The value of Groq comes from its excellent price-to-performance ratio. Its inferencing speeds are faster than those of H200s, and it has the lowest costs in the industry. When running similar batch jobs across different providers compared to Groq, the processing speed can sometimes be more than 10 times faster. These figures are important for developing practical applications for production use. It's common for me to run workloads in Groq that cost less than $100, while the same workload can approach $1,000 on Bedrock or Gemini. They have tuned a set of OS models that can now deliver a full application. The speeds have allowed me to offload a lot of the functionality from heuristics to straight-up LLMs.
I think there is a different way to look at it. My personal experience is that enterprises that are at the forefront of adopting new ways of working, are now much more comfortable taking risks with building applications and insourcing SaaS functionality. The amount of custom software build is actually increasing and the codebase are getting more complex. Is there a price to pay down the road? Maybe.
> Ai promises to eliminate labor, so businesses correctly identify AI risks as free debt.
These aren't promises, they're just hopes and dreams. Unless these businesses happen to be signing contracts with AI providers to replace their labor in a few years, they're incorrectly identifying AI risks as free debt.
I absolutely agree with you and I’m hyperbolizing to highlight exactly how incorrect that “promise” is
Realistically, the execs see it as either them or their subordinates and the idea of a captain dying with a ship is not regarded as noble amongst themselves. So they’ll sacrifice the crew, if only for one more singular day at sea.
Agent mode without rails is like a boat without a rudder.
What worked for me was coming up with an extremely opinionated way to develop an application and then generating instructions (mini milestones) by combining it with the requirements.
These instructions end up being very explicit in the sequence of things it should do (write the tests first), how the code should be written and where to place it etc. So the output ended up being very similar regardless of the coding agent being used.
I've tried every variation of this very thing. Even managed to build a quick and dirty ticketing system that I could assign to the LLM of my choosing. WITH context. Talking Graph Codebase's diagrams, mappings, tree structure of every possibility, simple documentation, complex documentation, a bunch of OSS to do this very thing automatically etcetcetc.
In the codebase I've tried modularity via monorepo, or faux microservices with local apis, monoliths filled with hooks and all the other centralized tricks in the book. Down to the very very simple. Whatever I could do to bring down the context window needed.
Eventually.....your return diminish. And any time you saved is gone.
And by the time you've burned up a context window and you're ready to get out. Now you're expeciting it to output a concise artifact to carry you to the next chat so you don't have to spend more context getting that thread up to speed.
Inevitably the context window and the LLMs eagerness to touch shit that it's not supposed (the likelihood of which increases with context) always gets in the way.
Anything with any kind of complexity ends up in a game of too much bloat or the LLM removing pieces that kill other pieces that it wasn't aware about.
So, relying on a large context can be tricky. Instead I’ve tried to get to a ER model quickly. And from there build modules that don’t have tight dependencies.
Not the founder? maybe read Walter Isaacson's book.
Stock graph shows Tesla stock had no material impact from the Solar City purchase, 90% of it's value coming after 2020. Today, Tesla energy and solar dominates the industry to the point where every installer offers Tesla Solar including the largest US installer Sunrun.
> Not the founder? maybe read Walter Isaacson's book.
The company was founded in July 1 2003, Musk didn’t even hear about the company until 2004. That’s a rather large gap to call someone a founder. But hey it’s an arbitrary distinction so feel free to disagree.
> Stock graph shows Tesla had no material impact from the Solar City Purchase
From the announcement of the purchase to its completion Tesla’s stock dropped ~20%.
Buying or creating a solar company in house made sense, over paying to bail out a relatives solar company he was involved with didn’t. Solar City was in 1.5 Billion dollars in debt, their business model was failing, and they had just laid off 20% of their workforce so yea Tesla shareholders got hosed.
Tesla was nothing but two guys, a name, an office, and an idea when Musk invested $6.5 million into it. They had no technology, no car, no money, no nothing. That makes Musk a founder.
No, that makes Musk one of two series A investors.
> two guys, a name, an office, and an idea
Add in the paperwork they filled out and we call those things companies. The entire point of incubators like Ycombinator is getting companies to a point where someone would make a significant investment, Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning and Ian Wright who joined a few months later pulled that first major hurdle off on their own.
