What do Northvolt and Stegra have to do with whether AI is a useful tool?
Northvolt was a badly executed company. If Stegra fails, it will be another badly executed company. That would no more prove that batteries or steelmaking are useless than a bankrupt CNC manufacturer would prove that CNC machines don’t work.
I am not claiming that every AI company, investment, or implementation will succeed. I’m sure Manny will fail. Who cares. I am saying that AI is a tool, that it already allows me to do useful work, and that using it effectively requires skill.
You are arguing against hype, reckless investment, and poorly managed technological projects. I am not defending any of those things.
It is sad when people who genuinely cannot adapt to new technologies lose their jobs.
But when capable people refuse to adapt for ideological reasons, it is hard to feel much sympathy when they are left behind.
You are right that the original topic was Microsoft using personal data to train AI, and I helped take the thread off topic.
I responded because the argument shifted from Microsoft’s practices to whether AI itself is useful.
I shortened your quote because I did not understand what it would mean, or how anyone could measure whether a medical breakthrough “offsets” lost insurance and livelihoods.
AI is already a useful tool, used worldwide, and its contribution to biology and medicine is undeniable.
If by “loss of medical insurance” you mean losing employer-provided coverage after losing a job, that is a problem with how some countries organize healthcare, not with AI itself. Policies are often slow to adapt when new technologies change the economy, but when politicians fail to update laws and social protections, blaming the technology does not solve the problem.
I’m sorry if I came across as unkind. That wasn’t my intention.
In fact, my last post began by apologizing for taking the discussion off topic and acknowledging that you were right about the original issue. I also explained why I had shortened your quote and what part of your argument I was responding to.
The correct late stage capitalism answer is: “Stop whining about yourself. You could become an Uber driver, supermarket shelf re-stacker, or window cleaning contractor. You could become an AI training-data labeler, elderly carer for hire, or influencer. Many fantastic opportunities out there!”
Have you ever considered using Windows LTSC?
I’ve been a satisfied user of this extremely stable and minimalist OS version without any bloatware for several years now; I’m still using the win10 version and have never been prompted to upgrade to 11.
There are no automatic upgrades and even the default settings already meet high standards for security and privacy.
It never ceases to amaze me how little LTSC (long-term servicing channel) is used in the professional sector.
However, I have 3 Windows 11 Professional licenses. It raises 2 questions: Do Microsoft customers have to pay extra for a trustworthy operating system?
If I upgraded/sidegraded to another Microsoft product, how long would I have until they do with the enterprise version–what they have done with the “Professional” versions?
It’s commonly used in embedded systems like CNC machines, where any changes would be really dangerous.
The problem with an LTSC shifts to the Rhino side now: will Rhino include new features, drivers, etc. that will eventually become incompatible with your LTSC?
Since @brt1 says he never had any problems with this, then this may be a good solution.
please don’t get me wrong: I’m definitely not a Windows fan. I understand your concerns very well, and I could easily add a few more items to your list of unbelievable insults that Microfoft is throwing to its users.
Unfortunately, most of the software that I’ve been using for about 25 years (CAD and graphics) only runs on Windows.
LTSC should not be confused with an Enterprise version; rather, it’s designed for environments where stability is the top priority (machine control, telephone systems, embedded systems, point-of-sale terminals, IoT, etc.) and where unsolicited updates, bloatware, etc. are an absolute no-go. Since Microsoft also serves this market, it’s unlikely that LTSC will be discontinued.
I’ve been using LTSC since 2019 without any issues (drivers, 3d-printer-integration, etc.) and see no reason to update. Support lasts for 10 years, meaning until 2029. The follow-up version from 2021 (also based on Windows10) has only 5 years of support, meaning until 2026. I haven’t looked into what these periods will be for Windows11-based LTSC versions.
I’m using the latest version of Rhino. Even 3ds Max - which is much trickier in terms of licensing - and many smaller programs (most of as portable versions) install and run stably and flawlessly.
However, I don’t want to gloss over the fact that there are limitations (fortunately, these don’t affect me):
no Office 365 (I use LibreOffice)
no Cortana (what a relief)
no Microsoft Store, no Edge browser, no Windows Analytics Upgrade Readiness (ツ)
no support for Surface Hardware (who cares)
Possiblly a problem for some: Adobe Creative Suite isn’t supported anymore. Since I find Adobe’s licensing policy just as abhorrent as Microsoft’s, I’m still working with my CS6, which I bought a long time ago, and am currently switching to Affinity (very cool).
