I'm sure OP knows this, but there are many branches of philosophy. On the epistemology side, there's usually more focus on meaning and knowledge. On ethics, focus on right and wrong. On logic, it's closer to math and science.
Many people think philosophy just means sophistry and arguing, but each branch has practical applications too. Some of my philosophy major friends ended up going for PhDs. The only career path there was writing and teaching. For those who didn't, it was to supplement some other degree.
Every time you search, you're sending it a signal that you're interested in a subject.
Google Analytics is embedded in lots of sites. Each time you visit, it sends them back a signal. If you click on one of the ads on the google site, or on any of the millions of sites with embedded google ads, it sends back a signal. If you use Android, each time you change location, make a call, or click on an app, that's a signal.
When using Nest, or Google Home, or Assistant, that's another signal. If you use Google Maps , Google Auto, shopping, photos, drive, translate, image search, gmail, all the office apps, and Gemini. Bingo, a signal.
If you follow a link in any of the above, shared by someone else. A signal.
You don't need to be logged-in. All is needed is an association of that signal with an 'abstract user' which represents you across many systems, devices, and applications.
You can turn off tracking, or tighten privacy settings, or go private. All they need is a loose combination of factors (aka fingerprint) to match your previous actions with your devices, user accounts, or signals.
When you get on Youtube, you're at the tail end of a massive amount of historical data accumulated over time and attached to you. The algorithm just returns a best prediction of what matches that trail. And what you click on and how much of it you watch or skip. Yup, another signal.
And no, none of us can opt out. The same is true for Facebook/Meta, and any other embeddable service, powered by ads.
You can go private, turn off javascript, use alternate browsers, or go back to a flip-phone. Sorry, it doesn't make a difference. Not any more.
I used to work on making those types of devices. There's one good reason to connect them to the internet, and that is to report the health of the device and automatically call up maintenance if things go wonky. But nobody does that. Instead, they all snag user interaction data and send it off to the magical cloud without knowing why. Or to upsell you consumables like water filters and detergents.
One other reason to have them connected is to send push notifications when something needs attention. Like when the power to the chest freezer in the basement has gone off and the human body parts are starting to leak.
Sounds like the issue is getting to the server, not the LLM server itself. If so, may want to look into running a reverse proxy, or if you want to access it remotely, tunnels: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling
If you have control of the server or platform serving the content, could look into "robots.txt" and "tarpits." There are a few, but one example is Nepenthes: https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes/
I pay for Cursor, OpenAI, and Anthropic. I was paying for Google Gemini as well, but it was returning too many errors so I canceled it. I also pay for Google office, Microsoft office, and Adobe subscriptions. They inject their own AI into their services, but I end up ignoring them or turning them off.
Mostly use it for coding in Cursor, but occasionally for research into the state of AI and to make MCP extensions. It's been worth the investment so far, given how much more of the mundane coding tasks get done by supervising it. I also had it update a Wordpress theme because I had no interest in learning the innards.
I never let them loose in 'agentic' mode, as they inevitably destroy all the work. I can run decent-sized models locally through lmstudio and Cline, but they're much slower than just using Cursor and a cloud model.
Outside coding, the only usable one I've found is Adobe Firefly, accessed inside Photoshop (to remove material) and Illustrator (to generate simple SVGs and icons from prompts).
Every single other one, when I've put it to a non-coding use has been a pile of slop. If all LLMs go away tomorrow, the only one I'll miss is the Adobe SVG creator.
Leftover warm Heineken at the bottom of a bottle. After a dinner party thrown by my parents. Snuck a little swig while the grownups were outside saying goodbye. I must have been 9 or 10-yo. Tasted like snakebite. Just awful.
Could try:
if [ condition1 ] && [ condition2 ]; then echo "OK" fi