Leftovers

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Intentions

        I wanted to just lay out some of my intentions for this capsule, or perhaps more of a wishlist for myself.

        I want to document some projects I'm working on, as well as externalize some thoughts around technology and community.

    • Politics and World Events

      • An ageless political joke

        When I was a child, I remember reading a book of dark humor. It was a somewhat outdated book already.

        "A man stood in the middle of Red Square in Moscow and shouted, 'Nikita Khrushchev is an idiot! Nikita Khrushchev is an idiot!"

        "He was arrested and brought before the court. The judge sentenced him to one year in a labor camp for insulting the General Secretary of the CPSU, and 50 years for leaking a classified state secret."

        A political joke like this is ageless; just change the names and a few details, and it is still relevant.

        "A man stood in the middle of Tian'anmen Square in Beijing and shouted, 'Xi Jinping is an idiot!..."

        "A man stood in the middle of Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang and shouted, 'Kim Jong Un is an idiot!..."

        "A man stood in the middle of Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., and shouted, 'Donald Trump is an idiot!..."

        "A man stood in the middle of Red Square in Moscow and shouted, 'Vladimir Putin is an idiot!..."

    • Technology and Free Software

      • When desktop publishing felt like wizardry

        I've been thinking about the computers I've used for writing over the years, and remembering one in particular.

        In about 1988, I persuaded the small non-profit organisation I worked for to buy an Atari 1040ST.

        I was already something of an Atari evangelist. At home I'd replaced my Sinclair QL with an Atari 520ST, and had become convinced that this was the future. Our office computers were Amstrads running CP/M, so we weren't particularly tied into the IBM/Microsoft world. Apple Macs existed, of course, and were obviously rather wonderful, but for an organisation like ours a Mac desktop publishing system seemed impossibly expensive.

        The Atari offered another way in. Not cheap, by any means. But within the realms of possibility.

      • The CSA Opens Certification for Suzi, Zigbee's Sub-Gigahertz Mesh IoT Sibling

        The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) has announced the opening of product certification for Suzi, the sub-gigahertz (sub-GHz) extension to the Zigbee wireless Internet of Things (IoT) communications standard.

        "This milestone marks a significant step forward in enabling the industry to bring standardized long-range, low-power, and interoperable IoT products to market, backed by the trusted Zigbee ecosystem," a CSA spokesperson says of the certification program's opening. "Zigbee has long been the foundation of reliable, secure, and low-power mesh networking. With the addition of Suzi, the technology evolves into a platform designed for larger, more complex, and more demanding IoT deployments."