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● 09.11.22

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 11/09/2022: MiTubo 1.3 and Haiku Activity Report

Posted in News Roundup at 4:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Debunking 7 Myths About Immutable Linux Distros – Invidious

• Immutable Linux distros are this fangled way of using Linux and as one might expect it comes with it’s detractors even for things that aren’t real problems

=> ↺ GTA Online – The Casual Criminals • ep1 // Linux – Invidious

• A pre-preview “episode” of Casual Criminals, a series where a pair of dirt bags in GTA online fumble around looking for easy money but usually only finding trouble, a jail cell, a hospital bed, or all of the above. The POV is from Teal1500 (so, not me) and shot in first-person because I really like the immersive feel that GTA has and I think it lends itself well to a silly RP like this because of how jank GTA’s controls are. I’ve been role playing my character in GTA for a while and I thought it would be fun to try to put a story together for him. Teal and I recorded this video from Teal’s perspective to see if doing a GTA roleplay would be any good. As it turns out, it is! Not entirely sure how much effort (if any) I will put into maintaining this “series”. I have one more episode planned but if y’all think it’s good, I might put together a few more.

=> ↺ Oh No, My Favorite Websites Got SHUT DOWN (again) – Invidious

• Kiwi farms and some other sites that would probably hurt the algorithm if I put them in this description got shut down, and Kiwi got all its archives purged from archive.org. Internet censorship is going to continue to grow, the threshold for being “harmful and or dangerous” will continue to lower.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Sharing Dual-Licensed Drivers between Linux and FreeBSD | FreeBSD Foundation

• As a silicon vendor, allowing device driver source code to be shared between Linux, FreeBSD, and other operating systems brings several benefits, including a potentially increased market, and additional collaboration effort resulting in increased test coverage and bug fixes.

• Linux and FreeBSD are both Open Source UNIX-like operating systems. Both have a long development history and are maintained by sizable development teams consisting of professional, volunteer, academic and hobbyist contributors. Both are capable of high performance in demanding production applications.

• However, one area where they differ is in the license: Linux is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) while FreeBSD uses the permissive Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license. The GPL is a reciprocal, “share-alike” license, sometimes called a viral license: derivative works of a GPL project must also be made available under the same license terms. In contrast, the BSD license allows FreeBSD to be used as a component of other projects but does not require that the derivative source code be shared. Some companies build products using unmodified FreeBSD, or share their modifications; examples include Netgate (pfSense), Netflix (streaming content distribution) and iXsystems (TrueNAS). Other companies like NetApp, Sony, and Apple build products that reuse parts of FreeBSD in proprietary software.

• It is possible to share driver source code between multiple operating systems to reduce development costs. In order to do so there are at least two aspects to consider: license compatibility, and architecture and interface compatibility.

Applications

=> ↺ 10 Destructive Linux Commands You Should Never Run

• I have been asked this question numerous times and I have avoided answering that because there is no definite list of dangerous Linux commands.

• You have the tools that enable you to control and modify every aspect of your operating system. I am not trying to scare you but if you are unfamiliar with the commands and tools, you can screw up your system pretty easily.

• Imagine the scenario of a young child in a household. There are numerous ways the kid can hurt herself. But does this mean the child should not be allowed outside the crib? That would be damaging to her growth.

• This is where parents set boundaries and guide the child. Don’t go near the fire. Don’t poke your fingers in the power outlets. As the child grows and gains experience, she can turn the stove on, make a fire in the fireplace and plug in the power cables.

=> ↺ MiTubo 1.3: sorting of QML ListView via Drag-Drop | Mardy

• One feature that I’ve been asked to add to MiTubo, and that indeed becomes more and more important as the number of subscriptions increases, is the ability to group subscriptions into folders. I’ve spent a good amount of time implementing the needed support in the C++ backend, which is now able to handle nested folders too, but given that building the UI parts was not a quick task and seeing how much time has passed since the last release, I thought of releasing a partial implementation of the whole feature, consisting only of the ability to manually sort the subscriptions via drag&drop (that, is no folder support). It turns out this is already not a trivial work!

• I found a nice tutorial on ListView DnD sorting by the great Aurélien Gâteau which I found very inspiring, and while I didn’t actually reuse the same code (mostly because I was already halfway through with my implementation, which I started before finding his tutorial), it was helpful to have it as a reference.

=> ↺ Amberol – SparkyLinux

• A small and simple sound and music player that is well integrated with GNOME. Amberol aspires to be as small, unintrusive, and simple as possible. It does not manage your music collection; it does not let you manage playlists, smart or otherwise; it does not let you edit the metadata for your songs; it does not show you lyrics for your songs, or the Wikipedia page for your bands. Amberol plays music, and nothing else.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to Turn a Raspberry Pi Into a Wi-Fi Access Point

• The latest Raspberry Pi OS release saw a beta of Network Manager, a tool new to the Raspberry Pi that replaces dhcpcd as a means to manage networking on the Pi. This new tool provides us with a simple, GUI based means to configure a spare Raspberry Pi as a wireless access point. If you need to extend a networking setup, add Wi-Fi to those hard to reach places, then this is for you.

• We’re going to go through the steps necessary to configure a Raspberry Pi as a wireless access point, and have the access point start whenever the Pi is booted. Best of all, this project will work with the Raspberry Pi 3B, 3B+ and the latest Raspberry Pi 4.

=> ↺ The Things Spammers Believe – A Tale of 300,000 Imaginary Friends

• That said, at the time in the mid noughties this greytrapping setup was announced, we had been battling scammy spam email and malicious software that also abused email to spread for some years, and we were eagerly looking for new ways to combat the spam problem which tended to eat into time and resources we would rather have used on other things entirely.

• With that backdrop, collecting made up or generated, invalid email addresses in our home domains from various logs as traps for spammers seemed like an excellent joke and a fun way to strike back at the undesirables who did their damnedest to flood our users’ mailboxes.

=> ↺ Running gotwebd behind nginx

• When I migrated my web server to OpenBSD some months ago (finally!) I decided to move from cgit to gotwebd too. To be fair, initially it wasn’t a pleasure because, as gotwebd was heavily work in progress, there wasn’t proper documentation, there were some bugs and so on. Lately however, with the 0.75 release approaching, the man pages were written and gotwebd become more stable too. I don’t regret the decision to move to it and I’m rather happy now.

• If you’re using OpenBSD running it is a no-brainer: on the latest -CURRENT you’ll find a `gotwebd’ package that includes the rc.d(8) script and the instructions on how to run it with httpd(8) in the manual. What’s the situations for other systems?

=> ↺ How To Install RawTherapee on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install RawTherapee on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, RawTherapee is an open-source, powerful application that is used to edit and process raw photos. RawTherapee enables the users to process their raw images taken from the camera to clearer and sharper images. It is also used to convert the raw photos captured from digital cameras by professional photographers into different viewable image formats.

• 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 the RawTherapee on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

=> ↺ NixOS Bento: new reporting feature

• Bento received a new feature, it is now able to report if the remote hosts are up-to-date, how much time passed since their last update, and if they are not up-to-date, how long passed since the configuration change.

• As Bento is using SFTP, it’s possible to deposit information on the central server, I’m currently using log files from the builds, and compare this date to the date of the configuration.

• This will be very useful to track deployments across the fleet. I plan to also check the version expected for a host and make them report their version after an update, this should possible for flakes system at least.

=> ↺ NixOS Bento: now able to compare local and remote NixOS version

• Project update: the report is now able to compare if the remote server is using the NixOS version we built locally. This is possible as NixOS builds are reproducible, I get the same result on the server and the remote system.

• The tool is getting in a better shape, the code received extra checks in a lot of place.

• A bit later (blog post update), I added the possibility to trigger the update from the user.

=> ↺ Commands to Sync Time with NTP Server in Linux

• For many people, computer clocks in your devices, network machines, and servers are generally accurate. But that’s not true! These clocks are manually maintained and backed by batteries which over time drift the clock, especially in the older machines.

• So why is accurate time so important? Having exact time on your machine is quite significant because of several reasons. Many aspects of your computer activity are linked with time. Perfectly synched time is crucial for tracking security-related issues; troubleshooting can become quite difficult if the timestamps in log files are incorrect. Even for financial services, keeping accurate time is critical.

=> ↺ How to View HTTP Headers in Google Chrome – TecAdmin

• Google Chrome DevTools (developer tools) is the browser’s built-in comprehensive toolkit for developers. Which provides a large number of information that is useful for the developers for debugging purposes. You can also find the website’s request headers and response header values directly with dev tools.

=> ↺ Machine room temperatures and the value of long Prometheus metrics history

• We have a few machine rooms. These aren’t high-tech, modern server rooms, which is not surprising since they’ve generally been there for decades. As part of this, our machine rooms don’t really have a specific set temperature that they’re supposed to stay at. They’re not supposed to get too hot, but the actual temperature they’re at varies over the year and depends on a lot of things, including what we’re running in them at the moment. To make sure that everything is (still) working, we have temperature sensors in the machine rooms that feed into our Prometheus setup.

• Recently we were looking at our dashboards and noticed that one of the machine rooms had an oddly high temperature. It wasn’t alarmingly high, and we could see it going up and then jumping back down in a familiar pattern that we see in all of our machine rooms as the AC cycles on and off. But it felt like the temperature of that machine room should be lower and maybe something was wrong. Since we have a long metrics history (we keep years worth of Prometheus metrics), we started looking at historical temperature data for this machine room, both in the past of this year and at this time in previous years (to see if this was something that had happened at this time of year before).

=> ↺ RCA:Renewing FreeIPA Internal Certificate After Expiration | Zamir’s Board

• On September 9th, users report failed to authentication to FreeIPA. By looking into the system status, we realize that the IPA services cannot start successfully. Most importantly, pki-tomcatd cannot start properly. With a deeper look we realized that acme.sh automatically renewed the SSL certificate and restarted FreeIPA, so we decided that should be the direct cause. With more in-depth research we realized that it’s internal certificate issue.

=> ↺ How To Install SmartGit on Fedora 36 – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install SmartGit on Fedora 36. For those of you who didn’t know, SmartGit is one of the most powerful Git GUI clients with support for Azure DevOps, Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab, etc. It focuses on simplicity while targeting non-experts and people who prefer a graphical application over command line usage. SmartGit is available for different platforms including Windows, Linux, and macOS.

• 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 the SmartGit on a Fedora 36.

=> ↺ Export or Save As PDF A Specific Range in LibreOffice Calc Sheets using Macro

• A simple program to show you how you can export range from LibreOffice as pdf using macro.

• Exporting a LO sheet’s content to PDF is often necessary because of the wide use of PDF files for distributions, reporting etc. In the earlier tutorial, I showed how to export an entire sheet’s content to a pdf file. In this tutorial, I will show how to export a specific range (e.g. A1:B2 etc.) as a content of a pdf file.

=> ↺ SteveCo: Migrating libvirt VMs

• I recently moved a bunch of libvirt VMs from a CentOS 7 host to a CentOS Stream 9 host. Normally moving virtual machines from one libvirt host to another is pretty easy. All you need to do is stop the VM on the original host, copy the disk image from host to host (with rsync or whatever is convenient), dump the VM config (with virsh dumpxml guest), and import that config on the new host (with virsh define). It turns out a few things have changed that make that not quite work though…

Games

=> ↺ Voxel Doom brings voxel goodness to the original DOOM

• I am ashamed to admit that I never played much of the original DOOM when it came out or in the decades since. When I saw the Voxel Doom project I downloaded it and decided to finally give the old classic an honest try.

=> ↺ The Starlight Children’s Foundation Bundle has a really odd selection

• Humble recently launched the Starlight Children’s Foundation Bundle and it’s a thoroughly odd selection but some of you might want to check it out. As usual I’ll list the Deck Verified rating for Steam Deck and any notes on Linux Native or ProtonDB compatibility levels.

=> ↺ Quake 1 port to Apple Watch

• Vyzmazal managed to get Quake running on an Apple Watch Series 5 which, while a few generations old now, still packs a processor that’s more than capable of running the game through a software renderer at around 60 fps at a respectable resolution of 640×480, and successfully tested at up to 1024×768, although with a reduced frame rate.

=> ↺ The Chess World Is Absolutely Losing It Over Cheating Allegations After Massive Upset

• The chess world has been rocked by online allegations of cheating after a top chess grandmaster was toppled by a relative newcomer this week in a major high stakes tournament in St. Louis.

• 31-year-old Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen—rated the top player in the world by the International Chess Federation (FIDE)—abruptly withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis after a third-round defeat by Hans Niemann, a young chess prodigy from the United States.

• Soon after his loss, Carlsen posted a cryptic tweet featuring a speech by football manager Jose Mourinho. “I prefer not to speak,” Mourinho said in the 2020 video. “If I speak I am in big trouble…and I don’t want to be in big trouble.”

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ First Look at Crystal Linux, an Arch Linux-Based Distro Focused on Ease of Use and Usability

• Meet Crystal Linux, an aspiring Arch Linux-based distro that, just like EndeavourOS and other similar distributions, wants to bring the power, simplicity, and flexibility of the Arch Linux distribution to the masses, mostly targeted at users who want a great Arch Linux experience with a very easy setup process.

• Unlike other Arch Linux-based distros, Crystal Linux tries to be unique as it comes with its own in-house built installer that lets you set your timezone, choose a keyboard layout, create a user, set a hostname, partition the disk, and select a default desktop environment or window manager.

=> ↺ The 8 Best Lightweight Linux Distributions With Openbox Window Manager

• The Openbox window manager offers better performance than conventional Linux desktops. Here are some of the most popular Openbox-based distros.

• Are you looking for a lightweight Linux distribution for an old PC? You’re in luck, for Openbox holds the answer to all your distribution woes. It is a highly customizable, lightweight, next-generation window manager that runs smoothly on older hardware. This is not all; it provides extensive standard support to replace the famous GNOME or Unity interfaces.

• If you run Openbox inside KDE or GNOME desktops, you can combine the customization options of the former with the desktop environments for the best results.

• To make the most of the given requirements, you need to check out the top distributions that support Openbox and its functionalities.

=> ↺ Haiku Activity & Contract Report, August 2022

• As is the usual way of things, the monthly Activity Report is hereby combined with my Contract Report.

• This report covers hrev56321 to hrev56399.

• David Karoly, who has been doing a lot of work in and around the ARM ports, was granted commit access last month. Welcome to the team, David!

BSD

=> ↺ Moving dsynth – DragonFly BSD Digest

• If you’re moving your dsynth build to a different machine, there’s now a ‘list-system’ directive that lets you recreate the same setup in a new place.

