> token prices having tanked the last few months

Token prices have only gone up for me; I guess it's punishment for not liking Cursor (or IDEs in general, because they mess with git and that holiest of holiest shall not be touched by some dirty software.)

> Problem with older hardware is what it can actually do, useful old hardware is even overpriced

You can probably get a Macbook M1 with 16GB RAM for under 1M sats. That does the trick for repetitive, well designed, preferably structured output work

> smoltelligence is practically free... or literally free via API as long as you don't care if it gets trained on

When I do pipelines it's mostly confidential or could-be-confidential stuff that I'm definitely not sharing. Like OCR->Sanity Check->Keyword Extraction->Embeds and then I have a search engine over docs. I developed that concept for a client where the input was confidential, so I just kept it like that and I'm happy with it, and if I'm going to go bankrupt off 2kWh, even at the most scammy price I've ever paid at ~65ct converted to USD, for 48 hours of non stop crunching, then I will not make it and deserve to stop breathing. I wish all my problems were in the 65ct magnitude lol.

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I don't know about Flock. I just think that we should always be careful when public money gets spent on tech. I know how cities/counties, state and feds source their tech - been hired on all sides of those types of deals, both sides of the Atlantic - and this is generally either consultant-driven, or vendor-driven. The functionaries of local govt often talk a whole deal but they really have no clue what they sign off on in terms of consequences. I think the backlash is deserved, but the city/county people ought to get a bit more of it, rather than just one vendor. They just switch vendors and act all the sunny days.

> unfamiliar cars

This is a great use-case on terminal roads, or if you're unlucky enough to be in a cul-de-sac.

> There is no per-Mtoken pricing that beats per-kWh pricing with old, fully depreciated hardware.

Not sure about this necessarily, esp with token prices having tanked the last few months. I live in an area with some of the highest electric rates in the country, even sticking an Avalon or something in my office as a space heater would lose money on-net if it was free. 

Problem with older hardware is what it can actually do, useful old hardware is even overpriced... I just sold some RAM sticks on eBay that I found in a drawer for probably more than I paid for them new years ago.

I probably should investigate more with smoltelligence pipelines, but then again smoltelligence is practically free... or literally free via API as long as you don't care if it gets trained on. That 6GB of nVidia VRAM I have does nothing right now, can't think of anything useful to do with it except the voice model/flock stuff.

> complained they couldn't get any of these features

Yea there's definitely demand, it didn't come out of nowhere, they started in gated communities iirc. First company through the door gets shot though, Flock didn't stand a chance. Options were either partner with politically aligned VC, which just draws suppressing fire from the opposite political side, or stay bootstrapped and draw suppressing fire from all sides until you pick one or die.

My neighborhood use-case is mostly unfamiliar cars, the nature of my road makes them immediately sus. It'd be trivial to let neighbors tag legit cars via a webapp, get push notifications, watch their houses when their away, pull data from public (or even paid) sources, but never egress data to big brother. 

Only one neighbor balked at the idea of me rolling one for us, the female politician ofc.

justin_shocknet

the ability to let stuff loop overnight without worrying about costs.

I love this part the most. I don't really like the small models for the workloads that I generally use LLMs for (code tracing, impact analysis) but whenever I have a pipeline that needs smoltelligence I can just run it on my old M1 and at 30W or so it can sit there forever for all I care.

There is no per-Mtoken pricing that beats per-kWh pricing with old, fully depreciated hardware. On new hardware at current prices, that is a huge challenge. I was looking at a higher-end M5 macbook the other day and at 10 grand it means I can have plenty subscriptions for the depreciation rate of that hardware.

If you DIY you get to actually be able to have real features, not the bullshit stuff you get in exchange for sharing footage. Facial rec, crowd and concealed weapon detection and things like that are very useful if there's actual lives at stake. And most of it is available as open weights on YoLo based models.

One of my friends is a property manager including in some rather bad neighborhoods (think North Philly-like) and they complained they couldn't get any of these features - it's apparently all LE-gated - even though they have personnel on the ground that could really use some automated alerting. Should check in how they fare.

What open weights models do you use?

optimism

> the ability to let stuff loop overnight without worrying about costs.

I love this part the most. I don't really like the small models for the workloads that I generally use LLMs for (code tracing, impact analysis) but whenever I have a pipeline that needs smoltelligence I can just run it on my old M1 and at 30W or so it can sit there forever for all I care. 

> If/when hardware becomes more reasonable

There is no per-Mtoken pricing that beats per-kWh pricing with old, fully depreciated hardware. On new hardware at current prices, that is a huge challenge. I was looking at a higher-end M5 macbook the other day and at 10 grand it means I can have plenty subscriptions for the depreciation rate of that hardware.

> Flock type cameras for my neighborhood

If you DIY you get to actually be able to have real features, not the bullshit stuff you get in exchange for sharing footage. Facial rec, crowd and concealed weapon detection and things like that are very useful if there's actual lives at stake. And most of it is available as open weights on YoLo based models. 

One of my friends is a property manager including in some rather bad neighborhoods (think North Philly-like) and they complained they couldn't get any of these features - it's apparently all LE-gated - even though they have personnel on the ground that could really use some automated alerting. Should check in how they fare.