Simply because latency is a competitive advantage, one worth paying for. At the speed of light, making a trip out to the desert and back is too slow.

20 ms extra, for models which respond in 5 minutes

Right It is a use case where humans are not latency sensitive

I keep my TI-84 at my desk and reach for it maybe once a week. Usually for money reasons though, not so much for work stuff.

Symbolic computation is a thing. How do you think wolfram alpha worked for 20 years before AI?

As someone who quit c++ over 15 years ago it's been comical to watch what this language has become.

In the U.S. I wouldn't expect meaningful regulation from an administration that accepts bribes in the form of literal gold nuggets.

For now.

I have... so many questions. Not the least of which is, why? I gave TikTok maybe 10 minutes of my time, once a year just to see what others are seeing. And each time, it was always meaningless junk. I'd uninstall the app after; it does nothing for me. Why did it captivate you?

I’m similar. I’ve installed the TikTok app a half a dozen times and it just doesn’t click for me.

YouTube I enjoy more, but I still don’t spend much time on it. I mostly go on there looking for something in particular and don’t spend much time scrolling. Their recommendations are terrible and creators chasing the algorithm is making every interesting corner round.

Instagram I like. I love to see updates from friends and family but that runs out quickly so I don’t end up spending much time there.

Facebook is good for their marketplace when I’m looking to buy something or give something away.

Mastodon is boring, X is offensive, posts on BlueSky and Threads feel fake and performative. LinkedIn is full of journeys and learnings and I’m not interested in either.

HN is the only social media site I visit with any kind of frequency.

Why does one person become addicted to gambling while another can visit a casino, try it once and then just walk away?

Not 12-14 hours but the novelty-seeking of new stories and discussion topics is a compelling escape (especially since it'll just be "a few minutes" I think to myself) and then I end up getting drawn into conversations and seeing new thread responses I should respond to, both of which may result in going down additional rabbit holes in order to back up the response...

Oh shoot, we were talking about TikTok right?

These short 'dopamine hits' are anywhere. As a kid I really loved reading encyclopedias, even read dictionaries for 'enjoyment'. Wikipedia was awful for me.

Nobody ever saw it as a bad thing though, many people even encouraged me. Looking back at it 90% what I read was absolutely useless besides some novelty and being useful for quizzes.

Wonder what I could've done with all the time I lost, probably changed my behaviour in general. Can't imagine how much tiktok changes these kids.

The thing i keep coming back to is that an LLM backed query is so, so much more expensive than a typical web request. What kind of advertising is going to align in the value necessary to cover those costs, plus margin? Chatbots aren't YouTube, users aren't going to sit through 30 second ads, I don't think.

Neither was 99.99999% of the content they stole.

Scraped != stolen.

Nonsense. Copying is not theft, this debate was solved 25+ years ago!

Have you seen the "you wouldn't steal a car" ads? Or this video? https://youtu.be/IeTybKL1pM4?si=utZ5KjmK-C2-fFdP