Some IT guy, IDK.

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • I don’t hate all LLMs/ML models/“AI”.

    I also don’t use them. I also don’t see a need to use them.

    I work in tech and these “AI” things are little more than averaging the most common replies to a given input. Any question that’s been asked, especially those that are asked often, is well suited for an LLM chat bot. That’s good if you want a high level overview of a topic that you don’t know much about. If you want accuracy, you’ll need to dig a bit more, but overall, you’ll get a relatively good idea of the answer you’re looking for. That’s enough for most people.

    I’m crazy. I like to deeply understand everything, so the high level, lack of detail, finesse, and accuracy of LLM chat bots is unacceptable for me, so I trend towards doing my own research. If I use an LLM at all, it’s just an augmented search engine. I’m more interested in its references than its response.

    There’s also something to be said about making short clips of impossible things that some smaller YouTubers are using “AI” models for. Things that would take a long time for a graphics artist to create, and an editor to composite. Stuff that a small time YouTuber can’t really afford, but they can get good enough but clearly “AI” visuals to spice things up in their videos. The AI is just for display during transitions, it doesn’t affect the content being made in any meaningful way. I’ve seen Paul Hibbert do this a lot and his production team from what I know is basically him and his wife. I’m not even sure if he has an editor, or if he does it himself. He’ll go from a live shot of him talking about a product, do an AI transition, to another live shot of him continuing his discussion. Rather than a cut, or some kind of fade, wipe, or other simplistic transition, the generated images are of him, and only to add visual flavor. He also does some AI generated music stuff, which again, fair. He’s not exactly a musician, and unless he has the money to hire a musician, he either uses AI for the funny transition music or he uses an unrelated and unlicensed (or open licensed) song… It just adds flavor to his content, it builds on what he’s creating, it doesn’t shape what he’s creating. All of his scripts sound genuine, not AI created, so everything should be fine.

    That, to me, is a good use of AI as a tool.

    There’s too many bad examples for me to really cover them in any detail, but I’m sure everyone has seen the AI generated person being animated by AI, reading an AI generated script, using an AI generated voice sample. Even if the original source material is legit, is buried under so many layers of slop that I can’t bear to watch it.

    For me, it entirely depends on what he’s using it for. It’s entirely not about the fact that he uses it. I’ll have to dig into it a bit to see what he’s doing, but from the comments I’ve read so far, it seems like the answer to what he’s using it for, is yes. He’s using it for everything… Not ideal.


  • some AI coprocessors, you’re right. they can’t be used.

    Most of what nVidia is offering, while lacking display outputs, can still be used for gaming/VDI/vGPU use, and in general aren’t particularly bad at it, usually quite the opposite. might take a bit of work to get them going, and nVidia hasn’t made it easy with their whole licensing thing. Putting aside the challenges, it’s usually possible to adapt their SXM datacenter GPU modules to work with more common frameworks like PCIe, and then utilize those as virtual GPUs in a virtual desktop. This is not dissimilar to what they’re doing with the geforce now platform.

    The big benefit of the chips is that they come with loads of memory, so cutting them up as a vGPU is actually a really optimal use-case. Most games are memory limited, which is to say they need more memory than most GPUs have, so the limit in performance is from the memory limitations, not the graphics processing limitations.

    The AI processors that are GPU based, like almost everything that nvidia is using, can mostly be repurposed, but those that are ML-only, like AI coprocessors that show up in CPUs like the AI optimized CPUs from AMD and Intel, can’t really be re-used, but they’re usually not released as a standalone product. Those may still be able to perform physics processing offloads… so maybe not useless? I’m not sure.


  • Listen, I work IT at a managed service provider, which means I see a dozen + small to medium business environments daily.

    The number of users that I know of, out of the hundreds or thousands that I support, who are actively using “AI” continually to do their jobs… Well, I can likely count them on one hand

    There’s a bunch that use whatever free tool they are allowed to access. Which kind of flies under the radar for me, but I still don’t think you’re dealing with double-digit percentages of people using “AI” that actually spend any money on it.

    And these are business users, who work at businesses with rather deep pockets at times…

    People are not buying the product. “AI” in the business world, isn’t making any money. So from what I’ve seen, this is less a matter of if, and more a matter of when and how bad.

    As a tech person, I am not threatened by AI. It can’t do my job. Also, I’m the one who fixes it when things go wrong. And the only thing I’m looking forward to is being able to pick up cheap RAM, and storage when this all comes crashing down as AI companies cash out and liquidate their inventory. Maybe I can pick up a cheap AI server and repurpose it to be a 3D/gaming virtual desktop, so when my friends come over with their cheap laptops and on board graphics for a LAN party, I can just provision them a virtual gaming computer and we can go ham…

    I’m going to save my sheckles until then…

    I have limited experience with the market but I see it this way: anyone with AI holdings should liquidate at their earliest convenience. I don’t think they’ll be keeping up this charade for a lot longer. Anyone who has tech holdings, either cash out, or be prepared to have that money held up for a while because it will take a long time for the prices to recover, and unless you want to cash out at a loss, you’re going to be holding for a long time. Everyone else, hold onto your butts. Probably everything will probably dip when the fecal matter hits the rotary air movement device. Non tech areas of the market should recover pretty quickly, so meh?

    This is obvious to me that the whole thing has failed. That realization hasn’t hit execs yet.


  • Look. I have no problems if you want to use AI to make shit code for your own bullshit. Have at it.

    Don’t submit that shit to open Source projects.

    You want to use it? Use it for your own shit. The rest of us didn’t ask for this. I’m really hoping the AI bubble bursts in a big way very soon. Microsoft is going to need a bail out, openai is fucking doomed, and z/Twitter/grok could go either way honestly.

    Who in their right fucking mind looks at the costs of running an AI datacenter, and the fact that it’s more economically feasible to buy a fucking nuclear power plant to run it all, and then say, yea, this is reasonable.

    The C-whatever-O’s are all taking crazy pills.





  • Yeah… As a technology person (working IT for many years now), it’s more likely that there’s some bad interaction between the browser, Adblock and the service that does the reviews. They’ve found a way to get an image to load regardless if the review applet works.

    My bet would be that the Adblock is preventing the site from loading the necessary code to show the review submission “page”. This image is up behind the review regardless of if it works, is just that if the review thing works, it covers this up.

    Sounds to me that this is a courtesy message basically saying that Adblock thinks the review thing is an ad.



  • I get it, but MacOS is UNIX which is arguably just as complex, and that shit is far from niche or obscure.

    The main difference is that MacOS is unified in its construction and Linux is fractured by design. If Linux can put everything together in a seamless and unified way, even if it’s not seamless under the hood, then we’ll be a lot closer to big OEMs putting out systems with Linux pre-installed.

    If OEM systems with Linux pre-installed start appearing on shelves next to Windows systems and Macs at best buy, then it’s actually possible it would happen. But the Linux community needs to do what they can to build, test, and deliver, some kind of front end that gives the end user that polished experience, that for anything that a user wants to do, there’s a knob to do that with which doesn’t require dropping into a config file or to the command line.

    I’m not going to delude myself or anyone else, while a lot of this is easy to say, the challenges are immense, and some organizations have been trying to accomplish this for many many years. Linux has come a lot way, but it’s not quite where it needs to be yet, in order for it to happen.


  • I work in IT for businesses and the number of times I’ve had to debunk AI slop hallucinations as actual troubleshooting information is not zero.

    “Yes, I can see the instructions say to check that checkbox, however, that checkbox does not exist” (screenshot of relevant control panel).

    This is just evidence, to me, that business types are already relying on AI instead of doing any actual thought or research on any topic they don’t already have a deep understanding of, or are too lazy to bother with.

    Consumers are not driving this change.

    The worst part is that it’s an echo chamber of yes-men that seem to be pushing for it. The AI enthusiasts trying to sell their crap, convincing the middle managers that they need their AI crap, and them buying it and asking for more/better AI crap, and the cycle continues. At no point does any of the output of any AI system provide any unique insight, or value, to anyone. The rest of us are being dragged along for the ride, regardless of what we want.



  • I work in IT. IMO, the civilian population moving to Linux is inevitable. As Linux finds itself and good ways to do things that don’t require people to know bash, or customize options by manually editing config files, things will push that way.

    IMO, it will happen, but not quite yet. We’re seeing the initial push of the privacy conscious and those that want to avoid becoming a product. It’s good, but we’re not there yet. We’re also seeing some pretty major players, most notably valve, pushing for consumer goods that are unashamedly Linux under the hood. This is, slowly but surely, pushing forward compatibility for apps running on Linux.

    We probably won’t see any line of business apps adopting a Linux build any time soon, and business in general actually wants the majority of what Microsoft is pushing for… Along with government institutions (for their own needs), and more. I don’t see business moving towards Linux anytime soon… Not beyond it’s current role in server operations.

    As stuff like steamOS get better and better, and find ways to solve problems in consumer friendly ways, that knowledge will feed back into existing Linux tools. We’ll get to a point where Linux will be as plug and play as Windows, and that’s when we actually have a good chance of migrating a lot of personal PCs to Linux.

    The Battle for the workplace is still a long way out. Well after the Linux home PC is commonplace. People at the office will simply have more experience with Linux, and push for being able to use Linux at work and eventually that’s going to start to happen… Probably not in our lifetimes.

    To me, it’s only a matter of time. Unless Linux undergoes a hostile takeover and unforeseen bullshit happens, it will happen.


  • Who says I’m upset?

    You’re the one who is butthurt because you don’t think that valve did good enough by your standards.

    The flaw in your comparison, especially with any wired controllers is that they basically didn’t have firmware. At all.

    Meanwhile, the og steam controller didn’t even have an associated console.

    So the comparison I’m going to draw from this, since people update their computers… Is that it’s a bit like asking Xbox 360 controllers to interoperate with the Xbox series x…

    The controller gets left behind while the hardware it is supposed to attach to, morphs into something entirely different.

    I don’t see PlayStation controller ports (from the og PlayStation era) on PS4s. So why are we bitching about steam controllers when Sony won’t continue to support the og PlayStation controllers on the PS4…

    The fuck are we even talking about anymore?

    Can you hear yourself?


  • You mean the one that was released in 2015, and they stopped selling in 2019, then continued to support for at least four more years?

    That’s the one?

    And we compare that to what? Can I get support on my Xbox 360 wireless controllers still? How about my dual shock controller for a PS3? Google surely still updates the stadia controller, right? They didn’t give up on it less than a year after the stadia service was taken down… Right?

    With the exception of maybe 8bitdo or something, their support for that controller was extremely good, and the fact that they made it 10 years ago, and stopped selling it 6 years ago, but only stopped supporting it 2 years ago, that’s pretty good, IMO.


  • Exactly right. And this is driving my point. There are options. If you don’t like one option, try something else.

    Pretty much every controller design has positives and negatives that change depending on who is using the controller. I enjoy the xbox one/series controllers for the most part, and they’re fairly reliable and my usual go to. I also have a dual shock somewhere that I don’t really use, and a stadia controller that was patched to work with anything, which gets more action than the dual shock, but not nearly as much as the Xbox controllers.

    I usually play with kb/mouse, so controllers are already pretty rare in my gaming experience, but they make an appearance from time to time.

    With these new steam controllers, I might see a good reason to use a controller more frequently… Especially if I can afford the $900+ that the steam machine will probably cost… They said it would be “competitively” priced in relation to PCs, not consoles. So I’m expecting $900+ right now. Time to start saving.


  • I would argue that, as long as valve gets it out the door, they support it. Index owners are still supported and that’s from a headset released in 2019. The oculus rift CV1 released in 2016 and it was killed around 2020 when oculus was purchased by Meta. Four years, and the headset is basically a paperweight for anyone who still owns one. A $600 USD paperweight.

    Considering that the connection cable was the first thing to die and in 2020 meta stopped selling those cables, anyone I know who had one, including myself, either stopped using it, or was forced to stop when their cable inevitably broke.

    There’s a dozen examples. The og steam controller, the steam link, and more recently the steam deck, which is still going strong.

    Yes, they have issues getting ideas out the door, but when they get out the door, they’re supported for a good long while.

    These don’t look like “we have an idea to build a thing” that will never make it to market… This looks like “we finally got a delivery date for these finished units and we’re excited about it”

    I’m looking forward to it, no matter what. Valve has time and time again proven itself to be more consumer focused than other tech companies. More from them is good IMO.


  • That’s a big challenge, but a worthwhile one. The reason that Microsoft exploded in the DOS era was because it ran on everything that was “IBM compatible” aka x86. Meanwhile Apple was over there with a competitive product, but you could only run the software on their OS that ran in their hardware. People were able to get cheap third party x86 compatible computers and run MS-DOS (and later Windows), and they were not locked into a specific vendor doing top to bottom hardware/software support.

    If they do this right, they’ll be the go to option for a lot of people who generally use their PC primarily for gaming.


  • As someone with hands on the larger side, small controllers suck for us too.

    The point you should be focused on is having a diversity in controller options, not that any one controller is good/bad.

    It is entirely subjective to say the controller is good. Your definition of good won’t be my definition of good. Your taste and opinion is just as valid as mine, and I don’t impose my preferences on you.

    I don’t know how big that controller is, since no banana was provided for scale. It could be huge and unwieldy, or it could be very tiny. One size never fits all.

    At the end of the day, if you don’t like it, don’t buy it, and/or don’t use it. This is +1 option in the controller space, and that kind of competition is good no matter what opinion you have.