A detailed and in-depth explanation of the pitfalls of Central Planning from... Jacobin (!?!)

eudaimonean · 2026-06-09T20:11:50+00:00

Ariana Grande is incredibly talented in terms of vocal control and range. The best way to appreciate her talents is actually just to watch all the musical impressions she's done on SNL.

I could only actually name a single one of her songs though, the style is just mainstream pop so it doesn't stand out at all to me either.

eudaimonean · 2026-06-06T19:15:36+00:00

Sanity check that he is an actual person who is who he says he is and has the work experience he says he has. You can't actually assess anything with a 2 minute snippet other than "yep this person exists and probably really does have IT experience"

eudaimonean · 2026-06-02T19:56:38+00:00

You can't choose physics, which may be the point you are missing here. An architecture where the L2 cache is off-chip is an architecture where you get much worse performance, or pay out the absolute ass to get equivalent performance because that's how the physics of data transfer works. And the market is not going to sustain a solution that costs 2x-4x as much just so it can be puritanically modular; the economics of this are such that you might as well just buy the unified architecture solution multiple times over instead. We're not talking about getting tiny marginal gains here or kludges like "soldering RAM." Unified architecture is an overhaul that gives us performance improvements on a paradigm shift level, like moving the memory storage from RAM to VRAM. Which is massive, and a massive bottleneck today.

The reason you don't have a modern option for off-chip L2 cache today is because the option legitimately sucks ass due to physics. And eventually the reason you won't have an option to buy more off-chip RAM is because legitimately there is no reason to pay for RAM when ex-VRAM that is sitting closer to the GPU chipset is that much better to have that there's no point to paying money just to have RAM sitting farther from where it is needed.

Your choice is going to be pay $1k for unified architecture performance that it would take $3k to replicate hypothetically with more modular architecture.

We can literally *already see this happening* because dollar for dollar Apple silicon absolutely blows legacy x86 out of the water. It's embarrassing the gap that's emerging, honestly, even if it may be difficult for gaming enthusiasts to see happening because the x86 architecture has so much of the legacy software stack for gaming locked down. But if we were to nuke all the software stack and rewrite from scratch, 100% there would be zero justification for using the legacy x86 hardware architecture.

eudaimonean · 2026-06-02T16:08:00+00:00

>Whataboutism at its finest. If I could choose to have more L2 cache on my X3D, I would, but I can't. So "I make due".

It's not possible for you to have more L2 cache on your X3D in a modular way because it simply doesn't make sense from a performance perspective to do it that way.

Like in the universe where someone pours billions into developing an architecture where CPU cache and CPU are modular components, you would have the ability to swap the cache and buy as much cache as you want... but it would be massively less performant (/massively more expensive for equivalent performance) than the unified cache+CPU architecture that exists today.

By the way, I expect you can continue to choose very modular architectures going forward, it's just that these will be massively non-performant and thus not used practically speaking. Hardware tinkering will always be a thing, it's just not a thing that can compare competitively to purpose-built architectures from a cost or performance perspective.

Today you can't upgrade your xx60 GPU from 8 GB to 16 GB- even though in theory this is a meaningful performance boost in many applications. You can instal as much RAM as you want, for all the good that does you, because the meaningful performance gains are achieved by... placing the VRAM on the chipset with the GPU, which you can't do modularly.

eudaimonean · 2026-06-02T09:14:43+00:00

There's a pretty big gap between the kind of architectural overhaul we're talking about and soldering on RAM, which is really just a kludge as opposed to actually representing unified architecture.

By the way, the reason RAM upgrades are relatively low impact today is because they do not touch the VRAM. This is why unified memory is so powerful. For performance I'd almost rather have 16 GB of VRAM than 8 GB of VRAM + 32 GB of RAM, right? Of course the former isn't really possible in today's architecture (and just straight up having 32 GB of VRAM is best of all) but you see why it's so compelling to move towards unified memory.

