So I had similar concerns regarding Windows 11, but I sat down, learned how to clean it up, and put a Creative Commons open source guide for others to follow. I knew many other reluctant friends who are senior devs at prolific companies in the tech space, and with my guide they seem to have no real remaining complaints.
It covers both the initial installation, as well as all my post-install recommendations. It eliminates I believe all the tracking, adware, suggestions, Cortana, feeding the Bing/ChatGPT machine, telemetry, etc. Absolutely nothing breaks. No need for a Microsoft account. It should be straightforward and to-the-click/keystroke.
I'd also like to point out that 90 % of the time spent to "compute" the Mandelbrot set with the JIT-compiled code is spent on compiling the function, not on computation.
If you actually want to learn something about CUDA, implementing matrix multiplication is a great exercise. Here are two tutorials:
In the same spirit, metal roofs are really good, but they're really expensive. A great deal of the expense comes when you have to cut the roof panels to match the contours of the roof, or cut holes for vent pipes.
A simple, single ridge roof should be pretty cheap, but it would also be very boring. That may not sound too bad, but most people don't want to feel like they live in a barn.
> The computer was suddenly revealed as palimpsest. The machine that is everywhere hailed as the very incarnation of the new had revealed itself to be not so new after all, but a series of skins, layer on layer, winding around the messy, evolving idea of the computing machine. Under Windows was DOS; under DOS, BASIC; and under them both the date of its origins recorded like a birth memory. Here was the very opposite of the authoritative, all-knowing system with its pretty screenful of icons. Here was the antidote to Microsoft's many protections. The mere impulse toward Linux had led me into an act of desktop archaeology. And down under all those piles of stuff, the secret was written: We build our computers the way we build our cities -- over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.
I repeat the last sentence to my students all the time ("We build our computers the way we build our cities -- over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.")
There's no way to understand why our computers work the way they do without understanding the human, social, and economic factors involved in their production. And foregrounding the human element often makes it easier to explain what's going on and why.
Despite their names suggesting otherwise, high-temperature superconductors actually require a colder environment than their room-temperature counterparts. This may seem counterintuitive, yet it's a perfect illustration of the idiosyncrasies that arise within complex systems that evolve over time. These naming conventions, like the codebases in large corporations, are the outcome of continual modifications that are so deeply ingrained, a complete overhaul would be prohibitively costly. When examining such codebases, inconsistencies and discrepancies are common, and they can appear almost ludicrous when compared side by side. However, it's crucial to understand that they are not mistakes, but rather footprints in the path of progression, mapping out the convoluted journey of technological evolution.
When did you start using the internet regularly? (It's possible that you didn't change, it's just that your brain found an easier dopamine delivery system).
We know what the solutions are. Because they were implemented in the 1930s, and removed in the 1980s and 1990s as "deregulation".
- The US needs Glass-Stegall back. That's the requirement that banks and brokerages must be completely separate companies. The argument for repealing Glass-Stegall was that banks were now so smart that they didn't need such severe restrictions to prevent collapse from bad investment decisions. The banks were wrong.
- Companies should only be allowed one class of voting stock. The New York Stock Exchange used to require that, back when the NYSE had real power. Allowing multiple classes of voting stock is what gives us President for Life CEOs such as Google and Facebook have.
- No stock buybacks. Illegal in the US from the 1930s to 1981. The US recently banned stock buybacks for 12 months for companies which received coronavirus funding.[1] But that was a one time thing. During periods of low interest rates, companies tended to buy back their own stock with borrowed money to prop up the stock price. This mostly benefits executives with stock options.
- Limits on complexity of corporate organization. This was a thing for utility companies until a decade or so ago. They were limited to a tree depth of 3 in ownership. This was to make regulation easier and reduce the risk of bankruptcy cascades. See "Enron".
- Utility deregulation. Regulated utilities used to be standard. They got a monopoly in exchange for regulation. Since they were allowed a fixed rate of return on investment for rate-setting purposes, they were not hugely profitable but were very stable. The argument in the 1980s for deregulation is that utilities tended to overspend on infrastructure, building about 10% more stuff than they really needed. With deregulation, that money could go to stockholders. When Pacific Gas and Electric was deregulated, the company went bankrupt in only a few years, leaving the stockholders with nothing. And consumer prices went up in deregulated states vs regulated ones.[2]
- Tax law favors debt, where interest is deductible as a business expense, over dividends, which are not deductible. This encourages taking on too much debt.
- US bankruptcy law allows "secured creditors" too much security. Bankruptcy is too easy on lenders and too hard on accidental creditors.
What we need is a return to conservative financial principles.
freedom (liberty) really goes away if we stop defending it.
it's like cleaning (like any and all maintenance work), you're never done with it.
what a lie (a mistake) to believe that liberty once fought and realized stays with us, in a state of having been won. It must be maintained, it's like being in shape.
Liberty, software, bureaucracies and their complicated interactions... why must it get worse before it gets better?
I don’t think many people primarily think of their Web 2.0 content as valuable, even if you tell them it is. The value is a byproduct of use, and this will continue as long as people still enjoy creating content. Content that is deeply engaging will always have value. Content that is simply the upteenth regurgitation of a canonical source (recipes and API documentation come to mind) will be displaced by a source that just answers the damn question.
What could cause a major problem for search engines is the balkanization of the internet from Web 1.0 personal sites to Web 2.0 shared (but still indexable) platforms to mostly unindexable private groups. Discord, and Whatsapp are models for how this might happen.
What might cause an acceleration in that direction? Bots. ChatGPT can create content that is authentic-looking, and if open forums become Markets for Lemons [1] then people will move to trusted groups like smaller chat groups. (The other alternative is verifying identities which will happen but has privacy issues.)
It covers both the initial installation, as well as all my post-install recommendations. It eliminates I believe all the tracking, adware, suggestions, Cortana, feeding the Bing/ChatGPT machine, telemetry, etc. Absolutely nothing breaks. No need for a Microsoft account. It should be straightforward and to-the-click/keystroke.
https://github.com/GoofGarage/Win11Clean
If there’s any bugbears, create an issue. I’ll be responding to them every few weeks, and I try to update the release every 3 months.