Gemini Articles of Interest
A Gemini client* is needed for the following links.
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My open-source machine learning toolbox
I recently got interested into what's possible with machine learning programs, and this has been an exciting journey. Let me share about a few programs I added to my toolbox.
They all work well on NixOS, but they might require specific instructions to work except for upscayl and whisper that are in nixpkgs. However, it's not that hard, but may not be accessible to everyone.
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ActivityWatch
Interesting FOSS program time! ActivityWatch[1] is a time monitoring FOSS program. Compared to alternatives, it's fully FOSS, privacy-friendly and stores data locally. I thought it'd help me see how I spend my computer time, thus would prove helpful in organizing it. If you're on Android it'll auto import your statistics from the OS.
On the Small Web we tend to be mindful of our computer usage and try to not get caught in the whirlwind of the WWW, so a helpful utility like ActivityWatch fits right in. I find it useful for keeping myself informed in regards to my screen time, not only that you can see what specific programs you use and you can group them based on various categories.
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Akka and the future of SpaceBeans
Apparently a paid licence will only be necessary for large companies (not sure if profiting from Akka), and looks like security patches will be backported (at least for a while). Any non-OSS version will be released as OSS after 3 years, but that doesn't matter in my opinion.
SpaceBeans is currently using the latest OSS version of Akka (the service relies on Akka Streams), and I don't plan to use the non-OSS version, so this is the end of the road for SpaceBeans as it is today.
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Clickbait on Gemini
Clickbait is encouraged in order to generate more revenue for websites, that are usually filled with ads or spyware. In other words, profit.
We've all seen how dire is the state of clickbait on the WWW. Articles are beginning to get written by neural networks just to automate clickbait, most of the titles are very exaggerated and you cannot find anything without stumbling upon some clickbait.
On Gemini however, clickbait isn't present, at least as of writing this, because there's no incentive to make profit. The restricted nature of the protocol makes it hard to monetize, in this case it's a good thing. We write here for fun, not to earn money.
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AWK the ultimate swiss army knife for data
I want AWK to be more well known. It was treated as soem weird-ass tool that somehow works but no one knows why. It's all over the place on StackOverflow whenever we need to select a reagon of a file or something. I didn't apprishate this in the beginning. I was forced to learn `sed` and `awk` back in collage. Now I absolutely love awk. It's a standard tool shipped on every UNIX system (so, anywhere besides Windows). Being readily available and easy to use. It's a great tool to have in your toolbox if you work with any kind of data.
* Gemini links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.