Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Reminder for all software developers/engineers, given recent news regarding Meta (e.g. https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/113794462779776347): don't ever sign NDAs. They will *always* bite you in the ass eventually, and they're never worth it. They (the people wanting you to sign the NDAs) need you a lot more than you need them.

Journalists: Send us examples of your stories being censored (like this) by Meta in the last year, whether on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads.

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-censoring-404-media-stories-about-facebooks-censorship/

@Einer von Vielen I'm aware of it, but I would like something that would work regardless of what web app(s) the server is hosting. I know about some possible solutions that should block these requests early, but have not had time to test them properly yet.

However, I'm also thinking about a more adversarial response, where we could use these "AI" scraper bots' complete lack of respect for the sites they invade against them. What if we could serve them an alternative page/site with garbage that would poison their training data? Preferably something that's less resource demanding on the server than the actual web app.

Anyways just thinking out loud. Just blocking them is probably the easiest, but as they keep changing user agent strings and IP address ranges all the time, it'll be a game of whack-a-mole. I'd like something that does more damage.

@xankarn
I think the common denominator, and the glue that holds disparate right wing groups together in the GOP, is racism—or you could call it the ideology of white supremacy. The connection to the purification project is pretty obvious, but I guess the privatization is too, at least with historical context, right? In the 60s many white Americans became convinced that the federal government couldn't be trusted not to help black people (national guard in the south, the Great Society, etc.). Ever since then they've been trying to hamstring it, egged on by right wing media pushing that narrative.

Now I tried Android 12.0 (the previous was 6.0) and it does have host mode, I can even tye with a keyboard.

Camera still doesn't work.

Considering how many people will have a #Linuxmobile in the workshop, the #microscope needs to have a builtin display.

Maybe that's for the better because #USB streaming is quite limited in resolution. USB 2.0 is just fast enough for 5mpix, and no one puts 3.0 in the cheap devices, so the only way to get 12mpix pics is to save them to SD instead.

Update: After this blog post was written, we learned Meta revised its public "Hateful Conduct" policy in ways EFF finds concerning. We are analyzing these changes, which this blog post does not address.

Hit up my recruiter via his cell phone today. Turns out he's still on vacation and is building a wellhouse today. Of course, as one does in January in Texas.

Anyhoo, he's gonna call me in a little bit anyway (or so he said) but he did say that they've still not heard a peep out of Corpo 1, even with their account manager "hounding them" for a plan.

Guess we'll see, but I don't hold out much hope for Corpo 1 at this point. Maybe my recruiter has other ops that he can start me on because I have a feeling we're both about to get ghosted by this company.

I'll bet 100 eds that they didn't expect me to pass their technical interviews and now the uppers don't know what to do because they didn't really expect to have to actually hire another engineer.

https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1876991454410650111

I think Yanis is a little starry-eyed about so-called AI, but apart from that quibble, I thought this was a pretty good read.

[Why the Left needs to watch Star Trek -Yanis Varoufakis]
https://unherd.com/2025/01/why-the-left-needs-to-watch-star-trek/

The Democratic Party disappoints us so frequently because it's what remains after principled Democrats who'd fight for us—and who therefore threaten the rich—are swamped by opposition spending in primaries (Cori Bush) or if that fails, locked out of leadership (AOC).

This frame helps clarify that the problem isn't that individuals like Pelosi and Schumer just happen to be bad. Rather, the party is the outcome of a system of billionaire spending that filters out anyone who wouldn't be like that.

@futzle Ohoho, I didn't think to go to the video's page on YouTube! This comment by Kayr Herkert sounds dead on:

« The 2 little black thingies are pellets that neutralize chemical gasses that can be produced when a nimh cell is overcharged. » and then has a dead link to a PDF about potassium hydroxide pellets.

My gut has been saying that these are used for their chemical nature, based on how they looked like a compressed powder. But I couldn't figure out what that would be!

Excellent find!

While disassembling my toothbrush, I came across an oddity. What are these little gray cylinders?

They're held loosely captive in a pocket of the plastic, not touching any other component. They're lightweight, rigid, non-magnetic, and maybe composed of something granular.

What the heck?

By contrast, a single average-size query (~100 words answer size) to GPT-3 produces 1.5 gCO2e (https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16894), or about 30x more; a 10,000-word answer would produce 3000x more CO2 than that hour of video. For GPT-4, it would be another three times worse.

So, in short, an LLM query has a much higher footprint than streaming video.

(5/5)

#FrugalComputing

I would still love to get some more eyes on this draft alternative Passover haggadah I put together.

https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZ5FVwZS4CESqy24ayP01Q5dGKMkj8RBo5y

Any and all feedback would be welcome! Please and thank you.

John Roberts Thinks Judges Should Be Spared Criticism; While Ignoring What He Has Unleashed - https://www.techdirt.com/2025/01/07/john-roberts-thinks-judges-should-be-spared-criticism-while-ignoring-what-he-has-unleashed/

Science paper piracy site Sci-Hub shares lots of retracted papers - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/01/science-paper-piracy-site-sci-hub-shares-lots-of-retracted-papers/ that's because academic publishers make it hard to share the final corrected versions... #openaccess

If you're an Apple user and I spoof your phone number in a call to the legitimate Apple Customer Support line (800-275-2273), I can force Apple to send you a system level "Apple Account Confirmation" prompt to all of your signed-in devices.

This approach is commonly used by a prolific voice phishing group to convince targets they really are in a support call with an Apple representative.

Today's deep dive into this weird world was made possible in part by a series of live phishing videos, tutorials and other secrets that show in unprecedented detail how these voice phishing scams can be so convincing.

Please share this story widely, because I learned a ton reporting this and frankly the various methods used by these groups to dox and target people are really slick.

From the story: "Besieged by scammers seeking to phish user accounts over the telephone, Apple and Google frequently caution that they will never reach out unbidden to users this way. However, new details about the internal operations of a prolific voice phishing gang show the group routinely abuses legitimate services at Apple and Google to force a variety of outbound communications to their users, including emails, automated phone calls and system-level messages sent to all signed-in devices."

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/01/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-prolific-voice-phishing-crew/

https://youtu.be/F44un1_y2fs

Good news for desert conservation. I've been waiting for this new California monument for a long time.

https://cvindependent.com/2025/01/a-preservation-victory-the-chuckwalla-national-monument-has-finally-been-designated-by-president-biden/

Hey friends. If you know someone who is looking for a software and cybersecurity worker with 20+ years experience, please let me know. Many thanks.