Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 28/08/2023: Manipulating PDFs and Synapse Room Cleaner



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Sunday, Complicated

        We've been playing Yahtzee with the in-laws for well over three years, now: a pandemic activity that became just a standard weekly thing. Two more games today (two Ls for me), but a neat little surprise as well. During the pandemic, meetings for free accounts didn't have limits; then a limit of 40 minutes was added, forcing us to split things up and do two calls.

        Now, today, another surprise: free accounts now have to wait ten minutes between meetings.

        So we got around it by jumping between accounts and doing it that way, but whew, what a pain in the butt. And I get it, they want to convert some of the endless free accounts people are using, but it's a no from me. So I'm going to look at other options. Needs to be easy enough to be launched from a tablet by a cou

      • Billsmugs's Photography: Photos (38)
      • 🔤SpellBinding: CLMOSUY Wordo: DUFUS
    • Politics and World Events

      • History Of The World Part III

        So the lion and the dolphin had come to opposite views (across the channel, for one); the French had the placid sediments of Paris (where else?) and the aqueous dominated. The British had been at the highlands (these sometimes more unicorn than lion) and Italian volcanoes, probably for a change of weather. This account simplifies or distorts; Neptunism actually originated in Germany. And some Neptunists did end up in Edinburgh. Moreover, it was an Italian studying volcanoes in Italy who booted Plutonism—but see how easy it is to cast this as English versus the French? There was a notable political contrast at the time; certain ideas in France had proven too radical (the reign of terror, the calendar system, etc) so a more conservative approach was supported in England, which bled into the sciences. This was Burkean conservatism, not the modern things that happen to have the same name. Radical change also found support in Catastrophism, assisted by various stories of floods, or to solve the Neptunist problem of where did the magic water go? What happened to that process? Not all flood myths are negative, by the way. Consider Egypt and the Nile.

      • The state will not save us from climate catastrophe

        CW: Bad vibes about the future in here. Go ahead and skip this one if you’re looking for hopefulness.

        I don’t understand why smart people keep fooling themselves about what the state is, and what it’s capable of.

        The state is a tool for imposing minority rule on a majority. Full stop. Well-meaning people have been deluding themselves about using the state to achieve benevolent ends since the 18th century. It will never happen. It can never happen. That’s just not what states are for.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Manipulate PDF files easily with pdftk

        I often need to work with PDF, sometimes I need to extract a single page, or add a page, too often I need to rotate pages.

        Fortunately, there is a pretty awesome tool to do all of these tasks, it's called PDFtk.

      • 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.

      • Synapse Room Cleaner

        After running my Matrix Synapse server for several years, joining and leaving several large rooms, and playing around with bridges, my server accumulated quite a few orphaned, empty, and broken rooms. Software developer wisdom says: "Why spend 10 minutes doing something if you can automate in 10 hours?". Thus, I built a small web-based tool that lets you get and/or delete rooms from your Synapse server.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Re: The Devil's Advocate

          Slondr just about summed up exactly how I feel about Gemini and how it should move forward.

          In short, this is working. Warts and all, it's working. Maybe there are some things to fix. Maybe we'll eventually fix them, and maybe we'll just continue. But I can't help but feel like Gemini is a roaring success by the only measure that really counts - there actually is a community here that is growing, vibrant and (mostly) healthy.

        • Fire Update

          There's been more smoke again for the last few days, but rain is in the forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday.

          The 12mm of rain we had last Tuesday was the most we'd had all year. Some parts of the Bush Creek fire got over 20mm, so that was good. On the other hand, a typical summer used to bring 3 or 4 really hard rainfalls, which doesn't seem to be happening any more.

          Solderpunk mentioned in his latest phlog post that he has started worrying about summer in advance.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Sheriff of Cork & Debian Edward Brocklesby or Brockelsby Street confusion
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
"Conviction for a Crime he Did Not Commit," Said Jennifer Robinson
Robinson is the kind of woman accomplisher we should look up to
An Extended Statement on Julian Assange
Assange's release was not important enough to "make the cut" for News, only "tweets" and other Social Control Media nonsense.
Microsoft Falling to New Lows in Aruba
Being below 20% in America is the exception, not the norm
 
