Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 09/06/2023: Thoughts on Flatpak and Apple Cultists



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Ashamed of My Penmanship

        I have a confession to make: I'm ashamed of my penmanship.

        My handwriting isn't particularly bad: on the contrary, it's quite legible. I dislike it not because it's unreadable, but because it's so utterly generic.

        I grew up in the last few decades that cursive and other forms of advanced penmanship were still widely taught in schools. Of course I was first taught how to write in print, and to this day I still form letters using the exact same movements taught to me in my preschool spelling books. We learned a standardized form of cursive around my second year of elementary school.

      • Butterflies and Roses 2023-06-09 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

        A few more pictures for the collection, from the trails near the Tanana River. This was from last Wednesday.

      • The Porklet and the Ash

        The springtime had finally come to the little forested valley in Vermont where the young ash tree stood. After another long winter and a rather surprisingly short and uneventful mud season, the slender tree was starting to unfurl its new leaves in the pleasant warm rays of sunshine beaming down over the hills that rimmed it on all sides. For a few days...maybe even as long as a week, the sparsely branching tree let its tiny feather-like leaves grow and spread like the wings of exotic birds. It was a good time in the valley.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • My thoughts on Flatpak

        I have been chatting about this with people who know more than I ever will about Flatpak.

        Soo I have added few edits here and there.

        If I seem frustrated, most of my frustration is aimed at the unnecessary shit slinging over packaging formats.

        *We all want the good stuff, why the hell are we fighting?!*

      • Rambly rant about my Apple fan boy coworker and tech illiteracy

        So, I had dinner with other people in my company today (as of when I started this post). One of them are absolute Apple fan boys. He knows that I piratically a VR resident. And the topic of Apple's new Vision Pro headset showed up. I expressed my view that I don't like it and it does nothing what current VR users want. And that I'm not their target audience. Also what Apple is doing is nothing new. We have it for ages. The Quest 2 have vision hand tracking. Quest Pro/Vive Pro eye/Pico 4 Pro have eye tracking. There's external mouth tracking addons have existed for a long time. And talking through an avatar is what the entire game of VRChat is about. Go get a VR headset and hop into VRChat for even an hour. See what the frontier is like. That's where innovation and new ideas are. Guess the reply "I don't care about innovation. It's not Apple and it's not a convinent package".

        I wanted to facepalm myself immediately. I asked myself. Seriously, this man wants to wait for a 3500 dollars headset that does nothing new. Just.. argh!.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Mastodon

          I am a microblogger now! Decided to finally try out Mastodon, even though I still rather dislike the involved technologies. But to avoid interacting with them too much directly, as well as to setup a separate communication channel, I registered at emacs.ch and tried to use an Emacs Mastodon client, mastodon.el. Quickly discovered that there is a memory leak in my Emacs version, related to images, so now using the usual Mastodon's web interface. It is okay: somewhat buggy and awkward, but there are many worse ones.

        • Yesterday’s Posts

          Another day, another proof-of-concept server.

          [...]

          I’ve no idea if this works in practice, let’s see. I plan on adding aggregators and otherwise tweaking the output until it matches what I like to read, then trying reading everything this way for a while to see if I prefer the forced slow cadence to the “live” versions.

      • Programming

        • Shell Script That Runs Forever

          Critics will point out that this script will not run forever due to e.g. the heat death of the universe, the hardware running the script failing, the human getting bored, etc. However given a running system this script will (probably) run forever, the lite version of forever that ignores our daystar going all red giant.

          The script does need a bit of help to run "forever". One lever is that shell scripts take pains to operate line-by-line, to ape an ape at a terminal. Either shells read single bytes to find where the next line is, or they read chunks and use lseek(2) to scoot the file pointer back to the start of the current line. This can be observed under ktrace(1) or similar, which is a great way to learn what system calls a process makes while going about its business. Especially if there are too many lines of code to easily follow what some too complicated shell is doing.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

SLAPP Censorship - Part 32 Out of 200: Garrett Made Spurious Requests (Later Withdrawn) the Same Week Someone He Later Spoke to by E-mail Sent Threats to Our Webhost
The "plot thickens" because there's a multi-party tag-team act, as confirmed by Garrett after he had sworn on the Bible
 
Links 04/04/2026: Social Control Media Verdict and Bans, Whistleblower (Axel Rietschin) Explains How "Microsoft Vaporized a Trillion Dollars"
Links for the day
Reaching the End/Event Horizon of LLM Slop
Are we moving towards a post-LLMs world?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 03, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, April 03, 2026
Gemini Links 04/04/2026: STXGE and Computer Relationships
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 33 Out of 200: Garrett Sued by My Wife and I, Then His Microsoft Acquaintance Files Another Lawsuit and Our Webhost Receives Legal Threats Too
Today we also show how our solicitor Mark Lewis responded to it
Good Friday, Leaving IBM for Good
Even on holidays
Links 03/04/2026: Rejection of More Software Patents and Social Control Media in Several Continents
Links for the day
Malware in Proprietary Software - Latest Additions by Rob Musial
Original published yesterday in gnu.org
Visual Evidence/Documentation of IBM Dying Like the Dinosaurs
IBM has many of these giant white elephants lying around, with some getting demolished
Links 03/04/2026: USPTO’s Latest Greenwashing and Internet Blackouts Impact Journalists in War Zones
Links for the day
IBM is a Dying Company, Nowadays It Kills Red Hat With Slop
when your last day is a national holiday in IBM's country
"Independence Drives" and Community-Run Sites
Independence in reporting is a much-valued trait
When Charlatans Are Only Good at Losing Money and Storytelling (e.g. About Investment in Them)
Wait till a a barrel of oil costs $300
What Apple Fans Are Missing
Apple is a bad company
The "Pale Blue Dot" Moment Had Returned
To many people, the "bitter-sweet" observation of how small we are
Saudi Arabia Does Not Rely Much on Microsoft/Windows
Putting aside politics, this is good for Free software
Almost 12 Years of Exposing Corruption in Europe's Second-Largest Institution
The "unready" President is now an abandoned President
Easter Moon Mission and Its Reminder of IBM's Demise
A lot of NASA operations now rely on GNU/Linux
When Power is Scarce and GNU/Linux Has Power
In Cuba, GNU/Linux has long enjoyed high adoption rates
Don't Totally Dismiss the 'Survivalists'
'Survivalists' or similar terms are used to describe a particular mindset of people who prepare for some really awful scenarios
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 02, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, April 02, 2026
A Much Better Use of Fuel Than Slop
Something positive for a change
Hoping for Peace
There are still many things to be enjoyed, including nature and kind people
Gemini Links 03/04/2026: "Slide Rule Triple Multiplication" and End of "Picture Pages"
Links for the day
Rumours of Microsoft Layoffs This Season
Just how much trouble is Microsoft in at this point?
GNU/Linux Measured at All-Time High in Sweden
Can 'influencers' have played a role
SLAPP Censorship - Part 31 Out of 200: Speaking About 20+ Years of Alleged Harassment/Defamation and High-Profile 'Targets' of Garrett
attempts were made to settle (in effect end the case) by the person who started the case almost half a dozen times along the way
In Asia, Windows is in Its Teens (Below 20%)
On a global scale, Windows is down to about 26%
GNU/Linux Becoming More Universal
It seems likely the end of Vista 10 coinciding with a sharp rise in memory prices (and now energy prices) will benefit GNU/Linux and therefore give us more to write about
Low Morale at IBM and Perception of Destructive Management
IBM is going nowhere, fast
Gemini Links 02/04/2026: Super Mario Galaxy Movie and New Antenna Instance
Links for the day
It Seems Like Google News Cracked Down on (Omitted, Delisted) a Lot of Slopfarms
There's no justification/point in spending so much energy just to plagiarise things poorly
Can Economies Like the American One Hang On?
The coming weeks will be "interesting" unless wars end
Steam Survey for Last Month Says 5.33% Use GNU/Linux
big leap for GNU/Linux
Links 02/04/2026: Science News, Energy Scarcity, Oil Sold in Yuan
Links for the day
Links 02/04/2026: Apple Turns 50, Efforts To Ban VPNs
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/04/2026: Kubernetes With FreeBSD, OFFLFIRSOCH, and Great Circle Distance
Links for the day
Dr. Andy Farnell on Microsoft Silencing or Deplatforming Opposition in the UK and Elsewhere
Microsoft as a king or a kind of "religion" one cannot question
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 01, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 01, 2026