This page permanently redirects to gemini://gemini.techrights.org/2022/08/21/kaisen-2-2-rc1/.

● 08.21.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 21/08/2022: Kaisen 2.2 RC1 and Cloud Hypervisor 26.0

Posted in News Roundup at 11:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

=> ↺ Linux Around The World: Kosovo – LinuxLinks

• We cover events and user groups that are running in Kosovo. This article forms part of our Linux Around The World series.

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ I love my GPD Micro PC

• Guess which of these two I find myself using more? That’s right, the GPD Micro. Granted, I’ve only had it for a month, so it may be a novelty effect that’ll wane over time, but still: I’m impressed. And, yes, I’ve installed Ubuntu MATE (a semi-official distro that has dedicated builds for this hardware) and Emacs on it, and I program on it.

• [...]

• It dual-boots Windows and Linux and is my only x86-64 computer.

Server

=> ↺ A guide to swiftly managing your Kubernetes resources using K9s – Earthly Blog

• Kubectl is the de facto and most popular Kubernetes command line tool used for accessing Kubernetes cluster metrics. However, one needs to know many commands to fetch metrics and operate a Kubernetes cluster using Kubectl. Though the CLI is robust, commands can quickly become cumbersome to run. For example, here is a command for editing a deployment:

• kubectl edit deployment/mydeployment -o yaml --save-config

• Not the longest command, but typing things like this over an over can get cumbersome. Fortunately, there is a terminal UI called K9s that makes interacting with your cluster faster and easier. It abstracts many common kubectl commands and maps them to just a few shortcut keys or clicks of the mouse.

=> ↺ Our slow turnover of servers and server generations

• We have long had a habit of upgrading machines between Ubuntu versions either every two years (for most machines that users log in to or directly use) or every four years (although the past two years are an exception). The every two year machines upgrade to every LTS version; the every four year machines upgrade every other LTS version, as their old LTS version threatens to fall out of support. The longer version of this is in How we handle Ubuntu LTS versions.

Videos/Shows

=> ↺ 210: GNOME, KDE, LibreOffice, Android 13, DEF CON, Krita, Spider-Man and more Linux news!

• On this episode of This Week in Linux: Happy 25th Birthday to GNOME, KDE Gear 22.08 Released, LibreOffice 7.4 Released, Android 13 Released, GLIBC Update Breaks Easy Anti-Cheat, John Deere Tractor Hacked To Run Doom, Krita 5.1 Released, Introducing the Horizon Linux project, Neptune 7.5, Humble Bundle Summer Sale, Spider-Man Remastered On Linux Via Proton, all that and much more on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

=> ↺ Manjaro and EndeavourOS are like Ding Dongs and Zingers – Invidious

• One of the most often complaints that you will hear about Linux is that there are too many distros that all do the same thing

=> ↺ GNU World Order 474

• kicontheme , kid3 , kidentitymanagement , kidletime , kig , kigo from the Slackware kde package set.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Does the Linux Kernel need software engineering? – Maíra Canal

• For those looking for a short answer: yes, it does.

• Now, we can dive into a more elaborate answer.

• Software engineering is a more systematic approach to software development, which involves the definition, implementation, measurement, management, change, and improvement of the software lifecycle. When we think about software through this lens, we must also think about software requirements, design, construction, testing, and maintenance.

• Software engineering improves software maintainability, scalability, and security. Moreover, makes it easier to add testing to the software stack. This approach makes the software more robust.

=> ↺ From Selftests to KUnit – Maíra Canal

• Last week, the series with DRM Kernel Selftests conversion to KUnit tests was merged into drm-misc-next and will probably be on the mainline on 5.20.

• This series was developed during an LKCAMP hackathon in October 2021 and is the combined effort of seven Linux Kernel beginners. In this hackathon, we learned about the KUnit Framework and also learned a bit about DRM.

• The series took quite a while to come out, as it was just a side-project to mos

Applications

=> ↺ Crow Translate is an Amazing Open-source Translation App for Linux and Windows

• Crow Translate is a free open-source desktop application that aids you in translating any text using Google, LibreTranslate, Bing, and Lingva API.

• Crow Translate is currently available for Windows and Linux, and it comes with a simple straightforward interface that allows the user to switch to many languages with a click.

• The app include a set of default shortcuts that makes it easy to use and productive for users who prefer using keyboard to control everything.

• It also comes with a command-line (CLI) tool with a set of commands to translate files, speak the translation, and print the translated output to a JSON file.

• [...]

• Crow Translate is released and distributed under the GPL-3.0 License.

=> ↺ Unlock Password-Protected PDFs with UnlockR

• The app is developed by Jagadeesh Kotra, and is released as an open-source project under the GPL-3.0 License.

