Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 14/09/2023: Distrohopping to Fedora Silverblue and When GemText Can Become Worse Than Plain Text



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Another response regarding pinyin

        Yes, the difficulty of experimenting with innovative or otherwise different teaching methods within a conservative environment is difficult, and we've talked about this before. I'm very lucky that my teachers were willing to engage in different ways of teaching us, unlike some other classes i have heard about. The lack of resources for pinyin-first teaching, and the difficulty in splitting classes more finely based on skill than one class per general level make this likely not to change for some time.

      • Stone Skipping

        In our high school days, my friends and I went on walks almost every day. It didn't matter where: the corner gas station was just as viable a trip as a hill five miles away overlooking the city.

        A favorite route of mine took us to a nearby park with a trail running through it. The trail followed a small creek that cut through the dense forestry and meandered behind immaculate suburban lawns. We'd often stop along the creek wherever we could find a straight stretch, and we'd skip stones together.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: DEWILNH Wordo: HUNKY
    • Politics and World Events

      • RE: Human Rights

        The well-being of a civilization's individuals should be their right, according to the abilities and resources of the civilization. I believe that. Therefore the (or at least a) goal of a civilization should be the well-being of its individuals. Alas, the purpose of civilization is not well-being but survival. If not of the individual, then of the group. And there's no lower limit to the shit scale... as long as survival is ensured.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Global tabs in window managers

        Tabs should be a part of the window manager, not the application. This is a hill i have been on for a long time (before i changed the direction of celeste, it was one of the things that was around for the longest). There is no reason why all things shouldn't be able to be tabbed together rather than segregated by application.

        There are a few instances of this around. Haiku gets mentioned a lot, but partly i think due to the design happening before tabs were really a big thing, the implementation isn't great due to a lack of quality of life features, like being easy to use.

      • Distrohopping to Fedora Silverblue

        The way I've been using my computer, the laptop that got me all the way through school, has changed a lot since I graduated. Between classes and homework sessions I'd often have downtime, and I used to fill this with things like tweaking my setups, random internet browsing, watching videos, you get the idea. Managing my Arch system was something I kind of enjoyed doing, and it was different enough from my school assignments that I'd still have energy to do it even when I didn't have energy for other things I wanted to do like personal programming projects.

        The past couple weeks though I've started to notice I really only take out my computer when I have something specific I want to accomplish, like writing a post or working on a project idea. And in this case Arch was starting to feel like a hassle. Updating every couple of weeks was annoying even when it went smoothly, which it didn't always. I also was running Hyprland and the pace of development on it is still really fast with the developers not being afraid to make breaking changes between updates. I just didn't have the patience to keep up anymore, which isn't to say anything bad about the project but rather that my computer usage has changed.

      • Are You a Terminal Emulator Hipster?

        GNOME Terminal, Alacritty, Kitty, XTERM, Terminator, Guake Terminal, Tilix, Hyper, Tilda, eDEX-UI, Konsole, Yakuake, and many more. I hadn't even heard of many of these before searching for terminal emulators to add to this list. Which terminal emulators have you used and why?

        I'm the kind of person who doesn't like spending a lot of time with configurations. I don't have a dot files repo. I don't even have a personal vimrc file. I tend to just use whatever comes with my Linux installation.

        This is a lie these days, actually, because I just realised that I copy over my home directory to the new computer. And I always install tmux.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Gemtext can be worse than plaintext

          Recently I was thinking about the limitations of gemtext, and how to work around those. For inspiration, I started thinking about how those issues were handled in other limited formats. I thought back to what's often considered the most limited format: plaintext files.

          Plaintext is limiting because it has no formatting at all. There are no semantic elements. That's also part of it's strength, allowing it the most universal support.

        • Gemtext Whitespace Comparison: Amphora vs Lagrange

          This is a test that emerges from @Zelena's [frustration] with whitespace handling in Gemtext, and her [request] that browsers "Do not strip whitespace." Her claim that "Gemtext can be worse than plaintext" is worth considering. It is also an experiment that feeds into my essay "Between Two Chairs: The Problem With Gemtext". If you don't like a lot of blah-blah, consider this post to be the Cliff's Notes version of that essay.

