engineer_22

Hi I am enjoying this conversation, but I am not understanding you.

If people chose their tools based on what engineers determined was the superior usage strategy or technology, nobody would use centralized social media, or MS Windows, unencrypted text chat, email without pgp, etc etc etc

You're using this as an example of how normal people behave, but that CS/SWE's would advise against? I am having a hard time understanding how you connect this to LLM / chatbot to drive the argument that general purpose LLM's are over valued.

Bottom line up front: LLM unlocks the power of a workstation for normal people.

Google Search ate the internet because everyone was using it. Some people said "free search isn't a business model, look what happened to yahoo"... and those people were wrong; not because they misunderstood the economics, but because they misunderstood what people needed.

Google Search reduced the friction of using the internet for normal people - suddenly the internet could be accessed with plain language, simple phrases, no networking knowledge or domain expertise required.

LLM is doing the same thing - reducing friction. Tradesmen and small businesses are building company landing pages and doing SEO by themselves. Businesses in every industry are programming applications in-house to unshackle themselves from SaaS systems. Entrepreneurs can build automated systems to handle mundane processes and get back to pulling the levers that actually move the needle. An LLM can level up your employees on the software they're already using.

The economic potential is only beginning to be realized.

Great, I can expect the price of Claude to drop to $2/mo

RIGHT - 30 HOURS OF WORK FOR $20 - WHAT A VALUE

Sometimes you get lucky and the smd components have larger packages you can hand solder, but the price for assembly in a Chinese pcb shop is so cheap I don’t think I want to hand solder

Your comment about watts stuck out to me. I became curious how much power we might be talking about.

I’m into Claude for $20/mo (petty bourgeois tier), let’s assume for sake of examination this is only paying for power, infrastructure already amortized

Price of grid power approx $0.15/kWh

$20 / ($0.15/kWh * 30 days) = 4.4 kWh per day.

This same amount of energy can lift a 2-ton SUV 1/2 mile into the air. To me this seems astounding.

If only half the $20 pays for power it’s still quite impressive.

It’s a sample of the forerunners

See: product adoption cycle

I don’t think the general-purpose LLM as a standalone tool is long for this world, at least not in consumer-facing applications.

I use AI chat every day, I find it endlessly useful. It’s replaced google search.

That’s not what this is. It’s industrial dumping applied to software. China has successfully applied this strategy to become the manufacturing workshop of the world.

If china is subsidizing training they diminish their off-shore competitors expectations of a viable return on investment. It’s trade-war behavior.

Had no idea this was a thing, sounds like it’d be fun with the kids. Who gets the next piece has been a problem as long as there’s been lego

This is a good example of where it’s important to be more up front about the role of AI in the making of a thing.

Maybe, but we don’t always discuss our tool stack before showing our work because a lot of times it’s assumed or not interesting. AI is a tool, it’s a lever that you push on to multiply your effort. The product of your effort speaks for itself, as it always has.

Joe Piston probably has enough on his plate flying his 2-seater without global 1Gbps entertainment-on-demand or executing trades on his brokerage account while his team of financiers crunch the numbers in row 2.

Starlink Aviation has 2 General Aviation tiers at $200/mo and $1,000/mo, 3 business tiers, $4000/mo, $12,500/mo, $20,000/mo, and negotiable “Fleet” pricing for commercial and government.

https://starlink.com/business/aviation?srsltid=AfmBOoqiIuBL1...

For comparison,

If you live in a $300,000 home and pay $100/month for internet you’re paying 0.4% per year for the service.

If you own a $15,000,000 jet and pay $20,000/month for internet you’re paying 1.6% per year for the service.

By this comparison, we might say private jet owners are paying 4x more for their internet on their plane.

No, because they have other customers.

Furnishing low-latency, broadband connectivity to private aircraft. The Challenger 350 noted in the article stickers north of $10M

They’re not utility. But you don’t have to be a utility to construct in the right-of-way.

No, the right-of-way is not anything-goes. The property is legally owned by the deed holder of the real property thru which it passes, but practically the right-of-way is managed and maintained by the jurisdiction claiming the right-of-way, i.e. municipal, county, state government agencies. Installations need to be permitted by the agency.

Disclaimer: this is only an opinion.

The language is too strong for the context. Author uses religious imagery, prognosticates about an Armageddon scenario, and does so based on a relatively short time series.

Turn the volume on the typical El Niño impacts up to eleven, then watch the collective infrastructure of modern industrial civilization crumble. Watch as flooding storms wash away roads and cities. Watch as trailing storms create new inland lakes, swamping farmland. Watch as fires raze forests and grasslands. Watch as heatwaves turn temperate regions into unsurvivable hellscapes. Watch as crops fail and dams burst. Watch as the shelves of your local grocery store gradually, then suddenly, go empty.

I think this kind of writing is low quality.

My parents live in New York State, 8 miles from the main east-west transportation and data corridor. They still have no high speed wired internet options. No fiber, no cable, no DSL, and dialup ISP has been retired long ago. Their only option is satellite. This is in 4th most populous state in the US, and #1 highest GDP/capita. Internet across the United States does not have the penetration many think, the US is vast.

Parent might be talking about amateur radio astronomy which I agree might be straying from the main argument

We should do this in USA

Waiting for an enterprising hacker to develop mosquito gene drive in their garage. You could probably develop a thriving recurring income stream if you develop something that works

Along you come and interrupt that signal, in a way that doesn't have underlying desire to borrow that book. So the clock gets reset, and so it goes.

Frankly, parent borrows the books and reads them. Far from malicious, maybe a bit quirky, this kind of behavior needs not be corrected, especially from an anonymous jay like yourself.

Pcbs are basically rolling off a laser jet printer in shenzhen and they’ll do pnp for a few dollars more. Pcb cheap.

Have engineer sit there to design pcb is expensive

Like no, it’s totally not cool to give a free pass to people who are putting other people’s lives and homes at risk. How would you feel if your house burned down because your neighbor did something stupid?

We quite literally have a long and rich tradition of laws to handle exactly this.

Very interesting research but can’t help but /feel/ this is abominable

Related:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

This is probably not the intent.

US intelligence has gamed this out and sees risks at the fringe - advanced artificial intelligence moves the needle the most in countries economically & politically dominated by the USA, the Global South are the targets of this, not US startups.

Online? It's like, a few clicks, maybe a few hurried minutes.

Unless, maybe you're so clueless that you do spend significant amount of time on each hand crafted submission, hoping the (unbeknownst to you) 23 yr old HR admin with a degree in comparative psych will appreciate the subtle indicators of subject matter expertise you've carefully woven through your cover letter and provocatively embedded in your relevant experience. Or perhaps instead, you took the time to look up the name of the hiring manager and reviewed all their socials to try to understand them better and thoughtfully included hints through your application that you share common interests, you might even see them in a bar or restaurant on their side of town, maybe you'll talk to them, you think to yourself, but no it would be too much we should simply observe, and wait, the work we've put into the application will speak for itself... In either case, yes I agree life will be hard for you, perhaps even cruel, for such a rare flower the light of day is cruelty. I wish you luck. Don't email me.