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● 01.22.23

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● Links 22/01/2023: helloSystem 0.8 Released

Posted in News Roundup at 8:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Desktop/Laptop

=> ↺ 6 Reasons Why Developers Prefer MacBooks Over Windows or Linux Laptops

=> ↺ Loaded and likely false headline, unsupported by actual evidence

• A computer is a little more than just another device to a developer. It’s more like their companion because they spend long hours solving problems on it to bring some of their best ideas to life. And naturally, when it comes to picking the right one, there are some non-negotiables: power, speed, and reliability.

Audiocasts/Shows

=> ↺ Fedora Ships A Filtered Flathub – Custom Repo?? – Invidious

• If you use Fedora you probably know about it’s weird flatpak situation but for the rest of us did you know Fedora filters flathub and even has it’s own custom flatpak repo.

=> ↺ Open Source Metaverse? – Invidious

• This week in Business News, Google will update Stadia controllers to prevent e-waste, Windows breaks itself with multiple updates, and the self-driving Tesla video was apparently staged. We also see the Linux Foundation creating an open source metaverse. We also visit sillyville.

=> ↺ Linux Distro Identical To Macos – Invidious

• In This Video We Are Looking At helloSystem is a desktop system for creators with focus on simplicity, elegance, and usability. Based on FreeBSD.

=> ↺ Netrunner 23 “Vaporwave” – New version based on Debian 11 Bullseye – Invidious

• In This Video We Are Looking At Netrunner 23 “Vaporwave” Developed by Blue Systems , which is also developing the Kubuntu and linuxmint KDE version ; offering multimedia codecs, Flash and Java plug-ins along with a highly customized KDE desktop environment; 23 version of Debian-based Netrunner codenamed “Vaporwave” has been announced.

Kernel Space

=> ↺ Kernel prepatch 6.2-rc5 [LWN.net]

• The 6.2-rc5 kernel prepatch is out.

Applications

=> ↺ 12 Best Free and Open Source Console Email Clients – LinuxLinks

• For the traditionalists, emails remains a fundamental part of the operating system. Fortunately, there is a wide selection of free email software available on the Linux platform which is stable, feature laden, and ideal for personal and business environments.

• The vast majority of Linux users would never be satisfied without access to a graphical user interface. However, even in 2021 there remain many reasons why console based applications can be extremely desirable.

• Although console applications are very useful for updating, configuring, and repairing a system, their benefits are not only confined to system administration. Console based applications are light on system resources (very useful on low spec machines), can be faster and more efficient than their graphical counterparts, they do not stop working when X/Wayland needs to be restarted, and they are great for scripting purposes.

=> ↺ 10 Best Free and Open Source Shells – LinuxLinks

• The shell is a program that takes commands from the keyboard and gives them to the operating system to perform. This environment lets users run commands, programs, and shell scripts. The shell is both an interactive command language and a scripting language, and is used by the operating system to control the execution of the system using shell scripts.

• The first Unix shell was the Thompson shell, sh, written by Ken Thompson at Bell Labs back in the early 1970s. Nowadays, on many Linux systems, bash (which stands for Bourne Again SHell) acts as the shell program. It was first released in 1989, and implements the POSIX standard plus many extensions.

• But there are lots of other free and open source shells available for Linux. We spotlight our recommended free and open source shells.

=> ↺ RSS Guard 4.3.0 Brings Massive Performance Improvements

• RSS Guard 4.3.0 open source cross-platform RSS feed reader brings users a considerable performance boost for the feed fetching mechanism.

• RSS feed readers are valuable tools for staying connected to the world around you while focusing on the digital content that is important to you. They allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds from your favorite websites, blogs, and news outlets, making it easy to keep track of new content as it becomes available.

• One such tool is RSS Guard, which has just released its brand new 4.3.0 version, promising significant improvements over previous ones. So, let’s see what has changed.

=> ↺ ’Damask’ is a New Wallpaper App for Linux Desktops – OMG! Ubuntu!

• Scores of wallpaper downloader apps exist for Linux, with most able to fetch high-quality backgrounds from a myriad of online sources and set them as your desktop wallpaper.

• Damask is another such app making its debut on Flathub this weekend.

• Built using GTK4 and following the GNOME HIG, Damask fits in perfectly on the modern Ubuntu desktop.

Instructionals/Technical

=> ↺ How to install Krita on KDE Neon – Invidious

• In this video, we are looking at how to install Krita on KDE Neon.

=> ↺ How to install the Waterfox browser on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install the Waterfox browser on a Chromebook.

=> ↺ How to install FL Studio 21 on a Chromebook

• Today we are looking at how to install FL Studio 21 on a Chromebook with Wine, an application layer that allows us to install some Windows applications on Linux. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

=> ↺ How To Install UVdesk Helpdesk System on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS – idroot

• In this tutorial, we will show you how to install UVdesk Helpdesk System on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, UVdesk is a powerful helpdesk system that can help businesses manage customer support and communication. It offers a variety of tools for handling customer inquiries, such as email and ticket management, an integrated knowledge base, and a customer self-service portal. Additionally, UVdesk is fully customizable and offers integrations with other popular business software.

• 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 UVdesk Helpdesk System 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.

