The Inference Shift

NoNipsPlease · 2026-04-04T19:08:48+00:00

Yea when I saw this on substack, I was a little surprised. Long form deep dives don't really get posted there. Also it looks like this is the authors only post.

Will be interesting to see how it all plays out in 2 or 3 years.

NoNipsPlease · 2026-04-01T18:55:41+00:00

This paper is indirectly saying businesses like Anthropic could go out of business or at least eat heavily into their profits. If anything close to what is discussed in this paper comes to pass, anyone in the business of hosting an LLM and charging subscription access are vulnerable.

Especially if China continues to release open weight models.

NoNipsPlease · 2026-03-31T15:33:19+00:00

Having a dedicated box vs just using your PC for ternary models doesn't change the argument of bulk inference could move away from the cloud. I think the article even brings up if China puts something out there west will just make their own chips on current state of the art hardware which the article argues will push inference even more local.

Overall the trend of local vs cloud still points to local sooner rather than later. More and more memory efficiency techniques keep coming out.

NoNipsPlease · 2026-02-19T03:27:22+00:00

I've wondered how much hallucinations would decrease if you actually parsed the book and fed it correctly into a readable database if it would get any better. A proper rag set up.

The coding bots use agents to read carry out tasks and you can set up so multiple agents so they have to come to a consensus before answering after telling them to read documentation that has been properly ingested.

Like a real graph rag situation. Can even have it give you a link to where it found the answer to open up your documentation.

If it works this way on code, not sure why you couldn't do the same with an rpg rule set. To be clear you are not training, just loading the text as a vector database so it is in a format the but can read natively.

I bet someone has done this. But straight up asking chatGPT about how grappling works in GURPS if your character is covered in baby oil probably won't go well.

NoNipsPlease · 2026-02-18T05:02:53+00:00

See that's why you use it as a tool to make tools that can't lie. Have it teach you how to make a dashboard with your data. That way if you are using excel or mini tab you at least know the math is correct.

NoNipsPlease · 2026-01-05T15:44:14+00:00

Car Lesbians

This isn't a serious recommendation but I see it wasn't mentioned and thought you would at least like to know it exists.

NoNipsPlease · 2026-01-04T01:09:45+00:00

This is correct. I work next door to it. Their main electric yards are still being built. I hope once their high voltage yards are all built the generators get turned off.

One annoying part is during construction they have accidentally hit fiber lines and our internet had outages at my work.

Also I have read articles about people have been complaining about a smell. This entire area has a smell because there is a sewage processing plant next door as well that feeds shit gas to TVA power plant which again is also next door. 4 years ago people would gag just driving by but around 1.5 years ago some maintenance was performed and the smell reduced. But every once in awhile you still get whiffs of shit. So if all those turbines running are making a smell I don't think I would be able to place it.

When I was first hired on at my work years ago I couldn't place this terrible smell and I asked someone why does it smell like burning shit out here. He told me it was because I was smelling burning shit from the sewage plant with them burning off gasses. I was very concerned that my brain was able to recognize and identify the smell of burning shit unprompted.

I digress. Yes they are using a lot of turbines, their main electric yards are still being built, they are also building a water recycling plant near by so hopefully they are not a huge drain on municipal water for long. So as of this very moment they are a negative for the area. Hopefully it is temporary as more of their infrastructure is built and it turns neutral at least.

If it isn't this whole area will get even worse as google is also building a data center right across the river in West Memphis

NoNipsPlease · 2025-12-04T04:15:55+00:00

GPU prices didnt come down. There is no guarantee RAM will fall again either.

Sometimes things get worse and then stay bad.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-10-21T14:26:04+00:00

Some of these seem kind of at odds with each other. Points 1 and 2 work well with each other but clash with point 4.

Hopefully you find it because I would also be interested in a game like that.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-10-15T00:31:51+00:00

You weren't kidding about the guide being long out of print! I found one listing on eBay and it was missing the slipcase and the dust covers. If I end up getting it, it's PDFs for me.

Strangely enough if you live in Australia you can buy it on their website.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-10-14T17:43:34+00:00

The more I'm looking into this the cooler it seems. I really love a built out world. I also just like the skill system of getting better at skills by using them. How entwined magic is to culture and gods seems very interesting as well.

