Hey everyone 👋 I'm Russ Been deep into AI since GPT first landed publicly and honestly, it completely changed how I learn. I'm not a traditional dev (self-taught everything 😅), but over the last year I've gone hard into Linux, servers, sysadmin, CLI tooling, automation, and building things for myself. I've always been moving away from heavy SaaS and vendor lock-in where possible, keeping more of my data and workflows under my own control. I'm especially into local and self-hosted AI (since my Main system broke down, I had to learn another way), practical automation, security, and building useful tools for real life instead of chasing hype. Right now I'm focused on deeper infrastructure and security, leveraging CLI tools, and basically treating my setup like I'm becoming a tech engineer one project at a time 😄 because im running an old macbook pro 2012 but have linux distro that I love for the moment, even though that moment is lasting me longer than 6 months. Funny thing is, a couple years ago I said on Reddit that one day we wouldn't need apps anymore, we'd just spin up what we need ourselves. Feels like we're sort of at that reality now. Joined because I like learning from builders and people actually doing things in AI, especially the practical stuff. edit: I forgot to answer the questions. 1. Building? - a few things. One today, reiterating on a bible app I made last week adding a few things at a time. This time is look and feel and maybe adding in text to speech from my own app running on my server for listening rather than reading at times. --why build this? because all apps have some sort of trial or something that disrupts my reading on the go, or has to be connected to a server to work. No other reason but to read on the go. Another thing I've considered and been working on (back end systems to help) is doing consulting in this space. 2.From community - to be completely honest, this journey has been a complete lonely one, not just with AI. I'm hoping to connect with people who enjoy building, experimenting, and thinking about where this is all going, especially practical AI, not just theory.

Just a coding student here from the Netherlands, using AI to assist me in learning so that when the day Skynet invades I am ready haha. Mainly here for the Command Center but who knows where it goes :)