=> ↺ In Other BSDs for 2022/09/10

=> ↺ BSD Now 471: De-Penguinization – DragonFly BSD Digest

• This week’s BSD Now includes a link to depenguin.me, a way to install BSD using a rescue boot environment, which is going to come in handy for someone reading this. I know I’ve linked to it before.

Debian Family

=> ↺ Debian GNU/Linux 11.5 “Bullseye” Released with 53 Security Updates and 58 Bug Fixes

• Debian GNU/Linux 11.5 is here exactly two months after the Debian GNU/Linux 11.4 point release as an updated installation medium for those who want to install the latest and greatest Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” operating system series on new computers.

• It includes all the security and software updates that have been released from July 9th until today through the main Debian GNU/Linux 11 “Bullseye” software repositories. In numbers, it includes a total of 58 miscellaneous bug fixes and 53 security updates.

=> ↺ FLOSSLinux: 202209102213 – Debian release day – Cambridge – post 3

• Working a bit more slowly – coming to the end of the process. I’ve been wrestling with a couple of annoying old laptops and creating mayhem. The others are almost through the process – it’s been a very long day, almost 12 hours now.

• As ever, it’s good to be with people who appreciate this work – I’m also being menaced by a dog that wants fuss all the time. It certainly makes a difference to have fast connectivity and even faster remarks backwards and forwards.

=> ↺ FLOSSLinux: 202209110020 – Debian release day(s) – Cambridge – post 4

• RattusRattus, Isy, smcv have all just left after a very long day. Steve is finishing up the final stages. The mayhem has quietened, the network cables are coiled, pretty much everything is tidied away. A new experience for two of us – I just hope it hasn’t put them off too much.

• The IRC channels are quiet and we can put this one to bed after a good day’s work well done.

Open Hardware/Modding

=> ↺ Latest Raspberry Pi OS Release Brings Improved Camera and Networking Support | Tom’s Hardware

• Raspberry Pi systems can bask in that new operating system glow today, with the launch of the latest edition of the tiny computer’s Debian-based OS. This release features many smaller tweaks, but the headline features seem to be an improved Python camera interface, and a simplified ability to easily make a Raspberry Pi into a wireless access point.

• Behind the scenes, this means Pi OS has moved from using the easily edited but slightly obscure dhcphd file to manage networking to the NetworkManager application already used by other Linux distributions. It’s not the default yet, dhcphd is still there, but it will become so in future releases so we’d better get used to it.

• NetworkManager makes it easier to connect to Wi-Fi networks with hidden SSIDs, and smooths the process of dealing with VPNs. Some may find the ability granted by the app to configure your Pi as a wireless access point interesting too. It’s being considered a beta feature for now, and must be switched to using the raspi-config tool.

=> ↺ Radxa Lifts Lid on Eight-core Compute Module To Take On Raspberry Pi | Tom’s Hardware

• The powerful eight-core Rockchip RK3588S processor is usually found at the larger end of the single-board computer spectrum, but Radxa has today announced, as first reported by CNX Software, that it will be incorporating the chip in a board that’s the size of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. And it comes with as much as 16GB of RAM, too.

=> ↺ Khadas VIM1S Low-Power SBC Gets Processor Refresh | Tom’s Hardware

• Khadas is launching an upgraded version of its VIM1 SBC Arm-powered SBC, which launched in 2016. The new VIM1S, as reported by CNX Software (opens in new tab), is a low-powered board that could still give the Raspberry Pi 4 (opens in new tab) a run for its money in the low-power computing sector.

=> ↺ A64-OLinuXino Open Source Hardware Linux computer is back in stock

• All variants of the Open Source Hardware Linux computer A64-OLinuXino now are back in stock!

=> ↺ Sipeed MetaSense RGB ToF 3D depth cameras are made for MCUs – ROS Robots (Crowfunding) – CNX Software

• We’ve just written about the Arducam ToF camera to add depth sensing to Raspberry Pi, but there are now more choices, as Sipeed has just introduced its MetaSense ToF (Time-of-Flight) camera family for microcontrollers and robots running ROS with two models offering different sets of features and capabilities

=> ↺ RGBD/ToF 3D cameras compatible with MCUs and support ROS1/ROS2

• The MetaSense A075V and the MetaSense A010 are two open-source and low-cost Time of Flight (ToF) cameras designed to interface with microcontrollers and ROS1/ROS 2 based platforms. Both devices have an operating depth range from 0.2 to 2.0m (2.5m on A075V model) with less than 1 cm accuracy.

• According to the product page, the MetaSense A075V uses a Cortex A7 processor (up to 1.5GHz) along with a 0.4T Neural Processor Unit. The MetaSense A010 which is optimized to interface with MCUs features a 32-bit RISC-V processor (up to 144MHz) with 132KB of RAM and 192KB ROM.

=> ↺ Board’s Eye Point of View – News – SparkFun Electronics

• If you’ve ever wondered how our boards are made, you’re in luck today! This behind the scenes video gives you a front row seat to every step of production of the QuickLogic Thing Plus, from the components getting soldered on all the way to packing the red box that ends up in your mailbox.

=> ↺ tinyML device monitors packages for damage while in transit | Arduino Blog

• Although the advent of widespread online shopping has been a great convenience, it has also led to a sharp increase in the number of returned items. This can be blamed on a number of factors, but a large contributor to this issue is damage in shipping. Shebin Jose Jacob’s solution involves building a small tracker that accompanies the package throughout its journey and sends alerts when mishandling is detected.

• Jacob started by creating a new Edge Impulse project and collecting around 30 minutes of motion samples from an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense’s onboard three-axis accelerometer. Each sample was sorted into one of five categories that range from no motion all the way to a hard fall or vigorous shaking. Features were then generated and used to train a Keras model, which yielded an accuracy of 91.3% in testing.

=> ↺ The Open Source Rotary Cell Phone, Two Years Later

• We know the pandemic has screwed with a lot of people’s sense of time, but we doubled checked, and it has indeed been more than two years since the Internet first laid eyes upon the incredible rotary cell phone put together by [Justine Haupt]. We’re happy to report that not only has she continued to develop and improve the phone since the last time it made the rounds, but that the kits for this open source marvel are currently available for preorder.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

Web Browsers

=> ↺ Daniel’s weekly report

• I have merged the first WebSockets take into the curl master branch. You need to enable it explicitly in the build to get it, but I hope lots of people do and try it out and give me feedback.

• There are several outstanding issues to do to make the WebSockets support really good, but now at least this significant first step has been taken. Thanks for flying curl.

Chromium

=> ↺ Contra Chrome

=> ↺ Don’t use Google Chrome. Bonus: Microsoft Azure Clown Computing | BaronHK’s Rants

• I’m sick of typing out why people should not use Google Chrome.

• Instead, I can make this page to direct people to which sums up the major point.

• Even before Chromium (the base of Chrome) gets rid of the ManifestV2 API for browser extensions next year (2023), it has already deleted APIs that ublock-origin and NoScript depended on for security guarantees.

• ManifestV3 just makes things much worse, again.

• AdGuard has already made a prototype extension that conforms to MV3, and it’s completely terrible according to users. (Warning: Google link) Ads load and then basically get hidden, so that they can spy on you regardless of whether you see them or not. And the rules limit makes it very hard to even do that.

• Soon, the choice will be to use something like this or to not use Chrome at all.

• Not using Chrome at all is a better option, and you can move your bookmarks and passwords over to another browser now while there’s still time.

• I’ve never used Chrome for my default Web browser and refuse to install it on any machines where I need security. Google is the major threat to your security when you have their software on your computer.

• Just having their repository allows them to install anything they want on your computer, which won’t complain about it even if it replaces your operating system files with malware, because you imported their signing key when you installed Chrome.

• (This is essentially the same situation people who use Raspberry Pi OS face with the Microsoft repository, which is enabled by default.)

• Chrome is too dangerous to use on the Web, for many reasons.

• Primarily because the company that makes it is an ad tech that gives it away for “free” because it is malicious software designed to run other malicious software and display advertising.

Programming/Development

=> ↺ SQLite Doesn’t Use Git

• SQLite as a database – Fossil uses SQLite as a database instead of Git’s object model. This makes it easy to back up and store repositories.

=> ↺ How to Avoid Overfitting?

• How to Avoid Overfitting?, Overfitting is a frequent error committed by Data Scientists. Your many hours of coding may be wasted if this happens.

• Your model’s outputs could be inaccurate, which would complicate the decision-making process even more.

• Let’s first discuss what overfitting is before moving on to how to avoid overfitting.

=> ↺ shikokuchuo{net}: nanonext – a web toolkit

=> ↺ Oh, I’m sure it’s probably nothing | Emily Riederer

• As a general matter, these are all exciting advances with great potential to aid in different workflows when used judiciously. However, it also poses the question: what cognitive burdens do we alleviate and which do we add when our projects begin to leverage multiple languages?

• Despite common data analysis tools like SQL, R, and python being high-level languages with declarative interfaces (in the case of R’s tidyverse and python’s pandas), successful usage still requires understanding the underlying assumptions and operations of each tool. There is not such thing as a truly declarative language; only those that generally make decisions that the user likes well-enough to ask for the “what” and delegate the “how”. These differences can emerge at many different levels: such as foundational issues like whether data structures are copied or modified in-place or broader design choices like default hyperparameters in machine learning libraries (e.g. python’s scikitlearn notoriously uses regularized logistic regression as the default for logistic regression.) Somewhere along that spectrum lies the fickle issue of handling null values.

=> ↺ Exploring OMPR with HiGHS solver

• There is a class of software for modeling optimization problems referred to as algebraic modeling systems which provide a unified interface to formulate optimization problems in a manner that is close to mathematical depiction and have the ability to link to different types of solvers (sparing the user from solver specific ways of formulating the problem). Both commercial and open source options are available. GAMS and AMPL are examples of commercial options. The popular open source options are JuMP in Julia and Pyomo in python. I have typically used Pyomo in Python but have explored using it from R. I recently became aware of algebraic modeling system in R provided by OMPR package.

=> ↺ Getting Familiar with the R Studio Source Pane | by Trevor French | Trevor French | Sep, 2022 | Medium

• You may have been using R Studio for years without realizing what all of those buttons do. This graphic and corresponding annotations will walk you through how everything works.

• a. Show in New Window- This allows you to pop the source pane into a new window by itself.

• b. Save Current Document- This saves the file contained in the tab you currently have active.

=> ↺ WASI vs. WASM

• WebAssembly (WASM) modules have no conception of the filesystem, the network, or much else outside the browser sandbox. Many are experimenting with using the format outside the browser for server-side applications. How can it be used both serverside and clientside?

=> ↺ GSoC ’22 final report

• Well, this is rather easy for me to talk about, I’ll be on X.org’s Developers Conference soon, and full of motivations behind the work I’ve done.

• Not just me, though! Me, Maíra and Magali (who might be familiar names to you already) will be there as well, and unfortunately Tales didn’t manage to get a visa due to bureaucracy layers no one dares to understand.

• Looking retrospectively, the project’s motivation actually boils down to a dogfight between AMD engineers and the weird code they have to manage. As I’ve talked about previously, GPU code can be quite intense, the DML module being a particularly fun example.

• [...]

• KW (for the intimate) is a much needed and very interesting project, whom I tried my best to contribute to: I spent about a month and a half at the beginning of GSoC pushing it, to the point where I simply had no will to make my commit messages pretty or to respond maintainers.

• Lucky me the owner of the project is also my GSoC mentor, and he completely understood where I was at and that I’d not be able to accomplish the (optional) goals I had set for KW in my proposal.

• I really think this situation helped me understand better what is it that we’re doing when we contribute to free software, and that was the lesson I took.

=> ↺ Announcing the glorious advent of XeDN – Xe

• So I made a mistake with how the CDN for my website works. I use a CDN for all the static images on my blog, such as the conversation snippet images and the AI generated “hero” images. This CDN is set up to be a caching layer on top of Backblaze B2, an object storage thing for the cloud.

• There’s only one major problem though: every time someone loads a page on the website, assets get routed to the CDN. I thought the CDN was configured to cache things. Guess what it hasn’t been doing.

=> ↺ Version controlling your .Rprofile, .gitconfig and other dotfiles. | Dr. Rick Tankard

• Dotfiles are an important part of coding on Linux and macOS. In my work, I find myself not only working on my macOS laptop but on several Linux servers. Each of these requires dotfiles to configure my R (.Rprofile), git (.gitconfig and .gitignore_global), ssh (.ssh/config but not key files), vim (.vimrc) and shell (.zshrc, .bashrc, .bash_profile, etc.).

=> ↺ Purchase Flower For Just Because Occasion. How R you doing it? | Everyday Is A School Day

• Randomness can be difficult to simulate because we are biased. Not that thinking of buying your spouse flowers is a bad thing. What if you can preserve that idea and actualization by coding that! But how?

=> ↺ Cosplaying as a Sysadmin

• As a software developer, I never was a true sysadmin. I never pulled a server to replace a failed drive at 3 a.m. I never got to roll my little maintenance cart through a cold aisle, with hearing protection to keep my fragile eardrums from rupturing amidst a sea of 100+ dB screaming server fans…

• That is, until I built my homelab. Now I can act like a sysadmin as I make sure my kids never have a moment of downtime while they’re streaming their favorite episode of Odd Squad.

=> ↺ Parallelizing Programs on the Blockchain

• EVM-based blockchains are often too difficult to scale past 1,000 transactions per second. Transactions can reference shared states and dynamically call into other contracts. This means that transactions must be executed in serial. On the other hand, program writers don’t need to declaratively enumerate their dependencies (e.g., state or other programs).

• The first way to gain parallelization is to do away with dynamic function calling. Both Solana’s Sealevel runtime and Move (Aptos/Sui) use static dispatch rather than dynamic. Sealevel enforces this at the “operating system” level, while Move does it as a domain-specific language (DSL).

=> ↺ Kushal Das: khata, under WASI

• While I am learning about WebAssembly slowly, I was also trying to figure out where all I can use it. That is the way I general learn all new things. So, as a start, I thought of compiling my static blogging tool khata into WASM and then run it under WASI.

C

=> ↺ Learn C Programming with Richard Stallman on Linux!

Python

=> ↺ How Classes and Objects Work in Python

• If you’re a developer looking to level up your Python skills, adding OOP to your Python box can be helpful. This tutorial will help you get started with object-oriented programming in Python.

• Python is one of the most-loved programming languages that supports procedural, functional, and object-oriented programming paradigms.

• Procedural programming works fine for simple and smaller projects. But as you start working on larger applications, it’s important to organize code better. Object-oriented programming lets you group related data and functions logically. It also facilitates code reuse and lets you add functionality on top of existing code.

=> ↺ Update: translate.py Version 2.5.12 | Didier Stevens

• A small update for my translate.py program.

=> ↺ Update: oledump.py Version 0.0.70

• This is an update to plugin plugin_vba_dco.py, improving generalization and adding option -p.

• You can watch this maldoc analysis video to learn how to use the generalization feature of this plugin…

Perl

=> ↺ Not Your Grandfather’s Perl

• What I do appreciate that’s missing from many other languages and systems is the extreme committment to backwards compatibility. The knowledge that the next minor release won’t break existing scripts is underrated, IMO.

=> ↺ CoRecursive #079: CPAN: This Day In History

• CPAN was the first open-source software module repository. And on this day, Aug 1st, in 1995, CPAN was first announced to a private group of PERL users.

Rust

=> ↺ The Sheer Terror of PAM – Xe

• Hey all, this is my RustConf 2022 for 2022! I’m super excited to finally be able to share this page publicly. Enjoy the talk! I’ve included a video of it, my script and slides embedded below and finally a link to the slides PDF at the bottom of the page. Choose how you want to enjoy this talk. All the options are vaild.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Accessibility, Jitsi, IRC, Element-Desktop

• The Wikipedia page on Accessibility says the following – Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology. Now IRC or Internet Relay Chat has been accessible for a long time. I know of even blind people who have been able to navigate IRC quite effortlessly as there has been a lot of work done to make sure all the joints ‘speak to each other’ so people with one or more disabilities still can use, and contribute without an issue. It does help that IRC and many clients have been there since the 1970s so most of them have had more than enough time to get all the bugs fixed and both text-to-speech and speech-to-text work brilliantly on IRC. Newer software like Jitsi or for that matter Telegram is lacking those features. A few days ago, discovered on Telegram I was shared that Samsung Voice input is also able to do the same. The Samsung Voice Input works wonder as it translates voice to text, I have not yet tried the text-to-speech but perhaps somebody can and they can share whatever the results can be one way or the other. I have tried element-desktop both on the desktop as well as mobile phone and it has been disappointing, to say the least. On the desktop, it is unruly and freezes once in a while, and is buggy. The mobile version is a little better but that’s not saying a lot. I prefer the desktop version as I can use the full-size keyboard. The bug I reported has been there since its Riot days. I had put up a bug report even then.

=> ↺ Transcending POSIX: The End of an Era?

• POSIX has become the standard for operating systems abstractions and interfaces over the decades. Two drivers for the design of the abstractions are the hardware constraints and the use cases of the time. Today, the speed balance between I/O and compute is shifting in favor of I/O, which is partly why coprocessors and special-purpose accelerators are becoming more mainstream. Therefore, we argue that the POSIX era is over, and future designs need to transcend POSIX and re-think the abstractions and interfaces at a higher level. We also argue that the operating system interface has to change to support these higher level abstractions.

=> ↺ Pentagon warns of GPS interference from Ligado broadband network

• The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report released Friday warned some Iridium Communications mobile satellite services “used by the U.S. Department of Defense and others will experience harmful interference under certain conditions and warned some high-precision devices sold before about 2012 “can be vulnerable to significant harmful interference.”

• The Defense Department said the study is consistent with its view that “Ligado’s system will interfere with critical GPS receivers and that it is impractical to mitigate the impact of that interference” and noted the study found FCC’s proposed mitigation and replacement measures “are impractical, cost prohibitive, and possibly ineffective.”

Leftovers

=> ↺ Eyes Above The Waves: Success, Privilege And God

• I agree with Zitron and Lewis that we have an unhealthy tendency to take credit for our own success. But pushing against that too hard may lead to a mindset that nothing we do makes any difference — we’re just a victim of circumstances — which leads to apathy and irresponsibility.

=> ↺ Transcendence | Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programmers

• I do not know that I have felt that sense of transcendence, and believe I am probably missing out both on strong emotional connections with others and on an ability to contribute effectively to society (to a society, to any society) by lacking the strong motivation that comes from knowing that making other people happier makes me happier, because I am with them.

=> ↺ Generators Of Disagreement With AI Alignment – by George

• I often find myself disagreeing with most of the things I read about AI alignment. The closest I probably get to accepting a Berkely-rationalism or Bostrom-inspired take on AI is something like Nintil’s essay on the subject. But even that, to me, seems rather extreme, and I think most people that treat AI alignment as a job would view it as too unconcerned a take on the subject.

• This might boil down to a reasoning error on my end, but:

• I know a lot of people that seem unconcerned about the subject. Including people working in ML with an understanding of the field much better than mine, and people with an ability to reason conceptually much better than mine, and people at the intersection of those two groups. Including some of my favorite authors and researchers.

• And, I know a lot of people that seem scared to death about the subject. Including people working in ML with an understanding of the field much better than mine, and people with an ability to reason conceptually much better than mine, and people at the intersection of those two groups. Including some of my favorite authors and researchers.

• So I came to think that there might be some generators of disagreement around the subject that are a bit more fundamental than simple engineering questions about efficiency and scaling. After reading nintil’s (linked above) and VKRs most recent essays on the subject, I think I can finally formulate what those might be.

=> ↺ The Big List Of Naughty Strings Helps Find Those User Input Problems

• Any software that accepts user input must take some effort to sanitize incoming data, lest unexpected and unwelcome things happen. Here to make that easier is the Big List of Naughty Strings, an evolving list of edge cases, unusual characters, script-injection fragments, and all-around nonstandard stuff aimed at QA testers, developers, and the curious. It’s a big list that has grown over the years, and every piece of it is still (technically) just a string.

=> ↺ Who Is Responsible For Your Safety?

• We recently posted a video where some ingenious metal-shop hackers made a simple jig to create zig-zag oil grooves on the inside of a cylinder, and the comment section went wild. What ensued was a flood of complaints that the video displayed unsafe shop practices, from lack of safety glasses to wearing flip-flops while operating a lathe.

Science

=> ↺ The Stubborn Computing Manifesto

• Stubborn computing is about being able to pick – and stick to – what you think is the best tool for the job. It’s an investment in software over time: As with the carpenter’s hammer, the chef’s knife or the weaver’s loom, it’s about subconscious and intrinsic mastery of the tools of one’s craft – a deep-seated skill growing along with a never-ending creative process. Ars longa, vita brevis.

• Stubborn computing isn’t about rejecting what’s new; it’s about embracing what’s good. The stubborn user realizes the benefits of faster hardware, better encryption, higher resolutions, more colours and increased bandwidth, but will practice extreme caution when discerning between change and improvement. Stubborn computing appreciates real improvement, but is wary of unforeseen danger and thus careful to rely too heavily on it initially. Stubbornness builds slowly.

• Stubborn computing isn’t an ironic fling with a past never experienced, nor is it about sentimental reminiscing. The stubborn user doesn’t install a Windows 95 theme because of a superficial whim or in a pointless search of lost time. The stubborn user might do so because their brand of stubbornness is rooted in the Windows 95 workflow, and they will go to great lengths to recreate this workflow in many more aspects than shallow aesthetics.

=> ↺ New programmable materials can sense their own movements | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Engineers 3D print materials with networks of sensors directly incorporated.

• This image shows 3D-printed crystalline lattice structures with air-filled channels, known as “fluidic sensors,” embedded into the structures (the indents on the middle of lattices are the outlet holes of the sensors.) These air channels let the researchers measure how much force the lattices experience when they are compressed or flattened.

