Incredibly prescient show, I loved it at the time and it's definitely worthy of a rewatch soon.
> I also find it pretty crazy and, frankly, a little sad to think that something like the Machine, which seemed like pure science fiction at the time, isn't all that far from our reality today.
Yeah. "You are being watched. The govt. has a secret system - a machine - that spies on you every hour of every day". The opening words from the show's title sequence - Jumped straight to mind after the revelations of Microsoft building "a machine" for the IDF on Azure not so long ago.
It's the price they're going to be offering to the general public to buy ahead of time, through their brokers. They get that price locked in, then once it starts trading it moves as it may. Usually the IPO buyers are not allowed to sell for some time
12GB GPU is insufficient for most purposes yes. Even 16GB is a notable improvement, but yes 32GB cards such as the 5090 or R9700 are a world of difference.
Given we're discussing a cost comparison (i.e. cutting a Claude subscription in lieu of running locally), how many months of claude $100 or $20/month plans would it cost to buy a 5090? I am showing it as 88 and 440 respectively. I.e. a 7 and 36 year payoff. Not even close to being worth it.
The Claude plans are probably still heavily subsidized. Expect prices to increase, especially after the IPO. Self-hosting models for personal use is probably overkill, but I can see companies doing it pretty soon since they can probably run 24/7 workloads and fully utilize the hardware.
Great point. And, 3 years ago, a 4090 cost $1600, so maybe that will happen again some day. (Same/similar card, or a future card. I remember when GPUs used to get better every few years instead of staying roughly the same but costing several times the original amount!)
"SemiAnalysis, a research and analysis company specializing in the semiconductor and AI industries, found that a $200/month subscription plan is far more generous than previously thought. According to its calculations, while it's widely believed that a $200/month plan maxes out at roughly $2,000/month in tokens (assuming API pricing), the actual numbers are closer to $14,000 for ChatGPT and $8,000 for Claude. "
You also get to keep your data private (so you should compare it to api pricing), there are no forbidden topics (i just did a pentest on my webapp), and multiple people can use it. Basalt does 150 tok/s on a 5080
> This must be what petrol heads fear about EVs. Sure, they're simpler and less maintenance and healthier. But you can't overbore it, or add a turbo, or change the cams.
I did learn from a Youtube vid not so long ago that you can flash cheaper Taycans to their high performance "turbo" "bios" if you have the nerve!
CPUs may run hotter but they have so much more protection. You can even power on and boot a modern Ryzen without even having a heatsink attached and it will not only survive, it will actually go in the BIOS and work for a while! One of these Socket A Athlons would be dead in a microsecond of having pushed the power button if you forgot to put on a heatsink. The Intel PIIIs of the time I believe were one of the first to implement thermal throttling and would crash but probably survive.
and it will not only survive, it will actually go in the BIOS and work for a while!
That's because modern CPUs are thermally limited, so they are essentially designed to stay at their maximum temperature and regulate speed and voltage very quickly in order to achieve that.
I've not had as much experience with AMD CPUs, but have seen several times where the stock Intel cooler's mounting mechanism either wasn't fully latched from the beginning or worked itself loose over time, such that the heatsink was never in contact with the CPU, and the computer continued to operate normally, albeit much slower than it should --- sometimes for years --- with the CPU sitting at its maximum temperature and throttling all the time.
They absolutely do! Not all the way, but if you'd have smoked a pack a day for 15 years and then have given up for the last 15, there's absolutely no way you'd be saying this!
A scenario explored in the prescient and excellent TV show Person of Interest (2011). We're comfortably able to build The Machine and/or Samaritan by now.
> I also find it pretty crazy and, frankly, a little sad to think that something like the Machine, which seemed like pure science fiction at the time, isn't all that far from our reality today.
Yeah. "You are being watched. The govt. has a secret system - a machine - that spies on you every hour of every day". The opening words from the show's title sequence - Jumped straight to mind after the revelations of Microsoft building "a machine" for the IDF on Azure not so long ago.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-isra...
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