Mateusz

Quite OK Image Format

I think we all accepted the current state of affairs when it comes to cutting edge. Things that are advanced and high-tech are by nature required to be complex beyond our comprehension. Have you ever step into a core C++ function or a class while debugging? Or maybe you tried to read a specification about some format to implement it and learn how it works. If so you experienced the sheer terror that awakes when stuff like GLIBC source code is on your screen. But for sure you have felt disoriented and confused about what was the author intent.

Recently I have embarked on a small project to understand how PNG works and implement it from scratch using nothing but raw C. It was funny, I got to decode images, and even try to optimize it using x64 SIMD. After all of this I felt good, it kinda click. In my head there were thoughts of “Well from the Information Theory standpoint this makes total sense.”. I was starting to beat myself to the fact that what I just implemented was good.

Couple of days later this blog posts shows around, it shook me to my core. And not only me, many people started to talk about this project. I’m not going to spoil the fun on reading it, but I’m just going to say that QOI (format abbreviation) is setting the standard for what I should consider actually good from this point on. Leaving this be I just want to say that the entire spec of this format fits on a single A4 sheet of paper - yeah, on one side of it.

Snake on a Keyboard

Microprocessors and people programming them are tightly coupled. The tool at everybody’s fingertips is the slab of switches we call a keyboard. From this we can do a bit of very scientific extrapolation to come to a conclusion that many programmers are going to be tightly coupled both to their keyboards and microprocessors. And what better way to combine these relationships then starting to put your own code into the keyboard you use. Unfortunately unless you buy (or build!) an open source keyboard the entire code running on your device is hidden from you. Better yet, they are going to go out of their way to put roadblocks for you to stop you tinkering with the thing you already own. What almost everybody wants is for you to download their 50Mb app to install a 32K firmware update for your keyboard and add some macros.

Imagine if while buying your keyboard you’d get a user and technical manual. All the components are labeled, all traces shown and each thing is explained. Because you know the company has this pdf in their possession. But they are more interested in answering Twitter question to build a persona rather then actually do something nice.

I feel very strongly about this, because a calculator is a calculator i does not have a generic CPU that can do anything. Meanwhile you might have heard of those tiny processors that are $1-5 in price and have massive computational potential called ARM. You can implement your own firmware but you have to jump through 100 hoops in order to even start considering “just writing code”. And if you manage to actually write this code the results are awesome. Companies that make any kind of electronic device, LET ME PLAY WITH IT! I don’t care about warranty, if I brick it it’s on me. Just make the necessary information accessible.

USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness

It’s sad to see that companies these days are just PR and nothing else. China is going to overtake the world - for me it already has. People are not interested in making stuff, just buying. Don’t mindlessly consume, create something, anything!

Antoni

Nationalism

Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him.

If one harbours anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:

~ All of these facts are grossly obvious if one’s emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial.

what are my weak points of thinking, where my emotion lead to me to blunder

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

But you can at least recognize that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes.

Other group

t is well established that group members are usually tolerant of criticism by a fellow group member but react defensively when a member of a different group voices exactly the same criticism. Though we could find many studies supporting this conclusion, these studies merely asked participants about their thoughts and feelings.