I think the most providers all give high latency batch APIs significant discounts. A lot of AI workloads feel batch-oriented to me, or could be once they move beyond the prototype and testing phases. Chat will end up being a small fraction of load in the long term.
Yeah I still don't understand this argument. The only cars I ever hear of (in Europe) with issues are German or French cars (not all brands). (Don't see many American brands here).
Well the software for one (excluding Tesla), it's faster, more advanced, more creative (probably more gimmicks but still).
Domestically (in China) they also offer much higher charging wattage.
But yes quality is at parity and they're cheaper.
Most Chinese cars still have massive software quality issues that you don’t hear about because there are few of them around here. ADAS are usually much worse as well.
My biggest software issue with my GWM relates to how they gamed the DPF, which is a local requirement. They built in the required automaticaly regenerating DPF, but also set the temperature/rev requirement so that it never automatically regenerates (even if it indicates it is doing so). So I have to manually regenerate every other month.
Otherwise the software is pretty good, with the occasional midflight reboot.Its definitely no worse than the honda I ran previously.
I have a specific use case (financial analysis), that is at the edge of what is possible with this models (accuracy wise).
Gemini 2 was the beginning, you could see this technology could be helpful in this specific analysis but plenty of errors (not unlike a junior analyst). Gemini 2.5 flash was great actually useable, errors made were consistent.
This is where it gets interesting, I could add additional points to my system prompt, yes it would fix those errors but it would degrade the answer elsewhere, often it wouldn't be incorrect but merely much simpler less nuanced and less clever.
This is where multi-agents helped it actually meant the prompt can be broken down so that answers remain "clever". There is a big con to this, it is slow, slow to the point that I chose to stick with a single prompt (the request didn't work well operating in parallel as the other prompt surfaced factors for it to consider).
However Gemini 3 flash is now smart enough that I'd now consider my financial analysis solved. All with one prompt.
I don't know, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with this whole saga. Perhaps I havent seen the full story.
The fact of the matter is they do have a policy and they have removed it, suspended accounts and perhaps even taken it further. As would be the case on other platforms.
As far as I understand there is no nudity generated by grok.
Should public gpt models be prevented from generating detestable things, yes I can see the case for that.
I won't argue there is a line between acceptable and unacceptable, but please remember people perv over less (Rule 34).
Are bikinis now taboo attire? What next, ankles, elbows, the entire human body?(Just like the Taliban).
(Edit: I'm mentioning this paragraph for my below point.)
GPT's are not clever enough to make the distinction by the way either, so there's an unrealistic technical challenge here.
I suspect the this saga blowing out of proportion is purely "eLoN BAd".
generating sexualised pictures of kids is verboten. Thats epstien level of illegality. There is no legitiamte need for the public to hold, make or transmit sexualised images of children.
Anyone arguing otherwise has a lot of questions to answer
You're the one making the logical fallacies and reacting emotionally. Read what I have said first please.
That is a different grok to the one publishing images and discussed in the article. Your link clearly states they are being moderated in the comments and all comments are discussing adults only. The links comments also imply that these folks are jailbreaking nearly, because of guardrails that exist too.
As I say read what I said, please don't put words in my mouth. The GPT models wouldn't know what is sexualised. I said there is a line at some point. Non-sexualized bikinis are sold everywhere, do you not use the internet to buy clothes?
Your immediate dismissive reaction indicates you are not giving what I'm saying any thought. This is what puritanical thought often looks like. The discourse is so poisoned people can't stop, look at the facts and think rationally.
I don't think there is much emotion in said post. I am making specific assertions.
to your point:
> Non-sexualized bikinis are sold everywhere
Correct! the key logical modifier is Non sexual. Also you'll note that a lot of clothing companies do not show images of children in swimwear. Partly that's down to what I imagine you would term puritanism, but also legal counsel. The definition of a CSAM is loose enough (in some jurisdictions) to cover swimwear, depending on context. That context is challenging. A parent looking for clothes that will fit/suit their child is clearly not sexualised (corner cases exist, as I said context) Someone else who is using if for sexual purposes is not.
and because like GPL3 CSAM is infectious, the tariff for both company and end user is rather high for making, storing, transmitting and downloading those images. If someone is convicted of collecting those images, and using them for a sexual purpose, then images that were created that were not-CSAM suddenly become CSAM, and legally toxic to posses. (context does come in here.)
> Your link clearly states they are being moderated in the comments
Which tells us that there is a lot of work on guardrails right? its a choice by xai to allow users to do this. (mainly the app is hamstrung so that you have to pay for the spicy mode.) Whether its done by an ML model or not is irrelevant. Knowingly allowing CSAM generation and transmission is illegal. if you or I were to host an ML model that allows user to do the same thing, we would be in jail. There is a reason why other companies are not doing this.
The law must be applied equally, regardless of wealth, or power. I think that is my main objection to all of this. its clearly CSAM, and anyone other than musk doing this would have been censured by now. All of this justification is because of who it is doing this, rather than what is being done. We can bike shed all we want about is it actually really CSAM, which negates the entire point of this, which is its clearly breaking the law.
> The GPT models wouldn't know what is sexualised.
ML Classification is really rather good now. Instagram's unsupervised categorisation model is really rather effective at working out context of an image or video (ie differentiation of clothes, and context of those clothes.)
> please don't put words in my mouth
I have not done this, I am asserting that the bar for justifying this kind of content, which is clearly illegal and easily prevented (ie a picture of a minor and "generate an image of her in sexy clothes") is very high.
Now you could argue that I'm implying that you have something to hide. I am actually curious as to your motives for justifying the knowing creation of sexualised images of minors. You've made a weak argument that there are legitimate purposes. You then argue that its a slippery slope.
Is your fear that this brings justifies an age gated internet? censorship? What is the price that you think is worth paying?
Again words in my mouth. I'm not justifying that and nowhere does it say that. I could be very impolite to you right now trying to slander me like that.
I said I don't understand the fuss because there are guardrails, action taken and technical limitations.
THAT is my motive. The end of story. I do not need to parrot outrage because everyone else is, "you're either with us or against us" bullshit. I'm here for a rational discussion.
Again read what I've said. Technical limitations. You wrote that long ass explanation interspersed with ambiguities like consulting lawyers in borderline cases and then you expect an LLM to handle this.
Yes ML classification is good now but not foolproof. Hence we go back to the first point, processes to deal with this when x's existing guardrails fail, as x.com has done, delete, suspend, report.
My fear (only because you mention it, I didn't mention it above, I only said I don't get the fuss above) it seems should be that people are losing touch in this grok thing, their arguments are no longer grounded in truth or rational thought, almost a rabid witch hunt.
At no point did I say or imply LLMs are meant to make legal decisions.
"Hey grok make a sexy version of [obvious minor]" is not something that is hard to stop. try doing that query with meta, gemini, or sora, they manage it reliably well.
There are not technical impediments to stopping this, its a choice.
My point is saying if it's so complex you have to get a lawyer involved, how do you expect your LLM&system to cover all its own shortcomings.
I'd bet if you put that prompt into grok it'd be blocked judging by that Reddit link you sent. These folks are jailbreaking nearly asking to modify using neutral terms like clothing and images that grok doesn't have the skill to judge.
> My point is saying if it's so complex you have to get a lawyer involved, how do you expect your LLM&system to cover all its own shortcomings.
Every feature is lawyered up. Thats what general counsel does. Every feature I worked on at a FAANG had some level of legal compliance gate on it, because mistakes are costly.
For the team that launched the chatbots, loads of time went into figuring out what stupid shit users could make it do, and blocking it. Its not like all of that effort stopped. When people started finding new ways to do naughty stuff, that had to be blocked as well. Because other wise the whole feature had to be pulled to stop advertisers from fleeing, or worse FCC/class action.
> These folks are jailbreaking nearly asking to modify using neutral terms like clothing
CORRECT! people are putting effort into jailbreaking the app. where as on x grok they don't need to do any of that. Which is my point, its a product choice.
