"Current technology is current and has reached the limit of the cash we can squeeze out of it due to increasing software requirements...but Future Technology is better and has more breathing room for profit margin."
 
I think the bigger news between the lines is that AMD can both sign mega-scale deals to provide compute to OpenAI and also continue to pursue the consumer graphics+console market. I think this is proving that Intel's monolithic approach (design + fab) is archaic, or too expensive to succeed and they've got enough cash and breathing room to actually innovate in the design space.....The Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 8 channels of RAM is amazing.
 
So...can we PLEASE get a better compute stack than ROCm, or at least make it easy to support consumer graphics?? The 395's gfx1151 is still crap with ROCm 7.0 and it has "AI" in the marketing title!!!

The only difference between fraud and market economics in this case is one is legal. They both take advantage of the consumer on the receiving end of it and leave them with e-waste and the need to Spend More Money to get something they had working previously with no other recourse other than..spend money.
 
I agree with whoever said that either services should be run in perpetuity (with a trust fund perhaps from the profit made) OR they fully release a server or specification to allow this device to continue to fully function.

How does AI cause job cuts in outsourced IT? This doesn't make any sense to me. My gut is telling me that its due in part to execs kowtowing to Trump and not wanting to spend money on non-American jobs, and just cutting the job entirely, but I have no evidence of this, but IT outsourcing is in large part Windows Desktop and Windows Server administration which can't just be 'automated' with an LLM, and some savvy IT help desk star isn't becoming 10x more productive with an LLM at their fingers....are they? Am I missing out on some technique or knowledge????

For $300? If you're the type that can throw $300 at a toy like this for a kid that is probably going to get bored with it quickly, then hopefully you can also pay the $5 per game or whatever is getting charged for the DLC to keep them interested in it beyond the half-hour they'll spend on the game.... Also I'm not sure that this is somehow better than a phone if you've bought logic/educational games on the phone, other than feeling better about the form factor since each game is going to be 'rotate the cube to put the thing in the right place'.

You nailed it - a 2 year old can pick up a rubics cube and play with it, even if they don't get the point of it. This has both reduced the number of cubes and increased the level of knowledge required just to play with it.
 
This feels like a conversation between marketing execs and the engineering staff of "What can we do to bring additional value to the Rubic's (tm) brand of revolving cubes?" (and it probably should have stayed in the conversation phase)
 
$300 USD are you f-ing kidding me, more than a switch? *With their own OS built for it* - 9 squares per side would have doubled the cost or more so this simple crap *is* the compromise!!!

Rooftop arrays on a DC are more for looks and 'street cred' than anything else. The power usage is in megawatts, not kilowatts, but a rooftop array gets people like you saying they actually are trying to improve the environment, so they are successful at that.... Which is really besides the point - power usage is fine if it improves humanity or is useful, but I bet over half the power usage is for advertisement and customer tracking/privacy invasion, not things actual humans want other than the shareholders.

I'm less concerned with the CO2 of the vehicles, which is probably quite high, than the fact that most farmland in Brazil is coming from destroyed rain forest, which is a MUCH better carbon sink.

A few things:

Should tell you enough right there, the electricity to run DCs is still pretty dirty though a few are experimenting with nuclear, 'clean energy' just costs too much to run a DC with since its negotiated with the provider, its not like Meta or Google actually owns the panels or turbines. This is their way of getting carbon credits.

This is taking a process that normally takes millions of years, speeding it up to weeks, and super-concentrating it in one spot. "But its already like that", yes, but not super concentrated, and the expectation is the bicarbonate produced by the crushed rock goes into rivers, washed into the sea. Our rivers and oceans are stressed enough, and again, this is super concentrated in specific areas.
 
I hear what you're saying about 'the damage is already being done' but just because we're hurting the planet doesn't mean we need to hurt it more to stop the pain already being done.

