I honestly do not wish Google to have the best model out there and be forced to use their incomprehensible subscription / billing / project management whatever shit ever again.
I don’t know what their stuff cost. I don’t know why would I use vertex or ai studio. What is included in my subscription what is billed per use.
They all suck. OpenAI ignores scanning limits and disabled routes in robots.txt, after a 429 "Too Many Requests" they retry the same url half a dozen of times from different IPs in the next couple of minutes, and they once DoS'ed my small VPS trying to do a full scan of sitemaps.xml in less than one hour, trying and retrying if any endpoint failed.
Google and others at least respects both robots.txt and 429s. They invested years scanning all the internet, so they can now train on what they have stored in their server. OpenAI seems to assume that MY resources are theirs.
For a personal plan to use premium Gemini AI features or for agentic development with Gemini CLI/Antigravity the billing is no more or less complicated then Claude Code or Codex CLI.
You pay for the $20/mo Google AI Pro plan with a credit card via the normal personal billing flow like you would for a Google One plan without any involvement of Google Cloud billing or AI Studio. Authorize in the client with your account and you're good to go.
(With the bundled drive storage on AI Pro I'm just paying a few bucks more than I was before so for me it's my least expensive AI subscription excluding the Z.ai ultra cheap plan).
Or, just like with Anthropic or OpenAI, it's a separate process for billing/credits for an API key targeted at a developer audience. Which I don't need or use for Gemini CLI or Antigravity at all, it's a one step "click link to authorize with your Google Account" and done.
You could decide to use an API key for usage based billing instead (just like you could with Claude Code) but that's entirely unnecessary with a subscription.
Sure, for the API anything involving a hyperscalar cloud is going to have a higher complexity floor with legacy cruft here and there, but for individual subscriptions that's irrelevant and it's pretty much as straightforward of a click and pay flow you'd find anywhere else.
after using aistudio fine for months suddenly my billing was cancelled and a week later im still waiting for it to be re-enabled.
Im at a total loss to how google can function this way, my only explanation is they somehow have a Philosophers Stone they generate wealth with because they sure as hell make it impossible to give them money.
Eventually the models will be generally be so good that the competition moves from the best model to the best user experience and here I think we can expect others will win, e.g. Microsoft with GitHub and VS Code
That's my hope but Google has unlimited cash to throw at model development and can basically burn more cash can openai and anthropic combined. Might tip the scale in the long run.
I only put things when the LLM gets something wrong and I need to correct it. Like “no, we create db migrations using this tool” kind of corrections. So far it made them behave correctly in those situations.
unfortunately having always-on cameras pointing around the house is kind of an arms race. if you don't, someone else will, and their word will be the one that gets taken seriously. so you better have one too!
its kind of like how in videos of altercations, the first thing all parties involved will do nowadays is grab their phones and start recording.
I really want to disagree with this, and have more faith in humanity, but I suspect you are more or less right. Even if it's 1,000 or even 10,000 or 100,000 cameras returned, it'll likely amount to a nothingburger for Amazon.
To make a real statement here, we'd probably need several million returns in the US alone. (A quick search suggests more than 20M installs in the US.)
In their defense, Redditors returning a throwaway piece of electronics then posting about it is probably the biggest sense of accomplishment they'll get all month.
It takes a special level of delusion to think you're pulling one over on the billion-dollar company who just paid millions to advertise this capability during the Super Bowl as if everyone didn't already know.
Hasn't Ring been sharing video with law enforcement for years? Ignoring that zomg ICE is the Reddit cause du jour (these people live for this), did they just now figure out how cloud-connected cameras work?
I fully expect these to all be replaced with generic cameras from Amazon full of security holes, that upload all video to CCP-controlled servers in China.
That's one reason why being in a Reddit bubble is dangerous. Reddit always seems to be boycotting something (including Reddit itself), but those boycotts rarely led anywhere. Then news websites pick up on Reddit as a source of news and the rest is echo effect.
