Let's take a look at a simple polygonal 3D model. The following is primitive, very [low poly](low_poly.md) model of a house, basically just a cube with roof:
```
I
.:..
.' :':::..
_-' H.' '. ''-.
.' .:...'.......''..G
.' ...'' : '. ..' :
.::''......:.....'.-'' :
E: : :F :
: : : :
: : : :
: :......:.......:
: .' D : .' C
: .'' : -'
: .'' : .'
::'...............:'
A B
```
In a computer it would firstly be represented by an array of vertices, e.g.:
```
-2 -2 -2 (A)
2 -2 -2 (B)
2 -2 2 (C)
2 -2 -2 (D)
-2 2 -2 (E)
2 2 -2 (F)
2 2 2 (G)
2 2 -2 (H)
0 3 0 (I)
```
Along with triangles (specified as indices into the vertex array, here with letters):
```
ABC ACD (bottom)
AFB AEF (front wall)
BGC BFG (right wall)
CGH CHD (back wall)
DHE DEA (left wall)
EIF FIG GIH HIE (roof)
```
We see the model consists of 9 vertices and 14 triangles. Notice that the order in which we specify triangles follows the rule that looking at the front side of the triangle its vertices are specified clockwise (or counterclockwise, depending on chosen convention) -- sometimes this may not matter, but many 3D engines perform so called [backface culling](backface_culling.md), i.e. they only draw the front faces and there some faces would be invisible from the outside if their winding was incorrect, so it's better to stick to the rule if possible.
The following is our house model in obj format -- notice how simple it is (you can copy paste this into a file called `house.obj` and open it in Blender):
```
# simple house model
v 2.000000 -2.000000 -2.000000
v 2.000000 -2.000000 2.000000
v -2.000000 -2.000000 2.000000
v -1.999999 -2.000000 -2.000000
v 2.000001 2.000000 -2.000000
v 1.999999 2.000000 2.000000
v -2.000001 2.000000 2.000000
v -2.000000 2.000000 -2.000000
v -2.000001 2.000000 2.000000
v 0.000000 3.000000 0.000000
vn 1.0000 0.0000 0.0000
vn -0.0000 0.0000 1.0000
vn 0.0000 -1.0000 0.0000
vn 0.0000 0.0000 -1.0000
vn -1.0000 -0.0000 -0.0000
vn -0.0000 0.8944 0.4472
vn 0.4472 0.8944 0.0000
vn 0.0000 0.8944 -0.4472
vn -0.4472 0.8944 -0.0000
s off
f 6 2 5
f 2 1 5
f 6 9 3
f 3 2 6
f 4 1 3
f 2 3 1
f 5 1 8
f 4 8 1
f 8 4 9
f 4 3 9
f 9 6 10
f 6 5 10
f 8 10 5
f 8 9 10
```
And here is the same model again, now in collada format (it is an [XML](xml.md) so it's much more verbose, again you can copy paste this to a file `house.dae` and open it in Blender):
**Do you want to start 3D modeling?** Or do you already know a bit about it and **just want some advice to get better?** Then let us share a few words of advice here.
Nowadays as a [FOSS](foss.md) user you will most likely do 3D modeling with [Blender](blender.md) -- we recommended it to start learning 3D modeling as it is powerful, [free](free_software.md), gratis, has many tutorials etc. Do NOT use anything [proprietary](proprietary.md) no matter what anyone tells you! Once you know a bit about the art, you may play around with alternative programs or approaches (such as writing programs that generate 3D models etc.). However **as a beginner just start with Blender**, which is from now on in this article the software we'll suppose you're using.
Let us preface with mentioning the **[hacker](hacking.md) chad way of making 3D models**, i.e. the [LRS](lrs.md) way 3D models should ideally be made. Remeber, **you don't need any program to create 3D models**, you can make 3D models perfectly fine without Blender or any similar program, and even without computers. Sure, a certain kind of highly artistic, animated, very high poly models will be very hard or impossible to make without an interactive tool like Blender, but you can still make very complex 3D models, such as e.g. that of a whole city, without any fancy tools. Of course people were making statues and similar kinds of "physical 3D models" for thousands of years -- sometimes it's actually simpler to make the model by hand out of clay and later scan it into the computer -- you may also make easily make a polygonal model out of paper, BUT even virtual 3D models can simply be made with pen and paper, it's just numbers, verices and triangles, very manageable if you keep it simple and well organized. You can directly write the models in text formats like obj or collada. First computer 3D models were actually made by hand, just with pen and paper, because there were simply no computers fast enough to even allow real time manipulation of 3D models; back then the modellers simply measured positions of someone object's "key points" (verices) in 3D space which can simply be done with tools like rulers and strings, no need for complex 3D scanners (but if you have a digital camera, you have a quite advanced 3D scanner already). They then fed the manually made models to the computer to visualize them, but again, you don't even need a computer to draw a 3D model, in fact there is a whole area called [descriptive geometry](descriptive_geometry.md) that's all about drawing 3D models on paper and which was used by engineers before computers came. Anyway, you don't have to go as far as avoiding computers of course -- if you have a programmable computer, you already have the luxury which the first 3D artists didn't have, a whole new world opens up to you, you can now make very complex 3D models just with your programming language of choice. Imagine you want to make the said 3D model of a city just using the [C](c.md) programming language. You can first define the terrain as [heightmap](heightmap.md) simply as a 2D array of numbers, then you write a simple code that will iterate over this array and converts it to the obj format (a very simple plain text 3D format, it will be like 20 lines of code) -- now you have the basic terrain, you can render it with any tool that can load 3D models in obj format (basically every 3D tool), AND you may of course write your own 3D visualizer, there is nothing difficult about it, you don't even have to use perspective, just draw it in orthographic projection (again, that will be probably like 20 lines of code). Now you may start adding houses to your terrain -- make a C array of vertices and another array of triangle indices, manually make a simple 3D model of a house (a basic shape will have fewer than 20 vertices, you can cut it out of paper to see what it will look like). That's your house geometry, now just keep making instances of this house and placing them on the terrain, i.e. you make some kind of struct that will keep the house transformation (its position, rotation and scale) and each such struct will represent one house having the geometry you created (if you later improve the house model, all houses will be updates like this). You don't have to worry about placing the houses vertically, their height will be computed automatically so they sit right on the terrain. Now you can update your model exporter to take into account the houses, it will output the obj model along with them and again, you can view this whole model in any 3D software or with your own tools. You can continue by adding trees, roads, simple materials (maybe just something like per triangle colors) and so on. This approach may actually even be superior for some projects just as scripting is superior to many GUI programs, you can collaborate on this model just like you can collaborate on any other text program, you can automatize things greatly, you'll be independent of proprietary formats and platforms etcetc. This is how 3D models would ideally be made.
OK, back to the mainstream now. Nowadays as a [FOSS](foss.md) user you will most likely do 3D modeling with [Blender](blender.md) -- we recommended it to start learning 3D modeling as it is powerful, [free](free_software.md), gratis, has many tutorials etc. Do NOT use anything [proprietary](proprietary.md) no matter what anyone tells you! Once you know a bit about the art, you may play around with alternative programs or approaches (such as writing programs that generate 3D models etc.). However **as a beginner just start with Blender**, which is from now on in this article the software we'll suppose you're using.
**Start extremely simple and learn bottom-up**, i.e. learn about fundamentals and low level concepts and start with very simple models (e.g. simple untextured low-poly shape of a house, box with a roof), keep creating more complex models by small steps. Do NOT fall into the trap of "quick and easy magic 3D modeling" such as sculpting or some "[smart](smart.md) [apps](app.md)" without knowing what's going on at the low level, you'll end up creating extremely ugly, inefficient models in bad formats, like someone wanting to create space rockets without learning anything about math or physics first. Remember to **practice, practice, practice** -- eventually you learn by doing, so try to make small projects and share your results on sites such as opengameart to get feedback and some mental satisfaction and reward for your effort. The following is an outline of possible steps you may take towards becoming an alright 3D artist:
In [computer graphics](graphics.md) 3D rendering is the process of computing images which represent a projected view of 3D objects through a virtual camera.
There are many methods and [algorithms](algorithm.md) for doing so differing in many aspects such as computation complexity, implementation complexity, realism of the result, representation of the 3D data, limitations of viewing and so on. If you are just interested in the [realtime](realtime.md) 3D rendering used in [gaymes](game.md) nowadays, you are probably interested in [GPU](gpu.md)-accelerated 3D [rasterization](rasterization.md) with [APIs](api.md) such as [OpenGL](opengl.md) and [Vulkan](vulkan.md).
@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ Here is the Internet over time in numbers:
## Alternatives To/Alternative Ways Of Implementing The Internet
See also https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/08/thematic-books-series/.
See also https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/10/how-to-build-a-low-tech-internet/.
Internet overtook the world thanks to having enabled great number of services to be provided very cheaply, at great scales and/or with extremely elevated attributes such as minimal [delay](delay.md) or great [bandwidth](bandwidth.md). This is crucial to many industries who couldn't do without such a network, however to individuals or even smaller organizations Internet is frequently just a tool of comfort -- they could exist without the Internet, just a little less comfortably. As Internet is becoming more and more monitored, controlled, overcrowded, limited and censored, we may start to consider the less comfortable alternatives as [good enough](good_enough.md) ways that actually gain us advantages in some other ways, e.g. more [freedom of expression](free_speech.md), more robust network (independence of the Internet infrastructure), technological independence etc. We have to keep in mind the services allowed by the Internet, such as long distance communication, information searching or playing games still mostly exist even without Internet, just usually separated or somehow suffering a few disadvantages; nevertheless these disadvantages may be bearable and/or made smaller, e.g. by adjusting ourselves to the limitations (if our communication becomes slower, we'll simply write longer messages to which we put more thought and information etc.) or combining these alternative services in a clever way. Additionally we can make use of the lessons learned from the Internet (e.g. cleverly designed [protocols](protocol.md), steganography, broadcasts, [digital](digital.md) data, ...) and apply them to the alternative networks. Let us now list a few alternatives to the Internet:
IQ (intelligence quotient) is a non-perfect but [still kind of useful](good_enough.md) measure of one's intelligence, it is a numeric score one gets on a standardized test that tries to estimate his intellectual ability at different tasks (logic, memory, language skills, spatial skills, ...) and express them with a single number. The tests are standardized and the scoring is usually tuned so that the value 100 means average intelligence -- anything above means smarter than average, anything below dumber than average. IQ is a quite controversial topic because it shows intellectual differences between [races](race.md) and sexes and clashes with [political correctness](political_correctness.md), there is also a great debate about "what intelligence even is" (i.e. what the test should measure, what weight should be given to different areas of intelligence), if it is even reasonable to simplify "intelligence" down to a single number, how much of a cultural bias there is (do we really measure pure intellectual capacity or just familiarity with some concepts of our western culture?) and the accuracy of the tests is also highly debated (which can be an issue if we e.g. start using IQ tests to determine who should get higher education and who shouldn't) -- nevertheless it's unquestionable that IQ DOES correlate with intellectual abilities, IQ tests are a tool that really does something, the debates mostly revolve around how useful the tool is, how it should be used, what conclusions can we make with it and so on. Basically only people with the lowest IQ say that IQ is completely useless.
TODO: more details, history, where to measure (web vs Mensa vs SAT etc.)
@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ As perhaps the most influential man in history whose image has been twisted, use
- *"Thou shalt not kill."* being directly in ten commandments lol (maybe they don't understand because the language is archaic, one may always find an excuse)
- ...
(Americans are stupid idiots who say they love Jesus but rather love to reference Old Testament for their pragmatics life decisions, however the law of Old Testament was explicitly cancelled by Jesus and [updated](update_culture.md) to a new one, based on love and nonviolence rather than violence, punishment and revenge -- this is the whole point of why Jesus came to [Earth](earth.md) in the first place. It's why the book is called *New Testament*, which in many languages gets translated as "The New Law". But as it's been said, Americans are stupid.)
(Americans are stupid idiots who say they love Jesus but rather love to reference Old Testament for their pragmatics life decisions, however the law of Old Testament was explicitly cancelled by Jesus and [updated](update_culture.md) to a new one, based on love and nonviolence rather than violence, punishment and revenge -- this is the whole point of why Jesus came to [Earth](earth.md) in the first place. Old testament is basically the Jewish part of the Bible, obsolete for Christians -- some Christians even completely reject Old testament, e.g. Cathars. It's why the book is called *New Testament*, it means "The New Law". But as it's been said, Americans are stupid.)
TODO: relationship of logic and math, which comes first etc.
**Power of logic is limited** (for more please read this excellent resource: http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html) -- though logic is the strongest, most stable platform our knowledge can ever stand on, it is still not infinitely powerful and has its limits, despite what any reddit [atheist](atheism.md) tells you or even what he believes. This sadly [dooms](doom.md) us to certain eternal inability to uncover all there is, we just have to accept from a certain point we are blind and not even logic will help us. [Kurt Godel](godel.md) mathematically proved with his [incompleteness theorems](incompleteness.md) that we simply won't be able to prove everything, not even the validity of formal tools we use to prove things. Even in just intuitive terms: on the lowest level we start using logic to talk about itself, i.e. if we e.g. try to prove that "logic works" using logical arguments, we cannot ever succeed, because if we succeed, the proven fact that "logic works" relies on the fact that logic indeed works; if it perhaps doesn't work and we used it to prove its own validity, we might have simply gotten a wrong result (it's just as if we trust someone saying "I am not a liar", he may as well be lying about not being a liar). By this logic even the previous sentence may or may not actually be true, we simply don't know, sometimes the best we can do is simply hold on to stronger or weaker beliefs. Logic furthermore cannot talk about many things; it can tell us how the world works but e.g. not WHY it works like it does.
**Power of logic is limited** (for more please read this excellent resource: http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html) -- though logic is the strongest, most stable platform our knowledge can ever stand on, it is still not infinitely powerful and has its limits, despite what any reddit [atheist](atheism.md) tells you or even what he believes. This sadly [dooms](doom.md) us to certain eternal inability to uncover all there is, we just have to accept from a certain point we are blind and not even logic will help us. [Kurt Godel](godel.md) mathematically proved with his [incompleteness theorems](incompleteness.md) that we simply won't be able to prove everything, not even the validity of formal tools we use to prove things. See also [knowability](knowability.md). Even in just intuitive terms: on the lowest level we start using logic to talk about itself, i.e. if we e.g. try to prove that "logic works" using logical arguments, we cannot ever succeed, because if we succeed, the proven fact that "logic works" relies on the fact that logic indeed works; if it perhaps doesn't work and we used it to prove its own validity, we might have simply gotten a wrong result (it's just as if we trust someone saying "I am not a liar", he may as well be lying about not being a liar). By this logic even the previous sentence may or may not actually be true, we simply don't know, sometimes the best we can do is simply hold on to stronger or weaker beliefs. Logic furthermore cannot talk about many things; it can tell us how the world works but e.g. not WHY it works like it does.
@ -12,4 +12,10 @@ TODO: some noice tree of sciences or smth
**What should we accept as "legit" science?** [We](lrs.md), in the context of our [ideal society](less_retarded_society.md), argue for NOT creating a strict definition of science, just as we are for example against "formalizing morality" with laws etc. There are no hard lines between good and evil, fun and boring, useful and useless, bloated and minimal, and so also there is no strict line between science and non-science. What is and is not science is to be judged on a case-by-case basis and can be disagreed on without any issue, science cannot be a mass produced stream of papers that can automatically be marked OK or NOT OK. We might define the term **[less retarded science](less_retarded_science.md)** so as to distinguish today's many times twisted and corrupted "science/[soyence](soyence.md)" from the real, good and truly useful science. Less retarded science should follow similar principles as [our technology](lrs.md), it should be completely free as in freedom, [selfless](selflessness.md), [suckless](suckless.md) as much as possible, unobscured etc. -- especially stressed should be the idea of many people being able to reproduce less retarded science; e.g. Newton's law of gravitation is less retarded because it can easily be verified by anyone, while the existence of Higgs boson is not.
**Never confuse trusting science with trusting scientists** (especially in [capitalism](capitalism.md) and other dystopias), the latter is literally faith ([soyence](soyence.md)), no different from blindly trusting religious preachers and political propaganda, the former means only trusting that which you yourself can test and verify at home and therefore having real confidence. We are not saying that you should never trust a scientist, only that you should know doing so is just pure relying on someone's word, which in today's society you often cannot afford to do. Also do NOT confuse or equate science with [academia](academia.md). As with everything, under capitalism academia has become rotten to the core, research is motivated by profit and what's produced is mostly utter bullshit shat out by wannabe [PhD](phd.md)s who need to mass produce "something" as a part of the crazy academia publish-or-perish game. As with everything in capitalism, the closer you look, the more corruption you find. So wait, **can we just trust nothing researched by someone else?** It's not so simple: for starters just realize that trusting "the big science" nowadays with anything important (e.g. one's health) is just like entrusting a random stranger in the street something that's valuable to you (actually it's worse because unlike a stranger, entities such as [corporations](corporation.md) have absolutely no emotion and conscience) -- can you do that? Well, sometimes yes, mostly it's probably a great risk, and generally you want to avoid having to do it. In the past things were better, so you can generally trust "science" that was done much further in the past, i.e. facts you find in old encyclopedias are generally more trustworthy than facts you find on today's internet. [LRS](lrs.md) would like to establish society in which "big science" would be trustworthy again; until we succeed though, you have to keep distrust in soyence.
**Never confuse trusting science with trusting scientists** (especially in [capitalism](capitalism.md) and other dystopias), the latter is literally faith ([soyence](soyence.md)), no different from blindly trusting religious preachers and political propaganda, the former means only trusting that which you yourself can test and verify at home and therefore having real confidence. We are not saying that you should never trust a scientist, only that you should know doing so is just pure relying on someone's word, which in today's society you often cannot afford to do. Also do NOT confuse or equate science with [academia](academia.md). As with everything, under capitalism academia has become rotten to the core, research is motivated by profit and what's produced is mostly utter bullshit shat out by wannabe [PhD](phd.md)s who need to mass produce "something" as a part of the crazy academia publish-or-perish game. As with everything in capitalism, the closer you look, the more corruption you find. So wait, **can we just trust nothing researched by someone else?** It's not so simple: for starters just realize that trusting "the big science" nowadays with anything important (e.g. one's health) is just like entrusting a random stranger in the street something that's valuable to you (actually it's worse because unlike a stranger, entities such as [corporations](corporation.md) have absolutely no emotion and conscience) -- can you do that? Well, sometimes yes, mostly it's probably a great risk, and generally you want to avoid having to do it. In the past things were better, so you can generally trust "science" that was done much further in the past, i.e. facts you find in old encyclopedias are generally more trustworthy than facts you find on today's internet. [LRS](lrs.md) would like to establish society in which "big science" would be trustworthy again; until we succeed though, you have to keep distrust in soyence.
{ For a physicist and electronics guys there's probably quite a lot of simplification, this is written from the limited point of view of a programmer. ~drummyfish }
Semiconductors are materials whose electrical conductivity varies greatly with conditions such as temperature, illumination their purity or applied voltage, unlike insulators who generally don't conduct electricity very well (have a great [resistivity](resistivity.md)) and conductors who do. Semiconductors, especially [silicon](silicon.md) (Si), are the key component of [digital](digital.md) [electronic](electronic.md) [computers](computer.md) and integrated circuits. Other semiconductors include germanium, selenium or compound ones (composed of multiple elements).
Semiconductors are, very simply speaking, materials whose electrical conductivity varies greatly with conditions such as temperature, illumination their purity or applied voltage, unlike insulators who generally don't conduct electricity very well (have a great [resistivity](resistivity.md)) and conductors who do. Semiconductors, especially [silicon](silicon.md) (Si), are the key component of [digital](digital.md) [electronic](electronic.md) [computers](computer.md) and integrated circuits. Other semiconductors include germanium, selenium or compound ones (composed of multiple elements).
Semiconductors are important for computers because they help implement the [binary](binary.md) [logic circuits](logic_circuit.md), they can behave like a switch that is either on (1) or off (0). Besides that they can serve e.g. for making measurements (a component whose resistivity depends on its illumination can be used to measure amount of light by measuring the resistivity). Especially important electronic components based on semiconductors are the **[diode](diode.md)** (lets current flow only one way) and **[transistor](transistor.md)** (a purely electrical "switch" that can be made extremely tiny).
@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ And the bad things are (see also this site: http://digdeeper.club/articles/wikip
- Wikipedia is **too popular** which has the negative side effect of becoming a **political battlefield**. This is one of the reasons why there has to be a lot of **bureaucracy**, including things such as **locking of articles** and the inability to edit everything. Even if an article can technically be edited by anyone, there are many times people watching and reverting changes on specific articles. So Wikipedia can't fully proclaim it can be "edited by anyone".
- Wikipedia is **hard to read**. The articles go to great depth and mostly even simple topics are explained with a great deal of highly technical terms so that they can't be well understood by people outside the specific field, even if the topic could be explained simply (Simple English Wikipedia tries to fix this a little bit at least). Editors try to include as much information as possible which too often makes the main point of a topic drown in the blablabla. Wikipedia's style is also very formal and "not [fun](fun.md)" to read, which isn't bad in itself but it just is boring to read. Some alternative encyclopedias such as [Citizendium](citizendium.md) try to offer a more friendly reading style. Back in the day Wikipedia used to be written pretty well, check it out e.g. at https://nostalgia.wikipedia.org.
- Wikipedia is **not [public domain](public_domain.md)**. It is licensed under [CC-BY-SA](cc_by_sa.md) which is a [free](free_culture.md) license, but has a few burdening conditions. We belive knowledge shouldn't be owned or burdened by any conditions.
- Even though there are no ads, there regularly appears **political propaganda**, main page just **hard pushes [feminist](feminism.md) shit** as featured images and articles, there appear popups for LGBT/feminist activism, and of course all articles are littered with [pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md) propaganda etc.
- Even though there are no commercial ads (yet), there regularly appears **political propaganda**, main page just **hard pushes [feminist](feminism.md) shit** as featured images and articles, there appear popups and banners for LGBT/feminist activism and of course all articles are littered with [pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md) propaganda etc. The issues is it's not just an encyclopedia anymore where you go get your information, it's a group with opinions that's trying to drag you somewhere -- you just go look up some mathematical formula and suddenly you see something like "YAY, LET'S CELEBRATE WOMEN IN AFRICA TODAY", even if it was something you agree with (which it isn't) it's just as annoying and out of place in an encyclopedia as capitalist ads.
- **Many articles are bought**, there exist companies that offer editing and maintaining certain articles in a way the client desires and of course corporations and politicians take this opportunity -- of course Wikipedia somewhat tries to prevent it but no prevention ever works 100%, so a lot of information on Wikipedia is either highly misleading, untrue, censored or downright fabricated.
World of Warcraft (WoW) is an AAA [proprietary](proprietary.md) [game](game.md) released in [2004](2004.md) by [Blizzard](blizzard.md) that was one of the most successful and influencing games among [MMORPGs](mmorpg.md).
World of Warcraft (WoW) is an AAA [proprietary](proprietary.md) [game](game.md) released in [2004](2004.md) by [Blizzard](blizzard.md) that was one of the most successful and influencing games among [MMORPGs](mmorpg.md). It's the mainstream kind of MMO, considered pretty easy (compare e.g. to Eve Online).
There is a [FOSS](foss.md) implementation of WoW server called [MaNGOS](mangos.md) (now having some [forks](fork.md)) that's used to make private servers. The client is of course proprietary and if you dare make a popular server Blizzard (or whatever it's called now, it's probably merged with [Micro$oft](microfost.md) or something now) will just rape you.
