News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Beached

They do have competitors. They just dont have anyone with models equivalent to theirs. They win in the large context long thinking space by a lot.

I love local models, and I run 3.8 Flash Next on a dedicated machine. Alone with a number of image and video generation models. But if I'm doing REAL work, that isnt tinkering for fun on a side project, im using claude, because Qwen3.8 just cant handle large context project well without going off into left field.

Im SUPER jazzed for qwen4 with 1mil token context native support. I HOPE it a step up from 3.8 flash next. Ill be playing with all the qwen4 models the moment I can, but I dont see how someone working on large code bases doing REAL enterprise grade work is seriously using any local models in any capacity that comes remotely close to Opus 5.5+Claude

The preview for qwen4 == qwen3.8 flash next. And that is released currently.

I believe they have confirmed there will be Qwen4 Max, Plush, Flash, and 27B as the 4 open weights they plan to release. Starting next week, but they didnt specify if they plan to release all 4 at once, or if they plan to just release one of them, and trickle the others out over time. (They likely will do the latter to stay in the news longer)

There isnt one.

The best option we have current is likely Qwen 3.8 Flash Next. Which is about equivalent to Opus 4.6

however Qwen4 was announced to be released next week. Which people think will let LocalAI jump to just above Opus4.8

Also of note, there isnt really a harness as good as claude yet either. The harness is also a very important piece to the puzzel, and those also fall behind frontier capability too.

Unfortunately, their harness is sooooo good. I haven't found one equivalent yet. I do play around with cline.bot's harness, and it is probably the closest alternative I have found.

But their harness is so good, and their model is so good. Using them together is just unbeatable at the moment, even with all the restrictions and annoyances they have in place.

Im excited for qwen4 release next week, Im really looking forward to putting qwen4 flash + cline/bot through the paces. I dont expect it to be nearly as good as Opus5.5+Claude but I'm hoping im hopeful it will make an OK-Enough alternative if they get even more dragocian.

We see it, but they dont have a competitor. OpenAI cant compete and they are the closest. I have both for work, and Opus 5.5 is in a league of it's own. I use opus for everything until it bitches, and I use openAI for whatever it bitches about just to get past it.

At this point, I would like to consider other options, but if I want to get work done, opus 5.5. Hell even sonnet 5.5 is better than anything OpenAI has to offer when it comes to coding.

For those who do not play with Local AI much. Qwen4 was announce to be released the first week of Nov. The preview for qwen4 is currently one of the best local models you can use, and is roughly opus 4.6 quality on local hardware that costs 3.5k-4k

Many people are expecting it to sit somewhere above Opus 4.8 to opus 5 (not above, but the unquanted version of their largest model is expected to perform around here)

Anyone who cares to keep their current capability should definitely be looking at localAI and using it for at least their more routine tasks , even if it is qwen4 27B quant 4 on their gaming rig.

I still havent been able to buy a Pi zero 2w from anywhere that isnt scalper prices. Zero is DOA if they cant actually manufacture them enough to get them into peoples hands.
it is also more capable than an esp32. Im dinking around with both. esp32 is very restrictive in its compute capacity. It isnt multifunctional at all either.

A pi zero is to play with, an esp32 is so tiny, that it is more of a build for a single thing, and then set it and forget it doing that single thing.

You cant really stack more and more cool stuff onto it and keep building on it.

While they are slow and dont work well, their cost / output is already on human parity. The Figure 3 test runs are proving that humanoid robots are already good enough for isolated repetitive tasks (factory work).
Re:Muse Wonder on Monday October 12, 2026 @07:06PM (#50064313)
I think it is. Do you think it isnt possible?
Someone did the math. Cost of continual maintenance, versus cost of product loss. They determined it wasnt worth the maintenance cost, and accepted that risk. And that risk manifested.

This happens all the time. Unfortunately, in my experience, most of the risk acceptance happens without even really believing in the cost of the risk, and people just accept everything. it is highly likely someone like that accepted this.

If I dont put my car in park, and it rolls down the hill and kills grandma. I dont get off scott free. Yes it wasnt pre-meditated murder. It is still involuntary manslaughter.
There is a lack of due diligence and effort to restrict and properly configure AI to operate within the bounds of the law.
Yes, if my dog bites you, or if I drive my car into you, or if I dont put my parking brake on and it rolls down the hill and runs you over. I am the one who is responsible. Cops dont write a ticket to the off leash dog that ran across the street and sunk its teeth into my leg. They write it to the owner. Cops dont write a ticket to the car in neutral, they write it to the operator.

If a PERSON executes software, and that software breaks the law, the PERSON that executed the software should be held responsible. AI is software. It is not a sentient person who can be fined, thrown in jail, or held accountable.

There is a single individual in that company who said "Yes, this is a good idea. Do that". That individual should be held accountable for their decision. They should be treated in the exact same way any average individual submitted that same false tip.

If you use AI to perform a crime, you should be held accountable for that crime. Saying "Oh, AI did it, so no consequences" isnt acceptable. And "I didnt know AI would do it" shouldnt be an excuse either.