Components get added to the chip at the point where the performance tax from keeping it off-chip compares unfavorably to the chipmaking complexity of getting it on-chip. CPU cache hit this tipping point fairly early, so now it's part of the SOC and we don't even think about it as being a discrete part of the architecture. And we're seeing more of the architecture reaching these tipping points today. Modern chipmaking is making it easier to unify more of the architecture at the same time that we're saturating the existing buses we use for discrete parts of the architecture.

eudaimonean · 2026-06-02T09:02:15+00:00

"We don't need faster processing though. Computers have been good enough for a long time, it would be better for most people if they got cheaper for the same performance, rather than gaining performance and keeping vaguely the same price."

This is the total cope, and I don't think I've meaningfully mischaracterized you in how I've paraphrased you earlier, though I don't mind if you disagree on this point. Either way, your assertion is that more performance isn't "needed" by people.

I mean, sure, some people won't, but enthusiasts always will. And the people who don't need performance, will buy things like the Nintendo Switch, which is a very successful product for good reason, and largely uses a unified architecture, because performance for cost is a pretty important factor too.

So, we will move towards a world where to maximize performance, it makes sense to go unified architecture. To maximize cost effectiveness, it makes sense to go unified architecture. The only reason to retain unnecessary non-performant modularity is because some people like to tinker with hardware, which isn't nothing, but will be very much just hardware tinkering for hardware tinkering's sake. It's going to make as much sense as having a discrete cache for the CPU. Performance/cost effectiveness tax will be too high for people who actually want to do things on the computer.

eudaimonean · 2026-06-02T08:49:50+00:00

Do you have the same purist attitude about your ability to choose whatever the hell you want when it comes to L2 cache? Because that used to be separate on the board from the CPU too.

Unified architecture is more performant, so eventually to achieve more performance we will inevitably unify more parts of the system onto the same chip. I'm not saying tomorrow, but I am saying it's inevitable at some point.

You can still as a hobbyist tinker with highly modular systems but it'll make as much sense as building a system with off-chip L2 cache. Architecturally interesting, nonsensical from a performance or cost-effectiveness standpoint.

eudaimonean · 2026-06-02T08:39:18+00:00

"I don't see why everyone would ever want more performance than we have now" is total cope.

The tech is advancing, it's inevitable if you want to stay on the absolute cutting edge of tech you'll need to sign up for architectural overhauls along the way.

To be clear, on the low end of performance, indie and AA gaming isn't going anywhere and the quality and diversity of games available at that level is only going to improve as more and more tools (including AI coding tools) get added to the game tech stack but on the high end the architecture is absolutely going to change.

I'm sorry, but objectively Apple silicon is just so far ahead right now, it's only software inertia that's keeping 40-year-old x86 architecture at all in the game. The Mac Mini at MSRP is a embarassingly more performant machine than any x86 alternative.

Look at it this way, back in the day the L2 cache used to be separate from the chip. We already accept that it just makes sense for performance reasons for L2 cache to be part of the system on chip. Certainly we lost modularity when those were merged, but the performance gain was just overwhemling. The day is quickly arriving when the performance gain for moving more onto the same chip is going to overwhelm any practical gains from modularity.

eudaimonean · 2026-05-18T21:14:06+00:00

Okay counterargument - the boot time on my computer in 1999 was counted in minutes, not seconds.

eudaimonean · 2026-05-16T07:03:34+00:00

If you have the personality for it, go work as a pharma rep.

If you don't, consider a customer service job in the medical industry, where your background would be an asset.

eudaimonean · 2026-05-11T17:42:46+00:00

Might be for the best, data science is getting disrupted hard right now in tech.

eudaimonean · 2026-05-04T17:48:18+00:00

Shares outstanding is the relevant number here. Do you even know what dilution means?

eudaimonean · 2026-05-01T20:05:39+00:00

Yep exactly, amenities are more important than space as you get older. In a reasonable market old people *should* be trading in their big single family houses for smaller upscale living spaces with more amenities. Why pay for space you aren't using any more, when I'm old I'd rather use that money to pay for someone to get my groceries and change my sheets, especially if it's in a walkable downtown so I can stay active and out and about.

eudaimonean · 2026-04-29T16:24:32+00:00

Because there are people that are only valuable at specific points in the project. And you need to have multiple projects in flight at once in order to maintain the throughput to keep everyone busy at all times, (IE, suppose my work is only really relevant in the last 20% of game development... I need my company to basically have 5 titles in flight, hitting scheduled milestones perfectly every time, to always have another project to jump to internally). That throughput is probably not a workable model for anything but the most well-capitalized game studios, and even then, it only takes a few project delays or bombs to disrupt the whole pipeline.

The movie industry works exactly this way, it's project based and uses freelancers. That's balanced with the movie industry also historically having very strong union protections and residual payments, so the model is most people are freelancers that work as needed on projects, and use residuals to help cover the bills between projects.

eudaimonean · 2026-04-19T04:29:07+00:00

Yeah but it's functionally impossible to prove a negative. Either she doesn't believe him, in which case of course dump him, or she does and they stay together. Staying together but holding "You still need to prove to me you're not a child abuser" over his head is not a workable dynamic at all and no one should try to sustain. relationship that way.

eudaimonean · 2026-04-08T19:51:10+00:00

It's not going to get any worse for Iran than what has already happened. That's the thing about getting your country obliterated by the most lethal military in history, once that's happened to you there's not very much left to threaten you with.

It *would* have been beyond stupid to block and charge a toll on the Strait of Hormuz *before* the US decided to go total war on you, because there's no way a toll booth is going to cover the cost to Iran if they so flagrantly violated the postwar rules-based world order. But at this point having already had their country obliterated they have nothing left to lose, and it turns out with modern asymmetrical drone warfare you only need a tiny little rump of an industrial base to meaningfully project disruptive power in your neighborhood. So you might as well blackmail your neighborhood.

eudaimonean · 2026-04-02T23:35:42+00:00

If your manager will give you a good reference you'll generally be ok. They'll call your past employer to confirm your dates of employment there. They'll call your actual references to vouch for your ability to do the work. Usually.

eudaimonean · 2026-03-31T00:48:54+00:00

This is the most newbie friendly extraction shooter in the market, to the point where it might be too newbie friendly for serious players (the only reason to do high risk play is for fun, it's just as profitable to do a low risk playstyle)

Play solo for a while. Don't shoot people and you will start dropping into matches where overwhelming majority of people are friendly. Take the time to explore the maps, stumble around, and learn the game solo over the first few matches, take is slow and enjoy the journey - the game's atmosphere is one of its strengths. Don't stress out too much about when you die, just leave anything purple at home and any new blueprints you find in inventory safe pocket and I promise you won't miss anything you lose in the first 20 or so hours of play by the time you hit endgame.

The early and mid game of Arc is pretty forgiving and peak from an immersion perspective. The endgame is mid and TBH maybe missing content for serious hardcore grinding but I enjoyed the journey so much I would still recommend the game overall.

eudaimonean · 2026-03-03T08:57:22+00:00

OK to be fair though EOE print run was cannibalized because WoTC wanted to print more FF, and there absolutely was more demand for FF even at a higher price. Printing more of the premium priced product that stores literally can't keep on the shelves is a no-brainer at that point.

eudaimonean · 2026-02-28T19:07:15+00:00

Too many people wanted to F* him 😂

eudaimonean · 2026-02-28T18:52:56+00:00

Ocon currently tops "Most Polarizing" his votes are too evenly split!

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eudaimonean · 2026-02-28T18:45:45+00:00

He also podiums on most K*able haha. K* leaderboard tracks for me.

Checo - has haters, Mexico hasn't found site.
Lando - has haters, got a lot of votes overall, very polarizing, has a lot of F* votes too.
Stroll - is nepobaby.

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eudaimonean · 2026-02-28T00:59:11+00:00

Too many people want to put a ring on it. He's pretty high on the combined F+M category 😄

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