John Goerzen: Make the Internet Yours Again With an Instant Mesh Network
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10319-make-the-internet-yours-again-with-an-instant-mesh-network
January 8, 2022, 3:57 AM
I’m going to lead with the technical punch line, and then explain it:
Yggdrasil Network is an opportunistic mesh that can be deployed privately or as part of a global-scale network. Each node gets a stable IPv6 address (or even an entire /64) that is derived from its public key and is bound to that node as long as the node wants it (of course, it can generate a new keypair anytime) and is valid wherever the node joins the mesh. All traffic is end-to-end encrypted.
Yggdrasil will automaticall...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 199 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-199-released/
January 7, 2022, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 199. This version includes the following changes:
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Support both variants of "odt2txt", including the one provided by unoconv.
(Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#298)
[ Jelle van der Waa ]
* Add external tool reference on Arch Linux for xb-tool.
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
--------------------
Jacob Adams: Linux Hibernation Documentation
https://tookmund.com/2022/01/hibernate-docs
January 6, 2022, 12:00 AM
Recently I’ve been curious about how hibernation works on Linux,
as it’s an interesting interaction between hardware and software.
There are some notes in the Arch wiki
and the kernel documentation
(as well as some kernel documentation on debugging hibernation
and on sleep states more generally),
and of course the ACPI Specification
The Formal Definition
ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is,
according to the spec,
“an architecture-independent power management and configura...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in December 2021
https://reproducible-builds.org/reports/2021-12/
January 5, 2022, 2:44 PM
Welcome to the December 2021 report from the Reproducible Builds project! In these reports, we try and summarise what we have been up to over the past month, as well as what else has been occurring in the world of software supply-chain security.
As a quick recap of what reproducible builds is trying to address, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, almost all software is distributed to end users as pre-compiled binaries. The motivation behind the reprod...
--------------------
Jonathan Wiltshire: Continuing adventures of the mystery cable
https://www.jwiltshire.org.uk/2022/01/05/continuing-adventures-of-the-mystery-cable/
January 5, 2022, 1:39 PM
My 4×2 has been in action again, trying to find the remainder of the mystery sometimes-4mm/sometimes-2.5mm/sometimes-1.5mm cable. It finally appeared in the tiniest gap possible between back wall and joist.
As we had suspected by tracing everything else, the junction is an unfused union of all three cable types with a 230V 32A circuit breaker on one end and a light switch on the other. So in the event of fault current at the kitchen lights, the 1.5mm cable is definitely going to burn out and...
--------------------
Thomas Lange: FAI.me service now support backports for Debian 11 (bullseye)
http://blog.fai-project.org/posts/faime-bpo-2/
January 5, 2022, 11:46 AM
The FAI.me service for creating customized installation and cloud
images now supports a backports kernel for the stable release Debian 11
(aka bullseye). If you enable the backports option, you will currently
get kernel 5.14. This will help you if you have newer
hardware that is not support by the default kernel 5.10.
The backports option is also still available for the images when using
the old Debian 10 (buster) release.
The URL of the FAI.me service is
https://fai-project.org/FAIme/
FAI...
--------------------
Russell Coker: Terrorists Inspired by Fiction
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/01/05/terrorists-inspired-by-fiction/
January 4, 2022, 11:00 PM
The Tom Clancy book Debt of Honor published in August 1994 first introduced the concept of a heavy passenger aircraft being used as a weapon by terrorists against a well defended building. In April 1994 there was an attempt to hijack and deliberately crash FedEx flight 705. It’s possible for a book to be changed 4 months before publication, but it seems unlikely that a significant plot point in a series of books was changed in such a small amount of time so it’s likely that Tom Clancy got th...
--------------------
Jelmer Vernooij: Personal Streaming Audio Server
https://www.jelmer.uk/navidrome.html
January 4, 2022, 6:00 PM
For a while now, I’ve been looking for a good way to stream music from my home
music collection on my phone.
There are quite a few options for music servers that support streaming. However,
Android apps that can stream music from one of those servers tend to be
unmaintained, clunky or slow (or more than one of those).
It is possible to use something that runs in a web server, but that means
no offline caching - which can be quite convenient in spots without
connectivity, such as the Undergro...
--------------------
Jonathan McDowell: Upgrading from a CC2531 to a CC2538 Zigbee coordinator
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2022/01/new-zigbee-coordinator.html
January 4, 2022, 3:50 PM
