Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 09/05/2023: Personal Stuff and Proportional Coding



  • GNU/Linux

    • Personal

      • Re: JeanG3nie: I'd rather be Ferrari than Ford

        For me it's liking bare fingers on acoustic guitar strings, attempting to hit higher vocal notes through 62-year-old vocal chords that might have encounters one cigarette too many the night before. It's ftp'ing files I'd vim'd to a gemini account instead of typing into either a textarea or a javascript-mediated equivalent.

      • Growing in the Wrong Places

        The city that I live in used to be a steel production town, it has since morphed into a hybrid college town and regular small city, but the scars are still here. An environmental survey of a pond near my house revealed that the only way to clean it would be to either cover the whole thing over and forget it existed, or dig out >6 feet of contaminated sludge from the floor of the pond. There isn’t 0 green-space in the city, but there is at least a 3:1 ratio of abandoned parking lots to flora. Nature within the city is often seen as a problem that needs to be overcome, rather than a harmonious relationship. In spite of this, small plants jut through cracks in the sidewalk made by the roots of trees. Squirrels use the power lines in lieu of dense forests, and geese inhabit the parks in droves, daring anybody to challenge their authority.

      • Ne-an-nes!

        Yesterday I sang the Liturgy in Byzantine chant at another church than the one I usually attend. It was stressful (I was protopsaltis and it was my first rodeo at that particular klḗros), but ultimately it was a good experience. I really enjoyed improvizing during the Anaphora, the Cherubic Hymn, and the communion hymn. The 2 other chanters were good isokratḗs and I appreciated their help in pointing me to the right hymns for the day and filling in the places I was unsure on.

        The weather has been beautiful, and spring is finally here. It's pretty warm here most days, sometimes even getting to 75℉. I've been playing koi-koi with my family and a solitaire matching game outside using a hanafuda deck I recently bought. It's pretty fun.

      • virginia woolf, between the acts

        There had always been lilies there, self-sown from wind-dropped seed, floating red and white on the green plates of their leaves. Water, for hundreds of years, had silted down into the hollow, and lay there four or five feet deep over a black cushion of mud.

        [...]

        Life, the history of the world, and all individual histories present themselves to us as a series of events, in other words of brief and dramatic acts. A battle, an encounter between statesmen, an important speech, a crucial letter are instants in history. I remember a night near Bahia, when I was enveloped in a firework display of phosphorescent fireflies; their pale lights glowed, went out, shone again, all without piercing the night with any true illumination. So it is with events; beyond their glow, darkness prevails.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: EFIYTVS Wordo: XEROX
    • Technical

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Ad-hoc served gemini file

          This file is being served by a bit of nonsense /bin/sh. It uses ncat(1), part of the nmap package, to listen on the right port and wrap the connection using my letsencrypt key. xq came up with the idea and the core server code for an experiment he's running for Kristall. I stole it to make this silly thing.

        • 2023 Week 16/17/18: Status and Photos

          The last few weeks have been dominated by two things: work and moving. At my job, we are engaged in a large upgrade project that takes up almost all of my time each day. In the evenings, I have been helping to pack, move and unpack dozens of boxes and bins. These tasks have left me very little time to engage in Gemini.

          Compounding the issue has been my recent trouble with our ISP. Not only did I post nothing onto my capsule for a week, but the capsule itself was unavailable for the same period. I'm so glad that issue has finally been taken care of.

      • Programming

        • Proportional Coding

          We are told—correctly—that readability of code is of primary importance in large codebases. And yet, most programmers miss a simple trick that can greatly boost readability.

          You might have guessed it from the title: use a proportional font.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Slop is "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like GNU."
What Torvalds says about "hey hi" ("AI") does not prove he is in charge
 
Intercontinental Brigading - Part VIII - How We Convinced British Police That the Americans Were Just Manipulating and Tricking Them at the Expense of British Taxpayers
Their job is to protect communities, not the feelings of Americans who threaten violence
IBM CEO Boasts to the Media About "AI" Momentum While Sacking His Workers Who Worked On It
Recently, IBM took a bailout and got rid of many workers
Corrupt Media Benefits Corrupt Officials (the Case of IBM)
IBM’s Pre-Earnings Publicity Blitz
Links 19/10/2026: "Investors Disturbed by Anthropic's Financial Data" and "The "Dead Internet" Is Here" (Slop and Bots Running on Huge Debt)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/10/2026: ICEYE/SAR, Smol Servers, and Starting an Open Access Journal
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 18, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, October 18, 2026
Gemini Links 18/10/2026: Hobbies, RAM Prices, and Avoiding GAFAM
Links for the day
Intercontinental Brigading - Part VII - Weekend Abuse Reported to British Police (Rogue Actors Take No Breaks)
Some time in the next few days I'll share an elaborate report
Gemini Links 18/10/2026: Hospitals, Literature, Fixed IP Addresses, and Sunday Types
Links for the day
Links 18/10/2026: Brazil Reduces Deforestation, Some 4-5 Gray's Inn Square Scandals in Insolvency Petition of Reform UK
Links for the day
UbuntuBuzz is LLM Slop
Tragic
"Assisted by NSA" and "It's Just a Tool" (So Fine!)
Free software is meant to be produced by people who value and pursue Software Freedom
Gemini Links 18/10/2026: Movies, Greenland, and Detectors of Slop Plagiarism
Links for the day
Links 18/10/2026: TikTok Censors Criticism of MElon, "Trump’s Latest Attempt to Be the King", and "Big Tech Oligarchs Have a Terrible Plan for Humanity"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 17, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, October 17, 2026
Gemini Links 17/10/2026: Big Glowing Advertising Screens, Busy October, and Art
Links for the day
The First Casualty: The Reputation of Linux Developers (and of Linux)
The last thing you can take from a person is pride
Links 17/10/2026: Europe Divorcing US President Putin (Kompromat), MElon and Kapo-berg ("Meta") Buying US Elections Again
Links for the day
GAFAM LLMs Seem to be Causing Veteran, Experienced Linux Developers to Quit, Only to be Replaced With GAFAM Bots and Unaudited Slopfest 'Code'
Better than 'pulling a SCO'?
30 Years of KDE and "Project Banana"
KDE recently turned 30 (many blog posts about it this past week)
Intercontinental Brigading - Part VI - Racism Against Blacks
Systems don't always work as intended
Inevitable Things
"Bitbucket was Inevitable"
Andy's Passing Thoughts on Media Dying, Not Reporting News (Even Critical News About Itself)
No more news
Stallman Was Right About Torvalds
The crowd/audience Linus Torvalds panders to is paid by GAFAM to go attend and dominate (speak at) LF events. They're people whose employer forces them to use slop, it's inorganic.
Links 17/10/2026: "Why Math Dumped OpenAI", US Third Circuit Has Confirmed LLMs and Other Slop Constitute Plagiarism or Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
GPL Was Right (About Hoarding, Now Automated With Plagiarism Blenders)
Some time next year the UK's High Court might listen to arguments related to this
Microsoft Allegedly Asks Many Workers to Leave at the End of This Year (or Get the Boot), It's Called Voluntary Exit Program a.k.a. Voluntary Early Retirement Program (or VEP) Even for People Far Too Young to Retire
"Everyone at Microsoft knows what those acronyms mean."
The Torvalds-led Slopfest as a Reminder to Pursue Software Freedom, Not Plagiarism Endorsed (for Money) by 'Linux' Foundation
What's happening this month moreover proves that he is not in control of important decisions in his project
Why We Never Got Back to IPFS
Practically speaking, we could get back to IPFS any time
Trillions of Dollars in Debt Are Not "Investment", More People Realise This Now
"Investors started offloading shares on Wednesday in response to an X post about the debt load of CoreWeave Inc..."
Red Hat Silent Layoffs: October 1 Bluewashing, Then Leaving IBM Altogether
It's said that weeks from now there will be another "round" (of "RAs")
Gemini Links 16/10/2026: Metrovision, Smartwatches, and Rekindled Love for Geminispace
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 16, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, October 16, 2026
Intercontinental Brigading - Part V - Keeping Linux Under Users' Control, Not Microsoft's (NSA) Control, Leads to Weaponisation of Cops (Killing the Messengers)
Transatlantic lawfare