I've always kind of wondered.. if you could somehow quantitate the storage capacity of the human brain, how much would it be. Then, assuming you could ever create a truly sentient AI, or do like the show Upload and digitize your consciousness, it seems like storage would be the problem. If you could exist essentially forever, and continue racking up new experiences and knowledge, that all has to be stored somewhere. If something that is basically just repeating back to us our own questions in the form of a statement, and maybe pulling in some random shit from who knows where, nothing even remotely close to what the average human brain is capable of, and that already takes somewhere around a TB of memory... I guess I won't be living long enough to ever see a sentient AI that approaches even the level of a squirrel or cow unless someone comes up with a major breakthrough in storage density.
Posts by aerogems
1886 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2021
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Grok-1 chatbot code released – open source or open Pandora's box?
Nvidia turns up the AI heat with 1,200W Blackwell GPUs
Not sure what comment you meant to respond to, but it couldn't have been mine unless you willfully misinterpreted what I wrote. I know subtlety on the Internet tends to get lost, but I went out of my way to give a rather specific example. Maybe that's why you put a question mark instead of a period, you weren't sure you were responding to the correct comment.
Instead of increasing the amount of power drawn, work on improving performance within existing power consumption levels. Like how ARM chips can give performance within spitting distance of x86, but at maybe 20% of the power draw. The point at which video cards started needing their own dedicated power feeds from computer PSUs, that should have been the point at which either they worked to up the amount of power that can be supplied by the bus, or started working on efficiency rather than performance.
Though, you are right, I added an extra zero onto the end of things, so it is KW, not MW.
Who needs central heating when you can just play a few rounds of the latest FPS and heat your place with the waste heat? Shit, you could just pump it into the clothes dryer too.
What I want to see, is sort of where CPUs have been going. Improving the performance per watt ratio. If I could get RTX 20XX performance out of the power demands of an old GTX 9XX series card, great. Then try to improve it to 30XX and so on; 1.2MW just for the GPU is well past ridiculous. I just picture that scene from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where they turn on the Christmas lights and then cut to the power meter spinning like crazy.
https://youtu.be/oHVG2UrWNh0?si=hP4QD0VTSC8j6zLY&t=75
Sorry, Siri: Apple may be eyeing Google Gemini for future iPhones
Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server
Re: The owner has two Ferraris. They have that kind of money
I remember hearing somewhere or other that the gear ratio on a Ferrari is such that you can basically never take it out of first gear and be within legal speed limits almost anywhere. Which, kind of makes me wonder what the point is. Then again, I've always been a bit of a function over form sort of person. If something looks nice, bonus, but it's a distant second to getting me from A to B reliably.
Sort of reminds me of a global company I worked for once upon a time. In certain areas of the healthcare field, this is a very well-known brand. I saw the markups on some of the products they sell, and they were ridiculous, like 300-400%, and I was in a meeting where some SVP was saying how if customers call them up saying they're going to go with a cheaper competitor they tell them, "Good luck with that!"
Anyway... internally, the company is incredibly stingy. They wouldn't pay for a proper PLM tool, or even to make some changes to a home grown one they had for a specific site to make it applicable for the entire company. So, instead of copying and pasting a bunch of shit from spreadsheets into emails all day, I had to cobble something together with VBA. A horrible solution, but pretty much literally the only one I had available, and likely only because the IT department forgot, or was too lazy, to modify the Office install to not include VBA.
In the rush to build AI apps, please, please don't leave security behind
To Quote Futurama
Hahahahahahahaha! Oh wait, you're serious! Let me laugh even harder!
If history is any guide, security will be like concern #30 on a list of 20 concerns. Up until it starts to affect an influential politician, celebrity, or a large enough group of common people that it sparks a sea change.
Microsoft license shuffle means Power Apps users could break the bank
Re: Very generalised response ahoy
That's both more than I needed, and would never have gotten approval. I just needed something to facilitate collecting info for things like creating new customers and vendors in SAP. Which is more than their Forms thing could do (it only seemed useful for creating questionnaires) and something I could not, for the effing life of me, figure out how to do using their app builder because there was no documentation. I just needed something that would do some real basic validation checks and then email me the result in a nice easy to use format for creating the BP record(s). You'd think Power Apps would be perfect for that, maybe even overkill... and it might be... if I could have ever found even a working example app similar to what I wanted to do.