Several years ago, there was the controversy about the guy who made Reddit Enhancement Suite getting his API access cut off. Everyone was on his side and I remember thinking "this guy could create his own reddit, he could literally steal all the users, similarly to how slashdot mass migration to reddit".
Maybe he realized it and wasn't interested, but man that would have been an epic move, by using their teen angst and have a hundred million active users overnight.
> special level of delusion to think you're pulling one over on the billion-dollar company
Except that’s not the only reason to participate in such a boycott. Perhaps they simply do not want to participate in one voluntary node of participation in the surveillance capitalism network.
I've been on Mounjaro for 4 months now. You normally start with an initial lower dose and increase the dose after a month. I lost 5 kg (~11 lbs) on the initial dose in the first month, and when I increased the dose, I also stopped smoking.
I've been smoking on and off for 20 years. I have stopped (and relapsed) many times, so I believe I can compare. This was a lot easier. I mean, I had cravings, but they weren't really that bad, and while the first week is generally the difficult part, I only had a couple of days with issues. I did not lose weight that month, though, which is fine as I would normally gain a lot due to compensating for cravings.
I increased the dose again and started losing weight. I guess some people gain weight when they stop using GLP-1. Even if that happens, I'm fine with stopping smoking without weight gain.
That's incredible! Smoking is the hardest one of them. Mainly because smokers tend to be skinny, as cigs kill your appetite (unlike alcoholics who tend to be fat) and all GLP-1 effects go together with the weight loss.
Congrats. Smoking is a bitch of a habit and extremely hard to quit.
Nicotine pouches (or even vaping) are astronomically less harmful than cigarettes and still work as appetite suppressors. As a bonus they are more convenient to use in public. Smokers should consider considering switching instead of quitting nicotine entirely if it's easier.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, but I totally agree.
I used to smoke a pack a day for years, but switched to vaping in the 2010s when nicotine salt juice became more available. It was a massive quality of life improvement. Though initially this unlocked a much higher dose of nicotine I'd ever get smoking, I eventually brought it down and regardless my lungs were doing better.
Around 2020, I switched to the pouches and since then I'm down to using maybe like two a day if any at all. Since they are a slower delivery method, the nature of the cravings has changed too. I can easily hold off for hours or even days since they're less intense. I have zero desire to go back to smoking or vaping ever again. I've never experienced any oral health issues from the pouches either. X-rays on my mouth and lungs now show no damage.
The only thing I will say is nicotine itself isn't entirely harmless and can trigger some mild anxiety. It seems to be related to keeping blood cotinine levels in check.
I'd never recommend people start a nicotine habit, but I think we're at the point where it's not much worse than caffeine if you take it orally. There is some research out there about the potential benefits of both preventing dementia, but I won't link anything. People can argue about that somewhere else.
The trouble with the dementia prevention claim is that while the retrospective studies are promising, none of the RCTs really show results. You can argue this is because the RCTs don't dose enough nicotine early enough to matter, and that's likely true, but retrospective studies can turn up all sorts of phantom correlations. Right now I would say we don't know for sure, and I wouldn't recommend nicotine as a preventative measure.
I would recommend nicotine as a stimulant, though. It is a solid adjunct to caffeine.
At some point everyone was talking about / showing off their mech keyboard in developer scene. I don’t think I’ve seen much in recent years.
I myself went deep into that for a while. Got a couple of keyboards and now I have two Apple Magic Keyboards. Don’t even know where I stashed my mechanicals.
The foam has disappeared, but the enthusiasts are going on. While it's not a craze, I believe mechanical keyboard is still superior for longer writing sessions (Apple's and Logitech's scissor switch keyboards are pretty good, too).
Gamers are moving to hall effect switches because of the things they enable, but from what I have seen, some people are still building their keyboards, and people still use mechanical keyboards.
I'd love to continue use mine, too, but they are bit too noisy for my office, and I don't continue computers at home as much, anymore.
Another chilling effect is caused by the tariffs, because people can't get their keyboards or parts as easily anymore. I got mine from Kickstarter directly, but it's impossible for me now.
> Another chilling effect is caused by the tariffs
Maybe that's why prices in Europe seem to have gone down significantly. It used to be very expensive to get anything over here (UK), but now we're almost spoilt for choice.
