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There is minimal downside to switching to open models

marble.onl

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Re: There is minimal downside to switching to open models

#311

Post by nomel »

tonfreed wrote: post #23
julianlam wrote: post #6

I think it's interesting that people write off open weight models because they're "a few months behind" proprietary models. I know LLMs move at the speed of light (especially these past few quarters), but if Opus and GPT "a few months ago" were really like open weight models, then there's really no reason to not switch, especially for those who were using these models a few months ago. Your codebase didn't change, so…

Even just one of the smaller models is good enough for the grunt work I use them for 90% of the time. Currently doing most of my home hobby projects with OpenCode Go and Qwen 3.7 Plus, it's not great at diagnosing issues in the code, but if I can clearly articulate a test suite or boilerplate refactoring it works fine.

> I use them for 90% of the time

10% failure rate would drive me absolutely insane.

Re: There is minimal downside to switching to open models

#313

Post by moomoo11 »

handoflixue wrote: post #198
moomoo11 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok but your competition using the latest models has an advantage not all of us are doing noob shit lol

You're being entirely unreasonable. 640 kilobytes of memory was enough for Bill Gates, and yet somehow your special project needs more?

it's 2026. my work machine is a macbook pro with 64gb ram.

i would rather spend a few hundred or thousands of dollars a month to make way more, than waste time and still lose to people who are using the latest commercial models which are 3 months ahead of the open source.

what are you even talking about?

Re: There is minimal downside to switching to open models

#314

Post by moomoo11 »

59nadir wrote: post #305
derwiki wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the big quant shops heavily use LLM; maybe it’s trivial stuff and they just work 100 hrs/week?

Anyone who heavily uses LLMs for their work is pretty obviously ill-equipped for their work, and likely getting even worse at it with time, yes. You can throw around as many "things people from the US worship because they make money" positions/industries as you want. Nevermind that you're "pretty sure". People who both know what LLMs are actually capable of without major issues, plus are already capable enough to do…

bro go do your tickets lmfao

Re: There is minimal downside to switching to open models

#315

Post by anigbrowl »

spiralcoaster wrote: post #301

This can't be for real. The title asserts there is minimal downside to switching to open models, but the article provides zero evidence that this is true, and the author hasn't even attempted it yet. The end of the article states "I’m hoping it’s going to be minimal". I wonder if I can get a post to the front page with the title: "There are no real barriers to humans colonizing Mars next month". And at the end, "I'm…

The author explains why he thinks it's going to be minimal in the very next next sentence. It's a shallow piece of writing but since it's more of a personal diary blog that's not a big deal. This sort of nitpicking isn't helpful.

Re: There is minimal downside to switching to open models

#316

Post by throwaway27448 »

zzzeek wrote: post #295
throwaway27448 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever read Manufacturing Consent? A conspiracy is not necessary for wide-spread propaganda campaigns—just a confluence of incentives that act against the common interest (even in the US) but work in the interest of the ruling class.

and then Chomsky goes on to form a deep online friendship with Jeffrey Epstein

Ah so let's just empty our brains out then. Sure, chomsky is a piece of shit. This doesn't absolve you of caring about the society you live in. Read the damn text and get back to me.

Re: There is minimal downside to switching to open models

#318

Post by brucehoult »

0gs wrote: post #269
brucehoult wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use the GPU but an Apple Silicon GPU has the same high speed access to all the RAM on the machine as the CPU does, rather than having its own walled-off maybe 16 GB VRAM in mainstream gaming GPUs or 24 GB in RTX 4090 or RTX 5090 (MSRP $1999 but in practice $3000-$4000 at the moment). Nvidia A100 (80GB VRAM) apparently cost $15,000 or so. Not only does Apple's unified memory give the GPU more RAM to use, but it a…

i believe you meant something like US$9999 for the 512GB. otherwise, i'm going to feel like QUITE the fool for choosing the 96GB variant at the same price

The referenced article specifically says $4000, but reading it more carefully now that's the UPGRADE price, not the full price of the machine.

Checking also...

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/05/mac-studio-no-512gb-ram...

... confirms that, but I'm not clear on which config the $4000 upgrade was starting from, but I think it's from the M3 Ultra's standard 96 GB.

Both articles say that previously 256 GB RAM was a $1600 upgrade from 96 GB but "now" is a $2000 upgrade.

Now "now" even 256 GB isn't available and 96 GB is the only option with the M3 Ultra.

M3 Ultra is currently $3999 with 96 GB and 28 core CPU 60 core GPU, or +$1500 with 32 core CPU 80 core GPU. If the base price was the same prior to March then yeah $3999+$1500+$4000 = $9499 would have been the price for a maxed out CPU/GPU/RAM config with a 1 TB disk.

I wasn't looking at Mac Studio prices back then so unfortunately articles such as these are my only clue. I'm still more than happy with my original M1 Mini with 16 GB RAM as I don't work with local LLMs — only on my little NUC-like RISC-V "K3" machine with 32 GB RAM and regular RISC-V cores with 1024 bit vectors as the "NPU", doing around 7 tok/s on 32B models while using 14W of power.

Re: There is minimal downside to switching to open models

#319

Post by snootypoot »

if you can afford to run one that is powerful enough for what you need it will be the superior choice. nobody should be feeding private data to the axis of evil (open ai, anthropic, palantir). i saw a job listing recently about an ai proficient data guy needed to work in a medical office. i thought to myself that there was very little chance they were cognizant of how medical records privacy laws conflict with non-local ai use. things are getting unhinged in the world.

Re: There is minimal downside to switching to open models

#320

Post by yardsold »

moomoo11 wrote: post #314
59nadir wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who heavily uses LLMs for their work is pretty obviously ill-equipped for their work, and likely getting even worse at it with time, yes. You can throw around as many "things people from the US worship because they make money" positions/industries as you want. Nevermind that you're "pretty sure". People who both know what LLMs are actually capable of without major issues, plus are already capable enough to do…

bro go do your tickets lmfao

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