Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 14/09/2023: Learning LaTeX and Using Slackware



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • teaching kids

        after 2 months of resting from 4 years of studying in college, i got a job. now i am a teacher of computer science. in the school where i studied. everyone here were inviting me for about half a year, including some highschoolers i knew.

        the first week i questioned my experience (still do, im not a teacher, i just write english words in nvim and they get colored differently). but the kids are kind to me. i talk about different topics with them. yesterday a lot of girls tried to make me watch their favorite anime series. also i got a... love letter? there are a lot of hearts. perhaps they are trying to brown-nose, knowing that I am not such a mean or experienced person. but i will not give good grades just because of pretty eyes.

      • Expanding the concept of Rules for Life

        Our initial reaction to any rule is to reject it, since we have free will, even if it is good for us. We tend to think that rules restrict and oppress us when, in fact, the opposite is true. Without rules, we quickly become slaves to our passions; without rules that give us clear guidance on what to do or not, we end up declining more and more. Therefore, rules are not restrictive but liberating.

        If we take all possible models of life from Greek literature, we will see that there is a limit that cannot be exceeded.

      • Fall Scenery (publ. 2023-09-14)

        These are some photos I took along the Tanana River (Fairbanks, AK, USA) last Friday (Sept 8). After visiting my parents a few days ago, who have a much slower Internet connection, I decided to start uploading lower resolution photos along with the original 4MB files.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • termemu

        xterm, because it comes with OpenBSD. xterm is bloated, but finding (or writing) something more suitable would be a pain. Rarely urxvt if a silly game needs it; urxvt buffers better; you can see a flicker in xterm if the code is bad and sprays escape sequences, a lot. Otherwise not urxvt as there are a few annoyances I'd have to figure out how to fix, and there's no tuits there, especially given that xterm is mostly good enough.

      • My email setup

        On the server side, it’s pretty vanilla. Postfix, Dovecot, SpamAssassin, WKD.

        On the client side, I use mbsync and notmuch and I have a ton of automatic filters via nmsync.

        Everything that those filters label with feed I read in a feedreader instead of an email app thanks to nmatom. I can check in on those newsletters once per day. No stress. And they’re not getting tangled up in my personal business, they don’t trigger notifications, they don’t require responses, they show up when I have time to read ‘em etc. Pretty great.

        I also have the opposite, thanks to rss2email; I have one RSS feed (janitorial type news from inside my building) that are so urgent that I get them in my email client.

      • Learning, Loving, LaTeX

        I first used LaTeX last year for a final assignment for one of my computer science classes. It involved needing to put a long series of images (more than 30) in a specific order, in a document and after struggling immensely with the first five, I decided to reassess my approach. LibreOffice is both an excellent and poor example of free software. It serves as a great one to one competitor to the Microsoft Office suite, albeit not as polished or feature rich, but enabling you to at the very least view files from the rest of society. That being said it also comes with all the same upsides and downsides as Word and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Google Docs. Graphical word processors are great for less-than tech savvy people, because it gives you the "What you see is what you get" experience, which works great for easy-to-format text. Now try to insert an image and watch your document rip itself to shreds. This is the position I was in, trying to put four images on a page, with them all being equally sized and occupying the four quadrants of the page, unable to get it working for the life of me in either LibreOffice or Google Docs. Then I remembered hearing about LaTeX and how easy it made formatting documents. I had never tried it and so I watched a few video guides on how to use it. It seemed simple enough and so I gave it a shot and just about instantly fell in love. I was able to do the whole assignment in vim (and GIMP for creating the images) and properly insert the images the way I wanted in a matter of minutes!

      • Using slackware

        I recently started to use slackware for my desktop, I tried it a few time in the past and didn't take the time to create a setup.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • AuraGem Music Relaunch

          I am announcing the relaunch of AuraGem Music. AuraGem Music was a project I originally announced on 2022-07-15 that allowed people to upload their private collections of music with Titan and stream their private collection with Gemini. Unfortunately, the service was slow at that time, for various reasons, but this situation has been improved; although, it's still not perfect since the AuraGem server is still on a home network, but for 320 kbps mp3 files, it should still be fine.

          Streaming on AuraGem Music should support any Gemini browsers that allow for streaming (by not timing out on long streams). Uploading music will require a client that supports Titan. Lagrange is an example of a client that supports both Titan and Gemini.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Hopping From One Set of Buzzwords to the Next
Rotating hype and vapourware
Currys PCWorld Hates GNU/Linux Even Though It Runs the World
If more and more people choose to remove Windows, then Currys PCWorld will feel the financial impact of its dumb policies
The Register MS Takes More Money to Boost Slop Hype, This Time From Snyk, a Notorious FUD Source
At some stage or at some point they might even decide to stop doing so
"AI" Hype or LLM Slop is Not About Efficiency, It's About Lowering Standards
It does not seem like IBM is genuinely committed to the same goals (or commitments) as the original Red Hat
If Free/Libre Software is Adding Trillions in Value to the European Economy, Then the European Commission Must Crush Software Patents
Further to what we wrote yesterday
 
