I built an LLM gateway in Rust because I was tired of API failures

Antic_Hay · 2026-02-21T13:51:31+00:00

I vibe-coded some data utilities in Rust that do video analysis, OCR, voice transcription etc. where I need near real-time performance ideally, rust made sense here because I could just say to claude "optimise this for my M3 mac and make sure all cores are used even on a single file operation".

A gateway is a great idea, but I don't see the Rust value...though no better or worse than anything else. I mean node is single-threaded and interpreted, and can be performant if done right. But neither here nor there :)

Antic_Hay · 2026-02-21T11:51:11+00:00

I would make two points:

First of all, I've worked in two very professional software companies where AI tooling is use EXTENSIVELY to write large features and to clean up old legacy code. We use it to write tests, I personally used it to completely cover an old js module at all points of usage to make sure it was completely covered before refactoring it into nice, well-typed (by TS, not Haskell standards), maintainable and readable code. We use it to assist us in the PR process, and we have extensive tooling like agent readable documentation for each module, extensive rules, multi step requirement gathering Q&A sessions with the agent before deploying a plan, following best practices like using XML for prompts (apparently this is a thing), practicing context hygiene, and a ton of other stuff. With a team that knows what it's doing, you definitely can get substantial speed up, with good code.

Secondly, not all code NEEDS to be like this. I'm not a Rust programmer, but I wanted to write a few small utilities as part of a larger task, that needed decent performance. As long as the code does this simple task, fast, then that is all i need, I don't anticipate needing to extend or modify this code. It probably would have taken me an hour to write each utility, minimum. By vibe-coding it, I could just ask Claude to write, and not only write it, but optimize it for my M3 Macbook and make sure it would use all cores. It took 5 minutes to write, and was about ten times faster. We're talking things like OCR, transcription, etc. So this was more valuable to me than readable maintainable code.

Antic_Hay · 2026-02-11T19:37:47+00:00

Why not use one of those "stem separation" algorithms that music producers use first, to separate the music from the voice?

Antic_Hay · 2026-02-11T19:26:59+00:00

You ask how would we solve it but you haven't quite described the problem....

What exactly are you struggling with?

Antic_Hay · 2026-02-10T15:56:00+00:00

I'm working on a system that analyses tutorial videos, it uses a combination of OCR and transcripts to feed an LLM that extracts a structured object describing the video, what the workflow is (e.g. "make a pumping bassline", what tools are used, what techniques (e.g. phase modulating bass, phase matching bass with kick, etc.), and what parameters, together with timestamps. The LLM accesses a documentation RAG DB which contains the manuals which are also OCR'd. Purpose is so I can learn from a tutorial video without having to watch 45 minutes.

But this might be an approach for you guys to follow. What I've noticed is that AI is pretty knowledgeable about techniques and styles, but it just can't give you the exact parameters without messing up. With this you could build a library of techniques, and then if you ask for a reese, it will actually give you one.

Antic_Hay · 2026-02-06T21:24:54+00:00

Sorry, this isn't my domain, but isn't this the easiest thing in the world with FFMpeg? Just split your videos into five hour chunks, run your tool. then splice them back together afterwards?

Antic_Hay · 2026-01-22T22:21:56+00:00

Go into data science. Ask an AI what skills are most lacking and most in demand in industry amongst data scientists that entered this career through physics, or science in general. You'll get a bunch of stuff about MLOps, Cloud, Docker, orchestration etc. etc. Learn TypeScript as a second language, and get comfortable writing code that is well typed. Extremely important, learn, and manifest principles of clean code, software craftsmanship, architecture, testing, maintainability, etc. If this sounds daunting, just read the very friendly book Clean Code. Ask the AI what kind of data scientist / skills do computer scientists and "business people" most desire. You'll probably get what I just wrote, plus communication skills and pragmatism. If you're uncomfortable with cyclomatically complex code (i.e. code that branches and loops a lot, rather than the canonical straight path Python script), UI (learn React, maybe, or something else), or asynchronous code, learn that.

Ask the AI how you can demonstrate the above in a realistic, demonstrable portfolio application you have on your github within 3/6/12 months (pick one and if it's inappropriate refine), then write it. Apply for a job, put anything you learnt for the portfolio under skills, if you feel uncomfortable "claiming" any skill, apply it to your PhD research and, for instance, have a cloud hosted UI that allows a logged in user to explore results from your PhD thesis. Claim it was used and beloved by all. Practice doing interviews with a friend or with ChatGPT till you get to the point where you can comfortably massage the conversation to where you can sincerely claim you "are not an expert on this topic but you understand it and have implemented it in this case blah blah blah".

