03.21.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

Links 20/03/2023: Curl 8.0.0/1 and CloudStack 4.18.0.0 LTS

Posted in News Roundup at 12:38 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  • GNU/Linux

    • Hackaday ☛ Dreamcast Linux: Looking Back At Linux On A SuperH-based Gaming Console

      The Dreamcast is probably best known as the swansong of Sega’s ambitions as a gaming console manufacturer, but perhaps lesser known is the fact that you can run Linux on it. In a deep-dive by [Cameron Kaiser] over at the Old VCR blog, it is demonstrated what it takes to make this feat even work in 2023, and what one can expect from a system with a 200 MHz HItachi SuperH SH-4 CPU, 16 MB of RAM and the luxuries of VGA and network interfaces.

      What’s interesting about Dreamcast Linux is that it was among the first times that Linux got put on a gaming console, even if it wasn’t entirely official or remotely supported by Sega. In fact, the fact that it works at all has its roots firmly in an exploit that was discovered shortly after the Dreamcast’s release. While Dreamcast discs are generally in a format called GD-ROM (Gigabyte Disc), early on it also supported the MIL-CD standard, which was Sega’s ill-fated attempt at creating multimedia CDs with MIL-CDs.

      Not only did MIL-CDs flop in the market, the support form in Dreamcast units also provided a juicy exploit via the firmware that handles detecting and switching between GD-ROM and the much more constrained, audio-only MIL-CD mode. Later Dreamcast models dropped MIL-CD support and will thus also not boot Dreamcast Linux, which is an important gotcha to keep in mind when dragging out a Dreamcast for some Linux action.

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Linux Magazine ☛ MNT Seeks Financial Backing for New Seven-Inch Linux Laptop

        If you’re looking for a tiny laptop that’s barely larger than your smartphone and runs Linux, MNT has just the device for you.

        The MNT Pocket Reform is a full-fledged laptop in a tiny form factor that could serve as your new on-the-go hardware. Sure, it’s tiny and the keyboard is small enough to be problematic for larger hands, but having a Linux laptop in your pocket (granted a larger pocket) has plenty of upsides.

        The MNT Pocket Reform includes an ARM Cortex-A53 CPU at 1.8 GHz, 8 GB of DDR4 RAM, 128 GB eMMC flash memory, an NVMe SSD slot (for up to 2 TB), full disk encryption (via LUKS), Vivante GC7000UL GPU, H.264/H.265 video decoder, Cortext-M7 Realtime core, HiFi4 Audio DSP, a mechanical keyboard with RGB backlighting, a micro-optical trackball, a 7″ full HD+ (1920 x 1200 px) display, Wi-Fi 802.11c, Bluetooth 5.0, MicroSD card slot, and an optional M.2 key B WWAN slot for 4G/5G/LTE.

      • Mind Matters ☛ The Raspberry Pi Phenomenon – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

        For the uninitiated, the Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer that runs the Linux operating system. It can be either operated as a desktop computer or as an embedded system (i.e., a custom electronic device), or both. Historically, computer systems were either general-purpose computers or embedded systems. General-purpose computers required too much hardware, too many chips, and too much power to work inside an electronic device. However, as manufacturers packed more and more functionality into less and less space using less and less power, eventually it became possible to have a computer that was small, cheap, powerful, and not especially power-hungry.

      • Slashdot ☛ System76 Meerkat Mini-Linux PC – Now with Up to Intel Core i7-1260P

        Liliputing.com has an update about the System76 Meerkat, which they describe as “a compact desktop computer with support for up to 64GB of RAM, up to two storage devices (for as much as 16TB of total storage), and up to an Intel Core i7 mobile processor. It’s basically a rebranded Intel NUC.” (Escept that System76 offers a choice of Pop!_OS or Ubuntu Linux pre-installed.)

      • EIN Presswire ☛ The Kubuntu Focus Team Announces the XE Gen 2 Linux Laptop

        The Kubuntu Focus Team announces the second generation of the powerful Focus XE laptop. This ultra-portable and affordable laptop is a great choice for developers, creators, and those who are looking for the best out-of-the-box Linux experience but don’t need the power, complexity, or expense of a dedicated GPU.

