Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 08/09/2023: Apple Stuff and Migrating to Neovim



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Good evening

        Hello. I've come across this place while walking through Nightfall City several times, but only last month did I decide to enter. I got my pass this week.

      • A rice portion size is eighty grams

        Because i always forget how much to weigh out. Different resources of course say different amounts, but it tends to be in the range of seventy-five grams to a hundred grams. I'm choosing eighty grams because that's the same as what one portion of five a day is measured as, so it's easy to remember.

      • Eating cheap and healthy

        My approximate current shopping list for eating pretty well as pretty cheaply. It could be cheaper in some places but i have chosen some things for taste as well.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • The worst things about iPad OS

        In September 2021, after 22 years using only FOSS except for driver firmware and video games, I got an iPad. Here are the three worst things about its OS. (The sustainability issue of the difficult-to-repair hardware is a topic for another day.)

      • iMac G5 WiFi

        In the past I tried several times to get the AirPort cart for my iMac G5 (1st generation machine with 17" screen). I was never successful - every time I bought one on-line (no matter where) the seller always wrote to me that the offered product no longer works. So I gave up.

      • Macintosh Classic II Repair — Part 2

        the keyboard & mouse arrived first, followed by the Wombat, with the capacitors dilly dallying until Wednesday (the 6th). I was surprised they bothered shipping the Wombat over labor day weekend, but they did so it arrived in typical USPS punctual fashion. Turns out that UPS, that Mouser uses to ship, don't work over labor day “to clarify, I'm not upset about that” so it didn't get sorted or go out for delivery until Wednesday. Luckily I had all afternoon free and they arrived early-ish, so I had plenty of time to work before needing to drop everything for while—time which it unexpectedly turned out I needed.

      • Migrating to Neovim

        I remember my first time using vi, using sudoedit because I was blindly following a guide online for who knows what. I remember struggling to figure out which mode I was in, though exiting never was as hard as the memes made it out to be. I started using it more and more, I never much cared for nano and so once I knew vim worked basically like a regular text editor when in insert mode, I used it, if I was already in the terminal. With my use of tiling window managers the hjkl keys got to be fairly familiar and so more and more often in my journey using Linux I jumped to vim when I needed a text editor.

        For the first 4 or so years of using it, I ran on the stock config, I didn't even have a separate .vimrc. Then a couple years ago I got sick of needing to go back and replace tabs with spaces in python and so I made a .vimrc consisting of a few lines, enabling relative numbers and fixing the aforementioned tabbing issues. When I first heard of neovim I checked it out, but realized it was really not all that different from regular vim, so I had no reason to jump ship, and anyway nobody likes a splitter. With the recent passing of Bram Moolenaar, it pushed me to consider neovim again due to him being the largest contributor to vim. I can't imagine there will be many more major updates to the original project, though his name will live on in our hearts.

      • Rogue Mapgen

        The map generation in rogue (1980) is primitive by today's standards, though if you run Moore's Law in reverse for a few decades you may see why. Nor was there much in the way of prior games to borrow from. Even with the simple map generation there are emergent features, notably where passages (represented by the "#" in the screenshots below) cross or loop back on themselves.

      • Magic’s sieges are weird

        Magic introduced a new card subtype, “siege”, on a card type that itself was also new, “battle”. You can attack battles and try to defeat them. Sieges are special in that you play them on the opponent’s side of the table so you’re attacking your own sieges.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
"social justice warriors"
More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
 
This is How Microsoft's XBox and Entire Consoles (If Not Gaming) Ventures Will Ultimately Die
Ensure you can blame "Tariffs" (politics)? If not "hey hi", the fashionable go-to excuse when businesses fail?
What They Really Hate David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) for
Nothing to do with code
Smart People Won't Buy 'Smart' Cars
Imagine trying to sell someone a house (proper home) while insisting that it'll need to be demolished 5 or 10 years later, then rebuilt again from scratch on the same vacant lot
The Relationship Between IBM Red Hat and Microsoft, Visualised
This metaphor goes a long way (projects, collaborations, and outsourcing
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part III - Spying on Reporters' Families, Chaining Cases for Microsoft Employees Who Demand Censorship of Facts (Even Politely Expressed)
the time seems right to wrap up this introductory series
Links 24/09/2025: "NASA Moving Out of Entire Buildings as It's Gutted" and Purge of Online Critics (Opposing Fascism Becomes Unlawful)
Links for the day
Science is Under Attack
Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
some of the junk Google News is promoting
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025