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nikcub

19,805 karma · joined October 4, 2009

Nik Cubrilovic - https://nikcub.me

squirrelscan - https://squirrelscan.com

open electricity - https://openelectricity.org.au

email nik at nikcub.me

@dir on twitter / x

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nikcub··on Making frontier cybersecurity capabilities available to defenders
I assume that's why this is gated behind a request for access from teams / enterprise users rather than being GA

but there are open versions available built on the cn OSS models:

https://github.com/lintsinghua/DeepAudit

nikcub··on Making frontier cybersecurity capabilities available to defenders
> What we've found is that giving LLM security agents access to good tools (Semgrep, CodeQL, etc.) makes them significantly better

100% agree - I spun out an internal tool I've been using to close the loop with website audits (more focus on website sec + perf + seo etc. rather than appsec) in agents and the results so far have been remarkable:

https://squirrelscan.com/

Human written rules with an agent step that dynamically updates config to squash false positives (with verification) and find issues while also allowing the llm to reason.

nikcub··on Gemini 3.1 Pro
and anyone notice that the pace has broken xAI and they were just dropped behind? The frontier improvement release loop is now ant -> openai -> google
nikcub··on New OpenAI funding to top $100B
mirror: https://archive.is/NLZxj
nikcub··on Warren Buffett dumps $1.7B of Amazon stock
My peak number of orders p.a was in 2023: 215 orders

In 2025 it was 27 orders

I expect it to be even lower this year. I didn't even buy my eero router upgrade from Amazon.

I largely attribute this to poor quality products, horrible search interface, trying to sort through the dropship spam, and prices no longer being as competitive.

Amazon used to have decent-quality "amazon native" brands like Anker, Eufy, Eero etc. but there are better alternatives to buying all of these products now

nikcub··on Claude Sonnet 4.6
Enabling /extra-usage in my (personal) claude code[0] with this env:

    "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL": "claude-sonnet-4-6[1m]"
has enabled the 1M context window.

Fixed a UI issue I had yesterday in a web app very effectively using claude in chrome. Definitely not the fastest model - but the breathing space of 1M context is great for browser use.

[0] Anthropic have given away a bunch of API credits to cc subscribers - you can claim them in your settings dashboard to use for this.

nikcub··on Claude Sonnet 4.6
I also remember when the playstation 2 required an export control license because it's 1GFLOP of compute was considered dangerous

that was also brilliant marketing

nikcub··on I’m joining OpenAI
Regardless of what you think of OpenClaw, Peter is a great hire - he's been at the forefront of brute-forcing app development with coding agents.
nikcub··on I’m joining OpenAI
the way they respond to security and privacy incidents + publishing technical security + privacy papers / docs
nikcub··on GPT‑5.3‑Codex‑Spark
and with neuralink it would generate slides of the audience naked
nikcub··on Anthropic raises $30B in Series G funding at $380B post-money valuation
Funny I consider this valuation modest considering what the max extent of the investment thesis is here.

SaaS and legal market caps have already contracted a multiple of the combined OpenAI + Anthropic valuations just based on the _threat_ of what they may be able to accomplish.

They'll have the data + knowledge edge over open alternatives and be able to implement + deploy (see the story about Anthropic employees being at GS for 6 months already[0])

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/anthropic-goldman-sachs-ai-m...

nikcub··on Claude Code is being dumbed down?
claude code is big enough now that it really needs a preview / beta release channel where features like this can be tested against a smaller audience before being pushed out.

as a regular and long-term user, it's frequently jarring being pushed new changes / bugs in what has become a critical tool.

surprised their enterprise clients haven't raised this

nikcub··on Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport
> In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.

They definitely care about not ratting the cage with the US - they don't harm US federal agents, or take US hostages, and the last incident of Americans being killed in Mexico by cartel-affiliated gunmen in a case of mistaken identity - it was the cartel who handed the perps over and apologised[0]

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/09/us/mexico-matamoros-ameri...

nikcub··on Orchestrate teams of Claude Code sessions
I use opus for coding and codex for reviews. I trigger the reviews in each work task with a review skill that calls out to codex[0]

I don't need anything more complicated than that and it works fine - also run greptile[1] on PR's

[0] https://github.com/nc9/skills/tree/main/review

[1] https://www.greptile.com/

nikcub··on Agent Skills
because more than one accesses it? :shrug:
nikcub··on Agent Skills
https://skills.sh
nikcub··on Agent Skills
it's actually .agents/ :)
nikcub··on Claude Code daily benchmarks for degradation tracking
one thing you learn from being on the internet is that you're never going to satisfy everybody
nikcub··on Claude Code daily benchmarks for degradation tracking
> I would run on 300 tasks and I'd run the test suite 5 or 10 times per day and average that score.

assume this is because of model costs. anthropic could either throw some credits their way (would be worthwhile to dispel the 80 reddit posts a day about degrading models and quantization) or OP could throw up a donation / tip link

nikcub··on Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms
I have an agent skill that is currently in the top 10 or so of the skills.sh directory - in terms of that audience, it's about 80% claude code.

