If Politico's article is accurate (*) then the California law is the most absurdly evil of all, making Texas legislators look like Free Software-friendly angels by comparison. California legislators and governor think this is a hardware problem!

They've put the burden on hardware manufacturers. Somehow Dell, System 76, etc is supposed to be in charge of making sure that their laptops can communicate the user's age to websites, regardless of whatever OS and applications the owner wants to run on their own laptop.

I fear this is an attempt to force hardware manufacturers to remove owners' ability to choose what OS and applications they run. If System 76 sells you a Pop OS laptop (or Dell sells you a Windows laptop), they need to make sure their fork of Linux (or Windows) and all applications which can access the network, can access the laptop hardware's (?!?) age-by-user database, and that part of Pop OS can't be open/maintainable (same for Dell's version of MS Windows), nor can the owner replace the unmaintainable OS or unmaintainable browser/apps or else the hardware manufacturer is liable.

So if they don't want to suddenly be destroyed by the government, they need to make sure their hardware has a locked bootloader and a very owner-hostile OS.

That's fucking evil and I hope horrific misfortune [angry details omitted] befalls ever legislator who voted in favor of it, and the governor who signed it.

(*) I can't stress how important that disclaimer is. I haven't read the actual bill yet; I'm just going by TFA's description of it.

If he uses a PC running Free Software, then he's his own spy.

Yeah, the prices are initially surprising. I guess all the spying, ads, and preloaded crapware/shovelware have massively increased the margins on Smart TVs, so that competitive pressures brought the price to way below benevolent TVs. That should give us all an idea how many dollars worth of fuckery a Smart TV inflicts.

This is not a product endorsement; I have no familiarity with the product and all I did was search Amazon and pick the first result (which was also sponsored). That said: Amazon claims to sell this.

(This is not a store endorsement, either, but it looks like Amazon will let you put it in your shopping cart (and presumably buy it) without asking who is going to use it for what. I only mention this because someone else posted that some vendor refuses to sell monitors to individuals.)

What we call "Dumb TVs," the industry calls "monitors." Use that search term and you'll find plenty.

I don't know. You seem to make a good point, but what would you say if the 4 year old explained that you're mounting your 60-inch TV wrong?

Think 2016 (when the Republicrat era ended) and later.

If you're trying to avoid it, then that's just a software problem, not a hardware one. It's only a hardware problem if you're trying to get more of it.

I remember when floating point was the luxuriously optional silicon. I try to be welcoming to new things even if I don't know how/if I'll use them, because I think they don't really inflate the cost of the processors much. (Am I right? I don't actually know.)

Long-term, I think there's widespread consensus that integrated floating point was a good idea. Even less controversial, integrated MMUs are a critically necessary part of our modern world. (It's hard to imagine that separate chips like the 68851 used to exist.) The vector stuff? Some code uses it. The cryptographic instructions? Oh hell yes! Maybe I'll get reamed for this, but I think the processor industry has a pretty good track record of making silicon that we eventually truly do light up.

This time, it's a little harder. The applications for LLMs seem so niche. Part of me thinks they're doing this several years too soon. But that said:

0. Neural networks have more applications than LLMs. However worthless you think LLMs are: if your computer is good at LLMs, what else might it be good at?

1. I strongly disagree with everyone who says the hypothetical applications for this should run "in the cloud" instead of on the user's own hardware. All my experience tells me that's definitely wrong. IF this "AI" stuff really isn't a bubble (I think it probably is), then getting coprocessors widely deployed for it out there, is a very good thing. "AI" is no different from non-"AI" logic, in that whatever you're doing, from the user's point of view it should be as local as possible, and with as few external dependencies as possible. You don't need to teach me that lesson again for the 100th time, dammit. Maybe a lot of laypeople will get stuck with OpenAI's (or whoever's) services, but we will want to run it on our machines.

2. Maybe the reason there are so few existing applications that use neural nets, is that the cheap hardware to make it practical isn't out there yet! Get the silicon out there and then developers will find uses for it. Back when I was stealing my employer's electricity (and coffee) at night, I ray-traced on a network of 80386s and 80486s, and the 486's floating point performance made me a lot more excited to work on my ray-tracer. Had it ran slower, I would have moved on to the next amateur time-waster sooner.

But I can see why consumers wouldn't care a bit, right now. By the time you have real use for this hardware, I think you'll have already retired the new machine that you're buying today. But wasn't that sort of the case with vector and crypto instructions too? Different people will check it out at a different pace. It's always been like that.

Beware, I heard the project to port GrapheneOS to the Samsung Galaxy SmartToupee has run into a lot of driver problems.

The government should clearly define what this is.

One of the things that makes these such Interesting Times is that while your statement would normally make perfect sense, these days the government has a financial conflict of interest in this situation, so I think they should be completely disqualified from defining anything!

Trump is doing this for the purpose of personally profiting from it, and might possibly might even be one of the bettors. He (and everyone who works for him, since they necessarily lack independence) should not have any say at all in this bet's adjudication, other than as a biased advocate for whatever position best maximizes their own interests.

If you and I have a conflict, then neither you nor I are fit to be a neutral judge in that conflict.

Hoarding resources: It's hardwired into our "core-rope" memory and it was essential for our survival until very recently.

Ah, yes, the 2020 toilet paper shortage. I was so high and mighty after my early March Costco trip. It's good to be the king.

The future was promised to be that robots do the manual labor, and humans make art and sing merry songs.

Don't forget the part about getting to have sex with Orion dancers! Once you've gone green, you never go back.

I love how Lobot used to be exceptional as a "bluetooth asshole," but now he's mainstream orthodox.

He didn't change. We did.

Hey Europe, make your own competitors, and then the question will be..

I only wonder what will be financially left of MS, Alfabet, Meta, etcetera when ther only consumers are in the USA.

..why should US consumers use these services?