For a little bit I thought this library might be a subtle joke, seeing the #define _SHITPRESS_H at the start. That combined with the compress() and decompress() not taking any arguments and not having a return value, I thought we were being played. Not to mention the library appears to be plain C rather than C++… surely the author should know the difference?

Then I saw how the interface actually works:

// interface for the library user, implement these in your program:
unsigned int SPR_in(); // Return next byte from input or value > 255 on EOF.
void SPR_out(unsigned char); // Output byte.

This seems extremely poorly thought out. Calling into global functions for input and output means that your library will be a pain to use in any program that has to (de)compress anything more than a single input.

The System76 scheduler helps to tune for better desktop responsiveness under high load: https://github.com/pop-os/system76-scheduler I think if you use Pop!OS this may be set up out-of-the-box.

Essentially, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely 😅

Smart pointers are really really nice, I do recommend getting used to them (and all other features from c++11 forward).

You’re recommending him to give up his sanity and/or life?

And conversely, something Go is very bad at. For example, os.Chmod silently not doing anything on Windows.

Agreed on all counts, except it being useless to think about :) It’s only useless if you dismiss philosophy as interesting altogether.

But that kinda misses the point, right? Like, all that means is that the observation may have created the particle, not that the observation created reality, because reality is not all particles.

I guess that depends on the point being made. You didn’t raise this argument, but I often see people arguing that the universe is deterministic and therefore we cannot have free will. But the quantum mechanical reality is probabilistic, which does leave room for things such as free will.

I can agree with your view to say observation doesn’t create reality, but then it does still affect it by collapsing the wave function. It’s a meaningful distinction to make in a discussion about consciousness, since it leaves open the possibility that our consciousness is not merely an emergent property of complex interaction that has an illusion of free will, but that it may actually be an agent of free will.

And yes, I fully recognise this enters into the philosophical realm and there is no science to support these claims. I’m merely arguing that science leaves open a path that enters that realm, and from there it is up to us to make sense of it.

There is the philosophical adage “I think therefore I am”, which I do adhere to. I know I am, so I’ll consider as flawed any reasoning that says I’m not. Maybe that just makes me a particularly stubborn scientific curiosity, but I like to think I’m more than that :)

can you define physical for me?

The distinction I tend to make is between physical using the classical definition of physics (where everything is made of particles basically) and the quantum mechanical physics which defies “physical” in the classical sense. So far we’ve only been able to scientifically witness quantum physics in small particles, but as you say, there’s no reason it can’t apply at a macro scale, just… we don’t know how to witness it, if possible.

it doesn’t require an observer to collapse the wave function

Or maybe it does? The explanation I have for us being unable to apply the experiments at a larger scale is that as we scale things up, it becomes harder and harder to avoid accidental observation that would taint the experiment. But that’s really no more than a hunch/gut feeling. I would have no idea how to prove that 😅

In fact, one of the great mysteries of physics right now is why only quantum objects have that property, and in order to figure that out we have to figure out what interaction “observation” actually is.

This does not stroke with my understanding of quantum physics. As far as we know there is no clear distinction between “quantum objects” vs “non-quantum objects”. The double slit experiment has been reproduced with molecules as large as 114 atoms, and there seems no reason to believe that would be the upper limit: https://www.livescience.com/19268-quantum-double-slit-experiment-largest-molecules.html

This proves that the wave is in fact real, because we can see the effects of it.

The only part that’s proven is the interference pattern. So yes, we know it acts like a wave in that particular sense. But that’s not the same thing as saying it is a wave in the physical sense. A wave in the classic physical sense doesn’t collapse upon observation. I know it’s real in an abstract sense. I’m just questioning the physical nature of that reality.

Thanks, that seems a fair approach, although it doesn’t have me entirely convinced yet. Can you explain what the physical form of a wave function is? Because it’s not like a wave, such as waves in the sea. It’s really a wave function, an abstract representation of probabilities which in my understanding does not have any physical representation.

