161–170 of 321 posts
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You forgot to mention that it takes a lot more energy to train that human before they're able to work.
The human in the scenario is on regardless. One has to assume. But I also think this sentence you typed is essentially a single line horror story and we should consider whether it is ever appropriate to say it out loud.
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YMMV but automations eat through the $100-$200 plans, which burn thousands in tokens alone. I have hourly automations for root cause analysis on customer support issues, daily automations for eg log analysis, weekly & monthly automations for KPI tracking & actioning. I will say, when I was building side projects that were 1) fairly well defined in scope and 2) without users/need for automations it was much easier to…
Most of it doesn't require AI. You could generate automation scripts that do that, except of customer support. People became dependent on AI in places where it never was required and now tech bros are doing the squeeze.
I find just going via Deepseek's platform API directly, using their V4 flash model, and hooking into a harness like Opencode more than acceptable. Think I've spent maybe $10 over a couple of weeks. I did explore self-hosting models but hardware right now is just too expensive.
Directly at DeepSeek? It was my understanding (but I didn't check) that some other AI operators were providing (some of?) DeepSeek's model for cheaper prices. Still, that's interesting. What do you get for that price? Only coding, or also e.g. image generation?
I just use it for my side-project coding and brainstorming tasks. At work I use AWS's Kiro CLI + Opus 4.6. At home I use Opencode + V4 Flash for the majority of "general" usage. I swap to V4 Pro for complex tasks if I feel like V4 Flash is struggling.
One other thing I highly like about the platform.deepseek API usage is it's a metered setup - not subscription based. Which means you only pay for what you use (the money that you put in doesn't expire) and can't spend more than you've deposited. This works well for me for my non-work coding because it generally happens in bursts. I may not code for a whole month (and therefore if I had a subscription it would have been wasted) and then spend a whole weekend coding nonstop.
It's entirely possible that there are middle-man providers that give a discount on Deepseek's own pricing, but I'm quite happy with the amount I'm paying so I haven't really looked into it.
[1]: https://lushbinary.com/blog/deepseek-v4-vs-claude-opus-4-7-v...
I feel like I must have plateued and don't know what to do next to level up. I'm currently on the $100/month codex plan and it seems fine using 5.5-xhigh all the time. I think of what to do next, have a chat session to determine exactly what to ask for up to the point of being ready to implement, and then codex churns on a commit-sized task whereupon I briefly check it on my local dev server. If necessary I ask for a…
Why do you need to "level up"? To have it shit out slop faster?
Just use it rationally for what you need to do.
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Luckily I needed a new laptop and I bought an M1 Max secondhand from a friend quite cheaply because it was fast enough to recompile something else I am interested in. So for me, there is no additional hardware cost; it was acquired in replacement. I run the AI models at home on this kit because I want to; I'll use openrouter if I need to. I accept the economics of this article are right. But I feel so incredibly sad…
You sound awesome. Just venting? (b/c curious if friends can fill your heart abundantly, & we know we're never too old to make new friends!) > dreading Even avoiding political headlines (OK, at least articles), plenty of cause for dread, so I keep re-focusing to avoid despair. Easier said than done innit! Can't kill my hope for the future though. One day, all the good stuff shall prevail (morality, intelligence, love…
So in my fight back I decided that I needed to re-centre myself; learn how these tools can help me personally return to productivity, try to get that deep self-teaching back, reanimate myself consistent with my principles, learn and make things. Take it head on without losing who I was.
I haven’t been a “big projects” developer since the dot com era (when I worked on some pretty cutting edge things). I have been a small projects developer: building things that matter for small businesses and schools, supporting designers, teaching people stuff along the way. I have been productive, I have very diverse skills and I have been valued.
What I have come back to is an industry that has abandoned craft principles or discussions about developer discipline, code quality, efficiency, robustness, resilience, etc., and fully organised itself into a headlong rush towards a kind of nihilistic Metropolis machine-cranking.
