● 08.24.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Gemini Links 24/08/2023: Another Social Place In Geminispace

Posted in News Roundup at 7:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal/Opinions

• We were talking a few months back on how difficult it was to use language like “fish” but not also mean the various cladistic subgroups of fish (such as horses, birds, and piano players). The gricean maxims helped but have their limits, especially in nerd circles where the gricean maxims have been eroded and it’s a race to the bottom of trying to misunderstand each other as much as possible and as “logically” as possible.

• Turns out there is a formal way to do it—to use a paraphyletic subset. “All fish except tetrapods” can be paraphyletically called “fish”, “all wasps except for ants and bees” can be paraphyletically called “wasps”.

• People are able to argue anything by having a different definition of words.

• “Cigarettes are healthy because by cigarettes I mean carrots and by healthy I mean that I buy them by the pound.”

• That’s no good.

• The cure for this is not to try to always stick to some dictionary definition and trying to demand others always use the exact same definition as you would and to hold them to what what they said would’ve meant if they were using the same definition as you would’ve used. That’s not a cure for the problem, that’s exacerbating the problem. “OMG how dare you wanna place some restrictions on cigarettes? I need them in my coleslaw!”

• I haven’t followed this discussion, because I consider this a none issue. Everyone can wear whatever they want.

• This summer I switched from wearing regular mascara to waterproof mascara.

• Mascara is serious business for us redheads with pale or invisible eyebrows and eyelashes. I’m not sure how I had three children with thick, black, beautifully curled half-inch eyelashes. I was not blessed with those. Some people don’t have to worry about this, but I almost always feel better about life once I give myself visible eyebrows and eyelashes.

• First time posting here, just want to say how much I have loved lurking and reading everyone’s posts. I didn’t really get a chance to experience the “old net”, my version of the “old net” was the SomethingAwful Forums, which were their own brand of insanity. What I enjoy about this space right now is it’s simplicity, and the relaxed attitude that makes me feel comfortable enough to share these mundane thoughts without worrying so much about whether someone else is going to flame me in the comments. I mean, I’m sure it can happen here, but without notifications, votes, etc, I guess I just care less.

Technology and Free Software

• these days i’ve been working on my music collection; downloading and organizing, ressurecting my ipod (and complaining it’s not compatible with gtkpod), and of course getting qmmp, because the skins make me happy.

• i’ve been using a very uncharacteristic skin, all pastel pink, but it’s cute and makes me happy which is always the point of customization. looks quite nice against my dark blue siphonophore wallpaper too.

Internet/Gemini

• It’s been heads down. Work on COBOL for the Gnu Compiler Collection (GCC), or `gcobol`, has been going on for almost two years. That has consumed all the energy of the COBOL team. There is a gcobol section on COBOLworx.com and a current development version of the compiler is available for Ubuntu 20.04 (and the equivalent Debian version). It generally works, passes allmost all of the interesting “NIST-85″ tests, and is worth a try.

• We’re turning back to GnuCOBOL since the Project recently released 3.2 with significant improvements. The binary installers for GnuCOBOL 3.2 are up on COBOLworx.com. Work on the adaptations to the debugger (`cbl-gdb`) has begun but it will be a while. So it won’t be updated for a bit.

• [...]

• We recently Released binaries for OpenLDAP Releases 2.5.15 and 2.6.5. Mostly bug fixes with a few weird “crashers”.

• 1. 00:00:00 Introduction 2. 00:02:30 Future of the Gemcast 3. 00:26:08 Poezio vs. Profanity 4. 00:38:29 Element X and Matrix

• About 17 days ago I fixed a bug in the server hosting software I use for my Gemini servers. The moment I did that, I started working on a new CGI based Gemini capsule. I kind of hyperfixated on it lol.

• It’s a place where any registered user can make posts, like, repost, reply, follow other users, etc. All posts can have image embeddings too. It uses some interesting methods to create interactive form pages, as well as very comprehensive user experience settings (with more to come).

• All of this is done entirely within Gemini, taking its protocol to its limits for some specific things.

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