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Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

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Re: Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

#301

Post by dijit »

doodlesdev wrote: post #297
tngranados wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it was founded in 2009, 14 years without turning a profit

Which, by analogy, would mean you could use subsided tokens for over 10 years and then, and only then, actually purchase your own hardware to do inference, with over a decade of technological advancements to compound. I'll invest in inference hardware whenever the economics make sense, not because of my prediction that prices will get higher (also, because smaller models keep getting better and they might just suffic…

> Whenever that gets too expensive for Beijing to pay, we won't be getting new SOTA open small models to run on local hardware, which, again, reinforces the decision to use providers for AI inference for now.

Valid takeaway.

"Invest" in the companies that release their models, because the alternative is to reward the people who will capture the market and jack up the prices to unreasonable level.

Unfortunately I think this is a bit like game theory, people will choose the local optimum despite the long term problems with doing so.

Re: Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

#302

Post by loeg »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #290
loeg wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was APPALLED that they wanted me to fill out an APPLICATION form, where they would decide my worth, and let me know if we would be allowed to live there. When buying a house, my cash was as good as anyone elses'. House sellers receive offers from buyers, sometimes including letters, and can choose to sell to any of them (or none of them), whether or not those offers are higher than the listed price. It's not so d…

Why would a house seller accept any offer that not the highest total price?

A seller might prefer a cash offer to an offer contingent on the buyer securing credit (credit might fall through). Or, like landlords, a seller might prefer a buyer with a higher credit score (same reason -- buyer is more likely to be able to secure credit and close the deal). A seller might prefer a slightly lower total offer with a serious amount of "earnest money" over a slightly higher total offer without significant earnest money (buyer might try to back out). A seller might prefer to sell to a family with a nice story in their buyer's letter than someone buying a 2nd or 3rd house. Or the seller may think all offers are too low and they can hold out and get a better offer later.

Re: Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

#303

Post by mpyne »

Danox wrote: post #279
dcrazy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have control over your costs. It is reasonable to assume that tokens will cost significantly more in the near to medium future as the market consolidates and subsidies decline.

Google, Microsoft, Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Oracle and others are going to be looking to recoup all the money that they’ve spent to date. Why would the price go down in the future?

> Why would the price go down in the future?

Because price is driven mainly by competition, not by a desire to recoup prior spending.

Investors aren't doing things out of the sheer goodness of their hearts, so if they could just bump the price up they'd have already forced it up. The very existence of workable local models puts a cap on how high the price can realistically go, but the high level of competition still extant makes the price floor ever closer to the actual cost to generate tokens.

Re: Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

#305

Post by shaewest »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #289
shaewest wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real estate is generally a "good" investment as it's considered a relatively safe way to get significant leverage. 5x leverage in the case of a 20% deposit, or even up to 20x leverage with countries that allow for 5% deposits (New Zealand). In addition, the interest payments almost always end up being near the rent the owner would have paid, so mortgage payments are higher, but that increase is generally (and quickly…

> relatively safe way to get significant leverage This only works if housing prices keep rising. This post could have been written in 2007.

Oh I don't disagree, I hate real estate as an investment, it's a terrible asset only made "viable" by tax benefits, rent-replacement and excessive amounts of risk via leverage.

Re: Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

#306

Post by 650REDHAIR »

onesociety2022 wrote: post #114
650REDHAIR wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also after a few years you can sell and upgrade. A 2022 Mac Studio w/ M1 Ultra and 128gb was ~$5200 new and I see them selling for over $4k on eBay. Can’t sell your used tokens…

You can’t actually - due to the RAM shortage you can’t even upgrade to an M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 128GB RAM. That model has been discontinued. Even the 96GB model has a wait time of 5 months in most locations. This is the reason why the resale value is so high.

Interesting! I just spec'd one out maybe ~2 weeks ago and I guess I should have pulled the trigger!

Re: Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

#308

Post by throwaway2037 »

shaewest wrote: post #305
throwaway2037 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> relatively safe way to get significant leverage This only works if housing prices keep rising. This post could have been written in 2007.

Oh I don't disagree, I hate real estate as an investment, it's a terrible asset only made "viable" by tax benefits, rent-replacement and excessive amounts of risk via leverage.

What is "rent-replacement"? I never heard that term before. I cannot find anything obvious using Google search.

Re: Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

#309

Post by PunchyHamster »

bastawhiz wrote: post #233
PunchyHamster wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, data centers don't pay residential electricity rates. There are 2 caveats here: Some places have higher prices for industrial than residential power as residential one might be subsidied by govt. And DC also pay for cooling, which residential will only effectively pay if they have AC and is hot outside. So power rates are some multiply of industrial pricing.

Generally you don't build a data center in a place that doesn't sell you electricity for cheap

Still for purpose of calculation you still need to calculate the price of both power and removing heat created by that power.

Re: Apple Silicon costs more than OpenRouter

#310

Post by bcjdjsndon »

shaewest wrote: post #237
ericpauley wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is far from a universal truth: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/upshot/buy-rent-cal... Real estate is only a clearly good investment if you ignore opportunity cost.

Real estate is generally a "good" investment as it's considered a relatively safe way to get significant leverage. 5x leverage in the case of a 20% deposit, or even up to 20x leverage with countries that allow for 5% deposits (New Zealand). In addition, the interest payments almost always end up being near the rent the owner would have paid, so mortgage payments are higher, but that increase is generally (and quickly…

> Real estate is generally a "good" investment as it's considered a relatively safe way to get significant leverage

Leverage? People don't normally invest in property (normally involves taking out a loan) for the purpose of taking out another loan. That so called "leverage" is being used to buy the house...ie you don't have any leverage

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