Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 06/06/2023: OpenKuBSD, GrapheneOS, and More



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Duolingo Progress

        Finished the first section in my Irish course on Duolingo. I'm still woeful, but I can read a bit of Irish. To a lesser extent, understand it when spoken. I'm a long ways from being able to read stuff outside the application, but, I'm getting there? It feels like progress, and it feels good to make progress on something which, if I'm being honest, is kind of a useless goal. Would it be better for my career to grind the rust off my French? Absolutely. Am I doing something else instead? Absolutely. I can talk about owls and beer (ulchabhan agus beoir). Say "I like Irish" (Is maith leom an Gaeilge). Important things.

      • Tanana River Trail Photos 2023-06-06 (Fairbanks, AK, USA)

        I took these photos yesterday during my lunch-break walk.

      • The Laundry Asymmetry

        When preparing for a longish trip I packed six sets of socks, underwear and t-shirts, so I could do the laundry weekly (six plus the clothes I was wearing). Sadly, I miscalculated.

      • Going to the Psycho Ward

        A married man with children goes and visits his wife's family. He tells the people there about the trip in the south of the country to which he goes by his car in the morning. Old Gruffandgrim*, his father in law, reminds him that he needs to work so he can make a living and have enough money for his trips.

      • Dory progress and Misfin thoughts

        I guess I'd call this a milestone achieved. I've successfully sent a couple of Misfin messages to the reference server with a small binary that uses Dory under the hood. Getting there was a little more difficult than I expected, as these things often go.

      • Taking the Measure of the Place

        A weary and dusty traveler shuffles into the bar, slips a business card back into his jacket pocket, and takes a look around to get the measure of the place. A motley crew of vagabonds, salesmen, entertainers, writers, and freethinkers fill the Midnight, chatting in small groups over lukewarm beer. Among the various patrons of the bar, one particularly odd creature stands out, balancing upright on long tentacles with constantly moving eyestalks scanning the scene.

      • Contextual Pizza

        I've been finally losing weight after years of simply refusing to deal with the problem. It was nothing too terrible--just an extra 40 pounds and change, but it definitely made itself felt in my feet and knees when running or doing tai chi. After about 4 months I'm finally getting close to the target weight I set, which upon reaching I promised myself a single piece of pizza. I shouldn't have done that.

        [...]

        Conflating the symbolic representation with the actual is fraught in so many unexpected ways.

    • Technical

      • OpenKuBSD design document

        I got an idea today (while taking a shower...) about _partially_ reusing Qubes OS design of using VMs to separate contexts and programs, but doing so on OpenBSD.

        To make explanations CLEAR, I won't reimplement Qubes OS entirely on OpenBSD. Qubes OS is an interesting operating system with a very strong focus on security (from a very practical point of view ), but it's in my opinion overkill for most users, and hence not always practical or usable.

        In the meantime, I think the core design could be reused and made it easy for users, like we are used to do in OpenBSD.

      • Pixel 7a & GrapheneOS

        I'm testing a phone for work, and it's an Android, which is new to me. I swapped the OS for GrapheneOS, which is a security-focused minimalist Android distribution, and the phone hardware is a Pixel 7a. Here's how someone fairly familiar with iPhones views a current-generation Android phone as their daily driver...

      • New order in /dev/pts

        Previously, I had one global session of terminal multiplexer, and that was where everything lived -- plain text accounting, news, blogging, different personal and $dayjob projects. Since you can have only so much tabs before it turns into complete mess, context switching meant closing them all and opening ones relevant to task at hand.

        [...]

        Actually, it is even more than that. Ever saw "normies" to struggling to put two browser windows side-by-side? Well, I can't do any better on their soil. But I can use tiling window managers, and they don't. The same satisfying feeling. I found my highground.

      • Striking mods

        First Reddit, now Stack Overflow; moderators are fed up with the admins of the sites they dedicate their labor to. Unpaid labor, to be exact. After decades of witnessing social media platforms rise and "fall" – some underwent a significant revamp and shrank to a healthy size, others shut down permanently, few just became plain irrelevant to former users, yet still exist – and how people react to such things, the latter in particular has become ridiculously predictable, for the sole reason that too many people merely decide to be vocal, rather than vote with their feet in a quiet manner.

      • The Search For An OSR System

        NOTE: I started writing this around New Years not long before the whole WotC OGL situation got started. I was holding off on publishing it because I wanted to find a happier ending to send it off with. The longer I wait, the more certain parts are going to make less sense, so I'm going to get it out faster.

      • Programming

        • The Urge

          One of the unhelpful things that I commonly experience when I read things about software (and very occasionally other things, but usually software) is the urge to make my own version of whatever the thing is.

        • things i wanna do (in no order)

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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Free Speech Around the World is Curtailed in the Name of "Protecting Us"
We have spent many years speaking about how to combat this trend
Recent Site Changes and Looking Towards 2026
In November 2026 we turn 20
Mozilla Firefox is Probably Already Below 2% in the UK (United Kingdom)
LibreWolf identifies as "Firefox" by default
When You Don't Want to Tinker Much You Just Use GNU/Linux, Not Windows
With GNU/Linux upgrades are possible and, failing that, one can just back up the home directory and copy it "back into" the new OS
Coming Soon, the Next Chapter About the Crisis of the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
We're far from done
Expect GNU/Linux to Rise Sharply in China
But Red China won't trust Red Hat (IBM), which works for the Pentagon and keeps the "secret sauce" for its OS secret (just what Americans accused China of doing with its distros)
 
Links 17/03/2025: "Badly Misled About Covid" and "Gag of America"
Links for the day
The Lie or Half-Truth of Clownflare (or Equivalents) Improving Things
It may seem "cheap" (temporarily) and "fast", but that's just bait
Enshittification of Online Media
Now more than ever we must fight for independent press
War Readiness Means Removing Every Windows Installation and CALEA-Compliant Equipment
Finland is vulnerable for a whole bunch of reasons
Reporting Facts is Not a Privacy Violation
Techrights has long valued and defended privacy
In the Russian Federation (Russia), Microsoft Isn't Even the 1%
the government builds "homegrown" (not pertinent parts of them) distros with which to replace Microsoft, not just Windows
Gemini Links 17/03/2025: "Hack the Planet", Klingnauer Stausee, and Enshittification
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 16, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 16, 2025
Slow News Cycles Are Part of a Trend, Technology Gravitating Towards Rich People's Interests
This issue isn't limited to the Web
Facebook REALLY, REALLY, R E A L L Y Does Not Want You to Read This Book
It would be a CRIME to read it
Illuminating Microsoft's Code of Conduct (CoC) Hypocrisy
Oppressor victimhood? Leadership claimed by the worst offenders?
Planet Ubuntu - or Ubuntu Planet - Has an LLM Slop Problem (Called Faizul "Piju" 9M2PJU)
Does investigative reporting have any future at all?
Links 16/03/2025: Handwriting Comeback and "MElon’s Attack on U.S.A.I.D."
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/03/2025: "Differences Distance" and "Dopamine-addicted Pigeon"
Links for the day
Links 16/03/2025: American Press Under Attack, "France Offers to Take in US Scientists"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/03/2025: Threats to Canada and How to Process News Online
Links for the day
Links 16/03/2025: Growing Tariff Hostilities and Social Media Surveillance
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 15, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 15, 2025
Gemini Links 15/03/2025: Sleeping in March, Headless Raspberry Pi 4
Links for the day
Links 15/03/2025: Hey Hi (AI) Hype Waning, Microsoft and Apple Ridiculed for Vapourware
Links for the day
Many Reports About Microsoft Layoffs Are LLM Slop Based on Other LLM Slop (From Microsoft-controlled LLMs That Downplay the Layoffs or Give Badly Outdated Data)
The LLM slopfarms also dilute/derank actual news about Linux by pushing Microsoft Azure instead; it's a spamfest!
When You Expose Corporate Crimes, Misconduct and Lies They Harasses and Troll You. Then You Write About the Harassment and Trolling and They Allege It's "All Personal".
protect women's safety
Gemini Links 15/03/2025: Bandcamp and DST
Links for the day
Links 15/03/2025: Albania TikTok Ban, No Skinnerboxes in Danish Schools
Links for the day
Sierra Leone: Android Up to Record Highs, Windows Falls to Record Lows of Almost 5% (15 Years Ago It Was 100%)
This is what happens when about 83% of Web requests come from mobile
Margarita Manterola (marga, Google) & Debian DebConf13 Swiss venue intrigue
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 14, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, March 14, 2025