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berkeleyjunk

2,236 karma · joined January 31, 2018

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berkeleyjunk··on Nine PBS sues Iron Mountain over blocked access to archival data
I think for most of broadcasting history video was fairly low quality (according to today’s standards). So I am not totally surprised that this number is low.
berkeleyjunk··on Microsoft's Satya Nadella: We Can't Let AI Giants Eat the Economy
At least from the article, it seems he wants to position Microsoft as someone who provides access to all models including non frontier models in order to democratize access. He sees OpenAI, Anthropic and Google as the AI giants who are trying to dictate the future.
berkeleyjunk··on Waymo driverless cars become trapped in Atlanta suburb after glitch [video]
I ended up seeing a video of this and it looked like the neighbors placed one of those lime green kid cutouts in the cul-de-sac and it seems to have confused the Waymos.
berkeleyjunk··on iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet
Interesting. Do you have examples of such data or any pointers. I always take screenshots of the wallet pass and they seem to work fine.
berkeleyjunk··on Claude Code refuses requests or charges extra if your commits mention "OpenClaw"
Reminds me of

https://www.macchaffee.com/blog/2024/you-have-built-a-kubern...

berkeleyjunk··on EMachines never obsolete PCs: More than a meme
Thanks for this fascinating write up. I could not afford anything better when I got into my first job, and the freedom that this mediocre box provided me was unbelievable.
berkeleyjunk··on Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything
I wish someone had told Alex Blechman this before his "Don't Create the Torment Nexus" post.
berkeleyjunk··on NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Kernel Modules
As someone who is pretty skeptical and reads the fine print, I think this is a good move and I really do not see a downside (other than the fact that this probably strengthens the nVidia monoculture).
berkeleyjunk··on Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
Nope. Totally different company and founded about 5 years earlier than Square.
berkeleyjunk··on Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
I thought about that too, but realized that it is double counting the returns. If you look at the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) method for valuing the company, the current value of the company is already the sum of the discounted cash flows from the future. i.e. the next 3-5 year returns are already priced into the pre 30% hike value.
berkeleyjunk··on Squarespace to Go Private in $6.9B All-Cash Transaction with Permira
It is interesting how most M&A transactions trend to have a 30% premium above the trading price. I have tried to investigate why but could not find a good explanation to why this number is so prevalent.
berkeleyjunk··on Not Using Zoom
The article suggests jitsi and I have had success using it in all the platforms you mentioned.
berkeleyjunk··on Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)
I can see the other things but "Apple home button scandal" either does not belong in the same league or there might be something I do not know about. Can you expand a little bit on your thinking?
berkeleyjunk··on Westfield Gives Up Downtown San Francisco Mall
I think you have a point but part of this was self-inflicted. Instead of knowledgeable salespersons who could help with the purchase, the stores tried to cut costs and replace them with lower cost people who did not know/care as much. If they reverse this trend I think the malls can come back.
berkeleyjunk··on The Meltdown at CNN
from the July 1860 issue. Wow, started reading it and I was hooked. Thank you for pointing out this gem.
berkeleyjunk··on Nvidia is now a $1T company
Pretty straightforward. The current value of the company is the Net Present Value of all the future expected cash flows. Basically you can take the money Apple will make in 2024, 2025, 2026 ... and reduce them to today's values by discounting with the interest rates: pretty much divide by (1+r)^n. Since Apple already makes a ton of money each year it is valued pretty high. Nvidia on the other hand has to GROW its earnings a LOT to justify its valuations.
berkeleyjunk··on Nvidia is now a $1T company
I am not an expert in this space but dabble a bit. This comment is spot on. AMD's software is pretty bad and NVDA has captured all the developer attention with CUDA and is the basis for lot of the frameworks people use. It is not a trivial advantage to break. I do wish good luck to AMD.
berkeleyjunk··on Statement on AI Risk
Thank you! That page certainly seems more concrete and useful.
berkeleyjunk··on Statement on AI Risk
I really thought there would be a statement detailing what the risks are but this seems more like a soundbite to be consumed on TV. Pretty disappointing.
berkeleyjunk··on He Paid $69.3M for an NFT So You Can Download It for Free
Archive link

https://archive.is/8hhdv

berkeleyjunk··on JPMorgan Chase Bank Assumes All the Deposits of First Republic Bank
It maybe impossible to predict what the Fed would do but it is certainly possible to avoid a lot of the damage by duration matching of assets and liabilities. e.g. Do not take short term deposits in checking that are callable at any time and invest them in 10 year maturity instruments. No issues at all taking proceeds from 5 year CDs and putting them into 5 year maturity bonds.
berkeleyjunk··on Geoffrey Hinton leaves Google and warns of danger ahead
After the war, Robert Oppenheimer remarked that the physicists involved in the Manhattan project had "known sin". Von Neumann's response was that "sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it."

- From Norman Macrae's John von Neumann book

berkeleyjunk··on Smartphones with Qualcomm chip secretly send personal data to Qualcomm
Yes. It is a bit lacking. If I had to guess it would be something to do with the Qualcomm iZat

https://www.qualcomm.com/site/privacy/services

berkeleyjunk··on Congress gets 40 ChatGPT Plus licenses to start experimenting with generative AI
>> summarizing large amounts of text in speeches; > Again, this seems fine.

Not sure about that. Imagine all the misunderstandings of the speeches already and add on ChatGPT making up something or wrongly summarizing something.

berkeleyjunk··on Dang is going to have 65,535 karma points soon
I always thought it was 3)
berkeleyjunk··on SVB insider says employees are angry with CEO
I don't think so. I think they are saying that if the original regulations were still in place, the bank would not have been able to make these "investments" even without a Risk Officer.
berkeleyjunk··on GPT 4 coming next week
Soon, the only "content" will be the SEO optimization junk floating around and it will create more content using Chat GPT 4. It will be turtles all the way down.
berkeleyjunk··on Google, Meta hired talent to do 'fake work'
I think avoiding smart people starting competitors by keeping them employed with high comps might be a good strategy for some of these cash rich and profitable companies. They might have been thinking of this as a good insurance.
berkeleyjunk··on FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank
They got too much in deposits very quickly and could not originate loans at the same speed. If they kept the money uninvested their operating costs would have eaten up their principal (even if they had to pay 0% in interest to their customers)
berkeleyjunk··on FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank
Actually not. The kind of asset they invested in does not really matter. If they invested in super safe government bonds at <1% at the same time, they would have had the exact same issue. It is the rapidly rising interest rates that did them in. If they were smarter they could have done a rolling ladder of short maturities but probably someone there was lazy.
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