If Musk had walked away they would’ve just kept looking because it was a very compelling investment as made clear by finding funding within a month of looking and the 1 million put up from a 3rd party.
I gave Zoho a compliment, not sure why there is so much defensiveness.
You are right - open source requires more work. My response related to open source was responding to the article's tone that it was surprising that anything could be cheaper than Google or Microsoft :) Which is silly.
Good point. I have been up way too long. I re-read the question now as just wanting alternatives.
I read the question earlier about email deliverability and black list management as being rhetorical in that those services are usually performed by a centralized service provider.
Glad someone was able to respond with some examples.
The key distinction lies in how YieldStar approaches setting rental prices compared to other systems. YieldStar not only recommends rental prices by analyzing the entire inventory it oversees but also incorporates a strategy that effectively eliminates the possibility of rent negotiation with potential tenants. This approach mirrors the dynamics of the prisoner’s dilemma, a situation in game theory where individuals may not cooperate, even if it’s in their best interest to do so. However, YieldStar transcends the Nash equilibrium—the point at which no participant can benefit by changing strategies if the others remain unchanged—by stripping tenants of any bargaining power. This ensures that the rent pricing strategy is firmly controlled, without the usual back-and-forth negotiation process.
This is a strange claim. How is it that software can eliminate the possibility of rent negotiation? A tenant can negotiate, or try to. How does software eliminate the possibility that this will succeed?
It's the scope and breadth of deployment and the algorithm/business pressures.
> RealPage discourages bargaining with renters and has even recommended that landlords in some cases accept a lower occupancy rate in order to raise rents and make more money.
This is the key to why it's price fixing. Everyone playing ball and means that the raising rent rates increases everyone's take home even if a few operate with lower occupancy.
The software calculates rent rates that make sure occupancy isn't too low to keep everyone in line. It removes bargaining with the promise that "if you play ball, you'll be rich".
Tenants can negotiate prices just like you can theoretically haggle with amazon.
The haggling part is not that relevant to whether this is price fixing or not.
If RealPage had the effect that all advertised rents in some area were 1000$ but 90% of renters actually negotiated that down to 800$, it would still be price fixing.
Conversely, if landlords in some area all independently decide not to budge from advertised prices and as a result occupancy rates are 10%, that would not be illegal price fixing. Most markets for consumers don't allow any kind of price negotiation, and yet they are not guilty of price fixing.
The key problem is that RealPage facilitates and even encourages explicit collusion between competitors, by showing the same non-public price recommendations to competing lamdlords. Whether that's successful or not and whether they try to make it contractually binding or not is ultimately irrelevant. As the FTC says, unsuccessfully trying to do price fixing is still illegal price fixing.
> RealPage discourages bargaining with renters and has even recommended that landlords in some cases accept a lower occupancy rate in order to raise rents and make more money.
Of course they would discourage them from deviating from Realpage's recommendation. Why are you paying for a software that recommends the most profitable rent if you aren't going to follow it? Realpage doesn't want property managers to complain that the software isn't working when they're ignoring the software's recommendations.
I have yet to see any evidence that there are any actual consequences of ignoring the recommendations. I'm assuming that Realpage will always accept payment for their services. This suggests that price fixing is unlikely. In the case of a cartel, members are incentivized to sell more than their quota allows, and you need active enforcement to maintain compliance. See the history of OPEC.
It doesn't matter if there are consequences for not following the illegal price fixing scheme (the recommendation algorithm). The fact that they are creating a price fixing scheme in the first place is illegal.
It's the same thing as if I were to call for a meeting of all landlords in my area to discuss rents. Anyone who owns property in the area is invited. At the meeting, I would propose that we all keep rents above 1000$ per room. People would argue and finally there'd be some broad agreement that 900-1100$ dollars per room is a better idea. We don't sign anything and don't imply any repercussions for those who ignore it. Then, 90% of those present would undercut the agreed numbers and offer their rooms for 800$. The end result is that rooms in the area go for 750-900$, so we utterly failed.
What everyone present at that meeting did, even those who undercut the agreed prices, is illegal price fixing. Competitors are simply not allowed to discuss and agree on prices in any way.
