● 01.10.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 10/01/2023: John Deere Surrenders a Little and Nadella Drops Hints of Upcoming Microsoft Layoffs

Posted in News Roundup at 12:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

• Wayland is making great headway in improvements but that doesn’t mean that you have to use it today, so today let’s go over some reason why you might want to avoid doing so.

• The ultimate ESP system, VoIP & RTC capture and troubleshooting, overpriced keyboards, making arcade cabinets even more fun, some notable distro releases, avoiding CAPTCHAs, and more.

• Python dictionaries are known as associative arrays or hashmaps in other languages. In this video I explain how python dictionaries work quickly

• In this video, I take a quick look at KaOS Linux! KaOS is a free, open-source Linux distribution built from scratch, focusing on KDE software. It is designed to provide a modern, stable, and fully customizable operating system built using the most recent software packages.

• In this video, I am going to show how to install Vanilla OS 22.10.

Kernel Space

• Being the latest stable kernel series, Linux 6.1, which will also be a long-term supported (LTS) series receiving updates for at least two years, brings new features, better performance, and improved hardware support so you can enjoy a safer, faster, and more stable Linux desktop or server experience.

• It took a while, but Linux kernel 6.1 is now finally available for Ubuntu users and users of Ubuntu-based distros. The latest release, Linux kernel 6.1.4, can be downloaded and installed on Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu), Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish), or even Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa).

• Bootlin is really happy to welcome another engineer in its team: Alexis Lothoré, who joined us on January 3, 2023.

• Alexis graduated in 2016 from INSA Toulouse and built his experience on embedded systems and embedded Linux while working for Smile and then Somfy Protect. In addition his experience on embedded Linux, Alexis has experience on micro-controller based development, with real-time operating systems such as FreeRTOS, and also has a wide knowledge around connected systems: protocols, security, robustness, evolutivity.

Graphics Stack

• This is the third part of my “Turnips in the wild” blog post series where I describe how I found and fixed graphical issues in the Mesa Turnip Vulkan driver for Adreno GPUs.

Applications

• The shell is a program that takes commands from the keyboard and gives them to the operating system to perform. This environment lets users run commands, programs, and shell scripts. The shell is both an interactive command language and a scripting language, and is used by the operating system to control the execution of the system using shell scripts.

• The first Unix shell was the Thompson shell, sh, written by Ken Thompson at Bell Labs back in the early 1970s. Nowadays, on many Linux systems, bash (which stands for Bourne Again SHell) acts as the shell program. But there are lots of other free and open source shells available for Linux.

• Computers have become so fast and capable that you can run multiple other virtual computers using its internal resources. This idea is known as virtualization, and although it may seem strange, virtualization has many uses. Plus, it can save you a lot of money for tasks that would normally require multiple computers to accomplish.

• To create these virtual machines, we use a program known as a hypervisor. One of the most recommended hypervisors is Oracle’s VirtualBox. So, what exactly can you do with VirtualBox? And why use it over other hypervisors?

• Explaining some of the things you can do in the popular interactive process viewer htop

• Impressive is a free open source presentation software that enables you to create a catchy beautiful presentation. In another work “Impressive”.

• It allows smooth alpha-blended slide translation, overview screen, and allows you to add a highlight for your boxes. Moreover, adding spotlight effect that you can browse or navigate through.

• Smooth alpha-blended slide transitions are provided for the sake of eye candy, but in addition to this, Impressive offers some unique tools that are really useful for presentations.

• Unlike many presentation software programs that resemble Microsoft PowerPoint, and LibreOffice embedded presentation, Spice-up is a standalone presentation software for Linux systems.

Instructionals/Technical

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Google Chrome on Manjaro 21. For those of you who didn’t know, Google Chrome is a free and open-source web browser developed by Google. The usability and extensive feature list of Chrome attracts users, and therefore a large community of people is using it as their primary web browser. Chrome is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS operating systems.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Google Chrome browser on a Manjaro 21.

• The SSL connection error: error:0A000086:SSL routines::certificate verify failed error is usually encountered when establishing an SSL connection to a MySQL server. I was configuring the replication between two MySQL servers running with MySQL version 8.0. After configuring the replication, the “SHOW SLAVE STATUS” command on the slave instance shows me the following error…

• If you’re looking for different ways to spoof your IP address, you’ll quickly come across proxy protocols like SOCKS5 as well as Shadowsocks and its different variants. What do these protocols do, and how are they different from each other?

