Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 22/06/2023: Cool Capsules of the Week and What Dystopia?



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Absinth make the beer taste fonder.

        Finally! Some time to blog!

        Man, it has been crazy over here. I have two part time jobs, recently moved and had covid last week. It was pretty brutal all round.

        So let me summarize all things related to me.

      • What the Hell Can I Do? (translation)

        I posted this to my blog-blog (on write.as), but realized that I had not done so here.

        This is my translation of a poem (of this name) by Jaime Sabines.

      • Scarlet Heroes Character Creation Thoughts

        After looking through a lot of OSR systems, I finally settled on trying out Scarlet Heroes. It looked like it offers the best balance between what I wanted out of a system.

        For the first game, I am a player, and someone else kind enough to be the GM. It's going to be a duet game, which Scarlet Heroes is designed for. The first step for me in this is to create a character.

      • Can cities be sustainable?

        I've been reading an old-ish book on sustainable city planning this morning

        Newman & Jennings (2008) Cities as sustainable ecosystems: principles and practices, Island press.

        And like I'm not criticizing the book per se I'm just kinda stuck thinking about whether we actually can make cities as we think of them, which are primarily---for lack of a better word--- endothermic entities that have to take in energy and resources to function rather than generate them and turn them into entities that can more efficiently provide for their own needs

      • There Is Only Power

        There is only wrath and what it lays waste to in its wake!

        There is no justice, no law, and no right or wrong, except for the one that replaces them!

        All can change, and most will...

        He who has the power will shape the reality of the world...



      • Beyond Dream's Door

        I had some friends over and got drunk and laughed until I cried at these two fuckin things.

        Beyond Dream's Door is a late-80s horror film with a student-film vibe; that is, wildly inventive and completely undisciplined. The acting, the cinematography, and frankly the script all conspire to make you think you're watching the leadup to a porno. It feels like it's already uploaded to Everything is Terrible.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • What Dystopia?

        There have been a few posts recently about the state of the Free Software movement.

        I was a member of the FSF for quite a few years, but gave back my badge and hung up my coat—because I think we’re pretty much done. The big battles are over, and freedom won.

        As a child I grew up in Microsoft land—first DOS, then Windows 3, 95, 98. Then I discovered Linux, and that I had been using junk: cheap consumer products aimed at control, when there was a world of high quality software for the sake of software that had been denied to me. I was deeply unhappy about this.

        The battles, then: that you had to buy a computer with a Microsoft operating system; that you had to use closed source software, and pay money for it; and that you had to trade files in proprietary formats that required that for-pay software. Oh, and you had to use Internet Explorer to browse the web, because so many pages were made specifically for it.

        [...]

        The are new problems that we didn’t have twenty years ago: the rise of social media, the dominance of algorithm-optimized information feeds.

      • 1 Bit Lifestyle, Beepberry, Playdate, Watchy

        I am slowly descending into madness...or actually color is being drained from my computing devices. Ok, maybe both of these things can be true. In addition to the monochrome (though it's 4-bit grayscale not 1-bit :-P) PDA I use everyday I should soon* finally have my Playdate handheld that uses a 1-bit monochrome sharp memory lcd. But that's not all. A few weeks back SQFMI, the folks behind the Watchy epaper smartwatch (yes I have one of these), unveiled a really neat little pocket computer called the Beepberry that uses the same sharp memory lcd. You can probably guess whether I ordered one. Yes, yes I did.

      • To anyone who's followed me from elsewhere

        So I recently made a post on my Tumblr that since I won't be using it anymore, you can find updates on my life and coding progress on here. If anyone is from there, I'll reiterate that it won't be Tumblr content and that's kind of the point, so I'm not expecting many people will keep up with this. I think I'll add a curious cat link so people can send me messages if they want, but the intention is definitely to not be doing what I was on Tumblr. You can subscribe to my RSS feed or bookmark my blog if you like, but I don't know if many people will, so if I get no engagement that's perfectly fine. I'm doing this for me.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Cool Capsule Of The Week

          Each week, I will decide on a cool Gemini capsule to focus on, and write a short article about what makes it cool. This is basically the Gemini version of the early Web’s Cool Site Of The Day.

