Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 01/08/2023: Gitea on Void and Unleashing Your Inner Mapper (OSM)



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • My Bread Is Getting Yummier

        I've been making bread for a long time now. Since I currently don't have a real oven (only a small electric mini-oven and an electric pizza oven), my options are pretty limited. I have a breadmaker I use largely to mix and knead the dough. I then either make a round loaf for the oven or some kind of rolls, flatbread or pizza for the pizza oven.

        Lately I've been concentrating on bread that can be used for sandwiches (tomato mostly). That means that the dough has to rise enough to passably fit stuff. Since I am not equipped to keep a running yeast culture I use instant yeast which tends to go fast and collapse. So I've been experimenting with various ways of slowing things down so the bread can rise and remain firm enough. Lowering the moisture helps currently 290mL water for 500g flour. This results in a heavy lump of dough which keeps its shape as it rises. Punching it down a couple of times and letting it rise slowly for the final time in a moist environment helps. I put it right into the little oven with a wet paper towel draped along the door to keep the air moist.

      • whale fall 3

        a little late this week but who cares :)

        [...]

        i found this artist this week, and his work is so dreamy. earthy tones aren't the colors i usually associate with surrealism, and they work beautifully. the background is so delicately colored too.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Manual intervention required when updating Gitea to v1.20.0 on Void

        My local Gitea instance runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 running Void Linux. I'm quite happy with Void itself. It's been totally rock solid and reliable since I got all of the kinks worked out about a week after the initial install. Gitea, however, has been a bit of a PITA on a few occasions prior to moving to Void, and the latest package upgrade I ran managed to break a few things. It's all back up and running now, but not without some frustration.

        After some troubleshooting, I found an obsolete setting in the config file, which once removed at least allowed the daemon to start.

      • Unleash Your Inner Mapper (OSM)

        OpenSteetMap is a community made map of the entire world. It's not just a map of roads, although it does have roads, paths, and other types of thoroughfares, but it has lots of other attributes including businesses, hiking trails, land usage, solar panels, bridges, bins, water fountains, camping grounds, and much much more. If it exists physically there's probably some combination of tags it can be described with on OSM.

        One of the great things about OSM is that since it's made entirely by the community, everyone gets to pick what kinds of things there are interested in mapping, which can make OSM far better than commercial maps. Many people have probably used OSM through the OSM website, OSMAnd or another similar app, but if not directly, indirectly through social networks, government maps or other apps which use OSM data like mapy.cz.

      • I just LOVE my day job... [Ed: Anonymous Microsoft pushers in Gemini]

        It got to the point where the leads calling me up every day to ask, "Why are you still having trouble with this? You've been on the project three months." Never mind that I'm the only team member in my time zone, nothing is documented unless *I* document it myself, and I can't get help because everybody else is busy with their shit.

      • First Impressions of the Beepy Pocket Computer

        The Beepy, formerly known as the Beepberry, is a little pocket-size computer handheld with the distinguishing features being the 1-bit monochrome (non-backlit) Sharp Memory LCD and the Blackberry thumb keyboard. The other key feature to this device is that it accepts a Pi Zero form factor computer board of your choice. A few other nice details are the physical power switch, one user-programmable button on the right side and quite a few GPIO pins broken out around the display. Here is what it looks like. Isn't it neat?

      • How to Errors Good

        My view of errors is built upon my view of encapsulation in general. A program is built from components, each having clearly defined concerns and boundaries, with each depending on other components. Each component defines an interface of methods which can be used by "upstream" components to interact with it. These interfaces are opaque, meaning they expose the bare-minimum information which is required to be useful to the caller. If the caller doesn't need to know something, the interface doesn't provide it, either in the types it uses, the documentation it provides, or the actual functionality it exposes. Whether an interface takes the form of a network API or a language-specific abstract interface is irrelevant to this discussion.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • How to use Fediverse local timelines

          It's my second year on Fediverse. I got to know the key concepts. I've tried several clients. I am used to its pros and cons. I had been thinking that there aren't anything that could surprise me. Then I started to use a client which supports several servers (don't be confused with several accounts which are also supported).

