ericd

5 ms·

61.
by ericd 1mo ago
Probably don’t really need it, just makes it easier. I tried it with some potato class models first and they would ignore or mishandle constraints, especially when vaguely worded. Sometimes it would try to send us to events that were obvi
62.
by ericd 1mo ago
Sure, it’s pretty dumb/naive implementation, would need to be a lot more efficient to scale. Basically had Claude write polite/low touch dumb crawlers for a bunch of local sites (library, local events spaces, luma, theaters, maker
63.
by ericd 1mo ago
I think the difference besides the supply crunch there is that everyone connected gets the ~same internet, just faster or slower. Quantitative, not qualitative difference. On the other hand, a computer that can run Gemma 4 8B versus one tha
64.
by ericd 1mo ago
If you actually want to learn, highly recommend a visit to https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/ . People there are running stacks of 2-4x DGX Sparks to get to similar levels of memory, at similar cost.
65.
by ericd 1mo ago
Yeah, I'm not sure people realize how expensive ZDR/Zero Data Retention is, and how important it is to a lot of businesses, this kind of thing starts looking really cheap really fast if it's a reasonable substitute.
66.
by ericd 1mo ago
Weird swipe, I'm not trying to sell it to you, this is just where I see it going, and why these things are going to sell (and why 512 gig M3 Ultra Mac Studios have skyrocketed in demand/price). It's not been an empty promise,
67.
by ericd 1mo ago
> And to take it another way, is the value to you, the cost of a small used car? For me personally, not quite that valuable yet, but I think it's getting there quickly. Deepseek V4 Flash massively increased the value of local AI t
68.
by ericd 1mo ago
>(also, of course it was Bell Labs.) Haha my exact reaction when I first found out.
69.
by ericd 1mo ago
I think there's some mental inertia around what a computer is and what it's worth. This thing can build custom software for you, mostly autonomously. It can monitor things happening on the internet that are relevant to you, in a h
70.
DefCon 34 – Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video](youtube.com)
6 points by ericd 1mo ago|0 comments
71.
by ericd 1mo ago
Something to keep in mind is that that figure includes homeless people who have been homed and are being supported, it's not just the ones currently on the streets.
72.
by ericd 1mo ago
The self-flagellation has gotten too extreme. Photovoltaics were invented in the US, and the US helped subsidize it to the point where they were an economically viable source of energy.
73.
by ericd 1mo ago
cmd-+ or ctrl-+, hit as many times as you need.
74.
by ericd 1mo ago
It costs about as much as a cheap car to do this well, but it's attainable now, and qwen 3.8 seems to make it possible on a 5090.
75.
by ericd 1mo ago
What do you think would actually help, instead of what those well intentioned but naive people think?
76.
by ericd 2mo ago
Yeah, I think that’s the longer term solution. But even before we get that infrastructure in place, I don’t think lifting 1000 tons is as absurd as people seem to think. SpaceX’s entire plan is dependent on doing many orders of magnitude mo
77.
by ericd 2mo ago
Yeah, I’m guessing there would be at least some directional weighting to the shielding. I guess the question then is how worthwhile it is to shield against background cosmic radiation versus point sources.
78.
by ericd 2mo ago
If anyone wants to get serious about VOC filtering, these things have 7 pounds of carbon in them, they’re made for filtering the air of weed grow ops: https://terra-bloom.com/collections/carbon-filters
79.
by ericd 2mo ago
If you mean the perchlorate concentration, it's water soluble, I think we just rinse it off as part of going inside.
80.
by ericd 2mo ago
Have you been following Starship development closely?
81.
by ericd 2mo ago
20 launches would also be doable, though, if there's a reasonable launch cadence? And yeah, I don't expect they'd assemble for a Mars mission or other long range mission where they need a radiation shielded craft in geo or lu
82.
by ericd 2mo ago
SpaceX is planning on launching the significantly more gigantic Starship daily. It's not there yet, but they're steadily grinding toward regular launches, and they supposedly are retiring Falcon 9 from commercial launches within t
83.
by ericd 2mo ago
Right, I don't think it makes sense to have our long distance transit vehicle be the same one that needs to decelerate/aerobrake - I'm assuming we'd do something like an Aldrin Cycler for transit between Earth/Mars,
84.
by ericd 2mo ago
Funny, just had an 8 year old 1600W Corsair Titanium efficiency power supply go. Generally very high quality, GaN transistors, all japanese caps, etc etc. It was still under warranty, and Corsair refunded the original price, stand-up compan
85.
by ericd 2mo ago
That's 5 Starship block 4 launches, seems fine? Propellant, presumably for long duration voyages we're not relying entirely on chemical combustion. If we're using cyclers, once they're up to speed, you need barely any fu
86.
by ericd 2mo ago
Right, as with almost everything with people, it's an emotional reaction (fear) with a thin layer of rationalization on top.
87.
by ericd 2mo ago
This seems sort of interesting as a sort of emergency backup, but it seems like the real solution for any sort of long distance/long duration in space is just making mass to orbit dramatically cheaper and shielding the spacecraft.
88.
by ericd 2mo ago
Bumping up against current limits on the wiring and the inverter, sadly. Not sure how important that is, if the inverter refuses to pull more than that, though. The structure of our current wiring layout is also just more amenable to adding
89.
by ericd 2mo ago
This came up recently on HN, I thought it was an amazing watch: https://www.nytimes.com/video/insider/100000004687429/farewe... I couldn't imagine the stress to hit deadline. And the insanity of making a
90.
by ericd 2mo ago
I found the challenge with our own was just matching the peak of the panels to the peak voltage accepted by our inverter (including a safe margin for cold+snowy days where peak voltage is the highest), otherwise I totally would’ve loved to

More ›