Search Results: "nate"

15 April 2014

Colin Watson: Porting GHC: A Tale of Two Architectures

We had some requests to get GHC (the Glasgow Haskell Compiler) up and running on two new Ubuntu architectures: arm64, added in 13.10, and ppc64el, added in 14.04. This has been something of a saga, and has involved rather more late-night hacking than is probably good for me. Book the First: Recalled to a life of strange build systems You might not know it from the sheer bulk of uploads I do sometimes, but I actually don't speak a word of Haskell and it's not very high up my list of things to learn. But I am a pretty experienced build engineer, and I enjoy porting things to new architectures: I'm firmly of the belief that breadth of architecture support is a good way to shake out certain categories of issues in code, that it's worth doing aggressively across an entire distribution, and that, even if you don't think you need something now, new requirements have a habit of coming along when you least expect them and you might as well be prepared in advance. Furthermore, it annoys me when we have excessive noise in our build failure and proposed-migration output and I often put bits and pieces of spare time into gardening miscellaneous problems there, and at one point there was a lot of Haskell stuff on the list and it got a bit annoying to have to keep sending patches rather than just fixing things myself, and ... well, I ended up as probably the only non-Haskell-programmer on the Debian Haskell team and found myself fixing problems there in my free time. Life is a bit weird sometimes. Bootstrapping packages on a new architecture is a bit of a black art that only a fairly small number of relatively bitter and twisted people know very much about. Doing it in Ubuntu is specifically painful because we've always forbidden direct binary uploads: all binaries have to come from a build daemon. Compilers in particular often tend to be written in the language they compile, and it's not uncommon for them to build-depend on themselves: that is, you need a previous version of the compiler to build the compiler, stretching back to the dawn of time where somebody put things together with a big magnet or something. So how do you get started on a new architecture? Well, what we do in this case is we construct a binary somehow (usually involving cross-compilation) and insert it as a build-dependency for a proper build in Launchpad. The ability to do this is restricted to a small group of Canonical employees, partly because it's very easy to make mistakes and partly because things like the classic "Reflections on Trusting Trust" are in the backs of our minds somewhere. We have an iron rule for our own sanity that the injected build-dependencies must themselves have been built from the unmodified source package in Ubuntu, although there can be source modifications further back in the chain. Fortunately, we don't need to do this very often, but it does mean that as somebody who can do it I feel an obligation to try and unblock other people where I can. As far as constructing those build-dependencies goes, sometimes we look for binaries built by other distributions (particularly Debian), and that's pretty straightforward. In this case, though, these two architectures are pretty new and the Debian ports are only just getting going, and as far as I can tell none of the other distributions with active arm64 or ppc64el ports (or trivial name variants) has got as far as porting GHC yet. Well, OK. This was somewhere around the Christmas holidays and I had some time. Muggins here cracks his knuckles and decides to have a go at bootstrapping it from scratch. It can't be that hard, right? Not to mention that it was a blocker for over 600 entries on that build failure list I mentioned, which is definitely enough to make me sit up and take notice; we'd even had the odd customer request for it. Several attempts later and I was starting to doubt my sanity, not least for trying in the first place. We ship GHC 7.6, and upgrading to 7.8 is not a project I'd like to tackle until the much more experienced Haskell folks in Debian have switched to it in unstable. The porting documentation for 7.6 has bitrotted more or less beyond usability, and the corresponding documentation for 7.8 really isn't backportable to 7.6. I tried building 7.8 for ppc64el anyway, picking that on the basis that we had quicker hardware for it and didn't seem likely to be particularly more arduous than arm64 (ho ho), and I even got to the point of having a cross-built stage2 compiler (stage1, in the cross-building case, is a GHC binary that runs on your starting architecture and generates code for your target architecture) that I could copy over to a ppc64el box and try to use as the base for a fully-native build, but it segfaulted incomprehensibly just after spawning any child process. Compilers tend to do rather a lot, especially when they're built to use GCC to generate object code, so this was a pretty serious problem, and it resisted analysis. I poked at it for a while but didn't get anywhere, and I had other things to do so declared it a write-off and gave up. Book the Second: The golden thread of progress In March, another mailing list conversation prodded me into finding a blog entry by Karel Gardas on building GHC for arm64. This was enough to be worth another look, and indeed it turned out that (with some help from Karel in private mail) I was able to cross-build a compiler that actually worked and could be used to run a fully-native build that also worked. Of course this was 7.8, since as I mentioned cross-building 7.6 is unrealistically difficult unless you're considerably more of an expert on GHC's labyrinthine build system than I am. OK, no problem, right? Getting a GHC at all is the hard bit, and 7.8 must be at least as capable as 7.6, so it should be able to build 7.6 easily enough ... Not so much. What I'd missed here was that compiler engineers generally only care very much about building the compiler with older versions of itself, and if the language in question has any kind of deprecation cycle then the compiler itself is likely to be behind on various things compared to more typical code since it has to be buildable with older versions. This means that the removal of some deprecated interfaces from 7.8 posed a problem, as did some changes in certain primops that had gained an associated compatibility layer in 7.8 but nobody had gone back to put the corresponding compatibility layer into 7.6. GHC supports running Haskell code through the C preprocessor, and there's a __GLASGOW_HASKELL__ definition with the compiler's version number, so this was just a slog tracking down changes in git and adding #ifdef-guarded code that coped with the newer compiler (remembering that stage1 will be built with 7.8 and stage2 with stage1, i.e. 7.6, from the same source tree). More inscrutably, GHC has its own packaging system called Cabal which is also used by the compiler build process to determine which subpackages to build and how to link them against each other, and some crucial subpackages weren't being built: it looked like it was stuck on picking versions from "stage0" (i.e. the initial compiler used as an input to the whole process) when it should have been building its own. Eventually I figured out that this was because GHC's use of its packaging system hadn't anticipated this case, and was selecting the higher version of the ghc package itself from stage0 rather than the version it was about to build for itself, and thus never actually tried to build most of the compiler. Editing ghc_stage1_DEPS in ghc/stage1/package-data.mk after its initial generation sorted this out. One late night building round and round in circles for a while until I had something stable, and a Debian source upload to add basic support for the architecture name (and other changes which were a bit over the top in retrospect: I didn't need to touch the embedded copy of libffi, as we build with the system one), and I was able to feed this all into Launchpad and watch the builders munch away very satisfyingly at the Haskell library stack for a while. This was all interesting, and finally all that work was actually paying off in terms of getting to watch a slew of several hundred build failures vanish from arm64 (the final count was something like 640, I think). The fly in the ointment was that ppc64el was still blocked, as the problem there wasn't building 7.6, it was getting a working 7.8. But now I really did have other much more urgent things to do, so I figured I just wouldn't get to this by release time and stuck it on the figurative shelf. Book the Third: The track of a bug Then, last Friday, I cleared out my urgent pile and thought I'd have another quick look. (I get a bit obsessive about things like this that smell of "interesting intellectual puzzle".) slyfox on the #ghc IRC channel gave me some general debugging advice and, particularly usefully, a reduced example program that I could use to debug just the process-spawning problem without having to wade through noise from running the rest of the compiler. I reproduced the same problem there, and then found that the program crashed earlier (in stg_ap_0_fast, part of the run-time system) if I compiled it with +RTS -Da -RTS. I nailed it down to a small enough region of assembly that I could see all of the assembly, the source code, and an intermediate representation or two from the compiler, and then started meditating on what makes ppc64el special. You see, the vast majority of porting bugs come down to what I might call gross properties of the architecture. You have things like whether it's 32-bit or 64-bit, big-endian or little-endian, whether char is signed or unsigned, that sort of thing. There's a big table on the Debian wiki that handily summarises most of the important ones. Sometimes you have to deal with distribution-specific things like whether GL or GLES is used; often, especially for new variants of existing architectures, you have to cope with foolish configure scripts that think they can guess certain things from the architecture name and get it wrong (assuming that powerpc* means big-endian, for instance). We often have to update config.guess and config.sub, and on ppc64el we have the additional hassle of updating libtool macros too. But I've done a lot of this stuff and I'd accounted for everything I could think of. ppc64el is actually a lot like amd64 in terms of many of these porting-relevant properties, and not even that far off arm64 which I'd just successfully ported GHC to, so I couldn't be dealing with anything particularly obvious. There was some hand-written assembly which certainly could have been problematic, but I'd carefully checked that this wasn't being used by the "unregisterised" (no specialised machine dependencies, so relatively easy to port but not well-optimised) build I was using. A problem around spawning processes suggested a problem with SIGCHLD handling, but I ruled that out by slowing down the first child process that it spawned and using strace to confirm that SIGSEGV was the first signal received. What on earth was the problem? From some painstaking gdb work, one thing I eventually noticed was that stg_ap_0_fast's local stack appeared to be being corrupted by a function call, specifically a call to the colourfully-named debugBelch. Now, when IBM's toolchain engineers were putting together ppc64el based on ppc64, they took the opportunity to fix a number of problems with their ABI: there's an OpenJDK bug with a handy list of references. One of the things I noticed there was that there were some stack allocation optimisations in the new ABI, which affected functions that don't call any vararg functions and don't call any functions that take enough parameters that some of them have to be passed on the stack rather than in registers. debugBelch takes varargs: hmm. Now, the calling code isn't quite in C as such, but in a related dialect called "Cmm", a variant of C-- (yes, minus), that GHC uses to help bridge the gap between the functional world and its code generation, and which is compiled down to C by GHC. When importing C functions into Cmm, GHC generates prototypes for them, but it doesn't do enough parsing to work out the true prototype; instead, they all just get something like extern StgFunPtr f(void);. In most architectures you can get away with this, because the arguments get passed in the usual calling convention anyway and it all works out, but on ppc64el this means that the caller doesn't generate enough stack space and then the callee tries to save its varargs onto the stack in an area that in fact belongs to the caller, and suddenly everything goes south. Things were starting to make sense. Now, debugBelch is only used in optional debugging code; but runInteractiveProcess (the function associated with the initial round of failures) takes no fewer than twelve arguments, plenty to force some of them onto the stack. I poked around the GCC patch for this ABI change a bit and determined that it only optimised away the stack allocation if it had a full prototype for all the callees, so I guessed that changing those prototypes to extern StgFunPtr f(); might work: it's still technically wrong, not least because omitting the parameter list is an obsolescent feature in C11, but it's at least just omitting information about the parameter list rather than actively lying about it. I tweaked that and ran the cross-build from scratch again. Lo and behold, suddenly I had a working compiler, and I could go through the same build-7.6-using-7.8 procedure as with arm64, much more quickly this time now that I knew what I was doing. One upstream bug, one Debian upload, and several bootstrapping builds later, and GHC was up and running on another architecture in Launchpad. Success! Epilogue There's still more to do. I gather there may be a Google Summer of Code project in Linaro to write proper native code generation for GHC on arm64: this would make things a good deal faster, but also enable GHCi (the interpreter) and Template Haskell, and thus clear quite a few more build failures. Since there's already native code generation for ppc64 in GHC, getting it going for ppc64el would probably only be a couple of days' work at this point. But these are niceties by comparison, and I'm more than happy with what I got working for 14.04. The upshot of all of this is that I may be the first non-Haskell-programmer to ever port GHC to two entirely new architectures. I'm not sure if I gain much from that personally aside from a lot of lost sleep and being considered extremely strange. It has, however, been by far the most challenging set of packages I've ported, and a fascinating trip through some odd corners of build systems and undefined behaviour that I don't normally need to touch.

14 April 2014

Andrew Pollock: [life] Day 76: Dora + Fever

We had a bit of a rough night last night. I noticed Zoe was pretty hot when she had a nap yesterday after not really eating much lunch. She still had a mild fever after her nap, so I gave her some paracetamol (aka acetaminophen, that one weirded me out when I moved to the US) and called for a home doctor to check her ears out. Her ears were fine, but her throat was a little red. The doctor said it was probably a virus. Her temperature wasn't so high at bed time, so I skipped the paracetamol, and she went to bed fine. She did wake up at about 1:30am and it took me until 3am to get her back to bed. I think it was a combination of the fever and trying to phase out her white noise, but she just didn't want to sleep in her bed or her room. At 3am I admitted defeat and let her sleep with me. She had only a slightly elevated temperature this morning, and otherwise seemed in good spirits. We were supposed to go to a family lunch today, because my sister and brother are in town with their respective families, but I figured we'd skip that on account that Zoe may have still had something, and coupled with the poor night's sleep, I wasn't sure how much socialising she was going to be up for. My ear has still been giving me grief, and I had a home doctor check it yesterday as well, and he said the ear canal was 90% blocked. First thing this morning I called up to make an appointment with my regular doctor to try and get it flushed out. The earliest appointment I could get was 10:15am. So we trundled around the corner to my doctor after a very slow start to the day. I got my ear cleaned out and felt like a million bucks afterwards. We went to Woolworths to order an undecorated mud slab cake, so I can try doing a trial birthday cake. I've given up on trying to do the sitting minion, and significantly scaled back to just a flat minion slab cake. The should be ready tomorrow. The family thing was originally supposed to be tomorrow, and was only moved to today yesterday. My original plan had been to take Zoe to a free Dora the Explorer live show that was on in the Queen Street Mall. I decided to revert back to the original plan, but by this stage, it was too late to catch the 11am show, so the 1pm show was the only other option. We had a "quick" lunch at home, which involved Zoe refusing the eat the sandwich I made for her and me convincing her otherwise. Then I got a time-sensitive phone call from a friend, and once I'd finished dealing with that, there wasn't enough time to take any form of public transport and get there in time, so I decided to just drive in. We parked in the Myer Centre car park, and quickly made our way up to the mall, and made it there comfortably with 5 minutes to spare. The show wasn't anything much to phone home about. It was basically just 20 minutes of someone in a giant Dora suit acting out was was essentially a typical episode of Dora the Explorer, on stage, with a helper. Zoe started out wanting to sit on my lap, but made a few brief forays down to the "mosh pit" down the front with the other kids, dancing around. After the show finished, we had about 40 minutes to kill before we could get a photo with Dora, so we wandered around the Myer Centre. I let Zoe choose our destinations initially, and we browsed a cheap accessories store that was having a sale, and then we wandered downstairs to one of the underground bus station platforms. After that, we made our way up to Lincraft, and browsed. We bought a $5 magnifying glass, and I let Zoe do the whole transaction by herself. After that it was time to make our way back down for the photo. Zoe made it first in line, so we were in and out nice and quick. We got our photos, and they gave her a little activity book as well, which she thought was cool, and then we headed back down the car park. In my haste to park and get top side, I hadn't really paid attention to where we'd parked, and we came down via different elevators than we went up, so by the time I'd finally located the car, the exit gate was trying to extract an extra $5 parking out of me. Fortunately I was able to use the intercom at the gate and tell my sob story of being a nincompoop, and they let us out without further payment. We swung by the Valley to clear my PO box, and then headed home. Zoe spontaneously announced she'd had a fun day, so that was lovely. We only had about an hour and half to kill before Sarah was going to pick up Zoe, so we just mucked around. Zoe looked at stuff around the house with her magnifying glass. She helped me open my mail. We looked at some of the photos on my phone. Dayframe and a Chromecast is a great combination for that. We had a really lovely spell on the couch where we took turns to draw on her Magna Doodle. That was some really sweet time together. Zoe seemed really eager for her mother to arrive, and kept asking how much longer it was going to be, and going outside our unit's front door to look for her. Sarah finally arrived, and remarked that Zoe felt hot, and so I checked her temperature, and her fever had returned, so whatever she has she's still fighting off. I decided to do my Easter egg shopping in preparation for Sunday. A friend suggested this cool idea of leaving rabbit paw tracks all over the house in baby powder, and I found a template online and got that all ready to go. I had a really great yoga class tonight. Probably one of the best I've had in a while in terms of being able to completely clear my head. I'm looking forward to an uninterrupted night's sleep tonight.

Matthew Garrett: Real-world Secure Boot attacks

MITRE gave a presentation on UEFI Secure Boot at SyScan earlier this month. You should read the the presentation and paper, because it's really very good.

It describes a couple of attacks. The first is that some platforms store their Secure Boot policy in a run time UEFI variable. UEFI variables are split into two broad categories - boot time and run time. Boot time variables can only be accessed while in boot services - the moment the bootloader or kernel calls ExitBootServices(), they're inaccessible. Some vendors chose to leave the variable containing firmware settings available during run time, presumably because it makes it easier to implement tools for modifying firmware settings at the OS level. Unfortunately, some vendors left bits of Secure Boot policy in this space. The naive approach would be to simply disable Secure Boot entirely, but that means that the OS would be able to detect that the system wasn't in a secure state[1]. A more subtle approach is to modify the policy, such that the firmware chooses not to verify the signatures on files stored on fixed media. Drop in a new bootloader and victory is ensured.

But that's not a beautiful approach. It depends on the firmware vendor having made that mistake. What if you could just rewrite arbitrary variables, even if they're only supposed to be accessible in boot services? Variables are all stored in flash, connected to the chipset's SPI controller. Allowing arbitrary access to that from the OS would make it straightforward to modify the variables, even if they're boot time-only. So, thankfully, the SPI controller has some control mechanisms. The first is that any attempt to enable the write-access bit will cause a System Management Interrupt, at which point the CPU should trap into System Management Mode and (if the write attempt isn't authorised) flip it back. The second is to disable access from the OS entirely - all writes have to take place in System Management Mode.

The MITRE results show that around 0.03% of modern machines enable the second option. That's unfortunate, but the first option should still be sufficient[2]. Except the first option requires on the SMI actually firing. And, conveniently, Intel's chipsets have a bit that allows you to disable all SMI sources[3], and then have another bit to disable further writes to the first bit. Except 40% of the machines MITRE tested didn't bother setting that lock bit. So you can just disable SMI generation, remove the write-protect bit on the SPI controller and then write to arbitrary variables, including the SecureBoot enable one.

This is, uh, obviously a problem. The good news is that this has been communicated to firmware and system vendors and it should be fixed in the future. The bad news is that a significant proportion of existing systems can probably have their Secure Boot implementation circumvented. This is pretty unsurprisingly - I suggested that the first few generations would be broken back in 2012. Security tends to be an iterative process, and changing a branch of the industry that's historically not had to care into one that forms the root of platform trust is a difficult process. As the MITRE paper says, UEFI Secure Boot will be a genuine improvement in security. It's just going to take us a little while to get to the point where the more obvious flaws have been worked out.

[1] Unless the malware was intelligent enough to hook GetVariable, detect a request for SecureBoot and then give a fake answer, but who would do that?
[2] Impressively, basically everyone enables that.
[3] Great for dealing with bugs caused by YOUR ENTIRE COMPUTER BEING INTERRUPTED BY ARBITRARY VENDOR CODE, except unfortunately it also probably disables chunks of thermal management and stops various other things from working as well.

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Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppBDT 0.2.3

A new release of the RcppBDT package is now on CRAN. Several new modules were added; the package can now work on dates, date durations, "ptime" (aka posix time), and timezones. Most interesting may be the fact that ptime is configured to use 96 bits. This allows a precise representation of dates and times down to nanoseconds, and permits date and time calculations at this level. The complete NEWS entry is below:
Changes in version 0.2.3 (2014-04-13)
  • New module 'bdtDt' replacing the old 'bdtDate' module in a more transparent style using a local class which is wrapped, just like the three other new classes do
  • New module 'bdtTd' providing date durations which can be added to dates.
  • New module 'bdtTz' providing time zone information such as offset to UTC, amount of DST, abbreviated and full timezone names.
  • New module 'bdtDu' using 'posix_time::duration' for time durations types
  • New module 'bdtPt' using 'posix_time::ptime' for posix time, down to nanosecond granularity (where hardware and OS permit it)
  • Now selects C++11 compilation by setting CXX_STD = CXX11 in src/Makevars* and hence depend on R 3.1.0 or later this gives gives us long long needed for the nano-second high-resolution time calculations across all builds and platforms.
Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the lastest release. As always, feedback is welcome and the rcpp-devel mailing list off the R-Forge page for Rcpp is the best place to start a discussion. Update: I just learned the hard way that the combination of 32-bit OS, g++ at version 4.7 or newer and a Boost version of 1.53 or 1.54 does not work with this new upload. Some Googling suggests that this ought to be fixed in Boost 1.54; seemingly it isn't as our trusted BH package with Boost headers provides that very version 1.54. However, the Googling also suggested a quick two-line fix which I just committed in the Github repo. A new BH package with the fix may follow in a few days.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

13 April 2014

Jeff Licquia: My Heart Bleeds (or, What s Going On With Heartbleed)

[en] One of the big news stories of the week has been the Heartbleed bug . If you know a techie person, you might have noticed that person looking a bit more stressed and tired than usual since Monday (that was certainly true of me). Some of the discussion might seem a bit confusing and/or scary; what s worse, the non-tech press has started getting some of the details wrong and scare-mongering for readers. So here s my non-techie guide to what all the fuss is about. If you re a techie, this advice isn t for you; chances are, you already know what you should be doing to help fix this. (If you re a techie and you don t know, ask! You might just need a little education on what needs to happen, and there s nothing wrong with that, but you ll be better off asking and possibly looking foolish than you will be if you get hacked.) If you re not inclined to read the whole thing, here are the important points:
  • Don t panic! There are reports of people cleaning out their bank accounts, cutting off their Internet service, buying new computers, etc. If you re thinking about doing anything drastic because you re scared of Heartbleed, don t.
  • You ll probably need to change a lot of your passwords on various sites, but wait until each site you use tells you to.
  • This is mostly a problem for site servers, not PCs or phones or tablets. Unless you re doing something unusual (and you d know if you were), you re fine as long as you update your devices like you usually do. (You do update your devices, right?)
So what happened? There s a notion called a heartbeat signal , where two computers talking to each other say Hey, you there? every so often. This is usually done by computer #1 sending some bit of data to computer #2, and computer #2 sending it back. In this particular situation, the two computers actually send both a bit of data and the length of that bit of data. Some of you might be asking so what happens if computer #1 sends a little bit of data, but lies and says the data is a lot longer than that? In a perfect world, computer #2 would scold computer #1 for lying, and that s what happens now with the bug fix. But before early this week, computer #2 would just trust computer #1 in one very specific case. Now, computers use memory to keep track of stuff they re working on, and they re constantly asking for memory and then giving it back when they re done, so it can be used by something else. So, when you ask for memory, the bit of memory you get might have the results of what the program was doing just a moment ago things like decrypting a credit card using a crypto key, or checking a password. This isn t normally a problem, since it s the same program getting its own memory back. But if it s using this memory to keep track of these heartbeats, and it s been tricked into thinking it needs to send back the word HAT, which is 500 characters long , then character 4 and following is likely to be memory used for something just a moment ago. Most of that recycled memory would be undecipherable junk. But credit cards, crypto keys, and passwords tend to be fairly easy to pick out, unfortunately. And that, by the way, is where the name comes from: the heartbeat signal bleeds data, so Heartbleed . There s been some fascinating commentary on how well this bug has been marketed, by the way; hopefully, we in the techie community will learn something about how to explain problems like this for future incidents. Does this affect every site? No. Only sites using certain newer versions of crypographic software called OpenSSL are affected by this. OpenSSL is very popular; I ve seen estimates that anywhere from a third to a half of all secure Internet sites use it. But not all of those sites will have the bug, since it was only introduced in the last two years. How do we know this? OpenSSL is open source, and is developed in public . Because of that, we know the exact moment when the bug was introduced, when it was released to the world, and when it was fixed. (And, just for the record, it was an honest mistake. Don t go and slam on the poor guy who wrote the code with the bug. It should have been caught by a number of different people, and none of them noticed it, so it s a lot more complicated than it s his fault! pitchforks and torches! ) What should I do? Nothing, yet. Right now, this is mostly a techie problem. Remember that bit about crypto keys? That s the part which puts the little lock icon next to the URL in your browser when you go to your bank s Web site, or to Amazon to buy things, or whatever. The crypto keys make sure that your conversation with your bank about your balance is just between you and your bank. That s also the part which is making techies the world over a little more stressed and tired. You see, we know that the people who found the bug were good guys and helped to get the bug fixed, but we don t know if any bad guys found the bug before this week. And if a bad guy used the bug to extract crypto keys, they would still have those crypto keys, and could still use them even though the original bug is fixed. That would mean that a bad guy could intercept your conversation with your bank / Amazon / whoever. Since we don t know, we have to do the safe thing, and assume that all our keys were in fact stolen, That means we have to redo all our crypto keys. That s a lot of work. And because your password is likely protected with those same crypto keys, if a bad guy has Amazon s key, they d be able to watch you change your password at Amazon. Maybe they didn t even have your old password, but now they have your new one. Oops. You re now less secure than you were. Now, it s important to make sure we re clear: we don t know that this has happened. There s really no way of knowing, short of actually catching a bad guy in the act, and we haven t caught anyone yet. So, this is a safety measure. Thus, the best thing to do is: don t panic. Continue to live life as usual. It might be prudent to put off doing some things for a few days, but I wouldn t even worry so much about that. If you pay your bills online, for example, don t risk paying a bill late out of fear. Remember: so far, we have no evidence yet that anyone s actually doing anything malicious with this bug. At some point, a lot of sites are going to post a notice that looks a lot like this:
We highly recommend our users change the password on their Linux Foundation ID which is used for the logins on most Linux Foundation sites, including our community site, Linux.com for your own security and as part of your own comprehensive effort to update and secure as many of your online credentials as you can.
(That s the notice my employer posted once we had our site in order.) That will be your cue that they ve done the work to redo their crypto keys, and that it s now safe to change your password. A lot of sites will make statements saying, essentially, we don t have a problem . They re probably right. Don t second-guess them; just exhale, slowly, and tick that site off your list of things to worry about. Other sites might not say anything. That s the most worrying part, because it s hard to tell if they re OK or not. If it s an important site to you, the best course of action might be to just ask, or search on Google / Bing / DuckDuckGo / wherever for some kind of statement. What about your site? Yup, I use OpenSSL, and I was vulnerable. But I m the only person who actually logs in to anything on this site. I ve got the bugfix, but I m still in the process of creating new keys. Part of the problem is that everyone else is out there creating new keys at the same time, which creates a bit of a traffic jam. So yeah, if you were thinking of posting your credit card number in a comment, and wanted to make sure you did it securely well, don t do that. EVER. And not because of Heartbleed.

C.J. Adams-Collier: When was the last time you upgraded from squeeze to wheezy?

