Vincent Bernat: Fast and dynamic encoding of Protocol Buffers in Go
https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2023-dynamic-protobuf-golang
February 6, 2023, 8:58 AM
Protocol Buffers are a popular choice for serializing structured data
due to their compact size, fast processing speed, language independence, and
compatibility. There exist other alternatives, including Cap’n Proto,
CBOR, and Avro.
Usually, data structures are described in a proto definition file
(.proto). The protoc compiler and a language-specific plugin convert it into
code:
$ head flow-4.proto
syntax = "proto3";
package decoder;
option go_package = "akvorado/inlet/flow/decoder";
message ...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in January 2023
https://reproducible-builds.org/reports/2023-01/
February 6, 2023, 12:37 AM
Welcome to the first report for 2023 from the Reproducible Builds project!
In these reports we try and outline the most important things that we have been up to over the past month, as well as the most important things in/around the community. As a quick recap, the motivation behind the reproducible builds effort is to ensure no malicious flaws can be deliberately introduced during compilation and distribution of the software that we run on our devices. As ever, if you are interested in contr...
--------------------
James Valleroy: A look back at FreedomBox project in 2022
https://jvalleroy.me/wordpress/?p=49
February 5, 2023, 9:44 PM
This post is very late, but better late than never! I want to take a look back at the work that was done on FreedomBox during 2022.
Several apps were added to FreedomBox in 2022. The email server app (that was developed by a Google Summer of Code student back in 2021) was finally made available to the general audience of FreedomBox users. You will find it under the name “Postfix/Dovecot”, which are the main services configured by this app.
Another app that was added is Janus, which has...
--------------------
Mike Gabriel: Call for translations: Lomiri / Ubuntu Touch 20.04
https://sunweavers.net/blog/node/142
February 5, 2023, 7:50 PM
Prologue
For over a year now, Fre(i)e Software GmbH (my company) is involved in Ubuntu Touch developmt. The development effort currently is handle by a mix of paid and voluntary developers/contributors under the umbrella of the UBports Foundation. We are approaching the official first release of Ubuntu Touch 20.04 with rapid pace.
And, if you are a non-Englisch native speaker, we'd like to ask you for help... Read below.
light+love
Mike (aka sunweaver at debian.org, Mastodon, IRC, etc.)
Inte...
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Jonathan Dowland: 2022 in reading
https://jmtd.net/log/2022_in_reading/
February 5, 2023, 10:00 AM
In 2022 I read 34 books (-19% on last year).
In 2021 roughly a quarter of the books I read were written by women. I was
determined to push that ratio in 2022, so I made an effort to try and only
read books by women. I knew that I wouldn't manage that, but by trying to, I
did get the ratio up to 58% (by page count).
I'm not sure what will happen in 2023. My to-read pile has some back-pressure
from books by male authors I postponed reading in 2022 (in particular new works
by Christopher Priest a...
--------------------
Russell Coker: Wayland in Bookworm
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2023/02/05/wayland-bookworm/
February 5, 2023, 8:41 AM
We are getting towards the freeze for Debian/Bookworm so the current state of packages isn’t going to change much before the release. Bugs will get fixed but missing features will mostly be missing until the next release.
Anarcat wrote an excellent blog post about using Wayland with the Sway window manager [1]. It seems pretty good if you like Sway, but I like KDE and plan to continue using it. Several of the important utility programs referenced by Anarcat won’t run with KDE/Wayland and giv...
--------------------
C.J. Collier: IPv6 with CenturyLink Fiber
https://wp.colliertech.org/cj/?p=1844
February 5, 2023, 12:49 AM
In case you want to know how to configure IPv6 using CenturyLink’s 6rd tunneling service.
There are four files to update with my script:
/etc/radvd.conf.header
/etc/default/centurylink-6rd
/etc/ppp/ip-up.d/centurylink-6rd
/etc/ppp/ip-down.d/centurylink-6rd
There are a couple of environment variables in /etc/default/centurylink-6rd that you will want to set. Mine looks like this:
LAN_IFACE="ens18,ens21,ens22"
HEADER_FILE=/etc/radvd.conf.header
The script will configure radvd to advertise v6...
--------------------
Jonathan Dowland: FreedomBox
https://jmtd.net/log/freedombox/
February 4, 2023, 6:44 PM
personal servers
Moxie Marlinspike, former CEO of Signal, wrote a very interesting
blog post about
"web3", the
crypto-scam1. It's worth a read if you are interested in that stuff. This
blog post, however, is not about crypto-scams; but I wanted to quote from the
beginning of the article:
People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will. The premise
for web1 was that everyone on the internet would be both a publisher and
consumer of content as well as a publisher and consumer of inf...
--------------------
Jonathan Dowland: The Horror Show!
https://jmtd.net/log/the_horror_show/
February 4, 2023, 6:22 PM
I was passing through London on Friday and I had time to get to The Horror Show! Exhibit at Somerset House, over by Victoria embankment. I learned about the exhibition from Gazelle Twin’s website: she wrote music for the final part of the exhibit, with Maxine Peake delivering a monologue over the top.
