Maybe not “today” but today is still early days.

I’ve been consuming lots of “build your own local AI coding agent” kind of content lately. No doubt this is the same as the guys that are welding together their own versions of Shelby Cobras and stuff… but in a few years you’ll be able to buy a “server” with enough GPU and ram to host strong open models and serve them to your little office.

I work in a small company, and if AI plays out the way Anthropic sees it’d their AI bill will be $100k every year (fire 2-3 people, pay for AI so that the remaining people do more). At that level of expenditure, why wouldn’t my poss pay as much as a copy machine $25k, lets say, go give “local AI” a chance?

The stock valuations that most tech companies carry (and certainly the 2-3 trillion that is being talked about for Anthropic) speak to potential future revenue.

To me, I see computing and actual “model” advances meeting the need within a few years… if not by entrenched companies like Nvidia, then by insurgent chipmakers or new (Chinese or otherwise) chipmakers.

In 10 years you’ll have “opus” is not better running in your phone and probably something more powerful in a PC.

It is obvious to me that AI computing is a COMMODITY, in that it will inevitably be something that can not be effectively gate-kept.

These two major US companies (OpenAI and Anthropic) are playing the game of “locking in” a monopoly in a product category that has yet to mature. This is a pretty old capitalist game, of course… Uber, Microsoft, facebook,and many others have played this game in the past.

But, unlike OSes or word processing file compatibility I don’t see a “network effect” in that an open source/weight model can/will do 99% of what a proprietary model can, will do it “transparently,” will eventually become so optimized that it can run locally, etc. etc.

I mean: maybe its name recondition that is worth “trillions” but a race to be “Xerox” or “Kleenex” or even “PC” (as in IBM PC) did not really work out well for these companies.

I think that even the established players (MS, Google, etc.) are biding their time, making sure that they don’t get locked out while non-proprietary solutions become feasible.

I means I know that much of the issues have to do with the limited availability of hardware, but locking down supply is not sustainable for the “big 2” and sooner or later more adequate memory and GPU supply will enter the market…

Most American Conservatives have no idea what Russian style policy is, or what life, even for “middle class” Russians is like.

They are passive, lazy and infantile people that just go along with whatever their peers and their media diet (Fox News, Talk Radio, Facebook, and now mass media) spoon feeds them.

The core of these people were always either racist or greedy or tolerant of racists for some other idiotic or bigoted reason.

This is what happens when you have a society of overly “soft” and spoiled people. People that have basically never experienced hardship for 2, 3 or 4 generations.

America happens to be the most powerful and most culturally dominant country right now, but this isn’t a special thing. It is human nature and America is just ahead of the curve.

Indeed.

The conversation has many gray areas, nuances and compromises… black and white, is-vs-them reduces the thing to something that favors “base” (dumb) knee-jerk reactions… right wing views in other words.

I consider myself a fully committed progressive and liberal. I will happily give up some material advantage to help those that need it. I don’t think that there is anything special in this.

Some is doing lots of work. But also I think this is also quite typical.

We, as American or Developed Western World citizens, have to homely acknowledge that we can’t really speak on absolutes about “capitalism.”

European political discourse is more nuanced for many reasons, but here in America we are talking about things like there are good and bad comic-book guys and stuff.

We all benefit from a society that utilizes capitalistic structures. It is totally off the rails (and has been since the 80s), and absolutely is holding our own societies back (so that a relative handful of people can benefit within their lifetimes).

We can’t have that conversation in America because it’s easier mentally to use charities, and most people we interact with are also intellectually infantile and can’t even give you a decent explanation of what is different about socialism and communism, much less what fascism means.

The reality is they “China” is dog-walking us, but not because they are an evil autocracy with brainwashed and subjugated masses of people, but because we have been self-sabotaging for decades now.

If “America” was more egalitarian it would still be the most desirable place to be. The smartest and most capable people would be beating the doors down to be here, every other major country would be trying hard to follow our leaked, etc.

As a counter to China we can talk about India. A county with just as many people and lots of economic development that could happen organically, and no lack of brainpower and human energy and ingenuity, but it’s an absolute shitshow.

A country that has deeply routed social inequalities wired into it, with a healthy dose of British imperialist mindset and infrastructure… a very few rich people and empowered classes (castes) and everyone else living in shit. And still, the smartest people want to flee to greener pastures.

America is becoming (regressing) toward what India and other chaotic third world counties and societies are instead of charting the path that “modern/secular/western” society has more of less been charting for the last two or three hundred years.

Talarico is the guy Vance WISHES he could be.

JD is more ambition-driven than ideological, and so are many, many people that support trump “eagerly” in public.

They are carrerist-first, not ideological. They are just as “evil” and should be disqualified from public service and shunned by society just the same if not more. They have the facilities to fully asses the implications of their actions and chose to support the amoral and destructive pursuits of the American right.

This is a very interesting project. I am an architect and still end up spending too much time working in AutoCAD.

Not only is it an outdated and pretty legacy-bound piece of software, but it is also quite expensive and not really offering much for the money. Unfortunately, there are not many alternatives.

I’ve been away of this project for a few months. It is very much an open source AutoCAD “clone” type of project, which also tells me that once it gets noticed by Autodesk, it will get …interesting.

This same person or “group” is also doing an open source (obviously AI coded) version of a robust (but also too expensive and not great) PDF viewer that very much looks like a clone.

Personally I’m happy to see this, and this guy (it is mostly one person) is doing good work but I am also very disappointed that there is no “evolution” or creativity on display here.