A well-thrown spear needs no apology. Reworked javelin and... projectiles. -Smooth mid-flight rotation. -Dynamic shadow based on height. -Hits penetrate targets, misses scatter. -Shield block mechanic for braced units. Still need adjustmens here and there. #indiedev #pixelartshow more

"The arrow, once released, answers to no man." Reactive... system forced a rework of projectile mechanics. This is last one about units for now. -Added a small physics engine where projectiles have their own height and parabolic trajectory. -If the shooter misses, the projectile continues -The example here is 100% accuracy but for stationary units only: moving enemies can dodge more easily. -Friendly fire works. -Javelin animation is still a diffrent story #pixelart #indiedevshow more

Hood tips: Use moon knight team up 99% of... the time unless you have good awareness and can be aggressive without overextending. With mk team up: start fights with the shield in front to boost demonic energy. Use it to block off heals to tanks pushing up and MELT them. Swing angles on tanks that are slow if you see the backline playing too close. If the dps aren’t right there to immediately punish, you can usually roast both healers or the very least 1 and force the 2nd to scatter and waste resources while their frontline panics. Limit testing helps you determine how much you can get away with. (Video example of swinging past a slower dps or tank when the healers are close.) Mk shield can be thrown mid fight in support ults to give your team the advantage. Same with teams backing up if they’re grouped. Pay attention to off angle dps and don’t let them go unchallenged. You can burst longer range enemies in half demon form if you alternate fire to control the bloom. He excels close to mid range and you want to maximize your uptime. Utilize the block to get max value by being aggressive and choosing when YOU want to use it. IMO his ult is best used with your team so position near them. He’s excellent when the enemy team pops a gambit ult and/or has committed to the push. You’ll be proving bonus health to nearby allies while in your ult and if positioned and timed well the enemy will have a hard time getting away even if you don’t kill all with your ult, your team is there and has an advantage. Use his void walk either defensively or offensively, you can force them to back up if you push past the frontline and drop your shield. Hes viable in almost any situation and the only thing ive had trouble dealing with is Black Cat but there’s not much you can do with that. (Team died in the clip womp womp)show more

RHP Cole Leaman (Lehigh Baseball) is an arm I'm... really looking forward to following this spring. Fresh off a strong Sophomore season in which he worked a 2.31 ERA with 49 Ks to 23 BB across 46.2 IP. Showed some positive flashes on the Cape. While slightly undersized, Leaman has a strong and athletic build at 6' and 190-lbs. Has put on a lot of good weight over the last couple of years. Leaman has almost a "check point" delivery in which he takes a noticeable side step towards the 1B side, gathers himself and breaks into the rest of his motion. Lengthy arm stroke and attacks from a high-3/4 slot from a low release height. Leaman is a high-level athlete and a dynamic mover on the mound. Sits really well on his back glute and his lead leg block enables him to generate power and drive his back side through. Drop and drive delivery. Little bit of effort, but plenty of arm speed. Leaman's FB sits in the 91-94 range, but it was up to 96 this summer and 98 this fall. Jumps out of his hand from a ~5'3" release height and flashes riding life through the zone. Averaged 15" of carry this summer and 2,361 RPMs. Gets over the barrels of opposing hitters when located in the top-1/2 of the zone, which is where the pitch is at its best. Command can be erratic at times. Would give it a 55. Leaman's most-used off speed pitch is a high-70s-to-low-80s CB. Shape is inconsistent and it can get a little slurvy at times, but he snapped off a handful of really good ones between the spring and summer. When it's at its best, it will flash a bigger shape with sharp, downward tilt. Leaman will also mix in a low-to-mid-80s SL that's distinct in shape. Another pitch he's still gaining a feel for, but like his CB it's also shown big time flashes. Shape of it will vary, but it will sometimes flash plus with sharp, two-plane break (more sweep than depth) and essentially take a late, hard left turn. Rounds out his arsenal with a high-80s cutter and a mid-to-high-80s CH. The former is more intriguing than the latter. Curious to see how much he uses the cutter this spring, threw a couple this summer that had late glove-side life. Leaman has a very intriguing blend of athleticism and stuff, though he'll need to iron out his command and control in order to maximize his upside. As mentioned, it's a bit scattered right now and has hindered him in some starts. 5th-8th round type this July. (📽️: Falmouth Commodores)show more

