Search Results: "tar"

30 April 2026

Russell Coker: Links April 2026

Charles Stross wrote an interesting blog post about the apparent desire of super rich people to kill the poor, it seems that the people in power want to make all the conspiracy theories come true [1]. Wouter wrote an insightful blog post about the need for free firmware [2]. Matthew Garrett wrote an interesting blog post about the potential security issues raised by non-free firmware and firmware updates [3]. Which goes well with Wouter s post. Interesting article about fake job adverts with a code sample for the applicant to show their skils which depends on hostile libraries that install a RAT [4]. Do we need Qubes for software development nowadays? Bruce Schneier wrote an insightful and informative article about the two-tiered Internet access scheme in Iran and how it is bad for society [5]. Caleb Hearth gave an interesting talk Don t Get Distracted about the often ignored unethical uses of software [6]. Techdirt has an insightful article from 2025 Fascism For First Time Founders about why it s a bad idea for tech companies to support fascism, this aged very well [7]. Dr. Bret C. Devereaux wrote an informative blog post about why fascists always fail at war, and also authoritarians in general [8]. Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders wrote an interesting blog post about the new Japanese political party Team Mirai, we need this sort of party in every country to save democracy [9]. Sam Varghese wrote an insightful article about the current situation in Israel and Iran and the poor performance of Australian journalists in covering the issues [10]. Louis Rossman made a video about the Norwegian Consumer Council s advertising campaign about Enshittification, he includes an excellent advert that the Norwegians produced [11]. Marga Manterola gave a really good talk at Fosdem 2026 Free as in Burned Out: Who Really Pays for Open Source? [12].
Related posts:
  1. Links February 2026 Charles Stross has a good theory of why AI is...
  2. Links April 2024 Ron Garret wrote an insightful refutation to 2nd amendment arguments...
  3. Links April 2025 Asianometry has an interesting YouTube video about elecrolytic capacitors degrading...

Otto Kek l inen: Mentoring Mondays for aspiring Debian contributors

Featured image of post Mentoring Mondays for aspiring Debian contributorsI mentor several people in Debian, and have been repeatedly asked to offer an opportunity to ask questions on a live call. I have now started a recurring video call for exactly that, which I call Mentoring Mondays, and it is open for anyone aspiring to contribute to Debian, one of the oldest and most widely used Linux distributions. Mentoring Mondays have already been happening for the past few Mondays, and this week we had a record 20 people on the call. During the calls so far we have had a demo of updating a package for a new upstream release using gbp, and of how to create a Merge Request on Salsa for a new upstream version. There is clearly a need for this, so I am announcing this now also on my blog, just as I have publicly announced that I offer mentoring for aspiring Debian contributors.

What is Mentoring Mondays? Mentoring Mondays is a recurring video call that lasts roughly 45 minutes with the agenda:
  • Weekly walk-through: demo of something in Debian packaging, explaining the what and why
  • Discussion on pros and cons to help participants develop their judgment
  • Questions & answers on Debian packaging, or open source contributing in general
This is ideal for you if you:
  • Have built a .deb package at least once and want to do it better
  • Are stuck on a specific Debian packaging bug and need guidance
  • Want to understand how Debian Developers actually work day-to-day
The call is mainly intended for those who want to contribute to Debian (or Debian derivatives, with Ubuntu being the most popular), but anyone can join to learn about things related to contributing to a Linux distribution. Please note that video chat uses Debian Social Jitsi. Joining the call requires authentication using a Salsa account, which anyone contributing to Debian should have anyway. Calls are not recorded, so participants can chat freely, and are also encouraged to be on-camera for an enhanced sense of community.

Next call: Monday May 4th, 2026 Make sure you are logged into Salsa first, before opening the call on Debian s Jitsi instance.

Matrix channel and future meeting time announcements Please join the Matrix channel #mentoringmondays:matrix.debian.social if you plan to attend Mentoring Mondays. All future meeting times will be announced there. It is also the channel to post questions about Debian packaging to be answered during the call. The current meeting time is friendly to people in Europe, Asia and Australian time zones, and will repeat at the same time slot on:
  • May 11th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
  • May 18th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
  • May 25th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
  • June 1st, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
  • June 8th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
Starting in mid-June the meeting time will change to accommodate participation in different time zones.

Spread the word Feel free to extend the invite to anyone you think might be interested in joining! If you mention this on social media, please post using tag #mentoringmondays, or simply boost the existing posts on the social media of your preference: Mastodon, Lemmy, Reddit, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Farcaster, X.

Thanks A big thanks to Jason Kregting for helping organize. I would also like to thank in advance all the Debian Developers who are able to join the call and be available to participate in discussions and help answer questions.

28 April 2026

Abhijith PA: Patience could've saved me time.

If I had been patient, it would have saved me time. One such instance is following. From my early blogs, you might know I am using mutt to do email. Just after I get along with mutt, I started using notmuch. Because limit search in mutt is always a pain when you have multiple folders. And what better tool out there than notmuch-mutt to bind both these. notmuch-mutt provide three macros by default. 
macro index <F8> \
"<enter-command>set my_old_pipe_decode=\$pipe_decode my_old_wait_key=\$wait_key nopipe_decode nowait_key<enter>\
<shell-escape>notmuch-mutt -r --prompt search<enter>\
<change-folder-readonly> echo $ XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache /notmuch/mutt/results <enter>\
<enter-command>set pipe_decode=\$my_old_pipe_decode wait_key=\$my_old_wait_key<enter>" \
      "notmuch: search mail"
macro index <F9> \
"<enter-command>set my_old_pipe_decode=\$pipe_decode my_old_wait_key=\$wait_key nopipe_decode nowait_key<enter>\
<pipe-message>notmuch-mutt -r thread<enter>\
<change-folder-readonly> echo $ XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache /notmuch/mutt/results <enter>\
<enter-command>set pipe_decode=\$my_old_pipe_decode wait_key=\$my_old_wait_key<enter>" \
      "notmuch: reconstruct thread"
macro index <F6> \
"<enter-command>set my_old_pipe_decode=\$pipe_decode my_old_wait_key=\$wait_key nopipe_decode nowait_key<enter>\
<pipe-message>notmuch-mutt tag -- -inbox<enter>\
<enter-command>set pipe_decode=\$my_old_pipe_decode wait_key=\$my_old_wait_key<enter>" \
      "notmuch: remove message from inbox"
One for search, one for reconstructing threads and one for manipulating tags, which I missed. Now my impatient part. I have already mapped f6 for my folder movements and in my initial days of notmuch, I only use just search. So I never cared about the f6 macro provided by notmuch-mutt. As time goes by I got very comfortable with notmuch. I was stretching my notmuch legs. I started to live more on notmuch search results date:today tag:unread than more on the mutt index. To the problem, since notmuch-mutt dump all results to a temp maildir location, can t perform flag changes back to the original maildir which was annoying, because we need to distinguish what mail you read and what not when you subscribed to most of all debian mailing list. I was under the impression that, the notmuch-mutt is not capable of doing so and I just went like that without checking docs. I started doing all crazy hack to sync these maildirs. I even started reading notmuch-mutt codebase. Later, I settled on notmuch-vim. Cause I can manipulate flags sync back from notmuch to maildir. And while searching for something, I accidentally revisited the the the notmuch-mutt macro page and saw the tag manipulation. I was like :( . If I read about the third macro patiently when added that to config, I could ve saved time by not doing ugly hacks around it. I think I learned my lesson.