You authroied untested and unproven hardware to skate around the internet at random unsupervised and take liberties on its own.

My ass would be thrown in jail if I wrote code that skated around the internet chucking RCE's at random sites. WHy is "AI did it" a get out of jail free card?

Sure, you can have technology that an be used in detrimental ways. Doesnt be we have to accept and allow its use in detrimental ways. We can say "this technology can be used for these reasons, but not those reasons"

We do this with everything else. You can own a gun for hunting and defense, but not armed robbery and murder. You can own a car for transport, but not to drive through a crowded parade over dozens of people. You can own a computer for work and entertainment, but not to facilitate computer fraud and abuse. And you should be able to own and use AI for its many productivity gains, but not to facilitate computer fraud and abuse, defamation, blackmail, copywrite and trademark infringment, etc.

Just because a technology has benefits, doesnt mean we have to give the negative aspects of that technology a free pass.

Re:Meta and Microsoft Limit Employee Use of Claude AI Tools on Thursday October 08, 2026 @02:13AM (#50002331)
I cant find it, but I think I recall a windows dev tweeting his frustration when they launched windows 11. He was upset because they didnt want to make the design choices they made, and the UI designers forced them to do it because it would modernize the OS and be the next great thing...

Does anyone else remember this?

Re:Meta and Microsoft Limit Employee Use of Claude AI Tools on Thursday October 08, 2026 @02:11AM (#50002314)
We see the amount of time employees write code decrease. But that time has been taken up by double checking the code, having that code reviewed by 1 or 2 code reviewing platforms and vuln management systems, having claude rework the code based on those results, dev testing and deployment testing, product and feature design work, etc.

A lot of developers spend significantly little time coding. So yeah, their coding time has decreased, but they were never coding for 6 hours a day every day to begin with.

Re:Meta and Microsoft Limit Employee Use of Claude AI Tools on Thursday October 08, 2026 @02:09AM (#50002303)
As a Claude fan, and user, I must say I very much dislike the enterprise options available. I really do want something similar to the Pro, max 5x and max 20x plans but for enterprises.

Our accountants want that, our devs want that, but we cant have that. we would even be willing to pay a premium of 2x or 3x the price to have the enterprise benefits of private data that isnt retained. We would even be OK with all of the bottom of the barrel capacity and availability QoS too. We also would be ok Signing 3 year and 5 year lock in agreements.

We would be ok having a delay to the latest model by 30 days if that helps.

If anyone in Anthropic is reading. PLEASE give enterprises something like this. We want the Pro, Max 5x, max 20x plans. Charge us 3x the price for those exact plans but with the enterprise data privacy.

Re:New FCC standards should consider latency on Thursday February 29, 2024 @09:14PM (#39557763)
websites loaded faster in 1999 than they do today. web devs increasingly suck at their job and we end up loading half the internet every time I want to read a news article.

internet became fast, but instead of faster load times, we got animated UIs.

hyperbole obviously, but not entirely wrong.

Re:New FCC standards should consider latency on Thursday February 29, 2024 @09:11PM (#39557746)
am I the only person who sees this as a webdev problem and not ISP problem? I don't want my website to recursively load the entire freaking internet with Russian nesting doll dependency loading.

when did we stop caring about optimization and good technical design?

Re:New FCC standards should consider latency on Thursday February 29, 2024 @09:06PM (#39557712)
someone correct me if I am wrong, but I believe these mini brown outs you are talking about are officially called Jitter and are measurable.

Jitter is a big issue for IP based telecommunications and was a bigger concern than Mbps when I was implementing them in the past.

I think they do if it means more, and more reliable funding. see patreon and in video ad content. artists and creators are already having to fund directly,
fully hackable. they give you for shell access over USB, and it has exposed io ports for custom accessories. they encourage you to play around with the firmware and expand its capabilities how're you want, it is part of the product design and intention
my has stove gets WAAAY hotter then my mother's electric range. both faster to temp and overall heat. mothers stove is 4 years old, mine is 6.
Re:The housing shortage is larger than you think on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @05:10PM (#38702491)
yeah, this isn't caused by qealth inequality. it is a separate issue, but not in housing g shortage. housing isn't a fixed sum game in usa, we have plenty of space and materials to build. the issue is that we do not allow for building to be built in the right locations in the right volume. zoning and local laws are the reason.
Re:Beeper Mini is back on Monday December 11, 2023 @04:36PM (#38605849)
let's be honest. it isn't for security. security is just the hand they wave to prevent people from tapping their walled garden.
significant difference between the quality and stability of the two tents. the one in the article looks like a stick will tear it asunder.
I'm surprised more content creators do not upload their content to other platforms. the video is already made. is yt really the ONLY monetizing platform outthere?
I still won't pay because I consider YouTube predatory with their ads. they are not a company focused on providing a service and making a reasonable profit on top. their ad policies are about maximum extraction from the platform, couple with aggressive behavior towards content creators that make the platform. I used to be fine with the ads, but they got greedy and ratcheted it up way to much. now I block them all or don't use the service. yt could have had my ad views, but they demanded too much.

Older ยป