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Don't know if I missed an announcement on WAN show saying such or something, but the flannel shirts seem to be out of stock in every size with a "this item will not be restocked"-message. Are they permanently discontinued? Afaik they were very popular, so I was surprised that they are (seemingly) completely gone...

Summary Via a video uploaded on the 1st of January 2024 at 4pm UTC, precisely a decade after his first upload at 4pm UTC on the 1st of January 2014, Tom Scott has announced that he is stepping back from his YouTube channel indefinitely. This marks the end of a 10-year, one-video-per-week streak for his channel. He will still be producing his newsletter and podcast, but the main channel will no longer be updated (unless Tom sporadically decides to). Tom Scott has made videos on various topics from Computer Science, to linguistics, to random experiments and skits, to (more recently) interesting places, feats of engineering, and projects. He has probably been one of the platform's longest and most consistent content creators, and now he's decided that a decade is enough; he kept up the channel uninterrupted for 10 years, and that's a nice point to end on. Quotes My thoughts Tom Scott is one of the OG YouTube creators. I have been following him from when the website looked very different, through university and into working, and now all good things must come to an end. I personally think it is good to see someone go "this is making me happy, but I'd also like to relax" and bow out after 10 years of improving their video and production skills, and highlighting a bunch of different, odd, fun, and interesting projects and ideas to people who might never otherwise have heard of them. Tom Scott will be missed, for sure, but better to end on a high note / slightly too soon, than burn out, crash, and/or start something bigger, which he explicitly said he doesn't want to do. Reading through the comments, it is clear that he has had an impact on many well-known creators as well: electroboom, vlogbrothers, slo-mo guys, Gamer's Nexus, Jay Foreman, SmarterEveryDay, AbroadInJapan, Alan Walker, TEDEd, blenderguru, HowToDad, and many other well-known youtubers have left their comments saying thank you and goodbye. Sources

You know your sister best. So if you think she would find MacOS to be too much to adapt to, then that's absolutely fair. In my honest opinion, you are probably better off with something else. The XPS-series is sexy, no doubt, but you are getting into prosumer-to-business territory, which is overkill for uni and there is no sense in spending more money than necessary. (I've got 8 years of background in Computer Science at uni level, and I would be hesitant to suggest them for our students.) Okay, so €1400 at most, and if it costs less, that would be a nice plus. In this case: If you prioritise less weight above less money spent: the LG Gram 14" -- it is without competition the lightest option, has good battery life (probably around 8-10 hours of uni use), and has many ports for plugging USB devices etc. into. Performance might be slightly below XPS-territory, but not by much. It being the lightest while still having great performance comes at a cost though, it is around €1400, so at the upper bound of your budget. If you want to save a bit of money: the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7i 14" () -- you gain ~½kg, but you save €300, and with 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and a similar size battery as the Gram, it should absolutely be fine for uni. For a mixed bag of battery life, money savings, screen size, and weight: the Acer Swift 3 -- more weight, but back to 1TB of storage, with a smaller 13" screen which may or may not be a dealbreaker vs 14" the HP Envy x360 -- main downside is less storage (512GB, I'm personally not certain this would be enough, but you may disagree), also with a smaller 13" screen. Prioritising saving money: the Lenovo Yoga Slim 6i -- okay but not spectacular, a good middle-of-the-road compromise the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 -- this is probably at the edge of what I would be comfortable recommending in terms of battery life and performance, but it is also significantly cheaper, which is absolutely worth bearing in mind. Any laptop with "Gaming" in the name will not be lighter nor have better battery life. For uni, and based on your preferences for a recommendation, I'd prioritise battery life over weight, weight over size, and size (and all the previous) much more over gaming capabilities. Hence the list above Some general considerations for laptops: Resolution doesn't matter that much on those screen sizes, but they do drain battery; go 1080p-1600p depending on what's available. 4k does not make a noticeable difference at 13"-15.6" screen sizes, but it will halve your battery life at the very least. Gaming and battery longevity do not go together; gaming on a laptop will reduce its battery time to 1-3 hours. Games are intensive to run and that means more power consumption. No portable laptop will be able to game anywhere near desktop-like performance (or gaming laptop, but they're not portable). It'll be around medium to low settings, possibly even needing to render at 720p and upscale for some modern or graphically intense games. But that's okay (in my opinion): it's meant to be portable and last a day, any gaming performance you get on top is really nice but not the main point of the device. RTINGS, a very reputable review site, also has a list of best battery life laptops that might be worth looking at (including the table at the bottom of the article): https://www.rtings.com/laptop/reviews/best/battery-life There is a limit of 3 free review-views per device you're viewing it on (so 6 if you've got both a laptop and phone to open different reviews). Or you may be able to get around it by clearing cookies and/or using a VPN if you have one. I hope this helps. Happy to answer questions if you have them :)

