Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 08/05/2023: YouTube Ads, Self-Hosting, and More



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • A change of scenery

        Today is the last day of Golden Week vacation here in Japan, and perhaps it's fitting that it's raining heavily.

        The other day I jumped on the Shinkansen* and visited a city from my past that I am intimately familar with. Even at 06:30 Tokyo station was packed with travellers and I almost got lost in the labrinth. There was no need for a map when I got to my desintation however, as I navigated the city under the hot summer sun. Knowing the streets and train lines backwards and forwards I was able to bypass the crowds and tourist traps and I visited quiet places where I used to go - places where no tourists (and very few foreigners) ever go. More than once I had a spot to myself, or an entire street to myself, which is just what I wanted.

      • Some Septembers are a lot longer than others

        Last night was stupid.

        Hold on, let me restate: last night I was stupid.

        Why? Because I hung out with the non-online versions of Eternal September-ites.

        See, so-called "Eternal September" was, in essence, nothing new to/for me. Those who rushed to demonstrate their stupidity *that* time were merely the descendants of the knuckleheads I started becoming aware of back in early grade school. They're the vast majority ilk that always self-centrically rush in. That all important separate, individual self has to be early to be seen in/on the scene, to be able to tell others they've been there and done that. Life's been a touch screen for them long before it was invented.

      • Not Growth

        Not growth is a negative, though there are traditions where what you have lost is important. However! Negatives may not be the best marketing strategy, especially in a culture that values positivism. The above link links to a PDF wherein a matrix is presented to help guide degrowth, or at least things to think about when deciding to do one thing or another, with nuance beyond the single-minded pursuit of increasing shareholder value.

        A notable rub is between the techno-optimist and techno-pessimist positions in the degrowth movement (or wider society); the optimists believe that technology will save the day, while the pessimists point out that piling more technology onto a technology problem may not work out so well--Jevon's paradox, and etc.

      • Families

        Families are strange... or rather those I have got to know, so far. Even more strangely, I haven't met a single family that could be called "healthy", and even those appearing to portray a stereotypical "healthy family", it's usually those that spiral into complete disaster upon the death of another family member, such as the family in this tiny anecdote I picked up a while ago.



        [...]

        A few years later, likely in 2016 or 2017, one of the deceased man's kids became an adult. His former affair organized a family party to celebrate the fresh adult's new milestone. While most family members engaged with each other in some way, the brother, his wife and his kids shut themselves off from everyone, neither talking to anyone else, nor playing together with the others. Taking the bowling alley the farthest away from the only child of his sister and the fresh adult's younger brother, they stood next to each to each other like a bunch of scared chicken. It seemed like they were jealous of the kid and the only child having fun with each other, glaring at the young ones in envy, when they thought no one was looking.

        [...]

        One might feel pity for the only child, as they experienced two losses within four years. First, their uncle – the deceased man, who properly introduced them to computers – passed away, and in 2015, they lost their father.

        [...]

        I wonder, however, what causes people to lose their minds over such things to the point of showing clear signs of mental issues. No one can convince me that this is just a side effect of the passing of another family member. Of course, the only child is the ideal scapegoat, as far I got told about them, but this is more of an excuse, rather than an explanation of the root cause.
      • If you've been open on the internet for decades you can always go back and dunk on your former self

        Found this in my LJ archives. 21 years ago:

        "Also terrible was my realization that I'm a twenty-something now."

        Oh my sweet boy

    • Technical

      • Matrix of Convivial Technology

        It's something about adding quote functionality to Mastodon. I was going through [GitHub discussion] and I came across interesting term /Matrix of Convivial Technology/. It was quoted from [The Matrix of Convivial Technology – Assessing technologies for degrowth by Andrea Vetter M.A.]. I thought that I should cite it on the small net because there is a place many new solutions has been creating.