Previously I setup a CC2531 as a Zigbee coordinator for my home automation. This has turned out to be a good move, with the 4 gang wireless switch being particularly useful. However the range of the CC2531 is fairly poor; it has a simple PCB antenna. It’s also a very basic device. I set about trying to improve the range and scalability and settled upon a CC2538 + CC2592 device, which feature an MMCX antenna connector. This device also has the advantage that it’s ARM based, which I’m hopefu...
--------------------
Russell Coker: Big Smart TVs
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/01/04/big-smart-tvs/
January 4, 2022, 11:37 AM
Recently a relative who owned a 50″ Plasma TV asked me for advice on getting a new TV. Looking at the options all the TVs seem to be smart TVs (running Android with built in support for YouTube and Netflix) and most of them seem to be 4K resolution. 4K doesn’t provide much benefit now as most people don’t have BlueRay DVD players and discs, there aren’t a lot of 4K YouTube videos, and most streaming services don’t offer 4K resolution. But as 4K doesn’t cost much more it doesn’t mak...
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Russell Coker: Curiosity Stream
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/01/04/curiosity-stream/
January 4, 2022, 5:27 AM
I have recently signed up for the Curiosity Stream [1] documentary site, this is designed to be like Netflix but for non-fiction content only. The service costs $US15 per annum or $52US per annum for 4K (I think the 4K service was about $US120 per annum when I signed up). The extra price for 4K seems excessive, while it is in line with the bandwidth requirements a large portion of the costs of the service would be about user support and running the service reliably for which 4K makes little diff...
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Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities December 2021
http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2022/01/04/floss-activities/
January 3, 2022, 11:35 PM
Focus
This month I didn't have any particular focus.
I just worked on issues in my info bubble.
Changes
plac:
release cleanup
bibliogram-docs:
update a feed checkbox
duck:
add indicator phrases
(1
2 3)
Debian Planets:
remove BlackWeb
Debian package uploads:
purple-discord,
python-plac,
sptag
(1
2 3),
mpv-mpris,
typer
Debian wiki pages:
AndriusMerkys/PackagingInSeconds,
Derivatives/Census/BlackWeb,
EmbeddedCopies,
Hardening/Goals,
InstallingDebianOn,
InstallingDebianOn/RaspberryPi,
WordPress
...
--------------------
Ian Jackson: Debian’s approach to Rust - Dependency handling
https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/10559.html
January 3, 2022, 6:35 PM
tl;dr: Faithfully following upstream semver, in Debian package dependencies, is a bad idea.
Introduction
I have been involved in Debian for a very long time. And I’ve been working with Rust for a few years now. Late last year I had cause to try to work on Rust things within Debian.
When I did, I found it very difficult. The Debian Rust Team were very helpful. However, the workflow and tooling require very large amounts of manual clerical work - work which it is almost impossible to do correctl...
--------------------
Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in December 2021
http://blog.alteholz.eu/2022/01/my-debian-activities-in-december-2021/
January 3, 2022, 12:23 PM
FTP master
This month I accepted 412 and rejected 44 packages. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 423.
Debian LTS
This was my ninetieth month that I did some work for the Debian LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian.
This month my all in all workload has been 40h. During that time I did LTS and normal security uploads of:
[DLA 2846-1] raptor2 security update for one CVE
[DLA 2845-1] libsamplerate security update for one CVE
[DLA 2859-1] zziplib security update...
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Joachim Breitner: Telegram bots in Python made easy
http://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/790-Telegram_bots_in_Python_made_easy
January 3, 2022, 10:20 AM
A while ago I set out to get some teenagers interested in programming, and thought about a good way to achieve that. A way that allows them to get started with very little friction, build something that’s relevant in their currently live quickly, and avoids frustration.
They were old enough to have their own smartphone, and they were already happily chatting with their friends, using the Telegram messenger. I have already experimented a bit with writing bots for Telegram (e.g. @Umklappbot or ...
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Birger Schacht: Introducing carl
https://bisco.org/notes/introducing-carl/
January 3, 2022, 8:52 AM
For some time now I wanted to learn Rust, but I
either didn’t have the time or couldn’t come up with a nice beginner project.
Given that I recently found myself to be without a job and we had another
lockdown in the part of the world I happen to live in, I decided to give that
idea another go (no pun intended).
There is apparently a trend to reimplement existing Unix tools in Rust (see
exa, a ‘modern replacement for ls’,
delta, a syntax highlighting pager for
git, diff and grep output, b...
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Russ Allbery: Review: Crashed
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-525-55880-2.html
January 3, 2022, 3:35 AM
Review: Crashed, by Adam Tooze

