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edge17on Don't rent the cloud, own instead

Just curious, what is the spec you pay $6000/year for? Where/what is the line between rent vs buy?

edge17on English professors double down on requiring printed copies of readings

yea I used a lot of low price editions in college that i would order from ebay etc and would ship from india. Wow i didnt know about the ink x-ray stuff, thats pretty interesting.

what i was referring to though was generic american bestsellers, nothing black/gray market. used books feel very expensive to buy online. my guess is market capture though

edge17on English professors double down on requiring printed copies of readings

This is a bit off topic, but why are used books so expensive on abebooks, thriftbooks, amazon so expensive compared to booksales, etc? I recall a time when a lot of these online stores were selling them for a few cents (granted, it was a long time ago and it was still called zShops on Amazon).

edge17on The Illustrated Transformer

Is there something I can read to get a better sense of what types of models are most suitable for which problems? All I hear about are transformers nowadays, but what are the types of problems for which transformers are the right architecture choice?

edge17on The Illustrated Transformer

Maybe I'm out of touch, but have transformers replaced all traditional deep learning architectures? (U-nets, etc)?

edge17on Movie posters from Ghana in the 1980s and 90s

My best movie experiences were probably watching hard to acquire bootlegs in the pre-digital age. The barriers were just so much higher, half the excitement was just getting a crappy copy.

edge17on Movie posters from Ghana in the 1980s and 90s

Yea, also often the movies were cams from people that recorded in the theater so you can see the audience walking around etc.

Quality hardly matters when the real treasure was getting the movie in the first place.

edge17on Texas Instruments’ new plants where Apple will make iPhone chips

I don't know if it was on purpose or not, but I have heard it said more than once that Republican led states are able to greenlight projects faster, are more business-friendly environments, and generally have less red tape compared to Democrat led states. Love it or hate it, but greenlighting projects is a big component in allocating funds.

edge17on U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

Section 9902 of the act authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to provide financial assistance to "covered entities"

One can argue how to interpret "financial assistance" broadly, which is exactly what the administration has done.

edge17on U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

...thats how the US Constitution works. Congress passes laws (CHIPS Act) and the executive branch is empowered to carry them out - in this case the Secretary of Commerce and Commerce Dept. One can argue whether it stretches the intent of the law, nothing wrong with debate. But as of now, I don't think any judge or court has contested in the interpretation of the language.

edge17on FFmpeg 8.0

Agree with this, but I think LLM's have been a net positive in helping generate commands? Admittedly, getting working commands is still tough sometimes, and i'm 50/50 on whether ChatGPT saved me time vs reading docs.

edge17on What's going on with gene therapies?

The other thing no one wants to say is the technical software/hardware talent in biotech is not as good as broader tech, and the people in charge of these projects are usually coming from a science background first and a technology background second.

edge17on What's going on with gene therapies?

A lot of the technology is regulated by FDA requirements, which apply to humans but not animals. Some of these requirements are challenging engineering problems - like how to do certain type of liquid transfers without exposing the contents of a container to the atmosphere, etc. There are lots of tools for doing liquid transfers that mimic what a human would do, but FDA places a different bar when it comes to developing a controlled manufacturing process.

There's also the question of, who writes the rules. Often it's industry experts that are already working on the process, and have incentives like keeping others out or licensing their own IP.

edge17on Ask HN: How to learn CUDA to professional level

What environment do you use? Is it still the case that Windows is the main development environment for cuda?

edge17on Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row

Are there non-icloud backup options? There used to be local encrypted backups through itunes, but I can't tell if that feature is still around.

edge17on Patrick McKenzie (patio11) podcast on technology, finance, and systems thinking

because the spelled out domain is free advertising and easy enough to remember. It says exactly what it is.

edge17on Forested wetlands are missing from maps

What does that mean that "the sun is brighter"?

edge17on GhostStripe attack haunts self-driving cars by making them ignore road signs

Six boffins mostly hailing from Singapore-based universities have proven it's possible to interfere with autonomous vehicles by exploiting their reliance on camera-based computer vision and cause them to not recognize road signs.

How do non-camera based systems (lidar etc) get road sign information? I would expect with cameras...?

edge17on No joke: FTC boss goes on the Daily Show and is told Apple tried to block her

These comments make it sound like Jon Stewart himself wields no power. He commands an audience he can take to any platform he wants. It just looks like he took a liking to the pot of money Apple put in front of him.You can't really make the argument that Apple is the only game in town for Jon Stewart.

Free speech laws protect against government supression of speech, not corporations.

edge17on Getting into robotics as a software engineer

Definitely agree here. I have been making this transition and currently work on life science lab automation robotics. It definitely takes intentionality because if you're good at software it's easy to get steered towards lucrative but higher level places in the stack.

edge17on Chinese villagers capture video of falling Long March rocket booster [video]

Another angle. Looks like it landed on someone's property https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1739686569676566911?s=20

edge17on Mass producing the most expensive rice cooker [video]

how big is the market for $1100 rice cookers?

edge17on U.S. GDP grew at a 4.9% annual pace in the third quarter, better than expected

I think what the comment is saying is, if the government is spending a lot of money inefficiently (i.e. spending $100,000 on a weapon that has $10,000 in raw materials plus layers of bureaucracy that are hard to quantify as costs) and accruing a lot of debt in the process, it is hard to understand what your cost is for basic things.

edge17on California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

Not sure the point here. California St is a major artery in and out of downtown. All I'm saying is there is an opportunity for improving the quality of traffic but instead the public resource of an entire lane is wasted on a bespoke piece of transportation history that runs at a loss in excess of $40m/year

edge17on California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

No problem, so what is your argument for utilizing a whole lane for a mode of transportation that consumes a significant public resource without providing much benefit?

edge17on California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

Simple math? Assuming a fixed number of cars on the road, more lanes will increase the flow. The cable cars are novelty transportation for tourists that residents of the city don't actually use for commuting.

In case it's not clear, I'm refering to California st starting downtown and going all the way up the hill.

edge17on California suspends Cruise's autonomous vehicle deployment

While I don't disagree, this is also a city that has whole lanes on major streets reserved for cable cars. The city isn't exactly known for making decisions that drive efficiency.

edge17on We are beginning to roll out new voice and image capabilities in ChatGPT

How do you train for this?

edge17on PID Control Challenges

very cool!

edge17on Diamond prices are in free fall in one key corner of the market

With logic like that, why buy a diamond at all? Sounds like your wife gets it!