What is Neo-Colonialism? The term "neo-colonialism" was coined by Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana. In Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965), he wrote:

In place of colonialism, as the main instrument of imperialism, we have today neo-colonialism ... [which] like colonialism, is an attempt to export the social conflicts of the capitalist countries. ... The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment, under neo-colonialism, increases, rather than decreases, the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world.

So basically, if colonialism is Europeans bringing genocide, war, and its religion to the Africa, Asia, and the Americas, neo-colonialism is the Americans (note the "n") bringing capitalism to the world. Before we see how this applies to the Internet, we must therefore make a detour into US history. This matters, because anyone would be hard-pressed to decouple neo-colonialism from the empire under which it evolves, and here we can only name the United States of America.

US Declaration of Independence Let's start with the United States declaration of independence (1776). Many Americans may roll their eyes at this, possibly because that declaration is not actually part of the US constitution and therefore may have questionable legal standing. Still, it was obviously a driving philosophical force in the founding of the nation. As its author, Thomas Jefferson, stated:

it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion

In that aging document, we find the following pearl:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

As a founding document, the Declaration still has an impact in the sense that the above quote has been called an:

"immortal declaration", and "perhaps [the] single phrase" of the American Revolutionary period with the greatest "continuing importance." (Wikipedia)

Let's read that "immortal declaration" again: "all men are created equal". "Men", in that context, is limited to a certain number of people, namely "property-owning or tax-paying white males, or about 6% of the population". Back when this was written, women didn't have the right to vote, and slavery was legal. Jefferson himself owned hundreds of slaves. The declaration was aimed at the King and was a list of grievances. A concern of the colonists was that the King:

has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

This is a clear mark of the frontier myth which paved the way for the US to exterminate and colonize the territory some now call the United States of America. The declaration of independence is obviously a colonial document, having being written by colonists. None of this is particularly surprising, historically, but I figured it serves as a good reminder of where the Internet is coming from, since it was born in the US.

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace Two hundred and twenty years later, in 1996, John Perry Barlow wrote a declaration of independence of cyberspace. At this point, (almost) everyone has a right to vote (including women), slavery was abolished (although some argue it still exists in the form of the prison system); the US has made tremendous progress. Surely this text will have aged better than the previous declaration it is obviously derived from. Let's see how it reads today and how it maps to how the Internet is actually built now.

Borders of Independence One of the key ideas that Barlow brings up is that "cyberspace does not lie within your borders". In that sense, cyberspace is the final frontier: having failed to colonize the moon, Americans turn inwards, deeper into technology, but still in the frontier ideology. And indeed, Barlow is one of the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (the beloved EFF), founded six years prior. But there are other problems with this idea. As Wikipedia quotes:

The declaration has been criticized for internal inconsistencies.[9] The declaration's assertion that 'cyberspace' is a place removed from the physical world has also been challenged by people who point to the fact that the Internet is always linked to its underlying geography.[10]

And indeed, the Internet is definitely a physical object. First controlled and severely restricted by "telcos" like AT&T, it was somewhat "liberated" from that monopoly in 1982 when an anti-trust lawsuit broke up the monopoly, a key historical event that, one could argue, made the Internet possible. (From there on, "backbone" providers could start competing and emerge, and eventually coalesce into new monopolies: Google has a monopoly on search and advertisement, Facebook on communications for a few generations, Amazon on storage and computing, Microsoft on hardware, etc. Even AT&T is now pretty much as consolidated as it was before.) The point is: all those companies have gigantic data centers and intercontinental cables. And those are definitely prioritizing the western world, the heart of the empire. Take for example Google's latest 3,900 mile undersea cable: it does not connect Argentina to South Africa or New Zealand, it connects the US to UK and Spain. Hardly a revolutionary prospect.

Private Internet But back to the Declaration:

Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

In Barlow's mind, the "public" is bad, and private is good, natural. Or, in other words, a "public construction project" is unnatural. And indeed, the modern "nature" of development is private: most of the Internet is now privately owned and operated. I must admit that, as an anarchist, I loved that sentence when I read it. I was rooting for "us", the underdogs, the revolutionaries. And, in a way, I still do: I am on the board of Koumbit and work for a non-profit that has pivoted towards censorship and surveillance evasion. Yet I cannot help but think that, as a whole, we have failed to establish that independence and put too much trust in private companies. It is obvious in retrospect, but it was not, 30 years ago. Now, the infrastructure of the Internet has zero accountability to traditional political entities supposedly representing the people, or even its users. The situation is actually worse than when the US was founded (e.g. "6% of the population can vote"), because the owners of the tech giants are only a handful of people who can override any decision. There's only one Amazon CEO, he's called Jeff Bezos, and he has total control. (Update: Bezos actually ceded the CEO role to Andy Jassy, AWS and Amazon music founder, while remaining executive chairman. I would argue that, as the founder and the richest man on earth, he still has strong control over Amazon.)

Social Contract Here's another claim of the Declaration:

We are forming our own Social Contract.

I remember the early days, back when "netiquette" was a word, it did feel we had some sort of a contract. Not written in standards of course -- or barely (see RFC1855) -- but as a tacit agreement. How wrong we were. One just needs to look at Facebook to see how problematic that idea is on a global network. Facebook is the quintessential "hacker" ideology put in practice. Mark Zuckerberg explicitly refused to be "arbiter of truth" which implicitly means he will let lies take over its platforms. He also sees Facebook as place where everyone is equal, something that echoes the Declaration:

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

(We note, in passing, the omission of gender in that list, also mirroring the infamous "All men are created equal" claim of the US declaration.) As the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) Facebook files later shown, both of those "contracts" have serious limitations inside Facebook. There are VIPs who systematically bypass moderation systems including fascists and rapists. Drug cartels and human traffickers thrive on the platform. Even when Zuckerberg himself tried to tame the platform -- to get people vaccinated or to make it healthier -- he failed: "vaxxer" conspiracies multiplied and Facebook got angrier. This is because the "social contract" behind Facebook and those large companies is a lie: their concern is profit and that means advertising, "engagement" with the platform, which causes increased anxiety and depression in teens, for example. Facebook's response to this is that they are working really hard on moderation. But the truth is that even that system is severely skewed. The WSJ showed that Facebook has translators for only 50 languages. It's a surprisingly hard to count human languages but estimates range the number of distinct languages between 2500 and 7000. So while 50 languages seems big at first, it's actually a tiny fraction of the human population using Facebook. Taking the first 50 of the Wikipedia list of languages by native speakers we omit languages like Dutch (52), Greek (74), and Hungarian (78), and that's just a few random nations picks from Europe. As an example, Facebook has trouble moderating even a major language like Arabic. It censored content from legitimate Arab news sources when they mentioned the word al-Aqsa because Facebook associates it with the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades when they were talking about the Al-Aqsa Mosque... This bias against Arabs also shows how Facebook reproduces the American colonizer politics. The WSJ also pointed out that Facebook spends only 13% of its moderation efforts outside of the US, even if that represents 90% of its users. Facebook spends three more times moderating on "brand safety", which shows its priority is not the safety of its users, but of the advertisers.

Military Internet Sergey Brin and Larry Page are the Lewis and Clark of our generation. Just like the latter were sent by Jefferson (the same) to declare sovereignty over the entire US west coast, Google declared sovereignty over all human knowledge, with its mission statement "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". (It should be noted that Page somewhat questioned that mission but only because it was not ambitious enough, Google having "outgrown" it.) The Lewis and Clark expedition, just like Google, had a scientific pretext, because that is what you do to colonize a world, presumably. Yet both men were military and had to receive scientific training before they left. The Corps of Discovery was made up of a few dozen enlisted men and a dozen civilians, including York an African American slave owned by Clark and sold after the expedition, with his final fate lost in history. And just like Lewis and Clark, Google has a strong military component. For example, Google Earth was not originally built at Google but is the acquisition of a company called Keyhole which had ties with the CIA. Those ties were brought inside Google during the acquisition. Google's increasing investment inside the military-industrial complex eventually led Google to workers organizing a revolt although it is currently unclear to me how much Google is involved in the military apparatus. Other companies, obviously, do not have such reserve, with Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty of others happily bidding on military contracts all the time.

Spreading the Internet I am obviously not the first to identify colonial structures in the Internet. In an article titled The Internet as an Extension of Colonialism, Heather McDonald correctly identifies fundamental problems with the "development" of new "markets" of Internet "consumers", primarily arguing that it creates a digital divide which creates a "lack of agency and individual freedom":

Many African people have gained access to these technologies but not the freedom to develop content such as web pages or social media platforms in their own way. Digital natives have much more power and therefore use this to create their own space with their own norms, shaping their online world according to their own outlook.

