Patrick Williams

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

This is a bad take. Inference isn’t served by “the model”. US companies serve some of the best Chinese models. Deepseek v4 has at least 19 different companies providing inference, some in the US.

https://t.co/ruXrXaXV0z

[Jim Cramer @jimcramer]

We must NOT let our companies use these Chinese models to save a few bucks. OpenAI and Anthropic are correct. This is vital national security. Please read Bing West's just released Cat 5. I respect the Chinese people greatly but these companies are run by the PLA for heaven's sakes.

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@BenjaminFo80988 @OpenRouter @opencode The bad uptick in tool failures corresponds pretty closely with my observed degradation. Yesterday I disabled a few worst providers and situation improved. Today more of them must have gotten some update from Deepseek…

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

The most irritating thing about LLMs is how much they break after they previously worked.

For a month, Deepseek V4 Flash was incredible. Now using Deepseek V4 Flash on @OpenRouter (with @opencode at least) is completely useless because the Tool-Call Error Rate is 90%.

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

Add this to your @opencode config:

"openrouter": {
"models": {
"deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash": {
"options": {
"provider": {
"ignore": ["deepseek", "venice",]
}
}
}
}
}

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@ThuleanFuturist Keebio Iris.

https://t.co/SnzRTH4Tmu

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@christophrumpel zinit - https://t.co/VKqcfJ3ueM

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@jonmasters I have no idea why I spelled disk with a C.

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@jonmasters > The checkout will take a few hours and use about 500 GiB disk space, and have about 15 million files outside .git.

Question is will I run out of disc space or inodes first?

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

> Fred made a whole set of structs containing raw untyped pointers so he could reinvent polymorphism in C, because he "doesn't like C++".

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

Are you actually sitting there telling me that, in 2024, a significant open source project is using fucking Autotools instead of something like Cmake?

See, this is why I retired early from software engineering.

Because for every new job I took, the same conversation would occur in slow motion over the course of a year or three.

Foobar, Inc: Welcome aboard, Devon. We were really impressed by all the awesome super-smart stuff on your resume!

Devon: Thanks, let's have a look at this codebase.

{Sound of Devon throwing up a little in his mouth.}

Devon: Pieces of this code appear to have been thrown together by howler monkeys over the course of a seven-day cocaine binge.

Foobar, Inc: Oh, that would be Fred. Yeah, he's self-taught, and his code's a little unorthodox, but —

Devon: He has clearly never taken a single computer science class in his life, and his code is a crime against god, art, and nature.

Foobar, Inc: But he's just so fast. He got our whole version 1.0 written over just seven days!

Devon: I totally believe that, and it's the reason why we need to —

Foobar, Inc: Yeah, we wish more programmers were fast like him. Nowdays, everyone seems to take forever to do anything. Including Fred, for some reason. Weird.

Devon: Have you ever heard of something called "technical debt"?

When you write hasty code, you introduce bugs and accidental complexity. It's like borrowing time from future you. You have to pay it back, with interest.

Foobar, Inc: What an interesting concept. You are clearly very smart.

But we don't have time for you to be an abstract philosopher king, pontificating about theoretical concepts which obviously have no bearing on the real world.

We have new features to write. That seems to happen so slowly nowdays for some unknown reason.

Devon: It's because you are drowning in technical debt.

Foobar, Inc: What an interesting abstract philosophical concept that has no bearing on our reality. You are clearly a really smart guy.

But we can't test your theory, because the CEO expects 5,763 new features in next month's release, to fulfill promises he made to Important Partner Business, without consulting us at all.

Devon: This tech debt needs to be paid down sometime. You can't just put it off. If you do, the interest will inflict itself on the timetable for every new feature you write.

Has someone tried explaining the concept of tech debt to the CEO?

Foobar, Inc: We can't do that. He's a boomer. Also, he has the power of a god, and the emotional stability of a single mother with a crack habit and an Onlyfans account.

