sinski @aosinski@qoto.org

Almost every thread about Rust for Linux ends up with someone saying "why not Zig instead"? And usually the answer is just "it's less mature" or "nobody pushed it".

I didn't know anything about Zig, so I decided to take a look today... and I'm not very impressed ^^;;

I learned that Zig does not have:

- Destructors
- Macros
- Lifetimes
- Operator overloading

Those are major reasons why I chose Rust for the drm/asahi driver...

It sounds like Zig is trying to be "modern C"... but the whole point of R4L is to not get stuck with C!

All those things Rust has that Zig doesn't are important for the things I'm doing.

Destructors/RAII are fundamental to how the driver tracks and cleans up firmware structures safely and reliably when needed. If I had to write "defer" everywhere it would be a bug-prone mess...

Rust's amazing macros are how I deal with the firmware versioning differences while keeping the driver maintainable. In C you can sort of do that (poorly) with the preprocessor... but Zig doesn't have that either, so that's actually a step back from C, as far as I can tell...!

I don't think I really need to explain lifetimes/memory safety, that's the one thing everyone knows is different between the languages... I'll just say, I am certain I wouldn't have gone from "first render" to "stable accelerated Linux desktop" in 2 days without memory safety.

(continued)

Scientists Alarmed by Signs of Collapse in Earth’s Natural Carbon Sinks

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae,... #press

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/10/scientists-alarmed-collapse-natural-carbon-sinks/?utm_source=press.coop

It's amazing how many people on Twitter can't seem to tell that those Tesla bots are just being remotely controlled by dudes with microphones wearing VR headsets and motion capture sensors. I hate that I have too much integrity to be a grifter. It just looks so easy 😭

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:9cdc863a-3188-4f13-8857-25970c7628ed

Heritage Foundation Makes Plans to Staff Next G.O.P. Administration

No matter the Republican, the effort has set a goal of up to 20,000 potential officials in a database akin to a right-wing LinkedIn.

By Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman
April 20, 2023

VCs endorsing Trump when he looked like a sure thing then pivoting to supporting Kamala when she started polling well is a testament to their herd mentality.

https://www.axios.com/2024/10/04/ben-horowitz-endorse-kamala-harris

I've haven't heard a ton of people talking about this, so I wanted to spread it. The state of California has removed 4 outdated hydroelectric dams that were blocking the breeding ground for Chinook salmon. This removal unflooded 2200 acres of land, and in preparation for this removal Native American tribes have been collecting and breeding seeds of native plants. They took these seeds and planted them along the restored river bank, taking the first steps to restoring the area. https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/before-and-after-photos-show-californias-unprecedented-dam-removal/ar-AA1rMwPg

#LandBack

Instead of my rant, I present to you this beauty. Frontend development is great.

#machKaputtWasDichKaputtMacht

I’m not a doomer but it feels like we’re pretty far to the right side already.

@aral It is already a crime, something that many media agencies have been (for what ever their motivation) wilfully failing to report.

Israel is already one of of 127 signatory's of Protocol II of the United Nations 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons,
Protocol II prohibits in all circumstances the use of booby-traps in apparently harmless portable objects

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Mines,_Booby-Traps_and_Other_Devices

@afilina my rule of thumb here: if your monolith looks like shit, then splitting microservices make it distributed shit.

As a teenager in Neustrelitz (East Germany), I painted small stones purple and left them all over town. Did it for years. It drove the police and Stasi nuts. It meant nothing. It just felt good to do something they couldn't control or understand.

I once visited New Orleans with my French ex and a guy came up and had a conversation with her in French and as we were walking away she whispered, “that guy talks like an 18th century pirate” and I was like, “yeah why wouldn’t he?”