The Gopher Times
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Opus 3 - Gopher news and more - Jan. 2022
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Heaven and computers tgtimes
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Before the era of smartphones, laptops, before Windows
and Apple, there were pioneers who took the fun of
computers from the hands of the few who could afford
computers, and shared them massively so that mere
individuals could afford it.
An ocean of creativity spread. Art of all kinds were
made on these new toys, that were permitting many to
try on their own, or enjoy a tune of 8-bit music, a
demo scene, play a video game, ASCII art...
Offering these pioneers a one-way ticket to enter the
legend, 8bitlegends.com builds a corner of peace,
making some room in our heart for the 8bit heroes.
https://8bitlegends.com/
Bitreich Radio playing auto-generated music 20h
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Bitreich Radio was lacking love. The scripts were
bugged and outputted strange music. To change this, a
redesign was done. See
gopher://bitreich.org/1/radio
for the new gopherhole menu.
When you listen to
gopher://bitreich.org/9/radio/listen
you will hear music auto-generated without any
copyright. It is relaxing music you can listen to in a
background, on a toilet, all for free and forever.
The #bitreich-radio title display has been fixed too.
I hope, this increases the listening experience.
All recommendations, especially about more auto-
generated music, are welcome. We need to escape the
copyright mafia trap.
Sincerely yours, Chief Music Manager (CMM)
Computer that lasts forever ploum
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More RAM, faster CPU, more cache size, lower latency.
Computer industry never sleeps while trying to raise
the bar over and over. It plays with the limit of
physics to keep the Moore's Law dream going.
By Building faster computers, hardware engineers offer
more resources to software makers, allowing them to
build more ambitious projects. The computer
performance discipline sure has been worked up
thoroughly.
If the software comsumes all the extra computing power
for its own goal, then we are conjointly building very
fast snails.
This conquest for a better cost/performance balance is
one direction for the evolution of computers, but it
is also possible to imagine a race for better
reliability and durability instead.
Ploum offers a vision of what computers are like when
maximizing durability of the hardware, but also the
software ecosystem, so that a computer built today
still be useful in 50 years, without upgrades (not
preventing upgrades to happen).
An old knife is still a piece of metal that can be
sharpened over again to be able to cut long after it
was built. Could this also be true for computers?
https://ploum.net/the-computer-built-to-last-50-years/
Year End Meeting 2021 Recordings Online 20h
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For everyone not able to join the 2021 year end
meeting, here are the recordings:
gopher://bitreich.org/1/end-year-meeting/2021
Thanks to everyone who contributed to bitreich over
the last five years!
Sincerely yours, Chief Community Manager (CCM)
100 years of radiodiffusion tgtimes
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The Internet existed forever: books and printed press
have always been around for communicating ideas and
information, and evolved progressively to become what
the Internet is today.
Letters were carried by messengers riding horses,
postal train, or airplanes. Long-range communication
evolved slowly for a long time, but has accelerated
rapidly in recent years, until today extreme bandwidth
and latency.
The common pattern: a new discovery in electronics
permits a new way to communicate information over a
long-distance, with a lightning-fast adoption all
around the world:
1919 wireless telegraphy and music transmission in
Germany, Netherland and United-States
1920 daily radio programmes in England, United-States
and USSR
1921 radio broadcasting from Eiffel Tower with 900 W
power intensity
1922 foundation of the BBC and arrival of 2000 W
broadcastings
A few years before, the long-range communication tool
of choice was paper.
A few years later, the telephone and television
started to develop.
Bitreich University reaches 100% employment rate 20h
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The first students are leaving the MEME university
degree programme. We, the board of meme professors,
would like to thank all students who participated.
All students found jobs in different careers:
Politics, News Reporters, Youtubers, Twitter
Conspiracy Trolls or Bakers. Just watch your local
news, radio, TV or anti-social network for them.
This means, there is a 100% employment rate!
We are so proud and hope for a new semester of
successful students.
Sincerely yours, Chief Meme Caretaker (CMC)
A world of tiny creatures tgtimes
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Ants. Is that what we would look like to the eyes of a
giant? What if one of those giants had the curiosity
of looking down on our world, watching all our tiny
activities, our tiny trades, our tiny farming, our
tiny meals, our tiny families, our tiny lives?
