Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 23/07/2023: Publically Accessible GNUnet Hostlist and New Arrivals



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • The Summer-So-Far in Review

        Most of this year we've been having supper with friends on Sunday. It started off with them coming here (their house wasn't finished yet, and the apartment they were renting was small, dark, crowded). The last couple months, we've been taking turns hosting. Some weeks, it's felt like a lot (children require active Entertainment). Other weeks, something to look forward to. Regardless, people moving here from Toronto is not the usual migration destination. We're very glad they did, and thankful to be able to see them regularly and often, rather than every year or two.

        So this has been a regular fixture of the summer, one less meal to plan during the week. The arrangements always that they cook, we bake. I say "we". This is a lie. My partner, it's understood by everyone, an exceptional baker. In the fridge right now: strawberry macarons, made with another friend, this particular batch delicious to me, unloved by them. "We wanted to try out a new filling recipe," my partner said ruefully. "It didn't set the way I wanted." I stress again that they taste amazing, but I'm probably a poor judge.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: DEFTISG Wordo: LIGNE
      • Pen shows and such

        So a little over a week ago I attended the PNW Pen Show, a revival of an old event that used to happen pre-pandemic. I don't think I've talked about it here before but I'm a fountain pen nerd. I wish I could say I constantly journaled but it's more like a feast and famine thing.

        I'll write through a 400pg a5 notebook in two months and then take a year to finish the next one. That's probably pretty normal, though, but I'll say that I'm probably at my best in basically every way when I'm journaling more. Is it symptomatic or causal? I don't know.

      • Discovering new music the old-fashioned way

        I was at my favourite independent bookstore this afternoon, and picked up a CD by Tigran Mansurian. I'd maybe (maaaaybe) heard the name before, but I'd picked it up because it's part of ECM's New Series, and it's basically a disc full of music I've never heard. For various configurations of strings and occasionally piano.

        I picked it up because Kim Kashkashian plays viola on it, and she's one of my favourite violists. I'm a poor player, and her sound and musicality are things I wish I had, even in the smallest quantity.

      • This week - sick and food

        I want to write about interesting things, but I was sick last week. I'm still getting over it. Not covid luckily or the recovery would be even slower. The worst part was I was so cranky it was hard to relax and sleep it off.

      • A Rubbish Rant

        I think there are people out there who genuinely don't understand where their trash goes. How it's handled.

        They can't possibly understand because then they'd care. Ugh.

        I bought a house recently. My first true home. And I keep having to clean up stupid problems that the last homeowners left for me. Like their trash.

      • whale fall 2

        i love charseraph's style and spec bio. this piece is actually from may but i came across it yesterday and couldn't not share it. the title itself is extremely evocative on its own, and paired with the nearly clinical drawings of these entirely unknown life forms? it's just beautiful.

      • The Self

        I am a set of continuous processes in motion, interacting with each other and the world around me, with its historical and societal aspects. There is the saying, "I feel like a completely different person," and it did happen to me a couple of times. Our selves go through small, imperceptible, changes which we gain by interacting with the outside world, or its reflection, our inner world. Eventually, a big leap is reached, a qualitative change, where we feel we're completely different from the older "version".

    • Politics and World Events

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Internet/Gemini

        • The Misfin messaging protocol

          There's more details on the official capsule, but the short version is that it's essentially 'Gemini email'. If you've implemented a Gemini server then it should be pretty simple to refactor that to support a basic version of a Misfin server too. (I say a basic version, because implementing certificate verification is a bit trickier and I feel that the spec could do with some clarifications in that area).

          Misfin uses gemtext (text/gemini) as its message format, so once you have a functioning Misfin server, it's simple to set up a 'webmail'-style interface on your capsule for reading messages.

        • Hello, Smol World!

          I've made my foray into the smol net. Hooray! But who am I?

        • New Public Service: Publically Accessible GNUnet Hostlist

          Quick announcement. I'm running a publically accessible GNUnet hostlist at `http://clehaxze.tw:9876/` due to me failing to bootstrap 3 new nodes today. I was experimenting and this issue really annoyed me. I don't know what happened with the default one. `https://v15.gnunet.org/hostlist` is down. But `https://gnunet.io/hostlist` is running correctly. That should be enough for nodes to botostrap.

          Anyway, for GNUnet users seeing this post, you can point your hostlist daemon to use my server. **I understand this is unencrypted HTTP**. But a) that should't matter as bad actors will get stopped by GNUnet's crypto anyway and b) I'll fix it later.

        • Questions about verification

          I'm slightly confused by the verification flow on the receiving side for misfin(B). Apologies if some of these questions are already obvious in the spec/best practices/reference examples and I've just missed/misunderstood!

          I'm specifically trying to implement the case where the server's certificate is a self-signed CA and there may be multiple mailboxes (each with certs signed by that CA).

        • One Year of Writing

          It has been about one year and two months since I've written my first post, not only on here, but in general. It's definitely interesting to read my old posts, they give me a glimpse of how I thought in the past, and how much my opinions differ now, being more refined in some aspects.

          I've thought about deleting some of them. Perhaps editing. In the end, I left them up because I think it represents fairly well my evolution. I can certainly say I write better now than I did the year before. Writing is an unique medium to not only sharpen your opinions, but to have rather meaningful debates with others. It's a rare medium that is omitted nowadays for the audio-visual, but it's full of knowledge that we wouldn't otherwise get.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Gemini Links 09/03/2025: Lagrange 1.18.5 and Writing Mannerisms
Links for the day
Links 08/03/2025: International Women's Day, Software Patents Being Squashed
Links for the day
Hiding Problems Doesn't Work
transparent organisations will be more stable and sustainable
Under the Pen Name "John O'Donnell" (LLM Slop, Not Real Article or Author) LinuxLinks Pushes Spammy Page
it happened some hours ago.
 