Jennifer Robinson: "After 14 years of legal battles, Julian Assange can go home a free man”
She explains the implications for the general freedom of the press
Judge: Assange Leaves Court 'A Free Man'
on his way to Australia now
Julian Assange verdict: guilty, not guilty or blackmailed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
12 Months Ago the FSF Said It Would Issue a Statement on IBM Taking RHEL Proprietary
Statement never happened
Microsoft's Bing Fall From 2.6% Before LLM Hype to Just 0.79% Right Now in Russia
statCounter's data
[Meme] Speaking Truth to Power (Still Easier in the West Than in Russia/BRIC)
Different people, different outcomes
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 25, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 25, 2024
The Plot to Silence (or Deplatform) Techrights
This past month I've been spending time working on the text of an online publication
[Meme] Julian Assange's Lawyers Need to Ensure Assange Maintains Freedom to Publish
Let's ensure he can continue to publish
Trying to Make Blogs (Independent and Mostly Decentralised Platforms) What Comes After Social Control Media
Social Control Networks 'stole the thunder' of blogs, but can we get back to blogs?
Julian Assange Has Landed
There will probably be some press interviews some time this month or next month
L is for Linux and Lao
Lao should really have something called LaOS
[Meme] Need More Sites Like Wikileaks, Not Less
On US government vs Wikileaks
We Know Who Stands to Gain From the Demise of the Press
the Assange release was a win for his family, but likely a dire loss for press freedom
[Meme] Think Twice Before Exposing or 'Embarrassing' Powerful People and Interests
The United States government has basically won the Assange case
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is Openwashing, Ben Cotton (Fedora) Acknowledges It, Fails to See How Bribes Led to That
As if... it "just happened"
Links 25/06/2024: RAM Stress, COVID Graft
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/06/2024: Hey Hi Punditry and Right to Repair
Links for the day
Links 25/06/2024: Julian Assange Freed From Prison, "AI" Bubble Imploding Some More
Links for the day
Three Points About Julian Assange Plea Deal
There is still a secret problem
[Meme] EFF Became a 'Bunch of Pussies' Working for GAFAM (and Sponsored by GAFAM)
It won't protect people, except very rich people's interests
IBM Does Not Care for the Blind (Wayland Harms Accessibility)
What a punch in the gut
Who Is This Backup FOR, the NSA?
As Admfubar put it, "backups for everyone..."
Tux Machines Past 20: Still Thriving
Now 20 years and 2 weeks old
[Meme] Microsoft is Coming /Home
"LOL, REAL SORRY!!!"
Microsoft's Siege of Libya Coming to an End
One might be tempted to guess the users deleted Windows and installed something else
Gemini Links 25/06/2024: Old Computer Challenge; An Opinionated GNU/Linux Guide
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 24, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, June 24, 2024
IEEE Computer Society on Andrew Tanenbaum, Winner of ACM Award, Who Also Inspired Linux Development
10 years ago
New Talk by Dr. Richard Stallman Published Two Days Ago By CeSIUM - Centro de Estudantes de Engenharia Informática da Universidade do Minho (Portugal)
The FSF no longer mentions Richard Stallman's talks, but we will
FSF Looking to Raise Money by Adding 200 New Members by July 19
The FSF is in good shape, according to Alexandre Oliva
Not Only Does It Not Add Security... (UEFI as a 'Bug Door')
SecureCore?
Data From Monaco Should Alarm Microsoft
Just how many people are deleting Windows and installing something else this year?
Name the Threats and Threat Actors
Looking back to 2006, there was Novell and gregkh (partly salaried by Microsoft), so these are familiar territories
Linux in Central Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger)
Vast area, vast number of "Linux users" (if one counts Android as such)
[Meme] Gagging One's Own Staff as a Signal of Corporate Distress
Censorship at Microsoft
The "Other" SPLC
You know you're winning the debate when censorship is explored
Staying the Course
censorship isn't easy against sites that understand ways to resist it
The 'All-Seeing' Microsoft Eye
Microsofters are observing us closely
Links 24/06/2024: Long COVID and "How I Write Blogs"
Links for the day
Microsoft: By Default, Destroy Linux
Here is what the very "polite" Microsoft Boccassi had to say
Allegations That Microsoft is Covering Up Employee Dissatisfaction and Using a Survey to Catch 'Risk' to the Cult Mentality
This favours or gradually socially-engineers a company for sociopathy
'Linux Hint' Inactive for Nearly a Month (It Used to be Very Active)
Their Twitter account hasn't been active for a long time and it's not too clear what's going on
An Unexpected GNU/Linux Trend
Burkina Faso is changing and not just politically
Android (Linux) at New Highs in Burkina Faso, Now Measured at 72% (Windows Was Measured at 98% 15 Years Ago)
based on this month's estimates
With 0.76% for ChromeOS and 3.7% for GNU/Linux (4.5% Total) Burkina Faso Approaches 5% for 'Linux'
More if one counts Android as "Linux"
Gemini Links 24/06/2024: Being Dull and OpenSSH Autoban
Links for the day
EPO Issues in The Hague
a report dated 4 days ago about a meeting that took place 12 days ago
[Meme] Garbage in, Garbage Out (EPO Patent Quality)
"Get back to work"
When the Employer Makes You Too Sick to Go to Work (New EPO Document)
"registering when you are sick"
Perens on a Stick
Remember what Novell did and how few (barely anyone) sided with Novell
Andrew Tanenbaum Gets an Award for His Work on MINIX
ACM one week ago
Twitter's Fall to Irrelevancy in Europe
Musk bought a dud
[Meme] 'Useless' Kids of EPO Examiners
malnourished?
Granting Loads of Monopolies in Europe (to Foreign Corporations of Epic Size and Far Too Much Power Inside Europe) is Vastly More Important Than Raising European Kids Properly?
"Efficiency" first? Whose? Corporations or families? No wonder so many young families are hesitant to have any kids these days; that's particularly true in east Asia and also in north America, not just Europe
[Meme] Putin's Red Flags
Firefox ESR or Firefox USSR
The Corporate/Mainstream Media and Even Social Control Media is Distorting the Record About What Mozilla Actually Did (It Originally Surrendered to Vladimir Putin)
Mozilla being avoided for purely technical reasons (sites not being compatible with it) is one thing. Foolishly, Mozilla is giving people more political reasons to also shun Mozilla. This is suicide.
GNU/Linux Up Some More This Morning, Windows Down Sharply Even in Rich Countries
Microsoft is in trouble in the Muslim world
United Arab Emirates (UAE) Rising... Towards 5% for ChromeOS and GNU/Linux
the latest numbers show it growing from about 0.1% to around 2.4% for GNU/Linux, plus 2.01% for Chromebooks (ChromeOS), i.e. about 5% in total.
Techrights in the Coming Decade: The Free Speech (Online) Angle
Free speech is a fundamental tenet of a free society
Links 24/06/2024: New Research, New Attacks on Justices Sceptical of Patent Maximalists, European Commission for Copyright Maximalists
Links for the day
[Meme] 12 Years a Fedora Volunteer
IBM gives me a 'free' Fedora badge as recognition
IBM Slavery: Not a New Problem
When IBM got rid of Ben Cotton it showed the world how much it valued Fedora
Why They Want to Abolish Master/Slave Terminology (Because This is What They're Turned Free Software Into)
It used to be about community; GAFAM turned that into exploitation and worse
Roy and Rianne's Righteously Royalty-free RSS Reader (R.R.R.R.R.R.) Version 0.2 is Released
They say summer "officially" started some days ago
Torvalds' Number Two Quit Linux a Decade Ago and Has Since Then Earned an Honorary Doctorate
Revisiting Fuzix and Alan Cox
GNU/Linux Reaches All-Time High in Tunisia
Based on statCounter
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 23, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, June 23, 2024
Edward Brocklesby (ejb) & Debian: Hacking expulsion cover-up in proximity to Oxford and GCHQ
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
You Know the Microsoft Products Really Suck When...
"Qualcomm and Microsoft go 'beyond the call of duty' to stop independent Copilot+ PC reviews"
IBM and "Regime Change"
Change of regime is not the same as freedom
Microsoft Windows in Nicaragua: From 98% to Less Than 25%
Operating System Market Share Nicaragua
Techrights in the Coming Decade: The Community Angle
Somebody needs to call them out on their BS
Techrights in the Coming Decade: The Software Angle
Gemini Protocol has just turned 5 - i.e. roughly the same age as our Git repositories
Techrights in the Coming Decade: The Patent Angle
Next month marks 10 years since we began covering EPO leaks
Wookey, Intrigeri, Cryptie & Debian pseudonyms beyond Edward Brocklesby
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock