[HN Gopher] Tales of the M1 GPU
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Tales of the M1 GPU
        
       Author : rawrenstein
       Score  : 975 points
       Date   : 2022-11-29 16:50 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (asahilinux.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (asahilinux.org)
        
       | kubb wrote:
       | I can hardly think of a better recommendation of Rust for kernel
       | development than this.
        
       | fareesh wrote:
       | I've never played games on my M1 Macbook - what are some popular
       | reasonably graphics intensive games that it would support? Could
       | it run Dota2 for example?
        
         | rpastuszak wrote:
         | Disco Elysium, Hades and CIV VI run really well on my MBA m1
         | (using a 4K display). These games are not as resource heavy as
         | Dota2 AFAIK but I'm comparing them to my maxed out 16inch MBP
         | from 2020 which acted more like a cursed semi sentient toaster
         | than a hi spec laptop.
        
         | tingol wrote:
         | Dota 2 runs pretty great.
        
         | drooopy wrote:
         | Resident Evil Village recently came out and it performs
         | surprisingly well even on the low end MacBook Air M1 with only
         | 7 GPU cores. What's even more impressive is that the game is
         | playable (low gfx settings, 30fps) when running that machine on
         | low power mode.
        
       | helf wrote:
       | The fact so much hardware these days is running a full real-time
       | OS all the time annoys me. I know it is normal and understandable
       | but everything is such a black box and it has already caused
       | headaches (looking at you, Intel).
        
         | ramraj07 wrote:
         | Every cell in your body is running a full blown OS fully
         | capable of doing things that each individual cell has no need
         | for. It sounds like this is a perfectly natural way to go about
         | things.
        
           | Retric wrote:
           | Mature mammalian red blood cells ditch their DNA, which is
           | one reason they don't live very long.
        
             | ralfd wrote:
             | Did dinosaur / do reptilian blood cells live longer?
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | No idea about dinosaurs but some reptilian red blood
               | cells live much longer as in 500+ days for turtles vs 120
               | for humans. However, it varies widely with mice and
               | chickens having much faster turnover. https://www.science
               | direct.com/science/article/pii/S000649712...
               | 
               | Five species of salamanders have similar enucleated red
               | blood cells, but I can't find out how long they last in
               | comparison. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18328681/
               | 
               | One theory is it's an adaption to having unusually large
               | genomes which would otherwise be an issue, but biology is
               | odd so who knows.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | For one, it makes them much harder to be used as viral
               | vectors.
        
               | glitchc wrote:
               | I think that's the reason why mammals evolved in this
               | way. Red blood cells go everywhere, and I mean
               | everywhere, in your body. Most other cells can't get
               | close enough.
        
               | robbiep wrote:
               | Those from birds which are nucleated last about 30-40
               | days compared to 120 in us so no
        
               | speed_spread wrote:
               | Not with that attitude
        
             | helf wrote:
             | I didn't know this. That is fascinating!
        
           | koheripbal wrote:
           | Organic units should not be admired for their design.
           | 
           | DNA is the worst spaghetti code imaginable.
           | 
           | The design is such a hack, that it's easier to let the unit
           | die and just create new ones every few years.
        
             | charlieflowers wrote:
             | > it's easier to let the unit die and just create new ones
             | every few years
             | 
             | Cattle, not pets
        
             | ramraj07 wrote:
             | Poor comparison - DNA is compiled assembly language code.
             | It is meant to be spaghetti to save space and reuse
             | proteins for multiple functions. In that regard it's the
             | most efficient compiler in the universe.
        
             | btown wrote:
             | "The creatures outside looked from DNA to k8s YAML, and
             | from k8s YAML to DNA, and from DNA to k8s YAML again; but
             | already it was impossible to say which was which."
        
             | andrekandre wrote:
             | its a pretty amazing hack though
             | 
             | the human body can scale from 1 cell to several trillion
             | without going down for maintenance even once all while
             | differentiating to different functions
             | 
             | it can take a high level of damage and heal without needing
             | a shutdown as well, most software crashes completely at the
             | first exception
             | 
             | cells give you that highly scalable and fault tolerant
             | system that we all want
        
               | ska wrote:
               | > without going down for maintenance even once
               | 
               | doesn't it go down for maintenance approximately once a
               | day?
        
               | alluro2 wrote:
               | It's more of a "sleep mode". There are still a lot of
               | wakeups, and cron jobs running clean up of temporary
               | files, cache management and backup routines. Background
               | services still run.
        
             | simonh wrote:
             | Death isn't a solution to maintenance issues, there are
             | some organisms including animals that live many hundreds of
             | years and possibly indefinitely. The reason seems to be to
             | increase the rate of iterations, to keep up the pace of
             | adaptation and evolution.
        
             | techie128 wrote:
             | Hello IT. Have you tried turning it off and turning it back
             | on again?
        
             | borissk wrote:
             | "Let the unit die and just create new ones every few years"
             | is a brilliant solution to many issues in complex systems.
             | Practically all software created by humans behaves the same
             | way - want a new version of your browser or a new major
             | version of your OS kernel or whatever else - you have to
             | restart them.
        
               | rswail wrote:
               | it's almost like Erlang supervisors all the way down :)
        
             | ssivark wrote:
             | And it's still more adaptable/robust/intelligent than
             | almost any system we've built so far.
        
         | babypuncher wrote:
         | This isn't even that new of a thing. The floppy disk drive sold
         | for the Commodore 64 included it's own 6502 CPU, ROM, and RAM.
         | This ran its own disk operating system[1]. Clever programmers
         | would upload their own code to the disk drive to get faster
         | read/writes, pack data more densely on the disk, and even copy
         | protection schemes that could validate the authenticity of a
         | floppy.
         | 
         | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_DOS
        
           | ansible wrote:
           | And all that engineering resulted in a floppy drive that was
           | slower _and_ more expensive than comparable units for other
           | home computers. I 'm not sure if there is a lesson there...
        
             | edgyquant wrote:
             | There's more to life and computation than cycles and
             | read/write speed. A generation of engineers began their
             | journey doing these "useless things"
        
             | ddingus wrote:
             | Well, it was slower due to a hardware problem. Basically,
             | the hardware serial device had a bug which required a bit
             | bang comms channel to the disk drive. Doing that amidst the
             | sometimes aggressive video DMA is what caused all the
             | slowdowns.
             | 
             | Back in the day I owned machines that did it both ways, but
             | not a C64. My Atari computer also had a smart disk drive.
             | Worked over something Atari called SIO, which is an early
             | ancestor of modern USB. Back then, the Atari machine was
             | device independent and that turned out to be great
             | engineering!
             | 
             | Today we have Fuji Net devices that basically put Atari and
             | other computers on the Internet, even to the point of being
             | able to write BASIC programs that do meaningful things
             | online.
             | 
             | The C64 approach was not much different, working via
             | RS-232. But for a bug, it would have performed nicely.
             | 
             | Now, my other machine was an Apple ][, and that disk was
             | all software. And it was fast! And being all software meant
             | people did all sorts of crazy stuff on those disk drives
             | ranging from more capacity to crazy copy protection.
             | 
             | But... That machine could do nothing else during disk
             | access.
             | 
             | The Atari and C64 machines could do stuff and access their
             | disks.
             | 
             | Today, that Fuji Net device works via the SIO on the Atari,
             | with the Internet being the N: device! On the Apple, it
             | works via the SmartPort, which worked with disk drives that
             | contained? Wait for it!!
             | 
             | A CPU :)
             | 
             | Seriously, your point is valid. But, it's not really valid
             | in the sense you intended.
        
               | rasz wrote:
               | No, VIC-20/1540 had hardware problem. C64 shipped with
               | fixed chips. C64 cant even work with 1540. Commodore
               | crippled it because of incompetence.
        
               | ddingus wrote:
               | Too late for me to edit, but yes I did confuse the source
               | of the bug. Please clarify the C64 drive scenario source
               | of slowness. Was it VIC-20 backward compatibility, or?
               | 
               | In any case, I maintain the engineering wasn't at fault,
               | having a CPU etc. Fastloaders showed it to be just poor
               | software, and that's a point I did not make clear enough.
        
             | cromwellian wrote:
             | The 1541 was slow because the c64's serial bus was slow.
             | Data was clocked over the bus 1 bit at a time. Various
             | fastloaders sped up the data rate by reusing the clock line
             | itself as a data line (2 bits at a time), later HW adapters
             | adder parallel port or even usb to overcome the serial bus
             | bottleneck.
             | 
             | Basically commodore was gonna use an ieee-488 bus for the
             | drive and then decided it was too expensive late in the
             | design and switched to this hacks serial bus that
             | bottlenecked everything.
        
             | Waterluvian wrote:
             | Probably not a fair comparison in some ways but this
             | reminds me of that story of Woz making a disk drive
             | controller with far fewer chips by being clever and
             | thoughtful about it all. I'm probably misremembering this.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | goosedragons wrote:
               | That's what pretty much what happened. The Integrated Woz
               | Machine.
        
               | ronbarr wrote:
               | You're talking about the Integrated Woz Machine. It was a
               | custom disk controller that Wozniak created that was used
               | in the Apple ][, /// and I believe on the original Macs.
               | It was cheap, fast and worked.
        
               | wrs wrote:
               | And a later Mac, the IIfx, introduced I/O coprocessors to
               | run the IWM, among other things. All part of the glorious
               | wheel of reincarnation. [0]
               | 
               | [0] https://www.computer-dictionary-
               | online.org/definitions-c/cyc...
        
               | duskwuff wrote:
               | Crazier yet: the IOPs on the IIfx were 6502-based
               | microcontrollers.
        
               | nsxwolf wrote:
               | The Integrated Woz Machine was the custom single-chip
               | version of the Apple II floppy controller.
        
             | NateLawson wrote:
             | The slowness was due to a hardware bug in the 6522 VIA
             | chip. The shift register (FIFO) would lock up randomly.
             | Since this couldn't be fixed before the floppy drive needed
             | to be shipped, they had the 6502 CPU bit-bang the IEC
             | protocol, which was slower. The hardware design for the
             | 154x floppy drive was fine, and some clever software tricks
             | allow stock hardware to stream data back to the C64 and
             | decode the GCR at the full media rate.
             | 
             | https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/gcr-
             | decoding/index....
        
             | Eleison23 wrote:
             | The 1541 was set to be a highly capable and performant
             | machine, but an interface/design bug held it back and
             | delivered dismal performance whenever connected to the C64.
             | They tried to fix it but it couldn't be rescued, so speed
             | freaks needed to wait for the 1570 series.
        
               | cromwellian wrote:
               | It was partially rescued by fastloaders and later
               | JiffyDOS. Fastloaders tended to max out at 10-13x if the
               | disk format was unchanged but if you could reformat or
               | recode the files you could go anywhere from 25x speed to
               | over 40x (transwarp) on stock hardware. DolphinDOS gave a
               | 25x speed up by using the parallel port with 1541.
               | 
               | Epyx games used the Vorpal format which gave 15x load
               | speedup.
               | 
               | The point is, the speed issues weren't really the 1541's
               | fault although GCR coding could have benefited from a HW
               | decoder.
        
           | musictubes wrote:
           | Oh God, the 1541 ran soooo hot, hotter than the C64 itself. I
           | remember using a fan on the drive during marathon Ultima
           | sessions. The 1571 was so much cooler and faster.
        
           | saltcured wrote:
           | In the era of CP/M machines, the terminal likely had a
           | similar CPU and RAM to the computer running the OS too. So
           | you had one CPU managing the text framebuffer and CRT driver,
           | connected to one managing another text framebuffer and
           | application, connected to another one managing the floppy
           | disk servos.
        
             | helf wrote:
             | I guess I should have clarified more: I dislike everything
             | running entirely separate OSes that you have no control
             | over at all and are complete black boxes.
             | 
             | The fact they are running entire OSes themselves isn't that
             | big of a deal. I just hate having no control.
        
           | rasz wrote:
           | Yes, but ... Commodore did this because they had incompetent
           | management. They shipped products (VIC-20, 1540) with
           | hardware defect in one of the chips (6522), chip they
           | manufactured themselves. The kicker is
           | 
           | - C64 shipped with 6526, a fixed version of 6522
           | 
           | - C64 is incompatible with 1540 anyway
           | 
           | They crippled C64 for no reason other than to sell more
           | Commodore manufactured chips inside a pointless box. C128 was
           | similar trick of stuffing C64 with garbage leftover from
           | failed projects and selling computer with 2 CPUs and 2
           | graphic chips at twice the price. Before slow serial devices
           | they were perfectly capable of making fast and cheaper to
           | manufacture floppies for PET/CBM systems.
        
           | helf wrote:
           | Oh I know it's been a thing forever. Hell, my NeXT Cube with
           | its NeXTDimension display board was such. The NeXTDimension
           | board ran its own entire stripped down OS. It used an Intel
           | i860 and a Mach kernel.... It also was massively
           | underutilized. If NeXT had did a bit more leg work and made
           | the actual Display PS server run entirely on the board it
           | would have been insane. But the 68K still did everything.
           | 
           | ... I miss my NeXTs..
        
         | jbverschoor wrote:
         | I sometimes wonder about how fast tings could go if we ditch
         | the firmware, and also just bake a kernel / os right into the
         | silicon. Not like all the subsystems which run their own
         | os/kernels, but really just cut every layer, and have nothing
         | in between.
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | It'd be slower. These coprocessor OSes are there to improve
           | performance in the first place.
           | 
           | (Especially because wall clock time is not the only kind of
           | performance that matters.)
        
