This morning I noticed some parking bays reserved for car charging in a car park at the corner of Sydney Rd and Glenlyon St in Brunswick (near Aldi). One of the parking spots was occupied by a Plug-in Prius from GoGet [1]. I didn t even realise that you could get a plug-in Prius in Australia. The charging station is run by Charge Point [2]. The charging points are about 1.5m high and the cable is about 3cm thick (about as thick as the pipe used for filling a car with petrol), so it would charge a car much faster than could be done with a regular power point. One big problem with the Charge Point web site is that they don t give any information on pricing. They sell home charge points (which I guess means just an all-weather two-phase power point) but don t give a price for that. They sell charge points that can be used by commercially but don t give a price for them either. Also their infrastructure for billing is apparently based on companies installing charge points and setting a price for the service. Some charge points may offer free service (I guess staff car parks and some government agencies) and others will charge varying rates none of which is available on the web site. Apparently they have an online portal which gives information on such things to registered users so you have to register to discover what it costs. Of course hardly anyone is going to register before discovering the price, not even when registration is free. But while registration is free the web site demands the make and model of the electric car, so presumably one has to spend $40,000 or more on a vehicle before discovering the price and availability of charging it. Charge Point can be used as an example of how not to design a web site that promotes a service, or at least how not to promote a service that is aimed at saving money (electricity is significantly cheaper than petrol so it s of interest to people and organisations that want to save money). The Charge Point site seems to be better suited to showing that the concept can work than convincing people that they should sign up for it. It seems to me that the best thing that they could do would be to prominently display the average cost of all non-free charge points that are open to the public along with an explanation of the price of driving a desirable car (such as a plug-in Prius or a Nissan Leaf) with such an electricity cost. The contact section on the web site only has a link for careers . I don t think it s possible to get widespread use of electric vehicles without getting better information out there. It appears that Charge Point is relying on councils to do the work of promoting their business by installing their stations and reserving car parking as Moreland council has done in this case.

• [1] http://www.goget.com.au/
• [2] http://www.chargepoint.com.au/

Hi Debian! Just to briefly introduce myself, I'm Vincent (vcheng@d.o, vincent_c on OFTC/Freenode) and I'm a recent graduate of the NM process, having attained DD-ship (is that even a word?) about a month ago in January. Before that, I was a DM since mid-2012, and just another contributor for a few years prior to that. Most of my contributions to the Project are related to packaging, especially packages maintained within the Debian Games Team. Outside of Debian, well, I'm just another 20-year-old, 3rd-year undergrad student studying at the University of British Columbia, working towards a major in computer science. I anticipate that I'll be able to ditch academia for good in 2016; just 2 more years to go... More about my life story in my AM's report. It's fairly boring, if I say so myself. This blog post isn't just about me; I'd like to touch upon another topic that I consider important, i.e. attracting new contributors, and in many cases that involves package sponsorship. That's one of the many things I'd like to work on as a DD, and to that effect I've dedicated a large chunk of the time I currently spend on Debian sponsoring various packages, including packages that I'm not familiar with. I would love to see the sponsorship-requests queue empty one day, but I admit that I find that increasingly unlikely to happen, now that I've gotten a taste of the time commitment involved with sponsoring. Team maintenance and sponsorship seems to work relatively well in Debian; why does that success not translate over to sponsorship-requests / debian-mentors@l.d.o, where a considerable amount of RFS requests don't see any response at all, and merely get closed once those packages get removed from mentors.debian.net (AFAIK they automatically get removed after 20 weeks)? Well, I'm not here to offer an answer for that, but I will point out that there was a relevant thread that originated on debian-devel a month ago: <87ha8lzl7n.fsf@inf-8660.int-evry.fr> (and no, I'm not talking about the giant init-related threads that pop up on debian-devel every other week or so and drown out everything else on the list...). Are DDs in general reluctant to engage in "fly-by sponsoring"? Most packages coming through the sponsorship-requests queue are not team-maintained, and are sent from sponsorees who are not already in contact with a sponsor, and who have no other way of getting in touch with a potential sponsor (assuming that there isn't an existing team or a DD who happens to be interested in that package). Regardless of the merits of fly-by sponsoring (many arguments in favour of, and against, this type of sponsorship have already been discussed in that thread; no need to re-iterate them here), it's discouraging for potential contributors new to Debian, who may just give up and move on to something else. I've now had the opportunity to be a sponsor (rather than just a sponsoree), and I acknowledge that being a sponsor is more work than I imagined it to be a month ago, and it can be quite tedious and not-fun at times. I suppose I can draw a parallel between sponsoring packages and RC bug fixing; neither is what I'd consider to be a highly enjoyable way of spending my leisure time, and both can eat up a large chunk of time and effort; both often involve working on something that you aren't familiar with. But both are beneficial to Debian. No, beneficial isn't a strong enough word; how about "essential" instead? Yeah, that makes more sense. Without dedicated RC bug squashers, Debian would never be able to make a release; without dedicated sponsors, the size of Debian's archive would be smaller and of lesser quality, and its community also a lot smaller. With all that said...I hope this blog post inspires at least a few DDs, possibly more, to dedicate a little bit more of their time towards sponsoring packages. :)

A new maintenance release of the RcppBDT package is now on CRAN. There is no new code in this; it mainly accomodates a request by CRAN to standardize the \code Imports: and \code Depends: relationships in the \code DESCRIPTION file. We also updated the build process now that we can use Rcpp 0.11.0. Having said that, there is a lot of new code in the git repository but I guess I'll talk about that when I can make a new upload. Yesterday, this balked because win-builder felt the need for a long long int in 64-bit mode which we can provide once C++11 will be permitted under R 3.1.0, due out in April. Oddly, no such need arose in 64-bit Linux. Oh well. The complete NEWS entry is below:

Changes in version 0.2.2 (2014-02-21)

• Updates to current CRAN Policy standards for Depends: and Imports: in DESCRIPTION
• Also take advantage of new Rcpp 0.11.0 build options
• New code remains in GitHub repo master branch until R 3.1.0 is release so that we can use C++11 in order to get the long long int support without which the package does not build on Windows (whereas Linux is fine)

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for 0.2.2 relative to 0.2.1. 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.

A pure maintenance release of RDieHarder is now on CRAN. RDieHarder provides R bindings for the DieHarder battery of tests for random number generators by Brown et al. This release contains no new code, but the vignette needed to be moved from inst/doc to vignettes/ to help finalize that transition of the R / CRAN Package Policy. Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report relative to the previous release. As always, more detailed information is on the RDieHarder 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.

A new minor release of RcppArmadillo is now on CRAN and in Debian. RcppArmadillo brings the Armadillo templated C++ library for linear algebra to R by means of Rcpp. This release contains both a few minor bugfixes from the 4.000 branch of Armadillo and some enhancements in RcppArmadillo itself that are related to the recent Rcpp 0.11.0 release.

Changes in RcppArmadillo version 0.4.000.4 (2014-02-19)

• Upgraded to Armadillo release Version 4.000.4
  • fix for randi() generating out-of-interval values
  • fix for saving field objects
  • workaround for a bug in the Intel compiler
• Updated for Rcpp (>= 0.11.0) by removing linking step from build process, added appropriate dependency on Rcpp
• Updated RcppArmadillo.package.skeleton function accordingly to use proper NAMESPACE import
• Rewritten rcpparma_hello_world (which is used by the RcppArmadillo.package.skeleton function) to use Rcpp Attributes, and added more examples
• Added two functions to set Armadillo's RNGs (ie the system RNG) from a given value and to randomize it, as suggested by G bor Cs rdi. Note that these do not work within RStudio (which itself also uses the same system RNG).

