And when this kind of power it's consolidated with a handful of companies, you leave people with nowhere to go for any kind of real success. So you're forced to compromise your vision in order to get any shelf space.

Money money money money money money money money money.

Money.

I also find that you can coerce a wide spectrum of otherwise declined queries by editing its initial rejection into the start of an answer. For example changing the "I'm sorry I can't answer that..." response to "Here's how..." And then resubmitting the inference, allowing it to continue from there. It's not perfect, sometimes it takes multiple attempts, but it does work. At least in my experience. (This isn't Gemma-specific tip, either. Nearly every model I've tried this with tends to bend quite a bit doing this.)

Thanks to the settings suggestions in the article, I was able to squeeze in the 31b model. Still testing, but it's real tight in 24gb of vram. A bit slower, too, but usable. Not sure I'm seeing much of a quality boost yet, but I'm still testing.

In fact, I started using it as a coding partner while learning how to use the Godot game engine (and some custom 'skills' I pulled together from the official docs). I purposely avoided Claude and friends entirely, and just used Gemma4 locally this week... and it's really helped me figure out not just coding issues I was encountering, but also helped me sift through the documentation quite readily. I never felt like I needed to give in and use Claude.

Very, very pleased.

Majority of mobile gamers. A very distinct category.

That said, it may be that I've simply been lucky and have an encountered that yet. So I'll be keeping an eye out for it.

True both outside AND inside the country.

She was in the hospital for a fall, and it just kind of spiraled. A week later she passed.

And suddenly, just like that, I was alone after 40+ years.

I have IRL friends, but they don't live close by. We meet up semi-regularly for lunch. I've been putting events on my calendar to have at least SOMETHING to attend every month. Trying to travel more. Do stuff that was impractical to do as a caretaker.

But the day to day... I'm "lucky" because I'm a coder, gamer, etc. A great deal of my day job and off time is, well, computer shit.

And it gets to me, for the first time in my life. Like, I've literally had the words "How do single people... live?" pop up into my head on numerous occasions... how do I "do a human", if you will.

Been a year so far, and I still don't know. Just taking it a day at a time. I try to fill the void with exercise, trying to get fit. Probably going to explore cooking at some point. I found a love of hiking late last year and found out I had a whole bunch of great trails nearby that I never even knew about. I try to attend protests. Hang at the library a bit. Check the local events calendar (rarely anything interesting to me, but I try). Took a firearm safety course. My big one last year was taking the train into NYC to visit the Statue of Liberty -- that was a blast. Had to teach myself how to use the subway and stuff. Local comic book conventions are another fun stop.

Stuff like that. Scattered, random stuff of interest and within means.

But I do find myself struggling to make the effort just for me, you know? Like, I want to do this stuff, but I want to do it WITH someone. I don't even mean that in a romantic sense -- just another person in general. Because if it's just "me", it's a lot tougher to justify. I have to force it. (And I do.) Luckily I can drag some folks along now and then when the stars line up. :P

(And yeah, dating sites are awful now. They were a lot of fun around the late 2010s, but now they're just the worst. Between the predatory pricing of the services, and the ever-increasingly likelihood of generated scam content, it's not worth the effort now.)

Anyway, I wish I could say things get better. I haven't hit that point yet, just over a year in. I just got 'used' to it and found a routine, but it's tough. I don't know how the natural loners do it. It's scary stuff. Especially when you're older (49 here).