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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Lemmy is… Not distributed computing.

    If each instance is a separate application than must scale on it’s own, then no distributed computing is occuring.

    There is one database, and you can have the instance itself behind a load balancer.

    Lemmy is not a distributed program, you can’t scale it linearly by adding more nodes. It’s severely limited by it’s database access patterns, to a single DB, and is not capable of being distributed in it’s current state. You can put more web servers behind a load balancer, but that’s not really “distributed computing” that’s just “distributing a workload”, which has a lot of limitations that defeat it being truly distributed.

    Actual distributed applications are incredibly difficult to create at scale, with many faux-distribited applications being made (Lemmy being n-tier im a per instance basis).

    Think of Kafka. Kafka is an actual distributed application.


  • Cloud computing is… Not distributed computing.

    We’re talking about pushing compute workloads across a distributed set of devices where that workload is linearly scalable by the number of devices involved, compute, storage, failovers…etc scale elegantly. Cloud computing can give you the tools to make such a thing a reality within the scope of the cloud provider, but it most definitely is not distributed computing just by existing.

    Also the fediverse is NOT distributed computing either, at least for Lemmy. There is no distributed compute available for Lemmy. You can’t have a few hundred users toss up their own compute to handle loads for an instance. Each instance is limited to a single database, and can have webservers behind a load balancer to spread out the compute. And that’s about the best you’ve got. Not distributed, you can’t just spin up 100 nodes for a Lemmy instance to handle more load and everything “just works”. It’s a very “classic” architecture in a way.

    A K8 cluster isn’t distributed computing until you build a distributed application that can elegantly scale with more and more nodes. And is fault tolerant to nodes straight up dying.

    Kafka for example, is an actual distributed application. One which you could run on a K8 cluster, it self-manages storage, duplication, load balancing, failovers, rebalancing…etc elegantly as you add more nodes. It doesn’t rely on a central DB, it IS the DB, every node. Lemmy is not.






  • AI can’t replace a person yet*

    Stating that AI limitations today means those limitations will exist in the future, despite the accelerated growth of AI complexity & capabilities is plain wrong.

    History is full of examples just like this, from computers, to the internet, to automation…etc “Robots will never replace my job because my job is complicated”, it’s not a matter of if, but when. Would you rather be on the side of history that considered the impacts and tried to mitigate them, or the side that stuck their head in the sand?

    Also, on the point of invalid logic. “AI is not the problem, it’s the abuse” is assuming AI exists in a void, which it doesn’t. The same logic: Biological weapons aren’t bad, it’s how they are used is the problem. Misinformation isn’t bad, it’s how it’s spread that’s the problem. Guns aren’t bad, it’s the people shooting them that’s the problem. …etc for everything else in the world that is a real problem because humans use and abuse it.

    Current gen AI is a problem because it’s a catalyst for abuse. Not because of nature of existing AI, you are right, but that’s an argument detached from the reality of the situation.

    Note: General Super Intelligence is a problem purely by it’s natural. The same goes with partial intelligence due to alignment issues which are currently paradoxical in nature. There are entire fields of study for this.


    I would suggest learning how current models function. They have a lot of limitations and they are nowhere near actual AI like movies and media suggest.

    Despite this you will find while learning this that the rate of advancement is such that the future dangers posed by AI are real, and must be considered. Ignorantly ignoring the writing on the wall doesn’t do us any good.



  • Lack of serviceability is a big one.

    Walled gardens are another.

    I have major issues with both. I bought the device, I should be able to repair it. It shouldn’t intentionally not work with other ecosystems that use standard protocols either. I should be able to integrate my device with standards the rest of the world uses.

    Pretty much you buy apple devices, you are essentially an expensive renter renting a really strong internal ecosystem that purposefully forces you into buying more of that ecosystem and not working outside of it.