Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 07/08/2023: RPoD, Thoughts on Guppy Protocol



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Another weekend done

        At 08:15 this morning there was 1 minute of silence in Hiroshima, in remembrance of the atomic bombing 78 years ago. There were a number of speeches as well, but only a small portion of the ceremony was televised. Recently there have been stories in the news about the bombing, and in the comments the debate still rages on over whether it was necessary or not.

    • Religion

    • Technology and Free Software

      • RPoD swap out complete

        My site (1436.ninja) is now hosted on a refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre, core i7, 10gb RAM, WD red 500gb conventional hard drive (for now). The website is down (the RPoD Gopher Proxy) due to config issues I don't have time for right now. I switched over to gophernicus as the gopherd. I need to make some script changes to get some things like the guestbook and Port70News back up. This will get done, but around my work schedule.

      • RPoD Changes Coming

        RPoD has intermittently been going down, and always when I am out of town. I have it plugged into an oversized UPS which is plugged into a dedicated power circuit in my home. The 'fix' has been to have my wife power cycle the machine. This occurs once I realize it's down, and when I am working, this can be days.

      • hiccup

        This chicken's head is other than atop its formerly connecting neck!

        Lots of enlightening (emphasis on the 'lighten-ing' part) email interaction with quite the Geminaut.

        House/yard work up the gazoo (anyone else here remember "The Great Gazoo"?).

        Assembled a package of images and text for a private investigator regarding some rather clear cut fraud and other associated illegality of my first wife amounting to my having been "seriously taken" several decades ago. There's likely no monetary recovery, but I'm ashamed to admit revenge of some *not illegal* kind is definitely on the table.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • First Thoughts On "The Guppy Protocol Specification"

          Someone's proposed a new protocol, which is sort of a version of the Spartan protocol over UDP, with in-band support for splitting messages over packets.

          I love thinking about network protocol design, so proposals like this one always make my ears perk up!

          My understanding, having implemented server software for both Gemini and Spartan, is that Spartan is mostly successful at being 90% faster than Gemini by altering about 10% of the spec. These alterations include the entire removal of TLS, and reducing the amount of data included in requests and responses.

          It also includes adding a new text/gemini line type, which is unfortunate because it introduces strict incompatibility with exitisting Gemini software, though robust fallbacks are possible to implement server-side.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Secret Layoffs at Microsoft, Apparently More Sites Will Shut Down Entirely
vindicates us and serves to affirm what we've said for over a month
SLAPP Censorship - Part 156 Out of 200: Brett Wilson LLP Becoming Wilson FC
Now acting almost like one-person shop (lots of staff has fled this past year)
 
