GPUs play a very large role in deep/machine learning, which includes among other things:
image classification (facial recognition, what's in an image, detection of cancer from mammograms), automated driving and the like
natural language processing (Siri, Google assistant, Amazon Echo)
As for 4k monitors, with pretty much every reference being online, more screen area is great. A developer in our organization might have an IDE open, Stack Overflow, some other browser tabs, mail client, our application, etc.
Nearly a decade ago when my wife got laid off we went through the bills and prioritized. The obvious like food, water and shelter were near the top. Cable TV didn't make the cut, but we were more bummed out about losing the house cleaning service. When things turned around, we brought back the house cleaning but have no real need to bring back cable TV. On vacation we have had access to cable TV again and it's done nothing to change our minds. The combination of TiVo and streaming services provides entertainment when we want it and to our taste with far less commercials. Why in the world am I going to shell out $100-130/month for a bunch of crappy reality shows, re-runs and so on? If I want a movie or series, it's probably on Netflix or Amazon, and I'd need to watch a lot to even approach what the cable used to cost.
Where I work we have code and software used for GPGPU computing using CUDA. I have servers that have been in service for about four years now and are approaching end of life. They have had three generations of GPUs in them. More recent developments in machine learning/neural nets/machine vision are using the Pascal cards (GTX 1080, Titan, 1080Ti) to do that kind of work. For $1000 or less you can get 12 teraflops of single precision math out of those things. That was a significant improvement from the earlier GTX generations, and those certainly fit in workstation's in a PCI slot. With our workstations lasting 3-4 years that could be two generations of these things, maybe three.
For screen upgrades we did do a big update where everyone got a second monitor, the number of requests hit a tipping point when it just made sense to have that as a standard config. We have looked at replacing the two screens with one larger one, too, which could be done as a big switch depending on if volume buying could get a better deal. When you start talking about getting big batches you can get some nice discounting. I would say that this case is far more rare than the combo box/screen update, which is easier to manage from a logistics perspective.
We have racks of file servers running Linux, serving Windows and Linux clients. We can instrument the work we are doing on these file servers, and the Linux clients are far less chatty and create far less file server load using NFS than their Windows counterparts using SMB. Ops numbers don't lie, and SMB is a more chatty protocol than NFS. Underlying filesystems are very reliable and proven.
Look at vendors who serve the HPC market like Isilon, Panasas, NetApp, etc. They have a strong Linux bent. Look at what HPC centers and big physics/science labs use for storage backends. It's not Windows.
I would say that dedicated four socket desktop boards don't exist. What I've seen are server boards put into a workstation enclosure. In some cases, the "workstation enclosure" is pretty much a 4U rack host put into something that has feet to allow it to be mounted on its side. We have customers who buy these servers/desktops for their analysis/modeling needs.
I'd venture that this makes it easier for management, as in you no longer have to remember that the server named XYZ is not part of a server infrastructure, but really in a workstation role. The clients we have that use these rigs are usually very large organizations doing complex engineering of big machinery or electronics.
GPU capability has been outstripping CPU capability for some time, and are easily upgraded as PCI devices. In terms of compute, the nVidia 1060 GPU was introduced in 2009 and could do 77.6 GFLOPS of doubles computation. There have been five generations since (Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta). Pascal is the most widely available and can do something like 5000 (yes, 5000) GFLOPs of doubles. On the consumer grade gaming cards in the GeForce line there have been pretty much the same generational leaps, plus the development of high DPI screens, 4K monitors, etc. Given that companies will buy PCs for a three or four year lifetime, depending on how things fall you could update the GPU 2-3 times and extend the life of the machine, especially if you also do something like move from a spinning HDD to a SSD as well.
In comparison, processor speed, core counts and RAM amounts have increased only modestly, and for many users the currently available amounts of RAM are still OK.
It's been around a decade, I signed up for it and gave it a solid month of regular use. At the end of the month I stopped using it entirely and have never missed it in my life. I was following people, had followers, found people who were doing interesting stuff, and all that. The signal to noise ratio was far too low to be remotely useful, the interface is terrible, etc.
I'm no stranger to social media or technology. I can enumerate good reasons for Usenet news, Reddit, Facebook or Instagram, but Twitter just seemed to be an endless stream of drek designed to make you nervous and interrupt your day 4000 times if you wanted to keep up.
I don't know how they expect to make money from it, either.
They aren't aiming this at people checking email and running spreadsheets. They are aiming it at people doing compute-hungry CAD, simulations, mathematical modeling, physics, data analytics, etc.
SMB gets spanked by NFS and other (generally *nix) protocols for speed, network utilization, etc. If you go to dedicated high performance filesystems you can get from a vendor who does this for a living, they will provide drivers for *NIX hosts and interconnects, since that's what people are using on their compute clusters. Maybe you get a driver for Server. SMB is by no means fast enough when the same hardware installed with a storage distro will run circles around the same box running Windows Server. There are some arcane Server file server tuning guides but they are very dense and hard to follow.
I concur about NTFS. It has performed well versus the days of FAT.
We have customers using these types of things of engineering workstations, and yes they do fully utilize the workstations. FWIW most of these "workstations" I've seen tend to be a server board put into a 4U desktop case versus a rack mount one. But there are people out there who do big engineering/big science work, and a single socket machine just doesn't cut the mustard. Linux has been laying down just fine on these machines for some time, though, without processor restrictions... so it's about time MS stepped up and provided an option to have the workstation OS be on a high end workstation and not have to go install Server on a machine whose role is really a workstation.
MS has done stuff like this for a while, if you look at the development of Windows on 64-bit it came to Server first, then tricked down to 64 bit XP, then Vista got 64 bit from the get-go, and onwards for 7 and 10. Now I just wish they would kill off 32-bit Windows!
People who are doing simulations, big data analysis, CAD/CAM, fluid mechanics, FEA/FEM, large math problems, physics, etc. The same people who have been consuming high end workstations for decades. As each new computing advance comes along, the problems get harder, the assemblies more complex, the math more detailed.
I'm excited about this because we used to have to install Windows Server to use this type of machine, now we won't need to. Linux happily installs on single, dual or quad core hosts so we only needed to maintain one install. Now we can keep things consistent on Windows.
I can tell you that I spend over $50 to go to the movies already. So do a lot of people. Who are these fat cats who blow $50 or more on going to the movies? Parents with kids. In my area, movie tickets for a evening show are at least $13/adult and $10/child. If we want to go when something opens it can be even more expensive. Matinees don't save much. Add in a drink or snack and we are talking $100 for a night out.
$50-100 is by no means "just a nickel" of us, we budget monthly and a trip to the movie theater to see a first run movie is a big treat for us. We watch most of our movies at home in some fashion, and there's also a second run theater that makes it affordable. And this is also cheaper than when we had to leave the kids at home and get a sitter to see a movie, so there's that.
If I could see first run moves for $50 I would pay for that in a heartbeat.
I'm also aware of torrents and sneaking candy in, too:)
Hours worked: the new company scrip. Only redeemable when your boss says it's redeemable, and for your benefit. You'd probably just spend that extra money, anyway.
That's why it's just a plain stupid idea to count sick days as some magical number you get out of each year. Legitimate sick days aren't planned and they sure as hell aren't vacation. For people who are concerned with abuse, there are any number of successful approaches to dealing with it. Where I work I've heard that people who might be suspected of abusing the policy are approached individually, and that managers are trained to look out for it. The managers are also trained that some people are sick more often than others, too, so to use their discretion. Just because you have a crappy immune system shouldn't count against you if you are otherwise a decent employee.
In my case, I went five years with maybe two or three days, then when we had our first kid I was sick a lot more, with all the fun germs coming back from the germ farm. After I got used to all those new pathogens I went right back down to normal numbers. Other people have similar stories, especially as they age. Few days missed with young, then later you get sick more.
I hadn't heard about the PTO in lieu of overtime, that's some serious bullshit. You are totally right about the "not being able to use" case. My mom's last job before she retired used PTO. Her manager would bitch about her submitting a time off request three months in advance, complaining that they didn't know if it was a "good time". It was stupidly ridiculous. If you can't manage someone being out for a week with three months notice, you have some serious management issues. Also, in the case where someone accrues OT as PTO I also bet you'd get some nastygram from accounting saying you had too much PTO and that you would need to take it, then the boss won't approve it.
For those unfamiliar with the employer "benefit" of "Paid Time Off", it's a system where your "sick time" and "vacation time" are pushed together. So you get to make choices like "should I stay home with this fever/cold/bronchitis/stomach flu/kidney stone OR do I get to see my family at the holidays this year?" and "I already paid for that cruise, I'll just bring in four boxes of kleenex and power through".
I get that PTO is an accountant's wet dream, combining all those liabilities into one column on the balance sheet. In reality, it becomes a fantastic way for everyone to bring their germs into the office and spread their sickness and being ineffective at work when they should be at home getting better, so they can see their family at the holidays.
My employer says "if you are sick, stay home", and there's no number of "counted" sick time. Some years I've not taken a sick day, other years I've been out two weeks. It's not like kidney stones or bronchitis were the same as sipping a drink out of a coconut on a tropical beach, or that I planned it.
