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

At Microsoft, "Firing People is a "Cheat Code" to Pump the Stock Short-term But They Are Literally Destroying the Company's Soul Long-term."
They frame layoffs as a "success story"
Google News Poisons Its Own Index With More Slopfarms (Including "filmogaz")
Naming and shaming lazy slobs who rip off other people using LLMs can work, eventually
Naming Culprits in Switzerland
Switzerland is highly secretive about white-collar crime
Sanitised Plagiarism as "AI" (How Oligarchy Plots to Use Slop to Hide or Distract From Its Abuses, or Cause People Not to Trust Anything They See/Read Online)
This isn't innovation but repression
Recent Layoffs at Red Hat (2026 the Year of Ultimate Bluewashing)
I found it amusing that Red Hat's CEO has just chosen to wear all blue, as if to make a point
Team Campinos Talks About SAP Days Before EPO Industrial Actions and a Day Before the "Alicante Mafia" Series (About Team Campinos Doing Cocaine)
EPO staff that isn't morally feeble will insist on objecting to illegal instructions
Stack(ed) Rankings and Ongoing Layoffs at Red Hat and IBM (Failure to Keep Staff Acquired by IBM)
IBM is mismanaged and its sole aim is to game the stock market (by faking a lot of things)
 
Great Reset at IBM, the Company That Pulps Red Hat
In 2026 many workers are RTO'ed, PIP'ed, and at Red Hat many have effectively 'left the company' and now start afresh as "IBM" staff
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part II - Breakout of Discontent This Winter in Europe's Second-Largest Organisation
So far we've caused a lot of panic and stress inside Team Campinos
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part I - An Introduction to the Mafia Governing the EPO
Are some people 'evacuating' themselves to save face?
J.H.M. Ray Dassen & Debian, Red Hat, GNOME unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: "Porting My Main Website Over to Gemini" and Seeed Studio DevBoard
Links for the day
IBM Stacked and Ranked Badly, Maladministration Dooms the Company
Now they stack people up for PIPs and layoffs ("RAs")
Links 16/01/2026: UK Royal Family's "Legal Team Accused of Dishonesty, Fraud and Misconduct", OSI Still Controlled by Microsoft (the OSI's Spokesperson is on Microsoft's Payroll, Not Interim Executive Director, Deborah Bryant)
Links for the day
Writing About Corruption
Fraud is everywhere
The B in IBM is Brown-nosing and Buzzwords (or Both)
International Buzzwords Machines
IBM's 'Scientific-Sounding' Tech-Porn Won't Help IBM Survive (or Be Bailed Out)
Who's next in the pipeline?
IBM Was Never the Good Guy
its original products were used for large-scale surveillance, not scientific endeavours
The Bluewashing is Making Red Hat Extinct (They All Become "IBM", Little by Little)
IBM does not care what's legal
Slopfarms Push Fake News About Microsoft Shutdown, 30,000+ Microsoft Layoffs Last Year Spun as Only "15,000"
The Web is seriously ill
Countries Take Action Against Social Control Media and 'Smart' 'Phones', Not Slop (Plagiarised Information Synthesis Systems or P.I.S.S.)
None of this is unprecedented except the scale and speed of sharing
Sites That Expose Corruption Under Attack, Journalism Not Tolerated Anymore (the Super-Rich Abuse Their Wealth and Political Power)
Sometimes, albeit not always, the harder people try to hide something, the more effective and important it is for the general public
Links 16/01/2026: Social Control Media Curbs in Australia Underway, MElon Still Profiting by Sexualising Kids 'as a Service'
Links for the day
More People Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux"
We still see many distros and even journalists that say "GNU/Linux"
LLM Slop on the Web is Waning, But Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm
I gave Linuxiac a chance to deny this or explain this; Linuxiac did not
More Signs of Financial Troubles at Microsoft, Europe Puts Microsoft Under Investigation
The end of the library is part of the cuts
Pedophilia-Enabling Microsoft Co-founder Cuts Staff
Compensating by sleeping with young girls does not make one younger
Microsoft Shuts Down Campus Library, Resorts to Storytelling About "AI" to Spin the Seriousness of It
Microsoft is in pain
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Back to Advertising the Talks of Richard Stallman
A pleasant surprise
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 15, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, January 15, 2026
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: House Flood and Pragmatic Retrocomputing Dogfooding
Links for the day
Links 15/01/2026: Starlink Weaponised for Regime Change (by Man Who Boasted About Annexing South American Countries for Tesla's Mining), Corruption in Switzerland Uncovered by JuristGate
Links for the day
Linuxiac May Have Reverted Back to LLM Slop (Updated Same Day)
Is he back off the wagon?
GAFAM and IBM Layoffs Outline
a lot of the layoffs happen in secrecy and involve convincing people to resign, retire, relocate etc.
Links 15/01/2026: Internet Blackouts, Jackboots Society in US
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Impact With EPO Cocainegate
Will Campinos survive 2026?
