serpro69

Yeah, no, I totally agree with this. I'm just a little annoyed when people call AI-generated stuff "art" is all :D Can't help but feel sorry for artists/designers/writers. They will be among the first ones to be affected by this bs. And the irony is that these models were trained on creator's own works. What a mess...

Love the quote "AI is not photography". That's the feeling I always have then I see people saying "AI can create art" or smth like that. It's not art for f***s sake...

Ubuntu (thought that was clear from the sentence since I mentioned the timeline relative to Ubuntu 20.04 release :D ) I do like KDE overall, but that issue was more or less a blocker for me, hence wen't back to Gnome. I haven't tried it with other distros though, or even with more recent Ubuntu versions, so things might have improved since then. Thunderbird mostly (Lately have to use Outlook - via web - for work since our IT peeps blocked authentication for third-party apps) It did support calendar and contacts last time I used it with O365 account (about a year ago)

I'm definitely on board with Joel as well.

Last time I tried KDE (I think it was around the time Ubuntu 20.04 came out) - I got stuck on getting Network Manager working properly, namely could not get VPN connections to work properly :/ While I do prefer command line for most things, VPN connections is one thing I'd still like to keep out of it. The same thing works just fine for me on Gnome without jumping through any hoops whatsoever

I guess another question is, even if they do come up with a meaningful regulation, will it be enough if no one else (US, I'm looking at you first and foremost) does the same? Likely not?

Same here. I never used TimeMachine and don't know what's your requirements besides using hard-links, but take a look at https://github.com/bit-team/backintime and https://github.com/linuxmint/timeshift if you don't want to deal with setting up a cron job which runs rsync directly. I don't think you'll be looking at them much though. Super+A -> type app name -> press Return -> profit :) At least I can't recall the last time I manually scrolled through the apps.

Oh damn, I thought I clicked on "edit" :/ 100% agree with this - they will never consider "good of the public" so long as money flows in and no one does anything (real) to rein them in. And yeah, you can easily see how they have politicians in their pockets. No need to go far, just look at the absurdity of TikTok hearing last month. I would not be surprised if Google and Meta "sponsored" the whole "ban evil tik-tok". Who will rein them in at this point? Well, I have some hope still that the EU will do something meaningful with their AI Act. But how it's going to turn out? Who knows. They tried to do something good with GDPR, but in practice personal data is still being collected and sold (a year old, but still relevant https://www.wired.com/story/gdpr-2022/ ). Then again, they seem to be at least noticing the problems and promising to come up with solutions . Now they're going to try to regulate same companies in AI field, which is much more obscure and unclear at this point than privacy and data protection areas. One can be hopeful at least, but I'm not overly optimistic either. I think something drastic needs to happen either for politicians to look beyond their greed, or for people to raise and go to the streets. The question is, will it be too late at that point? I sure hope not.

Here are a few articles about the whole "OpenAI transitioning into ClosedAI": - https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3naz/openai-is-now-everything-it-promised-not-to-be-corporate-closed-source-and-for-profit - https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak3w5a/openais-gpt-4-is-closed-source-and-shrouded-in-secrecy in case anyone's interested to know more about what they've been doing recently.

Haven't really wondered about that. I've never had more than a handful of icons in the tray, and I have same application windows "stacked", so having the entire dash filled out has never been a problem for me. I would suggest to not overuse the gnome extensions though. I've had issues in the past (16.04 / 18.04) where having too many extensions would give me all sorts of troubles. Since 20.04 I try to keep the extensions to absolutely necessary ones without which my overall experience with the DE would be noticeably worse. Not sure about the Windows 7 start menu per se, but when I think about "windows-like experience in Linux", the first thing that comes to mind is Zorin OS (which is also based on Ubuntu btw)

Hah, yeah, I can't say I was surprised when I saw that. Guess why he was so eager to push a "halt to all AI development"... not to help humanity (as he claims now and again), that's for sure. Yeah I agree, I only trivialize it to convey a point that these AI models are not really intelligent as we tend to think. The fact that it can pass a Bar exam, for example, does not make them "smart" (in the same way humans are smart). Now, that does not mean they won't have a huge impact on us. We can see the first signs of that already, as you yourself pointed out. But as much as it can hurt, it can also be beneficial to the humanity at large if used properly. But there's a lot of money to be made here (guess why OpenAI hasn't revealed anything about GPT-4 ; should probably rename themselves into ClosedAI at this point ), so unless properly regulated, it will likely do more harm than good.

Try Dash to Panel , it's a really nice extension if you're using Gnome. Also, If you want an Ubuntu-derivative and Gnome, I would recommend to try out PopOS. I've been using Ubuntu myself ever since I've switched to Linux years ago, but recently tried out PopOS on my wife's laptop (and she actually ended up using Pop daily), and was positively impressed by the smoothness of the experience I've had with it. It even offered me drivers for the Dell WD19DC docking station. I'm definitely giving it another go on my next laptop.

Generally agree with OP and share the concerns about current (pace of) AI developments. I'm also all-in for boycotting these bastards who well know the risks and all, and yet do nothing to ensure this stuff is safe before making it available to everyone; but that's not new for companies currently working on AI and has always been there. Money trumps the rest... (I do hope that governments will step in and start paying more attention to this sooner rather than later.) But I think a lot of the "worries" described in this thread come from the unknown. It's as some users here said, a year or two ago none of us thought this possible. So then a natural question I ask myself - if this is where we are today, what will we see in the next 2 years? And the unknown has always been scary for people. As for the current generative AI such as ChatGPT, I think it poses a bit different threats - spread of misinformation, education and intelligence level declines (people using it to write essays and such, thus relying on own brains less). I personally view ChatGPT as nothing else than an "accurate predictor of text". They are, after all, trained on human knowledge. Can it solve new problems? Can it invent something new? When we are all extinct and all the publicly available info only exists on the Wayback Machine, where will these models learn to solve tomorrow's problems? Now, I'm not saying that something like Skynet won't ever happen in the future. I can see that with current pace of developments it might someday come to pass. But the current technology is still a bit overhyped IMO (which in my mind is a good thing, because it attracts more attention from governments and we can hope this will be properly regulated before it gets out of hand). But these large language models are nowhere near artificial (general) intelligence.

Initiated a return with Amazon. Weird issue, but I can't solve it, so...

Same behavior trying to enter bios recovery - keyboard lights up, black screen, then the whole thing shuts down. I guess this means a motherboard replacement....

Weird thing is. When it's connected to power adapter - it takes very long time to "turn on" (the keyboard backlight), like I need to hold power button for half a minute or so. When it's on battery it (keyboard) lights up almost immediately. The amber blink also seems random. Sometimes it blinks once, sometimes it doesn't. Contacted Amazon and they're saying to send it back to them. Which is OK. But I need to find out if their warranty terms allow me to take out the ssd to back stuff up - that's the most important part here. But I'll try the bios recovery thingy while I wait anyways. Thanks for the tips :)

nope, not to my knowledge at least

So I have an XPS 15 9510 which does not power on. A power button press results in a single amber blink , the keyboard lights up , display does turn on and after ~10-15 seconds the laptop shuts down. I've checked the service manual and it does not mention anything related to a single amber blink (the "lowest code" is 1 amber 1 white) Tried searching around the web - nada. Anyone can help me troubleshoot this further? (Got it from Amazon. Dunno if they allow you to open it up w/o voiding warranty :/ Going to chat with them anyways, but making this thread just in case someone can give me any tips)

Assuming you haven't already, I'd contact XMG support with this query. They also have a discord server where you could ask around.

Hah, imagine the implications if/when that actually happens Earth can't possibly sustain us living forever Would open a bunch of other possibilities though, like exploration and colonization of out-of-reach planets maybe? But still, Earth would be doomed (not that it doesn't look like it already is)

Thanks for the review! Have been looking at the new NEO 17 for awhile now myself. I've read on XMG discord the other day that the keyboard "wears in" after some use and gets slightly quieter. It's a shame to read that mechanical kb does not help with touch-typing, and in fact is worse than the membrane. I never owned a laptop with a mechanical kb, but wanted to try it. Now after reading your comments I think I might stick to membrane if I ever decide to purchase this model.

That framework tablet looks very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Now this just got interesting. I haven't yet read through all of it, but do they also offer upgradable CPUs? I'm actually more interested in that than the GPU really. But still , looks like they're going in the right direction.

Yes, you are right. My point was that having threads such as this one does not bring any value to the forums. We have a thread of "your last purchase" where you can share what you bought, including laptops. We already have a thread for this particular laptop, where people share their findings and ask questions. And which itself also does not have that much activity. So what's the point in another thread? (I would understand if the OP mentioned something like "review is coming" or anything along those lines, but if it's just about buying a laptop?...) But again, I do agree with you. And yeah, I probably don't care one way or the other, so I just should've kept my mouth shut like I often do in such cases heh. I guess sometimes I just can't help it lol.

I think you misunderstood, what I meant is that the price I'm seeing here is 2k more than that lol. So the M16 I want to get comes up to around 5.5k usd total (with 4 years of warranty) Tried to use the same coupon link to get 15% off, but it seems like it only works for US-based purchases (The checkout says smth along the lines of "your coupon is valid but can't be applied to the product") As nice as this laptop seems to be, I'm really not sure that it's worth this much lol. So I'll probably keep looking for something else or waiting for prices to drop (at which point we'll probably start seeing 14th gen on the horizon )