Oh no! Anyways... I love zig and I'm glad they're moving off what GitHub has become, not least because enough high profile projects leaving might make them focus on what matters again.
> Yeah, TBH my BS detector is going off because this article never explains how he is able to intercept these calls.
You mean, except for explaining what he's doing 4-5 times? He was literally repeating himself restating it. Half the article is about the various indicators he used. THERE'S EXAMPLES OF THEM.
There's this bit:
> Monitored their network traffic for 60-second sessions
> Decompiled and analyzed their JavaScript bundles
Also there's this whole explanation:
> The giveaways when I monitored outbound traffic:
> Requests to api.openai.com every time a user interacted with their "AI"
> Monitored their network traffic for 60-second sessions
How can he monitor what's going on between a startup's backend and OpenAI's server?
> The truth is just an F12 away
That's just not how this works. You can see the network traffic between your browser and some service. In 12 cases that was OpenAI or similar. Fine. But that's not 73%. What about the rest? He literally has a diagram claiming that the startups contact an LLM service behind the scenes. That's what's not described, how does he measure that?
You are not bothered by the only sign that the author even exist is this one article and the previous one? Together with the claim to be a startup founder? Anybody can claim that. It doesn't automatically provide credibility.
I believe he's saying that a large number of the startups he tested did not have their own backend to mediate. It was literally direct front-end calls to openai. And if this sounds insane, remember that openai actually supports this: https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/realtime-sess...
Presumably OpenAI didn't add that for fun, either, so there must be non-zero demand for it.
It's a fair point that OpenAI officially supports ephemeral keys.
But I still believe the vast majority of startups do wrapping in their own backend. Yes, I read what he's doing, and he's still only able to analyze client-side traffic, which means his overall claims of "73%" are complete and total bullshit. It is simply impossible to conclude what he's concluding without having access to backend network traces.
EDIT: This especially doesn't make sense because the specific sequence diagram in this article shows the wrapping happening in "Startup Backend", and again, it would be impossible for him to monitor that network traffic. This entire article is made-up LLM slop.
> How can he monitor what's going on between a startup's backend and OpenAI's server?
He is not claiming to be doing that. He says what and how he's capturing multiple times. He says he's capturing what's happening in browser sessions. Reflect on what else you may to re-evaluate or discard if you misunderstood this.
> That's just not how this works. You can see the network traffic between your browser and some service.
Yes, the author is well aware of that as are presumably most readers. However for example if your client makes POST requests to the startup's backend like startup.com/api/make-request-to-chatgpt and the payload is {systemPrompt: "...", userPrompt: "..."}, not much guessing as to what is going on is necessary.
> You are not bothered by the only sign that the author even exist is this one article and the previous one?
Moving goalposts. He may or not be full of shit. Guess we'll see if/when we see the receipts he promised to put on GitHub.
What actually bothers is the lack of general reading comprehension being displayed in this thread.
> Together with the claim to be a startup founder? Anybody can claim that.
What? Anybody can be a startup founder today. Crazy claim. Also... what?
> It doesn't automatically provide credibility.
Almost nobody in this space has credibility. That could turn out to be Sam Altman's alias and I'd probably trust it even less.
In any case evaluating whether or not a text is credible should preferably happen after one has understood what was written.
When you need a company like that to do something, figure out what they're afraid of.
The only thing monopolies like these are afraid of is the government. So if you want them to get off their asses yesterday, raise a stink with whatever arm of your government will listen: FCC, local politicians, etc.
You would not believe how fast even the lowest level government workers can get these guys to take care of your problem with a single phone call.
That's the problem in my country. They're not afraid of anyone. It's a true duopoly here. There's no FCC to complain to, I guess the most you can do is weasel your way out of your contract but that leaves you with no internet. Local politicians don't give two shits (nor do they have any power). You could switch to a different provider, but their network is either copper (aka low speeds and unstable) or fiber (which is a hollow promise right now - there just isn't any fiber in my area).
No, a wafer is very much not a wafer. DRAM processes are very different from making logic*. You don't just make memory in your fab today and logic tomorrow. But even when you stay in your lane, the industry operates on very long cycles and needs scale to function at any reasonable price at all. You don't just dust off your backyard fab to make the odd bit of memory whenever it is convenient.
Nobody is going to do anything if they can't be sure that they'll be able to run the fab they built for a long time and sell most of what they make. Conversely fabs don't tend to idle a lot. Sometimes they're only built if their capacity is essentially sold already. Given how massive the AI bubble is looking right now, I personally wouldn't expect anyone to make a gamble building a new fab.
* Someone explained this at length on here a while ago, but I can't seem to find their comment. Should've favorited it.
Sure, yes the cost of producing a wafer is fixed. Opex didn’t change that much.
Following your reasoning, which is common in manufacturing, the capex needed is already allocated.
So, where does the 2x price hike come from if not supply/demand?
The cost to produce did not go up 100%, or even 20%
Actually, DRAM fabs do get scaled down, very similar to the Middle East scaling down oil production.
> So, where does the 2x price hike come from if not supply/demand?
It absolutely is supply/demand. Well, mostly demand, since supply is essentially fixed over shorter time spans. My point is that "cost per square mm [of wafer]" is too much of a simplification, given that it depends mostly on the specific production line and also ignores a lot of the stuff going on down the line. You can use to look at one fab making one specific product in isolation, but it's completely useless to compare between them or when looking at the entire industry.
It's a bit like saying the cost of cars is per gram of metal used. Sure, you can come up with some number, but what is it really useful for?
DRAM/flash fab investment probably did get scaled down due to the formerly low prices, but once you do have a fab it makes sense to have it produce flat out. Then that chunk of potential production gets allocated into DRAM vs. HBM, various sorts of flash storage etc. But there's just no way around the fact that capacity is always going to be bottlenecked somehow, and a lot less likely to expand when margins are expected to be lower.
> Sometimes they're only built if their capacity is essentially sold already.
"Hyperscalers" already have multi-year contracts going. If the demand really was there, they could make it happen. Now it seems more like they're taking capacity from what would've been sold on the spot or quarterly markets. They already made their money.
You can ship DRM-free games on it just fine. It's up to the dev/publisher.
Additionally you can get a lot of the benefits of Steam (Proton etc.) even for titles you didn't acquire through Steam - you can add and launch third party executables through the Steam client.
Steam is not exactly a walled garden save for some rather light curation of their own store.
I don't know why HN lately is a roller coaster of hot takes, but I'm quite enjoying it.
Since the authors of these comments rarely ever deign to lay out the thought process that makes them arrive at what they are laying out so matter-of-factly, I'm free to imagine the inner workings of the author myself. I don't think I'll be bored of it anytime soon.
I think it's only a hot take if you live in the West. If your country has been under Western occupation, or still is, then it's pretty much common sense.
if you are not part or collaborating with the occupying force, that is.