=> ↺ Cloud Hypervisor v26.0 Released! – Cloud Hypervisor

• This release has been tracked through the v26.0 project.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Add Another User to Your Chromebook

=> ↺ How to Set Up a Cron Job That Only Runs on Weekdays

• For most organizations, you only work on weekdays – Monday through Friday. In such a case, some tasks should only execute on weekdays and not on weekends. It could be a task like sending emails, checking attendance, or creating backups. Whatever the task, there is a way to automate it to only execute at a specific time every day on weekdays. To achieve that, you should use the Linux cron utility. If you have no idea how to use the crontab to schedule some tasks that only run on weekdays, read on to find out.

=> ↺ How to Add a Path Permanently in Linux

• This Linux tutorial explains how to add a path permanently in Linux. It is optimized for both users who are looking for a fast practical answer and for users who are looking for understanding both global and user environment variables.

• The tips provided in this article include two methods to add the persistent PATH for both specific and all users, being useful for every Linux distribution.

• The first two sections of the content go straight to the point, describing the steps to add a path permanently. After which, you can find a short explanation on environment variables.

• All instructions explained in this article contain screenshots, making it easy to understand and execute the examples.

=> ↺ My first course, available now: Zorin OS – Linux for the rest of us

• After a long period of research, writing, reading, rewriting, rereading, and testing, I am proud to share with you that my first course, with the title “Zorin OS – Linux for the rest of us”, is available from today.

=> ↺ mps0: IOC Fault 0x40007e23, Resetting

• Here I am, sitting on a beach, writing a blog post, and sipping a cool adult beverage. Reading email.

=> ↺ Creating a wireguard connection between my home and colo – failed attempt

• For years I’ve run the dev, test, and stage nodes for FreshPorts off servers in my basement. This meant that those hostnames have always pointed at my home IP address. I’d like to change that.

• Why? Nobody needs to know my home IP address. It’s a static IP, and keeping a hostname pointed there is not difficult, but sometimes it does mess up, if only briefly.

• What will I do instead?

• I will use a server in a colo. The hostnames will point at that server. Let’s call it my portal. I will configure Nginx on the portal to relay to my home servers. The connection between the portal and my basement will be maintained by the server at home and Wireguard will be involved.

=> ↺ How To Install Discord on Linux Mint 21 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Discord on Linux Mint 21. For those of you who didn’t know, Discord is a free all-in-one messaging, voice, and video client that’s available on your computer and phone. This platform is used to create communities and teams and enables smooth interaction between them. This app was originally developed for gamers to chat meanwhile playing games.

• This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of a Discord on Linux Mint 21 (Vanessa).

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Let’s Try Gnome Boxes – by Matt Hartley – Gloves Off Linux

• Matt shows VirtualBox the door and gives Gnome Boxes a whirl…for his first time – best read while listening to AC/DC – Thunderstruck.

• Every once in a blue moon, I “get a wild hair” and decide to try something new. Well, new to me, that is. And there is no question in my mind that Boxes qualifies. After all, I’ve been a VirtualBox user for years. Before that, some limited usage with VMWare.

• What the heck is Boxes?

• Setting aside the fact that Gnome Boxes sounds like a “Smurfs cartoon spin-off, ” it looks pretty interesting. Boxes uses QEMU, KVM, and libvirt virtualization technologies. And together, they form Voltron; er, I mean Boxes.

• At its core, the idea behind Boxes appears to focus on providing its users with the ability to run virtual machines in a reliable, no-nonsense environment. Keeping with its Gnome core user experience, the entire software layout is pretty minimalistic.

• [...]

• After waiting for my download to be complete, I was given the option to set my VM size. The defaults were pretty lackluster. 20 GB drive space with 2 GB of memory.

Distributions and Operating Systems

New Releases

=> ↺ August ISO refresh – Let’s meet Colorizer | MaboxLinux

• 2022 09 August ISO refresh is ready for download. Built from Manjaro stable branch as of 22.08.20.

• Available with latest LTS kernel – 5.15 or slightly older one 5.4 LTS.

• This release is exciting because it marks the debut of a brand new tool – Colorizer – in development for half a year, now in beta

=> ↺ Kaisen Linux Rolling 2.2RC1 changelog

• This release is the first and the last release candidate before the 2.2 version releasing.

• Her exist because some bugs can only be fixed with new ISOS, and it couldn’t wait for the 2.2 release. For example, encrypted persistence did not work on live systems before these ISOS.

• The other changes improve the netinstaller and GUI implementation. The default profiles are now installed in the /etc/xdg folder, to make it easier to reset user settings and integrate them for newly created users.

