01.31.23
Posted in GNU/Linux, Review at 11:41 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 00770802190b1c2ddea678a9910d0b65
Blackmailed by Establishment Media
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: Nitrux is being criticised for being “very unappealing”; but a look behind the scenes reveals an angry reviewer (habitual mouthpiece of the Linux Foundation and Linux foes) trying to intimidate Nitrux developers, who are unpaid volunteers rather than “corporate” developers
THIS Twitter thread (discussed in the video above) was highlighted to us by a reader who had once experienced similar mistreatment as an independent reporter. These people deserve a voice and taking this public can hopefully discourage repetition. We need to protect one another from mistreatment and injustice.
“As for the corporate media, it’ll injure itself to death. People are getting tired of what it’s trying to offer.”The paid press is full of people with a twisted agenda. One must track who’s who (or their true agenda). Techrights has had a go at it for years. We must support community distros and volunteers who are technical, always placing them above the ‘suits’ and their corporations. As for the corporate media, it’ll injure itself to death. People are getting tired of what it’s trying to offer.
The video above shows what the media did to Uri from Nitrux and MauiKit. █
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05.10.22
Posted in Deception, Hardware, Microsoft, Review at 2:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum bec8f63739da90c5eb3b497317ae4c6b
Bought and Paid-For Influence
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: AstroTurfers or “shills” on the Web are a mostly unspoken-about pandemic of growing proportions; we use Phoronix as an example of influenced (as in “influencer”) coverage
THE last post was mostly a chart, a simple chart showing the effect of corporate money. Gifting, money, whatever…
The post was about AMD and Phoronix even though other companies seem to have similar arrangements with so-called “influencers”; the phenomenon in general is not new, only the label is relatively new (it’s a euphemism embraced by the “influencers”, who don’t fancy words like “shills”). We want to encourage people to become more suspicious/sceptical of what they see on the Web, including social control media and GulagTube. If one searches for reviews on the Web, one is likely to find a lot of paid-for junk; moreover, there’s a great deal of censorship of negative reviews going on (some firms market this kind of censorship as a “service”).
“If one searches for reviews on the Web, one is likely to find a lot of paid-for junk…”The bottom line is, the culprits are rarely honest and upfront about sponsorship, conflict of interest, and so on. Disclosures are often absent or partly hidden (tacit at best). The issue is of utmost importance “especially now with so many “influencers”,” an associate noted, “but those are especially a danger to social control media useds” [sic] including those controlled by Zuck and Musk (or MusKSA; we now know a lot of the Twitter purchase is in fact funded by Saudi “royals”, more recently renowned for chopping and cooking journalists they don’t agree with; so much for a “free speech” Twitter).
The above video focuses on Phoronix but goes beyond that, including the way Microsoft has been bribing bloggers for “reviews” of products, including Windows. Some of the incentives and gifts exceed in value one month’s salary. █
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01.08.22
Posted in Free/Libre Software, Review, Site News at 10:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum c0cb7c0e43bf111fb7e014c9c69804f2
A Gemini Clients Survey
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: As another year starts it seems like a good time to revisit the options one has in Geminispace, comparing a bunch of decent Gemini clients (like Web browsers but for gemini://)
“My son and I have been experimenting with #gopher and #gemini,” said this person the other day. “As a browser, we are most often using #lagrange,” he added.
There seems to be a lot of consolidation among users around Amfora and Lagrange [1, 2], so few have paid attention to Telescope [1, 2] in the command line (a much lighter alternative to Amfora, and one that does not use Rust) and Moonlander for a GUI. Both projects aren’t being developed anymore, maybe due to a lack of broad userbase, but there are signs of revival in Telescope. Kristall and Bollux are demonstrated in this video from last year, but the above video of ours does not cover them because I never used them. All in all I tried more than half a dozen Gemini clients and it’s hard to recommend just one because it depends on the user and the sorts of needs one has (e.g. RAM available, access to images, tabbing etc.) and the platform one uses. For me, personally, Lagrange is something I can settle and stay with. It seems to have the most features and its developer ‘gets’ software freedom. █
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09.17.21
Posted in Free/Libre Software, Review at 9:11 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum ec192ce38f3d4d9773021d2d3f9b5149
Summary: Gemini protocol and/or Gemini space are easy for anyone to get started with or fully involved in (writing and creating, not just reading); today we take a look at the new version of Lagrange (it was first introduced here back in March and covered again in April), which I installed earlier today because it contains a lot of improvements, including the installation process (now it’s just a click-to-run AppImage)
LAST night Andrew Thorp wrote in the Gemini mailing lists: “While I like a good technical blog as much as the next software engineer, does anyone know of some good non-technical capsules ? In particular I enjoy reading about hiking, gardening, and photography. I don’t mind if the capsule contains technical content, but it’s nice to read something softer.”
It’s not controversial to say that Gemini is popular among geeks and developers; for mass adoption we’ll need to make it easier and welcoming to lesser- or differently-technical people, as well as foster “content” to that effect. It was the same with the World Wide Web in its early days (early 1990s). Techrights on Gemini is mostly technical, but the Daily Links are not limited to technology.
Contrary to how it may seem on the surface, as many early adopters are also command line lovers, one needn’t have any knowledge beyond the level of using a Web browser (or accessing the Web) in order to embrace/use Gemini. One existing barrier is the lack of software in repositories and “stores”; in due time, however, given the phenomenal growth of Gemini, we reckon we’ll leave this obstacle behind us.
As noted here before, creating and managing a Gemini capsule is a lot simpler than running a Web site and editing Web pages (there are also GUIs for it, as shown below).
As the media refuses to cover Gemini (publishers’ agenda has its lousy reasons) it remains highly important to spread the word. In the video above I sort of ‘review’ the latest version of Lagrange, which as far as I’m aware is the most advanced Gemini client/browser. It’s still actively developed, it is very popular, and its development is self-hosted, which is a positive sign. Now it’s possible to install and run it by just downloading a single file (the AppImage object), then double-clicking it. It ought to help by lowering the entry barrier. █
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09.16.21
Posted in Free/Libre Software, Review at 11:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum 2502c141249b73b6dd31167c4a2c69e0
Summary: After spending many months examining an array of different types of software for Gemini (including but not limited to clients/browsers) we take stock of what exists, what’s supported (it varies a bit), and which one might be suitable for use by geeks and non-geeks
AROUND the start of this year we began implementing our Gemini capsule, which now contains almost all the pages that exist in the Web site. It the process we produced a lot of code (released under the terms of the AGPLv3), mostly for converting WordPress and MediaWiki into Gemini pages.
Our Web site isn’t going away, but it’s no longer our sole priority. We invite readers to follow us into Geminispace (or Gemini space — the term used for that protocol and what lurks inside it).
I’ve asked around in IRC, where quite a few of us have tried Amfora, Lagrange, and Kristall. One of us settled on Kristall, I myself mostly use Lagrange these days, and MinceR (who tried all three) prefers Amfora. One associate prefers Amfora as well.
“There’s no clear strategy for ‘fixing’ the Web, so we need to gradually move to something else, at least for some use cases.”In the first half of this month the capsule has attracted nearly a quarter million page requests and it’s growing every month. We invest more energy in the Gemini capsule than we do in the Web site. Gemini protocol has promise and has a future; Gemini space continues to expand, too. There are currently 1,600 unique capsules that are known, compared to 500 last December and about 1,000 back in April (according to Mr. Bortzmeyer). So it more than tripled in a single year!
The video above covered my personal everyday experience with Gemini software (I used those tools in parallel and in conjunction, partly for testing purposes).
As promised in the video (recording before typing a single line of text), here are the links to various homepages, along with a screenshot of each homepage.
