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menacingly

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MCP is dead? 2 months ago

I don't understand how anyone is still primarily thinking about single-user scenarios in 2026

sum the amount of "you simply <x>" in this thread, then account for the fact that we're talking about running afoul of a regulation if you don't understand it, and you end up with a hassle. I'm not weighing in on whether or not it's bad, I'm just saying what I said. If you aren't accounting for a significant portion of revenue to justify it, you're going to get blocked because you represent a liability.

could something like steam or a linux distro use it to distribute software? seems crazy not to.

I think what people are saying is we know there is probably a silent line somewhere, and we have no way of knowing when we cross it. It feels like it has an implied "most of the people reading this can treat it as unlimited in practice"

You're only allowed to believe LLMs are a kind of digital messiah or that they're complete hype garbage, when of course the answer is some point between.

There is obviously a lot of potential here, but there is also a lot of solution looking for a problem.

My current red flag is if an argument hinges on a trademark breathless frisson for the growth potential. Statements like "models are getting smarter every month" that hasn't been true for a year. If your excitement over AI is based not on what we can do today, but a presumed future expansion for which we have no evidence, that's silly.

But what they can do today is cool. We worked for a long time to get computers to understand natural language intent, and LLMs demonstrably solve this problem.

if the servers are so private, why is on-device such a win? here are some irrelevant distractions:

- the cpu arch of the servers

- mentioning that you have to trust vendors not to keep your data, then announcing a cloud architecture where you have to trust them not to keep your data

- pushing the verifiability of the phone image, when all we ever cared about was what they sent to servers

- only "relevant" data is sent, which over time is everything, and since they never give anyone fine-grained control over anything, the llm will quietly determine what's relevant

- the mention that the data is encrypted, which of course it isn't, since they couldn't inference. They mean in flight, which hopefully _everything_ is, so it's irrelevant

microsoft was always going to take SMBs. Data is what makes them useful, so Microsoft keeps their SMBs, Apple gets consumers, Google gets their slice of productivity and android, where their preachy models will let you know if you did a harassment

WWDC 2024 [video] 2 years ago

To a technical person, the discussion around AI felt really creepy and disingenuous, full of irrelevant distractions

WWDC 2024 [video] 2 years ago

this is the video form of "bug fixes and performance improvements", and about as charismatic

it's because there is some sense among the physics-challenged that apple has to support it in hardware, as if we're a generation away from placing the burn-inducing, fusion-reactor-draining h100s in people's pocket it would take to run a model that impresses them as much as the tech demos of today

that's a good point. it could also be the same reason everyone else is struggling: it's very hard to find compelling utility for LLMs. We absolutely will, but it's difficult.

Right now everyone is setting incomprehensibly expensive amounts of compute on fire, for basically free, in the hopes utility emerges

That's certainly one of the available takes. Mine is that I'd need something other than some exuberant posts to think that's market essential at this point.

Either it becomes an essential part of workflows, in which case it becomes commoditized and we're worried about whether or not they'll someday support the mouse, or it's hype and it doesn't matter if/when they implement it

Apple isn't behind on AI any more than they were behind on cloud storage. It doesn't matter when, it doesn't matter if it isn't SOTA, I don't know how many different ways I can word that they have your data. Google has your data.

model-as-service companies can have all the features they want, their models can't do anything meaningful without the data Apple, MS, Google have.

Apple is at zero risk that someone else will have your notes, entire app library with data, mail, calendar, messages. They hold so much leverage. Even if you use some other (so far nonexistent) secret all-model, what are you going to access it with?