UltraMega

Toxic behavior online seems to be a growing trend. I'm sure it has everything to do with how social media tries to rile people up to maximize engagement.

Seems like reporting rude comments would be a great task for an AI tho. Maybe they'll try that. 

7 minutes ago, GanjaSMK said:

 

No doubt the short wave began a year ago, the medium wave is incoming. 

But, will it be like the dot-com boom though? Huge 4 year span of insane bubbling or will it inevitably change the world in greater ways, let alone the market pricing possible and bubbles aside? 

 

It's anyone's prediction for quote-on-quote AGI; it's clear it will come eventually. I suppose someone in an inner circle somewhere has a more definite estimation. 

 

I reference many opinions citing the fad tendency in new technologies, but it seems awful naive to bury your head in the sand at this point. 

I agree, AI is definitely not a fad. We're really at the beginning of the AI tech boom. It's definitely possible that some shift in the tech's development could lead to an upset for investors who are banking on top chip makers to remain on top with high demand, but AI overall is definitely not a fad. 

50 minutes ago, GanjaSMK said:

I mean at one point AMD over the course of like one or two weeks during the 09' dump was straddling $1.50~$3.  

 

I made huge gains from a large purchase then, but sold 90% at $30. 

 

I have little left but am glad I held onto some. Unreal from $30 to now. 

 

Not a crazy amount in short time, but wow. 

I was just out of high school back then, had no idea how to buy stocks. I remember seeing AMD at $2 and pleading with my dad to buy some, which he didn't haha. Can't blame him, I was just his nerdy son who had never talked about stocks before suddenly giving investing advice. It seemed clear to me that AMD would either go bankrupt entirely or their stock would have to go up, and knowing the stubbornness of the hardware enthusiast community to not let Intel win forever, I felt AMD simply could not fail and leave Intel with a monopoly, and so the gains were basically a guarantee. 

This situation with AI in general, not just AMD specifically, feels a little like seeing AMD at $2 back then in the sense that it seems extremely likely that AI related stocks will continue to go up with no limit that is easy to see right now. 

3 hours ago, GanjaSMK said:

I am not a financial advisor. 

 

MSFT and AMD are two incredibly poignant companies right here, right now. 

 

It's kind of like reading between the lines: 

 

MSFT + SONY went AMD, what two decades now?

AMD upended Intel in the server space what, 5 years ago, 10? 

MSFT owns Windows, right? Used on nearly ALL US Gov, DOD, etc. Didn't the DOD pick MSFT Azure for backend?

Wait a minute, isn't MSFT going to get permits for their own nuclear reactors?

OpenAI rolls on the scene publicly in what 2016 after the 2015 pledge, and MSFT has been involved since 2019 at a billion dollars, now 10 billion more?

 

If I had to pick two stocks to buy now at 18 years old, I'd buy these two. Every cent. Strong feels for me. 

 

It seems like any company deeply invested in AI hardware like Nvidia or AMD is selling water in the desert right now, and Microsoft is selling ice. 

I don't do crypto at all. I don't see any reason to investing crypto vs traditional stocks. Investing in one company you think might double is better than investing in crypto and hoping it doubles IMO. 

I only do tech stocks. All my investments are things I can fully wrap my head around. Aside from the covid inflation era, I've done well here. My brokerage account is up 30% over the last three months on Nvidia and Microsoft gains. If I had spare cash to add to my investments right now, it would go on AMD for sure. 

This is definitely a "rising tide lifts all boats" kind of thing. 

Quote

AMD stock surged on Tuesday, reaching a 52-week high of $158.74. Long-term stockholders were already enjoying riding a steady uptrend, but news of strong AI demand and price target increases from big-name analysts converged to boost the stock by 8% in a single day. AMD’s all-time high was $164.46 back in November 2021, and it has moved to within striking distance of breaking that record.

https://news.yahoo.com/amd-stock-reaches-52-week-144109796.html

This article is from yesterday. AMD is now at $170. 

On 04/01/2024 at 09:18, iamjanco said:

abuse my subwoofer?

 

okay.

 

 

My sub barely got warm to this. What is this, a Harley Davidson Club Reject playlist? 

You guys should really start linking Spotify file instead of YouTube, it's higher quality. 

Quote

AMD has announced that buyers can find the RX 7900 XT for $749 and the RX 7900 GRE in China for $549, which seems to be a response to Nvidia's RTX 40 Super series launch. AMD isn't cutting MSRP for the 7900 XT, but rather implementing a "special promotional pricing program for select etailers and retailers this quarter." We can already see prices for individual 7900 XT models falling by a considerable amount.
 