Wow. 3G delta. I haven t booted this laptop for a while I think I m finally ready to make the move from gnome2 to gnome3. There are bits that still annoy me, but I think it s off to a good start. Upgrading perl from 5.10 to 5.14.
cjac@calcifer:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  at-spi capplets-data compiz compiz-gnome compiz-gtk defoma deskbar-applet g++-4.3 gcc-4.3 gcj-4.4-base gcj-4.4-jre gcj-4.4-jre-headless gcj-4.4-jre-lib
  gdm3 gir1.0-clutter-1.0 gir1.0-freedesktop gir1.0-glib-2.0 gir1.0-gstreamer-0.10 gir1.0-gtk-2.0 gir1.0-json-glib-1.0 glade-gnome gnome-about
  gnome-accessibility gnome-applets gnome-core gnome-panel gnome-utils-common lib32readline5-dev libbrasero-media0 libclass-mop-perl libdb4.7-java
  libdb4.8-dev libdevhelp-1-1 libdigest-sha1-perl libdirectfb-dev libebook1.2-9 libecal1.2-7 libedata-book1.2-2 libedata-cal1.2-7 libedataserverui1.2-8
  libepc-1.0-2 libepc-ui-1.0-2 libept1 libgcj10 libgcj10-awt libgd2-noxpm libgstfarsight0.10-0 libgtkhtml-editor0 libjpeg62-dev libmetacity-private0
  libmono-accessibility1.0-cil libmono-bytefx0.7.6.1-cil libmono-cairo1.0-cil libmono-cil-dev libmono-corlib1.0-cil libmono-cscompmgd7.0-cil
  libmono-data-tds1.0-cil libmono-data1.0-cil libmono-debugger-soft0.0-cil libmono-getoptions1.0-cil libmono-i18n-west1.0-cil libmono-i18n1.0-cil
  libmono-ldap1.0-cil libmono-microsoft7.0-cil libmono-npgsql1.0-cil libmono-oracle1.0-cil libmono-peapi1.0-cil libmono-posix1.0-cil
  libmono-relaxng1.0-cil libmono-security1.0-cil libmono-sharpzip0.6-cil libmono-sharpzip0.84-cil libmono-sqlite1.0-cil libmono-system-data1.0-cil
  libmono-system-ldap1.0-cil libmono-system-messaging1.0-cil libmono-system-runtime1.0-cil libmono-system-web1.0-cil libmono-system1.0-cil
  libmono-webbrowser0.5-cil libmono-winforms1.0-cil libmono1.0-cil libmtp8 libnautilus-extension1 libpango1.0-common libperl5.10 libpolkit-gtk-1-0
  libpulse-browse0 librpm1 librpmbuild1 libsdl1.2-dev libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio libseed0 libstdc++6-4.3-dev libtelepathy-farsight0 libupnp3 libvlccore4
  libxmlrpc-c3 linphone-nox linux-headers-2.6.32-5-amd64 linux-sound-base metacity mono-2.0-devel mono-devel mysql-client-5.1 mysql-query-browser
  mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server-core-5.1 openoffice.org-base-core openoffice.org-core openoffice.org-gcj openoffice.org-report-builder-bin
  openoffice.org-style-andromeda php5-suhosin portmap python-beagle python-brasero python-docky python-encutils python-evince python-gnomeapplet
  python-gtop python-mediaprofiles python-metacity python-totem-plparser seahorse-plugins smbfs speedbar totem-coherence tqsllib1c2a unixcw vlc
  xserver-xorg-video-nv
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  accountsservice acl aisleriot apg aptdaemon-data aptitude-common asterisk-core-sounds-en asterisk-modules asterisk-moh-opsound-gsm at-spi2-core
  ax25-node bluez btrfs-tools caribou caribou-antler chromium chromium-inspector colord console-setup console-setup-linux cpp-4.6 cpp-4.7 crda
  cryptsetup-bin cups-filters db-util db5.1-util dconf-gsettings-backend dconf-service dconf-tools distro-info-data docutils-common docutils-doc enchant
  extlinux finger folks-common fonts-cantarell fonts-droid fonts-freefont-ttf fonts-horai-umefont fonts-lg-aboriginal fonts-liberation fonts-lyx
  fonts-opensymbol fonts-sil-gentium fonts-sil-gentium-basic fonts-sipa-arundina fonts-stix fonts-takao fonts-takao-gothic fonts-takao-mincho
  fonts-thai-tlwg fonts-tlwg-garuda fonts-tlwg-kinnari fonts-tlwg-loma fonts-tlwg-mono fonts-tlwg-norasi fonts-tlwg-purisa fonts-tlwg-sawasdee
  fonts-tlwg-typewriter fonts-tlwg-typist fonts-tlwg-typo fonts-tlwg-umpush fonts-tlwg-waree fonts-umeplus fuse g++-4.7 g++-4.7-multilib gcc-4.6
  gcc-4.6-base gcc-4.7 gcc-4.7-base gcc-4.7-multilib gcj-4.7-base gcj-4.7-jre gcj-4.7-jre-headless gcj-4.7-jre-lib gconf-service gcr
  gir1.2-accountsservice-1.0 gir1.2-atk-1.0 gir1.2-atspi-2.0 gir1.2-caribou-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-gst-1.0 gir1.2-cogl-1.0
  gir1.2-coglpango-1.0 gir1.2-evince-3.0 gir1.2-folks-0.6 gir1.2-freedesktop gir1.2-gck-1 gir1.2-gconf-2.0 gir1.2-gcr-3 gir1.2-gdesktopenums-3.0
  gir1.2-gdkpixbuf-2.0 gir1.2-gee-1.0 gir1.2-gkbd-3.0 gir1.2-glib-2.0 gir1.2-gmenu-3.0 gir1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0 gir1.2-gnomekeyring-1.0
  gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-0.10 gir1.2-gstreamer-0.10 gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-gtkclutter-1.0 gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 gir1.2-gtop-2.0 gir1.2-gucharmap-2.90
  gir1.2-javascriptcoregtk-3.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 gir1.2-mutter-3.0 gir1.2-networkmanager-1.0 gir1.2-notify-0.7 gir1.2-panelapplet-4.0 gir1.2-pango-1.0
  gir1.2-peas-1.0 gir1.2-polkit-1.0 gir1.2-rb-3.0 gir1.2-soup-2.4 gir1.2-telepathyglib-0.12 gir1.2-telepathylogger-0.2 gir1.2-totem-1.0
  gir1.2-totem-plparser-1.0 gir1.2-upowerglib-1.0 gir1.2-vte-2.90 gir1.2-webkit-3.0 gir1.2-wnck-3.0 gir1.2-xkl-1.0 git-man gjs gkbd-capplet glchess
  glib-networking glib-networking-common glib-networking-services glines gnect gnibbles gnobots2 gnome-bluetooth gnome-contacts gnome-control-center-data
  gnome-desktop3-data gnome-font-viewer gnome-icon-theme-extras gnome-icon-theme-symbolic gnome-online-accounts gnome-packagekit gnome-packagekit-data
  gnome-shell gnome-shell-common gnome-sudoku gnome-sushi gnome-themes-standard gnome-themes-standard-data gnome-user-share gnome-video-effects gnomine
  gnotravex gnotski gnuplot gnuplot-nox grilo-plugins-0.1 groff growisofs gsettings-desktop-schemas gstreamer0.10-gconf gtali guile-2.0-libs gvfs-common
  gvfs-daemons gvfs-libs hardening-includes hwdata iagno ienglish-common imagemagick-common ioquake3 ioquake3-server iputils-tracepath ipxe-qemu iw
  keyutils kmod krb5-locales lib32itm1 lib32quadmath0 lib32tinfo-dev lib32tinfo5 libaacplus2 libaacs0 libabiword-2.9 libaccountsservice0 libamd2.2.0
  libapache-pom-java libapol4 libapt-inst1.5 libapt-pkg4.12 libaqbanking-plugins-libgwenhywfar60 libaqbanking34 libaqbanking34-plugins libaqhbci20
  libaqofxconnect7 libarchive12 libasprintf0c2 libassuan0 libatk-adaptor libatk-adaptor-data libatk-bridge2.0-0 libatkmm-1.6-1 libatkmm-1.6-dev
  libatspi2.0-0 libaudiofile1 libavahi-ui-gtk3-0 libavcodec53 libavcodec54 libavformat53 libavformat54 libavutil51 libbabl-0.1-0 libbind9-80 libbison-dev
  libblas3 libbluray1 libboost-iostreams1.49.0 libboost-program-options1.49.0 libboost-python1.49.0 libboost-serialization1.49.0 libboost-thread1.49.0
  libbrasero-media3-1 libcairo-gobject2 libcairo-script-interpreter2 libcamel-1.2-33 libcanberra-dev libcanberra-gtk3-0 libcanberra-gtk3-module
  libcanberra-pulse libcapi20-3 libcaribou-common libcaribou-gtk-module libcaribou-gtk3-module libcaribou0 libccrtp0 libcdio-cdda1 libcdio-paranoia1
  libcdio13 libcfg4 libchamplain-0.12-0 libchamplain-gtk-0.12-0 libcheese-gtk21 libcheese3 libclass-factory-util-perl libclass-isa-perl libclass-load-perl
  libclass-load-xs-perl libclutter-1.0-common libclutter-gst-1.0-0 libclutter-gtk-1.0-0 libclutter-imcontext-0.1-0 libclutter-imcontext-0.1-bin
  libcluttergesture-0.0.2-0 libcmis-0.2-0 libcogl-common libcogl-pango0 libcogl9 libcolord1 libcommons-parent-java libconfdb4 libcoroipcc4 libcoroipcs4
  libcpg4 libcryptsetup4 libcrystalhd3 libcupsfilters1 libcw3 libdata-alias-perl libdatetime-format-builder-perl libdatetime-format-iso8601-perl
  libdb-java libdb5.1 libdb5.1-dev libdb5.1-java libdb5.1-java-jni libdbus-c++-1-0 libdbus-glib1.0-cil libdbus1.0-cil libdconf0 libdee-1.0-4
  libdevel-partialdump-perl libdevhelp-3-0 libdevmapper-event1.02.1 libdistro-info-perl libdmapsharing-3.0-2 libdns88 libdotconf1.0 libdvbpsi7
  libebackend-1.2-2 libebml3 libebook-1.2-13 libecal-1.2-11 libecore1 libedata-book-1.2-13 libedata-cal-1.2-15 libedataserver-1.2-16
  libedataserverui-3.0-1 libeina1 libemail-valid-perl libencode-locale-perl libepc-1.0-3 libepc-ui-1.0-3 libept1.4.12 libescpr1 libev4
  libeval-closure-perl libevdocument3-4 libevent-2.0-5 libevent-perl libevs4 libevview3-3 libexiv2-12 libexosip2-7 libexporter-lite-perl
  libexttextcat-data libexttextcat0 libfakechroot libfarstream-0.1-0 libfdk-aac0 libfdt1 libfile-basedir-perl libfile-desktopentry-perl
  libfile-fcntllock-perl libfile-listing-perl libfile-mimeinfo-perl libfltk-images1.3 libfltk1.3 libfolks-eds25 libfolks-telepathy25 libfolks25
  libfont-afm-perl libgail-3-0 libgcj13 libgcj13-awt libgck-1-0 libgconf-2-4 libgconf2-doc libgcr-3-1 libgcr-3-common libgd2-xpm libgdata13
  libgdata2.1-cil libgdict-common libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-common libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libgegl-0.2-0 libgeocode-glib0 libgettextpo0 libgexiv2-1
  libgirepository-1.0-1 libgjs0b libgkeyfile1.0-cil libgladeui-2-0 libgladeui-common libglapi-mesa libglew1.7 libglib2.0-bin libgmime-2.6-0
  libgmime2.6-cil libgmp10 libgnome-bluetooth10 libgnome-desktop-3-2 libgnome-keyring-common libgnome-media-profiles-3.0-0 libgnome-menu-3-0 libgnomekbd7
  libgnutls-openssl27 libgnutlsxx27 libgoa-1.0-0 libgoa-1.0-common libgphoto2-l10n libgraphite2-2.0.0 libgrilo-0.1-0 libgs9 libgs9-common libgssdp-1.0-3
  libgstreamer-plugins-bad0.10-0 libgtk-3-0 libgtk-3-bin libgtk-3-common libgtk-3-dev libgtk-3-doc libgtk-sharp-beans-cil libgtk-vnc-2.0-0
  libgtkhtml-4.0-0 libgtkhtml-4.0-common libgtkhtml-editor-4.0-0 libgtkmm-3.0-1 libgtksourceview-3.0-0 libgtksourceview-3.0-common libgucharmap-2-90-7
  libgudev1.0-cil libgupnp-1.0-4 libgupnp-av-1.0-2 libgupnp-igd-1.0-4 libgusb2 libgvnc-1.0-0 libgweather-3-0 libgwenhywfar-data libgwenhywfar60 libgxps2
  libhcrypto4-heimdal libheimbase1-heimdal libhtml-form-perl libhtml-format-perl libhttp-cookies-perl libhttp-daemon-perl libhttp-date-perl
  libhttp-message-perl libhttp-negotiate-perl libhunspell-1.3-0 libicu48 libimobiledevice2 libio-aio-perl libisc84 libisccc80 libisccfg82 libiscsi1
  libiso9660-8 libisoburn1 libitm1 libjavascriptcoregtk-1.0-0 libjavascriptcoregtk-3.0-0 libjbig0 libjs-sphinxdoc libjs-underscore libjson0 libjte1
  libkadm5clnt-mit8 libkadm5srv-mit8 libkarma0 libkdb5-6 libkmod2 libkpathsea6 liblapack3 liblavfile-2.0-0 liblavjpeg-2.0-0 liblavplay-2.0-0 liblcms2-2
  liblensfun-data liblensfun0 liblinear-tools liblinear1 liblinphone4 liblockfile-bin liblogsys4 liblvm2app2.2 liblwp-mediatypes-perl
  liblwp-protocol-https-perl liblwres80 liblzma5 libmaa3 libmagick++5 libmagickcore5 libmagickcore5-extra libmagickwand5 libmath-bigint-perl
  libmath-round-perl libmatroska5 libmediastreamer1 libmhash2 libminiupnpc5 libmission-control-plugins0 libmjpegutils-2.0-0 libmodule-implementation-perl
  libmodule-runtime-perl libmono-2.0-1 libmono-2.0-dev libmono-accessibility4.0-cil libmono-cairo4.0-cil libmono-codecontracts4.0-cil
  libmono-compilerservices-symbolwriter4.0-cil libmono-corlib4.0-cil libmono-csharp4.0-cil libmono-custommarshalers4.0-cil libmono-data-tds4.0-cil
  libmono-debugger-soft2.0-cil libmono-debugger-soft4.0-cil libmono-http4.0-cil libmono-i18n-cjk4.0-cil libmono-i18n-mideast4.0-cil
  libmono-i18n-other4.0-cil libmono-i18n-rare4.0-cil libmono-i18n-west4.0-cil libmono-i18n4.0-all libmono-i18n4.0-cil libmono-ldap4.0-cil
  libmono-management4.0-cil libmono-messaging-rabbitmq4.0-cil libmono-messaging4.0-cil libmono-microsoft-build-engine4.0-cil
  libmono-microsoft-build-framework4.0-cil libmono-microsoft-build-tasks-v4.0-4.0-cil libmono-microsoft-build-utilities-v4.0-4.0-cil
  libmono-microsoft-csharp4.0-cil libmono-microsoft-visualc10.0-cil libmono-microsoft-web-infrastructure1.0-cil libmono-npgsql4.0-cil
  libmono-opensystem-c4.0-cil libmono-oracle4.0-cil libmono-peapi4.0-cil libmono-posix4.0-cil libmono-rabbitmq4.0-cil libmono-relaxng4.0-cil
  libmono-security4.0-cil libmono-sharpzip4.84-cil libmono-simd4.0-cil libmono-sqlite4.0-cil libmono-system-componentmodel-composition4.0-cil
  libmono-system-componentmodel-dataannotations4.0-cil libmono-system-configuration-install4.0-cil libmono-system-configuration4.0-cil
  libmono-system-core4.0-cil libmono-system-data-datasetextensions4.0-cil libmono-system-data-linq4.0-cil libmono-system-data-services-client4.0-cil
  libmono-system-data-services4.0-cil libmono-system-data4.0-cil libmono-system-design4.0-cil libmono-system-drawing-design4.0-cil
  libmono-system-drawing4.0-cil libmono-system-dynamic4.0-cil libmono-system-enterpriseservices4.0-cil libmono-system-identitymodel-selectors4.0-cil
  libmono-system-identitymodel4.0-cil libmono-system-ldap4.0-cil libmono-system-management4.0-cil libmono-system-messaging4.0-cil
  libmono-system-net4.0-cil libmono-system-numerics4.0-cil libmono-system-runtime-caching4.0-cil libmono-system-runtime-durableinstancing4.0-cil
  libmono-system-runtime-serialization-formatters-soap4.0-cil libmono-system-runtime-serialization4.0-cil libmono-system-runtime4.0-cil
  libmono-system-security4.0-cil libmono-system-servicemodel-discovery4.0-cil libmono-system-servicemodel-routing4.0-cil
  libmono-system-servicemodel-web4.0-cil libmono-system-servicemodel4.0-cil libmono-system-serviceprocess4.0-cil libmono-system-transactions4.0-cil
  libmono-system-web-abstractions4.0-cil libmono-system-web-applicationservices4.0-cil libmono-system-web-dynamicdata4.0-cil
  libmono-system-web-extensions-design4.0-cil libmono-system-web-extensions4.0-cil libmono-system-web-routing4.0-cil libmono-system-web-services4.0-cil
  libmono-system-web4.0-cil libmono-system-windows-forms-datavisualization4.0-cil libmono-system-windows-forms4.0-cil libmono-system-xaml4.0-cil
