Posts by viznut@venera.social
(DIR) Post #AIcgMFHqdN32pE8oCG by viznut@venera.social
2022-04-19T21:23:09Z
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About symbolism: Many symbols that represent "sustainable technology" get it wrong by putting technology at the bottom and growing organic things out of it (like a leaf growing out of a gear, or grass growing out of a circuit board). I wanted the symbol of permacomputing to get it right, with the living biosphere as the basis that makes things like computer technology possible. I also wanted to include roots, because roots represent something that is deep and important despite being invisible, and something that may take a long time to develop properly.An algorithmic representation of a natural object may be easily interpreted as "living things growing out of technology", the connotation I wish to avoid. I therefore consider it important that the symbol states it clearly that technology is not supposed to be the basis.
(DIR) Post #AKgmYRu4oCGUEa9HOq by viznut@venera.social
2022-06-20T19:04:50Z
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Has someone advocated that kind of unrealistic preservation and connected it with permacomputing? Sounds like the same kind of fear of death that life-extension transhumanists suffer from.
(DIR) Post #AKkuZvpbOISkRd46lM by viznut@venera.social
2022-06-22T18:49:25Z
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The main point of SFMF is that each of their films has a file size of maximum of 5 megabytes in order to raise awareness of the environmental impacts of streaming media. But according to Nethogs it seems that the main page of their website is more than half of that. Maybe worth mentioning in the wiki, I think!
(DIR) Post #AKkuZwRt5x5UMMygRE by viznut@venera.social
2022-06-22T18:53:27Z
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We may also compare this to the Lovebyte demoparty where the entries are max 256 or 512 bytes each, and then then many of them kill the encoder when they are video-streamed to the watchers in high bitrates.
(DIR) Post #AMzcPxVgeiDDNcWjbM by viznut@venera.social
2022-08-28T15:31:32Z
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A computer history exercise for gaining insight to the future:* You are a computer designer in the year 1990 (or any other past year depending on your preference).* Your task: design a computer that will remain useful or otherwise relevant for as long as possible (even without later expansions/upgrades).* You don't have any specific knowledge about any future technology, but otherwise you may use your present understanding. Be visionary, avoid the design mistakes of the real historical computers.* After the imagination exercise, return to the present and apply the gained insight to today's world. What kind of design will be likely to last?#permacomputing
(DIR) Post #APCGX0TWJkWh8aYBeq by viznut@venera.social
2022-11-02T14:41:50Z
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"Something went wrong" (the most descriptive error message you're likely to get in the 2020s)"I don't know if it's still loading or if something went wrong" (the second best option)"I don't know if the app even works or if it's just faking that it works"
(DIR) Post #APCGadbRIXYHMIzBjs by viznut@venera.social
2022-11-02T15:01:56Z
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In addition to "where are my files?" there's also "what is a file?" (Because file systems are so well hidden nowadays that you may not even learn their basic concepts)Also related: A multinational corporation's service as the easiest way of copying a file between two nearby devices
(DIR) Post #APISw4sPSGCwQUfmgy by viznut@venera.social
2022-11-05T14:52:31Z
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"User" feels a bit like "consumer".
(DIR) Post #APSzxjyDotBDDJ0eTA by viznut@venera.social
2022-11-10T16:35:15Z
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After seeing several Mastodon instances run out of horsepowers due to #twittermigration:What about creating an ActivtyPub server software specifically designed for energy and resource efficiency? There could also be user-level features that encourage moderation in the use of bandwidth.There might also be relevant to #permacomputing. I'm still reading the protocol specification so I don't yet know how compatible the concepts could be.
(DIR) Post #APT6auZAxPdj5yM7FI by viznut@venera.social
2020-06-28T17:17:56Z
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Hello everyone. I'm Viznut from Northwestern Eurasia. I'm known for things such as VIC-20 demos, bytebeat music synthesis, Skrolli magazine and some texts about how capitalism and wasteful technology suck.I recently wrote a few lines about a vision I call "permacomputing" and it inspired me to check out the current status of the Fediverse. So far I'm not disappointed.#introductions permacomputing (some early notes) | viznut
(DIR) Post #AQJJXKt2WWCM7G1AkS by viznut@venera.social
2022-12-05T13:32:29Z
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#ChatGPT seems to somewhat know who I am, although it tends to make up quite a lot of facts. This means that I can make it insert some kind of a caricature of myself into various kind of stories, etc. by just mentioning "Viznut" in the prompt.What I find the most impressive in this model, however, are:1) Its ability to communicate in a great variety of human languages (even some pretty small ones such as Northern Sámi) while being able to access the same knowledge from all the different linguistic contexts.2) Its ability to remain neutral, factual, reasonable and diplomatic when answering questions. This combined with the ability to use small languages could revolutionize the ability of linguistically unprivileged people to learn about the world in their own languages.The model doesn't know its own technical details, however. Assuming it is about 175G parameters big like the original GPT-3, I expect the mainstream use of this type of ML models to have a considerable ecological impact in the future. I'm dreaming of a model like this that would compensate for its resource use by having some "green bias" in its output. It could e.g. prefer to recommend things that help minimize energy/resource consumption in various areas of life.