Ravi Dwivedi: A day in Vienna

On the 7th of September 2025, my friend Dione and I had a day trip to Vienna the capital of Austria. We were attending a conference in Budapest, Hungary, which is 250 km from Vienna. So, it was a good opportunity to visit Vienna. We took a morning train from Budapest to Vienna and got back to Budapest by night. However, booking these tickets turned out to be a bit complicated. There were many websites to book the train ticket Hungarian Railways, Austrian Railways, and third-party sites such as Omio. All these websites had different prices for the same ticket. I booked the tickets from the Hungarian Railways website as it was the cheapest. The train from Budapest to Vienna was 13, operated by Eurocity. Also, I had to pay 2 for the seat reservation on top. The train from Vienna to Budapest operated by Railjet was 21, along with 2 extra for reservation again making it 23. The tickets for the two-way journey added up to 38. The cost of these tickets varied depending on when one purchses them: the sooner you purchase, the lower the price. I bought my tickets 15 days ahead of the date of journey and paid just 38. In contrast, Dione booked just one day before her trip and paid around 100 for her tickets. As for the seat reservation, long-distance trains in Europe usually require paying extra for the seat reservation. This ensures that you get your preferred seat, such as a window seat or an aisle seat. Nevertheless, you will get a seat on long-distance trains because they do not sell more tickets than there are seats. Therefore, you will get a seat without reservation as well. However, we reserved our seats so that we can sit together. This helped us more in the return part of the journey from Vienna to Budapest which was more crowded than the train we took from Budapest to Vienna in the morning. On another note, reservation is mandatory on some trains in Europe, but ours wasn t one of them. In addition, people also use rail passes, so an extra charge is required on top for reserving the seats for pass holders. On the other hand, local trains do not require seat reservations in general. Our train s scheduled departure was at 08:55 from the Budapest Kelenfold station. We reached the train station 40 minutes before the train s scheduled departure. The Kelenfold station had free Wi-Fi, which was handy because I didn t have a local SIM.
A departures board at Budapest Kelenfold station. A departures board at Budapest Kelenfold station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
A platform on Budapest Kelenfold station. This is platform number 15 of Budapest Kelenfold station where we boarded our train. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Our train arrived on time. I tried to find our coach number but could not find the numbers written anywhere on the side of the coach. Luckily, we were helped by a fellow passenger who directed me to look at the doors, where the numbers were mentioned clearly! Then we got into our compartment and took our respective seats. Our tickets were checked twice - once while the train was in Hungary and the other when in Austria. Showing the PDF of the train ticket on our mobile to the ticket inspector was good enough for the purpose. Austria and Hungary are a part of the open transit Schengen area, which means this was the extent of the border control checks we had to go through.
Interior of the train. Interior of our Budapest to Vienna train. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The train also had free Wi-Fi, albeit with poor connection at times. There were no eatery options inside the train. We deboarded at the Wien Hauptbahnhof station in Vienna. The journey was 250 km and took 2.5 hours, reaching Vienna at 11:25, which was the scheduled time.
A blue and white colored train on a railway platform This blue colored train was the one we took for our Budapest to Vienna journey. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
A red colored train standing at the Vienna station An BB train standing at a platform of Vienna train station. BB is the national carrier of Austria. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Wien Hauptbahnhof train station Wien Hauptbahnhof train station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
At the station, we bought a 24-hour public transport pass from a ticket machine for 8. The pass includes unlimited access to all the public transport in Vienna for 24 hours. My pass was valid from the 7th of September at 11:34 to the 8th of September at 11:33. A single public transport ticket (from anywhere to anywhere) costs 2.4. A single ticket of 2.4 can be used once on any public transport in Vienna trams, metros, and buses. Therefore, the pass is a good deal if you are going to take at least four public transport trips in a day. Unlike the public transport pass I got in Budapest, the pass in Vienna was anonymous and not tied to the rider s name.
Public transport pass for Vienna. My public transport pass in Vienna.
We wanted to visit the Sch nbrunn Palace. The palace was reachable by subway. In order to get to the subway station, we started by going outside the station. But it was not outside. So we came back inside the station building and realized that the subway was underground. We took the subway and deboarded at the Sch nbrunn subway station the closest one to the palace. The ride was smooth; the train was pretty silent. By the way, like Budapest, there were no AFC gates for boarding the subway in Vienna. The stations had ticket validators instead, where you are supposed to validate your tickets before getting into the subway.
Vienna subway Instead of AFC gates, Vienna has ticket validators as in the picture. You need to tap your ticket in the validator before boarding the subway. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
These validators are in place to ensure that you use your ticket only once. Unlike AFC gates, which are present in metros of most of the countries I have been to, the ticket validators don t act as a physical barrier to enter the boarding area. If you board the metro without validating your ticket, you will be facing hefty fines upon getting caught. I have heard that the fine is around 100. On the other hand, if you have a public transport pass like we did, then you don t need to validate it before boarding. In addition, there were no annoying security checks either, unlike in Indian cities. In the Delhi metro, for example, you would need to scan your bags and pass through a security check before getting to the AFC gates.
Vienna subway Vienna subway. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Now back to the story, after alighting at the Sch nbrunn subway station, we walked to the Sch nbrunn Palace. One can roam around outside the palace and click pictures for free. To go inside, however, requires buying tickets. The tickets for the palace can be booked in advance on the internet. We didn t take the tickets in advance, as we decided to visit the palace at the last moment. So we went to the ticket counter and found out that we needed to wait for 1 hour 40 minutes before going inside if we took the tickets at that moment. In addition, one ticket costs 44 (around 4000 Indian rupees). Since we had to return to Budapest in the evening and only had a few hours in the city, we decided not to go inside the palace. Instead, we clicked a few pictures outside the palace.
Photo of Sch nbrunn Palace. Sch nbrunn Palace. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The Sch nbrunn Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is a historically significant place. It servedas one of the residences of the powerful Habsburg dynasty. The palace looked so good that my friend Dione said, It seemed like the palace was built yesterday . This remark applied to other parts of Vienna we went to. For example, the subway stations also seemed like they were built yesterday.
A street near Sch nbrunn Palace. A street near Sch nbrunn Palace. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Now, we wanted to go someplace to grab a bite. I asked my friend Urbec for suggestions on where to go. They suggested we visit the steps named Strudlhofstiege, which had the added benefit of being in a neighborhood with good bakeries and buildings. So, we took the subway and deboarded at the Ro auer L nde station, followed by walking around a kilometer to reach the stairs.
A subway station in Vienna. Ro auer L nde subway station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Platform of the _Ro auer L nde_ subway station. Platform of the Ro auer L nde subway station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
stairs with road in the front and trees in the background. Blue sky can also be seen in the background. The The Strudlhofstiege steps. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
On the way, we were also looking for a place to eat. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, and Vienna closes on Sunday. That means most of the shops including bakeries and caf s are closed. Only places like railway stations have shops open on Sundays. By the way, walking around in the streets of Vienna was a treat. The streets were not crowded (as it was not exactly a touristy neighborhood) and had good pedestrian infrastructure, with clean streets and separate cycling tracks. The buildings were also beautiful.
Buildings and streets in Vienna. A random street in Vienna.
Buildings and streets in Vienna. Another street in Vienna.
After some walking, we found a restaurant open. I grabbed the menu to check the prices. A lady at the shop asked me what I was doing, and I told her that I was browsing the menu. She said that the menu was in German. I don t know how she knew that we didn t know German, but it seemed like a racist thing to be told. We roamed around further and found a caf by the name of Blue Orange, where we ordered coffee and croissants. When we got our order, the waiter told us that they were having some issues, so they wouldn t charge us for the croissant if it wasn t good.
Picture of a caf . A picture of Blue Orange caf . Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
My friend and I took a bite, and both of us didn t like the croissant. After some time, the waiter came to us and asked whether the croissant was okay, to which we said no. Therefore, they didn t charge us for the croissant. This was the first time something like this happened to me. It felt like I was in a different world. I added a small tip at the end for this gesture, which I had to put in a jar at the counter. The cappuccino I ordered was 4.50, while the espresso that Dione ordered was 3.60. The croissant would have been 3.60. I remember Paris having cheaper croissants! Then when the waiter brought our drinks out, they automatically gave me the espresso and Dione the cappuccino. Dione found this funny because there is a stereotype in her country (Australia) that men drink strong black coffee, and women drink milky drinks like cappuccinos. She found it interesting that this stereotype seems to exist in Austrian culture too. We hopped on a tram to reach the nearest subway station and went to the Wien Hauptbahnhof station to have something before we caught our return train to Budapest.
Trams with buildings and the blue sky in the background Trams in Vienna. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
At the station, I had Esterhazyschnitten and Punschkrapfen (thanks, Urbec, for the suggestion). The lady at the shop warned me that punschkrapfen had alcohol in it, to which I said okay. Esterhazyschnitten was a cake made of almonds, while punschkrapfen was a jam-filled sponge cake, soaked in rum. Esterhazyschnitten was my favorite out of the two. The punschkrapfen was too sweet for my taste.
Punschkrapfen Punschkrapfen. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Esterhazyschnitten Esterhazyschnitten. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
While the station was well-built, there were a couple of things about the Wien Hauptbahnhof station that we didn t like. There were no seats inside the station, so we had to eat outside the building. Also, the toilets needed to be paid for. It costs 50 cents to use the toilets at this station. The Vienna train station had departure boards all over the place. So, we went to the platform our train was to arrive on.
A departure board in Vienna displaying information about the trains Departure boards in Vienna displaying information about the trains. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Platform and tracks at Wien Hauptbahnhof station. Platform and tracks at Wien Hauptbahnhof station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
When our train arrived, we had some difficulty locating our compartment. This train was operated by a different company (Railjet) than the one we took in the morning (Eurocity) from Budapest to Vienna, and we were able to locate the coach numbers using the digital board at the station. Each compartment had a digital board next to it on the station displaying the coach number. However, that wasn t the problem. Even after reading the coach numbers and trying to find ours, it didn t appear where we expected in the sequence. When we were not able to find our coach for a while, we asked a ticket inspector of the train who was standing on the platform. He directed us towards the front side of the train. So we started running to the front side as we didn t know how long the train stops. As we ran toward our coach, we found out that the engine of the back train was connected with the last compartment of the train at the front. At that point, we realized that the train was a combination of two trains. At a later station, the train on the back side parted ways and went towards Vienna Airport.
Inside our train. Interior of the train we took from Vienna to Budapest. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
A red colored train standing on the platform of Budapest Kelenfold station. This is the train we took for our return journey from Vienna to Budapest. It is standing on a platform in Budapest Kelenfold station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
We had a smooth journey and reached Budapest a couple of hours later. Vienna is a beautiful city; we enjoyed being there, and we would like to visit the city again! That s it for now. Signing off. See you in the next one! Credits: Thanks to Dione and Badri for proofreading.

27 April 2026

Sahil Dhiman: Weekly Notes

Weekly notes is a genre where people chronicle their week on their blogs. Weekly notes are like a window. I love going through these, as they re a steady stream of week on week happenings and progress in people s lives. It shows people making efforts to improve: from basic things like learning to swim or drive, to planning long-term goals such as vacations, moving house, states, or even countries. In some cases, they carry internal monologues, thoughts, and anxieties. These are like a constant nudge for me to work on myself, like them. These are the weekly notes I read nowadays: Most are there on Thejesh s weekly notes planet which autoupdates when new posts arrive, usually starting on Friday evenings, and by Monday, almost everyone has posted. It reminds of a word from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows - Kenaway :
the longing to see how other people live their lives when they re not in public; wishing you could tune in to the raw feed of another human existence, in all its messiness and solitude shimmying in place while brushing their teeth, squabbling over where to put the shoes, talking out their problems on solitary commutes if only to give you something to compare your own life against, and figure out whether you re bizarrely normal or normally bizarre.
Close enough.

Russ Allbery: Review: What We Are Seeking

Review: What We Are Seeking, by Cameron Reed
Publisher: Tor
Copyright: 2026
ISBN: 1-250-36474-4
Format: Kindle
Pages: 339
What We Are Seeking is a bit hard to classify beyond science fiction. I think I would call it anthropological science fiction, but it's also a first contact story and a planetary colony story. It is a standalone novel (well, so far as I know; see later in the review for caveats). This is Cameron Reed's second novel after the excellent and memorable cyberpunk novel The Fortunate Fall, first published in 1996 under Reed's former name of Raphael Carter. John Maraintha is a doctor from the world of Essius. He took what he thought was a temporary job on the Free Ship Edgar's Folly, where he's endured considerable culture shock. As the novel opens, John learns that the colonists on Scythia have requested a translator to talk to one of the native life forms, and a doctor since they're down to only one. John will be that doctor. The captain has decided, and by the rules of the free ships, John does not get a choice in the matter. The Scythian colony is about four hundred people, now located in a desert climate since the complex native life forms destroyed their previous settlement. The colonists are a split between Ischnurans and Zandaheans, two other human civilizations from the scatter of colony worlds left after Earth embraced AIs (aiyis here) and turned inward. Both of those groups marry, something John considers a moral abomination. Neither of them seem likely to understand Essian sexual ethics. More devastatingly, John had intended to spend some time as a ship doctor and then return home to a new place in Essian society. Once he lands on Scythia, the chances of that are gone; it is highly unlikely any ship would pick him up again and take him home. I have been trying to find the right books to compare What We Are Seeking with ever since I read it. The best I've come up with are Ursula K. Le Guin (particularly The Dispossessed), Eleanor Arnason's A Woman of the Iron People, and Becky Chambers's To Be Taught, If Fortunate. The start of the book felt like an intentional revisiting of an earlier era of science fiction, with somewhat updated science and politics, but the last half of the book, where the action picks up considerably, is a meditation on gender, social systems, religion, and small-group politics. All of that is mixed with biological exploration and a first-contact story with some quite-alien aliens. This is the sort of novel where the protagonist's culture is as foreign to the reader as any of the other cultures he counters, so the reader is assembling several jigsaw puzzles at once. John is dropped into an established colony with its own social norms and established hierarchies. The one other outsider, the translator Sudharma Jain, is, as his name implies, a Jain who keeps very strict religious observances. Half of the colony is from something akin to a fundamentalist Christian religious sect that practices patriarchy and strict marriage codes. The other half is more gently sexist (but still sexist) and has its own tradition of a third gender that becomes central to the story. John, meanwhile, is a strong believer in the Essian approach to social organization: Any two partners of any gender freely have sex by mutual consent and without obligation, and family is based solely on blood relations. These beliefs do not fit comfortably together, even when people are trying (as they mostly do) to be welcoming. The first half of this book is very slow. This gives all of the characters space to breathe and become comfortable, and the characterization is superb, but it is a book to start when you're in the mood for something slow and observational. There is a plot that gradually becomes apparent, or rather there are several plots that are intertwined, but tension and urgency are mostly reserved for the second half of the book. Instead, the book opens with a lot of close observation of alien flora and fauna and the untangling of subtle social dynamics among the Scythians. There is also a visitor from earth, much to the distress of the Scythians. Earth presence means the ships will not return and the colony may be cut off from any sort of technological resupply. Despite speaking a common language, that visitor is as mutually alien to the other groups as they are to the native flora. Her life is fully integrated with aiyis, giving her essentially godlike powers and the ability to turn off inconvenient emotions and disregard anything she doesn't want to see. What she and the Earth aiyis are doing on the planet is one of the early mysteries. The dialogue in this book is truly excellent. Each characters has their own voice, there are fascinating digressions on different words that lead to tidbits of world-building, and some of the culture-specific idioms are delightful.
"I'm making a mess of this. None of that matters. Let me fall out the window and come in the door again. This is how my story ought to start:"
The challenges for the characters in this story are slow but deep ones: belonging and self-definition, the conflict between cultural tradition and personal circumstance, and the sacrifices required to live with small groups in situations where civil war is viscerally attractive. It has one of the most comprehensive and fascinating treatments of transgender issues that I've read in science fiction. Its commentary on current politics is subtle and estranged in the way that science fiction does best, but still pointed and satisfying. And, well, there are passages like this that I absolutely adore:
"I wouldn't go that far. It could be they are right, the universe we see exists because a mind like ours created it at least, a mind enough like ours that we can say it wants one thing and not another, and when it acts it does so with intent. That's as good an idea as any. But it is certainly not plausible that such a being believes that people everywhere should marry, or that men should never visit men, or no one should become a jess. Look at what they have created. The universe could have been nothing at all, or one atom of hydrogen floating in a void, or a diamond crystal infinite in all directions, if their mind cared for simplicity or tidiness. Instead we have stars and planets and black holes and nebulas. It could have all been cold and dead, but there is life. They could have made one species for each world, or just a few, which could have stayed the same forever, but instead we have millions and millions, all of which are changing every moment, varying among themselves and boiling off in all directions. Such a god is like an artist who fills up a library of sketchbooks with their drawings of strange creatures, and when every scrap of paper in the place is used up, goes back with a different color ink and scribbles over them again. They are obsessed with variation they gorge themselves with it and never grow full. Do you really think a mind like that could want us all to live in the same way?"
I had one problem with this book, though, and for me it was a big one: There is no ending. Reed effectively builds tension, gets me caring about all of the characters, sets up several problems, starts down a path towards resolution, and then the book just... ends. Long-time readers of my reviews will know that I'm a denouement fanatic. I want the scouring of the shire, I want the chapter set in the happily ever after, I want the catharsis of an ending. This made me so grumpy! To be clear, this is not sequel bait (at least so far as I can tell). I can write a philosophical defense of the ending. The types of problems and lives that Reed set up don't have clear endings; this is, to some extent, the point. We muddle through, and then those who come after us muddle through some more, and the cumulative effect is called human civilization. And there is some denouement; Reed doesn't leave the reader at a cliffhanger or anything that egregious. But still, I wanted the happy ending, even though that was unrealistic for the style of story this is, because I'm a happy ending reader. This is not an ending sort of book; it's the sort of book where I get a sinking feeling at the 95% mark because there aren't enough pages left for the number of remaining unresolved problems. I've gotten less annoyed in the days since I finished the book, and I can appreciate the thematic point made by how the book ends, but I still feel like it's worth an advance warning if you're a reader like I am. I would be delighted by a sequel, but it didn't feel like that was the intent. Apart from that, this was both excellent and rather unlike a lot of current science fiction. I think the closest comparison I can make among recent novels I've read is Sue Burke's Semiosis. What We Are Seeking has a similar sort of world-building, but I liked these characters so much more. It felt like a classic literary science fiction novel, but very much written in 2026. Highly recommended, just beware of the lack of closure. Content notes: Sexism, homophobia, stomach illness, and some religious abuse. Rating: 8 out of 10

26 April 2026

Aurelien Jarno: Running upstream OpenSBI on SpacemiT K1

The SpacemiT K1 is a rather interesting RISC-V SoC, found for instance on boards like the Banana Pi BPI-F3 board. It's one of those platforms that looked promising on paper, but took a bit of time before things really started to move upstream. Things have clearly accelerated over the last few months. Linux 7.0 brings, among other things PCIe support, making the board quite capable as a development board. SD card, CPU thermal sensor and cpufreq support are already in the pipe. Unfortunately the situation is less advanced on the firmware side. There is only very basic support for the SpacemiT K1 in U-Boot for the second stage, and initial SPL support has been posted on the mailing list, but has not yet been merged. In practice, this means you still have to rely on the vendor U-Boot, which is based on the rather old 2022.10 release. On the other hand, OpenSBI does have upstream support for the SpacemiT K1, however it is not compatible with the vendor U-Boot, mostly due to device tree differences. This can be addressed by applying a few patches to the vendor U-Boot, which I have published in a git tree in the k1-bl-v2.2.y-opensbi branch (technically this can also be handled on the OpenSBI side, but I prefer using a vanilla upstream OpenSBI version). The first two patches update the configuration to get closer to the upstream U-Boot defaults, and to enable some configuration options for the Milk-V Jupiter board, which stores its firmware in SPI NOR flash, instead of eMMC for the Banana Pi BPI-F3. The following patches update the device tree by adding extra compatible entries to several devices, as expected by the upstream kernel and OpenSBI (thanks to Troy Mitchell for the hint about the UART change) and update the CPU riscv,isa properties. Finally an additional patch adds the SpacemiT P1 PMIC to the device tree, which is required for the OpenSBI reboot patchset I recently posted (this is currently done only for the Banana Pi BPI-F3 and Milk-V Jupiter boards, but extending it to other boards should be straightforward). Building this U-Boot version is as simple as running this command in the source directory: 
make k1_defconfig && make
On a Banana Pi BPI-F3 board, the resulting U-Boot can be flashed with: 
echo 0 > /sys/block/mmcblk0boot0/force_ro
dd if=FSBL.bin of=/dev/mmcblk0boot0 bs=512 seek=1
dd if=u-boot.itb of=/dev/mmcblk0p1
Building upstream OpenSBI is also fairly simple, and can be done by running this command in the source directory: 
make PLATFORM=generic
On a Banana Pi BPI-F3 board, the resulting OpenSBI can be flashed with: 
dd if=fw_dynamic.itb of=/dev/mmcblk0p2
Note that the vendor U-Boot version is patched to install OpenSBI in a separate partition instead of embedding, as the upstream U-Boot does. While this works well on the Banana Pi BPI-F3, the corresponding partition in the Milk-V Jupiter SPI NOR flash is too small for the upstream OpenSBI version, and can't be easily resized without breaking compatibility. To address this, the branch k1-bl-v2.2.y-opensbi-embedded contains an additional patch (a bit hackish I admit) to somehow restore the upstream approach. The build process remains simple, first build OpenSBI with the following command: 
make PLATFORM=generic
Then build U-Boot, specifying the patch to the just built OpenSBI firmware: 
make k1_defconfig && make OPENSBI=/path/to/opensbi/build/platform/generic/firmware/fw_dynamic.bin
On a Milk-V Jupiter board, the resulting combined U-Boot/OpenSBI can be flashed with: 
modprobe mdtblock
dd bs=4k if=FSBL.bin of=/dev/mtdblock2
dd bs=4k if=u-boot.itb of=/dev/mtdblock5
This combined U-Boot/OpenSBI can also be used on a Banana Pi BPI-F3, using the same flashing procedure as above, while skipping the OpenSBI part (although running it won't cause any issue, it will simply be unused). All of this is admittedly a bit hackish, but enabling the use of upstream OpenSBI is already one step forward. Hopefully, in a few months, we will be able to rely entirely on upstream U-Boot.

25 April 2026

Russ Allbery: Review: The Genocidal Healer

Review: The Genocidal Healer, by James White
Series: Sector General #8
Publisher: Orb
Copyright: 1991
Printing: May 2003
ISBN: 0-7653-0663-8
Format: Trade paperback
Pages: 255
The Genocidal Healer is the eighth book in James White's medical science fiction series about the Sector General hospital. As with the rest of the series, detailed memory of the previous books is not required and the books could be read out of order if you didn't mind spoilers. I read this as part of the Orb General Practice omnibus. Surgeon-Captain Lioren is a Tarlan doctor who was in charge of the medical response to a newly-discovered civilization. The aliens were suffering from an apparently universal plague and an ongoing vicious war waged entirely through hand-to-hand combat, putting them on the edge of extinction. Lioren rushed the distribution of a possible cure against the advice of the doctors working on developing it, with catastrophic results. As The Genocidal Healer opens, Lioren is insisting on a court-martial in the hope of receiving the sentence it believes it deserves and was denied: death. (It pronouns are the convention in the Sector General series for all alien races and formal discussions, because even someone prone to bouts of gender essentialism such as White understood the need for avoiding gender assumptions in a science fiction medical context.) Predictably, both Sector General and the Monitor Corps that technically runs the hospital are flatly unwilling to execute Lioren. Instead, he is assigned as a new apprentice in the psychology department under the legendary O'Mara, where he is ordered to investigate the psychological fitness of a senior doctor named Seldal. This leads him to talk to Seldal's patients, which in turn leads to a challenging set of ethical dilemmas. The first five chapters (and more than sixty pages) are the story of Lioren's trial and a recounting of the events on Cromsag. The series is full of medical and cultural puzzles like this, and usually I like them, but I thought this one was less successful. We know the vague (and horrible) outline of the ending in advance, and the massive simplification and artificial universality that is required to make this puzzle work is particularly blatant. A universally infectious disease is more of a fiction plot than a believable biological concept, and the number of failures of communication, analysis, and misunderstanding that have to line up to create White's predetermined outcome were a bit much for me. Once the story gets past that and into Lioren's psychological work, the novel improves. Lioren is guilt-ridden and irrational, but also rather arrogant about his guilt and his concepts of professional responsibility in a way that I think mostly worked. Most of the novel consists of Lioren slowly discovering that people like him and enjoy talking to him, much to his bafflement. In that, it has the gentle kindness and sense of universal basic decency that is characteristic of this series. There are, of course, medical puzzles to solve, although this time they are primarily psychological in nature. Various characters from previous books make an appearance, but White re-explains their background in sufficient detail that you don't need to remember (or have read) those previous books. There are a lot of similarities between this book and the previous one, Code Blue Emergency. Both feature nonhuman viewpoint protagonists and amusing descriptions of human facial expressions from an alien perspective. Both feature protagonists with overly rigid ethical structures that partly clash with the generally human policies of Sector General. The Genocidal Healer is a bit more subtle and nuanced, although a lot of Lioren's psychological evaluation rests on an ethical difference that I found somewhat unbelievable. This book, though, tackles a subject the previous book did not: religion. The treatment isn't horrible, but I have some complaints. My primary issue is that Lioren, who starts as an atheist, does extensive research into religion to help a patient and then starts making statements summarizing the religions beliefs of the majority of known species that are just... Christianity. As someone raised Christian, I recognized it immediately as the sort of abstracted Christianity that Christians claim is universal while completely ignoring the opinions of the adherents of any other religion. Key components of this majority galactic religious pattern, according to Lioren, include an omnipotent and omnibenevolent creator god, a religious figure who preaches forgiveness and mercy and is persecuted, and emphasis on redemption. This simply is not some abstract universal religion. This is just Christianity in disguise. Even in religions that have some of those elements in their traditions, they do not get the same emphasis and are not handled the way that Lioren describes them. I therefore found Lioren's extended discussions of religion rather annoying, since he kept claiming as relatively universal principles beliefs that are not even held by the majority of religious adherents on Earth, let alone a wildly varying collection of alien races with entirely different biology and societal constructions. It caused a lot of problems for my suspension of disbelief, on top of the annoyance at this repetition of, frankly, Christian propaganda. Lioren goes, from that research, into theodicy (the problem of evil). The interesting part of this is White's earnest portrayal of a doctor's approach to societal problems: a desire to find workarounds and patches and fixes for anything that makes people unhappy, whether medical or social. It makes sense, given the horrible biologic hands that some of the aliens in this series have been dealt, that they would question the idea of a benevolent god, so this philosophical digression is justified in that sense. But you might guess that a mid-list science fiction author is not going to say something new about one of the oldest problems in Christianity, and indeed he does not. Lioren arrives at the standard handwaving about the unknowability of divine intent, which I found tedious to read but at least not fatal to the plot. White, thankfully, doesn't take the religious material too far. The characters recognize how sensitive of an issue religion is in a hospital, Lioren never adopts religion fully, and the resolution of the plot is as much biological as philosophical. White is going somewhere with the introduction of religion, and although some of the path there annoyed me, I think the destination worked. White was from Northern Ireland, and therefore well aware of the drawbacks of religion, and he abhorred violence (hence Sector General as a setting), so the reader is in better hands with him than with most authors who might attempt this plot. I think I know a bit too much about religion to be the best audience for this entry in the series, and I'm not sure the introductory five chapters quite worked. But as with all of the other books in the series, this kept me turning the pages and I'm glad I read it. The Genocidal Healer probably isn't worth seeking out unless you're reading the whole series, but if you're enjoying the rest of the series, you'll probably like this too. Followed by The Galactic Gourmet. Rating: 6 out of 10

24 April 2026

Freexian Collaborators: Monthly report about Debian Long Term Support, March 2026 (by Santiago Ruano Rinc n)

The Debian LTS Team, funded by [Freexian s Debian LTS offering] (https://www.freexian.com/lts/debian/), is pleased to report its activities for March.

Activity summary During the month of March, 20 contributors have been paid to work on Debian LTS (links to individual contributor reports are located below). The team released 24 DLAs fixing 250 CVEs. We also welcomed two new members: Lukas M rdian and Emmanuel Arias to the team, who actually started to contribute to the LTS project several months ago. The team continued preparing security updates in its usual rhythm. Beyond the updates targeting Debian 11 ( bullseye ), which is the current release under LTS, the team also proposed updates for more recent releases (Debian 12 ( bookworm ) and Debian 13 ( trixie )), including Debian unstable. We highlight several notable security updates here below.
  • ansible (DLA 4502-1), prepared by Lee Garret in collaboration with Jochen, fixing a vulnerability that allows attackers to bypass unsafe content protections
  • asterisk (DLA 4515-1), prepared by Lukas M rdian, fixing four CVEs that include possible privilege escalations.
  • gimp (DLA 4500-1), prepared by Thorsten, fixing four CVEs related to denial of service or execution of arbitrary code.
  • gst-plugins-base1.0 and gst-plugins-ugly1.0 (DLA-4514-1, DLA-4516-1, respectively), both prepared by Utkarsh, addressing vulnerabilities that may yield to arbitrary code execution.
  • imagemagick, released by Bastien Roucari s (DLA 4497-1) fixing multiple vulnerabilities that could lead to information leaks, bypass of security policies, denial of service or arbitrary code execution.
  • libpng1.6 (DLA 4521-1), prepared by Tobias Frost, fixing an arbitrary code execution vulnerability
  • linux: Ben Hutchings released DLA 4498-1 and DLA 4499-1 for linux 5.10 and linux 6.1, respectively. Those updates especially address the CrackArmor flaw.
  • ruby-rack (DLA 4505-1), prepared by Utkarsh Gupta, addressing two vulnerabilities
  • strongswan (DLA 4512-1), prepared by Thorsten Alteholz, fixing a Denial of Service vulnerability
  • roundcube (DLA 4517-1) prepared by Guilhem Moulin, who discovered that one of the fixes provided by upstream was incomplete.
Contributions from outside the LTS Team: As usual, the thunderbird update, released as DLA 4511-1, was prepared by its maintainer Christoph Goehre. Thanks a lot for his continuous contributions. The LTS Team has also contributed with updates to the latest Debian releases:
  • Andreas Henriksson completed the uploads of glib2.0 for both trixie and bookworm
  • Arnaud Rebillout: python-cryptography for trixie
  • Arnaud and Bastien worked together to prepare a ca-certificates-java release for unstable
  • Bastien completed the upload of gpsd for trixie that was proposed in January.
  • Bastien uploaded a regression update of apache2 for trixie
  • Bastien prepared a zabbix point update for trixie
  • Bastien in collaboration with Markus released netty updates for trixie and bookworm DSA 6160-1
  • Daniel Leidert proposed python-tornado releases for both trixie and bookworm.
  • Daniel also prepared a python-authlib update for trixie
  • Guilhem prepared a mapserver update for bookworm.
  • Lucas Kanashiro proposed merge requests to fix three CVEs in erlang for both trixie and bookworm
  • Sylvain Beucler continued the work to replace p7zip with 7zip in the different supported releases, and proposed a point update for bookworm
  • Tobias prepared trixie and bookworm security updates, released as DSA-6189-1
  • Utkarsh prepared trixie and bookworm security update for ruby-rack, released as DSA-6180-1

Individual Debian LTS contributor reports

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23 April 2026

Sergio Talens-Oliag: Developing a Git Worktree Helper with Copilot

Over the past few weeks I ve been developing and using a personal command-line tool called gwt (Git Worktree) to manage Git repositories using worktrees. This article explains what the tool does, how it evolved, and how I used GitHub Copilot CLI to develop it (in fact the idea of building the script was also to test the tool).

The Problem: Managing Multiple BranchesI was working on a project with multiple active branches, including orphans; the regular branches are for fixes or features, while the orphans are used to keep copies of remote documents or store processed versions of those documents. The project also uses a special orphan branch that contains the scripts and the CI/CD configuration to store and process the external documents (it is on a separate branch to avoid mixing its operation with the main project code). The plan is trigger a pipeline against the special branch from remote projects to create or update the doc branch for it in our git repository, retrieving artifacts from the remote projects to get the files and put them on an orphan branch (initially I added new commits after each update, but I changed the system to use force pushes and keep only one commit, as the history is not really needed). The original documents have to be changed, so, after ingesting them, we run a script that modifies them and adds or updates another branch with the processed version; the contents of that branch are used by the main branch build process (there we use git fetch and git archive to retrieve its contents). When working on the scripts to manage the orphan branches I discovered the worktree feature of git, a functionality that allows me to keep multiple branches checked out in parallel using a single .git folder, removing the need to use git switch and git stash when changing between branches (until now I ve been a heavy user of those commands). Reading about it I found that a lot of people use worktrees with the help of a wrapper script to simplify the management. After looking at one or two posts and the related scripts I decided to create my own using a specific directory structure to simplify things. That s how I started to work on the gwt script; as I also wanted to test copilot I decided to build it using its help (I have a pro license at work and wanted to play with the cli version instead of integrated into an editor, as I didn t want to learn a lot of new keyboard shortcuts).

The gwt Philosophy: Opinionated and Transparentgwt enforces a simple, filesystem-visible model:
  • Exactly one bare repository named bare.git (treated as an implementation detail)
  • One worktree directory per branch where the directory name matches the branch name
  • Single responsibility: gwt doesn t try to be a general git wrapper; it only handles operations that map cleanly to this layout
The repository structure looks like this: 
my-repo/
+-- bare.git/           # the Git repository (internal)
+-- main/               # worktree for branch "main"
+-- feature/api/        # worktree for branch "feature/api"
+-- fix/docs/           # worktree for branch "fix/docs"
+-- orphan-history/     # worktree for the "orphan-history" branch
The tool follows five core design principles:
  1. Explicit over clever: Git commands are not hidden or reinterpreted
  2. Transparent execution: Every operation is printed before it happens
  3. Safe, preview-first operations: Destructive commands default to preview, confirmation, then apply
  4. Shell-agnostic core: The script never changes the caller s working directory (shell wrappers handle that)
  5. Opinionated but minimal: Only commands that fit the layout model are included

Core CommandsThe script provides these essential commands:
  • gwt init <url> Clone a repository and set up the gwt layout
  • gwt convert <dir> Convert an existing Git checkout to the gwt layout
  • gwt add [--orphan] <branch> [<base>] Create a new worktree (optionally orphaned)
  • gwt remove <branch> Remove a worktree and unregister it (asks the user to remove the local branch too, useful when removing already merged branches)
  • gwt rename <old> <new> Rename a branch AND its worktree directory
  • gwt list List all worktrees
  • gwt default [<branch>] Get or set the default branch
  • gwt current Print the current worktree or branch name
Except init and convert all of the commands work inside a directory structure that follows the gwt layout, which looks for the bare.git folder to find the root folder of the structure. As I don t want to hide which commands are really used by the wrapper, all git and filesystem operations pass through a single run shell function that prints each command before executing it. This gives complete visibility into what the tool is doing. Also, destructive operations (remove, rename) default to preview mode: 
$ gwt remove feature-old --dry-run
+ git -C bare.git branch -d feature-old
+ git -C bare.git worktree remove feature-old/
Apply these changes? [y/N]:
The user sees exactly what will happen, can verify it s correct, and only then confirm execution.

Incremental Development with CopilotThe gwt script has grown from 597 lines in its original version (git-wt) to 1,111 lines when writing the first draft of this post. This growth happened through incremental, test-driven development, with each feature being refined based on real usage patterns. What follows is a little history of the script evolution written with the help of git log.

Initial versionFirst I wrote a design document and asked copilot to create the initial version of the git-wt script with the original core commands. I started to use the tool with a remote repostory (I made copies of the branches in some cases to avoid missing work) and fixed bugs (trivial ones with neovim, larger ones asking copilot to fix the issues for me, so I had less typing to do).

First command updateOne of the first commands I had to enhance was rename:
  • as I normally use branches with / on their name and my tool checks out the worktrees using the branch name as the path inside the gwt root folder (i.e. a fix/rename branch creates the fix directory and checks the branch inside the fix/rename folder) the rename command had to clean up the empty parent directories
  • when renaming a worktree we move the folders and fix the references using the worktree repair command to make things work locally, but the rename also affects the remote branch reference, to avoid surprises the command unsets the remote branch reference so it can be pushed again using the new name (of course, the user is responsible of managing the old remote branch, as the gwt can t guess what it should do with it).

Integration with the shellAs I use zsh with the Powerlevel10k theme I asked copilot to help me add visual elements to the prompt when working with gwt folders, something that I would have never tried without help, as it would have required a lot of digging on my part on how to do it, as I never looked into it. The initial version of the code was on an independent file that I sourced from my .zshrc file and it prints on the right part of the prompt when we are inside a gwt folder (note that if the folder is a worktree we see the existing git integration text right before it, so we have the previous behavior and we see that it is a gwt friendly repo) and if we are on the root folder or the bare.git folder we see gwt or bare (I added the text because there are no git promts on those folders). I also asked copilot to create zsh autocompletion functions (I only use zsh, so I didn t add autocompletion for other shells). The good thing here is that I wouldn t have done that manually, as it would have required some reading to get it right, but the output of copilot worked and I can update things using it or manually if I need to. One thing I was missing from the script was the possibility of changing the working directory easily, so I wrote a gwt wrapper function for zsh that intercepts commands that require shell cooperation (changing the working directory) and delegates everything else to the core script. Currently the function supports the following enhanced commands:
  • cd [<branch>]: change into a worktree or the default one if missing
  • convert <dir>: convert a checkout, then cd into the initial worktree
  • add [--orphan] <branch> [<base>]: create a worktree, then cd into it on success
  • rename <old> <new>: rename a worktree, then cd into it if we were inside it
Note that the cd command will not work on other shells or if the user does not load my wrapper, but the rest will still work without the working directory changes.

