The website doesn't seem to mention anywhere that it's from ByteDance?
Also from the terms of service:
"You hereby grant to us, our affiliates and our third party partners (“SPRING Parties”) an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable, perpetual and worldwide license, to reproduce, use, and modify Your Content in connection with the provision and improvement of the Services and its underlying technologies, as well as for the SPRING Parties' respective business operations, in each case, to the extent permitted by applicable laws."
hard to tell if they are indeed Bytedance. but given Bytedance and Tencent has HUGE Singapore HQ and notorious status of SG being a proxy for China, I would not be surprised if this is indeed Bytedance in disguise
even their CEO from Singapore is a puppet hire. The one that went to all the senate hearing is not the one calling all the shots. He was hired just so bytedance can keep playing the soundbite 'our ceo is not from china'.
I went on to read to the Terms and Conditions further and was relived to find no mention of "oH yeah! if you use it for longer than a month, you owe us your life and your kids will be forever indebted to the great emperor behind the wall."
At this point in time T&Cs are a generic template that stretches into a closed bubble trying to defend against any legal action. There should be a "dontsuewecandowhatever" copyright-like legend and be done with the bs.
One uses my data for ads, the other has concentration camps, stamps out democracy, and oppresses both my religion and the religion of others. I wonder which one I am more concerned about.
When the company is required by law to turn over their data to the government without due process and to embody good socialist values, suddenly the difference between country and company is smaller. For your second point:
US Muslims in concentration camps within the last 15 years: ~0
Chinese Muslims in concentration camps within the last 15 years: ~1,000,000
Completely ignoring the forced sterilizations of men and women and China removing any democratic opposition and imprisoning student protesters in Hong Kong. It may not be one way traffic, but there sure is a whole lot more going one way than the other.
Which country has illegal torture, rendition, imprisonment without trial, spying on a global scale and is currently openly threatening Canada, Panama and Greenland, and has provided all the means for the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza?
I'm not a fan of the Chinese system - but green houses and stones...
The US is not some knight in shining armor, but people who act like the US's many many flaws and mistakes are equal to the ongoing issues in China are simply misinformed. The fact that we can discuss this at all on a US website shows why the US has the moral high ground here. We can actually discus our many problems without being sent to a mental facility. At the very least, one set of actions occurred because of politicians people voted in, the other occurs without the consent or will of the people.
Edit: Plus the CLOUD act requires a public warrant or subpoena that must be granted in a fair court, as opposed to China's laws, which allow the government access to data whenever they please.
> Edit: Plus the CLOUD act requires a public warrant or subpoena that must be granted in a fair court, as opposed to China's laws, which allow the government access to data whenever they please.
Laws - haha - Snowdon revealed mass illegal surveillance. Clapper bare faced lied to Senators about it.
Also those laws only protect US citizens - as far as the US is concerned everyone else is totally fair game for anything - including arbitrary assassination, kidnappings, torture, imprisonment without trial etc.
I'd suggest the US wake up and take a good look in the mirror before moralising to others.
In a multi-polar world the US is going to need friends - and the US has some great people and characteristics - but as a friend - you need to sort yourselves out or soon you'll be on your own.
I don't see anything about source available, git repository links or opensource licensing. Why would I switch from a free and opensource IDE to a closed source IDE offering no benefits?
How common is this in privacy policies?
> For security and privacy reasons, we request that you abstain from disclosing personal information, including passwords, credit card numbers, or other confidential data. Our commitment to safeguarding your privacy is unwavering, but the security of personal information also relies on safe user practices.
However true this is _here_, I really dislike this sentence, as it spills capitalist sentiment and distrust. How much are you the product when using Firefox (even if Mozilla gets ad revenue). How much are you the product with an OSS or community product, or a free tier for a reputable cloud offering?
Exactly. The phrase is wrong in every sense. You're pointing out the common case where something is free and offered in good faith (a terrifying and confusing concept for the Free Market faithful). There is also the exceedingly common case of both paying for something and being screwed by whoever sold it to you. Eg buying a Windows license and getting ads in the start menu.
The real lesson is: look at incentives/motivations. Are you transacting with a group that has power to unilaterally determine terms and reason to weigh them in their favor? They will.
You pay, and your'e the product, AND the product is broken, AND the devs and customer service have been replaced by an AI chatbot that is very polite but only gives incorrect answers. The future is bright.
Actually you often aren't the product, you are instead the raw material from which Meta/Google/etc creates their saleable products: e.g. profiles of recipients for targeted ads.
Ok, but in this setup I have to trust Anthropic (since the editor is using Claude on the backend) as well as Bytedance. No way to BYO API key. I get the incentives, but less reliance on remote services would be best.
I became unemployable sometime five years ago, throwing my CV into the abyss since then. This video alone almost gives me epilepsy with music and flickering. Is this how software development looks right now? Every code snipped including secrets goes to some remote server?
I use a dedicated PC with Ubuntu for the kind of AI assisted development where the AI's has access to the disk.
The only secrets it has are the API key to the AI, a temporary ssh key that can be used with git to access the github repository, and whatever the Brave browser stores for ChatGPT's website. Nothing else. No production keys, no CI keys no code signing keys.
Kind of the same restrictions I use on anything running Microsoft Windows.
Copilot doesn't have full repo/project knowledge like this/Windsurf/Cursor, that's the biggest benefit of these AI specific VSCode forks. These AI forks can edit and take context from your entire project folder. Copilot currently only looks at the specific open file you have, and does not have full project knowledge.
I worry about privacy issues for all LLM systems that are not running on my own computer (I use Ollama, but there are many other fine tools to use).
That said, I have been using Trae to design, code, and debug programming examples for a new book I am writing. I also use Grok, Meta’s models, Claude, and OpenAI for design, coding, and trouble shooting problems.
For ideological reasons I start work with local models on Ollama, but as needed I will use everything available, if needed.
70 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 73.5 ms ] threadAlso from the terms of service:
"You hereby grant to us, our affiliates and our third party partners (“SPRING Parties”) an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable, perpetual and worldwide license, to reproduce, use, and modify Your Content in connection with the provision and improvement of the Services and its underlying technologies, as well as for the SPRING Parties' respective business operations, in each case, to the extent permitted by applicable laws."
> The software is distributed by ByteDance's Singapore-based subsidiary Spring (SG) Pte, the company behind its Cici chatbot that launched in 2023.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/bytedance-launches-ai-code-editor...
from their privacy policy (which i didn't read)
> If you wish to contact the Data Protection Officer, please contact us: dpobrasil@bytedance.com.
singapore business directory: https://www.sgpbusiness.com/company/Spring-Sg-Pte-Ltd
hard to tell if they are indeed Bytedance. but given Bytedance and Tencent has HUGE Singapore HQ and notorious status of SG being a proxy for China, I would not be surprised if this is indeed Bytedance in disguise
Not sure ByteDance specifically does all that.
Now if you want to talk about the recent human rights records of the two countries concerned I think you'll find it's not all one way traffic.
US Muslims in concentration camps within the last 15 years: ~0 Chinese Muslims in concentration camps within the last 15 years: ~1,000,000 Completely ignoring the forced sterilizations of men and women and China removing any democratic opposition and imprisoning student protesters in Hong Kong. It may not be one way traffic, but there sure is a whole lot more going one way than the other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
How many wars is China currently involved in?
Which country has illegal torture, rendition, imprisonment without trial, spying on a global scale and is currently openly threatening Canada, Panama and Greenland, and has provided all the means for the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza?
I'm not a fan of the Chinese system - but green houses and stones...
Edit: Plus the CLOUD act requires a public warrant or subpoena that must be granted in a fair court, as opposed to China's laws, which allow the government access to data whenever they please.
Laws - haha - Snowdon revealed mass illegal surveillance. Clapper bare faced lied to Senators about it.
Also those laws only protect US citizens - as far as the US is concerned everyone else is totally fair game for anything - including arbitrary assassination, kidnappings, torture, imprisonment without trial etc.
I'd suggest the US wake up and take a good look in the mirror before moralising to others.
In a multi-polar world the US is going to need friends - and the US has some great people and characteristics - but as a friend - you need to sort yourselves out or soon you'll be on your own.
How common is this in privacy policies? > For security and privacy reasons, we request that you abstain from disclosing personal information, including passwords, credit card numbers, or other confidential data. Our commitment to safeguarding your privacy is unwavering, but the security of personal information also relies on safe user practices.
The real lesson is: look at incentives/motivations. Are you transacting with a group that has power to unilaterally determine terms and reason to weigh them in their favor? They will.
That was until the 2020s.
Now you pay and you are the product.
You pay, and your'e the product, AND the product is broken, AND the devs and customer service have been replaced by an AI chatbot that is very polite but only gives incorrect answers. The future is bright.
Actually I think ByteDance is more trustworthy as more focus is on them.
I know a lot of developers who have leaned into using AI heavily in their workflow.
I also know a handful of graybeards who refuse on either moral grounds or general distrust.
The output of the prior group though is undeniably, and I really think one is going to have to learn the tools to stay competitive.
You can't fight the invisible hand of the free market. Without AI, you're obsolete now. With AI, humanity is obsolete soon.
The only secrets it has are the API key to the AI, a temporary ssh key that can be used with git to access the github repository, and whatever the Brave browser stores for ChatGPT's website. Nothing else. No production keys, no CI keys no code signing keys.
Kind of the same restrictions I use on anything running Microsoft Windows.
That said, I have been using Trae to design, code, and debug programming examples for a new book I am writing. I also use Grok, Meta’s models, Claude, and OpenAI for design, coding, and trouble shooting problems.
For ideological reasons I start work with local models on Ollama, but as needed I will use everything available, if needed.