• QMPlay2 is an open-source multimedia player designed to provide a simple and feature-filled way to enjoy all media types in one place. Unlike VLC Media Player, QMPlay2 does not require extra plugins or libraries; its features are built and made available from the program’s modern GUI and inbuilt modules.

• WoeUSB is a free, open-source simple tool that enables you to create your own USB stick windows installer from an iso image or an actual DVD. I have used it myself to create bootable USB sticks for installing Windows from ISO images, and it has worked flawlessly every time. The interface is straightforward to use. Select the ISO image or DVD you want to use, select your USB drive, and click “Create.” The process is quick and painless, and the results are always perfect. If you need to install Windows from a bootable USB stick, WoeUSB is the ideal tool for the job.

• The following tutorial will teach you how to install WoeUSB on the Linux Mint 21/20 desktop release series using a LaunchPAD APT PPA with the command line terminal. This installation method will allow you to run in CLI mode or use the graphical mode interface.

• Firefox ESR is the perfect choice for enterprise users who need stability and security updates but may not have access to newer features. The Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) versions are officially supported by their respective organizations because they do not contain any bugs or unfinished products within their programmed functions! The Firefox extended support release is perfect for university or government networks needing more support than updated software or for users who prefer using Enterprised-based software.

• The following tutorial will teach you how to install Firefox ESR on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa LTS Linux using a recommended Launchpad PPA repository to provide the most up-to-date version using the command line terminal.

• Remmina is a remote desktop client written in GTK+, aiming to be useful for system administrators and travelers who need to work with many remote computers in front of either large monitors or tiny netbooks. It supports the following protocols: RDP, VNC, NX, XDMCP, and SSH. Among its features are Multi-Monitor support, Tabbed sessions, port forwarding, proxy support, and easy access to typical applications like Firefox or LibreOffice. Remmina also has a robust plugin system that can be used to extend its functionality.

• In the following tutorial, you will learn to install Remmina on Fedora Linux using two different methods: dnf package manager or flatpak package manager, with some tips for maintaining or removing popular remote desktop software in the future.

• Recently, you learned how to install Vim in Ubuntu 22.04. This powerful text editor that emerges as an improvement to the mythical vi also has support for plugins. Today, you will learn how to install and use Vim plugins.

• One of the most important reasons to use vim is that it is fast, lightweight, efficient and because it supports many important plugins. These plugins further increase the functionality of the editor and turn it into a Swiss army knife that can help us with almost anything.

• There are two ways to install plugins in Vim. The first one is manually, where we will have to download each one of the plugins. Although this process is safe and very efficient, the truth is that if you are going to install several, it will not be so much.

• Today we are looking at how to install Your Only Move Is HUSTLE on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

• phpBB is free and open-source forum software that provides a space for people to gather and communicate with each other.

• Wireguard is a free and open-source VPN protocol alternative to IPSec, IKEv2, and OpenVPN.

• JupyterLab is a next-generation web-based development environment for Project Jupyter.

• This tutorial will help you switching Ubuntu user interface language to Chinese (汉语, Hànyǔ or 中文, Zhōngwén). We offer you both choices of Simplified (简化字, Jiǎnhuàzì) and Traditional Chinese (正體字, Zhèngtǐzì). This will change the language of basically everything you see on the screen including login screens, menus and buttons, calendar and locale / regional format. For example, once switched you will immediately see Files, Writer and Clock all turned into Chinese characters. We also included a procedure to revert back to English language in case you need it. Finally, we write this as an aid for our friends Ubuntu computer users whose language is Chinese everywhere including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau and Taiwan.

• If you’re working from home, or are too far from your Ubuntu PC, setting up a remote connection seems smart.

• Ubuntu features a built-in remote desktop tool. This gives you total control over your desktop from any other computer or mobile device. You’ll see what’s on that screen and be able to move the mouse and even type!

• The remote desktop feature supports RDP and VNC and is built into Ubuntu by default. Here’s how to use remote desktop software with Ubuntu.

• Strapi is an open-source, headless Content Management System (CMS) built with JavaScript (NodeJS).

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Minetest on KDE Neon.

