No, it's not a re-invention. It's a nice upgrade, based on specs alone, but will likely be priced at conventional levels. It honestly just looks like you're catching up to Apple Silicon....which is a very good thing...but no, having a decent GPU at a lower price doesn't fit the definition of "re-invention."...nor revolution...nor do I see any way this will change personal computing. Any updates to how we use computers would have happened regardless. Unless they sell these for less than $100 or some insane price drop, no...this is a modest upgrade for Windows users. If these actually ship in fall...well...computing will be EXACTLY THE SAME a year later. No revolution...No "reinvention"...just an actual spec upgrade for a change, which we haven't even been seeing in chips in the last few years, but used to be the norm, just 10 years ago.

AI contributions are garbage. AI is a powerful tool, but everything I've seen Claude write as new code in Java is SHIT. I tell it to write unit tests for working code?...verbose garbage...logic errors, insultingly stupid code, like testing getters and setters. I finished all my tasks early last week, so was assigned to help another team who had been struggling. I had to alter some working code with an open source big data platform I've never used. The code was very low quality, the comments were complex and baffling and ultimately wrong. It worked, from what I can tell (I had Claude write it because I don't have a replica of the customer data to test on).

However, I am not proud of the code it generated. I wasn't given enough time to learn the new API myself, so I relied on Claude. It took forever and was expensive...had I know what I was doing, I know I could have done it in 15 min. Fortunately that team had 2 AI advocates...those guys who think AI is a religion...all hail the AI...every conversation is about how awesome it is. Their brains are so atrophied and rotted from AI (one used to be a REALLY good programmer, I've worked with him for 10 years), they just approved my PR because it looks like the shit they keep submitting and I flag for being garbage.

However, that example illustrates the danger. If you know what you're doing and think an LLM will help? It's great. If you're not an expert at the technology, you should be forbidden from making any contributions...even if AI does all the heavy lifting. As many have said, it usually look pretty good. Those verbose comments resemble the writing style and documentation made by a competent professional. The code is structured without the usual tells of a clueless moron. It is pattern matching from very good programmers, but it really has no clue what it's doing.

The poor often have nicer devices than the middle class. If there's no hope for the future, why not? $900 is within most credit card limits. However, you knew this and wanted to just be an asshole. People who have hope for the future ensure they pay their bills. If you can't make ends meet and will get evicted either way, why scrimp and save? Maybe that's your choice?...but most poor I know have nicer shoes than me, nicer cars, spend more on booze and drugs and even food. Why?...not because I'm better, but because I have hope and my savings lead to a higher number in my investment account. The Amazon driver that delivered my dog leash last night?...probably not the case.

This is irrelevant to the economy and just a hopeless and shitty indicator of how devastating the AI bubble is. While you seem to scorn at a "gaming device," it's a computer.

Computers are important and for the first time in history, increasing in cost per capability. Yeah, The cheapest laptop I could buy in 1999 was $2000...more expensive that Apple's cheapest MacBook Pro. Sure, the iPhone 17 is more expensive than the iPhone 1, but it's has very tangibly improved. Until now, each cost increase was accompanied by a spec upgrade, often significant one. Now we're just paying more for old technology to keep this AI bubble financial scam running.

This is horribly depressing and has been going on for far too long and there's no end in sight. I've been holding off on upgrading or replacing multiple devices among my family to wait out this catastrophe...and even if the bubble crashes tomorrow, it'll take months to reach all the suppliers for sophisticated devices like a steamdeck. I wanted a steambox, but it probably won't be a low enough price for me to make a whim purchase...and I don't want it enough to suffer.

AI advocates want to believe in their vision of the future and won't let reality get in the way. That's the massive problem here. Visionaries are picturing a future based on science fiction notions of AI, not what LLMs can actually do. AI is useful and interesting, but the capabilities are greatly overstated...both by the pick and shovel vendors, but their best buddies who are captains of industry and want to believe. They want to achieve new levels of productivity with lower numbers of people...rather than hope for the best, but carefully evaluate if it's real...many have chosen to trust in their vision and ignore all evidence that doesn't support their new religion. We've seen it before in smaller ways...just nothing this bad or excessive.

