Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 02/07/2023: Independence Day and Consequences of Running Leftist Communities



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

    • Politics and World Events

      • Independence Day

        It's around 11pm, the dog is trying to stand on the table and we're anxiously watching the baby on the monitor as the sounds of *pops* and *booms* are all around us.

        We grilled up some burgers on the patio and watched our town's firework display for Independence Day here in the US. Great show, and we could see it clearly from our house. We flew the drone up to capture most of the show. I noticed a few other blinking lights in the sky marking my neighbors doing the same. Unfortunately I wasn't as prepared as them, as I ran out of battery before the finale.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • The Consequences of Running Leftist Communities

        Today, the administrators of kolektiva.social, a Mastodon instance that bills itself as a "free, non-corporate platform for anarchists and anti-colonial content producers looking to circumvent Google, Facebook, and other surveillance capitalists," announced that an unencrypted copy of their database circa May 2023 was seized by the FBI as part of an unrelated raid€². The main content affected as part of this is all user account information and all posts, regardless of the post's privacy level. It should be noted that direct messages on Mastodon require a copy to be stored on both your instance's server and the target server, so the availability of these types of data is not unique. However, the failure to adequately handle potentially sensitive user data and to quickly communicate this breach shows me that kolektiva is falling prey to the lack of meaningful concern for its users that plagues most leftist spaces.

        [...]

        To be clear, this is no worse than corporate social media, which is often more than willing to hand over your unencrypted DMs to any government agency that asks for them. However, spaces that advertise themselves as places for activists to gather and work are essentially creating large databases of leftists that can be easily scooped up by the feds if that data isn't secured.

      • Old Computer Challenge: Preparation

        The Old Computer Challenge 2023[1][2] is coming up in little over a week and I've planned this weekend to get things set up for it. The idea of the challenge is simple: to use a computer with maximum 512m ram, 1 core and the lowest cpu frequency, for one week, and see what happens. The challenge runs from July 10th to 16th and this will be my first OCC, as I (regrettably) had never heard of it before. But let's get started!

        [...]

        So far, the first steps into setting up OpenBSD made me both really excited but also very aware of the limitations of the device. I already had to reinstall the OS once after the /usr partition was full due to me setting up ports. Speaking of... extracting the ports.tar.gz file took a whopping 30 minutes (for reference, this takes about 15 seconds on my M1 mac).

      • Internet/Gemini

        • striping things down

          I stopped hosting fedi. Deleted my alt account as well. i'm going through my phase of not socializing a lot anymore, or at least, trying something different.

          right now i'm only hosting gemini and xmpp over a dynamic dns. so please, if you wanna reach out, xmpp is my preference (i can email too, though!)

        • AmiGemini and GCC

          Had a horribly distracted morning again, but just couldn't let this one go.

          The final thing on my todo list for my AmiGemini setup was getting a comfortable line length, without excessive window decorations.

          Being the odd little duckling that I am. I'm not really a fan of anything more than 10-12 words per screen width of text.

          Without excessively large fonts. AmiGemini when in full screen mode therefore is quite uncomfortable for me to read in.

        • domains

          There are many projects, most of them only designed, which domains have been bought for. Being sensitive, these were reserved where original personal member domains were reserved. Unfortunately, this was very convenient, because we used Google Domains.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Staff Explains How Microsoft Swindled Employees and Avoided Paying Out Severance Pay (Microsoft Hasn't Much Money Left in the Bank)
This is a classic way to avoid paying workers
 
Gemini Links 01/02/2025: LLMs, Analog Computer, and BorgBackup
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 31, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, January 31, 2025
Links 31/01/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Microsoft, Sweden Again Fails to Protect Critics of Violence
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux" and More (Latest Roundup Featuring BetaNews, Janus Atienza, and Brittany Day From Guardian Digital, Inc)
LLM slop season
"Not one of us" by Dr. Andy Farnell
Elon Musk has brought embarrassment to nerds and technologists
Gemini Links 31/01/2025: "Bulletin Buble" and "Why Blog?"
Links for the day
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Pay Off: Vastly Faster Sites, Much Smaller Hosting Bills
success story for SSGs
Of Note: Linux Foundation Has Already Let Linux.com Rot for About 4 Months (No Activity)
there's no campaign aside from marketing spam there
Techrights Should be Even Faster Now
We're now better off
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 30, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, January 30, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Gave 3 Talks in India in Less Than a Week
In India this month we've not seen a single negative comment about RMS
Indian Data Biases statCounter For or Against "Linux"
In statCounter, the GNU/Linux increases and decreases are deeply tied to what it does with data collected in India
The Corporate Media Pretends That Facebook ("Meta") Has Performed Well, But Its Debt Doubles Every 2 Years Despite Mass Layoffs
That same media also helps parrot misleading financial claims
Microsoft's Debt Surged by More Than 6,000,000,000 Dollars in Just 3 Months
numbers released hours ago
The Sheer Irony of Microsoft Proxy Accusing Others of 'Stealing'
Wherever DeepSick's data came from, Microsoft (or its proxy) is in no position to issue criticism.
The Difference a Decade (and GAFAM Money) Makes
Credibility cannot be purchased
[Meme] The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Critics Because Its Message is Effective
Applying to others the same standards one is willing to violate?
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised $422,000 (Another $22k in the Two Weeks After Campaign Ended), Proving That Truth and Justice Tend to Find a Way
10,000+ dollars a week even without campaigning for more funds
Faking Revenue Increase by Buying Your Own Products and Services (Through Scams and Scammers Like Scam Altman)
Is this what society deserves? Media that instead of exposing corruption has chosen to participate in it and profit from it?
Microsoft Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay Reported Hours After Microsoft Reported Weak Numbers and Microsoft Stock Fell
Microsoft has a bloodbath this month
Links 30/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Causes Deaths, FBI Seizes Domains
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Action vs Inaction, Gopherholes, and More
Links for the day
Another Slew of Fake Articles About 'Linux' and 'Security' From Brittany Day at linuxsecurity.com (Spamfarm/Slopfarm)
linuxsecurity.com is basically a pariah and parasite. It lessens the incentive to write real articles about "Linux" by generating fake ones to outrank the originals.
Links 30/01/2025: Microsoft Wants Convicted Felon to Give Fentanylware (TikTok) to It (After Making a Phonecall Asking for That in 2019), "Moving Away From Google's Ecosystem"
Links for the day
Jack M. Germain (LinuxInsider) Seems to Have Turned to LLM Slop, Graphics Slop, and B2B SPAM
LinuxInsider is barely active anymore
Links 30/01/2025: Amazon Layoffs and DeepSeek Panic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Chaos Reigns, E-mail, Searching
Links for the day
IBM: Many Thousands of Layoffs in 2025
If 2025 is expected to be the same, then perhaps about 20,000 IBM workers will no longer be there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 29, 2025