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Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

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Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#321
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is the best direction to go. M$ Nadella is great at business strategic decisions. If only there is another great product person at M$ that pushes the design of their software and hardware. Both has gotten a lot better but still not Apple level of polish.

>Apple level of polish. Absurd claim given the untenable OS release cadence under Tim Cook. "But better than M$" is still undeserving of the lofty implication from "level of polish".

Not saying Apple is great but for me MS UX has been an utter crap, both in managed corp env and on a personal device.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#322
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is where the AGI employee succeeds where other automation doesn’t. The AGI employee doesn’t require the organization to change. It’s an agent that functions like a regular employee in the same exact system with all of its inefficiencies, except that it can do way more inefficient work for a fraction of the cost of a human.

Assuming we get to AGI and companies are willing to employ them in lieu of a human employee, why would they stop at only replacing small pieces of the org rather than replacing it entirely with AGI? AGI, by most definitions at least, would be better than most people at most things. Especially if you take OpenAI's definition, which boils it down only to economic value, a company would seemingly always be better off re…

Extrapolating this, I cannot help but imagine a dystopian universe in which humans' reason for existence is to be some uber AI's pets.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#323
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is where the AGI employee succeeds where other automation doesn’t. The AGI employee doesn’t require the organization to change. It’s an agent that functions like a regular employee in the same exact system with all of its inefficiencies, except that it can do way more inefficient work for a fraction of the cost of a human.

This is a huge selling point, and it will really differentiate the orgs that adopt it from those who don’t. Eventually the whole organization will become as inscrutable as the agents that operate it. From the executive point of view this is indistinguishable from having human knowledge workers. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to an organization like that when it faces disruptive threats that require…

Don't forget that the executive is also a (human) employee. If AGI is working so well, why would the major stakeholders need a human CEO?

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve used windows and macOS side by side for over a decade, and macOS BY FAR has a greater level of polish than windows, which to this day is relatively unstable. I haven’t had myself or a relative experience an OS-level crash in macOS in like five years years. Meanwhile, troubleshooting a family member’s BSOD is a regular occurrence.

> Apple level of polish - I can't tell if my macbook is charging or not while the lid is closed. There is no light indicator - minimize/maximize buttons are very small given that I am using a the touchpad. I am not saying they are unsuably small but far from ideal. - If I fully deplete the battery. I cannot immediatly turn it on with adapter's power. Why? Every windows laptop can be run with adapter even with a dead…

> If I fully deplete the battery. I cannot immediatly turn it on with adapter's power. Why? Every windows laptop can be run with adapter even with a dead battery.

First you should not be depleting modern batteries, its not good for the battery health, or indeed storage health, recall that solid-state storage integrity is not guaranteed in the absence of electrical current (a reminder to those who have a habit of backing up stuff onto SSDs, unplugging them and forgetting about them for extended time periods).

Second, if you think about it, its a safety feature in to protect you from data corruption.

If they let you turn on a machine with a fully-depleted battery and you immediately yank out the power cord, then you risk data corruption.

Sure, modern solid-state storage (at least the high quality implementations) have power-loss-protection. But that relies on capacitors. And to charge up capacitors, you need what ... oh yeah, that's right, electricity .... ;-)

So that is most likely why Apple require you to have a minimal charge before allowing you to power-on from completely depleted.

And to be honest, what are you bitching about anyway. Most Apple devices I use only require a 5–10 minute charge from completely depleted to get you to the minimum required. So just go make a cup of coffee and remind yourself not to completely deplete batteries in the future.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple level of polish - I can't tell if my macbook is charging or not while the lid is closed. There is no light indicator - minimize/maximize buttons are very small given that I am using a the touchpad. I am not saying they are unsuably small but far from ideal. - If I fully deplete the battery. I cannot immediatly turn it on with adapter's power. Why? Every windows laptop can be run with adapter even with a dead…

> There is no light indicator Counter point: Light indicators are ugly and usually unnecessary. Most people charge overnight, and don't want/need a light in their face.

> Counter point: Light indicators are ugly and usually unnecessary

And if you really must have an ugly and un-necessary light indicator, Apple have an answer for that....

Do not charge off USB-C, instead buy an Apple magsafe charger. That comes with a little indicator light on the end of the cord.

Alternatively, if you are charging off USB-C all you have to do on a powered mac is to look at the battery indicator in the menu bar.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean the non-product people that designed and wrote typescript?

Exactly, and they did it while no one at Microsoft was looking at them.

That's not what I see from the outside Everytime versioning comes up. My understanding is Microsoft marketing has full control over what constitutes a major / minor version bump like when typescript 4 is released vs typescript 3.9 (just an example). The people who build typescript don't even control their own version numbers.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to grow the real economy, build houses and reduce the cost of living. Yes, I wonder why it is so hard for Western countries to understand that there's no future in a place where housing is more expensive than your average salary. If may look cool for a few years until most people have left or are living on the streets.

"there's no future in a place where housing is more expensive than your average salary." don't get me wrong, everyone want cheaper housing but not their house

Maybe its time we stop seeing housing as an investment and more of a place to shelter oneself from the elements. One of the core pillars of survival

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#328
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a master class in becoming so big you don't need compelling products anymore. You are in their ecosystem, you will use their products. It took them 12 years to make Teams almost as good as Slack. Azure only has made it this far because its Microsoft, so many of their roll outs have been terrible (looking at you AKS, Cosmos DB). Copilot is used at my wifes company because they get it for free, and it seri…

.NET is a compelling product, cross platform, open source, well supported, good tooling.

.NET is not a good representation of Microsoft. It is a uniquely developer centered product (from devs by devs) that is of higher quality than almost everything else they produce.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple can pull off "Siri with context," it will completely annihilate Microsoft's first mover advantage. They'll be left with a large investment in a zero-margin commodity (OpenAI).

Apple will not beat Microsoft in any capacity here Microsoft has all the context in the world just waiting for exploitation: Microsoft Graph data, Teams transcripts and recordings, Office data, Exchange data, Recall data(?), while not context per se even the XBox gaming data

I don't think Microsoft legally has access to any Teams enterprise data like chats and recordings.

Re: Microsoft cancels leases for AI data centers, analyst says

#330
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a gap between "vastly more productive" and "noticeable benefit".

good shoes help me walk a bit faster, and for longer. they don't let me walk at the pace of a SUV. AI is like the good shoes. they help, and make many tasks a bit easier. but they can't make me into an SUV. and if they can, then no programmers will have jobs. which is the end-state of this whole LLM thing as far as I can tell.

I have a good shoes business. Can you give me a couple of 100 billions of dollars? Good news I promise you trillions, in a year or two or 10 maybe, who knows you can exprapolate into a future science fiction reality yourself. So when are you transfering the money?
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