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Links 10/05/2023: WordPress Turns 20 and GCC 12.3 Released



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • University of Toronto ☛ Curing my home desktop from locking up in the cold (so far)

        I've had a long running mystery where my home desktop would lock up if it got cold, where as time developed it seemed that getting too cold was down not much below 68 F (which is hardly cold, at least for Canadians). Back in December of last year I had the idea of 'replacing' the case front panel with just a stand-alone ATX chassis power switch. I hesitated for a bit, but the situation was getting more irritating this past winter and stand-alone ATX chassis power switches are not expensive items. Finally at one point I carried through with this plan (possibly when I had to open up the case after forgetting a critical step in software disk shuffling). Somewhat to my surprise, this relatively simple change seems to have fixed all of the problems.

      • Jake Bauer ☛ Computers as Workspaces

        As Gauer mentions, this idea might seem a bit extravagant and wasteful, considering that there are many who can hardly afford one computer, let alone several. He mentions that relatively powerful computers are quite inexpensive these days, especially on the second-hand market, but I’d also like to add that a separate physical computer might not even be necessary. If you are strapped for cash or simply don’t want another thing in your life, a separate user account with a different set of programs installed and a different look and feel on the same physical computer might also work.

      • DebugPoint ☛ Top 5 Best Linux Distributions for Laptops [2023 Edition]

        Over the past few years, the mainstream Linux distributions significantly improved all its components, making it a compelling choice for new or old laptops. Thanks to their customizability, low resource requirements, and vast community support, they have become a go-to choice for many laptop users.

        However, with so many Linux distributions available, choosing the right one can be daunting. In this article, we will explore the top Linux distributions optimized for laptops.

    • Server

      • LinuxSecurity ☛ Why Cloud Linux Is Beneficial for E-Commerce Stores

        Cloud-based Linux solutions offer the inherent security and stability of Linux, along with the well-known flexibility of cloud computing. This article will explore why using Linux in the cloud is beneficial for e-commerce stores, along with some potential challenges you may encounter, to equip you with the knowledge you need to make an informed decision.

      • Netcraft ☛ Netcraft among the UK's 100 fastest growing technology companies

        According to a list compiled by E2E and published in partnership with the Independent newspaper, Netcraft is amongst the 100 fastest growing technology companies in the UK.

        The E2E Tech 100 showcases companies that are excelling, experiencing consistent growth, and creating an impact not just in their own sector, but also on a nationwide or global scale.

        Netcraft appear in the Tech 100 table, based on independent research and data analysis by Experian.

    • Benchmarks

      • Maira Canal: Rotating Planes on VKMS

        In my last blog post, I described a bit of my previous work on the rustgem project, and after that, as I had finished the VGEM features, I sent a RFC to the mailing list. Although I still need to work on some rustgem feedback, I started to explore more of the KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) and its properties.

        I talked to my mentor Melissa Wen, one of the VKMS maintainers, and she proposed implementing plane rotation capabilities to VKMS. The VKMS (Virtual Kernel Mode Setting) is a software-only KMS driver that is quite useful for testing and running X (or similar compositors) on headless machines. It sounded like a great idea, as I would like to explore a bit more of the KMS side of things.

        What is Plane Rotation?

        In order to have an image on a display, we need to go through the whole Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) Display Pipeline. The pipeline has a couple of different objects, such as framebuffers, planes, and CRTCs, and the relationship between them can be quite complicated. If you are interested in the KMS Display Pipeline, I recommend reading the great KMS documentation. But here we are focused in only one of those abstractions, the plane.

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install PostgreSQL on Fedora 38

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PostgreSQL on Fedora 38. Are you looking for a powerful open-source relational database management system that can handle large amounts of data with ease? Look no further than PostgreSQL!

      • Own HowTo ☛ Bash script to read user's input

        In this tutorial, you will learn how to read the users input on bash script and then do something with the input.

        To read users input in bash we need to use the read command as shown in the example below

        In this script we are using echo command to

      • [Old] Fiatjaf ☛ How IPFS is broken

        If you have run an IPFS client you’ll notice how much it clogs your computer. Or maybe you don’t, if you are very rich and have a really powerful computer, but still, it’s not something suitable to be run on the entire world, and on web pages, and servers, and mobile devices. I imagine there may be a lot of unoptimized code and technical debt responsible for these and other problems, but the DHT is certainly the biggest part of it. IPFS can open up to 1000 connections by default and suck up all your bandwidth – and that’s just for exchanging keys with other DHT peers.

        Even if you’re in the “client” mode and limit your connections you’ll still get overwhelmed by connections that do stuff I don’t understand – and it makes no sense to run an IPFS node as a client, that defeats the entire purpose of making every person host files they have and content-addressability in general, centralizes the network and brings back the dichotomy client/server that IPFS was created to replace.

      • TuMFatig ☛ Self-Hosted Bookmarks using DAV and httpd on OpenBSD

        I’ve long time used NextCloud and the floccus iOS App and Firefox plugin to store, manage and use my bookmarks. In reality, I don’t use the NC interface. I only use floccus ; and it works really well.

