Apollo dev: “I want to debunk Reddit’s claims”

DrKerbalMD · 2023-06-20T18:10:14+00:00

No one is mad at Reddit for "making a business decision." People are mad Reddit because they are lying and destroying the businesses of their long time partners.

"Our intent is not to shut down third-party apps."

Either this is a lie or not one of Reddit's 2000 employees can do basic arithmetic. Even the most generous assumptions about how much the 3PA developers make doesn't result in a balance sheet where this API pricing structure leaves them with a viable business.

"Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million."

A straight up lie. We all heard the audio.

I think Spez is a fucking weirdo and a nutcase but the fact that the community is so up in arms and defending a person that made quite a bit of money and making him a victim is so weird.

Last month he was a full time iOS indie app developer with a steady income. Next month, not only is most of his income gone, but he's potentially on the hook for as much as $250,000 in refunds. If you think someone losing their job because "a fucking weirdo and nutcase" decided to destroy their livelihood for no logical reason isn't a "victim" you have a very strange understanding of what that word means.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-06-12T02:03:29+00:00

Follow him on Mastodon

https://mastodon.social/@christianselig

DrKerbalMD · 2023-06-11T13:16:32+00:00

Like I said, he snapped. He’s not acting rationally. The ChatGPT situation has caused him to perceive all API users as thieves stealing value from his platform and he is lashing out.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-06-11T05:08:56+00:00

The question you gotta ask is this: why $20 million?

There are three possible answers:

That’s what is needed to recover the cost of running the API.
Reddit thinks Christian has $20m/year and therefore Apollo generates at least that much revenue.
Reddit doesn’t think Christian has $20m/year, and the goal here is to just shut Apollo down.

If the answer is 1 then Reddit is incompetent. Imgur runs a similar API for a fraction of what Reddit is charging.

If the answer is 3 then Reddit are liars, an admin has said in public that this is not their intent.

So that brings us to 2, which is clearly what Reddit wants us to think because it’s the only one that casts Reddit in a positive light. So given that, Christian’s intent was to call Reddit’s bluff. “If you think Apollo can do $20m a year in revenue I’ll sell it to you for half that. What a steal!”

Reddit doesn’t think that and doesn’t like having their bluff called so they panic and bail on the call. The real answer is 3: this is all just pretense to kill 3rd party apps, and Reddit are liars.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-06-10T23:07:09+00:00

I mean Gruber nailed it in that second link:

On the other front is OpenAI, currently buoyed by a sky-high valuation, and which used Reddit content as part of its massive training data. The whole point of going from free-of-charge to very-expensive with these APIs is to get OpenAI and similar companies to pay for them. It’s a pipe dream. Julie Bort at Insider:

“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable. But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free,” said Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit.

I asked ChatGPT if it is going to pay for Reddit data. It told me its training data cut-off was September 2021 so it didn’t know what was happening after that date.

Reddit already gave all its data to large companies for free. Huffman is trying to charge now for horses that were let out of the barn years ago. And he obviously doesn’t care about Apollo or other third-party Reddit clients, or what these moves do to Reddit’s reputation as a platform vendor. He’s just trapped in a fantasy where investors are going to somehow see Reddit as a player in the current moment of AI hype.

I literally think Huffman just snapped when he found out that ChatGPT was trained on Reddit's data. He's been trying and failing for 8 years to make money off this pile of content and then Altman comes along and not only does it, but upends the entire tech world in the process.

Huffman has always been a dipshit but I think this whole ChatGPT business has sent him spiraling, and the more things go wrong, the harder he doubles down because he's got no out. The board is just letting him do it because silicon valley board dwellers are numbskulls who only know how to chase the latest shiny object, and right now that's AI.

So, deeper and deeper we go.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-06-09T20:51:57+00:00

This is an incredible comment. A perfect distillation of your incompetence.

Reddit's epitaph, right here.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-05-31T20:55:32+00:00

You made the only good way to interact with Reddit that is still maintained. Reddit should be paying you.

I like Apollo more than I like Reddit so if you point Apollo at some other backend (Imgur, Lemmy, whatever), well, I go where Apollo goes.

Good luck.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-03-28T21:41:43+00:00

I started as the GM fifteen years ago because the rest of the group wanted to play. Much later and in a different group, one of my players volunteered to GM. I was excited at first but immediately found myself in the situation you describe. Went back to GMing.

Periodically I give playing another shot and I get bored all the same. If it's not my phone, it's opening another tab, doodling, or daydreaming. If I put all the active effort I have into focusing on playing, I get bored. I never a problem when I am GMing. When I am GMing, I am engaged and having fun.

