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by teekert 36 days ago
Not sure why you're donwvoted. I too see the downsides as well as the upsides. The high prices vs the people that use their excess solar to power a GPU that powers an agent that messed about with an ESP32 and some sensors to build nice Home Automation integrations. Etc.

Of course it's hard to be positive when you lost your job, I get that.
1 comments
tavavex 36 days ago
The downsides you're listing are real things that are already affecting us. The upsides are imaginary and reliant on a very positive outlook for the future. My view is that we'll be renting someone else's server time because GPUs will all be tailored to datacenters and either too expensive or useless for home computing. Only to generate the ESP32 home automation project that was probably already generated or human-written a thousand times in the past and could be found by a quick Github search. Silver linings or not, this doesn't seem like a deal I would take.

Energy will probably get cheaper and cleaner though, can't deny that. I'll just need something to run on that energy.

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doctorwho42 36 days ago
> Energy will probably get cheaper and cleaner though, can't deny that. I'll just need something to run on that energy.

Citations needed. From what I see is

(1) the demand for electricity is growing at an explosive rate

(2) The AI data center build out is relying more on natural gas than you might expect. I believe it was the utah one that plans to build the world's largest gas power plant, which the next largest one is orders of magnitude smaller.

(3) The US is actively blocking hardware from China being sold in the US (low cost high grade solar panels, electric cars, etc.)

So, yes I deny that energy is getting cleaner and cheaper. In fact, I think it's going the exact opposite... It's getting more expensive and dirtier!!!

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teekert 36 days ago
Ah yes, personal computing was also supposed to come to an end. Yet here I am, on the best Linux ever with the most beautiful desktop being productive with all my favorite tools, not worrying about drivers or compatibility or anything. All for free, freedom included.
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