Renaming the commandAs I felt that git-wt was a long name I renamed the tool to gwt, I could have done it by hand, but using copilot I didn t have to review all files by myself and it did it right (note that I have it configured to always ask me before doing changes, as it sometimes tries to do something I don t want and I like to check its changes as I have the files in git repos, I manually add the files when I like the status and if the cli output is not clear I allow it to apply it and check the effects with git diff so I can validate or revert what was done).

The convert commandAfter playing with one repo I added the convert subcommand for migrating existing checkouts, it seemed a simple task at first, but it took multiple iterations to get it right, as I found multiple issues while testing (in fact I did copies of the existing checkouts to be able to re-test each update, as some of the iterations broke them). The version of the function when this post was first edited had the following comment explaining what it does: 
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# convert - convert an existing checkout into the gwt layout
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# Must be run from the parent directory of <dir>.
#
# Steps:
#   1. Read branch from the checkout's HEAD
#   2. Rename <dir> to <dir>.wt.tmp (sibling, same filesystem)
#   3. Create <dir>/ as the new gwt root
#   4. Move <dir>.wt.tmp/.git to <dir>/bare.git; set core.bare = true
#   5. Fix fetch refspec (bare clone default maps refs directly, no remotes/)
#   6. Add a --no-checkout worktree so git wires up the metadata and
#      creates <dir>/<branch>/.git (the only file in that dir)
#   7. Move that .git file into the real working tree (<dir>.wt.tmp)
#   8. Remove the now-empty placeholder directory
#   9. Move the real working tree into place as <dir>/<branch>
#  10. Reset the index to HEAD so git status is clean
#      (--no-checkout leaves the index empty)
#  11. Create <dir>/.git -> bare.git symlink so plain git commands work
#      from the root without --git-dir
#
# The .git file ends up at the same absolute path git recorded in step 5,
# so no worktree repair is needed. Working tree files are never modified.
The .git link was added when I noticed that I could run commands that don t need the checked out files on the root of the gwt structure, which is handy sometimes (i.e. a git fetch or a git log, that shows the log of the branch marked as default). After playing with commands that used the bare.git folder I updated the init and convert commands to keep the origin refs, ensuring that the remote tracking works correctly.

Improving the add commandWhile playing with the tool on more repos I noticed that I also had to enhance the add command to better handle worktree creation, depending on my needs. Right now the tool supports the following use cases:
  • if the branch exists locally or on origin, it just checks it out.
  • if the branch does not exist, we create it using the given base branch or, if no base is given, the current worktree (if we are in the root folder or bare.git the command fails).
  • as I needed it for my project, I added a --orphan option to be able to create orphan branches directly.

Moving to a single fileEventually I decided to make the tool self contained; I removed the design document (I moved the content to comments on the top of the script and details to comments on each function definition) and added a pair of commands to print the code to source for the p10k and zsh integration (autocompletion & functions), leaving everything in a single file. Now my .zshrc file adds the following to source both things: 
# After loading the p10k configuration
if type gwt >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  source <(gwt p10k)
fi
[...]
# After loading autocompletion
if type gwt >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  source <(gwt zsh)
fi

VersioningAs I modified the script I found interesting to use CalVer-based versioning (the version variable has the format YYYY.mm.dd-r#) so I added a subcommand to show its value or bump it using the current date and computing the right revision number.

About the use of copilotAlthough I ve never been a fan of AI tools I have to admit that the copilot CLI has been very useful for building the tool:
  • Rapid prototyping: Each commit represented a small feature or fix that I could implement, test immediately in my actual workflow, and iterate on based on the result
  • Edge case handling: Rather than trying to anticipate every scenario upfront, I could ask Copilot how to handle edge cases as they appeared in real usage
  • Script refinement: Questions like "how do I clean up empty directories after a rename" or "how do I detect if I m inside a specific worktree" were quickly answered with working code
  • Shell integration: The Zsh wrapper and completion system grew from simple prototypes to sophisticated features, with each iteration informed by how I actually used the tool
For example, the convert command started as a simple rename operation, but evolved to also create a .git symlink and intelligently handle various migration scenarios all because I used it repeatedly and refined the implementation each time.

Self-Contained and Opinionatedgwt is deliberately opinionated:
  • Zsh & Powerlevel10k Integration: The tool includes built-in Zsh shell integration, accessed via source <(gwt zsh) and supports adding a prompt segment when using p10k, as described earlier.
  • Directory Structure: The bare.git directory name is non-negotiable. This is how gwt discovers the repository root from any subdirectory, and how the tool knows whether a directory is a gwt repository. The simplicity of this marker means the discovery mechanism is foolproof and requires no configuration.
  • No Configuration Files: gwt deliberately has no configuration. There are no .gwtrc files or config directories. This makes it portable; the tool works the same way everywhere, and repositories can be shared across systems without synchronizing configuration.

From Script to SystemWhat started as a small helper script for managing worktrees has become a complete system:
  1. Core script (gwt): 1,111 lines of pure shell, no external dependencies
  2. Shell integration: Zsh functions and completions
  3. Prompt integration: Powerlevel10k segment
  4. Documentation: Built-in help and design philosophy documentation
The script is self-contained, everything needed for the tool to work is in a single file. This makes it trivial to update (just replace the script) or audit (no hidden dependencies).

Development with AI supportDeveloping gwt with copilot taught me some things:
  • Incremental refinement works well for small tools: Each iteration informed the next, resulting in a tool that handles real use cases elegantly
  • Transparency is a feature: Making operations visible builds confidence and is easier to debug
  • Opinionated tools can be powerful: By constraining the problem space (one bare repo, one worktree per branch), the solution becomes simpler and more robust
  • Shell integration matters: The same core commands are easier to use when they can automatically change directories and provide completions
  • Real-world testing is essential: I wouldn t have discovered the need for automatic directory cleanup or context-aware cd behavior without actually using the tool daily

What was next?The tool is stable and handles my daily workflow well, so my guess is that I would keep using it and fixing issues if or when I found them, but I do not plan to include additional features unless I find a use case that justifies it (i.e. I never added support for some of the worktree subcommands, as it is easier to use the git versions if I ever needed them).

What really happenedWhile editing this post I discovered that I needed to add another command to it and fixed a bug (see below). With those changes and the inclusion of a license and copyright notice (just in case I distribute it at some point) now the script is 1,217 lines long instead of the 1,111 it had when I started to write this entry.

Submodule SupportWhen I converted this blog repository to the gwt format and tried to preview the post using docker compose, it failed because the worktree I was on didn t have the Git submodule initialized. My blog theme is included on the repository as a submodule, and when I used gwt to check out different branches in worktrees, the submodule was not initialized in the new worktrees. This led me to add new internal function and a gwt submodule command to handle submodule initialization; the internal function is called from convert and add (when converting a repo or adding a worktree) and the public command is useful to update the submodules on existing branches.

Path Handling with Branch Names Containing SlashesThe second discovery was a bug in how the tool handled branch names containing slashes (e.g., feature/new-api, docs/user-guide), the worktree directories are created with the branch name as the path, so a branch like feature/new-api would create two nested folders (feature and new-api inside it). However, there was a mismatch in how the zsh wrapper function resolved worktree paths (initially it used shell parameter expansion, i.e. rel="$ cwd#"$REPO_ROOT"/ "), versus how the core script calculated them, causing the cd command to fail or navigate to the wrong location when branch names contained slashes. The fix involved ensuring consistent path resolution throughout the script and wrapper (now it uses a function that processes the git worktree list output), so that gwt cd feature/new-api correctly navigates to the worktree directory regardless of path depth.

Conclusiongwt is a tool that solves a real problem: managing multiple Git branches simultaneously without context-switching overhead. I m sure I m going to keep using it for my projects, as it simplifies some workflows, although I ll also use switch and stash in some cases, but I like the use of multiple worktrees in parallel. In fact I converted this blog repository checkout to the gwt format to work on a separate branch as it felt the right approach even if I m the only one using the repo now, and it helped me improve the tool, as explained before. Also, it was a good example of how to use AI tools like copilot to develop a simple tool and keep it evolving while using it. In any case, although I find the copilot useful and has saved me time, I don t trust it to work without supervision, it worked well, but got stuck some times and didn t do the things as I wanted in multiple occasions. I also have an additional problem now I ve been reading about it, but I don t really know which models to use or how the premium requests are computed (I ve only been playing with it since last month and I ran out of requests the last day of the month on purpose, just to see what happened it stops working ;). On my work machine I ve been using a specific user account with a GitHub Copilot Business subscription and I only used the Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.6 model and with my personal account I configured the Anthropic Claude Haiku 4.5 model, but I ve only used that to create the initial draft of this post (I ended up rewriting most of it manually anyway) and to review the final version (I m not a native speaker and it was useful for finding typos and improving the style in some parts). I guess I ll try other models with copilot in the future and check other command line tools like aider or claude-code, but probably only using free accounts unless I get a payed account at work, as I have with GitHub Copilot. To be fair, what I will love to be able to do is to use local models (aider can do it), but the machines I have are not powerful enough. I tried to run a simple test and it felt really slow, but when I have the time or the need I ll try again, just in case.

