I was using Taichi recently to prototype some fragment shaders (I just mocked out texelFetch, texture, etc and wrote a for loop over each pixel). I found it convenient to be able to run on the CPU and also not have to deal with any OpenGL or Vulkan setup.
One thing that was frustrating was that I couldn't template a function with another function (as far as I know). That lead to some copied and pasted code when I had multiple implementations that I wanted to compare. Can Metashade do that?
Agreed that the ability to just run on the CPU is valuable. Metashade doesn't support that yet and its codegen syntax doesn't look like regular Python code (everything codegen-related is prefixed with `sh.` etc.) but it's certainly possible to write a generator that would just execute the code "in the immediate mode" or generate C/C++ code for the CPU.
Regarding templating functions with functions - in Metashade you can just specialize the generated code however you see fit, with Python as the meta language. E.g. Python's `if` statements can act like `#ifdef`s or `if constexpr`, and you can certainly pass around callables to parameterize behavior.
This! Don't use an ultrasonic humidifier unless you fill it with distilled water. Tap water will just create a ton of white dust everywhere.
If you absolutely need more humidity in your home, get something like the Venta LW45 which has a half-submerged rotating disk and blows air over the still wet surface. Works with tap water (requires regular cleaning and a special additive).
I assume the author picked up the quotation mark habit from LaTeX. Backticks and apostrophes (single or double) get rendered as proper left and right quotation marks. It's also possible this was copy+pasted from a LaTeX source and they forgot to fix the quotation marks.
The italics on the page are also missing, for me at least. I am seeing them as obliques. The upright roman face is tilted, rather than using the separate set of italic glyphs. Some systems do this if the italic glyphs can't be found or something is misconfigured.
The problem with a solution like this is that you are limited to square pixels. Not all games and systems used square pixels, because CRTs didn't really _have_ pixels, only scanlines. Their vertical resolution was discrete, but their horizontal resolution was continuous as they displayed an analog signal.
For example, most SNES games ran at 256x224 (and were slightly letterboxed to fit the roughly 240 lines on a 4:3 NTSC CRT, though the border generally disappeared in the overscan area). The pixels were taller than they were wide.
Kirby's Dreamland 3 on the SNES ran at 512x224. Pixels were much wider than they were tall.
The original Doom ran at 320x200 in VGA mode 13h. It was not letterboxed but displayed in 4:3 on CRT monitors, so pixels were narrower than they were tall.
When emulating original arcade cabinet games it gets even harder to be pixel perfect. Many used custom horizontal and vertical scanning frequencies because they were speccing the specific CRT in the game's cabinet. This changed not only the frame rate but the number of scan lines.
Emulating a collection of these games precisely requires a CRT that can scan at multiple frequency ranges. Fortunately, such monitors were made by arcade monitor manufacturers both for new OEM cabinets and monitor field replacement in existing cabinets. For my custom emulation cabinet I chose a Wells Gardner D9200, widely considered one of the best such monitors ever made. Fortunately, I originally built my cabinet back in 2008 when these CRTs were still being made. Of course, the PC and software have been updated many times but IMHO, there is no better single CRT for broad-based emulation of many titles in one system.
The D9200 accepts analog RGB input and will scan at an incredibly wide range of frequencies enabling the cabinet to emulate virtually all raster CRT based arcade games. Once you acquire such a monitor, proper emulation requires feeding it a native analog signal to avoid external transcoding. The last graphics card manufactured with native analog output was the Radeon R9 280x released in 2013. It's also the fastest GPU available for a purist emulation system. Although analog retro emulation doesn't typically require a GPU that fast, it can be useful if you also want to natively emulate titles from sixth generation home consoles such as PS2, Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo Gamecube which had 3D titles but still output analog video to CRTs at 480P.
To complete a pixel perfect emulation system you'll need to run a special version of the MAME arcade emulator called GroovyMAME, which works together with a specially hacked graphics card driver called CRT EMUDriver. This driver allows precisely setting the scanning frequencies of analog graphics card output. The maintainers of GMAME release new versions monthly in sync with MAME and have been doing so for over a decade. If you really want to do it right, I recommend the active community of hardcore retro analog purists at http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/board,52.0.html. Having played, worked on and owned many analog CRT based game cabs in the 1980s, I thought I knew a lot about retro analog emulation but I always learn something new there.
