What the AI industry did to its customers in the last 8 days:
OpenAI cut the $200 Pro plan in half.
OpenAI launched a $500 plan.
OpenAI started watermarking your text.
DGX Spark went from $3,999 at launch to $6,950.
Micro Center started scanning ID to sell an RTX 5090.
Micron sold 75% of its 2027 memory to someone who is not you.
What happened to the things I own:
Nothing. My 4x 3090 are the same cards. The Qwen weights on my SSD are the same file. Nobody emailed me about a new tier.
I dont run local models because they are the smartest. I run them because its the only part of my AI setup where the rules didnt change this week.
Download the weights. Buy the hardware. Do it before the next announcement.