Posts

Showing posts with the label cartoon

Way of the Weasel

Image
Yes, I sometimes follow the way of the weasel.  But no, not the right wing racist path of Scott Adams (who knew ?):    I got a request to print 30 (or more) poetry booklets for a local museum.  They haven't asked for anything in almost 2 years so I figured they had made other arrangements. I was wrong. I wrote back that my printer seems to be on it's last legs (true although a new, expensive toner cartridge would help) and that the computer I use for printing might not power up (hadn't been used in almost 2 years).  So I said I wasn't interested. Then the request came for the booklet files so I tried booting up the computer - it did "work" although there was an error I had never seen before.  Even in the past when I did do the printing there were problems that I wasn't able to fix.  I was able to scrape the files off after finding an old USB 2.0 SD card reader and getting it to work (for some reason one of my old 2GB SD cards only works in the Kodak CX...

AI Slop

Image
AI is hated by many, especially the young, don't try to feed them "AI Slop" But this IEEE Spectrum article was interesting: https://spectrum.ieee.org/artificial-neurons-on-silicon-chips In this case, the grad student was sloppy by not connecting the substrate to ground and it may lead to a new way to implement AI that uses less power.  So sometimes it's good to make mistakes - so this AI sloppiness might be good, at least for the environment  :) It still boggles my mind that power used is a figure of merit embraced by the AI industry: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/04/data-centers.html It's like the Supermen from the planet Bizarro have taken over the tech leadership of Earth !  Why is using more power better ?  It's not but apparently that's the yardstick they use :(  It's also interesting that this new potentially power saving AI work is being done at a university in Singapore.  Singapore has (unlike the current US administration) decided to embra...