Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 11/07/2023: Old Computer Challenge and Mastodon Blog Comments Automation



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Chorale

        Except it isn't really a chorale, more like four voice harmonic practice, except it isn't really harmonic practice as not much attention is paid to chord progressions nor are fancy chords used (except in passing). What is going on here is some counterpoint, Dorian mode (-ish), vague modulation to dominant, and a some harmonic sequences, in particular the ground bass from Pachelbel's Canon which is a -4 +2 sequence though can be modified with inversions so the bass line is somewhat less jumpy and not so bleedingly obvious.

      • Sinclair A-Bike

        I once owned this thing [1]. It was around 2008, I think. It was the second, updated model with larger (inflatable to 90 psi) wheels.

        If I remember correctly I was very unsatisfied with it - it wasn't as small as I expected and it was rather uncomfortable when carried in its dedicated backpack. But as a bike it was quite a disaster. It rode well only on ideally flat surfaces (like corridors in buildings). And I wasn't able to climb anything (there are no ideally level surfaces in the real world). The final problem was that one of plastic parts broke after a few weeks of use. So I sold it.

    • Politics and World Events

      • Abdullah Öcalan, And All the Other Political Prisoners Must Be Released!

        Abdullah Öcalan, also known as Apo (“uncle”), is born 4 April 1949, in eastern Turkey. He is a founding member of the militant Marxist-Leninist “Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)” in 1978, which was based in northern Syria from 1979 to 1998 as a sanctuary, and led part of the Kurdish political movement from there.

        During the 1980s, the Turkish state began a program of forced assimilation of its Kurdish population. In protest against this fascist act, the PKK began an armed rebellion against the Turkey, and in connection with it began attacking its military forces.

      • Why I am an Anarchist

        Like so many others, I used to think that anarchists were violent pricks who enjoy throwing Molotov cocktails and destroy property. As usual, the propaganda machine _reverses_ reality completely.

    • Science

      • Agfa Click II

        I have got this old film camera. It wasn't expensive. Actually it is an interesting piece of German engineering. It's fairly simple, it's made mainly from plastic materials (including its faux leather case) yet if produces relatively nice images [1].

      • Thinking about how to teach logic

        I'm starting my full-time teaching load in a little under three months and while I was full of confidence and vigor before now a lot of the self-doubt is creeping in.

        I'm teaching multiple sections of the intro to computer science class, CS 160, and CS 250 the intro to math/logic for CS. I'm also supposed to work on revising CS 205, the intro to C and assembly programming class so I can start teaching it the following term. That one is the one I'm weakest on in terms of practical experience but, I mean, I still know this stuff I just need to practice specifically x86-64 programming instead of risc ISAs used in teaching compilers classes such as MIPS. I'm rusty on C but not incompetent at it, if you get what I mean.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Going online forward

        That reminds me of how as a kid (roughly 50 years ago) I'd hide notes/messages in library books: sometimes in the cover flaps, sometimes in the spine, sometimes just between pages. It would surely be nice to know if any were ever found.

        Makes me wonder if I can shift my posting motivation from "to meet and interact with interesting others" to "to bless others with serendipitous finds"? Because the former seems essentially impossible.

      • I give you: Serendipitous Finds

        Since I obviously suck at being texturally edgy in ways engendering interaction, I'm shifting my motivation for writing to reporting on placing messages on paper scraps, 3x5" cards, etc. in somewhat hidden public places, making such messages what I want to call "serendipitous finds".

        I'll likely post their content, and then go on to report on whether or not a message has been found. That'll be obvious if/when a message is gone. But I suppose I should place things in ways recognizable to me as having placed by me in case people carefully re-place them. So I should also log the details of their placement to make evidence of having been found unambiguous.

      • Christina's 5 questions

        written on GPD Win 1 via PuTTY as first daughter mumbles herself to sleep: "this a-way, this a-way" (from the song 500 Miles)

      • My Computer Challenge

        I am not actively participating in Solene's "Old Computer Challenge"^ this year--I only heard about it yesterday evening and am not in a position to go all in at the moment. However, I do want to follow the spirit of the challenge this week by reducing my energy and technology footprint.

