Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gemini Links 15/08/2023: UTF-8 and Newsboat Over SSH RSS



  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal/Opinions

      • 🔤SpellBinding: AILOPSU Wordo: TONED
      • Rel-Phil - Pol - Comsiderations of the Hawaiian Caste System as Exemplar of Empire’s Demonic Aetiology

        Snapshot of pre-KamehamehaIII caste system in Hawai’i. The presentation of the high Hawaiian system’s etiology is muddy because its generative conditions aren’t readily appreciable by Hellenistic Weltanschauung - the “modern secular” dead-materialistic gaze has massive blind spots. There was likely no external causus to yoke communities to serfdom in Hawaii. No barbarians at the gate, as the commenter notes.

      • The Whole World is Sleeping On Mr. Gnome

        So much energy, so much heart, such a unique sound. Their other album Madness in Miniature, is also incredible.

        Thank you for coming to my microblog.

      • Stretches

        I was more physically active when I was a kid, engaging in sports like basketball and going on hiking trips with the Boy Scouts. I also did gymnastics for a short time, but I didn't have much interest in the sport and I dropped out after one season. In the aftermath I quickly lost much of my flexibility.

        Today, after working desk jobs for almost seven years, I can barely reach my shins without having to bend my knees. My legs in particular are very stiff, with my back not far behind.

        I was recently recommended a self-care app called Finch. I love Finch--as I've been going through some touch mental work lately, it's been a big help for me--and I'll write a review of the app eventually. But one of the self-care activities Finch can prompt the user to do is stretching, and I've tried to take advantage of it in recent weeks.

      • Twilight at the Airport (Fairbanks, AK, USA, 2023-08-15)

        I realized today might be one of my last days to catch the sunrise this season, before sunrise starts overlapping with my shift schedule. After reviewing direction and timing, I decided to try the south side of the airport again. The skies were too murky to capture a sunrise proper, but I got a few nice twilight photos.

    • Politics and World Events

      • I Want To Wear A Dress!

        So, I am a very 'cis' male, perfectly happy in my body, without any alphabet leanings (not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld said). I am sick of _everything_ being sexualized (or genderized). My male toddlers were always referred to as 'she' because of long hair or maybe a doll-in-hand. One of my kids had to literally escape a mob of children in the playground at 3, a mob screaming "Get her, she has a penis"! My female dog is always called 'he' because she's big - and well, she lifts her leg and pees on everything, so maybe she is gender-queer, but anyway.

        My neighbor came to our morning-coffee-ritual wearing a simple yet fantastic Comme De Garcon dress. He wore it well. I was extremely envious.

    • Technology and Free Software

      • Toby's tinylog

        I wanted to find out what the minimum hardware for running a reasonably good Large Language Model at home would be, so I bought a refurbished ThinkCentre M715q with AMD Radeon 5 PRO 2400GE CPU. It's a 2018-era machine costing only around $200. With no upgrades, I was able to run llama.cpp in CPU-only mode on the smallest Llama 2 7b model (q2_K) generating 5.2 tokens/sec! Very impressive! I can also run Vicuna 13b (q4_1) at over 2 tokens/sec after upgrading the RAM to 16Gb. All this while consuming around 40W of power. One trick I had to employ is to use "LLAMA_AVX2=1 make" to compile, as it doesn't detect AVX2 by default. Anwyay, I love this ThinkCentre machine, it is amazing bang-for-buck and will be my main dev machine for the forseeable future.

      • Is it UTF-8?

        Another method is to brute force the problem with a Monte Carlo simulation, which at best will waste lots of CPU. However, where Monte Carlo is practical this may help confirm that a better approach has not gone off the rails. Or, that both the Monte Carlo and the better approach are wrong in ways that produce the same results, which maybe isn't so likely? Richard Feynman said things about actually verifying results in his 1974 commencement address at Caltech.

      • Dotfiles: You're doing it wrong

        When it comes to managing dotfiles, people like to come up with all kind of different and complicated solutions: bare repositories, git submodules, self grown bootstrap scripts, symlinks. Let me tell you: you're doing it wrong!

      • Some explanations about OpenBSD memory usage

        I regularly see people reporting high memory usage on OpenBSD when looking at some monitoring program output.

        Those programs may be not reporting what you think. The memory usage can be accounted in different ways.

        Most of the time, the file system cache stored in-memory is added to memory usage, which lead to think about a high memory consumption.

      • Internet/Gemini

        • How to run newsboat over SSH

          RSS is dead, isn't it?

          Well, not at all, not for me. I've been an rss user ever since I've made my first step into the world wide web. When Google Reader still has been a thing and the world has been ok. I just like the idea to keep up to date with all the things I'm interested in, without any algorithm predicting what I'm going to read.

          After g'reader died, RSS feeds felt more liken an on-off relationship. I tried different alternatives and even stopped using them altogether. But there was definitely something missing. Someone told me about ttrss then, while others moved to feedly, a free as in pay-with-your-data software-as-a-service solution.

        • Easing back into gemspace

          Hey, it's been awhile. I've had a long, long year and a lot has happened. The good thing though is that I'm going to have some stability soon for basically the first time in my life.


