Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 12/08/2023: TUI and IBM/Lenovo



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • 🔤SpellBinding: CLNOSUY Wordo: SKIRT
      • Gazing back from “The Universe Next Door”

        Maybe it’s dumb to try to review a 40-year old book that has already had thousands of other readers & commenters weighing in but here we go! And I’m not talking about the contemporary Robert Anton Wilson classic by the same name that was published at around the same time.

        Nope, the book I just read was Jim Sire’s The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog.

        He is a Christian theist who lays out his own worldview and then does brief forays into other worldviews for contrast.

    • Science

      • Occam’s Turtles All the Way

        And the standard non-theist/​pantheist/​atheist/​polytheist answer is, of course, “who created that creator? And the creator of that creator?”

        Ultimately it becomes a matter of semantics.

        Theists define “creation” as the subset of what exists and what’s there that excludes the theistic God and the entire realm of that God, labeling that excluded part as “transcendent”.

        I’m not onboard with that definition. By cosmos I wanna refer to the whole shebang, not just a subset.

        Theism, to my mind, diminishes God so much. Shrinks the idea down from something that encompasses all to this tiny li’l superhero flying around.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Re: TUI music players

        Yeah, that’s just facts. Most TUI things are bad. CLI is where it’s at. mpc, for example, is a good basis for shell scripts & automation. I love it. And since it’s for mpd, you can still connect it to a GUI or TUI app also, to get the best of both worlds.

        He also thinks that a conf file full of comments, including commented-out defaults, is bad. That’s also a good point. With a good editor it’s easy to hide away all comments or to navigate a huge file, ostensibly making the advantages of having those comments outweigh the drawbacks, but not everyone has that and starting from a blank file can often be a lot easier.

      • Games I've played on my brother's PSP back then

        I've never had a PSP myself, but my brother had. He is really one of those guys who has always been into Sony. I think it must have been back in 2007. My dad bought me my first computer a few years ago for christmas and it has been the time when we have got our first internet connection at home. An usb UMTS modem with EDGE/HSPA+ support, 8 mbit/s and a limited data plan of 1.5 gigs a month. Not much but enough to download some demos and funny videos for my brother's PSP every now and then. I've even built him a wiki of his favorite wrestlers (Jeff Hardy, The Hardy Boys, CM Punk, Edge) from WWE/Smackdown.

      • My last ThinkPad

        I've been a ThinkPad user for more than a decade now. I've enjoyed many of them, some for the better, some for the worse. But at the end of they day they all had something in common.

        I'm sorry for the clickbait, but Kai Hendry inspired me to use the same title for my own post. And I'm with him, this is probably my last ThinkPad, for sure.

      • The $50 ThinkCentre M600/M700 tiny series

        A few weeks ago, a friend from a local hackerspace told me about them becoming so cheap the first time. A lot of them are currently being sold from many ebay sellers in Germany. The price? Approximately EUR 50,-

        The ThinkCentre tiny series is the ultra small form factor (USFF) computer sold by Lenovo, while others, such as HP calls them mini or Dell who came up with micro. They are as small as a book but have nearly the same performance as their desktop brothers and sisters. At least when it comes to office work. I've got the M700 tiny which sits right next to my ISP router and I hardly ever notice. They are silent, reliable and just do their job.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Emphasis On

          Still interested in the question of Gemtext and emphasis, I figured I’d gather some data.

          [...]

          But as there’s very little support for it, the more important question is: why?