Publisher:
Penguin Books


Copyright:
2018


Printing:
2019


ISBN:
0-525-55880-2


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
615

The histories of the 2008 financial crisis that I have read focus almost
exclusively on the United States. They also stop after the bank rescue
and TARP or, if they press on into the aftermath, focus on the resulting
damage to the US economy and the widespread pain of falling h...
--------------------
Ben Hutchings: Debian LTS work, December 2021
https://www.decadent.org.uk/ben/blog/debian-lts-work-december-2021.html
January 2, 2022, 3:58 PM
In December I was assigned 20 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS
initiative. I worked 16 hours, and the remaining 4 hours cancelled
out my over-work in November.
I completed an update to the linux (4.9) package and issued
DLA 2843-1.
--------------------
Russ Allbery: 2021 Book Reading in Review
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/journal/2022-01/001.html
January 1, 2022, 7:41 PM
In 2021, I finished and reviewed 43 books, yet another (tiny) increase
over 2020 and once again the best year for reading since 2012 (which was
the last time I averaged 5 books a month). The year got off to a good
reading start and closed strong, but once again had sags in the spring and
summer when I got behind on reviews and fell out of the habit of reading
daily. This year, at least, the end-of-year catch-up was less dramatic;
all but two of the books I reviewed in December were finished in...
--------------------
Chris Lamb: Favourite books of 2021: Classics
https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/favourite-books-of-2021-classics
January 1, 2022, 6:38 PM
In my three most recent posts, I went over the memoirs and biographies, the non-fiction and fiction I enjoyed in 2021. But in the last of my 2021 book-related posts, however, I'll be going over my favourite classics.
Of course, the difference between regular fiction and a 'classic' is an ambiguous, arbitrary and often-meaningless distinction: after all, what does it matter if Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (from 1951) is a classic or not? The term also smuggles in some of the ethnocentric g...
--------------------
Junichi Uekawa: Welcome to 2022.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2022-Jan-1.html.en#2022-Jan-1-12:04:23
January 1, 2022, 3:04 AM
Welcome to 2022. Hopefully I will be writing more code this year.
--------------------
Chris Lamb: Favourite books of 2021: Fiction
https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/favourite-books-of-2021-fiction
December 31, 2021, 4:39 PM
In my two most recent posts, I listed the memoirs and biographies and followed this up with the non-fiction I enjoyed the most in 2021. I'll leave my roundup of 'classic' fiction until tomorrow, but today I'll be going over my favourite fiction.
Books that just miss the cut here include Kingsley Amis' comic Lucky Jim, Cormac McCarthy's The Road (although see below for McCarthy's Blood Meridian) and the Complete Adventures of Tintin by Hergé, the latter forming an inadvertently incisive portrait...
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Russell Coker: Links December 2021
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2021/12/31/links-december-2021/
December 31, 2021, 10:53 AM
Wired magazine has many short documentary films on YouTube, this one about How Photography is Affecting Our Brains is particularly good [1].
Matt Blaze wrote an informative blog post about Faraday cages for phones [2]. It seems that the commercial shielded bags are all pretty good while doing it yourself with aluminium foil may get similar results or may get much worse results with no obvious difference in the quality of the wrapping. Aluminium foil doesn’t protect that well and doesn’t prot...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: The Space Between Worlds
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-593-13506-7.html
December 31, 2021, 5:08 AM
Review: The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson

Publisher:
Del Rey


Copyright:
2020


ISBN:
0-593-13506-7


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
327

Cara is valuable because, in most places, she's dead.
In the world of Earth Zero, as the employees of the Eldridge Institute call
it, a scientific genius named Adam Bosch developed the ability to travel
between parallel worlds. This ability is not limitless, however. One
restriction is ...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Update on Linux hibernation support when lockdown is enabled
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/58077.html
December 31, 2021, 3:36 AM
Some time back I wrote up a description of my proposed (and implemented) solution for making hibernation work under Linux even within the bounds of the integrity model. It's been a while, so here's an update.The first is that localities just aren't an option. It turns out that they're optional in the spec, and TPMs are entirely permitted to say they don't support them. The only time they're likely to work is on platforms that support DRTM implementations like TXT. Most consumer hardware doesn't ...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 198 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-198-released/
December 31, 2021, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 198. This version includes the following changes:
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Support showing "Ordering differences only" within .dsc field values.
(Closes: #1002002, reproducible-builds/diffoscope#297)
* Support OCaml versions 4.11, 4.12 and 4.13. (Closes: #1002678)
* Add support for XMLb files. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#295)
* Also add, for example, /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu to our internal PATH.
[ Matt...
--------------------
Chris Lamb: Favourite books of 2021: Non-fiction
https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/favourite-books-of-2021-non-fiction
December 30, 2021, 10:01 PM
As a follow-up to yesterday's post listing my favourite memoirs and biographies I read in 2021, today I'll be outlining my favourite works of non-fiction.
Books that just missed the cut include: The Unusual Suspect by Ben Machell for its thrilleresque narrative of a modern-day Robin Hood (and if you get to the end, a completely unexpected twist); Paul Fussell's Class: A Guide to the American Status System as an amusing chaser of sorts to Kate Fox's Watching the English; John Carey's Little Histo...
--------------------
Noah Meyerhans: When You Could Hear Security Scans
https://noah.meyerhans.us/2021/12/29/when-you-could-hear-security-scans/
December 29, 2021, 5:49 PM
Have you ever wondered what a security probe of a computer sounded
like? I’d guess probably not, because on the face of it that doesn’t
make a whole lot of sense. But there was a time when I could very
clearly discern the sound of a computer being scanned. It sounded
like a small mechanical heart beat: Click-click…
click-click… click-click…
Prior to 2010, I had a computer under my desk with what at the time
were not unheard-of properties: Its storage was based on a stack of
spinning me...
--------------------
Chris Lamb: Favourite books of 2021: Memoir/biography
https://chris-lamb.co.uk/posts/favourite-books-of-2021-memoir-and-biography
December 29, 2021, 5:46 PM
Just as I did for 2020, I won't publically disclose exactly how many books I read in 2021, but they evidently provoked enough thoughts that felt it worth splitting my yearly writeup into separate posts. I will reveal, however, that I got through more books than the previous year, and, like before, I enjoyed the books I read this year even more in comparison as well.
How much of this is due to refining my own preferences over time, and how much can be ascribed to feeling less pressure to read par...
--------------------
Thorsten Alteholz: Fun with Telescopes
http://blog.alteholz.eu/2021/12/fun-with-telescopes/
December 29, 2021, 12:51 PM
Recently I purchased a small telescope to look at solar spots. When choosing a mount, I checked whether it can be controlled with OSS.
In this context INDI is mentioned everywhere and my desired mount was supported. indi and kstars are already part of Debian, so “apt install”, selecting my mount, …. oh, wait, the menu shows it, but I can not select it.
Ok, that was the time when I learned about the difference of indi and indi-3rdparty. The indi package just contains a few drivers and othe...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: A Spindle Splintered
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-76536-6.html
December 29, 2021, 3:40 AM
Review: A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E. Harrow

Series:
Fractured Fables #1


Publisher:
Tordotcom


Copyright:
2021


ISBN:
1-250-76536-6


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
121

Zinnia Gray lives in rural Ohio and is obsessed with Sleeping Beauty, even
though the fairy tale objectively sucks. That has a lot to do with having
Generalized Roseville Malady, an always-fatal progressive amyloidosis
caused by teratogenic industrial ...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: Out of Office
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-593-32010-7.html
December 28, 2021, 4:07 AM
Review: Out of Office, by Charlie Warzel & Anne Helen Petersen

Publisher:
Alfred A. Knopf


Copyright:
2021


ISBN:
0-593-32010-7


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
260

Out of Office opens with the provocative assertion that you were
not working from home during the pandemic, even if you were among the 42%
of Americans who were able to work remotely.
You were, quite literally, doing your job from home.
But you weren't wor...
--------------------
Steinar H. Gunderson: USB-C shenanigans
http://blog.sesse.net/blog/tech/2021-12-27-14-31_usb_c_shenanigans.html
December 27, 2021, 1:31 PM
At some point, my phone stopped taking charge (over USB-C) from one charger,
but not the other—it would briefly say “charging”, then drop it, wait a few
seconds, and then try again in an infinite loop. However, charging every
night on the included charger worked fine, so I wasn't that worried.
Naturally, I blamed the charger. But the other day, I noticed what was going
on; if I flipped the cable, it would charge with absolutely no problems at
all! And similarly, if I flipped the cable for...
--------------------
Abiola Ajadi: Outreachy-Everyone Struggles!
https://ajadi-abiola.github.io/blog/Everyone-Struggles!
December 27, 2021, 12:00 AM
Hello Everyone!
Three weeks into my internship and it’s been great so far with Awesome Mentors. I am currently learning a new Language which is Ruby and this is the perfect time to remind myself that everyone struggles! I struggled a bit getting farmiliar with the codebase and pushing my first merge request during the internship. I won’t say i have a perfect understanding of how everything works, but i am learning.
What is Debci?
Debci stands for Debian Continous Integration before i move...
--------------------
Vincent Bernat: Custom screen saver with XSecureLock
https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2021-xsecurelock
December 26, 2021, 12:39 PM
i3lock is a popular X11 screen lock utility. As far as
customization goes, it only allows one to set a background from a PNG
file. This limitation is part of the design of i3lock: its primary
goal is to keep the screen locked, something difficult enough with
X11. Each additional feature would increase the attack surface and
move away from this goal.1 Many are frustrated with these
limitations and extend i3lock through simple wrapper scripts or by
forking it.2 The first solution is usually safe, ...
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Aurelien Jarno: James Webb Space Telescope launched!
https://blog.aurel32.net/jwst-launched.html
December 25, 2021, 3:10 PM
The long awaited James Webb Space
Telescope has
finally been successfully launched today. It is a Xmas gift for many
people who have been waiting for it for many years.
On a more personal side, I am happy and proud to have contributed to a tiny
part of a tiny piece of software of this huge project over the last 15 years:
the Instrument Performance Simulator
of the NIRSpec instrument....
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Vincent Bernat: Automatic login with startx and systemd
https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2021-startx-systemd
December 24, 2021, 3:00 PM
If your workstation is using full-disk encryption, you may want to
jump directly to your desktop environment after entering the
passphrase to decrypt the disk. Many display managers like GDM and
LightDM have an autologin feature. However, only GDM can run
Xorg with standard user privileges.
Here is an alternative using startx and a systemd service:
[Unit]
Description=X11 session for bernat
After=graphical.target systemd-user-sessions.service
[Service]
User=bernat
WorkingDirectory=~
PAMName=log...
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Mike Gabriel: MATE 1.26 has finally landed in Debian testing
https://sunweavers.net/blog/node/140
December 23, 2021, 2:54 PM
For those, who haven't realized, yet: MATE 1.26 has now been uploaded to Debian and should be available in Debian testing to all happy testers.
During December, me and the whole family, we had been infected with Covid-19. All of us have recovered well, by now. In fact, I was very happy about a proper fever which I haven't had in years. (Fever is a well-known form of cancer prevention / prophylaxis). Drinking a lot (of warm water!), not eating for five days, and additionally following some healt...