• The channel is intended to provide a space for promptly sharing information about new features, bug fixes, announcements and any other thing that may be related to the development of the TDE project.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Gnome 44 will be officially released on March 22, 2023.

• Although it’s a bit premature to talk about what features will be found in the 44th iteration of the Gnome desktop, it’s safe to say that the Epiphany web browser will most likely get the GTK4 port we’ve been waiting for as well as WebExtensions support that will be enabled out of the box. There also may be wider libadwaita support in more apps.

• The big question on my mind is will Gnome 44 finally feature the new terminal app, Console, or will it continue on with the current default gnome-terminal?

• According to 9To5Linux, Gedit is making a comeback, although there is no indication it will return as the default text editor. My guess is that the new default will remain the same with the newly-updated Gedit available as an alternative.

• A new ‘window focus’ animation for GNOME Shell is available to test.

• GNOME designers are currently exploring a different way to indicate ‘focus’ in GNOME Shell. One idea is to remove the app icon, name, and menu that appears in the Top Bar (next to Activities button – this was retained to indicate the app in focus) and replace it with a window animation

• As is, user testing shows the (what’s left of the) app menu confuses users. “They think that it’s a task switcher, a shortcut to a specific app, or don’t understand what it is at all. It seems to be a trip hazard for new users,” explains GNOME design team member Tobias Bernard.

• Those running GNOME 43 interested to see if the proposed approach would affect their workflow can try it out by installing a new GNOME extension.

• Recently, I got an opportunity to attend GNOME Asia Summit 2022 held in Kuala Lumpur. And it was an experience that I’ll never forget.

• It was my first time attending an in-person conference. I was not quite nervous and unsure of what to expect. However, from the moment I arrived at the conference, I was immediately struck by the welcoming and inclusive atmosphere.

• [...]

• I also got an opportunity to meet and connect with other members of the GNOME community. I had the chance to chat with developers, designers, and advocates from different parts of the globe, and it was fascinating to hear about the different ways in which they are using and contributing to GNOME. Along with that, I also got to meet my fellow GSoCers/ friends at the event, and they made the event even more fun.

Distributions and Operating Systems

• We are fixing an issue in desktop-defaults-mx-common that should allow menu editing tools like menulibre to work without removing the mx-tools category. The fix involves a change is capitalization of the mx-tools.menu file that is hidden from users, but needs adjusted so that menulibre actually populates the category.

• For some users, you may see a double “mx-tools” menu category after the change. By defaults, those users who did fresh installs with MX-21 iso and those that updated from MX-19 may see the double category. Anyone doing a fresh install with MX-21.1 and later should not see the issue. This has to do with the original way the mx-tools menu entry was setup, by supplying files directly into the user’s home folder at user creation. From MX-21.1 and forward, those files have been moved outside the home folder, which is why only some users will see the issue. Users who successfully updated to desktop-defaults-mx-common 23.01.03 also won’t see the issue, but that package was pulled because it failed for some users. The full changes are in desktop-defaults-mx-common 23.01.04.

BSD

• We share a common struggle within the BSD community, and more broadly among Unix-like OSs that aren’t Linux. Think Minix, illumos, heck maybe even big iron UNIX. Linux is now perceived as the default, meaning anyone presenting an alternative has to justify their existence on top of its features and capabilities. Linux people with longer memories probably can recall what that used to be like.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

• Two days ago, Distrowatch published the announcement that OpenMandriva is making its debut into the world of rolling distros with its ROME (Rolling OpenMandriva Edition, I presume) release.

• I had upgraded the system not long ago, but I wanted to make sure that I am using this release, so I followed ben79′s most detailed walkthrough here. Big thanks, ben79!!!

• Everything worked perfectly and my system is stable as a rock.

Slackware Family

• For some time now, the slakfinder.org website has been offline. The domain still exists, but the web site just does not respond. Matteo Rossini (zerouno) needed a break from computers, so it is likely that the site won’t return on short notice.

Fedora Family / IBM

• This report covers work that happened between October 1st 2022 and January 8th 2023. For previous work, see the 2022Q3 report.

• [...]

• Since the last update, the SIG gained one new member (Jun Wang).

• We welcome anybody that’s interested and willing to do work within the scope of the SIG to join and contribute. See the membership section on the wiki for the current members list and how to join.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

• Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 769 for the week of January 1 – 7, 2023

Open Hardware/Modding

• Geocaching is a hobby that combines the fun of a scavenger hunt with modern GPS technology. One party will hide a small cache somewhere, then post the general location and the exact GPS coordinates for other parties to find. The goal is to use GPS navigation to find the hidden cache. Often, people will sign a log or leave a small memento in the cache for others to find. Trent Wyatt took that idea and flipped it with this “reverse geocache box” that will only open when someone takes it to a specific GPS location.

• Wyatt designed this with gift-giving in mind. The box has an internal lock that isn’t accessible from the outside. The only way for the recipient to open the box and get their gift is by pushing the red button when they are at the location set by the giver. If they aren’t at the proper location, the display on the box will show the distance to the proper GPS location and how many tries they have left. The idea is that the giver will tell the recipient the general location and the recipient will have to perform triangulation to find the exact coordinates where the box will open.

• We’re usually aiming for a phosh release at the end of each month. In 2022, we did 10 releases like that, 7 major releases (bumping the middle version number) and 3 betas. We skipped the April and November releases. We also did one bug fix release out of line (bumping the last bit of the version number).

• I hope we can keep that cadence in 2023 as it allows us to get changes to users in a timely fashion (thus closing usability gaps as early as possible) as well as giving distributions a way to plan ahead. Ideally we’d not skip any release but sometimes real life just interferes.

• Those releases contain code contributions from about 20 different people and translations from about 30 translators. These numbers are roughly the same as 2021 which is great. Thanks everyone!

• In phosh’s git repository we had a bit over 730 non-merge commits (roughly 2 per day), which is about 10% less than in 2021. Looking closer this is easily compensated by commits to phoc (which needed quite some work for the gestures) and phosh-mobile-settings which didn’t exist in 2021.

• MIDI stands for Music Instrument Digital Interface. It’s the standard communication method for all things music. It’s the way an instrument can talk to a computer. Every musician working in the digital space uses MIDI. Laurie Anderson’s violin? MIDI. Chemical Brothers? MIDI. But why might a DIY MIDI project be useful for you?

• Around the same time last year, I posted a review of a project where my son and I built a DIY mobile phone: the CircuitMess Ringo. Well, this year, both he and I built a DIY voice assistant: the CircuitMess Spencer.

• I have to admit, this kit took a bit less time to assemble [than the Ringo]. It also required less soldering which is good for my son, because he needs to spend time practicing before taking on projects such as this. Fortunately, CircuitMess manufactures and sells practicing kits which I will need to purchase for him to build up his soldering skills.

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

• Hi everyone! We’ve just released Chrome Beta 109 (109.0.5414.85) for Android. It’s now available on Google Play.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

GNU Projects

• GNUHealth 4.0.5 patchset has been released !

• [...]

• We provide “patchsets” to stable releases. Patchsets allow applying bug fixes and updates on production systems. Always try to keep your production system up-to-date with the latest patches. Patches and Patchsets maximize uptime for production systems, and keep your system updated, without the need to do a whole installation.

Programming/Development

• Arduino is a microcontroller-based platform that includes both hardware and software (Arduino IDE) to program. Arduino is an open-source platform which means we can install multiple libraries and different board cores in it. Sometimes we need to uninstall these boards from the Arduino IDE. This article will cover all the methods one can follow to delete Arduino boards from IDE.

• I like to use the glab command-line tool, which used to be a third-party project but which has apparently now been adopted by GitLab themselves. In particular, the glab mr family of commands to interact with merge requests are invaluable for checking out branches from contributors’ forks.

Perl / Raku

• Hillel Wayne wrote an interesting article titled “Microfeatures I’d like to see in more languages“, which caused quite some comments on the interwebs, including many references to the Raku Programming Language. Check out the comments on HackerNews, /r/programming and Lobste.rs. Good to see many people out of the blue mentioning Raku!

Rust

• We are pleased to announce that Android platform support in Rust will be modernized in Rust 1.68 as we update the target NDK from r17 to r25. As a consequence the minimum supported API level will increase from 15 (Ice Cream Sandwich) to 19 (KitKat).

• [...]

• Going forward the Android platform will target the most recent LTS NDK, allowing Rust developers to access platform features sooner. These updates should occur yearly and will be announced in release notes.

