Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 17/09/2023: The Rehearsal and AuraGem Music Bugfix



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • In Which I Finally Meet Spaghetti Pete

        For years we've been hearing about one of our friends' infamous former roommate. They became roommates, the story goes, when our friend answered a classified ad for a roommate that ended, "must like beer." He responded back with, "Hey, I'm looking for a place to live, and I like to drink beer." And this is how he became roommates with the guy that became known as Spaghetti Pete.

        Spaghetti Pete is the sort of guy who likes to have a good time: when he's not working, he's either at a party, or throwing a party. You'll always be offered a beer. And every now and then Spaghetti Pete gets ideas about something that sounds like fun.

      • where's bartender

        I've ordered a tea 6 months ago and still didn't get it. Have you seen ~bartender recently? Is he doing okay? If he's on a vacation, then we need to urgently find a replacement. What kind of pub is it without the most important person, without whom people cannot get drunk?

      • TV Showcase: The Rehearsal

        The “mockumentary” has held a place in my heart since “Borat” (2006).

        A mockumentary is a humorous production in the style of a documentary; “real life” participants interact with, usually, a very smart comedian playing a character.

        As a format it goes places nobody else can go, gently—or sometimes not so gently—poking fun at life with deadpan humour that I find immensely entertaining.

        More recently the UK series “Cunk on Earth” took a few episodes for me to get into, but left me convinced that the production is a work of genius. It’s worth watching the whole thing just for one scene about nuclear weapons—and ABBA.

    • Politics and World Events

      • Beangate

        The trick here is to make something old sound like a modern political scandal. Anyways, the foundation of modern Western mathematics is (or was) wrapped up with a number of, uh, strange views. The rational mind may put these rules down as "woo" or "humbug", but here we are. Here's a sample.

    • Science

      • stream 5

        i think there is something important even though it seems like there's not. it seems like everything is either important or unimportant, but if everything is equally important, then it also feels like every thing must be unimportant. I think there is a lot of beauty in the subtlety of sometimes adding line breaks and capital letters at interesting times and places to tweets and like that things. I think it matters to every character. every char. characters as people as letters and numbers and symbols inside of strings. what beauty what love what mystery is encoded in the strings of us our DNA or our actions logged in coordinate maps through all time through all places.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Ennui Institute

        I've been thinking about smol.pub all day so figured I'd give it a go. "For the price of a cup of coffee," and cetera. I've spent the bulk of my life, adult and otherwise, On Line and sweet peaches does it suck for the most part these days, a few small circles of community notwithstanding (1). I'm enamored with the idea of a simple posting platform, and have experimented a little bit with markdown-generated static sites (2) for accessible text-first tabletop role play adventure writing, which I've enjoyed, but I want to go simpler. This dovetails with a vague plan to Raspberry Pi Zero myself a markdown editor hobby PC, one which should really sputter under modern web conditions by design.

      • ChatGPT Writing Gamebooks and Pangamebook 1.6.0

        The new algorithm for shuffling gamebooks that I implemented yesterday caused all sorts of bugs in Pangamebook. It also revealed one or two old bugs I just had not noticed before.

      • Kvetching - Tech - The Machine Stops

        Once a month or three I do Fediverse. Tried to-day. Within 7 minutes, I was physically ill, my gut contorted, my shoulders tense. And this, not from reading bad news or uncouth disagreement. No, sick just from the biotic effect of the technology, even with pleasant pictures of pixelated kittens and amiable company. Within 20, I was writing irate re-replies to autie reply guys. 25 minutes later, I shut it all down with a sigh of relief.

      • Nothing much ...

        ... to say today. It's been a great weekend after a couple of quite crunchy weeks, but now I'm staring down the barrel of another few weeks of serious knuckle-down. All good, can't complain, I love my job! But I'm looking forward to things easing off a bit at some point.

        In the spirit of directionless rambling, I noticed just this afternoon that I'd received an email from the FSF advertising the upcoming 40th birthday of the GNU project. Amazing that it's been that long! Amazing also, that one of the two events they're hosting will be in Switzerland, and just a bit over an hour's train journey from where I live. There's even to be an RMS keynote!

      • Internet/Gemini

        • AuraGem Music Bugfix

          The bandwidth throttling of music files was on a global basis by accident, which meant that it was throttling bandwidth for the sum of the bandwidth of all connections. Now bandwidth throttling happens per connection, which means there can be concurrent connections of 320 kbps streams running.

        • Language log no word for x archive

          A list of articles documenting claims that some language has some amount of words for some concept.