But the digital divide is certainly not the worst problem we have to deal with on the Internet today. Going back to the Declaration, we originally believed we were creating an entirely new world:

This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

How I dearly wished that was true. Unfortunately, the Internet is not that different from the offline world. Or, to be more accurate, the values we have embedded in the Internet, particularly of free speech absolutism, sexism, corporatism, and exploitation, are now exploding outside of the Internet, into the "real" world. The Internet was built with free software which, fundamentally, was based on quasi-volunteer labour of an elite force of white men with obviously too much time on their hands (and also: no children). The mythical writing of GCC and Emacs by Richard Stallman is a good example of this, but the entirety of the Internet now seems to be running on random bits and pieces built by hit-and-run programmers working on their copious free time. Whenever any of those fails, it can compromise or bring down entire systems. (Heck, I wrote this article on my day off...) This model of what is fundamentally "cheap labour" is spreading out from the Internet. Delivery workers are being exploited to the bone by apps like Uber -- although it should be noted that workers organise and fight back. Amazon workers are similarly exploited beyond belief, forbidden to take breaks until they pee in bottles, with ambulances nearby to carry out the bodies. During peak of the pandemic, workers were being dangerously exposed to the virus in warehouses. All this while Amazon is basically taking over the entire economy. The Declaration culminates with this prophecy:

We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

This prediction, which first felt revolutionary, is now chilling.

Colonial Internet The Internet is, if not neo-colonial, plain colonial. The US colonies had cotton fields and slaves, we have disposable cell phones and Foxconn workers. Canada has its cultural genocide, Facebook has his own genocides in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and mob violence in India. Apple is at least implicitly accepting the Uyghur genocide. And just like the slaves of the colony, those atrocities are what makes the empire run. The Declaration actually ends like this, a quote which I have in my fortune cookies file:

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

That is still inspiring to me. But if we want to make "cyberspace" more humane, we need to decolonize it. Work on cyberpeace instead of cyberwar. Establish clear code of conduct, discuss ethics, and question your own privileges, biases, and culture. For me the first step in decolonizing my own mind is writing this article. Breaking up tech monopolies might be an important step, but it won't be enough: we have to do a culture shift as well, and that's the hard part.

Appendix: an apology to Barlow I kind of feel bad going through Barlow's declaration like this, point by point. It is somewhat unfair, especially since Barlow passed away a few years ago and cannot mount a response (even humbly assuming that he might read this). But then again, he himself recognized he was a bit too "optimistic" in 2009, saying: "we all get older and smarter":

I'm an optimist. In order to be libertarian, you have to be an optimist. You have to have a benign view of human nature, to believe that human beings left to their own devices are basically good. But I'm not so sure about human institutions, and I think the real point of argument here is whether or not large corporations are human institutions or some other entity we need to be thinking about curtailing. Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.

And, in a sense, it was a little naive to expect Barlow to not be a colonist. Barlow is, among many things, a cattle rancher who grew up on a colonial ranch in Wyoming. The ranch was founded in 1907 by his great uncle, 17 years after the state joined the Union, and only a generation or two after the Powder River War (1866-1868) and Black Hills War (1876-1877) during which the US took over lands occupied by Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other native American nations, in some of the last major First Nations Wars.

Appendix: further reading There is another article that almost has the same title as this one: Facebook and the New Colonialism. (Interestingly, the <title> tag on the article is actually "Facebook the Colonial Empire" which I also find appropriate.) The article is worth reading in full, but I loved this quote so much that I couldn't resist reproducing it here:

Representations of colonialism have long been present in digital landscapes. ( Even Super Mario Brothers, the video game designer Steven Fox told me last year. You run through the landscape, stomp on everything, and raise your flag at the end. ) But web-based colonialism is not an abstraction. The online forces that shape a new kind of imperialism go beyond Facebook.

It goes on:

Consider, for example, digitization projects that focus primarily on English-language literature. If the web is meant to be humanity s new Library of Alexandria, a living repository for all of humanity s knowledge, this is a problem. So is the fact that the vast majority of Wikipedia pages are about a relatively tiny square of the planet. For instance, 14 percent of the world s population lives in Africa, but less than 3 percent of the world s geotagged Wikipedia articles originate there, according to a 2014 Oxford Internet Institute report.

And they introduce another definition of Neo-colonialism, while warning about abusing the word like I am sort of doing here:

I m loath to toss around words like colonialism but it s hard to ignore the family resemblances and recognizable DNA, to wit, said Deepika Bahri, an English professor at Emory University who focuses on postcolonial studies. In an email, Bahri summed up those similarities in list form:

1. ride in like the savior
2. bandy about words like equality, democracy, basic rights
3. mask the long-term profit motive (see 2 above)
4. justify the logic of partial dissemination as better than nothing
5. partner with local elites and vested interests
6. accuse the critics of ingratitude

In the end, she told me, if it isn t a duck, it shouldn t quack like a duck.

Another good read is the classic Code and other laws of cyberspace (1999, free PDF) which is also critical of Barlow's Declaration. In "Code is law", Lawrence Lessig argues that:

computer code (or "West Coast Code", referring to Silicon Valley) regulates conduct in much the same way that legal code (or "East Coast Code", referring to Washington, D.C.) does (Wikipedia)

And now it feels like the west coast has won over the east coast, or maybe it recolonized it. In any case, Internet now christens emperors.

"Sir," said Tirian, when he had greeted all these. "If I have read the chronicle aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?" "My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia." "Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'" "Oh Susan!" said Jill. "She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up." "Grown-up indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."

"You see," said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out."

[...] Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me, thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.

BBI Kenya and live Supreme Court streaming on YT The last few weeks have been unrelenting as all sorts of news have been coming in, mostly about the downturn in the Economy, Islamophobia in India on the rise, Covid, and electioneering. However, in the last few days, Kenya surpassed India in live-streaming proceeds in a Court of Appeals about BBI or Building Bridges Initiative. A background filler article on the topic can be found in BBC. The live-streaming was done via YT and if wants to they can start from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIQzpmVKvro One can also subscribe to K24TV which took the initiative of sharing the proceedings with people worldwide. If K24TV continues to share SC proceedings of Kenya, that would add to the soft power of Kenya. I will not go into the details of the case as Gautam Bhatia who has been following the goings-on in Kenya is a far better authority on the subject. In fact, just recently he shared about another Kenyan judgment from a trial which can be seen here. He has shared the proceedings and some hot takes on the Twitter thread started by him. Probably after a couple of weeks or more when he has processed what all has happened there, he may also share some nuances although many of his thoughts would probably go to his book on Comparative Constitutional Law which he hopes to publish maybe in 2021/2022 or whenever he can. Such televised proceedings are sure to alleviate the standing of Kenya internationally. There has been a proposal to do similar broadcasts by India but with surveillance built-in, so they know who is watching. The problems with the architecture and the surveillance built-in have been shared by Srinivas Kodali or DigitalDutta quite a few times, but that probably is a story for another day.

Uttar Pradesh Population Control Bill

Hindus comprise 83% of Indian couples with more than two child children

The U.P. Population Bill came and it came with lot of prejudices. One of the prejudices is the idea that Muslims create or procreate to have the most children. Even with data is presented as shared above from NFHS National Family Health Survey which is supposed to carry our surveys every few years did the last one around 4 years back. The analysis from it has been instrumental not only in preparing graphs as above but also sharing about what sort of death toll must have been in rural India. And as somebody who have had the opportunity in the past, can vouch that you need to be extremely lucky if something happens to you when you are in a rural area. Even in places like Bodh Gaya (have been there) where millions of tourists come as it is one of the places not to be missed on the Buddhism tourist circuit, the medical facilities are pretty underwhelming. I am not citing it simply because there are too many such newspaper reports from even before the pandemic, and both the State and the Central Govt. response has been dismal. Just a few months back, they were recalled. There were reports of votes being bought at INR 1000/- (around $14) and a bottle or two of liquor. There used to be a time when election monitoring whether national or state used to be a thing, and you had LTO s (Long-time Observers) and STO s (Short-Term Observers) to make sure that the election has been neutral. This has been on the decline in this regime, but that probably is for another time altogether. Although, have to point out the article which I had shared a few months ago on the private healthcare model is flawed especially for rural areas. Instead of going for cheap, telemedicine centers that run some version of a Linux distro. And can provide a variety of services, I know Kerala and Tamil Nadu from South India have experimented in past but such engagements need to be scaled up. This probably will come to know when the next time I visit those places (sadly due to the virus, not anytime soonish.:( ) . Going back to the original topic, though, I had shared Hans Rosling s famous Ted talk on population growth which shows that even countries which we would not normally associate with family planning for e.g. the middle-east and Africa have also been falling quite rapidly. Of course, when people have deeply held prejudices, then it is difficult. Even when sharing China as to how they had to let go of their old policy in 2016 as they had the thing for leftover men . I also shared the powerful movie So Long my Son. I even shared how in Haryana women were and are trafficked and have been an issue for centuries but as neither suits the RW propaganda, they simply refuse to engage. They are more repulsed by people who publish this news rather than those who are actually practicing it, as that is culture . There is also teenage pregnancy, female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, etc., etc. It is just all too horrible to contemplate. Personal anecdote I know a couple, or they used to be a couple, where the gentleman wanted to have a male child. It was only after they got an autistic child, they got their DNA tested and came to know that the gentleman had a genetic problem. He again forced and had another child, and that too turned out to be autistic. Finally, he left the wife and the children, divorced them and lived with another woman. Almost a decade of the wife s life was ruined. The wife before marriage was a gifted programmer employed at IBM. This was an arranged marriage. After this, if you are thinking of marrying, apart from doing astrology charts, also look up DNA compatibility charts. Far better than ruining yours or the women s life. Both the children whom I loved are now in heaven, god bless them If one wants to, one can read a bit more about the Uttar Pradesh Population bill here. The sad part is that the systems which need fixing, nobody wants to fix. The reason being simple. If you get good health service by public sector, who will go to the private sector. In Europe, AFAIK they have the best medical bang for the money. Even the U.S. looks at Europe and hopes it had the systems that Europe has but that again is probably for another day.

