Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 12/08/2023: TUI and IBM/Lenovo



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • 🔤SpellBinding: CLNOSUY Wordo: SKIRT
      • Gazing back from “The Universe Next Door”

        Maybe it’s dumb to try to review a 40-year old book that has already had thousands of other readers & commenters weighing in but here we go! And I’m not talking about the contemporary Robert Anton Wilson classic by the same name that was published at around the same time.

        Nope, the book I just read was Jim Sire’s The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog.

        He is a Christian theist who lays out his own worldview and then does brief forays into other worldviews for contrast.

    • Science

      • Occam’s Turtles All the Way

        And the standard non-theist/​pantheist/​atheist/​polytheist answer is, of course, “who created that creator? And the creator of that creator?”

        Ultimately it becomes a matter of semantics.

        Theists define “creation” as the subset of what exists and what’s there that excludes the theistic God and the entire realm of that God, labeling that excluded part as “transcendent”.

        I’m not onboard with that definition. By cosmos I wanna refer to the whole shebang, not just a subset.

        Theism, to my mind, diminishes God so much. Shrinks the idea down from something that encompasses all to this tiny li’l superhero flying around.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Re: TUI music players

        Yeah, that’s just facts. Most TUI things are bad. CLI is where it’s at. mpc, for example, is a good basis for shell scripts & automation. I love it. And since it’s for mpd, you can still connect it to a GUI or TUI app also, to get the best of both worlds.

        He also thinks that a conf file full of comments, including commented-out defaults, is bad. That’s also a good point. With a good editor it’s easy to hide away all comments or to navigate a huge file, ostensibly making the advantages of having those comments outweigh the drawbacks, but not everyone has that and starting from a blank file can often be a lot easier.

      • Games I've played on my brother's PSP back then

        I've never had a PSP myself, but my brother had. He is really one of those guys who has always been into Sony. I think it must have been back in 2007. My dad bought me my first computer a few years ago for christmas and it has been the time when we have got our first internet connection at home. An usb UMTS modem with EDGE/HSPA+ support, 8 mbit/s and a limited data plan of 1.5 gigs a month. Not much but enough to download some demos and funny videos for my brother's PSP every now and then. I've even built him a wiki of his favorite wrestlers (Jeff Hardy, The Hardy Boys, CM Punk, Edge) from WWE/Smackdown.

      • My last ThinkPad

        I've been a ThinkPad user for more than a decade now. I've enjoyed many of them, some for the better, some for the worse. But at the end of they day they all had something in common.

        I'm sorry for the clickbait, but Kai Hendry inspired me to use the same title for my own post. And I'm with him, this is probably my last ThinkPad, for sure.

      • The $50 ThinkCentre M600/M700 tiny series

        A few weeks ago, a friend from a local hackerspace told me about them becoming so cheap the first time. A lot of them are currently being sold from many ebay sellers in Germany. The price? Approximately EUR 50,-

        The ThinkCentre tiny series is the ultra small form factor (USFF) computer sold by Lenovo, while others, such as HP calls them mini or Dell who came up with micro. They are as small as a book but have nearly the same performance as their desktop brothers and sisters. At least when it comes to office work. I've got the M700 tiny which sits right next to my ISP router and I hardly ever notice. They are silent, reliable and just do their job.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Emphasis On

          Still interested in the question of Gemtext and emphasis, I figured I’d gather some data.

          [...]

          But as there’s very little support for it, the more important question is: why?

          To see if data would help answer that, I sampled three sources to check for use of emphasis: news articles on the web, Gemlog entries, and Phlog (Gopher log) entries.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

Why It's Ludicrous to Call Us "Microsoft Haters"
Even if clustered together, news items still cover a broad spectrum (or spectra) of issues
The Old Ways of Computing Were Objectively Better
Not as fast, but certainly much better
 
IBM Bailouts and the IBM People Inside the Administration
It seems possible/plausible that it is bailout money down the drain or that this money will never arrive at all
Links 26/05/2026: Lithium Batteries Causing Fires (Even on Planes), 'Timmy' the Whale Dies
Links for the day
Pursuing Facts in an Age of Lies and 'Hallucinations' (Falsehoods Without Anyone Accountable, They Try Calling Computer-Generated Lies or Forgeries "Intelligence").
Our aim is to relay information while bypassing gossip networks like social control media and slop in "search" clothing
Computer-Generated Legal Filings Get You Reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
We'll write a lot more about this in the future
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XII - In the Second-Largest Institution in Europe One Can Take Paid 'Sick Leave' for Doing Cocaine, Then Come Back
Cocaine addicts in the management were bullying colleagues. They're still in charge.
Sites in Their Twenties
We currently run concurrently a handful of series and have a lot more in the backlog
SLAPP Censorship - Part 88 Out of 200: Brett Wilson LLP is Defaming Trans People in America Because Garrett Pays Hired Guns to Silence Them
Garrett is scoring many own goals this year
Sloppy "Resource Action," (RA) or IBM Layoff, Leads to Another IBM Lawsuit, Alleging IBM Tries to Pass Liability to Algorithms
IBM is meanwhile resorting to slop to gaslight its remaining shareholders
The Latest IBM Layoff Rumours
What has happened to the company that invented so much of modern computing?
Holy See Recognises the Threat of GAFAM and Slop
Will the Holy See move away from GAFAM?
Social Control Media is a Giant Waste of Time (and There Are No Future Remedies for This)
Social Control Media is considered unhealthy to young people, but it is also collectively unhealthy to nations and nation-building
Codecs and Software Patents - Part X - Florian Müller Still Muddying the Waters for FOSS, Using Software Patents
Some things never change...
Gemini Links 26/05/2026: Slop Bug Reports and Crawlers Considered Evil
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 25, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, May 25, 2026
Slop Causes Global Warming
in some parts of the world people die from overheat (heat strokes) as temperatures reach almost 50 degrees as early as May in the northern hemisphere
Vatican Speaks Out Against Slop, Promoting Instead "Truth, Dignity of Work, Social Justice, and Peace."
Religion (no matter which) does not oppose machines, but LLMs aren't useful machines
SLAPP Censorship - Part 87 Out of 200: Access to Justice
this part will be short
A Promise IBM/Red Hat Could Not Keep
"all about control, not so much optics."
Links 25/05/2026: Russia Lobbing Oreshnik Ballistic Missile Again, Slop Comes Under More Fire
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/05/2026: Injury in Gym and Abusive LLMs DDoSing Software Developers While Misusing Their Code
Links for the day
A 'Bank Holiday' When National Debt Doubles in a Decade
Maybe it's time to rename "Bank Holidays"
Links 25/05/2026: Lingering Environmental Concerns and Domain Registrars Targeted for Unmasking
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 24, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, May 24, 2026
Gemini Links 24/05/2026: Impressions of Auckland, the Age of Left or Right Extremism, and .zim files
Links for the day
Microsoft's 'Hiring Freeze' (Layoffs) and Salary Freeze (While Inflation Approaches Double-Digit Rates)
If they get replaced by anyone, it'll be low-paid folks in low-salary regions [...] workers' stress levels shoot up, compensation goes down
Slop Will Not End Humanity, The Pushers of It Do (Artificial Scarcities and Global Warming)
Causing hunger and poverty in the name of "computation"
How Can the 'Broligarchs' Love Us When They Don't Even Love Themselves?
Their SLAPPs have their limits
Death at IBM Due to Overwork
Dying for IBM is never worth it
We Publish Less, We Get More Exposure
UbuntuPit is coming to realise that quantity isn't what comes to matter or truly "count", especially when quantity comes at expense of authenticity
Codecs and Software Patents - Part IX - GNU Project Has Chosen to Adopt AV1 for Its Videos, Conversion and Additions Underway
One of our readers is working to help GNU through the maze of software patents and maze of patent lawsuits, which aren't the same thing but are somewhat overlapping issues
SLAPP Censorship - Part 86 Out of 200: The Position of Courts on Computer-Generated Lawsuits and Filings From Another Continent (Made by Two Men Who Work for Slop Companies)
Lawsuits by proxy from California
Links 24/05/2026: SoftBank CEO Getting Conned by Scam Altman, Hotter 2026 and El Nino With Growing Impact
Links for the day
Links 24/05/2026: Ebola Outbreak and "Journalists Identify Murder Victims Of Trump’s Boat Strike Program"
Links for the day
IAM Magazine is in Effect Dead, It's Now Fused Into Microsoft's Patent Troll (Which It Has Promoted All Along)
Microsoft-connected patent trolls in Europe [...] Now, in his new job, Wild can use his 'expertise' to help guide blackmail/extortion to better harm Europe's industry
A Huge Proportion of 'Articles' in The Register MS Are Actually Paid Spam of the Communist Party of China, Selling Compromised (for Wiretapping) Technology
The Register MS is having a go at becoming a marketing company or "B2B"
Top Officials Have Just Left Microsoft, Layoffs in Anything But Name
Microsoft's debt is very fast-growing
Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) Meets "Alicante Mafia" at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Report on meeting with VP1 and his team on 21 April 2026
UbuntuPit (ubuntupit.com) Has Deleted Slop Pages, Its Slopfarm Experiment Has Failed (Like Always!)
Turning one's site into a slopfarm is a death knell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 23, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, May 23, 2026