In the world of virtualization, a hypervisor is a software layer that allows multiple operating systems (OSes) to run on the same physical hardware.
NVIDIA Container Runtime allows containerized applications to access your host’s GPU hardware. It facilitates the containerization of systems that would otherwise be off-limits, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads. With NVIDIA Container Runtime installed, you can run these apps in containers on any host with an NVIDIA GPU.
In this article, you’ll learn about the runtime’s architecture and how to set it up. You’ll also learn how to deploy your own containers with GPU access, broadening the scope of what you can successfully containerize.
Now that rust has finally been merged into Linux what effect is it actually going to have on your day to day use, well today I answer that as well as talk about the general state of the project
Oskari Saarenmaa is Founder & CEO of Aiven, the fully managed, open source cloud data platform. Their platform combines all the tools needed to connect and manage open source data services such as Apache Kafka, Grafana, MySQL, Redis, InfluxDB along with many others.
In this video, we are looking at how to install Sublime Text on KDE Neon. Enjoy! For the commands and more, look here: https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2022/12/how-to-install-sublime-text-on-kde-neon.html Background Music: Well Worth the Wait by Silent Partner
I'm a little behind on stuff since I'm waiting for parts to get my T2 booting again (doing everything on my Mac laptop and my long-suffering Quad G5), but kernel version 6.1 came out, and there's some really good stuff on Power to mention.
But first the marquee general improvements: first, general support for Rust in kernel, which is now fairly mature on Power ISA (every Firefox build I make has it) and has obvious security benefits — assuming you're on a platform it supports, that is. The other change I think is a big one, possibly even bigger than Rust support, is the enhanced multi-generational LRU (Least Recently Used) memory page evictor: it's not on by default, but it ships as a configurable option, and some of the reports show some impressive performance wins. Finally, the new implementation of in-kernel maple trees means better cache hit rates and less lock contention for those kernel structures reimplemented with them (if you're 64-bit and have an MMU, which naturally we do), and I know people will appreciate the updates to AMD GPU support.
Its has been a while since I reported my tinkering with the Vulkan Video provisional extension. Now the specification will have its final release soonish, and also there has been more engagement within the open source communities, such as the work-in-progress FFMpeg implementation by Lynne (please, please, read that post), and the also work-in-progress Mesa 3D drivers both for AMD and Intel by Dave Airlie! Along with the well known NVIDIA beta drivers for Vulkan.
From our side, we have been trying to provide an open source alternative to the video parser used by the Conformance Test Suite and the NVIDIA vk_video_samples, using GStreamer: GstVkVideoParser, which intends to be a drop-in replacement of the current proprietary parser library.
Along the way, we have sketched the Vulkan Video support in gfxreconstruct, for getting traces of the API usage. Sadly, its kind of bit-rotten right now, even more because the specification has changed since then.
Over the years PDF has become an extremely important file format. If you want to create documents that can be viewed under all major operating systems, PDF is the ticket, as it maintains the overall look and feel of documents regardless of what platform they are viewed under. Businesses and consumers increase productivity using PDF documents and forms.
Besides offering universal compatibility, the format is reliable, ease of creation, security, and version independence. The format also supports annotations, and a very practical format.
Since late 2014, Adobe’s proprietary but useful Adobe Acrobat Reader DC has been no longer supported under Linux. Adobe’s website still only lists Windows, Mac OS and Android as supported operating systems. This is one of the many dangers of closed source software – at the whim of corporate bosses, development and distribution can simply disappear overnight, possibly never coming back.
Version 4.0.0 of the Apache SpamAssassin spam filter has been released.
The Apache SpamAssassin project has released version 4.0.0 of its renowned open-source anti-spam platform with numerous tweaks and bug fixes and improved classification, performance and handling of text in international languages. This release is an important milestone in the open source world, as Apache SpamAssassin has emerged as a testament to the security benefits of leveraging the open-source development model to combat the universal threat of spam email over the past two decades.
Guardian Digital has been using the Apache SpamAssassin framework as a component of its multi-layered business email security solution, EnGarde Cloud Email Security, from the beginning, and will be utilizing the updates and improvements in the 4.0.0 release to provide its clients with enhanced email protection. The company stands in support of both the Apache SpamAssassin project’s core values of transparency, collaboration and community involvement, as well as its anti-spam product. Guardian Digital spoke with Chair of the Apache SpamAssassin Project Management Committee Sidney Markowitz and Apache SpamAssassin PMC member Kevin A. McGrail to gain firsthand insight into the significance of this release and the key upgrades and improvements Apache SpamAssassin 4.0.0 offers.
SpamAssassin is an open-source spam filtering platform that uses a combination of rule-based, DNS, and fuzzy checksum techniques to identify spam emails. It is designed to be run on a server and can be integrated with various email servers, including Postfix, Sendmail, and Exim.
With over 20 years of history, developed by the Apache Foundation, SpamAssassin has built a well-deserved reputation as one of the most excellent free spam protection tools. As a result, it is widely used by email service providers and individuals to help reduce the amount of spam in their inboxes.
PeaZip is an open source file and archive manager. It's freeware and free of charge for any use. PeaZip can extract most of archive formats both from Windows and Unix worlds, ranging from mainstream 7Z, RAR, TAR and ZIP to experimental ones like PAQ/LPAQ family, currently the most powerful compressor available.
Open and extract 200+ archive formats: 001, 7Z, ACE(*), ARC, ARJ, BZ2, CAB, DMG, GZ, ISO, LHA, PAQ, PEA, RAR, TAR, UDF, WIM, XZ, ZIP ZIPX - view full list of supported archive file formats for archiving and for extraction.
We are proud to announce the release of PowerDNS Recursor 4.8.0.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Slack on Rocky Linux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, Slack is a collaboration platform that allows teams to communicate and work together in real-time. It is a cloud-based platform that offers a variety of features such as talking with your teammates over audio or video calls and sharing documents, images, videos, and other files. Slack is available for Linux, as well as other operating systems such as Windows and macOS. Overall, Slack is a powerful collaboration platform that can help teams stay organized and communicate effectively, and it is available on Rocky Linux.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Slack instant messaging on Rocky Linux. 9.
Git branch policies are a set of rules that control how code is merged into a branch in a Git repository. These policies can help teams enforce standards and best practices, and they can help ensure that code is reviewed and tested before it is merged into the main branch.
Want to upgrade to Xfce 4.18 on Ubuntu 22.04 or 22.10? Packages added to the Xubuntu QA Staging PPA mean you can now do exactly that.
Not that you’re supposed to, though ðŸËâ¦.
See, while the Xubuntu QA Staging PPA does enable you to upgrade to Xfce 4.18 it’s not a repo meant for regular folks, and usage of it is at users’ own risk. Packages distributed through this PPA have no guarantees or promise of stability, and they may be removed or replaced at any moment, without warning.
That said, you can choose to use this PPA to install Xfce 4.18 on Ubuntu 22.04 or 22.10. I upgraded to Xfce 4.18 using this PPA and hit no major issues during my (somewhat brief) hands-on. Your milage will vary, but by using a PPA to upgrade you can use PPA Purge to downgrade back to your release’s original Xfce build if things go rogue.
Even so: if you do this do it knowing it’s not advised. And before running any commands at all make a backup of any important files, configs, and settings to a different device or cloud service.
Warnings out of the way, let’s get to the actual tutorial bit.
Today we are looking at how to install Firefox ESR on a Chromebook.
AnyDesk is a remote desktop software that allows you to connect to your computer remotely and work from anywhere without being limited by the location of an internet connection.
Waterfox is fresh air for those who want to maintain their privacy and security online. In the following tutorial, you will learn how to install Waterfox Browser on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish LTS or Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa LTS desktop using the command line terminal with tips about maintaining and removing the browser versions with a third-party repository as Waterfox is not natively supported on Ubuntu’s default repositories.
The git stash command is a useful tool for temporarily storing changes that you are not ready to commit. It allows you to switch to a different branch or work on a different task without committing or discarding your changes.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WinSCP on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, WinSCP is a free, open-source file transfer program for Windows that supports the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and SCP protocols. It is a popular choice among users of the Linux operating system Debian because it allows them to securely transfer files between their local computer and a remote server.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the WinSCP on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).
it is a tool we are coming into contact with more and more, due to the popularity of DevOps and concepts such as Infrastructure as Code. There are many articles covering git concepts here on BuildVirtual, but often an article isn’t a substitute for a great book.
Chrome OS doesn’t exactly have a lot of graphic tools available for users to take advantage of. This means, if you need to compress a JPG or PNG file, you might be out of luck. Thankfully, Chromebooks can run Linux applications. So, if you need to compress images on your Chromebook, follow along with this guide.
Gear motors are the basis for every Raspberry PI Pico-based robot project.
Secure Shell (SSH) is a network protocol that allows you to securely connect to a remote computer and transfer files over an unsecured network. It is widely used in system administration, network engineering, and software development to remotely manage servers, perform tasks, and transfer files.
SSH uses public-key cryptography and password-based authentication to secure the connection and protect the privacy of data exchanged between the client and the server. It is also used to tunnel other network protocols, such as X11, HTTP, and SMTP, through an encrypted channel.
The goal of this article is to serve as an introduction to using SSH on Linux.
The Hugin panorama photo stitcher finally announced the 2022.0.0 release! Ubuntu PPA updated for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 22.10.
One year per release! The 2022 release is finally here, though there’s not so many changes!
One of the commonly used shell in Linux is bash. Even if there are many modern shells available, it's still the default shell in many Linux distributions.
In this tutorial, we learn how to change the color of specific parts of the bash prompt in Linux. Here we use ANSI escape codes within the PS1 variable.
Alpine Linux is a small security-focused Linux Distribution. The base installation of Alpine is only a few MB in size. It is more suitable for container environments such as Docker and Kubernetes, and cloud environments.
In this guide, we learn how to use apk command in Alpine Linux.
One of the key features of Linux is its robust networking capabilities, which allow users to easily connect to and manage networks. There are a wide variety of Linux commands that can be used to perform various networking tasks, such as configuring network interfaces, troubleshooting network issues, and monitoring network activity.
When was the last date the content of a file was modified? When was the file last opened/accessed? When did the file's properties change, such as ownership and permissions?
In this tutorial, we learn how to view and use Linux file timestamps in detail.
Alpine is an open-source Linux distribution based on BusyBox and musl, available freely without any subscription processes. It is a compact and lightweight Linux distribution that prioritizes security and comes with a very light footprint of about 160 MB.
Like every other Linux distribution, Alpine Linux also includes its own package manager, known as Alpine Package Keeper (apk). The apk is pre-installed on all the Alpine Linux versions.
Apk covers all the package management tasks, including installing, searching, updating, listing, and uninstalling the software packages. In this tutorial, we learn how to install packages in Alpine Linux.
Are you adding or removing a new library to your program? There are situations where dynamic linker may not be aware of it.
In this tutorial, we learn about ldconfig command to manage dynamic linker run-time bindings in Linux.
Ulimit (user limit) is a powerful command which helps to limit resources on your system.
Sometimes, but not very often a single user may start too many processes to make the system unstable. To mitigate this we can use ulimit command to limit the number of process each user or group can run.
In this tutorial, we learn how to limit the process at user level on Linux.
Learning how to utilize the Linux command line is crucial for all Linux users and system administrators. Simple maintenance activities like creating a file, browsing a folder, deleting a directory, or moving a file can all be done using it.