      • Programming

        • activity pub

          I've done a lot of changes to my code. Can't remember them all. Actually ran into the request verification recursively causing more verification requests problem. It was my server actor requesting its own public key from itself because it didn't bother to recognize itself and short circuit the logic. I disabled signature verification for now.

        • Webdev seemed so easy, but now it seems so hard...

          Just last week, it seemed like all I was going to need was a webserver and something to run TypeScript, now there's all this stuff about tech stacks and databases and endless tools to run frameworks to manage tools for running frameworks, then I've gotta figure out how to deploy all of it...

          It seems like full-stack web development is a lot harder than it probably should be. I'm starting to understand why out of the 4ish billion people on the internet, there are only a few thousand developers actively making cool things on the net.

        • Sublime Text snippets

          Unfortunately, each snippet must be placed in its own separate file. If multiple snippets are in the same file, only the first one will work.

        • Rogue

          rogue, or at least the oldest version I could find at the time on the Internet, did not compile on modern systems.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 10 Out of 200: Showing Public Tweets is Not a Privacy Violation, But This Isn't About Justice, It's About Censorship
It's time to put a stop to this abuse of process (which is what the Judge deemed it to be last year)
IBM's Payroll: Cannot Even Pay the People What They're Legally Entitled to
How financially-stressed is IBM at this point?
 
