I’m probably the third category. I like experimenting and trying different models and techniques. I want api access for my own apps and Claude subscriptions don’t have that.
Sure I could splash out a ton of money for a high ram Mac, but deepseek is so dirt cheap that I think depreciation on a high end machine costs more than my api spend.
Example of what I’m using it for: building a semantic database of podcast content (podcast discoverability sucks on an episode level). I need a cheap LLM, an embedder, a transcriber, none of which Claude will do.
My api costs for coding agents plus running apps are about ~$20/month, but I get more than just chat + Claude code.
If all I was doing was pumping an employers codebase through a coding agent, Claude would be the answer.
There’s a bunch of websites where I’ve declined to install their app about 74747627282 times in a row and… tomorrow they’re still going to think they can nudge me into it.
On the creator side, YouTube won’t monetize you until you have 1000 subs.
Which means the person that put up 1 video with a massive amount of views will get squat (but Google will gladly put in ads and take a 100% cut).
Protip: subscribe to creators that post useful but not very subscribeable videos. Sucks for creators that put up videos that don’t really relate to eachother.
Dunno why everything has to be a “channel”. That’s what search is supposed to be for.
And as you put up more roadblocks, the more you select for desperation. Your best prospects have lots of options and can take a path of lower resistance.
Just as in sports, if you’re trying to draft a top kicker/thrower/catcher/goalie/whatever, they’re going to avoid onerous terms and outsized effort.
> And as you put up more roadblocks, the more you select for desperation.
This isn't actually true in all instances. You can literally buy residency (or even citizenship) in numerous countries, so anyone who is optimizing for the path of least resistance will always have options.
Japan is a very unique destination. It's one of the most developed countries in the world, with world-class infrastructure, a super interesting culture, great food, abundant nature, etc. For Westerners, housing is relatively inexpensive in much of the country, with tons of akiya (empty houses) available for purchase because foreigners can (at least for the time being) buy property with few restrictions. Due to the weak currency, very few developed countries (and basically none in Asia) are as affordable to Westerners.
The problem with the business manager visa is that many of the people obtaining it weren't really interested in running businesses in Japan. They were setting up shell companies to get residency.
Raising the capital requirement and adding new requirements around employment and language will no doubt hurt some legitimate business manager visa holders but realistically, the number of people running legitimate businesses in Japan who might have to leave will be dwarfed by the number of people who used the visa as a workaround to get residency.
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