=> ↺ How to Install Stress or Stress-ng on AWS Amazon linux 2

• Analyze your server’s performance by installing the Stress workload generator tool on Amazon Linux to test the system’s stability and ability to handle the workload.

• To measure the ability of the systems, testers generally use stress tools, and in Linux, we have that free of cost to use. We can define the amount of stress we want to put on our Amazon Linux 2 server to test the system’s stability and performance.

=> ↺ How to install Docker on Rocky Linux – Darryl Dias

• Docker is a platform for developers and system administrators to develop, ship, and run applications in containers. Containers are lightweight, portable, and self-sufficient environments that allow applications to run consistently across different environments. It allows developers to package their applications and dependencies into a container, which can then be easily deployed and run on any host with Docker installed. This helps to ensure that the application will run the same way in the development, testing, and production environments.

=> ↺ How to Nvidia Prime Render Offload for Better Performance on Debian Linux – Invidious

• Debian supports Nvidia Optimus via the Prime Render Offload environment variables out of the box when using the closed-source Nvidia drivers. Using the closed-source drivers isn’t desirable but it’s required if you want to do any 3D gaming on Linux. The latest drivers integrate with the iGPU via Nvidia Optimus so you can switch between GPUs and get better performance and better battery life.

=> ↺ Stupid Easy Way to Transfer Small Files to or from Ubuntu 22.04 | UbuntuHandbook

• There are quite a few ways to transfer files between different machines. For Ubuntu and most other Linux, here’s an easy way for choice.

• Usually, I use a USB cable or a messenger app for transferring photo images between my personal PC and mobile devices.

• However, my USB cable is always NOT near at hand and I hate to scan QR code again and again on PC for logging 3rd app. In this case, creating a temporary http file server with Python is an easy and good choice.

=> ↺ Install the sf package on Ubuntu 20.04 – Pachá

• I was unable to install the sf package on a clean Ubuntu 20.04 setup, and the problem is attributed to incompatible software versions. My workaround, instead of installing the package from source, was to install a precompiled binary package, but that depends on configuring a PPA for GDAL.

=> ↺ Commonly Used DNS with Example Usage

• DNS servers are how the internet exists. It’s through DNS that the hostnames and domain names are resolved to get their IP addresses. Each system has default tools to troubleshoot the DNS errors. For system administrators, resolving the DNS issues is a common task.

• This post highlights the different tools that you can use to troubleshoot and check your DNS. We will mention the tool and give an example of its usage.

=> ↺ How to Check the Disk Space in Linux from the Command Line

• When working with Linux, you must quickly check the available space on your system. That way, you can keep a tab on your drives to ensure that you don’t run out of space. Checking the disk space is straightforward, depending on your GUI desktop. However, when you have a headless server, you need a way to check your disk space using the command line.

• This guide focuses on checking the disk space in Linux via the command line.

=> ↺ How To Set Up Nginx Reverse Proxy: A Step-By-Step Tutorial

• A reverse proxy is a type of server that sits between a client and a server, acting as an intermediary between the two. It accepts the requests from clients, forwards those requests to the appropriate server, and then returns the server’s response to the client.

=> ↺ Find Apt Packages that Consume the Most Space on Ubuntu

• If you are running out of space on the system, the most basic thing to do is check what is taking up how much space.

• There will be several factors behind that. From logs to cache, it could be anything.

• But have you ever wondered which application is taking more space? Yes, this is possible for apt packages at least.

• And this guide is focused on how you can check the APT packages that consume the most space on Ubuntu.

Desktop Environments/WMs

GNOME Desktop/GTK

=> ↺ Wow, GNOME 44’s New Backgrounds Are Stunning – OMG! Linux

• A fresh set of supplemental wallpapers will accompany the GNOME 44 release this spring, and no lie: they’re stunning.

• I care about desktop wallpapers more than most. On my desktop (with a 4K screen) I rarely run any app maximised, thus I see more of my desktop than the average person does.

• But even if you don’t, it’s not a bad thing to want something pleasing to look at when all apps are closed or minimized out of the way.

• And in GNOME 44 you won’t have to look far to find something that suits.

Distributions and Operating Systems

=> ↺ helloSystem 0.8 Released (FreeBSD-Based OS Inspired by macOS) – OMG! Linux

• Before you say it, I know: this site is titled omg! linux and not omg! BSD – despite this I’m gonna ask you to waive this post through.

• See, I’m kinda hard-wired to be interested in alternative operating systems. I’ve been that way ever since I discovered Linux in 2007. The fact you could run something OTHER than Windows on a PC? It was BIG news to me.

Reviews

=> ↺ Understanding Trisquel – Simon Josefsson’s blog

• The scripts to convert an Ubuntu archive into a Trisquel archive are available in the ubuntu-purge repository. The easy to read purge-focal script lists the packages to remove from Ubuntu 20.04 Focal when it is imported into Trisquel 10.0 Nabia. The purge-jammy script provides the same for Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy and (the not yet released) Trisquel 11.0 Aramo. The list of packages is interesting, and by researching the reasons for each exclusion you can learn a lot about different attitudes towards free software and understand the desire to improve matters. I wish there were a wiki-page that for each removed package summarized relevant links to earlier discussions. At the end of the script there is a bunch of packages that are removed for branding purposes that are less interesting to review.

