An additional sting for some of us -

In Australia, not only is 3G deprecated (I miss my Nokia n91), but 4G / 5G must be of the VoLTE variety. To date, there is no after market OS that is fully VoLTE compatible (Legacy, Graphine etc) here - its hit or miss. Additionally, most (but not all) overseas phones are on IMEI black lists by default.

Essentially, because the OEM are lock step with Google, you can’t avoid this issue by purchasing a common phone, unlocking your boot loader (assuming you could in the first place) and flashing CFW. Do that and you can’t make phone calls. Don’t do it, and you get caught up with this new app verification slop.

They think they’re winning… but I think “lol. Keep going. I have a flip phone.” As soon as this Samsung dies (adb debloated and all), I’m out entirely.

My Galaxy A20 has been going strong since 2019. If I get anything, I’ll either be something from that era or just go full flip phone.

PS: someone mentioned the commodore flipphone. It’s $$$. If you look, I imagine you can find a local equivalent of this instead -

https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/opel-mobile-touchflip-4g-flip-phone-optouchfp

(TTfone or Sunbeam I think?)

With right launcher and larger battery, I find it perfectly cromulent, with very good keyboard. It even runs FUTO voice STT (albeit slowly), my banking apps, Signal, FB messenger, maps, 5MP camera etc. It’s not going to replace flagship anything… but maybe it doesn’t need to.

There’s a good YouTube channel for anyone considering such devices -

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFtVwG0NFd6gT3TXfMCU7oA

Using a VPN makes it difficult to categorise the user. You’re obfuscating the data they want to mine and on sell. As such, your account is deemed “suspicious” (aka same profile as “bad actors”) and gets banned.

It’s all algorithmic theatre. The rules are intentionally opaque. Pay it no mind; it’s not about you, it’s about them. Their algo is coarse and binary.

Tldr: you made it too hard to sell your data (you’re the product). Fuck reddit. Speed its death by taking the good stuff elsewhere.

Can do!

Probably not. Which means - work phone should be entirely separate from your private device, not a dual sim.

Have your work phone forward messages etc to your private device if you must, but enforce the hard boundary yourself if IT won’t won’t provide you with separate device.

It was a localsend / dropbox alternative. I’ll see if I can find it. I doubt it was removed… I suspect the dev didn’t want to deal with the pile on and deleted it.

Edit:

https://vger.to/lemmy.world/post/48335808

https://0807.st/

Anything else? Would you like to see passport and blood tests too?

“Make it my way or you’re concealing something” is a wildly self entitled take.

Your computer, your rules? Fine.

The part I don’t buy is “closed source = compromised author with ulterior motives” and “engineers who don’t prioritize FOSS are untrustworthy.” You’re automatically assuming mal-intent when there are 1000 other reasons why something might be closed source.

Maybe the code is ugly and the dev is embarrassed. Maybe there are dependency licencing issues. Maybe they want to get paid without you forking their shit. Maybe they don’t want to deal with support and PRs from people who paid nothing but expect everything.

“Open source it or it’s suss” is not a privacy argument, it’s a purity test in a trench coat. And here’s what it looks like in practice - a dev ships a no-account, no-tracking, Tor-capable file sharing tool, and gets told it’s “spam” and “malware” for not being open source:

https://vger.to/lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/26565282

https://vger.to/lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/26561235

Prefer open source? Sure. Support it? Of course. “Demand” it as some sort of fealty oath? Yeah, nah.

If you don’t want to use something, don’t. Maybe stop accusing others of being secret agents because you don’t like their license.

Cmon now…leaving Agents.md in the repo is bush-league :)

You can bet your bottom dollar if the claude.md or agents.md hasn’t been added to the gitignore, then it’s -

1. intentional

2. actual slop (which you can more easily tell in 2 seconds of looking at the readme.md)

didn’t say it has to be a tag, what I had in mind was a simple disclosure in the post description explaining how you used AI

Same issue before though, be the actual disclosure a tag or a statement.

I do take issue with inexperienced developers that create privacy related software without proper knowledge of what their code actually does (AKA vibe-coding) and going around promoting it as “privacy-friendly” and “secure” while that may not be the case.

Slop is galling for sure but if we’re talking about trust…well…why trust anyone based on what they say (or don’t say)?

“Trust but verify” means I still verify. If the thing is mission critical or important to you, then you SHOULD verify, always. Hell, if the threat profile is high, sandbox it and sniff the packets it sends.

