Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 12/06/2023: Opal 1.7.0 and More



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Funeral For a Friend - Casually Dressed & Deep In Conversation

        I've talked about this album a lot. Every now and again I'll feel in the mood to just be 12 again: sad confused and angry.

        Disclaimer: This kinda got away from me! Bare with what is basically a listen along once I get into the song breakdowns. I highly recommend listening along if you want to! Back to the gemlog!

      • Introduction to the series (no album)

        The CS nerd in me is sad number 0 isn't an actual entry. But I figure this requires its own introduction!

        For the longest time I have considered a few albums I love "perfect". A perfect album to me is one I can press play on and I never get bored, tired, or that urge to "ugh let me skip this track" (cough uncough Drive by Incubus). But especially those that once I start listening I can't stop. I just want to keep listening or if a track comes on I have to just continue forward. That doesn't necessarily mean they have to be "album albums" where they require that context and ordering - but just an overall solid album through and through!

      • the art of letting go

        late at night, i'm the most productive. and when you used to be able to smoke inside, writing, smoking, and drinking is probably the best combination for successful prose on paper since liber and mercury bestowed us with their gifts. but even still, there is not much cooler a vibe than a writer at the end of the bar at a local pub, scribbling in a notebook in between sips of their beverage of choice—and it does say a lot about them, doesn't it?

        a pint: probably a more lover of language who writes for the hell of it. a dirty martini: some emotions are a bit built up in that one, there. an old-fashioned: who are you kidding? i see ~bartender shaking his head; i must've gotten that all wrong, but generalizations are more fun to write.

    • Science

      • Problematic Monoculture Reductivism in Literary Analysis

        In reading opinions of literary analysis, I sometimes come across large sweeping claims with little justification. Statements such as "Western stories focus on a singular power fantasy hero, while Eastern stories focus on unity to overcome threats." Usually they try to tie this in as a cultural analysis.

        They'll point to examples like *John Wick* to demonstrate their idea of Western stories, then *Sailor Moon* for Eastern stories. This ends up painting the stories of both cultures as one singular idea. It over-simplifies to a point where the the nuances of the cultures are ignored for the sake of the author's thesis statement.

      • the little things

        i tend to speak very openly about my mental health. about three to four years ago, i was at my absolute worst. i got stuck in really dangerous thought patterns, things like "if i were to jump out this window then i could knock myself out for a week at least at best". i was fortunate enough to (almost) never pull through with these ideas and sought help when i was at my lowest. within two weeks i got a first appointment with a psychotherapist in training. preliminary diagnosis: f32.1 moderate depressive episode. five months later i found myself in group therapy. i filled out a questionnaire at the beginning of every session which had me reflecting on my mental state of the past two weeks. the result was a score representative of the severity of my depression. before my first session i got a score of 33 out of 63, thinking it wasn't that bad. we weren't given the scale until late into therapy where we had the opportunity to look at our past scores and reflect on our mental growth. as it turned out, a score of 29 and above is classified as a severe depressive episode. it hadn't dawned on me just how messed up my mind was until then. at my last session, i got a score of 5. the scale didn't speak of depression up until a score of 8.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Bad Loops

        A bad loop might be "10 open up reddit, read all the posts, close reddit, open hacker news, read all the posts, close hacker news, GOTO 10". Sure, you might learn a few things, and put even more things into the ever-growing list of things to get to, but then where did the day go? Where were the other things you wanted to do?

      • Yet Another Homelab Setup

        I have a new homelab setup. I've been homelab-hopping for the past year or so, and with each new setup, something or other just never sit right with me. It always felt like there was something that could be made better or more effcient with the resources I had. I recently discovered the wonderful world of LXD, and I was excited over how robust the technology is, so I endeavored to make my homelab setup with it.

      • so many standards

        This is also a way of identifying a URL as the location of an avatar, and works pretty decently as just an extra class that can be added to what would otherwise be a normal HTML page containing information about a person.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Identity Again: Visual Hashing

          Feedback on my ideas around identity on Gemini has emphasized the need for decentralizaton and privacy.

