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> integrating with internal DBs could allow a startup to onboard and go live with customers much more quickly

The technical debt you'd accrue from this would be MASSIVE, and screw your entire architecture down to its roots. Hard pass from me.


5+ year old i7 are potato and would be a massive time waster today. Build times matter.


I have a seven year old ThreadRipper Pro and would not significantly benefit from upgrading.


The Threadripper PRO branding was only introduced 3.5 years ago. The first two generations didn't have any split between workstation parts and enthusiast consumer parts. You must have a first-generation Threadripper, which means it's somewhere between 8 and 16 CPU cores.

If you would not significantly benefit from upgrading, it's only because you already have more CPU performance than you need. Today's CPUs are significantly better than first-generation Zen in performance per clock and raw clock speed, and mainstream consumer desktop platforms can now match the top first-generation Threadripper in CPU core count and total DRAM bandwidth (and soon, DRAM capacity). There's no performance or power metric by which a Threadripper 1950X (not quite 6.5 years old) beats a Ryzen 7950X. And the 7950X also comes in a mobile package that only sacrifices a bit of performance (to fit into fairly chunky "laptops").


I guess I should clarify: I am a rust and C++ developer blocked on compilation time, but even then, I am not able to justify the cost of upgrading from a 1950X/128GB DDR4 (good guess!) to the 7950X or 3D. It would be faster, but not in a way that would translate to $$$ directly. (Not to mention the inflation in TRx costs since AMD stopped playing catch-up.) performance-per-watt isn’t interesting to me (except for thermals but Noctua has me covered) because I pay real-time costs and it’s not a build farm.

If I had 100% CPU consumption around the clock, I would upgrade in a heart beat. But I’m working interactively in spurts between hitting CPU walls and the spurts don’t justify the upgrade.

If I were to upgrade it would be for the sake of non-work CPU video encoding or to get PCIe 5.0 for faster model loading to GPU VRAM.


sTR4 workstations are hard to put down! I'll replace mine one day, probably with whatever ASRock Rack Epyc succeeds the ROMED8-2T with PCIe 5.0.

In the meantime, I wanted something more portable, so I put a 13700K and RTX 3090 in a Lian Li A4-H2O case with an eDP side panel for a nice mITX build. It only needs one cable for power, and it's as great for VR as it is a headless host.


I don’t notice myself sitting and waiting for a build. I don’t want to waste my time setting up a new workstation so why bother?


wtf on???


$3,500 per month must be 99th percentile daycare cost in the US.

Most people play $1,500 to $2,500, for dedicated daycare facilities with the prescribed 4:1 or 7:2 teacher:infant ratio.


Out of curiosity, I did some spelunking. The US Department of Labor has stats[0] which summarize county-level "median yearly prices for one child at the market rate." Still TBD what the comprehensive data show at P99. That said, among the county-level medians, it appears the maximum estimated cost in 2023 is in Arlington County, VA, at $28,747 for a single infant, which is $2400/mo.

[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/topics/childcare/price-by-ag...


Hopefully that’s the infant:teacher ratio. 4 teachers per infant seems a little extreme, and means massive underpaid adults!


If I was the adult, I would need a 4 adult to 1 infant ratio.

But yes, thanks for the correction.


> intelligence to fly away

It's intelligence in the sense that jerking your arm away from a hotplate is intelligence, which is to say it's not cognitive reasoning, just genetically hardwired triggers.

AGI has been defined by OpenAI as something that can do most economically viable activities better than humans can. I like that approach as it strikes at the heart of the danger it really poses, which is an upending of society and destruction of our current way to generate value to each other.


I tried to be not too long:

"... To fly away...?"

> It's intelligence in the sense that jerking your arm away from a hotplate is intelligence, which is to say it's not cognitive reasoning, just genetically hardwired triggers.

Sooo, we agree -- the flies are not very intelligent or more likely not intelligent at all.

Sooo, I tried to erect some borders on intelligence, excluded flies but included solving that geometry problem.

> AGI has been defined by OpenAI as something that can do most economically viable activities better than humans can.

This is the first I heard of their definition. Soooo, I didn't consider their definition.

Of course, NASA does not get to define the speed of light. My local electric utility does not get to define 1000 Watts per hour, a KWH.

The OpenAI definition of AGI is an interesting goal, but the acronym abbreviates artificial general intelligence, and it is not clear that it is appropriate for OpenAI to define intelligence.

Uh,

> most economically viable activities better than humans can.

If consider humans as of, say, 1800, then it looks like that goal was achieved long ago via cars, trucks, an electric circle saw, several of the John Deere products, electric lights, synthetic fabrics, nearly all of modern medicine (so far saved my life 4 times), cotton pickers and the rest of cotton processing, canned foods, nearly everything we will have at Thanksgiving dinner this year (apple pie, pecan pie, shrimp), ....

> for better than

For today, look at some John Deere videos!!! They have some big machine that for a corn field does the harvesting while the operator can mostly just watch, monitor, type email to his sweetheart, listen to Taylor Swift. As I recall, the machine even uses GPS to automate the steering!

That is far "better than" what my father in law did to harvest his corn!

So,

> most economically viable activities

is like a moving goal (goal post). Uh, humans are still plenty busy, e.g., writing good software, doing good research, Taylor Swift (supposedly worth $750 million) before her present world tour. Uh, I REALLY like Mirella Freni:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkHGUaB1Bs8

Sooo, defining the goal is a bit delicate: Need to be careful about nearly, what activities, and when?

Nearly all activities? Sort of already done that. What nearly all people do? Tough goal if the humans keep finding things to do AGI can't yet. I.e., we can keep giving the grunt work to the AGI -- and there is a lot of grunt work -- and then keep busy with what the AGI can't do yet in which case the nearly is a moving goal.

AGI, hurry up; there's a lot to do. For a start, I have some plans for a nice house, and the human workers want a lot of money. My car could use an oil change, and the labor will cost a lot more than the oil -- and I would have to tell the mechanic to be sure to trigger the switch that says there was just an oil change so that the car will know when to tell me it is time for another.

Yes, my little geometry problem with my thinking does qualify as a test of intelligence but due to the nearly and how delicate the definition is can fail the OpenAI test.

I don't see the current OpenAI work, the current direction of their work, or their definition of AGI as solving the geometry problem.

There is an activity my startup is to do: Some billions of people do this activity now. My startup should do the activity a lot better than the people or any current solution so should be "economically viable". I doubt that OpenAI is on track to do this activity nearly as well as my startup -- more, say, than the geometry problem. And I do not call my startup AGI or AI.

This situation stands to be so general that the OpenAI goal of nearly all will likely not be the way these activities get automated. Maybe 20 years from now when "nearly all" the activities are quite new and different, maybe the work of OpenAI will have a chance.


Your son is a goddamn genius.


Alternatively, he watches youtube videos about math, and if you’re a young math geek what’s cooler than “here’s a type of number they won’t teach you until the really advanced classes”

Not to dismiss this kid at all, I love that there are channels like 3Blue1Brown to share math to people in a way that really connects with them and builds intuition.

When I was a student you basically just had your math teacher and textbooks to learn from, which meant if you weren’t on the same page as them you’d get left behind. If you went to the library, most math books assume you’re familiar with the language of mathematics, so it can be tough to learn for that alone. I bet a lot of innumeracy is due to that style of teaching, often “I just don’t get math” is “I missed learning this connection and the class just moved on”.


Maybe; he still needs to finish his damned homework and remember to turn it in. And eat some vegetables.


All those things sound very boring to me.

I can offer no concrete solutions.

However, I have a friend who graduated from high school #1 of a big class and 2 years early. His mom explained that if he made at least a 1400(of 1600) on his SAT, she would buy him a new gaming computer. He then proceeded to make exactly a 1400. No more. No less.

I recommend if you haven't tried already, an iteration to this approach using a sliding scale reward system. Perhaps a gaming pc with nvidia 4060ti up to *insert parental budget* in event of a perfect SAT score.

Ofc this only works if he's a gamer. I feel this type of system can be applied in many areas though. In my view, the clever component his mother applied is that the computer he earned was not just a desirable reward... It was VERY desirable.

My parents also tried this system with me. It didn't work as well. The reward was not sizable enough. It just didn't seem worth it. Too low value. Also, I already had a job and bought my own. My parents were unwilling to budget a sufficient reward. It's gotta be something he more or less is unlikely to be able to get via other means.

Now my friend is a physician. He graduated top of his class from med school. I think he's pretty content with life.

The bored ones can be a little more trouble sometimes. Fun breed though. Best of luck.


Be careful with reward systems, as it can destroy internal motivation.

Additionally, one very important thing to learn as a young adult is how to motivate yourself to do things that have only long term payoffs.