South Africa and India long-lost brothers. As had shared before, after the 2016 South African Debconf convention, I had been following South Africa. I was happy when FeesMustFall worked and in 2017 the then ANC president Zuma declared it in late 2017. I am sure that people who have been regular visitors to this blog know how my position is on student loans. They also must be knowing that even in U.S. till the 1970s it had free education all the way to be a lawyer and getting a lawyer license. It is only when people like Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., and others from the civil rights movement came out as a major force that the capitalists started imposing fees. They wanted people who could be sold to corporate slavery, and they won. Just last week, Biden took some steps and canceled student loans and is working on steps towards broad debt forgiveness. Interestingly, NASA has an affirmative diversity program for people from diverse backgrounds, where a couple of UC (Upper Caste) women got the job. While they got the job, the RW (Right-Wing) was overjoyed as they got jobs on merit . Later, it was found that both the women were the third or fourth generation of immigrants in U.S.

NASA Federal Equal Opportunity Policy Directive NPD 3713 2H

Going back to the original question and topic, while there has been a concerning spate of violence, some calling it the worst sort of violence not witnessed since 1994. The problem, as ascertained in that article, is the same as here in India or elsewhere. Those, again, who have been on my blog know that merit 90% of the time is a function of privilege and there is a vast amount of academic literature which supports that. If, for a moment, you look at the data that is shared in the graph above which shows that 83% of Hindus and 13% of Muslims have more than 2 children, what does it show, it shows that 83+13 = 96% of the population is living in insecurity. The 5% are the ones who have actually consolidated more power during this regime rule in India. Similarly, from what I understood living in Cape Town for about a month, it is the Dutch Afrikaans as they like to call themselves and the immigrants who come from abroad who have enjoyed the fruits of tourism and money and power while the rest of the country is dying due to poverty. It is the same there, it is the same here. Corruption is also rampant in both countries, and the judiciary is virtually absent from both communities in India and SA. Interestingly, South Africa and India have been at loggerheads, but I suspect that is more due to the money and lobbying power by the Dutch. Usually, those who have money power, do get laws and even press on their side, and it is usually the ruling party in power. I cannot help but share about the Gupta brothers and their corruption as I came to know about it in 2016. And as have shared that I m related to Gupta s on my mother s side, not those specific ones but Gupta as a clan. The history of the Gupta dynasty does go back to the 3rd-4th century. Equally interesting have been Sonali Ranade s series of articles which she wrote in National Herald, the latest on exports which is actually the key to taking India out of poverty rather than anything else. While in other countries Exporters are given all sort of subsidies, here it is being worked as how to give them less. This was in Economic times hardly a week back

Export incentive schemes being reduced

I can t imagine the incredible stupidity done by the Finance Minister. And then in an attempt to prove that, they will attempt to present a rosy picture with numbers that have nothing to do with reality. Interestingly enough, India at one time was a major exporter of apples, especially from Kashmir. Now instead of exporting, we are importing them from Afghanistan as well as Belgium and now even from the UK. Those who might not want to use the Twitter link could use this article. Of course, what India got out of this trade deal is not known. One can see that the UK got the better deal from this. Instead of investing in our own capacity expansion, we are investing in increasing the capacity of others. This is at the time when due to fuel price hike (Central taxes 66%) demand is completely flat. And this is when our own CEA (Chief Economic Adviser) tells us that growth will be at the most 6-7% and that too in 2023-2024 while currently, the inflation rate is around 12%. Is it then any wonder that almost 70% are living on Govt. ration and people in the streets of Kolkata, Assam, and other places have to sell kidneys to make sure they have some money for their kids for tomorrow. Now I have nothing against the UK but trade negotiation is an art. Sadly, this has been going on for the last few years. The politicians in India fool the public by always telling of future trade deals. Sadly, as any businessman knows, once you have compromised, you always have to compromise. And the more you compromise, the more you weaken the hand for any future trade deals.

IIT pupil tries to sell kidney to repay loan, but no takers for Dalit organ.

The above was from yesterday s Times of India. Just goes to show how much people are suffering. There have been reports in vernacular papers of quite a few people from across regions and communities are doing this so they can live without pain a bit. Almost all the time, the politicians are saved as only few understand international trade, the diplomacy and the surrounding geopolitics around it. And this sadly, is as much to do with basic education as much as it is to any other factor

Suli Deals About a month back on the holy day of Ramzan or Ramadan as it is known in the west, which is beloved by Muslims, a couple of Muslim women were targeted and virtually auctioned. Soon, there was a flood and a GitHub repository was created where hundreds of Muslim women, especially those who have a voice and fearlessly talk about their understanding about issues and things, were being virtually auctioned. One week after the FIR was put up, to date none of the people mentioned in the FIR have been arrested. In fact, just yesterday, there was an open letter which was published by livelaw. I have saved a copy on WordPress just in case something does go wrong. Other than the disgust we feel, can t say much as no action being taken by GOI and police.

IT Rules 2021 and Big Media After almost a year of sleeping when most activists were screaming hoarsely about how the new IT rules are dangerous for one and all, big media finally woke up a few weeks back and listed a writ petition in Madras High Court of the same. Although to be frank, the real writ petition was filed In February 2021, classical singer, performer T.M. Krishna in Madras High Court. Again, a copy of the writ petition, I have hosted on WordPress. On 23rd June 2021, a group of 13 media outlets and a journalist have challenged the IT Rules, 2021. The Contention came from Digital News Publishers Association which is made up of the following news companies: ABP Network Private Limited, Amar Ujala Limited, DB Corp Limited, Express Network Pvt Ltd, HT Digital Streams Limited, IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd, Jagran Prakashan Limited, Lokmat Media Private Limited, NDTV Convergence Limited, TV Today Network Limited, The Malayala Manorama Co (P) Ltd, Times Internet Limited, and Ushodaya Enterprises Private Limited. All the above are heavyweights in the markets where they operate. The reason being simple, when these media organizations came into being, the idea was to have self-regulation, which by and large has worked. Now, the present Govt. wants each news item to be okayed by them before publication. This is nothing but blatant misuse of power and an attempt at censorship. In fact, the Tamil Nadu BJP president himself made a promise of the same. And of course, what is true and what is a lie, only GOI knows and will decide for the rest of the country. If somebody remembers Joseph Goebbels at this stage, it is merely a coincidence. Anyways, 3 days ago Supreme Court on 14th July the Honorable Supreme Court asked the Madras High Court to transfer all the petitions to SC. This, the Madras High Court denied as cited/shared by Meera Emmanuel, a reporter who works with barandbench. The Court says nothing doing, let this happen and then the SC can entertain the motion of doing it that level. At the same time, they would have the benefit of Madras High Court opinion as well. It gave the center two weeks to file a reply. So, either of end-week of July or latest by August first week, we might be able to read the Center s reply on the same. The SC could do a forceful intervention, but it would lead to similar outrage as has been witnessed in the past when a judge commented that if the SC has to do it all, then why do we need the High Courts, district courts etc. let all the solutions come from SC itself. This was, admittedly, frustration on the part of the judge, but due in part to the needless intervention of SC time and time again. But the concerns had been felt around all the different courts in the country.

