index.md (2349B)
1 --- 2 title: "Weeknote for 2025-W04" 3 description: "Fixing fraudulent USB drives, checking out subdirectories with 4 Git, and leaving Meta" 5 date: 2025-01-20T07:59:00-08:00 6 draft: false 7 categories: 8 - Weeknotes 9 --- 10 11 ## Fight Flash Fraud 12 13 I came into possession of a fraudulent USB “thumb” drive, fully aware of 14 what I was getting. The device claims to have a capacity of 2 TB, which is 15 nearly impossible, but I wanted to keep it out of a landfill and I didn’t 16 know its true capacity. I figured that one could find the last good sector 17 of such a drive, create a partition that went up to that, and have 18 a perfectly functional (but counterfeit) device. I also assumed that I would 19 have to hack something together to do all this myself---but then I learned 20 about `f3`, which does exactly what I want. Specifically, running `f3probe 21 --destructive` followed by `f3fix` gave me a usable USB device. If you have 22 a “defective” flash drive, use this tool to check it out! 23 24 [f3 - Fight Flash 25 Fraud](https://fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) 26 27 ## Checking out a subdirectory with Git 28 29 I finally tweaked [the script I use to write weeknotes]({{< ref 30 "/december-adventure/2024-29/" >}}), and the notes are finally living in 31 their own repository. I wanted to keep this extra repo lightweight, so 32 I went digging and learned that it’s possible to check out only specific 33 subdirectories of a Git repository. It takes a bit of setup but works great. 34 35 [Subdirectory Checkouts with git 36 sparse-checkout](https://jasonkarns.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/subdirectory-checkouts-with-git-sparse-checkout/) 37 38 ## Leaving Meta 39 40 [Last year I wrote about deleting social media accounts]({{< ref 41 "/posts/social-media/" >}}), but I skirted around some of my feelings about 42 “big social”, what it was doing to me, and what I felt like it was doing to 43 society. Dan’s post expresses these feelings better than I could have, 44 reaching the same conclusions that I’ve come to. We’re even on the same 45 Mastodon instance! I probably make too many assumptions about who would read 46 what I post here, but I assume that most people who see this understand how 47 high the cost of engaging with these platforms have become. If I’m wrong 48 though, please consider which systems your actions reinforce in the coming 49 years. 50 51 [After Big Social](https://phiffer.org/after-big-social/)