E.O. Wilson was one of these giants, looking at the
ants: the real ones, the insect ones: An entomologist,
someone dedicated to the study of insects.
After 92 years of empassioned life, E.O. Wilson is
fading away, joining the soil, which he spent his life
observing. Closing his own book, while at the same
time inviting everyone to open their eyes, and look,
carefully, at this world of tiny creatures.
stagit and stagit-gopher 1.0 is released bob
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I want to thank all contributors for patches and other
feedback.
You can find the releases on codemadness (primary) and
bitreich (mirror).
gopher://codemadness.org/1/releases/
https://codemadness.org/releases/
gopher://bitreich.org/1/releases/
It has the following changes:
stagit:
- Print the number of remaining commits.
- Ignore '\r' in writing diffs and file blobs.
- Percent encode characters in path names, like '?'
and '#'.
- Encode XML / HTML entities in the project name.
- Add EXAMPLES section to the man pages.
stagit-gopher:
- Print the number of remaining commits.
- Add EXAMPLES section to the man pages.
Thanks to:
- quinq: for the remaining commits patch.
- srfsh: for suggesting to look into percent encoding
characters.
(cl|g)it commander Bob
Uxn portable assembly language 100r.co
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The web is well-known for its drift toward platform
effect: reproducing the features of the underlying
operating system from one of its applications, in this
case, the web browser. This is largely made possible
through javascript, and the advent of WebAssembly can
only contribute more to this.
But making an assembly language a standard for
shipping graphical applications needs not to rhime
with excess and abuse of a platform. A more
conventional approach would be standardising high-
level API and protocols, for which low-level drivers
would be written. Instead, Uxn standardises as low as
the assembly language itself.
Yet, Uxn has nothing in common with Java:
>> Features were weighted against the relative
difficulty they would add for programmers
implementing their own emulators.
Say welcome to this rabbit hole, inviting you with a
fresh take on making computers work for end-users.
Impressive acheivements were reached, such as
portability of this platform on things as small as a
32bit microcontroller:
>> Currently, there are ports (not all are complete)
for GBA, Nintendo DS, Playdate, DOS, PS Vita,
Raspberry Pi Pico, Teletype, ESP32, iOS, STM32,
STM32, IBM PC, and many more.
https://100r.co/site/uxn.html
New Gopher Banner on bitreich.org 20h
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To support local gopher politics, we added a banner to
bitreich.org gopherhole. This is there to support
political movement into more gopher support all over
the world. Please support your local gopher charity,
if you can.
Please do not block the banner in your gopher
adblocker!
+===========================================+
+##########[ ALL GOPHERS MATTER ]###########+
+##[ DONATE TO YOUR LOCAL GOPHER CHARITY ]##+
+##############[ CLICK HERE ]###############+
+===========================================+
Sincerely yours, Chief Political Officer (CPO).
The UNIX calendar(1) command tgtimes
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It is probably there sitting in /usr/bin, the
calendar(1) command can offer you a fair dose of
flexibility that web-based or smartphone-based
calendars lacks.
By storing events in a single file of text edited by
hand, calendar(1) brings the comfort of your existing
text editor to manage events with a simple syntax:
- one line per event: first a date, then a tab, then a
description.
- A line starting with a tab implicitly has the same
date as the previous event.
- Empty lines are ignored, and the C preprocessor
brings #include and /* comments */ as needed.
No need to format everything right away: taking notes
at the bottom of the file, in the middle of a phone
call and formatting after hanging-up... It is it
trivial to manage a calendar file.
While the calendar(1) command is run, events for today
and tomorrow are printed: as a digest of what is
upcoming.
A command line flag permits sending this digest to all
users by email, making it a complete calendar software
suite from edition to reminder.
There is even support for weekly, monthly and yearly
(birthdays) events.
Sharing calendar events is as easy as sending the
section of the calendar file by email, and
synchronising the calendar across devices is a matter
of synchronising a single file.
