Search Results: "jan"

9 December 2016

Simon Richter: Busy

I'm fairly busy at the moment, so I don't really have time to work on free software, and when I do I really want to do something else than sit in front of a computer. I have declared email bankruptcy at 45,000 unread mails. I still have them, and plan to deal with them in small batches of a few hundred at a time, but in case you sent me something important, it is probably stuck in there. I now practice Inbox Zero, so resending it is a good way to reach me. For my Debian packages, not much changes. Any package with more than ten users is team maintained anyway. Sponsoring for the packages where I agreed to do so goes on. For KiCad, I won't get around to much of what I'd planned this year. Fortunately, at this point no one expects me to do anything soon. I still look into the CI system and unclog anything that doesn't clear on its own within a week. Plans for December: Plans for January: Plans for February: Other than that, reading lots of books and meeting other people.

7 December 2016

Shirish Agarwal: Day trip in Cape Town, part 2

Debconf16 logo The post continues from the last post shared. Let me get some interesting tit-bits not related to the day-trip out-of-the-way first I don t know whether we had full access to see all parts of fuller hall or not. Couple of days I was wondering around Fuller Hall, specifically next to where clothes were pressed. Came to know of the laundry service pretty late but still was useful. Umm next to where the ladies/gentleman pressed our clothes, there is a stairway which goes down. In fact even on the opposite side there is a stairway which goes down. I dunno if other people explored them or not. The jail inside and under UCT I was surprised and shocked to see bars in each room as well as connecting walkways etc. I felt a bit sad, confused and curious and went on to find more places like that. After a while I came up to the ground-level and enquired with some of the ladies therein. I was shocked to know that UCT some years ago (they were not specific) was a jail for people. I couldn t imagine that a place which has so much warmth (in people, not climate) could be evil in a sense. I was not able to get much information out of them about the nature of jail it was, maybe it is a dark past that nobody wants to open up, dunno. There were also two *important* aspects of UCT which Bernelle either forgot, didn t share or I just came to know via the Wikipedia page then but nothing else. 1. MeerKAT Apparently quite a bit of the technology was built-in UCT itself. This would have been interesting for geeks and wanna-be geeks like me 2. The OpenContent Initiative by UCT This would have been also something worth exploring. One more interesting thing which I saw was the French council in Cape Town from outside The French Council in cape town from outside I would urge to look at the picture in the gallery as the picture I shared doesn t really show all the details. For e.g. the typical large french windows which are the hall-mark of French architecture doesn t show its glory but if you look at 1306 2322 original picture instead of the 202 360 reproduction you will see that. You will also the insignia of the French Imperial Eagle whose history I came to know only after I looked it up on the Wikipedia page on that day. It seemed fascinating and probably would have the same pride as the State Emblem of India has for Indians with the four Asiatic Lions standing in a circle protecting each other. I also like the palm tree and the way the French Council seemed little and yet had character around all the big buildings. What also was interesting that there wasn t any scare/fear-build and we could take photos from outside unlike what I had seen and experienced in Doha, Qatar as far as photography near Western Embassies/Councils were concerned. One of the very eye-opening moments for me was also while I was researching flights from India to South Africa. While perhaps unconsciously I might have known that Middle East is close to India, in reality, it was only during the search I became aware that most places in Middle East by flight are only an hour or two away. This was shocking as there is virtually no mention of one of our neighbours when they are source of large-scale remittances every year. I mean this should have been in our history and geography books but most do not dwell on the subject. It was only during and after that I could understand Mr. Modi s interactions and trade policies with the Middle East. Another interesting bit was seeing a bar in a Sprinbok bus spingbok atlas bar in bus While admittedly it is not the best picture of the bar, I was surprised to find a bar at the back of a bus. By bar I mean a machine which can serve anything from juices to alcoholic drinks depending upon what is stocked. What was also interesting in the same bus is that the bus also had a middle entrance-and-exit. The middle door in springbok atlas This is something I hadn t seen in most Indian buses. Some of the Volvo buses have but it is rarely used (only except emergencies) . An exhaustive showcase of local buses can be seen here . I find the hand-drawn/cad depictions of all the buses by Amit Pense near to the T. Axe which can be used to break windows Emergency exit window This is also something which I have not observed in Indian inter-city buses (axe to break the window in case of accident and breakable glass which doesn t hurt anyone I presume), whether they are State-Transport or the high-end Volvo s . Either it s part of South African Roads Regulations or something that Springbok buses do for their customers. All of these queries about the different facets I wanted to ask the bus-driver and the attendant/controller but in the excitement of seeing, recording new things couldn t ask In fact one of the more interesting things I looked at and could look day and night is the variety of vehicles on display in Cape Town. In hindsight, I should have bought a couple of 128 GB MMC cards for my mobile rather than the 64 GB one. It was just plain inadequate to capture all that was new and interesting. Auditorum chair truck seen near Auditorium This truck I had seen about some 100 metres near the Auditorium on Upper Campus. The truck s design, paint was something I had never seen before. It is/was similar to casket trucks seen in movies but the way it was painted and everything made it special. What was interesting is to see the gamut of different vehicles. For instance, there were no bicycles that I saw in most places. There were mostly Japanese/Italian bikes and all sorts of trucks. If I had known before, I would definitely have bought an SD specifically to take snaps of all the different types of trucks, cars etc. that I saw therein. The adage/phrase I should stop in any one place and the whole world will pass me by seemed true on quite a few South African Roads. While the roads were on par or a shade better than India, many of those were wide roads. Seeing those, I was left imagining how the Autobahn in Germany and other high-speed Expressways would look n feel. India has also been doing that with the Pune-Mumbai Expressway and projects like Yamuna Expressway and now the extension Agra Lucknow Expressway but doing this all over India would take probably a decade or more. We have been doing it since a decade and a half. NHDP and PMGSY are two projects which are still ongoing to better the roads. We have been having issues as to should we have toll or no toll issues but that is a discussion for some other time. One of the more interesting sights I saw was the high-arched gothic-styled church from outside. This is near Longstreet as well. high arch gothic-styled church I have seen something similar in Goa, Pondicherry but not such high-arches. I did try couple of times to gain entry but one time it was closed, the other time some repairing/construction work was going on or something. I would loved to see it from inside and hopefully they would have had an organ (music) as well. I could imagine to some extent the sort of music that would have come out. Now that Goa has come in the conversation I can t help but state that Seafood enthusiasts/lover/aficionado, or/and Pescatarianism would have a ball of a time in Goa. Goa is on the Konkan coast and while I m eggie, ones who enjoy seafood really have a ball of a time in Goa. Fouthama s Festival which happens in February is particularly attractive as Goan homes are thrown open for people to come and sample their food, exchange recipes and alike. This happens around 2 weeks before the Goan Carnival and is very much a part of the mish-mashed Konkani-Bengali-Parsi-Portugese culture. I better stop here about the Goa otherwise I ll get into reminiscing mode. To put the story and event back on track from where we left of (no fiction hereon), Nicholas was in constant communication with base, i.e. UCT as well as another group who was hiking from UCT to Table Mountain. We waited for the other group to join us till 13:00 hrs. We came to know that they were lost and were trying to come up and hence would take more time. As Bernelle was with them, who was a local and she had two dogs who knew the hills quite well, it was decided to go ahead without them. We came down the same cable-car and then ventured on towards Houtbay. Houtbay has it all, a fisherman s wharf, actual boats with tough-mean looking men with tattoos working on boats puffing cigars/pipes, gaggle of sea-gulls, the whole scene. Sharing a few pictures of the way in-between. the view en-route to Houtbay western style car paint and repair shop Tajmahal Indian Restaurant, Houtbay I just now had a quick look at the restaurant and it seems they had options for veggies too. Unfortunately, the rating leaves a bit to be desired but then dunno as Indian flavoring is something that takes time to get used too. Zomato doesn t give any idea of from when a restaurant is in business and has too few reviews so not easy to know how the experience would have been. Chinese noodles and small houses Notice the pattern, the pattern of small houses I saw all the way till Houtbay and back. I do vaguely remember starting a discussion about it on the bus but don t really remember. I have seen (on TV) cities like Miami, Dubai or/and Hong Kong who have big buildings on the beach but both in Konkan as well as Houtbay there were small buildings. I guess a combination of zoning regulations, feel of community, fear of being flooded all play into beaches being the way they are. Also, this probably is good as less stress on the environment. Miamiboyz from Wikimedia Commons The above picture is taken from Wikipedia from the article Miami Beach, Florida for comparison. Audi rare car to be seen in India The Audi rare car to be seen in India. This car has been associated with Ravi Shastri when he won it in 1985. I was young but still get goosebumps remembering those days. first-glance-Houtbay-and-pier First glance of Houtbay beach and pier. Notice how clean and white the beach is. Wharf-Grill-Restaurant-from-side-and-Hop-on-Hop-off-bus You can see the wharf grill restaurant in the distance (side-view), see the back of the hop on and hop off bus (a concept which was unknown to me till then). Once I came back and explored on the web came to know this concept is prevalent in many a touristy places around the world. Umm also By sheer happenchance also captured a beautiful looking Indian female . So many things happening all at once In Hindi, we would call this picture virodabhas or contradiction . this is in afternoon, around 1430 hrs. You have the sun, the clouds, the Mountains, the x number of boats, the pier, the houses, the cars, the shops. It was all crazy and beautiful at the same time. The Biggest Contradiction is seeing the Mountain, the beach and the Sea in the same Picture. Baffled the mind. Konkan though is a bit similar there as well. You have all the three things in some places but that s a different experience altogether as ours is a more tropical weather although is one of the most romantic places in the rains. We were supposed to go on a short cruise to seal/dolphin island but as we were late (as had been waiting for the other group) didn t go and instead just loitered there. Fake-real lookout bar-restaurant IIRC the lookout bar is situated just next to Houtbay Search and Rescue. Although was curious if the Lookout tower was used in case of disappearance. lost people, boats etc. Seal in action Seal jumping over water, what a miracle ! One of the boats on which we possibly could have been on. It looked like the boat we could have been on. I clicked as I especially liked the name Calypso and Calypso . I shared the two links as the mythologies, interpretation differ a bit between Greek and Hollywood culture Debian folks and the area around Can see few Debian folks in the foreground, next to the Pole and the area around. Also can see a bit of the area around. Alone boy trying to surf I don t know anything about water sports and after sometime he came out. I was left wondering though, how safe he was in that water. While he was close to the pier and he was just paddling, there weren t big waves still felt a bit of concern. Mr. Seal - the actor and his handler While the act was not to the level we see in the movies, still for the time I hung around, I saw him showing attitude for his younger audiences, eating out of their hands, making funny sounds. Btw he farted a few times, whether that was a put-on or not can t really say but produced a few guffaws from his audience. A family feeding Mr. Seal I dunno why the birds came down for. Mr. Seal was being fed oily small fish parts, dunno if the oil was secreted by the fish themselves or whatever, it just looked oily from distance. Bird-Man-Bird Bird taking necessary sun bath typical equipment on a boat to catch fish-lot of nets boats-nets-and-ropes People working on disentangling a net There wasn t much activity on the time we went. It probably would have been different on sunrise and would be on sunset. The only activity I saw was on this boat where they were busy fixing and disentangling the lines. I came up with 5-15 different ideas for a story but rejected them as a. Probably all of them have been tried. People have been fishing since the beginning of time and modern fishing probably 200 odd years or so. I have read accounts of fishing companies in early 1800s onwards, so probably all must have been tried. b. More dangerous one, if there is a unique idea, then it becomes more dangerous as writing is an all-consuming process. Writing a blog post (bad or good) takes lots of time. I constantly read, re-read, try and improvise till I can or my patience loses out. In book you simply can t have such luxuries. hout-bay-search-and-rescue-no-parking-zone No parking/tow zone in/near the Houtbay search and rescue. Probably to take out emergency vehicles once something untoward happens. hout-bay-sea-rescue-with-stats Saved 54 lives, boats towed 154 Salut! Houtbay sea rescue. The different springbok atlas bus that we were on kraal-kraft The only small criticism is for Houtbay there wasn t a single public toilet. We had to ask favor at kraal kraft to use their toilets and there could have been accidents, it wasn t lighted well and water was spilled around. Road sign telling that we are near to UCT For us, because we were late we missed both the boat-cruise as well as some street shops selling trinkets. Other than that it was all well. We should have stayed till sunset, I am sure the view would have been breath-taking but we hadn t booked the bus till evening. Back at UCT Overall it was an interesting day as we had explored part of Table Mountain, seen the somewhat outrageously priced trinkets there as well as explored Houtbay sea-side as well.
Filed under: Miscellenous Tagged: #Audi, #Cape Town, #Cruises, #Debconf16, #French Council, #Geography, #Houtbay Sea Rescue, #Jail, #Middle East, #Springbok Atlas, #Vehicles

