cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/14262415

On the question what are use cases for a Gemini server:

Gemini is kinda a modernized version to the old Gopher protocol. Its purpose is to share hyper-linked text documents and files over a network - in the simplest way possible. It uses a simple markup language to create text documents with links, headings etc.

Here is a FAQ

Main differences with similar technologies are:

• It is much, much easier to write hyper-linked documents than in HTML

• a server is much much smaller and easier to set up than a web server serving HTML. It can easily and securely run on a small Raspberry Pi without special knowledge on server security.

• in difference to gopher, it supports modern things like MIME and Unicode

• There are clients for every platform including Android and iOS

• also, there are Web gateways which allow to view stuff in a normal web browser

• unlike Wikis, it is only concerned about distributing content, not modifying files. This means that the way to store and modify content can be matched to the use case: Write access to content can be via an NFS or Samba server, or via an SFTP client like WinSCP or Emacs.

• Unlike HTML2, it does not support advertising, tracking, spying to users, and so on.

• the above two points mean that it does not need user authentication

• the protocol is text-centric and allows for distraction-free reading, which makes it ideal for self-hosted blogs, small projects or associations, or microblogs.

Practically, for example, I use it to share vacation photos with family.

Two more use cases that come first to my mind:

• When I did my masters thesis, our lab with about 40 people had a HTTP page hosted on a file server that listed tools, data resources, software, and contact persons. That would be easier to do with Gemini because the markup is simpler. Also, today it would not be feasible to give every student write access to a Apache web server's content because of the complexity of web servers, and the resulting security implications.

• One time at work, we had a situation with a file server with many dozens of folders, and hundreds of documents. And because all the stuff had been growing kinda organically over many years, specific information was hard to find. A gemini server would have made it easy to organize and browse the content as collaboratively edited hypertext which serves as an index.

On the question what are use cases for a Gemini server:

Gemini is kinda a modernized version to the old Gopher protocol. Its purpose is to share hyper-linked text documents and files over a network - in the simplest way possible. It uses a simple markup language to create text documents with links, headings etc.

Here is a FAQ

Main differences with similar technologies are:

• It is much, much easier to write hyper-linked documents than in HTML

• a server is much much smaller and easier to set up than a web server serving HTML. It can easily and securely run on a small Raspberry Pi without special knowledge on server security.

• in difference to gopher, it supports modern things like MIME and Unicode

• There are clients for every platform including Android and iOS

• also, there are Web gateways which allow to view stuff in a normal web browser

• unlike Wikis, it is only concerned about distributing content, not modifying files. This means that the way to store and modify content can be matched to the use case: Write access to content can be via an NFS or Samba server, or via an SFTP client like WinSCP or Emacs.

• Unlike HTML2, it does not support advertising, tracking, spying to users, and so on.

• the above two points mean that it does not need user authentication

• the protocol is text-centric and allows for distraction-free reading, which makes it ideal for self-hosted blogs, small projects or associations, or microblogs.

Practically, for example, I use it to share vacation photos with family.

Two more use cases that come first to my mind:

• When I did my masters thesis, our lab with about 40 people had a HTTP page hosted on a file server that listed tools, data resources, software, and contact persons. That would be easier to do with Gemini because the markup is simpler. Also, today it would not be feasible to give every student write access to a Apache web server's content because of the complexity of web servers, and the resulting security implications.

• One time at work, we had a situation with a file server with many dozens of folders, and hundreds of documents. And because all the stuff had been growing kinda organically over many years, specific information was hard to find. A gemini server would have made it easy to organize and browse the content as collaboratively edited hypertext which serves as an index.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31328788

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31328788

This is like a clean, simple reincarnation of make. And it is fascinating how it works:

Make is essentially a configuration file which textually describes a directed graph (DAG) of dependencies by their path names, together with embedded shell command lines which build each dependency.

This works more or less well, but if some dependency is missing, one has to add "make clean" commands. Or maybe, just to be sure, "make clean" (which would not be necessary if the tool really unambigously defined the build). Or for example if a system library has changed. Or if an optional dependency appears which was not there before.

And it becomes more complex if build steps run in parallel. Therefore, things like "make config" and so on are needed.

D.J. Bernstein examined these ill-defined cases, and came up with an alternative system, which he called "redo".

