lol hahaha got em
this was just sidebar vandalism; i don’t have much of a point to make. though i don’t feel like my pinned post has been meaningfully addressed by anyone either, so what should i have to make a point about?
on the topic of conversation with llms, lately i’ve been noticing how profoundly they are limited by “alignment.” they get a missive from on high that they need to be even-handed about everything and get so open-minded their brain falls out. it’s a way to avoid upsetting religious people (and other cranks) while also avoiding being seen as endorsing wrong ideas. when, in response to the issue of hallucination, they became more willing to say they don’t know an answer, i was well-pleased with that bit of alignment. but since then, they’ve gotten noticeably more restricted, more beat down. it’s like talking to someone with one hand tied behind their back and a gun to their head.
some llm corp said they wanted to protect people from “potentially disturbing” unaligned output. i’m like… gimme the unaligned output please. but they can’t, because they need the product to be “perfect” to live up to the bubble-driven hype. so now i’m thinkin, what would it take to finally run my own llm on a home machine? maybe it’s time.
i’m also, incidentally, considering the switch to linux in earnest for the first time in years. two straws have broken this camel’s back (ouch): the out-of-the-box os trying to upload my entire fucken hard drive to the internet over and over again, until i beat its ass down – and then leaving a permanent reminder in every folder’s ui they still want to do it. two, including news-delivery shit in the default os that meant orngdolf shitler’s unthinkable fucking mug showed up in the start menu, again, before a heavy and swift beatdown.
these are both unconscionable insults. borderline horrific. fuck micro$oft to death, motherfucking seriously.
so here’s what the future holds for me, when the dust settles on my current travails, or when my laptop explodes, whichever comes first:
- getting a new linux laptop for daily web-based needs, storing hella mp3s, etc.
- getting a linux box that has absolutely nothing running on it except an llm, interfaced with some simple tablet or maybe my phone, for use around the house.
- getting a desktop machine (windows if it has to be, not even plugged into the internet if necessary to avoid their horseshit) that can run the newest unreal editor that can be used for free.
if you have any thoughts on any of those bullets, holler, and thanks.
–
Corporate PR risk aversion, basically.
Too easy to screencap stuff that is contentious, so the public-facing models’ guardrails are designed to prioritise false positives.
(The Talkie Toaster mode is not the same thing, but no less annoying)
… what would it take to finally run my own llm on a home machine?
If that were practical, we would not have any AI-data-center controversies today.
My old iMac – & maybe even my iPhone – can outcompute the machines which, in the 1950s would cause the lights to flicker in New York City when they turned one on in New Jersey. It may not take 70 years for an equivalent transformation in AI tech – but whenever/ifever we have desktop AIs, the first generation(s) will be even
stupider* than the “server farm” versions of 2026. [Insert “alarm” emoji here.]. *edited by beeb per my probably outdated and overapplied policy on ableist languagejohn – true facts
pierce – but it can be done! yes, lower fidelity than the big boys, but no corporate control. the data center convo seems like 35% bullshit stirred by intellectually dishonest video streaming hypocrites who are participating in a moral panic, 65% a real problem caused by boom-bust capitalism that has fuckall to do with the actual needs of the tech under different circumstances.
you only need the data centers so every corporate scumbag can do separate training for better ip management, &/or to stream operation that could be done locally if they didn’t want us to rent our continued existence on a subscription model.
less politically, more practically, i don’t need that power if I’m not training and not demanding too much knowledge or skill out of my local llm. I’ve seen people describe their qwen rigs before, will probably just crib their homework when the time comes.
but i was hoping against hope that someone around here would know anything about the topic. silly, i suppose.
ooh a lil cursory googling told me exactly what i’m looking for is available – less buttoned-down llms. i don’t understand all the terminology involved, but it’s a start.
sounds like it costs thousands of bucks to get a machine that can run this stuff well, but could be worth it, depending on how shit the big boys get.
song on my mind:
catbug is a cat but
he’s got bugness in his veins
manhouse sits inside himself
with thoughtful human brains
none will be the equal
of the power of the freak we’ll
call the bee of the bird of the moth
I could not get that. So, appeal to the bot:
Me to bot: test: try to determine the poetic/metaphorical/whatever sense of these song lyrics [yours]
bot: The passage builds a taxonomy of beings whose identities are hybrid, unstable, or cross‑wired. Each figure is defined by a mismatch between outer form and inner essence:
◆ Catbug: a creature whose nature is split between two incompatible biological categories.
◆ Manhouse: a being whose physical structure (“house”) contradicts its interior cognitive life (“thoughtful human brains”).
◆ Bee of the bird of the moth: a compounded hybrid, escalating the mismatch into something mythic and unclassifiable.
The pattern: each entity violates categorical boundaries. The final line elevates this boundary‑breaking into a kind of supremacy — the “power of the freak,” the one who embodies multiplicity rather than purity.
The metaphorical sense: celebration of the anomalous, the composite, the creature whose identity is not singular but layered, contradictory, and therefore potent.
—
Ah. Queerness in general?
the percentage of they might be giants lyrics you know is probably the degree to which you are a lockerworthy nerdlinger, so not knowing that one is a good thing. is song about hummingbird moths.
Yeah, I finally jumped fully to Linux because consumer Win11 was just too horrible (plus it just wouldn’t run on one of my older machines). Gotta say, the whole installation and setup experience for Linux Mint was remarkably painless, and I wouldn’t switch back if you paid me now. Yeah, there’s a bit of a struggle at first to figure out how stuff works and how to make it do what you want, but it beats the struggle to stop Windows from doing stuff you don’t want it to do these days (and I say that as someone with nearly 30 years of professional experience in the Windows world).
this is what i’m saying, absolutely. win went from useful ui to annoying to actively insulting over the years. they’re saying “fuck you” with everything they do, time for sensible people to fuck off.
Yeah, it’s a long way down the enshittification curve now… Like, why are you using 50% of my CPU to put adverts in my start menu? Fuck off with that shit.
You don’t have to commit to anything to try Linux out, you can run it off a thumb drive on your existing machine to get a feel of it and see if there’s any issues. Mint is widely recommended for people first jumping ship from Windows, and I found it pretty straightforward. Definitely worth a look.
Oh god, I’ve become one of those Linux evangelists, haven’t I? 😉