Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 19/06/2023: “We Need More of Richard Stallman, Not Less”



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • 🔤SpellBinding: ACYGINF Wordo: SKIPS
      • Re: ~christyotwisty's Five Questions for June 2023

        I guess it depends a bit on what you consider an object? And whether I should limit it to things I have a realistic possibility of ever buying. Is a house an object? If so, I'd like a Victorian in a walkable neighborhood, please. If a house isn't, but a car is, I'd like a Hyundai Ioniq or Kia EV6. I'm under no misapprehension that electric cars are a real solution to climate change; we need to aim at eliminating cars almost entirely, in favor of universal quality public transit. While I'm waiting on that dream, I hate my current car. It gets much worse in-town gas mileage than I expected it to, and has been unexpectedly expensive to maintain. I don't have any foreseeable chance of buying either of those things, since electric cars are still priced as luxury items here in the US.

      • Good Music You Haven't Heard Of

        "Music is my life" is a cliche, so I'll refrain from saying it. Suffice it to say that my life has revolved significantly around music for a very long time.

        Starting from high school I was one of those kids who had headphones on at every possible second. While not quite so anti-social anymore, I have worked as a developer for more than 10 years at this point, and have spent every work day of all of those listening to music while coding. And that's to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of miles driven, workouts worked, and dinners cooked while blasting tunes.

      • Medevel23 Free and Open-source Documentation Generators For Developers

        What is a Documentation Generator?

        A documentation generator is a tool that automates the process of creating documentation for software projects, APIs, or other technical products.

    • Science

      • New Rubik's 4x4x4 Cube

        I've been interested in Rubik's Cubes and other twisty puzzles for almost twenty years, but the height of my obsession was around 2010. Most of the puzzles I own come from those days, including my two Rubik's-brand 4x4x4 puzzles.

        The original mechanism in official Rubik's 4x4x4 cubes consisted of a plastic ball with grooves just offset from each perpendicular equatorial ring. The offset allowed one half of the puzzle to slide along the groove, while notches on the other side of the offset held the other half in place. As the outer layers turned, pieces would be swapped in and out of the grooves.

      • The lack of time for geeky tasks!

        It's been a busy month! New things going on at work world compounded with plenty to do around the house means I haven't spent as much as I would doing side projects. In turn, nothing really notiable to phlog about as of late.

      • RE: Division, remainder, mod âž—%❓

        Yes, you are qualified. You can tell whether -1 and 1 are the same number.

        And yes, as a programmer, you should care. Integers are the most basic atomic data type in a computer. As programmers we have to deal with integers and do integer arithmetic all the time. Both remainder and modulo are useful (the latter more so than the former, in my experience), and knowing which one we have in hands can be the difference between the program we just wrote doing what we expected or crashing.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Yet More On Paging

        So it turns out that amfora copies Bombadillo and only scrolls some of the page. Half-page scrolling can be problematic as the new content may be hard to find in the middle of the terminal. Half-page might be good if you're quickly skimming the text; two impressions might help you spot something that was missed when it was elsewhere on the page, and in that case you're glancing around and not following the prose. One option here is to patch amfora for full-page motion; probably these should be distinct commands like less, mutt, and vi have for full- or half-page motions.

      • Neovim: init.lua from scratch

        After chucking one of my only remaining Arch installations in favor of FreeBSD (now a dual boot with Void) I've been one by one massaging my dotfiles and fixing software compatibility issues to get my preferred environment up and running. Only yesterday I managed to get my multiplexer, Zellij, up and running by backporting a fix from upstream git to their current release. I've been having trouble getting my NeoVim config setup, in that it was reporting that it couldn't set up language servers, and last night after work I began investigating.

        I've been using kickstart.nvim for a while as a jumping off point, as when I made the switch from an init.vim to init.lua I didn't really feel like starting from scratch. But what I found bothered me enough that I chucked it all. About four months ago they switched from the Vim package manager they had always used, Packer, to a new one called Lazy. I've never experienced issues with Packer, but if that was the only change and things were working I'd probably just roll with it. They also switched from just using the NeoVim official lsp support package to a new plugin called Mason which is supposed to make installing new language servers easier. Crap, here we go.

      • We need more of Richard Stallman, not less

        The Free Software movement has been mostly killed by the corporate Open Source. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and its founder, Richard Stallman (RMS), have been decried for the last twenty years, including by my 25-year-old self, as being outdated and inadequate.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Our Priority is Still Tackling Software Patents and Corruption in Patent Offices
Meanwhile we got compliments on our recent articles, which means that they are effective
Slopwatch: Another Day, Another Slopfest, LLM Slop Scrapers Slow Down Our Site
We too have some slop issues; this past day this site and the sister site had to answer about 2.5 million requests (not counting Gemini Protocol) and it's slowing things down for everybody
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IX: Minimum Wages For You (Experienced Scientist), Alicante/EU Paydays For Me (Unproductive, Corrupt Official)
Does UPRP maladministration extend to the false belief that qualified and experienced scientists can play the role of circus clowns?
 
"The Liberating Power of Simply Telling People the Truth."
'polite' bullying
Why the Militants Have Lost Every Battle Since 2022 (When Attacking My Wife and I in Various Ways, Even Attacking Our Employers)
This takes patience, sure, but at the end most evildoers face the consequences for their actions
Politics Will Impact Software Choices
Will those systems respect users' freedom?
EPO: Neglecting Children to Promote American Monopolies by Shielding Them From European Competition
Yesterday the Central Staff Committee at the EPO spoke about another "reform" at the Office
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 11, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Links 11/06/2025: More Vulnerabilities Found in 'Smart' Phones, China Extends Reach in the Pacific
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/06/2025: Grain and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
Links 11/06/2025: "Quantum" Hype From IBM, US Closer to Martial Law, and “The Nation” Celebrates Milestone
Links for the day
IBM's CEO Roasted, Sizzled and Grilled for Dumb and Inconsistent Vapourware Promises
It looks like being a chronic liar is what it takes to lead the company once synonymous with computing
IBM's Goal Is Not (and Never Was) Computer Users' Freedom
More than 1.5 decades ago I found IBM to be an "ally of convenience" because of OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Wayland Shows the IBM/Red Hat Way of Doing Things
IBM is trying to 'kill' X
Who Imitates Who? Plagiarist as Client (From Microsoft), 'Plagiarism' at the Law Firm?
let's revisit the subject
GitHub is Proprietary, Controlled by Microsoft, and GPL Violation Warehouse
"IRS tax filing software [will be] released to the people as free software" ... In general this is good news
Slopfarm Catastrophe
Seems like BetaNews (or BetaNoise) has just suffered a major data loss and restored the site from a week-old backup
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VIII: Illegal Working Conditions
How many people need to die for these people to get their massive salaries?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 10, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Links 10/06/2025: Apple Hype and Physical Attacks on Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/06/2025: Loon Lake, Farming, and Forth
Links for the day
Links 10/06/2025: Jaws at 50 and US Democracy Crushed Very Rapidly (Martial Law Seems Imminent)
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
More on that later
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric