I'm really surprised 8GB are still even made, but also that 8GB still costs a whole $20. Not having shopped for a computer for several years, 8GB was the standard low-end configuration back then. It seems progress has ceased.

Yeah it looks like it nearly leveled off about 2010. That's about when I remember 16 GB being a pretty decent / normal configuration.

https://aiimpacts.org/trends-i...

Made me curious if there aren't nations with no military.

enjoy

https://science.howstuffworks....

Interestingly Panama is one of them. After getting rid of Noriega they decided having a military was a bigger risk than not. No US military bases, either.

The federal government of the USA is, as well its role in the world, is of course a bit different.

Cool except it's teleoperated.

Still useful to show what it's physically capable of. And collect training data I presume.

It is interesting to see the gap between autonomous and teleoperated is still so big. (Not surprising I guess since otherwise the streets would be full of self-driving cars).

It is hard but they're working on it:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts...

(Tesla in this case)

The federal government does do a lot of things other than military.

To me it's a cool new robot.

It's interesting that they would start with intentionally inhuman motion for a humanoid robot, but it's a robot, not a nightmare.

Also please nobody bring up the 'uncanny valley.' As an insight it's played out, especially since this isn't a robot that is ever supposed to appear human.

I don't think the next 25 years will bring 120% real increase. The main story of the last 25 years is the world's largest nations played catch-up with what the rich were already doing, but that is petering out. And the global population pyramid is inverting, which while necessary, will start to kick in and cause a serious strain on economies everywhere. And this is before we even get to climate change.

Then again, maybe AI will discover cold fusion and cheap carbon sequestration.

Don't you just love those meetings that could have been resolved by email?

"Could have" if only human nature were different than it actually is?

Everything in my experience tells me that the vast majority of people will never mentally process a complex email message. They don't even pretend to. "I told you (in an email)" carries zero weight.

Right but taking out a "loan" is not income (which is handy if you never repay it); and "business expenses" are not income (which is handy is a business ends up paying for your food, your travel, your residence, and even your recreation); and capital gains are paid at less than the rate of regular earnings, which is handy if you take all your compensation as shares instead of a paycheck.

But what's the use if the returned Mars samples just re-enter over Moscow and explode?

The risk of reputational harm is very real. Whenever a big company or government releases a model, you can bet a lot of 'journalists' will be trying to prod it into saying something offensive so they can print the headline "Microsoft AI is racist" etc.

Is there on vs off-peak pricing? For example if you don't have an EV and got one thus quadrupling your electricity, would your bill quadruple or not so much if you charged it at night?

They are working on it

"California Tops US EV Adoption: 25% EV Share Of Total Sales In H1 2023"

https://insideevs.com/news/688...

This story from a couple months ago says "Texas is the only state in the U.S. that generates more than a third of its electricity from wind and solar energy."

https://www.newsweek.com/texas...

And yet, electricity in Texas cost 11.36 cents / kWh vs 19.90 cents / kWh in California in Jan 2024.

https://www.electricchoice.com...

So where does that leave the idea that renewable energy must be very expensive?

Also I'm curious where 40 cents above came from.

I won't defend the wording of the headline, but it is an important threshold, because it's the point at which the conversion to renewable energy gets harder and more expensive.

As long as renewables are just cutting into demand for fossil fuels, you don't have to worry about storage / demand shaping / discarding energy. But now California has reached that point.