So called "Pixel Perfect" retro analog emulation of original arcade cabinets and home consoles isn't necessarily easy but it is possible - and IMHO absolutely worth it.
SNES and DOS do not use standard resolutions. However, PS2, GameCube, Wii, Xbox & Xbox 360, all Sega consoles, a wide variety of arcade hardware, etc. do. Anything that runs at standard hardware, which, barring super nintendo and certain PS1 software, IS the vast majority of the retro gaming catalog, will look awesome on these.
PS1 is an oddball. Most games run at standard resolution, like the Final Fantasy games. They will look awesome on these. Some, however, do not. Spyro runs at odd resolutions, similar to SNES games.
That being said, I still think this is an awesome option for retro gaming where CRT is not permitted.
Basically, society is better off using that money for something actually productive, rather than just repairing damage.
> Whence we arrive at this unexpected conclusion: "Society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed;" and we must assent to a maxim which will make the hair of protectionists stand on end – To break, to spoil, to waste, is not to encourage national labour; or, more briefly, "destruction is not profit."
I just want to point out that, in the US, it is illegal to not rent to families. More specifically, it is illegal to discriminate based on familial status. Whether anyone is actually enforcing that in a particular area may be a different matter.
> it is illegal to discriminate based on familial status.
I think the point was why you can't find 4 bedroom apartments for rent.
People don't want to rent to families, they don't buy 4 bedroom apartments and they don't rent them. It's not that they actively discriminate against families, they just don't buy properties that would cater to families.
I am not a landlord and probably won't ever be one, but looking at it from a financial standpoint, it seems smarter to have 2 2br 1ba apartments for rent than 1 4br 2ba apartment. They would take up roughly the same space, albeit maybe with smaller rooms, but 2 $1500 incomes would provide a more stable income than 1 $3,000 apartment if for no other reason than it is unlikely both tenants would leave at the same time.
Worst case you drop to $1,500 for a month or so instead of losing all $3,000 income while you wait for a new tenant to appear.
Whether anyone is actually enforcing that in a particular area may be a different matter.
And whether or not it actually is enforceable is yet another. Who would know if a small landlord passed over an applicant because they had a family? Maybe big landlords could be monitored, but I’ve Had a single rental house for 5 years and I’ve been through 2 tenants in that time, no one could detect any trends in that small sample.
It is weird to force a landlord to take customers they know they don't want. Especially when it comes to renting, where the behaviour of your customers does make a big difference. Looking at my current house, we have 10 appartments, and one family. Guess who is contributing to the noise the most? If I were a landlord, I'd also not take any families.
> It is weird to force a landlord to take customers they know they don't want.
What you call "weird" others call discrimination. Many racist folks didn't want to rent to black people or other minorities bc they "didn't want them". Others didn't want to rent to see senior citizens or people with disabilities.
Protected classes exist for a reason! It is socially optimal to not allow businesses to discriminate against many groups of people.
Sure, I get it. However, as a person with a disability, I can tell you one thing for sure: I much prefer knowing that someone doesnt want me. Imagine someone was forced by law to take you as a customer, but doesn't like you at all. Can you imagine how you are going to be treated? Doy ou really think insisting does improve things? I very much doubt that. I very much prefer living somewhere where there is no hate towards me.
So, given that personal observation, I really ask myself: What good does it do to force people to cooperate with humans they dont like?
Imagine someone was forced by law to take you as a customer, but doesn't like you at all
I don’t care if the pharmacy clerk likes me or approves of my lifestyle, but I do expect them to fill my prescription even if it’s against their feelings or religious beliefs. I don’t see how a fair society can exist without anti-discrimination laws.
Your comparison isn't really appropriate. In a shop, I can walk in, get my stuff, and walk out in a few minutes. If you rent, your landlord will always be your landlord, and there are plenty of opportunities for ongoing conflict. As a person with disability, I know that I will loose if someone picks a fight with me.
Maybe you should try to put yourself in the position of someone with lower priviledges before blindly insisting that anti-discrimination laws are all we need to fix things.
They don’t suggest they actually fixed things, just that they were necessary. In a true profit maximizing meritocracy many disabled people would not be able to survive because nobody would employ them etc. The degree of accommodation required by law isn’t about the disabled so much as the issues should people be allowed to systematically exclude them.
The person I'm replying to replied to someone discussing a profit maximizing entity which is the context. I understand there is value to other behaviors but corporations don't
Corporations are supposed to do whatever their shareholders want.
The default assumption is that shareholders want to maximize profit, but shareholders can also want different things.
In any case, even the most ruthless capitalist society imaginable is not made out of corporations alone. Corporations are just a legal shell. People work for them, people own them, people buy their products, etc.
In a true profit maximizing meritocracy some disabled people might not get a job (though they still might, at lower pay commensurable with their productivity). [0]
But there's nothing stopping people from (a) charitable giving, or (b) enacting laws to give tax payer funded assistance to disabled people.
(You might argue with (b), but you can't really argue with (a).)
[0] Compared to eg someone like John von Neumann, I'm an idiot, but I can still find work even with my comparatively weak intellect. I just can't expect as much pay as John von Neumann would warrant. Of course, that pay might in principle be low enough that people can't survive on it. That's where charity and/or public assistance comes in.
That's the default assumption because I'd you analyze the behavior of corporations, that's literally what they do. It doesn't matter if they could do other things. The fact is that they don't
People work for them because generally they don't have a choice. Not everyone has decision making power and 95% of workers need to follow what their boss says. Most Americans can't lose their job because they don't have savings, they barely make enough to survive
You’re actually arguing for the opportunity to be excluded from the housing market entirely? Or you can’t imagine that would happen, and you’re just in favor of being forced to pay more for worse housing? Because we don’t have to do this as a hypothetical with spherical cows - it used to be legal, for all kinds of disadvantaged groups, and it wasn’t better for them. Women, black people, parents, people with criminal histories, people who were unemployed, or Chinese, Irish, Jewish, etc…
So, maybe you should stop assuming that you are the only person in the conversation who knows what they are talking about.
It's not a matter of hatred in the vast majority of the cases, but convenience and profits. In a society where discrimination on the basis of disability is permitted, you may find that as people with disabilities cannot get a taxi or get on an airplane: the disability makes such a service more expensive to run and capitalism and profit maximization eliminates it naturally, no hate needed. Perhaps at some point an enterprising entity decides to break into the market of providing services for people with disabilities, at three times the cost of a normal fare. That would be somewhat better, but still not ideal.
I know this would happen because I moved from a country without anti-discrimination laws to a country with. I encountered more people on wheelchairs in the public during my first month in the latter than the previous 20-something years in the former. In the absence of anti-discrimination laws, all avenues for participation of people with disabilities in the society, even things as simple as going grocery shopping, was all but non-existent. As far as I know it still is like that in the old country. Not because people hate everyone needing a wheelchair: people are reasonably nice and thoughtful in the old country too. But in the absence of laws forcing accommodations, no accommodations are made, with obvious results.
> I moved from a country without anti-discrimination laws to a country with
Maybe the country you moved to was also rich and with a functioning free-market economy?
Capitalism naturally incentivizes entrepreneurs to seek and serve niche markets while doing everything to accept and accommodate potential customers.
In contrast, planned, state-run economies don't care in the slightest and just do the bare minimum required by law. Here is your job to jump through the hoops and manage to give them your money.
> Maybe the country you moved to was also rich and with a functioning free-market economy?
Yes, but the economy of the old country, while poorer, was not exactly state-run. All grocery stores were private businesses created by entrepreneurs. Same with taxis. Yet neither accommodated people with disabilities. It was not like grocery stores were owned by the government and those who ran them were disinterested government employees. They were private businesses who made their own decisions and still they did not accommodate people with disabilities.
