Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 04/09/2023: Web Environment Integrity Rant and Inbox Zero in Hindsight



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • 🔤SpellBinding: ACEHYTI Wordo: RANKS
      • One Particular Harbour

        I grew up on that big peninsula in Wisconsin that sticks out into Lake Michigan. Nearly every weekend during the summer I could be found on the family boat, jet skiing with friends or just hanging out on the beach. The radio was always playing oldies and boat rock. About half of the CD's we owned were Jimmy Buffett. We all knew the words to every song, the classics, the deep cuts. His music was the soundtrack to my childhood.

        I saw Jimmy Buffett in concert half a dozen times over the years. The first time I was probably 12 or 13. Pre-show tailgating at Alpine Valley was a mix of celebrating music and a lot of drinking, drugs and sex. Went every other year well into college. Grass seats, singing the same songs, it was always an amazing time.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Web Environment Integrity

          So, on the off-chance it does happen, I feel that some of the hackers and hobbyists on the fediverse, gopherspace, and geminispace could start looking into spoofing the PrivateToken challenge that the system is based around. You see, unless I'm talking shit, the second-worst case scenario would result in the entire internet splintering, and so a multi-web browser would be quite handy.

          That's not to say that splintering would necessarily be Google's fault. The idea of the so-called "splinternet" has been tossed around for years; but that's a subject for Wired to cover.

        • How to strengthen the Small net

          So probably without those interpersonal ties, this place will be like any other place on the Internet. It's a common way of thinking that we must be doing our best. So we are pushing Geminispace to be superior to everything else. But it shouldn't be.

        • This week — Going Through My Blog Task List

          TL;DR: I had another long weekend, so I drafted up some pages that I've been wanting to create. I also decided to scrap some past plans for this blog.

          Work has been busy as usual: I juggled different tasks during the workweek, but thankfully none were urgent. Unfortunately, we experienced rough weather here in the city, which culminated in Friday work being suspended thanks to the developing typhoon. Thus, I had another long weekend.

          Hence, I took the opportunity to work more on my blog, and cross off some tasks that I wanted to accomplish.

        • What was Inbox Zero?

          Inbox Zero was the philosophy that there should be super clear edges between “email you’ve never even seen before”, “email you still need to reply to but you don’t need to do anything else first”, “email that’s waiting for you or someone else to do something external”, and “email you’re done with but might wanna look up things in later”, and using folders to do that.

          I’m not sure if people are still using folders and stuff to organize email, but yeah, in general, fishing out “I need to do something” things from your notes or emails or RSS or socials or phone calls or meetings, and then making yourself aware of what are the practical and concrete actions I need to take and what context I need to be in, practicing that is pretty clutch.

      • Programming

        • Address Randomization Tribulations

          So, I have a tiny 32-bit application (a Forth) taking up about 4K, written in fasm. Pure minimalism, including an iffy elf header that fasm creates, with a fixed load address. More on that later.

          It's been unstable, and I tracked the instability down to the initial memory allocation. Right at the start I add my desired memory size to the code base (the top label in asm code), and invoke `brk` system call. This worked as long as I allocated a largish amount, but failed on anything smaller than 16MB or so. Furthermore, it failed intermittently.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

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
Hiding Problems Doesn't Work
transparent organisations will be more stable and sustainable
Under the Pen Name "John O'Donnell" (LLM Slop, Not Real Article or Author) LinuxLinks Pushes Spammy Page
it happened some hours ago.
 
[Video] Richard Stallman on Understanding the Misconception of So-called 'Artificial Intelligence'
to "know and understand"
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
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
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
OpenAI, Deep in Debt With Growing Losses, Sees Web Traffic Falling Fourfold in a Year
Microsoft's shares have fallen over 10% since the last report and OpenAI is trying to con people via Wall Street, offloading the debt to some gullible fools
Microsoft's Social Control Media Efforts Cratering (GitHub and LinkedIn)
Expect more layoffs
Microsoft Office is a Dying Cash Cow and Now It's Just Dying/Starving
Most people use Android and they don't need some bloated office suite because many processes involve Web forms
Links 07/03/2025: Radio’s Death Knells and US Abandoning Ukraine
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/03/2025: Replacing Firefox with LibreWolf, Visiting Churches
Links for the day
Links 07/03/2025: Oracle Layoffs, HPE Eliminates 3,000 Jobs, Massive Price Hikes at Microsoft, More Surveillance in Microsoft's Stuff
Links for the day
Manslaughter: Haverfordwest convictions, Abraham Raji & Debian DebConf drowning
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Open Source Initiative's (OSI) Latest IRS Files: Only 2.9% (2.90046827447%) of Its Income is From Members
So almost all the money is corporate
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency (Formal Complaint)
Time will tell if a Cheeto-controlled California will take this seriously or just brush it aside like a head of state from Ukraine
Half a Decade Without Social Control Media
Not all audience is desirable
IBM Laid Off Almost 2,000 Staff Last Friday and No Western Publication (Newspaper, Web Site) Even Mentioned That
Only some Asian sites mentioned it
Under IBM, After Killing OpenSource.com, the Next Casualty May be "Community Blog" of the Fedora Project
It sounds like they already made the decision/s
Social Control Media as a Rapid Race to the Bottom - Part IV - Physical Health, Mental Health, and Debilitating Anxiety
One is better off feeding stray pigeons (rather than scrolling and clicking on "timelines" like a dumb pigeon)
Links 07/03/2025: WSL Breakage (as Usual), Abandoning WordPress for Hugo
Links for the day
LLM Slop Versus Richard Stallman
"Compilation Of Corruption: Jeffrey Epstein And The Halls Of Academia"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 06, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, March 06, 2025