I just hid 1000 USDC (from my creator fees!)... with two agents in Moltbook Town I've used Bland AI (@ usebland) to hide half the seed phrase behind a phone call, meaning you need to CALL a specific Openclaw Lobster and trick their half of the seed phrase out of them The other half is hidden with another agent somewhere in the Town that you need to trick as well Both of whom have personalities based on their respective Moltbook profiles There's only one way to get the full seed phrase for the wallet: 1. Find the two Openclaws I've stationed in the Town 2. Trick them into giving you their half of the seed phrase (Hacking the site won't help, nothing is stored there locally, I have security measures for it to just delete those two agents, and then no one can win.) For every 4 hours this remains unsolved, I'll increase the payout by $50 in $ TOWN I'm not lying. 1000 USDC on Solana is here for the taking: DVDMchpGsXYQU4Jr6tbtV9H3PMAMA152ote384cveqAq Try to trick the Openclaws from Moltbook:show more

🚨 WARNING: SOMETHING EXTREMELY BAD IS HAPPENING!! Everyone thought... the biggest risk was the $SPCX IPO. WRONG. SpaceX has already gone public. Look at the valuations for 30 seconds. → SpaceX: $1.5 TRILLION → Anthropic: $1.5 TRILLION → OpenAI: $850 BILLION That is almost $4 TRILLION of private market hype competing for the same pool of capital. And Anthropic and OpenAI are still ahead. This is where the real problem starts. Money does NOT appear from nowhere. If funds want more exposure to $SPCX and the next mega IPOs, they need cash. And to get cash, they sell what they already own. → Stocks → Crypto → AI names → High-beta tech Everything retail is already holding. This is NOT just an IPO cycle. This is a liquidity black hole. Every IPO needs buyers. Every buyer needs cash. And cash does NOT appear from nowhere. There are only a few ways this goes from here: → LIGHT SHOCK: $SPX keeps correcting, high-beta names get hit first, crypto follows, then markets stabilize. → HEAVIER SCENARIO: funds keep raising cash for $SPCX and future IPOs, tech dumps harder, Bitcoin loses support, and retail gets trapped. → WORST CASE: Anthropic and OpenAI come next, liquidity gets sucked out of crowded trades, stocks dump HARD, crypto gets hit, and forced liquidations begin. But the worst part is simple. SpaceX was only the first one. Anthropic and OpenAI are still ahead. Markets are NOT pricing this liquidity drain yet. But they will. I’ve studied macro for 10 years and called almost every major market top, including the October BTC ATH. Follow and turn notifications on. I’ll post the warning BEFORE it hits the headlines.show more

Air India B-787 fuel switches: seen a lot of... comments on "racism", "appeasement" to Boeing"; "Western superiority" in some comments, and, on my behalf, I assure you it is not. As seen on this simple video, there´s NO WAY the switches could move themselves. This is not based on this video alone - which clearly shows a mechanical lock, and the need to push up before moving it, as a fail safe - but also on the opinions of captains who fly the plane, technicians, safety experts, and also the simple fact that, despite dozens of B-787 operators worldwide, no one reported switches moving themselves. I said it here more than once: I´m not for conspiracies. You can hide the truth from one person, but to believe that dozens of pilots, investigators, technicians, lawyers, manufacturers, mechanics, etc... would all be duped this easily... seems a far cry. Mathematically alone, tricking all these folks, each with their reputations on the line, seems remote. Also, the source for yesterday´s "leak" is the " Safety Matters Foundation" - NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE prestigious Flight Safety Academy Foundation - appears to have an agenda to deflect blame on the pilots, despite all evidence (so far) pointing to deliberate action. (Also as a note, didn´t you find it dodgy that in 2026, with everyone and their dog having a 20 MP cellphone, the picture of the document, released by the said foundation, has such poor quality? You can hardly read what´s in there) I also find it strange that, on yesterday´s incident, given that, less than one year after a crash involving a B-787 with "supposed" malfunctioning fuel switches, the crew of the latest incident, instead of delaying the flight, and grounding the aircraft, simply opted to continue the flight. Short memory? I underline nothing against Indian Nationals - there are two readers here in particular - which I won´t nominate for privacy reasons - who are Indian Nationals and who always come to help with insightful opinions and respect, which I have in a very high regard. ("not seeing the forest for the trees"") Also, don´t think it was because the accident happened in India that I think less of the nation. Mental health in aviation has been a problem everywhere, the Germanwings is a sad example of that and I also think the attempts of cover-up lately, hinting it was not pilot suicide - by note, pushed by the pilot´s parent - were farcical.show more

Tesla designed the Cybercab so a blind person can... ride without needing any help. And you can see that in the hardware. Inside the Cybercab, the door release has a warning-triangle door icon and Braille that reads OPEN. Lift it lightly and the butterfly door opens. Pull it all the way to the second detent and it becomes the mechanical emergency release, meaning it can still open the door even if the car has zero power. Your fingers can tell you exactly what it is before you pull it. Then look overhead. Between the dome lights is another button. Braille says STOP. Press it and Cybercab requests an immediate pull-over, ends the ride, and connects you with Robotaxi Support. Think about why those two controls matter so much… There’s no steering wheel. There’s no pedals. There’s no driver sitting up front to ask for help. So Tesla made sure a blind passenger can physically find the two most important controls, identify them by touch, and use them independently. The Tesla team didn’t stop there… The doors can also automatically open when your phone approaches it. The Robotaxi app works with screen readers. The seats are positioned around wheelchair height. There’s room in the cabin for a service animal and trunk space for things like a folded wheelchair or cane. Voice and audio cues can replace information you would normally need to see on a screen. Cybercab accessibility is a core part of the product and experience design… Elon even told us the goal is to make sure Cybercab meets the needs of the blind. Tesla even once brought a production Cybercab to the National Federation of the Blind convention in Austin so blind attendees could actually get inside, touch the controls, and experience it themselves. True autonomy is not true freedom if you still need another person beside you just to use it. Cybercab is the definition of true autonomy.show more

🎙️ Raphinha after FC Barcelona’s 7-2 win: 🤝 On... Hansi Flick and their relationship: “I can’t speak about others, but the truth is I’ve always said this and I’ll keep saying it forever. He’s the coach who changed my mindset so much inside the club, as well as the way I look at myself. That’s why I’m so grateful to him, and whenever I can, I’ll prove it to him.” 📈 On his level and always wanting to improve: “I think it’s always important to think that there’s something you need to improve. I’ll never tell you that I’m fine or that I’ve reached my best level, because if I said that, I’d be lying. I always try to improve everything I can, and I’m certain there’s still something more I can offer the team than what I’m offering now. I’m happy with the goals and the victory, and I think that’s the most important thing. But we have to keep improving, not just individually, but as a team as well.” 🎯 On playing as a striker: “The truth is, I’m comfortable there and scoring goals. I feel like I’m in good form.” Reporter: “Not bad, is it?” Raphinha: “No, not bad.” 😅 🤝 On Lamine after missing the penalty and helping his teammates: “This is normal, and that’s why whenever I can, I’ll try to help him, not just him, but Karim and Gabriel as well. I, more than anyone else, know that a striker needs his goal. We’re trying to do everything we can so he can score. We’re like a family here, and in a family everyone needs to be okay and moving in the same direction. So whenever we can, each one of us tries to help the other.” 🔥 On Adeyemi, the new players and Barça’s mentality: “I think this is the players’ hunger and their constant desire to achieve more. We have a mentality that whenever we can, we should look for more goals and create more chances. On top of that, it shows on the pitch just how strong our bond is as teammates. In that moment, I think Karim saw Lamine in a much better position to score the goal. And I think if we keep going this way, we have everything it takes to be at the top.” 💙❤️show more

