I think picking up people at the bar is easier than making friends at the gym - what you want is to join a crossfit gym, or something that has a stronger community culture to it. Not the gym.

But I hear that with Gen Z and Alpha they dont really go to bars but they do tend to go to the gym, and so the gym is becoming a more social space. So maybe OP is on the right track?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/15/why-gym-plac...

at least in the US, gen alpha wouldn't really be allowed in any bars which is honestly part of the problem

source: I'm on the younger end of gen z and I can't drink yet

> I can't drink yet

being on the older end, I can ASSURE YOU that you do not miss anything if you do not drink/cant drink right now.

Though, it took me some decades to realize this :-(

I think what matters most is that they get out and socialize.

If there is alcohol involved with that, it's a personal choice that I don't think deserves shame unless it's consumed in a shameful way. I would have to assume any adult should know their limits, be resilient against peer pressure, etc.

I would actually argue that the fights you have with yourself regarding addictions are just as much of a rite of passage as the fights you have with others while drunk.

If you so strongly wish you could eliminate negative experiences, you'll eventually have to ask yourself "compared to what?" and realize such a treadmill of misery is your true source of regret, not your actions or the consequences.

There's a pub in my city where the staff greet you when you walk in and actively encourage you to sit at a table that's already occupied. If you come in alone you'll probably end up sitting at a two person table where inevitably there will be a stranger right across from you, with a couple similar tables right next to it. Of course if you want to be alone you can go sit in a corner somewhere.

Needless to say everyone starts talking to each other after a drink or two. This bar is enormously popular. I've never seen it not be packed. It's an incredibly successful strategy for them. With all the complaints about the death of third spaces, I'm baffled that more places don't do this. I see no reason a cafe couldn't do it as well.

All this to say I think it's a great loss that younger people aren't going to bars as much. I wouldn't say they're the best way to form deep connections, but I have zero fear of ever lacking random social interactions, because I know I can just go to a reasonably busy pub in the evening, sit at the bar, and sooner or later either I'll start a conversation or someone else will. It's also a great way to get good at handling opinions that are different from yours - if you have a thin skin or live in a bubble, being subjected to drunk people from every walk of life will rectify those issues quickly lol.

I'm of half Mediterranian heritage and there was an Italian restaurant that I started eating at out of spite at the French one next door where I had a horrible experience. A little commercial strip across the street from a cemetary. Great food, big hearts.

Nobody ever suggested sharing a table, but if you offered and there was a seat available they'd seat you / someone there. They got busier, and the line started going out the door; people were doing this in line, because if you said you had a "full table" they would seat you at a family table and you could often get ahead of at least part of the line.

The French place closed and the Italian place moved downtown. The end.

I didn't end up with any enduring friends, but I met some great people who I shared food with, learned some interesting things. Riding Amtrak in first class (on the Starlight) was similar.

I have a ton of "gym friends." And this is a commercial gym. We know each other's names, will help out with spots, have small conversations. None of those have yet led to hanging out outside the gym, but if you go to the gym at the same time every day, you're bound to at least start to recognize people, and it's really easy to say, hey I've seen you around a lot, my name is...

i think this can also depend on location. I live in a military town and have been a powerlifter for several years, i routinely have men come up to ask about my routine. a handful of times its turned into real friendships.

Bars are a common place, but do you really want to meet the type of person who hangs out in a bar? Sure if you only want a one night stand what they do with the rest of their life doesn't matter. However if you want a relationship you probably don't want to start with a high odds of finding a borderline alcoholic.

You have some rather uncommon prejudice towards people who go to bars. Unless of course your culture is significantly different from mine.

But where I am from: - bars are 'a third place' where people hang regularly without getting wasted - bars serve dozens of different non-alcoholic drinks - most people in the bar are not "looking for a one night stand" but for some socializing, fun, and a chance to meet interesting people

But as I said, maybe your part of the world has bars that attract different clientele.

You don't need to get drunk regularly to be a near alcoholic.

