Yes. Before the update, when its avatar was still black, it solved pretty complex coding problems effortlessly and gave very nuanced, thoughtful answers to non-programming questions. Now it struggles with just changing two lines in a 10-line block of CSS and printing this modified 10-line block again. Some lines are missing, others are completely different for no reason. I'm sure scaling the model is hard, but they lobotomized it in the process.

The original GPT-4 felt like magic to me, I had this sense of awe while interacting with it. Now it is just a dumb stochastic parrot.

i ran a successful small business for 12 years. in my opinion, you must learn by doing. it's scary but you have to do it. the problem is every business is a unique snowflake and you're not going to find much general advice other than "buy insurance" or "outsource your payroll and HR."

one strategy i used was to sit down and think of all the things that could possibly go wrong with your business or a specific project, and google for solutions that can help you with that. work backwards from the problem. it's like designing a resilient software or systems architecture.

you're going to read a LOT of federal and local laws, accounting rules, insurance regulations, speak to a bunch of different solutions vendors, and wade through a bunch of bullshit before you find the one nugget of information you need.

you also need to be generally savvy about how to deal with money and people. naive people don't make it very far.