In my mid forties now reading without good reading glasses is absolutely awful, I could see some people struggling with enjoyment of reading if they weren't aware their eyesight is an issue.
Something to check if you are getting older and not enjoying reading as much lately!
Same. Having aging eyes has increased my empathy. When I can't read restaurant menus, or dosage information on a bottle, or see which direction the battery is supposed to go, or the right button on some tiny remote (and then inevitably fumble and guess when glasses aren't hand), ... I've learned a lot about what navigating the world might be like for others.
"We used to think dyslexia was related to IQ but it's largely orthogonal." More specifically, dyslexia is not a generic learning disability, it's a highly specific one (and mostly preventable).
I don't think space compute is going to work out, but I would certainly say "yes happy to buy space compute from you in the future if you offer it at a good price"
It makes no sense. We're being presented with a forced choice -- put them in space, or put them in the middle of downtown Seattle.
This is stupid. I don't understand what's happening... specifically, what mental virus is spreading that lowers everybody's IQ by 10-20 points, evidently including my own. Put the data centers in the ocean, powered by solar and networked with Starlink or LEO. Put them in the desert. Put them 20 miles south of Nowhere, Idaho.
Because the US has levied high tariffs on solar cells, can't build their own solar cells economically enough, and has such a torrid permitting system that it can't build transmission lines. Natural gas is the only form of generation that's easy to permit outside cities (due to pipeline agreements and this admin fast-tracking natural gas generation approval) but few cities will allow one. DCs need to be built within low latency interconnect of urban areas or else they become uncompetitive.
Elon claims (which I take with a huge grain of salt because he's made endless broken promises in investor calls and interviews) that he disagrees with the administration's stance on solar and would use it to power his DCs if he could, but contends that permitting is a huge problem.
The US needs to figure out how to build again.
> This is stupid. I don't understand what's happening... specifically, what mental virus
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes"
What does that have to do with my point? Space-based data centers need solar cells too. They are just like terrestrial data centers, only more expensive. For every dollar you save on the PV array, you'll spend two more on radiators.
And you don't need permits in international waters, any more than you need them in orbit. Lease space on container ships.
The argument is that it's too hard to gain the necessary approvals on Earth such that space is faster and easier. Not sure I buy it fully (I do see it somewhat), but that's the argument.
Sure but acquiring enough land to build solar profitably near a DC that can hook up to the big US interconnects is very expensive and will often be blocked by residents. If you want to build solar where there are few people and cheap input costs, then you need to transmit the power to the DC.
I keep hearing about brand new data centers they want to create. Seems reasonable to go to sunny, enormous, business friendly Texas and surround the data center site with acres of solar panels, batteries, emergency gas, and whatever sized grid connection you can get approved immediately.
If the DC is for training or text inference, latency seems irrelevant, so go where you can quickly plop down power.
Texas is actually absorbing a lot of the US's new generation capacity (though the grid there remains dirty)
It's fraught to make a DC for a single purpose because it reduces the value of the DC. A DC that serves multiple purposes can handle other workloads. Moreover even if inference is slow, latency does still matter, and it costs quite a bit to light up net capacity (you still have to run fiber to an interconnect and depending on how far you are, this can get expensive fast.)
I guess, but the amount of money getting thrown around is just stupid. Having to spend a few million to light up some more fiber is a drop in the bucket.
Supposedly some of the behind the meter gas turbines that have been getting installed are rated for a ten year service life. The DCs are burning them out in 10 months from rapid cycling. If they are willing to treat $10-100 million generators as disposable, cost seems irrelevant.
Understanding battery degredation takes a lot of nuance. If you do nothing but charge and discharge quickly at some given temperature, you degrade to 90% in 1,000 cycles.
But the battery also degrades over time, the hotter it is the more, the higher the SOC the more. So you have to add on that calendar degradation, to that 10% loss from just charging.
Total degradation in practice will vary a lot, based on users charging and storage practices. Most of the time in practice it seems some fault will brick a battery before it degrades too much in total capacity.
The battery in my PHEV (Chrysler Pacifica) showed no appreciable degradation in eight years (and >100k miles) before being replaced under recall for a manufacturing fault last year.
and likely other un predictable knock on effects would reduce the benefit, like going vegan would mean more food is available overall, and population might rise in response.
The purchasing experience when you buy direct from companies now is usually much easier than it was years ago. A lot of people instinctively turn to Amazon because its one click and stuff is on its way, but with the new payment integrations even small companies have a pretty close to 1 click experience as well. So when I think of buying something on Amazon I always check the actual brands website first now, because I don't want to support Amazon at all or force sellers to eat the overhead.
A surprisingly large percentage of products on Amazon are now companies that sell only a small number of very specific things and have a name like KUFLPOW.
Yup, they are called Chinese-all-caps. Or that’s at least how I call them. Get bad reviews? Generate a new CAC name and start over. Rinse and repeat. Same product made by one factory in China sold by 100s of CAC Amazon entities.
Yeah, that is baffling to me, the complete not giving a shit attitude. I couldn't do that, I'd start marketing and nurturing my MGKGUPXYZ brand and try to make customers happy. Which is probably why I'd fail in that marketplace right away.
Maybe! Or it might never pan out, or it may pan out way better.
Complicated things like this rarely turn out the way people expect, no matter how smart.
I’m thinking survivorship bias here. “Information Technology” is such a wide term, and we immediately think of the IT we currently use. Many of us can’t even remember all the blind alleys we wasted resources on in the ‘80s, especially those of us who weren’t there. I count myself among that group because I was a kid and didn’t pay much attention to business.
But I can say that, judging by historical artifacts, a lot of it was along the same broad lines as AI. And we maybe don’t realize how serious people were about it back then. The technology that actually changed the world was so comparatively boring and pragmatic that the stuff that was being hyped back then seems comically overwrought. It’s easy to assume it must have been a joke all along.
Is 90% of his brain actually missing or is the volume reduced by 90%? I.E. are the mass and connections still mostly there but just squished by extra fluid?
From what I can tell googling about this, it seems it is mostly just squished, so volume is down 90% but mass or neuron count is not missing 90%
I remember reading somewhere that they estimated he had 10-50 billion neurons, compared to the average of 86 billion, and they were squished into less than 15% of the normal volume.
I have a bad disc, and while its still bad, a couple weeks of freestyle swimming workouts makes it not hurt for a year or two and lets me mountain bike comfortably again. Something to try if the usual stuff doesn't work, as it tends not to!
This was the disc between lumbar and sacrum. 1,000 ways to have a bad disc so results will vary a lot!
Something to check if you are getting older and not enjoying reading as much lately!