Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

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.

A rare #Android encounter: I spent two days unlocking and #rooting a donated phone with the help of Russian forums, just to find out that it doesn't support USB host mode in the end. No free microscope display for me today.

On a side note, Android is crazy snappy compared to any computer I used after 2000. There's no delay between touching the screen and the sound feedback. This should never get forgotten in #linuxmobile

Meta axes third-party fact-checkers in time for second Trump term - Ars Technica

Meta will also "work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more,"

A global war of American billionaires, backed by the US government, against the rest of the world, propaganda division.

#democracy #propaganda

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/meta-axes-third-party-fact-checkers-in-time-for-second-trump-term/

All the time I spend worrying about Trump destroying the US is really cutting into the time I should be spending worrying about climate change destroying the world.

Really like how #libvirt's

virsh migrate --copy-storage-all myvm qemu+ssh://user@whatever.new.host/system is simpler than scp/rsyncing things over.

The #Forgejo monthly update was published ✨ It is a high level overview of the project activities.

All the best for the new year from Forgejo. We are in the preparations for the upcoming v10 release, have improved testing and automation. A a big thanks to everyone who makes Forgejo a success, including upstream projects and libraries Forgejo depends on.

https://forgejo.org/2024-12-monthly-update/

TBH I struggle with the indignant toots in the fedi about Zucks latest kowtowing. Like, when has that dude ever been anything but an opportunistic douche canoe? Why is anyone surprised? This rant is from 2011 y'all: https://www.laurahilliger.com/techie/fuck-you-facebook/

Butlerian Jihad when?

https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1ht7fft/used_meta_ai_to_edit_a_selfie_now_instagram_is/#lightbox

Reducing financial assets in the economy is good for you if you make your bones by renting out scarce financial resources to the needy masses. If you're one of those needy masses, not so much. Which is why both the Dems and Repubs have been in lock-step claiming that the Federal gov't running a deficit (i.e. putting more money into the economy than taking out) is a bad thing, and somehow "indebting future generations." Their shared rhetoric has set the stage for this DOGE nonsense.

For everyone freaking out about DOGE and gov't budget cuts that are (probably) coming, I would just like to take this opportunity to point out that the narrative -- spread as much by Dems as by Repubs -- that the federal budget deficit is too big and somehow problematic is what allows these kinds of policies to flourish. This is why I've been explaining MMT and national accounting to people for the last decade.

Revolution when?

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/01/health-insurers-limit-coverage-of-prosthetic-limbs-questioning-their-medical-necessity.html

Mourning Steve Langasek

https://lwn.net/Articles/1004297/ #LWN

I have encountered more image descriptions on Mastodon in 24 hours than I have in Twitter in a couple of years. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating.
As a blind person, this means a lot to me. If you read this and you describe your images, thank you so, so, so much on behalf of all of us. If you don't, now you know you'll be helping random Internet strangers make sense of your posts by typing in a few more words than usual.