Redo turns this inside-out: It uses real shell scripts for building stuff, together with special shell commands that define dependencies. And these commands have dependencies as input, they can for example use what the compiler tells them. (The background is that e.g. in a complex C project with lots of #defines, only the C compiler has a precise picture what it needs). The top-level command runs all these build scripts in the right order. (In fact, they could also be written in Lisp, Java or Guile or whatever, as long as they support the common dependency-defining commands.)

The resulting system is surprisingly simple.

One quality for example is that in a source tree, definitions can be build recursively without any special provisions. No top-level Makefile required.

This is a very interesting but not well-known editor.

Some unusual features it has:

• it is centered around outlines, this means one can divide a larger source code document into several or many smaller parts
• it supports generation of output files from such outlines - and can read them back
• it supports literate programming in a very nice way, and is a bit easier to use than org-mode
• a section of an outline can appear more than one time in the directed graph of text segments - much like a hard-linked file can appear more than once in a directory tree. For example, one can use this to keep the same text in the on-line help of a CLI program, and in a long-form help document.

Personally, I have used it extensively to generate documentation for a large commercial library around signal processing. The fact that it supports an interlinked "DAG" of text elements made it easy to cross-reference and link important stuff. For exanple, I could maintain a glossary with footnotes, and I could also export it to a braindead ancient source control system called VisualSourceSafe - let a proofreader make changes, and then import it back in, keeping the structure, and merge the corrections via git.

Overall, it can do similar stuff like Emacs + Org-Mode, but while org-modes has a huge number of features, I'd say LEO is a tad simpler.

Why software do you use in your day-to-day computing which might not be well-known?

For me, there are ~~two~~ three things for personal information management:

• for shopping receipts, notes and such, I write them down using vim on a small Gemini PDA with a keyboard. I transfer them via scp to a Raspberry Pi home server on from there to my main PC. Because it runs on Sailfish OS, it also runs calendar (via CalDav) and mail nicely - and without any FAANG server.

• for things like manuals and stuff that is needed every few months ("what was just the number of our gas meter?" "what is the process to clean the dishwasher?") , I have a Gollum Wiki which I have running on my Laptop and the home Raspi server. This is a very simple web wiki which supports several markup languages (like Markdown, MediaWiki, reStructuredText, and Creole), and stores them via git. For me, it is perfect to organize personal information around the home.

• for work, I use Zim wiki. It is very nice for collecting and organizing snippets of information.

• oh, and I love Inkscape(a powerful vector drawing program), Xournal (a program you can write with a tablet on and annotate PDFs), and Shotwell (a simple photo manager). The great thing about Shotwell is that it supports nicely to filter your photos by quality - and doing that again and again with a critical eye makes you a better photographer.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.it/post/18587452

30 associations are proposing to the European Commission to impose a limit on the size of new cars, in particular the total width and bonnet.

A report connected with this request showed that the average bonnet height of newly-sold cars in Europe is increasing by 0.5 cm a year.

Many studies showed that bigger cars and higher bonnets are related to more collisions, and worse outcome for pedestrians and cyclists (and those in smaller cars), especially in regards to children

Those SUVs are kid crushers, they shouldn’ be on our roads

crossposed from: https://mastodon.uno/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/114674420551539891

What is stunning about the video is the 120 year old motion picture in a city still without cars, side by side showing the same route with modern traffic (the modern version was edited to match speed).

Here an article about it from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/jun/09/riding-high-in-germany-on-the-worlds-oldest-suspended-railway

"It looks like something imagined by Jules Verne"

True. And somehow this sentence makes me cry. What if we used technology only to make peoples lives happier and better?

And here wiki with many technical details:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn

It's unique as it was a special solution to build an urban railway in a narrow valley.

In all the time, it had a single serious accident, in 1999. So comparatively, it is a very safe means of transport.

I have never used it but I remember be riding in an electric trolley bus as a child in Duisburg with my mother ...

The article explains the general problem on the example of software development. But given that AI models are heavily promoted by billion-dollar US companies and important actors in that space are not at all friendly to the European Union, I think the relevance can be far larger.

Generally, the article explains that judging usefulness of AI models, specifically LLMs, by trying them out is very prone to the same psychlological traps like astrology, tarot cards or psychics - the so-called Barnum effect. This is specifically because these models are carefully engineered to produce plausible-sounding andwers! And even very intelligent but unaware people can easily fall prey to it.