A mindless thought I had regarding the "AI apocalypse" goes something like this: Remember the whole 2012 apocalypse? Mayan calendar, Novelty Theory and all that? Well ...
2012:
"AlexNet, a deep learning model developed by Alex Krizhevsky, wins the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge with half as many errors as the second-place winner. This is a turning point in the history of AI; over the next few years, dozens of other approaches to image recognition were abandoned in favor of deep learning."
Alexnet won in September 2012. That's right there with the Mayan ending of November 2012 and the Timewave Zero prediction of infinite novelty happening in December 2012. All pseudo scientific nonsense but entertaining none the less. Good luck to us all while we pass through the great filter.
What you want to look for is called "Commercial Signage Display". These are basically large "TV" monitors that are sold to businesses like sports bars.
I used to go on here about Sceptre TVs, because they are relatively cheap and dumb as a brick. Was just shopping for one because of this LG news (wanted to replace my old one from 2014), and while Sceptre still lists them on their website, they tell me to go to Amazon or Walmart to buy one.
Amazon and Walmart say they are out of stock, with no expected date.
My conclusion is that Sceptre, the last holdout in the dumb TV industry, has quit in favor of focusing on monitors/displays for computers. Now I'm not sure if I'm going to ever replace my TV!
Just keep it disconnected and enjoy the "dumb" TV with a streamer box.
The reports of user-disconnected TVs jumping on open wifis or Amazon sidewalk by themselves are not credible. All of the problems stem from connecting the TV so don't.
I would be surprised if a truly dumb TV would be as good quality as modern LGs etc for the price. Maybe I'm wrong. But please don't pay _more_ for a dumb TV.
I’m looking for a TV and it seems like dumb ones simply aren’t available anymore
Seems like the only options are:
1. Buy a smart TV and not connect it to the internet and/or physically neuter it by unplugging the Wifi/Bluetooth module. I wish there was more info about this out there as I assume there are some models that don’t allow this
2. Buy a projector. I’ve been using a cheap $80 projector for a few years due to space constraints in the apartment I was living in. Now that I’m in a larger apartment, I wanted to buy a TV. But all this has me wondering whether I should just buy a better projector
It does have the “drawback” that it can only be used after sunset (assuming you don’t have a basement or blackout curtains or something). But I find that this provides a natural hard cap to the screen time that everyone is trying so hard to cut back on
TBH only hope at this point is for BOE/PRC panel makers to thoroughly involute and for bare panels + dumb connectors make it to aliexpress, i.e. like we have after market screens for everything else. Buy a screen, buy a case, get your dumb screen. TV manufactures will absolutely not pass up ad monetization, especially Korean ones that can't survive with lower margins.
I just got a new TV and agonized over how to get one that was dumb. I wasn't confident that it would be sufficiently dumb at the time of purchase, but I got a TCL QM6K. This was incidentally recommended by the 4K TV subreddit as one of the cheaper "good" TVs that you can buy this year, which I was glad to read, because I don't particularly care about agonizing over TV hardware details and I was glad to outsource that train of thought.
I set the TV up and was immediately pleased. The first thing it did was ask me if I wanted "smart" or "basic" mode. I selected basic mode, skipped the network connection, and disagreed to as many policies as it would let me. One week in, it hasn't nagged me a single time to connect to the internet or tried to push any other BS on me. I have it hooked up to an Apple TV and my Switch, and it seems to just work.
So yeah, I hope I'm not jinxing something here, but TCL was a great way to go for a delightful dumb TV experience.
The thing which depresses me the most is all these so-called smart TV's are giant Arm computers that run malicious software. Imagine if we could re-flash your TV with Linux or whatever.
I can imagine that. We'd have a slow SBC with a fast video decoder, a huge screen that is inseparable and also now uncalibrated, some video inputs for other things, maybe a tuner if anyone can figure it out, and some kind of network connectivity.