Sedition Law A couple of days ago, the Supreme Court under the guidance of Honorable CJI NV Ramanna, entertained the PIL filed by Maj Gen S G Vombatkere (Retd.) which asked simply that the sedition law which was used in the colonial times by the British to quell dissent by Mahatma Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak during the Indian freedom struggle. A good background filler article can be found on MSN which tells about some recent cases but more importantly how historically the sedition law was used to quell dissent during India s Independence. Another article on MSN actually elaborates on the PIL filed by Maj Gen S. G. Vombatkere. Another article on MSN tells how sedition law has been challenged and changed in 10 odd countries. I find it equally sad and equally hilarious that the Indian media whose job is to share news and opinion on this topic is being instead of being shared more by MSN. Although, I would be bereft of my duty if I did not share the editorial on the same topic by the Hindu and Deccan Chronicle. Also, an interesting question to ask is, are there only 10 countries in the world that have sedition laws? AFAIK, there are roughly 200 odd countries as recognized by WTO. If 190 odd countries do not have sedition laws, it also tells a lot about them and a lot about the remaining 10. Also, it came to light that police are still filing laws under sec66A which was declared null and void a few years ago. It was replaced with section 124A if memory serves right and it has more checks and balances.

Danish Siddiqui, Pulitzer award-winning and death in Afghanistan Before I start with Danish Siddiqui, let me share an anecdote that I think I have shared on the blog years ago about how photojournalists are. Again, those who know me and those who follow me know how much I am mad both about trains and planes (civil aviation). A few months back, I had shared a blog post about some of the biggest railway systems in the world which shows that privatization of Railways doesn t necessarily lead to up-gradation of services but definitely leads to an increase in tariff/fares. Just had a conversation couple of days ago on Twitter and realized that need to also put a blog post about civil aviation in India and the problems it faces, but I digress. This was about a gentleman who wanted to take a photo of a particular train coming out of a valley at a certain tunnel at two different heights, one from below and one from above the train. This was several years ago, and while I did share that award-winning photograph then, it probably would take me quite a bit of time and effort to again look it up on my blog and share. The logistics though were far more interesting and intricate than I had first even thought of. We came around a couple of days before the train was supposed to pass that tunnel and the valley. More than half a dozen or maybe more shots were taken throughout the day by the cameras. The idea was to see how much light was being captured by the cameras and how much exposure was to be given so that the picture isn t whitened out or is too black. Weather is the strangest of foes for a photojournalist or even photographers, and the more you are in nature, the more unpredictable it is and can be. We were also at a certain height, so care had to be taken in case light rainfall happens or dew falls, both not good for digital cameras. And dew is something which will happen regardless of what you want. So while the two days our gentleman cameraman fiddled with the settings to figure out correct exposure settings, we had one other gentleman who was supposed to take the train from an earlier station and apprise us if the train was late or not. The most ideal time would be at 0600 hrs. When the train would enter the tunnel and come out and the mixture of early morning sun rays, dew, the flowers in the valley, and the train would give a beautiful effect. We could stretch it to maybe 0700 hrs. Anything after that would just be useless, as it wouldn t have the same effect. And of all this depended on nature. If the skies were to remain too dark, nothing we could do about it, if the dewdrops didn t fall it would all be over. On the day of the shoot, we were told by our compatriot that the train was late by half an hour. We sank a little on hearing that news. Although Photoshop and others can do touch-ups, most professionals like to take as authentic a snap as possible. Everything had been set up to perfection. The wide-angle lenses on both the cameras with protections were set up. The tension you could cut with a knife. While we had a light breakfast, I took a bit more and went in the woods to shit and basically not be there. This was too tensed up for me. Returned an hour to find everybody in a good mood. Apparently, the shoot went well. One of the two captured it for good enough. Now, this is and was in a benign environment where the only foe was the environment. A bad shot would have meant another week in the valley, something which I was not looking forward to. Those who have lived with photographers and photojournalists know how self-involved they can be in their craft, while how grumpy they can be if they had a bad shoot. For those, who don t know, it is challenging to be friends with such people for a long time. I wish they would scream more at nature and let out the frustrations they have after a bad shoot. But again, this is in a very safe environment. Now let s cut to Danish Siddiqui and the kind of photojournalism he followed. He followed a much more riskier sort of photojournalism than the one described above. Krittivas Mukherjee in his Twitter thread shared how reporters in most advanced countries are trained in multiple areas, from risk assessment to how to behave in case you are kidnapped, are in riots, hostage situations, etc. They are also trained in all sorts of medical training from treating gunshot wounds, CPR, and other survival methods. They are supposed to carry medical equipment along with their photography equipment. Sadly, these concepts are unknown in India. And even then they get killed. Sadly, he attributes his death to the thrill of taking an exclusive photograph. And the gentleman s bio reads that he is a diplomat. Talk about tone-deafness On another completely different level was Karen Hao who was full of empathy as she shared the humility, grace, warmth and kinship she describes in her interaction with the photojournalist. His body of work can be seen via his ted talk in 2020 where he shared a brief collage of his works. Latest, though in a turnaround, the Taliban have claimed no involvement in the death of photojournalist Danish Siddiqui. This could be in part to show the Taliban in a more favorable light as they do and would want to be showcased as progressive, even though they are forcing that all women within a certain age become concubines or marry the fighters and killing the minority Hazaras or doing vile deeds with them. Meanwhile, statements made by Hillary Clinton almost a decade, 12 years ago have come back into circulation which stated how the U.S. itself created the Taliban to thwart the Soviet Union and once that job was finished, forgot all about it. And then in 2001, it landed back in Afghanistan while the real terrorists were Saudi. To date, not all documents of 9/11 are in the public domain. One can find more information of the same here. This is gonna take probably another few years before Saudi Arabia s whole role in the September 11 attacks will be known. Last but not the least, came to know about the Pegasus spyware and how many prominent people in some nations were targeted, including in mine India. Will not talk more as it s already a big blog post and Pegasus revelations need an article on its own.

Changes in RcppArmadillo version 0.10.6.0.0 (2021-07-16)

• Upgraded to Armadillo release 10.6.0 (Keep Calm)
  • expanded chol() to optionally use pivoted decomposition
  • expanded vector, matrix and cube constructors to allow element initialisation via fill::value(scalar), eg. mat X(4,5,fill::value(123))
  • faster loading of CSV files when using OpenMP
  • added csv_opts::semicolon option to allow saving/loading of CSV files with semicolon (;) instead of comma (,) as the separator

Changes in RcppArmadillo version 0.10.5.3.0 (2021-07-01)

• Upgraded to Armadillo release 10.5.3 (Antipodean Fortress)
• GitHub-only release
• Extended test coverage with several new tests, added a coverage badge.

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

Devastation How in this world, when you are caring for your plants, can it transform:

From This

Healthy Mulberry Plant

Healthy Mulberry Plant

Healthy Bael Plant

To This

Dead Mulberry Plant

Very Sick Bael Plant

With emotions involved, this can be an unpleasant experience. Bael is a dear plant to me. The plant as a whole has religious values (Shiva). As well, its fruits have lots of health benefits, especially for the intestines. Its leaves have a lot of medicinal properties. When I planted the Bael, there were a lot of emotions that went along. On the other hand, the Mulberry is something I put in with a lot of enthusiasm. Mulberries are now rare to find, especially in urban locations. For one, they have a very short shelf life; But more than that, the way lifestyles are heading towards, I was always worried if my children would ever have a day to see and taste these fruits. The mulberry that I planted, yielded twice; once very soon when I had planted and second, before it died. Infact, it died while during its second yield phase. It was quite saddening to see that happen. It made me wonder why it happened. I had been caring for the plants fairly well. Watering them timely, feeding them the right amount of nutrients. They were getting a good amount of sun. But still their health was deteriorating. And then the demise of the Mulberry. Many thoughts hit my mind. I consulted the claimed experts in the domain, the maali, the gardener. I got a very vague answer; there must be termites in the soil. It didn t make much sense to me. I mean if there are termites they d hit day one. They won t sleep for months and just wake up one fine day and start attacking the roots of particular plants; not all. I wasn t convinced with the termite theory; But still, give the expert the blind hand, I went with his word. When my mulberry was dead, I dug its roots. Looking for proof, to see if there were any termites, I uprooted it. But I couldn t find any trace of termites. And the plant next to it was perfectly healthy and blossoming. So I was convinced that it wasn t the termite but something else. But else what ? I still didn t have an answer to that.

