+5 wisdom

It’s sort of a pain in the ass…but worth a shot. Maybe.

So the search engine I use now is searXNG

Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark.

Heh, just making a silly joke. As a home labber, I imagine you’re well across YaCy, so am just name dropping it for the newbies. Yacy, Hister etc etc.

Answering the OP -

Personally, I find myself either going directly to the sites I want, using RSS feeds or (gasp!) using my local LLM agents with MCP adapters, with something like Exa to fetch the info I want (or directly via PubMed etc).

(these are raw CLI; I need to wire this up to XMPP very soon so I have something that’s a little less “Haxor” for the rest of the family to use)

More and more, I am mirroring the stuff I need offline, so that I can point my pet clankers at my local files, Kiwix archives, Recoll etc and then just one-click them open.

I believe Firefox allows you to point your local LLM (that you self host) as the “ai assistant”, so that when you click translate, your own machine (localhost) does the work. I’ve found the Qwen3 series models (Qwen3-4B) to have been quite capable at translation; I imagine the newer ones are even better.

Question: If you’re a parent, how do you navigate social media use with your child/children?

As a parent, I don’t allow my children social media and I curate what they can access otherwise.

Sorry, was that a trick question?

Beratna…if you want full control over T&C’s, you’re gonna have to host your own shit…and that probably includes the nightmare of email hosting.

That, or accept that email is compromised and adjust accordingly.

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XMPP hosted via Raspberry Pi.

The setup is:

• Prosody provides the XMPP server.
• Converse.js provides web client / PWA.
• Conversations for Android clients
• Coturn provides TURN services for calls and NAT traversal.
• Tailscale provides remote access without exposing the XMPP server directly to the public internet.

(nb: also configured Message Archive Management (MAM) for chat history, private multi-user chat rooms (MUC), HTTP File Upload for media, and Jingle signalling for audio/video calls).

The server is designed to be accessible over our LAN. When away from home, family members connect through Tailscale (I really should just use Android actions and geofencing to auto launch Tailscale, but on my kids devices, I just leave Tailscale enabled. I don’t think it hits the battery too hard). Tailscale can only connect to XMPP and we keep our XMPP to family only, with me manually adding devices to Tailscale as I need to.

As for why? Because I get joy from hosting my own shit, having control over it, having it work when other stuff falls over. My stuff falls over too, but I know WHY and HOW to fix it, and that’s how I prefer it. I want to get to the point that if the internet dies tomorrow, I shrug my shoulder and barely notice.

My goal is to replace all cloud based services we use and I’m about 85% of the way there. I have a much larger goal too…but that’s a story for a different time.

PS: I’m mildly irritated about Tailscale use, so I’m looking at getting off that teat as well eventually for a self hosted solution. There are some issues with Headscale and I don’t want to punch holes in firewall if I can avoid it. Still thinking on it.

PPS: Meshtastic, Reticulum etc all seem super cool…but until there’s interoperability simple enough for normies…good luck getting buy in. I struggle to convince the fam to use XMPP (weird issues with android clients, Tailscale drop outs etc).

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Yeah, KaiOS is dead.

Here is what I have - there must be a local version https://opelmobile.com.au/product/touch-flip/

It’s Android 8.1. I installed a different launcher, small browser (SmartCookieWeb) and a few other essentials (banking app, QR reader etc). If you don’t mind the flip factor (the T9 keyboard is a dream on this one…and with TT9 Whistle, I have the best of all worlds)

EDIT: Found it https://sunbeamwireless.com/product/sunbeam-f1-orchid

US version is more locked down but jailbreak guides avail https://furbreeze.github.io/2025/01/23/sunbeam-f1-root.html

Yeah, that was my feeling on it too. Cute, but too itty bitty. I already have an android flip phone if I want that form factor.

It sounds like the Cubots would be ideal for you…IF you can find evidence of CFW unlocking your regional bands.

Sorry dude. Chin up - they nuked 3G here entirely. Which means none of the good, old phones work at all. I have a Nokia N95 that’s awesome but I can’t do squat with it as a phone any more.

I got mine off Aliexpress, fwiw.

https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-duoqin-f22-pro-phone.html

The phone itself is awesome. The T9 keyboard is ass (the membrane they used is just not good). I got mine in 2022 iirc. I cycle between my Samsung A20 (yes, it still works well, 9 yrs in) and the local equivalent of the TCL flip (android 8.1 based).

I actually just installed this on it and it’s blazing fast STT now -

https://github.com/maxmilneaus/tt9-whistle

Edit to add: I have the F21 (the smaller one, candybar). The F22 is about the same height and an iphone, except halfish of the width.

Hmm. I think the issue with all these phones is that the modems can support those bands just fine but they’re generally tuned for Asian and European markets. Predominantly because those sorts of phones sell en mass there, maybe.

For example, I have a duoquin F22 pro (think modern Nokia). I know that folks over on XDA have flashed CFW to region unlock them for US.

You might be able to find what you want (the Cubots sound like a near match) quite cheaply but you’ll have to check XDA for CFWs first. Quite a few of these phones ship with unlocked bootloaders and AOSP by default so they are pretty easy to tinker with.

Else… How do you feel about the JellyStar?

https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-star

Ah, sorry. My bad.

I’ve been considering this one myself but it’s a bit funky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTmbxHQRSZ4

Dunno what your bands are there but the spec sheet has B1, B3, B5, B7, B8, B20, B28, B34, B38, B39, B40 and B41.

Might be more US friendly version? If not, I know the folks over on XDA forum tend to flash custom firmware with these.

Hey you might like this while you wait

https://cubot.net/phones/smartphones/pocket3-specs/88?l=en-us

About $250 on eBay etc

Why should I give a flying fuck? I have 3 lenovo tiny boxes, a Rpi4 4gb I got pre 2020, a stack of old laptops and phones, a compute stick and 4 tablets. And if I want to tinker (and I do), ESP32 + CYD is hard to beat.

The Pi 5 does nothing for me that I can’t do faster or cheaper (or both) elsewhere. I could literally spend $20 on a WYSE thinclient to get something that’s 3-4x the pi while being comparable in power draw.

No…if I want a shiny, I’ll get a FPGA or a Commodore 77. If I want to thinker, I’ll get ESP32s. And if I want low power always on compute…well, I’m good thanks.

Iirc shreddit lets you download all your posts before deleting them

I personally use RedReader (signed out) and “share to” Linkora to save useful threads.

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.quantumbadger.redreader/

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.sakethh.linkora/

That works for now. If redreader stops working… 🤷 bye Felicia. I don’t visit Reddit much anyway.

I’ve replaced “sitting at PC, nothing to read” with neal.fun, Atlas Obscura, Smithsonian Smart News and Lemmy 🤣

PS: IIRC, you can download a good chunk of reddit as an archive to search against.

https://github.com/ArthurHeitmann/arctic_shift

https://github.com/19-84/redd-archiver

I think the full pushshift reddit archive (to 2024?) was 4TB, but you can just grab smaller useful subsections. So it’s less of a workaround and more a “tube is out of the toothpaste, suck shit Spez”.

Actually, redd-archive (which is up to end of 2025) has an MCP, so you could point your local LLM at it and get it to find the info you need, all off line.

Last I checked, it even let you grab snapshots of particular subreddits of your choice, so you’re not grabbing multiple terabytes. 2026 snapshots aren’t out yet IIRC

Yes, very much so.

Take a look at my comment here.

PS: you might also be interested in this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apertus_(LLM)