Personally, I think you having to look at the porn I look at is sufficient punishment for snooping on me :)

Some of this is social engineering. “I have nothing I want to show” works even better when I literally can’t (because X isn’t on my phone or Y doesn’t run on my PC)

Maybe there are better ways to go about this though, which is partly why I created this post.

I think so.

Beyond the obvious slop (which is exceedingly obvious), you’re going to waste a lot of cognitive bandwidth trying to sniff out AI.

May as well assume AI is used by default and then do the due diligence on the privacy aspects that are of concern to you.

That holds true whether the project is hand coded or AI assisted. If it’s important, poke it.

Assume all software is “guilty until proven innocent”

But please don’t fall into the FuckAI mindset because llm=bad.

Most devs aren’t going to perform contrition for AI use to appease vocal minority. They’re just not. There’s no up side for them and it reads desperate.

I’m happy to tell you if asked because IDGAF if you use my shit or not. If I’m sharing it, it’s free, open source and shared out of love. I have no brand or portfolio I’m trying to boost. If you can’t see the USP, it’s probably not for you - and that’s fine.

It also usually means I made it for me first, so I’m probably not out to steal bitcoin or nudes. Still, do your own due diligence and poke it. I would.

OK, seeing you asked for pushback.

TL;DR: Tool disclosure is a poor proxy for doing your own due diligence.

“Forced disclosure about AI use in projects” sits sorta funny for a privacy based group, doesn’t it? Kinda “Papers, please”. Smells bad.

How would you even verify “did this project use an LLM” anyway? If I don’t disclose, what’s the back up, pistols at dawn? Read the code (if available), or get a third party checker…like an LLM? Do you have capacity to audit? Or is it just “trust me, bro” (which if you’re actually concerned about due diligence, isn’t enough).

More to the point: disclosure tag doesn’t change whether the code is accurate, safe or good. Shitty code is shitty either way, so the tag doesn’t touch the actual harm you’re concerned about.

What it does do is create two classes: labeled projects get extra scrutiny, unlabeled ones get a free pass, “no disclosure, must be hand-written, must be fine.” Backwards. Honest disclosure gets tarnished as slop, staying quiet gets rewarded. (Go check !self hosted right now for such an occurrence).

Better footing: assume ALL software in 2026 has had AI assistance, and review it on its merits.

There are better quality signals than hand on bible “are you now or have you ever been” oaths or performative humiliation for the FuckAI crowd.

For what it’s worth, I use an LLM to write code because I’ve got osteoarthritis and typing all day isn’t free. But if you think that means logging into Claude and telling it “make this for me, no mistakes”, you couldn’t be more wrong.

I define the project, I pseudo code it with pen and paper (hurts my hands less) I scope every ticket (yes, I make the llm go thru 3 stage ticket review), I review outputs, I smoke test and I even call in outside reviewers to spot check sometimes. I’m an absolute bastard to it in QA. I do that because when I’m done, I can stand in front of it and honestly tell you I made this, even if my fingers didn’t type most of it. And if it’s fucked, that’s on me, not “hallucinations”.

So, what box do I tick - “AI-assisted”? “Vibe slop”?

That tells you nothing about who’s accountable or how it was made. It carries no nuance and silently resolves to “ignore this one, a robot wrote it,” … which is backwards for projects where the human did more QA than most “fully human” teams ever do.

As always, ICBW and YMMV.

Worth pointing out the OAI is US based too. And Mechahitler. And Google. All at the whims of US govt

Use em if you must (the OAI honeymoon deal - with generous Codex use being included on basic subscription - is hard to beat) but remember…the cloud is someone elses computer…and you especially don’t want mission critical shit on someone elses AMERICAN computer.

OpenCode is probably the best serious cloud competition to the big 4. $10 month.

Latest versions of GLM, MiMO, Deepseek, Kimi ain’t nothing to sneeze at

https://thomas-wiegold.com/blog/opencode-go-review/

https://opencode.ai/go

If someone knows better cloud deal, speak up. Else, local Qwen uber alles.

So…is this Trump getting back at Darius for refusing to build autonomous weapons? I didn’t think he had the attention span.

They are. But the reputational cost? Who knows.

