IHeartBadCode

Yeah, something got in their crawl and Bluesky is on low key TPOT rising.

Someone did a post on it, you can see the map that was done in the picture there with TPOT in blue.

I don’t know why they started coalescing on Bluesky, but it is what it is. If they get annoying there, I know how to mute them. But as long as that doesn’t also herald the “free speech absolutists” that literally add zero value, I’m cool with TPOT heading to Bluesky.

Besides, I’m more active on Fedi/Mastodon at this point than Threads/Bluesky so it’s not really a pressing thing for me. I mean shit, I wouldn’t have a problem with Musk’s network if he’d clamp down on the utter trash going on over there. Like it’s gotten to pure garbage, I haven’t the time to block everyone who pops into my feeds that how hard the algo there is pushing the trash.

The postrat folk. The deep value Silicon Valley folk. Core Techbro kind of people.

Would have thought they’d be prone to sticking with Musk

Ditto, but at the same time. Being with daddy Musk might be too traditional at this point. No idea the reasons, but you can to see a lot of this popping up in that circle on Twitter.

TPOT → Bluesky is actually an interesting example of what looks like a successful transplantation… quasi-existential concerns about Elon Twitter, vibes have been off leading to big cascades of migration tend to happen after inciting incidents (eg twitter banning substack links being a canary in the coal mine)

You know the “I sound super thoughtful” kind of stuff. Lots of praise from that Group on XTwitter/Bluesky.

I don’t know. Lots of folks pointing out That Part Of Twitter (TPOT) also migrating over.

Thermal is a wall to contend with as well. At the moment SSDs get the density from 3D stacking the planes of substrate that make up the memory cells. Each layer contributes some heat and at some point the layer in the middle gets too hot from the layers below and not being close enough to the top to dissipate the heat upwards fast enough.

One way to address this was the multi-level cell (MLC) where instead of on/off, the voltage within the cell could represent multiple bits. So 0-1.5v = 00, 1.6-3v = 01, 3.1-4.5v = 10, 4.6-5v = 11. But that requires sense amplifiers that can handle that, which aren’t difficult outright to etch, they just add complexity to ensure that the amplifier read the correct value. We’ve since moved to eight-level cells, where each cell holds an entire byte, and the error correction circuits are wild for the sense amplifiers. But all NAND FGMOS leak, so if you pack eight levels into a single cell, even small leaks can be the difference between sensing one level from another level. So at some point packing more levels into the cell will just lead to a cell that leaks too quickly for the word “storage” to be applied to the device. It’s not really storage any longer if powering the device off for half a year puts all the data at risk.

So once going upwards and packing hits a wall, the next direction is moving out. But the more you move outward, the further one is placing the physical memory cells from the controller. It’s a non-zero amount of distance and the speed of light is only so fast. One light-nanosecond is about 300 millimetres, so a device operating at 1GHz frequency clock has that distance to cover in a single tick of the clock in an ideal situation, which heat, quantum effects, and so on all conspire to make it less than ideal. So you can only go so far out before you begin to require cache in the in-between steps and scheduling of block access that make the entire thing more complex and potentially slow it down.

And there are ways to get around that as well, but all of them begin to really increase the cost, like having multi-port chips that are accessed on multi-channel buses, basically creating a small network inside your SSD of chips. Sort of how like a lot of CPUs are starting to swap over to chiplet designs. We can absolutely keep going, but there’s going to be cost associated with that “keep going” that’s going to be hard to bring down. So there will be a point where that “cost to utility” equation for end-users will start playing a much larger role long before we hit some physical wall.

That said, the 200 domain of layers was thought to be the wall for stacking due to heat, there was some creative work done and the number of layers got past 300, but the chips do indeed generate a lot more heat these days. And maybe heat sinks and fans for your SSD aren’t too far off in the future, I know passive cooling with a heat sink is already becoming vogue with SSDs. The article indicated that Samsung and SK hynix predict being able to hit 1000+ layers, which that’s crazy to think about, because even with the tricks being employed today to help get heat out of the middle layers faster, I don’t see how we use those same tricks to hit past 500+ layers without a major change in production of the cells, which usually there’s a lot of R&D that goes behind such a thing. So maybe they’ve been working on something nobody else knows about, or maybe they’re going to have active cooling for SSDs? Who knows, but 1000+ layers is wild to think about, but I’m pretty sure that such chips are not going to come down in prices as quickly as some consumers might hope. As it gets more complex, that length of time before prices start to go down starts to increase. And that slows overall demand for more density as only the ones who see the higher cost being worth their specific need gets more limited to very niche applications.

That’s not untrue though. The number of times the average consumer has over corrected to only put themselves into a position where they over correct yet again is sobering.

I’m not dissing AI or the average consumer, I’m just saying they often paint their asses into a corner over and over again only to complain when they paint themselves into a corner.

Number of times I’ve heard people complain about having to pay the monthly price for iCloud is a non-zero number. But then you suggest getting a phone with an SD slot and they’re aghast that you’d suggest them giving up their blue bubbles. They hate ads on their Smart TV but how would they watch their Disney+ without a Smart TV? I’ve got a CVS receipt sized list of things consumers complain about that consumers wanted but now find themselves in the awkward position of “not like this.”

C’est la vie. But there’s not going to be any kind of discourse that’s going to prevent folks shooting themselves in the foot. All we can do is just present some other options for when they inevitably have a bloody stump where their foot used to be. They’re going to use AI no matter what and eventually they’ll be wondering how their back is against the wall with all this paint surrounding them. Yet again.

I don’t think there’s any point any trying to persuade them of anything really. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. So yeah, the average consumer is completely going to snag these shit PCs up in droves, they also are going to eventually regret that, but that’s a future them problem apparently.

You and the person you replied to are correct.