Same, I think we are just a collective consciousness of the bacteria/yeasts inside us, and the brain is just a compute device, that the bacteria use via the high bandwidth vagus nerves.
Thats why its important to not feed the bad bacteria and keep the good bacteria healthy.
I wish they would just allow us to push everything to GPU as buffer pointers, like buffer_device address extension allows you to, and then reconstruct the data to your required format via shaders.
The GPU programming seems to be both super low level, but also high level, cause textures and descriptors need these ultra specific data format's, and then the way you construct and upload those formats are very complicated and change all the time.
Is there really no way to simplify this ?
Regular vertex data was supposed to be strictly pre formatted in pipeline too, util it was not suddenly, and now we can just give the shader a `device_address`extension memory pointer and construct the data from that.
I also want what you're describing. It seems like the ideal "data-in-out" pipeline for purely compute based shaders.
I've brought it up several times when talking with folks who work down in the chip level for optimizing these operations and all I can say is, there are a lot of unforeseen complications to what we're suggesting.
It's not that we can't have a GPU that does these things, it's apparently more of a combination of previous and current architectural decisions that don't want that. For instance, an nVidia GPU is focused on providing the hardware optimizations necessary to do either LLM compute or graphics acceleration, both essentially proprietary technologies.
The proprietariness isn't why it's obtuse though, you can make a chip go super-duper fast for specific tasks, or more general for all kinds of tasks. Somewhere, folks are making a tradeoff of backwards compatibility and supporting new hardware accelerated tasks.
Neither of these are "general purpose compute and data flow" focuses. As such, you get the GPU that only sorta is configurable for what you want to do. Which in my opinion explains your "GPU programming seems to be both super low level, but also high level" comment.
That's been my experience. I still think what you're suggesting is a great idea and would make GPU's a more open compute platform for a wider variety of tasks, while also simplifying things a lot.
This is true, but what the parent comment is getting at is we really just want to be able to address graphics memory the same way it's exposed in CUDA for example. Where you can just have pointers to GPU memory in structures visible to the CPU, without this song and dance with descriptor set bindings.
If you got what you're asking for you'd presumably lose access to any fixed function hardware. RE your example, knowing the data format permits automagic hardware accelerated translations between image formats.
You're free to do what you're asking after by simply performing all operations manually in a compute shader. You can manually clip, transform, rasterize, and even sample textures. But you'll lose the implicit use of various fixed function hardware that you currently benefit from.
I am under the (potentially mistaken) impression that at minimum rasterization and texture filtering retain dedicated hardware on modern cards. There's also the issue of the format you output versus the format the display hardware works in natively.
That said, I'm not clear the extent to which such dedicated functionality either already is or could be made accessible via the instruction set. But even then I'm not sure how ergonomic it would be to make use of from a shader language.
I’m not watching Rust as closely as I once did, but it seems like buffer ownership is something it should be leaning on more fully.
There’s an old concurrency pattern where a producer and consumer tag team on two sets of buffers to speed up throughput. Producer fills a buffer, transfers ownership to the consumer, and is given the previous buffer in return.
It is structurally similar to double buffered video, but for any sort of data.
It seems like Rust would be good for proving the soundness. And it should be a library now rather than a roll your own.
> There’s an old concurrency pattern where a producer and consumer tag team on two sets of buffers to speed up throughput. Producer fills a buffer, transfers ownership to the consumer, and is given the previous buffer in return.
Just yesterday I watched this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7bSzp-QildA I am not a graphics programmer, but from what I understood I think he talks about doing what you are describing with Vulkan.
Safety features like tracking where you are, and requiring a subscription for seat heating ?
I just think the everything connected to cloud approach sucks, but Im communal danger now.
Getting rid of cruft and simplifying the GPU access, makes it easier to develope software that uses GPU's, like AI's, games ..etc.
Have you taken a look at the codebase of some game-engines, its complete cluster fk, cause some simple tasks just take 800 lines of code, and in the end the drivers don't even use the complexity graphics API's force upon you.
Its the low quality food, my memory improved a lot, after I stopped eating sugar and most refined foods.
Theres even some research that Alzheimer starts from bad bacteria in the gut, that loves sugar.
