You can do much of that other stuff by yourself, but no one alive carries a table of logarithms around in their head.

Once you accept that you should also accept that it contains Taylor series expansions for sine and cosine, which you also do not carry around in your head.

I recommend telling a physicist that you feel this way and seeing what they think about calculating machines.

>Single-precision computations for traditional applications are suitable only for experts, not for ordinary computer users.

Lots of ordinary computer users did compute in single precision! The reason I picked the 1990s as 'ancient' and not 1980 (when the 8087 was taped out) or 1985 (when IEEE754 was finally approved) was because those microprocessors were now in the hands of users who weren't under the supervision of 'experts'. That, along with the lack of fast 64 bit registers + the desire for high throughput at low fidelity led to a lot of 32 bit code!

And, frankly, if you want to get real technical, the ability of non-experts to program in FP in 64 bit is enforced NOT ONLY by the doubled bits but by the implicit ability (absent now in many implementations) to use the 80 bit extended precision format for intermediate calcs. It's the added bits in that format for scratch that let lots of 64 bit programs just work.

I am...very sorry to be the one delivering this news. It was not a pleasant realization for me, either.

Most (white) people I meet in the USA, even nice people, almost all operate on the idea that someone "going away" is a solution to problems and when you press they rarely have a care or concern for where that person goes or what happens to them.

Before this decade is out we'll see death camps in this country for indigence (among other things) and no one will give a shit.

The idea is that speed is *essential* but coordinative action is too. Most combat situations in history have not allowed for hierarchical resolution of all important decisions nor the slower, alternative consensus-based decision process. Independence and alignment with the mission allows for more agile, more effective units. As technology advances, it actually gets EASIER to talk and coordinate actively rather than train and pre-bake the coordination. Ship captains today can be released with much less latitude than 200 years ago because we can raise them on the radio at need.

I'm not arguing we should adopt military metaphors or even that exigencies force speed somehow, as they do often in military matters. I AM arguing that we ought to consider there are local and system-wide virtues to training and coordinating in such a way that you can move without talking.

Inquire within.

— A spooky ghost

WooooooOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOOOoooooo-

- A less spooky ghost

If this software succeeds despite the manifest failures that are pointed out here, that’s a sign that something is working. We could argue that something is just access to the model, but plenty of other companies sell that and they don’t seem to do as well.