Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 04/05/2023: IDEs Reviewed, Chatbots Debunked



  • Games

  • Technical

    • IDE Shopping

      Emacs was the first alternative I tried, really just because I know some people are able to really get into it and turn it into something powerful.

      I learn new tools best by finding a good starter config and making tweaks until I'm familiar enough where I could do it from scratch. I learned tiling window managers this way and am now currently using my own unique config, and it's also how I got into Linux in the first place by starting with Ubuntu Gnome (back when Unity was still the default DE) and eventually finding my way to Arch. So to tackle Emacs I set myself up with a popular configuration framework called Doom Emacs.

      [...]

      If you're interested in the differences between Vim and Neovim you're probably better off having someone else explain them to you. But from what I understand, Neovim is just a fork of Vim that's meant to be more maintainable and allow for more powerful plugins.

      After looking into and trying a couple different starter configs for Neovim, I eventually settled on LunarVim. Now LunarVim isn't so much a starter config. The project's website describes it as an "IDE layer for Neovim with sane defaults", and because LunarVim installs itself alongside your existing Neovim install and separates the user's config from its own, I'd say that feels accurate.

    • Pumpkin Patch

      Today I saw Brodie Robertson's latest video on the latest systemd feature, where you can reboot only the user space. I think that is pretty cool and welcome it's development. However, I can't entirely think of scenarios where it would be needed, I mostly reboot because I want to reboot my entire system. AFAIK the user space reboot is everything except the kernel, so I guess one would use it when you undergone a "standard" update of packages, mostly?

    • Science/Sci-Fi

      • The Forth

        That was from last year, but I remembered it was forth day too late this year and didn't have any ideas for something that could be quickly churn out.

      • Proof That ChatGPT Is Not Sentient

        There’s a childish variation of the Turing Test that ChatGPT fails today.

        Simply parrot whatever ChatGPT says.

        Then keep doing it.

        It won’t notice what you’re doing, and it won’t get bored or frustrated.

        If you’ve never played this game, find any sentient being and try it. But I suspect you already know how it should go.

        QED.

        [...]

        If you’re not convinced, just keep repeating. It must eventually become clear to you that there is nothing behind the curtain—just as it will never become clear to (this iteration of) ChatGPT that something untoward is going on.

    • Internet/Gemini

      • Metaverses

        I am perpetually late to the party. andi (@mcc on cohost), who I sort of peripherally knew-of when she was on Twitter, posted an essay in the early bird-migration days at cohost, on the various ideas of the metaverse: Stephenson's original conception, Facebook's ambitions (largely jettisonned), and others.

        [...]

        In some sense we've reached feature parity, thirty years later. We've also got the same level of control over our own identities on the platform, which is to say, barely any at all; we can choose to use the platform or not, but if we go, that's it. We can't take our Instagram data and import it elsewhere, not in any meaningful sense. We're stuck with apps and no overarching protocol.

        The Fediverse is a partial answer to that, allowing social verbs or ideas that work across a variety of platforms. But as you may have seen when trying to convince your mutuals to make the move to Mastodon, it comes with a tradeoff. It's not as instinctively simple as shitposting on Twitter. It requires people to think a little bit about their data and interactions. Most people don't want to do that, and so Mastodon won't take off until Twitter's last day. Maybe after that we'll start to see people other than idealistic free software types and disaffected tweeps in the Fediverse.

      • Writing process

        Like many geminauts, I've coded my own content management script.

        [...]

        Now, this assumes that I am to write and publish my text in the same session. This doesn't necessarily encourage afterthought and reflection.

        My last post "broke" my content management script. A geminaut very kindly sent me a message to tell me. I was very grateful, but also, it made me realize that people actually read my posts... which I should have expected, right? That is, after all, why I write?

        Certainly, but I suspect that actively ignoring that fact was what made it possible for me to write without getting caught in doubts and anxiety. But if I am to become a better writer, I also need to think about the audience, about the necessary context I have to include and the unnecessary grumbling I can spare them. Therefore, I need a bit more space to think, or at least some space to have distance.

