Maybe I'm weird, but does anyone else have worries about what future their prospective children would inherit? In particular things that worry me: 1. the growing geopolitcal turmoil which is likely to eventually descend into a great war of sorts, the footage coming out of Ukraine is horrifying, 2. climate change isn't going to be dealt with and again, lots of violence will ensure because of that, almost certainly, 3. not sure what to think about AGI, but I'm not entirely dismissive and at best it seems like a dual use technology, 4. a GATTACA-type future where the super rich figure out a way to birth super humans with perfect genetics and top 0.001% IQs. All of those make the future look so unappealing.
I think kids born now will inherit a much better world than in the past.
What sort of world did a child born in Europe in 1900 or 1930 inherit? What about a black child born in the US in 1950, or South Africa in 1960? What about a child born in China in 1950 or (what is now) Bangladesh in 1960 or Sri Lanka in 1970? Their children and grand children will have a much better life.
My grandparents were all born in Europe between the two world wars. Actually, despite humble origins they all had a fairly prosperous life. Even though I have much more education than they did, I don't think I can ever achieve the same level of prosperity as they had.
Like, I certainly cannot afford a family of 12 children. Nor can I afford to buy the amount of land that they acquired, and certainly not by working the same kind of jobs they did.
The poorest people have the most children, and they are not starving; they're usually obese. What has changed is that your definition of "afford children" has come to encompass a vast amount of requirements that your grandparents did not have.
Not really. The only expense that could lead to that is child care, so I'll assume you mean leaving preteens home alone as a nosy neighbor calls CPS. First of all that doesn't really happen and it's national news when it does. Second of all at least a few states have passed laws enshrining children's freedom.
But usually the "requirements" that get parents to spend too much money are entirely optional things, of which a few are college tuition, a car for the child, camps, tutors, music lessons, vacations abroad, innumerable toys, iPads, etc etc
This is not what average people are talking about when they say it’s unaffordable. Top 10% of incomes, sure.
The median household income is under $80k, while median yearly housing cost is around $25k, food expenses for a family of 4 are $12k-$19k, median utility costs around $4k, health insurance $27k (about to go up), and median cost of vehicle ownership is $12k. Yearly figures. That’s sharing one car between both working parents and we’re using median numbers here, and the median person doesn’t live in a place with great public transit options. Already that leaves almost nothing to deal with emergencies, saving in case a parent loses their job, and miscellaneous expenses like school books/supplies and clothing. And perhaps contributing to elder care for 1-4 grandparents.
Also, this is just the median; people in the lower 50% are much worse off, except for those poor enough to receive substantial aid. And don’t forget that young people typically have lower incomes.
You really don’t want half of your society to decide that pets are cheaper, unless you want to end up with an inverted population pyramid and eventual collapse, or unlimited migration to replace lost workers (which creates its own problems).
But children don't add much marginal cost to those figures, except insurance. Housing stays the same (no you don't need a bigger house), food goes up slightly (12-19k for 4 people is absurdly luxurious), utilities barely increase, you don't buy them a car, clothing can be had at goodwill or handed down, etc etc. I think maybe you don't understand what little the median family had materially in 1940. They were not buying their six kids clothes from Gap or going out to eat even monthly. They were in very small homes with very cheap clothes and the wife cooked every meal from plain cheap ingredients. They didn't have phone plans or Internet bills or take 20 minute showers.
I was using USDA figures for median food costs, do you have a better source? And I did not say to buy them a car, I was giving the median cost of single vehicle ownership for the whole family (which factors in purchasing, licensing, insuring, maintaining, and fueling the vehicle). These are median numbers.
This is not the 1940s:
Cheap homes are unavailable. Even single family homes are becoming unaffordable except in isolated areas without jobs. Housing costs, even apartments, have gone up enormously as a percentage of income and building/health codes don’t allow you to live in shanties.
You need a phone now for most jobs. People aren’t hiring you if you can’t be contacted except for bottom of the barrel work. You likely need internet if your job requires remote work and kids probably need it for homework.
People in the mid 1900s had single earner households and households or neighborhoods with extended family. That means more time for cooking, sewing and repairing clothes, and other housework. Work often wasn’t as far away, especially in working class neighborhoods, so you might not even need a car.
Besides all this, literally nobody is going to have kids if it requires going back to a 1940s standard of living. That’s society’s problem, if as an aggregate entity it cares about perpetuating itself. If nobody cares, fine, let it fall apart.
Median people in the USA eat extremely lavishly. Your series of comments, to me, boils down to a complaint that you can't maintain this extreme luxury while having children. Yeah, nobody ever could. The time frame in which people were "able" to have a lot of children was the time when they weren't living such extravagant lives of consumption. So yeah if the complaint is "Why can't I afford a lifestyle that would make my grandparents blush with shame at its luxury, and have as many kids as them, wtf?!" then I'm not very sympathetic to it.
> 4. a GATTACA-type future where the super rich figure out a way to birth super humans with perfect genetics and top 0.001% IQs. All of those make the future look so unappealing.
If everything goes alright for them. The thing is that we don't know about knock-on effects and monkey paw results - we can switch this gene on, your child has IQ 190, but later parents will figure out that it has social intelligence of a rock. Or we can switch this gene on, your child is now able to compete with marathon runners, whoops heart attack at 32 years.
I'm super excited to give this one a spin. It seems like a neat idea, Triton, but simpler and with automatic autotuning. My head is spinning with options right now. I love how everyone was hyping up CUDA this and CUDA that a couple of years ago, and now CUDA is all but irrelevant. There's now so many different and opinionated takes on how you should write high performant accelerator cluster code. I love it.
It's also kinda of ironic that right now in 2025, we have all this diversity in tooling, but at the same time, the ML architecture space has collapsed entirely and everyone is just using transformers.
> CUDA that a couple of years ago, and now CUDA is all but irrelevant
What? CUDA won't be irrelevant for years even if all the competitors figure out the holy grail, the ecosystem doesn't suddenly migrate over night. People learning CUDA today will continue to be find jobs and opportunities across the sector for the near future without any worries.
> but at the same time, the ML architecture space has collapsed entirely and everyone is just using transformers.
That's also not true, the ML space is still growing, and lots of things outside of Transformers, but it requires you to actually look and pay attention, not just browse the HN and r/localllama frontpage.
Overall, these do not seem to be the sentiments coming from someone inside the ML space, but rather from an onlookers perspective.
> There's now so many different and opinionated takes on how you should write high performant accelerator cluster code. I love it.
There are literally only 2: SIMT (ie the same as it always was) and tiles (ie Triton). That's it. Helion is just Triton with more auto-tuning (Triton already has auto-tuning).
The bubble will burst when all this agentic AI slop fails to deliver. Might take a while yet, because generative models are very good at aping competence and it's therefore easy to produce compelling demos.
It's just they have been in charge for so long, and gotten their ideology implemented for decades, the damage they caused is now so large and felt by so many people deep inside the neocolonial core that we finally see the first cracks in this system.
If these people were aware of the current moment instead of just confused and trapped in their own ideological bubble, they would probably all be wearing MAGA hats, since the authoritarian right is the only way they can realistically hold on to their rotten system in the long run. Curious why that's not a lesson they learned from history, too uncomfortable to think about that part I suppose.
Isn't the lesson from the success of TSLA, that you don't compete on price? That's what made Tesla the first successful EV. Because unlike the rest, they didn't try to compete on price and offer a mass market consumer vehicle. Instead they started with a roadster and then a luxury saloon both targeting the upper end of the market.
I don't see the point of a budget taxi car. After all even the human driven counterparts tend to be higher end luxury saloons or SUVs.
Robot Taxis will be competing on price. Whoever can release the lowest cost per mile and most reliable taxi will take lion's share simply because consumers are generally price conscious about transport. Very few will be analyzing the data if two are judged to be 'safe enough', it will come down to price.