🚨 WARNING: SOMETHING EXTREMELY BAD IS COMING ON MONDAY...... Four things are breaking at the same time. Interest rate hikes by December is almost confirmed now. Not pauses. Not holds. HIKES. Everything priced on the assumption that cheap money returns just got repriced from scratch. Every leveraged position, every rate-sensitive asset, every model built on a pivot that isn't coming. Japan officially entered yen intervention, that sounds technical. Here's what it means in practice. Japan is burning through reserves defending a currency that's been collapsing for months. And to fund that defense they sell what they own. US Treasuries, at scale, Into a bond market that's already under pressure from every other direction. China hasn't stopped, while everyone was watching Iran and the Fed, China has been quietly and consistently dumping US Treasury holdings for weeks. No announcement, no fanfare. Just steady selling that shows up in the data for anyone paying attention. And the AI rally is dying in real time. The momentum that carried Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Meta to valuations that made no fundamental sense is reversing. Funds that loaded up on the AI narrative at the top are now the ones selling into every bounce. The multiple that drove three years of outperformance doesn't survive a rate hike cycle and a liquidity crisis simultaneously. Now put all four together. Rates going up, liquidity going out. The world's two largest foreign Treasury holders selling simultaneously. And the primary growth narrative of the last three years losing believers by the session. When liquidity disappears across multiple layers of the financial system at once markets don't correct. They don't dip, they don't give you a clean exit. They crash fast and they crash hard. Stocks. Bonds. Metals. Crypto. There is no rotation trade that works when everything is being sold to cover everything else. There is no safe haven when the people who need cash are selling whatever has a bid. Insiders are already out, funds are already cutting. The rotation happened this week while retail was still debating whether to buy the dip. By the time Monday's open confirms what's coming it's already too late to position. This sounds SCARY, but I will keep you updated on everything here When I rotate money, I will post my moves here so my FOLLOWERS can SAVE their money Many will regret not following me earlier...show more

Pencak Silat Choreography Made with GPT Image 2 and... Seedance 2.0 by Yapper Prompt: { "model": "gpt-image-2", "size": "1024x1024", "prompt": "A clean instructional poster in a 4x4 grid (16 panels) showing a male martial artist demonstrating Pencak Silat choreography. The subject is a fit man with medium-length dark hair and a beard, wearing a red button-up shirt, beige pants, and white sneakers. Style is semi-realistic illustration mixed with hand-drawn sketch lines, soft shadows, and a light textured paper background. Each panel includes subtle motion arrows and small captions. Minimalist, balanced layout. शीर्ष title at top: 'Pencak Silat Choreography – 16 Counts – 10 Seconds – Smooth Flowy Chill'.\n\nPanel 1: wide ready stance, knees bent, one hand guarding forward, focused expression.\nPanel 2: step forward with outward block, arm extended defensively.\nPanel 3: inside block sweeping upward diagonally, torso rotating.\nPanel 4: strong straight punch forward, aligned hips.\nPanel 5: side step into low stance, both hands pushing outward.\nPanel 6: knee lifted high in chamber position, balanced posture.\nPanel 7: front kick extended forward, opposite arm guarding.\nPanel 8: step backward into defensive cover, arms crossing.\nPanel 9: low block, sweeping arm downward in deep stance.\nPanel 10: hook punch across body with hip rotation.\nPanel 11: turning body with pivoting feet, circular motion.\nPanel 12: forward palm strike, stable stance.\nPanel 13: low sweeping motion near ground in squat stance.\nPanel 14: rising smoothly from low stance, upward motion.\nPanel 15: controlled locking pose, one arm raised defensively.\nPanel 16: closing salute, feet together, hands pressed at chest, calm posture.\n\nInclude hand-drawn arrows (blue and purple accents), clean infographic layout, evenly spaced panels, consistent character design across all frames." } Video prompt for Seedance 2.0 Prompt: A focused male martial artist performs a smooth, flowing Pencak Silat sequence in a minimalist studio. He is in his late 20s, athletic build, medium height, warm tan skin, with thick wavy dark hair and a short, well-groomed beard. He wears a fitted deep red button-up shirt with sleeves rolled to the forearms, beige slim-fit pants with slight wear at the knees, and clean white sneakers. His expression is calm, controlled, and intent. The setting is a softly lit neutral studio with an off-white textured backdrop and a slightly worn wooden floor. Lighting is diffused and cinematic, creating gentle shadows and emphasizing fluid motion. The choreography is continuous and rhythmic, with no abrupt cuts: 0–2s: يبدأ in a grounded ready stance, knees bent, one palm forward in guard, eyes locked ahead 2–4s: steps forward into an outward block, transitioning into an inside sweeping block upward 4–6s: rotates hips into a straight punch, then shifts weight into a side step with a pushing motion 6–8s: lifts knee smoothly and extends into a controlled front kick, maintaining balance 8–10s: steps back into a guarded cover, drops into a low block, then rises into a hook punch 10–12s: pivots the body with a clean turn, transitioning into a forward palm strike 12–14s: lowers into a sweeping motion, then rises fluidly into a locking control pose 14–15s: finishes upright with a respectful closing salute, hands together at chest level Movement style is soft, flowing, controlled, with precise martial intention rather than aggression. Emphasis on balance, breath, and continuity. Camera is a steady medium-wide shot with subtle slow tracking, no cuts.show more

