> even when model subsidization is done, those open source models are quite viable alternatives.
Model inference was never subsidized. Inference is highly profitable with today's prices. That's why you have many inference providers. My guess, the prices for inference will go down, as more competition starts cutting the margin.
It's model training, development and R&D that cost a lot, and companies creating closed models don't have any business model except astroturfing and trying to recover training costs through overpriced inference.
I wonder why the question about data security and training comes often with DeepSeek, Kimi, Glm and never with Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google models.
Why is that?
IIRC, USA data protection protects data of US citizens only, foreigners data is not protected, and the companies are not even allowed to disclose when they collect those data.
> USA data protection protects data of US citizens only, foreigners data is not protected
HN is an American site. If you look at the US government, it is going to fearmonger about anything China related, because they haven't had a genuine competitor for decades and they're scared and lashing out. Most US news just parrot the government line, sometimes more so than state TV would, and so it reflects here.
I also feel comfortable saying that many Americans don't care one bit what happens to foreigners, be it by action of their government or companies.
> I also feel comfortable saying that many Americans don't care one bit what happens to foreigners, be it by action of their government or companies.
This is true. There are also many of us who do care.
This brings to mind something I heard recently about the so-called "Rule of 10". There will always be 3 people who support you, 3 people who are against you, and 4 people who have no idea what's going on and don't care.
Don't just focus on the 3 people who are being negative.
Wolf Warrior diplomacy isn't even 10 years dead. The HK treaty was violated and continues to be. Taiwan gets threatened every other week.
People can have problems with America and I'm fine with that. But pretending China isn't subsidizing industry (land, education, transportation) in a predatory fashion is silly. Too many companies have gone out of business because of it. We can all have our friends in China without pretending the CCP is playing the ballgame fairly. The government doesn't need to point it out. That doesn't even get into influence operations (which are especially easy on platforms like this.)
Seriously - there may be a day in the future where Western nations and China get along but it really can't/won't happen while it's holding all the industry and trying to take the Services income as well.
The US assisted a genocide, literally kidnapped the president of a sovereign country so it could take its oil, threatened its own allies with invasion and started a war of aggression against another so that it can take their oil, all in a span of a few months.
No it means that perhaps the US should finally start looking at itself instead of just asserting that it doesn't need to because China.
That doesn't mean China should not be criticized. But to me it's clear that the China blame game is not about a genuine concern for Chinese people or its neighbors, it's about trying to keep it down because China should never dared to rise in the first place.
Anglo Saxons and maybe the French should be in charge and the rest should be resource colonies. It very much feels like that Western mentality is still there.
> No it means that perhaps the US should finally start looking at itself instead of just asserting that it doesn't need to because China.
Agreed, the US definitely needs to do some introspection to sort out its own shit (and stop spraying it on everyone else).
However, that does not mean that China gets a pass. Fundamentally, the Chinese model of governance does not protect the individual. For all its faults, the US model is based upon the idea of individual liberty, which acts as a touchstone and allows it to self-correct whenever it goes to far in the wrong direction. That's something the Chinese model does not do, and means that, short of a revolution, it will continue to be an authoritarian state with all of the malignant features that entails.
> Fundamentally, the Chinese model of governance does not protect the individual. For all its faults, the US model is based upon the idea of individual liberty
Look, am not here to defend the Chinese model but I find it interesting how convinced you seem that individualism is the right model for everyone.
While I would generally agree with you, I have spoken to many from poorer countries who say that they prefer to trade some individualism for a steady hand of economic development and lifting the population from poverty. That is the Chinese model.
These people would argue that they can reclaim more and more individual freedom as the country gets richer and more self confident.
I am not saying they are right, but looking at a nominal democracy like India and a nominal autocracy like China, I know which government works better as far as raising the living standards of its population and it's not the Indian one.
My hope is that China will continue to liberalize on its own. Forcing it will likely only reverse the gains.
Individualism also leads to the sort of healthcare system the US had or Skid Row. So it's not all roses.
> also feel comfortable saying that many Americans don't care one bit what happens to foreigners, be it by action of their government or companies
What's the point of this kind of statement for you? Does this help you understand others or just continue to drive the wedge in? Where are you from? Ask yourself can the statement,
"many {of my country} don't care one bit what happens to foreigners, be it by action of the government or companies" not be read as true?
There are self-absorbed, disinterested, uncompassionate people in every country which will satisfy your "many" qualifier.
I am from Europe. I feel comfortable saying that many in Europe do not care about what their governments or companies do to foreigners, (at least not enough to inform themselves about it).
However looking at the polls in the US gives you a fairly decent idea that there's a decent chunk of people that seem to get off on violence towards non-Americans. Why do you think ICE went with the violent tactics it did?
As to
> What's the point of this kind of statement for you? Does this help you understand others or just continue to drive the wedge in?
The point is to maybe make some Americans ask what it is that they can do to reform the government they have the most direct influence over (their own) instead of trying to reassure themselves that theirs is still better than country's X.
I don't have an opinion about Zig AI policy for contributions. Their project, their policies. Fine for me.
However, I wanted to give Zig a try in an agentic coding scenario. For tasks that would take a few seconds when choosing Python, Java, or JavaScript as a target language, it would take tens of minutes and waste millions of tokens before producing anything.
Almost any model gets stuck trying to figure out the correct syntax and correct libraries for a specific Zig version, fighting with compiling and figuring out function call parameters, frequently taking it wrong and going on side quests for things that should just work.
I guess the relative lack of resources and the language instability don't play well for models that try to generate Zig code. Using specific tools like zig-mcp helps only a bit.
Until LLM support for Zig improves (one needs to spend significant resources for that to happen), LLM-generated Zig code won't be good enough for either Zig programmers or Zig contributors.
> Anyone who has ever used Mercurial knows very well what a good versioning tool UX looks like...
So true. I used Mercurial back in the day and also used Darcs before it, and it helped me realize that the best versioning tool UX that exists is still the one Git provides.
PS: Also CVS, SVN, Perforce, and Clear Case professionally, and gave a try to Fossil. None of them even close to Git usability-wise.
This subsidized inference is just a marketing ploy to increase prices and profit.
If common people can have a DIY setup with an open source model cheaper than those behemoths with a scale advantage, it's clear that we have been played.
Time to either self host a Chinese open source model or to just pay the cheap Chinese providers.
Yeah, local is clearly the future. Even beyond the cheap Chinese models you can install the apfel[1] stuff if you're on a mac and want a quick available onboard cli option. And I'm sure people will adapt the Flash-MoE[2] integration to be even better soon as well.
Don’t forget the hate speech laws. It’s just ridiculous. A state in Germany wants to criminalize questioning a certain country’s existence, with penalties of up to four years in prison
A strange view. The trade-off has nothing to do with a specific ideology or notable selfishness. It is an intrinsic limitation of the algorithms, which anybody could reasonably learn about.
Sure, the exact choice on the trade-off, changing that choice, and having a pretty product-breaking bug as a result, are much more opaque. But I was responding to somebody who was surprised there's any trade-off at all. Computers don't give you infinite resources, whether or not they're "servers," "in the cloud," or "AI."
He was surprised because it was not clearly communicated. There's a lot of theory behind a product that you could (or could not) better understand, but in the end, something like price doesn't have much to do with the theoretical and practical behavior of the actual application.
reply