Gemini Articles of Interest
A Gemini client* is needed for the following links.
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Technology and Free Software
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Docker (RPi3B)
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Bash alternatives to cloud products and platforms
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.
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Internet/Gemini
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Go Start a Blog
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.
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Advertising
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.
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Mew151
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.
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RIP, web
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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* Gemini links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. -