Life update Mid August 2025

I can't believe I haven't written on my blog for a month. Usually I end up with several posts by the end of the month. Lately my job has involved frequent flying around, all over the place. Malaysia last week, Canada this, Europe later. Flying is fun if for the first maybe 3 times. But after some point it's a chore that you just have to deal with since humans haven't developed teleportation yet. And we yet believe VR is real life.

Either way, job is fulfilling. I get to write actual docs that I'd want to read. Help the company get out of their corporate mindset and say "if you want real organic adoption, X must be done". And getting paid to essentially being the advocate of the FOSS users.

I am not a credit card person. By that I mean I have been frugal and using it as cash card for all intent and purpose. But the cost of traveling got me thinking if I can reduce it, even if a bit - the company does pay for most of the cost. But I strongly prefer some amenities when I have to catch a flight 7AM and I already woke up at 4AM. I'm miserable and in dire need of copious amount of coffee (or alcohol, depending on where I'm going to). And god damn TaiShin bank (a Taiwanese bank) has something really helpful.

This is most likely useless information for most readers of this blog (written in English, Taiwan speaks Chinese). But it is MY blog and I'm allowed to publish anything. And THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.

TaiShin's dual currency credit card is absolutely great. Taiwanese credit cards are usually crap. High annual fees with useless perks or free but barely any perks. This one is not one of them. It gives you 2.5% cashback on all foreign transaction (this is high in Taiwan standard, plus forging transaction fee is 1.5%. So the real saving is 1%). Discounted or free Taiwanese lounge access (if flight paid through the card, else USD $30). Plus a fairly low spending quota to waive the annual fee. Low enough I can put work expense on it, get the company to pay it later and have the card for free.

More importantly it treats all foreign transaction as paying in EUR/USD/JPY, depending on the card you applied for. These are major currencies. And this is huge. As New Taiwan Dollars (NTD) is minor currency. VISA's currency spread is WIDE. I have seen 3~4% spread converting SGD to TWD on their official website. With the card, I get preferential treatment by VISA charging in the major currencies, thus at a much better rate. Then I can use the bank's much better TWD to EUR/USD/JPY exchange rate to pay for my bills. Overall the spread can be lowered to ~2.5%.

It saves me money.

Sorry, I am too excited. It's quite literally free money for cost I have to pay anyway.

End of finance talk and back to computers and life. I have continued working my GGML fork for Tenstorrent hardware. It has progressed nicely and gained 2x speed by various optimizations and identified operators that need to be hand-written. GPT-OSS isn't working on by fork yet - something is wrong with the low level of TTNN and invalid devices pointers are generated. Need time but it's getting there. OSS will win.

I truly believe that there are 3 groups of developers in the Tenstorrent community (or any other AI hardware and HPC related community).

• The hackers

The IRC and Mailing List dorking people who just want to put up a middle finger and prove some point. 1% faster then SOTA is all they want.

• The integrator

People who sees potential in the hardware and is willing to spend time and effort to make something happen - that is if the SDK supports it or it is easily enough to patch. I belong to this group prior to joining the company.

• The "I just want to do X" people

They want their application to run. Better if no or just 1 line of change to their codebase. This group is the largest in number. But also the least tolerant in immature product. Nothing wrong with that. But difficult for new companies to support.

It is to be seen how and where the company will grow into. I have my strategy and agenda. But so does the stake holders and the investors. Praying everything goes well (extra pray that I can convince the company can pay me to go to FOSDEM).

After FOSDEM and Belgium I seem to have picked up a new hobby - visit the public transit system at each county I visit. And see how well they work. At Kuala Lumpur the KILA Express (connecting the Kuala Lumpur International Airport to city center) was quite nice. Though pricey (~USD $20) for public transit in Southeast Asia. Their in-city metro is... a mess. The train/MRT does not have a single entrance. I had to wait for 30 minutes to get a train to leave city center that day. The train itself is also a mess. KILA express 8/10 and city transit 4/10.

That's it.

Martin out.