Changes in RcppArmadillo version 0.12.6.1.0 (2023-07-26)

• Upgraded to Armadillo release 12.6.1 (Cortisol Retox)
  • faster multiplication of dense vectors by sparse matrices (and vice versa)
  • faster eigs_sym() and eigs_gen()
  • faster conv() and conv2() when using OpenMP
  • added diags() and spdiags() for generating band matrices from set of vectors

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

Changes in version 0.1.1 (2023-08-08)

• A simplifcation was applied to the C++ interface glue code (#9 fixing #8)
• The package no longer enforces the C++11 compilation standard (#10)
• An uninitialized memory read has been correct (#11)
• A new function ops has been added (#12)
• Function names no longer start with a dot (#13)
• Arbitrary index columns are now supported (#13)

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

Changes in RQuantLib version 0.4.19 (2023-08-07)

• Three calendaring / schedule tests were adjusted for slightly changed values under QuantLib 1.31
• Several checks in the configure script have been updated to reflect current versions of packages.
• Five examples no longer run because, even while extremely short, use of (too many default) threads was seen.

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

Tilburg, Netherlands. October 2022. St-Cergue, Switzerland. January 2023 Montreal, Canada. February 2023 In January, Debian India hosted the MiniDebConf Tamil Nadu in Viluppuram, Tamil Nadu, India (Sat 28 - Sun 26). The following month, the MiniDebConf Portugal 2023 was held in Lisbon (12 - 16 February 2023). These events, seen as a stunning success by some of their attendees, demonstrate the vitality of our community.

• Gifts for attendees (stickers, cups, lanyards);
• Workshop on how to contribute to the translation team;
• Workshop on packaging;
• Key signing party;
• Information about the project;

• main: Contains DFSG-compliant packages, which do not rely on software outside this area to operate.
• contrib: Contains packages that contain DFSG-compliant software, but have dependencies not in main.
• non-free: Contains software that does not comply with the DFSG.
• non-free-firmware: Firmware that is otherwise not part of the Debian system to enable use of Debian with hardware that requires such firmware.

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main non-free-firmware
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main non-free-firmware
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main non-free-firmware
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main non-free-firmware
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main non-free-firmware
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main non-free-firmware

• Marius Gripsgard (mariogrip)
• Mohammed Bilal (rmb)
• Emmanuel Arias (amanu)
• Robin Gustafsson (rgson)
• Lukas M rdian (slyon)
• David da Silva Polverari (polverari)

History of License Raj After India became free, in the 1980s the Congress wanted to open its markets to the world just like China did. But at that time, the BJP, though small via Jan Sangh made the argument that we are not ready for the world. The indian businessman needs a bit more time. And hence a compromise was made. The compromise was simple. Indian Industry and people who wanted to get anything from the west, needed a license. This was very much in line how the Russian economy was evolving. All the three nations, India, China and Russia were on similar paths. China broke away where it opened up limited markets for competition and gave state support to its firms. Russia and Japan on the other hand, kept their markets relatively closed. The same thing happened in India, what happened in Russia and elsewhere. The businessman got what he wanted, he just corrupted the system. Reliance, the conglomerate today abused the same system as much as it could. Its defence was to be seen as the small guy. I wouldn t go into that as that itself would be a big story in itself. Whatever was sold in India was sold with huge commissions and just like Russia scarcity became the order of the day. Monopolies flourished and competition was nowhere. These remained till 1991 when Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh was forced to liberalize and open up the markets. Even at that time, the RSS through its Swadeshi Jagran Manch was sharing the end of the world prophecies for the Indian businessman.

2014 Current Regime In 2010, in U.K. the Conservative party came in power under the leadership of David Cameron who was influenced by the policies of Margaret Thatcher who arguably ditched manufacturing in the UK. David Cameron and his party did the same 2010 onwards but for public services under the name austerity. India has been doing the same. The inequality has gone up while people s purchasing power has gone drastically down. CMIE figures are much more drastic and education is a joke.

Add to that since 2016 funding for scientists have gone to the dogs and now they are even playing with doctor s careers. I do not have to remind people that a woman scientist took almost a quarter century to find a drug delivery system that others said was impossible. And she did it using public finance. Science is hard. I have already shared in a previous blog post how it took the Chinese 20 years to reach where they are and somehow we think we will be able to both China and Japan. Of the 160 odd countries that are on planet earth, only a handful of countries have both the means and the knowledge to use and expand on that. While I was not part of Taiwan Debconf, later I came to know that even Taiwan in many ways is similar to Japan in the sense that a majority of its population is stuck in low-paid jobs (apart from those employed in TSMC) which is similar to Keiretsu or Chabeol from either Japan or South Korea. In all these cases, only a small percentage of the economy is going forward while the rest is stagnating or even going backwards. Similar is the case in India as well Unlike the Americans who chose the path to have more competition, we have chosen the path to have more monopolies. So even though, I very much liked Louis es project sooner or later finding the devices itself would be hard. While the recent notification is for laptops, what stops them from doing the same with mobiles or even desktop systems. As it is, both smartphones as well as desktop systems has been contracting since last year as food inflation has gone up. Add to that availability of products has been made scarce (whether by design or not, unknown.) The end result, the latest processor launched overseas becomes the new thing here 3-4 years later. And that was before this notification. This will only decrease competition and make Ambanis rich at cost of everyone else. So much for east of doing business . Also the backlash has been pretty much been tepid. So what I shared will probably happen again sooner or later. The only interesting thing is that it s based on Android, probably in part due to the issues people seeing in both Windows 10, 11 and whatnot. Till later. Update :- The print tried a decluttering but instead cluttered the topic. While what he shared all was true, and certainly it is a step backwards but he didn t need to show how most Indians had to go to RBI for the same. I remember my Mamaji doing the same and sharing afterwards that all he had was $100 for a day which while being a big sum was paltry if you were staying in a hotel and were there for company business. He survived on bananas and whatver cheap veg. he could find then. This is almost 35-40 odd years ago. As shared the Govt. has been doing missteps for quite sometime now. The print does try to take a balanced take so it doesn t run counter of the Government but even it knows that this is a bad take. The whole thing about security is just laughable, did they wake up after 9 years. And now in its own wisdom it apparently has shifted the ban instead from now to 3 months afterwards. Of course, most people on the right just applauding without understanding the complexities and implications of the same. Vendors like Samsung and Apple who have made assembly operations would do a double-think and shift to Taiwan, Vietnam, Mexico anywhere. Global money follows global trends. And such missteps do not help

Implications in A.I. products One of the things that has not been thought about how companies that are making A.I. products in India or even MNC s will suffer. Most of them right now are in stealth mode but are made for Intel or AMD or ARM depending upon how it works for them. There is nothing to tell if the companies made their plea and was it heard or unheard. If the Government doesn t revert it then sooner or later they would either have to go abroad or cash out/sell to somebody else. Some people on the right also know this but for whatever reason have chosen to remain silent. Till later

Consent, Violence, Sexual Abuse This again would be somewhat of a mature post. So children, please refrain from reading. When I hear the above words, my first thought goes to Aamir Khan s Season 1 Episode 2 in Satyamev Jayate. This was the first time that the topic of child sexual abuse was bought in the forefront in the hall rather than a topic to be discussed in the corner. Unfortunately, that episode is still in Hindi and no English subtitles available even today shows a lack of sensitivity in Indian s part to still come to terms with Child abuse that happens in India. The numbers that they had shared at that time were shocking. More than 50 per cent children experience sexual abuse and mostly from friends or relatives. That means 1 in every 2 children. And this was in 2012. But the problem of child sexual abuse didn t start then, it started in the 1960 s, 70 s. In the 1960 s, 1970s we didn t have much of cinema and TV and whatever there was pretty limited. There were few B movie producers, but most of them came into their own in the 1980s. So what influenced Indians in those days were softcore magazines that either had a mature aunt or a teen and they would tease and sooner or later the man would sort of overpower them and fulfill his needs. Even mainstream Indian cinema used similar tropes. One of the most memorable songs of that era Wada Karo Nahi Chodoge Tum Meera Saath from Aa Gale Lag jaa. A bit of context for the song. This is where Shashi Kapoor sees, he tries to ask her to date him, she says no. He tries to put an act where he shows he can t skate or rather pretends. And kinda takes a promise from her that she will date him if he is able to skate. And viola, the next moment he is not just skating, but dancing and singing as well. And the whole he touches her and you can see that is uncomfortable and yet after a while he woos her. Now this is problematic today because we are seeing it from today s lens. It might also have problematic with the feminists of that time, but they probably would have been called overly sensitive or something like that. And this is what went in Universal cinema. But this is just tip of the surface. There were and are multiple poems and even art in those times that flirted and even sort of engaged with sexual molestation, rape both in poems as well as literature, both in Hindi and various regional literature. Similar to stuff that Keats and some other poets (problematic stuff) they wrote and where both men and women were in two minds, whether to take all the other good literature out or kinda make the difference between the art and artist. Now, while Aamir spoke about consent it wasn t in any official capacity or even a legal capacity. The interesting thing was that there was an Act that kinda put some safeguards but had been doing rounds for almost a decade. Because the extremists on both sides, Hindus and Muslims were not in favor of that Act, it was still doing rounds. Aamir s episode on 6th May 2012 and the discussions in mainstream media following that forced the Indian legislature to make POSCO as a law on 22nd May 2012. Almost 6 months to 2 weeks, Nirbhaya happened and changes to the law happened in another 6 months. Both voyeurism and stalking were made jailable offenses and consent became part of lingua franca in the Supreme Court. Couple of weeks back, I had shared in the Manipur case the part about fingering . In the same Act, another change that was done that insertion of any part including foreign objects in any of the openings would be classed as rape . So in that Manipur case, at least those 2-3 people who have been identified as clear perpetrators according to the law of land would be rapists and should have the highest punishment. Unfortunately, the system is rigged against women as Vrinda Grover had shared just couple of weeks back. How a 6 month fast track case (to be completed within 6 months) becomes a 10 year old case tells you the efficacy of the system. The reality is far more worse than is shared or known. Just a few months ago, GOI shared some data on Sexual Harassment in 2018-19. And this is after constant pressurizing by Activists that GOI doesn t like. In fact, in 2021, Unicef had shared data about how India was one of the five countries where child brides are still prevalent. India denied but didn t produce any alternative data. The firing of Mr. James over NHFS data sets doesn t give it any brownie points to the present Government. What has happened in the last few years is that the Government for reasons of its own had been scrubbing and censoring a lot of data. I won t go far, just 2 day old story which I had shared just couple of days back. Roughly a 25 year old RPF constable kills his superior and kills 3 Muslims after going to various coaches and then the Government uses the defence of temporary insanity.

Even the mental instability defence has twists and turns

Incidentally, Press Trust of India is s private organization and not the public broadcaster of the old. And incidentally, just a few days back, it came to light that they hadn t paid Income tax for last 2-3 years. Because of issues in reward money, the public came to know otherwise they wouldn t have known. Coming back to the topic itself, there was a video where you could hear and see the accused stating after killing the three Muslims that if you want to remain in India, then you have to vote for only Modi or Yogi, otherwise this will happen. That video was scrubbed both from Twitter as well as YouTube. All centralized platforms at the very least, whether it is Google (Youtube) or Twitter or Meta uses its own media ID. Meta s being most problematic but that probably being a discussion for another day. The same censorship tools are applied rigorously and lot of incidents are buried. Cases of girls being thrown in lakes just after lakes or low numbers of conviction in case of gang rapes are more often than not disappears.

The above article shared just a few days ago that how low the conviction rates of gang rapes are in Gujarat tells you the story. You might get the story today, but wait for a few weeks and you will find that the story has disappeared. What most people do not know or understand is that the web is increasingly a public repository of idea, imaginations and trust and authoritarian regimes like Government of India is increasingly using both official as well as unofficial methods to suppress the same. To see that in the last 9 odd years, GOI has made the highest number of takedown requests and been either number one or number two tells all. My question is where we do from here ??? If even the Minister and her Ministry can do only whataboutery rather than answer the questions, then how we are supposed to come up solutions. And even if a solution exists, without the state and Center agreeing and co-operating with civil society, any solution will be far off the desired result. I am sorry that I at least have no answers

• 6 different pages for the supported weather data¹, accessible via the key0 button
• Alerting² on the PM2.5 page when the defined threshold has been crossed
• Automatic screen blanking after a defined amount of time to save the OLED screen from burn-in
• Manual screen blanking using the key1 button

• MicroPython is close enough to regular Python that I don't mind it. The standard library is much smaller, but there are ways to work around that.
• The Raspberry Pi Pico W is a fantastic board. At around 10 CAD (~7 USD), it's much cheaper than anything Arduino offers, much more powerful than those boards and gives you the option of not having to code in some terrible and weird C variant. It also has a nice ecosystem of compatible modules and hats.
• Displays, even if they advertise being "batteries included", often are not. I had the bad surprise of discovering the MicroPython driver for the Waveshare Pico OLED 1.3 was pretty bad and lacked a ton of features compared to their C code driver. Thankfully, I was lucky enough that the OLED panel it uses (the SH1107) is common enough for folks to have written their own drivers.
• thonny, a Python IDE, is probably the best tool to transfer files to the Raspberry Pico and to debug code, as it provides a file manager and a shell³. I'm a little annoyed by it not being vim, but I got used to its quirks fairly quickly.

• I fixed native hppa builds of linux, which regressed due to my changes for cross-build support.
• I changed klibc's address layout for some architectures to work around a bug in QEMU user-space emulation. While investigating this I realised why klibc had started failing to link for MIPS R6, and fixed that too.
• I updated my branch fixing some reproducibility issues in linux.
• I packaged ktls-utils, which is needed to support use of TLS by the Linux kernel, in particular for NFS-over-TLS. I opened several upstream issues for problems I found.
• In order to test the NFS client with TLS, I needed Linux 6.5, so I updated the linux package to 6.5-rc3 (not yet uploaded).
• I cherry-picked mitigations for CVE-2023-20593 a.k.a. Zenbleed to various kernel branches, and uploaded linux version 6.1.38-2 to bookworm-security.
• I updated the buster-security branch of linux to upstream stable version 4.19.289, uploaded and issued DLA-3508-1 for it.
• I uploaded linux backport versions 6.3.7-1~bpo12+1 (bookworm-backports), 6.1.28-2~bpo11+1 (bullseye-backports), and 5.10.179-3~deb10u1 (buster-security).
• I made a minimal backport of the fix for CVE-2023-3610 for bullseye-security.
• I released klibc version 2.0.13 after nearly 6 months of development. (At the time of writing, the above link was broken due to an expired certificate.) Headline features are the LoongArch port and the use of 64-bit time_t and RT signals on all architectures. I also uploaded the new version to Debian.

1. I predict that by the end of 2023 Russia will have a much smaller number of military aircraft through maintenance problems even if Ukraine doesn t get long-range SAM systems.
2. I predict that by mid 2024 Ukraine will have air superiority. They will destroy many Russian SAM systems and be able to bomb Russian targets with little risk.
3. I predict that Russia won t impose any significant new conscription programs on their population. Such programs are extremely unpopular and Russia doesn t have the industrial capacity to equip a larger army as they can t properly equip their current army.
4. Currently Ukraine is making slow but steady progress in retaking their territory in the East. I predict that before the end of 2023 they will have cut all supply lines to Crimea from the mainland by having artillery that can accurately cover all the distance to the coast of the Sea of Azov. I also predict that the bridge over the Kerch strait will be mostly unusable from now on (on average less than 1/3 the bridge capacity usable). As fast as the Russians can repair it the Ukrainians will bomb it again. At most they will have half of the road lanes available to cars and will be unable to transport any significant amount of military equipment.
5. Due to Russians lacking supplies I predict that Ukraine will recapture at least half the Crimean land area by the end of 2023.
6. The regions of Luhansk and Donetsk will be the most difficult to capture as they have been held the longest. I predict that the war will not end until Ukraine controls everything within their 2013 borders including Luhansk and Donetsk. The final victory may happen due to the Russian military collapsing or due to a new Russian government ordering a withdrawal.
7. I predict that Russia will make significant efforts to help Trump get elected in 2024. But even if they succeed it will be too late for him to help them much or change the outcome.
8. I predict that Ukraine will win this war before the end of 2025. Even if some of my other predictions turn out to be incorrect I predict that by the end of 2025 the military forces of Russia and Ukraine will not be fighting and that it will be because Ukraine has given the Russian military a proper spanking. If something like the Troubles in Ireland happens (which is a real possibility) that doesn t count as a war.
9. I predict that Ukraine will not deploy any significant attack inside Russian territory. They will launch small scale attacks on specific military targets but do nothing that the Russian population might consider to be full scale war.
10. I predict that Putin will not lead Russia 2 months after Ukraine recaptures all their territory. He may not live for long after Ukraine wins, or the Russian withdrawal might happen because Putin dies of apparently natural causes.
11. After the war I predict that Ukraine will control all their territory from 2013 and there will be a demilitarised zone or no-fly zone in Russian territory.
12. I predict that after the war some parts of the Russian Federation will break free. There are many different groups who would like to be free of Russia and Ukraine destroying most of the Russian military will make things easy for them. A Russian civil war is a possibility.
13. I predict that the US will give minimal support to Russia after the war as a strategic plan to block China. I predict that the quality and efficacy of such support will be comparable to the US actions in the Middle East.