Various patents expired and now you can get excellent typing keyboards from China for $30-50. Basically everyone I know who types for a living has one.
Gamers have moved on to analog keyboards which are controversial because some of their features straddle the line into cheats. e.g. with an analog keyboards you can negate all inertia in Counter-Strike or do speed tricks in Trackmania not otherwise easily accessible to keyboard players.
Could you give examples of excellent typing keyboards from China for $30-50? Every mechanical keyboard I've owned eventually suffered from key chatter or inconsistent actuation.
Just get a hall effect or TMR keyboard and all your problems with key chatter will go away. Also, I recommend you just build it yourself. It's a fun hobby and if you don't know how to make PCBs it's a great way to learn (keyboards are one of the easiest things to make from a PCB complexity standpoint).
Ever play "connect the dots" as a kid? That's what it's like making a keyboard PCB. It's the adult version of "connect the dots".
It's not a "rabbit hole", it's a pending addiction :D
From the article I like the characteristics of hall effect better than TMR (although one of the cons under HE, "Since the sensor is reading magnet position, any wobble in the switch can change the magnet’s alignment and affect the signal", is a bit troubling). There are indeed $30-50 ones on Amazon. Any particular brand recommendations?
> Full analog functionality often depends on proprietary software support (and not all boards execute it well).
Could you elaborate how that works? I'm on Linux. I find with Keychron I can visit the web-based tool to configure the keyboard, but if it's proprietary software I'm out of luck.
I use a Wooting which is largely open source on GitHub. Also their config tool is only needed to set up your keyboard, the config is saved onto the keyboard and persists across devices, OSes, etc.
In India, many brands are now offering low-cost mechanical keyboards. They were costly earlier but one can find super amazing one with 50% less cost now.
They have become mainstream, so they are not special any more.
Even keyboards with what used to be enthusiast features, such as aluminium case, double-shot PBT keycaps, switch foam, plate foam, flex cuts, hot-swap, damping, etc. are available off-the-shelf at very reasonable prices now.
> Is the mechanical keyboard craze still going on?
It depends on your definition of "craze".
Mechanical keyboards are more popular than ever, and became mainstream to the point where nowadays they are just considered keyboards. Even Logitech sells whole product lines of mechanical keyboards, and even has specialized lines of mechanical keyboards.
Also, multiple companies sell ergonomic keyboards that fall within the "craze" classification. Even if they don't ship with noisy switches, they are still in line with what mechanical keyboards were known for.
Nowadays even the pure mechanical keyboards have non-mechanical switches. Optical, magnetic, hall effect, etc. they ship in the standard cherry MX form factor. But aren't mechanical.
A few years ago you had blue switches, red switches, brown switches... You could count the types of switches with your fingers. Nowadays the offer is so vast that you can't keep track. Some companies even sell sample kits with an array of different types of switches for customers to try out. That's a relatively new development.
And do I need to mention the massive inflow of mechanical keyboards on offer from cheap Chinese manufacturers? We're not looking at 400€ mechanical keyboards, but 20€ mechanical keyboards.
The truth of the matter is that in the past you barely had any choice in keyboards. You could choose brand and color, but it was always the same keyboard. Anyone who wanted something beyond this pattern was drawn to mechanical keyboarss. Not today.
Utilitarian device to type on became an object of obsessive consumption, collection, customization, showing off, fashion (RGB lighting, forced mechanical over scissor distinction even though many people prefer the latter, etc). Yeah of course it's a craze, without scare quotes.
The same gear obsession happened to the gaming mice world, but it was much tamer by comparison.
> Yeah of course it's a craze, without scare quotes.
This is a simplistic opinion to hold. You'd be better complaining that some people enjoy things. Form factor is important, also tactile response and sound. Features like embedding USB hubs or touchpads are essentially a given in laptops. Not being forced to throw a keyboard to the trashbin just because a key failed.
Is this a craze?
Ask yourself this: why are there people paying good money for gaming keyboards? Or Apple's magic keyboard. Is it a craze?