I loved it. It was almost like David Keenan’s book England’s Hidden Reverse had been made into an exhibition. It’s divided into three themes: Monster, Ghost and Witch, although the themes ...
--------------------
Tim Retout: AlmaLinux and SBOMs
https://retout.co.uk/2023/02/04/almalinux-and-sboms/
February 4, 2023, 4:37 PM
At CentOS Connect yesterday, Jack Aboutboul and Javier Hernandez
presented a talk about AlmaLinux and SBOMs
[video],
where they are exploring a novel supply-chain security effort in the
RHEL ecosystem.
Now, I have unfortunately ignored the Red Hat ecosystem for a long
time, so if you are in a similar position to me: CentOS used to
produce debranded rebuilds of RHEL; but Red Hat changed the project
round so that CentOS Stream now sits in between Fedora Rawhide and
RHEL releases, allowing the wide...
--------------------
Scarlett Gately Moore: KDE Snaps, snapcraft, Debian packages.
https://www.scarlettgatelymoore.dev/kde-snaps-snapcraft-debian-packages/
February 3, 2023, 6:54 PM
Sunset, Witch Wells Arizona
Another busy week!
In the snap world, I have been busy trying to solve the problem of core20 snaps needing security updates and focal is no longer supported in KDE Neon. So I have created a ppa at https://launchpad.net/~scarlettmoore/+archive/ubuntu/kf5-5.99-focal-updates/+packages
Which of course presents more work, as kf5 5.99.0 requires qt5 5.15.7. Sooo this is a WIP.
Snapcraft kde-neon-extension is moving along as I learn the python ways of formatting,...
--------------------
Ian Jackson: derive-adhoc: powerful pattern-based derive macros for Rust
https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/14345.html
February 3, 2023, 12:34 AM
tl;dr
Have you ever wished that you could that could write a new derive macro without having to mess with procedural macros?
Now you can!
derive-adhoc lets you write a #[derive] macro, using a template syntax which looks a lot like macro_rules!.
It’s still 0.x - so unstable, and maybe with sharp edges. We want feedback!
And, the documentation is still very terse. It is doesn’t omit anything, but, it is severely lacking in examples, motivation, and so on. It will suit readers who enjoy dense ...
--------------------
Matt Brown: 2023 Writing Plan
https://www.mattb.nz/w/2023/02/03/2023-writing-plan/
February 2, 2023, 9:07 PM
To achieve my goal of publishing one high-quality piece of writing per week this year, I’ve put together a draft writing plan and a few organisational notes.
Please let me know what you think - what’s missing? what would you like to read more/less of from me?
I aim for each piece of writing to generate discussion, inspire further writing, and raise my visibility and profile with potential customers and peers. Some of the writing will be opinion, but I expect a majority of it will take a “l...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Blocking free API access to Twitter doesn't stop abuse
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/65647.html
February 2, 2023, 10:21 AM
In one week from now, Twitter will block free API access. This prevents anyone who has written interesting bot accounts, integrations, or tooling from accessing Twitter without paying for it. A whole number of fascinating accounts will cease functioning, people will no longer be able to use tools that interact with Twitter, and anyone using a free service to do things like find Twitter mutuals who have moved to Mastodon or to cross-post between Twitter and other services will be blocked.There's ...
--------------------
John Goerzen: Using Yggdrasil As an Automatic Mesh Fabric to Connect All Your Docker Containers, VMs, and Servers
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10461-using-yggdrasil-as-an-automatic-mesh-fabric-to-connect-all-your-docker-containers-vms-and-servers
February 2, 2023, 4:18 AM
Sometimes you might want to run Docker containers on more than one host. Maybe you want to run some at one hosting facility, some at another, and so forth.
Maybe you’d like run VMs at various places, and let them talk to Docker containers and bare metal servers wherever they are.
And maybe you’d like to be able to easily migrate any of these from one provider to another.
There are all sorts of very complicated ways to set all this stuff up. But there’s also a simple one: Yggdrasil.
My bl...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: RInside 0.2.18 on CRAN: Maintenance
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/02/01#rinside_0.2.18
February 2, 2023, 12:17 AM
A new release 0.2.18 of RInside
arrived on CRAN and in Debian today. This is the first
release in ten months since the 0.2.17 release. RInside
provides a set of convenience classes which facilitate embedding of R inside of C++ applications and
programs, using the classes and functions provided by Rcpp.
This release brings a contributed change to how the internal REPL is
called: Dominick found the
current form more reliable when embedding R on Windows. We also updated
a few other things around th...
--------------------
Valhalla's Things: How To Verify Debian's ARM Installer Images
https://blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/02/02-how-to-verify-debian-arm-installer-images/index.html
February 2, 2023, 12:00 AM
Posted on February 2, 2023



