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ianberdin

525 karma · joined January 11, 2020

https://x.com/ianberdin

Founder of https://playcode.io - ai app builder.

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ianberdin··on WTF Ubuntu?
I also ran into this problem. But it's possible to install an untested Linux kernel, and that fully solves the problem. As for Ubuntu — yes, it's terrible. Fortunately, there's a workaround.
ianberdin··on Tell HN: GitHub refuses to remove cracked copies of my software after a month
I personally know Ivan. For many years of his life, every day, he programmed algorithm after algorithm in this complex online photo editing tool. Essentially, he devoted half his life to it. And now, when someone has literally stolen his work, nobody is reacting. And that's terrible. I think it's absolutely terrible. GitHub should respond to this.

I've seen people on Reddit writing things like, "Come on, what's the big deal? AI can write any code now." I disagree. There are hundreds of thousands of lines of code here, very complex code, which even AI wouldn't be able to write on the first try or in a single day. So this person stole this code from Photopea and built a product on top of it.

ianberdin··on Claude Opus 5.5
Best cost for a good result on our MacBook Pro SVG benchmark.

https://playcode.io/blog/macbook-svg-benchmark#model-claude-...

Btw, we have added Opus 5.5 as default model to playcode.ai

ianberdin··on Show HN: Pelican-bicycle alternatives
https://playcode.io/blog/macbook-svg-benchmark

MacBook Pro 3D in SVG for me the most helpful one.

ianberdin··on Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously
What worries me most are questions like this: these autonomous AI employees or automations - it doesn't change the essence - consume a lot of LLM tokens. Please tell me, how do you pay for this? Do you use, for example, the Anthropic or OpenAI API directly, or do you connect, for example, a Codex subscription?
ianberdin··on My personal AI benchmark: “Generate an SVG of a frog with a Habsburg jaw”
Check out my MacBook SVG benchmark. From my experience, it demonstrates the Real model’s behavior. However, I notice the errors it makes, which are similar to the mistakes made by the mistake model in code.

https://playcode.io/blog/macbook-svg-benchmark

ianberdin··on Karpathy’s Pelican
Anyway, only Opus 5 Max and Fable 5 XHigh + Max make a good-looking Mac.
ianberdin··on Karpathy’s Pelican
I still believe my bench is superior to Pelican or Karpathy’s.

Everyone knows how a MacBook looks. Any missing or incorrect detail will be obvious. However, Pelican or this world can be anything.

https://playcode.io/blog/macbook-svg-benchmark

ianberdin··on CodePen 2.0
Congratulations, Chris! I’ve always been competing with you, and many users came to Playcode from Codepen. In fact, I even offered to buy playcode.io about 9-10 years ago, but you didn’t respond and 1-2 months later you released a copy product named Codepen Projects.
ianberdin··on Show HN: Kedge – Full-stack cloud with forkable VM snapshots and global SQLite
Fun fact: we also built our cloud platform based on Fly.io’s ideas, but we supercharged it with a custom Rust filesystem.

This platform powers full-stack applications for business users, including Playcode.ai.

For more information about our cloud platform, visit: https://playcode.io/cloud

ianberdin··on Scriptc by Vercel: TypeScript-to-Native compiler, no JavaScript engine in binary
I've heard stories like this before, how one or a few people miraculously coded up an alternative to Node.js. But can you name even one that actually works properly in production? Not a single one.

Take Bun, for example. Nobody is actually running it in production as a runtime. Why? Memory leaks and a whole bunch of other issues. I've personally tried it multiple times, and something always breaks. Come on, it's just not that simple.

Sure, you can build something that has similar interfaces and even works to some degree. But making a production-ready solution is a completely different level of complexity. There's that well-known chart where the first 90% of implementation happens almost instantly, and the remaining 10% takes forever to polish out all the rough edges.

On one hand, I really like the idea, and I've always wondered why TypeScript doesn't compile to native code. On the other hand, I'm quite skeptical that Vercel can actually pull this off. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I have very little faith in it.

