China is about to launch SSDs so small you insert them like a SIM card - https://www.theverge.com/news/759624/china-is-about-to-launch-ssds-so-small-you-insert-them-like-a-sim-card amazing
Trump regime apparatchiks would have to improve to be merely incompetent, exhibit 44,420:
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/16/nx-s1-5504196/trump-putin-summit-documents-left-behind
'It was embarrassing for Americans to welcome a notorious wanted war criminal on their territory. It was humiliating to watch an American president act like a happy puppy upon encountering the dictator of a much poorer, much less important state, treating him as a superior.'
14-day gift read
If journalists were doing their jobs, they would call the deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, DC, from three deep-red states what it is: an invasion and occupation force.
Inequality is bad for your health, even if you're rich.
While I'm generally very pro-EU, this #ChatControl initiative they keep pushing - despite experts having persistently debunking the rationale behind it - is indefensible.
Instead, this initiative will create an extremely invasive surveillance state where everything you type, view and receive is automatically scanned & potentially (falsely) flagged for human review.
This would mean the end of privacy.
If you are an EU-citizen, please consider writing to your MEPs.
I'd like to start manufacturing more LLM poison, but I'm a little bit sniped on where to get good source data.
Basically, I want to run Dissociated Press (markov-chain text generation) over some input sources, but I want to use sources that I can either a) find as public domain, or b) use under a combined license. For example, a bunch of code under the MIT license (the *same* MIT license) could all be churned up together.
I also want to ensure that the text's words and topics cover the space that LLMs will be called on to generate within. One approach would be to use English Wikipedia, for instance. Another would be to grab a bunch of Rust or Python source code that's all under the same license.
Those both involve more curation than I was hoping to do. Are there other sources I should be thinking of?
If you want help collecting some Gaps in the Linux Phone App Ecosystem, please contribute to this pad:
https://pad.hacc.space/XP5opplBQ3mWEpAcv47oSg#
(It's part of this #FrOSCon #FOSSonMobile Talk: https://programm.froscon.org/froscon2025/talk/0a60d401-814a-473d-af0c-5d6ac5913065/ (which won't be recorded, sadly).
#LinuxMobile
Support our comrades in publishing. Get 20% off all Distro titles thru 9/1/25 with code DISTRO at checkout.
Browse the entire catalog here: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_list&c=165
Stephen Miller is recruiting an army of pants-pissers. https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/8/15/2338519/-Cartoon-Join-the-war-on-US-cities
While the new ChatGPT might not be 20X better than the old versions, it just might take 20X the power to use.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/08/how-much-energy-does-chatgpts-newest-model-consume.html
Oh gee, never saw this one coming...
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/15/g-s1-83087/otter-ai-transcription-class-action-lawsuit
“We’ve already seen AI systems effectively collude to raise rent prices and point the finger at innocent black men based on faulty facial recognition tech,” EFF’s Kit Walsh told @SFPublicPress. AI recreates patterns in its training data, including biases. https://www.sfpublicpress.org/california-pushes-ai-regulation-as-experts-reveal-looming-dangers/
This is great. It reminds me of some of the complex hinged 3D-printed objects that come out as a single print.
https://hackaday.com/2025/08/15/liberating-a-collapsible-chair-from-a-single-piece-of-wood/
Newly released documents shed more light on previous efforts by Trump’s DOJ to undermine a key law protecting internet users’ speech. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/08/new-documents-show-first-trump-doj-worked-congress-amend-section-230
#ShlaerMellor, #FunctionPointAnalysis, #punk, #environmentalist, #unionAdvocate, #anarchosocialist
"with a big old lie and a flag and a pie and a mom and a bible most folks are just liable to buy any line, any place, any time" - Frank Zappa