chaosCruiser

Wow, those are some pretty big numbers! About 10x bigger than what I was thinking. I knew these things can get pretty weird, but this is just absolutely wild. When expectations fly that high, the crash can be all the more spectacular.

When you notice that your free account can’t do much, that’s a sign that OpenAI is beginning to run out of money. When that happens, the competitors will be ready to welcome all the users who didn’t feel like paying OpenAI.

That’s a very good point. Actually, video hosting services also suffer from a similar problem, and that’s one of the main reasons why it’s so hard to compete with YouTube. Since there are so many LLM services out there at the moment, it makes me think that there must be a completely ridiculous amount of investor money floating around there. Doesn’t sound like a sustainable situation to me.

Apparently, the companies are hoping that everyone gets so hooked on LLMs that they have no choice but to pay up when the inevitable tsunami of enshittification hits us.

As long as they can convince investors of potential future revenue, they will be just fine. In the growth stage, companies don’t have to be profitable because the investors will cover the expenses. Being profitable becomes a high priority only when you run out of series F money, and the next investors can’t borrow another 700 million. It’s a combination of having low interest rates and convincing arguments.

BTW I don’t think this is a good way to run a company, but many founders and investors clearly disagree with me.

Probably not going to go belly-up in a while, but the enshittification cycle still applies. At the moment, investors are pouring billions into the AI business, and as a result, companies can offer services for free while only gently nudging users towards the paid tiers.

When the interest rates rise during the next recession, investors won’t have access to money any more. Then, the previously constant stream of money dries up, AI companies start cutting what the free tier has, and people start complaining about enshittification. During that period, the paid tiers also get restructured to squeeze more money out of the paying customers. That hasn’t happened yet, but eventually it will. Just keep an eye on those interest rates.

Problem solved! I don’t need to think about this premium stuff any more. Recently, I’ve been playing with the idea of paying for premium, but that’s no longer the case. Specifically, the family pack is the one that kinda made some limited sense in the past. I can see the kind of game Google is playing, and I’m not planning to participate.

And that’s exactly why we have flat-earthers, antivaxxers and “truthers” of various kinds. Although, due to the same phenomenon, we also have communities like [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], !HandmadeMarketplace and so many other interesting and quirky places. You win some, you loose some.

The Internet is a pretty big place. There’s no such thing as an idea that is too stupid. There’s always at least a few people who will turn that idea into a central tenet of their life. It could be too stupid for 99.999% of the population, but that still leaves about 5 000 people who are totally into it.

The best thing about R is that it was made by statisticians. The worst thing about R is that it was made by statisticians.

People should really start demanding more sensible terms. Currently, people just don’t care, and companies are taking full advantage of the situation.

“Some years ago, I provided my phone number to Google as part of an identity verification process, but didn’t consent to it being shared publicly.”

That may have been the case at the time, but Google have a bad habit of updating legal documents and settings from time to time. Even if you didn’t consent to it directly, you may have agreed to a contract you didn’t read, which resulted in Google doing everything permitted in that contract. Chances are, the contract says that Google can legally screw around as much as they like, and you’re powerless to do anything about it.

Based on the numbers from Purism, it could be a lot more than 25% more expensive to manufacture everything in USA. Purims Librem 5 costs 799 $, while the made-in-America version costs 1999 $. That’s roughly a 2.5x difference. Obviously, economies of scale play a role too but let’s assume that the same factor applies to iPhones too. If so, the fanciest iPhone would cost about 4000 $.