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Dr. WiFi. Linux kernel hacker at Red Hat. Networking, XDP, etc. He/Him.

“What are we going to build now – those of us who still care about diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and giving consumers the power? Can we still put our HTML & CSS to good use? Can we get back to building a web where people have *agency* instead of *inhuman agents*?”
“Tech continues to be political” – https://www.miriamsuzanne.com/2025/02/12/tech-ai-wtf/

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“I promise, America will soon be the Cybertruck of countries—uglier than you could have imagined, built for rich chuds, borderline inoperable, and on fire. “

Here at DOGE, We’ve Streamlined Every Aspect of America’s Collapse - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/here-at-doge-weve-streamlined-every-aspect-of-americas-collapse

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Before crowbars were invented, crows would drink at home.

The local crowbar was shut down because of all the murders.

Police are still investigating the caws.

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While I don’t consider myself leftist*, this was worth reading.

*: As with many other labels, it depends on definitions / who you compare with.

https://jksteinberger.medium.com/a-few-points-for-the-left-bed0357de8e1

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Edited 19 days ago

A Danish baker from Videbæk is selling orange "Kvaje" Cakes, which literally means "fuck up cakes", shaped like the idiot from The White House.

Trump really is an international phenomenon — hated by the entire planet.

https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/ringkoebing-skjern/var-det-noget-med-en-bid-af-trump-bager-kommer-med-soed-stikpille

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All that and more in this issue of Citation Needed. If you found this helpful, please consider signing up for a free or pay-what-you-want subscription. Citation Needed is an independent publication, entirely supported by readers like you.

https://www.citationneeded.news/signup/

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There’s been a lot of talk about “Wokeness” lately & it’s given me some feelings.

Will people who used to support or tolerate me turn against me, out of a desire to conform or show obeisance to the prevailing winds?

I Met Paul Graham Once: http://okayfail.com/2025/i-met-pg-once.html

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So, it would be a fair cop to say that I am one of the petite bourgeoisie. This has allowed me to do things like buy shares of companies because I want to keep track of what's going on in their shareholder meetings.

And I've noticed something. All of the shareholder proposals to drop programs, stop charitable contributions to leftist organizations, et.al., seem to be coming from one place: The National Center for Public Policy Research.

The is a privately funded and held charity that doesn't reveal it's donors. It's a pretty far, into extreme, right wing policy churn engine responsible for bullying some of the world's largest companies into getting rid of DEI or facing lawsuits from them. What makes them so powerful that companies like AT&T have folded before the shareholders have had a chance to vote?

I'm really surprised that there's not a major media story about this.

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Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Edited 29 days ago

Are you fucking kidding me?

Jack Dorsey is a main track speaker at FOSDEM this year:
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4507-infusing-open-source-culture-into-company-dna-a-conversation-with-jack-dorsey-and-manik-surtani-block-s-head-of-open-source/

🤮

I am at a loss of words. I also owe sincere apologies to everyone flagging issues with FOSDEM over the years, whose concerns I often somewhat minimized. I am sorry, you were all right and I was wrong.

FOSDEM is now explicitly platforming AI/blockchain bro fascists. 🤬

👉 Edit: Drew DeVault is organizing a sit-in, and explains why: https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares-at-FOSDEM-please.html

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mitmproxy mitmproxy 11.1 is out! 🥳

We now support *Local Capture Mode* on Windows, macOS, and - new - Linux! This allows users to intercept local applications even if they don't have proxy settings.

On Linux, this is done using eBPF and https://aya-rs.dev/, more details are at https://mitmproxy.org/posts/local-capture/linux/. Super proud of this team effort. 😃

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‘There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things, including yourself. That’s what sin is.’

‘It’s a lot more complicated than that—’

‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.’

‘Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—’

‘But they STARTS with thinking about people as things ...’


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In case you do not know how GenAI works, here is a very abridged description:
First you train your model on some inputs. This is using some very fancy linear algebra, but can be seen as mostly being a regression of some sorts, i.e. a lower dimensional approximation of the input data.
Once training is completed, you have your model predict the next token of your output. It will do so by creating a list of possible tokens, together with a rank of how good of a fit the model considers the specific token to be. You then randomly select from that list of tokens, with a bias to higher ranked tokens. How much bias your random choice has depends on the "temperature" parameter, with a higher temperature corresponding to a less biased, i.e. more random selection.

Now obviously, this process consumes a lot of randomness, and the randomness does not need to be cryptographically secure, so you usually use a statistical random number generator like the Mersenne twister at this step.

So when they write "using a Gen AI model to produce 'true' random numbers", what they're actually doing is using a cryptographically insecure random number generator and applying a bias to the random numbers generated, making it even less secure. It's amazing that someone can trick anyone into investing into that shit.

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🧵 uses too much pesticides.
But 3 individuals changed the landscape because they didn't stayed isolated. It was the solution seekers, the cooperators, the people with the glass of wine, and the great-grandmas who influenced our mayor.
All of this still has to prove itself. But it gives me courage. And it shows that I don't have to stay alone if I want to change something.
Some of this hope I want to send to you for the difficult new year!

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The era of ChatGPT is kind of horrifying for me as an instructor of mathematics... Not because I am worried students will use it to cheat (I don't care! All the worse for them!), but rather because many students may try to use it to *learn*.

For example, imagine that I give a proof in lecture and it is just a bit too breezy for a student (or, similarly, they find such a proof in a textbook). They don't understand it, so they ask ChatGPT to reproduce it for them, and they ask followup questions to the LLM as they go.

I experimented with this today, on a basic result in elementary number theory, and the results were disastrous... ChatGPT sent me on five different wild goose-chases with subtle and plausible-sounding intermediate claims that were just false. Every time I responded with "Hmm, but I don't think it is true that [XXX]", the LLM responded with something like "You are right to point out this error, thank you. It is indeed not true that [XXX], but nonetheless the overall proof strategy remains valid, because we can [...further gish-gallop containing subtle and plausible-sounding claims that happen to be false]."

I know enough to be able to pinpoint these false claims relatively quickly, but my students will probably not. They'll instead see them as valid steps that they can perform in their own proofs.

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Volkswagen left an unprotected database with up to two years of sensitive personal data on 800k networked VW, Seat, Audi and Skoda cars accessible online, including names, user IDs, sensor and geolocation data.

CCC talk by @fluepke and @michaelkreil (in German):
https://streaming.media.ccc.de/38c3/relive/598

Spiegel article:
https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/volkswagen-konzern-datenleck-wir-wissen-wo-dein-auto-steht-a-e12d33d0-97bc-493c-96d1-aa5892861027

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If you somehow missed it, this is a political ad of the German party the richest man in the world has thrown his weight behind.

If you don’t see the roman salutes in the picture, you are part of the problem and not the solution.

#88

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we just stopped at a restaurant near the autobahn to hamburg to eat something and say that the MNT Reform Next campaign (it's our new 26mm thick 13" open hardware laptop) just went live aaaaa! https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next

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I have had engineers tell me with a straight face "maps are not political." My dude, there is NOTHING MORE POLITICAL THAN MAPS.

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The Open Source Movement has proven that, in a technical context, sharing and transparency has tremendous advantages and benefits for everyone involved.

It is time for governments, societies, economies, cultures, families and individuals alike to take these ideals of cooperation to heart, so we can all thrive as a species. Let's work together, not against one another.

We can do this.

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