Gemini Articles of Interest

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 07, 2023

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

• Technology and Free Software

  • Recommendation algorithms: all fail

    Is there a best practice of automated recommendation systems? Clearly there are lots of bad recommendation algorithms out there. Either they don't work as intended, or they do but have undesirable side effects. I've touched on music recommendation in a previous post (rewilding music), here I will focus on video.

    Youtube's algorithms have been criticised for promoting inaccurate information, serving scary content to toddlers, and much more. Since the algorithms are tightly kept secrets the criticism must be based on their observable effects, which partly depend on the interaction with millions or billions of users. And with individual customisation, each viewer will see different recommendations.

    The panic about misinformation has hit hard on those who are critical of the current order of things, regardless of whether they present accurate information or deranged misconceptions. Project Owl in 2017 had the ostensible goal of diminishing the spread of false information, and if it succeeded at that it also had a deleterious effect on independent news sites of high quality, who may have presented opinion pieces that were not well aligned with establishment views.

  • From Terminal to terminal

    Yes, that's all...Ok, maybe a terminal ? It's also very usefull. No problem for a PC under GNU/Linux of course but for the other computer that (almost) everyone has, the smartphone, it's not so easy.

  • Internet/Gemini

    • Finally reachable over IPv6

      Up until now, this site has been hosted on sourcehut pages. It was quite easy to get started since it integrates very well into the sourcehut ecosystem: the build gets triggered automatically on git push and it automatically gets the permission to publish the page.

    • Trying Gemini (again)

      I've been feeling increasingly disillusioned with the bloat and maintenance of my website, and the constant need to move social networks as each hub collapses.

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