I dunno, this wooden pencil of yours is kinda sharp. Would be a shame if it’s not registered… You’ve got a carry permit for it?

I just had a similar conversation recently… Looks like 3G is also dead, at least in US, so some cars from 2010s also can’t connect to the network anymore. However, depending on make and model, this “problem” may have been mitigated during a routine dealership service by upgrading hardware or software… Maybe it’s worth researching which models never got the “fix”

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People are downvoting you, but I like your idea to draw analogy with heating, because it is something most of us rely on, and if LLMs and related technology will keep evolving as they do, probably most of us will rely on it more or less, sooner or later. Regardless of what AI haters would say.

But your wood fire/central heating analogy is bad. I would compare large LLM vendors to hot water heating utility common in Eastern Europe, and small LLMs to various heating devices. Utility companies can set prices, and decide who gets connected to hot water pipe, and set water temperature. There are regulations that limit the power of such utility companies, allow customers to choose the supplier, etc. Same should happen with LLM providers - competition and anti-monopoly laws should protect customers who choose to use them.

Alternatively, customers may choose not to use utility-supplied heating. They can purchase space heaters, hand warmers, install split systems, burn wood - they are free to pick technology, power source, size, appearance of such devices. They can take responsibility of heating their homes, willing to invest their time and money in order to be independent of central heating utility. Small LLMs are like that - people can run their own, with capabilities dependent on investment, or they can pay smaller providers or resellers to get more flexibility and/or privacy and avoid capital investments. They could spend time tuning small models and harnesses to do some simple tasks, and they wouldn’t need to “buy intelligence” from OpenAI and others.

Slate looks interesting, but I wonder how that mid $20k price is possible with US based manufacturer… Also, not clear if they will collect data just like everyone else or not.

Yeah, I didn’t consider Leaf because of these issues… Thanks for sharing about e-golf. And I’m wary about quality of early Chevy and Ford EVs. Even newer models are crappy. I actually own a Ford Escape PHEV, and cannot charge it at all because of a recall after recall that come with a warning “not to charge due to the risk of fire” and take many months to be fixed. Edit: corrected my car’s model

Antique cars! Sounds good, actually!

I’d think most of the modern cars use eSim, not a physical card

I am. And I didn’t realize that’s a thing! But there is not many models… WV e-golf maybe a decent option

Yeah… Too bad that all EVs are spyware on the wheels. When car makers will be forced to stop or significantly reduce the amount of data they are collecting, I may consider buying one. Probably not going to happen in my lifetime.

What if the glasses come with a little flag stuck in the frame that says “I’m born blind, this thing helps me be less disabled. It’s not filming you.”? I mean, there are genuinely helpful use cases for such things out there.

No, you got me wrong. My position is that I don’t want anything that is capable of recording and that looks like an object that normally can’t do that. So I tried to imagine how something may have camera to capture what user sees, but not be able to store the recordings - only process it in like real-time, or close to it.

I may not understand the hardware design good enough, but I think if you make an open source device, it should allow custom firmware. If you allow custom firmware, someone will write a version of it that will work around the restriction on recording somehow. To be clear, I’m not concerned about communication protocol interception, but about someone changing how such device handles the data it captures.

Oh, and all that applies not just to camera, but also to microphone. Damn, such a good topic to talk about.

Actually, there is a way to use a camera, but I’m not sure if it’s possible from technical or usability perspectives.

Imagine a device that has a camera, but no data connectivity. No WiFi. Only USB for charging and firmware updates. Maybe BT for firmware or control from app. No memory card slot either. Internal storage reserved for system only, camera software cannot store videos or images persistently.

This will probably have to be not open source, especially if bluetooth is present - otherwise someone will figure out how to capture camera feed with a custom firmware.

But if possible, such device can use camera for smart navigation, object recognition, some basic tasks on-device, depending on how much compute (and battery) can be placed into such a small package.

Smart glasses with HUD and speakers, and bluetooth, no cloud dependency - yes, please.

With camera - absolutely not. This would be just a hidden recording device, absolutely capable of intruding other’s privacy, regardless if it’s cloud connected or not. I realize that camera provides a lot of functionality, but I just don’t see the way how it can preserve privacy of other people and fit in glasses form factor.

You don’t need much money to pay for Posteo, it’s 12 EUR a year. If you paranoid enough to suspect that bank tracks bills that you withdraw from ATM, just pay with these bills for a sandwich in a small convenience store. No standard surveillance camera will catch the serial numbers on the bills. Maybe do it a few times in different places. Then send the envelope through the drop box in suburbs or rural area where are no cameras. Don’t bring your phone to any of these locations. You’ll be fine.

Obviously, your threat model matters. You didn’t say in the original post anything about it, and the mainstream privacy methods, I believe, are mostly to protect from general surveillance by commercial entities. If you have to worry about feds, maybe just going offline is a safer choice.

In my state there is a law that makes false call to 911 a criminal offense. If someone says “there is a bomb” on such call, that makes it more serious offence because this will cause public alarm. If the person making such call is stupid enough to do it from their phone, they will likely be identified and prosecuted. And people doing stupid things tend to be that stupid.

I’m not sure about damages caused by the raid, though. SWAT doesn’t know if the threat is real or not, so they can’t be held liable. Probably the victim can sue the caller, if they’ve been found…

No mitigation until the kernal patch available for my distro, right?

Google Pixel has a standard “Now Playing” feature that is using on-device recognition. Well, you have to trust Google on that, though.