It's always difficult to recommend things without a concrete budget range. Might also be good if you can provide the region (US, Asia, Europe, ...) :) In terms of screen size, a lot of laptops come with 14" screens these days, so that might be a perfect middle ground. LG has their Gram laptops; they're not the cheapest, but in terms of weight and battery life, they're still excellent as far as I know. Then there are ultrabooks like the ThinkPad and XPS series. Slightly cheaper there is the HP Dragonfly, Asus Zenbook, that kind of thing. On a smaller budget, Lenovo's ThinkBook or IdeaPad might be an option? Lenovo's website also lets you configure most of their laptops, so you could play around with that to see if there is a combination which works for what you're looking for. This is going to be challenging. You've mentioned that budget is a constraint, and that it has to be a Windows machine, but the truth is that M1/M2 MacBooks are unrivaled in terms of battery life; they will easily be able to hold up to this requirement, whereas a Windows machine will probably need to be briefly plugged in at some point during the day. If your sister is happy keeping her current laptop as a gaming-only machine, the Windows requirement is not one by her university, and budget allows, that's what I'd go for. It will take a bit of adjusting, but it's the best option in my honest opinion. If your budget is really tight, I'd look for a used T-series ThinkPad, one of the ones with a hot-swappable battery. They're built like a tank, you can carry a spare battery to swap over when it runs out and switches to the internal one, screen will be smaller but useable. This will severely affect your gaming and weight options though...

It's hard to search the Wan Shows, but I am sure there was one where Linus mentioned that the payroll is now into 6 (or maybe 7) figures annually. They're employing over 100 people now, and while it's unlikely that they all earn the same, at that (business-wise, relatively small) scale it'll cost you millions just to pay people. (The only vaguely relevant reference point I have is academia, which pays nothing, and grants are usually in the millions to pay for 4-5 people for 4 years.) In the recent fibre upgrade video, I believe they mentioned their internet is 10k-50k per month, or something like that. For a direct ISP line and corporate internet, but still... The editing computers hopefully get turned off overnight, as do ligths and similar. But the servers running Floatplane, the forum, hosting their editing footage, etc. are all in-house afaik, and they can't be cheap to run 24/7. There are some resources about business electricity rates in British Columbia (which is where I believe LMG is located) and how to calculate your server consumption, which would let us get a rough estimate. But I'm not awake enough to do the maths right now

Summary Elon Musk tweeted a video of a flickering 'X' and then in Twitter's voice chat Spaces, confirmed that the iconic blue bird logo would be replaced by the X. This comes after musk acquired Twitter and renamed the company "X Corp", and is likely part of his desire to create a ubiquitous "everything app" for payments, social interactions, chats, etc. similar to China's WeeChat. The change could be enacted as early as tomorrow (Monday 24th of July), "if a good enough X logo is posted". Quotes My thoughts Another day another Musk's Twitter controversy? Apart from the part where nobody could read tweets without signing in, this will probably be the most visible change to Twitter. Some people will likely say that this, this is the final nail in the coffin and everyone will switch, but I honestly doubt it; the users have been through so much, and the mass exodus and immediate downfall never really came to be. I'd love to be wrong though (although ideally not to the benefit of Threads, but that's the most likely). We also need to wait and see if the madlad actually does it. He's made empty promises before, and taken u-turns on big changes like the sign-in-only viewing. But maybe we'll wake up tomorrow, and there will be a barrage of confused tweets about what the new 'X' app is and why it changed. Sources https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66284304 https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitter-change-logo-adieu-all-birds-2023-07-23/ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/business/elon-musk-twitter-logo.html

Sorry, that was a mistake on my end; 1200 is accurate. Thanks for the info about the CPU! I thought it was the other way around: that the 7600X gave a decent perf bump. Glad to know I can save some money there. Unfortunately, the WiFi is non-negotiable. My apartment building doesn't provide ethernet. I'm curious about the choice of the 6800 XT. Is it that much better than the 6700 XT? : ) The extra €200 is quite a bit on top...