  libmono-system-xml-linq4.0-cil libmono-system-xml4.0-cil libmono-system4.0-cil libmono-tasklets4.0-cil libmono-web4.0-cil libmono-webbrowser2.0-cil
  libmono-webbrowser4.0-cil libmono-webmatrix-data4.0-cil libmono-windowsbase4.0-cil libmount1 libmozjs10d libmozjs17d libmozjs185-1.0 libmpeg2encpp-2.0-0
  libmplex2-2.0-0 libmtdev1 libmtp-common libmtp-runtime libmtp9 libmupen64plus2 libmusicbrainz-discid-perl libmusicbrainz5-0 libmutter0 libmx-1.0-2
  libmx-bin libmx-common libmysqlclient18 libnatpmp1 libnautilus-extension1a libnet-domain-tld-perl libnet-http-perl libnet-ip-minimal-perl libnetcf1
  libnetfilter-conntrack3 libnettle4 libnewtonsoft-json4.5-cil libnice10 libnl-3-200 libnl-genl-3-200 libnl-route-3-200 libnm-glib4 libnm-gtk-common
  libnm-gtk0 libnm-util2 libnotify4 libnspr4 libnss-winbind libnss3 libnuma1 libnunit2.6-cil liboauth0 libodbc1 liboobs-1-5 libopal3.10.4 libopenal-data
  libopus0 libosip2-7 libp11-2 libp11-kit-dev libp11-kit0 libpackage-stash-xs-perl libpackagekit-glib2-14 libpam-cap libpam-modules-bin libpam-winbind
  libpanel-applet-4-0 libparams-classify-perl libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libpeas-1.0-0 libpeas-common libperl5.14 libpipeline1 libpload4 libpodofo0.9.0
  libpoe-component-resolver-perl libpoppler-glib8 libpoppler19 libportsmf0 libpostproc52 libprocps0 libpst4 libpt2.10.4 libptexenc1 libpython2.7
  libqt4-declarative libqtassistantclient4 libqtdbus4 libqtwebkit4 libquadmath0 libquicktime2 libquorum4 libquvi-scripts libquvi7 libraptor2-0 librasqal3
  libraw5 libregexp-reggrp-perl libreoffice libreoffice-base libreoffice-base-core libreoffice-calc libreoffice-common libreoffice-core libreoffice-draw
  libreoffice-emailmerge libreoffice-evolution libreoffice-filter-binfilter libreoffice-filter-mobiledev libreoffice-gnome libreoffice-gtk
  libreoffice-help-en-us libreoffice-impress libreoffice-java-common libreoffice-math libreoffice-officebean libreoffice-report-builder-bin
  libreoffice-style-galaxy libreoffice-style-tango libreoffice-writer libresid-builder0c2a librest-0.7-0 librest-extras-0.7-0 librhythmbox-core6 librpm3
  librpmbuild3 librpmio3 librpmsign1 libruby1.9.1 libsaamf3 libsackpt3 libsaclm3 libsaevt3 libsalck3 libsam4 libsamsg4 libsane-common
  libsane-extras-common libsatmr3 libsbsms10 libseed-gtk3-0 libsidplay2 libsigsegv2 libsocialweb-client2 libsocialweb-common libsocialweb-service
  libsocialweb0 libsocket-getaddrinfo-perl libsocket-perl libsonic0 libsoundtouch0 libsox2 libspeechd2 libspice-client-glib-2.0-1
  libspice-client-gtk-2.0-1 libspice-server1 libssl-doc libssl1.0.0 libstdc++6-4.7-dev libsvm-tools libswitch-perl libswscale2 libsystemd-daemon0
  libsystemd-login0 libtagc0 libtelepathy-farstream2 libtelepathy-logger2 libtest-warn-perl libtinfo-dev libtinfo5 libtirpc1 libtokyocabinet9 libtotem-pg4
  libtotem0 libtqsllib1 libtracker-sparql-0.14-0 libtree-dagnode-perl libts-dev libucommon5 libumfpack5.4.0 libunique-3.0-0 libupnp6 libusbredirhost1
  libusbredirparser0 libv4lconvert0 libverto-libev1 libverto1 libvisio-0.0-0 libvlccore5 libvo-aacenc0 libvo-amrwbenc0 libvorbisidec1 libvotequorum4
  libvpx1 libvte-2.90-9 libvte-2.90-common libwacom-common libwacom2 libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 libwebkitgtk-1.0-common libwebkitgtk-3.0-0 libwebkitgtk-3.0-common
  libwebp2 libwebrtc-audio-processing-0 libwildmidi-config libwireshark-data libwireshark2 libwiretap2 libwnck-3-0 libwnck-3-common libwpd-0.9-9
  libwpg-0.2-2 libwps-0.2-2 libwsutil2 libwv-1.2-4 libwww-robotrules-perl libx11-doc libx11-protocol-perl libx264-123 libx264-124 libx264-130 libx264-132
  libxalan2-java libxcb-composite0 libxcb-glx0 libxcb-shape0 libxcb-shm0-dev libxcb-util0 libxen-4.1 libxml-commons-external-java
  libxml-commons-resolver1.1-java libxml-sax-base-perl libxmlrpc-c++4 libxmlrpc-core-c3 libxz-java libyajl2 libyaml-0-2 libyaml-perl libyelp0 libzrtpcpp2
  libzvbi-common libzvbi0 lightsoff linphone-nogtk linux-headers-3.2.0-4-amd64 linux-headers-3.2.0-4-common linux-headers-amd64 linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64
  linux-image-amd64 linux-kbuild-3.2 live-boot-doc live-config-doc live-manual-html mahjongg memtest86+ minissdpd mono-4.0-gac mono-dmcs mscompress
  multiarch-support mupen64plus-audio-all mupen64plus-audio-sdl mupen64plus-data mupen64plus-input-all mupen64plus-input-sdl mupen64plus-rsp-all
  mupen64plus-rsp-hle mupen64plus-rsp-z64 mupen64plus-ui-console mupen64plus-video-all mupen64plus-video-arachnoid mupen64plus-video-glide64
  mupen64plus-video-rice mupen64plus-video-z64 mutter-common mysql-client-5.5 mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server-core-5.5 mythes-en-us openarena-081-maps
  openarena-081-misc openarena-081-players openarena-081-players-mature openarena-081-textures openarena-085-data openarena-088-data packagekit
  packagekit-backend-aptcc packagekit-tools planner-data planner-doc poppler-data printer-driver-all printer-driver-c2050 printer-driver-c2esp
  printer-driver-cjet printer-driver-escpr printer-driver-foo2zjs printer-driver-gutenprint printer-driver-hpcups printer-driver-hpijs
  printer-driver-m2300w printer-driver-min12xxw printer-driver-pnm2ppa printer-driver-postscript-hp printer-driver-ptouch printer-driver-pxljr
  printer-driver-sag-gdi printer-driver-splix psutils python-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets python-aptdaemon.gtkwidgets python-bzrlib python-dbus-dev
  python-debianbts python-defer python-dnspython python-fpconst python-gi python-gi-cairo python-gi-dev python-gobject-2 python-gobject-2-dev
  python-keyring python-launchpadlib python-lazr.restfulclient python-lazr.uri python-liblarch python-liblarch-gtk python-magic python-oauth
  python-packagekit python-pyatspi2 python-pyparsing python-repoze.lru python-routes python-setools python-simplejson python-soappy python-speechd
  python-spice-client-gtk python-wadllib python-webob python-zeitgeist python2.7 python2.7-dev python2.7-minimal qdbus quadrapassel remmina-common
  rhythmbox-data rpcbind rtkit ruby ruby1.9.1 shotwell-common smartdimmer software-properties-common sound-theme-freedesktop speech-dispatcher
  sphinx-common sphinx-doc swell-foop syslinux-themes-debian syslinux-themes-debian-wheezy tdb-tools telepathy-haze telepathy-logger telepathy-rakia
  tex-gyre ttf-marvosym wireless-regdb xbrlapi xorg-sgml-doctools xorriso xserver-xorg-input-mouse xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse xulrunner-17.0 yelp-xsl
  zeitgeist-core zenity-common
The following packages have been kept back:
  acroread-debian-files db4.8-util hibernate ia32-libs ia32-libs-gtk libboost-dev libboost-serialization-dev opensc wine
The following packages will be upgraded:
  abcde abiword abiword-common abiword-plugin-grammar abiword-plugin-mathview acpi acpi-fakekey acpi-support acpi-support-base acpid acroread-data
  acroread-dictionary-en acroread-l10n-en adduser alacarte alsa-base alsa-utils amb-plugins anacron analog ant ant-optional apache2 apache2-doc
  apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common app-install-data apt apt-file apt-utils apt-xapian-index aptdaemon aptitude
  aqbanking-tools aspell aspell-en asterisk asterisk-config asterisk-core-sounds-en-gsm asterisk-doc asterisk-voicemail astyle at audacity audacity-data
  augeas-lenses augeas-tools autoconf autoconf-doc automake automake1.9 autopoint autotools-dev avahi-autoipd avahi-daemon avidemux avidemux-common
  avidemux-plugins aview ax25-tools banshee baobab base-files base-passwd bash bash-completion bc bind9-doc bind9-host bind9utils binfmt-support binutils
  bison bluez-cups bogofilter bogofilter-bdb bogofilter-common brasero brasero-common bridge-utils browser-plugin-gnash bsd-mailx bsdmainutils bsdutils
  busybox buzztard buzztard-data bwidget bzip2 bzr bzrtools ca-certificates calibre calibre-bin ccache cd-discid cdebootstrap cdparanoia cdrdao
  checkpolicy cheese cheese-common chromium-browser chromium-browser-inspector cifs-utils cl-asdf cli-common clisp comerr-dev common-lisp-controller
  console-common console-data console-tools consolekit coreutils cowbuilder cowdancer cpio cpp cpp-4.4 cpufrequtils cracklib-runtime crawl-common
  crawl-tiles cron cryptsetup cups cups-bsd cups-client cups-common cups-driver-gutenprint cups-pk-helper cups-ppdc cupsddk curl curlftpfs cvs cw dash
  dasher dasher-data dbus dbus-x11 dc dcraw dctrl-tools debconf debconf-i18n debhelper debian-archive-keyring debian-faq debian-keyring debianutils debirf
  debootstrap desktop-base desktop-file-utils devhelp devhelp-common devscripts dialog dict dictionaries-common diffstat diffutils djtools dkms dmidecode
  dmsetup dnsmasq-base dnsutils doc-debian docbook docbook-dsssl docbook-to-man docbook-utils docbook-xml docbook-xsl docbook-xsl-doc-html docky dosemu
  dosfstools dpatch dpkg dpkg-dev dput dvd+rw-tools dvi2ps dynagen dynamips e2fslibs e2fsprogs ebtables ed eject ekiga emacs23-bin-common emacs23-common
  emacs23-nox emacsen-common emdebian-archive-keyring empathy empathy-common eog epiphany-browser epiphany-browser-data epiphany-extensions esound-common
  espeak espeak-data ethtool evince evince-common evolution evolution-common evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-common evolution-exchange
  evolution-plugins evolution-webcal exif exiftags exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light exiv2 f-spot fakechroot fakeroot fancontrol fceu
  fcrackzip fdupes feynmf file file-roller finch findutils firmware-iwlwifi firmware-linux-free firmware-linux-nonfree flac flashrom fldigi flex
  fontconfig fontconfig-config foo2zjs foomatic-db foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db-gutenprint foomatic-filters fping freedesktop-sound-theme freeglut3
  freetds-common ftp fuse-utils g++ g++-4.4 g++-4.4-multilib g++-multilib gawk gcalctool gcc gcc-4.4 gcc-4.4-base gcc-4.4-doc gcc-4.4-multilib
  gcc-doc-base gcc-multilib gcj-jre gcj-jre-headless gconf-defaults-service gconf-editor gconf2 gconf2-common gddrescue gdebi gdebi-core gedit
  gedit-common gedit-plugins genisoimage geoclue geoclue-hostip geoclue-localnet geoclue-manual geoclue-yahoo geoip-database gettext gettext-base
  ghostscript ghostscript-cups gimp gimp-data git git-buildpackage git-core git-svn gitk gksu glade gnash gnash-common gnash-opengl
  gnome-accessibility-themes gnome-applets-data gnome-backgrounds gnome-cards-data gnome-common gnome-control-center gnome-control-center-dev
  gnome-desktop-data gnome-dictionary gnome-disk-utility gnome-do gnome-do-plugins gnome-doc-utils gnome-games gnome-games-data gnome-games-extra-data
  gnome-icon-theme gnome-js-common gnome-keyring gnome-mag gnome-media gnome-menus gnome-nettool gnome-orca gnome-panel-data gnome-pkg-tools
  gnome-power-manager gnome-rdp gnome-screensaver gnome-screenshot gnome-search-tool gnome-session gnome-session-bin gnome-session-canberra
  gnome-session-common gnome-settings-daemon gnome-settings-daemon-dev gnome-system-log gnome-system-monitor gnome-system-tools gnome-terminal
  gnome-terminal-data gnome-user-guide gnomint gnu-fdisk gnucash-docs gnuchess gnumeric gnumeric-common gnupg gnupg-agent gocr google-talkplugin gparted
  gpgv gpredict gpscorrelate grep groff-base grub-common grub-legacy gsfonts-x11 gsmartcontrol gstreamer0.10-alsa gstreamer0.10-buzztard
  gstreamer0.10-buzztard-doc gstreamer0.10-doc gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg-dbg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-gnonlin
  gstreamer0.10-gnonlin-dbg gstreamer0.10-gnonlin-doc gstreamer0.10-nice gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-dbg
  gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-doc gstreamer0.10-plugins-base gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-apps gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-dbg gstreamer0.10-plugins-base-doc
  gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-good-dbg gstreamer0.10-plugins-good-doc gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-dbg
  gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-doc gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio gstreamer0.10-tools gstreamer0.10-x gtg gthumb gthumb-data gtk2-engines gtk2-engines-pixbuf
  gucharmap guile-1.6 guile-1.6-libs guile-1.8-libs gvfs gvfs-backends gvfs-bin gzip hal hamster-applet hardinfo hddtemp hdparm hfsprogs hostname hp-ppd
  hpijs hplip hplip-cups hplip-data htmldoc htmldoc-common iamerican ibritish iceweasel ifupdown ijsgutenprint imagemagick imagemagick-doc info
  initramfs-tools initscripts inkscape insserv install-info installation-report intltool iotop iproute ipsec-tools iptables iptraf iputils-ping
  ircd-hybrid irssi isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common isc-dhcp-server iscsitarget-dkms iso-codes ispell jack jadetex java-common jigdo-file keyanalyze
  keyboard-configuration keychain klibc-utils kpartx krb5-admin-server krb5-auth-dialog krb5-config krb5-doc krb5-kdc krb5-kdc-ldap krb5-multidev
  krb5-pkinit krb5-user lacheck lame latex-beamer latex-xcolor less lesstif2 lesstif2-dev lib32asound2 lib32bz2-1.0 lib32gcc1 lib32gomp1 lib32ncurses5
  lib32ncurses5-dev lib32nss-mdns lib32readline5 lib32stdc++6 lib32v4l-0 lib32z1 lib32z1-dev liba52-0.7.4 libaa1 libaa1-dev libacl1 libaften0
  libaiksaurus-1.2-0c2a libaiksaurus-1.2-data libaiksaurusgtk-1.2-0c2a libaio1 libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl libany-moose-perl libanyevent-perl libao-common
  libao4 libapache-dbi-perl libapache2-mod-apreq2 libapache2-mod-dnssd libapache2-mod-perl2 libapache2-mod-php5 libapache2-mod-python
