Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 23/06/2023: Amiga Archaeology and How to Kill a Decentralised Network



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Lemongrass

        A sauce made from lemongrass leaves, ginger root, and a frozen chive flower, all crushed together, then covered with warmed sesame seed oil was pretty good. It probably needed either more lemongrass or an actual shallot, or maybe not to pre-heat the oil so the ginger would be sharper.

        Probably lemongrass makes for a good tea (or herbal infusion or vegetable soup, if you prefer) unless you're allergic or otherwise cannot partake. It is probably not a morning tea.

      • Friday link roundup: June 23, 2023

        Somehow I find this LitRPG-but-it’s-about-sports-simulation weirdly compelling. Sort of in the same neighborhood as Jon Bois’ 17776/20020, but not at all the same genre or writing style. Maybe I just have a thing for “sports fiction” despite not being into sports IRL.

        It’s not perfect; the MC is written as being clumsy about stuff like gender and race and it seems like that’s on purpose, and yet he still manages to seduce every beautiful woman he encounters because this is a litRPG. Despite that flaw I still find the story engaging.

      • May and June 2023

        For the first time since I started these monthly updates, I will do this for a two months periods since I've been pretty busy lately. Next week I'm traveling so I don't want to defer more the update.

        [...]

        Things got more hectic by the end of the month with the collision of several things: me going to Madrid for an event (more later), having our apartment occupied for a few days by the installation of AC, and the delivery of the news on our first assignment for Bernat's pre and primary school. That eventually was confirmed and now we know the school for Bernat until he's 12! 🤯

      • 🔤SpellBinding: DILOYTR Wordo: FERNS
      • Pancakes

        My partner seems to have developed an intolerance for gluten. She can still eat it, but feels bloated, gets headaches. So for shared meals, we do gluten free. For the two decades prior, I made homemade pancakes every Sunday. This recipe isn't written down anywhere; it's just in muscle memory. I'm writing it down here so I don't forget.

    • Politics and World Events

      • Exclusivity in leftist activist circles

        Let's talk about exclusivity in leftist activist circles.

        i've been doing leftist activism for roughly three decades, but have had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for most of that, around 25 years. i've also been living with unrecognised / unacknowledged autism and adhd for most of my life, only getting diagnosed only a couple of years ago.

        Over the years, i've continued to try to do activist work where i could - often educational stuff, sometimes organisational and infrastructure stuff, but all too regularly dealing with things like transphobia, biphobia, whorephobia etc. from other leftists.

      • Up a little earlier than what's become the new normal

        Keep in mind that everything self indulges in is self-indulgent by definition, and the notion of self tends to be considered pathetic from points of view suggesting self is merely a conceptual blind spot obscuring a vast, ineffable underlying reality.



        [...]

        It's liberalism gone fundamentalist, and it's several orders of magnitude worse than what past liberals referred to as "born agains" (amongst other things) in the 1980s.
      • Topspace and topdrop

        For me, topspace involves an incredible feeling of power - a power constrained, yet one that could be overwhelming were it to be unleashed. It's a power that comes from not only having a substantial amount of control, but also being very aware of that, and typically involves a sense of strength within a centred calm, rooted in knowing that one can dictate that things will be _thus_. More generally, it feels like being in ‘flow’[b], like being very present and “in the moment”.



        [...]

        For me, there are two aspects of topdrop: the sense of power and/or superiority draining away of its own accord, and actively working to ground oneself.

        Feeling the sense of power-over[c] drain away can feel depressing, to greater or lesser extents, due to a sense of loss. There might be an active internal resistance to letting this happen, for whatever reason, and this can in turn lead to the sort of social issues described above.
    • Technology and Free Software

      • Amiga archaeology, Windows 95-98

        This toolstack works well enough in most cases. The Greaseweazle is normally connected to a small Linux computer I have in my workshop, and I have both a 3,5" and 5,25" drive connected to it. In the case of this Amiga disk-box I'm currently going through, I naturally only use the 3,5" drive.

        HXC's software is a bit clunky and I have to run it through wine since I don't run Windows, but it's what I'm used to from before. I have realized that I could probably replace it with the disk-utilities by keirf, since I mostly use it to analyze the disk and convert from scp to different formats.

      • (not quite) three years of Gemini (for me)

        My initial commit to the repository that manages this capsule is dated 9/7/2020.

        Solderpunk says that Gemini dates back from 6/20/2019, assuming I’m subtracting by 4 properly.

        I came for the Calm™ and stayed for the low-friction publishing with a workflow that I’m used to (edit text file, git commit text file, upload text file somewhere, let automated backups do their thing when they get around to it).

