Introduction
DebConf23, the 24th annual Debian Conference, was held in India in the city of Kochi, Kerala from the 3rd to the 17th of September, 2023. Ever since I got to know about it (which was more than an year ago), I was excited to attend DebConf in my home country. This was my second DebConf, as I attended one last year in Kosovo. I was very happy that I didn t need to apply for a visa to attend. I got full bursary to attend the event (thanks a lot to Debian for that!) which is always helpful in covering the expenses, especially if the venue is a five star hotel :)
For the conference, I submitted two talks. One was suggested by Sahil on Debian packaging for beginners, while the other was suggested by Praveen who opined that a talk covering broader topics about freedom in self-hosting services will be better, when I started discussing about submitting a talk about prav app project. So I submitted one on Debian packaging for beginners and the other on ideas on sustainable solutions for self-hosting.
My friend Suresh - who is enthusiastic about Debian and free software - wanted to attend the DebConf as well. When the registration started, I reminded him about applying. We landed in Kochi on the 28th of August 2023 during the festival of Onam. We celebrated Onam in Kochi, had a trip to Wayanad, and returned to Kochi. On the evening of the 3rd of September, we reached the venue - Four Points Hotel by Sheraton, at Infopark Kochi, Ernakulam, Kerala, India.
Suresh and me celebrating Onam in Kochi.
Hotel overview
The hotel had 14 floors, and featured a swimming pool and gym (these were included in our package). The hotel gave us elevator access for only our floor, along with public spaces like the reception, gym, swimming pool, and dining areas. The temperature inside the hotel was pretty cold and I had to buy a jacket to survive. Perhaps the hotel was in cahoots with winterwear companies? :)
Four Points Hotel by Sheraton was the venue of DebConf23. Photo credits: Bilal
Photo of the pool. Photo credits: Andreas Tille.
View from the hotel window.
Meals
On the first day, Suresh and I had dinner at the eatery on the third floor. At the entrance, a member of the hotel staff asked us about how many people we wanted a table for. I told her that it s just the two of us at the moment, but (as we are attending a conference) we might be joined by others. Regardless, they gave us a table for just two. Within a few minutes, we were joined by Alper from Turkey and urbec from Germany. So we shifted to a larger table but then we were joined by even more people, so we were busy adding more chairs to our table. urbec had already been in Kerala for the past 5-6 days and was, on one hand, very happy already with the quality and taste of bananas in Kerala and on the other, rather afraid of the spicy food :)
Two days later, the lunch and dinner were shifted to the All Spice Restaurant on the 14th floor, but the breakfast was still served at the eatery. Since the eatery (on the 3rd floor) had greater variety of food than the other venue, this move made breakfast the best meal for me and many others. Many attendees from outside India were not accustomed to the spicy food. It is difficult for locals to help them, because what we consider mild can be spicy for others. It is not easy to satisfy everyone at the dining table, but I think the organizing team did a very good job in the food department. (That said, it didn t matter for me after a point, and you will know why.) The pappadam were really good, and I liked the rice labelled Kerala rice . I actually brought that exact rice and pappadam home during my last trip to Kochi and everyone at my home liked it too (thanks to Abhijit PA). I also wished to eat all types of payasams from Kerala and this really happened (thanks to Sruthi who designed the menu). Every meal had a different variety of payasam and it was awesome, although I didn t like some of them, mostly because they were very sweet. Meals were later shifted to the ground floor (taking away the best breakfast option which was the eatery).
This place served as lunch and dinner place and later as hacklab during debconf. Photo credits: Bilal
The excellent Swag Bag
The DebConf registration desk was at the second floor. We were given a very nice swag bag. They were available in multiple colors - grey, green, blue, red - and included an umbrella, a steel mug, a multiboot USB drive by Mostly Harmless, a thermal flask, a mug by Canonical, a paper coaster, and stickers. It rained almost every day in Kochi during our stay, so handing out an umbrella to every attendee was a good idea.
Picture of the awesome swag bag given at DebConf23. Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi
A gift for Nattie
During breakfast one day, Nattie (Belgium) expressed the desire to buy a coffee filter. The next time I went to the market, I bought a coffee filter for her as a gift. She seemed happy with the gift and was flattered to receive a gift from a young man :)
Being a mentor
There were many newbies who were eager to learn and contribute to Debian. So, I mentored whoever came to me and was interested in learning. I conducted a packaging workshop in the bootcamp, but could only cover how to set up the Debian Unstable environment, and had to leave out how to package (but I covered that in my talk). Carlos (Brazil) gave a keysigning session in the bootcamp. Praveen was also mentoring in the bootcamp. I helped people understand why we sign GPG keys and how to sign them. I planned to take a workshop on it but cancelled it later.
My talk
My Debian packaging talk was on the 10th of September, 2023. I had not prepared slides for my Debian packaging talk in advance - I thought that I could do it during the trip, but I didn t get the time so I prepared them on the day before the talk. Since it was mostly a tutorial, the slides did not need much preparation. My thanks to Suresh, who helped me with the slides and made it possible to complete them in such a short time frame.
My talk was well-received by the audience, going by their comments. I am glad that I could give an interesting presentation.
My presentation photo. Photo credits: Valessio
Visiting a saree shop
After my talk, Suresh, Alper, and I went with Anisa and Kristi - who are both from Albania, and have a never-ending fascination for Indian culture :) - to buy them sarees. We took autos to Kakkanad market and found a shop with a great variety of sarees. I was slightly familiar with the area around the hotel, as I had been there for a week. Indian women usually don t try on sarees while buying - they just select the design. But Anisa wanted to put one on and take a few photos as well. The shop staff did not have a trial saree for this purpose, so they took a saree from a mannequin. It took about an hour for the lady at the shop to help Anisa put on that saree but you could tell that she was in heaven wearing that saree, and she bought it immediately :) Alper also bought a saree to take back to Turkey for his mother. Me and Suresh wanted to buy a kurta which would go well with the mundu we already had, but we could not find anything to our liking.
Selfie with Anisa and Kristi. Photo credits: Anisa.
Cheese and Wine Party
On the 11th of September we had the Cheese and Wine Party, a tradition of every DebConf. I brought Kaju Samosa and Nankhatai from home. Many attendees expressed their appreciation for the samosas. During the party, I was with Abhas and had a lot of fun. Abhas brought packets of paan and served them at the Cheese and Wine Party. We discussed interesting things and ate burgers. But due to the restrictive alcohol laws in the state, it was less fun compared to the previous DebConfs - you could only drink alcohol served by the hotel in public places. If you bought your own alcohol, you could only drink in private places (such as in your room, or a friend s room), but not in public places.
Me helping with the Cheese and Wine Party.
Party at my room
Last year, Joenio (Brazilian) brought pastis from France which I liked. He brought the same alocholic drink this year too. So I invited him to my room after the Cheese and Wine party to have pastis. My idea was to have them with my roommate Suresh and Joenio. But then we permitted Joenio to bring as many people as he wanted and he ended up bringing some ten people. Suddenly, the room was crowded. I was having good time at the party, serving them the snacks given to me by Abhas. The news of an alcohol party at my room spread like wildfire. Soon there were so many people that the AC became ineffective and I found myself sweating.
I left the room and roamed around in the hotel for some fresh air. I came back after about 1.5 hours - for most part, I was sitting at the ground floor with TK Saurabh. And then I met Abraham near the gym (which was my last meeting with him). I came back to my room at around 2:30 AM. Nobody seemed to have realized that I was gone. They were thanking me for hosting such a good party. A lot of people left at that point and the remaining people were playing songs and dancing (everyone was dancing all along!). I had no energy left to dance and to join them. They left around 03:00 AM. But I am glad that people enjoyed partying in my room.
This picture was taken when there were few people in my room for the party.
Sadhya Thali
On the 12th of September, we had a sadhya thali for lunch. It is a vegetarian thali served on a banana leaf on the eve of Thiruvonam. It wasn t Thiruvonam on this day, but we got a special and filling lunch. The rasam and payasam were especially yummy.
Sadhya Thali: A vegetarian meal served on banana leaf. Payasam and rasam were especially yummy! Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi.
Sadhya thali being served at debconf23. Photo credits: Bilal
Day trip
On the 13th of September, we had a daytrip. I chose the daytrip houseboat in Allepey. Suresh chose the same, and we registered for it as soon as it was open. This was the most sought-after daytrip by the DebConf attendees - around 80 people registered for it.
Our bus was set to leave at 9 AM on the 13th of September. Me and Suresh woke up at 8:40 and hurried to get to the bus in time. It took two hours to reach the venue where we get the houseboat.
The houseboat experience was good. The trip featured some good scenery. I got to experience the renowned Kerala backwaters. We were served food on the boat. We also stopped at a place and had coconut water. By evening, we came back to the place where we had boarded the boat.
Group photo of our daytrip. Photo credits: Radhika Jhalani
A good friend lost
When we came back from the daytrip, we received news that Abhraham Raji was involved in a fatal accident during a kayaking trip.
Abraham Raji was a very good friend of mine. In my Albania-Kosovo-Dubai trip last year, he was my roommate at our Tirana apartment. I roamed around in Dubai with him, and we had many discussions during DebConf22 Kosovo. He was the one who took the photo of me on my homepage. I also met him in MiniDebConf22 Palakkad and MiniDebConf23 Tamil Nadu, and went to his flat in Kochi this year in June.
We had many projects in common. He was a Free Software activist and was the designer of the DebConf23 logo, in addition to those for other Debian events in India.
A selfie in memory of Abraham.
We were all fairly shocked by the news. I was devastated. Food lost its taste, and it became difficult to sleep. That night, Anisa and Kristi cheered me up and gave me company. Thanks a lot to them.
The next day, Joenio also tried to console me. I thank him for doing a great job. I thank everyone who helped me in coping with the difficult situation.
On the next day (the 14th of September), the Debian project leader Jonathan Carter addressed and announced the news officially. THe Debian project also mentioned it on their website.
Abraham was supposed to give a talk, but following the incident, all talks were cancelled for the day. The conference dinner was also cancelled.
As I write, 9 days have passed since his death, but even now I cannot come to terms with it.
Visiting Abraham s house
On the 15th of September, the conference ran two buses from the hotel to Abraham s house in Kottayam (2 hours ride). I hopped in the first bus and my mood was not very good. Evangelos (Germany) was sitting opposite me, and he began conversing with me. The distraction helped and I was back to normal for a while. Thanks to Evangelos as he supported me a lot on that trip. He was also very impressed by my use of the StreetComplete app which I was using to edit OpenStreetMap.
In two hours, we reached Abraham s house. I couldn t control myself and burst into tears. I went to see the body. I met his family (mother, father and sister), but I had nothing to say and I felt helpless. Owing to the loss of sleep and appetite over the past few days, I had no energy, and didn t think it was good idea for me to stay there. I went back by taking the bus after one hour and had lunch at the hotel. I withdrew my talk scheduled for the 16th of September.
A Japanese gift
I got a nice Japanese gift from Niibe Yutaka (Japan) - a folder to keep papers which had ancient Japanese manga characters. He said he felt guilty as he swapped his talk with me and so it got rescheduled from 12th September to 16 September which I withdrew later.
Thanks to Niibe Yutaka (the person towards your right hand) from Japan (FSIJ), who gave me a wonderful Japanese gift during debconf23: A folder to keep pages with ancient Japanese manga characters printed on it. I realized I immediately needed that :)
This is the Japanese gift I received.
Group photo
On the 16th of September, we had a group photo. I am glad that this year I was more clear in this picture than in DebConf22.
Click to enlarge
Volunteer work and talks attended
I attended the training session for the video team and worked as a camera operator. The Bits from DPL was nice. I enjoyed Abhas presentation on home automation. He basically demonstrated how he liberated Internet-enabled home devices. I also liked Kristi s presentation on ways to engage with the GNOME community.
Bits from the DPL. Photo credits: Bilal
Kristi on GNOME community. Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi.
Abhas' talk on home automation. Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi.
I also attended lightning talks on the last day. Badri, Wouter, and I gave a demo on how to register on the Prav app. Prav got a fair share of advertising during the last few days.
I was roaming around with a QR code on my T-shirt for downloading Prav.
The night of the 17th of September
Suresh left the hotel and Badri joined me in my room. Thanks to the efforts of Abhijit PA, Kiran, and Ananthu, I wore a mundu.
Me in mundu. Picture credits: Abhijith PA
I then joined Kalyani, Mangesh, Ruchika, Anisa, Ananthu and Kiran. We took pictures and this marked the last night of DebConf23.
Departure day
The 18th of September was the day of departure. Badri slept in my room and left early morning (06:30 AM). I dropped him off at the hotel gate. The breakfast was at the eatery (3rd floor) again, and it was good.
Sahil, Saswata, Nilesh, and I hung out on the ground floor.
From left: Nilesh, Saswata, me, Sahil. Photo credits: Sahil.
I had an 8 PM flight from Kochi to Delhi, for which I took a cab with Rhonda (Austria), Michael (Nigeria) and Yash (India). We were joined by other DebConf23 attendees at the Kochi airport, where we took another selfie.
Ruchika (taking the selfie) and from left to right: Yash, Joost (Netherlands), me, Rhonda
Joost and I were on the same flight, and we sat next to each other. He then took a connecting flight from Delhi to Netherlands, while I went with Yash to the New Delhi Railway Station, where we took our respective trains. I reached home on the morning of the 19th of September, 2023.
Joost and me going to Delhi. Photo credits: Ravi.
Big thanks to the organizers
DebConf23 was hard to organize - strict alcohol laws, weird hotel rules, death of a close friend (almost a family member), and a scary notice by the immigration bureau. The people from the team are my close friends and I am proud of them for organizing such a good event.
None of this would have been possible without the organizers who put more than a year-long voluntary effort to produce this. In the meanwhile, many of them had organized local events in the time leading up to DebConf. Kudos to them.
The organizers also tried their best to get clearance for countries not approved by the ministry. I am also sad that people from China, Kosovo, and Iran could not join. In particular, I feel bad for people from Kosovo who wanted to attend but could not (as India does not consider their passport to be a valid travel document), considering how we Indians were so well-received in their country last year.
Note about myself
I am writing this on the 22nd of September, 2023. It took me three days to put up this post - this was one of the tragic and hard posts for me to write. I have literally forced myself to write this. I have still not recovered from the loss of my friend. Thanks a lot to all those who helped me.
PS: Credits to contrapunctus for making grammar, phrasing, and capitalization changes.
DebConf8
This tshirt is 12 years old and from DebConf8.
DebConf8 was my 6th DebConf and took place in Mar de la Plata, Argentina.
Also this is my 6th post in this series of posts about DebConfs and for the
last two days for the first time I failed my plan to do one post per day.
And while two days ago I still planned to catch up on this by doing more than one
post in a day, I have now decided to give in to realities, which mostly
translates to sudden fantastic weather in Hamburg and other summer
related changes in life. So yeah, I still plan to do short posts about all the
DebConfs I was lucky to attend, but there might be days without a blog post.
Anyhow, Mar de la Plata.
When we held DebConf in Argentina it was winter there, meaning locals and other folks
would wear jackets, scarfs, probably gloves, while many Debian folks not so much.
Andreas Tille freaked out and/or amazed local people by going swimming in the sea
every morning. And when I told Stephen Gran that even I would find it a bit cold with
just a tshirt he replied "na, the weather is fine, just like british summer", while
it was 14 celcius and mildly raining.
DebConf8 was the first time I've met Valessio Brito, who I had worked together
since at least DebConf6. That meeting was really super nice, Valessio is such a lovely person.
Back in 2008 however, there was just one problem: his spoken English was worse than
his written one, and that was already hard to parse sometimes. Fast forward
eleven years to Curitiba last year and boom, Valessio speaks really nice English now.
And, you might wonder why I'm telling this, especially if you were exposed to my Spanish
back then and also now. So my point in telling this story about Valessio is to illustrate two things:
a.) one can contribute to Debian without speaking/writing much English, Valessio did
lots of great artwork since DebConf6 and b.) one can learn English by doing Debian stuff. It worked
for me too!
During set up of the conference there was one very memorable moment, some time after the
openssl maintainer, Kurt Roeckx arrived at the venue: Shortly
before DebConf8 Luciano Bello, from Argentina no less, had found
CVE-2008-0166 which
basically compromised the security of sshd of all Debian and Ubuntu installations done in the last
4 years (IIRC two Debian releases were affected) and which was
commented heavily and noticed everywhere.
So poor Kurt arrived and
wondered whether we would all hate him, how many toilets he would have to clean and what not...
And then, someone rather quickly noticed this, approached some people and suddenly
a bunch of people at DebConf were group-hugging Kurt
and then we were all smiling and continuing doing set up of the conference.
That moment is one of my most joyful memories of all DebConfs and partly explains
why I remember little about the conference itself, everything else pales in comparison and
most things pale over the years anyway. As I remember it, the conference ran
very smoothly in the end, despite quite some organisational problems right before the start.
But as usual, once the geeks arrive and are happily geeking, things start to run smooth,
also because Debian people are kind and smart and give hands and brain were needed.
And like other DebConfs, Mar de la Plata also had moments which I want to share but I will only hint
about, so it's up to you to imagine the special leaves which were brought to that cheese and wine party! Update: added another xkcd link, spelled out Kurt's name after talking to him and added a link to a video of the group hug.
Whilst anyone can inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, most software is distributed pre-compiled to end users. The motivation behind the Reproducible Builds effort is to allow verification that no flaws have been introduced either maliciously or accidentally during this compilation process.
