DjangoFett

The article in its entirety:

SEOUL/HONG KONG/TAIPEI/SUNNYVALE, U.S. – A breakthrough in next-generation memory chip design, announced by China’s CXMT at the weekend, has sent shockwaves through markets and the semiconductor industry, although analysts and industry executives say its rivals have other ways to maintain their competitive edge.

Great. What’s the breakthrough? Who are the rivals? What edge was gained and what edge can be kept?

Turns out my organic LLM occasionally vomits out sensible things, too.

My last use of AI is in my post history and was fairly down voted because I was being foolishly ironic.

This said, I don’t really disagree with his take here despite keeping away from AI as much as I am reasonably able. I do my own critical thinking and hate that I have to jump through hoops on the internet to have a simple question answered without some layman’s AI summary that may or may not be even remotely correct or actionable. Even still, when I asked it to check on local real estate laws and provide summaries of possible actions based on a very strict set of parameters, it gave me information that my wife and I were able to bring to a human agent and have things work out better than we had actually expected.

I think a better way of putting it - and I’m still gonna ruffle feathers - is that AI is becoming the new electricity.

Put down your pitchfork and lemme explain.

When electricity came out, people rather reasonably pointed out that simply coming into contact with an electrical device could result in death if one wasn’t careful. On top of that, the infrastructure required for it was expensive, unsightly, and at the time incredibly disruptive to daily life. It was going to ruin and disrupt entire industries that had existed for centuries because it could do things a human could not do unaided.

All of this is to one degree or another entirely true even through to modern times, but electricity has become a ubiquitous resource that humanity would now deeply struggle to live without. I won’t dare compare AI that far as i genuinely believe humans would be significantly better off without it, but the initial Luddite response to electricity has a historical echo here.

I think Linus’ point is more that it can undoubtedly be a useful tool when used in a measured, controlled, intelligent manner, and that it is a genie that is very clearly unwilling to be put back in its bottle. Like it or not it exists, and while we can absolutely be unhappy about it, being blind to its actual real world beneficial uses because the companies that make it are actual festering waste is a bit silly - especially when in the hands of the right chaotic neutral parties these companies are about to have a massive lesson in just how messy their tools have made things.

It heavily depends on your needs, wants, and expectations.

In simplest terms, Ubuntu is Mac-like and Mint is Windows-like. At least, on the surface. Basically everything else is feature parity, just requires slightly different arrangements depending on which flavor you’re running.

I didn’t much like Ubuntu as it feels too close to MacOS to me. Primarily because I don’t really like that aesthetic. Ubuntu and Mint were my first forays into Linux as well, but this was also years ago when Mint was relatively new to the scene. While I personally liked the style of Mint, at the time it just didn’t have nearly enough features for what I was into.

These days I settled on CachyOS which is a fork of Arch. Cachy is aimed at gaming, but comes with a very straightforward installer with a huge amount of customization options to really make the OS your own. That’s ultimately what keeps me on Arch is the genuine ease of customization at this point. Rolling releases don’t bother me as i used to do CyanogenMod nightlies and this is like the big boy version of that, but I also can fully appreciate wanting shit to just work.

That said, Ubuntu is arguably the most popular distro because of its similarities to Mac and the “It just works” vibes it tends to give off these days.

The best part of Linux is how easy it is to check out a new flavor and see how you like it. And once you do find the flavor that suits you, the mega nerds in that particular community have probably already figured out how to do that thing you want. And if those folks didn’t for any reason, the folks at AUR* probably did.

*AUR = Arch User Repository and is an unregulated repository of whatever anyone clever enough to develop for Arch has come up with. Peruse and download at your own risk, but there’s some genuinely awesome and useful tools out there.

Give me actual information instead of anger and I am more than happy to engage in discourse. Everyone is anonymous here. My country of birth doesn’t define who I am any more than yours does you.

A) I didn’t come out sideways at a stranger on the internet.

B) I absolutely admitted genuine innocent ignorance. You then doubled down on “Amerikkans suck lol” so, uh, no.

Troll less, love more, and leave me the fuck alone.

My reply prior to this one did admit it. Get off your high horse you arrogant fuck.

You know what’s way better than berating ignorance?

Educating it. Especially when it was genuinely innocent instead of willfully malicious.

Assuming I’m an idiot because of where I’m from makes you no better than the majority of those in my country you so clearly spurn. Be better than a typical American, yeah?

Touché, but I was going for the most overtly despotic nation I am aware of, and I don’t think its unfair to call that regime despotic.

At the height of the Colin Kaepernick nonsense, my cousin got married to a cop.

So the reception is going normally when everyone is asked to stand and they started playing the National fucking Anthem. Literally everyone was surprised and taken aback by this, but most complied and faced the flag.

My Very Conservative Uncle, however, was busy having a conversation with me. Next to my chair. On one knee. During the anthem.

To his credit, nobody laughed harder about it than he did. “Of course I’m the guy taking a knee during the anthem!” He also was blocking me in and gave me the perfect excuse to do what I’d planned to anyway and remain seated because what the fuck? Are we in North Korea and need to tribute Glorious Leader at every event?

That was probably one of the last family functions I’ve been to, come to think of it.

The piracy option is by far the cheaper and easier method all things considered. If you like Free Media (Heck Yeah) then just Google those words or even their acronym and you’ll probably be rewarded with all you could ever want. Of course, this isn’t a legal thing I would ever actually suggest anyone do.

This is how a family could have watched things ranging from entire series to latest it-shows to classic films and newest releases as a family while on a reasonable budget. Of course, mind your local ordnance regarding such things and take appropriate measures when doing anything other than verifying those websites exist for purely educational purposes as governments and corporations are absolutely watching every single byte of data that passes through your pipes unless you actively shield it. You will receive notices about any illicit activity they detect and they would be within their legal right to restrict or deny your access to the internet for piracy and theft.

On an unrelated note, I’m quite happy with Proton VPN and the services they offer. Being Swiss-based with that reputation for international privacy, I’m reasonably assured my data isn’t at any greater risk of loss or breach than anyone else relying on a single point of failure and have my eggs in a basket that is otherwise entirely uninterested in me outside a subscription to keep their lights on.

One monthly fee for privacy and a one-time investment in some basic hardware and you’ve got all of humanity’s recorded media on your television. Uh. In theory.

Edit: word. I swear I English good.

Not the specific answer you’re looking for, but the one I’ve got as its the one I use for myself…

I have a RaspberryPi as the default input for my TV now. Any and all interactions with the big screen happen through mouse and keyboard now rather than the TV remote besides power and maybe sometimes the volume.

If you’re looking for a cheaper option than that, I believe you can get older chromesasts/firesticks and jailbreak those for more or less the same results I’ve got with my setup, but YMMV depending on what you’ve got and what you seek.