I forget the exact model, but it's a 1000W Corsair one. Bought it on a sale ~2 years ago, still unopened.

Can't believe I forgot to mention that: I have a PSU. Sorry for the confusion... A 2TB SSD would be within budget, but then I'd lose the drive redundancy. It would be simpler in terms of disk+partition management though

Budget (including currency): EUR ~1200 Country: EU Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Resolution / Refresh rate: 1440p / 60-100Hz (100Hz is "ideal conditions"; both my wallet and I are perfectly happy with 60Hz at that resolution) Games: mainly Deep Rock Galactic and Baldur's Gate 3, occasionally Elite Dangerous and Dota2 as well; nothing too demanding imo. I do want to be able to play some upcoming things like FrostPunk 2, the new Ratchet & Clank, and Starfield, but I don't expect to be able to play them at ULTRA 200Hz etc. Programs/Workloads: I dabble in Blender from time to time, but no by no means professionally. I've been wanting to try streaming or video editing, but that's a pipe dream in terms of free time at the moment. A distCC setup might be fun to play with, but my work laptop can compile things fast enough, so this is unlikely. Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): OS: likely to be Linux, nothing I play requires an extensive anticheat. Coming from: a Steam Deck and a laptop with a 1050Ti. The Steam Deck is where I do most of my single-player gaming, so this build would be for the things the Deck can't handle too well. Peripherals: Not needed. Existing parts list: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/fFB9jZ I have a PSU. This would be to get me started. It's roughly what I can afford right now, and I think it seems decent enough in terms of expansion/upgrades once I have more disposable income. The 2 x Seagate drives is for redundancy à la Raid 1.

Maybe I'm missing something, but could you not eavesdrop on LiFi connections with, for example, a telephoto lens and an IR camera? In private homes, this might be less of a concern, but if you're in a glass-/window-covered sky-scraper office, will it be a concern?

The interesting question, at least to me, here is what makes a human-created work "better" than an AI-generated one? The time and effort invested? The physical nature of it (e.g. sculptures)? If (and it's a big 'if') we achieve a level of generative AI that can to some extent be considered creative, what differentiates its works from a human's? Is there something inherently different in human work vs something which is exceptionally good at mimicking human behaviour? : ) (also, how do we meaningfully define "creative"? is that even possible?...)

