I cannot overstate the importance of this. This particularly affects neurodivergent people. The article also (correctly) mentions how socioeconomic status plays a role here.
Food insecurity erodes psychological safety. Housing insecurity erodes psychological safety. Having to do unpredictable and extra jobs just to make ends meet such that a parent has unpredictable availability hurts psychological safety. Having to break promises because of circumstances hurts psychological safety and this is just way more likely if you're struggling, despite your best intent.
It's worth ruminating on this when you start to understand how every aspect of society is designed to extract value from you at every possible moment. Third and fourth jobs, medical debt forcing you to work, student debt, mortgage debt, high rent prices.
Yet the thirst for ever-increasing profits is unquenchable. Part of the reason that people such as myself rail against this system and the society we've built around work is how damaging it is to society as a whole.
South Korea is really the end stage of this pipeline, where birth rates are around ~0.71 children per woman as there are so many disincentives to have children and, for that child to have a good life, everything gets invested into their education. The pressure is intense such that the teen suicide rate is huge. And this birth rate is so low that 3 generations of this will decrease the population by 90%.
What we're seeing here is the dismantling of necessary and useful government functions by people who have no idea about the consequences of what they're doing.
I can't wait for them to come for GPS (run by DoD). All these people want to do is replace these government functions with a worse and more expensive private alternative but hey, someone gets to rent-seek massive profits, so that's OK. It's also a lesson in how for many things, them being run by a government entity is the best alternative.
If you want to see actual waste, how about a current sitting Senator and former Florida governor who, at the time, run a company that got the largest fine in history for defrauding Medicare to the tune of $1.7 billion [1], something for which nobody faced criminal prosecution.
The author mentions it but I want to expand on it: Apple is a seriously good option here, specifically the M4 Mac Mini.
What makes Apple attractive is (as the author mentions) that RAM is shared between main and video RAM whereas NVidia is quite intentionally segmenting the market and charging huge premiums for high VRAM cards. Here are some options:
1. Base $599 Mac Mini: 16GB of RAM. Stocked in store.
2. $999 Mac Mini: 24GB of RAM. Stocked in store.
3. Add RAM to either of the above up to 32GB. It's not cheap at $200/8GB but you can buy a Mac Mini with 32GB of shared RAM for $999, substantially cheaper than the author's PC build but less storage (although you can upgrade that too).
4. M4 Pro: $1399 w/ 24GB of RAM. Stocked in store. You can customize this all the way to 64GB of RAM for +$600 so $1999 in total. That is amazing value for this kind of workload.
5. The Mac Studio is really the ultimate option. Way more cores and you can go all the way to 192GB of unified memory (for a $6000 machine). The problem here is that the Mac Studio is old, still on the M2 architecture. An M4 Ultra update is expected sometime this year, possibly late this year.
6. You can get into clustering these (eg [1]).
7. There are various Macbook Pro options, the highest of which is a 16" Mackbook Pro with 128GB of unified memory for $4999.
But the main takeaway is the M4 Mac Mini is fantastic value.
Some more random thoughts:
- Some Mac Minis have Thunderbolt 5 ("TB5"), which is up to either 80Gbps or 120Gbps bidirectional (I've seen it quoted as both);
- Mac Minis have the option of 10GbE (+$200);
- The Mac Mini has 2 USB3 ports and either 3 TB4 or 3 TB5 ports.
Worth pointing out that you "only" get <= 270GB/s of memory bandwith with those Macs, unless you choose the max/ultra models.
If that is enough for your use case, it may make sense to wait 2 months and get a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU, which will have the same memory bandwith, but allows for up to 128GB RAM. For probably ~half the Mac's price.
Usual AMD driver disclaimer applies, but then again inference is most often way easier to get running than training.
The issue with Macs is that below Max/Ultra processors, the memory bandwidth is pretty slow. So you need to spend a lot on a high level processor and lots of memory, and the current gen processor, M4, doesn't even have an Ultra, while the Max is only available in a laptop form factor (so thermal constraints).
An M4 Pro still has only 273GB/s, while even the 2 generations old RTX 3090 has 935GB/s.
That's a good point. I checked the M2 Mac Studio and it's 400GB/s for the M2 Max and 800GB/s for the M2 Ultra so the M4 Ultra when we get it later this year should really be a beast.