And because I am a freelancer (more of a contractor in practice), my competition is already the machine itself. I am one of those developers who is eliminated in the last sentence of the article. I am not needed on big projects and in many small jobs — the kind a burned out small business developer needs to get back to work — I will never be needed again.
It is very odd, trying to learn how to understand the tools that others are using to make you irrelevant.
And when all your friends are obsessed with AI, either clients desperate to use it or friends (in the creative culture I am surrounded by away from work) angry and resentful of it, I find I have just nobody to talk this through with.
In many ways I would rather not have returned to actively using HN (because articles and despair, and because being by oneself it’s possible to get drawn into online arguments) but in recent months I have noticed in the comments that perhaps this is the only place where these discussions among “craft” developers are happening at all.
I am over fifty and safe financially, and if my last day were for some horrible reason out of my control to be tomorrow, that’s OK; I have enjoyed my life and on good days I do still enjoy it. I have friends who I see when I can get myself out of the house, I have distractions I can enjoy, all that.
I am now much more troubled by what it is going to be like to continue to live it. I struggle every day to see where I have value, especially as burnout has left me with less energy to spend.
Like I say, I am safe and very aware I have been blessed; it’s not a cry for help. But I think a lot of us who found value in our work wonder what the fuck we can do to keep ourselves alive the way we were.
ETA: holy shit that was an essay.
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I'll add another use case for letting an AI go ham: many small, atomic refactors where the name of the game is never breaking anything. My personal OSS projects don't have the scale to necessarily make this worth it, but at work I run three pipelines using Barnum ( https://barnum-circus.github.io/ ). First, one that ingests files, identifies refactors (from a pre-approved list), and places a precise description of th…
I recently in $COMPANY had a coworker try fable to do a refactor where not breaking anything was the game. It broke something at the first PR. I think we’re not there yet.
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Solar panels are free and never break and have an unlimited life expectancy?
Solar panel breakage doesn't depend on a graphics card.
You can decide to not fix the panel that was being used to power a GPU.
Or you could sell the power back.
Or you could put it in a battery bank for when the sun is down.
Or, if none of those are the case and you just have excess power that's useless for anything but a GPU, then you prepaid for the GPU.
I love that we have solar panels, but we weren't gifted them. Using power has a cost.
I feel like I must have plateued and don't know what to do next to level up. I'm currently on the $100/month codex plan and it seems fine using 5.5-xhigh all the time. I think of what to do next, have a chat session to determine exactly what to ask for up to the point of being ready to implement, and then codex churns on a commit-sized task whereupon I briefly check it on my local dev server. If necessary I ask for a…
I am an engineer, and when I understand what’s going on, I never hit any limit.
I feel like I must have plateued and don't know what to do next to level up. I'm currently on the $100/month codex plan and it seems fine using 5.5-xhigh all the time. I think of what to do next, have a chat session to determine exactly what to ask for up to the point of being ready to implement, and then codex churns on a commit-sized task whereupon I briefly check it on my local dev server. If necessary I ask for a…
I have downgraded my Claude to the $20 one, and basically only use it for the web chat right now. For coding, I use DeepSeek @API Rates configured in Claude Code. I have spent around $4.8 for 320,000,000 tokens. I always felt like i was not using Claude plan, that i had to have the LLM working on something all the time to justify the price. Now with DeepSeek i don't think about it anymore. I don't feel bad when not u…
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Yeah, I agree. I've been consistently getting about $1,000/month of value out of the $100/month subscription for OpenAI, and about the same for Anthropic.
Sorry to be that guy. I think the more precise wording would be that you get tokens which would cost $1,000/month at API pricing. Maybe (depending on the profit margin of the API pricing) you incur costs somewhere close to $1,000/month. And maybe your usage is subsidized by 900$/month. The value you get out of it is a whole other question. One that according to recent news, CFOs find hard to esitimate.