Thanks to Vagrant on the debian-arm mailing list I’ve found that there is a chain of verifiability for the images usually used to install Debian on ARM devices.
It’s not trivial, so I’m writing it down for future reference when I’ll need it again.
Download the images from https://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/bullseye/main/installer-armhf/current/images/ (choose either hd-media or netboot, then SD-card-images and download the firmware...
--------------------
Simon Josefsson: Apt Archive Transparency: debdistdiff & apt-canary
https://blog.josefsson.org/2023/02/01/apt-archive-transparency-debdistdiff-apt-canary/
February 1, 2023, 8:56 PM
I’ve always found the operation of apt software package repositories to be a mystery. There appears to be a lack of transparency into which people have access to important apt package repositories out there, how the automatic non-human update mechanism is implemented, and what changes are published. I’m thinking of big distributions like Ubuntu and Debian, but also the free GNU/Linux distributions like Trisquel and PureOS that are derived from the more well-known distributions.
As far as...
--------------------
Julian Andres Klode: Ubuntu 2022v1 secure boot key rotation and friends
https://blog.jak-linux.org/2023/02/01/ubuntu-key-rotation/
February 1, 2023, 1:40 PM
This is the story of the currently progressing changes to secure boot
on Ubuntu and the history of how we got to where we are.
taking a step back: how does secure boot on Ubuntu work?
Booting on Ubuntu involves three components after the firmware:
shim
grub
linux
Each of these is a PE binary signed with a key. The shim is signed by Microsoft’s
3rd party key and embeds a self-signed Canonical CA certificate, and optionally a
vendor dbx (a list of revoked certificates or binaries). grub and li...
--------------------
Junichi Uekawa: February.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2023-Feb-1.html.en#2023-Feb-1-09:19:43
February 1, 2023, 12:19 AM
February. Working through crosvm dependencies and found that cargo-debstatus does not dump all dependencies; seems like it skips over optional ones.
Haven't tracked down what is going on yet but at least it seems like crosvm does not have all dependencies and can't build yet.
--------------------
Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities January 2023
http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2023/02/01/floss-activities/
February 1, 2023, 12:02 AM
Focus
This month I didn't have any particular focus.
I just worked on issues in my info bubble.
Changes
pydispatcher:
fix doc build with Python 3.11
pyemd:
cleanups
sourcehut:
add repo description to
git,
hg
summary page titles
Debian security tracker:
add more CVE search services
Debian BTS usertags:
fixed some cross, ftp-master, website, porting usertags
Debian screenshots:
deleted
wine (WinXP not Wine)
Debian package uploads:
python-docutils,
pydispatcher,
celery
Debian wiki pages:
Arch...
--------------------
Jonathan McDowell: Enabling retrogaming with Kodi on Debian
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2023/01/kodi-retro-gaming.html
January 31, 2023, 5:00 PM
For some reason my son has started to be really into watching playthroughs of Mario and similar games on Youtube. I don’t understand the appeal, but it’s less distracting as background than Paw Patrol, so I’m not complaining. He’s not quite at the stage he’s ready to play the games himself, but it’s coming. So I figured it would be neat to sort out some retrogaming bits ready for when that happens.
I already have a Kodi box underneath the TV; it doesn’t get as much use these days ...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: #39: Faster Feedback Systems – A Continuous Integration Example
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/01/30#039_faster_feedback_system_tiny_vs_tidy_example
January 31, 2023, 3:11 AM
Welcome to the 39th post in the relatively randomly recurring rants,
or R4 for short. Today’s
post picks up where the previous post #38:
Faster Feedback Systems started. As we argued in #38,
the need for fast feedback loops is fairly universal and
widespread. Fairly shortly after we posted #38,
useR! 2022 happened and one presentation had the key line
Waiting 1-24 minutes for a build to finish can be a massive time
suck.
which we would like to come back to today. Furthermore, the
unimitable ...
--------------------
Arturo Borrero González: Debian and the adventure of the screen resolution
https://ral-arturo.org/2023/01/30/console.html
January 30, 2023, 5:21 PM
I read somewhere a nice meme about Linux: Do you want an operating system or do you want an adventure? I love
it, because it is so true. What you are about to read is my adventure to set a usable screen resolution in a fresh
Debian testing installation.
The context is that I have two different Lenovo Thinkpad laptops with 16” screen and nvidia graphic cards. They are both
installed with the latest Debian testing. I use the closed-source nvidia drivers (they seem to work better than the nouvea...
--------------------
Russell Coker: Links January 2023
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2023/01/30/links-january-2023/
January 30, 2023, 1:17 PM
The Intercept has an amusing and interesting article about senior Facebook employees testifying that they don’t know where Facebook stores all it’s data on users [1]. One lesson all programmers can learn from this is to document all these things in an orderly manner.
Cory Doctorow wrote a short informative article about inflation from a modern monetary theory perspective [2].
Russ Allbery wrote an insightful blog post about effecive altruism and respect for disadvantaged people [3]. GiveDire...
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 234 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-234-released/
January 30, 2023, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 234. This version includes the following changes:
[ FC Stegerman ]
* test_text_proper_indentation requires at least file version 5.44.
(Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#329)
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppTOML 0.2.2 on CRAN: Now with macOS-on-Intel Builds
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/01/29#rcpptoml_0.2.2
January 29, 2023, 10:23 PM
Just days after a build-fix
release (for aarch64) and still only a few weeks after the 0.2.0
release of RcppTOML
and its switch to toml++, we have
another bugfix release 0.2.2 on CRAN also bringing release 3.3.0 of
toml++ (even if we
had large chunks of 3.3.0 already incorporated).
TOML is a file format that is most
suitable for configurations, as it is meant to be edited by
humans but read by computers. It emphasizes strong readability
for humans while at the same time supporting strong typing
...
--------------------
Petter Reinholdtsen: Is the desktop recommending your program for opening its files?
https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_the_desktop_recommending_your_program_for_opening_its_files_.html
January 29, 2023, 10:00 AM
Linux desktop systems
have
standardized how programs present themselves to the desktop
system. If a package include a .desktop file in
/usr/share/applications/, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Xfce and the other desktop
environments will pick up the file and use its content to generate the
menu of available programs in the system. A lesser known fact is that
a package can also explain to the desktop system how to recognize the
files created by the program in question, and use it to open these
files on reque...
--------------------
Gunnar Wolf: miniDebConf Tamil Nadu 2023
https://gwolf.org/2023/01/minidebconf-tamil-nadu-2023.html
January 29, 2023, 7:17 AM
Greetings from Viluppuram, Tamil Nadu, South India!
As a preparation and warm-up for DebConf in September, the Debian
people in India have organized a miniDebConf. Well, I don’t want to be
unfair to them — They have been regularly organizing miniDebConfs for
over a decade, and while most of the attendees are students local to
this state in South India (the very ``tip’’ of the country; Tamil Nadu
is the Eastern side, and Kerala, where Kochi is and DebConf will be
held, is the Western s...
--------------------
Valhalla's Things: Hello World!
https://blog.trueelena.org/blog/2023/01/29-hello-world/index.html
January 29, 2023, 12:00 AM
Posted on January 29, 2023



