1. Context for what I’m about to say: I’ve been using AI-coding models, agents and tools since they have existed, starting with the Github Copilot. I was one of the first waitlist-signups to Cursor after Aman just posted a link on his Twitter, and Claude Code I tested for a bit back when it was really bad. Majority of the last 3 years I’ve spent copy-pasting code from the Claude web app until this year when I deemed Cursor/Claude Code good enough to replace that workflow. Cline was still the best, but very expensive as it had to use Claude’s web API.

My perception of a models’ coding ability and its benchmarks used to be pretty similar but in this last year both have started diverging to the point where I’ve stopped paying attention to them (data leakage, or benchmarks testing for the wrong things).

Opus and Sonnet are absolute elite-tier models for coding, far above competition, and Gemini or any OpenAI model do not come close. Distilled models like GLM and others seem to have weird bugs and inconsistent behaviour. Benchmarks do not convince me otherwise.

2. Libya’s army chief was mysteriously killed in a plane crash a day after news broke that it had a signed $4b arms deal with Pakistan. Naturally, I was curious.

Turns out Libya is actually controlled by two different factions.

  • One is Tripoli-based, UN-recognized, and backed by Turkey (who even stepped in militarily to defend it in 2019) and Qatar. Is a coalition-based “national government”, controls most of Western Libya.

  • And the anti-islamist Haftar faction, supported mainly by Egypt+UAE and loosely by Russia (used Wagner to support Haftar in 2019 until Turkey intervened, at which point they withdrew) controls the East and South.

  • Tripoli has been subject to infighting over recent years while Haftar relatively stable so even huge backers like Turkey have begun hedging their bets by making some contacts w Haftar.

  • I guess the army chief flew to Turkey seeking their support after seeing Pakistan signing an arms deal with their rival. Plane crashed within Turkey’s airspace on the way back.

  • Even Haftar declared three days of national mourning in honour of the killed army chief, I imagine to dispel any rumour of their involvement.

Super interesting story, had no idea about Libya’s situation before this rabbit hole.