  libapache2-request-perl libappconfig-perl libapr1 libapreq2 libaprutil1 libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap libapt-pkg-perl libaqbanking-data
  libarchive-zip-perl libart-2.0-2 libart-2.0-dev libart2.0-cil libasn1-8-heimdal libasound2 libasound2-dev libasound2-plugins libaspell15 libass4
  libasync-interrupt-perl libasyncns0 libatasmart4 libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libatk1.0-dev libatk1.0-doc libatspi1.0-0 libattr1 libaudio-dev libaudio2
  libaudiofile-dev libaudit0 libaugeas0 libavahi-client-dev libavahi-client3 libavahi-common-data libavahi-common-dev libavahi-common3 libavahi-core7
  libavahi-glib-dev libavahi-glib1 libavahi-gobject0 libavahi-ui0 libavc1394-0 libax25 libb-hooks-endofscope-perl libb-keywords-perl libbind9-60
  libblas3gf libblkid1 libbluetooth3 libbml0 libboo2.0.9-cil libbrlapi0.5 libbs2b0 libbsd0 libburn4 libbusiness-paypal-api-perl
  libbusiness-tax-vat-validation-perl libbuzztard0 libbz2-1.0 libc-ares2 libc-bin libc-dev-bin libc6 libc6-dev libc6-dev-i386 libc6-i386 libcaca-dev
  libcaca0 libcache-fastmmap-perl libcairo-perl libcairo2 libcairo2-dev libcairomm-1.0-1 libcairomm-1.0-dev libcanberra-gtk0 libcanberra0 libcap-ng0
  libcap2 libcap2-bin libcapture-tiny-perl libccid libcdaudio1 libcddb-get-perl libcddb2 libcdparanoia0 libcdt4 libchm-bin libchm1 libck-connector0
  libclass-c3-perl libclass-c3-xs-perl libclass-insideout-perl libclass-inspector-perl libclass-method-modifiers-perl libclass-methodmaker-perl
  libclone-perl libclutter-1.0-0 libcolamd2.7.1 libcolor-calc-perl libcomedi0 libcomerr2 libcommon-sense-perl libcommons-beanutils-java
  libcommons-collections3-java libcommons-compress-java libcommons-digester-java libcommons-logging-java libconfig-inifiles-perl libconfig-json-perl
  libconfig-tiny-perl libconsole libcontextual-return-perl libconvert-asn1-perl libcoro-perl libcorosync4 libcpufreq-dev libcpufreq0 libcrack2 libcroco3
  libcrypt-openssl-bignum-perl libcrypt-openssl-random-perl libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl libcrypt-passwdmd5-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl libcss-minifier-xs-perl
  libcss-packer-perl libcups2 libcupscgi1 libcupsdriver1 libcupsimage2 libcupsmime1 libcupsppdc1 libcurl3 libcurl3-gnutls libcurses-perl libcwidget3
  libdata-optlist-perl libdata-structure-util-perl libdata-visitor-perl libdatetime-format-http-perl libdatetime-perl libdatetime-set-perl
  libdatetime-timezone-perl libdatrie1 libdb-dev libdb-je-java libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libdbus-1-3 libdbus-1-dev libdbus-glib-1-2 libdbus-glib-1-dev
  libdc1394-22 libdca0 libdebian-installer-extra4 libdebian-installer4 libdevel-globaldestruction-perl libdevel-size-perl libdevel-stacktrace-perl
  libdevel-symdump-perl libdevmapper1.02.1 libdigest-hmac-perl libdirac-decoder0 libdirac-encoder0 libdirectfb-1.2-9 libdirectfb-extra libdiscid0
  libdjvulibre-text libdjvulibre21 libdns69 libdpkg-perl libdrm-dev libdrm-intel1 libdrm-nouveau1a libdrm-radeon1 libdrm2 libdv4 libdvdcss2 libdvdnav4
  libdvdread4 libedit2 libelf1 libelfg0 libemail-address-perl libenca0 libenchant1c2a libengine-pkcs11-openssl libepc-common libesd0 libesd0-dev
  libespeak1 libevolution libexception-class-perl libexempi3 libexif12 libexpat1 libexpat1-dev libexpect-perl libfaac0 libfaad2 libfcgi-perl libfcgi0ldbl
  libffi-dev libffi5 libfftw3-3 libfile-homedir-perl libfile-libmagic-perl libfile-mmagic-perl libfile-slurp-perl libfile-which-perl libfilter-perl
  libfinance-quote-perl libflac++6 libflac8 libflickrnet2.2-cil libflite1 libfltk1.1 libfluidsynth1 libfontconfig1 libfontconfig1-dev libfontenc1
  libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev libfribidi0 libfs6 libftdi-dev libftdi1 libfuse2 libgail-common libgail-dev libgail18 libgc1c2 libgcc1 libgcj-bc
  libgcj-common libgconf2-4 libgconf2-dev libgconf2.0-cil libgcrypt11 libgcrypt11-dev libgd-gd2-noxpm-perl libgdata-common libgdbm3 libgdict-1.0-6
  libgdiplus libgdome2-0 libgdome2-cpp-smart0c2a libgdu-gtk0 libgdu0 libgee2 libgeoclue0 libgeoip1 libgfortran3 libgif4 libgimp2.0 libgio-cil libgksu2-0
  libgl1-mesa-dev libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx libglade2.0-cil libgladeui-1-9 libglib-perl libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-cil libglib2.0-data libglib2.0-dev
  libglib2.0-doc libglibmm-2.4-1c2a libglibmm-2.4-dev libglu1-mesa libglu1-mesa-dev libgnome-desktop-2-17 libgnome-desktop-dev libgnome-keyring-dev
  libgnome-keyring0 libgnome-keyring1.0-cil libgnome-mag2 libgnome-menu2 libgnome-speech7 libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgnome2-0 libgnome2-canvas-perl
  libgnome2-common libgnome2-dev libgnome2-perl libgnome2-vfs-perl libgnome2.24-cil libgnomecanvas2-0 libgnomecanvas2-common libgnomecanvas2-dev
  libgnomedesktop2.20-cil libgnomekbd-common libgnomeui-0 libgnomeui-common libgnomeui-dev libgnomevfs2-0 libgnomevfs2-common libgnomevfs2-dev
  libgnomevfs2-extra libgnupg-interface-perl libgnutls-dev libgnutls26 libgoffice-0.8-8 libgoffice-0.8-8-common libgomp1 libgpg-error-dev libgpg-error0
  libgpgme11 libgphoto2-2 libgphoto2-port0 libgpm2 libgpod-common libgpod4 libgraph4 libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-common libgsl0ldbl libgsm0710-0 libgsm1
  libgssapi-krb5-2 libgssglue1 libgssrpc4 libgstbuzztard0 libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0 libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libgstreamer0.10-0
  libgstreamer0.10-0-dbg libgstreamer0.10-dev libgtk-vnc-1.0-0 libgtk2-perl libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-bin libgtk2.0-cil libgtk2.0-common libgtk2.0-dev
  libgtk2.0-doc libgtkglext1 libgtkhtml3.14-19 libgtkimageview0 libgtkmathview0c2a libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a libgtkmm-2.4-dev libgtop2-7 libgtop2-common
  libgtop2-dev libguard-perl libgudev-1.0-0 libguile-ltdl-1 libgutenprint2 libgvc5 libgweather-common libhal-dev libhal-storage1 libhal1 libhamlib2
  libhpmud0 libhsqldb-java libhtml-packer-perl libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tableextract-perl libhtml-tagcloud-perl libhtml-template-expr-perl
  libhtml-template-perl libhtml-tree-perl libhtml-treebuilder-xpath-perl libhttp-server-simple-perl libhx509-5-heimdal libhyphen0 libical0 libice-dev
  libice6 libicu44 libicu4j-java libidl-dev libidl0 libidn11 libidn11-dev libieee1284-3 libijs-0.35 libilmbase6 libimage-exif-perl libimage-exiftool-perl
  libio-pty-perl libio-socket-inet6-perl libio-socket-ssl-perl libio-stringy-perl libio-stty-perl libipc-run-perl libiptcdata0 libisc62 libisccc60
  libisccfg62 libisofs6 libiw30 libjack0 libjasper1 libjavascript-minifier-xs-perl libjavascript-packer-perl libjaxp1.3-java libjaxp1.3-java-gcj
  libjbig2dec0 libjline-java libjpeg-progs libjpeg62 libjpeg8 libjs-jquery libjs-yui libjson-any-perl libjson-glib-1.0-0 libjson-perl libjson-xs-perl
  libjtidy-java libk5crypto3 libkadm5clnt-mit7 libkadm5srv-mit7 libkate1 libkdb5-4 libkeyutils1 libklibc libkms1 libkrb5-26-heimdal libkrb5-3
  libkrb5support0 libktoblzcheck1c2a liblapack3gf liblcms1 libldap-2.4-2 liblink-grammar4 liblircclient0 liblist-moreutils-perl liblocale-gettext-perl
  liblocales-perl liblockfile1 liblog-dispatch-perl liblog4c3 liblog4cxx10 libloudmouth1-0 liblouis-data liblouis2 liblqr-1-0 libltdl-dev libltdl7
  liblua5.1-0 liblua5.1-0-dev liblucene2-java liblwres60 liblzo2-2 libmad0 libmagic1 libmagick++3 libmagickcore3 libmagickcore3-extra libmagickwand3
  libmailtools-perl libmeanwhile1 libmime-tools-perl libmime-types-perl libmimic0 libmms0 libmng1 libmodplug1 libmodule-find-perl libmodule-starter-perl
  libmono-accessibility2.0-cil libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-c5-1.1-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-cecil-private-cil
  libmono-corlib2.0-cil libmono-cscompmgd8.0-cil libmono-data-tds2.0-cil libmono-db2-1.0-cil libmono-i18n-west2.0-cil libmono-i18n2.0-cil
  libmono-ldap2.0-cil libmono-management2.0-cil libmono-messaging-rabbitmq2.0-cil libmono-messaging2.0-cil libmono-microsoft-build2.0-cil
  libmono-microsoft8.0-cil libmono-npgsql2.0-cil libmono-oracle2.0-cil libmono-peapi2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil libmono-rabbitmq2.0-cil
  libmono-relaxng2.0-cil libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.6-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil libmono-simd2.0-cil libmono-sqlite2.0-cil
  libmono-system-data-linq2.0-cil libmono-system-data2.0-cil libmono-system-ldap2.0-cil libmono-system-messaging2.0-cil libmono-system-runtime2.0-cil
  libmono-system-web-mvc1.0-cil libmono-system-web-mvc2.0-cil libmono-system-web2.0-cil libmono-system2.0-cil libmono-tasklets2.0-cil libmono-wcf3.0-cil
  libmono-windowsbase3.0-cil libmono-winforms2.0-cil libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil libmono2.0-cil libmoose-perl libmouse-perl libmp3lame0 libmpc2 libmpcdec6
  libmpfr4 libmpg123-0 libmusicbrainz3-6 libmysqlclient-dev libmysqlclient16 libmythes-1.2-0 libnamespace-autoclean-perl libnamespace-clean-perl
  libncurses5 libncurses5-dev libncursesw5 libncursesw5-dev libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libneon27 libneon27-gnutls libnet-daemon-perl
  libnet-dbus-perl libnet-dns-perl libnet-ip-perl libnet-ldap-perl libnet-libidn-perl libnet-netmask-perl libnet-oauth-perl libnet-snmp-perl
  libnet-ssleay-perl libnet1 libnet1-dev libnet6-1.3-0 libnetaddr-ip-perl libnetpbm10 libnewt0.52 libnfnetlink0 libnfsidmap2 libnl1 libnm-glib-dev
  libnm-glib-vpn-dev libnm-glib-vpn1 libnm-util-dev libnotify-dev libnotify0.4-cil libnspr4-0d libnss-mdns libnss3-1d libnunit-cil-dev libofa0 libogg0
  liboobs-1-dev libopenais3 libopenal1 libopencore-amrnb0 libopencore-amrwb0 libopenct1 libopenexr6 libopenjpeg2 libopenraw1 libopenrawgnome1 libopts25
  liborbit2 liborbit2-dev liborc-0.4-0 libortp8 libosp5 libossp-uuid-perl libossp-uuid16 libostyle1c2 libotr2 libots0 libpackage-deprecationmanager-perl
  libpackage-stash-perl libpam-cracklib libpam-gnome-keyring libpam-ldap libpam-modules libpam-p11 libpam-runtime libpam0g libpam0g-dev libpango-perl
  libpango1.0-0 libpango1.0-dev libpango1.0-doc libpangomm-1.4-1 libpangomm-1.4-dev libpaper-utils libpaper1 libparams-util-perl libparams-validate-perl
  libparse-debcontrol-perl libparse-debianchangelog-perl libparse-recdescent-perl libparted0debian1 libpath-class-perl libpathplan4 libpcap0.8
  libpcap0.8-dev libpci3 libpciaccess-dev libpciaccess0 libpcre3 libpcsc-perl libpcsclite-dev libpcsclite1 libperl-critic-perl libperlio-eol-perl
  libphonon4 libpixman-1-0 libpixman-1-dev libpkcs11-helper1 libplist1 libplot2c2 libpng12-0 libpng12-dev libpod-coverage-perl libpoe-api-peek-perl
  libpoe-component-client-http-perl libpoe-component-client-keepalive-perl libpoe-component-ikc-perl libpoe-perl libpolkit-agent-1-0 libpolkit-backend-1-0
  libpolkit-gobject-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-1-dev libpoppler-glib4 libpoppler5 libpopt-dev libpopt0 libportaudio2 libppi-perl libppix-regexp-perl
  libppix-utilities-perl libpq5 libproxy0 libpstoedit0c2a libpthread-stubs0 libpthread-stubs0-dev libpulse-dev libpulse-mainloop-glib0 libpulse0
  libpurple0 libpython2.6 libqdbm14 libqpol1 libqt4-assistant libqt4-core libqt4-dbus libqt4-designer libqt4-gui libqt4-help libqt4-network libqt4-opengl
  libqt4-qt3support libqt4-script libqt4-scripttools libqt4-sql libqt4-sql-mysql libqt4-svg libqt4-test libqt4-webkit libqt4-xml libqt4-xmlpatterns
  libqtcore4 libqtgui4 libraptor1 libraw1394-11 librdf0 libreadline-dev libreadline5 libreadline6 libreadline6-dev libreadonly-perl libreadonly-xs-perl
  librecode0 libregexp-assemble-perl libregexp-common-perl libregexp-java libresample1 libroken18-heimdal librpc-xml-perl librpcsecgss3 librsvg2-2
  librsvg2-2.18-cil librsvg2-common librtmp0 libruby1.8 libsamplerate0 libsane libsane-extras libsane-hpaio libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules
  libschroedinger-1.0-0 libsctp1 libsdl-image1.2 libsdl-ttf2.0-0 libsdl1.2debian libselinux1 libselinux1-dev libsemanage-common libsemanage1
  libsensors-applet-plugin0 libsensors4 libsepol1 libsepol1-dev libservlet2.5-java libsetools-tcl libsgutils2-2 libshout3 libsigc++-2.0-0c2a
  libsigc++-2.0-dev libslang2 libslang2-dev libslp1 libslv2-9 libsm-dev libsm6 libsmbclient libsmi2ldbl libsndfile1 libsnmp-base libsnmp15
  libsoap-lite-perl libsocket6-perl libsofia-sip-ua-glib3 libsofia-sip-ua0 libsoup-gnome2.4-1 libsoup-gnome2.4-dev libsoup2.4-1 libsoup2.4-dev
  libsox-fmt-all libsox-fmt-alsa libsox-fmt-ao libsox-fmt-base libsox-fmt-ffmpeg libsox-fmt-mp3 libsox-fmt-oss libsox-fmt-pulse libsp1c2 libspandsp2
  libspectre1 libspeex1 libspeexdsp1 libsqlite0 libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev libsrtp0 libss2 libssh-4 libssh2-1 libssl-dev libstartup-notification0
  libstartup-notification0-dev libstdc++6 libstdc++6-4.4-dev libstrongswan libsub-exporter-perl libsub-identify-perl libsub-install-perl libsub-name-perl
  libsub-uplevel-perl libsvga1 libsvga1-dev libsvn-perl libsvn1 libsybdb5 libsysfs-dev libsysfs2 libt1-5 libtag1-vanilla libtag1c2a libtaglib2.0-cil
  libtalloc2 libtar libtasn1-3 libtasn1-3-dev libtdb1 libtelepathy-glib0 libtemplate-perl libterm-readkey-perl libterm-size-perl
  libtest-checkmanifest-perl libtest-class-perl libtest-deep-perl libtest-exception-perl libtest-mockobject-perl libtest-pod-perl libtext-aspell-perl
  libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-csv-perl libtext-csv-xs-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtext-template-perl libthai-data libthai0 libtheora0 libtidy-0.99-0
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11 April 2014