        In my journey to quit NextCloud, the only acceptable option to keep using floccus was getting a DAV self-hosted share. But, AFAIK, httpd(8) does not provide a DAV feature (yet?).

        I already use Baikal to self-host my calendars and addressbooks and it’s working great. So here’s a quick’n’dirty way to provide DAV using OpenBSD’s httpd(8) and sabre/dav.

      • WikiMedia ☛ Around the world: How Wikipedia became a multi-datacenter deployment

        Our in-house Content Delivery Network (CDN) is deployed in multiple geographic locations. This lowers response time by reducing the distance that data must travel, through (inter)national cables and other networking infrastructure from your ISP and Internet backbones. Each caching data center that makes up our CDN, contains cache servers that remember previous responses to speed up delivery. Requests that have no matching cache entry yet, must be forwarded to a backend server in the application data center.

        If these backend servers are also deployed in multiple geographies, we lower the latency for requests that are missing from the cache, or that are uncachable. Operating multiple application data centers also reduces organizational risk from catastrophic damage or connectivity loss to a single data center. To achieve this redundancy, each application data center must contain all hardware, databases, and services required to handle the full worldwide volume of our backend traffic.

      • Cap5 B V ☛ SSH quick and easy login setup

        If you have the need for more complex SSH configuration settings it would be better to put those in your .ssh/config . This keeps your alias list clean and readable. You can simply move (part of) those parameters to said file.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Content Management Systems (CMS)

      • WordPress ☛ WP Briefing: Episode 55: Happy Anniversary, WordPress!

        Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 55th episode of the WordPress Briefing as she looks back at the 20 years of WordPress and how the open source community made WordPress what it is today.

    • GNU Projects

      • GCC ☛ GCC 12.3 Released
        The GNU Compiler Collection version 12.3 has been released.
        
        

        GCC 12.3 is the first bug-fix release from the GCC 12 branch containing important fixes for regressions and serious bugs in GCC 12.2 with more than 127 bugs fixed since the previous release.

        This release is available from the WWW servers listed here:

        https://sourceware.org/pub/gcc/releases/gcc-12.3.0/ https://gcc.gnu.org/mirrors.html

        Please do not contact me directly regarding questions or comments about this release. Instead, use the resources available from http://gcc.gnu.org.

        As always, a vast number of people contributed to this GCC release -- far too many to thank them individually!
    • Programming/Development

      • Rlang ☛ Pledging My Time VI: scraping and analysis of race results in R

        I’ve posted in the past about analysing race results in R (most recently here). I ran the 2023 MK Marathon and wanted to have a look at the finishing times.

      • Rlang ☛ swephR v0.3.1

        This morning swephR version 0.3.1 made it unto CRAN and is now propagating to the mirrors.
        The goal of swephR is to provide an R interface to the Swiss Ephemeris (SE), a high precision ephemeris based upon the DE431 ephemeris from NASA’s JPL.

      • Rlang ☛ Color vision deficiency emulation fixed in colorspace 2.1-0

        The color vision deficiency emulation provided by R package colorspace was inaccurate for some highly-saturated colors due to a bug that was fixed in version 2.1-0. The (typically small) differences are illustrated for a range of palettes.

      • Qt ☛ New graphics integration in Qt WebEngine 6.6 and even 6.5

        With the 6.5.1 release, there will be one new change our users might notice. Qt WebEngine has previously forced the Qt Quick SceneGraph to use the OpenGL backend on Windows and macOS, even though the Qt defaults were using D3D11 and Metal respectively. With Qt 6.5.1 Qt WebEngine will now run with the Metal and D3D11 default QSG backends.

        This has been a long time coming. Chrome has always preferred using ANGLE on Windows. Where Qt did offer ANGLE in Qt5 but defaulted to WGL (Windows OpenGL), since Qt6 the ANGLE backend has been removed from Qt Gui, and WebEngine required Chromium to run in WGL mode. This has caused many issues, due to buggy Windows OpenGL drivers, and due to not using the same backend as Chrome itself.

      • Cloudbooklet ☛ Mojo: New programming language for AI
        If you're already working with Python and looking to boost your AI projects, Mojo is definitely worth exploring read this article and try Mojo immediately.

      • TecAdmin ☛ Mastering Environment Variables in Java: A Comprehensive Guide

        Environment variables are a fundamental aspect of software development, offering a flexible and powerful way to configure applications. By understanding how to work with environment variables in Java, you can create efficient, scalable, and robust programs.

      • LibreBoot ☛ Experimental Nvidia GPU support on Dell Latitude E6400 variants, plus E6400 XFR support now confirmed

        Dell Latitude E6400 with Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics was added, and included in the recent Libreboot 20230423 release. Today, experimental support is now available for variants with GPU: Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M. The Dell Latitude 6400 XFR (rugged variant) was also tested today (Intel graphics) and confirmed working in Libreboot 20230423.

        The Nvidia variants are not supported in Libreboot 20230423. Support is available in an experimental branch of Libreboot. 6400 XFR testing+photo provided, courtesy Mark Cornick (mcornick on Libreboot IRC).

