After a new AMD Ryzen powered Linux laptop for work and some gaming too? Germany company TUXEDO are back with another announcement with the Aura 15. Using the latest generation AMD Ryzen 7 4700U you get access to 8 fantastic cores of power.
TUXEDO have announced quite a lot over the last year, as they continue expanding like the Polaris 15 / 17 and the absolute monster with the TUXEDO Book XUX7. This Aura 15 is however a much cheaper offering than a lot of their other choices this year while still providing a good bit of power for a range of needs.
Chrome Flags come and go at a rapid rate. These features have been aptly renamed to “Experiments” by Google because they let you enable, disable and customize various features that are yet to make it into the mainline Chrome release. Quite often, these features never end up making it into the full version of Chrome.
When I joined LBRY at the beginning of 2020, I never could have imagined the kind of growth that the platform would receive. In just a few months, there are so many more creators and viewers on LBRY, the website has undergone some improvements, and the desktop and mobile apps keep better.
In this 2nd part of tmux is bloat I show you the partner of Abduco called dvtm, unlike Abduco which was a standalone terminal sesion manager, this tool is a standalone terminal multiplexer and combined you can get most of what you'll want to have from something like Tmux, obviously it's not perfect but if you don't need the extra features this might be a good choice.
The EXT4 file-system with the upcoming Linux 5.10 kernel has an optimization yielding big benefits for file overwrites in some circumstances.
With the EXT4 iomap code used in direct access (DAX) and direct I/O (DIO) modes there is an optimization for checking whether blocks are already allocated. In these cases of the blocks already having been allocated (hence an overwrite), the mapping information can be returned immediately and for multi-threaded overwrite requests there is an especially big performance benefit -- again, assuming you are using DAX/DIO such as on persistent memory with the likes of Intel Optane DCPMM or even simulating persistent memory within virtual machines.
XCP-ng as the open-source hypervisor built atop XenServer is preparing for its 8.2 LTS release while this week marked the availability of the first beta.
This XenServer-based open-source hypervisor is in the process of picking up many features for the 8.2 LTS release. There is a re-implementation of XCP-ng's UEFI support, Openflow controller access support with Xen Orchestra, experimental core scheduling, experimental storage driver support for Gluster / ZFS / XFS / CephFS, support for Intel Icelake and Comet Lake processors, and a variety of other improvements.
The Intel Meteor Lake line of CPUs is a far-future family that will appear sometime in 2022. The new line of processors will succeed Intel's Alder Lake family which will make its debut in the second half of 2021. The CPU family is expected to make use of next-generation core technologies and feature a brand new process node but before that, let's see what details the Linux patches unveil for Intel's Meteor Lake.
Intel updated their programming reference manual this week with some interesting new additions, primarily around user interrupts and the enhanced hardware feedback interface.
While Intel has already disclosed AMX (Advanced Matrix Extensions) as coming with Sapphire Rapids and some other new instructions, they have now disclosed more instructions that are on the way. Some appear to be coming with Sapphire Rapids while others on the client side with Alder Lake. New Intel instructions documented by this latest PRM revision include CLUI, HRESET, SENDUIPI, STUI, TESTUI, UIRET, VPDPBUSD, VPDPBUSDS, VPDPWSSD and VPDPWSSDS.
Meteor Lake is Intel's first 7nm microarchitecture not expected until late 2022 or 2023 that will pair "Ocean Cove" with "Gracemont" cores as the successor to Alder Lake. Intel engineers continue doing a lot of bring-up work for Alder Lake in recent months and that work coming together nicely for the Linux kernel and related components like the GNU and LLVM compiler toolchains. With the Alder Lake work beginning to settle down and wanting to ensure great Linux out-of-the-box support in time for launch, attention is turning soon enough to Meteor Lake.
Technology tools do have their limits. No one will become a master chef simply because they use chef-endorsed saucepans, the finest ingredients, or have access to sought-after recipes. For example, a diary application can make it easier for individuals to keep track of their daily activities and thoughts, but will the application really bring order into a chaotic world? Time tracker apps help users keep track of how much time is spent on various activities during the day, but still the user has to remember to start them.
Don’t get us wrong. There’s a real burning passion inside us for small productivity tools. Lean tools that focus on a single productivity enhancing activity can make an enormous difference to the way time is spent. Bloated, complex productivity tools tend to only slow you down, and complex solutions require too much maintenance.
The desktop environment with its bundle of programs sharing a common graphical user interface (GUI) remains a firm favorite with users. Not surprising really given that a good desktop environment makes computing fun and simple. The graphical desktop environment has become so ingrained in almost everyone’s computer activities that it might seem the command line will wither away. Yet, there is still an important role to play for the humble command-line interface (CLI).
[...]
