solaarphunk

3 bulan yang laludiscuss

Counterpoint: vehicle related crime is way down in SF. Which is great.

3 bulan yang laludiscuss

Like I said, very confused.

3 bulan yang laludiscuss

This is just a version of individualism vs the state. Much of western society has become increasingly confused about what violence is acceptable, let alone who should be allowed to commit violence, or have a monopoly on violence.

If we can't agree on that baseline, then its quite obvious that we'll continue to have an escalation in the types of violence that we've seen in the past few years, against the political and corporate classes in the US, with very little end in sight.

solaarphunk

3 bulan yang laludiscuss

Brussels appears to be extremely tone deaf to the basic needs of ordinary people, and taking further steps in a direction to centralize power is just going to push more people to the far right.

For example, the fact that right-wing governments in central and eastern Europe are protecting their borders, represents a very popular perspective, apparently shared by very few in the EU governing body.

Consolidating power at a moment when many EU policies are clearly unpopular seems like it will have unintended consequences.

solaarphunk

6 bulan yang laludiscuss

I've been building something similar (GPU-native OS research project) and wanted to share a mental model shift that unlocked things for me.

The question "why run CPU code on GPU when GPU cores are slower?" assumes you're running ONE program. But GPUs execute in SIMD wavefronts of 32 threads - and here's the trick: each of those 32 lanes can run a DIFFERENT process. Same instruction, different data. Calculator on lane 0, text editor on lane 1, file indexer on lane 2. No divergence, legal SIMD, full utilization. Suddenly you're not running "slow CPU code on GPU" - you're running 32 independent programs in parallel on hardware designed for exactly this pattern.

The win isn't throughput for compute-heavy code. It's eliminating CPU roundtrips for interactive stuff. Every kernel launch, every synchronization, every "GPU done, back to CPU, dispatch next thing" adds latency. A persistent kernel that polls for input, updates state, and renders - all without returning to CPU - changes the responsiveness equation entirely.

  A few things to try at home if you're curious:

1. Write a Metal/CUDA kernel with while(true) and an atomic shutdown flag. See how long it runs. (Spoiler: indefinitely, if you do it right)

2. Put 32 different "process states" in a buffer and have each SIMD lane execute instructions for its own process. Watch all 32 make progress simultaneously.

3. Measure the latency from "input event" to "pixel on screen" with CPU orchestration vs GPU polling an input queue directly. The difference surprised me.

The persistent kernel thing has a nasty gotcha though - ALL 32 threads must participate in the while loop. If you do if (tid != 0) return; then while(true), it'll work for a few million iterations then hard-lock. Ask me how I know.

solaarphunk

7 bulan yang laludiscuss

Seattle is the type of economy that is heavily threatened by AI. Desk jobs that Claude basically already knows how to do, and just needs to be integrated into the existing systems to have impact.

Most people in Seattle "tech" are middle management with no discernible skills other than organizational deckchair arrangement. It is a place to optimize for work-life balance, and not take risk - this is why the region, despite its technology density, has such a disproportionately small startup scene.

AI IS a huge threat to a place like this and I am not optimistic about the ability for people to adapt.

solaarphunk

2 tahun yang laludiscuss

Google did everything right in terms of local execution to get all the required licensure and top talent, and then Sergey threw it away.

solaarphunk

2 tahun yang laludiscuss

I agree, but they have clearly not met the standard for what China needs. I mean Zuck literally was jogging around Beijing 10 years ago trying to build goodwill to get in, and it was Google that made the decision to exit the market.

solaarphunk

2 tahun yang laludiscuss

Just like US companies are beholden to national security letters that can compel them to spy on non-US persons who may be users of their product?

solaarphunk

2 tahun yang laludiscuss

They are blocked because they don’t censor content. If they did agree to, they would be allowed - just like Microsoft, Bing, Apple, and a handful of other digital products are not blocked in China.

Edit: for those downvoting me, Google literally shut down their China operations because they were unwilling to comply with censorship requirements. Conversely, Google and other US companies seem completely willing to comply with national security letters that compel them to spy on non-US persons, which should make other countries where US companies operate equally uneasy.

solaarphunk

2 tahun yang laludiscuss

Americans can definitely invest into most Chinese tech companies- the exception is direct investments into non-tech, licensed companies, that require a VIE structure, which enables Americans to still invest.

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