They're still getting plenty of Nvidia GPUs. Someone in Jensen Huang's inner circle apparently runs a number of companies in Singapore that have been found to source GPUs at scale. The catch is that she has close ties to Beijing and is suspected of working closely with their government, potentially even spying for them.

This was reported just a week or two ago and is just one example of how China is still getting their hands on resources they're supposedly unable to get.

Remember, the kernel module is open source, but rest of the driver is closed source, and any kernel level code which can't be open sourced but had to be is moved to card firmware. Only the kernel module is open source. Not the libraries, not the driver, nothing else.

NVIDIA is holding to its pearls like a sloth holding to its branch, because their all business model and livelihood is dependent on that control. I still commend AMD's decision to allow full card enablement with any driver which talks the correct language.

The consumer has access to free and open models for local use.

The supplier has better control and wider market to serve running the models in data centers.

Only way I can see encrypted models being widespread is if they are bundled as part of a software package (OS/Browser/etc) and not sold as the product.

There will be ways for them to segment the market and make their money. Maybe not 100x stock in 5 years but money all the same.

So it is something that has been done for a long time now. Still feels like unethical rent-seeking that should not be tolerated by the customer.

See Also: car companies that charge additional fees for hardware already on the car. Additional services, I sort of understand(remote start via cell network), but stuff like heated seats, that is just wrong.

Tons of stuff happenning behind closed doors today though. No more stackoverflow for the next decade, that could create a problem if all new context only exists in chatgpt conversations only openAI has access to (or whoever).

Based on... what? Thoughts and prayers? Feelings? Vibes?

I don't know if you looked around but open source is basically unusable for the largest platform in the world, mobile.

The next platform, whatever that is, will also be closed source (maybe VR, once it finally matures...).

LLMs are closed source, is there even 1 (ONE) LLM which is both open source and open weights and publishes its training data and methodology and is also remotely competitive with the frontier lab LLMs?

Consoles are closed source. Appliances are closed source. Embedded devices are closed source.

Even the web is basically closed source. Blobs of encrypted, obfuscated JS used to serve news pages (!).

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but closed source has won.

Even that argument is weak - the DGX Spark is Linux, and the RTX Spark is practically the same exact chip.

Sorry to remind people of HN, but most of the consumer market still runs Windows. This was a joint project to have a consumer-level Windows-on-ARM machine, likely requiring lots of development efforts from both NVIDIA and Microsoft.

So, for these specific laptops, they put 100% of their attention for it to be on Windows for launch to capture as much market mindshare as they can. Local AI, Graphics and creative work, and some gaming.

I doubt Microsoft would have been happy about NVIDIA having Linux on their laptop right at launch.

Market Share by OS for consumer laptops & desktops:

• Windows: 76.65%

• OS X / macOS (Combined): ~15.67% (OS X at 9.86% + macOS at 5.81% due to user-agent reporting quirks)

• Linux: 5.63%

• Chrome OS: 2.04%

Who exactly?

nvidia has always been crap like this. Look at amd and intel, they let u write proper drivers (even if its real difficult to do so). No encrypted blobs or voodoo needed.

the nvidia drivers u need to use a card on Linux are unintelligible binary blobs. thats sad as it is. this is worse. they might give some shitty blobs at some point, after they made enough ppl give up on it and switch to give them and their partners their money, souls and firstborn

Is the problem one that could be easily countered by assuming that laptops are generally better when they're not on fire?

No. It's 'the NVidia way or the highway' problem. NVidia is so full of themselves they refuse to work under anyone's rules (i.e. the Linux kernel where they're constantly trying to work around them).

They're egomaniacs who are so full of themselves, riding high on the AI bubble, they think they're above everyone else in the ecosystem, while utilising all kinds of other people's work for their own benefit.

Look at the way they develop their 'open' Linux drivers where it's just a shim that loads a huge binary blob off the GPU rather than a proper driver like amdgpu has.

Meanwhile they wouldn't be a $5T company without Linux and the wider FLOSS ecosystem.

It's kind of like when Secure Boot debuted and the plan was to allow only Windows with it enabled, then no doubt someone would claim the fact that only Windows can boot with it enabled as a 'Linux driver problem'.

Claude, make a driver that runs at full capacity on my laptop. (make no mistakes).