Thomas Dickerson @elfprince13@mumak.app

One thing I learned during this process is:

I originally wanted the source language to have somewhat well-defined ASTs where macro-calls are parsed with their arguments as subnodes. I very quickly realized this is completely untenable for a system that needs to interact with TeX, so I switched to a system where the macro call is a sibling of its arguments rather than a parent. Then a simple TeX-style expander chomps through these expressions, popping arguments as-needed depending on the arity of the macro.

WebGPU, the new graphics API for JavaScript, shipped in a stable web browser (Chrome 113) about… an hour ago!

I have written a blog post about it, covering a brief (okay, not brief) history of graphics APIs to ~situate WebGPU in a context~, a brief general guide to writing WebGPU, and some specific resources for making WebGPU projects in TypeScript, Rust, and C++ (you can use it on desktop! it doesn't have to be in a browser).

I think WebGPU is really good.

https://cohost.org/mcc/post/1406157-i-want-to-talk-about-webgpu

"A game engine for functional programmers."

#Scala

https://indigoengine.io/

I'm super excited to finally share our work, accepted to Siggraph 2023: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/rtr/neural_texture_compression/ Neural Texture Compression, where we create a novel compression algorithm and format explicitly designed for rendering and graphics.

Compressing whole material texture stacks and their mipmaps together, we beat the BC formats by 10-16x - while keeping the random access requirement.
At the lowest bitrates, we surpass JPEG XL and AVIF, despite those formats being entropy coded.

Disappointed in myself for not accepting the Met Gala photo assignment because this would have been my year.

https://people.com/style/met-gala-2023-cockroach-red-carpet-photos-video/