Trae: AI Code Editor from ByteDance | Hacker News Reader

Trae: AI Code Editor from ByteDance

trae.ai

85 pointsgniting61 comments

Posted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42799540 (228 points, 383 comments)

Remember, if it's free, you're the product.

How common is this in privacy policies? > For security and privacy reasons, we request that you abstain from disclosing personal information, including passwords, credit card numbers, or other confidential data. Our commitment to safeguarding your privacy is unwavering, but the security of personal information also relies on safe user practices.

If not explicit, this is practically applicable to every ai chat bot out there with limited exceptions.

However true this is _here_, I really dislike this sentence, as it spills capitalist sentiment and distrust. How much are you the product when using Firefox (even if Mozilla gets ad revenue). How much are you the product with an OSS or community product, or a free tier for a reputable cloud offering?

Exactly. The phrase is wrong in every sense. You're pointing out the common case where something is free and offered in good faith (a terrifying and confusing concept for the Free Market faithful). There is also the exceedingly common case of both paying for something and being screwed by whoever sold it to you. Eg buying a Windows license and getting ads in the start menu.

The real lesson is: look at incentives/motivations. Are you transacting with a group that has power to unilaterally determine terms and reason to weigh them in their favor? They will.

In other words: “If it sounds too good to be true, it is.”

> Remember, if it's free, you're the product

That was until the 2020s.

Now you pay and you are the product.

Wait till 2026:

You pay, and your'e the product, AND the product is broken, AND the devs and customer service have been replaced by an AI chatbot that is very polite but only gives incorrect answers. The future is bright.

Actually you often aren't the product, you are instead the raw material from which Meta/Google/etc creates their saleable products: e.g. profiles of recipients for targeted ads.

I don't see anything about source available, git repository links or opensource licensing. Why would I switch from a free and opensource IDE to a closed source IDE offering no benefits?

I became unemployable sometime five years ago, throwing my CV into the abyss since then. This video alone almost gives me epilepsy with music and flickering. Is this how software development looks right now? Every code snipped including secrets goes to some remote server?

Roughly, yes.

I know a lot of developers who have leaned into using AI heavily in their workflow.

I also know a handful of graybeards who refuse on either moral grounds or general distrust.

The output of the prior group though is undeniably, and I really think one is going to have to learn the tools to stay competitive.

The distrust is well-warranted, but the solution is unclear.

You can't fight the invisible hand of the free market. Without AI, you're obsolete now. With AI, humanity is obsolete soon.

I use a dedicated PC with Ubuntu for the kind of AI assisted development where the AI's has access to the disk.

The only secrets it has are the API key to the AI, a temporary ssh key that can be used with git to access the github repository, and whatever the Brave browser stores for ChatGPT's website. Nothing else. No production keys, no CI keys no code signing keys.

Kind of the same restrictions I use on anything running Microsoft Windows.

Slightly off-topic, but you really shouldn't have any secrets in your code (assuming you mean secrets as in credentials, not as in trade secrets).

The file(s) with credentials are still somewhere out there, so you never open and edit them with the IDE?

I worry about privacy issues for all LLM systems that are not running on my own computer (I use Ollama, but there are many other fine tools to use).

That said, I have been using Trae to design, code, and debug programming examples for a new book I am writing. I also use Grok, Meta’s models, Claude, and OpenAI for design, coding, and trouble shooting problems.

For ideological reasons I start work with local models on Ollama, but as needed I will use everything available, if needed.

Does it do anything that VSCode with Copilot doesn't?

Send your code to China.

But at least it doesn't send it to the US

Well what’s the saying? If you love your code, set it free? :)

And if it comes back..... throw it harder.

Well, their backend is using Claude, so with this editor you're sending it to both, the US and China.

I'd send code to the US, rather than China.

I’d rather it go to the country with no power to prosecute and imprison me.

So… neither china nor the us?

I love this guy/gal/(it!!??)

Copilot doesn't have full repo/project knowledge like this/Windsurf/Cursor, that's the biggest benefit of these AI specific VSCode forks. These AI forks can edit and take context from your entire project folder. Copilot currently only looks at the specific open file you have, and does not have full project knowledge.

Sending proprietary code through TikTok to a US corporation seems like a hard sell. Who would do this?

Trae: The fastest way for the Chinese to siphon up everyone else's intellectual property.

It is really good plus it allows you to use Claude 3.5 for free (probably until ByteDance implements their own model).

Yeah, the privacy policy is dog shit, but it does work quite well (especially in builder mode).

My guess the TOS is because they want to train on user data. As people have noted Claude is not cheap and they are giving it away for free here.

Sure, though it means I'll never use this for professional projects, but it's fun to dick around with it building my toy game.

Personally I don't think it is worse than what I routinely trust US big tech on. I expect Github/Microsoft to train on my use as well.

Actually I think ByteDance is more trustworthy as more focus is on them.

Ok, but in this setup I have to trust Anthropic (since the editor is using Claude on the backend) as well as Bytedance. No way to BYO API key. I get the incentives, but less reliance on remote services would be best.

Why not use Cursor at that point ?

Cursor isn't free, at least not for Claude 3.5

As far as I can tell this is a better, more polished product. And they are giving away high quality model access for free.

I believe the lead of this at ByteDance said that Trae is only focused on go and js/ts right now.

Been watching too much Primeagen.

That is like "New operating system!" (actually 99% a copy of Debian with a different name)

Nope, thanks.

The website doesn't seem to mention anywhere that it's from ByteDance?

Also from the terms of service:

"You hereby grant to us, our affiliates and our third party partners (“SPRING Parties”) an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable, perpetual and worldwide license, to reproduce, use, and modify Your Content in connection with the provision and improvement of the Services and its underlying technologies, as well as for the SPRING Parties' respective business operations, in each case, to the extent permitted by applicable laws."

From a news article I found:

> The software is distributed by ByteDance's Singapore-based subsidiary Spring (SG) Pte, the company behind its Cici chatbot that launched in 2023.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/bytedance-launches-ai-code-editor...

ONE place..

from their privacy policy (which i didn't read)

> If you wish to contact the Data Protection Officer, please contact us: dpobrasil@bytedance.com.

their T&C mentions them as "SPRING (SG) PTE. LTD"

singapore business directory: https://www.sgpbusiness.com/company/Spring-Sg-Pte-Ltd

hard to tell if they are indeed Bytedance. but given Bytedance and Tencent has HUGE Singapore HQ and notorious status of SG being a proxy for China, I would not be surprised if this is indeed Bytedance in disguise

https://amp.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3295644/bytedance...

even their CEO from Singapore is a puppet hire. The one that went to all the senate hearing is not the one calling all the shots. He was hired just so bytedance can keep playing the soundbite 'our ceo is not from china'.

TikTok is a product of ByteDance, I think you're mixing both.

I went on to read to the Terms and Conditions further and was relived to find no mention of "oH yeah! if you use it for longer than a month, you owe us your life and your kids will be forever indebted to the great emperor behind the wall."

At this point in time T&Cs are a generic template that stretches into a closed bubble trying to defend against any legal action. There should be a "dontsuewecandowhatever" copyright-like legend and be done with the bs.

Only the OSX version available, with a waitlist for windows.

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