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts is a very famous quote from Aristotle, a Greek philosopher and scientist. This quote is particularly pertinent to Linux. In my view, one of Linux’s biggest strengths is its synergy. The usefulness of Linux doesn’t derive only from the huge raft of open source (command line) utilities. Instead, it’s the synergy generated by using them together, sometimes in conjunction with larger applications.
The cd command is a command-line OS shell command used to change the current working directory. A directory is a logical section of a file system used to hold files. Directories may also contain other directories. The cd command can be used to change into a subdirectory, move back into the parent directory, move all the way back to the root directory or move to any given directory.
The purpose of this article is to identify some tiny but useful tools that complement the cd command. They help users to navigate faster around the filesystem, and increase productivity when using the shell. We feature 9 tools each with their own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.
Here’s our recommendations.
XnConvert is a powerful batch image processor that allows you to easily perform a wide range of adjustments to a batch of images and convert them to many different formats. XnConvert is available as freeware for private non-commercial use, but companies are required to purchase a license. The pricing for an XnConvert commercial license starts at 15.00âââ¬Å¡€¬ per license.
The user interface is fairly straightforward and easy to use. From the Input tab, you can load in images by dragging and dropping them into the program, or using the Add files and Add folder buttons. XnConvert can open over 500 different image formats, including many RAW camera formats. Once loaded in, you can begin processing the images.
As I have stated many times in this blog, having password manager application is important for everyone using computer nowadays. Now it is a simple tutorial to begin using KeePassXC, a libre software to keep your passwords, identities, and secrets safely so that can access them all by a single master password only you know whenever you forget. Thanks to this app we can make passwords as secure as we want without the burden to remember any of them. Now let's start learning!
The first major post-launch update for the action-packed roguelike Burning Knight is out now. On top of new content, there's also now local co-op support.
What is Burning Knight? It's a real-time action roguelike built in the spirit of Nuclear Throne, Enter The Gungeon and others like it. You get a different area to run through each time, facing off against various enemies and traps as you progress through a castle.
Currently available in Early Access, the game Wildermyth is a very impressive mix of an RPG with turn-based tactical battles with a brilliant papercraft style. It also appears to be getting a slick new soundtrack.
We all know that a good soundtrack can really get you personally engrossed a game, and it can be the difference between being a good game and an awesome game you tell people about. One of those essential parts of the experience and composer Candy Emberley is very aware of this. Therefore they wish to get funding together to record properly with live instruments, instead of mixing together samples to produce a much richer soundtrack.
There have been many false dawns for Linux gaming, but in recent years things have been improving unabated. The launch of the Proton compatibility layer meant that thousands of DirectX-only games can now be translated to Vulkan and therefore work on Linux, while new Linux-compatible games continue to be released as well. If you want to play Windows-only games on Linux, see our guide on how to set up Proton and Steam Play. If, however, you just want to check out all the best Linux games in 2020 you can play, then read on below.
[...]
As an open-source platform itself, it’s only right that Linux is home to plenty of great free open-source games as well. There’s Brutal Doom for example – a beefed-up version of ZDoom, the open-source port of Doom, Doom 2, Final Doom and Master Levels. It features extra animations, gore, and weapons, as well as redesigned maps, modernized controls and UIs.
OpenRA lets you play Westwood strategy games like Red Alert, Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000 online in high resolutions. There’s 0 AD – the seemingly endless project to make an Age-of-Empires strategy game, not to mention the brilliant Dark Mod, which is a Thief-style game in the Doom 3 engine with hundreds of brilliant player-created levels.
Other than these free Linux games, you can also install DosBox to play old DOS games on Linux. Alternatively, you can also play Windows or Android games on Linux.
I’m happy to announce the successful deployment of the new identity system in KDE, codename MyKDE. The new identity system is now available in my.kde.org. You should be able to login into the my.kde.org website with your normal KDE credential.
For the moment, only the wikis are using MyKDE but in the comming months this should change with more and more services switching to MyKDE. I will let you all know of the progress of the migration.
Time for another update on what has happened around KDE Itinerary recently. Similar as in the last report the reduced global travel activity resulted in a focus on features related to mapping and navigation around large transportation hubs. KDE Akademy also fell into that time, with a number of relevant topics for this being discussed there.
[...]
Something that nicely shows what is possible by putting the building blocks we already have together is the support for rental bikes or scooters. It turned out KPublicTransport, which was originally meant to provide access to real-time data for trains and busses, only needed a few small extensions to access information about shared vehicles from OpenTripPlanner or GBFS services. Similarly, our station map only needed a small adaptor to visualize this in the right spots.
[...]
While field testing and collecting training samples of travel documents is still difficult, there’s plenty of other things that can be done. The KDE Itinerary workboard or the more specialized indoor map workboard show what’s on the todo list, and are a good place for collecting new ideas. For questions and suggestions, please feel free to join us on the KDE PIM mailing list or in the #kontact channel on Matrix or Freenode.
The first RC build of the 12.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available.
Installation images are available for:
o 12.2-RC1 amd64 GENERIC o 12.2-RC1 i386 GENERIC o 12.2-RC1 powerpc GENERIC o 12.2-RC1 powerpc64 GENERIC64 o 12.2-RC1 powerpcspe MPC85XXSPE o 12.2-RC1 sparc64 GENERIC o 12.2-RC1 armv6 RPI-B o 12.2-RC1 armv7 BANANAPI o 12.2-RC1 armv7 BEAGLEBONE o 12.2-RC1 armv7 CUBIEBOARD o 12.2-RC1 armv7 CUBIEBOARD2 o 12.2-RC1 armv7 CUBOX-HUMMINGBOARD o 12.2-RC1 armv7 RPI2 o 12.2-RC1 armv7 WANDBOARD o 12.2-RC1 armv7 GENERICSD o 12.2-RC1 aarch64 GENERIC o 12.2-RC1 aarch64 RPI3 o 12.2-RC1 aarch64 PINE64 o 12.2-RC1 aarch64 PINE64-LTS
Note regarding arm SD card images: For convenience for those without console access to the system, a freebsd user with a password of freebsd is available by default for ssh(1) access. Additionally, the root user password is set to root. It is strongly recommended to change the password for both users after gaining access to the system.
Installer images and memory stick images are available here:
https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/ISO-IMAGES/12.2/
The image checksums follow at the end of this e-mail.
If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR system or on the -stable mailing list.
If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the "releng/12.2" branch.
A summary of changes since 12.2-BETA3 includes:
o OpenSSL 1.1.1h has been merged.
o A fix for UFS hash checking had been added.
o A fix for mmap'd writes in fusefs for writes in direct_io mode had been addressed.
o Amazon EC2 AMIs for arm64 have been updated to include ebsvnme-id.
o A fix to NFSv4.1 addressing a locking issue had been addressed.
o Other miscellaneous bug fixes.
A list of changes since 12.1-RELEASE is available in the releng/12.2 release notes:
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.2R/relnotes.html
Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be updated on an ongoing basis as the 12.2-RELEASE cycle progresses.
=== Virtual Machine Disk Images ===
VM disk images are available for the amd64, i386, and aarch64 architectures. Disk images may be downloaded from the following URL (or any of the FreeBSD download mirrors):
https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/VM-IMAGES/12.2-RC1/
The partition layout is:
~ 16 kB - freebsd-boot GPT partition type (bootfs GPT label) ~ 1 GB - freebsd-swap GPT partition type (swapfs GPT label) ~ 20 GB - freebsd-ufs GPT partition type (rootfs GPT label)
The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats. The image download size is approximately 135 MB and 165 MB respectively (amd64/i386), decompressing to a 21 GB sparse image.
Note regarding arm64/aarch64 virtual machine images: a modified QEMU EFI loader file is needed for qemu-system-aarch64 to be able to boot the virtual machine images. See this page for more information:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm64/QEMU
To boot the VM image, run:
% qemu-system-aarch64 -m 4096M -cpu cortex-a57 -M virt \ -bios QEMU_EFI.fd -serial telnet::4444,server -nographic \ -drive if=none,file=VMDISK,id=hd0 \ -device virtio-blk-device,drive=hd0 \ -device virtio-net-device,netdev=net0 \ -netdev user,id=net0
Be sure to replace "VMDISK" with the path to the virtual machine image.