        This generation features the i7-1260P CPU, which provides a 16% and 60% boost in single and multi-core Geekbench 5 scores. In real life, this translates into very snappy performance and the ability to handle large, multi-process tasks with speed and ease. Other highlights of this laptop are the numerous high-speed audio and data ports, include Thunderbolt 4, and the capacity to attach multiple 4K displays. Customers can tailor their system with up to 64GB of high-speed 3200Mhz Dual-Channel RAM, up to 2TB of 7,450 MBps NVMe storage, and optional no-cost disk encryption. They are shipping now and the base model starts at $895.

    • Server

      • Apache Blog ☛ Apache CloudStack 4.18.0.0 LTS Release

        The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache® CloudStack® v4.18.

        Apache CloudStack 4.18.0.0 is a 4.18 LTS release with 300+ new features, improvements, and bug fixes since 4.17, including 19 major new features.

      • Silicon Angle ☛ Oracle simplifies Kubernetes deployment and operations in its cloud
        Oracle Corp. today introduced new features in its cloud-based Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes that it says can improve the reliability and efficiency of large-scale environments using the Kubernetes orchestrator for software containers while also simplifying operations and reducing costs.

      • Container Journal ☛ Oracle Adds Virtual Nodes to Managed Kubernetes Service

        Oracle today added a virtual nodes capability to Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes to make it simpler for IT teams to add additional capacity as needed. In addition, Oracle is extending the life cycle management tools it provides for the platform to include the ability to manage third-party add-ons such

      • Container Journal ☛ DevSecOps Use Cases for AI-Assisted Kubernetes [Ed: They're just calling everything, "hey hi" (AI), any sort of "logic" in algorithms. All for hype's sake.]

        As indicated in my blog DevOps Use Cases for AI-Assisted Kubernetes, an AI-assisted Kubernetes orchestrator has a number of different use cases to optimize cloud costs for DevOps, DevSecOps and SRE.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Applications

    • Instructionals/Technical

      • How to Install and Use NPX in Linux

        You might already be aware of the popular NPM (Node Package Manager) used as a package manager for Node, while NPX (Node Package eXecute), introduced in NPM version 5.2.0 (on August 10, 2017), an NPM package runner, is quite unpopular.

      • Linux.org ☛ DCA – 04 – Running Containers

        The information in this article is basic knowledge you need to know when dealing with Docker and running containers. I have covered some of this already, but I want to make sure we cover it and it you understand it.

      • Ubuntu Handbook ☛ How to Install Latest Battle for Wesnoth 1.16.x via PPA in Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04

        This simple tutorial is going to show beginners how to install the latest stable Battle for Wesnoth (so far 1.16.8) via PPA in Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Linux Mint 20/21.

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install KDE Plasma Desktop on Fedora 37

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install KDE Plasma Desktop on Fedora 37.

      • It’s Ubuntu ☛ 5 Ways To Count The Number Of Lines In A File In Linux

        How To Count The Number Of Lines In A File In Linux There are several ways to count the number of lines in a file in Linux based operating system. There are several commands in Linux for different tasks.

      • ID Root ☛ Boost Your Website’s Security with Nginx Security Headers

        In today’s digital age, security is a top priority for any website or online platform.

      • ID Root ☛ How To Install Bitwarden on Rocky Linux 9

        In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Bitwarden on Rocky Linux 9.

      • Red Hat Official ☛ Build a golden image for your RHEL homelab with Image Builder

        Build a golden image for your RHEL homelab with Image Builder

      • Removing our Firewall Configuration in Linux

        A firewall is a critical aspect of security for a Linux system. It acts as a barrier between a computer system and the internet, protecting the computer from unwanted incoming traffic.

      • OSTechNix ☛ Ansible Roles Tutorial For Beginners

        In this article, let us learn what are ansible roles and how to use Ansible roles to create a structured project and distribute them. Next we will move on to discuss the advantages of using ansible roles over standard playbooks. Finally, we will see how to create Ansible roles and different methods to import roles in the playbook.

