Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 06/09/2023: Vanity .onion Address and Trying Gemini



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Re: FLOSS Equivalent of Wordpad?

        I use AbiWord on machines like my OpenPandora. It's lightweight and does even more than Wordpad did. Sadly the GTK3 (or higher) versions are much slower than the old GTK2 versions i prefer :/

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Taking Accountability for My Vanity .onion Address

          Some folks probably already know that my website, gopherhole, gemini capsule, and finger server can be accessed over the tor network at the .onion address vigreyd6wrsvudjto7ccmt45avabdstveitqej2f4or75sjxkrijv3qd.onion. Heck, if you are reading this blog post using the Tor Browser, you likely would have been redirected to that .onion address. The first 6 characters are "vigrey", just like the first 10 characters of the DuckDuckGo .onion address are "duckduckgo" and the first 8 characters of the Facebook .onion address are "facebook". I am currently of the opinion that making a vanity .onion address was a morally wrong choice for me to make, even if it was a mindless choice at the time.

          Generating a vanity .onion address is essentially the same process as Proof-of-Work systems like Bitcoin use or trying to crack a hashed and salted password. In all of those cases, you make a random guess, see that your guess was likely horribly wrong, throw that guess away, and guess again. Do that over and over again until luck is on your side. All you had to do was waste a bunch of electricity on the way. In the case of my vanity .onion address, I statistically would have generated about 32^6 (1073741824) .onion addresses, likely throwing away over 1 billion addresses that didn't start with "vigrey". I did that once before and lost that .onion address's private key, so I did this twice in total... I also did this when .onion addresses were only 16 characters in length, so I likely threw away at least 3 billion .onion addresses needlessly.

        • Trying Gemini (again)

          I want to give Gemini and its community another try. Earlier this year I visited the geminispace in a curious but fleeting manner, and had a lot of fun in it, but it was more of a chance encounter than a move.

          I've been feeling increasingly disillusioned with the bloat and maintenance of my website, and the constant need to move social networks as each hub collapses. I am hoping that this will be a more sustainable way to document my thoughts and socialise in a way that is fulfilling but not so reliant on specific services.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Instant Bluewashing at Confluent: Mass Layoffs Alleged at IBM
So the main question is, did IBM just fire 800 people?
 
Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
Links for the day
A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
Not going to work all month long
EPO Staff Demonstration Today
The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
Links for the day
LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 14 Out of 200: Men Who Strangle Women (and Worse) Trying to Force Us to Write Public Apologies to These Men
For those who never before saw a SLAPP, they basically make many demands
"Vibe-forking" and Why It'll Ultimately Fail (Hype on Top of Hype)
Code made with LLMs sucks; converting solid, human-tested code into slop only complicates matters and increases risk
Updates About Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation
After all those years (a decade) and in spite of phony scandals many people out there still respect him
LLM Slop With "Linux" in the Domain Names
This is becoming a pain and a problem also in the arts and in software engineering
The EFF Has a Bug, Fixing This Bug is Likely Not Possible Anymore
"the EFF's continued existence impairs the arrival of a replacement organization, one which will actually champion digital rights."
Sophie Brun, Raphel Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 17/03/2026: Microsoft Windows Broken by Samsung, Afghanistan-Pakistan War Escalation
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/03/2026: Newcomers and False-Positive 'Slop'
Links for the day
Héctor Orón Martínez & Debian shadow candidate pressure on Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 17/03/2026: American Fentanylware (TikTok) Investors Implicated in Kickbacks, "Big Oil Knew It Was Wrecking Louisiana’s Coast"
Links for the day
For Third Time in a Week The Register MS Runs Google SPAM That Paints Google as an Ally of Women (Which is False, They're Womanisers)
What does that make The Register MS to women?
British Justice Minister Sarah Sackman Blasts Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
The "legal industry" is due for "some reckoning"
GAFAM Deprecating Old Videos ("Content") by Removing the Support for Their Format for No Good Reason
"Security" is not a valid excuse
Credit/Debit Cards Have Long Been Called Plastics, Over Time They're Becoming More Like Pure Plastics
They cost less than a dollar to manufacture
The European Patent Office (EPO) Holds a Public Demonstration Tomorrow and It'll be Live-streamed
The EPO's workforce was meant to be capable of speaking many languages and have extensive experience in the sciences
People Who Attacked Techrights Also Attacked My Mother
Picking on old ladies because you don't like Free software advocates is never OK
Little Community Element Left in CentOS
CentOS, unlike Fedora, was meant to be long supported and solid
Social Control Media is Cancel Culture (Companies Like Facebook Also Punish/Ban Accounts for Mentioning "Linux" and Lobby for Anti-Linux Legislation)
The masters of Social Control Media decide what ideas can and cannot be expressed
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 16, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, March 16, 2026
Someone at Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is Censoring the Birthday Greetings to Richard Stallman
Some people remember
The European Patent Office (EPO) Illegally Transitioning Into 'Gig' 'Economy' Equivalent (a Shop for Patent Monopolies in Europe)
for scabs aka SEALs
At Least Six EPO Strikes Next Month (Yes, Six!)
The pressure intensifies over time
Several MPs Blast Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) for Inaction and Ineffective Action This Week
"Four MPs have written to the SRA"
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 14 Out of 200: The Abusive Cases of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft and His Litigation Buddy Garrett Did Cause "Serious Harm"
claims were de facto abandoned at the trial
Today's Discussions About How IBM Pushes Workers Out
The corporate media keeps trying - baselessly and in vain - to paint everything that happens with the "hey hi" brush
Linux Teck (linuxteck.com) and Ubuntu PIT (ubuntupit.com) Are Botspam
now they just keep experimenting by trashing their sites and reputation
Links 16/03/2026: Moscow Experiencing Cellphone Internet Outages, "Salman Rushdie Is Tired of Talking About Free Speech"
Links for the day
Links 16/03/2026: Arctic Security and 'Mr. Nobody Against Putin'
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/03/2026: KN95 Skins and CSS Surprises
Links for the day
Debian is Dying for Some of the Same Reasons IBM's Fedora is Rapidly Dying
Prioritising CoC censorship, not communities
The Register MS is Again Femmewashing GAFAM (Which Makes Widows) in Exchange for Money
This is a moral issue because they betray or harm women and prop up authoritarian regimes
Gemini Links 16/03/2026: AB 1043, Lagrange Android Beta 47, and Poetry
Links for the day
"Slop-forking" or "Vibe-forking" as the New 'Noble' Plagiarism
New Cloudflare Slop Project?
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part VII - Cult Mentality, Mobbing, Nepotism
Does the EPO actually believe in the law?
2026 Microsoft Layoff Rumours
Surely if we had properly-functioning media, then someone would investigate this rather than rely on official statements from Microsoft and WARN notices
EPO Strike This Week
contact your national representatives about it
Gemini Links 15/03/2026: "Create Opportunities for Good Things to Happen", DOSbook, and Bitcoin Criticism
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, March 15, 2026
Pirate Praveen Arimbrathodiyil & Debian denouncing volunteers, hiding romances
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock