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Cake day: Jan 17, 2022

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Still watching it but this shouldn’t be surprising.

The whole point of US politics was to isolate China out of the “AI revolution” by depriving it to top of the line chip.

Meanwhile China has been building the entire World electronic ecosystem bar few very specific high end components, leaving these to TSMC, ASML, etc or design mostly to the US.

Even before tariffs and sale bans (due to dual use concerns) China already had a chip independence plan dating back from at least 2000. Since then close to the entire World move production there, at least assembly, and most deals to do so included, or tried to, include IP transfer and at the very least learning with the partner, if not more but that’d be just speculation, to add industrial espionage on top (even though plenty of news on the topic).

So… sure, it’s happening. Now the question though I asked on such thread countless time is basically : what’s the yield?

Because producing 1 board to send to a tester is already an incredible feat but that doesn’t mean thousands or even millions can be produced. If they can, that also doesn’t mean they can be produced economically efficiently, regardless of subsidies.

PS: most interesting book on the topic IMHO : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_War


common intelligence at scale

I mean not even… sure it can surprise you on some stuff you know little, sure it can regurgitate random parts from an encyclopedia and might even not be wrong about it… but it can easily be “outsmarted” by a 5yo on some of the most basic and random questions, it only has to be outside if its dataset. That’s not intelligence.


Thanks but doesn’t seem to work, 1st link 403, 2nd link no play button (and download is audio only), 3rd link loads but never plays, 4th link doesn’t play at all and download doesn’t work. Again I appreciate alternatives but IMHO sharing YouTube links, so BigTech links, on Lemmy isn’t great. We should rely on federated alternatives for videos too.

Edit: I did disable JS Shelter just for this (because of Anubis, ironically enough based on the video content!) but it still didn’t work. So to be honest even if it did work (which it didn’t) it would still not be great.


I typically use yt-dlp youtube-local and it usually works… but that is not the point. The point is that it is not sustainable to rely on platforms we do not want to support. I’m glad it works for you though, feel free to share a mirror if you can.


Please provide a non BigTech alternative, ideally with a way to donate to the content creator.

I’m interested but I literally can’t watch it. I don’t have a YouTube account, nor a Google one, and the video is not viewable without.


Humanoid robots are only hyped because GenAI is hyped and GenAI is hyped because Altman and his other conmen are scamming the World out of resources on the promise of AGI because “Scale Is All You Need”, a very convenient trope for VCs as they have no other idea beside dominating a market by scaling.

So… if the GenAI bubble does pop (and the HBR article on workslop lets me hope that it has started) then I don’t see how humanoid robot would not. I also imagine manufacturers are less prone to hype because they have been robots already for decades. Even some services like hospitals do have robots for cleaning, delivery, etc. Sure they don’t look humanoid but it’s still a baseline to compare with in terms of performance and price.

Edit: if you want to explore the OSHW FLOSS side of this check https://github.com/huggingface/lerobot but my own understanding is that there is no radical progress. Sure we might be inching away at “solving” robotics but nothing changed except few components getting a bit cheaper thanks to smartphone then in turn drone or obviously GPUs.

Edit2: if you don’t feel like reading the article just watch the 2 videos by Roland Johansson on normal hand vs hand without touch, it’s fascinating.



Going to play devil’s advocate here but in theory, it’s not necessarily bad, namely it could display

  • what’s in stock (assuming RFID or being patient enough to scan barcode of each item or data from online order)
  • recipes matching what’s in stock,
  • statistics of usage e.g. when it’s most used, how much electricity consumed, etc
  • contextual information e.g. calendar items overlapping with meal time (thus expecting food to take away)
  • what’s in stock that could go bad soon and thus potential recipes

so … honestly the “smart” can be potentially useful to the user.

The problem is not really the why IMHO but rather the how because sadly I have 0 trust that it will be done solely for the benefit of the user. Which is why I will not buy a proprietary version. If I could get a OSHW one with e.g. eInk and HomeAssistant and/or GadgetBridge support, I just might, until then I’m in no rush.




FWIW it’s basically peanuts for this kind of industry. Even $1 would be too much though.


Can’t wait for this to be generalized so that Easy Anti-Cheat or PunkBuster tell EA or Bethesda to lock your GPU because their faulty launcher detected you tried to play offline twice.

Initially preventing “bad guys” (really big quotes here) to do “bag things” (AFAICT it’s mostly lame LLMs, not actual dangerous military stuff, which for those they actually already have supercomputers allocated) sounds like a good idea… until it inexorably tricky down (unlike money and power) to citizens worldwide.

I don’t think remotely control CPUs or GPUs can end well for citizens. It won’t be PC as in Personal Computer, rather remotely controlled terminals for whomever is in power.


why cell phones don’t authenticate the towers they connect to.