Thinking The Corona pandemic had embraced and there was a lot to worry, and worry not any, if you change the perspective. With plants around in my home, and our close engagement with them, and the helplessness that I felt after seeking help from the experts, it was time again; to build up some knowledge on the subject. But how ? How do you go about a subject you have not much clue about ? A subject which has always been around in the surrounding but very seldom have I dedicated focused thought to it. To be honest, the initial thought of diving on the subject made me clueless. I had no idea where to begin with. But, so, as has been my past history, I chose to take it as a curiosity. I gathered some books, skimmed through a couple of pages. Majority of the books I got hold of were about DIYs and How to do Home Gardening types. It was a decent introduction to a novice but my topic of curiosity was different. Thankfully, with the Internet, and YouTube in particular, a lot of good stuff is available as documentary videos. While going through some, I came across a video which mentioned about carnivore plants. Like, for example, this one.

Carnivore Plant

This got me thinking that there could be a possibility of something similar, that did the fate to my Mulberry plant. But who did it ? And how to dive further on this suspicion ? And most of all, if that thought of possibility was actually the reality. Or was I just hitting in the dark ?

Beginning To put some perspective, here s how it started. When we moved into our home, the gardener put in a couple of plants stock, as part of the property handover. Now, I don t exactly recollect the name of the plants that came in stock, neither English nor Hindi; But at my neighbor s place, the plant is still there. Here are some of the pictures of this beauty. But don t just go by the looks as looks can be deceiving

Dominating Plant

Dominating Plant

Dominating Plant

We hadn t put any serious thought about the plants we were offered by the gardener. After all, we never had ever thought of any mishap either.

Plants we planted Apart from what was offered by the builder/gardener as part of the property handover, in over the next 6 months of we moving in, I planted 3 tree type plants.

1. Mulberry
2. Bael
3. Rudraksha

The Mulberry, as I have described so far, died a tragic death. Bael, on the other hand, fought hard. But very little did we know that the plant was struggling the fight. Our impression was that we must have been given a bad breed of the plant. Or maybe the termite theory had some truth. For the Rudraksha plant, the growth was slow. This was the very first time I had seen a Rudraksha plant, so I had no clue of what its growth rate could be, and what to expect out of it. I wasn t sure if the local climate suited the plant. A quick search showed no objections to the plant in the local climate, but that was it. So my theory has been to put in the plant, and observe. Here s what my Rudraksha plant looked like during the initial days/weeks of its settlement

Rudraksha Plant

The Hint Days passed and so on. Not much had progressed in gathering information. The plant s health was usual; deteriorating at a slow pace. On day, thinking of the documentaries I had been watching, it hit my mind about the plant behavior.

• Plants can be Carnivores.
• Plants can be Aggressive.
• Plants can be Invaders.
• Plants can be Territorial.

There are many plants where their aggression can be witnessed with bare human eyes. Like creepers. Some of them are good at spreading tentacles, grabbing onto other plants' stems and branches and spread above it. This was my hint from the documentaries. That s one of the many ways plants set their dominance. That is what hit my mind that if plants are aggressive on the out, underneath the soil, they should be having similar behavior. I mean, what we see as humans is just a part of the actual plant. More than half of the actual plant is usually underneath the soil, in most plants. So there s a high chance to get more information out, if you dig the soil and look the roots.

The Digging As I mentioned earlier, I do establish bindings, emotions and attachments. But not much usually comes in the way to curiosity. To dig further on the theory that the problem was elsewhere, with within the plants ecosystem, we needed to pick on another subject - the plant. And the plant we chose was the plant which was planted in the initial offering to us, when we moved into our home. It was the same plant breed which was neighboring all our newly planted trees: Rudraksha, Mulberry and Bael. If you look closely into the pictures above of these plants, you ll notice the stem of another plant, the Territorial Dominator, is close-by to these 3 plants. That s because the gardener put in a good number of them to get his action item complete. So we chose to dig and uproot one of those plant to start with. Now, while they may look gentle on the outside, with nice red colored tiny flowers, these plants were giants underneath. Their roots were huge. It took some sweat shredding to single-handedly remove them.

Dominating Plant Uprooted

Dominating Plant Uprooted

Dominating Plant Uprooted

Dominating Plant Uprooted

Today is brighter

Bael I ll let the pictures do the initial talking today.

Healthy Bael

Healthy Bael

Healthy Bael

Healthy Bael

Healthy Bael

The above ones are pictures of the same Bael plant, which had struggled to live, for almost 14 months. Back then, this plant was starved of its resources. It was dying a slow death out of starvation. After we uprooted the other dominant species, the Bael has recovered and has regained its charm. In the pictures above of the Bael plant, you can clearly mark out the difference in its stem. The dark colored one is from its months of struggle, while the bright green is from now where it is well nourished and regained its health.

Mulberry As for the Mulberry, I couldn t save it. But I later managed to get another one. But it turns out I didn t take good, full length pictures of the new mulberry when I planted. The only picture I have is this:

Second Mulberry Plant

I recollect when I brought it home, it was around 1 - 1.5 feet in length. This is where I have it today: Majestically standing, 12 feet and counting

Second Mulberry Plant 7 feet tall

Rudraksha Then:

Rudraksha Plant

And now: I feel quite happy about

Rudraksha Plant

Rudraksha Plant

Rudraksha Plant

All these plants are on the very same soil with the very same care taker. What has changed is my experience and learning.

Plant Co-Existence Plant co-existence is a difficult topic. My knowledge on plants is very limited in general, and co-existence is something tricky, unexplored, at times invisible (when underneath the soil). So it is a difficult topic. So far, what I ve learnt is purely observations, experiences and hints from the documentaries. There surely are many many plants that co-exist very well. A good example is my Bael plant itself, which is healthily co-sharing its space with 2 other Croton plants. Same goes for the Rudraksha, which has a close-by neighbor in an Adenium and an Allamanda. The plant world is mesmerizing. How they behave, communicate and many many more signs. There s so much to observe, learn, explore and document. I hope to have more such observations and experiences to share

New age communication So first, we had email and usenet. As I mentioned above, email was designed with fine intentions. Intentions that make it stand even today, independently. But not everything, back then, was that great either. For example, instant messaging was very closed and centralised then too. Things like: ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger; all were centralized. I wonder if people still have access to their ICQ logs. Not much has chagned in the current day either. We now have domination by: Facebook Messenger, Google Whatever the new marketing term they introdcue, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal etc. To my knowledge, they are all centralized. Over all this time, I m yet to see a product come up with good (business) intentions, to really empower the end user. In this information age, the most invaluable data is user activity. That s one data everyone is after. If you decline to share that bit of free data in exchange for the free services, mind you, that that free service like Facebook, Google, Instagram, WhatsApp, Truecaller, Twitter; none of it would come to you at all. Try it out. So the reality is that while you may not be valuating the data you offer in exchange correctly, there s a lot that is reaped from it. But still, I think each user has (and should have) the freedom to opt in for these tech giants and give them their personal bit, for free services in return. That is a decent barter deal. And it is a choice that one if free to choose

Retaining my data I m fond of keeping an archive folder in my mailbox. A folder that holds significant events in the form of an email usually, if documented. Over the years, I chose to resort to the email format because I felt it was more reliable in the longer term than any other formats. The next best would be plain text. In my lifetime, I have learnt a lot from the internet; so it is natural that my preference has been with it. Mailing Lists, IRCs, HOWTOs, Guides, Blog posts; all have helped. And over the years, I ve come across hundreds of such content that I d always like to preserve. Now there are multiple ways to preserving data. Like, for example, big tech giants. In most usual cases, your data for your lifetime, should be fine with a tech giant. In some odd scenarios, you may be unlucky if you relied on a service provider that went bankrupt. But seriously, I think users should be fine if they host their data with Microsoft, Google etc; as long as they abide by their policies. There s also the catch of alignment. As the user, you should ensure to align (and transition) with the product offerings of your service provider. Otherwise, what may look constant and always reliable, will vanish in the blink of an eye. I guess Google Plus would be a good example. There was some Google Feed service too. Maybe Google Photos in the near decade future, just like Google Picasa in the previous (or current) decade.

History what is On the topic of retaining information, lets take a small drift. I still admire our ancestors. I don t know what went in their mind when they were documenting events in the form of scriptures, carvings, temples, churches, mosques etc; but one things for sure, they were able to leave a fine means of communication. They are all gone but a large number of those events are evident through the creations that they left. Some of those events have been strong enough that further rulers/invaders have had tough times trying to wipe it out from history. Remember, history is usually not the truth, but the statement to be believed by the teller. And the teller is usually the survivor, or the winner you may call. But still, the information retention techniques were better. I haven t visited, but admire whosoever built the Kailasa Temple, Ellora, without which, we d be made to believe what not by all invaders and rulers of the region. But the majestic standing of the temple, is a fine example of the history and the events that have occured in the past.