           | saagarjha wrote:
           | Then you can't improve them.
        
           | p_l wrote:
           | You'd find yourself needing to add more CPUs to account for
           | all the low level handling that is done by various
           | coprocessors for you, eating into your compute budget,
           | especially with high interrupt ratio as you wouldn't have it
           | abstracted and batched in the now missing coprocessors
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | It's only a problem if they're closed source. We should be
         | working on that.
        
         | comprambler wrote:
         | Technically it is not a real time OS. There are very few OSs
         | that have this moniker (vxworks, qnx, etc)
        
           | saagarjha wrote:
           | "Real-time" isn't a trademark, you can assign it to other
           | things if they meet the typical guarantees of "real-time".
        
         | dist1ll wrote:
         | There's this great USENIX talk by Timothy Roscoe [1], which is
         | part of the Enzian Team at ETH Zurich.
         | 
         | It's about the dominant unholistic approach to modern operating
         | system design, which is reflected in the vast number of
         | independent, proprietary, under-documented RTOSes running in
         | tandem on a single system, and eventually leading to
         | uninspiring and lackluster OS research (e.g. Linux
         | monoculture).
         | 
         | I'm guessing that hardware and software industries just don't
         | have well-aligned interests, which unfortunately leaks into OS
         | R&D.
         | 
         | [1] https://youtu.be/36myc8wQhLo
        
           | est31 wrote:
           | I think making it harder to build an OS by increasing its
           | scope is not going to help people to build Linux
           | alternatives.
           | 
           | As for the components, at least their interfaces are
           | standardized. You can remove memory sticks by manufacturer A
           | and replace them with memory sticks from manufacturer B
           | without problem. Same goes for SATA SSDs or mice or
           | keyboards.
           | 
           | Note that I'm all in favour of creating OSS firmware for
           | devices, that's amazing. But one should not destroy the
           | fundamental boundary between the OS and the firmware that
           | runs the hardware.
        
             | dist1ll wrote:
             | Building an OS _is_ hard. There 's no way around its
             | complexity. But closing your eyes and pretending everything
             | is a file is a security disaster waiting to happen
             | (actually, happening every day).
             | 
             | And furthermore, OS research is not only about building
             | Linux alternatives. There are a lot of operating systems
             | that have a much narrower focus than full-blown multi-
             | tenant GPOS. So building holistic systems with a narrower
             | focus is a much more achievable goal.
             | 
             | > As for the components, at least their interfaces are
             | standardized
             | 
             | That's not true once you step into SoC land. Components are
             | running walled-garden firmware and binary blobs that are
             | undocumented. There's just no incentive to provide a
             | developer platform if no one gives a shit about holistic
             | OSes in the first place.
        
               | simonh wrote:
               | > There are a lot of operating systems that have a much
               | narrower focus than full-blown multi-tenant GPOS.
               | 
               | I hear some of them are used to manage embedded
               | components in GPOS systems. Oh, wait...!
        
               | dist1ll wrote:
               | Narrow focus =/= only control one hardware component
        
               | MisterTea wrote:
               | > But closing your eyes and pretending everything is a
               | file is a security disaster waiting to happen (actually,
               | happening every day).
               | 
               | What is this in response to? GP never mentioned file
               | interfaces.
        
               | Godel_unicode wrote:
               | Sure they did, they talked about the abstractions present
               | in Linux.
        
               | MisterTea wrote:
               | I'd like to know why they believe this.
        
               | GekkePrutser wrote:
               | > But closing your eyes and pretending everything is a
               | file is a security disaster waiting to happen (actually,
               | happening every day).
               | 
               | How so? I can see the limited access control in Linux is
               | an issue, and for this reason augmented security MAC
               | (Mandatory Access Control) controls exist like SELinux
               | and AppArmor.
               | 
               | But I don't see how the nature of everything being a file
               | is a vulnerability in itself.
               | 
               | I'd be happy to learn how though.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | dist1ll wrote:
               | It was a lame attempt at humor, a roundabout way of
               | referring to the simplifying assumptions that *nix
               | systems generally make of the underlying machine.
        
               | fanf2 wrote:
               | If you want to follow the principles of capability
               | security, then a key part of the strategy is to eliminate
               | "ambient authority", that is, any kind of globally
               | accessible way of obtaining a capability.
               | 
               | In traditional unix-like systems, file descriptors are
               | very close to capabilities. But the global filesystem
               | namespace is a source of ambient authority.
               | 
               | There are a couple of ways to fix this issue: fine-
               | grained per-process namespaces like Plan 9, so that the
               | filesystem's authority can be attenuated as necessary, so
               | it becomes more like a capability. Or eliminate absolute
               | pathnames from the API, so you have to use functions like
               | openat() to get an fd relative to an existing fd.
        
           | lbotos wrote:
           | Also one by Bryan Cantrill recently around the stack of black
           | boxes:
           | 
           | https://www.osfc.io/2022/talks/i-have-come-to-bury-the-
           | bios-...
        
         | stock_toaster wrote:
         | It's interesting that microkernels didn't "win" at the OS
         | layer, but they kind of seem to have "won" one layer down.
        
           | rswail wrote:
           | I think IBM's IO channels would like a word... it's been like
           | this for most of computing.
        
         | GekkePrutser wrote:
         | The real-time nature is not what makes it closed though. It's
         | simply that it's been designed to be closed.
         | 
         | For example, Intel's ME could be a really useful feature if we
         | could do what we want with it. Instead they lock it down so
         | it's just built-in spyware.
        
           | Gigachad wrote:
           | Isn't the primary purpose of the ME to run DRM and back door
           | the system? How would it be useful at all open source? People
           | would just turn it off entirely.
        
             | GekkePrutser wrote:
             | I could imagine a super low power coprocessor that's always
             | on would be a real useful tool. It could check my email and
             | other low power tasks.
             | 
             | And remote management isn't bad if it's entirely under my
             | control. It's the closed nature that makes me distrust it.
        
               | Gigachad wrote:
               | This has already been solved. Modern devices come with
               | low power general purpose cores and OSs can wake up
               | briefly to check for new messages. I just can't see why
               | you would ever want to remote manage your own laptop
               | where some software installed on the OS isn't sufficient.
        
               | wmf wrote:
               | _I just can't see why you would ever want to remote
               | manage your own laptop where some software installed on
               | the OS isn't sufficient._
               | 
               | It's to remotely recover when Windows corrupts itself.
               | (Which is far less common than it used to be.)
        
               | borissk wrote:
               | Intel recent CPUs come with efficiency cores and support
               | S0 standby, aka "Modern Standby", which can periodically
               | wake up and do stuff like check for new emails.
        
               | GekkePrutser wrote:
               | They do but it's not nearly as low-power nor as
               | constantly available as Intel ME is.
        
               | Avamander wrote:
               | There have been earlier attempts at achieving this
               | functionality by Intel, can't recall what they called it
               | right now, but it has existed for a while.
        
         | liuliu wrote:
         | I don't know. This sounds very computer-sciency-ish. We build
         | smaller tools to help build big things. Now the big things are
         | so good and versatile we can replace our smaller tools with the
         | big things too. With the more powerful tools, we can build even
         | bigger things. It is just compiler bootstrapping happening in
         | hardware world.
        
           | TimTheTinker wrote:
           | The problem is that there's so much unexplored territory in
           | operating system design. "Everything is a file" and the other
           | *nix assumptions are too often just assumed to be normal. So
           | much more is possible.
        
             | saagarjha wrote:
             | You do realize that RTKit is not a Unix-like OS, right?
        
             | dlinz wrote:
             | Curious student here, would you mind elaborating a bit on
             | this unexplored territory?
        
               | random314 wrote:
               | Smalltalk vms, forth, Oberon, lisp machines, amoeba etc
        
               | mrguyorama wrote:
               | This is a bit like asking "Can you elaborate on particle
               | physics" in 1900. The point is that _we don 't know_
               | because there's been so little experimentation in the
               | space. Not a lot of funding for "build an OS that uses
               | completely different idioms and concepts to what we know,
               | possibly without even a goal other than trying something
               | out".
        
               | TimTheTinker wrote:
               | Here's a HN comment from earlier this week that
               | elaborates on some earlier operating systems that
               | explored some really novel ideas:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33768592
               | 
               | To summarize:
               | 
               | > ITS (of PDP-10 hacker fame) - processes could debug and
               | introspect their child processes. The debugger was always
               | available, basically. The operating system provided
               | support for breakpoints, single-stepping, examining
               | process memory, etc.
               | 
               | > KeyKOS (developed by Tymshare for their commercial
               | computing services in the 1970s) - A capability operating
               | system. If everything in UNIX was a file, then everything
               | in KeyKOS was a memory page, and capabilities (keys) to
               | access those pages.
               | 
               | In every operating system, the basic unit of abstraction
               | will be a _process_ -- which necessitates a scheduler,
               | some form of memory protection, some way for the process
               | to interact with the kernel, and the notions of  "kernel
               | space" and "user space". There is a lot of room for
               | innovation there (see ITS), but I suspect most of the
               | room for innovation is in how an OS abstracts/refers to
               | various parts of the system.
        
             | lazide wrote:
             | Possible, but apparently rarely worth the extra effort or
             | complexity to think about.
             | 
             | The Unix 'everything is a file' has done well because it
             | works pretty well.
             | 
             | It also isn't generally a security issue, because it allows
             | application of the natural and well developed things we use
             | for files (ACLs, permissions, etc), without having to come
             | up with some new bespoke idea, with all it's associated
             | gaps, unimplemented features, etc.
             | 
             | Hell, most people don't even use posix ACLs, because they
             | don't need it.
        
         | the__alchemist wrote:
         | Same. It's not about the principle, but that generally these
         | OSes increase latency etc. There's so much you can do with
         | interrupts, DMA, and targetted code when performance is a
         | priority.
        
           | saagarjha wrote:
           | What makes you think performance was not a priority here?
        
       | hias wrote:
        
       | kajaktum wrote:
       | Half the comments here are talking about the vtuber herself. Who
       | cares. It's been talked before. Just imagine if half the thread
       | is discussing what gender she is. What I am interested in is the
       | claims here https://asahilinux.org/2022/11/tales-of-
       | the-m1-gpu/#rust-is-.... (what is it called if it comes with a
       | proof?).
       | 
       | The resident C/C++ experts here would have you believe that the
       | same is possible in C/C++. Is that true?
        
         | aulin wrote:
         | I must admit that for me this was a pleasant change of format
         | from the youtube videos.
        
         | SXX wrote:
         | I'm not exactly C or Rust expert so better to check @dagmx
         | comment for that, but I know some C++ and worked with
         | networking enough to know some pitfalls.
         | 
         | Talking of C++ it can be really solid to work with your own
         | data structures where you control code on both ends. Using
         | templates with something like boost::serialization or protobuf
         | for the first time is like magic. E.g you can serialize whole
         | state of your super complex app and restore it on other node
         | easily.
         | 
         | Unfortunately it's just not the case when you actually trying
         | to work with someone else API / ABI that you have no contol
         | over. Even worse when it's moving target and you need to
         | maintain several different adapters for different client /
         | server versions.
        
         | jahewson wrote:
         | If you choose a presentation format that overshadows the
         | content... it's going to overshadow the content.
        
           | puyoxyz wrote:
           | Except this is a blog post, not a Asahi Lina video ... did
           | you even click the link?
        
         | dagmx wrote:
         | In C? No, not unless you write your own scaffolding to do it.
         | 
         | In C++? Maybe, but you'd need to make sure you stay on top of
         | using thread safe structures and smart pointers.
         | 
         | What Rust does is flip this. The default is the safe path. So
         | instead of risking forgetting smart pointers and thread safe
         | containers, the compiler keeps you honest.
         | 
         | So you're not spending time chasing oddities because you missed
         | a variable initialisation, or you're hitting a race condition
         | or some kind of use after free.
         | 
         | While there's a lot of people who say that this slows you down
         | and a good programmer doesn't need it, my experience is even
         | the best programmers forget and (at least for me), I spend more
         | time trying to reason about C++ code than rust, because I can
         | trust my rust code more.
         | 
         | Put another way, Rust helps with reducing how much of the
         | codebase I need to consider at any given time to just the most
         | local scope. I work in many heavy graphics C and C++ libraries
         | , and have never had that level of comfort or mental locality.
        
           | rjzzleep wrote:
           | Of course it's possible in either. By the way, Mac drivers
           | are in fact written in a subset of C++. At least they used to
           | be, maybe that has changed.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | They are written in a strange subset of C++ with its own
             | inheritance system and currency classes.
             | 
             | In NeXTStep they were written in ObjC, and probably
             | should've stayed that way.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Just like UNIX kernel code is a strange subset of C.
               | 
               | I always find strange how "kernel C" is C, even though
               | ISO C would bork in kernel space, but doing a similar C++
               | subset is pointed out as not being C++.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | I'd also call kernel C strange. Mostly justified, but
               | there's no particular reason the memory allocation call
               | with the same behavior as malloc() in IOKit isn't named
               | malloc().
        
