Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49300474

Points: 8

# Comments: 1

https://api-docs.deepseek.com/quick_start/pricing/ Briefly Pro is $2/1m output in off-peak periods, $4 in peak. Flash is $0.66/$1.32. Input tokens are still much cheaper.

I don't mind these prices but I find the need to check against two different time brackets of unequal length an annoying distraction. I guess I need to make some little background app or plugin.

It's not the amount of the payment. It's the subscription model I can't stand. You're correct that I might use an app I like every day. But the marginal cost to the developer of me using it every day is $0. Rather than belabor the restaurant example , consider a book or a music CD. Writing books or recording music is generally a slow and difficult process, it takes months to produce one that might be read in a weekend. But if you buy a book, you can read or refer to it every day without paying again, or you cna listen to your favorite songs as often as you like by playing the CD. Nowadays many people prefer to stream music, but I think when people buy a book (even an e-book), they consider that it's their copy to read as often as they want...

...or not. If I buy a book and I don't like it, or later I find another book that I turn out to prefer to the first one, I can just not read it again. I don't have to cancel a subscription for the book.

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2026/governor-hochul-and-att...

My impression was that NY wanted a TRO to stop Kalshi operating in New York, not nationally. A TRO seems like a rather extreme measure in that it assumes the plaintiffs win the lawsuit as a premise, but I guess that's partly a function of how long New York has been trying and failing to obtain compliance with its gaming laws, and intended to provoke a preliminary hearing into the merits of the case (vs letting the litigation drag on for years without anyhting changing).

I am not a fan of the Trump admin but Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, is one of the few people in it that I think steers clear of politics and prioritizes doing a good job. A horrible air traffic disaster that occurred a couple of weeks into the new administration threw him into the spotlight while he was still getting settled in, and it seems like he took the lesson to heart.

I actually think gamers are a good population to recruit from because you do want people that internalize cognitive abstractions, maintain focus for long periods, juggle competing priorities etc. But one can also imagine some less attractive gamer stereotypes like poor emotional containment or cognitive saturation leading to a rage quit. It will be interesting to see what the attrition rate will be like for this cohort vs others.

In general, when I buy something I want to pay for it once and then have it. I don't want to rent or lease it, even if it's consumable. When I eat a restaurant I I pay for the meal when it's over; if it was delicious I might come back again. Even if I like it so much that I eat there every week, that doesn't mean I want a weekly subscription.

As I said in more detail below, on a free tier I expect to be able to at least try it out in a normal way. a monthly limit of exporting 3 pictures (eg to look at on my computer or TV) seems like something a normal person would hit in the first 30 minutes of just exploring what it does. Now, I noticed you run it this way for 14 days, but I gotta say that on first view this was massively outweighed by the 3/month limit.

subscription-wise, I just don't like them. If you are doing a ton of server-side processing, I'd rather pay on an as-needed basis. If not, I'd rather just Pay $19.99 (or whatever price you determine to be competitive in the market for photo apps). I see why subscription income would be nice to have for you, but for me it's a financial leaky faucet. In that case, I'd prefer to just go without because the app is a fun thing to have rather than a professional need.

It also bothered me that it was described as a 'reasonably priced' subscription. If I don't see a $ sign and a number, I reflexively classify it as a scam even though rationally I know you're just testing the waters. I close or dismiss 10 or 20 things a day after a cursory glance into whether they're worth my time or money: fear of being ripped off (FOBRO) outweighs the fear of missing out (FOMO).

But if there's a free tier I want to try out normal use patterns over the course of a week or a month, and I prefer one-time payments or token purchases to subscriptions. I do the latter only for my IDEs, and still don't like it that much.

My objection was to the free tier only allowing one to export 3 images a month. That seems bizarre to me, since in course of trying something for the first time you might make 5, 10, or 20 images in an hour. If I'm running into a monthly limit in the first few minutes of using a tool, my immediate reaction is that it's something I can live without.