Steve Kemp: Putting the finishing touches to a nodejs library

For the past few years I've been running a simple service to block blog/comment-spam, which is (currently) implemented as a simple JSON API over HTTP, with a minimal core and all the logic in a series of plugins. One obvious thing I wasn't doing until today was paying attention to the anchor-text used in hyperlinks, for example:
  <a href="http://fdsf.example.com/">buy viagra</a>
Blocking on the anchor-text is less prone to false positives than blocking on keywords in the comment/message bodies. Unfortunately there seem to exist no simple nodejs modules for extracting all the links, and associated anchors, from a random Javascript string. So I had to write such a module, but .. given how small it is there seems little point in sharing it. So I guess this is one of the reasons why there often large gaps in the module ecosystem. (Equally some modules are essentially applications; great that the authors shared, but virtually unusable, unless you 100% match their problem domain.) I've written about this before when I had to construct, and publish, my own cidr-matching module. Anyway expect an upload soon, currently I "parse" HTML and BBCode. Possibly markdown to follow, since I have an interest in markdown.

Andrew Pollock: [life] Day 73: A fourth-generation friendship

Oh man, am I exhausted. I've known my friend Kim for longer than we remembered. Until Zoe was born, I thought the connection was purely that our grandmothers knew each other. After Zoe was born, and we gave her my birth mother's name as her middle name, Kim's mother sent me a message indicating that she knew my mother. More on that in a moment. Kim and I must have interacted when we were small, because it predates my memory of her. My earliest memories are of being a pen pal with her when she lived in Kingaroy. She had a stint in South Carolina, and then in my late high school years, she moved relatively close to me, at Albany Creek, and we got to have a small amount of actual physical contact. Then I moved to Canberra, and she moved to Melbourne, and it was only due to the wonders of Facebook that we reconnected while I was in the US. Fast forward many years, and we're finally all back in Brisbane again. Kim is married and has a daughter named Sarah who is a couple of years older than Zoe, and could actually pass of as her older sister. She also has as a younger son. Since we've been back in Brisbane, we've had many a play date at each other's homes, and the girls get along famously, to the point where Sarah was talking about her "best friend Zoe" at show and tell at school. The other thing I learned since reconnecting with Kim in the past year, is that Kim's aunt and my mother were in the same grade at school. Kim actually arranged for me to have a coffee with her aunt when she was visiting from Canberra, and she told me a bunch of stuff about my Mum that I didn't know, so that was really nice. Kim works from home part time, and I offered to look after Sarah for a day in the school holidays as an alternative to her having to go to PCYC holiday care. Today was that day. I picked up Zoe from Sarah this morning, as it was roughly in the same direction as Kim's place, and made more sense, and we headed over to Kim's place to pick up Sarah. We arrived only a couple of minutes later than the preferred pick up time, so I was pretty happy with how that worked out. The plan was to bring Sarah back to our place, and then head over to New Farm Park on the CityCat and have a picnic lunch and a play in the rather fantastic playground in the park over there. I hadn't made Zoe's lunch prior to leaving the house, so after we got back home again, I let the girls have a play while I made Zoe's lunch. After some play with Marble Run, the girls started doing some craft activity all on their own on the balcony. It was cute watching them try to copy what each other were making. One of them tried gluing two paper cups together by the narrow end. It didn't work terribly well because there wasn't a lot of surface to come into contact with each other. I helped the girls with their craft activity briefly, and then we left on foot to walk to the CityCat terminal. Along the way, I picked up some lunch for myself at the Hawthorne Garage and added it to the small Esky I was carrying with Zoe's lunchbox in it. It was a beautiful day for a picnic. It was warm and clear. I think Sarah found the walk a bit long, but we made it to the ferry terminal relatively incident free. We got lucky, and a ferry was just arriving, and as it happened, they had to change boats, as they do from time to time at Hawthorne, so we would have had plenty of time regardless, as everyone had to get off one boat and onto a new one. We had a late morning tea at the New Farm Park ferry terminal after we got off, and then headed over to the playground. I claimed a shady spot with our picnic blanket and the girls did their thing. I alternated between closely shadowing them around the playground and letting them run off on their own. Fortunately they stuck together, so that made keeping track of them slightly easier. For whatever reason, Zoe was in a bit of a grumpier mood than normal today, and wasn't taking too kindly to the amount of turn taking that was necessary to have a smoothly oiled operation. Sarah (justifiably) got a bit whiny when she didn't get an equitable amount of time getting the call the shots on what the they did, but aside from that they got along fine. There was another great climbing tree, which had kids hanging off it all over the place. Both girls wanted to climb it, but needed a little bit of help getting started. Sarah lost her nerve before Zoe did, but even Zoe was a surprisingly trepidatious about it, and after shimmying a short distance along a good (but high) branch, wanted to get down. The other popular activity was a particularly large rope "spider web" climbing frame, which Sarah was very adept at scaling. It was a tad too big for Zoe to manage though, and she couldn't keep up, which frustrated her quite a bit. I was particularly proud of how many times she returned to it to try again, though. We had our lunch, a little more play time, and the obligatory ice cream. I'd contemplated catching the CityCat further up-river to Sydney Street to then catching the free CityHopper ferry, but the thought of then trying to get two very tired girls to walk from the Hawthorne ferry terminal back home didn't really appeal to me all that much, so I decided to just head back home. That ended up being a pretty good call, because as it was, trying to get the two of them back home was like herding cats. Sarah was fine, but Zoe was really dragging the chain and getting particularly grumpy. I had to deploy every positive parenting trick that I currently have in my book to keep Zoe moving, but we got there eventually. Fortunately we didn't have any particularly deadline. The girls did some more playing at home while I collapsed on the couch for a bit, and then wanted to do some more craft. We made a couple of crowns and hot-glued lots of bling onto them. We drove back to Kim's place after that, and the girls played some more there. Sarah nearly nodded off on the way home. Zoe was surprisingly chipper. The dynamic changed completely once we were back at Sarah's house. Zoe seemed fine to take Sarah's direction on everything, so I wonder how much of things in the morning were territorial, and Sarah wasn't used to Zoe calling the shots when she was at Zoe's place. Kim invited us to stay for dinner. I wasn't really feeling like cooking, and the girls were having a good time, so I decided to stay for dinner, and after they had a bath together we headed home. Zoe stayed awake all the way home, and went to bed without any fuss. It's pretty hot tonight, and I'm trialling Zoe sleeping without white noise, so we'll see how tonight pans out.

Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppCNPy 0.2.3

R 3.1.0 came out today. Among the (impressive and long as usual) list of changes is the added ability to specify CXX_STD = CXX11 in order to get C++11 (or the best available subset on older compilers). This brings a number of changes and opportunities which are frankly too numerous to be discussed in this short post. But it also permits us, at long last, to use long long integer types. For RcppCNPy, this means that we can finally cover NumPy integer data (along with the double precision we had from the start) on all platforms. Python encodes these as an int64, and that type was unavailable (at least in 32-bit OSs) until we got long long made available to us by R. So today I made the change to depend on R 3.1.0, and select C++11 which allowed us to free the code from a number if #ifdef tests. This all worked out swimmingly and the new package has already been rebuilt for Windows. I also updated the vignette, and refreshed its look and feel. Full changes are listed below.
Changes in version 0.2.3 (2014-04-10)
  • src/Makevars now sets CXX_STD = CXX11 which also provides the long long type on all platforms, so integer file support is no longer conditional.
  • Consequently, code conditional on RCPP_HAS_LONG_LONG_TYPES has been simplified and is no longer conditional.
  • The package now depends on R 3.1.0 or later to allow this.
  • The vignette has been updated and refreshed to reflect this.
CRANberries also provides a diffstat report for the latest release. As always, feedback is welcome and the rcpp-devel mailing list off the R-Forge page for Rcpp is the best place to start a discussion.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

9 April 2014

Andrew Pollock: [life] Day 71: Tumble Tastics trial, painting and plaster fun

Zoe slept in even later this morning. I'm liking this colder weather. We had nothing particular happening first thing today, so we just snuggled in bed for a bit before we got started. Tumble Tastics were offering free trial classes this week, so I signed Zoe up for one today. She really enjoyed going to Gold Star Gymnastics in the US, and has asked me about finding a gym class over here every now and then. Tumble Tastics is a much smaller affair than Gold Star, but at 300 metres from home on foot, it's awesomely convenient. Zoe scootered there this morning. It seems to be physically part of what I'm guessing used to be the Church of Christ's church hall, so it's not big at all, but the room that Zoe had her class in still had plenty of equipment in it. There were 8 kids in her class, all about her size. I peeked around the door and watched. Most of the class was instructor led and mainly mat work, but then part way through, the parents were invited in, and the teacher walked us all through a course around the room, using the various equipment, and the parents had to spot for their kids. The one thing that cracked me up was when the kids were supposed to be tucking into a ball and rocking on their backs. Zoe instead did a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu break-fall and fell backwards slapping the mat instead. It was good to see that some of what she learned in those classes has kicked in reflexively. She really enjoyed the rope swing and hanging upside down on the uneven bars. The class ran for 50 minutes (I was only expecting it to last 30 minutes) and Zoe did really well straight off. I think we'll make this her 4th term extra-curricular activity. We scootered home the longer way, because we were in no particular hurry. Zoe did some painting when we got home, and then we had lunch. After lunch we goofed off for a little bit, and then we did quiet time. Zoe napped for about two and a half hours, and then we did some plaster play. I'd picked up a fish ice cube tray from IKEA on the weekend for 99 cents (queue Thrift Shop), and I bought a bag of plaster of Paris a while back, but haven't had a chance to do anything with it yet. I bribed Zoe into doing quiet time by telling her we'd do something new with the ice cube tray I'd bought. We mixed up a few paper cups with plaster of Paris in them and then I squirted some paint in. I'm not sure if the paint caused a reaction, or the plaster was already starting to set by the time the paint got mixed in, but it became quite viscous as soon as the paint was mixed in. We did three different colours and used tongue depressers to jam it into the tray. Zoe seemed to twig that it was the same stuff as the impressions of her baby feet, which I thought was a pretty clever connection to make. After that, there was barely enough time to watch a tiny bit of TV before Sarah arrived to pick Zoe up. I told her that her plaster would be set by the time she got dropped off in the morning. I procrastinated past the point of no return and didn't go for a run. Instead I decided to go out to Officeworks and print out some photos to stick in the photo frame I bought from IKEA on the weekend.

Dirk Eddelbuettel: BH release 1.54.0-1

A new release of the BH package is now on CRAN and its mirrors. BH provides (a sizeable subset of) the Boost library for C++, particularly (large) parts delivered as pure template headers not requiring linking. See the BH page for more details. This release provides our first update relative to the Boost tarballs we started with. It moves us from 1.51.0 (which was getting a little long in the tooth) to 1.54.0. This is just about the first time ever that I didn't package something straight from the current release (now 1.55.0). My aim was to to balance the oh, shiny, new aspect with some stability. Comments welcome--maybe I will go to the bleeding edge next time. As before, the CRAN is created by running bcp over a number of selected components of Boost. If you'd like to see additional ones include, please do get in touch too. Before uploading, I also tested against all of these sixteen CRAN dependents I could quickly test on my server given the installed dependencies there. The complete list changes follows below.
Changes in version 1.54.0-1 (2014-04-07)
  • Upgraded to Boost 1.54.0
  • Adjust build script local/script/CreateBoost.sh accordingly
  • Renamed generation_runge_kutta_cash_karp54_classic.hpp to generation_runge_kutta_cash_karp54_cl.hpp to remain within 100-character limit for tar
Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the most recent release. Comments and suggestions are welcome via the mailing list or issue tracker at the GitHub repo.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

8 April 2014

Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppArmadillo 0.4.200.0

Conrad released a new upstream release 4.200 for Armadillo, his templated C++ library for linear algebra, earlier today. As usual, this was rolled up in a new RcppArmadillo release 0.4.200.0; I had actually made two pre-releases leading up his 4.200 release and was hence not expecting any surprises. Prior to uploading to CRAN, I also tested against all 61 reverse dependencies of the package. Last but not least, I also updated the corresponding Debian package.
Changes in RcppArmadillo version 0.4.200.0 (2014-04-07)
  • Upgraded to Armadillo release Version 4.200 (Flintlock Swoop)
    • faster transpose of sparse matrices
    • more efficient handling of aliasing during matrix multiplication
    • faster inverse of matrices marked as diagonal
Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the most recent release As always, more detailed information is on the RcppArmadillo page. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the R-Forge page.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

7 April 2014

Andrew Pollock: [life] Day 69: Walk to King Island, a picnic at Wellington Point, the long slow acquisition of some linseed and a split lip

Today was a really good day, right up until the end, when it wasn't so good, but could have been a whole lot worse, so I'm grateful for that. I've been wanting to walk out to King Island at low tide with Zoe for a while, but it's taken about a month to get the right combination of availability, weather and low tide timing to make it possible. Today, there was a low tide at about 10:27am, which I thought would work out pretty well. I wasn't sure if the tide needed to be dead low to get to King Island, so I thought we could get there a bit early and possibly follow the tide out. I invited Megan and Jason to join us for the day and make a picnic of it. It turned out that we didn't need a really low tide, the sand bar connecting King Island to Wellington Point was well and truly accessible well before low tide was reached, so we headed out as soon as we arrived. I'd brought Zoe's water shoes, but from looking at it, thought it would be walkable in bare feet. We got about 10 metres out on the sand and Zoe started freaking out about crabs. I think that incident with the mud crab on Coochiemudlo Island has left her slightly phobic of crabs. So I went back to Jason's car and got her water shoes. I tried to allay her fears a bit by sticking my finger in some of the small holes in the sand, and even got her to do it too. I'm actually glad that I did get her water shoes, because the shell grit got a bit sharp and spiky towards King Island, so I probably would have needed to carry her more than I did otherwise. Along the way to the island we spotted a tiny baby mud crab, and Zoe was brave enough to hold it briefly, so that was good. We walked all the way out and partially around the island and then across it before heading back. The walk back was much slower because where was a massive headwind. Zoe ran out of steam about half way back. She didn't like the sand getting whipped up and stinging her legs, and the wind was forcing the brim of her hat down, so I gave her a ride on my shoulders for the rest of the way back. We had some lunch after we got back to Wellington Point, and Zoe found her second wind chasing seagulls around the picnic area. After an ice cream, we went over to the playground and the girls had a great time playing. It was a pretty good park. There was this huge tree with a really big, thick, horizontal branch only about a metre or two off the ground. All the kids were climbing on it and then shimmying along the branch to the trunk. Zoe's had a few climbs in trees and seems not afraid of it, so she got up and had a go. She did really well and did a combination of scooting along, straddling the branch and doing a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu-style "bear crawl" along the branch. It was funny seeing different kids' limits. Zoe was totally unfazed by climbing the tree. Megan was totally freaking out. But when it came to walking in bare feet in an inch of sea water, Zoe wanted to climb up my leg like a rat up a rope, in case there were crabs. Each to their own. Zoe wanted to have a swim in the ocean, so I put her into her swimsuit, but had left the water shoes back in the car. Once again, she freaked out about crabs as soon as we got ankle deep in the water, and was freaking out Megan as well, so the girls elected to go back to playing in the park. After a good play in the park, we headed back home. We'd carpooled in Jason's truck, with both girls in the back. I'd half expected Zoe to fall asleep on the way back, but the girls were very hyped up and had a great time playing games and generally being silly in the back. When we got back to our place, Jason was in need of a coffee, so we walked to the Hawthorne Garage and had coffee and babyccinos, before Megan and Jason went home. It was about 3:30pm at this point, and I wanted to make a start on dinner. I was making a wholemeal pumpkin quiche, which I've made a few times before, and I discovered we were low on linseed. I thought I'd push things and see if Zoe was up for a scooter ride to the health food shop to get some more and kill some time. She was up for it, but ran out of steam part way across Hawthorne Park. Fortunately she was okay with walking and didn't want me to carry her and the scooter. It took us about an hour to get to the health food shop. Zoe immediately remembered the place from the previous week where we'd had to stop for a post-meltdown pit stop and declared she needed to go to the toilet again. We finally made it out of the shop. I wasn't looking forward to the long walk back home, but there were a few people waiting for a bus at the bus stop near the health food shop, and on checking the timetable, the bus was due in a couple of minutes, so we just waited for the bus. That drastically shortened the trip back. Zoe managed to drop the container of linseed on the way home from the bus stop, but miraculously the way it landed didn't result in the loss of too much of the contents, it just split the container. So I carefully carried the container home the rest of the way. By this stage it was quite a bit later than I had really wanted to be starting dinner, but we got it made, and Zoe really liked the pumpkin quiche, and ate a pretty good dinner. It was after dinner when things took a turn for the worse. Zoe was eating an ice block for dessert, and for whatever reason, she'd decided to sit in the corner of the kitchen next to the dishwasher, while I was loading it. I was carrying over one of the plates, and the knife managed to fall off the plate, bounce off the open dishwasher door and hit her in the mouth, splitting her lip. Zoe was understandably upset, and I was appalled that the whole thing had happened. She never sits on the kitchen floor, let alone in the corner where the dishwasher is. And this knife came so close to her eye. Fortunately the lip didn't look too bad. It stopped bleeding quickly, and we kept some ice on it and the swelling went down. I hate it when accidents happen on my watch. I feel like I'm fighting the stigma of the incompetent single Dad, or the abusive single Dad, so when Zoe sustains an injury to the face like a fat lip, which could be misinterpreted, I, well, really hate it. This was such a freak accident, and it could have gone so much worse. I'm just so glad she's okay. Zoe recovered pretty well from it, and I was able to brush her teeth without aggravating her lip. She went to bed well, and I suspect she's going to sleep really well. It's a bit cooler tonight, so I'm half-expecting a sleep in in the morning with any luck.

Russ Allbery: Review: Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October 2011

Review: Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October 2011
Editor: Gordon van Gelder
Issue: Volume 121, No. 3 & 4
ISSN: 1095-8258
Pages: 258
Another review of a magazine that I finished quite some time ago. Apologies for any inaccuracies or lack of depth in the reviews. There wasn't much in Charles de Lint's reviews in this issue that interested me, but Michelle West covers a great selection of books. Two of them (The Wise Man's Fear and The Quantum Thief) are already on my to-read list; the third, The Postmortal, sounded interesting and would go on my list to purchase if I didn't already have so many good books I've not read. Otherwise, this issue is short on non-fiction. The only other essay entry is a film review from Kathi Maio, which is the typical whining about all things film that F&SF publishes. "Rutger and Baby Do Jotenheim" by Esther M. Friesner: Baby is a former pole dancer with a toy poodle named Mister Snickers, which warns you right away that this story is going to involve a few over-the-top caricatures and more use of the word "piddle" than one might ideally want. Rutger is a mythology professor who tolerates her for the standard reasons in this sort of pairing. They're travelling across country to Baby's sister's wedding when their car breaks down in Minnesota, prompting an encounter with frost giants. As you might expect, this is a sort of fractured fairy tale, except based on Norse mythology instead of the more typical Grimm fare. The fun is in watching these two apparent incompetents (but with enough knowledge of mythology to clue in the reader) reproduce the confrontation between Thor and Utgard-Loki. The fight with old age is particularly entertaining. If you've read any of Friesner's other stories, you know what to expect: not much in the way of deeper meaning, but lots of fun playing with stereotypes and an optimistic, funny outcome. Good stuff. (7) "The Man Inside Black Betty" by Sarah Langan: This story comes with a mouthful of a subtitle: "Is Nicholas Wellington the World's Best Hope?" It's also a story that purports to be written by a fictional character, in this case one Saurub Ramesh (with Langan credited as having done "research"). It's told in the style of first-person journalism, relating the thoughts and impressions of Ramesh as he interviews Nicholas Wellington. The topic is Black Betty: a black hole above Long Island Sound. Wellington is a scientific genius and iconoclast with radical theories of black holes that contradict how the government has been attempting to deal with Black Betty, unsuccessfully. The structure here was well-handled, reminding me a lot of a Michael Lewis article during the financial collapse. Langan has a good feel for how journalism of this type mixes personalities, politics, and facts. But it's all setup and no story. We get some world building, and then it's over, with no resolution except pessimism. Meh. (4) "A Borrowed Heart" by Deborah J. Ross: Ross starts with the trappings of urban fantasy transplanted into a Victorian world: supernatural creatures about, a protagonist who is a high-class prostitute, and sex and a sucubus by the second page. It evolves from there into a family drama and an investigation, always giving the reader the impression that a vampire will jump out at any moment. But the ending caught me entirely by surprise and was far more effective due to its departure from the expected path. Well done. (7) "Bright Moment" by Daniel Marcus: The conflict between terraforming and appreciation for the universe as we find it is an old story pattern in science fiction, and Marcus doesn't add much here. I think the story would have been stronger if he'd found a way to write the same plot with a pure appeal to environmental beauty without the typical stakes-raising. But he does sprinkle the story with a few interesting bits, including a pod marriage and a futuristic version of extreme sports as a way of communing with nature. (6) "The Corpse Painter's Masterpiece" by M. Rickert: This is typical of my reaction to a Rickert story: shading a bit too much towards horror for me, a bit too cryptic, well-written but not really my thing. It's about a corpse painter who does the work of an informal mortician, improving the appearance of bodies for their funerals, and the sheriff who brings him all the dead bodies. It takes an odd macabre twist, and I have no idea what to make of the ending. (4) "Aisle 1047" by Jon Armstrong: Armstrong is best known for a couple of novels, Grey and Yarn, which entangle their stories in the future of marketing and commerce. One may be unsurprised, then, that this short story is on similar themes, with the intensity turned up to the parody point. Tiffan3 is a department-store saleswoman, spouting corporate slogans and advertising copy while trying to push customers towards particular products. The story follows the escalation into an all-out brand war, fought with the bubbly short-cut propaganda of a thirty-second commercial. For me, it fell awkwardly between two stools: it's a little too over-the-top and in love with its own bizarre alternate world to be effective satire, but the world is more depressing than funny and the advertising copy is grating. More of a curiosity than a successful story, I think. (5) "Anise" by Chris DeVito: Stories that undermine body integrity and focus on the fascinated horror of violation of physical boundaries aren't generally my thing, so take that into account in this review. Anise's husband died, but that's not as much of a problem as it used to be. Medical science can resurrect people via a sort of permanent, full-body life support system, making them more cyborg than human. "Anise" is about the social consequences of this technology in a world where a growing number of people have a much different relationship with their body than the typical living person today. It's a disturbing story that is deeply concerned with the physical: sex, blood, physical intimacy in various different forms, and a twisted type of psychological abuse. I think fans of horror will like this more than I did, although it's not precisely horror. It looks at the way one's perception of self and others can change by passing through a profound physical transformation. (5) "Spider Hill" by Donald Mead: I liked this story a lot better. It's about witchcraft and farm magic, about family secrets, and a sort of coming-of-age story (for a girl rather than a boy, for once). The main character is resourceful, determined, but also empathetic and aware of the impact of her actions, which made her more fun to read about. I doubt I'll remember this for too long, but when skimming through it again for a review, I had fond memories of it. (6) "Where Have All the Young Men Gone?" by Albert E. Cowdrey: Cowdrey in his paranormal investigation mode, which I like better than his horror mode. For once, the protagonist isn't even a lower-class or backwoods character. Instead, he's a military historian travelling in Austria who runs across a local ghost story. This is a fairly straightforward ghost investigation that follows a familiar path (albeit to an unusual final destination), but Cowdrey is a good story-teller and I liked the protagonist. (7) "Overtaken" by Karl Bunker: This is the sort of story that delivers its moral with the force of a hammer. It's not subtle. But if you're in the right mood for that, it's one of the better stories of its type. It's about a long-journey starship, crew in hibernation, that's overtaken by a far newer and faster mechanized ship from Earth that's attempting to re-establish contact with the old ships. The story is a conversation between the ship AIs. Save this one until you're in the mood for an old-fashioned defense of humanity. (8) "Time and Tide" by Alan Peter Ryan: Another pseudo-horror story, although I think it's better classified as a haunting. A wardrobe recalls a traumatic drowning in the childhood of the protagonist. As these things tend to do in stories like this, reality and memory start blurring and the wardrobe takes on a malevolent role. Not my sort of thing. (3) "What We Found" by Geoff Ryman: Any new Geoff Ryman story is something to celebrate. This is a haunting story on the boundaries between the scientific method and tribal superstition, deeply entangled with the question of how one recovers from national and familial trauma. How can we avoid passing the evils and madness of one generation down to the next? Much of the story is about family trauma, told with Ryman's exceptional grasp of character, but the science is entangled in an ingenious way that I won't spoil. As with Air, this is in no way science fiction. The science here would have fascinating and rather scary implications for our world, but clearly is not how science actually works. But as an insight into politics, and into healing, I found it a startlingly effective metaphor. I loved every bit of this. By far the best story of the issue. (9) Rating: 7 out of 10

