Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 06/06/2023: OpenKuBSD, GrapheneOS, and More



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Duolingo Progress

        Finished the first section in my Irish course on Duolingo. I'm still woeful, but I can read a bit of Irish. To a lesser extent, understand it when spoken. I'm a long ways from being able to read stuff outside the application, but, I'm getting there? It feels like progress, and it feels good to make progress on something which, if I'm being honest, is kind of a useless goal. Would it be better for my career to grind the rust off my French? Absolutely. Am I doing something else instead? Absolutely. I can talk about owls and beer (ulchabhan agus beoir). Say "I like Irish" (Is maith leom an Gaeilge). Important things.

      • Tanana River Trail Photos 2023-06-06 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

        I took these photos yesterday during my lunch-break walk.

      • The Laundry Asymmetry

        When preparing for a longish trip I packed six sets of socks, underwear and t-shirts, so I could do the laundry weekly (six plus the clothes I was wearing). Sadly, I miscalculated.

      • Going to the Psycho Ward

        A married man with children goes and visits his wife's family. He tells the people there about the trip in the south of the country to which he goes by his car in the morning. Old Gruffandgrim*, his father in law, reminds him that he needs to work so he can make a living and have enough money for his trips.

      • Dory progress and Misfin thoughts

        I guess I'd call this a milestone achieved. I've successfully sent a couple of Misfin messages to the reference server with a small binary that uses Dory under the hood. Getting there was a little more difficult than I expected, as these things often go.

      • Taking the Measure of the Place

        A weary and dusty traveler shuffles into the bar, slips a business card back into his jacket pocket, and takes a look around to get the measure of the place. A motley crew of vagabonds, salesmen, entertainers, writers, and freethinkers fill the Midnight, chatting in small groups over lukewarm beer. Among the various patrons of the bar, one particularly odd creature stands out, balancing upright on long tentacles with constantly moving eyestalks scanning the scene.

      • Contextual Pizza

        I've been finally losing weight after years of simply refusing to deal with the problem. It was nothing too terrible--just an extra 40 pounds and change, but it definitely made itself felt in my feet and knees when running or doing tai chi. After about 4 months I'm finally getting close to the target weight I set, which upon reaching I promised myself a single piece of pizza. I shouldn't have done that.

        [...]

        Conflating the symbolic representation with the actual is fraught in so many unexpected ways.

    • Technical

      • OpenKuBSD design document

        I got an idea today (while taking a shower...) about _partially_ reusing Qubes OS design of using VMs to separate contexts and programs, but doing so on OpenBSD.

        To make explanations CLEAR, I won't reimplement Qubes OS entirely on OpenBSD. Qubes OS is an interesting operating system with a very strong focus on security (from a very practical point of view ), but it's in my opinion overkill for most users, and hence not always practical or usable.

        In the meantime, I think the core design could be reused and made it easy for users, like we are used to do in OpenBSD.

      • Pixel 7a & GrapheneOS

        I'm testing a phone for work, and it's an Android, which is new to me. I swapped the OS for GrapheneOS, which is a security-focused minimalist Android distribution, and the phone hardware is a Pixel 7a. Here's how someone fairly familiar with iPhones views a current-generation Android phone as their daily driver...

      • New order in /dev/pts

        Previously, I had one global session of terminal multiplexer, and that was where everything lived -- plain text accounting, news, blogging, different personal and $dayjob projects. Since you can have only so much tabs before it turns into complete mess, context switching meant closing them all and opening ones relevant to task at hand.

        [...]

        Actually, it is even more than that. Ever saw "normies" to struggling to put two browser windows side-by-side? Well, I can't do any better on their soil. But I can use tiling window managers, and they don't. The same satisfying feeling. I found my highground.

      • Striking mods

        First Reddit, now Stack Overflow; moderators are fed up with the admins of the sites they dedicate their labor to. Unpaid labor, to be exact. After decades of witnessing social media platforms rise and "fall" – some underwent a significant revamp and shrank to a healthy size, others shut down permanently, few just became plain irrelevant to former users, yet still exist – and how people react to such things, the latter in particular has become ridiculously predictable, for the sole reason that too many people merely decide to be vocal, rather than vote with their feet in a quiet manner.