=== Amazon EC2 AMI Images ===
FreeBSD/amd64 EC2 AMIs are available in the following regions:
af-south-1 region: ami-0b78d5e770bcdeb5e eu-north-1 region: ami-0505a8c0c52cfff31 ap-south-1 region: ami-0c4c09e714e3a6e9f eu-west-3 region: ami-00e0dae18af349d16 eu-west-2 region: ami-06e6d824cb38c5eef eu-south-1 region: ami-077bfe44af5272bfc eu-west-1 region: ami-0830c03d9511775c6 ap-northeast-2 region: ami-00d438c5be9106d1a me-south-1 region: ami-01efb2372fa56c3dd ap-northeast-1 region: ami-0276c6be8130eac10 sa-east-1 region: ami-075bc30f68a1ef652 ca-central-1 region: ami-0e6349ad57b6ec50e ap-east-1 region: ami-0934a82e2fe4fc324 ap-southeast-1 region: ami-082ef5fab8053e525 ap-southeast-2 region: ami-034eced9d3b0a5fcb eu-central-1 region: ami-003b3ecea55e0f34a us-east-1 region: ami-046ecf67c8b89748a us-east-2 region: ami-02a876a6124ba82ca us-west-1 region: ami-076e14c698318f4a1 us-west-2 region: ami-0397116051898a487
FreeBSD/aarch64 EC2 AMIs are available in the following regions:
af-south-1 region: ami-04c4b469b7a750631 eu-north-1 region: ami-0a5c67bbe7b0e8109 ap-south-1 region: ami-0b1deff23e65431f0 eu-west-3 region: ami-06968c110a4e11fd1 eu-west-2 region: ami-04d9f8ba0273d9c53 eu-south-1 region: ami-08f7137dc70ba9340 eu-west-1 region: ami-09bdce51a19f36c5a ap-northeast-2 region: ami-0a943f6eb97da5f83 me-south-1 region: ami-0640892b8fe159522 ap-northeast-1 region: ami-0785670f49ecef76f sa-east-1 region: ami-07edcd782d88c3d98 ca-central-1 region: ami-0e1a9498537799d77 ap-east-1 region: ami-0f946da19f79ace77 ap-southeast-1 region: ami-09080b7b686213e52 ap-southeast-2 region: ami-0ca96c25f1ab45e19 eu-central-1 region: ami-04362b308dedebe83 us-east-1 region: ami-07ce6d0ad55d93d8a us-east-2 region: ami-0367f7addcbc6a4f3 us-west-1 region: ami-0d5a5ef688e8d1dbd us-west-2 region: ami-02cfa06ec6b5efd78
=== Vagrant Images ===
FreeBSD/amd64 images are available on the Hashicorp Atlas site, and can be installed by running:
% vagrant init freebsd/FreeBSD-12.2-RC1 % vagrant up
=== Upgrading ===
The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of amd64 and i386 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases. Systems running earlier FreeBSD releases can upgrade as follows:
# freebsd-update upgrade -r 12.2-RC1
During this process, freebsd-update(8) may ask the user to help by merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically performed merging was done correctly.
# freebsd-update install
The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.
# shutdown -r now
After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new userland components:
# freebsd-update install
It is recommended to rebuild and install all applications if possible, especially if upgrading from an earlier FreeBSD release, for example, FreeBSD 11.x. Alternatively, the user can install misc/compat11x and other compatibility libraries, afterwards the system must be rebooted into the new userland:
# shutdown -r now
Finally, after rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to remove stale files:
# freebsd-update install
3 October: The first RC build for the FreeBSD 12.2 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, armv6, armv7, arm64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, powerpcspe, and sparc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.
What would you like to see happen within PCLOS that would make it a better place? What are your feelings?
A better place? I do not know, but this is what I like about PCLOS: It gives us access to state of the art software like the Gimp for photo editing, R for computations, Texlive for writing reports, Firefox and Thunderbird for staying connected, LibreOffice for occasional writing and drawing, Shotwell for organizing our photos, Skype for seeing the family and lots more. It has a forum that is nice to visit with helpful people from all over the world.
And when doubting whether mankind is able to solve its problems in a peaceful way, I can always think of all the people that built this environment and keep it up! Thanks to all!
Here's something that I bet many people don't know about me. I love doing woodworking. Oh, trust me. I'm no "master carpenter" like our forum buddy sam2fish. But, I still love working with wood. But between working my regular job, the magazine, wrangling two young children and taking care of other things that come up, I haven't had a lot of time to scratch my woodworking itch in quite some time.
No, don't get me wrong. That itch is still present. I've not really had any extra time to work on scratching that itch. But that itch is becoming more prominent.
When I first moved into my house, I built my own mailbox. I wanted it big enough so that any magazines I receive in the mail didn't have to be "rolled up" just to fit in the mailbox. It opens up sort of like a night deposit box, a box within a boxed frame that opens by tilting out the inner box at the top, where the top of the inner box is open for the placement of mail. I even built the handle for the mailbox, routing it out of a piece of wood with places for your finger tips. It's stained and finished, and looks as good today as the day I made it.
“Companies in industries as diverse as finance, sports, health care, retail, oil and gas, and pharma are engaging in a wave of blockchain experiments,” write Gartner analysts David Furlonger and Christophe Uzureau in their recently published book The Real Business of Blockchain. “Many see it as the solution for bringing trust and transparency to digital environments.” Blockchain has indeed been capturing the imagination of business. According to a Gartner Research Forecast, the business value-add of blockchain is expected to exceed $3 trillion by 2030, over half that amount by 2025. But, in plain English, what does this all mean?
“It means you can theoretically do business with an unknown partner located anywhere on the planet and trade any asset at any transaction size and not need a lawyer, a bank, an insurance company, or any other intermediary making sure both of you follow through on what you’ve promised to do,” write the book’s authors. “Such a solution vastly expands the range of assets that a business could trade. The arrangement also greatly increases who or what a business could directly trade with, without needing a third party (which would take a piece of the value).”
[...]
Sometime after 2025, blockchain networks will start embracing a number of advanced, complementary technologies, especially AI, IoT, and identity solutions. Blockchains will then be able to handle a much greater number of small transactions and microtransactions supported by smart contracts with no need for human intervention. Such blockchains will help create new markets by expanding the types of assets that can monetized and exchanged as digital tokens. In addition, decentralized identity solutions will allow participants in an enhanced blockchain network to secure their personal data in a digital wallet and share it according to pre-established rules.
“As new forms of value come online with enhanced blockchain solutions, businesses will likewise innovate new business models using decentralized operational structures. Organizations will be technically able to delegate economic decision making to ‘things,’ which would act autonomously and according to the terms defined in a smart contract that runs on the blockchain. These enhanced things could remove humans from the transaction and eventually move blockchain networks toward completely autonomous transactions and ultimately the establishment of decentralized autonomous organizations.”
This past month was a great one for all of us here at Enable Sysadmin. We blasted past our viewership record and our unique visitors record while receiving over 370k views from 40 published articles. We covered a huge number of topics from a diverse cast of sysadmin professionals, and we're certain that there's something here for every tech enthusiast.
You’ve heard stories, but if you’re lucky, you’ve never experienced it. The bug is below you. It’s above you. It’s in the walls. It’s listening to us right now.
Troubleshooting and debugging are time-honored traditions of the methodical and systematic elimination of possibilities. But what happens if you cannot rule out a portion of the stack because your team does not have deep knowledge of it? Or worse yet, what if one of the layers of your stack is closed source software?
What if, horror of horrors, your stack is entirely open source and the bug is down in one of those layers? In Kubernetes? In Linux? Can your teams even begin to comprehend tracking down that type of bug? Can they even eliminate it as a possibility without reading hundreds of pages of code and documentation?
I was assigned 16 hours of work by Freexian's Debian LTS initiative and carried over 9.75 hours from August. I only worked 8.25 hours this month, and will return the remaining hours to the pool.
I attended and participated in the LTS team meeting on the 24th.
The beta of Groovy Gorilla (to become 20.10) has now been released, and is available for download.
This milestone features images for Kubuntu and other Ubuntu flavours.
Pre-releases of the Groovy Gorilla are not recommended for...
Aaeon is prepping several boards based on Intel 11th Gen and Atom x6000E chips including “UP Xtreme i11” and “UP Squared Pro 2” SBCs. Meanwhile, Congatec unveiled two Tiger Lake COM models with the new embedded “GRE” parts.
The recent flurry of product introductions based on Intel’s 10nm fabricated 11th Gen Tiger Lake Core and and Elkhart Lake Atom-6000E processors included some news from Aaeon and Congatec. Aaeon announced several Tiger Lake and Elkhart Lake products but with few details. Congatec revealed new models in its previously announced, 11th Gen Conga-TC570 and Conga-HPC/cTLU modules that make use of newly announced embedded Tiger Lake models (see farther below).
We’ve been covering some 802.11ax WiFI 6 embedded networking boards from Wallys Communications and Compex in the last few months, but 8devices has now entered the fray with Qualcomm IPQ6000/IPQ6010 powered Mango WiFi 6 system-in-module available in commercial or industrial temperature range, as well as as a development kit based on the module.
Mango SoM supports dual-band 2Ãâ2 MiMo 802.11ax and multi-Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, features up to 2GB RAM, 256MB NAND flash, and runs OpenWrt Linux with target applications including routers, gateways, and access points.
While deciding to build chat or a messenger application the developer often look for different options, at the end it's all about the requirements.
There are many commercial services and development tools to build chat/ messaging applications with different features set. However, it's difficult to find open-source and free options.
In this article we will explore open-source options that aid developers to build real-time chat apps.
Why would you choose an open-source tool for building a messaging app?
As a member of the team responsible for keeping ProPublica’s website online, there were times when I wished our site were static. Static sites have a simpler configuration with fewer moving parts between the requester and the requested webpage. All else being equal, a static site can handle more traffic than a dynamic one, and it is more stable and performant. However, there is a reason most sites today, including ProPublica’s, are dynamically generated.
In dynamic sites, the structure of a webpage — which includes items such as titles, bylines, article bodies, etc. — is abstracted into a template, and the specific data for each page is stored in a database. When requested by a web browser or other end client, a server-side language can then dynamically generate many different webpages with the same structure but different content. This is how frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Django, as well as content management systems like WordPress, work.
A string in C language is an array of characters that is terminated with a null character (\0). The string length is the number of characters in a string. In the string length ‘\0,’ a character is not counted.
A new version of our pinp package arrived on CRAN two days ago, roughly one year after the previous release. The pinp package allows for snazzier one or two column Markdown-based pdf vignettes, and is now used by a few packages. A screenshot of the package vignette can be seen below. Additional screenshots are at the pinp page.
The first release candidate of TVM 0.7, the Apache incubator project providing a deep learning compiler stack, is now available.
Apache TVM is a compiler stack for deep learning systems in providing end-to-end compilation support for a variety of back-ends from all of the models from key deep learning frameworks. TVM supports a variety of targets including the leveraging of LLVM for supporting code generation on the major CPU architectures as well as the likes of NVIDIA CUDA. With the Apache 0.7 release candidate there is even WebGPU and WebAssembly support for outputting to those browser-focused standards.
Recently I've been writing a couple of simple compilers, which take input in a particular format and generate assembly language output. This output can then be piped through gcc to generate a native executable.
Public examples include this trivial math compiler and my brainfuck compiler.
Of course there's always the nagging thought that relying upon gcc (or nasm) is a bit of a cheat. So I wondered how hard is it to write an assembler? Something that would take assembly-language program and generate a native (ELF) binary?
And the answer is "It isn't hard, it is just tedious".
Tau Station is the world's first Biblio-RPG. It's a massive, immersive, narrative sci-fi MMO. Missions in most games are things like "kill five rabid dogs and get a dagger." BORING. Our missions are rich, immersive, short stories where you control the outcome.
It's 400,000 plus lines of Perl, with a PostgreSQL backend.
Python is a powerful, efficient, and modern high-level programming language. When developing software systems, it is necessary to use numerical and arithmetic operations for performing calculations. Python provides a variety of numbers and arithmetic operations for this purpose. In this article, we will teach you about Python numbers, conversion of one data type into another data type, and arithmetic operations. The Spyder3 editor is used to create and run the Python script.
For the next part of my blog series on pulling apart Python's syntactic sugar, I'm going to be tackling rich comparison operators: ==, !=, >, <, >=, <=.
I just added some code to the surveil app, the beginnings of what will be a reporting feature.
[...]
I found that the surveil app uses quite a bit of bandwidth when sending video, on the mobile network anyway, so I added an option to just store the videos locally a while ago.
That works, but then the surveillance app can stop making videos for whatever reason and nobody's the wiser.
So I figured it would be nice with a daily report of the videos created, so that it is possible to keep an eye on things, even if videos aren't mailed.
A few years back I posted about how to implement state machines that only permit valid transitions at compile time in Java.
This used interfaces instead of enums, which had a big drawback—you couldn’t guarantee that you know all the states involved. Someone could add another state elsewhere in your codebase by implementing the interface.
Java 15 brings a preview feature of sealed classes. Sealed classes enable us to solve this downside. Now our interface based state machines can not only prevent invalid transitions but also be enumerable like enums.
POSIX has been the standard file system interface for Unix-based systems (which includes Linux) since its launch more than 30 years ago. Its usefulness in processing data in the user address space, or memory, has given POSIX-compliant file systems and storage a commanding presence in applications like deep learning that require significant data processing. The POSIX-compliant Lustre file system, for example, powers most supercomputers, and POSIX's dominance continues down market too.
POSIX has its limits, though and features like statefulness, prescriptive metadata, and strong consistency become a performance bottleneck as I/O requests multiply and data scales, limiting the scalability of POSIX-compliant systems. That's often an issue in deep learning, AI and other data-intensive uses now, but as data and the need to analyze it grow exponentially, the problem has, over time, moved down market.
Enter object storage. Unlike a file system, object storage requires no hierarchical data structure. It's a flat pool of data, with each piece of data defined by its meta data. It has no scalability limits, making it ideal for high-end storage and applications, but it has one performance limitation that POSIX doesn't have: data requests have to go through the POSIX file system stack. POSIX gets around that problem with the mmap() function, which makes the user space an intermediary between the operating system and storage.
"POSIX has been the standard file system interface for Unix-based systems (which includes Linux) since its launch more than 30 years ago," writes Enterprise Storage Forum, noting the POSIX-compliant Lustre file system "powers most supercomputers."
One of life’s mysteries is how two brothers, from the same mother and father, can be so different. One of the most notorious examples is that of King Midas. He is remembered in Greek mythology for turning everything he touched into gold. It is known as the Midas touch. His brother, whom we’ll call Donsonius, given the scant references about him, was totally different. Everything he touched was turned into filth.
Should you ever find yourself surrounded by flames a hundred feet high, surely you will find yourself. I was brewing an untenable third cup of coffee when two firefighters clad in Nomex brush-gear pulled up outside the kitchen window in a golf cart. I went out and wished them a good morning. According to them it was not a good morning. A fire was on its way: evacuation level two, poised to go to three.
At last!€ Good news!
[...]
The good news is not in what they did or what they are: the good news is that by their clownish, degraded Lucha Libre hog-rassle they have exposed openly, indisputably, the obscene charade our political system has evolved into: a stark horror that craftier, more elegant behavior and smoother, more amiable burlesques, have kept hidden from the American people for generations. Forever!
