Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 13/08/2023: Browsing Gemini with Lynx



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Simplicity 4 -- Eyecare

        Applying eye drops every hour the analog way.

        Some time ago I had to deal with a health issue regarding my eyes. This involved applying two kinds of eye drops regularly: once every hour and once every three hours. If both are due, wait 15 minutes between them.

        Of course everyone else would just charge their timer app on their smartphone and be done with it, right? Except, I do not have such a newfangled contraption. So other means had to make due.

      • Our “Twenty Questions” houserules

        Twenty questions is a game where one person things of something secret and the other person has twenty yes-or-no questions to narrow down who it can be and finally guess it. “Is the person alive today?” “Yes.” That sort of thing.

        The way we play it these days, it’s almost more like a puzzle or co-op experience because of the first rule, which is that the person who came up with the secret should aim for something that will be discovered by question number 17 or thereabouts. If they find the secret a lot sooner, you came up with a too easy secret, and if they don’t find the answer within 20 questions, you came up with a too difficult secret. For that reason, you obviously should pick something that you believe they are aware of.

      • Two down, two to go

        This morning a little bit before 09:00 I got another PREP notification that it was going to rain. Within a few minutes it did start raining, and then suddenly the skies opened up and it came down with a ferocity I don't think I've ever experienced before. It was so bad we could barely see out the windows, but within a few minutes it stopped and for the rest of the day the sun was out. Of course after it stopped raining the humidity went over 85%.

      • Mountain Day

        Friday was a national holiday in Japan - Mountain Day - and this coming week is Obon (or Bon?) and so I'm on vacation. As is the rest of the nation; my SO and I hit the road yesterday, and the roads were crowded in places. It was my first time in an EV, which was interesting.

        The navigation system (what's it called in the West, a satnav?) was functional, but only that. I'm used to pinching and swiping but this system didn't have that feature, and the UI's response to button and screen taps was slow.

      • Brussels restaurant recommendations 🍽️

        They bring you four courses, no choice, but they upsell extras. The staff were enthusiastic but disorganised. The food was small amounts of intense flavours. They have a sommelier (fancy!) who's equally as loquatious about canned beer as he is about wine. Don't sit inside unless you want loud music; outside in the square is pleasant.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Earned my Terraform certification but not for a good reason

        This is a bit of a rant, I just need to vent.

        I work as a Platform Engineer, and I use Terraform daily for deploying infrastructure in Azure/AWS and writing modules. The problem is my current place of employment; they have a very unique take on Terraform design that goes against many, scrap that, all documented best practices. This is a "design" decision they have actively chosen.

      • open source

        yesterday was the day when hashi decided that it didn't need the open source community which helped build it. hashi has decided to switch from mpl to busl. busl is not open source, it reverts to open source after 4 years. this is unfortunate, to start, it's a security risk.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Browsing Gemini with Lynx at portal.mozz.us

          A couple of years ago, I posted on the Lynx mailing list about adding Gemini support to the browser.[1] That's never happened. It's too bad, because Lynx supports a *lot* of protocols: gopher, http(s), telnet, ftp, nntp, wais, finger... the list goes on.[2]

          I like Lynx a lot and I want it to be my go-to browser in the terminal for Gopher, Gemini, and the web. So in the absence of built-in Gemini support, I browse Gemini sites through Michael Lazar's great SmolNet Portal at portal.mozz.us.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Where We Stand With the Winter Series
We'll need to protect names and sources
Gemini Links 10/02/2026: "The Last Messiah", Discord for Adults
Links for the day
Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part V - Strongest Strike Under António Campinos
SUEPO Munich is also reminding people of the threat of PIPs
GNU/Linux May Have Grown to 7% in Equatorial Guinea
Has there been some kind of mass migration there or is this just noise in the data?
 
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) is Not a Regulator, It's Part of the Litigation "Industry" in the UK (They Overlap Each Other)
Does nothing except talk about SLAPPs
Brett Wilson LLP Seems to Have Done for Roberto Foa What It Did a Year Earlier for the Serial Strangler from Microsoft
Repeat abusers (of the legal system) will misuse it as long as regulators do nothing
In Finland, Microsoft Falls Behind Yandex (Russia)
Bing has had many layoffs in recent years
Security More Advanced in Geminispace Than on the Web (Bloat)
For real security, use Geminispace capsules, not Web sites
Slop at Microsoft is a Miserable Failure, Now Microsoft Takes the "Vista Route" (Paying People to Say Good Things About It)
This is brainwash, it's meant to delay the implosion of the bubble
Rumours About February 2026 Microsoft Layoffs: Silent Layoffs or 30,000 Culled Tomorrow
Sooner or later (and soon) Microsoft will need to say something and file some WARN notifications
GNU/Linux at 12% in Guam, Based on statCounter (Compared to 2-3% a Year Ago)
Guam's "uptick" in GNU/Linux usage started weeks after "end of 10"
Fighting Slop With the Public Domain (and Why Slopfarms Perish Faster Than New Ones Appear)
We can combat the nonsense by producing more human-made works until the slop bubble implodes
After Employee Reviews at IBM Staff Expects Another Large Wave of PIPs and "RAs" (Layoffs)
From what we can see in the "public Web"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 09, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, February 09, 2026
Is Europe Abandoning Digital Opium?
GAFAM-controlled social control media
Microslop is Slop, Slop is Considered "Quality"
no wonder Microsoft's stuff breaks down so often
thelayoff.com Deletes On-Topic Discussions (Layoffs) While Leaving in Tact Pro-Corporate Trolling Made by LLMs (Slop)
Who at thelayoff.com deems spam made by LLMs (slop) to be on-topic and unworthy of zapping, whereas actually on-topic and authentic threads get routinely deleted?
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part IV - Machos in Charge of the House (and System), Even If the Faces Are Female (Optics)
basically a Windows/Microsoft (US) shop
Gemini Links 09/02/2026: Great Salt Lake Ecological Observatory and Offpunk 3.0 "A Community is Born" Release
Links for the day
Links 09/02/2026: Mass Plagiarism and Pollution/FakeCoin Company Nvidia Contacted Anna’s Archives, Narges Mohammadi Gets Second Prison Sentence
Links for the day
Links 09/02/2026: Russia Intentionally Killing Civilians, Jimmy Lai Effectively Sentenced for Life for Publishing News
Links for the day
Microsoft Competitions, Addictions, and Popularity Contests Are Not Going to Help Perl, They'll Waste Everybody's Time and Give Microsoft More Control Over Its Competition
Microsoft does not like Perl
A Can of WORMS - Part IV - They Would Even Attack RMS for Criticising Autocrats (Saying This is "Politics")
Conforming to society's perceived expectations isn't how effective activism can ever be done or was ever done in the recent past
Gemini Links 09/02/2026: The Exploration Myth and Making JavaScript Fun
Links for the day
EPO Outrage and Maintaining the Pressure
A vending machine does not fall over after a first push
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 08, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 08, 2026
"Low Performer" and "Underperformer" as Harmful Misnomers That Damage a Company's Reputation
Misnomers need to be avoided or called out
Expensive errors: Forbes Gold price, $44 billion Bitcoin given away by Bithumb, South Korea
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 08/02/2026: Microsoft OSI (Openwashing Lobby) in Europe, Raised Against Social Control Media Provocateurs in EU
Links for the day
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) Lobbies for Microsoft in the EU, Promoting Proprietary Lock-in
OSI pushing and selling Microsoft and GitHub. OSI is Microsoft front group.
Getting the European Court of Justice to Annul the Illegal and Unconstitutional Unified Patent Kangaroo Court (UPC)
We're still working on it
Finland's Dependence on GAFAM (US) Needs to be Lessened, EU Must Follow This Path
It's unwise to make one's entire national infrastructure (computer systems) dependent on a regime which compares its black citizens to monkeys and assassinates nonviolent dissenters
Links 08/02/2026: Microsoft GitHub as Burden on Developers and "The Chomsky Epstein Files"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/02/2026: "Doing Not Much Tweaking" and "Reclaiming Digital Agency"
Links for the day
Forbes: BitCoin, Cryptocurrency pages removed from investment database, links stop working
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Bitcoin warning followed immediately by network outage
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Money Funneled to Protection of Software Freedom, But Nothing Really Lost
Crossposted from personal site
They Tell Us Slop Replaces Workers, But the Reality Is, US Debt Has Surged 2,300 Billion Dollars in Six Months (the Economy is Collapsing)
Oligarchy already entertains the option of running away to (or colonising) some other planet without pitchforks and "unwashed masses"
Mozilla Firefox Sinks to Just 1.5% in the United States
According to analytics.usa.gov
We're Still Fast
The site is even faster than the BBC's despite being on shoestring budget with only a small technical team
Gemini Protocol is Not a Waste of Time of Effort
We see more and more GNU/Linux- or BSD-focused bloggers turning to Gemini
Our Gemini Protocol Support Turns 5 Today
today is a rare anniversary for us
In Today's World, One Must be Tough and Principled to Get Ahead Morally
But not financially (sellouts)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 07, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 07, 2026
The Right Wing in the United States Does Not Support Free Speech, It Supports Its Own Speech
Free speech is often opposed by those who also oppose Free software
IRC is a Lot Better Than Social Control Media (They're Not the Same at All)
A good social analogy for IRC is, there are many buildings with a party in each building
Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' is 'Dead Meat'
Or 0xDEADBEEF as some geeks might call it
When Identifying "Low Performers" and "PIPs" Aren't About Improving Performance But Reinforcing a Clique in Your Company/Organisation
It's very troubling to see once-respectable brands like IBM and institutions like the EPO resorting to this
Slop and Flop (IBM), Slopfarms and Hybrids (Linuxiac)
Did Bobby Borisov assume he would never get caught?
Crowdfunding vs Bitcoins: donations are better investment than digital tulip mania
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock