Does anyone know whether there any licences or licence derivatives - like the various flavors of Creative Commons - that currently restrict usage by AI LLMs?
This is a good overview on some of the environmental impacts:
'Environmental impact of direct lithium extraction from brines' (2023) in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, PDF: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-022-00387-5.pdf
Anyone suggest some great book recommendations to better understand modern computing hardware?
I have these three on my shortlist: (i) The Art of Electronics (3rd edition), written by Horowitz and Hill; (ii) Digital Design and Computer Architecture: ARM Edition; and (iii) The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles, by Nisan & Schoken
IMHO there is no way to understand _modern_ computer hardware without knowing the old, retro one. Start with basics od digital electronics, then analyze some old computers (Altair, Apple 1, PC XT)then, slowly move on.
This is great advice. The concepts haven't changed much - electricity and physics don't change at all - we just have new techniques and the scale is way larger than before.
Electricity and physics change immensely with scale. The kinds of slop you could get away with at very slow speed and relatively low powers on old hardware are not allowed for with modern high-speed technologies.
In the context of PCB design, even something as simple as decap sizing and placement becomes tricky as clock rate increases. EE students regularly suffer through voltage drops and ground bounce from poorly managing the size and placement of decaps. These are problems that either did not exist or had simpler solutions in the old days.
"The laws of the universe are constant" is not useful advice for learning anything.
Which subset of said laws is applicable for electrical engineering has changed immensely over the years, and studying old hardware will not prepare the student for modern design.
ha ha: "In November 2013, Architelos mentioned .TK, the largest ccTLD with over 20 million domains, as one of the safest domain extensions in the world." https://www.freenom.com/en/aboutfreenom.html
"To understand why, consider someone who spent three months of the year receiving unemployment benefits while they searched for a job, then worked for nine months. The government considered their income for the entire year and averaged it, then assessed their eligibility for payments based on their average fortnightly earnings – not their income when they were out of work and therefore eligible for payments."
