I know this rattles a lot of people's jimmies but in my own personal benchmarks (three problems a 10 year old could easily solve), all "frontier" LLMs are still getting the same output quality as GPT4 or even GPT3. So at least for me cheapest provider wins.
No, I'm not sharing the problems with you. Unlike a certain influencer who really likes pelicans, I don't get paid for boosting these companies.
In my daily usage and coding ChatGPT 5.2 is far better than 3.5 or 4… but as you prefer.
Anyway the point here is Chinese LLM VS Americans. DeepSeek is very close to Claude or ChatGPT performance, that’s why companies are using it, probably they don’t care about privacy and security issues. That are why I’m not using Chinese LLMs
I live in Spain. I'll give you an interesting example I've witnessed.
Two of my neighbors rent seasonally on airbnb. Middle class women, one of them a widow. I assume they used to make a tidy profit. I believe they worked quite hard on making those houses pretty, and I've seen they had good reviews.
Just now their license to operate has been denied, apparently without much explanation (I believe the Property Registry is making the decision, this is a bureaucratic body of state employees, not democratically elected).
Across the street lies a hotel, a true tourist trap. They have a 6/10 rating on booking and rely on scamming British tourists, whom you can see balancing drunk on their balconies daily. It's owned by a national conglomerate.
As you may guess, as of now the airbnbs are closed and the hotel is thriving despite only bringing the worst kind of tourist to the community.
An astute observer will note that the hotel industry is one of the biggest lobbyists supporting the current government at a national level.
I am not one to defend big companies, but for some people here Airbnb was freedom. Now they have to go work cleaning rooms or just collect retirement checks, as obtaining a license to run a hotel is impossible without political connections / corruption.
My point is, not everywhere are laws as fair as in the United States.
Before someone talks about housing pressure, this is a relatively out of the way area where 40% of houses sit empty most of the year.
The Airbnbs mentioned rented throughout the year in monthly periods, so they fill a different niche. The new law kills not only short term stays but everything that goes through an online provider (except multi-year contracts).
When I first arrived here I relied on these long stay airbnbs until I could find a way through the byzantine Spanish rental process. Now this option will no longer exist.
Again, you are not familiar with Spanish politics if you think this is by accident. I have myself given up on any attempts of doing business here after I spent 1 year waiting for a certain business license and could only obtain it (in a week) after a chance friendship with a local notary. :)
