Three Observations, Sam Altman - ”The cost to use a given level of AI falls about 10x every 12 months, and lower prices lead to much more use.”
You Didn’t Notice MP3 Is Now Free - The MP3 format, once a staple for digital audio, is now free due to expired licensing. However, its significance has diminished with the rise of streaming services and faster internet speeds, making file sizes less of a concern. While this change is notable for developers, the general population is largely unaffected by the shift away from MP3.
Ten Trends That Shaped the Cloud Market in 2024 - ”Around 60% of cloud buyers told IDC’s 3Q24 Cloud Pulse Survey October 2024 that their business’ IT or digital infrastructure currently requires major transformation, and 82% said their cloud also required modernization.” // Good summary of a very expensive analyst report.
Gartner Survey Shows Supply Chain GenAI Productivity Gains at Individual Level, While Creating New Complications for Organizations - The robot summarizes what’s happening here with theory of constraints, clever! // Robot: “Alice now processes orders faster, but Bob and Charlie still work at their original pace. If Alice completes 20% more orders, but Bob can only arrange transport for the same number as before, then Alice’s extra work sits idle–no overall productivity gain for the team."
The Peter Principle - by Nicholas Decker - “Promotions are used as incentives, even if they don’t always match future competence."
Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Using culture-blitz to incrementally change society.
Clouded Judgement 1.30.25 - The Year of AI Applications - Finance-nerd explanation of the “this is actually great!” case for last week: “What’s happened over the last 12 months is the cost per API call (ie the cost for inference) for these models has plummeted. Open source models like Llama, R1 from DeepSeek, etc have all contributed to this. It’s become even more clear the model calls themselves are commoditizing quickly. And this is great! If the variable ‘COGS’ component of marginal API call approaches zero, many of the questions listed above start to go away. You don’t worry about your margins shrinking, changing the pricing doesn’t become a must, etc. This in turn leads to a LOT more experimenting with AI features / functionalities. The radius of complexity shrinks."
Some Kind Of Monster (Type) - “The convoluted agreements common to many Fey are an aspect of their adherence to a particular vector of existence. If they agree to something, everyone has to agree that their perspective is the perspective through which the fey are experiencing reality.” // Ponderous! This seems derived from the idea that Fey take oaths very seriously. In the other side, this similar to fiends (devils) being bound by contracts.
Dell ends hybrid work policy despite remote work pledge - “Overall, our results do not support the argument that managers impose these mandates to increase firm values,” the authors state in their paper. “Instead, these findings are consistent with managers using RTO mandates to reassert control over employees and blame employees as a scapegoat for bad firm performance."