Andras Gerlits
@omniledger.io
I have built the first async, consistent data-platform
https://omniledger.io/
I build distributed systems @Citi
I also write about distributed systems
https://medium.com/@andrasgerlits
https://omniledger.io/
I build distributed systems @Citi
I also write about distributed systems
https://medium.com/@andrasgerlits
LLMs are us (me certainly) at our worst. I'm an LLM when I become annoyed with a problem, refuse to engage with it in earnest and just want to get it over with. I'm an LLM when I give the first answer to a non-obvious question that pops into my mind.
February 12, 2026 at 5:49 AM
LLMs are us (me certainly) at our worst. I'm an LLM when I become annoyed with a problem, refuse to engage with it in earnest and just want to get it over with. I'm an LLM when I give the first answer to a non-obvious question that pops into my mind.
People say that AI-produced stuff is uninspired, generic and soulless, but this year's Grammys were a great illustration of how we don't need GenAI for this to happen, shallow consumerism is enough.
February 7, 2026 at 5:12 AM
People say that AI-produced stuff is uninspired, generic and soulless, but this year's Grammys were a great illustration of how we don't need GenAI for this to happen, shallow consumerism is enough.
Is it possible to show that LLMs can't reason? It's easy to show that they can't reason the way we do, but hypothetically it might be possible to somehow couple its "semantics" coherently. Unless this is you however, you really should shut up about LLM intelligence though.
January 12, 2026 at 9:20 AM
Is it possible to show that LLMs can't reason? It's easy to show that they can't reason the way we do, but hypothetically it might be possible to somehow couple its "semantics" coherently. Unless this is you however, you really should shut up about LLM intelligence though.
How to mitigate latency in a deterministic system. This is an almost entirely novel concept which has very little literature supporting it.
December 29, 2025 at 7:11 AM
How to mitigate latency in a deterministic system. This is an almost entirely novel concept which has very little literature supporting it.
Gemini does a great job at summarising our paper
December 29, 2025 at 6:35 AM
Gemini does a great job at summarising our paper
LLMs automated design patterns, that is: stochastic pattern-matching on signals without any consideration for semantics.
Neither of them ever really worked, but both look like they do at first glance and since people don't like to think about semantics, they both took root
Neither of them ever really worked, but both look like they do at first glance and since people don't like to think about semantics, they both took root
December 27, 2025 at 4:52 AM
LLMs automated design patterns, that is: stochastic pattern-matching on signals without any consideration for semantics.
Neither of them ever really worked, but both look like they do at first glance and since people don't like to think about semantics, they both took root
Neither of them ever really worked, but both look like they do at first glance and since people don't like to think about semantics, they both took root
I'm reading @markburgessosl.bsky.social draft paper on attention in AI. Some 🤯:
- LLMs are slow because of the incredibly wide context when evaluating, so that's also a boundary problem
- Boundaries are the same as a rejection of a violation of an autonomy, so semantics are agentic
- LLMs are slow because of the incredibly wide context when evaluating, so that's also a boundary problem
- Boundaries are the same as a rejection of a violation of an autonomy, so semantics are agentic
December 22, 2025 at 6:03 AM
I'm reading @markburgessosl.bsky.social draft paper on attention in AI. Some 🤯:
- LLMs are slow because of the incredibly wide context when evaluating, so that's also a boundary problem
- Boundaries are the same as a rejection of a violation of an autonomy, so semantics are agentic
- LLMs are slow because of the incredibly wide context when evaluating, so that's also a boundary problem
- Boundaries are the same as a rejection of a violation of an autonomy, so semantics are agentic
If you want to issue stablecoins as defined by the GENIUS Act, you need to buy treasuries in equal amount. I wonder if its goal is to bring US debt back on-shore. It's amazing how the status quo is held up by the Two Generals' Problem and how that's mostly a misunderstanding.
December 17, 2025 at 4:49 AM
If you want to issue stablecoins as defined by the GENIUS Act, you need to buy treasuries in equal amount. I wonder if its goal is to bring US debt back on-shore. It's amazing how the status quo is held up by the Two Generals' Problem and how that's mostly a misunderstanding.
All clocks are wrong but some are useful.
🧵
🧵
December 11, 2025 at 2:14 PM
All clocks are wrong but some are useful.
🧵
🧵
Can someone explain to me why CAP was adopted into the canon based on a paper, but Paxos required Chubby to even be noticed?
December 10, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Can someone explain to me why CAP was adopted into the canon based on a paper, but Paxos required Chubby to even be noticed?
The problem of state-management is that processes are allowed to make decisions. We project free will. It's a kind of anthropomorphisation. In fact, all their "free will" is just a byproduct of their incidental entanglement, ie: unforeseen causal relationships between them.
December 9, 2025 at 9:22 AM
The problem of state-management is that processes are allowed to make decisions. We project free will. It's a kind of anthropomorphisation. In fact, all their "free will" is just a byproduct of their incidental entanglement, ie: unforeseen causal relationships between them.
Whatever you might think about LLMs, it's matter of fact that they are tools of cargo-culting, meaning that they imitate the external signals without understanding the internals. How that is not considered a problem is beyond me.
December 8, 2025 at 7:25 AM
Whatever you might think about LLMs, it's matter of fact that they are tools of cargo-culting, meaning that they imitate the external signals without understanding the internals. How that is not considered a problem is beyond me.
If you believe the conclusions of CAP apply to all distributed systems, you believe that there's no way to not have the occasional latency spike or even node isolation event happen to your service, unless you have an incredibly well tuned network. Our next project disproves this
November 29, 2025 at 9:40 AM
If you believe the conclusions of CAP apply to all distributed systems, you believe that there's no way to not have the occasional latency spike or even node isolation event happen to your service, unless you have an incredibly well tuned network. Our next project disproves this
LLMs and Tesla's FSD are the same problem. Both can only succeed if they can consistently apply meaning and reason about it. A bush with feet is a human carrying a plant. Now do this with orders of magnitude more complexity and you see the problem.
Probabilism won't save you
Probabilism won't save you
November 27, 2025 at 6:00 AM
LLMs and Tesla's FSD are the same problem. Both can only succeed if they can consistently apply meaning and reason about it. A bush with feet is a human carrying a plant. Now do this with orders of magnitude more complexity and you see the problem.
Probabilism won't save you
Probabilism won't save you
We're planning a new kind of service, one everyone thought impossible because of CAP, that should fix most distributed systems problems in a very simple way. If you have control-plane problems or service-integration issues, send me a DM or reply here and I'll get in touch.
November 26, 2025 at 5:41 AM
We're planning a new kind of service, one everyone thought impossible because of CAP, that should fix most distributed systems problems in a very simple way. If you have control-plane problems or service-integration issues, send me a DM or reply here and I'll get in touch.
I did find it amazing at the start, (but got used to by now) is how nobody refutes our innovation at its substance. People who take the time to understand it (without exception) also accept even our wildest claims.
Few actually care about truth if it contradicts their beliefs
Few actually care about truth if it contradicts their beliefs
November 20, 2025 at 10:20 AM
I did find it amazing at the start, (but got used to by now) is how nobody refutes our innovation at its substance. People who take the time to understand it (without exception) also accept even our wildest claims.
Few actually care about truth if it contradicts their beliefs
Few actually care about truth if it contradicts their beliefs
A thread about why pessimistic systems are bad at scaling.
Let's analyse Spanner using the model explained here. Spanner relies on pessimistic locks, so we first need to ask the question of what it is in a distributed system. Simple: a pessimistic lock is an optimistically written record, sometimes on a remote node.
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
November 20, 2025 at 5:53 AM
A thread about why pessimistic systems are bad at scaling.
Let's analyse Spanner using the model explained here. Spanner relies on pessimistic locks, so we first need to ask the question of what it is in a distributed system. Simple: a pessimistic lock is an optimistically written record, sometimes on a remote node.
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
November 20, 2025 at 5:52 AM
Let's analyse Spanner using the model explained here. Spanner relies on pessimistic locks, so we first need to ask the question of what it is in a distributed system. Simple: a pessimistic lock is an optimistically written record, sometimes on a remote node.
My goal with these threads is to outline the minimal semantics of distributed consistency in a generally accessible format. I think these questions have been mostly ignored for decades, which is a shame, since they can lead to practical results.
In the last one, we'll tackle CAP
In the last one, we'll tackle CAP
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
November 19, 2025 at 5:30 AM
My goal with these threads is to outline the minimal semantics of distributed consistency in a generally accessible format. I think these questions have been mostly ignored for decades, which is a shame, since they can lead to practical results.
In the last one, we'll tackle CAP
In the last one, we'll tackle CAP
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
November 19, 2025 at 5:18 AM
Let's first reformulate Linearizability to mean that time-order should never contradict any process's observed order of events. This will help us in mapping out the ultimate limits of our semantics in space. So: clocks at different distances, measured in ms (communication time)
So, when is the industry going to be ready to talk about decentralisation? I mean, you can argue that CloudFlare engineers know what they're doing, but that also means that this problem is too complex to be solved centrally.
November 18, 2025 at 2:28 PM
So, when is the industry going to be ready to talk about decentralisation? I mean, you can argue that CloudFlare engineers know what they're doing, but that also means that this problem is too complex to be solved centrally.
There's a great interview with Leslie Lamport, in which he makes the point that any time-ordered system will contradict the observed (causal) order of events as seen by different processes in different places. He's clearly right about this, except for his conclusion.
November 16, 2025 at 6:00 AM
There's a great interview with Leslie Lamport, in which he makes the point that any time-ordered system will contradict the observed (causal) order of events as seen by different processes in different places. He's clearly right about this, except for his conclusion.
Time is experiencing changes. In distributed systems, we focus on composing these changes eagerly into a unified view for any potential observer. This eagerness is the bottleneck. If you just lazily calculate each observer's current view, the known problems just don't apply.
November 15, 2025 at 5:46 AM
Time is experiencing changes. In distributed systems, we focus on composing these changes eagerly into a unified view for any potential observer. This eagerness is the bottleneck. If you just lazily calculate each observer's current view, the known problems just don't apply.
The basic facts of physics tells us why distributing systems is hard. It's because different time-coordination systems move at different speeds. The only logical conclusion here is that these need to be calibrated to each other if we want to establish order between them.
November 2, 2025 at 4:34 AM
The basic facts of physics tells us why distributing systems is hard. It's because different time-coordination systems move at different speeds. The only logical conclusion here is that these need to be calibrated to each other if we want to establish order between them.
Second outage in two weeks. I guess it's time to be educated about how nobody could do better than be down for half a day again.
October 30, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Second outage in two weeks. I guess it's time to be educated about how nobody could do better than be down for half a day again.