Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 20/08/2023: Free Pens, Gemini Clients via SOCKS5 (e.g. TOR)



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • malahide fossils

        i vist the malahide coast regularly when i am near Dublin. i managed to run and swim 5 days in row, despite the choppy and sandy water. no jellyfish this time, thankfully.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: ADELRTX Wordo: IMPEL
      • Knee

        My meniscus in right knee raptured while sitting on the chair in the office. Happed in mid of July. No way to move and very painful. Needed surgery fast. Took a week to get to arthroscopy. Now it is a month after the surgery. I spent that time mostly laying on the sofa with laptop /work / or iPad /entertainment/.

      • #5

        A few minutes before 15:00 today I got shot #5, booster #3. It was at a small clinic just like last time, with no fanfare, but there were more people getting their shots this time. Maybe people have found out the numbers are going back back up, but news is unfortunately pretty thin.

        The clinic this time was much farther from home. I had tried to reserve a slot earier during vacation but couldn't find any at a place near home. This place I went to today was the closest I could find near a train station. I did not want to have to take a bus out into the middle of nowhere, especially on the way home.

        [...]

        I guess for the entire world the virus is a thing of the past, but not for me. I shall remain vigilant until it really is finally gone. If that ever happens.

      • anger and fear regarding becoming a teacher



        Principal tells us to dress up for the next day of training. I get all gothed up in deep purple with my highest wedges and i feel divine. someone in the booth at the superintendent's speech played "too sexy" as my building's staff were walking in; suddenly i distinctly felt like i'd been set up to be used as eye candy and felt incredibly gross. I e-mailed the principal about it, then he surprises me in my classroom while I was preparing for the week ahead.

        He proceeded to talk an apology at me for about five minutes. He said he wasn't gonna be able to sleep at night with this hanging over his head, so he had to come right away. I don't doubt that, but I don't think for the reasons he intended to get across. He said he didn't choose the music and it's not at all what he was going for but that he really regretted how it all came together. He didn't ask me one question or stop to hear me speak at all. Shakes my hand and leaves.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • On-Call Culture and the Human Aspect: Prioritising Well-being in the Realm of Reliability

        Site Reliability Engineering is synonymous with ensuring system reliability, but the human factor is an often-underestimated part of this discipline. Ensuring a healthy on-call culture is as critical as any technical solution. The well-being of the engineers is an important factor.

        Firstly, a healthy on-call rotation is about more than just managing and responding to incidents. It's about the entire ecosystem that supports this practice. This involves reducing pain points, offering mentorship, rapid iteration, and ensuring that engineers have the right tools and processes. One ceavat is, that engineers should be willing to learn. Especially in on-call rotation mixing SREs with other engineers (for example Software Engineers or QA Engineers), it's difficult to motivate everyone to engage. QA Engineers want to test the software, Software Engineers want to implement new features; they don't want to troubleshoot and debug production incidents. It can be depressing for the mentoring SRE.

      • Everything's on fire / No XMPP, no Robbie Robertson

        We're between several wildfires. The smoke is absolutely miserable, burnt embers are dropping all over, and the communities about 10 km away are on evacuation alert. We've loaded up the car, just in case. I've done a lot of work on this house, but it can burn. Everything is temporary.

        Robbie Robertson died last week. Attentive readers of this phlog will remember a misleading phlog title a couple of years back.

      • Booklet printing

        I found how to prepare a PDF into a printable booklet (aka brochure or pamphlet) PDF! (Again!) The booklet pages will be half the size of the print paper -- e.g. with an A4 paper printer the booklet will be A5.

        For whatever reason I find it extremely hard to understand how to operate the printer... If I put the paper this way, how will it come out? Should I flip it to print the other side? Should I rotate? Who knows! It's not the first time I've gone through the whole process of (re)learning these things, but, like a dumbass, I never documented it. All is about to change! Brace yourself!

      • Free Pens

        At my office there was a box of free pens and I helped myself to three of them. I love free pens. I doubt that I will ever have a need to purchase a pen because I have so many that I have acquired through the past several decades.

        Yes, I can obtain pens at work. Our office has a modest supply cabinet including boxes of pens. However, it is the surprise pens that I chance upon outside of work that delight me the most. These are the pens that I see in hotel or bank lobbies, or trade shows, or conferences.

      • A PSP Update

        This is something I had been completely overlooking until a couple days ago. The PSP officially had a good collection of classic PS1 titles that it was capable of emulating, and thanks to community tools it's possible to convert any other PS1 title that wasn't officially supported and play it on the PSP.

        I never had a PS1 growing up, but I did play a couple PS1 games thanks to the PS2's backwards compatibility and a lot of my favorite PC games were also available on PS1. Lately I've been playing a lot of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 which was a childhood favorite. I've also been playing a bit of Re-Volt, an RC car racing game that's harder than I remember, and Spider-Man, whose PC demo I would play over and over.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • How to run gemini clients via SOCKS5 (e.g. TOR)

          After some discussions on the IRC channel, I decided to try how running a gemini client would work with SOCKS5 to be able to connect via TOR (though the same has other uses) and I found that most clients do not support SOCKS5 directly.