Edit: just got an email

Hello,

We recently removed access to Claude Fable 5 to ensure compliance with a recent US government directive. Here’s a summary of what’s happened:

You no longer have access to Claude Fable 5 You still have access to all other Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku models We reset your usage limits If this change doesn’t work for how you use Claude, you can cancel your subscription and get an automatic prorated refund.* To do so, visit this link from a web browser and click “Cancel plan” by Saturday, June 20, 2026, at 11:59 PM PDT (UTC−7). Note that this link will not work in the Claude mobile app. If you subscribed through Apple, please request your refund directly through Apple’s refund support.

We apologize for the disruption. You can learn more about Anthropic’s response and what led to this decision.

• Refunds are only available to eligible people who purchased a plan or upgraded their plan between 10:00 AM PDT on June 9, 2026, and 12:00 AM PDT on June 14, 2026 (UTC−7).

Claude Instagram LinkedIn X Youtube

Anthropic PBC, 54‌​8 M‌​a‌​r‌​k‌​e‌​t S‌​t, PMB 9‌​0‌​3‌​7‌​5, Sa‌​n F‌​r‌​a‌​n‌​c‌​i‌​s‌​c‌​o, C‌​A 9‌​4‌​1‌​0‌​4

Oh, that’s weird. My Qwen seems to work just fine 😇

Kidding aside, I actually had a job I started with Fable the other day - specifically renewed so that I could use it.

Guess Opus will have to finish it and then I revert to free.

Truth be told, Fable was nerfed anyway with security theatre.

Good opportunity for ZAI or someone else to gain some ground.

No loyalty to cloud shit. They’re all cooked. Use what works.

Seems…pretty thin tbh. I’m not ready to throw baby out with bathwater just yet.

Is that the whole thing? Genuinely asking.

There are many excellent options - far too many to list. So I will briefly say - there are some really nice 4B models (like Qwen3-4B HIVEMIND, Nanbeige, IBM Granite 3B) which you should be able to run at higher quants (Q6 and up) quite nicely. Of course, there are always newer models (Gemma, Qwen3.6 - soon 3.7) etc.

Best bet is to poke around hugging face, on TheBloke, Unsloth or DavidAUs archives and see what they have in the 3-7B range that tickles your fancy. Don’t immediately jump for the newest releases - the old ones are still good. Qwen3-4B 2507 instruct is still a favourite of mine and more recently Qwen3.5-2B shows promise.

Well, it IS French. All the best evil comes from France :P

Funny, I was just thinking last night how stupid Haiku seems compared to Sonnet…and all the while, that chipper little fuck was our only hope of avoiding AI apocalypse LOL

Do wish they had used more LOCAL models, instead of cloud based. I’m pretty sure Granite would have told em to go pound sand. That thing is straight laced to point of absurdity.

I actually have a theory here…I think there’s a bare basement level that a model needs to be…anything above which, deterministic tooling can do the rest. We’ve just been yeeting into a black box.

Why that matters is this - if you can make a 450M model do what a 7B model does…that has a huge set of implications (see above examples), not least of which is for use GPU poors.

I’m doing some smoke testing on this idea right now for what I’m calling an ‘expert system’, where the model is treated like a squawk box and the infrastructure around it provides the brains (not RAG, per se. More like sidecars or tool calling). I’m liking what I see so far but there’s lots of fucking work to go. There may yet be a cheat code for some of the NVIDIA tax, if we take the work outside of the magic parrot :)

No? Just me then. How about this - 99% accurate COPD cough count…with a itty bitty convolutional model, on a $30 Adurino.

https://www.edgeimpulse.com/blog/ai-dont-like-the-sound-of-that-cough/

Why this might be cool. Different coughs correlate to different conditions (aka there is work going on in cough acoustics as a diagnostic signal / proxy for spirometry and breath sounds).

The above was trained on his coughs…it’s not far from there to “was that a healthy cough, wet cough, dry cough, wheeze? Is this a Blue Bloater or Pink Puffer?”

I’ve long suspected PoC (Point Of Care) systems could be adapted to use language models. Imagine - Qwen3.5-2B (with --mmproj) that lives on your phone…and you can point at mole or freckle and ask “hey…is this fucky or what” - and it actually KNOWS because it has access to DermNZ and can classify based on ABCDEs

I hear you; I’m not wildly enamored with reddit either…but that convo is a good springboard.

I see almost everyone chasing bigger GPUs, more parameters, more more more. I figure when 9 people say “go right”, there should be at least someone that can make the plausible case for “actually, here’s why go left works”.

Eg: I think there should be some discussion about watts per token vs tokens per second.

I’m still re-writing the FAQ for my project - when it’s done (and if there’s interest) I will post it here.