Companies like BYD and Tesla are positioned well for that if they can get their AV functionality proven out as both are fully integrated car manufacturers.
Waymo doesn't have in-house manufacturing and is, to my knowledge, purely software so they have lots of vendors along with a relatively low output of vehicles. Their 2025 and 2026 plan is to build 2,500 new cars per year. Each Waymo car currently costs over $100k. Even if Tesla was pushing out Model Ys as their robotaxi platform, they could flood the market very easily in both scale and price per mile _if_ UFSD (unsupervised FSD) was proven.
I did a basic napkin calculation in the other comment. The price of the car is not that relevant per km than you make it to be.
I think self driving will be a commodity in the long term and every car will be able to do it. If Tesla will solve it purly by cameras, every other car manufacturer will be able to add this too. Perhaps a few years later but they will be able to do it too.
So Tesla has to leverage the first mover advantage, and they are loosing this already.
And while Musk says robot taxis are fundamental to tesla, the taxi market is actually not that big. All the broad nice areas like small cities etc. will buy a small fleet of cars and i don't think the price point of a Tesla will that crazy much cheaper than whatever everyone else will have that it will be obvous for everyone to just buy the Tesla model.
I alone will not use Tesla alone for Musk. Despite that, people might want to pay a euro more to have a SVU to have space or higher entry point than choosing the cheapest Tesla model to drive with.
Tesla can't flood the market very easily. If they could, they would have done it. And its expected that Tesla will not suddenly find the solution to their problems. They are optimizing away the next 9 at the 9x% reliability. Every additional 9 will take the same amount as the previous 9. And the nines are quite relevant if you look how many km these cars will have to drive.
If Americans were price conscious about transport they wouldn't be driving $60,000, 15mpg, oversized pickup trucks to go drop off their kids at daycare and commute to their office job, they'd be riding the bus.
Most Americans don't seem to consider the cost of their transportation in the slightest.
> If Americans were price conscious about transport they wouldn't be driving $60,000, 15mpg, oversized pickup trucks to go drop off their kids at daycare and commute to their office job, they'd be riding the bus.
> Most Americans don't seem to consider the cost of their transportation in the slightest.
Time is also an important cost. It would take us about 90 minutes from home to school to drop off my kid by bus (plus walking, since no bus stops near the school).
By car, it is 15 minutes worst case if I hit all red lights.
By car we leave home 8:15, kid is in school on time and I'm in my work meetings easily by 9:00.
By bus, we'd have to leave home at 6am and I might just barely make it in time for 9am meetings, or often be late.
So yes, people do consider the cost of transportation but it is not just dollars, also time.
The level of bus service is a societal choice. One could get bus service to be a lot more competitive in time. But I do agree, individuals do not have much control over bus schedules and people do what they can with what's currently available.
The context of the previous comments was clearly about monetary cost though, not other kinds of cost. There's also obviously environmental, health outcomes, etc, costs in question.
People who use ride share use more than one app because they can pick the one that is the cheapest. The people who use these will be price conscious.
Of course there will be other factors like amenities.
Personally, I think 'style' is going to be a non-insignificant factor to it as well. Few normies will want to get out of a 'nerd car' that has bulbous sensors all over it if they can pay a bit more to have a cooler looking ride, it's the Prius effect.
The style thing is just my opinion though but price will be the major one. People will tolerate an ugly robotaxi if it is significantly cheaper or more convenient.
With ride share you can take the cheap option 99 times out of 100, and then rent a limo for your hot date. And then rent a truck or movers when you need to move something. People buying vehicles usually buy something that covers all their needs, however rare.
So in other words, they value other things much higher than cost? Gee, sure sounds like exactly what I stated. People care more about other things than the cost, like how cool they look or how much departure angle they can achieve while they drive around in a parking garage. Overall TCO rarely figures into it.