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Molly de Blanc: kindle
http://deblanc.net/blog/2021/12/21/kindle/
December 21, 2021, 11:43 PM
I have a Kindle. I’ve spent a lot of time saying this sheepishly — it’s Amazon, it’s proprietary, DRM is bad, etc, etc. It was a very thoughtful gift from my parents, taking into account things like my travel schedule, preference for traveling lighter, love of reading, and small apartment.
I wanted to share some observations from my experience owning a Kindle.
I don’t like to read for school on it. I really markup the papers I read for school, underlining things, notes in the margins, ...
--------------------
Joey Hess: Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day
http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/Volunteer_Responsibility_Amnesty_Day/
December 21, 2021, 7:40 PM
Happy solstice, and happy
Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day!
After my inventory of my code today, I have decided it's time to pass
on moreutils to someone new.
This project remains interesting to people, including me. People still send
patches, which are easy to deal with. Taking up basic maintenance of this
package will be easy for you, if you feel like stepping forward.
People still contribute ideas and code for new tools to add to moreutils.
But I have not added any new tools to it sinc...
--------------------
Jonathan Dowland: Vim plugins by Tim Pope
https://jmtd.net/log/vim_plugins/
December 21, 2021, 2:39 PM
I've been using Vim as my main text editor for 18 years, but for most of that
time I've been using something very close to the default configuration: my
vimrc contained not much more than preferences for indentation and how to
visually indicate white space characters like tabs.
Last but not least, I've used a single colour scheme for most of that time:
Zenburn.
In 20151 I started exploring a few Vim plugins2. To manage
them, I started by choosing a plugin manager,
Pathogen3. Recently I
noticed ...
--------------------
Thomas Lange: New ISO images using Debian 11
http://blog.fai-project.org/posts/new-iso-fai-5.10/
December 21, 2021, 10:18 AM
I've created new ISO images for FAI. Now, they install Debian 11 using
kernel 5.10. The ISOs are available from
https://fai-project.org/fai-cd
There's also a Ubuntu version of the FAI CD which installs Ubuntu LTS
20.04 in two variants. A desktop and a server installation is
available.
If you want to install the Debian oldstable version (Debian 10),
please use the FAI.me service.
FAI...
--------------------
Craig Small: WordPress 5.8.2 Debian packages
https://dropbear.xyz/2021/12/20/wordpress-5-8-2-debian-packages/
December 20, 2021, 11:14 AM
After a bit of a delay, WordPress version 5.8.2 packages should be available now. This is a minor update from 5.8.1 which fixes two bugs but not the security bug.
The security bug is due to WordPress shipping its own CA store, which is a list of certificates it trusts to sign for websites. Debian WordPress has used the system certificate store which uses /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt for years so is not impacted by this change. That CA file is generated by update-ca-certificates and is ...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppSMC 0.2.6 on CRAN: Compiler Update
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/19#rcppsmc_0.2.6
December 20, 2021, 3:26 AM
A new maintenance RcppSMC release 0.2.6 arrived at CRAN yesterday. It chiefly updates the code to comply with g++-11 which default to C++17 – which brings us std::data(). And if one is not careful, as we weren’t in three files, this can clash with other uses of data as I tweeted a good week ago. Otherwise some JSS URLs now sport the preferred shorter doi form.
RcppSMC provides Rcpp-based bindings to R for the Sequential Monte Carlo Template Classes (SMCTC) by Adam Johansen described in his J...
--------------------
Bastian Venthur: Managing dotfiles with GNU Stow
https://venthur.de/2021-12-19-managing-dotfiles-with-stow.html
December 19, 2021, 1:00 PM
Many developers manage their user-specific application configuration – also
known as dotfiles – in a version control system such as git. This allows
for keeping track of changes and synchronizing the dotfiles across different
machines. Searching on github, you’ll find thousands of dotfile
repositories.
As your dotfiles are sprinkled all over your home directory, managing them in
a single repository is not trivial, i.e. how do you make sure that your
bashrc, .tmux.conf, etc. that life in y...
--------------------
Ben Hutchings: Debian LTS work, November 2021
https://www.decadent.org.uk/ben/blog/debian-lts-work-november-2021.html