Links 12/03/2026: Heating Bills to Soar, "Banks in Gulf Evacuate Their Offices"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/03/2026: On Phone Anxiety and Bjorn "Looking for Someone to Take Over Antenna"
Links for the day
Cultification: best candidates avoiding Debian leader elections
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman (RMS) et al Cited in 'Nature' (Journal/Site) Today, "CODE beyond FAIR"
Under Open Access
The Register MS, on Verge of Collapse, Keeps Promoting a Ponzi Scheme for China
Publishers that participate in this simply don't care about their readers
Overview of False Narratives and Lies Used to Lower Salaries at the European Patent Office (EPO), Abandoning Patent Quality and the EPC
Many of the latter slides are the same as Munich's
Links 12/03/2026: Atlassian Layoffs, GAFAN Covering up Slop-Induced Outages, "Age-verification in Operating Systems and the Internet"
Links for the day
The EPO's President, Who Covers Up Cocaine Use, is Trying to Suppress Communication Between EPO Staff Under the Guise of 'Privacy' (and in Defiance of a Court Ruling)
Why does Europe's second-largest institution: 1) curtail communication among staff (including union) and 2) go out of its way to avoid obeying a court order from ILOAT in Geneva?
Exactly One Week Before Next EPO Strike, Media Intentionally Not Mentioning EPO Strikes
One form of propaganda technique/s involves the systematic suppression of certain topics, or of particular "narratives"
Suicide of disgruntled employee? Bus fire at Kerzers / Chiètres, Switzerland, at least six dead
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 11, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Gemini Links 12/03/2026: "on Urbit" and the True Cost (or Criticism) of "Social Control Media"
Links for the day
Slop About "linux" in Google News
Once people recognise that those sites are fake it's hard to 'unsee' what they are
An American War on GNU/Linux, Software Freedom, and British Investigative, Science-Based Reporting - Part V - Attempts to Take Down and Suppress Criticism of Back Doors Controlled by Microsoft and the American Government
The cost of maintaining illusions
Slides From the European Patent Office (EPO) Explain Why They're Striking, How They're Striking, and What Comes Next
A week from now the strike will go ahead
GAFAM Datacentres Are Facilities of War, So Risk of Downtime by Missiles or State-Sponsored Cracking Has Vastly Increased
How safe is your business in "clown computing" or DCs marked as some "legitimate targets" at wartime?
Companies That Take Away Blood and Sweat From the Community to Sell a Ponzi Scheme to Everybody
We need Free software that is run by communities
1,234 People Gather Online to Plan Next EPO Strikes and Other Industrial Actions
yesterday an online gathering orchestrated the next moves by EPO staff
Links 11/03/2026: Fake Videos Swarm YouTube, "Ukraine Can Now Manufacture ‘China-Free’ Drones"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/03/2026: Lagrange for iOS and Android and "Turning a Folder of Git Repos Into Project Launcher"
Links for the day
Kafkaesque: Unlawful Activities in the UK to Cover Up Unlawful Activities in the United States of America
Why is bribery and even extortion seen is OK? Because rich people do those things?
Former IBM Executive, Ron Hovsepian, Doomed S.u.S.E. (SUSE)
SUSE is like a child nobody wants to raise
Quiet Layoffs or Silent Layoffs Alleged at Microsoft
Will some investigative journalists do their job now and ask Microsoft tough questions?
After a Long Lull LinuxTeck (linuxteck.com) Came Back Only as a Slopfarm
Unlike Linuxiac, LinuxTeck wasn't very active in recent years
Links 11/03/2026: EPO and USPTO Software Patents Thrown Out Again, Copyright Concerns Over Slop (Plagiarism Using Buzzwords)
Links for the day
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 9 Out of 200: 5RB Barrister Does Not Even Know the Name of His Own Client (That He Was Paid Well Over $200,000 to 'Speak' or 'Cover' for)
If you assault women in the United States, there's a barrister available for you in the UK
IBM's Fedora is Now Led by GAFAM Slop
The official word of Fedora is partly slop
IBM 'Dinobabies' Speak Out
"They want newbies out of school at a much cheaper rate"
Links 11/03/2026: "Drill, Baby, Drill" and Social Control Media Recognised as Threat to Democracy
Links for the day
5 Years Since Freenode Conflict
IRC isn't going away
A Week Ahead of Next EPO Strike the Staff Representatives Show the Administrative Council That the Office Lost the Best Staff, It's No Longer Attractive
the message circulated regarding the open letter to the Administrative Council
Jeff Bezos as an Individual Said to Have Enough Capital to Buy IBM
Assuming a market capitalisation of 234.70 billion
Starting Soon: Another New Series About Richard Stallman
There are some inside stories we can tell
Gemini Links 11/03/2026: School, Code Slop, and "Fancy Weapons"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 10, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Geminispace Continues to Grow
Geminispace Will Soon Have 5,000 Capsules
Very Little Slop About "Linux"
We hope to see slop eradicated by year's end
BBC Lied for Its Longtime Sponsor (Bribes for 15+ Years) Bill Epsteingate, in Effect Covering Up Sex Trafficking of Underage Girls
The state of the media is truly awful
Microsoft GitHub is Not Free Hosting and It Won't Last
Not for much longer [...] Microsoft is afraid to say that it is pulling the plug, but it seems inevitable
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft, March 2026
When will the media properly investigate this?
An American War on GNU/Linux, Software Freedom, and British Investigative, Science-Based Reporting - Part IV - Escalating to Ministers, Explaining the Severity of These Matters
British Sovereignty at Stake
"The Lost Generation" Came Back, This Time Literally
Based on my limited experience with young people ("alphas"), they're lost
IBM is Not Likely to Survive Another Decade
Despite having already survived over a century [...] Last week we saw claims that some company would likely acquire IBM for its remaining assets
IBM Has Just Been Sued Again by Its Own Staff (This Time a Manager, Stephen P. Gutierrez)
IBM's behaviour towards its staff can prove costly
When a Company Says Its Layoffs are "Due to AI" Check the Debt (Typically the Real Reason for Mass Layoffs)
The mass layoffs at Microsoft continue, but Microsoft hides those in some of the same ways IBM does
Doing More With Less
primacy of concepts rather than bells and whistles
Andy and Helen in Cybershow on Divesting From the United States' Technology and Politics
It is no longer considered a taboo to say this and it's not "anti-American" because many Americans can relate to and agree with such criticism
Links 10/03/2026: "GEMA v. Suno Copyright Case" and "Valve Faces PRS Lawsuit Over Allegedly Unlicensed Steam Music"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/03/2026: Woods in UK, Slop Laziness, and "Small Technology and Small Economic"
Links for the day
Garrett Announces LibreLocal Instance in Northampton, Massachusetts (USA)
his message was the only one last month
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 8 Out of 200: Gross Misuse of UKGDPR to Protect the Agenda of American Back Doors (Mass Surveillance)
Responding to bunk claims regarding UKGDPR and claims of 'analytics' in our sites
Links 10/03/2026: Oil Prices Rising, South Korean/US Military Assets Redirected
Links for the day
Links 10/03/2026: Rust Rewrites by Slop "20,171 Times Slower", "You MUST Review LLM-generated Code"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 09, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, March 09, 2026