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poelzi

85 karma · joined August 5, 2015

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poelzi··on AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt
Sure. tix.im does not force you to use anything. LLMs are optional.

For me personally, I'm finally able to build an environment that I actually like in absolute perfectionism. I just have to command and the the workflows bring my wishes to life with hardly any bugs. I had 1 regression in the last month with an avg of 1700 commits / week.

poelzi··on Insects don't swarm at LED lights
For sure, but the nonprofit that did the measurements where not counting windshields, they where counting traps in different areas. The decline of 50%+ biomass since in the last decades is just fucking real. Cats are not the reason for decline in birds, a collapse of the food chain is.
poelzi··on Insects don't swarm at LED lights
We don't see the swarms anymore, because they are all dead. If you don't look, you will not notice -https://www.science.org/content/article/germany-s-insects-ar...

AFAIK a nonprofit in Germany collected real data over the last decades. Your childhood memories of windscreens full of insects after each trip are true

poelzi··on Ask HN: What's your current AI agentic setup?
Mostly https://tix.im/ with my vx-maintainer expert, codex, opencode and claude-code as harnesses.

I was unhappy with everything out there - not secure enough, not flexible enough, not composable enough, not nix enough. The whole concept how we use AI is garbage, having 10 terminals open with agents working in different branches. I build workflows, very complex, multi model, multi harness, parameterized - nix defined workflows that run in highly isolated, fully composed environments. I have a few dozen workflows already, in vx-maintainer: quick-fix, change-management, spec-implement, red-green, sync-branches, ....

Each of those workflows does something, and this extremely well. Every time a workflow fails, the workflow gets some massage to make it more resilient, more flexible, more correct. Workflows are usually design that restart just recovers the last state and continues work. My land-feature workflow has at least 40 steps, most of them deterministic scripts. For example, if rebase is true, a mechanical rebase is started, if this fails, an agent rebase agent is started. Full multi panel + review tool pipeline. With time, the workflows start to be super sophisticated, for example: review is cached, but the review is pinned to the commit hash. When restarted and rebase is on, a ast-diff is generated to check if the review can be reused. Stuff, no normal person would do :)

vx-maintainer has an own bug / change tracker. Normal bugtrackers are build for humans, such agentic system need a tracker that works for both.

Then I have a special agent, the queue-manager, his goal is to keep the workflow engine busy. He queries the vx-meta tracker for changes and workflows to get implemented.

Workflows are semi-automatic. You can have tty and ui programs running inside the workflows. You have decision steps and agents can ask the operator.

And this is just the surface of it.

I never was able to get so much stuff done and had so much fun getting a project build. And fucking safe - no more fear when updating dependencies.

poelzi··on AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt
you can build workflows without agents. Giving them highly isolated environments where they can't break stuff and having human gates where it makes sense - game changer. And you can use local LLMs - stata is awesome. I have a strata tix flake, I start it, it registers the model locally, and it becomes useable everywhere.
poelzi··on AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt
Yeah. The concept is quite large and hard to understand - beeing the inventor does not make me the best explainer of the system, and english is not my native language. People grasp it more in a personal conversation and seeing it in action.

tix.im combines conecepts of expert systems with LLMs and other AI systems. Everything is composable via nix flakes. Any change is modeled via workflows that run in isolation. Each step type, is composed from the nix flakes defined and installed in the environment. Not only the projects nix flake (devshell), but also the tix project enabled experts. vx-maintainer is my software development expert - does only know about conecept of software development. Each workflow implemented is steps and workflows. For example, each change lands via land-feature workflow, it has ~40 steps. Workflows have complex parameters that define the flow inside the workflow DAG. In this case, rebase is mechanical, if it fails, medium smart rebase fixer is spawned, then mechanical step checks if all commits arrive in the rebase. Then it builds a collections, spawn a review swarm, open-code-review, etc... everything is tracked in an own issue tracking system and workflows can be restarted with minimal overhead.

Then I have an optimized queue-manager, an own agent prompt with an goal that can never be fulfilled. He manages that items from the tracker get done and land, extra workflows mechanically later check the landing.

rust expert, knows about rust specifics, has snippets, agents, skills etc. security expert has workflows with red-teaming, cyber models that get registered at the internal LLM gateway for usage, ...

I start to model everything in my daily live as an expert system now, with workflows that can be used by other expert flakes.

Workflow steps can be shared and also run wayland and x11 apps, rmux multiuser sessions etc. So, my goal is to move most of my tasks into some specialized environment.

And this is just a small part of the architecture - it is fully decentralized and user owned.

poelzi··on AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt
In my opinion, the whole paradigm how we use computers needs to be replaced. It is like the 80s, but now with internet and a thread larger then anything in computer history before. I remember boot sector viruses and stuff.

My approach is https://tix.im/ - not launched yet. But from expedience: modeling everything as workflows of composeable nix flakes (expert systems from programs, skills, agents, workflows and their snippets, DBs blobs, service descriptions, ...) and then run everything in highly isolated environments. It is not only so much more efficient, reduces errors, increases quality, reduces unnecessary cognitive load, ...