22 April 2026

Vincent Bernat: CSS & vertical rhythm for text, images, and tables

Vertical rhythm aligns lines to a consistent spacing cadence down the page. It creates a predictable flow for the eye to follow. Thanks to the rlh CSS unit, vertical rhythm is now easier to implement for text.1 But illustrations and tables can disrupt the layout. The amateur typographer in me wants to follow Bringhurst s wisdom:
Headings, subheads, block quotations, footnotes, illustrations, captions and other intrusions into the text create syncopations and variations against the base rhythm of regularly leaded lines. These variations can and should add life to the page, but the main text should also return after each variation precisely on beat and in phase. Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style

Text Three factors govern vertical rhythm: font size, line height and margin or padding. Let s set our baseline with an 18-pixel font and a 1.5 line height: 
html  
  font-size: 112.5%;
  line-height: 1.5;
 
h1, h2, h3, h4  
  font-size: 100%;
 
html, body,
h1, h2, h3, h4,
p, blockquote,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li  
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
CSS Values and Units Module Level 4 defines the rlh unit, equal to the computed line height of the root element. All browsers support it since 2023.2 Use it to insert vertical spaces or to fix the line height when altering font size:3 
h1, h2, h3, h4  
  margin-top: 2rlh;
  margin-bottom: 1rlh;
 
h1  
  font-size: 2.5rem;
  line-height: 2rlh;
 
h2  
  font-size: 1.5rem;
  line-height: 1rlh;
 
h3  
  font-size: 1.25rem;
  line-height: 1rlh;
 
p, blockquote, pre  
  margin-top: 1rlh;
 
aside  
  font-size: 0.875rem;
  line-height: 1rlh;
We can check the result by overlaying a grid4 on the content:
Screenshot of my website with a grid as an overlay and each line of text fitting on the grid
Using CSS rlh unit to set vertical space works well for text. You can display the grid using Ctrl+Shift+G.
If a child element uses a font with taller intrinsic metrics, it may stretch the line s box beyond the configured line height.5 A workaround is to reduce the line height to 1. The glyphs overflow but don t push the line taller. 
code, kbd  
  line-height: 1;

Responsive images Responsive images are difficult to align on the grid because we don t know their height. CSS Rhythmic Sizing Module Level 1 introduces the block-step property to adjust the height of an element to a multiple of a step unit. But most browsers don t support it yet. With JavaScript, we can add padding around the image so it does not disturb the vertical rhythm: 
const targets = document.querySelectorAll(".lf-media-outer");
const adjust = (el, height) =>  
  const rlh = parseFloat(getComputedStyle(document.documentElement).lineHeight);
  const padding = Math.ceil(height / rlh) * rlh - height;
  el.style.padding =  $ padding / 2 px 0 ;
 ;
targets.forEach((el) => adjust(el, el.clientHeight));
Screenshot of my website with a grid as an overlay and an image not breaking the vertical rhythm. Additional padding is visible before and after the image. The height of the image with padding is 216.
The image is snapped to the grid thanks to the additional padding computed with JavaScript. 216 is divisible by 27, our line height in this example.
As the image is responsive, its height can change. We need to wrap a resize observer around the adjust() function: 
const ro = new ResizeObserver((entries) =>  
  for (const entry of entries)  
    const height = entry.contentBoxSize[0].blockSize;
    adjust(entry.target, height);
   
 );
for (const target of targets)  
  ro.observe(target);

Tables Table cells could set 1rlh as their height but they would feel constricted. Using 2rlh wastes too much space. Instead, we use incremental leading: we align one in every five lines. 
table  
  border-spacing: 2px 0;
  border-collapse: separate;
  th  
    padding: 0.4rlh 1em;
   
  td  
    padding: 0.2rlh 0.5em;
To align the elements after the table, we need to add some padding. We can either reuse the JavaScript code from images or use a few lines of CSS that count the regular rows and compute the missing vertical padding: 
table:has(tbody tr:nth-child(5n):last-child)     padding-bottom: 0.2rlh;  
table:has(tbody tr:nth-child(5n+1):last-child)   padding-bottom: 0.8rlh;  
table:has(tbody tr:nth-child(5n+2):last-child)   padding-bottom: 0.4rlh;  
table:has(tbody tr:nth-child(5n+3):last-child)   padding-bottom: 0  
table:has(tbody tr:nth-child(5n+4):last-child)   padding-bottom: 0.6rlh;
A header cell has twice the padding of a regular cell. With two regular rows, the total padding is 2 2 0.2+2 0.4=1.6. We need to add 0.4rlh to reach 2rlh of extra vertical padding across the table.
Screenshot of my website with a grid as an overlay and a table following the vertical rhythm. Additional padding is visible after the table. The height of the table with padding is 405.
One line out of five is aligned to the grid. Additional padding is added after the table to not break the vertical rhythm. 405 is divisible by 27, our line height in this example.
None of this is necessary. But once you start looking, you can t unsee it. Until browsers implement CSS Rhythmic Sizing, a bit of CSS wizardry and a touch of JavaScript is enough to pull it off. The main text now returns after each intrusion precisely on beat and in phase.
  1. See Vertical rhythm using CSS lh and rlh units by Pawe Grzybek.
  2. For broader compatibility, you can replace 2rlh with calc(var(--line-height) * 2rem) and set the --line-height custom property in the :root pseudo-class. I wrote a simple PostCSS plugin for this purpose.
  3. It would have been nicer to compute the line height with calc(round(up, calc(2.4rem / 1rlh), 0) * 1rlh). Unfortunately, typed arithmetic is not supported by Firefox yet. Moreover, browsers support round() only since 2024. Instead, I coded a PostCSS plugin for this as well.
  4. The following CSS code defines a grid tracking the line height: 
    body  
  position: relative;
 
body::after  
  content: "";
  position: absolute;
  inset: 0;
  z-index: 9999;
  background: linear-gradient(180deg, #c8e1ff99 1px, transparent 1px);
  background-size: 20px 1rlh;
  pointer-events: none;
  5. See Deep dive CSS: font metrics, line-height and vertical-align by Vincent De Oliveira.

21 April 2026

Sergio Cipriano: How to view the Debian Upload Queue

How to view the Debian Upload Queue Some people may not know this, but the Debian Upload Queue is public and very easy to access: 
$ curl ftp://ftp.upload.debian.org/pub/UploadQueue/
drwxr-sr-x   18 1518     1281         4096 Jun 26  2019 DELAYED
-rw-r--r--    1 1518     1281         3442 Jul 14  2025 README
-rw-r-----    1 117      1281         3052 Apr 20 21:32 neovim-tokyonight_4.14.1-1.debian.tar.xz
-rw-r-----    1 117      1281         2119 Apr 20 21:32 neovim-tokyonight_4.14.1-1.dsc
-rw-r-----    1 117      1281         5533 Apr 20 21:32 neovim-tokyonight_4.14.1-1_amd64.buildinfo
-rw-r-----    1 117      1281         2637 Apr 20 21:32 neovim-tokyonight_4.14.1-1_source.changes
-rw-r-----    1 117      1281       197584 Apr 20 21:32 neovim-tokyonight_4.14.1.orig.tar.gz

Russell Coker: More About Ebook Readers in Debian

FBReader After my previous blog post about eBook readers in Debian [1] a reader recommended FBReader. I tried it and it s now my favourite reader. It works nicely on laptop and phone and takes significantly less RAM than Calibre or Arianna (especially important for phones). While the problems with my FLX1s not displaying text with Calibre or Arianna might be the fault of something on the FLX1s side those problems just don t happen with FBReader. FBReader has apparently now got a proprietary version as the upstream, but we still have FOSS code to use in Debian. It would be nice if someone updated it to store the reading location using WebDAV and/or a local file that can be copied with the NextCloud client or similar. Currently there is code to store reading location in the Google cloud which I don t want to use. It s not THAT difficult to see what chapter you are at with one device and just skip to that part on another, but it is an annoyance. One thing I really like about FBReader is that you can run it with a epub file on the command line and it just opens it and when it s been closed you can just open it again to the same spot in the same file. I don t want a library to view a book list, I just want to go back to what I was last reading in a hurry. Calibre might be better for some uses, for example I can imagine someone in the publishing industry with a collection of thousands of epub files finding that Calibre works better for them. But for the typical person who just wants to read one book and keep reading it until they finish it FBReader seems clearly better. The GUI is a little unusual, but it s not at all confusing and it works really well on mobile. Okular I tried Okular (the KDE viewer for PDF files etc) which displays epub files if you have the okular-extra-backends installed, but it appears to not display books with the background color set to black. I would appreciate it if someone who has read some public domain or CC licences epub files can recommend ones with a black background that I could use for testing as I can t file a Debian bug report without sample data to reproduce the bug. I decided not to use it for actual book reading as FBReader is far better for my use taking less RAM and being well optimised for mobile use. Folite Foliate supports specifying a book on the command-line which is nice. But it takes more memory than FBReader which is probably mostly due to using webkit to display things. The output was in 2 columns on my laptop in small text which is probably configurable but I didn t proceed with it. I determined that it doesn t compare with FBReader for my use. It s written in JavaScript which may be a positive feature for some people. Koodo I had a brief test of Koodo which isn t in Debian. Here is the Koodo Reader Github [2]. I installed the .deb that they created, it installs files to /opt/Koodo Reader/ (yes that s a space in the directory name) and appears to have Chromium as part of the runtime. I didn t go past that even though it appears to have a decent feature set. It is licensed under version 3 of the AGPL so is suitable for Debian packaging if someone wants to do it. Thorium I saw the Thorium reader on Github [3] which looks promising, it s under the BSD 3 clause license so is suitable for Debian packaging. The EDR Lab seems like a good project for advancing electronic document use [4] and it would be good to have their stuff in Debian. For the moment I m happy using FBReader.
Related posts:
  1. Ebook Readers in Debian Laptop For a while I ve been using Calibre 8.5.0+ds-1+deb13u1 in...
  2. Apache Mesos on Debian I decided to try packaging Mesos for Debian/Stretch. I had...
  3. NBD and PXE Booting on Debian I have a Xen server that I use for testing...

Ravi Dwivedi: LibreOffice Conference Budapest 2025

In September 2025, I attended the LibreOffice Conference in Budapest, Hungary, on the 4th and the 5th, and a community meeting on the 3rd. Thanks to The Document Foundation (TDF) for sponsoring my travel and accommodation costs. The conference venue was Faculty of Informatics, E tv s Lor nd University (ELTE). The conference was planned to be held from the 4th to the 6th, but the program for the 6th of September had to be canceled due to the venue being unavailable because of a marathon in Budapest. So, all the talks got squeezed into just two days, making the schedule a bit hectic. The TDF had booked my room at the Corvin Hotel. It was a double bedroom with a window. The breakfast was included in the hotel booking. The hotel was walking distance from the conference venue. One could also take a tram from the hotel to reach the venue.
A double bed A shot of my room. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Tram A tram in Budapest. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

3rd of September On the 3rd of September, we had a community meeting at the above-mentioned venue. I walked with my friend Dione to the venue. Upon reaching there, I noticed that the university had no boundaries and gates. This reminded me of the previous year s conference venue in Luxembourg, which also had no boundaries or gates. In contrast, Indian universities and institutes typically have walls and gates serving as boundaries to separate them from the rest of the city. Many of these institutes also have security guards at the entrance, who may ask attendees to present proof of admission before allowing them inside. I was surprised to find that institutes in Europe, like the one where the conference was held, did not have such boundaries. The building where the conference was held was red, which happened to be the same color as the building for the previous year s conference venue. I remember joking with Dione that the criteria for the conference venue might have been the color of the building.
A red building The red building in the picture served as the conference venue. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
During the community meeting, we shared ideas on how to spread the word about LibreOffice. The meeting lasted for a couple of hours. After the community meeting, we went to the hotel for dinner sponsored by the TDF.
Cake slices These Esterh zy cake bites were really yummy. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Raspberry Currant cake slices Raspberry Currant cake slices. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