I believe it’s because they assume it’s not necessary because it was until now

  • prohibitively expensive, but now a “tower” is less than 2k EUR e.g. https://www.crowdsupply.com/ukama/ukama
  • prohibitively complex, see above, namely you don’t need to be a TelCo engineer to get it going
  • probably illegal, namely you needed (and I bet still need in most places) wireless band allocation before you could deploy anything

… so I imagine there was no authentication because there was no practical threat beside few “fun” examples in CCC or DEF Con.


Who in the EU wants a US car

Bunch of people according to most EU capitals where one can see, sadly, plenty of Swatzicars.


move somewhere I can get around with just a bicycle.

So… FWIW that’d be Brussels and I bet most European cities. By bike you can get your food in, get to the nearby Brico to fix pretty much anything in your house, get deliveries with national post service, but you can cycle all the way to the airport (if somehow you don’t want to use the train), park there and get… well pretty much anywhere else in the World.


There were and still are into quantum computing.

They are absolute champions of tech-washing and green-washing.

It’s literally anything to say, do and spending money on to make people forget that their core business is actually advertising.




conjure up an email summary within seconds that can shave off up to 5 whole minutes

… but can it? Like actually, can one do that?

Sure an LLM can generate something akin to a summary. It will look like it’s getting some of the points in a different form… but did it get the actual gist of it? Did it skip anything meaningful that once ignore will have far reaching consequences?

So yes sure an LLM can generate shorter text related to what was said during the meeting but if there is limited confidence in the accuracy and no responsibility, unlike somebody who would take notes and summarize potentially facing negative consequences, then wouldn’t the reliance on such a tool create more risk?


Well this next example isn’t about phones but e-bikes. Unfortunately unwise me bought a fancy designer bike made by a national startup (CowBoy, to name and shame them) and I’m now stuck with a fancy metal frame on wheels because the belt is not in stock. Ordered in February, supposed to arrive 60 days later, I’m still waiting, not even an email received, nothing in now late June.

So… yes my next e-bike will be very VERY boring, in the sense of relying on built that have easy to source replacement part.

Yes, it did take few a first relatively large mistake (even though I did use that bike daily for years already) but that’s what I meant by “only work once”. You try, make painful mistake, don’t repeat.


you might be able to get a replacement battery for your 200€ phone, but having to pay 200€ for it.

On the assumption that consumers are somehow rational and have some memory, that “trick” only work once.

Next time a consumer get stuck with a practically irreplaceable battery because it’s too expensive from a company, they will look at other companies selling equivalent products, AND how much they are charging for batteries. I also imagine a business of spare parts because just having to give the right data, e.g. specifications like cell, module, pack, C-rate, E-rate, SOC, DOD, voltage, capacity, energy, cycle life, but also connectors and just size, will probably open up dedicated spare part vendors.



Actually… if you flip it…

So I’d rather argue that hammer can even screw screws.


I think you are thinking of Collabora Online, not Collabora Office and surely not Collabora the company.


“We won’t get any closer to the goal if we don’t start.”

such a great line, yes, just take a step! Even if it’s hard, you will learn something but if you don’t try, you won’t.


Like what?

If Collabora has extra features they do not think they need, relying on the lowest dependencies seems like the most reliable and fair choice.


This isn’t what you asked for but… maybe you have one already?

My phone has an ARM processor and I can use my BT keyboard (Corne-ish Zen) with it.

Edit: alternatively the PinePhone also has a battery+keyboard case but I admit I don’t exactly love typing on it.


Scam and grift at unreal scale. Sad and worried but not even surprised. Altman is literally doing the exact opposite he promised from the start. It’s not about safety, it’s all about money and power.



long-awaited plans for an affordable car

You mean the 1, ONE, single, as in nothing else really matter, thing that gave any modicum of decency to Musk despite all this BS over the years and was again the very reason one could have been excited about him making Tesla so much more famous (not popular, as in… affordable) is actually not happening? Sorry, in Musk parlance, is happening next year?

shocked Pikachu face

I honestly feel disgusted because, even though I do not have a car, when Musk on ramped Tesla I was cheering for him. I do NOT think cars are the solution BUT if we have no other choice, I was naively thinking electric cars, specifically NOT fancy elitism expensive coupe or sedans, but rather affordable ones was one potential path. Meanwhile, years later, if I look by the window outside where I live, in Belgium, we do have electric plugs in the street (nice!) which are sadly used by a … fancy EV. At the same time in the city center the silent (literally) revolution have been electric bikes, especially cargo bikes and longtails. So many of those now used.

So tiring that CEOs of large company can claim vaporware constantly without any consequences. It’s damaging to entire ecosystem they overshadow. They already have economical power by their cheer scale but they also abuse the mindshare of potential customers and regulators. We need to hold them accountable to false claims, claims that are indefinitely delayed and it has to hurt the bottom line of their companies.


The propaganda aspect is import so I’m adding this to a reply rather than yet another edit.

This research is interesting. What the article tries to do isn’t clarifying the work rather than put a nation “first”. Other nations do that too. That’s not a good thing. We should celebrate research as a better understanding of our world, both natural and engineered. We should share what has been learned and built on top of each other.

Now when a nation, being China, or the US, or any other country, is saying they are “first” and “ahead” of anybody else, it’s to bolster nationalistic pride. It’s not to educate citizens on the topic. It’s important to be able to disentangle the two regardless of the source.

That’s WHY I’m being so finicky about facts in here. It’s not that I care about the topic particularly, rather it’s about the overall political process, not the science.


Thanks for taking the time to clarify all that.

It’s not a typo because the paper itself does mention 3090 as a benchmark.

I do tinker with FPGAs at home, for the fun of if (I’m no expert but the fact that I own few already shows that I know more about the topic than most people who don’t even know what it is, or what it’s for) so I’m quite aware of what some of the benefits (and trade of) can be. It’s an interesting research path (again, otherwise I wouldn’t even have invested my own resources to learn more about that architecture in the first place) so I’m not criticizing that either.

What I’m calling BS on… is the title and the “popularization” (and propaganda, let’s be honest here) article. Qualifying a 5 years old chip as flagship (when, again, it never was) and implying what the title does, is wrong. It’s overblown otherwise interesting work. That being said, I’m not surprised, OP share this kind of things regularly, to the point that I ended up blocking him.

Edit: not sure if I really have to say so but the 4090, in March 2025, is NOT the NVIDIA flagship, that’s 1 generation behind. I’m not arguing for the quality of NVIDIA or AMD or whatever chip here. I’m again only trying to highlight the sensationalization of the article to make the title look more impressive.

Edit2: the 5090, in March 2025 again, is NOT even the flagship in this context anyway. That’s only for gamers… but here the article, again, is talking about “energy-efficient AI systems” and for that, NVIDIA has an entire array of products, from Jetson to GB200. So… sure the 3090 isn’t a “bad” card for a benchmark but in that context, it is no flagship.

PS: taking the occasion to highlight that I do wish OP to actually go to China, work and live there. If that’s their true belief and they can do so, to not solely “admire” a political system from the outside, from the perspective of not participating to it, but rather give up on their citizenship and do move to China.


Well, I honestly tried (cf history). You’re neither addressing my remark about the fact from the article nor the bigger picture. Waste of time, blocked.


Unfortunately my model isn’t supported. I might look for a 2nd hand supported one with the USB adapter and try, as I do use and work with Linux on a daily basis.


Based on https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1jb2uvt/roomba_accidentally_saw_outside_and_now_i_cant/ I’d bet some models surely do.

That being said, I am NOT promoting Roomba or any other brand, I’m only highlighting that apps aren’t necessarily a requirement for the basic feature.

Finally, as others suggested if one genuinely does need such feature and is mindful about privacy, I’d check https://valetudo.cloud/ first then see what harder supports it, which sadly doesn’t seem to support Roomba or Roborock AFAICT. It does, lucky you, check https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html#roborock

Edit: apparently “Xiaomi V1 is made by Roborock” according to https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html so maybe there is way, worth investigating for you IMHO.


turns out you can use older GPUs in creative ways to get a lot more out of them than people realized

If that’s the point then that’s the entire GPU used for mining then ML revolution, thanks to CUDA mostly, that already happened in 2010 so that’s even older, that’d 15 yeas ago.

What I was highlighting anyway is that it’s hard to trust an article where simple facts are wrong.


What is this… “Nvidia’s flagship RTX 3090 GPU”? Are we in back in 2020? Half a decade ago? Is this a joke? Even then, it wasn’t the flagship, the 3090 Ti was.


Is there a Murena/Volla of vacuuming robots? Namely can one buy a working robot (new or reconditioned) with Valetudo pre-installed?


FWIW you can use a Roomba without an app. You… push the physical button on the robot, and voila. No app, no connection, still cleaning.

Sure you can’t schedule cleaning but honestly unless you have a version that can empty it’s own trash recipient and your house is always robot cleaning friendly (so… 0 cable on the way, chairs aside, etc) it’s rarely a huge efficiency gain.

Honestly I feel like 10y/o there was a lot of hype around vacuuming robot but it didn’t “explode” in popularity because it’s not really such a big difference.


Blocked, you’re just trying to be provocative instead of having a constructive discussion. I don’t have time to waste on that so don’t bother replying to my comments, I won’t see what you write anymore.


"Venture capital finance has dried up amid political and economic pressures, prompting a dramatic fall in new company formation" Posted in technology as most of the funded companies are into technology. The most shocking piece is arguably the number of funded company pear year with a clear peak in 2018 which is 50x (!) more than last year, 2023.
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