Hacker News: nice_byte

New comment by nice_byte in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

nice_byte — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:49:47 +0000

Sounds like you have two happy well-adjusted friends?

New comment by nice_byte in "Introduction to spherical harmonics for graphics programmers"

nice_byte — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 11:21:54 +0000

Not really. Besides the problems with ringing outlined in the post, the number of coefficients required to capture higher frequency detail grows quadratically, requiring not only more storage but also operations to evaluate. Which makes straightforward cubemap replacement impractical.

New comment by nice_byte in "Introduction to spherical harmonics for graphics programmers"

nice_byte — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:24:45 +0000

Author here. Please let me know if the sample code doesn't work for you. It's all single threaded dumb JavaScript which makes it very easy to read, but definitely not performant. I decided to stick with it for didactic reasons, but still worried that it may hang someone's browser.

New comment by nice_byte in "Bitmap fonts make computers feel like computers again"

nice_byte — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:49:04 +0000

ai slop

New comment by nice_byte in "I prefer OG style websites – what are yours?"

nice_byte — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:50:33 +0000

http://pouet.net

https://www.unknowncheats.me/

New comment by nice_byte in "Learn Claude Code by doing, not reading"

nice_byte — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:51:50 +0000

I don't think that is true.

New comment by nice_byte in "Learn Claude Code by doing, not reading"

nice_byte — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:31:09 +0000

you literally don't have to. you can literally just keep doing your job the way that you always have.

New comment by nice_byte in "Looking at Unity made me understand the point of C++ coroutines"

nice_byte — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:18:01 +0000

I don't know, I'm not convinced with this argument.

The "ugly" version with the switch seems much preferable to me. It's simple, works, has way less moving parts and does not require complex machinery to be built into the language. I'm open to being convinced otherwise but as it stands I'm not seeing any horrible problems with it.

New comment by nice_byte in "Opera: Rewind The Web to 1996 (Opera at 30)"

nice_byte — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:52:13 +0000

sucks that opera is no longer with us. used to be my go-to browser before Firefox and eventually chrome...

New comment by nice_byte in "On The Need For Understanding"

nice_byte — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 21:27:36 +0000

no. it was the first question I asked and was given a satisfactory explanation (along the lines of, "this adds things to your program that help it write text to the screen.")

New comment by nice_byte in "Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock"

nice_byte — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 20:24:43 +0000

this story would make a killer asianometry video

New comment by nice_byte in "Personal Computer by Perplexity"

nice_byte — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 03:30:03 +0000

this is such disappointing clickbait. i thought it was a hardware product.

New comment by nice_byte in "Why does C have the best file API"

nice_byte — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:14:47 +0000

mmap is not a language feature. it is also full of its own pitfalls that you need to be aware of. recommended reading: https://db.cs.cmu.edu/mmap-cidr2022/

New comment by nice_byte in "Americans are destroying Flock surveillance cameras"

nice_byte — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 01:39:48 +0000

Good.

New comment by nice_byte in "Choosing a language based on its syntax?"

nice_byte — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 22:44:02 +0000

Yeah I misused the term "token". What I really meant is that they should just be token separator and nothing more (i.e. once we encounter whitespace it means the current token has ended)

New comment by nice_byte in "Choosing a language based on its syntax?"

nice_byte — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:53:14 +0000

I have really just one wish when it comes to syntax: no syntactically significant whitespace. Space, newline, tab, etc. should ALL map to the same exact token. In practice this also means semicolons or something like them are needed as well, to separate expressions/statements. I dislike langs that try to insert semicolons for you, but at least it's better than the alternative.

the way python treats whitespace is a huge design mistake that has probably wasted like a century (if not more) worth of time across all users, on something really trivial.

New comment by nice_byte in "Lena by qntm (2021)"

nice_byte — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:54:58 +0000

tl;dr yes it is

she did not explicitly consent for that photo to be used in computer graphics research or millions of sample projects. moreover, the whole legality of using that image for those purposes is murky because I doubt anyone ever received proper license from the actual rights-holder (playboy magazine). so the best way to go about this is just common-sense good-faith approach: if the person depicted asks you to please knock it off, you just do it, unless you actively want to be a giant a-hole to them.

New comment by nice_byte in "Lena by qntm (2021)"

nice_byte — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 09:03:55 +0000

the "porn" angle is very funny to me, since there is nothing pornographic or inapropriate about the image. when I was young, I used to think it was some researcher's wife whom he loved so much he decide to use her picture absolutely everywhere.

it's sufficient to say that the person depicted has withdrawn their consent for that image to be used, and that should put an end to the conversation.

New comment by nice_byte in "Lena by qntm (2021)"

nice_byte — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 08:56:45 +0000

Everybody knows that. The GP's reaction is what perplexes me. Are they saying the name of the story is inappropriate? I think it's very appropriate.

New comment by nice_byte in "Lena by qntm (2021)"

nice_byte — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 07:19:45 +0000

when you read this and its follow-up "driver" as a commentary on how capitalism removes persons from their humanity, it's as relevant as it was on day one.

good sci fi is rarely about just the sci part.