Links 02/09/2025: Oligarch Tech and Text Encoding Concerns in Ada

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 02, 2025

Contents

Gemini* and Gopher
- Personal/Opinions
- Technology and Free Software
  - Programming

Gemini* and Gopher
- Personal/Opinions
  - Joining the jet set without a jet 🚄
    
    Today I've been a fancy-pants international traveller. I went over the Simplon pass by bus, then from Visp to Dijon by double-decker train. Current speed through France: 311km/h (193mph)
    
    International stereotypes: Italian bus driver drove too fast. Swiss train left Visp punctually. French train left Basel a few minutes late.
  - care
  - rise again
- Technology and Free Software
  - yeeting oligarch tech: month 9
    
    I started a list over lunch in an attempt to track what-all I've changed since January 7, when I clicked on Janet Vertesi's Cyber-Cleanse in someone else's CoSo post and thought "well, I'm already not using Chrome for a browser, I wonder what email options exist besides Gmail?"
  - Programming
    - Text Encoding Concerns in Ada
      
      I wrote a very long reply to someone on the Comp.Lang.Ada Usenet newsgroup about handling text encoding in Ada, which is important information for modern programs and is very poorly documented; so I figured I should duplicate the reply here for posterity.

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

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