thomasjkenney
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EDIT (since ‘edit’ did not work):
Nothing fancy, mind you. It’s a very bland component, a voltage regulator. Doubtless it needs to be of certain precision/responsiveness or certain industrial processes don’t work without retooling.After the HAHA wore off, I read more carefully, and it looks like opportunistic strike at Intel. Old enough that it’s been in the shadows for a few years now. I’m going digging…very interesting.
The war continues apace: German Court Bans Sales of Select Intel CPUs in Germany Over Patent Dispute
Nothing fancy, mind you. It’s a very bland component, a voltage regulator. Doubtless it needs to be of certain precision/responsiveness or certain industrial processes don’t work without retooling.
@SeaBirds re: “…but surely it’s risky to hold a moderate amount of precious metal ‘in your hand’…”
Will Uncle Ted accept your certificate for vaulted Swiss gold for a freshly kilt side of venison? There is always risk bringing the energy to the work. Gold in a vault is quite safe. Do you need the gold to buy your way across a border? Where’s your gold?
Surfer’s game.
@DB Smith re: interview lackluster
Softball for TV audience, I’m sure, but there do seem to be gaps or odd steering of the quest.
The shining point I get is Putin’s re-affirmation that people are not ideas, nor ideas people. Never corner your enemy. Humans can reform.
Add re AI: I would not trust any of the current publicly facing LLMs. The intent seems to be the prevention of the dissemination of misinformation. (unnecessary wink wink)
@zerosum: THANK YOU!!! All this speculation and intrigue…and it was just another business day. Will read immediately.
@phoenixvoice re: AI
For your use case, searching for reality, it’s probably not much help. The LLM is doing what you just did, refining the search language, to produce results. It’s doing so statistically, which is why it gets odd results often. You can spot mismatch almost instantly, but the machine just says ‘number is good, here you go!’ There may be some ‘spice’ written into the system, so it tries to pick some edge results. Also, beyond the bland errors of statistics, we have Bing…er…Copilot…refusing to answer queries on ethical grounds, and being stubborn when pressed. Ideological intent of the creator, or poisoned model? My guess is former, since it is very common, not an aberration. The latter is possible, but would be more random.
I’ve done the same, dabbled for a while to see what’s up. It’s very good for some uses, completely useless for most, and utterly dangerous for some more. Let it write a thank-you note, then edit it. Do NOT, under any circumstances, let it decide what to feed your children!
If you imagine each word as an iceberg, and you can only see the word’s exposed surface, this idea is a ‘door’ to understanding how unwieldy the statistics can get if you wish to improve accuracy. You have your word ‘surface’ (the spelling, pronunciation) that humans pass as the token. Under the surface, you have all the meaning of that word, all the ways the word has been seen connected to other words, a set of grammatical rules that may be special for that word, scores for various attributes like popularity, offensiveness, red, green, blue, sharp, diffuse, etc…this is where the forest really starts to get thick.
The machine has to digest the whole iceberg on each word to decide to use or not. It gets condensed over time, mimicking human generalization, and gets faster, better. We humans have a lot of these inferences hard-coded. They are instinct. Machine has no instinct, only digestion/action.
Biggest issue is timely error correction, update of the models. You can’t have live feedback, or your AI call center will learn to answer “F#(^ you, jackass! Whadda’ya want now?!?” Solid facts don’t change too much, but temporal stuff like ‘currently president’ and ‘hurricane dave’ will cause the machine to draw a blank, or fudge it.
A little extra, if you’re interested in the hardware side: the machine matches by setting up huge n-dimensional matrices to index the words. The stink about using GPUs for this is that processing graphics stuff for games and vr is very similar. GPUs have fastest memory and narrowly-purposed processors. They were a natural fit, but now are being replaced by some prupose-built stuff (nVidia H100 and friends). China currently is in possession of some H100s, and is doubtless reverse-engineering. We refused to sell the tech, so we get to suffer the ‘import substitution’ of IP.
@Dr D re: People’s Front of Judea
“Every time something happens, they have to make YET ANOTHER splinter group of Gay Tibetean Midget Mothers of West Texas, who are in a fight with the Gay Tibetean Midget Mothers of EAST Texas.”
…and they immediately start to locate other purple-hairs so they can group with like folk. How do you divide and conquer vegetable oil?
I must ‘fourth’ teri’s sentiment. Memes are a downgrade. It’s still viable humor, and maybe you can have a ‘humor’ thread, like Martyanov’s Friday music threads.
@jb-hb re: bad company
I worked for one. I found out after leaving that the owner was running it as a loss so he didn’t have to pay so much alimony. This was not a small company, nationwide medical transcription services, with many big-name hospitals. It was damn frustrating, because there were several inflection points to improve or change service, always money available to throw at things, but “…like a bad marksman, you keep missing the target!”
