Matthew Garrett: Responsible stewardship of the UEFI secure boot ecosystem
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/60248.html
July 12, 2022, 5:50 AM
After I mentioned that Lenovo are now shipping laptops that only boot Windows by default, a few people pointed to a Lenovo document that says:Starting in 2022 for Secured-core PCs it is a Microsoft requirement for the 3rd Party Certificate to be disabled by default."Secured-core" is a term used to describe machines that meet a certain set of Microsoft requirements around firmware security, and by and large it's a good thing - devices that meet these requirements are resilient against a whole bun...
--------------------
Andrew Cater: 20220709 2100 UTC - Finished Debian media testing for the day
http://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.com/2022/07/20220709-2100-utc-finished-debian-media.html
July 9, 2022, 9:07 PM
 I've just finished my last test: Sledge is finishing his and will then push the release out. Today's been a bit slow and steady - but we've finally got there.Thanks, as ever, due to the release team for actually giving us an update, the press team for announcements - and, of course, the various sponsors, administrators and maintainers of Debian infrastructure like cdimage.debian.org and the CD building machines.It's been a quiet release for the media team in terms of participation - we've not ...
--------------------
Andrew Cater: Testing 11.4 Debian media images - almost finished - 20220709 1933 UTC
http://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.com/2022/07/testing-114-debian-media-images-almost.html
July 9, 2022, 7:34 PM
 We're flagging a bit now, I think but close to the end. The standard Debian images caused no problems: Sledge and I are just finishing up the last few live images to test now.Thanks, as ever, to the crew: RattusRattus and Isy, Sledge struggling through feeling awful. No debian-edu testing today, unfortunately, but that almost never breaks anyway.Everyone's getting geared up for Kosovo - you'll see the other three there with any luck - and you'd catch all of us at the BBQ in Cambridge. It's goi...
--------------------
Andrew Cater: As has become traditional - blogging as part of the media release for Debian 11.4 - 202207091436 UTC
http://flosslinuxblog.blogspot.com/2022/07/as-has-become-traditional-blogging-as.html
July 9, 2022, 2:37 PM
 A lower profile release today: Sledge working in the background as affected by COVID. RattusRattus and Isy doing sterling service on the other side of Cambridge, /me over here.Testing on the standard install media is pretty much done: Isy, Andy and Sledge have moved on to testing the live images.Stupidly hot for UK - it's 28 degrees indoors with windows open.All good so far :)
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 1.0.9 on CRAN: Regular Updates
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/07/09#rcpp_1.0.9
July 9, 2022, 2:08 PM
The Rcpp team is please to announce the newest release 1.0.9 of Rcpp which hit CRAN late yesterday, and has been uploaded to Debian as well. 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 om July 2, but it took a few days to clear a handful of spurious errors as false positives with CRAN — this can when the set of reverse dependencies is so large, and the CRAN team remains busy. ...
--------------------
Bits from Debian: DebConf22 Cheese and Wine Party
https://bits.debian.org/2022/07/debconf22-cheese-and-wine-party.html
July 8, 2022, 4:00 PM
In less than two days we will be in Prizren to start
DebCamp and
DebConf22 o/
This C&W is the 18th official DebConf Cheese and Wine party. The first C&W was
improvised in Helsinki during DebConf 5, in the so-called "French" room. Cheese
and Wine parties are now a tradition for DebConf.
The event is very simple: bring good edible stuff from your country. We like
cheese and wine, but we love the surprising stuff that people bring from all
around the world or regions of Kosovo. So, you can...
--------------------
Junichi Uekawa: Created a HTML app to generate my weekly notes.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2022-Jul-8.html.en#2022-Jul-8-21:30:52
July 8, 2022, 12:30 PM
Created a HTML app to generate my weekly notes.
For writing TODO items and log of what I did each hour.
I print this out every week and write notes on it, mostly to help myself remember what I was doing at that time.
I don't seem to have good short term memory and this helps me focus, at least tells me when I am not.
I rewrote this in SVG instead of a drawing app because I didn't feel like changing anything in that drawing app considering there's lots of repetition.
However, I'm n...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Lenovo shipping new laptops that only boot Windows by default
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/59931.html
July 8, 2022, 6:49 AM
I finally managed to get hold of a Thinkpad Z13 to examine a functional implementation of Microsoft's Pluton security co-processor. Trying to boot Linux from a USB stick failed out of the box for no obvious reason, but after further examination the cause became clear - the firmware defaults to not trusting bootloaders or drivers signed with the Microsoft 3rd Party UEFI CA key. This means that given the default firmware configuration, nothing other than Windows will boot. It also means that you w...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 218 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-218-released/
July 8, 2022, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 218. This version includes the following changes:
* Improve output of Markdown and reStructuredText to use code blocks with
syntax highlighting. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#306)
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
--------------------
Jonathan Dowland: Musick To Play In The Dark 2
https://jmtd.net/log/Musick_To_Play_In_The_Dark_2/
July 7, 2022, 1:54 PM
This took a while to arrive! After the success of the reissue of
Coil's Musick To Play In The Dark, it was inevitable that the
second edition would also be reissued. The pre-order opened late
November 2021 and mine arrived in late April this year.
I was toying with the idea of ordering one of the most exclusive editions
direct from DAIS Records, in particular the
glow in the dark one, but with international shipping the cost was pretty high.
I went with a UK distributor
(Boomkat)
instea...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: A Master of Djinn
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-26767-6.html
July 6, 2022, 3:04 AM
Review: A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark

Series:
Dead Djinn Universe #1


Publisher:
Tordotcom


Copyright:
2021


ISBN:
1-250-26767-6


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
391

A Master of Djinn is the first novel in the Dead Djinn Universe,
but (as you might guess from the series title) is a direct sequel to the
novelette "A Dead Djinn in Cairo". The
novelette is not as good as the novel, but I recommend reading it first
f...
--------------------
Alberto García: Running the Steam Deck’s OS in a virtual machine using QEMU
https://blogs.igalia.com/berto/2022/07/05/running-the-steam-decks-os-in-a-virtual-machine-using-qemu/
July 5, 2022, 7:11 PM
Introduction
The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming computer that runs a Linux-based operating system called SteamOS. The machine comes with SteamOS 3 (code name “holo”), which is in turn based on Arch Linux.
Although there is no SteamOS 3 installer for a generic PC (yet), it is very easy to install on a virtual machine using QEMU. This post explains how to do it.
The goal of this VM is not to play games (you can already install Steam on your computer after all) but to use SteamOS in desktop mo...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: A Mirror Mended
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-76665-6.html
July 5, 2022, 2:27 AM
Review: A Mirror Mended, by Alix E. Harrow

Series:
Fractured Fables #2


Publisher:
Tordotcom


Copyright:
2022


ISBN:
1-250-76665-6


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
129

This is a direct sequel to A Spindle
Splintered and will completely spoil that story, so start there rather
than here.
A Mirror Mended opens with a glimpse at yet another version of the
Sleeping Beauty story, this one (delightfully) a Spanish telenovela.
...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: She Who Became the Sun
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-62179-8.html
July 4, 2022, 2:58 AM
Review: She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

Series:
Radiant Emperor #1


Publisher:
Tor


Copyright:
2021


Printing:
2022


ISBN:
1-250-62179-8


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
414

In 1345 in Zhongli village, in fourth year of a drought, lived a man with
his son and his daughter, the last surviving of seven children. The son
was promised by his father to the Wuhuang Monastery on his twelfth
birthday i...
--------------------
Thorsten Alteholz: My Debian Activities in June 2022
http://blog.alteholz.eu/2022/07/my-debian-activities-in-june-2022/
July 3, 2022, 11:37 AM
FTP master
This month I accepted 305 and rejected 59 packages. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 310.
From time to time I am also looking at the list of packages to be removed. If you would like to make life easier for the people who remove packages, please make sure that the resulting dak command really makes sense. If this command consists of garbage, please adapt the Subject: of your bug report accordingly.
Also it does not make sense to file bugs to remove packages from NE...
--------------------
Martin-Éric Racine: Refactoring Debian's dhcpcd packaging
http://q-funk.blogspot.com/2022/07/refactoring-debians-dhcpcd-packaging.html
July 3, 2022, 8:57 AM
Given news that ISC's DHCP suite is getting deprecated by upstream and seeing how dhclient has never worked properly for DHCPv6, I decided to look into alternatives. ISC itself recommends Roy Maple's dhcpcd as a migration path. Sadly, Debian's package had been left unattended for a good 2 years. After refactoring the packaging, updating to the latest upstream and performing one NMU, I decided to adopt the package.
Numerous issues were exposed in the process:
Upstream's ./configure makes BSD...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: The Haunting of Tram Car 015
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/haunting-tram-015.html
July 3, 2022, 4:50 AM
Review: The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark

Publisher:
Tordotcom


Copyright:
February 2019


ASIN:
B07H796G2Z


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
65

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is a novella and the second story in
the Dead Djinn universe, after "A Dead Djinn
in Cairo". While there are a few references to the previous story, it's
not a direct sequel and has different main characters. Order of reading
is not important.
Ag...
--------------------
Junichi Uekawa: Watching my raspberry pi update I noticed I have nodejs 12 in them.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2022-Jul-3.html.en#2022-Jul-3-06:07:13
July 2, 2022, 9:07 PM
Watching my raspberry pi update I noticed I have nodejs 12 in them.
Most systems I work on have nodejs 16 installed. I don't remember what changed ...
--------------------
François Marier: Remote logging of Turris Omnia log messages using syslog-ng and rsyslog
https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/remote-logging-turris-omnia-router/
July 2, 2022, 3:45 AM
As part of debugging an upstream connection problem I've been seeing
recently, I wanted to be able to monitor the logs from my Turris
Omnia router. Here's how I
configured it to send its logs to a server I already had on the local
network.
Server setup
The first thing I did was to open up my server's
rsyslog (Debian's default syslog server) to
remote connections since it's going to be the destination host for the
router's log messages.
I added the following to /etc/rsyslog.d/router.conf:
mod...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: Overdue
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-64160-534-0.html
July 2, 2022, 2:50 AM
Review: Overdue, by Amanda Oliver