We find it easier to smile and present him with rosy scenarios, and then lay off a few scapegoats when we don't meet goals.

If only we could understand why everything takes so long these days. Software engineers must be lazy. Not like Fred. Let's put Fred in charge of the whole department. Maybe he can shake things up.

Devon: Hey, I spent a week re-architecting the BazTranslator component. It runs sixty-three times faster, and you can include new conversions by inheriting from this base class and overriding just these two virtual functions.

Foobar, Inc: How DARE you, sir? You were supposed to be writing new features! This is why progress is so slow. You spent a whole week without adding any new functionality! Don't you understand we are in crisis, here?

Devon: You are always in crisis. Have you tried reading this book of essays by Fredrick Brooks?

Foobar, Inc: Get that thing out of my face.

Why are you being so difficult? You should watch out. You're acquiring a reputation for being difficult to manage. You should tremble in fear now.

Devon: I could have a new job with one phone call. I am trying to help you, you silly people.

Foobar, Inc: Then stop being an abstract philosopher king and write features as fast as you can! Like Fred! Why can't you be more like Fred?

Devon: Fred made a whole set of structs containing raw untyped pointers so he could reinvent polymorphism in C, because he "doesn't like C++".

Foobar, Inc: Yes, isn't he clever? We love Fred!

Devon: And segfaults, apparently.

{Sound of major project hitting an iceberg, burning down, falling over, and then sinking into the swamp.}

Foobar, Inc: Another project failed. Clearly, it's your fault, wasting time with all your weird philosophy and refactoring code. We're going to lay you off.

Devon: I am actually relieved.

Appros of nothing, does your family carry a lot of credit card debit?

Foobar, Inc middle manager: Of course not! That stuff will kill you!

Why do you ask?

Devon: No reason.

{Sound of Devon retiring from a high-paying engineering career and writing a science fiction novel in his bedroom for nine months.}

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@ogbonigwe1 @GergelyOrosz Maybe the person that volunteer to write the blog left the project?

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@ogbonigwe1 @GergelyOrosz Sorry, but I see this as a maintainer of another open source project all the time. People submit issues (often with very little information) and expect I'm going to gift my time to them to fix it.

If the problem doesn't resonate with me & nobody steps up to fix it, I'll close.

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@ogbonigwe1 @GergelyOrosz Could be they _are_ serious, but just not serious about solving _your_ problems?

[Jason Turner @lefticus]

PSA: It's 2024

It's been 13 years since C++11 was released.

It was 13 years from C++98 to C++11.

If you still feel like you cannot "trust these modern features of C++" that's 100% on you.

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@GergelyOrosz @jonmasters "Stable employer"? Are the days gone when IBM would quietly lay off 5-10% of every department at least once a year? Doesn't seem like it from what I've heard.

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

For all those people who like to tell us how the metric system is so much better, how'd you end up with a standard piece of paper being 297mm? You couldn't add 3 more and make it a rounder number?

[Terrible Maps @TerribleMaps]

Paper sizes world map

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

Strongly disagree. I can read your code. I can’t read your mind. Tell me _why_ you made the change in the commit message.

[Jake @JustJake]

Hot take but commit messages are almost entirely useless

Just turn on squashing, write great descriptions, and git commit -m "BONK"

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@bexcran @olofj Shouldn’t systemd-timedated be restoring the previous time during boot so that it is at least in the correct year? If that isn’t working, something is likely misconfigured.

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@olofj @bexcran Sure. @bexcran, you know how to find me on Discord? I probably won’t have tons of availability this weekend but we can arrange something for early during the week.

[Open Source Firmware Conference @osfc_io]

#OSFC2023 videos are online.

Check out https://t.co/7xUwnmMu84 for all videos. It can be found through the navigation via the archive.

You can also find all videos here: https://t.co/yI3M6jsyG3

[Patrick Williams @williamspatrick]

@hugelgupf Yes. Open Houses are often more for the agent than the seller. If you have a buyer’s agent, your agent will just bring you to the houses you want to see.