Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 15/08/2023: UTF-8 and Newsboat Over SSH RSS



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • 🔤SpellBinding: AILOPSU Wordo: TONED
      • Rel-Phil - Pol - Comsiderations of the Hawaiian Caste System as Exemplar of Empire’s Demonic Aetiology

        Snapshot of pre-KamehamehaIII caste system in Hawai’i. The presentation of the high Hawaiian system’s etiology is muddy because its generative conditions aren’t readily appreciable by Hellenistic Weltanschauung - the “modern secular” dead-materialistic gaze has massive blind spots. There was likely no external causus to yoke communities to serfdom in Hawaii. No barbarians at the gate, as the commenter notes.

      • The Whole World is Sleeping On Mr. Gnome

        So much energy, so much heart, such a unique sound. Their other album Madness in Miniature, is also incredible.

        Thank you for coming to my microblog.

      • Stretches

        I was more physically active when I was a kid, engaging in sports like basketball and going on hiking trips with the Boy Scouts. I also did gymnastics for a short time, but I didn't have much interest in the sport and I dropped out after one season. In the aftermath I quickly lost much of my flexibility.

        Today, after working desk jobs for almost seven years, I can barely reach my shins without having to bend my knees. My legs in particular are very stiff, with my back not far behind.

        I was recently recommended a self-care app called Finch. I love Finch--as I've been going through some touch mental work lately, it's been a big help for me--and I'll write a review of the app eventually. But one of the self-care activities Finch can prompt the user to do is stretching, and I've tried to take advantage of it in recent weeks.

      • Twilight at the Airport (Fairbanks, AK, USA, 2023-08-15)

        I realized today might be one of my last days to catch the sunrise this season, before sunrise starts overlapping with my shift schedule. After reviewing direction and timing, I decided to try the south side of the airport again. The skies were too murky to capture a sunrise proper, but I got a few nice twilight photos.

    • Politics and World Events

      • I Want To Wear A Dress!

        So, I am a very 'cis' male, perfectly happy in my body, without any alphabet leanings (not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld said). I am sick of _everything_ being sexualized (or genderized). My male toddlers were always referred to as 'she' because of long hair or maybe a doll-in-hand. One of my kids had to literally escape a mob of children in the playground at 3, a mob screaming "Get her, she has a penis"! My female dog is always called 'he' because she's big - and well, she lifts her leg and pees on everything, so maybe she is gender-queer, but anyway.

        My neighbor came to our morning-coffee-ritual wearing a simple yet fantastic Comme De Garcon dress. He wore it well. I was extremely envious.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Toby's tinylog

        I wanted to find out what the minimum hardware for running a reasonably good Large Language Model at home would be, so I bought a refurbished ThinkCentre M715q with AMD Radeon 5 PRO 2400GE CPU. It's a 2018-era machine costing only around $200. With no upgrades, I was able to run llama.cpp in CPU-only mode on the smallest Llama 2 7b model (q2_K) generating 5.2 tokens/sec! Very impressive! I can also run Vicuna 13b (q4_1) at over 2 tokens/sec after upgrading the RAM to 16Gb. All this while consuming around 40W of power. One trick I had to employ is to use "LLAMA_AVX2=1 make" to compile, as it doesn't detect AVX2 by default. Anwyay, I love this ThinkCentre machine, it is amazing bang-for-buck and will be my main dev machine for the forseeable future.

      • Is it UTF-8?

        Another method is to brute force the problem with a Monte Carlo simulation, which at best will waste lots of CPU. However, where Monte Carlo is practical this may help confirm that a better approach has not gone off the rails. Or, that both the Monte Carlo and the better approach are wrong in ways that produce the same results, which maybe isn't so likely? Richard Feynman said things about actually verifying results in his 1974 commencement address at Caltech.

      • Dotfiles: You're doing it wrong

        When it comes to managing dotfiles, people like to come up with all kind of different and complicated solutions: bare repositories, git submodules, self grown bootstrap scripts, symlinks. Let me tell you: you're doing it wrong!

      • Some explanations about OpenBSD memory usage

        I regularly see people reporting high memory usage on OpenBSD when looking at some monitoring program output.

        Those programs may be not reporting what you think. The memory usage can be accounted in different ways.

        Most of the time, the file system cache stored in-memory is added to memory usage, which lead to think about a high memory consumption.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • How to run newsboat over SSH

          RSS is dead, isn't it?

          Well, not at all, not for me. I've been an rss user ever since I've made my first step into the world wide web. When Google Reader still has been a thing and the world has been ok. I just like the idea to keep up to date with all the things I'm interested in, without any algorithm predicting what I'm going to read.

          After g'reader died, RSS feeds felt more liken an on-off relationship. I tried different alternatives and even stopped using them altogether. But there was definitely something missing. Someone told me about ttrss then, while others moved to feedly, a free as in pay-with-your-data software-as-a-service solution.

        • Easing back into gemspace

          Hey, it's been awhile. I've had a long, long year and a lot has happened. The good thing though is that I'm going to have some stability soon for basically the first time in my life.


* 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
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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
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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
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Links 04/06/2025: Linux Foundation PR Spam and Lee Jae-myung Wins Election
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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"
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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