Notices by Phil Dennis-Jordan 😷 (pmdj@mstdn.social)

@CommieGIR @Mustardfacial @GossiTheDog They aren’t GPU cores, there are chunky but (supposedly) efficient purpose-built neural processor subsystems on the Ryzen AI and Intel Core Ultra 200V SoCs. Impetus seems to mostly be Microsoft’s “Copilot+” branding which requires a 40TOPS+ NPU. Plus, keeping up with Qualcomm. There is very little software that actually uses it though. (The GPU is probably faster but consumes more energy for the same job.)

@CommieGIR @Mustardfacial @GossiTheDog More or less! I don’t know if it can be used for anything other than neural networks, e.g. general matrix operations. To be fair I’ve also not looked into what APIs you use to program these things… it’s certainly nothing as general purpose as OpenCL though.
On the plus side, the specialisation means that it’s fairly compact and doesn’t wast all that much die area.

@CommieGIR @Mustardfacial @GossiTheDog Cynics might say it’s worthless even if you do use AI because there’s virtually no software that uses it. 🤪 Supposedly the background blur in MS Teams will use it, and so will the video speech recognition/live translation feature that’s apparently in the latest version of Windows 11.

@gsuberland I feel like in today’s state of computing and the world at large, I care more about data autonomy and sovereignty than licenses on specific bits of code. (And yes that implies interoperability.)

@alexhall @anna Maybe the phone number IS the scam. If a mark receives an invoice for something they didn’t buy, logs into the website and can’t see it, they might still worry and phone the number given. Then the scammers can string them along with any old “ah yes, that one hasn’t made it to the web interface yet, but I can cancel it for you now. I’ll just need your card details to verify…”

@alexhall @anna It takes some effort to make a convincing looking scam website, and I suspect a lot of people are now sensitive to web based phishing. So it’s maybe just not worth it anymore, whereas running a scam phone bank is.

@sinbad Not just me then huh. (Not that I really get invited to parties these days.)

@silverwizard Not currently supported, as far as I’m aware. The closest you can get is to pass through a whole USB host adapter PCI device to the guest, then all devices connected to its ports will end up in the (same) VM.
Proper USB passthrough isn’t ridiculously difficult to implement by any stretch, but I guess nobody’s got around to it yet.

@uliwitness At least within the significant digit group they are sized by value. (5c > 2c > 1c, 50c > 20c > 10c, €2 > €1)
And I suspect you’re supposed to identify the group via the kind of edge ridges.

@hikhvar @vaurora Even if you do have the expertise and are fully set up for self employment, I’ve also struggled to find clients who are willing to go for such a retainer model rather than a more direct payment for specific work on a feature/optimisation/etc. I mean the latter isn’t to be sniffed at, but it’s difficult to commit to e.g. signing up as a maintainer for a project subsystem when you’re only being paid for dev & upstreaming of a specific deliverable.

@hikhvar @vaurora Yup. And this trust is easiest to earn by just being paid for your time for deliverables. But then moving to a retainer model from THAT, once you’re trusted, requires going through legal & accounting and they don’t really understand why you suddenly want to change what is working fine from their point of view.
So I suspect the model really needs to be supported and encouraged centrally by The Project, who can advertise willing & trusted maintainers.

@hikhvar @vaurora Coming at it from the other side though, as a small business owner based in a country where donations are not deductible as a business expense: F/OSS projects who take donations really, really, REALLY, need to start offering some kind of low-cost billable service or product, even if fairly nominal, rather than just donations alone. You’re missing out on a whole bunch of cash.

@cks @hikhvar @vaurora Yup. I find it truly baffling how many projects only accept donations considering this is an issue for most organisations in much of the world. I’m guessing it’s pretty straightforward in the US to make donations and treat them as expenses, otherwise it makes no sense how we ended up with asking for donations being so popular.

@danyowdee @arroz I suspect this may too be different if driving in/around Cupertino. Designed in California… for wealthy Californians.
Last I checked CarPlay/Siri still couldn’t deal with messages in languages other than the system UI language, etc.

@neil We’ve used this scheme a handful of times, mostly for replacing batteries in phones and tablets so far. They’ve also managed to avoid making it a bureaucratic nightmare, at least for consumers. No idea how it works precisely for service providers, but it sounds like they’re happy too.

@feld @encthenet @bitcoaxer Yeah, we’ll see how battery-powered shorthaul flights vs train journeys shakes out. (Obviously geography and political climate will play a huge role there…) Longhaul is the one where planes are very hard to replace and energy density becomes paramount. Longhaul flights on jet planes already spend a significant proportion of their fuel on… transporting the fuel.

@feld @encthenet @bitcoaxer For almost anything but aviation/aerospace, batteries have an acceptable power density; combined with an electric drive train, they’re more efficient than ICEs, jet engines, fuel cells, etc. Their current incarnation certainly has its share of problems, but nowhere near the issues H2 gets you.
For aviation, we’ll see. I suspect synthetic hydrocarbons are more likely than H2 there; but batteries might get good enough too

@feld @encthenet @bitcoaxer I don’t think those are near the top 3 problems.
1. It takes a colossal amount of electricity to split water molecules. Unless there’s >100% renewables supply, you’re causing an increase in fossil fuel consumption to source it. At best true at a small/local scale during peak production.
2. H2 is a pain to store and transport.
2a. Molecules are so tiny they escape.
2b. Extremely volatile.
2c. Needs to be pressurised.