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.

In cycling, a ride's Training Stress Score is a function of that ride's duration, average power and the intensity of the ride relative to the rider's capability. This Slowtwitch article provides a good overview on how intensity and TSS is calculated on a bike. However, having TSS values for other sports allows a multisport athelete to take into consideration the physiological cost of activities in different sports. This is achieved by ensuring, say, 50 TSS on the bike "counts" the same as a 50 TSS run. This can be used to simply determine the length, intensity and scheduling of the athletes next workout (to ensure adequate recovery) regardless of the combination of sports, or to identify the athlete's long-term tolerance to and targets for training load using metrics such as Chronic Training Load. To make this possible when using Strava, I wrote a Chrome extension that estimates the TSS score of a run from its Grade Adjusted Pace distribution: Source code is available. If you found this Strava extension useful, you might like my extensions to quickly switch between metric and imperial units or to change the default comparison filter.

Enrico and me have just started a census on Debian Services floating around, and we want YOU to participate!

An issue which I always find depressing but sadly unsurprising in discussions of process with software is the frequent disregard for human elements; indeed often the goal people have in creating process is to try to control and eliminate human elements. Little thought is given to what is going to motivate people to do what s asked and if they are going to follow it at all, or in the spirit it was intended. One example I ve seen several times is the idea that some engineers work on irrelevant things and that this can be fixed by requiring every commit to be tied to the project plan or a bug so off project work is obvious. This isn t really attacking the problem so much as putting a roadblock in place to try to avert it; the real problem is normally people not communicating about what they re doing and what s important but those problems are really hard to address. Sadly what tends to happen is that people work around the roadblock and cause some collateral damage; for example devaluing the bug tracker by referencing irrelevant bugs or creating meaningless bugs solely to allow commits, while continuing to behave like they did originally. This is often worse than the original situation. This sort of issue is one of the things I appreciate most about working on Linux there s quite a bit of process but because of the way it has been evolved the incentives are usually right to make sure they are followed in the spirit in which they were intended. For example the patch submission process is essentially just best practices for making sure changes go to people who care in a form which makes it easy for them to work with it; there is a bunch of tooling around it which built on those practices (and in turn influenced the practices) but it all comes back to that basic thing of getting attention for changes and making them easy to work with. As a result people mostly do the right thing (or close enough) so everything runs smoothly. The trick is to remember to standardize and write things down when it s needed notice the good practice and spread its adoption. The key difference here seems to be if process is viewed as something to solve problems for people or if it is viewed as a way to solve problems with people. If the problem is with the people then the view starts off negative and it s perhaps unsurprising that there is little consideration of how they will react. Sometimes it s not so much that a problem is seen with people as that the people doing don t have any real interest in the process (write only timesheets often bear no relation to reality for example) but there is an assumption that they are going to just do what they re asked (but instead they for example don t fill in their time sheets or don t provide accurate information). The end result is the same, their needs don t get considered and their actions end up being counterproductive. Starting to avoid these problems is fairly straightforward take a step back and consider why the people expected to carry out the process are going to want to do so. How does it help them? How will they see it helping others? Generally what s in it for them? If these are difficult questions to answer then there may be a problem it is likely people will ignore the process or do it badly without a lot of active enforcement, but perhaps that s OK for the situation. Beware of using metrics to provide incentives, metrics are gameable and that game can cause problems without care. But do think about people; making software is all about people.

This is the 2nd point release of OpenStack Havana (this is the name of the current stable release of OpenStack). It was out on Thursday (US time), and I uploaded it on Friday (Chinese time). Unfortunately, I realized that the latest python-keystoneclient didn t support the token and endpoint command line options, effectively breaking Keystone itself, and all automated endpoint registration in all core packages. So after fixing Keystone and openstack-pkg-tools, I had to re-upload a 2nd Debian release. However, after this glitch, the packages passed successfully our CI testing suite: my friends at eNovance and I run the tempest functional test suite each time there s this kind of major update, so that we can validate the packages are working as expected. And all went well after the new keystone command line options were fixed in the postinst scripts. As a side note, I fail to see consistency on deprecating these interfaces. While we still have the old glance index thing in the Glance client (this is really old), keystoneclient just broke backward compatibility, when keystone is quite recent. So, it looks to me that it wasn t a great idea to just remove token and endpoint this way (though I can understand the need of consistency). Hopefully, this will all be fixed anyway, when we move to the unified python-openstackclient command lines instead of per-project clients. I realized today that the pkg-openstack team now maintains more than 100 packages. This of course includes general purpose Python modules, which probably will move to the Python module team if it one day supports Git (life is too short: I do not wish to learn such a deprecated technology as SVN). Though this is still a lot of packages, and some more are coming: as per the OpenStack TODO list wiki page, Ironic (a replacement for nova-baremetal), TripleO (OpenStack on OpenStack), Tuskar (contols where things are deployed with TripleO) and Designate (DNS as a Service) are already packaged, and I am waiting for the Icehouse (this is the name of the next stable release) beta3 to be out to upload them to Experimental. This is scheduled for the 6th of March. I believe I am currently nearly up-to-date with the current global-requirements.txt (eg: python dependencies of OpenStack), pending a few Python module upgrades, so hopefully, packaging OpenStack Icehouse beta3 will smooth.

Google Summer of Code 2014 is currently open for mentoring organizations to register. I've decided to not apply for GSoC with my data mining open source project ELKI anymore.

• You don't get any feedback for your application. So unless you were accepted, you have no idea if it is worth trying again (I tried twice).
• As far as I can tell, you only have a chance if there is someone at Google advocating your project. For example, someone involved in your project actually working at Google.
• I don't really trust Google anymore. They've been too much exploiting their market dominance, leveraging YouTube and Android to force people into Google+ etc. (see Google turning evil blog post).
• I'll be looking for a Post-Doc position in fall, so the timing of the GSoC isn't ideal anyway.

There are currently roughly 1500 source packages in Debian which possibly (very likely actually) do have broken URLs in debian/control. While it is quite useful that we have VCS information and Homepage URLs in the Packages file these days, we also created a rather big source of bitrot. These URLs are typically paste-and-forget. Sure, people occasionally catch the fact that a homepage or VCS has moved, especially if they are active and in good contact with their upstreams. However, there are also other cases...

A new release 0.2.11 of RInside is now on CRAN. RInside provides a set of convenience classes which facilitate embedding of R inside of C++ applications and programs, using the classes and functions provided by the Rcpp R and C++ integration package. This release, the first in fourteen months, fixes one important initialization issue created by the recent Rcpp 0.11.0 release, adds a few other changes related to that release and improves a number of small points such as new or improved examples. The NEWS extract below has more details.

Changes in RInside version 0.2.11 (2014-02-11)

• Updated for Rcpp 0.11.0:
  • Updated initialization by assigning global environment via pointer only after R itself has been initialized with special thanks to Kevin Ushey for the fix
  • Updated DESCRIPTION with Imports: instead of Depends:
  • Added correspondiing importFrom(Rcpp, evalCpp) to NAMESPACE
  • Noted in all inst/examples/*/Makefile that Rcpp no longer requires a library argument, but left code for backwards compatibility in case 0.11.0 is not yet installed.
• Added --vanilla --slave to default arguments for R initialization
• Added a few more explicit #include statements in the qt example which Qt 5.1 now appears to require with thanks to Spencer Behling for the patch
• Added new MPI example with worker functions and RInside instance, kindly contributed by Nicholas Pezolano and Martin Morgan

CRANberries also provides a short report with changes from the previous release. More information is on the RInside page. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the Rcpp 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.

Late last week, and just before leaving to participate in this crazy thing, I managed to get a new version of RcppSMC onto CRAN. RcppSMC combines the SMCTC template classes for Sequential Monte Carlo and Particle Filters (Johansen, 2009, JSS) with the Rcpp package for R/C++ Integration (Eddelbuettel and Francois, 2011, JSS) and thereby allows for easier and more direct access from R to the computational core of the Sequential Monte Carlo algorithm. This release regroups a few minor changes we accumulated over the last few months, but was triggered by the Rcpp 0.11.0 release last week. The NEWS entry is below:

Changes in RcppSMC version 0.1.2 (2014-02-06)

• Updated for Rcpp 0.11.0 with explicit importFrom in NAMESPACE and corresponding versioned Imports: in DESCRIPTION; also removed linking instruction from src/Makevars as no it is longer needed with this new Rcpp version
• Addded GitHub / Travis CI support
• Use more portable dev.new() rather than x11() in pfLinearBS.R
• Applied some corrections to pfNonlinBS.R example
• Converted NEWS to NEWS.Rd

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report relative to the previous release. As always, more detailed information is on the RcppSMC 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.

I have always loved Drum and Bass. In 2013 I rediscovered my love for Darkstep and Neurofunk, and found that these genres have developed quite a lot in the recent years. Some labels like Black Sun Empire and Evol Intent produce mixes/sets on a regular basis as podcasts these days. This article aggregates some neurofunk podcasts I like a lot, most recent first. Enjoy 33 hours and 57 minutes of fun with dark and energizing beats. Thanks to BSE Contrax and Evol Intent for providing such high quality sets.

• Evolcast Episode 002 hosted by Gigantor (00:56:25) This is the second Evolcast episode, hosted by Gigantor. Featuring a mix spanning various genres.
  
  01 - The Sickness - SPL
  02 - Catch 22 - Misanthrop
  03 - Neo - Audio Remix - Hive
  04 - Can U Feel It VIP - Drumsound and Bassline Smith
  05 - Head Shrinker - NC-17 and Nusense
  06 - Lights - The Prototypes
  07 - Dibby Dibby Sound - Sigma Remix - Jay Fay and DJ Fresh feat. Ms. Dynamite
  08 - Operation Ivy - June Miller
  09 - Fire - Craze and Tropkillaz
  10 - The Illest - Rell The Soundbender Remix - Far East Movement feat. Riff Raff
  11 - Power Move - Evol Intent Reflip - Jackal
  12 - Kronos - Smooth and Markoman
  13 - Acid Howl - Rampage Anthem - Murdock and Doctrine
  14 - No Operative - State Of Mind
  15 - Jim Skynner - Evol Intent and Eye-D
  16 - Cata - Savoy and LoBounce
  17 - Chumps - The Al Gore Rhythm Method
  18 - Hideous - Haywyre Remix - Black Sun Empire and Noisia
  19 - Patty Cake - Bro Safari and Jesse Slayter
  20 - Temptation - Neosignal
  21 - KNAS Dillon Francis Remix - Steve Angello
  22 - Pay Me v4 - MUST DIE! and Mantis
  23 - Mistrust - Teddy Killerz and Aeph
  24 - Punish Me In The Middle Of The Night VIP - Evol Intent vs. Dom and Roland
  25 - Nightfall - Stealth feat. Codebreaker
  26 - Additional Faces - Computer Club Reflip - The M Machine
  27 - Undertaker - The Upbeats
  28 - Before The Sun - Doco
  29 - Click Clack - Buku
  30 - Fuk Yo Scene v5.9.i - Evol Intent
  31 - The Dealer - Evol Intent Remix - FINAL - Bro Safari and UFO!
  32 - Flare - Des McMahon Remix - Carver and Clock
  33 - Coffins - Pegboard Nerds feat. Misterwives
  34 - The Ladies - Throwback Mix - Evol Intent
  35 - Experts - The Prototypes Remix - SKiSM
  36 - We Are Not Alone - Evol Intent and Gridlok
  37 - Tsunami Jump - Friction Remix - Borgeous feat. Tinie Tempah
  38 - This Is Not A Dream v8c - Evol Intent
  
• Timeless Shock Podcast 008 (01:05:43) Contrax
  check our Homepage: http://contrax-dnb.com
  
  check our twitter: https://twitter.com/Contrax_DnB
  
  check our facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ContraxEyepax
  
  check our soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/contraxmusik
  https://soundcloud.com/dnb_contrax
  Tracklist Contrax:
  coming soon
  
  BlacKShark
  check Homepage: http://www.fsw-cru.de/
  
  check facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DJBlacKSharKFSW
  Tracklist BlacKShark:
  01 Calvin Clark-Oblivion
  02 Olly F-Special Bulletin
  03 Bassline Terrorist-Death Rattle (Majistrate RMX)
  04 Eski B-I am the Danger
  05 Misanthrop-Greed of Gain
  06 Lockjaw-Flatline
  07 Deadmau5-Ghosts 'N' Stuff ((Sub Focus RMX) The Ripper Master Edit)
  08 Loadstar-Give It To Me (DC Breaks RMX)
  09 Rammstein-Spring (BlacKSharK DnB Bootleg)
  10 Misanthrop-Deadlock
  11 Cyantific-Ice Cream
  12 Dj Emotion-No Fear
  13 Draven-Venom
  14 Serial Killaz-Killa Klash Annix Remix-Serial Killaz
  15 Deichkind-bon voyage (BlacKSharK DnB Bootleg)
  16 Dangerous-Work Boots VIP
  17 Kenesis feat. Talabun-Get Darker
  18 Nico Suave-Vergesslich (BlacKSharK DnB Bootleg)
• Timeless Shock Podcast 007 (00:47:54) Contrax
  check our Homepage: http://contrax-dnb.com
  
  check our twitter: https://twitter.com/Contrax_DnB
  
  check our facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ContraxEyepax
  
  check our soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/contraxmusik
  https://soundcloud.com/dnb_contrax
  Tracklist:
  01 Unknown Error - The Yearning (Apex VIP)
  02 Seba - Under The Sun
  03 Brother - Still Blue (Command Strange & Intelligent Manners RMX)
  04 Submatik - Sunset feat. Greg Cooke
  05 R-Monix - You Bring Nothing
  06 Technimatic - Sheltered Storm
  07 Contrax - The End Of Time
  08 Midnight Request - Come Home
  09 Jaydan - Shes Heaven
  10 Erick Trodly & Impish - Be Around
  11 Martin Solveig - The Night Out (Hosta RMX)
  12 Paramount - Electric Blue
  13 Tenorio Junior - Nebulosa (Nu:Tone RMX)
  14 Spillage - Systematic
  15 Bank - Magic Hour
  16 Chase & Status feat. Liam Bailey - Blind Faith (Loadstar RMX)
  17 Virtue feat. Bonnie Rabson - Hello Insomnia
  18 Korus - Humming Bird
  19 Whiney - Wasting Time
  20 Sound Tactix - Understand
  21 Keeno - Little Son (VIP RMX)
  22 Mars & Gala - Just One Night
• BSE - Podcast 028 - Guestmix by Maztek (01:32:38) First Podcast of 2014, This time a brand new 1,5 hour exclusive mix by Maztek!
• Evolcast Episode 001 Gigantor Live at Beta Nightclub (00:54:53) This is the inaugural episode of the Evol intent podcast. Starting things off with Gigantor's set from 22 November, 2013 in Denver at Beta Nightclub.
• BSE - Podcast 027 - Variations on Black (01:04:15) Brand new 45 min mix to celebrate the release of our new album 'Variations on Black',this time mixed by Black Sun Empire!
• Timeless Shock Podcast 006 (01:07:40) Contrax
  check our Homepage: http://contrax-dnb.com
  
  check our twitter: https://twitter.com/Contrax_DnB
  
  check our facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ContraxEyepax
  
  check our soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/contraxmusik
  https://soundcloud.com/dnb_contrax
  Tracklist Contrax:
  1.Future Primitive - Kryptic
  2.Amalgan - Space Hornet
  3.Contrax - ??? (unfinished track)
  4.Apolloud - Transmission
  5.Computerartist - Orbit
  6.Encode & Valrus - Face 2 Face
  7.Fourward - Robot (insideinfo remix)
  8.Receptor & Freqax - First Step
  9.June Miller - From autumn to Ashes
  10.Semantics & Kalu - 2025
  11.Quadrant & Cease - Built for War
  12.Rusty K - Kali
  13.The Prototypes - Blackout (feat Mc ID)
  14.Black Sun Empire & Eye D - Milkshake
  15.Optiv & BTK - Bad Attitude
  16.Rawtekk - Monopolists & Robberies
  17.State of MInd - Max Headroom
  18.Telekinesis - Diabolo
  
  Blind:Sight
  check Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/blind-sight
  
  check facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DJBlindSight
  Tracklist BlindSight:
  1) Manufactured Superstars feat. Selina Albright - SERIOUS (Ed Rush RMX)
  2) MSTRKRFT - PARIS (Upbeats RMX)
  3) EWUN - SCREW UP
  4) State of Mind - DESTINESIA
  5) AMC & T Phonic -WHERE U OUT
  6) Friction & K Tee - SET IT OFF (Icicle RMX)
  7) BTK & Mindscape - Bandits
  8) Suspicious Stench feat. FLOWDAN - SHUTDOWN (LoKo RMX)
  9) Dextems - QUARK (Absurd RMX)
  10) Twisted Facts & Brain Crisis feat MC DON - MURK
  11) BTK feat. Sam Wills - TRY
  12) D Iolax - KILLING THE FUTURE
  13) BTK - DROP IT (Optiv RMX)
  14) Engage & Forbidden Society - RIGID CRASH
  15) Bad Company - BULLET TIME (SPOR RMX)
• BSE - Podcast 026 - Guestmix by Neonlight (00:45:08) Brand new hour long mix for drum'n'bass this time mixed by Neonlight!
• Timeless Shock Podcast 005 (01:00:08) Contrax
  check our Homepage: http://contrax-dnb.com
  
  check our twitter: https://twitter.com/Contrax_DnB
  
  check our facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ContraxEyepax
  
  check our soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/contraxmusik
  https://soundcloud.com/dnb_contrax
  Tracklist Contrax:
  01.Danny Howells - September (Furney Remix)
  02.Calibre - Broken
  03.BCee feat Lingby - Count The Stars (Joe Syntax Remix)
  04.BCee feat Lingby - Count The Stars (Hybrid Minds Remix)
  05.Command Strange - Do Me Right
  06.Eveson feat Jo-S - Time Flows By
  07.Hibea - The Form (Phil Tangent Remix)
  08.Lenzman - Empty Promise
  09.LSB - The Hurting
  10.London Elektricity - Just One Second (Apex Remix)
  11.Lomax, Eveson - Under The Bridge
  12.Pedestrian - Hoyle Road (SpectraSoul Remix)
  13.S.P.Y - One Last Quest
  14.Technimatic - The Unspoken
  15.Utah Jazz - Burn Out
  16.Colossus - Under The Weather
  
  Discord
  check Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/discorddnb
  
  check facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Discord
  Tracklist Discord:
  01.Fields - Behind The Curtains
  02.London Elecricity - Ugotta Be Crazy
  03.Calyx & Teebee - Scavenger
  04.Calyx & TeeBee - Elevate This Sound
  05.Commix - Ultra Clean
  06.Nickbee - Alien
  07chris su - Fade
  08.Lenzman - Ever so slghtly
  09.?
  10.Marky & Spy - Yellow Shoes
• BSE - Podcast 025 - Guestmix by State of Mind (00:57:58) Brand new hour long drum'n'bass mix, this time mixed by State of Mind!
• Timeless Shock Podcast 004 (00:43:51) 01.Yanntek-Night Flight
  02.The Upbeats-Beyond Reality
  03.Black Sun Empire-Eraser (Neonlight RMX)
  04.Blockhe4d & Gridlok-Dumptruck
  05.Phace & Misanthrop-Motor
  06.Defazed-Am i Dreaming
  07.Effector-Revival
  08.Braincrack-Bad Business
  09.Black Sun Empire-All Is Lost (Memtrix RMX)
  10.Joe Ford-City 17
  11.Contrax-Elevator
  12.Contrax-Predator
  13.Fourward-Talk To Me
  14.Telekinesis-She Wants To Skate
  15.Braincrack-Board Steppa
  16.Insom-Final Decision (Braincrack RMX)
  17.Chris Su-F.A.T.E.
  18.Tenet-Krasnodar
  19.The Upbeats-Alone (Fourward RMX)
  20.Fourward-Steady State VIP Mix
• BSE - Podcast 024 - Special Edition (01:00:15) A bit different then usual The first 30 mins contains just demos that were send to podcastdemo(at)gmail.com, feel free to send us more track (just mail 320mp3s) and maybe you will make it to the next edition or more ... The second part is the mix we did for Crissy Criss s show on one extra, notice the new label =)
• BSE - Podcast 023 (00:49:53) Brand new hour long mix for drum'n'bass this time mixed by State of Mind!
• Timeless Shock Podcast 003 (01:02:40) 1.S.P.Y.-What The Future Holds Feat. Ian Shaw
  2.Tokyo Prose-Raised By Wolves
  3.A Sides-Undeniable
  4.Static-Bad For Me Original Mix
  5.Benzla-Dusk
  6.June Miller-Brave Man
  7.Jakwob-Blinding Hybrid Minds Remix
  8.Macca and Vector-Dawn
  9.Blueprint And Self Definition-Embrace
  10.Bungle-Astral Travel
  11.Hybrid Minds-Meant to Be
  12.Getz-Just Don t
  13.Ivy Lab-Afterthought feat. Frank Carter III
  14.Gerwin amp Nuage-Lying Portraits feat. 2Shy
  15.BrokenDrum-In My Dreams
  16.Hybrid Minds-Blame
  17.Roy Green amp Protone-2 Hours
  18.Survival amp Silent Witness-Feel It Original Mix
  19.S.P.Y-Love Hurts
  20.Technimatic-Solace
  21.Technimatic-Unfinished Business
  22.Original Sin-only love
• BSE - Podcast 022 - Guestmix by The Upbeats (01:02:00) Brand new hour long mix for drum'n'bass this time mixed by the Upbeats!
• BSE - Podcast 021 (01:01:18) Brand new hour long mix for drum'n'bass!
• BSE - Podcast 020 - BBC1xtra Black Sun Empire guestmix (00:43:37) This is the mix we did for Bailey on BBC 1xtra! Full of fresh bits check itout
• Timeless Shock Podcast 002 (00:54:42) 1.Yanntek - Ancients Of Future Original Mix
  2.Incube amp Lost - Lifepath
  3.Agressor bunx - Chupacabra original mix
  4.Jade - Test Subject Original Mix
  5.Audio - Headroom Original Mix
  6.Vidual - Nile feat. Annihilus
  7.Semantics - Too Close
  8.Optiv BTK - Whatever Mefjus Remix
  9.Royalston - Late Nights
  10.Vidual amp Voice EE - Code Of The Samurai
  11.Mefjus M Force - Abandon Original Mix
  12.Mindscape - Stardust
  13.Teddy Killerz NPhonix - Scary
  14.No Remorse - The Circular Motion
  15.Brainfuzz - Method Lean Original Mix
  16.Blokhe4d amp Prolix - Switchblade
  17.Teddy Killerz - New Drums
  18.Incube amp Lost - Satellite
  19.Black Sun Empire feat. Foreign Beggars - Dawn Of A Dark Day Original
  20.Enei - Movin Fast June Miller Remix
  21.Contrax - Black Orbit
  22.Aeph - One Last Chance
• Timeless Shock Podcast 001 (00:46:23) 1.hybrid minds - fade
  2.spectrasoul - away with me
  3.bcee-beyond belief(technicolour komatic remix)
  4.hybrid minds - i am trough
  5.bachelors of science - beast
  6.hybrid minds - inner beauty
  7.hybrid minds - lost
  8.lsb - overthinking
  9.hybrid minds - summer rain
  10.sabre - oblique
  11.totally enormous - gareden ( calibre remix)
  12.eatherwood - spoken
  13.override - white lights
  14.madmen - scandinavian
  15.flirt with dirt - beyond the rise
  16.survival - locked
  17.hybrid minds - patience
• BSE - Podcast 019 - Guestmix by Optiv and BTK (00:43:37) Warming up for Blackout Belgium June 23rd a special mix by BTK and Optiv! BTK is playing a b2b set with Optical at Blackout Belgium and a solo set Blackout London in Cable July 21st! For more information check www.blackoutbelgium.be or www.facebook.com/blackoutbelgium
• BSE - Podcast 018 - Guestmix by N.Phect (00:53:15) This edition N.Phect brings you a fresh mix to celebrate his new release on Obsessions! enjoy! If you like the podcast make sure to like us at www.facebook.com/blacksunempire
• BSE - Podcast 017 - Guestmix by Audio (00:25:21) This edition Audio takes control and brings it hard! enjoy! If you like the podcast make sure to like us at www.facebook.com/blacksunempire
• BSE - Podcast 016 (00:34:21) Lets start of 2012 with loads of new dark beats! If you like the podcast make sure to like us at www.facebook.com/blacksunempire
• BSE - Podcast 015 (01:04:21) End of the summer holiday is near so its time for new beats!
• BSE - Podcast 014 Guestmix by Rido (01:04:21) New Podcast specially mixed for you by Rido, who is about release on our label oBSEssions.
• BSE - Podcast 013 Studio Brussel mix by Black Sun Empire (01:04:21) A mix we did for Studio Brussel to promote the release of our new album "Lights and Wires".
• BSE - Podcast 012 Guestmix by Chris.SU (01:04:21) New Podcast specially mixed for you by Chris.SU, who is about to finish his solo album F.A.T.E., but you can listen to some of the forthcoming tracks right here.
• BSE - Podcast 011 - Guestmix by Nymfo (01:04:21) Special deep guest mix by our buddy Nymfo, Big upppppp
• BSE - Podcast 010 - Classics for the New Year (01:04:21) Special mix with a collection of classic but still inspirational tracks
• BSE - Podcast 009 - Subsessions guest mix by BSE (00:39:21) A mix we did for Bulletproofs Subsessions radio show on George FM
• BSE - Podcast 008 - Studio Brussel mix by BSE (00:34:04) A mix we did for Studio Brussel
• BSE - Podcast 007 - Guestmix by Mindscape and Jade (00:54:25) A slamming new mix our friends Mindscape & Jade made for us with mashing it up hungerian style :)
• BSE - Podcast 006 - Guestmix by Eye-D (00:54:25) A slamming new mix our friend Eye-D made for us exploring the harder sides of d'n'b :)
• BSE - Podcast 005 - Guestmix for DNB Arena by Black Sun Empire (00:54:25) A new mix including some dubstep tracks by us which will be released on our new label Shadows of the Empire and of course tons of new tracks on Black Sun Empire Recordings, oBSessions and many others!
• BSE - Podcast 004 (00:54:25) A new mix including some dubstep tracks by us which will be released on our new label Shadows of the Empire and of course tons of new tracks on Black Sun Empire Recordings, oBSessions and many others!
• BSE - Podcast 003 - Guestmix by Isotone (00:41:27) this episode consists of a guest mix by Isotone!
• BSE - Podcast 002 (00:51:17) mix by black sun empire and an interview with telemetrik
• BSE - Podcast 001 (00:13:17) mix by black sun empire

You can also see the Python source for the program that was used to generate this page.

Dustin Kirkland wrote an interesting post about fingerprint authentication [1]. He suggests using fingerprints for identifying users (NOT authentication) and gives an example of a married couple sharing a tablet and using fingerprints to determine who s apps are loaded. In response Tollef Fog Heen suggests using fingerprints for lightweight authentication, such as resuming a session after a toilet break [2]. I think that one of the best comments on the issue of authentication for different tasks is in XKCD comic 1200 [3]. It seems obvious that the division between administrator (who installs new device drivers etc) and user (who does everything from playing games to online banking with the same privileges) isn t working, and never could work well particularly when the user in question installs their own software. I think that one thing which is worth considering is the uses of a signature. A signature can be easily forged in many ways and they often aren t checked well. It seems that there are two broad cases of using a signature, one is to enter into legally binding serious contract such as a mortgage (where wanting to sign is the relevant issue) and the other is cases where the issue doesn t matter so much (EG signing off on a credit card purchase where the parties at risk can afford to lose money on occasion for efficient transactions). Signing is relatively easy but that s because it either doesn t matter much or because it s just a legal issue which isn t connected to authentication. The possibility of serious damage (sending life savings or incriminating pictures to criminals in another jurisdiction) being done instantly never applied to signatures. It seems to me that in many ways signatures are comparable to fingerprints and both of them aren t particularly good for authentication to a computer. In regard to Tollef s ideas about lightweight authentication I think that the first thing that would be required is direct user control over the authentication required to unlock a system. I have read about some Microsoft research into a computer monitoring the office environment to better facilitate the user s requests, an obvious extension to such research would be to have greater unlock requirements if there are more unknown people in the area or if the device is in a known unsafe location. But apart from that sort of future development it seems that having the user request a greater or lesser authentication check either at the time they lock their session or by policy would make sense. Generally users have a reasonable idea about the risk of another user trying to login with their terminal so user should be able to decide that a toilet break when at home only requires a fingerprint (enough to keep out other family members) while a toilet break at the office requires greater authentication. Mobile devices could use GPS location to determine unlock requirements, GPS can be forged, but if your attacker is willing and able to do that then you have a greater risk than most users. Some users turn off authentication on their phone because it s too inconvenient. If they had the option of using a fingerprint most of the time and a password for the times when a fingerprint can t be read then it would give an overall increase in security. Finally it should be possible to unlock only certain applications. Recent versions of Android support widgets on the lock screen so you can perform basic tasks such as checking the weather forecast without unlocking your phone. But it should be possible to have different authentication requirements for various applications. Using a fingerprint scan to allow playing games or reading email in the mailing list folder would be more than adequate security. But reading the important email and using SMS probably needs greater authentication. This takes us back to the XKCD cartoon.

• [1] http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2013/10/fingerprints-are-user-names-not.html
• [2] http://tinyurl.com/lak528z
• [3] http://xkcd.com/1200/

This year I take care of organizing of the Debian booth at Chemnitzer Linux-Tage 2014 which has been approved a few days ago. The CLT is a yearly (mostly) german speaking Free Software community event which takes place on the weekend of 15th/16th march in Chemnitz (Germany). On the Linux-Live pages you find a lot of projects that will have a booth there and the talk schedule contains many interesting topics. There will also be a key signing event for which you can register until 11th of march. The Wiki page for the Event is already in a good shape. Many things are already organized, but we still have some items left. A lot of people from the Debian community have already told me that they will be there. We will have a Debian Wheezy BabelBox demonstration running on a VirtualBox host that Jan Wagner will provide as well as merchandising (Thanks to Alexander Wirt). Two talks from people on our Wiki page have been accepted by the CLT organizers too:

• Methoden zur Gewinnung neuer Teammitglieder by Andreas Tille
• Das Debian-LAN Projekt: Installation eines Debian-Netzwerks einfach gemacht by Andreas Mundt

I am happy to meet many nice people from the Free Software community in Chemnitz soon.

The home lab is my LAVA development environment and I ve recently got two iMX53 Quick Start Boards working with a typical LAVA master image based on a Linaro build of Linux 3.1.0 for mx5 with a Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot 11.10 rootfs:

 3.1.0-1002-linaro-lt-mx5 (buildd@hubbard) (gcc version 4.6.1 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.1-9ubuntu3) ) #13-Ubuntu PREEMPT Fri Dec 16 01:21:07 UTC 2011

As part of my Debian work, it was clearly time to look at a current, Debian, kernel and rootfs and as I m developing and testing on Debian unstable, this would necessarily mean testing the Debian ARMMP (multi-platform) kernel which replaces the mx5 build used in Wheezy.

Linux version 3.12-1-armmp (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 4.8.2 (Debian 4.8.2-10) ) #1 SMP Debian 3.12.9-1 (2014-02-01)

I will be scripting the creation of a suitable image for these tests and there are other changes planned in LAVA to make it easier to build suitable images, but it is useful to document just how I worked out how to build the first image. Manual build steps First, I ve already discovered that the u-boot on the iMX53 doesn t like ext4, so the first step was to prepare an ext3 filesystem for the image. With a SATA drive attached, it was also much better to use that than the SD card, at least for generating the image. I m also doing this natively, so I am working inside the booted master image. This is fine as the master is designed to manipulate test images, so the only package I needed to install on the LAVA master image was debootstrap. I had an empty SATA drive to play with for these tests, so first prepare an ext3 filesystem:

# mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
# mkdir /mnt/sata
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sata
# mkdir /mnt/sata/chroots/

Start the debootstrap:

# apt-get update
# apt-get install debootstrap
# debootstrap --arch=armhf --include=linux-image-armmp \
 --verbose unstable \
 /mnt/sata/chroots/unstable-armhf http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian

Various actions in this chroot will need proc, so mount it here:

# chroot /mnt/sata/chroots/unstable-armhf
# mount proc -t proc /proc
# mount devpts -t devpts /dev/pts
# exit

You may also have to edit the apt sources the LAVA master image doesn t have editors installed, so either use echo or download an edited file. I m using:

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian sid main

flash-kernel needs changes For the initial tests, I ve got to get this image to boot directly from u-boot, so flash-kernel is going to be needed inside the chroot and to get the iMX53 to work with the ARMMP kernel and Device Tree, flash-kernel will need an update which will mean a patch:

# chroot /mnt/sata/chroots/unstable-armhf
# apt-get update
# apt-get install patch flash-kernel
# cp /usr/share/flash-kernel/db/all.db /home
# cd /home
# patch -p2

The patch itself goes through a couple of iterations. Initially, it is enough to use:

 Machine: Freescale MX53 LOCO Board
-Kernel-Flavors: mx5
+Kernel-Flavors: armmp
+DTB-Id: imx53-qsb.dtb
+DTB-Append: yes

Later, once the device has booted with the ARMMP kernel, the Machine Id can be updated to distinguish it from the mx5 flavour (from /proc/cpuinfo) and use the model name from the Device Tree (/proc/device-tree/model):

diff --git a/db/all.db b/db/all.db
index fab3407..41f6c78 100644
--- a/db/all.db
+++ b/db/all.db
@@ -62,6 +62,18 @@ U-Boot-Initrd-Address: 0x00800000
 Required-Packages: u-boot-tools
 Bootloader-Sets-Incorrect-Root: yes
 
+Machine: Freescale i.MX53 Quick Start Board
+Kernel-Flavors: armmp
+DTB-Id: imx53-qsb.dtb
+DTB-Append-From: 3.12
+Boot-DTB-Path: /boot/dtb
+U-Boot-Kernel-Address: 0x70008000
+U-Boot-Initrd-Address: 0x0
+Boot-Kernel-Path: /boot/uImage
+Boot-Initrd-Path: /boot/uInitrd
+Required-Packages: u-boot-tools
+Bootloader-Sets-Incorrect-Root: no
+
 Machine: Freescale MX53 LOCO Board
 Kernel-Flavors: mx5
 U-Boot-Kernel-Address: 0x70008000

(I will be filing this patch in a bug report against flash-kernel soon.) With that patched, update and run flash-kernel:

# mv all.db /usr/share/flash-kernel/db/all.db
# flash-kernel
flash-kernel: installing version 3.12-1-armmp
Generating kernel u-boot image... done.
Taking backup of uImage.
Installing new uImage.
Generating initramfs u-boot image... done.
Taking backup of uInitrd.
Installing new uInitrd.
Installing new dtb.
# exit

LAVA overlays This will be a LAVA test image and it needs an overlay if you want a vanilla image, set up a passwd inside the chroot instead.

# cd /mnt/sata/chroots/unstable-armhf/
# wget --no-check-certificate https://launchpad.net/~linaro-maintainers/+archive/overlay/+files/linaro-overlay-minimal_1112.2_all.deb
# wget --no-check-certificate https://launchpad.net/~linaro-maintainers/+archive/overlay/+files/linaro-overlay_1112.2_all.deb
# chroot /mnt/sata/chroots/unstable-armhf/
# dpkg -i linaro-overlay-minimal_1112.2_all.deb linaro-overlay_1112.2_all.deb
# rm linaro-overlay-minimal_1112.2_all.deb linaro-overlay_1112.2_all.deb
# exit

Changes to allow the chroot to boot Now the chroot needs setting up as a boot image:

# chroot /mnt/sata/chroots/unstable-armhf/
# echo T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttymxc0 115200 vt102 >> ./etc/inittab
# echo auto lo eth0 > ./etc/network/interfaces.d/mx53loco
# echo iface lo inet loopback >> ./etc/network/interfaces.d/mx53loco
# echo iface eth0 inet dhcp >> ./etc/network/interfaces.d/mx53loco
# apt-get clean
# umount /dev/pts
# umount /proc
# exit

Partitioning as a LAVA test image This would be enough as a single partition test image but, currently, LAVA expects a much more hard-wired image. Depending on the history of the device and the need for LAVA to be able to put fresh kernel builds together with a known rootfs, LAVA has used a separate /boot and / partition in the test image for nearly all boards. Standard LAVA test images for many boards (like the iMX53) also have a small unallocated space at the start of the SD card, so until I can get LAVA upstream to handle test images of arbitrary design, I m adapting the image to suit the expectations inside LAVA. Yes, I know but it s better to get something working before spending time fixing things to make it work better. It will be fixed, in time. So I needed to separate out the /boot contents from the rest of the rootfs whilst keeping the chroot itself in a state which I can easily update and use to create other images.

