Yeah there's definitely a desire, but be clear, it's a smallish minority that have this desire for freedom, especially outside the US, sad to say. And fulfilling that desire seems to get harder every year, as in, the devices you actually need, to be functional in the world, are locked down more and more.

Also, open weight models follow the same pattern: can't be stopped easily but small chunk of people will have what it takes to use them, and without approved hardware you are crippled. Tbf this one is a very evolving situation, we'll see.

In other parts of the world, my feeling is that they'll be pragmatic about it and have an official version and a more discreet version. For example, maybe a fully locked-down phone that "complies," but then have their private phone or other device for other things. I partly agree that "the devices you actually need, to be functional in the world, are locked down more and more." Yes, more and more services require and will require locked-down devices. But I find that I need those services less and less. For example, Wise asked me too many questions. It annoyed me. So I dumped them. Bitcoin being more usable in practice than before, I don't miss Wise. Another example: it's harder than it was to buy physical SIM cards without some form of KYC (perhaps use of a credit card, lighter KYC), but eSIMs are now very easy to buy with btc on lightning. Yet another example: online banking requires mobile apps more and more, but I need bank accounts less and less (through native Bitcoin payments, prepaid cards that can be bought with Bitcoin, and a personal network of people willing to accept Bitcoin for services and products, etc). I can basically just use bank accounts to get cash out of an ATM. Facebook and others are more locked down, but now we have Nostr, delta.chat, simplex, and others. AI frontier models are more locked down, but open-weight models are now good enough to be usable, and even usable on local devices for many uses (speech-to-text, translations, etc). On the hardware side, RISC-V is making progress. I understand the gloomy feeling. It's hard not to get that feeling when we see just about every law, every government, everywhere, going in the wrong direction. However, it feels like, thanks to technology (and people like you!!), our personal freedom space is expanding.

Jan3 recently made a phone app for speech to text. The app is very easy to use and works really well, even on a fairly old phone: https://github.com/jan3dev/a1echos. Handy.computer (speech to text) works amazingly well too, even on an old desktop. ppq.ai also made it easy to use end-to-end encrypted models and pay privately with Lightning, without an account. I have personally put many friends on ppq.ai, even friends who really don’t consider themselves technical. trymaple.ai is also an interesting option. I think the LLM memory wiki trend is also very inspiring. Done well, it seems likely to allow the use of less powerful models and still get pretty good results.

I've used both ppq and maple; definitely useful, especially ppq's e2e encrypted to TEE option. I agree that local models continue to move forward, and will be increasingly useful. But if personal devices are fully locked down it will be moot *from the perspective of sovereignty*. (You can also argue that too much compute power will also be locked down).

With alternatives like RISC-V (much much slower, yes), we at least have a sovereign option available. Now that AI is advancing, I find myself needing to browse the internet far less often. This reduces my need for CPU power, as some web pages can be quite heavy. When combined with services like routstr.com, it seems like it would be possible to access decentralized stronger computing power even with a relatively weak local device. This means that unless they manage to lock down devices and chips worldwide, we still have a way to preserve our freedom. But as you say, it does mean less sovereignty. However, looking at how Chinese users find ways to access the open internet through friends acting as relays in other countries, it seems that with a strong personal network, we can still maintain freedom; as long as the world as a whole isn’t completely locked down. At some point, voting with one's feet will probably also become a necessity, as some countries will slide into tyranny faster than others. In Western countries, I think we tend to feel like the laws are the actual system, but I think that in the rest of the world, the laws and what actually happens on the ground are very divergent. This conversation makes me feel that, to stay consistent with my (perhaps misplaced) optimism, I should focus more on open hardware going forward. That’s one of my issues with GrapheneOS — its reliance on a trusted computing device (if my understanding is correct). I don’t really want to encourage that approach. I’ll need to look more closely at our open hardware options at this point. I like the approach of using the right tool for the right job and perhaps opting for much weaker hardware (but open) if it can handle the specific task I need it to do. Then, I can use other small devices for other small tasks. Also, I’m very interested in the auto-routing features of some AI projects, where they direct queries to the appropriate AI model based on the nature of the query and the necessary computing power. Preserving our sovereignty will likely mean learning to be economical with our resources.

re: Chinese users. I don't know your level of experience with China (I lived there for many years), but I think it very clearly shows the opposite: through a combination of deep packet inspection, a ton of monitoring and intimidating the public, the amount of "wall hopping" that goes on is tremendously small and 95%+ of the population know nothing except what the CCP allows them to. It does not support your case. re: reduced need for cpu/compute: I don't get your idea there, if you are replacing web calls with AI calls you're surely using more compute, not less. I guess the most useful general comment is: I'm not denying that individual people, at smaller scales, can resist this, with effort. I'm just trying to make a correct prediction about the future of the world generally: I think the overall direction/trend is definitely going one way, not the other way.

Then you definitely know more about China than I do. The Chinese people I know all live abroad, so they're a small group who probably weren't as affected by the propaganda (proof being that they chose to leave), and their friends/contacts back home are likely the same. That's a scary thought. If 95% of people fall for the propaganda and only 5% escape it, that's a really dangerous situation. On the CPU/compute point: yes, overall it would be more, but *locally* (in a totalitarian State) it could be less if the heavy lifting is done elsewhere. Right now, more "open" hardware seems weaker and more expensive. To be clearer: if the UK went totally totalitarian and locked down all the good devices, I'd use low-power, open hardware locally and offload the heavy computing to devices in countries that aren't as restrictive. But what you said about China is really concerning. If it's that bad over there, how do we make sure it doesn't get like that here? Hmmm... "Voting harder" doesn't seem to be working. Maybe all this craziness will eventually end, just like it did with the Soviet Union? I don't have any contacts in Russia, though, so I don't know what life is really like on the ground right now. But then I'd like to know more about that 5% in China. Is it a hard and painful existence, or do they manage to live pretty well through all of that? Because if the 5% can be okay, then maybe we have to resign ourselves to the fact that only the people who are awake and taking actual steps will live well. That's not my wish, but it might be the reality. But if even that 5% are struggling, it really doesn't bode well for us. #openhardware

And to your point : one of the scariest developments in terms of freedom is the newly required ETAs and now biometrics in Europe, Japan, Thailand, etc. I can't see how to avoid it all except : being smuggled in, or simply refusing to travel. I can't see how even bitcoin fixes that. I guess the only way is to boycott countries doing that and buy-cott the ones not doing it.