i dont know what all the hype is with gemini 2.5, at least the currently running instance. from my experience at least in conversation mode, it cannot remember my instructions to avoid apologies and similar platitudes from either the “persona”, personal instructions, or from ine message to the next.
saw this post last night and tbh thought it a bit weird since initially it was described by author as “alternative to emailing yourself” - like, really? after 20 years of dropbox? the countless competitors it spawned, including OSS as well as by all major email providers???
came back curious to see if the discussion took a different direction from besides sarcasm or another 30 posts saying “why not syncthing?” - glad to see the couple to comments including OP and yours as constructive.
that being said, i’m a syncthing user, including running my own (st) discovery server on openwrt. aside from some annoyance at rather frequent conflicts and being browser based, im running it on all 5 major OSs, including ios (mobius sync) and android.
i strongly disagree that running it on a phone is a pain, and in fact, found it the most reliable and versatile sync solution for ios by far - and that includes icloud, dropbox, google drive and google photos.
the only thing that comes close is apple photos, but that’s specifically for photos. and that too, only because of the deep os integration, ie always running in the background and allowing seamless access to older photos that are not on device. even then, there’s always a mysterious slight difference in # of items reported on the mac vs the phone - “eventual consistency”, where “eventual” is t=infinity i suppose.
tramp is great. all the other mentioned solutions are nowhere near as seamless for “just do what i want, without distractions”.
vscode? “trust me bro, i will run a networked daemon on your server”. enjoy wondering which plugins to reinstall on your remote. enjoy installing proprietary shareware+telemetry plugins just to use git. try opening a local file and a remote file side by side in the same window. wifi connection broke for a sec? oops, you have to refresh the whole browser window.
want to edit a single file on a host you rarely connect to? enjoy spending 10 minutes setting up autosync solutions.
with any of the above - oops, you actually need sudo for that file in /etc? yeah, drop to shell and edit in vim.
there are other options to do stuff and for very specific predefined workflows they may win, but the versatility of tramp is still unmatched, especially if you do use emacs.
the only times ive had issues is when i have a weird shell setup on the remote - for that there is /sshx: instead of /ssh:
Not sure how you can compare vscode with TRAMP. A lot of dev work nowdays is done in containers where you install specific versions of dev tools, compilers, etc. Vscode is one click from seamlessly working inside such a container with its dev tools. TRAMP doesn't provide anything like that, right?
> What about mounting a remote file system over sftp?
That can be OK for some tasks, but not others. For example, TRAMP will execute commands on the remote; so commands like M-x find-grep-dired will be faster when using TRAMP.
> Install EMACS or whatever editor you prefer on the remote?
There's actually a lot of flexibility there, since Emacs is perfectly usable in a text terminal, which could be run over SSH; it can also show X11 windows over the network (though I recommend the "lucid" build, rather than GTK); and it also has a client/server mode.
installing an editor on the remote sure works - my mention of vim was not an accident, it is my preferred remote editor. some of us are bitextual ;-) - but then you lose the seamless remote+local editing, need to sync your config, potentially clash with someone else’s (ever ssh into ubuntu@awshost?), take special care not to sync any private stuff, etc.
as for sftp, unfortunately that’s not an option if you happen to use windows locally eg for work reasons, nor if you use a mac as of several years now, since fuse became closed source.
not to mention, again, the fact that you are limited to whatever root you decided to mount, limited to editing as a user that i’ve already mentioned, as well as limited from using remote tools as sibling stated. try making a git commit over sftp.
if you have a focused “working on a project” workflow it may work, otherwise PITA
I suppose I fail to see the advantages because I have never had a need to keep remote and local synced as I go. Its always been work on local and sync to remote, with editing on a remote for very specific and limited things.
i was replying to “install your preferred editor on the remote” - without syncing your config, you might as well just use vim even if it’s not your favorite.
most of my remote editing fits into your description. of course, if you’re not an emacs user, you likely won’t find much value in tramp, magit, org-mode, dired, ediff, eshell, etc
this is already happening in full force. sota models are already poisoned. leading providers already push their own products inside webchat system prompts.
g has been demanding a valid phone for years, as have most other major providers. if you lose the number you sign up with, you can potentially get locked out of the account. whats your mo?
I lost my hotmail account I had for years due to losing my phone number. My boss at one point said he would pay for me to have a cell phone, not for work purposes or to contact me just as a perk of working there hey here is a personal cell phone on me so you don't have to pay for one.
All good and he let me get the first iphone that came to Canada the 3g and it was awesome. Left that job years later and didn't think far ahead enough that I needed that phone number to get into my account should I have an issue. Well I did and tried all the recovery methods with no luck. Sad thing is I still get occasional emails forwarded from that account, haven't seen one in a long while but was still getting them for years. Hurts a lot to have lost it. The screw up that compounded my loss was I guess I was paranoid about giving my personal information online back in the day. So my name I used was John Fokendoe. And some made up birthday. So I could not remember all the info I entered and years and years lost.
For my google I downloaded the backup codes in Case I lose access to my phone. They sit in a folder safe and there if I ever need to recover the account.
I currently have three actively used gmail accounts that all date from the initial "word of mouth" referral from another user days. I once had many gmail accounts that I spun up for a project mapping spam to disposable accounts, etc.
Not one of these emails ever had a phone number attached. The current gmail accounts I use also have no phone number associated, whenever I'm asked to attach a phone number for recovery or security I decline.
As none of these were ever signed up from a phone number there's no phone number to lose, in the event of a security challenge I verify from an associated gmail account.
There's little to no trace of my birth certificate name, phone number, actual address of my house, etc. on the internet .. the few people who do push through on that kind of back tracking invariably end up with a relative or a different but similar West Australian.
Their own policies place a limit on how "demanding" they can be.
Initializing a new (or power-washed) android/ChromeOS device _requires_ a Google account, so if you don't have one (or claim not to) they device initialization process will generate a new Google account for you. Even if there's no phone number or SIM card in the device.
I've had a number of Android/ChromeOS devices over the years, and I've had each one generate a new Google account. None of these accounts have phone numbers associated with them.
I generally don't use these accounts for much more than downloading free apps from the Google Play store -- maybe more extensive use would trigger a "You must add a phone number to this account to proceed"?
Initializing a new (or power-washed) android/ChromeOS device _requires_ a Google account
It's been a while since I've had to look at Android in any detail, but I remember that not being necessary, and a quick search online suggests that to still be the case today.
Interestingly, your phone number is actually not stored on the SIM card. It instead holds a globally unique ICCID number which your operator links to your account (phone number) on their systems.
This actually makes it possible to transfer your phone number between SIM cards or even operators, and means your cell phone is blissfully unaware of its own phone number.
Not sure how it looks in USA, but in EU you can get a prepaid SIM card for $2 and use it forever for cases like this. You'll probably have to top it up with another $1-2 if used sparingly, but that's the price of such separation.
Where in the EU? The best I've found in Ireland requires adding €5 of prepaid credit at least every six months to prevent the number from being deactivated. As of yet, I have not managed to automate it.
Can't definitely find it, but in Orange Poland prepaid offer it costs ~$7 (29 PLN) to prolong the account for 365 days (regardless whether it is topped up or not), but it has to be activated manually, it is not the "normal" way to use a prepaid plan tbh.
haven’t used claude code directly, but at least through copilot ive seen it read my makefile, extract the command, and run it directly after modifications. telling it to use make helped, but wasn’t perfect
i guess im the one guy left that has neither
edit:quote