Voroxpete
@Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on NVIDIA could enter the desktop CPU market with performance equal to AMD and Intel 13 hours ago:
Yeah, we’ve been through this exact same game with multiple iterations of Intel and AMD chips. When AMD first started doing consumer CPUs they badged them according to their equivalent Intel clock speed because one to one comparisons were misleading.
What’s the L1 and L2 cache? What are the bus speeds? How many cores and how are they architectured? Multi-threading? How many steps is the instruction cycle? There are so many factors beyond just clock speed that play into real world performance.
- Comment on NVIDIA could enter the desktop CPU market with performance equal to AMD and Intel 13 hours ago:
I think that’s 100% what this is, and it’s a very smart play if that’s the case. Intel are reeling from some significant setbacks, while Nvidia is swimming in cash. There’s never been a better time for them to make a play for the desktop CPU space.
And they’ve got absolutely no illusions about what’s happening with AI. They’re the ones who are literally paying AI companies to buy their chips. They know the space is collapsing. But as the guys selling the picks and shovels, they can ride out that collapse if they’re smart.
End of the day, if what we get out of this is a new, serious competitor in the CPU space, that’ll at least be some kind of win. With Nvidia’s money and expertise they could really force Intel to get their shit together. AMD chasing their heels is the only that’s ever kept them from completely going to shit, but more competition is even better. With all three major companies playing in both the CPU and GPU spaces, that could be really good for consumers.
- Comment on Microsoft previews tech to ease creation of keyboard-accessible websites 20 hours ago:
It annoys me that I can guarantee they’re doing this to make it easier for agentic AI to interact with the web, but I guess if we get some important accessibility benefits along the way that’s not a bad thing.
- Comment on US | Hegseth Claims Iran War Isn’t Endless — But He Refuses to Provide a Timeline for Its End 3 days ago:
It’s not endless. They just don’t know when it’s going to end. But don’t worry, Trump has assured everyone that they have enough munitions stockpiled to fight forever. Not that they’re going to. Because it’s not an endless war. It’s just… open-ended.
- Comment on Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea. 3 days ago:
Yes, the bottom of the ocean is a terrible place to put a data centre. And the fact that it is, somehow, still a more practical option than space is a really good indicator of how unbelievably stupid the entire notion of space data centres is.
- Comment on U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material 4 days ago:
Seems reasonable. This case is substantially similar to previous cases that were taken up by the supreme court - in particular a finding over whether a selfie generated by a monkey was copyrightable - and the lower court decisions are in line with the previous precedents set by the supreme court. So they’re effectively just saying “Our opinion hasn’t changed.”
- Comment on Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea. 5 days ago:
Yep. Radiation is deadly to computers, and without the atmosphere to protect you there is a LOT of radiation in space.
- Comment on Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea. 5 days ago:
Basically the way you would make a stealth spaceship would be by focusing as much as possible on energy efficiency. At every juncture you would try to use as little power as possible, and use every bit of it as efficiently as possible, so that you’re not remitting waste. That waste, in the form of heat, radio waves, etc, is what gets you spotted.
(For the Elite: Dangerous players, yes, that game got it right.)
- Comment on Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea. 5 days ago:
The entire ISS has 14GW of cooling (and a lot of that just goes towards keeping the sun from cooking it). A single server rack can produce around 72GW of heat.
The ISS cost about $100 billion.
Basically, if you took the entire budget of Sam Altman’s “Stargate” project (money that, to be clear, he does not have and will not get) and put it into space data centres you might, optimistically, put one rack in space.
Most data centres have dozens to hundred.
- Comment on Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea. 5 days ago:
You need to think about how an infrared laser works. You’re taking electricity, converting it into light and then focusing the light.
So you’d need to take the heat from your GPUs, inefficiently convert it into electricity (a lot of it would remain as heat), then inefficiently convert electricity into light (much of the electricity would turn back into heat in this process) and then focus the light away from the space data centre.
Now, we already have a process for moving heat away from things as infrared light, without going through all those steps (which would just reduce the efficiency of the process). It’s called a radiator, and it’s how we cool things in space. That’s literally where the name comes from; they radiate heat away as infrared light. That’s why hot things glow in thermal cameras.
It is incredibly inefficient. Radiation (ie, infrared light) is, by far, the worst way of cooling things. But in space its the only option you have, because there’s no convection or conduction across vacuum.
A top end GPU puts out about 1,000 watts of waste heat. The entire International Space Station has enough cooling for 14 of those, if it was doing nothing else whatsoever. An average server rack contains 72. The ISS cost $100 billion dollars. So at a minimum you’re looking at around $500 billion to put one single server rack in space. And that’s before accounting for the heat from the sun, which we can’t avoid because we need solar power to run this thing. So probably closer to a trillion. In other words, twice the already ludicrous price tag of Sam Altman’s “Stargate” project. For a single server rack.
- Comment on Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea. 5 days ago:
For anyone who doesn’t know, this is because space is an absolutely terrible place to put computers. Getting power is actually the easiest problem to solve, and is still really hard, because building any kind of infrastructure in space is hard. Then you’ve got all that radiation you have to shield against because you’re no longer protected by the Earth’s atmosphere, and worst of all you’ve got the cooling problem because Jesus fucking Christ, space is not cold!
This is why I get annoyed every time a scifi movie shows people freezing to death in space. Because it leads to this level of mass delusion and then suddenly it matters and everyone just unquestioningly believes the lie that space is cold. Space is a vacuum. A vacuum is what your Contigo travel mug uses to keep your coffee scalding hot after four hours. If vacuums are that good at keeping something hot when it naturally wants to get colder, think about what they’ll do to something that is actively generating heat. All of your components are going to cook.
There are proposals to put data centres at the bottom of the ocean that are substantially more credible than this idiocy.
- Comment on Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks 1 week ago:
Don’t buy the hype. They’re not acting in good conscience, they’ve just weighed the pros and cons and decided that the PR hit isn’t worth it.
- Comment on Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks 1 week ago:
This is just them sticking to their principles.
Can’t say the evidence really backs you up on that one.
- Comment on Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks 1 week ago:
They’re not. Conscience has nothing to do with this.
They just don’t think the PR hit is worth it.
Whenever companies choose to act in a way that we perceive as good, we were the voice of reason, not them.
- Comment on Video game romances need to evolve beyond lore dumps 2 weeks ago:
My wife and I played Haven back before we got married, and never got around to finishing it. Really ought to dust that game off again. Playing it as a couple was really fun, and actually helped us to learn things about each other.
- Comment on Video game romances need to evolve beyond lore dumps 2 weeks ago:
You know what’s wild? The answer that immediately comes to mind is Warframe.
Genuinely, I’m not remotely joking, Warframe has some of the best video games romance I’ve ever encountered.
Two things really stand out to me about the conversations in Warframe.
First, the things they learn about you are often just as important as the things you learn about them. The article talks about the process of two people figuring out how they fit into each other’s lives, and that’s exactly what you get with Warframe. You need to actually show that you can be someone they can love, as well as simply showing interest in them.
Secondly, and I think maybe more importantly; most of the conversations in Warframe don’t feel “important.” They all are. But most of them are about comparatively trivial things. A lot of it is literally just people sharing shower thoughts, or jokes, or talking about dumb shit, or getting things off their brains.
Also, the way the characters interact feels distinct and different. Amir, the most obvious case of ADHD in the universe, writes five messages for every one of yours (these conversations all happen through “Not MSN Messenger”), and most of the time what he needs is for you to just listen while he unloads all the chaotic shit in his brain. Eleanor, the journalist, writes long, carefully formed sentences with correct punctuation and grammar. She poses questions, prods and pries, tries to dig secrets out of you. Aoi will sometimes just send you a string of emojis, and will be delighted if you reply the same way. She likes to be silly, but more importantly she needs to just know that you’re there and you cared enough to reply. It’s the written equivalent of squeezing someone’s hand. Some characters will pester you, others are more likely to wait for you to talk first. There’s a unique dynamic with each of them.
- Comment on Marathon | Launch Gameplay Trailer 3 weeks ago:
This has the makings of another Concord written all over it. Even after the disaster with the stolen art, the reports I’ve heard are that the gameplay just isn’t good. Whatever talent was at Bungie left some time ago by the sounds of things.
- Comment on Discord Users Threaten Exodus Over Age Verification Face Scan Controversy 3 weeks ago:
Revolt is now stoat.chat. And I think they might be getting a little slammed with new users.
As someone who made an account a while ago, no issues so far.
- Comment on 'What a great way to kill your community': Discord users are furious about its new age verification checks — and are now hunting for alternatives 3 weeks ago:
Revolt is now called Stoat Chat. Some sort of legal issue apparently.
Anyway, for those who don’t know, it’s basically an open source clone of Discord. Definitely worth a look, probably where I’ll my stuff now.
- Comment on New Fable game removes feature core to franchise's DNA 3 weeks ago:
Imagine if any other kind of media did the same thing. Like, you’re reading a book, and every few pages there’s a footnote telling you what the protagonist’s current Paragon/Renegade score is based on the decisions they recently made. Would be a miserable experience.
God, I love KOTOR so much, but its consequences have been a fucking disaster for the entire RPG industry.
- Comment on British soldiers to get new AI radios, headsets and tablets 3 weeks ago:
Sure, and they’re talking about that like something they might add to it down the line, because at the end of the day these systems are usually just android apps, so you can theoretically add anything.
In practice, what’ll most likely happen is that they’ll try that capability out, decide that it sucks, and quietly ditch it. Or, they’ll roll it out anyway in order to keep the government happy, and then commanders will just tell their troops not to use it. Militaries have always known how to work with and around bad equipment.
If they have to shove in a dumb AI app to get the funding for some actually very useful military equipment approved, well, that’s military procurement for you. Would be nice if the current UK government weren’t so hell bent on shoving AI in everything, but the realistic alternatives currently are “Nazis” and “Sparkling fascists.”