We are a blinded, despised, bamboozled people. To keep us so is the purpose and intent of the system that rules us. From its beginnings, America was a Capitalist racket run on manipulation and exploitation of its people. From Shea’s Rebellion to Citizens United it has jammed one vicious, rank perversion of justice after another down our throats. Lincoln knew better—as his letters reveal—than to laud a government of, by, and for the people.
The job of Presidents, Congress, and the nomenklatura of the Deep State has been to keep the great mass of Americans completely oblivious to the Capitalist Tyranny that owns them. Our “leaders” are trained to present a wholesome, ideal image of the nation, using the deep hunger of the ignorant and powerless to identify with a heroic, victorious force to bind their loyalty in the brazen face of their endless betrayal, feeding them poison exceptionalism instead of the nurture proper to a civilized state.
A spokesperson for the French government said Trump's diagnosis "demonstrates that the virus spares no one, including those who have shown skepticism."
Drugs would function as real social service items, not huge profit-producing goods for a tiny group of oligarchs.
"Now is not the time to be euphemistic about Trump's recklessness. His disregard for basic health protocols has been bad not just for himself and his staff, but also for countless Americans."
The Introduction to Linux training course on edX.org, currently in its sixth edition, has surpassed a milestone of one million enrollments, according to The Linux Foundation.
This 14-week, introductory course helps students develop a working knowledge of Linux using both the graphical interface and command line across the major Linux distribution families.
It seems like this whole issue revolving around secure passwords just keeps coming up over and over and over, year after year after year. And, it's probably for a good reason: people just aren't getting the message. If they are, they aren't changing their habits and behaviors.
I get it, and I bet a lot of you "get it," too. It's difficult to remember a unique, complex password for each site. This leads to password reuse between sites, even though everyone knows such behavior is bad and a poor security practice.
So, just how difficult is it for a hacker to break your password using brute force? Well, that was exactly the topic of a Reddit thread recently. The graphic posted in the thread pretty much speaks for itself.
It's true that Windows machines are a preferred target for mass malware attacks, but advanced persistent threats (APTs) are more of a threat to Linux, since the threat actor is usually either a nation state or state-sponsored group who establishes a long term presence on a network to wreak havoc. According to Kaspersky, there are over a dozen APT actors who have been seen using Linux malware or some Linux based modules.
The list of Americans killed by the police this year continues to increase with no end in sight. Many are familiar with the sad stories involving Breonna Taylor, Tyree Davis, Daniel Prude, Rayshard Brooks, Sean Monterrosa and Michael Forest Reinoehl. As of Sept 6, 2020, the police had killed 781 people; Wikipedia offers detailed profiles of many of these killings.
If you’re wondering what the hell is going on right now – the “Why is the world turning to shit?” thought – you may find Netflix’s new documentary The Social Dilemma a good starting point for clarifying your thinking. I say “starting point” because, as we shall see, the film suffers from two major limitations: one in its analysis and the other in its conclusion. Nonetheless, the film is good at exploring the contours of the major social crises we currently face – epitomised both by our addiction to the mobile phone and by its ability to rewire our consciousness and our personalities.
Michael Mann, one of the world’s most eminent climate experts, says Earth’s future 'is in the hands of American citizens.'
Following passage of the House bill, one advocate said "it is past time for Senate Republicans to move to help the American people instead of focusing on trying to ram through the confirmation of another Supreme Court Justice."
Nikola Motor Company, to put it mildly, is having itself a bad month. First came the bombshell reports from a hedge fund that founder Trevor Milton lied in 2016 when he told the world that the company had a fully functional Nikola 1 electric semi truck. Worse than that, it was revealed that a promotional video in 2018 showing the truck rolling down a lonely highway, was actually showing a Nikola 1 rolling down a hill, since the truck couldn't actually move under its own power. Milton resigned after those reports, but the hits kept coming. Two women have come forward claiming that Milton inappropriately groped them when each was fifteen, with one of those women being his cousin. For the record, Milton has denied both allegations.
Donald Trump has been laying waste to our Constitution, our democracy, and our very society.
State Democratic lawmakers called the situation "a national emergency" and said Republican efforts are a "dangerous threat to democracy."
This essay is part of a periodic series on the 2020 presidential election. Some earlier pieces can be found here.
As a metaphor for American electoral politics, the taste test used by marketers of food products is a master stroke of misdirection. In a taste test, ‘food’ is reduced to a matter of taste— versus digestion, metabolism, nutritional content, conditions of production and aesthetic appeal, for purposes of comparison. The products being compared are chosen to affect a predetermined outcome— they aren’t the result of honest inquiry. Finally, majority opinion— a social artifact, is used to place dissenters in a minority position. Choosing a losing product calls one’s judgment into question.
