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User: mikael

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  1. There is a raytracing extension to Vulkan and OpenGL which allows an optimized kd-tree to be stored in a buffer and interrogated using custom instructions.

  2. It's quite simple. You take your scene, slice and dice it into triangles, even parametric surfaces like NURBS, subdivision surfaces used by Pixar, 3D models from 3Dmax, Maya, Blender. All of that gets converted into textures, material shaders and geometry mesh. The geometry mesh gets chopped up into a hierarchical bounding volume like a kd-tree. All of this can be stored in a data format loaded straight into the GPU or CPU cache. It's all vectors, matrices and parametric coordinates. Separate processors are assigned to process each pixel and do thing like supersampling, ambient occlusion, global illumination, caustics and radiosity. Nvidia have their Optix ray-tracing library. Intel have Embree.

  3. Re:DHL first. Amazon next on DHL To Invest $300 Million To Quadruple Robots In Warehouses In 2019 (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    Our jobs have already been robotized many times. Email replaced printing out documents and dropping them into someone else IN tray. Compilers replaced hand-coding assembly. Washing machines replaced hand-washing.

  4. Re:Oscillating universe on Recent Quasar Observations Support Lots of Mini-Bangs Instead of One Big Bang (wired.com) · · Score: 1

    Those jets of charged particles would generate magnetic fields and pull the quasars or black holes together, or maybe line them up in neat little rows.

  5. Re: Ripples, echos, aftershocks on Recent Quasar Observations Support Lots of Mini-Bangs Instead of One Big Bang (wired.com) · · Score: 1

    If you were to take 100 ball bearings, scatter them one by one on the classic rubber sheet example, they would each just have a small gravity well. If you let them all fall to the center, then the sheet would be deformed way more.

  6. If that were a Children's petting zoo, and they were feeding the critters live baby chicks, then the devil enclosure would be quite appropriate.

  7. Re: The fundamental principle isn't cost-avoidance on RISC-V and Linux Foundations Partner to Promote Open Source CPU (techrepublic.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Unfortunately, many of those patents for performance enhancing features using out-of-order execution were based on a single research paper. That was implemented in one CPU vendor design, then cross-patented to other CPU vendors. RISC-V has the advantage that it doesn't have those vulnerabilities baked in and built upon.

  8. That would be insane - an SSD disk drive with a built in GPU / compute engine. That would get close to the "take the CPU to the data" approach for big data processing.

  9. Re:Ripples, echos, aftershocks on Recent Quasar Observations Support Lots of Mini-Bangs Instead of One Big Bang (wired.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Given that massively heavy objects in space stretch space time, then it seems logical that a quasar could actually create it's own massive gravity well. From our perspective, looking straight at that gravity well, the quasar would appear to be billions of light-years away than it really it. If for any reason, it suddenly disintegrated into lots of smaller objects in the same way of a cloud of a sparks created by a magicians disappearing trick, then that gravity well would suddenly disappear and be replace with the stars of a a galaxy. Then that galaxy of stars would appear to be way closer than the quasar.

  10. It was discussed in the past on slashdot. The price an energy provider can charge depends on two prices. When supply exceeds demand, it's the cheapest provider who dictates the price. Everyone will trying undercutting each other to their minimum profit margin. When demand exceeds supply is the most expensive provider who dictates the price. Everyone else can charge up to that price. The costs depend on spin up time to heat up the systems: renewable > gas > nuclear > coal

  11. Re: Cheaper solar and wind on More Than 40 Percent of World Coal Plants Are Unprofitable, Says Report (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    They had vertical windmills - an S shaped sail that sat on top of a millstone. Using just wind power alone, the natives could ease themselves from the tedious task of milling grain by hand.

  12. Re:Cheaper solar and wind on More Than 40 Percent of World Coal Plants Are Unprofitable, Says Report (reuters.com) · · Score: 2

    You use the surplus energy generated from your renewal systems to push water uphill (potential energy), or to charge up batteries (electrical energy), spin up flywheels (kinetic energy), compress gas (kinetic energy), charge up hydrogen fuel cells (chemical energy). Then you release energy from these sources when you need it.

