I have played a bit with Rust in the past, but I’ve never done much with it.

To get myself more acquainted with the language, I’ve decided to try to write a small game with it, always a fun way to play with programming.

For that, I’ve started digging into the options and found Are we game yet?, a great resource with pointers for all things Rust and game development.

I’ve decided to try Amethyst for a game engine, as my first impressions with the documentation look quite good, and it will be nice to get updated with more modern game event management concepts.

I’ve followed the book’s instructions to get the latest stable Rust, and it also provides a 2D starter template repo. I managed to get it up and running, but I ran into a couple of hiccups, which I thought I’d document here.

First, I got this problem:

thread 'main' panicked at 'attempted to leave type `platform::platform::x11::util::input::PointerState` uninitialized, which is invalid', /rustc/d9a105fdd46c926ae606777a46dd90e5b838f92f/library/core/src/mem/mod.rs:659:9

Fortunately, 10 days ago someone at /r/rust_gamedev ran into the same thing, and the solution was to downgrade Rust from 1.48.0 to 1.46.0.

Doing that was simple:

rustup default 1.46.0

(Really impressed with how smooth the tooling is!)

I ran `cargo run` again, everything rebuilt, but then I ran into another problem:

thread 'main' panicked at 'called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: Unsupported', /Users/hisham/.cargo/registry/src/github.com-1ecc6299db9ec823/gfx-backend-vulkan-0.3.3/src/lib.rs:326:9

There’s a ton of people reporting different errors for panicked at ‘called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` on the internet, but a search for “err value unsupported gfx-backend-vulkan” put me on the right track. Another Amethyst beginner fixed the same issue by installing the necessary Vulkan library.

The recipe for this library was not yet available for GoboLinux, but thanks to our friends in Gentoo, it was easy to read their ebuilds for vulkan-loader and vulkan-headers and build the equivalents for Gobo.

With the Vulkan library built, I tried again, and then it progressed further, but still failed. But then, the output itself told me what was missing and gave me a useful hint:

vulkan: No DRI3 support detected - required for presentation
Note: you can probably enable DRI3 in your Xorg config

Fixing that was easy, thanks to a very on-point blog post by an Arch user, which told me to edit my /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following entries for my Intel Xorg driver:

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
   Driver      "intel"
   Option      "AccelMethod"  "sna"
   Option      "TearFree"     "true"
   Option      "DRI"          "3"
EndSection

I restarted X, and voilà! The 2D starter repo for Amethyst showed me window with graphics and accepted keyboard input.

Now let’s continue reading the Amethyst book to learn how to make a simple game in Rust! :)

Earlier today I quipped on social media: “We need dumb tech and smart users, and not the other way around”.

Later, I clarified that I’m not calling users of “smart” devices dumb. People are smart. The tech should try to not “dumb them down” by acting condescendingly, cutting down on their agency and limiting their opportunities of education.

A few people shared replies to the effect that they wish for smart devices that wouldn’t be at odds with the intents of the user. After all, we all want the convenience of tech, so why settle for “dumb tech”, right?

The question here becomes a game of words: what is a “smart device”, after all?

A technically-minded person will would look at smart devices like smartphones, smart TVs, etc., and say “well, they are really computers”, or “they have computers inside”. But if we want to be technically pedantic, what is a computer? Having a Turing-complete microprocessor running programs? My old trusty microwave for sure has a microprocessor, but it’s definitely not a “smart device”. So it’s not about the internals, it definitely has to do with the end-user perception of the device.

The next reasonable approximation towards a definition is that a smart device allows you to install “apps”. You can extend it with more functionality (which is really making use of the fact that it’s a “computer inside”). Smart TVs and smart phones check this box. However, other home appliances like “smart kettles” don’t, the “smartness” comes from being internet-connected. So, generally, it looks like smart devices are things you either run apps in, or control via apps (from another smart device, of course).

So, allowing for running apps pretty much makes something into a computer, right? After all, a computer is a machine for running software. But it’s really interesting to think what is in fact a computer — where do we draw the line. From an end-user perspective, a game console is also a machine for running software — a particular kind of software, games — but it is not a computer. Is a Smart TV a computer? You can install apps in it. But they are also generally restricted to a certain kind of software: streaming services, video and the like.

Something doesn’t feel like a computer unless you can run any kind of software in it. This universality is a key concept. It’s interesting how we’re slowly driven back to the most fundamental definition of a computer, Alan Turing’s definition of a computer as a universal machine. Back in 1936, before the first actual computer was built during World War II, Turing wrote a philosophy section within a mathematics paper where he made this thought exercise of what it means to compute, and in his example he used the idea of a person doing the computations by hand: reading data, applying rules to process data, producing new data, repeat. Everything that computes follows this model: game consoles, the autopilot in an airplane, PCs, the microcontroller in my microwave. And though Turing had a technical notion of universality in mind, the key point for us here is that in our end-user understanding of a computer and what makes us call some things computers and others not, is that the program (or set of allowed programs) is not fixed, and this is what we see (and Turing saw) as universal: that any program that may be expressed in the computer’s language can be written and run on it, not just a finite set.

Are smart devices universal machines, then, in either sense of the word? Well, you can install new apps in them. Then, it can do new things it couldn’t yesterday. Does that make it a computer? What about game consoles? If I buy a new game (which is effectively new software!), it can also do new things, but you won’t really look at it as a computer. The reason is because you’re restricted on the kind of new software you can make this machine run: it only takes games, it’s not universal, at least from an end-user point of view.

But game consoles are getting “smarter” nowadays! They not only play games; maybe it will also have an app for showing you the weather, maybe it will accept some streaming service… but not others — and here we’re hinting at a key point of what “smart” devices are really like. They are, in fact, on the inside, universal machines that satisfy Turing’s definition. But they are not universal machines for you, the owner. For me, my Nintendo Switch is just a game console. For Nintendo, it is a computer: they can install any kind of software in it in their next software update. They can decide that it can play games, and also access Youtube, but not Netflix. Or they could change their mind tomorrow. From Nintendo’s perspective, the Switch is a universal machine, but not from mine.

The same thing happens, for example, with an iPhone. For Apple, it is a computer: they can run anything on it, the possibilities are endless. From the user’s perspective, it is a phone, into which you can install apps, and in fact choose from a zillion apps in the App Store. But the the possibilities, vast as they may be, are not endless. And that vastness doesn’t help much. From a user perspective, it doesn’t matter how many things you can do with something; what matters are what things you want to do with it, which of those you can and which ones you can’t. Apple still decrees what’s allowed and what isn’t in the App Store, and will also run their own software on the operating system, over which you have zero say. A Chromecast may also be a computer on the inside, with all the necessary networking and video capabilities, but Google has decided that it won’t let me easily play my movies with it, and so it can’t, just like that.

And such is the reality of smart devices. My Samsung TV is my TV, but it is Samsung’s computer. My house is filled, more and more, with computers over which I have no control. And they have control over what I can and what I can’t do with the devices I bought. From planned obsolescence, to collecting data on my habits and selling it, to complicating access to functionality that is there — the common thread in smart devices is that there is someone on the other side controlling the experience. And as we progress towards the “ever smarter”, with AI-based voice assistants being added to more devices, a significant part of that experience becomes the ways it “delights and surprises you“, or, in other words, your lack of control of it.

After all, if it wasn’t surprising, if it did just what you expected and nothing more, it wouldn’t be all that “smart”, right? If you take all the “smartness” away, what remains is a “dumb” device, an empty shell, waiting for you to tell it what to do. Press a button to do the thing, and the thing happens. Don’t press, it doesn’t do the thing. Install new functionality, the new functionality is installed. Schedule it to do the thing, it does when scheduled, like a boring old alarm clock. Use it today, it runs today. Put it away, pick it up to use it ten years from now, it runs ten years from now. No surprise upgrades. No surprises.

“But what about the security upgrades”, you ask? Well, maybe I just wanted to vacuum my living room. Can’t we design devices such that the “online” component isn’t an indispensable, always-on necessity? Of course we can. But then my devices wouldn’t be their computers anymore.

And why do they want our devices to be their computers? It’s not to run their software in it and free-ride on our electricity bill — all these companies more enough computers of their own than we can imagine. It’s about controlling our experience. Once the user has control over which software runs, they make the choices. Once they don’t, the choice is made for them. Whenever behavior that used to be user-controlled becomes automatic in a “smart” (i.e., not explicitly user-dictated) way, that is a way where a choice is taken away from you and driven by someone else. And they might hide choices behind “it was the algorithm”, which gives a semblance of impersonality and deniability, but putting the algorithm in place is a deliberate act.

Taking power away from the user is a deliberate act. Take social networks, for example. You choose who to follow to curate your timeline, but then they say “no, we want our algorithm to choose who to display in your timeline!”. Of course, this is always to “delight” you with a “better experience”; in the case of social networks, a more addictive one, in the name of user engagement. And with the lines between tech conglomerates and smart devices being more and more blurred, the effect is such that this control extends into our lives beyond the glass screens.

In the past, any kind of rant like this about the harmful aspects of any piece of tech could well be responded with a “just don’t use it, then!” In the world of smart devices, the problem is that this is becoming less of an option, as the fabric of our social and professional lives increasingly depends on these networks, and soon enough alternatives will not available. We are still “delighted” by the process, but just like, 15 years in, a smartphone is now just a phone, soon enough a smart kettle will be just a kettle, a smart vacuum will be just a vacuum and we won’t be able to clean our houses unless Amazon says it’s alright to do so. We need to build an alternative future, because I don’t want to go back to using a broom.

I was interviewed at the Changelog podcast about the surprising story of the maintainership transition in htop:

The Changelog 413: How open source saved htop – Listen on Changelog.com

I am not going to talk directly about the US protests. Instead, I will briefly note the role of the State in them, both as cause—promoting institutional racism—and as a continuing instigator. But aren’t the protests for justice, which supposedly needs to come from the State? But the government is clearly not interested in justice. So we have on one side the people, on the other side the State. But it didn’t have to be this way by definition: it’s _this_ particular state that’s the problem. And this makes me think of Peter Thiel.

Peter Thiel has said, in no uncertain terms, that he does not believe in democracy and ultimately wants the destruction of any form of State. That’s what he went up on stage in the elections for. That’s what the alt-right stands for. This is not a crisis, this is an ongoing plan. Historians will look at this as a multi-decade process, with the early 1980s under Reagan and Thatcher as the first inflection point, and the last few years with the alt-right, Trump and Brexit as the second one.

The first stage, neoliberalism, was about crippling the state in order to declare it inefficient and privatize it. In the 90s in particular this was sped up in practice and played down in discourse, but early on this was the stated goal.

Now at the second stage, it is no longer about crippling government institutions. It is about crippling the concept of government itself: get the incompetent to power, so that the supposed flaws of the democratic model become evident. Then offer something else.

Of course, the trickery there is that invariably the incompetent were led to power in various places by apparently legal but effectively criminal means: mass propaganda done in breach of campaign funding laws, voter supression, buying congress.

So now we’re at the stage where there’s a useful minority of radicalized fascists ensuring we get the worst possible government, and a mass of average people whose heroes are billionaires, ranging from your monopolist-turned-philantropist to your tweeting-techbro bigot. It may seem contradictory that the forces that are ultimately destroying the notion of nation-state ostensibly employ the discourse of nationalism. But if you pay attention, they are priming their base on adapting to the upcoming state of things.

This pandemic is the first time in history when we see a national crisis being addressed by the government by giving a press release and giving names of _companies_ who are going to be doing this and that to deal with the issue. This was very, very startling to see.

The notion that is up for companies and not the state to organize society is being normalized. America is at the forefront of this process, and has been for a long time. Other places still have things like functioning health and educational systems, but the pressure exists. In that sense, the landmark space launch — once a matter of national pride, now privatized into another triumph of business over country — led by Thiel’s associate Musk, is not at all disconnected from the ongoing events. They are deeply, closely connected.

Thiel’s company Palantir — named after the all-seeing eye in LOTR, another techbro favorite — provides machinery for mass surveillance in the the US. The surveillance people worldwide are under is already managed by a private company.

When you think of Russia and its oligarchs, or the growing number of billionaires in China’s parliament — why lobby the middleman, just buy a Congress seat for yourself — we see that the increasingly direct control of superpowers by businessmen is not an American-only phenomenon. It might be that the façade of a state will stick around for long, as a useful device as people cling to their flags and anthems, but I feel the foundations of the modern nation-state slowly crumble into dust under my feet, and I do not like what’s taking its place.

