Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 14/06/2023: Flatpak’s Sandboxing Works and Social Web



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • 🔤SpellBinding: AILQYUT Wordo: CHURN
      • Random Japan Thoughts

        1. A cultural difference that I notice is that it would appear Japanese people have a much better sense of their place within a larger whole than Americans do. We are so obsessed with individuality and uniqueness that we miss the value of our place in the whole. Thusly, we often lack pride in the larger things we are a part of, like our country, culture, home.

    • Science

      • Mad movement on main

        I've been thinking lately that I need to be more vocal about my feelings on the mad movement/mad pride and my criticisms of psych as a field.

        I'm always frustrated by how controversial it seems to be to point out that a lot of psych is still pseudo-science, systems of control and bigotry dressed up in p-hacking and wishful thinking.

        I don't know.

        I feel like I often get treated like I'm anti-science when I say these things but I'm not. I just think there's a lot in the past century of history that's flawed and needs to be rebuilt off of different foundations. This doesn't seem controversial to me. I've worked in sciences like physics that are full of reinventions and massive re-understandings of the field, and that's about comparatively simple systems to---say---a living thing.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • [Older] Invidious: Make Youtube cool again

        I have a complicated relationship with Youtube like, I imagine, a lot of people. While I really dislike everything that Google is doing with the platform and their idiotic algorithm, there are tons of exceptionnaly good content on the platform.

      • Working From Alone

        Before the pandemic I did what everyone else did: I came into the office five days a week only to mostly spend most of my time at a computer, with headphones on to block out the noise; we would talk at lunch. For a while we played Switch games together once a week.

        I even worked with a team based in another country, for well over a year, from the office. I would come in every day to my desk in an open plan office full of people working on entirely unrelated projects. It simply didn’t occur to me that it would make more sense to work from home.

        [...]

        Then everything changed. We had to work from home. I got lucky, very lucky: we had just moved from a just-big-enough apartment to a house with room for an “office”. So, I got my new working space—in the basement, but with a pretty nice window.

        [...]

        I love being able to focus on my work: to put on music, if I want; or not, if I want; to dance or do push-ups or sit for a while if it gets to be too much.

        There’s a trend back towards working in offices, or at least there seems to be a push for it coming from somewhere.

        That’s fine for some, I guess. I have discovered what I like, and it’s working from home; to be alone with my thoughts then to step outside my office and be with my family. Bliss.

      • Flatpak's Sandboxing Works

        Flatpak is an alternate distribution method for Linux. By default, programs are sandboxed from the rest of the system.

        An often made statement by critics of Flatpak is the insistence that this isn't real security, because a package maintainer can change its security settings to poke holes in the sandbox. (This is allowed because some software relies on it for functionality.)

        Recently, malware was released through Minecraft mods on CurseForge, and possibly other modding platforms. It was a wide attack that ended up causing several mods and modpacks to be affected. Installing and running any of the mods causes the system to be infected.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Social Web

          I'm sat in the garden today. It's very warm; breezy too, but the breezy just brings a slightly different kind of warmth. We have a weather warning for thunderstorms later, so we'll see what that brings.

          I'm encouraged at the moment by the social web and the fediverse. There's a growing understanding that the fabric of our online lives can't be run in a VC-backed, for-profit manner.

        • More Social Media

          I've really been enjoying Mastodon. Compared to other social media, there is undoubtedly more of an initial effort to be made in uncovering interesting people to follow. I've been dropping into a few other instances to find those interesting people; FOSS and gamedev related. I guess it'll take a while to understand and refine the process, but it's fun to follow the chain of people and topics ever-deeper.

          [...]

          I've also been liberally using the block button, mainly on bot feeds which are just polluting the water with low-effort RSS spam.

        • Back in the saddle?

          It was fairly easy a transition: except for the part where I could access my capsule for about three minutes, but *too* soon couldn't again for over half an hour, making me wonder if I'd completely wasted my time, and possible others' time for having announced my new capsule address. Egg is never far from one's face online....

        • New setup for the web

          New setup! When visiting the site from the web, you’re no longer being redirected to port 1966. Instead, Apache now acts as a reverse proxy.

          The following config requests new certificates from Let’s Encrypt automatically thanks to mod_md.

          HTTP requests are redirect to HTTPS. HTTPS requests for “/.well-known” URLs are left untouched for the Let’s Encrypt renewal to work. All other HTTPS requests are proxied to the old port 1966.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Gemini Links 23/12/2025: Hydraulic Pressure Balance and mercury://
Links for the day
Techrights as 'Regulator' Against Runaway Trains
"Runaway trains" never scared us because we know that they, unlike us, don't think rationally
Social Control Media is Bots (Fake Traffic, Fake 'Engagement')
As per FORTUNE, 76% of Twitter is alleged to be bots now
"Major [IBM] Reductions Will Take Place Soon in Rochester MN"
Maybe that's just the latest office gossip
 
A Good End for a Fine Year
Today we saw some pleasant news online about the growth of GNU/Linux and more perils impacting Windows and XBox
Serial Sloppers Lost Momentum, Sites With "Linux" in Their Name Barely Bother Anymore
Will 2026 be the year slopfarms jump the shark?
Gemini Links 23/12/2025: "The sun is shinning" and "problem in the Butlerian Jihad setup"
Links for the day
Links 23/12/2025: "Over 8,700 News Articles Censored in Turkey in 2024" and "Photos Are Being Deleted From the Epstein Files"
Links for the day
Links 23/12/2025: That ‘Satisfying Click’ and Security Lapses, Car Bomb Kills Russian Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov
Links for the day
Links 23/12/2025: GNU Taler 1.3, US Regime Censors Television Again
Links for the day
Valve Can Bring More Users to GNU/Linux, But It Won't Bring Freedom
Steam is DRM
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, December 22, 2025
How the Slop (So-called 'AI') Bubble Will Burst Next Year
There are already talks about mass layoffs in January
"Generative AI Bubble Has Begun to Pop", Nvidia Rides “Circular Financing... a Strategy That Hearkens Back to the Dot-com Crisis”
For companies like Microsoft this may mean another 30,000+ layoffs next year
Microsoft-Connected Media Talking About XBox Division "Profit Margins" is Distraction From XBox Sales Collapsing 70% in One Year
The simple fact is, Microsoft's console is dead in the water
The Reality is "Vibe Code" (Slop) is That It's Worthless
“Confidently Wrong”
British Web Developers Can Probably Ignore Firefox Users (Based on US Standards)
Mozilla has managed to piss off enough people
On the 'Digital Gulag' of 'Secure Boot' and Microsoft Disguising Its Attacks on Users as "Security"
Dr. Andy Farnell has this new article
Slopfarms Can Only Survive in Google News, Which is Still Promoting Them
Google News promoted only 3 slopfarms today
Gemini Links 22/12/2025: Films, Creativity vs. Consumption, Slop in YouTube
Links for the day
Microsoft XBox Losing Money, Layoffs and Studio Shutdowns (As Well as Price Hikes) Not the Solution
Microsoft does not quite talk about profits
Links 22/12/2025: Data Breaches, deterioration in Politics, and Geminispace
Links for the day
Links 22/12/2025: North Korean Applicants Target GAFAM (Amazon), ‘Orwellian Climate of Fear’ of CPC (Even Outside China)
Links for the day
More IBM Layoffs in India
It's not as simple as "laid off to be replaced by an Indian"
GAFAM Deeply Connected to Jeffrey Epstein, Richard Stallman (RMS) in No Way Connected to Jeffrey Epstein
people who hoarded all the capital get to decide what people think and say
Linus Torvalds Has a Birthday This Coming Weekend, Thankfully He Still Controls His Main Project
GNU and Linux should remain under their control as long as they live
Mozilla is Getting Attention for All the Wrong Reasons, Take a Look at LibreWolf
Just last week Mozilla added a new top-level manager who (as usual) came from a "tech giant"
When Conformism Means Capitulation and Defeat
In an age of injustices like these, we all have some kind of moral obligation not to be conformist.
Text is Still King
But the so-called 'industry' insists that we should download 10 MB of objects from multiple domains... even just to read 5-10 paragraphs of text
Links 22/12/2025: Facebook "Testing $14.99 Monthly Subscription Fee to Post Links" and "Middle East Petrostates as American Media Owners"
Links for the day
Beyond the World Wide Web (WWW)
We continue to treat Gemini Protocol as a first-class citizen
Serbia: GNU/Linux Rises, Windows Down to All-Time Lows
According to statCounter
"Wrestling With Pigs"
"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."
Productive Year and Better Access to Techrights' Archives Going Back to 2006
we've long needed and wanted native, local, independent search facilities
Linux Abandoned by Linux Foundation
It speaks for Microsoft and for so-called 'AI' companies
Microsoft Has Practically Given Up on XBox Already
Expect many XBox related layoffs when 2026 starts (Q1)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, December 21, 2025
"Today's [Red Hat] is run by a cabal of vultures."
it seems safe to assume Red Hat too will languish away
Microsoft Layoffs in 2026 Can be Bigger Than 2025 Microsoft Layoffs (30,000+ Workers Laid Off)
"Is there going to be any reorg or Microsoft layoffs?"
Gemini Links 21/12/2025: Solstice, Chaos of CSS, and Program Interpreter Fun
Links for the day
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Represents People, Not Corporations
FSF isn't in the "business" of appeasing oligarchs
Why?
Why write articles?
Microsoft-Connected Publisher Spinning XBox's Death Spiral (It's Dying Fast) as a Strength and Something Deliberate
"Microsoft’s big gaming pivot"
Slop is Rare by Now
A year ago slop was so abundant that we did a whole series about it, and it was daily
Links 21/12/2025: U.S. Strikes in Syria, "Epstein Files Photos Disappear From Government Website"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/12/2025: Labrador Retriever of Lagrange's Developer Dies From Cancer, Political Philosophy, and "Getting to Inbox Zero"
Links for the day
IBM: We Can't Make 'AI' (Voice Recognition) Do the Work of a McDonald's Teenager, So Let's Try the Same on Saudi Planes
IBM is lost. It's truly lost.
Microsoft is Becoming Irrelevant: The Case of Georgia
Not Georgia Tech
Sirius Open Source is Now Imminently Dead (Struck Off)
compulsory strike-off
Dr. Richard Stallman, Invited by LibreTech Collective, is Giving a Public Talk in Georgia Tech Next Month (Scheller College of Business)
They can probably squeeze about 400 people into this room
25 Years of Activism for GNU/Linux
My passion for GNU/Linux brought a lot of contentment
Africa, Where Microsoft Used De Facto Slaves to Pretend to be "AI", Chatbots Usage is 0.2% of Measured Online Traffic
Judging by recent trends in Africa, many "Windows PCs" are being converted into GNU/Linux computers
New Drone Footage Shows IBM is Dead (Parts of It)
The people who participated in IBM when IBM actually mattered probably have boasting rights, unlike people who work for IBM today
Michael Larabel Adds Slop Category to Phoronix, Quickly Realises That It's Worthless
Phoronix nowadays gets carried away; it made a new category to talk about slop and it decided to call it "intelligence" with some caricature of a brain (that's misleading)Phoronix nowadays gets carried away; it made a new category to talk about slop and it decided to call it "intelligence" with some caricature of a brain (that's misleading)
After 35 Years the World Wide Web, HTML, and HTTP Are Proprietary
HTTP/2 added a lot of complexity (it's just a Google protocol, based on SPDY originally), many image formats are proprietary and patented, HTML got 'replaced' by Java-Scripts [sic], and many URLs (the URL system was created in the early 90s) are just long strings for proprietary 'webapps'
The General Public License (GPL) Inspired the Web's Original Openness/Freedom, According to Tim Berners-Lee
"During the preceding year I had been trying to get CERN to release the intellectual property rights to the Web code under the General Public License (GPL) so that others could use it."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 20, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, December 20, 2025