Welcome to my new blog!
Or rather, strictly speaking, welcome to my first blog!
Back when everybody had a blog, I had an old-fashioned personal website where pages were organized by topic rather than by date, so now that blogs are dead (or so they say), I guess it’s time for me to have one :) .
The old website is still online, but updating it is getting harder, both for organizational reasons and because the static generator I’ve used is ...
--------------------
Scarlett Gately Moore: KDE Snaps, Debian uploads and much more in the works!
https://www.scarlettgatelymoore.dev/kde-snaps-debian-uploads-and-much-more-in-the-works/
January 28, 2023, 3:01 PM
Witch Wells, AZ Snow
It has been a very busy few weeks as we endured snowstorm after snowstorm!
I have made some progress on the Mycroft in debian adventure! This will slow down as we enter freeze for bookworm and there is no way we will make it into bookworm as there are some significant issues to solve.
lingua-franco uploaded and accepted
pako uploaded and accepted
speechpy-fast uploaded
fitipy ready to upload
On the KDE side of things:
Plasma-bigscreen uploaded and a...
--------------------
Emmanuel Kasper: Table of correspondence between AWS / Azure / Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform / upstream projects
https://00formicapunk00.wordpress.com/2023/01/28/table-of-correspondence-between-aws-azure-red-hat-openshift-container-platform-upstream-projects/
January 28, 2023, 1:14 PM
If you know the Amazon Web Services or Azure portfolio, and you are interested in OpenShift or the OKD OpenShift community distribution, this is a table of corresponding technologies.
OpenShift is Red Hat’s Kubernetes distribution: it is basically the upstream Kubernetes delivered with monitoring, logging, CI/CD, underlying OS, tested upgrade paths not found with a manual kubernetes.io kubeadm install.
After passing the two corresponding certifications, my opinion on cloud operators is that it...
--------------------
Russ Allbery: Review: The Library of the Dead
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-250-76777-6.html
January 28, 2023, 3:54 AM
Review: The Library of the Dead, by T.L. Huchu