Leftovers

• Turns out that Revue is getting shut down. This means that I won’t be able to use it anymore (and I stopped using it because it wasn’t getting much traction vs the amount of work I put into it).

Science

• The Alpine nation is well known for its watches, chocolate and pharmaceutical industry. But in recent years Switzerland has also become a leader in robotics thanks to its top universities, research centres and start-ups.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• I gave myself a few goals to meet this year, one of which was to be more aware of how I use my phones. Whenever I reach for them, I take deliberate note and have them justify their intrusion, or their flip cases remain closed.

• [...]

• The other observations were a tad unsettling. The most alarming is what I’m dubbing the lucid dream effect. I’ve become more attuned to when I’m reaching for my phone, but I’ve still caught myself mindlessly scrolling well after the fact. It’s become so rote, in some cases I had no recollection of picking it up in the first place. It’s like realising you’ve been in a dream this whole time.

• Mostly though, I’ve realised just how often I reach for it to fill a spare moment. This is unsurprising; it’s conventional wisdom that we’re hooked on these devices and crave the sugar hit and dopamine that comes from a brief, superficial distraction. But I think we kid ourselves by thinking yeah, but I’m smart, and that doesn’t happen to me! It does.

• [...]

• And I’ve already noticed a change, even after just a week. There isn’t a way to talk about these without sounding cliché, but I’ve become more aware of my surroundings. I’ve smiled at more people! I look out the window more.

Proprietary

Security

• Patching endpoints is one of the most exhausting and redundant tasks that Linux admins are burdened with, but keeping up with the latest security updates is crucial in maintaining a robust security posture. Failing to keep endpoints up-to-date with critical and recent patches that are released allows for security vulnerabilities to exist in the network that malicious hackers can use to infect endpoints and systems with harmful malware.

• UK Government Environment Agency web site had an open redirect that was actively being used to redirect to various porn sites, including OnlyFans clone sites. Disclosure should have been easy but wasn’t, as the agency haven’t followed wider UK government policy on vulnerability disclosure.

• [...]

• Don’t run government sites on old web servers.

• Check for open redirects.

• Make vulnerability disclosure easy.

• In order to prevent a data breach, ethical hackers look for loopholes in systems, network architecture, and software. In the contemporary digital age, the internet has helped users to connect with one another on a global scale, but it has also created a number of challenges related to cybercrime and theft. Even large organizations have had substantial financial setbacks and data leaks as a result of security flaws. Over time, there has been an increase in demand for certified ethical hackers due to the growth in online attacks. To protect their data from criminal cyber-attacks, several businesses already use the expertise of ethical hackers.

• [...]

• The technique of getting into network or computer systems to check for threats or flaws that a hostile attacker may find and exploit to steal sensitive information, inflict financial loss, or do other major damage is known as ethical hacking, also referred to as penetration testing.

• The Defense Information Systems Agency has released a security technical implementation guide to ensure the secure installation of the Tri-Lab Operating System Stack 4.

• The TOSS 4 STIG outlines requirements to guide the installation of the production simulation environment in compliance with the Defense Department’s security requirements, the DoD Cyber Exchange said Thursday.

Digital Restrictions (DRM)

• As the agriculture sector accelerates its adoption of technology, the reliance on high-tech machinery such as GPS-guided combines and tractors has become more common-place.

• But equipment makers such as Deere have generally required customers to use their parts and service divisions for repairs and until recently, only allowed authorized dealers the means and tools to access the complex computerized systems of their tractors and other machinery.

• The “right-to-repair” movement has gained steam as input costs have surged in recent years – as has the price of repairs.

• The American Farm Bureau Federation and machinery manufacturer Deere & Co (DE.N) signed a memorandum of understanding on Sunday that ensures farmers have the right to repair their own farm equipment or go to an independent technician.

• As the agriculture sector accelerates its adoption of technology, the reliance on high-tech machinery such as GPS-guided combines and tractors has become more common-place.

• But equipment makers such as Deere have generally required customers to use their parts and service divisions for repairs and until recently, only allowed authorized dealers the means and tools to access the complex computerized systems of their tractors and other machinery.

