It doesn't say 1k per day. Not saying I agree with the statement per se, but it's a much weaker statement than that.

"If you haven't spent at least $1,000 on tokens today per human engineer, your software factory has room for improvement" - how exactly is that a weaker statement?

My read of it was "by today", aka cumulative. But you're right that it can also be read as "just today". The latter is an absurdly strong statement, I agree.

I would love to see setups where $1000/day is productive right now.

I am one of the most pro vibe-coding^H^H^H^H engineering people I know, and i am like "one claude code max $200/mo and one codex $200/mo will keep you super stressed out to keep them busy" (at least before the new generation of models I would hit limits on one but never both - my human inefficiency in tech-leading these AIs was the limit)

Tokens evaporate when you have Agent Swarms. Have you tried Claude Code Teammates, for example?

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-teams

Only for a few days - but going from $200-400/mo to $1000/day productively seems like a huge stretch.

Also the eat tokens may be compared to single-tasking - when agent swarms move faster, I need to come back to that task sooner, slowing down the multi-tasking that allowed me to use a full 20x max subscription... so the overall usage once that is taken into account is smaller.

It's probably just prompt based. Actual fine-tuning for these kind of use cases is getting less common than it used to be.

Likely. You can go into Nano Banana or ChatGPT right now, upload a pretty architectural rendering, and tell it to make it look old, weathered, winter, etc and it will come out looking very similar. Give it an example to really dial it in.

Probably, but with a small sample size like that, they should probably be taking the uncertainty into account, because I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this variation falls within expected noise.

E.g. some binomial interval proportions (aka confidence intervals).

This was me, and now I have horrific back pain almost every week. Fix what's broken before it breaks you.

Depends if it's sufficiently transformative or not.

That just means it’s then subject to its own copyright. It doesn’t mean that the derivative work is also exempt from the terms of the original copyright.

For example, you can use a sample in a new song. And that new song can by copyrighted. But you still have to seek permission from the copyright holders of the sample to use it.

Fair use is the only time it’s legal to use another copyrighted piece without consent. And the rules for fair use vary from country to county.

Seek? In the grand scheme of things asking forgiveness only applies if you're going to not be that transformative and something like YouTube's automated copyright strikes might affect you. "Ask Forgiveness" is often a better option.

Fair use is a defense, not a requirement - You don't need permission to claim fair use; it's a legal defense if you're sued Seeking permission can backfire - Copyright holders may deny permission even when fair use would apply, creating unnecessary barriers.

This is especially true for parody and commentary.

> Seek? In the grand scheme of things asking forgiveness only applies if you're going to not be that transformative

That’s not why I said.

> something like YouTube's automated copyright strikes might affect you. "Ask Forgiveness" is often a better option.

Now you’re talking about platform quirks rather than copyright law.

> Fair use is a defense, not a requirement

Actually “fair use” is defined by law in a lot of counties. It’s not a defence, it’s a legal right.

> You don't need permission to claim fair use;

That’s not what I said.

> it's a legal defense if you're sued Seeking permission can backfire

It’s spelt “defence” (with a C not an S) and the point is you seek permission before distribution, not after

Not everything in life follows the “ask for forgiveness not permission” rule ;)

> Copyright holders may deny permission even when fair use would apply, creating unnecessary barriers.

Copyright holders cannot deny fair use in jurisdictions where fair use laws apply.

The difference between Seek and Ask Forgiveness in the situation outlined is that Seek lays out costs before hand and generally they are minimal, and Ask Forgiveness can determine costs at the will of the person sampled or remove the work completely from circulation.

Pointing out these errors isn't wrong. But making the leap to "therefore: AI hallucinations!" without substantiating those accusations is.

Yes, and a YouTube video more than a text article. etc. etc.

It's a tool. The main question should be: is it useful? In the case of AI, sometimes yes, sometimes no.

I mean, think of it this way. If I built a web app that took HTTP requests and converted them into a YouTube video, then downloaded and decoded that video in software, and then served the request, you'd say "that's stupid - you're using 10,000x more compute than you need to".

It's a tool, and using the wrong tool for the wrong job is just wasteful. And, usually, overly complicated and frail. So it's only losses.

I don't think that's the same. I spitball crazy ideas, but my core knowledge/expertise is sound, and I try not to talk out of my ass. (Or I am upfront when I'm outside my area of expertise. I think it's important to call that out once your word starts carrying some weight.)

A product manager can definitely say things that would make me lose a bit of respect for a fellow senior engineer.

I can also see how juniors have more leeway to weigh in on things they absolutely don't understand. Crazy ideas and constructive criticism is welcome from all corners, but at some level I also start expecting some more basic competence.

In general there are so many different sub-fields of knowledge that it's extremely confining to stay in one area of expertise; the slow uneducated person that has been working to keep some giant build farm running and migrating projects and helping fix tickets for 5 years will have a lot of expertise you don't have if you have a more casual experience of the system.

Good / bad / unclassified.

It makes sense for unclassified to smell worse than good, and it'd probably be the biggest category by a long stretch.

(Pure speculation.)

And even good / bad is sometimes subjective and brain can adjust to it depend on whatever you like the taste for instance. Tell you this as a big fan of durian. Since there a lot of chemicals responsible for smell brain override reaction to fruit once you love the taste.