nVidia GET3D auto-generates objects for your 3D Worlds
GET3D (Generate Explicit Textured 3D) generates a wide variety of objects to fill your 3D worlds. It’s soon to be released open source if you want to try out.
Game Booze
It seems games are branching out to different kinds of marketing
Resident Evil paired with Cocalero to produce their own tequila. Resident Evil Cocalero Tequila
Watch people through walls using wifi
I bet you didn’t realize your wifi could show where you are in your house could it?
Biggest discoveries of the year
Quanta Magazine makes a wonderful set of videos on mathematics, computer science, physics, biology, cosmology, and science fields. They distill amazing discoveries down to quick videos that often include interviews with the very scientists involved. One series I really like is their yearly summary videos that sum up some of the biggest breakthroughs of the year.
The 2021 video has a really great interview on how we’re starting to formalize and start really understanding how neural nets used in AI algorithms work. They used a clever idea of starting with how these networks worked if the net width was infinite.
It’s a great part of my effort to move away from emptier forms of social media consumption and more intentionally spend my time/energy on creative, positive, constructive, uniting, uplifting, and educational efforts.
The 2020 video has a really good segment on the LEAN mathematical proof assistant that is building up a library of theorems and assist in proving them.
Zig Ziglar
“Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal, and I’ll give you a stock clerk.”
J C Penny
My dad would have one of Zig Ziglar’s many tapes playing in his car every time we’d get in. It was inevitable that if you got in his car – the moment he turned it on you would hear the click of the tape deck and out would come Zig Ziglar. I don’t think my dad even programmed the station buttons on his radio.
I can almost recite some of his presentations word for word – and I can tell you firmly that they work. I remember being about 10 years old and writing down several goals using his method. The most audacious of the lot involved a goal I set 15 years in the future. And you know what? It worked. Even though I thought it was an impossible goal at the time. It was far too far away, too impossible for a kid from a rural school with a middling education and less than affluent upbringing. I followed his simple plan and led me along the way. Sure enough, it became reality.
I think we give far too little focus or credit in our efforts to help others on how very simple individual habits of success and simple goal setting will change a life. History shows that works infinitely faster and better than someone, some organization, or society to change things for you.
Paravirtualization of GPU
Looks like nVidia now allows paravirtualization of a single GPU between different virtual machines. This is really cool for AI work. Craft Computing shows you how to set up the graphics cards and virtual machines.
Check out some of his other great videos as well. I like this one where he was finally able to figure out how to use ANY graphics card for 3D Acceleration in a virtual machine:
Gödel’s incompleteness theorems
Gödel proved his 3 famous incompleteness theorems at the opening of the 1900’s, and I would argue that they are still probably the most profound discoveries in mathematics of the whole century.
Veritasium gives one of the best descriptions of these proofs, and the mathematical developments that led to them.
Homeworld 3
I’m a huge fan of the original game Homeworld. It was visually stunning – creating a grand visual scale that really helped you feel the vastness of space and the isolation of the fleet trying to get home. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the later entries (especially Deserts of Kharak), but Homeworld 3 looks to recapture that original stunning style.
Targeted towards June 30th, 2023 release, they sure are making as much of the pre-launch hype as they can. They hosted a very successful online funding campaign that included tons of different goodies like art books, special discord access, signed prints, models, and more. The original Art of Homewold book often sells for hundreds of dollars (over a thousand USD at one point but falling fast now they’re doing re-prints with this release).
I’m excited to see how this new game comes out. I don’t buy many games, but this might be on the list.
Until then, maybe I’ll just download the original Homeworld source code (released in 2003) and see if I can build my own copy. Or maybe just look around at some of the original digial models or maybe get a few 3D printed ones or maybe the whole fleet from the Tempest Ship Yards.
Pacific Drive
This looks like a promising game – but not due out until 2023.
A mix of storm and ghost chasing in first-person, Pacific Drive invites you to survive a drive through hell.
Fear and Good Will Hunting
“You’re always afraid to take that first step, because all you see is every negative thing ten miles down the road.”
Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting
If I could sum up the fear, anxiety, and even the core of the negativity that is so pervasive in our culture today – it would be this line. But it is more than this. It seems that public opinion and policy is now driven more by fear than by truth or true courage. How?
It is fear that prevents an entire generation from committing to marriage because they fear commitment, divorce, or hurt — yet the world applauds continual transient relationships. It is often fear that prevents people from having children or being open to children because they fear economic conditions, unrest, political and social uncertainty, career impacts, personal struggles — yet the world lauds keeping the birth rate shrinking and putting careers first. It is fear of engaging in the world and dealing with actual messiness of human lives that keeps perfectly healthy individuals on forums and social media instead of actually engaging in real world work of change — while social media posts are rebranded as heroic action. It is fear that tells a woman she must be able to kill her own child, and that she cannot succeed without that right – while the world says it is empowerment. All of these things bring immediate gratification/simplicity – but rob of us of the deep growth that gives real meaning to our lives.
So what would true courage look like? It is easier to just go from relationship to relationship uncommitted, but robs us of the freedom a committed relationship gives us to express ourselves with another person. Or as Jessie Jackson said decades ago, it is simply easier and cheaper to promote abortion among the poor and minorities than actually build support and education systems for people to actually have the choice to keep their children. It’s far easier to push for shrinking population growth instead of changing our behaviors to be more sustainable. It’s easier to spend all our money on ourselves instead of helping others. It’s easier to simply legalize homelessness than actually spending the money and effort to address the substance abuse, mental health, education, and skill training issues that caused the homelessness. It’s easier to repost divisive social media rants than go out and actually dedicate our lives to helping others in the actual messiness of life or find common ground to unite people and build constructive relationships.
Contrast that with the hope in the words of John Paul II, a man that faced down all the power of the Soviet Union and was critical in the fall of the Iron Curtain. Here’s a man that knows that the impossible becomes possible with faith:
Do not be afraid! Open, I say open wide the doors for Christ. To His saving power open the boundaries of states, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization, and development.
Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch…. I plead with you–never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid!Why should we have no fear? Because man has been redeemed by God. When pronouncing these words in St. Peter’s Square, I already knew that my first encyclical and my entire papacy would be tied to the truth of the Redemption. In the Redemption we find the most profound basis for the words “Be not afraid!”: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (cf. Jn 3:16).
Peoples and nations of the entire world need to hear these words. Their conscience needs to grow in the certainty that Someone exists who holds in His hands the destiny of this passing world … And this Someone is Love.
Pope John Paul II