vid

In my experience and logically, goths might form in smaller centres (or cities) but will converge in cities when they pursue university, careers, or richer environments. I hung out with goths in Toronto in the 90s, some were there for fashion reasons but many were quite committed including developing their own takes (hippy-goth, techno-goth, etc). The article's use of goths as an example is stretched.

A couple years before that, Steve Mann had his medically attached prototype glasses ripped off his head in a McDonald's in Paris. https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/19/3169889/steve-mann-cyborg...

I've been using Google premium to not see ads for years now. It's great and apparently the video makers earn more too. I don't love Google's domination and some of their practices but this is pretty reasonable.

P16s gen 2, with the larger battery. OLED can use less power if you can keep things dark, but I don't put a lot of work into it.

Do you need to be in that galaxy? I easily get 8h with this $1400 64GB RAM AMD Thinkpad with an OLED screen running unoptimized Ubuntu (yes it looks 90s anonymous). An equivalent notebook for most practical purposes from Apple would be at least 3.5× more expensive.

SEEKING WORK | BC, Canada

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Probably not

Technologies: Full stack Node.js/Javascript, systems, practical uses of AI, Linked Data

Résumé/CV: https://zooid.org/~vid

Email: vid_hn@zooid.org

I've initiated and contributed to a number of significant projects. My core strengths are ideation and quickly building robust proofs of concepts across diverse areas. I'm more interested in what the project is about than a get-rich plan, but sometimes the two come together. I don't need full-time work. If you need an experienced technical partner, let's connect.

Location: BC, Canada

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Probably not

Technologies: Full stack Node.js/Javascript, systems, practical uses of AI, Linked Data

Résumé/CV: https://zooid.org/~vid

Email: vid_hn@zooid.org

I've initiated and contributed to a number of significant projects. My core strengths are ideation and quickly building robust proofs of concepts across diverse areas. I'm more interested in what the project is about than a get-rich plan, but sometimes the two come together. I don't need full-time work. If you need an experienced technical partner, let's connect.

A 24gb model is fast and ranks 3. A 70b model is slow and 8.

A top tier hosted model is fast and 100.

Past what specialized models can do, it's about a mixture/agentic approach and next level, nuclear power scale. Having a computer with lots of relatively fast RAM is not magic.

To all these comments, I'm not talking practically for myself, I'm talking about what a revolutionary "think different" company would do for its users and projection into the world. Starting with taking away the friction of changing models and the impact of all these product lines, which sometimes instantly become less valuable (2023's "8GB is more than enough"), would be a good start, and Apple if anyone could amortize this on behalf of their userbase.

Another observation; I've travelled the world and rarely see people who could use robust, secure products the most (vulnerable people) using Apple products. They're all packing second-tier Samsung or LG Androids and old Windows notebooks (there are decent Samsung, LG, Android, Windows products, but that's not what they have access to).

Is there a normal LLM user yet? Most people would want their options to be as wide as possible. The big ones usually get covered (eventually), and there are distinct good libraries emerging for Mac only (sigh), but last I checked the experience of running every kit (stable diffusion, server-class, etc) involved overhead for the Mac world.

It's not "DDR5" on its own, it's a few factors.

Bandwidth (GB/s) = (Data Rate (MT/s) * Channel Width (bits) * Number of Channels) / 8 / 1000

(8800 MT/s * 64 bits * 8 channels) / 8 / 1000 = 563.2 GB/s

This is still half the speed of a consumer NVidia card, but the large amounts of memory is great, if you don't mind running things more slowly and with fewer libraries.

I wanted to go down this path some months ago, but couldn't find any options on the market. I ended up with a 42" 4k LG C3, but it's just "ok" because I can easily see pixels. I wanted to use the room as dual use work/watch movies, but without the need to watch movies I'd probably go back to a wide screen curved display.

So Apple just released their new caste-defined product line. Sure, they're technically good. But I don't know how they can claim any vision aligned with any legacy, they're basically a shiny walled-garden Dell.

Actually your comment was facetious. But that inherently shows how you don't believe Ferrari would make a general consumer offering, in contrast to what people might expect from Apple.

Oh, I do take my money elsewhere. However, your livid-ness is a lot more misplaced compared to expecting a very massive, "user friendly," general computing company that "thinks different" to give the people what they want.

I think the OP's point is that Apple is forcing people to pay a lot more for something that doesn't cost Apple that much (extra RAM) and is part of artificial product lines. One could claim the product lines are important for ultimate profitability, but Apple makes so much money it's hardly critical if they wanted to be a truly incredible consumer focused company. Apple has gotten far away from the idea of a home computer someone can hack with, where hacking includes local AI these days. In this period we know more memory is important for many applications of local AI, which they claim is a goal to provide for people, so it's hard not to say Apple's approach is optimized for shareholders, not end users.

The work of an Open-source low-code email editor?

Would have been nice to see people discuss this.

"Most people" could get by with a Chromebook. But "most people" is made up of many groups, if you ignore those groups you have nothing but a race to the bottom.

I did another take on this, that extends Markdown links to include types (like triples, like Semantic Mediawiki) called "mdld". It's quite powerful but I left it at a good-enough stage for my uses. https://github.com/vid/mdld

Fiction - [Trouble on] Triton by Samuel Delaney. It just has so many relevant big ideas told in a very subdued way via a not very likeable but appropriate character.

I'm contemplating retirement. I find myself ostensibly in a workplace of high personal relevance, but it's going in the wrong direction, largely I think due to layers of disconnected professionalization that are supposed to have the answers, but the result is just a race to the bottom.

I'd like to have more cash before retiring, but it'd be ok with a bit of restraint. It's mostly up to finding a good lifestyle.

Thing is, I still enjoy 'tech;' the activity of programming, writing tests, designing things (even building workstations), constant learning, and the larger potential it brings to more than technical people, tied in with the sometimes distant idea that a more participatory world can be fairer and more peaceful.

I wonder if an engaging hobby will appear that combines elements of free software, wikipedia, non-dominating personal perspective, and problem solving. People like solving puzzles, maybe we can help solve other people's puzzles too.

I'm surprised it hasn't happened so far, but contributory culture has been abducted so many times, and the intentionally free/open world hasn't been very good at course correction. Which isn't surprising considering other powerful interests, including professionalization and the way "startups" took over with their compartmentalize and cash-out energy, the tech giants, and now of course AI (which could be part of a helpful system). "Sensemaking" was a thing for a while, but it's not really talked about anymore.

Good to hear you improved it. I just need it to be as good as standalone whisper-large. I certainly don't want to send all my conversations to a third party.

I tried it a week or so ago, it didn't really go well. Transcription was terrible, even though using the same model (whisper-large) on its own works well. The UI messages were trying to make it sound like a straightforward app, they should have been much more helpful as many things went wrong with a "try again later" type message. I also wish they'd bundled more functionality in the service, so the app could be a simple web front end that uses its API.

At a greater level, I've always wanted something like this, but we shouldn't be able to collect info on other people without their permission. The dangers of breaches or abuse are too great.

Since corporations are holding back the greatest benefits, we should be able to remember commercial works we've accessed, and collect and organize info on corporations, and some info on governments, but by their nature corporations will be better at getting the upper hand and the resulting attacks on government might not be for the better for society at large.

Yes, some parts of some governments conduct abuses which should be called out, but that is specific departments, other departments work to other principles, sometimes pushing back against the abuse. Otherwise comparing governments to business or computers is a downward spiral. This[1] is an interesting series on this topic.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...

Podcasts can be a kind of social experience that's akin to morning talk show hosts, the actual content can be quite low. A real potential of this is the combination of the podcaster's intent and the listener's context. Between the two, podcasts can be generated personalized to each individual listener, while still keeping it a more passive medium and the podcasters can retain their personality in the synthetic form. This has really huge potential for those moments where you want to learn, want some personality and bias, but don't want ¾ of the podcast to be for a general audience. It's an interesting hybrid of broad and narrowcasting. I think by the time it's in the wild, it won't really be a podcast though, because direct q&a will be an option (albeit with the usual drawbacks of LLMs).

The idea of having no privacy in public doesn't extend to every cause and creeper creating their own spy system. They are rarely going to focus on useful 'powers that be' issues. They are going to be all about asymmetrical exploitation. If this is let go, anyone with minimal skills and intent will be fully weaponized, some will organize as they do now for lulz or outright malicious activities like doxxing and blackmail, but amplified and "accepted" (without critique, just "cool" innovation for infiltration), and this will be another unrelenting assault on society.

There's no good normal from some people being able to deeply track some other people using all the tools available. It should be strictly forbidden for individuals and corporations to collect and organize this information, and use by government should be strictly limited.

On the other hand, it should be perfectly normal and good for individuals to deeply track companies and governments as bodies. The lack of a society wide focus on this aspect is quite troubling.

The problem is you're violating other people's privacy, then uploading it.

They innovate to infiltrate. 20ish years ago Steve Mann was beat up for invading people's comfort zone with AR glasses, then Google's AR users were "glassholes," now Meta is trying to make it cool. As much as I think AI is valuable, I hope they fail. The act of holding up a smartphone is much more explicit to signal to others they're about to lose all privacy to a centralized company. I don't think Quest is that innovative either, it's mostly first person shooters.

Where does Meta actually talk about things that could really be called "cool" at a society level? Or is it all just empty hype along the lines of Facebook being exploitation of social networking.

I hope HTC can keep the torch burning. They're a small player against some real giants. Their newest headset has two USB-C ports, even though it already has eye tracking built in (unlike Quest). Making it more open ended is good for the ecosystem, users and could reduce obsolescence.

This was reduced to rubble on reddit for being an advertisement, with the suggestion being the testing is rigged to their product.