The situation is getting better in some ways because we are opening up in Tokyo. However fear remains the same. The fear of going out vs the business as usual.
I'm spending more time on home network than ever before and
I am learning about ipv6 more than before. I can probably
explain MAP-E or dslite to you like I never could before.
Italianization (Italian: Italianizzazione; Croatian: talijanizacija; Slovene: poitaljan evanje; German: Italianisierung; Greek: ) is the spread of Italian culture and language, either by integration or assimilation.[1][2]
In 1919, at the time of its annexation, the middle part of the County of Tyrol which is today called South Tyrol (in Italian Alto Adige) was inhabited by almost 90% German speakers.[1] Under the 1939 South Tyrol Option Agreement, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini determined the status of the German and Ladin (Rhaeto-Romanic) ethnic groups living in the region. They could emigrate to Germany, or stay in Italy and accept their complete Italianization. As a consequence of this, the society of South Tyrol was deeply riven. Those who wanted to stay, the so-called Dableiber, were condemned as traitors while those who left (Optanten) were defamed as Nazis. Because of the outbreak of World War II, this agreement was never fully implemented. Illegal Katakombenschulen ("Catacomb schools") were set up to teach children the German language.
The Prontuario dei nomi locali dell'Alto Adige (Italian for Reference Work of Place Names of Alto Adige) is a list of Italianized toponyms for mostly German place names in South Tyrol (Alto Adige in Italian) which was published in 1916 by the Royal Italian Geographic Society (Reale Societ Geografica Italiana). The list was called the Prontuario in short and later formed an important part of the Italianization campaign initiated by the fascist regime, as it became the basis for the official place and district names in the Italian-annexed southern part of the County of Tyrol.
Ettore Tolomei (16 August 1865, in Rovereto 25 May 1952, in Rome) was an Italian nationalist and fascist. He was designated a Member of the Italian Senate in 1923, and ennobled as Conte della Vetta in 1937.
The South Tyrol Option Agreement (German: Option in S dtirol; Italian: Opzioni in Alto Adige) was an agreement in effect between 1939 and 1943, when the native German speaking people in South Tyrol and three communes in the province of Belluno were given the option of either emigrating to neighboring Nazi Germany (of which Austria was a part after the 1938 Anschluss) or remaining in Fascist Italy and being forcibly integrated into the mainstream Italian culture, losing their language and cultural heritage. Over 80% opted to move to Germany.
cvProjectPoints2()
calls. So I decided to just write a small C++ shim to call the new version of
that function, expose that with =extern "C"= to the rest of my world, and I'd be
done. And normally I would be, but this is OpenCV we're talking about. I wrote
the shim, and it didn't work. The code built and ran, but the results were
wrong. After some pointless debugging, I boiled the problem down to this test
program:
#include <opencv2/calib3d.hpp> #include <stdio.h> int main(void) double fx = 1000.0; double fy = 1000.0; double cx = 1000.0; double cy = 1000.0; double _camera_matrix[] = fx, 0, cx, 0, fy, cy, 0, 0, 1 ; cv::Mat camera_matrix(3,3, CV_64FC1, _camera_matrix); double pp[3] = 1., 2., 10. ; double qq[2] = 444, 555 ; int N=1; cv::Mat object_points(N,3, CV_64FC1, pp); cv::Mat image_points (N,2, CV_64FC1, qq); // rvec,tvec double _zero3[3] = ; cv::Mat zero3(1,3,CV_64FC1, _zero3); cv::projectPoints( object_points, zero3,zero3, camera_matrix, cv::noArray(), image_points, cv::noArray(), 0.0); fprintf(stderr, "manually-projected no-distortion: %f %f\n", pp[0]/pp[2] * fx + cx, pp[1]/pp[2] * fy + cy); fprintf(stderr, "opencv says: %f %f\n", qq[0], qq[1]); return 0;
$ g++ -I/usr/include/opencv4 -o tst tst.cc -lopencv_calib3d -lopencv_core && ./tst manually-projected no-distortion: 1100.000000 1200.000000 opencv says: 444.000000 555.000000Well that's no good. The answer is wrong, but it looks like it didn't even write anything into the output array. Since this is supposed to be a thin shim to C code, I want this thing to be filling in C arrays, which is what I'm doing here:
double qq[2] = 444, 555 ; int N=1; cv::Mat image_points (N,2, CV_64FC1, qq);
cv::Mat, but the API wants cv::InputArray for some arguments and
cv::OutputArray for others. Clearly cv::Mat can be coerced into either of
those types (and that's what you're supposed to do), but the details are not
meant to be understood. You can read the snazzy C++-style documentation.
Clicking on "OutputArray" in the doxygen gets you here. Then I guess you're
supposed to click on "_OutputArray", and you get here. Understand what's going
on now? Me neither.
Stepping through the code revealed the problem. cv::projectPoints() looks like
this:
void cv::projectPoints( InputArray _opoints, InputArray _rvec, InputArray _tvec, InputArray _cameraMatrix, InputArray _distCoeffs, OutputArray _ipoints, OutputArray _jacobian, double aspectRatio ) .... _ipoints.create(npoints, 1, CV_MAKETYPE(depth, 2), -1, true); ....
OutputArray object. This object already had a buffer, and that's
where I was expecting the output to go. Instead it went to the brand-new buffer
I didn't want. Issues:
OutputArray object knows it already has a buffer, and they could just
use it instead of allocating a new one
static void cvProjectPoints2Internal( const CvMat* objectPoints, const CvMat* r_vec, const CvMat* t_vec, const CvMat* A, const CvMat* distCoeffs, CvMat* imagePoints, CvMat* dpdr CV_DEFAULT(NULL), CvMat* dpdt CV_DEFAULT(NULL), CvMat* dpdf CV_DEFAULT(NULL), CvMat* dpdc CV_DEFAULT(NULL), CvMat* dpdk CV_DEFAULT(NULL), CvMat* dpdo CV_DEFAULT(NULL), double aspectRatio CV_DEFAULT(0) ) ...
CvMat is still there. I
have no words.
Yes, this is a massive library, and maybe other parts of it indeed did make some
sort of non-token transition, but this thing is ridiculous. In the end, here's
the function I ended up with (licensed as OpenCV; see the comment)
// The implementation of project_opencv is based on opencv. The sources have // been heavily modified, but the opencv logic remains. This function is a // cut-down cvProjectPoints2Internal() to keep only the functionality I want and // to use my interfaces. Putting this here allows me to drop the C dependency on // opencv. Which is a good thing, since opencv dropped their C API // // from opencv-4.2.0+dfsg/modules/calib3d/src/calibration.cpp // // Copyright (C) 2000-2008, Intel Corporation, all rights reserved. // Copyright (C) 2009, Willow Garage Inc., all rights reserved. // Third party copyrights are property of their respective owners. // // Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, // are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: // // * Redistribution's of source code must retain the above copyright notice, // this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. // // * Redistribution's in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, // this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation // and/or other materials provided with the distribution. // // * The name of the copyright holders may not be used to endorse or promote products // derived from this software without specific prior written permission. // // This software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors "as is" and // any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied // warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. // In no event shall the Intel Corporation or contributors be liable for any direct, // indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages // (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; // loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused // and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, // or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of typedef union struct double x,y; ; double xy[2]; point2_t; typedef union struct double x,y,z; ; double xyz[3]; point3_t; void project_opencv( // outputs point2_t* q, point3_t* dq_dp, // may be NULL double* dq_dintrinsics_nocore, // may be NULL // inputs const point3_t* p, int N, const double* intrinsics, int Nintrinsics) const double fx = intrinsics[0]; const double fy = intrinsics[1]; const double cx = intrinsics[2]; const double cy = intrinsics[3]; double k[12] = ; for(int i=0; i<Nintrinsics-4; i++) k[i] = intrinsics[i+4]; for( int i = 0; i < N; i++ ) double z_recip = 1./p[i].z; double x = p[i].x * z_recip; double y = p[i].y * z_recip; double r2 = x*x + y*y; double r4 = r2*r2; double r6 = r4*r2; double a1 = 2*x*y; double a2 = r2 + 2*x*x; double a3 = r2 + 2*y*y; double cdist = 1 + k[0]*r2 + k[1]*r4 + k[4]*r6; double icdist2 = 1./(1 + k[5]*r2 + k[6]*r4 + k[7]*r6); double xd = x*cdist*icdist2 + k[2]*a1 + k[3]*a2 + k[8]*r2+k[9]*r4; double yd = y*cdist*icdist2 + k[2]*a3 + k[3]*a1 + k[10]*r2+k[11]*r4; q[i].x = xd*fx + cx; q[i].y = yd*fy + cy; if( dq_dp ) double dx_dp[] = z_recip, 0, -x*z_recip ; double dy_dp[] = 0, z_recip, -y*z_recip ; for( int j = 0; j < 3; j++ ) double dr2_dp = 2*x*dx_dp[j] + 2*y*dy_dp[j]; double dcdist_dp = k[0]*dr2_dp + 2*k[1]*r2*dr2_dp + 3*k[4]*r4*dr2_dp; double dicdist2_dp = -icdist2*icdist2*(k[5]*dr2_dp + 2*k[6]*r2*dr2_dp + 3*k[7]*r4*dr2_dp); double da1_dp = 2*(x*dy_dp[j] + y*dx_dp[j]); double dmx_dp = (dx_dp[j]*cdist*icdist2 + x*dcdist_dp*icdist2 + x*cdist*dicdist2_dp + k[2]*da1_dp + k[3]*(dr2_dp + 4*x*dx_dp[j]) + k[8]*dr2_dp + 2*r2*k[9]*dr2_dp); double dmy_dp = (dy_dp[j]*cdist*icdist2 + y*dcdist_dp*icdist2 + y*cdist*dicdist2_dp + k[2]*(dr2_dp + 4*y*dy_dp[j]) + k[3]*da1_dp + k[10]*dr2_dp + 2*r2*k[11]*dr2_dp); dq_dp[i*2 + 0].xyz[j] = fx*dmx_dp; dq_dp[i*2 + 1].xyz[j] = fy*dmy_dp; if( dq_dintrinsics_nocore ) dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 0] = fx*x*icdist2*r2; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 0] = fy*(y*icdist2*r2); dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 1] = fx*x*icdist2*r4; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 1] = fy*y*icdist2*r4; if( Nintrinsics-4 > 2 ) dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 2] = fx*a1; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 2] = fy*a3; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 3] = fx*a2; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 3] = fy*a1; if( Nintrinsics-4 > 4 ) dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 4] = fx*x*icdist2*r6; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 4] = fy*y*icdist2*r6; if( Nintrinsics-4 > 5 ) dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 5] = fx*x*cdist*(-icdist2)*icdist2*r2; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 5] = fy*y*cdist*(-icdist2)*icdist2*r2; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 6] = fx*x*cdist*(-icdist2)*icdist2*r4; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 6] = fy*y*cdist*(-icdist2)*icdist2*r4; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 7] = fx*x*cdist*(-icdist2)*icdist2*r6; dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 7] = fy*y*cdist*(-icdist2)*icdist2*r6; if( Nintrinsics-4 > 8 ) dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 8] = fx*r2; //s1 dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 8] = fy*0; //s1 dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 9] = fx*r4; //s2 dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 9] = fy*0; //s2 dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 10] = fx*0;//s3 dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 10] = fy*r2; //s3 dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 0) + 11] = fx*0;//s4 dq_dintrinsics_nocore[(Nintrinsics-4)*(2*i + 1) + 11] = fy*r4; //s4
148. This version includes the following changes:
[ Daniel Fullmer ]
* Fix a regression in the CBFS comparator due to changes in our_check_output.
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Add a remark in the deb822 handling re. potential security issue in the
.changes, .dsc, .buildinfo comparator.
From: Ian Jackson <*****>
To: support@bountysource.com
Subject: Re: Update to our Terms of Service
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 16:26:46 +0100
Bountysource writes ("Update to our Terms of Service"):
> You are receiving this email because we are updating the Bountysource Terms of
> Service, effective 1st July 2020.
>
> What's changing?
> We have added a Time-Out clause to the Bounties section of the agreement:
>
> 2.13 Bounty Time-Out.
> If no Solution is accepted within two years after a Bounty is posted, then the
> Bounty will be withdrawn and the amount posted for the Bounty will be retained
> by Bountysource. For Bounties posted before June 30, 2018, the Backer may
> redeploy their Bounty to a new Issue by contacting support@bountysource.com
> before July 1, 2020. If the Backer does not redeploy their Bounty by the
> deadline, the Bounty will be withdrawn and the amount posted for the Bounty
> will be retained by Bountysource.
>
> You can read the full Terms of Service here
>
> What do I need to do?
> If you agree to the new terms, you don't have to do anything.
