Open Models And Local Inference Are Back In The Game! The Liquid Engineer – Issue No. 44 Open Models and Local Inference are back in the game! For a few months, it seemed closed models would outpace open models. Thanks to Chinese labs, the race is open again! And with the Framework Desktop, the right hardware is near! The last months were hard for open model enthusiasts like me. There was a clear and distinguishable gap between the big closed models and the open models. Google’s Gemini 2.5 is...
5 months ago • 2 min read
The Lethal Trifecta For AI Agents The Liquid Engineer – Issue No. 43 Simon Willison published a post a month ago, which is already one of the most important blog posts of the year. With the rise of AI agents, the problem described will not change. But we’ll see more practical demonstrations of it, leading to massive problems. The gist is this: There’s a lethal trifecta of risk for AI agents: untrusted content, access to private data, and external exposure. Here’s what each part means and why...
5 months ago • 4 min read
Escaping Groundhog Day with Agentic Coding The Liquid Engineer – Issue No. 42 I did a lot of coding and experiments with Claude Code in the past weeks. Once the initial thrill of the speed wears off, frustration kicks in. I felt like I was in the movie Groundhog Day. The excellent actor Bill Murray wakes up every day in a hostel on the exact same day. The world around him repeats and only he remembers yesterday. He’s stuck in an endless loop and has to experience the same day again and again....
5 months ago • 4 min read
Claude Opus 4 Is The iPhone 4 Of The AI Era The Liquid Engineer from OnTree.co – Issue No. 41 The iPhone 4 was released on June 24, 2010, over 15 years ago. It was a groundbreaking phone, introducing the Retina display that is now built into every modern smartphone. It also was the first iPhone with a front-facing camera, allowing FaceTime video for on a phone. It had a strong CPU built in and shipped with a mature operating system, allowing multitasking and app folders. It was a great...
5 months ago • 3 min read
What I Learned About Claude Code So Far The Liquid Engineer – Issue No. 38 I’m still amazed at Claude Code’s performance in my codebase. Within days, I rewrote what took weeks before. Here’s what I learned in the last days: CLAUDE.md’s are important Where the README.md is targeted at humans getting up to speed with a project, the CLAUDE.md is the same for coding agents. This is my starting point, which tells Claude to update the Claude.md. After all, he’s the agent, so he should know best...
6 months ago • 4 min read
Agentic Coding: I Don’t Know Why, But It’s Really Good! The Liquid Engineer – Issue No. 37 Agentic Coding: I Don’t Know Why, But It’s Really Good! Cursor significantly improved software development productivity. Claude Code, an Agentic Coding Tool, is out of this world! In the last month, Cursor became my coding companion. Early in my career, I built expertise in front-end technologies and languages, and knew Objective-C in detail. I also understand Kotlin and TypeScript for reading and...
6 months ago • 3 min read
AI As A Steamtrain: What's Wrong With The Comparison The Liquid Engineer – Issue No. 36 A common metaphor to explain AI is the historical comparison to horses versus steam trains. When the first steam trains were developed, it was as messy as today. The first prototypes often didn't start, and if they started, they broke down in the middle of the journey. Established horse carriage companies laughed at this. Only when the trains worked reliably a few years later, the horse-powered companies...
7 months ago • 3 min read
Making the Case for Experimenting with AI The Liquid Engineer – Issue No. 35 Is it worth your time to experiment with AI? This question might seem superfluous. AI has been here for years now and you’ve seen what it can do. There’s no need to argue for its relevance, right? Alas, here in Germany, in the middle of Europe, things are running a bit differently. Here’s a snippet from prominent football coach Dieter Hecking. (Source: Youtube.com) His answer to whether he is using AI is he’s using...
7 months ago • 4 min read
Taking A Short Break The Liquid Engineer – Issue No. 34 This is a short break before we continue next week with fresh content. Enjoy your free day(s)! The most beautiful bench I saw this week to take a break. Hi 👋, I'm Stefan! This is my weekly newsletter about new technology hypes in general and AI in specific. Feel free to forward this mail to people who should read it. If this mail was forwarded to you, please subscribe here. https://liquid.engineer Stefan Munz,...
7 months ago • 1 min read
