The debridement operation was a success: nothing bad grew afterwards. I was discharged after a couple of nights with crutches, instructions not to weight-bear, a remarkable, portable negative-pressure "Vac" pump that lived by my side, and some strong painkillers. About two weeks later, I had a skin graft. The surgeon took some skin from my thigh and stitched it over the debridement wound. I was discharged same-day, again with the Vac pump, and again with instructions not to weight-bear, at least for a few days. This time I only kept the Vac pump for a week, and after a dressing change (the first time I saw the graft), I was allowed to walk again. Doing so is strangely awkward, and sometimes a little painful. I have physio exercises to help me regain strength and understanding about what I can do. The donor site remained bandaged for another week before I saw it. I was expecting a stitched cut, but the surgeons have removed the top few layers only, leaving what looks more like a graze or sun-burn. There are four smaller, tentative-looking marks adjacent, suggesting they got it right on the fifth attempt. I'm not sure but I think these will all fade away to near-invisibility with time, and they don't hurt at all. I've now been off work for roughly 12 weeks, but I think I am returning very soon. I am looking forward to returning to some sense of normality. It's been an interesting experience. I thought about writing more about what I've gone through, in particular my experiences in Hospital, dealing with the bureaucracy and things falling "between the gaps". Hanif Kureishi has done a better job than I could. It's clear that the NHS is staffed by incredibly passionate people, but there are a lot of structural problems that interfere with care.

Review: The Book That Broke the World, by Mark Lawrence

Series:	Library Trilogy #2
Publisher:	Ace
Copyright:	2024
ISBN:	0-593-43796-9
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	366

The Book That Broke the World is high fantasy and a direct sequel to The Book That Wouldn't Burn. You should not start here. In a delightful break from normal practice, the author provides a useful summary of the previous volume at the start of this book to jog your memory. At the end of The Book That Wouldn't Burn, the characters were scattered and in various states of corporeality after some major revelations about the nature of the Library and the first appearance of the insectile Skeer. The Book That Wouldn't Burn picks up where it left off, and there is a lot more contact with the Skeer, but my guess that they would be the next viewpoint characters does not pan out. Instead, we get a new group and a new protagonist: Celcha, whose sees angels who come to visit her brother. I have complaints, but before I launch into those, I should say that I liked this book apart from the totally unnecessary cannibalism. (I'll get to that.) Livira is a bit sidelined, which is regrettable, but Celcha and her brother are interesting new characters, and both Arpix and Clovis, supporting characters in the first book, get some excellent character development. Similar to the first book, this is a puzzle box story full of world-building tidbits with intellectually-satisfying interactions. Lawrence elaborates and complicates his setting in ways that don't contradict earlier parts of the story but create more room and depth for the characters to be creative. I came away still invested in this world and eager to find out how Lawrence pulls the world-building and narrative threads together. The biggest drawback of this book is that it's not new. My thought after finishing the first book of the series was that if Lawrence had enough world-building ideas to fill three books to that same level of density, this had the potential of being one of my favorite fantasy series of all time. By the end of the second book, I concluded that this is not the case. Instead of showing us new twists and complications the way the first book did throughout, The Book That Broke the World mostly covers the same thematic ground from some new angles. It felt like Lawrence was worried the reader of the first book may not have understood the theme or the world-building, so he spent most of the second book nailing down anything that moved. I found that frustrating. One of the best parts of The Book That Wouldn't Burn was that Lawrence trusted the reader to keep up, which for me hit the glorious but rare sweet spot of pacing where I was figuring out the world at roughly the same pace as the characters. It surprised me in some very enjoyable ways. The Book That Broke the World did not surprise me. There are a few new things, which I enjoyed, and a few elaborations and developments of ideas, which I mostly enjoyed, but I saw the big plot twist coming at least fifty pages before it happened and found the aftermath more annoying than revelatory. It doesn't help that the plot rests on character misunderstandings, one of my least favorite tropes. One of the other disappointments of this book is that the characters stop using the Library as a library. The Library at the center of this series is a truly marvelous piece of world-building with numerous fascinating features that are unrelated to its contents, but Livira used it first and foremost as a repository of books. The first book was full of characters solving problems by finding a relevant book and reading it. In The Book That Broke the World, sadly, this is mostly gone. The Library is mostly reduced to a complicated Big Dumb Object setting. It's still a delightful bit of world-building, and we learn about a few new features, but I only remember two places where the actual books are important to the story. Even the book referenced in the title is mostly important as an artifact with properties unrelated to the words that it contains or to the act of reading it. I think this is a huge lost opportunity and something I hope Lawrence fixes in the last book of the trilogy. This book instead focuses on the politics around the existence of the Library itself. Here I'm cautiously optimistic, although a lot is going to depend on the third book. Lawrence has set up a three-sided argument between groups that I will uncharitably describe as the libertarian techbros, the "burn it all down" reactionaries, and the neoliberal centrist technocrats. All three of those positions suck, and Lawrence had better be setting the stage for Livira to find a different path. Her unwillingness to commit to any of those sides gives me hope, but bringing this plot to a satisfying conclusion is going to be tricky. I hope I like what Lawrence comes up with, but it feels far from certain. It doesn't help that he's started delivering some points with a sledgehammer, and that's where we get to the unnecessary cannibalism. Thankfully this is a fairly small part of the tail end of the book, but it was an unpleasant surprise that I did not want in this novel and that I don't think made the story any better. It's tempting to call the cannibalism gratuitous, but it does fit one of the main themes of this story, namely that humans are depressingly good at using any rule-based object in unexpected and nasty ways that are contrary to the best intentions of the designer. This is the fundamental challenge of the Library as a whole and the question that I suspect the third book will be devoted to addressing, so I understand why Lawrence wanted to emphasize his point. The reason why there is cannibalism here is directly related to a profound misunderstanding of the properties of the library, and I detected an echo of one of C.S. Lewis's arguments in The Last Battle about the nature of Hell. The problem, though, is that this is Satanic baby-killerism, to borrow a term from Fred Clark. There are numerous ways to show this type of perversion of well-intended systems, which I know because Lawrence used other ones in the first book that were more subtle but equally effective. One of the best parts of The Book That Wouldn't Burn is that there were few real villains. The conflict was structural, all sides had valid perspectives, and the ethical points of that story were made with some care and nuance. The problem with cannibalism as it's used here is not merely that it's gross and disgusting and off-putting to the reader, although it is all of those things. If I wanted to read horror, I would read horror novels. I don't appreciate surprise horror used for shock value in regular fantasy. But worse, it's an abandonment of moral nuance. The function of cannibalism in this story is like the function of Satanic baby-killers: it's to signal that these people are wholly and irredeemably evil. They are the Villains, they are Wrong, and they cease to be characters and become symbols of what the protagonists are fighting. This is destructive to the story because it's designed to provoke a visceral short-circuit in the reader and let the author get away with sloppy story-telling. If the author needs to use tactics like this to point out who is the villain, they have failed to set up their moral quandary properly. The worst part is that this was entirely unnecessary because Lawrence's story-telling wasn't sloppy and he set up his moral quandary just fine. No one was confused about the ethical point here. I as the reader was following without difficulty, and had appreciated the subtlety with which Lawrence posed the question. But apparently he thought he was too subtle and decided to come back to the point with a pile-driver. I think that seriously injured the story. The ethical argument here is much more engaging and thought-provoking when it's more finely balanced. That's a lot of complaints, mostly because this is a good book that I badly wanted to be a great book but which kept tripping over its own feet. A lot of trilogies have weak second books. Hopefully this is another example of the mid-story sag, and the finale will be worthy of the start of the story. But I have to admit the moral short-circuiting and the de-emphasis of the actual books in the library has me a bit nervous. I want a lot out of the third book, and I hope I'm not asking this author for too much. If you liked the first book, I think you'll like this one too, with the caveat that it's quite a bit darker and more violent in places, even apart from the surprise cannibalism. But if you've not started this series, you may want to wait for the third book to see if Lawrence can pull off the ending. Followed by The Book That Held Her Heart, currently scheduled for publication in April of 2025. Rating: 7 out of 10

Review: The Wings Upon Her Back, by Samantha Mills

Publisher:	Tachyon
Copyright:	2024
ISBN:	1-61696-415-4
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	394

The Wings Upon Her Back is a political steampunk science fantasy novel. If the author's name sounds familiar, it may be because Samantha Mills's short story "Rabbit Test" won Nebula, Locus, Hugo, and Sturgeon awards. This is her first novel. Winged Zemolai is a soldier of the mecha god and the protege of Mecha Vodaya, the Voice. She has served the city-state of Radezhda by defending it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, for twenty-six years. Despite that, it takes only a moment of errant mercy for her entire life to come crashing down. On a whim, she spares a kitchen worker who was concealing a statue of the scholar god, meaning that he was only pretending to worship the worker god like all workers should. Vodaya is unforgiving and uncompromising, as is the sleeping mecha god. Zemolai's wings are ripped from her back and crushed in the hand of the god, and she's left on the ground to die of mechalin withdrawal. The Wings Upon Her Back is told in two alternating timelines. The main one follows Zemolai after her exile as she is rescued by a young group of revolutionaries who think she may be useful in their plans. The other thread starts with Zemolai's childhood and shows the reader how she became Winged Zemolai: her scholar family, her obsession with flying, her true devotion to the mecha god, and the critical early years when she became Vodaya's protege. Mills maintains the separate timelines through the book and wraps them up in a rather neat piece of symbolic parallelism in the epilogue. I picked up this book on a recommendation from C.L. Clark, and yes, indeed, I can see why she liked this book. It's a story about a political awakening, in which Zemolai slowly realizes that she has been manipulated and lied to and that she may, in fact, be one of the baddies. The Wings Upon Her Back is more personal than some other books with that theme, since Zemolai was specifically (and abusively) groomed for her role by Vodaya. Much of the book is Zemolai trying to pull out the hooks that Vodaya put in her or, in the flashback timeline, the reader watching Vodaya install those hooks. The flashback timeline is difficult reading. I don't think Mills could have left it out, but she says in the afterword that it was the hardest part of the book to write and it was also the hardest part of the book to read. It fills in some interesting bits of world-building and backstory, and Mills does a great job pacing the story revelations so that both threads contribute equally, but mostly it's a story of manipulative abuse. We know from the main storyline that Vodaya's tactics work, which gives those scenes the feel of a slow-motion train wreck. You know what's going to happen, you know it will be bad, and yet you can't look away. It occurred to me while reading this that Emily Tesh's Some Desperate Glory told a similar type of story without the flashback structure, which eliminates the stifling feeling of inevitability. I don't think that would not have worked for this story. If you simply rearranged the chapters of The Wings Upon Her Back into a linear narrative, I would have bailed on the book. Watching Zemolai being manipulated would have been too depressing and awful for me to make it to the payoff without the forward-looking hope of the main timeline. It gave me new appreciation for the difficulty of what Tesh pulled off. Mills uses this interwoven structure well, though. At about 90% through this book I had no idea how it could end in the space remaining, but it reaches a surprising and satisfying conclusion. Mills uses a type of ending that normally bothers me, but she does it by handling the psychological impact so well that I couldn't help but admire it. I'm avoiding specifics because I think it worked better when I wasn't expecting it, but it ties beautifully into the thematic point of the book. I do have one structural objection, though. It's one of those problems I didn't notice while reading, but that started bothering me when I thought back through the story from a political lens. The Wings Upon Her Back is Zemolai's story, her redemption arc, and that means she drives the plot. The band of revolutionaries are great characters (particularly Galiana), but they're supporting characters. Zemolai is older, more experienced, and knows critical information they don't have, and she uses it to effectively take over. As setup for her character arc, I see why Mills did this. As political praxis, I have issues. There is a tendency in politics to believe that political skill is portable and repurposable. Converting opposing operatives to the cause is welcomed not only because they indicate added support, but also because they can use their political skill to help you win instead. To an extent this is not wrong, and is probably the most true of combat skills (which Zemolai has in abundance). But there's an underlying assumption that politics is symmetric, and a critical reason why I hold many of the political positions that I do hold is that I don't think politics is symmetric. If someone has been successfully stoking resentment and xenophobia in support of authoritarians, converts to an anti-authoritarian cause, and then produces propaganda stoking resentment and xenophobia against authoritarians, this is in some sense an improvement. But if one believes that resentment and xenophobia are inherently wrong, if one's politics are aimed at reducing the resentment and xenophobia in the world, then in a way this person has not truly converted. Worse, because this is an effective manipulation tactic, there is a strong tendency to put this type of political convert into a leadership position, where they will, intentionally or not, start turning the anti-authoritarian movement into a copy of the authoritarian movement they left. They haven't actually changed their politics because they haven't understood (or simply don't believe in) the fundamental asymmetry in the positions. It's the same criticism that I have of realpolitik: the ends do not justify the means because the means corrupt the ends. Nothing that happens in this book is as egregious as my example, but the more I thought about the plot structure, the more it bothered me that Zemolai never listens to the revolutionaries she joins long enough to wrestle with why she became an agent of an authoritarian state and they didn't. They got something fundamentally right that she got wrong, and perhaps that should have been reflected in who got to make future decisions. Zemolai made very poor choices and yet continues to be the sole main character of the story, the one whose decisions and actions truly matter. Maybe being wrong about everything should be disqualifying for being the main character, at least for a while, even if you think you've understood why you were wrong. That problem aside, I enjoyed this. Both timelines were compelling and quite difficult to put down, even when they got rather dark. I could have done with less body horror and a few fewer fight scenes, but I'm glad I read it. Science fiction readers should be warned that the world-building, despite having an intricate and fascinating surface, is mostly vibes. I started the book wondering how people with giant metal wings on their back can literally fly, and thought the mentions of neural ports, high-tech materials, and immune-suppressing drugs might mean that we'd get some sort of explanation. We do not: heavier-than-air flight works because it looks really cool and serves some thematic purposes. There are enough hints of technology indistinguishable from magic that you could make up your own explanations if you wanted to, but that's not something this book is interested in. There's not a thing wrong with that, but don't get caught by surprise if you were in the mood for a neat scientific explanation of apparent magic. Recommended if you like somewhat-harrowing character development with a heavy political lens and steampunk vibes, although it's not the sort of book that I'd press into the hands of everyone I know. The Wings Upon Her Back is a complete story in a single novel. Content warning: the main character is a victim of physical and emotional abuse, so some of that is a lot. Also surgical gore, some torture, and genocide. Rating: 7 out of 10

I previously blogged about the difficulties in getting a good Wifi mesh network setup [1]. I bought the Kogan AX1800 Wifi6 Mesh with 3 nodes for $140, the price has now dropped to $130. It s only Wifi 6 (not 6E which has the extra 6GHz frequency) because all the 6E ones were more expensive than I felt like paying. I ve got it running and it s working really well. One of my laptops has a damaged wire connecting to it s Wifi device which decreased the signal to a degree that I could usually only connect to wifi when in the computer room (and then walk with it to another room once connected). Now I can connect that laptop to wifi in any part of my home. I can now get decent wifi access in my car in front of my home which covers the important corner case of walking to my car and then immediately asking Google maps for directions. Previously my phone would be deciding whether to switch away from wifi due to poor signal and that would delay getting directions, now I get directions quickly on Google Maps. I ve done tests with the Speedtest.net Android app and now get speeds of about 52Mbit/17Mbit in all parts of my home which is limited only by the speed of my NBN connection (one of the many reasons for hating conservatives is giving us expensive slow Internet). As my main reason for buying the devices is for Internet access they have clearly met my reason for purchase and probably meet the requirements for most people as well. Getting that speed is not trivial, my neighbours have lots of Wifi APs and bandwidth is congested. My Kogan 4K Android TV now plays 4K Netflix without pausing even though it only supports 2.4GHz wifi, so having a wifi mesh node next to the TV seems to help it. I did some tests with the Olive Tree FTP server on a Galaxy Note 9 phone running the stock Samsung Android and got over 10MByte (80Mbit) upload and 8Mbyte (64Mbit) download speeds. This might be limited by the Android app or might be limited by the older version of Android. But it still gives higher speeds than my home Internet connection and much higher speeds than I need from an Android device. Running iperf on Linux laptops talking to a Linux workstation that s wired to the main mesh node I get speeds of 27.5Mbit from an old laptop on 2.4GHz wifi, 398Mbit from a new Wifi5 laptop when near the main mesh node, and 91Mbit from the same laptop when at the far end of my home. So not as fast as I d like but still acceptable speeds. The claims about Wifi 6 vs Wifi 5 speeds are that 6 will be about 3* faster. That would be 20% faster than the Gigabit ethernet ports on the wifi nodes. So while 2.5Gbit ethernet on Wifi 6 APs would be a good feature to have it seems that it might provide a 20% benefit at some future time when I have laptops with Wifi 6. At this time all the devices with 2.5Gbit ethernet cost more than I wanted to pay so I m happy with this. It will probably be quite a while before laptops with Wifi 6 are in the price range I feel like paying. For Wifi 6E it seems that anything less than 2.5Gbit ethernet will be a significant bottleneck. But I expect that by the time I buy a Wifi 6E mesh they will all have 2.5Gbit ethernet as standard. The configuration of this device was quite easy via the built in web pages, everything worked pretty much as I expected and I hardly had to look at the manual. The mesh nodes are supposed to connect to each other when you press hardware buttons but that didn t work for me so I used the web admin page to tell them to connect which worked perfectly. The admin of this seemed to be about as good as it gets. Conclusion The performance of this mesh hardware is quite decent. I can t know for sure if it s good or bad because performance really depends on what interference there is. But using this means that for me the Internet connection is now the main bottleneck for all parts of my home and I think it s quite likely that most people in Australia who buy it will find the same result. So for everyone in Australia who doesn t have fiber to their home this seems like an ideal set of mesh hardware. It s cheap, easy to setup, has no cloud stuff to break your configuration, gives quite adequate speed, and generally just does the job.

• [1] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2024/08/24/wifi-6e-mesh/

• For the Debian firmware-nonfree package:
  • I opened the MR:
    • !104: Update to linux-support-6.10.6
  • I reviewed the MRs:
    • !102: Backport firmware-nonfree 20240709-2~bpo12+1 to Bookworm
  • I responded to a query about backporting.
• For the Debian linux package:
  • I opened or updated the MRs:
    • !741: Draft: Fix some reproducibility issues
    • !1153: Update to 6.11
    • !1161: Fix and clean up Build-Depends
    • !1164: d/config: Fix broken configs that were being resolved differently by kconfig
    • !1175: Fix perf build failure on many architectures
  • I reviewed the MRs:
    • !964: tools/arch/x86/intel_sdsi: Add sdsi package for Intel SDSi provisioning tool (merged)
    • !1136: Compile with gcc-14 on all architectures (merged)
    • !1148: [arm64] drivers/phy/marvell: Enable PHY_MVEBU_CP110_UTMI as module (merged)
    • !1149: [arm64] Include modules for Lenovo Yoga C630 and Lenovo Miix 630 (merged)
    • !1150: Draft: debian/lib/python/debian_linux/debian.py: allow more liberal revision suffixes than just \+b\d+
    • !1155: [ia64] Purge ia64 from installer (merged)
    • !1156: [x86] enable mfd components for BXT pmic (merged)
    • !1157: [x86] Enable IPU6 and related camera options (merged)
    • !1163: riscv64 kernel config update for 6.11 (merged)
    • !1173: Update to 6.11-rc5 (merged)
    • !1165: [amd64] Enable DRM_ACCEL_HABANALABS and DRM_ACCEL_IVPU (merged)
    • !1176: [riscv64] fix conflict between kernel-image and mtd-core-modules (merged)
  • I merged my own MRs:
    • !1161: Fix and clean up Build-Depends
    • !1164: d/config: Fix broken configs that were being resolved differently by kconfig
    • !1175: Fix perf build failure on many architectures
  • I uploaded:
    • linux version 6.11~rc4-1~exp1 to experimental.
    • linux version 6.11~rc5-1~exp1 to experimental.
    • linux version 6.10.6-1~bpo12+1 to bookworm-backports.
  • Upstream, I commented on additional backports required to address CVE-2024-26621 and CVE-2024-42258.
  • I responded to bug reports:
    • #1072004: linux: regression in the 9p protocol in 6.8 breaks autopkgtest qemu jobs (affecting debci)
  • Upstream, I submitted the patch aacraid: Fix double-free on probe failure which should fix part of bug #1075855.
  • Upstream, I pointed out that the fix in !1175 is needed in Linux 6.11.
  • I updated the bullseye-security branch to upstream version 5.10.224, but didn t make a new upload.
  • I updated the bullseye-security-6.1 branch, merging changes from version 6.1.106-3.
• For initramfs-tools:
  • I opened and later merged the MRs:
    • !129: hook_functions: Fix copy_file with source including a directory symlink
    • !130: Fix autopkgtest failures on armhf and ppc64el
    • !131: hook-functions: copy_file: Canonicalise target filename
    • !132: autopkgtest: Run tests as root
    • !133: Backport fixes for bookworm
  • I reviewed the MRs:
    • !128: Put compressed kernel modules and firmware in an uncompressed cpio
  • I uploaded:
    • version 0.144 to Debian unstable.
    • version 0.145 to Debian unstable.
    • version 0.142+deb12u1 to Debian bookworm.
  • I responded to Debian bug reports:
    • #984584: initramfs-tools: autopkgtest amd64-separate-usr fails if TMPDIR is a tmpfs
    • #1079333: initramfs-tools: upgrading causes dpkg(1) to fail
    • #1079150: cryptsetop: Waiting for encrypted source device
    • #1080203: initramfs-tools: USB keyboard stopped working on LUKS prompt
• For the Debian iproute package, I reverted the recent removal of the /usr/sbin/ip symlink and uploaded version 6.10.0-2.
• For kernel-wedge:
  • I fixed a bug in duplicate detection that linux !1176 had revealed.
  • I added support for packages installing modules under /usr/lib/modules, and a test case for this.
  • I uploaded version 2.106 to Debian unstable, including the above and some other bug fixes.
• For the Debian sgt-puzzles package, I responded to and wrote a patch for bug #1079717: sgt-puzzles: [Mozaic] crashes when copying the game.

