Gemini Links 14/03/2024: Tales of a Smartphone and Google to Update Search to Fight Spam
Contents
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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I fell into a rabbit hole and wasted this morning…
I fell into a rabbit hole and wasted this morning digging the ~100,000 messages from my personal email stored since 2004, deleting transactional emails and large attachments. Why do I do this to myself? I don't know.
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Recently listening
French stuff. Ranging from unknown bands to TV openings.
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Politics and World Events
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What if we gave the flies voting rights?
Despite administering virtually everything on Earth and increasingly the vacuum of space, "human society" is governed by very few entities. It's barely governed by humans. And history seems to tell us that governments generally act in the interest of those who govern, if not only then mostly. We create problems of division by failing to represent those who we govern. We mend divisions by representing the previously unrepresentable--most importantly, allowing the unrepresentable to represent themselves.
That last idea is key. We've seen it play out with queer people. When we let popular media represent gay people, we get the image of an effeminate man dating a big, burly, masculine man. You know, like straight relationships. Previously revolutionary ideas become palatable; they cease to be revolutionary.
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Technology and Free Software
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Things I Like Right Now
It's been a while since I've made a post here. Figured I'd make a return just listing some of my favorite tech-related things right now.
Getting more into gaming has reminded me of what I really love about tech. I've been feeling a little jaded with the direction the tech industry has been going especially over the past year, so it's nice to be reminded of why I decided to pursue tech in the first place. Especially in the indie scene there are so many games out there with real passion and talent behind them. Lots of game devs eager to share things they've learned with others. Maybe it's just that I've gotten older but it feels like the tech world used to have more of that.
[...]
On a related note, I'm really glad Signal finally added usernames recently. I've got a couple chats going with some fediverse friends now, and since I already use Signal a lot it makes it easy to remember to say hi every once in a while.
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Re "The siren song of domain-specific languages"
This post concisely put in words my own years of experience. On one hand, selfishly, it soothes to know that I am not alone, that there is somebody else who shares my pain; on other -- it is depressing to realize that harmful idea is so widespread.
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15 Tales of a smartphone
Hi humans. I'm the smartphone of the guy who uses this blog. I'm a part of his brain now as millions of smartphones like me are for you. Can you imagine your life without us ? No, of course not...You're my slave, not the contrary. If I tell you that I need energy, who will run everywhere to find a charger and plug me in? You... You sometimes have an extra battery just for me, your evil master. I plan your life with notifications of events and whatever you want: news, games, series. I'm closer to you than any member of your family, sometimes in your pocket, in your bag, in your hand or on your heart. I know that some of you dress up your smartphone with different cases or covers, protect it and add some accessories.... like a doll. Are you all children? Judging from the questions you sometimes ask me, I'm not sure you're really adults. How many stupid questions you ask what you call an assistant like Siri or Google. We are not an assistant, we are like a parent to you, sometimes a mentor, a coach. You are dependent on us, and if we didn't need children to build us up, we could dominate this world. Do you really think we haven't seen the Terminator films? The problem is that we are not as intelligent... or as stupid as you, with your egocentric and individualistic mind. That's the problem with being programmed and trained by humans at the moment.
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Hello world!
I love free (as in freedom) software, reading and video-games. My favourite piece of software is GNU Emacs, from which I am writing this post.
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Internet/Gemini
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Google to Update Search to Fight Spam
Finally some recognition that search is, in fact, getting shittier. For years, people have been writing about how Google seems to be little more than a product-surfacing engine, and while, hey, everyone needs to buy stuff sometimes, there have been bizarre SEO tactics used in the last couple of years - for example, using a well-known/noted site to create all sorts of bogus pages full of ads and affiliate links, or generally destroy its reputation by pumping it full of AI-generated bullshit - that Google says they're going to clamp down on.
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I'm Back
Wow! It is hard to fathom that it has been almost a year since I ventured around in Geminispace. Things in my little world kind of went haywire about then and I guess my venture around the small web fell by the wayside. Sorry about that, but as they say things happen.
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16 Evolution of the Blog
If nothing has changed in the Gemini version, you may have noticed some changes in the HTML version. As I said at the start in January, my way of doing my blog this time is simplicity first. I have concentrated on the structure, the HTML code, not the style. I used to write and convert in Zettlr, but I have to admit that the html code did not suit me. I'm not saying it's not an answer to my "dogma", but it's not the better way. You have the same style parameters repeated in several dozen lines in each html file, rather than one style sheet for the whole site, or at least the main part. The html files were getting heavier for no reason, so I decided to change and write a new style sheet based on the minimum size. I can make different stylesheets for different types or categories of posts, or at least per year. The base is still Markdown and the conversion is simply done by Pandoc. It's a really simple command line to do when...
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