Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 14/06/2023: Flatpak’s Sandboxing Works and Social Web



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • 🔤SpellBinding: AILQYUT Wordo: CHURN
      • Random Japan Thoughts

        1. A cultural difference that I notice is that it would appear Japanese people have a much better sense of their place within a larger whole than Americans do. We are so obsessed with individuality and uniqueness that we miss the value of our place in the whole. Thusly, we often lack pride in the larger things we are a part of, like our country, culture, home.

    • Science

      • Mad movement on main

        I've been thinking lately that I need to be more vocal about my feelings on the mad movement/mad pride and my criticisms of psych as a field.

        I'm always frustrated by how controversial it seems to be to point out that a lot of psych is still pseudo-science, systems of control and bigotry dressed up in p-hacking and wishful thinking.

        I don't know.

        I feel like I often get treated like I'm anti-science when I say these things but I'm not. I just think there's a lot in the past century of history that's flawed and needs to be rebuilt off of different foundations. This doesn't seem controversial to me. I've worked in sciences like physics that are full of reinventions and massive re-understandings of the field, and that's about comparatively simple systems to---say---a living thing.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • [Older] Invidious: Make Youtube cool again

        I have a complicated relationship with Youtube like, I imagine, a lot of people. While I really dislike everything that Google is doing with the platform and their idiotic algorithm, there are tons of exceptionnaly good content on the platform.

      • Working From Alone

        Before the pandemic I did what everyone else did: I came into the office five days a week only to mostly spend most of my time at a computer, with headphones on to block out the noise; we would talk at lunch. For a while we played Switch games together once a week.

        I even worked with a team based in another country, for well over a year, from the office. I would come in every day to my desk in an open plan office full of people working on entirely unrelated projects. It simply didn’t occur to me that it would make more sense to work from home.

        [...]

        Then everything changed. We had to work from home. I got lucky, very lucky: we had just moved from a just-big-enough apartment to a house with room for an “office”. So, I got my new working space—in the basement, but with a pretty nice window.

        [...]

        I love being able to focus on my work: to put on music, if I want; or not, if I want; to dance or do push-ups or sit for a while if it gets to be too much.

        There’s a trend back towards working in offices, or at least there seems to be a push for it coming from somewhere.

        That’s fine for some, I guess. I have discovered what I like, and it’s working from home; to be alone with my thoughts then to step outside my office and be with my family. Bliss.

      • Flatpak's Sandboxing Works

        Flatpak is an alternate distribution method for Linux. By default, programs are sandboxed from the rest of the system.

        An often made statement by critics of Flatpak is the insistence that this isn't real security, because a package maintainer can change its security settings to poke holes in the sandbox. (This is allowed because some software relies on it for functionality.)

        Recently, malware was released through Minecraft mods on CurseForge, and possibly other modding platforms. It was a wide attack that ended up causing several mods and modpacks to be affected. Installing and running any of the mods causes the system to be infected.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Social Web

          I'm sat in the garden today. It's very warm; breezy too, but the breezy just brings a slightly different kind of warmth. We have a weather warning for thunderstorms later, so we'll see what that brings.

          I'm encouraged at the moment by the social web and the fediverse. There's a growing understanding that the fabric of our online lives can't be run in a VC-backed, for-profit manner.

        • More Social Media

          I've really been enjoying Mastodon. Compared to other social media, there is undoubtedly more of an initial effort to be made in uncovering interesting people to follow. I've been dropping into a few other instances to find those interesting people; FOSS and gamedev related. I guess it'll take a while to understand and refine the process, but it's fun to follow the chain of people and topics ever-deeper.

          [...]

          I've also been liberally using the block button, mainly on bot feeds which are just polluting the water with low-effort RSS spam.

        • Back in the saddle?

          It was fairly easy a transition: except for the part where I could access my capsule for about three minutes, but *too* soon couldn't again for over half an hour, making me wonder if I'd completely wasted my time, and possible others' time for having announced my new capsule address. Egg is never far from one's face online....

        • New setup for the web

          New setup! When visiting the site from the web, you’re no longer being redirected to port 1966. Instead, Apache now acts as a reverse proxy.

          The following config requests new certificates from Let’s Encrypt automatically thanks to mod_md.

