Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 02/07/2023: Independence Day and Consequences of Running Leftist Communities



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

    • Politics and World Events

      • Independence Day

        It's around 11pm, the dog is trying to stand on the table and we're anxiously watching the baby on the monitor as the sounds of *pops* and *booms* are all around us.

        We grilled up some burgers on the patio and watched our town's firework display for Independence Day here in the US. Great show, and we could see it clearly from our house. We flew the drone up to capture most of the show. I noticed a few other blinking lights in the sky marking my neighbors doing the same. Unfortunately I wasn't as prepared as them, as I ran out of battery before the finale.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • The Consequences of Running Leftist Communities

        Today, the administrators of kolektiva.social, a Mastodon instance that bills itself as a "free, non-corporate platform for anarchists and anti-colonial content producers looking to circumvent Google, Facebook, and other surveillance capitalists," announced that an unencrypted copy of their database circa May 2023 was seized by the FBI as part of an unrelated raid€². The main content affected as part of this is all user account information and all posts, regardless of the post's privacy level. It should be noted that direct messages on Mastodon require a copy to be stored on both your instance's server and the target server, so the availability of these types of data is not unique. However, the failure to adequately handle potentially sensitive user data and to quickly communicate this breach shows me that kolektiva is falling prey to the lack of meaningful concern for its users that plagues most leftist spaces.

        [...]

        To be clear, this is no worse than corporate social media, which is often more than willing to hand over your unencrypted DMs to any government agency that asks for them. However, spaces that advertise themselves as places for activists to gather and work are essentially creating large databases of leftists that can be easily scooped up by the feds if that data isn't secured.

      • Old Computer Challenge: Preparation

        The Old Computer Challenge 2023[1][2] is coming up in little over a week and I've planned this weekend to get things set up for it. The idea of the challenge is simple: to use a computer with maximum 512m ram, 1 core and the lowest cpu frequency, for one week, and see what happens. The challenge runs from July 10th to 16th and this will be my first OCC, as I (regrettably) had never heard of it before. But let's get started!

        [...]

        So far, the first steps into setting up OpenBSD made me both really excited but also very aware of the limitations of the device. I already had to reinstall the OS once after the /usr partition was full due to me setting up ports. Speaking of... extracting the ports.tar.gz file took a whopping 30 minutes (for reference, this takes about 15 seconds on my M1 mac).

      • Internet/Gemini

        • striping things down

          I stopped hosting fedi. Deleted my alt account as well. i'm going through my phase of not socializing a lot anymore, or at least, trying something different.

          right now i'm only hosting gemini and xmpp over a dynamic dns. so please, if you wanna reach out, xmpp is my preference (i can email too, though!)

        • AmiGemini and GCC

          Had a horribly distracted morning again, but just couldn't let this one go.

          The final thing on my todo list for my AmiGemini setup was getting a comfortable line length, without excessive window decorations.

          Being the odd little duckling that I am. I'm not really a fan of anything more than 10-12 words per screen width of text.

          Without excessively large fonts. AmiGemini when in full screen mode therefore is quite uncomfortable for me to read in.

        • domains

          There are many projects, most of them only designed, which domains have been bought for. Being sensitive, these were reserved where original personal member domains were reserved. Unfortunately, this was very convenient, because we used Google Domains.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Nat Friedman Had Left Microsoft GitHub Exactly One Week Before Matthew Garrett Sent His First SLAPP (Which Was an Empty Threat, He Was Abusing the Legal System of Another Continent to Terrorise Critics Who Had Just Unearthed Major Microsoft Scandals)
And it was likely talked about by his lawyers around the exact same time Nat Friedman was packing up
 
Pushing Microsoft's Proprietary Trash/Trap as "Open" and "Linux" (Windows is 'Linux' Now?)
Maybe it's time to just stop saying "FOSS". The people who use that term are promoting Microsoft.
Slopwatch: Comparing Linux to Vermin, Attacking BSD With LLM Slop, and Helping Microsoft Demonise Linux/OpenBSD/SSH Over Weak User Passwords
Microsoft must be laughing its arse off, seeing how a bunch of Serial Sloppers (no skills, no comprehension, no integrity, no creativity) and slopfarms use Microsoft LLM to flood the Web with anti-Linux FUD
Links 05/06/2025: US Poised for Another $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Cops Want GAFAM Kill Switches
Links for the day
Links 05/06/2025: First US Spacewalk 60 Years Ago, GNU Octave 10.2.0 is Out
Links for the day
Scandinavia Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
The Danes have had enough of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in Bangladesh, According to statCounter
Windows isn't growing, it's going away
Gemini Links 05/06/2025: Loop Earplugs Review and ANS Forth
Links for the day
Armenian Adoption of GNU/Linux
Russian influence in Armenian must be worrying to Microsoft
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part II: Turning a Once-Respected Patent Office Into a Circus and Laughing Stock
It's not legal, but administrators who don't care about the law and don't fear the law would just go ahead and turn things to junk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 04, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 04, 2025
Slopwatch: Mindless Slop Pieces, Fake Images and Text, Linux FUD on the Cheap
spewed out by Microsoft-controlled LLMs
Links 04/06/2025: Workers' Strikes, Sudan Exodus
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: Linux Foundation PR Spam and Lee Jae-myung Wins Election
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Future Leaders of the World and Platforming Jordan Peterson
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: WSL Backfiring on Microsoft and "Disney, Microsoft Announce Massive Layoffs"
Links for the day
Our Case is a Very Easy Win, the SLAPPs From Microsofters Were a Grave Error, and Censoring Information Won't Work (It'll Only Ever Backfire)
Censoring is what people do when they lose the argument
Say the Truth, the Rest Will Follow
There's no guarantee that writing the truth will result in an audience (or readership), but over time - in the long run - people generally gravitate towards what they know or feel to be crude truth, not just what's comforting (albeit false or self-deluding, usually groupthink dictated from above)
How to Expose High-Level Corruption Without Getting in (Too Much) Trouble
Democracy depends on free press and freedom of the press depends on being able to safely publish (and keep available) material that bad people don't want to be known to anybody
In-Depth EPO Coverage at Techrights Turns Eleven
11 years is a very long time
Windows Measured Below 10% in Afghanistan, GNU/Linux Gaining a Lot
about 80% are Android (Linux) users, compared to only about 10% for Windows
Poland's Political Predicament and Social Control Media
Democracy and fake "tech" don't mix well; the latter tends to interfere with the former and that's why we get more "Putins" out there
EPO: Taking Away From the Staff to Give More to the Rich
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) wrote to EPO staff earlier this week
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 03, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 03, 2025
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part I: It's a Lot Like the EPO
we can commence a series soon
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Inescapable Questions and Quitting All "Oligarch Tech"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linux FUD From Slopfarms, Blaming Linux for Microsoft Issues; Even WebProNews Has Become a Slopfarm (Googlebombing "Linux" With Slop Images and Fake/Plagiarised Text)
The Web is really getting bad; it's also overwhelmed by fake material or plagiarised material, wherein the plagiarism gets disguised/hidden by LLM sausage factories
Links 03/06/2025: Tiananmen Square Massacre Censorship and Growing Military Activities Around Taiwan
Links for the day
Linux is Already Dominant (Android), Let's Make GNU/Linux Dominant in Desktops/Laptops as Well
"Dr. Stallman recently warned everybody about Microsoft."
The Loyalty to Microsoft and the Salaries From Microsoft (Funding SLAPPs Against Techrights and Tux Machines)
Garrett always knows better. He knows everything best.
Windows Falls in Italy as GNU/Linux Jumps to 5%
Italy knows a thing or two about digital autonomy
Nigeria is All Android and Google
Windows down to almost nothing in Africa's largest population
Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Second Wave) Not Limited to Redmond
"More layoffs at Microsoft as axe falls in Washington and California"
Gemini Links 03/06/2025: Forth System and "Common Lisp is a Dumpster"
Links for the day
The Leaks Were Right: Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in May, Then Another Wave in June
Just as we've been saying for over a month
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 02, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 02, 2025