This reminds me Free-PC.com. Their pitch was that they'll give you a free computer...you watch ads. Their vision was to give you something you really want and hope that somehow if you can't afford your own computer, you'll be a valuable enough target for advertisers to not only subsidize the cost of a desktop computer, but to make a profit. It was a cool idea...but the math never supported it. Also, all that happened was that half of them were grabbed by nerds who used them as a second computer. I had lots of buddies who did that. The company went out of business and didn't want to pay for free shipping, so now they have a dedicated server from their home projects. Like these CEOs...it was a cool vision, but impractical....don't let reality get in the way of that!!!

If you dream it and believe in it hard enough, it has to come true, right?...you're a smart Silicon Valley executive. No reality can get in the way of your massive intelligence...only a lack of faith, right???

We've had code-generation technology for decades. Are you saying no one can read HTML because we have tools for that as well?

Your theory is only valid if they want to do last year's output and 1/20th of the cost. In nearly all historical examples of productivity gains, unless they were hiring large masses of the mindless, the productivity gains were used increase output more than cut costs. As many have pointed out, this is AI-washing. They were already going to lay off these employees.

Why would Oracle lay everyone off vs use these tools to overwhelm and crush all their competitors? Is there really no room to expand? No new projects to try? Are all these tech companies happy with last year's revenue and have they saturated their markets? Their investors are HAPPY with market stagnation at lower costs? NO!!!! That's not how publicly traded companies work. They want growth growth growth until there is no more to be had.

AI is a complex topic. It definitely boosts some productivity, but far less than advertised. It will cause job loss, but far less than feared. Most of the hype is bullshit, but there's real substance as well. Some of the layoffs were AI related...but most were just CEOs using it as an excuse to hide economic headwinds and their mistakes.

I am on /. because I fucking hate sports. Some are kinda fun to play...in the same way Brussel sprouts CAN be tasty, but they will never match a good burger or donut. I don't enjoy watching them. I'm a nerd. I don't give a rat's ass. Watching the game swilling beer and chomping fried foods waiting for the heart attack to take you isn't my idea of a good time. That's what the bullies who beat me up as a child did.

But my perspective aside, I am neutral on performance enhancing drugs. You know that probably every Marvel actor who took his shirt off was on them, right? Sure, Tom Holland wasn't juicing to the level Dave Bautista was, but there have been many leaks that major movie studios hire trainers to give them P.E.D.s. It's not a secret, the execs knew and encouraged it. They want Tom Holland to be ripped with a below 5% bodyfat and nice physique. And whatever they say is bullshit...yoga and running alone won't get you there. That wasn't a really good personal trainer alone and eating protein and vegetables that got them to 3% bodyfat with 16" arms. Ever notice how actors today look better than actual Olympic athletes with their shirt off? They're more toned and lean....and most are older.

Someone natural working out to look like a B-tier Marvel hero?...their body would be DEVASTATED. Until a few years ago, I didn't realize that every jacked bodybuilder and hollywood star was max juicing. I just figured they were so much better at working out than the rest of us. They absolutely are working hard. But if you worked out like John Cena for 6 months, you wouldn't be able to walk or get out of bed.

So...I don't care much. I don't care about sports, but I know I'm in the minority...let those people decide with their wallets and eyeballs. I know that I enjoy watching movies with big buff heroes injecting super-physiological doses of drugs into their body so they look amazing. Or even just normal actors who are good at their craft looking like Ben Affleck or Matt Damon looked in the early 2000s instead of how Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson looked in the 70s...or going the Antony Starr route and wearing a padded suit...which I don't mind because...FUUUUUCK is that guy good!!!!....really a testament to the craft...but it might be interesting to one day see Homelander out of his costume (which they never do because Anthony Starr is like 150 pounds, soaking wet). I enjoy watching movies with men with unrealistic bodies, ESPECIALLY at their age, since the acting talent and opportunities tend to surface WELL beyond their athletic physical prime.

"One time" is far from reassuring. Sometimes the AIs get it right. However, if I am sending an AI to it, it's too complex for me to figure out at first glance. I am typically sending it complex projects with a lot of steps to figure out. AI is a nice upgrade from Stack Overflow and a powerful tool. However, in order to justify the AI-washing layoffs, it has to be a lot more reliable than "one time." I get failures daily.

