If you have the chops to evaluate different harnesses, you have the chops to build one that is perfect for you.
2,710 karma · joined May 21, 2013
http://caffeineindustries.com - I am a full time firefighter/EMT that moonlights with Python and the web.
If you have the chops to evaluate different harnesses, you have the chops to build one that is perfect for you.
Said with tongue firmly planted in cheek:
"The Himalayas are the highest, youngest, and most unstable mountain system on Earth. Let's terraform these bastards to extract energy and incentivise people to live there. They can build these giant, terribly unsafe, concrete buildings right on the bank of a river fed by a an unstable glacier. Let's also have one way in and one way out! The mountains are too steep for meaningful egress upward, so rock crawl your way out there for the bi-seasonal melt floods!!!!"
Dental insurance is an absolute scam. Dental coverage in the USA is beyond abysmal. I am very fortunate (or unfortunate depending on perspective) to live close enough to Mexico to investigate the prices there.
I recently had three, previously crowned, teeth removed and the posts for implants placed. The least expensive I could find in my city of 1 million was $16k out the door. I drove to the Mexico border, walked across and paid $3350 for the implants and they replaced a broken crown. I still need to heal completely before they place the arches (the new teeth) and they are going to charge me $2250 for those.
WTH? Its not like they are using TEMU veneers and implants. Its the same stuff, I could pick between zirconia and porcelain. Same machines, same tools, same training. And as a bonus, the dentists and staff were some of the most caring and thoughtful "dental people" as I suffer from "dental anxiety" like no other.
I think a lot of dental anxiety stems from the cost. Furthermore, the fact that we can't really tell what is going on in our mouths like a strange growth on your face or something, means we have to implicitly trust the dentist. Is a $2000 crown really necessary? We have no real way to actually hold a dentist or their practices accountable. There is just too much friction built into the dental system for a normie to really know what is needed versus the dentist needs to pay off a $15000 bicycle so everyone is getting crowns for a month. lol
At least I am learning to build modular so I can reuse parts like image gen, audio gen (STT/TTS), knowledge management. I have probably built 4 of these systems in the last year, each one gets better and lasts longer until I brick the crap out of it. Super fun.
It has been this way since the beginning, unfortunately. There is certainly no harm in trying on local models on local workloads with modest guardrails.
Like most of these models (Qwen, Gemma, Llama, gpt-oss), finding all the little gotchas like, special tokens and prompt structure, model preference are a PITA right now. The reward are really nice models that run exceptionally well in agentic harnesses tuned with the prompts and parameters you fought so hard to learn.
I have been doing a LOT of work around this with Qwen3.6 and its been super fun. There are some neat benchmarks that help guide, but nothing beats reading the output... and there is a lot of output to read when trying different quants, etc. Which leads me too...
The other thing I have learned is the "harness" is only as good as the model tuning that goes into it. If your prompt(s) are buggered from the beginning, you are going to have a bad time. The prompt structure and special tokens can be a PITA or really help depending on how much you know.
I don't know how agentic harnesses can work without being optimized for the models running within them. This is the biggest insight into working with agents for me. First thing I have always looked at were the prompts and parameters... everything else is orchestration to me.
I receive at least 10 python job ads a day from indeed and linkedin. Are any of them legit? I have no reason to apply, so I am curious if they are bullshit or not. Any insight for this poorly constructed question?
I know of svg.py (https://github.com/orsinium-labs/svg.py) and drawsvg (https://github.com/cduck/drawsvg)... I have played with both a bit, no idea how they compare to others.
I don't understand why so many people focus on Trump and Left and Right and all the theater of politics in general. Subtract the politics from TFA and it is really, really good.
The author and I agree on some "pop-stoicism" critiques and disagree on others. Well reasoned and articulate arguments to support or dismiss "teachings" from the neo-pop-stoic culture.
The we get to passages like this; "It is, I suppose, strictly speaking accurate that if the approximately 8.6 million people who die each year due to a lack of access to quality healthcare were to wish their fate, their desires would not be frustrated, but tautological truth does not make for philosophical profundity."
Yes it does. How does this person know the 8.6 million people that died did not live meaningful lives while they were able bodied and healthy? How does the author know what is "right" for them? Whether I agree/disagree with the aspects of the authors POV; any sober and/or objective reading of this just reeks of ego and "holier than thou" attitude.
I suspect this type of attitude is a large reason why people that devote large amounts of time to thinking about politics end up categorizing "justice" into politically ideological boxes.
Edit to add;
I am reading the comments and not many are talking about this point either which I think is profound.
I hit ctrl-f inside TFA and did not find a word used in Stoic literature that I have read; Virtue.
You would think a critique on Stoicism would at least cover the basics, no?
Here is a reminder for everyone that cares;
Stoic virtue is the highest good and the only true path to a flourishing life, encompassing four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance (or self-control), and justice.
I had maybe 10 plugins and they managed to step all over each other. One would break sync, another would break some theme and so on. There is nothing to ensure they play nice with the system itself, let alone anything malicious as you pointed out. From what I understand, there are people that have upwards of 50 plugins installed! They must never shut it down because it probably takes 20 minutes for it to start with that many plugins.
I will say that I am experimenting with various PKMS software. I am running SiYuan and it is has been very pleasant. I have only installed one plugin to make cool indexes on folders as folder notes. Everything else can be configured and used as is out of the box.
There are several others that I will try in the coming months as well. Anytype, Flusterapp, Joplin and Craft are going into my evaluation cue.
Luckily, we have Jan.ai and LM Studio which are happy to run GGUF models at full-tilt on various hardware configs. Added bonus; both include very nice API server as well.
GGUF/GGML was like the 4th iteration of file type quantization from llama.cpp and I remember that I had to consciously begin watching the bandwidth usage from my ISP. Up to that point, I had never received an email warning me about reaching limits of my 2TB connection. All for the same models just in different forms. TheBloke was pumping out models like he had unlimited time/effort.
I say all that to say, llama.cpp was still trying, dare I say 'inventing', all the things throughout these transitions. Ollama comes in to make the running part easier and less CLI flag dependent building off of llama.cpp. Awesome.
GG and company are down in the trenches of the models architecture with CUDA, Vulkan, CPU, ROCm, etc. They are working on perplexity, token processing/generation and just look at the 'bin' folder when you compile the project. There are so many different aspects to make the whole thing work as well at it does. It's amazing that we have llama-server at all with the amount of work that has gone into making llama.cpp.
All that to say, Ollama shit the bed on attribution. They were called out on r/localllama very early on for not really giving credit to llama.cpp. They have a soiled reputation with the people that participate in that sub-reddit at least. They were called out for not contributing back if I remember correctly as well, which further stained their reputation among the folks who hang in that sub-reddit.
So it's not a matter of "ease" to build what Ollama built... At least from the perspective of someone who has been paying close attention from r/localllama; the problem was/is simply the perception (right or wrong) of the meme; Person 2 to person 1: "You built this?" -> Person 2: takes item/thing -> person 2: Holds up item/thing -> "I built this". A simple act that really pissed off the community in general.
Furthermore, "sharing" is broken. Does it copy the file? Does it move the file? Am I duplicating this 200mb pdf when I move it to books? How the ____ do I know? There is a dearth of information and I imagine most people, like myself, give up and use it to read before bed or watch a few videos on the couch. I am never going to by another iPad until the OS is useful beyond drawing, creating music or reading.
If you use one program at a time, do not need an actual file system, have no need to install software from a variety of places (Github, Vendor sites, etc), have no problem installing multiple "apps" that only work behind paywalls or not at all and you don't care about replacing a functional device whenever Apple obsoletes it... iOS is the best thing since sliced bread.
If you need anything outside of iOS's limited list of abilities, its a trash operating system that has crippled amazing hardware.