Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 27/06/2023: The Gemini PDA, Leadership and Management



  • Personal/Opinions

    • 🔤SpellBinding: GILURSO Wordo: GEOID
    • On the Cusp of Summer

      There's summer, and then there's _summer_ - that point at which, regardless of what the season says, regardless of what the weather's been, it feels like something's changed, and a new season begins. For me, that's always been July. My partner is a teacher, and has the summer months off. So for her, summer is Summer Vacation, July and August, and for me it's taken on that meaning as well. In school, and then in university, I kept this schedule too, so as I met my partner in university and have been with her since, I've never really known anything different. I can't really defend it in any meaningful way, but summer begins in July.

    • All signs point to her
    • Tree/Shrub TBD

      Yesterday (2023-06-26) this little (shrub? tree?) caught my eye.

  • Technology and Free Software

    • ReactOS, or: The Thinkpad lives!

      With the friendly help of my local electronic waste disposal service i got a new mainboard for my old Thinkpad R60 that has died a while ago (i wrote about it in another post)... so, its back in the land of the living and it comes near the point where we have to ask the "Ship of Theseus" question ;-)

      Now i am at the point where i have not only one but TWO usable fairly (for my circumstances) daily driver capable computers, so what to do with the Thinkpad? I could simply go back and install OpenBSD on it like i had for the most time of having it in my posession, but that somehow feels a bit too... "normal"

    • The Gemini PDA and Time-capsule Computing

      I write this log on a Planet Computers Gemini PDA. Released in 2018, the Gemini PDA is a small UMPC aesthetically based on the Psion Series 5 from the late 1990s. It was the first PDA released by Planet Computers and came in WiFi and 4G models--the latter can make telephone calls and use cellular data to connect to the Internet. The PDA was primarily designed to run Android and is based on an SoC for Android phones, but it can also run Debian, Kali Linux or Sailfish. It can also dual-boot between any of these.

    • Leadership and Management

      I'm in my 40s and a good majority of my life has revolved around being or becoming a technical expert. In school I was the nerdy kid in the 90s that just kept my head down, had a few friends, and grew to love computers. I took my computer to LAN parties, and usually did my work to the best of my abilities. I wasn't the top of my class, I was in the middle, and I wasn't an outcast, I was just there. I blended in, and I wasn't part of any popular crowds. I was kind and friendly, and of course joked with my friends and was angsty just like the rest of the teenagers there, but most of all, my primary focus in school was to learn, and so that's what I did. Whether I was learning the things my teachers needed me to was another story, but I was driven to learn because I didn't like not knowing things and above all, failing.

    • Games Showcase: Baba Is You

      “Baba is you” is a sliding blocks puzzle game—yawn. Where the rules are encoded as blocks on the board—wait, what?

    • Getting the width of the current monitor in Emacs

      If you have virtual workspaces on macOS and you use the emacs function display-pixel-width it will give the combined with of ALL the monitors you are using. You are better off using (caddr (frame-monitor-attribute 'geometry)), since frame-monitor-attribute gets the specified attribute from the monitor which the current frame is actually on. BTW: The function frame-monitor-attributes returns all the monitor attributes. The function display-monitor-attributes-list returns the attributes for ALL the monitors you are using.

    • Internet/Gemini

      • The always something of software

        A while back I wrote a Lua script called 'gemlink' leveraging 'gemget' to fetch the content of a given argument-specified Gemini URL, processing/formatting links so they stand out a bit more to me. I then created another called "gemlink-all" that reads all lines of stdin, running "gemlink" against all such links, facilitating getting the content of numerous Gemini documents into a single file, should I feel like having a bit of a quote-and-comment fest.

    • Programming

      • Useless things? ➰🗿🤏

        I like making software things that may not quite be useless, but only get used by me. I like making whatever I have a whim to make. I don't have to care about what anyone else wants or needs.

      • Re: Interleaved 2D Notation for Concatenative Programming

        I am always curious about structure editors, and ways to represent structured data, especially code. So I was pretty curious about this post and the provided links to the pdf file and a web IDE. However, I think this is one is totally pointless (like most attempts at 2d/graphical programming paradigms).

