#Proprietary software

[el-ffej]

Regarding the DeepSeek AI Hysteria:

Text of posting:

To people who see the performance of DeepSeek and think: "'China is surpassing the US in AI." You are reading this wrong. The correct reading is: "Open source models are surpassing proprietary ones." DeepSeek has profited from open research and open source (e.g. PyTorch and Llama from Meta). They came up with new ideas and built them on top of other people's work. Because their work is published and open source, everyone can profit from it. That is the power of open research and open source.

Also recommended reading:

[radioregine]

finally captured some recordings i'm happy with <3 rest of tonight is gonna be for decorating + scanning in the zine and linking downloads for the audio files

[girderednerve]

in my quest for more gifs of lestat i have descended into hell (trying to install ffmpeg on windows). please keep me in your thoughts, etc

[el-ffej]

Or, to look at the situation from another angle:

Text of posting:

To people who see the performance of DeepSeek and think:

"'China is surpassing the US in AI."

You are reading this wrong. The correct reading is:

"Open source models are surpassing proprietary ones."

DeepSeek has profited from open research and open source (e.g. PyTorch and Llama from Meta). They came up with new ideas and built them on top of other people's work.

Because their work is published and open source, everyone can profit from it. That is the power of open research and open source.

I am very wary of people going "China does it better than America" because most of it is just reactionary rejection of your overlord in favor of his rival, but this story is 1. absolutely legit and 2. way too funny.

US wants to build an AI advantage over China, uses their part in the chip supply chain to cut off China from the high-end chip market.

China's chip manufacturing is famously a decade behind, so they can't advance, right?

They did see it as a problem, but what they then did is get a bunch of Computer Scientists and Junior Programmers fresh out of college and funded their research in DeepSeek. Instead of trying to improve output by buying thousands of Nvidia graphics cards, they tried to build a different kind of model, that allowed them to do what OpenAI does at a tenth of the cost.

Them being young and at a Hedgefund AI research branch and not at established Chinese techgiants seems to be important because chinese corporate culture is apparently full of internal sabotage, so newbies fresh from college being told they have to solve the hardest problems in computing was way more efficient than what usually is done. The result:

American AIs are shook. Nvidia, the only company who actually is making profit cause they are supplying hardware, took a hit. This is just the market being stupid, Nvidia also sells to China. And the worst part for OpenAI. DeepSeek is Open Source.

Anybody can implement deepseek's model, provided they have the hardware. They are totally independent from DeepSeek, as you can run it from your own network. I think you will soon have many more AI companies sprouting out of the ground using this as its base.

What does this mean? AI still costs too much energy to be worth using. The head of the project says so much himself: "there is no commercial use, this is research."

What this does mean is that OpenAI's position is severely challenged: there will soon be a lot more competitors using the DeepSeek model, more people can improve the code, OpenAI will have to ask for much lower prices if it eventually does want to make a profit because a 10 times more efficient opensource rival of equal capability is there.

And with OpenAI or anybody else having lost the ability to get the monopoly on the "market" (if you didn't know, no AI company has ever made a single cent in profit, they all are begging for investment), they probably won't be so attractive for investors anymore. There is a cheaper and equally good alternative now.

AI is still bad for the environment. Dumb companies will still want to push AI on everything. Lazy hacks trying to push AI art and writing to replace real artists will still be around and AI slop will not go away. But one of the main drivers of the AI boom is going to be severely compromised because there is a competitor who isn't in it for immediate commercialization. Instead you will have a more decentralized open source AI field.

Or in short:

[cellsshapedlikestars]

Weird question maybe but what laptop do you have? Mine finally stopped turning on and I need a new one for work and writing and I don't want to just give in and buy a mac

One that I would not recommend to anyone tbh.