          HTTP requests are redirect to HTTPS. HTTPS requests for “/.well-known” URLs are left untouched for the Let’s Encrypt renewal to work. All other HTTPS requests are proxied to the old port 1966.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

When Energy Prices Double in About a Month the Slop Bros Won't Sleep at Night
Unhinged leadership does not seem eager to end a conflict that it started
Newer is Not Better, Lunar Edition
Maybe in 57 years (2083, after all these wars) we'll managed to launch a capsule with a human and a dog above the stratosphere again
 
American Back Doors No Longer Trusted by Europeans
Has the EU paid attention, for a change?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 37 Out of 200: The Correct Suspicion Garrett and Graveley Were Collaborating in Overseas Litigation Against Critics
Microsofters and back doors' boosters from America frivolously sue Brits
Microsoft Has Lost Nearly 20% in "Desktop Operating System Market Share" Since COVID-19 Began
Add Android and iOS, then Windows falls to 24%
Maintenance Later This Month
Apr 24, 2026 21:00 - Apr 25, 2026 09:00 BST
Microsoft: Move Over, XBox, Slop is the New "Entertainment" and We Demote Our "Entertainment" CEO
Marketers, marketers, marketers, as a CEO called Ballmer put it
linuxbuz.com is a Slopfarm, It Depends on LLMs
In the more distant past it could be said that linuxbuz.com was an OK site
Links 07/04/2026: Patent Trolls Leigh M. Rothschild, Bolstered by GNOME and OIN, Continues to Attack; ‘Retaliatory Antitrust Suit’ by MElon
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/04/2026: Copyleft Revisited, Killing Linux Processes With FZF
Links for the day
It Would be Good for Debian to Have a Female DPL, But...
Debian isn't exactly selecting people for quality or policing bad behaviour
IBM Insiders Say What's Wrong With IBM in Albany (and Yes, There Are Layoffs)
promotions boil down to what insiders now call "brown-nosing" and nepotism
After Killing OpenSource.org IBM Together With OSI Told Us It Would Carry on OpenSource.net, But the Site Has Been Essentially Dead for 9 Months (Effectively Abandoned)
OpenSource.org has been dormant for 4 weeks already and OpenSource.net last had a new page 9 months ago (it'll be 9 months tomorrow) [...] That's IBM in a nutshell
A Lot of What Happened to OSI is Because of Reporting by Techrights
Half a year since Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) "left"
Public Presentations by RMS Hardly Interrupted Anymore
We'll carry on covering those sorts of topics throughout the year
Links 07/04/2026: US Wants to Put Journalists in Prison for Reporting Facts, Artist ‘Bale’ Arrested Over Rape Allegation in Social Control Media
Links for the day
To IBMers, IBM Has Failed and is Fast Becoming a Book of Jokes and One-Word Punchlines
How else can one make it obvious that IBM is circling down the drain?
"AI Revolution" Was a Lie: Microsoft CEO Admits What He Calls "AI" is Sometimes Sloppy and Microsoft Admits That Slop is for "Entertainment Purposes Only" (Not for Any Serious Work)
if it gets "memory-holed", we can bring it up again and again
Social Control Media is Not a Viable Business Model
The future of the Web might not be the Web
From Datacentres Boom to Actual Booms That Target Datacentres, Now Struggling to Justify Humongous Energy and Water Consumption
Datacentres that are used for mindless "entertainment" (as Microsoft calls it) like slop are not a priority at this time
Gemini Links 07/04/2026: Aircraft Lift Force, Editor History, and Consumer Hardware Stagnation
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 06, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, April 06, 2026
What Matters is Software Freedom, Not the Brands
The important thing is to speak about Software Freedom
Wikileaks is About to Turn 20
~2 days ago it turned 19.5
The Cloud of Smoke
Will 2026 be the year that "The Cloud" openly confesses the risks it brings about?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 36 Out of 200: Claim KB-2024-003529 in a Nutshell (Microsoft Employee Does Terrible Things, Then Sues the Reporter in Another Continent)
It commences with more of an overview
Gemini Links 06/04/2026: Solar Panel Story and Centralisation
Links for the day
"Free Speech, Free Press": What the World Needs to Improve