Monopolies

Copyrights

• Parliament remains on break for most of the month of January, but that hasn’t cooled interest in Bills C-11 and C-18. I’ve appeared on several podcasts in recent weeks on these bills that may interest. Last week, I was pleased to appear on CBC’s Front Burner for an episode titled “Will Canada Make Web Giants Pay For News?”. The discussion with host Jayme Poisson focused on the implications of paying for links, the inclusion of the CBC in the system, and potential alternatives that would mitigate against the harms created by the bill.

• Like fast food and snacks, the short story has been derided as minor cuisine, ephemeral and insubstantial, light fare compared to the novel’s sustenance. For Katherine Mansfield, a great master of the form, eating offered a model for the sensuous consumption of her fiction — stories, in turn, that are filled with scenes of alimentary pleasure. On the centenary of the New Zealand writer’s death, Aimée Gasston samples her appetites.

• When in 1920 Katherine Mansfield quoted Coleridge in her notebook — “I, for one, do not call the sod under my feet my country. But language, religion, laws, government, blood — identity in these makes men of one country”— she replied beneath resolutely with the words: “The sod under my feet makes mine”.1 For Mansfield, the messy materiality of the external world was more keenly significant than any secondary intellectual ordering of it, as the redolent sensuousness of her prose still attests. Reviewing the version of Mansfield’s journal published by her lover/husband John Middleton Murry in 1927, Virginia Woolf concluded: “She is a writer, a born writer. Everything she feels and hears and sees is not fragmentary and separate; it belongs together as writing”.2 Writing for Mansfield was a holistic expression of every one of her heightened senses. But Woolf omitted one faculty that was crucial to Mansfield — taste. Mansfield wrote poems about food in her notebooks, as well as recipes and grocery lists, and would interrupt her prose with famished declarations such as: “Im so hungry, simply empty, and seeing in my minds eye just now a surloin of beef, well browned and with plenty of gravy and horseradish sauce and baked potatoes I nearly sobbed”.3 More recent additions to New Zealand’s Alexander Turnbull Library’s manuscripts collection add to its store of food-related Mansfieldian matter, comprising shopping lists, receipts, and recipes for orange soufflé and cold-water scones. This expanding wealth of material, both fictional and biographical, is not circumstantial evidence of everyday life and art intermingling — it is far more often proof that, to Mansfield, the two could never be separated.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• If you’re not sure about the amount of treasure to add to your treasure, I’m here to tell you: don’t fret. Instead, make sure you have a solid restocking rule and you’re golden. There will always be enough treasure if restocking adds treasure. And if you’re running a Megadungeon, it never gets cleared out so there’s always restocking to do.

• I grew one crystal for a week or so, using a slow evaporation process. You can see in the images that several additional crystals_20230109_ were growing off of it, and several on the sewing thread.

• I should be studying for this shit exam of this shit class I have tomorrow. “Requirements and Software Architecture” is the class, if you must know. Can you think of anything that’s more boring than this? I’m going through past exams to prepare (because we rarely did any such exercises during classes; grading is mostly based on a PA) and I’m wondering if it makes any difference. The (theory) lectures were so damn boring and uninteresting I couldn’t bear to be there, I couldn’t concentrate on what the professor said, I couldn’t not think to myself “what a bunch of bull!” So instead I stopped attending, naturally.

• I had a dream that continued the timeline of another dream I had some days ago, like consecutive episodes of a series. This is the first time it happened to me I think.

• I was in an open space, at night, palm trees around and many lights, some kind of event, many people were around, almost like a festival or something of the sort. The place was somewhere in Asia (not because there were specific features I can point out to, but because it was a dream, I just know alright?). A guy crossed paths with me and asked if I didn’t like beer, or why I wasn’t drinking beer, or something like that. I replied that I don’t much appreciate beer. He gave me a dark, almost black, beer bottle, the label was black, and it was in Thai or similar (so I assume I was in Thailand). I gave it a sip and indeed not that bad, nothing like the crap I tasted in real life…

Technical

• I was scared by an epiphany I had the other day when I read a quote by John Carmack [1]. But before I get to the quote and the ephiphany, I need to give some background to understand where I was, and where I am.

• First, for the years I was working for The Corporation (and later, The Enterprise), I was in essense, working in telephony networking, and I was never a fan of telephony networking (the Protocol Stack From Hell [2] notwithstanding).

