On 04/11/2024 04:57, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2024-11-03, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 08:48:50 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> A gentler more commercial form of communism...
>>
>> “Communism” is when the Government does it.
>>
>> What do you call it when a private company does it?
>
> I've heard the term "corporatism". IMHO that's a
> contraction of "corporate fascism".
>

Mmm. It is a rather new phenomenon - the collusion of state and big
capital to capture markets by diktat, rather than by competition. It is
very similar to the way Russia is run, although there, with no
democracy, they don't even bother to pretend its anything but a mafia
supported oligarchy.

I don't think it has any good name. We knew who the Fascists were in the
1930s because they called themselves Fascists, and they competed with
the communists for control of totalitarian regimes.

Today both right and left are leaning towards totalitarianism again.

With the full support of global megabucks.

--
“Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee,”

– Ludwig von Mises

In comp.os.linux.misc Pancho <Pancho.Jones@proton.me> wrote:
> On 11/3/24 22:56, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Sun, 3 Nov 2024 15:24:19 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/3/24 3:48 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think that ARM having eaten into its market in low power devices
>>>> is now swinging up towards an equal power performance solution.
>>>
>>> They're trying, but Intel has very well refined solutions in that
>>> market. ARM may ruin itself trying to catch up ...
>>
>> I’ve got news for you: ARM has already caught up and has long been
>> inhabiting the high-performance computing space.
>>
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujitsu_A64FX>
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer)>
>
> And you also have ARM based OS X Apple Macs in the consumer market.
>
> Intel have had competitor chips (non 86) in the past and survived. I
> think the main difference this time is that MS Windows is no longer
> dominant. Competitor chips have similar revenue to fund development.

A second effect is the rise of GPU computation. Some portion of the
money flow that used to go to Intel for their "next faster CPU" is now
instead flowing to Nvidia for their "next faster GPU".

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 02:02:38 -0600, Harold Stevens wrote:

> Caveat: The wowe does not get good reviews on Amazon (2.7 out of 5
> stars, last I checked).

I got interested in minis when the company bought a Mac mini to build a
iPhone app, not the Mac part but the form factor. The Intel NUCs were
overpriced for what they were and I prefer AMD.

I won't say Beelink was the only offering a couple of years ago but they
were one of the first. Now there's a whole raft of copycats. The Beelink
has worked for me so I'd stick with them if I buy another although I'm
sure some of the others are just as good.

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 02:35:50 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> Recently got an Ard Uno and the bits and pieces to build an
> electronic door lock. TWO-button switch. The idea is to enter a 7 or
> 8 digit BINARY combo using the buttons with maybe a 10-15 second
> time-out. Gotta decide on polling -vs- interrupt ... interrupt can
> use much less standby power if you do it right combined with the Ard
> low-power/sleep library. Amazing what can be done even with really
> weak/slow chips. For MOST Ard uses though I'd rec the Mega2560 - but
> you may have to tweak the libs for accessories as the pins are
> different. Built some good multi-channel solar-powered environmental
> monitors using those boards.

I've got a few Unos. My problem is figuring out what to do with them. I
don't mean the coding/peripheral aspects but projects that are something I
need. Right now I have a 4 wheel chassis with a primitive IR keypad
controller. The long range plan is to incorporate the PWM ability of the
L298Ns and go to the nfr240l01 for two way communication. The problem is
the chassis has limitations.

I've got a couple of the Nano 33 BLE Sense boards. A MIT course in TinyML
used them. The nRF52840 is Arm. All of the onboard sensors make it more
expensive but it's handier if you can make use of them.

Right now I'm messing around with the Pico W. Too many choices, too little
discipline...

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 16:40:30 -0000 (UTC), Rich wrote:

> A second effect is the rise of GPU computation. Some portion of the
> money flow that used to go to Intel for their "next faster CPU" is now
> instead flowing to Nvidia for their "next faster GPU".

If the AI bubble dies down there will be bloodshed. (not advocating
violence but there's a lot of money riding on that game)

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 13:01:01 +0000
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> However fabrication limits are getting stuck at 10nm and below, and
> clock speeds are stuck at a few GHz which means that the
> power-performance ratio is pretty much the same for Intel and ARM
> architectures. Only by having fewer transistors and implicitly doing
> less, can the power be reduced.
>
> I.e. Moore's law has basically stopped representing reality. And ARM
> is no longer fantastic power performance compared with Intel. Its one
> advantage is it doesn't have to support a legacy architecture. And so
> its probably cheaper and less buggy.

I've long held that necessity will ultimately force a serious rethink of
programming practices w.r.t. resource-efficiency once Moore's Law runs
afoul of pesky real-world physics principles, i.e. "eighteen inches is a
nanosecond" vs. "you can't cram an arbitrary amount of stuff into a
finite space without creating a black hole." Gonna be real interesting
when we finally hit the wall.

On 4 Nov 2024 18:14:42 GMT
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 16:40:30 -0000 (UTC), Rich wrote:
>
> > A second effect is the rise of GPU computation. Some portion of the
> > money flow that used to go to Intel for their "next faster CPU" is
> > now instead flowing to Nvidia for their "next faster GPU".
>
> If the AI bubble dies down there will be bloodshed. (not advocating
> violence but there's a lot of money riding on that game)

It's going to die; the only question is when. Ed Zitron at
https://www.wheresyoured.at/ has done a lot of solid writing on this
the last year or so, and we've already seen a few ominous "Jurassic
Park" ripple-in-the-glass moments with the investor class starting to
ask just *when* they can expect to see a return on the piles of money
they've lit on fire.

NVidia, of course, will make out like bandits in the meantime.

On 04/11/2024 18:20, John Ames wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 13:01:01 +0000
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> However fabrication limits are getting stuck at 10nm and below, and
>> clock speeds are stuck at a few GHz which means that the
>> power-performance ratio is pretty much the same for Intel and ARM
>> architectures. Only by having fewer transistors and implicitly doing
>> less, can the power be reduced.
>>
>> I.e. Moore's law has basically stopped representing reality. And ARM
>> is no longer fantastic power performance compared with Intel. Its one
>> advantage is it doesn't have to support a legacy architecture. And so
>> its probably cheaper and less buggy.
>
> I've long held that necessity will ultimately force a serious rethink of
> programming practices w.r.t. resource-efficiency once Moore's Law runs
> afoul of pesky real-world physics principles, i.e. "eighteen inches is a
> nanosecond" vs. "you can't cram an arbitrary amount of stuff into a
> finite space without creating a black hole." Gonna be real interesting
> when we finally hit the wall.
>

It may be that computing as we understand it is simply a mature
technology, and there isn't much more to actually do.

--
There’s a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons and reasons
that sound good.

Burton Hillis (William Vaughn, American columnist)

In comp.os.linux.misc rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 16:40:30 -0000 (UTC), Rich wrote:
>
>> A second effect is the rise of GPU computation. Some portion of the
>> money flow that used to go to Intel for their "next faster CPU" is now
>> instead flowing to Nvidia for their "next faster GPU".
>
> If the AI bubble dies down there will be bloodshed. (not advocating
> violence but there's a lot of money riding on that game)

There will certainly likely be a dramatic drop in Nvidia's stock price,
which many who invested in it will see as "bloodshed" for their
portfolios (unless they managed to get out in time).

And I rather expect the current AI marketer driven hype cycle to crash
down just like all the other marketer driven AI hype cycles of the
past crashed down. At which point, what small usefulness the current
AI's do have that the marketer's have been hyping will finally come
out.

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 18:30:27 +0000
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> It may be that computing as we understand it is simply a mature
> technology, and there isn't much more to actually do.

You have to wonder - but businesses accustomed to getting cheap-as-free
upgrades of ~2^N in raw compute every few years will doubtless still
expect to scale their capabilities upward accordingly. When they can't,
it's gonna be real interesting to see what kind of renewed interest
there'll be in maximizing efficient use of the available resources, vs.
the "throw a beefier computer at it" approach that has very much been
standard practice for the last ~30 yrs.

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 13:09:12 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Mmm. It is a rather new phenomenon - the collusion of state and big
> capital to capture markets by diktat, rather than by competition.

Nothing new about it. All it takes is weak regulatory authorities that sit
by and do nothing. Cf the 19th-century robber barons in the USA.

It takes effective and ongoing regulation to ensure that free markets
remain free.

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 13:01:01 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> For a given clock speed, which is limited by the physical dimensions of
> the chip, the smaller the transistors the less power it takes to run the
> chips.
>
> However fabrication limits are getting stuck at 10nm and below ...

Why? Because each transistor is being made out of fewer and fewer atoms,
and they are simply not working so well as transistors any more, because
of quantum leakage effects.

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 10:20:13 -0800, John Ames wrote:

> i.e. "eighteen inches is a nanosecond"

For suitably small definitions of “inch”, I suppose ...

On 4 Nov 2024 07:03:56 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> The Beelink came with Windows 11 Pro. I was a little skeptical of the
> license but Win11 didn't last long enough to bother. I've done dual
> boots in the past but lately I go scorched earth if there's anything on
> the drive.

The trouble with that is, you are still paying the Microsoft tax.

On 4 Nov 2024 17:47:36 GMT, rbowman wrote:

> The Intel NUCs were overpriced for what they were ...

And Intel still couldn’t make money on them. That’s why it gave up.

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 18:58:09 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

> > i.e. "eighteen inches is a nanosecond"
>
> For suitably small definitions of “inch”, I suppose ...

Well damn, I was misremembering from accounts of Grace Hopper's famous
"nanosecond" wires. I guess another fundamental principle is "double-
check yer dang constants..." ;)

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 11:29:47 -0800, John Ames wrote:

> On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 18:58:09 -0000 (UTC)
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>
>> > i.e. "eighteen inches is a nanosecond"
>>
>> For suitably small definitions of “inch”, I suppose ...
>
> Well damn, I was misremembering from accounts of Grace Hopper's famous
> "nanosecond" wires. I guess another fundamental principle is "double-
> check yer dang constants..." ;)

1 light-nanosecond is close enough to 12 inches, or almost exactly 30cm.
The speed of light is officially defined as 299 792 458 m/s exactly.

But remember, that’s for light or radio waves in a vacuum (or a close
enough approximation, like Earth’s atmosphere). Electrical signals through
a wire travel much slower -- I believe half the speed of light or even
less.

And the actual charge carriers (electrons, in a metal wire) move even
slower; I remember a book that said they can take several days to go
completely around an electrical circuit.

By the way, the speed of sound under normal Earth atmospheric conditions
is very close to 1 millionth of the speed of light. Coincidence? You be
the judge. ;)

On 2024-11-04, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 04/11/2024 18:20, John Ames wrote:
>
>> I've long held that necessity will ultimately force a serious rethink of
>> programming practices w.r.t. resource-efficiency once Moore's Law runs
>> afoul of pesky real-world physics principles, i.e. "eighteen inches is a
>> nanosecond" vs. "you can't cram an arbitrary amount of stuff into a
>> finite space without creating a black hole." Gonna be real interesting
>> when we finally hit the wall.

Horrors - we might have to start programming efficiently again.

> It may be that computing as we understand it is simply a mature
> technology, and there isn't much more to actually do.

I've been seeing a lot of immature behaviour lately.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

On 2024-11-04, John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 18:30:27 +0000
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> It may be that computing as we understand it is simply a mature
>> technology, and there isn't much more to actually do.
>
> You have to wonder - but businesses accustomed to getting cheap-as-free
> upgrades of ~2^N in raw compute every few years will doubtless still
> expect to scale their capabilities upward accordingly. When they can't,
> it's gonna be real interesting to see what kind of renewed interest
> there'll be in maximizing efficient use of the available resources, vs.
> the "throw a beefier computer at it" approach that has very much been
> standard practice for the last ~30 yrs.

It'd be a nice change from the "abundance justifies waste" mindset
which has taken hold.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey

rbowman wrote this post while blinking in Morse code:

> On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 02:02:38 -0600, Harold Stevens wrote:
>
>> Caveat: The wowe does not get good reviews on Amazon (2.7 out of 5
>> stars, last I checked).
>
> I got interested in minis when the company bought a Mac mini to build a
> iPhone app, not the Mac part but the form factor. The Intel NUCs were
> overpriced for what they were and I prefer AMD.
>
> I won't say Beelink was the only offering a couple of years ago but they
> were one of the first. Now there's a whole raft of copycats. The Beelink
> has worked for me so I'd stick with them if I buy another although I'm
> sure some of the others are just as good.

So far I'm liking my Trycoo mini PC. (Dual boot Win 11 Pro / Debian)

--
Used with permission.

On Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:57:21 GMT
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

> It'd be a nice change from the "abundance justifies waste" mindset
> which has taken hold.

Indeed...

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 19:00:37 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 4 Nov 2024 17:47:36 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> The Intel NUCs were overpriced for what they were ...
>
> And Intel still couldn’t make money on them. That’s why it gave up.

It will be interesting to see how ASUS does with the line. They're not
going for the budget consumer market. I think the cheapest NUC 14 is $800
and it's up from there.

