Links 17/07/2024: Open Source Initiative Lies and Dark Net Thoughts
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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On Calmness
I've written about this before in my own journal, but I think writing about it here could be useful.
Every once in a while my mind pops into a state which I can describe in almost no other way than calm focus. To explain I'll need to set this up a bit more by describing my current life and normal state. I'm a middle-aged father of two younger children, so my day consists of little down or alone time, and as such, I'm always looking to the next task, whether that is the insurmountable to-do list at work, or the constant barrage of little-people interactions and corrections from my wife and I. I get up at 5:15 and I'm not done packing breakfast and lunch for the kids for the next day until 20:30/8:30pm. Needless to say there's not a lot of introspection in my life these days, and wondering about the world... or even taking a step back and calmly looking at your life almost in a third person perspective.
My mind is always thinking of something, and thinking I have a task that I'm not doing. I can relax and make time for myself, but my brain is usually so tired that I can't really focus on anything that takes high-level thought, such as contemplating your own situations in life, so I'm usually stuck in a "work" mode, and if you've read my entry on "work mode", you'll really understand what this is like for me.
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Technology and Free Software
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D I G I T A L D R E A M
I recently acquired a DECstation 5000/200. I had spotted it on ebay, and as it turns out, the person was local to my area, and has an entire warehouse full of old Digital Corp. stuff! He explained they were in business back when DEC was still around, and are to this day still selling DEC gear to an existing customer base. Since then they also started selling medical hardware for supplemental income.
We didn't talk very long, as I knew he had an errand to run when I went to go pick up the machine, but interestingly, he also remarked that they sold new computer gear for a while, but the old retro gear was actually selling better, so they pivoted into medical equipment.
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Day 3 of the 2024 Old Computer Challenge
Haven't got much done today for the challenge, because of work. Observation though: it can be *really* boring when your train is held at a signal for half an hour without the distractions of a smartphone!
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Where the "f" is my "s", solved?
I may have solved a long standing time waste issue without needing someone else's likely ultimately disappointing app.
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The Open Source Initiative did not coin the term "Open Source" and why that's important
The people of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) have made claims multiple times that their group were the ones who invented the term "open source" when referring to software.
Christine Peterson makes this claim in an article published on RedHat's opensource.com by recalling from memory the story of how she believes she came to create it.
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No amount of organizing will make me want to do something
The book is potentially useful, though I had to return it to my library before I could finish, but it's also just the latest piece of self-help I've read over the past few months with the goal of simplifying my life and get more done on the goals I have. But there's a deeper issue that I need to address that no amount of organizing will solve - when it comes to learning new skills, I often lose steam after the first few accomplishments (the easy ones) and then feel stress when I don't pick up something super easily. I'm also bad at doing things that I feel are tedious.
As an example, I'm working my way through an online certificate course. I did great the first week, doing a little each day and generally setting a good pace, but I've fallen off in the last couple of weeks. I'll get a little done here and there, but I don't have the steam to push through the tedious parts of the reading and doing exercises that I theoretically should be able to do easily.
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Internet/Gemini
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The Dark Net
As part of that, I think about the Internet in a few decades. In the worst case, the public Internet is gone. An alternative that is slightly less bad is that governments will have discovered that blocking at the level of the national Domain Name System (DNS) won't work because it's easy to circumvent using alternative name servers. And so, slowly at first but then ever faster, from the top down, people will think that perhaps the Great Firewall is cool: for the children, against porn, against spam, against vandalism, to fight tax evasion, to fight terrorism, you know the deal. And yes, even to fight fascism. So many people are telling me that we should ban Telegram, for example.
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What's the minimal NNCP setup to get started?
This page is for you if you are curious about NNCP and you don't know how to get started. It contains instructions on how to set up your laptop such that it can exchange files with my laptop (melanobombus) via my server (sibirocobombus).
Before testing it, you need to send me an email with some info but we'll get to that.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.