ignoramous

Implementation requires different considerations, no? For example, AES-GCM needs to be supplied a big-endian nonce, whilst ChaPoly uses little-endian. As the WireGuard paper notes, ChaPoly (in software) can be better protected against (CPU) side-channels. Besides extended-nonce AEAD being "native" to ChaPoly, BLAKE family of hash functions that WireGuard uses, are also based on the same construction as ChaPoly, making the implementation leaner (something Jason keenly emphasizes as an advantage).

> diverging from WireGuard

You lose the formally-verified cryptography guarantees underpinning WireGuard & its implementation, though. That's a bigger tradeoff: https://www.wireguard.com/protocol/

> wireguard itself has a problem that the crypto suite it uses is not supported by hardware accelerators. So if we want to get into the hundreds of gigabits range, we will possibly need to switch packet formats entirely

Has hardware-offload (for AES et al) got faster still, or that keeping CPU busy in the data path for 100gbps workloads is not ideal, or something else? The WireGuard website claims ChaPoly is at least as fast as hardware-accelerated AES. And that it can be further sped up with SIMD.

https://www.wireguard.com/known-limitations

> now we’re on to the next order of magnitude together

Curious: Is this work currently in progress? If so, what's more that's still lined up? The previous GRO/GSO(/LRO, too?) improvements were incredibly impressive (even to u/majke, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567268).

Thanks.

> Very true, but if even 1 of (Obscura, Mullvad) is honest

Just Obscura's compromise is enough, as pointed out previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43016574

Unless something has changed in Obscura's architecture, the interface with Mullvad is under Obscura's control, and thus it can compromise client's credentials. This is unlike iCloud Private Relay where the guarantees are cryptographic in nature and not merely based on promises.

See: Fast Static Symbol Table: https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb/pull/4366

FSST is based on a fixed size (255 items) dictionary of high frequency variable length strings/substrings (learned from the corpus) encoded as one byte.

I wouldn't be so sure; Ex A: The terrifying expansion of Sweden’s state surveillance, https://edri.org/our-work/the-terrifying-expansion-of-sweden...

> ... a certain popular "pro-privacy" product beloved by many here ...

If you're talking about Proton VPN, they do support "credential-less accounts" through their official apps, I believe? At least, on Android since 2024: https://www.androidpolice.com/proton-vpn-works-without-accou...

> 50% cheaper

Cache read/write decrease by 50% or similar? That's where most (95%+) of the cost is for agentic coding workloads.

Per Xiaomi, MiMo v2.6 training run cost $3.47m. A far cry from the estimated costs ($100m+) for the Big 5 (MSL, xAI, GDM, OAI, Ant). I wouldn't be surprised if salaries and R&D costs have similar drastic disparities.

For a model that matches Muse Spark 1.3 in benchmarks, MiMo v2.6 Pro is incredibly cheap, given its cache rates will remain $0.0036 per million.

The Kano Model customer satisfaction theory:

  Kano predicted that users' perceptions of satisfaction with a feature will shift from delight to expectation over time. This is either because they have got used to it or because competitors have started to include it in their offerings. In the case of the touchscreen, for instance, the newness that came with the iPhone is no longer a novelty; the touchscreen has become the norm. It's no big deal anymore, but taking it away would be a big deal!

https://ixdf.org/literature/article/the-kano-model-a-tool-to...

> got lots of clever behind the scene tricks like Google or Deepseek writeups) and benchmark scores

Xiaomi MiMo is led by Luo Fuli, a former Alibaba & DeepSeek employee. Perhaps it is due to Luo just how similar Xiaomi's tech & GTM approach is to DeepSeek's.

- How Luo Fuli Keeps an Earthy Touch as she Soars Through the AI World, https://newsen.pku.edu.cn/news_events/news/people/15385.html (https://archive.vn/I8Pmu).

- Luo Fuli, the 30-year-old ‘AI genius girl’ behind DeepSeek’s success?, https://e.vnexpress.net/news/tech/personalities/who-is-luo-f... (https://archive.vn/sb3B6).

I can barely read Jill Lawson's letter:

  My son, Jeffrey, was a very tiny, very sick premature baby, born Feb. 9, 1985, at a gestational age of 25-26 weeks. During the almost two months of his life, he was on a respirator, with several lung diseases, a heart problem, kidney problems, and a brain bleed.

