Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 29/07/2023: Communications Secretaries and Godwin’s Law



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Random Fooding

        Blueberries that are accidentally mashed and put in a jar with some water will need stirring now and then to help oxygenate the mix. Also be sure to use blueberries right off the bush; these have a fine powder on them that is the natural yeast.

      • Communications Secretaries

        Suppose you had enough money to be ridiculous. Here's something great you could do:

        Hire a few full-time Communications Secretaries, to live and travel with you. They could work in shifts, so you'd have 24/hr coverage, and they wouldn't get worn out. Build quarters for them, so they could be comfortable and have privacy yet be close at hand; and, so their families could be near them, if they have families and want them nearby during work shifts. And pay them fantastically well, more than they could make at any sensical job.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: AHIKOWR Wordo: FOSSE
    • Politics and World Events

      • The Kids Online Safety Act S.1409

        Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced S.3663 last year, the Kids Online Safety Act, and re-introduced it as S.1409 this year. In the next couple days, it will get marked up in the senate, and continue on its merry way.

        The act is stupid, as most acts of congress are. The name of the act is a manipulation of elemental protective feelings--as most act names are. In reality, they could call this act and so many others, the Give Government Control of Your Life Act. Government doesn't care about children, or humans in general--the evidence of that truth is depressingly overwhelming.

      • A friend in jail

        A friend of mine recently started serving a six-year prison sentence. The full story is long, as they usually are, but in brief he accepted a plea deal related to some images that he had on his Google drive. He may have some chance of getting out in three years, if all goes well.

        I've been in touch with him through Securustech.net. It's $0.25 for a "digital stamp" to send him an emessage (plus another $0.25 to send him a return stamp so he can reply.) We've also chatted on the phone, also through Securus; I believe that was about $0.65 for 10 minutes.

        The charges are understandable, when you consider the fact that some employee has to read my email to search for... I'm not sure, something illegal I suppose. And, some employee has to listen in on our phone call as well. Time is money, after all.

      • the truth

        this bullshit ufo congressional hearing shit where the bullshit ufo "whistleblower" has described the conspiracy from the x files before congress has popped up in the middle of an x files rewatch and now im inspired to write about it. not about the bullshit hearing, which is just bullshit, and obvious bullshit, but about the x files and its complicated relationship with the "truth" underlying conspiracy theories. so here goes nothing. this is going to spoil how the show ends without, in my opinion, actually spoiling anything, so if you care about spoilers for a 30 year old series youve been warned, but again, for complicated reasons ill get into i dont think its *actually* a spoiler.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • 2023-07-28

        I have been enjoying the Old Computer Challenge phlog posts. I was thinking about participating with an old MDD G4 PowerMac but I pretty much realized that I'm more in love with the idea of the OCC rather than actually participating.

        To be more specific, I adore old operating systems and UIs and hyper-efficient software and command lines...but the hardware part? not so much.

        The fact that we all connect to SDF to use gopher and links and irssi is already a pretty fulfilling "retro" computing style for me.

        I feel like if I had some version of Unix with a useable version of SSH, then I would be 90% able to do everything I need on a daily basis with one very big exception...youtube.

      • Mac Classic Expansion Card

        I bought a Macintosh Classic sometime early pandemic for nostalgia. I got a terminal emulator loaded up and connected to a Raspberry Pi, so I use it for writing or browsing the small web.

        A few weeks ago, I started getting gray, horizontal lines on boot. I opened it up- and the mainboard on this thing is so strange. There's the main board with ports and what looks like a processor- then *another* board of similar size with another with a Motorola chip and RAM. The two boards are only mounted together by a socket that overlaps the processor, and very flimsy.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Blog Log No. 277

          I just cannot keep this blog updated, can I? I write so much but never on here. I think sometimes this just turns into a journal and not a blog and that's a little too personal for my taste. Even though I don't know any of you. And, as always, you can't write back.

        • I am alive!

          Someone on the Fediverse asked me why I am talking about using Gopher while I am silent here on my Gopherhole. Yes, I haven't posted for a longer while. But it isn't mean that I stopped using Gopher. I am alive and I am browsing Gophersphere daily. I for sure was reading [Old Computer Challenge Gopher Hole]. But this Phlog is intended for my Gopher research, and I haven't had anything interesting to add to that topic. I've been experimenting with Offpunk, but I've come across some problems with it. And during summer days I haven't found time for that. But the proper time will come in the future. Cheers!

          P.S. The latest news on the Gophersphere is [GitHub proxy]. A nice thing, and it's something new.

        • Godwin's Law: Gaiden

          this is a minor one, and will likely be a short one. this is in the genre of "using twitter drama as a jumping off point to complain about something".


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 16/02/2026: Barack Obama Responds to Racist Cheeto and Benjamin Mako Hill Studies Online Communities
Links for the day
IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
It's not about security or politics
Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
Social control media is not social and not media
 
Another EPO Strike One Week From Now, Local Staff Committee Munich to Discuss It This Week
Campinos MIA while Office staff goes on strike at least 4 times
Gemini Links 16/02/2026: Task Completed by Avoidance and "Playing Again With Akkoma"
Links for the day
Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
"Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
Techrights' Architecture
Stability is the main goal
Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
Links for the day
The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
"AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
Is society "seeing the light"?
Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
Expect many more cuts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026
Links 15/02/2026: Slop, Politics, and Gemini
Links for the day
Small is Beautiful (in Cascading Style Sheets/Inheritance Rules)
If done correctly, pages can take a tenth of a second to fully load
Microsoft Has Fallen to New Lows in Hong Kong This Year
That Windows "market share" falls there is perhaps expected
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.5 Million Dollars This Winter, Almost 50% More Than in All of 2024 Combined
Verbal advocacy goes a long way
Spread the Word About EPO Strikes and Patent Injustices in Europe
Corruption in Europe is a real thing
The Register MS is Promoting Slop, Promotion Connected to Microsoft (Trying to Replace Judges With Microsoft)
marketing spun as "science"
He Did Not Have Enough Souls
A lot of the subjects we cover here no other site dares touch
"Mix Vale" is a Slopfarm
3 "articles" about "ubuntu"
Links 15/02/2026: Roy Medvedev Dead at 100, Rise of "YouTube Politicians"
Links for the day
Links 15/02/2026: How Alexey Navalny Was Executed by Putin, Erdogan Helping Iran
Links for the day
IBM Fedora Keeps Promoting Slop, Red Hat Has Been Turned Into Chaff and Trash to Help IBM's Stock (With "AI" Storytelling)
Red Hat's Fedora is an old brand (20+ years). It no longer stands for what it meant to people in the Fedora Core days (I was a Fedora user back then).
What IBM Said About 2026 Layoffs and What's Happening in Practice
t'll leave IBM at the very bottom, in due course (customers will notice something profound has changed)
Gemini Links 15/02/2026: "Already Midway February" and Loadbars Remembered
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 14, 2026
Microsoft's Bing Down to 0.5% in Armenia
Microsoft does not want shareholders to see this
Libel by Bots: Unexplored Legal Area?
Liability can be traced back to the operator
Maybe Obvious, But Merits Repeating: A Lot of "Demand" for Slop is Faked, Manufactured, Fabricated by Dark Patterns, Bundling, Media PR (Deception/Hype) Campaigns
Over the past few years many products and services got rebranded as "AI"
xAI and X (Twitter) Live on Borrowed Time, It'll Get a Lot Worse Fast
Being associated with a child porn site formerly known as "Twitter" is odorous to say the least
Microsoft is Lobbying Brussels via Opensource.org and OSI
The new (GAFAM) management at OSI is not serving the OSI's original mission
Will Lockett's Newsletter: Microsoft became Microslop and Windows users are "flocking" to GNU/Linux "to escape the mess"
"Users are fed up and jumping ship from Windows to Mac or Linux. In fact, it appears that Windows has lost 400 million users since 2022!"
Photographic Collections
There are going to be over 100,000 JPEG, PNG, and GIF files by the time we turn 20
Norway Curbs Social Control Media as It Harms Norway's Society
A decrease from 11% to just 1.87% is possible to reason about
Accomplishments of Our Community
Why I enjoy writing in Techrights
Microsoft Invented a Slop CEO ("AI CEO") Because Real Interest in Slop is Waning, So It's Just Faking Its Prominence
It's noise
Google Promoting Slop, Not Journalism
The truth of the matter is, Google is part of this problem and it doesn't seem to care
Another IBM Company (Spawned by IBM) is Hiding the Scale of Layoffs, Just Like Red Hat and Kyndryl
Why is the scale of the layoffs there shrouded in secrecy?
Links 14/02/2026: Financial Woes in Hong Kong and "Hong Kong Journalists Face ‘Precarious’ Future After Jimmy Lai Jailed"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/02/2026: Fish Shell and Meta Slash-commands
Links for the day
Links 14/02/2026: "Bias and Toxicity in" Slop, Microsoft's Vista 11 System Update Breaks Systems Again
Links for the day
Links 14/02/2026: "Suppression of Free Speech" and "Climate Change Puts Winter Games on Thin Ice"
Links for the day
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part I - Getting the Word Out About What the 'Alicante Mafia' Did to Europe's Second-Largest Institution
Can't everyone in the European media agree that letting cokeheads run Europe's second-largest institution is a terrible idea?
Richard Stallman in the United States - Part I - Huge Audience (Offline and Online), 'Cancel Culture' Attempted and Failed
the comeback of Richard Stallman (RMS) in the United States
GitHub Cannot Survive for Much Longer
Microsoft is trying to just hide the debt
Ed Zitron: Microsoft Is A Decaying Empire That Bet The Future On Making In Excess Of $500 Billion In New Revenue Within The Next 4 To 6 Years From AI — And It Hasn’t Made A Dime In Profit Yet
Microsoft bets its future on a bunch of nothing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 13, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, February 13, 2026
Gemini Links 14/02/2026: "Throwback VR Headset" and OFFLFIRSOCH 2026
Links for the day