Here’s an angle, been bothering me for some years now. Suppose you have some dosh, can start a small business. Suppose you have a friend that’s a medical insurance broker. Start up a company, hire as many people as can be afforded, and have them all sign up through your friend’s brokerage. Doesn’t have to be a successful company, and can have turnover, as long as there’s a minimum head count to keep it profitable for both parties.
@aspnaz re: finding tunnels, yes, a stretch. I had in mind “…and let God sort them out…” Someone may have referenced the ‘chipping’ in relation to trying to find tunnels, but it may be de rigeur for gov property, and makes a lot of sense in many other realms. Guy steals IDF identity, tries to slip in, no chip no service (just one ex).
@Dr D re: detecting the chips
You pulse from anywhere that is convenient (satellite, nearby cell tower, Amazon van), and you detect from ‘boots on the ground’ that are proximal to any chips. I won’t speculate about the power required to ‘reflect’ NFC chips at distances > 5m. I do remember my friend’s dad, a HAM, showing me his radio burns. I will speculate that the condition of the chip carrier is of little concern.
@Dr D and tboc re: fuel injection at elevation
I’ve had a Ford 5.0 V8 up to 3700m/12,500ft with little noticeable effect. Back ~35 yrs when I had my first car, I recall driving it up to about 3400m and it was chugging and wheezing and coming to a begrudging agreement with gravity.
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@mpsk re: kindly doctor
That’s my wife’s doctor to a T.
A quote from the Doctorow article linked down-thread at schneier.com
AI companies are implicitly betting that their customers will buy AI for highly consequential automation, fire workers, and cause physical, mental and economic harm to their own customers as a result, somehow escaping liability for these harms. Early indicators are that this bet won’t pay off. Cruise, the “self-driving car” startup that was just forced to pull its cars off the streets of San Francisco, pays 1.5 staffers to supervise every car on the road. In other words, their AI replaces a single low-waged driver with 1.5 more expensive remote supervisors – and their cars still kill people.
AI Bots on X (Twitter) – schneier.com
Interesting comments in the thread. Also, many of the technical sites I read have become 20% more wordy without corresponding increase in substance. AnandTec example. In some places it feels as awkward as the prayer recited by Brother Maynard upon employment of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
@poppie re: “The picture is of someone who is dead.”
Which one? Austin, or Jeezus?
@zerosum – Thank you very much for the zeta function stuff. It gives voice to something I was trying to argue with someone re: physical properties of matter, and localization of said. I had posited that the properties might be different in different regions of the universe, and perhaps in differing regions within a galaxy, or smaller (ever?) units. Maybe someplace carbon only has 3 bonds possible at STP, for instance. This arose because we were discussing Vernor Vinge’s ‘zones of thought’ – the closer to the center of the galaxy, the less possible organized intelligence, and past a threshold, species are able to ‘improve’ and ascend eventually into…what?
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Luongo is very good today.
The Titanothere used to exist in the southwest part of North America, when it wasn’t mostly desert.
@WES: Yes, agree, expect to be primitive. You’ve included a few things that would require a few more things:
Mine
Forge
Milling machine(s)
Rolling machine(s)
A buncha beer drinkin buddies to replenish the salt peter
…more, don’t wanna be a bore…Somewhere between water buckets and gun barrels is indoor plumbing?
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Out for a ride in the hills yesterday, passing through an old rancho. They’d moved something recently, and I had a clear view into a fenced area adjacent the road. Right there, sitting out in the elements, was an amazing, gigantic, industrial-strength lathe! 4m x 2m x 1.5m, industrial green cladding, rust. Thought of Kunstler, and felt like warning the caballeros to hide that thing again.
@Dr D’s sprokets – Wooden wheels and leather belts, so there!
@WES re: ‘only two, and in Europe’
I’ve posted previously about Helms Pumped Storage, Kings River, CA. There’s a YouTube doc about it!
@jb-hb: Yeah, it’s kinda a Fahrenheit 451 situation. All it takes is some leftover thoughts, a little idle speculation, and you’ve invented something practical…again. 🙂
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Thanks, all, for not dropping this. I can admit to being ‘armchair’ but somewhat more experienced than John Q CubicleRat. I guess my perspective is that we’ve tried all the really big things, and are walking many back. What happens if we start at the small things and walk that forward? Sure, it’s damn hard to run a Whirlpool on 1 watt. But what then if you start chipping at those problems? Out of necessity? If you have run out of blueberries, step back and walk around that bush a bit.
What kind of food do you eat that you require it to be frozen through a winter?
@jb-hb re: turbines and such
Yes, neat! Thanks. The tiny turbines are great. For the other direction, I was thinking medical peristaltic pumps, like you see in blood transfusion setups.