6 April 2014

Russ Allbery: control-archive 1.6.1

control-archive is the software that maintains the archive of Usenet control messages and the "canonical" list of newsgroups maintained on ftp.isc.org. There's nothing particularly exciting in this release, but there were some accumulated metadata changes and it had been nearly a year since the previous release. This is one of my few packages that uses a three-part version number, since I figured there would be metadata-only releases and wanted a way to designate those. And then, of course, I almost always made code changes. So this is only the second metadata-only release (which is part of why I did a release now, to be honest). At some point, I still want to rewrite the underlying signature validation code and then redo all the code in this package to match my current coding style and be quite a bit cleaner. But the hours to do projects like that aren't particularly forthcoming at the moment. You can get the latest release from the control-archive distribution page.

Steve Kemp: So that distribution I'm not-building?

The other week I was toying with using GNU stow to build an NFS-share, which would allow remote machines to boot from it. It worked. It worked well. (Standard stuff, PXE booting with an NFS-root.) Then I started wondering about distributions, since in one sense what I'd built was a minimal distribution. On that basis yesterday I started hacking something more minimal: Unfortunately here is where I ran out of patience. Using tcc and the static C library I can compile code. But I can't link it.
$ cat > t.c <>EOF
int main ( int argc, char *argv[] )
 
        printf("OK\n" );
        return 1;
 
EOF
$ /opt/tcc/bin/tcc t.c
tcc: error: file 'crt1.o' not found
tcc: error: file 'crti.o' not found
..
Attempting to fix this up resulted in nothing much better:
$ /opt/tcc/bin/tcc t.c -I/opt/musl/include -L/opt/musl/lib/
And because I don't have a full system I cannot compile t.c to t.o and use ld to link (because I have no ld.) I had a brief flirt with the portable c-compiler, pcc, but didn't get any further with that. I suspect the real solution here is to install gcc onto my host system, with something like --prefix=/opt/gcc, and then rsync that into my (suddenly huge) intramfs image. Then I have all the toys.

Russell Coker: Finding Corrupt Files that cause a Kernel Error

There is a BTRFS bug in kernel 3.13 which is triggered by Kmail and causes Kmail index files to become seriously corrupt. Another bug in BTRFS causes a kernel GPF when an application tries to read such a file, that results in a SEGV being sent to the application. After that the kernel ceases to operate correctly for any files on that filesystem and no command other than reboot -nf (hard reset without flushing write-back caches) can be relied on to work correctly. The second bug should be fixed in Linux 3.14, I m not sure about the first one. In the mean time I have several systems running Kmail on BTRFS which have this problem. (strace tar cf . cat > /dev/null) 2>&1 tail To discover which file is corrupt I run the above command after a reboot. Below is a sample of the typical output of that command which shows that the file named .trash.index is corrupt. After discovering the file name I run reboot -nf and then delete the file (the file can be deleted on a clean system but not after a kernel GPF). Of recent times I ve been doing this about once every 5 days, so on average each Kmail/BTRFS system has been getting disk corruption every two weeks. Fortunately every time the corruption has been on an index file so I don t need to restore from backups. newfstatat(4, ".trash.index", st_mode=S_IFREG 0600, st_size=33, , AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW) = 0
openat(4, ".trash.index", O_RDONLY O_NOCTTY O_NONBLOCK O_NOFOLLOW O_CLOEXEC) = 5
fstat(5, st_mode=S_IFREG 0600, st_size=33, ) = 0
read(5, <unfinished >
+++ killed by SIGSEGV +++

4 April 2014

Rog rio Brito: The importance of flexible deadlines in MOOCs

I have always thought that having flexible deadlines in MOOCs is important, despite not having used them too much. Until last night, that is. The course in question is Stanford's Statistical Learning and they adopted a policy of letting the students complete all the assignments of the 10 week course until the last day of the course, in March 21. Then, they graciously extended the deadline to April 4. Were it not for such an extension, I would not have completed the course. I sent them a message on the course forums this morning to thank them for this, as this, in my experience, is not so common with MOOCs. I reproduce below the message that I posted on the forums:
Subject: Thank you also for the EXTENSION of the deadlines Dear professors and staff, I would like to thank you (of course) for the course, as many others have already. Despite not liking edX platform too much (preferring the UI of, say, Coursera), your course was an exception, interesting enough (and funny enough) that I sticked to it until the end. But I would like to bring attention here to a point that many may not have appreciated (or, perhaps, not expressed as clearly as I thought that it deserved), namely, the extension of the deadlines (and a uniform deadline for all homeworks). In particular, due to some unfortunate facts of my personal life, I could not work on the course at all in the past few weeks. In fact, I completed units 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 in the last 3 or 4 days and submitted my last quiz a few hours before today's midnight (at my local time, UTC-0300), and I still got a passing grade(!). Even with my desire to finish the course, this would not have been possible if you had not graciously allowed for the deadline extension. I am sure that I may not be alone here in appreciating this extension (even though I think that I may be many standard deviations from the mean, doing the homework and R programs of 7 weeks in only 4 days). Thank you so very much for everything (including this extension!), Rog rio Brito.

Andrew Pollock: [life] Day 66: Story time, Science Friday, impromptu play date, scootering and the Hawthorne Markets

Zoe slept through last night, which was lovely. We had nothing really planned for today. The Bulimba Library has a story time thing at 10:30am on a Friday. I've never bothered to take Zoe because it would have been too much of a hustle to get her there after her Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class, particularly by bike. Since today we didn't have a BJJ class, it made getting to story time much easier. So we had a nice lazy start to the day, and then Zoe just wanted to procrastinate anyway, so since we were in no particular rush, I let her play in her room for a bit and I read for a while. We eventually had teeth and hair brushed and biked over to the library. Not having been to the story time thing before, I assumed it was in the kids area, but it turned out it was downstairs in the general purpose room, which we only discovered after story time had started. I'm certainly glad I never busted a gut to get to the library in time for it, because it wasn't anything particularly exciting. They did give all the kids a colouring sheet and there was some colouring and a couple of songs, but really it was nothing to phone home about. I did run into Jacob and his mum Laura from Kindergarten. They live locally, and so I invited them over for lunch and a play date. They had some grocery shopping to do, and I had to go to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled, so we agreed to meet at our place in about an hour. We biked to the pharmacy to get my prescription filled and some more sunscreen for Zoe, and the pharmacist gave her a free Chupa Chups We biked home, and grabbed some balloons from the convenience store next door for our Science Friday activity. I was slightly more organised today, and figured out what I wanted to do in the morning while Zoe was watching TV. We did yeast and sugar and warm water in a bottle with a balloon on top and watched it inflate itself with all the carbon dioxide produced by the yeast eating the sugar. The only problem was the balloons we bought were total rubbish. They'd been on the shelf for too long and they'd all stuck to themselves and either popped when I tried to blow them up or had holes in them. So we marched back to the corner store in our lab coats to get some more, and the store keeper gave Zoe one of the little flashlights she keeps playing with in the bowl at the check out. It was a good day for freebies. We were able to complete our Science Friday activity before Laura and Jacob and his baby brother Ethan came over for lunch. Zoe didn't have a particularly good lunch, I think it was the distraction of having Jacob there as well. After lunch, they couldn't really agree on anything to play. Laura said Jacob just plays out in the yard at Kindergarten the whole day. The one thing they both managed to agree on briefly was bubbles. Ethan was getting tired and needed a nap by about 2pm, so they left. Zoe wanted to ride her scooter, but I had to clean up from lunch and the aftermath of the play date on the balcony first, so she went and played some games on her Nexus 7 while I did that, and then we headed out on the scooter. It was about 2:30pm by this point, and the Hawthorne Markets, which have now moved to a Friday "twilight" thing, were due to start at 4pm, so I figured we could just kill time on the scooter. It's funny how the scooter is now the in thing as of Tuesday. It's sat unused on the balcony for most of the year, but I'm glad she wants to use it now because it guarantees she moves faster than if she were to walk and want to be picked up every 5 minutes. We scootered around to the playground and she played there until about 3:45pm, when we headed around to the markets. We ran into Nicky Noo from the Ooniverse Family Cafe, who we'd met on Tuesday, and she made Zoe another dog balloon and she got her face painted. After that, it was the obligatory jumping castle for a while. It was getting time to get home for Sarah to pick her up, when I dropped the dog balloon on the ground and it popped. That made Zoe very sad. Then the lack of a decent lunch kicked in. Zoe wanted some poffertjes, but they would have taken too long, so I gave her a few of the free samples to tide her over, and we headed home. Sarah was waiting for her when we got home, so we parted ways at that point. I like how the days that have nothing planned often end up as full if not fuller than the days when I do have something planned.

Gunnar Wolf: Mozilla: So our communitary echobox *does* resound with social issues

I woke up to the news that, after a very short tenure, Brendan Eich steps down as the Mozilla CEO. Why? Because of the community outcry. Because some years ago, Eich pubilcly supported (and donated funds) the ban of any kind of marriages in California that were not between a man and a woman. The world has advanced enormously in this regard in the last years/decades, and so many individuals and organizations opposed and announced they would boycott Mozilla that either him or Mozilla could not stand the pressure anymore. So, of course, it's sad the person had to resign. Many people talked about freedom of speech, freedom of harbouring his own personal opinion But when it comes to the rights of minorities, particularly of minorities that have suffered such hard prejudice and abuse as the gay, lesbian and all the other non-orthodox sexual- and gender- orientations, righting a wrong is much more important than preserving an individual's freedom of opinion. Besides, it's not just thinking or talking about something The concrete proposition Eich supported (and eventually made him resign) is about bringing the life of thousands of people to a hellish state of uncertainty, and going back to not having a way for the society to legally recognize their way of being, their love, their lifes. But anyway What prompts me into writing this is that, once again, the Free Software (and related denominations) community has shown that a set of core values, seemingly shared by a very large amount of our own people with no coordination or correlation with what conforms us as a community (and thus, being emergent traits), are strong enough to create a critical mass, to achieve cohesion. And that ours is not just a technical community of people writing software at all layers of the stack, but first and foremost is a group of social activists, committed to making the world better. I will quote from Matthew Garrett's post on this topic, clearly more contundent and thorough that what I'm trying to come up with:
The Mozilla Manifesto discusses individual liberty in the context of use of the internet, not in a wider social context. Brendan's appointment was very much in line with the explicit aims of both the Foundation and the Corporation - whatever his views on marriage equality, nobody has seriously argued about his commitment to improving internet freedom. So, from that perspective, he should have been a fine choice. But that ignores the effect on the wider community. People don't attach themselves to communities merely because of explicitly stated goals - they do so because they feel that the community is aligned with their overall aims. The Mozilla community is one of the most diverse in free software, at least in part because Mozilla's stated goals and behaviour are fairly inspirational. People who identify themselves with other movements backing individual liberties are likely to identify with Mozilla. So, unsurprisingly, there's a large number of socially progressive individuals (LGBT or otherwise) in the Mozilla community, both inside and outside the Corporation. A CEO who's donated money to strip rights from a set of humans will not be trusted by many who believe that all humans should have those rights. It's not just limited to individuals directly affected by his actions - if someone's shown that they're willing to strip rights from another minority for political or religious reasons, what's to stop them attempting to do the same to you? Even if you personally feel safe, do you trust someone who's willing to do that to your friends? In a community that's made up of many who are either LGBT or identify themselves as allies, that loss of trust is inevitably going to cause community discomfort.

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