This 100% -- the AI features already in Firefox, for the most part, rely on local models. (Right now there is translation and tab-grouping, IIRC.)
Local based AI features are great and I wish they were used more often, instead of just offloading everything to cloud services with questionable privacy.
Local models are nice for keeping the initial prompt and inference off someone else's machine, but there is still the question of what the AI feature will do with data produced.
I don't expect a business to make or maintain a suite of local model features in a browser free to download without monetizing the feature somehow. If said monetization strategy might mean selling my data or having the local model bring in ads, for example, the value of a local model goes down significantly IMO.
Which ones? Translation is local. Preview summarization is local. Image description generation is local. Tab grouping is local. Sidebar can also show a locally hosted page.
The last feature was the sidebar and Google lens integration. For the sidebar the "can" does the heavy lifting but you should also include that it's hidden and won't sync if you use a local page...
I still can’t believe they switched to Calibri at all; the only people who should be using Calibri are people who don’t realize that Microsoft Word lets you pick other fonts.
I do wish they’d gone for a classier serif though; Garamond was right there.
Wow, uh, it’s kind of astounding how poorly Eric is reading the room there.
A weird disposable(!) voice recorder ring seems to go against pretty much all of the “open and repairable” image that the Pebble brand has been cultivating.
This product should probably have been “Core” branded and kept on a different website entirely. Its very existence seems kind of toxic to the Pebble brand, IMO.
The AI integration in question, from the Calibre changelog:
- Allow asking AI questions about any book in your calibre library.
- Right click the "View" button and choose "Discuss selected book(s) with AI"
- AI: Allow asking AI what book to read next by right clicking on a book and using the "Similar books" menu
- AI: Add a new backend for "LM Studio" which allows running various AI models locally
It seems pretty harmless really.
I understand some people feel that AI is overhyped and don't particularly like it, but this level of weird knee-jerk "anything AI is the devil incarnate" response is just as ridiculous, IMO.
Recommending books based on reading history is one of the very few uses of AI I'd consider good. With enough metadata about books it will be able to recommend similarities better than anyone, with appropriate topical filters. Storygraph is a Goodreads alternative trying to make use of this.
It would probably be better to use a deterministic graph algorithm to do this, but it's seemingly too hard for anyone to do properly.
Calibre has had a comically obtuse and amateur UI for over a decade. I don't think anyone working on it is spending time on a grand beautiful UI redesign (which would be really hard, both in effort and in politics). So I don't think it's fair to complain that anytime someone adds a feature you don't use that is taking time away from UI work.
I wasn't complaining, I don't mind whichever feature an open-source freely-available project I use weekly wants to work on. I did suggest these features might have taken some effort, and opportunity cost dictates it wasn't spent elsewhere.
Both of those comments seem to just boil down to "Core probably could be more proactive about comms", which hardly seems like a particularly egregious sin.
"interactions with Core have gone so poorly that they were adversely impacting my mental health"
That seems a little more serious than "could be proactive about comms" especially when this is one of the key people responsible for a lot of the original Pebble tech, rebble tech, and working within Google to get the Pebble OS open sourced.
I think unfortunately this is a normal thing that happens: passionate people get very attached to something and have trouble dealing with dispute even when everyone is relatively good intentioned. I've seen it in the workplace a dozen times.
It seems like Rebble (the board) really overplayed their hand.
From what they posted, it seems like they wanted more control over what Core was doing, deciding that the best way to do that was to try and hold the app store data hostage.
Now, with the Core app open sourced and multiple app store repos supported, Rebble's position will likely be greatly diminished from what it could have been if they had been satisfied with what they had. I guess in the end though, the outcome was a net win for everyone (fully open source apps), so it works out.
I spent some time on their Discord chatting and trying to nudge them towards a healthier approach.
Many of them seem to think that PebbleOS was released just for them (they quote the Google press release), and so reading between the lines I really do think they feel at some level that code has been "stolen" from them. Which is ridiculous (and I said so) but if they think it's true then it explains their actions much more clearly than any other explanation I've found (or they've elucidated).
My best understanding (which I've extrapolated from what I've learned) is that they had all these plans of being a scrappy team who worked together on PebbleOS in their spare time, as friends, and Eric capitalising a company of paid developers has made all those plans redundant - so they've been powering through the five stages of grief in coming to terms with that while everyone else has been celebrating the return of Pebble.
Definitely agree that this is the best outcome for everyone! In particular, with multiple repo support, I'm hoping this can open the door for some kind of "F-Droid for Pebble" with automated builds from source repos. So many Pebble apps are open source anyway I think it would be a good fit.
I think the real issue is simply that the definition of ASD has been expanded to the point of near-meaninglessness. If we're applying the same label to:
1. Someone who is totally nonverbal and effectively unable to function in society
2. Someone who is kind of socially awkward
...then maybe it's time to come up with a new labeling system. ("Autism" in the context of vaccines usually is implicitly referring exclusively to [1])
It's not near meaningless though. Like not even close. And I'm also not sure people at large going for this argument really care to differentiate because these terms already exist that highlight the differences within the DSM for ASD!
The distinction you're drawing here is the OP's point. People in category one are still human beings. The CDC is suggesting that people should avoid vaccines because death from measles is preferable to outcome #1.
It's not merely that people in category #2 hate being implicated in that. It's also insulting to the people in category #1 as well. They are being told that their lives are utterly worthless.
Agreed -- While I admire their work in keeping the lights on, Rebble doesn't necessarily make sense in a world where the "real" Pebble company has returned.
Keep in mind that this is their goal statement (straight from their FAQ):
> Our goal is to maintain and advance Pebble functionality, in the absence of Pebble Technology Corp.
Eric's new company, by effectively re-creating Pebble Technology Corp, is an existential threat to that mission: If there is someone else maintaining and advancing Pebble functionality, then what is the purpose of Rebble? It does seem unfortunate though -- I hope they can all work something out.
Alternatively, I could say that Eric Migicovsky's track record is building a for-profit company that ultimately failed, and with the new company, he obviously, explicitly intends to prioritize selling new hardware. Whereas Rebble kept the lights on for devices that would otherwise have been bricks, as a collective of volunteer hackers.
Their missions conflict because Pebble2's potential customers largely overlap with Rebble's current users, but I would say their aims are quite different.
You could also say his track record is making things as open as possible so things like Rebble can spring up if necessary, but also in negotating deals that keep core services running for years after the purchase, and then after the purchaser's purchase.
I largely agree, but I think there's merit to Rebble's argument that Core Devices could be here today, gone tomorrow. I'd hate to see Pebble die again only for Rebble to have disbanded in the meanwhile. Then the community has nothing but code repos.
Could pebble2 launch with a minimal set of apps, asking the old Devs to push their binaries again? Sure, and with that in mind, all this deal with rebble does is save everyone time.
The way this reads, is a group of enthusiasts got together to create a lifeboat for people who wanted to keep their pebble devices alive... But are now building a moat around said life raft.
If they truly cared about the devices, the users, and the developers.. they would just drop this attitude and move forward.
Another interpretation is that for rebble the worst thing that could happen, was Eric coming back and restarting pebble.
Local based AI features are great and I wish they were used more often, instead of just offloading everything to cloud services with questionable privacy.
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