This is not true. I’ve helped lots of people install Linux on their old laptops, they used them until the hardware stopped working and I rarely if ever got any questions or requests for help.

Because it just worked.

That’s not nearly enough skin for my enlightened tastes, I think we may need to ready the machetes.

It’s wild the things they accuse Russia of. My favorite is when everyone was convinced that Putin blew up Nord Stream 2, and now everyone thinks it was genius statecraft from Ukraine.

I was under the impression that the real costs are associated with training the models, in the belief that they’ll arrive at a self-improving AI that will explode in functionality and basically become the most valuable asset on the planet, especially for governments and armies. In the meantime, you offer services to users at a loss, in order to gather unique data that isn’t open to your competitors.

That’s what excuses this level of investment.

This is pretty much always the case when you start a new job. It takes time adjusting to the environment, the people and everything else. It’s going to get better, it always does.

However, skipping proper food and exercise is counter-productive, so do make an effort to cover those needs.

It’s great that smart people are working on this, but I don’t think we can expect hobbyists to make a useful OSS implementation of smartphones. Especially since there is so much dependence on the hardware. We either need a company that can throw some weight behind it, or just straight up governments that value it (e.g. from a sovereignty point of view).

The best thing to do is just start with whatever you already have. An old gaming rig, laptop or Raspberry Pi, doesn’t matter. Each will present some technical obstacle that you need to overcome (for example keeping the laptop going when the lid is closed). That’s part of learning.

Self-hosting is a hobby where we gradually learn more. Experimentation is just as important as reading the docs.

Gentoo is fun and a nice way to learn more about computers. Their wiki and their community was really good when I was into it, I’m sure it still is. But compiling everything from scratch is quite demanding of your CPU and your time, so it’s not really something that you run as your daily driver for long.

Also lots of killers seek psychiatric help voluntarily (and are often sadly ignored). For a sane, moderately competent person it’s easy to plan the perfect murder or terror attack – it’s a different thing to carry it through because a sane person also has mental guardrails.

Mossad is effective because Israelis are ruthlessly trained to dehumanize anyone who’s an obstacle to their goals.