chironjit

Adding my review of the ones I have tried:

Cursor: I've been using Cursor and had to reinstall recently. Almost accidentally agreed to data sharing, which now is a compulsory must to agree on to use (or must be manually disabled later). Almost missed it, as I'm happy to share usage but not my code (A lot of the code I write have bits I would like to remain private, and anything I'm happy to make public is already public). Not super happy with this.

Their agent mode is also not that great, it either overshoots or misses because it doesn't get the context. Worse, it will refactor and delete other parts, such as comments that I put there as guides for myself.

Was happy to use it in chat though - really sped up my troubleshooting, and that itself made it worth the price. Also, the latest models are actually quite a lot better than the older one, especially for novel code.

Copilot (on VS Code): Stopped using it after I found cursor. The earlier autocomplete models were nice for boilerplate but now that I have used the newer models (deepseek, gemini 2.5 models, sonnet 4) those feel really bad, and not useful for novel code.

Absolutely hate the agent mode but I find autocomplete with asks to be the best for me. I like to at least know what I'm putting in my codebase and it genuinely makes me faster due to:

1) Stops me overthinking the solution 2)Being able to ask it pros and cons of different solutions 3) multi-x speedup means less worry about throwing away a solution/code I don't like and rewriting / refactoring 4) Really good at completing certain kinds of "boilerplate-y" code 5) Removed need to know the specific language implementation but rather the principle (for example pointers, structs, types, mutexes, generics, etc). My go to rule now is that I won't use it if I'm not familiar with the principle, and not the language implementation of that item 6) Absolute beast when it comes to debugging simple to medium complexity bugs

I've been using cursor for several months. Absolutely hate Agent mode - it jumps too far ahead, and it's solutions, though valid, can overcomplicate the whole flow. It can also give you a whole bunch of code that you have to accept blindly will work, and is not super great at making good file layouts, etc. I've switched to autocomplete with the ask mode when I'm stuck

Exactly. This statement quite really does not make sense as this is literally how electricity works with grid too, since you need to have a reserve margin

I do find the rest of the article more or less balanced in the discussion of the issue, even though it tries very hard not to actually squarely put blame where it lies

I actually spent quite some time trying to build a custom driver for a custom screen for my Framework 13, only to burn the screen driver.

Very impressed by what you have done here. Kudos to you on achieving designing and building a whole laptop!

This is unfortunately also true for lots of non-Canadians(that are not Americans). That includes me - the number one source of news i use is the NYT, and I think I can tell you more about American politics/politicians than I can about any other country

Also, prefab units are not a new thing. They're common in Japan and I remember my dad mentioning the low-rise apartment he bought in the early 90s (not in Japan) being prefabbed by a Japanese company

Not in the US but bought a second-hand Toyota from a Toyota dealer that I later found out from the service manual was a Hertz rental in its previous life. Its been trouble free for the 8 or so years we've had it (it's now with another family member).

Funny enough, I bought that model because I used to rent it from another company and so I "knew" how the car would be.

So, not saying Hertz is a not a shitty company, but I wouldn't say rental cars aren't a good buy

There are CFC tax rules in Germany (like in some other countries). So though corporate taxes in Estonia are zero*, you will likely be subject to the German corporate tax system if the majority of the beneficial owners are based in Germany.

The best I'd say is a sense of collectiveness that is somewhat higher than other countries.

It's not nationalism. Rather, there is some amount of willingness to give up personal comfort for some sort of general/societal greater good.

This is really something I've noticed compared to say the UK, Australia, certain asian countries, etc.

Not sure why it hasn't translated to improving bureaucracy.

You're missing the point here. It's bad, and it affects people's lives. It also fuels populist sentiment because people blame immigrants for problems not entirely related to them.

Worse still, if a german says fuck it and wants to run his business in Estonia, the org still has to pay taxes in germany

The only silver lining to all this are Spaniards, Greeks, etc say the system here is better than in their country, but I think you should strive to benchmark up and not down

I'll one up you and say that it's so broken, there are lots of people that basically live on ranges of exceptions.

In my case, I was told I was not eligible for the visa I needed but when I spoke to a migration consultant who knew the process, they managed to get it done. I was pretty shocked as this wink, wink, nod, nod style system is not something I expected from this country.

Having lived here for 1.5 years, I can say that beraucracy in germany basically works in the sense of how bureaucracy in other lesser third world countries work.

Basically, the system works in general for the average population but is broken such that it affects most those at the margins (for example, the rich, the poor, those entrepreneurial, etc).

In other countries, when this happens, you see the rich paying their way to access while the poor generally suffer until some populist movement comes and promises to save them.

It's thus really not that surprising, I just had yo change my view on where I placed each country in this developed/developing country mental model

The pandemic did a real switch. I remember being able to go weeks cashless back before it, but today I don't even carry my wallet out with me.

To add, Germany is an outlier when it comes to cashless payment adoption, even (and especially when) compared to its neighbours.

Overall, our experience is that it is impossible to be out and about cashless in Germany as there is no telling which bar / beergarten / restaurant / shop only accepts cash.

I also want to add that I'm not anti-ubuntu. I've been using Linux on and off for the past 10 years. As someone who isnt well versed with linux internals, I greatly appreciate all they've done to improve the end user experience.

I'll pitch in here to add - snaps are just bad. They break at weird times and often require the terminal to troubleshoot.

Containers are not perfect, and they have an overhead in terms of storage, compute, etc. That said, I see it's value and if done right is mostly invisible to the end user.

I've been using Pop os and flatpaks for the past several years, and really it's been almost flawless.

A few months ago I got a new laptop and couldn't use Pop as it was glitching. Moved to Ubuntu as it was supported and everything seemed to work fine. However, slowly snaps started breaking and more than once I've had to update snaps from the cli because the software centre just outright broke and refused to update the snaps.