>
> If you have a bounty posted prior to June 30, 2018 that is not currently being
> solved, email us at support@bountysource.com to redeploy your bounty. Or, if
> you do not agree with the new terms, please discontinue using Bountysource.
I do not agree to this change to the Terms and Conditions.
Accordingly, I will not post any more bounties on BountySource.
I currently have one outstanding bounty of $200 on
https://www.bountysource.com/issues/86138921-rfe-add-a-frontend-for-the-rust-programming-language
That was posted in December 2019. It is not clear now whether that
bounty will be claimed within your 2-year timeout period.
Since I have not accepted the T&C change, please can you confirm that
(i) My bounty will not be retained by BountySource even if no solution
is accepted by December 2021.
(ii) As a backer, you will permit me to vote on acceptance of that
bounty should a solution be proposed before then.
I suspect that you intend to rely on the term in the previous T&C
giving you unlimited ability to modify the terms and conditions. Of
course such a term is an unfair contract term, because if it were
effective it would give you the power to do whatever you like. So it
is not binding on me.
I look forward to hearing from you by the 8th of July. If I do not
hear from you I will take the matter up with my credit card company.
Thank you for your attention.
Ian.
They will try to say "oh it's all governed by US law" but of
course section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act makes the card
company jointly liable for Bountysource's breach of contract and
a UK court will apply UK consumer protection law even to a
contract which says it is to be governed by US law - because you
can't contract out of consumer protection. So the card company
are on the hook and I can use them
as a lever.
Update - BountySource have changed their mind
From: Bountysource <support@bountysource.com> To: ***** Subject: Re: Update to our Terms of Service Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2020 18:51:11 -0700 Hi Ian The new terms of service has with withdrawn.This is not the end of the matter, I'm sure. They will want to get long-unclaimed bounties off their books (and having the cash sat forever at BountySource is not ideal for backers either). Hopefully they can engage in a dialogue and find a way that is fair, and that doesn't incentivise BountySource to sabotage bounty claims(!) I think that means that whatever it is, BountySource mustn't keep the money. There are established ways of dealing with similar problems (eg ancient charitable trusts; unclaimed bank accounts). I remain wary. That BountySource is now owned by cryptocurrency company is not encouraging. That they would even try what they just did is a really bad sign. Edited 2020-06-17 16:28 for a typo in Bountysource's email address
Language is a tool of power
In school, we read the philologist diary of Victor Klemperer about the
changes in the German language during the Third Reich, LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii, a book which makes it clear that the use of
language is political, creates realities, and has reverse repercussions on
concepts of an entire society. Language was one of the tools that supported Nazism in
insiduously pervading all parts of society.
Language shapes our concepts of society
Around the same time, a friend of mine proposed to read Egalia's daughters by Gerd Brantenberg, a book
in which gendered words were reversed: so that human becomes
huwim, for example. This book made me take notice of gendered concepts
that often go unnoticed.
Language shapes the way we think and feel
I spent a large part of my adult life in France, which confronted me with
the realization that a language provides its speakers with certain concepts. If
a concept does not exist in a language, people cannot easily feel or imagine
this concept either.
Back then (roughly 20 years ago), even though I was aware of gender inequality, I hated using
gender neutral language because in German and French it felt unnatural, and, or so
I thought, we were all alike. One day, at a party, we played a game that
consisted in guessing people's professions by asking them Yes/No questions.
Turns out that we were unable to guess that the woman we were talking with was
a doctor, because we could simply not imagine this profession for a
young woman. In French, docteur is male and almost nobody would use
the word doctoresse, ou femme docteur.
Unimaginable are also the concepts of words in German that have no
equivalent in French or vice versa:
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.A change in language is such a new model: it can make oppression and inequalities visible. Words do not only describe our world, they are a vehicle of ideas, and utopias. Analyzing and criticizing our use of language means paving the way for ideas and concepts of inclusion, equality, and unity. You might be guessing at where am I getting at with this Right: I am in favor of acknowledging past mistakes, and replacing oppressive metaphors in computing. As noted in the IETF draft about Terminology, Power and Oppressive Language, by Niels Ten Oever and Mallory Knodel, the metaphors "master/slave" and "blacklist/whitelist" associate "white with good and black with evil [which] is known as the 'bad is black effect'", all the while being technically inaccurate. I acknowledge that this will take time. There is a lot of work to do.
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-memstick.conf, all relevant BT modules were added to the blacklist, all this time.
rrs@lenovo:~$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-memstick.conf
blacklist memstick
blacklist rtsx_usb_ms
# And bluetooth too
#blacklist btusb
#blacklist btrtl
#blacklist btbcm
#blacklist btintel
#blacklist bluetooth
21:21
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver btusb
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo systemd[1]: Mounted /boot/efi.
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: examining hci_ver=06 hci_rev=000b lmp_ver=06 lmp_subver=8723
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rom_version status=0 version=1
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8723b_fw.bin
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: bluetooth hci0: firmware: direct-loading firmware rtl_bt/rtl8723b_fw.bin
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8723b_config.bin
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: bluetooth hci0: firmware: failed to load rtl_bt/rtl8723b_config.bin (-2)
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: firmware_class: See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for information about missing firmware
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for rtl_bt/rtl8723b_config.bin failed with error -2
Jun 14 17:17:08 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: cfg_sz -2, total sz 22496
01:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723BE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
btusb module is initialed (along with the misleading driver message), you ll get the following in your USB device listing
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0bda:b728 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Bluetooth Radio
rrs@lenovo:~$ systemctl status bluetooth
bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-06-15 12:54:58 IST; 3s ago
Docs: man:bluetoothd(8)
Main PID: 310197 (bluetoothd)
Status: "Running"
Tasks: 1 (limit: 9424)
Memory: 1.3M
CGroup: /system.slice/bluetooth.service
310197 /usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd
Jun 15 12:54:58 lenovo systemd[1]: Starting Bluetooth service...
Jun 15 12:54:58 lenovo bluetoothd[310197]: Bluetooth daemon 5.50
Jun 15 12:54:58 lenovo systemd[1]: Started Bluetooth service.
Jun 15 12:54:58 lenovo bluetoothd[310197]: Starting SDP server
Jun 15 12:54:58 lenovo bluetoothd[310197]: Bluetooth management interface 1.15 initialized
Jun 15 12:54:58 lenovo bluetoothd[310197]: Sap driver initialization failed.
Jun 15 12:54:58 lenovo bluetoothd[310197]: sap-server: Operation not permitted (1)
12:55
rrs@lenovo:~$ bluetoothctl
Agent registered
[bluetooth]# devices
Device E6:3A:32:A4:31:8F MI Band 2
Device D4:B8:FF:43:AB:47 MI RC
Device 00:1E:3D:10:29:0F BD Remote Control
[CHG] Device 00:1E:3D:10:29:0F Connected: yes
[BD Remote Control]# info 00:1E:3D:10:29:0F
Device 00:1E:3D:10:29:0F (public)
Name: BD Remote Control
Alias: BD Remote Control
Class: 0x0000250c
Paired: no
Trusted: yes
Blocked: no
Connected: yes
LegacyPairing: no
UUID: Human Interface Device... (00001124-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
UUID: PnP Information (00001200-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb)
Modalias: usb:v054Cp0306d0100
[bluetooth]#
0000 or 1234 are accepted.
So, the working steps so far are to Trust the device and then Connect the device.
For the sake of future use, I also populated /etc/bluetooth/input.conf based on suggestions on the internet.
Note: The advertised keymappings in this config file do not work.
Note: I m only using it for the power saving measures in instructing the BT connection to sleep after 3 minutes.
rrs@priyasi:/tmp$ cat input.conf
# Configuration file for the input service
# This section contains options which are not specific to any
# particular interface
[General]
# Set idle timeout (in minutes) before the connection will
# be disconnect (defaults to 0 for no timeout)
IdleTimeout=3
# Enable HID protocol handling in userspace input profile
# Defaults to false (HIDP handled in HIDP kernel module)
#UserspaceHID=true
# Limit HID connections to bonded devices
# The HID Profile does not specify that devices must be bonded, however some
# platforms may want to make sure that input connections only come from bonded
# device connections. Several older mice have been known for not supporting
# pairing/encryption.
# Defaults to false to maximize device compatibility.
#ClassicBondedOnly=true
# LE upgrade security
# Enables upgrades of security automatically if required.
# Defaults to true to maximize device compatibility.
#LEAutoSecurity=true
#
#[00:1E:3D:10:29:0F]
[2c:33:7a:8e:d6:30]
[PS3 Remote Map]
# When the 'OverlayBuiltin' option is TRUE (the default), the keymap uses
# the built-in keymap as a starting point. When FALSE, an empty keymap is
# the starting point.
#OverlayBuiltin = TRUE
#buttoncode = keypress # Button label = action with default key mappings
#OverlayBuiltin = FALSE
0x16 = KEY_ESC # EJECT = exit
0x64 = KEY_MINUS # AUDIO = cycle audio tracks
0x65 = KEY_W # ANGLE = cycle zoom mode
0x63 = KEY_T # SUBTITLE = toggle subtitles
0x0f = KEY_DELETE # CLEAR = delete key
0x28 = KEY_F8 # /TIME = toggle through sleep
0x00 = KEY_1 # NUM-1
0x01 = KEY_2 # NUM-2
0x02 = KEY_3 # NUM-3
0x03 = KEY_4 # NUM-4
0x04 = KEY_5 # NUM-5
0x05 = KEY_6 # NUM-6
0x06 = KEY_7 # NUM-7
0x07 = KEY_8 # NUM-8
0x08 = KEY_9 # NUM-9
0x09 = KEY_0 # NUM-0
0x81 = KEY_F2 # RED = red
0x82 = KEY_F3 # GREEN = green
0x80 = KEY_F4 # BLUE = blue
0x83 = KEY_F5 # YELLOW = yellow
0x70 = KEY_I # DISPLAY = show information
0x1a = KEY_S # TOP MENU = show guide
0x40 = KEY_M # POP UP/MENU = menu
0x0e = KEY_ESC # RETURN = back/escape/cancel
0x5c = KEY_R # TRIANGLE/OPTIONS = cycle through recording options
0x5d = KEY_ESC # CIRCLE/BACK = back/escape/cancel
0x5f = KEY_A # SQUARE/VIEW = Adjust Playback timestretch
0x5e = KEY_ENTER # CROSS = select
0x54 = KEY_UP # UP = Up/Skip forward 10 minutes
0x56 = KEY_DOWN # DOWN = Down/Skip back 10 minutes
0x57 = KEY_LEFT # LEFT = Left/Skip back 5 seconds
0x55 = KEY_RIGHT # RIGHT = Right/Skip forward 30 seconds
0x0b = KEY_ENTER # ENTER = select
0x5a = KEY_F10 # L1 = volume down
0x58 = KEY_J # L2 = decrease the play speed
0x51 = KEY_HOME # L3 = commercial skip previous
0x5b = KEY_F11 # R1 = volume up
0x59 = KEY_U # R2 = increase the play speed
0x52 = KEY_END # R3 = commercial skip next
0x43 = KEY_F9 # PS button = mute
0x50 = KEY_M # SELECT = menu (as per PS convention)
0x53 = KEY_ENTER # START = select / Enter (matches terminology in mythwelcome)
0x30 = KEY_PAGEUP # PREV = jump back (default 10 minutes)
0x76 = KEY_J # INSTANT BACK (newer RCs only) = decrease the play speed
0x75 = KEY_U # INSTANT FORWARD (newer RCs only) = increase the play speed
0x31 = KEY_PAGEDOWN # NEXT = jump forward (default 10 minutes)
0x33 = KEY_COMMA # SCAN BACK = decrease scan forward speed / play
0x32 = KEY_P # PLAY = play/pause
0x34 = KEY_DOT # SCAN FORWARD decrease scan backard speed / increase playback speed; 3x, 5, 10, 20, 30, 60, 120, 180
0x60 = KEY_LEFT # FRAMEBACK = Left/Skip back 5 seconds/rewind one frame
0x39 = KEY_P # PAUSE = play/pause
0x38 = KEY_P # STOP = play/pause
0x61 = KEY_RIGHT # FRAMEFORWARD = Right/Skip forward 30 seconds/advance one frame
0xff = KEY_MAX
21:48
btusb.enable_autosuspend=n, but that did not help in this case.
Given that this device is enumberated over the USB Bus, it probably needs this feature applied to the whole USB tree of the device s chain. Something to investigate over the weekend.
Jun 16 20:41:23 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: ACL packet for unknown connection handle 7
Jun 16 20:41:43 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: ACL packet for unknown connection handle 8
Jun 16 20:41:59 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: ACL packet for unknown connection handle 9
Jun 16 20:42:18 lenovo kernel: input: BD Remote Control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-7/1-7:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:10/0005:054C:030>
Jun 16 20:42:18 lenovo kernel: sony 0005:054C:0306.0006: input,hidraw1: BLUETOOTH HID v1.00 Gamepad [BD Remote Control] on 2c:33:7a:8e:d6:30
Jun 16 20:51:59 lenovo kernel: input: BD Remote Control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-7/1-7:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:11/0005:054C:030>
Jun 16 20:51:59 lenovo kernel: sony 0005:054C:0306.0007: input,hidraw1: BLUETOOTH HID v1.00 Gamepad [BD Remote Control] on 2c:33:7a:8e:d6:30
Jun 16 21:05:55 lenovo rtkit-daemon[1723]: Supervising 3 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Jun 16 21:05:55 lenovo rtkit-daemon[1723]: Successfully made thread 32747 of process 1646 owned by '1000' RT at priority 5.
Jun 16 21:05:55 lenovo rtkit-daemon[1723]: Supervising 4 threads of 1 processes of 1 users.
Jun 16 21:05:56 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: ACL packet for unknown connection handle 12
Jun 16 21:06:12 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: ACL packet for unknown connection handle 1
Jun 16 21:06:34 lenovo kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: ACL packet for unknown connection handle 2
Jun 16 21:06:59 lenovo kernel: input: BD Remote Control as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-7/1-7:1.0/bluetooth/hci0/hci0:3/0005:054C:0306>
Jun 16 21:06:59 lenovo kernel: sony 0005:054C:0306.0008: input,hidraw1: BLUETOOTH HID v1.00 Gamepad [BD Remote Control] on 2c:33:7a:8e:d6:30
rrs@lenovo:~/ps3pair$ kodi-ps3remote localhost 9777
usr/share/pixmaps/kodi//bluetooth.png
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/kodi-ps3remote", line 220, in <module>
File "/usr/bin/kodi-ps3remote", line 208, in main
xbmc.connect(host, port)
packet = PacketHELO(self.name, self.icon_type, self.icon_file)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/kodi/xbmcclient.py", line 285, in __init__
with open(icon_file, 'rb') as f:
11:16 => 1
rrs@lenovo:/etc/bluetooth$ kodi-ps3remote localhost
/usr/share/pixmaps/kodi//bluetooth.png
Searching for BD Remote Control
(Hold Start + Enter on remote to make it discoverable)
Redmi (E8:5A:8B:73:57:44) in range
Living Room TV (E4:DB:6D:24:23:E9) in range
Could not find BD Remote Control. Trying again...
Searching for BD Remote Control
(Hold Start + Enter on remote to make it discoverable)
Living Room TV (E4:DB:6D:24:23:E9) in range
Redmi (E8:5A:8B:73:57:44) in range
Could not find BD Remote Control. Trying again...
Searching for BD Remote Control
(Hold Start + Enter on remote to make it discoverable)
BD Remote Control (00:1E:3D:10:29:0F) in range
Found BD Remote Control with address 00:1E:3D:10:29:0F
Attempting to pair with remote
Remote Paired.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/kodi-ps3remote", line 221, in <module>
main()
File "/usr/bin/kodi-ps3remote", line 212, in main
if process_keys(remote, xbmc):
File "/usr/bin/kodi-ps3remote", line 164, in process_keys
keycode = data.encode("hex")[10:12]
AttributeError: 'bytes' object has no attribute 'encode'
11:24 => 1
With the current four-month release cycle, the next Rcpp release is due in July following the 1.0.4 release in March. Just prior to the 1.0.4 release I had asked this:
It would be particularly beneficial if those with unsual build dependencies tested it as we would increase overall coverage beyond what I get from testing against 1800+ CRAN packages. BioConductor would also be welcome.but only on the rcpp-devel list, and only about a good week prior to the release. I remain rather disappointed and disillusioned about what happened after 1.0.4 was released. Two PRs in that release were soon seen to have side effects on more marginal test systems, precisely what added testing could have revealed. An additional issue arose from changes in R s make system, which is harder to anticipate or test. Each and every infelicity was fixed within a day or so, and we always make candidate releases available the current Rcpp as of this writing is 1.0.4.12 meaning twelve microreleases were made since 1.0.4. And those microreleases are always available for normal download and
install.packages use via the Rcpp drat repository accessible to all. So it was truly troubling to see some, especially those with experience in setting up or running testing / ci platforms, pretend to be unable to access, install, and provide these for their own tests, or the tests of their users. It just doesn t pass a basic logic test: it takes a single call to install.packages(), or, even more easily, a single assignment of an auxiliary repo. All told this was a rather sad experience.
So let s try to not repeat this. If you, or maybe users of a build or ci system you maintain, rely on Rcpp, and especially if you do so on systems outside the standard CRAN grid of three OSs and the triplet of previous, current, next releases of R, then please help by testing. I maitain these release as a volunteer, unpaid at that, and I simply cannot expand to more systesm. We take reverse dependency check seriously (and I just run two taking about a day each) but if you insist on building on stranger hardware or much older releases it will be up to you to ensure Rcpp passes. We prep for CRAN, and try our best to pass at CRAN. For nearly a dozen years.
To install the current microrelease from the Rcpp drat repository, just do
That is all there is to it. You could even add the Rcpp drat repository to your repository list.
Rcpp has become successful because so many people help with suggestions, documentation, and code. It is used by (as of today) 1958 CRAN packages, 205 BioConductor packages, and downloaded around a million times per month. So if you can, please help now with some more testing.
If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub. For the first year, GitHub will match your contributions.
This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.
Could I be any more happier?Well, this time, my project is basically to write a linter (an extension to RuboCop). This tool is mostly to help the Debian Ruby team. And that is the best part, I love working in/for/with the Ruby team!
More details about the project can be found here, on the wiki.git ls-files in the gemspec files. This has been the most problematic thing for us.
Dir or Dir.glob, the best (closest) possible solution
(right now) is to use Rake::FileList which tries to respects the .gitignore file.:wq for today.
This post was originally published in the Wikimedia Tech blog, and
is authored by Arturo Borrero Gonzalez and Brooke Storm.
In the previous post, we shared the context on the recent Kubernetes upgrade that we
introduced in the Toolforge service. Today we would like to dive a bit more in the technical
details.
