Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 20/06/2023: Gemini's Fourth Anniversary is Today



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Politics and World Events

      • God, nature, and the space aliens

        Recently I talked with a religious friend about how I find the body very complex. He then jokingly said to me, assuming I believed in his religion, "can you believe that some people think something as complex as a human crawled out of the ocean?" I shrugged it off as I did not want to ruin my relationship with this person (we live in a society), but his comment did make me think.

        [...]

        When he taught us the leg muscles, he used one particularly funny example that I still remember. One certain muscle near the knee (that I forget the name of) prevents the knee joint's capsule from getting pinched between the femur and tibia bones when the knee bends. He told us the story of how when god, nature, and the space aliens all got together to design the lower extremities, they had problems with their prototype caveman pinching the knee capsule every time he tried to walk. Luckily, baby Jesus came along on his tricycle and suggested that a muscle pull the capsule away from the bones just before they bend, making it so that the caveman could walk just fine.

      • Top Gun: Maverick

        Finally got around to finishing Top Gun: Maverick tonight. Rented it from the library a couple weeks ago, but hadn't gotten around to it until now. Definitely a fun movie, the action scenes were super well done! Love that the "enemy territory" was in a snowy, mountainous region, made for some great visuals. The dogfights were great, had me on the edge of my seat the entire time.

      • Little meadow

        When I moved in there was grass behind the house, a little, inhospitible backyard past the sandpapery square of concrete patio. Looking out the back door there's the sun-blasted patio, some grass, swampy yard, then the hill up to the cemetary scrubby with thicket and young trees.

        I dug a bed for mint along the house's back wall up to the patio, another bed out from it that supports a healthy horseradish where Evy grew gourds. Other plants didn't do well there til this year when I planted onions. Evy's parents brought their old painted iron yard table and chairs.



      • 🔤SpellBinding: CERSTUY Wordo: MEATY
    • Technology and Free Software

      • Using git bundle to synchronize a repository between Qubes OS dom0 and an AppVM

        In a previous article, I explained how to use Fossil version control system to version the files you may write in dom0 and sync them against a remote repository.

      • Asus L410MA lid screen issue with XFCE4 on Debian 12

        Despite being cheap I decided to buy another Asus laptop from the same family for my little one, also this laptop was purchased as second-hand hardware, even because I was convinced to have definitely resolved all the issues, in the previous tests eventually Devuan worked better than Debian.

      • Asus L410MA lid screen issue with XFCE4 on Debian 12
      • Framework Laptop, one year on

        This laptop was meant to be an auxiliary laptop, for writing on the couch. I'm an Apple main user, and knowing macOS has helped my career. But I'm also very pro Right to Repair, and those two things are butting heads right now. So the Framework laptop seemed like the obvious choice, being Very Repairable.

      • Re: Richard Stallman

        After reading Ploum's recent post about how Richard Stallman was right all along, I have to say that I agree with his take.

        [...]

        This might seem odd coming from someone who just posted about how sick he was of Linux and was moving back to FreeBSD. If only all of my choices were easily explainable in life.

        I've found myself as I get older actually becoming more "radicalized" than I was in my 20's and 30's. I definitely feel like society lost it's way a long time ago. One of the things that I like most about Ploum's post is that he recognizes the larger parallels between society's ills and free/libre vs proprietary software. Everywhere you look these days you see that what used to be held in common trust is being carved up and divided among those who don't really need any more.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Gemini's Fourth Anniversary

          The Gemini protocol was first publicly announced under the name "Gemini" on this day in 2019. solderpunk considers this to the official start date of the protocol, meaning today is its fourth anniversary.

          From my earliest days on Gemini, I knew the protocol dated back to 2019, but last night I got to thinking about what that really means.

          I first explored Gemini and decided to create my own capsule in March of 2021. By then, COVID-19 had been ravaging the world for more than a year. Many businesses were still shuttered, many areas were still in full lockdown, and most people still practiced social distancing. We were forced to carry out most of our communication through social media and other online platforms controlled by corporate interests. The Reddit post became our only source of news, the Netflix subscription our only form of entertainment. And in that isolated environment, political and social tensions spilled over, fresh on the heels of the George Floyd protests and riots on one side and the contentious US Presidential election and January 6 protests and riots on the other.

      • Literature

        • Re: The Library Rocks!

          Alex wrote an excellent quick post about using local libraries. It reminded me of when my mother used to take me and my brother to the library almost every day as a child; they really are excellent places with incredible services.

          As Alex wrote about the physical benefits and services of libraries, I thought I should share some of the digital ones. I agree that going to a library can be an amazing experience, but it is also useful to know how to get the most out of yours when you can’t go there in person.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

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
[Video] Richard Stallman on Understanding the Misconception of So-called 'Artificial Intelligence'
to "know and understand"
Gemini Links 09/03/2025: Lagrange 1.18.5 and Writing Mannerisms
Links for the day
Links 08/03/2025: International Women's Day, Software Patents Being Squashed
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
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
Links 09/03/2025: FiveThirtyEight Killed by Disney, Nature (Journal) Chooses Suicide by Slop
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