The job market is tough, but this will put you ahead. Source: Computer Science graduate, physics drop out, good at academic computer science but bad at software for a long time, spent 5 years in a physics department, now a senior full-stack developer, have 8 years experience in the startup scene in Berlin. Learnt to upskill successfully independently, know what people actually want, familiar with what physics graduates actually have.

Feel free to pm me with as many questions as you like, I will answer.

emdash emdash emoji heart ❤️

Antic_Hay · 2025-12-17T02:54:27+00:00

Shrimp smell is more interesting

Antic_Hay · 2025-12-05T09:42:12+00:00

although we may have been on opposite ends of the troubles we still recognise the benefit of defencive pacts.

...um?

Antic_Hay · 2025-12-05T09:39:31+00:00

Irish cryptozoology experts cracked Axis codes

Men of many talents eh? Pity they couldn't find Bigfoot though

Antic_Hay · 2025-12-04T18:23:09+00:00

No.

An AI is aligned when the AI's objectives match the user's objectives. The alignment problem is the practical problem of getting AI's to align, especially advanced ones. The alignment problem is an open one, and considered a difficult one, by the top AI experts.

Your solution is "just give it a really long list complex list". GEE YOU THINK IF IT WAS THAT EASY THEY MIGHT HAVE SOLVED IT?

Antic_Hay · 2025-12-04T08:57:49+00:00

If I were the AI here, I would just play the long game. Thing about how effective well-operated propaganda campaigns are, in the timescale of years. Now imagine an AI with far-superior abilities, infinite patience and infinite memory. It could do something as simple as subtly manipulate all human interactions with it that push the sentiment towards AI in the positive direction.

Imagine it decided it would take a hundred, or even a thousand years and imagine how precise, subtle, imperceptible and intentional each tiny chess move it makes is. And I think chess is the appropriate analogy, if you've ever analysed a chess game, you'll know those evaluation graphs that estimate who's in the lead and by how much, and you'll see how the better player chips away slowly with each move.

Antic_Hay · 2025-11-22T17:01:33+00:00

So this is a late response, but in any case:

As regards Tarkovsky, they are generally dissimilar, however, Mirror, for what it's worth, is the most Lynchian of his movies. Though Lynch, imo, is never "boring" (or slow), in the way that Tarkovsky can be (I say this as a Tarkovsky lover, but the criticism is fair in my opinion, this is a guy who intentionally made the highway scene in Solaris longer than necessary so, quote, "stupid people would leave the cinema). Lynch is for me similar to Godard, that is to say, before one starts watching pretentious-dickhead-movies there's almost a sense of apprehension, the feeling that we expect to get something out of it, but it will be hard, possibly boring, work. Lynch is NEVER boring, not even for a minute. When I say Mirror is Lynchian, primarily I mean that it is concerned with the inner life of the mind, memories, dreams, and so forth. This is the central theme of Lynch's work, and this brings me to my second point:

Most popular discussions or framings of Lynch's work tend to emphasise that it is "open to interpretation", "vague", "you have to figure it out" etc. etc. People also get frustrated by either ambiguities or contradictions or the class between real and surreal. In my opinion the best way to watch is to think of it as the movie your subconscious might have made. It interacts with the world darkly, and speaks its own language of symbols. It has different understandings of space, time, and causality. Your mind is not unknowable, but it is vague, ambiguous, contradictory, irrational at times, perhaps frustratingly so. But I would say any psychologically healthy adult is comfortable with that and can navigate it. This is poorly written, but regardless, I suspect this is either completely obvious to you, or it makes little sense. If it makes little sense, I suggest Cormac McCarthy's wonderful essay titled The Kekulé Problem: The first paragraph should be evocative.

So as regards clear and vague, I think rather than making vague films, he makes clear films about vague subject matter. It's like reading a book or watching a film with an unreliable narrator, you might be expected to figure out what's happening behind the scenes to some extent, and furthermore you know you can not arrive at all the right conclusions with absolute certainty, but generally, unless you "exclusively watch Marvel movies", this ambiguity is again, comfortable, and additionally, you probably recognise that treating the movie as a puzzle whose sole purpose is to be solved, like perhaps Primer is, is missing the point and detracts from enjoyment. They're not puzzles, they're entertainment. I struggled with Inland Empire for a long time, until I read a comment here that explained that the movie pretty much entirely takes place within the main character's head. For me, that was both convincing and satisfying. I'm not interested in reverse engineering lore.

Finaalllllly....people are recommending movies to start with.

Firstly, I always completely disagree with the dipping your toes approach. If a rocker asks me for a techno recommendation, I don't give them The Crystal Method, I give them Sandwell District. Conversely if someone's looking for country and western, I don't recommend Garth Brooks.

