Hi, is anyone interested in compiling javascript? By compilation, I mean cross platform true native compilation (JavaScript to exe, elf, wasm, asm.js, and arduino firmware). The project is here : http://nectarjs.com Contact me if you want more information

call me crazy, but I'm about 0% likely to use a closed source compiler in this day and age

i'd be even fine if it were AGPL/EUPL

@gerred yes, I understand, that's why we need a strong community to make this kind of decision

in webgl2, is it better to (1) have separate shader programs for textured vs non-textured or (2) use a single uber program that always does texture lookups

@qqq really depends on what you're building

BTW, what are you building?

Most "real" programs these days use a method called "deferred shading", where you render to 3-4 images at once. One image is U,V of polygons, one is a "material type" for each polygon, one is a depth, etc. then after all that is rendered a single shader program combines all the images into one by looking up the U,V of a texture, applying shading and outputting a pixel.

This reduces the cost of texturing polygons that are hidden, freeing up more GPU power to do even more crazy stuff.

So a lot of games these days use the ubershader approach, but that's probably not the best method unless you're doing something like deferred shading

@joelkuiper is that your work? That's impressive!

what equipment do you use? These are fantastic

@wamaral yep, and thanks 😄

Growing up my dad was big into radio astronomy (using radio dishes instead of telescopes), but the output of his equipment was a bunch of line graphs and the like. Those things could see further than cameras, but this is way more visually impressive.

Seeing stuff like this gives me the itch to get off this planet sometime before I die.

@tbaldridge this is my current rig https://secure.flickr.com/photos/joelkuiper/31911244183/in/dateposted/

if I ever get the chance to visit space, then I’m all up for it. Radioastronomy is definitely easier in some sense, since you don't have to deal with weather as much 😛

but this makes for nicer prints, I guess 😉

nice!

haven’t found a nice angle yet to use Clojure in the process, but who knows someday I may find a use case 😛

So you got that in your room and despite all of the light pollution you get these nice images?

I move it up to my roof of course 😉

but still, I’m in the inner city of Groningen (pop ~300k) which makes light pollution a real issue. I use various Narrow Band filters to capture emission lines from the nebula, and also mitigate most of the light pollution

Its hard to imagine that this works. Where I live (~600k) its hard to see the stars at night at all.

there is a lot of processing going on the reduce noise with various software tricks, and the filters help a lot. But still, dark skies would be far far better, maybe someday 🙂

it is rather convenient to just move it up the stairs though, so I try to make the best of it

I wonder how it would scale, living around some other 12m people, would it be feasible?

depends if they have electricity 😉

They do, sadly

Hm, I am afraid the telescope wont work without electricity either 😄

depends on the amount of time you’re willing to put in it. Fainter structures will be completely drown by the light pollution. But brighter targets like the Andromeda galaxy or Orion Nebula you might be able to capture, if you put enough data in it to get a nice signal to noise ratio in. But if it takes 12 hours to capture the data from the city, and it’s a 2 hour drive to a darker site … the latter would be preferable 😛

but yeah, it's a real issue, I grew up in rural Wisconsin, 15miles away from a town of 1500 people (not a typeo). You could see the Milky Way with the naked eye almost every night.

yeah, I’ve been thinking for a while that it might be best to buy a vacation home or just a small plot of land in a rural area if I ever get the money and want to pursue this further

Welp I really should go to some rural area someday to see the Milky Way. Living in the big city, some nights I get to see the moon

Once a year I take a weekend off in some kind of castle in a village where there live like 100 ppl (https://goo.gl/maps/Tbr9PyiJs9s) There is not much around and its so beautiful at night 🙂

The guy that built the castle was into astronomy too, btw and put a tower on top of the castle to be closer to the stars.

nice, that seems perfect 🙂 even just looking at it without all the gear and tech make for very humbling, awe-inspiring and romantic view!

It totally is and it has electricity, the only problem is, its forbidden to go on top of the tower, cause, it might collapse and if it does not, it does not have some kind of handrails 😄

practicalities 😛

Hehe, 10 years ago I went on top, but, yea, today, with kids, the tradeoff seems not worth it 😄 But if you ever come by, just shoot me a message, maybe we can get something going.

Does anyone using docker for testing? How to cache .m2?

@souenzzo I usually mount an external volume at the path of whatever I want to cache

But I need to handle with user's id and permissions on every machine...

@wamaral

@joelkuiper Amazing! Thanks for sharing bro, directly from heart to heart

I’m often wondering what the light-pollution does for kids curiosity.

As @tbaldridge mentioned, when there is no light pollution, you can see the milkyway and the three-dimensionality of space which kind of makes you curious about a lot of things, like what’s out there, where does it end etc.

Living in a city, the sky looks two-dimensional and robs you of any such quetions.

on a clear night, this is almost exactly what I remember it looking like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjTVAdROXM8

well the first part, not the middle where you're in orbit, never seen that, lol

Luckily, especially in winter time, we get to see Venus, Jupiter and Mars in the dark mornings/afternoons, and I usually point them out while walking my kids to/from school.

In that sense, https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sky-guide-view-stars-night-or-day/id576588894?mt=8 is amazing

@tbaldridge Trysil is about 5 hours by car from where I am now (Oslo, Norway) 🙂

my curiosity was sparked by science fiction I guess, I had to actively seek out looking at the milky way … it’s a sad thing. And while a fear of the darkness seems innate, and in some sense even logical … I do hope we can strike some sort of balance at some point, and not light up everything we touch like a christmas tree.

Simple solutions would be to direct the light we generate at the ground, not to the sky, would even save some electricity (although the more recent broad-band LED emissions are a total pain for astronomy)

If you're interested in educating yourself about light pollution I would suggest the International Dark-Sky Association site ( http://darksky.org/ ). (They could use a donation too if you are so inclined.) I don't think fear of darkness is innate. It's more of a fear of the unknown. We no longer know what it's like to experience darkness because it's so easy for us to light it up.

Light aimed at the ground still reflects, but I guess probably not as extremely as light pointed at the sky. Nowadays, flying in to a major city at night, you'll see streets as sort of rivers of LED lights; they cast such a rigid outline that they can space them to have near-perfect coverage.

About light pollution and being able to see the Milky Way, I really like this illustration http://cdn.iflscience.com/images/5cfbe570-7fd1-586f-8176-8b11794767cf/extra_large-1464385706-171-bioluminescent-bacteria-could-light-up-the-streets-of-paris.jpg I've stumble upon it in an article about this startup in Paris growing bioluminescent bacteria. Now I don't know anything about their process nor progress, or if it would really be possible to see the stars this way, but I quite like the idea.

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/bioluminescent-bacteria-could-light-streets-paris/

Reading some of the messages here I realize I'm luck I've grown up in a place where I could see the stars and the Milky Way almost every night, I still can. Funny how we take some things for granted.