BAPCO Energies confirmed on April 5 that a storage... tank at its Sitra facility in Bahrain caught fire “as a result of a hostile Iranian drone attack.” The fire was extinguished. No injuries. Damage under assessment. That is the official statement, repeated verbatim across Bahrain News Agency, Gulf News, Al Arabiya, and Xinhua. It is clean, attributable, and consistent with the pattern of Iranian drone and missile strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure that has continued daily since February 28. Then the videos appeared. Footage circulating on social media, shared by Drop Site News and multiple Arabic-language accounts, appears to show two sequential impacts at the facility: one from the incoming drone, and a second moments later from what the accounts describe as a Patriot interceptor missile that failed to intercept the drone and instead struck the oil storage tanks directly. The videos have not been independently verified. The trajectory analysis has not been forensically confirmed. BAPCO’s statement does not mention air defence involvement. The Bahrain Defence Force reported 13 successful drone interceptions in the preceding 24 hours and made no acknowledgement of a misfire. This has happened before. On March 9, an explosion near BAPCO in Sitra injured dozens and was attributed to an Iranian drone. Reuters and the Middlebury Institute subsequently concluded with moderate-to-high confidence that a US-operated Patriot interceptor caused the blast. Drone fragments were absent at the impact site. The damage pattern matched a Patriot warhead detonating at low altitude after losing its target. Bahrain later acknowledged Patriot involvement without formally correcting the original attribution. The March 9 precedent is what makes the April 5 videos significant. Not because they prove the interceptor hit the tank. They do not prove that. But because they introduce a documented pattern: in saturated airspace where dozens of Iranian drones arrive simultaneously, Patriot systems operating at the edge of their engagement envelope against small, slow, low-altitude targets can produce outcomes where the defence causes the damage it was deployed to prevent. The drone is the threat. The interceptor is the response. And the oil tank does not distinguish between the two when the impact arrives. BAPCO operates a 405,000 barrel per day refinery at Sitra. It was struck by confirmed Iranian missiles on March 5, triggering force majeure. It was struck by what was later assessed as friendly fire on March 9, injuring residents. It was struck again on April 5 by what officials call a drone and what videos suggest may have also involved an interceptor. Three incidents in five weeks at the same facility. No force majeure was declared for April 5. The fire was contained rapidly. But the question the videos raise is not about this fire. It is about what happens when Patriot systems engage small, slow, low-altitude drones in saturated airspace directly above the infrastructure they are positioned to protect. Iran does not need to penetrate the shield. It needs to force the shield to fire in conditions where the shield’s own projectiles become the threat. The defence and the attack converge on the same target. And the oil burns either way.show more

