Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 15/06/2023: Reddit Backlash and More



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Book Review: Crusader

        My wife and I purchased eleven books between us while in England last month. Two of mine were nonfiction titles, but one of the novels was a piece of historical fiction: "Crusader" by Ben Kane.

        This book is the second in a trilogy of novels about Richard I of England, also known as Richard CÅ“ur de Lion or Richard the Lionheart. Spanning from November 1189 to October 1192, the book relates the story of Richard's participation in the Third Crusade against Saladin and the Ayyubids. The real historical events of the book are experienced through the eyes of a fictional Irish nobleman, Ferdia Ó Catháin (also known as Rufus), who is one of Richard's closest companions. Rufus has an intricate story of his own, but "Crusader" does not elaborate on it, leaving the details to the first book "Lionheart".

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Digital access, precarity and guilt

        Plenty of people more eloquent than me have discussed the precarity of Discord as an alternative for storing documentation, and about the consecuences of its implosion cutting people off from their loved ones with whom they can't keep in touch outside of corporate social silos. I agree, and though I still use Discord (it's hard to find a suitable setup for simultaneous voice chat and text chat that isn't fully ephemeral), I change accounts often and do a monthly backup of the chat logs I hold dear.

        I live in a state where the awareness that all things I love can disappear in a moment due to a company's whim, but for a moment I forgot that sometimes my whims also mess with my relationships online. This week both issues intersected, and I'm still recovering.

      • How do you prep?

        It's a bit like a test balloon to see if it would work as Reddit alternative. Not that I've been a big Reddit user. I'm betting on Lemmy, to be honest. But we'll see.

      • Re: How do you use your mobile?

        It's funny, all of them except banking verifications I do more regularly on my computer, and my phone feels like a proxy tool of some sort. I use Discord on it to read, but never to write longform, or just tell someone when I'm hopping into a call; I'll wait until I get home and can use my keyboard. Tagging and queuing posts on Tumblr is a Computer Affair.

      • Learning Zeptoforth: OLED Display

        I have Zeptoforth 1.0.1 installed on my Pico, and I'm learning how to use the bitmap drawing interface for ssd1306-based displays. This communicates over I€²C. Here is my display, which is using the string printing interface to display a counter of the microsecond timer register, updating every 10ms...

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Servers with late-breaking smiles

          I finally received replies from Gemini hosts I'd signed up with over four days ago. But dimension.sh - itself silent on the matter for a couple days after signing up with them - beat them to my online heart a couple days ago. So I don't need them anymore.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

900 Days Later
900 days is a very long time (almost 1,000)
Cybershow Requires Free Software to Record Shows
Cybershow is run by people who understand that without Software Freedom there can be no sovereignty
Losses at Microsoft's GitHub Seem to be Deepening
How many billions of dollars has Microsoft lost by betting on the false prediction that it can somehow "monetise" public code by LLMs?
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Links for the day
European Patent Office Strikes Intensify Tomorrow, Huge Strikes Planned for June, 10,000 Strike Participations Registered
Campinos may well be ousted soon
SLAPP Censorship - Part 93 Out of 200: A Blueprint of Reckless Lawfare in the UK, Waged and Funded by Americans (in Another Continent)
Lawfare powered by slop companies (including Microsoft) from America, targetting British people who consistently oppose slop because it's objectively terrible
Links 31/05/2026: Watershed Moment, Traveller RPG Book Binding, and GUI Annoyances
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Over at Tux Machines...
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IBM CEO Can Become a Billionaire by Laying Off Tens of Thousands of Workers (or Buying Companies Using Borrowed Money, Only to Lay off Thousands in Them)
Like he did Confluent recently
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LLM fetishist that claims to cover Linux
BetaNews is Still Publishing Fake Articles, Sometimes Fake News, or LLM Slop Disguised as 'Journalism'
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Gemini Links 30/05/2026: Writer's Block, Evil GAFAM (Google), and Scepticism of Slop
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Links 30/05/2026: Fairphone 6, China’s Rise in Drug Development, Slop Wastes Money Without Delivering Value
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Links 30/05/2026: Alarm Over Large Companies Cancelling Slop Contracts, Ozzy Osbourne Resurrection as Slop Draws Ire
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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
IBM: The B Turns From "Business" to "Bailouts" to "Buybacks" ("IBM is the Next Intel")
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Links 30/05/2026: More GAFAM (Amazon) Mass Layoffs, Peter Schiff Warns of Trillion-Dollar Slop Bubble Waiting to Implode
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Slop is Plagiarism
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Richard Stallman (RMS) Talks and Secure Transmission of Private Communications in Formats Everybody Can Access With Free Software
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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
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It's Friday Night Again, So Microsoft is Again Shelving (Under Weekend Lull) Nightmare News for XBox Staff
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Links 29/05/2026: "Spyware Economy" and Cuba's Energy Crisis
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Gemini Links 29/05/2026: Rap Rant and LLMs Criticised
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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)
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