Gamer PCs can run inference on an open source LLM locally with good response time... As a society, we really only need datacenters for the model contruction (still an important issue). The idea that this infrastructure is necessary for end use is just corporate greed trying to prevent you learning the truth. If the world economy holds on another few years, our [new] laptops will have the right chips. The inference side of the game is going to fan out away from datacenters anyway.

I still have two 32 bit systems in constant use. One I use as a RAID NAS for personal archive. It has 500MB, works great but has not been able to run web browsers for a long time. This impacts only when I want to install something, which is rare but happens. The other is a laptop with 4GB, and runs (er, ran) Firefox great. I use this laptop all the time, it is my main "walk around" laptop. Sorry to see Firefox leave it.

Thanks! My point of view, LLMs are a narrow part of natural language processing, and I don't understand them to get context sensitivity right, in the sense of extracting or expressing any meaning. Even though they produce strings that may conform to a context sensitive grammar. (Also, I don't understand the term "AI complete" to be rigorous...) But I DO understand LLM operation to be a type of computation, somewhat useful in a small subset of the ways that an "AI" would be useful. LLMs have nothing to be ashamed of. There is no reason to conflate them with intelligence.

They are "language models".. it is in the name. Models that simply predict likely text to follow example text - based on statistics, not "thought". You can do a lot of tricks, like have your example text say that the next text will describe a thought process... but it does not; this is simply a trick of language. I encourage everyone to refuse to repeat the rather misleading marketing term "AI", and just use one of the true terms "LLM", "GPT", or the actual brand name (Copilot, Gemini, ...) when discussing these machines.

At the end of the article this advice is given: Never use your primary WiFi network for IoT devices. I don't need an article to know that. What I think is worthwhile, clearly a lot of effort went into this simply for the sake of investigation, to find EXACTLY what the situation was, after the basic facts were obvious. (Also clearly for a lot of hacking fun!) I would have enjoyed a more technical dive in the article...

no, proposing to spend 175 billion on such an idea is not funny at all. point is, no way would such an idea be feasible in less than 4 years, and above all, no way the cost could stay anywhere under 10s of trillions of dollars. no, this thing is not funny at all.

let's step aside of the companies and personalities a monment... i read: "fully operational" before he leaves office in January 2029, capable of intercepting rockets, "even if they are launched from space," BUT WAIT - here's the punch line: with an overall price tag of $175 billion. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA - i can't stop laughing! HA HA HA HA HA HA...

The most obvious problem has not yet been thoroughly discussed here. What kind of business workloads will toletate it? Enough to justify cost? I doubt it...

There's a tool that will help Duolingo develop more efficiently, and so investors think the app is done? I've been doing some vibe coding lately -- and believe me, being able to ask an LLM to spit out the code of a basic app is nowhere near being able to develop a production quality app, let alone run a good business.

Why not jusy use railroads for the long hauls? To me, trucks seem better for the collecton and distribution at either end.

"Microsoft, tactically admitting it has failed at talking all the Windows 10 PC users into moving to Windows 11 after all..." Sheesh, I am WAITING for the CHANCE to upgrade to Windows 11! I keep my ASUS laptop fully updated via Windows Update all the time. At the top there is a colorful invitation to upgrade to 11. I try it regularly, I've gone down the "see if you system can support Windows 11" path, the answer is yes, but finally I must wait until "Windows 11 update is ready for your model". When, WHEN, I ask! Will it be before the Windows 10 support ends??

Culture tends to pervade an organization.. and usually flows down from the top. As the discussion reported in the article is centered on the competent management of details, I think it is relevant that I found this typo while reading the front page of the bcachefs web site: "...bcache already has a reasonably good track record for reliability Starting from there...." Just a proofreading would have caught that. So I imagine there may very well be such oversights in the code as well.

In the end, as paradigm shift does ruin some lives and expectations, don't there end up new industries and new work? I think it requires two things: entrepreneurship (unboxed creativity) to get out of your sinking boat and be able to see new value niches, and retargeted education for the workforce (with an associated delay). Both are education issues. If the education system is too workforce focused, without enough practise and preparation for broader thinking, that's where you've (as a society) put yourself in a problem spot. Because paradigms are always going to shift...

I thought human personality was dried up in the tech sector. But what a great name, the Jack-Ma-Backed Ant Group! What is a jack-ma-backed ant? It has a funny, crooked back?

Completely agree. When I read this, "...paints an equally grim picture," I was a bit stunned, because until that point I had thought the article was /celebrating/ the trend! But I guess that was me, not the author..