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

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: The OSI Does Not Respect Anybody's Privacy
The surveillance mafia that bans dissent or key people (even co-founders) with dissenting views
 
Links 31/03/2025: China Tensions, Bombs Falling in Myanmar After Earthquake
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: Falling Out of Love With Tech, Sunsetting openSNP
Links for the day
R.T.O. at IBM in Texas and Atlanta (State of Georgia) Expected as "Soft Layoffs" Catalyst This Coming Year
It also sounds like more IBM layoffs are in the making
Law Firms Can Also Lose Their Licence for Clearly Misusing It
The bottom line is, never made the false assumption that because you can pile up SLAPPs in a docket you will not suffer from bad reputation or even get disbarred
Link between institutional abuse, Swiss jurists, Debianism and FSFE
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
LLM Slop Piggybacking News About GNU/Linux and Distorting It
new examples
Links 31/03/2025: Press and Democracy Under Further Attacks in the US, Attitudes Towards Slop Sour
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: More X-Filesposting and Dreaming in Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 30, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 30, 2025
Links 30/03/2025: Security Breaches, Crackdowns on Dissent/Rival Politicians
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: London Soundtrack Festival, Superbloom, gmiCAPTCHA
Links for the day
Phasing Out Vista 10 in Nations Where ~90% of Windows Users Still Rely on It
Recipe for another Microsoft disaster
The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
The LLM Bubble is About to Implode, Gimmicks and Financial Shell Games Cannot Prevent That, Only Delay It
To inflate the bubble MElon is now doing the classic trick of buying from oneself for a fictional value
Links 30/03/2025: Contagious Ideas, Signal Leak, and Squashing Lousy Patents
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025
Judges Would Never Rule for Men Who Strangle Women or Against Women Who Merely Wrote Articles About Abuse They Had Received From Men
We don't intend to do "trial by media", so we won't be disclosing claims and defences until it's over
Windows is an Unnatural Disaster, It is Also Avoidable
there's a wide window of opportunity opening
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Less YouTube and More Station
Links for the day
In Some Countries, Such as Thailand, Firefox is Already Measured at Less Than 2% (One Day Firefox Will Get Blocked, Not Only Lack Support)
Web consolidation around Chrom-isms will doom the Web as we know it
Killing the News With Spam and Slop Benefits Those Whose Desire is an Uninformed Population
adoption of Free software depends indirectly on political activities/activism
Links 29/03/2025: Trademarks Battles, Fires Destroy More Than 3,000 South Korean Homes
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: An Introduction
Perhaps tomorrow or perhaps next week we'll share more information about what happened and what was reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency
Links 29/03/2025: More Crackdowns on Science, "Hey Hi" Slopping is Flopping
Links for the day
IBM's BS (Bait, Switch) Regarding Ways to Stay Onboard
PIPs, RTOs, and forced relocations are just an illusion of choice (or ability to recover)
Costa Rica Almost Bankrupt Because of Microsoft
the incidents in Costa Rica are Windows incidents
Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Art of Looking, Wireguard, EMacs
Links for the day
Links 29/03/2025: Attacks on Social Security and War Updates
Links for the day
Banned evidence: Ars Technica forums censored email predicting DebConf23 death, Abraham Raji & Debian cover-up
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 28, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, March 28, 2025