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That is exactly why a Duress Pin, like the one in GrapheneOS, should be standard everywhere. Ideally, it should also include an option to visibly destroy the device by overheating it, to ensure that no one can accuse you of not having actually deleted the data and keep asking for a password.

I like the idea of having a user-friendly app that lets you use LLMs locally. Tools like Ollama and LMStudio tend to put most people off because you have to decide for yourself which models to use and there are so many settings to configure. If the hardware you’re using is compatible, Ensu could be a drop-in replacement for casual ChatGPT users.

However, it’s a bit confusing because, for example, a larger LLM model was downloaded to my smartphone than to my computer. It would probably make the most sense if the app simply categorized devices into five different tiers and then, depending on which performance tier a device falls into, downloaded the appropriate model and simply informed the user of the performance tier. Over time, it would then be possible to periodically replace the LLM for each tier with better ones, or to redefine the device performance tiers based on hardware advancements.


Osaurus is what I use for local - it's a native Swift macOS app with sandboxing, agent tooling, and server capabilities. Mac only though.

LLMStudio is pretty darn easy and if I recall it recommends a model to install when you first start it

I don’t understand why people think it’s so difficult to build a website. If you let go of the idea that every little site has to look ‘modern’ and have thousands of features, it’s really easy. Stallman’s website would be a good example. It’s super minimalist, and there’s nothing stopping a restaurant from building a site like that too. The homepage can simply list the opening hours and special offers, and then have a subpage listing the regular menu. All you need is HTML and a Server. If you don't want to rent one just buy a Raspberry Pi and host it at the restaurant or at home. Even if you don’t know much about technology, you can always ask a computer science student or a friend’s child to do it for a bit of pocket money.

I think you underestimate how what you just wrote will fly over the head of most non technical people?

Yeah. "put some HTML on a server" may as well say "split a few atoms" for people who have never done so.

No one is saying that it's impossible to learn all that stuff. But it takes time, has a fairly high entry barrier (despite LLMs and all that), and needs to happen _while_ keeping the business afloat.


Or just host it on squarespace (or something similar).

Having a website like stallmans would be worse for a business than having no website

This time it's satire, but I bet someone will offer exactly that for real in the next few days. The idea is unethical but far too lucrative from a business perspective.


Often OSS is used not because you want the software, but the software and the upkeep. So even with such a service, you're now just taking code in-house that you have to maintain as well.


Realistically, if it in fact did take 5 minutes to do the cleanroom reimplementation, you could just process updates from the OSS source in realtime.


The people that will take this as a good thing unironically will just have their personal Yes Man do that work internally.


9b with 4bits runs with around 60 tok/s on my RTX 4070 with 12GB VRAM and 35b-A3B runs with around 14 tok/s and partial offloading. For roleplaying I prefer the faster 9b Version but for coding tasks both aren't really usable and Claude is still way better especially if you manage to persuade your employer to give you unlimited access.


> 35b-A3B runs with around 14 tok/s and partial offloading

FYI, this is what I am seeing for pure CPU inference so something is likely off with your setup.

Test setup is intel 13500 w/ 6 threads and 64GB DDR4 ram, a newer system should be much faster


Germany is an absolutely terrible choice for this. Other Email providers such as Tuta which also offer encrypted emails, were forced to install a backdoor. As soon as the police arrive, every future email sent to the account in question is copied unencrypted without the person being informed. This is much worse than passing on payment details or stored backup email addresses, as Proton Mail is required to do in Switzerland.


> Other Email providers such as Tuta which also offer encrypted emails, were forced to install a backdoor. As soon as the police arrive, every future email sent to the account in question is copied unencrypted without the person being informed.

Important caveat: Tuta was required by a court to provide police with access to a customer's _unencrypted_ emails (ie regular SMTP mail). The police had also asked for a backdoor to Tuta's E2E emails, and that request was rejected by the courts.


But the idea behind Tuta and Proton is that emails are encrypted when they arrive in the inbox. The fact that emails sent between Tuta users are still safe offer little added value because distribution is far too limited. The reason people choose such a provider is that they do not want the authorities to have access to their mailbox, but this is undermined by a backdoor. Switzerland is much better off in terms of the legal situation in this area.


It's really cool that you can simply get the full text from sites that refuse to offer the entire text in their RSS feed, without having to go to their site. However, there are a few things that don't work so well. When you add feeds from YouTube, the video is not embedded. Even if the feature is out of scope, it would be good if the title and a link to the video were displayed instead. Also Bluesky posts lacks the embedded content. Furthermore, a maximum of 100 feeds is clearly not enough. If you add things like YouTube, Reddit, Lemmy, Bluesky, etc. you will reach the limit very quickly. Even if these are not content that you actually read in the reader, it would be annoying to have two different RSS Apps just for that reason.


This is precisely why tools such as Copilot CLI, Claude Code, OpenCode, etc. are best used within a VM or a rootless Podman container.


No, this is precisely why such tools are best unused at all. It is foolish in the extreme to give an LLM access to your system.


But it's not my system it's just a container that I can delete. If you already have the image it takes less than a second to deploy them. Podman is rootless, which makes it almost impossible for anything to escape from the container.


Users get way more out of it when the device is free. Even if they don't use this option, it makes it easier to set up competing services. This includes ones that would never be allowed in an official store because they're DRM-free alternatives to big streaming services but still offer all the same content. The existence of such alternatives, if they are easy to use, can force the big services to become more user-friendly. Just as happened back then with Napster.

Also every user is free to simply not use the option of installing things outside of the store.


> This includes ones that would never be allowed in an official store because they're DRM-free alternatives to big streaming services but still offer all the same content.

Do you know anyone who works in a professional creative field that doesn't involve writing code? If so, ask them how they'd feel about their work bring out there on the internet free to all takers. What the implications would be for their ability to feed their children and pay their mortgage doing the things they love.

This is what I mean by "programmer-brained." Of all creative workers, only programmers seem okay with abolishing IP laws, I guess because they figure they'll be okay living out of an office at MIT, or even worse out of an office at some YC startup that turns the user into the product. But artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, etc. all put food on the table because of those IP laws programmers hate so much. Taking that protection for the fruit of your labor away would be at least as disruptive as AI has been.


The solution would be a "noob mode" that disables sideloading and other security-critical features, which can be chosen when the device is first turned on and requires a factory reset to deactivate. People who still choose expert mode even though they are beginners would then only have themselves to blame.


This should be voted higher, it quite literally is this simple.


This is just a variant of the "complicated unlocking mechanism" I was talking about. It still screws over everything not coming from the play store because the installation process for them essentially becomes a huge hassel, that even involves factory resetting their device, that most people won't want to deal with.


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