5 December 2016

Shirish Agarwal: The Anti-Pollito squad arrest and confession

Disclaimer This is an attempt at humor and hence entirely fictional in nature. While some incidents depicted are true, the context and the story woven around them are by yours truly. None of the Mascots of Debian were hurt during the blog post . I also disavow any responsibility for any hurt (real or imagined) to any past, current and future mascots. The attempt should not be looked upon as demeaning people who are accused of false crimes, tortured and confessions eked out of them as this happens quite a lot (In India for sure, but guess it s the same world over in various degrees). The idea is loosely inspired by Chocolate:Deep Dark Secrets. (2005) On a more positive note, let s start Being a Sunday morning woke up late to find incessant knocking on the door, incidentally mum was not at home. Opening the door, found two official looking gentleman. They asked my name, asked my credentials, tortured and arrested me for Group conspiracy of Malicious Mischief in second and third degrees . The torture was done by means of making me forcefully watch endless reruns of Norbit . While I do love Eddie Murphy, this was one of his movies he could have done without . I guess for many people watching it once was torture enough. I *think* they were nominated for razzie awards dunno if they won it or not, but this is beside the point. Unlike the 20 years it takes for a typical case to reach to its conclusion even in the smallest court in India, due to the torture, I was made to confess (due to endless torture) and was given summary judgement. The judgement was/is as follows a. Do 100 hours of Community service in Debian in 2017. This could be done via blog posts, raising tickets in the Debian BTS or in whichever way I could be helpful to Debian. b. Write a confessional with some photographic evidence sharing/detailing some of the other members who were part of the conspiracy in view of the reduced sentence. So now, have been forced to write this confession As you all know, I won a bursary this year for debconf16. What is not known by most people is that I also got an innocuous looking e-mail titled Pollito for DPL . While I can t name all the names as investigation is still ongoing about how far-reaching the conspiracy is . The email was purportedly written by members of cabal within cabal which are in Debian. I looked at the email header to see if this was genuine and I could trace the origin but was left none the wiser, as obviously these people are far more technically advanced than to fall in simple tricks like this Anyways, secretly happy that I have been invited to be part of these elites, I did the visa thing, packed my bags and came to Debconf16. At this point in juncture, I had no idea whether it was real or I had imagined the whole thing. Then to my surprise saw this evidence of conspiracy to have Pollito as DPL, Wifi Password Just like the Illuminati the conspiracy was for all to see those who knew about it. Most people were thinking of it as a joke, but those like me who had got e-mails knew better. I knew that the thing is real, now I only needed to bide my time and knew that the opportunity would present itself. And few days later, sure enough, there was a trip planned for Table Mountain, Cape Town . Few people planned to hike to the mountain, while few chose to take the cable car till up the mountain. First glance of the cable car with table mountain as background Quite a few people came along with us and bought tickets for the to and fro to the mountain and back. Ticket for CPT Table mountain car cable Incidentally, I was thinking if the South African Govt. were getting the tax or not. If you look at the ticket, there is just a bar-code. In India as well as the U.S. there is TIN Tax Identification Number TIN displayed on an invoice from channeltimes.com Few links to share what it is all about . While these should be on all invoices, need to specially check when taking high-value items. In India as shared in the article the awareness, knowledge leaves a bit to be desired. While I m drifting from the incident, it would be nice if somebody from SA could share how things work there. Moving on, we boarded the cable car. It was quite spacious cable car with I guess around 30-40 people or some more who were able to see everything along with the controller. from inside the table mountain cable car 360 degrees It was a pleasant cacophony of almost two dozen or more nationalities on this 360 degrees moving chamber. I was a little worried though as it essentially is a bucket and there is always a possibility that a severe wind could damage it. Later somebody did share that some frightful incidents had occurred not too long ago on the cable car. It took about 20-25 odd minutes to get to the top of table mountain and we were presented with views such as below View from Table Mountain cable car looking down The picture I am sharing is actually when we were going down as all the pictures of going up via the cable car were over-exposed. Also, it was pretty crowded on the way up then on the way down so handling the mobile camera was not so comfortable. Once we reached up, the wind was blowing at incredible speeds. Even with my jacket and everything I was feeling cold. Most of the group around 10-12 people looked around if we could find a place to have some refreshments and get some of the energy in the body. So we all ventured to a place and placed our orders the bleh... Irish coffee at top of Table Mountain I was introduced to Irish Coffee few years back and have had some incredible Irish Coffees in Pune and elsewhere. I do hope to be able to make Irish Coffee at home if and when I have my own house. This is hotter than brandy and is perfect if you are suffering from cold etc if done right, really needs some skills. This is the only drink which I wanted in SA which I never got right . As South Africa was freezing for me, this would have been the perfect antidote but the one there as well as elsewhere were all bleh. What was interesting though, was the coffee caller besides it. It looked like a simple circuit mounted on a PCB board with lights, vibrations and RFID and it worked exactly like that. I am guessing as and when the order is ready, there is an interrupt signal sent via radio waves which causes the buzzer to light and vibrate. Here s the back panel if somebody wants to take inspiration and try it as a fun project backpanel of the buzz caller Once we were somewhat strengthened by the snacks, chai, coffee etc. we made our move to seeing the mountain. The only way to describe it is that it s similar to Raigad Fort but the plateau seemed to be bigger. The wikipedia page of Table Mountain attempts to share but I guess it s more clearly envisioned by one of the pictures shared therein. table mountain panaromic image I have to say while Table Mountain is beautiful and haunting as it has scenes like these Some of the oldest rocks known to wo/man. There is something there which pulls you, which reminds you of a long lost past. I could have simply sat there for hours together but as was part of the group had to keep with them. Not that I minded. The moment I was watching this, I was transported to some memories of the Himalayas about 20 odd years or so. In that previous life, I had the opportunity to be with some of the most beautiful women and also been in the most happening places, the Himalayas. I had shared years before some of my experiences I had in the Himalayas. I discontinued it as I didn t have a decent camera at that point in time. While I don t wanna digress, I would challenge anybody to experience the Himalayas and then compare. It is just something inexplicable. The beauty and the rawness that Himalayas shows makes you feel insignificant and yet part of the whole cosmos. What Paulo Cohello expressed in The Valkyries is something that could be felt in the Himalayas. Leh, Ladakh, Himachal , Garwhal, Kumaon. The list will go on forever as there are so many places, each more beautiful than the other. Most places are also extremely backpacker-friendly so if you ask around you can get some awesome deals if you want to spend more than a few days in one place. Moving on, while making small talk @olasd or Nicolas Dandrimont , the headmaster of our trip made small talk to each of us and eked out from all of us that we wanted to have Pollito as our DPL (Debian Project Leader) for 2017. Few pictures being shared below as supporting evidence as well The Pollito as DPL cabal in action members of the Pollito as DPL where am I or more precisely how far am I from India. While I do not know who further up than Nicolas was on the coup which would take place. The idea was this If the current DPL steps down, we would take all and any necessary actions to make Pollito our DPL. Pollito going to SA - photo taken by Jonathan Carter This has been taken from Pollito s adventure Being a responsible journalist, I also enquired about Pollito s true history as it would not have been complete without one. This is the e-mail I got from Gunnar Wolf, a friend and DD from Mexico
Turns out, Valessio has just spent a week staying at my house And
in any case, if somebody in Debian knows about Pollito s
childhood That is me. Pollito came to our lives when we went to Congreso Internacional de
Software Libre (CISOL) in Zacatecas city. I was strolling around the
very beautiful city with my wife Regina and our friend Alejandro
Miranda, and at a shop at either Ram n L pez Velarde or Vicente
Guerrero, we found a flock of pollitos. http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/22.77111/-102.57145 Even if this was comparable to a slave market, we bought one from
them, and adopted it as our own. Back then, we were a young couple Well, we were not that young
anymore. I mean, we didn t have children. Anyway, we took Pollito with
us on several road trips, such as the only time I have crossed an
international border driving: We went to Encuentro Centroamericano de
Software Libre at Guatemala city in 2012 (again with Alejandro), and
you can see several Pollito pics at: http://gwolf.org/album/road-trip-ecsl-2012-guatemala-0 Pollito likes travelling. Of course, when we were to Nicaragua for
DebConf, Pollito tagged along. It was his first flight as a passenger
(we never asked about his previous life in slavery; remember, Pollito
trust no one). Pollito felt much welcome with the DebConf crowd. Of course, as
Pollito is a free spirit, we never even thought about forcing him to
come back with us. Pollito went to Switzerland, and we agreed to meet
again every year or two. It s always nice to have a chat with him. Hugs!
So with that backdrop I would urge fellow Debianities to take up the slogans LONG LIVE THE DPL ! LONG LIVE POLLITO ! LONG LIVE POLLITO THE DPL ! The first step to make Pollito the DPL is to ensure he has a @debian.org (pollito@debian.org) We also need him to be made a DD because only then can he become a DPL. In solidarity and in peace
Filed under: Miscellenous Tagged: #caller, #confession, #Debconf16, #debian, #Fiction, #history, #Pollito, #Pollito as DPL, #Table Mountain, Cabal, memories, south africa

