Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 17/03/2023: CentOS Newsletter and News About 'Mr. UNIX' Ken Thompson Hopping on GNU/Linux



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • HowTo GeekThe System76 Meerkat Is a Tiny PC Built for Linux

        System76 is one of the few PC manufacturers with a focus on excellent Linux support, with a wide range of desktops and laptops. Now the company has brought back the “Meerkat,” a compact PC built for Linux.

        System76 first introduced the Meerkat in 2009, which was advertised as a “NetTop” (remember those?), and has gone in and out of production over the years with occasional hardware upgrades. The tiny PC is once again available for purchase, this time with your choice of 10th, 11th, or 12th Gen Intel Core processors. There are two sizes: a “short” model (1.42 inches tall) with only one M.2 drive slot, and the “tall” version (2 inches tall) adds a 2.5-inch drive bay for extra storage capacity. Both versions are 4.6 x 4.41 inches across.

    • Applications

      • Linux LinksExcellent Utilities: nvitop – GPU process management

        This utility is automatically installed with the NVIDIA drivers and lets users query and modify the GPU device state. While it’s probably the most well known NVIDIA monitoring tool, there are many other (and superior) tools available.

        nvitop is an interactive NVIDIA device and process monitoring tool and bills itself as “the one-stop solution for GPU process management”. Like nvidia-smi, nvitop is built on top of NVML, but the tool offers a lot more functionality. It’s free and open source software written in Python.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Leftovers

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • 2023-03-17 🔤SpellBinding: UFGHINC Wordo: CRORE
      • Playing cards with indicators along one edge

        Minimalists want indicators along as few corners as possible (if any… grumble grumble).

        Lefties want indicators in opposite corners so they can fan the cards in the opposite direction.

      • odd little film

        I was trying to find something worth watching on my neglected Tubi account and after some awful false starts (tip: much of Bryan Cranston's early work is best missed, though it's not his fault) I found a budget production called "Big Dark Energy" and was drawn in by the soundtrack (sounds like throat-singing in parts).

      • (privileged) work gripes

        I've been growing a little more unsatisfied with my work lately. I've been working there for nearly 2 years now, and generally, it is a comfortable job. Office job, home office 3x a week, lots of union protections and rights, flextime, nice coworkers, fair pay. I can call in sick for 3 days without a doctors note and only need one at the 4th. I get 30 days PTO a year and can take some over from the previous year, and we have no limited sick days. I have my own solo office - with walls, we do not have large offices with cubicles. We even have a sensible mission that I stand behind and my work actually leaves somewhat of a mark and ensures the safety of society in a specific way. I contribute my part to that. The work I get, what I actually get to see and handle, is very interesting to me. I enjoy seeing and reading it, and managing it.

      • Life's Not Too Bad

        Since late last year life's been going pretty well. Things that used to weigh heavily on my mind are no longer so burdensome. I've reclaimed my 'live in the moment' attitude and energy. I'm currently neck-deep in trying to start my career (again), and I'm uncharacteristically optimistic about how things will go over the next couple of months.

        I read this interesting article in Neuroscience News that talked about how our perception of time is directly linked to our heartbeat. I thought it was fascinating and that it totally tracks with my own lived experience.

        When I look back at times of stress and anxiety in my life, my perception of time was all over the place. Between feeling like I didn't have enough time to accomplish what I needed to accomplish while also feeling like every day was a slog, it makes sense that my skewed sense of time could be linked to an erratic heart rate.

    • Technical

      • Would You Like an OpenTTD Save Game?

        This game really deserves more players. It's absolutely amazing. OpenTTD owns my heart and soul nowadays.

        I've come to understand that most new players struggle to make a profit, and I assume some give up out of frustration and quit early on. When I started some 6-7 months ago I made a loss in my first game, but then read up a bit on how it works. I'm getting pretty good at it now.

        The least thrilling part of the game is that time between starting a new game and getting the finances going at a level where you can't feasibly spend money as fast as it's rolling in. I have no idea what the common length of that time is, but when starting in 1950 I usually make between $600k-$1000k in the year 1953. By 1955 I'm guaranteed to make more than a million per year.

