gghh

Gotcha, thanks for explaining. Indeed I noticed it was 128G of memory just like the DGX.

Fair :)

I'm tourist in Zig land too, follow Kristoff / A. Kelley etc, Tiger Beetle DB (written in Zig) and stuff, but only as observer / bystander.

Sorry for lazy question but some people here know this off top of their head so asking. Memory bandwidth of this chip?

Last time I check an NVidia situation was for DGX Spark (the GB10 chip), it has regular LPDDR5X which by JEDEC standard cannot go beyond ~270 GB/sec, ie 8533 Mbit/s on a 256 lanes bus.

So yeah Lemire seems to go "OMG unified memory, they're following Apple path..." ok, but Apple pulled off a much faster interconnect, 800 GB/s ballpark, and I'm trying to understand (not really, I'm asking you to try understand, he he) how is this laptop faring in that regard.

It's bland and generic because it's a manifesto. Author (and HN submitter) is Loris Cro, aka @kristoff_it, VP of Community at Zig Software Foundation.

In his role, devising as set of general guidelines to use as compass when things (inevitably! and often!) get very very muddy and Right v. Wrong is hard to tell apart -- both objectively, and also from the point of view of being a community leader with ton of vested interest -- is essentially one half of his job. Other half is abide to said guidelines.

So @kristoff_it last week sat down, came up with three simple rules short enough he can print on a business card (or hang on his office wall or whatever), and posted them here to test if they make sense to the wider community.

TLDR: yes can seem bland / generic but within context it makes sense to me author needed to distill his ethics in a nutshell.

Thanks

Can you please spell out the spell out? You're linking 1300 words.

Right, Dwarkesh's episode with Reiner Pope. Didn't watch the full video but as soon I saw both going to an old school blackboard with an actual chalk in hand I could tell they meant business hehe :) Thanks for recommending the vid and for the info about DS V4.

Ah ok, sharing context/KV cache, I can see that helping. I need to learn more about DS V4, you seem to hint it has some advantages over previous generations in this respect. I haven't followed that closely to quite catch this argument, I'll check it out.

_50 watts over 2 hours is 100 watt hours (Wh) which is 360 kJ._

Yes of course that was a brain fart of mine. Watt is Joule per second not certainly Joule per hour. I made the point of "lecturing" readers on power v. energy since Antirez (OP) wrote _"50W of energy usage..."_ (instead of power consumption) and it's a mistake people often make. So my side point was: ok 50W but for how long.

The other thing I'm arguing is 50W is nothing to be shocked by. I would like to see an argument for the opposite. I'd like to know what's the power consumption of playing eg. Baldur's Gate for a couple hours on a gaming rig and I wager we surpass that by a margin.

Now, the data center economy of scales. You're saying they almost certainly exists. Okay whatever I don't know. Requests served in parallel. Amortizing memory access for model weights. Likely. I'm writing this with some thinly veiled dismissive attitude because I believe that it would be very useful to have hard data on whether or not serving many users v. just one user makes LLMs more efficient. It's an important point with wide ranging implications.

If there is scale, like you claim, and one day a wealthy patron gifts me a 40k USD rig where I can run a frontier LLM locally, then I'd still be making selfish use of the commons (energy, which belong to the planet, all of us, that kinda stuff) because the efficient/responsible choice is to pool and use a cloud vendor (or pool your rig with neighbors etc).

But saying a machine can be more efficient if it serves many users sounds to me a bit like nine women making a baby in a month.

I'm sorry I don't understand. From the way you frame it, and the sentiment of the replies, seems like this is some scary big number. MacBook M3 Max is a beefy machine and doing inference means it's going at full send. 50W is... what tiny appliances consume. Sure it's more than reading emails but... it's still not a number to be shocked at. An on-the-go laptop has a TDP (max rated power) of 45W. Regular work laptop is 70W. Gaming laptop 230W. The servers I have in the lab on which I run benchmarks counting syscalls per seconds for days on end (you know, performance engineering!) are now going north of 1kW.

Washing machine 900W. Hair dryer 1500W. Pizza oven 2000W. So yeah, you say 50W, yeah sure same as video rendering or gaming I guess, yet not really an OMG-level number.

And frankly I'm not quite sure there's anything like economy of scale where it gets more efficient if you serve more users (like some sibling comments seem to imply).

Last thing, and I know many know but also many others don't or have forgotten: Watts is a rate of consumption, not an absolute amount. That is Joule, energy. So you say 50W, but what you pay for (or the planet pays, whatever) generally is the amount of energy, hence you need to say for how long that consumption was sustained. 50W over 2 hours, that's 100 Joules, the actual resource you consumed and paid for.

Power (watts) is like speed (m/s). You say 50 miles an hour, need to say how long was the drive, so we know how far you got.

As the person who posted the quote, gonna be direct: no idea.

I have to say, I don't identify myself as a anarchist (maybe a bit of a sympathizer), yet I'm middle aged and finding myself a little dissatisfied by many things I see around me, so if I see people making the equation anarchist = degenerate, my immediate reaction is "yeah let's slow it down shall we."

Fair. But I think that statement isn't meant as a strict and precise definition (eg. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or whatever), more like a "gateway" description directed at those who associate anarchism only with utter chaos and "burn the house down" kinda attitudes.

Now, I'm aware that when you need to say something is "gateway" that's a bit of a red flag, i.e. "milk before meat" (describing something as friendly and innocent at first, then only later showing the more aggressive indoctrination) is exactly what cults do. Having said that, I'd grant that the late David Graeber is quite the straight shooter so I think he's in the clear here.

Right. "Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion."

From: "Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!", David Graeber, 2009, https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-a...

Exactly. I see elsewhere in this page people comparing this project to Linus Torvalds starting an OS in his dorm room while studying CS. Like these were "young and clueless" devs writing an OS for fun.

From the looks of it, this seems like a serious corporate backed project made by employees of the Ant Group, the chinese fintech giant. A more fair comparison would be with Google's Fuchsia OS (defunct) or Huawei's HarmonyOS. It may succeed, it may fail, but it's nothing like a couple of kids doing a passion project to learn Rust.

What I meant by it is "the fine article", meaning the post. Actually using acronyms goes against "Don't assume knowledge", incidentally a point in Eva's list (the article).

I've learned the acronym here on HN, googled for a second and found "the fine article" as explanation, but now that you ask I've checked wiktionary... and apparently the commonly accepted meaning is derogatory (the f*king article, like "RTFM", "read the F-ing manual).

Lesson learned, won't be saying "TFA" again unless I mean f-ing

Good point. Focus on the customer. Didn't see that aspect.

Right: rude, dismissive, patronizing. Gives me exactly this impression, you put it into words better than me.

I see. It was the first sentence that came to mind. The point I'm trying to make is, in my experience, "just" is often abused, as it conveniently relieves one from providing a sound argument.

Well, a copy editor maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_editing

I've never used one, but I assume there are professionals for hire to do this.

In fact I've read one of the advantage of going with a publisher (as opposed to self-publishing) is they give you an editor. But again, I'd expect a freelance market to exist.

If I could add one prescription to TFA, it would be to avoid using "just" (the adverb, as in "simply") at all costs.

"A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors."

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but none of that is simple. There's that math joke about proof methods, and this would be "proof by intimidation".

When describing a process: "To measure the inverse reactive current in unilateral phase detractors, just use an ordinary turbo encabulator". Why "just"? Are there other methods? For what reason is this the preferred one?

When giving advice: "Why don't you just use a bash script?" This implies your suggestion is simpler or more economical than my proposed approach, therefore better, but you aren't supporting its alleged superiority with arguments I can counter, only implying it.

Thanks for the references. I'll check them. I'm extremely biased against the business use of passive voice, to the point of getting so worked up when someone does it with me on mail or slack, that I need go to a quite room and relax for 5 minutes.

The purchase order has been made.

Your virtual machine has been created.

I see this a lot in corporate environments, and it's by low level managers thinking every bit of information they're trusted with is so delicate and confidential, they must go above and beyond to reveal the least possible amount of it. Note, in the examples above, it was the manager themselves doing the action. What's wrong with "I did this", "I did that"? This is LARPing as CIA agents (or whatever), and they like the sound of it (I want you to know I have information I can't share, you little shit!).

"I've just created your virtual machine" peasant

"Your virtual machine has been created" special ops elite force management

Mind you, 99.999% of the time, the concealment of "who did the thing" is totally unnecessary. It's only there to reinforce status.

Jon Hall was essentially Linus Torvalds' agent in the 90s. While at DEC, he got Linus to the right places and meet the right people, so that his "hobby, nothing big or professional" OS entered the trajectory to become what we know today.

I'm about 30 years younger than Jon Hall, so I couldn't be familiar with his accomplishments other than by oral/written accounts. Since he hasn't written big hit books I could read or software I could use (alright alright, Linux for Dummies), I constantly saw people calling him a legend but never understood why. I finally asked around in the Linux kernel community, and was explained the extent of his contribution: he was Linus' mentor in a way. When they met in 1994, Linus was a 25 yo student and Jon a 44 yo DEC marketing manager. I like to think of their conversation as something like "Listen to me kid, this is what you gonna do".

With this in mind, a line in Jon Hall's wikipedia bio stands out: It was during his time with Digital that he initially became interested in Linux and was instrumental in obtaining equipment and resources for Linus Torvalds to accomplish his first port, to Digital's Alpha platform.. Another one in his linkedin work history reflects this view: Senior Marketing Manager, DEC, 1983-1998: In 1994 met Linus Torvalds, recognized commercial value of Linux, obtained funding for port of Linux to 64-bit Alpha processor, opening up a billion dollar line of Linux-based High Performance Computing Super Computers.

WP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Hall_(programmer)

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maddog/

Do you think a minecraft server (and multiplayer game servers in general) can benefit for running on a soft-realtime OS like Linux with the PREEMPT_RT patch?

Games often use their tick rate (iterations of the event loop per second) as a quality metric, and an rt OS should favor preemption and low scheduling latency over throughput... so maybe that should give a more fluid experience?

But the bottleneck for minecraft seems to be in memory allocations, so an OS that can schedule threads rapidly may not change much after all.

Access to medication, which is reported to work well in conjunction with targeted therapy such as cognitive behavioral therapy.

For more info see the book "Taking Charge of Adult ADHD" by Russel Barkley https://www.amazon.com/dp/1462546854 and the DIVA-5 test that many physicians use as part of the diagnosis process https://www.divacenter.eu (costs 10 EUR to download the PDF).

I recall seeing something similar a while back, you'd traceroute to some IP address and the output was the opening text of a star wars movie https://www.theregister.com/2013/02/15/star_wars_traceroute/

SUSE | Software Engineer | REMOTE or ONSITE | Full Time

Senior Kernel Engineer

The SUSE Performance team is recruiting a senior kernel engineer. In this role, they will be responsible for fixing bugs, kernel maintenance, developing new features, performance regression analysis and improving performance in general for containers (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes) and control groups.

SUSE is strongly committed to open source, and we actively contribute to numerous FOSS projects and initiatives. We embrace and believe in the open source innovation model and the open source business model. As a member of our kernel team you will have the opportunity to contribute to the Linux kernel and related tools.

How to apply

Preferably, submit all relevant information in a single PDF file, so that no important detail is lost in transit. Give us some time to process your application. Expect the interview to be done over phone. Form submission for this position at https://jobs.suse.com/us/en/job/71000279/Senior-Kernel-Engin...

This is not the only job opening currently available at SUSE, see suse.com/jobs

SUSE | Software Engineer | REMOTE or ONSITE | Full Time

Senior Kernel Engineer

The SUSE Performance team is recruiting a senior kernel engineer. In this role, they will be responsible for fixing bugs, kernel maintenance, developing new features, performance regression analysis and improving performance in general. A specific focus on the CPU scheduler is desirable.

SUSE is strongly committed to open source, and we actively contribute to numerous FOSS projects and initiatives. We embrace and believe in the open source innovation model and the open source business model. As a member of our kernel team you will have the opportunity to contribute to the Linux kernel and related tools.

How to apply

Preferably, submit all relevant information in a single PDF file, so that no important detail is lost in transit. Give us some time to process your application. Expect the interview to be done over phone. Form submission for this position at https://jobs.suse.com/us/en/job/71000047/Senior-Kernel-Engin...

This is not the only job opening currently available at SUSE, see suse.com/jobs

SUSE | Software Engineer | REMOTE or ONSITE | Full Time

Arm Kernel Software Engineer

We're looking for an experienced Arm Linux developer to help our team make Linux run on specific Arm machines, implement new features and solve bugs in the kernel and other core software. If you can analyze and fix kernel crashes, have a clue on how to track down mysterious system hangs and like working with open-source communities, then this is the job for you.

Requirements are excellent knowledge of the C programming language, knowledge of the Arm architecture, understanding of the open source development processes and culture, version control with git. Experience with Linux kernel development is appreciated.

How to apply

Preferably, submit all relevant information in a single PDF file, so that no important detail is lost in transit. Give us some time to process your application. Expect the interview to be done over phone. Form submission for this position at https://jobs.suse.com/us/en/job/71000102/Arm-Kernel-Software...

This is not the only job opening currently available at SUSE, see suse.com/jobs

SUSE | Software Engineer | REMOTE (worldwide) or ONSITE | Full Time

Debug Infrastructure Developer (Linux/GDB)

As SUSE Labs toolchain developer you will be working with the community to improve the Linux toolchain (mainly GCC, GDB, binutils and glibc), concentrating on debugging facilities. Your responsibilities will include fixing implementation problems, discussing design ideas and implementing them when concluded as viable and feasible. You will be presenting your work by providing whitepapers or articles or by giving presentations at technical conferences.

10% of your work time will be reserved for general open source work. This is not limited to toolchain issues and you can chose freely on what projects to spend it on.

The team is widely distributed around the world, and most of its members are working remotely. If you want to work from a SUSE office instead, that is fine as well.

How to apply

Preferably, submit all relevant information in a single PDF file, so that no important detail is lost in transit. Give us some time to process your application. Expect the interview to be done over phone. Form submission for this position at https://jobs.suse.com/job/nuremberg/debug-infrastructure-dev...

This is not the only job opening currently available at SUSE, see suse.com/jobs

These slides are from the talk given at the Open Source Summit (formerly known as LinuxCon) last week in Prague. The abstract given at the talk page https://osseu17.sched.com/event/ByYt/replace-your-exploit-ri... is

With the WikiLeaks release of the vault7 material, the security of the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) firmware used in most PCs and laptops is once again a concern. UEFI is a proprietary and closed-source operating system, with a codebase almost as large as the Linux kernel, that runs when the system is powered on and continues to run after it boots the OS (hence its designation as a “Ring -2 hypervisor"). It is a great place to hide exploits since it never stops running, and these exploits are undetectable by kernels and programs.

Our answer to this is NERF (Non-Extensible Reduced Firmware), an open source software system developed at Google to replace almost all of UEFI firmware with a tiny Linux kernel and initramfs. The initramfs file system contains an init and command line utilities from the u-root project (http://u-root.tk/), which are written in the Go language.