Arch Family

=> ↺ BTW, You Should Use Arch. And why you should consider using Linux…

• If you’re into Linux distributions, you might have noticed the picture above shows a run of the popular neofetch tool. However, something’s off — it does not match the article’s title. The logo on the left is not Arch’s logo, but Debian’s. If you noticed, great, you’ve probably used some distribution of Linux before.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ risiOS Review: A Friendly Fedora Spin with Distinctive Features

• risiOS is a nifty little Fedora-based distro with its unique set of features. A must-try for GNOME fans.

• risiOS is a Fedora workstation-based distro that ships unique tools and features for new users in Fedora. It is designed to make your Fedora journey easier by providing options at your fingertips. It’s a must-try distro because you get the Fedora GNOME offerings while enjoying additional features.

• In this article, I review risiOS 36 (based on Fedora 36), released in August 2022.

• [...]

• The tested version (Fedora 36 The Big Beta) did not show any surprises in installation – everything was pretty smooth.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Wouter Verhelst & Debian: another expulsion for vigilantism?

• Wouter Verhelst is the latest Debian Developer to be removed from the Debian keyring.

• Nobody has publicly stated whether this was a resignation or an expulsion. Sometimes there is little difference. Sometimes people are blackmailed to resign.

• Wouter was responsible for acts of vigilantism against another volunteer at FOSDEM 2022. Wouter’s behavior and anger problems have contributed to the ongoing disclosures that multiple people have made from debian-private (leaked) gossip network.

• Wouter effectively used the resources and infrastructure of FOSDEM VZW, a Belgian non-profit, to continue a vendetta from the FSFE e.V., a German non-profit.

• In particular, Wouter has been removed from Debian shortly after the disclosures about the Debian Day suicide of Frans Pop. Pop was from Netherlands, Wouter is from Belgium, an adjacent country. Many developers who know Pop personally are frustrated that the vendettas have reached this level.

Canonical/Ubuntu Family

=> ↺ Ubuntu May Drop ‘To Do’ App from Default Install – OMG! Ubuntu!

• Ubuntu developers are considering whether to drop the desktop ‘To Do’ application from the default install in Ubuntu 22.10.

• The tool has shipped as part of Ubuntu’s default software set since the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release. And, as default apps go, having a simple task management app is a pretty understandable one. Windows and macOS offer ‘to do’ apps to their users, as do many Linux distributions, including Linux Mint.

• However, development on ‘To Do’ has slowed in recent years, the app was dropped from GNOME’s core apps, and it recently lost its chief developer. A new maintainer is in place who has rebranded the app as ‘Endeavour’, in an effort to distance the app from being part of the stock GNOME experience.

• [...]

• Is there a case to be made for Ubuntu including a task manager tool? Or are users better placed to install this sort of software by themselves?

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ How to install GCam 8.5.300 mod in all Android smartphones

=> ↺ How to Turn Off TalkBack on Android

=> ↺ When will the Nothing Phone 1 get Android 13? – 9to5Google

=> ↺ Nothing Phone (1) Android 13 shouldn’t be on your mind, says Carl Pei

=> ↺ 5 Thing to Love about Android TV and Google TV – Dignited

=> ↺ Google Android 13 Review | PCMag

=> ↺ Ring fixed a security flaw in its Android app that could have leaked video footage | Android Central

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Events

=> ↺ DEFCON Photo Dump

• I made the decision to visit DEFCON this year with some friends, which turned out to be an absolute blast. Here are some pictures of cool stuff that we took during our time there.

SaaS/Back End/Databases

=> ↺ MariaDB buys geospacial specialist CubeWerx • The Register

• Database vendor MariaDB has forked out an undisclosed sum for CubeWerx, a geospatial data specialist, in the hope of making make these features easier to build into data-hungry applications.

• The company behind the MariaDB database – a fork of MySQL – hopes to add geospatial capabilities to its fully managed cloud service MariaDB SkySQL in the not-too-distant future.

• Glenn Stowe, the MariaDB product manager for geospatial moving from CubeWerx, said developers wanting to use geospatial data in their application had to take a “DIY approach.”

• “It is common to integrate with things like PostGIS, so you’d have your database layer and your application server layer and a whole bunch of other things you needed to put together often with a lot of open source tools and a whole stack of things that weren’t really built to fit together,” he said.

• “It’s very difficult to do things like analytics and security because you have to start to stick layers between the database and the application servers,” he said.

• [...]

• The CubeWerx solutions itself is based on MariaDB, he said. “We’re a big Linux shop, so MariaDB is just the most modern database that’s well integrated with all the distros that we use,” Stowe said.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ The Image Model | Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programmers

• I was reflecting on things that I know now, a couple of decades in to my career, that I wish I had been told at the beginning. Many things came to mind, but the most immediate from a technological perspective was Smalltalk’s image model.

• It’s not even the technology of the Smalltalk image that’s relevant, but the model of thinking that works well with it. In Smalltalk, there are two (three) important files for a given machine: the VM is the machine that can run Smalltalk; the image is a snapshot of all of the Smalltalk objects on the machine(; and the sources are the source code for the classes and methods in that image).

=> ↺ Is Data Science a Dying Profession? | R-bloggers

• Data science is described as a “dying field” that will soon be supplanted by positions like data engineering and ML operations in some articles, while it is described as being replaced by tools like AutoML in others.

=> ↺ Bootstrapping An {ojs} Quarto Document With An Observable Notebook | R-bloggers

• Quarto is amazing! And, it’s eating the world! OK. Perhaps not the entire world. But it’s still amazing!

=> ↺ Quick Sort Time Complexity

• Quick Sort, also written as quicksort, is a divide-and-conquer sorting algorithm. When coded, the quicksort program would consist of a swap() function, a pivot() function, a partition() function, and the quicksort function itself. Both the pivot() and partition() functions call the swap() function. The quicksort() function itself is short and calls the pivot() and partition() functions. It recursively calls itself in two places within its body. Now, there are different ways of writing the pivot() and partition() functions. The choice of the type of pivot() function and/or partition() function determines the efficiency of the whole program. Efficiency is like the number of main operations that are carried out by the program.

• Time complexity is the relative runtime of a program. This can be seen as the main operation of the program.

• Sorting can be ascending or descending. In this article, sorting is ascending.

• The aim of this article is to produce the time complexity for a quicksort program. Since quicksort can be written in different ways depending on the choice of the pivot() and/or the partition() functions, each quick-sort type has its own time complexity. However, there is a range of a number of operations into which the different types of quicksort programs fit. This article presents just one of the different types of quicksort programs. Any code segment presented is of the C language.

=> ↺ Intercept Flutter traffic on iOS and Android (HTTP/HTTPS/Dio Pinning) – NVISO Labs

• Some time ago I wrote some articles on how to Man-In-The-Middle Flutter on iOS, Android (ARM) and Android (ARM64). Those posts were quite popular and I often went back to copy those scripts myself.

• Last week, however, we received a Flutter application where the script wouldn’t work anymore. As we had the source code, it was easy to figure out that the application was using the dio package to perform SSL Pinning.

• While it would be possible to remove the pinning logic and recompile the app, it’s much nicer if we can just disable it at runtime, so that we don’t have to recompile ourselves. The result of this post is a Frida script that works both on Android and iOS, and disables the full TLS verification including the pinning logic.

=> ↺ Re-implementing JavaScript’s == in JavaScript

• JavaScript’s “double equals” operator, ==, is typically discouraged. And for good reason: its behavior is tricky. Where === asks “are these the same thing?”, the double-equals operator asks a question that’s not straightforward.

• More specifically, == implements something called the Abstract Equality Comparison Algorithm, a 13-step process for determining if two things are equivalent.

• Let’s try to implement this algorithm in pure JavaScript. (Without using the == operator, of course.) This is mostly a useless idea, but I wanted to try it!

=> ↺ Use Node built-ins to test small projects

• In short: small Node projects don’t need a testing framework like Jest or Mocha. You can just use Node’s built-in assert module and a test script.

• I maintain a few npm packages. Some of them are very small—often just a single short function. For example, I maintain percentage, a tiny package that formats numbers like 0.12 as 12%.

=> ↺ Some resources for looking at the current development version of Go

• Go is under more or less continuous development (although the pace and nature of changes is different near releases). The Go website, Go playgroup, and other resources are what you want if you’re interested in the latest released version of Go, as most people are, but there are also some resources if you want to look at the latest development version, what is generally called the tip.

• The official source code is at go.googlesource.com. Typically you’ll want to look at the tree view of the main branch. There’s also the Github mirror of Go, which is where the issues are and which may be more convenient to navigate. Getting your own local copy is straightforward, as is building Go from source.

• Tip.golang.org is more or less what it sounds like. Generally I’ll want the Go documentation, especially the Go language specification. Tip.golang.org has a link for the latest standard library documentation, which goes to pkg.go.dev/std@master. You can also directly look at the specification from your local source tree, in doc/go_spec.html, but it probably won’t have formatting that’s as nice. At the moment, godoc can be used to run a local web server to view the standard library documentation for a Go source tree (or perhaps only the source tree that it was built from, in which case you’ll want to build the latest Go development version yourself).