None of this is "hard legal problems" or in fact unpredictable. They are/have done a ton of work to stop that (again mainly because they want people to pay for "spicy mode")
To throw away an iconic name like "Microsoft Office" boggles the mind.
That brand must've been worth a fortune. Strategically it also emboldens competitors, "they're all random products anyway, never heard of any of them, may as well try this or that".
They're wrong on multiple fronts, they're regressive. The poor bear the brunt of them.
Despite the bad press, a well run government highway is much cheaper, generally 30% or more of that toll goes directly to maintaining the system and it's profits, there's more efficient funding methods out there.
They're natural monopolies, they fill up with traffic regardless of how much you rip people off.
It’s probably necessary long term as gasoline taxes are yielding less per mile as total fuel efficiency improves. The dedicated funding source is necessary because if DOT construction budgets (which are huge) were in the general fund, they would be looted by lawmakers to fund patronage programs and the entire surface transportation network would be unfit for service within 20 years. TxDOT loves NTTA because it’s a huge cash cow and hits non-residents hard. If I have to go to Dallas, I expect to spend at least $25 one way. Usually someone else is footing that bill. By extension, I consider myself very lucky that I don’t have to live there.
Question, where are you usually going where a toll is favorable in Dallas? I haven’t lived there since 2022 but I grew up there and learned to drive in Dallas. There are only a handful of places that require taking the toll to get there and save massive amounts of time. Many times, the access road is almost as fast (especially outside of rush hour). But yea, I guess if you drive the entire length of George Bush/DNT to save 10 minutes, it might cost you that much for a day trip…
But consciously, at least where I live. There are definitely optional non-toll routes around me. Toll roads come at a financial cost to offset a time cost. Non-toll roads come at a greater time cost vs financial cost. If someone chooses to use a toll road regardless of their personal financial circumstances because the value to them is worth the time savings…so be it.
All roads and their usage comes at a cost, toll roads just at more of a cost due to their additional overheads. What you end up with is a more expensive path that disincentivizes a public path there. Drivers on it pay the overheads of the tolls, drivers avoiding it continue to pay more in gas and wear. Everyone would pay less if it were just a public path.
Seems to me you are focused on money rather than time here. However, people using these road are not in alignment with that metric. What’s important is not the cost, but the value. Why choose a toll road over a public path from A to B? It’s all about saving time—that’s the value the transaction provides those users.
If a toll road becomes public, its value goes away because traffic increases on it, eliminating any benefit of traffic reduction that provides time savings that the gate keeping of the charging a toll provides. Also this notion of “everyone now bears the cost of the road” creates damage. That cost now hits the folks who don’t want to use it currently because they do not see its value. All you have done is hurt both the drivers of the road and the drivers who do not use the road by “sharing the burden” and making it public.
I'm not sure money and time are cleanly separable metrics for this in that changing one changes the other, which is why it's not as simple as looking at the toll roads' dynamics in isolation. If a region spends more on transport infrastructure then the average transit time is going to be less (and conversely the opposite) for pretty much any method of buildout except fraud. The notion of "everyone now bears the cost of the road" causes the roads to be optimized towards the average public good. This is not to say it's without tradeoff to anybody at all - just that it's geared towards the best tradeoff for everyone as a whole. The notion of "those able to bear the cost and extra overhead of the toll road bear its cost" certainly still causes a reduction in time for those willing and able to pay, but only for the able who now have no interest in their public infrastructure funding duplicating a path they already have for the common good.
That's where the shift in burden to the poor so the rest can have shorter commute comes from. If everyone had the same opportunity cost to use the toll road then it wouldn't have the shift in burden as much as a pure shift in utility. Of course it doesn't have the same opportunity cost, so who benefits from the toll road is more slanted than who benefits from the public road. Whether or not the shift of burden is acceptable/ideal is a matter of opinion on public policy, but it's there.
> I'm not sure money and time are cleanly separable metrics for this in that changing one changes the other, which is why it's not as simple as looking at the toll roads' dynamics in isolation
Sure they are, tolls regulate the amount of traffic on a toll road and should hopefully decrease congestion and improve travel time. Eliminate the tolls, you will gain more traffic, more congestion, and more travel time. This will diminish its utility in that regard and it becomes yet another congested path.
