Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 09/07/2023: Mutt and Updated Thoughts on Gemini



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • birthday!!!

        hello, it's my birthday!!! so, how do you like to celebrate when it's your birthday? today i'm going out to eat and having a homemade strawberry lemonade cake. i'm excited!!!

      • Sumo - Nagoya Day 1

        We have exciting times afoot. During the last basho, Kiribayama gained the rank of Ozeki and became Kirishima. There were a few retirements which have caused a bit of a shake up. Takakeisho cleared kadoban status and so keeps at ozeki. In the end, we have 3 key contenders for ozeki in Daieisho, Wakamotoharu and Hoshoryu. Oh and of course Terunofuji returned and showed he is still capable of some amazing sumo after yet more knee surgery.

      • Hello Gemini!

        So, recently I have been engaging a bit with the Korean language again. I have a complicated relationship with Korean and language learning in general. I've spent a significant amount of hours striving towards fluency in languages, but have not reached it. Partially I haven't reached fluency because I have failed to focus on one. The language I grew closest to conversational fluency in was Korean.

        Then I developed hypothyroidsim, chronic leg pain, and moved to a new city in Korea and so did not have the friend base I had in the old city. I had a very bad third year in South Korea. At one low point, when my computer was having trouble loading a presentation right before my first class of the morning, I raked my nails across my face and drew a bit of blood. I can't quite remember but I belive I started to self-harm just a touch in other similar ways.

      • Gimme some of that sweet tomorrow

        In (to me) similar news, I've never lived with a woman that didn't want to fill our living space with gobs of useless junk in the name of decor.

        I'd like to add vehicle doors that lock themselves to your list. We've a Kia Soul whose doors and hatch (other than the driver seat door) lock themselves under circumstances we've yet to discern, and of course the manual is long gone.

        What that means is Murphy's Law guarantees the door you need to get into to quickly get something from or put something in the vehicle is locked if you don't have the key fob on you - which I rarely do because the button on it that causes the horn to sound repeatedly (in case... one is being attacked...? I've still no idea what it's for...) is located on the fob such that going down on one's haunches or bending over to pick something up results in one's pants pocket pressing that idiotic horn/alarm button, requiring quickly abandoning what you're doing in a panic to fetch the fob from the pocket and disable the ridiculous beeping.

      • Perfect Albums - A summary

        After writing my 3rd perfect album gempost I realized that I think I need to rethink the formula a bit. I genuinely love writing them but they're probably not that fun to read! But until I think up a better way to approach these I'll be maintaining a summary page that contains all of the entries and a paragraph about them to at least give folks who are interested in the list a quick and more consumable way to get the information! It'll be updated as new entries are added. Every entry will still get a dedicated gempost and added to my gemlog.

      • When Grief and Trauma Become Background Noise

        Duster had a stroke a few weeks ago and for the first couple of days it was the worst thing I had ever experienced. I was a complete wreck, absolutely beside myself the entire time. My baby boy was suffering and though we took him to the ER and they released him back to us after 20 hours with care instructions and medication, it felt like there was nothing I could do to help him.

      • detours

        Emergencies happen when you’re busy with other things. There’s that manner in which the working world suddenly fades away as you realise the importance of the moment, and get the hell out of the office.

      • Working with Obsidian

        I got interested in note-taking in 2020, and started seriously doing it a few months later. Looking back, I can now tell it was when I was seeing my grandma suffering with the early stages of dementia, and that really scared me. That loss of identity is something that I find existentially terrifying, and has been a motivating factor to take notes seriously. Now I enjoy taking notes for the sake of it, and continuously improving at it and seeing the growth of my vault of knowledge is both satisfying and helpful when I’m learning new skills.

    • Politics and World Events

      • The Social Contract: Direct Action Gets the Goods

        When most workers think about improving their working conditions collectively, a contract is the limit of their political imagination. It’s not their fault, that’s just the common understanding of what a union does. Anyone familiar with this process knows that the process of bargaining a contract, and even getting to the bargaining table to begin with, is long and arduous. It’s part of an organizing model that relies on the work of professional union staffers and lawyers who are in effect providing a service. We call it Service Unionism.

      • Who is the woman in my eye

        When I was little I would stare into the lights around my room. It would create little spots in my vision; flickering and dancing that would eventually fade away. As they would face every time the every shrinking flickering dot would become this image of a woman's face. She was beautiful. She captivated me. I would do this constantly growing up. I would stare into my ceiling lights, in the lights coming through my window, anywhere - if it meant I could see her. I would try staring at larger lights hoping that final flickering dot was larger and I would be able to see her more clearly. She stayed with me for most of my childhood. It wasn't until I was around high-school that I lose memory of seeing her. Which makes sense since this was when the lights, in general, faded from my eyes. But who was she?

      • We Who Will Destroy the Future
      • The Point of DARVO

        DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is a common tactic deployed by abusers to co-opt one of the few (potential) sources of power available to the survivor — disclosure — and turn it towards their own project of coercive control. The abuser denies allegations of abuse (if any have yet been made, sometimes abusers preempt their victim), attacks the credibility of the survivor, and creates a narrative in which the abuser is cast as the true victim of the survivor. When some people first hear of DARVO they express concern that the reality of the tactic makes it functionally impossible to distinguish between abuser and victim, implies the presence of “mutual abuse,” or demotes the situation from abusive to simply “toxic.” With these conclusions in hand many feel as though they can safely recuse themselves from engaging with the situation entirely, thus fulfilling the abuser’s central aim in deploying DARVO as a tactic in the first place.