I tried just creating a simple Access form that people could fill out and send to me, but my manager at the time must've been molested by Access in the past or something for the way he was so adamantly adverse to the very idea of using Access for anything. He got visibly angry at just the mere suggestion without even being willing to hear me out on why it was better than using a bunch of Excel sheets.
Anyway, good job.
At a previous job I was looking for a way to help automate routine data collection, and looked at the Power Apps as a possible solution. But, for the life of me, I couldn't find any real documentation on them. You either use whatever the SharePoint wizard things create, or fumble around in the dark until you chance across a light switch. Not that I give a gerbil's wet fart if it would have ended up costing that employer more, but suppose it's just as well. Now I know not to bother with those apps in the future.
Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS
Re: "make their websites dependant on Google's proprietary features"
Not just with games, but especially with games, I've always been of the opinion that the game/app should be developed using systems specced to the minimum system requirements. Then you don't even need "recommended" listings because if the game/app is playable/usable on the "minimum" it will always scale up better than it scales down. None of this shit where you give the devs some absolute bleeding edge level system for their dev work. You can have a really nice powerful server with a metric shittonne of cores to compile the code, but when the devs are testing their work, it's done on systems that will be considered the minimum requirements later.
Re: Be Brave
FFS, give the culture war bullshit a rest already. The reason people don't want to associate with you isn't because they're "woke" it's because you're an asshole. It's not them, it's you. It's always been you, and will always be you unless you are willing to put in the time and effort to change. Save the virtue signaling for the next klan rally.
The webkit only thing wouldn't be quite so bad if Apple actually bothered to keep it up to date with web standards. But, sort of like MS with Internet Explorer, they lost interest in it as soon as they became the dominate player. It wasn't until there was some competition that all of a sudden they decided it was worth putting some work into it.
Trump 'tried to sell Truth Social to Musk' as SPAC deal stalled
Re: pushed for Elon Musk to speak at the upcoming Republican National Convention
Given the whole "we can refuse to sell you any future vehicles if you don't let us buy back your cybertruck" bit in the purchase agreement, I wouldn't put it past Xitler to try and add something about how you must register with the RNC and vote for Republican candidates. I doubt any court would uphold that provision as being legal, but until someone actually bothered to challenge it in court, a lot of people might just assume it is legal or decide they don't want to risk it.
Re: Hey Buddy... can you spare a dime (or a billion or two)
Anyone who actually reads the Bible will quickly realize that God is not the hero of the story. Not saying Lucifer necessarily is the good guy either, but it's definitely not God. The "guy" creates humanity as exhibits in a private zoo, creates women for the sexual gratification of men, kicks humanity out of his zoo for gaining self-awareness, commits global genocide and later infanticide (which Christians still celebrate to this day), he helps the Jewish tribes roam around the desert wiping out various city-states for 40-years... then he cucks Joseph, is a deadbeat/absentee father who basically only shows up once during his kid's entire life, and has basically been completely absent from the world since the Old Testament days.
These are not "good guy" type activities, even based on the morality system "he" handed down to humanity.
Re: Trump isn't planning to invade Russia in winter
Let him try. The US govt can just seize any assets he owns, like property, and sell it off. Not to mention freeze his bank accounts. He'd basically be dependent upon Putin to provide basically everything for him, and I doubt Putin would be terribly inclined to do so. He might be willing to allow Trump to claim asylum in Russia because it will annoy the US and provide him with a valuable bargaining chip, but I doubt very much he'd be willing to supply Trump with the kind of lifestyle he's accustomed to. Sort of like Snowden, he might be given a work visa and allowed to apply for jobs with Russian companies, but I'm betting that's about as far as Putin'd be willing to go.
