I’ve messed with neural nets over a decade ago and ever since I realized their limitations back then I’ve lost all interest.
It can never outgrow its own boundaries. If you train one too much then its output will just be the literal training data with some error, but never anything better, no matter how much data you throw at it.
That alone has always made the ideas that it can “create” things or “think”/“solve problems” absolutely ridiculous to me.
I’ve said this before on lemmy and have gotten downvotes from it, but neural nets are much closer to something like an ASIC.
And now there actually is a company that literally makes ASIC chips that implement neural nets! ;D

I’m not denying that neural nets do have genuine uses, but the way most are being used in the 2020s just grosses me out.

The idea that it is some kind of revolutionary technology that can replace human labor.

Now people say that but 10+ years ago nobody cared. I had 2 chatbots talking to each other about random things that got picked from the Internet as an experiment all running 24/7 on a Pentium D PC, and whenever I showed this to someone they responded with a “uh cool.” Now these same people think they’re interacting with a “thinking” being that is capable of doing their job whenever they engage with some LLM-based bot, when in reality it’s not too different from what I had back then at its core.

I do this for a server in my LAN. I use DHCP+TFTP to boot grub over the network via PXE, and then grub boots the Kernel with the root pointing to a NFS share:

menuentry 'GNU/Linux NFS' --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
        load_video
        set gfxpayload=keep
        insmod gzio
        insmod part_msdos
        insmod part_gpt
        insmod fat
        echo    'Loading kernel ...'
        linux   <TFTP Root>/vmlinuz root=/dev/nfs ip=dhcp nfsroot=<NFS Server IP>:/export/rootfs/<Root Dir> rw loglevel=6 threadirqs
}

Doing this makes managing that installation much easier. It’s just a directory that lives on the Main Server.
I don’t even need to boot the other Server to update the software in it, chroot is enough. And I don’t even have to worry about doing separate backups, because I already back up the Main Server’s Storage regularly.

For the bots

Says the bot. Most of those upvotes are probably also from bots.

I’m on a machine w/ FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE right now and my AMD GPUs mostly work (minus some features like manual fan control or overclocking, also certain shaders may make the driver crash). They pull in the amdgpu driver code from Linux so you get the same experience for the most part. Bluetooth is very hit or miss in terms of drivers. (Also I find OSS to be better than any audio “solution” on Linux.)

I haven’t been able to get Steam to work reliably. It starts up fine the first time after a fresh install. But on any subsequent startup it just hangs indefinitely. I also haven’t messed with WINE since I don’t really have the need, but FOSS games/ports generally just work (OpenRCT2, OpenMW, Quake, Doom, 0ad, SuperTux, Wesnoth, Xonotic, etc.).

As with Linux distros, I just recommend installing it on a spare machine or drive to see if it works for you. Definitely consult the FreeBSD handbook for guidance though.

Fantastic news. Fuck NoVideo. I hope they drown in their proprietary paperweights.

As a kid I always used to imagine about all the different things that could be automated, and now the chinese are just doing it lol.
Anyone who is somehow still not convinced that the PRC is actively advancing socialism should just look at how much they focus on automation, railway and self sufficiency.

I wish the school I went to as a kid had classes like that! Neural Nets are fascinating to learn about.

But to us everything has to justify its own cost and profit-making ability, even schooling. Rail has to be self-sufficient in five years to be very tentatively approved, and the economic stimulus it provides is not considered at all in the equation: it has to cover its own cost of operation. If there is no immediate gain from it, then we don’t want it. And not only that, but we don’t want others to have it either.

This is one of the things that pisses me off so much about this society. It especially pisses me off when average people only think within those boundaries and then wonder how nothing ever happens and things start to crumble and stagnate around them.

If everyone actually followed this nonsense tomorrow then humanity would regress back to shit throwing monkeys in no time.

Personally I always rejected this shit because it never made any sense to me, and even now there are people who think lesser of me because of it.
You can show them the coolest thing they’ve ever seen and they’ll inevitably go “OK, but how are you going to make money with it?”. They’re completely incapable of seeing past that.
It really is like a fucking cult who calls anyone that gets shit done or even just pursues knowledge without a profit incentive a heretic.

I can easily see that happening on x86 machines because of the presence of the Intel ME aka. MINIX3. Putting it in the ME would be convenient for big tech and the 3 letter agencies, since enterprise-grade x86 machines have a BIOS option to disable the Intel ME completely (like my ThinkStation).

every breadtuber would start off their videoessay with their own version of this:

Instead they take sponsorship offers and shill for some crap nobody wants and desperately try to be influencers. They worry about viewer retention & going viral before they even think of anything else. I’ve learnt pretty early in life that people who shill for whoever pays the most are not to be trusted or taken serious. Their continued actions show where their values are, but too many people are far too easily swayed by a few nice words and charming personalities.

Completely Agreed. What I really hate about “Mobile OSs” is the fact that they’re the most slow and bloated pieces of crap ever imagined.
Android and iOS are insults to Computing, they’re not useful for anything. People just put up with them because most of the time there is no other Option.

Most Phones right now are many times better than the Work/Gaming PC I had back in circa 2010.
Some ARM Computers even come with an NPU, or some have Instruction Set Extensions that are better than anything you can find on x86;
Some ARM Computers have literal Super Computing capabilities, yet none of that stuff is made available to the User (or if it is, only to to a limited extent) because the Manufacturers just shit out binary blobs for Android that work “good enough” and call it a day.

And then a couple years later people are expected throw out their Pocket-Sized Super Computer just to keep investors happy, it’s insanity.

Meh, for me that is already the case because I refuse to use most ARM-based devices due to how locked down they are to the point where the user is basically just renting them.

What disturbs me however are people who seem convinced that Mobile/Cloud-based devices are “the future” or “next step” and act as if PCs were just a “Phase”.
It saddens me that there are many people out there who don’t realize the power and potential of Personal Computing.

This whole thing feels like a celebrity ad.

HL3 will retcon a ton of stuff because of HL:A’s ending

That’s what I’m expecting, why else would they suddenly decide to change the EP2 ending after 13 years.

I agree, I’d rather them conclude the Story HL2 has set up ASAP and see something completely new.

they released a side game that only a small percentage of the players could play—which is based on the leaked story of E3

I’m assuming you’re referring to Epistle 3 by Laidlaw? In what way is HL:A based on that? I thought HL:A takes place before HL2 (minus the ending scene).

Personally I’ve come to terms with the fact that we’ll probably never get a proper continuation of EP2 years ago. Like I said, I don’t expect much from Valve at this point.
If the game comes out and it doesn’t have bad writing and features interesting and innovative gameplay I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
If the game comes out and it not only has interesting gameplay but also continues to follow the Story that EP2 set up I’ll be very pleasantly surprised.
If the game comes out and it’s overall OK but they retcon a bunch of stuff and make it so Aperture and the Borealis are no longer relevant, or worse, abandon the storyline for something completely different, then it’s time to forget and play some more indie games! :)

Right now I’m mostly interested in what their current Half-Life Project even looks like.

Lol, FO4 kind of replaced Skyrim in that regard since it’s literally just the Skyrim build of Gamebryo with a facelift and some improvements.

They wanted Starfield to be the next big sandbox game engine, but nobody wants Oblivion in Space.

The only big-Name Game I have any amount of faith in is HL3, although I don’t expect much.

Same. I tried getting into TES4 but couldn’t make it past half the game because I found it too boring and watered down compared to Morrowind.
In FO4 I made it past the beginning area before I got bored and quit.
I already know that TES6 & FO5 will be yet another Loot Hoarder Sim with a “You are the chosen one” Story and MMO-Tier Quests.
They’ve been making bad Morrowind clones for 2 decades now with no end in sight, and that’s how they’ll probably die lol.

I’m more annoyed at the people who leave Twitter only to go to the next Bigtech Platform.
The Fediverse is right here with no Ads, no Influencers, no AI Shit, no bullshit algorithm that feeds you some narrative or rage/engagement-bait, impossible to monetize and anyone can use it today!

This is like something I’d expect to see on 4chan. Posts like this remind me of how much of a shithole reddit really is.

They pulled the plug on Ensemble Studios and then like 10 years later they noticed that a lot of people are still playing and modding their old Age of Empires games, so they went ahead to produce shitty remakes that look like mobile games and after that they proceeded to continue the series with live-service trash.

Fuck those fuckers @Redmond. Now I feel dirty everytime I look at my old AoE Game Discs.