North America: GNU/Linux Measured at 13%-15% Every Night
many (north) Americans use GNU/Linux at home and are using it to access the Web in the small hours of the morning
Links 21/08/2026: "Silicon Valley’s Billionaire Cults Are Coming for Democracy" and "Who’s Raking it in as the National Debt Explodes?"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 157 Out of 200: What is a 'Defamation Troll'?
"Defamation Mill" also
Northern Europe Leads the Pack in Abandoning Windows After Threats Made to Greenland (Says Clownflare Data)
Clownflare has a vast trove of data, so it cannot be easily dismissed as pure nonsense
Clownflare: In Past 12 Months Microsoft Windows Fell From ~80% to ~75% on Desktops/Laptops in Asia
Microsoft is deep in debt
The State of Slopfarms About "Linux" in August 2026
The Web needs serious cleanup, which curation can help deliver
IBM Offers Workers Some Money to Fire Themselves, It's Called "Next Step" and It's Allegedly 'Extended' (Not Enough Fools Have Fired Themselves)
Will IBM executives - including the CEO - ever be held accountable?
£5 Million Unsolicited/Undisclosed Bribes and What That Means to British Politics
It still remains unknown (disclosure denied) who helps fund the £1 million lawfare against us
[Satire] Pocock, Binface & nobodies vs Farage: defamation before UK High Court
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The IBM Censorship Team, PIPs (Silent Layoffs) in IBM Europe
There seem to be many de facto layoffs going on at IBM right there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 20, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, August 20, 2026
Gemini Links 21/08/2026: "Ensmallening the BigWeb", "Rust Dependencies"
Links for the day
Links 20/08/2026: 'Linux' Foundation Promoting Slop Hype for Money (Hype as a Service), Malaysia’s Exports Jump 38% Year-on-Year
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/08/2026: A "Break From Routine" and "Modem Was the Problem"
Links for the day
Clownflare Reckons GNU/Linux is on Almost 1 in 10 Laptops/Desktops in Western Europe
Western Europe and China are leaving more of GAFAM behind them
Looking Ahead at September
Rianne and I look forward to a productive September
Links 20/08/2026: Facebook "Ran Ads for an App That Promised to Nudify Female Politicians" and Facebook Faces "Social [Control] Media Addiction Trial"
Links for the day
Clownflare Sees GNU/Linux at 16% Market Share on Desktops/Laptops in Tajikistan
in Tajikistan it seems like adoption of GNU/Linux is exceptionally high, based on a very large data set associated with Web access
The Demise of Social Control Media Continues
Entering (anew) social control media in 2026 seems foolish
SLAPP Censorship - Part 155 Out of 200: Throwing Stones in Houses Made of Glass
character-assassination-as-a-service
Gemini Links 20/08/2026: Planners, Pantsing, Vinylyssee
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 19, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Gemini Links 19/08/2026: "Big Boost in Autonomy" and "Answer of E-Mail"
Links for the day
Firefox in Trouble in the US, Down to Lowest Level in 20+ Years
more sites will stop or intentionally neglect Firefox support
Clownflare: More Than 1 in 5 Laptops or Desktops in El Salvador Run GNU/Linux or ChromeOS
Clownflare Radar reckons it's more like 20%+ now
SLAPP Censorship - Part 154 Out of 200: Computer-Generated Legal Filings From Men Who Are Salaried by Mass Plagiarism Companies in Another Continent (America)
This isn't the behaviour of a moral person but of some sort of "crypto bro" or "slop bro"
Fired by IBM for Medical Leave, Rampant Censorship of IBM Critics Explained
We've already caught and showed many cases where thelayoff.com deleted comments that were not even remotely racist
Links 19/08/2026: First Amendment Under Fire by White House of Cards, "Universities Were Forced to Pay Up" for Not Censoring
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/08/2026: What Friendship Means, Sm0lNet/SmolNet, and New Feeds
Links for the day
Omarchy is Already Dying
Same as the life cycle of slopfarms
No, WSL (Windows With Fake 'Linux') Isn't Growing Faster Than Ubuntu, This Was Disinformation Spread by a Microsoft Propaganda Site, Then Spread by Slopfarms
Be sceptical; Microsoft is truly desperate for anti-Linux spin right now, seeing that Windows is in a freefall
Microsoft's Mass Layoffs Impact the Ability to Run Microsoft
Can Microsoft still run Microsoft?
Microsoft's Active Directory ("AD") and "Entra" Are National Security Threats
Even the US government concluded Microsoft could not be trusted for security; it issued a formal report about it in April 2024
Instant Impact: GNU/Linux Skyrockets to 10% in China Days After Policy Changes
Let's see what the 'aftermath' looks like by year's end
Links 19/08/2026: Timothy James King (AmigaDOS) Dies, GitHub Goes Offline, Finland Wants to Shun Social Control Media
Links for the day
Slop's Achilles Heel: It Increases the Workload, Not Just Costs
Set aside its inability to scale well
Improving techrights.org
Technical debt (like 17 years with WordPress) is something that's better to address early, not later
Mass Layoffs at Dropbox, Blame the Debt, Not Slop Hype
The debt of Dropbox Inc., which isn't an imaginary (estimated) thing, is over 4 billion dollars
Microsoft is 'Angel of Death' to Developers (Even Its Own), 'Voluntary' Layoffs Happening Again
From what we are hearing and reading, there are 'voluntary' layoffs again
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 18, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 18, 2026
Gemini Links 19/08/2026: Shirts, Handwriting, and Fights in Geminispace
Links for the day