To be fair to the 1980’s, a Hercules video card in 1982 adjusted for inflation would only be about $1700. We are way beyond that point.

An original Macintosh 128K would set you back $8100 in today’s money, so I guess in that regard Apple hasn’t changed. ;)

At least the Macbook Neo comes with a lot more flashy stuff.

It is starting to feel like it. Might not see price decline for a while yet, but the upswing on pricing is nearing breaking point.

I suspect if anyone is buying these is because of them needing to meet an existing strict spec. Not sure what that would be but it is a possibility.

I hadn’t been keeping a close eye on pricing but was blown away the other day. The Nvidia RTX 5090 launched at $4090 here in Australia, that was already obscene. Nowadays almost 2 years later, you are lucky if you find one under $12,000!

For a while there, second hand mini desktops like the Lenovo/Optiplex’s could be picked up for about half the price of a new Pi5. Typically had equal RAM, loads of SSD storage and desktop class(ish) CPU perfomance, plus all the other benefits (Secureboot, x86 compatibility so you could run Windows if you wished). Only major thing missing was the GPIO connection.

But looking now the prices are increasing rapidly as they have been discovered. The cheap ones are typically striped of RAM and storage.

Debian the foundation of the modern world. Or at least we wish it was.

A situations like this makes me use a form of Malapropism one would expect of a Dickensian society to bring about almost Orwellian situation. Makes you wonder when someone will use Chekhov’s Gun before it all gets Bowdlerized. Alas this Machiavellian paragraph is reminiscent of a Lovecraftian creature.

But seriously, that paragraph above reads like the scene in Blackadder when they meet the writer of the Dictionary.

Only works if local models cannot do it.

Having a Glide wrapper is actually kind of neat from the developers perspective because it is basically a “Done” API with a fixed software base. I don’t think anyone is making new Glide code nowadays.

I say this because in the past there were projects to provide things like DirectX compatibility to Vulkan/OpenGL bY just doing a 1-to-1 API interpretation. That’s all well and good until you realize that a lot of games use the API in weird ways and that there are loads of driver side adaptions for Nvidia/AMD/Intel that exist outside the DX space. Early progress is no indicator of future progress.

But with Glide, no chance Turok 2 or Incoming is getting an update. You can account for any oddities that came up along the way.

I have softened very VERY slightly on AI code. If it can identify genuine issues than that is fine. It is when folks just trust it blindly and just send 50 commits without understanding a thing or even remotely testing it, that is just crazy. But then on the flip side, yeah all the other issues probably aren’t worth it.

It is complicated at times but then things like this always are. The most successful evil always has some claim to virtue.

Alas, occasionally you have to walk with the devil to achieve some good. One just has to weigh up if it is worth it.

I once asked Stallman about how he used to build and run GNU tools before having the Linux kernel. He was using a proprietary Minix system as a means to get work done until there was a better alternative. I mean running a proprietary system is one thing, burning through the amazon with 100 quintillion tokens is very different.

There are folks in the occult space that think LLM’s are possessed by evil spirits. Yeah, I know, make of that what you will.

BUT, when I see folks at the top and the way they talk about this stuff, my rational mind kind of wavers and you see people who are just completely and totally absorbed with these things. Maybe them occult folks are on to something. 🙃

Scary to see, it is like alzheimer’s disease in how it eats away at the persons autonomy below but unlike that disease, it still maintains enough cognition for them to be functional in society. For better or worse.

I use Trisquel, one of the FSF approved distros. So far it seems to have held up well against a lot of the less inviting changes in the Linux space, but it is based on Ubuntu. I do wonder how much longer it will hold up until I end up making the jump to a BSD system. Not the fault of the developers, just that the flow of the base system is too strong to fight against forever.

I had not heard of it but will check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

Live your life as an inverse Altman. What ever he says, do the opposite.

We cannot allow this kind of clear thinking here.

The whole Patriot missiles being purchased directly form the US is because they cannot allow others to provide them far cheaper. Its not about protection, it is the middle taking their cut.

Ah yes, the usual MAGA rigid definitions in action.

They were never getting that cheque.

Fair point. I will say this, the low quality of Chinese goods isn’t entirely their fault. They enable it but it also comes from higher up.

I knew someone that was building some device, I forget was it was, and they were in China sourcing parts. That is when you see the game and they know exactly what is going on. You are after a specific capacitor, they will bring out 10 of the same product ranked in terms of price and quality. The 5 cent part, that will last 5 years or 1,000 hours, the 50 cent part will last 30 years or 10,000 hours.

Most producers will just go for the cheapest parts available to get the prices at the end down or to increase profit margins. China can make brilliant high quality parts, just those that control the pricing will always go for the low end and then blame it on Chinese manufacturing.

But also, many Chinese manufactures offer these parts knowing this, so it goes both ways.