Several people have been asking me to explain and/or write about my solution for chatting nowadays. I realize that the current scenario is much more complex than, say, 10 or 20 years ago. Back then, this post would probably be more about the IRC client I used than about different chatting technologies. I have also spent a non trivial amount of time setting things up the way I want, so I understand that it s about time to write about my setup not only because I think it can be helpful to others, but also because I would like to document things for myself.

The backbone: Matrix I chose to use Matrix as the place where I integrate everything. Despite there being some heavy (and justified) criticism on the protocol itself, it serves me well for what I need right now. Obviously, I don t like the fact that I have to provide Matrix and all of its accompanying bridges a VPS with 4GB of RAM and 3 vCPUs, but I think that that ship has sailed, unfortunately. In an ideal world, I would be using XMPP and dedicating only a fraction of the resources I m using today to have a full chat system. And since I have been running my personal XMPP server for more than a decade now, I did try to find a solution that would allow me to keep using it, but unfortunately the protocol became almost a hobbyist thing, so there s that.

A few disclaimers I self-host everything, including my Matrix server. Much of what I did won t work if you don t self-host Matrix, so keep that in mind. This won t be a post teaching you how to deploy the services. My intention is to describe what I use and for what purpose. Also, as much as I try to use Debian packages for everything I do, I opted to deploy all services using a community-maintained Ansible playbook which is very well written and organized: matrix-docker-ansible-deploy. Last but not least, as I said above, you will likely need a machine with a good amount of RAM, CPU and storage, especially if you deploy Synapse as your Matrix homeserver (which is what I recommend if you plan to use the bridges I ll mention). My current VPS has 4GB of RAM, 3 vCPUs and 80GB of storage (of which I m currently using approximately 55GB).

Problem #1: my Matrix client(s) There are a lot of clients that can talk the Matrix protocol, but most of them are either web clients or GUI programs. I live on the terminal, more specifically inside Emacs, so I settled for the amazing ement.el Emacs mode. It works surprisingly well, but unfortunately doesn t support end-to-end encryption out of the box; for that, you have to hook it up with pantalaimon. Unfortunately, the project seems abandoned and therefore I don t recommend you to use it. I don t use it myself. When I have to reply some E2E encrypted message from another user, I go to my web browser and use my self-hosted Element client. It s a nuisance, but one that I m willing to accept because of security concerns. If you re into web clients and don t want to use Element (because it is heavy), you can try Cinny. It s lightweight and supports a decent set of features. If you re a terminal lover but don t use Emacs, you may want to try gomuks or iamb.

Problem #2: IRC bridging There are basically two types of IRC bridges for Matrix:

• The regular and most used matrix-appservice-irc. This bridge takes Matrix to IRC (think of IRC users with the [m] suffix appended to their nicknames), and is what the matrix.org and other big homeservers (including matrix.debian.social) use. It s a complex service which allows thousands of Matrix users to connect to IRC networks, but that unfortunately has complex problems and is only worth using if you intend to host a community server.
• A bouncer-like bridge called Heisenbridge. This is what I use personally. It takes IRC to Matrix, which means that people on IRC will not know that you re using Matrix. This bridge is much simpler, and because it acts like a bouncer it s pretty much impossible for it to cause problems with the IRC network.

Due to the fact that I sometimes like to use other IRC clients, I still run a regular ZNC bouncer, and I use Heisenbridge to connect to my ZNC. This means that I can use, e.g., ERC inside Emacs and my Matrix bridge at the same time. But you don t necessarily need to run another bouncer; you can simply use Heisenbridge and connect directly to the IRC network(s) you want. A word of caution, though: unlike ZNC, Heisenbridge doesn t support per-user configuration when you use it in bouncer mode. This is the reason why you need to self-host it, and why it s not possible to offer the service to other users (they would have access to your IRC network configuration otherwise). It s also worth talking about logs. I find that keeping logs of everything that goes on IRC has saved me a bunch of times, and so I find it really important to continue doing that. Unfortunately, neither ement.el nor Element support logging things out of the box (at least not that I know). This is also one of the reasons why I still keep my ZNC around: I configure it to log everything.

Problem #3: Telegram I don t use Telegram myself, but unfortunately several people from the Debian community do, especially in Brazil. There is a whole Debian community on Telegram, and I wanted to be able to bridge our Debian Matrix channels to their Telegram counterparts. I am currently using mautrix-telegram for that, and it s working great. You need someone with a Telegram account to configure their credentials so that the bridge can connect to it, but afterwards it s really easy to bridge channels together.

Problem #4: GitLab webhooks Something else I wanted to be able to do was to receive notifications regarding new issues, merge requests and other activities from Salsa. For this, I m using maubot, which is awesome and has a huge list of plugins. I m using the gitlab one.

Final thoughts Overall, I m satisfied with the setup I have now. It has certainly taken some time and effort to find the right tool for each problem I needed to solve, and I still feel like there are some rough edges to soften (like the fact that my Emacs client doesn t support E2E encryption out of the box, or the whole logging situation), but otherwise things are working fine and I haven t had any big problems with the deployment. You do have to be much more careful about stuff (for example, when I installed an unrelated service that hijacked my Apache configuration and made Matrix s federation silently stop working), though. If you have more specific questions about any part of my setup, shoot me an email and I ll do my best to help. Happy chatting!

For their 30^th anniversary (ish; the Covid pandemic pushed the date out a bit) British electronic music duo Orbital released the compilation 30 something. The track list mostly looks like a best hits list, which given their prior compilation celebrating 20 years looks much the same would appear superfluous. However, they ve rearranged and re-recorded all their songs for 30, to reflect their live arrangements. The reworkings are sufficiently distinct from the original versions (in some cases I prefer them) and elevate the release. The couple of new tracks are also fun, and many of the remixes on the second disc are worth a listen too. But what I actually sat down to write about was the cover artwork. They often have designs which riff on the notion of a circle (given their name) and the 30-something art (both for the album and single takes from it) adapts a loading spinner-like device from computing (I suppose it mostly closely resembles the spinner from macOS). A possibly unintended effect of the pattern occurs when you view it on a display which is adjusting its brightness, such as if you re listening to it on a phone, the screen is off, and you pick it up. The brightest part of the spinner is visible first, and the rest fade into visibility in sequence. The first time you see this is unexpected and very cool. (I've tried to recreate it in the picture below, but I don't think it's worked.) Although I've suffixed the titled of this post unintended consequences?, It's quite possible this was deliberate. I ve got the pattern on a t-shirt and my kids love to call out Daddy s loading! In my convalescence it s taken on a special sort of resonance because at times I ve felt I m in a holding state: waiting for an appointment to be made; waiting a polite interval before chasing an appointment; waiting for treatment to start after attending an appointment. Thankfully I m at the end of that now, I hope.

Beer, cake and ISO testing amidst rugby and jazz band chaos On Saturday, the Debian South Africa team got together in Cape Town to celebrate Debian s 31st birthday and to perform ISO testing for the Debian 11.11 and 12.7 point releases.

We ran out of time to organise a fancy printed cake like we had last year, but our improvisation worked out just fine!

We thought that we had allotted plenty of time for all of our activities for the day, and that there would be plenty of time for everything including training, but the day zipped by really fast. We hired a venue at a brewery, which is usually really nice because they have an isolated area with lots of space and a big TV nice for presentations, demos, etc. But on this day, there was a big rugby match between South Africa and New Zealand, and as it got closer to the game, the place just got louder and louder (especially as a band started practicing and doing sound tests for their performance for that evening) and it turned out our space was also double-booked later in the afternoon, so we had to relocate.

Even amidst all the chaos, we ended up having a very productive day and we even managed to have some fun!

Four people from our local team performed ISO testing for the very first time, and in total we covered 44 test cases locally. Most of the other testers were the usual crowd in the UK, we also did a brief video call with them, but it was dinner time for them so we had to keep it short. Next time we ll probably have some party line open that any tester can also join.

Logo

We went through some more iterations of our local team logo that Tammy has been working on. They re turning out very nice and have been in progress for more than a year, I guess like most things Debian, it will be ready when it s ready!

Debian 11.11 and Debian 12.7 released, and looking ahead towards Debian 13 Both point releases tested just fine and was released later in the evening. I m very glad that we managed to be useful and reduce total testing time and that we managed to cover all the test cases in the end. A bunch of things we really wanted to fix by the time Debian 12 launched are now finally fixed in 12.7. There s still a few minor annoyances, but over all, Debian 13 (trixie) is looking even better than Debian 12 was around this time in the release cycle. Freeze dates for trixie has not yet been announced, I hope that the release team announces those sooner rather than later, also KDE Plasma 6 hasn t yet made its way into unstable, I ve seen quite a number of people ask about this online, so hopefully that works out. And by the way, the desktop artwork submissions for trixie ends in two weeks! More information about that is available on the Debian wiki if you re interested in making a contribution. There are already 4 great proposals.

Debian Local Groups Organising local events for Debian is probably easier than you think, and Debian does make funding available for events. So, if you want to grow Debian in your area, feel free to join us at #debian-localgroups on the OFTC IRC network, also plumbed on Matrix at #debian-localgroups:matrix.debian.social where we ll try to answer any questions you might have and guide you through the process! Oh and btw South Africa won the Rugby!

Another short status update of what happened on my side last month. Quite a bit of time went into helping organize the FrOSCon FOSS on Mobile dev room (day 1, day 2, summary) but that was all worth it and fun - so was releasing Phosh 0.41.0 (which incidetally happened right before FrOScon). A three years old MR to xdg-spec to add call categories landed (thanks Matthias) allowing us to finally provide proper feedback for e.g. IM calls too. The rest was some OSK improvements (around Indic language support via varnam and layout configuration), some Cell Broadcast advancements (thanks to NGI0 for supporting this) but also some fixes. Here's the details: Phosh

• Debug crash when swiping away keyboard on lockscreen (MR).
• Fix outdated clock when swiping back from lockscreen plugins (MR)
• Avoid deprecation warning (MR)
• Better handle mobile network generation bit masks (MR)
• Improve docs that end up in the libphosh-rs docs (MR)
• Modernize ModemManager backend in preparation for Cellbroadcast support (MR)
• Remove hacks from Cell Broadcast support MR (MR). Still draft but not much todo left once the ModemManager side landed
• Remove deprecated UI props and add a check so they don't creep back in (MR)
• Allow to use ASAN when feedbackd is a subproject (MR)
• Fix crash when Wi-Fi hot spot quick setting gets disabled (MR)
• Don't allow to change hotspot state on the lock screen (MR)
• Prepare and release Phosh 0.41.0~rc1 and Phosh 0.41.0
• Prepare 0.41.1 (MR)

Phoc

• Don't reject gesture when we cross another surface (MR)

phosh-mobile-settings

• Drop redundant enums (MR)
• Remember last used panel (MR)
• Fix initial state of move up/down popovers (MR)
• Allow to select OSK layouts (MR). This ensures only actually available layouts can be selected. Currently used by phosh-osk-stub but can easily be extended to squeekboard once it provides the information.

libphosh-rs

• Allow to run doc build locally and fix CI (MR)
• Release 0.0.2

phosh-osk-stub

• Allow to open OSK Settings panel when screen is not locked (MR)
• Unswap Enter and Backspace (MR)
• Bug fix release 0.41.1
• Use varnam_learn() for better completions in the varnam completer (MR)
• Export layout information (MR)
• Reduce flicker when launching settings (MR)

phosh-wallpapers

• Avoid new event sounds not being picked up due to stale caches (MR)
• Improve phone-hangup sound (MR)

meta-phosh

• Add release helpers (MR)

phosh-recipes

• VM images to test nightly packages https://salsa.debian.org/agx/phosh-recipes (based on Mobian's recipes)

Debian

• Upload Phosh 0.41.0~rc1 and 0.41.0 releases
• Robustify release script a bit (MR)
• Enable binding lib in phosh (MR)
• Move govarnam and varnam schemes packages into the input method team
• Upload varnam schemes to sid (MR)
• Make varnam-schemes reproducible, add autopkgtests and run upstream test during build (MR)
• Build wlroots with xcb-errors support (MR)

Mobian

• Help mobian-recipes with newer debos: (MR)

ModemManager

• Rework most bits of Cell Broadcast to move it closer to undraft status (MR). (Remaining bits affect enabling of unsolicited messages and setting channels).

Calls

• Use official notification category (MR)
• Use AdwAboutDialog (MR)

gnome-bluetooth

• Fix some deprecations (MR)
• Make pairing dialog adaptive (MR)
• Allow to use with Phosh without imposing more API/ABI guarantees (MR

gnome-settings-daemon

• Fix crash when hitting an error condition (which could then bring down the whole session): (MR)

feedbackd

• Install the udev rule via meson (MR to makes it easier for distros to pick up rule changes
• Sync packaging with Debian (MR)
• Document used gsettings (MR)

Chatty

• Update information at matrix.org (MR)
• Implement more unified push bits: (MR
• Document things a bit (MR
• Chase libcmatrix API changes (MR)

Libcmatrix

• More cleanups (MR, MR, MR)
• Publish docs (MR)
• Ship introspection data (MR)
• Release 0.0.2 (MR) (Release announcement)

Eigenvalue

• Catch up with libcmatrix API changes (MR)

kunifiedpush

• Avoid broken URLs when using ntfy (MR)

gir-rustdoc

• Improve error message when not running in CI (MR)

python-dbusmock

• Drop outdated comments (MR)

matrix spec

• propose some hints for Mobile clients (MR)

sound-theme spec

• propose new sound name for cell broadcasts (MR)

varname-schemes

• Make reproducible (MR)
• Don't ignore errors in build scripts (MR)
• Allow to run test against installed schemes (MR
• Fix build with recent ruby (MR)

FroSCon

• Helped a bit to setup the event
• Gave a short Phosh status update

Help Development If you want to support my work see donations. This includes a list of hardware we want to improve support for. Thanks a lot to all current and past donors.

Bruce Schneier and Kim C rdova wrote an insightful article about the changes that corporations make to culture as technical debt [1]. We need anti-trust laws to be enforced before it s too late! Bruce Schneier posted the transcript of an insightful lecture he gave on rethinking democracy for the age of AI [2]. Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful blog post about companies that are too big to care [3]. We need to break up those monopolies. Science Alert has an interesting article on plans to get renewable energy by drilling into the magma chamber of an active volcano [4]. What I want to know is whether using the energy could reduce the power of an eruption or even prevent it from happening. Bruce Schneier wrote an interesting article about Crowdstrike and the market incentives for brittle systems [5]. Also we need to have more formally proven software and more use of systems like seL4. Dave s Garage on YouTube has an interesting video about modern Mainframes [6]. Their IO capacity dwarfs the memory bandwidth of most PC servers. Framework has an interesting YouTube video about the process of developing a RISC-V motherboard for their laptops [7]. The documentary series Who Broke Britain by ABC news gives a good insight into the harm caused by austerity policies [8]. Rolling Stone has an interesting story about the consequences of being a CIA agent in al Quaeda [9].

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/2d49n8al
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/26vnjl6e
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/27njkm72
• [4] https://tinyurl.com/yvrnxq6w
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/298p9zxv
• [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouAG4vXFORc
• [7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMwepyyaj8I
• [8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW2NSrzcrIQ
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/2dfgty8z

DebConf24 was held in Busan, South Korea, from July 28th to August 4th 2024 and preceded by DebCamp from July 21st to July 27th. This was my second IRL DebConf (DC) and fourth one in total. I started in Debian with a DebConf, so its always an occasion when one happens. This year again, I worked in fundraising team, working to raise funds from International sponsors. We did manage to raise good enough funding, albeit less than budgeted. Though, the local Korean team was able to connect and gather many Governmental sponsors, which was quite surprising for me. I wasn t seriously considering attending DebConf until I discussed this with Nilesh. More or less, his efforts helped push me through the whole process. Thanks, Nilesh, for this. In March, I got my passport and started preparing documents for South Korean visa. It did require quite a lot of paper work but seeing South Korea s s fresh passport visa rejection rate, I had doubts about visa acceptance. The visa finally got approved, which could be attributed to great documentation and help from DebConf visa team. This was also my first trip outside India, and this being to DebConf made many things easy. Most stuff were documented on DebConf website and wiki. Asking some query got immediate responses from someone in the DebConf channels. We then booked a direct flight from Delhi, reaching Seoul in the morning. With good directions from Sourab TK who had reached Seoul a few hours earlier, we quickly got Korean Won, local SIM and T Money card (transportation card) and headed towards Seoul by AREX, airport metro. We spent the next two days exploring Seoul, which is huge. It probably has the highest number of skyscrapers I have ever seen. The city has a good mix of modern and ancient culture. We explored various places in Seoul including Gyeongbokgung Palace, Statue of King Sejong, Bukchon Hanok village, N Seoul Tower and various food markets which were amazing. Next, we headed to Busan for DebConf using KTX (Korean high speed rail). (Fun fact, slogan for City of Busan is Busan is Good .) South Korea has a good network of frequently running high speed trains. We had pre-booked our tickets because, despite the frequency, trains were sold out most of the time. KTX ride was quite smooth, despite travelling at 300 Kmph at times through Korean countryside and long mountain tunnels. The venue for DebConf was Pukyong National University (PKNU), Daeyeon Campus. PKNU had two campuses in the Busan and some folks ended up in wrong campus too. With good help and guidance from the front desk, we got our dormitory rooms assigned. Dorms here were quite different, ie:

• Rooms had heated floors. It seems to snow in Busan.
• Each area was had card based access. There was a separate card for laundry too.
• Rooms had announcement systems right inside the room, though we couldn t decipher any announcement as all of them were in Korean.
• Each room was provided with a dedicated access point and own SSID inside the room.

Settling in was easy. We started meeting familiar folks after almost a year. The long conversations started again. Everyone was excited for DebConf. Like everytime, the first day was full of action (and chaos). Meet and greet, volunteers check in, video team running around and fixing stuff and things working (or not). There were some interesting talks and sponsors stalls. After day one, things more or less settled down. I again volunteered for video team stuff and helped in camera operations and talk directions, which is always fun. As the tradition applies, saw few talks live on stream too sitting in the dorm room during the conf, which is always fun, when too tired to get ready and go out. DebConf takes care of food needs for vegan/vegetarianism folks well, of which I m one. I got to try different food items, which was quite an experience. Tried using chopsticks again which didn t work, which I later figured that handling metal ones were more difficult. We had late night ramens and wooden chopsticks worked perfectly. One of the days, we even went out to an Indian restaurant to have some desi aloo paratha, paneer dishes, samosas and chai (milk tea). I wasn t particularly craving desi food but wasn t able to get something according to my taste so went there. For day trip, I went to Ulsan. San means mountains in Korean. Ulsan is a port city with many industries including Hyundai car factory, petrochemical industry, paint industry, ship building etc. We saw bamboo forest, Ulsan tower (quite a view towards Ulsan port), whale village, Ulsan Onggi Museum and the sea (which was beautiful).
Amongst the sponsors, I was most interested in our network sponsors, folks who were National research and education networks (NREN) here. We had two network sponsors, KOREN and KREONET, thanks to efforts by local team. Initially it was discussed that they ll provide 20G uplink each, so 40G in total, which was whopping but by the time the closing talk happened, we got to know we had 200G uplink to the Internet. This was a massive update to last year when we had 1G main and 100M backup link. 200G wasn t what is required, but it was massive capacity and IIRC from the talk, we peaked at around 500M in usage, but it s always fun to have astronomical amount of bandwidth for bragging rights ;)
Now let s talk about things I found interesting about South Korea in general:

• Convenience stores were everywhere, one could see same brand stores less than a kilometer apart. We had even had two of them (GS25(s)), a road cross away too. These places were well stocked with almost everything, even alcohol.
• There were wide footpaths and pedestrian friendly policies.
• Public transport and intra modal transfer is convenient and easy to figure. Each metro station connects to multiple nearby buildings through underground walkways, and one never had to go out in the sun (in hot and humid weather). Also, Seoul and Busan metro networks were massive. The Same T money card worked for buses (almost hop on, tap and hop off at your destination), metros and even cabs.
• South Korea pays special attention to maintaining their historical and cultural buildings. These venues had informational brochures in Korea, English, Japanese and Chinese.
• We got a constant stream of Public safety alerts on our phones. Some phones even read them aloud for heatwaves and rains warnings, all in Korean.
• Trash was segregated at source everywhere.
• Public, high speed Wi-Fi was omnipresent in malls, public transport, airport etc. In metro, each coach had access points from all three telecom providers (SK Telecom, KT and LG U+) which also had almost similar voice and data plans.
• Police personals were quite helpful despite the language issue.
• Not many folks here are comfortable in English, but one can always make use of various mobile translation apps.
• Cards are accepted everywhere and there are too many of these cards ;)
• Food situation was a bit difficult for me as a vegetarian. We always have vegan/veg food in DebConf but outside, this whole concept doesn t seem to exist here.
• I couldn t find any public speedtest servers inside Korea. All my fast.com/speedtest.net servers were located either Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and even in the United States. On the very last day, I got a speedtest servers in Seoul, inside SK Telecom.

If one has to get the whole DebConf experience, it s better to attend DebCamp as well because that s when you can sit and interact with everyone better. As DebConf starts, everyone gets busy in various talks and events and things take a pace. DebConf days literally fly. This year, attending DebConf in person was a different experience. Attending DebConf without any organizational work/stress so was better, and I was able to understand working of different Debian team and workflows better while also identified a few where I would like to join and help. A general conclusion was that almost all Debian teams needs more folks to help out. So if someone want to join, they can probably reach out to the team, and would be able to onboard new folks. Though this would require some patience. Kudos to the Korean team who were able to pull off this event under this tight timeline and thanks for all the hospitality. This whole experience expanded my world view. There s so much to see and explore and understand. Looking forward to DebConf25 in Brest, France. PS - Shoutout to abbyck (aka hamCK)!

Review: Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher

Publisher:	Tor
Copyright:	2023
ISBN:	1-250-24410-2
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	116

Thornhedge is a fantasy novella by T. Kingfisher, the pen name that Ursula Vernon uses for her adult writing. It won the 2024 Hugo Award for best novella. No matter how much my brain wants to misspell the title, it is a story about a hedge, not a Neolithic earthwork.

The fairy was the greenish-tan color of mushroom stems and her skin bruised blue-black, like mushroom flesh. She had a broad, frog-like face and waterweed hair. She was neither beautiful nor made of malice, as many of the Fair Folk are said to be.

There is a princess asleep in a tower, surrounded by a wall of thorns. Toadling's job is to keep anyone from foolishly breaking in. At first, it was a constant struggle and all that she could manage, but with time, the flood of princes slowed to a trickle. A road was built and abandoned. People fled. There was a plague. With any luck, the tower was finally forgotten. Then a knight shows up. Not a very rich knight, nor a very successful knight. Just a polite and very persistent knight who wants to get into the tower that Toadling does not want him to get into. As you might have guessed, this is a Sleeping Beauty retelling. As you may have also guessed from the author, or from the cover text that says "not all curses should be broken," this version is a bit different. How and why it departs from the original is a surprise that slowly unfolds over the course of the story, in parallel to a delicate, cautious, and delightfully kind-hearted conversation between the knight and the fairy. If you have read a T. Kingfisher story before, particularly one of her fractured fairy tales, you know what to expect. Toadling is one of her typical well-meaning, earnest, slightly awkward protagonists who is just trying to do the right thing in a confusing world full of problems and dangers. She's constantly overwhelmed and yet she keeps going, because what else is there to do. Like a lot of Kingfisher's writing, it's a story about quiet courage from someone who doesn't consider herself courageous. One of the twists this time is that the knight is a character from a similar vein: doggedly unwilling to leave any problem alone, but equally determined to try to be kind. The two of them together make for a story with a gentle and rather melancholy tone. We do, eventually, learn the whole backstory of the tower, the wall of thorns, and Toadling. There is a god, a rather memorable one, who is frustratingly cryptic in the way that gods are. There are monsters who are more loving than most humans. There are humans who turn out to be surprisingly decent when it matters. And, like most of Kingfisher's writing, there is a constant awareness of how complicated the world is, how full it is of people who are just trying to get through each day, and how heavy of burdens people can shoulder when they don't see another way. This story pulled me right in. It is not horror, although there are a few odd bits like there always are in Kingfisher stories. Your largest risk as a reader is that it might make you cry if stories about earnest people doing their best in overwhelming situations hit you that way. My primary complaint is that there was nowhere near enough ending for me. After everything I learned about the characters, I wanted to spend some time with them outside of the bounds of the story. Kingfisher points the reader in a direction and then leaves the rest to your imagination, and I can see why she chose that story construction, but I wanted more catharsis than I got. That complaint aside, this is quintessential T. Kingfisher, and I am unsurprised that it won a Hugo. If you've read any of her other fractured fairy tales, or the 2023 Hugo winner for best novel, you know the sort of stories she tells, and you probably know whether you will like this. I am one of the people who like this. Rating: 8 out of 10

With news like this one cited by Bruce Schneier [1] people are asking whether it s worth using Secure Boot. Regarding the specific news article, this is always a risk with distributed public key encryption systems. Lose control of one private key and attackers can do bad things. That doesn t make it bad it just makes it less valuable. If you want to setup a system for a government agency, bank, or other high value target then it s quite reasonable to expect an adversary to purchase systems of the same make and model to verify that their attacks will work. If you want to make your home PC a little harder to attack then you can expect that the likely adversaries won t bother with such things. You don t need security to be perfect, making a particular attack slightly more difficult than other potential attacks gives a large part of the benefit. The purpose of Secure Boot is to verify the boot loader with a public key signature and then have the boot loader verify the kernel. Microsoft signs the shim that is used by each Linux distribution to load GRUB (or another boot loader). So when I configure a Debian system with Secure Boot enabled that doesn t stop anyone from booting Ubuntu. From the signatures on the boot loader etc there is no difference from my Debian installation and a rescue image from Debian, Ubuntu, or another distribution booted by a hostile party to do things against my interests. The difference between the legitimate OS image and malware is a matter of who boots it and the reason for booting it. It is possible to deconfigure Microsoft keys from UEFI to only boot from your own key, this document describes what is necessary to do that [2]. Basically if you boot without using any option ROMs (which among other things means the ROM from your video card) then you can disable the MS keys. If it s impossible to disable the MS keys that doesn t make it impossible to gain a benefit from the Secure Boot process. You can use a block device decryption process that involves a signature of the kernel and the BIOS being used as part of the decryption for the device. So if a system is booted with the wrong kernel and the user doesn t recognise it then they will find that they can t unlock the device with the password. I think it s possible on some systems to run the Secure Boot functionality in a non-enforcing mode such that it will use a bootloader without a valid signature but still use the hash for TPM calculations, that appears impossible on my Thinkpad Yoga Gen3 which only has enabled and disabled as options but should work on Dell laptops which have an option to run Secure Boot in permissive mode. I believe that the way of the future is to use something like EFIStub [3] to create unified kernel images with a signed kernel, initrd, and command-line parameters in a single bundle which can be loaded directly by the UEFI BIOS. From the perspective of a distribution developer it s good to have many people using the current standard functionality of shim and GRUB for EFI as a step towards that goal. CloudFlare has a good blog post about Linux kernel hardening [4]. In that post they cover the benefits of a full secure boot setup (which is difficult at the current time) and the way that secure boot enables the lockdown module for kernel integrity. When Secure Boot is detected by the kernel it automatically enables lockdown=integrity functionality (see this blog post for an explanation of lockdown [5]). It is possible to enable this by putting lockdown=integrity on the kernel command line or lockdown=confidentiality if you want even more protection, but it happens by default with Secure Boot. Secure Boot is something you can set to get a selection of security features enabled and get a known minimum level of integrity even if the signatures aren t used for anything useful, restricting a system to only boot kernels from MS, Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc is not useful. For most users I think that Secure Boot is a small increase in security but testing it on a large number of systems allows increasing the overall security of operating systems which benefits the world. Also I think that having features like EFIStub usable for a large portion of the users (possibly the majority of users) is something that can be expected to happen in the lifetime of hardware being purchased now. So ensuring that Secure Boot works with GRUB now will facilitate using EFIStub etc in future years. The Secure Boot page on the Debian wiki is worth reading, and also worth updating for people who want to contribute [6].

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/264thnky
• [2] https://github.com/Foxboron/sbctl/wiki/FAQ#option-rom
• [3] https://wiki.debian.org/EFIStub
• [4] https://blog.cloudflare.com/de-de/linux-kernel-hardening
• [5] https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/55105.html
• [6] https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot

Pain (The Soft Moon Remix) by Boy Harsher ¹ In mid-June I picked up an unknown infection in my left ankle which turned out to be antibiotic resistant. The infection caused cellulitis. After five weeks of trial and error and treatment, the infection is beaten but I am still recovering from the cellulitis. I don t know how long it will take to be fully recovered, nor how long before I can be useful again: I m currently off work (and thus off my open source and other commitments too). Hopefully soon! That s why I ve been quiet.

Vienna - the capital of Austria - is one of the most visited cities in the world, popular for its rich history, gardens, and cafes, along with well-known artists like Beethoven, Mozart, G del, and Freud. It has also been consistently ranked as the most livable city in the world. For these reasons, I was elated when my friend Snehal invited me last year to visit Vienna for a few days. We included Christmas and New Year s Eve in my itinerary due to the city s popular Christmas markets and lively events. The festive season also ensured that Snehal had some days off for sightseeing. Indians require a visa to visit Austria. Since the travel dates were near, I rushed to book an appointment online with VFS Global in Delhi, and quickly arranged the required documents. However, at VFS, I found out that I had applied in the wrong appointment category (tourist), which depends on the purpose of the visit, and that my travel dates do not allow enough time for visa authorities to make a decision. Apparently, even if you plan to stay only for a part of the trip with the host, you need to apply under the category Visiting Friends and Family . Thus, I had to book another appointment under this category, and took the opportunity to shift my travel dates to allow at least 15 business days for the visa application to be processed, removing Christmas and New Year s Eve from my itinerary. The process went smoothly, and my visa application was submitted by VFS. For reference, here s a list of documents I submitted -

• VFS appointment letter
• Duly-filled visa application form
• Original passport
• Copy of passport
• 1 photograph
• My 6 months bank account statement
• Cover letter
• Consent form (that visa processing will take up to 15 business days)
• Snehal s job contract
• My work contract
• Rent contract of Snehal
• Residence permit of Snehal
• A copy of Snehal s passport
• Invitation letter from Snehal
• Return flight ticket reservations
• Travel insurance for the intended travel dates

The following charges were collected from me.

Service Description	Amount (Indian Rupees)
Cash Handling Charge - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)	0
VFS Fee - India - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)	1,820
VISA Fee - India - SAC Code:	7,280
Convenience Fee - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)	182
Courier Service - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)	728
Courier Assurance - SAC Code: (SAC:998599)	182
Total	10,192

I later learned that the courier charges (728 INR) and the courier assurance charges (182 INR) mentioned above were optional. However, VFS didn t ask whether I wanted to include them. When the emabssy is done processing your application, it will send your passport back to VFS, from where you can either collect it yourself or get it couriered back home, which requires you to pay courier charges. However, courier assurance charges do not add any value as VFS cannot assure anything about courier and I suggest you get them removed. My visa application was submitted on the 21st of December 2023. A few days later, on the 29th of December 2023, I received an email from the Austrian embassy asking me to submit an additional document -

Subject: AUSTRIAN VISA APPLICATION - AMENDMENT REQUEST: Ravi Dwivedi VIS 4331 Dear Applicant, On 22.12.2023 your application for Visa C was registered at the Embassy. You are requested to kindly send the scanned copies of the following documents via email to the Embassy or submit the documents at the nearest VFS centre, for further processing of your application:

• Kindly submit Electronic letter of guarantee EVE- Elektronische Verpflichtungserkl rung obtained from the Fremdenpolizeibeh rde of the sponsor s district in Austria. Once your host company/inviting company has obtained the EVE, please share the reference number (starting from DEL_____) received from the authorities, with the Embassy.

Kindly Note: It is in your own interest to fulfil the requirements as indicated above and submit the missing documents within 14 days of the receipt of this email. Otherwise a decision will be taken based on the documentation available. Sie werden in Ihrem Interesse ersucht, die gekennzeichneten M ngel so schnell wie m glich zu beheben bzw. fehlende Unterlagen umgehend nachzureichen, um die weitere Bearbeitung des Antrages zu erm glichen. Sollten Sie innerhalb 14 Tagen die gekennzeichneten M ngel nicht beheben bzw. die fehlenden Unterlagen nicht nachreichen, wird ber den vorliegenden Antrag ohne diese Unterlagen bzw. M ngelbehebung entschieden. Austrian Embassy New Delhi R.J/ Consular Section +91 11 2419 2700 EP-13, Chandragupta Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110 021, India bmeia.gv.at/botschaft/new-delhi facebook.at/AustrianEmbassyNewDelhihttp://www.facebook.at/AustrianEmbassyNewDelhi twitter.com/MFA_Austriahttp://www.twitter.com/MFA_Austria [refocus1][Signatur_V+30]https://www.bmeia.gv.at/en/european-foreign-policy/foreign-trade/refocus-austria/[Logo_AT_IN_22px]

I misunderstood the required document (the EVE) to be a scanned copy of the letter of guarantee form signed by Snehal, and responded by attaching it. Upon researching, Snehal determined that the document is an electronic letter of guarantee, and is supposed to be obtained at a local police station in Vienna. He visited a police station the next day and had a hard time conversing due to the language barrier (German is the common language in Austria, whereas Snehal speaks English). That day was a weekend, so he took an appointment for Monday, but in the meantime the embassy had finished processing my visa. My visa was denied, and the refusal letter stated:

The Austrian embassy in Delhi examined your application; the visa has been refused. The decision is based on the following reason(s):

• The information submitted regarding the justification for the purpose and conditions of the intended stay was not reliable.
• There are reasonable doubts as to your intention to leave the territory of the Member States before the expiry of the visa.

Other remarks: You have been given an amendment request, which you have failed to fulfil, or have only fulfilled inadequately, within the deadline set. You are a first-time traveller. The social and economic roots with the home country are not evident. The return from Schengen territory does therefore not seem to be certain.

I could have reapplied after obtaining the EVE, but I didn t because I found the following line

The social and economic roots with the home country are not evident.

offensive for someone who was born and raised in India, got the impression that the absence of electronic guarantee letter was not the only reason behind the refusal, had already wasted 12,000 INR on this application, and my friend s stay in Austria was uncertain after January. In fact, my friend soon returned to India. To summarize -

1. If you are visiting a host, then the category of appointment at VFS must be Visiting Friends and Family rather than Tourist .
2. VFS charged me for courier assurance, which is an optional service. Make sure to get these removed from your bill.
3. Neither my travel agent nor the VFS application center mentioned the EVE.
4. While the required documents list from the VFS website does mention it in point 6, it leads to a dead link.
5. Snehal informed me that a mere two months ago, his wife s visa was approved without an EVE. This hints at inconsistency in processing of applications, even those under identical categories.

Such incidents are a waste of time and money for applicants, and an embarrassment to VFS and the Austrian visa authorities. I suggest that the Austrian visa authorities fix that URL, and provide instructions for hosts to obtain the EVE. Credits to Snehal and Contrapunctus for editing, Badri for proofreading.

Planing A Self Organized Solo Trip You know the movie Queen? The actor Kangana Ranaut plays in that movie the role of Rani Mehra, a 24-year-old Punjabi woman, who was a simple, homely girl that was always reliant on her family. Similar to Rani I too rarely ventured out without my parents and often needed my younger sibling by my side. Inspired by her transformation, I decided it was time to take control of my own story and discover who I truly am.

Trip Requirements

My First Passport The journey began with a significant first step: Obtaining my first passport Never having had one before, I scheduled the nearest available interview date on June 29 2022. This meant traveling to Solapur, a city 309 km from my hometown, accompanied by my father. After successfully completing the interview, I received my passport on July 14 2022.

Select A Country, Booking Flights And Accommodation Excited and ready to embark on my adventure, I planed trip to Albania and booked the flight tickets. Why? I had heard from friends that it was a beautiful European country with beaches and other attractions, and importantly, it didn t require a visa for Indian citizens and was more affordable than other European destinations. Before heading to Albania, I planned a overnight stop in Abu Dhabi with a transit visa, thanks to friend who knew the process for obtaining it. Some of my friends did travel also to Europe at the same time and quite close to my plannings, but that I realized just later the trip.

Day 1, Starting The Experience On July 20, 2022, I started my journey by traveling from Pune, Maharashtra, to Delhi, where my brother lives. He came to see me off at the airport, adding a touch of warmth and support to the beginning of my solo adventure. Upon arriving in Delhi, with my next flight scheduled for July 21, I stayed at a backpacker hostel named Zostel, Paharganj, Delhi to rest. During my stay, I noticed that many travelers at the hostel carried rucksacks, which sparked a desire in me to get one for my own trip to Europe. Up until then, I had always shopped with my mom and had never bought anything on my own. Inspired by the travelers, I set out to find a suitable rucksack. I traveled alone by metro from Paharganj to Rohini to visit a Decathlon store, where I purchased a 50-liter rucksack. This was a significant step in preparing for my European adventure and marked a milestone in my journey of self reliance.

Day 2, Flying To Abu Dhabi The following day, July 21 2024, I had a flight to Abu Dhabi. I spent the night at the hostel to rest before my journey. On the day of the flight, I needed to reach the airport by 3 PM, and a friend kindly came to drop me off. With my rucksack packed and excitement building, I was ready for the next leg of my adventure. When we arrived at the airport, my friend saw me off, marking the start of my international journey. With mom made spices, chutneys, and chilly flakes packed for comfort, I completed my immigration process in about two and a half hours. I then settled at the gate for my flight, feeling a mix of excitement and anxiety as thoughts raced through my mind. To ease my nerves, I struck up a conversation with a man seated nearby who was also traveling to Abu Dhabi for work. He provided helpful information about safety and transportation in Abu Dhabi, which reassured me. With the boarding process complete and my anxiety somewhat eased. I found my window seat on the flight and settled in, excited for the journey ahead. Next to me was a young man from Ranchi(Zarkhand, India), heading to Abu Dhabi for work at a mining factory. We had an engaging conversation about work culture in Abu Dhabi and recruitment from India. Upon arriving in Abu Dhabi, I completed my transit, collected my luggage, and began finding my way to the hotel Premier Inn AbuDhabi, which was in the airport area. To my surprise, I ran into the same man from the flight, now in a cab. He kindly offered to drop me at my hotel, which I gladly accepted since navigating an unfamiliar city with a short acquaintance felt safer. At the hotel gate, he asked if I had local currency (Dirhams) for payment, as sometimes online transactions can fail. That hadn t crossed my mind, and I realized I might be left stranded if a transaction failed. Recognizing his help as a godsend, I asked if he could lend me some Dirhams, promising to transfer the amount later. He kindly assured me to pay him back once I reached the hotel room. With that relief, I checked into the hotel, feeling deeply grateful for the unexpected assistance and transferred the money to him after getting to my room.