Publisher:
Chicago Review Press


Copyright:
2022


ISBN:
1-64160-534-0


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
190

Like many lifetime readers, I adored the public library. I read my way
through three different children's libraries at the rate of a grocery sack
of books per week, including numerous re-readings, and then moved on to
the adult section as my introduction to science fiction. But once I had a
regu...
--------------------
Steve Kemp: An update on my simple golang TCL interpreter
https://blog.steve.fi/an_update_on_my_simple_golang_tcl_interpreter.html
July 1, 2022, 2:00 PM
So my previous post introduced a trivial interpreter for a TCL-like language.
In the past week or two I've cleaned it up, fixed a bunch of bugs, and added 100% test-coverage. I'm actually pretty happy with it now.
One of the reasons for starting this toy project was to experiment with how easy it is to extend the language using itself
Some things are simple, for example replacing this:
puts "3 x 4 = [expr 3 * 4]"
With this:
puts "3 x 4 = [* 3 4]"
Just means defining a function (proc) n...
--------------------
Ben Hutchings: Debian LTS work, June 2022
https://www.decadent.org.uk/ben/blog/debian-lts-work-june-2022.html
July 1, 2022, 1:12 PM
In June I was not assigned additional hours of work by Freexian's
Debian LTS initiative, but carried over 16 hours from May and worked
all of those hours.
I spent some time triaging security issues for Linux. I tested
several security fixes for Linux 4.9 and 4.19 and submitted them for
inclusion in the upstream stable branches.
I rebased the Linux 4.9 (linux) package on the latest stable update
(4.9.320), uploaded this and issued the final DLA for stretch,
DLA-3065-1....
--------------------
Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities June 2022
http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2022/07/01/floss-activities/
July 1, 2022, 2:51 AM
Focus
This month I didn't have any particular focus.
I just worked on issues in my info bubble.
Changes
duck:
add more obsolete domains
(1
2),
indicator phrases
(1
2)
lintian:
add more obsolete domains
Debian BTS usertags:
fix old release goal tags,
reassign edos tags to debian-qa,
reassign sphinx tag to debian-python
Debian userdir-ldap:
modernise and cleanup welcome message wording
Debian website:
consultants fix
Debian package uploads:
sptag
Debian wiki pages:
AutomaticPackagingTools,
Ava...
--------------------
Russell Coker: Links June 2022
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/06/30/links-june-2022/
June 30, 2022, 1:38 PM
Google did some interesting research on the impact of discrimination on code reviers [1]. It turns out that this is a bigger problem than most white men would have ever suspected and it even has an adverse effect on Asian people.
nothello.net is an amusing site to make the point that you shouldn’t use IM to say hello separately from asking the question [2]. A good link to share on your corporate IM system.
TechCrunch has an amusing article about the Facebook farewell to Sheryl Sandburg [3].
Bl...
--------------------
Aigars Mahinovs: Long travel in an electric car
http://aigarius.com/blog/2022/06/29/long-travel-in-an-electric-car/
June 29, 2022, 6:37 PM
Since the first week of April 2022 I have (finally!) changed my company car from
a plug-in hybrid to a fully electic car. My new ride, for the next two years, is
a BMW i4 M50 in Aventurine Red metallic.
An ellegant car with very deep and
memorable color, insanely powerful (544 hp/795 Nm), sub-4 second 0-100 km/h, large
84 kWh battery (80 kWh usable), charging up to 210 kW, top speed of 225 km/h
and also very efficient (which came out best in this trip) with WLTP range of 510 km
and EVDB real r...
--------------------
Tim Retout: Git internals and SHA-1
https://retout.co.uk/2022/06/29/git-internals-and-sha1/
June 29, 2022, 5:54 PM
LWN reminds us that Git still uses SHA-1 by default.
Commit or tag signing is not a mitigation, and to understand why you need to
know a little about Git’s internal structure.
Git internally looks rather like a content-addressable filesystem, with four
object types: tags, commits, trees and blobs.
Content-addressable means changing the content of an object changes the way
you address or reference it, and this is achieved using a cryptographic hash
function. Here is an illustration of the inte...
--------------------
Russell Coker: Philips 438P1 43″ 4K Monitor
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/06/29/philips-438p1-43-4k/
June 29, 2022, 12:00 PM
I have just returned a Philips 438P1 43″ 4K Monitor [1] and gone back to my Samsung 28″ 4K monitor model LU28E590DS/XY AKA UE590.
The main listed differences are the size and the fact that the Samsung is TN but the Philips is IPS. Here’s a comparison of TN and IPS technologies [2]. Generally I think that TN is probably best for a monitor but in theory IPS shouldn’t be far behind.
The Philips monitor has a screen with a shiny surface which may be good for a TV but isn’t good for a monit...
--------------------
Michael Ablassmeier: More work on virtnbdbackup
https://abbbi.github.io//virtnbdbackup-blog/
June 29, 2022, 12:00 AM
Had some time to add more features to my libvirt backup utility, now it
supports:
Added backup mode differencial.
Save virtual domains UEFI bios, initrd and kernel images if defined.
virtnbdmap now uses the nbdkit COW plugin to map the backups as regular
NBD device. This allows users to replay complete backup chains
(full+inc/diff) to recover single files. As the resulting device is
writable, one can directly boot the virtual machine from the backup
images.
Check out my last article on...
--------------------
Michael Ablassmeier: More work on virtnbdbackup
https://abbbi.github.io//virtnbdbackup/
June 29, 2022, 12:00 AM
