Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 31/08/2023: Launch of the smolweb.org Web Site



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Navigation

        Whenever I go out exploring I passively create a mental map of what's around me such as stations, parks and where different roads lead to. When I go somewhere new and find it's just down the street or around the corner from a place I've already visited, it helps fill in the pieces of that mental map.

        I've also been slowly learning to navigate the train system here by memory, because I'd rather not use my phone. One thing I've learned that has come in handy, is which stations are close to others so I can avoid the always crowded ones (take Akihabara station on the JR Yamanote Line, for instance.)

      • A Fire Upon The Deep

        "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Verno Vinge (1992) is slightly incoherent and jumps around a lot, as opposed to say a Jim Butcher series that mostly sticks to the protagonist. The threads mostly do eventually come together. The incoherence is in part the jumpy storyline, and also various inclusions of what look use USENET, only "in space" as said in one of those deep drawn out booming voices. Some things are not really explained. Kurzweilian Transcendence and faster than light travel are taken as givens, which is perhaps typical for the genre and maybe for the epoch.

      • Timid hello

        I shouldn't be at a pub mid-afternoon on a Thursday... there's work to be done. But there's always work to be done, that will never change.

        I order a tall pint of Guinness but quickly change my mind. Espresso con panna instead. I'll regret the caffeine, but not as much as I would the alcohol.

        I'm no stranger to places like this. I've been in and out of them for years, nearly two decades at this point. This one feels different, but maybe that's just my wishful thinking. I give a fake name so I can tell a real story.

      • What’s the deal with parking lots?

        The history of humanity is all about overcoming nature. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. And yet we as a society seem to be perfectly happy with parking lots being totally exposed to the elements.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • FuckHub Actions (or: what even is privacy?)

        Following the recent deadline of my student plan on FuckHub, I updated the mirror repo of my capsule/website to have no history; added a simple index page pointing to the main website (where you're reading from, hopefully); and made the repo public.

        [...]

        EVERYTHING is still somewhere in FuckHub's servers. I can actually browse all of the repo's history, up until some known commit (e.g., if I know commit abc123, I can read that and all parent commits on the website).

      • OpenBSD vmm and qcow2 derived disks

        Let me show you a very practical feature of qcow2 virtual disk format, that is available in OpenBSD vmm, allowing you to easily create derived disks from an original image (also called delta disks).

        A derived disk image is a new storage file that will inherit all the data from the original file, without modifying the original ever, it's like stacking a new fresh disk on top of the previous one, but all the changes are now written on the new one.

      • My top 20 video games

        Trivia, I'm not a huge gamer, I still play many games nowaday, but I only play each of them for a couple of hours to see what they have to offer in term of gameplay, mechanics, and see if they are innovative in some way. If a game is able to surprise me or give me something new, I may spend a bit more time on it.

      • My top 20 video games

        I wanted to share my favorite games list of all time. Making the list wasn't easy though, but I've set some rules to help deciding myself.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Launching smolweb.org website

          I think that Gemini is a response to bloated website that does not fit to many people. It needs a specific browser, it limits creativity and possibilities.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Freedom, Not Fame, is His Goal
pursuit of money can be not only tiring but also involve abandoning one's freedom
Getting Better After 20 Years
Exactly two months from now this site is turning 20
Gemini Links 07/09/2026: Music Composition, Free Stuff, and Self-hosting Git Repos
Links for the day
 
Alleged Manager at IBM Says "[t]here are likely to be a lot (and I meant, A LOT) of RAs before December."
"We’re getting pressure from above to put some team members on PIPs."
Links 07/09/2026: Amazon Cargo Plane Crash, .org/.net/.com Domains Considered Risky
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/09/2026: Cheese, Text-based Life, and Icons in Swaybar
Links for the day
Links 07/09/2026: Slop Trashes Memory of Parton, Flock Surveillance Infuriates Everyone
Links for the day
EPO Hiding Cocainegate and Abandoning Transparency (Even Access to Very Basic Information is Denied)
The EPO isn't just becoming like a private for-profit corporation. It's also becoming more secretive.
Richard Stallman Has Resurrected Lost Updates
We didn't ask about it
SLAPP Censorship - Part 174 Out of 200: Cascading Scandals and a Path Towards Much-Needed, Long-Awaited Reform
Reform the UK's law, not "Reform UK"
EPO's Gema Requena Sempere (PD People) Contacted Regarding Children With Disabilities
In the coming week we may be in fruitful contact with some media regarding EPO scandals
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 06, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, September 06, 2026
People Who Enforce the GPL Banned From Linux Foundation Board (After Bribes From Prolific GPL Violators), Now They're Banned From Giving Talks at Events
about the "LF" ('Linux' Foundation)
Gemini Links 06/09/2026: The Slop Plagiarism 'Holy War' (Hype, Scam, Scheme), Burning CD-Rs, and Hardcopy Mono
Links for the day
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Inaction and Incompetence - Part IV - Insufficient Resources in the Face of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) by Lawyers
it's about 120KG
OpenStreetMap is the Future, Dictatorship is the Past
OpenStreetMap helped us check maps for transport, various overlays with addresses, and there was 0% reliance on GAFAM or "Google" anything
Silent Layoffs, Cool-down, and Cool-off: How GAFAM and IBM Operate (the Law Doesn't Apply to Them)
Laws? What laws?
How Strikes at the European Patent Office Are Seen by Striking Staff in Berlin, Germany
We have some more EPO scandals to cover later this year and next year
Association for Computing Machinery Cites Techrights in Relation to GemText and Gemini Protocol
published yesterday, Open Access
Links 06/09/2026: More XBox Trouble (Microsoft Unrest, Many Silent Layoffs This Month), John Duffy as Next USPTO General Counsel
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/09/2026: Avoiding 'Smart' 'Phones' and Setting up Gemini for the First Time
Links for the day
Links 06/09/2026: Sabotage by Slop and "What Happens If 'Open' 'AI' Dies?"
Links for the day
How Back Doors Became the 'Normal' or 'Norm'
"We also allowed a lethal monoculture to fester"
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Inaction and Incompetence - Part III - The SRA is Vastly Worse Than Brits Realise, We Have a "Wild West" in London
In the next part we'll begin looking at correspondence with the SRA
SRA and Manslaughter: How the SRA Contributed to Agony in Proprietary Software Scandals With Clear Misuse of "Without Prejudice"
Trying to prevent the public from finding out the criminal stuff that went on, resulting in many deaths
Canonical (or Ubuntu) Rejecting IRC Isn't the Widespread Trend
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) adoption still growing by some yardsticks
SLAPP Censorship - Part 173 Out of 200: Two Years
It was exactly 2 years ago that we filed lawsuits against Garrett
Linux of America
We could not help but notice GNU/Linux in North America yesterday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 05, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, September 05, 2026
Gemini Links 06/09/2026: Internet Limiting (Limited Time Allotted) and Solar MiniServer
Links for the day
Eight Months of Strikes in EPO, Organised by the Staff Union (SUEPO) Also in Berlin
In Berlin, only one member of staff voted against the action plan
Links 05/09/2026: "Let’s Stop Buying New Phone" and 'Open' 'AI' (Proprietary Slop) Drowning in Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/09/2026: Polarization, Warped Maps, and Emacs rectangle-number-lines
Links for the day
Software Freedom, Even If Difficult to Attain Due to Outside Pressure, Does Make You Happier
Peer pressure and opinionated employers can make friends and staff more miserable if they dictate bad software
You Can Run GNU/Linux on a Desktop/Laptop for 1,000+ Days Nonstop
To me, the long uptime is a way of "marketing" GNU/Linux as robust and stable
Profiting From Global Warming (and Making More Money the More You Cause Warming)
Unregulated bank and pyramid scheme
SLAPP Censorship - Part 172 Out of 200: The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Complicit in the SLAPPs by Inaction (Didn't Even Study Any Evidence, Only Wasted Time and Budget)
"SRA placed into special measures due to 'disappointing standard of leadership'"
China Does Not Need American (US) Products Like GAFAM's
China has abundance of technical things it can leverage to preserve its autonomy
RMS Didn't Make Enough Backups
Making backups is important
Refresher: Why EPO Staff is on Strike This Year (Aside From the EPO Acting Like a Corrupt, Above-the-Law, For-Profit Corporation That Violates Its Own Charter)
One core issue at the EPO is erosion of purchasing power
Gemini Links 05/09/2026: Fireflies, Shore Pine, and ASCII Art
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 04, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, September 04, 2026