Comments on the BBI court case which happened in Kenya, then and the subsequent appeal. I am not going to share much about the coverage of the BBI appeal as Gautam Bhatia has shared quite eloquently his observations, both on the initial case and the subsequent appeal which lasted 5 days in Kenya and was shown all around the world thanks to YouTube. One of the interesting points which stuck with me was that in Kenya, sign language is one of the official languages. And in fact, I was able to read quite a bit about the various sign languages which are there in Kenya. It just boggles the mind that there are countries that also give importance to such even though they are not as rich or as developed as we call developed economies. I probably might give more space and give more depth as it does carry some important judicial jurisprudence which is and which will be felt around the world. How does India react or doesn t is probably another matter altogether But yes, it needs it own space, maybe after some more time. Report on Standing Committee on IP Regulation in India and the false promises. Again, I do not want to take much time in sharing details about what the report contains, as the report can be found here. I have uploaded it on WordPress, in case of an issue. An observation on the same subject can be found here. At least, to me and probably those who have been following the IP space as either using/working on free software or even IP would be aware that the issues shared have been known since 1994. And it does benefit the industry rather than the country. This way, the rent-seekers, and monopolists win. There is ample literature that shared how rich countries had weak regulation for decades and even centuries till it was advantageous for them to have strong IP. One can look at the history of Europe and the United States for it. We can also look at the history of our neighbor China, which for the last 5 decades has used some provision of IP and disregarded many others. But these words are of no use, as the policies done and shared are by the rich for the rich.

Fighting between two State Borders Ironically or because of it, two BJP ruled states Assam and Mizoram fought between themselves. In which 6 policemen died. While the history of the two states is complicated it becomes a bit more complicated when one goes back into Assam and ULFA history and comes to know that ULFA could not have become that powerful until and unless, the Marwaris, people of my clan had not given generous donations to them. They thought it was a good investment, which later would turn out to be untrue. Those who think ULFA has declined, or whatever, still don t have answers to this or this. Interestingly, both the Chief Ministers approached the Home Minister (Mr. Amit Shah) of BJP. Mr. Shah was supposed to be the Chanakya but in many instances, including this one, he decided to stay away. His statement was on the lines of you guys figure it out yourself. There is a poem that was shared by the late poet Rahat Indori. I am sharing the same below as an image and will attempt to put a rough translation.

kisi ke baap ka hindustan todi hain Rahat Indori

Poets, whether in India or elsewhere, are known to speak truth to power and are a bit of a rebel. This poem by Rahat Indori is provocatively titled Kisi ke baap ka Hindustan todi hai , It challenges the majoritarian idea that Hindustan/India only belongs to the majoritarian religion. He also challenges as well as asserts at the same time that every Indian citizen, regardless of whatever his or her religion might be, is an Indian and can assert India as his home. While the whole poem is compelling in itself, for me what hits home is in the second stanza

:Lagegi Aag to aayege ghat kayi zad me, Yaha pe sirf hamara makan todi hai The meaning is simple yet subtle, he uses Aag or Fire as a symbol of hate sharing that if hate spreads, it won t be his home alone that will be torched. If one wants to literally understand what he meant, I present to you the cult Russian movie No Escapes or Ogon as it is known in Russian. If one were to decipher why the Russian film doesn t talk about climate change, one has to view it from the prism of what their leader Vladimir Putin has said and done over the years. As can be seen even in there, the situation is far more complex than one imagines. Although, it is interesting to note that he decried Climate change as man-made till as late as last year and was on the side of Trump throughout his presidency. This was in 2017 as well as perhaps this. Interestingly, there was a change in tenor and note just a couple of weeks back, but that could be only politicking or much more. Statements that are not backed by legislation and application are usually just a whitewash. We would have to wait to see what concrete steps are taken by Putin, Kremlin, and their Duma before saying either way.

Civil Aviation and the broad structure Civil Aviation is a large topic and I would not be able to do justice to it all in one article/blog post. So, for e.g. I will not be getting into Aircraft (Boeing, Airbus, Comac etc., etc.) or the new electric aircraft as that will just make the blog post long. I will not be also talking about cargo or Visa or many such topics, as all of them actually would and do need their own space. So this would be much more limited to Airports and to some extent airlines, as one cannot survive without the other. The primary reason for doing this is there is and has been a lot of myth-making in India about Civil Aviation in general, whether it has to do with Civil Aviation history or whatever passes as of policy in India.

A little early history Man has always looked at the stars and envisaged himself or herself as a bird, flying with gay abandon. In fact, there have been many paintings, sculptors who imagined how we would fly. The Steam Engine itself was invented in 82 BCE. But the attempt to fly was done by a certain Monk called Brother Elmer of Malmesbury who attempted the same in 1010., shortly after the birth of the rudimentary steam engine The most famous of all would be Leonardo da Vinci for his amazing sketches of flying machines in 1493. There were a couple of books by Cyrano de Bergerac, apparently wrote two books, both sadly published after his death. Interestingly, you can find both the book and the gentleman in the Project Gutenberg archives. How much of M/s Cyrano s exploits were his own and how much embellished by M/S Curtis, maybe a friend, a lover who knows, but it does give the air of the swashbuckling adventurer of the time which many men aspired to in that time. So, why not an author???

L Autre Monde: ou les tats et Empires de la Lune (Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon) and Les tats et Empires du Soleil (The States and Empires of the Sun). These two French books apparently had a lot of references to flying machines. Both of them were authored by Cyrano de Bergerac. Both of these were sadly published after his death, one apparently in 1656 and the other one a couple of years later. By the 17th century, while it had become easy to know and measure the latitude, measuring longitude was a problem. In fact, it can be argued and probably successfully that India wouldn t have been under British rule or UK wouldn t have been a naval superpower if it hadn t solved the longitudinal problem. Over the years, the British Royal Navy suffered many blows, one of the most famous or infamous among them might be the Scilly naval disaster of 1707 which led to the death of 2000 odd British Royal naval personnel and led to Queen Anne, who was ruling over England at that time via Parliament and called it the Longitude Act which basically was an open competition for anybody to fix the problem and carried the prize money of 20,000. While nobody could claim the whole prize, many did get smaller amounts depending upon the achievements. The best and the nearest who came was John Harrison who made the first sea-watch and with modifications, over the years it became miniaturized to a pocket-sized Marine chronometer although, I doubt the ones used today look anything in those days. But if that had not been invented, we surely would have been freed long ago. The assumption being that the East India Company would have dashed onto rocks so many times, that the whole exercise would have been futile. The downside of it is that maritime trade routes that are being used today and the commerce would not have been. Neither would have aircraft or space for that matter, or at the very least delayed by how many years or decades, nobody knows. If one wants to read about the Longitudinal problem, one can get the famous book Longitude .

In many mythologies, including Indian and Arabian tales, in which we had the flying carpet which would let its passengers go from one place to the next. Then there is also mention of Pushpak Vimana in ancient texts, but those secrets remain secrets. Think how much foreign exchange India could make by both using it and exporting the same worldwide. And I m being serious. There are many who believe in it, but sadly, the ones who know the secret don t seem to want India s progress. Just think of the carbon credits that India could have, which itself would make India a superpower. And I m being serious.

Western Ideas and Implementation. Even in the late and early 18th century, there were many machines that were designed to have controlled flight, but it was only the Wright Flyer that was able to demonstrate a controlled flight in 1903. The ones who came pretty close to what the Wrights achieved were the people by the name of Cayley and Langley. They actually studied what the pioneers had done. They looked at what Otto Lilienthal had done, as he had done a lot of hang-gliding and put a lot of literature in the public domain then.

Furthermore, they also consulted Octave Chanute. The whole system and history of the same are a bit complicated, but it does give a window to what happened then. So, it won t be wrong to say that whatever the Wright Brothers accomplished would probably not have been possible or would have taken years or maybe even decades if that literature and experiments, drawings, etc. in the commons were not available. So, while they did experimentation, they also looked at what other people were doing and had done which was in public domain/commons.

They also did a lot of testing, which gave them new insights. Even the propulsion system they used in the 1903 flight was a design by Nicolaus Otto. In fact, the Aircraft would not have been born if the Chinese had not invented kites in the early sixth century A.D. One also has to credit Issac Newton because of the three laws of motion, again without which none of the above could have happened. What is credited to the Wilbur brothers is not just they made the Kitty Hawk, they also made it commercial as they sold it and variations of the design to the American Air Force and also made a pilot school where pilots were trained for warfighting. 119 odd pilots came out of that school. The Wrights thought that air supremacy would end the war early, but this turned out to be a false hope.

Competition and Those Magnificent Men and their flying machines One of the first competitions to unlock creativity was the English Channel crossing offer made by Daily Mail. This was successfully done by the Frenchman Louis Bl riot. You can read his account here. There were quite a few competitions before World War 1 broke out. There is a beautiful, humorous movie that does dedicate itself to imagining how things would have gone in that time. In fact, there have been two movies, this one and an earlier movie called Sky Riders made many a youth dream. The other movie sadly is not yet in the public domain, and when it will be nobody knows, but if you see it or even read it, it gives you goosebumps.

World War 1 and Improvements to Aircraft World War 1 is remembered as the Great War or the War to end all wars in an attempt at irony. It did a lot of destruction of both people and property, and in fact, laid the foundation of World War 2. At the same time, if World War 1 hadn t happened then Airpower, Plane technology would have taken decades. Even medicine and medical techniques became revolutionary due to World War 1. In order to be brief, I am not sharing much about World War 1 otherwise that itself would become its own blog post. And while it had its heroes and villains who, when, why could be tackled perhaps another time.