I have disk images of various clean states of my OS/software-installation-setups to easily switch back and a second tray with an identic system drive to test apps before final installation. If - for any reason - I needed to upgrade or switch to a different OS, I could also use this second drive. This would give me two setups working parallelly for the time of switching.
I have an almost identic setup on my laptop/mobile workstation (also with disk images).
Here’s a link to some additional info on LTSC 2019 in German … partially outdated.
Just trying to raise awareness about @ItHasLegs effort on getting Rhino8 working properly with Wine, check the post where people are working their way around problems to get it fully functional Rhino on Linux - Technicalities
Some users reported being able to run Rhino + VisualArq, when I get the time I plan to install a double boot Ubuntu and test Rhino + VisualArq + Orca3D
Yeah, read whole the post. I think AI is what it is. Like it or not. Use it and learn how to use it, at least if you are young, AI will stay. I just hope there wont be a big violent break or war in society that comes with big technology inventions that are missused in the benefit of a minority and create even more inequality. As it happens right now. Let’s see and hope and act if necessary.
Anyway holy shit, I never heard of LTSC, i wish i knew about it 10 years ago. It seems to be the version of windows i always try to achieve, by disabling and deinstalling all the crap manually. All i want is a stable & save OS, no apps no features.
As soon as Rhino works on Linux i am going Linux. Its the only software that keeps me back.
Windows LTSC will still come with all the tracking & privacy concerns of standard Windows. If that’s something you value, a de-bloated version of Windows won’t change that.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang: 63 Years Old
OpenAI: Sam Altman: 41 Years Old
Grok’s Elon Musk: 55 Years Old, born in South Africa
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei: age 42–43
Meta AI: Mark Elliot Zuckerberg: age 42
…to name a few
Most of the people I talk to who are AI enthusiasts–are older. The kids seem to realize what it’s going to do.
Back to Microsoft Window, Having used nearly every version of Windows, I think that its heyday was between 2000-XP, because neither was too bloated then, and had from he ground up a cohesive complete user interface. To use Windows now, is to dig back through time, but then Microsoft removes system administration features, because they seem to think that their OS is running on a limited amount of computers–that only do office work.
So, us design/workstation people have to do even more work like shut off Fast-boot, and for people who need to reverse-engineer things using a laptop, we find fewer power modes, and a higher idle power draw than it used to because it’s still indexing–like we still had spinning iron in our laptops.
Amid the RAMcylypes, Windows memory consumption is an issues:
So, when I last exported my car body from Rhino 3D to do CFD on it, the memory usage hit around 51GB. The mesh size on the car surfaces was about 10mm, and those get turned into little volumes. I really need 5mm, want 2.5mm. A little more memory wouldn’t help me get to either of those, but I might have hit the next lower millimeter.
Because of their texture load and 3840x2160 rendering size, a few of my renders would not fit in my old 8GB GPU, on the CPU, the RAM usage was noticeable.
Well, it does - since a few days, since wine-staging 11.14 was released.
I haven’t put it to any stress test yet, just messed with a few boxes and curves, but it looks promising.
As has been said, even VisualArq installs and runs, if that is your thing.
You can try it right now, or wait for a very long time - or forever - until McNeel ships a native Linux version.
Some time back I looked at Dolfyn. If it’s yours, I am honored to be on the same thread.
Have you seen Butterfly, it is/was a Grasshopper front end for OpenFoam. It might give you some ideas, though I liked a old-fashioned UI that leaves more room for viewing, such as CfdOf.
A lot of FEM/CFD is like painting: it’s all in the preparation…well and the visualization. Usually, if there is a problem with CFD/FEM, it’s because there is a meshing problem. Back in the day, I used to use Salome Mecha, Codes Saturun and Astre, in which the user had a lot of control over the meshing.
Sadly, I don’t think that descretalization is in the Scrabble dictionary.
Thank you for the compliment Brenda, it is much appreciated, yes dolfyn is my code.
Thank you for the pointers as well! Snappy is too snappy… I will have a look at them!
My point is that the mesh makes or breaks your result. No matter how fine you go, if he mesh is sh*t, your result will be sh* t too. In other words, the mesh will make or brake your result. Most people do not like meshing, but good meshing requires that you understand the physics, the modelling, the code and the numerics, as well as the modelling and numerical errors too, and the role of meshing. We could start here discussing about your goals - I have been involved in vehicle aerodynamics over more than 30 years - and the usefulness of the fineness of your mesh, turbulence modelling et cetera, but that will be boring for the majority of Rhino users. You can email me at info (at) dolfyn.net (should still work ;- )
Just a dolfyn teaser…
Made with VisIt, not Paraview.
I wish you a very good recovery and the sooner the better,