I think other people might be smarter than you give them credit for and (for example) may chose a 30 minute car commute (plus associated dollar costs) over a much longer and multi-step public transportation trip.
Do other people not receive the same psychic damage from driving, especially during rush hour? Hopefully you're not texting during that 30 minutes that you're driving, but regardless, it's really draining to drive. Advanced lane guidance that actually works is amazing tho.
That 1 hour train commute's a nice way to unwind while doing something much more relaxing; reading a book, writing poems, making jewelry, knitting, writing letters to friends, etc
That's not to say every train commute's automatically better, 2 trains, a bus, and a tram over 1 hour would be annoying timed. I'm just saying wall clock time isn't the end all, be all metric.
Everything else held constant and I actually do have the time in my schedule, I'd generally prefer a 1 hour train ride to a half hour drive. I can spend that time doing lots of things I'd much rather do than force myself to stay focused on boring and at the same time stressful situations. I'm far more relaxed when I arrive. I'm probably getting dropped off closer than the parking garage. I'm not worried about my car getting vandalized/broken into/hit by other cars. I don't have to worry about finding a place to park or pay for parking. And its a considerably safer trip in the end.
> So in other words, they value other things much higher than cost?
This is what PP said:
> > Have you considered that Americans might value their time differently than you?
Not random other things, specifically time
Time is a lot more valuable than the other things. If I'm billing $250/hr and the bus round trip takes 3 hours, that's $750 per day lost. That completely dwarfs any of the other costs like car payment (which you don't need - buy a used car) and maintenance/insurance.
What you might not be considering is they didn't need a $60k+ oversized truck to go commute to their office job or a massive $70k 3-row SUV just because they have one kid now. That's the other side of my comment.
Not only do people tend to ignore (or even actively vote against) cheaper options they tend to then massively overbuy their more expensive form of transportation, at least if what they cared about was cost.
But it's not about cost. It's about comfort, style, lifestyle image projection, personal enjoyment, and more. Cost barely figures into it for so many.
If I were to ask the people I know "how much do you spend on transportation monthly on average", most probably wouldn't come close to having an answer. Many might be able to say their car payment. I doubt many would come close to factor in all the rest of their costs. It's crazy to me to see people balk at a $3 train fare to go into the city, "that's expensive!". Then when we calculate the cost for them to drive their oversized truck into town and back it's more expensive.
The premise you established is a false dichotomy. Original text:
> If Americans were price conscious about transport they wouldn't be driving $60,000, 15mpg, oversized pickup trucks to go drop off their kids at daycare and commute to their office job, they'd be riding the bus.
In reality, those are not the only two choices.
Riding the bus is extremely expensive unless your time is free, so that needs to be taken into account.
One can get a cheap efficient car and have all the time-saving benefits of a car and all the cost-saving benefits of a cheap one.
> One can get a cheap efficient car and have all the time-saving benefits of a car and all the cost-saving benefits of a cheap one.
They could, but they often don't.
The top selling passenger vehicles in the US are a pickup truck, a pickup truck, a small SUV, a pickup truck, a mid-sized SUV, a mid-sized SUV, a pickup truck, then finally a full-sized sedan, then a pick up truck, and then a compact car. I guess we're just all farmers and off-roaders here in the US. Maybe one day we'll get paved roads to commute to our office-based farming jobs, 'till then I guess we really need all that ground clearance.
You think all these people are basing these purchasing decisions of buying those pickup trucks entirely because its the more cost effective option to go get groceries and go to their office job?
You constructed a narrative and overlaid it over the facts.
The facts are that for many decades past, it was possible for hopeful economic immigrants to abuse asylum laws, or the back then less protected border, to gain entry to the US. Neither red nor blue administrations handled this properly and lots of people benefited from the status quo, and your focus on, "the left" is quite conspicuous, because one does not tend to think of farm owners, meat processing plants and construction contracting businesses as "the left".
