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by user3939382 304 days ago
I've been watching this my whole life. UML, SOA, Mongo, cloud, blockchain, now LLMs, probably 10 others in between. When tools are new there's a collective mania between VCs, execs, and engineers that this tool unlike literally every other one doesn't have trade offs that make it only an appropriate choice in some situations. Sometimes the trade offs aren't discoverable in the nascent stage, a lot of it is monkey-see-monkey-do which is the case even today with React and cloud as default IMHO. LLMs are great but they're just a tool.
3 comments

The big difference is LLMs are as big as Social Media and Google in the pop culture, but with a promise of automation and job replacement. My 70 year parents use it every day for work and general stuff (with generally understanding the limitations), and they’re not even that tech savvy.
We haven’t mapped the hard limitations of LLMs yet but they’re energy bound like everything else. Their context capacity is a fraction of a human’s. What they’ll replace isn’t known yet. Probabilistic answers are unacceptable in many domains. They’re going to remain amazingly helpful for a certain class of tasks but marketing is way ahead of the engineering, again.
you forgot IoT
IoT wasn't exactly a waste of money. If anything, the problem was that companies didn't spend enough doing it properly or securely. People genuinely do want their security cameras online with an app they can view away from home. It just needs to be done securely and privately.
I want a Wireguard-like solution - preferably with an open source Home Assistant plugin - rather than yet-another-subscriber-lockin-on-company-servers.

Investors want otherwise.

synology has surveillance station, synology supports wireguard (tailscale, too), there's ios and android surveillance station apps.

The software that the synology uses on the backend is open source, so you could set this all up with proxmox or a debian server or something, too.

you need to ensure your cameras support either direct access inside the network, or onvif or something like that. IDK, i don't use it anymore, but i did for a good long while, with wifi and wired IP cameras. My synology had a "license" for 12 cameras, but lightning took it out (something about a bunch of ethernet cables in trees), and my new synology doesn't have enough licenses to bother with.

anyhow, just thought you should know - "software" "NVR" is available, and has been for over a decade.

I have 4 cameras, a home security system, a remotely monitored smoke detector, a smart plug, 4 leak sensors, smart bulbs, a car whose location and state of charge I can track remotely, a smart garage door opener, a smart doorbell, and 7 smart speakers.

I think IoT was more than just hype.

Wait until the kids find out about LAMP