               | Razengan wrote:
               | > _They are written in a strange subset of C++ with its
               | own inheritance system and currency classes._
               | 
               | Can someone explain? Is there something other than
               | DriverKit, which seems to be C++?
               | 
               | https://developer.apple.com/documentation/driverkit
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | You have to go back to IO Kit, Driver Kit is the new one
               | in userspace.
               | 
               | https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iokit
               | 
               | Which is how the Objective-C framework for NeXTSTEP
               | drivers used to be called,
               | 
               | http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/NeXTStep/3.3/
               | nd/...
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | I suspect they're either conflating things with
               | ObjectiveC or FireBloom
               | (https://saaramar.github.io/iBoot_firebloom/)
               | 
               | Both would sort of fit those descriptions I guess if one
               | were to squint.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | https://developer.apple.com/documentation/kernel/osmetacl
               | ass...
               | 
               | https://developer.apple.com/documentation/kernel/osarray
               | 
               | That kind of thing.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Oh interesting. Thanks for the link
        
           | kajaktum wrote:
           | I am curios to know if the trait system helps a lot with
           | mapping the underlying kernel features/quirks? Which language
           | is better at creating abstractions that maps closer to how
           | the kernel works?
        
             | dagmx wrote:
             | Hmm , I'm no kernel writer but I don't think trait's
             | necessarily offer anything in rust over C++ where I'd use
             | polymorphism with abstract interfaces.
             | 
             | When I've written lower level components the things that
             | have really been godsends outside the safety features are
             | things like enums (much more powerful than C/C++
             | unions/enums and much more ergonomic than variants).
             | 
             | And even though I said traits don't offer too much more
             | than C++, one thing I think they do really offer is when
             | combined with generics. Rust generics let you define trait
             | requirements better (though not as extremely flexible) as
             | C++ concepts/constraints.
        
           | pjmlp wrote:
           | It would also have been possible in Ada, but of course it
           | isn't cool.
        
             | dagmx wrote:
             | The history of Ada kept it from getting widespread
             | attention. Sometimes it's just about the right time and
             | place.
             | 
             | Plus there's something to be said for cargo being a killer
             | feature for rust. Easy build configuration , easy package
             | management and access to a large ecosystem of libraries.
             | 
             | Between that and the book..:As steep a learning curve as
             | the language itself has, the actual on-boarding process is
             | way more accessible than many other compiled languages.
        
               | pjmlp wrote:
               | Sure, but let's not pretend it is the very first time
               | anything better than C and C++ came to be, and Ada is
               | only a possible example.
               | 
               | Rust sucess story is briging Cyclone type system into
               | mainstream, and in such a way that other languages (even
               | those with automatic management runtimes) started looking
               | at affine and linear type systems for low level
               | performance optimizations.
               | 
               | However for explicit type conversions, bounds checking in
               | strings and arrays, modules, co-routines, assignment
               | before use,... there were plenty of alternatives, which
               | for one reason or the other didn't took off, most not
               | really technical related.
        
           | tomjakubowski wrote:
           | I agree that Rust is the better language because it gives you
           | the safe tools by default.
           | 
           | Smart pointers are no panacea for memory safety in C++
           | though: even if you use them fastidiously, avoiding raw
           | pointer access, iterator invalidation or OOB access will come
           | for you. The minute you allocate and have to resize, you're
           | exposed.
        
             | dagmx wrote:
             | Yeah that's definitely true. Anytime I use any C++ api that
             | I did not write or analyze at my best is a shotgun waiting
             | to go off. Hell, even then, that assumes I know enough to
             | catch everything. I've recently been doing security
             | analysis of some very popular repos and C++ is terrifying
             | at times.
             | 
             | Rust isn't perfect but it gives me so much more trust in
             | everything I do.
        
           | embedded3 wrote:
           | > What Rust does is flip this. The default is the safe path.
           | So instead of risking forgetting smart pointers and thread
           | safe containers, the compiler keeps you honest.
           | 
           | For what it's worth, the same is true of Swift. But since
           | much of the original Rust team was also involved with Swift
           | language development, I guess it's not too much of a
           | surprise. The "unsafe" api requires some deliberate effort to
           | use, no accidents are possible there. It's all very verbose
           | through a very narrow window of opportunity if you do
           | anything unsafe.
        
             | dagmx wrote:
             | I have such a love hate relationship with Swift. It
             | genuinely has some great ergonomics and I see it as a
             | sister language to rust.
             | 
             | I just wish it was more cross platform (I know it
             | technically works on Linux and windows...but it's not a
             | great experience) and that it didn't have so much churn
             | (though they've stopped futzing with the core components as
             | much with Swift 4+).
             | 
             | I also wish it was faster. I did an Advent of Code against
             | some friends. I picked Rust, they picked Swift. The rust
             | code was running circles around their Swift ones even when
             | we tried to keep implementations the same.
             | 
             | Anyway, that's a rant, but I think to your point, I feel
             | like Swift could have been as big as Rust..or bigger given
             | the easier use, with many of the same guarantees. I just
             | wish the early years were more measured.
        
               | embedded3 wrote:
               | >The rust code was running circles around their Swift
               | ones even when we tried to keep implementations the same.
               | 
               | I've done Advent of Code a few years -- even Javascript
               | implementations, if using a good (optimal) algorithm, are
               | highly performant, so I'm suspicious of the claim. In
               | most AoC problems, if your code is observably different
               | between languages, it's the fault of the algorithm,
               | regardless of language. But perhaps you are referring to
               | well-profiled differences, even if there are no
               | observable differences.
               | 
               | That said, in projects other than AoC I've compared Swift
               | to C++ and it's hard to deny that a low-level language is
               | faster than Swift, but Swift itself is certainly fast
               | compared to most dynamically typed or interpreted
               | languages like Python, JS, Ruby, etc. which are vastly
               | slower than anything in Swift.
        
               | dagmx wrote:
               | Swift is fast but it's both easy to accidentally write
               | slow code and there is a not-insignificant amount of
               | overhead to the reference counting and constant dynamic
               | table lookups.
               | 
               | When I say Rust ran circles around it, I mean the
               | difference was not noticeable unless timing, and was the
               | difference of 200ms vs 400ms or a 3 seconds vs 5 seconds
               | , so nothing to write home about necessarily.
        
               | irae wrote:
               | That is not the first time I want to understand a bit
               | better the performance difference today between the
               | approaches of Rust, without a garbage collector, ARC on
               | Swift with the reference counting and other garbage
               | collected languages, such as Javascript.
               | 
               | I know Javascript have an unfair advantage here, since
               | the competition between V8 and the other javascript cores
               | is huge over the years and garbage collection on JS is
               | not often a problem. At least I see more people
               | struggling with the JVM GC with its spikes in resource
               | usage.
               | 
               | I've also heard that the erlang VM (be it written in
               | elixir or erlang itself) implements GC on a different
               | level, not to the global process, but on a more granular
               | way.
               | 
               | Is there a good resource that compare the current state
               | of performance between those languages or approaches?
        
           | ribit wrote:
           | Additional advantage of Rust is the extensive macro system.
           | The ability to generate a bunch of versioned structures out
           | of a common description, all with their own boilerplate and
           | validation code, is invaluable for this kind of work. Some of
           | it can be done in C++ with templates as well, but the
           | ergonomy is on a different level.
        
           | kevincox wrote:
           | > even the best programmers forget
           | 
           | For me it isn't even that it catches these problems when I
           | forget. It is that I can stop worrying about these problems
           | when writing the vast majority of code. I just take
           | references and use variables to get the business logic
           | implemented without the need to worry about lifetimes the
           | entire time. Then once the business logic is done I switch to
           | dealing with compiler errors and fixing these problems that I
           | was ignoring the first time around.
           | 
           | When writing C and C++ I feel like I need to spend half of my
           | brainpower tracking lifetimes for every line of code I touch.
           | If I touch a single line of code in a function I need to read
           | and understand the relevant lifetimes in that function before
           | changing a single line. Even if I don't make any mistakes
           | doing this consumes a lot of time and mental energy. With
           | Rust I can generally just change the relevant line and the
           | compiler will let me know what other parts of the function
           | need to be updated. It is a huge mental relief and time
           | saver.
        
         | saagarjha wrote:
         | Possible? Definitely. Easier? Probably not. At least for the
         | most part, there are a couple things which C(++) can sometimes
         | be more ergonomic for and those can be isolated out and used
         | independently.
        
         | mort96 wrote:
         | I have a lot of experience in C, a lot of experience in C++,
         | and some experience with Rust (I have some projects which use
         | it). My opinion is that it's true, and the other comments are
         | good explanations of why. But I want to point out, in addition
         | to those: There's a reason why Rust was adopted into Linux,
         | while C++ wasn't. Getting C++ to work in the kernel would
         | almost certainly have been way less work than getting Rust to
         | work. But only Rust can give you the strong guarantees which
         | makes you avoid lifetime-, memory- and concurrency-related
         | mistakes.
        
           | pclmulqdq wrote:
           | You can't underestimate the amount of personal hatred that
           | Linus and several other linux maintainers have for C++. I
           | can't really say I blame them - C++ before C++11 was a bit of
           | a nightmare in terms of performance and safety.
        
       | dimator wrote:
       | watching a virtual persona stream their development of their M1
       | GPU drivers is one of the most cyberpunk things I've ever seen!
       | it's easy to forget that this world is looking closer and closer
       | to those dreamed up by Gibson, Stephenson, etc. what a time to be
       | alive.
        
         | anxiously wrote:
         | Can someone explain this vtoon trend to me? It doesn't seem to
         | be driven by anonymity because their real name is easily
         | findable, so I assume it's something else? It seems very
         | common, especially in certain communities.
        
           | realjhol wrote:
        
             | IntelMiner wrote:
             | Very well articulated comment from someone with highlights
             | such as
             | 
             | "you write for the Gaurdian and relentlessly spout feminist
             | propaganda"
             | 
             | "destruction that activist hooligans created in Portland"
             | 
             | "Neurodiverse isn't a real medical term"
             | 
             | Sounds like you've got a very particular axe to grind from
             | a very particularly narrow world view. I hope one day you
             | learn to enjoy your fellow human beings for who they are
        
           | anaisbetts wrote:
           | If you were the Genre of person who got rude / explicit /
           | insulting comments whenever you showed your actual face on
           | camera, the vtoon trend would be quite easy to understand
        
             | mlindner wrote:
             | Hector Martin (assuming they're the same person) looks
             | perfectly fine on camera. They're an average looking person
             | but I fail to find anything anyone would criticize about
             | his looks.
        
               | Alekhine wrote:
               | Try being a woman.
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | My first response was a bit curt so I've removed it.
               | (Edit: I can't seem to remove it.) Yes I'm aware a lot of
               | women get harassment when they show their face streaming.
               | It's one of the reasons it's so popular in Japan for
               | women to be vtubers rather than show their face while
               | streaming while the popularity for men doing it is
               | significantly less (though there's still plenty who do it
               | without changing their voice).
               | 
               | However Hector Martin is not a woman living in Japan and
               | they look perfectly fine/average.
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | But Hector Martin isn't a woman...
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | The above comment is deleted.
        
           | gburdell3 wrote:
           | Some people just prefer their public persona to be in the
           | form of an avatar instead of their real face. They want to
           | have something there to represent themselves instead of just
           | streaming a screen and nothing else, but they would rather
           | that representation be an avatar or character rather than
           | their physical selves.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | Also Japanese viewers like this better, and you don't have
             | to look good, and if you're streaming from inside a
             | soundproof box in summer without AC then you don't even
             | have to wear clothes.
        
             | maegul wrote:
             | Personally, I like the idea. IMO, we lost something when it
             | became normal/expected to link our real-life self to our
             | internet selves. We arguable gained some unpleasant things
             | too (thinking of Facebook here).
             | 
             | A persistent avatar/alias as an internet persona seems to
             | match the real-life to internet-life relationship better.
             | IE, for many, they're different and rather separable
             | aspects of life.
        
               | javajosh wrote:
               | There was a Black Mirror episode that makes plain the
               | downside of a virtual representation: it can be taken
               | from you and manipulated by someone else. The persona
               | becomes a sale-able commodity, and can be separated from
               | your control.
        
               | teddyh wrote:
               | With deep fakes, this is already also true of your _non_
               | -virtual representation.
        
               | spartanatreyu wrote:
               | I remember hearing that this exact thing happened a few
               | years ago in either Japan or South Korea.
               | 
               | There was a talent agency that had three-four performers
               | who took shifts streaming games through a shared vtuber
               | persona who had build up some popularity. At some point
               | the agency fired the performers and replaced them with a
               | new performer who didn't have the same performance.
               | 
               | The fans weren't told but it was immediately apparent, so
               | they started demanding the changes to be reverted. The
               | fans were ignored and both the vtuber's popularity and
               | the agency fell back into obscurity.
               | 
               | I guess the lesson here is that personas are personal.
        
               | arczyx wrote:
               | Maybe this is what you're talking about? https://virtualy
               | outuber.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Club_Project#20...
        
               | setr wrote:
               | Perhaps relevant -- loss of control can be much more
               | impacting depending on how much weight you give to that
               | online persona:
               | http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-
               | cyberspace/
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | LeonM wrote:
           | In case of Marcan/Lina I got the impression that he created
           | Lina just for fun. It started as an April fools joke (Lina
           | 'took over' Marcan's live stream), but Marcan seems to enjoy
           | it a lot, even going so far as contributing to the Inochi2D
           | software (used to render Lina) to improve all sorts of facial
           | features.
           | 
           | I don't have the impression that in Marcan's case it was ever
           | about anonymity, it is more about a creative expression.
           | 
           | Up until Lina's introduction on April 1st, I had never seen a
           | vTuber stream, and I must say it is quite fun to watch.
           | Though personally I wish Lina's voice is tweaked a bit,
           | because it can be hard to understand what she is saying.
        
