Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 23/07/2023: Publically Accessible GNUnet Hostlist and New Arrivals



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • The Summer-So-Far in Review

        Most of this year we've been having supper with friends on Sunday. It started off with them coming here (their house wasn't finished yet, and the apartment they were renting was small, dark, crowded). The last couple months, we've been taking turns hosting. Some weeks, it's felt like a lot (children require active Entertainment). Other weeks, something to look forward to. Regardless, people moving here from Toronto is not the usual migration destination. We're very glad they did, and thankful to be able to see them regularly and often, rather than every year or two.

        So this has been a regular fixture of the summer, one less meal to plan during the week. The arrangements always that they cook, we bake. I say "we". This is a lie. My partner, it's understood by everyone, an exceptional baker. In the fridge right now: strawberry macarons, made with another friend, this particular batch delicious to me, unloved by them. "We wanted to try out a new filling recipe," my partner said ruefully. "It didn't set the way I wanted." I stress again that they taste amazing, but I'm probably a poor judge.

      • 🔤SpellBinding: DEFTISG Wordo: LIGNE
      • Pen shows and such

        So a little over a week ago I attended the PNW Pen Show, a revival of an old event that used to happen pre-pandemic. I don't think I've talked about it here before but I'm a fountain pen nerd. I wish I could say I constantly journaled but it's more like a feast and famine thing.

        I'll write through a 400pg a5 notebook in two months and then take a year to finish the next one. That's probably pretty normal, though, but I'll say that I'm probably at my best in basically every way when I'm journaling more. Is it symptomatic or causal? I don't know.

      • Discovering new music the old-fashioned way

        I was at my favourite independent bookstore this afternoon, and picked up a CD by Tigran Mansurian. I'd maybe (maaaaybe) heard the name before, but I'd picked it up because it's part of ECM's New Series, and it's basically a disc full of music I've never heard. For various configurations of strings and occasionally piano.

        I picked it up because Kim Kashkashian plays viola on it, and she's one of my favourite violists. I'm a poor player, and her sound and musicality are things I wish I had, even in the smallest quantity.

      • This week - sick and food

        I want to write about interesting things, but I was sick last week. I'm still getting over it. Not covid luckily or the recovery would be even slower. The worst part was I was so cranky it was hard to relax and sleep it off.

      • A Rubbish Rant

        I think there are people out there who genuinely don't understand where their trash goes. How it's handled.

        They can't possibly understand because then they'd care. Ugh.

        I bought a house recently. My first true home. And I keep having to clean up stupid problems that the last homeowners left for me. Like their trash.

      • whale fall 2

        i love charseraph's style and spec bio. this piece is actually from may but i came across it yesterday and couldn't not share it. the title itself is extremely evocative on its own, and paired with the nearly clinical drawings of these entirely unknown life forms? it's just beautiful.

      • The Self

        I am a set of continuous processes in motion, interacting with each other and the world around me, with its historical and societal aspects. There is the saying, "I feel like a completely different person," and it did happen to me a couple of times. Our selves go through small, imperceptible, changes which we gain by interacting with the outside world, or its reflection, our inner world. Eventually, a big leap is reached, a qualitative change, where we feel we're completely different from the older "version".

    • Politics and World Events

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Internet/Gemini

        • The Misfin messaging protocol

          There's more details on the official capsule, but the short version is that it's essentially 'Gemini email'. If you've implemented a Gemini server then it should be pretty simple to refactor that to support a basic version of a Misfin server too. (I say a basic version, because implementing certificate verification is a bit trickier and I feel that the spec could do with some clarifications in that area).

          Misfin uses gemtext (text/gemini) as its message format, so once you have a functioning Misfin server, it's simple to set up a 'webmail'-style interface on your capsule for reading messages.

        • Hello, Smol World!

          I've made my foray into the smol net. Hooray! But who am I?

        • New Public Service: Publically Accessible GNUnet Hostlist

          Quick announcement. I'm running a publically accessible GNUnet hostlist at `http://clehaxze.tw:9876/` due to me failing to bootstrap 3 new nodes today. I was experimenting and this issue really annoyed me. I don't know what happened with the default one. `https://v15.gnunet.org/hostlist` is down. But `https://gnunet.io/hostlist` is running correctly. That should be enough for nodes to botostrap.

          Anyway, for GNUnet users seeing this post, you can point your hostlist daemon to use my server. **I understand this is unencrypted HTTP**. But a) that should't matter as bad actors will get stopped by GNUnet's crypto anyway and b) I'll fix it later.

        • Questions about verification

          I'm slightly confused by the verification flow on the receiving side for misfin(B). Apologies if some of these questions are already obvious in the spec/best practices/reference examples and I've just missed/misunderstood!

          I'm specifically trying to implement the case where the server's certificate is a self-signed CA and there may be multiple mailboxes (each with certs signed by that CA).

        • One Year of Writing

          It has been about one year and two months since I've written my first post, not only on here, but in general. It's definitely interesting to read my old posts, they give me a glimpse of how I thought in the past, and how much my opinions differ now, being more refined in some aspects.

          I've thought about deleting some of them. Perhaps editing. In the end, I left them up because I think it represents fairly well my evolution. I can certainly say I write better now than I did the year before. Writing is an unique medium to not only sharpen your opinions, but to have rather meaningful debates with others. It's a rare medium that is omitted nowadays for the audio-visual, but it's full of knowledge that we wouldn't otherwise get.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

The End of FOSSPost (fosspost.org), It Has become an LLM Slopfarm Like FOSSLinux
These sites will never get lucky with slop. These experiments always end badly.
Gemini Links 22/05/2026: Esperanto Music History, Suspicious Adoption of Signal, and Unauthorised LLM Slop in Code
Links for the day
 
Links 22/05/2026: Ebola Crisis and Samsung Averts a Walkout With Big Bonuses
Links for the day
Links 22/05/2026: Inflation Fears and Thailand Tightens Visa Rules for Tourists From Dozens of Nations
Links for the day
EPO Staff Representation Speaks of This Week's Discussion With the EPO's Budget and Finance Committee (BFC) Amid Mass Strikes
The Central Staff Committee's outline (prepared in a rush) or the "flash report"
SLAPP Censorship - Part 84 Out of 200: New Legislation Against SLAPPs on the Way (After We Reached Out to Ministers)
They dealt with the matter individually too, but we won't share this in public, at least not at this time
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XXX - Where Was "The Ethics and Compliance Team" When the Family of EPO President Campinos Was Caught Doing Cocaine?
It remains to be seen if national delegates will tolerate this in future meetings
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 21, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, May 21, 2026
Links 21/05/2026: "Declining America" and Why Slop 'Code' is Made to Fail
Links for the day
Techrights and Tux Machines Subjected to Cyberattacks for Several Weeks
In the past I spoke to the cybercrime unit of British Police. Maybe it's time to do so again.
The Register MS Has Become a 'Content' Farm Promoting Slop for Hostile Corporations
Now they call it "PARTNER CONTENT" - not "SPONSORED" - as if semantics make the difference
Latest Example of Widespread Fake Assertions (False News) About "Hey Hi"
The false narrative of "Hey Hi layoffs"
Links 21/05/2026: Facebook Rewarded With Tax Breaks to Destroy the Environment and Cause Global Warming, Shortages, Pollution; SpaceX (SPCX) Continues Losing Billions of Dollars
Links for the day
Codecs and Software Patents - Part VIII - GNU Audio/Video Team Has Chosen the AV1 Video Codec and It Explains Why (They've Researched Their Options)
AV1 video codec will be used to encode and share GNU videos online
Dr. Stallman Helps Establish Free Software Advocacy Outside the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as Well
The ideals or principles of Free Software needn't be centralised or monopolised; they can be federated
22 Years of Tux Machines and a Community Stronger Than Ever Before
We've already received some feedback from the community and improved it accordingly
Microsoft Under Investigation for Breaches of Law in the UK
Just like the Microsofters
More Microsoft Layoffs on the Way (June and July 2026)
with or without PIPs
LWN Sponsored by the Linux Foundation (Monopolies)
We must be able to casually point this out
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XXIX - European Patent Office (EPO) Tells Staff "Speaking up" is Good, But Not When the "Brother-in-law" of EPO's President Does Cocaine
Do we still have a functioning democracy and potent press?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 20, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 20, 2026
Gemini Links 21/05/2026: Immigration, Slop, and Slop 'Code' Suggestions Infesting Code Repositories
Links for the dayGemini Links 21/05/2026: Immigration, Slop, and Slop 'Code' Suggestions Infesting Code Repositories
GAFAM is Connected to Misogyny, Almost All Founders Divorced
They're not good people, even if they pay the media to pretend otherwise
SLAPP Censorship - Part 83 Out of 200: Religion is Still Alive, But for Many This Religion is Monetary (Greed, Monopolies, Corporate Power)
If all you keep boasting about is being able to afford a hotel room and some domestic flight, then maybe you have no real accomplishments and are more like a "Facebook serf" with a credit card
Oracle Seems to Have Popularised Overnight Layoffs, Now GAFAM Does the Same
layoff emails at 4 a.m. local time
A Lot of Fake News About Microsoft's LinkedIn Today, Some Comes From Slopfarms, Some Relies on Those Slopfarms
As usual, slopfarms make the Web a huge pile of garbage
IBM's Kyndryl is Circling Down the Drain, Say Kyndryl Insiders
"IBM Dinosaurs who were recycled and catapulted into the orange trash heap by IBM"
A Lot of Coverage Adding Hype Factor to Slop Bug Reports... is Made by LLM Slop
Local Privilege Escalation [...] the slop motivates some actual people to keep writing about it
Links 20/05/2026: Mass Layoffs at NPR (Bought by the Ballmers and Bill Epsteingate), Starbucks Korea CEO Fired Over ‘Tank Day’ Ad
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/05/2026: Advantage of CD Collections, Geminaut's View of Nostr, and SSL / TLS Certificates
Links for the day
IBM is Becoming a Pile of Expired Patents and Abandoned Buildings, Assets of Little Actual Value
Having laid off a ton of people, borrowed lots of money to fake growth (by acquisition), and sent some jobs to low-paid regions where innovation isn't done
Links 20/05/2026: Looting of Americans for "White Grievance Reparations Fund"; "Mark Zuckerberg Used Shell Companies to Bully Native Hawaiians"
Links for the day
Web Browsers Are for Rendering Web Page, They Shouldn't Become PDF Editors
Linus Torvalds is quickly learning and speaking about this
SLAPP Censorship - Part 82 Out of 200: British Government Intervenes in the SLAPPs by Brett Wilson LLP
At this stage our matters are dealt with by a layer below that of the Prime Minister (adjacent to it)
LinkedIn Communications Reveal That LinkedIn - Like GitHub - Will Vanish Inside the Belly of Microsoft
This is definitely going to happen.
In Wall Street, Financial Difficulties Drive Shares Up
Wall Street doesn't work that way
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XXVIII - European Patent Office (EPO) Guidebook Says Report Crimes Committed on EPO Premises. Some Did, But President Campinos Covers up for the Culprits.
The staff has long been on strike and the union (SUEPO) organised an enhanced day of action just two days ago
Gemini Links 20/05/2026: Fall of an Empire, "High Tech is a Social Exercise", and Big Cameras
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 19, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 19, 2026