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For the past decade my home server is also my desktop workstation. According to canon people shouldn't do this because the workstation might crash or be updated more frequently or create conflicting resource usage, but with containers it's never been a problem for me and lets me have one more capable computer (with dGPU) essentially for each purpose, rather than managing two systems, one of which I only use for ~20 hours a week (I usually use my laptop). However I definitely would like it to use as little power when in low processing states.

I mean "Linux" (as a user OS) should for the most part be a common experience, so if a very technical or very non technical person wants to do something or someone wants to support someone doing ordinary things using a different distro, they aren't on a whole new arbitrary mini-adventure full of surprises, except at the desktop level.

Mind you even though I've been running Linux for decades, I have lost the enthusiasm for the low level details and am happiest when I can use apt for everything and have the OS manage dependencies and updates. I see a lot of negative comments about Flatpack and my experiences haven't been great, so I don't know if it is comprehensively good and will solve issues like low level drivers (GPUs).

I run KDE Neon and this checks out. However, it's a terrible idea to create another distro. The Linux world needs more cohesion. I might go back to Ubuntu if their KDE 6 is decent now. I use the DE for the purpose of running programs in the environment and that includes being able to easily set up things like CUDA, which is easiest with Ubuntu, a PITA with other options.

I have some of that, especially when I haven't been out for a while. Moving to a place where English isn't the main language helped me quite a bit to get into the right headspace. Also realizing no one really cares about me. This is fun: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sheeple.png

Sometimes if you walk to a previous stop or come in from a different line you can find a seat more easily. If it makes sense you could even go a couple stops "backwards" if the train reverses at that point. Shifting your schedule might be another option. At one phase I took standing as a challenge and drastically improved my balance over a couple of years, though it's not fun when the car is really crowded.

Once you get used to it, you get more solitude in public transit. Plan your route so you get access to a seat, settle in with a book or music. The other people melt away. Whereas driving a car involves constant interaction with other drivers which in many places (including rural areas, not to single out pickup drivers but there is a pattern) can be quite fraught.

I use local AI fairly often for innocuous queries (health, history, etc) I don't want to feed the spy machines plus I like the hands on aspect, I would use it more if I had more time and while I hear the 120b is pretty good (I mostly use qwen 30b), I would use it a lot more if I could run some of the really great models. Hopefully Medusa Halo will be all that.

Exactly. People would be thrilled with a $1200 64GB card with ok processing power and transfer speed. It's a bit of a mystery why it doesn't exist. Intel is enabling vendors to 'glue' two 24GB cards together for a $1200 list price 48GB card, but it's a frankenstein monster and will probably not be available for that price.

I post them with good descriptions on local sites and Facebook marketplace (sigh) and wait for the right buyer. Obviously for less than what I paid, but top end parts can usually get a good price, I got a year of enjoyment out of it, and it's not going to landfill.

Who said anything about the B50?

Plenty of people use eg 2, 4 or 6 3090s to run large models at acceptable speeds.

Higher VRAM at decent (much faster than DDR5) speeds will make cards better for AI.

People are running GPT OSS 120b at 46 tokens per second on Strix Halo systems, which is quite usable and a fraction of the cost of a 128GB NVidia or Apple system. Apple's GPU isn't that strong, so real competition to Apple and NVidia can be created.

I'm not sure it really takes that kind of breakthrough approach. Apple chips are more energy efficient, but x86 can be much faster on CPU or GPU tasks, and it's much more versatile. A main "bug and feature" issue is the PC industry relies on common denominator standards and components, whereas Apple has gone vertical with very limited core expansion. This is particularly important when it comes to memory speed, where the standards are developed and factories upgraded over years at huge cost.

I gather it's very difficult and expensive to make a board that supports more channels of RAM, so that seems worth targeting at the platform level. Eight channel RAM using common RAM DIMMs would transform PCs for many tasks, however for now gamers are a main force and they don't really care about memory speed.

I have looked into the Threadripper, but just can't justify it. The tension between all the options and the cost, power usage, size (EATX) is too much, and I don't think such a system, especially with 2025 era DDR5 in the 6000mt range, will hold its value well. If I were directly earning money with it, sure, but as a hobby/augmentation to my work, I will wait out a generation or lose interest in the pursuit.

Competitors to NVidia really need to figure things out, even for gaming with AI being used more I think a high end APU would be compelling with fast shared memory.

There are a lot of local AI hobbyists, just visit /r/LocalLLama to see how many are using 8GB cards, or all the people asking for higher RAM version of cards.

This makes it mysterious since clearly CUDA is an advantage, but higher VRAM lower cost cards with decent open library support would be compelling.