Had some time to add more features to my libvirt backup utility, now it
supports:
backing up virtual domains UEFI bios, initrd and kernel images if
defined.
virtnbdmap now uses the nbdkit COW plugin to map the backups as regular
NBD device. This allows users to replay complete backup chains
(full+inc/diff) to recover single files. Also makes the mapped device
writable, as such one can directly boot the virtual machine from the backup
images.
Check out my last article on that
topic or wat...
--------------------
Dima Kogan: vnlog 1.33 released
http://notes.secretsauce.net/notes/2022/06/28_vnlog-133-released.html
June 28, 2022, 4:47 PM
This is a minor release to the vnlog toolkit that adds a few convenience options
to the vnl-filter tool. The new options are
vnl-filter -l
Prints out the existing columns, and exits. I've been low-level wanting this for
years, but never acutely-enough to actually write it. Today I finally did it.
vnl-filter --sub-abs
Defines an absolute-value abs() function in the default awk mode. I've been
low-level wanting this for years as well. Previously I'd use --perl just to
get abs(), or I'd...
--------------------
Jonathan Dowland: WadC 3.1
https://jmtd.net/log/wadc_3.1/
June 28, 2022, 2:18 PM
Example map with tuneables on the right
WadC — the procedural programming environment for generating Doom
maps — version 3.1 has been released. The majority of this was done
a long time ago, but I've dragged my feet in releasing it. I've said
this before, but this is intended to be the last release I do of WadC.
The headline feature for this release is the introduction of a tuning
concept I had for the UI. It occurred to me that a beginner to WadC
might want to load up an example progra...
--------------------
Jamie McClelland: Deleting an app won't bring back Roe v Wade
https://current.workingdirectory.net/posts/2022/dont-panic-organize/
June 25, 2022, 10:27 PM
In some ways it feels like 2016 all over again.
I’m seeing panic-stricken calls for everyone to delete their period apps, close
their Facebook accounts, de-Google their cell phones and, generally speaking,
turn their entire online lives upside down to avoid the techno-surveillance
dragnet unleashed by the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
I’m sympathetic and generally agree that many of us should do most of those
things on any given day. But, there is a serious problem with this cycle of
repressio...
--------------------
Ryan Kavanagh: Routable network addresses with OpenIKED and systemd-networkd
https://rak.ac/blog/2022-06-25-routable-network-addresses-openiked-systemd-networkd/
June 25, 2022, 11:41 AM
I’ve been using OpenIKED for some time now to configure my VPN.
One of its features is that it can dynamically assign addresses on the internal network to clients, and clients can assign these addresses and routes to interfaces.
However, these interfaces must exist before iked can start.
Some months ago I switched my Debian laptop’s configuration from the traditional ifupdown to systemd-networkd.
It took me some time to figure out how to have systemd-networkd create dummy interfaces on which...
--------------------
Kees Cook: finding binary differences
https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2022/06/24/finding-binary-differences/
June 24, 2022, 8:11 PM
As part of the continuing work to replace 1-element arrays in the Linux kernel, it’s very handy to show that a source change has had no executable code difference. For example, if you started with this:
struct foo {
unsigned long flags;
u32 length;
u32 data[1];
};
void foo_init(int count)
{ struct foo *instance;
size_t bytes = sizeof(*instance) + sizeof(u32) * (count - 1);
...
instance = kmalloc(bytes, GFP_KERNEL);
...
};
And you changed only the struct defini...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds: Supporter spotlight: Hans-Christoph Steiner of the F-Droid project
https://reproducible-builds.org/news/2022/06/24/supporter-spotlight-hans-christoph-steiner-f-droid-project/
June 24, 2022, 10:00 AM
The Reproducible Builds project relies on several projects, supporters and sponsors for financial support, but they are also valued as ambassadors who spread the word about our project and the work that we do.
This is the fifth instalment in a series featuring the projects, companies and individuals who support the Reproducible Builds project. We started this series by featuring the Civil Infrastructure Platform project and followed this up with a post about the Ford Foundation as well as a rec...
--------------------
Raphaël Hertzog: Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, May 2022
https://raphaelhertzog.com/2022/06/23/freexians-report-about-debian-long-term-support-may-2022/
June 23, 2022, 12:15 PM
Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.
Debian project funding
Two [1, 2] projects are in the pipeline now. Tryton project is in a final phase. Gradle projects is fighting with technical difficulties.
In May, we put aside 2233 EUR to fund Debian projects.
We’re looking forward to receive more projects from various Debian teams! Learn more about the rationale behind this initiative in this article.
Debian LTS contributors
In May, 14...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 217 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-217-released/
June 23, 2022, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 217. This version includes the following changes:
* Update test fixtures for GNU readelf 2.38 (now in Debian unstable).
* Be more specific about the minimum required version of readelf (ie.
binutils) as it appears that this "patch" level version change resulted in
a change of output, not the "minor" version. (Closes: #1013348)
* Don't leak the (likely-temporary) pathname when comparing PDF documents.
You ...
--------------------