I start to move more and more daily tasks into the systems. Even UI programs become interactive workflow steps, which allow me to attach from anywhere back to a task in an environment optimized for the task.

Dependency updates for example, a workflow. A subgraph from a security scanner expert checks each change in the dependency tree.

poelzi··on Backdoor in Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace
This is why I started to move more and more into my tix.im environment. You can't trust anything anymore - I assume everything is compromised if not proven otherwise.
poelzi··on Backdoor in Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace
I guess, this is why I'm building tix.im ...
poelzi··on How Has Roman Concrete Lasted for Millennia? 1,900-Year-Old Latrine Offers Clues
The trick was: Lime CHUNKS, proper volcanic fly ash, salt water + no steel. Self repairing and more flexible
poelzi··on I can haz smoller NixOS ISOs?
i'm doing this using nix2container and a rust program that generates a landlock filter so i can mount nix store and only the supplied derivates are visible :) coming to you in a few month, tix.im

tbh, this is the most powerful computer program I have ever seen. Working on this now for over 6 month, ~600k LOC. I think it will grow to 800k in the base package. Unfortunately, uncompromised security requires quite some LOC.

This works: tix workflow submit ../vx-maintainer/workflows/change-management/default.nix --follow -- --feature-branch="feat/2lines" --instructions="tui overview should show running flows in 2 lines. 2 line: running steps, done, failed, etc. reports counter: info/success/failed/warning/error sparkle line with load ... . then if extended by double click, each running step has a line. what step, memory, cpu usage, token counters, ... subgraphs should be rendered under the parent flow. Title should always show that subgraph. details has link to parent " --source-repo=/home/poelzi/Projects/tix/tixim --implementor=opencode\#gpt-5.5

I get a human gate after the plan is finished where I can give feedback (in this workflow). And then another gate when everything is done. 4 different models, multiple harnesses, multiple reviews, rest cases etc. :) It makes me so smile watching the workflow progress. And the shit becomes global in a few days...

poelzi··on Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite same same, just different time and job.

I don't see anybody using a hand drill anymore - your hands will become all weak and you will lose your ability to drill good holes by hand...

If you want anti AI sentiment, you should take a visit to /r/rust

poelzi··on GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension
I have build a proper workflow system for complex work that composes environments from nix flakes (very extended flakes) - it allows you to combines deterministic with agentic steps. The release process is a workflow in your project that requires to generate reproducible outputs - nix does this for you. The network basically is a distributed CI system - Multiple parties need to check and build your release. When all parties agree, that the package is correct, the SUI smart contract gives it's go. IKA is a multi party encryption network which implements a novel MCP-2pc algorithm. Your release key is split in half - IKA has one part, you have the other. Only is both parties sign the transaction, your software package gets release. Every party, even your PC can be compromised, and it is very hard to just release malware in your package. The whole release pipeline needs to succeed ant then you need to sign it with your hardware token. There are mandatory workflows in the release pipeline that check your software for side loading, comparing your dependency tree to the last version published, etc.

It is the largest project I have ever build and I code since 25 years.

I was just not satisfied with the agentic tools out there, nor with the CI / build infrastructure. Nix is nice, but the way packages are build / signed is just half way to perfect.

We can be lucky that the github hack did not infect the CI infrastructure. Imagine you infect the compilers in github CI to add a sleeper worm that does nothing for a month...

Only if you have multiple parties, building the same software with bootstrapped compilers and every artifact is hash compared, you can be sure it is legit

poelzi··on GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension
Working hard on the github killer. Fully decentralized with nearly unbreakable release system. Multiple parties need to produce the same artifacts in the release workflow. IKA then signs the release on the network side, you sign your release using hardware token. Release pipeline analysis source code for malware on the complete dependency chain. Rust + Nix + SUI + WALRUS + SEAL + IKA - a complete decentralized economy. A few more weeks until testnet :)
poelzi··on Anthropic is expanding to Colossus2. Will use GB200
Nobody uses grok except checking shit on X At least the hardware is not idle
poelzi··on GitHub Actions is the weakest link
I'm building a fix since over half a year. Very sophisticated workflow engine for the paranoid with strong AI integration and fully decentralized and deterministic behavior. Nix, Rust, SUI, Walrus, SEAL, IKA and my engine/framework + many tools. One goal is to have multiple workflows by independent parties that not only check the compiler output, but do advanced source chain analysis. When enough parties report successful run, the IKA network signs the build digests. You can hold the second part of the key, so only you + successful pipeline will result in a release. No single point of failure, no single party that can be hacked.
poelzi··on Warp is now open-source
Overwhelming and overloaded. Terminals need to be 1 thing first: fast, and there it fails miserably.
poelzi··on Niri 26.04: Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
I love niri. I'm half way through getting hdr rendering running
poelzi··on SilentGlass actively blocks malicious HDMI and Display Port connections
And also bridges the HDMI monitor into his network or does any OS automatically link that ? EoH is mostly for smart TVs
poelzi··on The Polyglot NixOS
The nix store can do hard linking for the hashsum files. The nix store is read-only so you don't get modifications in general - does not really matter for boot disks, but in general.
poelzi··on The Polyglot NixOS
The difference is, you can create proper abstraction modules that put everything together, from dependencies, to config files, firewall rules etc and have nice options for your abstraction.