=> ↺ Re: “The web is a harsh manager” – Jim Nielsen’s Blog

• In fact, I bet you could make a persuasive powerpoint for a C-level audience which hinges on the fiscal argument for design engineers, e.g. “You believe in design, and you’re paying for it, but you are not getting your money’s worth because of the gap between engineering and design.” I know I’ve seen it.

• It’s like a restaurant that believes in sourcing sushi-grade fish, which they pay people to source and purchase, but turns out their cook is just deep frying it and nobody is noticing. Shame.

=> ↺ Separating I/O and logic

• Earlier this week I watched Alex Chan’s Sans I/O programming talk. In the talk, Alex argues the importance of separating I/O and program logic, with reference to a situation where his team was unable to use already-available parsing libraries for BagIt data because said libraries depended on local access to a file.

=> ↺ Using mutants to improve Slither | Trail of Bits Blog

• The most common approach to finding ways to improve a static analysis tool is to find bugs in code that the tool should have been able to find, then determine the improvements that the tool needs to find such bugs.

• This is where program mutants come into play. A mutation testing tool, such as universalmutator, takes a program as input and outputs a (possibly huge) set of slight variants of the program. These variants are called mutants. Most of them, assuming the original program was (mostly) correct, will add a bug to the program.

• Mutants were originally designed to help determine whether the tests for a program were effective (see my post on mutation testing on my personal blog). Every mutant that a test suite is unable to detect suggests a possible defect in the test suite. It’s not hard to extend this idea specifically to static analysis tools.

=> ↺ Solene’% : How to hack on Nix and try your changes

• Not obvious development process is hard to document. I wanted to make changes to the nix program, but I didn’t know how to try them.

• Fortunately, a coworker explained to me the process, and here it is!

=> ↺ From Novice to Industry Professionals, the East Bay R Enthusiasts Welcomes Everyone

• R Consortium recently talked to Allan Miller with the East Bay R Language Enthusiasts Group about the group’s history and success in environmental and health industries.

=> ↺ I have complicated feelings about TDD • Buttondown

• That thread (it’s a good one) argues that the problem was an organization failure by TDD proponents, pushing too hard and letting memetic decay transmute “TDD” into “tests r gud”. I have a different explanation: TDD isn’t as valuable as its strongest proponents believe. Most of them are basing TDD’s value on their experience, so I’ll base it on mine.

• Let’s start with my background: I’d consider myself a “TDD person”. I learned it in 2012, it helped me get my first software job, and my first two jobs were places that did strict TDD in Ruby. For a while all my personal projects followed strict TDD, and if I ever went crazy and did a tech startup, I’d use TDD to write the software. I defended it back in 2018 and would defend it now.

Python

=> ↺ Pandas Count Rows with Condition

=> ↺ Pandas Covariance

=> ↺ Pandas Change Index

=> ↺ Pandas Cross Join

=> ↺ Pandas Combine DataFrames

=> ↺ Pandas Columns

=> ↺ PandasCrosstab() Function

=> ↺ Pandas DataFrame from CSV

Scala

=> ↺ Scala SortBy

• Ordering or organizing the components in a sequential or alphabetical sequence is the process of sorting. A unique sorting function for both mutable and immutable Scala collections is developed and is referred to as Scala Sort. One or more attributes of a Scala collection can be sorted using the SortyBy function. It uses a function that is specified on the user side to sort the components of a collection. The SeqLike trait includes it. To sort the collection according to our needs, we can utilize a variety of data structures and the SortBy function. We will study the Scala SortBy on this topic.

=> ↺ Scala Streams

• Scala is to facilitate lazy operations. Since all calculations on these collections are deferred, they are not strictly defined. We will explore the Scala streams which are the unique types of lists in this article on streams in Scala. The Scala collection which stores the data also includes the Scala Stream. The only one difference that separates this from a list in Scala is when it is necessary for the Scala when the stream values are calculated. Because they don’t load the data all at once, Scala Streams are lazy lists that only evaluate the values as needed. This improves the program performance.

=> ↺ Scala for Comprehension

• To iterate across the collections in programming languages, we utilize the loops like the for-loop and while-loop. A unique type of loop called a for-comprehension is introduced by the Scala programming language. The construct, like many others in Scala, is a direct descendant of Haskell. It may be used for much more than just looping through collections. When utilizing a functional way of programming, it helps us deal with the syntax’s complexity.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ outline is your friend

• If you open a plain HTML document with no CSS and you focus an interactive element like a button, link, or textarea, you’ll see that by default browsers use the outline property to highlight these elements.