=> ↺ Can Computer Neural Networks Learn Better Than Human Neurons? | Mind Matters

• They can and do; when artificial intelligence programmers stopped trying to copy the human neuron, they made much better progress

=> ↺ Chinese game company appointed the world’s first humanoid robot as its CEO

• The world of technology continues to meet the firsts.

• Recently, the China-based mobile game company NetDragon Websoft appointed an artificial intelligence-supported virtual human being as the general manager named “Tang Yu.”

• The appointment was made on August 26 and the virtual CEO, Ms. Tang Yu started her position in the company’s principal subsidiary, Fujian NetDragon Websoft.

• According to the company’s statement, Tang Yu will support decision-making during the company’s daily operations and provide a more effective risk management system. She will also be used as a real-time data center and analytics tool for the board.

=> ↺ Huawei just beat the iPhone 14 to a key new feature

• Just a week ago we were reporting on how the iPhone 14 might be the first smartphone to offer satellite communication, but as it turns out it won’t – because Huawei just got there first with the Huawei Mate 50 and Mate 50 Pro.

=> ↺ Improving Machine Learning Outcomes | by John Hawkins | Towards Data Science

• In order to build successful machine learning solutions, there are certain fundamental ideas that everyone involved needs to understand. In this blog post, we look at three key early stages of the design process that managers can focus on to ensure that the project is headed toward a successful outcome.

=> ↺ Two atomic clocks have been quantum entangled for the first time | New Scientist

• Researchers have quantum entangled atomic clocks, allowing them to be synchronised more accurately. Such entangled clocks could be used to study dark matter and gravity more precisely

=> ↺ Pushing the Frontiers of Mathematical Research

• For decades, mathematicians have turned to computers for help with tasks like big numerical calculations and visualizing complex geometric objects. Like a blackboard, the computer has been a handy tool that picks up where human capacity to juggle numbers, symbols, and pictures drops off.

• Today, however, computers are playing an entirely new role: they are learning modern mathematics.

• A loose-knit international group is using computer proof assistants, originally developed to check formal software correctness, to create online libraries of mathematical theorems and proofs. The theorems housed in these libraries can then be called upon as building blocks for proofs of new mathematical results. The hope is that the libraries one day will encompass the entirety of mathematical knowledge.

• “It’s a completely new way to do mathematics that is very satisfying,” said mathematician Kevin Buzzard of the U.K.’s Imperial College London.

• Buzzard discussed this work in one of the most-watched lectures at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians in July this year. (The Congress, originally scheduled to be held in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was transformed into an entirely online event after that country’s invasion of Ukraine.) Around the same time, a paper appeared on the arXiv containing what might be called a “proof assistant manifesto,” laying out progress achieved and describing challenges ahead. Buzzard is one of the paper’s 10 authors, along with ACM A.M. Turing Award recipient Leslie Lamport.

=> ↺ Lamboozling Attackers: A New Generation of Deception

• Deception is a powerful resilience tactic that provides observability into attack operations, deflects impact from production systems, and advises resilient system design. A lucid understanding of the goals, constraints, and design trade-offs of deception systems could give leaders and engineers in software development, architecture, and operations a new tactic for building more resilient systems—and for bamboozling attackers.

• Unfortunately, innovation in deception has languished for nearly a decade because of its exclusive ownership by information security specialists. Mimicry of individual system components remains the status-quo deception mechanism despite growing stale and unconvincing to attackers, who thrive on interconnections between components and expect to encounter systems. Consequently, attackers remain unchallenged and undeterred.

• This wasted potential motivated our design of a new generation of deception systems, called deception environments. These are isolated replica environments containing complete, active systems that exist to attract, mislead, and observe attackers. By harnessing modern infrastructure and systems design expertise, software engineering teams can use deception tactics that are largely inaccessible to security specialists. To help software engineers and architects evaluate deception systems through the lens of systems design, we developed a set of design principles summarized as a pragmatic framework. This framework, called the FIC trilemma, captures the most important dimensions of designing deception systems: fidelity, isolation, and cost.

• The goal of this article is to educate software leaders, engineers, and architects on the potential of deception for systems resilience and the practical considerations for building deception environments. By examining the inadequacy and stagnancy of historical deception efforts by the information security community, the article also demonstrates why engineering teams are now poised—with support from advancements in computing—to become significantly more successful owners of deception systems.

=> ↺ Understanding Wavelets

• Mathematical transforms can be a great help in understanding signals. Imaging trying to look at a complex waveform and figuring out the frequency components without the Fourier transform. [Artem Kirsanov] calls the wavelet transform a “mathematical microscope” and his video gives you a great introduction to the topic. You can see the video below.

Hardware

=> ↺ Rubenerd: Weird Al had 100 gigs of RAM

• Defragmentation isn’t necessary if you’re on an SSD, and if anything could add to wear without benefit. But I do miss those animations.

• The bigger observation there is memory. A hundred gigs seemed ridiculous and unobtainable at the time. Consumer-level machines still measured memory in megabytes, and people had memories of a decade prior when this was kilobytes, or even less. I still remember a kid at my school being amazed that my Commodore 16 from eBay didn’t have 16 MiB of memory.

=> ↺ Garmin Reacts to Apple Watch Ultra: ‘We Measure Battery Life in Months. Not Hours.’

• Garmin has reacted to Apple’s new rugged Apple Watch Ultra, saying in a tweet following the iPhone 14 and Apple Watch event that it measures battery life in “months” and “not hours,” promoting its latest Enduro 2 watch for athletes.

=> ↺ No More Invasive Surgery—This Pacemaker Dissolves Instead

• After having cardiovascular surgery, many patients require a temporary pacemaker to help stabilize their heart rate. The device consists of a pulse generator, one or more insulated wires, and an electrode at the end of each wire.

• The pulse generator—a metal case that contains electronic circuitry with a small computer and a battery—regulates the impulses sent to the heart. The wire is connected to the pulse generator on one end while the electrode is placed inside one of the heart’s chambers.

• But there are several issues with temporary pacemakers: The generator limits the patient’s mobility, and the wires must be surgically removed, which can cause complications such as infection, dislodgment, torn or damaged tissues, bleeding, and blood clots.

=> ↺ It’s Time to Address the Poor Quality of Supply Chain Data | SupplyChainBrain

• The reality of global supply chains in recent years has been a sorry affair, but there’s reason for hope.

• By their nature, supply chains are notoriously messy, complex and opaque. Fundamental issues remain hidden in the shadows, whether they be child and forced labor, deforestation or the impact of climate change. The outsourcing of production results in a lack of responsibility for poor conditions in facilities. And the failure to achieve visibility into multiple tiers of the supply chain reinforces that lack of accountability.

=> ↺ Flexible Radiation Monitoring System Speaks LoRa And WiFi

• Radioactivity has always been a fascinating phenomenon for anyone interested in physics, and as a result we’ve featured many radioactivity-related projects on these pages over the years. More recently however, fears of nuclear disaster have prompted many hackers to look into environmental radiation monitoring. [Malte] was one of those looking to upgrade the radiation monitor on his weather station, but found the options for wireless geiger counters a bit limited.

=> ↺ 2022 Cyberdeck Contest: The Folding Mini-Deck

• The trend for cyberdecks has brought us many takes on the home-made portable computers, but it’s fair to say that some of them can be rather unwieldy. This is not an accusation you can point at [Smeef] with the Mini-Deck though, because its Raspberry Pi Zero, Adafruit miniature display, and tiny keyboard make the whole unit able to fit in the palm of a hand. We’re not sure we’ve seen one so compact!

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Texas Court Decision Threatens ACA Coverage of Preventive Medical Services

=> ↺ Community Organizers Celebrate Defeat of Petrochemical Complex in “Cancer Alley”

Security

=> ↺ The Challenges of IoT, TLS, and Random Number Generators in the Real World

• IoT (Internet of things) is now a first-class member of the Internet, communicating with cloud infrastructure. With this come additional requirements to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authentication for every customer’s data. The IETF TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol is used for almost all Internet traffic security, but TLS is not as secure as the general public believes it to be. The current TLS protocol has been proven secure, but do IoT implementations live up to that promise? IoT does not always have the luxury of hardware RNGs (random number generators) or other features typically found on servers, laptops, or even phone processors. The history of RNGs that have not been as random as expected has led to this question.

=> ↺ [A repeat] roguelazer’s website: SSH MITM at Best Western

• I’m currently staying in a Best Western hotel in Eureka, CA, avoiding the Bay Area heat wave, and I noticed something remarkable: the hotel’s free WiFi network performs automatic man-in-the-middle interception of all SSH traffic. I’ve literally never seen this before on public WiFi… Check it out…

• [...]

• Based on traceroutes, it really does look like all of my traffic is being routed through some central facility in Texas that’s doing god knows what DPI on it.

=> ↺ Major security bugs are a long-term threat: Here’s why and what’s next

• The technology world is entering a new phase where code complexity and widespread use of global software tools have opened the door for a damaging security flaw that can last for years.

=> ↺ Google rolls out update for high-severity vulnerability in Chrome

• Google LLC has begun rolling out an update for Chrome to fix a high-severity vulnerability that is being actively targeted by hackers.

• The vulnerability is found in the Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Chrome, the search giant detailed in a blog post Friday. The update that Google’s engineers have created to fix the issue is set to roll out over the coming weeks.

=> ↺ Navigating the path to passwordless authentication

• Yves Audebert is chairman, president and co-CEO of Axiad IDS, a trusted identity solutions provider for government and financial organizations. He previously founded ActivCard / ActivIdentity, one of the lead providers of the Defense Department’s Common Access Card and HSPD12 FIPS 201 credentialing systems.

• If you have been in business long enough, you have probably heard the quote often cited from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will lead you there.” And while this quote isn’t verbatim from the book (or the subsequent movie Alice in Wonderland), the sentiment has stood the test of time because it appropriately captures an important strategic premise — that it’s important to be clear on your destination and desired business goals before kicking off a strategic initiative.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ How The Mighty Are Falling

• Good news today on the war in Ukraine. Izyum has fallen. Russian troops are abandoning weapons and stores and fleeing on foot or surrendering. It’s a collapse reminiscent of the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940. A general was even captured alive. Folks in Russia are calling for the removal of Putin. Life is good and getting better. Now, the world needs to deal with Trump…

=> ↺ Jayapal Ties Trumpian Rhetoric to Violent Threats Against US Lawmakers and Democracy

• “We’re in a very dangerous place… and I think it is important that we understand what’s at stake.”

=> ↺ ‘End the War With Nature,’ Says UN Chief From Flood-Ravaged Pakistan

• “That support is entirely necessary. And it is not a matter of solidarity. It’s a matter of justice.”

=> ↺ Ukrainian troops enter Kupyansk, previously captured by Russia — Meduza

• Ukrainian armed forces have liberated the city of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region, which has been occupied by Russian troops since the start of the war, according to Natalya Popova, adviser to the head of the regional council.

=> ↺ Russian authorities to finance projects to “help with self-identification” for Donbas residents Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives gives out millions for projects supporting war in Ukraine — Meduza

• A year ago Russia launched the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine the fund has been giving out multi-million-ruble grants for films, books, music festivals, and educational programs on the condition that their creators support the Russian invasion of Ukraine and intend their work to help “integrate” residents of the self-proclaimed Donbas republics into the “Russian world.” Meduza explains who is applying for grants and which ideas have already been approved.

=> ↺ “The Russian army turned tail.” Zelensky announces the liberation of nearly 800 square miles of Ukrainian territory — Meduza

• Since the beginning of September the Ukrainian army has liberated around 700 square miles (2,000 square km) of their own territory. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky spoke about it in his evening address on September 10.

=> ↺ Russian Ministry of Defense releases first comments on retreat in Kharkiv region — Meduza

• The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation decided to regroup troops in the regions of Balakliya and Izyum to “intensify efforts in the direction of Donetsk” and achieve the goals of the “special operation” to liberate the Donbas. A post on the department’s official Telegram channel stated:

Transparency/Investigative Reporting

=> ↺ Declassify the Documents From Trump’s Basement

Environment

Energy

=> ↺ How Chevron Polluted the Amazon and Fought Environmental Lawyer Steven Donziger

Finance

=> ↺ UK’s New Prime Minister Makes No Apologies for Favoring the Wealthy

=> ↺ Opinion | A Farmworker Speaks Truth to Power in Washington

• In the early days of the pandemic, California farmworker Carolina Sanchez saw stark differences in how she was treated on union versus non-union jobs. 

=> ↺ Maine’s Biggest City Will Vote on Public Campaign Financing Measure

=> ↺ Tapped out: underclass left behind in Australia’s cashless future

• Begging is tough enough at the best of times, but brutal now that the nation is on the brink of a cashless economy. Card machines may be an alternative for Australians who rely on spare change from strangers to stay afloat, writes James Fitzgerald Sice, but is this the best way to get ahead?

• Dave Brown* has been begging on the streets of Sydney’s inner west for more than five years. However, it is only in the past year that he has started accepting card payments from passersby.

• Dave is a 41-year-old recovering drug addict on a disability pension who lives in a housing commission unit in Glebe. Dave’s criminal record has meant he has found it difficult to find and keep a job, leaving him vulnerable to the steady decline of cash in Australia.

• During the Covid-19 pandemic, this steady decline became a sudden drop-off. So when Dave found out that his 15-year-old dog Jedda needed operations to remove numerous cancerous lumps, he took a leap-of-faith into the digital economy.

=> ↺ Childcare owner to join Early Childhood Strike amid staff crisis – Michael West

• Severe labour shortages and poor pay for carers have left the childcare sector in crisis. One childhood operator, John Owens, has written to Premier Dominic Perrottet to tell him he will join tomorrow’s Early Childhood rally. What’s the scam?

• “Some 30-40% of staff time is now spent on process driven tasks (red tape) imposed on our sector by NSW Education. Parents generally have no idea how NSW Education is driving up the cost of childcare and distracting our staff from their core responsibility (caring for and educating the children),” writes Owens.

=> ↺ Opinion | The US Must Ends Its Complicity in Illicit Financial Flows Out of Africa

• If you caught the breaking news story about Russians flying gold out of Sudan, straight from the mines, you were likely shocked by the blatant theft. The truth is that for years, every year, nearly $90 billion of African resources are lost to the Global North in Illicit Financial Flows, or IFFs. It isn’t just the Russians—U.S.-based corporations and others throughout the Global North are also complicit in this theft.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

=> ↺ ‘I’m Going to Kill You’: Man With Gun Arrested at Pramila Jayapal’s Home

• A armed man was arrested outside of Representative Pramila Jayapal’s home over the weekend after he threatened to kill her if she didn’t “go back to India.”