Custom admission controllers
One of the key components of the Toolforge Kubernetes are our custom admission controllers. We use
them to validate and enforce that the usage of the service is what we intended for. Basically, we
have 2 of them:
RBAC and PSP for Toolforge, original image in wikitech
I mentioned that we know about each user by means of TLS certificates. This is true, and in fact,
there is a key component in our setup called maintain-kubeusers. This custom piece
of Python software is run as a pod inside the cluster and is responsible for reading our external
user database (LDAP) and generating the required credentials, namespaces, and other configuration
bits for them. With the TLS cert, we basically create a kubeconfig file that is then written into
the homes NFS share, so each Toolforge user has it in their shell home directory.
Networking and Ingress setup
With the basic security controls in place, we can move on to explaining our networking and Ingress
setup. Yes, the Ingress word might be a bit overloaded already, but we refer here to
Ingress as the path that end-users follow from their web browser in their local machine to a
webservice running in the Toolforge cluster.
Some additional context here. Toolforge is not only Kubernetes, but we also have a Son of
GridEngine deployment, a job scheduler that covers some features not available in Kubernetes. The
grid can also run webservices, although we are encouraging users to migrate them to Kubernetes. For
compatibility reasons, we needed to adapt our Ingress setup to accommodate the old web grid.
Deciding the layout of the network and Ingress was definitely something that took us some time to
figure out because there is not a single way to do it right.
The following diagram can be used to explain the different steps involved in serving a web service
running in the new Toolforge Kubernetes.
Toolforge k8s network topology, original image in Wikitech
The end-user HTTP/HTTPs request first hits our front proxy in (1). Running here is
NGINX with a custom piece of LUA code that is able to decide whether to contact the web grid
or the new Kubernetes cluster. TLS termination happens here as well, for both domains
(toolforge.org and tools.wmflabs.org). Note this proxy is reachable from the internet, as it
uses a public IPv4 address, a floating IP from CloudVPS, the infrastructure service we
provide based on Openstack. Remember that our Kubernetes is directly built in virtual machines a
bare-metal type deployment.
If the request is directed to a webservice running in Kubernetes, the request now reaches
haproxy in (2), which knows the cluster nodes that are available for Ingress. The
original 80/TCP packet is now translated to 30000/TCP; this is the TCP port we use internally for
the Ingress traffic. This haproxy instance provides load-balancing also for the Kubernetes API as
well, using 6443/TCP. It s worth mentioning that unlike the Ingress, the API is only reachable from
within the cluster and not from the internet.
We have a NGINX-Ingress NodePort service listening in 30000/TCP in every Kubernetes worker node in
(3); this helps the request to eventually reach the actual NGINX-Ingress pod in (4), which is
listening in 8080/TCP. You can see in the diagram how in the API server (5) we hook the Ingress
admission controller (6) to validate Kubernetes Ingress configuration objects before allowing them
in for processing by NGINX-Ingress (7).
The NGINX-Ingress process knows which tools webservices are online and how to contact them by means
of an intermediate Service object in (8). This last Service object means the request finally
reaches the actual tool pod in (9). At this point, it is worth noting that our Kubernetes cluster
uses internally kube-proxy and Calico, both using Netfilter components to handle traffic.
tools-webservice
Most user-facing operations are simplified by means of another custom piece of Python code:
tools-webservice. This package provides users with the webservice command line
utility in our shell bastion hosts. Typical usage is to just run webservice start stop status. This
utility creates all the required Kubernetes objects on-demand like Deployment, ReplicaSet, Ingress
and Service to ease deploying web apps in Toolforge. Of course, advanced users can interact
directly with Kubernetes API and create their custom configuration objects. This utility is just a
wrapper, a shortcut.
tool-fourohfour and tool-k8s-status
The last couple of custom components we would like to mention are the tool-fourohfour
and tool-k8s-status web services. These two utilities run inside the cluster as if
they were any other user-created tool. The fourohfour tool allows for a controlled handling of HTTP
404 errors, and it works as the default NGINX-Ingress backend. The k8s-status tool shows plenty of
information about the cluster itself and each tool running in the cluster, including links to the
Server Admin Log, an auto-generated grafana dashboard for metrics, and more.
For metrics, we use an external Prometheus server that contacts the Kubernetes cluster to scrape
metrics. We created a custom metrics namespace in which we deploy all the different
components we use to observe the behavior of the system:
Two women sit in an office, one asks: "What's the difference between being
assertive and being aggressive?" The other replies: "Your gender." (Cartoon by
Judy Horacek, 1999.)
When a person of a marginalized group (read: a person with less privilege, a person with lower rank)
is being framed and blamed as being aggressive, she is being told that her
behavior is unacceptable. Marginalized people have learnt that they need to
comply to fit, and are likely to suppress their feelings. By being framed as aggressive, the marginalized
person is also being told that what they are saying cannot be listened to
because the way they are saying it does not comply with
expectations. There is a word for this: tone policing. This great comic by Robot Hugs has all the important
details. Tone policing is a silencing tactic in which privileged
participants of a discussion one-sidedly define the terms of the
conversation. This tactic has the interesting side effect of shifting the
responsibility to prove that one is not aggressive, hostile,
explosive, a minefield, etc. to the person being framed and blamed - proving
that one is worthy to be listened to. (Some of those words are actual quotes
taken from real life.)
Years ago, I worked in a company in which my female developer colleague would
put herself in a state of overly expressed sorriness, all the while pretending
to be stupid and helpless whenever she needed to ask anything from the
sysadmins. When I confronted her with that, she replied: "I do it because it
works." In the same company, another woman who generally asked assertively for
what she needed ended up being insulted by one of the project managers using
the word "dominatrix". While the example comes from my own experience, this kind
of thing happens across any oppression/privilege boundaries.
In some conversations, be they verbal or written, frustration and anger of one
person are sometimes being mistaken by the communication partner for
aggressiveness. Why is this happening? Asking a person with privilege to see,
question, or change their behavior, questions their privilege. I'm thinking
that it might be that most people think of themselves as "being good" and
when they are being asked to question themselves or their behavior, their
self-image is being challenged. "Me? But I did not do anything wrong! It's
certainly not my fault if you are being oppressed! I sacrificed myself to reach my
current position in life!" This comic by Toby Morris, "On a Plate", explains it quite nicely.
So are we stuck with seeing conversations derail? I'd argue instead that while anger and
frustration are unpleasant feelings, they're important: they show us
that our boundaries have been crossed, that we want something to change, to
stop, or that we need something different right now. We have the right to be
angry and to demand change.
Welcome to gambaru.de. Here is my monthly report (+ the first week in June) that covers what I have been doing for Debian. If you re interested in Java, Games and LTS topics, this might be interesting for you.
