Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 10/05/2023: Gopher Sites and Proportional Fonts



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Tea and Biscuits - Thank You, Sergio Busquets

        Today I got the news that a Football Club Barcelona Legend is retiring after this season. One always want your legends to play forever, because it is such a joy see them work. Sergio played in a very thankless position, but a crucial one, CDM - Central Defensive Midfielder. This position is the engine of the midfield for Barcelona, he protects the Center Backs from counter attacks and are always on the lookout to get a toe in somewhere to disrupt the flow of the opposition's passing. But what Sergio did best was his positioning and his passing. He passes the ball to where he wants his players to be. So he dictates the shape of the formation and where attacks essentially comes from. He makes the pass before the assist pass is made to the goal scorer. It's not flashy at all, but is crucial to the success of the team.

      • More Rhubarb Sprout Photos 2023-05-10 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

        The rhubarb has continued to grow since my photos a few days ago, so here are some new ones. The complex folding is fascinating to look at.

    • Politics

      • Two Energy Crises

        The Western world seems to have two energy crises occurring simultaneously.

        One is the obvious crisis we all know: our over-reliance on fossil fuels and the issues it causes. Fossils fuels, while efficient, are finite and create pollution. While renewable sources of energy are important to offset the issues of traditional energy, they still rely on rare-earth minerals and energy-intensive production methods to build out at scale. We also use energy wastefully and recklessly, further exacerbating environmental problems.

    • Technical

      • Dabbling with Misfin

        The implementations (surprise!) did not interoperate, which was fun. Also divergent readings of the specification have already turned up. Whose fingerprint are we sending back to the client, again?

        Probably a test suite would help here. Probably I need to unrustify my SSL session debugging skills.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Email and a Few Gopher Sites

          I received a nice email from Matto [0] last week, which I greatly appreciated. He came across my phlog visiting the gopher.viste.fr random gopher site list generator [1], which is a great distraction when you have some time to kill. Matto's own gopher site is full of interesting tutorials and commentary on life at the text console.

          Hear, hear for Old Debian! I came across Wirefull's gopher hole [2] where one can see "Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 'etch' sparc64". Nothing beats the simplicity and stability of old Debian, and it's perfect for running a gopher server.

      • Programming

        • Proportional fonts for coding? No thank you

          There's some back and forth in the Gemini [1] community about coding with a proportional font [2]. You can pry my monospace font from my cold dead hands.

          I've been coding for nearly 40 years now, and it's always been some form of a monospace font, some pretty, like the character set for VGA (Video Graphics Array) on IBM (International Business Machine) PC (Personal Computer)s, and some not to pretty, like the character set on the TRS (Tandy-Radio Shack)-80 Color Computer. Code in a proportional font just looks weird to me.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

The Register Bill
The Register MS - putting the "MS" in your centre of the universe
Analogies for "Memory Safety" in Rust
Don't worry, it's Rust! It can do anything!
 
Links 07/09/2025: Yle Impersonated in Social Control Media, Boat-Attacking Orcas, Midjourney Sued Again
Links for the day
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Linux Journal, and the Serial Slopper
Google won't tackle the issue because Google participates not only in relaying slop but also in generating lots of it
Links 07/09/2025: Google Fines in EU and "Your Internet Access Is at Risk"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/09/2025: Little Brother and Corporate Theatre
Links for the day
Links 07/09/2025: More Harms of Slop and Anthropic's Nightmare Scenario (Huge Legal Liabilities for Slop)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 06, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, September 06, 2025
Microsoft Sites Now Talking About September's Mass Layoffs at Microsoft
It's noteworthy that even Microsoft's MSN now covers the latest revelations about mass layoffs
Gemini Links 06/09/2025: SpellBinding Moving and "The Cloud" Ridiculed
Links for the day
Slopwatch: On "the Apology Industry", Chatbots (Punchbag for Customers), and Fake Articles About "Linux"
"news reporting priorities changed"
Links 06/09/2025: "Covid Incidence on the Rise" and Many Attacks on the Press Worldwide
Links for the day
Nobody Denies That SecureBoot Will Cause Problems After September 11
Not even Microsoft
Gemini Links 06/09/2025: Infinite Scrolling and Posting from Emacs
Links for the day
Links 06/09/2025: GitHub Meltdown Over Slop, "U.S. Jury Says Google Should Pay $425 Million in Privacy Lawsuit"
Links for the day
Despite Its Severe Financial Problems Gnome Foundation Inc Paid Rosanna Yuen Over 100,000 Dollars Last Year
maybe relocation should be considered
The "Left" and the Right"
It poisons everything
Mozilla and Rust Are Not Leftists
they're part of the mass consumerism machine
Disposable to Microsoft
There is an extensive set of people who got used by Microsoft, only to be thrown away a month later or a year later or a decade later
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VII - This Coming Week Many PCs Will Refuse to Boot "Linux" (Because of Microsoft's Expired Certificate)
The real solution is, disable "secure boot" or "SecureBoot" while it's still possible. [...] Just like submarine patents, a lot of this problem was "hibernating" for a while
The Thing Nobody in Red Hat Wants to Talk About Openly
There is a real sentiment or worry among Red Hatters, Europeans and Americans in particulars (because of higher salary expectations)
Slopwatch: Small Parade of Fake News About "Linux" and Scams Borrowing the Name (or Word) "Linux"
In practice, LLMs are a risk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 05, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, September 05, 2025
Genini Links 05/09/2025: Community, ROOPHLOCH, and PITkit
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Vaccine Sceptics Poison the Well, Two Exploited Vulnerabilities Patched in Android
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/09/2025: Logitech Lift and DIY Gemini Servers
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Sainsbury's Caught Spying on In-Store Shoppers and Microsoft "OpenAI is Using Legal Threats to Harass its Critics"
Links for the day
BASIC Predates Microsoft by Over a Decade, Microsoft-Controlled Sites Like The Register MS Don't Want You to Know This
The state of the media is really bad when it relies a lot on oligarchs' money and is appointing editors who are working for oligarchs
Brian Kernighan, "Only Third to Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson" (UNIX), Agreed With Someone Who Said Rust Was Just Hype, Should Not Replace C
17 hours ago
Reminder: Microsoft's "Secure Boot" Certificate for "Linux" Will be Expired in One Week
Many PCs won't manage to 'rotate' to another certificate
"Many of the Red Hat Employees Are Still Looking for Work"
Shame on IBM's CEO
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 04, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 04, 2025
Microsoft Started With Code Literally From The Trash, Nothing Has Improved Since
The reality is, there are systems and code that are reliable. But they're not Microsoft's.
Hypothesis That New McKinsey/Microsoft Executive Inside Red Hat Will Outsource Research and Development Operations to India (Like They Do in IBM)
IBM is floundering
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place