=> ↺ Tradeoffs in API Design

• There are a few choices when designing an API layer: REST or RPC, binary or plaintext, TCP or HTTP, schema or schemaless? A few of the tradeoffs and an overview of some of the tools.

Leftovers

=> ↺ Creativity Comes from Idleness – Daniel Miessler

• Our creativity is like a daily pool of water within each of us.

• When we use it, it depletes a bit. When we’re distracted it quickly drains. And when we’re alone with our thoughts it replenishes.

• In an ideal world you’d wake up and have a full day of creativity ahead of you. You’d just sit down and create, and your reservoir would grow a thousand ideas.

=> ↺ A Well-Known Links Resource – Jim Nielsen’s Blog

• That got me thinking about another previous article article where I explored the idea of creating and surfacing an index of all the outbound links on my blog — something you can see here.

• That index of links is mine and its representation is an HTML document within the context of my blog. But it got me wondering: why just for me?

• What if everyone — individuals, companies, etc., — surfaced their outbound links in an open, accessible way which could then be aggregated in one source for querying?

Science

=> ↺ Computer scientists just developed a system for helping AI understand human goals

• Artificial intelligence systems are opaque, especially to people without a relevant technical background and enough time to dig into the code.

=> ↺ Artificial neuron swaps dopamine with rat brain cells like a real one | New Scientist

• An artificial neuron that can both release and receive dopamine in connection with real rat cells could be used in future machine-human interfaces.

• Most brain-machine interfaces measure simple electrical signals in neurons to glean information about brain function. But much of the information in neural networks, like the brain, is encoded in neurotransmitters such as dopamine, chemicals that neurons use to send messages to each another.

• “The brain’s native language is chemical, but current brain-machine interfaces all use an electrical language,” says Benhui Hu at Nanjing Medical University in China. “So we devised an artificial neuron to duplicate the way a real neuron communicates.”

• The neuron consists of a sensor made from a graphene and carbon nanotube electrode, which can detect when dopamine is released. If enough of it is detected by the sensor, a component called a memristor triggers the release of more dopamine at the other end through a heat-activated hydrogel.

• Hu and his team demonstrated that the neuron is able to both send and receive dopamine in communication with rat brain cells in a dish. It could also activate a mouse muscle through the sciatic nerve and move a robotic hand.

=> ↺ Are we falling in love with robots? – BBC News

• “I love the robots. Sometimes you find one that’s got stuck so you help it and it says ‘thank you’.”

=> ↺ Quantum annealing can beat classical computing in limited cases

• Recent research proves that under certain conditions, quantum annealing computers can run algorithms — including the well-known Shor’s algorithm — more quickly than classical computers. In most cases, however, quantum annealing does not provide a speedup compared to classical computing when time is limited, according to a study in Nature Communications.

• “We proved that you can be sure you will reach a fast solution from the initial problem, but that’s only true for a certain class of problems that can be set up so that the many histories of evolution of the quantum system interfere constructively. Then the different quantum histories enhance each other’s probability to reach the solution,” said Nikolai Sinitsyn, a theoretical quantum physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-author of the paper with his Los Alamos colleague Bin Yan.

• While examples of superior quantum performance in quantum annealing simulations are routinely reported, they lack definite proof. Sometimes researchers infer that they have achieved quantum advantage, but they cannot prove that this superiority is over any competing classical algorithm, Sinitsyn said. Such results are often contradictory.

=> ↺ Stanford and NVIDIA researchers shrink VR headsets to regular glasses

• Researchers at Stanford University and NVIDIA teamed up to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing virtual reality (VR) experiences, the bulky headsets. In a new research paper, the team showed how they could be reduced down to a thickness of a pair of regular-looking glasses, a press release from the company said.

=> ↺ Xiaomi Builds a Humanoid Robot for Some Reason

• Xiaomi, a large Chinese consumer-electronics manufacturer, has introduced a full-size bipedal humanoid robot called CyberOne. It’s 177 centimeters in height and weighs 52 kilograms, and it comes with 21 degrees of freedom, with “a curved OLED module to display real-time interactive information.” Nifty! So, uh, its actual purpose is…what exactly?

=> ↺ New network visualization tool maps information spread

• Today the Observatory on Social Media and CNetS launched a revamped research tool to give journalists, other researchers, and the public a broad view of what’s happening on social media. The tool helps overcome some of the biggest challenges of interpreting information flow online, which is often difficult to understand because it’s so fast-paced and experienced from the perspective of an individual account’s newsfeed.

=> ↺ CCNY-based team scripts breakthrough quantum algorithm

• City College of New York physicist Pouyan Ghaemi and his research team are claiming significant progress in using quantum computers to study and predict how the state of a large number of interacting quantum particles evolves over time. This was done by developing a quantum algorithm that they run on an IBM quantum computer. “To the best of our knowledge, such particular quantum algorithm which can simulate how interacting quantum particles evolve over time has not been implemented before,” said Ghaemi, associate professor in CCNY’s Division of Science.

• Entitled “Probing geometric excitations of fractional quantum Hall states on quantum computers,” the study appears in the journal of “Physical Review Letters.”

=> ↺ China Breaks Record for Quantum Memory Entanglement Distance

• Two quantum memories were entangled while 12.5 km apart.

=> ↺ Engineers fabricate a chip-free, wireless electronic “skin” | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• The device senses and wirelessly transmits signals related to pulse, sweat, and ultraviolet exposure, without bulky chips or batteries.

=> ↺ Design prevents buildup of scar tissue around medical implants | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• A new device, which doesn’t rely on immunosuppressing drugs, may assist efforts to develop an artificial pancreas to treat diabetes.

Hardware

=> ↺ Disk drive SMART attributes can go backward and otherwise be volatile

• Recently, we had a machine stall hard enough that I had to power cycle it in order to recover it. Since the stall seemed to be related to potential disk problems, I took a look at SMART data from before the problem seemed to have started and after the machine was back (this information is captured in our metrics system). To my surprise, I discovered that several SMART attributes had gone backward, such as the total number of blocks read and written (generally SMART IDs 241 and 242) and ‘Hardware ECC Recovered’ (here, SMART ID 195). I already knew that the SMART ‘power on hours’ value was unreliable, but I hadn’t really thought that other attributes could be unreliable this way.

• This has lead me to look at SMART attribute values over time across our fleet, and there certainly do seem to be any number of attributes that see ‘resets’ of some sort despite being what I’d think was stable. Various total IO volume attributes and error attributes seem most affected, and it seems that the ‘power on hours’ attribute can be affected by power loss as well as other things.

=> ↺ The names of disk drive SMART attributes are kind of made up (sadly)

• A well known part of SMART is its system of attributes, which provide assorted information about the state of the disk drive. When we talk about SMART attributes we usually use names such as “Hardware ECC Recovered”, as I did in my entry on how SMART attributes can go backward. In an ideal world, the names and meanings of SMART attributes would be standardized. In a less than ideal world, at least each disk drive would tell you the name of each attribute, similar to how x86 CPUs tell you their name. Sadly we don’t live in either such world, so in practice those nice SMART attribute names are what you could call made up.

• The only actual identification of SMART attributes provided by disk drives (or obtained from them) is an ID number. Deciding what that ID should be called is left up to programs reading SMART data (as is how to interpret the raw value). Because of this flexibility in the standard, disk drive makers have different views on both the proper, official names of their SMART attributes as well as how to interpret them. Some low-numbered SMART attributes have almost standard names and interpretations, but even that is somewhat variable; SMART ID 9 is commonly used for ‘power on hours’, but both the units and the name can vary from maker to maker.

=> ↺ The Australian Commodore 64 – LinuxJedi’s /dev/null

• I have repaired a few Commodore 64 computers recently for other people and finally decided to acquire one of my own. I figured it should be something somewhat unique if possible and this lead me to this Australian Commodore 64 that I purchased from someone in the UK.

• This is actually a regular bread-bin C64 inside with an aftermarket case to look a little like a C64C. The case was created by a company called “Micro Accessories”. I’m guessing the Australian market didn’t get the C64C until later on, if at all, which would have lead to this case.

=> ↺ The Web’s Diversity – Jim Nielsen’s Blog

• He talks about how Tim Berners-Lee had a Next computer, but the Next computer was a machine that cost thousands of dollars and not everyone had thousands of dollars to spend on a computer (then or now, really).

Security

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ Matter is almost here, so should you upgrade devices now or later? – Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis

• On our recent IoT Podcast, we took a question that Chris left on our IoT Voicemail Hotline. And Chris isn’t the only one with this question as we’re receiving it more often these days. Chris is ready to migrate his smart home hub to something new and add some more connected devices to his home. With the Matter standard expected to officially roll out within the next few months, Chris wants to know if he should wait before buying new products.

=> ↺ Can the FTC restore our faith in technology? – Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis

• After reading the Tesla stories this week that prompted Kevin’s story above, I tried to talk to my child about our upcoming trip to visit some colleges. In preparation for their junior year, my husband and I read “The Price You Pay for College”, a book that details the astonishing use of data collection by colleges as they seek information to help determine how much a family is willing to pay for college.

• [...]

• I’ve shown my husband and my child how I can see everything that they ask Alexa in the app, something few people might realize that Alexa shares with the app owner.

Environment

Energy

=> ↺ ongoing by Tim Bray · Slow Travel

• That we travel more slowly, which is to say more humanely, and which will enable us to cut down on the greenhouse gas per unit of distance.

• Concretely, that for every trip we want to take, we maximize the distance that is covered by train, and minimize those legs that require becoming airborne.

Overpopulation

=> ↺ UN Report: Global hunger numbers rose to as many as 828 million in 2021

• The number of people affected by hunger globally rose to as many as 828 million in 2021, an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (1), according to a United Nations report that provides fresh evidence that the world is moving further away from its goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030.

• The 2022 edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report presents updates on the food security and nutrition situation around the world, including the latest estimates of the cost and affordability of a healthy diet. The report also looks at ways in which governments can repurpose their current support to agriculture to reduce the cost of healthy diets, mindful of the limited public resources available in many parts of the world.

Finance

=> ↺ WFH being used to dismiss staff

• Large tech and finance companies have been doing this lately:

• 1. Announcing workers must return to the office full time, or face dismissal.

• 2. Reporting a loss, or lower than expected profits, and will need to cut staff. If only they had a convenient excuse.

• 3. (Bonus): Complaining about staff retention.

=> ↺ Rubenerd: Former Australian Prime Minister Morrison’s secret portfolios

• This is the sort of story that a publisher would reject from a prospective author for being too far fetched. I already regarded them man and his policies with contempt, but this is the rotting cherry on top.

• It’s come out that Morrison had himself sworn into a number of additional portfolios while Prime Minister, including Minister for Resources, Home Affairs, Finance, Health, Bullshit, and the Treasury. Not sure where that penultimate one came from.

• Weirder still, this was done in secret, having been sworn in by the Governor General but not reported. Ministers in those same portfolios, whether we believe them or not, also professed no knowledge of this arrangement, meaning they were doing their jobs in tandem with a secret collaborator.

• Already some commentators have dismissed the news as nothing, claiming the Government at the time did far dodgier things. But in the words of former Australian Lieutenant General David Lindsay Morrison, the standard we walk past is the standard we accept.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ How Democrats could win more elections

• My fellow Americans…if I may call you that? I’ve only been a US citizen for five weeks, but I think I may have identified a key weakness in the Democrats’ electioneering strategy, and I wanted to bring it to your attention because it would be great if the forced birth/martial law/mass incarceration party didn’t win the next election.

• [...]

• I know, I know. Don’t teach granny to suck eggs! High-paid Democratic Party consultants have forgotten more about this stuff that I’ll ever learn, etc etc. But you guys, I think I could really be onto something.

• Take Social Security. Created in 1935 by FDR, Social Security is one of the most popular government programs in US history – and it’s especially popular among old people for some reason, and you know, old people vote a lot!

Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

=> ↺ So, Sue Me! @Canberra Writers Festival – Michael West

• Australia prides itself on freedom of expression, yet we have the most draconian laws in the Western world. How can we uphold a free press when defamation law is having a chilling effect on our media and threatens to undermine the very foundations of investigative journalism?

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ RE: Brain Fart

• I can relate 100% with them. I’m like a squirrel chasing new nuts every 5 seconds, almost as if the nuts I catch rot by the touch. It’s completely irrational to take on so many things simultaneously, and yet, here we are. I have more than 4 ongoing books for some reason. I haven’t read a single word of any of them for the past… 2 weeks? Maybe more?

=> ↺ GUINQSH Wordo: YAWPS

Technical

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ gemini:// to Gemini Portal

• I just modified my gmi->md script to rewrite gemini:// links to the Gemini Portal. With only 8 new (readable) lines the HTTPS/HTML version of the capsule became that much user friendlier. A handful of links are now broken in the process (gemini://localhost links from the gemini-ipfs-gateway) but no problem, they weren’t valid anyway.

• Pretty happy with the results and with how easy it was. Good thing Gemtext is so simple.

Programming

=> ↺ Migrating Neovim config to Lua

• While I was at it, I also split up my config into many smaller files, imported into init.lua for example via require(‘plugins’). Lua is definitely a great improvement compared to the vimscript way I was doing before. It is also great in that regard that many new neovim plugins this day (e.g. integration with LSP) only show a way to configure it with Lua, which would have required wrapping the configuration in lua in the traditional way.

=> ↺ C parser

• Programming languages are fun to write. Sorta. Inspired by all the new languages coming out (Hare, Odin, Zig, etc.), I decide to have a go at writing my own. I’m calling it “zinc”, a name inspired by the Antimony programming language. Antimony describes itself as “a bullshit-free (©) programming language that gets out of your way”.

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

=> Techrights

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.