Scrounger

Pretty crazy story.

Here's a short film about the situation made by the Whistleblower:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmEPNAy3RtA

> Changing email providers sounds daunting, but it was relatively painless

If you have your own custom domain, changing providers is pretty easy, IMO. In fact, the portability factor is probably the best benefit of having your own domain.

> I'm running these things in headless VMs

What's your setup like and what do you use it for?

I have a M2 Max MBP with plenty of ram and I use VSCode + Zoo Code plugin with Qwen3-Coder-Next-GGUF:UD-Q4_K_XL to run local agentic coding sessions, but I'm intrigued by being able to run headless as I could probably run multiple instances in parallel to do stuff?

Like are you using UTM with some pre-built VM and a local LLM?

Curious.

Location: San Diego, CA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Maybe.

Technologies: I'm a full-stack growth marketer with enough coding chops to prototype MVPs. Worked in the blockchain sector for the past 7 years and would like to transition into an AI-enabled consumer product.

Some of my writing (before AI/LLMs) straight from the dome: https://medium.com/@dilanka

In other words, I'm a straight up marketing nerd.

Resume/Work: https://tinyurl.com/bdzez9cv

Email: [email protected]

Interesting site/challenge; however, I had trouble browsing and finding "what to do" in a reasonable time.

I recently spent like $170 giving a new lease on life to a 15-year-old Lenovo S10-3 Ideapad with a 1-core Intel Atom CPU, 2GB of RAM, a WiFi card, and a 250GB SSD running AntiX Linux in TTY/Command Line mode.

So far, I've turned it into a picture/frame + vision board running Tailscale so I could SSH in and/or rsync stuff.

I am also attempting to run a no-AI version of Pwnagotchi to pwn WiFi networks.

I am also using it as an always-on appliance that does stuff like rsync/backup my entire server, run lightweight Python scripts to check the uptime and days until domain expiration, etc., on a set of websites I own and would like to own, etc.

I have all of this stuff connected to a Telegram bot that reports to me.

It's an interesting set of constraints, and you can surprisingly do a lot of cool stuff.

> I recommend Magic Earth.

LOL Bruh... this has a 1.7 rating on Android based on 42k reviews

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.generalmag...

> Like allowing apps to restrict screenshots. I own the phone. If I want a screenshot, it should screenshot. This is not something for apps or Google to determine, and if the OS listens to me (not the app) it should allow screenshotting the display 100% of the time regardless of what the app cries about.

PREACH!

I hate this.

> What about banking Apps? No problem there?

Most banking apps work, but Google Pay/NFC payments won't work.

> May God protect us.

Today, data systems and algorithms can be deployed at unprecedented scale and speed. Unintended consequences will affect people with that same scale and speed

—Michael Chapman

> Also M2 batteries are about maybe halfway done already unless the refurb replaced the battery.

My mom still uses a 2019 Macbook Air with 8GB of RAM. The battery requires servicing, but she's unaware and still using it just fine. I asked her to go to the Apple Store and get the battery replaced along with her iPhone 12 Pro Max battery, and she'll easily get 10 years out of each device.

> why Apple has nearly wiped it off their site all together, seriously go check out apple.com, not a single mention of Apple Intelligence.

TBF, the reason Apple removed "Apple Intelligence" is that they failed to deliver on its promises.

So much so that they just settled their false advertising in a class action lawsuit for $250M:

https://archive.is/efWkb

Also, P.S: Not to say that clothing/shopping is the primary use case, but I know plenty of women who use AI for clothes/fashion/interior decoration etc related tasks.

I've been running qwen3.6:35b-a3b-q4_K_M (22.3GB) via Ollama.

Is the 20.9GB GGUF version better or negligible in comparison?

> Which open weights model?

Yes, I'm also wondering!

Currently I'm testing out gemma4:26b and qwen3.6:35b-a3b-q4_K_M locally on my M2 Max Macbook Pro.

Not the fastest, but reasonable.

However, I am also interested in getting as close as possible in performance to Opus 4.6 while minimizing my costs.

Who remembers BlackICE Defender tho?

https://archive.org/details/BlackICE_Defender

I'm on regular Android but thinking about switching to GrapheneOS for my next phone.

This is what I do... I use Mullvad VPN with NextDNS.io for DNS.

> https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

I get "Our tests indicate that you have some protection against Web tracking, but it has some gaps." but nothing of too much importance I think.

I use a VPN and NextDNS.io.

> I know it's a cliché, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

"Kindly let me help you, or you will drown, said the monkey as it put the fish safely up a tree"

—Alan Watts

> Beginning to wonder if convenience is the root of all evil, and not money.

Self-deception is actually the root of all evil, not money nor convenience.

> Try to beat this: https://fingerprint.com

I beat it, I think... nothing much there. I use a VPN and NextDNS.io.

> Many non technical people have ethical concerns.

100% correct.

I have many non-technical friends who want to De-Google but lack the knowledge and/or find the switch intimidating.

Google Fi will auto-switch between AT&T and T-Mobile but not Verizon, AFAIK.

I don't think I agree with the following from this guide:

> Do not use a personal virtual private network (VPN). Personal VPNs simply shift residual risks from your internet service provider (ISP) to the VPN provider, often increasing the attack surface. Many free and commercial VPN providers have questionable security and privacy policies. However, if your organization requires a VPN client to access its data, that is a different use case.

> My issue is that crawlers aren’t respecting robots.txt

Cloudflare has a toggle switch to automatically block LLM's + scrapers etc:

https://blog.cloudflare.com/declaring-your-aindependence-blo...

> Bluesky

FWIW, I've been consistently posting quality stuff on Bluesky for the last year, and despite having a few hundred followers, I get ZERO engagement.

People in the Bluesky subreddit tell me it's not a "post and ghost" platform in that you have to constantly interact with people if you want to earn engagement, but that's too time consuming.

In other words, the discovery algorithm(s) on BlueSky sucks.

> Whitelisting solves the problem for me. I curate every tweet I see with a browser extension. Strangers can't kick down the door. I only see content from my direct follows. It dramatically reduces the stress. Maybe a little like horse blinkers.

This extension? https://github.com/rxliuli/mass-block-twitter

> Social media as a vessel for diverse discussion is a tall order. It’s too public, too tied to context, and ultimately a no-win game. No matter how carefully you present yourself, you’ll end up being the “bad guy” to someone. The moment a discussion touches even lightly on controversy, healthy dialogue becomes nearly impossible.

Worth reading Jaron Lanier's Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now book:

https://www.amazon.com/Arguments-Deleting-Social-Media-Accou...

> Feds and criminals

How does one tell the difference?

> But things will change, because of the scale

Yup!

Plus we can't ignore the inherent reflexive + emergent effects that are unpredictable.

I mean, people are already beginning to talk like and/or think like chatGPT:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.01754