3 December 2016

Ross Gammon: My Open Source Contributions June November 2016

So much for my monthly blogging! Here s what I have been up to in the Open Source world over the last 6 months. Debian Ubuntu Other Plan for December Debian Before the 5th January 2017 Debian Stretch soft freeze I hope to: Ubuntu Other

2 December 2016

Raphaël Hertzog: My Free Software Activities in November 2016

My monthly report covers a large part of what I have been doing in the free software world. I write it for my donors (thanks to them!) but also for the wider Debian community because it can give ideas to newcomers and it s one of the best ways to find volunteers to work with me on projects that matter to me. Debian LTS In the 11 hours of (paid) work I had to do, I managed to release DLA-716-1 aka tiff 4.0.2-6+deb7u8 fixing CVE-2016-9273, CVE-2016-9297 and CVE-2016-9532. It looks like this package is currently getting new CVE every month. Then I spent quite some time to review all the entries in dla-needed.txt. I wanted to get rid of some misleading/no longer applicable comments and at the same time help Olaf who was doing LTS frontdesk work for the first time. I ended up tagging quite a few issues as no-dsa (meaning that we will do nothing for them as they are not serious enough) such as those affecting dwarfutils, dokuwiki, irssi. I dropped libass since the open CVE is disputed and was triaged as unimportant. While doing this, I fixed a bug in the bin/review-update-needed script that we use to identify entries that have not made any progress lately. Then I claimed libgc and and released DLA-721-1 aka libgc 1:7.1-9.1+deb7u1 fixing CVE-2016-9427. The patch was large and had to be manually backported as it was not applying cleanly. The last thing I did was to test a new imagemagick and review the update prepared by Roberto. pkg-security work The pkg-security team is continuing its good work: I sponsored patator to get rid of a useless dependency on pycryptopp which was going to be removed from testing due to #841581. After looking at that bug, it turns out the bug was fixed in libcrypto++ 5.6.4-3 and I thus closed it. I sponsored many uploads: polenum, acccheck, sucrack (minor updates), bbqsql (new package imported from Kali). A bit later I fixed some issues in the bbsql package that had been rejected from NEW. I managed a few RC bugs related to the openssl 1.1 transition: I adopted sslsniff in the team and fixed #828557 by build-depending on libssl1.0-dev after having opened the proper upstream ticket. I did the same for ncrack and #844303 (upstream ticket here). Someone else took care of samdump2 but I still adopted the package in the pkg-security team as it is a security relevant package. I also made an NMU for axel and #829452 (it s not pkg-security related but we still use it in Kali). Misc Debian work Django. I participated in the discussion about a change letting Django count the number of developers that use it. Such a change has privacy implications and the discussion sparked quite some interest both in Debian mailing lists and up to LWN. On a more technical level, I uploaded version 1.8.16-1~bpo8+1 to jessie-backports (security release) and I fixed RC bug #844139 by backporting two upstream commits. This led to the 1.10.3-2 upload. I ensured that this was fixed in the 1.10.x upstream branch too. dpkg and merged /usr. While reading debian-devel, I discovered dpkg bug #843073 that was threatening the merged-/usr feature. Since the bug was in code that I wrote a few years ago, and since Guillem was not interested in fixing it, I spent an hour to craft a relatively clean patch that Guillem could apply. Unfortunately, Guillem did not yet manage to pull out a new dpkg release with the patches applied. Hopefully it won t be too long until this happens. Debian Live. I closed #844332 which was a request to remove live-build from Debian. While it was marked as orphaned, I was always keeping an eye on it and have been pushing small fixes to git. This time I decided to officially adopt the package within the debian-live team and work a bit more on it. I reviewed all pending patches in the BTS and pushed many changes to git. I still have some pending changes to finish to prettify the Grub menu but I plan to upload a new version really soon now. Misc bugs filed. I filed two upstream tickets on uwsgi to help fix currently open RC bugs on the package. I filed #844583 on sbuild to support arbitrary version suffix for binary rebuild (binNMU). And I filed #845741 on xserver-xorg-video-qxl to get it fixed for the xorg 1.19 transition. Zim. While trying to fix #834405 and update the required dependencies, I discovered that I had to update pygtkspellcheck first. Unfortunately, its package maintainer was MIA (missing in action) so I adopted it first as part of the python-modules team. Distro Tracker. I fixed a small bug that resulted in an ugly traceback when we got queries with a non-ASCII HTTP_REFERER. Thanks See you next month for a new summary of my activities.

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30 November 2016

Chris Lamb: Free software activities in November 2016

Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world (previous month):
Reproducible builds

Whilst anyone can inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, most software is distributed pre-compiled to end users. The motivation behind the Reproducible Builds effort is to permit verification that no flaws have been introduced either maliciously or accidentally during this compilation process by promising identical results are always generated from a given source, thus allowing multiple third-parties to come to a consensus on whether a build was compromised.

This month:

My work in the Reproducible Builds project was also covered in our weekly reports. (#80, #81, #82 #83.

Toolchain issues I submitted the following patches to fix reproducibility-related toolchain issues with Debian:

strip-nondeterminism

strip-nondeterminism is our tool to remove specific non-deterministic results from a completed build.


jenkins.debian.net

jenkins.debian.net runs our comprehensive testing framework.

  • buildinfo.debian.net has moved to SSL. (ac3b9e7)
  • Submit signing keys to keyservers after generation. (bdee6ff)
  • Various cosmetic changes, including
    • Prefer if X not in Y over if not X in Y. (bc23884)
    • No need for a dictionary; let's just use a set. (bf3fb6c)
    • Avoid DRY violation by using a for loop. (4125ec5)

I also submitted 9 patches to fix specific reproducibility issues in apktool, cairo-5c, lava-dispatcher, lava-server, node-rimraf, perlbrew, qsynth, tunnelx & zp.
Debian

Debian LTS This month I have been paid to work 11 hours on Debian Long Term Support (LTS). In that time I did the following:
  • "Frontdesk" duties, triaging CVEs, etc.
  • Issued DLA 697-1 for bsdiff fixing an arbitrary write vulnerability.
  • Issued DLA 705-1 for python-imaging correcting a number of memory overflow issues.
  • Issued DLA 713-1 for sniffit where a buffer overflow allowed a specially-crafted configuration file to provide a root shell.
  • Issued DLA 723-1 for libsoap-lite-perl preventing a Billion Laughs XML expansion attack.
  • Issued DLA 724-1 for mcabber fixing a roster push attack.
Uploads
  • redis:
    • 3.2.5-2 Tighten permissions of /var/ lib,log /redis. (#842987)
    • 3.2.5-3 & 3.2.5-4 Improve autopkgtest tests and install upstream's MANIFESTO and README.md documentation.
  • gunicorn (19.6.0-9) Adding autopkgtest tests.
  • libfiu:
    • 0.94-1 Add autopkgtest tests.
    • 0.95-1, 0.95-2 & 0.95-3 New upstream release and improve autopkgtest coverage.
  • python-django (1.10.3-1) New upstream release.
  • aptfs (0.8-3, 0.8-4 & 0.8-5) Adding and subsequently improving the autopkgtext tests.


I performed the following QA uploads:


Finally, I also made the following non-maintainer uploads:
  • libident (0.22-3.1) Move from obsolete Source-Version substvar to binary:Version. (#833195)
  • libpcl1 (1.6-1.1) Move from obsolete Source-Version substvar to binary:Version. (#833196)
  • pygopherd (2.0.18.4+nmu1) Move from obsolete Source-Version substvar to $ source:Version . (#833202)
RC bugs


I also filed 59 FTBFS bugs against arc-gui-clients, asyncpg, blhc, civicrm, d-feet, dpdk, fbpanel, freeciv, freeplane, gant, golang-github-googleapis-gax-go, golang-github-googleapis-proto-client-go, haskell-cabal-install, haskell-fail, haskell-monadcatchio-transformers, hg-git, htsjdk, hyperscan, jasperreports, json-simple, keystone, koji, libapache-mod-musicindex, libcoap, libdr-tarantool-perl, libmath-bigint-gmp-perl, libpng1.6, link-grammar, lua-sql, mediatomb, mitmproxy, ncrack, net-tools, node-dateformat, node-fuzzaldrin-plus, node-nopt, open-infrastructure-system-images, open-infrastructure-system-images, photofloat, ppp, ptlib, python-mpop, python-mysqldb, python-passlib, python-protobix, python-ttystatus, redland, ros-message-generation, ruby-ethon, ruby-nokogiri, salt-formula-ceilometer, spykeviewer, sssd, suil, torus-trooper, trash-cli, twisted-web2, uftp & wide-dhcpv6.
FTP Team

As a Debian FTP assistant I ACCEPTed 70 packages: bbqsql, coz-profiler, cross-toolchain-base, cross-toolchain-base-ports, dgit-test-dummy, django-anymail, django-hstore, django-html-sanitizer, django-impersonate, django-wkhtmltopdf, gcc-6-cross, gcc-defaults, gnome-shell-extension-dashtodock, golang-defaults, golang-github-btcsuite-fastsha256, golang-github-dnephin-cobra, golang-github-docker-go-events, golang-github-gogits-cron, golang-github-opencontainers-image-spec, haskell-debian, kpmcore, libdancer-logger-syslog-perl, libmoox-buildargs-perl, libmoox-role-cloneset-perl, libreoffice, linux-firmware-raspi3, linux-latest, node-babel-runtime, node-big.js, node-buffer-shims, node-charm, node-cliui, node-core-js, node-cpr, node-difflet, node-doctrine, node-duplexer2, node-emojis-list, node-eslint-plugin-flowtype, node-everything.js, node-execa, node-grunt-contrib-coffee, node-grunt-contrib-concat, node-jquery-textcomplete, node-js-tokens, node-json5, node-jsonfile, node-marked-man, node-os-locale, node-sparkles, node-tap-parser, node-time-stamp, node-wrap-ansi, ooniprobe, policycoreutils, pybind11, pygresql, pysynphot, python-axolotl, python-drizzle, python-geoip2, python-mockupdb, python-pyforge, python-sentinels, python-waiting, pythonmagick, r-cran-isocodes, ruby-unicode-display-width, suricata & voctomix-outcasts. I additionally filed 4 RC bugs against packages that had incomplete debian/copyright files against node-cliui, node-core-js, node-cpr & node-grunt-contrib-concat.

