Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 16/09/2023: Practicing Counting in Chinese and Hashnix Radio



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Practicing counting in chinese

        When i was in china and surrounded by people speaking all sorts of different languages, i started a cruel experiment whenever anyone started counting in english, by saying unrelated numbers at the same time. The point of this experiment was to confirm that people will always fall back to counting in their native language. It was very unscientific but happened every time.

        My friend recently said that they might consider maths a sort of language of its own. In some ways i agree, but i think at least that something about the way that we develop mathematical or counting ability ties itself more firmly to our native language than other things.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: ACKYTWR Wordo: BEADS
      • D&D at the drop of a hat

        I can drop ‘em right into my ongoing campaign, plenty of stuff for them to do and explore there, and I have many ways of making characters that are all compatible up with the big 5e game down the line. From pregens or the Essentials Kit to something in the middle like Dungeonesque and if they’re really non-nerdy and just wanna dip their toes, I have my own “Searcher” class. I don’t use it if I think they are serious about getting into full D&D but it’s nice because it only has two stats and those are both derived straight up from level. So in short, if I think they’re future nerds I’ll use the Essentials Kit and if I think they’re pretty set in their non-nerd ways I’ll use my searcher class, and it’s no big deal if I guess wrong because it’s easy to switch over.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Ansible no more, moved all services to containers.

        As the title, I have abandoned Ansible in favor of containers. My setup still uses Terraform to deploy and configure Hetzner Cloud as always, but I have updated the cloud-init bootstrap to install Docker instead. I then deploy my infrastructure via Docker Compose.

      • New dumb phone at last, it cost €£11.50 but came with €£10 credit.

        I have been on the search for a true dumbphone for a long time now [0], the best I could achieve, without spending a small fortune, was running a Nokia 2.3 smartphone with a minimal launcher which I paid €£60 for.

      • Of Unity, childhood and making games

        As a child from the 90s living in a small city in Mexico, playing video games was something out of this world... from the future. Having an Arcade machine in the neighborhood, paying a few quarters, and enjoying 15 minutes of the latest game was amazing. I remember the release of Nintendo 64 with stunning 3D graphics, and having change to play for a few minutes in every store. Also, sound cards and 3D graphic cards were more accessible, so we could play in our family computers.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Hashnix Radio

          Hashnix Radio open mic is now available to gemini! You can find the announcement post in the link below, as well as the link to the radio stream + details.

        • Hashnix.club Open Mic

          Hashnix Radio Open Mic streaming is now available to the geminispace! There's a gemini-compatible stream + the icecast details made availble via the links below.

          Feel free to use this subspace as a way to coordinate when you stream in, or take turns trading off with someone else requesting to stream, or even to see if anyone else is streaming or might want to join in on listening and broadcasting.

      • Programming

        • TDD in C (make is all you need)

          There are a few things I used to think I'd miss going back to C from a more "modern" programming language. Lately I've been writing a lot of C again and finding that not to be the case, either because I just don't actually miss the language feature or because it's nowhere near as hard to simulate or manually implement as I thought it would be. Take sum types (tagged unions) for instance. At it's heart all that's required to add some type safety to a union is to associate it with an enum tag. In C this can be as simple as stuffing an enum and a union into struct fields and providing functions to access them only after checking the tag field.

          One thing that I think languages like Rust, Go and Zig have put to the fore is including a nice test framework right at language level. Going back to C, I thought it might be even more beneficial to do test driven development than in "safer" languages, but the tooling doesn't really exist out of the box. So on one of my recent scribbles I set out to see how hard it would be to do some TDD using just what you might have on any POSIX system - namely the compiler and POSIX make.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM Misleads and Gaslights Investors With Slop Sold as "AI" (the Business is Waning, Mass Layoffs Continue)
People who do this are dishonest. They should not be put in charge.
Submit Your Suggestions for EU's Embrace of Software Freedom by Tomorrow
Time to leave GAFAM (US) hegemony behind
Slopless Weekend
This is not sustainable
 
Microsoft Lost 20% of Its Money in the Past 6 Months
Microsoft is hiding what's really happening while mocking critics
Great News, IBM 'Gained' Almost 10% in "Goodwill" Value After Firing Tens of Thousands in 2025
"goodwill" will be inflated despite IBM staff getting sick of IBM
Americans Move to GNU/Linux
some of the biggest American populations
I Still Like Drawing and Various Other Arts (They Help My Activism and Journalism), Slop is an Enemy of Creative People
Recognise that slop isn't intelligence; it's a generational excuse for plagiarism and privatisation of not only the Commons but also proprietary knowledge (without authorisation)
Carmen-Lisandrette Maris (Mission:Libre) Explains to Adolescents and Young Adults How Free Software Improves Privacy
Based on what we've seen and read, Mission:Libre has a solid grasp of Software Freedom
Chatbots Didn't Do Any Good for Microsoft
Google "AI" = search + copypasta
Links 02/02/2026: Cultural Cleansing by China and 'Living Behind Firewalls" in Iran
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Measured at More Than 4% in Russia
growing adoption of GNU/Linux in Russia
Gemini Links 02/02/2026: Stages of Age, Workflows, and Counting Capsules
Links for the day
Oracle's Debt Rose Over 20 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months
Is "hey hi" becoming a synonym for debt?
Oligarchs' 'Speech Zones' Are Not the "Public Square"
The apologists of social control media, including press that got "addicted" to such fake "media", are helping dictators and oligarchs grab the public attention away from the real press
Links 02/02/2026: 'Melania' a Horror Movie "Will They Inherit Our Blogs?"
Links for the day
Doing More Detailed Series (Long-Form Works)
Long readings or book-like reading binges are only possible when parts are suitably labeled (name and numbers) if not interlinked
Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part II - Racism, Cocaine Use and White-Collar Corruption
When you hire people illegally, to work for cocaine users and keep quite about the cocaine use, what will be the impact on the reputation of an institution?
A Can of WORMS - Part II - Darkening the Name of RMS, Associating It With Crime
Beware projection tactics
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 01, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 01, 2026
Gemini Links 01/02/2026: Fossil Heating Installations and Some FOSDEM Coverage
Links for the day
The State of Memory Leaks in GNU/Linux
The issue won't be solved by adding more memory
Links 01/02/2026: Nvidia's Jensen Talks Down Microsoft 'Open' 'Hey Hi' and Britain's Starmer Makes Friends With China, Japan
Links for the day
Why Microsoft Accenture Has So Many Layoffs in Recent Years
The debt of Accenture doubled a year ago
Links 01/02/2026: Public TV Gutted by Cheeto, Billionaires Fund a Cheeto Propaganda Movie in 'Documentary' Clothing
Links for the day
The New Site ("New Techrights", SSG Since 2023) Exceeds the Old Site in Requests
The "New Techrights" gets about twice as many requests as the "old" (WordPress) "Techrights", the site of 2006-2023
20 Years Ago
Some time soon all this slop frenzy will become like yesterday's "blockchain" or "metaverse"
Gemini Links 01/02/2026: Zdzisław Beksiński and Disconnected Git Workflow
Links for the day
Talks About Nadella's Microsoft Exit After Chatter About Tim Crook Leaving Apple (Years Ahead of Retirement Age)
Mass layoffs and record debt do not represent a company's health.
We Still Cover the Same Problems We Spoke of 20 Years Ago
We're not easily seduced by "novelty" (new things), we try to judge them critically
Patents Standing in the Way
They also cause environmental harm
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 31, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, January 31, 2026
IBM, a Microsoft Company
Microsoft and IBM as a pair go a long way back
A Lot Less GAFAM in Scandinavia
Are they reacting to geopolitics and risks from the US?
IBM Kills Companies It Bought (Neudesic Seems Like Latest Casualty)
Why isn't even a single publisher investigating those things?
Fake "Linux" Articles
Just because some platform has "Linux" in the domain name and/or site name does not imply that it is a news/Linux site
Gemini Links 31/01/2026: "Proof Without Content" and "Technology Connections"
Links for the day
Links 31/01/2026: Microsoft "OpenAI Representatives Are Going to Critics’ Houses With Threats and Demands", Its Proprietary Chaffbot Faces More Lawsuits
Links for the day
Links 31/01/2026: "Introducing Encrypt It Already" and "Huge Cache of Epstein"
Links for the day
A Can of WORMS - Part I - Trying to Throw RMS Under the Bus at MIT and Everywhere Else
This series won't give air to online 'trolls'
Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part I - An Introduction
When the series ends, some time around the second or third EPO strike of this year, we'll contact the relevant authorities and plead for intervention
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part I - Who Regulates This Regulator? (Only Itself!)
We won't self-censor or prematurely terminate this series
Norway Almost Trusts Russia More Than the Bill Gates (Sleeping With Young Russian Girls) Company, Microsoft
Microsoft represents crime
Riddle Us This... (Jim Zemlin and Bill Gates)
Do these people even understand the literal meaning of "safe space"?
Is "Nobel Prize for Peace" a Sick Person's 'Code Word' for Gangbanging Now? Ask Bill Gates.
Watch all the Gates apologists getting all silenced/silent
BBC Gaslights Women Sexually Exploited (Many Under Legal Age) for Its Rich Sponsor, Bill Epsteingate (Gates)
Is this a national broadcaster or a propaganda tool "For Rent"?
Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' Reportedly About to Become Bankrupt, Seeking Emergency Cash Infusion (Loans)
the money promised to Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' failed to arrive
Gemini Links 31/01/2026: Deep Ice and Slide Rules
Links for the day
Writing About Abuse
Never ever allow misogynists to get their way if you strive to live in a decent society
MIT DEDP MicroMasters online learner's blog post about cover-up linked to resignation of Swiss financial regulator
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Salary Erosion Procedure (SAP) as the Primary Reason for EPO Strikes
They focus on financials, as the corruption aspects are un-sayable or unspeakable, except in private
IBM Bluewashing: Feels Like IBM is Scuttling Neudesic (and Some of Red Hat)
We recently saw some Red Hat staff joining a Microsoft proxy
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 30, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, January 30, 2026
Microsoft Stock Collapsing Due to the Slop Bubble and Microsoft is Hiding Budget 'Black Holes'
Microsoft does not perform like it tells "the media" and "the market"