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This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Short on time? Read this 30-second summary of todays post. Download a free, private AI program to run on your computer. Use it offline without any subscription cost and avoid the risk of having sensitive info ingested into a large language model like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. The newest versions of private AI tools like Jan run easily on my 2021 Mac laptop, cost nothing, and are easy to use. Theyre a good alternative to costlier AI platforms. Quick start guide Download and install Jan for free. Other good free alternatives to consider include Msty, AnythingLLM, or LM Studio. Open Jan and pick an open-source large language model. The model you use impacts the AIs response style. You can switch anytime. I use the v1 model. Try your first query. Here are a few quick mini prompts to start with:Summarize the pros and cons of using AI for [specific task].Turn my rough notes below into a short summary and bullet points.”“Turn this angry email draft to my service provider into a constructive message more likely to generate a helpful response. Adjust the apps appearance settings, including font size and shortcuts. Close other processor-intensive apps on your computer, like video editing tools, to reduce the likelihood of your computer slowing down. 5 reasons to use private AI Save money: Avoid subscription fees by running AI models on your own computer. Generate unlimited responses without monthly charges. Keep your data private: Using private AI on your computer ensures no data is sent to or stored on big tech firms servers. No conversations leave your device. You can even run these tools offline. For sensitive legal, medical, financial or personal issues, ask questions without worrying about your data ending up in a large language models training data. Work offline: Having full offline access is handy whether youre traveling without Wi-Fi, working in a remote area, or hesitant to trust a random public network. Experiment with hundreds of open-source models: Choose an open-source large language model that suits you. Each is trained differently. Some are stronger at certain languages, others specialize in coding. New ones emerge regularly. Switch as often as youd like. By contrast, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini limit you to the platforms own models. Tip: Use LM Arena to compare two models responses side by side. Reduce your environmental impact: If you run hundreds of daily prompts, a local AI app may mean less use of internet infrastructure and remote data servers. Private AI tools allow you to keep your data on your laptop, though they may not be as powerful as top AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. [Image: generated with ChatGPT] Jan is an excellent, free, private AI tool Platforms: Mac, PC, Linux What I like about it Fast and easy to set up and use: Jan takes a minute to download and install. Using Jan is as easy as using ChatGPT, Claude, or any other chatbot, though you do have to make an initial decision about which model to use. Assistants: Create customized AI helpers for various purposes. One for translating Chinese, another for coding. Task it to Act as a software engineering mentor focused on Python and JavaScript. Provide detailed explanations with code examples. Use markdown formatting for code blocks. Projects: Organize queries into distinct folders for easy access to subjects of interest without searching through hundreds of threads. Integrations: Link Jan to Canva, Todoist, Linear, or other tools using MCP (model context protocol) connections. Documentation and resources: Lots of useful documentation, including a handbook and blog. Whats Next: Jan AI is developing mobile versions for iOS and Android and adding integrations to link Jan to other services. A Jan case study Becki Lee, a senior technical writer, uses Jan to explore health questions she wants to keep private. I have a chronic illness Im struggling to get diagnosed, she emailed me. So I created an assistant to help interpret test results and brainstorm possible explanations for my symptoms. Obviously, its super important to take this with a grain of salt (a chatbot is absolutely no substitute for a doctor). However, this helps bubble up conditions I can research further on my own, and it also generates questions I can ask my actual doctor. More free AI optios for Mac, PC, or Linux Msty The free version of this well-designed app has multiple unique features. Unlike Jan, which is completely free, Msty also has paid advanced features. Its best free features include: A built-in prompt library with hundreds of options. Special focus and zen modes that strip away side menus. Create multiple personas, which are assistants with distinct personalities. Each can adopt a different style or approach in answering your queries. Knowledge Stacks let you import document collections for analysis. These can include PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoints, spreadsheets, lists of YouTube links, or even an Obsidian vault. Advanced features, like multistep automations, require a paid subscription. Ive only used the free version. Its easy to use, powerful, and well designed. I chose the Gemma 3. AnythingLLM Like Jan, this is a straightforward open-source AI app thats a good option for novice AI users. How its different from Jan You can upload files for AnythingLLM to summarize. Enable it to make simple charts. Turn on Web search, which requires a free API key from Google or Serpa. Theres also a new beta Android version. Caveat: Its not quite as nicely designed as Jan, and isnt updated as often. LM Studio This more developer-friendly option is less simple for beginners. Whats notable: Florent Daudens, an AI expert and educator who used to oversee daily editorial coverage at CBC/Radio-Canada, relies on LM Studio for private AI use. I asked him why and he said, Its practical, with a user/developer-friendly interface, quick updates when new models drop, a server option, and helpful model compatibility info. In a LinkedIn post, Florent shared an example of using LM Studio on his laptop. He used Googles Gemma 3 model to analyze plane photos for extracting registration numbers as an investigative journalist might, without sending data to external servers. Limitations of private AI tools Feature limits: Many special features on other AI platforms wont work on these private AI platforms. ChatGPTs new plug-ins for Canva or Figma, for instance, wont work with private AI. You may not be able to export results directly to Google Sheets or Slack, as you can with other AI tools. No interactives or advanced visuals: You cant create infographics and visual illustrations like ChatGPTs. No coding and hosting interactive applications, as you can with Claude or Gemini. No advanced searches with detailed citations like those from Perplexity. Quality variation: Some open-source models have limited or older training data, so results for certain queries may be worse. For ordinary queries and text summarization, this quality difference may not be noticeable. Slower speed: Depending on your query, you might wait longer with some open-source models than with ChatGPT, Copilot, or other private AI platforms. Speed hasnt been a big concern for me so far. Cant handle as much text at once: A smaller context window means that private AI tools may not be able to analyze text blocks as large as those ChatGPT or Claude can handle. Some small language models may resort to skimming longer text. They may also be more likely to hallucinate details if asked for summaries of long, complex documents. Additional resources Free, open-source AI tools for journalists curated on Hugging Face by Florent Daudens. Read more about why I like Hugging Face as an open-source AI hub. Local LLM Group on Reddit, with 546,000 members. Keep up on notable research on AI and private AI tool development. Helpful write-up about local large language models by Stephen Turner. LinkedIn Learning Course on private large language models and Jan AI. This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.
