sxan

sxan, 1 day ago

That’s kind of a straw man, though, isn’t it? Governments of capitalist countries have worked hard to suppress non-capitalist movements within and without their country, but that’s just what governments do. The Soviet Union was communist (as pure communist as the US is pure capitalist, which is to say, not very), and that also suppressed any alternatives. It’s not a function of the economic system; it’s a characteristic governments repeatedly demonstrate, regardless of their economic ideology.

I agree with the grandparent argument: capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the best thing we have so far. Personally, I don’t believe communism can work, mainly because I think it goes against human nature. Except for clan behavior - altruism to your family, friends, neighbors - people are generally selfish, and communism requires us to be altruistic at our own expense to people who we not only don’t know, but who may talk differently from us, look different from us, have different culture from us. And even at the clan level, communism struggles. There were hundreds of attempts at building communes in the US in the 60’s, and I honestly believe most died out not because they were subverted by the government, but because people are selfish and they collapsed under their own internal conflicts. Very few of those remain, and when you look at them, they have fairly rigid internal structures that re-enforce the commune.

Maybe if we can make it to post-scarcity, we’ll be able to afford to be communist, because then it won’t depend on altruism. But right now, when times are hard and food is scarce, most humans will look to feeding their own children first, and the priorities of the commune tear like tissue. Capitalism endures because it’s built upon greed and selfishness, and those come easy to humans. When times are hard, we tend to fall back on barter, which is capitalism.

Anyway, saying that the US suppression of communism in Latin American countries says less about capitalism than it says about the US government, and their perceived interests. The proof is in the parallels in Soviet and communist (Mao era) China regional actions.

sxan, 3 days ago

I’m a little offended that this utterly skips over software, as if a CPU would do anything without the component that was invented before any CPU.

Software without a CPU is still useful. The reverse is not true.

sxan, 3 days ago

Software is algorithmic instructions. We wrote and executed algorithms by hand long before we had calculating machines; and when we did get computers that could run more complex algorithms, they didn’t have CPUs. They had vacuum tubes (there were even simpler programmable purely mechanical computers before even vacuum tubes). CPUs didn’t come along until much later; we’d been writing software and programming computers for decades before the first CPU.

And even if you try to argue that vacuum tubes computers had some collection of tubes that you could call a “CPU” - which would be a stretch - then it still wouldn’t have been made from silicon (rocks) as in the OP post.

But before the first calculating mashing, people are writing algorithms - what software literally is - and executing them by hand long before we had calculating machines to do it for us. Look up how we calculated the ranging tables for artillery in WWII. Algorithms. Computed by hand.

The word “computer” literally comes from the word for the people (often women) who would execute algorithms using their brains to compute results.

sxan, 3 days ago

Software is a necessary component, just like screws are a necessary component in an engine. Screws don’t exist only in engines, have existed since long before engines, and can be used in other ways. Just like software.

sxan, 3 days ago

Say I agree with your distinction - or restriction. There was still software written for, and programmed into, general-purpose, Turing-complete calculating machines long before there are CPUs.

So let’s look at the technical details of the word. The term “Software” was coined in 1958 by John Tukey. The computers in use at that time were machines like the IBM 704, the PDP-1, and the UNIVAC 1107; these are all vacuum tube computers that contained no silicon microchips and no CPUs. Even technically, the term “software” predates silicon and CPUs.

Non-technically, I disagree with your premise on the basis that it’s often been argued - and I agree with the argument - that humans are just computers with software personalities programmed by social conditioning, running on wetware and a fair bit of firmware. And there’s increasing evidence that there’s no real CPU, just a bunch of cooperating microorganisms and an id that retroactively convinces itself that it’s making the decisions. Even if the term “software” wasn’t coined until 1958, software has been a thing since complex organisms capable of learning from experience arose.

Unless we’re all living in a simulation, in which case, who knows if software or hardware really exist up there, or whether there’s even a distinction.

sxan, 6 days ago

I was going to say, I know the answer, but was not sure I could spell it correctly.

sxan, 6 days ago

I think you have to cut off one of your fingers every time that happens, out something.

sxan, 4 days ago

All 100 billion of you.

sxan, 4 days ago

They’re still also statistically pretty young compared to other rich people who got wealthy in their young adulthood. And male. Give young men access to a bunch of money, and the results tend to not be pretty. Day what you will about old men, if they’re reaching peak income near or after 50, they’ve already blown the worst of their testosterone out of their systems - that still leaves ego, which is its own problem, but suddenly coming into money in your youth I believe badly skews your perspective of reality. The culture they obtained wealth in is also important: guys (and gals) who gain sudden wealth in their youth through, say, competitive snowboarding are also going to have a skewed perspective, but their peer group and the lack of the negative influence of Wall Street and investors mitigate the worst of the effects.

sxan, 3 days ago

So you cook the potatoes in a garden variety pressure cooker; but the difference is you then rapidly chill them before preparing to eat. Right?

sxan, 4 days ago

Personally, I care about these factors for my desktops as well. CPU, GPU, memory, and (and this surprised me) SSD temps - how many fans do I need? At least three in a proper tower-style desktop. I feel like the Grinch: “all the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise!” And fans take power. Everything takes power.

So I’ve been running a micro-PC for a while: a Ryzen 7, integrated GPU, little 6x6x2 enclosure. It still has a fan in it, and I’ve got it in a space in my desk made for hiding computer devices and wires - I had to build a fan into that because it was getting warm in there and raising average temps on the computer.

My point is that these battery-optimized architectures are also pretty important for the desktop market, too. Gaming rigs with GPUs bigger than the entire rest of the motherboard notwithstanding, average desktop user would be fine with one of these micro computers. As long as you stay away from the hog software like Electron and Java applications, they’re perfectly capable; heck, even rustc burns through compilations pretty fast, and that’s not exactly an efficient compiler. And Go programs compile in no time on a Ryzen 7, or even 5. I suspect it’d even handle my mom and her Firefox with 200 tabs.