poobear22

I'd like to know who is buried at a national cemetery who was both at a Japanese internment camp and later a Korean or Vietnam POW. Would the help desk blow my request off?

I was very weakly involved in the optical computing area and watched not much happen over 40 yrs. My observations were existing CPUs just improved enough to render many of the optical computing promises unnecessary. So, I have always had skepticism many developing technologies that are over promoted. I think LLMs are great but are over promoted. I suspect there will be a lot of idle capacity that will serve as a platform for new projects. I'm thinking it may be worth looking into what will fill those voids: the excess capacity, the lowering of costs, the unemployed AI people looking for new projects. Not my field, but I think DNA sequencing and analysis of new drugs on these platforms may in an area to consider.

I am always amazed how people will look the other way when there is a paycheck involved. In many cases, they have constraints (families, mortgages, etc), and sometimes it is just greed. I'd want to think it's the former with most Tesla employees.

But I am sure many people on the margins will move along when the opportunity comes along.

I did not view the data as indicating a new product was needed. the charts showed a boost due to the M1 chips. I'm happy with my 2015 vintage Mac. But I do have a high end Studio which should last a long time.

Kinda fun. Low chess expert player here. The square color one was harder, but I don't really think about square colors like that, maybe I should. It may be nice to introduce another level of sophistication, but that would introduce a much more complex back end. Maybe place the opposing king in check via various pieces?

I remember those metal bars placed over asphalt or cement. But, I also remember as a 4-yr old, performing the risk analysis in my head. I think I did less stupid things later in life due to the adventures I faced on the playground.

Also, its a great place for bicycle rides on quiet roads. Great air (when there are no fires). Nearby horseback riding on Salinas Sunset Beach. Don't forget to have artichokes!

They held a great Matrix-themed party at a bar in San Francisco about 1999. I wanted a chance to win the offered Ducati and took my friend. Somehow, my friend, with way too many free drinks, was called onstage by magician who gave him a quarter and somehow the marked quarter ended up in the inflated balloon. I picked up a good amount of their stock and made a mint on paper, then after the acquisition by Nortel rode my stock holdings down to $238. A case where if I had only purchased beer and recycled the aluminum cans, I would have turned out better.

I remember in the mid/late 1980s, optical computing was going to take off. I was in a more conservative optics group performing conventional work, while this flash-bang optical computing group was sucking up all the project funding for optical technologies. But, the hype never lasted and eventually the whole department was disbanded. (I do acknowledge some work in fibre communications transport) In retrospect, conventional microprocessors would improve fast enough to challenge the material limitations, and complexity issues of the proposed optical technology. So, ten years ago, I had this same conversation with a co-worker where he thought quantum computing was around the corner, and I was still wanting to push the pause button for 20 or more years. I think today, I still think it is going to another ten or twenty years. I do hope to be proved wrong someday.

Is this book still a thing? I remember buying it for someone as an early 1990's gift. But reading the errata comments at the link, it reminds me of a book of mathematical integrals I had purchased and the very first integral I looked up had an error. My co-worker, a mathematician, encouraged me to throw the book out, and I obliged.

This sounds like an effort to drive up the price of a given crypto product similar to how concert tickets or sporting event tickets are price manipulated. Filling all the seats (promoting a crypto coin) would create an artificial scarcity driving up prices. Initial holders, would be able to sell their holdings at greatly inflated prices, which would be similar to a tax on society, but the profit going to the initial holders.

Also, with a crypto coin, I bet the risks of significant price swings would greatly challenge people who attempted this as a retirement vehicle.

I really worry for the ones who bought inflated real estate and are looking at a 50-pct salary reduction. That will hurt hard. Not to mention the work from home people with long commutes being asked to RTO at a lower pay. In managing contractors, I've seen the ones what were able to jump on a well paying <12-month contract and think that is their next level of compensation and it will never be below that level. It always seemed to reset to a mean salary.

After WWII, a lot of talent came from Europe to the US, and the US benefited greatly. With the current trend, I could see a lot of unemployed government scientists, and I wouldn't see them going to work for some of these large US companies in the news. So, I wonder if the US will experience a reverse brain drain, with talent going to other countries.