      • TecAdmin ☛ How to enable debug mode in Laravel for specific environments

        Laravel is a popular PHP framework used to build web applications. One of the essential features of Laravel is its debugging functionality, which helps developers identify and fix issues in their code. In this article, we will discuss how to enable debug mode in Laravel for specific environments.

      • Trend Oceans ☛ Status Resolved: debconf- DbDriver config: config.dat is locked by another process

        While making system updates, I have encountered the error debconf-DbDriver ‘config’ config.dat is locked by another process, which doesn’t conflict with any programme, but it’s not looking good to print every time, so I have decided to fix it up and suppress the error message.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Create a New Sudo User on Linux Mint 21 or 20

        Managing user access and privileges is a critical aspect of ensuring the security and stability of any Linux system. In this article, we explore the concept of sudo, its importance in Linux Mint, and some common use cases.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Zoom on Linux Mint 21 or 20

        Zoom is a leading video conferencing platform transforming how businesses, organizations, and individuals communicate and collaborate. By offering a range of features and capabilities, Zoom has become a go-to solution for remote work, online education, and virtual events.

      • Linux Capable ☛ How to Install Chromium Browser on Linux Mint 21 or 20

        As a Linux Mint user, you may be interested in exploring the Chromium browser, and this article is here to help.

      • Linux Capable ☛ Fail2Ban Custom Jails: 20 Example Configurations

        In today’s digital landscape, protecting your system from unauthorized access is essential. Fail2Ban is an open-source security tool that can help. It automatically scans log files for suspicious behavior and bans offending IP addresses, preventing further unauthorized access attempts.

      • Pablo Iranzo Gómez: Showing calendar events in Telegram

        If you’ve a Telegram group, it might be interesting the ability of https://t.me/redken_bot for adding a calendar ical that automates publishing each day the events in the agenda for the day.

        If you did read Python and iCalendar ICS processing, part of the basis in that article are part of the bot and are easily used:

        For configuring, only a few simple steps are required:

        Have a calendar ICS/webcal accessible (for example a public Google Calendar one) Have a Telegram group where we do want to publish the events Add @redken_bot to the group Specify the URL del calendar and the name Let’s see some screenshoots of the process for you to check how easily it can be achieved.

    • Games

      • Godot Engine ☛ Maintenance release: Godot 4.0.1

        The first of many, Godot 4.0.1 comes with important fixes and usability improvements to Godot 4.0. Multiple crashes, bugs, and smaller annoyances have been addressed in this patch release, and we recommend all Godot 4 users to update.

      • uni Emory ☛ Does Gaming Add Any Value to College Students?

        Over the years, people assumed gaming was unsuitable for college students. They thought it was a distraction hindering learners from focusing on their studies. However, this unfair judgment suppressed the many benefits it could add to the educational sector.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

    • ZDNet ☛ How to choose the right Linux desktop distribution for you

      The Linux operating system is a powerful, flexible, secure, and reliable platform that can serve just about any purpose you need. From server to desktop, IoT to containers, embedded systems, and much more… Linux can be anything you want it to be.

      You may not even realize how prevalent the open-source operating system is. It’s literally everywhere. Your car, your fridge, your cloud account, your social networking account, your bank, Netflix, Spotify, Twitter… just about every network service you use depends on Linux.

      [...]

      One of the biggest reasons for this is that it’s not easy for the average consumer to head to Best Buy, Target, or Walmart, and buy a new PC or laptop with Linux pre-installed. Sure, there are plenty of companies that offer Linux systems (such as System76, Dell, Lenovo, Purism, Slimbook, Tuxedo Computers, Vikings, Ubuntushop.be, and Juno Computers), but consumers can be turned off by the higher prices of those systems. That’s fine, because Linux can be installed on most modern (and even older) computers, and it’s actually quite easy.

      Another reason for this is choice. For users who are already familiar with Linux, choice is a big selling point because it means there are so many options to choose from (on just about every front).

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Medevel ☛ 10 Top Open Source Privacy-First Web Analytics

      Google Analytics is a free web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, allowing website owners to gain insights into the behavior of their users.

    • Top Open Source Companies 2023

      Open source companies are, for the purpose of the list below, defined as companies that make significant use of open source software. As you’ll see in the list, many of the companies also use proprietary software.

