jfries (u/jfries) - Readit News

jfries commented on I'm building a Minecraft clone in hardware, on a tiny FPGA with 143kb of RAM twitter.com/nickmqb/statu... · Posted by u/nickmqb

nickmqb · 5 years ago

The FPGA that I'm using for this (the Lattice iCE40 UP5K) is really limited when it comes to RAM, which is the main constraint when it comes to world size. As per the title, there's only 143kb, which is insanely low for doing any kind of 3D stuff :). 48kb is used by the frame buffer, 19kb for textures, which leaves 76kb. 48kb of that is used for the map, which currently limits it to 32x32x32 blocks. However, I do have some plans to improve on that in the future!

The FPS (30Hz) is rock steady though! One of my pet peeves when doing DirectX/OpenGL development is that it's really hard to completely avoid frame drops, e.g. if the OS decides to schedule some other thread, or because the GPU driver decided to do something else than render your app. With hardware development, you can side step all of those problems. As a result, the Minecraft clone is guaranteed to not drop frames :).

jfries · 5 years ago

If you have a guarantee for the worst case of generating a pixel (which you indicate by saying that you never drop frames), couldn't you get rid of the framebuffer? Schedule pixel generation so that they complete just in time for when they're needed for output.

This would save up RAM for other things (and be a fun exercice to get right).

jfries commented on Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020 sizecoding.org/wiki/Memor... · Posted by u/guiambros

iszomer · 5 years ago

Tiny binaries probably relied heavily on the native OS's system libraries.

jfries · 5 years ago

Yes, that would give some peace of mind, right? Unfortunately for us, that's not the case. The only platform specific code is the 8 instructions on top of "Code of framework" on http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/Memories

First to set the video mode, and then to set up a timer used to progress time.

jfries commented on Show HN: Remotehour – Allows people to talk to you anytime you’re available remotehour.co/... · Posted by u/shyamady

jfries · 5 years ago

Not sure if this app supports it or not, but it would be very useful with a 5 second warning before being thrown into a video call. I could see all kinds of embarrassing moments happening otherwise.

jfries commented on Finding Mona Lisa in the Game of Life kevingal.com/blog/mona-li... · Posted by u/fanf2

jfries · 5 years ago

Since propagation of information is limited to one cell per step, it's possible to speed this up by splitting the image into smaller subimages and solving those first, and then solve the borders between such subimages.

This technique can be used to solve multiple steps as well, the only change is that the border between subimages becomes thicker.

jfries commented on Obscure Features of JPEG (2011) hodapple.com/blag/posts/2... · Posted by u/userbinator

jfries · 6 years ago

Could progressive mode be used to serve thumbnails by just truncating the image at a suitable point, or does the spec (and so, decoders) expect the whole image to eventually arrive?

jfries commented on Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) crucial in SARS-coronavirus lung injury (2005) nature.com/articles/nm126... · Posted by u/Khelavaster

jfries · 6 years ago

What are the implications of this?

jfries commented on I built a DIY license plate reader with a Raspberry Pi and machine learning towardsdatascience.com/i-... · Posted by u/GrassFedAltCoin

jfries · 6 years ago

Surprised by the negativity in the comments. This is an extremely impressive presentation of ability to put together current technologies and get the thing working front start to finish.

A+, would hire.

jfries commented on Obesity Trends in the U.S. hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-... · Posted by u/EndXA

partiallypro · 6 years ago

I think it largely has to do with not being as active. We have a lot more desk jobs now than we had in the past. In the past people didn't have to go to the gym to not be overweight, they burned it all off when they were going throughout their day.

jfries · 6 years ago

That's a tempting theory, but the increased ratio of white vs blue collar jobs isn't enough to explain it. See graph on https://www.businessinsider.com/great-news-weve-become-a-whi...

jfries commented on France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax reuters.com/article/us-fr... · Posted by u/ComodoHacker

smabie · 6 years ago

If Super Micro knows they didn’t do it, they should absolutely love the story. Buyback the underpriced shares and make a ton of free money once the market realized the Bloomberg story is false. I don’t know if they actually did that, but that’s what I would have done. I didn’t actually do that because I trusted Bloomberg a lot. But there was substantial profit to be made as an insider. I bet many/most employees made that trade, at the very least.

jfries · 6 years ago

Would that be legal, or counted as insider trading? Since you're trading on relevant information not available to the public.

jfries commented on Show HN: I've made a rotary dial number input, because why not? github.com/victorqribeiro... · Posted by u/atum47

jfries · 6 years ago

Interestingly (or perhaps annoyingly) enough, the placement of the 0 was different in different countries. At least in Sweden the first digit was 0, and not 1 as in this implementation. This was reflected in the emergency number which was 90000 at the time, which is easy to dial without mistakes even in a stressful situation.

Is there a need for localization?