          [Toot! for Mastodon] is a mobile client which looks a bit too colorful for a serious user. But it has two functionalities that are dedicated to this client and I haven't spotted in other ones.

          The first is pinning a hashtag (don't be confused with hashtag following added in the latest Mastodon specs) which is good for users who don't want to pollute their home timeline with random users' posts. A pinned hashtag is accessible from a special menu, without being visible on the home timeline.

        • Zines

          I've spent the last few days traipsing back and forth through Gemspace and Gopherspace looking at what's available. It's a pretty mixed bag, as is to be expected. Many people started their phlog or gemlog then abandoned it quickly, many more kept theirs running for years and I'm just visiting a monument to that moment in time. It's in equal parts fascinating and saddening, partly because I arrived too late and partly because these things were written (presumably) with no other goal than to share something. This can be contrasted with the modern WWW, on which even simple blogs are often laden with trackers and ads as a way to monetize content.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

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We'll need to protect names and sources
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Links for the day
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Who would want such a position?
IBM RAs (or PIPs) in London, England?
They try to keep the lid on it
International Buybacks Machines
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IBM Could be the Next Kyndryl, a Dinosaur With Accounting Fraud
Many shareholders (or even pension funds) are taking a big hit today
Ian Murdock Died in San Francisco 10 Years Ago. Cops Led to His Death.
10 years ago Ian Murdock died after cops had messed him up
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Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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They try to avoid "negative" topics
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analytics.usa.gov Shows Rapid Erosion of Windows Market Share Since 'End of 10' (Vista 10)
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The SRA, by inaction, is complicit in this
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Does nothing except talk about SLAPPs
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For real security, use Geminispace capsules, not Web sites
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This is brainwash, it's meant to delay the implosion of the bubble
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Sooner or later (and soon) Microsoft will need to say something and file some WARN notifications
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Fighting Slop With the Public Domain (and Why Slopfarms Perish Faster Than New Ones Appear)
We can combat the nonsense by producing more human-made works until the slop bubble implodes
After Employee Reviews at IBM Staff Expects Another Large Wave of PIPs and "RAs" (Layoffs)
From what we can see in the "public Web"
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC logs for Monday, February 09, 2026
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GAFAM-controlled social control media
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no wonder Microsoft's stuff breaks down so often
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Who at thelayoff.com deems spam made by LLMs (slop) to be on-topic and unworthy of zapping, whereas actually on-topic and authentic threads get routinely deleted?
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Gemini Links 09/02/2026: The Exploration Myth and Making JavaScript Fun
Links for the day
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A vending machine does not fall over after a first push
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 08, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 08, 2026
"Low Performer" and "Underperformer" as Harmful Misnomers That Damage a Company's Reputation
Misnomers need to be avoided or called out
Expensive errors: Forbes Gold price, $44 billion Bitcoin given away by Bithumb, South Korea
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 08/02/2026: Microsoft OSI (Openwashing Lobby) in Europe, Raised Against Social Control Media Provocateurs in EU
Links for the day
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OSI pushing and selling Microsoft and GitHub. OSI is Microsoft front group.
Getting the European Court of Justice to Annul the Illegal and Unconstitutional Unified Patent Kangaroo Court (UPC)
We're still working on it
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Gemini Links 08/02/2026: "Doing Not Much Tweaking" and "Reclaiming Digital Agency"
Links for the day
Forbes: BitCoin, Cryptocurrency pages removed from investment database, links stop working
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Bitcoin warning followed immediately by network outage
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Money Funneled to Protection of Software Freedom, But Nothing Really Lost
Crossposted from personal site
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Oligarchy already entertains the option of running away to (or colonising) some other planet without pitchforks and "unwashed masses"
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We're Still Fast
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Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC logs for Saturday, February 07, 2026
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When Identifying "Low Performers" and "PIPs" Aren't About Improving Performance But Reinforcing a Clique in Your Company/Organisation
It's very troubling to see once-respectable brands like IBM and institutions like the EPO resorting to this
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Did Bobby Borisov assume he would never get caught?
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Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock