@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz
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j_bertolotti

@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz

Associated Professor of Physics at the University of Exeter.
Scientific visualizations (grouped under the hastag #PhysicsFactlet).
He/lui/on. All opinions are my own fault.

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j_bertolotti, to random
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Dear hive mind: is there a simple to use, and decently stable macroblogging platform on the Fediverse that one can use without having to self-host?
Thank you

p.s.
Main big requirement is the possibility to categorize the posts so that they are easy to find even after some time has passed.
Second big requirement is that it can't be a beta or a personal project that is likely to be abandoned in an year.

Kay, to gamedev
@Kay@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

This is the sign you've been waiting for. Make a dungeon crawler! 👀

To help you get started, I've got over 200 dungeon themed 3D models on my itch page for FREE, Oh there's animated characters, weapons, and enemies too!

#gamedev #indiedev

video/mp4

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@Kay If only I knew how to code I would make my own vtt for my ttrpg gaming sessions 😃

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

Google has launched an “Audio Emoji” feature where during a phone call on Android you can play an animation on your phone with a sound effect that the other person also hears. Sounds include applause and farting.

It’s a really strange feature. WTF?

https://9to5google.com/2024/04/30/google-phone-audio-emoji-rollout/

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@carnage4life Google: We are sorry we are killing all those useful products, but it is for a good cause. You see, we need all hands on deck to ship a button that plays fart noises during a phone call.

j_bertolotti, to random
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

"Non-commutative Math is the least weird idea in history!"
(by @ZachWeinersmith )
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/commute-2

eniko, (edited ) to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

"The market will efficiently allocate resources where they're most needed!"

Meanwhile, the market: we're putting this "AI" thing that doesn't seem to work and everyone hates into everything you use including your mouse. We're sure this will make us rich somehow. Do you like this? [Yes / Ask me again later]

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@eniko One of the problems with economics is that the assumptions behind those grandiose statements (e.g. perfect knowledge) are seldom stated out clearly. And nobody ever checks if those assumptions are satisfied in the real world.

j_bertolotti, to random
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Business idea: A course teaching University Professors how to start their presentation from their own computer (with an advanced course on how to share your screen when online).

Not sure anyone would be willing to pay for it, but there is clearly a need for such a course.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

This is probably just the communities I'm in, but it feels like whereas AI art had a fairly serious backlash, AI music has not? Is this your impression?

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@ZachWeinersmith I have not been bombarded with AI music, so I am less likely to rant about it.

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

Google really brought the Killed By Google vibe that has caused everyone to think twice about adopting their consumer products to their developer tools. 😫

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@carnage4life When was the last time Google has made a good decision on anything?
("Let's make a ton of money by exploiting our monopolistic position" doesn't count as a good decision.)

eniko, to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

i dont understand achievements. i dont understand why the act of playing literal video games needed to be gamified

note: please don't explain achievements to me. it will not help me understand, it will only annoy me

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@eniko Me beating a super-hard semi-secret boss: 85% of the players got this achievement.
Me simply progressing the story without doing anything special: 2% of the players got this achievement.

Achievements in videogames are weird 🤷‍♂️

sfera314, to random
@sfera314@mathstodon.xyz avatar

I'm thinking 🤔 of founding (unless it already exist) the

'Revolutionary Brigades for the Boycott of Bureaucracy' (RBBB) 🥺

a transnational, non-violent movement whose mission is to expose the irrationality of many norms affecting our life and challenge them through civil disobedience. 👩‍🚒

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@sfera314 History teaches us that this a noble battle, but also one we have lost a long time ago.

j_bertolotti, to random
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

I need a physical button on my smart(?)phone for "please connect to those damn Bluetooth earbuds you were already connected to 15 minutes ago. NOW!"

j_bertolotti, to random
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

90% of political takes online can be classified as "people falling for the false dichotomy fallacy (again)"

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

I want to end the night on a high note and talk about a game that I really love.

Boson X has been in my library for almost a decade. Surely, it is the greatest endless runner I’ve ever played.

What intrigues me about this one is the mystery. I’m apparently a scientist dealing with particles, and I’m now running in this tube where the goal is to get 100% of something. The game hints at a story but leads it up to your imagination about what could be going on.

But then when you start the game, it is just pure adrenaline. You jump and must make sure the stay on the platforms. If you miss, the game stops. And if you hit 100% by running on the flashing rectangles, you move on to the next stage where things are more hardcore.

Boson X only takes up 20MB of space.

When was the last time you’ve ever encountered a game that looks and sounds this good that’s only 20MB? Almost never.

Yet, not only does it have a great art style, but a killer soundtrack too. Everything is colourful and sounds fantastic. Any modern PC can run this without a hitch. When I say “any” I mean it: Windows, Linux, and Mac ports are all available. And yes, this runs great on a Steam Deck.

Even though this game is simple, I’ve put untold hours into Boson X. Anyone can pick it up, but it is challenging to master. That’s a testament to how excellent it is.

Highly recommended!

Boson X screenshot (RTX 3080 Ti)
Boson X screenshot (RTX 3080 Ti)
Boson X screenshot (RTX 3080 Ti)

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@atomicpoet Feels like an accurate representation of what particle Physicists do at LHC 😁

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

Mercedes is the first automaker in the US to sell cars that are L3 self driving which means the driver doesn’t have to pay attention to the road.

It should be noted that Tesla’s products are at L2 despite brand names like Autopilot & Full Self Driving that imply it’s at L5.

https://fortune.com/2024/04/18/mercedes-self-driving-autonomous-cars-california-nevada-level-3-drive-pilot/

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@carnage4life The real test for any self-proclaiming "self driving car" is: can they cross Rome from one side to the other?
(Answer: no they can't and are unlikely to in foreseeable future.)

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@nus
Rome being Rome I would expect the car to just give up, stop in the middle of the road, and the driver to be burnt alive by a mob of very angry commuters.
@carnage4life

j_bertolotti, to random
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Fisici italiani: sapete se esiste un buon libro di "Metodi matematici per la Fisica" in italiano o se è un buco del mercato in attesa di essere riempito?

lisyarus, to random
@lisyarus@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

New blog post: Demystifying multiple importance sampling

It is a simple thing that turns out to be confusing to a lot of us rendering engineers. I try to explain it in detail here with path-tracing examples!

https://lisyarus.github.io/blog/posts/multiple-importance-sampling.html

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lisyarus I am biased by years of working in optics, but using ω as a direction feels cursed.

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lesley Beside, if one uses it as a direction, there should be some visual indication you are talking about a unit vector, e.g. r̂.
@lisyarus

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lisyarus Hard disagree. Together with using standard symbols for standard quantities (in Physics&co the same quantities keep turning up over and over), it helps parsing an otherwise complex equation at a glance.
@lesley

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lisyarus Well, as I said in my first comment, I am biased 🙂 @lesley

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

I played Shenmue III, which is the first Shenmue game I’ve ever played. Believe me, I have thoughts!

If you’re not aware of Shenmue, it’s considered the SEGA Dreamcast’s magnum opus. Conceived by Yu Suzuki – considered SEGA’s equivalent to Shigeru Miyamoto – it was the biggest, most detailed AAA title SEGA ever produced. Certainly, it was the most expensive game anyone had ever made until that point.

It got a sequel two years later which arrived on the Dreamcast and Xbox. After Suzuki left SEGA, he formed his own studio called YS Net and crowd-funded Shenmue III on Kickstarter.

For years, people have been talking up this series as the grand-daddy of open world games, one which opened the floodgates for the likes of Grand Theft Auto III. I have my doubts about that, which I will get to in a moment.

Regarding Shenmue III itself, I made the big mistake of not starting with the first game of the series. This is a problem because I was seemingly dropped into the middle of the story, and whole lot clearly went on in the other games that I wasn’t aware about.

However, from playing Shenmue III, it seems stuck in the past. I got the sense from playing it that it adhered quite closely to what the original Shenmue was like. I’m sure Shenmue fans would cry foul if it had a more modern game design so I don’t blame the developers for playing it safe.

For one thing, this game is not so open as I was lead it was going to be. It’s quite obvious that the developers wanted me to play the game a certain way, and going off the beaten path was a big no-no. Which again, this is fine – but it’s clear to me that this is not so much an open world game as it is something else.

In fact, while I was playing this, I got a serious sense of deja vu. This genre may have been new and novel to console gamers, but to a PC gamer such as myself, this was looking quite familiar to me.

And then it hit me. This is pretty much a console version of a 3D adventure game – the type I’d play on DOS, Windows, and Mac. You know, kind of like Grim Fandango or Syberia. The only big difference is that you control it with a gamepad instead of a mouse.

Sure, there are also mini-games as well as a few martial arts scenes. Yet the crux of this game is the adventure element. You have objectives, talk to people, do some investigating.

Shenmue didn’t come out of left field. Yu Suzuki was clearly aware of what was going on with PC gaming, and he wanted to bring it to Dreamcast. And I appreciate it, especially since he brought a Japanese cultural perspective to adventure gaming.

But Shenmue III was released in 2019. While it’s fidelity to the series is admirable, it doesn’t feel all that refined. This becomes readily apparent when you compare it to SEGA’s newer series, Like a Dragon. Frankly, I think that series out-Shenmues Shenmue by combining adventure gaming with combat and mini-games more seamlessly.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate Shenmue for what it is. I admire the graphics and the sound. The dialogue is okay even if it feels stilted and the interactions with NPCs are more than a little odd. And it plays all great on the Steam Deck since it’s verified for the platform.

I’m not sure, though, that I want to see another Shenmue. Not that we’ll get one – I’m not sure the demand is there. Everything Shenmue does, a lot of modern games do better. Maybe if a Shenmue IV leaned more heavily into the adventure aspect, we’d have something that stands out.

Overall, Shenmue III isn’t a bad game but it isn’t impressive either.

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@atomicpoet Never played any of the Shenmue games, but I distinctly remember all the series fans being very disappointed by how badbthe third one was (if I remember correctly most people were also disappointed by the second one.)

j_bertolotti, to random
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

: The "Ashcroft/Mermin Project"
I will try to (likely very slowly) go through the classic textbook "Solid State Physics" by Ashcroft and Mermin and make one or more animation/visualization per chapter.
This will (hopefully) help people digest the topic and/or be useful to lecturers who are teaching about it. As with all my animations, feel free to use them.
The idea is that the animations are a companion to the book, so I will give only very brief explanations here.

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@cortogantese You don't scatter on the crystal, you scatter on the defects.
As per why you don't scatter on the crystal, you need Bloch modes to explain that. In the Drude model it is just postulated.

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Released into the and uploaded to together with the script used to generate it: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drude_Model.gif

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

#PhysicsFactlet: The "Ashcroft/Mermin Project"
Chapter 2: Sommerfeld model
Electrons in a metal can be approximated as a Fermi gas, where only one electron can occupy a given state. At low temperature most of them are difficult to excite, because there is no free state available.

Fermi function plotted against energy for increasing temperatures (purple line). A dashed black line represent the Fermi energy, and the thermal energy is represented as a shaded orange area. At the bottom of the plot a number of small disks represent the electron piling up and, when the temperature is high enough) getting randomly excited to higher energy states.

lowqualityfacts, to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

That makes sense.
https://patreon.com/lowqualityfacts

j_bertolotti,
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lowqualityfacts Physicists like to describe this as the parachute making spacetime more flat.

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