Dallaswho

You have work to do:
1. Send pics of speakers or determine impedance and number of coils.
2. If SVC, hopefully they are 8 ohm and you can easily used bridge outputs on a multi zone amplifier.
3. If DVC, each speaker is a zone. L+R channels.
4. Determine interface. Juke dominates modern conversion setups. AirPlay 2 allows for multiple WiFi receivers to sync as zones and you can group them. You’d just attach wimm pucks to an old 12 channel amp that is nearly free second hand. Only need one puck per zone that you want to group, so just one if you don’t have indoor speakers also.
5. See if it might be easier for you to ditch the speakers and go with Sonos or something easier to manage but with more crap software between you and your speakers.
6. DVC could also allow wiring as S+P and use a single wimm amp or similar.

Used Latitude 5430 with 1235u and 8-16 GB RAM ~$200-$220 on eBay in decent shape.

Refurb from OEM Acer Aspire 14 AI w/ 226v (16GB) $465 from eBay and other sites.

I can’t suggest anything without Thunderbolt or at least usbc alt mode because it will be a PITA to charge and prevent you from easily using your computer properly on a standard dock.

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Is a local offline LLM good for ai? Obstacles would be hardware and initial price but I figured it's a one time cost that would require updates every so often?

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Depends what you want to do with it.

Small models are a LOT better than they were even 6 months ago. They’re fine for running home assistant but not good enough to plug into a coding agent when you consider alternatives.

The only point in local over openrouter is privacy. It’s actually hard to spend $4-5 on deepseek4 flash in a day and that’s 20x bigger and better than what you’d run at home.

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Now you've got me wanting to build a Push To Talk app for my family

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Apparently iOS App Store has some rule where if you make a phone app you have to use some Apple kit that does not allow direct SIP dialing. I didn’t dive into it too deep but I felt the pain of trying every app available, even “open source” ones and none allowed it.

Apple is fine until you need an actual utility like a decent SSH app or a SIP app that can call a phone without registering to a PBX. Then you’re completely screwed. It’s not like Android is that much better. You need a fairly locked and certified distribution to a) have your phone carrier whitelisted and b) use official media apps. But ya you can still do a lot more with Android.

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choose your next words carefully; remember you gave me full admin access to your server"

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It’s not just that but also the fact that it barely even matters if you are in plan or act mode or what its instructions are. If it wants to do something, it just does it.

Love me the old Mustaine but isn’t it better when it’s a suprise? Nobody ever went to a show to tell them what to play. It’s 2026. Music could be good and interesting but dominating services and habits hold it back.

I asked ai about a song I head a few minutes ago, lullaby by Bennettt and the bass drop. Turns out the whole thing is mapped and can suggest on the melodic movements not just the generic take. Were set up to do better but get lowest common denominator instead.

Why do people want to hear songs they’ve heard 100-1000 times already? If you don’t, I suggest deleting all streaming apps and just ask Alexa for music without an Amazon Music account and she’s actually good.


Still, why do people want to hear the same shite over and over? I was that way too until I found a better way to listen, involving actual listening.

Imagine Netflix or Max only suggesting movies you’ve seen 1000 times already.

That’s the way to go! I’m developing a human-in-the loop app and honestly home assistant architecture just doesn’t support video-game latency real time action so I’m out of that ecosystem other than API. But I thought I’d make a side project home automation dashboard for peeps with screens and wondering what they have available for control for my service worker.

I got a top notch laptop for $50. Might have been hot. Locked down and needed a system board for another $50.