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

Links 24/07/2026: Mass Layoffs at Patreon, Netflix Deemed Bad for People's Brains
Links for the day
Google Spreads Misinformation, Google's Slop Makes Stuff Up and Calls That "Intelligence"
Google very well understands (and even publicly admits so, albeit only for legal reasons) that the slop does not work
US is Insolvent, GAFAM is Buying Time by Hiding (Not Disclosing) Its True Debt Which Explains Never-ending Layoffs (Unrelated to Slop or "Efficiency Drives")
Five Tech Giants are Hiding $1.65tn in AI Debt, Using the Trick that Toppled Enron
PIP Apocalypse (PIPocalypse) at IBM, CEO Promotes Vapouware (Lying to Shareholders)
Companies get to shrink while lying about it to the public, even to shareholders
 
At 3PM on a Friday The Register MS Collects Some 'Pyramid Scheme' Money From Communist China (ZTE)
This won't age well for The Register MS
Car Companies Fail Because They Don't Manufacture What Costumers Actually Want
They try to impose their dumb vision on purchasers
What Freedom Does Not Mean
Tell Warren Buffett to go skiing; he'll soon understand how much freedom he truly has
Linuxiac is Plagiarism
We won't link to it, we're done [...] If you wish to support journalism about GNU/Linux, do not visit or link to slop
Verizon is Over 200 Billion Dollars in Debt (US Telecoms Collapsing, Wrapping Up the Failure in "Hey Hi" Clothing)
They will tell us this is "innovation", not a failure, and that only "Luddites" would oppose this
You've Been Conned If You Ever Believed That MElon (MUSK, Elon) Was a Trillionaire
Connected to corrupt officials
The People Who Tried to 'Cancel' (or Deplatform/Censor) Daniel Pocock Are Annoyed That He's Mentioned in Dozens of Press Articles
If Pocock's words did not matter, there would not be such a huge effort to silence him
Cybershow Explains Why Only Sociopaths Gravitate Towards Leadership Position in 'Tech'
The general thesis is a familiar one
Give Me Your "Dumbest" (Devices)
Why can't people accept that a "modern "smart" "phone" isn't necessary to check the time (overkill) and playing social control media "on the go" is far from necessary?
Speeding Up 'Down Under': Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania...
As things stand, the best we can do is let people retrieve pages within less than 0.1 seconds since a request is received
Google's Debt Trebled in Only 9 Months and It's Not Even the Full Picture (There's Secret Debt, Too)
No wonder there are so many layoffs and workers try to unionise
Microsoft Layoffs in India
it's about cost-cutting
Deregulation is Blowing Up the Economy, Which Has Become a Multi-Level Scheme or Pyramid Scheme
Why did only Japanese media call out the BS; is that so hard to figure out and properly report on?
Daniel Pocock Proves Wikipedia is for Rich People or People Who Work for Very Rich People (the True Owners of Wikipedia)
It's for billionaires and their faithful boot lickers
GNOME: Your Personal Opinions Must Overlap GAFAM's (Otherwise Those Opinions Are Impermissible)
Get well soon, GNOME
Making Excuses for Stressful, Unrewarding, and Immoral Jobs
excuses for difficult and/or barely-rewarding jobs. [...] People in tech must not be evaluated (or have their "worth" assessed) based on remuneration
Almost 5 Years Without Social Control Media ('Mind Prison')
Life is too short to be stuck inside a skinnerbox
Linux Must be About People (Humans), Not Bribery From Slop Companies Trillions of Dollars in Debt and in Pursuit of Positive Press
We've lost Williams
John Dvorak Understood That "MSM" Was a Vehicle of Censorship
Independent publishing, which obviates the need to censor (influenced by existing advertisers or lookout for prospective advertisers), is the only credibly thing out there
To Understand Why Linus Torvalds Became a Boot-Licking Booster of Slop Look at Another Operative of 'Linux' Foundation, the "Mentor" of Clickfraud SPAMnil (According to SPAMnil Himself)
it seems like SJVN does not give a full disclosure
Blaming "Computers" Instead of Blaming Microsoft
Blaming Microsoft is "hate"
"Online We Are All Refugees" and Slop Pushers Are the Oppressors
They basically resort to nationalism and racism to distract from their commercial failure and fraud (pyramid scheme)
GNU/Linux Soaring in Antigua And Barbuda
GNU/Linux is internationally approaching 8%
Calling Out the Worst Culprits in "Linux" Slop (Slopfarms That Manipulate Information and Engage in Plagiarism)
Once they're gone (offline), the slopfarms cannot carry on for much longer
Defying Discrimination
Rianne's birthday is exactly a month away
Dan Williams Represented Real Diversity in Linux
Williams probably understood based on personal experience what it was like to be marginalised and discriminated against
The First Point About Software Freedom is, You Must Understand What It Really Means (Not "Open Source")
Forty Three Years of Commitment to Software Freedom [...] Educating people about what Software Freedom actually means
Gemini Links 24/07/2026: Recovering From Broken Shoulders, Loss of Passion, and "True Hacker Versus Growth Hacker"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 23, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, July 23, 2026
Gemini Links 23/07/2026: Databases, TLGS, and RSS Feeds
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2026: Science, Censorship, and Territorial Overreach by China
Links for the day
The State of Google Security: Blocking competition
GMail is the best!
What Happens When Windows Becomes as 'Niche' as GNU/Linux on Desktops and Laptops
Android enjoys a near-monopoly and GNU/Linux isn't far behind Windows.