Ellora Temple - The majectic carving believed to be carved out of a single stone

Dominance has the power to rewrite history and unfortunately that s true and it has done its part. It is just that in a mere human s defined lifetime, it is not possible to witness the transtion from current to history, and say that I was there then and I m here now, and this is not the reality. And if not dominance, there s always the other bit, hearsay. With it, you can always put anything up for dispute. Because there s no way one can go back in time and produce a fine evidence. There s also a part about religion. Religion can be highly sentimental. And religion can be a solid way to get an agenda going. For example, in India - a country which today consitutionally is a secular country, there have been multiple attempts to discard the belief, that never ever did the thing called Ramayana exist. That the Rama Setu, nicely reworded as Adam s Bridge by who so ever, is a mere result of science. Now Rama, or Hanumana, or Ravana, or Valmiki, aren t going to come over and prove that that is true or false. So such subjects serve as a solid base to get an agenda going. And probably we ve even succeeded in proving and believing that there was never an event like Ramayana or the Mahabharata. Nor was there ever any empire other than the Moghul or the British Empire. But yes, whosoever made the Ellora Temple or the many many more of such creations, did a fine job of making a dent for the future, to know of what the history possibly could also be.

Enough of the drift So, in my opinion, having events documented is important. It d be nice to have skills documented too so that it can be passed over generations but that s a debatable topic. But events, I believe should be documented. And documented in the best possible ways so that its existence is not diminished. A documentation in the form of certain carvings on a rock is far more better than links and posts shared on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc. For one, these are all corporate entities with vested interests and can pretext excuse in the name of compliance and conformance. So, for the helpless state and generation I am in, I felt email was the best possible independent form of data retention in today s age. If I really had the resources, I d not rely on digital age. This age has no guarantee of retaining and recording information in any reliable manner. Instead, it is just mostly junk, which is manipulative and changeable, conditionally.

Email and RSS So for my communication, I like to prefer emails over any other means. That doesn t mean I don t use the current trends. I do. But this blog is mostly about penning my desires. And desire be to have communication over email format. Such is the case that for information useful over the internet, I crave to have it formatted in email for archival. RSS feeds is my most common mode of keeping track of information I care about. Not all that I care for is available in RSS feeds but hey such is life. And adaptability is okay. But my preference is still RSS. So I use RSS feeds through a fine software called feed2imap. A software that fits my bill fairly well. feed2imap is:

• An rss feed news aggregator
• Pulls and extracts news feeds in the form of an email
• Can push the converted email over pop/imap
• Can convert all image content to email mime attachment

In a gist, it makes the online content available to me offline in the most admired email format In my mail box, in today s day, my preferred email client is Evolution. It does a good job of dealing with such emails (rss feed items). An image example of accessing the rrs feed item through it is below

RSS News Item through Evolution

The good part is that my actual data is always independent of such MUAs. Tomorrow, as technology - trends - economics evolve, something new would come as a replacement but my data would still be mine.

Mobile trends Trends have shown. Data mobility is a commodity expectation now. As such, I wanted to have something fill in that gap for me. So that I could access my information - which I ve preferred in a format - easily in today s trendy options. I tried multiple options on my current preferred platform of choice for mobiles, i.e. Android. Finally I came across Aqua Mail, which fits in most of my requirements. Aqua Mail does

• Connect to my laptop over imap
• Can sync the requested folders
• Can sync requested data for offlince accessibility
• Can present the synchronized data in a quite flexible and customizable manner, to match my taste
• Has a very extensible User Interface, allowing me to customize it to my taste

Pictures can do a better job of describing my english words.

Aqua Mail Message List Interface

Aqua Mail Message View Normal

Aqua Mail Message View Zoomed - Fit to Screen

All of this done with no dependence on network connectivity, post the sync. And all information is stored is best possible simple format.

Debian

This was my 27th month of active contributing to Debian. I became a DM in late March 2019 and a DD on Christmas 19! \o/ This month was a bit exhausting; lots of moving parts. With the financial year ending, it was even more crazy, with me running around to banks, CA, et al.
Anyway, with now working on Ubuntu full-time, I did little of Debian this month. Here are the following things I worked on:

Uploads and bug fixes:

• polybar (3.5.5-1) - New upstream version, v3.5.5.
• ruby-http-parser (1.2.1-5) - Disable tests causing FTBFS on s390x architecture.
• debian-security-support (1:11+2021.03.19) - Fix for bug #984539: dpkg hook should never fail.
• Filed bug #985314 against asterisk (systemd misconfiguration) and added a patch as well.
• Filed bug #985421 against at (add DEP8 tests) and added a patch as well.

Other $things:

• Attended the Debian LTS team meeting.
• Mentoring for newcomers.
• Moderation of -project mailing list.

---

Debian (E)LTS

Debian Long Term Support (LTS) is a project to extend the lifetime of all Debian stable releases to (at least) 5 years. Debian LTS is not handled by the Debian security team, but by a separate group of volunteers and companies interested in making it a success. And Debian Extended LTS (ELTS) is its sister project, extending support to the Jessie release (+2 years after LTS support). This was my eighteenth month as a Debian LTS and ninth month as a Debian ELTS paid contributor.
I was assigned 60.00 hours for LTS and 39.00 hours for ELTS and worked on the following things:

LTS CVE Fixes and Announcements:

• Issued DLA 2580-1, fixing CVE-2021-21311, for adminer.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 4.2.5-3+deb9u2.
• Issued DLA 2581-1, fixing CVE-2021-27803, for wpa.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 2:2.4-1+deb9u9.
• Issued DLA 2585-1, fixing CVE-2020-13848, for libupnp.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 1:1.6.19+git20160116-1.2+deb9u1.
• Issued DLA 2589-1, fixing CVE-2020-26519 and CVE-2021-3407, for mupdf.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 1.9a+ds1-4+deb9u6.
• Issued DLA 2593-1, fixing bug #962596, for ca-certificates.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 20200601~deb9u2.
• Issued DLA 2589-2, fixing regression caused by DLA 2589-1, for mupdf.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 1.9a+ds1-4+deb9u7.
• Issued DLA 2598-1, fixing CVE-2020-25097, for squid3.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 3.5.23-5+deb9u6.
• Issued DLA 2599-1, fixing CVE-2021-28963, for shibboleth-sp2.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 2.6.0+dfsg1-4+deb9u2.
• Issued DLA 2601-1, fixing CVE-2021-3429, for cloud-init.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 0.7.9-2+deb9u1.
• Issued DLA 2558-2, fixing regression caused by DLA 2558-1, for xterm.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 327-2+deb9u2.
• Released debian-security-support to unstable via Holger to fix bug #984539.

ELTS CVE Fixes and Announcements:

• Issued ELA 374-1, fixing CVE-2021-27803, for wpa.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 2.3-1+deb8u13.
• Issued ELA 375-1, fixing CVE-2021-3410, for libcaca.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 0.99.beta19-2+deb8u2.
• Issued ELA 376-1, fixing CVE-2020-25638, for libhibernate3-java.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 3.6.10.Final-3+deb8u1.
• Issued ELA 382-1, fixing CVE-2020-25097, for squid3.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 3.5.23-5+deb8u3.
• Issued ELA 385-1, fixing CVE-2021-28963, for shibboleth-sp2.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 2.5.3+dfsg-2+deb8u2.
• Issued ELA 363-2, fixing regression caused by ELA 363-1, for xterm.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 312-2+deb8u2.