      • The Search For An OSR System

        NOTE: I started writing this around New Years not long before the whole WotC OGL situation got started. I was holding off on publishing it because I wanted to find a happier ending to send it off with. The longer I wait, the more certain parts are going to make less sense, so I'm going to get it out faster.

      • Programming

        • The Urge

          One of the unhelpful things that I commonly experience when I read things about software (and very occasionally other things, but usually software) is the urge to make my own version of whatever the thing is.

        • things i wanna do (in no order)

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



Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM: The B Turns From "Business" to "Bailouts" to "Buybacks" ("IBM is the Next Intel")
Trying to shore up the falling share price/stocks while veteran workers and Vice President (with high salaries) are cut off
It's Friday Night Again, So Microsoft is Again Shelving (Under Weekend Lull) Nightmare News for XBox Staff
It did the same thing when the chiefs of XBox got canned
 
Links 30/05/2026: Alarm Over Large Companies Cancelling Slop Contracts, Ozzy Osbourne Resurrection as Slop Draws Ire
Links for the day
Red Hat Exodus or RAs (or PIPs) in 2026 Not Limited to China, IBM is Doing Well at Hiding Layoffs
All we need to know is, does IBM hand out lots of PIPs?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 92 Out of 200: A Spouse Cannot be Turned "On" and "Off" Like a Faucet
Today's part will be very short because we keep the parts shorter in weekends and summer is officially around the corner (June on Monday)
The Register MS Has Just Published Fake Article That Mentions "AI" 23 Times. "Sponsored by Arm." It Does This Every Day.
A lot of the time we see this term everywhere in "the news" simply because slop pushers are paying for it
SQLite Under DDoS Attack by Slop Reports or Fake 'Bugs' (Just Like cURL and Many Other Projects)
Even Linus Torvalds is starting to talk about this
Links 30/05/2026: More GAFAM (Amazon) Mass Layoffs, Peter Schiff Warns of Trillion-Dollar Slop Bubble Waiting to Implode
Links for the day
Slop is Plagiarism
Trillions of dollars down the drain, invested in a dud
Gemini Links 30/05/2026: Rehabilitation and Taming Emacs Cache and Temporary Files
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talks and Secure Transmission of Private Communications in Formats Everybody Can Access With Free Software
Maybe the FSF should step up a bit the campaign to use Free software to communicate with one another
General Consultative Committee (GCC) Discusses Working Conditions of Employees of the European Patent Office (EPO)
On the agenda: Salary Erosion Procedure, Breastfeeding Policy, New Amicale Framework, Public Holidays 2027
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 29, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, May 29, 2026
Links 29/05/2026: "Spyware Economy" and Cuba's Energy Crisis
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/05/2026: Rap Rant and LLMs Criticised
Links for the day
Akira Urushibata on Misleading Numbers From Anthropic's Project Glasswing (False Marketing by FUD Tactics)
Posted yesterday and approved a short while ago
Censorship of Information Unflattering to IBM (or GAFAM)
Years ago we gave a platform to a censored Microsoft whistleblower
Silent Layoffs at Microsoft in 2026
Time will tell is there are investigative journalists out there who will quit parroting Microsoft (e.g. false layoff figures) and relying on LLMs controlled by Microsoft to spew out false "facts" for them
SLAPP Censorship - Part 91 Out of 200: Legal Aid in Support of Freedom of the Press and British Women (Attacked by Americans)
bolstered by prominent counsels
Codecs and Software Patents - Part XII - GNU's Web Site Will Soon Have Many Recent Talks by Chief GNUisance Richard Stallman (RMS)
GNU videos being transcoded or converted into AV1
[Video] Richard Stallman's Rapperswil (Switzerland) Talk Online
accessible without proprietary software
Trusting Trust is an Old Issue, Predating Rust and LLM Slop by Over Half a Century
Microsoft Lunduke wants to make a case against Rust and slop (LLMs), but the issues he addresses aren't exactly new or unique
California Should Have Abandoned So-called 'Age‑Verification Laws', Not Make Exemptions (for Now)
This has nothing to do with 1) children 2) safety 3) safety of children
Links 29/05/2026: Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Feels So Broken, American Pope on Defederation
Links for the day
Techrights Does Not Censor Information About IBM, It Platforms and Retains Suppressed Voices From Inside IBM
They don't like it when people criticise the management [...] panic attacks mentioned
Bob (Robert) Cringely Devoted Three Years of His Life Trying to Profit From LLM Slop and Now He Sounds Off, It's Just Not Working and It Can Crash the Economy Soon
"The labs raising money at valuations with too many zeros are happy"
Techrights After About 60,000 Articles in 20 Years
Sites fail if they don't offer anything new or if they wrongly believe that adopting slop to parrot other sites will give them exposure
Organised Plunder or Robbery: GAFAM and Hardware Companies Rely on Media Bribery to Perpetuate False Narratives and to "Drive Sales" (and Drive Prices Upwards)
The price-fixing seems plausible and, if so, we need to demand action
Linux Foundation Destroys the Identity and History of Linux
Groklaw's PJ was thorn on the side of LF sponsors
The Problem of Microsoft Crimes
Opposing crime isn't "hatred"
The Fall of Slop (Even Microsoft Admits There's a Problem)
If Microsoft admits that slop is too expensive and is for "entertainment purposes" because it cannot be relied upon, why would anyone other than the pushers and profiteers still insist that slop bears potential?
Red Hat Will Die Inside a Dying IBM
IBM isn't where Red Hat came to thrive but where it came to die
Very Large Strike at the European Patent Office Today, "Production" Sank a Huge Deal
At this pace, we might be looking at tens of thousands fewer European Patents being granted this year
Gemini Links 29/05/2026: Leadership and Religion, the Board Game (Second Edition)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 28, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, May 28, 2026
Links 28/05/2026: Pakistan and Afghanistan Are Still Fighting, Iranians Back Online
Links for the day
"LLMs Are Not Much More Than Plagiarism Engines"
the impact of LLMs on communities and software projects
Is Slop Profitable Yet? No.
Everything is a giant minus
Bob (Robert) Cringely Has Just Explained That After 3 Years of Hard Work It Became Apparent LLM Slop is Unfit for Purpose in Courts
Added moments ago to Daily Links
Links 28/05/2026: LibreSSL 4.3.2, "Jeff Bezos Is Afraid Of What Comes Next", Measles Making a Comeback
Links for the day
PCs That Are Made to 'Expire' and 'Secure' Boot Contributing to Planned Obsolescence
People who are responsible for this ought to be held accountable
Evil, Faceless Corporation: Google Steals Money From You If You Don't Purchase an Android Device for MFA
At this point, under the guise of "hey hi" (slop) Google is firing tens of thousands of workers
People Go Back to Basics, Abandon Microsoft's GitHub to Avoid Slop
The media didn't pay any attention to GitHub's de facto chief quitting Microsoft only a few months ago
SLAPP Censorship - Part 90 Out of 200: When Efforts to Silence His Spouse and Also the Wife of a Blogger in Another Continent Only Give More Exposure to Embarrassing Information
The Garrett trial ended in October 2025
IBM - Much Like the European Patent Office (EPO) - Gives the President (Head of Board and CEO) All the Money While Staff Drowns in High Inflation Rates
They're discussing the same sort of thing we often see mentioned in the EPO
"THE REGISTER EXPLAINER" as "Paid-for SPAM" at The Register MS With "AI" 40 Times in the Short Page
What will be left of The Register MS in a few years?
2025: EPO President Campinos Breaks the Cookie Jar, Steals Another Million Euros While His "Brother-in-Law" Does Cocaine at the Office and Staff Prepares Rolling, Indefinite Strikes
any additional month of Campinos in charge of the EPO is a liability not just to the EPO but the EU as well
Gemini Links 28/05/2026: Dumping Microsoft GitHub, Gopher Rabbit Hole
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 27, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 27, 2026