Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 13/06/2023: GPL and Upgrading Debian Bullseye



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Blowing it up and gone.



        I was just over at Tinny and Reg's old place. Yeah, you know the last one. I went to drag over some pallets, to prop up the right front of their old van laying in the grass aside the sheds. It was hard to set inside the back of it, there on the plywood sheet the kids lay in there. Hot too, even with the hatch removed.

        Those kids still come around there sometimes. They once had more in store. I surely can't fix that, but I'll add what I can. Even if it's just someplace dry and shady to while away the summer, one bottle-flip at a time. A space is a space.

      • Photos from the UAF Botanical Garden

        My family visited the UAF botanical garden this last Saturday. It was a little disappointing, because a lot of plants had not flowered yet, and the ones that had flowered, had been beaten up badly by a recent wind and rain storm. But nonetheless I got some good photos. Sorry, I don't know the identification for most of these flowers; I didn't see much at the garden by way of signs or labels to tell me what is what.

      • Tokyo Thoughts #1

        I spent the last few days in Tokyo. It is an amazing place. The people are very proud of where they live and they take good care of it. They are nice and welcoming. It makes me think that Americans have forgotten how to be kind and how to care for our culture.

      • Tokyo Thoughts #2

        Almost no one in Tokyo looks at you on the streets, at least not in the eyes. I feel like this is respectful, but VERY different than in the US.

        This phenomenon is the same in big US cities, though. Certainly, in Chicago people also avoid looking at strangers. It just felt like I was so separate from the citizens of Tokyo.

      • Bad Dreams at Mt. Fuji

        I had a bad dream about you last night as I slept here next to Mt. Fuji, Brandon. The gist of the dream was that I was driving both your cars around and someone was trying to take them from me. I awoke grunting as someone was trying to take our Jeep! I think it happened because just before bed last night, I posted on here my first thoughts that weren't about you. My brain was connecting you to where I am now.

      • News of my demise, etc etc

        So, some quick advice: Don't get COVID.

        I went back to Seattle in the beginning of March, wore a mask the whole time (my partner did not. I think this is important). We got to drop in on Emerald City Comic Con, which was well missed, and I was so happy to be there, and also just walk around the city again. I miss walking around cities.

        My partner was sick by the time we were done at ECCC (they did wear a mask there, as we do for conventions). By the time we got home, I had cold-like symptoms. That Tuesday I was fully sick with it.

        [...]

        Anyway, three months out, I still have a little bit of a cough, and my brain fog has mostly cleared up. I truly believe it could have been so much worse, if I had not gotten vaccines. I wish I had gotten the booster before I left town.

      • 2023 Week 22/23: Status and Photos

        A friend from out of town is visiting us this week, and to show him around the area, we've done many activities we don't normally do. My favorite so far has been a visit to a nearby amusement park, which we haven't been to since 2017.

        My family gave me three old hard drives to try to pull data from. The oldest was from our family Windows 95 PC, the second had Windows 98 installed, and the newest was salvaged from my dad's Windows XP system--which was heavily used by my sister whenever she snuck into his office room after bedtime. I was able to successfully clone the 98 and XP drives, but the 95 drive appears to have some sort of logic fault that prevents the head from reading the platters properly. I don't hear any clicks, whines, scrapes or beeps when it powers up, and my computer can even detect the correct storage size, but it can't read any data. I may need the help of an expert on old hard drives.

        The recent big buzz on Gemini seems to be about user authentication. The question is, in short, if one creates accounts on two different services with the same client certificate, how can one prove the accounts belong to the same person? Without some way to see information about users' certificates, and without third-party tools such as PGP, this doesn't appear to be possible.

    • Science

      • The EURion Constellation

        On some notes they’re disguised: one on UK bank note they’re musical notes, although the music doesn’t make sense. On others they are zeros mixed in with other digits.

        The pattern has a very specific purpose: it’s very quick to automatically detect, and it says “I am a bank note”. Various pieces of hardware and software look for it, and will refuse to copy the image if it’s found.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Upgrading Debian Bullseye (11) to Bookworm (12)

        I’m reading the release notes, and following the instructions. I started reading at 14:20, and I logged into the server at 14:34. – 2021-08-30 Upgrading Debian Buster (10) to Bullseye (11)

      • The GPL: A Postmortem

        I do not have much corporate experience, but recall folks saying "do not bring in GPL" at some FAANG or the other. Other random comments indicate this is a fairly common corporate position. Still others use copyleft licenses as a poison pill: pay up for your proprietary or I'll tap this enforcement card. Sleepycat Software comes to mind, though Michael Olson is doing different things these days. The AGPL has likewise been weaponized in the cloud wars. Others can maybe ignore the GPL as they don't distribute anything—welcome to cloud city, where our deals never change!—or they make their money elsewhere, so why not open up the code? However, a GPL does not seem a common or anyways exclusive license choice here.

      • Dinosauria

        I came across this incomprehensibly gorgeous animation series by David James Armsby and I have not emotionally recovered from it. The love and respect he has for dinosaurs is tangible. I cried at least 15 times. His process videos are also very worth watching because of the sheer amount of preproduction work he does - including very large fully painted dinosaur sculptures(??!?!??!)

      • Internet/Gemini

        • And now for my next trick

          As of now, all of my personal side projects that I've shared are basically complete (I just have to add query support to Cosmarmot). Lately I've been playing with writing GTK4 apps in Common Lisp, my reasons being that I really enjoy the look of a well-designed GTK/Libadwaita application, especially one that supports responsive design for narrow windows and mobile, and fits in well in my Gnome desktop, and because the Common Lisp bindings are so good thanks to the very good GObject introspection bindings. I've done enough to start to get comfortable with writing GUI code, something that has never been my forté. The last time I dipped my toes in desktop GUI programming was writing panel widgets for Gnome 1 (!) in Python. I do feel like writing something fun in it, though.

          I have two ideas, and I'm only probably going to work on one. Both of them are kind of unnecessary for their respective ecosystems, but each would add something that hasn't appeared or hasn't become common yet.

        • Gemtext can be worse than plaintext

          Recently I was thinking about the limitations of gemtext, and how to work around those. For inspiration, I started thinking about how those issues were handled in other limited formats. I thought back to what's often considered the most limited format: plaintext files.

          Plaintext is limiting because it has no formatting at all. There are no semantic elements. That's also part of it's strength, allowing it the most universal support.

          Comparing gemtext to other, intentionally more advanced markup languages would not be a fair comparison. But what about a step down to plaintext?

        • Gemini: Exploring the Cozy World of Capsules and Space

          This post is made to give you basic understanding of what Gemini is, what are Capsules and Gemlogs, modern-day use of retro image techniques and text-based art

      • Programming

        • Variable scope acts like a devil for the user 👿

          You can clone an object to get more than one. The variables in scope 2 are only available to the clones. But...

          If you update a variable in one of the clones, the others don't see the change. When you make a clone, the current *value* is given to the clonee but the cloner keeps its own copy.

          So my code for keeping track of the number of active clones fails.

        • New Chapter

          Last week my job hunt came to a close when I accepted a software engineering role with a pretty large, well-known company. The timing couldn't have been any better either since my last class is over in two weeks.

          I've been looking forward to it more and more as it's had time to settle in. The office I'll be working at is in a good location and we'll be really close to family. I also feel excited about the opportunity long-term. I'm sure there'll be room for growth inside the company and whenever it's time for me to move on I'm confident I'll have gotten some valuable experience.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete