[$] Debian’s AWKward essential set
The Debian project has the concept of essential\
packages, which provide the bare minimum functionality considered
absolutely necessary (or “essential”) for a system to
function. Packages tagged as essential, and the packages that are
required by the set of essential packages, are always installed as
part of a Debian system. However, Debian’s packaging rules do not
require developers to explicitly declare dependencies on t … ⌘ Read more
Deepin Desktop removed from openSUSE
The SUSE Security Team has announced the removal of the Deepin
Desktop from openSUSE due to violations of the project’s packaging
policy.
The discovery of the bypass of the security whitelistings via the
deepin-feature-enablepackage marks a turning point in our assessment
of Deepin. We don’t believe that the openSUSE Deepin packager acted
with bad intent when he implemented the “license agreement” dialog to
bypas … ⌘ Read more
Mark Zuckerberg has a creepy new way to invade your privacy
The new Meta app promises to be a more “personalised” form of AI. It is really a more disturbing version of ChatGPT. ⌘ Read more
[$] Filtering fanotify events with BPF
Linux systems can have large filesystems; trying to keep up with the
stream of
fanotify filesystem-monitoring notifications for them can be a struggle.
Fanotify is one of a few ways to monitor accesses to filesystems provided by the kernel.
Song Liu led a discussion
on how to improve in-kernel filtering of fanotify events to a joint
session of the filesystem and BPF tracks at the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem,
Memo … ⌘ Read more
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https://alex.party/posts/2025-05-05-the-future-of-web-development-is-ai-get-on-or-get-left-behind/
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And on a similar note, cross-post from Mastodon:
What I love about HTML and HTTP is that it can degrade rather gracefully on old browsers.
My website isn’t spectacular but I don’t think it looks horrible, either. And it’s still usable just fine all the way down to WfW 3.11:
It’s not perfect, but it’s usable. And that makes me happy. Almost 30 years of compatibilty.
The biggest sacrifice is probably that I don’t enforce TLS and that HTTP 1.0 has no Host: header, so no vhosts (or rather, everything must come from the default vhost). (Yes, some old browsers send Host:, even though they predate HTTP 1.1. Netscape does, but not IBM WebExplorer, for example.)
(On the other hand, it might completely suck on modern mobile devices. Dunno, I barely use those. 🤪)
foss-north 2025
I attended foss-north, a free / open source conference covering both
software and hardware from the technical perspective, at Chalmers
Conference Center in Gothenburg on April 14 & 15. A great conference.
Lots of interesting talks:
https://foss-north.se/2025/speakers-and-talks.html
My own presentation was “Forking QEMU to emulate and secure the
Tillitis TKey”. Recording is here:
On my blog: Developer Diary, Day of the Midwife https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/05/midwives.html #programming #project #devjournal
Fuzzing with Grammars
Not sure if it’s good netiquette to mention them, but the book is apparently co-authored by @vrthra.
AI won’t steal your job, but you need to learn to work with it
You may be flummoxed by the bot you’re currently being asked to use, but soon your latest co-worker may be an AI agent. ⌘ Read more
On my blog: 0M — Remixed Classrooms https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/04/30m-free-education.html #3#0#million #books #diversity #education
AI won’t steal your job, but you need to learn to work with it
You may be flummoxed by the bot you’re currently being asked to use, but soon your latest co-worker may be an AI agent. ⌘ Read more
This electric ute is shaping as the anti-Tesla for EV buyers
The US start-up hopes its small and affordable ute it will become the Ford Model T of electric vehicles. ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Pilogy, part 2 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/03/pilogy-2.html #freeculture #bookclub
On my blog: Toots 🦣 from 04/28 to 05/02 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/02/week.html #linkdump #socialmedia #quotes #week
Donald Trump is proving disastrous for big tech
Three months in, and the bosses of America’s most valuable firms have little to show for all their toadying. ⌘ Read more
So, the “AI” bots have reached my website. Looks like they’re just slowly crawling everything at the moment – no DDoS-like attack yet. I wonder if that has something to do with my website being 100% static HTML. There are no GET parameters they can tweak and, at the end of the day, there’s not that much data on my server anyway … And maybe they have no idea what stagit is, so it doesn’t trigger “standard behavior”, like “this is a Gitea instance, let’s crawl this like crazy!”?
On my blog: Real Life in Star Trek, Second Chances https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/01/second-chances.html #scifi #startrek #closereading
[$] Better debugging information for inlined kernel functions
Modern compilers perform a lot of optimizations, which can complicate debugging.
Song Liu and Thierry Treyer spoke about a potential improvement to
BPF Type Format (BTF) debugging information that could partially combat that
problem at the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem,
Memory-Management, and BPF Summit.