        I'll try to implement something like a 12- or 24-hours quarantine. This way, I get a chance to revise posts before sending them. But also, since it's a one-time quarantine, I don't get to revise indefinitely. Maybe it's more akin to having an editor (except it's me). A busy one, who doesn't want back and forth.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

As Expected, Facebook Collapses, Microsoft Hides Massive Debt
GAFAM is a giant mountain of debt
Staff of EPO Cautions Against Unlawful Weaponisation of PIPs Against Industrial Actions That Protest Corruption
PIP-like sanctions against anybody who does not toe the line of Cocaine King?
IBM, Running Out of Things It Can Sell, is Selling Software Patents
IBM is not just pathetic; it's actively harmful because it lobbies for software patents and spreads software patents around
The 'Church' of Moglen/Stallman
'reunion' with Eben Moglen
Microsoft Has Fallen to #3 in Singapore
There are many technically talented people in Singapore or overseas workers who lodge in Singapore
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 29, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 29, 2026
At The Register MS "PARTNER CONTENT" Means Company Writing Fake Articles About Itself and Its Own Products
At The Register MS, content-farming has become a thing
Gemini Links 29/07/2026: Star Trek, Retirement, and ODEs in GNU Octave
Links for the day
Links 29/07/2026: "BuzzFeed Lays Off 33 Percent of Remaining Staff" (Trying LLM Slop Some More), Scam Altman Mocked by the Media
Links for the day
GNOME Curated and Censored by IBM (Under the Guise of "Code of Conduct")
Felipe Borges (IBM) has just posted a follow-up
Digital Mass Surveillance as a Hallmark of Failed Societies
"small leap forward in tech ethics"
I Found a Typo, Don't Vote!
Social control media isn't good at adding any meaningful signal
Jeremy Sands Explained the Harms of Codes of Conduct
next week the 500th show milestone [is reached]
Tonight's Earnings Report From Microsoft and Facebook ('Meta') Will be Faked Because They Hide Almost a Trillion Dollars in Debt
The US economic system is only as honest as the people who govern it
The Vacuum Syndrome
Parables help
The Only Old People Who Can Survive IBM Are the CEO and His Circle of Enablers
very similar to what's happening at the EPO
Microsoft Layoffs Aren't Done Ahead of the Need to Tell Shareholders About "Efficiency" (Tonight)
Microsoft layoffs won't be "Done" until what's left of Microsoft is "None"
Microsoft Lacks Growth. Ahead of 'Results' The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Finds Merit in Allegations Slop is Microsoft's Excuse for Price Hikes (Piggybacking Vendor Lock-in).
At this stage it's not hard to see why many nations gravitate away from Microsoft
Parliament leaks confidential cult inquiry witness contact list (COFG Victoria)
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Troll-Feeding is Time-Wasting
in social control media
WordPress is Technical Debt
There are a number of technical tasks underway and maybe some testing (this coming weekend or later)
Will Red Hat Still Exist in 2027 or Just Become a "Brand" at IBM?
Whistleblowers told us IBM was laying off about 500 Red Hat engineers earlier this year
Call for IBM Whistleblowers
If you work for IBM and have something material (like balance sheets) to prove financial misconduct, please try to 'touch base' and establish a secure communication channel we can both use
EPO Series on EU and Pan-European Corruption, Vote-Rigging, Extending Beyond the EPO Itself
By Saturday it will be August already, so we'll start preparing for Rianne's birthday
SLAPP Censorship - Part 133 Out of 200: Lies by Omission
As usual, the other side wants people to ignore how much they lost
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Streamlining the Decision-Making Process
Negrão was one of 17 applicants for the position but he somehow managed to end up as the sole candidate on the shortlist prepared by the Management Board in June 2020
Links 29/07/2026: "Hugging Face Has a Deepfake Nudes Problem" and "$1.5B Anthropic Copyright Infringement Ruling" (Plagiarism is Not "Training")
Links for the day
Comments on Today's Judgment
It hopefully helps clarify what actually happened
Thank You, Andy
Burnham and "Tech Rights"
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Inaction and Incompetence - Part II - 77 Messages Sent, Did Not Even Investigate or Examine Any of the Actual Evidence (British Taxpayers' Money Wasted)
SRA has become known (even notorious) for inaction
Inevitable Politics
In technology, provided the work you do has growing impact (we served almost 2 million requests yesterday), things will inevitably become more political - whether you like it or not does not matter
Not Only "Loonies Take on Farage"
pretending that the opposition to the right wing is "Loonies"
Brigading Against Women - Part I - Bypassing the Legal System by Threatening Companies in Another Continent
In the next part we'll begin to connect Lozza's online activities (and court activities) to those of Garrett
IBM is Trying to Turn Debt (Borrowed Money) Into Fake Growth and It'll Worsen Matters
they put in their balance sheets a fake "growth" in something that does not even exist
Microsoft Relies on Misleading Narrative of Studios Going 'Independent'; in Reality There Are Mass Layoffs in Them
This is not a good narrative for Microsoft
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 28, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Gemini Links 29/07/2026: Arosa, Tired Tuesday, and Constellation Browser
Links for the day
In IBM, PIPs and RAs (Layoffs) Have Become Almost the Same Thing, Workers 'Expire' With Age (Seniority, Experience) and Empathy is Punishable by Termination
IBM does seem like a dead company
At Microsoft, PIPs Are Sometimes Known as "LITE" (a Silent Layoffs Legal Hack or a Shrewd Workaround to Skirt WARN Act)
Zero "layoffs" to report
Gemini Links 28/07/2026: “Strategies Against Algorithms” and DIYers
Links for the day
"Social Dialogue" With the Man Who Never Faced Real Competition at the European Patent Office (EPO), He Buys the Voters and Eliminates Rivals
Will the "Pretender" write back?
Digital Restrictions (DRM) and Microsoft: What Kills XBox Will Kill Windows Next
Microsoft wrongly and very arrogantly assumed that users would tolerate everything it throws their way
GNU/Linux in Afghanistan Reaches 7%
For many years it was stuck at less than 1%
Greenwashing Corruption With a "Chief Sustainability Officer", Who Infamously Defended Battisetelli's Crimes at the EPO and Petitioned for Him
She was rewarded for conspiring against EPO staff, as usual
What I Explained to Police About Blackmail and Death Threats via Burner Accounts (a Practice Which Generally Constitutes a Crime)
Today I've communicated several times with police
Links 28/07/2026: "People’s Claude Chats Are Publicly Accessible Online" and SpaceX Stock Crashes Like Its Products
Links for the day
UK tech sector missing from democratic process
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
How Not to Cover Elections (Democracy Relies on Reliable, Complete Information)
Misinformed voters are a recipe for disaster
Microsoft E.E.E. (and "Bait and Switch") Going Exactly According to Plan
That is what they are trying to tell us and the companies that employ us
IBM: An Old Company That Hates Old People
Remember that's coming to Red Hat workers in 2 months
Strict Policy on Violence and Violent Language
This matter is now being escalated to law firms
Avoiding Discrimination Against People With Disabilities
work underway to improve the system which runs the sites
Links 28/07/2026: XBox DRM Doomed Everyone (Cannot Play Anything), Slop (Ponzi Scheme) Being Pinkwashed Now
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/07/2026: Ethics, GIMP Script-Fu, SMTP Versus Gemini, and Proposal for Better TOFU
Links for the day
To a Sociopath, Ethical People Are Bad People. Don't Fall for It.
If you put sociopaths on a pedestal, the pedestal will break
Improving the Static Site Generator
Our system has fixes triaged
Diversity in Debian
bringing up the topic is the real problem, diversity itself is a taboo subject
GNU/Linux in Brazil. The B in BRIC(S).
the "market share" is assessed to be around 5%
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 27, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, July 27, 2026