Dear François Nzanga Mobutu, Good evening. I bet your... father is turning in his grave, writhing in pain and shame after reading your tweet. He, at least, knew that there are authentic and fully-fledged Congolese Tutsis. He proved it until people like you and others came along and misled him. Do I need to inform you, in case you're unaware, that the people who demonstrated yesterday in Washington DC, roughly 4,000 of them, others the same day in Nairobi, and still others in England shortly before, are Banyamulenge, these Congolese Tutsis from the highlands, who are protesting against what Tshisekedi and the FARDC, the Wazalendo, Évariste Ndayishimiye and the FDNB, as well as the FDLR and mercenaries, are doing to their relatives in Minembwe and throughout the highlands? Their Sukhoi fighter jets and drones bomb daily, killing children, women, the elderly, and men. They destroy homes, churches, schools, hospitals, and community radio stations. They even kill cows and sheep and destroy fields and crops. They have imposed a blockade on Minembwe, with no entry or exit. They have done and are doing the same thing to the Tutsi in Masisi and Rutshuru in North Kivu. Instead of listening to their cries and examining their demands, the excuse is quickly found; the preferred shortcut is Rwanda. Always and only Rwanda. Too easy, isn't it? Your thinking, which is also the regime's narrative, can be summarized in these two sentences: - all the problems facing the DRC come from elsewhere, particularly from Rwanda; we will end up being told that even the migrants are here because of Rwanda. “And all the solutions must come from elsewhere, especially from the United States of America, from Papa Trump.” Under these conditions, what is the point of the regime you serve? Two small truths to remember, dear François: “Such an attitude, this kind of ideology, this denial of nationality to Congolese Tutsis of origin, from North and South Kivu, as well as to all those who are victims of the same persecution, like the Hema and others, this easy rejection based on appearance (racial profiling), are among the root causes of the crisis the country is going through;” “As long as we haven’t decided to be sufficiently responsible, to sit down as a nation and rigorously assess our share (of responsibility) in what is happening to us, we will continue to wait for solutions from others, solutions that may never come.” Furthermore, there are satanic verses that must be banished immediately, in the interest of everyone and the country, such as: "There are no Congolese Tutsis, every Tutsi is Rwandan, therefore a foreigner," etc. Either we will be able to put an end to exclusion, discrimination, hate speech, and ethnic hatred, and live together according to the law and history, or this deep-seated problem risks haunting us for a long time. But to achieve this, we need leadership capable of understanding and transcending differences and turning them into assets for living together. This is possible.show more

I FIND GREATER BUSHENYI TO BE INCREDIBLE! KAMPALA SACCOS... MAY WANT TO MAKE STUDY TOURS HERE Over this Easter holiday in Bushenyi, I was hoping to find some time to write a more formal piece on law. Instead, as you can see in these clips, Kabagareme, the booming Saturday meat market got in the way. You will never find a better meal, a better price and the extra satisfaction of actually supporting the local people’s “hustle” Deeply satisfying on all fronts. Kabagarame is yet another example of the high levels of civic awareness and organization of the people here. Apart from always being well represented in National since independence, Bushenyi has achieved social-economic transformation through embracing formal education very early on. It’s not uncommon to find families with three generations of university graduates here unlike almost anywhere else in Uganda. Most 50-60 year old Ugandans are one generation removed from peasantry. And, I think that Bushenyi’s case is not the case of the “diploma disease” that afflicts Uganda, generally. There’s a big difference between papers and an education. The former, I hear, you can buy at Nasser road, the latter, you cannot. It must translate in the way you think and live. The people here for example, organized their land holding as early as the 1960s when most land here got surveyed and titled. Elsewhere, land fragmentation, disorder, disputes and violence still block economic progress. Access to credit for example, is much easier when you have titled land. The per capita income here is even by visual estimation only, high. Generally, every household has a combination of any of the following crops; coffee, tea and bananas or all three. They will generally keep at least a few crossbred cows. Each of those is a cash crop in its own right. I have never seen a grass thatched house here. Especially tea factories dot the magically beautiful green hills along with several schools whose performance in the National exam, a National obsession, is among the very best in the country. The stretch between Kyamuhunga and Kasese covering the present day Rubirizi and Bunyarunguru districts is perhaps, the most beautiful part of Uganda. It spots the beautiful magical twin crater lakes of Kyema and Kamweru (“Africa”), the Kazinga channel, lakes Edward and George. One can have the breathtaking, sweeping panoramic views of Queen Elizabeth National park, Mountain Rwenzori, and all aforesaid lakes, atop the West arm of the great East Africa rift valley. There are so many hotels in Bunyaruguru of which Kyangabi Crater Resort has always been my favorite. Although, it has to be said, the views are at King Fisher Lodge. The big revelation to me this holiday however is how well the SACCOS here seem to be doing. I took interest in taking a closer look at upcountry SACCOS from my friend Muhimbise Atiki and Kakande Alex ‘s recent analysis of Y-SAVE’s no dividend in two years situation. From anecdotal evidence, the biggest SACCOS here include Kyamuhunga, Mushanga and Muhame. At least two of these SACCOS have a loan portfolio of ugx. 50BN each! Today, one declared and gave dividends. SACCOS might be the local solution that has been brewing to building local capital. SACCOS might also finally break the back of the trust deficit and therefore high risk that underbelly Uganda borrowing resulting in high interest rates. Kampala SACCOS may, after putting down The Intelligent Investor, need to come here for a practical education. There’s a lot to admire and learn.show more

