Welcome to the machine.

This is my sponsorship profile. Here I’d like to convince you to support my work.

I am an American computer scientist who lives in the Research Triangle. I come from a very low SES background, and got married to an Indonesian immigrant when I was 19. While we live together, I work as a security guard for a distribution centre to make ends meet, but it’s always a challenge to get ahead. Most of my waking hours outside of work go towards computer science! I’m sure you’ll find at least one of my countless projects quite interesting.

I have learned many programming languages and paradigms over the years, and I learned baremetal programming on the Game Boy Advance when I was seventeen – but I began to notice that something was wrong with how code actually works. Computers weren’t always doing what they were supposed to, even for programmers, and I spent a few years figuring out why.

This led me to pen many essays on the subject, all variously exploratory in their efforts to identify what is not working. They revolve heavily around systems programming in particular, since this type of programming seems to be the most consequential and powerful.

Here is a list of highlights among the volume of articles I have written about sustainable computer science:

• Argued for “law & order” as a solution to systems misbehaviour [1]
• Provided a general ethos for systems programming that makes computing sustainable in the long run [2]
• Provided a pathos for why unsustainable computing is morally wrong [3]
• Disposed of the concept of memory safety as a solution to systems misbehaviour [4]
• Written about instances of unsustainable computing to illustrate what the problem is with it [5]
• Identified suspect incentive structures at play that are working towards a future where we don’t own our computers at all [6]
• Dissected the recently popular concept of decentralisation, to dispell of its status as a panacea to unsustainable or unjust computing practises [7]
• Elaborated on a new approach to overcoming platform leadership problems on the internet [8]
• Introspected strong criticisms against my own work [9]

To the same ends I have also been endeavouring to implement a proof-of-concept of a programming language called C*, which has a living spec on my wiki. C* is most special, as it facilitates comprehensive compile-time guarantees of fully arbitrary mutability of state, an aspect of programs no other language to date has the ability to express. Other projects I am working towards when I have the spare time include:

• The ÔÇô Game Engine, a collection of system protocols that can be implemented agnostically from operating systems and “platforms”
  • ÔÇô’s VR6, an all-in-one runtime + IR + collection of Embeddable Strict Subsets of many popular programming languages
  • Lapis, a state management module with intense semantic integration with the ESSs provided by VR6
• An unnamed game console that runs without an operating system, instead providing services through static libraries
• Various tools & services to facilitate syndication across social networks, both public and on the deepweb
• HALO, a social network building on most of the above works that provides independently scalable content networking through a suite of protocols

I am only one person, and these days I am very broke. The more you support me, the more time I can dedicate towards all of these things. I could wind down to a three-day or even two-day workweek waiting tables and still keep my life afloat. That said, your support means more than anything to me, especially at this stage, no matter how much you donate or even if you don’t. Please give my projects a star or follow me if you can. It helps me out a lot.