Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

At the risk of restating the obvious: the AI companies are spending $100 billion in a single quarter on data centres because they plan to use them at capacity to maximise profits. Therefore the actual energy and water cost of an individual query is irrelevant: the purpose of installing >10 GW of new data centre capacity per year globally is to use it fully. Ditto for the generation capacity needed to power them: it will be used, if not for data centres, then for something else.

#FrugalComputing

What's all this now?
https://newpublic.substack.com/p/how-blacksky-grew-to-millions-of

I don't actually understand the article after a quick skim, but I'm guessing from Christine LemmerWebber's analysis of how Bluesky really isn't decentralized that Blacksky isn't either?

If anyone knows more, I'd be curious to hear.

#blacksky #bluesky #fediverse #decentralization #socialmedia

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

Last night I fell asleep listening to the latest episode of the Vergecast, which covered the #GooglePixel 10 phone & how it’s « AI stuffed ».

What did I dream about?

That I was browsing AI-generated photos on my phone. They seemed pointless and absurd (like: a mini car sitting on a car seat).

Then a white overlay appeared on screen, showing the energy consumption it took to generate the photos.

I remember screaming when I read « 100 liters » (22 gallons)… and then I woke up 😐

#NoAI

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.