Debian Games
PSA: don't rely on GnuTLS, please. CVE-2020-13777 Whoops, for the past 10 releases most TLS 1.0 1.2 connection could be passively decrypted and most TLS 1.3 connections intercepted. Trivially. Also, TLS 1.2 1.0 session tickets are awful.You are reading this correctly: supposedly encrypted TLS connections made with affected GnuTLS releases are vulnerable to passive cleartext recovery attack (and active for 1.3, but who uses that anyways). That is extremely bad. It's pretty close to just switching everyone to HTTP instead of HTTPS, more or less. I would have a lot more to say about the security of GnuTLS in particular -- and security in general -- but I am mostly concerned about patching holes in the roof right now, so this article is not about that. This article is about figuring out what, exactly, was exposed in our infrastructure because of this.
Depends on GnuTLS:
apt-cache --installed rdepends libgnutls30 grep '^ ' sort -u
libcurl3-gnutls, so the
be really thorough, I would actually need to recurse down the
dependency tree.
On my desktop, this shows an "interesting" list of targets:
aptcadaver - AKA WebDAVcurl & wgetfwupd - another attack on top of this onegit (through the libcurl3-gnutls dependency)mutt - all your emailsweechat - your precious private chatsapt, curl, fwupd, and wget rely on HTTPS for
"authentication" more than secrecy, although apt has its own
OpenPGP-based authentication so that wouldn't matter anyways. Still,
this is truly distressing. And I haven't mentioned here things like
gobby, network-manager, systemd, and others - the scope of this is
broad. Hell, even good old lynx links against GnuTLS.
In our infrastructure, the magic command looks something like this:
cumin -o txt -p 0 'F:lsbdistcodename=buster' "apt-cache --installed rdepends libgnutls30 grep '^ ' sort -u" tee gnutls-rdepds-per-host awk ' print $NF ' sort uniq -c sort -n
mariadb - all MySQL traffic and passwordsmandos - full disk encryptionslapd - LDAP passwordsmandos is especially distressing although it's probably not
vulnerable because it seems it doesn't store the cleartext -- it's
encrypted with the client's OpenPGP public key -- so the TLS tunnel
never sees the cleartext either.
Other reports have also mentioned the following servers link
against GnuTLS and could be vulnerable:
eximrsyslogsambaVNC implementationsapache2gnupgpythonnginxopensshweechat
uses GnuTLS, it will only suffer from the problem when acting as a
server (which it does, in relay mode) or, of course, if the remote IRC
server also uses GnuTLS. Same with apt, curl, wget, or git: it is
unlikely to be a problem because it is only used as a client; the
remote server is usually a webserver -- not git itself -- when using
TLS.
mutt package will use the
latter, so it's not affected. I haven't confirmed that myself nor have I
checked on Debian.
Also, because it relies on session tickets, there's a time window
after which the ticket gets cycled and properly initialized. But that
is apparently 6 hours by default so it is going to protect only
really long-lasting TLS sessions, which are uncommon, I would argue.
My audit is limited. For example, it might have been better to walk
the shared library dependencies directly, instead of relying on Debian
package dependencies.
_gnutls_initialize_session_ticket_key_rotation), explicitly says:
* This function will not enable session ticket keys on the server side. That is done
* with the gnutls_session_ticket_enable_server() function. This function just initializes
* the internal state to support periodical rotation of the session ticket encryption key.
memcpy(session->key.initial_stek, key->data, key->size);
I've been digging into async exceptions in haskell, and getting more
and more concerned. In particular, bracket seems to be often used in ways
that are not async exception safe. I've found multiple libraries with problems.
Here's an example:
withTempFile a = bracket setup cleanup a
where
setup = openTempFile "/tmp" "tmpfile"
cleanup (name, h) = do
hClose h
removeFile name
hClose is
running, it will be interrupted before the file is removed.
We normally think of bracket as masking exceptions, but it
doesn't prevent async exceptions in all cases.
See Control.Exception on "interruptible operations",
which can receive async exceptions even when other exceptions are masked.
It's a bit surprising, but hClose is such an interruptable operation,
because it flushes the write buffer. The only way to know is to
read the code.
It can be quite hard to determine if an operation is interruptable, since
it can come down to whether it retries a STM transaction, or uses a MVar
that is not always full. I've been auditing libraries and I often have
to look at code several dependencies away, and even then may not be sure
if a library has this problem.
bracket
or onException or the like probably have this problem.
What can libraries do?
finally. Good mostly in simple situations; more complicated things
would be hard to write this way.
hClose h finally removeFile name
uninterruptibleMask, but it's a big hammer and is often not the
right tool for the job. If the operation takes a while to run,
the program will not respond to ctrl-c during that time.bracketInsulated :: IO a -> (a -> IO b) -> (a -> IO c) -> IO c bracketInsulated a b = bracket (uninterruptibleMask $ \u -> async (u a) >>= u . wait) (\v -> uninterruptibleMask $ \u -> async (u (b v)) >>= u . wait)(Note use of uninterruptibleMask here in case async itself does an interruptable operation. My first version got that wrong.. This is hard!)
race or cancel or withAsync or the like, unless the thread is small
and easy to audit for these problems. Kind of a shame, since I had wanted to
be able to cancel a thread that is big and sprawling and uses all the
libraries mentioned above.
After that I got multiple questions about the setup, so I thought "Michael and Michael did posts about their setups, you could too!"
And well, here we are ;-)
desk
The desk is a Flexispot E5B frame with a 200 80 2.6cm oak table top.
The Flexispot E5 (the B stands for black) is a rather cheap (as in not expensive) standing desk frame. It has a retail price of 379 , but you can often get it as low as 299 on sale.
Add a nice table top from a local store (mine was like 99 ), a bit of wood oil and work and you get a nice standing desk for less than 500 .
The frame has three memory positions, but I only use two: one for sitting, one for standing, and a "change position" timer that I never used so far.
The table top has a bit of a swing when in standing position (mine is at 104cm according to the electronics in the table), but not enough to disturb typing on the keyboard or thinking. I certainly wouldn't place a sewing machine up there, but that was not a requirement anyways ;)
To compare: the IKEA Bekant table has a similar, maybe even slightly stronger swing.
chair
Speaking of IKEA The chair is an IKEA Volmar. They don't seem to sell it since mid 2019 anymore though, so no link here.
hardware
laptop
A Lenovo ThinkPad T480s, i7-8650U, 24GB RAM, running Fedora 32 Workstation. Just enough power while not too big and heavy. Full of stickers, because I stickers!
