1. How video games use lookup tables
Total comment counts : 20
Summary
This article discusses the use of look-up-tables (LUTs) in graphics programming, using WebGL as an example. LUTs allow for creative techniques in manipulating video footage, such as turning grayscale footage into color or creating variations of images. The article explains the use of LUTs in the fragment shader, where each pixel’s final color is determined. The article also mentions the performance implications of using LUTs and provides examples of how they have been used in games like Left 4 Dead.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article explains the use of lookup tables to achieve a specific effect in a video game. The author describes how two lookup tables are used: one for storing lighting details around the player and another for pseudo-randomly ordering background rows. By randomizing the order, the author is able to give the effect a “soft edge” and hide the raster scan. The author uses a lookup table because calculating the random order in real-time would be too slow.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the use of look-up tables to create a textured tunnel effect. By knowing the angle and distance of each pixel from the center of the screen, designers can determine which texture to place at each location, creating the illusion of moving through a 3D tunnel. It is noted that this effect is relatively inexpensive and can even be implemented on lower-end devices. The author initially thought that the game Stardust used this effect, but it is revealed that the game actually utilizes a repeating 6-frame animation for the background.
2. The KDE desktop gets an overhaul with Plasma 6
Total comment counts : 56
Summary
The article discusses the release of KDE Plasma 6, KDE Frameworks 6, and KDE Gear 24.02, which are all based on the Qt 6 development framework. This release focuses on migrating to Wayland and aims to provide a seamless upgrade for users while improving performance, security, and support for newer hardware. For developers, there is a focus on removing deprecated frameworks and decreasing dependencies to make it easier to write applications targeting KDE. The article also mentions some changes in Plasma 6, such as the default use of Wayland as the graphical session, the switch from single-click to double-click for opening files, and changes to scrolling behavior. The Breeze theme and the System Settings and Dolphin applications have also undergone updates.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author expresses their positive experience with Plasma 6, particularly highlighting the improved Wayland support. They mention that they were using a keyboard shortcut to switch to the previously-used desktop, but it was removed by KDE. However, a KDE developer created a new KWin script to replace this functionality, which fixed the author’s workflow. The author expresses their appreciation for KDE and concludes by providing links to the relevant KDE resources.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article praises the KDE team for their steady progress and encourages users to file bug tickets and provide feedback. The author hopes that more distributions will adopt an opinionated KDE setup, as it is highly customizable but often not utilized to its full potential.
3. Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap
Total comment counts : 35
Summary
The article discusses Heinz’s introduction of a fully recyclable ketchup cap, made possible through a collaboration with Berry Global. The new cap is made of polypropylene, which simplifies recycling and can be processed by any facility that handles plastic #5. The article highlights the use of industrial X-ray CT to explore the cap’s design without damaging it, showcasing its uniform composition compared to the old cap with a silicone valve. The new cap leverages the shear-thinning property of ketchup to dispense the perfect amount and prevent mess. Developing sustainable packaging requires careful design and fine-tuning, and industrial CT plays a crucial role in analyzing and refining packaging solutions. Heinz’s recyclable cap demonstrates a commitment to environmental sustainability and has the potential to significantly reduce waste.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses how only 3% of polypropylene (PP) products are currently being recycled in the United States. It emphasizes that despite claims of recyclability, both the bottle and cap are often not actually recycled. The article suggests that this situation is mainly due to misleading marketing and provides insights into an engineering puzzle. The title of the article is “How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled.”
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author discusses their frustration with the large amount of garbage generated from their urban lifestyle. They mention that in the past, people used more environmentally-friendly packaging like glass bottles and wonder why there has been a shift towards using plastic packaging.
4. Children need risk, fear, and excitement in play
Total comment counts : 35
Summary
The article discusses the importance of outdoor risky play for children’s development and argues that removing all risk from children’s lives can be harmful. The author highlights the decline in outdoor play and the increase in structured and screen-based activities among children. They emphasize that when children have the time, space, and freedom to engage in risky play, they naturally take risks and engage in activities such as climbing, exploring, and playing with tools. The article concludes by stating that all children need risky play, although it may look different for each child.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author reminisces about their old school’s two-story monkey bars, which were eventually made safer with rubber shavings underneath. However, over time, it was reduced to one story and then eventually removed altogether. The author expresses nostalgia for the danger and excitement of playing on the steel bars, noting that injuries were rare. The author concludes by speculating that there is likely now a sign criticizing overprotective parents.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article suggests that parents’ aversion to risk in child-rearing is connected to the size of their families. The author believes that parents are more comfortable with their oldest child taking risks if they have other children at home, as opposed to if they have only one child. This aversion to risk may be rooted in the fear of losing the only child and ending their lineage. The article also mentions a similar correlation between the average age of a society and its propensity for war, suggesting that fertility rates may affect the acceptance of risk in children’s behavior.
5. Learn CSS layout the pedantic way (2015)
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
This article is a collection of chapters about CSS layout. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the rules and details in CSS, as there are many misconceptions and inaccuracies regarding certain concepts. The author aims to provide a pedantic but comprehensive guide to CSS layout, covering topics such as box positioning, box sizing, additional properties influencing positioning, flexbox, and practical layout techniques. The chapters also include examples and quizzes to test understanding. Overall, it is a resource for those who already have a grasp of CSS and want to delve deeper into layout.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article explains that floats can be used to position boxes to the left and right of their container box, but the author argues that using floats for layout is confusing and outdated, especially since the introduction of flexbox and grid. The author suggests that floats are better suited as a typographic tool.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article explains that CSS layout consists of four different systems: table (used for email), float (for articles with inline images), flexbox (most commonly used), and grid (a modern alternative to table). Additionally, the article mentions absolute and fixed positioning as hacks to bypass layout.