Water, though, should be the most distant storage. It’s logistics, and is (surprisingly) analogous to computer architecture, too. The slower, less consistent of delivery, should be at the back of the room. Water can be pumped and drained if it isn’t frozen, or if the plumbing hasn’t been chewed through by varmint. Sun can be ‘pumped’ when it’s not cloudy. Etc etc. Batteries are pretty much always ready, as long as they have the charge, so should be the closest to point of work.
The feeder systems should always keep the batteries topped off, and draw from the batteries. Feeders are hydro, solar, wind, steam, thermal, diesel, draft horse, energetic children (or adults!).
Also, if possible, 2 FULL BANKS OF BATTERIES!!! A/B switch. Maybe even co-located. Think about that fir tree next to the shed, and what’ll happen at -40*C some dark stormy night.
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When my mom had ’50 acres of pinyon pines’ she was required by the county to keep a 5000gal (20kl) storage tank for fire safety. Odd thing was, after doing the survey to build a tank and well on the high ground, they discovered the site was slightly too rich in uranium. It was only a few ppm more than the drinking well downhill, and couldn’t be certified drinkable. So, mom could’ve maybe added ‘atomic pile’ as a steam source! HAHA!!
@Michael Reid, Red, (and Wes, since he asked)
Thanks for the progress report.
Any thoughts about using pumped storage for a backup? Set a tiny panel and pump to trickle low-to-high, and leave the high tank for emergencies. It’s probably useless in winter, I guess. I’m a big fan of low-tech backup systems, so thought I’d mention it.
Subtle facet re: illegal immigrant labor
Yes, it is still illegal to hire them. So who among businesses will taste of this forbidden fruit and expose themselves to sanction by the state? There will be stand-ups that appear to hire illegals and escape sanction. You can’t compete, so you do it, too. Gub’mint comes along and takes your life…another small biz wacked. Honeypot.
Not sayin’ they are doing this right now, but the opportunity arises, and the hundred monkeys have proven my betters on several occasions.
Awe, respect, sadness.
The Clipper Lindbergh
is the shortest, a Boeing 747-400. It’s pretty old, a used airframe. They chopped a section out and put in a ‘roll-top’ door
so they could fly around with the door purposely open. On the tour, the pilot “Manny” said the door stuck open on an early test flight, and
had been so well designed, and the plane itself so well-mannered, that the landing was pretty normal.There just isn’t anything like this produced here anymore.
@noirette re: tarnished, vilified
I’m old enough to have seen Marion Barry smoking crack cocaine with a ‘prostitute’ on the evening news…and go on to win the next mayoral election. He had his warts, but he was doing something the people liked.
@Dora re: RFK Jr, interesting.
I used to watch Formula 1 racing a lot. I noted over several seasons that certain drivers who were superb but also good sports would eventually be dropped from teams. Drivers who were damn near sociopath became the champs. Ferrari had Michael Schumacher and Reubens Barrichello for a long period. Schumacher was a ruthless shite. Barrichello was a good sport.
If you care, even a tiny bit, that is a crack into which the wedge is driven. Schumacher swerved and ran Barrichello off the track and nearly into the wall, just to have the position. I dare say their relationship changed markedly after that.
re: fog net, this was among the New Shiny in ’70s/’80s with other enviro things. Similar structure can be built rather large. Pick a nice a foggy beach, make a concrete frame 30m x 100m, line with vertical vanes of a conductive metal (aluminum, copper?) Drain into a cistern below. It’s completely passive, and will keep working until it falls apart…in a few hundred years after maintenance ends.
Same principle feeds our SoCal coastal oak forests. They’re primarily ‘fog forest’ like the home of the guanaco in the southern hem. Live oaks collect and ‘rain’ the fog in a dispersion around the base. Too much soaked earth near the base of a live oak can kill it, and at the least encourage fungal growth.
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@aspnaz re: “No election means no outlet for peoples’ frustrations. The only alternative is violence, ”I’m sure you meant to say “…One of many possible alternatives is…”, right?
re: the bromeliad, we have yucca, what I’d guess are distant cousins, here in SoCal. They’re among a few of the 100-year club, have that party, then become cranky. Odd thing is yucca is an asparagus, not a bromeliad. The other, actually the one known as century plant, is an agave.
The yucca gets to be about 3-4m tall, the blossoms are prized (saw a pickup full of them on a remote road). Flowers have a delicate scent like magnolia, with a sharp perfume undernote…to which I am allergic.
Here are 3 shots from San Gabriel Mtns near Los Angeles:
Japan earthquake, very big, saw a ZH headline and the USGS map dots. Gonna go see if there are details. What a wreck of a new year already, jeebus.
According to my wife, “Aloha!” means “Git daphuq off my beach!”
Hippo Gnu Bear
Hippo Gnu Ewe
Hippo Gnu Tapir
Hippo Gnu GarMy Sandra Boynton sucks! Peace, everyone!
