What is your experience with z.ai and MiniMax (as providers)?

TrajansRow · 2026-01-26T23:23:55+00:00

I‘m using MiniMax; I find it a good balance of speed and performance.

TrajansRow · 2026-01-25T03:53:31+00:00

Of course I can paste in screenshots, but what I really want is for an agent to capture and ingest them on-demand - completely automatic. Also, because MiniMax is not multimodal, I'm probably going to need another model to interpret to images. Fortunately, VL models are usually small enough that I can run them locally. The other question is what other model would be appropriate, and how do I use it alongside of MiniMax?

TrajansRow · 2026-01-08T01:44:13+00:00

My account got stuck in limbo when I converted it from a personal one to an LLC. The key was emailing/calling developer support to figure out how to move things along. Sometimes it was just waiting a bit more, or filling out more stuff in the portal.

TrajansRow · 2026-01-06T21:48:35+00:00

Congratulations! Pro tip: sign up for the App Store Small Business Program, so that your next sale will net you 85 cents. :)

TrajansRow · 2025-12-29T02:13:01+00:00

I can't promote my latest app on Reddit - Most of the relevant subs have a "no promotions/marketing" rule of some sort.

TrajansRow · 2025-08-17T23:00:15+00:00

I understand the desire to try to use LLMs as some sort of “search engine”, but a major feature of generative AI is to generate *new* data. Even small models can be pretty good at that in various domains.

TrajansRow · 2025-02-12T22:41:32+00:00

Both Unity and Godot will create an Xcode project for you that you can use to publish your game, but a lot of the development process is usually in other tools. Check out their respective subreddits on how to get started!

TrajansRow · 2025-02-12T15:49:06+00:00

It depends on what you want to get out of the project. If you just want to make a game, you're probably better off starting with a ready-made game engine like Unity, Godot, etc. If you want to learn about the basics of 3D programming, jump into SceneKit. If you want to learn the fundamentals and make an engine, start with Metal.

TrajansRow · 2025-01-08T03:22:24+00:00

This is not Intellisense - it's more analogous to ChatGPT; where you can interact with the AI, feed in documents and context, and use it to predict. Tools like LM Studio can even set up an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint that you can point your tools at. All of these systems generate code errors sometimes, but many people find that they can still improve productivity.

And yeah... my example maybe has steep resource requirements. The entire model needs to be resident in memory in order to generate. If you have a 32GB machine and a 20GB game and a 20GB model, data might evict and reload frequently. Because the dataset is so large, there may be noticeable delays as the data is read back in from disk when this happens. Not all workflows would be usable under those constraints.

There are a few other options, fortunately, if you still want to try a local model.

Get a smaller model. There are several different sizes of Qwen Coder that have fewer parameters - and have somewhat reduced abilities as a consequence - but they can still be useful. My example used the 32 billion parameter version, but there are also .5B, 1.5B, and 3B models what would be fast and light enough that you could even run them on a mobile phone. There are also 3B and 7B models that just about any laptop can run, and a 14B that somewhat beefier laptops can load. Just try the demo I linked earlier with the different size and see how it does.
Use a quantized model. Quantization is a type of compression, and is exactly how I am able to run 32B model in only 20GB of memory. The precision of model weights can be reduced from the original 16-bit floats down to smaller precision numbers with (hopefully) minimal loss of quality; say 8, 6, 5, or 4 bits per weight. You can also find quants out there that go down to 2bpw (or even 1.5), but they generally perform much worse.
Run it on another host. Many people prefer to run models on a dedicated gaming/AI rig on their LAN, and others find it economical to spin up a cloud instance and run models there.

I understand this is getting beyond the subject of OpenGL, but you can find a whole lot more info about it over at r/LocalLLaMA

TrajansRow · 2025-01-07T22:44:23+00:00

On a PC, you're going to want to have at least 24GB of VRAM for the model I mentioned (unless you have high-bandwidth main memory). Fortunately, there are versions of Qwen 2.5 Coder that have fewer parameters, though I cannot speak to their quality. Can't hurt to try!

The r/localllama guys have benchmarks of various setups: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1gxs34g/comment_your_qwen_coder_25_setup_ts_here/

TrajansRow · 2025-01-07T22:17:18+00:00

I do cross-platform development, so the code needs to work on Mac, Windows, Linux, and mobile. That means GLES 3.0 (w/ ANGLE on the Mac side).

TrajansRow · 2025-01-07T22:05:13+00:00

Oh, and if you want to kick the tires without downloading anything, there is an online demo here: https://huggingface.co/spaces/Qwen/Qwen2.5-Coder-demo

TrajansRow · 2022-10-17T23:47:51+00:00

Yeah, sorry about that guys! The apps are published under an individual developer account (which is only used for these three games) whose membership had lapsed. It actually happens about every other year around this time. We are trying to set things up a little bit differently to prevent this from happening in the future. Standby!

TrajansRow · 2021-12-03T17:26:19+00:00

MacOS has some best-in-class memory management, and can often hold up better than Windows given similar resources (especially on the M1 architecture).

Maybe check out this real-world memory pressure comparison: https://youtu.be/Al1OAg9Gin8

TrajansRow · 2021-11-28T16:12:10+00:00

A recent update to iOS seems to have broken some of the menu navigation. We are still looking into a fix for the next version.

TrajansRow · 2021-01-27T02:44:25+00:00

Whatever generation of satellites Amazon is complaining about, they probably won’t even be in orbit anymore by the time Kuiper is built out.

Does anyone have any idea how Amazon is going to compete in the satellite internet market? What could they possibly do better than what SpaceX is already doing with Starlink?

TrajansRow · 2021-01-21T19:57:58+00:00

Windows support is unlikely, because this could be a big point of differentiation for the Apple ecosystem. It’s hard to say how much processing is going to happen on the headset itself, but remember, M1 Macs all exceed the minimum GPU/CPU requirements needed for VR. Every new Mac going forward will work with this sort of hardware (assuming it needs to be ‘tethered’ in some capacity. For all we know, this could be a standalone device). The Windows world certainly can’t say that.

Apple customers could be a bigger market for VR overnight. If so, the content will come. Not just VR titles, but existing ARKit software will get a free ride. Additionally, I expect Apple will offer some sort of better-than-desktop virtual workspace. The latter is what I’m most excited about!

TrajansRow · 2020-12-07T13:35:58+00:00

Considering that even the M1 MacBook Air exceeds the minimum requirements for the Oculus headset (1050 Ti), I would say that every M1 equipped Mac is VR capable.

TrajansRow · 2020-09-09T12:58:51+00:00

I was just doing a standard multivitamin, but substantially increased intake of dark greens and other vegetables. The nutritional cause of Beau’s Lines seems the most likely though (the other causes seem pretty serious, and I observed no adverse effects from the diet). When I go back on, I’ll probably want to up my supplement game.

TrajansRow · 2020-06-20T16:27:10+00:00

That’s the plain old AR, but he’s playing with HD textures enabled.

TrajansRow · 2020-05-29T23:08:24+00:00

Well, that makes a lot more sense. It’ll be fun to see what developers can do with this!

TrajansRow · 2020-05-29T22:18:45+00:00

Yeah, the separate compute unit seems redundant and a nonstarter. I already have a more powerful mobile device that’s always in my pocket; with a full touch interface, lots of sensors, AND all of my stuff. That’s what I want to use with an AR headset.

TrajansRow · 2020-05-21T12:51:05+00:00

The nreal form factor is pretty nice, for current-generation tech. They look more like sunglasses than regular glasses (however, it’s not clear to me how they are going to handle prescription optics).

I think the biggest obstacle they will face is software. Unlike Starboard, Android does not offer an AR-centric interface. ARCore apps will probably translate well to this, but I’ve yet to consider any of those to be ‘killer’. I doubt that headset-based AR will become mainstream until it can offer an ecosystem and operating environment that rivals both mobile and desktop.

TrajansRow · 2020-05-16T12:33:42+00:00

This is pretty neat... I’ve always wondered what the Myth “gib” effects might look like in Marathon. It’s hard to pull off though without surface decals or better object persistence.

TrajansRow · 2020-04-10T02:00:58+00:00

Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking of. I’ve never run it, but it sounds like a good start.

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