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Writing on GPUs, LLMs, MLOps, Kubernetes — and mindset · 3517 posts
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A Three-Line Config File Killed Four GPUs for a Week — How containerd Drop-in Merging Really Works
The nodes stopped advertising GPUs. The nvidia runtime was written out cleanly in the config file, but it was nowhere to be found in containerd config dump. The culprit was a three-line registry config I had added a week
2026-08-26 · 12 min read #kubernetes#containerd#gpu#nvidia#troubleshootingAI for Everyone, Part 6 — Drawing Digits From Words With a 1.11M Diffusion Model
We built a conditional diffusion model with 1.11 million parameters that draws a 0 when you type "zero". The forward process that adds noise is a single formula; the reverse process that restores the image is that same l
2026-08-24 · 8 min read #ai#diffusion#ddpm#generative#pytorchAI for Everyone, Part 5 — Colourising Photos With a 0.47M U-Net, and Why the Colours Came Out Washed Out
The smallest model in this series — a 472K-parameter U-Net — restored colour to greyscale CIFAR-10 images. Shapes survived intact, but the colours came out noticeably washed out. That is not a capacity problem; it is a c
2026-08-23 · 7 min read #ai#computer-vision#unet#colorization#pytorchAI for Everyone, Part 4 — Captioning Images With 1.37M Parameters, and Why Part 3 Bug Was Absent Here
We joined a CNN encoder to a transformer decoder and captioned Fashion-MNIST images. With 1.37 million parameters and ten minutes of training, the label hit rate reached 91%. This part looks at what cross-attention does
2026-08-22 · 7 min read #ai#captioning#multimodal#transformer#pytorchAI for Everyone, Part 3 — Loss of 0.0017, Accuracy of 7.5%: The Culprit Was One Padding Slot
We built a VQA model — one that answers questions about an image — with 1.48 million parameters. Training loss fell to 0.0017 while accuracy sat at 7.5%, worse than guessing. The cause was not the model but a single line
2026-08-21 · 8 min read #ai#vqa#multimodal#debugging#pytorchBuilding a Hands-On Learning Platform on a Home Server — Putting Kubernetes Inside an Unprivileged Pod
A write-up of putting a learning platform on a 7-node Kubernetes cluster at home: a learner presses a button, a dedicated container comes up, a browser terminal attaches to a real Linux shell, and at every step the serve
2026-08-20 · 16 min read #kubernetes#cilium#security#homelab#kwokLabHub — I opened a hands-on platform where you learn on a real server, in the browser
Some things do not stick from reading. There is no substitute for attaching to a server, typing a command, getting it wrong, and finding out why. LabHub is a learning platform that puts that loop inside the browser. Pres
2026-08-20 · 8 min read #labhub#kubernetes#devops#education#hands-onAI for Everyone, Part 1 — Training a 16M-Parameter Language Model From Scratch in 15 Minutes
Training a language model from scratch on a single GPU. With the TinyStories dataset and a 16-million-parameter decoder-only transformer, we produced readable English fairy tales in 15 minutes. We look at why the causal
2026-08-19 · 9 min read #ai#llm#transformer#pytorch#hands-onFourteen Things Table Tennis Taught Me: Skill Makes the Relationships, a Title Blocks the Growth
Fourteen principles from years of playing table tennis, and how they carry over into work and life. The structure that turns skill into an entry ticket to relationships, why playing only for fun never makes you better, a
2026-08-16 · 11 min read #mindset#growth#deliberate-practice#sports#careerWhat It Means to Be Smart: What Gets Measured and What Does Not
The word intelligence has three different things mixed into it. The general factor as a statistical regularity, CHC as the mainstream model of psychometrics, and the social usage we reach for when we size someone up in d
2026-08-16 · 14 min read #mindset#intelligence#psychometrics#expertise#evidenceThe Power of Small Habits — The 21-Day Myth, the 66-Day Median, the 18-to-254-Day Reality
The claim that a habit takes 21 days has no research behind it. That number came from a plastic surgeon's observation in 1960. The most-cited habit-formation study, from Lally and colleagues, actually reported an average
2026-08-16 · 12 min read #mindset#habits#psychology#self-improvement#2026-08How Not to Wait for Motivation — Drive Is Not So Much the Cause of Action as, Often, Its Result
Why does the plan to start once the drive arrives fail structurally? The order of action and mood as shown by a behavioural activation meta-analysis, the autonomy, competence and relatedness of self-determination theory,
2026-08-16 · 12 min read #mindset#motivation#psychology#self-improvement#2026-08Experts Do Not Know More, They See Differently
The 1973 chessboard experiment is the starting point of expertise research. Masters remember real game positions far better, but on randomly scattered arrangements most of that advantage disappears. That means pattern pe
2026-08-16 · 13 min read #mindset#learning#expertise#chunking#perceptionThe Road to Becoming an Expert: Feedback First, Volume Second
This post moves the evidence set out in the previous four posts into an executable form. Narrow the domain to where feedback arrives, build the feedback loop before you build the volume, practise under the conditions you
2026-08-16 · 14 min read #mindset#learning#expertise#deliberate-practice#careerThe Structure of Being Good — Self-Assessment, Feedback, and a Narrow Scope
The wish to be good at something runs strong, yet what being good is actually made of is a question people ask surprisingly rarely. This is a map post that lays out the structure of skill in three pillars: calibrated sel
2026-08-16 · 10 min read #mindset#growth#deliberate-practice#self-improvement#2026-08When Your Purpose Is Unclear — Clarity Is Not a Precondition for Starting
Why does the strategy of waiting until purpose becomes clear fail, in a state of not knowing what you are living for? The view that purpose is discovered downstream of accumulation rather than upstream of planning, the l
2026-08-16 · 12 min read #mindset#purpose#career#self-improvement#2026-08The Structure of Practice: Why Practice That Goes Well and Practice That Lasts Are Different
Spacing, retrieval practice, mixing things up. Three things with relatively solid evidence in learning research, set out together with their effect sizes. And then the central paradox of the field: the conditions that ma
2026-08-16 · 14 min read #mindset#learning#practice#retrieval#spacingHow Not to Lower Your Standards: A Structural Problem, Not a Willpower One
Standards do not collapse because you decide to let them go. They slip quietly through unnamed exceptions, renegotiation while exhausted, and convergence on the median of what surrounds you. This piece covers the five me
2026-08-16 · 7 min read #mindset#standards#discipline#growth#2026-08Metacognition — The Gap Between Feeling You Know and Knowing
Metacognition lost its definition as it became a buzzword. This post returns to the original definition of monitoring and control, and sets out the way the feeling of knowing is manufactured from fluency as a proxy signa
2026-08-16 · 12 min read #mindset#metacognition#learning#psychology#2026-08People Do Not Change Easily, and People Change — The Evidence and Speed of Personality Change
The statement that people do not change and the statement that people can change are both true, and that tension is the subject of this post. The rank-order stability of the Big Five that holds throughout adulthood, the
2026-08-16 · 12 min read #mindset#personality#psychology#self-improvement#2026-08