As part of this project I wrote a script to determine which packages installed on your system are "reproducible" or not:
$ apt install devscripts
[]
$ reproducible-check
[]
W: subversion (1.9.7-2) is unreproducible (libsvn-perl, libsvn1, subversion) <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/subversion>
W: taglib (1.11.1+dfsg.1-0.1) is unreproducible (libtag1v5, libtag1v5-vanilla) <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/taglib>
W: tcltk-defaults (8.6.0+9) is unreproducible (tcl, tk) <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/tcltk-defaults>
W: tk8.6 (8.6.7-1) is unreproducible (libtk8.6, tk8.6) <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/tk8.6>
W: valgrind (1:3.13.0-1) is unreproducible <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/valgrind>
W: wavpack (5.1.0-2) is unreproducible (libwavpack1) <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/wavpack>
W: x265 (2.5-2) is unreproducible (libx265-130) <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/x265>
W: xen (4.8.1-1+deb9u1) is unreproducible (libxen-4.8, libxenstore3.0) <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/xen>
W: xmlstarlet (1.6.1-2) is unreproducible <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/xmlstarlet>
W: xorg-server (2:1.19.3-2) is unreproducible (xserver-xephyr, xserver-xorg-core) <https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/xorg-server>
282/4494 (6.28%) of installed binary packages are unreproducible.
Whether a package is "reproducible" or not is determined by querying the Debian Reproducible Builds testing framework.
The --raw command-line argument lets you play with the data in more detail. For example, you can see who maintains your unreproducible packages:
MeteoSurf is a free multi-source weather forecasting App designed to provide wind and wave conditions of the Mediterranean Sea. It is an application for smartphones and tablets, built as a Progressive Web App able to supply detailed and updated maps and data showing heights of sea waves (and other information) in the Central Mediterranean. It is mainly targeted for surfers and wind-surfers but anyone who needs to know the sea conditions will take advantage from this app.
Data can be displayed as animated graphical maps, or as detailed table data. The maps refer to the whole Mediterranean Sea, while the table data is able to provide specific information for any of the major surf spots in the Med.
As of current version, MeteoSurf shows data collecting them from 3 different forecasting systems
Read More [by Fabio Marzocca]
Today is Debian's 24th anniversary. If you are close to any of the cities
celebrating Debian Day 2017, you're
very welcome to join the party!
If not, there's still time for you to organize a little celebration or
contribution to Debian. For example, spread the word about Debian Day
with this nice piece of artwork
created by Debian Developer Daniel Lenharo de Souza and Valessio Brito,
taking inspiration from the desktop themes
Lines
and softWaves by Juliette Belin:
If you also like graphics design, or design in general, have a look at
https://wiki.debian.org/Design and join
the team! Or you can visit the general list of Debian Teams
for many other opportunities to participate in Debian development.
Thanks to everybody who has contributed to develop our beloved operating system
in these 24 years, and happy birthday Debian!
Within the next three years, more than seven billion people and businesses will be connected to the Internet. During this time of dramatic increases in access to the Internet, networks have seen an interesting proliferation of systems for digital identity management (i.e. our SPID in Italy). But what is really meant by digital identity ? All these systems are implemented in order to have the utmost certainty that the data entered by the subscriber (address, name, birth, telephone, email, etc.) is directly coincident with that of the physical person. In other words, data are certified to be identical to those of the user; there is a perfect overlap between the digital page and the authentic user certificate: an idem , that is, an identity.
This identity is our personal records reflected on the net, nothing more than that. Obviously, this data needs to be appropriately protected from malicious attacks by means of strict privacy rules, as it contains so-called sensitive information, but this data itself is not sufficiently interesting for the commercial market, except for statistical purposes on homogeneous population groups. What may be a real goldmine for the web company is another type of information: user s ipseity. It is important to immediately remove the strong semantic ambiguity that weighs on the notion of identity. There are two distinct meanings
<Read More [by Fabio Marzocca]>
Octagonal Well in the Cloister of Giuliano da Sangallo, Faculty of Engineering,
Via Eudossiana, Rome
In the tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers , Thomas Mann states, Deep is the well of the past... . Sometimes this well is bottomless and it may appear far away and passed, yet all of our actions and everyday decisions come to life by its contents. It is the fundamental substrate, the raw material from which to draw the basic connections of our creativity.
The image of the well, used by Thomas Mann, is very significant. In symbolism, the well is the place where you take contact with the deep self and where to get water that gives life. The ancient times remind us of the socializing role of the well, invested with an aura of sacredness, where sharing with others took place. It was
<Read More [by Fabio Marzocca]>
There is an empty chair at the conference table of business professionals, a not assigned place that increasingly demands for the presence of a new type of integration manager. The demands for an ever-increasing specialization, imposed by the modern world, are bringing out with great emphasis the need for an interdisciplinary professional who understands the demands of specialists and who is able to coordinate and to link actions and decisions. This need, often still ignored, is a direct result of the growing complexity of the modern world and the fast communications inside the network.
Complexity is undoubtedly the most suitable paradigm to characterize the historical and social model of today s world, in which the interactions and connections between the various areas now form an inextricable network of relations. Since the 60s and 70s a large group of scholars including the chemist Ilya Prigogine and the physicist Murray Gell-Mann began to study what would become a true Science of Complexity.
Yet this is not an entirely new concept: the term means composed of several parts connected to each other and dependent on each other , exactly as reality, nature, society, and the environment around us. A complex mode of thought integrates and considers all contexts, interconnections, interrelationships between the different realities as part of the vision.
What is professionalism? And who are professionals? What can define a professional? < >
<Read More [by Fabio Marzocca]>
Disclaimer This is an attempt at humor and hence entirely fictional in nature. While some incidents depicted are true, the context and the story woven around them are by yours truly. None of the Mascots of Debian were hurt during the blog post. I also disavow any responsibility for any hurt (real or imagined) to any past, current and future mascots. The attempt should not be looked upon as demeaning people who are accused of false crimes, tortured and confessions eked out of them as this happens quite a lot (In India for sure, but guess it s the same world over in various degrees). The idea is loosely inspired by Chocolate:Deep Dark Secrets. (2005)
On a more positive note, let s start
Being a Sunday morning woke up late to find incessant knocking on the door, incidentally mum was not at home. Opening the door, found two official looking gentleman. They asked my name, asked my credentials, tortured and arrested me for Group conspiracy of Malicious Mischief in second and third degrees .
The torture was done by means of making me forcefully watch endless reruns of Norbit . While I do love Eddie Murphy, this was one of his movies he could have done without. I guess for many people watching it once was torture enough. I *think* they were nominated for razzie awards dunno if they won it or not, but this is beside the point.
Unlike the 20 years it takes for a typical case to reach to its conclusion even in the smallest court in India, due to the torture, I was made to confess (due to endless torture) and was given summary judgement. The judgement was/is as follows
a. Do 100 hours of Community service in Debian in 2017. This could be done via blog posts, raising tickets in the Debian BTS or in whichever way I could be helpful to Debian.
b. Write a confessional with some photographic evidence sharing/detailing some of the other members who were part of the conspiracy in view of the reduced sentence.
So now, have been forced to write this confession
As you all know, I won a bursary this year for debconf16. What is not known by most people is that I also got an innocuous looking e-mail titled Pollito for DPL . While I can t name all the names as investigation is still ongoing about how far-reaching the conspiracy is . The email was purportedly written by members of cabal within cabal which are in Debian. I looked at the email header to see if this was genuine and I could trace the origin but was left none the wiser, as obviously these people are far more technically advanced than to fall in simple tricks like this
Anyways, secretly happy that I have been invited to be part of these elites, I did the visa thing, packed my bags and came to Debconf16.
At this point in juncture, I had no idea whether it was real or I had imagined the whole thing. Then to my surprise saw this
Just like the Illuminati the conspiracy was for all to see those who knew about it. Most people were thinking of it as a joke, but those like me who had got e-mails knew better. I knew that the thing is real, now I only needed to bide my time and knew that the opportunity would present itself.
And few days later, sure enough, there was a trip planned for Table Mountain, Cape Town . Few people planned to hike to the mountain, while few chose to take the cable car till up the mountain.
Quite a few people came along with us and bought tickets for the to and fro to the mountain and back.
Incidentally, I was thinking if the South African Govt. were getting the tax or not. If you look at the ticket, there is just a bar-code. In India as well as the U.S. there is TIN Tax Identification Number
Fewlinks to share what it is all about . While these should be on all invoices, need to specially check when taking high-value items. In India as shared in the article the awareness, knowledge leaves a bit to be desired. While I m drifting from the incident, it would be nice if somebody from SA could share how things work there.
Moving on, we boarded the cable car. It was quite spacious cable car with I guess around 30-40 people or some more who were able to see everything along with the controller.
It was a pleasant cacophony of almost two dozen or more nationalities on this 360 degrees moving chamber. I was a little worried though as it essentially is a bucket and there is always a possibility that a severe wind could damage it. Later somebody did share that somefrightful incidents had occurred not too long ago on the cable car.
It took about 20-25 odd minutes to get to the top of table mountain and we were presented with views such as below
The picture I am sharing is actually when we were going down as all the pictures of going up via the cable car were over-exposed. Also, it was pretty crowded on the way up then on the way down so handling the mobile camera was not so comfortable.
Once we reached up, the wind was blowing at incredible speeds. Even with my jacket and everything I was feeling cold. Most of the group around 10-12 people looked around if we could find a place to have some refreshments and get some of the energy in the body. So we all ventured to a place and placed our orders
I was introduced to Irish Coffee few years back and have had some incredibleIrish Coffees in Pune and elsewhere. I do hope to be able to make Irish Coffee at home if and when I have my own house. This is hotter than brandy and is perfect if you are suffering from cold etc if done right, really needs some skills. This is the only drink which I wanted in SA which I never got right . As South Africa was freezing for me, this would have been the perfect antidote but the one there as well as elsewhere were all bleh.
What was interesting though, was the coffee caller besides it. It looked like a simple circuit mounted on a PCB board with lights, vibrations and RFID and it worked exactly like that. I am guessing as and when the order is ready, there is an interrupt signal sent via radio waves which causes the buzzer to light and vibrate. Here s the back panel if somebody wants to take inspiration and try it as a fun project
Once we were somewhat strengthened by the snacks, chai, coffee etc. we made our move to seeing the mountain. The only way to describe it is that it s similar to Raigad Fort but the plateau seemed to be bigger. The wikipedia page of Table Mountain attempts to share but I guess it s more clearly envisioned by one of the pictures shared therein.
I have to say while Table Mountain is beautiful and haunting as it has scenes like these
There is something there which pulls you, which reminds you of a long lost past. I could have simply sat there for hours together but as was part of the group had to keep with them. Not that I minded.
The moment I was watching this, I was transported to some memories of the Himalayas about 20 odd years or so. In that previous life, I had the opportunity to be with some of the most beautiful women and also been in the most happening places, the Himalayas. I had shared years before some of my experiences I had in the Himalayas. I discontinued it as I didn t have a decent camera at that point in time. While I don t wanna digress, I would challenge anybody to experience the Himalayas and then compare. It is just something inexplicable. The beauty and the rawness that Himalayas shows makes you feel insignificant and yet part of the whole cosmos. What Paulo Cohello expressed in The Valkyries is something that could be felt in the Himalayas. Leh, Ladakh, Himachal , Garwhal, Kumaon. The list will go on forever as there are so many places, each more beautiful than the other. Most places are also extremely backpacker-friendly so if you ask around you can get some awesome deals if you want to spend more than a few days in one place.
Moving on, while making small talk @olasd or Nicolas Dandrimont , the headmaster of our trip made small talk to each of us and eked out from all of us that we wanted to have Pollito as our DPL (Debian Project Leader) for 2017. Few pictures being shared below as supporting evidence as well
While I do not know who further up than Nicolas was on the coup which would take place. The idea was this
If the current DPL steps down, we would take all and any necessary actions to make Pollito our DPL.
This has been taken from Pollito s adventure
Being a responsible journalist, I also enquired about Pollito s true history as it would not have been complete without one. This is the e-mail I got from Gunnar Wolf, a friend and DD from Mexico
Turns out, Valessio has just spent a week staying at my house And
in any case, if somebody in Debian knows about Pollito s
childhood That is me.
Pollito came to our lives when we went to Congreso Internacional de
Software Libre (CISOL) in Zacatecas city. I was strolling around the
very beautiful city with my wife Regina and our friend Alejandro
Miranda, and at a shop at either Ram n L pez Velarde or Vicente
Guerrero, we found a flock of pollitos.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/22.77111/-102.57145
Even if this was comparable to a slave market, we bought one from
them, and adopted it as our own.
