Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

A moment of gratitude for the amazing @vkc - whose video tutorials are simply illuminating.

As a clueless self-hosting newbie I often ask for advice here on the Fediverse… and get really helpful feedback but most of the time it reads like a foreign language to me (a non-dev).

Well, Veronica has perfected a way to talk to newbies.

Thank you Veronica for making me understand OpenSSH - at long last 🙌

I highly recommend her #PeerTube channel: https://tinkerbetter.tube/c/veronicaexplains/videos ❤️✨

I've had an above average level of education and I like school so it's worse for most people.

Mention a name? Who is that? Mention a state or organization? Who are they?

Adding more background to your posts can really expand the number of people who can engage with the topic.

Of course it's also good if you are simply helpful when asked dead simple questions. Eg. "Who is Maxwell?" or "What is a primary?"

But most of the time people WILL NOT ask.

"Page 9 has a diagram of how AI investment is distributed across a business. Most of it goes to sales and marketing. And they spend the money on … spam." @davidgerard

As a personal benchmark, I've seen an annoying spike in spam emails and phone calls over the past year. The former are mostly templated pitches with a dash of personalization, while the latter are just irrelevant spam on steroids.

https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/08/21/mit-on-enterprise-ai-95-failure-5-spam/

FERC: Solar + wind made up 91% of new US power generating capacity to end of May 2025 - https://electrek.co/2025/08/21/ferc-solar-wind-made-up-91-of-new-us-power-generating-capacity-to-end-of-may-2025/ (v slashdot) #renewables

Is sales tax really what's keeping Danes from reading more? Seems unlikely...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/denmark-to-abolish-vat-on-books-in-effort-to-get-more-people-reading

What the heck happened to 9-axis inertial sensors?

I can find only 1 at digikey and it's
1. on its way out
2. pricey

#electronics

This #BlackAugust we're reading the zine Freeing Assata from Philly Anticap.

In it they discuss the history of the Shakur family, Assata Shakur's daring escape from prison, Russell Maroon Shoatz, the Black Liberation Army, and anti-prison struggles.

https://phlanticap.noblogs.org/zine-freeing-assata/

.pdf available here:

https://phlanticap.noblogs.org/files/2025/04/freeingassatascreen.pdf

The 4th Amendment matters in the digital age. Michigan Supreme Court joins a growing consensus: warrants for cell phones must be limited in scope. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/08/fourth-amendment-victory-michigan-supreme-court-reins-digital-device-fishing-1

HBD to Russell Maroon Shoatz! From the Black Liberation Movement to decades of unjust imprisonment, his revolutionary insights on liberation, prisons, and social change remain a guide for collective freedom. Explore related titles at https://pmpress.org.

made a perky little musical number about how cute local farms you trust ❤️ can still give you the shits & shred your kidneys

https://youtube.com/shorts/Pm8iu-NuWxA?feature=share

Just casual weekend sale things...

@jwildeboer You are all like little babies. The first thing I do is go to the last machine and "cat /etc/LOG" and then do all the things I did there. And if anything is different it goes into "cat >> /etc/LOG".

groupadd, useradd, echo 'jwz ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL' >> /etc/sudoers, all that shit is cut and paste now.

Log everything is what I'm saying. If you did it, write it down. In a text file. On slash.

Question for you!

What are the first few commands you immediately do after setting up a new Linux/*BSD machine? I don't care if you do it manually or automated with Ansible. I am just curious about what you deem to be the critical first thing :)

Me:
- feed my ssh keys to /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
- immediately change /etc/ssh/sshd_config to set
* PermitRootLogin Yes,
* PubKeyAuthentication Yes,
* PasswordAuthentication No.
- reboot

Curious what you do first :)

#SelfHost #Admin

At least two major hotel sites -- Marriott and Hilton -- refuse to work (apparently) because I block ads and trackers.

Microsoft betrays the naive developers who trusted its word:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/githubs-fall-microsofts-ai-takeover-developer-betrayal-dion-wiggins-oyetc

Here things get really interesting, slippery.

For some in orgs & movements transitioning to self-hosted infra, the uncertainty & doubt defers to their own crew because the figure of the tech giant, the brand & its culture, is too depersonalised, amorphous - abstract - to ascribe distrust to

So it follows that once again we see tech-literacy being a crucial bridge to positive change. We cannot make healthy platform choices if we cannot read nor understand what, where & *who* a platform is

3/3

What a massively sleazy company Uber is -- see this breakdown of how it profits by systematically screwing drivers and riders.

https://len-sherman.medium.com/how-uber-became-a-cash-generating-machine-ef78e7a97230

Take a taxi, if you can still find one.

Costco announced they will not stock mifepristone in their pharmacies. Contrary to viral social media posts, this IS a big deal and it DOES mean that they caved to pressure from far-right MAGA anti-woman conservatives. Here I go over the evidence and what you can do https://skepchick.org/2025/08/costco-gives-misogynists-a-win-by-not-selling-abortion-medication/

For pete's sake, @mozilla : if you want to measure whether the AI/ML features are worth a damn, put a big green "disable all AI in my browser" button on the version update screen and put some telemetry around how many people instantly click it.

Just about everyone I know who has taken the 142 update is working through about:config menus to toggle off everything under browser.ml.* and grumbling about it, or just straight-up abandoning Firefox in exasperation.

Turn the ship around. *Please*.

#USpol #Texas #Gerrymandering #Redistricting #Disenfranchisement

Ossum speech:

"Texas State Rep. #AnnJohnson clapped back at #GOP members amid Wednesday's redistricting vote.

“If you knew you could win this next election, you wouldn’t be taking this effort to try to steal five seats from elected officials that members of color elected to represent them in Washington D.C.”

https://youtube.com/shorts/GCcddd7Eqow

@democracydocket
@democratsabroad
@indivisibleteam