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Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

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Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#91
post #74
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also cheaper to let the US do its military thing and be a bodyguard, and that means the EU can focus on more important social issues. Maybe it's a small price to pay, maybe not. Some future generation will have to answer that. I guess Europe had better hope America doesn't do what Americans want and pull troops home... The only truth of foreign policy is "might makes right". Ignoring treaties as just pieces of…

The only reasons Europeans care about the US military presence in Europe are (1) the economic benefits and (2) the signalling of solidarity against Russia. Actually countering Russian military capacity really isn't an issue any more, and Britain and France have enough nukes to act as a deterrent. Russia is a threat, but in the annoying neighbours who keeps holding loud parties, deal drugs and litter the streets and w…

> Britain and France have enough nukes to act as a deterrent

But would they be willing to sacrifice their countries in a nuclear exchange on behalf of Germany? Also, Britain and France have far fewer nukes than Russia and the US. In addition, they don't have the massive land area to make a first strike implausible.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there ever a time in history (let's say, in the past 2000 years) when gold was worthless though? Barring from super specific events, like trying to escape from a sinking Titanic etc.

Its not that gold is worthless, but it might be worth significantly less for you. A sovereign nation could institute a recall of gold devaluing the commodity[1]. A different sovereign nation could invade and take the gold by force. Both of which have precedent in the last 100 years. Ofcourse if you only read history from the perspective of the winners, gold is always a good long term investment. [1] https://en.wikipe…

The great thing about gold is that it's easy to hide. From what I'm reading about the EO6102, most people just didn't obey it and kept the gold.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#94

> A nanometre is one billionth of a metre. That's roughly the speed a human hair grows every second. That’s a great fact to impress friends and family with.

In the past I've heard it called a "Beard second" :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beard-second

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#95
post #74
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also cheaper to let the US do its military thing and be a bodyguard, and that means the EU can focus on more important social issues. Maybe it's a small price to pay, maybe not. Some future generation will have to answer that. I guess Europe had better hope America doesn't do what Americans want and pull troops home... The only truth of foreign policy is "might makes right". Ignoring treaties as just pieces of…

The only reasons Europeans care about the US military presence in Europe are (1) the economic benefits and (2) the signalling of solidarity against Russia. Actually countering Russian military capacity really isn't an issue any more, and Britain and France have enough nukes to act as a deterrent. Russia is a threat, but in the annoying neighbours who keeps holding loud parties, deal drugs and litter the streets and w…

    Actually countering Russian military capacity really isn't
    an issue any more, and Britain and France have enough 
    nukes to act as a deterrent
Yes, NATO is probably safe from a preemptive nuclear strike from Russia, thanks to mutually assured destruction.

Which... okay, yes. It's distinctly better than not being safe from a preemptive Russian nuclear strike. However, this is merely necessary; not sufficient.

Have you considered the vast number of non-nuclear aggressions that Russia might undertake, and in fact has already undertaken?

Crimea was safe from Russian nuclear attack too. Ask them how it went.

Are France and the UK's nuclear arsenal going to help if Russia makes more Crimea-style land grabs? Shuts down shipping lanes? Cuts pipelines or internet access? Shoots down geostationary satellites over Europe? Assassinates the leader of a NATO nation?

Granted, there's no guarantee that the United States would help you then, either. We have not been the most reliable partner, and I am deeply sorry for that. I do not support the leaders who have made things this way. I want us to be a better partner.

Regardless, surely you understand that there is a great need for conventional military deterrence by NATO? Nukes solve an extremely limited list of potential problems.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#96
post #80

the machine learning on A14 is still slower than Qualcomm and Samsung chips [0] Android smartphones are smarter than iPhone technically by the article's common sense [0] https://youtu.be/F_IsBD6E3O4

Nobody has these chips in their hands, so I would treat any claims with skepticism at this point.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At one point EU should realize that the US are playing the same game as the Chinese and are really not business friend. While I (as a German) agree that the US imperialism and dominance in high tech is a problem, I would not go as low and say the US is on the same level as China, which is an outright threat to all core values of the Western nations.

US is also a threat to Western values, just look around the world and see how many people hate America. Usually it's because of the pretty bad shit that American government has done to them. Though I agree that being under Chinese or Russian rule seems like an on average worse outcome than the current American dominance.

FWIW, Churchill wasn't completely wrong when he (supposedly) said, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#98
post #55
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They compare it to the A12 I think because the iPad Pro and previous iPad Air (I believe, can’t remember) were both running A12 variants. It may still have something over the A13, but if they are trying to convince people to upgrade they probably want to compare it to the previous gen.

The issue is more fundamental. Apple hasn't made any computing breakthroughs. They got a lot of gains by going super-wide to extract obvious parallel performance. They are now at the point where adding more units costs more than it offers (at present). Their fundamental advantage over x86 is that aarch64 is less quirky, so implementing good ideas takes less time. Their only "easy" dial left is ramping clocks, but tha…

I think this was borne out pretty well with the announcement. Most of the 'breakthrough' tech enabled by A14 was just stuff the A13 could already do just fine. They spent about 10 minutes talking about deep fusion FFS.

(still buying one though...)

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#99

> A nanometre is one billionth of a metre. That's roughly the speed a human hair grows every second. That’s a great fact to impress friends and family with.

A demonstration that always stuck with me is from when Grace Hopper was on David Letterman. She had a piece of wire about 30cm long to show how far light travels in a nanosecond. Then she pulled out a little packet of pepper to show how far light travels in a picosecond.

Re: Apple iPhone 12: The chip advance set to make smartphones smarter

#100
post #64

> the tiny on-off switches are now only about 25 atoms wide Speaking as someone completely clueless about the engineering at that level... damn, that's impressive.

That would be impressive, unfortunately it is not correct. You can see this article, and the comments, for more information.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24618031

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