The Guggenheim Family and the birth of Civil Aviation If one has to credit one family for the birth of the Civil Aviation, it has to be the Guggenheim family. Again, I would not like to dwell much as much of their contribution has already been noted here. There are quite a few things still that need to be said and pointed out. First and foremost is the fact that they made lessons about flying from grade school to college and afterward till college and beyond which were in the syllabus, whereas in the Indian schooling system, there is nothing like that to date. Here, in India, even in Engineering courses, you don t have much info. Unless until you go for professional Aviation or Aeronautical courses and most of these courses cost a bomb so either the very rich or the very determined (with loans) only go for that, at least that s what my friends have shared. And there is no guarantee you will get a job after that, especially in today s climate. Even their fund, grants, and prizes which were given to people for various people so that improvements could be made to the United States Civil Aviation. This, as shared in the report/blog post shared, was in response to what the younger child/brother saw as Europe having a large advantage both in Military and Civil Aviation. They also made several grants in several Universities which would not only do notable work during their lifetime but carry on the legacy researching on different aspects of Aircraft. One point that should be noted is that Europe was far ahead even then of the U.S. which prompted the younger son. There had already been talks of civil/civilian flights on European routes, although much different from what either of us can imagine today. Even with everything that the U.S. had going for her and still has, Europe is the one which has better airports, better facilities, better everything than the U.S. has even today. If you look at the lists of the Airports for better value of money or facilities, you would find many Airports from Europe, some from Asia, and only a few from the U.S. even though they are some of the most frequent users of the service. But that debate and arguments I would have to leave for perhaps the next blog post as there is still a lot to be covered between the 1930s, 1950s, and today. The Guggenheims archives does a fantastic job of sharing part of the story till the 1950s, but there is also quite a bit which it doesn t. I will probably start from that in the next blog post and then carry on ahead. Lastly, before I wind up, I have to share why I felt the need to write, capture and share this part of Aviation history. The plain and simple reason being, many of the people I meet either on the web, on Twitter or even in real life, many of them are just unaware of how this whole thing came about. The unawareness in my fellow brothers and sisters is just shocking, overwhelming. At least, by sharing these articles, I at least would be able to guide them or at least let them know how it all came to be and where things are going and not just be so clueless. Till later.

lathe

dreiebenk (nb) v rve, v rvenbea ka, jorahanbea ka, v tnanbea ka (se) svarv (sv) sorvi (fi)

dreiebenk

lathe (en) v rve, v rvenbea ka, jorahanbea ka, v tnanbea ka (se) svarv (sv) sorvi (fi)

(nb): sponskj rande bearbeidingsmaskin der ein med skj reverkt y lausgj r spon fr eit roterande arbetsstykke

v rve, v rvenbea ka, jorahanbea ka, v tnanbea ka

dreiebenk (nb) lathe (en) svarv (sv) sorvi (fi)

(se): ma iidna mainna uohpp vuolahasaid jorri bargo vdnasis

(nb): sponskj rande bearbeidingsmaskin der ein med skj reverkt y lausgj r spon fr eit roterande arbetsstykke

LCD PanelMost (if not all) QNAP models come with an LCD display, in my model i got a 2 lines by 16 characters each. The tool to control the panel is:

/sbin/lcd_tool

but sometimes it's a bit stubborn in executing the commands, so as mentioned here you may want to killall -9 lcdmond and then issue the command you want; this is the snippet i'm using:

# print a msg on the panel
killall -9 lcdmond
/sbin/lcd_tool -1 "$LINE1" -2 "$LINE2"
sleep 5
# turn off screen light
killall -9 lcdmond
/sbin/lcd_tool -f

it ain't pretty, but it gets the job done.

Speaker / BuzzerIf you look for how to make your system beep, you may find these commands:

/sbin/pic_raw 80    Beep short
/sbin/pic_raw 81    Beep long

but they no longer work. So keep looking, i stumbled upon this post, mentioning hal_app, and that indeed works, but with a different syntax than the one presented at that link.In order to use hal_app to make a beep sound, the syntax that worked for me is:

/sbin/hal_app --se_buzzer enc_id=0,mode=XXX

If you remove entirely mode=XXX, it produces a short beep, but here is the list of all the modes available and their results (found out via exhaustive search):

code	output
0	short beep (0.5 secs)
1	long beep (1 sec)
2	3x short beeps (0.5 secs), long pause (1 sec)
3-7, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20	2x long beeps (1 sec), very long pause (2 secs)
8, 9	3x long beeps (1 sec), very long pauses (2 secs)
12, 13	long beep, 2x very short pause (0.25) very short beep (0.25)
14	3x very short beep (0.25) very short pause (0.25)

(you can prepend as many 0 to the mode strings as you wish, so 000 is equivalent to 0, 000018 is equivalent to 18, and so on).PS: this article is based on my system, TVS-473 running firmware 4.5.3.1652PPS: friendly reminder that this is how you edit the crontab on a QNAP machine.

Tseng Labs ET4000AX (1989) This SVGA graphics card was installed into a PC powered by a 386SX CPU running at 16 MHz. This was a good card at the time as it was pretty fast. It didn t feature 2D acceleration, unlike the later ET4000/W32. This version only features 512 KB of RAM. It can display 1024 768 images with 16 colors or 800 600 with 256 colors. It was also compatible with CGA, EGA, VGA, MDA, and Hercules modes. No contemporary games were using the SVGA modes but the higher resolutions were useful with Windows 3. This card was manufactured directly by Tseng Labs.

Tseng Labs ET4000 AX ISA card

AdLib clone (1992) My first sound card was an AdLib. My parents bought it in Canada during the summer holidays in 1992. It uses a Yamaha OPL2 chip to produce sound via FM synthesis. The first game I have tried is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I think I gave this AdLib to a friend once I upgraded my PC with a Sound Blaster Pro 2. Recently, I needed one for a side project, but they are rare and expensive on eBay. Someone mentioned a cheap clone on Vogons, so I bought it. It was sold by Sun Moon Star in 1992 and shipped with a CD-ROM of Doom shareware.

AdLib clone ISA card by Sun Moon Star

On this topic, take a look at OPL2LPT: an AdLib sound card for the parallel port and OPL2 Audio Board: an AdLib sound card for Arduino .

Sound Blaster Pro 2 (1992) Later, I switched the AdLib sound card with a Sound Blaster Pro 2. It features an OPL3 chip and was also able to output digital samples. At the time, this was a welcome addition, but not as important as the FM synthesis introduced earlier by the AdLib.

Sound Blaster Pro 2 ISA card

Promise EIDE 2300 Plus (1995) I bought this card mostly for the serial port. I was using a 486DX2 running at 66 MHz with a Creatix LC 288 FC external modem. The serial port was driven by an 8250 UART with no buffer. Thanks to Terminate, I was able to connect to BBSes with DOS, but this was not possible with Windows 3 or OS/2. I needed one of these fancy new cards with a 16550 UART, featuring a 16-byte buffer. At the time, this was quite difficult to find in France. During a holiday trip, I convinced my parent to make a short detour from Los Angeles to San Diego to buy this Promise EIDE 2300 Plus controller card at a shop I located through an advertisement in a local magazine! The card also features an EIDE controller with multi-word DMA mode 2 support. In contrast with the older PIO modes, the CPU didn t have to copy data from disk to memory.

Promise EIDE 2300 Plus VLB card

3dfx Voodoo2 Magic 3D II (1998) The 3dfx Voodoo2 was one of the first add-in graphics cards implementing hardware acceleration of 3D graphics. I bought it from a friend along with his Pentium II box in 1999. It was a big evolutionary step in PC gaming, as games became more beautiful and fluid. A traditional video controller was still required for 2D. A pass-through VGA cable daisy-chained the video controller to the Voodoo, which was itself connected to the monitor.

3dfx Voodoo2 Magic 3D II PCI card

3Com 3C905C-TX-M Tornado (1999) In the early 2000s, in college, the Internet connection on the campus was provided by a student association through a 100 Mbps Ethernet cable. If you wanted to reach the maximum speed, the 3Com 3C905C-TX-M PCI network adapter, nicknamed Tornado , was the card you needed. We would buy it second-hand by the dozen and sell them to other students for around 30 .

3Com 3C905C-TX-M PCI card

Curiosity I guess this would be common to most of us. While I grew up, right from the childhood itself, the sky was always an intriguing view. The Stars, the Moon, the Eclipses; were all fascinating. As a child, in my region, religion and culture; the mythology also built up stories around it. Lunar Eclipses have a story of its own. During Solar Eclipses, parents still insist that we do not go out. And to be done with the food eating before/after the eclipse. Then there s the Hindu Astrology part, which claims its own theories and drags in mythology along. For example, you ll still find the Hindu Astrology making recommendations to follow certain practices with the planets, to get auspicious personal results. As far as I know, other religions too have similar beliefs about the planets. As a child, we are told the Moon to be addressed as an Uncle ( ). There s also a rhyme around it, that many of us must have heard. And if you look at our god, Lord Mahadev, he s got a crescent on his head

Lord Mahadev

Reality Fast-forward to today, as I grew, so did some of my understanding. It is fascinating how mankind has achieved so much understanding of our surrounding. You could go through the documentaries on Mars Exploration, for example; to see how the rovers are providing invaluable data. As a mere individual, there s a limit to what one can achieve. But the questions flow in free.