If we replace the meeting with a third party offering a recommendation algorithm that everyone independently follows, knowing that others do the same, nothing materially changes. The algorithm need not be binding, and need not be adopted fully, for this to be illegal to do.
I find the pernicious belief that prices could be fixed in the market itself more dangerous than the dumbest price fixing scheme of all time. Let it play out, so we can all remember that price fixing doesnt work, and we might actually see some good come from this story.
Price fixing absolutely works for the parties fixing the price, assuming they have a dominant enough position, at least for some significant time. Look at OPEC - do you seriously believe they would be richer if they competed instead of agreeing on prices/supply?
Monopolies can extract massive wealth from a market, they perfectly optimize profit as long as they are not exceedingly incompetent. Price fixing is just a less organized monopoly.
The problem is that they do this at the cost of all other market participants. But markets can't correct for powerful enough monopolies or cartels. Only outside intervention (riots, government intervention, disruption of the whole sector) can dissolve a monopoly. There is no example in history of a monopoly losing its position in a market without this, since they can always just buy out incumbent competitors.
Why would you compare landlords to OPEC? One organization has the backing of several militaries, including ours, defending their market position by threat of war. If you try to sidestep them you could end up like iraq.
Price fixing in the market doesnt work, because rival landlords cant call the government to airstrike their competitors when they get undercut.
As long as demand exists for the product, cartel members make more money than regular market actors. Defectors can make even more money, but that behavior is going to either be irrelevant (if the defector is too small to Mather), or it will be punished - not by armies, but by other coercive measures. Bribing to return, denying access to other services, bad mouthing, even vandalism or illegal violence. The advantage of the cartel is too large to be allowed to dissolve.
And again, we don't have to guess. Cartels need to be broken up from the outside, they just don't dissolve naturally. This is basic economics, and a well understood weakness of markets. The idea that monopolies and cartels are too weak to resist in a market is not born out by either economic theory nor history.
> As long as demand exists for the product, cartel members make more money than regular market actors. Defectors can make even more money
These two are completely contradictory statements. "Regular market actors" are the same as "defectors." Fracking companies, for example would not be able to exist without OPEC driving up the price of oil because it would be too expensive.
Buyers are also market actors. Also, suppliers who haven't been part of the cartel don't have access to their pricing strategy, and so can't profit as much. Defectors know exactly for some time, and can use that information to beat the market and the cartel in the short term.
Where does it say that? If it's something on the contract, you'd think that the FTC would open with that rather than vaguely imply this this happening.
to me, it's not enough to show that the same algorithm or software is deciding the price.
It has to be that there's some threat of punishment from the cartel against those who would lower their price from the agreed one. For example, the explicit agreement by the landlord to keep the price at the algorithmicaly calculated one, even so far as to leave vacancy (where as there wouldn't have been a vacancy if the price was lowered).
There is. I forget the number, but the landlords are only allowed to disagree with the software (and give lower rent) only ~10% or so of the time. Otherwise they will be kicked off of the price fixing platform.
Why isn't that clearly stated in the FTC brief? That's a hell of an absence of evidence, under the circumstances. If there's a smoking gun, why leave it out?
This sounds like denying the existence of price fixing altogether. Sure, buyers can try to negotiate against a price fixing scheme but it won't work. The price is fixed.
The software isn't really doing anything. It's simply the means of communication by which the prices are fixed amongst the suppliers.
> The software isn't really doing anything. It's simply the means of communication by which the prices are fixed amongst the suppliers.
The software literally includes the algorithm that says "this week, you will set the rate for this apartment at $X" based on its data. And if you want to deviate from that, without being kicked off, and losing your substantial fee payment, you will do that rate (and they will check), or you can "request an override" from RealPage, that they may allow or deny at their discretion (and RP agents are formally trained that override approvals may not exceed 5% of requests).
Even if they didn't kick you off, they would still be engaging in price fixing. They would be worse at actually changing prices with their scheme, but badly executed, ineffective price fixing is still illegal.
The only way you can productively refuse negotiation is by knowing the price is fixed (or you have the only supply), otherwise others will take your business.
reply