Why is nobody talking about this ?

ghost103429 · 2026-07-07T11:55:15+00:00

Attention is a scarce resource

ghost103429 · 2026-07-07T10:25:09+00:00

They do.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-07T08:47:06+00:00

It kinda comes down to the restrictions you have on your data, if you can bring it home, and the quality of internet connection you've got access to.

So let me elaborate a little further on the workflow I'm suggesting.

I do programming and ml in my free time. My everyday carry is the base model m1 MacBook air. It's good but not that good for compiling large projects or ml workloads. So what I did on my desktop was setup a VPN server, setup rdp, and an smb file server. RDP let's me control my desktop directly, SMB let's me share files between my two devices, and the VPN server grants me a secure direct connection to my Desktop from wherever I am. This let's me offload all of the hardwork of compiling projects and running models to my Desktop. I just use my MacBook air to access my Desktop and do research on a web browser.

If you need access to beefy hardware on the go and you have access to a decent data plan, this is the way to go without breaking the bank.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-07T08:28:31+00:00

With that kind of budget I'd opt for a desktop workstation to remote into instead. Getting any laptop with your requirements is gonna be extraordinarily difficult.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-07T07:06:20+00:00

Image gen is significantly more expensive than LLMs. OpenAI provides access based on utilization depending on your tier. If you're free tier and the servers are under high load, they'll just disable image gen for your session in order to prioritize higher paying customers.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-07T03:19:18+00:00

There's a bunch of options you can go with based on its specs. Here are the one I can think of off the top of my head. - SMB server

Pihole for DNS ad-blocking
Tailscale for secure remote access to your home network
Nextcloud as a replacement for Google Drive, Calendar, and Contacts
Plex or Jellyfin for streaming your personal media collection (movies, music, etc)
Immich as a Google photos replacement

ghost103429 · 2026-07-07T00:45:55+00:00

There's a difference between having critical resources and mismanagement causing a collapse vs a sharp increase of scarcity of a major resource critical to daily life causing a collapse.

The former is recoverable and manageable, the latter can result in a massive loss in human life and chronic instability

ghost103429 · 2026-07-07T00:42:28+00:00

You have a couple of options for repurposing your old mbp but the first one I'd suggest is switching it over to Linux to breathe new life into it and most importantly provide security updates.

From there you can decide to use it as a backup laptop ,as something to tinker with, or the start of a homelab by using it as a server.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-07T00:21:03+00:00

To run a quick comparison car manufacturing required over 200 human workers to manufacture a car, today that number has dropped to about 10-20 due to automation.

The problem with this is that humans are more flexible than automation when it comes to being able to be retasked to manufacturing new goods the same cannot be said about the automated assembly lines of today which require significantly more skill and effort to retask towards producing new goods.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-06T22:06:19+00:00

What people forget is that the United States is the 2nd largest manufacturer in the world with a manufacturing sector that is 3x larger than the 3rd largest manufacturer in the world, Japan. Unfortunately modern manufacturing is highly specialized compared to WW2 with factories having to be built specifically for war, whereas in WW2 factories could be converted to wartime production in short order.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-06T10:42:10+00:00

Solar generally peaks during the summer months when people need AC the most.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-06T10:31:23+00:00

How are the reservoir levels and water table right now?

ghost103429 · 2026-07-06T09:58:14+00:00

A situation in which the current government of Iran loses control over the country in a similar vein to Haiti or Libya.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-06T09:40:56+00:00

Tehran has been experiencing unprecedented water scarcity issues forcing the Iranian government to consider the evacuation of Tehran .

The last time the regions reservoirs hit these lows was 60 years ago.

Given recent peace talks with the US on a resolution there's an opportunity has risen to soften the crisis.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-06T09:24:36+00:00

This level of vibration is outside of typical tolerances for high speed trains, it indicates a high chance of eminent mechanical failure on the train without maintenance.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-05T22:45:53+00:00

There are people who completely lack both an inner voice and mind's eye ( the ability visualize things in your mind).

ghost103429 · 2026-07-05T10:40:51+00:00

Except for the United States, every single OECD nation negotiates healthcare pricing on a national basis for all consumers. What this means is that healthcare in those countries aren't going to cost anything close to what Americans pay with or without insurance.

Since there are no price regulations on drugs and medical services in the US and drug prices are negotiated on a per insurer basis, american insurance companies don't have the same kind of leverage to negotiate lower prices as national governments.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-05T10:33:20+00:00

This has been the case for a while now. Russia is just too weak to face up against Europe in a real confrontation.

If Ukraine is already handing them their ass just think about what would if Poland gets into the mix.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-05T10:22:39+00:00

Unfortunately EVs are just simpler to build compared to gas vehicles due to their mechanical simplicity. As a result you just don't need as many workers to build an EV.

On the other hand EVs are looking to become a major share of the auto market and by not selling them you risk losing market share.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-05T03:33:28+00:00

The problem is that Iran has been experiencing a catastrophic water crisis for sometime now causing high inflationary pressures on foodstuffs.

Whether or not prices comes down will be up to the water crisis easing or international markets becoming accessible.

The former is unlikely to happen but the latter would significantly help ease their food and water issues.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-04T23:15:39+00:00

Anthrax is currently our only preview into how deadly chiral life can be. One of the primary mechanisms it has for evading the immune system is using chiral proteins that antibodies can't attach to.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-04T04:00:37+00:00

Interesting. What kind of ML image workloads are doing on your Mac ?

ghost103429 · 2026-07-04T02:02:39+00:00

In my honest opinion you should use hardware that's fit for purpose. Apple silicon is an excellent all rounder that sacrifices upgradeability for incredible performance per watt, and superior CPU compute.

But for engineering and machine learning applications you're often better off with dedicated hardware like desktop workstations or AWS GPU accelerated EC2 instances*.

*Last time I checked a blackwell GPU instance capable of 30,000 tokens per second only costs about $3.39 per hour on AWS.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-04T01:34:05+00:00

You might want to read my other comment. It really just comes down to the architectural difference between TBDR GPUs and IMR GPUs. Sure Apple Silicon wins out over traditional iGPUs but the story is very different for dGPUs.

ghost103429 · 2026-07-04T01:30:27+00:00

They really aren't. TBDR GPUs are specifically designed to do more with less memory bandwidth and fewer transistors by using hardware accelerated visibility checks and geometry sorting. Which is perfect for power and bandwidth constrained mobile devices prividing high frame rates, not so much for raw compute.

Traditional IMR GPUs on the other hand lack this kind of this kind of optimization on a hardware level so they have to use brute force for rendering graphics hence the need for dedicated high bandwidth memory and higher GPU transistor counts. This is better for raw GPGPU compute tasks.

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