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by layer8 31 days ago
To be fair, the cost of software development has always been fairly unpredictable. What may be different is that the cost used to be roughly proportional to man-hours spent, while now the number of agents running in parallel may be less predictable.
2 comments
xienze 31 days ago
> To be fair, the cost of software development has always been fairly unpredictable.

Yes, but in a "oops this is gonna take another two months to finish" kind of way, not the "oops this is the 12th time this month 8 developers have burned $2K in tokens in a single day and no one really knows how it happened" kind of way.

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kridsdale1 31 days ago
We’re all being given belt-loaded machine guns and tossed on to Planet K. We used to pay for the salaries of soldiers, now we have an Ammo Budget.
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dgellow 30 days ago
A belt loaded spinwheel machine gun, where there are some chances the next bullet is a dummy round, or goes in the wrong direction. And everytime you reload a new soldier is in charge of the gun
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bluGill 30 days ago
You don't need that analogy as the normal use of a automatic gun in war is not to kill, it is to suppress - stop the enemy from moving. If you are hit by a gun in automatic mode it is your own stupid fault. When you want to kill someone you switch to one shot or maybe 3 round bursts.
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dgellow 30 days ago
TIL. I know literally nothing about automatic guns
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bluGill 30 days ago
The only important thing to know is they're loud and thus impossible to conceal. Maybe someone out in the open would be hit if one starts firing unexpectedly. However, the vast majority of cases, the purpose of an automatic gun in war is just to put oatness stream of bullets so that everyone on the other side knows it's stupid to show your head and this allows your own people to move in relative safety because they know where your automatic weapon isn't going to be firing and the enemy, of course, isn't going to be able to respond.
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ilovecake1984 31 days ago
The cost per month is 100% known and always has been. What has been variable is the rate of delivery. AI is different and can be substantial in countries with lower wages.
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