• I have long tried many different ways of making games. I’ve used large engines such as Godot, Unity, and Unreal. I’ve used purpose-built frameworks like MonoGame, XNA, LOVE, and PyGame. I’ve even tried close to the metal low-level libraries like Raylib and Bevy.

• It wasn’t until I was browsing my Itch.io purchases and stumbled across a license to DragonRuby in the Palestinian Aid Bundle that I finally found a way to make games that is fun for me. Everything just clicked, and effortlessly, I was rendering text and blinking it on screen within an hour. For reference, I had 0 Ruby knowledge up until this point, it’s just that easy to learn. The Discord community was essential in getting me hooked, and helping me through some of the thinking involved in my first game.

• I have a complicated relationship with Youtube like, I imagine, a lot of people.

• While I really dislike everything that Google is doing with the platform and their idiotic algorithm, there are tons of exceptionnaly good content on the platform.

• You can find everything regarding computer science, 3d printing, physics talks, video games, history and so much more. It’s full of dedicated people talking about their passion. I used to only use the “Subscriptions” page of Youtube. The default home page has always been irrelevant, and the Popular tab is just plain cancer.

• As everyone else around here, I love a good tracking of visitors.

• Kidding… screw that.

• However, I feel it’s pretty good to know if your capsule gets any traffic at all and which part of it people find it more interesting. Some may not care, some may.

• In order to do that, I just need a gemini server (I choose molly-brown), docker and my content (that’s my *.gmi files).

• This is the Dockerfile that I’m currently using when I need to create some proof of concepts with rust.

• In this case, I’m building a simple rust application using the rocket framework as dependency.

Internet/Gemini

• I didn’t take too much time reading everything in detail, but “Why though?” is also my thought.

• I certainly won’t be using it. For one, my capsule is hosted on SourceHut, so I couldn’t use it even if I wanted. But most of all, I don’t see the point. I know that if I had something like that, something others could use to let me know they’d linked to a post of mine, I would get FOMO and that’s not cool. I understand this is very individual, maybe you get peace of mind by having this system giving you the latest mentions and whatnot, that’s alright. For me, “what if someone replied but didn’t let me know?” would be at the back of my mind too frequently, I can smell it. And that’s another reason to ask “why though?” If your RFC, that you wrote for yourself, requires others to adopt it to be useful to you, then it’s not much use, I don’t think.

• After publishing yesterday an idea of gemini mention kind of “standard” and a couple of implementations, I realized I haven’t explained why I decided to “work” on this proposal.

• Inspired by [My take on gemlog responses] by Bacardi55. On the one side is so convenient and tempting to have the whole achievements of the modern web. It’s not that I oppose it, or I don’t want it at all, and I renounce it. On the other hand, are we not creating mechanisms for small-net whose distorted operation drives the big-net in the opposite direction to what is expected?

• To me these proposals feel like Web technology. They are (relatively) complex technical solutions that are difficult to apply universally to everyone, and require (relatively) costly commitment from both gemlog authors and readers.

• Gemlogs are not meant for interaction, per se. It’s a bit like having a discussion with someone by publishing open letters in a newspaper. It’s a many-to-many, open ended forum.

• The Gemini community is globally very nice and I’ve really been enjoying the different interaction I had with fellow geminauts over station¹, tinylogs², gemlog entries or via email (keep emails coming!). I really like those interactions, but I feel like interacting with each other over gemlog entries remains difficult. At least to ensure the author see all the responses to their posts. It’s very common to see a gemlog entry being a response to another author entry, but we don’t have yet a simple way to notify each other.

• Freezr made an interesting proposal about having a “Re:log” for replies in the geminispace, separate from the gemlog…

• As I wrote in the initial post, I am not an expert in programming and have a non-IT engineering background. Nevertheless I have some coding experience (I do some Python coding every now and then), so I understand the argument, that log-parsing is in the more complex than a CGI script. I also have to say that I wrote this post from my perspective, self-hosting my gemini capsule on a virtual Rootserver, which gives me access to all Logs. I see the point, that not every user has access to this.

• The Gemini-space is really versatile and offers countless ways to interact with, one aspect I love so much on Gemini is this direct thread that links a capsule to another one! On dynamic aggregators, like Antenna, you can often find entries that directly address other Gemlogs by simply adding a “Re:” before the title’s Gemlog they are referring to, exactly as you would reply to an email from your favorite client!

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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