Day 3, Flying And Arrive In Tirana Once in the hotel room, I found it hard to sleep, anxious about waking up on time for my flight. I set an alarm to wake up early, but my subconscious mind kept me alert, and I woke up before the alarm went off. I got freshened up and went down for breakfast, where I found some vegetarian options like Idli-Sambar and bread with butter, along with some morning tea. After breakfast, I headed back to the airport, ready to catch my flight to my final destination: Tirana, Albania. I reached Tirana, Albania after a six hours flight, feeling exhausted and I was suffering from a headache. The air pressure had blocked my ears, and jet lag added to my fatigue. After collecting my checked luggage, I headed to the first ATM machine at the airport. Struggling to insert my card, I asked a nearby gentleman for help. He tried his best, but my card got stuck inside the machine. Panic set in as I worried about how I would survive without money. Taking a deep breath, I found an airport employee and explained the situation. The gentleman stayed with me, offering support and repeatedly apologizing for his mistake. However, it wasn t his fault, the ATM was out of order, which I hadn t noticed. My focus was solely on retrieving my ATM card. The airport employee worked diligently, using a hairpin to carefully extract my card. Finally, the card was freed, and I felt an immense sense of relief, grateful for the help of these kind strangers. I used another ATM, successfully withdrew money, and then went to an airport mobile SIM shop to buy a new SIM card for local internet and connectivity.

Day 4, Arriving In Tirana, Facing Challenges In A Foreign Country I had booked a stay at a backpacker hostel near the city center of Tirana. After sorting out the ATM and SIM card issues, I searched for a bus or any transport to get there. It was quite late, around 8:30 PM, and being in a new city, I was in a hurry. I saw a bus nearly leaving the airport, stopped it, and asked if it went to the city center. They gave me the green flag, so I boarded the airport service bus and reached the city center. Feeling very tired, I discovered that the hostel was about an hour and a half away by walking. Deciding to take a cab, I faced a challenge as the driver couldn t understand my English or accent. Using a mobile translator to convert my address from English to Albanian, I finally communicated my destination to him. With that sorted out, I headed to the Blue Door Backpacker Hostel and arrived around 9 PM, relieved to have finally reached my destination and I checked in. I found my top bunk bed, only to realize I had booked a mixed-gender dormitory. This detail had completely escaped my notice during the booking process. I felt unsure about how to handle the situation. Coincidentally, my experience mirrored what Kangana faced in the movie Queen . Feeling acidic due to an empty stomach and the exhaustion of heavy traveling, I wasn t up to cooking in the hostel s kitchen. I asked the front desk about the nearest restaurant. It was nearly 9:30 PM, and the streets were deserted. To avoid any mishaps like in the movie Queen, I kept my passport securely locked in my bag, ensuring it wouldn t be a victim of theft. Venturing out for dinner, I felt uneasy on the quiet streets. I eventually found a restaurant recommended by the hostel, but the menu was almost entirely non-vegetarian. I struggled to ask about vegetarian options and was uncertain if any dishes contained eggs, as some people consider eggs to be vegetarian. Feeling frustrated and unsure, I left the restaurant without eating. I noticed a nearby grocery store that was about to close and managed to get a few extra minutes to shop. I bought some snacks, wafers, milk, and tea bags (though I couldn t find tea powder to make Indian-style tea). Returning to the hostel, I made do with wafers, cookies, and milk for dinner. That day was incredibly tough for me, I filled with exhaustion and struggle in a new country, I was on the verge of tears . I made a video call home before sleeping on the top bunk bed. It was a new experience for me, sharing a room with both unknown men and women. I kept my passport safe inside my purse and under my pillow while sleeping, staying very conscious about its security.

Day 5, Exploring Nearby Places I woke up the next day at noon. After having some coffee, the hostel management girl asked if I wanted breakfast. She offered curd with cornflakes, which I refused because I don t like curd. Instead, I ordered a pizza from a vegetarian pizza place with her help, and I started feeling better. I met some people in the hostel, some from Syria and others from Italy. I struggled to understand their accents but kept pushing myself to get involved in their discussions. Despite the challenges, I felt more at ease and was slowly adapting to my new environment. I went out from the hostel in the evening to buy some vegetables to cook something. I searched for shops and found some potatoes, tomatoes, and rice. I decided to cook Khichdi, an Indian dish made with rice, and added some chili flakes I brought from home. After preparing my dinner, I ate and then went to sleep again.

Day 6, Tiranas Recent History The next day, I planned to explore the city and visited Bunkart-1, a fascinating museum in a massive underground bunker from the communist era. Originally built as a shelter for Albania s political and military elite, it now offers a unique glimpse into the country s history under Enver Hoxha s oppressive regime. The museum s exhibits include historical artifacts, photographs, and multimedia displays that detail the lives of Albanians during that time. Walking through the dimly lit corridors, I felt the weight of history and gained a deeper understanding of Albania s past.

Day 7-8, Meeting Friends From India The next day, I accidentally met with Chirag, who was returning from the Debian Conference 2022 held in Prizren, Kosovo, and staying at the same hostel. When I encountered him, he was talking on the phone, and I recognized he was Indian by his accent. I introduced myself, and we discovered we had some mutual friends. Chirag told me that our common friend, Raju, was also coming to stay at the hostel the next day. This news made me feel relaxed and happy to have known people around. When Raju arrived, the three of us, Chirag, Raju, and I planned to have dinner at an Indian restaurant and explore Tirana city. I had a great time talking and enjoying their company.

Day 9-10, Meeting More Friends Raju had a ticket to leave soon, so Chirag and I made a plan to visit Shkod r and the nearby Komani Lake for kayaking. We started our journey early in the morning by bus and reached Shkod r. There, we met new friends from the conference, Pavit and Abraham, who were already there. We had dinner together and enjoyed an ice cream treat from Chirag.

Day 12, Kayaking And Say Good Bye To Friends The next day, Pavit and Abraham had a flight back to India, so Chirag and I went to Komani Lake. We had an adventurous time kayaking, even though neither of us knew how to swim. We took a ferry through the backwaters to the island on Komani Lake and enjoyed a fantastic adventure together. After our trip, Chirag returned to Tirana for his flight back to India, leaving me to continue my journey alone.

Day 13, Climbing Rozafa Castel By stopping at Shkod r, I visited Rozafa Castle. Despite the language barrier, as most locals only spoke Albanian, people around me guided me correctly on how to get there. At times, I used applications like Google Translate to communicate. To read signs or hotel menus, I used Google Photos' language converter. I even used the audio converter to understand and speak some basic Albanian phrases. I took a bus from Shkod r to the southern part of Albania, heading to Sarand . The journey lasted about five to six hours, and I had booked a stay at Mona s Hostel. Upon arrival, I met Eliza from America, and we went together to Ksamil Beach, spending a wonderful day there.

Day 14, Vlora Beach: Beach Side Cycling Next, I traveled to Vlor , where I stayed for one day. During my time there, I enjoyed beach side cycling with a cycle provided by the hostel owner and spent some time feeding fish. I also met a fellow traveler from Delhi who had brought along some preserved Indian curry. He kindly shared it with me, which was a welcome change after nearly 15 days without authentic Indian cuisine, except for what I had cooked myself in various hostels.

Day 15-16 Visiting Durress, Travelling Back To Tirana I then visited Durr s, exploring its beautiful beaches, before heading back to Tirana one day before my flight home. On the day of my flight, my alarm didn t go off, and I woke up late at the hostel. In a frantic rush, I packed everything in just five minutes and dashed toward the city center to catch the bus to the airport. If I had been just five minutes later, I would have missed the bus. Thankfully, I managed to stop it just in time and began my journey back home, reflecting on the incredible adventure I had experienced. Fortunately, I wasn t late; I arrived at the airport just in time. After clearing immigration, I boarded my flight, which had a layover in Warsaw, Poland. The journey from Tirana to Warsaw took about two and a half hours, followed by a seven to eight-hour flight from Poland back to India. Once I arrived in Delhi, I returned to Zostel and booked a train ticket to Aurangabad for the next three days.

Backview This trip was an incredible adventure for me. I never imagined I could accomplish something like this, but I did. Meeting diverse people, experiencing different cultures, and learning so much made this journey truly unforgettable. Looking back, I realize how much I ve grown from this experience. Although I may have more opportunities to travel abroad in the future, this trip will always hold a special place in my heart. The memories I made and the incredible people I met along the way are irreplaceable. This experience goes beyond what I can express through this blog or words; it was incredibly precious to me. Every moment of this journey is etched in my memory, and I am grateful for every part of it.

I m finishing typing up this blog entry hours before my last 13 hour leg back home, after I spent 2 weeks in Busan, South Korea for DebCamp24 and DebCamp24. I had a rough year and decided to take it easy this DebConf. So this is the first DebConf in a long time where I didn t give any talks. I mostly caught up on a bit of packaging, worked on DebConf video stuff, attended a few BoFs and talked to people. Overall it was a very good DebConf, which also turned out to be more productive than I expeced it would. In the welcome session on the first day of DebConf, Nicolas Dandrimont mentioned that a benefit of DebConf is that it provides a sort of caffeine for your Debian motivation. I could certainly feel that affect swell as the days went past, and it s nice to be excited about some ideas again that would otherwise be fading.

Recovering DPL It s a bit of a gear shift being DPL for 4 years, and DebConf Committee for nearly 5 years before that, and then being at DebConf while some issue arise (as it always does during a conference). At first I jump into high alert mode, but then I have to remind myself it s not your problem anymore and let others deal with it. It was nice spending a little in-person time with Andreas Tille, our new DPL, we did some more handover and discussed some current issues. I still have a few dozen emails in my DPL inbox that I need to collate and forward to Andreas, I hope to finish all that up by the end of August. During the Bits from the DPL talk, the usual question came up whether Andreas will consider running for DPL again, to which he just responded in a slide Maybe . I think it s a good idea for a DPL to do at least two terms if it all works out for everyone, since it takes a while to get up to speed on everything. Also, having been DPL for four years, I have a lot to say about it, and I think there s a lot we can fix in the role, or at least discuss it. If I had the bandwidth for it I would have scheduled a BoF for it, but I ll very likely do that for the next DebConf instead!