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When Santa Claus is done delivering presents on Christmas Eve, he must get back home to the North Pole, even if its snowing so hard that the reindeer cant see the way. He could use a compass, but then he has a challenge: He has to be able to find the right North Pole. There are actually two North Polesthe geographic North Pole you see on maps and the magnetic North Pole that the compass relies on. They arent the same. The two North Poles The geographic North Pole, also called true north, is the point at one end of the Earths axis of rotation. Try taking a tennis ball in your right hand, putting your thumb on the bottom and your middle finger on the top, and rotating the ball with the fingers of your left hand. The place where the thumb and middle finger of your right hand contact the tennis ball as it spins define the axis of rotation. The axis extends from the south pole to the north pole as it passes through the center of the ball. Earths magnetic North Pole is different. More than a thousand years ago, explorers began using compasses, typically made with a floating cork or piece of wood with a magnetized needle in it, to find their way. The Earth has a magnetic field that acts like a giant magnet, and the compass needle aligns with it. The magnetic North Pole is used by devices such as smartphones for navigationand that pole moves around over time. Why the magnetic north pole moves around The movement of the magnetic North Pole is the result of the Earth having an active core. The inner core, starting about 3,200 miles below your feet, is solid and under such immense pressure that it cannot melt. But the outer core is molten, consisting of melted iron and nickel. Heat from the inner core makes the molten iron and nickel in the outer core move around, much like soup in a pot on a hot stove. The movement of the iron-rich liquid induces a magnetic field that covers the entire Earth. As the molten iron in the outer core moves around, the magnetic North Pole wanders. For most of the past 600 years, the pole has been wandering around over northern Canada. It was moving relatively slowly, around 6 to 9 miles per year, until around 1990, when its speed increased dramatically, up to 34 miles per year. It started moving in the general direction of the geographic North Pole about a century ago. Earth scientists cannot say exactly why other than that it reflects a change in flow within the outer core. Getting Santa home So, if Santas home is the geographic North Pole (which, incidentally, is in the ice-covered middle of the Arctic Ocean) how does he correct his compass bearing if the two North Poles are in different locations? No matter what device he might be usingcompass or smartphoneboth rely on magnetic north as a reference to determine the direction he needs to move. While modern GPS systems can tell you precisely where you are as you make your way to grandmas house, they cannot accurately tell which direction to go without your device knowing the direction of magnetic north. If Santa is using an old-fashioned compass, hell need to adjust it for the difference between true north and magnetic north. To do that, he needs to know the declination at his location (the angle between true north and magnetic north) and make the correction to his compass. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has an online calculator that can help. If you are using a smartphone, your phone has a built-in magnetometer that does the work for you. It measures the Earths magnetic field at your location and then uses the World Magnetic Model to correct for precise navigation. Whatever method Santa uses, he may be relying on magnetic north to find his way to your house and back home again. Or maybe the reindeer just know the way. Scott Brame is a research assistant professor of earth science at Clemson University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Costcos latest promotional offering just dropped, but members arent rushing to claim it. At select warehouse club locations, members can now take home complimentary 3-pound bags of Gala apples. The shopping warehouses unique business model, wherein membership fees contribute largely to its revenue, means that it focuses on plugging its membership more than advertising specific products. Costco puts significant effort into encouraging people to join, or upgrade and renew, existing memberships. In the past, Costco has offered enticing items like tote bags to coax customers into automatic membership renewals, but the promotional bag of apples is not as appealing, according to one Costco member. Giving away apples is like giving away white bread, they told TheStreet. Its fine, I guess, but not very interesting. Its certainly not going to get me to do anything different. Costco has previously been successful in pushing customers to upgrade to the Executive tier, which is $130 annually, with customers earning 2% cash back on most purchases, compared with $65 for the basic level. In June, for example, Costco started unveiling a new membership feature that allowed Executive members to shop one hour earlier than regular members during weekdays and Sundays, and half an hour earlier on Saturdays. The perk was generally well received. The company reported a 1% boost in sales at the end of September, and Executive memberships increased by 9%, according to CFO Gary Millerchip. Which might explain why the apples that followed seemed to fall a bit flat. Whats more, Costco shoppers have complained about employees tirelessly approaching them about memberships. Another customer told TheStreet that his membership makes sense for the amount that he shops, but he continues to face pressure. The last few times Ive gone to check out, Ive gotten the third degree about my membership, he says. Its getting really old. For years, Costcos membership system has served the brand well. But its apparent that taking a few steps in the wrong direction could turn people away. Ava Levinson This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
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