Notwithstanding his gift for self-deception, even Donald Trump knows that he would now lose anything like a free and fair election. He would lose the popular vote more soundly than four years ago, and he would lose in the Electoral College as well.
Fascism is unique among political systems in that it treats society as a diseased body that needs to be purified. Certainly, the political left thinks that society is in need of reform, often to the point of advocating revolution, but the distinguishing feature of fascism, especially of the Nazi variety, is its organic imagery—the idea that the body politic is not just flawed but€ diseased.€ Where the left proposes political and economic solutions to social problems, Nazis propose a€ cure€ of the diseased body politic. Unlike a disease of the physical body, which can be treated with biomedical procedures, fascism’s remedy is the removal of foreign bodies and the collective spilling of blood. Sociologist Klaus Theleweit has explored this body imagery in narratives produced by members of the Freikorps (paramilitaries who inspired the Nazis), while a key premise of Nazi ideology was the organic metaphor of€ Blud und Boden€ (Blood and Soil), both of which needed to be purified before Germany could become great again.
A great deal far out of the norm has already happened in Donald J. Trump’s presidency. Norms seem to be in his view, weak spots, vulnerable points of attack, often surprise attacks because some norms have been taken as staunch realities for so long. That’s a serviceable definition of a norm: a way of behaving and thinking that long has had residency in the order of things.
By ignoring demands to release incarcerated people during the pandemic, prison administrators and elected officials relegate them to mass death under the fatal logic of public safety.
In this watercolor by James Hough—who was imprisoned for twenty-seven years—the lifeless body of a black man fuels the prison economy in which incarcerated people are paid a pittance to produce boxers that are then sold back to them. The Big House Products label is attached to all the commodities they produce. Hough created the work while incarcerated in Pennsylvania to critique the extractive practices of prisons: the removal of people from their communities, the warehousing and exploitation of their labor, and the diminishing of their lives.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Hough and others are advocating for people to be released from facilities without social distancing, protective equipment, routine handwashing, and adequate healthcare. By ignoring these demands, prison administrators and elected officials relegate people to mass death under the fatal logic of public safety.
In Ohio, one of the first states where cases were reported, Governor Mike DeWine ordered that the entire state prison population be tested. After over 80 percent tested positive in two prisons, Ohio abruptly stopped mass testing—because accounting for the number of cases would force officials to acknowledge the system’s investment in the disposability of human life, laying bare larger truths about America’s economy. Those most susceptible to the violence of carceral capitalism—frontline workers, undocumented laborers, people held in prison cells—get sick and receive little or no care. Like the body in Hough’s painting, their labor produces goods and fuels economies, while their lives and deaths are unaccounted for.
We've pointed out just how ridiculous it is that Congress seems wholly focused on destroying the open internet by gutting the Section 230 protections that enable the open internet to exist in its present form. We're in the midst of a variety of pretty major issues, and yet Congress is introducing new anti-internet and anti-tech bills like it's last call before the bar shuts down.
42 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever. Another 83 million American consumers can only get access to broadband from one ISP, usually Comcast. Tens of millions more are stuck under a broadband duopoly, usually comprising of Comcast/Spectrum and some apathetic telco that refuses to upgrade or repair its aging DSL lines. Data makes it extremely clear the end result of this lack of competition is some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world, and some of the worst customer service of any industry in America.
Epic Games wants this dispute to be only about what percentage of Fortnite in-app purchasing (IAP) revenues the app developer--Epic--and what complementary (100% minus the former) percentage the platform maker and operator--Apple--will get. Now, they're not actually asking the court to lower Apple's 30% cut, but they say they want to be permitted to offer alternative in-app payment methods and they want alternative iOS app stores to be allowed to compete with Apple's App Store, with the ultimative objective of bringing down that percentage. They furthermore claim that customers will get better service, but that's just because they want to show that consumers are harmed (a key issue in antitrust cases) in the sense of being deprived of certain benefits they could have if only Apple was less heavy-handed.
If, say, Epic served 50% of its customers directly, Apple would get its 30% only on the remaining 50%, resulting in an effective rate of 15%, which would already be pretty close to the 12% Epic is charging developers who offer their products via Epic's PC and Mac app store. In reality, Epic would presumably hope for Apple to simply reduce its 30% under such competitive pressure, thereby reducing or entirely eliminating any incentives for developers like Epic to deal with payment processing themselves.
The risk-opportunity picture would be quite appealing to Epic if the best case was a (potentially drastic) reduction of Apple's 30%, and the worst case would just be for Epic having to pay Apple what it owes under the current Apple developer contracts anyway, plus legal fees on top, which will quickly be in the tens of millions in this case, but that's just a rounding error on the balance sheet of the multi-billion-dollar business that is Epic.