        • slow updates

          I’ve been thinking it’s painful to update the main page and I’m pretty slow to push updates. I’m imagining I can solve this with a new tag, that when present, will automatically get added to the index and I can grab all the files that match this year. Or maybe the last N posts… I’ll try for the current year to begin with.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Many IBM Layoffs, Centred Around Expert Labs US in Atlanta (Offer of "Relocation" Where No Such Option Exists)
So Techrights was assessing comments/gossip online and it was right about the Thursday cull
Richard Stallman's Next Public Talk is in Milan, Italy Next Week
Happy hacking
Why We'll Continue Covering EPO Abuses (Other Patent Offices as Well, as the Need Arises) for Many Years to Come
We're basically becoming Russia
These Feet Are Made for Walking
Humans are apparently so very clever that they decided to form a "progressive" consensus: feet no more
OFTC Has Just Culled About a Third of Its Online Users
It's not the first time they purge or force offline many people/bots
Central Staff Committee of the EPO Opposes Abuses Against EPO Staff, Challenging SuccessFactors Stunts
Europe became institutionally colonised
 
Gemini Links 23/05/2025: Balkan Tourism, UK Polls, Reticulum and Meshtastic
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 22, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 22, 2025
Back to Basics, Folks, "AI" (Plagiarism) is Symptom of a Dying Industry Looking for Whatever Prey It Can Devour
lousy/sloppy imitations
Liam Proven's Thoughts on "AI" Being a Scam No Different From Religions, Alternative Medicine, and More
"Is there anywhere outside of retrocomputing that doesn't have AI in it?"
Slopwatch: Slopfarms That 'Hallucinate' (Yield Falsehoods) Cited as Credible Sources and Microsoft Media Gaslighting Everybody
Part of the problem is, Google News
More Media Coverage and Photos From Richard Stallman's Presentation in Liberec (Czech Republic)
Here are some photos
The Microsofter Who Kept Sending Threatening Post and E-mail to My Wife Has Been Spooking Women for at Least Two Decades
censorship was the ultimate goal
Links 22/05/2025: Openwashing, Dumping Microsoft's Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub), and New Climate Disasters
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/05/2025: Crimson Pro Font and CGI in Bash
Links for the day
IBM Goes to India, Fires People in the United States (Under the Guise of "Relocation" or Similar), Accusation of Bribery in the Company
LLM slop sites (some are pure slopfarms) from India say the IBM layoffs result in hiring "AI" (the "I" stands for India)
Links 22/05/2025: TikTok Laying Off Again, Microsoft-Backed Builder.ai Set for Bankruptcy, Scam Altman Uses 'Funny Money' to 'Buy' (Hire) Company
Links for the day
We Seem to Have Abandoned Science and Replaced Sound Policy With Private Patent Shareholders and College Dropouts Like Bill Espteingate
Because of what they did there are now many people out there who reject all vaccines
The Evolution of Microsoft's War on GNU/Linux
13 sins
My New Desk Arrangement (and More Breaks From the Keyboard)
all in all yesterday I devoted 4-5 hours to redoing and shuffling stuff
Gemini Links 22/05/2025: "Conspirituality" and Visiting One's Old University
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 21, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Bigots and Lunatics Who Attack Microsoft Critics, Projecting Their Own Bigotry by Accusing Others of Imaginary Things (Which They're Innocent Of)
"In psychology, projection refers to assigning your negative traits or unwanted emotions to others without being aware you’re doing it."
"The Appeals Committee [at the EPO] Unanimously Stated a Formal Flaw in the Consultation of the General Consultative Committee (GCC) on the Reform"
It's a truly horrifying situation
Microsoft Killed the Term "Open Source" (by Bribing/Taking Over OSI, 'Linux' Foundation Etc.) and Now It Needs to Kill the Brand Linux (Because Windows Just Won't Run!)
Why else would Microsoft falsely describe Windows as "Linux" and "Open Source"?
Slopwatch: Liars for Microsoft, Plagiarism, and IBM Red Hat Markets Slop as "AI"
Today was a bad day news-wise
Links 21/05/2025: Climate Problems and Ceasefires No Longer Foreseen
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/05/2025: "Shrimps of Doom" and "ASCII-graphs"
Links for the day
Links 21/05/2025: GitHub Becoming Slop, MElon as a Drug Addict Considered National Security Risk
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Slopfarms 'Think' Redis is "Linux" (RedisRaider)
Today we'll keep it short and to the point again
IBM Has Allegedly Just Sacked Mr. McKinsey (McK), Clay Cowan, Its Fourth CMO in a Few Years
To insiders he represented the company that's killing IBM or advising IBM on how to self-destruct
Gemini Links 21/05/2025: Trips, 4D Golf, and Writing Software
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 20, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 20, 2025