        • Oracle Cloud might screw me over

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



Recent Techrights' Posts

They Won't Buy Vista 11 PCs or "Hey Hi" Copilot+++++++ PCs of Microsoft (With TPM)
Windows at 8%
No Time Left for President Biden to Pardon Julian Assange
At least they tried
Total Lock-down Ambitions - Part IV - The Latest Examples and the Perils (in Summary)
For further reading take a look at Musial's nice outline
FOSDEM is Called "FOSDEM" Because of Richard Stallman (RMS)
The overlap there seems timely; yesterday RMS spoke in French-speaking (in part) Switzerland where questions in French were accepted
Video: University in Peru Honours Richard Stallman
Tomorrow, January 20, Richard Stallman speaks in France
 
Richard Stallman 'Unveils' His January 20 Talk in Montpellier, France
It's free (gratis)
Links 19/01/2025: Gaza Ceasefire and PR Stunt by Fentanylware (TikTok), Faking It by "Going Dark" to Incite American Addicts (Users)
Links for the day
[Meme] Hardware RAID and Hardware Raid
We're expecting attacks on the press in Trump's second term (no need to impress anyone for another election cycle) to be far worse than the first
What's Running on the Laptops
12 months have passed
[Meme] 404, Not Found
Kuhn: I'd like to interject for a moment, we made an alliance with the Microsoft-dominated LF to outsource projects to Microsoft GitHub and rich people gave us money to do this
Links 19/01/2025: TikTok (Fentanylware) Now Banned in the US, Convicted Felon Talks to Fentanylware CEO and Pooh-Tin About Undoing the Ban Despite the Supreme Court Unanimously Upholding It
Links for the day
FTC Realises Microsoft Buying Fake 'Clients' to Fake "Revenue" (Microsoft 'Buying' Services and Products From Itself!)
Ponzi scheme
Total Lock-down Ambitions - Part III - The Web Browser as DRM Pusher
A lot of "streaming" stuff is DRM
IBM Termination Story and Information From Microsoft About Mass Layoffs
In 2 weeks of 2025 Microsoft already had 2 waves of layoffs
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 18, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, January 18, 2025
Links 18/01/2025: Restoring the Great Wall of China and Economic Expansion in China
Links for the day
Guardian Digital (linuxsecurity.com) is Spamming the Web With Microsoft's Promotional LLM Slop About UEFI 'Secure' Boot (Which is Against Real Security)
This is an attack on honest journalism
Links 18/01/2025: TikTok's Endgame, "Car Freedom", and Spying in Cars 'Fines' GM (Settlement)
Links for the day
January 20: Richard Stallman Talk in Europe
evening time in Europe, around midday in the United States and Canada
Links 18/01/2025: Apple Getting Out of Hey Hi (AI) Slop (Too Much Misinformation), Chaffbots/Chatbots Try to Settle Copyright Infringement Lawsuits
Links for the day
What Fake News Sites Are Doing to GNU/Linux
The LLM slop about Linux serves two purposes
Links 18/01/2025: Microsofters Upset at Microsoft's Ridiculous Rebrands (Excuse for Massive Price Hikes), Chaffbot Company ('Open'AI) Faces More Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/01/2025: Surge in Illnesses, ctags, and Gemsync
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Too Lazy to Write Real Articles, Offloading to Chatbots Instead (LLM Slop About "Linux")
The Web was already full of garbage before the LLM frenzy. Now it's even worse.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 17, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, January 17, 2025
RMS 'Inauguration' in Montpellier (Government Administration) on January 20th
Happy hacking
Even Technical Articles and HowTos From UNIXMen Nowadays Seem to be LLM Slop
We've just permanently removed the RSS feed of UNIXMen
The FSF's 2024 End-of-Year Fundraiser Succeeds: Over $400k to Support Software Freedom
That's worth bringing up again because the SFC is trying to 'crash' this achievement of the FSF
[Meme] Fentanylware (TikTok) Banned in the United States, Next Up European Union (EU)
And the United Kingdom (UK)
President Biden is Right, "Free Press is Crumbling" and the United States Exports Its Media-Hostile Culture to Other Continents
perhaps Biden should pay closer attention to how Donald Trump-inspired Americans take their battles to other continents
Links 17/01/2025: TikTok Banned by the United Stated (SCOTUS Rejects Appeal)
Links for the day
Software Freedom Conservancy Inc (SFC) Makes It Obvious It's Just a Copycat Trying to Exploit or Leech Off the FSF's (and GNU's) Work
They swim next to the rich people (who "match")
Links 17/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Herds Its (Drug) Users Into Even More Harmful "Apps"
Links for the day
Guardian Digital, Inc (linuxsecurity.com) Uses Microsoft-Controlled Front Groups and LLM Slop in Order to Spread Microsoft-Directed Anti-Linux FUD
Microsoft garbage likely produced by Microsoft LLMs, spewing out Microsoft FUD
Likely Fake 'Article' About Linux Mint 22.1
BetaNews fired up its plagiarism machine (LLM)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 16, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, January 16, 2025