Manipur Lot of news from Manipur. Seems the killings haven t stopped. In fact, there was a huge public rally in support of the rapists and murderers as reported by Imphal Free Press. The Ruling Govt. both at the Center and the State being BJP continuing to remain mum. Both the Internet shutdowns have been criticized and seems no effect on the Government. Their own MLA was attacked but they have chosen to also be silent about that. The opposition demanded that the PM come in both the houses and speak but he has chosen to remain silent. In that quite a few bills were passed without any discussions. If it was not for the viral videos nobody would have come to know of anything . Internet shutdowns impact women disproportionately as more videos of assaults show Of course, as shared before that gentleman has been arrested under Section 66A as I shared in the earlier blog post. In any case, in the last few years, this Government has chosen to pass most of its bills without any discussions. Some of the bills I will share below. The attitude of this Govt. can be seen through this cartoon

The above picture shows the disqualified M.P. Rahul Gandhi because he had asked what is the relationship between Adani and Modi. The other is the Mr. Modi, the Prime Minister who refuses to enter and address the Parliament. Prem Panicker shares how we chillingly have come to this stage when even after rapes we are silent

Data Leakage According to most BJP followers this is not a bug but a feature of this Government. Sucheta Dalal of Moneylife shared how the data leakage has been happening at the highest levels in the Government. The leakage is happening at the ministerial level because unless the minister or his subordinate passes a certain startup others cannot come to know. As shared in the article, while the official approval may take 3-4 days, within hours other entities start congratulating. That means they know that the person/s have been approved.While reading this story, the first thought that immediately crossed my mind was data theft and how easily that would have been done. There was a time when people would be shocked by articles such as above and demand action but sadly even if people know and want to do something they feel powerless to do anything

PAN Linking and Aadhar Last month GOI made PAN Linking to Aadhar a thing. This goes against the judgement given by the honored Supreme Court in September 2018. Around the same time, Moneylife had reported on the issue on how the info. on Aadhar cards is available and that has its consequences. But to date nothing has happened except GOI shrugging. In the last month, 13 crore+ users of PAN including me affected by it I had tried to actually delink the two but none of the banks co-operated in the same Aadhar has actually number of downsides, most people know about the AEPS fraud that has been committed time and time again. I have shared in previous blog posts the issue with biometric data as well as master biometric data that can and is being used for fraud. GOI either ignorant or doesn t give a fig as to what happens to you, citizen of India. I could go on and on but it would result in nothing constructive so will stop now

IRCv3 I had been enthused when I heard about IRCV3. While it was founded in 2016, it sorta came on in its own in around 2020. I did try matrix or rather riot-web and went through number of names while finally setting on element. While I do have the latest build 1.11.36 element just hasn t been workable for me. It is too outsized, and occupies much more real estate than other IM s (Instant Messengers and I cannot correct size it like I do say for qbittorrent or any other app. I had filed couple of bugs on it but because it apparently only affects me, nothing happened afterwards But that is not the whole story at all. Because of Debconf happening in India, and that too Kochi, I decided to try out other tools to see how IRC is doing. While the Debian wiki page shares a lot about IRC clients and is also helpful in sharing stats by popcounter ( popularity-contest, thanks to whoever did that), it did help me in trying two of the most popular clients. Pidgin and Hexchat, both of which have shared higher numbers. This might be simply due to the fact that both get downloaded when you install the desktop version or they might be popular in themselves, have no idea one way or the other. But still I wanted to see what sort of experience I could expect from both of them in 2023. One of the other things I noticed is that Pidgin is not a participating organization in ircv3 while hexchat is. Before venturing in, I also decided to take a look at oftc.net. Came to know that for sometime now, oftc has started using web verify. I didn t see much of a difference between hcaptcha and gcaptcha other than that the fact that they looked more like oil paintings rather than anything else. While I could easily figure the odd man out or odd men out to be more accurate, I wonder how a person with low or no vision would pass that ??? Also much of our world is pretty much contextual based, figuring who the odd one is or are could be tricky. I do not have answers to the above other than to say more work needs to be done by oftc in that area. I did get a link that I verified. But am getting ahead of the story. Another thing I understood that for some reason oftc is also not particpating in ircv3, have no clue why not :(I

