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

Based on Insider Leaks, Asha Sharma's Job is to Kill XBox While Talking About "AI"
They cite SneakerSO
Linux Kernel 7.0 Release Candidate Comes Out, Stallman Turns 73 in Three Weeks
It predates Microsoft and Apple
In Greenland, Firefox's Gecko and KHTML (KDE, But Bastardised by Apple) Bigger Than Chrome
Are those Danes recognising the risk of monoculture?
IBM Layoffs Definitely Still Happening
Contrary to what some apologists try to say
Don't Use the Future Tense to Discuss the Slop Bubble
Wall Street does not react to reality; it reacts to panic, which is related to expectations
The Broken Window Industry and Its Ongoing Desires to Make Technology Less Dependable
Reliable computing is becoming harder to find
New XBox CEO Typecast in Social Control Media
Microsoft apologists will fall back on (or shuffle between) the "racist" and "sexist" angle
Sites Without JavaScript Deserve Your Visits
We're not arguing that the Web should be as simple or barebones like Gemini Protocol/GemText
EPO Strikes Are Already Working
Campinos is already going "into hiding"
 
Links 23/02/2026: "What Boston Will Cost Me" and Women as Hostages
Links for the day
IRC Usage Levels Seem to be Rebounding This Year
it looks like the total count (tally) of users increased a lot lately
Microsoft Tricked the Media Into Lying About Microsoft Layoffs in January. Now It Does the Same (in February).
Microsoft has got the media by the wallet (or balls)
Free Software Projects Become Slow Due to Slop
It does not improve efficiency or productivity, it reduces both
EPO Strike Has Begun (or Resumed)
The EPO status quo is untenable
Links 23/02/2026: US Surrenders to Climate Change (to Benefit Oil Companies and Slop), UK Court of Appeal to Hear Mazur
Links for the day
GAFAM Jobs No Longer Lucrative
Those days are long gone
Germans Recognise the Contagion is Digital, Not Racial
How to dismantle or neutralise those weapons? Turn them off
Free Software (or Software Freedom) Ain't No Religion
It's hardly surprising that some of the loudest opponents of Software Freedom and its luminaries also disregard or bend facts
Dr. Andy Farnell Explains Why the Slop Industry is Like Trespassers and Thieves
interesting new article about robots.txt files
The Demise of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and Profession Based Around Bullying With SLAPPs and Empty Threats
For press to survive and thrive in the UK we need the hired gun to be submerged
Gemini Links 23/02/2026: Imperfect Journal, Evil, and "Progress Goes Boing!"
Links for the day
“Power is a Thing of Perception. They Don't Need to be Able to Kill You. They Just Need You to Think They are Able to Kill You” ― Julian Assange
When leadership becomes corrupt enough to lose a sense of authority its days are numbered; it'll be replaced
IBM Has Already Admitted 2026 Mass Layoffs (in 4Q Earnings Call)
We showed this earlier this month, but some people bring that up again
Reasons to Go on Strike in the European Patent Office (EPO)
If you live in Europe and don't work for the EPO, you can still help
First speech of Chanellor Hitler, Andreas Tille & Debian denounce Branden Robinson
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 22, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 22, 2026
More and More Projects Quit Microsoft GitHub This Year, XBox Will See the Same
Microsoft GitHub's embrace of slop as "strategic" gives us a clue of what'll happen to XBox very soon
Google "Intelligence": Despite Slam-Dunk or "Smoking Gun" Proof, Drug Abuse in EPO Leadership is "Unverified Allegations"
Google's slop (so-called 'AI') lacks intelligence
8,000 Pages/Articles Per Year
We're eager to maintain a good production/publication pace and illuminate the sinister attempts to interfere with Freedom of the Press in the UK
Gemini Links 22/02/2026: Okonomiyaki and Midcrunch Crisis
Links for the day
Freedom Means Accepting He or She Who is Different
In the Debian community we're sadly seeing some authoritarian overreach this month
Microsoft Windows Falls to Another New All-Time Low in Guatemala, It is a Bottomless Pit
Maybe users come to realise that Windows means back doors and those doors are open to a regime that ought not be trusted
"XBox" Will Become Slop After Mass Layoffs
When all else fails, "AI it"
Links 22/02/2026: Hardware Price Hikes Across the Board, "Microsoft Issues Statement on Potential Layoffs"
Links for the day
Microsoft "Layoffs Incoming"
This transition isn't about promoting games; it's about canning the console
Links 22/02/2026: "Bloat of Modern Fitness Apps" and Wikipedia Deprecates Archive.today
Links for the day
Our IRC 5-Year Anniversary (for Self-Hosted) is Fast Approaching
A week from now it's March already
Gemini Links 22/02/2026: Dream Job Gone and Slop in Taskwarrior
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 21, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 21, 2026
GNU/Linux Grew a Lot in Nicaragua
We've not noticed until today
Techrights Has Over 1,000 Good Articles 'in the Tank'
Drafts, notes, and lengthy documents
New Article Challenges Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for Choosing the Wrong SLAPP Cases to Investigate
The one point we can agree on is that SRA does not know how to correctly select the worst culprits/offenders
The Brand 'Watsonx' is a Terrible Name for IBM 'Hey Hi' (Chatbots) Because Watson Agreed With Adolf Hitler
Almost a century has passed and IBM still believes that selling "intelligence", chatbots in particular, should be done under the name "Watson"
Why IBM is Still Scary and Dangerous
Keep a distance from "Big Blue" Bully
Measuring the Growth of Our Mission and Community
Something between experiment and prototype
Richard Stallman in the United States - Part III - Georgia Tech Did a Fine Job Upholding Free Speech Principles
The real problem was social control media (toxic)
Debian's Master is Deleting Criticism of SystemD and Other Things (On-Topic and Published by Debian Developers), Resorts to the Excuse Messages Are "Too Long"
Censorship serves nobody except the masters that control this censorship
Digg's Latest Incarnation Already Failed, It's Infested With LLM Slop
Many submissions go to slopfarms and some get summarised by slop
Gemini Links 21/02/2026: Veganism and DeskPi RackMate T0
Links for the day
On The Web, XBox Already a Dying Breed
Down to about 0.05% on large machines, based on statCounter [...] Microsoft will never publicly admit or say how many billions it lost on the XBox
2026 a Year of 'Top-Down' Microsoft Layoffs (Management First)
Stay tuned for what comes next
Your "Likes" Aren't Yours and They're Mostly "Worthless Clicks"
Social hermits are not popular, irrespective of how many "Facebook friends" or "likes" they get
Waggener Edstrom/Frank Shaw Lied, There Are Definitely Microsoft Layoffs
Microsoft never issued a formal statement, it made allusions by proxy
Microsoft-Controlled Media With Embargo and Press Operatives
This won't be the last example of media manipulation for narrative control or face-saving "damage control"
Slop Hype Makes Our Core Technology Less Reliable and Far Less Resilient (We Pay for the Catastrophe That Follows)
Only slop-free projects can be trusted
Going for 1,000 (Days of Uptime)
universal records are vastly better
Firefox is No-Go in China, Not Even 1% "Market Share" Anymore
Given Mozilla's utterly rubbish marketing these days (politics over technical aspects), set aside the cheerleading for slop, there's hardly a chance of Mozilla Firefox reaching or exceeding 10% again
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part III - It's in His Eyes
Workers are free to draw their own conclusions
Links 21/02/2026: Tensions Over Iran and Illegal Cheeto Tariffs, Presidential Approval Sags
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2026: "Moving Away From Cloudflare", Many Layoffs or Shutdowns in Games (Including XBox/Microsoft)
Links for the day
GNU Linux-libre is a Grown-Up Today
"before that, every distro that wanted to respect its users' freedom had to remove itself all of the binary blobs that were distributed as part of the kernel Linux's so-called sources"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 20, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, February 20, 2026
Gemini Links 21/02/2026: "The Evil of Action" and Slop Bots Causing Great Harm Online (Not Just the Web)
Links for the day