The LLM is the key element here, not the 7 dollars VPS... The model itself has cost billions of dollars to train and of the service shuts down or is interrupted for some reason your fancy setup breaks like nothing.
> The model itself has cost billions of dollars to train
But that has nothing to do with this use case, right? By the same logic, Linux has millions of man-hours went into it but we can use it for free on a $7 VPS.
> service shuts down or is interrupted for some reason your fancy setup breaks like nothing
No, it doesn't. That's what I meant by commodity. You can switch to another service and it will work just fine (unless you meant that all LLM providers might cease to exist).
Also note that they have a $2/day API usage cap, meaning that they are willing to spend $60+/month for the LLM use. If everything else fails, they can use those funds to upgrade the VPS and run a local model on their own hardware. It won't be Sonnet-4.6-level, but it will do. It just doesn't make sense with current dollar-per-token prices.
No, the key (novel) element here is the two-tiered approach to sandboxing and inter-agent communication. That’s why he spends most of the post talking about it and only a few sentences on which models he selected.
> This is capitalism's biggest flaw: it's based on the assumption that there will be competition
The fact that governments allow Microsoft to abuse its position to force OEMs to install Windows is the biggest problem. This would never happen in a market where regulation ensures healthy competition.
That version of capitalism sailed 40 years ago in the USA, antitrust enforcement has slowly disappeared which creates a race to the bottom for other countries who would like their companies to compete against USA's companies. If they enforce antitrust then the behemoths created in the USA by absorbing competitors without antitrust enforcement can eat their lunch, even though it's better for consumers.
Unfortunately this also allowed the USA to have companies so large that they basically control the government, changing this now will require massive political will and a political body untethered from corporate interests. I really don't see that happening in the USA, it's been thoroughly captured after so many years driving on that path.
I totally agree. There seems to be absolutely zero focus on Glass Steagall or Citizens United so I can't see how this actually happens without political revolt at this point.
Yes, the neo-liberal economy we've ended up with has drifted quite far from well-regulated Capitalism. I'd still argue that we owe a lot of our rights to hard-fought socialist policy though.
I'm in the process of migrating to self-hosted immich and the experience is being great so far. If you have a beefy home lab it is incredibly fast and performant. One thing to mention is that you should have a good backup strategy not to risk losing your photo library
You have a market that's locked by Microsoft working with OEMs and Microsoft spraying money around to ensure that nobody ever seriously consider switching. Add to that that Windows is used as a surveillance tool by the three letter agencies and you have the perfect storm for things not to change.
France has nowhere the military power to resist a country like the US. They have not invested in the military for a very long time and most of their equipment is completely outdated.
France's nuclear policy isn't unique in that they are willing to launch a first-strike (all the serious nuclear powers claim to be). France's nuclear policy is unique in that they are willing to use nuclear fire as a warning shot: before they launch their full strategic stockpile, they'll (probably) erase a military base or aircraft carrier with a tactical nuke. That lower threshold to break the nuclear taboo is what's interesting.
They already nuked America economically twice in the 20th century.
The first time the French involvement in gold markets caused the Great Depression and the second time the repatriation of gold caused a financial system crisis which severely damaged the dollar and forced the US to decouple the dollar from gold entirely.
You don't need a lot of nuclear weapons to be able to say "Fuck off, or everyone dies". You just need enough, and the widespread belief that you'd actually use them.
France probably has enough, and is definitely credible in their willingness to use them.
Maybe not but they have enough to be useful. They do have nukes - a US invasion of France would not be a good idea. On the more realistic end of things the French are able to provide military intelligence to Ukraine to counter the US president turning it off to help his mate Vlad.
After the failure against countries with no military might like Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan, and now Iran, I wouldn’t place a lot of importance into how much tech and quantity in the military plays a critical role into winning wars today.
I wouldn't be that cynical. From the interactions I've had with people from mainland China, particularly those in the educated classes, I can say for certain that it was soft power that drew them towards the West and the US in particular. China already beat back the West in the Korean War.
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