Or are you just complaining that other people enjoy things?
It's still a craze but the people who want a nice keyboard to use daily found theirs and drifted away from the novelty/modding, I think.
I've used a HHKB Pro 2 since 2010 and it's still going strong. I have a replacement ready if/when it dies, but other than a shiny space bar it looks and feels like new.
I absolutely love my UHK [1] split mech keyboard that I ordered from Hungary several years ago. It’s the only one I stuck with after trying some other popular ones.
Other than being split, the keyboard layout is standard so it’s easy to adapt to.
It probably helps me avoid RSI. I keep an apple trackpad between the two splits, so I never use a mouse. And a microphone in the middle as well, you can guess why. I clamshell my MacBook and almost always work on a monitor. Besides ergonomics, the biggest benefit is the on-board programmability; it lets me define custom layers and macros so I can trigger complex window management, app switching, and IDE navigation with simple key combos.
That's exactly how I used to work about 15 years ago, but I found that the Apple trackpad killed my wrists. These days I just have a regular mouse, and simply try to do as much as I can from the keyboard.
I agree trackpad is not RSI-proof by any means, but for me mousing is worse. With the trackpad in the middle I can use either hand to scroll or click etc. I also keep that minimal and instead rely on keyboard tools like Vimium, and scroll kb shortcuts
Mechanical keyboard is still a sensible choice. With the advent of cheap 3D printing and custom PCBs, there's now also a lively DIY community, especially for odd/split layouts. I don't think it's a craze. It's just a hobby.
Yeah but just look at what happened within the last 2 years. I was not convinced about the AI revolution but I bet in another 2 years, we won't be looking at the output..
Not so sure, there are indiosyncracies now within the various models, I suspect all this is the result of RLHF, and they cause side.effects. I'm not sure that more attention-is-all-you-need is necessarily going to give us another step change, maybe more general intelligence, but not more focus. Possibly also we soon end up with grokked AI's on all side: pushing their agenda whatever you asked... Gemini: "no this won't work with Cloudflare, I created your GCP account, there you go" OpenAI: "I am certain you really wanted me to do all these other tasks and I have done them, you should upgrade your tokens plan" etc (you know how to fill in for DeepSeek and Grok already, right)
It is not opus. It is good, works really fast and suprisingly through about its decisions. However I've seen it hallucinate things.
Just today I asked for a code review and it flagged a method that can be `static`. The problem is it was already static. That kind of stuff never happens with Opus 4.5 as far as I can tell.
Also, in an opencode Plan mode (read only). It generated a plan and instead of presenting it and stopping, decided to implement it. Could not use the edit and write tools because the harness was in read only mode. But it had bash and started using bash to edit stuff. Wouldn't just fucking stop even though the error messages it received from opencode stated why. Its plan and the resulting code was ok so I let it go crazy though...
I've been using it with opencode. You can either use your kimi code subscription (flat fee), moonshot.ai api key (per token) or openrouter to access it. OpenCode works beautifully with the model.
Edit: as a side note, I only installed opencode to try this model and I gotta say it is pretty good. Did not think it'd be as good as claude code but its just fine. Been using it with codex too.
I tried to use opencode for kimi k2.5 too but recently they changed their pricing from 200 tool requests/5 hour to token based pricing.
I can only speak from the tool request based but for some reason anecdotally opencode took like 10 requests in like 3-4 minutes where Kimi cli took 2-3
So I personally like/stick with the kimi cli for kimi coding. I haven't tested it out again with OpenAI with teh new token based pricing but I do think that opencode might add more token issue.
Kimi Cli's pretty good too imo. You should check it out!
I was using it for multi-hour tasks scripted via an self-written orchestrator on a small VM and ended up switching away from it because it would run slower and slower over time.
I honestly do not wish Google to have the best model out there and be forced to use their incomprehensible subscription / billing / project management whatever shit ever again.
I don’t know what their stuff cost. I don’t know why would I use vertex or ai studio. What is included in my subscription what is billed per use.
I pray that whatever they build fails and burns.
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