62% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Perhaps saying most Americans are struggling is doomerism, but what percentage living paycheck to paycheck no longer counts as doomerism and is just a harsh truth? 75%? 90%? Do you think the number of people living paycheck to paycheck is increasing or decreasing this year?

https://econofact.org/factbrief/is-there-a-consensus-that-a-majority-of-americans-are-living-paycheck-to-paycheck#%3A~%3Atext=While+one+survey+by+LendingClub%2Cspending%3B+62%25+answered+yes.

In a capitalist society, what is good or best is irrelevant. All that matters is if it makes money. AI makes no money. The $200 and $300/month plans put in rate limits because at those prices they’re losing too much money. Lets say the beak-even cost for a single request is somewhere between $1-$5 depending on the request just for the electricity, and people can barely afford food, housing, and transportation as it is. What is the business model for these LLMs going to be? A person could get a coffee today, or send a single request to an LLM? Now start thinking that they’ll need newer gpus next year. And the year after that. And after that. And the data center will need maintenance. They’re paying literally millions of dollars to individual programmers.

Maybe there is a niche market for mega corporations like Google who can afford to spend thousands of dollars a day on LLMs, but most companies won’t be able to afford these tools. Then there is the problem where if the company can afford these tools, do they even need them?

The only business model that makes sense to me is the one like BMW uses for their car seat warmers. BMW requires you to pay a monthly subscription to use the seat warmers in their cars. LLM makers could charge a monthly subscription to run a micro model on your own device. That free assistant in your Google phone would then be pay walled. That way businesses don’t need to carry the cost of the electricity, but the LLM is going to be fairly low functioning compared to what we get for free today. But the business model could work. As long as people don’t install a free version.

I don’t buy the idea that “LLMs are good so they are going to be a success”. Not as long as investors want to make money on their investments.

Awesome, I’ll give these a spin and see how it goes. Much appreciated!

Good to know. I’d hate to buy a new machine strictly for running an LLM. Could be an excuse to pickup something like a Framework 16, but realistically, I don’t see myself doing that. I think you might be right about using something like Open Web UI or LM Studio.

This is all new to me, so I’ll have to do a bit of homework on this. Thanks for the detailed and linked reply!

8GB

I have a MacBook 2 pro (Apple silicon) and would kind of like to replace Google’s Gemini as my go-to LLM. I think I’d like to run something like Mistral, probably. Currently I do have Ollama and some version of Mistral running, but I almost never used it as it’s on my laptop, not my phone.

I’m not big on LLMs and if I can find an LLM that I run locally and helps me get off of using Google Search and Gimini, that could be awesome. Currently I use a combo of Firefox, Qwant, Google Search, and Gemini for my daily needs. I’m not big into the direction Firefox is headed, I’ve heard there are arguments against Qwant, and using Gemini feels like the wrong answer for my beliefs and opinions.

I’m looking for something better without too much time being sunk into something I may only sort of like. Tall order, I know, but I figured I’d give you as much info as I can.

There are other ways to lower the amount of plastic in you. If you donate your blood you can measurably lower your pfas levels. Really just removing blood which carries plastic through your whole body will also lower your concentration of plastics. Because plastic is in the water, make sure you drink filtered water. They do make filters that will catch micro plastics and some will advertise it. If you want to keep your levels lower avoid hydrophobic coatings that sit next to food for extended periods of time and definitely don’t heat that food next to a hydrophobic coating. Think microwaving food in a container with coatings that’ll leach into the food. So bags of popcorn should be avoided like the plague, unfortunately.

Source: Veritasium, skip to at least 50:15, but honestly I’d recommend watching the whole thing https://youtu.be/SC2eSujzrUY.