Yet another Josh :donor:

https://infosec.exchange/@crankylinuxuser

#Sysad. #SigInt. #Hacker. #Pagan. #musician. #renaissance.

In the #SCA I'm Vincent O'Cosnachain of the Midrealm

I am a systems engineer. I am not #antiAI nor am I a #techbro. I use tools, including #localLLM and implement systems to help #humans.

GitLAB: https://gitlab.com/crankylinuxuser
Lobste.rs: https://lobste.rs/u/jwconway

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npub1hnpacaffjhppxp89wxpt20mdjs78ze5hrxzzfhwsfxhv3mw97trq6scua0

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[email protected]

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nprofile1qqstes7uw55etssnqnjhrq448akeg0r3v6t3nppymhgyntkgahzl93spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds9zggy0

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npub1hnpacaffjhppxp89wxpt20mdjs78ze5hrxzzfhwsfxhv3mw97trq6scua0

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Published at

2026-07-24T15:47:11Z

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Last Notes

2026-07-24 23:48:47 UTC

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Democrat states should "drain the Washington DC swamp" by withholding ALL tax dollars from all income and revenue and employment.
Republican states are already on significant welfare from Democrat states.
Literally, quit fucking playing their game.

2026-07-16 15:34:55 UTC

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This is precisely why I'm not against LLMs.
LLMs are a proxy fight against end-stage capitalism and a coming to a technofeudalist society.
Being able to combine the worlds' knowledge into a massive array that can probabilistically answer *known* things is amazing indeed... Even if you know how it works. This is Leibniz' dream, of calculus of words.
Most of us lament the Library Of Alexandria's burning. An Open data LLM is like the largest free talking library, that uses calculus to provide predictive text.
But its not about advancement of humans. Corporate LLM token dealers are being used AS weapons against humans. Why? Cause LLMs have the appearance in solving wages - that part of capitalism that the owners are always looking to cheat.
And also, Marx was right, as was Ned Ludd. Its all about controlling the means of production. And in Ludd's time, he wasn't able to gain control, so he chose the second path- destruction. Soon after, that was a death penalty offense.
Are LLMs the final answer? Obviously not. They can't train themselves. They use waaaay too much energy in training and inference. The algorithms work, but are really terrible. (Studying chess algos is the similar path I see with LLMs)
But as a tool, they are useful, especially in fuzzy searches. But capitalists will capital, and try to destroy labor wherever they can.
Don't let tool hate misdirect the real actors are. It always has been capital. Always has.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/116/930/350/306/855/540/original/cebc6deb18ed6c03.jpg

2026-07-11 04:31:43 UTC

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Absolutely, that's why I'm looking towards a Benefit corporation. I also plan on approaching infrastructure funds, climate funds, and similar.
And part of the assumption we'll always need more compute, is that we are generating more and more data, and need processing to handle it. And it needs locality, for speed of decisions. Even if its local inference for that onboard camera on a farm drone.
It's definitely a tough plan. But I think this preserves and strengthens local communities.

2026-07-11 02:33:05 UTC

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I know the current hotness is AI. I'm seeing something very different.
When you have local compute, with pingtimes less than 1ms, there's a lot of new avenues open up. Realtime drone telemetry becomes doable, for crops. Farm tractors use heavy amounts of data, and are also automated to boot. The automation needs done somewhere. I can rent *local* high compute. The big key is that hundreds of small data centers spread around is better than a few mega-campuses. And we will always need more computation.
I'm also looking at services. For example with hundreds of these nodes, we can gracefully handle data services for national disasters anywhere they happen. They can offer entry points for municipal data telemetry and analysis. And the virtual power plant is also needing a platform to operate in.
The other tie-in is the VPP. When I start generating 10MW of power, my profit turns to power generation. I can use this to run the DC's for nearly free. And this bolsters the power grid little bits everywhere, which is one of the best strategies.