          To see if data would help answer that, I sampled three sources to check for use of emphasis: news articles on the web, Gemlog entries, and Phlog (Gopher log) entries.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

The World Needs Activists With Social Skills and Perseverance
An everyday activist makes life better for everybody, everywhere (not for personal gain or even credit)
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XI - Losing Over a Million Pounds (Borrowed Money) to Try to Silence Critics of Restricted Boot With Microsoft-Controlled "Certificates"
Garrett is also very jealous of Daniel Pocock
 
Links 22/10/2026: MElon (Elon Musk) Election Interference and Perl/Raku Foundation by the Numbers
Links for the day
Techrights Audience Grew as a Function of the Intensity of Attacks on Its Existence
We try to publish fewer stories but better (not necessarily long but at least important) stories
TechRepublic is Becoming a Slopfarm
It seems like TechRepublic became LLM slop (maybe all of it, maybe only some of it for now)
Techrights is Not About GNU/Linux, Tux Machines Is
When we say "GNU/Linux" we emphasise the GNU
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XII - Lawfare to Cover Up Microsoft's Restricted Boot Calamity (Microsoft as Authority Over Linux), Garrett Wants to Talk About Penises Instead
When lawsuits become a political weapon
Without Microsoft's Monopoly (and Monopoly Rents) the Inevitable Microsoft Mass Layoffs Carry on Endlessly
Microsoft Windows is not retaining the dominance it once had
IBM's Debt Grew About $2 Billion in 3 Months
The silent layoffs still seem to impact Red Hat
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 22, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, October 22, 2026
Gemini Links 22/10/2026: Solar MiniBBS, Building Major Tom, and Zig
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2026: Busan’s Celebrity Shark in Canal Again
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2026: "Software Developers Have Been Promoted Into Incompetence"
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2026: eBay to Lay Off a Tenth of Staff (Again), Node.js and PHP Security Crises, Climate News
Links for the day
Red Hat Layoffs Still Going on This Week (Whilst IBM's Debt Grows in Spite of Mass Layoffs)
IBM is bluffing/cheating the shareholders again
IBM's Debt Continues to Increase While the Company Rapidly Shrinks
This is what a dying company looks like
Linux Kernel Needs Diversity and Diversity of Good Code, Not LLM Slop
Linux (and Linus) are kicking a can down the road
Microsoft Shrinks Every Year
Microsoft will try to spin or twist this as "efficiency"
Gemini Links 22/10/2026: Holiday Inn and Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 21, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 21, 2026
Techrights Was Right About a Fake Security Model Built Around Lies or Built Upon Trust in "Certificates" and "Authorities" (like Microsoft)
We have begun to amass some media reports and blog posts from technical sites
Windows Monopoly is No Longer Sustainable (the Case of Oceania)
This is why Microsoft layoffs are happening all the time
Some Downtime Possible Shortly (Router Work)
We don't use PHP in the site anymore
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft This Week and/or Next Week
Cannot pull a bunny out of some hat
With Its Future on the Line, EPO Management (Dictatorship) Resorts to Further Escalations to Fake 'Production' and Curtail Industrial Actions
It's clear that with a yearlong campaign of industrial actions - including strikes - Campinos cannot save face anymore
Gemini Links 21/10/2026: Summer Day in Tokyo (30c in Late October) and Whole Food for the Whole World
Links for the day
Links 21/10/2026: "Zelensky Took the Gloves Off This Time With Convicted Felon" and "Cellebrite iPhone Radio Zero-Day"
Links for the day
Reuters is Becoming Slop, Not a News Agency (Treat Reports From Reuters Sceptically)
In their own words
Disclosure/s Crisis at The Register MS (Promoting a Ponzi Scheme for Money)
So now they sell several schemes/scams at the same time, not limited to the slop
Links 21/10/2026: "The Tragic Death of the Republican Party" and "No War But Data Center War"
Links for the day
Internet Relay Chat Still Growing
The numbers go up, not down [...] Don't believe the doomers
Intercontinental Brigading - Part X - American Back Doors Inside Our Computers, With Transatlantic Swatting Against Critics Thrown 'Into the Mix'
"If your Windows PC's Secure Boot certificates are out of date, your system is vulnerable to malware like rootkits."
Gemini Links 21/10/2026: A Walk Through Amsterdam and Pythagorean Theorem
Links for the day
More Mass Layoffs at Microsoft Weeks From Now, Then Again Months From Now
Microsoft's crisis is not limited to XBox
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 20, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 20, 2026