sponaugle

6 ms·

1.
by sponaugle 5d ago
The idea that someone would reach out to you and actually expect that you would take something down because students were using it is absurd. It shows a lack of understanding of both how the internet works, and more so the idea that an acti
2.
by sponaugle 1mo ago
The pricing differential is just absurd now. I expanded the memory on my math clusters about 2 years ago so I would have 4 machines with 1.5TB of DDR4 memory each. Back then a 128GB DDR4 DIMM could be found for $150 used. Now those same
3.
by sponaugle 3mo ago
The best part of this workflow - which I see often - is that by having someone build custom software to automate some process they often step back away from the process being their job. That eventually translates into them understanding tha
4.
by sponaugle 5mo ago
What I was commenting on was the concept that a small model at home is somehow more efficient. To make a reasonable and fair comparison you would compare many people running a small model at home vs those same people using what would likel
5.
by sponaugle 5mo ago
"But there’s another challenge: local LLMs. It’s already possible to run LLMs on local hardware, and that’s only going to get easier in the future. Apple’s M-series chips are extremely good at doing this today. Open weight (read: free)
6.
by sponaugle 6mo ago
That brings back memories! Riding in the Transport to pizza hut with tanks of refrigerant banging around in the back. I remember when Ardent appeared! It was such a cool machine, and to this day I occasionally scan e-bay to see if one co
7.
by sponaugle 6mo ago
That is awesome. The NP-1s were great. I spent lots of time working on en.ecn.purdue.edu - Some tape drivers, some maintenance, and lots of software projects - it was really cool that in those days everyone was on the same machine, workin
8.
by sponaugle 6mo ago
George was really into video stuff - he had stacks of 8mm video tapes in his office, and of course stacks of exabyte drives. He had many different cameras and was always trying new ones out. He was also a really early adopter of laserdiscs
9.
by sponaugle 6mo ago
I was holding the camera for some of these videos. Such a great time!
10.
by sponaugle 6mo ago
Sad to hear! I worked for George for all of my undergraduate time at Purdue. He was an amazing boss with such a passion for all things unix. For a while he had the UNIX license plate on his minivan.
11.
by sponaugle 7mo ago
I am similar in that all of my interactions are with my real name and it is unique enough that just putting it into google will instantly identify me. There is one other 'jeff sponaugle' but I think he is far more annoyed with my
12.
by sponaugle 7mo ago
A fantastic read, and really interesting to see the use of Forth. I remember Forth having a bit of popularity in the 80s. This was such an amazing game, especially in that you felt like the world was huge with the encouragement to just ex
13.
by sponaugle 7mo ago
The study looks at a wide range of different tests spanning many different areas of expertise and output types. Some of the tests, like the web vis tasks used Sonnet not Opus (which was not out at the time). It is similar to testing a car
14.
by sponaugle 7mo ago
Yea, that makes sense as you would need quite a bit of information across a reasonable temporal range if the identifying qualities are movement related. Very interesting.
15.
by sponaugle 7mo ago
This is a VERY controlled environment - and they used 20 passes of each person walking with direct knowledge of each person to train for identity. They did no tests with multiple people walking at the same time, or with any other external m
16.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
Oh they are both loud and eat a ton of power. I think the 9305 is at least 800 watts at idle. That is the biggest downside of the retired datacenter gear... yo u really need a dedicated room with power, cooling, and sound isolation.
17.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
Agreed - the big thing is 100g is much much cheaper now as so much 100g gear is coming out of datacenters. So many of those older ConnectX4s and 5s, plus lots of switches and optics. 100g really is the new 10g for homelabs.
18.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
I'm using ConnectX5s for most, and some ConnectX4s in the older servers. Both of those cards have really come down in price in the used/ebay market. I have been playing around with some different optics - I have a bunch of CWDM4
19.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
Yea! Those MS-O2s look great, so I may need to upgrade! I did get a couple of DGX Sparks to play with.
20.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
Yea I'll dig up the link I used - there was a great reference about getting the thunderbolt working after reboots/etc.
21.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
I have a 3 node proxmox setup on MS-01s using a 25G Thunderbolt ring for Ceph, and indeed it took a lot of hoops to get it working correctly and reliably. I did manage to get it such that nodes can go up and down without needing to unplug
22.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
"because I can, and it is fun." The best answer! I am most of the way done with upgrading most of my homelab to 100G from 10G, but there really isn't a practical reason for it. 100G has dropped in price so much as datacen
23.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
I think understanding stellar processes and then using that understanding to theorize about other observations is a skill. My point was that observing can be a fantastic way to build a skill.. not all skills, but certainly some skills.
24.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
Agreed - There is no guarantee of what will happen in the future. I'm not for or against the outcome, but certainly curious to see what it is.
25.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
"it lost its value". It has not lost its value yet, but the future will shift that value. All of the past experience you have is an asset for you to move with that shift. The problem will not be you losing value, it will be you
26.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
"No-one has ever learned skill just by reading/observing" - Except of course all of those people in Cosmology who, you know, observe.
27.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
"If humans are machines, they are still a subset of machines and they (among other animals) are the only ones who can be demotivated and so it is still a mistake to assume an entirely different kind of machine would have those properti
28.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
"I think 2026 is the year of Business Analysts who were unable to code." This is interesting - I have seen far more BAs losing jobs as a result of the 'work' they did being replaced by tools (both AI and AI-generated).
29.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
Oh yea, 100% agree.
30.
by sponaugle 8mo ago
On that avenue, I do push hot air from my homelab into my upper garage for heat. If it below 50deg outside I also bring in some cold air from outside. Both are somewhat free offsets for heating/cooling.

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