> [CM-5] With a pricetag of "only" $46,000 per machine, it is very possible these were authentic.
The base price was $750K for 32 CPUs. If Google is correct and memory serves, the one at NCSA cost around $10-15M and had 512 CPU.
I can't remember where I saw it but for the movie IIRC they just had the casing with the blinky lights.
> Ray Arnold's workstation is a SGI R4000 Indigo.
IIRC the R4000s looked identical so it could have still been an R3000. But if SGI was supplying them in September 1992 (when filming was happening), it could have been an R4000.
> project a decade into the future can increase costs
A very good point.
I don't agree we can blame Trump for HSR though. 2/3 of the time that has passed have had Democrats in the white house. HSR is nearly all pure-California-style self-inflicted wound. And honestly it's just the most visible project California has failed with, there are many others. The one I'm personally angry about is Prop 1. We're now 12 years after, and have no additional water resources even broken ground. It's shameful.
The thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different. To one person it can mean, "don't put the construction garbage in the river." To another it can mean "not one single Delta Smelt can be scared because of this construction."
And because it's so flexible, in states like California where we have aggressive environmental laws, it's leveraged as the NIMBY trump card. When it can't block a project, the process is used to make it inordinately expensive and take decades. One example would be the environmental studies for the CA High Speed Rail.[1]
This video about Shoreham was my entry into the Proper People's channel. If you like this kind of abandoned structure exploration, I recommend checking out their other videos.
> Hard disagree. When you've had to chase through a change in untold and actually unknown numbers of duplications of code in different permutations and fix them because they are all on fire simultaneously, you'd disagree too.
The other end of this spectrum is dealing with the architecture astronaut's up-front abstraction. Totally overengineered for solving the initial requirements, but then constantly needing new hacks to make it cope with new requirements as they come up in the normal course of work.
That's why there's a balance in there, it's somewhere between "always duplicate code even when you know a lot about the problem" and "always write abstractions even when you know very little about the problem."
> So where is all the productivity going? Where is the value?
Infrastructure doesn't produce value overnight. How long did it take the Interstate System to provide measurable value? I asked Gemini. Supposedly increased national productivity by 25% over 39 years[1]. But if you drove on a newly finished interstate in 1959, you saw the same cars just moving a lot faster.
That's what we're seeing right now. People can produce an incredible amount of stuff really quickly with AI. Is it directly connected to measurable productivity across the entire economy? No, because, realizing a mass productivity increase from infrastructure takes time.
Typed, garbage collected, fast to compile and run, stdlib that includes just enough to work out of the box. I really don't like writing it by hand but for the LLM it's perfect.
> They also included 2,000 prompts based on posts from the Reddit community r/AmITheAsshole, where the consensus of Redditors was that the poster was indeed in the wrong.
Sorry, anonymous people on reddit aren't a good comparison. This needs to be studied against people in real life who have a social contract of some sort, because that's what the LLM is imitating, and that's who most people would go to otherwise.
Obviously subservient people default to being yes-men because of the power structure. No one wants to question the boss too strongly.
Or how about the example of a close friend in a relationship or making a career choice that's terrible for them? It can be very hard to tell a friend something like this, even when asked directly if it is a bad choice. Potentially sacrificing the friendship might not seem worth trying to change their mind.
IME, LLMs will shoot holes in your ideas and it will efficiently do so. All you need to do ask it directly. I have little doubt that it outperforms most people with some sort of friendship, relationship or employment structure asked the same question. It would be nice to see that studied, not against reddit commenters who already self-selected into answering "AITA".
> Universities typically are in the public sector side of the equation... and the public sector doesn't pay any non-administrative role the Big Tech rate.
There's absolutely no reason government couldn't pay competitive rates for software engineers. They do it for doctors and administrators of state-owned medical centers. Not to mention football coaches
> It was 2008; "big box" software was largely seen as obsolete to the vast majority of developers.
Well, I'm just reporting it as I understood their decision in the moment. I was working on The Sims at that time, and I assure you, retailers still mattered to us bigly.
In 2008, the app store was launching, and physical software was still sold at Targets, Walmarts and other large retailers. A 30% margin was roughly what retailers would make off of physical software sales. By setting the App Store to be the same, Apple was signaling to retailers that they were not trying to undercut their margin, and keep a healthy relationship with them.
Steak is the meat that people pay the most attention to in this regard! People will pay hundreds of dollars for a few ounces of steak solely based on how the cow was raised and fed.
For steak, I disagree with the article about stigma of eating bugs. Feeding cows bugs will save money, no doubt, and that might help cost on the low end of the beef market. Steak is a different thing though. A "bug-raised, bug-finished" steak would have to be incredible to overcome the stigma.
The base price was $750K for 32 CPUs. If Google is correct and memory serves, the one at NCSA cost around $10-15M and had 512 CPU.
I can't remember where I saw it but for the movie IIRC they just had the casing with the blinky lights.
> Ray Arnold's workstation is a SGI R4000 Indigo.
IIRC the R4000s looked identical so it could have still been an R3000. But if SGI was supplying them in September 1992 (when filming was happening), it could have been an R4000.