        • I am Spartacus — Anonymous Identities on Gemini

          After a few days of musing, I am of the opinion that Morgan's Gemini identity proposals are fundamentally flawed and I am not going to implement them in Bubble.

        • gemini client testing

          The original torture tests that were up at => gemini://gemini.conman.org/test/torture had been taken down some time ago, and I started writing some new ones for shits and giggles and talked about it in

      • Software Releases/Announcements

        • Opal 1.7.0 - now with Titan!

          Last night I finished the initial implementation of support for the Titan protocol in Opal.

          Opal is a Gemini client library written for the C# world (.NET Standard 2.0 and .NET 7).


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM May Well Be Laying Off Over 13,500 and Up to 27,000 Staff This Week When It Says "Single-Digit Percentage of Our Global Workforce"
It's not yet possible to know how many people IBM gets rid of
Early Unverified Figures About Scale of Latest IBM Layoffs
the real scale of the RAs will remain elusive
How Techrights Search Works
Hopefully bots won't use it
Techrights Became a Lot More Productive as a Result of Attacks on It
By default, it's safe to assume anything on the Web is garbage, especially in social control media
Unverified Rumours: IBM Cuts Will Continue Another ~10 Days, Managers Will Invite Those Impacted for 1-on-1 Meetings
Right now IBM likes diversity because with adoption of low-paid demographies it gets to pay workers less for the same work
analytics.usa.gov: Vista 11 Scarcely Used, GNU/Linux Increasingly Dominant (Microsoft Loses "Goodwill", Depletes Cash Equivalents, and Debt Soars)
"Total current assets" fell by more than 2 billion dollars in the past 3 months
Not Only Mass Layoffs at IBM But Complete Shutdowns "Amid A.I. Boom"
apparently about 10,000 layoffs, not counting those who got pushed out by PIPs and other means
 