6. Talc – A fast and flexible allocator for no_std and WebAssembly
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
The article discusses a fast and flexible allocator for no_std and WebAssembly. It mentions different qualifiers and tips for supporting the work. The article also provides benchmarks and usage instructions for targeting WebAssembly. It describes various features of the allocator, such as the average occupied capacity, OOM handling system, and provided OomHandler implementations. There is also information on building the allocator on stable Rust and the specific optimizations used. The article highlights improvements in performance, benchmarks, and shell scripts. Finally, it provides instructions on migrating from v2 to v3 of the allocator.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article talks about using a tool called Talc in WebAssembly (WASM) for memory tracking and monitoring. They find it to be great and easy to use, especially for tracking the evolution of app memory. They provide an example of how they use Talc in their console. The author also mentions that they haven’t benchmarked dlmalloc (Rust’s default WASM allocator), but they consider Talc to be a straightforward swap and acknowledge that the author of Talc is focused on performance.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article compares the performance of two allocators, Talc and Frusa, with Rust’s system allocator. Talc is faster than Frusa when there are no conflicts, but slower when there are concurrent allocations. Both Talc and Frusa are much slower than Rust’s system allocator.
7. Open Collective Official Statement – OCF Dissolution
Total comment counts : 10
Summary
The Open Collective Foundation has announced its decision to dissolve, effective December 31. This has caused shockwaves in the Open Collective ecosystem and community. Open Collective Inc, the for-profit entity responsible for building the Open Collective platform, clarifies that it is separate from the nonprofit organizations founded by the founders of Open Collective. The exact reasons for the Foundation’s decision are unknown, but Open Collective Inc is committed to supporting the affected collectives and their transition to other paths. The majority of open source projects on the platform are hosted by a different organization, Open Source Collective, which is financially stable. The platform is exploring potential options for the affected collectives, and coordination with Open Collective Foundation will be necessary. The support team is available to assist with any questions or concerns.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the potential challenges faced by 600 groups that rely on fiscal sponsorship. Fiscal sponsorship is a mechanism in the US charitable world where an existing 501(c)(3) organization handles the administrative tasks and legal requirements for another organization that wants to accept charitable donations. The fiscal sponsor takes care of paperwork, provides a bank account, and ensures compliance with regulations. In return, they receive a small portion of the donations to cover their costs. However, if a fiscal sponsor dissolves, the relationship needs to be unwound, and a new sponsor must be found. The Python Software Foundation is mentioned as an example of an organization that occasionally acts as a fiscal sponsor.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the shutdown of the Open Collective Foundation (OCF) and the impact on various organizations affiliated with it, such as Open Collective and Open Source Collective. Many entities receiving donations through OCF can migrate to other organizations while maintaining existing sponsors, but some may need to find non-OC organizations due to additional requirements. The situation is described as both strange and technical.
8. Optimize sgemm on RISC-V platform
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
This article discusses optimization techniques in computing, particularly the similarities and differences across different platforms. The author highlights that memory prefetching/preloading has a significant impact on the performance of the RISC-V platform, whereas it has little effect on ARM/x86 platforms. Additionally, the author mentions the presence of SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) registers on the Allwinner D1-H platform.
Top 2 Comment Summary
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9. I keep making things out of checkboxes (2021)
Total comment counts : 21
Summary
The author describes how they became obsessed with creating checkbox animations. They initially built a JavaScript library called Checkboxland, which allowed text and animations to be displayed on a checkbox grid. After taking a break from the project, they decided to revisit it and create more complex animations, including ones that responded to clicks. This led to the idea of converting images into ASCII text and eventually converting videos into checkbox animations. The author also created a webcam filter using html checkboxes. They mention feeling guilty about spending so much time on these projects when they could be working on more useful things, but they also enjoy the creativity and experimentation. The author contemplates whether to continue making checkbox animations or move on to other projects.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article is expressing a feeling of guilt for spending a lot of time on projects that are not particularly useful, even though they have the skills and tools to create more meaningful things. The author compares this to the idea of Superman using his superpowers to fry an egg, questioning the purpose of having skills if they are not used for more important tasks.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author recalls implementing Conway’s Game of Life using checkboxes and showing it to their mentor, who found it amusing. The author thought it was the obvious choice for the task, but is glad to see that there are others who have used the same method.
10. Scheduling Internals
Total comment counts : 9
Summary
The article discusses the concept of concurrency in programming and explores different ways to handle multiple clients concurrently. The author begins by explaining the limitations of using threads and highlights issues such as memory allocation, performance, and static stack allocation. They then introduce the concept of asynchronous I/O as an alternative approach to handling concurrency. The article dives into the technical details of implementing asynchronous I/O and discusses various topics such as concurrency vs parallelism, coroutines, preemptive vs non-preemptive schedulers, and scheduling algorithms used in different programming languages. The article assumes an intermediate level of proficiency in reading code and operating system internals.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article believes that there are some bugs in the schedulers. One bug is related to multi-core scheduling, where the second core eventually stops functioning. Another bug is observed in the deadline scheduler, where sometimes a task skips the queue and becomes the most runnable even though its deadline is “0s away.” Additionally, there is an issue with the top task occasionally being double-scheduled on a core.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the author’s work on creating animations and a multithreaded runtime in C. They mention their goal of auto parallelizing async tasks and their use of bulk synchronous parallelism without mutexes. They also describe using two io_urings for full duplex communication and their plan to write up their learnings. The author mentions their adapted HTTP server and their use of mailboxes and double buffering for thread safe communication. They also mention their plan to add coroutines based on Marce Coll’s coroutines.