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



Recent Techrights' Posts

How We Process Screenshots of Slop to Suitably Tag Them as Slop
everything is a single command
 
Links 11/08/2025: Meritless Twitter Suspensions and Disney Scraps Deepfake Dwayne Johnson
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/08/2025: Upgrading Debian Bookworm and Better Quality PDFs From Gemini Pages
Links for the day
Currys PCWorld Lied a Decade Ago, 10 Years Later It Still Effectively Voids Your Warranty for Installing GNU/Linux Despite It Being Increasingly Mainstream
Microsoft gatekeepers
Team GNOME Has Libeled Me for Nearly 20 Years
we are not dealing with sane people
Experience With Airlines in 'Web Sites' and in 'Apps'
In a lot of ways, Stallman Was Right about what JavaScript would turn out to be
Open Does Not Mean Free
wiser to ask if some program is freedom-respecting
The Register MS Takes Money From Companies Banned by the Biden and Trump Administrations (National Security Risk)
today's sponsor
Sabotaging GNU/Linux PCs (and Users) is Not a 'Joke'
maybe cruelty is the very objective
Links 11/08/2025: Data Breaches, Politics, and Climate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 10, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 10, 2025
Gemini Links 11/08/2025: Tea Caffeine Hot and Super ZZ Zero
Links for the day
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and Other Serial Sloppers
Maybe Microsoft wants to dub this "Web5"
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Residents Management Company, Automation, and Politics
Links for the day
Links 10/08/2025: AOL Ending Dial-up
Links for the day
Seductive Mirage or Allure of Complex, Proprietary Coffee Machines (or Similar White Elephants)
Software is a lot like those things
Links 10/08/2025: Webrings, “AI Sunglasses” and “AI Eyeglasses”, US Administration Intensifies Attacks on Science and Research
Links for the day
Sometimes Newer is Worse
We generally need to reject this dumb notion that "old" means bad
The Code Used to Make Techrights Fits on a Seventh of a Floppy Disk (or 100KB When Compressed)
For the sake of comparison I've just downloaded the latest version of WordPress. The ZIP file is 27.2MB in size, or ~27,200KB.
What They Tell Young Programmers
Coding in 2025
Simpler is Better When Simple is Enough
Over-complicating things to "sell" new versions is so 1990s
Links 10/08/2025: From Social Control Media to Prison, New Examples of Windows TCO
Links for the day
Sloppy Reporting About Slop, or How The Register MS Lowers Its Standards
Maybe the management isn't even aware of this
IBM's Strategy: Cull 'Expensive' Workers, Replace Them With Cheaper Ones
So far we saw not even one rebuttal or challenge to the claim of Red Hat layoffs scheduled for tomorrow
If You Attack Somebody Too Much You Legitimise and Strengthen That Somebody
at the end those attacks add up to a "martyr" status
The Man Who Helped Microsoft Kill Linux is Trying to Delay Our Lawsuits Against Him
By conservative estimates, and based on court documents submitted by them, they're prepared to spend over a million dollars on lawyers, fighting against me and my wife
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Gen Con 2025 and Framework Laptop
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 09, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 09, 2025
The Register MS (Microsoft) or The Register AI (Slop)?
What a slopfest!
Is Red Hat About to Give the Boot to GNOME People Who Helped Microsoft 'Secure' (Monopolised) Boot?
It was always a dumb idea to play along with Microsoft's hardware mischief
Sales of Windows on PCs (Windows Licences) Go Down
Microsoft has a big problem in its hands
The Hype That Microsoft and The Register MS (Among Others) Promote Helps Stage DDoS Attacks on Free Software Sites
Microsoft is, to put it bluntly, pure evil
The Goal of Coopetition Assumes You're Friends
it will never work with Microsoft
Links 09/08/2025: Putin Allegedly to Visit Alaska (Which He Deems Part of Russia), Mike Tyson Sued for Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, LinuxSecurity, and Google News With Its Slopfarms of Choice
SEO spam, made with LLMs
Follow the Money: The Register MS Gets Paid to Promote "Hey Hi" Ponzi Scheme/Hype, Some Fake 'Articles' Might Be Composed by LLMs Already
paid to promote slop
Gemini Links 09/08/2025: Rethinking Aliases and Posting on Gopher vs. the Web
Links for the day
Links 09/08/2025: Apollo 13 Astronaut Jim Lovell Dies, Slop Future Bleak
Links for the day
After Shutting Down Studios, Divisions, Applications (e.g. Skype) Microsoft is Also Shutting Down 'Apps'
Cuts all around as layoffs persist this month, Microsoft tries to get many people to resign, and debt skyrockets
Most of Geminispace Can Probably Fit on a CD-ROM or a DVD (the Textual Part)
If one excludes very large capsules and ones that contain non-textual contenty
Eventually UEFI 'Secure Boot' Will be Dropped (Users Will Demand Its Removal and Boycott Its Pushers)
we expect OEMs will just listen to users
The Register MS: We Know Slop is a Bubble and Mindless Hype, But We Get Paid to Participate
Call out the culprits
Hate Mail From Anonymous Cowards
if this persists, we'll need to escalate
There Are Probably Over a Million Pages in Geminispace
there are two many limitations which merit a mention when it comes to assessing magnitude
Informal Open Letter to the Lawyer of the Microsofters (on Who's Funding the SLAPPs Against Techrights)
Whenever I ask about the funding they try to change the subject and act all aggressive
Microsoft Lunduke is Just Provoking People for Provocation's Sake
Be forewarned and remember where this guy came from: Microsoft
Besieged by Plagiarists Who Play With LLMs and Image Fusions
We really need to exercise or use our collective voice to oppose Serial Sloppers
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 08, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, August 08, 2025
Gemini Links 09/08/2025: Water Painting and Political Violence
Links for the day