> If everyone had the same opportunity cost to use the toll road then it wouldn't have the shift in burden as much as a pure shift in utility
Not that sure that a Marxist-style “equity” argument is all that convincing here. There is no huge mass public benefit here in eliminating an existing toll road. Your only true benefliciaries of this change are those people 1) who have to go from point A to point B, 2) need to arrive somewhat sooner than they do now (and can’t leave any sooner to get there) and 3) cannot afford the toll to get there faster under any circumstance.
Seems like that’s a pretty small subset of folks. Everybody else probably falls into 2 basic categories. Those willing to pay the toll to get there sooner—-but they lose the time benefit in your world. Those not willing to pay to get there sooner—but they now get the privilege for paying for a road they were choosing to not pay for before. Seems to me the bulk of the affected, lose.
Bear in mind, I am only arguing against the elimination of existing toll roads. Public infrastructure needs are what they are and region planners should make best efforts to deliver reliable and reasonable road infrastructure for its population. However, there is no doubt that toll roads can help improve overall transportation needs. So if a beneficial road can be created sooner if its costs can be offset via toll vs. waiting until public money is available to fund the construction, I think there is value to be explored there.
> Sure they are, tolls regulate the amount of traffic on a toll road and should hopefully decrease congestion and improve travel time. Eliminate the tolls, you will gain more traffic, more congestion, and more travel time. This will diminish its utility in that regard and it becomes yet another congested path.
That is (further) evidence the two metrics are linked, not that they are independent.
I'm also not convinced lack of use is a great measure of utility either, I think the measure of utility you're actually chasing is, still just average time for the group defined to use it. I.e. don't get the way tolls try to achieve their utility conflated with what that utility actually is.
> Not that sure that a Marxist-style “equity” argument is all that convincing here. There is no huge mass public benefit here in eliminating an existing toll road. Your only true benefliciaries of this change are those people 1) who have to go from point A to point B, 2) need to arrive somewhat sooner than they do now (and can’t leave any sooner to get there) and 3) cannot afford the toll to get there faster under any circumstance.
>
> Bear in mind, I am only arguing against the elimination of existing toll roads. Public infrastructure needs are what they are and region planners should make best efforts to deliver reliable and reasonable road infrastructure for its population. However, there is no doubt that toll roads can help improve overall transportation needs. So if a beneficial road can be created sooner if its costs can be offset via toll vs. waiting until public money is available to fund the construction, I think there is value to be explored there.
Your list of 3 potential reasons still excludes ones I had already laid out in my initial reply and is focused more on identifying those who would find paying a toll worthwhile rather than any consideration of the overall cost effectiveness of adding a toll road to the network. How much people are (or aren't) willing to pay for a toll road that only tells which toll roads will be profitable, not how efficient the return on investment is in terms of the road system as a whole.
It's also not clear what you mean by "eliminate". If you mean "dig up and demolish" then I'd agree, that'd be throwing the baby out with the bath water. What's built has been built, you'd need good reason to un-build it completely. If you mean "just not have them be tolls" then no, it really does end up being more efficient on average - even if it doesn't seem it to the people who were paying the toll before.
The point of the article is that you're paying one way or another. Roads aren't free to build and/or maintain... in fact, it's extremely expensive to build and maintain them. It's just that all levels of gov't have allowed revenues from the gas tax get inflated away by both regular inflation and increased fuel efficiency.
Determining who pays to maintain these systems is a political decision, but it certainly makes sense that we should really be charging people who use them. Adding a luxury tax to folks who want to skip traffic seems like a free lunch for everyone else. At the end of the day, suburbanites want to force the rural and urban dwellers to subsidize their primary mode of transportation (large, dense highways), but it's becoming more and more politically untenable.
I think the most important thing to think about here, is how this affects long term real estate values and development patterns. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago.
>. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago.