  13. Re:Remember the USB 1.0 standard on Intel Publishes Its First Modern Windows Driver for PCs (pcworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Some mobile phones from ZTE would do the same. The memory of the phone became a virtual disk drive, and it would even reroute your PC's routing tables to go through the mobile network.

  14. Re:God damn Store on Intel Publishes Its First Modern Windows Driver for PCs (pcworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Plus telemetry to send back to the mothership, backdoors for law enforcement, with gaming adverts popping up whenever you want to change settings.

  15. Re: More Backdoors, more backdoors...!! on Mass Router Hack Exposes Millions of Devices To Potent NSA Exploit (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    That would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    He was the person who designed the Atari home computer SIO bus. For many peripherals, the device driver was actually contained within the device itself. Upon connection by the interface cable, the device driver would be uploaded. When the interface cable was removed, the device driver was removed.

  16. Re:Move to Canada on When the Internet Archive Forgets (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    A distributed web archive system, like BitTorrent, where different systems archive different webpages and can be searched in the same way.

  17. I agree. Ulysses 31 is a good example. The French did the story lines, but they needed the Japanes Anime artists help to really give those animations a means to convey intense explosions. Sometimes they did that by mixing purples blues and whites, for supernova, red/orange/yellow/black for an exploding planet, or black/white cracks with god rays for strange exotic matter.

  18. Disney offshored that work from Hollywood to the Far East decades ago, then brought it back when it was automated by computer. Artists from the art schools are way more qualified than to inbetween and fill in paint cells.

    If you look at how they did many of those early animations, there were motion artists who took movies of dancers, rotoscoped the animation to get generic stick figures for reference. These frames were a closely guarded secret as they were reused between animations. When it came to make an animation, they took those reference frames, outlined each with a simple body, get detail artists do a fully detailed frame, then hand those over to inbetweeners who did the intermediate animation frames, and finally to the cel painters who outlined and filled in each individual frame. The deep learning system replaces these stages.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  19. Re:Why bother? on CeBIT, World's Largest IT Conference, Canned (dw.com) · · Score: 1

    Saudi's have investments in SoftBank

  20. Re:You have to wonder about the economic impact on CeBIT, World's Largest IT Conference, Canned (dw.com) · · Score: 1

    Those conference centres are always fully booked with all sorts of conferences. They will find others to fill the space:

    https://www.eventbrite.com/d/g...

  21. Re:Seemingly against the tide on Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers To Predict Their Futures (medium.com) · · Score: 2

    It's probably because just about anything written about in the past sci-fi novels is now possible. Those little worm drones in Dune that could climb walls, relay video and sound as well as inject poison? That's doable. Tiny little drones with cameras? Done. Tricorder with multispectral scanner? Done. Touchscreens? Done. Full dome displays? Done. VR headsets? Done. Swarms of microbots? Done.
    Video-on-Demand by cable? Done. Talking car? Done. Remote surveillance of your home by pocket videoscreen? Done.

    If we look at how we lived back in the 1960's compared to now, the only changes have been the shape and size of TV screens, electronics and home appliances. We've mapped the human genome, virome, proteonome, and every other -ome there is.

    The only things left are holographic displays, light sabers, flying cars, time travel and teleportation. Maybe the first two can be done using air ionization:
    https://nerdist.com/the-future...

  22. Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? on Elon Musk's Boring Company Cancels Los Angeles Tunnel Following Lawsuit (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    I think they are concerned about the environmental impact of having a hyperloop station in their neighbourhood where certain undesirables could appear out of nowhere, mug whoever is around in the area and disappear again.

  23. Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? on Elon Musk's Boring Company Cancels Los Angeles Tunnel Following Lawsuit (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 2

    If they are going to build a big long squiggly tunnel underneath LA, then maybe it makes sense to make sure it will have more than one purpose - capacity for power, fibre-optics and other services.

  24. Re:Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? on Elon Musk's Boring Company Cancels Los Angeles Tunnel Following Lawsuit (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    I think it's more about a possible infestation of streetgangus criminalis being unintentionally transferred into their neighborhood.

  25. Re:ADHD what is it ? on Large Genetic Study Finds First Genes Connected With ADHD (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    France doesn't allow junk food, processed meat, soft drinks in their schools. Parents volunteer to help out at the school.