Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory!
Good morning and welcome back to another edition of Friday Inspiration!
This is it, the last article before I take a break. I hope you enjoy it! I have 2 techy articles that are not crypto-related! How exciting! Plus one article that I’m still not 100% sure is real or not, but would be pretty neat if it was. And finally, it wouldn’t be a Friday Inspiration article without at least 1 crypto article :)
Hope you enjoy it! Let’s jump on in!
Port your slow JavaScript to Rust, incrementally
https://zaplib.com/
So I just stumbled upon this team. I haven’t tried out Zaplib at all and I haven’t heard of anyone else trying it out yet either. But if it works, I think it’s a really cool idea.
Here is the problem they are trying to solve. So JavaScript is a programming language that has become the de facto language for developing web applications. You are reading this newsletter in your email, right? Most likely there is some kind of JavaScript running that application.
Here’s the problem: JavaScript is pretty slow. But you might be saying, “well, my email works fast enough so is there really a problem?”
Well, most applications work fine enough, but when you get into heavier applications, ones that do a lot of data analysis or have AI built-in, then they can take a huge performance hit.
Introducing Rust. Rust is a relatively newish language, only about a decade or so old. In the past few years, it has gained incredible traction. I’m learning it right now and am a huge fan of it!
Rust is super fast. I don’t have specific numbers, but I’ve seen some comparisons where Rust applications can run almost 1,000 times faster than a JavaScript application doing the same thing.
So it’s obvious, right? We should all just start building web apps in Rust!
Well, that’s the other issue, and where Zaplib comes in. See, JavaScript, though slow, is super easy to learn. Rust on the other hand can take months of dedicated study to truly master.
Zaplib aims to bridge the two and allow JavaScript developers to use a tool that simply converts their JavaScript code into Rust! It sounds too good to be true, but if that works, then this could be a huge performance-boosting tool for web developers.
World’s First Fully-Contained Climbing Suit Deployed on Everest this Season
https://www.climbing.com/news/fully-contained-climbing-suit-to-debut-on-everest/
So I’m like 90% sure this was a joke. It was released on April Fools Day, but it still sounded really incredible, and honestly this day and age, very believable.
Introducing the AlpineComfortMAX. This is a suit being rolled out that looks like an astronaut suit. It’s supposed to be fully contained and even have a screen on the inside of your helmet so you can watch Netflix or Hulu!
It is thermal regulated so it’s never colder than 60, and it also gives you the perfect amount of oxygen so it always feels like you’re breathing fresh air at the beach.
The point of this thing?
To allow common folk to climb Mt. Everest! A climb that without proper training can kill you pretty quickly.
They say once you cross over the 8,000 m (26,000 ft) mark, that there is so little oxygen for your brain, you’re body begins to fail. This means you don’t have long to make it up the last 3,000 feet and then back down before you die. Obviously, most people bring oxygen, but that along with the extremely cold temps certainly makes it dangerous no matter how many people have done it.
I’ve heard of people losing their eyesight above 8,000 m before, only to recover once they reached the base!
Well, the AlpineComfortMAX fixes all of that! Now you can hike up Everest like it’s a casual stroll on the beach. Take a rest at the top in your 60-degree suit and watch some Netflix while the whole world spins below.
Forget ray tracing - Nvidia calls path tracing one of the "largest breakthroughs for real-time graphics in many years"
So I thought this was a very fascinating article, but if you don’t know much about the math behind computer graphics, it will not be interesting to you.
Let me break it down the best I can. The first process for generating 3D graphics with a computer was a process called Rasterization. This just made simple 3D calculations and built an image line by line across the screen.
Well, those images lacked a lot of depth, shadows, lights, and reflections, and just didn’t look amazing. But a lot of the movies we know and love used it. Including a lot of the early Pixar movies.
Thus they developed a “new” technique called Ray Tracing. This was actually a mathematical creation from way before computers, but it was brought alive in like the 60s or something. Ray Tracing takes a slightly different approach to Rasterizing where it simulates every single pixel cast from a light source.
Confused?
Well, think about it this way. The only reason we see anything in real life is a light shines on it, right?
That’s what they did in computer graphics too. They said, let’s take the point of view to be what the screen shows (like our eyes), and then we’ll generate the picture by casting “rays” from a made-up light source.
This unlocked deeper shadows, cool reflections, and an overall crisper and more realistic picture. This technique was used in Bug’s Life to generate a few shadows, but not used to create a full feature until Monster House. I believe the first Pixar movie to use this throughout the entire film was Cars.
Think about how crips the reflections on Lightning McQueen are compared to Buzz Lightyear’s helmet in Toy Story.
Here is a classic example used in computer graphics:
Video games are a completely different story, however. See, to render those films takes days, not seconds, and that’s with a very powerful computer. That’s why there is such a gap between its invention of it in the 60s and Cars which was made in 2006. Back then, it didn’t take days, it would have taken months. It was just unrealistic.
Well, video games have to be instantaneous, so there is no way they could ever do Ray Tracing, right?
Introducing Nvidia, who a few years ago started releasing graphics cards that could actually do this ray tracing in real-time! Thus creating some amazing and very realistic video games.
Well, the news today, is that there is a new technique called Path Tracing. This is an iteration on Ray Tracing, which solves a couple of problems Ray Tracing still has.
Nvidia has just announced they can also do Path Tracing in real-time on their new chips coming out, which is just going to be huge for video games! Very exciting for any PC gamers out there!
As an example, this is a computer generated image of a Tiger walking through a forest:
Solana NFTs Can Now Be Traded on OpenSea
https://decrypt.co/97139/solana-nfts-opensea-trading-live
Last but not least is the crypto article.
OpenSea is the most popular NFT platform out there. It has just reached a valuation of roughly $13 billion! For a company that started in late 2017, that’s pretty good!
Up until now, OpenSea has only supported Ethereum based NFTs. This has obviously been enough for them and done really well for them. Enough to get them to $13 billion. But they are not done!
There is another super popular blockchain being used for NFTs: Solana.
The problem people have with Ethereum is that it’s expensive. You might have to pay upwards of $300 in fees just to buy one NFT! This isn’t an issue if you’re buying a $200,000 Bored Ape, but it is definitely an issue if you want to buy an NFT that’s like $10.
Solana, on the other hand, is the fastest blockchain out there, and one of the cheapest. Buying an NFT on Solana can cost a fraction of a dollar.
The big news today is that OpenSea now supports the buying and selling of Solana NFTs! This is huge because there have been several Solana-based NFT platforms gaining huge traction already. The biggest at the moment is a site called Magic Eden.
It is clear that OpenSea was worried Magic Eden could pose a true threat, and they want to get ahead of them while they can.
Ok, that’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed it! Thank you all again for reading, I will return! In the meantime, check out any of the old content!