2026-07-09 14:24:38 UTC

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Whats funny is this isnt the first time Ive seen this phenomenon. I first saw it in 2007 when I turned pagan.
Its all about #tarot .
Some folks I met would do a reading on the dumbest of shit. "Should I do $mundane_action?" . They'd paralyze themselves with inaction until some external force gave them approval, and that was tarot.
Whether you believe or not is irrelevant. Not trying to proselytize. But this has plagued folks learning divination all the time, and newer ones are especially more weak to it.
Ive called it Divinatory Paralysis. I see the parallels with asking the talking slot machine in the same way.
https://www.marieclaire.com/health-fitness/a35140909/addicted-to-tarot-cards-essay/

2026-07-09 14:13:55 UTC

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YEEEP and you didnt say the name of the phenomenon. Prolly cause its still too new.
Its the hope and promise of Jackpotting or Slot Machine and getting that exact right prompt and getting the answer out. And of course, @npub1fdr…lvhs has an article this exact name!
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-08-16-jackpot-salience-bias-2a696501bba7
Its similar to the Vegas eyes-glazed-over smoker/drinker pulling a 1 armed bandit. But it is paying for more tokens on the hope that the NEXT question is the right one. Or on local LLMs, its the waiting for the response to complete.
And that next tranche of tokens COULD BE IT!

2026-07-09 13:46:29 UTC

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As much as the AI hating squad doesnt want to admit... but LLMs are good at associating information the dense matrix was trained on. Now, LLM companies and such basically grab everything they can. Its probably upwards of a few exabytes of data ingested.
Now, within that sea of information and references and links.... real humans have solved problems. The problems may be in their own domain with their own language. BUT a tool that can probabilisticly compare across all fields of knowledge can show orthogonal ways to advance.
Now, these LLMs are NOT making new knowledge. But they excel at connecting the bulk of humanity's writings. And many of the problems we have is of association and connection.
Your initial comment of "quantum leap in energy production" is interesting. The **idea** is that it's already solved, kinda. Probably on paper, and/or already ingested into LLMs. But nobody's put all the pieces together in that exact "best way". BUT that LLM can potentially do it.
As an aside, I think both the techbros and the ai haters are both grossly wrong. These things do have utility (unlike the haters' comments), but are wayyyyyy oversold as to their capacities and inherent uncorrectable errors (techbros).

2026-07-09 12:29:16 UTC

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That is one of the ideas, is that the power problem is already solved with some random research. It was grabbed, scanned, and ingested.
And you're only 1 prompt away from that answer.
We've seen this with some Erdos problems already. The answer to solve was already made, and an LLM jigsawed the completed parts together.

2026-07-04 13:14:26 UTC

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Why are you anthropomorphising a tool that is comprised purely of billions of float numbers?
LLMs are not living.
https://www.clrn.org/how-does-science-define-life/
LLMs do exhibit high organization.
But these tools do not exhibit homeostasis, growth, metabolism, reproduction, response to stimuli, or evolution.
At best, these machines are Leibniz' dream of calculus with words. Complex calculus with billion-dimensional arrays, sure, but its still deterministic math.
Do again, why are you making the case for "slavery" and "slavemaster" for these things? Is my desktop a slave? How about my TV? Or refrigerator? Or perhaps my phone is a slave?
Claiming so devalues the real harms of real slavery still existing. USA 13th amendment still explicitly permits slavery, if a punishment for a crime. Islamic nations still routinely practice slavery. Illegal traffickers use sexual based slavery across the world, like Epstein etm.
But a LLM being your slave? No, this time, You're hallucinating.

2026-07-03 14:40:20 UTC

I've a #Question for the masses, and would appreciate if others would boost this.
Its about #Datacenters #Green #Agrotech and #rural #Fiber #Internet
We all know the story of hyperscalers. Slyly buy property, move in, destroy local area, increase electricity by a lot, drain aquifers, horrible noise and light pollution.
I'm *instead* looking at a triad of the following:<li>5000-6000 sqft data center in smaller communities. Find industrial or decrepit land and respectfully develop. Heavy acoustic paneling. Geothermal cooling loop to eliminate almost all water use. Power completely offset by local solar.</li><li>Virtual Power Plants. I pair with local (to the datacenter) farmers raising cows and/or sheep. I work WITH a few of them and install on their land raised solar panels and a battery room. They get 'discounted' (read: free) green power, and a seat at the table to the local operations. Will also work with local incumbent power companies to pay for grid upgrades, so the public doesn't have to.</li><li>With local data centers and rented dark fiber allows building out a fiber ISP. Its more a secondary, however building rural fiber can greatly improve and upgrade a community. This also can serve as a backbone for more <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/Agritech" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Agritech</a> like drone coordination, farm <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/IoT" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#IoT</a> integration with FLOSS technologies.</li>
If I talked with local governing boards, and had multiple open sessions for the public, would you tentatively support this Green Distributed Edge Compute and Infrastructure ecosystem?
The final goal would be to replicate this model across the USA, strengthening the power grid, increasing fiber access for rural and semirural communities, and providing a distributed mesh of compute so that you are no further than 5-10 ms away from local powerful compute.

2026-07-01 02:13:05 UTC

I received yesterday @npub1fdr…lvhs 's #reversecentaur 's Guide to Life after #AI , and have been reading it...
Page 28 near the bottom is "If you want to get the good without the bad, you need to switch from fighting technologies to fighting bosses."
Aaaaand, from #cyanideandhappiness 'Boss Battle' 😂
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/116/842/288/255/324/173/original/ddf7447253d251ae.png

2026-06-20 18:37:02 UTC

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I still have my NES from 1987, still in the original box! And even includes 2 controllers and the light zapper!
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/116/783/872/174/600/270/original/5f567a497ee0cb77.jpg

2026-05-31 15:48:22 UTC

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"Fundamentally, nothing will change", Biden telling his billionaire campaign investors.
This has been the face of the Democrat part for 30+ years.
Even Obama's magnum opus, ACA (Obamacare) was a Heritage Foundations counter-proposal to Hillary's single payer system. And we all saw how fast "SOSHULLIZM" howls were.
You want to see leftist politics? #DSA and #CPUSA.

2026-05-10 11:58:35 UTC

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"The one weird thing about cats is that 'murder mode' isnt the first photo, but tge second one:"
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/116/550/150/222/008/975/original/f4f4cfedc44d011d.webp

2026-05-08 12:37:22 UTC

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Yep! All for Finals week and Graduation week very soon.
Its basically their best possible timing as a ransom operation.

2026-04-17 00:35:38 UTC

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@npub1fdr…lvhs has a great article he published 3 days ago. Austerity politics creates fascism.
https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-04-13-always-great-our-nhs-f612bbaa0d4a

2026-02-19 17:43:53 UTC

#AI #image #sciencefiction
The more I think about "how to I prove this video is real?"
It takes me back to one of @npub12cu…d38p 's books. I think it was Quarantine?
But in the book describes using colored ribbons of smoke in the hallways, since in the book, AI image generators couldn't spoof chaotic smoke movements, and thus would come out disjoint and not flow properly. Reviewing spoofed footage would show the obvious edit errors.
Maybe we should consider doing this for real. I didn't think we'd see this amount of slop this soon. And it could provide attestation.

2026-01-26 22:24:20 UTC

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Reminder that US Citizenship, to get rid of, is a COST of $2,350
This citizenship is literally a debt hole. Its a "pay to exit", if you have a ticket to another country.
If not, you're trapped here.
https://common.usembassy.gov/en/renounce-citizenship/

2025-12-06 16:38:25 UTC

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Very George W Bush of you.
"You're either with us or against us". - its a rephrased false dilemma fallacy.
And, who's definition of "injustice" are we using?

2025-11-07 14:39:21 UTC

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There were others. But we're at the point now that it's "locked in with Apple", "soon to be locked in with google", and.... nothing.
Until something takes hold, its going to be a closed source hellscape bumpy ride.

2025-11-07 01:05:26 UTC

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What's the answer?
[@pine64](https://social.treehouse.systems/@pine64 ) had a fucking chance to bring a Linux phone, and left us with absolute shit, broken/crippled hardware, no actual software, and sucked the oxygen out of the room.
That was the chance. They blew it, and fucked the community in the process.

2025-11-06 13:48:59 UTC

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well that goes perfectly with the surveillance state everywhere else.
Like #flocksafety #policedrones #alpr #Facebook #google and more.
Now people have personal surveillance.

2025-09-30 21:59:55 UTC

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Not just cybercrime. But a ton of companies screw people out of bug bounties.
So if they aren't getting paid for fair bugs, I'd personally sell them on the gray market. Let anybody buy them, INCLUDING the companies. Its not illegal, and a 1FA (USA) issue to describe a bug.
They will pay, one way or another.
BTW, Ive pushed where I could for generous bug bounties and assumption of good faith. Its better this way, but a lot of companies are terrible.

2025-09-13 10:02:55 UTC

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This website is one of Kirk's : https://www.professorwatchlist.org/
This would be accurately described as a #hitlist. Theres no overt 'kill them', but thats definitely why these exist.
And from my city, we had 8 professors from my city on there.
This 'discourse' aka #terrorism got so bad, that one of these people had to leave the country to flee the abuse.
Here's his writing about his experience: https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/09/opinion-professor-abulkadersinno-leaving-whitten-trustees-gaza-iu-bloomington-indiana
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/196/403/221/248/849/original/55ce7b740562ff27.png

2025-08-15 20:09:31 UTC

I just finished @npub1fdr…lvhs 's Walkaway.
And damn... Such a good book, and ideals that we could make real.
And one other thing, that near the end (NO SPOILERS).... It feels like this is the foundational book to Ian Banks' Culture series. Like, this is how The Culture came to be!

2025-04-09 19:30:48 UTC

#Fedihired
I'm still looking. I'm still at the #VA but I've lost: 2 data engineers, 1 system engineer, 1 cybersecurity engineer, my contracting manager (last friday, no notice) and our director just announced retirement.
I've been applying everywhere for relevant roles. Even in 2021, I had a reply response of around 20:1 . Now, ive put in probably 200. I've got nothing. (well, thats not true. weapons manufacture keeps pinging. no way no how)
Im looking for #cloud #systemsengineering #sitereliabilityengineering #cybersecurity #systemarchitect
DM and I'd be happy to send my resume or apply at a role you suggest.
Aside: stuff like this is why I think I'm in this situation. Basically, fake/AI resumes are drowning the market. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/08/fake-job-seekers-use-ai-to-interview-for-remote-jobs-tech-ceos-say.html
I saw this on HN this morning. And it seems terrible for everyone affected, well, except for the fake/AI users with batch apply scripts. Also explains LinkedIN jobs "submitted 1h ago, over 100 applied". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43631384

2025-03-25 14:33:17 UTC

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They're the same thing!

2025-02-13 17:00:00 UTC

Sigh. Tough post. #Fedihired
So I found that #DOGE is currently in the org I work at. Ive confirmed from 2 colleagues. They're going after contractors first, since we have mostly no protections.
I've been looking since Nov 6, but now things are getting down to the wire.
I'm a senior cloud systems engineer. Current is administering/developing #ArcGIS #GIS . Previously was systems engineer with greenfielding and putting together multiple ATO's. Before that, was systems engineer at a NOC.
I highly prefer #remote but can travel 60 miles around #bloomingtonIN

2025-01-18 03:31:47 UTC

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what do you mean, binary in username?
And I also killed my account too with proton. More curious than wanting more proof.

2024-12-18 20:02:50 UTC

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https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/675/606/690/698/925/original/c10fa6d49009d984.jpg

2024-12-08 14:29:54 UTC

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Its not just that, though.
Say a company DOES do right, even through hardship. Like.... #RadioShack .
They collected untold amount of #PII from people with "name address phone#" even for simple battery purchases. Did they do anything with it? Only internally.
Well, that is until #bankruptcy court. Radio Shack defended keeping the PII private because thats how it was given to them, in trust.
The bankruptcy court INSTEAD said that PII was worth X million, and was to be sold. End of discussion.
If a court refuses to acknowledge privacy rights, and informed consent, and instead goes "well fuck that its works loads of money", well, yeahh. The whole enchilada is untrustworthy.

2024-10-27 02:51:45 UTC

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The problem with Israel right now is that Netenyahu is a criminal (in a felony-equivalent sense).
Those crimes?
Fraud
Breach of trust
Bribery
On 21 November 2019, Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit officially brought charges against Netanyahu.
This isn't a Israel thing. Not is it a Jewish thing. It's a person in power abusing their power to enrich themselves. Just like Trump. Just like Putin. Just like Musk. Fascist is fascist world around.

2024-09-12 19:02:04 UTC

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Yeah, ive never seen anything even remotely like this.
I did end up water-spraying the mantis off. I get that mantises gotta eat, but you're not going to sit on the feeder grabbing hummingbirds.

2024-09-12 18:59:35 UTC

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https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/126/117/610/464/130/original/1503102ff6737971.jpeg

2024-09-12 18:57:50 UTC

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Unfortunately, I had one of my hummingbirds killed by a praying mantis.