● 07.03.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 03/07/2023: Go Start a Blog and RIP, World Wide Web

Posted in News Roundup at 7:43 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• I’ve lived a life of poverty and persecution, and then making something from nothing, hiring people and worrying about how to pay their salaries; I take care of my broke parents, and children, some queer and trans (and I am completely supportive). My life did not include such privileges as choosing pronouns or gender, getting voluntary medical procedures and hormonal treatments, or deciding that other people should bow to me and my lifestyle choices. I was too busy surviving. You are the privileged one here.

• [...]

• That is just so offensive. It is precisely the kind of alienating behaviour that, well, alienates certain groups and gives them a bad name. And it looks like you prefer it that way, so you can bitch “those people just don’t get it”.

• This is what happens when you stew in the same soup – you start normalizing horrible behavior. Aside from the name-calling, do you honestly think that you are clearly communicating yourself to anyone? You can hi-five your buds but as an ambassador for your chosen letter, YOU HAVE FAILED, MISERABLY.

Politics and World Events

• I wasn’t planning on posting today. I have a programming related task that I would rather be doing, something that I find interesting and exciting, but my previous post apparently stirred some things. I’m not going to even link to the replies. You know who you are. But if I ignored what was said I couldn’t live with myself.

• I was heavy drinker of coffee for 20 years. I started to drink coffee at college. It tasted horrible. But I learned it is less unappetizing when milk is added. So, I stopped drinking it 2 weeks ago. From 6 double cups a daný to 0. First day was ok. But than I got heavy headache for a day, when I took a painkiller. And then it was ok.

Technology and Free Software

• Most web products from file hosting to chat to banking software are made up of a tech ‘stack’ within a large software ecosystem. These are built for ‘scale’ and designed to be administered by a company providing you a more or less turnkey product at various levels of services. You pay for increasing levels of convenience, either with your private information being tracked, or with recurring expenses. This could mean paying annual fees for a ‘creative editing suite’, downloading and running a health tracking app that invisibly sells your data to data brokers, or accessing a social media account that sells your data to advertisers. And there are many more examples you can imagine or read about in the news.

Internet/Gemini

• It sure feels like the big tech platforms that people have relied on for years are starting to rot away. There’s lots to be said about X adding rate limiting, Y getting put behind a login, Z killing their API, and one of those things I’ve often seen said is that it feels like the internet is dying.

• I’m sure it does feel that way if platforms are the main way you interact with the internet, even more so if the companies behind those platforms’ driving force is only valuation. I believe the truth is that in some ways the internet has in fact never been healthier than now. The reason for that is how stupid easy and cheap it is for someone to set up their own space on the internet to do and say whatever they want. And there’s no need to worry about some random executive messing everything up because of their obsession with infinite growth.

• Does gemini have advertising? This boils down to how one defines advertising, which like spam, porn, or bears depends on “I’ll know it when I see it”. A narrow ruling may mandate an advertising company, that is, a commercial involvement with intent to sell. This would exclude other senses such as public notices (road closed due to sinkhole) or promotions: book reviews, great gadget geekouts, the latest game addiction, etc. Gemini has very little of the first sense, but does have the second and especially third. One can, typing in vi, also do product placement. Some placements are less clumsy and more relevant. For instance, the Psi Corps advertisement in Babylon 5 followed a regular advertising block, to the point that you might not realize at first that the show was back on.

• Mew151 has a series of artistic posts titled “Antimoon”, a collection of articles titled “Cyberspace” which are “dedicated to the World Wide Web, programming, and other techy things”, a gemlog, and “Natalie’s Accordion Corner” — a section of the capsule dedicated to accordions, which can even boast its own “Squeeze Blog”. I can hardly wait until after I finish writing this post before reading all of it.

• Mew151 is also the Gemini capsule of an interesting website. That may seem like something that shouldn’t qualify for the CCOW, but it actually does speak to Gemini’s strengths.

• It’s official! The Web is dead!

• i’m exaggerating, of course, but the demise feels imminent. for too long now search results have been near useless unless you append “reddit” to the end of your search. otherwise you get useless clickbait articles which never get to the point, bombard you with requests to give you push notifications and to accept cookie upon cookie. and the reddit trick is dead, along with reddit! many communities are still locked down! the owners are at odds with its userbase and i can’t see the animosity ever properly clearing. when it comes to websites like this, things only get worse. deterioration and collapse are inevitable.

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