Either way, good luck to them, but honestly, even if they succeed, I probably won't use it. Knowing their track record with vendor lock-in and Next.js, where they do everything possible to push you onto Vercel Cloud — no thanks.

ianberdin··on Claude Opus 5
I’m pretty sure Opus 5 is adapted to tricks from long reasoning in Kimi K3 and based on original Opus 4.8. It is not fable in any form.
ianberdin··on Claude Opus 5
Opus yes, it likes to explain steps and reread files.

Fable is not better, it says zero information between steps and then output a summary. A perfect “send - done”.

ianberdin··on Claude Opus 5
Pelican svg: https://playcode.io/blog/macbook-svg-benchmark#model-claude-...

It creates the MacBook svg way better than 4.8, yet only fable can make it perfect without visual defects. Results similar to Kimi K3.

ianberdin··on Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber
Fixed. Converted to PNGs for webpage.
ianberdin··on Are AI labs pelicanmaxxing?
We have a little bit different conclusions.

Same pelican grid + MacBook Pro in 3D. Also with end cost.

https://playcode.io/blog/macbook-svg-benchmark

ianberdin··on Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber
Pelican svg and a near-perfect 3D MacBook at max effort for $0.16, about a fifth of Fable's price.

Fable 5 still wins on detail with no visible errors, but it's close. And this isn't a memorized pelican;

https://playcode.io/blog/macbook-svg-benchmark#gemini-3-6-fl...

ianberdin··on Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark
Our answer to Pelican benchmark: https://playcode.io/blog/macbook-svg-benchmark
ianberdin··on The real prices of frontier models
Just checked some of your comments. I see you mostly talk about how everything is AI written.
ianberdin··on The real prices of frontier models
@dang, why is this flagged?
ianberdin··on The real prices of frontier models
Thank you for the criticism. I heard you. I added a TLDR. I cleaned up many AI constructions. By the way, I tweaked it a bit, compressed it.

One way or another, I want to note that yes, this text was made in collaboration with AI. My English is non-native. It helps me translate, helps me structure better. Yes, there is a downside, it can bloat the text with unnecessary words. But that, unfortunately, is the price.

But the key thing is that I tried very hard to share my many years of experience, or rather a part of it, which I acquired, with all of you. And I am very glad that this information turned out to be useful to you.

The key here is: * The information that is written in the article. * Not how it is written, but what I was trying to convey to you.

Thank you very much for reading and responding.

ianberdin··on The real prices of frontier models
Well, criticizing is, of course, great. But the reality is that English is not my native language and I dictated most of it with my voice, then processed it with the help of AI, translated, added, corrected, and converted.

It is actually a big result of work, a lot of research and attempts. And to just say that "oh, this is AI-slop," I consider unfair, but that is your choice.

There is a difference: - There are people who do, - And there are those who criticize.

ianberdin··on The real prices of frontier models
We've switched the default model in playcode.io among Opus 4.8, Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6, and Sonnet 5. I must admit, Opus 4.8 is quite expensive, and the costs accumulate quickly. Opus 4.6 is about 50% cheaper, while Sonnet 5 is significantly more affordable. According to the data, Sonnet 5 is about 2-3 times cheaper. Fable 5 is unaffordable at all...

Today, I tested Sol 5.6 on various tasks. It performs similarly to Opus 4.8 but is still noticeably more expensive than Sonnet 5. Although Sonnet 5 isn't the top model, it's quite effective for creating typical websites for small and medium businesses. However, they will increase the price starting September 1, as their free offer is ending.

I'm also actively testing Grok 4.5. There's something promising about it. The design is mediocre, in my opinion, but it operates quickly and reliably without any deadloops. Usually, Grok models would fail or loop, but this one is stable.

Overall, I really want a benchmark based on real tasks.

ianberdin··on The real prices of frontier models. Tokens * Price, right?
Well, I both agree and disagree with you.

