Readit NewsBlue_Cosma commented on Ask HN: Who's running local AI workstations in 2026? · Posted by u/Blue_Cosma
Just bought a Strix Halo (framework desktop), waffled a long time between that and a Mac Studo but I got tired of waiting for the M5 and don’t really like Apple.
I work with ML professionally, almost all in cloud, I just wanted something “off grid” and unmetered, and needed a computer anyway so decided to pay a bit more and get the one I want. It’s “personal” in that it’s exclusively for me, but I have a business and bought it for that.
Still figuring out the best software, so far it looks like llama.cpp with Vulcan though I have a lot of experimenting to do and don’t currently find it optimal for what I want.
Thanks a lot for sharing. Haven't tested Strix Halo myself. Did you consider DGX Spark as well?
What is your target use case? Curious what feels suboptimal about llama.cpp + Vulkan so far.
Blue_Cosma commented on Ask HN: Who's running local AI workstations in 2026? · Posted by u/Blue_Cosma
You asked us...well, first tell us what's your real driver? You have three years on local infrastructure? What does that even mean - you're running Ollama Llama_70b for 3 years?
Whats your stack?
And none of that hardware can run larger models, smaller tiny ones, or highly quantized versions of larger ones sure. Or do you have something important to say?
Our main driver and hypothesis was to work with regulated industry. We worked with a few large enterprise clients in defence and industry for R&D and IP use cases mostly.
Our stack changes per project, adapting to client needs and infra: Llama 70B on a Mac Studio M1 with Ollama in 2024, vLLM on 4xH100 private cloud for larger deployments. Most recently, we've been working on a custom workstation with 2x RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Max-Q + 1.1TB DDR5 to run larger models locally using SGLang and KTransformers.
The question isn't rhetorical, I'm trying to understand if the demand we see in regulated sectors is the whole market or if there's broader adoption I'm missing.
Blue_Cosma commented on Ask HN: How do you assess developers' AI-assisted coding skills in interviews? · Posted by u/Blue_Cosma
Do you want to hire a developer with 5+ years of LLM experience? Or 3+ years of Claude experience?
Hire learners, or hire people who teach people (evaluate new tools, write guides, conduct training, mentor, etc.).
Excellent point. How do you evaluate a developer’s ability to learn and integrate new tools (like AI assistants) into their workflow?
Blue_Cosma commented on Ask HN: How do you assess developers' AI-assisted coding skills in interviews? · Posted by u/Blue_Cosma
Answering with the assumption this is for interviews; we ask them to build a simple component of our app within 1 hour, using any resources they like. We judge them based on their communication (breaking down the problem), code quality, and final result.
This is indeed during interviews (question updated)
Thanks! I assume the 1-hour coding session is done live. From your experience, do candidates seem comfortable using AI tools as naturally as they would on their own?
Do you also pay attention to how they interact with these tools — for example, prompting, reviewing, or correcting suggestions?
Blue_Cosma commented on Ask HN: How do you assess developers' AI-assisted coding skills in interviews? · Posted by u/Blue_Cosma
AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) are now part of most developers’ daily workflow, they speed up prototyping, planning, implementation but also change how we think and debug.
I’m curious how you assess developers’ ability to leverage these tools efficiently during the recruiting process. Any tips to share? Any return on experience?
Also hard to justify the $50k capex compared to just hitting the Anthropic API. You'd need massive volume to break even on that hardware especially with electricity costs. Seems like overoptimization unless you have strict data privacy needs.