lostinbr

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Everyone needs to understand that the people and the minds behind all of this are vastly superior to the general public...sorry thats just the truth. This isnt about making a quick buck its again about changing the world.

What artificial intelligence is capable of producing and is going to produce is hard to explain and comprehend for the common folk. This is unfortunately a case of "We know better and we know what's good for you"

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:lol:

frick all that.

I’m not generally anti-AI, but this mentality among the tech elites is a problem. Let’s assume, for a moment, that the following opinions spouted by the tech CEO’s and AI leaders are true:
1. That AGI is inevitable.
2. That AGI will completely change the concept of “work” in human society.
3. That this will cause a major economic disruption, necessitating UBI.
4. That it’s a race, and the first lab to create AGI will hold all of the power.

..then what you’re telling me is that it’s a race to create an even more significant tech oligarchy than we already have? A race to concentrate the wealth (and therefore the political power) in the hands of a few? Why the frick should the general public subsidize that race?

Why would we willingly accept higher costs so that Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and/or Elon Musk can become even richer and give us table scraps in the form of UBI? If anything, they should be subsidizing our electrical costs.

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70% of Louisiana’s electrical capacity currently supplies industrial customers. All that has done was give us some of the lowest utility rates in the country. Why do yall think data centers change anything?

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Normally the negotiation of electrical rates for industrial customers occurs out in the open. This is necessary because the utility’s return on capital is guaranteed. If they don’t earn that return on the industrial tariff or on the individual PPA’s, then the remainder of the rate-paying public have to make up the difference.

So under normal circumstances, all of the various special interest groups (including consumer advocacy groups who argue on behalf of residential customers) get to go in front of the PUC and argue for why the industrial rates should be higher. This is true for the baseline industrial tariff as well as normal PPA’s, which should be public record and still have to ultimately be approved by the PUC.

The issue with data centers is that they negotiate their PPA’s under NDA. Everyone involved (including Entergy and the PUC members who have to approve it) is under NDA. The details of the contract are kept hidden from the public. So despite the fact that the consumer is on the hook for any costs that don’t get fully covered by the special contract, nobody on the consumer’s side can scrutinize the rates.

That’s the difference with data centers. And it seems pretty obvious that the contracts are favorable to the tech companies; if they weren’t, there would be no reason to hide them under NDA. It shouldn’t be legal for a regulated utility to enter into secret contracts.

There’s also something inherently slimy about selling out the general public for AI. Regardless of whether you believe AI will actually take a ton of jobs away, the tech companies believe it. Why should consumers subsidize data centers to run AI models, when the tech companies building the data centers say we’ll need UBI because of the economic impact of those same AI models?

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If there is anywhere to splurge it is your audio interface. However, there are some really good options on a budget. Focusrite and Motu have some incredible options for around $200. These and just about any other interfaces come with at least a very basic recording program with upgrade paths to more professional-level options.

The key is to have the lowest amount of latency possible. If the latency is too high, recording over playback won't sync up right. Any extra RAM will prevent "bogging down". NVME drives will give faster read and write speeds and with a 2nd storage drive, the recording/playback won't have to fight for read/writes on the OS/application drive. Also, if you go with a windows laptop, get a fresh install of the OS or remove any of the bloatware that comes on it.

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I’m gonna be a little contrarian here and say latency isn’t that critical. You should never have a situation where recording over playback doesn’t sync correctly - that’s what automatic delay compensation does. The DAW should handle this part.

The place latency makes the biggest difference is monitoring. Specifically if you’re recording through plugins while trying to monitor the plugin output in real time. If you have high latency the issue is that you may notice a delay in your monitors which can throw performance off, but there are ways around this. Many (most?) interfaces nowadays allow some form of direct monitoring so that you get a direct, low-latency feed from your instrument/mic input. You can also print and disable plugin-heavy tracks prior to recording so that you aren’t wasting resources on unnecessary signal processing.

Some other notes:

- I would argue that CPU performance is actually pretty important for recording and mixing. It’s pretty easy to hit a CPU bottleneck when the track count starts creeping up. If the only true VST you’re running is EZ Drummer, I’d prioritize the CPU over RAM. But I’d still ideally want 16 GB RAM just because everything on the system side is so damn memory hungry nowadays.

- GPU doesn’t matter at all.

- People have mentioned using cloud storage for projects, which I agree with, but you don’t want to be working from cloud storage. I also wouldn’t really want to be working from external USB drives if you can help it. 256 GB local storage is probably enough as long as the computer is dedicated to audio. You just might be moving some stuff around between local storage and external/cloud storage to make sure your active project(s) are local. Personally I use a dedicated HDD for projects (backed up to cloud storage) with my OS and software installed on an NVME drive. But that’s a little harder with a laptop.

- Effective monitoring (speakers/headphones) is a whole different rabbit hole. The reality is that, unless you invest the effort into building out a good room, it’s gonna be hard. I’d rather mix on a pair of good headphones than mix on a pair of good studio monitors in a bad room. Either way (headphones or a suboptimal room) makes mixing low-end harder. But it is what it is.

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It’s been amazing to watch over the last several years how many people still cut over 2 lanes of traffic to take that exit despite there being a brand new exit that they can use.

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If they’re cutting across 2 lanes of traffic doesn’t that mean they’re coming from 110? Or is there also a brand new exit on the 110 side of the split? I don’t drive on 110 very often so might just not have seen it.

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No it's not. Every time you park you're pulling in forward one time and backward one time. The difference is if you pull in the spot forward you're going to be backing out into a wider and longer area (the row). If you back into the spot, you're backing into a much tighter spot that is also much shorter with lines you need to end up between.

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The reason it’s easier (for many people) is that the rear wheels are the vehicle’s pivot point. So the widest arc when turning is going to be at the front bumper.

In larger vehicles, it’s easier to have the widest arc occur on the side that isn’t squeezing between two other cars. The smaller the vehicle, the less it matters. It’s also generally a bit easier to get centered in a spot when you’re backing in because you can see the lines (either on a camera or in the mirrors).

As others have pointed out, I think there’s an argument that the prevalence of backup cameras has probably offset a lot of the safety advantages of back-in parking.

All of that said, I don’t know why anyone really cares which way another adult pulls into parking spots.

This is the three year chart of natural gas spot prices at the Henry Hub:



There’s a pretty obvious reason everyone’s gas bills were so high in January.

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It’s real. BBC got the video first. And it’s him. It’s his riot/protesting ensemble. He wanted to look like a GI.

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I haven’t read the other 17 or so pages to see if this got hashed out, but it’s a little troubling to see “it’s real, BBC got the video first” stated as fact followed by two sources that aren’t BBC.

I have no clue if this one is real or not (just because I haven’t dug into it much yet) but I’m confident about this:

If you see someone tweet a video saying “XYZ news obtained” whatever, you should really try to find and verify the reputable source before sharing it. AI image and video generation is getting insanely good, and we (society) need to start trying to vet this stuff before sharing it if we’re gonna have any fricking chance at separating the truth from the bullshite.

/rant

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how the Federal Govt never stepped in and fixed it is beyond ridiculous

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Federal money is the only reason any of the big projects are moving forward right now. They aren’t just going to come in and foot the entire cost of a multibillion dollar loop. The state has to have skin in the game, and the state has more projects than money already.

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What about eastbound? This seems to be the big problem on I-10/MRB due to a terrible design flaw of the eastbound off ramp of the bridge.

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So the way they presented the data makes it hard to say exactly. They used StreetLight, which is a dataset built up from mobile device data (as I understand it). They broke BR and the surrounding area up into “zones” for origins & destination of bridge crossings. There were 2 zones for I-10 outside of the model area (one for I-10 past Port Allen, and one for I-10 past Ascension).

The issue is that the technical report doesn’t include full data for all eastbound and westbound crossing origins and destinations for every zone. Instead, they only included the top 5 origins in each direction. This is what it looks like:



So two things:
1. I-10 External (zone 3016 on the east side of BR) didn’t make the top 5 westbound origins. So I don’t have the exact percentage, but we know it’s less than 10.6%.
2. We don’t know what the westbound crossing destinations look like in detail. However, I think it’s reasonable to assume that on average, westbound destinations should roughly align with eastbound origins.

There is the following snippet which offers some additional clarity:



This is the model they developed from the data, rather than the actual StreetLight data itself. The width of each bar corresponds to a volume of average daily eastbound traffic across the I-10 bridge. You can see how the bar is widest on the bridge itself (since that’s 100% of the volume) and quickly falls off as you get to I-10 and I-12 further east. This is a result of traffic exiting the interstate.

To my eye, it looks like something like half of the eastbound bridge traffic exits before the 10/12 split.

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How old are you? That's been standard tipping practice for decades until relatively recently.

15% was normal.
20% was for great service
10% was if they did the job but barely put in any effort.

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What you are calling “standard tipping practice” is considerably better than what the other guy said. :dunno: