John Balis

Generalist AI engineer.
I created tortoise.cpp, localwriter, and localpilot.
DM's always open.

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

local inference has come a long way since 2023

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

@deontologistics Interested!

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

Finally doing Linux From Scratch; I've been meaning to for ages.

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

@keithccurtis Yeah imo fine as an optional feature; that does requires some setup from the user outside of the oxt install though right?

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

There is a promising FOSS fork of localwriter called writeragent with a lot of new agentic features. Definitely worth checking out if you like localwriter.

[Keith Curtis @keithccurtis]

https://t.co/MHZw38NzQV

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

@keithccurtis I didn't user numpy because I didn't have a particular need for it; the python dep I considered was LiteLLM. Because I wanted all depdencies to be vendored ,and cross platform vendoring for things with binary blobs seemed like a pain, I ended up not including any dependencies.

[Timothy Gowers @wtgowers @wtgowers]

AI has now solved a major open problem -- one of the best known Erdos problems called the unit distance problem, one of Erdos's favourite questions and one that many mathematicians had tried.
https://t.co/SD1vVPkrHR

[carl feynman @carl_feynman]

I remember when SLAM (simultaneous location and mapping) was a big unsolved problem-- late 80s and early 90s. I tried and failed to find a good method. I had a feeling it was impossible, but that was obviously wrong, because animals can do it, so I didn't tell anyone of my suspicion. And fortunately I was wrong! Now it's in our appliances!

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

The EFF is needed more than ever and should not retreat from twitter.

[EFF @EFF]

After almost twenty years on the platform, EFF is logging off of X.

This isn’t a decision we made lightly, but it might be overdue. 🧵(1/5)

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

@JoelSercel @peterrhague good tweet; I ended up reading about antimatter and learning something!

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

In case people are wondering, I am not stopping development of localwriter, and it is on track to get new agentic features of its own soon :^)

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

https://t.co/38kdr5DxgG

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

This connectome-only drosophila em from eon producing naturalistic behavior is incredibly startling if it's real, and may imply it's much easier to make somewhat functional ems than I thought.

[Michael Andregg @michaelandregg]

In the case of this fruit fly the weights are determined by how many synapses are connecting to neurons, where the weight is linear with the number of synapses connecting. In the future we'll use a lot more sophisticated modeling based on neuron size and other cell morphology.

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

@michaelandregg Are you giving its eyes any input or is it going entirely by smell/touch/proprioception?

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

@michaelandregg Like it already seems to behave kinda like a fly. Is that yellow coloring on the ground an indicator that there is a simulated food smell?

[John Balis @JohnUBalis]

@michaelandregg @eonsys Maybe a lazy question: how do you read the weights from the physical synapses?

[Michael Andregg @michaelandregg]

I'm excited to share this demo of some of our work at @eonsys!

[KATY PERRY @katyperry]

done

[Amanda @hey_amandam]

You do need to master this tooling but that alone will not make you stand out or protect you.