"There were a tiny handful of incredible nerds who thought [Zork] was fun, mostly because 3D graphics and the physical touch of another human being hadn't been invented yet. But for the most part, people would tire of the novelty because trying to guess what to type to make something happen is a terrible and exhausting user interface. This was also why people hated operating systems like MS-DOS, and why even all the Linux users reading this right now are doing so in a graphical user interface." I get that Dash is exaggerating here for effect, but the comparison between command-line interfaces and LLM chatbot interfaces rings false to me. Command-line interfaces have steep learning curves, but they're deterministic and composable, which is why we still use them today. The reason that chatbot interfaces suck isn't that they're based on textual inputs, but that they're neither deterministic nor composable. (GUIs have different affordances than command-line interfaces which make sense for some use cases, but they also have their own learning curves and limitations. A hypothetical GUI-based LLM interface would have all the same problems as a text-based one.) Plus the Zork series sold like 700,000 copies
"Metastability is a peculiar problem where a digital signal can take an unbounded amount of time to settle into a zero or a one. In other words, the circuit temporarily refuses to act digitally and shows its underlying analog nature."
"[T]he semiconductor industry needs to sell more and more powerful chips to maintain its economies of scale. It is therefore necessary for demand for computing power to increase year on year, at the same rate as gains in computing power." ... goes on to convincingly argue that adoption of AI services lags behind what's nnecessary to "consume" semiconductor production capacity. Model providers are caught in a double bind between reducing per-token marginal costs through increased efficiency and needing to keep semiconductor manufacturers afloat: "What is changing here is the growing interdependence of investment in AI and the insane capitalization of the industry, as exemplified by Nvidia."
"To use devices for longer, a change in business models as well as consumer attitudes is needed. This requires raising awareness and education but also providing incentives for behavioural change. And to support devices for a long time, an infrastructure for repair and maintenance is needed, with long-term availability of parts, open repair manuals and training. To make all this happen, economic incentives and policies will be needed (e.g. taxation, regulation)."
"In short, the look and feel and vision of Pixar all came from inside and predated Jobs by at least a decade. Steve Jobs was a crucially important money man for the company, and later a business dealmaker of the first order for it. He was responsible for the look and feel and vision of Apple, but not of Pixar. The marketing message seems to have been crafted to make it seem that what was true for Apple was also true for Pixar - one genius fits all - but that was not the case as the details make clear."