             | novok wrote:
             | Oh I didn't realize that is what was happening. This makes
             | all the HN commentary around it even funnier.
        
             | leidenfrost wrote:
             | What I like about Lina and Alyssa is the increase of
             | visibility of LGBT+ people in the more "hardware" part of
             | software development.
             | 
             | As your get more low level, less visual and more niche,
             | there's less and less diversity of software developers. And
             | everyone should feel welcomed into hacking the kernel.
        
               | heurisko wrote:
               | Everyone being welcomed into contributing to the kernel
               | can result in a natural lack of diversity, as it selects
               | for people interested in technical programming.
               | 
               | It is the ham-fisted attempts to increase diversity for
               | its own sake have ended up being discriminatory. [1]
               | 
               | If there are barriers stopping people contributing, these
               | should be removed. I expect these to be economic
               | barriers, rather than those based on particular
               | characteristics.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/03/llvm_contribut
               | or_resi...
        
               | leidenfrost wrote:
               | Why is it that whenever gender and identity is mentioned
               | in a technical community suddenly people start talking
               | about "ham-fisted" and forced inclusions?
               | 
               | There's nothing forced about people getting into
               | programming and becoming relevant for it, that just by
               | chance it turns out they are not cis+heterosexual.
               | 
               | Nobody in the Asahi crew was "a ham fisted attempt to
               | increase diversity".
               | 
               | The only forced thing here is the "forced inclusion"
               | topic. That, for whatever kind of reason, people
               | stubbornly keep trying to bring to the front.
        
               | epolanski wrote:
               | I think the point is about many engineering orgs adding
               | "minorities" for the sake of PR rather because these
               | "minorities" are great resources.
               | 
               | It is obvious that there's terrific engineers and
               | professionals regardless of sexual orientation and we
               | have countless proofs behind it, last but not least the
               | linked article and many of the other asahi contributors.
               | 
               | But when the likes or Google or Facebook are obviously
               | hiring because you are a minority it's when the solution
               | to gender or sexual discrimination is simply...reversed.
        
               | catiopatio wrote:
               | > Why is it that whenever gender and identity is
               | mentioned in a technical community suddenly people start
               | talking about "ham-fisted" and forced inclusions?
               | 
               | You answered your own question; it's a technical
               | community. Centering political activism is
               | counterproductive to the fundamental telos of being a
               | technical community.
               | 
               | Existing members, unsurprisingly, push back against
               | colonization of their community by those more interested
               | in gender ideology or identity politics than technology.
        
               | heurisko wrote:
               | My point was criticising your underlying assumption that
               | the lack of diversity is due to an unwelcoming
               | environment, presumably as a result of intolerance to
               | certain characteristics.
        
             | glandium wrote:
             | Isn't it the opposite, though?
             | https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1582930401118806016
        
               | LeonM wrote:
               | I might be wrong here, but I have always been under the
               | impression that they are the same person. I didn't even
               | realise that is was supposed to be a secret.
               | 
               | Simple things like Lina en Marcan using the same hostname
               | for the development machine (Raider), using the same IDE
               | (Kate), using the same bash aliases (the one I like most
               | if 'stfu' that appears to suppress terminal output), and
               | a huge overlap of knowledge. Then there is also the same
               | fast-paced speaking style that Marcan has.
               | 
               | I did notice Lina always (rather jokingly) denying being
               | Marcan, especially during the April 1 debut, but I always
               | assumed that that was just part of the joke.
               | 
               | Again, I might be wrong here, maybe they are not the same
               | person after all, but as far as I can tell it's just
               | Hector Martin having fun.
               | 
               | > Isn't it the opposite, though?
               | 
               | You mean Lina being first, and Marcan being an alter-ego?
               | Marcan (Hector Martin) is a real person, he has done
               | quite a few interviews on camera.
               | https://youtu.be/dF2YQ92WKpM?t=496
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | teddyh wrote:
           | It's like getting a specific haircut, choosing what model of
           | glasses to get, or getting a nose job, or a tattoo. Or even
           | just picking what style of clothes you want to represent
           | yourself in. I.e. it's simply choosing your appearance, using
           | more modern technology.
        
             | leoqa wrote:
             | That's generous. I find it weird and creepy, interestingly
             | the Hololive kids are exclusively young women with
             | childlike affects.
             | 
             | It's not fooling anyone to pretend like this is normal self
             | expression.
        
               | atahanacar wrote:
               | You sound like that religious old guy I see every now and
               | then, who always annoys young people passing by for
               | having tattoos and piercings.
        
               | teddyh wrote:
               | When they were new, most people thought of nose jobs (and
               | other cosmetic surgery) as being weird and creepy. Some
               | people still do. What is "normal" is a function of
               | commonality, and at least VTooning does not cost a
               | fortune and risks neither complications nor needing
               | further surgery for years to come.
        
               | throwaway675309 wrote:
               | Number one: you're using an overloaded term, but I
               | suppose that your specific social conditioning has given
               | you a specific concept of the definition of normal self
               | expression that this clearly falls out of those
               | boundaries.
               | 
               | Number two: this person's goal CLEARLY isn't to fool
               | anyone, it's not a deep fake video, and it's frankly none
               | of your business or concern that they enjoy using an
               | animated avatar.
        
               | KerrAvon wrote:
               | What is "normal self expression"? And what do you think
               | they're trying to fool you about exactly?
               | 
               | edit: clarify
        
         | Mistletoe wrote:
         | I like your optimism, but it seems more like a Phillip K. Dick
         | novel to me.
         | 
         | >In 2021, society is driven by a virtual Internet, which has
         | created a degenerate effect called "nerve attenuation syndrome"
         | or NAS. Megacorporations control much of the world,
         | intensifying the class hostility already created by NAS.
         | 
         | from Johnny Mnemonic
         | 
         | What can we do to make it more utopian?
        
           | Razengan wrote:
           | > _What can we do to make it more utopian?_
           | 
           | Move to Mars and start over.
        
             | Mistletoe wrote:
             | Not falling for it! I've seen Total Recall! Based on an
             | actual Phillip K. Dick story.
             | 
             | I have no hope that would work or is what Elon wants. I
             | know he wants to set up the world's most exclusive gated
             | community there.
        
           | kevingadd wrote:
           | It's an interesting set of tradeoffs - vtubing has made it
           | possible for people to be on-screen personalities who
           | normally would not able to as easily because it can be very
           | hard to overcome problems with your IRL appearance. That
           | stuff _really_ matters if you want to succeed on YouTube or
           | Twitch. In comparison if you want to be a vtuber, there are
           | relatively affordable ways to grab a stock model and
           | customize it. You can also just commission a custom one from
           | an artist and rigger - though I think the cost of that is
           | sadly out of reach of an amateur it 's not as high as you
           | might assume.
           | 
           | If you stream without a face camera at all it generally hurts
           | your ability to grow an audience, and unfortunately our
           | society is still pretty focused on appearance so if you don't
           | look great you're going to potentially get a lot of toxicity
           | in your chat. A vtuber avatar acts as an equalizer in this
           | sense and also lets people express their personality and
           | aesthetics visually in a way that might not otherwise be easy
           | - they can pick eye and hair colors they think represent them
           | without having to use colored contacts or hair dyes, etc.
           | 
           | A few different people I know found that having a vtuber
           | avatar made it much easier for them to get into streaming
           | regularly and it did grow their audience, so I'm happy to see
           | the technology catch on and improve.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | > It's an interesting set of tradeoffs - vtubing has made
             | it possible for people to be on-screen personalities who
             | normally would not able to as easily because it can be very
             | hard to overcome problems with your IRL appearance.
             | 
             | That's not the reason most of the popular ones do it.
             | (Ironmouse, sure, but not anyone else.)
             | 
             | Most of the bigger ones are corporate characters, so
             | they're actually forced to hide themselves and it's more
             | like they're uncredited actors. Besides that, it gives you
             | privacy, avoids stalkers, means you don't have to do your
             | makeup or get dressed (up or at all), things like that.
             | Appearance still definitely matters though, but now it's
             | your voice carrying you and not your face.
        
           | mattnewton wrote:
           | Small nit but I was confused, I think Johnny Mnemonic is
           | Gibbson? And I had to look up NAS, I think that part of the
           | movie not the book. I think we have another couple decades
           | before androids and mood organs of Phillip K dick at least
           | but I could be wrong. But parts of Gibbsonian cyberpunk is
           | already here!
        
             | Smoosh wrote:
             | > already here
             | 
             | Just unevenly distributed.
        
             | Mistletoe wrote:
             | You are so right. Bizarre. I thought that was Phillip K.
             | Dick for all of my life I think. Even worse because Johnny
             | Mnemonic is one of my favorite movies! I've got the Black
             | Shakes worse than I thought.
        
               | dwringer wrote:
               | I was shocked to read this comment because I interpreted
               | your original comment as meaning a Philip K Dick novel
               | would be optimistic compared to the cyberpunk dystopia in
               | which we find ourselves now. lol
               | 
               | Anyway it's pretty fair to confuse the two I think, there
               | can't be any way Johnny Mnemonic wasn't influenced by
               | Blade Runner (I'm guessing it's true of both the movies
               | and of the books). Very similar themes and protagonists
               | at a certain level of abstraction.
        
               | ethbr0 wrote:
               | Johnny Mnemonic was dead tree published in 1981. (I have
               | the issue of OMNI)
               | 
               | Blade Runner, the movie, was released in 1982.
               | 
               | And PKD's DADoES was published in 1968.
               | 
               | Honestly, IMHO, Blade Runner in movie form shares more
               | DNA with Alien than proto-cyberpunk. They're both
               | character studies rather than world-building exercises,
               | albeit with massive credit to Ridley Scott and the design
               | team that their "background" world is more lifelike than
               | many world-centric films.
               | 
               | But Blade Runner fundamentally lacks the multi-level
               | cutthroat competitive aspect of cyberpunk. Oddly enough,
               | a quirk that frequently recurs in British scifi, in
               | contrast to the more free market American themes.
        
               | olddustytrail wrote:
               | Well, Blade Runner and Alien are set in the same
               | universe.
        
               | vl wrote:
               | I'm watching The Peripheral, which seems to be influenced
               | by Ready Player One. Which is ironical, since Gibson is a
               | granddaddy of Ready Player One.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | abudabi123 wrote:
           | >  What can we do to make it more utopian?
           | 
           | A polity with an outmost shell of no bs ic spooks in a ratio
           | of twenty to one cybersec defense to offense. There is the
           | problem of sciengineers conceiving in the labs photonic
           | computing but the committee member wage/salary slave cuts
           | cost corners (or not but bloats up on unnecessary complexity)
           | and we get the worsest join on the venn diagram in the
           | industry spec.
        
             | aftbit wrote:
             | I feel like this is insightful but also I do not understand
             | what you are saying. Can you perhaps elucidate?
        
           | masklinn wrote:
           | > I like your optimism, but it seems more like a Phillip K.
           | Dick novel to me.
           | 
           | Is it?
           | 
           | It's basically forums & avatars brought in the medium of
           | audio and video communication.
        
             | extrememacaroni wrote:
             | That's probably what everyone would say if they didn't read
             | books. But some read books so...
             | 
             | OMG CYBERPUNK DYSTOPIA PHILIP K DICK
        
           | babypuncher wrote:
           | Aesthetically it looks like the worlds imagined in a Phillip
           | K. Dick novel, but none of the actual dystopian aspects are
           | present in what GP described (rampant poverty/class
           | disparity, environmental destruction, etc.)
           | 
           | I don't think someone sharing their craft through a virtual
           | avatar is any more responsible for these things than the
           | flying cars from Blade Runner would be.
        
         | Aaargh20318 wrote:
         | > watching a virtual persona stream their development of their
         | M1 GPU drivers is one of the most cyberpunk things I've ever
         | seen!
         | 
         | What would really push it into cyberpunk territory is if it
         | turns out this is not an actual human but an AI-controlled
         | virtual person.
        
           | ngcc_hk wrote:
           | Is she not real? :-o
        
           | lazide wrote:
           | Which is using this to seed memetic triggers that will allow
           | it to take control invisibly later.
           | 
           | Damn, I hope someone gets this into a script soon.
        
         | segmondy wrote:
         | Which is what Zuck is trying to get us all into with the Meta,
         | but the world is not ready yet.
        
           | babypuncher wrote:
           | The difference is Zuck wants to control it. He wants to de-
           | democratize the movement so he can more easily profit from
           | it.
        
           | philistine wrote:
           | Don't forget to dissociate the concept of virtual worlds
           | which already exist and are quite popular (MMOs etc.), and
           | the idea of a virtual world owned and imagined by Zuckerberg
           | which has been a terrible failure so far.
        
             | cjsawyer wrote:
             | The opinions around facebook's metaverse are hilarious when
             | things like Second Life, WoW, EVE, VR Chat, and even Roblox
             | have been so massively popular yet unrecognized for what
             | they are.
        
               | segmondy wrote:
               | The difference between Facebooks Meta and other worlds is
               | the difference between getting a billion+ people into the
               | same virtual world. How big is Second Life? or Roblox?
        
               | Gigachad wrote:
               | Facebook is going to struggle to get a billion people on
               | to their website/app soon. I really don't see this many
               | people wanting to use a shitty VR chat app.
        