Other (E)LTS Work:

• Front-desk duty from 01-03 until 07-03 for ELTS and then from 29-03 until 04-04 for both LTS and ELTS.
• Triaged wpa, python-aiohttp, spip, wpa, qemu, tomcat7, tomcat8, grub2, mupdf, openssh, tiff, spice, pillow, xmlgraphics-commons, batik, libupnp, ca-certificates, salt, squid3, shibboleth-sp2, courier-authlib, cloud-init, spamassassin, openssl, libcaca, and openjpeg2.
• Marked CVE-2021-21330/python-aiohttp as not-affected for stretch.
• Marked CVE-2021-20233, CVE-2021-20225, CVE-2020-27779, CVE-2020-27778, CVE-2020-27749, CVE-2020-27748, CVE-2020-25647, CVE-2020-25632, CVE-2020-25631, and CVE-2020-14372, affecting grub2, as ignored for stretch and jessie.
• Marked CVE-2020-27842/openjpeg2 as no-dsa for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2020-27843/openjpeg2 as no-dsa for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2021-28041/openssh as not-affect for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2020-3552 3,4 /tiff as no-dsa for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2021-20201/spice as no-dsa for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2020-11988/xmlgraphics-commons as postponed for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2020-11987/batik as postponed for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2020-12695/libupnp as no-dsa for stretch.
• Marked CVE-2021-25122/tomcat7 as not-affected for stretch.
• Marked CVE-2021-25329/tomcat7 as ignored for stretch.
• Marked CVE-2021-28116/squid3 as postponed for stretch and jessie.
• Marked CVE-2021-3449/openssl as not-affected for stretch.
• Document extra notes for grub2 for LTS and co-ordinate with the sec-team.
• Document extra notes for pillow about piled-up issues in jessie.
• Issued DLA-2593-1 for ca-certificates on Microsoft s request; co-ordinating w/ them.
• Co-ordinating w/ maintainer of courier-authlib for stretch and jessie update.
• Fixing build failures of ELTS security tracker and re-ordering entries in data/CVE-EXTENDED-LTS/list file.
• Answer queries of dupondje and mikap about openssl on IRC; and it being not-affected for stretch.
• Help review the status of CVE-2021-3121/golang-github-gogo-protobuf-dev for Ola.
• Co-ordinating w/ Noah for cloud-init and setuptools.
• Auto EOL ed mongodb, linux, guacamole-client, node-xmlhttprequest, newlib, neutron, privoxy, glpi, and zabbix for jessie.
• Attended monthly meeting for Debian LTS.
• Answered questions (& discussions) on IRC (#debian-lts and #debian-elts).
• General and other discussions on LTS private and public mailing list.

---

Until next time.
:wq for today.

Debian

This was my 26th month of active contributing to Debian. I became a DM in late March 2019 and a DD on Christmas 19! \o/ This month was a nice mix of amusement, excitement, nervousness, and craziness. More on it below.
Anyway, whilst I was super-insanely busy this month, I still did some Debian stuff here and there. Here are the following things I worked on:

Uploads and bug fixes:

• ruby-mechanize (2.7.7-1) - Fixing CVE-2021-21289.
• rails (2:6.0.3.4+dfsg-3) - Fixing silent build failure, bug #979133.
• tiledb (1.7.7-1.1) - NMU + source-only upload for migration.
• ruby-launchy (2.5.0-3) - Add Breaks+Replaces for launchy; fixing bug #974046.
• ruby-upr (0.3.0-3) - Fixing FTBFS + autopkgtest; cf: bug #883370.
• gdisk (1.0.6-1.1) - Add Restrictions: allow-stderr for autopkgtest; fixing bug #981231.
• test-check-clojure (0.9.0-4) - Fixing FTBFS + autpkgtest; cf: bug #982721.
• rails (2:6.0.3.5+dfsg-1) - Fixing CVE-2021-22880 and CVE-2021-22881.
• ruby-mechanize (2.7.6-1+deb10u1) - pu-upload, fixing CVE-2021-21289.
• ruby-handlebars-assets (2:0.23.8+dfsg-3) - Fixing autpkgtest by embedding a dummy rails app.
• ruby-rails-assets-emojione (2.2.6-5) - Fixing autpkgtest by embedding a dummy rails app.
• ruby-rails-assets-jquery-colorbox (1.6.3~dfsg-7) - Fixing autpkgtest by embedding a dummy rails app.
• ruby-rails-assets-jquery.slimscroll (1.3.6+dfsg-3) - Fixing autpkgtest by embedding a dummy rails app.
• ruby-rails-assets-markdown-it (8.4.2-5) - Fixing autpkgtest by embedding a dummy rails app.
• ruby-mousetrap-rails (1.4.6-7) - Fixing autpkgtest by embedding a dummy rails app.
• ruby-rails-assets-jquery-fullscreen-plugin (0.5.0+dfsg-4) - Fixing autpkgtest by embedding a dummy rails app.

Other $things:

• Attended the Debian LTS team meeting.
• Mentoring for newcomers.
• Moderation of -project mailing list.
• Sponsored ruby-rspec-stubbed-env for C dric Boutillier, heh :P

---

Interesting Bits!

• Last month, I wrote:

  Besides, there s something more that is in the pipelines. Can t talk about it now, shh. But hopefully very sooooooon!

  And now I can talk about it! So here it is..
  I ve joined Canonical as a SDE to work on Ubuntu, full time!!! \o/
  Fully remote + dream job/work + most of the work is in the open-source domain + the beessstttt co-workers one could ever ask for! It s been an amazing time so far and I ll talk more about it later this month.
  But for now, here s our team monitor selfie (with Rick missing because of his secret plan ! )
  
  We ll soon e-meet them in a more detailed manner in the next blog post, that is, later this month!
• In another exciting news, I got 2 more CVEs assigned!!! \o/
  No, it is not something that I found, it was discovered by Tavis Ormandy. I just assigned them a CVE ID, CVE-2021-26937 for screen and CVE-2021-27135 for xterm.
  This is my 2nd and 3rd, so I am (still) very excited about this! ^_^

---

Debian (E)LTS

Debian Long Term Support (LTS) is a project to extend the lifetime of all Debian stable releases to (at least) 5 years. Debian LTS is not handled by the Debian security team, but by a separate group of volunteers and companies interested in making it a success. And Debian Extended LTS (ELTS) is its sister project, extending support to the Jessie release (+2 years after LTS support). This was my sixteenth month as a Debian LTS and seventh month as a Debian ELTS paid contributor.
I was assigned 60.00 hours for LTS and 60.00 hours for ELTS and worked on the following things:
(however, I had overworked for 9 hours for both, LTS and ELTS, last month so I had to work for 51 hours for both this month!)

LTS CVE Fixes and Announcements:

• Issued DLA 2544-1, fixing CVE-2020-36221, CVE-2020-36222, CVE-2020-36223, CVE-2020-36224, CVE-2020-36225, CVE-2020-36226, CVE-2020-36227, CVE-2020-36228, CVE-2020-36229, and CVE-2020-36230, for openldap.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 2.4.44+dfsg-5+deb9u7.
• Issued DLA 2545-1, fixing CVE-2020-8020 and CVE-2020-8021, for open-build-service.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 2.7.1-10+deb9u1.
• Issued DLA 2546-1, fixing CVE-2020-8695, CVE-2020-8696, and CVE-2020-8698, for intel-microcode.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 3.20201118.1~deb9u1.
• Issued DLA 2548-1, fixing CVE-2020-35502, CVE-2021-20209, CVE-2021-20210, CVE-2021-20211, CVE-2021-20212, CVE-2021-20213, CVE-2021-20215, CVE-2021-20216, and CVE-2021-20217, for privoxy.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 3.0.26-3+deb9u1.
• Issued DLA 2549-1, fixing CVE-2020-0256 and CVE-2021-0308, for gdisk.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 1.0.1-1+deb9u1.
• Released a non-maintainer upload, fixing #981231, autopkgtest regression for CVE-2020-0256 and CVE-2021-0308, for gdisk.
  For Debian sid, these problems have been fixed in version 1.0.6-1.1.
• Issued DLA 2554-1, fixing CVE-2021-26910, for firejail.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 0.9.44.8-2+deb9u2.
• Issued DLA 2558-1, fixing CVE-2021-27135, for xterm.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 327-2+deb9u1.
• Issued DLA 2561-1, fixing CVE-2021-21289, for ruby-mechanize.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 2.7.5-1+deb9u1.
• Released buster-pu update, fixing CVE-2021-21289, for ruby-mechanize.
  For Debian 10 Buster, these problems have been fixed in version 2.7.6-1+deb10u1.
• Released team/maintainer upload, fixing CVE-2021-21289, for ruby-mechanize.
  For Debian sid, these problems have been fixed in version 2.7.7-1.
• Released team/maintainer upload, fixing CVE-2021-22880 and CVE-2021-22881, for rails.
  For Debian sid, these problems have been fixed in version 2:6.0.3.5+dfsg-1.
• Issued DLA 2570-1, fixing CVE-2021-26937, for screen.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 4.5.0-6+deb9u1.
• Issued DLA 2573-1, fixing #981404 and #982519, for libzstd.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 1.1.2-1+deb9u1.
• Issued DLA 2574-1, fixing CVE-2021-27212, for openldap.
  For Debian 9 stretch, these problems have been fixed in version 2.4.44+dfsg-5+deb9u8.

ELTS CVE Fixes and Announcements:

• Issued ELA 357-1, fixing CVE-2021-3272, for jasper.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 1.900.1-debian1-2.4+deb8u7.
• Issued ELA 358-1, fixing CVE-2020-36221, CVE-2020-36222, CVE-2020-36223, CVE-2020-36224, CVE-2020-36225, CVE-2020-36226, CVE-2020-36227, CVE-2020-36228, CVE-2020-36229, and CVE-2020-36230, for openldap.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 2.4.40+dfsg-1+deb8u9.
• Issued ELA 359-1, fixing CVE-2020-27351, for python-apt.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 0.9.3.14.
• Issued ELA 360-1, fixing CVE-2020-0256 and CVE-2021-0308, for gdisk.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 0.8.10-2+deb8u1.
• Issued ELA 361-1, fixing CVE-2021-26926 and CVE-2021-26927, for jasper.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 1.900.1-debian1-2.4+deb8u9.
• Issued ELA 362-1, fixing CVE-2020-8695, CVE-2020-8696, and CVE-2020-8698, for intel-microcode.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 3.20201118.1~deb8u1.
• Issued ELA 363-1, fixing CVE-2021-27135, for xterm.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 312-2+deb8u1.
• Issued ELA 371-1, fixing CVE-2021-27212, for openldap.
  For Debian 8 jessie, these problems have been fixed in version 2.4.40+dfsg-1+deb8u10.

Other (E)LTS Work:

• Front-desk duty from 22-02 until 28-02 for both LTS and ELTS.
• Triaged privoxy, dnsmasq, openldap, libzstd, ruby-mechanize, firefox-esr, thunderbird, screen, xterm, glibc, isync, rails, openscad, imagemagick, avahi, gdk-pixbuf, python-reportlab, python-aiohttp, spip, gdisk, and jasper.
• Marked CVE-2021-20214/privoxy as not-affected for stretch.
• Marked CVE-2021-27645/glibc as no-dsa for stretch.
• Marked CVE-2021-20247/isync as no-dsa for stretch.
• Marked CVE-2020-28599/openscad as no-dsa for stretch.
• Markec CVE-2021-2024 1,4-6 /imagemagick as ignored for stretch.
• Marked CVE-2021-26720/avahi as postponed for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2021-20240/gdk-pixbuf as not-affected for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2021-27645/glibc as no-dsa for jessie.
• Marked CVE-2020-28463/python-reportlab as postponed for jessie.
• Document extra CVEs as notes for imagemagick in jessie.
• Auto EOL ed libupnp, webkit2gtk, libraw, jackson-dataformat-cbor, node-lodash, linux, asterisk, yara, python-django, botan1.10, smarty3, xen, u-boot, steghide, mumble, gsoap, ruby-twitter-stream, isync, nodejs, openscad, mupdf, mongo-java-driver, firefox-esr, thunderbird, and salt for jessie.
• Sponsored upload for php-horde-text-filter for Sylvain and published its DLA announcement.
• Got CVE-2021-26937 for screen. Yay, this is the 2nd one I got assigned! \o/
• Got CVE-2021-27135 for xterm. Woah, this is the 3rd one, am I on a roll or what? \o/
• Co-ordinated with package maintainer (and upstream) of ca-certificates for backporting patch to stretch.
• Co-ordinated with package maintainer of ca-certificates for backporting patch to stretch.
• Co-ordinated with package maintainer of screen for fixing vulnerabilites in stretch.
• Attended monthly meeting for Debian LTS.
• Answered questions (& discussions) on IRC (#debian-lts and #debian-elts).
• Cross-checked LTS survey results, emailed Ola about the problems found.
• General and other discussions on LTS private and public mailing list.

---

Until next time.
:wq for today.

The disease stiffened and carried off three or four patients who were expected to recover. These were the unfortunates of the plague, those whom it killed when hope was high

Small, podgy, and at best middle-aged, Smiley was by appearance one of London's meek who do not inherit the earth. His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress costly, ill-fitting, and extremely wet.

Perhaps his life might have veered elsewhere if the US government had opened the country to colored advancement like they opened the army. But it was one thing to allow someone to kill for you and another to let him live next door.

The Daily News review described the [Manhattan restaurant] as nouveau Southern, "down-home plates with a twist." What was the twist that it was soul food made by white people?

"Earlier tonight I gave some thought to stealing a kiss from you, though you are very young, and sick and unattractive to boot, but now I am of a mind to give you five or six good licks with my belt." "One would be as unpleasant as the other."

We're accustomed to worrying about AI systems being built that will either "go rogue" and attack us, or succeed us in a bizarre evolution of, um, evolution what we didn't reckon on is the sheer inscrutability of these manufactured minds. And minds is not a misnomer. How else should we think about the neural network Google has built so its translator can model the interrelation of all words in all languages, in a kind of three-dimensional "semantic space"?

A better proxy for your life isn't your first home, but your last. Where you draw your last breath is more meaningful, as it's a reflection of your success and, more important, the number of people who care about your well-being. Your first house signals the meaningful your future and possibility. Your last home signals the profound the people who love you. Where you die, and who is around you at the end, is a strong signal of your success or failure in life.

• [DLA 2489-1] minidlna security update for two CVEs
• [DLA 2490-1] x11vnc security update for one CVE
• [DLA 2501-1] influxdb security update for one CVE
• [DLA 2511-1] highlight.js security update for one CVE

• ELA-341-1 for highlight.js

• golang-github-cyberdelia-heroku-go
• golang-github-rivo-uniseg
• golang-github-dchest-uniuri
• golang-github-deanthompson-ginpprof
• golang-github-cnf-structhash
• golang-github-dreamitgetit-statuscake
• golang-github-gin-contrib-static
• golang-github-grafana-grafana-plugin-model
• golang-github-hashicorp-terraform-svchost
• golang-github-jesseduffield-pty
• golang-github-vividcortex-mysqlerr
• golang-github-zorkian-go-datadog-api
• golang-github-zenazn-goji
• golang-github-suapapa-go-eddystone
• golang-github-uber-go-atomic
• golang-github-rhnvrm-simples3
• golang-github-ua-parser-uap-go
• golang-github-hashicorp-go-slug
• astronomical-almanac
• meep
• meep-mpi-default
• meep-openmpi
• mpb
• nuspell
• osmo-msc
• osmo-bts
• libosmocore

• entropybroker
• chktex
• osmo-pcu
• libosmo-netif
• libosmo-sccp
• osmo-bsc
• osmo-sgsn
• osmo-ggsn
• osmo-pcu
• osmo-trx
• libsmpp34
• osmo-hlr
• osmo-mgw
• openbsc
• osmo-iuh
• osmo-bts
• osmo-msc
• libosmo-abis
• golang-gopkg-go-playground-colors.v1

• pescetti
• rplay
• setserial
• siggen
• te923con
• sshesame
• feynmf
• pywws
• golang-github-wildducktheories-go-csv

• golang-github-jesseduffield-termbox-go
• golang-github-mgutz-str
• golang-github-ua-parser-uap-go
• golang-github-rivo-uniseg

• golang-github-go-chi-chi
• golang-github-hashicorp-go-azure-helpers
• golang-github-mitch000001-go-hbci
• golang-github-go-chi-cors
• golang-github-fvbommel-sortorder
• golang-github-goburrow-modbus
• golang-github-hashicorp-go-tfe
• golang-github-zclconf-go-cty-yaml
• golang-github-go-chi-chi

  * Non maintainer upload by the Reproducible Builds team.
  * No source change upload to rebuild on buildd with .buildinfo files.

for i in $(seq 18 30) ; do echo -n "Dec $i: " ; ls -lart1 done/*upload grep -c "Dec $i" ; done
Dec 18: 12
Dec 19: 0
Dec 20: 3
Dec 21: 13
Dec 22: 13
Dec 23: 16
Dec 24: 4
Dec 25: 28
Dec 26: 0
Dec 27: 38
Dec 28: 198
Dec 29: 206
Dec 30: 9

• pre upload work:
  • test build with pbuilder in sid
  • check PTS for last upload date (and having arch:all binaries) and open RC bugs
  • modify d/changelog
  • check debdiff between two sources (should be only the changelog entry!)
  • upload
  • (some times filing bugs or modifying bug meta data etc)
• post upload:
  • check PTS for testing migration, so for this I've had >500 browser tabs open and I'll keep each of them open until the packages migrates...

• Carl Karsten (CarlFK)
• Ivo De Decker (ivodd)
• Kyle Robbertze (paddatrapper)
• Louis-Philippe V ronneau (pollo)
• Nattie Mayer-Hutchings (nattie)
• Nicolas Dandrimont (olasd)
• Stefano Rivera (tumbleweed)
• Wouter Verhelst (wouter)

               == On-premise ==                                          == Online ==
                                                      
              Camera 1                                                 Jitsi
                                                                          
                 v                 ---> Frontend                         v                 ---> Frontend
                                                                                            
    Slides -> Voctomix -> Backend -+--> Frontend         Questions -> Voctomix -> Backend -+--> Frontend
                                                                                            
                 ^                 ---> Frontend                         ^                 ---> Frontend
                                                                          
              Camera 2                                           Pre-recorded video