- Comment on British soldiers to get new AI radios, headsets and tablets 3 weeks ago:
Smaller armies benefit more from tools like this. Not the AI part - see my other comment for why I think that’s not even real - but the ability to quickly and effectively communicate orders and information. A soldier being able to point a webcam on their helmet at the enemy position so that HQ can instantly see their disposition and entrenchment is super helpful. The ability to draw orders on terrain maps in real time is super helpful. Most of war is communication and intelligence gathering. Part of the reason the French army collapsed in 1940 is that they were using signal flags while the Germans were using radios. That stuff matters.
And for smaller militaries this matters more, because you can’t simply drop the hammer on every threat you meet. You have to judiciously and precisely consider when to engage and when to fall back. You maneuver your enemy into situations where you have the upper hand. You defeat in detail. You plan every engagement to minimize your casualties and maximize theirs.
- Comment on British soldiers to get new AI radios, headsets and tablets 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, we’re currently having discussions at my company about how we’re going to respond if potential clients starting asking about AI or putting it in their RFPs.
And this isn’t a new problem. We make a product that can be hosted in a cloud server if you want to. Because of the nature of the product, this is the stupidest idea imaginable. We straight up tell people not to do it. This is something that absolutely needs to be on-prem. But we made it able to run remote, because sometimes buyers will put out an RFP that says “System must be cloud native.”
That line gets put there by a CTO who can barely open their email, but keeps seeing the word “Cloud” in Business Insider and WSJ, and thinks it must be the future because that’s where their photos get backed up to. No one in their right mind wants it, but we have to offer it or else someone else gets the sale.
- Comment on New Fable game removes feature core to franchise's DNA 3 weeks ago:
I think what you’re getting at here might be better expressed as “Moral choices are more interesting than morality systems.”
Life Is Strange doesn’t have a morality system of any kind, but it has, easily, some of the most interesting moral choices I’ve ever experienced in a video game. One of them doesn’t even affect the ending or later story beats (to my knowledge), and yet I literally had to put the controller down and walk away because I couldn’t make that choice… Both options were so unspeakably horrible, and yet the choice was obviously and urgently necessary.
Mass Effect actually has some really interesting moral quandaries, but they’re massively undercut by the need to force them into the game’s binary moral code, instead of just allowing them to be the complex problems that they are. Morality systems boil every choice down to an arbitrary position on an arbitrary axis.
The Witcher works because it simply presents you with situations and allows you to judge them for yourself. It doesn’t present you with a score card afterwards.
- Comment on What's your opinion on Ubiquiti/Unifi gear? 3 weeks ago:
Only when you have to write out to swap. In the case of something like ZFS, it stores data in RAM, looks for it there, then looks on the disk. So freeing up the RAM is instantaneous; you just mark the space as free, then the other process writes into it.
- Comment on British soldiers to get new AI radios, headsets and tablets 3 weeks ago:
So, as far as I can see, this is basically just the same networked soldier tech that every modern military is using. Canada has had this stuff in the field for a while (mostly with 3RCR, and I think 3PPCLI), with plans to expand to the entire reg force once we work the kinks out. It’s pretty much just a way of giving soldiers a map screen where commanders can draw orders, and also giving them a camera so they can directly feed back visual intel. Helps cut back fog of war.
In the article itself the only hint of AI is the note that these devices will be “AI capable” which is kind of a no shit Sherlock. Literally these systems already use off the shelf smart devices connected up to a hardened comms system. The Canadian one is built on Samsung S22s. Of course its “AI capable”, anything with a CPU is.
My suspicion is that the UK military just really wanted this networked soldier capability (its a good program, that’s why everyone is doing it), and knew that they could get the funding more easily if they snuck the word AI in there because the current UK government has an absolute raging hard on for anything remotely AI related.
- Comment on What's your opinion on Ubiquiti/Unifi gear? 3 weeks ago:
It’s part of ZFS 2.3.0, so it just depends what version TrueNAS is shipping with.
- Comment on What's your opinion on Ubiquiti/Unifi gear? 3 weeks ago:
ZFS seems pretty RAM hungry
This is a common misunderstanding.
Short version; ZFS isn’t RAM hungry, it’s RAM aware. If your system has unused memory lying around, ZFS will use it to improve read performance. But it will give up that memory the moment anything else needs it. Like many other Linux processes, it’s just making the best use of the resources that are available.
and I don’t believe you can add new drives to an existing volume.
- Comment on US gave Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach agreement to end war, Zelenskyy says 3 weeks ago:
This is 100% Trump. He thinks this is a big foreign policy win that he can carry into the mid-terms.
Of course, ending the war means convincing Russia to back down from the fight that they started, and the US no ability to do that because Trump still keeps trying to treat Russia like a friend. So any pressure they put on them will be meaningless. Meanwhile any pressure they put on Ukraine will basically amount to “End the war on Russia’s terms, or fight it without our help”, which is just a choice between two equally terrible options.
- Comment on SSH Client for Linux Desktop and Android - Alternative to Termius 3 weeks ago:
Xpipe is fantastic. I have to manage a LOT of SSH connections between work and homelab (well over 200 now) and Xpipe has been a god send.