Summary The USA's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have started a probe on OpenAI in terms of data use, data security, and liability of ChatGPT's outputs. Questions like copyright of the data input, and how potentially harmful the outputs are to the users, are some of the topics that the probe is investigating [0, 1, 2]. OpenAI have said they will work with the FTC on this, and that GPT-4 was built using "years of safety research" [1]. Quotes My thoughts Slowly but surely, the legislative machinery is beginning to approach LLMs. This could be highly impactful for both OpenAI but also other LLM companies, as it will likely set a precedent on these things. In terms of harm, we've seen numerous examples of everything from defamation [3] and making up court cases [4], to death [5]. Although OpenAI seemingly tries their best to keep ChatGPT "safe" (for a suitable definition of that word), communities have sprung up to "jailbreak" it and get around these restrictions [6-8]. It's an arms race, but one which also requires a lot of philosophical thought in terms of what is safe and in what context. (And the question of "truth" can depend on what language you are currently chatting to it in, see e.g. [12]). Another interesting thought is whether this is even a valid question to ask in terms of LLMs like ChatGPT. Another user on the forum, Sauron, pointed out [13] that the systems weren't necessarily designed with safety/alignment in mind: they were made to believably predict and generate the next word given the existing text, and at that they are excellent! [14]. But this design-goal doesn't specify anything about safety. Obviously LLM companies have started caring about this, there was a whole section (Section 6) in the GPT-4 technical report dedicated to how they filtered harmful prompts [11], but it slightly seems to be something which has now been added to the spec, rather than intended from the get-go (at least to the extent we're now seeing). LLMs and copyright is also an interesting question. Copyright and the internet/digital age has always been awkward, and now that companies are building (highly profitable) systems using potentially copyrighted data, the situation is unlikely to get better; there is a lot of money at stake. (A completely naive question, but could ChatGPT output (and maybe even input) be considered "fair use", given that it is extremely transformative?) Finally there's the question of data privacy. ChatGPT ran afoul of Italy some months ago, due to GDPR concerns [9], and various companies have tried their best to keep employees from leaking company secrets by using ChatGPT [10]. However, LLMs need this extra interactive data; it is what improves them and makes them more "natural" to interact with. I don't think what OpenAI (and other LLM developers) are doing is any worse than social media and targeted ads, people post secret information on Discord these days [15], not to mention the myriad of War Thunder leaks, and all of this data is being used to train/improve some sort of algorithm. If more privacy regulations come of this however, I will be very glad to see that. Sources [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/13/ftc-openai-chatgpt-sam-altman-lina-khan/ [1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-ftc-opens-investigation-into-openai-washington-post-2023-07-13/ [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23793911/ftc-openai-investigation-consumer-ai-false-information [3]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/9/23755057/openai-chatgpt-false-information-defamation-lawsuit [4]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/23/two-us-lawyers-fined-submitting-fake-court-citations-chatgpt [5]: https://www.brusselstimes.com/430098/belgian-man-commits-suicide-following-exchanges-with-chatgpt [6]: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-jailbreak-chatgpt/ [7]: https://github.com/0xk1h0/ChatGPT_DAN [8]: https://www.jailbreakchat.com/ [9]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/31/chatgpt-blocked-italy/ [10]: https://www.axios.com/2023/03/10/chatgpt-ai-cybersecurity-secrets [11]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08774 [12]: https://thediplomat.com/2023/03/will-asian-diplomacy-stump-chatgpt/ [13]: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1517888-33-46-of-amazons-mechanical-turk-workers-estimated-to-use-llms-to-automate-their-work/?do=findComment&comment=16026532 [14]: https://fortune.com/longform/chatgpt-openai-sam-altman-microsoft/ [15]: https://www.polygon.com/23683683/discord-classified-documents-leak-thug-shaker-central-jack-teixeira

Fiction: all of the Becky Chambers books! The Wayfarers is her first universe, set in a future with multi-species interstellar travel. There’s a decent amount of “science” to its sci-fi genre (some suspension-of-disbelief, but still), the characters are extremely well-written and nuanced, and the worldbuilding is very immersive. 2nd book, A Closed and Common Orbit, is more tech-/AI-exploratory, but they’re all excellent imo (and the 2nd is sort of a sequel to the 1st, so minor spoilers if you start there; otherwise they’re all independent). The “Monk and Robot” series is also interesting. Set in a future, on a different planet, where robots became sentient and humans redesigned society to be greener and leave the robots in peace. They’re novellas however, so shorter stories, but still excellent! Non-fiction: I quite enjoyed “Coders” by Clive Thompson. It’s a neat exploration of various fields of computer science and software engineering, along with a bit of history on terms, programming cultures/philosophies, etc. It’s also very accessible. The “Open Circuits” book by Schlaepfer and Oskay is beautiful, but more pictures with short explanations than a book. Fascinating if you’re curious about how PCBs and their components work. And if you’re a cryptocurrency/blockchain sceptic, David Gerard’s “Attack of the 50 foot blockchain” is an entertaining read.

Yes, we'll need a paradigm shift in how we implement or approach LLMs for significant improvements on GPT4 to be seen. IIRC, wan show a month or two ago talked about how OpenAI had already said that there were significantly diminishing returns in GPT5... And Meta and others have achieved incredible results with smaller sets and fewer parameters. So new technology of some sorts seems to be the next required step. There are some interesting ideas out there like Forward-Forward [0], but it's basically just a concept for now. I mean given that we as humans can't even agree what "truth" is, it's hard to imagine how we'd teach/program an AI to distinguish. Alignment and all that. And at the point where AI can reason about truth, correctness, nuance, etc. we probably have much bigger ethical questions concerning such a system ^^;; [0]: The Forward-Forward Algorithm: Some Preliminary Investigations (Hinton, 2022; https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.13345)