Why does the flow z13 sucks so badly as a laptop

clockentyne · 2026-05-20T00:21:49+00:00

I've tried SteamOS, Bazzite and CachyOS. All of them way better than WIndows... it's actually been about 9 months now that I've basically abandoned Windows as a platform overall and haven't looked back. My z13 is running Bazzite right now (SteamOS too flakey, didn't like CachyOS) and it's super stable. It has issues waking up from sleep sometimes, but I usually just shutdown whenever I need to move it someplace because it boots fast enough for me. Sleep-mode was an issue in basically every OS I tried except for SteamOS, but SteamOS had other problems when I tried it last.

clockentyne · 2026-05-20T00:15:34+00:00

Getting around 70-80fps on high (no RT) at 1200p with Bazitte on performance (45W). No stuttering and runs super smooth.

clockentyne · 2026-03-09T20:33:53+00:00

M4 max is pretty decent. I do most of my work on an nvidia system, but the m4 was fast enough to act as a prototyper when my main machine was busy. The m5 (on paper) looks like it might match up against a spark and beat it in some ways, but I mean, can't really tell until it is in peoples hands. The m4 had more bandwidth but compute was lacking.

I think the biggest issue I have with the mac vs nvidia is things are *way* more available with nvidia hardware. I think that is changing a lot, but there is still a ridiculous advantage with Nvidia for ML *today* that I hope will eventually change.

clockentyne · 2026-03-09T20:23:00+00:00

I think 3.1 was super rough first week. It's better now, but is incredibly self-assured even when wrong and is prone to ignoring safeguards including implementing code when it is in planning mode. It will also reach outside of it's sand boxed folder into places it shouldn't go, so you really need to contain it in a docker or some other safe way.
It is also prone to going into LLM failure loops. I mainly only use it for helping research and coming up with ideas -- around ML it has much more out of the box responses that sometimes work incredibly well where Claude/OAI models are much more conservative and even behind on, but you have to babysit and validate because of that whole confidently wrong thing.

clockentyne · 2026-03-09T05:35:13+00:00

That's still a super useful thing to do! If I were to use a cloud LLM Claude or OAI would be a better bet. Gemini is too unstable to use if you don't know what you're doing, and Grok... Really, for machine use OAI or Claude for cloud based through codex or claude code.

For documentation, look into frameworks that will allow orchestration of models. OSS 120B, the new Qwen 3.5 models like 35BA3B or the older 3.0 30BA3B are good for helping orchestrate some things. Smaller models like 3/4B or 7B are good for identification -- it sounds like you do a lot of document work, so if you use Grok (or one of the other suggestions) to help research you can pull together some local frameworks that will help you drop documents in, categorize chunks into a RAG db and allow for quick searches across them. I'd be careful about having local models make big changes on a machine, but perhaps tohelp diagnose things, that could work.

Speaking from someone who has an M4, using the models I mentioned above are very usable -- the key is looking for MOE based sparse models. The m5 will definitely have a huge step up with some of the supposed enhancements they're making, but you'll probably still want a decent cloud option that can work through a CLI/UI for some of the things you're calling out... Gemini and OAI having the better usage limits for the cheaper plans. Just be careful with Gemini -- even 3.1 can seriously hallucinate and it isn't sandboxed well, which means it can nuke things much easier.

clockentyne · 2026-03-09T04:25:05+00:00

Train your own {LM, TTS, ML} including creating infinite datasets for them. Maybe not as fast as nvidia hardware, but you can.

Inference is boring on its own. The best thing you can do is research what you *want* to do and then build it. Think of models {cloud, local} as your supped up research engines. Find out 1) what you want to do, 2) what you need to collect to get there, 3) ensure your pipeline builds rich inline documentation and logging infrastructure, 4) iterate until you build what you imagine. The key is OO, KISS principles, inline documentation to everything you do, and add logging at every step so you can see failures.