There are a lot of "regulars" in most who need to "get a life". I won't object to those who are visiting once in a while, but there are far more bars everywhere I've been than could exist if people "had a life", my general observation is 5-10% of the population is a regular.

> but do you really want to meet the type of person who hangs out in a bar

Wow, ok. There is a huge space between alcoholic at the bar every night and someone who likes to have a drink with their friends on a Saturday night.

Not all bars have the same "type" of people. Also if you're looking for camaraderie or friendship, it's a pretty good place to have talks of all kind - the silly ones are the best!

But even if I don't drink? Seems like a bar is not a place I would want to go. I know there can be other things to do there than drink, but still.

I find camaraderie is excellent through sports leagues and board game events, stuff like that.

Go to a 'bar' in Italy and people are just as likely to get a coffee as they are wine at night.

Or join something that's inherently a group activity. For me, it's singing in a choir. Everybody goes there to do something together with other folk, which lowers the barrier.

Second this. CrossFit is fantastic for community. Not so sure about my knees though!

I love coffee, so this is a nice read. Couple years ago I switched to french press, fresh beans (grind on demand) & no milk or sugar - okay, a dash of full cream milk sometimes. Has to be strong - you can't drink weak coffee like that!

We initially looked into using shadcn/radix - but it's quite bloated. Maybe even warranted with all the a11y accommodations - even the official W3C ARIA examples are not straightforward (most of the time).

Yea, was wondering this too.

For all of the Apple hate recently (with glass + MacOS bugs) - it's still great to be able to invest in high quality hardware. I made the switch to Mac, oh about 12 yrs ago, and sometimes forget how spoilt we are with really tight hardware + software integration.

Apple hardware isn't exceptional, it's maybe slightly above average, sometimes, and still costs more than it should - even the neo with its paltry 8GB of RAM. Apple has had plenty of hardware problems and design foibles. So many.

Their software is equally average in most respects, and has a far smaller market share worldwide across all form factors they support.

iOS is the reason I'll never own another iPad.

I mean, it's fine that you like it, but "spoilt" seems like an exaggeration.

> Apple hardware isn't exceptional, it's maybe slightly above average

Is this a serious statement? If Apple's hardware is maybe slightly above average - what's above it? It's an easy company to hate on - but you don't have any other platform integrated as well as Apple's right now IMO. Unless you maybe count Huawei.

Edit: I think I may be referring more to the holistic picture. But still curious what hardware you think is better.

The "holistic" picture is still crap, unless you like being trapped in a walled garden. I don't.

Apple hardware and software has always been a small worldwide market share, it's just not as popular or as good as the fanboys think it is. For many people it's simply a status symbol and not a real tool for doing anything more than getting to have a blue bubble in text messages so the other fanboys won't laugh at you.

Oh, Apple Silicon you say? Every single test of it is done before thermal throttling kicks in, cutting performance to a fraction of what the peak is. So yeah, you get great performance for about 5 minutes, and then it goes to shit.

We've had to sue Apple in a class action over their faulty hardware, and we won. We just retired our last MBP, and good riddance. It was just so flaky and wouldn't play nice other systems on the network - and I used to be a Mac Sysadmin, so I'm not an idiot with this stuff.

We own Apple stock and would never buy another Apple product again. Fortunately fools and their money are soon parted, so we'll keep making money off them.

Yeah, no way that is a serious statement. My Macbook Air from 2011 still works perfectly, and the original iPhone that I found stashed inside one of my dad's cabinets charged, turned on without issues and was fully usable as well. That's a device that's almost two decades old. If that's not hardware quality, I don't know what is.

Apple had to replace the motherboard in our MBP 7 times before they told us the next repair would cost us $1200. So we sued them in a class action, and we won.

We own Apple stock, and I've worked as a Mac SysAdmin and we'll never buy another Apple product.

Antenna-gate ("you're holding it wrong"), the "magic mouse" with the charging port on the bottom, the shitty keyboard problems, screen problems, etc, etc... Apple misses the mark a lot on its hardware.

Only someone firmly in the grasp of the reality distortion field will claim that Apple hardware is superior.

