Maybe a bit off-topic:
For my PhD, I wanted to leverage LLMs and AI to speed up the literature review process*.
Due to time constraints, this never really lifted off for me. At the time I checked (about 6 months ago), several tools were already available (NotebookLM, Anara, Connected Papers, ZotAI, Litmaps, Consensus, Research Rabbit) supporting Literature Review.
They have all pros and cons (and different scopes), but my biggest requirement would be to do this on my Zotero bibliographic collection (available offline as PDF/ePub).
ZotAI can use LMStudio (for embeddings and LLM models), but at that time, ZotAI was super slow and buggy.
Instead of going through the valley of sorrows (as threatofrain shared in the blog post - thanks for that), is there a more or less out-of-the-box solution (paid or free) for the demand (RAG for local literature review support)?
*If I am honest, it was rather a procrastination exercise, but this is for sure relatable for readers of HN :-D
Recently there's HN discussions on the topic of local AI/LLM being utilized by researchers from IEEE Spectrum magazine, probably worth a look up [1], [2].
[1] Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades (260 comments):
I tried to do RAG on my laptop just by setting it all up myself, but the actual LLM gave poor results (I have a small thin-and-light fwiw, so I could only run weak models). The vector search itself, actually, ended up being a little more useful.
Oh! Same! I made an R / Shiny powered RAG/ Researching app that hooks into OpenAlex (for papers) and allows you to generate NotebookLM like outputs. Just got slides with from-paper images to be injected in, super fun. Takes an OpenRouter or local LLMs (if that's your thing). Network graphs too! https://github.com/seanthimons/serapeum/
If you don’t mind a little instability while I work out the bugs, might be interested in my project: https://github.com/rmusser01/tldw_server ; it’s not quite fully ready yet but the backend api is functional and has a full RAG system with a customizable and tweakable local-first ETL so you can use it without relying on any third party services.
My girlfriend wanted to visit the US once in her life, but we decided to cancel the plans due to the current uncertainty.
A German tattoo artist was detained because she had her work equipment with her. What will happen when I bring my phone and laptop as an IT guy?
IIrc the discussion about this (tattoo) topic made it apparent that, that artist was likely working in the USA before (without permit) and planned to do so again, and had posted so in the web.
But myself I wouldn't go to the USA right now as well. In the case that anything goes wrong, there is likely so much chaos in all the agencies right now, the danger of error is just very high and impact could be catastrophic.
You should always bring a burner device when traveling to a foreign country, US or otherwise
The border patrol can effectively do anything they want, for any reason. If they ask you to unlock your devices, do it. Let them take it away to be imaged. There will be nothing of value on a burner device.
1password has a travel mode which will remove vaults from your devices. Take this one step further and remove everything unnecessary for travel from your devices
I've travelled to 50+ countries and never considered bringing a burner device. This recent US thing of of checking your devices or social media posts and turning back people with wrongthink is kind of novel.
I worked for a government contractor and this was common guidance over a decade ago if you are in any sensitive role
It is not hard to imagine a scenario where a foreign government might surreptitiously plant a rootkit on a lowly IT workers device as they transit customs, as a means to pivot for corporate or other espionage
It is much more common to phish the administrative staff for a firm to get network access but you would have to be a fool to ignore the vector of customs simply using direct physical access for a much more effective hack
I just realized that the most restrictive border I ever crossed was a trip to Tel Aviv and it was well known even back then that they would inspect everything about you before you even landed
Given that there are precedents of people being detained (for weeks!) for no apparent reason, I assume that the parent is scared that it could happen to them.
A French citizen was denied entry because they found messages criticising Trump on his phone/computer. Not detained for weeks, but could well have been for all we know.
Glass bottles are 8 cents, if they are re-use.
Re-use glass bottles with a clip closure are 15 cent (and there are still some other kind of bottles with 15 cent).
If they are only single use, they are 25 cents (e.g. beer from Lidl).
In my area of Germany, we have some places where public toilets are not available as desired.
Instead of build new ones, which are expensive, the local responsible persons found a nice solution.
They pay bars to let their toilets used. Bars and restaurants, who join this initiative get a sticker on the front door.
So you don't have to sneak inside to use the restrooms.
Off-Topic but somehow related:
I was thinking about to use my iDevices as generic HDMI-Displays.
The afaik best app for doing this is Duet Display [1], if you want to use Mac/Win. But I want to use it for a Raspberry Pi for example. Duet display streams the display information to the own application via ethernet over lightning port.
HDMI itself is also some network protocol (dangerous superficial knowledge). Theoretically it should be possible to build a small device, which translates hdmi video/audio to the same kind of network via lightning port as duet and display?
What do you think? Do you see any pitfalls there, which I don't see?
ZotAI can use LMStudio (for embeddings and LLM models), but at that time, ZotAI was super slow and buggy.
Instead of going through the valley of sorrows (as threatofrain shared in the blog post - thanks for that), is there a more or less out-of-the-box solution (paid or free) for the demand (RAG for local literature review support)?
*If I am honest, it was rather a procrastination exercise, but this is for sure relatable for readers of HN :-D
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