Rephrasing a common quote - talk is cheap, that’s why I talk a lot.

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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Fear of falling back, but there are no EU companies comparable to Intel, AMD, Apple and MS.

    Nothing is certainly a must, but a technology allowing you to submit a project plan (not too detailed, like a school essay or something) and receive a working application (I’m still impressed by Claude) after about a few dozens corrections given, - that seems something more valuable that energy spent.

    Similar with technologies allowing swarms of autonomous weapons to function, or really anything autonomous.

    Need for perpetual connectivity is bad, but companies have to make money and control their product, AI is solving that. Fundamentally it’s possible that models comparable to Claude Sonnet will run locally on smartphones 10-20 years from now.

    The EU certainly doesn’t profit from anything here, it’s just that complacency sometimes turns just being slow into being obsolete, and then into being Opium Wars’ China.


  • Me too, but that’s up to Valve. If they don’t want it under macOS, then they don’t.

    The possible agreement aside, there might also be cartel pressure upon Valve to not do this. Apple was making their jump from x86_64 to ARM on Macs about the same time as Proton was appearing in Steam. Perhaps Proton for Linux doesn’t result in pressure, while Proton for macOS would.

    In theory they could put out a paid compatibility tool in their marketplace, with Codeweavers getting a cut. Valve, I mean. If that were a problem with not hurting Codeweavers’ business. Mac users are known to be tolerant to paying for software.


  • It’s not about class, it’s about the EU falling back in tech.

    Is there a EU alternative to Anthropic’s Claude?

    Because for Facebook, Google and such one can agree that these are not in everything beneficial, but there are also no EU companies like Intel, AMD, or EU companies like MS and Apple.

    It just doesn’t seem the EU (yes, taken together) is going a better path, it’s just falling back.

    And now a big change is happening, and whether it’s a crash or a jump forward is unclear. Plenty of bets are that it’s the latter.


  • They allow this because they are being developed to allow this.

    Browsers that don’t allow this in a Web-like system without such functionality (like Gemini) can be written in two days or a week if you don’t hurry.

    Or at least take as long as Mosaic or Arena took to become usable.

    Enormous resources are being invested into continued development of a platform where users provide valuable feedback.

    By the way, ML is long past the point where that data could even be interpreted ambiguously. Those who have the data know exactly who you are and probably some useful traits of what you are thinking the moment you are typing a comment at any big website.


  • Pretty of “smart” things could work with a few MCs with only builtin memory.

    It’s just that 10 years ago people were complaining how nobody pays for making optimized nice things, using a computer few thousand times more powerful than needed for a job.

    Well, now this may change, it’s again profitable to optimize. Or perhaps not yet.

    Economic reality always changes. Tools, means, environments, markets, populations, politics, knowledge, and even goals.

    So I don’t think it’s killing anything. Some producers will start optimizing. Some will cut on “smart” features nobody needs. Some will raise prices. As it always happens. Then some solutions will work and some not.




  • Most drones are too cheap to move the needle toward NATO’s gargantuan spending targets.

    One way to say it.

    But as a general rule, Western militaries tend to give the biggest contracts to established manufacturers.

    Another one.

    OK. It’s of course important, all things old big foundries are doing, but perhaps producing small drones is also something they should do. Scale should make them more efficient than Ukrainian housewives.

    Or, what another commenter mentions, cheaper and more numerous interceptor missiles. Perhaps in certain conditions using lasers in air defense becomes a good idea. That’s something that requires expertise and supply chains above Ukrainian housewives, and something that’d be needed.

    I think (no expertise or sanity) that while he’s right to some extent, traditional producers are also overvalued because of the way defense markets work. It’s sort of a closed loop with NATO governments spending a lot on orders to companies from mostly NATO countries, with common projects and established ties, and that’s good for familiarity of processes, but bad for their market value to be used as an indicator.

    Nobody’s comparing Rheinmetall to Ukraine’s drone production, I mean, it appears their CEO is doing that now.

    Ukrainian housewives are not producing 155mm artillery or jets. But when a drone solves the same problem as a 155mm shell, then perhaps they don’t need to. Similarly with jets.

    Western militaries (not all of them, but Americans in Iran now) seem to love solving problems with cool expensive tools, even if not that well fit for the goal. I suppose that’s because they need to maintain experience in operating those tools in real combat, so it’s not really unnecessary expense.

    So. He has a point actually. But also Ukraine’s military, including procurement, is trained on real war that still hasn’t ended. His company is trained on what delivers in peacetime coolness and strategic sabre rattling.







  • Mobsters (and other organized businessmen) prefer for their goals and means to be impregnable for outside spectators. Meaning we don’t know what’s happening. Also a much better job for their own ends, not yours.

    Computation supply chains cracking are a problem, yes.

    You know what else is a problem? Those who have a lot of reserve resources and reserve supply chains.

    I would expect for USA to start playing Hitler in a decade or so, and it won’t be the “inefficient Hitler” trope usually ascribed to USA. It’ll be the “Hitler having listed all possible targets and eliminated them in under an hour when the global boogaloo starts” trope, the “Hitler having predicted all his possible opponents, as in separate people, down to every decision 10 years forward” kind of trope, the “evil Hari Seldon” kind of trope. The point is clear I hope.

    All delivered to us by computation which most of the world uses inefficiently, but with proper understanding much more powerful. Anyway. I suppose it’s too late to change anything.

    EDIT: And also “when the global boogaloo starts” kinda omits the fact that it has probably already ended.


  • In olden days of W2K I would just assume malware is everywhere, and while trying to be as clean as possible, I always have some malware and shouldn’t do anything personal with computers that I can’t accept being possibly compromised.

    I was a kid, too.

    Then that idea that you can be safe has gotten to me, both through switching to Linux and through stupidity.

    OK, a bit before that porn and historical military music became too interesting.

    So. Malware is everywhere. Some guy from India’s malware is in a browser extension and a Google Play v2ray client, some guy from China’s malware is in an ebook reader, and some government’s malware is in the operating system you use, and some government’s deep state’s malware is in algorithms and protocols, as a backdoor hidden in the open.

    Perhaps the Internet is one big compute cluster operated via such, providing free computation for US deep state, who the hell knows.

    But even without conspiracy theories - IRL crooks hide traps in far simpler things.

    The whole trust that most of what you use doesn’t have backdoors stealing everything possible, that trust is reminiscent of Soviet people literate in the first generation, who blindly trusted everything printed in a typography. Well, the generation having such has naturally left us. I think that will also happen for attitude to working with computers in some 60 years or so.