John Goerzen: I Finally Found a Solid Debian Tablet: The Surface Go 2
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10396-i-finally-found-a-solid-debian-tablet-the-surface-go-2
June 22, 2022, 11:46 PM
I have been looking for a good tablet for Debian for… well, years. I want thin, light, portable, excellent battery life, and a servicable keyboard.
For a while, I tried a Lenovo Chromebook Duet. It meets the hardware requirements, well sort of. The problem is with performance and the OS. I can run Debian inside the ChromeOS Linux environment. That works, actually pretty well. But it is slow. Terribly, terribly, terribly slow. Emacs takes minutes to launch. apt-gets also do. It has ba...
--------------------
Louis-Philippe Véronneau: Montreal's Debian & Stuff - June 2022
https://veronneau.org/montreals-debian-stuff-june-2022.html
June 21, 2022, 5:15 PM
As planned, we held our second local Debian meeting of the year last Sunday. We
met at the lovely Eastern Bloc (an artists' hacklab) to work on Debian
(and other stuff!), chat and socialise.
Although there were fewer people than at our last meeting1, we still did
a lot of work!
I worked on fixing a bunch of bugs in Clojure packages2, LeLutin worked
on podman and packaged libinfluxdb-http-perl and anarcat worked on
internetarchive, trocla and moneta. Olivier also came by and worked on
debugging h...
--------------------
Steve Kemp: Writing a simple TCL interpreter in golang
https://blog.steve.fi/writing_a_simple_tcl_interpreter_in_golang.html
June 21, 2022, 1:00 PM
Recently I was reading Antirez's piece TCL the Misunderstood again, which is a nice defense of the utility and value of the TCL language.
TCL is one of those scripting languages which used to be used a hell of a lot in the past, for scripting routers, creating GUIs, and more. These days it quietly lives on, but doesn't get much love. That said it's a remarkably simple language to learn, and experiment with.
Using TCL always reminds me of FORTH, in the sense that the syntax consists of "words...
--------------------
John Goerzen: Lessons of Social Media from BBSs
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10393-lessons-of-social-media-from-bbss
June 21, 2022, 1:52 AM
In the recent article The Internet Origin Story You Know Is Wrong, I was somewhat surprised to see the argument that BBSs are a part of the Internet origin story that is often omitted. Surprised because I was there for BBSs, and even ran one, and didn’t really consider them part of the Internet story myself. I even recently enjoyed a great BBS documentary and still didn’t think of the connection on this way.
But I think the argument is a compelling one.
In truth, the histories of Arpanet a...
--------------------
Niels Thykier: wrap-and-sort with experimental support for comments in devscripts/2.22.2
https://nthykier.wordpress.com/2022/06/20/wrap-and-sort-with-experimental-support-for-comments-in-devscripts-2-22-2/
June 20, 2022, 8:00 PM
In the devscripts package currently in Debian testing (2.22.2), wrap-and-sort has opt-in support for preserving comments in deb822 control files such as debian/control and debian/tests/control. Currently, this is an opt-in feature to provide some exposure without breaking anything.
To use the feature, add --experimental-rts-parser to the command line. A concrete example being (adjust to your relevant style):
wrap-and-sort --experimental-rts-parser -tabk
Please provide relevant feedbac...
--------------------
John Goerzen: Pipe Issue Likely a Kernel Bug
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10390-pipe-issue-likely-a-kernel-bug
June 20, 2022, 4:31 PM
Saturday, I wrote in Pipes, deadlocks, and strace annoyingly fixing them about an issue where a certain pipeline seems to have a deadlock. I described tracing it into kernel code. Indeed, it appears to be kernel bug 212295, which has had a patch for over a year that has never been merged.
After continuing to dig into the issue, I eventually reported it as a bug in ZFS. One of the ZFS people connected this to an older issue my searching hadn’t uncovered.
rincebrain summarized:
I believe, if ...
--------------------
Iustin Pop: Experiment: A week of running
https://k1024.org/posts/2022/2022-06-20-a-week-of-running/
June 20, 2022, 1:17 PM
My sports friends know that I wasn’t able to really run in many, many
years, due to a recurring injury that was not fully diagnosed and
which, after many sessions with the doctor, ended up with OK-ish state
for day-to-day life but also with these words: “Maybe, running is just
not for you?”
The year 2012 was my “running year”. I went to a number of races,
wrote blog posts, then slowly started running only rarely, then a few
years later I was really only running once in a while, and cou...
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Petter Reinholdtsen: My free software activity of late (2022)
https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/My_free_software_activity_of_late__2022_.html
June 20, 2022, 12:30 PM
I guess it is time to bring some light on the various free software
and open culture activities and projects I have worked on or been
involved in the last year and a half.
First, lets mention the book
releases I managed to
publish. The Cory Doctorow book "Hvordan knuse
overvåkningskapitalismen" argue that it is not the magic machine
learning of the big technology companies that causes the surveillance
capitalism to thrive, it is the lack of trust busting to enforce
existing anti-monopoly laws...
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Jamie McClelland: A very liberal spam assassin rule
https://current.workingdirectory.net/posts/2022/liberal-spam-rule/
June 20, 2022, 12:27 PM
I just sent myself a test message via Powerbase (a
hosted CiviCRM project for community organizers) and it
didn’t arrive. Wait, nope, there it is in my junk folder with a spam score of
6!
X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=6.093 tagged_above=-999 required=5
tests=[BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1,
DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_EF=-0.1, DMARC_MISSING=0.1,
HTML_MESSAGE=0.001, KAM_WEBINAR=3.5, KAM_WEBINAR2=3.5,
NO_DNS_FOR_FROM=0.001, SPF_HELO_NONE=0.001, ST_KGM_DEALS_SUB_11=1.1,
T_SCC...
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: #38: Faster Feedback Systems
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/06/19#038_faster_feedback_systems
June 19, 2022, 3:46 PM
Engineers build systems. Good engineers always stress and focus efficiency of these systems.
Two recent examples of engineering thinking follow. One was in a video / podcast interview with Martin Thompson (who is a noted high-performance code expert) I came across recently. The overall focus of the hour-long interview is on ‘managing software complexity’. Around minute twenty-two, the conversation turns to feedback loops and systems, and a strong preference for simple and fast systems for mo...
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John Goerzen: Pipes, deadlocks, and strace annoyingly fixing them
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10388-pipes-deadlocks-and-strace-annoyingly-fixing-them
June 19, 2022, 3:46 AM
This is a complex tale I will attempt to make simple(ish). I’ve (re)learned more than I cared to about the details of pipes, signals, and certain system calls – and the solution is still elusive.
For some time now, I have been using NNCP to back up my files. These backups are sent to my backup system, which effectively does this to process them (each ZFS send is piped to a shell script that winds up running this):
gpg -q -d | zstdcat -T0 | zfs receive -u -o readonly=on "$STORE/$DEST"
This...
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Bastian Venthur: blag is now available in Debian
https://venthur.de/2022-06-18-blag-in-debian.html
June 18, 2022, 4:00 PM
Last year, I wrote my own blog-aware static site generator in
Python. I called it “blag” – named after the blag of the
webcomic xkcd. Now I finally got around packaging- and uploading blag to
Debian. It passed the NEW queue and is now part of the distribution. That
means if you’re using Debian, you can install it via:
sudo aptitude install blag
Ubuntu will probably follow soon. For every other system, blag is also
available on PyPI:
pip install blag
To get started, you can
mkdir blog...
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Antoine Beaupré: Matrix notes
https://anarc.at/blog/2022-06-17-matrix-notes/
June 17, 2022, 3:34 PM
I have some concerns about Matrix (the protocol, not the movie that
came out recently, although I do have concerns about that as
well). I've been watching the project for a long time, and it seems
more a promising alternative to many protocols like IRC, XMPP, and
Signal.
This review may sound a bit negative, because it focuses on those
concerns. I am the operator of an IRC network and people keep asking
me to bridge it with Matrix. I have myself considered just giving up
on IRC and converting t...
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Dima Kogan: Ricoh GR IIIx 802.11 reverse engineering
http://notes.secretsauce.net/notes/2022/06/16_ricoh-gr-iiix-80211-reverse-engineering.html
June 16, 2022, 10:04 PM
I just got a fancy new camera: Ricoh GR IIIx. It's pretty great, and I strongly
recommend it to anyone that wants a truly pocketable camera with fantastic image
quality and full manual controls. One annoyance is the connectivity. It does
have both Bluetooth and 802.11, but the only official method of using them is
some dinky closed phone app. This is silly. I just did some reverse-engineering,
and I now have a functional shell script to download the last few images via
802.11. This is more conve...
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.11.2.0.0 on CRAN: New Upstream
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/06/15#rcpparmadillo_0.11.2.0.0
June 16, 2022, 12:11 AM
Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra and scientific computing. It aims towards a good balance between speed and ease of use, has a syntax deliberately close to Matlab, and is useful for algorithm development directly in C++, or quick conversion of research code into production environments. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and language–and is widely used by (currently) 991 other packages on CRAN, downloaded over 25 million t...
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: AsioHeaders 1.22.1-1 on CRAN
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2022/06/15#asioheaders_1.22.1-1
June 15, 2022, 11:45 PM
An updated version of the AsioHeaders package arrived at CRAN yesterday (in one of those pleasant fully-automated uploads and transitions). Asio provides a cross-platform C++ library for network and low-level I/O programming. It is also included in Boost – but requires linking when used as part of Boost. This standalone version of Asio is a header-only C++ library which can be used without linking (just like our BH package with parts of Boost).
This release brings a new upstream version, follo...
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Edward Betts: Find link needs a rewrite, the visual editor broke it
https://edwardbetts.com/blog/find-link-needs-a-rewrite
June 15, 2022, 10:22 PM
Find link is a tool that I wrote for adding links between articles in Wikipedia. Given an article title, find link will find other articles that include the entered article title but no link to the article. There is the option to edit the found articles and add the missing link.
For example, you might want to find missing links to the gig economy article.