Of course I also understand that you can take SAT only once, so as bad as that is, it’s maybe not the best time to learn a life lesson.


Is it a recent thing that you can only take it once? when I was a teenager you could take it as many times as you wanted


I was wrong. I was making assumptions


You can, but they send all your scores to colleges, not just your latest.


The problem is that there are rarely guarantees for long-term playoffs.


I scored 32 on the Act which was one of the highest scored in the high school, if not the highest. My parents thought I could do better and that it would be worth it, so they offered a new hunting rifle if I improved my score. Got a 35 on the retake and got a super nice Sako rifle and scope--IIRC a little over $1000 in 2005.


Haha well done.

I like the iterative approach. Perhaps we can ammend the test case with advice to keep the receipt for the first video card and offer an upgrade to a 4070ti on the retake or whatnot.

Or bigger/better boom stick on the retake or whatnot.


>reward system

Is a good idea if you need a (relatively) constant result because your brain adapts to the idea of getting a satisfying reward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5geuTf8nqo (+ some other of his videos about rewards)


But his homework is boring


Just quit school and join YC now :-)


Not saying the kid can't be a genius, but grandparent discussing math with the kid and incentivising him to learn is probably a massive boost to his development. It's not the same as having to go to the library and teach yourself. Still, props to the kid though.


plot twist, his son is 38 and has a physics degree


His name? Albert Einstein.


I'm going to be this guy, but isn't it just Pythagoras theorem with a slight twist which is taught at 11 - 14 year old levels?

It only sounds complicated because of the words used like "complex", "imaginary", "real".

So if you studied Pythagoras at school and someone (a YouTube video) says you just have to do Pythagoras on the i multiplier and the other number, it would be fairly easy if you understand Pythagoras?


I remember some time ago watching an episode of the Joe Rogan show(it had some comedic value back then) He and his friends were talking about the MIT admittance exam, pointing out the square root in the maths problem as an indication that this math problem was really hard. And I thought to myself "that's what primary school children learn around here at age 12 in my literally 3rd world country".

Pythagoras was around the same time. I'd like to warn people that not understanding these basic math concepts makes you appear uneducated to many people internationally.


I put "absolute value of complex numbers" in YouTube, and the first video within 30 seconds says it's root of a squared + b squared. So all the kid has to know is to multiply a with itself, and b with itself and add them together.


I'm in the U.S., and we learned those things around that age too, maybe a little older.


That's interesting. Was that in a public school? Would you be willing to share your state and if you believe your experience represents a national average or is above/below the national average in regards to "at what age do children learn about square root"?


Still no Mac support... I know the technical reason why so not upset, just sad.


Just get a steam deck and connect mouse to it. It's the best solution to anyone with Mac and wants to game


Noise about macOS died down back in 2018, and seems the linux port is riddled with bugs. This project is basically dead in the water.


macOS dropped when Apple stopped supporting more advanced OpenGL features.

> linux port is riddled with bugs

That's... interesting... as many of the engine and game devs also play on linux (and a considerable part of the playerbase)

If you're looking for the codebase Zero-K and most previously spring mods are based upon you should look at: https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/spring


The transformation is complete. This place is the new Reddit.


Please read the last sentence of the HN guidelines : https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


LOL that’s such a disrespectful take… the gameplay design in those games are second to none. That’s something that needs to be fine tuned from scratch each time.


That is an understatement. The amount of refinement they have done now on various games is starting to feel like it is beyond just pure iteration but is a result of intuition that cannot be taught.


"Internal folks" who gives a rats ass about what they think? A company's reputation has little to do with how people on the inside perceive it, its actions and track record do the talking.

Stadia was a classic reason I couldn't trust GCP or any Google product aside from Gmail cause I've been using it so long, because unlike you I'm NOT in the know, I just see a bunch of stuff spun out, hyped (calling it 'little stuff' is a highly subjective assertion) and axed without warning. And I won't mention what an absolute mess the android development journey has been, a related symptom of a haphazard, disorganized product strategy. These things are uniquely Google, and it's a terrible look.


Agree, nobody cares. But it was pointed out in response to a suggestion it's revisionist to say it was an experiment. It was correct (ie it was an experiment), albeit not understood by people who believe at face value what companies say.

I haven't been in the know for years, but I learned enough - don't look at what they say, look at where the money is. It's the same for almost every company.

Product strategy is a mess at most companies. The developer experience sucks for most products. Stripe built a multi-billion dollar business off of developer experience because the standard experience sucks so bad.


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