We incentivize density in this country by having a ton of compliance hoops that increase cost on a per-building basis. People might just decide that they love suburbs so much that they vote for politicians who tell the Strong Towns crowd, the environmentalists and the trades and engineering groups to shove it and we go back to the 1980s and slap up street after street of chap AF single family homes on septic with nary a site plan in site.
The problem with a progressive tax for a service is that there is no pricing mechanism to direct it.
If fewer people drive, and more take the train, how is the state compelled to shift funding?
This is one of the hard problems of politics, and it’s one of the reasons markets have been successful, but most people entirely ignore it.
Again, the point of the article is that we already do not have enough budget for road infrastructure, and the roads are already significantly subsidized by federal highway spending. Any solution of “more taxes on wealth and earnings” is theoretically doable, but practically very difficult. Taxing use seems entirely reasonable.
Probably shouldn't have a progressive tax for a service. You have a progressive tax for things like automobiles, houses, income. A portion of that revenue goes to transportation services that benefit both the public and local business.
> Taxing use seems entirely reasonable.
If by use you mean 18-wheelers, then by all means, tax away. I am pretty sure highways would last for decades with a minimum of maintenance if there were no large trucks on them.
> If by use you mean 18-wheelers, then by all means, tax away. I am pretty sure highways would last for decades with a minimum of maintenance if there were no large trucks on them.
I mean, this is magical thinking. Yes, weight should be taxed, but the vast majority of states restrict trailers to the rightmost lanes. You can see the extra wear and tear. That doesn’t mean that autos aren’t contributing non-trivially.
As truck taxes rise, more of that freight will move to rail, so it’s not an infinite tax base.
It's the traffic jam at the toll plaza that I completely fail to understand. It massively slows traffic town, creates hazards, it's uniquely unsafe for the workers, it ruins engine and roadway efficiency, and causes engine breakdown on unseasonably hot days.
I cannot imagine that this is the best way to fund roads.
New Jersey solved this: just put up signs saying “you’re on a toll road, go check what you owe and pay later”. No toll plaza!
Then when you forget, which you 100% will if you’re not dealing with it frequently, or just reasonably assume they’ll send you a bill—ta-da! First communication they send is a nastygram assessing an extra $50 for every toll you forgot to go beg to pay when you got home.
Ingenious way to screw non-locals, and no toll plazas needed!
That's not really an argument, in europe, automated tolls have existed since 1991 (this was actually the first ever country wide system in the world). [1]
Besides, since about 10 years ago, we also have a lot of automated toll roads where you don't even need to have the Via Verde chip now. You just pass by, it collectes your car plate number and it processes the payment for you. Then it's your responsability to check your inbox for the bill (or to set it up to pay automaticaly).
The vast majority of the tolling infrastructure no longer uses plazas. In California and in Texas, the tech exists to prevent you from even noticing. That's not deployed everywhere, especially in areas where they do rate-limiting, like the Bay Bridge, where they need you to slow down and stop when the bridge traffic gets too high, but most areas you wouldn't even notice.
This is also causing problems with people using fake plates and magnetized plates. There's an entire growing industry around it. We're going to have to eventually start requiring some kind of transponder that repeats your plate number for sensors that can't be trivially covered... or you know... just raise the gas tax.
That's the consequence of 4 freeways all (I-580, I-80, I-880, SH-24) dumping their traffic onto a bridge, and using metering lights to try and keep the bridge itself working.
I dont like privatized highways or HOV, but...people still have toll roads? Georgia and Florida and surrounding states have electronic passes and pay by toll if you dont have that.
I have thrown coins into a bucket in at least 15 years.
Going to need a citation for that, because it seems the wealth(ier) and/or business-classes would bear the most significant burden of toll roads.
Typically, in my experience, tolls are assessed at boundaries of cities, regions, and intra-region/city transit is toll-free.
Businesses that use the toll road (think trucking/freight, etc) pay tolls because they come from outside of the boundary. Wealthier individuals may commute into the boundary for work, also paying tolls.
One can live inside the city of San Francisco and never pay a toll - but someone that lives outside and commutes in for work or business pays tolls every day.