• According to the most recent data from the FBI on hate crimes, “62 percent of victims were targeted because of the offenders’ bias toward race/ethnicity/ancestry, which continues to be the largest bias motivation category.” Reported hate crimes increased by nearly 1,000 between 2019 and 2020.

=> ↺ Royal Favours: pipe and slippers time for David Hurley and Scott Morrison – Michael West

• It’s time for Governor-General David Hurley and Scott Morrison to go. Public perceptions of mates-deals have tarnished the two highest offices in the land. Michael West reports on the unfolding scandal of the Australian Future Leaders Foundation.

• It is time for the Governor-General to exit. Scott Morrison too. The former has tarnished the reputation of the Crown, the latter the very foundations of Australia’s democracy.

=> ↺ Trump’s Political Operation Has Raised Over $500 Million Since the 2020 Election

=> ↺ London Bridge Has Fallen — By Radio

• One of the global news stories this week has been the passing of the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Since she had recently celebrated 70 years on the throne, the changing of a monarch is not something that the majority of those alive in 2022 will have seen. But it’s well known that there are a whole suite of “London Bridge has fallen” protocols in place for that eventuality which the various arms of the British government would have put in motion immediately upon news from Balmoral Castle. When it became obvious that the Queen’s health was declining, [Hackerfantastic] took to the airwaves to spot any radio signature of these plans.

=> ↺ How Queen Elizabeth II won the hearts of Hungarians in 1993

• Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh spent four days in Hungary in May 1993. Their visit was covered in detail both by the Hungarian and the foreign press. The Queen saw the Holy Crown of Hungary, visited museums and gave a speech at Parliament. In addition to the usual political visits, she also made a stop at a homeless shelter and had a bite to eat at a farmhouse in Bugacpuszta, with cither music in the background. We looked up some old newspaper articles to remember her visit, and how much Hungary loved her.

=> ↺ Opinion | 10 Observations About the 2022 Midterms

• Two-thirds of the way through 2022, the political situation is quite different than it appeared to be on January 1. Then, Democrats viewed the midterm elections with trepidation; now, they see them as an opportunity. Here are 10 reasons why the situation has changed.

=> ↺ Opinion | Release the Dirty Permitting Bill Draft Now

• As a West Virginian Veteran, I appreciate that person’s right to speak out is a cornerstone of our democracy. For decades, people across the country have voiced their concerns about polluting facilities in their neighborhoods as part of the federal government’s review and decision-making regarding permits and projects.

Monopolies

Copyrights

=> ↺ Why copyright is a bad fit for the [Internet] age

• The problem is that copyright, in the form of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), is too powerful, and its reach is too wide. Unlike analog material, digital formats — ebooks, Spotify streams — need software to access them. If that software has any form of copy protection, as is usually the case, whatever restrictions it imposes on the user cannot be legally sidestepped, because of the DMCA.

• Controlling in detail how we enjoy books, music or films is not what copyright is designed for. Copyright is supposed to be about rewarding artists fairly for their creativity. Modern copyright fails to do that. A 2018 survey by the Authors Guild revealed that median earnings from book income fell by 50%, from 2009′s $6,250, to $3,100 in 2017. In the music industry, a 2021 U.K. Parliament report found that performers’ incomes average less than the median wage.

=> ↺ Book publishers just spent 3 weeks in court arguing they have no idea what they’re doing

• In an early sign that this trial would scar publishing’s romantic image, however, the DOJ’s initial lawsuit turned up internal emails in which PRH’s CEO Markus Dohle admits that he “never, never bought into that argument,” and that one of the “goals” of the post-merger PRHS&S would be to become an “exceptional partner” to Amazon.

• Over the course of the trial that ensued, publishers would continue to insist on their existing public image as helpless incompetents at the whims of larger companies and an irrational market. The government, meanwhile, stuck to the narrative that the publishers were savvy operators who knew exactly what they were doing with their billion-dollar companies. The question of which story was most convincing will help decide the future of American antitrust law.

=> ↺ Football Fans Turn Pirate as Another Legal Streaming Service Falls Over

• To divert people away from piracy, legal streaming services warn of the unreliability of illegal streaming sites. But for the third time in a matter of weeks, football fans have been unable to watch key matches due to legal platforms falling over. As one fan wrote on Twitter: if I pay for a legal service that doesn’t work and can find a pirate stream in less than a minute, why am I paying?

=> ↺ How Audible steals from creators

• If you listen to audiobooks, chances are you get them on Audible, Amazon’s monopoly platform with a 90+% market-share in many genres. But my books aren’t for sale there, even though that means foregoing the majority of the market. I explain why in a chapter of “Chokepoint Capitalism,” my forthcoming book, co-authored with Rebecca Giblin.

• Audible is a classic “chokepoint capitalism” story – that is, it’s a story about a company that has corralled an audience inside some kind of walled garden, and used its control over the audience to demand greater and greater concessions from the creators who want to reach them, eventually abandoning all pretense of fairness and literally stealing from creators.

• In Audible’s case, the walls are made from DRM, or “Digital Rights Management” – this is the “copy protection” system that Audible requires of all creators and publishers who sell on its platform. The company claims that DRM prevents listeners from stealing from creators by making it impossible to share the books they buy.

• In reality, though, removing Audible’s DRM is not hard; if you’re a dishonest person who wants to share an Audible title widely, you can figure out how with a couple of quick searches. But while removing DRM is easy, it’s also very, very illegal: under Section 1201 of the DMCA (a 1998 US copyright law), selling someone a DRM-bypass tool is a felony carrying a 5-year sentence and a $500k fine.

• That means that DRM never prevents copyright infringement (because infringers don’t care if they break the law), but it always prevents competition. If you’re a rival of Audible, hoping to unseat it, you have to convince potential customers to give up their Audible titles or maintain two separate libraries. You can’t just give them a tool to convert Audible files to MP3s or even another DRM format.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Confession (Penance)

• The two hardest things to do as a Catholic are 1) Give up your sins, 2) Confess your sins when you fail to give them up.

• If it wasn’t for these two basic things, then being a Catholic would be very easy. But it is what we are called to do.

• I’ve heard, more than once, the absurd idea that “Being a Catholic is easy because you can sin all you want, because you can then just go to Confession.”

=> ↺ The Disappearance Of 4chan user ‘Strah’

• So its september which means the spooky season is here. Its this time of year where my interest in the paranormal, the creepy, and the conspiratorial really peaks.

=> ↺ Star Log 2022-09-10 22:30 AKDT (Fairbanks, AK, US)

• After the failure last night, I was feeling rather discouraged. But I continued to pray, and I noticed the forecast predicting lighter cloud cover around 10pm. So, I stayed up a bit later than usual, and was blessed with a great hour of star gazing, mainly toward the southern sky.

• I had done a little research before hand, and so I was hoping to see Jupiter a little to the left of the moon tonight. I was not disappointed — Jupiter was brilliant. My binoculars are not powerful enough to actually view the disc, but the brightness of it certainly was attention-getting. The brightness is not well-captured in Stellarium, but this gives you an idea of the position of it…

Technical

Programming

=> ↺ The trouble with trantor’s threading design

• This is just something on my mind and I’m trying to figure out how to solve. Most web frameworks use a work-stealing thread pool to improve throughput. Maybe one of the threads is overburdened with 100 tasks in its queue. But all the other 15 threads are idle. Other threads should be able to take tasks away from the overburdened thread. Well, I can’t do that (at least not easily) in Drogon and Trantor.

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=> Techrights

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