It's connected to a Lenovo ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Dock (Gen 1). After 2 years with that thing, I'm still not sure what to think about it, as I had various issues with it over the time:
The above screenshot from the official Cisco Jabber product webpage shows the new, single view layout of the Cisco Webex Teams client, but you can configure the client to have the old, classic split view layout of Contact List and Chat Window. But as you can already see from above screenshot audio & video calls is one of the core functions of Cisco Jabber whereas this feature has been added only lately to the well-known Conversations XMPP client on Android. Conversations is using Jingle extension to XMPP whereas Jabber uses SIP for voice/video calls. You can even use Cisco Jabber to control your deskphone via CTI, which is a quite common setup for Jabber. In fact you can configure Jabber to be just a CTI client to you phone or a fully featured UC client.
When you don't want to have Ciscos full set of on-premise servers, you can also use Cisco Jabber in conjunction with Cisco Webex as Cisco Webex Messenger. Or in conjunction with Webex Teams in Teams Messaging Mode. Last month Cisco announced general availability of XMPP federation for Webex Teams/Jabber in Teams Messaging Mode. With that you have basic functionality in Webex Teams. And when I say "basic" I really mean basic: you can have 1:1 chat only, no group chats (MUC) and no Presence status will be possible. Hopefully this is just the beginning and not the end of XMPP support in Webex Teams.
XMPP Clients
Well, I'm sure many of you know "normal" XMPP clients such as Gajim or Dino on Linux, Conversations on Android or Siskin/Monal/ChatSecure on Apple IOS. There are plenty of other clients of course and maybe you used an XMPP client in the past without knowing it. For example Jitsi Meet is based on XMPP and you can still download the Jitsi Desktop client and use it as a full-featured multi-protocol client, e.g. for XMPP and SIP. In fact Jitsi Desktop is maybe the client that comes closest to Cisco Jabber as a chat/voice/video client. In fact I already connected Jitsi Desktop to Cisco CUCM/IM&P infrastructure, but of course you won't be able to use all those Cisco proprietary extensions, but you can see the benefit of open, standardized protocols such as XMPP and SIP: you are free to use any standard compliant client that you want.
So, while Jitsi supported voice/video calls for a long time, even before they focussed on Jitsi Meet as a WebRTC based conference service, Conversations added this feature last month, as already stated. This had a huge effect to the whole XMPP federation, because you need an XMPP server that supports XEP-0215 to make these audio/video calls work. The well-known Compliance Tester listed the STUN/TURN features first as "Informational Tests", but quickly made this a mandatory test to pass tests and gain 100% on the Compliance Tester. But you cannot place SIP calls to other sides, because that's a different thing.
As many of you are familiar with standard XMPP clients, I'll focus now on some similarity and differences between Cisco Jabber and standard XMPP...
Similarities & Differences
First, you can federate with Cisco Jabber users. Cisco IM&P can use standard XMPP federation with all other XMPP standard compliant servers. This is really a big benefit and way better than other solutions that usually results in vendor lock-in. Depending on the setup, you can even join from your own XMPP client in MUCs (Multi User Chats), which Cisco calls "Persistent Chat Room". The other way is not that simple: basically it is possible to join with Cisco Jabber in a MUC on a random server, but it is not as easy as you might thing. Cisco Jabber simply lacks a way to enter a room JID (as you can find them on https://search.jabber.network/. Instead you need to be added as participant by a moderator or an admin in that 3rd party MUC.
Managed File Transfers is another issue. Cisco Jabber supports Peer-to-Peer file transfers and Managed File Transfers, where the uploaded file get transferred to an SFTP server as storage backend and where the IM&P server is handling the transfer via HTTPS. You can find a schematic drawing in the Configuration Guides. Although it appears similar to HTTP Upload as defined in XEP-0363, it is not very likely that it will work. I haven't tested it yet, because in my test scenario there is a gatekeeper in the path: Cisco Expressway doesn't support (yet) Managed File Transfer, but you can upvote the idea in the ideas management of Cisco or other ideas such as OMEMO support.
OMEMO support? Yes, there is no end-to-end encryption (E2EE) currently planned for Cisco Jabber, while it is common nowadays for most modern XMPP clients. I think it would be good for Cisco Jabber to also (optionally) support OMEMO or its successor. Messaging clients without E2EE are not state of the art anymore.
Whereas Conversations is the de-facto standard on Android, Apple IOS devices are still lacking a similar well-working client. See my blog post "XMPP - Fun with Clients" for a summary. In that regard Cisco Jabber might be the best XMPP client for IOS to some degree: you have working messaging, voice/video calls, Push Notifications and integration into Apples Call Kit.
There are most likely many, many more differences and issues between Cisco Jabber and standard compliant XMPP servers and clients. But basically Cisco Jabber is still based on XMPP and extends that by proprietary extensions.
Summary
While I have the impression that the free clients and servers are well doing and increased development in the past years (thanks to Conversations and the Compliance Tester), the situation of Cisco Jabber is a little different. As a customer you can sometimes get the impression that Cisco has lost interest in developing Cisco Jabber. It got better in the last years, but when Cisco Spark was introduced some years ago, the impression was that Cisco is heavily focussed on Spark (now: Webex Teams). It's not like Cisco is not listening to customers or the development has been stopped on Jabber, but my impression is that most customers don't give feedback or tell Cisco as the vendor what they want. You can either submit ideas via the Colaboration Customer Ideas Tool or provide feedback via your Cisco and partner channels.
I think it is important for the XMPP community to also have a large enterprise level vendor like Cisco. Otherwise the Internet will become more and more an Internet of closed silos like MS Teams, Slack, Facebook, etc. Of course there are other companies like ProcessOne (ejabberd) or Tigase, but I think you agree that Cisco is another level.
Corels is now on CRAN! The package was introduced with an initial tweet which pointed to the GitHub repo.
The source code repo has since been relocated from my account to the (upstream) corels org in GitHub. And renamed: as the upstream (C++) repo as well as the existing Python package simply call is corels we now do too. The repo, to be distinguishable as a directory, will remain named rcppcorels.
We also describe the package a little on the corels package page. Some more work should go into along with work in the upstream repos, so please follow whichever GitHub repo you are interested in.
The work on corels is also what is described in the recent arXiv paper on Rcpp and libraries:
If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub. For the first year, GitHub will match your contributions.
This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.
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