      • The Ukrainian utopia that almost existed

        The Ukrainian counteroffensive has begun, and every day we read the names of cities unknown to most Americans until the invasion: Kherson, Kharkiv, Mariupol and Mykolaiv. After more than 15 months of fighting, large swaths of southern and eastern Ukraine remain under illegal Russian occupation.

      • Russian Anarchists on the Wagner Mutiny

        Early on June 24, Vladimir Putin addressed Russia about the unfolding rebellion of the Wagner private military company, saying that Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion is “pushing the country toward anarchy and fratricide.”

        This is a misuse of words. Fratricide has long been the rule under Putin. Torturing and assassinating dissidents was fratricide. Invading Ukraine was fratricide. Both the Wagner company and the Russian military have made fratricide their profession. Anarchy is the opposite of fratricide: it is the condition that prevails when people do not compete to rule each other. Totalitarianism always leads to bloody conflicts over power.

      • The White Anti-Racist is an Oxymoron

        I received an annoying e-mail about white people and their struggle to do anti-racist work. I keep reading and hearing white people talk about their struggle to do anti-racist organizing, and frankly it gets on my nerves. So I am writing this open letter to white people who engage in any activist work that involves or affects non-whites. Given that the US social structure is founded on white supremacy, and that there is a global order in which white supremacy and European domination are at large, I would challenge any white person to figure out what movement or action they can get involved in that will not involve or affect non-white people.

      • What is Primitivism?

        The following is my own attempt to define primitivism.

        Primitivism is the pursuit of ways of life running counter to the development of technology, its alienating antecedents, and the ensemble of changes wrought by both.

        Technology is here defined as tool use based upon division of labor...that is, tool manufacture and utilization that has become sufficiently complex to require specialization, implying both a separation and eventual stratification among individuals in the community, along with the rise of toil in the form of specialized, repetitive tasks.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Katolaz's Ed Tutorial and Some More Tips

        I enjoyed Katolaz's ed tutorial [0], I found it a great way to learn a useful subset of ed commands. I haven't used a line editor since the 80s, but the simplicity is compelling for minor edits, or even glog posts like this one :).

      • Prepping for the Old Computer Challenge

        It's almost time for the third annual Old Computer Challenge (starts Monday, July 10). I did a modified version of the first year's, by limiting the RAM and CPU of a computer that was old, but not old enough to meet the challenge's requirements. The second year was limited online time, and I missed it somehow. This year is the same as the first, but leaning into the SLOW computer requirements. Using a not-so-old computer and limiting it is explicitly okay. I'm going to use the same computer as the first year, an Asus EeePC 1015PX. From 2013, it has a 2-core, 4-thread Intel Atom processor at 1GHz to 1.6GHz, 2GB of RAM, and a very slow spinning-rust hard drive.

      • Using Dice to Generate Human Readable Passwords

        As a result of this, I decided I wanted to make my passwords in an analog way that were much more human friendly. A way of doing that was with some dice I had laying around.

      • OLD COMPUTER CHALLENGE - YEAR 3

        All my notes regarding this year's challenge will be contained within this file. I will be updating it throughout the week.

        [...]

        It's a few minutes past midnight. The challenge began. The T42 is asleep and I'm pecking at a keyboard connected to the low-spec OpenBSD server. No xenodm, mind you.

      • Mutt issues

        OK, so I have mutt receiving emails fine, but I'm having issues sending them. When I first went to test mutt's sending of emails today, I couldn't get any emails to send as the error message returned was "invalid SMTP URL". It took me about an hour before I discovered I had written "smpts://" in the config file (*facepalm*).

      • Internet/Gemini

        • I am a language model

          ChatGPT is a language model. It outputs text token by token based on its prior input. It does not consciously consider what it's writing, it merely melds parts of its input into novel combinations.

        • Re: I am a language model

          I don't think this pattern ever stops as we age. We will continue to master skills until our brains can basically do them on their own and we get bored. The trouble starts, when we run out of new goals. For some, this starts in puberty, when they start questioning the value of the goals their parents present to them. For some it may just start to really impact their lives after they have reached their PhD or worked a job for many years, that they once found interesting.

        • Re: I am a language model

          Not knowing where or when you are is extremely disorienting. Combined with a hearing loss (which disconnects large parts of one's brain) and a vision loss (likewise), in addition to a declining ability to process information, reality is a scary place. Over time she became quite paranoid, convinced that others were plotting to take away her stuff (not worth anyone's efforts, really), destroying her artwork, and otherwise conspiring against her. She would regularly go to the bank and demand funds which she had withdrawn years ago, and accuse them of thievery -- until, eventually, the local branch closed, convincing her that they had absconded with her money and are living it up somewhere... (again, we are talking about life savings of a few thousand, which in her mind had grown into millions).

        • Updated Thoughts On Gemini

          Previously I had written about my experiments with getting Gemini to be used for different cases. Having now used it for a while, I'd like to reflect on what has and hasn't worked.

        • Fedran Infrastructure

          In the first weeks of March, June, September, and December, life gets complicated for my day job. Usually that means the pressure gathers in intensity in the preceding weeks and then winds down after the quarterly release.

          It is time when my other obligations start to press into my attention and I'm too busy to focus on them. Naturally that means as the release winds down, I try to get focus on the others.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
 
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025
Links 21/09/2025: "Hey Hi" (Hype) Under Fire, Fakes Identified; Tesla Burns Family
Links for the day
Google's Software is Malware and Malware in Mobile Devices
Originally posted by Rob Musial
Links 20/09/2025: Hegemony Coming to a Close, Luigi Mangione Ruled Not Terrorist
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/09/2025: "Charlie Kirk Was a Hateful Piece of Shit" and Slop Code Attempted by Microsofter
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 20, 2025