Building a budget AM4 system for roughly $500 would be within the realm of reason. ($150 mobo, $100 cpu, $150 RAM, that leaves $100 for storage, still likely need power and case.)
But mining all the tracking data in order to show profitable targeted ads is extremely intensive. That’s what kicked off the era of “big data” 15-20 years ago.
Mining tracking data is a megaFLOP and gigaFLOP scale problem while just a simple LLM response is a teraFLOP scale problem. It also tends towards embarrassingly parallel because tracks of multiple users aren't usually interdependent. The tracking data processing also doesn't need to be calculated fresh for every single user with every interaction.
LLMs need to burn significant amounts of power for every inference. They're exponentially more power hungry than searches, database lookups, or even loads from disk.
Surprisingly, communism was antiracist which explains why it was popular outside the US. There is the fact that many communists were racist on a personal level, but the state policies were inclusive due to the very nature of the ideology. As someone who also comes from the former block, I think that communism was a bad idea with terrible implementation but it also had its moments no matter what the US propaganda is trying to present it as.
Yep, worker's rights, universal health care, women's rights (voting, divorce, abortion, generous maternity leave). Compared to Switzerland which allowed women voting rights in the seventies, communism was putting uncomfortable comparisons at some moments. If you wonder why communism was attractive, it wasn't just because of propaganda or because people were stupid, but because communism was addressing actual problems of the time that the christian conservative establishment of the west was preferring not to handle.
The fact that you put the tatars as the only thing to know about communism shows that you've learned one thing and found it sufficient. At the same time, the link you share shows how later communist leaders acknowledged Stalin's actions as a crime... I'm not here to defend communism though (mainly because it is not defendable), just to provide a perspective beyond the standard tropes.
People can’t think anything good of communism because they’re conditioned to feel that way.
Whats interesting is how equal it was for everyone, one comment I got when asking people who lived through the soviet era was that.
“there’s no advantage given to any religion” (hence, new years being the traditional family get together time). and “we were all comrades, men and women”. A lot of what they hear from the US about gender equality falls on deaf ears because thats what they had and they were told was bad.
A weird perspective, but certainly an interesting one.
It’s always difficult to hear things that doesn’t fit our narrative.
Even if you can point to some positive outcomes the is the main issue of the whole system being so easy to corrupt and coopt for personal gain & power trips.
You might get lower infant mortality, better access to healtcare ans aeducation (as long as the party considers you worthy) but you will almost immediately get crooks and incompetents in leadership positions, whose only qualities are the set of morals to get to a position of power no matter the cost.
And those leadership positions are appointed by or even part of The Party - and the party is never wrong. There is no free press to critisize them and if you do speak up, then you are logically an spy from The West, undermining the perfect communist utopia & need to be punished.
Only if someone is really epically incompetent they might get purged by the inner circles, but it is even more likely they will purge someone actually doing things right who still has some morals left.
You could be the most ideological communist trzing to build the bright future & will still end up sidelined or worse by the corrupt pigs holding to all the power in the communist state.
When the Soviets crashed the Prague Spring in the 1968 there were some interbrigadists that went to fight agains Francos fascists in Spain during the interwar period with international communist brigades. Only now they were watching soviet soldiers shoot people in the streets and crush them with their tanks...
Have you heard about Roma? The communist states tried to help them but in a hamfisted ways like separating kids from parents. They did nothing to actually resolve racism. Many Roma ended up in squalor in segregated settlements. That goes on to this day and improves very slowly. It definitely was not "its moment".
So nice of you to teach me about the roma. I was sure to have never heard about them. /s
The history of gypsies and their segregation is much older though and the regimes inherited much of their attitude based on prior prejudices. The treatment differed in different times and locations. I've heard accounts of casual police brutality and of good integration in the local community and of a "leave everything as it is without engaging with hard problems". None of those was sanctioned on the bases of race theory and in fact the official stance was for equality. Compare it to the US where it was part of local and state legislation. On the other hand, the higher ups in the regimes were often repainted nationalists and common criminals of old so adherence to the ideals was often perfunctory and positive actions and outcomes were falling short of what was possible.
If it's part of legislation, you can fight it. If the official ideology is equality and racial prejudices "don't exist", then any problems are suppressed and you can't do anything.
Soviet union was defacto an apartheid when you consider how non-white ethnics were treated in practice. They just were so good at suppressing everything that it was never "an issue".
Making value statements about art is pretty much exclusively the realm of art critics and art historians. They're no more representative of artists than general historians are representative of politicians and soldiers.
Max effort is kind of nebulous as it really means different things to different people. Heart rate is probably the simplest and universal gauge for this...
Atm I am somewhat unfit (relative to my past/potential) so when I do a round on the pads in muay thai/boxing which could be 2-4 minutes, my heart rate sits around 180-185 for the duration of the round. Often, sparring is actually more relaxed than pads because the coaches like to work us hard.
I have noticed that if my training meaningfully reaches 173+ I will usually feel like a vegetable for several hours after, usually the whole day. I get endorphins and heightened awareness around the 150-172 region.
"Max effort" is kind of meaningless because it means different things to different people - when I was 16 my swimming coach pushed me with sprints until I puked, not THAT uncommon amongst competitive athletes and I was a little out of shape that one time. I rarely see people push themselves that hard during HIIT classes, myself included...
The meaning of the words “Max effort” doesn’t change or vary.
It’s just that some people have a max that is lower than others, or at some points in your life your effort is lower than at others, as dictated by physical, mental, or psychological capacity for that person at that moment.
For example a normally sedentary person might find it mentally and psychologically uncomfortable to exercise strenuously. That doesn’t mean they’re not putting forth max effort.
> We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it
There's Mr. Kimmel's quote. Where did he lie? He never said what Mr. Robinson's political affiliations are or where.
My objection was not the student in question being mentioned. It was why he was mentioned: his views on Charlie Kirk, a US culture war topic that has nothing to do with the discussion and nothing to do with the student’s admission grades.
Oxfords name is currently being trashed globally because of this though. It sucks, but it must be dealt with. Celebrating violence against free speech doesn’t make sense for Oxford’s name to stand behind.
> Oxfords name is currently being trashed globally because of this though
Entirely depends on what circles you move in. The vast majority of people, especially those outside the US, are not talking about Charlie Kirk at all. Hence my objection to him being brought up. At bare minimum it has no relevance to the ranking being discussed in this topic.
> Celebrating violence against free speech doesn’t make sense for Oxford’s name to stand behind.
And they do not stand behind it. Oxford does not control the students union. I don’t buy any argument that they should somehow be policing free speech in the name of free speech. Makes no sense at all.
reply