I don’t think the app in the picture is driven by AI. Seems like a catalogue of questions. Probably to assess some situation by some standard procedure. I’d trust that. Regarding the AI apps mentioned below: I wouldn’t trust them at all. If my private parts start itching and I can’t make sense of it, I’d go to the doctor. At least if it’s serious. Or use Dr. Google if it’s not too bad.

wtf?

You could use some containerized mail server like Mailcow. They’re pretty alright to set up and should work fine for low volume. At least in my experience. Unless you don’t want to deal with mail yourself, then you should maybe consider a paid service. But I don’t have any experience with those.

Certainly Ubuntu. But fortunately I have more options to choose from.

Sounds like standard practice. First embrace as long as something helps you grow and then wait for the right moment and extinguish.

I don’t think this will be received well in the western market. But that might not be their main criterion.

Usually that’s done by the network routing. Add a default(?) route(?) or make the software bind to the vpn interface. I’m not sure. I think firewall rules can do the same thing. If you’re using docker, I’d advise you to use “gluetun” that seems to do everything for you.

Usually people do copyright violation with bittorrent. That means they tend to make sure the routing or dns doesn’t leak anything. I think that’s usually done by running the software inside of some containers or virtualization. If you do that your setup becomes simpler than inventing a dozen or so firewall rules. Either use gluetun or make the container bind to the vpn in its entirety. So practically the same setup everyone uses for pirating, just that you don’t pay for a VPN service, but do that (server) part yourself on your virtual server. Everything else is a good bit more elaborate and complicated…

I think what you’re trying to do is called a VPN. Set up a VPN that tunnels all the torrent traffic to and from the virtual server.

Thanks. I’ll try lmsys, but ultimately I do mind privacy. But I also fool around.

Yeah, I know about AMD GPUs. Nvidia has quite a monopoly on AI and as everyone uses their hardware and software frameworks, that’s what’s supported best. At least currently. My predicion is: that’s about to change. But their competitors didn’t do a great job. But I’ve been annoyed with Nvidia’s stupid Linux drivers for so long, (I mean that also changed,) but I’d like to give my money to someone else, and swallow that pill. If I decide to do it anyways.

Thanks for the info. I think I can do something with that. Mistral-Nemo is pretty awesome for its size. Intelligent, can write prose, dialogue or answer questions, it’s completely uncensored out of the box…

Most people use either Matrix or XMPP. Both work.

There is a nice overview of chat protocols here: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/

I mostly use matrix as of today. I think it’s alright. It’s a bit difficult to explain encryption and device verification to other people… I think that could be designed better. But apart from that it works very well. So does XMPP which I’ve used before that. Have a look at the messenger matrix and all the options before deciding on an ecosystem. I’d take one of the friends and do some evaluation before dragging the whole group in. You can do that with some pre-existing servers before learning how to host the server part.

And btw: With most of them you can just use some public servers. You should do that unless you’re willing to put in the effort to maintain an own server. That’d give you complete control over the infrastructure… But it’s also a liability to maintain a server, do the updates etc for a group of friends and maybe years to come… End to end encryption will keep the content of your messages private, anyways. (If you use it.)

We need uncensored models. Eric Hartford wrote a good blog article in May 2023 about the whole topic: https://erichartford.com/uncensored-models

I think that also applies to biology reasearch and a variety of topics. And also in the adult industry AI can contribute new “art” or take away and flood everything with low quality content. We also have fights about copyright everywhere. I don’t see the adult industry in a different position than other industries… We’re going to see how AI changes things. Having a say certainly helps. I don’t like things being forced on people.

Good point. I think it’s super important to make this decision early on. Whether you want to invest time and do self hosting, or not and you’ll want to use managed services or regular non-free platforms. Doing things by yourself certainly teaches a lot. I do it. And I gain knowledge, independence and I think it’s important to understand the tools I use on a regular basis and not let Apple/Google take care of my life. And since I do a lot of things with computers, I can make good use of the gained knowledge. However I can also feel how someone wouldn’t want to do that. They might have other hobbies, a stressful job or a family and it’s quite some time that I spend digging through configuration files, reading documentation and maintaining stuff. It has to be worth it in some way, or it becomes a liability. And I think that’s not super obvious when starting the journey. I’m glad we have managed services which give independence without spending too much time. But I also prefer going all the way and learning lots of stuff.