      • The Playdate

        In which I discuss my thoughts on the Playdate console and the games I've played on it.

        [...]

        What is funny is for a month or two before I first heard about the Playdate, I was earnestly looking for a device that was more pocketable than my original model Game Boy Advance but was more capable and/or cheaper than however much GBA Micros are now. I had decided on getting a Miyoo Mini and was just waiting for them to get back in stock when someone on the Fediverse posted about the Playdate, and literally the instant I saw it I knew I had to get one.

      • June 2023 Status Update

        I haven't posted in a long time here, this is actually the first entry of the 2023... woops!

        Truth to be told, there are various things I'd like to write about but not enough time, so I thought to copy the big guys and write a "Status Update" post myself. It's more like sending a message in a bottle though.

        So, lots of stuff, right? Let's go!

        [...]

        Last month I started to help in the OpenSMTPD-portable repository. It was starting to rot a bit, lagging behind what we have in base on OpenBSD and accumulating cruft.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Why am I here (in Geminispace)?

          A preface: I’m severely out of practice wrt writing. This feels kinda meandering, the ideas don’t seem to flow that well and I’m not even sure it makes that much sense. It’s also uncomfortably woe-is-me and humourless. So… sorry, I guess?

        • How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

          Year is 2023. The whole Internet is under the control of the GAFAM empire. All? No. Because a few small villages are resisting the oppression. And some of those villages started to agregate, forming the "Fediverse".

          With debates around Twitter and Reddit, the Fediverse started to gain fame and attention. People started to use it for real. The empire started to notice.

        • How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

          As Peter Thiel, one of Facebook’s prominent investor, put it: "Competition is for losers." Yep, those pseudo "market is always right" people don’t want a market when they are in it. They want a monopoly. Since its inception, Facebook have been very careful to kill every competition. The easiest way of doing it being by buying companies that could, one day, become competitors. Instagram, WhatsApp to name a few, were bought only because their product attracted users and could cast a shadow on Facebook.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's Mass Layoffs (30,000+ in 2025) Not About "AI", Just Business Failure
"AI" is replacing... the old excuses for mass layoffs
EPO People Power - Part XVI - Berenguer Does Not Speak German, So What Did He Tell German Police That Busted Him?
based in Germany and does not speak the language
Challenges for EPO Insiders to Try to Tackle in 2026
Nothing will get solved as long as the circus that runs this show tries to keep the circus going
 
"But Corruption is Everywhere"
"We'll always have Polio..."
Days Without Slop About "Linux"
It's time to move on
Links 27/12/2025: Canada Post Strike Called Off, Debate About Europeans "Working Over Christmas"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/12/2025: Household Appliances and Flight Fright
Links for the day
Links 27/12/2025: US Cracking Down on Whistleblowers, Expanding Bombardment Campaigns Worldwide
Links for the day
Resuming EPO Coverage Today, Can António Campinos 'Survive' Cocainegate?
We said we'd continue in the weekend
Links 27/12/2025: More Attacks on Media (Meduza Co-founder Sentenced to Prison in Absentia), "What Owning Music Means To Me"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/12/2025: geminiprotocol.net Downtime and Capsular Gemlog Manager
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 26, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, December 26, 2025
Tossing Embarrassing News Under the Christmastime Bus
This isn't just some coincidence; those are conscious choices
Victim-Blaming in Debian
Verhelst previously did blame-shifting when Debian suicide clusters happened
IBM Cuts in Japan, Red Hat is Attached to a Sinking Ship
IBM, which controls Red Hat, is a rapidly shrinking company
Manchester United Dumped Microsoft Because Qualcomm Sort of Did
The Windows PCs were an utter failure
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Supported by Unconventional Digital Bartering Communities
But no strings attached
Geminispace: 5,000 Capsules in 2026
There are 4.8k now
Gemini Links 26/12/2025: Careful What You Eat and "My Secret Santa"
Links for the day
The Indigenous Community Versus Corporate AstroTurt and 'Cancel Culture'
Good people will recognise exactly what's happening here and respond to it tactfully
Richard Stallman: Epstein is a Serial Rapist. Bill Epsteingate: Epstein is a Friend.
Supporting the FSF (or Richard Stallman) is supporting those who asserted Epstein had serially raped women
The Paradox of GAFAM: Saying You Protect Women, Appointing Abusers of Women to Run the Company
older articles
Censored by FreeBSD Core Team Secretary, Reinstated After Talking About it in Public
FreeBSD misfiring a CoC?
Links 26/12/2025: Chatbot Toys Terrorising Children, US Undeclared "War on Terror" Unilaterally Extends to Nigeria During Holidays
Links for the day
Links 26/12/2025: French Postal Services Under Russian Attack, U.S. Cheetos Accuse People Who Obstruct Information Warfare by Russia of "Censorship"
Links for the day
Debian's Daniel Kahn Gillmor is Wrong, Signal is No "Gold Standard" (It's Also Promoted by Proponents of Back Doors)
I'm not too sure why Debian or the ACLU would wish to associate with this
Next Year Will be the Year of Quantum, Just Like 2020, 2015, 2010, 2005 and So On
"Quantum" is the future
The Silent Power of Coercion Over Speech
The important thing is optics
Kazakhstan Doesn't Need GAFAM Datacentres (Spy Hubs)
Suffice to say, as far as we can gather nothing came out from the empty (false) promises of GAFAM's "data centers in Kazakhstan"
So Simple That You Can Touch and Feel It
In light of recent experiences
Christmas Music Project: Back to When Music Was Music
now Canonical (or Ubuntu) says we should make available tens of gigabytes of disk space
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Under Attack by Cross-Network Spam Floods
So far we've been spared (our network has not been targeted at all) [...] Let's hope the spam won't discourage the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who still use IRC
An "AI-Infused" Windows
Microsoft Windows isn't becoming a worthless pile of garbage by accident
Microsoft Laid Off Over 30,000 People This Year, Coders Are "Too Expensive"
Go get some popcorn. Microsoft "slopware" is about to get real!
Critics Have Long Said Microsoft Produces "Slopware", Microsoft Wants to Prove Them Right
Slop instead of code is a step in the right direction?
The Top 8 Innovations of IBM in 2025
What innovations will come out from IBM in 2026?
And as the Year Turns...
The significance of new years isn't based on geology or astronomy or anything like that
Appliances Versus Computers
Replacing a computer inside an object of some kind or inside an appliance (which nowadays includes "modern" cars) isn't simple and isn't cheap
A Dark Side of Europe
They try hard to silence people who speak about these issues
Why People Love Techrights (and Also Loved "Boycott Novell")
I will continue to publish for many decades to come
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, December 25, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, December 25, 2025
Browsing Techrights With a GUI and 10 Megabytes of RAM Per Tab
Some people say it's not possible in 2025, maybe in part because they depend on very bloated software
A Tribute to Richard Stallman
It's about knowledge and sharing
Links 26/12/2025: Impermanence, Salt and Thermometer, Freetube
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/12/2025: Hibernation and TV Detox
Links for the day
Canonical is Making the Cost of PCs Very High, Due to Unnecessary Ubuntu Bloat
They say the reason for the price surge is LLM hype/frenzy
Canonical's Ubuntu is Bloatware
How did Ubuntu get so fat?
The EPO is a Very Vicious Organisation You Neither Wish to Join Nor Stay in for "Too Long"
Consider what the EPO thinks of its own workers, the staff that actually does real work
2026 Will Hopefully Turn Out to be Slopless
we seem to be starting the post-Christmas period on the right footing
Links 25/12/2025: Mail Carriers in "a Murky Future", Dihydroxyacetone Man’s "Chip Embargo Against China Backfiring Spectacularly"
Links for the day
The Register MS: All I Want For Xmas is Microsoft
they actually put effort into it
How to Win Nobel Prize for Peace
Do you get to Heaven (or peace platitudes) by sleeping with 72 virgins?
The Right to Repair (Especially When Products Are So Poorly Made)
Many electrical appliances fail often/quick and are nearly impossible to repair
Links 25/12/2025: Ample Cover-up Found in Jeffrey Epstein Files; ChatGPT Causes Psychosis, Not a Good Use Case
Links for the day
Giving Money to Free Software
In life, people must make sacrifices to do what's right and just
The Register MS: Don't Use Linux
That really says a lot about The Register MS
EPO People Power - Part XV - EPO Cocainegate to Resume This Weekend
The next installment (number 16) will probably come out this weekend
Microsoft: XBox is Going "Online", "Cloud"...
XBox as a console is pretty much dead
The Year of the Bubble
We hope that in 2026 the marketing liars will find some new buzzwords to latch onto and quit calling everything "AI"
Mozilla Firefox is a GAFAM Browser With Slop, Move to a Free Software Web Browser
on mobile the options would be more limited
libera.chat Was Under Attack Last Night
Several months from now libera.chat turns 5
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raises Over $300,000 Before Christmas
the FSF made it past $300,000
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 24, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 24, 2025