        • Re: Emergency Notifications, Mastodon, the Climate Crisis

          One of the links in the post is to lemmy.world about how the Dutch government is starting a Mastodon server. But that lemmy.world link is down right now.

          Fedi’s tech is still pretty flaky and unreliable. Posts go missing all the time. I don’t wanna slag Lemmy because I know they’re working hard. And it’s not just them that have issues, it’s the entire ActivityPub world.

        • How to reply to Lemmy posts from Mastodon

          If you got an account on Mastodon, Homecamp, Akkoma, Misskey, Pixelfed or similar during the big Twitter migration and you wanna reply to a post on Lemmy or kbin, read on!

          If you don’t have any Fedi account at all yet, you’re living the blessed life. Good on you!♥ Bookmark this page and return here once you’ve been on Fedi a few weeks and have gotten comfy and wanna branch out to the threadiverse. Or, if it's the threadiverse itself that's appealing rather than the seedy world of microblogging, just make an account on Lemmy or kbin instead and in that case you don't need this tutorial. You might need a reverse tutorial if you wanna interact with people from Mastodon or Pixelfed or whatever, but I don't know how to make one since I don't know how Lemmy looks from the inside!

          For us in gemspace, there is actually a Fediverse on Gemini thing that’s awesome, it’s called Tootik, but this tutorial doesn’t apply to it yet since it can’t fetch posts by URL as far as I know. I don’t know for sure, but I believe you can still subscribe to Lemmy and kbin groups from Tootik. I’ll edit this section if I find out more.♥

      • Programming

        • Mixed feelings about Rust

          Now, I was not intending for this post to see a wide audience. I have no way of knowing how many people read what I write there, but based on the lack of feedback I'd guess not many. This time, it was picked up by Rust weekly, from whence it hit HackerNews. You know how they say never read the comments? I read the comments, which were overwhelmingly negative of course.

          [...]

          Another of my criticisms was Rust macros. I said flatly that they were a mistake. I stand by that. Zig's use of 'comptime' shows that a fully developed language and compiler level type reflection scheme can completely, and cleanly, replace not only macros but a lot of other metaprogramming pains. Generics are a breeze with good type reflection. You can move even more classes of bugs from runtime to compile time. Heck, the comptime concept enables Zig to have their build system written in Zig.

          Now, around this same time, @thecompiler was getting ready to present a keynote address at RustConf. Certain members of the Rust core team took it upon themselves to turn this into an awful mess, by reaching out to the conference organizers and implying that the core team had decided as a whole that his talk was not a good fit for the keynote. Did I mention that @thecompiler was one of the editors of the C23 standard, and a massive presence in the programming community? He was insulted and it became a scandal.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

unixcop.com is the Latest "Linux" Site to Have Become a Slopfarm After 2 Years of Death (Inactivity)
Not a way to stage a comeback
While GAFAM/Microsoft Disguise Financial Crisis as "Investment in AI" the Slop Giants Make Up a Narrative of Wilful Slowdown
A BS artist is good at the art of BS when the artist's failures or weaknesses get twisted as moral or professional leadership
 
