Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 02/09/2023: Fediverse and Feeds



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Limiting improvisation

        I was asked why I suggest limiting improvisation in the blorb playing style. Great question! Here’s my answer.

        I’ll first clarify one thing and then explain why there’s this limitation.♥

        Ah, for “wallpaper” stuff you can make up stuff as much as you want! They’re like “what color is her towel” and you go “it’s a light yellow”. Maybe your notes say “The desk is full of uninportant papers. Hidden under the rug is a key” and the players start looking at papers and you can start making up geneologies and transaction accounts to your hearts contempt. That stuff happens all the time, room descriptions should be short & sweet knowing that you can make this sort of thing up.

        It’s only for “salient” things—the core main things the players and their characters are interacting with—that there’s a limit. For example, the other day I ran a module that said “the desk is full of important documents. GM’s choice”. That violated this principle. If the documents are so important, they shoulda been specified before the session began. (It'd had been OK if the module had said upfront that "DMs, you need to specify the documents on page 277" but it did not.)

      • 🔤SpellBinding: CEMNOYP Wordo: OASES
      • Across The Spider-verse



        The amazing visual style of the first movie is back—and even a little improved. The story hops between “dimensions”, giving the artists a chance to play; and in some segments they are spectacularly successful.

        The one criticism I have in this department is that the device of dropping incidental text into the frame—comic book style—is not used as much as in the first movie. That’s a shame; I like it. It still works well when it is used.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • listing data with TableDb

        These two things will cause it to dump... something or another. I kind of expected them to be the IDs of the locally stored DHT keys. but they aren't. unless they're encoded in some other way. on my computer they all started with VkxEM

        that VkxEM seems to be the start of a base64'd binary blob that starts out with "VLD0" I guess the key names are stored pretty packed.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Issue using ZNC with multiple accounts and SASL

          I have been using different bouncers on different IRC networks since I got more into IRC again (with SDF and Tildechat) in the beginning of this year and switched between a ZNC and a Soju-based bouncer and I am actually using both right now since I don't want to change the configs that are working, both are working quite well, so I am not sure if I am preferring one over the other.

          When configuring ZNC I had a rather random issue that caused the nickserv or SASL authentication to fail on some irc accounts and I couldn't really figure out why and when manually authenticating via Nickserv it always worked, also using cert auth usually works. Since most bouncers and irc networks are up for a long time, this is not really an issue and I simply thought, it is an intermittend issue that happens every Blue Moon (which was actually last week).

        • Fedi is like email

          I love email.

          Email has a lot of the same problems fedi has. It’s used by some very bad people, there’s not a lot of moderators, there’s spam and bad faith servers that you need to block on the instance level, if you get kicked off a server or a server operator folds you need to migrate your address and that’s a 🐝, the protocol is also really complicated these days with many layers and spec addons, it’s difficult to find a place and crowd that’s good for you etc.

          Fedi also has some of the same advantages as email: no-one owns it, it can be used for all kinds of things, it’s free etc.

        • Re: Why I don’t use the Fediverse

          Yeah, the clones do have a lot of the same problems. Mastodon is akin to tinylogs, and Lemmy is like a discussion site or Usenet type thing. (Although with more bugs.) For example, there is a currently defunct app that makes Lemmy look and feel like a phpBB site (except you get access to all of Lemmy).

          I guess my typical approach to this stuff is trying to think back at what worked? Email, discussion sites, mailing lists. If something works like it did in that era it might be fine, if it works differently then there might be some risks.

        • Re: Creating a atom feed file to submit to antenna

          I also use Atom for Antenna (because then I can have time stamps, not just dates), and Alex’s guide above is good, go check it out if you do wanna use Atom, but just know you can also just make a gmisub file and only use it for Antenna.

          That is much easier, for people who don’t wanna have to fiddle with the Atom format.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Twitter (X) is Dying, Now It's Just Like a Mafia-Type Operation of the Man Who Does Nazi Salutes in Public
a form of extortion
The Price of Exposing Corruption in Poland (and Elsewhere)
It's easier to participate in corruption than to merely do the right thing and oppose it
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IX: Minimum Wages For You (Experienced Scientist), Alicante/EU Paydays For Me (Unproductive, Corrupt Official)
Does UPRP maladministration extend to the false belief that qualified and experienced scientists can play the role of circus clowns?
"The Liberating Power of Simply Telling People the Truth."
'polite' bullying
Who Imitates Who? Plagiarist as Client (From Microsoft), 'Plagiarism' at the Law Firm?
let's revisit the subject
EPO's Central Staff Committee (CSC) Scrutinises the Man Who Illegally Grants (and Forces Others to Illegally Participate in Granting) Software Patents in Europe
EPO compels examiners to break the law in the name of obeying illegal "rules" or "orders"
The Latest Rumour Says The Next (as Correctly Predicted Before) Wave of Layoffs at Microsoft is 3 Weeks Away, "Larger Than the First Wave"
Step 2
TV Licensing Used to SPAM Your Postbox, Now It Does the Same to E-mail
First they ask for your E-mail address; then they start nagging you via E-mail
 
X11 is Free Software
Whether you agree (e.g. on politics) with the person/s forking it doesn't matter
The More Time Passes, the Better Our Advice on Social Control Media Seems
At the end of the day, any platform you do not control yourself is working for someone else
UK High Court Blasts Brett Wilson LLP for Misusing "GDPR" After Failed Efforts to Censor Critics Using 'Libel' Claims
No wonder this firm is rapidly shrinking
Recent Blunders in Microsoft GitHub (e.g. Slop-Generated Bug Reports or GPL Violations 'as a Service') Taking Their Toll?
Put bluntly, if you still use Microsoft GitHub, then you're slave to Microsoft
American Imperialism and Microsoft Plagiarism
Techrights will therefore do what Microsoft does not want it to do: it'll write even more about Microsoft
When They Have Nothing Left to Help Advance Abusive Litigation for Microsoft People... Other Than Throwing ~500 Pages of Someone Else's Work Into a PDF
Microsoft is having a very tough year
Slopwatch and Yet More Holes in 'Secure Boot' (as Usual!), Promoted Inside Linux by the Man We Are Suing
Today's Slopwatch will be short
Gemini Links 13/06/2025: People You've Left Behind, Life Update and OS Changes
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 12, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 12, 2025
Links 12/06/2025: Portland Homeless Deaths Quadruple, COVID Cases Surge in Asia
Links for the day
EPO's Gareth Lord Asked About "Quality and Productivity" or, Put Another Way, Why the EPO Keeps Granting So Many Invalid/Illegal Patents
letter to Lord
The Toxic Playbook
Either you support Prince Mohammed bin Salman or you're a nazi
It's Possible That BetaNews Got Cracked, But Nobody Talks About It, The Site Contains an Outdated Old Image, No Activity
It's possible that they will never explain what happened to the site and users' accounts
Links 12/06/2025: Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Dies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/06/2025: Video Game Diegesis and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
Why the Militants Have Lost Every Battle Since 2022 (When Attacking My Wife and I in Various Ways, Even Attacking Our Employers)
This takes patience, sure, but at the end most evildoers face the consequences for their actions
Our Priority is Still Tackling Software Patents and Corruption in Patent Offices
Meanwhile we got compliments on our recent articles, which means that they are effective
Politics Will Impact Software Choices
Will those systems respect users' freedom?
EPO: Neglecting Children to Promote American Monopolies by Shielding Them From European Competition
Yesterday the Central Staff Committee at the EPO spoke about another "reform" at the Office
Slopwatch: Another Day, Another Slopfest, LLM Slop Scrapers Slow Down Our Site
We too have some slop issues; this past day this site and the sister site had to answer about 2.5 million requests (not counting Gemini Protocol) and it's slowing things down for everybody
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 11, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Links 11/06/2025: More Vulnerabilities Found in 'Smart' Phones, China Extends Reach in the Pacific
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/06/2025: Grain and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
Links 11/06/2025: "Quantum" Hype From IBM, US Closer to Martial Law, and “The Nation” Celebrates Milestone
Links for the day
IBM's CEO Roasted, Sizzled and Grilled for Dumb and Inconsistent Vapourware Promises
It looks like being a chronic liar is what it takes to lead the company once synonymous with computing
IBM's Goal Is Not (and Never Was) Computer Users' Freedom
More than 1.5 decades ago I found IBM to be an "ally of convenience" because of OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Wayland Shows the IBM/Red Hat Way of Doing Things
IBM is trying to 'kill' X
GitHub is Proprietary, Controlled by Microsoft, and GPL Violation Warehouse
"IRS tax filing software [will be] released to the people as free software" ... In general this is good news
Slopfarm Catastrophe
Seems like BetaNews (or BetaNoise) has just suffered a major data loss and restored the site from a week-old backup
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VIII: Illegal Working Conditions
How many people need to die for these people to get their massive salaries?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 10, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 10, 2025