Though, I have to say, I'm very curious to find out what would happen if a former US President were convicted of a felony and sentenced to time in prison. Does the Secret Service continue its protective detail or does being convicted of a felony mean that is forfeit? What about the pension and other perks former POTUS' get? Does that continue or does it also go away? They'd have to keep Trump in protective custody, but that was never really designed to be a long-term thing. He'd be completely isolated for years. Just all kinds of things that, up to now, no one has ever really had any reason to really even think about, because every previous POTUS (maybe save Nixon) was smart enough to avoid all the shit Trump just did right out in the open and even bragged about.
Also, as a number of cases involving Bill Clinton have demonstrated, a sitting POTUS can still be expected to stand trial for things that happened before they were POTUS, not to mention states can do their own thing regardless. So, things like the hoarding of classified documents and refusing to give them back when asked (numerous times) along with conspiring to obstruct efforts to retrieve them... that all happened when he wasn't POTUS, so could continue on regardless. Which would be another interesting one. What if a sitting POTUS is convicted of a crime they committed before being POTUS? You'd think if we had a functioning legislature, it would be a pretty swift impeachment and conviction to remove them from office, but a functioning legislature is not something we have right now.
Re: Hey Buddy... can you spare a dime (or a billion or two)
But you know, the longer you listen to this abortion debate, the more you hear this phrase ‘sanctity of life'. You’ve heard that. Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it's a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realise that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other ‘cuz God told them it was a good idea!The sword of God, the blood of the land, veangence is mine. Millions of dead motherfuckers. Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. ‘You believe in God?' ‘No.’ *Pdoom*. Dead. ‘You believe in God?' ‘Yes.' ‘You believe in my God? ‘No.' *Poom*. Dead. ‘My God has a bigger dick than your God!
-- George Carlin
Truly one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age. Pick almost any topic and there's likely a fitting quote from Carlin on it.
Re: Why would Musk want to buy that
Trump doesn't outright own TS, and he has some kind of exclusivity agreement with the holding company. So, he basically can't post on Xitter without violating the terms of that contract, which then probably can strip him of his ownership stake and potentially cost him hundreds of millions when he's bleeding cash everywhere.
Re: How much?
The whole point of a SPAC is to end run the IPO process. An already public company, created for the sole purpose of merging with a privately held company, merges with the privately held company and it's then instantly publicly traded. Which is why it's something I say should be outlawed, or at least very tightly regulated. There may be a few edge cases where it's the legitimately best option, but probably 99.9 times out of 100, it's going to be a bunch of grifters looking to scam gullible idiots.
Re: Hey Buddy... can you spare a dime (or a billion or two)
“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!”
-- George Carlin
https://youtu.be/iouZYYzQEjU
Re: How much?
There are, sadly, millions of people who are willing to give this "rich" asshole money. Money they often can't really afford, and he shouldn't need if he were as wealthy as he claims to be. If of the 70-something million people who voted for him last time, they all gave him an average of like $13, you arrive at a billion dollars if my math is correct.
But, as with anything involving the stock market, the valuation is generally a worthless figure useful only for bragging rights.
The SEC, and its various counterparts around the world, really need to outlaw this SPAC garbage. They're designed specifically to get around having to provide a lot of the investor info you'd normally need to give for an IPO. Generally the only people who would be interested in that sort of thing are shady organizations with people who are looking to cash out before they're required to file anything with the SEC and everyone else is left holding the bag.
That said, there's even more drama going on with the Truth Social SPAC. There's now one more lawsuit Trump has to deal with, alleging that he's trying to alter the terms of the deal by giving himself a larger stake in the resulting company and diluting the ownership stake of one of the major financial backers.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/01/legal-hurdles-swell-for-trumps-truth-social-deal-in-11th-hour-00144398
The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?
On the one hand... the classic Outlook codebase has got to be creaking loudly by now. It was created back in the innocent days of the interwebs and before Microsoft was forced to consider security implications. So, starting fresh, taking all those lessons learned over the decades, seems like a good thing.