I decided to try a Samsung bc I like my phones a lot and went "let's see how this goes!" Bad idea. The touchpad/mouse can be activated just by grabbing the base. I have clicked into things just by putting pressure *around* the touchpad. The speakers, for some reason, are on the bottom, so everything is weirdly low and muffled if you use it on anything that isn't a hard surface. You know, like a lap. Or my bed, where I watch videos at night. It sucks. 2/10 do not buy. The only thing that's kept me from buying a new one is that I just got it. Although looking back, it's been almost 2 years... But still, I can't bring myself to buy a new one when it *technically* works fine

I will never buy a Mac tbh. Apple and their proprietary bullshit can go to hell

If anyone has suggestions for anon, feel free to share

[shroombies]

Do NOT show an autistic person w a special interest in learning the Obsidian notetaking software, they WILL abandon sleep entirely to fill up vaults with meandering deep dives

[brown-little-robin]

AUGH

[recreationaldivorce]

i installed the tumblr app bc tumblr on a mobile web browser was just awful but i tried tumblr web on mobile again just now and it seems ok... might uninstall the app

[coolerdracula]

I hope the current investigations in Apple are actually fruitful because imessage being proprietary makes me so mad

[yukami08]

And this, kids, is why when you want to buy new hardware for your company, you buy standard stuff! For real though, who's the genius at QNAP that decided they were gonna make an enterprise grade NAS with a single board computer based on ARM v7? Fuck you. When the server reaches your pathetic EOSL, what happens? It stops being maintained and it has to be decommissioned. What happens then if someone wants to buy it back? Do they have to plug a security vulnerability on the network? All of that because you decided that using the cheapest components was a better idea? "But Yuka, you can hack the firmware to install Linux on it so you still have security updates" Debian isn't compiled for ARM Marvell anymore. The only version of Debian that is ready to install for this machine is Debian 10 which reached it's EOL only 2 years later! And that's not even taking into account the fact that you have to work around the system to flash the installer to the poor 16MB of unupgradable flash memory on board! "But further updates are too heavy on the system. It's just not powerful enough" Which is why it should have been made with standard components! So you can upgrade and maintain it! And then again, I'm not the one who decided that *an enterprise grade storage server* only needed 1GB of RAM! Tell me, oh great defender of garbage ideas, why do I have in my room a laptop from 2008 running ArchLinux in glorious 64bits with a desktop environment and everything if the system if just not powerful enough to get further updates? Tell me how the system is not powerful enough for updates when I used TrueNas Scale on my main storage server built on a Core2Duo from 2006! Not to even get into the default software of this thing which by itself is a crime but this isn't about that

[shapoopy178]

Jfc Windows, forced updates are one thing but unannounced forced updates that automatically install and reboot my computer overnight are something else entirely, like actively hostile to the user. I frequently leave calculations running overnight when I leave the office so that they're done when I get back in the morning, but now I can't trust my computer to not shut itself down and kill the calculation. Clown shoes operating system.

[windcarvedlyre]

Boots windows. Is quickly reminded of why I left.

[airdeari]

listen I support Reddit mods doing what they're doing and I know that it's important work but also it is so fucking hard to Google anything anymore

[katya-1917]

All this stupid fucking proprietary bloatware, man. No, I don't want your stupid app, I just want the damn menu/to use your fucking toilets.

theres bikes around the city you can rent but you have to use an app that needs your drivers license. theres buses that drive right to your destination, but if you dont have change you need the app. you can wash your car here if you sign into the app. you can go to the bathroom here you just have to unlock it with the app that needs your location on. you can order at this restaurant if you scan the code and download the app. im losing my freaking mind

[jbird-the-manwich]

before it gets bad I'm just gonna tell y'all certain rich people have literally only recently noticed Open Source software availability compromises the bottom line of their proprietary investments so if you see little chickadees on this website talking about the dangers of Open Source software all of a sudden it's cuz they accidentally sipped some koolaid mixed up by the far right yacht people to fuck with peoples software sovereignty and right to repair, modify, and redistribute robust codebases that become a problem when 30% of your portfolio is in, oh, say, adobe or openai.

This is your unfriendly neighborhood computer fucker telling you not to fall for it and to demand your right to digital sovereignty rather than trusting companies to make correct choices about what to do with the parts of your life they would very much like to have in the cloud to continue improving their products.

[adulthumanproblem]

I actually got my printer to print again??

And all it took was washing out the ink cartridge because the ink had gotten all gunky

The black is very light now because of residual water, but hey. Printing!

Will make stamp making easier