existential tingle

@ID_AA_Carmack re: "I don’t have “golden ears” to pick apart audio quality like I can with, say, missing gamma correction on texture filtering" My working belief is that even if end users don't have "golden ears/eyes" there is still a gain in enjoyment (even if they can't articulate why)

When you stream Spotify to Bluetooth speakers or headphones, the audio comes over the network lossily compressed with Vorbis or AAC codecs, is then decoded on your device to 48 Khz raw samples, then the Bluetooth stack lossily re-compresses it with SBC or AAC codecs before sending it over the airwaves to the speakers. I don’t have “golden ears” to pick apart audio quality like I can with, say, missing gamma correction on texture filtering, but that still hurts my system optimization soul. It is likely over-optimization, but It would be cleaner if there were a way to send bluetooth-ready, compressed audio directly.

@falco_girgis This post significantly restored my faith in software engineering, like a health bar refilling after a potion or some shit

The first time I got a request to SH4ZAM up a fast Fourier transform for the Sega Dreamcast’s SH4 CPU, I added it to the backlog, knowing full-well it was possible to do with HW acceleration due to some obscure PowerPoint slides I found from Hitachi from a few years after the demise of the DC, where the SH4 was being rebranded as a hybrid CPU/DSP chip for accelerating VoIP algorithms… The problem? I didn’t even remember how tf to add two complex numbers or how imaginary numbers even work, let alone how tf the FFT works… The second request? I got off my ass and started with the most fundamental basics by accelerating a custom implementation of C99’s for the SH4, learning how to crawl and eventually walk with complex math before trying to sprint… FINALLY, I could revisit that old Hitachi slide with the “radix 2 butterfly dif” graphic and understand wtf it was even talking about. I now am fairly certain I know exactly how to do a fast FFT on the DC’s SH4 CPU using the XMTRX 4x4 back-bank of FP regs and the FTRV god instruction, by exploiting the fact that multiplication of 2 complex numbers can be represented as a 2D vector being transformed by a 2x2 rotation matrix, which we can extend to a 4x4 matrix to do TWO complex multiplies… Stay tuned, as the dude who dropped out of grad school after rage quitting applied linear algebra cooks up an FFT to accelerate your dance rhythm DC homebrew!

@MsMelChen This makes a lot of sense. The written equivalent equivalent of “Boston Cracked Shoe” (a thing I recently learned about) ivy-style.com/adlai-stevenso…

Some people are shocked at how Epstein comes across as so mediocre and dumb in his emails, citing his sloppy correspondences riddled with misspellings, erratic punctuation, absent capitalization, random spacings and weird syntax. These aren't actually signs of illiteracy though. They are, in fact, assertions of status and also a window into his psyche. Meticulous adherence to proper sentence structure and formatting in emails is the hallmark of the earnest professional - the diligent academic, the public intellectual seeking a donation, the ambitious subordinate eager to demonstrate competence and respectability. Those who already command outsized power and deference can get away with communicating in ways that are deliberately terse, unpolished, even negligent. Such indifference to linguistic norms signals that the sender operates beyond the rules that constrain others. They need not invest time or effort in refinement because their position ensures the message will be received, deciphered, and acted upon regardless. The recipient, aware of the hierarchy, instinctively compensates by overlooking errors and trying to decode meaning. In this way, this negligence is a flex, an assertion that ordinary standards of clarity and courtesy simply do not apply to the author. This pattern echoes broader codes of elite behavior. Just as certain high-status circles treat dress codes with studied nonchalance by say wearing the "wrong" thing precisely because they can, the powerful can afford to write poorly. The more unassailable one's position, the less one needs to perform propriety in prose. (Interestingly there's horseshoe theory in action here where the only other people who will refuse to conform to linguistic standards are the indignant anti-imperialist woke types who think that insisting on proper linguistic standards is basically white supremacy)

It’s probably a skill issue but: the “V” in Scrabble/Crossplay should be worth like 25 points seriously that letter can burn in hell

@darmstadiym @ID_AA_Carmack #Personal_life_and_death" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_H… has the origin of the "Burger" nickname. It's fairly literal. At her first industry job she had a stash of hamburgers in her desk 😀

@ID_AA_Carmack why was this person called "burger"?