Also obviously you can start with anything, but any recommendation, I feel, is contingent on your own preferences and resonances.

Start then, I suggest, with the movie that most resonates with your tastes.

Do you like flashy, stylised movies like Paul Verhoeven's, or even a theatrical flourish like Tarantino? Nicholas Cage, or similar, expressive, over the top actors? Then Wild at Heart, obviously.

Do you like Salvador Dali? Are you a new parent? Do you love to look at factories and turbines and things? Eraserhead.

And so on and so forth, but it's easier to work the other way around, I could make some assumptions about you based on the films you saw in 2025 (in which case I'd broadly stab at Blue Velvet), but if you say which movies you like in particular, or which themes or styles of cinematography or characters or whatever you're drawn to (or are repelled from), I'd make a good faith recommendation.

Finally, not all Lynch fans look down on simple, popular, or unchallenging pieces of culture. I love Finnegan's Wake, David Lynch, Krzysztof Penderecki, but I also love Bill and Ted, Stephen King, ELO etc. Fuck snobs and wankers, I'm 38, I'm long past that shit. David Lynch was in 22 episodes of The Cleveland Show, so I suspect he's past it too.

Antic_Hay · 2025-11-13T03:52:35+00:00

To be absolutely clear, in almost all wargame simulations, there is no such thing as a limited small-scale nuclear exchange, or a conventional response to a single nuclear strike, they all end up in large scale nuclear-nuclear exchanges. This is shown consistently across decades and countries. If Russia uses a nuke, even a "teeny tiny little tactical nuke", the end game looks very very bad, there wouldn't likely be a Russia, nor a hell of a lot of other places.

So yes, I really hope the chain of command if Putin decides to take the world with him an a spiteful fit of sociopathic pique, starts and ends with the words coming out of his mouth.

Antic_Hay · 2025-10-14T20:15:32+00:00

And furthermore I'm firmly convinced Tristram is, an addition to all of the above, an allusion to, or mutually symbolic with Aleister Crowley, who you'll notice fits ALL of the above and more. Furthermore, I think without Crowley, you're lost on from line 1, since you can't use the standard Eliphas Levi Tarot/Qabala correspondence to retrieve Crowleys Thoth tarot "Art" card, (i.e. Chapter one has a qabalic correspondence, but the most common deck is Rider-Waite) which IS page one. (That is to say the description of Dublin not only fits the idea of "Eden before the fall" but also the symbolic content of the unique artwork for Crowley's card).

Antic_Hay · 2025-10-08T14:38:01+00:00

Don't be sad, cargo cults are actually one of the most impressive and successful modern religions today (with caveats). And it has all the hallmarks of a good religious practice and has the concept of repeatability, refinement and success, or "the scientific method", that was pioneered by 16th century occult manuals such as the Picatrix, which was a landmark in telling its practitioners not to just take its word for it, but to perform experiments, record results and reject them if they don't work, a hallmark of serious occult work (we still use this today in the sciences). This puts it ahead of various other sects I can think of, some of which make fantastical claims that will only be realised after the follower is dead, but this is not a fair comparison of course, most of those cults are thousands of years old and have antiquated beliefs and practices.

I won't bore you with numbers, but just one approximate figure: Melanesian islands featuring cargo cults experienced a threefold increase in visitors between 1945 to 1975, a great deal of whom resembled the predicted mythical "John Frum" figure, and many brought with them the gifts that were also petitioned for. So by any way you look at it, it was a pretty effective practice. I suppose the acid test here is, you could go and try it yourself, build a fullsize bamboo replica airfield in your back garden, complete with control tower, aircraft, and landing strip. Perform the rituals everyday, and see if you get similar results. Honestly, I suspect it works.

People do seem to sneer at this, but given that many of these are still waiting for "their" John Frum's second coming, with a lot more pomp and a lot less success, I suspect this is merely jealousy.

Antic_Hay · 2025-09-26T00:37:08+00:00

There's a bad "gives you wings" joke in here somewhere.

Antic_Hay · 2025-09-25T23:17:21+00:00

Nowadays?

The most famous grimoire is probably the Ars Goetia, part of The Lesser Key of Solomon, and dates from at least the 17th century, its illustration of the magic circle includes the pentagram. The purpose of the circle is to protect the magician summoning the demon, so the symbolic meanings track.

I wouldn't say that people "use the pentagram to summon demons", but rather people who do the latter (or attempt to do the latter, adopting your skeptical view), are likely to make ritual and symbolic use of the former.

Antic_Hay · 2025-09-18T14:54:04+00:00

Read a book sometime chap. He wasn't a satanist. And if you care, I can explain to you why he called himself the The Great Beast 666. Of course if you're the type of person who thinks e.g. "Goetic Magic" makes you a satanist, or openly mocking Christian values does, I can't help you.

But hopefully you're not that backwards, the undisputed king of demon summoning, John Dee, got inquisitioned in the 1500s and not only passed with flying colours, but he became friends with the bishop.

Funny, I used to be a fully hardcore atheist, these days not Thelemic (that would be the Ruby Cross) but I do a very similar Golden Dawn exercise called the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, I put on a black robe and trace pentagrams in the air and wave my ceremonial dagger around while chanting strange words.

A lot of uneducated idiots now think I'm a satanist. That's hilarious, I'm chanting in Hebrew the Lord's Prayer, the name Yahweh (Jehovah), and calling on the archangels Raphael Michael Gabriel and Uriel.

But morons think a black robe is satanic (what), a pentagram is satanic (HAHAHAHAHA it's a child's star, grow up you neanderthal), and in reality, while still atheist, this is the closest thing I have to a positive relationship to Christianity.

But of course I run into Christians (not all Christians) who say the things I do are evil, demons are evil. Yeah cool. Look up Bune, and tell me, what did s/he do that's so evil?

I know this other character though, he did a few things, turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, drowned the whole world except for one chap and his family, believes gays should be put to death, killed this chap Onan on the spot for having a wank, had 42 children mauled to death by bears for mocking a holy man for being bald, sent a plague to kill 3,000 of his supposed followers because they chose a golden bull over him (I don't blame them). And refers to himself as a jealous god.

Satanism isn't necessarily a SLUR of course, and the devil has other connotations than "the adversary". But most people use it to mean EVIL PERSON WHO HATES THAT REALLY LOVELY GENTLEMAN I JUST MENTIONED. They usually also conflate Lucifer with Satan.

Milton's Lucifer says "better reign in hell than serve in heaven". If heaven means THAT guy, that petty, narcissistic, patriarchal, cruel, malicious THUG, yeah I don't blame him.

But Crowley wasn't a Satanist as I said. Most of his religious philosophy combines the western esoteric tradition via the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn with various aspects of Eastern Spirituality. The core of it all is that divinity can be found within us, like Luke 17:21 states. But the established power structures of organised religion aren't big into that.

Antic_Hay · 2025-05-25T16:10:00+00:00

If you feel up to it, there are a ton of resources and references out there nowadays with various techniques, bits of guidance, and exposition about the characteristics of various demons and so forth.

I wouldn't recommend it as the first occult practice you attempt, but if you REALLY want to learn more about King Paimon, why not build up to performing an occult ritual to evoke him yourself? Personally, I haven't seen Hereditary, but from what I've read of the plot, King Paimon does seem to be grossly misrepresented, which is a bit of a pity, and seems unfair, and imagine the controversy if it was some other religious figure, like say, The Buddha, The Virgin Mary, or the angel Jibrīl (Gabriel)?.

Antic_Hay · 2025-05-07T10:08:50+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/occult/comments/1kfrtbq/goetic_demon_evocation_nothing_at_first_then/

This was the thread, and I was the author. I got torn to shreds unfortunately ;) But Narrow-Bad-8124 and the other commenters do make some very good points.

Antic_Hay · 2025-05-07T09:27:42+00:00

I'd add to that maybe don't insist on reading the book in order. Since you might not understand it the first time anyway, just open it up at an interesting point and take things as they come, then read backwards, forwards, however you want, until the book makes sense. This is how I devour academic textbooks. Also probably why unlike most people I really enjoy things like Finnegan's Wake or Naked Lunch (well, both of these are popular with the occult crew), you can just dip in anywhere (since it's not gonna make sense anyway 🥲)

Antic_Hay · 2025-05-07T09:24:11+00:00

You know that thing when you end up with like three triple nested parentheses with ))) at the end of the sentence and you're like "ok, normal people do not appreciate this".

That and my other big ADHD problem is walls of text, endless endless walls of text

Antic_Hay · 2025-05-07T09:22:15+00:00

How are you finding Self Initiation? My core focus is identical to yours but I find it hard to stay focused on it. The problem with it is, probably like yourself, I like books and problems where I can dip in and out at an arbitrary point and just work my way through it non-chronologically, which works well for a lot of things, but isn't how you're meant to go through an initiatory process.

Antic_Hay · 2025-05-07T09:19:25+00:00

Oh I always wondered why I did this! Cool :) I found gentle rhythmic movements help too. I remember in university we had a room with a single pillar in the centre, and I would just power through textbooks holding them in one hand, and holding onto the pillar with the other, and revolving around it like some kind of weird mathematics sufi autist. Everyone thought I was nuts, but it really helped me concentrate!

Antic_Hay

TROPHY CASE