Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

@ludicity @Riduidel i know of *one* study that bothered actually measuring actual time to do things with LLM coding, and that's the METR study and it's got a low n=16 and is full of caveats

but I see LLM advocates (a) pooh pooh it utterly for 1000 reasons (b) absolutely never run a single study themselves to the same degree of rigour

must be a reason for (a) but never (b)

Plastic recycling is a lie (and always has been).

The combination of federal funding cuts and rising prices is making it difficult for many food pantries to meet rising needs. Please consider supporting your local food pantry during this busy holiday season: https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank

MerrAI Christmas everyone!

If I understand this correctly the reason RAM has quadrupled in price is that a huge quantity of RAM that hasn't been produced yet has been bought to populate GPUs that also haven't been produced yet to go in datacenters that haven't been built yet that will be powered by infrastructure that might never exist to meet a demand that doesn't exist at all to make profit margins that mathematically can't exist and economists talk about this thing they call the "rational markets hypothesis".

FYI, some of us will be present at the #39c3 in Hamburg, Germany.

https://39c3.c3nav.de/l/codeberg

@davidgerard I think it's worth a screenshot of Galen's actual job listing on LinkedIn, for those unlikely to click further:

Online shopping 2025.

🤵 Orders something online.
🏬 Want to track the order?
🤵 Yes!
🏬 Scan this code:
🤵Uh, okay.
🏬 Download our app to track your order.
🤵 Ugh.. alright..
🏬 Before you can use our app you need an account!
🤵 Never mind!

Data data harvesting, it's all data harvesting.

MIT Technology Review profiles @rondeibert who understood that civil society needed digital defense long before just about anyone else and has been doing it ever since.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/24/1129294/ronald-deibert-citizen-lab-digital-threats-spies-cybersecurity/

What asshat decided that user name and password should now always be on separate pages? How does this make anything better? Fuck you.

On the heels of @demo_fest we are announcing another project:

January 2026 is Fediverse Punk Month!!

We encourage all hardcore punk underground DIY adherents to try spending January on the Fediverse with us. If you've been dabbling, try doubling-down. If you are already confident here, then spread the word and bring your friends. Let's get some collective momentum going!

https://allpunkspleaseleavemeta.com has the pitch, info, and physical and digital flyers to share.

Sharing this around the Fediverse is great, but we really hope you will share this with people off the Fediverse! Post on other social media, and/or print out the physical flyers and distribute to local punks.

The distance between #Dublin and #London is 464 miles, #asthecrowflies.

But as #GretaThunberg learnt today, it's about a million miles in politics.

In Dublin, #PresidentConnolly regards the #genocide in #Gaza as a horror. But in London, the #CityOfLondonPolice treat opposition to genocide as #Terrorism. So #Greta went from a presidential welcome in #Ireland to arrest in #England/#UK.

#aTaleOfTwoCities #iepol #ukpol

I offer Cassandra's Complete Class Theorem¹.

All "good use cases for AI" break down into one of four categories:

I. Bad use case.
II. Good use case, but not something AI can do.
III Good use case, but it's already been done without AI.
IV. Not AI in the LLMs and GANs sense, but in the sense of machine learning, statistical inference, or other similarly valid things AI boosters use to shield from critique.

https://wandering.shop/@xgranade/115766140296237983

___
¹Not actually a theorem.

I wrote a bit about the "one good use of LLMs" (namely, a bunch of different "one good uses") I keep seeing and why those aren't good, actually.

https://alextheward.com/blog/llms_are_a_cognitohazard/

A lot of this boils down to "if you care about accuracy and learning, you shouldn't be using an LLM for anything".

"I came across this information using my Spotify which has also been hacked into and
would love your help hacking out of Spotify. Also, I have yet to figure out how to unhack the hackers from my Instagram"

"Please keep in mind that Facebook owns Instagram and these are big companies that you likely don’t want to have a trail of evidence that you are a part of an Instagram and Spotify hacking ring. Also, Spotify is a major partner of Spotify so you are likely familiar with the coding for all of these illegally developed third party apps."

https://daniel.haxx.se/email/2016-01-19.html

From the apt-list-changes for util-linux in Debian 13:

« The mesg(1) and write(1) programs are no longer provided. It is believed chatting between users is nowadays done using more secure facilities. »

A little sad, but very cute.

Migrating a large accretion of complex blog post content between platforms is a draining demoralising experience. It turns out that we, as web developers, are capable of creating byzantine platforms which give diligent blog writers the ability to create hours and hours of unrewarding work that is so cryptically & diversely broken that no script can be written to make sense of the mess.

Enjoy your holidays if you're in a cultural context where that sort of thing happens right now.

When you sign up to become a Friend of PM, we’ll send you books monthly, and you'll get 50% off of everything on our website year-round. You’ll also receive the Always Antifascist benefit scarf as a free gift if you sign up this month.
Sign Up Here: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_list&c=139

RE: https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission/115768059949620435

And if you want to help make sure this actually happens, and doesn't just stay a laundry list of wishes, come join us at the European Rail Passengers Union where we are bringing passengers together to advocate for the trains we all need and deserve: https://erpu.eu/