Account Registration in Pidgin and Hexchat This is the biggest pain point in both. I failed to register via either Pidgin or Hexchat. I couldn t find a way in either client to register my handle. I have had on/off relationships with IRC over the years, the biggest issue being IIRC is that if you stop using your handle for a month or two others can use it. IIRC, every couple of months or so, irc/oftc releases the dormant ones. Matrix/Vector has done quite a lot in that regard but that s a different thing altogether so for the moment will keep that aside. So, how to register for the network. This is where webchat.oftc.net comes in. You get a quaint 1970 s IRC window (probably emulated) where you call Nickserv to help you. As can be seen it one of the half a dozen bots that helps IRC. So the first thing you need to do is /msg nickserv help what you are doing is asking nickserv what services they have and Nickserv shares the numbers of services it offers. After looking into, you are looking for register /msg nickerv register Both the commands tell you what you need to do as can be seen by this

Let s say you are XYZ and your e-mail address is xyz@xyz.com This is just a throwaway id I am taking for the purpose of showing how the process is done. For this, also assume your passowrd is 1234xyz;0x something like this. I have shared about APG (Advanced Password Generator) before so you could use that to generate all sorts of passwords for yourself. So next would be /msg nickserv register 1234xyz;0x xyz@xyz.com Now the thing to remember is you need to be sure that the email is valid and in your control as it would generate a link with hcaptcha. Interestingly, their accessibility signup fails or errors out. I just entered my email and it errors out. Anyway back to it. Even after completing the puzzle, even with the valid username and password neither pidgin or hexchat would let me in. Neither of the clients were helpful in figuring out what was going wrong. At this stage, I decided to see the specs of ircv3 if they would help out in anyway and came across this. One would have thought that this is one of the more urgent things that need to be fixed, but for reasons unknown it s still in draft mode. Maybe they (the participants) are not in consensus, no idea. Unfortunately, it seems that the participants of IRCv3 have chosen a sort of closed working model as the channel is restricted. The only notes of any consequence are being shared by Ilmari Lauhakangas from Finland. Apparently, Mr/Ms/they Ilmari is also a libreoffice hacker. It is possible that their is or has been lot of drama before or something and that s why things are the way they are. In either way, doesn t tell me when this will be fixed, if ever. For people who are on mobiles and whatnot, without element, it would be 10x times harder. Update :- Saw this discussion on github. Don t see a way out It seems I would be unable to unable to be part of Debconf Kochi 2023. Best of luck to all the participants and please share as much as possible of what happens during the event.

Manipur Videos Warning: The text might be mature and will have references to violence so if there are kids or you are sensitive, please excuse. Few days back, saw the videos and I cannot share the rage, shame and many conflicting emotions that were going through me. I almost didn t want to share but couldn t stop myself. The woman in the video were being palmed, fingered, nude, later reportedly raped and murdered. And there have been more than a few cases. The next day saw another video that showed beheaded heads, and Kukis being killed just next to their houses. I couldn t imagine what those people must be feeling as the CM has been making partisan statements against them. One of the husbands of the Kuki women who had been paraded, fondled is an Army Officer in the Indian Army. The Meiteis even tried to burn his home but the Army intervened and didn t let it get burnt. The CM s own statement as shared before tells his inability to bring the situation out of crisis. In fact, his statement was dumb stating that the Internet shutdown was because there were more than 100 such cases. And it s spreading to the nearby Northeast regions. Now Mizoram, the nearest neighbor is going through similar things where the Meitis are not dominant. The Mizos have told the Meitis to get out. To date, the PM has chosen not to visit Manipur. He just made a small 1 minute statement about it saying how the women have shamed India, an approximation of what he said.While it s actually not the women but the men who have shamed India. The Wire has been talking to both the Meitis, the Kukis, the Nagas. A Kuki women sort of bared all. She is right on many counts. The GOI while wanting to paint the Kukis in a negative light have forgotten what has been happening in its own state, especially its own youth as well as in other states while also ignoring the larger geopolitics and business around it. Taliban has been cracking as even they couldn t see young boys, women becoming drug users. I had read somewhere that 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 young person in Afghanistan is now in its grip. So no wonder,the Taliban is trying to eradicate and shutdown drug use among it s own youth. Circling back to Manipur, I was under the wrong impression that the Internet shutdown is now over. After those videos became viral as well as the others I mentioned, again the orders have been given and there is shutdown. It is not fully shut but now only Govt. offices have it. so nobody can share a video that goes against any State or Central Govt. narrative A real sad state of affairs Update: There is conditional reopening whatever that means When I saw the videos, the first thing is I felt was being powerless, powerless to do anything about it. The second was if I do not write about it, amplify it and don t let others know about it then what s the use of being able to blog

Mental Health, Binging on various Webseries Both the videos shocked me and I couldn t sleep that night or the night after. it. Even after doing work and all, they would come in unobtrusively in my nightmares While I felt a bit foolish, I felt it would be nice to binge on some webseries. Little I was to know that both Northshore and Alaska Daily would have stories similar to what is happening here While the story in Alaska Daily is fictional it resembles very closely to a real newspaper called Anchorage Daily news. Even there the Intuit women , one of the marginalized communities in Alaska. The only difference I can see between GOI and the Alaskan Government is that the Alaskan Government was much subtle in doing the same things. There are some differences though. First, the State is and was responsive to the local press and apart from one close call to one of its reporters, most reporters do not have to think about their own life in peril. Here, the press cannot look after either their livelihood or their life. It was a juvenile kid who actually shot the video, uploaded and made it viral. One needs to just remember the case details of Siddique Kappan. Just for sharing the news and the video he was arrested. Bail was denied to him time and time again citing that the Police were investigating . Only after 2 years and 3 months he got bail and that too because none of the charges that the Police had they were able to show any prima facie evidence. One of the better interviews though was of Vrinda Grover. For those who don t know her, her Wikipedia page does tell a bit about her although it is woefully incomplete. For example, most recently she had relentlessly pursued the unconstitutional Internet Shutdown that happened in Kashmir for 5 months. Just like in Manipur, the shutdown was there to bury crimes either committed or being facilitated by the State. For the issues of livelihood, one can take the cases of Bipin Yadav and Rashid Hussain. Both were fired by their employer Dainik Bhaskar because they questioned the BJP MP Smriti Irani what she has done for the state. The problems for Dainik Bhaskar or for any other mainstream media is most of them rely on Government advertisements. Private investment in India has fallen to record lows mostly due to the policies made by the Centre. If any entity or sector grows a bit then either Adani or Ambani will one way or the other take it. So, for most first and second generation entrepreneurs it doesn t make sense to grow and then finally sell it to one of these corporates at a loss GOI on Adani, Ambani side of any deal. The MSME sector that is and used to be the second highest employer hasn t been able to recover from the shocks of demonetization, GST and then the pandemic. Each resulting in more and more closures and shutdowns. Most of the joblessness has gone up tremendously in North India which the Government tries to deny. The most interesting points in all those above examples is within a month or less, whatever the media reports gets scrubbed. Even the firing of the journos that was covered by some of the mainstream media isn t there anymore. I have to use secondary sources instead of primary sources. One can think of the chilling effects on reportage due to the above. The sad fact is even with all the money in the world the PM is unable to come to the Parliament to face questions.

The above poster/question is by Surya Pratap Singh, a retired IAS officer. He asks why the PM is unable to answer in either of the houses. As shared before, the Govt. wants very limited discussion. Even yesterday, the Lok Sabha TV just showed the BJP MP s making statements but silent or mic was off during whatever questions or statements made by the opposition. If this isn t mockery of Indian democracy then I don t know what is Even the media landscape has been altered substantially within the last few years. Both Adani and Ambani have distributed the media pie between themselves. One of the last bastions of the free press, NDTV was bought by Adani in a hostile takeover. Both Ambani and Adani are close to this Goverment. In fact, there is no sector in which one or the other is not present. Media houses like Newsclick, The Wire etc. that are a fraction of mainstream press are where most of the youth have been going to get their news as they are not partisan. Although even there, GOI has time and again interfered. The Wire has had too many 504 Gateway timeouts in the recent months and they had been forced to move most of their journalism from online to video, rather Youtube in order to escape both the censoring and the timeouts as shared above. In such a hostile environment, how both the organizations are somehow able to survive is a miracle. Most local reportage is also going to YouTube as that s the best way for them to not get into Govt. censors. Not an ideal situation, but that s the way it is. The difference between Indian and Israeli media can be seen through this

The above is a Screenshot shared by how the Israeli media has reacted to the Israeli Government s Knesset over the judicial overhaul . Here, the press itself erodes its own by giving into the Government day and night

Binging on Webseries Saw Northshore, Three Pines, Alaska Daily and Doogie Kamealoha M.D. which is based on Doogie Howser M.D. Of the four, enjoyed Doogie Kamealoha M.D. the most but then it might be because it s a copy of Doogie Howser, just updated to the new millenia and there are some good childhood memories associated with that series. The others are also good. I tried to not see European stuff as most of them are twisted and didn t want that space.

EU Digital Operational Resilience Act and impact on FOSS Few days ago, apparently the EU shared the above Act. One can read about it more here. This would have more impact on FOSS as most development of various FOSS distributions happens in EU. Fair bit of Debian s own development happens in Germany and France. While there have been calls to make things more clearer, especially for FOSS given that most developers do foss development either on side or as a hobby while their day job is and would be different. The part about consumer electronics and FOSS is a tricky one as updates can screw up your systems. Microsoft has had a huge history of devices not working after an update or upgrade. And this is not limited to Windows as they would like to believe. Even apple seems to be having its share of issues time and time again. One would have hoped that these companies that make billions of dollars from their hardware and software sales would be doing more testing and Q&A and be more aware about security issues. FOSS, on the other hand while being more responsive doesn t make as much money vis-a-vis the competitors. Let s take the most concrete example. The most successful mobile phone having FOSS is Purism. But it s phone, it has priced itself out of the market. A huge part of that is to do with both economies of scale and trying to get an infrastructure and skills in the States where none or minimally exists. Compared that to say Pinepro that is manufactured in Hong Kong and is priced 1/3rd of the same. For most people it is simply not affordable in these times. Add to that the complexity of these modern cellphones make it harder, not easier for most people to be vigilant and update the phone at all times. Maybe we need more dumphones such as Light and Punkt but then can those be remotely hacked or not, there doesn t seem to be any answers on that one. I haven t even seen anybody even ask those questions. They may have their own chicken and egg issues. For people like me who have lost hearing, while I can navigate smartphones for now but as I become old I don t see anything that would help me. For many an elderly population, both hearing and seeing are the first to fade. There doesn t seem to be any solutions targeted for them even though they are 5-10% of any population at the very least. Probably more so in Europe and the U.S. as well as Japan and China. All of them are clearly under-served markets but dunno a solution for them. At least to me that s an open question.

