But in the field of integrated circuit design there’s lots of apps that are Linux-only. I’ve tried to run some of them in containers on Mac. But XQuartz is awful.
If they ever transitioned to Wayland perhaps this would let us run these apps on Mac in a nice way.
On the other hand some of them have started getting ARM builds (for running simulations on certain cloud environments) so maybe native Mac GUI builds could happen someday soon.
Feels like it'd just create a market for a big rack-mountable multi-bay PCIe enclosure, with its own internal power supply, that you could connect with one ore more thunderbolt cable. I don't see any reason why a solution built around a Mac Studio should have to be significantly more cluttered.
I don't know if such a solution exists right now, but I'm thinking there's a fair chance it will soon as the Mac Pro disappearing creates a demand for something like it.
Thunderbolt is really an unsung hero here. It is surprisingly nice to be able to move various components around my desk that would have otherwise sat in a huge tower hogging all the PCIe slots they can find.
The Thunderbolt offerings on the current Mac lineup offer dramatically less bandwidth in total if that matters for a given use case. Thunderbolt 5 is the equivalent of PCI-E Gen 4 x4. So if all 4 of the Thunderbolt 5 ports on a Mac Studio can run at full speed, that's still only the equivalent of a single gen 4 x16 slot. That's less than half the bandwidth of a basic consumer x86 CPU, to say nothing of the Xeon that was in the previous Intel Mac Pro or a modern Epyc/Threadripper (Pro).
This is a big reason why things like eGPUs kinda suck. Thunderbolt is fast for external I/O, but it's quite pathetic compared to internal PCI-E.
Reports as pointed out here have shown that x4 to x16 for most GPUs and common loads is a 1% to 10% loss of performance - hardly pathetic. In many (gaming) cases, it would be unnoticeable.
> Not necessarily. Many people grew up with PCs and laptops but now mostly use their phones, because outside of specific jobs or hobbies, everyday computing needs are heavily optimized for mobile-first.
It's a deeply flawed comparison, because many of the things we do with a phone now wasn't something we'd do at all with the computers we grew up with. We didn't pay at the grocery store with a computer, we didn't buy metro tickets, we didn't use it to navigate (well, there was a short period of time where we might print out maps, but anyway..)
When I grew up, I feel like our use of home computers fell into two categories:
1. Some of us kids used them to play games. Though many more would have a Nintendo/Sega for that, and I feel like the iPhone/iPad is a continuation of that. The "it just works" experience where you have limited control over the device.
2. Some parents would use it for work/spreadsheets/documents ... and that's still where most people use a "real" computer today. So nothing has really changed there.
There is now a lot more work where you do the work on services running on a server or in the cloud. But that's back to the original point: that's in many cases just not something we could do with old home computers. Like, my doctor can now approve my request for a prescription from anywhere in the world. That just wasn't possible before, and arguably isn't possible without a server/cloud-based infrastructure.
Phones/tablets as an interface to these services is arguably a continuation of like those old dumb terminals to e.g. AS/400 machines and such.
> It's true even in tech; half a year ago I switched my phone to a Galaxy Z Fold7, and I haven't used my personal laptop since then, not once.
(edit: I'm broadly in agreement with your comment & observations, so I don't at all mean to come off as argumentative for the sake of being argumentative. You just got me thinking about how that situation might have been handled thirty or a hundred years ago.)
> [...] my doctor can now approve my request for a prescription from anywhere in the world. That just wasn't possible before [...]
I'm picking nits, but wasn't this more or less instantaneous approval possible before with e.g., a fax and a telephone? Or (although this is a bit of a stretch) a telegram and telegraph?
These anecdotes come from the very peak of Chinas demographic dividend. In a decade or two their demographic dividend will be in a steep decline.
China also needs to change something drastic to avoid brain drain. The migration of competent people is still one-way. There no path to become a Chinese citizen. China has come a long way, but Europe is still ahead on building liveable communities and wok/life balance, while the US is still attractive to those seeking freedom and prosperity. China has avoided issues due to a huge population and that demographic dividend. But eventually it’ll become an issue
>China also needs to change something drastic to avoid brain drain.
Why does this matter? I hear this a lot but at the same time I look at what's coming out of China, especially in the AI space, and it's clear that brain drain isn't really hampering them.
It's almost as if you don't need the absolute best and brightest. Heck we used to get by retraining people from other industries to be programmers. I know companies absolutely can't do that now nor be expected to help grow their workers and can only work with exact match H1Bs, but it used to be a societal expectation of companies.
No, 2000s-2020s was peak blue collar dividend, think world combined, but low value dividend. When PRC had lots of hands but few brains, i.e. fraction of STEM vs US / west.
2040s-2080s is PRC peak tertiary skilled dividend. They'll have about 2-4x US in just STEM who'll be in workforce for most of our and our children's life times, even while tfr math starts eating away at future cohorts. The TLDR is they've just started cooking, their highend human capita pool will be exploiting greatest high skill demographic dividend in recorded history for high value. Their final form is OCED combined in talent and world combined in bluecollar backstopped by robots/automation (currently on trend to be more than world combined).
