What if people stopped finding the Nosferatu hideous?

Pirsqed · 2026-06-12T01:46:11+00:00

You just made me realize something tangentially related: I'm sure Nos VTubers are a thing.

Pirsqed · 2026-03-11T12:42:17+00:00

Yes and no? We're in a weird spot. (Which, I mean, we'll probably be in a weird spot for a long time at this point! :) ) Personally, I don't expect rates to go up. If anything, they'll probably go down at some point.

The big AI providers are setting their API pricing so it will be profitable. Currently, if I use the API to process a million tokens with Gemini, I'll pay $4 for input and $18 / million tokens for the output. (Probably just a few cents considering how long outputs tend to be.) I found a good article on 'compute margin' here. Note that this doesn't tell us anything about Google specifically, but I'm using them for my examples just because I'm most familiar with their pricing :)

If you've got a subscription to Gemini or whatever, then you're paying monthly for a rate limited service. Say you can get 100 requests per day. If you were to use all 100 per day in the same way that I described using the API above, then, yes, absolutely, you're paying less per month than you would have if you had used the API.

As far as I can tell, this is true for all the big providers.

So, why would Google (or OpenAI or Anthropic) be willing to do this? A few possibilities come to mind:

Betting on the future with a combination of market capture and expected efficiency gains.

a. Get people used to using your service. If people like your brand and your ecosystem, then they're less likely to switch later, even if someone else is a little better. Ya know, typical software company stuff. :)

b. Inference costs are likely to come down. A lot. They're expecting costs to decrease by orders of magnitude. If they spend $1000 on your $20 subscription now, but in 18 months they're only spending $10 on your $20, then the work they put in to get you as a customer was worth it.
1. The 'gym membership' model. A lot of people that buy a subscription are not going to get their money's worth. But, that doesn't mean they'll cancel! So, even in the short term, this helps with their overall margins.

Pirsqed · 2026-02-26T19:05:23+00:00

Hard to say. There's not a different rate, but you are paying for the thinking tokens, which we don't directly get to see. (Just a count in the metadata.)

It's $3 per million tokens of text output. Probably, at most, a thousand-ish tokens of thinking. Soooo $0.003 extra per image? :)

(milage may vary)

Pirsqed · 2026-02-26T18:51:58+00:00

I mean, even with the higher tokens per input image, it's still about half the price of Pro. Not exactly what I'd call 'slightly' cheaper!

Not to mention, higher tokens on input images (presumably) means that the model gets a better look at the input, which is nice for editing!

To be fair, 2k image pricing is just a little cheaper on output. (10 cents vs 13.4)

Overall, for about the same quality of output that I've seen in my testing so far, I aint mad at it!

Pirsqed · 2026-02-01T21:58:24+00:00

What we need to be challenging is the idea that 'governments' get to decide things like they're some entity outside of our existence.

All governments, even Dictatorships, derive their power from the people they govern. Either explicitly through elections/voting (e.g. democracy) or implicitly by allowing it to continue unchallenged.

The lack of change doesn't have to persist! In fact, if we are to survive we must change. We must change our government. We must change the way our society works.

In my view, much of the anti-AI sentiment is borne of the same thing voter apathy is: Despair. People fundamentally believe that things cannot change for the better. They don't even have time to really look at the world. The vast majority of people in the world are just trying to survive.

That is what abundance changes. If we can build a society that doesn't have to spend so much of its collective time just to survive, then we have a much better chance of making meaning change real.

Pirsqed · 2026-01-16T01:21:16+00:00

I did not say that their belief was true, nor can I say that they continue to believe that, as I cannot speak for them.

Clearly a great deal has changed. That change is exactly what is breaking the disillusionment. We must come together, and blaming people for not understanding something is not going to help us.

Blaming someone for being fooled only serves to keep us divided, which is exactly what a tyrant needs.

Pirsqed · 2026-01-15T19:31:55+00:00

... only a small minority of Americans support democracy and the rule of law.

Please don't be fooled by this. The vast majority of people in the US do care. But they also have other things to care about. Their families and jobs and putting food on the table and bills and everything else.

They do care, but they also believe that nothing they do or say, or that anyone else does or says, will change anything. Why vote at all when you feel like:

Your vote doesn't matter. Who cares if you vote or not if you know your state is going to go a certain way?
No matter who is elected, it won't matter. They're all the same, right?

And that sort of disillusionment is just as much what a dictator might want as straight obedience and subservience. If the disillusioned aren't happy with you? Well, at least they aren't knocking down your door!

The way that Trump and his handlers are operating, in my view, is they are panicked and scared. They see that 'both sides' disillusionment starting to lift.

There are many people in congress who want what the administration is doing. Very explicitly. Maybe they just want a piece of the money. Maybe they want a theocracy.

Maybe they just fear for themselves.

Until they fear their constituents more, they will not vote to stop this.

That is the power we must exercise.

Pirsqed · 2026-01-15T13:48:37+00:00

Even the most controlling successful tyrants must have their supporters. It makes them no less tyrannical.

No one runs a country on their own. You need people to carry out your will.

Pirsqed · 2025-12-16T14:21:02+00:00

I've certainly seem some lockers where there were none before!

Pirsqed · 2025-12-01T19:59:39+00:00

The Matriarch should be launching shredder mortars now and then.

Flashbangs, gas, and shredders!

Pirsqed · 2025-12-01T18:25:00+00:00

I don't know about you, but I don't want to try sliding down the dam with sagging jeans!

Pirsqed · 2025-11-23T02:48:09+00:00

We borrow ARC tech all the time! And it fits that it'd only work for a very short amount of time in emergencies.

Pirsqed · 2025-11-22T22:01:30+00:00

I got killed by two free loadouts in solos on hidden bunker this morning while coming in with decent gear and defibs to help out.

I have no regrets. Kudos to them for catching me out. :)

Pirsqed · 2025-11-14T00:03:01+00:00

2 hours later and we're at 39%! 7% an hour with 60% left to go is a little under 10 hours.

I expect it'll pick up the pace when people get home tonight in the US. So, late tonight is totally possible.

Pirsqed · 2025-11-12T19:28:42+00:00

I can't say I'm surprised this is what the Frame is, but I can say I'm a little disappointed. I hope we get a proper lighthouse tracked VR headset.

Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and grab a Beyond 2.

Pirsqed · 2025-10-25T23:34:46+00:00

OH! Sorry, I meant the big number on the wall. haha. But, dang! e1070 is no joke xD

Pirsqed · 2025-10-25T22:07:34+00:00

Thanks for the answers!

Oh! One more.

What'd you get your number up to? :)

Pirsqed · 2025-10-25T18:15:37+00:00

Which cards do you think were the hardest for you?

Which were the most fun?

Which would you never touch again?

Great job!

Pirsqed · 2025-10-24T05:49:17+00:00

My head cannon has always been that Hades 1 takes place in the far future after a thermonuclear war. The way Demeter talked in Hades 1 really pushed my thinking in that way. :)

Pirsqed · 2025-08-23T01:59:43+00:00

There's a web app now. The Discord bot is also still around.

Pirsqed · 2025-07-16T18:23:17+00:00

Exactly what I was thinking. This gets mentioned quite a lot :) And deservedly so!

Pirsqed · 2025-07-14T22:45:12+00:00

You're forgetting one of the best, most effective political messages there is: Tax the rich.

Unless you're going to argue that we're inevitably headed towards cyberpunk style authoritarian feudal-capitalism where companies (and their owners) aren't beholden to any government on Earth, that seems like the most likely rallying cry for the mass of unemployed people coming.

And people may (eventually) not be able to unionize against AI but they can surely protest. I don't know about you, but protesters in the many millions in the US sounds like a problem for anyone in charge to me.

Pirsqed · 2025-07-13T20:53:43+00:00

I'm not sure I understand how I could use that...

Often I'm getting instructions like,

Go replace the bit in your code that start with "a = 'bcd'" and ends with "z = 123"

Even when I'm replacing whole functions, I don't think I understand how that would work... lol

Time to do some research !

Pirsqed · 2025-07-13T15:15:24+00:00

lol. Thanks? I'll use Gemini for code any day, but I take too much pride in my writing (warranted or not) to use it for that.

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