Slopwatch: linuxbsdos.com, Linux Journal, LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and WebProNews
Either Google doesn't care about the integrity of Google News or it deems slop to be acceptable
Gemini Links 05/11/2025: Affirmation, GnuPG, and While Loops
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After the bluewashing never expect to see news about "Red Hat layoffs", just as "Tivoli layoffs" aren't to be expected
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Notice how quiet the EPO's management has been lately
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Just to affirm and be sure, I've used our new search facility
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Links for the day
Techrights Search Will Come Early
Maybe tomorrow
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Shadow Crew and Ads Disguised as Articles
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Some say "software focus", but most just resort to buzzwords and blame-shifting hype
Resisting Misogynists
Rianne has already added close to 100,000 pages to this site
Starting November on a Strong Note
All in all, this month started well for us as we have good, accurate publications with considerable impact
Fake Retirements Help IBM Keep the Layoff Figures Down
Yesterday we read that it was quite cruel how IBM (or Red Hat) compelled staff to pretend to be happily leaving or "retiring" when the reality was, they had been pushed out with some "package"
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Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
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Richard Stallman's 2005 Article on Why Patents on Software Should be Denied
If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted, says Richard Stallman
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So the real extent of the layoffs is being kept 'undercover'
Slopwatch: The WebProNews Slopfarm and the Serial Slopper
The Web is ill
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Links for the day
Corporate Media That Fails to Report Cocaine at EPO is Totally Failing to Report Mass Layoffs at IBM
How come nobody anywhere writes about this week's RAs?
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Just to be very clear, search would not be unprecedented at Techrights
At IBM, Layoffs Start at 1AM (at Night)
not a single English-speaking site covers the news about the layoffs
Links 04/11/2025: Google Cloud Account Engages in Censorship of the Innocent, arXiv Spammed by LLM Slop
Links for the day
EPO Cocaine Chronicles: Our Aim Will be to Ensure This Becomes a Mainstream Media Topic, Not a Suppressed Scandal (Which the German State Deems Embarrassing and Detrimental to Its Pan-European Patent Franchise)
At the EPO, and perhaps in German media as well, people "fall upwards" (they get rewarded for bad things)
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Consider adopting SSGs if you still use a CMS such as WordPress
But he Was Born in Manchester! (Origin Stories)
Borussia Dortmund does not exist!
What Julian Darley Wrote About the Stallman Talk Regarding "AI" in Oxford (2025)
From LinkedIn (Microsoft)
GNU/Linux is American, Not Finnish
It started in Boston, not in Helsinki
'Hacker' 'News' Makes Dumb Assertions Against Smart People
A logical fallacy
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Without free press, there won't be free society
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." -Galileo Galilei
This site is educational
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As a graffiti around the corner from our home says, "be a better person"
Standing Up or Standing for What's True But Inconvenient
Bad actors need to be called out
Many People Have Said That They "Leave" IBM in Recent Days (Ahead of Mass Layoffs)
So the real extent of layoffs is greater than what's publicly stated (there are silent layoffs) [...] Whatever IBM says about the scope, scale, or magnitude of the "RAs", it doesn't tell the full story
Media Coverage Regarding IBM is Vapourware and LLM Slop
With slop images, too
statCounter Says GNU/Linux Rose to 4% in the Russian Federation
Adoption of Vista 11 has been embarrassingly weak
Corruption is Not a Joke
we'll try to limit our use of humour to avoid misunderstandings or misinterpretations
The Slopfarm WebProNews is Overwhelming "linux" Results in Google News
Google News is slop
The Fall of IBM: What Happened?
Just like the EPO continues riding some old reputation acquired in the 1970s IBM relies on old myths like, "nobody gets fired for buying IBM."
IBM's CEO Already Has the Excuse for the Latest Wave of Mass Layoffs
Only days ago the CEO told a bunch of nonsense
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Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/11/2025: Entering WiFi Passwords and Programming Rambles
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Arch users (btw!) are growing in relative and absolute share
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the data set is large
Holding Institutions Such as the EPO Accountable Through Public Information
Speaking truth to power is never easy
Techrights Will Contact German Media About the EPO's Substance Abuse
This scandal won't "go to waste"
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How much more can the staff endure and generally tolerate?
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Legal matters that relate to sharing of code will be discussed
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 03, 2025
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Many people say "software" people are impacted
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It would be nice to meet for a chat
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Links 03/11/2025: Data Breaches, Wars, and Digital Censorship
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Gemini Links 03/11/2025: Poetry, Old Androids and Small Shells
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The Rumour Was True, Mass Layoffs at IBM Today
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Links 03/11/2025: Internet Anniversary
Links for the day
Two Years of Uptime
Reboots are seldom involuntary
Richard Stallman is Giving Another Talk in Less Than a Fortnight
in two weeks' time (13 days from now)
Windows Falls Below 20% in the UK
Many people choose to leave Windows altogether
Microsoft's Search Business Falls to Lowest Point in 2 Years, Based on statCounter
what can Microsoft sell other than shares in Microsoft?
Evidence Regarding Layoffs at Red Hat
Seems like IBM layoffs
Microsoft: Our "Goodwill" Value Grew More Than Tenfold Since 2011
Hallmark of pseudo-economics
GNU/Linux as a Boarding Pass
being mostly analogue is still feasible
Links 03/11/2025: Lack of Trust in LLMs and Windows TCO at Jaguar
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/11/2025: Books in October and Change
Links for the day
Mozilla Firefox Won't Survive and Many Sites Don't Work With It (Compatibility Abandoned)
The Web has become monocultural
Debian is Non-Free
Devuan might be worth looking into
Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli and LinuxSecurity
This is a real problem and most certainly a big problem because when people try to find real information about security and GNU/Linux they instead read "word salads" made by bots
Four Reasons to Party With Us in Four Days, Celebrating the Four Freedoms
Today we expect to be back to a more-or-less regular publication pace
Links 03/11/2025: The "Smartphone Panopticon" and Belarus' Hybrid Attacks on EU Intensify
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Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 02, 2025
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