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Cake day: August 26th, 2024

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  • I got a really nice omnibus edition of Blindsight/Echopraxia that was printed in the UK, but ultimately, the necessarily(?) cardboard nature of the vampire character in Echopraxia was what left me cold. The first chapter or two are some of the most densely-packed creative sci-fi ideas Iā€™ve ever read, but I came to the book looking for more elaboration on the vampires, and didnā€™t really get that. Valerie remains an inscrutable other. The most memorable interaction she has is when sheā€™s breaking her arm and making the POV character guy reset it, seemed like she was hitting on him?










  • My baseline understanding is that ā€œNPUs,ā€ as such, are vector accelerators with perhaps lower precision and definitely lower peak TDP. I say this because much of the incremental ML research Iā€™ve skimmed over seems to be around getting away with lower precision, dropping down to FP8 or even FP4 from FP16 when they can get away with it.

    Iā€™m still confused as to why and how this is an acceptable tradeoff to firing up an iGPU with precise power/TDP stepping. Perhaps one of those situations where the power budget and latency to fire up the whole GPU block or burst it to max power ends up costing as much as the actual calculation. I think for purposes of this discussion, we also need a source that sheds light on the architectural differences between NPUs and GPU shader/execution units.





  • I am left thinking that many people here in the US are going to have a hard time accepting that having this person, at this stage in his life, as the national figurehead will do permanent damage to the USā€™ prestige and global standing. Doesnā€™t matter if Reagan was sundowning, media was more controlled then and his handlers were there to support the institution of the presidency at least as much as they were there to support a narcissist. In 2016, other countries could look at Trump as a temporary aberration and wait him out. This time, itā€™s clear that the US is no longer a reliable partner.

    An intentional sacrifice of the USā€™ role as head manager of the global economy is not nearly as well thought out as the people pushing it think it is.



  • Atlantic writer: ā€œbetter dubble down on Twitter huhuhuhhuhā€

    https://archive.is/OtYCo

    Calls to disengage from X, now that Elon Musk has turned it into a white-supremacist haven, certainly have a moral appeal. But if this election showed how difficult it is to meaningfully ā€œdeplatformā€ speakers you disagree with, it also demonstrated the danger of ignoring the platforms where they speak. Unfortunately, the only way to change whatā€™s happening in an echo chamber may be to add your own noise.

    This is your periodic reminder that Steve Jobsā€™ widow owns that toilet-paper factory. And that they still pump out hot new singles from hitmakers like David Frum and, occasionally, my personal favorite, Eliot ā€œGW Bush Did Nothing Wrongā€ Cohen.




  • The more I think about it, the more ā€œDay Oneā€ comes across as nonsensical.

    I woke up this morning, we had multiple data centers across the globe filled with millions of serversā€¦ Day One.

    I clocked into the swing shift, we have bins overflowing with unthinkable amounts of returned items, many of which are semi-perishable toiletries and personal hygiene productsā€¦ Day One.

    As a simple-minded catchphrase to orient oneā€™s thinking, it becomes more and more absurd as the company scales. But Jeff donā€™t care, he punched out a long time ago.