Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 12/05/2023: Nokia and IDEs



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • So simple

        In fact, the seeming existence/presence of ego - an instant of conviction of being a nexus of separate individuality - is literally the-missing-of-it.

      • Queens Of The Stone Age - New Music

        While I was doing my MSc in Chemistry in 2012, I started listening to QOTSA. I remember that I was at a point where I was looking for new bands and my own friend there at University suggested the band to me. QOTSA are one of the best rock bands out there. When I listen to a band I give a lot of credit to unique song structures, recording sound/techniques and the general vibe of the band. As time progresses it becomes ever the more difficult to innovate in music. So many combinations of melodies, drum beats etc have already been recorded and used, it's hard not to fall into a trap when writing new music. However, QOTSA almost always delivers something new and fresh. Their music writing style is definitely "Avant-Garde", they generally use differnt song structures and melodies. The weirder, the better. On top of that, their recording always sound amazing, and is part of their aesthetic.

      • Early Morning Adventure 2023-05-12 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

        I had a half-baked plan this morning to do some early-morning sunrise photography. Sunrise is now 4:38am and getting earlier each day, so I thought this might be my last practical opportunity. It sounded kind of boring to go back to my other photography spots, but I couldn't figure out from a map what might be another good spot, in view of the terrian and treelines in this area. I had one idea to try to head downtown and see if I might get some good shots against a skyline. One the way, I found a parking lot near the "Boatel" with a good view across the river.

      • Bad at Reading

        Is it something I've become bad at through lack of practice (failing to build a habit of reading)? Something I've become bad at through practicing the wrong thing (building a habit of failing to read)? Something intrinsic to my brain? Am I just trying to read the wrong things?

        I don't know whether it's a problem or not. I feel very ignorant on a huge number of topics and I feel like perhaps if I read more then I could be less ignorant. On the other hand, there will always be vastly more things I'm ignorant about than things I'm knowledgeable about, so perhaps it's a silly thing to worry about.

    • Technical

      • A New Smartphone After Four Months

        At the end of December, I purchased a Nokia G21 TA-1418 to replace my Samsung Galaxy Note8.

        The Samsung ran well for the most part and performed the tasks I needed, but my current job requires me to install certain MFA tools on my smartphone, and the Note8 was reaching end of support for some of those tools. Of course, the screen also had major burn-in and the battery barely lasted a day on standby, but those were relatively minor concerns for me. I chose the G21 as a replacement phone since it still offered SD-based expandable storage and a 3.5 mm TRS jack: increasingly rare features among US smartphones.

      • The The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild soundtrack hits different when it comes on CDs instead of in the game

        While Tears of the Kingdom is actually out for me right now, I wanted to wrap up my previous Zelda experience. In the run-up to the TotK release, I watched someone else play BotW with a couple mods enabled. This got me in the mood to play the game myself a little bit again, and I also wondered if I could get the soundtrack. Way back when, when I first got the game, I looked into getting the soundtrack, and decided against. When I looked at the entry on Amazon a bit (maybe years) later, only scraps were available at ridiculous (three-digit) prices. However, when I checked the final time, they were down to normal levels…but they were all imports, and all the printing was in Japanese. I still have access to at least one computer with a CD-ROM drive, so I bought the thing.

      • Programming

        • Re: The Trouble With IDEs

          Eclipse, well, there's a funny story there, some intern started up Eclipse, which promptly made 50 database connections in the test environment, which killed that environment, and I got blamed for it because the DBAs on the other side of the wall thought it was 'jmates' who had caused the problem, not the intern 'jmate'. Why the heck would a unix sysadmin be running Eclipse? I get annoyed when vim has a 30 millisecond startup time. Java? A bloat browser? Fuggedaboutit!

          Joel Spolsky informs us in 2001 that bloat does not exist.

          Unix is my IDE. OpenBSD in particular, using a somewhat customized version of the base vi, plus various other tools that I know pretty well and can mostly debug (the man(1) crash was a beyond my skills). That's an environment. It's got problems; however, the developers accept my patches (not sure what ever happened to the strptime(3) bug I sent Apple) and make continual improvements to a complex system on a predictable cycle with little in the way of resources. How much do the Googles and Microsofts pull in for profits? Why is their code so often featured in the CVE charts?

          Let's review some alternative environments.