Other states, such as Illinois have a vast amount of toll roads - where tolls are trivial (typically) but also still only assessed at boundaries. The roads are often much more well maintained than government roads, since the toll collector has a direct financial interest in maintaining traffic on the roads.
Here in Chicagoland, the major tollways aren't boundary oriented, they're just charging effectively per mile. The same is true of my home state of Indiana. They were supposed to be free once the bonds were paid off, but, of course, that never happened.
Because there is no consequences for the peddlers or the supporters.
You wouldn't take seriously someone who advocates with a straight face for reinstating prohibition or segregation yet it's perfectly socially acceptable to say "no, it will be different this time".
It's not just toll roads. You see this with every recurring bad thing.
When I was in the Chicago area, I paid no tolls when I entered and exited the tollway within the same region. Perhaps that has changed within the last 10ish years?
It doesn't seem practical to charge tolls at every onramp.
It is zone-based. If you are close enough to a plaza, you won't be tolled getting on, if you're just after a plaza, you won't be tolled getting off. The toll for each ramp is more expensive the further it is from a plaza. It's possible for you to hit only one ramp toll in a short run, but if you were to math the total paid on any given route it will work out to be roughly linear with your distance.
It was very much on and off for many years. It was intended to cover the costs then go away. Instead they installed stream lined overhead tolls to not have to wait at the toll booth anymore and now it's just a perpetual tax.
It's also partially owned by outside investment (specifically the skyway from Indiana)
Very interesting. That still doesn't imply the "poor bear the brunt" (the original GP's assertion). Likely the inverse - since again, businesses and wealthy individuals are going to travel by vehicle vastly more than "poor" individuals.
Ha ha, definitely changed in the last year or two. I've been to Chicago a few times only to get a nice bill in the mail for tolls (I live two states away). When it's all done electronically, you sometimes have no idea you've had your pocket picked. ;-)
I'm curious, do you have any data for that (and of an actual "a well run government highway)?
In my country, there were several "scandals" (altough I don't think anyone ever got arrested) about highway construction and how they massively went over budget. I can also say that when they are new, they are great to ride, but, since the budget only thinks about construction, after a couple of decades they start degrading badly until a new massive budget is again used for major work on them.
Public transit systems are only effective in highly-dense, urban settings.
Toll roads are often not within dense urban cities - usually on the outskirts, suburbs, highways, bridges and more. Public transit simply doesn't work in these places because of how large and spread-out the US is.
You’re forgetting how this is all interconnected. Creating the large freeways creates sparse housing that requires freeways. Creating public transport does the reverse.
Before all these massive road developments it’s not like people just sat at home and couldn’t go anywhere.
So what's your proposal? Go back in time 200 years and create a public-transit system?
The US is huge. There is no feasible way to support public transit for 95%+ of it's land-mass. That's not going to change anytime soon, or ever.
Also, most mass-transit systems in the US operate at significant loss, even with government (ie. taxpayer) funding and collecting rider-fare. A lot of public transit systems are in complete disrepair and are severely lacking. Buses and lightrails are never going to be "cheaper", as convenient or accessible as roads and vehicles are.
What I would do is the same as what most cities around the world are doing, spending more on public transport, spending less on roads, implementing tolls and congestion charges, and over time reshaping cities to be better for walking, PT, and cycling.
The US is not unique in having fully adopted cars and ripped up old PT networks. It happened all over Australia which is also a massive very spread out country. But significant effort has gone in to reversing the damage.
There is something deeply wrong about a society that can afford to create hundred billionaires but can’t afford busses.
I subscribe to the opinion that there are probably some good reasons why people in the US tend to spread out when they have the option. I think the problem of collective human action is complex enough that optimizing at the individual level is probably the best we can do. I would rather spend time thinking about how to serve people in ways that they actually want instead of “big idea” approaches.
The government built infrastructure for low density living because the vast majority of people want to live in low density suburbs, not high density urban areas. Forcing people to live in ways they don’t want to when there are viable alternatives just leads to the government being replaced.
reply