Overall, snaps is really just janky on its own target os, and hating snaps doesn't mean we're anti-containerisation

Living in germany for a year now, and holy cow how Germans backwards rationalise so many things this way.

Like wtf, how can the powerhouse of Europe be so thick?

Its hard to overstate how true your point is re-bankers responsibility.

The very basic thing you learn when studying banking is durations and how your primary job is balancing that for your debts and assets.

Bankers also have various tools to short circuit any issues, inclusing raising rates on deposits, getting wholesale funding, matching various duration bonds, etc.

Also, while historical data is not an indicator of future data, the average long term interest rates in the US have always been higher than what it was in the past decade.

Yes, hindsight might be 2020, and this applies to even my comments. But we literally are paying these bankers exorbitant sums to know these and do better than the average Joe

Yeah, most people who use large companies as examples also conveniently forget that these companies had to build tools to manage the system.

I know you're getting bashed, but i understsnd your pain. I have a new framework too, and whats unsaid in this blog post is whether this setup works for a laptop.

Specifically, i've noticed battery performance leaves lots to be desired and your mileage will vary by distros.

Mine specifically, started with Zorin but noticed it didnt do well with idle power usage. Switched to PopOs as its my desktop daily driver, but kept getting random freezes. Gave up and went with stock ubuntu.

Pretty much stable now, and perfect for a desktop but really not happy that a 2022 laptop only lasts 2 - 3 hours in usage. Not sure if its a linux issue but if Windows does solve it, wouldnt blame you for making that choice

Just got kicked out of it an hour ago because it's too busy now.

Been playing with it the whole day - got an idea on how to fix an old bug in an old programme of mine(that is still running).

But, here's the thing, how good it is depends on the available knowledge out there.

I've now tried, js, python, solidity, appscript(not tested the code), Excel and google sheets.

When you're building common js, python, etc stuff, it's really handy to have one screen that basically gives you the answer rather than having to google it, parse through the posts, etc.

However, if you're on the bleeding edge of tech, or looking for more obscure topics, it really starts showing its limitations.

I managed to run into that for example looking for Jupiter notebook commands, optimisations, versioning (giving me python2 results instead of python3 with obsolete/unmaintained packages).

Its limit is basically what has been created and knowledge already available.

Depending on what you're building, would suggest understanding what you're copy pasting and possible vulnerabilities that may arise from the code.

Overall, I'm sold - defo wouldn't mind paying 20 to 40 a month for this. If it's pricier, not so sure.

I wasnt kidding about the duration but other than this anomaly, she is otherwise normal/healthy.

That said, thanks for pointing it out - it didnt occur to me that it could be a symptom of something.

An interesting read..

On another note, I'm sure my other half is a bear, or at least a genetic anomaly. She can somehow sleep 16 hours a day for days on end.

I think the issue is actually much worse than just making it harder for someone to start a company.

The primary issue i see with Germany are that the issues raised by the writer is not just limited to starting a company. It is EVERYWHERE.

The problem is that whether Germans realise or not, it profoundly affects them in many ways.

Because of the archaic system of doing things, everything takes time. You have to set aside time to do these things. Because of how bureaucratic every process is, each staff can only see a limited number of people.

You constantly have to refresh some archaic website to find a slot. Slots are usually all gone in an instant, and your luck depends on someone cancelling or maybe them adding an extra staff for that day.

Often, there is no way to submit applications online, even for things that may logically be better off being submitted online.

The problem i see is: 1) It affects everything, including healthcare. Waiting times for public healthcare, government support etc, are through the roof. 2) Often times, this time blowout issue is blamed on something else (such as refugees, etc). There may be some truth to it, but as an outsider I see how easy it feels to blame some hapless refugee than admitting that system was already at its seams prior. 3) This system disadvantages the less-well-off - being able to pay for it lets you buy your way out of the hassle. 4) Unfortunately, most Germans view this from some perspective of denial, helplessness while others get defensive when you argue about it.

Its really worse than this.. This guy really LARPed the white-knight / sheriff-of-the-crypto-wild-west for years. He's the last guy anyone would have thought would pull such blatantly shady stuff like this. Before this all came out, more people in the space would have seen him in positive light than they would have seen CZ (the CEO of Binance).

Interesting, will have a look at this

I've learnt to sorta live it and workaround it but one egregious example was a passport renewal site for a (non US) country whose image uploading function failed silently on image upload.

Repeated the process multiple times for an hour until it occurred to me to just try a chrome-based browser. Worked fine after that.

I've run into quite a few crypto-related sites that break in weird ways when interacting with wallets / etc. The relative frequency of these issues on crypto sites are really the most disappointing - so much for decentralisation, anti-monopoly, etc, etc

Not keen to name and shame in this thread but my primary worry is that it will drive away more people from Firefox.

Haha, I don't necessarily disagree with you on this..

My only view on this is it would be nice to have a general chrome compatibility switch. I've not accounted for the feasibility of this from a technical or commercial perspective, so I can't advocate for it beyond a nice to have feature.

Hey, just wanted to say great work. I'm excited for innovation of a non-chrome engine and am gonna give it a try.

My 2 biggest beef with Firefox is website compatibility and dead tabs.

For item 1, certain sites don't work with Firefox when they do with Chrome. This can happen even in sites of industries that claim to want privacy / decentralisation / anti-monopoly. Some of these are government websites.

Sometimes, websites explicitly block non Chrome browsers too.

So if I had to request a feature, this would be it.

For the second item, I haven't been really able to pin it down. But I've seen this on both Android and Linux version. A tab sometimes goes dead, that it it doesn't refresh or basically doesn't respond when typing a new address. The solution has been to just close the tab and start a new one.

Will give it a try and provide more feedback