He was already well into a storied career, but I first knew “Burger” Bill Heineman as a big fish in the small pond of the Apple IIGS community at the start of the 90s, known for doing state of the art low level optimization on a platform with very limited commercial prospects. In 1992, the programmers in the early Id crew went to Kansas Fest, the grass roots Apple II convention, to show Silas Warner, the author of Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple II, our new take with Wolfenstein 3D. Someone seeing it for the first time on our laptop made the awed comment “Wow, I thought Bill Heineman was a hot programmer!” and I took that as a very substantial compliment. We started working with Bill shortly after that, and I really enjoyed talking shop and kicking around ideas with him. We had a lot of overlap in interests and skills, but he had impressive areas outside of my scope – Want to learn the details of Japanese game hardware? Learn to read Japanese technical manuals. Want to develop games for them, but they won’t give you a dev kit? Build your own hardware dev kit. I was very good at dropping into any system environment and getting shit done fast. He was probably better. Masters of Doom has the details, which I don’t trust myself to rehash from memory, but our collaboration on the SNES port of Wolfenstein 3D completely blew up and left us in a bad position, forcing me to drop what I was doing and do the port myself. We were mad, but eventually it was water under the bridge, and we wound up working together on additional Id projects afterwards. It was a useful cautionary tale about how brilliant technical people don’t always make wise decisions in other parts of their life. Bill became Rebecca, and we had email and Twitter contacts (@burgerbecky) over the years. We finally ran into each other again virtually at the covid Kansas Fest (still going after all these years!) and had some fun back and forth on ancient technical topics. They were living in Dallas with Jennell Jaquays, who had been a designer at Id, and I had some intention of getting out for a visit, but it never happened. I respect how they stayed technical, current, and sharp far longer than most programmers manage, shipping games over 40+ years with many, many generations of hardware. The driving force was always clearly the love of the work. 🫡

@ID_AA_Carmack John, you and Becky are both heroes to me. But what's up with the misgendering? Rebecca preferred female pronouns.

@noaudiophile Good luck and happy speaker'ing.

Understand the test conditions to understand the data.

a critical reappraisal of methods of mayhem

UHHHHH THE NEW #PULP ALBUM isn’t NOT their best album?!??!??!

@PartOfYouGame Fantastic news!

Finally got around to making the account for the other site. Same handle over there!

@noaudiophile It's a really interesting question tho and I'm not really qualified to speak on it (but of course I did anyway. it's the internet)

@noaudiophile Unlike most gnosticism I'm aware of (which, at least ostensibly, "cuts out the middle man" and allows for direct connection with the divine) Shinto relies pretty heavily on priests, places of worship, etc.

Was new age gnosticism and ego death obsessing introduced from the west to Japan, or was it inherent to Shinto religion and Japanese culture?

@PartOfYouGame BACK AT YOU! By the way are you fine folks on Bl--sky or any other platforms by any chance? I'm looking to get away from Twitter/X because you know, Reasons

@JohnBooty So much love. Hope the rest of MAGFest ripped. Can’t wait for you to enjoy the game!

@PartOfYouGame it was awesome meeting you (Dakota, I believe) at MAGFest this past weekend. really fell in love with the art style as soon as I walked by the booth. can't wait to actually play the game this weekend.... you rock!!

Does Musk know that you can vote for any candidate at any polling station and that there aren't like, special places to vote for each candidate?

@drvolts I loathe Trump with all my soul, but the rationale of many Trump voters is: "he's probably an asshole, but he advances the things we like (e.g. abortion bans) and that is more important. Not like we have to have dinner with the man."

... and you respond by just repeating yourself, louder. "HE'S A CAREER CRIMINAL WITH 34 FELONY CONVICTIONS." It's pointless. They *heard* you. They just don't understand, don't care. You're assuming they share the premise "criminal rapists are bad," but they don't.

I'm glad I don't have to write an endorsement piece, because I really wouldn't know how to go about it. Ever since 2015, when Trump descended the escalator, I have had the same feeling, which I've never quite seen articulated, so I will briefly try:

an app that is Venmo except it lets you send farts instead of money

Perhaps men are too emotional to be President.

@SebAaltonen @catalinmpit In my recent experience, 6-7 interviews was typical just for an individual contributor role. Standard seemed to be: - 4 or 5 interviews with folks who would be your peers - 1 interview with your prospective manager - Then a final interview w/ VP

@catalinmpit I did 7 interviews when I joined Unity 6 years ago. That's what you have to do to get a principal engineer job in a big multinational company nowadays.

10 rounds of interviews. Never seen something like this before. This is nuts!