By adding a few more custom syntax rules on top of
those supported by calendar(1), readable text can be
maintained with little effort.
Jan 23 09:00 Breakfast: cooked eggs and fruits
@ Home Sweet Home
10:30 The Gopher Times proof-reading
@ ircs://irc.bitreich.org/
15:30 On-call duty untill!
@ https://the-dull-gull.corp/login
Jan 24 12:30 Lunch break in town with folks
@ that small cafe that does snacks
Jan 26 19:15 Call with friends abroad
@ mumble://example.com/
Gopher log4j contest 20h
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We hereby announce the gopher log4j contest. Anyone
sending in the patches to java to allow jdni gopher://
loading will be awarded with one year free bitreich
premium membership. One drink per day is free.
Please post your patch on
ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
and you will be rewarded with your membership pass and
a free towel for the member pool.
Sincerely yours, Leading Organisational Gardener 4
Java (LOG4J)
A Guide to Hell by J. Mickens usenix
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>> As a highly trained academic researcher, I spend a
lot of time trying to advance the frontiers of human
knowledge. However, as someone who was born in the
South, I secretly believe that true progress is a
fantasy, and that I need to prepare for the end
times, and for the chickens coming home to roost, and
fast zombies, and slow zombies, and the polite
zombies who say "sir" and "ma'am" but then try to eat
your brain to acquire your skills. When the
revolution comes, I need to be prepared; thus, in the
quiet moments, when I'm not producing incredible
scientific breakthroughs, I think about what I'll do
when the weather forecast inevitably becomes RIVERS
OF BLOOD ALL DAY EVERY DAY. [...]
If James Mickens looks like he is a highly trained
soldier killing zombies in the doomed lands of System
Programming, that is because James Mickens is a highly
trained soldier killing zombies in the doomed lands of
System Programming.
https://usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf
Annna now on #gopherproject too 20h
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With the extension of annna for multi-server support,
she is now able to join irc.libera.chat/#gopherproject
and help our gopher comrades there.
They will receive the bitreich news and have all the
pleasure of annna features, like memes, URI resolvers
etc. There is much to find out!
If you want to dig deeper, look at the annna
internals:
git://bitreich.org/annna
I hope this brings an influx of new ideas for
gopher<>IRC.
Sincerely yours, Chief IRC Officer (CIO)
Confessions of a thief chemla
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>> Below is the beginning of "Confessions of a Thief"
from Laurent Chemla. He founded a major French DNS
registrar, but before that, was the first to commit
online piracy in France (from a Minitel), and worked
on development tools for Atari. The book is published
online in French and translated below.
A thief. How else to name one of the first individual
in France to procure itself an Internet access? In
1994, borrowing the clothes of a telecommunication
expert, that I was not yet, I obtained from an IT
staff employee of a parisian University that he let me
an access to Internet. In exchange, I brought him help
- relatively - to the building of a network devoted to
let student work from home.
I then stole, I confess, this first access to a
network that remained to me a mostly unexplored land
since my last visits in 1992, mediated by obscure
manoeuvres of a friend or through piracy.
This theft benefited to me, I could learn to use a
tool long before the majority of the IT crowd, gaining
an advance that still persist today.
I stole, but I plead good faith. At this epoch nobody
around me did understand what it was about. Would it
bit a thief to steal something nobody had interest in?
This access was to the reach of only a few testing
university students, this access that a small IT
company could not afford, I stole it, and I am not
ashamed.
For my relatives, I am nontheless an "IT janitor".
Programmer to a tiny IT company, I always have been
passionated by telematic networks. A passion that
costed me, in 1986, to be the first to be guilty of
piracy in France, pirated from a Minitel, yes, but to
each his glory. As there was not yet any law against
IT piracy, I have been incriminated for stealing
electrical power. All that ended up in an acquittal,
but still, here is a decent start for a thief career!
Indeed, how to name differently someone who
constituted its professional network by taking part to
associations? We have the impression to contribute
unpaid for the many, but we mostly get known and, time
after time, the clients get attracted by this
visibility. Of course anyone whose professional
occupation deals with voluntary sector end-up face to
its own consciousness. Not unlike, I suppose, a lawyer
who gain clients from the excluded folk that he help
graciously and daily. I ignore what its consciousness
would tell him, but I know mine is not at rest.
