Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#1

Post by ForgotIdAgain » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

List of scenes that I am particularly fond of:

- Minecrat computer engineering: Culminated with this playable 3d simplified minecraft clone (CPU+GPU) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BP7DhHTU-I

- Shader computing scene: More of a subculture of an already marvelous subculture, people are finding weird ways to compute with shader

https://blog.pimaker.at/texts/rvc1/ Risc V emulator in a shader https://github.com/SCRN-VRC/SVM-Face-and-Object-Detection-Shader Object detection in a shader

- Cellular automata: people finding awesome patterns, some great project:

https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working-game-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life https://btm.qva.mybluehost.me/building-arbitrary-life-patterns-in-15-gliders/

- TAS/Speedrun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBK1sq1BQ2Q Insane game exploit which uses only player input in order to inject an elaborate rom hack with network functionality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9dTmzRAL_4 Another insane one which work by switching game (!!) during the run

- "Can it run Doom" Scene:

https://twitter.com/sylefeb/status/1258808333265514497 Run a doom map renderer on a FPGA. Not on a classic computer "emulated" by the fpga, the renderer is directly implemented in the fpga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6hnQ1RKhbo Yes doom can run doom

So what are your technical gem?

Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#2

Post by kodah » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

Not really weird anymore as there's a lot of entry level and cloud-based components for people to get into it with. My scene is the localized automation scene; basically home automation but with no cloud connected products.

Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#3

Post by tenebrisalietum » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:14 PM UTC

Making Doom levels, but that's probably more artistic than technical, though knowing your way around the engine and editors is technical.

Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#4

Post by bckr » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

I'm in the deep learning music scene, which is due for its stable diffusion moment in the next year or two. The (primarily) timbre transfer system called RAVE is where I'm starting, and my contribution is to optimize the system to improve training time.

[] https://github.com/acids-ircam/RAVE/tree/master/rave

Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#5

Post by chc4 » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

- Programming Language dev: I think compilers and VM runtimes are neat, and like talking to people in the space on twitter or reading new papers that come out about it. The /r/ProgrammingLanguage discord server is a great place to hang out, with lots of interesting and competent people working on sideprojects simply because they like the topic.

- Urbit: I got into Urbit years ago, and still think it's really interesting as a Lisp-machine-alt-timeline-esque project. The goal is basically trying to think how the world would look if your entire OS was built on a runtime that uses cons cells and bignums everywhere for values, with a single transparently persistent state a la KeyKOS, and everything has typed RPC and P2P apps were the default.

Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#6

Post by zh3 » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

Laser galvo's. Fast flicking mirrors drawing patterns on the walls and ceiling. Use a UV laser and draw crazy glowing shapes on luminous paint (ever shone a UV laser at something luminous?)

Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#7

Post by Torwald » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

https://www.demoscene.info/

(used to be active there, in the demoscene)

Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#8

Post by elihu » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

Modular synthesizers. Electric vehicle conversions. The intersection of musical instrument construction with just intonation and other alternative tuning systems.

Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#9

Post by nahumfarchi » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

Generative art (fxhash specifically)

Re: Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?

#10

Post by LAC-Tech » Mon, Nov 21, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

- Systems that work offline. Partly for practical reasons due to my background working in Agtech companies, as well as logistics in developing countries. But also it's just technically and socially fascinating. How do you detect conflicts? How do you decide what one is? To what extent - if any - can it be resolved automatically? Revisions, event sourcing, CRDTs... there's no one size fits all industry solution and not enough people to take it seriously. (Friendly request - if it's been a problem for you in your industry, drop me a line. I sometimes think I should niche down in it, but wonder if it's too obscure).

- Frontend JS minimalism. Any stories about people ditching transpilers, build tools etc appeals to me immensely. My spicy take is that React is not an abstraction above the DOM, it's an abstraction parallel to it.

- Concatenative langauges. Less Forth and more Joy[0]. I just feel like there's something here, and the idea will not die until it catches on. The amount of concatenative language interpreters I've abandoned is a bit embarassing.

[0] https://hypercubed.github.io/joy/joy.html