• Is there life beyond us
• What s out there in the sky
• Why is all this the way it is

Hobby The very first step, for me, for every such curiosity, has been to do the ground work, with the resources I have. To study on the subject. I have done this all my life. For example, I started into the Software domain as: A curiosity => A Hobby => A profession Same was the case with some of the other hobbies, equally difficult as Astronomy, that I developed a liking for. Just did the ground work, studied on those topics and then applied the knowledge to further improve it and build up some experience. And star gazing came in no different. As a complete noob, had to start with the A B C on the subject of Astronomy. Familiarize myself with the usual terms. As so on PS: Do keep in mind that not all hobbies have a successful end. For example, I always craved to be good with graphic designing, image processing and the likes, where I ve always failed. Never was able to keep myself motivated enough. Similar was my experience when trying to learn playing a musical instrument. Just didn t work out for me, then. There s also a phase in it, where you fail and then learn from the failures and proceed further, and then eventually succeed. But we all like to talk about the successes. :-)

Astronomy So far, my impression has been that this topic/domain will not suit most of the people. While the initial attraction may be strong, given the complexity and perseverance that Astronomy requires, most people would lose interest in it very soon. Then there s the realization factor. If one goes with an expectation to get quick results, they may get disappointed. It isn t like a point and shoot device that d give you results on the spot. There s also the expectation side of things. If you are a person more accustomed to taking pretty selfies, which always come right because the phone manufacturer does heavy processing on the images to ensure that you get to see the pretty fake self, for the most of the times; then star gazing with telescopes could be a frustrating experience altogether. What you get to see in the images on the internet will be very different than what you d be able to see with your eyes and your basic telescope. There s also the cost aspect. The more powerful (and expensive) your telescope, the better your view. And all things aside, it still may get you lose interest, after you ve done all the ground work and spent a good chunk of money on it. Simply because the object you are gazing at is more a still image, which can quickly get boring for many. On the other hand, if none of the things obstruct, then the domain of Astronomy can be quite fascinating. It is a continuous learning domain (reminds me of CI in our software field these days). It is just the beginning for us here, and we hope to have a lasting experience in it.

The Internet I have been indebted to the internet right from the beginning. The internet is what helped me be able to achieve all I wanted. It is one field with no boundaries. If there is a will, there is a way; and often times, the internet is the way.

• I learnt computers over the internet.
• Learnt more about gardening and plants over the internet
• Learnt more about fish care-taking over the internet

And many many more things. Some of the communities over the internet are a great way to participation. They bridge the age gap, the regional gap and many more. For my Astronomy need, I was glad to see so many active communities, with great participants, on the internet.

Telescope While there are multiple options to start star gazing, I chose to start with a telescope. But as someone completely new to this domain, there was a long way to go. And to add to that, the real life: work + family I spent a good 12+ months reading up on the different types of telescopes, what they are, their differences, their costs, their practical availability etc. The good thing is that the market has offerings for everything. From a very basic binocular to a fully automatic Maksutov-Cassegrain scope. It all would depend on your budget.

Automatic vs Manual To make it easy for the users, the market has multiple options in the offering. One could opt-in for a cheap, basic and manually operated telescope; which would require the user to do a lot of ground study. On the other hand, users also have the option of automatic telescopes which do the hard work of locating and tracking the planetary objects. Either option aside, the end result of how much you ll be able to observe the sky, still depends on many many more factors: Enthusiasm over time, Light Pollution, Clear Skies, Timing etc. PS: The planetary objects move at a steady pace. Objects you lock into your view now will be gone out of the FOV in just a matter of minutes.

My Telescope After spending so much of the time reading up on types of telescopes, my conclusion was that a scope with high aperture and focal length was the way to go forward. This made me shorten the list to Dobsonians. But the Dobsonians aren t a very cheap telescope, whether manual or automatic. My final decision made me acquire a 6" Dobsonian Telescope. It is a Newtonian Reflecting Telescope with a 1200mm focal length and 150mm diameter. Another thing about this subject is that most of the stuff you do in Astronomy; right from the telescope selection, to installation, to star gazing; most of it is DIY, so your mileage may vary with the end result and experience. For me, installation wasn t very difficult. I was able to assemble the base Dobsonian mount and the scope in around 2 hours. But the installation manual, I had been provided with, was very brief. I ended up with one module in the mount wrongly fit, which I was able to fix later, with the help of online forums.

Dobsonian Mount

In this image you can see that the side facing out, where the handle will go, is wrong. If fit this way, the handle will not withstand any weight at all.

Correct Panel Side

The right fix of the handle base board. In this image, the handle is on the other side that I m holding. Because the initial fit put in some damage to the engineered wood, I fixed it up by sealing with some adhesive. With that, this is what my final telescope looks like.

Final Telescope

Clear Skies While the telescope was ready, the skies were not. For almost next 10 days, we had no clear skies at all. All I could do was wait. Wait so much that I had forgotten to check on the skies. Luckily, my wife noticed clear skies this week for a single day. Clear enough that we could try out our telescope for the very first time.

Me posing for a shot

Telescope As I said earlier, in my opinion, it takes a lot of patience and perseverance on this subject. And most of the things here are DIY. To start with, we targeted the Moon. Because it is easy. I pointed the scope to the moon, then looked into the finder scope to center it, and then looked through the eyepiece. And blank. Nothing out there. Turns out, the finder scope and the viewer s angle weren t aligned. This is common and the first DIY step, when you plan to use your telescope for viewing. Since our first attempt was unplanned and just random because we luckily spotted that the skies were clear, we weren t prepared for this. Lucky enough, mapping the difference in the alignment, in the head, is not very difficult. After a couple of minutes, I could make out the point in the finder scope, where the object if projected, would show proper in the viewer. With that done, it was just mesmerizing to see the Moon, in a bit more detail, than what I ve seen all these years of my life.