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 18:59:07 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> On 4 Nov 2024 07:03:56 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>
>> The Beelink came with Windows 11 Pro. I was a little skeptical of the
>> license but Win11 didn't last long enough to bother. I've done dual
>> boots in the past but lately I go scorched earth if there's anything on
>> the drive.
>
> The trouble with that is, you are still paying the Microsoft tax.

At $350 the tax must be bargained down. That's why I said I didn't have
complete confidence in the 11 Pro it came with, not that a company in
Shenzhen would cut corners.

Maybe it's entirely legit. The Swift 3 was $679 with very similar hardware
including the display, keyboard, laptop configuration.

amazon.com/dp/B0D8NS7KSH/

When you get down to $165 that claims to come with Windows 11 Pro you've
got to wonder what exactly the 'tax' is. Not the greatest processor and I
doubt the other components are top shelf, but there still has to be some
cost involved for the physical components and assembly.

On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 10:20:13 -0800, John Ames wrote:

> I've long held that necessity will ultimately force a serious rethink of
> programming practices w.r.t. resource-efficiency once Moore's Law runs
> afoul of pesky real-world physics principles, i.e. "eighteen inches is a
> nanosecond" vs. "you can't cram an arbitrary amount of stuff into a
> finite space without creating a black hole." Gonna be real interesting
> when we finally hit the wall.

That giant sucking sound is the lights going out... Meta's plan to acquire
a nuke ran into a problem. There was a program to create bee friendly
environments around the disused nuclear plants. It happens the one Meta
had their eye own is populated by a rare sort of honeybee.

Amazon's plan to splice into an operating nuke hit a more prosaic block.
Two power companies sharing the plant's output sued claiming Amazon would
be the preferred customer and they might get short-changed in a pinch.

On 11/4/24 1:10 PM, rbowman wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 02:35:50 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> Recently got an Ard Uno and the bits and pieces to build an
>> electronic door lock. TWO-button switch. The idea is to enter a 7 or
>> 8 digit BINARY combo using the buttons with maybe a 10-15 second
>> time-out. Gotta decide on polling -vs- interrupt ... interrupt can
>> use much less standby power if you do it right combined with the Ard
>> low-power/sleep library. Amazing what can be done even with really
>> weak/slow chips. For MOST Ard uses though I'd rec the Mega2560 - but
>> you may have to tweak the libs for accessories as the pins are
>> different. Built some good multi-channel solar-powered environmental
>> monitors using those boards.
>
> I've got a few Unos. My problem is figuring out what to do with them. I
> don't mean the coding/peripheral aspects but projects that are something I
> need.o

Know what you mean ... I've got tons of parts - for
those "someday" projects :-)

The executors of my estate are NOT gonna be happy.
Hell, even have a ZX-81 in The Heap somewhere :-)

> Right now I have a 4 wheel chassis with a primitive IR keypad
> controller. The long range plan is to incorporate the PWM ability of the
> L298Ns and go to the nfr240l01 for two way communication. The problem is
> the chassis has limitations.

PWM ... why not steppers ?

Build a better chassis ? Of course that requires the right
tools, which means off to the hardware store, which
means bringing back a bunch of other stuff you didn't
know you needed and ........

I come across robotics sites selling more-or-less
finished chassis. Just bolt yer stuff on.

Radio comms, esp with limited units like Ards, can
be annoying. They DO make an Uno with built-in
wifi now - so depending on your coverage you might
be able to run it straight up from a laptop. There
are various 900 MHz bi-di modules too.

https://store.arduino.cc/products/arduino-uno-wifi-rev2

> I've got a couple of the Nano 33 BLE Sense boards. A MIT course in TinyML
> used them. The nRF52840 is Arm. All of the onboard sensors make it more
> expensive but it's handier if you can make use of them.
>
> Right now I'm messing around with the Pico W. Too many choices, too little
> discipline...

Again, I get it.

My last job left me time and leeway to fool around with
various projects that MIGHT, maybe, be useful someday
some way. A few were. Fun, and I learned a lot.

The Pico does interest me. Basically a hopped-up
microcontroller and you can get wi-fi too. Looks
easier than starting with a raw PIC or '51 and
building up from there.

In any case you can get surprisingly good computing
power and peripherials for pretty cheap now. Outfits
like Grove have whole fams of accessories kinda
meant to go together.

https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/Grove_System/

I don't build a UNIVAC to start any new
computer project, so perhaps it's not
"cheating" to take advantage of what the
modern microcontroller/microcomputer
catalog offers.

Just glad a LOT of people are still into this
sort of stuff - don't think a smartphone is
the end-all of tech. The spirit of Radio Shack
lives on. :-)