Darkness breeds corruption
IBM prioritises a "lot of smoke and hype and use of trending buzzwords"
IBM can pretend all it wants things are fine
GAFAM Paying the Price for Pursuing US Military Money (Taxpayers' Money as 'Stimulus' With Strings Attached)
The "cloud" in cloud computing is a cloud of smoke
Observing Slop's Demise
If energy becomes more scarce, then one rare/side perk (or upside) will be slop companies screaming for lifeboats
Links 06/04/2026: Crackers Breached the European Commission, Why "Old Way of Campaigning Won’t Cut It Anymore"
Links for the day
Enron Versus NVIDIA (the Cost of Circular Financing, or Funding Your Own Customers to Buy Your Products) - “The Inventory Paradox” or “The Vibe Revenue Admission”
Round-tripping (finance)
You Know "The Economy" is Fake When 6 Months After Oracle Says Debt-Saddled 'Open' 'AI' (Slop) Will Pay It $300,000,000,000 Oracle Says It Must Lay Off 30,000 Workers at 6AM
Oracle is in deep debt, which increased at a pace of almost 4 billion dollars per month lately
Free Software Will Outlive GAFAM
GAFAM is overhyped
Techrights Was Further Decentralised Three Years Ago
In 2020 we began working on IPFS stuff
The Military Attacks on Dubai Internet City as Reminder That GAFAM Isn't Safe (Disregard the "Nobody Gets Fired for Buying GAFAM" Mindset)
These are all realistic and foreseeable scenarios that GAFAM sceptics have long warned about
The Wars Aren't Ending, Now We See GAFAM Facilities Being Bombed
This is becoming a tech issue
Links 06/04/2026: Turning 34, Throwing Things Away, and Printing in GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Links 06/04/2026: Ex-Microsoft Engineer Explains Why Azure Fails, Germany Prepares for War
Links for the day
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XI - EPO Strike Enters Its Second Week, EPO Sheds Off Qualified Staff to Make Way for Nepotists
More than six months ago the "Cocaine Communication Manager" got arrested for cocaine use
Another Microsoft Outlook Downtime
Microsoft has sloppy code, it's not something suitable for mission-critical things
Week 2 of April IBM Layoffs Accelerate Based on Rumours
"Heard about Layoff at IBM"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 05, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, April 05, 2026
Culture of Harassment Inside Microsoft, Says Former Director at Microsoft
listen to Microsoft insiders
Drone Strikes on Amazon (GAFAM) Datacentres Highlight Azure's Miniscule Share
Azure is failing
SLAPP Censorship - Part 35 Out of 200: How to Make ~10,000 Pound Sterling (13,220.50 United States Dollars) by Copy-Pasting and Editing 10 Pages
Today it's Easter Sunday, so we'll keep this part relatively short
Gemini Links 05/04/2026: Artemis II Mission Tracker, Meditation on Copyright, Alhena 5.5.5, "Gemini as the Final Frontier of Human Cognition"
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Low of ~60% in Switzerland, GNU/Linux Among Top Gainers
What will it take for mainstream media (not just geeks' site) to cover it?
Mainstream Media on "Practical Survivalism"
Suffice to say, panic buying begets more panic and price surges
Cloud Computing as a Cloud of Smoke (Your Hosting Provider is a "Legitimate" Military Target)
When a French datacentre went up in flames people joked that the "cloud" meant a cloud of smoke
Andreas Tille Congratulates Sruthi Chandran Before the Election for Debian Project Leader (DPL) is Even Over
Andreas Tille, the current Debian Project Leader (DPL) who has been in this role for nearly 24 months
When You Try to Change the World for the Better and Somehow They Find a Way to Say You Are the Villain
Don't be a fool. Don't fall for inversions of narratives.
Slop Was a Flop and Energy Crisis Will be Slop's Final Blow
Today we see no slopfarms in Google News
Links 05/04/2026: "Taiwanese Airlines to Hike Fuel Surcharges 157%" and Openly Racist Voter Suppression Starts in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/04/2026: Playing with Hyprland and Migrating Antenna Filters
Links for the day
Links 05/04/2026: "Confidential Computing" as Proprietary Bundle of False Promises and "The Web Is an Antitrust Wedge"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 04, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, April 04, 2026