I find it strange that people seem to think serving people with disabilities at "three times the price" is reasonable. In this so called free market economy, disabled people likely wouldn't have money to pay for those services because nobody would employ them. It would also likely be much more difficult for them to start their own businesses. There would be essentially no customers, so it wouldn't be a profitable business model.
Regulation is important, regulation literally creates and shapes the markets and allows people to participate in society where they would otherwise be unable to
Everything has a cost. Serving special needs may costs more. A rich society can decide and afford to cover that cost and that is perfectly fine. A developing economy on the other hand, may decide to impose that cost on its businesses, thus unwittingly weakening itself.
Regulation is not free and doesn't magically make our wishes come true. It just moves costs around, hiding them and often preventing the free market from minimizing them.
Generally in rich countries, it is not "the society" that covers the cost. For example, government does not give money to grocery stores to create ramps and accessible bathrooms—they fine the stores that don't have them. That's the core of accessibility regulations in rich countries, like ADA in the US.
The difference between rich countries, the government forces the businesses to accommodate people with disabilities at the cost to the business. In poor countries, at least the one I came from, they leave it to the businesses to make that decision themselves. The result is that in rich countries are much more accessible than poor countries.
I don't know if your model (where "the society", which I guess means the government pays for this stuff) is tested in any jurisdiction. If it has, I would appreciate a link to an article about the results. But the model where businesses are forced by regulations to cover the costs works very well, as evidenced by how accessible US is thanks to ADA.
The money always comes from the citizens, no matter who pays. If the government pays - it is taken through increased taxes. If the business pays - it is taken through increased prices. But it's always the people's money - lifted from you and me.
The difference is whether the whole society pays (via taxes or higher overall prices at the till because of the higher cost of doing business) or the person needing the extra service does. In the countries without anti-discrimination laws, those in discriminated groups (like people with disabilities) tend to have a much lower quality of life—they cannot get hired, even if they get hired they earn much less, they cannot access services, even if they can they must pay much more. In the societies that have these sorts of regulations, the whole society bears the extra cost, so everyone's individual burden is lower and manageable.
My point still stands—unless the society via regulations forces businesses to accommodate groups like people with disabilities, those groups will be excluded from society, as they are in my old country.
There is no such thing as a free market without regulation. Governments create money, they regulate it. Without the regulation of how business is conducted and how things are transacted there would be no market, do you realize that?
Is the opposite disallowed in the US? In Germany, we have plenty of housing coops and state run builders that e.g. discriminate against single (young?) men. I've tried half a dozen of these not-for-profit entities before I found one that said "we don't care who you are. If you want to live here and you can pay the rent, we're fine with it".
The "no discrimination allowed" is often just "no discrimination allowed that we don't approve of".
There's also an incredibly high bar to prove housing discrimination. It's not like all housing applications are reviewed by an enforcement agency and statistical anomalies in approval rates are investigated. Protected classes are really only protected from the most blatant forms of discrimination.
Its often surprised me how anti-children many of the people in the West are. Children make noise, children are the future of your society. You make it difficult for families to live and children to be children and then are surprised when demographics are getting worse with no young folks. Interestingly, in India, the discrimination is the other way round and bachelors and unmarried folks find it harder to rent. Here there is no protection against that and a lot of listings, especially in good neighborhoods will explicitly specifiy, families only. People will conjure up parents and bring them over for a few months sometimes to make it look like they are a 'family'.
I don't mind children, but I prefer to not live around dysfunctional families that make the children run their household. People who say stuff like "children noise is the music of the future" have never lived below a family with children that really made noise (or I guess maybe they have, but they've lived in a bunker). I have, and you no longer live alone, you live with the constant noise that's sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but it's never gone unless you get ear plugs.
I'm fine with children, but they need to have adults that reign them in. That's a coin flip, so I wouldn't ever move anywhere again, knowing that families with children live above/below/next to me.
I'd argue the parents of said children are anti-children, because they are living in an apartment building without any possibility to play for the children nearby. There is nothing they can use outdoors to get rid of excess energy. Parents could have found something a few kilometers away, but apparently did not care about their chldren. I dont see why I should be especially understanding if the parents are unwilling to live somewhere where their children can have fun. The fact remains that they are very loud and parents apparently are bad at parenting.
> I'd argue the parents of said children are anti-children, because they are living in an apartment building without any possibility to play for the children nearby.
What do you have to say about the fact that apartments are the only option?
It feels to me that you're trying to depict not living in a nice suburban villa as subjecting children to abuse, as if this was a whimsical decision of egotistical parents.
Meanwhile, moving to the suburbs is a luxury that's way out of the reach of working class families, not to mention the fact that outside of the US it's outright unthinkable.
And all the time wasted commuting is not considered abuse why?
To me it reads you're claiming "let them eat cake", followed up by "not letting children eat cake is anti-children."
I know for a fact that child-friendly-suburbian appartments are actually cheaper then the city-center-appartment they have now. But you can go on and assume all sorts of bad things about me, that doesnt change my opinion about egotistical parents.
OP is not the exception. I have at least two playgrounds in a 300m radius. Perhaps I'm lucky but I don't recall ever living in a place that didn't had at least a playground in walking distance.
Might I strongly suggest, as a person who recognizes outsized emotional reactions to sound in myself… you may have misophonia? Maybe address that for yourself if that’s the case, because it’s bound to affect more than your relationship with families living in your midst.
I’m suggesting that there’s a name for feeling outsized emotional reactions to noise (whether particular sounds, or in general). I don’t know if that applies to you, but it helped me learning there is a word for it and that other people experience it too. In no way was I trying to suggest anything negative about you.
It would only be weird if we did not live in a society. We as a society have decided it is wrong, for example, to not hire someone because they have a disability and it would be an inconvenience to accommodate their disability, or to pay them less to account for the extra inconvenience, or to charge people with disabilities more for services (such as a plane ticket) because of those extra costs or inconveniences. We as a society have made similar decisions about treatment of people based on their ethnicity, gender, and many more criteria, including family status.
That’s textbook discrimination. The reason it is banned is because people have a right to housing regardless of familial status and business owners desire to avoid inconvenience.
Your argument would be better if there was better, more available social housing. As there isn’t, and shelter should be considered a human right, discrimination must be discouraged.
Objectively it’s not weird where the law contradicts what you might prefer. If you want to discriminate you can discuss that without characterizing what’s normal or weird. But I suspect that doesn’t make you sound like a very good prospective landlord.
You are allowed to discriminate when renting out your rental house assuming it’s a single family house and you’re the owner and not using an agent (under federal law, maybe not under state). So it’s not a lack of enforcement against small time landlords like you, it’s that it’s probably not illegal.
That's not what the parent comment was saying. They were saying that there is a reasonable explanation to not develop properties that cater to families - e.g. 4 bedrooms. The alternative is that the 4-bedroom that you conceivably might construct would rent out to 4 individuals who would split the bill...which also introduces a whole bunch of other challenges.
Overall point still seems valid - which is there is little financial advantage to renting out a 4-bedroom property and thus a limited supply.
People get around this by never putting themselves in the position of having to refuse. If, as a landlord, you only ever buy single bedroom apartments and studios, you aren’t going to run into families that need 4 bedrooms. It’s not illegal for the landlord to discriminate as to what sort of properties they buy.
I mean, gp recounted a story about someone who has a policy against renting to families, so so it sounds like they do refuse sometimes. Also, where I live, lots of families live in one or two bedroom apartments.
While you’re generally correct it’s important to note that the Fair Housing Act’s discrimination provisions don’t apply to all housing so it is actually sometimes legal to discriminate based on familial status. It’s probably not relevant here because we’re talking apartments it seems (although a 4BR is a huge apartment).
What's really annoying is that the current generation of Intel CPUs support ECC, they just don't implement it in consumer chipsets. You can get working ECC with a W680 motherboard, but those are very expensive and availability is slim.
One thing that was frustrating was that I couldn't template a function with another function (as far as I know). That lead to some copied and pasted code when I had multiple implementations that I wanted to compare. Can Metashade do that?