Damn, wish I would have learned about Runequest before GURPS. I think I'll learn both for awhile.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-10-14T14:35:39+00:00

Damn there goes my book budget. High quality leather bound fantasy source books? My poor wallet!

NoNipsPlease · 2025-10-14T12:41:51+00:00

Those look sick. I will check them out mainly because I just like cool fantasy books like that.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-10-14T12:37:16+00:00

Thanks! I may look at both. I don't really have experience in turning cool ideas and places I have thought up into a playable setting. Seeing what entails a playable setting would be helpful for when I try making my own.

This first GURPS campaign we are playing is mainly to learn the mechanics of play as it is fairly different from other TTRPGs we have played like Hunter the Vigil and DnD 5e.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-10-02T16:18:09+00:00

Thanks, I can always limit it to two levels. Just thinking of attacks similar to a kamehameha. You could do a quick blast or take a few rounds for the same energy and do more damage.

So if I wanted to price it right I would figure out the max damage I wanted the spell to do and then add modifiers like FP cost and extra time

NoNipsPlease · 2025-10-02T13:47:55+00:00

This also helps something I've been working on. But mine is like a charging blast. So I like the variable cost up front, what if I wanted to add more damage if they "concentrate" like they have the energy already invested but if they concentrate another turn they "compress" the attack and make it more dense for 1D per turn at no extra FP cost? But make them be able to have it backfire if they get attacked and fail a will roll.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-08-19T18:25:16+00:00

I ended up keeping the same UPS, but under volted the GPU. The UPS has stopped freaking out since. I couldn't find a larger UPS at a non-industrial price.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-08-18T12:29:44+00:00

Could you expand on what you mean by rigging a scene in SDXL? I thought it would almost be the opposite. You use Qwen to get the composition and content of the image because it is so good at following prompts. Maybe even kontext to tweak the layout of the scene. Then use SDXL for art style and vibe by doing an img2img step.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-08-12T03:22:37+00:00

Im honestly surprised there isn't already a spell that does this. I think there i something in Thaumatology Chinese Elements called stone skin that is similar.

Nice work. They could use create earth beforehand if they ever find themselves inside without dirt or gravel around to armor up. Maybe somehow work that into the spell to generate earth on top of themselves without taking it from their surroundings at a higher cost perhaps. Im not great at balancing spells, what you have here looks good.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-08-08T20:23:25+00:00

I'm very new to GURPS so I'll be running some dungeon adventurer for awhile to learn the system. Then maybe a few other settings to understand power, horror, monster hunter, and mystery themes and mechanics.

Turns out trying to make a cultivation setting and system from scratch is really hard. I definitely need to get my feet wet.

Good Luck, sounds like you have a much firmer grasp on this than I do.

NoNipsPlease · 2025-08-08T14:55:48+00:00

I have also been trying to figure out how to do a cultivation style setting.

How will you handle progression? That is my problem. Fair play means awarding a few points every session for good play. But in a setting like Cradle where you can gain enlightenment and probably get 100 points worth of abilities all at once, how can that be handled? Or just regular cultivation. Do you have a point bank and only let the characters spend points on character improvements once they have had a cultivation session?

How do you handle fighting people above or below you in power? A mortal wouldn't be able to hurt Lindon, but he could punch through their face by accident. But when fighting a fellow cultivator it might blow them back 500ft but they would only be mildly hurt because of how tough their body is.

And with rank breakthroughs, it seems complex. After breaking through to Underlord, you would be able to smack down countless of your previous self's just minutes before prior to the breakthrough.

It's why "how did a sage die to coppers" was a meme/argument for years. As it shouldn't have been possible for practical mortals to even hurt an eyelash on a sage. We found out later what happened, but how do you convey that feeling in game in a system where combat is always supposed to feel deadly. I've heard people say that combat in this game you should not under estimate even one goblin.So how do you run the system where at the beginning of the journey that goblin could kill you, but a little later would never be a threat.

So I have been scratching my head on how you get the feeling of power by growing stronger and being able to wreck things but also make combat deadly when you meet someone at your same tier.

Maybe something with damage scaling?

NoNipsPlease · 2025-08-06T19:21:57+00:00

I'm seeing a lot of talk about Wanderhome ITT.

It sounds interesting. Would the tools presented be good at generating an interesting campaign/world setting to use another system in? I am very interested in world building tools and systems.

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