[Video] Richard Stallman on Understanding the Misconception of So-called 'Artificial Intelligence'
to "know and understand"
FSF's Defective by Design (DBD): Amazon Tightens the Digital Handcuffs
Reproduced verbatim
The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): Plenty of Issues, Plenty of Censorship
The OSI is abusive on many levels!
EPO Staff Appraisals Apparently Benefit Kakistocracy, Including Cheaters Who Grant Illegal Patents and Punish Good Patent Examiners (Who Find Valid Reasons for Denials)
In prior reports the staff representatives said that rewards typically went to people who granted many patents, i.e. didn't do proper examination and instead just allowed many fake patents get enshrined as EPs, causing fiasco (from which some patent attorneys could profit)
As The Web Gets Drowned Out, Sinking in a Pool of LLM Slop, Real News Sites With Real News Become Increasingly Rare If Not Extinct
This is a real problem
Links 09/03/2025: Moderna Patents Thrown Out, Climate United Sues E.P.A.
Links for the day
Links 09/03/2025: FiveThirtyEight Killed by Disney, Nature (Journal) Chooses Suicide by Slop
Links for the day
The Harder They Try to Censor, the Bigger the Scandal (and the Impact) Will Be
We don't plan to self-censor our coverage; sometimes we just delay publication a little
Gemini Links 09/03/2025: Leasehold Derangement Syndrome, Raspberry Pi, and More
Links for the day
All-Time Low for Microsoft in Africa
it helps show how irrelevant Microsoft is becoming
French woman (frontaliere) trafficked to promote unauthorised cross border Swiss insurance
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
New York Times & Guardian reporting on Modern Slavery Act prosecution of Glodi Wabelua
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Diana & Adrian von Bidder-Senn, EVP, Palm Sunday & Debian death on wedding day
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The RTO (Return-to-office) Layoffs or 'Soft' Layoffs at IBM and Red Hat
There are certainly many layoffs going on there, but many are described as "resignations" or "retirements" after RTO or some other form of relocation
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 08, 2025
Graveyard of Mastodons: A Vast Number of Inactive Accounts
More than 80% of users in mastodon.social (the "big one") are no longer active
Gemini Links 08/03/2025: Reading Cory Doctorow's 'Little Brother', Abandoning GAFAM Forever
Links for the day
No, We Don't Want to Go "Viral" (and You Probably Don't, Either)
"Viral" junk gets forgotten quickly
Windows is Being Eradicated
On the Web, in Africa in particular, user strings or UAs that say "Windows" are becoming more rare
For International Women's Rights Day (Today) Staff Representatives at the European Patent Office (EPO) Opened Up on Gender Discrimination at the Office
Office discrimination against women is widely known; unless you sleep with men in management
Links 08/03/2025: Tariff Self Harm and Mostly Solved Diseases Making a Comeback
Links for the day
Links 08/03/2025: Climate Change Causing Food Shortages, Selling Off Chrome Still in the Cards
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/03/2025: Driving in Japan, GrapheneOS, Tariffs Silver Lining
Links for the day
Working Like a Pack of Hyenas, the Microsofters Try Hard to Hide the Truth and Actively Censor Critics
They even target women
The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): Bylaws of the OSI a Shocking Oversight
That's what the OSI is right now: a salesperson
Thinking About Abandoning 'Google News' Altogether Due to Easy Poisoning by LLM Slop
As long as Google News keeps sending traffic to these leeches, it'll be very hard to justify relying on Google News for anything at all
Links 08/03/2025: Microsoft Failures, Further Attacks on Speech in Hong Kong
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/03/2025: Physical Albums, Analog Computing, Deleting All Social Control Media
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 07, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, March 07, 2025
OpenAI, Deep in Debt With Growing Losses, Sees Web Traffic Falling Fourfold in a Year
Microsoft's shares have fallen over 10% since the last report and OpenAI is trying to con people via Wall Street, offloading the debt to some gullible fools
Microsoft's Social Control Media Efforts Cratering (GitHub and LinkedIn)
Expect more layoffs
Microsoft Office is a Dying Cash Cow and Now It's Just Dying/Starving
Most people use Android and they don't need some bloated office suite because many processes involve Web forms
Links 07/03/2025: Radio’s Death Knells and US Abandoning Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/03/2025: Replacing Firefox with LibreWolf, Visiting Churches
Links for the day
Links 07/03/2025: Oracle Layoffs, HPE Eliminates 3,000 Jobs, Massive Price Hikes at Microsoft, More Surveillance in Microsoft's Stuff
Links for the day
Manslaughter: Haverfordwest convictions, Abraham Raji & Debian DebConf drowning
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Open Source Initiative's (OSI) Latest IRS Files: Only 2.9% (2.90046827447%) of Its Income is From Members
So almost all the money is corporate
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency (Formal Complaint)
Time will tell if a Cheeto-controlled California will take this seriously or just brush it aside like a head of state from Ukraine
Half a Decade Without Social Control Media
Not all audience is desirable
IBM Laid Off Almost 2,000 Staff Last Friday and No Western Publication (Newspaper, Web Site) Even Mentioned That
Only some Asian sites mentioned it
Under IBM, After Killing OpenSource.com, the Next Casualty May be "Community Blog" of the Fedora Project
It sounds like they already made the decision/s
Social Control Media as a Rapid Race to the Bottom - Part IV - Physical Health, Mental Health, and Debilitating Anxiety
One is better off feeding stray pigeons (rather than scrolling and clicking on "timelines" like a dumb pigeon)
Links 07/03/2025: WSL Breakage (as Usual), Abandoning WordPress for Hugo
Links for the day
LLM Slop Versus Richard Stallman
"Compilation Of Corruption: Jeffrey Epstein And The Halls Of Academia"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 06, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, March 06, 2025