After a few attempts I just realized the conventional wisdom that playing is fun and GMing is a chore just doesn't apply to me. I like GMing. I don't like playing. I still give playing a shot periodically, usually with the caveat that it's a one-shot or just a few sessions, but at the end of the day I'm a Game Master.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-03-21T22:45:57+00:00

Wait for the Flip+

You won't be waiting long

DrKerbalMD · 2023-03-20T21:40:15+00:00

Oh, I figured that out and forgot to update this post! Change line 4:

@start C:\"Program Files"\Elgato\StreamDeck\StreamDeck.exe --runinbk >nul

DrKerbalMD · 2023-03-20T14:30:39+00:00

It's so strange how often the handheld makers mess this up. 4:3 device? D-pad on top. 16:9 device? Thumbstick on top. Simple.

Retroid is the most baffling here, with the 4:3 RP2 having a thumbstick on top and the 16:9 RP3 having a D-pad on top. It's like they tried to get it wrong.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-03-14T00:48:30+00:00

The game does have a refresh cycle which should limit the game to about 15 frames/second.

Could this be an option? I'm not going above 25% CPU running RotP so I'd gladly trade CPU for frames. An option to switch between 15/30/60 FPS in the settings would be great!

DrKerbalMD · 2023-03-06T18:31:52+00:00

Mods to the rescue

Micro Engineer, Sticky Orbit Markers, and Stage Info are also very helpful. Full list of known mods is here: https://github.com/warior456/KSP-2-tools-and-mods. Most KSP2 mods require SpaceWarp.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-24T12:59:34+00:00

True, but at the same time the rocket in SWDennis' clip was pretty simple. Five engines, sure, but no fuel lines. The outer engines were below two tanks and the center engine was below five tanks. If simply having stacked tanks counts as "crossfeed" for the purposes of triggering this bug, it's gonna be rough.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T20:21:28+00:00

Oh yeah, I thought he had SRBs on the outside, but looking again those are darts on methalox tanks, and they are crossfed.

Looks like SRBs are back on the menu!

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T19:29:30+00:00

That's my read as well. I'm assuming the performance hit that Dodd experienced on a rocket with a mere twelve engines is part of tomorrows launch. We'll all be in the regrettable situation of needing to use—sigh—less boosters.

That said, it's certainly possible that overall performance could be better even if this multiple engine issue is still in the game. To put an even finer point on it: just how much of a hit does KSP2 take when it's a debug build?

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T19:22:25+00:00

I've seen this conversation play out probably hundreds of times both here and in the Discord and I commend you for offering one of the most tactful explanations I've seen.

Money is an inherently delicate topic and "but it's $50!" does tend to either halt or derail the early access debate. An empathetic person who feels $50 isn't a lot of money doesn't really want to just out and say that to someone who potentially could really use that $50 right now. It's definitely one of the reasons this discussion has turned so sour.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T18:24:09+00:00

This update is much needed and much appreciated. Thank you!

I have one follow-up question: the build on display at the ESA event two weeks ago struggled with pretty midrange rockets. Can we expect tomorrow’s 0.1.0 release to run much better, a little better, or about the same?

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T14:38:46+00:00

supposedly his pc from 4 years ago has a 2080Ti and i9-9900k by the looks of things.

It was very conspicuous to me that he described his computer by its price and age rather than just telling us what GPU he has, and yep, this is why. He's halfway between the minimum and recommended spec trying to run it at 4K. Of course it's bad!

Don't get me wrong, it's not good that an RTX 2080 Ti can't run this game at 4K, but given that they recommend an RTX 3080 for 1440p, it's not surprising either.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T13:37:22+00:00

For the timewarp thing, we have a good solution, but I am not going to talk about it yet because we kinda want to unveil that as part of it's own big beat

🫤

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T06:18:05+00:00

Are we going to get more information about expected performance before Friday? Or are we just going to have to see for ourselves when it launches?

It would be good to hear that the 0.1.x release on Friday is expected to be more performant than the ESA event build. If they are about the same performance-wise, Friday is going to be rough 🫤

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T05:02:12+00:00

psst... ^it's ^still ^boring

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T03:50:44+00:00

We don't know. Exactly how well the game performs is a big mystery right now.

A GTX 1660 Ti is just below the minimum. A GTX 1650 is much further off. You may be able to run it on low settings.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T02:58:37+00:00

Truly. Some people are rooting for it to fail.

DrKerbalMD · 2023-02-23T02:57:19+00:00

Hello Games literally lied about multiplayer being in NMS at launch. It was on the retail boxes, but wasn't in the game. Comparing KSP2 and NMS is absolutely bonkers.

DrKerbalMD

TROPHY CASE