For the past 30 odd years I've hand picked and built a desktop PC (which also acts as a home server) pretty much every year, selling the "old" one each time. I really enjoy it as a hobby and for the benefits of understanding and optimizing a system at the parts level. Even though there is a lot of nonsense created by all the choices and marketing, I really prefer the parts approach, and am happy with Linux so a Mac isn't very appealing. A perfectly designed PC can do tasks very well with optimized parts and at a much better price.

But I just can't bring myself to upgrade this year. I dabble in local AI, where it's clear fast memory is important, but the PC approach is just not keeping up without going to "workstation" or "server" parts that cost too much.

There are glimmers of hope with MR-DIMMs CU-DIMM, and other approaches, but really boards and CPUs need to support more memory channels. Intel has a small advantage over AMD, but it's nothing compared to the memory speed of a Mac Pro or higher. "Strix Halo" offers some hope with four memory channel support, but it's meant for notebooks so isn't really expandable (which would enable à la carte hybrid AI; fast GPUs with reasonably fast shared system RAM).

I wish I could fast forward to a better time, but it's likely fully integrated systems will dominate if the size and relatively weak performance for some tasks makes the parts industry pointless. It is a glaring deficiency in the x86 parts concept and will result in PC parts being more and more niche, exotic and inaccessible.

I very consistently see people say prompt processing is slow for larger context sizes ("notoriously slow"), something that is much less of an issue with eg CUDA setups.

Here's my variation; I can't stand the ergonomics of Apple computers. The screen doesn't tilt back far enough, they're heavy and slippery, and the only thing I could switch to from a Trackpoint is mind control.

I'm a Linux guy too, when I have to use a Mac I turn all the gloss off and it's ok, but without going to Nix I miss a system wide package manager and I like an open-as-possible community OS that runs everywhere. It's a shame Apple doesn't license their chips.

About a year ago I got a maxed out Macbook Pro, but the above combined with the fact I wasn't comfortable travelling with something that cost as much as a good used car made me return it.

Now I'm using a Thinkpad that was ¼ the price and it's great, AMD chip, 64GB of RAM, replaceable storage, fantastic screen, keyboard (and Trackpoint) means it can do just about anything. Yes, battery life is limited, around four hours with the 16" OLED (I haven't put any work into optimizing it, and this isn't a battery-first model), but I can handle it. I'll maybe get a Strix Halo laptop since I like running LLMs, but otherwise x86 has improved enough that it's pretty good. That said, I won't complain if it matches/surpasses Apple chips, and I'd consider running a headless Apple 'server' at home.

It's fine that the points are different.

If you need to use npm in the rest of the project, which can be helpful for any project that uses front end Javascript, having one library (essentially) that uses a different mechanism is not great.

I have built many projects and while I swore at convoluted bundlers in the past, they are pretty nice these days.

I agree with sitkack. npm (packaged software) is really handle to bundle code and keep a repo up to date. But I guess if you just want a markdown editor on a page, this is fine.

There is also https://github.com/maximhq/bifrost which apparently overcomes some performance issues of litellm and is easy to get going.

How long is it before a starlink has this capability. Maybe a stretch, but also inevitable. I think about the fact that there are probably many uses of starlink that don't involve a consumer login, they just provide ubiquitous surveillance wherever.

I have nicer.info but haven't put it to use in 12 years.

ob https://files.ohai.social/media_attachments/files/111/755/74...

That video. This is why I can't take Apple, and, sorry, many of their fans, seriously.

Because people agreed with you? Why is that a problem?

I don't think that's true, but can't quickly find evidence. Ultimately it can't be depended on and is something an EV buyer would want to verify for their region.

My experience of rural areas is that few are actual farmers. After all, farming has largely consolidated and become automated. Most country people just don't want a city lifestyle. They might have some of the accoutrements of a farmer and have added lifestyle (enjoyable/fulfilling) overhead and significant attitude (independence & sometimes xenophobia) for themselves, but it's a lifestyle choice. Therefore most don't have a welder (though they probably know someone who has one).

I've been looking into neodb, have you compared them? https://neodb.net/

I totally understand. When I have a project with a months timeline that I know can be done more quickly, I spend a lot of up front time exploring areas that might be helpful, or might just be interesting on their own. A friend called this process "annealing." It does bring more creative and sometimes breakthrough solutions, but I find we are in a world where development creativity is subjugated to more top down controlled ideas (which can often lead to a 'race to the bottom' for the users in a startup culture focused on exits)

I'm not diminishing them, I am in awe of their work, I'm just pointing out that sometimes people (including myself) focus on esoteric projects that might have some learning opportunities, but don't directly solve a real problem (and might just be psychological mechanisms).

The big question is, would the author lose interest if they were working on something mission critical?