"Before microchips existed, computers were built with mechanical relays." Should probably say something about vacuum tubes as well!

I can suggest our service (previously here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44849129 ) that might be helpful -- If you want a zero-setup backend to try qqqa, ch.at might be a useful option. We built ch.at — a single-binary, OpenAI‑compatible chat service with no accounts, no logs, and no tracking. You can point qqqa at our API endpoint and it should “just work”:

OpenAI-compatible endpoint: https://ch.at/v1/chat/completions (supports streamed responses)

Also accessible via HTTP/SSH/DNS for quick tests: curl ch.at/?q=… , ssh ch.at Privacy note: we don’t log anything, but upstream LLM providers might...

This is impressive and it also kind of demonstrates how bloated Windows really is. You can fit a ton more functionality into even 1MB.

My new theory, developing for a while, is that as technology makes things easier, the perceived average quality goes down over time. I've yet to fully understand the factors that drive this trend, but feel certain AI will put it in overdrive! I'm not a luddite or hater actually - but this trend is pretty apparent...

Interesting - I somehow didn't realize that KVM didn't require root access.

Also, I wonder if this could be adapted to use Apple's Hypervisor.framework. That one also doesn't require root and ought to be able to spin up and down very quickly.

Author here, was a bit surprised to see this here. I thought there needed to be a good zero-JS LLM site for computer people, and we thought it would be fun to add various other protocols. The short domain hack of "ch.at" was exciting because it felt like the natural domain for such a service.

It has not been expensive to operate so far. If it ever changes we can think about rate limiting it.

We used GPT4o because it seemed like a decent general default model. Considering adding an openrouter interface to a smorgasbord of additional LLMS.

One day, on a plane with WiFi before paying, I noticed that DNS queries were still allowed and thought it would be nice to chat with an LLM over it.

We are not logging anything but OpenAI must be...

Author here, was a bit surprised to see this here. I thought there needed to be a good zero-JS LLM site for computer people, and we thought it would be fun to add various other protocols. The short domain hack of "ch.at" was exciting because it felt like the natural domain for such a service.

It has not been expensive to operate so far. If it ever changes we can think about rate limiting it.

We used GPT4o because it seemed like a decent general default model. Considering adding an openrouter interface to a smorgasbord of additional LLMS.

One day, on a plane with WiFi before paying, I noticed that DNS queries were still allowed and thought it would be nice to chat with an LLM over it.

We are not logging anything but OpenAI must be...