Series:
Edinburgh Nights #1


Publisher:
Tor


Copyright:
2021


Printing:
2022


ISBN:
1-250-76777-6


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
329

The Library of the Dead is the first book in a post-apocalyptic
(sort of) urban fantasy series set in Edinburgh, written by Zimbabwean
author (and current Scotland resident) T.L. Huchu.
Ropa is a ghosttalker. This means she can...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Further adventures in Apple PKCS#11 land
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/65462.html
January 27, 2023, 11:39 PM
After my previous efforts, I wrote up a PKCS#11 module of my own that had no odd restrictions about using non-RSA keys and I tested it. And things looked much better - ssh successfully obtained the key, negotiated with the server to determine that it was present in authorized_keys, and then went to actually do the key verification step. At which point things went wrong - the Sign() method in my PKCS#11 module was never called, and a strangedebug1: identity_sign: sshkey_sign: error in libcryptosi...
--------------------
Matt Brown: Goals for 2023
https://www.mattb.nz/w/2023/01/27/goals-for-2023/
January 26, 2023, 7:50 PM
This is the second of a two-part post covering my goals for 2023. See the first part to understand the vision, mission and strategy driving these goals.
I want to thank my friend Nat, and Will Larson whose annual reviews I’ve always enjoyed reading for inspiring me to write these posts.
I’ve found the process articulating my motivations and goals very useful to clarify my thoughts and create tangible next steps. I’m grateful for that in and of itself, but I also hope that by publishing thi...
--------------------
Louis-Philippe Véronneau: Montreal Subway Foot Traffic Data, 2022 edition
https://veronneau.org/montreal-subway-foot-traffic-data-2022-edition.html
January 26, 2023, 6:30 PM
For the fourth year in a row, I've asked Société de Transport de Montréal,
Montreal's transit agency, for the foot traffic data of Montreal's subway.
By clicking on a subway station, you'll be redirected to a graph of the
station's foot traffic.
Orange line (top10)
Green line (top10)
Blue line
Yellow line
Global Top 10
Licences
The subway map displayed on this page, the original dataset and my
modified dataset are licenced under CCO 1.0: they are in
the public domain.
The R code I ...
--------------------
Shirish Agarwal: Minidebconf Tamilnadu 2023, Tinnitus, Cooking, Books and Series.
https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2023/01/26/minidebconf-tamilnadu-2023-tinnitus-cooking-books-and-series/
January 26, 2023, 1:34 PM
First up is Minidebconf Tamilnadu 2023 that would be held on 28-29 January 2023. You can find rest of the details here. I do hope we get to see/hear some good stuff from the Minidebconf. Best of luck to all those who are applying.
Tinnitus
During the lock-down of March 2020, I became aware of noise in ears and subsequently major hearing loss. It took me quite a while to know that Tinnitus happens to both those who have hearing loss as well as not. I keep running into threads like this and...
--------------------
Bálint Réczey: How to speed up your next build 5-20x with Firebuild?
https://balintreczey.hu/blog/how-to-speed-up-your-next-build-with-firebuild/
January 26, 2023, 9:06 AM
TL;DR: Just prefix your build command (or any command) with firebuild:
firebuild <build command>
OK, but how does it work?
Firebuild intercepts all processes started by the command to cache their outputs. Next time when the command or any of its descendant commands is executed with the same parameters, inputs and environment, the outputs are replayed (the command is shortcut) from the cache instead of running the command again.
This is similar to how ccache and other compiler-...
--------------------
Matt Brown: Vision, Mission and Strategy
https://www.mattb.nz/w/2023/01/26/vision-mission-and-strategy/
January 26, 2023, 4:30 AM
This is the first of a two-part post, covering high-level thoughts around my motivations and vision. Make sure to check out the second part for my specific goals for 2023.
A new year is upon us! My plan was to be 6 months into the journey of starting a business by this point.
I made some very tentative progress towards that goal in 2022, registering a company and starting some consulting work, but on the whole I’ve found it much harder than expected to gather the necessary energy to begin that...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppTOML 0.2.1 on CRAN: Small Build Fix for Some Arches
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/01/25#rcpptoml_0.2.1
January 26, 2023, 12:54 AM
Two weeks after the release of RcppTOML
0.2.0 and the switch to toml++, we have a
quick bugfix release 0.2.1.
TOML is a file format that is most
suitable for configurations, as it is meant to be edited by
humans but read by computers. It emphasizes strong readability
for humans while at the same time supporting strong typing
as well as immediate and clear error reports. On small typos
you get parse errors, rather than silently corrupted garbage. Much
preferable to any and all of XML, JSON or YAM...
--------------------
Bits from Debian: New Debian Developers and Maintainers (November and December 2022)
https://bits.debian.org/2023/01/new-developers-2022-12.html
January 24, 2023, 3:00 PM
The following contributors got their Debian Developer accounts in the last two months:
Dennis Braun (snd)
Raúl Benencia (rul)
The following contributors were added as Debian Maintainers in the last two months:
Gioele Barabucci
Agathe Porte
Braulio Henrique Marques Souto
Matthias Geiger
Alper Nebi Yasak
Fabian Grünbichler
Lance Lin
Congratulations!...
--------------------
Kentaro Hayashi: Porterboxes and alternatives
https://kenhys.hatenablog.jp/entry/2023/01/24/202912
January 24, 2023, 11:29 AM
As you know, Debian projects and sponsor provides so-called "porterbox", but it does not cover all architectures.
There are some alternatives to fix architecture-specific bugs.
For the record, let's pick it up them. [1][2][3]
porterbox
deb-o-matic
qemu
amd64
adayevskaya.d.o
debomatic-amd64.d.n
DQIB ready
arm64
amdahl.d.o
debomatic-arm64.d.n
DQIB ready
armel
amdahl.d.o abel.d.o