4th of September On the first day of the conference, attendees were given swag bags containing a pad, sticky notes, a pen, a conference T-shirt, and a bottle.
A blue colored T-shirt on a bed along with a pen, a bottle, a diary and a sticky note Conference swag. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The talks started early in the morning with Eliane Domingos, Chairperson of TDF s Board of Directors, giving the inauguration talk. As always, I found Italo Vignoli s talk on the importance of document freedom interesting. During the snack break, I noticed that there were three types of milk available for coffee: cow s milk, lactose-free milk, and almond milk. Almond milk is rare in India, but I have managed to get it, but I have never seen lactose-free milk in India. Since I run fundraisers in my projects, such as Prav, I could relate to Lothar K. Becker s talk. He discussed the issue that certain implementations in LibreOffice require a budget that is too large for any single interested entity to fund independently. Furthermore, The Document Foundation (TDF) cannot legally receive funds from government entities. Therefore, there is no organization or entity to pool resources from all the interested entities to finance the implementation.
Lothar giving his presentation Lothar giving his presentation. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Another talk was by the Austrian Armed Forces on their migration to LibreOffice. I wanted to know why they migrated, and I found out that they did it for their digital sovereignty, and not for saving on the license costs. Another point presented in the talk was that LibreOffice is available on all the operating systems, while the Microsoft Office suite is not that widely available. The migration was systematic and was performed over a few years. They started working on it in 2021, and the migration was finished recently. In addition, it also required training their staff in using LibreOffice.
Presentation on migration to LibreOffice by Austrian Armed Forces Presentation on migration to LibreOffice by Austrian Armed Forces. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The lunch was inside the university canteen. We were provided lunch coupons by the TDF. I got a vegan coupon with 4000 Ft written on it, which meant I could take lunch for up to 4000 Hungarian forints.
My lunch ticket My lunch ticket for the conference. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
The lunch I had on the first day The lunch I had on the first day. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
During the evening, it was my turn for the presentation. I was done with preparing my slides ten days before my talk. I also got my slides reviewed by friends. My talk was finished in 20 minutes, while I was given a 30-minute slot. This helped us catch up on the schedule. Furthermore, I made my talk interactive by asking questions and making sure that the audience was not asleep. During my talk, my friend Dione took my pictures with my camera. My talk was on how free software projects could give users a say in freedom to modify the software. I illustrated this using the Prav project that I am a part of. After the talks were over, we were treated to a conference dinner at Trofea Grill. It had a great selection of desserts, which helped me sample some Hungarian desserts. The sponge cake was especially good.
Desserts at Tofea Grill Desserts at Tofea Grill. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

5th of September The next day the 5th of September I went with Dione to the venue early in the morning, as her talk was the first one of the day. Her talk was titled Managing Tasks with Nextcloud Deck. Later that day, I also attended a talk on Collabora. At lunch, I found the egg white salad quite tasty.
Dione giving her presentation Dione giving her presentation. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Egg white salad Egg white salad. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
After the lunch break, we had the conference group photo. I had a Nikon camera, which we used to take the group photo. I requested a university student to take our group photo and also taught her how to operate the camera.
People looking at the camera and smiling Group photo
By the evening, the conference ended, after which we went to a pub, which was again sponsored by TDF. I had beer, but that one really tasted bad, so I couldn t finish it. The only vegetarian option was goat cheeseburger, which my friend Manish and I opted for. The burger tasted awful. Apparently, I don t like goat cheese. The next day I went sightseeing with Dione in Budapest. Stay tuned for our adventures! Credits: Thanks to Dione and Richard for proofreading.

20 April 2026

Bits from Debian: Debian Project Leader election 2026 is over, Sruthi Chandran elected!

The voting period and tally of votes for the Debian Project Leader election has just concluded, and the winner is Sruthi Chandran. Congratulations! 347 out of 1,039 Developers voted using the Condorcet method. More information about the results of the voting is available on the Debian Project Leader Elections 2026 page. Many thanks to Sruthi Chandran for her campaign, to our Developers for their votes, and to Andreas Tille for his service as DPL over the past two years! The new term for the project leader will start on April 21, 2026 and expire on April 20, 2027.

Sune Vuorela: Kookbook 0.3.0 released

I recently released version 0.3.0 of my recipe manager application Kookbook find it in git in KDE Invent or as released tarballs in https://download.kde.org/stable/kookbook/ Changes since last time is more or less Minor bugfixes and a Qt6 port nothing as such noteworthy unless you aim to get rid of Qt5 on your system. so what is kookbook?
It is a simple recipe viewer that works with semi-structured markdown. More details can be seen in the quite old 0.1.0 announcement At some point I should do a 10 recipe example collection, but my personal collection is in danish, so I m not sure it is going to be useful. Unless someone will donate me some handfuls of pre-formatted recipes, I will happily announce it.

Russ Allbery: Review: Surface Detail

Review: Surface Detail, by Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
Copyright: October 2010
Printing: May 2011
ISBN: 0-316-12341-2
Format: Trade paperback
Pages: 627
Surface Detail is the ninth novel in Banks's Culture science fiction (literary space opera?) series. As with most of the Culture novels, it can be read in any order, although this isn't the best starting point. There is an Easter egg reference to Use of Weapons that would be easier to notice if you have read that book recently, but which is not that important to the story. Lededje Y'breq is an Indented Intagliate from the Sichultian Enablement. Her body is patterned from her skin down to her bones, covered with elaborate markings similar to tattoos that extend to her internal organs. As an intagliate, she is someone's property. In her case, she is the property of Joller Veppers, the richest man in the Enablement and her father's former business partner. Intagliates are a tradition of great cultural pride in the Enablement. They are a living representation of the seriousness with which debts and honor are taken, up to and including one's not-yet-born children becoming the property of one's debtor. Such children are decorated as living works of art of the highest skill and technical sophistication; after all, the Enablement are not barbarians. As the story opens, Lededje is attempting, not for the first time, to escape. This attempt is successful in an unexpected way. Prin and Chay are Pavulean researchers and academics who, as this story opens, are in Hell. They are not dead; they have infiltrated the Hell that Pavuleans are shown to scare them into proper behavior in order to prove that it is not an illusion and their society does indeed torture people in an afterlife, in more awful ways than people dare imagine. They have reached the portal through which temporary visitors exit, hoping to escape with firm evidence of the existence and horrors of the Pavulean afterlife. They will not be entirely successful. Yime Nsokyi is a Culture agent for Quietus, the part of Contact that concerns itself with the dead. Many advanced societies throughout the galaxy have invented and reinvented the ability to digitize a mind and then run it in a virtual environment. Once a society can capture the minds of every person in that society from that point forward, it faces the question of whether to do so and, if it does, what to do with those minds. More specifically, it faces the moral question of whether to punish the minds of people who were horrible in life. It faces the question of whether to create Hell. Vatueil is a soldier in a contestation, a limited and carefully monitored virtual war. The purpose of that war game is to, once and for all, resolve the question of whether civilizations should be allowed to create Hells. Some civilizations consider them integral to their religion or self-conception. Others consider them morally abhorrent, and that conflict was in danger of spilling over into war in the Real. Hence the War in Heaven: Both sides committed to fight in a virtual space under specific and structured rules, and the winner decides the fate of the galaxy's Hells. Vatueil is fighting for the anti-Hell side. The anti-Hell side is losing. There are very few authors who were better at big-idea science fiction than Iain M. Banks. I've been reading a few books about AI ships and remembered that I had two unread Culture novels that I was saving. It felt like a good time to lose myself in something sprawling. Surface Detail does sprawl. Even by Banks's standards, there was an impressive amount of infodumping in this book. Banks always has huge and lovingly described set pieces, and this book is no exception, but there are also paragraphs and pages of background and cultural musings and galactic politics. We are introduced to not one but three new Contact divisions; as well as the already-mentioned Quietus, there is Numina, which concerns itself with the races that have sublimed (transcended), and Restoria, which deals with hegemonizing swarms (grey goo nanotech, paperclip maximizers, and their equivalents). Infodumping is both a feature and a bane of big-idea science fiction, and it helps to be in the right mood. It also helps if the info being dumped is interesting, and this is where Banks shines. This is a huge, sprawling book, but it deals with some huge, sprawling questions and it has interesting and non-reductive thoughts about them. The problems posed by the plot come with history, failed solutions, multi-sided political disputes, strategies and tactics of varying morality and efficacy, and an effort to wrestle with the irreducible complexity of trying to resolve political and ethical disagreements in a universe full of profound disagreements and moral systems that one cannot simply steamroll. It also helps that the characters are interesting, even when they're not likable. Surface Detail has one fully hissable villain (Veppers) as a viewpoint character, but even Veppers is interesting in a "let me check the publication date to see if Banks was aware of Peter Thiel" sort of way. The Culture ships, of which there are several in this story, tend towards a gently sarcastic kindness that I find utterly charming. Lededje provides the compelling motive force of someone who has no involvement in the broader philosophical questions and instead intends to resolve one specific problem through lethal violence. Vatueil and Yime were a bit bland in personality, more exposition generators than characters I warmed to, but their roles and therefore the surrounding exposition were fascinating enough that I still enjoyed their sections. I'm sure this is not an original observation, but I was struck reading this book in the first half of 2026 that the Culture functions as an implementation of what the United States likes to think it is but has never been. It has a strong sense of shared ethics and moral principles, it tries to export them to the rest of the galaxy through example, persuasion, and careful meddling, but it tries to follow some combination of pragmatic and moral rules while doing so, partly to avoid a backlash and partly to avoid becoming its own sort of hegemonizing swarm. That is a powerfully attractive vision of how to be an advanced civilization, and the fact that every hegemon that has claimed that mantle has behaved appallingly just makes it more intriguing as a fictional concept. In this book, like in many Culture books, the Culture is painfully aware of the failure modes of meddling, and the story slowly reveals the effort the Culture put into staying just on a defensible side of their own moral lines. This is, in a sense, a Prime Directive story, but with a level of hard-nosed pragmatism and political sophistication that the endless Star Trek Prime Directive episodes never reach. Surface Detail does tend to sprawl, and I'm not sure Banks pulled together all the pieces of the plot. For example, if there was a point to the subplot involving the Unfallen Bulbitian, it was lost on me. (There is always a possibility with Banks that I wasn't paying close enough attention.) But the descriptions are so elaborate and the sense of politics and history are so deep that I was never bored, even when following a plot thread that meandered off into apparent irrelevance. The main plot line comes to a satisfying conclusion that may be even more biting social commentary today than it was in 2010. A large part of the plot does involve Hell, so a warning for those who haven't read much Banks: He adores elaborate descriptions of body horror and physical torture. The sections involving Prin and Chay are rather grim and horrific, probably a bit worse than Dante's Inferno. I have a low tolerance for horror and I was able to read past and around the worst bits, but be warned that Banks indulges his love for the painfully grotesque quite a bit. This was great, and exactly what I was hoping for when I picked it up. It's not the strongest Culture novel (for me, that's either The Player of Games or Excession), but it's one of the better ones. Highly recommended, although if you're new to the Culture, I would start with one of the earlier books that provide a more gradual introduction to the Culture and Special Circumstances. Followed, in the somewhat disconnected Culture series sense, by The Hydrogen Sonata. Content warnings: Rape (largely off-screen), graphic violence, lots of Bosch-style grotesque torture, and a lot of Veppers being a thoroughly awful human being as a viewpoint character. Rating: 8 out of 10

