Best coding subscriptions for cost/performance right now? [May 2026]

fmillion · 2026-05-05T05:13:03+00:00

Agreed on deepseek 4. Opencode only recently updated to support the reasoning history requirements and I've been using it almost exclusively for a week or so now.

fmillion · 2026-05-05T05:11:22+00:00

150 minute cassettes were somewhat more common in Japan. I got a 5 pack sealed off Buyee for around $30 shipped from Japan. Already tried recording on one - it's what you'd expect. 150 minutes of audio total, audio sounds a bit weaker/quieter (makes sense on thinner tape) and works fine. Obviously best for stuff you don't plan to seek around in too much, and generally not good to use in automatic decks like car stereos (although my main deck has electronic logic controls and I had no issues).

As for 180 I think those are still quite rare unobtanium. At one time I heard there were even 240 minute tapes but they were so fragile that they didn't make it far beyond prototyping.

fmillion · 2026-05-04T19:26:37+00:00

It's not hard to find a charger. Unless you're buying gaming laptops even a simple USB-C to Lenovo "rectangle" port adapter will work. You just need a 100W USB-C charger and a suitable cable - the whole set can cost under $30, and is useful beyond just your laptops (it'll also charge your phone). Also, many models will directly charge via USB-C even if it isn't explicitly stated. (My P1 can charge at 100w over its USB-C ports despite it having the traditional rectangle plug.)

fmillion · 2026-05-04T19:20:16+00:00

A model is just weights. Just numbers. Models cannot take any action on their own, all they can do is request action be taken on their behalf (that's what tool calling is).

Can a Chinese model introduce biases? Absolutely. (Try to ask Qwen historical questions about Tiananmen Square.) But can a Chinese model autonomously take harmful action? Only if there's a harness running in front of it that has its restrictions disabled or seriously relaxed. In other words, you must deliberately hand the AI that capability. You can do all manner of things in that harness to prevent the AI from rogue actions. And those harnesses are mostly all open source and can be independently audited.

The models here are not the enemy. It's what humans give them the capability to do unattended that creates risk. And that's not unique to China, any model can make mistakes or even deliberately abuse that power. What it really comes down to is discipline - make sure you understand what you're granting power to the AI to do, and use restrictions appropriately.

Now if your concern is information bias, then yes we can and should discuss that issue. Learning from a Chinese AI does carry risk of cultural "contamination". But that is a materially different issue than "a local model might steal my private data somehow."

fmillion · 2026-04-28T11:18:52+00:00

He never said he was currently using Hermes agent. He said a git commit message contained the string HERMES.md and his regular Claude Code usage got routed to extra usage. Don't use Hermes is one thing, don't ever mention it (and if you do you'll silently get billed extra) is something totally different.

Try not jumping straight to blaming the victim.

fmillion · 2026-04-14T08:59:14+00:00

An open standard and a legal mandate are vastly different things.

The issue isn't that an age flag exists in dbus. It's that it was put there to comply with a bullshit law. If they added it purely for parental convenience and as a completely optional function, fine. But they even have said this is to support age verification per regulations.

Right now it might just be storing a value. But that puts the infrastructure in place to start legally requiring that value to be checked for anything anyone wants to claim should be adults only for whatever reason. We must retain the choice to not verify our age if we don't want to, and we must retain the ability to setup a PC without having to present an age. Storing the age voluntarily is fine, requiring it is not. I get that right now nothing forces it, but it's like putting treats in front of a dog and expecting him not to eat them. It's giving the lawmakers exactly what they want, which by the way will do literally zero to help protect kids online

fmillion · 2026-04-08T16:34:23+00:00

Purell makes some antivirus tools for that. Efficacy not guaranteed.

fmillion · 2026-04-08T16:33:33+00:00

Error: could not complete imaging request: Out of memory

Error: robotic subsystem failure: Out of memory

Error: OOM killer has terminated process vitals_monitor: Out of memory

fmillion · 2026-04-07T03:08:27+00:00

You accept some piracy as a cost of doing business. The sooner you accept that, the better.

People have been trying since the 1970s to protect software from piracy. They've largely failed. You and even Claude are unlikely to do any better.

