One of the strangest things in the AI industry is 'tokenomics'. It's not very clear why using GPT-4 in early 2023 was so expensive and then six months later 20 bucks could get you a fair amount of GPT-4 inference. This pattern has continued across various labs/providers for years--there is a continuous see-saw of pricing that doesn't seem related to anything.<p>So what open weight models do is at least provide a baseline of inference cost to add some sanity to the price markers. And of course predictability too--if you really want Kimi K2 instead of K3 you can still use it.<p>So the competitive pressure and predictability offered by open models is helpful for users
> It's not very clear why using GPT-4 in early 2023 was so expensive and then six months later 20 bucks could get you a fair amount of GPT-4 inference.<p>FlashAttention was a hell of a drug.
Why do prescription medications cost so much, and generics so little (comparatively)?<p>Artificial inflation to recoup R&D.
Its very clear: nobody wanted to pay for usage at that price point
It's basically supply and demand?
Because as per usual it's silicon valley misunderstanding economics. AI is HPC. And how the HPC market worked before:<p>If you're the best performing "computing cluster" (ie. whatever you call the entity that can complete a massive calculation), you get a blank check from Congress.<p>Why? Because you need those calculations to "pump" nuclear weapons. They are needed to calculate both the geometry to make fusion bombs possible at all and to calculate the effect of a given geometry. They are the reason US/Russia/China have the biggest and strongest weapons known to humanity. And of course, they were replicated worldwide for this reason. I mean not that anyone will admit this but we don't have the best possible solution, and we don't know either the upper or lower limits for fusion devices (plus the lower limit would be very useful for energy generation, which for the US would effectively mean almost literally unlimited large marine ships that never need refueling. And yes, the solution to that problem is almost literally a 3d shape. Not just that, but mostly)<p>Now it appears it does not work the same when you democratize computation. Humans want a particular amount of computation and are willing to pay a given price for that. But the accountants still saw the blank check from before and ... do what accountants do. Economics don't change because you make things bigger and accessible, do they? Oh ... wait a second ...
Is anyone using open weight models for agentic coding?<p>What is your stack (harness, model) and how much do you pay per month?<p>How would you compare your experience to a typical subsidized plan like Claude Code + Pro plan?<p>I’m asking because i keep hearing that open weight models are cheap and efficient - is that really the case in practice?
I am using GLM-5.2 via Ollama Cloud in the $20/month plan. With the same plan I can get many different API keys that I use to run my OpenWebUI server, my opencode and pi dev sessions. I am usually running 2 to 4 sessions concurrently, and I never hit quota limits. At work I get Claude, and I was getting reports that I was spending $75 per hour of work on Opus.
> The government should use procurement to create demand for portable, interoperable systems rather than permanent dependence on one API vendor.<p>Now, here is an idea that I have not heard before... and I think there is some merit to this. This is also the sort of thing that a state (looking at you CA, CO, IL, NY) could do, instead of just the federal government.
why would any software want to have Kubernetes moment? can't count how devop I know that is confused by it
Recently my company bought another company, and we kept zero of the original engineers, we just had to run the ghost ship.<p>We walked in, and it was fine. Because it was all kubernetes and laid out like every other app for the most part.<p>The kube hate is just sad at this point. You need to know like 15 concepts that are all applied in the same way. It mostly just works.
I still don't know what it is tbh. Something for docker?
You... don't know what Kubernetes is... pretty impressive, honestly.<p>Its 2026 and its the de facto method of deploying software basically everywhere.<p>You gotta really work for it to not know what its for by now.
If you can get it implemented for anything you can’t be fired.
It's for running a massive number of docker containers and automatically managing them and scaling them up and down on demand. It is also so famously brutally complex that basically you need a dedicated Kube expert to handle it.
Way over complicated for what most users need? Huh?
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