        The beauty of concatenative languages such as Forth is that the arguments precede the operation dynamically/temporally, and can therefore be decoupled. Arguments can come from anywhere as long as they get pushed onto the stack -- at any time prior to the execution of this particular instruction! This is crucial, as that is how we concatenate.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Plagiarism is Hardly a New Problem, It Predates Mainstream Media Getting Paid to Whitewash It as "Training" or "Hey Hi", Then Conflate Plagiarism With "Intelligence" or Deferred "Value"
"Quantum" isn't new either; it's a 'circle-jerk' for companies without direction, only hype
Unsafe at Any Speed, "Modern" Appliances
Appliances have gotten worse
 
linuxstans.com Died, Then Came Back as Slop (LLM Junk)
Don't make the mistake or the assumption that merely 'dabbling in' or 'experimenting with' LLMs can be forgivable as it is a trust destroyer
Links 09/09/2026: GAFAM Fatalities in Miami International Airport, "Britain’s Health Crisis Is Becoming a Political Crisis"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/09/2026: "Adjective Is Subjective" and Walled Gardens
Links for the day
Links 09/09/2026: Airport 'Down' (Glasgow and Edinburgh), 'Open' 'AI' Losses Rise to Pace of 50 Billion Dollars in Losses Per Year
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 176 Out of 200: The Sex-Obsessed Non-Experts
We heard some sexual stories
European Patent Office (EPO): No Transparency and No Paper Trail
The incompetence is that of the management, i.e. sheer incompetence of people who never examined a patent in their entire lifetime
Gemini Links 09/09/2026: Going Out, Smartphone Addiction, Mapping the Geminispace
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 08, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 08, 2026
Linux is Sabotaged by Botspam and Bloat (de Facto Denial of Service Attack in "Intelligence" Clothing After Rust in "Security" Clothing)
Linux is becoming orphaned, devalued and diluted by GAFAM slop
Switzerland No Longer Wants Microsoft's 'Swiss Cheese' (Back Doors)
Switzerland's patience with Microsoft is wearing thin
Debian is Not a Community, Many Debian Developers Work for Large Companies Including GAFAM (US)
"Community" sounds like friendship and amicability
Links 08/09/2026: Slop Companies Attack Some More Sites, Nvidia Bribes 'Linux' Foundation for Some More Openwashing and for Saying Slop is "Secure"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/09/2026: Ultra Introverts, BlackBerry Bold in 2026, and Laughing at LLMs
Links for the day
Microsoft Layoffs in October 2026
Microsoft is a market leader. In NDAs.
Links 08/09/2026: "The Green Revolution Has Failed Africa" and Palantir/Microsoft Harming NHS
Links for the day
Microsoft's Silent Layoffs Are the New Normal at Microsoft
Microsoft has a ton of layoffs all the time, but the media isn't mentioning those as no WARN notices get issued
SLAPP Censorship - Part 175 Out of 200: Implicit and Explicit Coalition Against the UK's SLAPP Industry
SRA recognises the problem
Further Transparency Problems at the EPO
The EPO was never meant to be profitable
Gemini Links 08/09/2026: "Everything Must Go", Announcing Perigee, and Presentations in a Browser
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 07, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, September 07, 2026
Alleged Manager at IBM Says "[t]here are likely to be a lot (and I meant, A LOT) of RAs before December."
"We’re getting pressure from above to put some team members on PIPs."
Links 07/09/2026: Amazon Cargo Plane Crash, .org/.net/.com Domains Considered Risky
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/09/2026: Cheese, Text-based Life, and Icons in Swaybar
Links for the day
Freedom, Not Fame, is His Goal
pursuit of money can be not only tiring but also involve abandoning one's freedom
Links 07/09/2026: Slop Trashes Memory of Parton, Flock Surveillance Infuriates Everyone
Links for the day
Getting Better After 20 Years
Exactly two months from now this site is turning 20
EPO Hiding Cocainegate and Abandoning Transparency (Even Access to Very Basic Information is Denied)
The EPO isn't just becoming like a private for-profit corporation. It's also becoming more secretive.
Richard Stallman Has Resurrected Lost Updates
We didn't ask about it
SLAPP Censorship - Part 174 Out of 200: Cascading Scandals and a Path Towards Much-Needed, Long-Awaited Reform
Reform the UK's law, not "Reform UK"
EPO's Gema Requena Sempere (PD People) Contacted Regarding Children With Disabilities
In the coming week we may be in fruitful contact with some media regarding EPO scandals
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Gemini Links 07/09/2026: Music Composition, Free Stuff, and Self-hosting Git Repos
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 06, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, September 06, 2026