Personal question: How old is your computer?

[freebeard]

VR is incredible.

What do you use for a display?

I thought NAS was for multi-user networks. Do peeps use them as stand-alone?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

What do you use for a display?

I thought NAS was for multi-user networks. Do peeps use them as stand-alone?

My BIL gave me his 'old' Meta Quest 2.

As I mentioned, NAS is a computer, so folks use them for all sorts of things other than just Network Attached Storage. People run Plex servers on them, for example. They can provide VPN services to serve data over WAN.

[freebeard]

I had to look up Plex. As long as the client[s] is/are multiuser, I think that's an on label use.

Does it have an NPU? The only use I can think of for one for me would be graphic inpainting and outpainting. I've got a lot of old low-res pictures from the 1990s.
_________________

If it doesn't it's zero-day obsolete. (Don't be embarrassed, I'm way back on the curve -- the PI 5 can only do 12-24 TOPS)

AMD Ryzen NPU does 30-50 TOPS. Free business loaners now according to this video's ad:

The Discovery of a New Semiconductor Can Change Everything

In-memory logic means the CPU-RAM bottleneck goes away, with orders magnitude less power consumption.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Does it have an NPU?

Intel AI Boost NPU 4 @ 13 TOPS... This was the first release by Intel that doesn't improve performance for most applications, but instead reduces power consumption.

All this talk about needing way more power for AI compute seems silly to me. The watts per flops have been declining continuously, but aside from that, there is so much idle power consumption from compute that's doing nothing. Something like Folding@Home should offload AI tasks to idle compute nodes AND provide a reward for participating. It could become sophisticated enough to prefer nodes that have a momentary excess amount of renewable power generation.

In addition to shifting electricity supply around to stabilize the grid, we could be shifting demand around.

[Piotrsko]

Dont recall much idle in DOS or windows machine's that are internet connected. Pot load of communication going on in the background. Watch the blinkenlights

[redpoint5]

My new build idles at 3% CPU, and that includes all the bloat of Windows, managing a RAID 1 array, storing HD streams from 4 PoE cameras (BlueIris), and Plex server operations.

AI could be offloading compute and compensating participants. I'd be happy to provide excess compute so long as the compensation were greater than the additional electricity consumption. The compensation could be x dollars per y petaflops.

I could see distributed compute being best for things that don't require an immediate result, such as generation of photos, videos, or sound.

As an aside, I'm finding the majority of my queries via AI summary vs search results. I'll be telling my grandkids it was 2024 that AI became personally useful to me, and they'll listen in astonishment imagining a world before AI.

[freebeard]

...and that includes all the bloat of Windows

Does that include Copilot? Grabbing screenshots every 3 seconds and capturing your keystrokes and compressing and exporting it?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Does that include Copilot? Grabbing screenshots every 3 seconds and capturing your keystrokes and compressing and exporting it?

I have copilot installed in my Win11 Enterprise installation. It does not send info to Microsoft unless one enables that, and that information does not include things like screenshots.

Features can be enabled that store screenshots encrypted on the local machine for local reference by Copilot.

I haven't used Copilot at all yet... need to watch some Youtube videos to see what is useful, and what to avoid.

[freebeard]

"It does not send info to Microsoft unless one enables that" according to Microsoft.

The Next Scary AI Phase in Your New Windows and iPhone 16 is Here Now! -- 193K views 2 weeks ago

[freebeard]

For me personally, the Golden Age is truly here:

duckduckgo.com/?q=asahi+linux&t=raspberrypi&iar=news&ia=news

The news is two weeks old. With Asahi Linux I'd trust it again.

My M1 Mac hasn't been world-facing since I installed Norton Antivirus and it added Norton 360 with Lifelock. Yikes!

edit:
It appears that I'd have to expose the Mac one time to install Asahi Linux, there's no ISO. Items not supported like the internal microphone and touch sensor, the Mac Mini doesn't even have.