Hmmh, I lately use mistral-nemo which is 12B parameters. Since I’m more a programmer than a gamer, I didn’t put a graphics card into my PC, and I believe it’s too old to accomodate any recent one. (older PCIe generation, only x8 ports) I’d have to replace everything. And then I might as well go for a Radeon RX 7900 XTS or something. That’s $1.000(?) but has 24GB of VRAM. I don’t think buying an entire PC and then going for an old GPU will make me happy. And thanks to llama.cpp I get about 2 tokens per second just on the CPU. It’d have to be a considerable step up to be worth it. And last time I checked even a P40 was like $300+ and it’s super old and unclear if it’ll continue to be supported in the major frameworks. I’m not sure. I still lean towards paying for cloud GPU compute.

Thanks for the numbers on your setup. That certainly helps weighing my options. Maybe some of my friends have some upgrades planned and want to give me their older 8GB NVidia cards…

Sure. I usually do the same thing. The laptop on which I’m typing right now is a refurbished Dell one and I really prefer a bit older enterprise hardware to new consumer hardware. Nice build quality, no nonsense and Linux runs great on that device. And it cost me a fraction of a new machine. However… with the intended use-case of a media center I’m not sure. Intel always adds hardware acceleration in their iGPUs and the modern codecs are quite demanding. I wouldn’t buy an older generation that doesn’t really support AV1. I’m not sure if hardware from 2 years ago can do that. And if someone buys a new TV set which supports HDR or something and then the recently bought, refurbished media center is out of date again… that also doesn’t help. Maybe I’d buy a new one in this case and just use it for the next 10 years. That’s also sustainable. But yeah, you have to pay attention to the details if you’re buying off-brand. But that also applies to most computer hardware, regardless. It’s a bit more of a lottery with cheap and off-brand devices.

Add some googly eyes if it “lives” in the living room. They fit right above the switch which would then become the nose.

Yeah back when I needed storage (quite some years ago) the mini pcs were less capable and more pricey, so I ended up building a NAS myself. It’s a regular, yet very power efficient PC. But due to size, it doesn’t fit next to the TV. If I’d do the same thing today, I’d certainly consider a machine like this. And $200 doesn’t sound much for a 2-bay NAS.

Uuhh, that’s a cute little trash can. Now fit that with the maximum of RAM it supports and two 12TB harddrives… And it’ll do more media center and NAS than the average person needs.

Someone linked a list of Mini-PCs here: https://lemmy.world/post/19837516

I think the N100 sounds good. But I can’t comment on buying a cheap chinesium one versus a refurbished Fujitsu/Lenovo or an Intel NUC.

yeah, you don’t listen. i’d say complaining is fine, generally in most circumstances. but it won’t get you anywhere in this case.

Yeah, I don’t think I agree with you at all. Software development and operation are vastly different jobs. Packaging is yet a different story. Maintainers need different things than developers. Handling dependencies is a chore, and you need lots of them if your product speaks dozens of protocols and can interconnect with thousands of devices, each with their own quirks… All the people have something in mind. They already pay attention to deployment and support several methods. Sure it’s not the method you have in mind. But the world doesn’t specifically revolve around you. There are other factors at play. And sure. It’d be awesome if we solved software packaging, dependency hell, the supply chain of larger projects and everything. It’s just not easy. And reality has quite some limitations. It’s just… fighting reality doesn’t get you anywhere. Sometimes we have to make ends meet with imperfect solutions. Or you just live without a smart home. Or use a different software stack. I mean there is FHEM and some other projects.

And with that said, there is some merit to what you’re saying. Software should be designed with usage in mind. It’s just not easy and there are contradicting requirements. Either someone puts in all the effort to cater for your specific use-case… Or they don’t.

Ah thx, I think I read that back then… Pretty annoying.

Do you have some links to read up on that? I saw the Nix stuff. And the Home Assistant devs seem pretty alright to me. Sometimes they make decisions which I don’t understand. But I’d like to know what kind of internet drama surrounds this…