Moon

Moon

Moon

Moon

The images are not exactly what we saw with our eyes. The view was much more vivid than these pictures. But as a first timer, I really wanted to capture this first moment of a closer view of the Moon. In the whole process; that of ground work studying about telescopes, installation of the telescope, astronomy basics and many other things; the most difficult part in this entire journey, was to point my phone to the viewing eyepiece, to get a shot of the object. This requirement just introduced me to astrophotography. And then, Dobsonians aren t the best model for astrophotography, to what I ve learnt so far. Hopefully, I ll find my ways to do some DIY astrophotography with the tools I have. Or extend my arsenal over time. But overall, we ve been very pleased with the subject of Astronomy. It is a different feel altogether and we re glad to have forayed into it.

Focus This month I didn't have any particular focus. I just worked on issues in my info bubble.

Changes

• myrepos: link to multi-git-status
• pytest-rerunfailures: relax dep version, typos, rst syntax, https, yaml syntax
• morfessor: metadata fixes
• nmslib: URL, license
• gensim: relax dep version
• Debian portfolio: link to Debian Janitor service (sent privately)
• Debian QA services: link to Debian Janitor service
• Debian mirror list: remove ftp.utexas.edu
• Debian package uploads: python-preshed
• Debian wiki pages: CopyrightReviewTools, DebianEdu/Documentation/Bullseye/Installation, DebianEvents/internet/2020/MiniDebConfOnline2/orga (1 2), DebianLocations, de/CopyrightReviewTools, DellServerManagement, Derivatives/Census/Auxtral, DeveloperNews (1 2), DontBreakDebian, Games/Suggested, InstallingDebianOn/PINE64/ROCK64, Keysigning/Need, LocalGroups, LudovicRousseau, MemberBenefits, Po4a, PrivacyIssues, qa.debian.org, StaticLinking, Statistics, Teams/Welcome/BrainStorming
• FOSSjobs wiki pages: resources

Issues

• Crashes in gnome-shell-extension-log-out-button, gnome-shell-extension-show-ip, geeqie, webdl (sent privately), webkit2gtk
• Broken apt sources in calamares-settings-debian, apt, cloud-init, debian-edu-config, debian-lan-config, debirf, docker.io, dpmb, fai-doc, golang-pault-go-archive, lxc-templates, mariadb-10.3, marionnet, mercurial
• Broken symlink in ansible
• Broken feeds in ooni.org
• Python 3 support needed in git-remote-hg
• Features in Hefur
• New versions of libtorrent-rasterbar, restic
• Website outdated for morfessor
• Dependency issues in libintellij-annotations-java
• Code copies in cython-blis
• License change needed in visdom
• Incorrect homepage in thermald
• Conffile removal needed in tracker
• Git tag issue in gensim
• Intent to package morfessor, nmslib, pyemd, pytest-rerunfailures, gensim

Review

• Spam: reported 1 Debian bug reports and 179 Debian mailing list posts
• Debian packages: sponsored iotop-c
• Debian wiki: RecentChanges for the month
• Debian screenshots:
  • approved dde-calendar deja-dup dstat eventstat facter fbset forkstat friendly-recovery galternatives goodvibes grub2-splashimages grub-splashimages gtimelog hdparm health-check hostname info2www iotop-c iselect jack-keyboard jerry xmaxima
  • rejected grub2-splashimages (not useful screenshot), cockpit-system (menacing cartoon character), gpsbabel (help output), openscenegraph (no UI shown, content of unknown license), tesseract-ocr-ara (random Android app), libkdepimdbusinterfaces5 (unrelated logo)
  • approved deletion of vidalia (unrelated screenshot), bochs-wx (screenshot of wrong package)
  • rejected deletion of xfce4 (boilerplate reason), qtcreator (screenshots are versioned), gnome-icon-theme-blankon (incomprehensible), hashcat/kcharselect/phpbb3/xbubble/youtube-dl/jack-keyboard (spam)

Administration

• Debian wiki: unblock IP addresses, approve accounts

Communication

• Attempt to initiate discussion about packages broken by the bullseye transition from /updates to -security
• Respond to queries from Debian users and developers on the mailing lists and IRC

Sponsors The gensim, cython-blis, python-preshed, pytest-rerunfailures, morfessor, nmslib, visdom and pyemd work was sponsored by my employer. All other work was done on a volunteer basis.

• Grow the OSI's membership, and build a more representative organization.
• Defend the Open Source Definition and FOSS commons.
• Define the future of open source, as part of the larger community.

• Brandeis University
• OpenStreetMap Foundation
• TODO Group
• OpenStack Foundation
• Network Time Foundation
• Sourcefabric
• Open Culture Foundation
• FUSS Project
• FOSSASIA
• Open Preservation Foundation
• Open Source Community Africa
• Open Forum Europe
• GNOME Foundation
• OpenJS Foundation
• OASIS
• OpenUK

• LBNL BSD License (BSD-3-Clause-LBNL)
• OpenLDAP Public License Version 2.8 (OLDAP-2.8)
• CAL Beta 4 (CAL-1.0)
• Mulan PSL v2 (MulanPSL-2.0)
• BSD 1 Clause (BSD-1-Clause)
• PHP License 3.01 (PHP-3.01)
• The Unlicense (Unlicense)
• MIT No Attribution (MIT-0)

• CAL v1.0 (initial draft)
• Vaccine License

• Pushing for organizational D&O and liability insurance, which we obtained in July 2020
• Recruiting and encouraging new board members: I helped recruit both our appointed board members, Deb Bryant and Tracy Hinds, who now serve as officers, and endorsed Megan Byrd-Sanicki's candidacy, also a board officer
• Recruiting and interviewing a new interim General Manager, Deb Nicholson
• Forming an Incubator Project Working Group to determine graduation criteria for OSI Incubator Projects and serving as Snowdrift.coop's board sponsor

Artemisia Lomi or Artemisia Gentileschi (US: / d nt l ski, -ti -/, Italian: [arte mi zja d enti leski]; July 8, 1593 c. 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, now considered one of the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists working in the dramatic style of Caravaggio. In an era when women had few opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional artists, Artemisia was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence and had an international clientele.

Maria Pellegrina Amoretti (1756 1787), was an Italian lawyer. She is referred to as the first woman to graduate in law in Italy, and the third woman to earn a degree.

Laura Maria Caterina Bassi (October 1711 20 February 1778) was an Italian physicist and academic. She received a doctoral degree in Philosophy from the University of Bologna in May 1732. She was the first woman to earn a professorship in physics at a university. She is recognized as the first woman in the world to be appointed a university chair in a scientific field of studies. Bassi contributed immensely to the field of science while also helping to spread the study of Newtonian mechanics through Italy.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi (UK: / n je zi/ an-YAY-zee,[1] US: / n -/ ahn-,[2][3] Italian: [ma ri a ae ta na a zi, - e z-];[4] 16 May 1718 9 January 1799) was an Italian mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian. She was the first woman to write a mathematics handbook and the first woman appointed as a mathematics professor at a university.[5]

Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (US: /k r n ro p sko pi /,[4] Italian: [ lena lu kr ttsja kor na ro pi sk pja]) or Elena Lucrezia Corner (Italian: [kor n r]; 5 June 1646 26 July 1684), also known in English as Helen Cornaro, was a Venetian philosopher of noble descent who in 1678 became one of the first women to receive an academic degree from a university, and the first to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori (/ m nt s ri/ MON-tiss-OR-ee, Italian: [ma ri a montes s ri]; August 31, 1870 May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori broke gender barriers and expectations when she enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she graduated with honors in 1896. Her educational method is still in use today in many public and private schools throughout the world.

Rita Levi-Montalcini OMRI OMCA (US: / le vi mo nt l t i ni, l v-, li vi m nt l -/, Italian: [ ri ta l vi montal t i ni]; 22 April 1909 30 December 2012) was an Italian Nobel laureate, honored for her work in neurobiology. She was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with colleague Stanley Cohen for the discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF). From 2001 until her death, she also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life. This honor was given due to her significant scientific contributions. On 22 April 2009, she became the first Nobel laureate ever to reach the age of 100, and the event was feted with a party at Rome's City Hall. At the time of her death, she was the oldest living Nobel laureate.

Margherita Hack Knight Grand Cross OMRI (Italian: [mar e ri ta (h)ak]; 12 June 1922 29 June 2013) was an Italian astrophysicist and scientific disseminator. The asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honour.

Samantha Cristoforetti (Italian pronunciation: [sa manta kristofo retti]; born 26 April 1977, in Milan) is an Italian European Space Agency astronaut, former Italian Air Force pilot and engineer. She holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a European astronaut (199 days, 16 hours), and until June 2017 held the record for the longest single space flight by a woman until this was broken by Peggy Whitson and later by Christina Koch. She is also the first Italian woman in space. Samantha Cristoforetti is also known as the first person who brewed an espresso in space.

• Updated travis.debian.net, my hosted service for projects that host their Debian packaging on GitHub to use the Travis CI continuous integration platform to test builds:
  • Support Debian "buster". (commit)
  • Set TRAVIS=true environment variable when running autopkgtests. (#45)
• Updated the documentation in django-slack, my library to easily post messages to the Slack group-messaging utility to link to Slack's own message formatting documentation. (#66)
• Added "buster" support to local-debian-mirror, my package to easily maintain and customise a local Debian mirror via the DebConf configuration tool. (commit)

• several packages have been merged, some are dropped (eg. texlive-htmlxml) and one new package (texlive-plain-generic) has been added
• luatex got updated to 1.0.4, and is now considered stable
• updmap and fmtutil now require either -sys or -user
• tlmgr got a shell mode (interactive/scripting interface) and a new feature to add arbitrary TEXMF trees (conf auxtrees)

• A Yubikey 4 (or other GnuPG compatible smartcard).
• Two USB memory sticks to store master copies of the key you create.
• Either a lot of patience, or a ChaosKey or something else to generate a lot of entropy for the kernel. Entropy is used by GnuPG to create encryption keys.

• OpenPGP is a standard of encryption keys.
• GnuPG (also known as GPG or gpg) is an encryption program that supports OpenPGP.
• Encryption key or key pair is a secret and a public key for encryption. Key and key pair are often used as synonyms.
• The secret keys is yours, and only you will have it or be able to you use. The public key is public, anyone can have a copy. The two are linked and you can't create a secret key linked to a public key. (If you can, you will become a famous cryptographer. Like Isaac Newton famous among apple growers.)
• Master key is the important thing to keep track of. In the encryption world, the master key is what identifies you.
• A subkey is a secondary key or key pair for encryption, derived from the master key. Subkeys can be created and revoked almost at will, and there can be any number of them. Subkeys are always associated with a single master key.
• Subkeys can be dedicated for encryption, signing, and authentication. You can have one of each.
• Encryption is the process of taking a file and making it illegible to everyone except the owner of a secret key. When the public key is used to encrypt, only the secret key can decrypt.
• Signing is using a secret key to make a separate file that others can verify using the corresponding public key. This means the signer can "prove" they have the file. For example, you might sign emails to prove they came from you.
• Authentication is the process of proving you're you. Typically, for example, a server will know your public key, and will give a large random number encrypted with your public key. Only you have the corresponding secret key, so only you can send the random number back to the server, and thereby the server knows you're you.

1. Create a new, signing-only master key with GnuPG.
2. Create three "subkeys", one each for encryption, signing, and authentication. These subkeys are what everyone else uses.
3. Export copies of the master key pair and the subkey pairs and put them in a safe place.
4. Put the subkeys on the Yubikey.
5. GnuPG will automatically use the keys from the card. You have to have the card plugged into a USB port for things to work. If someone steals your laptop, they won't get the private subkeys. Even if they steal your Yubikey, they won't get them (the smartcard is physically designed to prevent that), and can't even use them (because there's PIN codes or passphrases and getting them wrong several times locks up the smartcard).
6. Use gpg-agent as your SSH agent, and the authentication-only subkey on the Yubikey is used as your ssh key.

• Configure GnuPG with regards to checksum and encryption algorithms. You can use the defaults, but depending on the version of GnuPG you have, they may be weaker than is recommended. These values are from Riseup.net OpenPGP guide, see link at the end. Add the following lines to ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf:

    personal-digest-preferences SHA512
    cert-digest-algo SHA512
    default-preference-list SHA512 SHA384 SHA256 SHA224 AES256 AES192 AES CAST5 ZLIB BZIP2 ZIP Uncompressed
    personal-cipher-preferences TWOFISH CAMELLIA256 AES 3DES
    keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net
  

• Create new sign-only master key.

$ gpg --full-generate-key
gpg (GnuPG) 2.1.18; Copyright (C) 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Please select what kind of key you want:
(1) RSA and RSA (default)
(2) DSA and Elgamal
(3) DSA (sign only)
(4) RSA (sign only)
Your selection? 4
RSA keys may be between 1024 and 4096 bits long.
What keysize do you want? (2048) 4096
Requested keysize is 4096 bits
Please specify how long the key should be valid.
0 = key does not expire
= key expires in n days
w = key expires in n weeks
m = key expires in n months
y = key expires in n years
Key is valid for? (0) 1y
Key expires at Tue 29 May 2018 06:43:54 PM EEST
Is this correct? (y/N) y

GnuPG needs to construct a user ID to identify your key.

Real name: Lars Wirzenius
Email address: liw@liw.fi
Comment: test key
You selected this USER-ID:
"Lars Wirzenius (test key) <liw@liw.fi>>"

Change (N)ame, (C)omment, (E)mail or (O)kay/(Q)uit? o
We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform
some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilize the
disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number
generator a better chance to gain enough entropy.
gpg: key 25FB738D6EE435F7 marked as ultimately trusted
gpg: directory '/home/liw/.gnupg/openpgp-revocs.d' created
gpg: revocation certificate stored as '/home/liw/.gnupg/openpgp-revocs.d/A734C10BF2DF39D19DC0F6C025FB738D6EE435F7.rev'
public and secret key created and signed.

Note that this key cannot be used for encryption. You may want to use
the command "--edit-key" to generate a subkey for this purpose.
pub rsa4096 2017-05-29 [SC] [expires: 2018-05-29]
A734C10BF2DF39D19DC0F6C025FB738D6EE435F7
A734C10BF2DF39D19DC0F6C025FB738D6EE435F7
uid Lars Wirzenius (test key) <liw@liw.fi>

    4096 SHA256:PDCzyQPpd9tiWsELM8LwaLBsMDMm42J8/eEfezNgnVc cardno:000604626953 (RSA)