Yesterday it said 3527, an hour ago it's 3534.
Gemini* and Gopher
Personal/Opinions
six dead mice
got into
my green tea
Glad that
the matcha
is in a tin
A few plums
made it through
the summer
Almost ripe
I would like
to ferment them
there are
only a few.
head full of wordshead full of words in all the languages a soup of sounds and phrases finding connections opening doors the stream flowing two ways connecting the dots
MissingI've been silently enjoying the feed here for a long time, especially during the last weeks it seemed more alive around than ever (since I was around at least). Now something has indeed shifted in the air, since little campsite left us. Was there something I didn't notice?
Forgotten Realms Avatar SeriesIn an attempt to become more familiar with the lore of the Forgotten Realms, I chose the Avatar series as a starting point. These are my thoughts about this series, and they will contain spoilers. If you haven't read the books, you might want to stop reading right now.
The original three books take place during the Time of Troubles. When somebody steals the Tablets of Fate, Lord Ao, the uber-god of the Faerûnian pantheon, casts the gods off to the mortal realm until they find the Tablets and return them to him. With the gods unable to fulfill their usual duties, the Time of Troubles starts: clerics can't access their gods' favors; magic becomes instable; strange natural cataclysms and supernatural phenomena plague the land.
The plot revolves around four adventurers, Midnight, Kelemvor, Adon, and Cyric. The heroes try to help Mystra, Goddess of Magic, retrieve the Tablets of Fate and overcome the evil machinations of Bane, God of Strife, Bhaal, God of Murder, and Myrkul, God of Death. Eventually, Mystra, Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul perish when their mortal avatars are destroyed. Midnight and Cyric return the Tablets of Fate to Ao and ascend to godhood. As a recompense for their efforts, Midnight becomes the new Goddess of Magic and Cyric assumes the combined powers of the Gods of Strife, Murder, and Death. Kelemvor dies, too, but, helped by Mask, God of Thieves, he hides as an immortal soul in the Realm of the Dead, right under Cyric's nose. The only surviving member of the party, Adon, becomes the Patriarch of the new Goddess of Magic.
Technology and Free Software
Quantum Tunneling Transistors Could Deliver a Big Boost to Energy Efficiency in MicrochipsResearchers from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the National University of Singapore, the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have developed a quantum-effect tunneling field-effect transistor that, they say, could deliver dramatic gains in energy efficiency for future electronics — beyond the so-called Boltzmann limit.
"By adopting quantum tunnelling, our TFET breaks through this boundary," joint project lead Jianhua Hao, head of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University's physics and materials department, of the Boltzmann limit, "paving the way for ultra-low-power, high-performance integrated circuits essential for emerging AI chips and advanced semiconductor applications."
Your project needs a code of ethics, not conductUnfortunately, there basically isn't a mature operating system that satisfies both these criteria. 9front is probably the closest. It's not entirely clear if 9front has a meaningful code of conduct because everything you can learn about the project online is told only in riddles, but in general I get the impression that the people in the 9front community are safe.
At the same time, I realize these two criteria feel a bit disjointed. I feel that even if I did find a community that satisfied them, there may be something in the future I can't account for. Ideally the second point should flow from the first.
Internet/Gemini
On AI Infiltrating the SmolnetI read a post by sava.rocks [0] and various replies on the geminispace BBS [1] about AI agents grabbing content from gopher and gemini using an MCP server developed last year. It really was just a matter of time before they infiltrated the smolnet.
The developer of the MCP server in question ('gopher-mcp'), has changed the code to honour robots.txt, and added some rate limiting. Better than nothing, I suppose.
Meanwhile, a user on the SDF bboard posted a sensible, anti-AI robots.txt for gopher (it should work for gemini as well).
- Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.