Yeah, I'm not really sure what the long play is here. $200 is what I spend on groceries for an entire month.

I'm impressed.

A pound of chicken breast, a pound of apples, a third loaf of bread cost at least $7. And that's only 1500 kcal.

A ten pound bag of russet potatoes costs $2-3 here (high CoL SoCal), and that's >3,000 kcal. A four pound bag of pinto beans is $4, that's >5,000 kcal. That's four days of 2,000 kcal per day for $7. Likewise 32,000 kCal of rice at Costco is $24 so it gets even cheaper when you buy those 20-40 pound bags. That goes for quinoa, lentils, and all kinds of other staples. Base caloric requirements are really cheap to cover with the basics, and should cost $50-60/mo. The rest can be spent on fresh meat, veggies, and fruit.

Under $200/mo is relatively easy to achieve as long as you know how to cook or can tolerate a repetitive diet. Stretching it to $250-300/mo takes it up a notch and makes it a very balanced and varied diet with whatever fruit and vegetables you want. I only run it up to $300/mo when I buy higher quality meats at Costco and eat an avocado a day.

Lol I'm not saying it's impossible.

Yes, beans/potatoes/rice can get you a long ways.

Definitely highly location dependent. In Hungary we spend ~3 times that for 2 people. And I definitely don't buy the cheapest. So to me, $200 looks realistic.

COL isn't the same everywhere. That $8 of chicken in downtown San Francisco whole foods that closed is $4 elsewhere and those differences add up.

I was assuming $3.50/lb.

Probably spends another $600 on takeout.

and $1,000 on APIs :D

Interesting, I’ve been using o1-pro and Gemini 2.5 Pro with identical profiles and prompts and o1-pro has won every single time without exception.

Where win means the problem I set out to solve was solved and passed tests. Where both are aware of the tests.

They upgraded Gemini Deep Research to use the 2.5 model a few days ago and the stylist shot up - I've seen a bunch of people comparing the new version favorably to OpenAI's, I agree that it's as good and maybe even better now.