(DIR) Post #AQJJjnMUToStu9japk by viznut@venera.social
2022-12-05T13:45:44Z
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It's free for now, but considering the current hype I don't think it's going to stay that way for very long.
(DIR) Post #AQdmRXtY1tvGYT2sLI by viznut@venera.social
2022-12-15T13:31:49Z
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Some people (even ones I follow) have been spreading misinformation based on poor understanding of how image generator models such as Stable Diffusion work. Therefore, some quick reminders:* There's no continuous scraping for new training material. Producing datasets such as Laion-5B is a huge process you don't want to repeat even every year. So, putting a lot of "No AI" images online today does NOT affect what the models will generate tomorrow.* The models don't store the original training images and therefore do not use them as copy-pastable source material. Apart from a couple of very iconic artworks (such as Mona Lisa), the art world is mostly statistics to them. Therefore, the signatures you see in AI-generated art are NOT "scrambled versions of the signatures of the original artists" but something generated based on "statistics" about signatures.I tend to side with the artists in the #AIArt discussion, so I hate to see campaigners ruin their credibility by being so gullible to obvious misinformation.
(DIR) Post #AWj4mM9mbrlVlvGt72 by viznut@venera.social
2023-06-15T19:26:47Z
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The original core topic in permacomputing is the utopian idea that computer technology, including its production mechanisms, could work in a regenerative way in the biosphere. With the main questions being whether if it is possible at all, and what it would be like.I genuinely believe it is possible, but it would require a lot of changes/reinventions even on the very basic material levels. Therefore, most "practical" permacomputing concentrates on extending the lifespans of existing hardware.
(DIR) Post #AWk3Abmi9TDERNsNoe by viznut@venera.social
2023-06-16T07:18:48Z
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The classic Apple bitmap font "Chicago" tries to avoid aliasing by sticking to 90° and 45° angles in letters like W, M and K.However, this idea is much older than that. This pixel font is from a French embroidery book printed in 1527.The previous two pages sample a blackletter font. Blackletter is by itself more orthogonal and angular than Antiqua, so the idea works much better there.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ce_est_ung_tractat_de_la_noble_art_de_leguille_ascavoir_ouvraiges_de_spaigne_(1527_af)#pixelArt #typography #ancientPixels
(DIR) Post #AXt25UvbyUrYXMWuSO by viznut@venera.social
2023-07-20T13:06:18Z
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Some #linguistics / #ethnomathematicsIn most Eurasian languages, the numbers from 21 to 99 folllow the general pattern "X tens [and] Y".In Finnish: 42 = neljä·kymmentä·kaksi 'four tens two'However, in Finnic and Sámi languages (and probably in other Uralic languages as well), there used to be another system that used ordinals for the tens (and sometimes even for the hundreds):42 = kaksi·viidettä[kymmentä] 'two of the fifth [ten]'This approach would make it possible to have an unambiguous place-value number system without a zero symbol:III I II III'three of the first ten of the second hundred of the third thousand'= 2103
(DIR) Post #AiNDP0nlgF8hhjNNk8 by viznut@venera.social
2024-03-25T13:26:46Z
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I'm referring to the idea of rerendering the entire frame, regardless of the framerate. This idea is something that became prominent in game development in the nineties, I think. Games written for older platforms generally update only what is necessary.
(DIR) Post #Akf835IaWdy3ARveGO by viznut@venera.social
2024-08-05T15:42:16Z
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I ended up first in the oldskool demo competition of this year's Assembly. This wasn't self-evident, as there were several high-quality entries in the compo.Technically, it's a one-file C-64 demo mostly consisting of character-mode animation made with the same tools I've used for a few VIC-20 demos. As for the social/political message, I also feel I'm repeating things I've said earlier, but perhaps I'm somewhat clearer this time."Transcend the Game" by PWP (which turned 30 years old a couple of weeks ago)csdb.dk/release/?id=244634youtube.com/watch?v=9HqOD1QUP3…#demoscene
(DIR) Post #AoAPk7rf9vhRWgWONk by viznut@venera.social
2024-11-18T12:13:32Z
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A game idea has been haunting me for over 20 years. Its title has ranged between "World simulator", "Bottom-up Civilization", "Multi-player Populous" and "Self-sufficient Community Simulator", but the general idea has remained pretty much the same. Imagine non-extractive but technological human life in a world where the environment actually reacts to what you do.I've started to implement the game several times, but it always fell apart at the world-shaping stages (climate/weather most often). Now I've started it yet another time, this time focusing on the gameplay/interface layer first. I've also been taking ideas from Dwarf Fortress and RimWorld even though my original design took somewhat different routes.
(DIR) Post #Aq4YvoslGIH7QyJJhY by viznut@venera.social
2024-04-01T11:26:15Z
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Some length-limited #literature types matched up with #demoscene size-limited categories:8 bytes: four-character idiom (四字熟語)32 bytes: six-word story64 bytes: stanza128 bytes: limerick256 bytes: dribble (50 words)512 bytes: drabble (100 words)4K: sudden fiction (<750)8K: flash fiction (<1000)64K: short story128K: novellaunlimited demo: novel