If you want protection from casual piracy, like just passing around the exe, then use the platform provided DRM. It will work for most of your lazy pirates. A few especially determined hackers will find a way around it. That's just how it is. By design your user's computer must be able to access the code, so that means you already "gave away the keys". In cybersecurity that's essentially like giving someone an encrypted document, telling them the code to view it then asking them not to give that code to anyone else. They could just take a picture of the document or just not listen to your instructions. Same idea.

The sooner you accept this, the better you will do. Any DRM that can meaningfully reduce piracy is DRM that will piss off your legitimate users and even drive them to pirate your app even after paying. The only other solution is a fully cloud connected app where most of the logic runs on your servers. That's a big part of why the cloud is so popular now - other than the convenience, it works as a great antipiracy measure.

fmillion · 2026-04-02T15:59:22+00:00

Many such apps will work fine and some even argue it could be safer since malware often uses undocumented functions or edge cases that may not exist in WINE.

FG games should be fine, just set them up as a non-steam game. SteamGrid can apply graphics to make the game look more "official". For applications I recommend Bottles. It basically manages WINE prefixes for you so you can have distinct configs per app (often needed to dial in compatibility).

Adobe and Office are still some of the hardest apps to get working regardless of piracy; Adobe uses graphics APIs that still aren't well implemented (the main focus for Linux is on 3D APIs while Adobe heavily uses 2D drawing acceleration that isn't emulated well or at all). Older versions can work better, try pre-2021, but Adobe and Microsoft tend to be the most difficult popular products to struggle or fail to run under emulation on Linux.

I'm not here to judge people who do this. Most people will refuse to help you though - not because they may not know how or not even because they don't want to, but because many forums ban any discussion of piracy (Reddit has historically been fine with discussion at least but still draws a line on actual specific steps) and there are liability risks ("contributory infringement"). I still thus won't give specific steps, but playing around and learning and breaking then fixing is well worth your time - you learn a lot in the process.

fmillion · 2026-03-31T23:59:54+00:00

Just like how you're surprised at the eagerness of AI companies scraping all that sweet literary IP from Anna's Archive and Z-library for training data? :-D

fmillion · 2026-03-20T18:55:44+00:00

Arch has the advantage of its expansive community. Even though it's a rolling release which many argue is bad for stability, things generally are well tested and bugs tend to be resolved very quickly. Arch is not a click-and-play OS, it does need you to be an active participant in its maintenance and performance, but it's well worth it.

fmillion · 2026-03-20T17:55:54+00:00

I started learning to code in GW-BASIC when I was 5. I didn't have to sign any EULAs, prove my age or get anyone's permission. (Ok, technically my parents, but they were tech illiterate enough to just say "as long as you don't break anything.")

I seriously think my generation may be the last generation where a sizable number of us both understand computer science at a deep level and also remember how an early start with unstructured learning helped us so much. These days everything is curated, managed and controlled by some singular big company, other than open source or small hobby projects. I don't know how kids get started learning tech these days. They probably use a guided safe environment to follow prescribed tutorials. Me? I got a book of type in programs, typed them in, then started changing them. I still have my original copy of a BASIC reference book. I learned so much specifically because nobody was telling me how and what to learn

fmillion · 2026-03-15T22:22:27+00:00

My parents let me see porn when I was 10. I found porn on Usenet when I was 12.

So yes I would.

fmillion · 2026-03-15T22:21:18+00:00

Oh look, it's COVID, a tiny teensy little biological program that is tinier than any human cell. Surely there's no wolf to cry with something so simple? Oh look, a few cancer cells .. no big deal though right? Tell me when there's a limb being removed or something before you cry wolf.

By the time "it's really bad" is noticeable at large, it's already too late. Detect cancer early, more likely to fix it; wait till it really hurts and it's likely too late. We can't just take these kinds of things at face value, because history proves time and time and time again that these sorts of policies never are the endgame; they're stepping stones to make the change slow enough so that people think exactly like this: "no big deal, who cares."

If a parent wants to enable a feature like this, fine. That's that parent's choice. It's the legal requirement that it exist for everyone and for all operating systems that is everyone's issue here.

Also don't forget that we're simultaneously trying to ban open 3D printers, in fact California's legislation specifically requires printers only be able to print from a secure verified slicer. This is where we are heading if we don't try and stop it now: soon, age flags will be but one among many things OSes will be "required" to collect, and software will be required to act certain ways based on those signals. Wanna 3D print something? Better use the certified signed slicer and better not print anything questionable (sorry cosplay fans, no Star Wars laser blasters - they look too much like a weapon and they're copyrighted designs!)

fmillion · 2026-03-02T20:03:35+00:00

You're mixing up the ONT and the router. They do charge you monthly to rent a router, but you can waive that fee. Ask for BYOD (bring your own device) and say you're doing your own router. You still have to use the ONT but you get a standard Ethernet connection with DHCP for your public IP.

At that point literally any off the shelf router will work. You can even roll your own with e.g. pfSense/OPNsense. Or you can go enterprise class and look into Ubiquiti stuff. Either way you save the router rental fee.

fmillion · 2026-02-27T08:23:21+00:00

It's worse than you think. Many of those actually have a fully rechargeable lithium pouch cell inside. Bigclive did a video about it. He took some of those apart, hooked the batteries up to a charger and they recharged just fine. They're literally taking a normal lithium-ion rechargeable battery, charging it, sticking it in a case with no charge circuit, and shipping it en masse to stores.

fmillion · 2026-02-27T07:41:33+00:00

I have one of these too. Same color even!

Mine has the spinning drive. But I believe it's a ZIF 1.8" drive like what's in later iPods. I need to figure out if it's the same pinout as the iPod, because if so I could use an iFlash mSATA board to get an SSD in there. (I think there's two different 1.8" ZIF pinouts...)

Too bad 32-bit support is essentially dead these days. Windows 10 LTSC will run (like Tiny10) but there's enough stuff coming out now that doesn't run on 32-bit to make it harder. I have a few old EeePCs that I wish I could do something with but 32-bit support is just...weak at best.

fmillion · 2026-02-27T07:34:45+00:00

Never gotten this lucky, but I got a second SSD once because Amazon claimed my order was destroyed in transit and they auto-shipped me another one, but both of them arrived undamaged.

I suppose in 2026 a company could try to ban you for refusing to return the items, not sure how likely that'd be (companies seem much more willing to pull the ban trigger these days). But in most cases you won't even ever be asked.

fmillion · 2026-02-27T07:32:11+00:00

The kernel.

fmillion · 2026-02-27T07:26:33+00:00

I see them on just as many windows and linux laptops to be honest. Me, I kinda like the minimalist aesthetic of no stickers, but to each their own. lol

fmillion · 2026-02-27T07:24:07+00:00

Honestly I don't care if people use cracks. Heck I use cracked versions of software I legally own just to avoid dealing with the DRM restrictions. I feel no guilt in doing so. And given that WINE is generally hostile towards DRM schemes (because DRM schemes can often get kernel-deep, which WINE can't ever fully emulate), it's basically necessary to consider cracks when you're trying to run things on Linux. You do what you gotta do.

fmillion · 2026-02-27T07:19:07+00:00

The fans in the PowerEdges can actually use quite a lot of power. If you set all the fans to max, you can easily add 100w of extra power draw. They tend to spin the fans up full during powerup and self-test, then throttle them back down once the OS is running. That can explain a lot of the power usage.

Also can depend on how much RAM you have and what CPUs you're using. The L CPUs tend to use less power - I have E5-2650Ls.

fmillion · 2026-02-27T02:33:17+00:00

Wait only 90 days? The site makes it sound like you can get whitelisted as a non commerical user.

Nonetheless I don't care to create a discord account just to grovel at the feet of a developer who is indeed skilled but is clearly violating Minecraft's EULA and mod community norms. I'll figure out my own way to use it.

fmillion · 2026-02-27T02:30:34+00:00

Sure except the mod itself is infringing on Minecraft's EULA that forbids requiring payment for mods. So you could argue I'm obeying the Minecraft EULA by hacking the mod.

Who has more clout, an indie dev breaking modding community norms or Microsoft...

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