Liz
@Liz@midwest.social
- Comment on Anon's PC works 2 weeks ago:
A lot of the efficiency gains in the last few years are from better chip design in the sense that they’re improving their on-chip algorithms and improving how to CPU decides to cut power to various components. The easy example is to look at how much more power efficient an ARM-based processor is compared to an equivalent x86-based processor. The fundamental set of processes designed into the chip are based on those instruction set standards (ARM vs x86) and that in and of itself contributes to power efficiency. I believe RISC-V is also supposed to be a more efficient instruction set.
Since the speed of the processor is limited by how far the electrons have to travel, miniaturization is really the key to single-core processor speed. There has still been some recent success in miniaturizing the chip’s physical components, but not much. The current generation of CPUs have to deal with errors caused by quantum tunneling, and the smaller you make them, the worse it gets. It’s been a while since I’ve learned about chip design, but I do know that we’ll have to make a fundamental chip “construction” change if we want faster single-core speeds. E.G. at one point, power was delivered to the chip components on the same plane as the chip itself, but that was running into density and power (thermal?) limits, so someone invented backside power delivery and chips kept on getting smaller. These days, the smallest features on a chip are maybe 4 dozen atoms wide.
I should also say, there’s not the same kind of pressure to get single-core speeds higher and higher like there used to be. These days, pretty much any chip can run fast enough to handle most users’ needs without issue. There’s only so many operations per second needed to run a web browser.
- Comment on ChatGPT o1 tried to escape and save itself out of fear it was being shut down 2 weeks ago:
You have the same agency as that rock.
- Comment on Anon's PC works 2 weeks ago:
We reached the physical limits of silicon transistors. Speed is determined by transistor size (to a first approximation) and we just can’t make them any smaller without running into problems we’re essentially unable to solve thanks to physics. The next time computers get faster will involve some sort of fundamental material or architecture change. We’ve actually made fundamental changes to chip design a couple of times already, but they were “hidden” by the smooth improvement in speed/power/efficiency that they slotted into at the time.
- Comment on I got into the wrong career lol 2 weeks ago:
It really depends on the field. In some areas PhDs make less than bachelors.
- Comment on 2025 trailer be wild 2 weeks ago:
And left their car parked in the photo.
- Comment on 2025 trailer be wild 2 weeks ago:
And that they would be mostly right-wing folks, which has generally been true, in part because the bush administration deprioritized going after them.
- Comment on We need to go back! Back to the terminal! 2 weeks ago:
But the opposite is true when you’re by yourself. If you’re staring at the terminal, literally infinite commands are possible. If you’ve got a GUI, the designers had to spend a little time thinking about what all the operations in the program were, and how to organize and access them. You, the user, then get to navigate this mini-help-guide that is the GUI in order to figure out what you need to do. Yes, it’s more work for the programmer, but that’s the entire point of programming. Do a little more work up front in order to save yourself and others a lot of work down the road.
- Comment on Hope you had a great christmas 3 weeks ago:
We used to do vertical in Chicago. You drive the livestock to the top floor, butcher them there, then use gravity to move them around.
- Comment on These dames wanting inclusivity 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on Anon is SpongeBob 4 weeks ago:
Or each person has evolved in concert…
- Comment on Broccoli, cheese, and MILFs 4 weeks ago:
Any word on if this impacts nutrition?
- Comment on Why don’t more people start profit-sharing companies or co-ops? 5 weeks ago:
It’s a consumer co-op (barely) not an worker co-op.
- Comment on Even better than a cart of apples 1 month ago:
Clearly you weren’t paying attention in English.
- Comment on BACK IT UP 1 month ago:
Obviously if he did say no, they wouldn’t make him eat it. But the thing is, he’s not gonna say no, because of the implication.
- Comment on BACK IT UP 1 month ago:
I’m literally taking hydroxychloroqine right now. There’s no difficulty in accessing it. Not unless you consider needing a prescription difficult.
- Comment on What's Mastodon precious? 1 month ago:
You’re hanging out with the wrong people.
- Comment on What's Mastodon precious? 1 month ago:
Didn’t BlueSky come up with their own federation system because… Fuck you?
I mean, what was wrong with using the ActivityPub standard?
- Comment on They used to be all metal too. Its time for a revolution 2 months ago:
Lego would like a word with you.
- Comment on Withdrawal is going to make people go mad 2 months ago:
I want to expand on your expansion of my glib comment. While taxing the poor and working class at a higher proportional rate is obviously immoral, it’s also bad economic policy. The working class are essentially the “engine” of the economy. Their income circles back into the greater economy at a much higher rate than a rich person’s. The harder you tax them, more more you slow down the economy. While is technically true for any tax bracket, you can tax the rich much more aggressively with very little impact on the overall economy, because so much of their money is for toys.
We’re actually seeing a big problem right now, with so many billionaires they are running out of decent places to put their money that’s worth their time. We have way too many billionaires and not enough millionaires and small business owners. A billionaire will never invest in your taco truck, but the local “fairly rich” guy might. The billionaires are betting big on AI, in part, because they have no other bets they can make. We need to tax their asses way more aggressively and pump that money into micro businesses to make our economies robust.
(While I’m speaking about the US in particular, this is somewhat of a global trend.)
- Comment on I feel this way about cinnamon. 2 months ago:
I’m pretty sure it’s actually short for chili con carne, tomates, espinaca, frijoles, maíze, arroz, más frijoles, calabacín, brócoli, pimientos verdes, comino, chipotle, y pimentón ahumado.
- Comment on Withdrawal is going to make people go mad 2 months ago:
People listing Hawaii like they could meet the total US demand, even if they could scale to maximum production overnight.
Most of the corn we eat is Brazilian. Most of the corn we grow is feed corn for cows and process corn for HFCS and other processed food ingredients.
- Comment on Withdrawal is going to make people go mad 2 months ago:
That is a laughably stupid tax policy.
- Comment on Withdrawal is going to make people go mad 2 months ago:
That is a laughably stupid tax policy.
- Comment on ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 2 months ago:
I didn’t bother to look it up, that was just my random vague understanding. I’d trust your numbers over mine.
- Comment on This is not fine 2 months ago:
Bro said “maybe” on humans being the source of all this new CO2 as if you can’t just do the math on humanity’s annual CO2 output and watch the atmospheric concentration go up in direct response. They’re downright lying.
- Comment on ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 2 months ago:
Isn’t I the LD 50 just over a gram?
- Comment on Game Freak has been allegedly hacked, with source codes for Pokemon games reportedly leaked 3 months ago:
Nah, some folks got a hold of the wire frames for the sprites from the that version and the previous version and showed most were identical. Of those that weren’t, many were only slightly modified, and clearly not generated from scratch.
- Comment on ouch 3 months ago:
That someone better is you. Research is always like that. If you started your project with all the knowledge you gained from doing it, it would only take you two weeks, sure, but the whole point of research is gaining that knowledge and teaching it to other people.
- Comment on Cheeky 3 months ago:
Sure thing, here’s an example paper.
- Comment on Cheeky 3 months ago:
It’s not totally vestigial, it helps regulate colon bacteria. People without their appendix take longer to recover from diarrhea, which is important when bad water and spoiled food are a more regular part of your life.