> Is this a serious statement? If Apple's hardware is maybe slightly above average - what's above it?

The only hardware I can think of that's consistently higher-quality than Apple is niche stuff at a much higher price point.

e.g. the Seneca keyboard, Sennheiser Orpheus headphones, etc.

I am forced to use a MacBook for work and I think it is shit. I partucularly abhor its reflective screen and the toy keyboard. I hate that it has only 4 usbc ports that force me to have a dongle.

I can't fathom why people like that crap apart from looking slick.

Mac OS is shit, and I would unironically prefer to be forced to use Windows at work.

Style over substance. Pure crap to me.

Same here. When I was presented with a MBP at work, I promptly installed Windows on it. I'm not saying Windows is something amazing, but it's better than the toy OS that is MacOS, and Linux simply wasn't an option at work (Devops/Security does not support Linux). I also then plug in my own keyboard and mouse, and external monitor so I don't have to use the subpar keyboard or look at that crap glossy screen.

Now that they ditched Intel, I have even less use for them. Fortunately my current job sends me whatever hardware I want (but I still can't use Linux at work).

The hardware is great, but it has been crippled by the software. That still makes it a bad product, imho.

Am I missing something - what's with the "tribe" terminology?

It's part of Spotify model, here is a blog article explaining it: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale/spotify

EDIT: Just like Agile, it's poorly implemented at most companies and can lead to a ton of fighting due to multiple reporting arrows coming off employees.

I once interviewed with a company that organised their people into four "tribes". The company culture was pretty odd, and I fortunately managed to bomb the in-person interview. Now I know where they got the idea from.

Yea, it's a very odd way of referring to people you work with.

My immediate assocation with the term would be 'tribalism' so a lot of in-fighting seems on-brand.

Thanks!

It’s a way of signaling to new hires that your culture is all messed up, similar to having a cutesy name for employees.

Giving an agent this level of access to infra is doing a disservice to people who've trusted this guy with their business.

Let it go. This is clearly a vibe-coded site, the fonts, layout, all look anthroposized. If Mythos was really so good, then they would not share it with anyone.

Some good points, but as a whole - I'm not sure if I agree. Sketch lost to Figma because of it's design tooling & multiplayer. Physical products still get designed before being constructed - I don't see that going away. If anything, I think Figma should stop trying to play both sides of the field and decide what it wants to be.

> Sketch lost to Figma because of it's design tooling & multiplayer.

Or maybe because you could just send a Figma link to anyone in your org and it opened in the browser vs having to tell them to download some Mac app and open a specific file that will get outdated over time.

Correct, though I believe the parent comment covered that under the broad interpretation of “multiplayer”

Any recommendations on good open ones? What are you using primarily?

LMArena actually has a nice Pareto distribution of ELO vs price for this

  model                        elo   $/M
  ---------------------------------------
  glm-5.1                      1538  2.60
  glm-4.7                      1440  1.41
  minimax-m2.7                 1422  0.97
  minimax-m2.1-preview         1392  0.78
  minimax-m2.5                 1386  0.77
  deepseek-v3.2-thinking       1369  0.38
  mimo-v2-flash (non-thinking) 1337  0.24

https://arena.ai/leaderboard/code?viewBy=plot&license=open-s...

LMArena isn't very useful as a benchmark, however I can vouch for the fact that GLM 5.1 is astonishingly good. Several people I know who have a $100/mo Claude Code subscription are considering cancelling it and going all in on GLM, because it's finally gotten (for them) comparable to Opus 4.5/6. I don't use Opus myself, but I can definitely say that the jump from the (imvho) previous best open weight model Kimi K2.5 to this is otherworldly — and K2.5 was already a huge jump itself!

qwen3.5/3.6 (30B) works well,locally, with opencode

Mind you, a 30B model (3B active) is not going to be comparable to Opus. There are open models that are near-SOTA but they are ~750B-1T total params. That's going to require substantial infrastructure if you want to use them agentically, scaled up even further if you expect quick real-time response for at least some fraction of that work. (Your only hope of getting reasonable utilization out of local hardware in single-user or few-users scenarios is to always have something useful cranking in the background during downtime.)