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX - $999

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT - $749

AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE - $549

AMD unveils promo pricing in wake of Nvidia's Super launch — cuts pricing for RX 7900 XT and 7900 GRE | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

Good start. If the 4000 Super cards get close to MSRP, AMD is going to have to cut prices some more if they want to stay competitive. 

37 minutes ago, Slaughtahouse said:

I have not opened most of those articles but I read about Google layoffs for tomorrow reported by Ars. I’m not entirely convinced that article is accurate. They’re correlating PMAX (AI solution) to LCS (Large Customer Sales) and personally, I think the answer is more simple. Larger customers are spending less (larger trend) and they [Google] need to reorganize their groups and teams internally (trim the fat) to either manage more clients with less or reprioritize smaller clients. I could be entirely wrong but it seems incredibly risky for large clients to switch to AI so quickly at such scale that it’s already resulting in layoffs at Google. Seems sus.

Could be a mix of both. Less sales, but also Google wanting to replace humans with AI where possible. I don't think Google is trying to eliminate wholes sales teams overnight, but have an AI that do some of the simpler tasks and thus lessen the need for humans to some degree. 

Some interesting videos:

Recent news about AI:

Google lays off “hundreds” more as ad division switches to AI-powered sales | Ars Technica

Quote

The Information detailed that layoffs would come to Google's Ad division this month. That report said that many of those are being laid off or reassigned because AI is replacing them. Google has been packing Google Ads—its most important product—with tons of generative AI features lately. One is a natural-language chatbot that helps people navigate the large selection of ad products; another is a system that can just make ad assets like images and text on its own based on a budget and goals given by the ad purchaser. Google's generative AI ad system is part of a product called "Performance Max" which works by autonomously remixing and tweaking your ads using the click-through rate as an instant feedback system. Google used to have humans do sales guidance for its products, create art assets, and decide on text and layouts, but now AI can do it a thousand times a second.

Artificial intelligence helped scientists create a new type of battery  (sciencenews.org)

Quote

But now a new battery material has been discovered by combining two computing superpowers: artificial intelligence and supercomputing. It’s a discovery that highlights the potential for using computers to help scientists discover materials suited to specific needs, from batteries to carbon capture technologies to catalysts. 
 

Calculations winnowed down more than 32 million candidate materials to just 23 promising options, researchers from Microsoft and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, or PNNL, report in a paper submitted January 8 to arXiv.org. The team then synthesized and tested one of those materials and created a working battery prototype.

How Machine Learning And AI Are Shaping Material Science (forbes.com)

Quote

The advent of computational tools and sophisticated modeling techniques has revolutionized this process. Now, for example, researchers can simulate the behavior of materials under different conditions using advanced software, significantly speeding up the discovery process.
 

This computational approach allows for the exploration of a vast landscape of materials, including those that do not exist naturally, leading to innovations like superconductors, biomaterials and nanomaterials.
 

Moreover, the rise of automation and robotics in manufacturing, underpinned by material science advancements, has enabled the production of materials with precise specifications and in high volumes. This shift boosts efficiency and scalability and opens up new possibilities in product design and functionality.
 

Transitioning to more advanced, technology-driven approaches like integrating machine learning (ML), machine learning operations (MLOps) and large language models (LLMs) is essential to overcome the challenges mentioned above, promising enhanced efficiency, innovation and alignment with sustainability and environmental responsibility. This integration is poised to transform material science, offering new prospects for various industries.

NASA accelerates science with gen AI-powered search | CIO

Why 2024 Will Be The Year Of Specialized AI (forbes.com)

Discoveries in weeks, not years: How AI and high-performance computing are speeding up scientific discovery - Source (microsoft.com)

AI-driven drug discovery is poised to boom in 2024 | The AI Beat | VentureBeat

Quote

The rise of AI has elicited fear that the technology will eliminate millions of jobs around the world. The International Monetary Fund this week reported that about 40% of jobs around the world could be affected by the rise of AI.
 

Bill Gates doesn’t necessarily disagree with that notion, but he believes history shows with every new technology comes fear and then new opportunity.
 

“As we had [with] agricultural productivity in 1900, people were like ‘Hey, what are people going to do?’ In fact, a lot of new things, a lot of new job categories were created and we’re way better off than when everybody was doing farm work,” Gates said. “This will be like that.”