As much as experimenting with terraforming sounds intriguing, doing it to our own planet while we still live on it does not. Wouldn't it be better to come up with solutions that remove carbon from the production sites *before* it gets in the air rather than fuck around with the natural processes of our life support system? I know its not an 'all scientists work on the same thing' but it terrifies me that there's people who want to experiment with our planet's abilities to do a minor thing and change it into a major one (this one isn't as bad as the nanoparticles in the sky to reflect light at least).... If nothing else, processes like this just gives the polluters more incentive to keep polluting and will further reduce the investments into clean energy.

What sites are you on?? I never get any geoblocking browsing from inside EU except from little news sites from broadcast TV in places like Oklohama that get linked to occasionally. Its so rare I can't even remember the last time I got geoblocked (normally the 451 http code)..... And I really appreciate the sites that allow me to block cookies. I get its 'work for you' but allowing the consumer to know 1) where their data is going to and 2) to block it WITHOUT logging in was one of the better moves of the EU on the internet. If you're not allowing me to block cookies or data uses on your website, and its geoblocked from EU, nothing of value has been lost.

People say "I was raised with TV and I'm fine!" but when kids in the 1950s->pre-netflix era watched TV you typically had a serial stream of crap to choose from, with cartoons on at certain socially-acceptable times of day (normally after school or saturday mornings only). Older demographic advertisements made more money so kids either watched that crap or, more likely, turned it off and did something else. "Good" video games that could keep your attention for hours (lets say mid-90s) started to change this equation but even still, it wasn't ubiquitous and many kids didn't like the games that offerred this level of immersion.
 
My kids have a thousand, *good* cartoons to choose from, just on Netflix, not to mention *every disney movie ever made*, 35 seasons of the Simpsons, and the thousands of other good programs on Disney, not even talking about the free shit you find on a typical smart TV (and I'm not even adding in the Youtube app on the TV which is a whole other thing).
 
4K HDR Dolby Sound Screen Time now is addictive in ways it NEVER was in the past, so yes, we do have a harder time as parents in the 2020s managing screen time than parents did 20 or 30 or more years ago. "My friend has a phone and can play as much as they want" arguments don't help either. Digital Interactivity has reached Drug Addiction levels and its hard to be able to know when to draw the line.

There are zigbee thermostats (at least for radiators) that do not require a cloud connection. The trade off to not having a cloud connection and hence a centralized app is user-supplied technical skill, which is lacking in 99% of the population, thus why cloud connected devices are popular.

I also run home assistant. There's a few problems with what you want to do -

1) The easiest devices to integrate are *already* in the cloud, and you add some credentials to let HA automate the API
2) Using local automation protocols like Zigbee or Z-wave
3) Hackery via various serial protocols or MODBUS or something to get it to work as you expect.

The average internet user has ZERO experience with almost any of this which is why alexa/google home are so popular. It Just Works, except when it doesn't, and you can ask alexa or gemini for assistance.

Limiting the number of cloud connections isn't magically going to cause deshittification. The problem is capitalism and chasing ever increasing profits. I feel like this is a drum I keep beating recently but its really the root of the problem - companies need (via capitalistic growth desires) to figure out ways to attract new customers and extract more capital from existing customers, so they add features, change features, and end up enshittifying their product.

In order to get away from this, we have to stop chasing absolute growth for the sake of it, but its absolutely ingrained not just in business, and government, but in our very culture. Maybe its even a part of being human, I don't know, but growth for growth's sake is what is killing the internet and the planet in general.

I thought it was the new user block that did that, there was still a ton of spam with the delay because it took less time to sign up for a new account than it did to wait for the limit.....

Maybe you're trying to be funny but its most definitely not close or 'the suburbs' for Beijing, any more than 800 miles is 'the suburbs' in the USA (unless you consider Jacksonville Florida a suburb of NYC)... Its easily 10+ hours or more by train to this 'Eiffel Tower', especially for a tourist with limited time, its absolutely wrong and not even close.