Shitty food has been around for a long time. Some virus known for causing long-term effects in non-negligible parts of the population has been around since 2019.
> The increase in disability prevalence from 2016 to 2022 is likely attributable in part to the long-term effects of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Wild to me that the first mention of COVID is this far down the page.
Most people have been infected at least a couple of times may this point, and at this point it’s very well documented to cause lasting cognitive decline.
This thesis contradicts the chart though. Why would older people be much less affected and the generation 70+ even show a negative trend if these people were far more likely to experience a more severe disease progression? You would expect them to be hit at least as hard (if not harder) as young people from those long term memory effects. The trend for the youngest age group also starts well before 2019.
First when you have combination of factors, this can happen.
Second, old people were more likely to die on covid. Kids were getting covid too, just not dying and long term covid consequences were observed in then. It can easily be that where old person died, young ended up with long term consequence.
There is no reason to assume the effect would be uniform accross generations.
-----
Either way, cell phone obsession and "rewiring of biology" claims are wven further from anything shown in the article. They are both purely what HN and the blogger want it to be.
I don't see your argument. Are you suggesting that covid pruned old people with weak memory to the point that it improved their memory on average? Because that is the only conclusion of your argument combined with the data. And that's not just completely unfounded, it's a pretty wild violation of Occam's razor.
I was just talking with my wife yesterday about how readily people assume they have superior competence to or greater insight than experts in a given field. I'm not picking on you in particular, but your comment jumped out at me.
Substantially:
We've been eating "low quality" food of one type -- ultra-processed food -- since at least the '60s, so what's your explanation for the recency of the effect?
And some time earlier than that -- very roughly the 1920s and earlier -- we were eating "low quality" foods of a different type: spoiled, adulterated, and questionably-sourced food products, so do you claim that we started with poor concentration then, got better/had a heyday in the mid-20th century, and now we're declining again?
In short: what's your evidence to support your claim?
It's reasoned conjecture on an internet message board. Yes, it is over-stated. But if one treats quality of diet as one variable among many in cognitive capacity, which is the only sane approach, then trying to match the diet of a population to trendlines in society-wide cognitive performance is not going to tell you anything.
Could be multiple factors. In my N=1 experience fiddling with various things in my life.
* Improving diet (primarily avoiding refined foods and sugar) generally improves my energy levels.
* Cutting out social media mostly improves concentration.
* Trying to avoid rumination such as problem solving or rehearsing arguments through meditative practices reduces stress levels, makes it easier to be present and react to things in front of you.
* Sleep is also pretty big for cognitive clarity. Having a consistent sleep schedule and not drinking coffee past noon helps with sleep.
But really, all of these seem to tie into each other. If you want to improve your diet, it's much harder if you are tired from lack of sleep or overstimulation. If you want to improve your sleep, you can't be scrolling social media all day. Mental exhaustion also makes awareness/meditation harder.
As someone who has eaten way too much sugary food I think my gut-brain coupling may have had enough of this. A few weeks ago I had a sugar binge one night and the cognitive effects were impossible to ignore the next day. Fortunately after 2-3 days I was back to normal but of my sample size of one, and in my condition (which is pre-diabetic) I observed a clear link.
It was a good experience as it's prompted me to get more serious about cutting back sugar, implemented as long term, achievable habit change.
Bacteria (and your body) like sugar because it’s an easy to use fuel source. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having reasonable amounts of sugar in your diet.
The catch is that the body likes lots of things that are awful for it. For instance drug abuse isn't limited to humans - some bears have gotten addicted to huffing gas to get high. [1] Quite cute if it wasn't so awful! The big issue is that in modern times a whole bunch of things are going wrong - testosterone levels (adjusted for health/bmi/age) are declining, IQ is declining [2], basically every single psychological disorder is skyrocketing, and much more.
And the reason why isn't clear. So the most likely reason is that we're doing what humanity has done repeatedly and endlessly throughout history and likely accidentally poisoning ourselves with some thing or things -- things that we believe to be completely safe. So a precautionary principle approach to consumption is to consider what we evolved with and sugar definitely wasn't that. Sugar only really took off in the 19th century. And various further refined sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup and other such things only took off in the late 20th century.