               | RhodesianHunter wrote:
               | I don't think you can call that a difference until
               | metaverse starts actually hitting those numbers, or even
               | surpassing the existing worlds.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | Near as I can tell, second life seems to have around
               | 40-50k typical users online.
               | 
               | Which is sizable, but not amazing.
        
               | steveklabnik wrote:
               | 50k active users online right now would put Second Life
               | at the 13th most active game on Steam.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | Which is when folks start getting into the 'huh. People
               | still play that?' part of the list, near as I can tell.
               | 
               | [https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed]
        
               | steveklabnik wrote:
               | Yeah the way folks talk about steamcharts is _wild_.
               | Honestly I think it's kinda bad for gaming, but I
               | understand why people do it.
        
               | steveklabnik wrote:
               | > How big is... Roblox?
               | 
               | 58.8 million DAUs in Q3 https://ir.roblox.com/news/news-
               | details/2022/Roblox-Reports-...
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _opinions around facebook's metaverse are hilarious
               | when things like Second Life, WoW, EVE, VR Chat, and even
               | Roblox have been so massively popular_
               | 
               | Well, yes. Who does something matters. I could totally
               | see Facebook's metaverse failing a la Stadia or Diem.
        
               | cjsawyer wrote:
               | I didn't make myself clear enough, I was talking about
               | people brushing off the core concept as intrinsically
               | unfeasible. Obviously their specific version is tonedef
               | and lacking features but the baseline concept is proven
               | valid by those other versions.
        
               | kmeisthax wrote:
               | No, I specifically oppose Facebook's metaverse ambitions
               | _because_ they are shittier mass-marketized versions of
               | those same things.
               | 
               | All of those other things you mentioned fit into specific
               | niches and have built communities around themselves over
               | time.
        
               | dd36 wrote:
               | Fortnite too.
        
               | steveklabnik wrote:
               | I kinda think to some degree those words _are_ the reason
               | those opinions are the way they are. The metaverse is
               | being sold as this new, groundbreaking, fantastic thing,
               | when they 've already existed for decades.
        
               | mrguyorama wrote:
               | Also, VRChat is infinitely better than the Metaverse,
               | does not require you to sell your soul to Facebook, does
               | not require a branded headset (OR ANY AT ALL, YOU CAN
               | PLAY IT 2D), runs well, HAS LEGS ON YOUR AVATAR FFS, and
               | massive community support in and out of game.
               | 
               | Also it didn't require billions in investment. Facebook
               | could have literally burned $900 million on hookers and
               | cocaine, and then thrown $100 million to buy VR chat, and
               | be better off than they are now.
        
               | numpad0 wrote:
               | I feel that Facebook's metaverse push is a desperate
               | attempt to reverse the evolution of our identities from
               | baseline, offline, unitary identity towards constructed
               | and abstract, online, contextual, anime girls form. I
               | don't know precisely why it's always specifically anime
               | && girls, but everything else seems to fall face first so
               | I guess it's survival of fittest.
        
               | cjsawyer wrote:
               | It's a side effect of where the early avatar creating
               | tools had their development effort focused. Now it's just
               | a weird cultural thing.
        
               | hansworst wrote:
               | I agree with everything except for the billions of
               | dollars part. It seems quite obvious (but maybe I'm
               | wrong?) that most of that investment went into the
               | hardware that Meta has been developing over the years,
               | and some of the "platform" capabilities that surround
               | that hardware (think their app store for example). Sure,
               | the virtual experiences are part of it. But I think it's
               | not where the majority of the money went.
               | 
               | They currently have the most popular VR hardware
               | platform. And it's the only piece of hardware that Meta
               | really has, everything else they make is software. If
               | Meta wants to keep growing, being the leading producer of
               | "the next big thing" in hardware would certainly help.
               | Zuckerburg is betting on VR/AR being that next big thing.
               | Only time will tell I guess. But I find it a little weird
               | when I see people commenting on Meta's investment as if
               | all they did was create a basic second life clone.
               | They're building some of the most innovative consumer
               | hardware at the moment. I'm not hugely into it because
               | Meta doesn't really seem like the company I'd like to
               | entrust with cameras pointing at my eyeballs, but you
               | can't deny that the hardware they've built so far is
               | quite impressive.
        
               | vlunkr wrote:
               | They've already existed, and had fun, engaging content.
               | Meta in that sense is putting the cart before the horse.
               | You can't convince us all to get into this world and then
               | figure out what we're supposed to be doing there later
               | on.
        
               | jotm wrote:
               | Everyone just pretends there wasn't a time when people
               | were spending years of their life in an MMO.
               | 
               | That was ruined by games trying to appeal to more
               | mainstream people (with less hardcore Features like
               | losing all your possessions upon death) and the
               | micromonetization strategies that everyone hates.
               | 
               | I wonder if VR will even have games like early Everquest,
               | WoW, EVE, etc but in VR.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | Vtubers are popular because they aren't in a virtual world
             | you have to go visit. You just open up YouTube/Twitch and
             | they stay in that little window without the possibility of
             | getting trapped in an MMO where you die in real life if you
             | die in the game.
             | 
             | Although some of them are designing "virtual worlds" as an
             | excuse to get around YouTube moderation and taking 30% of
             | superchats.
        
           | p1necone wrote:
           | No, Zucks Metaverse just sucks. "The world isn't ready for my
           | brilliant ideas" is the rallying cry of people with ideas but
           | no execution ability.
        
           | ActorNightly wrote:
           | Same thing was said about full touch screen iphones circa
           | 2007.
           | 
           | VR/AR just hasn't been done right as of now, but its getting
           | close. Demand is there. Imagine virtual schooling during time
           | like Covid, but instead of Zoom, kids actually see each other
           | in VR and can interact with each other.
        
             | HardlyCurious wrote:
             | And then their avatars could have cloth masks, you know,
             | just for show, like why TV anchors wore them.
        
             | GekkePrutser wrote:
             | Yeah it's pretty great, though I hope it won't be leveraged
             | to reduce physical presence in social settings. The real
             | world is still the place to be when possible, but it would
             | be great not having to fly across the world for face to
             | face meetings. Teams is just not good enough. VR might
             | eventually become so.
        
       | samgranieri wrote:
       | This is seriously impressive!! Hats off to everyone involved
        
       | punnerud wrote:
       | Not one comment here about the "GPU drivers in Python". I like
       | the idea of iteration speed, over pure speed.
       | 
       | And the coprocessor called "ASC" also have similarities with
       | Python, where the GPU is doing the heavy lifting, but the ASC
       | (like Python) interact using shared memory. The same Python is
       | doing with a lot of its libraries (written in C/C++)
        
         | saagarjha wrote:
         | > And the coprocessor called "ASC" also have similarities with
         | Python
         | 
         | It's a processor, not a programming language :) The team has
         | essentially strapped the API into something that you can poke
         | with Python instead of with a native driver.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | rafale wrote:
       | Loved reading this. About the triangle/cube screenshot, they were
       | taken on Linux on a physical Mac OS computer? How were you able
       | to deploy your driver, does the M1 GPU have a basic text/console
       | mode allowing you to start and work with Linux?
       | 
       | Awesome job.
        
         | puyoxyz wrote:
         | Displaying to the screen and stuff was already working, you can
         | already use Asahi Linux and have a GUI and everything, it's
         | just that it's all rendered by the CPU right now
        
       | calrizien wrote:
       | Great work! Seems like Apple could make this a whole lot easier
       | by giving even the slightest support...
        
         | sneak wrote:
         | It is irksome to me given how much Linux is used inside Apple
         | (board bringup, debugging, etc). You benefit from these gifts,
         | Apple, give back a teensy bit in return. Everybody wins.
        
       | adultSwim wrote:
       | Keep it up! I'm sticking with Thinkpads until Linux support
        
         | GekkePrutser wrote:
         | Also they have matte screens and real keyboards.
         | 
         | The 2015MBP one was the last one that was passable for me, what
         | came after is horrible. Even the new MBP that has real ports
         | again is still not as good as the 2015 in terms of keyboard.
        
           | sneak wrote:
           | All currently shipping Macbook Airs and Pros have a keyboard
           | that is, as far as I can tell, identical to the great one
           | from 2015 that we love. They switched them all back after the
           | butterfly keyboard fiasco, but hardware pipelines are 2-4
           | years deep and it took a while.
        
           | gsora wrote:
           | Thinkpad keyboards are great (I own a couple T400's and used
           | to daily drive a X61s), but the latest MacBook Pros have
           | real, actually good keyboards afaik too.
        
             | GekkePrutser wrote:
             | I've tried them but they're nowhere near Lenovo quality
             | sadly. Unfortunately Lenovo is on a downward trend with
             | ever less travel with each generation so I guess they'll be
             | on par in a few years :(
        
               | girvo wrote:
               | That is indeed the trend, for basically all
               | manufacturers. For my part, it's not too much of a worry
               | -- I barely use my laptops keyboard directly, thats what
               | my custom mechanical keeb is for, after all. The laptop
               | being thin, light, and powerful is important to me
               | (otherwise I'll just use a desktop). I despise my work
               | laptop (a Metabox/rebranded Clevo 15" thing), as it is
               | huge, thick, _and_ has a terrible keyboard when I 'm
               | forced to use it.
               | 
               | These low-travel ones may not be perfect, but they're
               | decent, and that's enough for me personally for the times
               | I do need to use it.
        
               | sbuk wrote:
               | I can't agree. I have a recent X series, and at this
               | point, it's approaching butterfly-keyboard levels of
               | unreliability. I've always found the travel to be on the
               | spongy side, but this iteration is terrible. Also, my
               | trackpad literally has to warm up before it's usable.
               | I've tried with the track point, but it just doesn't work
               | for me.
        
       | grappler wrote:
       | I'm loving seeing the shift from embedding and linking to tweets
       | and twitter accounts to embedding and linking to fediverse posts
       | and profiles.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kaiby wrote:
       | > It feels like Rust's design guides you towards good
       | abstractions and software designs.
       | 
       | > The compiler is very picky, but once code compiles it gives you
       | the confidence that it will work reliably.
       | 
       | > Sometimes I had trouble making the compiler happy with the
       | design I was trying to use, and then I realized the design had
       | fundamental issues!
       | 
       | I experience a similar sentiment all the time when writing Rust
       | code (which for now is admittedly just toy projects). So far it's
       | felt like the compiler gives you just enough freedom to write
       | programs in a "correct" way.
       | 
       | I don't really do unsafe/lower-level coding, so I can't speak to
       | much there however.
        
       | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
       | Apple should upstream their drivers.
       | 
       | Who is Asahi Lina? Is that an actual person?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | worldsavior wrote:
         | Asahi Lina is a maintainer in Asahi Linux project. She is now
         | much known because of the achivement she earned, programming
         | the Asahi Linux GPU driver for MacOS.
        
           | Arelius wrote:
           | I assume you mean Asahi Linux GPU driver for Mac M1? or does
           | this run ontop of MacOS somehow?
        
             | worldsavior wrote:
             | Yes I meant for the M1.
        
           | madeofpalk wrote:
           | Is Asahi Lina a pseudonym? Is Asahi _Linux_ named after her?
           | Or is it all one big coincidence?
        
             | nicoburns wrote:
             | > Is Asahi Lina a pseudonym?
             | 
             | This one.
        
             | masklinn wrote:
             | > Is Asahi Lina a pseudonym?
             | 
             | Yes
             | 
             | > Is Asahi Linux named after her?
             | 
             | Other way around, it's a pseudonym created to work on the
             | project, IIRC Lina got involved early-mid 2022 while Hector
             | Martin started the project in late 2020 / early 2021.
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | Why does she have so much clout when the latter has been
               | working on this for much longer?
               | 
               | I feel like there's some fanboyism happening here. This
               | person basically just joined the project.
        
               | mort96 wrote:
               | What do you mean by "so much clout"..? She's one of the
               | people who decided to work on the Asahi Linux project,
               | and she's writing and streaming about the work she's
               | doing and participating in mailing lists and IRC
               | communities. Is that an unexpected amount of "clout"?
        
               | masklinn wrote:
               | They "just joined the project" and reverse engineered and
               | developed the kernel drivers from relatively little prior
               | work, in just a few months.
               | 
               | From afar they also seem to have a pretty ebullient and
               | infectious personality and to stream a lot (we're talking
               | 10h streams every few days:
               | https://www.youtube.com/@AsahiLina/streams) which is
               | impressive work and dedication.
        
               | Rufbdbskrufb473 wrote:
        
               | piperswe wrote:
               | [citation needed]
               | 
               | There's been a lot of speculation about this, but I
               | haven't seen any damning evidence yet.
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | > The anime character is just what Hector started using
               | more often for communicating about the project. It's not
               | a different person.
               | 
               | Wait really? So they swapped their gender with a voice
               | changer as well? Do you have some evidence of this?
               | 
               | Though it would certainly explain how a developer who
               | "just joined" somehow was allowed to co-opt the project
               | name without any push back.
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | > Wait really? So they swapped their gender with a voice
               | changer as well?
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33292198
               | 
               | Please stop trolling on this topic. It's annoying to see
               | every thread about Asahi Linux get dragged off topic like
               | this.
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | How am I "trolling"? I'm asking honest questions because
               | I want to know. What happens more often is that every
               | Asahi Linux post gets dragged off topic praising the
               | person's greatness in a cult like manner. That's why I
               | mentioned "fanboyism" in some other post.
               | 
               | I'd prefer if we kept to technical discussion in these
               | posts personally.
        
