Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 01/08/2023: Gitea on Void and Unleashing Your Inner Mapper (OSM)



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • My Bread Is Getting Yummier

        I've been making bread for a long time now. Since I currently don't have a real oven (only a small electric mini-oven and an electric pizza oven), my options are pretty limited. I have a breadmaker I use largely to mix and knead the dough. I then either make a round loaf for the oven or some kind of rolls, flatbread or pizza for the pizza oven.

        Lately I've been concentrating on bread that can be used for sandwiches (tomato mostly). That means that the dough has to rise enough to passably fit stuff. Since I am not equipped to keep a running yeast culture I use instant yeast which tends to go fast and collapse. So I've been experimenting with various ways of slowing things down so the bread can rise and remain firm enough. Lowering the moisture helps currently 290mL water for 500g flour. This results in a heavy lump of dough which keeps its shape as it rises. Punching it down a couple of times and letting it rise slowly for the final time in a moist environment helps. I put it right into the little oven with a wet paper towel draped along the door to keep the air moist.

      • whale fall 3

        a little late this week but who cares :)

        [...]

        i found this artist this week, and his work is so dreamy. earthy tones aren't the colors i usually associate with surrealism, and they work beautifully. the background is so delicately colored too.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Manual intervention required when updating Gitea to v1.20.0 on Void

        My local Gitea instance runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 running Void Linux. I'm quite happy with Void itself. It's been totally rock solid and reliable since I got all of the kinks worked out about a week after the initial install. Gitea, however, has been a bit of a PITA on a few occasions prior to moving to Void, and the latest package upgrade I ran managed to break a few things. It's all back up and running now, but not without some frustration.

        After some troubleshooting, I found an obsolete setting in the config file, which once removed at least allowed the daemon to start.

      • Unleash Your Inner Mapper (OSM)

        OpenSteetMap is a community made map of the entire world. It's not just a map of roads, although it does have roads, paths, and other types of thoroughfares, but it has lots of other attributes including businesses, hiking trails, land usage, solar panels, bridges, bins, water fountains, camping grounds, and much much more. If it exists physically there's probably some combination of tags it can be described with on OSM.

        One of the great things about OSM is that since it's made entirely by the community, everyone gets to pick what kinds of things there are interested in mapping, which can make OSM far better than commercial maps. Many people have probably used OSM through the OSM website, OSMAnd or another similar app, but if not directly, indirectly through social networks, government maps or other apps which use OSM data like mapy.cz.

      • I just LOVE my day job... [Ed: Anonymous Microsoft pushers in Gemini]

        It got to the point where the leads calling me up every day to ask, "Why are you still having trouble with this? You've been on the project three months." Never mind that I'm the only team member in my time zone, nothing is documented unless *I* document it myself, and I can't get help because everybody else is busy with their shit.

      • First Impressions of the Beepy Pocket Computer

        The Beepy, formerly known as the Beepberry, is a little pocket-size computer handheld with the distinguishing features being the 1-bit monochrome (non-backlit) Sharp Memory LCD and the Blackberry thumb keyboard. The other key feature to this device is that it accepts a Pi Zero form factor computer board of your choice. A few other nice details are the physical power switch, one user-programmable button on the right side and quite a few GPIO pins broken out around the display. Here is what it looks like. Isn't it neat?

      • How to Errors Good

        My view of errors is built upon my view of encapsulation in general. A program is built from components, each having clearly defined concerns and boundaries, with each depending on other components. Each component defines an interface of methods which can be used by "upstream" components to interact with it. These interfaces are opaque, meaning they expose the bare-minimum information which is required to be useful to the caller. If the caller doesn't need to know something, the interface doesn't provide it, either in the types it uses, the documentation it provides, or the actual functionality it exposes. Whether an interface takes the form of a network API or a language-specific abstract interface is irrelevant to this discussion.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • How to use Fediverse local timelines

          It's my second year on Fediverse. I got to know the key concepts. I've tried several clients. I am used to its pros and cons. I had been thinking that there aren't anything that could surprise me. Then I started to use a client which supports several servers (don't be confused with several accounts which are also supported).

          [Toot! for Mastodon] is a mobile client which looks a bit too colorful for a serious user. But it has two functionalities that are dedicated to this client and I haven't spotted in other ones.

          The first is pinning a hashtag (don't be confused with hashtag following added in the latest Mastodon specs) which is good for users who don't want to pollute their home timeline with random users' posts. A pinned hashtag is accessible from a special menu, without being visible on the home timeline.

        • Zines

          I've spent the last few days traipsing back and forth through Gemspace and Gopherspace looking at what's available. It's a pretty mixed bag, as is to be expected. Many people started their phlog or gemlog then abandoned it quickly, many more kept theirs running for years and I'm just visiting a monument to that moment in time. It's in equal parts fascinating and saddening, partly because I arrived too late and partly because these things were written (presumably) with no other goal than to share something. This can be contrasted with the modern WWW, on which even simple blogs are often laden with trackers and ads as a way to monetize content.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

The Ludicrous Mythology of Commonality as Signal of Value, Merit, Popularity
Devalue what's true, promote marketing?
[Video] Richard Stallman on the Four Essential Freedoms (Manuel Cuda News, 2025)
Added to a channel several days ago by Manuel Cuda News
[Video] Richard Stallman on Understanding the Misconception of So-called 'Artificial Intelligence'
to "know and understand"
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
 
Links 10/03/2025: Small Web Praised, LLM Chatbots Exposed as Worse Than Useless Again
Links for the day
A Call for GNU/Linux and BSD Developers to Unite Against GAFAM and the Regime They Empower
We have long encouraged and continue to encourage people who value Software Freedom to altogether boycott GAFAM
Gemini Links 10/03/2025: Realisation About Young People, Punks, and Discord IPO
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 09, 2025
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
Hiding Problems Doesn't Work
transparent organisations will be more stable and sustainable
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
Under the Pen Name "John O'Donnell" (LLM Slop, Not Real Article or Author) LinuxLinks Pushes Spammy Page
it happened some hours ago.
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