# cd /mnt/sata/chroots/unstable-armhf/boot/
# tar -czf ../../boot.tar.gz ./*
# cd ..
# tar -czf ../root.tar.gz ./*

Now the test image file and its partitions:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/sata/images/empty/debian.img bs=1M count=1024
# cp /mnt/sata/images/empty/debian.img /mnt/sata/images/debian-unstable-armhf-armmp.img
# losetup /dev/loop0 /mnt/sata/images/debian-unstable-armhf-armmp.img
# parted /dev/loop0 -s unit mb mktable msdos
# parted /dev/loop0 -s unit mb mkpart primary 1 10
# parted /dev/loop0 -s unit mb mkpart primary 11 110
# parted /dev/loop0 -s unit mb mkpart primary 111 1024

I did make the mistake of using kpartx at this stage but there are many areas of confusion when translating the kpartx output to offsets for mount when parted is easier:

# parted /dev/loop0 unit B -s print
Model:  (file)
Disk /dev/loop0: 1073741824B
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number  Start       End          Size        Type     File system  Flags
 1      1048576B    10485759B    9437184B    primary
 2      10485760B   110100479B   99614720B   primary
 3      110100480B  1024458751B  914358272B  primary

Use the Start numbers and use losetup to create the loop devices for each
partition

# losetup -o 10485760 /dev/loop1 /dev/loop0
# losetup -o 110100480 /dev/loop2 /dev/loop0
# mkfs.vfat /dev/loop1
# mkfs.ext3 /dev/loop2

Now clean up the loop mountpoints:

# losetup -d /dev/loop2
# losetup -d /dev/loop1
# losetup -d /dev/loop0
# losetup -a

losetup -a should return nothing. If it doesn t, investigate the contents of /dev/mapper and use dmsetup remove until losetup -a does report empty. Otherwise the subsequent stages will fail. Now deploy the /boot contents into the empty image:

# mount -oloop,offset=10485760 /mnt/sata/images/debian-unstable-armhf-armmp.img /mnt/boot/
# pushd /mnt/boot/
# tar -xzf /mnt/sata/chroots/boot.tar.gz
# popd
# sync
# umount /mnt/boot/

and the / contents (removing the duplicate ./boot contents)

# mount -oloop,offset=110100480 /mnt/sata/images/debian-unstable-armhf-armmp.img /mnt/root/
# pushd /mnt/root
# tar -xzf /mnt/sata/chroots/root.tar.gz
# rm ./boot/*
# popd
# sync
# umount /mnt/root

Check the image

# mount -oloop,offset=10485760 debian-unstable-armhf-armmp.img /mnt/boot
# ls /mnt/boot
config-3.12-1-armmp  initrd.img-3.12-1-armmp  System.map-3.12-1-armmp  uImage  uInitrd  vmlinuz-3.12-1-armmp
# umount /mnt/boot
# mount -oloop,offset=110100480 debian-unstable-armhf-armmp.img /mnt/root
# ls /mnt/root
bin  boot  dev  etc  home  initrd.img  lib  lost+found  media  mnt  opt  proc  root  run  sbin  srv  sys  tmp  usr  var  vmlinuz
# ls /mnt/root/bin/auto-serial-console
/mnt/root/bin/auto-serial-console
# umount /mnt/root
# md5sum debian-unstable-armhf-armmp.img

Downloads Yes, I have put that file online, if you are interested. Do read the readme first though. Getting the image off the device

# ip a
# python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80 2>/dev/null

then wget (just http://, IP address / and the filename), md5sum , finish with Ctrl-C. Depending on setup, it may be quicker to transfer the uncompressed
file over a LAN than to let the device compress it. Your main machine
will do the compression much faster, even with a larger download. (It also helps to not compress the image on the device, you can
test the mount offsets more easily and do check that the image
can be mounted with the offsets from parted.) Results

• complete log of the first successful LAVA test of a Debian ARMMP kernel on an iMX53 (153k)
• LAVA submission JSON (only usable with a local URL of the image and a few tweaks to the standard LAVA mx53loco device configuration)
• LAVA result bundle (JSON) (75k)

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor	: 0
model name	: ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)
Features	: swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3 tls vfpd32 
CPU implementer	: 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant	: 0x2
CPU part	: 0xc08
CPU revision	: 5
Hardware	: Freescale i.MX53 (Device Tree Support)
Revision	: 0000
Serial		: 0000000000000000

# uname -a
Linux imx53-02 3.12-1-armmp #1 SMP Debian 3.12.9-1 (2014-02-01) armv7l GNU/Linux

# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Debian
Description:	Debian GNU/Linux unstable (sid)
Release:	unstable
Codename:	sid

Next! Yes, there is a lot to do from here on.

• The creation of the test image needs to be smoothed out and scripted. I m thinking that this would go into vmdebootstrap. Lars?
• LAVA needs to be less presumptive about the contents and partitioning of the test image.
• the Debian ARMMP kernel itself needs to regain SATA support (an update is already pending).
• I ve also got two Cubieboard2 devices and there is a sun7i-a20-cubieboard2.dtb file in the ARMMP kernel which deserves some investigation .

Then there is the whole issue of actually making this multi-platform. After all, it is far from ideal that a multi-platform kernel package has to have platform-specific operations using flash-kernel at each update. So Grub on ARM is going to be on the list of things to investigate .

Original sin I feel that I was somewhat born innocent, an animal with sound, primal instincts. But if I remained that way, I wouldn't be able to function in a complex society, so I got education. Education taught me what is expected from me in order to be accepted by my peers[1]. Education taught me more than that: it also taught me to enjoy what a complex society can give me: art, science, history, philosophy, adding depth of meaning and correlations to my perceptions and memories. Education wasn't perfect, though. Some of my educators obsessed about some of the expectations, and gave me rules to follow that aren't really needed to interact with a society. Sit down for hours in silence without complaining. Don't talk back to figures of authority, even when they are abusing me. Don't ever feel that my efforts in a task have been enough, because there is always something more that I could have done. Do what people expect me to do, regardless of what I wish to do. Do what I need to do, not what I want to do. So I grew up with a set of arbitrary expectations that weren't needed to function in a society, and weren't in any way meeting any of my needs, yet I still felt them as a part of me, putting every effort into meeting them that I would put in making myself happy. I like to call this set of learned arbitrary, unneeded expectations "neurosis". I like this as an interpretation of the "original sin" myth: in order to go from an innocent animal to a member of a complex society, I acquired a set of neuroses that make me behave in a meaningless way. Or, rephrased going along with the myth, that rob me of my innocence. In some environments like BDSM, many have a name for an unnegotiated practice forced on a person: they call it "abuse". It made sense to accept that I have been abused many times while being educated, because my educators also had their own baggage of parasite expectations, of neuroses. And since I don't currently know how I can ever be sure that I freed myself from all my neuroses, I feel like I should accept that it is possible that I do and will abuse others; by accepting it as a possibility, I hope at least to be able to realise as soon as possible that I am doing it, and try to stop. I have now realised that my life is far simpler and more rewarding when expectations are negotiated between all the parties involved. I have recently spent a substantial amount of my energy in recognising and renegotiating many of the expectations and the neuroses that I had learnt while growing up, and, who knows, perhaps this effort will continue throughout my life. So there you go, an agnostic atheist freeing himself of his original sin, and regaining his paradise lost one step at a time, alive, on earth. And enjoying every moment of it. [1] I suspect that is why people educated in a high class society tend to be accepted more easily by a high class society: they conform to the right set of expectations. But I digress.

