461–470 of 734 posts
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That's more or less irrelevant, AMD is one of the many fabless companies like Qualcomm or MediaTek. Intel makes it's own chips, and now wants to make chips for other companies as well. They may end up making AMD processors one day.
Isn’t that a huge conflict of interest? It’s hard to see how AMD would get capacity ahead of Intel CPUs.
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I could make the same baseless argument that many people also died due to the over restrictive policies and draconian imprisonment tactics. Of course 0-covid is only possible if it is maintained forever, because like it or not the rest of the world still has covid.
I'm not sure it's the best approach, but I would figure they would wait until circulating Covid strains were acceptably less harmful and then reopen.
Their lockdowns are politically motivated: saving face because they prematurely declared victory, and a need to avoid dependence on western vaccines due to the ineffectiveness of their own vaccines—the latter really just a roundabout way to save face.
If you understood Chinese culture, you’d know that saving face is pretty important and makes you do crazy things.
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I disagree current systems can turn a web search that presents results in a pleasing manner. I had a horrible time trying to find a specific musician's work on YouTube just last night. It kept recommending me completely unrelated vids as if I was browsing just to browse. It couldn't seem to comprehend that even though I usually watch cute cat videos today I am searching for music, even when I was exact quoting the au…
The current Alexa experience is like guessing the syntax in the early 90s adventure games. It's horrible :-)
To be perfectly honest, this is still within a 1000km radius circle that encompasses Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. That covers the majority of next-generation fabs that aren't Intel. It's great to legally diversify these fabs, but it does very little to mitigate geopolitical issues that are brewing in and around the east china sea.
They might rattle their sabers but these fabs will be safe.
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I think you underestimate the dependency of all modern economy on semiconductor industry. I honestly think there is 100% chance that if China invaded Taiwan today, the US would declare war and send troops to defend Taiwan. In contrast, I think there is >0% chance that the US would not declare war on Russia if they did a (tactical) nuclear attack in Ukraine.
No you massively overestimate the importance of economics or semiconductor industry. Whatever will happen to Taiwan has nothing to do with Chips. For China it's about nationalism, for US it's about protecting allies/upholding treaties and protecting democracy from the strongest authoritarian regime. Chips are not important. After all chances are high they might be destroyed even in a successful defense of Taiwan. As…
I doubt this is true for China (I very much suspect economic concerns trump any other concerns for them as well), but I am quite convinced you are wrong about the USA - one of the biggest supporters of non-democratic regimes in the world. There is little in US history to suggest they have any preference for a democratic regime over a subservient autocratic one. They are also extremely clearly uncaring of international treaties.
And make no mistake: the USA is coordinating Ukraine's defense because it sees it as a good chance to weaken Russia, not out of some deep care for the people of Ukraine.
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But you underestimate our ability to downsize, turn around and build them locally on a 5-year horizon, and our ability to backtrack tensions anyway if we re reaching a nuclear point. We will give Ukraine to Russia if we can save Paris.
> We will give Ukraine to Russia if we can save Paris. Only that you just taught the already aggressive ruling elite of a huge country with an abundance of resources who don't care about anyone including their own except that they need them for work and for the fighting that threatening use of nukes gets them anything they want. Moldova next - it's not EU or NATO, already very low risk for Russia, if they can get the…
To be perfectly honest, this is still within a 1000km radius circle that encompasses Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. That covers the majority of next-generation fabs that aren't Intel. It's great to legally diversify these fabs, but it does very little to mitigate geopolitical issues that are brewing in and around the east china sea.
How does it do little to diversify these fabs? The current situation is that if China invades Taiwan, the entire Western world is compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan's high end chip fabs. It cannot be overstated how much we depend on that, if TSMC operates in other countries, we don't HAVE to engage in WW3.
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> I can't wait for the next grocery innovation of having the customers stock the shelves from the backroom before they can fill a sack with onions. Think bolder. As a software engineer in the Soviet Union I had to spend about three weeks each year in the collective farm fields planting, tending and harvesting potatoes and cabbages. Since some of my American friends are very fond of socialism these days - these types…
You were a professional software engineer in the Soviet Union while still being a high school student? Or do you mean to say that you were one in the 1940s, when people were packed into train cars to bring in the harvest, among other things? Something about this doesn't seem to entirely add up, given that workers in government and defense-critical industries weren't exactly rounded up a la carte to work the fields. N…
I kinda think I should write an essay about the life of a software engineer in the Soviet Union. It is always interesting to get reactions of un-believe to simple truths, known to everybody with the same "living experience". What stops me - my English is bad and Russians know all this already. Still, let me do what I can.
So, software engineers and the food supply. I worked as a software engineer in a biological research center. I've participated in the practice described below from 1979 to 1991, 1991 being the last year of the planned economy. Each employee has a quota to be fulfilled in the collective farm fields, like 20 days a year. Each morning, weekends including, a big number of buses was coming to the city center. Our research institution was assigned one bus. We packed in it and were driven into the fields. There was a quota to be done by each until afternoon: planting, tending or harvesting depending on the season. In the afternoon like "before lunch" buses arrived to take us back to the city. You were free from work this day, but paid in full. You were also paid for the work done in the fields. Twice paid for a half of a day's work.
No one was exempt from the farm work quota, nor government workers, nor defense contractors from a county seat 20 miles away.
So the whole system was not especially cruel, but extremely ineffective, like the life in the late Soviet Union in general - do not forget these buses with their fuel, some of them bringing people from 20 miles away - for half a day's work.
( In 1990 yours truly organized and participated in an economic experiment, reducing some of the costs. Instead of giving a quota to each co-worker, we've organized a team of volunteers, spent whole days in the field and were done with the quota for the whole institution in a week or so. This was a back-breaking affair, but earned a good money. I've sent a letter to the county newspaper with a proud name Kommunist, describing the "experiment". They published it, but they also published "letters from workers" naming me "the enemy of the people". )
Some misconceptions to correct, if I may.
>in the 1940s, when people were packed into train cars to bring in the harvest
Incarceration rates in Stalin times were less than incarceration rates in present Texas or Luisiana. So not much could have been done using inmates labor only.
>dedicated class of kolhozniks that were paid next to nothing,
Kolhozniks in my time were paid 2-3 times more than a software engineer. Not that was much, but still.
>and couldn't really leave the countryside for better jobs in the cities.
This practice ended in 1965. Free movement of people was restricted in general though, meaning you have to jump through some stupid obstacles to move, but absolutely possible.
>I would pay good money to see the likes of Peter Thiel spend a few weeks a year picking strawberries
This is a strange wish. If Thiel is a good person, he will work along with you, yes. But if he is the bad guy like I guess you've implied - he will be a supervisor over you packing strawberries. Some things never change with a change of a political system.
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Are you certain that AI is used in any of the tech that the US is sending to Ukraine? It's mostly cold war era equipment, designed around the '90s or earlier. Modern AI also seems very failure-prone for military applications around populated areas.
What about the air defense systems? Those things surely need advanced compute. There’s also drones, communications systems, electronic warfare systems, jets etc…
Aerospace code is much too thoroughly-vetted to use something as slow and imprecise as a modern AI system. Existing realtime platforms and sensors are plenty fast, and you can prove that they'll work correctly. Plus, when you're procuring chips to run in an adverse environment, advanced process nodes will probably be too fragile and prone to interference.
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It also manifests in potentially bad management that keeps itself going such as the current administration’s braindead covid policies.
Braindead from an American perspective, it is also likely those policies have averted upwards of 4 million deaths.