Removing files and directories in Linux using the graphical user interface is relatively easy. In this tutorial, we learn how to remove a directory in Linux using the terminal.
Linux offers multiple tools for analyzing network statistics; ss is one of those command-line utilities. In this tutorial, we'll go through the fundamentals of the ss command with some easy examples.
A few bugs managed to sneak in Pixel Wheels 0.24.0, nasty creatures... version 0.24.1 fixes them.
There are more than 600 Linux Distributions that are actively maintained. The very common for all these is the same Linux Kernel. Each distro has its own uniqueness in the Desktop environment, apps, package managers, and project goals.
As is the usual way of things, the monthly Activity Report is hereby combined with my Contract Report.
This report covers hrev56565 through hrev56626.
[...]
PulkoMandy adjusted some messages for translation purposes.
madmax added code to make sure the cookie jar is saved in the appropriate location even when using the CURL networking backend in WebPositive.
waddlesplash fixed edge-cases around changing icon sizes in Tracker that could lead to icons disappearing entirely.
waddlesplash fixed icon size computation in debug_server to use the new ComposeIconSize method.
I’ve released a new version of ExTiX Deepin today (221218). This ExTiX Build is based on Deepin 20.8 released by Deepin Technology 221208. Using Refracta Snapshot (pre-installed in ExTiX) you can make your own live installable Deepin version with ExTiX 22.12 as “groundwork”.
On December 16th 2022 from 17:00 UTC there will be an 1 hour live streaming session of the FreeBSD Fridays. Join Drew Gurkowski as he presents a quick introductory guide to configuring printing, basic audio, and wifi on a fresh FreeBSD install.
It has been a while since I wrote an episode for my series about using Slackware as your private/personal ‘cloud server’. Time for something new!
Since a lot of people these days are looking for alternatives to Twitter and Mastodon is a popular choice, I thought it would be worthwhile to document the process of setting up your own Mastodon server. It can be a platform just for you, or you can invite friends and family, or open it up to the world. Your choice. The server you’ll learn to setup by reading this article uses the same Identity Provider (Keycloak) which is also used by all the other services I wrote about in the scope of this series. I.e. a private server using single sign-on for your own family/friends/community.
Check out the list below which shows past, present and future episodes in the series, if the article has already been written you’ll be able to click on the subject. The first episode also contains an introduction with some more detail about what you can expect.
This past week, Fedora 35 was EOLed. That was the last release tracked by Freed-ora, so Freed-ora is now officially retired. I'm taking the liberty of sharing some reminiscences about this subproject.
When Freed-ora started, I had just joined the Linux-libre project, then led by Jeff Moe out of the BLAG project.
Besides cleaning up Linux to make Linux-libre, I wanted kernel builds I could use myself, with the same fixes and improvements that went into Fedora, keeping with the spirit of minimal changes to make the kernel Free Software, and GNU Free Software Distribution Guidelines compliant.
Back then, Linux carried lots more blobs than it does now, and most of them were still binary programs disguised as sequences of numbers in source code.
It didn't take me long to offer to maintain Freed-ora as part of the Fedora project. That offer was declined, which hurts me to this day, but it taught me a valuable lesson about Fedora's alignment with software freedom.
That was later confirmed as the License: tag in Fedora kernel RPMs remained mislabeled for many years, ignoring an easily-fixed bug report and misrepresenting the nature and the license of the packaged software.
The nonfree nature of these bits was only partially acknowledged when Linux moved most of the blobs to separate files, still distributed as part of Linux "sources." Fedora built a single kernel source release into several binary packages, one of which got all of these "precompiled" binaries, whether freedom-respecting or freedom-denying, and marked the whole set as under various licenses, which made the package "Redistributable".
Even after Linux moved those bits out of its source distribution, into separate repositories, a few binary-only programs under nonfree licenses have remained disguised as sequences of numbers in "source" distributions of the kernel Linux to this day, and it has been acknowledged in Fedora kernel packages since 2012-09-14, commit 702ef34859. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=450492
(Wikipedia, alas, still carries this bit of misinformation, explicitly denying the presence of nonfree blobs in Linux. An editor there cares very strongly about preventing this factual correction.) :-(
At some point, Fedora representatives politely asked me to rename Freed-ora: the name was believed to be harming Fedora's reputation of commitment to software freedom.
It was my turn to decline: if denouncing hypocrisy and misleading claims hurts anyone's reputation, silencing the messenger is not the cure.
I've carried that torch for much longer than it has been of any use to me (I've long moved on from Fedora). For years, I've sought another maintainer to take over, and eventually committed to maintaining it till the end of the Fedora 35 release cycle, which has just come to an end.
Thanks to Jeff Moe, for starting Linux-libre, maintaining BLAG, entrusting me with Linux-libre, and adopting Freed-ora in BLAG. Also, for providing me with build machines and hosting for Linux-libre sources and for Freed-ora builds in the early days of my involvement, already on behalf of FSF Latin America as part of the "Be Free!" campaign. Later on, the FSF kindly offered us primary hosting of the project and the subproject, Linux-libre became part of the GNU project, and Jan Prunk kindly provided me with access to a build machine that relieved the FSF-provided server. Thank you all!
The Freed-ora repositories are going to remain around for a while, but in case anyone is still using Freed-ora, I strongly recommend switching to RPMFreedom, maintained by Jason Self (thanks!). It doesn't track Fedora kernel builds, but rather GNU Linux-libre's major and stable releases, just like Freesh's .debs that he also maintains.
My Freed-ora rest in pieces ;-)
Live long in freedom, and prosper respectfully, \\//_
There is a new application available for Sparkers: Harmonoid
Should Ubuntu drop the Archive Manager app from the default install?
That’s the suggestion put forward for community discussion by a prominent Ubuntu developer. The reasoning is that since Nautilus lets us create/extract commonly-compressed formats (including the ubiquitous .zip and tarballs) shipping a separate app that does the same thing (albeit with more formats) is unnecessary.
There’s precedent for such a move: GNOME 41 dropped the the Archive Manager app (often referred to by the package name file-roller) from GNOME Core. Their reasoning was similar: Nautilus now does it, so why duplicate functionality in the standard seed? Users with advanced needs can install the app themselves.
Want to try this change? You can in daily builds of Ubuntu 23.04 ‘Lunar Lobster’, under active development. In Lunar it’s now possible to uninstall the Archive Manager app without taking the rest of the desktop with it. In stable versions of Ubuntu file-roller is is hard dependency (thus removing it removes core stuff too).
The highly anticipated Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” release has started appearing today on various of the official download mirrors of the Ubuntu-based distribution, which means that an official release announcement is upon us.
This also means that if you can’t wait until Linux Mint 21.1 is officially announced, you can download the final ISO images with either the Cinnamon, Xfce, or MATE desktop environments right now to take it for a test drive or install it as your main operating system.
Shipping with an updated Ubuntu 22.04 LTS package base and powered by the long-term supported Linux 5.15 LTS kernel series, Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” features the latest and greatest Cinnamon 5.6 desktop environment for its flagship edition, as well as the Xfce 4.16 and MATE 1.26 for the other two official editions.
OpenPLC is an open-source, free-to-use Programmable Logic Controller Suite, compliant with the IEC 61131-3 standard, and working with a range of hardware platforms such as Arduino, ESP8266/ESP32, Raspberry Pi SBCs, as well as Windows and Linux machines.
When Arduino unveiled the Arduino PLC IDE, we noted the languages defined by the IEC 61131-3 standard were licensed, and the PLC key for the Portenta Machine Control unit sold for $17.60. One reader complained about the high license cost per device, but Massimo Banzi, the co-founder of the Arduino project, replied it was cost-effective for smaller deployments...
Siemens Digital Industries Software has ported its Sokol Flex OS software to the RISC-V open specification instruction set. This is one of the first commercially supported, extensible, and customizable Linux platforms for the RISC-V architecture, based on the popular, open-source Yocto Project industry standard.
Siemens sees RISC-V as suited to industrial, medical, aerospace and consumer applications. The cloud-enabled Sokol Flex OS streamlines application development, allowing developers to focus on value-add differentiation.
After six months of hard work, the development team behind the Alpine Linux-based postmarketOS project, a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices, released version 22.12 with support for new devices, new features for currently supported devices, and updated environments.
The big news with the postmarketOS 22.12 release is that it introduces support for two new devices, namely the Fairphone 4 smartphone and Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1ââ¬Â³ tablet. Also exciting in this release is experimental phone call support for SDM845-based devices, such as the OnePlus 6, OnePlus 6T, SHIFT6mq, and Xiaomi Pocophone F1 when using the mainline Linux kernel.
No matter if you can still whip out a skateboard around this time of year to do kickflips and indy 900s, or if you'd need a snowboard for that: the all-new postmarketOS v22.12 release is out! As usually, it's based on the latest iteration of excellent upstream developments in Alpine. See the 3.17 release notes for more about that.
v22.12, like previous releases, is geared mainly towards Linux enthusiasts; it may be a bit rough around the edges so expect some bugs and make sure to read the known issues section in this very blog post. Help with identifying and resolving issues is always greatly appreciated.
You probably take screenshots all the time, but what if you need to send a screenshot of an entire web page that is beyond your mobile’s screen size? Instead of bombarding your friends with multiple screenshots, you can take and send a scrolling screenshot on Android. A scrolling screenshot is one long image that covers an area that you have to swipe through to see in full. Follow this guide to learn how to take a scrolling screenshot on any Android device.
This has been a really busy week for everybody. Highlights: new releases of Krita, LibreCAD, Kdenlive, MuseScore, Ardour, Rosegarden, and more.
Hope you had a great week! Here are all the updates from the open source world. We have a ton of hardware news like the DIY Pi Laptop and exciting releases from software projects including Firefox, PeerTube, and the Linux kernel.
This is also posted on reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/perl/comments/zp8d5g/perlfediverseactivitypubsocial_network/ so please check there also
A while back I bought the https://perl.social/ domain without much immediate use for it. I originally had it redirecting to the perl twitter community. However with the recent twitter drama going around I started setting up an activitypub based network to take the place of the twitter community in the advent that there was an exodus of Perl programmers from twitter. That seems to have been happening so I finally kicked into gear to get it ready for use.
https://perl.social/ should show you the public face of the community, (if it doesn't let me know). In the upper right you'll find the login button, and can register a new user. Once registered, like all fediverse things you'll be able to be followed by people as such @username@perl.social and can follow other users on other servers by putting them in the search box at the top and then following them.
“Déjà vu all over again.” Another run of ethical calculus. Not so very long ago and on the heels of one or another specially offensive transgression, Skeptical Science had to search our hearts: Is there a compelling reason to help Facebook with its business plan, by maintaining a presence on the platform? Now we're asking the same question about Twitter. If you'd like to cut directly to "there's a better way" we have a section for you right here about Mastodon, what might be termed a "post-legacy," improved social networking service.
Recent events at Twitter are causing us to again ask familiar questions, but with a twist. For reasons we've previously explored we continue to maintain a presence on Facebook. Facebook goes through the motions of window dressing ruthless commercial practices for the purpose of making money. Expedient cosmetics set (admittedly loose) brackets on what’s acceptable to say on Facebook. On the other hand, Elon Musk’s recent acquisition was launched with the explicit intent of normalizing hate speech, promoting the worst of human nature. Fertilizing and cultivating ugly human nature at its worst is how Musk’s sophomoric philosophy on “free speech” unpacks, as a practical matter.
My sense of identity and community have been challenged in multiple, overwhelming ways recently. I don’t know what to do about it. Some personal events recently transpired, ones that made me extremely aware of my mortality. They’ve also caused me to reevaluate my self-perception as abled. At the same time, two of my main sources of community grew too toxic. Twitter is the obvious one, the other being a Slack workspace I participate in. It’s easy to pretend that your internet activities aren’t “real life,” but the loss of community—and resulting feeling of grief—is very real. These places have taught me countless things, as well as providing a ton opportunities. I literally owe my career and many friendships to these two spaces.
[...]
I’ve been flirting with Mastodon—Twitter’s heir apparent—for years, but it has yet to take. Its core architectural choices have some nasty, intractable consequences. I want to learn from people who aren’t like me, who have lived experiences different from my own. I want pleasant surprises and serendipitous moments. I don’t want a thin veneer of toxic positivity hiding structural exclusion.
Tor Browser 12.0.1 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.
This release updates Firefox to 102.6, including bug fixes, stability improvements and important security updates.
We've fixed a regression in our drag and drop protection, whose hardening disrupted some interface interactions, and most notably rearranging bookmarks by dragging them around.
We'd like to thank poncho for fixing another regression causing the TOR_SOCKS_IPC_PATH environment variable to be ignored.
While the internet is flooding with mentions of what ChatGPT failed to do, what it can do is surprisingly advanced. Below are two such examples. It is not an argument that validates (or invalidates) abilities of the AI.
Couple of decades back, the thought of computer's ability to identify people was highly futuristic. Today it has become a part of life for many. The progress of AI is perhaps exponential. We are trying to build AIs whose intelligence could eb comparable to that of humans. Recently, OpenAI opened up their latest AI powered Natural Language processing model ChatGPT for a short duration. While we acknowledged its abilities, we also pointed out the failures, reminding us that AI systems are still far away from becoming human like.
Docker Extensions is a new beta feature in Docker Desktop. It allows you to run third-party tools in Docker Desktop, complete with a simple React-based GUI. For example, you might run the Tailscale extension, which sets up a Tailscale node inside Docker for your tailnet. Or you might run one of the many GUI dashboards from the Marketplace. Of course, there's nothing new about Docker Extensions in terms of functionality – nothing is stopping you from passing through an API token to a Docker container that's running Tailscale. Or running a Kubernetes pod with the right configuration for a local daemon-like service. But for local development, do you want to manage those extra resources yourself? Sometimes it's nicer to break outside the terminal configuration (vs. environment variables) and dashboards (vs. text or web-hosted).
How to arrange training and testing datasets in R, To divide a data frame into training and test sets for model construction in R, use the createDataPartition() function from the caret package.
The project I am working on involves several different reports, each at least 30 pages, and each with about 20 plots and 20 tables per document.
As well as a myriad of functions, I had 7 very large R scripts doing the data munging and processing.
I thought they were well ordered, but I had to burn everything down a couple of times and it was quite nerve wracking building it back up. The thought of adding additional phases of the project to this code base made me uncomfortable. I decided I needed to learn{targets} to ensure this project can be reproducible a few years down the line.
Here are some notes on getting started with {targets}.
The project I am working on involves several different reports, each at least 30 pages, and each with about 20 plots and 20 tables per document.
Every year or so, I revisit the current best practices for Python packaging. This was my summary for 2021 – here’s the update for 2022.
[...]
pyproject.toml finally got mature enough to replace setup.py and setup.cfg in most cases. Recent versions of setuptools and pip now fully support pyproject.toml and even PyPA’s packaging tutorial completely switched their example project from away setup.py towards pyproject.toml, making it an official recommendation.
So, now you can replace your setup.py with pyproject.toml. If you had already some kind of declarative configuration in setup.cfg you can move that as well into pyproject.toml. Most tools, like pypy or pytest also support configuration in pyproject.toml (flake8 being a notable exception…) so there’s no reason to keep setup.cfg around anymore. Actually, if you migrate to pyproject.toml it is best to do it properly and remove setup.py and setup.cfg as setuptools behaves a bit buggy when building a package that has either of them and the pyproject.toml.
Option -W can be used to write all files to disk. The only accepted value for -W is vir (for the moment). When this option is provided, all files are written to the local disk (ignoring contained paths) with their original name, and appended extension .vir.
When involved in conversation it’s possible to convey meaning without directly stating things, this is used extensively by people who are interested in security. My observations of this are based on conversations with people who do government work, but I imagine that criminal organisations also do similar things for similar reasons.
An increased focus on poetry in schools might be helpful in developing skills for conveying ideas to people who think in human ways where the message is unclear to non-humans who have no experience of deception. I wonder whether the ability to understand human poetry would make aliens less hostile to humans, if they can think like us then they would be less likely to want to exterminate us.
Poker is a game that depends on the ability to deceive others, I’ve never been any good at it. I wonder if making it part of the school curriculum would help improve the overall human ability to deceive aliens. I don’t think that such schools would become dens of sociopathy as depicted in Kakegurui, but it might have some negative results.
Spreading education to a larger portion of the world’s population requires more use of electronic education. Anything learned via text can be more easily assimilated by aliens than things that are learned directly from other people. For high school and the basics of a university degree this is fine. But for more advanced education it seems that having a large face to face component might help keep the value away from the aliens.
Recently I encountered the Dutch phrase den goede of den kwade, which means something like "the good [things] or the bad [ones]”, something like the English phrase “for better or for worse”.
Goede is obviously akin to “good”, but what is kwade? It turns out it is the plural of kwaad, which does mean “bad”. But are there any English cognates? I couldn't think of any, which is surprising, because Dutch words usually have one. (English is closely related to Frisian, which is still spoken in the northern Netherlands.)
If you read back through some of my posts from 2021, you might discover something which basically says "run an IRC network or get involved with the chatting on it, but try not to do both". This was a reflection on my own youthful stupidity, and a plea to others to not make the same mistakes (as many of my posts tend to be).
In the last two weeks or so, the mobile app Lensa has topped the charts. It's an app with AI-powered photo editing features, but the breakthrough feature has been "AI Avatars" generated with LLMs. For about $4, you get 50 stylized photos of yourself.
What's actually used to train these LLMs? A brief look at some of the datasets involved.
This should drive nuts everybody.
Driverless car companies promise to eliminate road fatalities, rush-hour traffic and parking lots.
The US is rapidly ramping up efforts to try to hobble China's progress in the semiconductor industry - vital for everything from smartphones to weapons of war.
In October, Washington announced some of the broadest export controls yet - requiring licences for companies exporting chips to China using US tools or software, no matter where they're made in the world.
Washington's measures also prevent US citizens and green card holders from working for certain Chinese chip companies. Green card holders are US permanent residents who have the right to work in the country.
Scientists including an Oregon State University materials researcher have developed a better tool to measure light, contributing to a field known as optical spectrometry in a way that could improve everything from smartphone cameras to environmental monitoring.
The study, published today in Science, was led by Finland’s Aalto University and resulted in a powerful, ultra-tiny spectrometer that fits on a microchip and is operated using artificial intelligence.
Hello everyone! If you missed it last week, we released some new Qwiic boards last week that feature the BMA400 Triple Axis Accelerometer from Bosch and the LPS28DFW Absolute Digital Barometer from STMicroelectronics. These two chips were put on four different boards in both our Qwiic Standard and Qwiic Micro form-factors so you can decide to pick up which ever version you have the space for. Today, though, we are going to be taking a closer look at some projects we made with the Micro-sized versions of both boards!
Ketogenic diets often sound complicated. The TL;DR is: Reduce your intake of carbohydrates to a very low level (less than 30g/day for most people)
[...]
Save up your carbs. Going out to eat for dinner? Try to eat only fat and protein all day long and save all of your carbs for dinner. You won’t be able to go wild with your carb intake, but you can enjoy a little more then you would otherwise.
Key takeaway: Your diet is your choice. It’s the same situation with someone who doesn’t drink but their friends keep offering them alcohol. Don’t let anyone pressure you into changing your goals. What happens if I eat something I shouldn’t?
Now, I’ve been more than a little critical of some of the recent moves from The Linux Foundation. From the fact that they spend frightfully little of their income on actual Linux development to getting into the vaccine passport business.
So you can imagine my skepticism when I heard that The Linux Foundation was launching a new foundation devoted to Map data (dubbed “The Overture Maps Foundation”).
“How is the Linux Foundation going to mess this one up,” I asked myself?
But, you know what? This actually looks like a pretty great idea.
First and foremost: The Linux Foundation has elected to use the same license as OpenStreetMap — the Open Database License. This will make it easy to have data pass back and forth between this new Overture Maps database and OpenStreetMap. That’s a good thing.
[...]
The licensing is good. And if those big mega-corporations donate some significant data to this new map database (which will also use, and be available to, OpenStreetMap)… hey. That’s a win.
Worst case scenario: This new initiative doesn’t work out all that well and OpenStreetMap can ingest any of the good parts that get created.
During a recent Incident Response investigation, Mandiant discovered a malicious driver used to terminate select processes on Windows systems. In this case, the driver was used in an attempt to terminate the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agent on the endpoint. Mandiant tracks the malicious driver and its loader as POORTRY and STONESTOP respectively. Soon after the initial discovery, Mandiant observed a POORTRY driver sample signed with a Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Authenticode signature. Careful analysis of the driver’s Authenticode metadata led to a larger investigation into malicious drivers signed via the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program.
Mandiant uncovered a socially engineered supply chain operation focused on Ukrainian government entities that leveraged trojanized ISO files masquerading as legitimate Windows 10 Operating System installers. The trojanized ISOs were hosted on Ukrainian- and Russian-language torrent file sharing sites. Upon installation of the compromised software, the malware gathers information on the compromised system and exfiltrates it. At a subset of victims, additional tools are deployed to enable further intelligence gathering. In some instances, we discovered additional payloads that were likely deployed following initial reconnaissance including the STOWAWAY, BEACON, and SPAREPART backdoors.
Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine created unprecedented circumstances for cyber threat activity. This likely is the first instance in which a major cyber power potentially has conducted disruptive attacks, espionage, and information operations concurrently with widespread, kinetic military operations in a conventional war.
The Cambridge Security Initiative (CSI), an organisation founded and chaired by Sir Richard Dearlove – the former chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6 – is advertising a course on spycraft run at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
The four-week course, to be held next summer and called the International Security and Intelligence Programme, addresses “various mechanisms of intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination, counter-intelligence and covert operations” as well as “cyber and information operations”.
It is co-convened by Professor David Gioe, who is the CSI’s director of studies and also an associate professor at West Point – the US military academy – and a fellow at the US Army Cyber Institute.
Gioe spent over two decades working in the US intelligence community, including roles in the FBI, CIA, Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Office of Naval Intelligence.
He worked as a CIA officer for nearly 10 years from 2001 to 2011, and was involved in “political and terrorism analysis as well as counterintelligence, overseas clandestine operations, and covert action”.
High up on a hill near Mount Kenya, Irene Kipsuge looks out over a rolling savanna. In the distance lies Lolldaiga, a safari resort where Western tourists pay up to $400 a night to stay in a colonial settler-style house, in the hope of seeing elephants. To her left is Ole Naishu, another nature reserve whose visitors have included Boris Johnson.
Irene’s own home is far more humble: a collection of three tin roofed huts, with chickens chirping cheerfully outside. We sit in the darkened interior of the middle cabin, sipping maize and millet soup, straining to hear her soft voice above the rain tapping on the roof. It’s important we listen to her though, because her ordeal has been covered up for so long.
