● 06.20.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 20/06/2023: De-federating and Computer Challenge

Posted in News Roundup at 8:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• It’s funny – even when I’m sitting down to write you a letter like this, I find myself wanting to say the same things I always say to you: that I love you, and I love you, and that your heart is the size of day, and that I love you, saying these words again and again, ibidem, ibidem, until the words are no longer enough.

Technology and Free Software

• Hello, I’ve been talking a lot about Qubes OS lately but I never explained why I got hooked to its offer. It’s time to tell why I like it.

• After looking through a lot of OSR systems, I finally settled on trying out Scarlet Heroes. It looked like it offers the best balance between what I wanted out of a system.

• For the first game, I am a player, and someone else kind enough to be the GM. It’s going to be a duet game, which Scarlet Heroes is designed for. The first step for me in this is to create a character.

Internet/Gemini

• Bubble version 5 introduces several new features. Some improve basic usability and some are smaller things that have been missing from the start. All of these have been informed by the experience of using BBS over the past weeks.

• Today is the fourth anniversary of the public announcement of Project Gemini. I promise that nobody, not a soul, is more surprised than I am that an average of one hundred thousand working Gemini URIs have appeared per year since that announcement. I’m more grateful than I can convey that so many people have responded so positively and energetically to the idea of a smaller, simpler, saner online space, and I continue to regularly feel worse than I probably should that I didn’t do a better job of handling that response.

• A few posts ago I wrote that ads on Gemini “could never happen”.

• For any URLs that do have a problem, you can click on the URL and get a list of the inbound links to that page. Personally I’ve used this fix internal links that are broken, links that I’ve typo-ed by mistake, and even to put redirects in place to correct old, inbound links to pages that have moved.

• To use it, go to Kennedy, select the Capsule Health Report, and enter the domain name of a capsule.

• Facebook (“Meta”) is launching a Twitter alternative that will interoperate with the Fediverse, currently codenamed “Barcelona” and “P92″ (and likely to be known as “Threads”). We don’t know the extent to which this will or won’t interoperate; admins who’ve met with Facebook/Meta employees to discuss P92 have signed non-disclosure agreements. Most discussion can be framed in two ways:

• 1. Whether P92 in particular is worth defederating from, should it involve an ActivityPub server.

• 2. Whether Facebook/Meta projects in principle would be worth proactively blocking, should they attempt to interoperate with a Fediverse instance.

• I’m going to focus on the latter topic, as we know little about the former.

• I guess this is the introductory post: the first post on a new blog/gemlog/phlog. Feels daunting…

• I plan to use this blog over the next while to at least initially talk about Solene’s Old Computer Challenge, which I intend to attempt to participate in this year.

• He goes on to lament not being more active, but notes that he’s getting back into the space and hopes to build up momentum for some slow and steady progress.

• I know how he feels! I’ve let Gemini Quickstart decay over the last two years, while the hosting and client landscape has changed all around us. The Android client I recommend on the site hasn’t been available for over a year, and there are several new ones, including the Lagrange port, which is probably the most popular Android client right now. I don’t have any idea what things look like over in iOS and MacOS land these days. There’s no mention of Antenna, Station, Newswaffle, or Bubble, or anything else that’s appeared since then. I’ve started doing a little work on it just to get it ready for making all of the changes it needs, but I’ve got to say, it’s hard out here these days! I have tremendous respect and substantial envy for anyone who’s able to keep up with their side projects.

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