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6·17 hours agoThose are starting to become a thing
deleted by creator
What would you like to know about it?
I glossed over it the other day here -
https://aussie.zone/comment/24336560
From go to woah (including the compute), total project cost is about $1400 USD / ~$2K AUD. I realise I have the privilege of claiming that’s not a lot, but for a hobby spend that makes me happy / does useful stuff (see TV example above), it’s not a lot.
OK, here’s a real life use case, small time as it is, that has nothing to do with anything rarefied.
I have a TCL Android TV that, after some “unapproved measures”, runs without a Google account - FLauncher as the front end, telemetry blocked, home media streaming, YouTube ad-free. The yar har har works.
Two days ago the kids come in. TV’s not working.
Jellyfin: fine. Nova Player: fine. Stremio, YouTube, anything hitting the net: dead.
We’d had a brownout that day, so I figured the router was scrambled. Reset it, re-added the network… and Smarttube now launches, plays for 30 seconds, then hard-locks. Just weird JSON vomit and then dead.
At that point I’m thinking the TV is fucked. Options:
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factory reset and reinstall the workarounds - 2-3hrs of pain-in-the-ass fuckery, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
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crawl the net decoding cryptic error codes.
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take it in for repair (good luck with that).
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fall down a TV diagnostics rabbit hole.
Instead, I chose option 5)
I told my local LLM: "This TV is on this IP. This laptop has ADB access. I’ve given you MCP tools with ADB libraries. Here’s the issue, here’s what I tried. Check prior history of what I did for this project, figure out what’s wrong now and fix it, or tell me it’s broken.
If it looks like the brownout caused corruption, factory reset, stream-install the backup APKs directly, sign in my accounts, get it back up and running.
Failing that, if it’s looking like a hardware issue, push a diagnostic tool, test the TV and tell me which parts I might need, as well as likely costs using eBay or Amazon. I’m happy to spend $50 on this shitbox and not one cent more. If the fix looks like it’s more than $50, find me a TV of this size under $200. Prefer local shop X or Y.
Present everything as markdown in the usual folder, using house style. Ping me on my phone if you need me to authorise anything or when you’re done with the TL;DR."
The agent ADBs in, pokes around, tests, checks the WiFi, and figures out the brownout had corrupted the date and time.
Turns out this p.o.s doesn’t have a RTC back up battery.
Wrong clock = certs flagged as invalid = no net.
It syncs the date and time with my location. Boom, everything comes back.
Now, could I have twigged it myself?
Yes - eventually. But the agent already had the tools, knew the TV’s prior state, and had a record of what I’d already tried.
It could’ve reset the TV, sideloaded all my apps, re-signed into my accounts - the whole lot - if needed.
This is not the only time I’ve had real world use of my local, and it had very little to do with “writing functions”.
I had a project - jailbreak my tcl. Over time, I’d stored enough context of what I had done in the LLM and its tools, so that it could do what I’d do (and more), faster, based on the constraints I had put in place.
People that call these things “spicy autocorrect” are demonstrating either a skill issue or a lack of imagination.
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Just in defence of your point:
I prefer to self host, and am in the process of setting up my entire system to run off solar (tiny 2x250 watt solar array, 3 deep cycle 100Ah marine batteries and sundry equipment).
End to end, my AI rig - a BC-250 (a cut down PS5, basically) consumes 50w standby / 200w on inference and can run Qwen 3.6-27b (Ternary Bonsai specifically, about par with Sonnet 4.6 on the AAII) at good speeds (~30 tok/s)
With a smart power plug and Raspberry pi (uses about 5w) as the pilot fish, I can run my entire system “off grid”, to say nothing of the excess solar that accumulates (several days battery back up to run home router, pi server, hard drive array and 2-3hrs daily of inference).
For $1500 AUD, “Poor man’s Sonnet 4.6 at home” ain’t nothing to sneeze at.
Outside of folks such as myself, this blog post may be of interest -
https://blog.andymasley.com/p/individual-ai-use-is-not-bad-for
deleted by creator
31·2 days agoAs. You. Wish. Princess. Buttercup.
1·8 days agoAlternatively, create your own private intranet and/or become a P2P node in something like YaCy, peer tube etc.
You can self host a lot (and I mean a lot) of what people think of as “the internet” using a busted $20 laptop and some decent storage.
I’d say you can get a really decent slice of the internet in 10-15TB of storage if you have the technical know how.
1·18 days agoLooks like human steered, AI assisted. Nothing wrong with that but by all rights it should get 1) disclosure 2) [AIT] tag, if OP is dev
At the very least, it deserves more than just a naked URL drop without explanation.
Edit: fwiw
Try this
Using a sledgehammer to crack a wallnut can be satisfying :)
Besides, the kids are always finding fun and inventive ways to break the TV, so I figured set it up once and then let the bot handle it.
Twelfth Doctor: This is Clara, not my assistant. She’s a… Some other word.
Clara: I’m his carer.
Twelfth Doctor: Yeah, my carer. She cares so I don’t have to.