People I know who are into the Maker electronics scene buy from Amazon, Sparkfun, etc. We have a local place that's independently owned that does good business. The staff are well trained and they aren't trying to push overpriced batteries and on phones.
For R/C cars, planes, drones the selection online is far better than any one store could ever provide.
If I need a cable I go to Monoprice or Amazon. It seems any physical entity charges highway robbery for the most mundane of cables. I can buy what I need plus backups/extras for the same price as any brick and mortar store.
For computer stuff we have a Micro Center near us, every time I visit the place is busy. They stock everything needed to build a PC if you want to buy local, or you can walk out with a complete system. Sales people at Micro Center generally know what's going on, or will summon someone who does if it's not their department.
The cell phone stores are pretty ubiquitous and can provide more in depth service, although I've gotten my two last phones from one of the online resellers. My MVNO is happy to point me at the reseller and tells me exactly which one to buy. Phone shows up at my house and I activate it with a few mouse clicks.
A/V equipment is really well covered online. I've bought from NewEgg, Amazon and Crutchfield over the years. Crutchfield by far stands out as the best car stereo buying experience out there. I replaced a head unit and they also put in all the "extras" needed to put the thing in my car, and the included instructions were clearly written and easy to understand. For other stuff like TVs, receivers, blu-ray, consoles the prices are pretty much the same and shipping is quick.
Batteries can be found anywhere from the local BJ's/Costco to online at the usual suspects, for a decent price and in just about whatever quantity you might like.
I don't see what Radio Shack could do that could keep up with the better options available out there, plus their staff was generally poorly trained / unresponsive and the stores didn't stock anything useful. I went in looking for basic stuff on more than one occasion but walked out empty handed because the price was ridiculous or it wasn't in the store, or both. It's no wonder they were circling the drain for so long. There's probably even a net gain in the size of the market they were serving, and more jobs for the market, too.
Would my password count as "shared" because the account is in my wife's name yet I use it as well as my kids? It's a "family" account yet you still have one login credential. By definition you have to share it, it's not like each family member signs in under their own unique login, like Amazon Prime Family and Spotify Family do. They just provide profiles for the shared account.
As my kids grow up and move on the cost is so low I wouldn't care if they kept using it, the cost of Netflix pales in comparison of the other financial support I'm on the hook for until they are living on their own.
"The early data are suggesting the presence of a core," Lunine says. "But not a discreet core. It seems that it's fuzzy." He says more data should help provide a more precise understanding than fuzzy.
The core is being very discreet, hiding under all those clouds so we can't see it, and being very unobtrusive. It's not like it's out there waving itself around for everyone to see. I guess it leaves that to the flashy cloud layers and the Great Red Spot, which is a discrete formation that's been known for some time.
I am in one of the rare US municipalities with a non-profit ISP. It's part of the town power and light company, and they also provide cable and phone service. Prices are fair, service is great and the vast majority of the employees are people who live here. We've had our speeds upped a few times at no additional cost, and we even got a refund on our power bill when the power company ran a surplus.
When asked about them selling information, the answer was a loud and clear "NO, we never sell information about our customers".
The downsides of this setup are that the support hours are not 24/7, and some services/equipment can lag. But given that I've not experienced significant downtime in 10+ years, I can deal with it.
I pay very little for water from my household tap, yet there's an aisle in the supermarket filled with water in plastic bottles, and people buy it all the time. A lot of it comes from municipal taps just like mine.
Also, the local yogurt place could just offer other fruits to put in their yogurt. Also, should Amazon ever try making it to step 3 it's not like redirecting a ship or truck to bring back reasonably priced bananas is going to be impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
As for 4k monitors, with pretty much every reference being online, more screen area is great. A developer in our organization might have an IDE open, Stack Overflow, some other browser tabs, mail client, our application, etc.
Ten years of decline, one year of add. That's a trend that's not Comcastic.
Nearly a decade ago when my wife got laid off we went through the bills and prioritized. The obvious like food, water and shelter were near the top. Cable TV didn't make the cut, but we were more bummed out about losing the house cleaning service. When things turned around, we brought back the house cleaning but have no real need to bring back cable TV. On vacation we have had access to cable TV again and it's done nothing to change our minds. The combination of TiVo and streaming services provides entertainment when we want it and to our taste with far less commercials. Why in the world am I going to shell out $100-130/month for a bunch of crappy reality shows, re-runs and so on? If I want a movie or series, it's probably on Netflix or Amazon, and I'd need to watch a lot to even approach what the cable used to cost.
For screen upgrades we did do a big update where everyone got a second monitor, the number of requests hit a tipping point when it just made sense to have that as a standard config. We have looked at replacing the two screens with one larger one, too, which could be done as a big switch depending on if volume buying could get a better deal. When you start talking about getting big batches you can get some nice discounting. I would say that this case is far more rare than the combo box/screen update, which is easier to manage from a logistics perspective.
If the speaker came with a remote control, it could have a Chuck D pad!
We have racks of file servers running Linux, serving Windows and Linux clients. We can instrument the work we are doing on these file servers, and the Linux clients are far less chatty and create far less file server load using NFS than their Windows counterparts using SMB. Ops numbers don't lie, and SMB is a more chatty protocol than NFS. Underlying filesystems are very reliable and proven.
Look at vendors who serve the HPC market like Isilon, Panasas, NetApp, etc. They have a strong Linux bent. Look at what HPC centers and big physics/science labs use for storage backends. It's not Windows.
I'd venture that this makes it easier for management, as in you no longer have to remember that the server named XYZ is not part of a server infrastructure, but really in a workstation role. The clients we have that use these rigs are usually very large organizations doing complex engineering of big machinery or electronics.
In comparison, processor speed, core counts and RAM amounts have increased only modestly, and for many users the currently available amounts of RAM are still OK.
Leisure Suit Tim In The Land of the Coffee Shop Hipsters?
I'm no stranger to social media or technology. I can enumerate good reasons for Usenet news, Reddit, Facebook or Instagram, but Twitter just seemed to be an endless stream of drek designed to make you nervous and interrupt your day 4000 times if you wanted to keep up.
I don't know how they expect to make money from it, either.
SMB gets spanked by NFS and other (generally *nix) protocols for speed, network utilization, etc. If you go to dedicated high performance filesystems you can get from a vendor who does this for a living, they will provide drivers for *NIX hosts and interconnects, since that's what people are using on their compute clusters. Maybe you get a driver for Server. SMB is by no means fast enough when the same hardware installed with a storage distro will run circles around the same box running Windows Server. There are some arcane Server file server tuning guides but they are very dense and hard to follow. I concur about NTFS. It has performed well versus the days of FAT. We have customers using these types of things of engineering workstations, and yes they do fully utilize the workstations. FWIW most of these "workstations" I've seen tend to be a server board put into a 4U desktop case versus a rack mount one. But there are people out there who do big engineering/big science work, and a single socket machine just doesn't cut the mustard. Linux has been laying down just fine on these machines for some time, though, without processor restrictions ... so it's about time MS stepped up and provided an option to have the workstation OS be on a high end workstation and not have to go install Server on a machine whose role is really a workstation.
MS has done stuff like this for a while, if you look at the development of Windows on 64-bit it came to Server first, then tricked down to 64 bit XP, then Vista got 64 bit from the get-go, and onwards for 7 and 10. Now I just wish they would kill off 32-bit Windows!
People who are doing simulations, big data analysis, CAD/CAM, fluid mechanics, FEA/FEM, large math problems, physics, etc. The same people who have been consuming high end workstations for decades. As each new computing advance comes along, the problems get harder, the assemblies more complex, the math more detailed. I'm excited about this because we used to have to install Windows Server to use this type of machine, now we won't need to. Linux happily installs on single, dual or quad core hosts so we only needed to maintain one install. Now we can keep things consistent on Windows.
the GOP will push for a tax
Proof of the alternate universe theory? Sign of the end times? Pigs will start flying? Hell will freeze over?
It's the only way to be sure
$50-100 is by no means "just a nickel" of us, we budget monthly and a trip to the movie theater to see a first run movie is a big treat for us. We watch most of our movies at home in some fashion, and there's also a second run theater that makes it affordable. And this is also cheaper than when we had to leave the kids at home and get a sitter to see a movie, so there's that.
If I could see first run moves for $50 I would pay for that in a heartbeat.
I'm also aware of torrents and sneaking candy in, too :)
Rebooting is the first step of troubleshooting any Microsoft problem.
Hours worked: the new company scrip. Only redeemable when your boss says it's redeemable, and for your benefit. You'd probably just spend that extra money, anyway.
In my case, I went five years with maybe two or three days, then when we had our first kid I was sick a lot more, with all the fun germs coming back from the germ farm. After I got used to all those new pathogens I went right back down to normal numbers. Other people have similar stories, especially as they age. Few days missed with young, then later you get sick more.