Another post about the Valve/Collabora free games thing. This time, the bad bit people trying to scam free games from us. Before I start, I want to make one thing clear there are people who have requested keys who don t meet the criteria, but are honest and legitimate in their requests. This blogspam is not about them at all. If you re in that category, you re not being complained about. So. Some numbers. At time of writing, I ve assigned keys to 279 Debian Developers or Debian Maintainers almost 25% of the total eligible pool of about 1200. I ve denied 22 requests. Of these 10 were polite requests from people who didn t meet the conditions stated (e.g. Ubuntu developers rather than Debian). These folks weren t at all a problem for us, and I explained politely that they didn t meet the terms we had agreed at the time with Valve. No problem at all with those folks. Next, we have the chancers, 7 of them, who pretended to be eligible when they clearly weren t. For example, two people sent me signed requests pointing to their entry on the Debian New Maintainers page when challenged over the key not being in the keyring. The NM page showed that they had registered as non-uploading Debian Contributors a couple of hours previously. A few just claimed I am a DD, here is my signature when they weren t DDs at all. Those requests were also binned. And then we move onto the final category. These people tried identity theft, but did a terrible job of it. There were 5 people in this category:

From: Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxxx.xxxxxx@ieee.org>
Subject: free subscription to Debian Developer
8217 A205 5E57 043B 2883 054E 7F55 BB12 A40F 862E

This is not a signature, it s a fingerprint. Amusingly, it s not the fingerprint for the person who sent my mail, but that of Neil McGovern a co-worker at Collabora. Neil assured me he knew how to sign a mail properly, so I shitcanned that entry.

From: "Xxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx" <x.xxxxx@bbw-bremen.de>
Subject: Incoming!
Hey dude,
I want to have the redemption code you are offering for the Valve Games
mQGiBEVhrscRBAD4M5+qxhZUD67PIz0JeoJ0vB0hsLE6QPV144PLjLZOzHbl4H3N
...snip...
Lz8An1TEmmq7fltTpQ+Y1oWhnE8WhVeQAKCzh3MBoNd4AIGHcVDzv0N0k+bKZQ=3D=3D
=3Du/4R

Wat? Learn to GPG!

From: Xxxxxx-Xxxx Le Xxxxxxx Xxxx <xx.xxxxxxxxx@gmail.com>
Subject: pass steam
Hey me voila
Merci beaucoup
valve
2069 1DFC C2C9 8C47 9529 84EE 0001 8C22 381A 7594

Like the first one, a fingerprint. This one is for S bastien Villemot. Don t scammers know how to GPG sign?

From: "Xxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx" <xxxxxxxx@web.de>
Subject: thanks /DD/Steam gifts us finally something back
0x6864730DF095E5E4

Yet again, a fingerprint. This one is for Marco Nenciarini. I found this request particularly offensive due to the subject line the haughty tone from an identity thief struck me as astonishingly impertinent. Still, when will scammers learn to GPG?

From: Sven Hoexter <svenhoexter@gmail.com>
Subject: Valve produced games
I'm would like to get the valve produced games
My keyring: 0xA6DC24D9DA2493D1 Sven Hoexter <hoexter> sig:6

Easily the best scam effort, since this is the only one which both a) registered an email address under the name of a DD, and b) used a fingerprint which actually corresponds to that human. Sadly for the scammer, I m a suspicious kind of person, so my instinct was to verify the claim via IRC.

31-01-2014 16:52:48 > directhex: Hoaxter, have you started using gmail without updating your GPG key? (note: significantly more likely is someone trying to steal your identity a little to steal valve keys from collabora)
31-01-2014 16:54:51 < Hoaxter!~sh@duckpond6.stormbind.net: directhex: I do not use any Google services and did not change my key

So yeah. Nice try, scammer. I m not listing, in all of this, the mails which Neil received from people who didn t actually read his mail to d-d-a. I m also not listing a story which I ve only heard second ha actually no, this one is too good not to share. Someone went onto db.debian.org, did a search for every DD in France, and emailed every Jabber JID (since they look like email addresses) asking them to forward unwanted keys. All in all, the number of evildoers is quite low, relative to the number of legitimate claims 12 baddies to 279 legitimate keys issued. But still, this is why the whole key issuing thing has been taking me so long and why I have the convoluted signature-based validation system in place. Enjoy your keys, all 279 of you (or more by the time some of you read this). The offer has no explicit expiry on it Valve will keep issuing keys as long as there is reason to, and Collabora will continue to administer their allocation as long as they remain our clients. It s a joint gift to the community thousands of dollars worth of games from Valve, and a significant amount of my time to administer them from Collabora.

This weekend I attended FOSDEM, as I did for the past 4 years. As always, it was a great experience, even if most of the talks I attended were not so interesting. One of the great things about these events, is to get together with other Free Software enthusiasts. One of them introduced me to the new kid on the block: Telegram. It is advertised as a free and secure replacement for WhatsApp, a mobile application I have been refusing to use for months, much to the anger of friends and family. People use WhatsApp because it saves them money to send SMS-like messages to other people. Which in my mind does not make much sense, as I can use email or XMPP for that same purpose, without having to enter just another walled garden. Sadly, people nowadays are using email less and less, and think that it is easier to send a Facebook message (it is not), and XMPP has became a de-facto walled garden since Google betrayed its users by dropping federation. WhatsApp has the advantage of having millions of users already inside their walled garden, like it happened with Facebook, MSN, or ICQ back in the day. Their success can possibly be attributed to the foolproof system it uses to discover contacts: it just sends your entire address book to their servers for matching against already registered users, which is in itself enough reason not to use it. So, when I was told of a secure, free and open alternative, I was eager to try it out. I started by opening their website to see what it was about. There, I found the first signs that something was wrong: no mention of licenses, almost no technical detail of how the protocol works, or how security is achieved. Still, my friend wanted to talk to me, so I rushed to install it and accept a laundry list of permissions in Android. That was a big mistake. The first thing the application did was to check my address book for contacts, without my permission or knowledge. I got greeted by being told that some of my contacts already have Telegram installed, and since then I keep getting notification that some more of my geek friends are installing it. So it is obvious that this company got all my records, breaking my privacy and security. This is enough for me to remove this piece of software from my phone, but it is not the end of the story. When checking it in more detail I found several other problems. The supposed "secret chat" cannot be possibly secure, as there is no verification of the remote party. It "just works", who cares if there is a man in the middle or not. Supposedly it employs a peer-to-peer connection, but I haven't verified that. On the other hand, the non-"secret" conversations are all routed to the main server. The client-to-server communication is supposedly encrypted, but it uses a home-made protocol (which everybody knows is a recipe for disaster), and the server has access to the cleartext of all your communications. Then, browsing the website, I've found that this "open" and "free" offer does not even have all the source code released. In particular, the server code is not public, nor you can set up your own server. Of course, it does not have federation, so even with the server code you wouldn't be able to talk with your friends. It all depends on two men funding and maintaining the project, so when the funds run out, one can only expect that all the users will be left in the dark. I think these arguments are enough to realise that Telegram is only marginally better than WhatsApp. It offers encryption at the transport layer, but you still are contributing to another walled garden, you are at the mercy of a company which does not have a funding plan, and the security practises range from weak to disturbing. In closing, if you are going to compromise your privacy, give away all your contacts' information, and rely on a single company to keep in touch with people, you might as well go and use what everybody else is using. Update: Even before submitting this post, I've found that some more qualified people has already dissected Telegram and concluded that it is basically snake oil. Please see this article. and proceed to uninstall Telegram.