19 April 2026

Russ Allbery: Review: Collision Course

Review: Collision Course, by Michelle Diener
Series: Class 5 #6
Publisher: Eclipse
Copyright: November 2024
ISBN: 1-7637844-0-1
Format: Kindle
Pages: 289
Collision Course is the sixth novel in the Class 5 science fiction series and the first that doesn't use the Dark X naming convention. There are lots of spoilers in this story for the earlier books, but you don't have to remember all the details of previous events. Like the novella, Dark Ambitions, this novel returns to Rose, Sazo, and Dav instead of introducing another Earth woman and Class 5 ship. In Dark Class, Ellie discovered an interesting artifact of a previously-unknown space-faring civilization. Rose, Sazo, and Dav are on their way to make first contact when, during a routine shuttle flight between the Class 5 and Dav's Grih military ship, Rose is abducted. The aliens they came to contact have an aggressive, leverage-based negotiating strategy. They're also in the middle of a complicated war with more sides than are readily apparent. What I liked most about Dark Horse, the first book of this series and our introduction to Rose, was the revealed ethical system and a tense plot that hinged primarily on establishing mutual trust when there were excellent reasons for the characters to not trust each other. As the series has continued, I think the plots have become more complicated but the ethical dilemmas and revealing moments of culture shock have become less common. That is certainly true of Collision Course; this is science fiction as thriller, with a complex factional conflict, a lot of events, more plot reversals than the earlier books, but also less ethics and philosophy. I'm not sure if this is a complaint. I kind of miss the ethics and philosophy, but Diener also hasn't had much new to say for the past few books. The plot of Collision Course is quite satisfyingly twisty for a popcorn-style science fiction series. I was kept guessing about the merits of some of the factions quite late into the book, although admittedly I was in the mood for light entertainment and was not trying too hard to figure out where the book was going. I did read nearly the entire book in one sitting and stayed up until 2am to finish it, which is a solid indication that something Diener was doing worked. I do have quibbles, though. One is that the ending is a bit unsatisfying. Like Sazo, I was getting quite annoyed at the people capturing (and recapturing) Rose and would have enjoyed somewhat more decisive consequences. Also, and here I have to be vague to avoid spoilers, I was expecting a bit more of a redemption arc for one of the players in the multi-sided conflict. The ending I did get was believable but rather sad, and I wish Diener had either chosen a different outcome (this is light happily-ever-after science fiction, after all) or wrestled more directly with the implications. There were a bit too many "wait, one more thing" ending reversals and not quite enough emotional payoff for me. The other quibble is that Collision Course was a bit too damsel in distress for this series. Rose is pregnant, which Diener uses throughout the book as a way to raise the stakes of the plot and also make Rose more annoyed but also less capable than she was in her earlier novel. Both Sazo and Dav are in full heroic rescue mode, and while Diener still ensures Rose is primarily responsible for her own fate, there is some "military men attempt to protect the vulnerable woman" here. One of the things I like about this series is that it does not use that plot, so while the balance between Rose rescuing herself and other people rescuing her is still tilted towards Rose, I would have liked this book more if Rose were in firmer control of events. I will mostly ignore the fact that a human and a Grih sexually reproducing makes little to no biological sense, since Star Trek did similar things routinely and it's an established genre trope. But I admit that it still annoys me a bit that the alien hunk is essentially human except that he's obsessed with Rose's singing and has pointy ears. Diener cares about Rose's pregnancy a lot more than I did, which added to my mild grumpiness at how often it came up. Overall, this was fine. I prefer a bit more of a protagonist discovering how powerful she is by making ingenious use of the ethical dilemmas her captors have trapped themselves in, and a bit less of Rose untangling a complicated political situation by getting abducted by every player serially, but it still kept the pages turning. Any book that is sufficiently engrossing for me to read straight through is working at some level. Collision Course was highly readable, undemanding, and distracting, which is what I was looking for when I read it. I would put it about middle of pack in the series. If Rose's pregnancy is more interesting to you than it was to me, that might push it a bit higher. If you have gotten this far in the series, you will probably enjoy this, although it does feel like Diener is running out of new things to say about this universe. That's unfortunate given the number of threads about AI sentience and rights that could still be followed, but I think tracing them properly would require more philosophical meat than Diener intends for these books. Which is why the next book I grabbed was a Culture novel. Currently this is the final book in the Class 5 series, but there is no inherent reason why Diener couldn't write more of them. Rating: 7 out of 10

18 April 2026

Valhalla's Things: Pizza!

Posted on April 18, 2026
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:cooking
This post contains a bit of consumerism and is full of references to commercial products, none of which caused me to receive any money nor non-monetary compensation. This post has also been written after eating in one meal the amount of bread-like stuff that we usually have in more than 24 hours. I ve been baking bread since a long time ago. I don t know exactly when, but probably it was the early 2000s or so, and remained a regular-ish thing until 2020, when it became an extremely regular thing, as in I believe I bake bread on average every other day. In the before times, I ve had a chance to bake pizza in a wood fired oven a few times: a friend had one and would offer the house, my partner would mind the fire, and I would get there with the dough and prepare the pizza. Now that we have moved to a new house, we don t have a good and convenient place for a proper wood fired oven in masonry, but we can use one of the portable ones, and having dealt with more urgent expenses, I decided that just before the potential collapse of the global economy was a good time as any to buy the oven I had been looking at since we found this house. I decided to get an Ooni Karu 2, having heard good things about the brand, and since it looked like a good balance between size and portability. I also didn t consider their gas fired ovens (nor did I buy the gas burner) because I m trying to get rid of gas, not add stuff that uses it, and I didn t get an electric one because I m not at all unhappy with the bakery-style pizza we make in our regular oven, and I have to admit we also wanted to play with fire1. We also needed an outdoor table suitable to use the oven on and store it. Here I looked for inspiration at the Ooni tables (and for cheaper alternatives in the same style), but my mother who shares the outdoor area with us wasn t happy with the idea of steel2. And then I was browsing the modern viking shores, and found that there was a new piece in the N MMAR series my mother likes (and of which we already have some reclining chairs): a kitchen unit in wood with a steel top. At first I expected to just skip the back panel, since it would be in the way when using the oven, but then I realized that it could probably be assembled upside down, down from the top between the table legs, and we decided to try that option. This week everything had arrived, and we could try it. Yesterday evening, after dinner (around 21, I think) I prepared the dough with the flour I usually use for bakery-style pizza: Farina di Grano Tenero Tipo 0 PANE (320 - 340 W); since I wanted to make things easier for myself I only used 55% hydration, so the recipe was:
  • 1 kg flour
  • 550 g water
  • 2 g dry yeast
  • 12 g salt
The next time I think I ll try with one of my other staples: Molino Bogetto etichetta blu (260/280 W) Then this morning we assembled the N MMAR , then I divided the dough in eight balls, put them in a covered but not sealed container 3, well floured with rice flour and then we fired the oven (as in: my partner did, I looked for a short while and then set the table and stuff), using charcoal, because we already had some, and could conveniently get more at the supermarket. When the oven had reached temperatures in the orange range4 I stretched the smallest ball out, working on my wooden peel, sprayed it with water5, sprinkled it with coarse salt and put it in the oven. After 30 seconds I turned it around with the new metal peel, then again after 30 seconds, and then I lost count of how many times I repeated this6, but it was probably 2 or 3 minutes until it looked good. A flatbread on a regular plate: it's only a bit more than half the plate in diameter, puffed up near the borders and thin in the middle, and only lightly browned in places, not burnt. It's sitting on the lower shelf of a wooden table. And it was good. The kind of pizza that is quite soft, especially near the borders. We ate it with fresh mozzarella and tomatoes, and then made another one the same way, to finish the mozzarella. Another flatbread on the same plate, this time it's about 4 cm smaller than the plate on all sides, and it's covered with brownish-red chopped up vegetables. This was supposed to be our lunch, but we decided to try one with some leftover cooked radicchio, and that also worked quite nicely. And finally, we decided we needed to try a more classical pizza, with tomato sauce and cured meat, of which we forgot to take pictures. Up to here we had eaten about half of the dough, and we were getting full: I had prepared significantly more than what I expected to eat, to be able to accidentally burn some, but also with the idea to bake something else to be eaten later. So I made two more focaccias with just water and salt, and then I tried to cook some bread with what I expected to be residual heat. Another flatbread with coarse salt and two bread rolls, one of which is completely carbonized on one side. The other one has been cut, and while it has a carbonized spot, it is also well cooked in the middle, and perfectly edible. Except that the oven was getting a bit too cold, so my partner added some charcoal, and when I put the last two unflattened balls right at the back of the oven where it was still warmer, that side carbonized. After 5 minutes I moved them to the middle of the oven, and turned them, and then after another turn and 5 more minutes they were ready. And other than the burnt crust, they were pretty edible. So, the thoughts after our first experience. Everybody around the table (my SO, my mother and me) was quite happy with the results, and they are different enough from the ones I could get with the regular oven. As I should have expected, it s much faster than a masonry oven, both in getting to temperature and in cooling down: my plan for residual heat bread cooking will have to be adjusted with experience. We were able to get it hot enough, but not as hot as it s supposed to be able to get: we suspect that using just charcoal may have influenced it, and next week we ll try to get some wood, and try with a mix. As for the recipe, dividing the dough in eight parts worked quite well: maybe the pizzas are a bit on the smaller side, but since they come one at a time it s more convenient to cut and share them, and maybe make a couple more at the end. Of course, I ll want to try different recipes, for different styles of pizzas (including some almost-trademark-violating ones) and for other types of flatbread. I expect it won t be hard to find volunteers to help us with the experiments. :D
  1. any insinuation that there may have been considerations of having a way to have freshly baked bread in case of a prolonged blackout may or may not be based on reality. But it wasn t the only or even the main reason.
  2. come on! it s made of STEEL. how can it be not good? :D
  3. IKEA 365+ 3.1 glass, the one that is 32 cm 21 cm 9 cm; it was just big enough for the amount of dough, and then I covered it with a lid that is missing the seal.
  4. why did they put a thermometer on it, and not add labels with the actual temperature? WHY???
  5. if you don t have dietary restrictions a bit of olive oil would taste even better.
  6. numbers above 2 are all basically the same, right?

Yifei Zhan: CommBank hardware MFA token

A while ago, CommBank started asking for MFA confirmation on its mobile app for every NetBank login on a browser. Previously, there was an option to use SMS for MFA, which isn t as secure as I would like, but it was at least usable. Since I m switching away from Android to Mobian and won t be able to use the CommBank app for much longer, I applied for a physical NetCode token. The hardware is made by Digipass and looks disposable. It is a small, battery powered gadget with a screen and a button. When pressed, it shows a temporary NetCode for authentication. Such a NetCode is required both for NetBank logins and approving online transactions. The letter that came with it has the wrong link for activation, the correct link is under NetBank -> Settings -> NetCode (under the Security section) To apply for a physical token, call the NetBank team, mention you can t use the app and need a physical NetCode token, and make sure they actually submit your request for a token. It took me 2 calls to get them to ship me a token. The hardware is free of charge but can only be applied for via phone call; unfortunately staff members at my local branch are unable to do anything in relation to NetBank. I was told privately by a CommBank employee that they are deprecating the hardware token in favor of the mobile app, I hope that won t happen anytime soon, or that they add support for passkeys before they do. The last time I checked, the CommBank app was LineageOS-friendly, but I don t want to configure WayDroid just to do online banking. PayID, the thing that allows you to receive payment via a phone number or email address, is not compatible with the hardware token, and existing PayID will be silently deactivated if you use hardware token. This looks to be an artificial restriction; I don t see why it has to be this way. Regular CommBank mobile app sessions will also be de-activated once the hardware token is activated (I was told so but my sessions weren t deactivated until I wiped my Android phone), and you won t be able to sign into mobile app again until you manually disable the NetCode token. Online banking has been getting progressively more invasive and anti-user over the last decade, from demanding remote attestation to requiring real time location data, each time locking certain features when those demands are not satisfied; all based on the flawed assumptions that everyone owns a phone running a certain flavor of iOS or Android, and has it ready all the time. I m not sure what can be done to reverse this trend, but on the personal level I will use NetBank less and go back to cash.

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