That cellphone mastodon server @HolosSocial has made me wonder if it would be possible to self host a bunch of stuff on a raspberry pi (like @freedomboxfndn ) and have a mobile server that you could power from a battery pack or your laptop to self host from public networks (eg coffe shop) or tether it to your cellphone.

Maybe add a small lora device into the same case so you can run a #meshtastic node at the same time.

Is this possible?

#selfhosting #networking #spitballing

Occam's Knife Game:

People who are in deep denial about what they nonetheless know to be the truth will offer up every explanation they can imagine except the correct one in an effort to sustain their denial. You can tell they understand the truth of the matter, because of how carefully and completely they avoid it.

See also: spit-balling, red herring, motivated reasoning, dishonesty.

#socialMedia #denial #occamsRazor #occamsKnifeGame #climateChange
#spitBalling #redHerring #motivatedReasoning #dishonesty

I wouldn’t characterize myself as an advocate for AI. I’m largely skeptical and remain so. Still, with generative AI all over and clogging up self-publishing with it’s slop, it’s impossible to ignore.

I’ve embarked on a quest to see whether generative AI that is available can help me in various ways. One of these ways is with writing, not in generating text but helping me write.

Since I don’t really want companies that own AI to have visibility into what I consider my original work, I installed my own LLM (easy enough) and set about experimenting. With it local, on my machine, I had control of it and felt safer sharing my thoughts and ideas with it.

I wondered how I would use it. So I tried it out. This idea I’ve been working into a novel needed a start, and yesterday I got that done with some assistance. It’s advice on writing wasn’t bad, and helped me be more of an active voice by nagging me a bit when I had it look at my work – like a good editor, though not a replacement for a human editor.

The general theme I go with when writing is get the draft done and re-read it later. Yesterday, I sweated it out over about 1,000 words of an introduction to the novel with foreshadowing and introductions of some of the characters who had placeholder names. Names in the context of the novel seemed pretty important to me, so it was sort of a ‘hold back’ on allowing me to write more fluidly – a peculiarity I have.

The LLM did provide me with names to pick from based on what I gave it, and I researched it on my own – and lo! – that was finally done. I had to rewrite some parts so that it flowed better, which I must admit it seemed to once I took the LLM’s advice, though it does nag a bit on some style issues.

All in all, it was a productive day. I treated the LLM as something I could spitball with, and it worked out pretty well. This seems like a reasonable use case while not letting it actually write anything, since a LLM is trained on a lot of text.

I’d tap out a few paragraphs, and paste it into the LLM to see what it thought, and it would be helpful. Since I was doing this as I wrote, it commented on the story as I went along and noticed things I had not, giving inputs like, “There is potential for tension between the characters here that might be worth exploring.”

Of course, it does seem to be equipped with a Genuine People Personality. It sometimes comes across as a bubbly personality that can grate on my nerves.

Much of what I did yesterday I could have done without it, but I think it saved me some time, and I’m more confident of that introduction as well. It is nice that I can be alone writing and have a tool that I can spitball ideas with as I go along. Is it for everyone? I don’t know. I can only tell you how I believe it helps me. At least I know it’s not going to blabber my ideas to someone else.

As I use it in other ways, I’ll re-evaluate subscriptions I have to AI services like Chat-GPT. I don’t need to be bleeding edge, I just want something that works for me. In the end, that’s how we should be measuring any technology.

https://realityfragments.com/2024/05/27/writing-with-a-llm-co-pilot/

#ai #editor #life #llm #ollama #perspective #spitballing #technology #writing

Why do social media companies get to collect and sell our data? Why aren’t users free to build and monetize their own personal databases?

Maybe social media companies put some meaningful effort into developing the infrastructure to ease the upload of personal data?
#brainstorming #spitballing

@joranelias maybe for S4 '@' works as it always does. but for non-s4 it accesses attributes.

#spitballing

Been thinking of the problem of media, political apathy, divide-and-conquer tactics from the ultra-wealthy, etc.

How about something like Citizens' Unions? I.e. organizations with a membership of natural persons, based on their residence, which provides political reviews, news and even some forms of mutual aid to the members, and also acts as a political interest group in the relevant administrative bodies.

Syndicated from city/county-level to national and multi-national level.

#spitballing #politicalapocalypse #mediademise
#fuckmurdoch