Skip to main content

Johan Bové

Onder de noemer, wat is de Vlaamse taal mooi: de definitie van het woord "gerief"; " Doet dat computergerief eens van de tafel af, we gaan eten."

cf https://www.vlaamswoordenboek.be/definities/term/gerief

Johan Bové

Excuse me for metzgerei-ing the German Language.

Johan Bové

Johan Bové

What is Global Authentication Project?

1 min read

The Global Authentication Project consists of a wide community of open source researchers assisting in Bellingcat research through structured tasks and feedback. For this dataset, we are working with many individuals who have Ukrainian language skills and others with local contextual knowledge of the events and places seen on the map. Other participants include individuals skilled in geolocation and chronolocation, with all contributions being vetted by Bellingcat researchers. 

The aim of this project is to detail incidents where there is open source evidence of potential civilian harm in Ukraine, as well as attempting to clarify where and when such events took place. Documenting these incidents is important given claims by the Russian government in particular that it is not seeking to attack civilians and avoid impacting civilian infrastructure.

Read more about it on Bellingcat's announcement.

Johan Bové

MDCP: Minidisc Related Patents

I have heard that a patent filing typically runs about US$50,000. Perhaps we can think of these documents then, with their obscure and redundant language, as the Sutras of our technological age. Assembled at great cost, impenetrable to the uninitiated, they hold the hard won secrets of the world's technical priesthood. May you read, digest, and be nourished.

Johan Bové

My reasons to support the Gemini Internet Protocol

3 min read

Why do I believe Gemini is great for personal Internet presences? First of all, it's a real grass-roots initiative which I am very excited about.

If you're reading this, chances are high you are already using Gemini. But for history reasons and to share my opinions of Gemini I would like to offer you here some views of mine.

Collecting some of the strong-points of Gemini from my perspective of having some experience with Gopher and running personal websites.

Fast and lightweight

  • It's very easy on the system resources. So the protocol works really well on slower hardware without any problems. Hosting on a Raspberry Pi3 is easy-peasy.
  • Since there are no fancy design in Gemini capsules, it is really optimized for low bandwidth.
  • It should work really fine on a feature-phone, like for KaiOS. I don't believe there is a client yet for KaiOs at this time.
  • It's fairly easy to build clients and servers for the protocol.

Simple yet complete

  • The specifications provide enough functionality to do basically what you would expect to be able to do online.
  • Much lower learning curve compared to Gopher and HTML. You can start publishing Gemini pages within minutes.
  • Even-though the syntax is limited, it still gives enough playroom for creative expression.
  • Use of TLS certificates promises security and privacy.
  • It is more international than US-centric Gopher.
  • The procol supports the UTF-8 character set so any language can be used to publish sites in.
  • This should help make the protocol more popular in non-ascii wielding regions in the World.

Easy to publish

  • Content will be probably first of all stored in static text files which are future-proof and easy to maintain.
  • Many servers already available that require minimal technical skills.
  • Yes, you still need a server, but there are many collectives which you can join to facilitate this.

Focus

  • No popups, animations, videos, sound effects.
  • Focus on actual content instead of fluff and effects.
  • No advertisemens and commercial tracking.
  • No Facebook, Google or Twitter.

Accessible

  • Power of formatting goes into the clients or readers. Like in the good old days of the early Web, people are expected to style the content to their own liking.
  • It's pure text, has simple navigation rules, so should be great for people with disabilities.
  • No JavaScript so you really see what you get.

And on top of this, the young Gemini community is driven to make this a success!

I'm sold.

ps. I published this first in plain text on my Gemini capsule and now that I copy paste this into a HTML document I can really tell just how easy it is to publish on Gemini.

Johan Bové