  • Leftovers

    • RTE ☛ RTÉ Concert Orchestra Explores the History of Soul

      Enjoy soul classics made famous by€ Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles, All Green, Jackie Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, Bessie Smith and more.

    • James G ☛ The Peace Lily

      I mentioned casually in passing that I have houseplants. My peace lily has been troublesome; my other plants have grown and thrived. A friend mentioned in passing that peace lilies can be difficult plants to grow and thrive. The wisdom shared by my friend -- the sort of serendipitious remark that stands out in your mind -- provided me with a semblance of relief. It was not I who was the problem (Taylor Swift's Anti-Hero is now singing softly in my mind), with my forgetfulness interfering with watering schedules.

    • uni Stanford ☛ Rethinking Globalization through the Eyes of Artists: Exploring Economic Relocalization

      Deep Transformation Network – Artists and Creatives Group, hosted by Christina Conklin and Michele Guieu Tuesday, May 16, 2023. 12:00 pm€  to 1:15 pm PST – Online THE LINK TO THE EVENT IS HERE.

    • Helsinki Times ☛ Digital Skills Week encouraging Finns to transition to digital services

      Each and every Finn should know at least how to use e-mail, manage their own affairs in digital services, use passwords and identify themselves in services. This is reflected in the digital skills recommendations published by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. The recommendations have been published as part of the programme of the Digital Skills Week that begins today. The topic of the week is Digital Courage. Digital courage is needed in order to transition to primarily providing digital services.

    • uni Stanford ☛ What’s Next for Earth: Economic Relocalization Exhibition

      Online Exhibition opened March 13, 2023 Featured Artists Jodie Atherton (US), Christina Conklin (US), Alison Lee Cousland (Australia), Yvonne C Espinoza (US), Ries Faison (US), Diane Farris (US), Deborah Kennedy (US), Michele Guieu (US), Rosalind Lowry (Ireland), Peggy Rose (US), Susan Smith (US), Kim Tanzer (US), Marcela Villasenor (US), Karen Viola (US).

    • Savannah Chrisley: I don’t know if ‘I actually want kids’ after parents went to jail

      The 25-year-old “Chrisley Knows Best” star was granted guardianship of her niece and younger brother after her parents reported to prison for tax evasion and bank fraud.

    • YLE ☛ English-language dominance at Aalto University breaches Finnish law, justice office says

      The Deputy Chancellor of Justice noted that only about five percent masters-level economics courses at Aalto University are taught in Finnish.

    • CS Monitor ☛ A scholar who finds the good in ‘bad’ English

      In her book, “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English," Valerie Fridland argues that many maligned verbal tics play useful roles.

    • uni Stanford ☛ ‘Nonanswers’: What are you doing this summer?

      Erin Ye reflects on productivity culture and the importance of taking it easy in this fourth installment of her column "Nonanswers."

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Technical

      • Internet/Gemini

        • Intro to AI

          Classes started up again recently and I'm taking the last university course I'll ever have to take. There's not a ton of offerings during spring/summer, but I saw an intro to AI course was being offered and I figured it would be a fun one to end things on.

          It's pretty chill, even despite the condensed schedule that spring and summer classes at my school take on. I think that's owing to it being a senior-level course (which I find tend to treat students more like adults) and the smallish class size which lets the lectures be very discussion focused. And the fact that it's the only class I have to focus on doesn't hurt at all.

        • Gemini's Killer App

          To perhaps get bogged down in the technical details, I think Gemini owes a lot of this to its thoughtful design. Specifically here by not having allegories for CSS or Javascript. All that's left at that point is the text. There are no design or interactivity knobs to tune to make up for poor writing.

          But I believe it's bigger than that. Gemini's design eschews extensibility, and a lack of styling options or a client-side programming language are just 2 examples of this larger choice.

      • Programming

        • Newcommer - Or, trying to rethink my new life

          I learnt about smolweb circa 2020 and lost all contact with it. Now after a chat with some friends at a Ruby irc, I discovered Gemini and fell in love. After a while I found here. So nice to meet you all :)

        • A new-post script

          Now I'm feeling a little motivated to evict python from this script, because there's some friction in doing this task partly in bash and partly in python.

          Python isn't the greatest scripting language for one-liners, and using the -c switch isn't really useful any more beyond that. So for now this script (1) creates a tempfile, (2) dumps mostly hard-coded python into it (from a bash HEREDOC), (3) executes it, (4) captures the return code, (5) unconditionally removes the tempfile, and (6) exits the script if the return code was unsatisfactory. That's...not great.

        • Programming language learning

          But I haven't written any zig in around 4 months, and never did it daily for any sustained period. So going through ziglings is supposed to refresh my memory and get my skills back up. With recent advancements in the tooling and standard library (in particular package management and TLS) I'm interested in starting to use it for small web applications.

          What I really noticed about going through ziglings is that I'm *flying* through this. I got through 50 in a day, and spent maybe 20 minutes today getting through another 20. That's probably partly because I have some experience here already, but I know that the structure of this project (over 100 tasks) would push me towards prioritizing speed regardless. I barely read the comments (some of them are quite long), and I'm mostly kind of banging on it until the build is green. This is what concerns me.


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



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