name: r2u

on:
  push:
  pull_request:
  release:

jobs:
  ci:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: rocker/r2u:latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: SessionInfo
        run: R -q -e 'sessionInfo()'
      #- name: System Dependencies
      #  # can be used to install e.g. cmake or other build dependencies
      #  run: apt update -qq && apt install --yes --no-install-recommends cmake git
      - name: Package Dependencies
        run: R -q -e 'remotes::install_deps(".", dependencies=TRUE)'
      - name: Build Package
        run: R CMD build --no-build-vignettes --no-manual .
      - name: Check Package
        run: R CMD check --no-vignettes --no-manual $(ls -1tr *.tar.gz   tail -1)

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

Changes in version 0.0.7 (2023-07-19)

• Updates, extensions and corrections to calendars from South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Taiwan, South Africa, Denmark and Finland from QuantLib 1.31
• Added support for UnitedStates/SOFR calendar

> ## see https://github.com/qlcal/qlcal-r/blob/master/demo/allUScalendars.R
> ## see R/calendars.R in qlcal, we prepend 'UnitedStates/' in makeHol()
> cals <- c("LiborImpact", "NYSE", "GovernmentBond", "NERC", "FederalReserve", "SOFR")
> print(Reduce(cbind, Map(makeHol, cals)))
           LiborImpact NYSE GovernmentBond NERC FederalReserve SOFR
2023-01-02        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2023-01-16        TRUE TRUE           TRUE   NA           TRUE TRUE
2023-02-20        TRUE TRUE           TRUE   NA           TRUE TRUE
2023-04-07          NA TRUE             NA   NA             NA TRUE
2023-05-29        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2023-06-19        TRUE TRUE           TRUE   NA           TRUE TRUE
2023-07-04        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2023-09-04        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2023-10-09        TRUE   NA           TRUE   NA           TRUE TRUE
2023-11-10        TRUE   NA             NA   NA             NA   NA
2023-11-23        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
2023-12-25        TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE           TRUE TRUE
> 

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

RISC -V Motherboard, SBC While I didn t want to, a part of me is hyped about this motherboard. This would probably be launched somewhere in November. There are obvious issues in this, the first being unlike regular motherboards you wouldn t be upgrade as you would do.You can t upgrade your memory, can t upgrade the CPU (although new versions of instructions could be uploaded, similar to BIOS updates) but as the hardware is integrated (the quad-core SiFive Performance P550 core complex) it would really depend. If the final pricing is around INR 4-5k then it may be able to sell handsomely provided there are people to push and provide support around it. A 500 GB or 1 TB SSD coupled with it and a cheap display unit and you could use it anywhere although as the name says it s more for tinkering as the name suggests. Another board that could perhaps be of more immediate use would be the beagleboard. They launched the same couple of days back and called it Beagle V-Ahead. Again, costs are going to be a concern. Just a year before the pandemic the Beagleboard Black (BB) used to cost in the sub 4k range, today it costs 8k+ for the end user, more than twice the price. How much Brexit is to be blamed for this and how much the Indian customs we would never know. The RS Group that is behind that shop is head-quartered in the UK. As said before, we do not know the price of either board as it probably will take few months for v-ahead to worm its way in the Indian market, maybe another 6 months or so. Even so, with the limited info. on both the boards, I am tilting more towards the other HiFive one. We should come to know about the boards say in 3-5 months of time.

CHIPS Act I had shared about the Chips Act a few times here as well as on SM. Two articles do tell how the CHIPS Act 2023 is more of a political tool, an industrial defence policy rather than just business as most people tend to think.

Cancelation of Books, Books Burning etc. Almost 2400 years ago, Plato released his work called Plato s Republic and one of the seminal works within it is perhaps one of the most famous works was the Allegory of the Cave. That is used again and again in a myriad ways, mostly in science-fiction though and mostly to do with utopian, dystopian movies, webseries etc. I did share how books are being canceled in the States, also a bit here. But the most damning thing has happened throughout history, huge quantities of books burned almost all for politics But part of it has been neglect as well as this time article shares. What we have lost and continue to lose is just priceless. Every book has a grain of truth in it, some more, some less but equally enjoyable. Most harmful is the neglect towards books and is more true today than any other time in history. Kids today have a wide variety of tools to keep themselves happy or occupied, from anime, VR, gaming the list goes on and on. In that scenario, how the humble books can compete. People think of Kindle but most e-readers like Kindle are nothing but obsolescence by design. I have tried out Kindle a few times but find it a bit on the flimsy side. Books are much better IMHO or call me old-school. While there are many advantages, one of the things that I like about books is that you can easily put yourself in either the protagonist or the antagonist or somewhere in the middle and think of the possible scenarios wherever you are in a particular book. I could go on but it will be a blog post or two in itself. Till later. Happy Reading.

Update:Manipur Extremely horrifying visuals, articles and statements continue to emanate from Manipur. Today, 19th July 2023, just couple of hours back, a video surfaced showing two Kuki women were shown as stripped, naked and Meitei men touching their private parts. Later on, we came to know that this was in response of a disinformation news spread by the Meitis of few women being raped although no documentary evidence of the same surfaced, no names nothing. While I don t want to share the video I will however share the statement shared by the Kuki-Zo tribal community on that. The print gives a bit more context to what has been going on.