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • LWN ☛ 25 Years of curl

        Daniel Stenberg observes the 25th anniversary of the curl project.

      • Daniel Stenberg ☛ curl 8.0.0 is here

        Exactly one month since the previous release, we are happy to give you curl 8.0.0 released on curl’s official 25th birthday. This a major version number bump but without any ground-breaking changes or fireworks.

      • Daniel Stenberg ☛ curl 8.0.1 because I jinxed it

        Right. I said in the 8.0.0 blog post that it might be a good release. It was. Apart form the little bug that caused it to crash in several test cases. So now we shipped curl 8.0.1, which is almost identical apart from a single commit that was reverted.

    • Content Management Systems (CMS)

      • Kev Quirk ☛ Thoughts on Editing Posts

        Should content on a personal site be edited, or should it be a snapshot in time? Here’s my thoughts…

        So I read this post by Manu Moreale yesterday, where he was talking about retrospectively editing posts, and why he thinks it’s a bad idea:

        I dislike the concept of editing old content on personal sites. And the motivation is related to my love for simple, straight to the point, chronologically organised personal blogs. I believe a personal blog can and should be a representation of who you are at different points in time.

    • GNU Projects

      • FSF ☛ FSF Blogs: From Freedom Trail to free boot and free farms: Charting the course at LibrePlanet day two
      • GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) ☛ GIMP in GSoC 2023

        GIMP is again a Google Summer of Code mentor organization in 2023

      • LWN ☛ coreutils-9.2 released

        Version 9.2 of the GNU coreutils collection — the home of common tools like cp, mv, ls, rm, and more — is out. The changes are mostly minor; numerous bugs have been fixes and a few new command-line options have been added.

      • GNU ☛ coreutils @ Savannah: coreutils-9.2 released [stable]

        This is to announce coreutils-9.2, a stable release.
        See the NEWS below for a brief summary.
        Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
        There have been 209 commits by 14 people in the 48 weeks since 9.1.
        The following people contributed changes to this release:
        Arsen Arsenović (1) Jim Meyering (7)
        Bernhard Voelker (3) Paul Eggert (90)
        Bruno Haible (1) Pierre Marsais (1)
        Carl Edquist (2) Pádraig Brady (98)
        ChuanGang Jiang (2) Rasmus Villemoes (1)
        Dennis Williamson (1) Stefan Kangas (1)
        Ivan Radić (1) Álvar Ibeas (1)
        Pádraig [on behalf of the coreutils maintainers]
        ==================================================================
        Here is the GNU coreutils home page:
        http://gnu.org/s/coreutils/
        For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
        http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=shortlog;h=v9.2
        or run this command from a git-cloned coreutils directory:
        git shortlog v9.1..v9.2
        To summarize the 665 gnulib-related changes, run these commands
        from a git-cloned coreutils directory:
        git checkout v9.2
        git submodule summary v9.1
        Here are the compressed sources:
        https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.2.tar.gz (14MB)
        https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.2.tar.xz (5.6MB)
        Here are the GPG detached signatures:
        https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.2.tar.gz.sig
        https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.2.tar.xz.sig
        6afa9ce3729afc82965a33d02ad585d1571cdeef coreutils-9.2.tar.gz
        ebWNqhmcY84g95GRF3NLISOUnJLReVZPkI4yiQFZzUg= coreutils-9.2.tar.gz
        3769071b357890dc36d820c597c1c626a1073fcb coreutils-9.2.tar.xz
        aIX/R7nNshHeR9NowXhT9Abar5ixSKrs3xDeKcwEsLM= coreutils-9.2.tar.xz
        Verify the base64 SHA256 checksum with cksum -a sha256 –check
        from coreutils-9.2 or OpenBSD’s cksum since 2007.
        gpg –verify coreutils-9.2.tar.xz.sig
        pub rsa4096 2011-09-23 [SC]
        6C37 DC12 121A 5006 BC1D B804 DF6F D971 3060 37D9
        uid [ unknown] Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com>
        uid [ unknown] Pádraig Brady <pixelbeat@gnu.org>
        gpg –locate-external-key P@draigBrady.com
        gpg –recv-keys DF6FD971306037D9
        wget -q -O- ‘https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?group=coreutils&download=1′ | gpg –import -
        gpg –keyring gnu-keyring.gpg –verify coreutils-9.2.tar.gz.sig
        Gnulib v0.1-5857-gf17d397771
        Bison 3.8.2
        * Noteworthy changes in release 9.2 (2023-03-20) [stable]
        ** Bug fixes
        ‘comm –output-delimiter=”” –total’ now delimits columns in the total
        line with the NUL character, consistent with NUL column delimiters in
        the rest of the output. Previously no delimiters were used for the
        total line in this case.
        [bug introduced with the --total option in coreutils-8.26]
        ‘cp -p’ no longer has a security hole when cloning into a dangling
        symbolic link on macOS 10.12 and later.
        [bug introduced in coreutils-9.1]
        ‘cp -rx / /mnt’ no longer complains “cannot create directory /mnt/”.
        cp, mv, and install avoid allocating too much memory, and possibly
        triggering “memory exhausted” failures, on file systems like ZFS,
        which can return varied file system I/O block size values for files.
        [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
        cp, mv, and install now immediately acknowledge transient errors
        when creating copy-on-write or cloned reflink files, on supporting
        file systems like XFS, BTRFS, APFS, etc.
        Previously they would have tried again with other copy methods
        which may have resulted in data corruption.
        [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5 and enabled by default in coreutils-9.0]
        cp, mv, and install now handle ENOENT failures across CIFS file systems,
        falling back from copy_file_range to a better supported standard copy.
        [issue introduced in coreutils-9.0]
        ‘mv –backup=simple f d/’ no longer mistakenly backs up d/f to f~.
        rm now fails gracefully when memory is exhausted.
        Previously it may have aborted with a failed assertion in some cases.
        [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
        rm -d (–dir) now properly handles unreadable empty directories.
        E.g., before, this would fail to remove d: mkdir -m0 d; src/rm -d d
        [bug introduced in v8.19 with the addition of this option]
        runcon –compute no longer looks up the specified command in the $PATH
        so that there is no mismatch between the inspected and executed file.
        [bug introduced when runcon was introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
        ‘sort -g’ no longer infloops when given multiple NaNs on platforms
        like x86_64 where ‘long double’ has padding bits in memory.
        Although the fix alters sort -g’s NaN ordering, that ordering has
        long been documented to be platform-dependent.
        [bug introduced 1999-05-02 and only partly fixed in coreutils-8.14]
        stty ispeed and ospeed options no longer accept and silently ignore
        invalid speed arguments, or give false warnings for valid speeds.
        Now they’re validated against both the general accepted set,
        and the system supported set of valid speeds.
        stty now wraps output appropriately for the terminal width.
        Previously it may have output 1 character too wide for certain widths.
        [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3]
        tail –follow=name works again with non seekable files. Previously it
        exited with an “Illegal seek” error when such a file was replaced.
        [bug introduced in fileutils-4.1.6]
        ‘wc -c’ will again efficiently determine the size of large files
        on all systems. It no longer redundantly reads data from certain
        sized files larger than SIZE_MAX.
        [bug introduced in coreutils-8.24]
        ** Changes in behavior
        Programs now support the new Ronna (R), and Quetta (Q) SI prefixes,
        corresponding to 10^27 and 10^30 respectively,
        along with their binary counterparts Ri (2^90) and Qi (2^100).
        In some cases (e.g., ‘sort -h’) these new prefixes simply work;
        in others, where they exceed integer width limits, they now elicit
        the same integer overflow diagnostics as other large prefixes.
        ‘cp –reflink=always A B’ no longer leaves behind a newly created
        empty file B merely because copy-on-write clones are not supported.
        ‘cp -n’ and ‘mv -n’ now exit with nonzero status if they skip their
        action because the destination exists, and likewise for ‘cp -i’,
        ‘ln -i’, and ‘mv -i’ when the user declines. (POSIX specifies this
        for ‘cp -i’ and ‘mv -i’.)
        cp, mv, and install again read in multiples of the reported block size,
        to support unusual devices that may have this constraint.
        [behavior inadvertently changed in coreutils-7.2]
        du –apparent now counts apparent sizes only of regular files and
        symbolic links. POSIX does not specify the meaning of apparent
        sizes (i.e., st_size) for other file types, and counting those sizes
        could cause confusing and unwanted size mismatches.
        ‘ls -v’ and ‘sort -V’ go back to sorting “.0″ before “.A”,
        reverting to the behavior in coreutils-9.0 and earlier.
        This behavior is now documented.
        ls –color now matches a file extension case sensitively
        if there are different sequences defined for separate cases.
        printf unicode \uNNNN, \UNNNNNNNN syntax, now supports all valid
        unicode code points. Previously is was restricted to the C
        universal character subset, which restricted most points <= 0x9F.
        runcon now exits with status 125 for internal errors. Previously upon
        internal errors it would exit with status 1, which was less distinguishable
        from errors from the invoked command.
        ‘split -n N’ now splits more evenly when the input size is not a
        multiple of N, by creating N output files whose sizes differ by at
        most 1 byte. Formerly, it did this only when the input size was
        less than N.
        ‘stat -c %s’ now prints sizes as unsigned, consistent with ‘ls’.
        ** New Features
        cksum now accepts the –base64 (-b) option to print base64-encoded
        checksums. It also accepts/checks such checksums.
        cksum now accepts the –raw option to output a raw binary checksum.
        No file name or other information is output in this mode.
        cp, mv, and install now accept the –debug option to
        print details on how a file is being copied.
        factor now accepts the –exponents (-h) option to print factors
        in the form p^e, rather than repeating the prime p, e times.
        ls now supports the –time=modification option, to explicitly
        select the default mtime timestamp for display and sorting.
        mv now supports the –no-copy option, which causes it to fail when
        asked to move a file to a different file system.
        split now accepts options like ‘-n SIZE’ that exceed machine integer
        range, when they can be implemented as if they were infinity.
        split -n now accepts piped input even when not in round-robin mode,
        by first copying input to a temporary file to determine its size.
        wc now accepts the –total={auto,never,always,only} option
        to give explicit control over when the total is output.
        ** Improvements
        cp –sparse=auto (the default), mv, and install,
        will use the copy_file_range syscall now also with sparse files.
        This may be more efficient, by avoiding user space copies,
        and possibly employing copy offloading or reflinking,
        for the non sparse portion of such sparse files.
        On macOS, cp creates a copy-on-write clone in more cases.
        Previously cp would only do this when preserving mode and timestamps.
        date –debug now diagnoses if multiple –date or –set options are
        specified, as only the last specified is significant in that case.
        rm outputs more accurate diagnostics in the presence of errors
        when removing directories. For example EIO will be faithfully
        diagnosed, rather than being conflated with ENOTEMPTY.
        tail –follow=name now works with single non regular files even
        when their modification time doesn’t change when new data is available.
        Previously tail would not show any new data in this case.
        tee -p detects when all remaining outputs have become broken pipes, and
        exits, rather than waiting for more input to induce an exit when written.
        tee now handles non blocking outputs, which can be seen for example with
        telnet or mpirun piping through tee to a terminal.
        Previously tee could truncate data written to such an output and fail,
        and also potentially output a “Resource temporarily unavailable” error.