Sometimes you can call 1-800-dev-null to get this fixed.

thank you

The 1976 celebration was exciting.

I am looking forward to celebrating this in 2026, if our country still exists.

Here are my thoughts, I am a little removed from some of these fields so you will not hurt my feelings if you want to be blunt.

Ok, “What I wrote was true before Deepseek and their non-human reinforcement learning Breakthrough”.

Right, I did make a general statement that could be applied pre- and post-Deepseek. I think I get your point. But, you are stating: that “So you’re worried that LLMs have stopped scaling even though the biggest breakthrough from DeepSeek is scaling RF learning without humans?” I’m not worried about it, but I am waiting to see continued LLM performance improvement due to HW scaling as opposed to algorithmic improvements. This seems to happen in industries, like in weather forecasting, model is developed, sucks up all resources, new model is developed, HPC company goes bankrupt, new super computer purchased, new model rolled out, new performance gains, sucks up all computer resources, rinse and repeat. But it takes a long time to release a new upgrade of a model. Now, regarding algorithmic improvements, the way I think about it is to break it down into two areas: a) throughput/efficiency improvement (faster/more_efficient) and b) performance improvement (better predictions). I’m not following this as close as I would like, but it seems Deepseek is more aligned with faster/more_efficient. My statement I wrote, I think what has changed is the realization that, as applied to LLM, investors have been neglecting the efficiency side of the problem. It seems many of the promises of performance around the corner are more investment/funding driven. The other option, of focusing on efficiency would leave more stakeholders with less wealth, so they have a nature bias to promote this technology.

So, with the Deepseek approach/revelation, my thoughts are:

Before Deepseek announcement: Established/large LLM producers: Resources: More hardware, data centers, power distribution, tax credits. Challenges: making a profit, establishing a true moat (but not publicly recognized) Moat: Significant cost challenges to new market entrants limited who could compete. New_entrant/small LLM producers: Resources: License large-scale LLMs, tune them for bespoke requests. Moat: Significant cost challenges to new market entrants limited who could compete. HW producers NVIDIA is dominant with CUDA and established HW products

After Deepseek announcement: Established LLM producers: Called into question the excess resources: More hardware, data centers, power distribution, tax credits. Need to recognize and acquire new entrants that may pose a down-stream challenge. This will be tough as many companies will spring up.

New_entrant/small LLM producers: Resources: New companies should sprout up as barrier to entry is reduced. Moat: Small vendors can specialize, or build business to be acquired by large LLM vendor. HW producers NVIDIA is dominant with CUDA and established HW products Increased GPU demand and high margins of established HW players will bring in new market entrants (competition). Numerous small LLM producers will increase HW sales. Margins are high with NVIDIA, so other HW suppliers will see this as an opportunity to enter the market. Also, since NVIDIA margins are so high, large-scale LLM vendors will welcome competition.

I re-read the thread topic and it is in response to NVIDIA stock. My response was in response to LLM generators and their moat (not NVIDIA's moat). So, my point was the moat for LLM generators had diminished. Additional competition generating LLMs from new entrants may increase demand for HW. The HW may be used more efficiently but I am still waiting to see if LLM performance continues to improve.

As I see it: I'm waiting to see improvements in LLM performance. What I see is an improvement in computational efficiency (less hardware needed)

If general LLMs do not show continued performance improvement, then there is a lot of excess HW that needs to be utilized somehow. If LLMs continue to show performance improvement, then the hardware can be used more efficiently.

Yep, that is my point. If the large scale LLMs are not sufficiently better than the new crop of startups, I suspect the large firms will need to acquire the startups (that would be their response due to a lack of a moat). Its hard to buy everything and to know where to place your bets.

I loved this stuff. I used SPC to monitor individual job crashes in terms as mean time between failures. My position did not allow me to directly influence the many stakeholders who seemed unable or lazy to fix their code, but I had nice automated metrics to shine the flashlight on problems that I thought should be fixed and thru that, I was able to get many of the stakeholders to take action.

That is a long time. Sorry. This will take some work reprogramming yourself. It is time for some new habits. Suggest documenting your steps so you do not drift back into those old habits.

Exercise. Get a little better definition on you. Food. Start a healthy diet. Learn to cook if you have too. Cutout fast food. No alcohol. No sugary drinks. Sardines on Toast. Do some single road trips! Social events: Hiking clubs, volunteer to help the homeless, Toastmasters Public Speaking is great (find the right club however) When you have some vacation, take a week trip to Canada, Europe, of somewhere wild in the US.

I look back at the time I was "dumped" and I wish I had spent the time on more fitness activities and more solo trips.

But really appreciate the free time you now have.

Some ideas for you:

a) The CNA program sounds great and several of my friends went that route and it worked well for them. Also, there is something similar, the Radiological program for X-rays etc also offered at local colleges. b) I know a few people starting out as electricians, plumbing, and something called steam fitting plumbing. Some of these jobs are hard on the knees and back as you get older. c) The fireman is nice, I’ve known a few fireman who worked on business investment during their off work cycle.

For any job I’ve always had, I’ve always worked a plan B option to prepare myself should I leave my current job. Work always got my 100-pct commitment, so plan B preparation would involve off work study, but I was able to transition successfully across several different industries with substantially different required skill sets. I would not manipulate work to prepare for my new career but I could often find some of my news skills helping me in my current job.

You did not well articulate your current skill set. So, it’s a little hard to help nail down areas that match your skillset. But, your response seems to indicate you want to follow the rules. There are probably some areas of inspection or audit work that you would align with. So, fire inspection, etc?

I agree with your comment on the licensing exam. But, I do not think any one role is better than another. But if a highly skilled person capable of performing engineering takes a non-engineering job, they are not doing engineering (or are out of scope with the required work). So, for me, it tweaks me a little when people refer to themselves as "engineers". And when I managed federal government system administrators, they were "administrators" and that was a GS-2210 Information Technology Specialist. Not an engineer. And they were really smart, but I had to keep an eye on them or they would start engineering solutions not in line with the chief engineer (who was an engineer) and these rouge solutions were very difficult to unwind from. So, I have always held a special status for true engineers and following an engineering direction. But I also recognize there are many important people working in roles that are not engineering.

Not exactly fire/smoke-related, but I did this one year for a remote house that I leave idle 6-months a year and wanted to prevent stagnate air. It did work. The fan energy costs can get excessive, and there are some websites that suggest slower RPM fans what are cheaper.

But the box fans are so ubiquitous. For this year, I settled on adding a timer to the AC line and only run the fan periodically and my energy bill is noticeably lower.

I was way productive at home, but often times I felt work from home was actually too intense and it was easier to go into work.

But here was always my problem, it is really hard to differentiate between the smart slackers at home and the hard working ones. And more than once, I was burned by really smart people who wanted to use their super powers to slack off.

I read the first six or seven. I found them pretty powerful, even the admitted guilty ones. I'll read more. Thank you for posting.

BTW, great book: "The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row" Mr. Hinton was released after 28 yrs.

My observations are that BN has been rocking really well the last year. I noticed the uptick last year. I still miss the volume of books from the 1990 and 2000's but is is a nice place to visit.

i think about $600 a year and the comments are much higher quality.

I've been stuck at 2000 for 40 yrs, but I did have a career and a life. I've picked it up again, and have as a goal, 2200 and a stretch goal of 2400. I'd like to think I could get to 2200 as I have focus now that I am retired. But, I really do not know and I think after a year of serious study, I need to evaluate my opportunity costs as there are other things I like to do.

That said, the on-line puzzles from chess.com or lichess.com are great. Puzzle books are great, better than sudoku, and you have an easy metric to see how well you perform.

Be careful not to play speed chess (its fun) but probably not the best for development.

I recently found: http://www.billwallchess.com/. what is nice, he has a lot of chess books in PGN notation, so you can get the book, then follow thru the whole book on a chess viewer, it saves a lot of time setting up pieces. So, books on endgames, etc are much easier to study.

At the early steps, I'd suggest not to waste time in studying openings and work on combinations, endgames. You just need enough opening to muddle thru and then you can win in later stages.

I am putting together a small binder of the openings I will play. If it is not in the binder, I will not play it. I've been far too whimsical playing things like Kings Gambit, but I need to focus on more specific openings, at least playing them more often.