I have not been impressed with Claude's unit tests. They're usually stupidly verbose. I've thrown away entire batches of code when I see they take a simple function and start unit-testing the Java getters and setters...even worse, they don't clearly indicate they're doing so...and it looks like actual business logic until you look closely. I would love to have Claude write acceptable unit tests. That would save me time and help me make more robust releases. It just fails pretty reliably on those.

AI is not useless, we just have to be realistic. It's like self-driving cars. Someday I am sure they will be great, but they're not really great now. They are still an experiment to play with, not something changing our lives.

I have to scrutinize pull requests much moreso than ever before. I have a handful of coworkers who like to let Claude do everything...which honestly isn't a concern if they test it and write the tests themselves and understand what it does. However, I have had to reject several PRs because they were having AI writing the tests AND the code. Obviously AIs are prone to write unit tests that justify their behavior, not the actual intended function of the code.

There's a temptation to let Claude do everything...but when I've tried it, I had to edit it heavily. Usually the code it produced was unprofessional or didn't even resemble working. However, it did help me out a few times with libraries I've never used before. I just am very careful about writing my own unit tests and verifying end to end. Additionally, I've been lazy and just pointed Claude at a stacktrace and ask it to tell me why it was failing (a project I'm unfamiliar with). It failed 100% of the time. In fairness, so did I...they were tricky bugs...I had to contact the author and have him explain what he intended to do. It's ability to understand code is really lacking....whereas that should be it's greatest strength.

I am an AI realist. I give it credit where it works and complain where it's overhyped. I have multiple AI evangelists on my team. For them, it's a religion...do everything in AI...AI is all powerful. To me, it's a tool in my toolbox.

The difference between us is that I see AI as it is today....their vision is AI as they imagine it...based on sci fi books and movies. In their vision, Claude is smart and knows what it's doing and will guide you to the promised land with a layover in nirvana and bliss. All hail AI!!!!

The disturbing part is they seem to have noticeably regressed and believe Claude over their own judgment.

If you COULD do this, you WOULD...Someone WOULD happily spend 10x what McDonald's needs it to cost to build a robot chef...think Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or some expensive hotel doing late night room service. There are a billion uses for this technology. Ask any person and they can think 100 surefire ways to make money. I am sure there are many dangerous industrial and oil rig jobs that pay top dollar and cause a lot of workspace injuries that will pay a lot more than McDonald's. Amazon would LOVE an army of these in their warehouses and has been trying for a long time. It turns out manipulating a robot hand in unpredictable space is difficult to do. Even if you make the space predictable, it's still difficult to do...then there's the lifespan issue. You spend several million dollars to build a robot and it breaks down in a few weeks...or food bits get in joints, etc. Who cleans the robot? If it was just a sensor cost or AI issue, we'd see these being successfully deployed in limited scenarios now....maybe not McDonald's but definitely SOMEWHERE.

I have been saying it to anyone who will listen: Mythos won't end cybersecurity. It's not a tool too powerful to get into anyone's hands. it's an incremental upgrade to existing models. I am sure it's nice...it just won't change the world or set it on fire. I also have an insider connection that confirmed...it's no revolution, just a marketing stunt. I thought Anthropic was above the Sam-Altman-grade bullshit, but I was wrong. It's inspired many emotions, but that was based on our imagination, not reality.

That's the pick and shovel vendors. Selling AI is profitable, gambling on AI is profitable, but are AI investments profitable? If you use LLMs in your business, how much are you saving? Yes, nVidia shareholders are making a fuckton. AI can help professionals be more productive. It may pay for itself, but providing enough productivity to tangibly reduce headcount?...that's science fiction...I can imagine MANY ways of doing so with science fiction AI...just not with real world LLMs.

You could automate ditch digging with 80s technology. Take a (digital) picture, draw the ditch, let the robot do it's work...or simply drill some beacons in the soil at the 4 corners. It's not the AI stopping automated ditch digging..it's ALL the other stuff. A robotic excavator would be very expensive. It doesn't take a lot of labor to dig a ditch...one skilled operator and maybe a day's worth of labor, tops. So that tops out around $400 today. Even if you're charging consulting company rates, that's $2000 per ditch...There's no way to automate that excavator to recoup costs. And in your example the human being is there to deal with emergencies or contingencies, such as ground shift.