I could probably come up with a use for that, but it's about as likely as coming up with a plan for one of the Raspberry Pi Zero Ws that are sitting in the drawer.
I feel like all the closed model providers are milking it as they likely know open models on local hardware will one day eat their lunch. We all know it's not a matter of if but when. The company goes bankrupt, the hardware and property sold off, banks holding the bag.
The only way out is to develop a model vastly more powerful and capable that we have now. The market believes theres a good chance of that, although I've never understood why its truly winner-take-all
Yeah avoiding all mention of the huge financial incentives that may push for “pacing the frontier” makes it seem like the opposite of a credibility boost for these firms.
It seems damaging since most folks (who lack insider knowledge) will naturally wonder if it’s due to plateauing performance per $ or some other non “alignment” reason.
Cloud models will always have massive benefits of scale.
Caching is the simplest one to understand, cloud providers often reach a 90% cache hit rate, so hosting the same request locally on the exact same model on the same hardware is often way less efficient than on the cloud where a group of users generates a healthy cache.
KV cache is per conversation, I'm getting 100% hit rate on my single tenant local set up.
The benefits of scale are on the token generation side, you can batch rounds and generate tokens for multiple conversations per pass instead of just one token per pass.
I heard a story recently from a friend who mingles with a lot of tech and finance people. One conversation happened after a meeting between a group which deeply bothers him to this day. The conversation basically went like this: "How will all the humans rendered obsolete by AI die?" Answers ranged form "Maybe they will die in riots" or die of starvation from food shortages, or hey, gunned down by AI drones.
I asked him "Are you sure it wasn't dark humor" - "NO! They were dead serious."
There's a cult around AI, not the users, but people with wealth and power who would be more than happy if there were less people. A lot less people.
> I brought up the ordinary comforts of kinship, friendship, craft, memory, legend, lore, skills passed down across generations, and other benefits that small towns provide: things that make human beings human beings. I pointed out that there must be something in the kind of places he grew up in worth preserving. I dared venture that it is always worth mourning when a venerable human community passes from the Earth; that maybe people are more than just figures finding their proper price on the balance sheet of life …
> And that’s when the man in the castle with the seven fireplaces said it.
> “I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.”
Yes, it's absolutely a cult. I'd even go so far as to say it's a death cult.
I don't fear genAI even a little. I am terrified and angered by genAI companies and their most hardcore supporters, though. I think they present a genuine danger to us all.
There was also the Micro-A which I found on some dev boards. I think the Arduino Due (Arm Cortex M3 chip) used one for the USB host port as well as an Atmel Arm uc board.
Also that weird, really small USB connector that was found on some early digital cameras. I think Kodak was a big user of it. Sorta looked like a narrower and taller version of the Mini-B. Maybe the Mini-AB but that doesn't look like it. I have one in my box at home.
> Ziptie once coiled, attach label for what format / length.
Please god, no more zip ties. Use double sided Velcro strap. You can buy it in a roll and cut to length. Reuse it all you want. Join multiple shorter lengths to make a longer one. Just please don't make me cut another god damn zip tie off a bundled cord. I deal with enough zip tie bondage fetishists at work.
double-sided velcro holds less well and is more likely to stick to things. Just toss a pair of diags in your box if you are worried about getting the zip ties off.
I am talking about frivolous use of zip ties and over-application. Things like zip tying an extension cord for storage. And over application as in every 2-4 inches on cable bundles. Madness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_artificial_intelli...
2012: "AlexNet, a deep learning model developed by Alex Krizhevsky, wins the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge with half as many errors as the second-place winner. This is a turning point in the history of AI; over the next few years, dozens of other approaches to image recognition were abandoned in favor of deep learning."
Alexnet won in September 2012. That's right there with the Mayan ending of November 2012 and the Timewave Zero prediction of infinite novelty happening in December 2012. All pseudo scientific nonsense but entertaining none the less. Good luck to us all while we pass through the great filter.
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