This is something bouncing around in my head today, thought it fits with recent talk about ‘send money to Israel through chip fab ruse.’ It also is loosely tied with my view that Intel is going down a la IBM, DEC, etc.
What if you wanted to counterfeit some chips, and they were ‘market-current’ in that they were the latest or a recent gen of chips generally available. John Q Bert could order one from NewEgg for US$80, for example. These chips need to be a good forgery, presenting to the motherboard and its firmware so that they are accepted and will actually run when called upon to do so. It’s difficult because all the timings of various subsystems have to be within spec, so you have to have a very good copy of the chip.
You have a company or an industry under surveillance. You need to do a supply chain attack and give them some compromised CPUs that will do your bidding in the wild. Let’s say Amazon is doing a build-out and needs 10k+ Intel Xeon processors. Who would be a better source of fake, performant Xeon processors than Intel? Just not built in Taiwan, but in Israel. Intel already has fabs there, as does AMD. Likely the other companies (Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, etc) are there, too, or have been approached.
It saves cost and risk if you can contract with a company to fake it’s own product, eh?
@phoenixvoice re: lions
Yes, but… They exhibit very doggish behavior, s#!+ anywhere they please and decline to bury, live in strong social structures, do not hold much of a schedule.
Cigarettes and Whiskey – Peter Sellers, The Muppets
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In Frederik Pohl’s The Knights of Arthur, a disembodied brain, Arthur, gets wired into a stolen cruise ship in New York Harbor. He and his friends sail off to new adventures. Published January, 1958.
“In fact, we only just barely MIGHT have exceeded culture of 2,000 years ago?”
A Canticle For Leibowitz – We might escape the cycle?
The Mote In God’s Eye – We don’t escape, we just deal with it, ad nauseam.1983 – A Merman I Should Turn To Be
Many humans, even knowing what is now known, seem very locked-in to the human perspective of space, space travel, other civilizations that visit eachother for tea. The Filter is one thing. The other is how advanced intelligences might pass The Filter. The easiest way to pass The Filter, for example, is to not leave. Have enough energy on hand that you can project in some force (EM, grav, ?, and quantum-ly?) and sense-analyze-act in a remote location. Need to travel (i.e. manipulate objects in meatspace)? Project your will to construct a new being or machine on a remote world, and imbue it with appropriate cognitive ability to be autonomous when needed, if needed.
We have known of this travel restriction, and have yearned in our fiction for teleporters, hyperdrives, stargates. If we see the problem, and we’re brick-stupid monkeys, it must become the core problem for any advanced intelligence at some point.
We have abundant animal life on this planet that gets very close to our level of intelligence…but never quite there. We killed the others. Even up to neandertal, the supposed empath, subsumed and killed. The clever ones, killed for competition. The vicious ones, killed for their hazard. The peaceful ones, killed because they were obstacle or resource.
So many lanes are open to advanced intelligence on a given (hospitable) world, and it gets pared down over time. I have seen, and I think it’s part of why Dr D got through to me a bit, that we have ‘failed’ to use certain steps in the technological ladder in a timely way. Too long at certain junctures, or made too much nothing of certain resources. If things grind down slowly, maybe we get more chances, but it’s getting to be a close scrape. In A Canticle For Leibowitz the Church barely escapes in a secretly-built ship moments before a new-clear war starts. Close scrape.
re: Musk “…Humankind is most likely the only species “in this part of the galaxy” with a consciousness…”
…at this particular infinitesimal slice of entropy’s progress…
…using physical principles with which we are familiar, and can recognize when we see them…
…at a scale that is neither too small, nor too big to be invisible to our limited senses…
…moving in a timescale similar to our own……and that wish to be visible to other technologically capable beings.
The Picasso photo: index of refraction in the mucus on the surface of his eyeballs, another IoR in the glass of the vase, another IoR in the water inside that vase, a lacquered table with another IoR.
Slice’n’dice! Spectacular!
@jb-hb re: big-screen microphone, hmmm, seems reasonable. They were selling flat-diaphragm loudspeakers when I was a kid. The other stuff, should I add the flashing red light that you are required to carry, even when accompanied by a fully cleared escort? How about the copper-clad door frames? (I s#!+ you not, my boss told me about the ‘beacon’, think it was a Northrup facility. Same boss also wised me up to not coiling my 50A power cables when they’re plugged in.)
@zerosum: My mom showed me a stack, when she took programming at CSUN mid-’70s. Not long after, we went to an airshow at Van Nuys, and the military folks were there producing line-printed banners with Snoopy and stuff. The program to produce the print was encoded on punch tape…a long reel of paper stock, IIRC about 2cm wide with 6 ‘bits’ across. Just like a Player Piano. Get one of them young’uns to fix you up! And while he/she/it works, do an info dump. HEHE!