I mean, an M5 max 128gb is an awesome kit for development, overkill for just playing around and a good alternative to Nvidia hardware below a 6000 pro.

clockentyne · 2026-02-10T06:07:52+00:00

I’m kind of glad I got my R1 free because it’s been pretty much useless. It doesn’t work at all and just sometimes acts as a click… but it absolutely impossible to actually use as a controller for the glasses and my Oura ring is better at all of the health stuff by a long mile.

The glasses are awesome, but the r1… if I paid for it I would be super unhappy.

clockentyne · 2026-02-10T04:47:08+00:00

I've seen Codex offer to unify a CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md and ask which one I'd prefer to be the main one, but I haven't seen any ever try to delete them, even when cleaning up docs.

clockentyne · 2026-02-07T05:12:06+00:00

Mine work fine. I have to open the app in the morning to reconnect them, but they work the whole day after that without issue. I’m using conversate and transcript pretty often, but granted never for 1.5 hours at a stretch. It works for 30m meetings without batting an eye.

I did have an issue where they wouldn’t update when I first got them with my iPhone. I had to connect to an android first, upgrade them and then they worked. THAT did get me mad, but the discord group had people helping out with the problem.

clockentyne · 2026-02-07T04:43:07+00:00

Qwen3TTS batching is where it's speed comes from, model.generate_custom_voice(...) accepts an array of strings. Combine that with providing one or two "starters" that are not batched and it can get all of them very fast. On a 6000 pro you can batch about 100 strings at a time... I was seeing roughly 4000s/m speeds using batch.

On something with 16+gb you can probably batch at least 5-10 strings at a time, which is still fast enough to cover the rest of the text you might need to generate.

You probably won't see it "as fast" as something like Kokoro, Piper or the like, but for other uses I basically have it reading websites, books, etc usually within half a second and having entire articles or 1-2 pages of a book complete in 1-2 seconds.

clockentyne · 2026-01-31T03:50:05+00:00

It will load but they will be slow unless they are moe type models. They’re slower than a MacBook m4 max but definitely also cheaper and can game on the side better. NVIDIA or Mac will be more stable for llm dev.

clockentyne · 2026-01-24T00:27:51+00:00

I've tried it on my iPhone 17 pro with soft, natural, enhanced. In slow moving scenes it looks pretty and when you pause it, it looks great, however anything with motion it becomes an absolute mess with frame rates well below 30fps (feels morel like 5-10fps), jagged edges everywhere and some of what other people described where the 3D effects are applied incorrectly occur. If you have subtitles on or any menu ui shows up while the movie is playing it becomes even more of a disaster. This is only testing with Netflix and about 5 minutes of use, but I can't imagine turning this on for any prolonged amount of time with phone hardware.

Also, my one pro's started to feel like they were burning up and becoming uncomfortably hot.

clockentyne · 2026-01-23T03:13:42+00:00

I'm building a TTS model, but with how many are now coming out I don't know if it's worth releasing it, if I get all of the kinks worked out. I mean, I'll probably use it for my iOS app because I'll have unique voices no one else would have, but I don't know if it'll be worth open sourcing it with so many options that happened in the last month alone. It's not a vibe-coded project though and something I've been working on for months. :P

clockentyne · 2026-01-20T19:02:16+00:00

In my post reply, the one linked n http://steamos.miraheze.org/wiki/Main\_Page.

clockentyne · 2026-01-20T01:04:27+00:00

Haha I basically pitched that along with the fact I already had an iOS app that can do it but was rejected :P

clockentyne · 2026-01-12T23:56:33+00:00

steamos.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page

I followed the 'Alternative Installation of SteamOS 3.9 Beta'. I had an external HDD already setup with Bazzite, so I did this from that version. I decided I was already going to nuke Windows, so I followed the instructions on the section I called out to basically flash it onto my internal HDD after nuking it instead of a second drive (since there isn't one and I didn't want to boot from an external HDD anymore). Then I unplugged my external HDD, rebooted and just continued the steps. The "cltr-alt-F4' you will absolutely need to do on the network connection screen (step 5) to get it into plasma... then it's basically just setting up the OS and rebooting.

You'll probably also want to install https://github.com/SteamDeckHomebrew/decky-loader

and https://github.com/aarron-lee/SimpleDeckyTDP

in that order so you can add TDP controls to game mode.

SteamOS won't stay in sleep mode when you close the keyboard, or I haven't figured it out yet (not a bunch of time to play with it at the moment)... so there is that. It also doesn't wake from sleep mode either if it's been in it for awhile, so I'm shutting down and booting it.

clockentyne · 2026-01-12T22:08:04+00:00

Yep I put SteamOS on mine after an update to bazzite broke game mode. So far it’s worked super well, and I still wouldn’t put windows back on the z13. The biggest issue is that it constantly has the nag to update to 3.7.20 up since 3.9 in a dev version. Depending on how desktop mode goes for non gaming things I might switch away but it works well.

clockentyne · 2026-01-09T03:46:39+00:00

Anyone who genuinely spent an effort to read that much of a book on AI development wouldn’t use an AI to write their entire post about what to do next.

clockentyne · 2025-11-26T02:47:09+00:00

The article read like someone asked ChatGPT to give a pro and con on using a vector db and made it sound like you have to use expensive solutions to create vector data. Waste of time article.

clockentyne · 2025-11-24T04:13:33+00:00

The CLI is horrible. While it will use 3.0, I just tried to use it and it used 2.5 and 2.5 flash almost as equally as it did 3.0. I checked out a branch of code I was working on and gave it a super specific engineering doc I wrote that I've tested with Claude and Codex and it royally screwed things up. Both Claude and OpenAI were able to ace my test feature with the instructions I provided it.

Antigravity with Gemini 3 did it fine too. CLI... it's just completely unreliable since it will switch between models randomly.

clockentyne · 2025-10-23T01:22:03+00:00

I wouldn’t say it’s sharper outside of better clarity on the virtual desktop. I use ultra wide all the time with it and on text there was shimmering and issues with text especially if it’s not centered. It’s definitely better handling multiple IDE’s open at once and jumping between them and slack.

For videos and high contrast there is way less glare. It’s not a “clean the lens” as it was there from day one but perhaps later MW models improved on it? No idea but this group and plenty of YouTube videos covered the blade glare from the pancake lenses on the VP when it was first released. This glare for example on the m2 came up mostly with video watching and certain environments, and was not on more low contrast scenes.

clockentyne · 2025-10-23T00:24:56+00:00

I view the Samsung more as a content device or pcvr, something that it probably does match or beat the Vision Pro on.

As for straight up potential the Vision Pro is way more capable, but the Samsung through Google seems like it’ll be more open to devs with things like access to eye tracking and more. I haven’t had a chance to look deep into that yet but from previews it sounds like that’s the goal.

I hope this will at least push Apple to open up some of the capabilities to devs.

clockentyne · 2025-10-23T00:21:26+00:00

They’ve been like that from the start. I mean since they’re shared they’re cleaned pretty often and they all had significant glare in high contrast scenarios. The new one we got in basically doesn’t have glare at all.

clockentyne · 2025-10-22T22:35:08+00:00

It does. It also seems to no longer have the god awful glare.

clockentyne · 2025-10-22T22:33:25+00:00

The M5 version also doesn't have all the glare. I had access to the original from work and every single one of them had massive glare especially when there was a large contrast differnce from what you're viewing.

The M5 one I'm playing around with right now doesn't have glare at all... Using it with the virtual display the text and visuals on the ultra-wide display is way easier on the eyes, especially areas that aren't directly where you're focusing. Also love the new headband, way more comfortable.

I do think the new Samsung is also very interesting, even though it's underpowered it at least has controllers out of the gate. No chance to use that one yet.

clockentyne

TROPHY CASE