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I Love the Computer

michaelenger.com

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141–150 of 167 posts

Re: I Love the Computer

#141

Post by Hugsbox »

echelon wrote: post #18
Shellban wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that we recover from the damage being done now. As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers.

> As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers. Choose one: - You spend 30 hours writing a program to manage data for your hobby. You write it on your personal computer. - You spend one hour generating a program to manage data for…

You're making a really strong case for option A, whereas B sounds really depressing

Re: I Love the Computer

#142

Post by holoduke »

dgellow wrote: post #134
holoduke wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just reversed engineered large parts of my 2011 car odb comms. Was able to hook a stm32 board to the car communication and have full control over a lot of stuff so that I can build my own instrument cluster from a lcd screen. It literally took me one evening to get the first proof of concept working. I never touched stm32 stuff before.

you did none of this. Did you personally learn something from that experience? Other than how to use your agent

Of course I learned from it. I mean the reverse engineering part which is basically try and error is something I rather skip. The remaining things like wiring the hardware is still there. The boring stuff is what the LLM can do for me. I still find the process to get stuff working challenging and interesting. It's not only about the end result. It's just a different approach than the old school low level one

Re: I Love the Computer

#143

Post by holoduke »

rolandog wrote: post #43
specproc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you, son. I've just spent the whole f*king day screaming at an agent on a deadline.

This right here. People simp for LLM companies as if their experience of using the out-of-pocket top-of-the-line "team of PhD's" paid models will be what is deployed when trying to contact your bank, insurance, etc. No,... once tech companies stop playing the "no/some revenue until we own the world" VC game, we'll all be stuck trying to talk to GlueSnifferGPT when reporting an emergency.

That will never happen. You know that. It will only become more and more. there is no return. My advise: don't stick with those blocker ideas.

Re: I Love the Computer

#144

Post by rolandog »

holoduke wrote: post #143
rolandog wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This right here. People simp for LLM companies as if their experience of using the out-of-pocket top-of-the-line "team of PhD's" paid models will be what is deployed when trying to contact your bank, insurance, etc. No,... once tech companies stop playing the "no/some revenue until we own the world" VC game, we'll all be stuck trying to talk to GlueSnifferGPT when reporting an emergency.

That will never happen. You know that. It will only become more and more. there is no return. My advise: don't stick with those blocker ideas.

Not sure I follow; more and more what? And what do you mean by blocker ideas?

Re: I Love the Computer

#145

Post by rfv6723 »

godelski wrote: post #75
suyavuz wrote: post #37

I still like the computer itself. Breaking something, poking at it, fixing it, and then it suddenly works. The hard part now is liking the industry around it.

> The hard part now is liking the industry around it. This is exactly how I feel. I fell in love with computing for the same reasons I fell in love with physics and engineering. I love making things. I love the puzzles. I love digging down to understand things. And on top of that, it always ends up being useful. And then I can share my work with others and they get utility out of it too?! What an incredible and fulfi…

[flagged]

Re: I Love the Computer

#146

Post by dwroberts »

> However, having had much success with experimentation so far I decided to try something that would probably work: I copied the code from the magazine into Notepad and saved the file as .exe instead of .txt.

Glad to hear I’m not alone in these kind of early experiments. I remember having no idea what the concept of programming actually was, and opening game EXEs in notepad to try and understand how they worked. The demo of Majesty was one I particularly wanted to modify and had no idea how

Re: I Love the Computer

#148

Post by lostmsu »

mid-kid wrote: post #128
lostmsu wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "in x years we won't need programmers" and end up proving themselves wrong time and time again This is how it looks in your head, maybe. But in reality since Sonnet 3.5 - when the whole "no need programmers" started - no "years" have passed. Sonnet 3.5 came out on June 20, 2024. We are still 5 days away from the lowest possible "years". So even if you quoted them literally, they could not have possibly proved thems…

It was just an example of the type of shit they say to sell it, and then walk back from. https://fortune.com/2026/05/26/sam-altman-dario-amodei-walki...

Yeah, and you hallucinated that example.

The link isn't any stronger either.

Re: I Love the Computer

#149

Post by abc123abc123 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #26
Shellban wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that we recover from the damage being done now. As one example, a friend of mine has remarked that large corporations will benefit from the current AI-induced reality of no one being able to afford their own hardware, and keep prices that way to enforce a renters model on computers.

That's my fear, and unfortunately I think its likely to happen. I feel like we will settle down a little bit, but into a new higher "normal" baseline that still largely makes it unaffordable for most. There's also still the risk of the creation of a new economic underclass, if both a) hardware remains too expensive for local inference and b) subscription or pay-per-token based inference also remains expensive or incr…

This is not correct. Prices will adjuts when the crash comes. At worst, the market and prices will just open peoples eyes up to the reality that 99% of the daily software we use, runs perfectly fine on a 5 years old computer.

The idea that you _must_ have 128 GB RAM and 1 TB ssd in your computer is juts absurd.

Remember... we reached the moon with the compute power of a pocket calculator, and there is no eternal law that says that everything has to be written in javascript.

Re: I Love the Computer

#150

Post by indymike »

drchickensalad wrote: post #3
fasterik wrote: post #2

I love computers too, but it doesn't resonate with me when people call AI "snake oil." The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do. AI does more or less what it's marketed to do, sometimes badly. I still write code by hand. But LLMs have been a legitimately useful tool when I've wanted to dig into a new field like computer graphics, theoretical physics, or numerical analysis. Or even ju…

> The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do In my opinion you should interpret the usage of "AI" here to mean "the entire business/management/financial/bubble ecosystem surrounding LLMs". The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized rather than a specific technical assessment (although that often is an issue too)

> The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized

Calling something "snake oil" implies that the product only, at best, has a placebo effect (amplified, no doubt, by the sales presentation). LLMs seem to be much more useful than a placebo.

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