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Tales of the M1 GPU

asahilinux.org

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Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#351

Post by leidenfrost »

okeuro49 wrote: post #316
leidenfrost wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 partic…

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.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#352

Post by catiopatio »

leidenfrost wrote: post #351
okeuro49 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 partic…

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 "f…

> 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.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#353

Post by pjmlp »

dagmx wrote: post #336
pjmlp wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also have been possible in Ada, but of course it isn't cool.

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 accessi…

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.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#354

Post by sbuk »

izacus wrote: post #328
hot_gril wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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).

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...

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#355

Post by okeuro49 »

leidenfrost wrote: post #351
okeuro49 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 partic…

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 "f…

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.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#356

Post by ribit »

dagmx wrote: post #262
kajaktum wrote: post #261

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 tr…

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 initia…

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.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#357

Post by epolanski »

leidenfrost wrote: post #351
okeuro49 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 partic…

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 "f…

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.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#358

Post by pclmulqdq »

mort96 wrote: post #337
kajaktum wrote: post #261

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 tr…

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…

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.

Re: Tales of the M1 GPU

#360

Post by hansworst »

mrguyorama wrote: post #137
steveklabnik wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

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