Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 28/06/2023: Many Net and Technology Musings



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • 🔤SpellBinding: CHUOPTN Wordo: MILER
      • The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by A. E. Waite

        The accepted meanings of tarot cards can't be deduced just by looking at them. Let alone their "true" meanings.

        Nor can you uncover their secret significance through philology. Claims by people like Court de Gebelin, Eliphas Lévi and Dr. Papus that the cards originated in Egypt or some other ancient repository of lost wisdom hold no water whatsoever under historical investigation. What educated guesses we can make as to the original designers' intentions are disappointingly mundane; "The Tower" representing the defeat of the De La Torre family in medieval Italy; the "Strength" card commemorating the victory of a friend over a clan whose crest was the lion, etc. I hope I'm not ruffling any feathers by stating outright that the land disputes of long-dead bourgeois Italians hold no cosmic significance to me.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Fedran Infrastructure Redux

        I know I said that I was going to work on writing after working on the previous post[1], but I tried to speed up the pipelines because an hour was overwhelming and bothered me.

      • to these services

        because they insist that I register first sending me links to these is pretty much telling me to fuck off

        * facebook * instragram * spotify * discord

      • re: Leadership and Managemen

        Wow, this has been an appealing read.

        A bit of context: I'm 36, and I studied Engineering first, followed by Management of IT Systems. I enjoy management but also appreciate working on the technical stuff. And I've been a professor in college fo the last 5 years.

        [...]

        However, when working with people, it's rare to achieve those same percentages. Anyone can fall ill, conflicts can arise between team members, and people can become tired. In sales, the percentages can be even lower. Closing 33% of deals is often seen as an ideal number, but sometimes it can be lower than 5%.

      • re: Useless things?

        Well, as usual, it depends on what we 'define' as useless. I'm thinking of something like "unfinished stuff that doesn't even do a single thing well yet".

      • Reduced Site Functionality

        I somehow managed to introduce a bug into this site's configuration. It manifests as one of processes serving the site eating all the CPU resources. Every day there seems to be about zero to three of these.

        As I can't debug such rare events, I need to rely on logging but my efforts so far haven't been successful. So now what I'm doing is that I'm disabling part of this site's functionality, piece by piece. Let's see whether I can pare it down to a set that no longer runs into the problem.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • I'm on Lemmy

          I haven't had a reddit account in a while, but I do read a number of subreddits. Well, I guess I should say that I *did* read those subreddits, since I used gopherddit and Libreddit to do it and they depend on the soon- to-be-very-expensive API.[1]

          Like a lot of people, when the reddit moderators' strike started, I checked out Lemmy. Yesterday I took the plunge and actually signed up for an account (it's @visiblink@lemmy.sdf.org).

        • Defederate Meta?

          I haven’t made my mind up and I’ll keep editing this page until I have.

          I’m leaning towards “no” on the block, but it’s not an easy call and I haven’t made up my mind yet. The block side has two big arguments in their favor:

          1. Google federated to XMPP (a.k.a. Jabber) and we were like “OK cool” and I and many others federated with them. Then they shut off federation and moved all their users to their own closed network. 2. Meta had a big part to play in the Cambridge Analytica debacle. Not only is Meta the enemy (although I generally prefer to follow the Kumbaya Doctrine — if I truly believed they were reformed), they’re scary to deal with in case they’ll start data mining Fedi stuff.

        • Neutral Progress

          A couple of posts recently have talked about how to make progress on the Gemini spec.

      • Programming

        • Starforth: A Minimal Self-Hosting Compiler

          I've always been vaguely aware of Forth. It's the language that works with only a stack. Which also means it uses reverse polish notation, that is, instead of `2 + 2`, you write `2 2 +`.

          My (inaccurate) knowledge of Forth ended there. But then recently I was reading up on Forth and I realized something.

        • Done with comments

          Same here. For me it's mostly text-processing scripts/utilities, and almost always in Lua.

          And call me insane, but I stopped including blank lines and comments years go: the blank lines so I can see more of the actual code lines together, the comments because somewhere along the line I realized that over time they too often became misleading unless so verbose as to make it impossible to see sufficient code together. Plus, I'd rather study what actually executes when trying to re-understand how something works.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

'Dark Patterns' or a Trap at the European Patent Office (EPO)
insincere if not malicious E-mail from the EPO's dictators
There's an Abundance of Articles About the New Release of Kali Linux, But This One is a Fake
It can add nothing except casual misinformation (fed back into the model to reinforce lies)
IBM's Leadership Ruining Lives of People Who Thought Working for IBM Would be OK
Nobody gets fire-lined for buying IBM?
The United States' Authorities Ought to Become Enforcers of the General Public License (GPL) for National Security's Sake
US federal agencies ought to pursue availability of code and GPL compliance (copyleft), not bans
The Problem of Microsoft Security Problems is Microsoft (the Solution is to Quit Microsoft) and "Salt Typhoon" Coverage Must Name CALEA Back Doors
Name the holes, not those who exploit them.
A "Year of Efficiency"
No, we don't mean layoffs
 
Another Terrible Month for Microsoft in Web Servers
Consistent downward curve
LLM Slop Disguised as Journalism: The Latest Threat to the Web
A lot of it is to do with proprietary GitHub, i.e. Microsoft
Gemini Links 20/12/2024: Regulation and Implementing Graphics
Links for the day
Links 20/12/2024: Windows Breaks Itself, Mass Layoffs Coming to Google Again (Big Wave)
Links for the day
Microsoft: "Upgrade" to Vista 11 Today, We'll Brick Your Audio and You Cannot Prevent This
Windows Update is obligatory, so...
The Unspeakable National Security Threat: Plasticwares as the New Industrial Standard
Made to last or made to be as cheap as possible? Meritocracy or industrial rat races are everywhere now.
Microsoft's All-Time Lows in Macao and Hong Kong
Microsoft is having a hard time in China, not only for political reasons
[Meme] "It Was Like a Nuclear Winter"
This won't happen again, will it?
If You Know That Hey Hi (AI) is Hype, Then Stop Participating in It
bogus narrative of "Hey Hi (AI) arms race" and "era/age of Hey Hi" and "Hey Hi Revolution"
Bangladesh (Population Close to 200 Million) Sees Highest GNU/Linux Adoption Levels Ever
Microsoft barely has a grip on this country. It used to.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, December 19, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, December 19, 2024
Gemini Links 19/12/2024: Fast Year Passes and Advent of Code Ongoing
Links for the day
Twitter is Going to Fall Out of Top 100 Domains as Clownflare (DNS MitM) Sees It
evidence of Twitter's (X's) collapse
[Meme] Making Choices at the EPO
Decisions, decisions...
Large and Significant Error Correction in South America?
Windows now has less than half what Android achieved in terms of "market share"
Links 19/12/2024: Astronaut Record and Observer Absorbed
Links for the day
Links 19/12/2024: Seven Dirty Words and Isle Release v0.0.3 (Alpha)
Links for the day
Links 19/12/2024: Nurses Besieged by "Apps", More Harms of Social Control Media Illuminated
Links for the day
15 Countries Where Yandex is Already Seen to be Bigger Than Microsoft (in Search)
Georgia, Syrian Arab Republic, Cyprus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Turkey, and Russia
Links 19/12/2024: Magnitude 7.3 Earthquake and Privacy Camp
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/12/2024: Port Of Miami Explosion, TurboQOA, Gnus
Links for the day
Fake Articles About 'Linux'
Dated yesterday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 18, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 18, 2024
FSF Has Made It Halfway to Its Target (Funding Goal) a Week Before Christmas Day
$400,000 definitely seems reachable now, especially if they extend the "deadline"
[Meme] The Master Churnalist
Speaking of press releases being passed off as "journalism"
Spamnil's TFiR: Still Pretending Press Releases Are 'Articles' (TFiR 'Originals' as Plagiarism or Fluff)
Same as last year
Links 18/12/2024: Zakir Hussain Dies, TuneIn Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 18/12/2024: Karate Love and Advent of Code
Links for the day
Windows (or Microsoft) Has Become the "One Percent" (Market Share) in Chad
How long before it falls below 1%?
Arvind Krishna, IBM's CEO, Will Eventually Suck Up to Donald Trump Like His Predecessor Did or the Watson Family Did With Adolf Hitler
Literally Hitler
Being a Geek Need Not Mean Being Sedentary
"In the past 18 months," Berkholz writes, "I’ve lost 75 pounds and gone from completely sedentary to fit, while minimizing the effort to do so (but needing a whole lot of persistence and grit)."
GAFAM Kissing the Ring of the Mafia Don
"resistance" to dictatorship and defenders of democracy?
Slop Spaghetti From the Chef, Second Time Today
Fresh slop ready out the oven!
IBM - Like Microsoft - Lies About the Number of People It's Laying Off (Several Tens of Thousands, Not Counting R.T.O. "Silent" Layoffs and Contractors/Perma-Temps)
How many waves of silent layoffs have we seen so far at IBM this year?
Links 18/12/2024: EU Launches Probe Into TikTok (At Last!)
Links for the day
Links 18/12/2024: Doha/Qatar Trafficking, Bloat Comfort Zone, and Advent of Code 2024
Links for the day
Saving What's Left of Decent and Independent Journalism on the Web
We increasingly (over time) try to make local copies (hosted on our server) of important documents; it's hard to rely on third parties
[Meme] Microsoft's Latest Marketing Pitch
"Stop Being Poor; buy a new PC with TPMs"
In South Africa, a Very Large Nation, Web Developers Can Already Ignore Microsoft Browsers (Edge Measured Below 3% in 55 Nations)
The dumb assumption you must naively test with Microsoft browsers is no longer applicable in a lot of places
Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the Voice of Bill Gates and Satya Nadella
Not hard to see what they've done with the money
Microsoft Boasts That Its (Microsoft-Sponsored) "Open Source AI" Propaganda Got Cited in Media (That's Just What the Money Did)
This is a grotesque openwashing campaign
In Many Places Around the World, Perhaps as Expected, Yandex is Nearly Bigger Than Microsoft (Like in Several African Countries)
Microsoft may soon fall to "third place" in search
Keeping Productive This Christmas
We've (pre)paid for hosting till almost January 2026 and fully back on the saddle
IBM and Canonical Leave Money on the Table Because Microsoft Pays Them Not to Compete and Instead Market Windows, WSL, Microsoft 'Clown Computing', and TPMs
Where are the regulators?
Other Editors Who Agree "Hey Hi" (AI) is Just Hype But Won't Say So Publicly as It Might Upset Key Sponsors
Some media would gladly participate in a scam to make money
Brian Fagioli's Latest "Linux" Article Appears to be Fake
Another form of plagiarism/ripoff using bots?
IBM (and Red Hat) is a Patent Troll, Still Leveraging Software Patents to Extract Money Out of Other Companies by Suing Them
Basically, when it comes to patents, IBM is demonstrably part of the problem, not the solution
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 17, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 17, 2024