Oh and the top end Macbook Pro 16 (the only current Mac with an M4 Max) has 410GB/s memory bandwidth.
Obviously the Mac Studio is at a much higher price point.
Still, you need to spend $1500+ to get an NVidia GPU with >12GB of RAM. Multiple of those starts adding up quick. Put multiple in the same box and you're talking more expensive case, PSU, mainboard, etc and cooling too.
Apple has a really interesting opportunity here with their unified memory architecture and power efficiency.
How is the performance difference between using a dedicated GPU from Nvidia for example compared to whatever Apple does?
So lets say we'd run a model on a Mac Mini M4 with 24GB RAM, how many tokens/s are you getting? Then if we run the exact same model but with a RTX 3090ti for example, how many tokens/s are you getting?
Do these comparisons exist somewhere online already? I understand it's possible to run the model on Apple hardware today, with the unified memory, but how fast is that really?
Not the exact same comparison but I have an M1 mac with 16gb ram and can get about 10 t/s with a 3B model. The same model on my 3060ti gets more than 100 t/s.
Could you say what exact model+quant you're using for that specific test + settings + runtime? Just so I could try to compare with other numbers I come across.
Unified memory is great because it's fast, but you can also get a lot of system memory on a "conventional" machine like OP's, and offload MOE layers like what Ktransformers did, so you can run huge models with acceptable speeds. While the Mac mini may have better value for anything that fits in the unified memory, if you want to run Deepseek R1 or other large models, then it's best to max out system RAM and get a GPU to offload.
For sure and the Mac Mini M4 Pro with 64GB of RAM feels like the sweet spot right now.
That said, the base storage option is only 512GB, and if this machine is also a daily driver, you’re going to want to bump that up a bit. Still, it’s an amazing machine for under $3K.
The hassle of not being able to work with native CUDA isn't worth it for a huge amount of AI. Good luck getting that latest paper or code working quickly just to try it out, if the author didn't explicitly target M4 (unlikely but all the most mainstream of stuff).
In a homelab scenario, having your own AI assistant not ran by someone else, that is not an issue. If you want to tinker/learn AI it's definitely an issue.
No disrespect to you but I'm constantly reminded of this quote:
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It's this same idea that led Google down the garden path that was (is?) GWT: Java everywhere. It seems like a good idea but for every platform you add, you reduce the total the lowest common denominator between them. You add transliteration bugs and issues.
Google also trie to do this with Protocol Buffers on Javascript front ends and the serialization methods were... suboptimal. Because obviously you can't do (or at least couldn't at the time) binary encoding and decoding on a browser.
All this is why we've seen multiple attempts to, say, allow you to write an app that'll work on iOS and Android. React Native springs to mind.
Now if you can come up with an end-to-end Typescript solution, that's great. But it's also a pretty severe constraint and one that doesn't, for example, solve the native mobile platform issue.
I have pretty positive experience with Capacitor, actually. Precisely because it doesn't try to be e2e solution that shields you away from the native platform. It doesn't stand in your way when you want to do something native, it's more of a toolkit to manage the bridge between WebView/Native land.
I've never understood how 1% equity to be the first hire is attractive. It's irrational greed. You see stories like Google or Instagram and you think "that could be me". You're more likely to win the lottery than for that to be you.
It's the same thing with crypto bros not wanting to miss the next Bitcoin.
Not only is 1% substantially less than the 33% the last founder got, those shares aren't equal. Voting power, clawbacks, dilution, acceleration on change of control and so on.
Thje most likely outcome is that equity is worth nothing. The next most likely outcome is an acquihire. Participating and liquidity preferences may mean your 1% stake is actually worth $0. Maybe the buyer offers you a new equity package but how is that different from just getting hired directly? Meanwhile, the founders often get huge bonuses (which are really a way of paying the equity holders less) with generous new equity packages (even with earn outs).
If you're good enough to be hired as a founding engineer, you're good enough to be a founder or simply to work in big tech or fintech for $500k-$1M+ a year in total comp with next to no risk. And that total comp beats the expected value of your employee startup equity value by a mile.
It never ceases to amaze me how often people will make socialist economic arguments (that are objectively correct) yet eschew the label "socialism".
An enterprise, like providing a utility, has revenues and it has costs. The difference between the two can be called the "surplus labor value". What happens to that depends on the economic system.
In capitalism, capital owners own that enterprise (utility) and they siphon off profits raising the costs. Put another way, capital owners own the means of production, not the residents of the city or the city itself. This is rent-seeking behavior.
In a socialist organization of the economy, the residents either directly or through the city itself, would own the utility. Any profits would go back into the utility or be extra revenue for the city but there's really no incentive to increase prices on the citizens who own the utility (unlike the unquenchable thirst for increasing profits for capital owners).
I have to constantly point out that capitalism isn't markets (market existed thousands of years before it and exist in every economic system). Capitalism simply supplanted feudalism by replacing kings with billionaires. That's it.
We have abundant examples of how the latter is a substantially better system. Just compare EPB Internet (Chattanooga, TN and surrounds) vs Verizon, AT&T, Comcast or Spectrum. Municipal broadband, without exception, is substantially better than any national ISP. The only thing that keeps national ISPs in business is more rent-seeking behavior such as lobbying for legislation to ban municipal broadband.
Given this is the Superbowl weekend, it's worth adding that the Packers are owned by Green Bay (an arrangement the NFL now bans for any other franchise). What do we see in other cities? Teams extorating massive tax breaks from cities, counties and states to build massive stadiums at taxpayer expense without the team having to give up anything. The KC Chiefs are rumbling about leaving because the city didn't pass a sales tax increase to pay for upgrades to Arrowhead Stadium.
I don't know why anyone is surprised by any of this anymore.
Minitel is just one project, a successful one but eclipsed by the rest of the IT world. Does that mean the French government could have done what SV did? Why didn't they?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has clearly reshaped Europe and it's impossible to tell what the long term impacts will be. Some random thoughts:
1. It clearly strengthened NATO, with Finland and Sweden joining and member nations increasing military spending;
2. It revealed Russia's military as a paper tiger and exposed the rampant corruption;
3. It became apparent that neither Ukraine nor Russia could "win" militarily (whatever that means) after 1-2 years;
4. Barring serious escalation, it's now a war of attrition. Ukraine is running out of people to conscript. But Russia is hurting too. Bringing in North Korean troops is clearly a measure to avoid or delay another mobilization;
5. Thus far, the Russian economy has withstood sanctions probably better than anyone expected;
6. Russia has done long-term damage to their energy exports regardless of the outcome. Europe won't be keen to return to a dependence on Russian natural gas;
7. The most likely outcome for awhile seems to be that the West will eventually get bored and there'll be a negotiated settlement that'll cede Ukrainina territory to Russia, creating a land bridge to Crimea and guarantee a Russian port in the Black Sea (IMHO);
8. There clearly has been internal strife in Russia. Oligarchs are dying in car crashes an dfalling out of windows at an alarming rate. And this is beyond the one very public and short-lived coup attempt;
9. If Ukraine cedes territory to Russia, I very much suspect Zollensky will have to flee the country and it will go hard right, kinda like Hungary;
10. Less talked about is Asaad falling in Syria but it's significant as this was a port for the Russian navy in the Meditaranean. Russia had been forced to use this for repairs after Ukrainian missile and drone attacks on their Black Sea fleet. That is a serious loss;
11. Many like to paint Trump as a Putin patsy, even an asset. The truth seems to be far more complicated. For example, Trump had been banging the drum about the dangers of Nordstream 1 and 2 and European dependence on Russian natural gas back in 2017-2018. In fact, Germany conceded to pressure by the first Trump administration to build an LNG port because of this threat. Those aren't pro-Russian moves.
12. As much as Trump may want to end the conflict, there will be significant resitance to this because it's hugely profitable to the military-industrial complex. Fun fact: spending in Afghanistan in the last year was pretty much the amount spent on military aid to Ukraine in the firs tyear.
13. Ukraine is and always was too large to occupy so either that was never the goal or Putin didn't listen to his generals. I've seen estimates that you'd need a standing army of 500,000+ to occupy a country the size of Ukraine and it would be a quagmire like 1980s Afghanistan was for the Soviets;
14. So either the goal had to be gaining territory, installing a puppet regime (like Lukashenko previously) and/or it was ideological (the so-called "Duganist" argument).