      • [EN] Dvorak

        I have been practicing dvorak for 2 weeks or so now. I am capable of touchtyping at 20wpm or something like that, while my qwerty top-speed (i cannot touch type in qwerty) is 90-100 wpm in spanish and 80-90wpm in english. Typing speed is not my priority, anyway; i wanna learn dvorak mainly because of 2 reasons: learning to touchtype, and ergonomics.



        [...]

        Dvorak, at least for spanish and english, is designed to be better than qwerty in terms of the amount of hand movement, hand alternation, inbound rolling, bigrams, trigrams etc. It does feel better to touchtype in dvorak than in qwerty, because you do not need to leave the home row as much, and typing with the same hand is greatly reduced. There are some diptongs in spanish, but it does not increase same-hand-writing to a level near similar to qwerty.
      • YouTube Ads

        Lately I've been very stressed, and find myself spending a lot of time watching YouTube. I know, I shouldn't for a variety of reasons, but it helps silence the noise in my head... Occasionally I learn something useful.



        [...]

        Occasionally, my app goes to a black screen during rapid back-and-forth action; I just back out and try again.
      • Re: StackSmith: YouTube Ads

        > When other thoughts arise, one should not pursue them, > but should inquire: 'To whom do they arise?' It does not > matter how many thoughts arise. As each thought arises, > one should inquire with diligence, "To whom has this > thought arisen?". The answer that would emerge would be > "To me". Thereupon if one inquires "Who am I?", the mind > will go back to its source; and the thought that arose will > become quiescent. With repeated practice in this manner, > the mind will develop the skill to stay in its source.

      • What's new?

        Changed the post "Using 'xfce4' without a Mouse" according to an entry in wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_keys#Enabling).

        I have reverted my story "An Abusive Interviewr" to the text format so you can read it if you find it using Veronica-2.

      • Goals for 2023.

        - Work: - Complete the move from the cloud to self-hosted. - Establish salary transparency. - Begin the first steps of transferring the company into employee ownership.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Leave it to software to accurately reflect what too many others are

          I wanted to mess with gmisub, but that seemingly required BearSSL, which seemingly required gmni, and I finally re-figured out how to have headers and libraries in non-default places be seeing by the compilation/linkage toolage, but ultimately hit the likes of...

        • Discord Discourse

          Kind of hard to avoid the latest Discord news. At least on cohost, one of my ex-Twitter haunts and one that skews young and queer and seems to have a lot of feelings about the news that Discord is changing how it handles usernames (changing from UserName#WXYZ to @username).

        • Image galleries and writing a browser extension 🖼️

          "I hacked up a quick thing" overlapping with "The web sucks" - there's a Venn diagram of the perfect Gemini post!

          Lots of web sites have photo galleries. I'm interested in photography, so I see a lot of them. They suck. They give you animated transitions and fancy navigation and social media widgets and fancy borders and I JUST WANT TO LOOK AT THE PICTURES. Sometimes you can tell the browser (say, by right-clicking a thumbnail link) to open an image in another tab and so just get the image and no flim-flam. So I thought "I could make a browser extension to do that: open all the images in a gallery, one per tab."