You say the building does not start acting like a wave, and you’re right, that would be silly. But it does enter into a superposition where the building can be either collapsed or not. Like Schreudinger’s cat, which can be dead or alive, and will be in a superposition of both until observation happens again. And yes, the probabilities of this superposition are indeed expressed through the wave function, even though there is no physical wave.

It’s true observation does not require consciousness. But until we know what does constitute observation, I believe consciousness provides a plausible explanation.

Do elaborate on the batshit part :) It’s a scientific fact that physical matter does not exist in its physical form when unobserved. This may not prove the existence of consciousness, but it certainly makes it plausible. It certainly invalidates physical reality as the “source of truth”, so to say. Which makes the explanation that physical reality is a product of consciousness not just plausible, but more likely than the other way around. Again, not a proof, but far from batshit.

I see that’s certainly a different way of looking at it :) Of course I can’t say with any authority that it must be wrong, but I think it’s a flaw because it seems you’re presuming that consciousness arises from physical properties. If the physical act of copying a brain’s data were to give rise to consciousness, that would imply consciousness is a product of physical reality. But my position (and that of the paper I linked) is that physical reality is a product of mental consciousness.

let alone if it’s technically “real” (as in physical in any way.)

This right here might already be a flaw in your argument. Something doesn’t need to be physical to be real. In fact, there’s scientific evidence that physical reality itself is an illusion created through observation. That implies (although it cannot prove) that consciousness may be a higher construct that exists outside of physical reality itself.

If you’re interested in the philosophical questions this raises, there’s a great summary article that was published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/436029a

take in user sourced input without any sanitization

But that’s exactly the problem: these applications were sanitizing the input using the APIs provided by their language standard libraries. Except that sanitization proved insufficient because the requirements for sanitization differ greatly when the command is interpreted by cmd.exe as opposed to running regular executables. This is such a big footgun in the Windows API that it was overlooked by seemingly every major programming language implementation out there.

It would print “&& rm -rf /“ and nothing bad would happen.

That’s entirely dependent on the application. In many cases the command would be hard-coded in the application, in which case you’re right. But some applications have good reasons to pass user-supplied arguments to scripts. Imagine a case where an application generates PDFs through a batch script, for instance. It might make sense to let users specify the filename, but then it does need proper escaping. In such a case it’s a huge risk if it turns out the escaping rules suddenly changed because Windows silently invoked cmd.exe under the hood.

Usually your coroutines (should) all spin up at the very start and all stay running for the entire app lifetime.

That’s an interesting perspective. At that point, what is even the point of coroutines over using threads? I thought the main reason for their existence was being lightweight enough to spin up whenever, wherever you need.

Good question! 😂 maybe I’m overthinking it, but you seem to be making the point that it’s silly for people to like WASM based on the argument the JVM already exists and people are not fond of it/Java. If that’s not the point, why did you make the meme at all?

Of course, technically you can compile anything to almost anything. But I don’t think linking to a project that’s unmaintained for 15 years really helps your argument.

Some programming languages are blindly deemed “safe” in spite of supporting unsafe memory management strategies, and somehow not enforcing those rules does not render them unsafe.

You’re applying a strawman argument here, because nobody is blindly deeming any languages as safe. But they are recognizing some languages as safer than others. Safety isn’t a binary switch, and most people recognize that. Most people also recognize that using tools that make it harder to achieve safety, does, in fact, make it harder to achieve safety. And thus, if safety is important, avoiding those tools makes perfect sense.

Nah, 40 years ago this discussion already existed and it was between C and FORTRAN at the time. FORTRAN was often faster than C, precisely because of aliasing rules that Rust now benefits from as well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/146159/is-fortran-easier-to-optimize-than-c-for-heavy-calculations

Btw, are these the Debian benchmarks you were referring to? Because I can see C and Rust trading blows with one another, but neither taking a consistent lead. Nothing that points to an undisputed performance lead surely. https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/rust-gcc.html

But I still agree with your premise that performance isn’t the deciding factor. Which means that other than legacy reasons, C (and C++) really doesn’t have much going for it anymore.