Why is there this push to use AI everywhere when it's so resource-heavy? What do Google, MS etc gain?
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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Data mining.
I wonder how it can be worth the extra cost on CPU/GPU time, compared to search of mail.
I might type "best value Jacuzzi" into Google, but "write a python script to sort numbers", or "write a message sounding like I'm actually sorry to not go to someone's party", or "this sentence is a lie" into an AI.
I can only see one of those being valuable.
This AI "revolution" has me so turned off. "hi there, here at coffee shop X we use"AI"". Um. Ok. Neat. Does it do anything different?
Even Chatgpt is hit and miss. I'm not buying into this AI thing until we have cylons.
It doesn't actually need to make money at the moment, just drive value for shareholders.
Data is the new oil.
I would be mad too if an off-centered ad suddenly appeared on my lock screen.
I would have run a malware scan
Things like this make me glad I don't use Windows.
It invaded my Swiftkey keyboard with no permission and zero warning today (Obviously I realize that I probably gave it permission for shenanigans when I accepted the SwiftKey terms and conditions).
Man, Microsoft's purchase of SwiftKey still bugs me.
It's frustrating that after so many years, there's still no open source mobile keyboard where you can "import" your typing history from multiple sources to tailor autocomplete to your own "voice".
While Google also has problems, it was a pretty smooth switch from SwiftKey to google keyboard (years ago for me to be fair)
Sadly both of these don't work well when adding 3+ languages. I love typing by swiping but it worked so much better before I installed more languages.
Really hoping they'll fix that one day.
The Heliboard keyboard (opensource), based on Openboard, is pretty damn good on at least 3 languages with a seamless typing experience with predictions.
The trick config is to use one language (english) then use "sub languages" that you need. Don't just tick the 3 languages on the list or you need to switch manually between them when typing.
No spying going on here.
That is an absurdly large QR code. I recently switched to MacOS (I know Linux exists and it’s not for me) so I’m glad I’m away from this kind of nonsense.
My love is for Linux, and my job gives me a Mac. I'm pretty happy. My first time using a Mac full time. I'm blown away how much it's not a piece of shit like windows has become. Windows just feels like a sinking ship with bandaids all over it and slow to do anything. Christ the calculator app has a loading screen. A 386 should be able to load the windows 10 calculator app in a nanosecond. What is it really doing? Gobbling up and packaging past calculations to copilot for analysis or some shit. Ridiculous.
My love is for Linux, and my job gives me a Mac. I'm pretty happy
Same here. Absolutely love it. The only thing I don't love is I'm not able to get MacBook without an x86_64 chip. VirtualBox doesn't work on M-series ARM chips so I'm left without a standard way to run virtual machines :(
I put the blame on Microsoft here. I am more pro-ARM than I'm pro Apple; I had a surface pro X and ended up giving up on it because Microsoft has put zero effort into enticing developers to make ARM versions of their apps. Google drive still doesn't have a functioning app (!!) for Windows on ARM, which at this point has existed for over 10 years. (Emulation doesn't help here as it needs drivers).
In contrast, Mac has had apps since basically day 1 of Apple Silicon, and ARM support in Linux has been pretty good for years.
I’m also a Linux user who got a MacBook Pro for work reasons and Parallels is nice, especially for Windows VMs. I was also annoyed to find I couldn’t use Virtualbox on Apple silicon and reluctantly bought Parallels. It’s expensive but it has a lot of features and nice touches so I don’t regret the purchase.
Basically, it’s like everything Apple-related where you initially go “Wait, how much does it cost? Fuck that.” But then once you buy it, it’s actually really nice and you don’t feel ripped off. (Or not as ripped off, anyway.)
I do love it. My issue though is making cross-platform VM configs using Vagrant. I had something really nice going with virtualbox since it was usable by Linux, Mac and Windows. Now I'm not sure what the common demonator would be :/
I wonder how long it'll take Microsoft to completely ruin their reputation with companies again after they took so long to recover it.
Business is entrenched. There's no getting away from them.
Look at the VMware fiasco, companies will continue to pay their extortionist prices because it's still less than paying for, and risking transition.
Also, in business, Group Policy is used, preventing this sort of thing.
As I understand it, most companies are making transition plans away from VMware. A lot of contracts are multi-year, and transistioning your virtual infrastructure is one hell of a project if you have any amount of complexity to your infrastructure.
It's also one of those types of projects that is likely to be pushed down in priority whenever there's fires to fight. The price hike is absolutely insane, but in the balance of things it might be better business sense to keep paying while you investigate alternatives and migration plans.
That's what our company is doing right now. Currently using VMware vcenter. We've started talks with IBM/redhat about open shift virtualization. I have to maintain redhat ansible automation platform, automation hub and a redhat openshift containerization cluster.
Based on how absolutely terrible it is to maintain those and how absolutely terrible redhat support is, I keep trying to talk my company out of their current talks with redhat openshift virtualization.
It doesn't help that redhat's tech team keep fucking up answers in their meetings with our team about their platform and our questions about feature party with vmware
They are not. Other vendors are just as expensive as the new VMware pricing. Only options for cheap VMs is going with a solution that most 3rd parties won’t support.
Things like HyperV and KVM are free. We use one of these solutions at my company. One does not have to pay out the ass (or at all) for a VM.
KVM doesn’t have the support that VMware does. Hyperv is missing a lot of features.
Unfortunately Group Policy isn't bullet proof, Microsoft has a history of sneaking in "features" like this as part of an update, but without any corresponding policy to disable it.
It's also a moving target. There isn't one simple 'turn off the ads; turn off the tracking' group policy. It requires repeated research and effort by the IT team playing wack-a-mole with this stuff.
When that happened, Microsoft can fix their reputation again by buying more popular open source companies again. Nothing money can't fix. Maybe they'll buy Canonical next.
Mistral AI currently. They're just a minority currently but I doubt it'll stay that way.