Qwertronix

It appears, from the outside, to be a collection of small optimizations:

- The way they pace and limit usage seems to echo some strategies I've seen to reduce the impact of burst usage

- They cut down the maximum context length of most models

- They claim to have some custom sauce that improves how they handle API requests and reduces error rates

- Their explanations appear focused around optimizing concurrency in the same way that the 'flex' mode of some APIs does, though I've not seen specific docs of them claiming that this is part of how they save on costs

There may be more that I haven't seen or noticed. I don't work for or with them.

Apologies, I intended the oxygen bit as a flippant joke but I can see how that could come across as an insult instead.

As to the difference between voluntary and involuntary, the grey line between those is exactly my point. The employee 'voluntarily' wears blue jackets and could certainly not wear one, and risk getting fired, and certainly could quit that job. A student certainly could spend far more time than their peers on study and end up with a lesser grade on their work, with presumably less returns in most cases. I see a lot of parallels between a teenage student navigating complex new social relationships and learning their way through middle and high school and an employee trying to just earn enough money for rent, in terms of both of them having to make 'choices' that do not feel from the inside like decisions they make freely and that have consequences that appear life-ruining to not take (in which case it reveals a preference for not having your life ruined, rather than for whatever it is that you decided to wear or use or do to merely keep up with the perceived requirements).

Do you like carbon monoxide? No? Then why do you make and "use" it?

Maybe breathe and let your brain have some oxygen to think about the answer to your own question.

Wearing your second job uniform while working doesn't reveal a preference for blue jackets, it just means you'd like to not be fired.

Yeah, but the counter is:

"Bro just don't synthesize the virus that wipes out humanity if the ai tries to make one"

Because humans are famously excellent at never running files that someone posing as a trusted colleague with a solution to an urgent problem gives them. /s