15. Between China and India there will always be a market for Russian energy exports.
This is complicated. For context, there's a 1936 international treaty that regulates traversal of the Bosporus Straits called the Montreux convention [1]. it generally allows the passage of warships with a couple of exceptions and it depends on if Turkey is at war or not.
What happened in 2022 is that Turkey decided Russia's invasion was a "war" (in the context of a treaty) and thus limited access to the Black Sea to Russian warships. But that comes with a couple of restrictions.
The most notable one is that Russia is allowed to use the passage for ships based in the Black Sea and that was important. Ukraine could (and did) attack ships in Sevastopol and when that happened, they would have to retreat to repair (if possible). And they went to Syria to do that one several occasions.
Turkey's relationship with Europe, NATO, the US and Russia is... complicated. Like Turkey is the largest military in NATO (other than the US of course) and does pretty much whatever the US tells them to, but they also buy Russian armaments (eg missile systems) and the US has stationed nuclear weapons in Turkey. And while buying Russian arms, Turkey is selling drones to Ukraine who is using them to attack Russia. And Turkey, despite being a NATO member, has been at war with Greece, another NATO member.
Russia also has used internal waterways to bypass the Bosporus Straits [2].
What I find endlessly fascinating is how often I see anti-capitalist sentiment, which your comment is, in the context of how often and how much people will defend capitalism and attack socialism. For the record, I don't know if the second part applies to you, specifically. This is a general observation.
Local food production is quintessential socialism: it is quite literally the workers (the farmers) owning the means of production (the farm).
When people hear that, they so often reject it with some variant of "no, that's a business; that's capitalism". Businesses (and markets) existed millenia before capitalism and exist in every economic system.
The defining characteristic of capitalism is exploitation by capital owners. In the eggs case, it's Cal-Maine Foods (or any other large company) owning the land and in all likelihood employing undocumented workers because they can pay them sub-minimum wage. At least that's how the likes of Tyson produces chicken.
It's also worth adding that something like avian flu is used to justify price hikes well beyond what the supply change would otherwise warrant.
The Instagram dating thing is because, in the heteronormative sense, a guy without one odd WAY more likely to be cheating. If you’re in a relationship, even if you don’t post, your significant other will likely tag you in their posts.
I’ve never really understood doomscrolling on Twitter or Reddit. The only social media I find remotely useful out entertaining is actually TikTok. The comments are IME the least toxic and most entertaining. And I’ve gone down fascinating rabbit holes of things that have absolutely no relevance to my life like medical residency TikTok.
Agreed, but we are getting thrown in with the people who have an insta account, but say they don't so they don't get fact-checked on their relationship status.
My reddit scrolling wasn't doom for my case. I was either personal topics I liked (cars, computing, software, photography, etc...) or brain rot/stupid shi that's the main reason I've left because I could be more productive than looking at an endless supply of that stuff
You can mute subreddits and not see them anymore
Funny you have to purge the algo on things like YouTube if you click on a thubmnail with some hot chick, boom your feed is nothing but click bait of hot women
I cannot overstate the importance of this. This particularly affects neurodivergent people. The article also (correctly) mentions how socioeconomic status plays a role here.
Food insecurity erodes psychological safety. Housing insecurity erodes psychological safety. Having to do unpredictable and extra jobs just to make ends meet such that a parent has unpredictable availability hurts psychological safety. Having to break promises because of circumstances hurts psychological safety and this is just way more likely if you're struggling, despite your best intent.
It's worth ruminating on this when you start to understand how every aspect of society is designed to extract value from you at every possible moment. Third and fourth jobs, medical debt forcing you to work, student debt, mortgage debt, high rent prices.
Yet the thirst for ever-increasing profits is unquenchable. Part of the reason that people such as myself rail against this system and the society we've built around work is how damaging it is to society as a whole.
South Korea is really the end stage of this pipeline, where birth rates are around ~0.71 children per woman as there are so many disincentives to have children and, for that child to have a good life, everything gets invested into their education. The pressure is intense such that the teen suicide rate is huge. And this birth rate is so low that 3 generations of this will decrease the population by 90%.
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