Back then, we were a young couple Well, we were not that young
anymore. I mean, we didn t have children. Anyway, we took Pollito with
us on several road trips, such as the only time I have crossed an
international border driving: We went to Encuentro Centroamericano de
Software Libre at Guatemala city in 2012 (again with Alejandro), and
you can see several Pollito pics at:
http://gwolf.org/album/road-trip-ecsl-2012-guatemala-0
Pollito likes travelling. Of course, when we were to Nicaragua for
DebConf, Pollito tagged along. It was his first flight as a passenger
(we never asked about his previous life in slavery; remember, Pollito
trust no one).
Pollito felt much welcome with the DebConf crowd. Of course, as
Pollito is a free spirit, we never even thought about forcing him to
come back with us. Pollito went to Switzerland, and we agreed to meet
again every year or two. It s always nice to have a chat with him.
Hugs!
So with that backdrop I would urge fellow Debianities to take up the slogans
LONG LIVE THE DPL !
LONG LIVE POLLITO !
LONG LIVE POLLITO THE DPL !
The first step to make Pollito the DPL is to ensure he has a @debian.org (pollito@debian.org)
We also need him to be made a DD because only then can he become a DPL.
In solidarity and in peace Filed under: Miscellenous Tagged: #caller, #confession, #Debconf16, #debian, #Fiction, #history, #Pollito, #Pollito as DPL, #Table Mountain, Cabal, memories, south africa
Is Erwin Schr dinger s wave function which did in the atomic and subatomic world an operation altogether similar to the one performed by Newton in the macroscopic world an objective reality or just a subjective knowledge? Physicists, philosophers and epistemologist have debated at length on this matter. In 1960, theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner has proposed that the observer s consciousness is the dividing line that triggers the collapse of the wave function[1], and this theory was later taken up and developed in recent years. The rules of quantum mechanics are correct but there is only one system which may be treated with quantum mechanics, namely the entire material world. There exist external observers which cannot be treated within quantum mechanics, namely human (and perhaps animal) minds, which perform measurements on the brain causing wave function collapse[2].
The English mathematical physicist and philosopher of science Roger Penrose developed the hypothesis called Orch-OR (Orchestrated objective reduction) according to which consciousness originates from processes within neurons, rather than from the connections between neurons (the conventional view). The mechanism is believed to be a quantum physical process called objective reduction which is orchestrated by the molecular structures of the microtubules of brain cells (which constitute the cytoskeleton of the cells themselves). Together with the physician Stuart Hameroff, Penrose has suggested a direct relationship between the quantum vibrations of microtubules and the formation of consciousness.
In the perennial search of the meaning of life and the fundamental laws that govern nature, man was always faced for millennia with the mysterious concept of emptiness. What is emptiness? Does it really exist in nature? Is emptiness the non-being, as theorized by Parmenides?
Until the early years of the last century, technology had not yet been able to equip scientists with the necessary tools to investigate the innermost structure of matter, so the concept of emptiness was always faced with insights and metaphors that led, over the centuries, to a broad philosophical debate.
For the ancient atomist Greek philosophers, the existence of emptiness was not only possible but had become a necessity, becoming the ontological principle for the existence of being: for them, actually, the emptiness that permeates the atoms is what allows movement.
What happened in the Reproducible
Builds effort between Sunday
August 28 and Saturday September 3 2016:
Media coverage
Antonio Terceiro blogged about testing build reprodubility with debrepro
.
GSoC and Outreachy updates
The next round is being planned now: see their
page with a timeline and
participating organizations listing.
Maybe you want to participate this time? Then please reach out to us as soon
as possible!
Packages reviewed and fixed, and bugs filed
The following packages have addressed reproducibility issues in other packages:
The following updated packages appear to be reproducible now, for reasons we
were not able to figure out yet. (Relevant changelogs did not mention reproducible
builds.)
Reviews of unreproducible packages
706 package reviews have been added, 22 have been updated and 16 have been removed in this week,
adding to our knowledge about identified issues.
5 issue types have been added:
diffoscope development
diffoscope development on the next version (60) continued in
git, taking
in contributions from:
Mattia Rizzolo:
Better and more thorough testing
Improvements to packaging
Improvements to the ppu comparator
strip-nondeterminism development
Mattia Rizzolo uploaded strip-nondeterminism0.023-2~bpo8+1 to
jessie-backports.
A new version of strip-nondeterminism 0.024-1 was uploaded to unstable by
Chris Lamb. It included
contributions
from:
Chris Lamb:
Improve code quality of zip, jar, ar, png processors
AYANOKOUZI, Ryuunosuke:
Preserve file attribute information of target file (#836075)
Holger added jobs on jenkins.debian.net to run testsuites on every commit.
There is one job for the master
branch
and one for the other
branches.
disorderfs development
Holger added jobs on jenkins.debian.net to run testsuites on every commit.
There is one job for the master
branch
and one for the other
branches.
tests.reproducible-builds.org
Debian: We now
vary the
GECOS records of the two build users. Thanks to Paul Wise for providing the
patch.
Misc.
This week's edition was written by Ximin Luo, Holger Levsen & Chris Lamb and reviewed by a bunch of Reproducible Builds folks on IRC.
For centuries man has hunted, he brought the animals to pasture, cultivated fields and sailed the seas without any kind of tool to measure time. Back then, the time was not measured, but only estimated with vague approximation and its pace was enough to dictate the steps of the day and the life of man. Subsequently, for many centuries, hourglasses accompanied the civilization with the slow flow of their sand grains. About hourglasses, Ernst Junger writes in Das Sanduhrbuch 1954 (no English translation): This small mountain, formed by all the moments lost that fell on each other, it could be understood as a comforting sign that the time disappears but does not fade. It grows in depth .
