The raison d’être for RISC-V is domain-specific architecture. Currently, computational demands are growing exponentially (especially with AI), but Moore’s Law is ending, which means we can no longer meet our computational demands by scaling single-core speed on general-purpose CPUs. Instead, we are needing to create custom architectures for handling particular computational loads to eke out more performance. Things like NPUs, TPUs, etc.

The trouble is designing and producing these domain-specific architectures is expensive af, especially given the closed-source nature of computer hardware at the moment. And all that time, effort, and money just to produce a niche chip used for a niche application? The economics don’t economic.

But with an open ISA like RISC-V, it’s both possible and legal to do things like create an open-source chip design and put it on GitHub. In fact, several of those exist already. This significantly lowers the costs of designing domain-specific architectures, as you can now just fork an existing chip and make some domain-specific modifications/additions. A great example of this is PERCIVAL: Open-Source Posit RISC-V Core with Quire Capability. You could clone their repo and spin up their custom RISC-V posit chip on an FPGA today if you wanted to.

Yeah, this is the one piece a lot of people miss: in any decently competitive market, individual firms have effectively zero power to set prices; they must instead accept the prices determined by the market.

Knowing that, the solution to that sort of corporate BS, then, is to ensure markets are competitive by busting monopolies, lowering barriers to entry, and getting money out of politics to reduce the effect of lobbying.

Sounds similar to some of the research my sister has done in her PhD so far. As I understand, she had a bunch of snapshots of proteins from a cryo electron microscope, but these snapshots are 2D. She used ML to construct 3D shapes of different types of proteins. And finding the shape of a protein is important because the shape defines the function. It’s crazy stuff that would be ludicrously difficult and time-consuming to try to do manually.

Exactly. I rode an ebike one summer to commute to an internship. The sweat factor alone meant I never would have done that by regular bike, as I would’ve arrived at the office sweating like a pig.

On the other hand, a car has far greater maintenance costs. The car has license, insurance, maintenance, gas, parking, etc., whereas an ebike is basically free in comparison. Electricity to power an ebike is pennies, and maintainance is a few basic tools and a new tire or inner tube on occasion.

With all the money saved, you can just rent a car for the handful of days the ebike genuinely is not sufficient.

In Bibi’s eyes, every day that Hamas continues to exist is a good day. If Hamas ever ceases to exist, Israelis might go back to questioning his corruption charges.

In 2016, I said half-jokingly that I was moving to Canada if he won. Then he won and now here I am in Canada. Granted, I was a senior in high school when he won and I was already applying to a couple universities in Canada. But definitely was worth it. As many issues as Canada has (cough cough housing crisis), I at least trust it to not descend into fully-fledged fascism any time soon.

Yeah, this is a great example of why I make an effort to specify the government when criticizing countries. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? I call Putin and his government evil but never the Russian people at large. China’s genocide of the Uyghurs? I call Xi Jinping and the CCP evil but never the Chinese people at large. Israel’s apartheid state and ethno-religious cleansing? I call Netanyahu and his government evil but never the Israeli people at large (and certainly not Jews at large).

The allure of treating entire demographics or populaces as a monolith and blaming them for the crimes of their government is exactly why genocidal rhetoric is so dang pervasive, and I won’t abide by it.

(Yes, I will also criticize civilians who actively support these crimes, but I make sure to be clear in distinguishing between them and the rest of the civilian population.)

Ah, but that says not to kill people. It says nothing about killing rats! /s

Seriously, though, that’s exactly why we’re so capable of committing atrocities: we dehumanize each other until we consider it acceptable to kill. Portraying Jews as rats and subhuman is exactly how the Holocaust happened, and portraying Palestinians as subhuman is exactly how Israel is currently doing what they’re doing.

People complain about the UN doing nothing, but it’s also important to remember it was literally designed to not be able to do anything if one of the security council nations – USA, UK, France, Russia, or China – vetoes it. And USA always vetoes anything against the Israeli government.

Considering the UN’s hands are tied, I’m very glad they’re at least using their figurative microphone and international influence to call attention to how fucked up the treatment of Palestinians is.

I don’t know for others, but growing up American, Israel and its friends in Washington had done a terrific job of conflating any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. What finally got me to re-evaluate my stance on the Israeli government a few years back was when well-known, respectable organizations like the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International started using the word “apartheid” to describe the situation of Palestinians.

Hearing sources like the UN Office for Human Rights, the UN Secretary General, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International calling out the Israeli government’s actions in strong, unequivocal terms like “war crime” and “apartheid” is a start. I wish they could do more, and I sure as heck am angry with US foreign policy in this, but I’m just glad the UN has the balls to actually call this a war crime.

When you’re a thin-skinned fascist conducting ethno-religious cleansing, any criticism must be met with absolute resistance. Fascism requires extreme black-and-white thinking and complete rejection of nuance.

We see the same pattern in the US with the MAGA movement, where even dyed-in-the-wool conservatives like Liz Cheney get demonized for “betraying” their “side”. Facts and nuance are rejected, and the only thing that matters is team loyalty.

Ah yes, a totally normal thing that innocent, non-fascist governments do. Nothing to see here, UN. Certainly no war crimes or ethnic cleansing!

I don’t follow their politics closely, but I still can’t believe Netanyahu clawed his way back into power after basically everyone else in government, even fellow hard right-wingers, banded up to oust him. That, plus him having faced all those corruption charges. Wtf is up with politics in Israel that allowed him to claw his way back in so quickly like some sort of alien parasite?

Exactly. I’d honestly rather have paid social media than engagement algo and ad-driven social media. When your algorithms chase engagement over all else, it leads to real harms, like the youtube alt-right pipeline. Fediverse ain’t perfect, but I like that there’s no engagement-chasing algorithm, no ads, just donations.

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It’s one thing that’s super frustrating about a lot of online left-wing populism — so much focus on villainizing and punishing individuals and not nearly enough on fixing the systemic issues via good policy. Hate landlords? Talk about eliminating the housing crisis to eliminate their power over you. Hate your boss? Talk about improving safety nets and overall prosperity to reduce their power over you. Hate corporations? Talk about eliminating monopolism, reducing barriers to entry, and increasing competition so they have less power over you. Villainizing and punishing individuals feels good, but it does nothing to eliminate the underlying economic power dynamics.

It’s what happens when someone hates capitalism so much and hasn’t touched grass in so long that they cheer on the brutal murder of small business owners. Prime example of your brain on extreme black-and-white thinking.

Yeah, Canada and its closest allies (US, UK, etc.) have absolutely every reason to not want to stir the pot with India, considering India is considered critical in countering China in Asia. It’d be insane to pull a stunt like this unless they actually have damning evidence. I guess we’ll all see what comes of this with time, but I’m strongly inclined to believe Canada for now.

That and India’s response has basically been bald-faced whataboutism and “bUt He WaS a TeRrOriSt”. Doesn’t exactly endear me to believing India had nothing to do with this.

This is exactly what I don’t understand about people who want peace in Ukraine as soon as possible and at all costs: capitulation for the sake of short-term peace endangers long-term peace.

If we globally set the precedent that you can invade whomever you want and win just because you have nukes, that makes for a vastly more dangerous world. Every country with nukes will suddenly be more willing to go all imperialist, and all the countries without nukes will want to have them as a guarantee against invasion. And I don’t know about y’all, but a world with way more nukes in way more hands is way more dangerous.

Plus, Putin has shown he’ll keep on invading neighbors so long as he can get away with it. Delivering a crushing defeat to Russia and specifically Putin is the only way to achieve a more lasting peace.

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