This article seems like a good way to kick off this thread. Bill Gates explains how AI will change our lives in 5 years (msn.com)

At the title says, this will be a thread to post news about AI and discuss it. Feel free to post any AI related stuff here, or in the news section. Either is fine. I see a lot of interesting news about AI, so I think it will be good to keep a lot of it in one place. 

Personally, I think we are somewhere between 6 month to 5 years away from some kind if AI driven robots to enter the market in an impactful way. 

Some interesting talks from tech leaders and insiders about AI:

Bill Gates and Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) discussing the future of AI

Interview with the CEO of Scale, a company focused on making AI data processing more efficient

Jensen Huang of Nvidia on the Future of AI

18 minutes ago, bonami2 said:

I feel it fit fine in the Technology New thread. Most of it is computer related like the AI Brain research and many other thing 

True, but I feel like one could easily drop 2-3 news articles a day about AI with how the news about it has been lately, so I just don't want to fill up the news section with AI stuff. 

The only crazy part is how much we have to talk about the idea of having a couple options for shirts as if it's a major decision. It's really not a big deal at all. Framing it like one is the crazy part to me, and I just keep trying to maintain that overall point since it keeps being commented on. 

I'm not talking anime girls and abstract images. I mean something like the black wire frame design but made to work better with t-shirt prints, or something like the design we already have for mugs, but in a shirt. I don't think a reasonable argument can be made that a few more options like that would hurt brand identity, or have any real impact on brand identity at all. 

If we're going to go into this much depth about it, then I don't see how the current logo on a shirt without much else really help much either. For anyone who doesn't know what EHW is, the logo doesn't tell them much. What does ExxtremeHW mean? Is it Extreme Homework? Adding something that at least indicated it was computer related would definitely be on brand. 

45 minutes ago, iamjanco said:

edited, my comments in red for the sake of my sanity clarity:

 

 

 

cheers.

 

 

 

I don't think a couple of shirt options has any impact on brand identity, so I simply don't agree with your entire premise at all. It seems completely arbitrary and way over the top. A couple of shirt options would have no impact on brand identity unless the other options were really stupid. 

I suspect this year there will be a ton of news about AI. I don't want to overload the news section with AI related news, but I don't want to ignore it either since it's all very relavent to where tech is headed. 

You would guts prefer that I just post individual AI news threads as normal, or have one thread in the news section that was continually updated with AI news, or one thread in the general section for "AI Discussion" while the larger AI topic have regular news threads?

Basically, I don't want to clutter up the site with all this rapid fire AI news, but I still want to post it. 

2 hours ago, Sir Beregond said:

I get what both of you are saying, I think you are too hyper-focused on t-shirts that you are missing what Jan is saying.

 

T-shirts are one thing. All @iamjanco was saying is that t-shirts as part of the whole branding and marketing strategy should have a cohesive design strategy starting out. Part of what makes a brand identifiable is that you can see a logo + a color theme and immediately know what it is. Cohesive with the rest of the branding being done and the other marketing tactics that will also be using EHW designs in its efforts makes sense here. And then its usually the more creative design ideas that maybe break a bit from core branding/design cues then become the one off t-shirts as your brand establishes.

 

Anyway I don't disagree that you can obviously have more than 1 t-shirt design. Just keep them fairly consistent in theming starting out.

I'm not really focused on it at all, just responding to jancos comments. 

If anything, I think it's strange that there are such strong opinions about 1 shirt vs a couple. They will all have an extremehw.net. logo on them, I'd say that makes them pretty consistent. Why most of the people here prefer a shirt that is just the logo and nothing else, Idk. But it is what it is, I don't really care. Personally, if I had an ehw shirt I'd want it to be less boring than just a logo. I don't think a shirt with nothing more than a logo on it really serves much purpose as far marketing because people don't respond to a logo with no other info. Something that had a sort of tech enthusiast design + the logo would be better unless you just want to look like a best buy employee or something. 

Just wanted to add, I don't think of the merch as a marketing thing. We're not going to attract users by having merch or wearing shirts out in the world with an ehw logo. The merch is just a way for E to have a bit of revenue for running the site, and more options would likely mean more sales and more revenue for E. 

And really, I just want there to be a shirt I actually like. A plain logo is not my style. 

2 hours ago, Alex said:

I feel like you might've not dealt with the 'enterprise-grade' support MS provides. It's... great lol.

AWS/GCP provides a million times better support, but AWS costs an arm and a leg and doesnt have an M365 competitor.

 

M365 licensing is awful for pretty much everyone in the chain, and the CSP program sucks to support and their ever-changing Ts&Cs make life needlessly complex. I just want a competitor so that it isnt like 99.9% of people using MS's product stack so that they'd be forced to not take as many horrible risks with their software releases and support models because they know that people can't really go anywhere else.

I'm all for competition, but I wouldn't trust Google or Amazon to reliably be able to do what Microsoft does in these spaces. Given how anti-competitive both of those companies tend to be, especially google, it seems like it would go poorly. 

24 minutes ago, iamjanco said:

It's not about t-shirts; it is about a coherent marketing strategy. But do as you will.

 

There are currently no shirts since E wasn't happy with the print quality so it's irrelavent for now. That said, if you think having 3 or so different options for shirts is a bad marketing strategy then OK. I think that is obviously not the case, no one is going to be turned away from the site if there are a couple t-shirt options, and it's crazy to me that anyone would have a strong opinion against that. Feels like you just want to debate for the sake of debating. 

I think we all liked that dark wireframe design, for example. It just didn't work out for other reasons like the background not being clear and too low res, but it was a good design. 3 or so designs like that would be great. 

If you think 3 or so designs like that would be a bad marketing strategy, frankly, I don't think that is logical reasoning. 

4 minutes ago, iamjanco said:

Everyone is entitled to an opinion; mine's just based more on commonly accepted marketing strategy.

I didn't know you were an expert on t-shirts. 

Even with your logic in mind, less in more doesn't mean just 1. 3 or so designs would definitely be on the "less is more" end of the spectrum. 

40 minutes ago, iamjanco said:

I don't think a screenshot of a list is a meaningful counterpoint. The merch isn't a big deal, but IMO there's room for more than just one design for shirts. 

I definitely don't think "less is more" is the right plan for selling anything like t-shirts or mugs in general. For EHW needs, I think 2-3 more creative options would be fine. 

23 minutes ago, iamjanco said:

my recommendation?  k.i.s.s.

 

Just a simpler logo on the front w/the url on the rear

As far as merch like t-shirts goes, it's not one or the other. There can be simple options and some more creative ones. Just seems like the more options the better, within reason.

1 hour ago, neurotix said:

Here's my suggestion:

 

@ENTERPRISEI know it's on the back burner for you, but you have multiple t-shirt designs you need to sample and then add to the store.

 

Going into a Microcenter or a Best Buy and possibly other places wearing a shirt with "Extremehw.net" in big letters across your chest is some good real-world (meatspace lol) advertising. Surely someone would notice and possibly check the site out and join.

 

I second this. I know when we were doing the t-shirts it was probably design overload at the time, but I was just having fun with AI image gen at the time and seeing what it could do. There has to be room for a couple more creative designs. 

It would be good to have the EHW YouTube channel setup so that each video description starts with a link to the EHW homepage followed by a link to the EHW merch store. With a couple creative designs, who knows. Maybe the merch would bring in a few sales straight from YouTube. 

13 hours ago, Alex said:

I'd be up for a proper competition from google for a business ecosphere, MS frankly sucks at it and we all know it.

I don't know it. 

No company as big as Microsoft is perfect, but overall I think they're doing pretty well. Seems like the market thinks so too. 

Google likes to monopolize things so they can charge whatever they want, like with search and ads. If Google were bigger in the business ecosystem, I'm sure it would be a bad thing. 

On 12/01/2024 at 11:49, Alex said:

Ew.

 

Microsoft's entire product lineup has been getting considerably worse since around 3-4 years ago.

VS what?

Microsoft Overtakes Apple: The New King of Tech Valuation! (msn.com)

Microsoft’s revenue in 2022 was $198 billion ¹. The largest source of Microsoft’s revenue was Office, with $44.9 billion (23% of the total), followed by Azure with $44 billion of revenue (22% of total) ¹. The other significant contributors to Microsoft’s revenue were Windows and Server Products, which accounted for 12% of the total revenue each ¹.

 

 

Explore

 

According to Microsoft’s 2023 annual report, the company generated a total revenue of $211 billion in fiscal year 2023 ¹. The report also states that the largest contributors to Microsoft’s revenue were Server Products and Cloud Services with $78 billion (37% of total), followed by Productivity and Business Processes with $69 billion (33% of total) ². The other significant contributors to Microsoft’s revenue were Windows and Office, which accounted for 12% of the total revenue each ³