I hadn't heard about the PTO in lieu of overtime, that's some serious bullshit. You are totally right about the "not being able to use" case. My mom's last job before she retired used PTO. Her manager would bitch about her submitting a time off request three months in advance, complaining that they didn't know if it was a "good time". It was stupidly ridiculous. If you can't manage someone being out for a week with three months notice, you have some serious management issues. Also, in the case where someone accrues OT as PTO I also bet you'd get some nastygram from accounting saying you had too much PTO and that you would need to take it, then the boss won't approve it.
For those unfamiliar with the employer "benefit" of "Paid Time Off", it's a system where your "sick time" and "vacation time" are pushed together. So you get to make choices like "should I stay home with this fever/cold/bronchitis/stomach flu/kidney stone OR do I get to see my family at the holidays this year?" and "I already paid for that cruise, I'll just bring in four boxes of kleenex and power through". I get that PTO is an accountant's wet dream, combining all those liabilities into one column on the balance sheet. In reality, it becomes a fantastic way for everyone to bring their germs into the office and spread their sickness and being ineffective at work when they should be at home getting better, so they can see their family at the holidays. My employer says "if you are sick, stay home", and there's no number of "counted" sick time. Some years I've not taken a sick day, other years I've been out two weeks. It's not like kidney stones or bronchitis were the same as sipping a drink out of a coconut on a tropical beach, or that I planned it.
For R/C cars, planes, drones the selection online is far better than any one store could ever provide.
If I need a cable I go to Monoprice or Amazon. It seems any physical entity charges highway robbery for the most mundane of cables. I can buy what I need plus backups/extras for the same price as any brick and mortar store.
For computer stuff we have a Micro Center near us, every time I visit the place is busy. They stock everything needed to build a PC if you want to buy local, or you can walk out with a complete system. Sales people at Micro Center generally know what's going on, or will summon someone who does if it's not their department.
The cell phone stores are pretty ubiquitous and can provide more in depth service, although I've gotten my two last phones from one of the online resellers. My MVNO is happy to point me at the reseller and tells me exactly which one to buy. Phone shows up at my house and I activate it with a few mouse clicks.
A/V equipment is really well covered online. I've bought from NewEgg, Amazon and Crutchfield over the years. Crutchfield by far stands out as the best car stereo buying experience out there. I replaced a head unit and they also put in all the "extras" needed to put the thing in my car, and the included instructions were clearly written and easy to understand. For other stuff like TVs, receivers, blu-ray, consoles the prices are pretty much the same and shipping is quick.
Batteries can be found anywhere from the local BJ's/Costco to online at the usual suspects, for a decent price and in just about whatever quantity you might like.
I don't see what Radio Shack could do that could keep up with the better options available out there, plus their staff was generally poorly trained / unresponsive and the stores didn't stock anything useful. I went in looking for basic stuff on more than one occasion but walked out empty handed because the price was ridiculous or it wasn't in the store, or both. It's no wonder they were circling the drain for so long. There's probably even a net gain in the size of the market they were serving, and more jobs for the market, too.
Would my password count as "shared" because the account is in my wife's name yet I use it as well as my kids? It's a "family" account yet you still have one login credential. By definition you have to share it, it's not like each family member signs in under their own unique login, like Amazon Prime Family and Spotify Family do. They just provide profiles for the shared account. As my kids grow up and move on the cost is so low I wouldn't care if they kept using it, the cost of Netflix pales in comparison of the other financial support I'm on the hook for until they are living on their own.
"The early data are suggesting the presence of a core," Lunine says. "But not a discreet core. It seems that it's fuzzy." He says more data should help provide a more precise understanding than fuzzy.
The core is being very discreet, hiding under all those clouds so we can't see it, and being very unobtrusive. It's not like it's out there waving itself around for everyone to see. I guess it leaves that to the flashy cloud layers and the Great Red Spot, which is a discrete formation that's been known for some time.
I am in one of the rare US municipalities with a non-profit ISP. It's part of the town power and light company, and they also provide cable and phone service. Prices are fair, service is great and the vast majority of the employees are people who live here. We've had our speeds upped a few times at no additional cost, and we even got a refund on our power bill when the power company ran a surplus.
When asked about them selling information, the answer was a loud and clear "NO, we never sell information about our customers".
The downsides of this setup are that the support hours are not 24/7, and some services/equipment can lag. But given that I've not experienced significant downtime in 10+ years, I can deal with it.
I pay very little for water from my household tap, yet there's an aisle in the supermarket filled with water in plastic bottles, and people buy it all the time. A lot of it comes from municipal taps just like mine.
Also, the local yogurt place could just offer other fruits to put in their yogurt. Also, should Amazon ever try making it to step 3 it's not like redirecting a ship or truck to bring back reasonably priced bananas is going to be impossible.