        There are two ways I'm approaching it. The first is using a smaller machine with more limitations and requiring more active configuration, and the second is reducing the amount of content I passively consume.

      • OCC Update

        All my notes regarding the old computer challenge are now here...

      • Day 2

        I'm a bit busy today celebrating my birthday so I won't have time to do anything for the challenge, but I'm writing this from the old computer.

      • (No) Old Computer Challenge

        I just have spent a nice half of hour by reading of other people' Old Computer Challenge Entries [1]. Pretty interesting but some computer - while really old by today standards - dot's seem to be old to me.

      • Pin-Bored

        Some weeks ago, I submitted a support request to change my Pinboard username. I still haven’t heard back!

        And today, I happened to run across people on HackerNews (yeah, I know) talking about how Pinboard has been broken for them, how their paid archival functions haven’t been working (I don’t have an archival account, so I didn’t notice that), how the owner, Maciej, has been completely incommunicado on the Pinboard blog for *years*... And yet every time someone makes a complaint on HN, he’s right there in the comments with some snarky response.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Announce: OMG [dot] Pebcak [dot] Club certificates changed!

          This is a brief announce to let anyone know that for a colossal pebcak I deleted my VPS, and therefore I had to create a brand new VPS and to create new self-signed certificates.

        • Server updates and Gemini with lowdown

          What I’ve been up to since the last blog posts in this server? Not much, but there’s been changes. Notably it’s running off some old bottom-tier Intel Celeron laptop from ~2007 now instead of the Raspberry Pi 2B as some minor-ish enough updates has been causing it to no longer boot properly, and this issue wasn’t even new, I’ve known it since the last 2 years when trying it with Alpine Linux and wondering why that happens also. This time it’s Debian so I guess better to just throw in the towel with that hardware and just use the laptop I had laying around instead. It was already having troubles anyway before that and giving “illegal instructions” errors when just trying to setup some files for some few packages during apt install. It’s probably the SD card issue, or maybe armhf architecture is too niche and left underlooked, or both, but for sure I don’t want to deal with it anymore. I can at least say that laptop was able to do a major upgrade from Debian 11 bullseye to 12 bookworm sucessfully, so it certainly doesn’t have that issue. I did managed to hastly move some services and datas over to the laptop, only leaving out setting up a Gopher server mostly because I still haven’t bothered to have my site generator setup to do Gopher yet, and the Debian repository, cause I somewhat can’t be bothered to set that back up.

        • Mastodon Blog Comments Automation

          When I post here I usually also put the link out on Mastodon where people will sometimes comment. I've always done this by hand but, since I know just enough bash to be dangerous, I recently started thinking of ways to automate this step for me and also link back to the Mastodon post from the original blog post while I'm at it.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

FSF Amicus Brief: Aspose.PDF for .NET 24.2.0, OOXML (.docx), and Microsoft Word (Proprietary)
Could the FSF not find any law firm that, in addition to talking about or for Free software, does not use .NET, OOXML, and almost everything Microsoft?
New Interview With Richard Stallman in Italy (Manuel Cuda News)
Due to Google's growing aggression against Free software and proper APIs, this cannot be downloaded and converted to a free format
The UEFI hype and Microsoft's lies
By Sami Tikkanen
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
In Central African Republic Windows Has Pretty Much Fallen to Zero
We need to focus on Software Freedom
Microsoft Windows Down to 8.5% in South Africa
South Africa and Egypt are strategic in Africa
 
Microsoft's Entryism as Mortal Risk/Danger: The Example of the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Microsoft is a cult
The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): An Introduction
In a nutshell: there's a massive conflict inside the OSI and the OSI stooges (staff serving Big Sponsors like Microsoft) try to hide it
Links 04/03/2025: Microsoft Issues Policy Instructions to the Cheeto Mussolini Administration, Cloudflare Engages in Mass Censorship Again
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/03/2025: Athens, Fedora 41, and Yelling at Clouds
Links for the day
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Belatedly Comments on Case That Tests Copyleft in the United States
"The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced today it has submitted an amicus brief in the case entitled Neo4j"
Paraguay: GNU/Linux Surging to New Usage Levels (7%), According to statCounter
Notice that the gains are at Microsoft Windows' expense
If They Try to Censor You on Some Topic, Then You Should Cover This Topic Even More
OSI is only a small part of it
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 03, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, March 03, 2025
Thorsten Glaser & Open Source Initiative (OSI) resignations due to AI whitewashing
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 03/03/2025: Copyrights, GrapheneOS, and SpaceBeans
Links for the day
Links 03/03/2025: Europe Rallies Behind Ukraine, Measles Flourishes in US Again
Links for the day
After Fund-raising Campaign the Free Software Foundation Still Raises About $13,000 Per Week (Without Campaigning for New Donors/Members)
Richard Stallman in the Board is not a liability
Links 03/03/2025: 'Monetisation' Myth' and Microsoft's LLMs Helping Criminals
Links for the day
The New Series About the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and the Microsoft Entryism in OSI is Closely Related to the SLAPP Against Techrights
Also based on the leading publication that they want removed
New Series: A Deep Dive Into the Severe Corruption of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), Nowadays a Front Group and Lobbyist of Microsoft
There's a lot to show
Links 03/03/2025: Mass Layoffs in IBM China, Intel Still in Trouble
Links for the day
3 Out of 4 in Cuba Use Linux to Access the Web
Maybe change does come about...
Doing Free Software for a Living in an Era or a Time of Abundance of Code (and Fast Internet to Pass It Around Freely) or Writing When the Web is Attacked by LLM Slop
Tailoring code to needs is the key
Links 02/03/2025: Day Off, POWER9, Console Challenge
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 02, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 02, 2025
Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Low in Thailand
We're seeing many all-time records like these so far in 2025
Gemini Links 02/03/2025: Snowdrop Flower and Hostile Leaders
Links for the day
Links 02/03/2025: Microsoft Outlook Goes Offline, Foreign-Owned Social Control Media Interfering With Fair Elections
Links for the day
According to statCounter, Windows Falls Off a Cliff in Maharlika, GNU/Linux Surges to 5%
But mobile is king
New Video Clip of Richard Stallman's Latest Visit to and Talks in Italy
Richard Stallman or RMS giving his latest talk last week
Windows Used by Only One in Six Asians to Access the Web, According to statCounter
maybe more governments in Asia should move away from Microsoft
GNU/Linux Reaches 5% in Brazil, an All-Time High According to statCounter
There are hundreds of millions of people in that country
Google Already Dominates the Global South (via Android/Linux)
If one puts aside Russia and east Europe, not many countries exist that still connect to the Web from Windows more than from Android
GNU/Linux Widespread in Finland, Sweden, and Norway
Sweden has many Chromebooks in schools3 nations
Germany's Incoming Leader Said He'd Seek More Independence from the US, GNU/Linux Soars to 6%
Last month it was 5%
For the First Time GNU/Linux is Measured at Over 4% in Europe (Not Counting ChromeOS/Chromebooks)
Europe, on average, is now estimated to have GNU/Linux on 1 in 25 Web-connected laptops/desktops
Over 2 Years of LLM Hype and Nothing to Show for It
People still use search, not chatbots
Apple's iOS Almost Bigger Than Windows Now (Internationally), Windows Falls to 22% According to statCounter
Without Windows domination, there's not much left going for Microsoft
Putin's Loyal DOGE
We hereby crown Arvind Krishna "Putin's DOGE"
The Media Barely Reported This (Late Friday): IBM Lays Off About 2,000 More Workers, Effective Hours Ago
Maybe some diversity programs can help IBM recruit slaves or grossly-underpaid staff
Microsoft Money Being Spent to Bully Techrights Only Legitimises Techrights
The longer it goes on for, the greater the Streisand Effect
Suing One's Way Out of Real Trouble Won't Work (It Merely Increases the Trouble)
"Guns for hire" in London can only issue "legal" threats
Microsoft Writing Articles About Microsoft, Using Microsoft LLMs
Right now there are many articles about Microsoft Outlook being down completely
Gemini Links 02/03/2025: OFFLFIRSOCH 2025 and Programming
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 01, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 01, 2025