IBM Cash "Down $6.3 Billion From Year-end 2025." Total Debt/Equity 188.97%. (Debt Can Exceed the Company's Real Value)
the CEO alone can make well over $0.7 billion in 5 years of salaries and bonuses
Wave of PIPs Allegedly Coming to Microsoft, Managers Trained to Terminate Employees Without Paying Severance (and Without Calling it Layoffs)
They count and cut the losses
This Looks Like the End of XBox, the Console
Sharma has become the "fall man" of Microsoft
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: A Consummate Master of the "Rigged Game"
"single-candidate shortlist"
Attempts to Change Focus and Change the Subject as IBM Shares Dwindle. Buying Revenue to Mask the Rapid Decline One More Time.
IBM used to be good at engineering, not financial engineering
Down 848% Year-on-year, Negative Cash Flow, Growing Debt (Richest Man on the Planet or Shrewd Scammer?)
The latest for Tesla is more of the same
IBM Falls Below $200, Expect $199 or Less Today (Panic Threshold)
Will this be enough to topple the managers?
Gemini Links 23/07/2026: SharePoint Rants and “Junk DNA” in Commented-Out Code
Links for the day
Links 23/07/2026: RIP John C. Dvorak, Organisation Weaponised Against J.K. Rowling
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 22, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Freexian & Debian: antitrust, unfair competition against joint authors and volunteers
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
IBM in the Red After Bad Results (Shares Down in After Hours)
Will the CEO step down, retire, of what else?
Gemini Links 22/07/2026: Fault Lines, the Dark Web and Beyond, and Why Substack is Awful
Links for the day
Insult and Injury: Getting Banned, Not Just Sacked, by Microsoft
A former insider spoke about this in public 5 hours ago
Links 22/07/2026: "Dumb Phones" Not Enough to Tackle Harmful Addition, "MPEG-4 Visual's Road to Being [Software] Patent-Free"
Links for the day
IBM's Press Release About Results Mentions "AI" 10 Times, "Quantum" 4 Times
Blah blah blah AI"
Top secret: Cults inquiry submission concealed from public
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
An Hour Ahead of Alleged 'Results' (Amid Investigation Into Fraud) IBM Falls Back to New Lows
Only cents away from a 52-week low
IBM Headed for Lowest "Value" in 2 Years
In a nutshell, Krishna "can't keep it up" and IBM is now investigated for fraud
Investigation Progressing
There is nothing "funny" about receiving mortal threats for merely reporting information in a civilised country
Things We Could Do More Than Half a Century Ago But Can No Longer Accomplish
Newer is not always better
Anupa Ann Joseph & Debian defamation gang
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
State of the Invidious Project
Never forget how hostile Google can be towards freedom
Prioritising the Safety of Women is the Best Approach to Foster Diversity in Technical Communities
Debian was never "normative", but that does not mean Debian should have such low standards
IBM Will Report 'Results' Tonight (CET), It's Already Investigated for Securities Fraud
"Five of the biggest US tech giants are carrying $1.65 trillion in debt that does not show up on their balance sheets"
Hardware Has Gotten a Lot Worse, Not Just Far More Expensive
prices go up fast
Amid Claims of Microsoft Bing Layoffs It Seems Like Bing Cannot Even Hold on to Second Place
Yandex is sometimes bigger than Bing
Wikileaks Does Not Publish New Material Anymore, But Wikileaks Still Changes the World
Wikileaks has a legacy that will soon turn 20
Links 22/07/2026: Postal IRCs, PlayStation Kills Discs, Union Action Against Microsoft, "Judge Considers Tossing Databricks Patent Suit Under California anti-SLAPP Law"
Links for the day
Same 'Journalists' Who Published Fake News for IBM (Pump and Dump) Now Write Puff Pieces About the Stock Falling
the media is so compromised
They Called It "Social" and "Media", But It Turned Out to be Slop and Child Porn
Why do any sane people still use social control media?
Age of consent: DebConf26 registered sex offender in Argentina?
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: In the Pole Position Despite a Dismal Track Record
António Campinos is an old hand when it comes to such high-level institutional intrigue
Site a Bit Slower Due to Visitors' Load
We'll try to work out better speeds
Gemini Links 22/07/2026: Emacs, Astrology Clock, Arduino, and Rogallo v1.0.0
Links for the day
After Involvement by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) LibreTech and Quibble Gain More Participants
RMS expressed gratitude for people who worked on Quibble and improved LibreJS after many years of inactivity
The Lessons From the Assange Saga
This will not end well
Linux Foundation an Enemy of the Planet, Proponent of Pollution and Global Heating
"could the "polluters pay" model be extended to the computing environment and used to take on Microsoft and Microsofters?"
Apple Will Increase Surveillance of Customers, Record Verbal Communications Under the Guise of "Hey Hi"
Apple now drinks that same Kool-Aid
Dave Winer, Blogging Pioneer, Sells Out, Spews Out LLM Slop to Readers
Another one bites the dust [...] Now it's a slopfarm of sorts
Not Everything Can be Automated
not a new thing
GNU/Linux OS in ComorOS
Now, as in recent years or the last year, the GNU/Linux "signal" is growing significantly
Microsoft Redefines "Layoffs" to Give Smaller Tallies
It's not just calling them "buyouts" or saying people are merely "leaving" or "retiring"
IBM is Not Done Destroying Red Hat, Wait Till October 1st 2026 (More Layoffs and Bluewashing)
It's not bluewashing 'til it's 100% done
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 21, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 21, 2026
"LF Sex", Nothing to Do With Linux
a lot of explaining to do this week