Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 12/05/2023: Nokia and IDEs



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • So simple

        In fact, the seeming existence/presence of ego - an instant of conviction of being a nexus of separate individuality - is literally the-missing-of-it.

      • Queens Of The Stone Age - New Music

        While I was doing my MSc in Chemistry in 2012, I started listening to QOTSA. I remember that I was at a point where I was looking for new bands and my own friend there at University suggested the band to me. QOTSA are one of the best rock bands out there. When I listen to a band I give a lot of credit to unique song structures, recording sound/techniques and the general vibe of the band. As time progresses it becomes ever the more difficult to innovate in music. So many combinations of melodies, drum beats etc have already been recorded and used, it's hard not to fall into a trap when writing new music. However, QOTSA almost always delivers something new and fresh. Their music writing style is definitely "Avant-Garde", they generally use differnt song structures and melodies. The weirder, the better. On top of that, their recording always sound amazing, and is part of their aesthetic.

      • Early Morning Adventure 2023-05-12 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

        I had a half-baked plan this morning to do some early-morning sunrise photography. Sunrise is now 4:38am and getting earlier each day, so I thought this might be my last practical opportunity. It sounded kind of boring to go back to my other photography spots, but I couldn't figure out from a map what might be another good spot, in view of the terrian and treelines in this area. I had one idea to try to head downtown and see if I might get some good shots against a skyline. One the way, I found a parking lot near the "Boatel" with a good view across the river.

      • Bad at Reading

        Is it something I've become bad at through lack of practice (failing to build a habit of reading)? Something I've become bad at through practicing the wrong thing (building a habit of failing to read)? Something intrinsic to my brain? Am I just trying to read the wrong things?

        I don't know whether it's a problem or not. I feel very ignorant on a huge number of topics and I feel like perhaps if I read more then I could be less ignorant. On the other hand, there will always be vastly more things I'm ignorant about than things I'm knowledgeable about, so perhaps it's a silly thing to worry about.

    • Technical

      • A New Smartphone After Four Months

        At the end of December, I purchased a Nokia G21 TA-1418 to replace my Samsung Galaxy Note8.

        The Samsung ran well for the most part and performed the tasks I needed, but my current job requires me to install certain MFA tools on my smartphone, and the Note8 was reaching end of support for some of those tools. Of course, the screen also had major burn-in and the battery barely lasted a day on standby, but those were relatively minor concerns for me. I chose the G21 as a replacement phone since it still offered SD-based expandable storage and a 3.5 mm TRS jack: increasingly rare features among US smartphones.

      • The The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild soundtrack hits different when it comes on CDs instead of in the game

        While Tears of the Kingdom is actually out for me right now, I wanted to wrap up my previous Zelda experience. In the run-up to the TotK release, I watched someone else play BotW with a couple mods enabled. This got me in the mood to play the game myself a little bit again, and I also wondered if I could get the soundtrack. Way back when, when I first got the game, I looked into getting the soundtrack, and decided against. When I looked at the entry on Amazon a bit (maybe years) later, only scraps were available at ridiculous (three-digit) prices. However, when I checked the final time, they were down to normal levels…but they were all imports, and all the printing was in Japanese. I still have access to at least one computer with a CD-ROM drive, so I bought the thing.

      • Programming

        • Re: The Trouble With IDEs

          Eclipse, well, there's a funny story there, some intern started up Eclipse, which promptly made 50 database connections in the test environment, which killed that environment, and I got blamed for it because the DBAs on the other side of the wall thought it was 'jmates' who had caused the problem, not the intern 'jmate'. Why the heck would a unix sysadmin be running Eclipse? I get annoyed when vim has a 30 millisecond startup time. Java? A bloat browser? Fuggedaboutit!

          Joel Spolsky informs us in 2001 that bloat does not exist.

          Unix is my IDE. OpenBSD in particular, using a somewhat customized version of the base vi, plus various other tools that I know pretty well and can mostly debug (the man(1) crash was a beyond my skills). That's an environment. It's got problems; however, the developers accept my patches (not sure what ever happened to the strptime(3) bug I sent Apple) and make continual improvements to a complex system on a predictable cycle with little in the way of resources. How much do the Googles and Microsofts pull in for profits? Why is their code so often featured in the CVE charts?

          Let's review some alternative environments.

        • Async for UI Control Flow

          In Card Story (link at the end), the users can do things like "edit a line of text", or "create a link from a branch in one card to another card". Like most user interfaces, some things the users do involve multi-step flows. One of the questions when developing user interface code is how to logically represent this kind of multi-step flow.

        • Riding the IDE threads wave

          Holy moly: managed to sleep until 8:35am, which is way later than I usually arise. Three cheers for the power of some well-placed THC.

          Unfortunately that puts a real crimp in my internet attention budget for today.

          Much interesting and playful thoughtfulness down these paths...

          I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, but vim has long been the only IDE I've ever needed.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): The OSI Election is Rigged, Biased Against People Who Oppose the Openwashing of GPL-Violating Bots Operated by Microsoft for Profit (OSI Gets Paid to Promote This)
they reckon that pretence of calm would serve them best, helped by puff pieces
In Vietnam, statCounter Sees Microsoft Windows Falling Below 7% "Market Share"
Can Microsoft still demand $500 or more per Windows licence?
Fresh IBM Layoffs Reported in Europe and North America, Jobs Allegedly Moved to South Asia (Low Salaries)
As usual, IBM does not talk about this
The Ludicrous Mythology of Commonality as Signal of Value, Merit, Popularity
Devalue what's true, promote marketing?
[Video] Richard Stallman on the Four Essential Freedoms (Manuel Cuda News, 2025)
Added to a channel several days ago by Manuel Cuda News
 
Latvia (and Lithuania) Stepping Away From GAFAM, Microsoft
Windows becomes unessential as Android and GNU/Linux rise
Microsoft Layoffs Are Infectious (Don't Get Acquired or Become a Partner)
It seems like companies choosing to become "buddies" with Microsoft are dooming themselves and their products
A Closer Look Inside the EPO, Courtesy of Benoît Battistelli's Submissive Lapdogs Roberta Romano-Götsch and Elodie Bergot
new report comes from the Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN)
Links 10/03/2025: Staff Strikes, Mass Layoffs in Gaming Industry
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/03/2025: "Eat The Rich" and Two-Year Anniversary of the 'Space Elevator' Orbit (Like 'Webring')
Links for the day
Links 10/03/2025: Small Web Praised, LLM Chatbots Exposed as Worse Than Useless Again
Links for the day
A Call for GNU/Linux and BSD Developers to Unite Against GAFAM and the Regime They Empower
We have long encouraged and continue to encourage people who value Software Freedom to altogether boycott GAFAM
Gemini Links 10/03/2025: Realisation About Young People, Punks, and Discord IPO
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 09, 2025
[Video] Richard Stallman on Understanding the Misconception of So-called 'Artificial Intelligence'
to "know and understand"
FSF's Defective by Design (DBD): Amazon Tightens the Digital Handcuffs
Reproduced verbatim
The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): Plenty of Issues, Plenty of Censorship
The OSI is abusive on many levels!
EPO Staff Appraisals Apparently Benefit Kakistocracy, Including Cheaters Who Grant Illegal Patents and Punish Good Patent Examiners (Who Find Valid Reasons for Denials)
In prior reports the staff representatives said that rewards typically went to people who granted many patents, i.e. didn't do proper examination and instead just allowed many fake patents get enshrined as EPs, causing fiasco (from which some patent attorneys could profit)
As The Web Gets Drowned Out, Sinking in a Pool of LLM Slop, Real News Sites With Real News Become Increasingly Rare If Not Extinct
This is a real problem
Links 09/03/2025: Moderna Patents Thrown Out, Climate United Sues E.P.A.
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/03/2025: Lagrange 1.18.5 and Writing Mannerisms
Links for the day
Links 09/03/2025: FiveThirtyEight Killed by Disney, Nature (Journal) Chooses Suicide by Slop
Links for the day
Links 08/03/2025: International Women's Day, Software Patents Being Squashed
Links for the day
Hiding Problems Doesn't Work
transparent organisations will be more stable and sustainable
The Harder They Try to Censor, the Bigger the Scandal (and the Impact) Will Be
We don't plan to self-censor our coverage; sometimes we just delay publication a little
Gemini Links 09/03/2025: Leasehold Derangement Syndrome, Raspberry Pi, and More
Links for the day
All-Time Low for Microsoft in Africa
it helps show how irrelevant Microsoft is becoming
French woman (frontaliere) trafficked to promote unauthorised cross border Swiss insurance
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
New York Times & Guardian reporting on Modern Slavery Act prosecution of Glodi Wabelua
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Diana & Adrian von Bidder-Senn, EVP, Palm Sunday & Debian death on wedding day
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The RTO (Return-to-office) Layoffs or 'Soft' Layoffs at IBM and Red Hat
There are certainly many layoffs going on there, but many are described as "resignations" or "retirements" after RTO or some other form of relocation
Under the Pen Name "John O'Donnell" (LLM Slop, Not Real Article or Author) LinuxLinks Pushes Spammy Page
it happened some hours ago.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 08, 2025
Graveyard of Mastodons: A Vast Number of Inactive Accounts
More than 80% of users in mastodon.social (the "big one") are no longer active
Gemini Links 08/03/2025: Reading Cory Doctorow's 'Little Brother', Abandoning GAFAM Forever
Links for the day
No, We Don't Want to Go "Viral" (and You Probably Don't, Either)
"Viral" junk gets forgotten quickly
Windows is Being Eradicated
On the Web, in Africa in particular, user strings or UAs that say "Windows" are becoming more rare
For International Women's Rights Day (Today) Staff Representatives at the European Patent Office (EPO) Opened Up on Gender Discrimination at the Office
Office discrimination against women is widely known; unless you sleep with men in management
Links 08/03/2025: Tariff Self Harm and Mostly Solved Diseases Making a Comeback
Links for the day
Links 08/03/2025: Climate Change Causing Food Shortages, Selling Off Chrome Still in the Cards
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/03/2025: Driving in Japan, GrapheneOS, Tariffs Silver Lining
Links for the day
Working Like a Pack of Hyenas, the Microsofters Try Hard to Hide the Truth and Actively Censor Critics
They even target women
The Fall of the Open Source Initiative (OSI): Bylaws of the OSI a Shocking Oversight
That's what the OSI is right now: a salesperson
Thinking About Abandoning 'Google News' Altogether Due to Easy Poisoning by LLM Slop
As long as Google News keeps sending traffic to these leeches, it'll be very hard to justify relying on Google News for anything at all
Links 08/03/2025: Microsoft Failures, Further Attacks on Speech in Hong Kong
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/03/2025: Physical Albums, Analog Computing, Deleting All Social Control Media
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 07, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, March 07, 2025