> So a precautionary principle approach to consumption is to consider what we evolved with and sugar definitely wasn't that. Sugar only really took off in the 19th century.
We have evidence that apiculture has been a thing for well over 8,000 years.
Our bodies literally love to burn glucose as fuel and we perform better physically (and mentally I assume) when glucose is readily available.
We have literally evolved to be sugar burning machines.
You completely missed the point GP was making. Yes, sugar is an easy fuel source. The point is we have NOT evolved to consume massive amounts every day without breaks (i.e. daily) and without lots of fiber to buffer it.
I think you might be the one that’s missing the point. I’m saying some sugar is absolutely fine as part of a balanced diet, this isn’t a controversial point. Excessive calories are bad, whether they’re sugar or anything else.
As a European visitong the US, I am constantly amazed at how there is masses of sugar added to 'normal' food over there. You take a bite expecting a certain flavour, and go wtf did someone glace this with caramel or drop some candy in the flour mix?
Not a major proportion of your daily caloric intake and not in excess of your daily caloric burn (unless you’re actively trying to gain weight). More if you’re doing a lot of aerobic exercise.
Apparently very popular content - a parent at my kid’s kindergarten wanted to make cake for their kids birthday, said they’d only use 1 tsp of honey in the whole thing.
Cue universal freak out in the parents’ WhatsApp group.
Apparently, sugar:
- causes cancer
- causes autism
- causes hyperactivity
- causes blindness
- makes children indolent and lazy
- will permanently ruin a child if they even look at it
It’s weird, IMO. I let my kiddo have sugar within reason, and somehow she’s leaner than any of the other kids in her class, who even already have rotten teeth at two, despite their sugar free diets. They feed them simple carbs almost exclusively, and are oblivious to amylase.
Perhaps it’s because she’s physically active - the rest of her cohort are pretty much forbidden from walking or running as those pose risks, and children must be sheltered from all conceivable risk so that they grow up into independent and capable adults.
I would argue that that - physical activity - is far more important than what you shove in your face.
There have been repeatedly, credibly and demonstrably shown to be significant benefits to not spending your entire life sitting on your ass - but I guess it’s harder to get off your ass than to proselytise about sugar being an evil and artificial harmful chemical that has no place in the human body - despite it literally being what we run off of.
"I would argue that that - physical activity - is far more important than what you shove in your face."
No, it bloody is not.
I used to drive a bicycle for 6 - 12 hours ever day while working in the delivery. I also didn't watch what I was eating.
I ended up getting fat and with haemorrhoids. So I had to quit cycling.
Then I spend some time (years actually) researching and slowly improving my diet.
Result? I lost weight, my haemorrhoids (and several other health issues) stopped acting up, and I am overall much healthier despite most of my physical activity being walking.
Yes, exercise is important. But it won't help you if you eat massive amounts of garbage food.
So stop talking stuff you have no clue about.
Also, we do not "run off of" sugar. Human body can run off sugar, or fat, or a combination of these. And argument could be made that running off fat is actually healthier. Body can in fact produce all sugar it needs with absolutely zero need for dietary sugar (note that doesn't mean you should go zero carb, just that carbs / sugars are not a metabolic necessity).
As for this:
"who even already have rotten teeth at two, despite their sugar free diets. They feed them simple carbs almost exclusively, and are oblivious to amylase."
Uhh... carbs ARE sugars. It literally doesn't matter that you are avoiding "sugar" if you end up eating bread instead.
Moderate exercising is conaistently shown to improve peoples health results. Study after study, it has positive impact.
It may or may not affect peoples weight (which is aesthetic issue on itself), but in terms of health improvements it is one intervention that consistently works.
They are not saying kids should be 8 hours on bikes whether they feel like or not. They are saying they should run around with other kids which something entirely different.
Long before RFK Jr said it recently, Dr Robert Lustig, paediatric endocrinologist, went viral about 15 years ago with a video "Sugar: The bitter truth"[1] and book and talk slots following on from it.
Gary Taubes, who became widely known for researching tons of studies on diet and coining the saying "eat food, not too much, mostly plants". Food meaning unprocessed stuff your (great great) grandma would recognise as food, wrote an NY Times article agreeing with it.
reply