               | wtallis wrote:
               | > I'd prefer if we kept to technical discussion in these
               | posts personally.
               | 
               | That's really not what your posting history indicates.
               | And bringing up the subject of "fanboyism" is pretty much
               | the exact opposite; that's _never_ going to take the
               | conversation in a productive direction.
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | Going after "posting history" is already taking things in
               | a non-productive direction. If I disliked vtubers I
               | wouldn't watch them so much. I have a bigger issue with
               | pitch changers as they make listening difficult. Most
               | vtubers don't actually use them.
        
         | sliken wrote:
         | Their = apple? Their = Asahi Lina's?
         | 
         | Asahi Linux has been upstreaming, but of course it's ongoing.
         | The GPU driver in particular depends on some rust inside the
         | kernel bits which aren't in the mainline kernel, yet. The 6.1
         | kernel has some Rust bits, 6.2 will have more, but I don't
         | believe that will be enough for the GPU driver ... yet.
        
         | bitwize wrote:
        
           | mlindner wrote:
           | Let's not head down this direction of madness please.
           | 
           | I've followed Japanese vtubers for some time and that is
           | CERTAINLY not the case. Vtubers are just aliases for the real
           | person. And each person picks and chooses how much they blend
           | their real lives into that alias.
           | 
           | There are even some vtubers that will have a camera facing on
           | themselves while they stream as a vtuber (for example stream
           | their body, but not their face) or will alternate streams
           | between a vtuber persona and a real live camera or vtubers
           | who stream as a vtuber but the real person behind the vtuber
           | is an open secret (i.e. artists who engage in vtubing but
           | sell artwork at comic conventions attending as a real
           | person). There's a huge range and spectrum of ways people
           | choose to do vtubing.
           | 
           | (Note: A lot of the latter cases are more possible in Japan
           | because of the general social/legal concept there that taking
           | pictures of people without their permission is at least
           | extremely rude and sometimes also illegal if you don't blur
           | their face when publishing it. This is helped by the fact
           | that it's a legal requirement that all devices capable of
           | taking photographs must make a photographing noise when doing
           | so. For example on iPhone in Japan it is impossible to
           | silence the shutter sound effect without modifying the device
           | hardware.)
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | > This is helped by the fact that it's a legal requirement
             | that all devices capable of taking photographs must make a
             | photographing noise when doing so.
             | 
             | That's not a legal requirement, it's a carrier request.
             | 
             | > For example on iPhone in Japan it is impossible to
             | silence the shutter sound effect without modifying the
             | device hardware.
             | 
             | That now turns off once you take them out of the country
             | though.
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | Things must have changed in recent years, as it must have
               | absolutely started out as a mandatory legal requirement.
               | From my understanding it dates to some of the earliest
               | digital cameras that didn't have shutter noises built-in
               | and has nothing to do with carriers.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | I believe that's true in Korea (or at least the govt
               | regulators ask for it) but it's always been a carrier
               | cartel thing in Japan.
               | 
               | https://articles.inqk.net/2018/02/09/japan-iphone-
               | shutter.ht...
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | That goes against everything I've ever heard on the
               | subject and I don't recognize this site. Also if it was a
               | carrier reason, wouldn't the sound appear if you were
               | roaming in Japan? It doesn't.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | You haven't heard of Buzzfeed Japan? You're welcome to
               | try to find the law though.
               | 
               | > Also if it was a carrier reason, wouldn't the sound
               | appear if you were roaming in Japan? It doesn't.
               | 
               | If it was geofenced you could disable it by putting it in
               | airplane mode, so it's by purchase country instead. (On
               | recent phones it does turn off if you leave Japan
               | though.)
        
           | tgcordell wrote:
           | I understood deadnaming to generally pertain to gender
           | identity. I don't think it's far-fetched to initially
           | consider Asahi Lina's name as a Pseudonym/Alias/Pen-Name, as
           | many creatives (authors, artists, musicians) have been doing
           | for hundreds of years.
           | 
           | If it is a gender identity decision, I still don't view it as
           | malicious for the OP to ask. The context just isn't there in
           | the blog post to make that clear.
        
         | wincy wrote:
         | I think it's a vTuber anime persona of a very talented
         | programmer or something?
        
           | dkdbejwi383 wrote:
           | And, sorry for continuing this thread, what is a "vTuber
           | anime persona"?
        
             | bogeholm wrote:
             | vTuber = virtual YouTuber (YouTube as genericized term for
             | "video platform", as in Xerox for copying)
             | 
             | Anime = Japanese cartoon style
        
             | hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTuber
        
             | wincy wrote:
             | It's like a full time filter where the only online identity
             | someone presents is as an anime girl. I think it was
             | popularized by a company called HoloLive that has Japanese
             | girls do this as a full time job? It's a VERY niche culture
             | thing.
             | 
             | Check out the Asahi Lina channel to see what I mean.
             | 
             | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LonzMviFCNs
        
               | wilsonnb3 wrote:
               | Surprisingly it is not that niche anymore - for example,
               | the hololive subreddit has 800,000 subscribers which is
               | about half of the hockey subreddit.
        
               | mlindner wrote:
               | Yes but none of them are using voice changing that makes
               | it hard to listen to. They all speak in their natural
               | voices or with a natural manual affect that they prefer
               | to put on, something that computers don't seem to be able
               | to replicate yet.
               | 
               | I watch Japanese vtubers quite a lot and enjoy doing so,
               | but I couldn't personally listen to Lina as the voice
               | sounds grating on the ears.
        
               | masklinn wrote:
               | Do all subscribers to team subreddits follow the main sub
               | as well though? Because I assume fans follow "their"
               | teams' subreddit, and there's several in the 100k range.
        
               | wilsonnb3 wrote:
               | I think most fans subscribe to the "main" sub (r/hocket,
               | nba, baseball, etc) for general league news and
               | discussion in addition to team subs.
               | 
               | Hololive functions in a similar way - the most popular
               | members have their own subreddits in addition to the main
               | hololive sub.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Ironmouse is the most popular female streamer on Twitch
               | (by subs). Pekora is in the top 5 most watched female
               | streamers worldwide (by viewer-hours).
               | 
               | It's not needed for guys apparently, but it's not niche.
        
               | rowanG077 wrote:
               | It doesn't have to be a anime girl. There are also a few
               | male vtubers. Bubi and Lord Aethalstan beeing examples.
        
             | psychphysic wrote:
             | One of those threads where you comment and more questions
             | are raised that feel almost irrelevant.
             | 
             | From what I have gleaned, vTuber is a virtual YouTuber. The
             | streams use an anime model a s behaviour.
             | 
             | So we've no idea who it is.
             | 
             | And for some reason I feel creeped out now. There is
             | something perturbing about the saccharin persona coupled
             | with the pseudonym.
             | 
             | Like Pennywise (It) vibes?
        
               | sjf wrote:
               | I feel like I am going to regret this post, but anyway...
               | 
               | I am a woman in tech, and the whole thing feels slimy. I
               | found it really creepy and couldn't watch more than a
               | couple of minutes- I couldn't tolerate the voice changer
               | for longer than that. But the whole concept is kinda
               | gross because (as someone else pointed out below) the
               | streamer is most likely an adult man, not a cute asian
               | girl. And the persona is being performed for the benefit
               | of other adult men.
        
               | claudiawerner wrote:
               | >the streamer is most likely an adult man, not a cute
               | asian girl
               | 
               | I can't see why that makes it "kinda gross"; in fact,
               | playing with identity and having the courage to do so in
               | a whimsical way seems awesome. To have the security in
               | oneself to put on a persona so different to the one we
               | are in meatspace is one of the best inventiont of the
               | 'net in my opinion. The possibilities are freeing.
               | 
               | On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
               | 
               | >And the persona is being performed for the benefit of
               | other adult men.
               | 
               | What possible 'benefit' do they get out of it? Do we know
               | if these "other adult men" leer at the persona? And if
               | so, so what? So long as the person behind the persona
               | isn't be harrassed. It's strange that this sentence is
               | implicitly stating that something done for the benefit of
               | adult men is wrong _in itself_.
        
               | masklinn wrote:
               | > From what I have gleaned, vTuber is a virtual YouTuber.
               | The streams use an anime model a s behaviour.
               | 
               | Yes, basically instead of streaming as themselves vTubers
               | stream as a persona, usually with an anime-style virtual
               | avatar.
               | 
               | > And for some reason I feel creeped out now. There is
               | something perturbing about the saccharin persona coupled
               | with the pseudonym.
               | 
               | I've not found a vTuber I enjoyed (but the main vTuber
               | community is japanese and japanese TV / entertainment
               | is... a lot, and not my cup of tea).
               | 
               | However how is "Asahi Lina" and an animated cartoon
               | avatar creepier than psychphysic and a random picture or
               | manga snip on a forum 15 or 20 years ago? As far as I'm
               | concerned it's the same principle moved from the media of
               | text and images to that of audio and video.
        
               | psychphysic wrote:
               | > However how is "Asahi Lina" and an animated cartoon
               | avatar creepier than psychphysic and a random picture or
               | manga snip on a forum 15 or 20 years ago?
               | 
               | That's a really good question and I only have a cop-out
               | answer.
               | 
               | I'm not the type to get the creeps.
               | 
               | But the immediate thought I had and commented else where
               | was of Pennywise.
               | 
               | Which is really quite alarming!
               | 
               | I think the core was that Asahi in my mind is quite
               | infantilised and the realisation that the person behind
               | the persona is quite likely to be adult man.
               | 
               | Nothing particularly predatory here, but there is still a
               | feeling of a false sense of security.
        
               | sangnoir wrote:
               | > Nothing particularly predatory here, but there is still
               | a feeling of a false sense of security.
               | 
               | What danger could an online persona possibly present to
               | you? "[...]a false sense of security" implies there's a
               | danger
        
               | psychphysic wrote:
               | There's no point thinking of this as a cognition the
               | pilomotor response is a reflex.
               | 
               | One that evolved before the dinosaurs were wiped out.
               | 
               | I can only tell you my feelings, thoughts and emotions.
               | Feel free to come up with a better explanation!
        
               | yazaddaruvala wrote:
               | I think any first reaction is always an entirely fair
               | first reaction. Biases exist. Snap judgements exist. No
               | point in pretending otherwise.
               | 
               | I think like with anything "new", life is always about
               | disconfirming our biases. As a result, now that you're
               | aware of this bias, have the additional time and can
               | access System 2:
               | 
               | Going forward you find a way to have a less aggressive
               | reaction to learning about a the next VTuber.
        
               | psychphysic wrote:
               | I almost certainly won't.
               | 
               | Unless this stuff goes entirely mainstream I will just
               | avoid it.
               | 
               | This is the first time I've watched this kind of
               | livestream and as well has as making my teeth itch with
               | creepiness, not being an efficient means of conveying the
               | topic it is boring.
               | 
               | I guess I'm older than the average HN user but I prefer
               | reading to watching a video for education.
        
         | rvz wrote:
        
           | ccouzens wrote:
           | Assuming it is the case I don't think it's polite to share
           | this information. I don't know their motivation for creating
           | a separate public image, but I think we should respect their
           | decision to do so by not connecting them.
        
             | CameronNemo wrote:
             | The Linux kernel does not accept anonymous contributions
             | due to legal reasons.
             | 
             | https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/1.Intro.html
             | 
             | > It is imperative that all code contributed to the kernel
             | be legitimately free software.
             | 
             | > For that reason, code from anonymous (or pseudonymous)
             | contributors will not be accepted.
             | 
             | > All contributors are required to "sign off" on their
             | code, stating that the code can be distributed with the
             | kernel under the GPL.
             | 
             | > Code which has not been licensed as free software by its
             | owner, or which risks creating copyright-related problems
             | for the kernel (such as code which derives from reverse-
             | engineering efforts lacking proper safeguards) cannot be
             | contributed.
        
               | saagarjha wrote:
               | I expect Asahi Lina to be more than happy to assign
               | copyright to an appropriate entity to contribute it
               | upstream.
        
         | nicoburns wrote:
         | > Apple should upstream their drivers.
         | 
         | Apple don't have linux drivers. It would be great if they wrote
         | some, but it's never going to happen.
         | 
         | > Who is Asahi Lina? Is that an actual person?
         | 
         | The virtual persona of an actual person who has chosen to
         | remain anonymous (hence the name which would be a crazy
         | coincidence otherwise).
        
           | robocat wrote:
           | While anonymous, they did put in some personal information at
           | 10 minutes into: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LonzMviFCNs
           | 
           | They are Canadian born, currently studying in Japan, so that
           | explains some of the cultural mix.
        
             | Phelinofist wrote:
             | I always thought that she was an umbrella persona for
             | marcan and alyssa or is the backstory just for the Lina
             | persona?
        
           | gjsman-1000 wrote:
           | > Who is Asahi Lina? Is that an actual person?
           | 
           | Man... if I was a conspiracy theorist who believed Apple was
           | genuinely evil, what if Asahi Lina is an Apple employee? ;)
        
             | embedded3 wrote:
             | Apple has pushed OS updates to help the Asahi team, though
             | they did not publicize this, of course.
        
               | unicornporn wrote:
               | Source for this claim?
        
               | plonk wrote:
               | You got downvoted unfairly, asking for sources is totally
               | normal.
        
               | spoils19 wrote:
               | Commenting on the fairness of votes is against the HN
               | commenting guidelines.
        
               | sbuk wrote:
               | This has been long established. marcan_42 has repeatedly
               | posted about this here, on twitter and reddit to name a
               | few locations.
        
               | chris_wot wrote:
               | It might be "long established" but plenty of people
               | didn't know this, including me.
        
               | sbuk wrote:
        
               | chris_wot wrote:
               | Hi, this is HN. It's perfectly reasonable to ask for
               | sources. There isn't any need to be so hostile.
        
               | sbuk wrote:
               | Depends on the context. The OP, IMO, was being passive-
               | aggressive, almost incredulous.
               | 
               | As I said, every time anything comes up about Asahi, it
               | is guaranteed that at least two threads will occur. This
               | and comment about the vTuber. At this point - 2 years
               | after the project began - it adds little value to the
               | conversation, to the extent that the project lead, who
               | was previously very active here, doesn't contribute
               | anymore.
        
               | ddingus wrote:
               | Sometimes it's good to ask. One may get additional
               | context that way. And if that happens, it's a good thing.
        
               | gregsadetsky wrote:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | dboreham wrote:
         | > Apple should upstream their drivers.
         | 
         | To what upstream project?
        
           | 2Gkashmiri wrote:
           | i can only assume the poster meant apple should add linux
           | drivers of M1/m2 to mainline linux kernel
        
             | squarefoot wrote:
             | I'm not sure Apple would want users to run anything but
             | Apple operating systems on their hardware, and the other
             | way around (fighting against hackintoshes back in the day).
             | I hope to be proven wrong though, as their hardware is
             | really interesting.
        
               | kitsunesoba wrote:
               | > (fighting against hackintoshes back in the day)
               | 
               | Apple doesn't really care about individual hackintoshers.
               | Some of their devs have griped about the uselessness of
               | stack traces and logs coming in from hackintoshed
               | machines (bogus errors produced by slight hardware
               | mismatches, drivers developed by amateur community
               | members filling logs with garbage, etc) but they've never
               | gone after anybody who was hackintoshing for personal
               | use. There's even been fairly big YouTubers who've done
               | it without issue, and back when Macs were Intel only and
               | had abysmal thermals/performance a surprising number of
               | Mac/iOS devs were using hackintoshes as their primary dev
               | machines that they submitted to the App Store with.
               | 
               | Where they draw the line is _selling_ hackintoshed
               | machines or any of the tools to facilitate the process.
               | Eliminate financial gain from the equation and you 'll
               | probably be fine.
        
               | hot_gril wrote:
               | They've never taken issue with other OSes running on
               | their hardware. They made Boot Camp for Intel Mac users
               | to run Windows and wrote Windows drivers to use Apple-
               | specific hardware like the iSight cameras. They even
               | showcased this feature in the TV ads. Linux also worked
               | but wasn't explicitly supported.
               | 
               | The rule is only, no macOS on non-Apple hardware.
        
               | izacus wrote:
               | > They've never taken issue with other OSes running on
               | their hardware.
               | 
               | What on earth are you talking about, iPads, iPhones and
               | all other new devices from Apple outright lockout any
               | kind of 3rd party OS from booting on them.
               | 
               | MacBooks are the only ones grandfathered into old
               | behaviour of actually allowing 3rd party OSes (although
               | they've also lost the ability to boot Windows in latest
               | generation as well).
        
               | sbuk wrote:
               | It's clear the context of the whole thread is Apple's OS
               | X/macOS based lineage of machines. Also, they _haven 't_
               | lost the ability to boot Windows, seemingly due to
               | licensing issues with Qualcomm, Microsoft hasn't offered
               | a Windows port yet. Of course, one couldn't boot directly
               | into Windows from the previous generation of PowerPC
               | based Macs either...
        
               | izacus wrote:
               | "They've never taken issue with other OSes running on
               | their hardware." is a false statement even within context
               | of this thread. They've thanken issue with other OSes on
               | their hardware.
        
               | sbuk wrote:
               | Is it any different to the false statement that is
               | "(although they've also lost the ability to boot Windows
               | in latest generation as well)"? The last line
               | specifically refers to macOS. No need to be deliberately
               | obtuse.
        
               | rjsw wrote:
               | I thought someone had posted here that Apple ran Linux on
               | their hardware for manufacturing tests.
        
               | gjsman-1000 wrote:
               | Hector Martin claims so which (frankly) suggests he has
               | some insiders.
               | 
               |  _However,_ just because Apple  "runs linux" doesn't mean
               | they "run linux" the way you are thinking. It's very easy
               | for corporations to write slapdash, horrific,
               | unmaintainable kernel forks that run on a specific piece
               | of hardware. That's just fine when you are testing
               | hardware before handing it to your OS team, but
               | absolutely unacceptable for upstreaming.
               | 
               | For examples of this, take a look at old Android devices
               | (and their ancient kernels), or the original Correlium
               | port of Linux to Apple Silicon (which happened almost
               | half a year before the Asahi Linux beta - but the code
               | was sheer unmaintainable crap). Upstream it? Heck no - it
               | would be rejected entirely and need almost a total
               | rewrite from scratch. Just because you can write a
               | functional driver doesn't mean it is anywhere close to a
               | good, maintainable driver.
               | 
               | So, in a nutshell... yes, Apple does use Linux for early
               | manufacturing tests. But it would almost certainly not be
               | in a state where we could benefit much from it, and
               | certain features would likely not be implemented. It's
               | not anywhere near as simple as "Apple has done the work
               | already - just upstream it please!"
        
               | svenpeter wrote:
               | IIRC we know about their internal Linux port because of
               | some comment left in the open source XNU release.
        
               | monocasa wrote:
               | > Hector Martin claims so which (frankly) suggests he has
               | some insiders.
               | 
               | Eh, I've heard the same thing form people I trust, and
               | I'm not the Apple news version of deep throat or
               | something. It's simply not a very well kept secret.
               | 
               | Although part of me wonders if the code will flow the
               | other way. Now that marcan has put in the elbow grease to
               | upstream concepts like 16KB pages, the non standard
               | ordering for regular MMIO and PCI on Apple Silicon, etc,
               | will Apple embrace those in their custom distro to avoid
               | having so much un-upstreamed code? We'll probably never
               | find out, but it's fun to think about.
        
               | p_l wrote:
               | 16kB pages weren't too hard to get running before, iirc,
               | it's just that most devices people care about went to
               | 64kB.
               | 
               | Generally linux is happy unless you try to make pages
               | smaller than 4kB,then all sorts of hell break lose in VFS
        
               | saagarjha wrote:
               | Linux is generally fine with 16K pages; userspace
               | programs often are not.
        
           | antihero wrote:
           | The Linux kernel
        
             | madeofpalk wrote:
             | Is Apple/macOS _downstream_ of the Linux kernel?
        
               | hot_gril wrote:
               | No it's not
        
         | tiagod wrote:
         | >Asahi Lina, our GPU kernel sourceress. Lina joined the team to
         | reverse engineer the M1 GPU kernel interface, and found herself
         | writing the world's first Rust Linux GPU kernel driver. When
         | she's not working on the Asahi DRM kernel driver, she sometimes
         | hacks on open source VTuber tooling and infrastructure.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | > Apple should upstream their drivers.
         | 
         | Apple's drivers _are_ upstreamed, in Darwin. I 'm not aware of
         | any reason to believe that Apple has any Linux drivers that
         | they could upstream.
        
       | nicoburns wrote:
       | The m1n1 hypervisor specialised for debugging is a pretty genius
       | idea. Is anyone aware of anyone else taking a similar approach?
       | Seems like it would be a pretty generally applicable technique
       | and would make OS/hardware driver development a lot more
       | approachable.
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | Not that I know of. m1n1 originated from software that (IIRC)
         | was used initially for reverse-engineering the Wii.
        
         | ngcc_hk wrote:
         | Idea wise actually S/360 run on hardware microcode and all
         | these idea of virtual machine and hypervisor came from an
         | unauthorised development called CP67 or later VM. IBM used it
         | for development MVS etc. as some hardware is yet to be built
         | for certain features.
         | 
         | But the modern day these development is crazy.
         | 
         | How can yo manage a 100+ structure in a language you just
         | learnt (Rust) for a secret GPU the vendor does not share info.
        
         | bri3d wrote:
         | Even before true CPU-supported "hypervisors," there was shim
         | software like SoftICE that worked similarly to m1n1 in that you
         | would run an OS underneath and then use a supervisor tool to
         | trace and debug the OS under inspection.
         | 
         | More recently, it's fairly common to use a hypervisor or
         | simulator for kernel debugging in device driver development on
         | Windows via Hyper-V.
         | 
         | A lot of Linux driver development is done using qemu as well,
         | although this is usually more targeted and isn't quite the same
         | "put a thin shim over the OS running on the hardware" approach.
         | 
         | The flexibility and I/O tracing framework in m1n1 are pretty
         | uniquely powerful, though, since it was built for reverse
         | engineering specifically.
        
         | hedgehog wrote:
         | Some developers used user mode Linux for driver development,
         | and I think some development has happened on the NetBSD rump
         | kernel more recently. I find the work that goes into building
         | this kind of tooling all pretty impressive.
        
         | averne_ wrote:
         | The nouveau project used a kernel module to intercept mmio
         | accesses: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/MmioTrace.html.
         | Generally speaking hooking onto driver code is one of the
         | preferred ways of doing dynamic reverse engineering. For
         | userspace components, you can build an LD_PRELOAD stub that
         | logs ioctls, and so on.
        
       | neonsunset wrote:
       | This looks to be very impressive and interesting but the writing
       | style makes it an incredibly aggravating slog to get through.
        
       | psychphysic wrote:
       | What an interesting tale. But I feel like an anime character
       | described it to me.
       | 
       | I'm totally fine with it (I'm grateful the story is being told at
       | all), but it is surreal tone for technical writing.
        
         | qrio2 wrote:
         | pretty much the appeal(?) of asahi lina. it's been a weird ride
         | to follow for sure.
        
           | throwntoday wrote:
           | Have to say as much as I want to watch their streams, I can't
           | get passed the annoying voice.
        
             | psychphysic wrote:
             | I had a quick look and the streams it made the hair stand
             | up on the back of my neck.
             | 
             | Not in a good way. The write up wasn't so bad but the
             | entire package is too much for me.
        
               | ddoolin wrote:
               | I went and checked out the YouTube video attached to one
               | of the tweets. Just...wow. I see what you mean.
        
             | ge96 wrote:
             | Yeah... I was hoping to passively watch it, maybe gleam
             | something but yeah.
             | 
             | The other thing too, watching other people code is kind of
             | not fun like George or Rene. More fun to see some
             | screeching video with no actual info just the end result of
             | a robot pissing in a cup.
             | 
             | Also goes to show how much work goes into writing
             | code/having some end result. Maybe it will get more
             | exposure since there is a growing trend for vtuber stuff.
        
               | throwntoday wrote:
               | You don't like watching George? His coding streams always
               | get me hyped enough to work on my own projects.
        
               | ge96 wrote:
               | The stuff he works on and OP above is beyond my current
               | level/field. I wouldn't really watch it to follow along
               | rather just for the company/background noise. Maybe
               | learning something in the process. Currently I don't
               | watch anyone regularly for code.
               | 
               | I get it though, I used to watch Social Network or
               | Silicon Valley to hype myself up to pursue something. Now
               | my problem is too many projects ha.
        
             | hallarempt wrote:
             | Fair enough. I cannot get past your typo.
        
             | mlindner wrote:
             | I've said the same but I got flagged on hacker news for
             | saying it. I'm not quite sure why it's an objectionable
             | thing to say.
        
             | Philip-J-Fry wrote:
             | This shouldn't be controversial to say, but it's blatantly
             | obvious that it's a voice changer.
        
               | TreeRingCounter wrote:
        
               | IshKebab wrote:
               | Duh. Doesn't mean it's not annoying af.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | westmeal wrote:
               | Yeah it's way too high pitched. They must have a pretty
               | deep voice.
        
               | 91edec wrote:
               | My headcannon is that Asahi Lina is actually Marcan since
               | they both have a Spanish accent/twang.
        
               | Phelinofist wrote:
               | At least in the videos I watched I found the speech
               | pattern (like the talking speed) to match marcans, if you
               | e.g. compare it to his presentation with fail0verflow at
               | C3 for the PS3 hack or some of his streams. But that is
               | also speculation ofc.
        
             | renox wrote:
             | Bah I've watched some of Jon Blow's videos on Jay, even
             | though he's much more pleasant to watch on video, it's
             | still annoying: a normal blog would be so much more
             | 'efficient'.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | > But I feel like an anime character described it to me.
         | 
         | Mario Brothers would make more sense though. Whoever created
         | this is a plumber par excellence.
        
         | noveltyaccount wrote:
         | The quantity of exclamation points lol. I assume I'm just too
         | old to get it...I'm okay with that, and I'm damn impressed with
         | the results, so more power to Lina, whatever works for her.
        
           | kelnos wrote:
           | Yeah, it's just... sorry, but there is nothing in the world
           | so exciting that 149 exclamation points (thanks to another
           | poster for counting) is warranted.
           | 
           | When every statement is exciting and special, then none of
           | them are.
        
