Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Checkout localllama (Score 5, Informative) 192

To address the question: "Where can I find open-source, local-only AI solutions?"

There is a vibrant online community called localllama dedicated to this very topic. Localllama is a great resource for individuals interested in running AI models locally without relying on cloud services. You can explore a variety of models and tools within this community.

One popular option is 'llama.cpp', a high-performance library for running large language models locally. 'llama.cpp' is designed to be efficient and can run on both CPUs and GPUs. For those who prefer a more comprehensive framework, the Hugging Face Transformers library is another excellent choice. It supports a wide range of models and provides extensive documentation and community support.

While a GPU is recommended for optimal performance and faster inference times, it is possible to run these models on a CPU. However, be prepared for significantly longer processing times if you choose to use a CPU.

Comment F'em (Score 1) 197

Fuck Apple.

But also, but Epic too.

Apple needs to get their bitch ass slapped back to the stone age and has for a very long time now.

But it's not like Epic is some bastion of perfection. They have the moral high ground only because Apple cedes it at every opportunity.

Comment Apple's ENTIRE business model... (Score 1) 73

...is fleecing its customers in various ways, be it this sort of thing, or somehow convincing everyone their products are perfect. They are fantastic at it, you'll never hear me say differently, and it's made them the richest company on the planet. But they're doing it at the expense of a horde of zombie sucker customers, and this is just more of the same.

Comment Hmm, let's see... (Score 2) 154

...I have 64Tb of space in my home server currently, spread across 8 8Tb hard drives. Jumping over to Microcenter.com, the cheapest 8Tb spinner I can currently get is $150, while the cheapest 8Tb SSD I can get is $500.

So, $1,200 versus $4,000.

I'd LOVE to switch to all SSDs, but not with that price disparity... and especially in today's economic climate, I don't think businesses are going to want to do it either (setting aside those that NEED SSDs for speed reasons).

I know this guy is talking about 5 years from now, and the price disparity IS shrinking over time, but I just can't believe it's going to shrink THAT much in just 5 years. I don't doubt that he's right with the basic point about no more hard drives, but I think his time horizon is off by probably 5 years.

Comment Re:If MS didn't artificially limit who CAN run it (Score 1) 265

Hey, thanks for that! It's the first time I've ever seen it outright stated what the issue was (though now that I know what to search for I found plenty of places - figures). Makes sense now. And knowing what the emulation performance hit would be I definitely would choose not to upgrade even if given the choice... though I still think I'd like to be GIVEN the (informed) choice. Good to finally have a concrete answer though, so thanks again!

Comment If MS didn't artificially limit who CAN run it (Score 1) 265

...then it would probably have larger take-up.

But no, MS decided my Dell XPS 9560 with 32Gb RAM can't run it. No, not because I don't have a TPM - I do - but because the CPU, for some reason that has never been adequately explained, isn't supported. It's more than adequate to run Win11 well, but for some reason they decided that no, they wouldn't support it.
  And sure, I can force-install anyway, but then I gotta worry about not getting updates? Not an option.

Nobody is complaining about RAM requirements, those have always been in place. No one WOULD be complaining about CPU requirements if you supported more than you do AND articulated why others aren't supported, because again, CPU requirements have always been a thing. SSD/free space? Obviously okay. TPM? Well, you should absolutely provide a software emulation version, so a hardware TPM isn't a hard requirement (totally okay to flash a big, red "this is gonna suck" message if it has to go that route though).

In fact, that's really what SHOULD have happened right from the start: allow an update on any machine that CAN technically run it, but throw up warnings about why it might not be a good idea to do so, and let users decide. If someone knows they are going to get a slow, crippled experience and still chooses to upgrade, then go ahead, let 'em, and continue to support them. You know, like MS has pretty much always done?

But no, instead, MS artificially limited the pool of users. I don't know what the adoption rate would be if they had done this from the word go, but it would for sure be higher than it is now. And yes, some people argue that sometimes you have to leave legacy behind to move the state-of-the-art forward, and that's true, but let's be honest: what Win11 offers is NOT sufficiently ahead of Win10 to warrant leaving so many behind.

They shot themselves in the foot, and now all they can do is wait for peoples' machines to age out and they get them on the next purchase. I won't even get into the obvious sustainability arguments there because even if we have a whole other planet to dump our waste on, that would still be a shitty thing to do to cusotmers.

Comment Re:Does it run desktop software? (Score 4, Informative) 65

It has file MANAGEMENT, yes, but it does NOT have a file MANAGER, because it does not expose a proper file system to user land, which is what people want. This is a purposeful design choice by Apple, and we can debate whether it's a good one or not, but it is what it is, and you'll never have a PROPER file manager as a result, you'll always have some kneecapped app.

And when you say it can run Office, photo edit software and sound/movie production, that's true in a general sense, but again, it's not what people mean. They mean it can't run the FULL desktop versions of this stuff, and that's true. You're not running a FULL version of Office, for example, you're still running a trimmed-down "mobile" version. You're not running a FULL version of Photoshop, or Cubase, or Final Cut, you're running trimmed-down versions. And, again, we can debate whether this is good or bad, whether they have 99% of what most people need 99% of the time and therefore could effectively be considered "full", but it again is what it is by design.

Comment Re: Nice work if you can get it (Score 1) 132

Considerations which too many ignore mostly involve representations across different media

  - does it scale well? What does it look like when 20' tall banner at a conference? What does it look like in a favicon?
  - what does it look like when cropped? What about when repeated? Repeated with an offset? In general: if this is used as a background during a presentation, is it going to look okay?
  - what does it look like in grayscale? Black& white? How will it look when printed out faxed
  - does it translate well into being a 3d object?

These are the only logo considerations i tend to care about

Comment Re: Claiming to achieve something... (Score 1) 35

Alternate theory: every time someone claims. Quantum Supremacy, it will be disproven via increasingly complex simulations of quantum computers. This will be an arms race until it is ultimately proven that P=NP, and that quantum computers are just really good at feeding in the large number of hidden variables required for the conversion.

Quantum reality: real

Superposition: almost certainly a misunderstanding

The math that currently drives quantum the theory: very real and very important and very good at predicting final states, but not "actual" descriptions of reality

Just a prediction, backed up by nothing.

Slashdot Top Deals

One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God. -- J. Gustav White

Working...