Yes, but at the same time can we stop marketing as “self driving cars” normal cars with a somewhat sophisticated cruise control, like Teslas, and stop pretending their “super full self driving unsupervised for realsies plus plus” is a “self drive mode”?
Well, there’s nothing yet that even resembles a comparable replacement with a different architecture (RISC-V?). So even if they were angling for that, it would have to be at least 3 years away, plus if Intel and Power PC are anything to go by, there’s another 5 years until they drop support. So at a minimum, if someone buys a M-series laptop today, they can expect support for 8 years.
Not terrible, given how Microsoft left 3-year-old computers unsupported by surprise with the TPM requirement in Windows 11.
But this is only because of execs’ stupidity.
For a simple task that AI can actually do, say a boring text processing task, the API calls don’t just cost less than my salary, they typically cost less than keeping the monitor on during the time it would take me to do it.
However when companies are stupid and decide to do things such as “tokenmaxxing” or leaderboards for who can waste more AI compute, you end up with things like calling multi-trillion models to do number calculations, or passing a 300k token context into every turn of the chat and giving it your entire codebase to change two lines of code.
This one I blame squarely on stupid CEOs and execs. The smaller version of Gemma 4 is low-powered enough that can run on phones, and can output usable results for many use cases.
Isn’t this from building data centres and renting them out to other companies (e.g. Anthropic) that have AI tools/models that have at least some utility?
Depends on what the targets are for the C-Suite, but in 2026 one could assume yes.
Like Gmail? Google drive? Slack?
I’m not defending AI, but I can come up with >10 products that would absolutely cripple the company I work at if the provider suddenly says “Soz, terms of service violation”.
Vendor reliance is dangerous. That doesn’t just apply to AI. If the company in OP’s message had both Claude and Gemini they’d been okay, so the problem isn’t with AI explicitly - the problem is with reliance on services that are critical for workflows, and providers being able to change their mind at a moment’s notice.
In any case, leaving aside where the problem is, the idea that 60 employees can’t use Natural Intelligence to do their jobs means there’s something really wrong with that company…
First of all, I’m going to say that I don’t think this comparison actually makes sense and I was just entertaining the question of the message I was replying to - humans are machines are way too different to reduce the comparison to merely “which is more energy efficient”.
But second, I compared to the same level - I stopped at infrastructure. I didn’t consider the costs (energy or otherwise) of building a solar panel or power plants in the same way I didn’t consider the costs of a frying pan, a hob, or farms. Because if we do that, then any point we make about this needs to be a 500 page dissertation, not a Lemmy message.
The good news is that data for how much material/energy is required for a solar panel is freely available, and also that a solar panel can be used for energy generation many more times than a cow.
Well, in pure energy usage, no; however if you take into account the energy usage of the whole chain, they’re orders of magnitude better.
After all, they can even be hooked up to a solar panel directly. For us to get 2000 kJ of energy, we need to water plants for a year, transport them, spend more than 2000 kJ of electricity cooking, and that’s not even considering raising an animal for x months or years which needs >5000 kJ a day to just exist. Our sun->movement energy efficiency rate is pretty appalling and orders of magnitude worse than a robot’s - even if the robot is just hooked onto the regular grid.
My money would be on Mandarin but… Boy it’s a hard language. The English has a few quirks but it is an EASY language compared to most, including French. IMO, this and not number of native speakers or economic power alone explains best English overtaking French and establishing itself as de facto lingua franca of the 21st century.
The only thing is that the 8GB Framework 12 is a bit more expensive than the (8GB) MacBook Neo, and if you get it to 16GB it starts getting close to MacBook Air territory. But if you can sacrifice the nice build quality and nice screen plus spend some extra £, you can get Linux and a repairable laptop.
In any case: Windows is just not a value proposition anymore. Why pay extra to deal with Intel, MS and Copilot?
It used to be really hard to defend Apple and the pricing of their “budget” lines. But these days it seems manufacturers are trying HARD to make apple look like the sensible option.
£1099 for a 2 year old processor, 1080p, 256GB and 16GB RAM, and it doesn’t even run linux but windows? How’s that better than a £1099 Macbook Air that comes with a better screen, brand new processor, 512GB and the same 16GB of RAM?
At this point you’re paying extra for the privilege of dealing with Windows and Copilot. 🙄
At the risk of being called a corporate bootlicker, it sounds like it isn’t their own, it was their employer’s.
If it’s your own, absolutely, fair play. If it’s your employer’s… Then it feels murkier. I wouldn’t blame their IT department for being quite cross if/when time comes to upgrade and return the laptop and give it a second life. For example, I would be quite pissed if IT gave me a defaced laptop like this as a loaner while mine is getting repaired.
I have never seen “immense” spelled that way!
That’s a big difference but not all. The sub-$1000 ultrabook sector has SO MUCH garbage, like Intel Celerons that stutter when you scroll down a web page designed in 2022+. Manufacturers are happy because they can sell rubbish and uncle John with no idea about computers will say “I want a laptop with 1 TB so it’s faster, and it must have free office 365 and an antivirus”…
So when someone puts a phone processor in a laptop and builds a chassis that isn’t a $5 extruded plastic shell, they panic because it still manages to be better in both benchmarks and real world use despite the paltry amount of RAM.
Unlike the equivalent Windows 11 laptop with 32 GB of RAM and an Intel Celeron, where you’d get to experience that speed… Never. But sure, you can have all your apps frozen at once.
Performance wise it’s an interesting one. I think from a price and energy standpoint it sits squarely against windows ultrabooks with a Snapdragon X, for example, a Galaxy Book 4 Edge.
Based purely on benchmarks, the A18 Pro is weaker than that, plus you have only 8GB of RAM.
However - I have a Surface Pro X with the original SQ1, with roughly 40% of the performance of these… And even at that level, the problem is Windows on ARM, not the performance. It only lets you down for things it’s clearly not meant to do, like video editing.
Another alternative I see for that price is a windows laptop with an i5-1334U, which theoretically gives you a raw performance within 2% of the A18 Pro.
Given that at this price Linux compatibility is an absolute lottery, would I sacrifice half the RAM for having an OS that isn’t Windows? Yeah there’s not much to think. W11 will probably eat half the RAM on telemetry alone, and Apple’s BS is easier to put up with than MicroSlop’s…
The LLM is whatever you want it to be. Self hosted or from any provider with a compatible endpoint. It’s likely a proprietary one… Because the cost of training LLMs means most are proprietary ones.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with running Openclaw. What is way too brave for my taste is giving it access to accounts with your personal data, or the filesystem in your computer. That’s a disaster waiting to happen.
I run it in an isolated server, and it doesn’t have access to my data - if it goes tits up, it deletes unimportant stuff only. If anyone gets access to the credentials in it, it’s a bunch of budget-limited API keys, so they can spend all of $4 on openrouter. Maybe the riskiest bit is its Google account. I went with the approach of giving it its own Google account, so that it can create docs and calendar events and then add me, rather than getting access to my Google account. But then again… That account has no payment info, nothing that I would be mega worried if it got leaked…
Sure, it might limit the usefulness a bit, but I think installing something like this is only acceptable if you sandbox it and don’t let it access valuable information. Going full mad scientist on something as “alpha” as this, letting it run wild with your info is nuts.
Some really good advice that someone gave me once is that the internet doesn’t exist.
Sure, it obviously does exist, but this was about communication style. When you send an email, you change codes and don’t write in the same way as a WhatsApp - you can expand your points more… But you should never forget you’re talking to a person - just because it’s internet, you shouldn’t talk any different to them.
You shouldn’t assume that the message is anonymous just because it’s internet. You shouldn’t assume certain things are okay “just because it’s internet”.
I don’t think they were 100% right because they were disregarding that code changing between different mediums and audiences is normal (you don’t talk the same way to your boss and your partner, or in written form vs spoken), but I do stand by the point that you shouldn’t change code or make assumptions just because “internet”.
It was at the beginning, but lately it’s been hot garbage. I think they’ve nerfed it on purpose so that the migration to gemini is an easier sell.
For me, I’m happy it now understands “hey Google, how’s my timer?” As equivalent of “how long is left on my timer” and no longer answers that question with “it’s seven fifty two pm” 😡