             | sneak wrote:
             | I'm pretty sure that M1 Linux GPU drivers are indeed that
             | exciting. Being able to ditch the ever-increasing burden of
             | keeping macOS from telling the Cupertino mothership every
             | single little thing I do on my Mac for a proper Linux
             | desktop on the best laptop ever made (I have a maxed out
             | 64gb/8tb M1 max rMBP) is... exciting, to put it mildly.
        
             | girvo wrote:
             | _shrugs_ I 'm getting old these days, but to me those
             | exclamation points helped convey the tone the writer was
             | chasing. I read the article, then watched one of the VODs
             | of their streaming, and what do you know: the inner tone I
             | heard while reading the article matched how they talk!
             | 
             | But perhaps I'm biased: I write how I talk too, and use and
             | abuse punctuation to attempt to mimic my own voice.
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | Not as surreal as an actual presentation by an anime character.
         | WTF is going on here?
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/SDJCzJ1ETsM?t=1179
         | 
         | How can people watch this?
        
           | DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
           | I just tried watching this with a Pitch Shifter Chrome
           | extension. The voice goes from grating to just ... bad audio,
           | at the lowest possible setting - which is far more tolerable
           | than the original. I may need to go and edit the extension to
           | turn down the pitch even more.
        
         | treesknees wrote:
         | There are 149 exclamation points on that page (!)
        
           | jbuzbee wrote:
           | I was just getting ready to say the same thing and was
           | wishing for a plugin that would replace all exclamation
           | points with a period. That would make reading much easier
        
           | staunch wrote:
           | I suspect a certain Elaine Benes may have been the editor on
           | this post!
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSKn8RlD7Is
        
           | ddingus wrote:
           | Would that not mean general excitement on the part of the
           | author?
           | 
           | I find it hard to analyze these things by numbers alone. It's
           | context that really matters and if there truly is a baseline
           | excitement, there really should be a high number of
           | exclamations.
        
             | treesknees wrote:
             | It can in moderation, but there's a phenomenon that people
             | (often women) in communications overuse exclamation points,
             | trying to come across as friendly and not assertive [1][2].
             | It's something I've noticed in my professional career, and
             | not me trying to make a stereotype. You start to tip that
             | usage too far, like 149 of them in a technical document,
             | and it detracts from your content.
             | 
             | >A bunch of shader cores, which process triangles (vertex
             | data) and pixels (fragment data) by running user-defined
             | programs. These use different custom instruction sets for
             | every GPU!
             | 
             | Why are different instruction sets exciting to the author?
             | What does exclaiming that fact really mean for me as the
             | reader? What I got out of it was the author was so
             | surprised by this basic fact, that it was so out of this
             | world unbelievable, that we also must be surprised by it.
             | I'd rather read technical explanations with
             | leadership/competence.
             | 
             | [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/women-exclamation-
             | points-emil...
             | 
             | [2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1083
             | -6101...
        
               | ddingus wrote:
               | These meta discussions can be illuminating.
               | 
               | The intent I got was the idea of all the GPU instruction
               | sets being different is notable, and perhaps unexpected
               | and at the least challenging. The latter being an
               | exclamation in the context of reverse engineering makes
               | some degree of sense to communicate the fundamental
               | difficulty inherent in this effort.
               | 
               | Now, we could go back and forth a few more times, invite
               | friends and curious others to the party and end up with
               | many different takes on this text.
               | 
               | What's the takeaway?
               | 
               | For me, it's lack of judgement. Content is king. I want
               | to know what others mean to say and how they feel about
               | it. I don't want to judge them on those things because
               | what exactly is the point?
               | 
               | Make things better for me?
               | 
               | ...better for people like me?
               | 
               | ...people in general? Doubt that given the diversity of
               | takes the experiment above would generate.
               | 
               | Waste of time. That's the takeaway.
               | 
               | And to press that idea home somewhat more, when I talk to
               | other people, not text, but talking, I find diversity
               | beautiful. Some are stoic. Some are bitter, jaded well
               | worn solders. Others are excitable. Funny? Yup.
               | 
               | I submit you cost yourself more wondering why they don't
               | conform than ever getting the answer is worth. Further,
               | taking their intent in a more liberal, forgiving sense
               | will get you to the good stuff others intend to share
               | more quickly and efficiently. Plus, you might laugh a
               | little.
               | 
               | I do. And it's enjoyable.
               | 
               | When I read the piece, I enjoyed feeling a bit of the
               | joy, excitement, frustrations experienced by the authors
               | and that amplified the good in all of it a little. Great!
               | They did have one heck of an adventure after all.
               | 
               | Finally, you mention women overusing exclamation points.
               | Maybe they are just being women? Just putting that out
               | there.
               | 
               | I am pretty sure if we were to take a poll of those of us
               | who are women as to whether being one is OK would trend
               | to a definitive yes. The ones I know well tend to have a
               | lot of fun and more colorful, rich relationships too.
               | Kind of envy that personally.
               | 
               | I think it is OK to be a woman. After all, being a guy, I
               | tend to be a guy. Why would women play it any
               | differently?
               | 
               | Thoughts for you to consider.
               | 
               | Cheers! <-- Exclamation intended to convey a general
               | upbeat mood, hoping it's catchy.
        
           | bmicraft wrote:
           | Usually I get annoyed by that, but in this case I read the
           | whole thing and didn't even notice. It helps that they didn't
           | come in "packages" bigger than 1.
        
         | rychco wrote:
         | I'm actually very happy about the rise of VTubers/live avatars.
         | I imagine that there are a lot of people that would love to
         | _interactively_ share their knowledge /skills on youtube/twitch
         | but avoid doing so because they're not conventionally
         | attractive or just too shy.
        
           | wilsonnb3 wrote:
           | > I imagine that there are a lot of people that would love to
           | interactively share their knowledge/skills on youtube/twitch
           | but avoid doing so because they're not conventionally
           | attractive or just too shy.
           | 
           | Couldn't they just not show themselves on camera at all?
        
             | rychco wrote:
             | True but this is likely less engaging for the audience,
             | which has been my experience.
        
               | sph wrote:
               | This is when I repeat my silly joke that I'd rather see
               | Skeletor doing live coding than another anime girl with
               | pitched upvoice.
               | 
               | Enough furries and anime girls, people. They are cute,
               | but there is more to animated art
        
               | gpm wrote:
               | Project idea: Take something that looks like a mindflayer
               | (d&d art with tentacles around it's mouth) and use it for
               | live coding.
               | 
               | Instead of displaying a mouse and cursor have the
               | tentacles reach out and manipulate the code from behind a
               | semi-transparent pane of glass that the code is displayed
               | on.
        
               | rodgerd wrote:
               | Be the change you want to see in the world, then.
        
               | 91edec wrote:
               | Live coding with an animated 40k Ork is something I never
               | knew I wanted.
        
           | mrguyorama wrote:
           | But what about people that hate the "twitchification" of
           | media? I don't like when youtubers I enjoy watching switch to
           | streaming and then all their content is identical "poggers"
           | chat and donation begging garbage. Streamers all feel the
           | same, regardless of the content. I don't feel there's any
           | value to a hundred instances of a stupid emoji streaming by
           | in a """chat""" window, and everything just feels like
           | attention whoring "pick me" nonsense.
           | 
           | Vinesauce has been streaming since well before twitch, and
           | their content got significantly more "Twitch"-y after they
           | embraced the current system. It's obvious why, because if you
           | play into the chat begging, the surface level
           | """interaction""", then you get more money from the
           | parasocial twelve year olds with mom's credit card.
           | 
           | But I don't want my content full of ten second interruptions
           | as a robot voice reads off the same tired joke somebody paid
           | ten dollars to get read off.
        
             | levesque wrote:
             | Donations and twitch emerged as funding mechanisms because
             | Youtube ads are not providing enough revenue for the vast
             | majority of content creators out there.
        
             | jacoblambda wrote:
             | that's all a choice of the streamer. some streamers choose
             | to have TTS (text to speech) but a lot don't. Twitch is bad
             | about TTS in particular but it's far less common on the
             | youtube side of streaming.
             | 
             | Doubly so the twitch chat is going to mirror the streamer.
             | So if the streamer is being a goon and playing up the
             | twitch culture, you'll get twitch chat. But you can also
             | have a very different chat experience if you establish from
             | the get go that chat is to behave a specific way.
        
             | rodgerd wrote:
             | > But what about people that hate the "twitchification" of
             | media?
             | 
             | Well, when those people put months of their lives into
             | reverse-engineering a reliable stack of code for an
             | undocumented platform, and want to do presentations and
             | write-ups of their work, those people can decide to present
             | however they want.
             | 
             | In the meantime maybe people who are contributing precisely
             | nothing can STFU about the people who are.
        
       | tiahura wrote:
       | Is anyone porting the GPU driver to Windows?
        
         | raverbashing wrote:
         | MS or Apple can port it themselves, but I think there's not so
         | much interest on the Apple side
        
         | noveltyaccount wrote:
         | Keep an eye on this project:
         | https://github.com/amarioguy/m1n1_windows
        
         | monocasa wrote:
         | I think there's larger barriers to getting windows running on
         | Apple Silicon that would need to be addressed first.
         | 
         | For one example, Windows ARM kernels are pretty tied to the GIC
         | (ARM's reference interrupt controller), but Apple has its own
         | interrupt controller. Normally on ntoskrnl this distinction
         | would simply need hal.dll swapped out, but I've heard from
         | those who've looked into it that the clean separation has
         | broken down a bit and you'd have to binary patch a windows
         | kernel now if you don't have source access.
        
           | my123 wrote:
           | hal.dll no longer exists on Windows. It's just a stub for
           | backwards compat now.
           | 
           | What you can do is having a small hypervisor to simulate the
           | needed bits...
        
           | gjsman-1000 wrote:
           | Apple Silicon doesn't use GIC, but uses AIC (Apple Interrupt
           | Controller).
           | 
           | "Apple designed their own interrupt controller, the Apple
           | Interrupt Controller (AIC), not compatible with either of the
           | major ARM GIC standards. And not only that: the timer
           | interrupts - normally connected to a regular per-CPU
           | interrupt on ARM - are instead routed to the FIQ, an abstruse
           | architectural feature, seen more frequently in the old 32-bit
           | ARM days. Naturally, Linux kernel did not support delivering
           | any interrupts via the FIQ path, so we had to add that."
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25862077
           | 
           | TL;DR: No standard ARM interrupt controller, custom
           | controller requires quirky architectural features
        
             | saagarjha wrote:
             | Apple silicon doesn't use GIC, but it has some sort of vGIC
             | that I believe the Asahi Linux team is using.
        
             | monocasa wrote:
             | Yep, that's essentially what my post says.
             | 
             | My next point was about how the NT kernel was designed to
             | handle exactly this kind of change pretty cleanly, but that
             | clean barrier has been allowed to stagnate. So way back, NT
             | kernels for weird systems like SGI workstations that had
             | x86 CPUs but were decidedly not PCs otherwise simply needed
             | hal.dll swapped out with a version written by the hardware
             | vendor to paper over those system differences like how
             | interrupts are routed around and how to access PCI devices.
             | That's no longer really an option however.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | You can always just run NT in a VM under Linux:)
        
         | masklinn wrote:
         | Porting what?
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | s3p wrote:
           | This made me laugh. Had the same question lol.
        
           | abdusco wrote:
           | GPU driver. So that one can install Windows on Apple Silicon
           | and get accelerated graphics.
        
             | mort96 wrote:
             | The GPU driver is an important component for desktop users,
             | but it's just one small part of what you need to bring
             | Linux to these machines. There's a ton of work in all kinds
             | of other areas, down to changes in the core of the kernel.
             | A GPU driver for Windows won't do you any good without all
             | those other drivers.
        
             | gjsman-1000 wrote:
             | It would take more than a GPU Driver, or actually, drivers
             | at all.
             | 
             | Windows has some behavior that is hard-coded and cannot be
             | changed except by Microsoft. This behavior can fairly
             | easily be bent on Linux, but Windows drivers can't bend the
             | rules for some of these issues.
             | 
             | The biggest issue that immediately comes to mind is that
             | the M1 MMU (Memory Management Unit) only can handle 16K
             | pages. Linux can easily be built for 16K, and _most_
             | programs work on 16K, but Windows currently only supports
             | 4K on ARM. No driver can fix that - only Microsoft. Of
             | course, if Microsoft joins the Apple Silicon train (which
             | Apple has said they are _more than welcome_ to do), then
             | they probably will have official Apple documentation and
             | not need the Asahi Linux findings.
        
               | fulafel wrote:
               | In https://asahilinux.org/2022/03/asahi-linux-alpha-
               | release/ it says that 4k pages work on the HW but 16k has
               | tome advantages. Dropping 4k page size supporrt would
               | imply a departure from arm architecture compatibility
               | compatibility I think, it might have also nontechnical
               | problems (ARM license).
        
               | my123 wrote:
               | The arm spec allows to have machines that implement any
               | of 4KB, 16KB, or 64KB granules or any combination
               | thereof. Apple shipped plenty of phone SoCs that didn't
               | support 4KB pages for the CPU (A9->A13).
        
               | fulafel wrote:
               | Interesting - at first this didn't seem to be detailed in
               | the popular (Wikipedia etc) or ARM web pages I could find
               | but it seems it was about terminlogy, "translation
               | granule" was the right one and then you can find mentions
               | like "The granule sizes that a processor supports are
               | IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED".
        
       | gfody wrote:
       | is there an easy way to unvoicemod the streams?
        
         | pulvinar wrote:
         | Turn on closed-captioning, and mute the sound.
        
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