We tend to think that markets reflect consumer choice. But the artificial-intelligence boom has been powered by the investment decisions of concentrated capital rather than by consumer demand.
OK, here’s a real life use case, small time as it is, that has nothing to do with anything rarefied.
I have a TCL Android TV that, after some “unapproved measures”, runs without a Google account - FLauncher as the front end, telemetry blocked, home media streaming, YouTube ad-free. The yar har har works.
Two days ago the kids come in. TV’s not working.
Jellyfin: fine. Nova Player: fine. Stremio, YouTube, anything hitting the net: dead.
We’d had a brownout that day, so I figured the router was scrambled. Reset it, re-added the network… and Smarttube now launches, plays for 30 seconds, then hard-locks. Just weird JSON vomit and then dead.
At that point I’m thinking the TV is fucked. Options:
factory reset and reinstall the workarounds - 2-3hrs of pain-in-the-ass fuckery, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
crawl the net decoding cryptic error codes.
take it in for repair (good luck with that).
fall down a TV diagnostics rabbit hole.
Instead, I chose option 5)
I told my local LLM: "This TV is on this IP. This laptop has ADB access. I’ve given you MCP tools with ADB libraries. Here’s the issue, here’s what I tried. Check prior history of what I did for this project, figure out what’s wrong now and fix it, or tell me it’s broken.
If it looks like the brownout caused corruption, factory reset, stream-install the backup APKs directly, sign in my accounts, get it back up and running.
Failing that, if it’s looking like a hardware issue, push a diagnostic tool, test the TV and tell me which parts I might need, as well as likely costs using eBay or Amazon. I’m happy to spend $50 on this shitbox and not one cent more. If the fix looks like it’s more than $50, find me a TV of this size under $200. Prefer local shop X or Y.
Present everything as markdown in the usual folder, using house style. Ping me on my phone if you need me to authorise anything or when you’re done with the TL;DR."
The agent ADBs in, pokes around, tests, checks the WiFi, and figures out the brownout had corrupted the date and time.
Turns out this p.o.s doesn’t have a RTC back up battery.
Wrong clock = certs flagged as invalid = no net.
It syncs the date and time with my location. Boom, everything comes back.
Now, could I have twigged it myself?
Yes - eventually. But the agent already had the tools, knew the TV’s prior state, and had a record of what I’d already tried.
It could’ve reset the TV, sideloaded all my apps, re-signed into my accounts - the whole lot - if needed.
This is not the only time I’ve had real world use of my local, and it had very little to do with “writing functions”.
I had a project - jailbreak my tcl. Over time, I’d stored enough context of what I had done in the LLM and its tools, so that it could do what I’d do (and more), faster, based on the constraints I had put in place.
People that call these things “spicy autocorrect” are demonstrating either a skill issue or a lack of imagination.
OK, here’s a real life use case, small time as it is, that has nothing to do with anything rarefied.
I have a TCL Android TV that, after some “unapproved measures”, runs without a Google account - FLauncher as the front end, telemetry blocked, home media streaming, YouTube ad-free. The yar har har works.
Two days ago the kids come in. TV’s not working.
Jellyfin: fine. Nova Player: fine. Stremio, YouTube, anything hitting the net: dead.
We’d had a brownout that day, so I figured the router was scrambled. Reset it, re-added the network… and Smarttube now launches, plays for 30 seconds, then hard-locks. Just weird JSON vomit and then dead.
At that point I’m thinking the TV is fucked. Options:
factory reset and reinstall the workarounds - 2-3hrs of pain-in-the-ass fuckery, but it wouldn’t be the first time.
crawl the net decoding cryptic error codes.
take it in for repair (good luck with that).
fall down a TV diagnostics rabbit hole.
Instead, I chose option 5)
I told my local LLM: "This TV is on this IP. This laptop has ADB access. I’ve given you MCP tools with ADB libraries. Here’s the issue, here’s what I tried. Check prior history of what I did for this project, figure out what’s wrong now and fix it, or tell me it’s broken.
If it looks like the brownout caused corruption, factory reset, stream-install the backup APKs directly, sign in my accounts, get it back up and running.
Failing that, if it’s looking like a hardware issue, push a diagnostic tool, test the TV and tell me which parts I might need, as well as likely costs using eBay or Amazon. I’m happy to spend $50 on this shitbox and not one cent more. If the fix looks like it’s more than $50, find me a TV of this size under $200. Prefer local shop X or Y.
Present everything as markdown in the usual folder, using house style. Ping me on my phone if you need me to authorise anything or when you’re done with the TL;DR."
The agent ADBs in, pokes around, tests, checks the WiFi, and figures out the brownout had corrupted the date and time.
Turns out this p.o.s doesn’t have a RTC back up battery.
Wrong clock = certs flagged as invalid = no net.
It syncs the date and time with my location. Boom, everything comes back.
Now, could I have twigged it myself?
Yes - eventually. But the agent already had the tools, knew the TV’s prior state, and had a record of what I’d already tried.
It could’ve reset the TV, sideloaded all my apps, re-signed into my accounts - the whole lot - if needed.
This is not the only time I’ve had real world use of my local, and it had very little to do with “writing functions”.
I had a project - jailbreak my tcl. Over time, I’d stored enough context of what I had done in the LLM and its tools, so that it could do what I’d do (and more), faster, based on the constraints I had put in place.
People that call these things “spicy autocorrect” are demonstrating either a skill issue or a lack of imagination.