And rightfully past administrations should shoulder the blame for not dealing with immigration in a lawful manner back then. If there was a need for immigrant labor they should have handed temporary VISAs or whatever, instead of ignoring illegal immigration.
Trump 1.0 tried to build his Big Beautiful Wall and implement many other policies to get a grip on abuse of the immigration rules.
Obama ran a relatively normal immigration policy with "deportations" (incl border turnarounds) increasing until wokeness emerged in 2012, after which number of deportations went into sharp decline.
George W Bush more than doubled border spending, ended catch and release, created the Secure Border Initiative, sent 6000 National Guard members to the southern border, and called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration enforcement upgrades: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/stateoftheunion/...
Bill Clinton did a crackdown against illegal immigration, passing the 1996 IIRAIRA act that made it easier to deport illegals and increased border security.
This has been a live issue for a long time and was a bipartisan issue up until 2012, when wokeness took off (https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vVtE!,f_auto,q_auto:...). After that the Republicans stuck to the prior position and the Democrats moved FAR to the left. Bill Clinton would be a "fascist" to them. The fact that Bill Clinton had nothing in common with Hitler or Mussolini doesn't register with them at all.
If you think of hiring as trying to get the best deal: best candidate for the most discounted price, what you want to do is find the proverbial gem in the rough. But AI does precisely the opposite of that. It will recommend exactly the same profile that appeals to everyone else. The gems will remain undiscovered and you will all be competing for the few individuals that according to their profile, are the safest bet.
He did a lecture. Not sure if you can still find it on Youtube, because IIRC, he published a paper and then redacted it. From what I can tell it was bits of old fashioned differential geometry and a whole lot of hand waving.
ML Research is ripe for such a subculture to emerge, because there are truly so many research directions that are nothing more than a tower of cards ready to be exposed.
You need an element of truth to capture your audience. Once you have an audience and you already deconstructed the tower of cards, you start looking for more content. And then you end up like Sabine.
Maybe at some point, but as of now it’s much more applied and empirical. Aside from money, there’s nothing stopping you from training a new architecture or loss function and sharing the weights for everyone to use.
Very recently some researchers at a Chinese lab invented a new optimizer Muon Clip which they claim is better for certain types of LLM training. I don’t think there are enough AdamW fanboys out there for it to cause a controversy. Either it works or it doesn’t.
Applied ML is truly blessed by being incredibly empirical.
So many crackpots get filtered by "oh, if your new theory is so good and powerful, then show a small scale system built on it". This hard filters 99% of crackpots, and the remaining 1% usually builds something that performs within a measurement error of existing systems.
Grand Theories Of Everything don't have such a filter. There is no easy demonstration to perform, no simple experiment to run that would show whether string theory has merit. So we get very questionable theories, and then a lot of even more questionable theories, and then crackpots and madmen as far as eye can see.
The curse on physics isn't that it has crackpots. It's that the remaining unsolved problems are incredibly hard, the space of solutions is vast, and there isn't enough experimental data coming in to quickly weed out the obviously wrong ones.
Very well said. I also think the goal of crackpots isn’t to create something useful but to have their names next to Maxwell, Einstein, and Hawking. Household names of geniuses. Their individual accomplishments are less important.
> the remaining 1% usually builds something that performs within a measurement error of existing systems
Another point that people miss when they wax poetic about how neural nets are like brains or whatnot: we didn’t pick transformers because they were the most elegant method. We use them because they work really well on the hardware we have. It’s why RNNs fell out of favor, they’re way too slow to train. Transformers made training on the whole internet possible.
Maybe RNNs can be salvaged, but my guess is they’ll be approximately as good as transformers but slower to train.
My impression of NVIDIA is that internally the teams are quite independent and there's not much in terms of broad strategy. So it could be these two efforts are not related.
This is accurate. A lot of projects that come out are each teams research projects unless they’re tied to a specific product which is when they start working closer together and integrating further.
However this repo was specifically part of their acquisition of CentML
