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hersh @literature.cafe
Posts 2
Comments 77
Giuliani’s attempts to overturn 2020 election partly thwarted by wrong number
  • Never liked him, but I acknowledge that he had some effective economic policies during his time as mayor. He was at least competent and sane. He went completely off the rails a long time ago, though.

    He's often credited with cleaning up Times Square, which was known for prostitution back in the 80s. But honestly, he reaped what his predecessors sowed to a large degree.

    He used 9/11 like his personal sword and shield. He was lucky to be in a prominent position related the biggest and least controversial issue in America. I don't imagine he ever would have been on the national stage otherwise. He was pretty much at the natural end of his career before then.

    NYC has a history of conservative mayors, which seems a bit odd since we're so solidly liberal in federal elections. It sure doesn't help when we get a Democrat as infantile and corrupt as our current mayor, Eric Adams. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Eric_Adams

  • PIC

    1
    Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills
  • Absolutely this. Phones are the primary device for Gen Z. Phone use doesn't develop tech skills because there's barely anything you can do with the phones. This is particularly true with iOS, but still applies to Android.

    Even as an IT administrator, there's hardly anything I can do when troubleshooting phone problems. Oh, push notifications aren't going through? Well, there are no useful logs or anything for me to look at, so...cool. It makes me crazy how little visibility I have into anything on iPhones or iPads. And nobody manages "Android" in general; at best they manage like two specific models of one specific brand (usually Samsung or Google). It's impossible to manage arbitrary Android phones because there's so little standardization and so little control over the software in the general case.

  • World's first bioprocessor uses 16 human brain organoids for ‘a million times less power’ consumption than a digital chip
  • Is this legit? This is the first time I've heard of human neurons used for such a purpose. Kind of surprised that's legal. Instinctively, I feel like a "human brain organoid" is close enough to a human that you cannot wave away the potential for consciousness so easily. At what point does something like this deserve human rights?

    I notice that the paper is published in Frontiers, the same journal that let the notorious AI-generated giant-rat-testicles image get published. They are not highly regarded in general.

  • Google AI making up recalls that didn’t happen
  • DuckDuckGo is an easy first step. It's free, publicly available, and familiar to anyone who is used to Google. Results are sourced largely from Bing, so there is second-hand rot, but IMHO there was a tipping point in 2023 where DDG's results became generally more useful than Google's or Bing's. (That's my personal experience; YMMV.) And they're not putting half-assed AI implementations front and center (though they have some experimental features you can play with if you want).

    If you want something AI-driven, Perplexity.ai is pretty good. Bing Chat is worth looking at, but last I checked it was still too hallucinatory to use for general search, and the UI is awful.

    I've been using Kagi for a while now and I find its quick summaries (which are not displayed by default for web searches) much, much better than this. For example, here's what Kagi's "quick answer" feature gives me with this search term:

    Room for improvement, sure, but it's not hallucinating anything, and it cites its sources. That's the bare minimum anyone should tolerate, and yet most of the stuff out there falls wayyyyy short.

  • Just booted fresh Debian install with 7900 XTX: Getting errors at boot
  • I recently upgraded to a 7900 XTX on Debian stable, as well. I'm running the newest kernel from Debian's backports repo (6.6, I think), and I didn't have that same problem.

    I did have other problems with OpenCL, though. I made a thread about this and solved it with some trouble. Check my post history if you're interested. I hope it helps. I can take a closer look at my now-working system for comparison if you have further issues.

  • How can I get OpenCL to work on Debian Bookworm with an AMD 7900 XTX?
  • IT WORKS NOW! I will need time to run additional tests, but the gist of my solution was:

    1. Backport llvm-18 from sid following the guide you linked at https://wiki.debian.org/SimpleBackportCreation

    2. After compiling and installing all those deb files, I then installed the "jammy" version of amdgpu-install_6.0.60002-1.deb from https://www.amd.com/en/support/linux-drivers

    3. Downloaded the latest kernel sources from https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git, and simply copied all the files from its lib/firmware/amdgpu folder into my system's /lib/firmware/amdgpu. Got that idea from https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/amdgpu-doesnt-seem-to-function-with-navi-31-rx-7900-xtx/72647

    4. sudo update-initramfs -u && sudo reboot

    I'm not totally sure it step 3 was sane or necessary. Perhaps the missing piece before that was that I needed to manually update my initramfs? I've tried like a million things at this point and my system is dirty, so I will probably roll back to my snapshot from before all of this and attempt to re-do it with the minimal steps, when I have time.

    Anyway, I was able to run a real-world OpenCL benchmark, and it's crazy-fast compared to my old GTX 1080. Actually a bigger difference than I expected. Like 6x.

    THANKS FOR THE HELP!

