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Comment Re:insanity (Score 1) 133

local LLMs aren't there yet and probably won't for the forseable future for ordinary people. If you want to run a full model like DeepSeek v4.1 Flash, you need something like half a TB of RAM.

The open-source LLMs are a different threat: They enable a service industry independent of the large players. I could today get some venture capital, rent a few racks in a hosting center, install a bunch of beefy machines and offer the same service as Claude or ChatGPT, just on an open-source model. The differences in benchmarks are becoming irrelevant for 95% of common use cases. And if I can offer that service for $19/m while OpenAI wants $29/m then OpenAI has a problem.

And IMHO this is the chinese strategy: Undermine the US AI industry by breaking its business model.

Comment insanity (Score 4, Interesting) 133

Has everyone gone insane or are we witnessing a major PsyOps ?

Since AI isn't magical, for it to be able to "kill all humans", it would have to be able to acquire the means to do so. Which means that these already exist. It means someone is able to do it right now. And we're chill with that, but worried about AI?

No doubt a bunch of autonomous weapon systems linked into a C&C could cause considerable bloodshed. Given that most of the existing weapon systems of that kind are essentially suicide drones, it'll still be limited damage.

Human-killing virus? Still need a means of creating and delivering it.
Nuclear war? We have humans in the loop.
Drive us all insane with AI-slop TikToks? A few percent of humanity still don't use that.

So what is the actual scenario ? When someone shouts "AI will kill us all", why don't we ask them "how, exactly" ?

Comment Re:Ok, but⦠(Score 5, Insightful) 162

Considerably more difficult than you imagine. Between them, they have almost 70 command-line options or flags. Taking into account that many of those behave differently depending on the presence or absence of other flags, there's a couple hundred different code paths. Then you need to handle directories, files, sparse files, sym- and hard-links, on and across different filesystems, not to mention the various file-like things scattered around (pipes, streams, etc.)

It's not rocket science, but neither is it trivial.

Comment agencies (Score 1) 172

agencies can't be trusted to oversee themselves.

We knew that. But now we have proof.

Will anything happen because of that? Nah, I don't think so. A few token gestures maybe. A friendly mail to everyone saying to write better reasons, followed up by an informal mail that tells them to ignore the previous one.

This isn't a mistake. It's intentional. The more arbitrary and uncontrolled the police can act, the more it is feared, the more it is a tool for oppression and not a part of civil society, the more likely the cops will stand on the side of the powerful when there are protests or uprisings against the increasing oppression and economic divide.

Comment oh drat (Score 2) 96

And here I was, thinking foldable phones would allow us to go back to smaller sizes. Guess I'll be sticking with my SE, which at least comfortably fits into my pocket.

Someone please bash some sense into Apple.

I'm sure there are people who want a mini-tablet in their trousers. I'm also sure I'm not the only one who simply wants a phone. That you don't have to think about every time you move or sit.

Comment Re:Chasing a trend (Score 1) 96

I'm old. Like, well, really REALLY old. And you would think being essentially immortal would come with perks like being able to see, but having effective ciliary muscles and them being completely dead are two different things.

I watched the preso and my first thought was "Jesus (... thank you again sir), Apple keeps making better phones for old people!" This seems like one such phone, although I don't see myself opening my wallet for one until my 15 pro max is truly utterly dead (heh), and I know for sure that the hinge / crease is going to hold up.

Comment Re: slop on TV? you don't say... (Score 1) 70

Mine too. I was starting to run out of storage and I _finally_ took the time to set up Thunderbird. This made it easier to delete all the accumulated spam.

Funny. Spam is all I use my gmail account for. It's the e-mail I use to sign up to places I don't expect to visit often or that make me sign up for no discernible reason (well, obviously the reason is that they want to send me spam). My entire gmail inbox is spam, newsletters and the occasional "here is your activation link" mail.

It's really useful as a spam-sink.

Comment Re:Kewl flex,hipster, No TV? I don't poop either!! (Score 2) 70

Dude, what is your problem?

I mention not owning a TV because it's topical - it means I didn't not notice the quality going down slowly over time, so I might notice the difference more than those who did.

Nowhere did I imply that not owning a TV makes me better in any way. It's a personal choice, that's all.

Why you jump on that so aggressively - maybe ask yourself why that is.

Comment Re:TDS (Score 1) 274

It means Iran has severely limited the capacity of the Strait of Hormuz. It's a hostage situation. No one is winning, but the objective isn't to win in the sense of completely closing the Strait, the objective is to create a sufficiently long period of pain that eventually the US and its allies walk away. Christ almighty, force multiplication is hardly a new concept.

Comment Re: A giant step forward for mankind (Score 1) 274

There are plenty of places in North America without coverage because there's so little to cover. The Los Vegas metropolitan area has about three million people. So yes, that would be a place with cell phone coverage. By the same token, coverage in states like Montana, particularly in mountainous areas is spotty because, well, there's not a lot of people.

Comment and pop (Score 3, Interesting) 189

Signs that the bubble is about to burst. They are now claiming AGI despite being fundamentally away from it. An LLM can not ever achieve AGI. It may reasonably well PRETEND to be AGI, but at the core it's just a highly successfull letter-prediction machine. Or as a metaphor: It is "intelligence" in the sense that a toddler carefully placing one foot in front of the other while trying hard to not fall over is "running". Nope, isn't and never will be. You need a qualitative change to get there.

If they now CLAIM that they've achieved AGI, it's a sign we're nearing the end of LLM development and they're getting desperate selling the latest incremental updates. Which means the illusion is about to come crashing down.

Which is good news. Fewer data centers and lower memory prices will benefit us all.

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