Using your imagination, any job can be automated...but as a thought exercise, do it....create the robot to replace a McDonald's worker...there's no way you can ever do it cheaper. I can imagine many ways to automate away my job. I can't imagine Claude doing that in the next 5 years. It makes too many mistakes for tasks a tiny fraction of what I do. With AI, errors multiply exponentially based on complexity.

IF your job could be automated....it would be. Someone would have automated your job somewhere. For example, truck driver...IF...it could be automated, it would be....maybe not for commercial, but for combat. The US Army would pay top dollar to transport a tanker truck of fuel through a warzone...risk not having your soldiers killed. They may not do it for all payloads, but they would be trying it out right now and making the news doing so.

I question that the wealthy ARE receiving benefits, beyond the pick and shovel vendors. I don't think the modern LLM AIs are useful enough to really make a tangible dent in your labor needs. Most talk about actual benefits are based on theoretical science fiction AI...not today's version of Claude/OpenAI/Gemini. IF AI worked as promised, absolutely...but first, it has to work as promised. It falls short in real-world usage. If ChatGPT can do your job, it was probably automated a few years ago by simpler technology.

So we're all in this uneasy transition. Today's AI doesn't work very well and shows no sign of working as promised in the short term. However, it's equally foolish to assume it never will work.

The wealthy WILL absolutely benefit from science fiction AI. However Claude/Gemini/OpenAI/CoPilot all fail on the basics today. They provide SOME value, but not enough to tangibly cut headcount.

Modern AI has greatly oversold it's capabilities. However, every tech leader has significant AI investments and is selling picks and shovels. So....you're NIKE...who do you trust?...a guy like me who uses Claude daily?...or fucking Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Jensen Huang, Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Marc Beinhoff, etc. If you're the CEO of Nike you have to decide if you're going to believe the most famous leaders in tech saying that AI is going to revolutionize IT and your best staff will all become 10x developers and professionals...or believe actual professionals, like me, who aren't famous who will tell you...yeah, it helps some...not sure how much...but definitely a percentage improvement and not a 2x or greater improvement....you are highly unlikely to be able to reduce headcount. Jensen Huang has publicly stated that the notion of programming languages will very soon be obsolete...so why more programmers than you ABSOLUTELY need to?

I know they know the pick/shovel vendors are exaggerating, but by how much? It gives them hestiation to hire someone new if Claude 5.0 comes out next year and you can lay them off.

This is all a huge fraud. It's safe to say every AI layoff of programmer positions was a routine layoff, AI washed. However, it's far sexier to say "AI Baby!!!!...ride the wave" about your layoff than "interest rates make hoarding surplus talent dangerously unprofitable" or "we overhired" or even worse...."our business is in decline". It shocks me shareholders haven't filed lawsuits about this...I still think that day is coming.

However, every headwind faced by Meta, Google, etc is also faced by Nike and every B-tier and C-tier business that hires large IT staffs. So yeah, we have routine layoffs, CEOs committing fraud by lying that it's due to AI...and everyone else watching, unsure of what is going on....when in doubt, it's safer to close open reqs and downsize. They can always increase headcount once they know what is going on...once they have more clarity as to who is telling the truth...people like me...or AI vendors and the psycho evangelists who are so exited for science fiction AI that they pretend Claude can actually reliably write code that works...or that OpenAI can actually do much of anything of moderate complexity. I understand their perspective...

It just saddens me that this is just another externality of the AI hype bubble, like how EVERYTHING related to computing is now in scarce supply and many factors more expensive than it should be...that technology is actually going up in price and the $1000 will buy you a SLOWER device today than it bought 1.5 years ago...Moore's Law is now going in the opposite direction!...and that's assuming you still have a job to buy a new device...and you weren't laid off.

I'd like to just continue on with my life and ignore this AI bullshit, but I can't...it impacts my job. It emboldens employers to mistreat employees, thinking they have a lot more leverage than they did 5 years ago (which may very well be true). It makes it difficult and painful for me to buy devices or upgrade my personal technology like normal to distract myself from the stupidity of the news.