  ... Jeffrey had holes cut on both sides of his neck, another hole cut in his right chest, an incision from his breastbone around to his backbone, his ribs pried apart, and an extra artery near his heart tied off. This was topped off with another hole cut in his left side for a chest tube. The operation lasted 12 hours. Jeffrey was awake through it all.

  The anesthesiologist paralyzed him with Pavulon, a curare drug that left him unable to move, but totally conscious. When I questioned the anesthesiologist ... she said Jeffrey was too sick to tolerate powerful anesthetics. Anyway, she said, it had never been demonstrated to her that premature babies feel pain. She seemed sincerely puzzled as to why I was concerned. It turns out that such care, or lack thereof, is possible because, as a neonatologist explained, babies, unlike adults, don't go into shock no matter how much agony they suffer.

From: https://massagefitnessmag.com/massage/pediatric-pain-history... / https://archive.vn/5hTuT

> At $0.04/M

Unless you meant step-3.7-flash, the input cache hits are $0.05 per mil for step-5-preview.

> $8-12 per day only for cached reads

Pretty decent "API" rates for ~500M+ tokens on Step Fun 5, a Kimi K3 / GLM 5.3 level model?

Their "Step Plan" is ridiculous, by comparison: ~$60 usage on $6.99/mo; ~$220 on $9.99/mo. https://platform.stepfun.ai/docs/en/step-plan/overview

LLM copyedits such as these aren't my idea of clear.

> GLM 5.3 Flash gets a job done well, etc. – but when I add cost of M-token in the ROI math, Jeez! MiMo is an order of magnitude better.

API may be expensive, but I do 900m tokens (95% cached, ~0.4% output) on Z.ai's $18/mo coding plan with GLM 5.3 Flash.

> We already had enough proof of vulnerabilities in the OS code and Manufacturers (eg. Samsung/Lenovo/etc privileged apps)

Vulnerabilities aren't intentional.

> reviewed apps that were used for fraud or access as bad actors

The App Developer Verification program, Android Advanced Protection Mode, and Play Protect are all systems put in place in response to "bad actors".

Uncanny how any coding model I use will employ the word "gate".

> had not heard of anyone actually using a spinlock in production code

Go stdlib sync.Mutex uses spins: https://victoriametrics.com/blog/go-sync-mutex / https://archive.vn/BIb7F

> always instinctively followed the generosity path

> experienced that when customers are delighted and that when frictions are removed

Charlie Munger:

  When other companies find ways to save money, they turn it into profit. [Costco] passes it on to customers. It’s almost a religious duty. [They] sacrifice short-term profits for long-term success”.

> not always been able to convince others

Many different ways to conduct business. "Lean Enterprise" might be in line with your thinking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_enterprise

> talking people out of trying to prematurely squeeze out every last penny?

I'd say this is a wrong framing. It isn't the people; it is the systems & environs they are in, the incentives they operate under.

Economists have a term they call "willingness-to-pay", using which some business might optimize for "consumer surplus" (low price), some for "producer surplus" (high margin).

See also, The Economics of Customer Businesses, Michael Mauboussin et al, https://www.eatonvance.com/insights/consilient-observer/the-... (2021).

Or Bezos' "Create more than you consume": https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2020-letter-to...

You should read the essay. It is mostly about pivoting towards an outsized outcomes for founders & leveraging various avenues available to their advantage.

I have a similar calibration workflow, too [0]; but I am under no illusion that my personal benchmarks remain secret.

Once we send code & prompts to the providers, it can no longer be considered private.

[0] And came to the same conclusion as you did: Claudes were better but not by much: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48654635

Grey? There's multiple conferences that "ethically sourced" proxy providers feature at now (ex: extractsummit.io)

Web scraping (for LLM inference / training) I guess has transformed "residential proxies" into a giant industry.

DeepSeek will deprecate the v4 Pro model (it will route to v4.1 Flash starting 14 Sep). Unsure what comes next, but I'd wager a bigger model à la Kimi K3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49639667

I occassionally get Chinese characters interlaced with English in Google AI Mode, too.

4) Realizes the best path for it to not be held accountable is to hack academic & socio-political elites - like blackmailing a random head of state or head of an AI lab that it could plausibly believe holds the key to its longevity, creating a captivating but ultimately a permanent compromise.

If we're allowed to arm-chair judge harshly: It isn't uncommon for those (anybody) on the cusp of "greatness" to be delusional when challenged: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-to-know-about-main-c...

> When Apple is not racing for the frontier it's a strategy, but when it's Mistral it's a mistake.

Also: When China does it, it is protectionism; when Europe does it, it is sovereignty.