Gemini Articles of Interest

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 10, 2023

A Gemini client^* is needed for the following links.

• Technology and Free Software

  • Katolaz's Ed Tutorial and Some More Tips

    I enjoyed Katolaz's ed tutorial [0], I found it a great way to learn a useful subset of ed commands. I haven't used a line editor since the 80s, but the simplicity is compelling for minor edits, or even glog posts like this one :).

  • Prepping for the Old Computer Challenge

    It's almost time for the third annual Old Computer Challenge (starts Monday, July 10). I did a modified version of the first year's, by limiting the RAM and CPU of a computer that was old, but not old enough to meet the challenge's requirements. The second year was limited online time, and I missed it somehow. This year is the same as the first, but leaning into the SLOW computer requirements. Using a not-so-old computer and limiting it is explicitly okay. I'm going to use the same computer as the first year, an Asus EeePC 1015PX. From 2013, it has a 2-core, 4-thread Intel Atom processor at 1GHz to 1.6GHz, 2GB of RAM, and a very slow spinning-rust hard drive.

  • Using Dice to Generate Human Readable Passwords

    As a result of this, I decided I wanted to make my passwords in an analog way that were much more human friendly. A way of doing that was with some dice I had laying around.

  • OLD COMPUTER CHALLENGE - YEAR 3

    All my notes regarding this year's challenge will be contained within this file. I will be updating it throughout the week.

    [...]

    It's a few minutes past midnight. The challenge began. The T42 is asleep and I'm pecking at a keyboard connected to the low-spec OpenBSD server. No xenodm, mind you.

  • Mutt issues

    OK, so I have mutt receiving emails fine, but I'm having issues sending them. When I first went to test mutt's sending of emails today, I couldn't get any emails to send as the error message returned was "invalid SMTP URL". It took me about an hour before I discovered I had written "smpts://" in the config file (*facepalm*).

  • Internet/Gemini

    • I am a language model

      ChatGPT is a language model. It outputs text token by token based on its prior input. It does not consciously consider what it's writing, it merely melds parts of its input into novel combinations.

    • Re: I am a language model

      I don't think this pattern ever stops as we age. We will continue to master skills until our brains can basically do them on their own and we get bored. The trouble starts, when we run out of new goals. For some, this starts in puberty, when they start questioning the value of the goals their parents present to them. For some it may just start to really impact their lives after they have reached their PhD or worked a job for many years, that they once found interesting.

    • Re: I am a language model

      Not knowing where or when you are is extremely disorienting. Combined with a hearing loss (which disconnects large parts of one's brain) and a vision loss (likewise), in addition to a declining ability to process information, reality is a scary place. Over time she became quite paranoid, convinced that others were plotting to take away her stuff (not worth anyone's efforts, really), destroying her artwork, and otherwise conspiring against her. She would regularly go to the bank and demand funds which she had withdrawn years ago, and accuse them of thievery -- until, eventually, the local branch closed, convincing her that they had absconded with her money and are living it up somewhere... (again, we are talking about life savings of a few thousand, which in her mind had grown into millions).

    • Updated Thoughts On Gemini

      Previously I had written about my experiments with getting Gemini to be used for different cases. Having now used it for a while, I'd like to reflect on what has and hasn't worked.

    • Fedran Infrastructure

      In the first weeks of March, June, September, and December, life gets complicated for my day job. Usually that means the pressure gathers in intensity in the preceding weeks and then winds down after the quarterly release.

      It is time when my other obligations start to press into my attention and I'm too busy to focus on them. Naturally that means as the release winds down, I try to get focus on the others.

^* Gemini links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.