I originally wrote the tool in 2008 when the MediaWiki software didn't have a rich-text editor. Wikipedia articles were edited by writ...
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John Goerzen: Really Enjoyed Jason Scott’s BBS Documentary
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10385-really-enjoyed-jason-scotts-bbs-documentary
June 14, 2022, 12:13 AM
Like many young programmers of my age, before I could use the Internet, there were BBSs. I eventually ran one, though in my small town there were few callers.
Some time back, I downloaded a copy of Jason Scott’s BBS Documentary. You might know Jason Scott from textfiles.com and his work at the Internet Archive.
The documentary was released in 2005 and spans 8 episodes on 3 DVDs. I’d watched parts of it before, but recently watched the whole series.
It’s really well done, and it’s no...
--------------------
Edward Betts: Fixing spelling in GitHub repos using codespell
https://edwardbetts.com/blog/fixing-spelling-in-github-repos-using-codespell
June 13, 2022, 9:04 PM
Codespell is a spell checker specifically designed for finding misspellings in source code.
I've been using it to correct spelling mistakes in GitHub repos sine 2016.
Most spell checkers use a list of valid words and highlighting any word in a document that is not in the word list. This method doesn't work for source code because code contains abbreviations and words joined together without spaces, a spell checker will generate too many false positives.
Codespell uses a different approach, inste...
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Ben Hutchings: Debian LTS work, May 2022
https://www.decadent.org.uk/ben/blog/debian-lts-work-may-2022.html
June 13, 2022, 6:30 PM
In May I was assigned 11 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS
initiative and carried over 13 hours from April. I worked 8 hours,
and will carry over the remaining time to June.
I spent some time triaging security issues for Linux, working out
which of them were fixed upstream and which actually applied to the
versions provided in Debian 9 "stretch". I rebased the Linux 4.9
(linux) package on the latest stable update, but did not make an
upload this month. I started backporti...
--------------------
Iustin Pop: Somewhat committing to a new sport
https://k1024.org/posts/2022/2022-06-12-new-sport/
June 12, 2022, 9:00 PM
Quite a few years ago - 4, to be precise, so in 2018 - I did a couple
of SUP trainings, organised by a colleague. That was enjoyable, but
not really matching with me (asymmetric paddling, ugh!), so I also did
learn some kayaking, which I really love, but that’s way higher
overhead - no sea around in Switzerland, and lakes are generally too
small. So I basically postponed any more water sports 😞, until
sometime in the future when I’ll finally decide what I want to do (and
in what setup).
I...
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Louis-Philippe Véronneau: Updating a rooted Pixel 3a
https://veronneau.org/updating-a-rooted-pixel-3a.html
June 11, 2022, 4:00 AM
A short while after getting a Pixel 3a, I decided to root it, mostly to
have more control over the charging procedure. In order to preserve battery
life, I like my phone to stop charging at around 75% of full battery capacity
and to shut down automatically at around 12%. Some Android ROMs have extra
settings to manage this, but LineageOS unfortunately does not.
Android already comes with a fairly complex mechanism to handle the charge
cycle, but it is mostly controlled by the kernel and cannot b...
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Iustin Pop: Still alive, 2022 version
https://k1024.org/posts/2022/2022-06-10-still-alive/
June 10, 2022, 9:22 PM
Still alive, despite the blog being silent for more than a year.
Nothing bad happened, but there was always something more important
(or interesting) to do than write a post. And I did say many, many
times - “Oh, I should write a post about this thing I just did or
learned about”, but I never followed up.
And I was close to forgetting entirely about blogging (ahem, it’s a
bit much calling it “blogging”), until someone I follow posted
something along the lines “I have this half-writte...
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