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Comment by MisterMunchkin | Hacker News Reader

But that’s a good thing. Instead of someone being able to just lock the knowledge away, now we can all have it. And that means we can make better things.

It sucks if you’re a rent seeker, but I’m enjoying this post-IP world. I don’t care who reads my source code anymore, code is disposable. It’s expertise that matters now.

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> It sucks if you’re a rent seeker, but I’m enjoying this post-IP world

Oh yes, this new world is terrible for rent seekers. It's like the kum-bah-yah free software world Stallman might have imagined. Information wants to be free and all. Can't stop the signal. Very counterculture. Like the Adobe clone apps.

Except for the closed SOTA model weights, out of reach hardware, and the resulting $200 subscription rent now paid readily both by anybody trying to create something new, and anybody who wants to rip it off. That particular flavor of rent seeking is booming.

I myself am a "rent-seeker" in an alternative sense of "I seek a way to pay for my own continued shelter via my creative output" and it definitely seems like it's gonna suck for me.

> Except for the closed SOTA model weights, out of reach hardware, and the resulting $200 subscription rent now paid readily both by anybody trying to create something new, and anybody who wants to rip it off. That particular flavor of rent seeking is booming.

SOTA only provides agents that are easier to manage. Such agents will likely also be made available in open models, as it is primarily a post-training issue.

Even if it never comes, the best open models are already capable of performing these tasks.

Yep. Current open weight models that you can run on prosumer hardware are on par if not better than Opus 4.6. And Opus 4.6 was deemed revolutionary in terms of performance.

The problem is that many of us seek employment from rent seekers. It's all great in theory, but not fun in the in-between times if you're trying to pay your own rent and find placement and nobody wants to bring anyone new on board because they can't find ways to make it profitable.

> It's all great in theory, but not fun in the in-between times if you're trying to pay your own rent.

To add to this, the Second Industrial Revolution started in 1870 and the 40 hour workweek became common starting around 1920. That's basically a lifetime.

And those fifty years had poverty, child work at machines that sometimes killed their users, and fun events with “massacre” in name related to negotiating those 40 hour weeks.

If an asset doesn't exist to hold value, how do you "protect" expertise? How do you differentiate it? How do you justify investment if someone else will steal anything of value you create?

For a short while, it's great, but in the long run, it makes it difficult to financially invest in building software with either time or money.

> Instead of someone being able to just lock the knowledge away, now we can all have it

Uhh I think you're missing a tiny 3 trillion dollar detail. I understand though, something that small and inconsequential is easy to overlook.

What 3 trillion dollar details? What are people here smoking?

$10 a month to unlock the world 6 months before the same is available for free. $200 a month if you're in a hurry.

The fee is flat, and all the value produced stays with the user.

It's one of the best deals on anything software industry produced ever. And they can't walk back on it, because open weight models act as a rachet.

It's fantastic for the rent seeking AI providers. They can squeeze users any which way the want and if anyone so much as utters a peep of complaint, they can be banned for life without recourse.

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