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Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating. I yie
by recursivedoubts 22d ago
Even w/the pricing spike, inflation adjusted we are back to roughly the prices of a new Mac SE/30 for something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating.
I yield the floor to no one when it comes to pessimism, but that's incredible.
- bubblegumcrisis 22d agoSigh.. Is there anything better now though? All I see from AI, is an amplification of the enshittification of the internet. And people being even more alone.
- kilroy123 22d agoWell, there is more renewable energy than ever before powering the world. It's all being built and added to the grid faster and faster each year. That's one big plus.
- runjake 22d agoThen you’re either spending time in the wrong parts of the internet or doing things that don't fulfill you. These times are exciting and rough seas make good sailors. Find your path forward.
- ashetr 22d agoWhat is exciting about getting pablum spoonfed by a data center owned by trillionaires? I'd rather go to the library and read a book.
- theoreticalmal 22d agoYour legs broke? Go do that
- 2shag15 22d agoWhat does it have to do with legs? This site has turned a mental hospital with AI patients.
- corysama 22d agoIt's an expression. "You're legs broke?" here means "What's stopping you from going to the library and reading a book?"
- LevGoldstein 22d agoIt's a grovel-for-investor-dollars site that we've long pretended is for serious technical discussion. Comments should always be filtered through that lens.
- brookst 22d agoWhy in the world are you choosing to live that way? I'm writing the best music of my life, realizing games and art projects I never had time for, and writing higher quality software in addition to dramatically more of it. Who has time for pablum? How exactly are you using these tools that you have that experience?
- ted_dunning 22d agoYou are actually not doing much of that. You have become a spectator.
- senordevnyc 22d agoWho is stopping you?
- runjake 22d agoYou can do both. I still find time to read a couple books a month. You have agency and can choose your own adventures. If you don't like something, don't do it.
- snozolli 22d agoFalse dichotomies make for terrible conversation. "Find your path forward!" he shouted with glee, as he ran toward the cliff.
- runjake 22d agoSo do platitudes.
- AbsurdCensor 22d agoSure, when you look a little wider, since 2000 we have seen the following major improvements: - Extreme poverty has dropped from 30% to under 10% globally. - Child mortality rates have dropped in half - Internet access has exploded from 10% to 70% - Solar energy costs have dropped 90% - Cancer death rates have declined by 30% All of these massive improvements in less than 30 years. While there certainly are issues to solve, and if you simply follow journalism you may think the world is worse off, but for many, their lives have been significantly improved.
- minhaz23 22d agoIs that AI / compute driven?
- rowanG077 22d agoAI in the sense of LLMs is too new to really make an impact yet. But it is compute driven. Modern science and engineering would be impossible as we do it now without high-end compute.
- brookst 22d agoIn part, sure. From drug discovery to crop yields to education, compute and AI have material benefits. It's kind of shocking that anyone could doubt this. Evidence: * https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.09809 https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.09809 * https://phys.org/news/2016-12-mobile-money-access-percent-kenyan.html https://phys.org/news/2016-12-mobile-money-access-percent-ke... * https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3893351 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3893351 This being HN, I hasten to add they also have massive downsides, we're all doomed, nobody programs the right way anymore, those poor people just think compute & AI are improving their lives, etc, etc.
- AbsurdCensor 22d agoAbsolutely computer driven. It's hard to say the impact of AI, let's give it the same 25 years of computer advancements.
- SamPatt 22d ago
- cedws 22d agoJust like the computer revolution, it will make a small number of people richer and put everyone else at their mercy. In real terms the average person is far poorer than in the 20th century. Used to be able to buy a home and support a family on a single income. Now it can take two just to survive.
- marknutter 22d agoI wonder if doubling the workforce had anything to do with that..
- svachalek 22d agoYou're right, probably nothing to do with moving all manufacturing out of the country or Reagan's union busting.
- marknutter 15d agoThose played a huge part as well. Well, not so much the union busting.
- senordevnyc 22d agoIn real terms, the median human globally today is vastly richer than at any point during the twentieth century. And the median American is also richer in real terms, both in terms of wealth and in terms of income. Of course, that all assumes that you use a reasonable measure of inflation that’s stable, well-designed, and applied methodically and consistently over many decades. Alternatively, you can cherry pick data points and go based on vibes, which lets claim whatever you want!
- anonym29 15d ago>Of course, that all assumes that you use a reasonable measure of inflation that’s stable, well-designed, and applied methodically and consistently over many decades. Too bad the measure that everyone points to is far from stable¹; BLS's various CPIs² have been consistently and substantially modified over time, and not for purposes aligned with the interests of consumers³. ¹ https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/historical-changes.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/historical-chan... ² https://www.shadowstats.com/article/cpi-glossary https://www.shadowstats.com/article/cpi-glossary ³ https://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-438-public-comment-on-inflation-measurement https://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-438-public-comment-on...
- TheRealPomax 22d agoThere is nothing special about making a computer that's unaffordable, irrespective of whether it's 2026 or 1989. If anything, it just shows how little they're trying.
- Keyframe 22d agoOn the higher end upgrade we're more like back to roughly SGI prices.
- intrasight 22d agoYes. I commented elsewhere that it's only twice as expensive as my first mac which has 128kb.
- high_na_euv 22d agoYou should compare with competition, not what was decades ago. E.g how is the perf/$ vs Wildcat lake
- JKCalhoun 22d ago[dead]
- jgalt212 22d agowhen was the turing test beaten?
- olmo23 22d ago2001 according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
- goda90 22d agoI think it was determined that the Turing test is too easy because humans are too easily fooled.
- bbor 22d agoYes, which is exactly and entirely the point of the whole paper. Somehow missed still -- despite how important AI has become, shockingly few people actually read the short, layperson-accessible paper that started the whole field. I kinda have to link it now, so uhh here's a random PDF: https://www.hec.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Computing%20Machinery%20and%20Intelligence%20by%20Alan%20Turing.pdf https://www.hec.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Computing%...
- acchow 22d agoHumans are equally fooled into believing each other are conscious.
- intrasight 22d ago2050 I'm guessing
- Someone1234 22d agoThe EU just had to pass a law to force companies to disclose if a customer service agent is AI or Human. It is beaten. https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/safer-and-more-transparent-ai-2026-08-02_en https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/safer-and-m...
- 22d ago
- dannyw 22d agoThe DRAM market is cyclical. I don’t think anyone truly knows when, but it will happen. Fab capacity is being bought online; there’s just lead time. Noticeably greater intelligence is being achieved at the same number of parameters (see: Qwen3.8). I think the future will be bright, it might be a matter of time. And for tinkers, a used Epyc + DDR4 server can be great fun and epic value.
- SSLy 22d agoLooks like I'll be sporting my 5800X3D + DDR4 + 9070 XT gaming box for a little while. Too bad the CPU's ST is slower than my MB Air m4.
- pdpi 22d agoI built a new PC about two years ago, and I probably got it at the last possible opportunity for a while. CPU and motherboard have come down by maybe £100 in between the two of them, but a 7900 xtx (or any other 24GB GPU) for under £1,000 now seems like a bargain, and £180 for 64GB of DDR5 makes me feel like an old man talking about the halcyon days.
- devmor 22d agoI built my current PC the day that the AM5 platform released, for about $6k not including the 3090 I moved over from the previous rig. If I sold just the two sticks of RAM in it right now, it’d pay for nearly half of the total cost.
- raegis 22d agoI bought a motherboard from Newegg in late 2024. It came with 16GB of RAM as a free "gift". The same RAM goes for $534 on Newegg today. It was $437 in January. Prices are still creeping up for this "throwaway" memory. I still have it, but never installed it because I only use ECC memory in my desktops. I'm saving it for a future Desktop in case memory prices never fall again.
- 22d ago
- darreninthenet 22d agoAn additional £1,000 for a 2TB drive is crazy though, rapidly takes the new Mac mini from a good price to a nuts price
- criddell 22d agoConsidering hard drives were $10k / GB in the Mac SE/30 days, that feels like a bargain too.
- inigyou 22d agoBut software also fit in 640kB instead of 640GB.
- bigfishrunning 22d agoIt still can, but until very recently the motivation for keeping software small wasn't there. I'm still hoping the tide is coming in.
- aurmc 22d agoSure, yes, compared to the prices of storage 35 years ago, it's a bargain. Compared to the prices of storage today, when people are presumably buying the product, it's actually a bad price.
- criddell 22d agoSure, but this thread started with somebody pointing out that these computer prices are in line with Mac SE/30 prices. I'm just carrying that over to cover storage and it's even more amazing how much we get for so little money.
- SloopJon 22d agoI happily booted and ran an Intel Mac mini using a 4TB drive in a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure, and I do the same for an M4 Max Mac Studio using an 8TB drive in a USB4v2 enclosure (OWC Express 1M2 80G). You'll just have to be careful to match the enclosure to the ports on the system. The base-model M6 Mac mini still uses Thunderbolt 4, so a USB4v2 enclosure would be wasted.
- afro88 22d ago> something that can beat a turing test w/o sweating Ok I'll be that guy. It's pretty easy to figure out if you're talking to an LLM now we know it's tics, failure modes, jailbreak techniques etc
- formvoltron 22d agoYo... the Se/30 was worth it. dual floppies was so lame