Also 75% darwin-arm64

nikcub··on ClickHouse acquires Langfuse
Clickhouse are on a bit of a roll. acquired peerdb and are doing a hosted postgres product[0]

Acquired hyperdx[1] for their clickstack[2] observability platform and adding langfuse to a bunch of other llm related acquisitions and products

They're really building out a snowflake / databricks alternative

[0] https://clickhouse.com/cloud/postgres

[1] https://clickhouse.com/docs/cloud/manage/hyperdx

[2] https://clickhouse.com/use-cases/observability

nikcub··on Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales
Resale value is starting to ward some people off.

You can buy 1-2 year old used Teslas and BYD's in Australia for ~30% below retail.

Meanwhile Toyota hybrids not just retain their value but there have been moments where used RAV4's are listed above retail because the waitlist for new was so long.

nikcub··on There's a ridiculous amount of tech in a disposable vape
Did that in Australia - the problem is even worse now. Disposable vapes were a market response to banning and restricting pod vapes (where you can keep the base and just swap out the pod).

Nicotine policy and policing has been a clusterf - not only are there wasteful disposable vapes everywhere, but a thriving black market that has lead to firebombings and murders.

nikcub··on Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation
really find a negative in it ey - what type of donation and from who would be acceptable to you to fund the python foundation?
nikcub··on Anthropic made a mistake in cutting off third-party clients
> ie. Anthropic did not invest in image generation, Google did and Gemini has a shot at the market now.

They're after the enterprise market - where office / workspace + app + directory integration, security, safety, compliance etc. are more important. 80% of their revenue is from enterprise - less churn, much higher revenue per W/token, better margins, better $/user.

Microsoft adopting the Anthropic models into copilot and Azure - despite being a large and early OpenAI investor - is a much bigger win than yet another image model used to make memes for users who balk at spending $20 per month.

Same with the office connector - which is only available to enterprises[0] (further speaking to where their focus is). There hasn't yet been a "claude code" moment for office productivity, but Anthropic are the closest to it.

[0] This may be a mistake as Claude Code has been adopted from the ground up

nikcub··on Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
I've used cursor and claude code both daily[0] within a month of their releases - i'm learning something new on how to work with and apply the tools almost every day.

I don't think it's a coincidence that some of the best developers[1] are using these tools and some openly advocating for them because it still requires core skills to get the most out of them

I can honestly say that building end-to-end products with claude code has made me a better developer, product designer, tester, code reviewer, systems architect, project manager, sysadmin etc. I've learned more in the past ~year than I ever have in my career.

[0] abandoned cursor late last year

[1] see Linus using antigravity, antirez in OP, Jared at bun, Charlie at uv/ruff, mitushiko, simonw et al

nikcub··on Claude Code On-the-Go
I delayed adopting conductor because I had my own worktree + pr wrappers around cc but I tried it over the holidays and wow. The combination of claude + codex + conductor + cc on the web and claude in github can be so insanely productive.

I spend most of my time updating the memory files and reviewing code and just letting a ton of tasks run in parallel

nikcub··on Anthropic taps IPO lawyers as it races OpenAI to go public
There have been multiple model generations now where Anthropic have proven that they're ahead of everyone with developing LLMs for coding - if anything the gap has broadened with Opus 4.5.
nikcub··on Mistral 3 family of models released
s3 + cloudfront

https://huggingface.co/blog/rearchitecting-uploads-and-downl...

nikcub··on Google, Nvidia, and OpenAI
> But I don’t know anyone non-technical who has ditched ChatGPT as their default LLM.

Google are giving away a year of Gemini Pro to students, which has seen a big shift. The FT reported today[0] that Gemini new app downloads are almost catching up to ChatGPT

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/8881062d-ff4f-4454-8e9d-d992e8e2c...

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