  • How can I get OpenCL to work on Debian Bookworm with an AMD 7900 XTX?
  • Thanks for the links! I've never attempted making my own backport before. I'll give it a shot. I might also try re-upgrading to sid to see if I can wrangle it a little differently. Maybe I don't actually need mesa-opencl-ics if I'm installing AMD's installer afterwards anyway. At least, I found something to that effect in a different but similar discussion.

  • How can I get OpenCL to work on Debian Bookworm with an AMD 7900 XTX?
  • Update: I upgraded to Sid. Unfortunately, mesa-opencl-icd depends on libclc-17, which uninstalls -18. So I can't get OpenCL working while the correct libclc is installed.

    No idea where to go from here. I'll probably restore my Bookworm snapshot, since I don't want to be on Sid if it doesn't solve this problem.

  • How can I get OpenCL to work on Debian Bookworm with an AMD 7900 XTX?
  • Update: Running amdgpu-install did not provide those files. There were a few errors regarding vulkan packages when I attempted, I guess because it's assuming Ubuntu repos. Trying with just opencl and not vulkan succeded, but still clinfo reported the missing files.

    I don't think I can get this working without a whole newer llvm.

  • How can I get OpenCL to work on Debian Bookworm with an AMD 7900 XTX?
  • Ah, somehow I didn't see 18 there and only looked at 17. Thanks!

    I tried pulling just the one package from the sid repo, but that created a cascade of dependencies, including all of llvm. I was able to get those files installed but not able to get clinfo to succeed. I also tried installing llvm-19 from the repo at https://apt.llvm.org/, with similar results. clinfo didn't throw the fatal errors anymore, but it didn't work, either. It still reported Number of devices 0 and OpenCL-based tools crashed anyway. Not with the same error, but with something generic about not finding a device or possibly having corrupt drivers.

    Should I bite the bullet and do a full ugprade to sid, or is there some way to this more precisely that won't muck up Bookworm?

  • How can I get OpenCL to work on Debian Bookworm with an AMD 7900 XTX?
  • Thanks, that's good advice. There are lower-numbered gfx* files in there. 900, 902, 904, 906. No 1030 or 1100. Same after reinstalling.

    Looks like these files are actually provided by the libclc-15 package. libclc-16 has the same set of files. Even libclc-17 from sid has the same files. So I guess upgrading to testing/unstable wouldn't help.

    apt-file search gfx1100-amdgcn-mesa-mesa3d.bc yields no results, so I guess I need to go outside of the Debian repos. I'll try the AMD package tonight.

  • How can I get OpenCL to work on Debian Bookworm with an AMD 7900 XTX?

    I looked this up before buying the GPU, and I read that it should "just work" on Debian stable (Bookworm, 12). Well, it doesn't "just work" for me. :(

    clinfo returns two fatal errors:

    ``` fatal error: cannot open file '/usr/lib/clc/gfx1100-amdgcn-mesa-mesa3d.bc': No such file or directory

    fatal error: cannot open file '/usr/lib/clc/gfx1030-amdgcn-mesa-mesa3d.bc': No such file or directory

    ```

    I get similar errors when trying to run OpenCL-based programs.

    I'm running a backported kernel, 6.6.13, and the latest Bookworm-supported mesa-opencl-icd, 22.3.6. From what I've found online, this should work, though Mesa 23.x is recommended. Is it safe/sane to install Mesa from Debian Trixie (testing)?

    I've also seen references to AMD's official proprietary drivers. They do not officially support Debian, but can/should I run the Ubuntu installer anyway?

    I'm hoping to get this up and running without any drastic measures like distro hopping. That said, if "upgrade to Testing or Unstable" is the simplest approach, I am willing to entertain the idea.

    Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

    16
    DuckDuckGo now has an AI prompt available in beta, and I can already see it on my devices. Does it affect privacy? If so, what alternatives do we have?
  • Thanks! I didn't see that. Relevant bit for convenience:

    we call model providers on your behalf so your personal information (for example, IP address) is not exposed to them. In addition, we have agreements in place with all model providers that further limit how they can use data from these anonymous requests that includes not using Prompts and Outputs to develop or improve their models as well as deleting all information received within 30 days.

    Pretty standard stuff for such services in my experience.

  • DuckDuckGo now has an AI prompt available in beta, and I can already see it on my devices. Does it affect privacy? If so, what alternatives do we have?
  • I'm not entirely clear on which (anti-)features are only in the browser vs in the web site as well. It sounds like they are steering people toward their commercial partners like Binance across the board.

    Personally I find the cryptocurrency stuff off-putting in general. Not trying to push my opinion on you though. If you don't object to any of that stuff, then as far as I know Brave is fine for you.