Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 03/08/2023: Illusionary Democracy and All Things Illegal



  • Personal/Opinions

    • 🔤SpellBinding: AIMNTUY Wordo: RETRO
    • Appenzell

      OK, so what's the deal with Appenzell? We already heard that their history is related to St. Gallen. You need to look at the map of St. Gallen: Appenzell is completely surrounded by St. Gallen. Appenzell is mountainous. St. Gallen rules over the lands by the Bodensee to the north, the wide Rhine valley to the east, and the Thur valley to the south.

    • Zürich

      I’ve lived in the Canton of Zürich for 30 years. When I was 18, my father and my stepmum left for Indonesia for two years and when they came back I didn’t want to be there so I moved out when I was twenty or so, to Zürich, to live in shared apartments like many other students did. And then I just never went back to Aargau.

    • St. Gallen

      St. Gallen is an abbey with a famous library. It’s really very nice. Apparently it was founded by an Irish missionary. This dude was 612; the monastery was founded by St. Othmar in 720; the Magyars attacked in 926 and subsequent years. The books were moved to its books were removed to Reichenau to keep them safe. To quote Wikipedia: “Not all the books were returned.” Just saying.

    • Aargau

      A few days ago I started reading up on the Swiss cantons, creating a post on fedi based on those Wikipedia articles. I'm reposting these posts on the blog because they're starting to grow on my.

  • Politics and World Events

    • Illusionary Democracy

      There’s so much to unpack here that I’ve been struggling to formulate a single coherent post on the topic, so I’m going to ignore 95% of the problem and just go for something about which I feel on thoroughly safe ground.

  • Technology and Free Software

    • All Things Illegal

      It is a logical fallacy to assume that since the State is evil, _all_ laws it enforces are likewise, evil. However, _many_ laws are in fact, are fruits of the poisoned tree. While I will focus on the US, many of the issues mentioned apply universally.

    • Internet/Gemini

      • Rebuilding my gopher server

        So here's something not to do: don't blindly flail at a system upgrade on your server!

        A couple of nights ago, I decided to upgrade gopher.visiblink.ca. It runs Raspberry Pi OS on a Pi Zero W. Raspberry Pi OS is based on Debian and the /etc/apt/sources.list file uses the same codenames as Debian.

        So, without going to the Raspberry Pi OS homepage to check on the latest version, I just assumed that it was Debian 12 "Bookworm" and went ahead with the regular steps toward a dist-upgrade. It turns out that the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS is Debian 11 "Bullseye." Ouch.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
It's not about security or politics
Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
Social control media is not social and not media
 
Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
"Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
Techrights' Architecture
Stability is the main goal
Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
Links for the day
The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
"AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
Is society "seeing the light"?
Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
Expect many more cuts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026
Links 15/02/2026: Slop, Politics, and Gemini
Links for the day
Small is Beautiful (in Cascading Style Sheets/Inheritance Rules)
If done correctly, pages can take a tenth of a second to fully load
Microsoft Has Fallen to New Lows in Hong Kong This Year
That Windows "market share" falls there is perhaps expected
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.5 Million Dollars This Winter, Almost 50% More Than in All of 2024 Combined
Verbal advocacy goes a long way
Spread the Word About EPO Strikes and Patent Injustices in Europe
Corruption in Europe is a real thing
The Register MS is Promoting Slop, Promotion Connected to Microsoft (Trying to Replace Judges With Microsoft)
marketing spun as "science"
He Did Not Have Enough Souls
A lot of the subjects we cover here no other site dares touch
"Mix Vale" is a Slopfarm
3 "articles" about "ubuntu"
Links 15/02/2026: Roy Medvedev Dead at 100, Rise of "YouTube Politicians"
Links for the day
Links 15/02/2026: How Alexey Navalny Was Executed by Putin, Erdogan Helping Iran
Links for the day
IBM Fedora Keeps Promoting Slop, Red Hat Has Been Turned Into Chaff and Trash to Help IBM's Stock (With "AI" Storytelling)
Red Hat's Fedora is an old brand (20+ years). It no longer stands for what it meant to people in the Fedora Core days (I was a Fedora user back then).
What IBM Said About 2026 Layoffs and What's Happening in Practice
t'll leave IBM at the very bottom, in due course (customers will notice something profound has changed)
Gemini Links 15/02/2026: "Already Midway February" and Loadbars Remembered
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 14, 2026
Microsoft's Bing Down to 0.5% in Armenia
Microsoft does not want shareholders to see this
Libel by Bots: Unexplored Legal Area?
Liability can be traced back to the operator
Maybe Obvious, But Merits Repeating: A Lot of "Demand" for Slop is Faked, Manufactured, Fabricated by Dark Patterns, Bundling, Media PR (Deception/Hype) Campaigns
Over the past few years many products and services got rebranded as "AI"
xAI and X (Twitter) Live on Borrowed Time, It'll Get a Lot Worse Fast
Being associated with a child porn site formerly known as "Twitter" is odorous to say the least
Microsoft is Lobbying Brussels via Opensource.org and OSI
The new (GAFAM) management at OSI is not serving the OSI's original mission
Will Lockett's Newsletter: Microsoft became Microslop and Windows users are "flocking" to GNU/Linux "to escape the mess"
"Users are fed up and jumping ship from Windows to Mac or Linux. In fact, it appears that Windows has lost 400 million users since 2022!"
Photographic Collections
There are going to be over 100,000 JPEG, PNG, and GIF files by the time we turn 20
Norway Curbs Social Control Media as It Harms Norway's Society
A decrease from 11% to just 1.87% is possible to reason about
Accomplishments of Our Community
Why I enjoy writing in Techrights
Microsoft Invented a Slop CEO ("AI CEO") Because Real Interest in Slop is Waning, So It's Just Faking Its Prominence
It's noise
Google Promoting Slop, Not Journalism
The truth of the matter is, Google is part of this problem and it doesn't seem to care
Another IBM Company (Spawned by IBM) is Hiding the Scale of Layoffs, Just Like Red Hat and Kyndryl
Why is the scale of the layoffs there shrouded in secrecy?
Links 14/02/2026: Financial Woes in Hong Kong and "Hong Kong Journalists Face ‘Precarious’ Future After Jimmy Lai Jailed"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/02/2026: Fish Shell and Meta Slash-commands
Links for the day
Links 14/02/2026: "Bias and Toxicity in" Slop, Microsoft's Vista 11 System Update Breaks Systems Again
Links for the day
Links 14/02/2026: "Suppression of Free Speech" and "Climate Change Puts Winter Games on Thin Ice"
Links for the day
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part I - Getting the Word Out About What the 'Alicante Mafia' Did to Europe's Second-Largest Institution
Can't everyone in the European media agree that letting cokeheads run Europe's second-largest institution is a terrible idea?
Richard Stallman in the United States - Part I - Huge Audience (Offline and Online), 'Cancel Culture' Attempted and Failed
the comeback of Richard Stallman (RMS) in the United States
GitHub Cannot Survive for Much Longer
Microsoft is trying to just hide the debt
Ed Zitron: Microsoft Is A Decaying Empire That Bet The Future On Making In Excess Of $500 Billion In New Revenue Within The Next 4 To 6 Years From AI — And It Hasn’t Made A Dime In Profit Yet
Microsoft bets its future on a bunch of nothing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 13, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, February 13, 2026
Gemini Links 14/02/2026: "Throwback VR Headset" and OFFLFIRSOCH 2026
Links for the day