Brain drain barely a problem now, this isn't 2000s where there's shit domestic opportunities and PRC lose large % of the few best they produce. They now they mint so much talent, brain drain a rounding error, top talent increasingly stay in PRC. And many of the best that went abroad are returning. Or future trend is many of best that are leaving will recirculate back to PRC eventually. TBH most of those go abroad now are frankly PRC B/C tier talent, i.e. most international students are those too mid to do well on gaokao and even then they turn into A students in west. Like there's still some sectors where west can draw because they can afford to pay magnitudes more (which is matter of FX/geopolitics), but PRC now also in position to attract foreign talent via $$$, so much so that places have to ban nationals from working in PRC strategic sectors. China's expat draw is it's PRC, if you're high end talent and you want lab built in a few months, bottomless access to resources including human capital, dynamism of Asian tier1 cities, that EU+US can't offer. But immigration point really secondary to fact that when PRC produces plurality of high performing global talent, and retains most of them, they don't need to worry about immigration of competent people, just need to hold on people they have, which by and large is happening, i.e. Tsinghua brain drain rate went from 30% to single digits in last few years and returnee rate higher than ever. As in west depend on PRC talent surplus (because western talent pipeline shit vs PRC), trains them, and now that PRC rich with opportunities, many recirculate/reverse braindrain back to PRC anyway when they're high level.
At end of the day _most_ people are economic migrants, they move for $$$ not muh freedom/community. Ultimately US/EU strength is they have money/FX money multiplier, US way more than EU. When that goes away/decline people start making different choices. And again, PRC demographics will be lingering in background... but just means cheaper housing/less crowded cities, i.e. less drag on PRC living. It terms of active demographic dividend, most of us will be dead before PRC declines, imo not really worthwhile extrapolating on that timescale.
The one big thing missing from LLMs is the ability to express how confident it is in the truth of what it’s saying.
Perhaps this could be a step in that direction. If we can associate the attribution with likelihood of being true. E.g., Arxiv would be better than science fiction in that context. But what is the attribution if it hallucinates a citation? Im guessing it would still be attributing it to scientific sources. So it does nothing to fix the most damaging instances of hallucination?
How is he taking it at face value? He’s saying it doesn’t matter. Which it really doesn’t.
The reason solid state is exciting is the promised high energy density, and in some cases better safety. We shouldn’t care if it’s really “solid state” or not. That’s just marketing fluff. It doesn’t even really have a good definition as some chemistries are somewhere in between (sometimes described as semi-solid state).
This test confirms the charging speed and basically confirms the energy density (estimates people have done based on the video/report put it in the ballpark of what’s claimed)
You and I should really not demand a test that it’s actually solid state. That just doesn’t matter. We need energy density tests, cycle life tests, puncture tests, etc. If all those specifications are confirmed, whether it’s solid state or not becomes completely moot.
And in the end what truly matters is if it can be mass manufactured at low cost, which can’t be tested anyway. All these social media demands for tests are kind of ridiculous, since the only thing publishing the tests does is give Donut more PR. They’re basically laughing all the way to the bank considering how easy it has been to manipulate YouTube, Reddit and HackerNews into giving them free press. We will have another round in a week when the next test is published. I’m honestly impressed.
Personally I reserve all judgement until the promised bikes are on the road and torn down by third parties.
It should be said that in the LinkedIn post announcing this the clams are much more moderate. Like “10% along what we consider to be AGI” and “lots of work left to do” if I remember correctly. How is that different from any other R&D company working on AI? They all claim to be on the path to AGI in some form
The convenience of filling is only there if you have the fuel stations. Considering how expensive it is I’d argue that it’s far better to spend that money on EV charging infrastructure, you get a lot more bang for gour buck. And EVs are arguable significantly more convenient when you have the infrastructure. Would you buy a phone that lasted a week or two, but you had to go to a phone filling station to refill it?
And yes, EVs can be more convenient also for street parking. It’s just an infrastructure problem and by now there are dozens of different solutions for every parking situation imaginable.
It’s frankly absurd reading debates about this online from Norway. It’s over. Yeah Norway has money and cheap electricity, that’s what makes it possible to “speed run” the technology transition. But other than that it’s a worst case scenario for EVs. Lots of people with only street parking in Oslo. Winter that’s brutal on range. People who love to drive hours and hours to their cabin every weekend. With skis on the roof. Part of schengen so people drive all the way down to croatia in summer. We gave EVs and Hydrogen cars the same chance. Same benefits. EVs won. End of story. Though a hydrogen station near me blew up in a spectacularly loud explosion so maybe that makes me a bit biased.
But in the field of integrated circuit design there’s lots of apps that are Linux-only. I’ve tried to run some of them in containers on Mac. But XQuartz is awful.
If they ever transitioned to Wayland perhaps this would let us run these apps on Mac in a nice way.
On the other hand some of them have started getting ARM builds (for running simulations on certain cloud environments) so maybe native Mac GUI builds could happen someday soon.
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