How much does it cost to run your own hardware such that the service is comparable to Claude? Similar speed, similar features, web chat access, CLI access?
How much do people actually do that demands the capabilities of Claude instead of open models that can run on hardware in the range of thousands of dollars (which is not that much when the alternative is hundreds of dollars a month, indefinitely)?
People chasing the best of the best models for all tasks in order to "keep up" are only wasting resources at this point.
Regarding similar features, there are lots of off the shelf harnesses that support all that, or can easily be extended (literally just ask your agent) to do it.
i am 100% sure i need opus 5.5 model to build stuff like this because i try lesser models because i want my tokens to go farther and lesser models simply cannot: https://fujimod.com
> All of this is unreviewed vibe-coded slop that could be hazardous to your camera’s mental, emotional, or digital health. If you're uncomfortable with risk to your camera, please don't use it.
You don't care anyways. Actual engineering works "100%" fine with small models now. You should try it!
The real question is: what's the rate of growth for capital returns vs labor returns? If capital returns are accelerating, over 50-100 years, yeah, we will still end up in techno feudalism.
> Jobs get nice when employers are competing over the same pool of employees.
During an all hands where quarterly earnings were presented for a very large American company, the live audience were obviously employees.
The CFO came on stage and was very enthusiastic about the labor market "loosening". Employees were clapping. Unsure if because they didn't understand the meaning of that statement or because just to appear supportive of leadership.
I was thinking: they're talking about us, turkeys.
Do you believe than an industry that's investing 1 trillion per year in infrastructure, isn't also investing tens of billions in marketing, including pseudo-grassroots movements aka astro turfing? They would be total idiots not to, and they're not.
I've seen Moonshot pay creators on X for posting promotional messaging about Kimi K3.1 Pro, with the requirement not to disclose it as a paid sponsorship.
X then took action and suspended creator's accounts that were posting about Kimi K3.1 without the paid sponsorship tag, allegedly hitting some accounts that weren't paid by Moonshot.
In any case, I do not think that people are typically being paid to promote AI generally, rather than specific products.
To imply so on comments from well established HN users, as if it was unlikely they simply find value in AI and have a genuinely positive opinion, often seems misguided.
I prefer that we discuss the people and situations for what they are, not reduce them to catchy phrases that lump people together and discard any nuance.
If you don't have a cynical view about it, then why do you feel bad about being called a booster of it? Does it not describe your view? Or, if you are like not cynical but still like lukewarm, why do you feel targeted in the first place?
If everyone had the same opinions they do, but called it all "AI optimism", or whatever other term you prefer, would anything change for you?
This feeling you might have, where everyone is having a secret meeting without you, deciding on opinions and terms to operate against you, is understandable in this world, but you can't live forever in that solipsism. You need to be brave enough to have your own opinion against those that truly, passionately have their own. You need to argue and fight for what you believe in, not try to explain away or conspiratorialize your opponents. There is no one coordinated, arbitrary force you can point to that can explain why people don't share your worldview. You can just defend what you believe in, and always be ready to update your assumptions.
Arguably, I would say this has been a 50+ year-long project starting in the Reagan/Thatcher era that Clinton/Blair fully realized by ushering in de-regulatory, labor-disempowering neoliberal policies as part of the left political flank. There's been a lot written about this:
I dislike the phrase neoliberal (its badly defined). I would argue that Blair (and Brown and Cameron etc.) was a lot worse than Thatcher because Thatcher did want competitive markets, whereas more recently its just been "business friendly" which is quite the opposite.
Despite what you hear techies say, "really bad software" didn't really exist before, except for some very small enterprise niches. Stuff like Windows, Photoshop or other categories that techies complain, has always hovered between "bad" and "above average" with some moments of hitting "quite good". Really bad software was software that barely did its main job.
Well, really bad software is now super cheap to create.
That won't really change software economics outside of corporate malpractice (those small enterprise niches) or regulatory capture.
Average software is probably only marginally cheaper and good software will be as expensive as always because expectations have shifted up.
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