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October
Gemini Links 30/09/2025: Motorcycling in Central Oregon, Protocol Styles and the Flag of Sark
Links for the day
Links 30/09/2025: Death Sentences, Internet Censorship, and Internet Shutdowns
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/09/2025: Social Control Media and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Richard Stallman About to Give More Talks in Europe, Some Confirmed Already
In Göteborg
Links 30/09/2025: CERN in "Have I Been Pwned" and More Windows TCO Blunders
Links for the day
Microsoft Canonical is Selling Mass Surveillance and Back Doors as "Security for Ubuntu"
If you are looking for a GNU/Linux distro to use, just remember that Microsoft has Ubuntu in the bag
Justice for Wildlife
animals cannot speak to humans who hate animals
Cowboys Gonna Be Cowboys (on the Internet, They're Not a New Problem)
Boys will be boys
Cowboys of the "Left" and Cowboys of the "Right"
Don't believe the lie that this is some "leftist" thing
When Codes of Conduct Serve to Protect Criminals From Much-Deserved Scrutiny
CoCs are typically unfit for purpose because enforcement lacks context and suitable understanding of the full background (the "full story")
It Took the Open Source Initiative (OSI) 4+ Years to Address the 'Data Breach' or Data Protection Violation Reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) in March 2025
We may never know the dialogue or its nature
Even Microsoft's Biggest Boosters (and Media Operatives) Are Turning Against Microsoft
Expect many more layoffs before the fake "results" next month
GNU Was Right 42+ Years Ago
Since then the abusive, user-hostile technology has spread like mushrooms
Old Isn't Always Inadequate
How many gadgets manufactured today (in 2025) will still work in 2075?
The Monkey Business of Rust People
Compatibility won't matter
Almost Half of the FSFE's Money (the Fake 'FSF', Misusing the Brand) Comes From Vodafone
That money always comes with strings, even if they're invisible to most of us
Microsoft Lunduke Spreads Deliberate Lies to Incite Online Mobs
Has he lost his reading comprehension skills?
Our 19th Birthday (in Just Over 5 Weeks From Now)
We meanwhile have ongoing, solid plans to cover patent-related issues when the FSF turns 40
British GNU/Linux Distro FydeOS Tops DistroWatch
That seems like a decent site and decent effort to keep an eye on
We'll Soon Have 75,000 GemText Pages
avoid many perils of today's Web
Google Used Free Software to Build a Monopoly. Now Google Kicks Free Software to the Curb
The "G" in "Google" does not stand for GNU. It never did. It's just another greedy company.
Gemini Links 30/09/2025: Retro Hardware, Federated Fragmentation, and Nex Server Written in C
Links for the day
4 More Days Till "4 decades, 4 freedoms, 4 all users"
We are now just 4 days away from the rare anniversary
Two Months After Merging to Hide GitHub Losses Microsoft is Doing It Again (This Time Windows)
Merging those two together is not a sign of strength but a tightening of budget
Speculations About the Next Large Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs
the mass layoffs are likely to happen on week 3 or 4 in October
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 29, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 29, 2025
Links 29/09/2025: Opposition to Surveillance Giant Google and Conflicts Worldwide (Moldova Sides With EU)
Links for the day
Why the EPO Never Managed to Silence Us (After Over a Decade of Trying)
Firms like Mishcon de Reya and Brett Wilson LLP contribute to a bad stigma, staining the entire occupation
Links 29/09/2025: Datacenter Fires and "Too Much Internet Use Is Changing Teenage Brains"
Links for the day
Almost a Couple of Years After Microsoft Hijacked the Name 'Sudo' (to Describe Unrelated Windows Stuff) Microsoft Canonical Breaks Sudo in Ubuntu
These are vandals in "goodwill" or "security" clothing
Does the Good Law Project (GLP) Know the Director of Brett Wilson LLP Deems It OK to Endorse Violent Actions Against Trans People?
We were miffed to see this morning's report
Names Are Not Unique IDs and the UK Government's "Digital ID System" Would be a Nightmare
Digital surveillance, "apps", and worse (all the time)
What is Roy and Rianne's Righteously Royalty-free RSS Reader?
A news reader that uses OPML files and parses RSS feeds
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in 5 Days
We should be talking about software freedom, not "Open Source"
It Feels Like Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Tacitly Admitted That It Defamed Me
It arguably admitted many other things by refusing to deny or address them (altogether)
Stefano Maffulli's Front Page Mentions "AI" 11 Times
They're more focused on slop (plagiarism) than sharing or Software Freedom
CMS Rot
With "modern" (bloated) content management systems (CMSs) there is a long chain of dependencies
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 28, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 28, 2025
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About Linux 6.17 and Microsoft Meddling in Linux Development
today's Slopwatch is short because the picks are from Sunday
Gemini Links 29/09/2025: The Labor Wars and Retro
Links for the day