For a business with ten or more engineers/people-using-ai, it might still make sense to set this up. For an individual though, I can’t imagine you’d make it through to positive ROI before the hardware ages out.

It's hard to tell for sure because the local inference engines/frameworks we have today are not really that capable. We have barely started exploring the implications of SSD offload, saving KV-caches to storage for reuse, setting up distributed inference in multi-GPU setups or over the network, making use of specialty hardware such as NPUs etc. All of these can reuse fairly ordinary, run-of-the-mill hardware.

Since you need at least a few of H100 class hardware, I guess you need at least few tens of coders to justify the costs.

I see the 512GB Mac Studios aren’t for sale anymore but that was a much cheaper path

I'm backing up a big dataset onto tapes, so I wanted to automate it. I have an idle 64Gb VRAM setup in my basement, so I decided to experiment and tasked it with writing an LTFS implementation. LTFS is an open standard for filesystems for tapes, and there's an implementation in C that can be used as the baseline.

So far, Qwen 3.6 created a functionally equivalent Golang implementation that works against the flat file backend within the last 2 days. I'm extremely impressed.

It is surprisingly competent. It's not Opus 4.6 but it works well for well structured tasks.

What near SOTA open models are you referring to?

I want to bump this more than just a +1 by recommending everyone try out OpenCode. It can still run on a Codex subscription so you aren’t in fully unfamiliar territory but unlocks a lot of options.

The Codex TUI harness is also open source and you can use open models with it, so you can stay in even more familiar territory.

pi-coding-agent (pi.dev) is also great. I've been using it with Gemma 4 and Qwen 3.6.

The thing I dislike about OpenCode is the lack of capabilities of their editor, also, resource intensive, for some reason on a VM it chuckles each 30 mins, that I need to discard all sessions, commits, etc.

I don't know if it is bun related, but in task manager, is the thing that is almost at the top always on CPU usage, turns out for me, bun is not production ready at all.

Wish Zed editor had something like BigPickle which is free to use without limits.

> turns out for me, bun is not production ready

What issue did you run into?

Is this sort of setup tenable on a consumer MBP or similar?

Qwen’s 30B models run great on my MBP (M4, 48GB) but the issue I have is cooling - the fan exhaust is straight onto the screen, which I can’t help thinking will eventually degrade it, given the thermal cycling it would go through. A Mac Studio makes far more sense for local inference just for this reason alone.

For a 30B model, you want at least 20GB of VRAM and a 24GB MBP can’t quite allocate that much of it to VRAM. So you’d want at least a 32GB MBP.

I have 24GB VRAM available and haven't yet found a decent model or combination. Last one I tried is Qwen with continue, I guess I need to spend more time on this.

Is there any model that practically compares to Sonnet 4.6 in code and vision and runs on home-grade (12G-24G) cards?

im currently running a custom Gemma4 26b MoE model on my 24gb m2... super fast and it beat deepseek, chatgpt, and gemini in 3 different puzzles/code challenges I tested it on. the issue now is the low context... I can only do 2048 tokens with my vram... the gap is slowly closing on the frontier models

I haven’t tried this myself yet but you would still need enough non-vram ram available to the cpu to offload to cpu, right? This is a fully novice question, I have not ever tried it.

You're correct. If you don't have enough RAM for the model, it can still run but most of it will run on the CPU and be continuously reloaded from the SSD (through mmap).

A medium MoE like 35B can still achieve usable speeds in that setup, mind you, depending on what you're doing.

The Mac Minis (probably 64GB RAM) are the most cost effective.

How are you running it with opencode, any tips/pointers on the setup?

GLM 5.1 via an infra provider. Running a competent coding capable model yourself isn't viable unless your standards are quite low.

What infra providers are there?

There's DeepInfra. There's also OpenRouter where you can find several providers.

I am using GLM 5.1 and MiniMax 2.7.