      • Forced Obsolescence Hurts Security

        Project Zero at Google has reported a number of exceptionally severe vulnerabilities in Samsung's modem stack, allowing remote code execution with no information other than a victim's phone number.

      • Setting up GNU Emacs for Speedata Publisher

        If you follow my "Pebcak's diary" you already knew that I am trying to learn these high-level TeX implementations, such as ConTeXt and Speedata Publisher.

        The latter is especially challenging since works exclusively with "XML Schema" and I found very few native opensource editors able to work with this XML variation.

      • The Grand Code Restructuring

        In general I don't like to fuss over code, but this is exactly what I've been doing in preparation of the NLnet funded work. I've spent the last month restructuring Marginalia's code base. It's not completely done, but I've made great headway.

        Things got the way they got because in general for experimental solo-development projects, I think it makes sense to be fairly tolerant of technical debt.

        Since refactoring is something that is extremely difficult to break up into parallel tracks or do in small iterations, the cost of refactoring is effectively multiplied by the number of people that could be working on the code.

        It's a bit like Amdahl's Law applied to project management. When leaning into this, it allows smaller solo projects to be be extremely nimble compared to larger projects. Refactoring is very cheap when you're working alone because there is no resource contention. This may seem a weird notion if you're coming from working mostly on large projects where any technical debt is nearly irreversible, but that's mostly a problem of large scale software development.

      • Programming

        • Rainy

          I found a CodePen the other day that showed a method for a rain effect on a web page. I like it a lot, so I’ve modified it to work without a pre-processor, and included instructions for how to add it to a Midnight page (or any other, for that matter). There are, of course, plenty of other ways to play with it. I’ve tried to make it as simple as possible to customize the basics, but going beyond that will require at least some knowledge of JavaScript and/or CSS.

        • Man. We _really_ don't know git.

          I read through this and couldn't help but just shrug and say, "same." My college education never mentioned git. Ever. I wound up in some advanced classes early on, and wound up doing some actual programming with open-ended results (not workshop "program this thing the instructor said to do" kind of drivel). I was working with classmates older both in terms of their progress toward degrees and in chronological age.

          **Nobody else knew how git worked.** And the only reason I did is having fallen down the Linux rabbit hole years prior to that, and wound up picking up some _very_ basic (read: I didn't even branch things properly or grasp what atomic commits were and how awesome they are) skills with source control in general.


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



Recent Techrights' Posts

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Turkey (Eurasia) is another example of Microsoft failing with LLM hype and just burning a lot of energy in vain (investment without returns)
Backlash and Negative Press After Microsoft Tells Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) People to DIE
Follow-up stories
Censorship as Signal of Opportunity for Reform
It remains sad and ironic that Wikileaks outsourced so much of its official communications to Twitter (now X)
The World Wide Web Has Been Rotting for Years (Quality, Accuracy, and Depth Consistently Decreasing)
In the past people said that the Web had both "good" and "bad" and that the good outweighed the bad
Comoros: Windows Plunges to Record Low of About 6% in Country of a Million People (in 2010 Windows Was 100%)
Many of these people earn a few dollars a day; they don't care for Microsoft's "Hey Hi PC" hype
The Mail (MX) Server Survey for July 2024 Shows Microsoft Collapsing to Only 689 Servers or 0.17% of the Whole (It Used to be About 25%)
Microsoft became so insignificant and the most astounding thing is how the media deliberate ignores it or refuses to cover it
Windows Down From 98.5% to 22.9% in Hungary
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Notice that not too long ago Windows was measured at 100%. Now? Not even 15%.
Microsoft Windows "Market Share" in New Zealand Plunges to 25%
Android rising
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Worse than grammar Nazis
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Let's Encrypt is somewhat of a dying breed where the misguided CA model is shunned
 
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They expect volunteers (unpaid slaves) to do the PR for them...
African's Largest Population (Nigeria) Approaching 80% Android "Market Share" Amid Steady Monthly Increases While Microsoft Has Mass Layoffs in Nigeria
Microsoft- and Apple-sponsored Western (or English-speaking) media chooses to ignore that or treat it as irrelevant (a racist disposition in its own right)
[Meme] The Warlord's Catspaw
Thugs that troll us
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Microsoft's undoing may in fact be its attitude towards women
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In some ways this reminds us of Novell
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Let's Encrypt has just fallen again
Links 17/07/2024: New Attacks on the Press, European Patents Squashed Even at Kangaroo Court (UPC)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/07/2024: Proponents of Censorship and New Arrivals at Gemini
Links for the day
Links 17/07/2024: School Budget Meltdown and Modern Cars as Tracking Nightmares
Links for the day
This Should Certainly be Illegal, But the Person Who Helped Microsoft Do This is Still Attacking the Critics of It
perhaps time for an "I told you so post"
[Meme] A Computer With an Extra Key on the Keyboard Isn't Everyone's Priority
(so your telling me meme)
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Billions of Computers Run Linux and Many Use Debian (or a Derivative of It)
many devices never get updated or even communicate with the Net, so exhaustive tallies are infeasible
[Meme] Microsoft is Firing
Don't worry, Microsoft will have some new vapourware coming soon
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What happened shortly before Independence Day wasn't the end of it, apparently
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Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC logs for Tuesday, July 16, 2024
[Meme] Ein Factory
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Links 17/07/2024: Open Source Initiative Lies and Dark Net Thoughts
Links for the day
Media Distorting Truth to Promote Ignorance
online media is rapidly collapsing
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Links 16/07/2024: TikTok Ban in Europe and Yandex Split
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/07/2024: On Packrafting and on Trump Shot
Links for the day
[Meme] Firefox Users Who Think They Know Better Than Mozilla
Enjoy Firebook
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Mozilla has managed to alienate some of the biggest fans of Firefox
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Microsoft's ability to milk a relatively rich Europe is fast diminishing
How to Make Software Suck and Discriminate Against People at the Same Time
ageism glorified
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The sharp fall of Bing may mean that exiting the Russian market won't matter to anybody
[Meme] Microsoft Seems to be Failing to Comply With WARN Act (by Refusing to Announce Mass Layoffs as They Happen)
since when does Microsoft obey the law anyway?
Microsoft Layoffs Are Still Too Frequent to Keep Abreast of and Properly (or Exhaustively) Classify
The "HR" department knows what's happening, but whistleblowers from there are rare
Bahamas Joined the "5% Windows" Club
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Links 16/07/2024: Salesforce Layoffs and Microsoft's DMARC Fail
Links for the day
Antenna Abuse and Gemini Abuse (Self-hosting Perils)
Perhaps all this junk is a sign of Gemini growing up
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They will keep bailing out Microsoft to bail themselves out
The Software Freedom Conservancy Folks Don't Even Believe in Free Speech and They Act As Imposters (Also in the Trademark Arena/Sense)
Software Freedom Conservancy was already establishing a reputation for itself as a G(I)AFAM censor/gatekeeper
Djibouti Enters the Windows "10% Club" (Windows Was 99% in 2010)
In Africa in general Microsoft lost control
GNU/Linux Share Doubled in the United States of America (USA) in the Past 12 Months
Or so says statCounter
Even in North Korea (Democratic People's Republic Of Korea) Google Said to Dominate, Microsoft Around 1%
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[Meme] The Red Bait (Embrace... Extinguish)
They set centos on fire, then offer a (de facto) proprietary substitute for a fee
Shooting the Messenger to Spite the Message
segment of a Noam Chomsky talk
[Video] Boston Area Assange Defense (Yesterday)
It was published only hours ago
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Guinea is not a small country
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 15, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, July 15, 2024
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Links 16/07/2024: Old Computer Challenge and One Page Dungeon Contest
Links for the day
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Links for the day
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video is not new
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IRC at 16
Logging has been used for us and against us
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statCounter milestone?
Links 15/07/2024: China’s Economic Problems, Boeing Under Fire
Links for the day
500 Days' Uptime Very Soon
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Windows Falls Below 20% in Tunisia
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Links 15/07/2024: Google Wants Wiz and Why "Sports Ruin Everything"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2024: Old Computer Challenge and Sending Files via NNCP
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
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