Originally published on AI Tech Connect.
Two clocks, and why conflating them costs money A batch discount is priced on a deadline. You surrender latency, accept a completion window of up to 24 hours, and the provider chooses when the work runs. You do not. A time-of-day tier is priced on the wall clock. The rate depends on the hour of dispatch, you pick that hour, and latency does not change at all. They compose; they are not alternatives. One trades responsiveness, the other scheduling freedom. A job may be eligible for both, for one, or for neither. Deadline is the classifier, not importance. The nightly reconciliation finance depends on is important and completely deferrable. The autocomplete nobody remembers is trivial and not deferrable at all. The ceiling is arithmetic, not effort. Where off-peak is half of peak, this…