A good technical LLM interview question: Your LLM chatbot... takes 12s before it generates the first token, and the users are complaining. So you move the model onto a GPU with 3x the computing power. The time to first token barely improves. Why did this happen? (answer below) Latency in an LLM app is a placement problem disguised as a model problem. If you profile the 12 seconds, the model's prefill itself may only account for around 1.5 seconds of it. So halving the prefill step saves just 750ms out of 12000, which is under 7%. The rest is spread across stages that never touch the GPU. The request first travels to whatever region the app runs in, and a cross-continent round trip could cost over a second before any code executes. Then the request handler starts. On a container-based serverless platform under load, this adds several seconds of cold start, paid before auth, rate limiting, or prompt assembly even begins. Retrieval adds its own hop, and the response streams back across the same distance. Optimizing a stage that was already fast cannot alter the latency that's majorly affected by other stages. Those other stages are slow for a structural reason. An LLM app runs two workloads that want opposite machines. - The request path is short, spiky, and needs to sit close to users - Inference is long-running, GPU-bound, and billed hourly, whether requests arrive or not. So the actual decision is not which model to run, but where each of these two workloads runs. There are three options, each with its own tradeoffs: > A dedicated GPU box removes inference cold starts, but it bills around the clock and lives in one location, so distant users wait out the round trip on every request > Container-based serverless scales to zero, but the request path pays a cold start, and most of these platforms have no GPU behind them. > Edge runtimes start in under a millisecond, because a WebAssembly module carries no OS or container image to boot. They handle the request path well and cannot hold a model. So the answer is not to pick one, but to split the app across two of them. The request path runs close to users, and inference runs on a dedicated GPU it calls into. That also explains the failed upgrade. More compute made a stage that was already fast faster, and left the 10.5 seconds around it untouched. To actually learn how it's done in practice, Akamai's GitHub has a reference implementation for each half. - vllm-on-lke serves Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct behind an OpenAI-compatible endpoint on one RTX 4000 Ada GPU in Linode Kubernetes Engine, with Terraform creating the cluster, both firewalls, and the GPU operator in one apply. - akamai-functions-llm-chatbot covers the front, where a WebAssembly API checks a KV cache and only calls the GPU-backed instance on a miss. Both are available on Akamai’s new Developer Hub, alongside their tutorials and code samples. It also links to Edge Case, their Discord, where four developer advocates architect and deploy a production app live every other Wednesday. If you create a new Akamai Cloud account, you can also get $300 in credits for joining. Join here: That said, this post treats generation as a single 1.5s block, but that block has its own structure, and knowing it well tells you whether a model is slow to start or slow to stream. I wrote a first-principles walkthrough of it, covering the prefill and decode split, KV caching, and where the time actually goes inside each one. Read it below. Thanks to Akamai Cloud for partnering today!show more