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petermcneeley

2,350 karma · joined May 7, 2017

http://darkcephas.blogspot.ca/
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petermcneeley··on Show HN: WebGPU enables local LLM in the browser – demo site with AI chat
This demo only works if you have the webgpu feature "f16". You can find out if you have this by checking for the feature list in https://webgpureport.org/ . The page itself can of course check for this but since f16 support is common they probably just didnt bother.
petermcneeley··on Efficient Computer's Electron E1 CPU – 100x more efficient than Arm?
I think this is more like an fpga than simply a bunch of cores arranged in a fabric.
petermcneeley··on Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games
I mean a bank is literally a money printer.
petermcneeley··on YouTube prepares crackdown on mass-produced videos as concern over AI slop grows
The problem isnt AI; the problem is quality.
petermcneeley··on Techno-feudalism and the rise of AGI: A future without economic rights?
Im saying that that scenario is virtual the same as before the workers revolutions only now the workers are no longer required. Before the workers got a tiny slice of production to sustain themselves. Now they will get nothing for they will not be part of production.
petermcneeley··on Techno-feudalism and the rise of AGI: A future without economic rights?
I mean this is what feudalism was and this not the only system with this property. Early forms of industrial capitalism had the same form as well. We tend to think of capitalism bringing economic prosperity to the common people but nothing of the sort happened. Worker organization brought prosperity to the workers. Our entire worldview of capital is formed by the period from 1940-1990. This is a historical aberration as it actually is the period of forced confiscation of capital from the capitalist. This is why the common people think of this period as the Golden Age.
petermcneeley··on Techno-feudalism and the rise of AGI: A future without economic rights?
Yes but it should be clear that an economy composed of elite producing for themselves and other elite is totally possible.
petermcneeley··on Techno-feudalism and the rise of AGI: A future without economic rights?
This a late 20th century myopic view of the economy. In the ages and the places long before, most of human toil was enjoyed by a tiny elite.

Also "rendering such a future impossible". This is a retrocausal way of thinking. As though an a bad event in the future makes that future impossible.

petermcneeley··on Nano-engineered thermoelectrics enable scalable, compressor-free cooling
> the APL team achieved nearly 100% improvement in efficiency over traditional thermoelectric materials at room temperature

Peltier effect refrigeration has very low efficiencies (5%) so while this is an amazing accomplishment it will not replace other more mechanical cooling methods.

petermcneeley··on Most ints are not floats
Another unfortunate fact is that max int (signed and unsigned) is also not a float. This means you cannot write clamped ftoi conversion only in floating point (because the value is not representable). This is why webgpu (wgsl) does not fully saturate on ftoi

https://www.w3.org/TR/WGSL/#floating-point-conversion

petermcneeley··on How much slower is random access, really?
Whats most misleading is the data for the smaller sizes (1k)
petermcneeley··on Mechanical Watch: Exploded View
The suspension (supports) should not be visible if it has the same index of refraction.
petermcneeley··on I Miss the Internet (2024)
> Designed to keep us moving and prevents us from being contemplative and forming groups that can address the problems of modern society.

It is sorta like the promise of cyberspace failed [0]. I wonder if something killed/smothered it or it was simply poorly formulated to begin with. [0] https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

petermcneeley··on DARPA program sets distance record for power beaming
"reflects onto dozens of photovoltaic cells arranged around the inside of the device which convert the energy back to usable power."

This is no different that what we were considering two decades ago for the space elevator competition. One of the problems with this approach is that as the photovoltaic cells heat up their overall efficiency decreases.

petermcneeley··on How easy is it for a developer to "sandbox" a program?
For obvious reasons chromium has pretty extensive sandboxing. You can read the source right here: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:con...
petermcneeley··on Researchers develop ‘transparent paper’ as alternative to plastics
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic...
petermcneeley··on Canadian Government Buries “Lawful Access” Provisions in New Border Bill
> To combat money laundering and financing terror, there are new restrictions imposed on cash transactions over $10,000 and cash deposits by one person into someone else’s account.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/liberals-introduce-s...

petermcneeley··on Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
petermcneeley··on Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
No im not. A gallon is a measure of volume? This is a USA unit.
petermcneeley··on Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
I dont have much use for a bad reasoning machine.
petermcneeley··on Chomsky on what ChatGPT is good for (2023)
I recently saw a new LLM that was fooled by "20 pounds of bricks vs 20 feathers". These are not reasoning machines.
petermcneeley··on Please Fund More Science (2020)
He list 3 ways to solve covid. But covid was solved via the 4th way. https://fortune.com/2022/01/12/bill-gates-covid-seasonal-flu...
petermcneeley··on Alberta separatism push roils Canada
What % of the participants of the trucker protest were from Alberta?
petermcneeley··on Diffusion models explained simply
This page is full of text. I am guessing the author (Sean Goedecke) is a language based thinker.
petermcneeley··on Brandon's Semiconductor Simulator
Amazing work feels very similar to Paul Falstad page https://www.falstad.com/emstatic/index.html.

This really needs a WebGPU port. Multigrid on a GPU is moderately easy.

petermcneeley··on Doom GPU Flame Graphs
tbh I find magic trace to be more useful https://github.com/janestreet/magic-trace
petermcneeley··on Three Felonies a Day (2013)
смотри сюда

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_giv...

petermcneeley··on Home galleries are hiding in plain sight across Canada
Yes there is a crisis. Not sure that it is merely housing.

"Canada has one of the highest immigration rates per capita in the world."

https://www.statista.com/statistics/443063/number-of-immigra...

petermcneeley··on A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics
The grass was so green back then. Today leaves are brown and there is a patch of snow on the ground.
petermcneeley··on A 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics
Is my computer hacked or is everyone else seeing a giant subscribe banner on this page?
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