RetroTechie

Joined 3 years ago

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1,574
Member since
Jul 20
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Recent submissions

Comment · 2 hours ago
US != rest of the world. Even within the US, it's economics more than politics that decide where things are headed. Those economics have shifted in favour of renewables.

And personally I expect that datacenter buildout to slow down. The AI bubble won't last, and average dude in the street simply won't up their spending on AI (applications) to a level that justifies the ongoing buildout.

Yes lots of resources will be wasted. But it won't last, markets & investors will correct the situation somehow.

Comment · 3 hours ago
Let's try & figure out interstellar travel first, ok?
Comment · 8 hours ago
Excessive consumption becomes unsustainable when the world runs up against resource limits. Go figure.

Can't say I'm feeling much empathy for the passengers here. That said: this companies' planning was piss-poor going by the article. Fuel prices go up & down, can't you hedge / insure against that somehow? Buy fuel in advance, take delivery in batches at locations A, B, C around the world. Something like that? Passengers paid $320k/pop, and best you could do is pass the hat & drop 'em off in the next port? Shame on you.

Edit: don't be surprised if that ship still sits in same Cambodian harbour years from now. With a fat (unpaid) bill attached, amid ongoing legal battles. What a waste...

Comment · 11 hours ago
> Answering what should exist and what the world is missing requires a vision for what you want the world to become.

Nonsense. All that's needed is asking around, and listen. You could literally throw the dice, go to random country X, and ask the 1st person you meet what would make their life better.

Maybe the gutter on their roof is leaking, and they need someone to fix it. If so, maybe there's more people with the same problem, and a gutter-fixer would make people happy.

Sure, if you have a 'grand vision' and (again, by asking around) find there's others sharing that vision, by all means go work on that. But to find something useful to work on, any 'vision' is really not required.

Comment · 22 hours ago
> When you launch nano without a file loaded, there's a notice at the bottom of the screen: [ Welcome to nano. For basic help, type Ctrl+G. ]

Does it also show that when invoked with a filename? If not: it should! (newbie user invoking with a filename *also* doesn't know how to use the editor. So that help pointer should be shown in both cases).

Comment · 1 day ago
"for RISC-V hardware that natively supports fast misaligned memory copies"

That'll be server-CPU territory, most likely? (read: not supported by cheapo 4/8-core consumer CPUs)

Comment · 1 day ago
> Is there any truly good solution to this?

Yes, what smart RAM manufacturers (or who've been longer in the business) are doing: ramp up production capacity, but do so gradually.

Those ramp-up timelines tend to be longer than the markets' boom & bust cycles. So they'll be looking at longER-term trends to decide what to invest in & when.

Comment · 1 day ago
His logic is flawed in multiple ways:

1) Assuming that RAM in AI datacenter is doing more useful work than outside it.

Wrong! That depends entirely on what it's used for. And since mr. Altman doesn't KNOW what your or my RAM chip(s) are used for, he also can't decide which use is more important.

2) What he deems more important, is a matter of opinion. What's important to him, likely won't matter to me. And vice versa.

Go read some history books, mr. Altman! Maaany wars have been fought over "I know what's best for everyone! Now bow & kiss my toes!"

Oh and 3) all those AI datacenters are built using other people's money than the tech bros running the show. Whereas consumers pay for RAM with their own money. But hey, no doubt it's more fun to shovel *other* people's cash into a firepit.

Comment · 2 days ago
Wow so much [attacking the messenger] in this thread, without addressing the points it makes.

Humanity is destroying this planet's biosphere in the pursuit of greed. And it might well cause our demise (not just us, btw) if we don't change our ways.

Imho it's hard to find flaws in the logic laid out in the essay. If you can: bring it on!

Comment · 2 days ago
Modelslapping
Comment · 2 days ago
"But What I’ve come to realize is that there actually are some projects that are guaranteed success by simply working on them."

Try & look for this in any activity. It's analog to "attention makes [X] more beautiful". Put more effort in = get more out of it.

It's so easy to get lost in things that appear fun/useful at first, but turn into a pointless timesink that gets you nothing.

Do things that move you forward, solve problems, learn, help others, sharpen your skills. For such activities, any effort invested has a return.

Comment · 2 days ago
> I feel like it won't be long before someone comes up with a crazy chimera of an OS that can run DOS, Windows, Linux, BSD, and macOS binaries.

This is the future, imho: some tiny, cross-platform, ultra-reliable kernel (like seL4), a set of shims that offer different sets of APIs (OS "personalities" if you will) to apps, an emulator, VM or binary translation layer here & there, all happily living under the same roof.

*BSD (including Linux compat layer) + Wine + some emulators like DOSBox already goes a long way. MS Windows desktop running on top of Linux isn't outside the realm of the possible either. And be sure to check Genode OS.

Fun times ahead!

Comment · 2 days ago
> The no cost nature of Linux, as compared to the per-client client licensing for server versions of NT, can't be understated, though.

THIS, so much. One time (~1995 or so?) I bought a boxed SUSE Linux release. Pulled out the book, and practically on the 1st page, there was a copyright notice specifically allowing anyone to copy that book & pass it on. Whereas for practically every other book I'd had in my hands up to that point, copyright notices consisted of various "forbidden to do X, Y or Z" statements.

That right there convinced me I had something different, something special in my hands. Disclaimer: I had read about "open source" before, so I did know what I was looking at. But still it felt special.

Unsurprisingly: note the documentation linked to at the end of jmmv's Unix<->NT comparison above. They're ALL Amazon "buy this book" links. Over on the Linux/BSD side of the fence, such references are typically web pages, man pages, a free-download pdf or the like.

It's not the "free beer" aspect that got me over time. It's the "open", "sharing", "community project", versus "closed", "profit", "property of BigCorp Inc".

Comment · 3 days ago
You'd be surprised how many people don't even have drinking water stored to get through a few days. That's 2nd most essential after air to breathe.

Same with food. NONE of this type of preparation is difficult, very space / time consuming, or expensive.

As for the LNG situation: worst case is do without heating. Totally doable in UK climate; extra layers of clothing & blankets / sleeping bags do the job (been there, done that in the NL).

Remember we're talking getting through a crisis, not comfort. Although you can have both with more prep work.

Comment · 3 days ago
> Alpine userland is nice

NetBSD userland is not?

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