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

A Year Ago, Only a Few Weeks After We Countersued the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI', Our Webhost Came Under Attack
At the end of September 2024 our webhost received several threats
The Register - Kissing the hand that feeds it
hired to manage the publication several people connected to Microsoft, including the new Editor in Chief
 
Links 28/09/2025: Windows TCO, Security Breaches, and Deutsche Bahn Woes
Links for the day
Datacentres Aren't Reliable for Backups
bad practices cause immeasurable levels of permanent data losses each and every day
Links 28/09/2025: Science, Censorship, and Security Incidents/Advisories
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/09/2025: Golem and Cybertrucks
Links for the day
Links 28/09/2025: Moldova Elections, LLM Slop Failing Again to Accomplish Anything
Links for the day
Links 28/09/2025: Slop Does More Harm, Newly Released Epstein Estate Documents
Links for the day
Links 28/09/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Going Private' (the Dictator's Media Allies) and UK Mirror Lays Off More Journalists
Links for the day
If Only Someone Warned Us About This...
Ubuntu is committing suicide with Rusty code
The Myths of "Linux" and of "Intelligence"
As noted this morning
People Remembered GNU's Birthday (Which Helps Remind People It All Started in 1983, Not 1991)
Have the FSF and GNU earned the respect they deserve?
Slopwatch: Ponzi Schemes Promoted by Media Companies, Linux Journal Turning Its 30-Year Reputation to Dust, and Serial Slopper Brian Fagioli Plagiarising, As Usual
This bubble will end up very badly
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 27, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 27, 2025
Links 27/09/2025: Squashing Software Patents and When Hospitals Become For-Profit
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/09/2025: Young Feet and Online Bots
Links for the day
GNU Project Turns 42
In 2033 it'll be 50
Next Step: Find Out Who's Funding the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' to SLAPP Us
We now have the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' working alongside a strangler of women, who as a Microsoft employee spent time in prison for it
Web Sites That Are Independent Are Also Like Software Projects (Sometimes Literally So)
Roll out your own 'stack'
Pieter Hintjens on Codes of Misconduct a Decade Ago
original is still online
Links 27/09/2025: Australia Might Ban Microsoft GitHub for Young People, Likely Illegal Executive Order Turns TikTok Into Cheeto Propaganda
Links for the day
Repeating the Lies to Promote a Ponzi Scheme is Not OK Because "Many Other Sites Do This" (Including Slopfarms)
They already work on the next Ponzi scheme
The Register MS (Situation Publishing) is Participating in a Ponzi Scheme
The market in "tech" seems awful when a lot of it sells a fraud and journalism about this market is part of the fraud
Glimmer of Hope: More People Realise and Come to Accept "AI" is Just a Giant, Elaborate Ponzi/Pyramid Scheme That Will Leave Everyone Worse Off (Except the "Top of the Pyramid")
quoting Einhorn and some comments
Mass Layoffs in Starbucks... and Society Loses Nothing of Value
Society might even be better off if Starbucks shuts down entirely
Do Your Job and Demand Your Compensation - But in That Order.
We'll do our best to convince the Judge to award all costs to us (lawyers, barrister, LIP bills etc.) plus judgements against them, for abusive litigation and needless suffering associated with that abuse
Matthew J. Garrett Behaved in a Similar Fashion to 4Chan and Kiwi Farms
Opposites attract? Are they opposites at all?
Drew DeVault Suggests "CoC Enhancement", Starts Trolling Projects in Microsoft GitHub
And it backfires immediately
Like Nazi Germany and Volkswagen
Tell us all about "freedom" when your government runs a Ponzi scheme
Microsoft Sponsored This Man, Microsoft Sponsored His Behaviour (and He Controls Microsoft)
They get what they paid for
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 26, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 26, 2025
He Talks Too Much, He Says Dumb Things
only British when that suits him
Slopwatch: FUD and Plagiarism (Working Against Linux) Promoted and Rewarded by Google News
Shame on Google News
Reminder: We're Unloading Some Publications to Tux Machines
About 15 years ago I was struggling to keep up with TechDirt
The E-mail Protocol is for Text
bad netiquette
Gemini Links 26/09/2025: Slop in OpenStreetMap and MOPML (My Own Private Markup Language)
Links for the day
Links 26/09/2025: More Provocations Against NATO by Russia (Near Alaska, USA), Microsoft Booster Accenture Has Mass Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 26/09/2025: Hardware, Security, Health, and Nuclear Armament
Links for the day
Links 26/09/2025: "Digital Fatigue" and Slop Frenzy (Hype) Ruining Work Productivity, Culture, Languages
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Unwilling to Disclose or Explain How 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' Pays for His SLAPPs Against Us (He Cannot Afford These), So We Are Escalating
Escalated in the British authorities
What 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' Could Learn From Jimmy Kimmel About the 'Streisand Effect'
Lawyering up is risky and is usually doesn't work
Linux is Replacing Apple
Apple is money down the drain. Not only are the gadgets overpriced; they cost a lot to maintain and keep going over time
"We don't have that kind of relationship with Microsoft. The only public key that every UEFI firmware is guaranteed to have is Microsoft's, and only Microsoft owns the private key."
This is how to sabotage GNU/Linux distros that Microsoft does not control
Slopwatch: linuxconfig.org, linuxsecurity.com, and Google's Promotion of the Worst and Most Prolific Slopfarms
Over in Google News it has been quite chaotic this past day
Gemini Links 26/09/2025: Reading RSS Feeds, ROOPHLOCH 202
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 25, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 25, 2025