For the philosophers of ancient Greece, the time was just a way to measure how things move in everyday life and in any case there was a clear distinction between quantitative time (Kronos) and qualitative time (Kair s). According to Parmenides, time is guise, because its existence
<Read More [by Fabio Marzocca]>
There once was a Kingdom strongly United, built on the honours of the people of Wessex, of Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia who knew how to deal with the invasion of the Vikings from the east and of Normans from the south, to come to unify the territory under an umbrella of common intents. Today, however, 48% of them, while keeping solid traditions, still know how to look forward to the future, joining horizons and commercial developments along with the rest of Europe. The remaining 52%, however, look back and can not see anything in front of them if not a desire of isolation, breaking the European dream born on the shores of Ventotene island in 1944 by Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Ursula Hirschmann through the Manifesto for a free and united Europe . An incurable fracture in the country was born in a referendum on 23 June, in which just over half of the population asked to terminate his marriage to the great European family, bringing the UK back by 43 years of history.
<Read More [by Fabio Marzocca]>
Hating jetlag based headache.
Disturbed to see the Brexit result.
Review wiki RecentChanges.
Answer some questions about Launchpad on #debian-mentors.
Whitelisted one user in the wiki anti-spam system.
Reviewed and sponsored yamllint 1.2.2-1 upload.
Noted OFSET repo is broken and updated Freeduc info.
Noted the Epidemic-Linux website is having database issues.
Noted that Facebook finally completely dropped their RSS
feeds, dropped Facebook RSS feed URL generation
from the Debian derivatives census scripts and
notified the affected derivatives.
Cleared up Tanglu hash sum mismatches again.
Minor changes to Planet Debian derivatives.
Enjoyed the photos from Valessio.
Hazy city away from the mountain and tablecloth clouds
flowing over the mountain on the way to a pub lunch.
Jet lag headaches seem to be subsiding thankfully.
Ping someone generating a bounce when changing their SSH key.
Mention autorevision and other suggestions in an IRC discussion
about mesa & reproducible builds.
Review some DebConf16 announcements and add minor fix.
Push out some TODO items to check-all-the-things.
Ask for a dd-list for the GCC 6 transition.
Usual spam reporting throughout the day via manual List-Archive
copy-paste, feeding mboxen to my report-spam-debian-lists and
report-spam-debian-bugs scripts and manual BTS clicks.
Usual wondering why there isn't an RFC for MUA spam reporting.
Disturbed by the sudden appearance of an astronautess in the
orga room but placated by a plentiful supply of crisps.
Ask x32 folks about debian-x32.org vs x32 on ports.d.o.
Glad to just avoid the room shuffle dance.
Finish mime support for check-all-the-things.
Disappointed that piz.za does not actually resolve.
Amused by pollito's virtual tour of UTC.
Completely stuffed full of Butleritos.
Landed late due to technical delays.
Mountains! Mountains are everywhere!
Beautiful sunny day with clear blue skies.
Ran into Valessio as I was shown to my room.
Wandered around the campus for a bunch of hours.
Ate an all you can eat yum buffet lunch at the pub.
Wandered down the hill and ended up on the train
and wandering around a lake with lilies in a park.
Arriving back at UCT we ran into a beer mission
along with some wonderful arriving folks.
The warm DebConf nervous centre was quite inviting
and soon had plentiful beer, pizza and discussion.
Children can use their imagination better than us because they are (still) immediately in contact with the Whole and they represent the most pristine prototype of the human being. From birth and for the first years of life, the child is the mirror of our species, who carries in himself the primary elements and the roots of evolution, without conditions or interference.
When then education begins, especially school, his imagination is restrained and limited, everything is being done to concentrate his interests only for what is real and to let him leave the world of fantasy. In the first drawing exercises to which the children are subjected at school, their imagination or the appearance of how they perceive some elements of nature are discarded; the drawing that best fit to a photographic vision of reality is rewarded, inhibiting their own imaginative potential from the very beginning, in favour of a more reassuring homologation
<Read More [by Fabio Marzocca]>
The accelerated world of the Western or Westernized countries seems to be fed by an insidious food, which generates a kind of psychological dependence: anxiety. The economy of global markets cannot help it, it has a structural need of it to feed their iron logic of survival. The anxiety generated in the masses of consumers and in market competitors is crucial for Companies fighting each other and now they can only live if men are projected to objective targets continuously moving forward, without ever allowing them to achieve a stable destination.
The consumer is thus constantly maintained in a state of perpetual breathlessness, always looking for the fresh air of liberation that could eventually reduce his tension. It is a state of anxiety caused by false needs generated by advertising campaigns whose primary purpose is to create a need, to interpret to their advantage a still confused psychological demand leading to the destination decided by the market
<Read More [by Fabio Marzocca]>
The paths of life to guide us towards the knowledge are many and a straight; well-defined line does not always represent them. Among these, the theory of Fuzzy Logic can help us to better understand some of the methods that maybe for too long we have lost the habit to use, if not even forgotten, because of the residuals of the positivist scientism.
Brief mathematical introduction
All the elements making up the majority of the categories of everyday life (feelings, emotions, opinions, values, quality, etc.) cannot be defined in a unique or exact way. Let s try to define an event that causes severe pain: a hammer blow on the finger? The loss of a loved one? Tooth extraction? It is evident that the answer can vary in a very consistent way, based on the subjectivity of the individual, the environment, boundary conditions and the general context. This is because the Strong Pain is a fuzzy set (which we will call SP), characterized by a function of degree of membership which maps the elements of a universe in a real continuous interval between 0 and 1. In practical terms
A constant demand for creativity is raising from every corner of the Western world, from any business sector or professional activity, by individual or communities. This term is used everywhere, even in advertising to attract the attention of consumers: as a thirsty wanderer lost in the desert sand, the need for creativity seems to be the source of an oasis of salvation.
Julien Ries anthropological research showed us that, already more than two million years ago, Homo Habilis looks like Symbolicus, with aesthetic sensibility, sense of symmetry and consciousness of creativity. Gilbert Durand confirms that the specific activity of man, the identity card of Homo Sapiens, is the symbolic activity, an essential part of his creativity. Then, man is creative at the moment when his first activates his imaginative feature.
So we can ask ourselves, how did we miss the creativity of man, of which so much we feel the need, or at least where is it hiding now? But above all which kind of creativity are we talking about?
<Read More >
Official logo of DebConf23
Suresh and me celebrating Onam in Kochi.
Four Points Hotel by Sheraton was the venue of DebConf23. Photo credits: Bilal
Photo of the pool. Photo credits: Andreas Tille.
View from the hotel window.
This place served as lunch and dinner place and later as hacklab during debconf. Photo credits: Bilal
Picture of the awesome swag bag given at DebConf23. Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi
My presentation photo. Photo credits: Valessio
Selfie with Anisa and Kristi. Photo credits: Anisa.
Me helping with the Cheese and Wine Party.
This picture was taken when there were few people in my room for the party.
Sadhya Thali: A vegetarian meal served on banana leaf. Payasam and rasam were especially yummy! Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi.
Sadhya thali being served at debconf23. Photo credits: Bilal
Group photo of our daytrip. Photo credits: Radhika Jhalani
A selfie in memory of Abraham.
Thanks to Niibe Yutaka (the person towards your right hand) from Japan (FSIJ), who gave me a wonderful Japanese gift during debconf23: A folder to keep pages with ancient Japanese manga characters printed on it. I realized I immediately needed that :)
This is the Japanese gift I received.
Click to enlarge
Bits from the DPL. Photo credits: Bilal
Kristi on GNOME community. Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi.
Abhas' talk on home automation. Photo credits: Ravi Dwivedi.
I was roaming around with a QR code on my T-shirt for downloading Prav.
Me in mundu. Picture credits: Abhijith PA
From left: Nilesh, Saswata, me, Sahil. Photo credits: Sahil.
Ruchika (taking the selfie) and from left to right: Yash, Joost (Netherlands), me, Rhonda
Joost and me going to Delhi. Photo credits: Ravi.
DebConf8
This tshirt is 12 years old and from DebConf8.
Update: added another xkcd link, spelled out Kurt's name after talking to him and added a link to a video of the group hug.
Whilst anyone can inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, most software is distributed pre-compiled to end users. The motivation behind the 
If you also like graphics design, or design in general, have a look at
Within the next three years, more than seven billion people and businesses will be connected to the Internet. During this time of dramatic increases in access to the Internet, networks have seen an interesting proliferation of systems for digital identity management (i.e. our SPID in Italy). But what is really meant by digital identity ? All these systems are implemented in order to have the utmost certainty that the data entered by the subscriber (address, name, birth, telephone, email, etc.) is directly coincident with that of the physical person. In other words, data are certified to be identical to those of the user; there is a perfect overlap between the digital page and the authentic user certificate: an idem , that is, an identity.
There is an empty chair at the conference table of business professionals, a not assigned place that increasingly demands for the presence of a new type of integration manager. The demands for an ever-increasing specialization, imposed by the modern world, are bringing out with great emphasis the need for an interdisciplinary professional who understands the demands of specialists and who is able to coordinate and to link actions and decisions. This need, often still ignored, is a direct result of the growing complexity of the modern world and the fast communications inside the network.
Disclaimer This is an attempt at humor and hence entirely fictional in nature. While some incidents depicted are true, the context and the story woven around them are by yours truly. None of the Mascots of Debian were hurt during the blog post
. I also disavow any responsibility for any hurt (real or imagined) to any past, current and future mascots. The attempt should not be looked upon as demeaning people who are accused of false crimes, tortured and confessions eked out of them as this happens quite a lot (In India for sure, but guess it s the same world over in various degrees). The idea is loosely inspired by 
. I guess for many people watching it once was torture enough. I *think* they were nominated for 
I have to say while Table Mountain is beautiful and haunting as it has scenes like these
In the perennial search of the meaning of life and the fundamental laws that govern nature, man was always faced for millennia with the mysterious concept of emptiness. What is emptiness? Does it really exist in nature? Is emptiness the non-being, as theorized by Parmenides?
For centuries man has hunted, he brought the animals to pasture, cultivated fields and sailed the seas without any kind of tool to measure time. Back then, the time was not measured, but only estimated with vague approximation and its pace was enough to dictate the steps of the day and the life of man. Subsequently, for many centuries, hourglasses accompanied the civilization with the slow flow of their sand grains. About hourglasses, Ernst Junger writes in Das Sanduhrbuch 1954 (no English translation): This small mountain, formed by all the moments lost that fell on each other, it could be understood as a comforting sign that the time disappears but does not fade. It grows in depth .
For the philosophers of ancient Greece, the time was just a way to measure how things move in everyday life and in any case there was a clear distinction between quantitative time (Kronos) and qualitative time (Kair s). According to Parmenides, time is guise, because its existence
<
with the Whole and they represent the most pristine prototype of the human being. From birth and for the first years of life, the child is the mirror of our species, who carries in himself the primary elements and the roots of evolution, without conditions or interference.
The accelerated world of the Western or Westernized countries seems to be fed by an insidious food, which generates a kind of psychological dependence: anxiety. The economy of global markets cannot help it, it has a structural need of it to feed their iron logic of survival. The anxiety generated in the masses of consumers and in market competitors is crucial for Companies fighting each other and now they can only live if men are projected to objective targets continuously moving forward, without ever allowing them to achieve a stable destination.
All the elements making up the majority of the categories of everyday life (feelings, emotions, opinions, values, quality, etc.) cannot be defined in a unique or exact way. Let s try to define an event that causes severe pain: a hammer blow on the finger? The loss of a loved one? Tooth extraction? It is evident that the answer can vary in a very consistent way, based on the subjectivity of the individual, the environment, boundary conditions and the general context. This is because the Strong Pain is a fuzzy set (which we will call SP), characterized by a function of degree of membership which maps the elements of a universe in a real continuous interval between 0 and 1. In practical terms
Julien Ries anthropological research showed us that, already more than two million years ago, Homo Habilis looks like Symbolicus, with aesthetic sensibility, sense of symmetry and consciousness of creativity. Gilbert Durand confirms that the specific activity of man, the identity card of Homo Sapiens, is the symbolic activity, an essential part of his creativity. Then, man is creative at the moment when his first activates his imaginative feature.
So we can ask ourselves, how did we miss the creativity of man, of which so much we feel the need, or at least where is it hiding now? But above all which kind of creativity are we talking about?
<