The buffer is the UI, rendered by Emacs's extremely optimised text display machinery
The author is known in the community as a mere packager whose knowledge of the nitty-gritty derives entirely from hearsay. Perhaps he read the long-winded preamble to xdisp.c written in 1995 boasting of all manner of optimisations. But they were written so long ago, almost no one believes most of them matter anymore, what with thirty years of bitrot.
Anthropic, like most frontier companies, have more money than they know
what to do with. When the prize is world domination, turning a profit
isn't high on their todo list. Twenty dollars per month is the bare
minimum hurdle to prevent DoS bots from ruining it for the rest of us.
"Tremendous societal cost" is putting it uncharitably. My country was
built on the financial incentivization of patents. I can think of
several economies with an open disregard for patents, even some where
the state assumes ownership of all innovation, and I'm happy I live in
one where IP hoarders like The Walt Disney Company continue to thrive.
That's right, but HN clapback derangement syndrome compels me to state another obvious fact of life.
Profit motive is the singlemost powerful motivator for the pharmaceutical industry. Take that away, and let's see how many smart, hard-working people work their butts off to rescue sick children.
You could tax people according to their means, record usage, multiply by impact, and disperse accordingly. Set guaranteed purchase orders and x-prize style payouts, etc. Hard but not impossible.
Maybe we get a few less drugs but I'd bet we'd see more curative cheap drugs we need desperately like antibiotics which are an economic dead-end today rather than the cost escalating for-life stop-gaps like statins, diabetes drugs, biologics, ed drugs, hair treatments, etc.