debomatic-armel.d.n
NG
armhf
amdahl.d.o abel.d.o harris.d.o
debomatic-armhf.d.n
DQIB ready
i386
exodar...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Build security with the assumption it will be used against your friends
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/65272.html
January 23, 2023, 10:44 AM
Working in information security means building controls, developing technologies that ensure that sensitive material can only be accessed by people that you trust. It also means categorising people into "trustworthy" and "untrustworthy", and trying to come up with a reasonable way to apply that such that people can do their jobs without all your secrets being available to just anyone in the company who wants to sell them to a competitor. It means ensuring that accounts who you consider to be thr...
--------------------
Petter Reinholdtsen: Opensnitch, the application level interactive firewall, heading into the Debian archive
https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Opensnitch__the_application_level_interactive_firewall__heading_into_the_Debian_archive.html
January 22, 2023, 10:55 PM
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 take long to find
the OpenSnitch
package, which has been in development since 2017, and now...
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Jonathan Dowland: Barbie crowns
https://jmtd.net/log/barbie_crown/
January 22, 2023, 9:14 PM
My daughters have had great fun designing and printing crowns for their
Barbies. We've been through several design iterations, and several colour
choices. Not all Barbies have the same head circumference. Real crowns probably
don't have a perfectly circular internal shape.
They changed their minds on the green crown soon after it finished, but we
managed to find a grateful recipient.
crown v1.scad (1.4k)...
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Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 1.0.10 on CRAN: Regular Update
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2023/01/22#rcpp_1.0.10
January 22, 2023, 3:51 PM
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 wi...
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Simon Josefsson: Understanding Trisquel
https://blog.josefsson.org/2023/01/22/understanding-trisquel/
January 22, 2023, 11:10 AM
Ever wondered how Trisquel and Ubuntu differs and what’s behind the curtain from a developer perspective? I have. Sharing what I’ve learnt will allow you to increase knowledge and trust in Trisquel too.
Trisquel GNU/Linux logo
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-jam...
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Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 233 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-233-released/
January 20, 2023, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 233. This version includes the following changes:
[ FC Stegerman ]
* Split packaging metadata into an extras_require.json file instead of using
the pep517 and the pip modules directly. This was causing build failures if
not using a virtualenv and/or building without internet access.
(Closes: #1029066, reproducible-builds/diffoscope#325)
[ Vagrant Cascadian ]
* Add an external tool reference for GNU Guix ...
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Antoine Beaupré: Mastodon comments in ikiwiki
https://anarc.at/blog/2023-01-19-mastodon-comments-in-ikiwiki/
January 19, 2023, 9:50 PM
Today I noticed bounces in my mail box. They were from ikiwiki trying
to send registration confirmation email to users who probably never
asked for it.
I'm getting truly fed up with spam in my wiki. At this point, all
comments are manually approved and I still get trouble: now it's
scammers spamming the registration form with dummy accounts, which
bounce back to me when I make new posts, or just generate backscatter
spam for the confirmation email. It's really bad. I have hundreds of
users regi...
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Steinar H. Gunderson: Not speaking at FOSDEM
http://blog.sesse.net/blog/tech/2023-01-19-01-17_not_speaking_at_fosdem.html
January 19, 2023, 12:17 AM
The schedules are out, and evidently, I could not find anywhere to
have a plocate talk; the only devroom I could find that was remotely
relevant (Distributions) didn't include me (perhaps because I was
a day or so after the submission deadline?), and when I moved to
lightning talks, evidently that didn't fit either.
So, 54 devrooms, and no place for a topic that is dear to my heart.
Achievement unlocked, I guess? Somewhat ironic when the last part of the talk
would be a lament that we don't hav...
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Jonathan Dowland: Belfast (David Holmes Remix)
https://jmtd.net/log/belfast/
January 18, 2023, 9:36 AM
This morning’s record to start the day is David Holmes’s remix of “Belfast”, by Orbital: the latest cover mount record with Electronic Sound magazine.
This, and several other new remixes are available on the recent compilation “30 Something” which, despite being yet another comp, I’ve found quite compelling.
An unusual decision by ES: they’ve split the remix across both sides, but kept the RPM at 45. I haven’t ran the numbers to figure out if they could have fit it on...
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Matthew Garrett: PKCS#11. hardware keystores, and Apple frustrations
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/64968.html
January 18, 2023, 5:26 AM
There's a bunch of ways you can store cryptographic keys. The most obvious is to just stick them on disk, but that has the downside that anyone with access to the system could just steal them and do whatever they wanted with them. At the far end of the scale you have Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), hardware devices that are specially designed to self destruct if you try to take them apart and extract the keys, and which will generate an audit trail of every key operation. In between you have t...
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Russ Allbery: Review: Forward
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/1-5420-9206-X.html
January 18, 2023, 3:28 AM
Review: Forward, edited by Blake Crouch

Publisher:
Amazon Original Stories


Copyright:
September 2019


ISBN:
1-5420-9206-X


ISBN:
1-5420-4363-8


ISBN:
1-5420-9357-0


ISBN:
1-5420-0434-9


ISBN:
1-5420-4363-8


ISBN:
1-5420-4425-1


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
300

This is another Amazon collection of short fiction, this time mostly at
novelette length. (The longer ones m...
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Arnaud Rebillout: Build container images in GitLab CI (iptables-legacy at the rescue)
https://arnaudr.io/2023/01/18/build-container-images-in-gitlab-ci-iptables-legacy-at-the-rescue/
January 18, 2023, 12:00 AM
It's 2023 and these days, building a container image in a CI pipeline should be
straightforward. So let's try.
For this blog post we'll focus on GitLab SaaS only, that is,
gitlab.com, as it's what I use for work and for personal
projects.
To get started, we just need two files in our Git repository:
a Containerfile (or Dockerfile if you prefer to name it this way) that
defines how to build a container image.
a .gitlab-ci.yml file that defines what the CI should do. In the example
below, w...
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Thomas Lange: FAI 6.0 released and new ISO images using Debian 12 bookworm/testing
http://blog.fai-project.org/posts/fai6/
January 17, 2023, 4:20 PM
After more than a year, a new major FAI release is ready to download.
Following new features are included:
add support for release specification in package_config via release=<name>
the partitioning tool now supports partition labels with GPT
support partition labels and partition uuids in fstab
support for Alpine Linux and Arch Linux package managers in install_packages
Ubuntu 22.04 and Rocky Linux 9 support added
add support for NVme devices in fai-kvm
add ssh key for root remote acce...
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Russ Allbery: Review: Night and Silence
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-698-18353-3.html
January 17, 2023, 3:34 AM
Review: Night and Silence, by Seanan McGuire

Series:
October Daye #12


Publisher:
DAW Books


Copyright:
2018


ISBN:
0-698-18353-3


Format:
Kindle


Pages:
353

Night and Silence is the 12th book in Seanan McGuire's long-running
October Daye Celtic-inspired urban fantasy series. This is a "read the
books in order" sort of series; you definitely do not want to start here.
Gillian, Toby's estranged daughter, has be...
--------------------
Gunnar Wolf: Back to Understanding Computers and Cognition
https://gwolf.org/2023/01/back-to-understanding-computers-and-cognition.html
January 16, 2023, 4:29 AM
As many of you know, I work at UNAM, Mexico’s largest university. My
work is split in two parts: My “full-time” job is to be the systems
and network administrator at the Economics Research
Institute, and I do some hours of teaching
at the Engineering Faculty.
At the Institute, my role is academic — but although I have tried to
frame my works in a way amenable to analysis grounded on the Social
Sciences (Construcción Colaborativa del
Conocimiento, Hecho con Creative
Commons, Mecanismos ...
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Russ Allbery: Review: The Truth
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-06-230736-3.html
January 16, 2023, 2:51 AM
Review: The Truth, by Terry Pratchett

Series:
Discworld #25


Publisher:
Harper


Copyright:
November 2000


Printing:
August 2014


ISBN:
0-06-230736-3


Format:
Mass market


Pages:
435

The Truth is the 25th Discworld novel. Some reading order guides
group it loosely into an "industrial revolution" sequence following
Moving Pictures, but while there are
thematic similarities I'll talk about in a moment, ...
--------------------
Freexian Collaborators: Monthly report about Debian Long Term Support, December 2022 (by Anton Gladky)
https://www.freexian.com/blog/debian-lts-report-2022-12/
January 16, 2023, 12:00 AM
Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.
Debian LTS contributors
In December, 17 contributors have been paid to work on Debian
LTS, their reports are available:
Abhijith PA
did 3.0h (out of 0h assigned and 14.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 11.0h to the next month.
Anton Gladky
did 8.0h (out of 6.0h assigned and 9.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 7.0h to the next month.
Ben Hutchings
did 24.0h (out of 9.0h assigned and 15.0h f...
--------------------
Matthew Garrett: Blogging and microblogging
https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/64660.html
January 15, 2023, 10:40 PM
Long-term Linux users may remember that Alan Cox used to write an online diary. This was before the concept of a "Weblog" had really become a thing, and there certainly weren't any expectations around what one was used for - while now blogging tends to imply a reasonably long-form piece on a specific topic, Alan was just sitting there noting small life concerns or particular technical details in interesting problems he'd solved that day. For me, that was fascinating. I was trying to figure out h...
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