Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 12/07/2023: Weight Tracker for Palm OS Release and Better Gemini Searching



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Watering the Black Walnut Treets

        It's been a dry summer, so far. Forecast keeps calling for rain, but the sky only delivers clouds, mostly.

      • Book Showcase: Citizen of the Galaxy

        I haven’t posted for nearly a week—but never fear, I’m still here!

        Actually I’m on vacation. We’ve been hiking and “swimming”; I’ve been trying not to get sunburned, and mostly succeeding; and trying not to get bitten by insects, and mostly failing.

      • So came the sun

        So the pleasantly rainy/dismal day sadly morphed into a bright sun in a clear blue sky. I say "sadly" because these conditions tend to tempt my wife into insisted we get a whole lotta this/that/other done, and I'm just so shot from much work the last three days that muscles/ligaments literally sorely need a break. Yet I also know too much sedentary leads the selfsame muscles/ligaments into stiffness perdition.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Slow boat to noon

        I recently heard someone pronounce the word 'eunuchs', and it sounded exactly like 'unix' - leading to a mini AHA moment.

        Rainy day. My wife's youngest daughter has work friends (they're all nurses) over to alcohol-assisted decompress downstairs. Fine with me. I'd otherwise likely have been enlisted for varieties of chores by now. Instead I'm polishing the bookmarks list while visiting links I no longer recall, surfing a bit from those starting points.

        I'm also back to being a bit more minimalist on the Chromebook for recently having experienced bewildering CPU usage. I'm mostly working from the Linux-y command line environment provided (I think..) by the "Terminal" app, which means leaning on elinks, amfora, gemget, my scripts, etc., bothering with the Chrome browser only as necessary - which tends to imply gnarly security environs.

      • Weight Tracker for Palm OS Release

        I'm releasing my first Palm OS application, a weight tracker for Palm OS >=3.0. You might be asking a few questions, like how did I write an app for Palm Pilot? And why, when the platform has been dead for 15 years? But first, the app itself!

      • Waiting for Spider-Man

        While chatting with a friend about upcoming games, he lamented about having to wait 2 years for the next Spider-Man game to come to PC. I argued that it could surely not take that long considering how quickly most of Sony's releases have made it to the superior platform. Turns out they haven't. Not even the relatively recent Spider-Man: Miles Morales or Returnal. So it's gonna take 2 years after all.

        But will I really be waiting for it? To me, it feels like waiting is merely a figure of speech these days. For most things that I'm waiting for, there's almost no real waiting happening. Spider-Man 2 is 2 years away and in all that time, there's a lot of life that's going to incessantly keep happening. People are going to come and go. Amazing works of art and entertainment will launch and take my world by storm. I might occasionally remember that Spider-Man 2 exists and check the calendar before noticing other things on it that come out sooner. Stuff that's already been out for a while. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Spider-Man 2 will launch and it too may slip by without catching my attention.

      • Old Computer Challenge 2023 - Day Three

        Today I wanted to do a little more work. I entered the challenge with the plan to spend some time on Scheme.

        In the last year I have done some things in SBCL Common Lisp as well as some things in Elisp, so expanding this with Scheme seems worthwhile. This morning started with a readable display, so I jumped right in.

        On the command line I started "guile3.0 --listen"" and in Emacs I ran ""M-x connect-to-guile"", to get a nice REPL.

      • OLD COMPUTER CHALLENGE: DAY 1
        HOSTNAME: gogglev
        HARDWARE: ASUS eeePC 701
        CPU: Intel Celeron-M ULV 353 @ 630 MHz(900MHz native)
        RAM: 512 MB (1 GB native)
        STORAGE: 4 GB SSD
        OS: AntiX 
        DISPLAY: Shuttle XP17 LCD (LAN Party Edition, w00t!) 
        RELEASED: 2007
        
      • OLD COMPUTER CHALLENGE: DAY 2

        NOTE: "With the disappearance of Blastwave and the removal of free downloads of SunFreeware on 30 September 2013, OpenCSW is the biggest source of Solaris packages. , it had 3739 unique packages for Solaris 10." - gopherpedia

      • Internet/Gemini

      • Programming

        • Garbage collection nowadays

          No, I don't mean the bin man (in UK English).

          I have always believed the prevailing wisdom that GC is more efficient than manual memory managememt. And, in instructions executed, I still believe so.

          However, hardware in the past 10/20 years has improved drastically (cache sizes, number of cores, SSD), with the noted exception of main RAM access times. And GC is very efficient in time, but there is a persistent, high, cost in space (I've seen figures of 4-8x). And to get performance out of modern hardware, you really want to keep your working set in cache. So perhaps hardware changes mean the prevailing wisdom is no longer valid.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

More Gains for GNU/Linux, Based on Web Surveys
the Steam site shows rapid growth for "Linux" this month
 
Taiwan's Media Covers Closure of Microsoft's "AI" Lab, It's Time to Talk About the Gradual Death of Windows and Implosion of the "AI" Bubble
Earlier this week we showed that mostly Asian media had the 'nerve' to mention Microsoft silently shutting down its 'AI' lab
IBM Gets Rid of Kelly Chambliss as Mass Layoffs Reported in IBM Consulting, IBM Loses Key Contracts/Graft
IBM Consulting has been in disarray lately
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Articles, Not Even Written by Humans
Why aren't Web sites more vocal about this problem?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 02, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Links 03/04/2025: Apple Fined Over Secret Surveillance, "Elegant Writer For A More Civilized Age"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/04/2025: Books and Cold Tea
Links for the day
Links 02/04/2025: More Layoffs, Nokia Again Takes Advantage of Illegal and Unconstitutional Patent Court With Nokia Staff as 'Judges'
Links for the day
Links 02/04/2025: Seizures and Returns to Windows of 24 Years Ago
Links for the day
LLM Slop Helps Obscure and Distort News About Layoffs (IBM, GAFAM)
It's hard to find accurate information
Links 02/04/2025: Microsoft Developers Are Threatening to Go on Strike, World Backup Day Noted
Links for the day
Gemini Protocol Has Growing Appeal (the Web Got Too Bloated and Full of LLM Slop)
For any "data plan" with bandwidth limits or "tiers" it would be cheaper to use/browse Geminispace
The Web Can Survive LLM Slop, But Only If We Collectively Shun and Discourage Serial Sloppers
Doing nothing ought not be a possibility
Amid Secret Shut-downs and Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (4 Waves of Layoffs in 3 Months of 2025) Some Microsoft Staff Expected to Go On Strike
workers going on strike
Gemini Links 02/04/2025: No more on Mastodon and Gemini Mention Script in Go
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 01, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 01, 2025
My Motion Disbarring or “Striking Off” Brett Wilson LLP for Enabling Violent Americans Who Try to Crush Microsoft Critics in the United Kingdom by Multiple SLAPPs
"Guns for hire" (for Microsoft people who received Microsoft salaries)
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Hijacked Again by Patent Litigation Industry, as President Cheeto Prioritises Aggressors
The "mafia" has taken over the "industry" and the Federal system (justice and constitutions trampled upon)
Ubuntu Slop and FUD Manufactured With LLMs and Funded (by Oneself) 'Studies'
Slop and FUD are ruining the Web
Gemini Links 01/04/2025: Games and More
Links for the day
Links 01/04/2025: Apple Fined $162M for Privacy Abuses, Disinformation Online a Growing Concern
Links for the day
Why We're Reporting Brett Wilson LLP for Apparently Misusing Their Licence to Protect American Microsofters Who Attack Women
For those who have not been keeping abreast
Newer Press Reports Confirm That Microsoft Shuts Down 'Hey Hi' (AI) Labs Despite All the Hype
The "hey hi" (AI) bubble is not sustainable
Links 01/04/2025: Mass Layoffs at Eidos and "Microsoft Pulls Back on Data Centers" (Demand Lacking); "Racist and Sexist" Slop From Microsoft
Links for the day
Stefano Maffulli and His Microsoft-Funded OSI Staff Are Killing the OSI and Killing "Open Source" (All for Money!)
This is far from over
Gemini Links 01/04/2025: XKCDpunk and worldclock.py
Links for the day
50 Years of Sabotage and a Gut Punch to Computer Science (and Science in General)
Will we get back to science-based computing rather than cult-like following?
Techrights Headlines as Semaphore
"If you are hearing this, thank you"
3 Months in 2025, 4 Waves of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft, Now Offices Shut Down Permanently
"A recent visit by the South China Morning Post confirmed that the office was dark, unoccupied, and had its logo removed."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 31, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, March 31, 2025