The Last 'Dilberts' or Some of the Last Salvaged (Comic Strips Which Disappeared Shortly After They Had Been Published)
Around the time the creator of Dilbert went silent he published some strips mocking TikTok and usage of it
The Creator of Git Probably Doesn't Know How to Install and Deploy Git
Nobody disputes this: Mr. Torvalds created Git
Slop is a Liability
Slopfarms too will become extinct because people aren't interested in them
GAFAM is a National and International Threat to Everybody
GAFAM is just a tentacle in service of imperialism
EPO People Power - Part XXXVI - In Conclusion and Taking Things Up Another Notch
They often say that the law won't deter or stop criminals because it's hard to enforce laws against people who reject the law
Running Techrights is Fun, Rewarding, and Gratifying
In Geminispace we are already quite dominant
Red Hat is Connected to the Military, Its Chief Comes From Military Family (From Both Sides)
The founder of Red Hat's parent company literally saluted Hitler himself (yes, a Nazi salute)
Don't Cry for Gaslighting Media in a Country Which Loathes the Press
my wife and I received threats for merely writing about Americans
Red Hat (IBM) is Driving Away Remaining Fedora Users
I've not used Fedora since Moonshine
Robert X. Cringely Has Already Explained IBM's Bullying Culture (Towards Its Own Staff)
IBM is a fairly nasty company
Proton Mail compromise, Hannah Natanson (Washington Post) police raid & Debian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Gemini Links 15/01/2026: "Ode to elinks", envs.net Pubnix and Downtime at geminiprotocol.net
Links for the day
Still Condoning Child Labour and Exploiting Unpaid Children Developers as PR Props (to Raise Monopoly Money)
These people lack morals. So they project.
"Security, AI or Quantum" on "the IBM Titanic"
Who's RMS?
Hours Ago The Register MS Published Microsoft Windows SPAM "Sponsored by Intel." The Fake 'Article' Says "AI" 34 Times.
The Register MS isn't a serious online newspaper
EPO People Power - Part XXXV - Where Else Will Corruption and Substance Abuse be Tolerated?
We need to raise standards
Status and Capital
People who do a lot are too busy to boast about it and wear fancy garments
IBM Paying the Price for Treating Workers Badly and Discarding Real Talent (Because It's "Expensive")
IBM is dead man walking
Turbulence Ahead
I last rebooted my laptop in 2023
Google News Rewards Plagiarism With LLMs (About Linux, Too)
Google is in the slop business now
Links 14/01/2026: Failing Economy and Conquest Abroad as a Distraction From Domestic Woes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/01/2026: The Ephemerality of Our Digital Lives and "Summer of Upgrades"
Links for the day
Projection Tactics - Part III: Silencing Inconvenient Voices Online
If X gets banned in the UK, it'll be hard to see what the spouse says in public
Outsourcing on Microsoft's Agenda, Offshoring Also
"In some cases, India hiring is poised to replace certain roles previously based in the U.S."
Links 13/01/2026: 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams Passes Away With Cancer, Ban on X/Twitter Considered for CSAM Profiteering
Links for the day
The Goal is Software Freedom for All
Anything to do with "Linux Foundation" is timewasting
Reminder That Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Is Not Free, And It's Because of IBM
software freedom just 'gets in the way'
Under IBM, in Order to Game the Stock Market, Red Hat Resorted to Boosting the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in Human History
This is what IBM turned Red Hat into
Revision handed Microsoft the keys to the distortion of the past/history
This isn't the first time The Register MS rewrites computing history in Microsoft's favour, as we pointed out several times in past years
What Will Happen to GAFAM After the US Defaults Rather Than Bails Out the Market?
Or tries to topple every government that doesn't play by its rules?
EPO People Power - Part XXXIV - Bad Optics for the European Union (for Failing to Act and Tolerating Cocaine Use in Europe's Second-Largest Institution)
There are principles in laws which tie awareness with complicity
EPO's Central Staff Committee is Now Redacting (Self-Censoring) Due to Threats From the EPO "Mafia"
"On the agenda: salary adjustment procedure for 2025 (as of January 2026)"
"AI" (Slop) 'Demand' Isn't Growing, It's Fake, It's a Pyramid Scheme
They try to resort to 'creative' accounting (fraudulent schemes like circular financing)
Difficult Times at IBM and Microsoft Ahead of Mass Layoffs (Probably Before This Month's Results Unless Postponed to 'Prove' Rumours 'Wrong')
IBM and Microsoft used to be tech giants. Nowadays they mostly pretend by pumping up their stock and buying back their own shares.
Canonical: Make Ubuntu Bloated (Debian With Snaps), Then Sell the 'Debloated' Version for a Fee
If people want a light distro, then they ought not pay Canonical but instead choose a light (by design) GNU/Linux distro
People Don't Want "Just Enough", They'll Look for Quality
That's why slopfarms will go away or become inactive
Gemini Links 14/01/2026: 3D and Tiny Traffic Lights Pack
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 13, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Slop Waning Whilst Originals Perish
Slop is way past its "prime"
XBox's 'Major Nelson' Loses His Job Again, This Time in a Microsoft Mono Pusher
Microsoft hasn't much of a future in gaming. XBox's business is in rapid decline and people who push Mono to game developers are the same