December 18, 2021, 8:37 PM
In November I was assigned 0.75 hours of work by Freexian's Debian
LTS initiative and carried over 15.25 hours from earlier months. I
mistakenly worked 20 hours, which we'll try to resolve.
I continued work on an update to the linux (4.9) package, but did
not make an upload this month.
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Andrew Cater: Debian media team - testing and releasing Debian 11.2 20211218 2030
http://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.com/2021/12/debian-media-team-tesing-and-releasing.html
December 18, 2021, 8:34 PM
 We've more or less finished the release of the Debian CD/DVD/Blu-Ray and other media for Bullseye 11.2 release. This is one of the (roughly) quarterly point releases and roll-up releases.Thanks firstly to the developers, users, helpers, bug filers who help to keep Debian moving and working and to the release team and press team who more or less finish their job before the media team start theirs. Thanks to Sledge and RattusRattus and Isy in Cambridge and to Schweer who single-handedly clears a...
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Bits from Debian: 2,000 fonts for Debian
https://bits.debian.org/2021/12/2000-fonts-debian.html
December 17, 2021, 5:45 PM
Debian comes with tons of fonts for all kinds of purposes,
you can easily list them (almost) all with: apt-cache search ^fonts-.
However, sometimes they are not in their latest version, or as a user you would like
to get access to new fonts that are not present in Debian stable yet.
With the tool fnt you can easily preview, and install
fonts from Debian sid and Google Web Fonts (that's about 2,000 fonts that are DSFG compliant).
Any user can use the tool to install fonts only for the user itself...
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Jonathan Dowland: ereader
https://jmtd.net/log/ereader/
December 17, 2021, 4:31 PM
Kobo Libra H2O e-reader
This year I finally bought an e-reader: a "Kobo Libra H2O": a 7" 300ppi
screen with an adjustable colour temperature front light, waterproof,
physical buttons on a "margin"/spine which pushes the case dimensions up
to 8", which is sadly a little too big for most jeans pockets.
In fact this is the second time I've bought one. Sarah and I bought a pair
of Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2nd generation) readers as Honeymoon
gifts for each other in 2013. Sarah took to hers, b...
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.10.7.5.0 on CRAN: Bugfixes
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/17#rcpparmadillo_0.10.7.5.0
December 17, 2021, 2:27 PM
Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra aiming towards a good balance between speed and ease of use with a syntax deliberately close to a Matlab. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 937 other packages on CRAN, and downloaded over 22 million times (per the partial logs from the cloud mirrors of CRAN).
This release brings another bug fix release 10.7.5 by Conrad in the ‘long-term supp...
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Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 197 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-197-released/
December 17, 2021, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 197. This version includes the following changes:
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Drop unnecessary has_same_content_as logging calls.
[ Mattia Rizzolo ]
* Ignore the new "binary-with-bad-dynamic-table" Lintian tag.
* Support pgpdump 0.34 in the tests. Thanks to Michael Weiss
<dev.primeos@gmail.com> for reporting and testing the fix.
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: RProtoBuf 0.4.18: Multiple Updates
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/16#rprotobuf_0.4.18
December 16, 2021, 11:05 PM
A new release 0.4.18 of RProtoBuf arrived on CRAN earlier today. RProtoBuf provides R with bindings for the Google Protocol Buffers (“ProtoBuf”) data encoding and serialization library used and released by Google, and deployed very widely in numerous projects as a language and operating-system agnostic protocol.
This release, the first since March of last year, contains two contributed pull requests improving or extending the package, some internal maintance updating the CI setup as well as ...
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: BH 1.78.0-0: New Upstream, Two New Libraries
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/16#bh_1.78.0-0.txt" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/16#bh_1.78.0-0.txt
December 16, 2021, 9:46 PM
Boost is a very large and comprehensive set of (peer-reviewed) libraries for the C++ programming language, containing well over 100 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 28 million package downloads.
