Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 04/08/2023: Gemini Client Preferences and FreeBSD Minimum Desktop Guide



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Heaviest Of Them All

        Alas, the fate was sealed And 'twas decided that he ought to live in peril And to roam in vain For an eternity unknown Until his undoing cometh.

        And to be forgotten both above and under the earth. Thus was decided for him And thus it shall be ...

      • Head in Pisces

        Her cracked lips are leaking. Both eyes still work, but cannot grasp the damage. The skeletal fingers tip-toe from her shoulder up the neck, looking for the point of impact. There it is, a screwdriver through the throat, barely missed the trachea. The hand grabs the handle.

        "What the fuck are you doing?!" The shattered blade exclaims through a flooded speaker in its hilt. She spits into her other hand. Oily blue mixed with blood reflecting the hot orange light of antique lightbulbs in the ceiling. "Don't fucking pull it out, stop!"

      • The Moments We Feel Alive

        When I was a kid, I’d sometimes have the clarity to realize how truly meaningful or special a moment was.

        Once, a friend from a previous town had come to visit for the summer. We spent the days in the woods, exploring or building forts, and the nights inside playing PlayStation. I knew the summer would be over in the blink of an eye, my friend would return to his town and I might never see him again. But I had a trick.

        It’s going to sound odd, but I would squeeze my tear ducts with my thumb and pointer finger and massage them. Yes it’s strange, but this would give me a moment of clarity, a moment where I felt truly in the moment, instead of being swept away by time. I would feel my mind clear, the weight of life lifted from my head. I’d do this often, trying to remember moments like that summer.

      • As the evening comes to a close

        But for a few unavoidable exceptions, if something doesn't load in elinks, I consider it not worth my time. There are plenty of good reads in Gemini, and simple personal websites some of those authors create. Ain't got time to watch a page load, jump around so that I wind up clicking on the wrong links, suddenly displays an overlay or popup requiring a click to make it go away, etc.

      • Taking time off

        So I kind of have August off? And it's flipping wild, tbh, because I don't think I've ever intentionally taken more than a couple of days off at a time in my life.

      • Do I know how to be happy?

        I think one of the cruelest things anyone has ever said to me was a decade ago when I was dating someone who had spent a lot of time telling me I needed to open up, needed to learn to rely on them, &c. and then when I was talking about how hard shit was in grad school they got quiet and said

      • 🔤SpellBinding: ADEFITX Wordo: CONEY
      • Midnight Poll I

        It's not that I stopped having dreams. But I stopped remembering them. Perhaps they weren't so special anymore.

        Maybe it's because I became busier with life, and at the end of the day I was too tired to keep thinking, let alone remember.

      • I wish there were more garbage in this world

        Oh my gosh, how I loved "Garbage 2.0"!

        Kinda makes me wonder if we might have some favorite bands/albums in common, given you're almost exactly a generation younger than me, but I was a huge fan of much 1990s music.

        This is, I never had anyone my own age to communicate with about it, because most people my age are often insanely stuck up about the music of "our" times/day.

        I rarely whip out the CDs anymore, so I've forgotten a lot of band, album, and song names. And it's not *just* because I'm lazy, having been coddled by Alexa so quickly playing what I want/need with little to no fuss. But it's that we're generally too busy doing things requiring focus to have great songs trying to kidnap that focus. I'm not nearly as capable of doing things to music as I thought I used to be.

    • Politics and World Events

      • Re: Cost of the Right Thing

        France I recall being pretty car centric but there were plenty of walkable areas, and often good public transportation options. "The United States is a unique outlier" when it comes to car-slaughter, and public transportation generally ranges from "lol" to "no". Or, let's play granny frogger on that six-lane stroad! How bad varies by location; a tourist from Florida was quite happy that those sitting in cars were not actively trying to murder him on his bicycle; we were chatting at some intersection in Seattle, maybe it was the Elliot and Western mess, in the usual car exhaust with all the usual noise pollution.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Fingering vending machines

        This section was absent in the original RFC (RFC742, from dec. 1977), which was an incredibly succinct document. It was, however, present in both RFC1194 and RFC1196 (both from late 1990), with a slight variation on the final sentence:

        Vending machines should NEVER NEVER EVER eat requests. Or money.

      • FreeBSD minimum desktop guide

        I'm not going to cover the installation process, but it is worth noting you might want to add your user to groups 'wheel operator video'.

        The few services I use by default are local_unbound, powerd and ntpd. local_unbound caches dns requests and needs no configuration, powerd adjusts cpu frequency as is needed and enables hibernation and suspending, ntpd makes your clock synced.

        Once it's installed, I get the handbook from the post-installation menu. One benefit is that this will also set up pkg and save you 10 seconds, when you install packages for the first time.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Joining a google group (?) from a non-google email

          I recently had the displeasure of needing to join a (non-usenet) google group. Google doesn't make this easy to find anymore, but they do allow you to subscribe from a non-google account.

        • My Gemini Client Preferences

          The ideal would be to have an actual SOCKS5 interface built-in to the client, like the Firefox Web browser has. I haven't yet come across a gemini client that has SOCKS5 support. So, I've had to use torsocks. The tricky part is torsocks doesn't work well with all clients. In particular, Lagrange has this problem where, if I try to run it on top of torsocks, the feed reader occasionally crashes and causes the whole application to freeze up. At one point, I actually patched Lagrange to disable the feed runner from running, but I found it was easier just to delete all my feeds from the Lagrange feed reader, and load the feeds up using my gmisub aggregator instance. But if the client had proper SOCKS5 support, I wouldn't have to deal with torsocks at all.

        • It's feeling like one of those quoting kinds of days

          I'm glad I don't. I'm merely an occasionally humble user of it for giving me a fast path to efficiently putting easily nicely rendered text in others-accessible places where the quality of others in somewhat the same space seemingly defies Sturgeon's Law on a regular basis.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Coping With the Site Going More Mainstream
Fame is no laughing matter
21 Pages in Less Than 7 Hours is No Joking Matter
We've become a lot more effective and efficient
Generation Chaff - Phase V: Censorship of Dissent (Painted as Harassment or Terrorism)
Censorship is all around us now
Generation Chaff - Phase IV: Apps Only Few Companies Decide On
Tools are being collectively confiscated, under the premise or false prospect of "security"
 
Links 24/10/2025: "Independent Media in Cambodia is Collapsing" and Serious F5 Breach
Links for the day
They Never 'Put Down' Corporations
There are "pests" that are traded in Wall Street
Correct Information is a Valued Asset in the Age of Slopfarms and Public Relations (PR) or Spin
Publishing suppressed facts is never easy
The Register MS Continues to Bag Money to Promote a Ponzi Scheme, Even Money From China
Today in the front page
analytics.usa.gov: The Only Supported Version of Windows (This Past Week) is Only Used by About 13.9% of People in the US, the Home Base of Windows
Even Vista 7 is still used more
Rust is Very Secure
If only Rust itself is secure
Who Will be Held Accountable for Breaking Ubuntu by Imposing Rust on Otherwise-Functional Programs, in Effect Replacing GNU With Proprietary Microsoft (GitHub)?
they're practical people who merely point out that a bunch of buffoons not only ruin Ubuntu but also every future distro based on Ubuntu
Generation Chaff - Phase VIII: In Summary
Like "Science" with a capital "S", what we see here commercial interests usurping everything
Generation Chaff - Phase VII: Curtailing Alternative Media
There was always an obligation - a collective duty of sorts - to uphold independent journalism
Generation Chaff - Phase VI: Centralisation of Information (X, Cheetok/Fentanylware)
Would you trust information when controlled by such people?
Generation Chaff - Phase III: Slop and Plagiarism
A lot of the current so-called 'economy' is built upon false valuations
Generation Chaff - Phase II: "Cloud", Blockchains and Other Hype
For those of us who turned down those propositions there was a struggle; we needed to justify not having skinnerboxes or "social" accounts in some site run by a private company
Generation Chaff - Phase I: Social Control Media
IRC predates the Web
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 23, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 23, 2025
More Clues Shed on Collapse of Microsoft XBox
XBox is basically circling down the drain as Microsoft implements 2-3 waves of layoffs each month
'Vibe Coding' Doesn't Work
In a lot of ways, so-called 'Vibe Coding' is already considered vapourware or a passing fad promoted in the media by managers who try to justify mass layoffs, especially ridding companies of "very expensive" software engineers
Links 24/10/2025: Microsoft's Killing of XBox Connected to Revenue/Profit Problems, "How Elon Musk Ruined Twitter"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/10/2025: 86,400 Seconds and "Society's Task"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News and Slopfarms That Relay Nonsense From LLMs
Google News, which once prioritised or used to care about provenance and quality, is feeding slopfarms
Links 23/10/2025: More Health Concerns Over Dumb Chatbots (LLMs) and "Talking Cars" as Latest Buzz
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Daylight Savings Time and Duration Shorthand
Links for the day
Links 23/10/2025: LLM 'Hallucinations' (Defects) in Practical Code 'Generation', China Becomes More Economically and Technologically Independent
Links for the day
Why We Support Richard Stallman and You Probably Should Too
It's not about being "Richard Stallman fan", it is about maintaining the right to hold positions (on technology) like his
Linux Foundation Uses LLM Slop to Promote Microsoft in Linux.com (Again), Rendering It a Linux-Hostile Slopfarm
Openwashing with slop by "Linux.com Editorial Staff", which basically seems to be a bot
Some Large German Media Covers Richard Stallman's Talks in Germany Earlier This Week
LLM-based chatbots are just "bullshit generators" (as he has long called them)
Links 23/10/2025: Windows TCO Galore and "The Internet Is Going to Break Again"
Links for the day
Trouble in Red Hat/IBM and a Retreat to Ponzi Economics in Search of Wall Street Market Heist
Would you invest your life savings in this kind of crap?
Who Asked Software in the Public Interest (SPI) for a Refund? ($100,000, Resulting in Losses of $267,201 in 12 Months, Highest-Ever Losses)
The IRS does not reveal who or what's tied to this refund (or the cause/reason)
Social engineering attack: Debian voted to trick you on binary blobs
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Techrights Will Always Stand for Women's Rights
We even invest money - personal savings that it - in our principles
Certified Lawyers Should Know Better (Than to Intimidate Us With Man Who Drives on Motorcycle Through a Really Bad Storm Between Distant Cities, Then Collects Photos of Our Home)
Mentioning someone was in prison for bad things isn't a crime, it's a public service
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble is Already Imploding
"ChatGPT Usage Has Peaked and Is Now Declining, New Data Finds"
The So-called "Sexy" Buckets (AI, Quantum) Cannot Save IBM From Reality, Shares Tank
"No matter how much financial hocus-pocus they use to reclassify revenues to land in the "sexy" buckets (AI, Quantum), it still smells old and musty - just like this company."
Paul Krugman is Wrong About the Scope of Mass Layoffs in the United States
A few years ago society was accelerating its journey towards feudalism, boosted by COVID-19
Links 23/10/2025: Proprietary Blunders and CISA's Latest Disclosure of Holes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Fast Past (F1), 99.9% Uptime
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Slopwatch: Google News is Promoting Fake 'Articles' About Fake Xubuntu, Fake Articles About Replacing Windows With GNU/Linux
The quality of the Web deteriorates and unless someone cleans up the mess, real sites will lose an incentive to produce anything
When "AI Layoffs" Mean Layoffs Due to the "AI" Bubble Popping
many people that are laid off by Microsoft claim to be specialists in "AI"
Mysterious grant forfeited, $100,000 from Software in the Public Interest accounts 2023
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: bullying, student union behaviour: Armijn Hemel's FSFE resignation
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: psychological abuse, stalking, Galia Mancheva, Susanne Eiswirt ignored by FSFE judgment for Matthias Kirschner
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Helping FSFE scam victims and conference organisers
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Nigerian fraud in FSFE constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Worrying and Amusing Stories of "Clown Computing" Gone Awry
Many of these disasters could be avoided
Links 22/10/2025: Amazon Plans to Replace Workers With Robotics, AWS and Clown Computing in General Ridiculed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/10/2025: Niri Completely Changes Multitasking and Overview of Diff-ers
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2025: Study on Misinformation by Slop and Heavily Debt-Sabbled Microsoft OpenAI (ClosedSlop) Uses "Browser" as Gimmick/Distraction
Links for the day
They've Already Spent Close to a Million Dollars on Lawyers and Sent Us About 50 KG of Legal Papers (Sponsored by Mysterious Third Party) to Try to Censor Techrights, Without Success
They try to overcompensate with sheer volume for a lack of solid, clear arguments (we are the victims here)
12 Months Ago the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' Officially Went 'Tag-Team'
We're actually sort of flattered or proud that such despicable people are so desperate to censor us
"Cloud Computing" Was Always a Joke, But This Week Was the Punchline
Maybe stop following tech trends and fashions
"Cloud Computing" Does Not Mean Safety
Fault tolerance is related to the notion of software freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 21, 2025
The Fall of Windows: From Something to Nothing
Of course Microsoft will pretend everything is fine and "just trust the hey hi" (AI)