• Trisquel adds a couple of Trisquel-specific packages. The source code for these packages are in the trisquel-packages repository, with sub-directories for each release: see 10.0/ for Nabia and 11.0/ for Aramo. These packages appears to be mostly for branding purposes.

Arch Family

=> ↺ 5 Key Differences Between SteamOS and Arch Linux

• You may have heard that the Steam Deck uses Arch Linux. This is technically true. Valve’s SteamOS is based on Arch Linux.

• But the experience on the Deck is very different from what you would encounter if you installed Arch Linux on a PC. Here are some ways SteamOS is different from its parent distribution.

Fedora Family / IBM

=> ↺ Four benefits from Red Hat and Microsoft for Azure Red Hat OpenShift customers

Debian Family

=> ↺ Petter Reinholdtsen: Opensnitch, the application level interactive firewall, heading into the Debian archive

• While reading a blog post claiming MacOS X recently started scanning local files and reporting information about them to Apple, even on a machine where all such callback features had been disabled, I came across a description of the Little Snitch application for MacOS X. It seemed like a very nice tool to have in the tool box, and I decided to see if something similar was available for Linux.

• It did not took long to find the OpenSnitch package, which has been in development since 2017, and now is in version 1.5.0. It has had a request for Debian packaging since 2018, but no-one completed the job so far. Just for fun, I decided to see if I could help, and I was very happy to discover that upstream want a Debian package too.

Devices/Embedded

=> ↺ RP2040 Feather ‘bones’ for a few different varieties

=> ↺ As it shifts focus from DIY computer kits, Kano spins out its creative software suite as a standalone business • TechCrunch

• Founded out of London in 2013, Kano has brought various products to market through the years designed to teach the building blocks of computing to children. This includes its flagship Raspberry Pi-based modular PCs, as well as accessories such as the Harry Potter Coding Kit, replete with a physical magic wand that works across most platforms.

=> ↺ Reverse Engineering Yaesu FT-70D Firmware Encryption | lander’s posts

• Ham radios are a fun way of learning how the radio spectrum works, and more importantly: they’re embedded devices that may run weird chips/firmware! I got curious how easy it’d be to hack my Yaesu FT-70D, so I started doing some research. The only existing resource I could find for Yaesu radios was someone who posted about custom firmware for their Yaesu FT1DR.

=> ↺ The Ham Radio all-in-one cable

• The Ham Radio All-in-one-Cable (AIOC) is a small adapter with a USB-C connector that enumerates itself as a sound-card (e.g. for APRS purposes) and a virtual tty (“COM Port”) for programming and asserting the PTT (Push-To-Talk).

Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

=> ↺ Meet BharOS, India’s rival mobile OS to Google’s Android

=> ↺ MIUI 14: Xiaomi 12 starts receiving Android 13 update through Mi Pilot program – NotebookCheck.net News

=> ↺ Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite’s Wi-Fi model is receiving Android 13-based One UI 5.0 update – GSMArena.com news

=> ↺ The best visual novels on Android in 2023

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

=> ↺ Libre Arts – Weekly recap — 22 January 2022

• There have been many interesting updates in the last 3 weeks, I’ve picked the ones I can realistically handle. Highlights: OBS Studio 29, Pinta 2.1, HDRView 1.7.1, Synfig 1.4.4, Ossia Score 3.1.6, and more.

=> ↺ FOSS Weekly #32 – KDE Plasma 5.27, Kernel vulnerability, DNEG’s tool, and more | FOSS Weekly

• Welcome to this week’s edition of FOSS Weekly! This week, DNEG released their open source tool as promised a while back, Apple open sourced their 40-year-old Apple Lisa’s source code, and we also have lots of interesting releases from distros and other projects.

=> ↺ App Store Rejection of the Week: Ice Cubes, a Splendid New Mastodon Client

• Today, Mastodon’s explosive growth in the face of Twitter’s collapse has made it a new UI playground, especially so on iOS. I’m following — and using — at least half a dozen excellent new iOS Mastodon clients, each of them distinctive.

Web Browsers/Web Servers

Mozilla

=> ↺ Desktop email, and from Alpine to Thunderbird

• In my experience, fewer phrases elicit as much surprise in technical circles as desktop email client. Even among those who still use them at work—by choice or otherwise—fewer do at home. It’s akin to admitting you still use floppy disks or, perhaps a more adjacent analogy, Lotus Notes.

• Web email is good enough for most people, and probably has been for a long time. You run it in most browsers and devices, you don’t need to worry about syncing, and it’s one fewer application to configure, upgrade, and maintain. That first one is key; email autoconfiguration just works sometimes, but there are enough edge cases to keep it from being as foolproof as logging into a website like Hotmail. Is that still a thing?

• I’d also guess that most people don’t know how email works under the hood, such as the protocols (or the fact its sent and stored in plaintext, but that’s a separate issue). To them, email is another glorified social network, which also lends itself to being loaded in a browser like their social media data harvester of choice.

• [...]

• I’ve used a mix of Thunderbird and Alpine for years, but I made the fateful decision last weekend to merge everything into Thunderbird and call it a day. I’ll continue to recommend Alpine for those who want to live out of a terminal, but I find a high-resolution, bitmapped display with a mouse is an easier, denser interface for email tasks.

GNU Projects

=> ↺ GNU Parallel 20230122 (‘Bolsonaristas’) released [stable] [Savannah]

• GNU Parallel 20230122 (‘Bolsanaristas’) has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Programming/Development

=> ↺ Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 1.0.10 on CRAN: Regular Update

• The Rcpp team is thrilled to announce the newest release 1.0.10 of the Rcpp package which is hitting CRAN now and will go to Debian shortly. Windows and macOS builds should appear at CRAN in the next few days, as will builds in different Linux distribution and of course at r2u. The release was prepared a few days ago, but given the widespread use at CRAN it took a few days to be processed. As always, our sincere thanks to the CRAN maintainers Uwe Ligges and Kurt Hornik. This release continues with the six-months cycle started with release 1.0.5 in July 2020. As a reminder, we do of course make interim snapshot ‘dev’ or ‘rc’ releases available via the Rcpp drat repo and strongly encourage their use and testing—I run my systems with these versions which tend to work just as well, and are also fully tested against all reverse-dependencies.

• Rcpp has become the most popular way of enhancing R with C or C++ code. Right now, around 2623 packages on CRAN depend on Rcpp for making analytical code go faster and further, along with 252 in BioConductor. On CRAN, 13.7% of all packages depend (directly) on CRAN, and 58.7% of all compiled packages do. From the cloud mirror of CRAN (which is but a subset of all CRAN downloads), Rcpp has been downloaded 67.1 million times.

=> ↺ BH 1.81.0-1 oon CRAN: New Upstream, New Library, sprintf Change

• Boost is a very large and comprehensive set of (peer-reviewed) libraries for the C++ programming language, containing well over one hundred individual libraries. The BH package provides a sizeable subset of header-only libraries for (easier, no linking required) use by R. It is fairly widely used: the (partial) CRAN mirror logs (aggregated from the cloud mirrors) show over 32.6 million package downloads.

• Version 1.81.0 of Boost was released in December following the regular Boost release schedule of April, August and December releases. As the commits and changelog show, we packaged it almost immediately and started testing following our annual update cycle which strives to balance being close enough to upstream and not stressing CRAN and the user base too much. The reverse depends check revealed about a handful of packages requiring changes or adjustments which is a pretty good outcome given the over three hundred direct reverse dependencies. So we opened issue #88 to coordinate the issue over the winter break during which CRAN also closes (just as we did before), and also send a wider ‘PSA’ tweet as a heads-up. Our sincere thanks to the two packages that already updated, and the four that likely will soon. Our thanks also to CRAN for reviewing the package impact over the last few days since I uploaded the package earlier this week.

=> ↺ Setting a new focus for my blog

• Since writing this, I have been considering what exactly the essential subject of my dissatisfaction with my writing has been. I may have found the answer: I lost sight of my goals. I got so used to writing that I would often think to myself, “I want to write a blog post!”, then dig a topic out of my backlog (which is 264 items long) and write something about it. This is not the way; much of the effort expended on writing in this manner is not spent on the subjects I care about most, or those which most urgently demand an expenditure of words.

• The consequences of this misalignment of perspective are that my writing has often felt dull and rote. It encourages shallower takes and lends itself to the rants or unthoughtful criticisms that my writings are, unfortunately, (in)famous for. When I take an idea off of the shelf, or am struck by an idea that, in the moment, seemingly demands to be spake of, I often end up with a disappointing result when the fruit of this inspiration is published a few hours later.

• Over the long term, these issues manifest as demerits to my reputation, and deservedly so. What’s more, when a critical tone is well-justified, the posts which utilize it are often overlooked by readers due to the normalization of this tone throughout less important posts. Take for instance my recent post on Rust in Linux. Though this article could have been written with greater nuance, I still find its points about the value of conservatism in software decision-making accurate and salient. However, the message is weakened riding on the coat-tails of my long history of less poignant critiques of Rust. As I resume my writing, I will have to take a more critical examination of myself and the broader context of my writing before reaching for a negative tone as a writing tool.

=> ↺ Fully Autonomous Real-World Reinforcement Learning with Applications to Mobile Manipulation – The Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Blog

• Training this multi-level policy was not only more efficient than learning both skills at the same time but it allowed for the grasping controller to inform the navigation policy. Having a model that estimates the uncertainty in its grasp success (Ours above) can be used to improve navigation exploration by skipping areas without graspable objects, in contrast to No Uncertainty Bonus which does not use this information. The model can also be used to relabel data during training so that in the unlucky case when the grasping model was unsuccessful trying to grasp an object within its reach, the grasping policy can still provide some signal by indicating that an object was there but the grasping policy has not yet learned how to grasp it. Moreover, learning modular models has engineering benefits. Modular training allows for reusing skills that are easier to learn and can enable building intelligent systems one piece at a time. This is beneficial for many reasons, including safety evaluation and understanding.

=> ↺ The Premature Obituary of Programming

• Deep learning (DL) has arrived, not only for natural language, speech, and image processing but also for coding, which I refer to as deep programming (DP). DP is used to detect similar programs, find relevant code, translate programs from one language to another, discover software defects, and to synthesize programs from a natural language description. The advent of large transformer language models10 is now being applied to programs with encouraging results. Just like DL is enabled by the enormous amount of textual and image data available on the Internet, DP is enabled by the vast amount of code available in open source repositories such as GitHub, as well as the ability to reuse libraries via modern package managers such as npm and pip. Two trail-blazing transformer-based DP systems are OpenAI’s Codex8 and Deepmind’s AlphaCode.18 The former is used in the Github Copilot project14 and integrates with development environments to automatically suggest code to developers. The latter generates code to solve problems presented at coding competitions. Both achieve amazing results. Multiple efforts are under way to establish code repositories for benchmarking DP, such as CodeXGLUE19 and CodeNET.20

=> ↺ ShinyProxy vs Posit Connect: Benchmark Test for Scaling Shiny Apps – R programming, Shiny for Python

• Shiny is a web framework for R (and now Python) users. With it, you can build a working dashboard for your analytics in a relatively short time. While it is easy to start developing dashboards without programming experience, the challenge comes with scaling. The quality and interactive method of data delivery will mean greater adoption and more users.

• There are many solutions to optimize dashboard performance for a single user. This includes examples like promises for non-blocking access and profvis to identify bottlenecks. However, to scale a Shiny application for a large number of users, the deployment environment plays a significant role.

=> ↺ Learn Hadoop for Data Science – Data Science Tutorials

• Learn Hadoop for Data Science, Are you wondering why learning Hadoop is necessary for data science? You are on the appropriate page.

• You can read more about why Hadoop is essential for data scientists here. This article’s conclusion will include a case study showing how Marks & Spencer Company uses Hadoop to meet its data science needs.

=> ↺ Profiling and Optimizing an Interpreter — Andrew Healey

• In my last post, I added for loops to my interpreter for the nodots programming language. Today, I’m profiling and optimizing the same interpreter.

=> ↺ Junichi Uekawa: Working through crosvm dependencies in Debian.

• Working through crosvm dependencies in Debian. intrusive-collections Debian package went in. Next up is argh. I think most of them is there now and the next challenge is getting crosvm to build with the newer dependencies.

=> ↺ O_RDONLY, O_WRONLY and O_RDWR Flags in C Language

• In programming, file management allows us to store and access any type of information whether in user-created databases, system files for running programs, executable files, and so on.

• The C language provides, among other things, the open() function to create or open files. This function opens or creates a file specified in the input arguments by its absolute or relative path.

• When we use this function, we have the possibility to specify via flags the attributes that the file to be opened or created must have, for example. whether it should be read-only, read-write or both.

• In this Linux Hint article, you will learn how to specify the read and write attributes of files using the O_RDONLY, O_WRONLY, and O_RDWR flags.

• We will look at a theoretical description of these flags and then implement their use in examples that include code snippets and images where we set read and write attributes with these flags.

R

=> ↺ parallelly 1.34.0: Support for CGroups v2, Killing Parallel Workers, and more

• With the recent releases of parallelly 1.33.0 (2022-12-13) and 1.34.0 (2023-01-13), availableCores() and availableWorkers() gained better support for Linux CGroups, options for avoiding running out of R connections when setting up parallel-style clusters, and killNode() for forcefully terminating one or more parallel workers.

=> ↺ {reactable} Podium – How to Build a Leaderboard in R Shiny – R programming

• {reactable} is pretty powerful in itself given just how many features are available in it. But its real power is in how we can tinker with it. In one of our R Shiny projects, we needed a leaderboard of sorts. So, we figured, why not make things interesting and add a podium on top? This blog post walks you through a similar example using the same technique.

=> ↺ Kaggle January Playground Series – Tidymodels – Sport Data Science

• Hello, hope you have your Yorkshire tea ready this is going to be a new series on the blog in which each month I am going to be tackling Kaggles monthly playground series.

Python

=> ↺ Pandas Weighted Average

• The weighted average is the average of the data that identifies the specific numbers that are more important than the other numbers in the DataFrame. We will be implementing all possible ways in which the Pandas weighted average can be calculated with the help of several examples.

=> ↺ Pandas Case When

• In this tutorial, we will perform different operations by using case statements and if-else statements. A case statement makes it possible to compare the value of a variable to a range of potential values. When the set of values is referred to or passed in the case statement, each value inside the set is checked by the cases or conditions inside the statement.

• Case statement in the Pandas DataFrame provides an output or returns a value if the condition is satisfied.

=> ↺ Pandas – Convert Categorical Values to Int Values

• The datasets for machine learning execution include both numerical and categorical variables. Categorical variables are string-type data that humans easily comprehend. Machines, on the other hand, cannot understand categorical inputs directly. Consequently, categorical content must be transformed into numerical values that machines can interpret.

=> ↺ Get the Pandas DataFrame Rows Based on Index

• Basically, a Pandas DataFrame has two indices. These indices are distinguished by their axis. The row index is an index that is located along axis 0 (horizontal), whereas the column index is an index that is located along axis 1 (vertical).

• In this article, we will use iloc[] and loc[] functions to get the rows from the DataFrame. We need to specify the row and column ranges (start and end locations along the columns or rows). The location-based indexing can be used to query the Pandas DataFrames.

=> ↺ Pandas Json Normalize

• The “JSON” basically stands for the “JavaScript Object Notation”.

• Pandas has the most popular “data processing framework” in Python, which is the “JSON” normalize” feature. It is a built-in feature of Pandas. It is the simplest way to do the Pandas JSON normalization() using the “Python” request modules.

• In this article, we will see different levels of normalization.

=> ↺ Do You Know About Pythons Keyword Only Arguments? – Invidious

• Did you know about pythons keyword only arguments?

=> ↺ This Python Trick Will Take Your List Game To The Next Level – Invidious

=> ↺ Python Added A New Way To Assign With Walruses – Invidious

• Pythons new assignment expression is an interesting way to assign values

Rust

=> ↺ i18n-format for Rust – Hubert Figuière

• A quick announcement for i18n-format, a Rust crate to help with string localization. While it’s not GNOME specific as it is only about gettext, I wrote it for GNOME applications.

• The goal is to allow the use of gettext! and ngettext! while xgettext can still extract the strings.

Standards/Consortia

=> ↺ Rubenerd: Comments on FeedLand roadmap

• I see it as natural a thing to do as hosting WordPress, MediaWiki, and the static-generated site you’re reading now.

• [...]

• I’ll be interested to see what the technical requirements are. I briefly ran a Node.js and MariaDB stack on FreeBSD (my preferred server OS) for Ghost, so I’d expect the toolchain to be similar.

=> ↺ CSS color functions and custom properties – Manuel Matuzović

• I know I’m really late to the party, but I finally understood why people find color functions like hsl(), hwb(), or lab() so appealing.

• There are many reasons, but one of them is that in combination with custom properties, working with color functions is so much easier, cleaner, and understandable compared to working with hex colors or rbg().

Leftovers

=> ↺ The Art of Knowing When to Quit

• It feels like there’s a hesitancy to bring closure to any creative endeavor because what if it becomes successful? Sorry, you already brought it to an end so no more $$$.

• It feels like our culture’s impulse is to wring every last cent possible out of any creative endeavor — or at least leave open the possibility for more from the outset.

• [...]

• It reminds me of an interview I saw between Charlie Rose and Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry talks about how the incredible success of their sitcom Seinfeld could’ve allowed them to continue creating season after season. But he felt ending the show when they did (two years after co-creator Larry David had already left) was doing the audience a favor…

• [...]

• I think this goes for lots of creative endeavors, including software. There’s an art to knowing when — and how — to bring something to an end.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

=> ↺ Affordable device for fixing broken bones piloted in Gaza, Sri Lanka and Ukraine

• When soft tissue is severely damaged together with bone, external fixators are the first step in keeping fractures in legs and arms in place before an operation to definitively fix the bones can be carried out.

• However, their cost and low availability in many regions mean people resort to homemade or low-quality fixators that may lead to serious complications or improper healing.

• The Imperial external fixator is currently being tested in Gaza and Sri Lanka, and since the invasion of Ukraine, more than 500 fixators have been manufactured in Poland to help with the crisis.

=> ↺ Mortality by vaccination status ONS critique

• In Nov 2022 we (Professor Fenon and team) made a formal complaint to the Statistic Regulator about the multiple anomalies in the ONS mortality by vaccination status reports. On 20 Jan 2023 they final responded and they agreed with our major concern that 1) the ONS data was based on a biased sample that under-represented the proportion of unvaccinated in England; and 2) the ONS data could not be used to make any assertions about vaccine efficacy or safety.

Security

=> ↺ Linux malware hit a new high in 2022

=> ↺ 1

=> ↺ 2

=> ↺ Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Linux Mint 19.x users should upgrade as support ends this April – Neowin

• For any Ubuntu or Linux Mint users out there still running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or Linux Mint 19.x, it’s time to start upgrading to a newer version. This warning also goes out to users of other Ubuntu 18.04 LTS-based distributions, of which, there are many. Luckily, if your system runs Ubuntu 18.04 or distros based on this release, your system should also handle Ubuntu 22.04 LTS just fine and you’ll get newer packages.

=> ↺ Episode 359 – The NOTAM outage and other legacy technology

• Josh and Kurt talk about the recent FAA NOTAM outage. Keeping legacy things running for long periods of time is really hard to do, this system is no different. It’s also really hard to upgrade many of these due to corner cases and institutional knowledge. There aren’t any great answers here, but we do ask a lot of questions about long running tech.

Privacy/Surveillance

=> ↺ How the Netherlands Is Taming Big Tech

• Dutch government and educational organizations have had remarkable success in compelling Big Tech companies to make major privacy changes. Their carrot-and-stick approach engages high-level Silicon Valley executives in months of highly technical discussions and then makes it worth their while by negotiating collective agreements allowing firms to sell their vetted tools to different government ministries and the nation’s schools. And the Dutch efforts to prod change could provide a playbook for other small nations wrangling with tech superpowers.

Defence/Aggression

=> ↺ ‘Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy’: From UN Peacekeeper to U.S. Sentinel State

• In a recent article in the Ottawa Hill-Times, journalist David Crane asked an important question: “Is Canada trying to match or outdo American hostility to China?”

• Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (CIPS), announced in Vancouver recently by Liberal foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly and other ministers, answers that question unequivocally:

• “China is an increasingly disruptive global power” begins the CIPS assessment of China.

