Post

It's a pick between Claude and Bring Your Own, as I understand it. Which means if you prop up an API endpoint on your own PC, you can just plug in a local model, and otherwise services like OpenRouter can also be plugged in.

Err, nvm, I think I misunderstood what you meant by byok.

Hey Paul. I strongly recommend that you read this essay about “open models.” They can be as exploitative as proprietary models. The huge ethical question concerns capture & use of data for training. “Open” tells us nothing about that. Open =/= ethical. Open =/= progressive.

I've personally been hoping to see some way for the average person to basically replicate the entire bluesky stack without having to actually write all of the software themselves and maintain all of the infrastructure to the degrees required now. I still don't think I've seen that yet.

Bluesky never promised freedom from algorithms, they promised that others couldn't dictate your algorithms for you

Running local models on a phone costs zero tokens though. A 500M param model on a £200 Android gives you something real without paying anyone per request.

It costs less than three dollars per million tokens to use Kimi K2.5, I'm a broke bitch from a third world country and even I can afford that much.

Where can I learn more about your grants program?

Can confirm

That's very cool! How did you apply for the grant? Usually grant programs have a main page with a call for proposals and open applications (or at least an indicator of how to apply). I haven't been able to find anything like that outside of these small, discontinued grant programs.

So @pfrazee.com might be able to correct me here but I've gotten the impression Attie is mostly small models and the token spend is basically on the natural language UI, but actually producing the feeds is just database queries

Reiterating another replier's recommendation that you read this piece. I think you're fetishizing "open" as somehow magically avoiding all the ethical/theft issues that so many people are so justifiably enraged by. (Aka this high-minded language sounds to many like "a different excuse for theft")

Yes, agreed. Be good to talk to someone about this.

What the American government is doing right now is all anyone needs to see to be radicalized about decentralization.

...but this leaves the door open for people to use open-weight models and experiment.

2nd on open models. As someone that repeatedly got screwed over by Microsoft in the beginning of the "Indie games on Xbox" days, tying your existence to a business outside of your control is a recipe for disaster. Anthropic especially has shown they greatly disrespect developers and open source.

But "taking a stand" without taking a stand is "open model washing" the way "openwashing" has been a problem for open source. I'm not claiming malice, the point I'm making probably wasn't considered. But if you're going to take a stand for open models etc as part of the future, take a stand for it

"open code exist to protect folks with the closed code" is definitely an opinion

In other words, you say you're radicalized. Great! Be radical about it! Take a stand!

Indeed I think a lot of people have been saying "the Supreme Court decided AIgen output is in the public domain!" but that's not true, they declined to hear the case. One reason (of several) I don't include AIgen in my projects; international legal situation unclear AFAICT.

And shipping software nobody likes doesn’t affect change.

I think personal computing without personal computers is more ideal; the form of PC’s are alienating and don’t allow us to live embodied lives.