So…the “Slack will now train AI using your data” thing is not as much of a five alarm fire as I’d first assumed:
“We do not develop LLMs or other generative models using customer data.” ← GOOD.
“Data will not leak across workspaces.” ← Or so they say. They •are• training across workspaces, but sounds like recommender systems and not generative models, so…we’ll see. Seems fraught. Still, that public commitment does mean something — legal exposure, at least.
The bad news: platform owners don’t have a vision and are out of ideas for how to innovate their #ecosystems, all in the name of #efficiency.
To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum’s character from Jurassic Park: The most brilliant minds of #engineering are optimized to execute and have not bothered to consider whether they should.
The good news: “real” #innovation will happen from the experienced middle, not the top.
Great power efficiency and high performance in an ultra portable form factor: The TUXEDO Pulse 14
Benefit from:
➡ energy saving operation with a lot of processing power
➡ a very quiet cooling
➡ a bright 16:10 3K display (400 nits, 100% sRGB)
➡ ultra light (1.4 kg) and thin (18 mm) ultrabook chassis
➡ and many more
And if you want an automated CPU scheduler, auto-cpufreq is amazing: https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq . You can even use it to set charging limits to protect your battery on ThinkPads!
This morning, a colleague (a sysadmin who works exclusively on Red Hat) needed to quickly create a VM for a reverse proxy. Among the requirements:
Minimal, only for nginx
Root file system on btrfs (I don't know why, but it's their internal policy)
Be online ASAP
I swiftly installed Alpine Linux for them. With just two commands, I set up the root on btrfs and got the setup running. Within a minute, the VM was up; in ten seconds, nginx was installed, and within two minutes, it was configured.
They were amazed by the speed and lightness of it all, as well as the updated kernel.
Alpine Linux remains, in my opinion, an excellent and flexible solution in the Linux environment.
RSS is maybe coming back into fashion. So it's a shame that it is often implemented inefficiently, with #feed pullers apparently routinely ignoring HTTP cacheing headers, conditional gets, and all the hints that RSS allows too, for those of us not running 24h rolling news podcasts!
#TheMetalDogArticleList #MetalInjection
MAYNARD JAMES KEENAN On New TOOL: "We Can't Drag This Out Another 14 Years"
"I think we could do it more efficiently."
So Casio fans, there is often talk about how module 593's major failing is its backlight. And yes, it is pretty weak and uneven. I too have thrown shade at it and yet, if I am totally honest I don't recall ever having struggled to read it in real life.
While in photos it often comes out looking totally unreadable, I find that with the naked eye (in the dark at night), I have always read the entire display just fine.
To expand on that point, "The eye takes approximately 20–30 minutes to fully adapt from bright sunlight to complete darkness and becomes 10,000 to 1,000,000 times more sensitive than at full daylight."†
Thus waking at night the brightness of the LED may be sufficient, while if you just walk into a dark room in the middle of the day… it might not be.
Embrace fresh perspectives for today's tasks. Swift communication and empathy can mitigate misunderstandings. Tackle one problem at a time with patience.
Unitary management:
"A good decision is no longer a decision legally well-supported, but a decision made within a reasonable time, which will not be appealed and whose application will incur fewer costs."
Learn how to set a data frame column as the index for faster data access and streamlined operations.
In R, utilize the setDT() function from #datatable or column_to_rownames() from #tibble to seamlessly set your desired column as the index. Try it out with your datasets and experience the boost in productivity!
How the housing industry is working to stop energy efficient homes
"Home #builders have used their political muscle to prevent states and cities from adopting the latest code, which would lower the #climate impact of new houses
#EnergyEfficiency advocates say affordability is a convenient talking point for the home builders. They say the industry is mainly concerned with its profit margins"
"For one thing, that $20,000 figure comes from an NAHB survey of just eight homebuilders, according to NCPR. It appears to be a wild exaggeration.
A federal study found the new standards would actually raise building expenses by $4,700 to $6,500 for a single-family #home
Lower energy bills mean homeowners would recoup their upfront costs in just a few years. And hiring a contractor to upgrade #efficiency later would cost many multiples of that."
Sometimes I wonder if my insistence of handcrafting my code is outdated. 🤔 I love writing code, feeling the familiarity of a project I know inside-out.
Yet all around me, people seem to be jumping on tools that abstract away the code, be it “AI” or “no code”. I never had fun working with a WYSIWYG editor to build a website, it was always more pain than worth.
“Everyone is looking around, talking about when layoffs are coming next, at what company.”
—A tech worker tells Insider that no job in the industry feels safe right now.
There’s a new acronym in tech: #ZIRP -- Shorthand for “zero interest rate phenomenon”
ZIRP is a frequent reference lately among tech employees about the current upheaval in an industry that for years was synonymous with cushy perks, high pay, and stability.
As the Federal Reserve started to consistently increase interest rates in 2022 to ward off inflation, companies that had thought little about spending started to tighten their belts.
A history of tech companies throwing money around has started to look like an anomaly of the past.
Moonshot projects are a relic of the ZIRP era.
So are free catered food, day care, and laundry service at work.
Hopping from one mid-six-figure salary job in Big Tech to the next? ZIRP.
Tech workers are coming to grips with the fact that the ZIRP era is over, as CEOs who once only had #growth on their minds have taken up with “#efficiency.”
In the last 18 months, this efficiency mindset has led to mass layoffs at behemoths like Meta, Amazon, and Google.
Currently investigating the question... when travelling to a regional centre in Europe (like say: Valencia, Spain) that doesn't have overseas direct flights. Is it more CO2 efficient to fly the shortest possible distance (say, Paris or London) and then take a train. Or is some combination of hops best? There are no direct North America to Valencia flights, but most airports in Europe have flights to Valencia.
I am reminded that Spain's RENFE train service claims complete carbon neutrality and source all electricity from renewable sources. So that is a consideration.
Wrap your head around this:
The reported CO2 emissions from France's SNCF railway operator for a train from Paris to Valencia is: 5.9kg
The calculated CO2 emissions from one crossing on the Queen of Oak Bay, assuming the ship is full, from Horseshoe Bay (Vancouver) to Departure Bay (Nanaimo) is: 5.3kg
If I drive in an EV from Vancouver Island to Toronto in an effort to "save CO2” I actually produce MORE CO2 than flying there: 316kg EV vs 233kg flight.
(Note this is for a single person travelling -- multiple people in the EV would split the CO2, multiple people on the plane would multiply the CO2)
Why? Because Ferry+Alberta+Saskatchewan = 268kg all by themselves. If AB/SK had the same emissions as BC it would be 48kg EV vs 233kg flight.
If AB/SK/BC had the same emissions as MB then it would be 37kg vs 233kg flight.
So getting back to flying overseas. The best option appears to be TurboProp flight from Vancouver island to Calgary (90kg) then long-haul jet direct to Barcelona (378kg) = 468kg
and onto the train.
The moral of all this: Power Generation Matters!! If you live in a place that still uses Coal or NG power (or Diesel Boats!), focus on that! Also: Flying is Always High CO2 even when it's not the highest.
The terrible human toll in Gaza has many causes.
A chilling investigation by +972 highlights efficiency:
An engineer: “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed.”
An AI outputs "100 targets a day". Like a factory with murder delivery:
"According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”"
"The third is “power targets,” which includes high-rises and residential towers in the heart of cities, and public buildings such as universities, banks, and government offices."
It was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses.
“We were not interested in killing operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”