Links 14/08/2025: Data Brokers Hiding Opt-Out Pages From Google, "Fight Chat Control"
Links for the day
FSF Infrastructure Under Constant Attack
The disconnect (literally) has had an effect on credibility
Feels Like The Register MS is Trying to Diversify a Bit
If The Register MS goes back to being The Register US (or UK), that will be a nice improvement
Gemini Links 14/08/2025: Reading Journal and LLM Fatigue Revisited
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 13, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Internet Relay Chat and Gemini Protocol Help Us Relive the Net of the Dial-Up Era
The kids were alright
"GPT-5" is Another Microsoft Dead Cat Trying to Bounce
The hype, the momentum (or the inertia) is wearing off
Microsoft Windows Losing Its Grip Near Turkey and Russia
The 'corridor' nations connecting Iran to Europe
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Google News, and Serial Slopper (SS)
The slop, the bad, and the ugly
Links 13/08/2025: The “Incriminating Video” Scam and Corruption in South Korea
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/08/2025: Movie Memories and Mystery Machine Bus
Links for the day
Links 13/08/2025: GitHub Trouble and Openwashing by Microsoft OSI With the Typical Buzzwords
Links for the day
Microsoft Swallows GitHub Losses
Only Microsoft knows how much money it has already lost on GitHub
Gemini Links 13/08/2025: Climate, Coffee, and Deploying Troops in Washington DC After Pardoning 1,000+ Insurrectionists in Washington DC
Links for the day
The Register MS Lowered MS Focus This Week
We hope The Register recognises its errors and tries to make up for them
Learning Ethics From Jeffrey Epstein's Enabler/Client/Ally, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft Accenture
Whatever merits vocabulary changes initially had are being tainted or obscured by later iterations, which tell us to avoid word like "normal", which apparently offend some people (so they argue)
Personal Attacks From Rust People Serve to Confirm They Have Lost the Argument
"The discussion I find around the net so far has no technical merit and centers around ad hominem"
Physical Meters and Purely Mechanical Meters Aren't Dumb; It's Dumb to Mock or Dismiss Them as Antiquated
I've learned a lot this week, both online and over the telephone
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 12, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 12, 2025
GitHub Will End Up like XBox and Skype
It is not likely that the XBox franchise will survive the next 5 years
Stones Thrown in Glass Houses
Projecting? You bet!
As Europe Gets Increasingly Serious About Software Freedom and Digital Sovereignty It Needs to Enforce a Ban on Software Patents ASAP
many councils in Europe move to Free software and US policy/companies cannot be trusted
Windows 12 in Bahrain (Microsoft "Market Share" Down to 12%, an All-Time Low)
They really ought to get away from Windows even faster
The Web Needs 'Pest Control' When It Comes to LLM Slopfarms
The goal is to discourage more sites becoming slopfarms
Microsoft Can Now Stop Reporting the GitHub Layoffs (Even When They Happen)
GitHub's original staff will see the true cost of becoming "b0rged" - something that Microsoft earned a bad reputation for
How to Get Very Bad or Even Malicious Code Into Linux? Write it in a Language That Linus Torvalds and Most Other Linux Developers Don't Understand.
One point nobody brings up is, what if code gets committed while evading audits and scrutiny?
Links 12/08/2025: Wikipedia Fails at UK High Court, Perlmutter Still Fights to Squash the Slop Lobby
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Field Recording and Digital Legacy
Links for the day
Links 12/08/2025: WinRAR Zero-Day, SonicWall Does More Harm Than Good
Links for the day
Links 12/08/2025: More Sabotage of Underwater Cable Ahead of Russian Alaska Summit
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Will Not Miss Microsoft GitHub, It Was Only Good at Harvesting a Lot of Code for Plagiarism-as-a-Service
investors are apparently willing to lose money for buzzwords
Slopfarms Slopping Away at "Linux" and Spreading Microsoft Misinformation
Slopfarms don't comprehend this as they lack actual comprehension, they're just parrots
Links 12/08/2025: Science, Hardware, and Ukraine Excluded From Negotiations About Its Future
Links for the day
GitHub the Company Has, in Effect, Just Died (Time to Look for Alternatives)
To Microsoft, what's left of GitHub after dismantling/folding it is some "training set" (people's code, without permission to "train" i.e. misuse under the guise of "GenAI" plagiarism)
Linux Foundation Says "Housekeeping", "Hung", "Normal", "Native Feature/Support" and "Girl/Girls" Are Offensive Words
Bombing people is OK, just use the right "terms"
It Looks More Like Microsoft GitHub Layoffs
GitHub is just losing loads of money
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Meditation, OpenStreetMap, Smolweb, and More
Links for the day
Google News is Dying: Most of Its Top Stories Now Are LLM Slop With Slop Images (i.e. 100% Fake 'Content')
Google News has been drowning in this sort of stuff for quite some time
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 11, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 11, 2025
Our Predictions Were Right: GitHub Dying as Losses Pile Up (as a Company It Cannot Continue to Exist, It's Not 'Free Hosting')
GitHub always lost money