[X] My Assistant

I don't know what the chances are that RISC-V will become popular, but its already a step forward.

[www.tomshardware.com] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/epi-deliv...isc-v-processor

Although I do not know if Europe will be able to keep up with ARM-Nvidia

Found a quote that pretty much sums up my concerns about how people see technology.

Finally, the new ThinkPads have a subtle branding change: The ThinkPad logo is now right-side up when the laptop is open. You only have to scan the multiple Apple logos in your local Starbucks to appreciate the significance of the revision.
"Traditionally, we always had the logos face the user," Flynn explained. "The idea was that it was your personal system. But when it's up, it obviously doesn't communicate the brand. We weren't actually planning on changing that until in the user survey, the next-genners kept asking, 'Why is the logo upside-down?'"

The thought that "younger people" are consciously asking for branding that more conspicuously advertises their consumption (by proxy for socioeconomic status), and are dissatisfied with products that don't do so sufficiently, scares me.
Also, I guess we can blame Apple in part for this as well.
The "personal computer" is well and truly dead.
I see a little hope that maybe Zoomers hold a little more disdain for brands as religions/status symbols, but we'll see if they will practice what they preach.

I don't know what the chances are that RISC-V will become popular, but its already a step forward.

[www.tomshardware.com] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/epi-deliv...isc-v-processor

Although I do not know if Europe will be able to keep up with ARM-Nvidia

the first risc-v board I saw used a PowerVR GPU, so it's still worse than worthless.
PowerVR is marginally worse than Nvidia, in that it is at least as proprietary as Nvidia is, but it additionally does not typically even publish binary updates for newer kernels and such. They're also the reason Intel Clover Trail atom chips stopped being supported after the Windows 10 creators' update; they didn't even bother publishing Windows drivers and Intel couldn't help because they had licensed a PowerVR GPU core for the chip.
I'd rather have no accelerated 3D and just get a dumb framebuffer.

Disclaimer: I didn't read that link. Maybe it's something new. I just don't like how tom's hardware tries to autoplay videos in a corner of the page whenever I go there, so I try to avoid them.

For me I don't really care too much about absolute computing power. I find I barely tap what I have usually. So competing with ARM/nvidia on the top end of their ranges is not something I am concerned about.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 23 2021, 21:53

I've been diving deep into things like black body color temperatures and related subjects.

Light's so weird.

I've been diving deep into things like black body color temperatures and related subjects.

Light's so weird.

Well, light is a very particular phenomenon given its wave-particle duality, explaining its own existence is already rare.

Really, light's not the thing that's weirdest to me; it's how people perceive light.

Sure, light itself is also strange but that's not really what I meant - it is related, though.
White balance, too.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 26 2021, 04:51

Give a shot at neutrinos then. They either have mass, but still travel at the speed of light without losing it. Or neutrinos have no mass and time is not dependent on the speed of light. Both options break the standard model but somehow neutrinos can variate (in time) whilst traveling at light speed. Fun.

Give a shot at neutrinos then. They either have mass, but still travel at the speed of light without losing it. Or neutrinos have no mass and time is not dependent on the speed of light. Both options break the standard model but somehow neutrinos can variate (in time) whilst traveling at light speed. Fun.

With physics I just assume everything we know is wrong, but still just right enough that we can make useful things happen without REALLY understanding underlying principles all the way down.

Sort of like how a computer program can't really analyze the system it runs in meaningfully (it can't understand the methods with which it executes). You can still do things like runtime analysis to guess at, for instance, what might have larger performance penalties or guess with some high degree of accuracy when you've missed cache or whatever, But you can't really _know_.

I sort of hope we can figure it all out, but I'm unsure.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 26 2021, 06:02

With physics I just assume everything we know is wrong, but still just right enough that we can make useful things happen without REALLY understanding underlying principles all the way down.

Sort of like how a computer program can't really analyze the system it runs in meaningfully (it can't understand the methods with which it executes). You can still do things like runtime analysis to guess at, for instance, what might have larger performance penalties or guess with some high degree of accuracy when you've missed cache or whatever, But you can't really _know_.

I sort of hope we can figure it all out, but I'm unsure.

any assumption about how things work are as good as any other until they're proven wrong, but its surprisingly effective to work off these guesses still.
even if they might be wrong they might be close enough to work with, which also translates to the computer program analogy. even if the system doesnt actually have what you're checking for because your check is wrong, it might still just work because the same thing that made your incorrect check return true also caused what you needed it for to work.

until ofcourse you inevitably run into the case where it doesnt work and then you start wondering "but then how did all this other stuff work".

kinda like how I often program, forgot if it was out of a course or book or something specific but what always stayed with me with software is the tip/quote "just write it as if it already works". meaning you just write your high level logic around do_what_I_need();, assuming it already works and then later implement what you actually needed, as to not slow yourself down with specifics about how to actually do the thing.

similar again, perfectly fine using light for things without knowing the underlying specifics of light, as long as my assumptions of how it works are close enough for the usecase I'll need it for.

This post has been edited by cate_chan: Sep 26 2021, 14:51

- Support for RAR archive files has been dropped.

Excellent.

No one should use RAR; any work done to discourage its use is a good thing.

With physics I just assume everything we know is wrong, but still just right enough that we can make useful things happen without REALLY understanding underlying principles all the way down.

Quantum physics itself is not wrong, but its relative to the environment in which you are living, there may be rules in this universe that are wrong but in another they are completely valid, as would be an antimatter universe

The same can be said at the molecular level

MIDI is really nice; I just wish that it used a bit rate that was an integer multiple of what typical PC uarts are clocked at. Or that PC uarts used an integer multiple of the MIDI clock (yeah I know they use some multiple of the NTSC colorburst/color reference subcarrier frequency usually).

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 28 2021, 08:24

Quantum physics itself is not wrong, but its relative to the environment in which you are living, there may be rules in this universe that are wrong but in another they are completely valid, as would be an antimatter universe

The same can be said at the molecular level

I guess I'm really talking about string theory and not quantum mechanics here.
It might be totally wrong in how it explains things, but give us correct answers for the wrong reasons. We still don't know exactly how to extrapolate quantum physics laws into larger bodies or explain why gravity is such a weak force.

There are theories that string theorists have, and those are convenient, but we don't really have easy ways to verify most of them.

Maybe I'm just being postmodern and you should ignore the ramblings of a madman.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 28 2021, 08:42

It might be totally wrong in how it explains things, but give us correct answers for the wrong reasons.

(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)
Uh - oh, now my poor brain is a mess

I guess I'd explain it as sort of like how one could be totally wrong about the directon of electron (or electrical current) flow, but still make things work with electricity.

[web.engr.oregonstate.edu] That happened.

Also lightning moves from the ground upwards.

It is important to realize that the difference between conventional current flow and electron flowin no way effects any real-world behavior or computational results.

And even though it's still fundamentally incorrect in its explanation, it works so well that we never bothered actually redefining positive and negative for practical purposes.

[pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov] https://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/woppos.html

Later, when electric batteries were discovered, scientists naturally assigned the direction of the flow of current to be from (+) to (-). A century after that electrons were discovered and it was suddenly realized that in metal wires the electrons were the ones that carried the current, moving in exactly the opposite direction. Also, it was an excess of electrons which produced a negative electric charge. However, it was much too late to change (Ben) Franklin's naming convention

CRT television electron guns made a little more sense once I realized that.

This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Sep 28 2021, 09:11

CRT television electron guns made a little more sense once I realized that.

I suppose TVs can't use a photon beam because watching the tv would affect the image.

I remember there being something else that was 'oh wow that makes a lot of sense now' with the whole electron flow/current flow situation.
but I've completely forgotten what the point was and for all regular usecases current flow works just fine.

This post has been edited by cate_chan: Sep 28 2021, 21:23

I suppose TVs can't use a photon beam because watching the tv would affect the image.

We won't know until the enterprises they stop overexploiting LED, OLED and now QLED technology to make televisions thinner than a sheet of paper

(IMG:[i.blogs.es] https://i.blogs.es/3389c2/tele-transparente/1366_2000.jpg)

Imagine buying a 1080p television with dead pixels at ~ $ 6000 USD

I don't see the use of a transparent TV, just to show off that you're an idiot with a lot of money

There are theories that string theorists have, and those are convenient, but we don't really have easy ways to verify most of them.

In itself existence does not have an easy way to check, not even through mathematics, since even mathematics is incomplete

work