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2023-05-20

Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles and Unreal Engine

  • A developer used Google Photorealistic 3D tiles API and Unreal Engine 5.1 to create an immersive experience that combines location data with dynamic responses from the ChatGPT API.
  • The experience allows users to enter prompts in a specific format and receive information about a location, including interesting facts, which are displayed in 3D text in the virtual world.
  • The developer used the Google Maps API and Cesium platform to retrieve location and geometry data and created a clever portal mechanism using the Niagara particle system to transition the user from their current location to the new location.

Industry Reactions

  • Cesium and Unreal Engine now support this API, potentially enabling 3D drive-throughs of users' hometowns in games.
  • The API has quota limitations in its beta version, and some have raised concerns over the legality of using Google Maps data and drone regulations for mapping.

Orb Farm

  • Orb Farm is a personalized aquatic ecosystem for nurturing, sculpting, and observing.
  • The system includes various components such as sand, stone, wood, water, algae, daphnia, grass, bacteria, fish, and goldfish.
  • The website allows users to reset, view information, and clear their ecosystem.

Industry Reactions

  • Users admire the creator Max Bittker and compare it to other simulation projects like Sandspiel.
  • Some users point out balancing flaws in Orb.Farm but still find the project entertaining while others discuss Sandspiel Studio and other visually programmed artificial life-based projects.

Linux tool to show progress for cp, mv, dd

  • Progress is a tool that runs on Linux, FreeBSD, and macOS and displays the percentage of copied data for basic commands like cp, mv, dd, tar, gzip/gunzip, and cat.
  • It can show estimated time, throughput, and has a "top-like" mode for monitoring.
  • Progress is easy to install and run on deb-based, archlinux, rpm-based systems, macOS with homebrew or MacPorts, and can be built from source with ncurses library.

Industry Reactions

  • Discussions on using progress indicators in Linux commands, including suggestions for tools like pv and Pipe Watch
  • Alternatives to dd, such as ddrescue or rsync, are discussed, along with the benefits of slowing down transfers to prevent overloading shared connections.

Nyxt: The Hacker's Browser

  • Nyxt is a browser with many built-in features for analyzing, navigating, and extracting information from the internet.
  • The browser is fully customizable and hackable, with its source code open and available for modification.
  • Some of Nyxt's unique features include powerful link hinting, smart bookmark search, and built-in programmability through a REPL.

Industry Reactions

  • Nyxt just had a major 3.0.0 release, and some users are excited to try it out.
  • Developers are seeking to create modular browsers with APIs for automation and customization that allow more freedom and control than traditional browsers.

Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

  • A video shared by the Vox YouTube channel explores how cars are the biggest source of noise pollution in cities, and that loud cars are not a necessary feature of transportation technology.
  • The video argues that car companies promote the idea of loud cars to signal status and attract attention, and that quieter alternatives, such as electric vehicles, can provide a more sustainable and enjoyable city environment.
  • The video suggests that cities should prioritize policies that reduce car use and promote public transportation and active transportation modes, such as biking and walking.

Industry Reactions

  • Possible solutions include physical barriers to attenuate tire noise, prioritizing walking and biking infrastructure, and reducing car usage through increased awareness, political action, and mass transit systems.
  • Electrification can help reduce noise and pollution levels in cities, but there is a debate on whether electric vehicles need to make artificial noise for pedestrian safety.

FreeBSD spends 7% of its boot time running a bubblesort on its SYSINITs

  • When the FreeBSD kernel boots in Firecracker (1 CPU, 128 MB RAM), it now spends 7% of its time running a bubblesort on its SYSINITs.
  • O(N^2) can bite hard when you're sorting over a thousand items. Time to replace the bubblesort with something faster.

Industry Reactions

  • Sorting algorithms are complex to implement in C and C++ programming language, Rust may be a better alternative for generic programming or easy creation of generic data structures and sorting algorithms
  • Amazon is testing a new sort technique to optimize boot time in EC2 instances for cold starts, while FreeBSD has started using the quicker qsort method to enumerate SATA drives in the AHCI driver to reduce kernel boot time. The slowest part of kernel boot time and the potential optimizations that can be made were discussed.

Migrating from Supabase

  • Val Town migrated from Supabase to Render due to problems encountered with scalability and local development issues.
  • Supabase's lack of documentation and broken toolchain for the CLI made local development difficult, and being limited to production was a major issue.
  • Val Town ultimately switched to a simpler "vanilla" Postgres service at Render, eliminating complex features and dependencies for a more streamlined database architecture.

Industry Reactions

  • Supabase's goal is to make Postgres easier, but not mandatory; better documentation and more examples recommended
  • Suggestions for improving CLI tools, migration preview and enforcement, and treating the database as a persistence layer, not an application

Apple Restricts Employee Use of ChatGPT, Joining Other Companies Wary of Leaks

  • Apple has restricted the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools for some employees.
  • This is in line with Apple's development of its own similar technology.
  • The move is in response to leaks from employees, as other companies have also been wary of such leaks in recent years.

Industry Reactions

  • OpenAI introduces business subscription with more granular data control to reassure customers of privacy concerns and urge them to sign up for protection
  • The post discusses the potential and limitations of AI tools like ChatGPT and LLMs for various tasks and the ongoing debate around their ethical and legal implications.

Venture Predation

  • Predatory pricing is a strategy used by firms to suppress competition.
  • Venture predators are startups that use venture finance to price below their costs and chase rivals out of the market to grab market share.
  • Venture predation can harm consumers and misallocate capital away from genuine innovations, and reforms to antitrust law and securities regulation may be needed to deter it.

Industry Reactions

  • The debate centers around whether startups that sell below cost are guilty of "dumping" and whether this is unique to VC-backed companies
  • The surge in the demand for "unicorns" has resulted in a push toward "venture predation," raising concerns about ethics and impacts on innovation and the economy.

Satellites reveal widespread decline in global lake water storage

  • Satellite observations, climate models, and hydrologic models indicate that more than 50% of large natural lakes and reservoirs have experienced volume loss over the past 30 years due to both human activities and climatic factors.
  • The decreasing water volume in these lakes and reservoirs poses a significant threat to essential ecosystem services, including freshwater storage, food supply, waterbird habitats, the cycling of pollutants and nutrients, and recreation.
  • Yao et al.'s findings highlight the urgent need for improved water management strategies to conserve and protect these vital freshwater resources.

Industry Reactions

  • The article calls for responsibility from societies to manage their natural resources sustainably.
  • Discussion Service users discuss possible solutions for water shortage, including clean energy-powered desalination, conservation and waste reduction, afforestation, better water distribution, and moving water-intensive industrial processes to water sources.