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kethinov

1,165 karma · joined March 2, 2014

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kethinov··on Show HN: Running 104GB Qwen3.8-Flash-Next on 48GB Mac with at ~12 tok/s
Next help us normies run GLM 5.3 on our potato computers. Wouldn't that be nice!
kethinov··on I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC
It's not speedy. I get 1-3 tokens per second.

The machine:

CPU: 24 × AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 12-Core Processor

RAM: 128gb

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16gb (I typo'd the GPU above)

(This is via Ollama on Ubuntu.)

But 1-3 tokens per second is much faster than a lot of other high end models I've tried, so I was pretty pleased with it. Obviously other models run much faster on this hardware though.

kethinov··on I put a datacenter GPU in my gaming PC
qwen3-coder-next runs fine on my consumer grade nvidia 4070. Performance is not spectacular, but it's only a little bit slower than a properly-fit model.
kethinov··on Qwen 3.7 Preview
Can someone explain what the current state of model benchmarking is? If you try to look up what the best locally runnable model is, you get a bunch of random blog posts using idiosyncratic criteria to rank things seemingly based on one dude's opinion.

Ideally I would love to see a leaderboard with relatively objective ranking criteria that 1. lets you filter by open weight / locally runnable, 2. filter by date of release (nothing older than x), and 3. is agnostic to hardware requirements. I just want to know what the best model is. Let me worry about how I will afford to run it.

I love the llmfit project for seeing what will run on your hardware, but it would be nice to know what I'm missing out on by not having better hardware, thus why objective hardware-agnostic ratings would be helpful.

kethinov··on Artemis II safely splashes down
For All Mankind aired an episode today that movingly commemorated the fictional lead character Ed Baldwin's Apollo 10-like in-universe mission on the same day that the real world Artemis II mission which also strongly resembles Apollo 10 landed safely. A strange and moving coincidence.
kethinov··on Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting
You're right, it absolutely does make sense. And yet it annoys me anyway.

There's been research by linguists (John McWhorter comes to mind) analyzing this phenomenon and it basically just comes down to the fact that as we age, we get more set in our ways, so the linguistic innovations that younger people do just have a tendency to annoy us, even when they logically follow or are objectively useful.

I try not to let it bother me, because it's irrational to feel that way, but it just does lol

kethinov··on Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting
Your reply did exactly what I complained about: expanding the definition of emulator to cover reimplementing a network protocol.

You're not wrong that "server emulator" is a generically correct use of the term emulation, in the same sense that it is a correct use of the word for someone to say they emulate a fashion sense of a celebrity they like in their own wardrobe.

But in computer science, strictly speaking, the original definition of emulator was more strict. It was about things like emulating processor architecture A so as to execute programs written for it on processor architecture B.

And part of why expanding the definition to include "server emulators" annoys me is why has this definition expansion occurred only in gaming contexts? If a free UO server is a "server emulator" then why is Samba not also a server emulator? The lack of consistency is irritating to me, and it only happened because gamers like the term emulator, not due to any kind of rigorous computer sciencey reason.

kethinov··on Show HN: Moongate – Ultima Online server emulator in .NET 10 with Lua scripting
I'm a fan of UO and I love seeing more projects like this. Nice work!

Obligatory nitpicky aside, a time-honored tradition of HN:

I've long been irritated by the use of the term "server emulator" in gaming contexts. Technically these projects are just reimplementations of a proprietary networking protocol. Nobody calls Samba a "server emulator" because it reimplements the Windows file sharing protocol, because Samba isn't "emulating" anything from the perspective of the traditional definition of "emulator" in computer science.

But for some reason, I guess because "emulator" has colloquially been redefined by non-CS nerd gamer normies as a term for software that lets you play proprietary games on platforms they were not designed for, we have ended up in this new status quo where the term's definition has expanded in this game of telephone way that annoys mainly me and not many other people.

And what's kinda funny is I say that it is a "new" status quo, but it's not even that new. I recall, what, like 20 years ago now I was in an edit war on Wikipedia fighting with people over the "server emulator" article, insisting that the term was technically inaccurate and should not be used. Unsurprisingly in retrospect, I lost that edit war.

Nowadays the whole thing feels like my first "old man yells at cloud" moment, of which I'm sure I'll experience more as I age. I certainly do find new slang introduced by gen Z like "he got the riz!" to be quite cringey, so it looks like I'm well on my way to getting crotchety and terrible about the natural evolution of language! ;)

kethinov··on Andrej Karpathy talks about "Claws"
I'm broadly with you on disliking OP's comment because it is needlessly negative, but I don't think it quite rises to the standard of a personal attack.

Accusing the author of introducing slop into the language by coining (or using) a new term is a criticism of the author's work, not the author himself.

It's akin to saying, "Your work has a negative side effect which I don't like." Which clearly would've been the nicer way to say it.

kethinov··on An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
The comments section on Ars is particularly depressing. I've been posting there for two decades and watched it slowly devolve from a place where thoughtful discussions happened to now just being one of the worst echo chambers on the internet, like a bad subreddit. I've made suggestions over the years in their public feedback surveys to alter their forum software to discourage mob behavior, but they don't seem to be doing anything about it.
kethinov··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2026)
Location: Upstate New York (between Syracuse and Rome)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Angular, Node.js, Express, Electron, PHP, ASP.NET, C#, Java, Ruby on Rails, Go, Rust, C++, Bash, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, Linux, macOS, Windows, Apache, nginx, Docker, AWS, AI training and integration, product design, user interface design, people management, recruiting, mentoring, and more.

Résumé/CV: https://kethinov.net/resume (web) https://kethinov.net/resume.pdf (pdf)

Email: kethinov@gmail.com

Hello HN! I'm Eric, an experienced software developer seeking a coding or engineering management role. I've worked in many tech stacks and I'm always ready to learn new ones to get the job done. Let's make great things together!

kethinov··on I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
Suppose you could wave a magic wand and change US immigration law in any way you like. What changes would you make?
kethinov··on Ask HN: How does one build large front end apps without a framework like React?
Vanilla JS is very powerful and has the features you need to build SPAs without a big framework. Proxies and mutation observers are great for maintaining state, Updating the DOM yourself is fine, view transitions are awesome, etc. The only thing that's hard is routing, but there are lots of small dedicated JS libraries to handle that. Here's one I made that gives you the Express API on the frontend: https://github.com/rooseveltframework/single-page-express
kethinov··on Show HN: I built a local-first podcast app
Any plans to make an Electron or Tauri version?

Also personally I do not prefer to play podcasts with a podcast app. I just want it to download the files to a directory which I then sync with another audio player. Does your app make that workflow easy?

kethinov··on Cap: Lightweight, modern open-source CAPTCHA alternative using proof-of-work
Other critiques aside, I wish there was more effort put into developing accessible CAPTCHAs that do not require JavaScript. Whatever its merits or flaws are, this CAPTCHA is yet another CAPTCHA that requires JS.
kethinov··on Why Good Ideas Die Quietly and Bad Ideas Go Viral
The TL;DR answer to this question is there is a lot of intellectual junk food out there and our monkey brains are pretty vulnerable to succumbing it just as we crave literal junk food and resisting those cravings is very difficult.

If only we had GLP-1 agonists for our minds too and not just our bodies.

In lieu of that, all we've got is the same as always: nurture your mind by cultivating a good media diet, a healthy skepticism that doesn't drift into reactionary contrarianism, and an openness to new information; especially new evidence that contradicts things you believe.

...Which is basically like trying to solve the obesity crisis by telling people to diet and exercise. It would be nice if we had a more effective tool or technique to help a larger percentage of people achieve it.

kethinov··on Show HN: Firebender, a simple coding agent for Android Engineers
Now do Waterbender for Windows apps, Airbender for macOS/iOS apps, and Earthbender for Linux apps.
kethinov··on LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed
The residential area being on fire looks significantly uglier to me.
kethinov··on LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed
A lot more could be done: https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-better-approach-to-forest-man...
kethinov··on NYC Congestion Pricing Tracker
Would be nice if they made transit better first instead of making driving worse first.
kethinov··on Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
What ad platforms do you like and dislike?
kethinov··on No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
A well-functioning organization would not devalue people who are more judicious about their use of time, preferring productivity over unnecessary socializing.

But while what you're describing does not describe a well-functioning organization, it's definitely true in practice. People who buck the silly social dynamics in office cultures will be perceived as less productive whether it's true or not and are frequently devalued.

A knee-jerk response to what I just wrote of course will be maybe those people just can't see the real value of all these allegedly silly office rituals, but before you jump to that conclusion, consider the possibility that it's at least equally likely that the people perpetrating the rituals are overvaluing them.

The point is all of these social dynamics and office rituals should be open to being reexamined every so often to see if they're truly adding the value people think they're adding so they don't devolve into rituals people do because they're rituals. Keep the good ones, ditch the useless ones, and be proactive about objectively evaluating which are which.

kethinov··on No "Hello", No "Quick Call", and No Meetings Without an Agenda
At a certain point it just doesn't make sense to over-optimize for being highly interruptible, when the sacrifice (productivity) isn't worth the gain (satisfy outdated notions of office etiquette designed by extroverts who want to vampire other people's attention unnecessarily).
kethinov··on Show HN: CommitAsync – $100K+ dev jobs 100% remote only
Sites with infinite scroll should not have footers.
kethinov··on Pretty Eight Machine
I helped him out (in a very small way) on that album. Super fun project to work on. Brendan is very talented.
kethinov··on US spent more on health care in 2022 than 6 countries combined with universal
Profits are a strong incentive to innovate. We should subsidize those profits but not do it the stupidest possible way by making consumers pay insane drug prices.
kethinov··on US spent more on health care in 2022 than 6 countries combined with universal
I have looked and I don't buy it. I think any realistic transition to a single payer healthcare system in the United States is going to result in us still being the most expensive health care system in the world for lots of complex downstream consequences reasons. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It means we should just embrace paying the most to get the highest quality product instead of pretending that the goal should be to somehow be less expensive than everyone else while still getting the best care. It's unrealistic. You get what you pay for.
kethinov··on US spent more on health care in 2022 than 6 countries combined with universal
The small tweak = new patent loophole is easy to solve with patent abuse reform. The sting of the reduced profit margin by stopping patent abuse can be offset by making prizes for making stuff generic bigger than the profits they would get from patent abuse.

The job loss from transition to single payer is a tougher problem, but I would rather just rip that bandaid off than keep a lot of unnecessary insurance jobs around.

kethinov··on US spent more on health care in 2022 than 6 countries combined with universal
While I am very enthusiastic about reforming our system to a single payer system, one fact about the US that is unique that a lot of people on my side of the issue need to understand better is that making our healthcare system more socialized will almost certainly not bring down the costs. It may even go up.

One of the big factors driving the lower costs of healthcare in other countries isn't the cost savings from socializing it, it's the fact that the US essentially subsidizes the entire drug research industry and the rest of the world doesn't have to pay for that like we do.

So even with single payer healthcare, we're still gonna have to be the nation that shovels all the money into the drug industry. I don't personally see a problem with that per se. We are a rich country. We should pay the lion's share. But the cost shouldn't be so directly passed on to consumers in the form of insane drug prices. Switch to a prize system in exchange for taking stuff off patent or something, e.g. the federal government buying the patent whenever something new comes out for an extremely high one time price, then let the generics market go nuts with it. That would bring down consumer prices without eviscerating drug company profit margins and destroying their incentive to innovate.

kethinov··on The Cutting Room Floor
Love that site. I used their page on Secret of Mana as a reference [1] during my work making ROM hacks for the game [2] and a large focus of my work was restoring content that was cut, including unused graphics, dialog, and even unused music. Fun project.

[1] https://tcrf.net/Secret_of_Mana_(SNES)

[2] https://www.romhacking.net/?page=hacks&genre=&platform=&game...

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