On the other hand... making the cutover before you have a lot of key functionality in place just seems stupid. Windows 11, as a whole, is fine, but the decision to use the incomplete 10X UI overhaul is just baffling. Here they are doubling down on this bizarre idea. I tried the new Outlook a couple months back, and ended up going back after a couple hours. I can deal with it looking different, I can learn new button placements... I haven't surrendered the higher functions of my brain. but it was lacking some things I needed at the time.
On the other other hand, if it means we finally get a unified inbox, there's at least that.
Cryptocurrency laundryman gets hung out to dry
I always kind of wondered about that. Why is bitcoin so beloved by online scammers when there's the ability to trace every transaction built right into the "currency" itself. Seems like it would make it easy to see where the "money" is flowing. I just never really cared enough to look into it on my own, so thanks El Reg for satisfying a minor curiosity of mine.
Justice Dept reportedly starts criminal probe into Boeing door bolt incident
Intern with superuser access 'promoted' himself to CEO
Eeek. I had a brief job in 1991 where we similarly all had admin level accounts. In fact, it was worse than that. Everybody was told to log on as user root! I thought that sort of nonsense had been killed with fire.
One of my most recent jobs, the company was migrating ERPs. As I was told it, the previous ERP, everyone had admin access. This was only a few months ago. It's unfortunately far more alive and well than it should be.
Reminds me a bit of a former coworker. If you left your workstation unlocked to go use the restroom or something, he'd use your computer to send messages to people or set up meetings for like 2am on Saturday to discuss the weather. He claimed it was to make sure people would lock their workstations, which it did, but really he was just taking the piss.
We're not Meta support: State AGs tell Zuck to fix rampant account takeover problem
Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout
HP print rental service seeks more users to become subscription addicts
Ah printers
One of those things I remember unfondly, like dialup modems, and CRT monitors. I still have a laser printer around here somewhere, but I haven't used it in probably around 3-years. I think the last time I used it at all was to print off a copy of my eulogy for a good friend that passed away about 3-years ago, and that was basically one page; haven't touched it since.
Still, for people who do a lot of printing, I can see how this might be better for them. If you're a lawyer, just as the first example that comes to mind as a profession that may do a lot of printing*, it might be worth paying a small premium to have ink be delivered to you rather than hit up Amazon or the local retail store when suddenly you get an error message about being out of ink. As long as this is an option people can opt into, and they are still selling a la carte carts... it's not something I am ever likely to be interested in, but if others are, fine.
What I still have a problem with, however, is HP and others integrating a bunch of DRM garbage into the carts so people can't refill them or things like that.
* Yes, yes, they should be using a laser, not inkjet... it's just an example, don't overthink it
Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway
US politicians want ByteDance to sell off TikTok or face ban
Chrome users – get an alert when extensions are in danger of falling into wrong hands
Apple's had it with Epic's app store shenanigans, terminates dev account
Re: Android has a 70% global market share.
Being the sort who doesn't develop emotional attachments to inanimate objects or fictional entities, every time I'm set for an upgrade to my device I look at both Android and iOS, and iOS tends to win every time. Longer support, better performance, and better privacy round out three of the top metrics I use when deciding what to go with. Google has slowly been pulling its shit together with Android, but sometimes it feels like one step forward, three steps back. Also, to be fair, the longevity of support tends to be a Qualcomm thing that Google can't directly influence. We'll see what happens with their custom designed SoCs given Google's habit of randomly* dropping products. So far, they are still falling short of Apple's SoC, but they're within spitting distance. So, if Google manages to actually support these SoCs with newer versions of Android for roughly the same length of time Apple does iPhones, that would definitely be a big step forward. Still, we're still a couple years away from seeing how things shake out, and then I'd want to see that they are committed to doing it over the span of multiple SoCs. So, maybe by the early 2030s, if Google hasn't decided designing and maintaining their own SoCs is too expensive, I'll consider an Android device. I know Samsung has made commitments to like 5-years of support, but only on their flagship devices, and there's usually a pretty significant delay between the time Google releases some update and Samsung is able to graft their useless shit on top.
* At least from the perspective of someone on the outside. There's likely some kind of reason, like a key person on the project left or joined a different group, or there was a management shuffle and the new manager didn't see the value in the project.