No other system provides this in that sane way. I used countless configuration systems, from custom bash hacks, ansible, chef, puppet, salt - I have seen a lot.

Nix is just on another level. Never going back

poelzi··on The French aristocrat who understood evolution 100 years before Darwin
There is always someone 100 years ahead of time: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1424329112

These are the ones I'm searching for and if their model is more logical, requires less assumptions, explains more and is more consistent, I change my paradigm. Unfortunately, you then have to either stop writing in forums like this, or get downvoted into oblivion.

poelzi··on Ask HN: My Cofounder was diagnosed with cancer, what should I do?
I would have loved to know what I know now when my father had leucemia. He did everything the doctors told him to, but died a very ugly, painful death. I fucking hold his hand when he died so FU.

He was eating and acting wrongly and was in the wrong state of mind - last one I knew and tried multiple times to get out of it, but he did not listen.

poelzi··on Ask HN: My Cofounder was diagnosed with cancer, what should I do?
You understand nothing about biology and are not even able to quickly search scholar.

https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=fi&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=cance...

Every fucking expert on sugar will tell you that this stuff is unhealty. I wrote multiple times, it depends on the cancer.

And I never said he should avoid regular treatment.

poelzi··on Ask HN: My Cofounder was diagnosed with cancer, what should I do?
Stand with him and help him through his hard time - when he has fought it off, you will be buddies for life.

There is no universal cure for cancer, but most of them can be starved out. Carbohydrates are fuel for cancer avoid them on all cost. Depending on the cancer, fasting and strong reduction of caloric intake. Some expert say, you should avoid autophagy, some say, 30-40 day fast can starve it out - depending on the type. GDF-11 seems to to have fixed some - needs to be precisely adjusted based on bio markers. There are some peptides to boost immune system. If he wants to eat, vegan and mostly greens, fibers and no processed foods.

As a biohacker, my suggestion: Vitamin D, K MH-7, Zinc, Se-Methyl L-Selenocysteine, Zone 2 Training, Stretching 2x day 15 minutes at least (immune-cells use fascia as roads - glued fascia layers are a breeding ground for cancer)

poelzi··on Planner, a task manager designed for Linux
Last update 3 years ago, closed source. Why ?
poelzi··on Half the world is now middle class or wealthier (2018)
The only reason it gives you the illusion of beeing richer then our previous generations is, that you can now buy tons of cheap Chinese shit for which your grandparents had to buy very expensive western utilities (the stuff that still works).

Otherwise, we are, on average, poorer then our parents. Our kids, if you are still consider having them, will be poorer then you.

A necessary result from capitalism with fiat money. However, if your wealth exceeds a certain threshold, currently something around 1.5-2 million €, you will benefit from this system and earn more all the time.

poelzi··on What if the Universe has no end?
The big bang bullshit is falsified, read the papers collected there http://cosmology.info/
poelzi··on Superconductivity Theory Under Attack
I studied philosophy and physics in my youth and I can distinguish between a genius and a "crackpot" very well. Details are what counts, you can get every model to fit roughly if you don't care about the number of constants involved. If the model is correct, it also works for extreme situation. FQHE is the extrem situation that breaks the electron and SC model.

I have not heard any "crackpot" to distinguish between classical logic and mathematical one, because this is something only well studied people with background in logic and philosophy of science do. This was on of the hints that made me realize this guy is good, really good.

Science is always 80 years ahead of current discussion: https://www.pnas.org/content/112/24/7426

We are talking about interdisciplinary physics here, it's the top rank.

It took me a year to really understand Stoyans Model. Now I'm in a paradox free, consistent world view with the fewest possible assumptions you can possible make. For me galaxies and the the universe as a whole, is the logical and deterministic consequence from the lowest number of fundamental particles you can have. The world became a very complex, deterministic machine of utter beauty.

I understand the fine structure constant, 137, relativity (I only can smile on your implementation of it), time, Newtonian mass, magnetic fields, planetary fields (origin), gravity, electron orbit conditions, the periodic table in it's fullest (why), quasars, pulsars, globular clusters, periodicity of the redshift, lyman alpha forest, black holes, super-massive black holes (totally different object), photons, beta-particles, ... the list goes on.

I understand the internal discrepancies inside the standard model, I know for a fact, that most parts of it are in fact falsified.

If you bring up a error in the math equations or a logical error in the theory of his, I would be glad to discuss this in detail. So far, I have not found a problem and in fact, came to the conclusion that this is the first model I can remotely accept as true, because it is complex and not complicated.

Just some weeks ago, another confirmation from a different model with quite close values was presented at a physics conference I attended. His was ~10^27 N/m² and in BSM its 1.3 * 10^26 N/m² of Vacuum pressure, a hidden variable in the standard model.

poelzi··on Astronomers on the verge of detecting “first light”
http://cosmology.info/
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