27 November 2016

Dirk Eddelbuettel: anytime 0.1.1: More robust

CRAN just accepted the newest release 0.1.1 of anytime, following the previous five releases since September. anytime is a very focussed package aiming to do just one thing really well: to convert anything in integer, numeric, character, factor, ordered, ... format to POSIXct (or Date) objects -- and to do so without requiring a format string. See the anytime page, or the GitHub README.md for a few examples, or just consider the following illustration: 
R> library(anytime)
R> anytime("20161107 202122")   ## all digits
[1] "2016-11-07 20:21:22 CST"
R> utctime("2016Nov07 202122")  ## UTC parse example
[1] "2016-11-07 14:21:22 CST"
R>
Release 0.1.1 robustifies two aspects. The 'digits only' input above extends what Boost Date_Time can parse and relies on simple-enough pre-processing. This operation is now more robust. We also ensure that input already of class Date is simply passed through by anydate() or utcdate(). Last but not least we added code coverage support, which oh-so-predictably lead us to game this metric to reach the elusive 100% coverage. The NEWS file summarises the release:

Changes in anytime version 0.1.1 (2016-11-27)
  • Both anydate() and utcdate() no longer attempt to convert an input value that is already of type Date.
  • The string splitter (needed for the 'all-digits' formats extending Boost Date_time) is now more defensive about the input argument and more robust. Thanks to Bob Jansen for the heads-up (PR #30 closing issue #29).
  • Code coverage reporting has been added (PR #31).

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is a comparison to the previous release. More information is on the anytime page. For questions or comments use the issue tracker off 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.

25 November 2016

Julian Andres Klode: Starting the faster, more secure APT 1.4 series

We just released the first beta of APT 1.4 to Debian unstable (beta here means that we don t know any other big stuff to add to it, but are still open to further extensions). This is the release series that will be released with Debian stretch, Ubuntu zesty, and possibly Ubuntu zesty+1 (if the Debian freeze takes a very long time, even zesty+2 is possible). It should reach the master archive in a few hours, and your mirrors shortly after that. Security changes APT 1.4 by default disables support for repositories signed with SHA1 keys. I announced back in January that it was my intention to do this during the summer for development releases, but I only remembered the Jan 1st deadline for stable releases supporting that (APT 1.2 and 1.3), so better late than never. Around January 1st, the same or a similar change will occur in the APT 1.2 and 1.3 series in Ubuntu 16.04 and 16.10 (subject to approval by Ubuntu s release team). This should mean that repository provides had about one year to fix their repositories, and more than 8 months since the release of 16.04. I believe that 8 months is a reasonable time frame to upgrade a repository signing key, and hope that providers who have not updated their repositories yet will do so as soon as possible. Performance work APT 1.4 provides a 10-20% performance increase in cache generation (and according to callgrind, we went from approx 6.8 billion to 5.3 billion instructions for my laptop s configuration, a reduction of more than 21%). The major improvements are: We switched the parsing of Deb822 files (such as Packages files) to my perfect hash function TrieHash. TrieHash which generates C code from a set of words is about equal or twice as fast as the previously used hash function (and two to three times faster than gperf), and we save an additional 50% of that time as we only have to hash once during parsing now, instead of during look up as well. APT 1.4 marks the first time TrieHash is used in any software. I hope that it will spread to dpkg and other software at a later point in time.vendors. Another important change was to drop normalization of Description-MD5 values, the fields mapping a description in a Packages files to a translated description. We used to parse the hex digits into a native binary stream, and then compared it back to hex digits for comparisons, which cost us about 5% of the run time performance. We also optimized one of our hash functions the VersionHash that hashes the important fields of a package to recognize packages with the same version, but different content to not normalize data to a temporary buffer anymore. This buffer has been the subject of some bugs (overflow, incompleteness) in the recent past, and also caused some slowdown due to the additional writes to the stack. Instead, we now pass the bytes we are interested in directly to our CRC code, one byte at a time. There were also some other micro-optimisations: For example, the hash tables in the cache used to be ordered by standard compare (alphabetical followed by shortest). It is now ordered by size first, meaning we can avoid data comparisons for strings of different lengths. We also got rid of a std::string that cannot use short string optimisation in a hot path of the code. Finally, we also converted our case-insensitive djb hashes to not use a normal tolower_ascii(), but introduced tolower_ascii_unsafe() which just sets the lowercase bit ( 0x20) in the character. Others For a more complete overview of all changes, consult the changelog.
Filed under: Debian, Ubuntu

18 November 2016

Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 0.12.8: And more goodies

Yesterday the eighth update in the 0.12.* series of Rcpp made it to the CRAN network for GNU R where the Windows binary has by now been generated too; the Debian package is on its way as well. This 0.12.8 release follows the 0.12.0 release from late July, the 0.12.1 release in September, the 0.12.2 release in November, the 0.12.3 release in January, the 0.12.4 release in March, the 0.12.5 release in May, the 0.12.6 release in July, and the 0.12.7 release in September --- making it the twelveth release at the steady bi-montly release frequency. While we are keeping with the pattern, we have managed to include quite a lot of nice stuff in this release. None of it is a major feauture, though, and so we have not increased the middle number. Among the changes this release are (once again) much improved exception handling (thanks chiefly to Jim Hester), better large vector support (by Qiang), a number of Sugar extensions (mostly Nathan, Qiang and Dan) and beginnings of new DateVector and DatetimeVectors classes, and other changes detailed below. We plan to properly phase in the new date(time) classes. For now, you have to use a #define such as this one in Rcpp.h which remains commented-out for now. We plan to switch this on as the new default no earlier than twelve months from now. Rcpp has become the most popular way of enhancing GNU R with C or C++ code. As of today, 843 packages on CRAN depend on Rcpp for making analytical code go faster and further. That is up by eightyfour packages, or a full ten percent, just since the last release in early September! Again, we are lucky to have such a large group of contributors. Among them, we have invited Nathan Russell to the Rcpp Core team given his consistently excellent pull requests (as well as many outstanding Stackoverflow answers for Rcpp). More details on changes are below.

Changes in Rcpp version 0.12.8 (2016-11-16)
  • Changes in Rcpp API:
    • String and vector elements now use extended R_xlen_t indices (Qiang in PR #560)
    • Hashing functions now return unsigned int (Qiang in PR #561)
    • Added static methods eye(), ones(), and zeros() for select matrix types (Nathan Russell in PR #569)
    • The exception call stack is again correctly reported; print methods and tests added too (Jim Hester in PR #582 fixing #579)
    • Variatic macros no longer use a GNU extensions (Nathan in PR #575)
    • Hash index functions were standardized on returning unsigned integers (Also PR #575)
  • Changes in Rcpp Sugar:
    • Added new Sugar functions rowSums(), colSums(), rowMeans(), colMeans() (PR #551 by Nathan Russell fixing #549)
    • Range Sugar now used R_xlen_t type for start/end (PR #568 by Qiang Kou)
    • Defining RCPP_NO_SUGAR no longer breaks the build. (PR #585 by Daniel C. Dillon)
  • Changes in Rcpp unit tests
    • A test for expression vectors was corrected.
    • The constructor test for datetime vectors reflects the new classes which treats Inf correctly (and still as a non-finite value)
  • Changes in Rcpp Attributes
    • An 'empty' return was corrected (PR #589 fixing issue #588, and with thanks to Duncan Murdoch for the heads-up)
  • Updated Date and Datetime vector classes:
    • The DateVector and DatetimeVector classes were renamed with a prefix old; they are currently typedef'ed to the existing name (#557)
    • New variants newDateVector and newDatetimeVector were added based on NumericVector (also #557, #577, #581, #587)
    • By defining RCPP_NEW_DATE_DATETIME_VECTORS the new classes can activated. We intend to make the new classes the default no sooner than twelve months from this release.
    • The capabilities() function can also be used for presence of this feature

Thanks to CRANberries, you can also look at a diff to the previous release. As always, even fuller details are on the Rcpp Changelog page and the Rcpp page which also leads to the downloads page, the browseable doxygen docs and zip files of doxygen output for the standard formats. A local directory has source and documentation too. 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.

16 November 2016

Joey Hess: Linux.Conf.Au 2017 presentation on Propellor

On January 18th, I'll be presenting "Type driven configuration management with Propellor" at Linux.Conf.Au in Hobart, Tasmania. Abstract Linux.Conf.Au is a wonderful conference, and I'm thrilled to be able to attend it again. -- Update: My presentation on keysafe has also been accepted for the Security MiniConf at LCA, January 17th.

