Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 24/07/2023: Goodbyes to the Web



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • Gravity Circuit: First Impressions

        I only have vague memories of Mega Man... Mega Man *anything* (X, Zero, one, forty-two etc.). I admit I never played through any of them, but I must have played one or two levels on friends' consoles in the 1990's. Apparently this means I'm not the best to judge Gravity Circuit for its roots... I am probably similarly familiar with 2 other games that Gravity Circuit reminds me of - Shovel Knight (I think of it when using downwards attacks with Kai) and Steel Assault (surprised I haven't heard more mention of the similarities with this recent title).

        As of the time of writing, I have played through the initial stage, and then the one with the steel factory or whatever the one is where you can hop in something like a mech... And I'm definitely planning to play more! I'm not very good at it - I play on Easy and I still die pretty often. Part of it is the controls for me. Maybe I'm slower at internalizing control schemes than I was in my teens, now that those are a couple of decades behind me.

      • Rain Check

        Heavy rain this morning, the trip to the lake postponed. Instead we watched the Blue Jays squeak past the Mariners, then headed to our friends' place for supper. Pasta for the main course, chocolate peanut butter pie for dessert (I told you she was a good baker).

        In the reclaimed time this afternoon we gave one of the dogs a bath and I spent a few hours hacking on my forever project. I've put well over a thousand hours into it, over the years. Probably several multiples of that. I give it away on my website, offer it for free (with optional donation) on itch. I've made a few hundred bucks in a few years. Enough to cover my domain and hosting, break even, and that's enough.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Hello world!

        Hello there! I'm a decade Linux veteran here to spread some information about the scene.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • I think I'm done with the web

          The title is a bit melodramatic, I know. I can't realistically abandon the web since I work in web technologies, and a lot of the stuff I have to do day-to-day requires the web. I guess I just feel tired. Something about the recent collapse of Twitter and the subsequent clamour of wannabe replacements has soured me to the "web" and the impossibility of wresting it away from greedy hands.

          The web was (at one point) an exciting place to me. Lots of interesting people writing about the things that fascinated them for no other reason than they wanted to write about it. They could potentially find a new community of people who share their passion, but equally they may be shouting into the void alone. It didn't matter. People just wrote and drew and shared.

        • Cool Capsule Of The Week: D Moonfire

          D Moonfire is organized in such a way that you can actually explore it. Its index isn’t a large list of everything on the capsule. Instead, it has links to some recent gemlog posts, short excerpts describing some locations with links scattered throughout, and a footer that appears on every page with links to even more locations. Because of this, it can be easy to lose your bearing after exploring and not know whether you’re reading the end of a random page, Dylan Moonfire’s gemlog, his biography, or the index. Surprisingly, this isn’t really a problem because you can always just go the the parent directory, the capsule index, or use one of the links in the footer to get around.

        • Advancing toward beddie bye time

          Oh wow, Gemini just got an order of magnitude better for me:

          Doctor Who Zone

          It was on the order of something like three decades ago that I started plowing through Doctor Who, a journey lasting through the first seven Doctors. Much of it was on good 'ole (public) broadcast TV, but I'm pretty sure I've some DVD's laying around somewhere.

      • Programming

        • Only One Script

          Sometimes there is a need to run only one instance of a script. Additionally, one may want to know when the script last ran or if the script is running how long ago it started. Various implementations of this pattern have various problems: the lock could fail, allowing multiple instances to start, or a stale lock could prevent any instances from starting. Failures involve manual intervention, and there may be additional cleanup work depending on exactly what went awry. Another thing to worry about is a script simply not running because 02:30 AM on a particular Sunday does not exist, or exists twice—thanks, daylight saving time!

        • Today's coding lesson: Head Up Ass Recursion

          As I've mentioned probably n+1 times too many, my beef with liberals began in the 1990s, when I started increasingly reading that "old white males" were the cause of all the world's ills. I was quite liberal up to that point, complete with irregularly-scheduled vehement arguments with my birth family. I still remember how great I felt when Clinton/Gore announced balancing the budget. I also remember thinking Joe Biden was a vile asshole back then.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Always Check Your Inputs
Garbage in, garbage out. Or wrong assumptions, wrong corollary.
 
Links 10/07/2025: "Apple Vs The Law" and Twitter Became Full Nazi Bar
Links for the day
Unable to Find Anyone to Work as Their Media Lawyer, Brett Wilson LLP Will Continue Losing Female Staff
What sort of sick person would wish to join Brett Wilson LLP to carry this baton?
Microsoft-Sponsored Propaganda Site Has Removed False 'Hit Piece' About Dr. Stallman (With Fake and Misrepresented Imagery) But Only After 4 Years
So they only removed that page some time around 2025, i.e. about 4 years after it had been published
Dan Neidle Said That Tax Evasion Facilitator Mr Zahawi (Working to Silence Bloggers Through Brett Wilson LLP) Targeted Not Only Him (But The Others Kept Quiet)
"Mr Neidle said after repelling Mr Zahawi he was contacted by bloggers and tweeters who had received similar threats. They deleted their work “and in most cases never commented publicly on anything again”."
SLAPP Funding Transparency Urgently Needed in the UK and Elsewhere (in Practice, Not Just in Theory)
Writing about crime - including Microsoft crime - is not a crime
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 09, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Elodie Bergot Still Doing Illegal Things at the EPO, Based on the Local Staff Committee Munich
They keep taking away from the staff while compelling the staff to do illegal things
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025