Zygmunt Bauman saw it back in the 1990s: in a world of companies, we’re no longer citizens, only consumers. And the rippling effects of this are much worse than they initially sound, but this is a conversation for another time.

Alexis King just published a great blog post titled “No, dynamic type systems are not inherently more open”.

That reminded me of the talk I gave last year at FOSDEM, titled “Minimalism versus types”, where I advocated for static types from a slightly different angle. I tried to convince people that types in dynamically-typed programs are often more complicated than people realize. And often more complicated than in typical statically-typed languages.

People often say the opposite, that static type systems are more complicated, and dynamically-typed languages are simpler. At the surface level, this seems true: in a dynamic world you just go merrily declaring variables, assigning values and doing things with them, without ever having to write down any types, no matter how trivial or complex they are. Things can’t get any simpler in the typing department than “doing nothing”, right?

Well, types are nothing more than the shapes and allowed behaviors of your data. So it’s not like you don’t have shapes and behaviors in any program, regardless of the language… so, you have types, whether you write them or not. They are there, even in assembly language, even if at a conceptual level, as the sets of “valid values” your program can manipulate. And you have to think about them, and they have to make sense, and they have to do the right thing. So, in short, in a correct dynamically-typed program the types need to be just as correct as they are in a statically-typed one (or else you’ll get runtime errors).

In other words, the types are there, but you have to run the type checker in your head. And you know what’s funny? When people don’t write down the types, they often end up with types that are often more complicated than the types from people who do write them. The complexity just goes under the radar, so it piles up.

One day you open that module which you haven’t touched in six months, and you see a function call where the third argument is null. You need to remember what kinds of variables you can pass to that third argument, or read the whole source code to figure it out. You follow through the code to see all places that third argument is used and realize the accepted type of the third argument depends on what you give to the second argument. Congratulations, you’re dealing with a dependent type, which means you’ve just surpassed Haskell in terms of type system complexity. Compilers that deal with this kind of type system are so complex they are effectively proof assistants (and are at the forefront of programming language research), and here you are dealing with those data types with your brain (and your faith in your ability to come up with sufficient tests) alone.

Given that there is no mechanical type checker to prescribe what is expressible, and that the dynamic runtime will accept anything as long as the program doesn’t crash, when doing typechecking in your head you essentially have the world’s most powerful and complicated type checker at your disposal. And once you start making use of this power, you end up dealing with the world’s most complicated type system.

And when you give people expressive power, they use it. In my experience, people go wild constructing complicated structures in dynamic languages that they normally wouldn’t in static languages. It’s not that static languages are less powerful (Turing equivalence, blah blah), but they make the things you’re doing more obvious to you (Alexis’s post has some great examples). In a dynamically-typed program people are all to keen to make variables and data structures perform double or triple duty (“this is a X but also a Y under circumstances Z”), but when they have to write down what they’re doing as types, it’s like a little conscience check, and they think twice before creating a more complex type for something that could be described in a simpler way (simple example: they’ll probably make two plain functions instead of making one function that takes a string argument that changes the behavior of other arguments). Static types nudge you towards simpler, less “clever” solutions (and we all know what kind of solution is more maintainable in the long run).

But okay, let’s assume we avoid “clever” and pick the same solutions in either. Writing the same program in a static or a dynamic language to process the same data in the same way, you will end up with values of roughly the same types in both. The fact that the variables have static types or not does not change that.

“But in a dynamic language I don’t have to write the types! It’s less work!”

“Not having to” write types but having to think about them anyway is like doing math “not having to” write anything down and doing all calculations in your head. How is it an advantage to not use pen and paper to track down your train of thought as you do a complex calculation, and instead be restricted to do it only in your head? And how is an advantage to not have a mechanical tool — like a calculator, which can actually compute the things you wrote down — to check whether what you wrote with pen and paper makes sense?

I’m lazy, so I hate doing any math in my head. I’ll take writing things down and have a machine check it for me any day of the week. Why wouldn’t I want the same when programming? That’s what computers are for, right? To save us from computing things in our head. So I’ll write my types, and have the compiler check whether they make sense, thank you very much. It’s less work.