On one hand, the price is just astronomical for Fable, well, not exactly astronomical, but I would say unaffordable. That is to say, so expensive that it is impossible to use.

But on the other hand, Fable is simply incomparable to anything else. I mean, it is just amazing. There is nothing even close to being equal to it.

ianberdin··on The real prices of frontier models
Well, in my view, it's just the most ordinary manipulation to avoid creating unrest. There is most likely no improvement inside.

Of course, these are my guesses, but did anyone feel the difference in the transition from Opus 4.5 to 4.6? In my opinion, no. And it's unlikely to be a matter of the tokenizer.

ianberdin··on Migrating a production AI agent to GPT-5.6: 2.2x faster, 27% cheaper
I have a large monorepo that includes about 15 TypeScript services and many Rust services. Everything is well-documented and organized, with standardized and structured custom code.

When an issue arises, I often test the systems by providing a minimal prompt, like: "this user, this is their email, this isn't working, figure it out in production." I send this to both Opus and ChatGPT, but it doesn't help. I've set up Agents.md and Quote.md identically, with the same access and linkers, so the Harness is consistent.

ChatGPT rarely succeeds. If the task is complex and requires a multi-step process to identify the true cause, ChatGPT usually stops after a few initial ideas and wrongly claims it has found the solution.

- For simple tasks, like identifying a missing item in a to-do list, ChatGPT performs well. - However, for issues like memory leaks or file system corruption, it struggles.

On the other hand, Opus 4.8 always finds the solution, albeit slowly. I can rely on it without worrying about whether it will succeed. It just gets the job done.

Recently, Fable 5 has emerged, which resolves issues without needing any prompts. It operates even faster than Opus.

When I ask ChatGPT or Opus to create a new feature: - ChatGPT often produces superficial results, ignoring existing code and building unnecessary independent code. - Interestingly, the outcome from ChatGPT appears functional, but it's usually incorrect, focusing on a superficial "aha!" moment.

Opus, however, plans thoroughly, executes, and cleans up, ensuring everything works correctly. If needed, I can provide more realistic examples, though it's challenging due to the monorepo's size and complexity, with hundreds of thousands of lines of code.

ianberdin··on Migrating a production AI agent to GPT-5.6: 2.2x faster, 27% cheaper
I have already developed a habit of speaking in this format over 10 years of supporting my product.
ianberdin··on Migrating a production AI agent to GPT-5.6: 2.2x faster, 27% cheaper
Btw, we wrote an article about real prices of frontier models: https://playcode.io/blog/real-price-of-frontier-models. Usually people talk about announced price, not real one.
ianberdin··on Migrating a production AI agent to GPT-5.6: 2.2x faster, 27% cheaper
Everyone probably has the same question: what about Fable? Fable 5 is sick.

It is simply the best model in the world out of everything we have ever tried. It's absolutely fantastic. It solves almost any task from start to finish, the way it should be done — no errors, perfect code. It's a miracle.

If there's any way to make it a little more affordable, that would be incredible.

As for GPT-5.6 Sol — it doesn't even come close. I honestly don't understand why people even try to compare them. It feels like Sam's attempt to hold onto his audience with those endless daily limit resets. A clever trick, nothing more.

ianberdin··on Migrating a production AI agent to GPT-5.6: 2.2x faster, 27% cheaper
We at Playcode.io - a company similar to Ploy are still using Opus 4.6. "Why?" you might ask.

Because GPT 5.6 Sol, while fast and pleasant to use, is essentially the same model as 5.5 wrapped in new marketing packaging, just to avoid losing ground to Anthropic. In practice, it's the same quality: it generates the same garbage, tons of code, and can never solve even a single complex task. We simply don't trust it to write code for clients that they'll end up throwing away anyway.

"Then why not Opus 4.8?" you might ask.

Well, because Opus 4.8 and 4.7 are just another lie, a price hike with no actual quality improvement.

That's why at Playcode, we give our clients the best possible quality/price - which is Opus 4.6. Regardless of what people write in articles like this.

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