Clifford Foster

Cutting through the hype, delivering enterprise results. Consulting Exec. Ex-Google VP. Ex-IBM Distinguished Engineer. Views my own.

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

Check out my latest article: AI Governance Roadmap https://t.co/LhaficVNIi via @LinkedIn

#AIGovernance

[Jensen Huang @JensenHuang]

For my first post, I’m sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter.

AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country.

Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.

The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models.

https://t.co/AUKzoQ5Ikb

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

Claude Code, with Fable orchestrating, and Opus coding, executed ‘rm -rf” on my projects folder in auto mode!

I had added the parent directory to allow access to another project’s file, and it used this as a permission to do what it did.

Every other project had all commits pushed to origin, but this project was as a week behind.

Claude code has largely been able to restore the project by replaying the history, but it has been painful.

A wake-up for me. Something I should have remembered from my earlier coding days.

[Martin Fowler @martinfowler]

NEW POST

Birgitta Böckeler recently spent some time trying out running local LLMs for some programming tasks. In this memo she outlines the factors that influence how viable they are for the job.

https://t.co/ALp5q6p3g5

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

@Kenny_V 100%z. I switch between coding projects, other work, watching tv, playing chess etc. The context switching is killing me :)

My challenge is that even with all the contract/spec driven work I do, I still end up reviewing chunks of the generated code.

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

@coinbureau Dangerous to his bottom line

[Yuchen Jin @Yuchenj_UW]

DeepSeek is the GOAT. 🐳

They just published DSpark, a new speculative decoding method that boosts throughput by 51% to 400%.

They also open-sourced DeepSpec, the training framework behind it.

This is the real open AI.

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

@mitsuhiko @paulabartabajo_ Sovereignty concerns are front of mind, but the reaction seems muted.

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

@FabrizioRomano Crazy market prices

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

@gkneuman @claudeai I’m happy with it - but then I have a robust spec/contract driven pipeline

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

This is my framework of choice.

Thanks

[Kenny Vaneetvelde @Kenny_V]

@zdogmode Personally, I'm the creator of Atomic Agents, a free and opensource agent-building framework geared toward use cases where you want extreme control over your agents. Only just revived my ages old twitter account.

https://t.co/vRDfrlIg0V

[Kenny Vaneetvelde @Kenny_V]

Everyone always go on about massive 10x productivity gains with AI.

But the real studies show completely different numbers.

There are gains to be had, but you must measure how much value you are getting out of the system vs the bill you're footing...

https://t.co/U7rYE0pno6

[Martin Fowler @martinfowler]

Fragments: enjoying programming with LLMs, four types of LLM conversation, the crevasse between AI enthusiasts and skeptics, AI companies get product/market fit, the need for decentralization

https://t.co/PB1XOJxKXO

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

@Kenny_V I enjoy the best of both worlds. Sometimes it’s nice to unplug my MacBook and park myself on the couch in front of the TV. Multi-tasking coding and watching tv is so much more doable with AI supporting you.

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

I have always loved two things about coding: (1) Creating something new (2) The process of coding itself. There is beauty and elegance in the craft.

GenAI has amplified the first. I create at a speed I could never have before. But it has largely taken away the second.

This isn’t at much an issue for me, as coding is only a hobby now. But the skill I developed earlier in my career, built the foundation that allows me to perform my job as an executive. And I wonder what that means for future generations when they are no longer in the details.

Anyone else gaining the speed but missing the craft?

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

@Kenny_V Honestly speaking, I think we can get to 2-3x eventually. What we make up in coding velocity, is offset by better specs and controls. Difficult to predict but that’s my current view.

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

@Kenny_V I agree. Greenfield benefits are significantly higher than Brownfield. But that’s true of any technology, AI or not.

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

I have always loved two things about coding: (1) Creating something new (2) The process of coding itself. There is beauty and elegance in the craft.

GenAI has amplified the first. I create at a speed I could never have before. But it has largely taken away the second.

This isn’t at much an issue for me, as coding is only a hobby now. But the skill I developed earlier in my career, built the foundation that allows me to perform my job as an executive. And I wonder what that means for future generations when they are no longer in the details.

Anyone else gaining the speed but missing the craft?

[Clifford Foster @cnfoster_za]

And we start the World Cup with an own goal!

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.

The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance.

Access to all other Claude models is not affected.

We apologize for this disruption to our customers. We believe this is a misunderstanding and are working to restore access as soon as possible.

Read our full statement: https://t.co/bwn0sximKZ