Update, Few hours later : The Print also shared more of a context about six days ago. The reason we saw the video now was that for the last 2.5 months Manipur was in Internet shutdown so those videos got uploaded now. There was huge backlash from the Twitter community and GOI ordered the Manipur Police to issue this Press Release yesterday night or just few hours before with yesterday s time-stamp.

IndianExpress shared an article that does state that while an FIR had been registered immediately no arrests so far and this is when you can see the faces of all the accused. Not one of them tried to hide their face behind a mask or something. So, if the police wanted, they could have easily identified who they are. They know which community the accused belong to, they even know from where they came. If they wanted to, they could have easily used mobile data and triangulation to find the accused and their helpers. So, it does seem to be attempt to whitewash and protect a certain community while letting it prey on the other. Another news that did come in, is because of the furious reaction on Twitter, Youtube has constantly been taking down the video as some people are getting a sort of high more so from the majoritarian community and making lewd remarks. Twitter has been somewhat quick when people are making lewd remarks against the two girl/women. Quite a bit of the above seems like a cover-up. Lastly, apparently GOI has agreed to having a conversation about it in Lok Sabha but without any voting or passing any resolutions as of right now. Would update as an when things change. Update: Smriti Irani, the Child and Development Minister gave the weakest statement possible

As can be noticed, she said sexual assault rather than rape. The women were under police custody for safety when they were whisked away by the mob. No mention of that. She spoke to the Chief Minister who has been publicly known as one of the provocateurs or instigators for the whole thing. The CM had publicly called the Kukus and Nagas as foreigners although both of them claim to be residing for thousands of years and they apparently have documentary evidence of the same . Also not clear who is doing the condemning here. No word of support for the women, no offer of intervention, why is she the Minister of Child and Women Development (CDW) if she can t use harsh words or give support to the women who have gone and going through horrific things Update : CM Biren Singh s Statement after the video surfaced

This tweet is contradictory to the statements made by Mr. Singh couple of months ago. At that point in time, Mr. Singh had said that NIA, State Intelligence Departments etc. were giving him minute to minute report on the ground station. The Police itself has suo-moto (on its own) powers to investigate and apprehend criminals for any crime. In fact, the Police can call for questioning of anybody in any relation to any crime and question them for upto 48 hours before charging them. In fact, many cases have been lodged where innocent persons have been framed or they have served much more in the jail than the crime they are alleged to have been committed. For e.g. just a few days before there was a media report of a boy who has been in jail for 3 years. His alleged crime, stealing mere INR 200/- to feed himself. Court doesn t have time to listen to him yet. And there are millions like him. The quint eloquently shares the tale where it tells how both the State and the Centre have been explicitly complicit in the incidents ravaging Manipur. In fact, what has been shared in the article has been very true as far as greed for land is concerned. Just couple of weeks back there have been a ton of floods emanating from Uttarakhand and others. Just before the flooding began, what was the CM doing can be seen here. Apart from the newspapers I have shared and the online resources, most of the mainstream media has been silent on the above. In fact, they have been silent on the Manipur issue until the said video didn t come into limelight. Just now, in Lok Sabha everybody is present except the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. The PM did say that the law will take its own course, but that s about it. Again no support for the women concerned. Update: CJI (Chief Justice of India) has taken suo-moto cognizance and has warned both the State and Centre to move quickly otherwise they will take the matter in their own hand.

Update: Within 2 hours of the CJI taking suo-moto cognizance, they have arrested one of the main accused Heera Das

The above tells you why the ban on Internet was put in the first place. They wanted to cover it all up. Of all the celebs, only one could find a bit of spine, a bit of backbone to speak about it, all the rest mum

Just imagine, one of the women is around my age while the young one could have been a daughter if I had married on time or a younger sister for sure. If ever I came face to face with them, I just wouldn t be able to look them in the eye. Even their whole whataboutery is built on sham. From their view Kukis are from Burma or Burmese descent. All of which could be easily proved by DNA of all. But let s leave that for a sec. Let s take their own argument that they are Burmese. Their idea of Akhand Bharat stretches all the way to Burma (now called Myanmar). They want all the land but no idea with what to do with the citizens living on it. Even after the video, the whataboutery isn t stopping, that shows how much hatred is there. And not knowing that they too will be victim of the same venom one or the other day Update: Opposition was told there would be a debate on Manipur. The whole day went by, no debate. That s the shamelessness of this Govt. Update 20th July 19:25 Center may act or not act against the perpetrators but they will act against Twitter who showed the crime. Talk about shooting the messenger

We are now in the last stage. In 2014, we were at 6

1. Get the official installation image from the usual locations. I got the netinst CD image via BitTorrent.
2. Boot from the image and go through the installation in the normal way.
   1. You may want to select an alternative desktop environment (and unselect GNOME). These steps have been tested with MATE.
   2. Stop when you are asked to remove the installation media and reboot.
3. Press Alt + Right arrow to switch to the text VC. Hit return to activate the console and run the following commands (answering yes as appropriate):

chroot /target bash
apt-get install sysvinit-core elogind ntp dbus-x11
apt-get autoremove
exit

4. Observe the output from the apt-get install. If your disk arrangements are unusual, that may generate some error messages from update-initramfs.
5. Go back to the installer VC with Alt + Left arrow. If there were no error messages above, you may tell it to reboot.
6. If there were error messages (for example, I found that if there was disk encryption, alarming messages were printed), tell the installer to go Back . Then ask it to Install GRUB bootloader (again). After that has completed, you may reboot.
7. Enjoy your Debian system without systemd.