"AI Slowdown" is Code Word for Bubble Imploding (Trying to Make This Slowdown Seem Wilful, an Act of Safety and Responsibility)
They help one another by inflating the bubble and making false excuses when expansion stalls
SLAPP Censorship - Part 185 Out of 200: What Reputation?
Helping monopolies and working for monopolies never made anybody popular
Gemini Links 16/09/2026: Slovenia, Catastrophe Ethics, and ROOPHLOCH 2026
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 15, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Microsoft Layoffs in September 2026 Are Silent, Hidden
Expect the same next month ahead of the fake results
Links 15/09/2026: 'Smartphone', Android TV Box, Stockholm Syndrome of [Slop Plagiarism] Acceptance
Links for the day
Carmen-Lisandrette Maris Prepares Audiobook to Explain Software Freedom/Digital Rights to Adolescents, Needs Help From Volunteers
needs help with narrating
Links 15/09/2026: Putin-Connected Money for The Insurrectionist Jr. and Turkey's Crackdown on Activists
Links for the day
publicdomainpictures.net Seems to Have Become Fed Up With Slop Contaminating Its Database (Wasting Storage, Bandwidth), Now It's Suitably Flagged, Should Be Demoted/Delisted
The site was redone, suffered some hours of downtime, then 'relaunched' with a new interface this week
Gemini Links 15/09/2026: Hiking in Munții Făgăraș, Scams, and Slop Plagiarism Considered Unethical
Links for the day
Linux Kernel Becoming a Slopfest - Part 1 - At the Beginning (Torvalds Knew It Was Trouble)
We still wonder if we should make and actively maintain a shame list (developer/employer) for the people who contaminate Linux the most with slop plagiarism
EPO Staff is Preparing to Take Up a Notch the Strikes and Other Industrial Actions Ahead of October's Meeting (It Can Help Oust the Corrupt Leadership)
mobilising perhaps thousands of workers at a critical time in the history of the Office
Allegedly Many PIP Layoffs in Nepal, IBM Does This Before a Known Death Toll in Avalanche (Caused by China-, Europe-, and US-Induced Global Warming)
Fresh wounds, before the bodies are even recovered (thousands still missing)
"Wail" by Alexandre Oliva
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License BY-SA (Attribution ShareAlike) 4.0 International
This Morning The Register MS Published a Page With "AI" 83 Times in it. The Register MS Got Paid to Do This.
The Register MS is not a serious publisher and a lot of the stuff about "AI" on the Web isn't journalism but paid-for SPAM
SLAPP Censorship - Part 184 Out of 200: A Tiny Law Firm That Knows Nothing But Microsoft (But Merely Pretends to Understand "IT")
They've managed to trick some mainstream media into thinking they're "Tech" experts or "Social [Control] Media" gurus; nothing could be further from the truth
Links 15/09/2026: Sweden’s Far Right Perishing and "Iceland Just Got Played"
Links for the day
It's Not About How Developers Vote
This isn't about politics, it's about users being in control of their own computers and computing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 14, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, September 14, 2026
Gemini Links 15/09/2026: Poetry, Enshittification of Ebay, and Mecha System
Links for the day
LG Lies to Cover Up Lies About Its Spying TVs (It Records and Transmits Conversations in Rooms)
This is what a lot of "modern" technology is like
Oracle's Debt Continues to Soar (Increase of 60 Billion Dollars in 15 Months, Not Counting the Secret Debt, With Off-balance-sheet Debt Having "Grown Roughly Thirtyfold in Four Years")
Oracle debt continues to grow
It Has Cost $215,000 in Legal Costs to Sue IBM for Wrongful Termination
IBM typically settles out of court and demands secrecy (to avoid anyone else benefiting from the very expensive outcome)
Apple's iOS and macOS Measured as Bigger Than Windows in the US, Linux-Based OSes at Almost 30%
Expect the silent layoffs at Microsoft to continue at a rapid pace
Oracle, Like Microsoft, Drowns in Debt and Discards Tens of Thousands of Staff (Microsoft Does the Same More Discreetly)
The main difference between Microsoft and Oracle is that the latter is honest about what's going on
Gemini Links 14/09/2026: First Android Phone, Leaving Sony, and Rant About Gemini-to-HTTP Proxy Providers
Links for the day
Links 14/09/2026: "Scam Altman Now Trying to Gain Control of Electric Grid" and Sweden Moving to the Right
Links for the day
Vista 11 Flunked
Microsoft cannot start a "Vista 12" campaign as it would only make matters worse
Microsoft Urgently Needs Distraction: There's No "Next XBox", But There's a New Boot Screen (Like 'Dark Mode', a Feature That Can be Implemented in Mere Minutes/Hours)
Anything to distract from XBox fiasco
The PIPs or 'Voluntary Termination Offers' Help IBM Fake Its Situation
"IBM is not a tech company"
IBM Flying Away to Sweatshops (So Will Red Hat)
Even on Sunday people post about 'leaving' IBM
RFID Ambitions Already Established by Widespread Skinnerbox Adoption
A society that cannot maintain privacy for those who deserve it will not manage to assure dignity of citizens
SLAPP Censorship - Part 183 Out of 200: What Actually Happened Two Months Ago (Based on People Who Attended)
It's dangerous to assert what happened in a hearing you did not attend (there was no video stream or recording, either)
Phil Harvey, an Editor-in-Chief in a B2B Site, Explains Why ChannelFutures (Connected to TechTarget) and Other Sites That Used to Cover Linux Deleted Many Articles
Every old article in channelfutures is gone!
Software Freedom Day 2026 is 5 Days From Now, Fresh Reminder to Boycott Proprietary Software
Let this be a timely reminder of why people should avoid proprietary software
Links 14/09/2026: Slop Hardly Used for Actual Work (Chatbots Are for Lonely People), Slop Bots (Scrapers, Plagiarism) "Are Thirsty for Power"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/09/2026: Trip, Hiding, and OCR
Links for the day
IBM PIPs Are Layoffs (RAs Come Later Even If You Satisfy the "Performance" and "Plan")
Notice how "the media" almost never mentions silent layoffs, as if just because they're silent, there's nothing to investigate, nothing to see there
Slop Companies Engage in Plagiarising the Web, Now They Pay People to Contaminate the Web With Their Lies
Remember that the lawfare against us is funded by slop salaries!
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 13, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, September 13, 2026