Kristall. Homepage: https://kristall.random-projects.net/
Amfora. Homepage: https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora
Telescope. Homepage: https://git.omarpolo.com/telescope/
Lagrange. Homepage: https://git.skyjake.fi/gemini/lagrange
Moonlander. Homepage: https://sr.ht/~admicos/moonlander/
We are absolutely certain that Gemini will continues to grow; it’s not some passing fad and interest in Gemini will grow as fatigue/backlash increases, seeing that the Web is a monopolistic monoculture of bloat and surveillance. There’s no clear strategy for ‘fixing’ the Web, so we need to gradually move to something else, at least for some use cases. █
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06.12.21
Posted in GNU/Linux, KDE, Review at 6:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Summary: A quick recommendation of KDE based on a reasonably recent (but not latest) build; there’s this myth about KDE being difficult and flaky, but for a number of decades it has been the most advanced desktop (on any operating system) and its developers managed to hide the complexity while offering users all the power they may want/need
THERE is a new version of KDE Plasma out in the wild. Over the past few days , as the media caught on (some examples of coverage, including videos of this release), more and more distributions of GNU/Linux built and integrated it into repositories and/or ISOs. KDE remains by far the most powerful desktop environment (I’ve used plenty over the years, even for very long periods of time) and this video shows some of the extensive sets of features that KDE comes with by default, even without further add-ons or applications.
“It’s not daunting and complicated, at least not by default.”If you’re not a GNU/Linux user, KDE isn’t a bad way to start. It’s not daunting and complicated, at least not by default. It should not be scary anymore. It’s also very stable (it’s rock-solid in Debian ‘Buster’/10). If you left KDE or rejected KDE in the past (around a decade ago), maybe it’s time to revisit and reassess. █
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05.02.21
Posted in Free/Libre Software, Review at 11:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Summary: Audacity is still our software of choice for audio editing; it had a new stable release just 10 days ago (GPL-licensed)
THE TechBytes audiocast uses Mumble (instance we self-host with Murmur at the back end) for recording and Audacity for editing. A decade or more ago we had used all sorts of applications, including several SIP-based ones, but for multi-user chats Mumble is fantastic and we warmly recommend it. It doesn’t do video, but it copes with audio very well and it’s very easy to use. Some time in the future we’ll try to introduce more people to it.
“The licence is GPLv2 and the project will turn 21 later this month.”The above video focuses on Audacity and how it can generally be used (by virtually anybody). It’s Free/libre software with many developers involved (they welcome more), it still has new releases (very active project; last release 10 days ago, according to Wikipedia), and it runs across platforms with standardised formats. There’s no vendor lock-in and anyone can use it. The learning curve is not steep (especially for people who edited sounds before) and it’s not as monstrous as proprietary counterparts, weighing at 65.6 MB for Windows, 86.0 MB for macOS, and for GNU/Linux it varies depending on the distribution. The licence is GPLv2 and the project will turn 21 later this month.
I’m not new to audio editing, so Audacity was very easy for me to learn. It’s the only application I’ve ever used to edit TechBytes and it keeps getting better all the time. It’s also very stable in my experience. It case of crashes it can (and does) recover data.
Here’s where to download the software. █
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04.04.21
Posted in Free/Libre Software, Review at 1:25 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Summary: When it comes to the Gemini (gemini://) protocol, Lagrange is probably the most advanced application made so far; does it manage to keep things simple and reliable (or stable) enough? Let’s examine a week’s experience
LAST WEEK I started experimenting with Lagrange, which is a more feature-rich (albeit complicated and heavy) Gemini client than Moonlander, which is still an alpha, exceedingly simple, but also very light (less than a megabyte of RAM for the main application).
“Remember that one of the goals of Gemini is to keep things slim and simple; making everything light (from clients/browsers to capsules) is an objective.”It has now been over a week of Lagrange use, so I thought it’s time to do another video, pointing out the upsides and downsides of Lagrange. Remember that one of the goals of Gemini is to keep things slim and simple; making everything light (from clients/browsers to capsules) is an objective. Does Lagrange stay true to that goal? █
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