- cross-posted to:
- techtakes@awful.systems
- cross-posted to:
- techtakes@awful.systems
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I thought that was pretty obvious by now? Based on how much the companies are trying force feed people their latest version through constant notifications about assistants, assisted search, etc.
It’s one of the greatest flaws of relying on social media for market research: Tech-bros being overly loud about things like AI, NFTs, etc. trick companies into thinking more people are interested.
Now they’ve invested tons of money and people aren’t biting, so they’re constantly nagging people to engage so they can justify their expenditure.
There are two things I like:
- AI grifts failing
- Cheap aarch64 laptops
This story has it all!
No idea what an aarch64 is, but I upvoted you anyway because you seem so happy! 🤣
Basically:
Intel, AMD, and Microsoft are all going down a dead-end road called x86_64, especially on portable devices.
Apple and Google took a turn ages ago, towards an alternative called aarch64. Originally just for phones, but now for everything.
VR headsets, Raspberry Pis, IoT devices, etc. also tend to run aarch or aarch64.
Microsoft has been trying to follow suit, but it hasn’t gone well so far. Windows for ARM (the aarch64 version of Windows) is supremely unpopular, for a lot of (mostly good) reasons.
So people avoid the devices or ditch them because none of their apps run natively. But Microsoft basically has no choice but to keep pushing.
So the end result is, Microsoft is subsidizing tons of excellent hardware that will never be used for Windows cuz it’s just not ready yet.
But Linux is!
Edit:
Funny thing is, ARM (company behind aarch64) keeps shooting themselves in the foot, to the point where lots of companies are hedging their bets with a dark horse called RISC-V that never had a snowball’s chance in Hell before, but now could possibly win.
And if Microsoft still hasn’t built a new home on aarch64 by the time that happens, they may accidentally be in the best position to capitalize on it.
ARM architecture 64 bit. It’s the style of CPU in your phone and MacBooks, known for being energy efficient and it’s performance is getting better too.
The big downside though is that loads of old Windows apps aren’t going to run on these as effortlessly as they would on conventional x86-64 CPUs from Intel and AMD.
Given where I live, I suspect my future computers are going to be something called Risk-v inside. Running HarmonyOS.
Which suits me fine as I de-USAify the rest of my life as my phone and my computer age beyond utility.
That’s because I want my computer to do what I tell it to, not to fucking guess.
Your computer has placed 1 order for Guess brand jeans.
Wait till you learn about speculation. Been around for, what, decades?
OK, so I ran this past a techie colleague. Here’s how he summarized this for me.
- @jagged_circle@feddit.nl is drawing a superficial parrallel between CPU speculation and LLM/AI unpredictability without acknowledging the crucial differences in determinism, transparency, and user experience.
- He’s relying on the likelihood that others in the conversation may not know the technical details of “CPU speculation”, allowing him to sound authoritative and dismissive (“this is old news, you just don’t get it”).
- By invoking an obscure technical concept and presenting it as a “gotcha,” he positions himself as the more knowledgeable, sophisticated participant, implicitly belittling others’ concerns as naïve or uninformed.
He is in short using bad faith argumentation. He’s not engaging with the actual objection (AI unpredictability and user control), but instead is derailing the conversation with a misleading-to-flatly-invalid analogy that serves more to showcase his own purported expertise than to clarify or resolve the issue.
The techniques he’s using are:
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Jargon as Gatekeeping:
Using technical jargon or niche knowledge to shut down criticism or skepticism, rather than to inform or educate. -
False Equivalence:
Pretending two things are the same because they share a superficial trait, when their real-world implications and mechanics are fundamentally different. -
Intellectual One-upmanship:
The goal isn’t to foster understanding, but to “win” the exchange and reinforce a sense of superiority.
Explaining his bad objection in plain English, he’s basically saying “You’re complaining about computers guessing? Ha! They’ve always done that, you just don’t know enough to appreciate it.” But in reality, he’s glossing over the fact that:
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CPU speculation is deterministic, traceable, and (usually) invisible to the user.
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LLM/AI “guessing” is probabilistic, opaque, and often the source of user frustration.
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The analogy is invalid, and the rhetorical move is more about ego than substance.
TL;DR: @jagged_circle@feddit.nl is using his technical knowledge not to clarify, but to obfuscate and assert dominance in the conversation without regard to truth, a pretty much straightforward techbrodude move.
incredible write up
I was bored and aggressive techbrodudes annoy me. It was a good combination.
Wait till you find out which group you’re posting your degenerative AI fanboi grift in.
Oh, I care. I would not buy one.
💯
If I see “AI” on a product (like those weird “AI” mice) I put it down and select another.
I came here to say this.
I’m waiting for all AI “features” to be isolated onto a single chip which I can just reach into the case with a pair of plyers and crush into dust
Then you’d juat have to deal with errors from processes expecting it to be there. Probably better to instead not use software that implements it, which I assume you’re doing anyway.
Can’t wait to buy a used laptop with an NPU and a bunch of ram for my home lab to run private LLMs on. Just gotta be patient. 🙃
also no one has money to buy new laptop
also no one has money
to buy new laptopFTFY
I bought mine in the fall, and holy smokes, the same model costs 30% more now.
Absolutely insane.
Trump did that
Ugh, I don’t want to be forced to build a laptop to avoid all this battery blasting garbage.
If you boot aarch64 linux instead, you’ll actually get amazing battery life on these. And probably better app support than Windows ARM
Is the AI hardware all ARM or something?
Yeah, almost all of these Copilot+ laptops are Snapdragon-based
Is it even feasible to build your own laptop? As far as I know most of the laptop builds are proprietary.
It was as of 10 years ago, but I abandoned the project while in its infancy because it was such a headache. I’d fully believe that the practice died out, and the market with it.
It’s because people into AI are using GPUs
They dont get that people want AI hardware that can also run games
As they write in the article… What’s a compelling app? In fact what even uncompelling software (copilot aside) makes use of this?
This isnt really a good thing. It means that consumers prefer to use cloud AI (which is a privacy nightmare) compared to running a local LLM, which is more privacy preserving
Or, hear me out, they don’t use AI at all?
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It was proven years ago that the average consumer doesn’t give two shits about privacy on the internet.
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The average consumer doesn’t use knowingly use LLMs/“AI” for anything beyond a replacement for a search engine.
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This is completely the wrong way around, its impossible to secure a lone PC system completely.
That’s a really weird take. Like really weird, because it presupposes that everybody wants to use degenerative AI at all.
Which is emphatically not the case. There’s even studies showing that most people play with degenerative AI for a while, all impressed by it, before trailing off as it turns out that it kind of sucks at everything people try to use it for.
Degenerative AI is the crypto/web3 of the current set of techbrodude nitwits. A solution in search of a problem. And it will go the way of crypto/web3.