• True enough if taken in isolation. Insidious, however, in the way it is used in this report.

• “We are not just going to engage the Indo-Pacific, we are going to lead,” stated Joly in her opening remarks. In this case, leadership seems to imply being tougher on China than anyone else. In its two-page assessment, the CIPS lists a litany of China’s alleged misdeeds and that, it would seem, is all there is to say. Not a word about its impressive economic achievements; nor that China is Canada’s second largest trading partner; nor about lifting 800 million people out of poverty, as recognized by the UN; not a peep about its development of solar power generation, documented in a Lancet study. Frankly, any teacher would be compelled to give a failing grade to the Canadian government’s assessment of China because of the obvious bias.

=> ↺ California’s Lost History of Lynching Latinos in L.A. More Than 100 Years Ago – Copyright L.A. TACO

• Not far from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, a crowded line of cars take turns crossing.

• In front of the Metropolitan Detention Center, many sit in their cars, oblivious that Francisco Cota, a 15-year-old Latino accused of murdering a local shopkeeper, was dragged up the street, repeatedly stabbed, and lynched above the intersection over 160 years ago in the heart of El Pueblo de Los Angeles.

• A few blocks away at Temple and N Spring Street, at least eight more men were lynched from 1855 to 1863 in broad daylight among a large armed crowd. These lynchings took place where L.A.’s first courthouse and jail used to stand, now replaced with City Hall. Further down Temple at its intersection with Broadway, Miguel Lachenal was lynched by a violent mob in 1870—and historians believe over a dozen more lynchings occurred at this site. Not far is the Fort More Pioneer Memorial, which doesn’t mention the murders that happened at that exact place, with all but one of them lynchings of Latinos. There were also many other lynchings sites across Southern California in El Monte, Santa Ana, San Gabriel, San Pedro, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo, as well as in Northern California.

=> ↺ The Democrats are Now the War Party

• The Democratic Party has become the party of permanent war, fueling massive military spending which is hollowing out the country from the inside and flirting with with nuclear war.

Environment

Energy/Transportation

=> ↺ Australia: high industry concentration, high profit margins, says UBS – Michael West

• Competition regulator the ACCC has to sign off on ANZ’s takeover of Suncorp and and Brookfield’s bid for Origin Energy. What’s the scam?

• The scam is, as shown in the graphic above by investment bank UBS, Australia is a land of high prices – oligopolies with high industry concentration – yet both deals, if approved, will only deliver further monopoly power: one less bank and one bigger, more vertically integrated energy company.

• UBS analysis highlights four reasons Australia is good for foreign investors: fast population growth, high dividends, relative detachment from global economic cycle and a concentrated industry structure: “For consumers the outcome of this is bad, i.e. less choice and expensive prices. But for the businesses that are already here, this is great, i.e. less competition and higher margins”.

=> ↺ This government school in Himachal Pradesh runs completely on solar energy

• Government Model Boys Senior Secondary School in Nalagarh was established in 1856. Currently, there are about 800 students studying in this school, which includes boys from class 6-12.

• Jitender Kumar, a former physics teacher, is presently the principal of the school. Himachal Pradesh Council for Science Technology and Environment or HIMCOSTE supported the school in installing three solar units of 6 kilowatts capacity each.

• The total 18kW solar plant was installed in 40 days and cost about Rs 9.18 lakh. It was completely executed and funded by HIMCOSTE.

Finance

=> ↺ Google parent Alphabet to cut 12,000 jobs

• Google’s parent company Alphabet will cut 12,000 jobs, in the latest staff redundancies to hit the tech industry.

• Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said he took “full responsibility” for the cuts, in an internal email.

=> ↺ The Big Tech layoffs are just beginning – by Bryan Lunduke

• Earlier today, Microsoft announced that they will be laying off roughly 10,000 full time staff — which amounts to nearly 5% of all Microsoft employees.

• And this isn’t the first big layoff of the year… despite the year only being roughly 2 weeks old.

• Coinbase. Amazon. Cisco. Salesforce. It seems like almost every major Tech firm is starting 2023 by announcing layoffs (or had already announced staff cuts in the final days of 2022).

=> ↺ $1 Hospital Sell Off? – Michael West

• Forking out $1.2bn to build a hospital then flogging it for a dollar must surely make the NSW government the most hopeless dealmaker in Australian history. Then letting the buyers sell it – along with another 41 hospitals to the Cayman Islands – puts the federal government in a nearby league.

=> ↺ Byron Bay blue between “Airbnb mafia” and grassroots groups highlights costly housing crisis – Michael West

• Pandemic lockdowns crushed Airbnb, Stayz and other short-term rental operators but the market has bounced back sharply, creating tensions in popular tourist destinations between councils, community groups and well-heeled property owners. Callum Foote reports on the case of ritzy Byron Bay.

• A powerful lobby group for short-term rental providers, whose politically connected members oversee hundreds of properties, has nixed local council legislation and led to a community backlash and claims of profiteering at the expense of a housing supply and cost of living crisis.

• Short-term rentals offered by platforms such as Airbnb and Stayz spread quickly throughout Australia. They delivered easy choice and competition for accomodation for tourists but councils are now grappling with a backlash from residents who say they are in part responsible for a housing supply crisis and rising living costs in the regions.

=> ↺ Banks Recover only 13% of Rs 10 Lakh Crore Loans Written off in Last 5 Years

• Banks have recovered only 13% of a staggering amount of loans worth more than Rs 10 lakh crore loans written off in the last five years.

=> ↺ Four Pillars to Four Punters? Will ANZ “do a Richard Branson”, licence its brand like Virgin? – Michael West

• ANZ is now free to pull a Richard Branson and licence its brand to sell ANZ-branded financial products through its non-banking and non-financially regulated wing after regulators approved its restructuring, reports Callum Foote.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

=> ↺ Advice for running a long campaign

• This might be another short three page section in the rules for Knives, a simple 2d6 rule system that I’d like to use at my table. The OGL mess is making me angry and I don’t think I want to invest too much energy into D&D-like games. Wizards of the Coast, shame on you.

=> ↺ Physics vs Crime

• Assistant: “Captain, we don’t know until we’ve done dusting tests whether the culprit is the neighbor coming through the window, or the butler coming from the hall.”

• Captain MW: “OMG! This is a remarkable paradox! The culprit is the neighbor and the butler at the same time!”

• Assistant: “Not really… but until the prints come back, we won’t know which it is; until then we can rule out people who weren’t even in town that day. So there’s still a lot of progress we can make on the case with what we’ve got so far, we can sta–”

• Captain MW: “You’re saying that those prints will collapse the wave function! Impossible! But don’t worry, Captain Many Worlds to the rescue! It’s clear that we are living in a field of overlapping simultaneous worlds and in one world the neighbor is a cruel and disgusting killer, and in the other the butler is a callous and brutal murderer. Both worlds obviously equally true! These people disgust me, assistant, they truly disgust me!”

• Assistant: “Uh, no, it’s one world, it’s just that we haven’t done the tests yet, once we–”

• Captain MW: “Truly a superposition of murder, assistant. Yes, yes. We’ve got two murderers on our hands. And I am a hero in every world!”

=> ↺ Experiment

• Hello, Midnight Pub. I’m a hacker!!!

=> ↺ Do you even compute, bro?

=> ↺ Do you even compute, bro?

• Personal computing, broadly construed in such a way that it includes smartphones and tablets and whatnot – basically, computing done on a single-user device which is the personal property of the person doing the computing – has never been bigger than it is today. The average person owns more personal computers, buys personal computers more frequently, and spends more time using a personal computer than even a lot of hardened computing enthusiasts would have ten years ago. This is not just more common and more socially accepted than it used to be, it is, in a weird and quite rapid reversal of social norms, socially expected, to the extent that now you’re a social misfit weirdo if you aren’t on a computing device all the time.

=> ↺ Realizing you already live pretty tiny

• I’ll peel back the curtain a bit and say I’ve never owned a home. I’m not sure I ever really want to in this kind of economy. I am leery of going into that much debt (because that’s all a mortgage is and until yours is paid off that house is not yours); however, I’m even more sensitive to the implication that I’m tied to that spot and am stuck with that commitment until I get it sold or paid off.

• Considering that for the last 4 or 5 years my wife and I have moved pretty regularly, seemingly at least once a year.. the absence of a sense of permanence has led me to have a mentality of “well does it matter if we do X modification to the dwelling or get Y appliance? We’re only here for (probably a year).” Not only that, it’s resulted in our used living space being pretty small.

Technical

=> ↺ A response to Solderpunk’s “Orphans of Netscape Part II”

• I discovered the smolnet sometime in either late 2019 or 2020; I frankly don’t remember when I first got my account at the Soviet at Circumlunar.Space. And, joke intended with the name, I kinda figured what I was getting into would wind up being a technically interesting but politically rotten orgy of people screaming about capitalism, as if sitting on a pubnix in the dark corners of the internet and yelling about change would actually enact it.

=> ↺ I still prefer email

• Although instant messaging has overtaken most of the communication with my friends and family, I still prefer plaintext email. I refused to use things like Whatsapp and so they contacted me through SMS. A few weeks ago I installed Signal on my phone, because this is the only messenger that I think can be trusted and is way more secure than SMS. Now I need to tediously convince them to use that instead. But I really like emails over all forms of digital communication.

=> ↺ Configuring Networking in rc.local

• Much of my Linux setup is totally bespoke and manual. GRUB config? I write it by hand, or I generate it from a template using a tiny program I wrote in CHICKEN Scheme named bootconf-update. The underlying principle is that if some part of the system shits the bed, I am better able to debug things because I can reason about my setup. Today I’m writing about how I do static network configuration.

Internet/Gemini

=> ↺ Track the Voyager Mission Status from Gemini

• With this app you can track the Voyager probes telemetry from your Gemini browser.

• Telemetry data is not 100% accurate but it does the job as you can view the distance from Earth or from the Sun.

=> ↺ Capsule of the day – 2023-01

• NOTA: Links are selected randomly from a list of known host from the lupa crawler[1]. The links are not manually curated and I’m not responsible of the content of these capsules. If some offensive capsules are listed here automatically, please alert me so I can manually remove them.

=> ↺ Capsule of the day – 2023-01-22

• 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

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