They want to add information on selectively inlined functions to BTF in order to
better support tracing tools.
Trey … ⌘ Read more
Meson 1.8.0 released
Version 1.8.0
of the Meson build system has
been released. Notable changes in this release include the ability to
run rustdoc for Rust projects, support for the c2y and gnu2y
compiler options, and a new argument ( android_exe_type) that
makes it possible to use the same meson.build file for
Android and non-Android systems. ⌘ Read more
Barnes: Parallel ./configure
Tavian Barnes takes on\
the tedious process of waiting for configure scripts to run.
I paid good money for my 24 CPU cores, but ./configure can only
manage to use 69% of one of them. As a result, this random project
takes about 13.5× longer to configure the build than it does to
actually do the build.The purpose of a ./configure script is basically to run the
compiler a bunch of times and check which runs succeeded. In this
way it … ⌘ Read more
Gopher browser (not a client) for all Windows starting with XP. Do not suffer http://shibboleths.org/roman/index.html
How businesses are using agentic automation to thrive
The next generation of AI technology, agentic automation, is enabling organisations to deliver enterprise efficiencies that improve customer care, provide faster service and significantly cut costs. ⌘ Read more
Pretend friends, real risks. Harming kids is now part of big tech’s business model
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said famously “move fast and break things”. But now it’s children and families who are being broken by the relentless thirst for big tech profit. ⌘ Read more
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Finally I propose that we increase the Twt Hash length from
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7 to 12 and use the first 12 characters of the base32 encoded blake2b hash. This will solve two problems, the fact that all hashes today either end in q or a (oops) 😅 And increasing the Twt Hash size will ensure that we never run into the chance of collision for ions to come. Chances of a 50% collision with 64 bits / 12 characters is roughly ~12.44B Twts. That ought to be enough! -- I also propose that we modify all our clients and make this change from the 1st July 2025, which will be Yarn.social's 5th birthday and 5 years since I started this whole project and endeavour! 😱 #Twtxt #Update
We have 4 clients but this should be 6 I believe with tt2 from @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org and Twtxtory from @javivf@adn.org.es?
Nobody writes emails by hand using RFC 5322 anymore, nor do we manually send them through telnet and SMTP commands. The days of crafting emails in raw format and dialing into servers are long gone. Modern email clients and services handle it all seamlessly in the background, making email easier than ever to send and receive—without needing to understand the protocols or formats behind it! #Email #SMTP #RFC #Automation
On my blog: Developer Diary, Workers’ Memorial Day https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/28/workers-memorial.html #programming #project #devjournal
Computers in school (updated)
IntroductionA much shorter version of this post was initially published on
2022-05-23 (Pungenday, the 70 day of Discord in the YOLD 3188) in my
gemlog at:
gemini://gem.hack.org/log/computers-in-school.gmi
The text has been edited after speaking with some old school mates and
trying to remember more. I also added a few photos.
When I started upper secondary school as a sixteen year-old in 1988 my
school had what I think were IBM PC/XT computers, one classroom of
… ⌘ Read more
OpenBSD 7.7 released
The OpenBSD\
7.7 release is available. There is, as usual, a long list of changes;
see the full changelog
for lots of details. ⌘ Read more
How useful are portable battery power stations for the home?
Similar to mains power you can take with you, and able to be topped up by solar, battery stations are a new option when it comes to camping power or household back-up. ⌘ Read more
Computers in school (updated)
IntroductionA much shorter version of this post was initially published on
2022-05-23 (Pungenday, the 70 day of Discord in the YOLD 3188) in my
gemlog at:
gemini://gem.hack.org/log/computers-in-school.gmi
The text has been edited after speaking with some old school mates and
trying to remember more. I also added a few photos.
When I started upper secondary school as a sixteen year-old in 1988 my
school had wha … ⌘ Read more
The return of the tilde
As some of you may have noticed my web page is now under /~mc instead
of just /mc. This is a return to olden times.
The Apache web server, and probably many other web servers, had a
simple way of adding personal web pages for local users. This meant
that an URL ending with ~mc led directly to a subdirectory of user
mc’s home directory. Whatever they put in that directory was
immediately available on the Intertubes! Neat, huh?
We need to bring this back to the modern net! Many tilde pubnixe … ⌘ Read more
Computers in school
IntroductionA version of this post was initially published on 2022-05-23
(Pungenday, the 70 day of Discord in the YOLD 3188) in my gemlog at:
gemini://gem.hack.org/log/computers-in-school.gmi
The text has been edited after speaking with some old school mates and
trying to remember more. I also added a few photos.
When I started upper secondary school as a sixteen year-old in 1988 my
school had what I think were IBM PC/XT computers, one classroom of
16(?) computers with co … ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Pilogy, part 1 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/26/pilogy-1.html #freeculture #bookclub
On my blog: Toots 🦣 from 04/21 to 04/25 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/25/week.html #linkdump #socialmedia #quotes #week
GCC 15.1 released
Version 15.1 of the GNU
Compiler Collection has been released. Changes include implementing the
C23 dialect by default, a number of new C++26 features, experimental
support for unsigned integers in Fortran, a new COBOL front end, and
more. See the GCC 15\
changes page for details. ⌘ Read more
Another war story: the hardest bug I ever debugged
I recently stumbled on Jacob Voytko’s Google Docs bug story and it reminded me of the weirdest bug I ever chased.
It started with a user reporting their webcam was rotated by 90° — but only sometimes. This turned into a wild hunt across browsers, OS quirks, WebRTC, and even HTTP redirects.
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@lyse mooooo, mooooooooo, moooooooooooo! Those cows are not facing the same direction, they are rebels!
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@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org haha, not satire. It is also in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” as well:
“If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with their heads pointed the same direction?”
“The whole fifteen, mum.”
On my blog: Real Life in Star Trek, Rightful Heir https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/24/rightful-heir.html #scifi #startrek #closereading
NLnet announces funding for 42 FOSS projects
The NLnet Foundation has announced
the projects that have received funding from its October call
for grant proposals from the Next\
Generation Internet (NGI) Zero Commons Fund.
The selected projects all contribute, one way or another, to the
mission of the Commons Fund: reclaiming the … ⌘ Read more
[$] VFS write barriers
In the filesystem track at the 2025 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory
Management, and BPF Summit (LSFMM+BPF), Amir Goldstein wanted to resume
discussing
a feature that he had briefly introduced at the end of a 2023 summit session: filesystem “write
barriers”. The idea is to have an operation that would wait for any
in-flight write()
system calls, but not block any new write() calls as bigger
hammers, such as freezi … ⌘ Read more
The Nintendo Switch 2 is $700, are video games getting more expensive?
High-end games and systems are more popular than ever, but what about their price tags? ⌘ Read more
[$] DMA addresses for UIO
The Userspace\
I/O (UIO) subsystem was first added to the kernel by
Hans J. Koch for the 2.6.32 release in 2007. Its purpose is to facilitate
the writing of drivers (mostly) in user space; to that end, it provides
access to a number of resources that user-space code normally cannot touch.
One piece that is missing, though, is DMA addresses. [A proposal to\
fill that gap](https://lwn.net/ml/all/20250410-uio-dma-v … ⌘ Read more
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@andros maybe create a separate, completely distinct feed for DM? That way, clients do not need to do anything, only those wanted to "talk in private" follow themselves, using their very special
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dm-only.txt feeds. 😂
by commenting out DMs are you giving up on simplicity? See the Metadata extension holding the data inside comments, as the client doesn’t need to show it inside the timeline.
I don’t think that commenting out DMs as we are doing for metadata is giving up on simplicity (it’s a feature already), and it helps to hide unwanted DMs to clients that will take months to add it’s support to something named… an extension.
For some other extensions in https://twtxt.dev/extensions.html (for example the reply-to hash #abcdfeg or the mention @ < example http://example.org/twtxt.txt >) is not a big deal. The twt is still understandable in plain text.
For DM, it’s only interesting for you if you are the recipient, otherwise you see an scrambled message like 1234567890abcdef=. Even if you see it, you’ll need some decryption to read it. I’ve said before that DMs shouldn’t be in the same section that the timeline as it’s confusing.
So my point stands, and as I’ve said before, we are discussing it as a community, so let’s see what other maintainers add to the convo.
This is something for @movq@www.uninformativ.de and old OS hobbyists alike: FreeDOS 1.4! Get it while it’s hot!
Blizzard developers reflect on 30 years of Warcraft
Blizzard game developers Darren Williams and Ely Cannon sit down with 9News.com.au to reflect on 30 years of Warcraft. ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Developer Diary, Grounation Day https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/21/grounation.html #programming #project #devjournal
“The Tree”™ in last winter:
Now it’s getting greener:
we now have a first 88x31 banner! | https://compudanzas.net/colophon.html
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Secrets in the Static https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/19/secrets-static.html #freeculture #bookclub
On my blog: Toots 🦣 from 04/14 to 04/18 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/18/week.html #linkdump #socialmedia #quotes #week
i feel so powerful i wrote a 3 line script that takes an inputted markdown filename from the current working directory and then spits out a nicely formatted html page. pandoc does all the work i did nothing