In my experience, dealing with repeated nvidia problems is not worth the hassle. Just replace it with a good AMD graphics card and sell that nvidia thing.
For me, this result is also not too surprising:
If allowing / using Undefined Behavior (UB) would allow for systematically better optimizations, Rust programs would be systematically slower than C or C++ programs, since Rust does not allow UB. But this is not the case. Rather, sometimes Rust programs are faster, and sometimes C/CC++ programs. A good example is the Debian Benchmark Game Comparison.
Now, one could argue that in the cases where C/C++ programs turned out to be faster than Rust programs, that at least im these cases exploiting UB gave an advantage. But, if you examine these programs im the Debian benchmark game (or in other places), this is not the case either. They do not rely on clever compiler optimizations based on assumptioms around UB. Instead, they make heavy use of compiler and SIMD intrinsics, manual vectorization, inline assembly, manual loop unrolling, and in general micro-managing what the CPU does. In fact, these implementations are long and complex and not at all idiomatic C/C++ code.
Thirdly, one could say that while these benchmark examples are not idiomatic C code, one at times needs that specific capability to fall back to things like inline assembly, and that this is a characteristic capability of C snd C++.
Well, Rust supports inline assembly as well, though it is rarely used.
You can legally buy second-market OEM licenses. They are not that expensive, and do not expire. And, older versions of Windows are much slimmer and boot much faster, though it is not a good idea to connect them to the Internet - instead, one would block connections between VM and Internet. Which is anyway much better from a privacy perspective.
Another big plus of that approach: If your laptop or PC breaks, you can just move the VM image with Windows exactly like any other file you have backed up (you do backups, don't you?) to the new hardware and use it as before. This esoecially breaks the problem of forced OS upgrades if the new hardware does not support the old windows version, or you do not have the installer and license keys any more, but the new Windows version does not support your old documents, media formats, or pheriperals like scanners.
Also, if you modify your Windows install and it might break, you can just make a snapshot of the VM image - which is a copy of a file - and restore it when needed.
Great article, a pleasure to read and a fantastic work of really good science and critical thinking.
A few more thoughts here:
A good counter-example is Copenhagen. There, almost nobody uses ebikes in the city. (It would not be faster because there are so many bikes on the road. There is a bridge across the harbour where at rush hour times there pass more than two bikes per second, that's over 5000 vehicles a hour.)
What made the difference was good, safe bike infrastructure. And NL has this, too.
A very uncomfortable reading but in this time, a necessary topic.
The new development since this text was written is the Trump administration dismantling security institutions and intimidating security companies.
And, the rampant illegal data collection of US companies feels increasingly hostile. Why would a smartphone or smartphone app need my fingerprints or microphone?
That completely ignores the fact that a human being needs at least half an hour to one hour of light exvercise / physical movement daily to stay healthy at all. If you do not cycle or run, you'd need to go to a gym / fitness studio.
Also, if you care at all about CO2 emissions, eating vegan or vegetarian food is the way.
Also, driving 3 or 4 kilometers to a supermarket to get a veggie pizza needs way more energy and CO2 for the drive, thsn for the food itself. You can compute that from the fuel consumption of a car - about 180 Grams of CO2 per person per kilometer, so 1.4 kilograms for 4 kilometers each way.
Also, often the danger of cycling is stressed. That's rubbish because of the health effect of physical exercise - the most dangerous aspect of modern life is lack of exercise, and if you use a bike instead a car you are wayyy less likely to die of cardiovascular problems, which are the real killer, not accidents.
Es ist eigentlich nicht richtig, verschiedene städtische Verkehrsmittel nach zurückgelegten Kilometern zu bewerten, denn Menschen haben nach gesichertem Ergebnis der Verlehrsforschung ein Wegezeitbudget.
Das heisst, wer ein "schnelleres" Verkehrsmittel nutzt, wird ganz automatisch weitere Wege zurück legen, die mittlere tägliche Zeit für Wege wird nach einer Anpassungsphase mehr oder weniger im Mittel dieselbe sein.
Und umgekehrt: Wer Fahrrad statt Auto fährt, verbringt deswegen im Mittel nicht mehr Zeit zum Pendeln. Statt dessen organisiert er oder sie kürzere Wege. Wer damit experimentiert, kann das gut an sich selber beobachten, denn der Zusammenhang wirkt sowohl kollektiv als auch individuell.
Die ernüchternde Erkenntnis hieraus: Das Auto spart keine Zeit.
I want to learn / use a functional programming language.
That's a good idea.
With over 20 years of programming in languages like C, C++, Python, Go, Pascal, Forth and so on, I think functional languages are often easier - in the same way that programming without lots of global variables is usually and objectively better. There are of course a few domains where the OOP approach works better, like defining data structures with tight invariants, Linux hardware drivers, or simulating ships.
Or sometimes, you need a bit of imperative code for a number-crunching core.
But most code can advantageously be represented and structured as:
input -> transformation -> output
and the transformation part, which is almost everything which is really interesting, is where the functional style shines.
Now if you want something beginner-friendly and practical, it depends on what you want to do. Here my ten cents:
For systems programming, signal processing and embedded stuff, I'd totally recommend Rust. It has certainly a bit of Algol syntax but that's rhe proverbial wolf in sheeps clothing: Many concepts actually come from OCaml, as well as the first Rust compiler. This would also answer the question whether functional languages are relevant and useful in industry.
If you want to do concurrent server-side programming, I believe there is nothing better than Clojure - perhaps with Babashka for scripting and ClojureScript for the Browser. Clojure is also incredibly elegant and concise, and at the same time it can use Java libraries, so it has huge library support, a battery powerhouse included.
If you learn both, you will see that Clojure and Rust have actually a lot in common in their approach to concurrency, which is preventing shared mutable state. It is great to learn both.
If you want a very practical, well-documented, and beginner-friendly language that also has great GUI support, I'd recommend Racket, a Scheme descendant. Like Clojure, it supports gradual typing.
If you want to program close to the Unix/Linux environment and want a simple as well as powerful language, a Scheme version could be a good choice. Personally, I love Guile, and use it where I previously used Python. Guile is very easy to use as a extension library for C and C++ programs or to control low-level code written in C. It also has a quite good REPL and debugger support and thus, interactive experience.
Speaking of Python, it has a great vector library which is heavily influenced by APL and functional designs, named Numpy. A C++ analogon would be Eigen. You see that functional programmers subversively introduce their filth everywhere!!
For data analysis, Scala could be an option. It is like OCaml on the JVM. Similarly, F# for .NET (but who wants to get entangled in Windows?).
If you want to keep it more multi-paradigm, you could chose Common Lisp - it will let you program in many styles and its SBCL implementation probably has the best performance after Rust. But Schemes like Guile or Racket are more geared toward a functional-preferring style. And if you want Lisp with stricter typing, there is Coalton - but I have not tried that last one.
Eine sehr interessante Feststellung. Sie lässt mich schnurstracks an die Situation in den USA vor dem amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg denken, als es um die Abschaffung der Sklaverei ging und die Südstaaten bzw die machthabenden Eliten der damaligen Südstaaten einerseits ökonomisch völlig abhängig von der Sklaverei als Institution gemacht hatte, aber andererseits auch noch ihre gesamte Gesellschaft auf einer Ideologie aufgebaut hatte, dass Sklaverei rechtens sei.
Heute sehen wir scheinbar nicht nur ideologisch -ökonomische Umbrüche von ähnlicher Tragweite, sondern der Symbolismus der Konföderierten wird von Trump noch aktiv beschworen. Es geht heute um die fossile Industrie als Geld und Macht vermittelnde Institution. Die Erneuerbaren Energiequellen, Wärmepumpen, Elektroautos, Abbau des Autoverkehrs im Städten, oder allgemein Decarbonisierung lassen diese Geld- und Machtquellen gerade schmelzen.
Was dazu führt dass die alte Macht in etlichen Ecken der Welt gerade versucht, die Demokratie auszuschalten - mit Methoden des Faschismus.