    • Programming/Development

      • Andy Wingo: a world to win: webassembly for the rest of us

        Good day, comrades!

        Today I’d like to share the good news that WebAssembly is finally coming for the rest of us weirdos.

      • Simon Ser ☛ Simon Ser: Status update, March 2023

        Hi all!

        In the past week or so I’ve focused on a NPotM: go-imap, an IMAP library for Go. “But Simon, a New
        Project of the Month is supposed to be new!” Right, right, the NPotM is a
        lie… But only a half-lie: I’m rewriting it from scratch. go-imap was one of the
        first Go projects I’ve written, and I couldn’t recite the IMAP4rev1 RFC by
        heart at the time. This is just a roundabout way to say that mistakes were
        made. IMAP extensions — a lot of which provide important functionality — were
        designed to be implemented out-of-tree in separate Go modules. However many
        extensions change the behavior of existing commands, so trying to design a
        modular system is a fool’s errand which only results in a more complicated API.
        Go channels were (ab)overused in the public API. The internals were not
        designed with goroutine safety in mind, so races were ducktaped after the fact.
        It’s not possible to run multiple IMAP commands concurrently: each time
        a command is sent, the caller gets to twiddle their thumbs until the reply
        comes back before sending a new one, paying the full price of the roundtrip.
        The parser has a weird intermediate representation based on interface{} Go
        values. Many functions and types are exported in the public API but really
        shouldn’t be.

      • TecAdmin ☛ How to Handle Query String Errors in JavaScript

        Query strings are a way to pass data between different pages or components of a web application.

      • Perl / Raku

        • Rakulang ☛ Rakudo Weekly 2023.12 Priced/2

          Andrew Shitov comes with exciting news: thanks to the generous sponsorship of the Perl and Raku Foundation, it has been possible to halve the ticket price to The Raku Conference 2023 on August 3-4 in Rīga, Latvia at the same location as the 2019 conference (Twitter, Mastodon).

      • Python

      • Java

    • Standards/Consortia

  • Leftovers

  • Gemini* and Gopher

    • Personal

      • Cozy Fairbanks Neighborhood Sunset

        Actually, the sun has already set in this picture. I tried to make it out in time for the sunset proper, but I couldn’t get the kids stuffed in bed fast enough.

      • Hymnography for the Annunciation and the Veneration of the Cross

        Friday (March 25th) was the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos, where the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would (if she accepted) bear Christ into the world. We celebrate it nine months before Christmas.

      • Veneration of the Holy Cross; good news

        Happy almost midpoint of Lent! Today is the veneration of the Holy Cross, which I think I wrote about last year.

      • Government healthcare

        So, November of last year I thought, “Hey, I haven’t poked at
        Healthcare.gov in a while, maybe I’ll have a lookie-look.” I hop on
        the website and click some links, and find out that for people
        who earn a living there is still no affordable healthcare on
        healthcare.gov. I get it, someone out there thinks it’s the bees knees
        (in fact, I think I recall reading someone extolling the virtues of it
        on gopher!) but it ain’t this guy.

        Fine, no big deal. My healthshare and self-pay is working out pretty
        well. It’s a lot of work and expense, but it gets the job done.

        Then, a few days after that episode, I get a bill in the mail for a
        state healthcare plan for two of my kids. Nice… bamboozled! Tricked
        into signing up for something I don’t need or want. I don’t recall
        asking to sign up for that, but they did get really, really pushy
        about getting all my info before I could even browse, so it’s not
        terribly surprising.

      • SpellBinding: Offensive Words?

        Since its inception, there’s been a question of which words should be excluded, because they are offensive. This can get out of hand – someone out there is offended by the same words that seem completely innocuous to an unsuspecting, well-meaning person.

        On the other hand, _not including_ words is perhaps equally offensive. These words exist, ugly or not, and who am I to decide that no one is allowed to acknowledge their existance…

        After much deliberation I decided to not edit words based on their offensiveness. These words exist, and pretending they don’t may make some people happy, but there is a price. Editing our history to eliminate unsightly periods can only lead to the eventual disaster of repeating these horrible mistakes. It’s better to own our terribleness in the past and do the best we can in the future. That requires honesty.

      • Dealing With Braindeadness

        Every once in a while I have a day where I’m just utterly brain-dead. Today’s one of those days. I just can’t muster up the energy to finish tasks and I get very easily distracted. Over the years I’ve learned different techniques for powering through those days.

        My brain-dead days are very often preceded by a couple of days of poor sleep (almost always self-induced). As a result, I can barely keep my eyes open all day and the urge to nap is overwhelming. However, I’ve learned that I have to power through and reject all naps. Though I may suffer during the day, staying awake will prevent my braindeadness from spreading into the next day.

      • Predisposed Sneakiness

        I find myself often inclined to go about things in a less-than honest way or in a way that conceals myself.

        I’m not entirely sure when this all started, part of me thinks I’ve always somewhat been like this, but I remember first noticing it one night when I was 12, slinking down the stairs. I realized I just instinctively was walking on the inside of the stair, where it had the most support, because it results in less creaking; and that I was making large, slow steps to try and create as little noise as possible. My parents never really enforced a strict bedtime so it wasn’t like I was doing anything wrong by getting a late night snack, but nevertheless I was hoping not a living soul would be aware of my being in the kitchen.

      • Another Monday

        I should have taken a mental wellness day today – especially as the weather was
        so nice – but I wasn’t in the mood to play hooky (strangely enough) so I just
        toughed it out instead. Apparently it was Friedrich Nietzsche who said “What
        does not kill me makes me stronger”. If that were the case with me I would have
        joined K-1 or UFC a long time ago.

      • N O W

        Lately, my mind has been feeling like I am walking through mud, just really slow, not clear and not really going anywhere…and that is where it’s at. I attribute this to being sick on and off for the past month. We’ll see how things are tomorrow.

    • Technical

      • Power Suggestion Button

        Do you remember when the power button became a suggestion? My old 8088 had a physical power button. It was spring-loaded, and when you pressed it, you physically disconnected (or connected, it was a toggle) the power from the motherboard. It was a jarring, brutal action that suddenly robbed the computer of its life force, without any warning. No time to save files or spin down disks. No time for anything. It was mankind’s ultimate dominance over machine.

      • Offline

        Offline computer use can work, or not. The best way to find out whether it works for you would be to drop your internet for a day or a weekend or whatever. Repeated, this should eventually reveal most of what, if anything, you are missing, besides the withdrawal symptoms. Most software should be fine, though if you’ve been offline for a while the very first thing to do after reconnecting is to check for security patches, especially if you actually need to entangle zero-day prone chunky chortleware with random interweb sites.

      • No computing on Sunday

        Almost, because this text is being written on a computer.

        The first ice cream this year eaten, some 2 cubic meter of ground and
        stones moved and shaped to form of a miniature mountain on our garden,
        and 24 km on bikes ridden.

        I also made a few pictures with my film camera (results will be seen
        only when I finish the roll of the film).

      • Internet/Gemini

        • The archeo-enthusiast network is growing

          As I wrote before, I try to send e-mails to people who can tell
          something about the Internet in the days of Gopher protocol
          popularity. Today I received an unexpected reply. Unexpected, because
          to my e-mail from almost a year ago. Fortunately, we operate in a
          small-net and by definition there is no rush here. Things moved
          quickly, and after a while we got a new story from the early
          nineties. And what’s more, the desire to write about further
          details. I recommend looking at [Authentic 1990s experiences] and
          d1337 writings.

        • SDF Neomutt and GPG – checklist

          You shouldn’t put set pgp_decrypt_comman and so on, because you are using GPGME.

      • Programming

        • Learn Git!

          People keep gently encouraging me to learn git. Most recently, a ham
          radio operator reached out about some ham radio software that I
          cobbled together, and asked if I would host it on github. He even went
          so far as to walk me through the steps. Seriously, that’s some kind of
          investment!

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

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DecorWhat Else is New

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  3. Links 01/06/2023: Spleen 2.0.0 Released and Team UPC Celebrates Its Own Corruption

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  7. Gemini Links 31/05/2023: Personality of Software Engineers

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  8. Links 31/05/2023: Armbian 23.05 Release and Illegal UPC

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    It seems like EPO staff is starting to have doubts about the safety of EPO pensions after Benoît Battistelli sent money to reckless gambling (EPOTIF) — a plot that’s 100% supported by António Campinos and his enablers in the Council, not to mention the European Union

  14. Working Conditions at EPO Deteriorate and Staff Inquires About Pension Rights

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  19. Gemini Links 30/05/2023: Curl Still Missing the Point?

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  22. First Speaker in Event for GNU at 40 Called for Resignation/Removal of GNU's Founder

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  24. Site Updates and Plans Ahead

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  28. Gemini Links 29/05/2023: Rosy Crow 1.1.1 and Smolver 1.2.1 Released

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