        • Async for UI Control Flow

          In Card Story (link at the end), the users can do things like "edit a line of text", or "create a link from a branch in one card to another card". Like most user interfaces, some things the users do involve multi-step flows. One of the questions when developing user interface code is how to logically represent this kind of multi-step flow.

        • Riding the IDE threads wave

          Holy moly: managed to sleep until 8:35am, which is way later than I usually arise. Three cheers for the power of some well-placed THC.

          Unfortunately that puts a real crimp in my internet attention budget for today.

          Much interesting and playful thoughtfulness down these paths...

          I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but vim has long been the only IDE I've ever needed.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Brian Kernighan, "Only Third to Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson" (UNIX), Agreed With Someone Who Said Rust Was Just Hype, Should Not Replace C
17 hours ago
Reminder: Microsoft's "Secure Boot" Certificate for "Linux" Will be Expired in One Week
Many PCs won't manage to 'rotate' to another certificate
 
BASIC Predates Microsoft by Over a Decade, Microsoft-Controlled Sites Like The Register MS Don't Want You to Know This
The state of the media is really bad when it relies a lot on oligarchs' money and is appointing editors who are working for oligarchs
Analogies for "Memory Safety" in Rust
Don't worry, it's Rust! It can do anything!
"Many of the Red Hat Employees Are Still Looking for Work"
Shame on IBM's CEO
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 04, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 04, 2025
Microsoft Started With Code Literally From The Trash, Nothing Has Improved Since
The reality is, there are systems and code that are reliable. But they're not Microsoft's.
Hypothesis That New McKinsey/Microsoft Executive Inside Red Hat Will Outsource Research and Development Operations to India (Like They Do in IBM)
IBM is floundering
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Means of Production and Rusting Out
Links for the day
Links 04/09/2025: Science, Hardware, and Eyes on China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Digital Minimalism and Social Control Media
Links for the day
IBM's GNU/Linux Divestment, Based on Hard But Anecdotal Evidence (IBM Fails to Recognise How Much Money It Made and Can Still Make From "Linux")
Love us or hate us, a lot of what we've been saying about Red Hat under IBM turns out to be rather accurate
Links 04/09/2025: Massive Microsoft Staff Cuts (Barely Reported), "Strange Conspiracy Theory Is Reportedly Spreading Inside OpenAI"
Links for the day
Activists Can Win, But Keep an Eye on the Ball and on the Trophy
GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
Links for the day
At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 03, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VI - This Serious Harm Was Planned for Over a Decade, Not an Accident or Merely Some Misfortune
The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
GNOME Unfit for Diversity and Inclusion
GNOME's leadership is using "bad words"
Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News
Links 03/09/2025: Microsoft Causes Mass Layoffs Outside Microsoft Also, "Google Can Keep Paying for Firefox Search Deal"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/09/2025: calendar.txt, Alhena 5.3.1, and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
The Theory That the Man From McKinsey, Whom Red Hat Took From Microsoft a Month Ago as Executive, Wants 'Efficiency' (Lower Salaries)
So far... no "official" word
When Your Site's Articles Are Being 'Cheapened' by Slop as Feature Images
Dr. Farnell should become an advisor to The Register MS
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops to Only Half a Dozen Capsules and 0.2% of the Whole in Geminispace, Self-Signed is the Way to Go
It used to have hundreds, according to Lupa
Doing to Red Hat What They Already Did (and Still Do) to IBM
there seems to be a drive to hire cheaper staff, and it may be led by somebody Red Hat hired from Microsoft
Links 03/09/2025: Salesforce's Latest Mass Layoffs, 93% in Large Poll at The Register MS Say UK Government Should Dump Microsoft
Links for the day
Preparations for Our 19th Anniversary Have Already Begun
When we get back we'll probably sort out some balloons and venue for the next party
Pleased After 2 Years With team.blue
Moving from a Content Management System (CMS, dynamic) to a Static Site Generator (SSG) was a wise decision that made life so much easier
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is Being Attacked by Organisations Jealous of Its Principled Stance and Longevity
Nobody is perfect, but imperfection does not instantaneously imply sinister intent
If You Reject the Google Verdict in the US, Then You Should Also Reject the "Modern" Web (Do Something About It)
Gemini Protocol is still open; it cannot be hijacked or subverted because it's frozen by design and by intention
Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
Many People Are "Leaving" Red Hat, Even High-Level Managers
Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025