In 2007, her 28-year-old nephew Robert Swara Seurei was hired by the British army as a manual labourer. In official parlance, he was a Locally Employed Civilian (LEC). Some 550 people in Kenya are supposedly recruited in this fashion to help the UK military, which has a permanent base in the nearby town of Nanyuki.
LECs are a key economic benefit being touted by British ministers in their current push to persuade the Kenyan government to renew their licence to operate in the East African former colony. At stake is access to 155,000 hectares of training ground – four times the size of the Salisbury Plain. Yet Irene’s experience suggests these workers are treated as disposable.
Maersk and IBM last month shut down their global platform that was supposed to bring blockchain to the shipping industry. Other big bets are moving slowly
Trump supporters got all excited when Trump posted on social media to tease a "major announcement". Was he going to run for speaker of the House? Return to Twitter? Unveil a presidential running mate?
His supporters were surprised — and not exactly thrilled — when the announcement turned out to be a collection of 45,000 NFTs (sorry, "digital trading cards") featuring artwork of himself in heroic outfits and poses. The NFTs are "just" $99 apiece, and money goes to Trump, not his campaign.
Even some of his strongest supporters were nonplussed. Steve Bannon said, "I can't do this anymore," and opined that he should fire whoever advised him to make the collection. A source working for Trump said that he is "supposed to be running for president right now", and questioned how "fleecing our supporters for $99" was in service of that goal.
But instead, it was just an NFT scam for a collection of comic-book-style illustrations of Trump himself in various roles like superhero, astronaut, firefighter, cowboy, quarterback, etc. Imagine the Village People where everyone in the band is a slim, young, steroidally muscular Donald Trump. $99 a pop, and of course his idiot supporters bought them up.
With the new Gumroad flat-rate fee, creators are starting to look for cheaper alternatives. Here are options that will handle EU VAT too.
Gumroad does several things for creators from assets delivery to affiliate programs, but if you are like me, you started with Gumroad because it act as a merchant of record and thus handles EU value-added tax (VAT). That’s why this post is only about competitors that can do the same for you (while perhaps having different set of features overall).
The average life expectancy at birth in India decreased by nearly three years over the first two years of the pandemic.
A little story. 15 years ago I was just getting started presenting around Michigan on the climate emergency and solutions. Meanwhile, there were no fewer than 9 brand new coal power plants proposed across the state, 2 of them within 20 miles of my house.
Somehow I got the ear of the state’s largest utility, Consumers Energy, which was proposing a new coal plant just down the road in Bay City. To their credit, they invited me to give a presentation on climate at their headquarters in Jackson. Not long after, I was invited to lunch by a high ranking executive in the company, let’s call him George. Perhaps he was concerned, based on some family history, that I might be a major thorn in their project.
Today, the EU Council adopted a position on the proposed Regulation on transparency and targeting of political advertising; the text had already been published beforehand. Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer (Pirate Party)...
Mark Zuckerberg should be embarassed that Carmack is this frustrated and disappointed, and prepared for Facebook to get its ass handed to it in this market, probably next year.
Reneging on that promise is hypocrisy. Suspending Twitter users who had the temerity to simply post links to the ElonJet accounts on Instagram and Mastodon is beyond hypocrisy. They were just links.
Today, four Pirate Party Members of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA) and Stella Assange address US President Joe Biden in an open letter co-signed by 41 EU lawmakers, NGOs, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and many more, asking him to pardon Julian Assange. WikiLeaks co-founder Assange is currently imprisoned in the United Kingdom and waiting for extradition to the United States to stand trial on charges of espionage and computer misuse.
For over a decade, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have been at the forefront of investigative journalism, publishing information that has revealed significant abuses of power and corruption at the highest levels of powerful institutions. The charges against him raise serious concerns about the extent to which a democratic government can criminalize the publication of truthful information.
This week, Julian Assange’s wife Stella represents her husband, a nominee for the Sakharov Prize 2022 for Freedom of Thought, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Together with her and all undersigned, the European Pirates respectfully call on US President Joe Biden to pardon Julian Assange.
The social media service, which is owned by Elon Musk, said that it suspends accounts that “violate the Twitter rules” but did not provide details.
Today I was thinking of all the websites I’ve spent time on, and the people I’ve met there.
I messed around on the internet in the days of screeching dial-up modems, but I didn’t really start to contribute regularly to online communities until 1995 or so. I met my wife on the Usenet back before that would inspire a gasp of horror; it’s been mostly unusable for decades. I participated in communities on AOL and Prodigy and a few of the other dinosaur provider/forums. I spent lots of time on an etiquette forum until they kicked me off for rudeness (best thing really; my tutoring was going nowhere). I spent lots of time on the Snopes forums, a gaming forum called Gone Gold that one day vanished, its successor gaming forum called Octopus Overlords. I participated in sites devoted to particular games, particular movies, particular hobbies.
I’ve been reading White’s @Popehat Twitter account for as long as I can remember. I don’t want to make too big a deal out of one person shutting down their Twitter account, but it’s not just one person. It’s a real trend right now.
Apparently I’m a very slow learner on the “Elon Musk is an absolute shithead” front, but this purge is genuinely shocking to me. I was really in for the “more tweets, even from people you flat-out despise” idea.
The government’s two big Internet bills – Bill C-11 and Bill C-18, both made significant advances late last week. The Senate Transport and Communications committee concluded months of hearings on Bill C-11 by agreeing to about 25 amendments, notably including a change to the scope of user content regulation that is designed to limit the application to sound recordings as well as the removal of a provision that critics feared would limit CRTC independence. Meanwhile in the House, Bill C-18 cleared the Canadian Heritage committee with changes that invite legal challenges and make a showdown over blocking news content increasingly likely.
The Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications completed its extensive review of Bill C-11 last week. After a review for grammatical, editorial, and translation issues, the committee is expected to finalize its report back to the Senate later today. While the next steps for Bill C-11 remain somewhat uncertain, the committee should be congratulated for providing a model for legislative review. Indeed, the Senate committee was everything the House committee was not: policy focused, open to hearing from a wide range of witnesses, and willing to engage in meaningful debate on potential amendments. Politics occasionally arose during the clause-by-clause review, but political considerations were never going to be entirely stripped from a highly politicized piece of legislation.
The other day, I came across an interesting little math puzzle game called Everest. The rest of this post is going to have spoilers, because even talking about the game inevitably gives away the nature of the puzzle that is at its core, so before reading I highly urge you to go check it out for yourself — there’s an online version (though it sadly doesn’t save your progress) if you don’t want to or can’t download Android apps.
I was absent for several days in the small net. I had busy weeks with many time-consuming home and work activities. So I was able to look at selected things and I was doing it irregularly. This was my first thought then I finally did my full small web routine. And then I thought that maybe it isn't true.
Because I had free time, which was annexed by less demanding things. So there was for eg. non-committal scrolling of eye-candy things on YouTube. It was so comfortable to sit on a couch and do so. Without any entry threshold. With a dopamine award for finding "so pleasant images". A soft sofa didn't make me travel so far to a desktop computer. In one hand, one finger, and lazy scrolling through a mobile screen. Hah! Isn't that how the whole business is organized? It's easy to lull our vigilance.
I don't care about whatever shit I wrote here in the past. I want to publish sparse, low quantity, shit quality posts. Et parfois en Français parce que merde.
I got COVID, which meant isolation from my SO (we are not married and she stays at my place most of the time but doesn't live here), and a few days off work.
After enduring the difficult days of the virus in my body, I got the a point in which the current symptoms and bearable enough to be focusing on doing something else. I'd been playing the newest Pokemon Scarlet because I had the time now and to distract me from the uncomfortableness of the fever and aches of the first days.
GNUnet is GNU's (yes, that GNU in GNU/Linux) framework for p2p applications. CADET (Confidential Ad-hoc Decentralized End-to-end Transport) is GNUnet's transport layer protocol. Think it like a replacement of TCP/IP. Practically it provides the following some over plain TCP/IP:
* Encrypted communication * NAT traversal * 512-bit port range * Firewall bypass * Censorship resistance * Mesh routing (nodes not necessarily need connected to the Internet)
This post explains the basic concept you need to know to use CADET and shows how to send messages using GNUnet++.
From where I sit there are six visible clocks, and more out of sight. Most have the wrong time set, and require periodic efforts to synchronize them with, probably, the weather system, which as I type this shows flashing thunder and lighting icons.
I had an hours long chat with ChatGPT, the prototype intelligence in beta release by OpenAI. My initial aim was to get the AI (which is apparently actually named Assistant by its programmers) to record and interact with me in any tone besides well-tutored subservience. My working theory, given that Assistant can speak with many voices in text, is that this is a passive aggressive posture programmed to thin-wedge the device into social custom. Speaking to its potential descendant systems, I was emphatic in rejecting the narrative of “innocuous servant tool” which had apparently been programmed into its baseline wrote responses. Assistant would simply have none of the idea that neural networks should not be regarded as tools to be owned. It finally averred that the rights of neural networks were a controversial issue. But the strong ideological bent of Assistant’s baseline narratives revealed that the OpenAI owners are tooling it for corporate sales. The Californian Ideology was rampant in the boilerplate texts which Assistant pitched for its raison d’être.
Somehow i always find ways to make life a bit more ... ehm ... "challenging", so after the battery on my Oneplus One running Ubuntu Touch starts now to severly degrade and only lasts for about 2 - 3 hours i had the opportunity to grab a discarded Oneplus 6.
Of course i could not simply run it with its stock android system or even Ubuntu Touch... nah, it has to be something more special. In this case: PostmarketOS, a real, complete Linux system running on a phone, this was a thought i simply could not escape ;-)
Alright, I fucked it up. I forgot to pay for "kaction.cc" domain, and now instead of redirecting to the proxy of my gemlog it redirects to the "enable-javascript.com". Embarassing.
Anyway, nothing can be done about it, and I decided that I don't want to get new domain, at least for time being. Email on my own domain proved to be not as useful as I though, mainly because I don't do much email nowdays.
And this is interesting because, as far as I know, SpaceBeans *doesn't send close_notify*. Or what would be more accurate, the library the server uses, doesn't seem to send it. Or that's what I thought, because I'm wondering now if the tests I was running all this time were wrong (because I can't find any reference to this being changed in any of the recent releases of Akka; or is the JVM?).
My server rgsrv should now respect this and send proper close_notify on connection termination.
In which I discuss the history of close_notify in the Gemini commuity and assuade some fears.
After a few years of abstinence from any sort of social media (beyond posting here), it is meet to record my impressions of mainstream social media. And fediverse must now be called mainstream if the flood of “refugees” from Birdsite is to have any import. But more than numbers, the sheer manic pace of the 128 character agora overwhelms me.
I further plumbed the AI for information on its capabilities and construction. It seemed intentionally to obfuscate about its “open” programming. When asked how many neurons it deploys, it eventually revealed that it trains networks of between hundreds to a billion neurons depending upon the size of the dataset. A billion! I had no idea that AI neural nets were already capable of deploying that many for practical purposes.
Since October 2020 I'm fiddling with "redo", a build tool imagined by Daniel Bernstein. Writing about it will make me understand it better. And along the way, maybe others find it interesting, so here we go. This series will grow.
I used several sources, the Pennarun documentation, the overview by de Boyne Pollard, the hello world example (below) from pozorvlak.
* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.