Version 1.78.0 of Boost was released in a few days ago on their schedule with April, August and Dece...
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: BH 1.78.0-0: New Upstream, Two New Libraries
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/16#bh_1.78.0-0
December 16, 2021, 9:46 PM
Boost is a very large and comprehensive set of (peer-reviewed) libraries for the C++ programming language, containing well over 100 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 28 million package downloads.
Version 1.78.0 of Boost was released in a few days ago on their schedule with April, August and Decemb...
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Raphaël Hertzog: Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, November 2021
https://raphaelhertzog.com/2021/12/16/freexians-report-about-debian-long-term-support-november-2021/
December 16, 2021, 3:27 PM
Every month we review the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering. Please find the report for November below.
Debian project funding
Our project funding work continues with an active bid on the work of packaging a recent gradle in Debian. This month the bidder has been estimating the scope of the entire project.The Grow Your Ideas project page also has some ambitious initiatives that may evolve into a funded project. The project ideas on that page range from a new wiki for Debian, ...
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Timo Jyrinki: Working and warming up cats
http://losca.blogspot.com/2021/12/working-and-warming-up-cats.html
December 14, 2021, 7:29 AM
How to disable internal keyboard/touchpad when a cat arrives I’m using an external keyboard (1) and mouse (2), but the laptop lid is usually still open for better cooling. That means the internal keyboard (3) and touchpad (4) – made of comfortable materials – are open to be used by a cat searching for warmth (7), in the obvious “every time” case that a normal non-heated nest (6) is not enough.The problem is, everything goes chaotic at that point in the default configuration...
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Andrej Shadura: Coffee gear upgrade
https://blog.shadura.me/2021/12/12/coffee-gear-upgrade/
December 12, 2021, 11:49 AM
Two weeks ago I decided to make myself a combined birthday and Christmas present and upgrade my coffee gear.
I’ve got my first espresso machine back in 2013, it was a cheap Saeco Philips Poemia, which made reasonably
drinkable coffee, but not being able to make good coffee made me increasingly unhappy about it. However,
since it worked, I wasn’t motivated enough to change anything — until it stopped working. One day the nut holding
the ‘shower screen’ broke, and I couldn’t replace it...
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Russell Coker: Some Ideas for Debian Security Improvements
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2021/12/12/ideas-debian-security-improvements/
December 12, 2021, 7:24 AM
Debian security is pretty good, but there’s always scope for improvement. Here are some ideas that I think could be used to improve things.
A security “wizard”, basically a set of scripts with support for plugins that will investigate your system and look for things that can be improved. It could give suggestions on LSMs that could be used, sysctl settings, lists of daemons running as root that possibly don’t need root privs, etc. Plugins could be for different daemons, so there could b...
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Molly de Blanc: Applications
http://deblanc.net/blog/2021/12/11/applications/
December 11, 2021, 9:07 PM
The first time I applied for grad school it was a bit of a lark. I was serious about it, I wanted to go, I had goals, and I am happy to be here now. However, it was a little fun. I took a white paper and crisped it up with the help of some friends who read it and provided comments. I wrote a personal statement, got some letters of recommendation, and generally felt pretty good about the process. It wasn’t stressful.
The second time I applied to grad school it was a slog. For several weeks I ga...
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Neil Williams: Diversity and gender
https://linux.codehelp.co.uk/diversity-and-gender.html
December 11, 2021, 12:20 PM
As a follow on to a previous blog entry of mine, Free and Open, I feel it
worthwhile to do my bit to dismantle the pseudo-science and over
simplification in the idea that gender is binary at a biological level.
TL;DR: Science simply does not support binary sexes or binary genders.
Truth is a bit more complicated.
There is certainty and there are binary answers in mathematics. Things
get less definitive in physics, certainly as soon as quantum is
broached. Processes become more of an equilibrium...
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