9 November 2016

Enrico Zini: On SPF

I woke up this morning with some Django server error mails in my inbox: 
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc5 in position 9: ordinal not in range(128)
 
 'REMOTE_USER': u' -guest@users.alioth.debian.org',
I did what one does in cases like these, I tried to fix the bug and mailed -guest@users.alioth.debian.org asking them to try again and let me know if it works. I get a bounce: 
  <Actual user's email>
    (generated from  -guest@users.alioth.debian.org)
    SMTP error from remote mail server after MAIL FROM:<enrico@enricozini.org> SIZE=3948:
    host   [ ]: 550 Please see http://www.openspf.org/Why?id=enrico%40enricozini.org&ip=2001%3a41c8%3a1000%3a21%3a%3a21%3a21&receiver=bq :
    Reason: mechanism
I resent the mail to the actual user's address, and it went through. Job done, at least until they get back to me telling me that my fix didn't work. Lessons learnt:

Daniel Pocock: Understanding what lies behind Trump and Brexit

As the US elections finish, many people are scratching their heads wondering what it all means. For example, is Trump serious about the things he has been saying, or is he simply saying whatever was most likely to make a whole bunch of really stupid people crawl out from under their rocks to vote for him? Was he serious about winning at all, or was it just the ultimate reality TV experiment? Will he show up for work in 2017, or like Australia's billionaire Clive Palmer, will he set a new absence record for an elected official? Ironically, Palmer and Trump have both been dogged by questions over their business dealings, will Palmer's descent towards bankruptcy be replicated in the ongoing fraud trial against Trump University and similar scandals? While the answer to those questions may not be clear for some time, some interesting observations can be made at this point. The world has been going racist. In the UK, for example, authorities have started putting up anti-Muslim posters with an eery resemblance to Hitler's anti-Jew propaganda. It makes you wonder if the Brexit result was really the "will of the people", or were the people deliberately whipped up into a state of irrational fear by a bunch of thugs seeking political power? Who thought The Man in the High Castle was fiction? In January 2015, a pilot of The Man in the High Castle, telling the story of a dystopian alternative history where Hitler has conquered America, was the most-watched original series on Amazon Prime. It appears Trump supporters have already been operating US checkpoints abroad for some time, achieving widespread notoriety when they blocked a family of British Muslims from visiting Disneyland in 2015. Ambushing them at the last moment as they were about to board their flight, it is unthinkable how anybody could be so cruel. When you reflect on statements made by Trump and the so-called "security" practices around the world, this would appear to be only a taste of things to come though. Is it a coincidence that Brexit and Trump both happened in the same year that the copyright on Mein Kampf expired? Ironically, in the chapter on immigration Hitler specifically singles out the U.S.A. for his praise, is that the sort of rave review that Trump aspires to when he talks about making America great again? US voters have traditionally held concerns about the power of the establishment. The US Federal Reserve has been in the news almost every week since the financial crisis, but did you know that the very concept of central banking was thrown out the window four times in America's history? Is Trump the type of hardliner who will go down this path again, or will it be business as usual? In his book Rich Dad's Guide to Investing in Gold & Silver, Robert Kiyosaki and Michael Maloney encourage people to consider putting most of their wealth into gold and silver bullion. Whether you like the politics of Trump and Brexit or not, are we entering an era where it will be prudent for people to keep at least ten percent of net wealth in this asset class again? Online dealers like BullionVault in Europe already appear to be struggling under the pressure as people rush to claim the free grams of bullion credited to newly opened accounts. The Facebook effect In recent times, there has been significant attention on the question of how Facebook and Google can influence elections, some European authorities have even issued alerts comparing this threat to terrorism. Yet in the US election, it was simple email that stole the limelight (or conveniently diverted attention from other threats), first with Clinton's private email server and later with Wikileaks exposing the entire email history of Clinton's chief of staff. The Podesta emails, while being boring for outsiders, are potentially far more damaging as they undermine the morale of Clinton's grass roots supporters. These people are essential for knocking on doors and distributing leaflets in the final phase of an election campaign, but after reading about Clinton's close relationship with big business, many of them may well have chosen to stay home. Will future political candidates seek to improve their technical competance, or will they simply be replaced by candidates who are born hackers and fluent in the language of a digital world?

6 November 2016

Shirish Agarwal: The long tail in a common s man journey to debconf16 1

I was going to put a technical post but saw the discussion of one of the meetings of the debconf meets and decided to share a novice s travel experience. Before I start here s the discussion log http://meetbot.debian.net/debconf-team/2016/debconf-team.2016-10-20-20.01.log.html and specifically this part which hit me (using fake names for discussion as haven t taken permission from the folks to cite them by name.)
20:36:52 abcd: $100 CAD is a lot for some, but you d only need it if you won t sleep in sponsored accom, which arguably is acceptable.
20:37:04 it would, efgh, fixed sponsorship sum for everybody and allocation of rooms completely decoupled. Hotel gets the money from everybody and the base fee from DebConf.
20:37:15 people who can t afford also have special needs and may be uncomfortable in sharing rooms. That s quite frequently in our community. Managing each case will be much more complicated.
20:37:31 hijk: we could set aside budget for such special needs, for sure.
20:37:43 I m talking about managing each case
20:37:46 hijk: yes, but we ll have the special cases no matter what.
20:37:48 yes, and the special cases need to be catered for regardless of how everybody else is housed
20:38:06 hijk: room allocation already includes this.
20:38:19 people having to expose their personal problems to have us permitting them staying in the hotel
20:38:23 that s just too weird
It just goes on. I dunno whether I m weird or not or the experience I would share is just normal, this I would leave for you to decide. As have shared before, some friends of mine from the free software community had cajoled me last year to apply for debconf bursary (debconf15), which surprisingly got approved, but as it was late and my pre-conceived myths/notions of visas taking a looooong time decided not to go further. Many things take a long time to happen in the Indian bureaucratic maze. For instance have been in a civil case for almost a decade now among other things so know and accept that things take their own sweet time otherwise known as Indian patience Did the application and again, surprise, surprise this time too I was approved. Luckily, had done the application for bursary early so was a bit positive on the visa-front. There was a goof-up at the embassay but thanks to people at travel.stackexchange.com where I asked quite a few questions, I was a bit informed and travel was relatively hassle-free. Internally though, I was nervous as hell. I had been feeling like a conman or a fraud or being an imposter because I knew before-hand that the project is so huge and had done the mistake of putting up a talk and a workshop where the big guns would be, which again was accepted (not good). The only thing I was thinking of as a saving grace is that there might be some newbies who don t know about the project at all (on Open Day) and hopefully I could help with that but as you will see, even there I was fully inadequate. I live in Pune which is around 3.5 hours from Mumbai (BOM) from where international flights take off. While Pune has an Airport, due to defence considerations, there cannot be much improvement either for domestic or International carriers. There have been attempts to have an exclusive civilian Airport for a long time (almost a decade) and would still take a decade or more. Hence had decided to take an early morning train from Pune to Mumbai, change couple of locals and finally land up at the Mumbai International Airport. Hind-sight as they say is 50:50, while I do have friends in Mumbai, I also found about a homestay which is closer to the Airport and still relatively budget-friendly. Anyways, met few friends but as was paranoid about missing connections found myself in front of the Airport at 20:00 hrs. with about 7 hours + to go before my flight. While there is nothing to do around the airport rather than hanging around, just hung around outside the airport as knew that inside the airport will be chilling and once you go in, you cannot come out or at least it s an inconvenience to the security therein. The International Airport in on three levels, the basement is for vehicles, the first level to receive International and Domestic passengers and the upper-most level exclusively for people flying internationally. This again, came to know when I tried to enter into the ones meant for Domestic and International Passengers coming into the city. Came to the check-in counter at around 02:00 hrs, did the security thing and just had to wait as the flight was of 0400 hrs (from my limited search experience, the cheapest flights are at such times when nobody else (i.e.civilized people) wants to fly). Entered Doha around 5:15 Doha time and saw a much much bigger airport than either the Mumbai International Airport or/and the Delhi International Airport . While I have written some negative stuff about Doha, there were two positives that I am sure, I had forgotten to share a. There were no transit Visa Fees that I had to pay. Most countries and airports I researched have something called transit visa and that can really get expensive, so saved money on that. b. The free ride into the city and back with voluntary tipping the driver or/and guide (approx. 3-4 hours) While the second from what I could tell/know is a gimmick, this is something I wish other countries and airports emulate. There are hotels in the airport and I could have had hotel accommodation if I had booked a slightly more expensive ticket, roughly INR 5k/- each way which would have given me a bit more legroom as well as stay as my layover was more than 24 hours. But this information was known at last minute. Qatar Airways has just a toll-free number and trying more than a few times gave up. They don t have an office in the city. When I reached the check-in counter they said if I had upgraded to Y class I would have had the hotel thing. Changing tickets at the last moment was too expensive and anyways for hotel accommodation for layovers they required at least 24 hours notice. Had to make do with recliners and chairs which are not really comfortable. There were only a couple of waiting rooms on air-side which had a view of the aircraft and hence were a bit more pleasing than those which were on the land-side and were fully blocked without a view. I wish there was a map of the Airport from within the Airport as even with the single terminal it is really easy to get lost. Somehow the day and night went by and took my second flight and reached Cape Town, South Africa. Throughout the journey had been stressed as had to be awake at all times and make sure that nothing gets stolen. Having attendants at toilets were also good so that there is no possibility of any violence there. So it had been 2 days, no shower and no sleep. Later also came to know about Airport Sleeping Pods and shower stalls but these also seem to be less in number, at few airports and there always be a bit of premium attached to them as airports are a monopoly business. Anyways, reached the venue. Throughout the travel there was quite a bit of unnamed fear which I later came to know after seeing Dr. Ramanujan s The Man who knew Infinity . It was/is the fear or unknown, while in the movie it is articulated as fear of crossing seven seas, symbolically it is the fear or unknown. Now while I was dead tired, I still pushed myself as I didn t want to have the effects of jet lag interfere with the normal sleeping and waking patterns. I did freshen myself but didn t allow myself the luxury of the bath-tub as I knew that if I went in, I would not come out that day. Met all the people, learnt who s who, where things are happening etc. and slowly night came. Night came and I was so-looking forward to sleep but sleep was not to be. I later learnt it could be either of the two reasons, it could either have been travel-induced insomnia or/and what is known as the first night effect . It was only on the second day when I was in bath-tub for about 2/3 hours I could feel the tension leaving my body. I finally realized that I am in Cape Town, South Africa and could enjoy and be surprised at seeing birds within few feet of me . Now I don t know whether I m the only weird/paranoid one, I do know that it would not have been easier for me at least for the first night as I was turning and twisting throughout the night. I opened the lights, read for some time hoping for sleep to take over but that didn t work. Tried quite a few things but sleep didn t come. If I had been sleeping with other people I dunno how they would have reacted. I myself am a light sleeper (most of the time) and if I had sleep coming and somebody else acted or been the way I was, I wouldn t been able to sleep. However much you try, whatever is the natural reaction is, will be. There are still some bits to share but that would be in part 2.
Filed under: Miscellenous Tagged: #air-travel, #Debconf16, #paranoia, #sleep

5 November 2016

Russ Allbery: Review: The Just City

Review: The Just City, by Jo Walton
Series: Thessaly #1
Publisher: Tor
Copyright: 2014
Printing: January 2015
ISBN: 0-7653-3266-3
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 368
The premise for The Just City is easy to state: The time-traveling goddess Athene (Athena) decides to organize and aid an attempt to create the society described in Plato's Republic. She chooses Thera (modern Santorini) before the eruption, as a safe place where this experiment wouldn't alter history. The elders of the city are seeded by people throughout history who at some point prayed to Athene, wanting to live in the Republic. The children of the age of ten that Plato suggested starting with are purchased as slaves from various points in history and transported by Athene to the island. Apollo, shaken and confused by Daphne wanting to turn into a tree rather than sleep with him, finds out about this experiment as Athene tries to explain the concept of consent to him. He decides that becoming human for a while might help him learn about volition and equal significance, and that this is the perfect location. He's one of the three viewpoint characters. The others are two women: one (Maia) from Victorian times who prayed to Athene in a moment of longing for the tentative sexual equality of the Republic and was recruited as one of the elders, and another (Simmea) who is bought as a slave and becomes one of the children. I should admit up-front that I've never read Plato's Republic, or indeed much of Plato at all, just small bits for classes. The elders (and of course the gods) all have, and are attempting to stick quite closely to Plato's outline of the ideal city. The children haven't, though, so the book is quite readable for people like me who only remember a few vague aspects of Plato's vision from school. The reader learns the principles alongside Simmea. One of Walton's strengths is taking a science fiction concept, putting real people into it, and letting the quotidian mingle with the fantastic. Simmea is my favorite character here: her journey to the city is deeply traumatic, but the opportunity she gets there is incredible and unforeseen, and she comes to love the city while still understanding, and arguing about, its possible flaws. Maia is nearly as successful; Walton does a good job with committee debates and discussions, avoids coming down too heavily on the drama, and shows a believable picture of people with very different backgrounds and beliefs coming together to flesh out the outlines of something they all agree with, or at least want to try. I found Apollo less engaging as a character, partly because I never quite understood his motives or his weird failure to understand the principles of consent. Walton doesn't portray him as either hopelessly arrogant or hopelessly narcissistic, which would have been easy outs, but in avoiding those two obvious explanations for his failures of empathy, I felt like she left him with an odd and unexplained hole in his personality. He's a weirdly passive half-character for much of the book, although he does develop a bit more towards the end (which was probably the point). Half the fun of this book is working out what the Republic would be like in practice, and what breakdowns and compromises would happen as soon as you put real people in it. Athene obviously has to do a bit of cheating to make a utopia invented as an intellectual exercise work out in practice, plus a bit more for comfort (electricity and indoor plumbing, for instance). The most substantial cheat is robots to replace slaves and do quite a bit that slaves couldn't. Birth control (something Plato obviously never would have thought of) is another notable cheat; it's postulated to be an ancient method since lost, but even if that existed, there's no way it would be this reliable. But otherwise, the society mostly works, and Walton shows enough of the arguing and mechanics to make that believable, while still avoiding infodumps and boring descriptions. It's neatly done, although I'm still a bit dubious that the elders from later eras would have put up with the primitive conditions with this little complaint. The novel needs a plot, of course, and that's the other half of the fun. I can't talk about this in any detail without spoiling the book, since the plot only kicks in about halfway through once the setup and character introductions are complete. That makes it hard to explain why I found this a bit less successful, although parts of it are brilliant. What worked for me is the growth of Simmea and her friends as students and philosophers, the arguments and discussions (and their growing enthusiasm for argument and discussion), and the way Greek mythology is woven subtly and undramatically into the story. It really does feel like sitting in on ancient Greek philosophical arguments and experiments, and by that measure Walton has succeeded admirably in her goal. What didn't work for me was the driving conflict of the story, once it's introduced. I can't describe it without spoilers, but it's an old trope in science fiction and one with little scientific basis. It may seem weird to argue that point in a book with time-traveling Greek gods, a literal Lethe, and a Greek idea of souls, but those are mythological background material. The SF trope is something about which I have personal expertise and which simply doesn't work that way, and I had a harder time getting past that than alternate metaphysical properties. It threw me out of the book a bit. I see why Walton chose the conflict she did, but I felt like she could have gotten to the same place in the plot, admittedly with more difficulty, by using some of the more dubious aspects of Plato's long-term plan plus some other obstacles that were already built into the world. This more direct approach added a bit of SF-style analysis of the unknown that seemed weirdly at odds with the rest of the story (even if the delight of one of the characters is endearing). That complaint aside, I really enjoyed reading this book. Apollo didn't entirely work for me, but all of the other characters are excellent, and Walton keeps the story moving at a comfortable clip. Given the amount of description required, particularly for an audience that may not have read the Republic, a lesser writer could have easily slipped into the infodump trap. Walton never does. Fair warning, though: The Just City does end on a cliffhanger, and is in no way a standalone novel. You will probably want to have the sequel on hand. Followed by The Philosopher Kings. Rating: 7 out of 10

3 November 2016

Jan Wagner: Container Orchestration Thoughts

Container Orchestration ThoughtsSince some time everybody (read developer) want to run his new microservice stacks in containers. I can understand that building and testing an application is important for developers.
One of the benefits of containers is, that developer (in theory) can put their new version of applications into production on their own. This is the point where operations is affected and operations needs to evaluate, if that might evolve into better workflow. For yolo^WdevOps people there are some challenges that needs to be solved, or at least mitigated, when things needs to be done in large(r) scale.

Orchestration Engine Running Docker, which is actual the most preferred container solution, on a single host with docker command line client is something you can do, but there you leave the gap between dev and ops.

UI For Docker Since some time there is UI For Docker available for visualizing and managing containers on a single docker node. It's pretty awesome and the best feature so far is the Container Network view, which also shows the linked container. Container Orchestration Thoughts

Portainer Portainer is pretty new and it can be deployed as easy as UI For Docker. But the (first) great advantage: it can handle Docker Swarm. Beside that it has many other great features. Container Orchestration Thoughts

Rancher Rancher describes themselves as 'container management platform' that 'supports and manages all of your Kubernetes, Mesos, and Swarm clusters'. This is great because this are all of the relevant docker cluster orchestrations at the market actually. Container Orchestration Thoughts For the use cases, we are facing, Kubernetes and Mesos seems both like bloated beasts. Usman Ismail has written a really good comparison of Orchestration Engine options which goes into details. Container Orchestration Thoughts

Docker Swarm As there is actually no clear defacto standard/winner of the (container) orchestration wars, I would prevent to be in a vendor lock-in situation (yet). Docker swarm seems to be evolving and is getting more nice features other competitors doesn't provide.
Due the native integration into the docker framework and great community I believe Docker Swarm will be the Docker Orchestration of the choice on the long run. This should be supported by Rancher 1.2 which is not released yet.
From this point of view it looks very reasonable that Docker Swarm in combination with Rancher (1.2) might be a good strategy to maintain your container farms in the future. If you think to put Docker Swarm into production in the actual state, I recommend to read Docker swarm mode: What to know before going live on production by Panjamapong Sermsawatsri.

Persistent Storage While it is a best practice to use data volume container these days, providing persistent storage across multiple hosts for shared volumes seems to be tricky. In theory you can mount a shared-storage volume as a data volume and there are several volume plugins which supports shared storage. For example you can use the convoy plugin which gives you:
  • thin provisioned volumes
  • snapshots of volumes
  • backup of snapshots
  • restore volumes
As backend you can use:
  • Device Mapper
  • Virtual File System(VFS)/Network File System(NFS)
  • Amazon Elastic Block Store(EBS)
The good thing is, that convoy is integrated into Rancher. For more information I suggest to read Setting Up Shared Volumes with Convoy-NFS, which also mentions some limitations. If you want test Persistent Storage Service, Rancher provides some documentation. Actually I did not evaluate shared-storage volumes yet, but I don't see a solution I would love to use in production (at least on-premise) without strong downsides. But maybe things will go further and there might be a great solution for this caveats in the future.

Keeping base images up-to-date Since some time there are many projects that tries to detect security problems in your container images in several ways.
Beside general security considerations you need to deal somehow with issues in your base images that you build your applications on. Of course, even if you know you have a security issue in your application image, you need to fix it, which depends on the way how you based your application upon.

Ways to base your application image
  • You can build your application image entire from scratch, which leaves all the work to your development team and I wouldn't recommend it that way.
  • You also can create one (or more) intermediate image(s) that will be used by your development team.
  • The development team might ground their work on images in public available or private (for example the one bundled to your gitlab CI/CD solution) registries.

Whats the struggle with the base image? If you are using images being not (well) maintained by other people, you have to wait for them to fix your base image. Using external images might also lead into trust problems (can you trust those people in general?).
In an ideal world, your developers have always fresh base images with fixed security issues. This can probably be done by rebuilding every intermediate image periodically or when the base image changes.

Paradigm change Anyway, if you have a new application image available (with no known security issues), you need to deploy it to production. This is summarized by Jason McKay in his article Docker Security: How to Monitor and Patch Containers in the Cloud:
To implement a patch, update the base image and then rebuild the application image. This will require systems and development teams to work closely together.
So patching security issues in the container world changes workflow significant. In the old world operation teams mostly rolled security fixes for the base systems independent from development teams.
Now hitting containers the production area this might change things significant.

Bringing updated images to production Imagine your development team doesn't work steady on a project, cause the product owner consider it feature complete. The base image is provided (in some way) consistently without security issues. The application image is build on top of that automatically on every update of the base image.
How do you push in such a scenario the security fixes to production? From my point of view you have two choices:
  • Let the development team require to test the resulting application image and put it into production
  • Push the new application image without review by the development team into production
The first scenario might lead into a significant delay until the fixes hit production created by the probably infrequent work of the development team. The latter one brings your security fixes early to production by the notable higher risk to break your application. This risk can be reduced by implementing massive tests into CI/CD pipelines by the development team. Rolling updates provided by Docker Swarm might also reduce the risk of ending with a broken application. When you are implementing an update process of your (application) images to production, you should consider Watchtower that provides Automatic Updates for Docker Containers.

Conclusion Not being a product owner or the operations part of an application that is facing a widely adopted usage that would compensate the actual tradeoffs we are still facing I tend not to move large scale production projects into a container environment.
This means not that this might be a bad idea for others, but I'd like to sort out some of the caveats before. I'm still interested to put smaller projects into production, being not scared to reimplement or move them on a new stack.
For smaller projects with a small number of hosts Portainer looks not bad as well as Rancher with the Cattle orchestration engine if you just want to manage a couple of nodes. Things are going to be interesting if Rancher 1.2 supports Docker swarm cluster out of the box. Let's see what the future will bring us to the container world and how to make a great stack out of it.

Update I suggest to read Docker in Production: A History of Failure and the answer Docker in Production: A retort to understand the actual challenges when running Docker in larger scale production environments.

2 November 2016

Markus Koschany: My Free Software Activities in October 2016

Welcome to gambaru.de. Here is my monthly report that covers what I have been doing for Debian. If you re interested in Android, Java, Games and LTS topics, this might be interesting for you. Debian Android Debian Games Debian Java Debian LTS This was my eight month as a paid contributor and I have been paid to work 13 hours on Debian LTS, a project started by Rapha l Hertzog. In that time I did the following: Non-maintainer uploads QA

31 October 2016

Chris Lamb: Free software activities in October 2016

Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world (previously):

Debian & Reproducible builds

Whilst anyone can inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, most GNU/Linux distributions provide binary (or "compiled") packages to end users. The motivation behind the Reproducible Builds effort is to allow verification that no flaws have been introduced either maliciously and accidentally during this compilation process by promising identical binary packages are always generated from a given source.

  • Presented a talk entitled "Reproducible Builds" talk at Software Freedom Kosova, in Prishtina, Republic of Kosovo.

  • I filed my 2,500th bug in the Debian BTS: #840972: golang-google-appengine: accesses the internet during build.

  • In order to build packages reproducibly, one not only needs identical sources but also some external and sharable definition of the environment used for a particular build, stipulating such things such as the version numbers of the required build-dependencies. It is not currently clear how to handle these .buildinfo files after the archive software has processed them and how to make them available to the world so I started development on a proof-of-concept server to see what issues arise in practice. It is available at buildinfo.debian.net.

  • Chaired an IRC meeting and ran a poll to determine a regular time .

  • Submitted two design proposals to our wiki page.

  • Improvements to our tests.reproducible-builds.org testing framework:

    • Move regular "Scheduled in..." messages to the #debian-reproducible-changes IRC channel.
    • Use our log_info method instead of manual echo calls.
    • Correct an "all sources packages" "all source packages" typo.
    • Submit .buildinfo files to buildinfo.debian.net.
    • Create GPG key on nodes for buildinfo.debian.net at deploy time, not "lazily".

My work in the Reproducible Builds project was also covered in our weekly reports. (#75, #76, #77 & #78).

I also submitted 14 patches to fix specific reproducibility issues in bio-eagle, cf-python, fastx-toolkit, fpga-icestorm, http-icons, lambda-align, mypy, playitslowly, seabios, stumpwm, sympa, tj3, wims-help & xotcl.
Debian LTS

This month I have been paid to work 13 hours on Debian Long Term Support (LTS). In that time I did the following:
  • Seven days of "frontdesk" duties, triaging CVEs, etc.
  • Issued DLA 647-1 for freeimage correcting an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the XMP image handling functionality.
  • Issued DLA 649-1 for python-django fixing a possible CSRF protection bypass on sites that use Google Analytics.
  • Issued DLA 654-1 for libxfixes preventing an integer overflow when a malicious client sent INT_MAX as a "length".
  • Issued DLA 662-1 for quagga correcting a programming error where two constants were confused that could cause stack overrun in IPv6 routing code.
  • Issued DLA 688-1 for cairo to prevent a DoS attack where a malicious SVG could generate invalid pointers.
Uploads
  • gunicorn:
    • 19.6.0-7 Set supplementary groups when changing uid, add an example systemd .service file to gunicorn-examples, and expand README.Debian to make it clearer what to do now that /etc/gunicorn.d has been removed.
    • 19.6.0-8 Correct previous supplementary groups patch to be compatible with Python 3.
  • redis:
    • 3:3.2.4-2 Ensure that sentinel's configuration actually writes to a pidfile location so that systemd can detect that the daemon has started.
    • 3:3.2.5-1 New upstream release.
  • libfiu:
    • 0.94-8 Fix FTBFS under Bash due to lack of && in debian/rules.
    • 0.94-9 Ensure the build is reproducible by sorting injected modules.
  • aptfs (2:0.8-2) Minor cosmetic changes.

NMUs
  • libxml-dumper-perl (0.81-1.2) Move away from a unsupported debhelper compat level 4.
  • netatalk (2.2.5-1.1) Drop build-dependency on hardening-includes.

QA uploads
  • anon-proxy (00.05.38+20081230-4) Move to a supported debhelper compatibility level 9.
  • ara (1.0.32) Make the build reproducible.
  • binutils-m68hc1x (1:2.18-8) Make the build reproducible & move to a supported debhelper compatibility level.
  • fracplanet (0.4.0-5) Make the build reproducible.
  • libnss-ldap (265-5) Make the build reproducible.
  • python-uniconvertor (1.1.5-3) Fix an "option release requires an argument" FTBFS. (#839375)
  • ripole (0.2.0+20081101.0215-3) Actually include the ripole binary in package. (#839919) & enable hardening flags.
  • twitter-bootstrap (2.0.2+dfsg-10) Fix incorrect copyright formatting when building under Bash. (#824592)
  • zpaq (1.10-3) Make the build reproducible.
Debian FTP Team

As a Debian FTP assistant I ACCEPTed 147 packages: ace-link, amazon-s2n, avy, basez, bootstrap-vz, bucklespring, camitk, carettah, cf-python, debian-reference, dfcgen-gtk, efivar, entropybroker, fakesleep, gall, game-data-packager, gitano, glare, gnome-panel, gnome-shell-extension-dashtodock, gnome-shell-extension-refreshwifi, gnome-shell-extension-remove-dropdown-arrows, golang-github-gogits-go-gogs-client, golang-github-gucumber-gucumber, golang-github-hlandau-buildinfo, golang-github-hlandau-dexlogconfig, golang-github-hlandau-goutils, golang-github-influxdata-toml, golang-github-jacobsa-crypto, golang-github-kjk-lzma, golang-github-miekg-dns, golang-github-minio-sha256-simd, golang-github-nfnt-resize, golang-github-nicksnyder-go-i18n, golang-github-pointlander-compress, golang-github-pointlander-jetset, golang-github-pointlander-peg, golang-github-rfjakob-eme, golang-github-thecreeper-go-notify, golang-github-twstrike-gotk3adapter, golang-github-unknwon-goconfig, golang-gopkg-dancannon-gorethink.v1, golang-petname, haskell-argon2, haskell-binary-parsers, haskell-bindings-dsl, haskell-deriving-compat, haskell-hackage-security, haskell-hcwiid, haskell-hsopenssl-x509-system, haskell-megaparsec, haskell-mono-traversable-instances, haskell-prim-uniq, haskell-raaz, haskell-readable, haskell-readline, haskell-relational-record, haskell-safe-exceptions, haskell-servant-client, haskell-token-bucket, haskell-zxcvbn-c, irclog2html, ironic-ui, lace, ledger, libdancer2-plugin-passphrase-perl, libdatetime-calendar-julian-perl, libdbix-class-optimisticlocking-perl, libdbix-class-schema-config-perl, libgeo-constants-perl, libgeo-ellipsoids-perl, libgeo-functions-perl, libgeo-inverse-perl, libio-async-loop-mojo-perl, libmojolicious-plugin-assetpack-perl, libmojolicious-plugin-renderfile-perl, libparams-validationcompiler-perl, libspecio-perl, libtest-time-perl, libtest2-plugin-nowarnings-perl, linux, lua-scrypt, mono, mutt-vc-query, neutron, node-ansi-font, node-buffer-equal, node-defaults, node-formatio, node-fs-exists-sync, node-fs.realpath, node-is-buffer, node-jison-lex, node-jju, node-jsonstream, node-kind-of, node-lex-parser, node-lolex, node-loud-rejection, node-random-bytes, node-randombytes, node-regex-not, node-repeat-string, node-samsam, node-set-value, node-source-map-support, node-spdx-correct, node-static-extend, node-test, node-to-object-path, node-type-check, node-typescript, node-unset-value, nutsqlite, opencv, openssl1.0, panoramisk, perl6, pg-rage-terminator, pg8000, plv8, puppet-module-oslo, pymoc, pyramid-jinja2, python-bitbucket-api, python-ceilometermiddleware, python-configshell-fb, python-ewmh, python-gimmik, python-jsbeautifier, python-opcua, python-pyldap, python-s3transfer, python-testing.common.database, python-testing.mysqld, python-testing.postgresql, python-wheezy.template, qspeakers, r-cran-nleqslv, recommonmark, rolo, shim, swift-im, tendermint-go-clist, tongue, uftrace & zaqar-ui.

28 October 2016

Jaldhar Vyas: Get Ready For Bikini Season With These n Weird Tricks

It all started last June when my son had his Janoi (Yagnopavita) ceremony -- the ritual by which a Brahmana boy becomes "twice-born" and eligible to study the Vedas. As well as a profound religious experience, it is also an important social occasion with a reception for as many friends and family as can attend. (I think our final guest total was ~250.) This meant new outfits for everyone which might be exciting for some people but not me. I still don't know why I couldn't just keep wearing the khes and pitambar from the puja but no, apparently that's a faux pas. So I relented and agreed to wear my "darbari" suit from my wedding. And it didn't fit. I knew I had gained some weight in the intermediate 17 years but the thing was sitcom levels of too small. I ended up having to purchase a new one, a snazzy (and shiny!) maroon number with gold stripes (or were they black stripes?) Problem having been solved, much was eaten, more weight was gained and then I forgot about the whole thing. Tip 1: Actually Do Something. I have over the years tried to improve my physical condition but it has never gotten very far. For instance I have a treadmill/coatrack and a couple of years ago I began using it in earnest. I got to the point where I actually ran a 10K race without dying. But I did not train systematically and I ended up in some pain which caused me to stop working out for a while and then I never got around to restarting. Diets have also failed because I don't have a clear idea of what and how much I am eating. All I know is that women go into the kitchen and when they come out they have food. By what eldritch process this occurs is a mystery, I just eat whats given to me thankful that the magic happens. Once I was moved to try and help but quickly fell afoul of the lack of well-defined algorithms in Gujarati home cooking.
"How much saffron should I add?"
"this much."
"How much is this much in SI units?"
"You're annoying me. Get out."
Fast forward to March of this year. For my birthday, my wife got me a Fitbit fitness tracker. This is what I had needed all this time. It measure heart rate, distance travelled, time slept and several other pieces of info you can use to really plan a fitness regimen rationally. For example, I was chagrined to learn that sometimes when I'm at the computer, I am so immobile that the fitbit thought I was asleep. So I started planning to taken more frequent breaks. (A recent firmware upgrade has added the ability to nudge to walk atleast 250 paces each daytime hour which is handy for this.) Also by checking my heart rate I discovered that I went on the treadmill I ran too fast thereby stressing my body for little gain and ending up going too slow to get much aerobic effect. Now I can pace myself appropriately for maximum cardiac efficiency without ending up injuring myself and giving up. I also get a little more activity each day by simple changes such as taking the stairs instead of the lift and instead of getting off at the 14th street PATH I go all the way to 34th street and walk down. Tip 2: You must have data in order to see what you did right or wrong and to plan what you need to do moving forward. One caveat about these fitness trackers. They are not anywhere as accurate as a proper checkup from a doctor who specializes in such things. If you want to do any kind of pro or amateur athletics you probably should not rely on them but for the average shlub who just wants to avoid appearing on the news being winched off his sofa by the fire brigade they are good enough. Another practice I began was keeping a food diary. It can be a real eye-opener to see how much you are actually eating. It is probably much more than you thought. I am fortunate that my diet is pretty good to begin with. Vegetarian, (not vegan, Hindus eat dairy products,) mostly home-cooked with fresh ingredients, not fried or processed, and I don't drink alcohol. However there were a few optimizations I could make. I drink a lot of soda; atleast two cans a day. I really ought to stop altogether but in lieu of that I have atleast switched from Coke to Coke Zero thereby saving a lot of empty calories. I now eat 4 rotlis with my dinner instead of six. We as a family eat more green vegetables instead of potatos, skim milk instead of whole fat, canola oil instead of corn oil, and less rice and don't slather ghee on everything quite so much. One entirely new practice I've adopted that may seem faddish but works for me is intermittent fasting. The idea is to steadily train your body to need less food by eating all your days allowed amount pf calories during a 6-8 hour window and not eating at all during the remaining time. It's hard to get used to for many people but I fast atleast 2-3 times a month for religious reasons anyway so I adapted pretty quickly. The fitbit tells me how many calories I am expending and how many I can eat to maintain a healthy level of weight loss but other than that I don't bother with "food groups" or specific diets such as paleo, or low-carb etc. As long as what you eat is reasonably balanced and you are burning more calories than you are adding, it should be enough for weight loss. Indeed from the end of March to now, I've lost 3 stones (20Kg) even with the occasional "cheat" day. Tip 3: All published diets are bullshit without scientifically proven efficacy. Don't bother with them. Experiment instead and see what works for you and your metabolism. As long as you are getting all the proper nutrients (you shouldn't need a supplement unless you have an actual medical condition.) and you have a net calorie deficit, it's all good. If you eat food you enjoy, you are more likely to stick to your diet. The proper amount of sleep is one area of a healthy lifestyle I am still doing poorly in and the reasons are not all raven-related. I have always had problems with insomnia and was once actually diagnosed with sleep apnea. Losing weight has helped a lot but the fitbit is still reporting that I toss and turn a lot during the night. And that's when I'm in bed in the first place. I stay up much too late which can also lead to subsidiary bad behaviours such as midnight snacking. It's something I need to work on. Tip 4: Stop blogging at all hours of the night, It's not doing you any good. So that's what I'm doing. Moving forward, I need to deal with the sleep thing and I would also like to start some program of strength-training, I'm doing ok in terms of aerobic exercise but from what I've read, you also have to build up muscles to keep weight loss permanent. The difficulty is that it would involve joining a gym and then actually going to that gym so I've put it off for now. The immediate threat is Diwali (and Thanksgiving and Christmas...) My wife bought 4 lbs of sweets today and I can feel their presence in the fridge calling to me.

25 October 2016

Bits from Debian: "softWaves" will be the default theme for Debian 9

The theme "softWaves" by Juliette Taka Belin has been selected as default theme for Debian 9 'stretch'. softWaves Login screen. Click to see the whole theme proposal After the Debian Desktop Team made the call for proposing themes, a total of twelve choices have been submitted, and any Debian contributor has received the opportunity to vote on them in a survey. We received 3,479 responses ranking the different choices, and softWaves has been the winner among them. We'd like to thank all the designers that have participated providing nice wallpapers and artwork for Debian 9, and encourage everybody interested in this area of Debian, to join the Design Team. It is being considered to package all of them so they are easily available in Debian. If you want to help in this effort, or package any other artwork (for example, particularly designed to be accessibility-friendly), please contact the Debian Desktop Team, but hurry up, because the freeze for new packages in the next release of Debian starts on January 5th, 2017. This is the second time that Debian ships a theme by Juliette Belin, who also created the theme "Lines" that enhances our actual stable release, Debian 8. Congratulations, Juliette, and thank you very much for your continued commitment to Debian!

24 October 2016

Francois Marier: Tweaking Referrers For Privacy in Firefox

The Referer header has been a part of the web for a long time. Websites rely on it for a few different purposes (e.g. analytics, ads, CSRF protection) but it can be quite problematic from a privacy perspective. Thankfully, there are now tools in Firefox to help users and developers mitigate some of these problems.

Description In a nutshell, the browser adds a Referer header to all outgoing HTTP requests, revealing to the server on the other end the URL of the page you were on when you placed the request. For example, it tells the server where you were when you followed a link to that site, or what page you were on when you requested an image or a script. There are, however, a few limitations to this simplified explanation. First of all, by default, browsers won't send a referrer if you place a request from an HTTPS page to an HTTP page. This would reveal potentially confidential information (such as the URL path and query string which could contain session tokens or other secret identifiers) from a secure page over an insecure HTTP channel. Firefox will however include a Referer header in HTTPS to HTTPS transitions unless network.http.sendSecureXSiteReferrer (removed in Firefox 52) is set to false in about:config. Secondly, using the new Referrer Policy specification web developers can override the default behaviour for their pages, including on a per-element basis. This can be used both to increase or reduce the amount of information present in the referrer.

Legitimate Uses Because the Referer header has been around for so long, a number of techniques rely on it. Armed with the Referer information, analytics tools can figure out:
  • where website traffic comes from, and
  • how users are navigating the site.
Another place where the Referer is useful is as a mitigation against cross-site request forgeries. In that case, a website receiving a form submission can reject that form submission if the request originated from a different website. It's worth pointing out that this CSRF mitigation might be better implemented via a separate header that could be restricted to particularly dangerous requests (i.e. POST and DELETE requests) and only include the information required for that security check (i.e. the origin).

Problems with the Referrer Unfortunately, this header also creates significant privacy and security concerns. The most obvious one is that it leaks part of your browsing history to sites you visit as well as all of the resources they pull in (e.g. ads and third-party scripts). It can be quite complicated to fix these leaks in a cross-browser way. These leaks can also lead to exposing private personally-identifiable information when they are part of the query string. One of the most high-profile example is the accidental leakage of user searches by healthcare.gov.

Solutions for Firefox Users While web developers can use the new mechanisms exposed through the Referrer Policy, Firefox users can also take steps to limit the amount of information they send to websites, advertisers and trackers. In addition to enabling Firefox's built-in tracking protection by setting privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true in about:config, which will prevent all network connections to known trackers, users can control when the Referer header is sent by setting network.http.sendRefererHeader to:
  • 0 to never send the header
  • 1 to send the header only when clicking on links and similar elements
  • 2 (default) to send the header on all requests (e.g. images, links, etc.)
It's also possible to put a limit on the maximum amount of information that the header will contain by setting the network.http.referer.trimmingPolicy to:
  • 0 (default) to send the full URL
  • 1 to send the URL without its query string
  • 2 to only send the scheme, host and port
or using the network.http.referer.XOriginTrimmingPolicy option (added in Firefox 52) to only restrict the contents of referrers attached to cross-origin requests. Site owners can opt to share less information with other sites, but they can't share any more than what the user trimming policies allow. Another approach is to disable the Referer when doing cross-origin requests (from one site to another). The network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy preference can be set to:
  • 0 (default) to send the referrer in all cases
  • 1 to send a referrer only when the base domains are the same
  • 2 to send a referrer only when the full hostnames match

Breakage If you try to remove all referrers (i.e. network.http.sendRefererHeader = 0, you will most likely run into problems on a number of sites, for example: The first two have been worked-around successfully by setting network.http.referer.spoofSource to true, an advanced setting which always sends the destination URL as the referrer, thereby not leaking anything about the original page. Unfortunately, the last two are examples of the kind of breakage that can only be fixed through a whitelist (an approach supported by the smart referer add-on) or by temporarily using a different browser profile.

My Recommended Settings As with my cookie recommendations, I recommend strengthening your referrer settings but not disabling (or spoofing) it entirely. While spoofing does solve many the breakage problems mentioned above, it also effectively disables the anti-CSRF protections that some sites may rely on and that have tangible user benefits. A better approach is to limit the amount of information that leaks through cross-origin requests. If you are willing to live with some amount of breakage, you can simply restrict referrers to the same site by setting: 
network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy = 2
or to sites which belong to the same organization (i.e. same ETLD/public suffix) using: 
network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy = 1
This prevent leaks to third-parties while giving websites all of the information that they can already see in their own server logs. On the other hand, if you prefer a weaker but more compatible solution, you can trim cross-origin referrers down to just the scheme, hostname and port: 
network.http.referer.XOriginTrimmingPolicy = 2
I have not yet found user-visible breakage using this last configuration. Let me know if you find any!

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