Nowadays again, my activities continue to be lucrative
out of Internet, at the time of Nasdaq's fall. How can
one earn while everyone loose, if not by cheating?
A thief is on that use to its profit else's good. To
me, Internet is a public good and, if serve as
commercial gallery for some, it must not limit itself
to such a deviation. Internet must first and foremost
be the tool that, for the first time in mankind,
permitted the freedom of speech, defined as a
fundamental human right.
This right, in all its guarantee from our
constitutional state, has stayed hypothetical since
its proclamation. In France law protects freedom of
Speech of syndicates and journalists but no text that
permit to the simple citizen to undertake justice, to
reach its freedom. What else since, before Internet,
this freedom was to the reach of some privilegied? The
lawyer protected them because only them needed that
protection. Ten years ago, noone would have been able
to benefit an as simple, fast and affordable way to
expose works, arts or ideas but by vociferating in the
street or by climbing the social scale rung by rung to
the point of having media's attention. One had to be
represented by others with the expression right for
themself. Only ersatz. The only freedom that matters
is the one available to all and I dont give a damn
about those reserved to the mighty or their
representatives.
Internet thereby permit to a growing number of citizen
to apply their fundamental right to take the parole on
the public place. From this point of view, it must be
protected such as any other necessary yet fragile
resource, such as water we drink everyday. It cannot
be reserved to anyone, neither be limited in its
usages if not by the common right. No exception
legislation must forbide the exercise of freedom of
speech and, as soon as possible, states must preserve
the common tool that became a public benefit. And as I
use a public good to lead my own fights, yet again, I
behave as a thief.
I thereby knew the Internet some time before everybody
else, still at the age of the Far West, Eldorado,
Utopia. At this era, the network was backed by public
money (mostly from United States), the life was
happier and the electronic sky bluer. We worked all
along, among passionated, inventing new computer
objects that even Microsoft did ignore, like Linux or
the World Wide Web (you know, the three fastidious *w*
we have to type in the address of your favorite porn
website...) that did not yet exist and that today
everybody mistake for the network itself.
We were far from thinking that some day, we would need
a plethora of lawyers to organize the network. That
some day, we would need interdepartmental comittees to
address of the question. That some day, we would have
to put black on white the manners not yet named
"netiquette" that seemd all so natural to us. Our only
desire, share that formidable invention with the most
people, make its apology, attract the most numerous of
passionated who shared with us their competency, their
knowledge and intelligence.
I remember that at this epoch, when I was saying
"Internet", my friends looked at me as if coming from
another planet. When I transfered a file from a
computer from one end of of the world to my own
machine - by cabalistic commands typed by hand under
an interface working without a mouse pointer - the
seasoned IT engineers was assisting to the
demonstration as to a bad movie: finding a file was
taking hours, reading speeds was worth a sick snail
and the file often revealed to be unusable... But
while a pal entered in my office, I would show him how
by typing a single command line I could share, for a
ridiculous price, my work, my knowledge, my files or
my data with pure strangers and that could live at the
other side of the street as the other side of the
world.
Besides from other passionated people, everybody was
laughing at me. I could tell them that this thingy
would be a revolution for human knowledge, they looked
at me in pity and went back to their work.
In the best case, I was told with lucidity "It is a
pirate thing.". Some was asking who would that fit,
beyond telematic specialists. Other claimed that
volontary and free sharing of resources would not
have, by definition, any economical future. I was also
asked sometimes who would dare to provide such a
terrible service. And when I explained them that
everything was entirely decentralised, with for only
coordination volunteership and good will of all, the
same ones was telling me that it could never work at a
large scale.
https://www.confessions-voleur.net/
Publishing in The Gopher Times you
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Want your article published? Want to announce
something to the Gopher world? Directly related to
Gopher or not, reach us on IRC with an article in any
format, we will handle the rest.
ircs://irc.bitreich.org/#bitreich-en
gopher://bitreich.org/1/tgtimes/
git://bitreich.org/tgtimes/