Video team I set up the standby loop for the video streaming setup. We call it loopy, it s a bunch of OBS scenes that provide announcements, shows sponsors, the schedule and some social content. I wrote about it back in 2020, but it s evolved quite a bit since then, so I m probably due to write another blog post with a bunch of updates on it. I hope to organise a video team sprint in Cape Town in the first half of next year, so I ll summarize everything before then.

It would ve been great if we could have some displays in social areas that could show talks, the loop and other content, but we were just too pressed for time for that. This year s DebConf had a very compressed timeline, and there was just too much that had to be done and that had to be figured out on the last minute. This put quite a lot of strain on the organisers, but I was glad to see how, for the most part, most attendees were very sympathetic to some rough edges (but I digress ). I added more of the OBS machine setup to the videoteam s ansible repository, so as of now it just needs an ansible setup and the OBS data and it s good to go. The loopy data is already in the videoteam git repository, so I could probably just add a git pull and create some symlinks in ansible and then that machine can be installed from 0% to 100% by just installing via debian-installer with our ansible hooks. This DebConf I volunteered quite a bit for actual video roles during the conference, something I didn t have much time for in recent DebConfs, and it s been fun, especially in a session or two where nearly none of the other volunteers showed up. Sometimes chaos is just fun :-)

Baekyongee is the university mascot, who s visible throughout the university. So of course we included this four legged whale creature on the loop too!

Packaging I was hoping to do more packaging during DebCamp, but at least it was a non-zero amount:

• Uploaded gdisk 1.0.10-2 to unstable (previously tested effects of adding dh-sequence-movetousr) (Closes: #1073679).
• Worked a bit on bcachefs-tools (updating git to 1.9.4), but has a build failure that I need to look into (we might need a newer bindgen) update: I m probably going to ROM this package soon, it doesn t seem suitable for packaging in Debian.
• Calamares: Tested a fix for encrypted installs, and uploaded it.
• Calamares: Uploaded (3.3.8-1) to backports (at the time of writing it s still in backports-NEW).
• Backport obs-gradient-source for bookworm.
• Did some initial packaging on Cambalache, I ll upload to unstable once wlroots (0.18) hits unstable.
• Pixelorama 1.0 I did some initial packaging for Pixelorama back when we did the MiniDebConf Gaming Edition, but it had a few stoppers back then. Version 1.0 seems to fix all of that, but it depends on Godot 4.2 and we re still on the 3 series in Debian, so I ll upload this once Godot 4.2 hits at least experimental. Godot software/games is otherwise quite easy to run, it s basically just source code / data that is installed and then run via godot-runner (godot3-runner package in Debian).

BoFs Python Team BoF Link to the etherpad / pad archive link and video can be found on the talk page: https://debconf24.debconf.org/talks/31-python-bof/ The session ended up being extended to a second part, since all the issues didn t fit into the first session. I was distracted by too many thing during the Python 3.12 transition (to the point where I thought that 3.11 was still new in Debian), so it was very useful listening to the retrospective of that transition. There was a discussion whether Python 3.13 could still make it to testing in time for freeze, and it seems that there is consensus that it can, although, likely with new experimental features like disabling the global interpreter lock and the just in time compiler disabled. I learned for the first time about the dead batteries project, PEP-0594, which removes ancient modules that have mostly been superseded, from the Python standard library. There was some talk about the process for changing team policy, and a policy discussion on whether we should require autopkgtests as a SHOULD or a MUST for migration to testing. As with many things, the devil is in the details and in my opinion you could go either way and achieve a similar result (the original MUST proposal allowed exceptions which imho made it the same as the SHOULD proposal). There s an idea to do some ongoing remote sprints, like having co-ordinated days for bug squashing / working on stuff together. This is a nice idea and probably a good way to energise the team and also to gain some interest from potential newcomers. Louis-Philipe V ronneau was added as a new team admin and there was some discussion on various Sphinx issues and which Lintian tags might be needed for Python 3.13. If you want to know more, you probably have to watch the videos / read the notes :)

Debian.net BoF Link to the etherpad / pad archive link can be found on the talk page: https://debconf24.debconf.org/talks/37-debiannet-team-bof Debian Developers can set up services on subdomains on debian.net, but a big problem we ve had before was that developers were on their own for hosting those services. This meant that they either hosted it on their DSL/fiber connection at home, paid for the hosting themselves, or hosted it at different services which became an accounting nightmare to claim back the used funds. So, a few of us started the debian.net hosting project (sometimes we just call it debian.net, this is probably a bit of a bug) so that Debian has accounts with cloud providers, and as admins we can create instances there that gets billed directly to Debian. We had an initial rush of services, but requests have slowed down since (not really a bad thing, we don t want lots of spurious requests). Last year we did a census, to check which of the instances were still used, whether they received system updates and to ask whether they are performing backups. It went well and some issues were found along the way, so we ll be doing that again. We also gained two potential volunteers to help run things, which is great. Debian Social BoF Link to the etherpad / pad archive link can be found on the talk page: https://debconf24.debconf.org/talks/34-debiansocial-bof We discussed the services we run, you can view the current state of things at: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianSocial Pleroma has shown some cracks over the last year or so, and there are some forks that seem promising. At the same time, it might be worth while considering Mastodon too. So we ll do some comparison of features and maintenance and find a way forward. At the time when Pleroma was installed, it was way ahead in terms of moderation features. Pixelfed is doing well and chugging along nicely, we should probably promote it more. Peertube is working well, although we learned that we still don t have all the recent DebConf videos on there. A bunch of other issues should be fixed once we move it to a new machine that we plan to set up. We re removing writefreely and plume. Nice concepts, but it didn t get much traction yet, and no one who signed up for these actually used it, which is fine, some experimentation with services is good and sometimes they prove to be very popular and other times not. The WordPress multisite instance has some mild use, otherwise haven t had any issues. Matrix ended up to be much, much bigger than we thought, both in usage and in its requirements. It s very stateful and remembers discussions for as long as you let it, so it s Postgres database is continuously expanding, this will also be a lot easier to manage once we have this on the new host. Jitsi is also quite popular, but it could probably be on jitsi.debian.net instead (we created this on debian.social during the initial height of COVID-19 where we didn t have the debian.net hosting yet), although in practice it doesn t really matter where it lives. Most of our current challenges will be solved by moving everything to a new big machine that has a few public IPs available for some VMs, so we ll be doing that shortly. Debian Foundation Discussion BoF This was some brainstorming about the future structure of Debian, and what steps might be needed to get there. It s way too big a problem to take on in a BoF, but we made some progress in figuring out some smaller pieces of the larger puzzle. The DPL is going to get in touch with some legal advisors and our trusted organisations so that we can aim to formalise our relationships a bit more by the time it s DebConf again. I also introduced my intention to join the Debian Partners delegation. When I was DPL, I enjoyed talking with external organisations who wanted to help Debian, but helping external organisations help Debian turned out to be too much additional load on the usual DPL roles, so I m pursuing this with the Debian Partners team, more on that some other time. This session wasn t recorded, but if you feel like you missed something, don t worry, all intentions will be communicated and discussed with project members before anything moves forward. There was a strong agreement in the room though that we should push forward on this, and not reach another DebConf where we didn t make progress on formalising Debian s structure more.

Social Conference Dinner

Conference Dinner Photo from Santiago

The conference dinner took place in the university gymnasium. I hope not many people do sports there in the summer, because it got HOT. There was also some interesting observations on the thermodynamics of the attempted cooling solutions, which was amusing. On the plus side, the food was great, the company was good, and the speeches were kept to a minimum, so it was a great conference dinner, even though it was probably cut a bit short due to the heat. Cheese and Wine Cheese and Wine happened on 1 August, which happens to be the date I became a DD at DebConf17 in Montr al seven years before, so this was a nice accidental celebration of my Debiversary :) Since I m running out of time, I ll add some more photos to this post some time after publishing it :P Group Photo As per DebConf tradition, Aigars took the group photo. You can find the high resolution version on Debian s GitLab instance.

Debian annual conference Debconf 24, Busan, South Korea
Photography: Aigars Mahinovs aigarius@debian.org
License: CC-BYv3+ or GPLv2+

Talking Ah yes, talking to people is a big part of DebConf, but I didn t keep track of it very well.

• I mostly listened to Alper a bit about his ideas for his talk about debian installer.
• I talked to Rhonda a bit about ActivityPub and MQTT and whether they could be useful for publicising Debian activity.
• Listened to Gunnar and Julian have a discussion about GPG and APT which was interesting.
• I learned that you can learn Hangul, the Korean alphabet, in about an hour or so (I wish I knew that in all my years of playing StarCraft II).
• We had the usual continuous keysigning party. Besides it s intended function, this is always a good ice breaker and a way to for shy people to meet other shy people.
• and many other fly-by discussions.

Stuff that didn t happen this DebConf

• loo.py A simple Python script that could eventually replace the obs-advanced-scene-switcher sequencer in OBS. It would also be extremely useful if we d ever replace OBS for loopy. I was hoping to have some time to hack on this, and try to recreate the current loopy in loo.py, but didn t have the time.
• toetally This year videoteam had to scramble to get a bunch of resistors to assemble some tally light. Even when assembled, they were a bit troublesome. It would ve been nice to hack on toetally and get something ready for testing, but it mostly relies on having something like a rasbperry pi zero with an attached screen in order to work on further. I ll try to have something ready for the next mini conf though.
• extrepo on debian live I think we should have extrepo installed by default on desktop systems, I meant to start a discussion on this, but perhaps it s just time I go ahead and do it and announce it.
• Live stream to peertube server It would ve been nice to live stream DebConf to PeerTube, but the dependency tree to get this going got a bit too huge. Following our plans discussed in the Debian Social BoF, we should have this safely ready before the next MiniDebConf and should be able to test it there.
• Desktop Egg there was this idea to get a stand-in theme for Debian testing/unstable until the artwork for the next release is finalized (Debian bug: #1038660), I have an idea that I meant to implement months ago, but too many things got in the way. It s based on Juliette Taka s Homeworld theme, and basically transforms the homeworld into an egg. Get it? Something that hasn t hatched yet? I also only recently noticed that we never used the actual homeworld graphics (featuring the world image) in the final bullseye release. lol.

So, another DebConf and another new plush animal. Last but not least, thanks to PKNU for being such a generous and fantastic host to us! See you again at DebConf25 in Brest, France next year!

Most banks are behind CDNs and DDoS mitigation providers nowadays, though they still hold their own IP space. Was interested in this, so compiled a list from BGP.Tools and Hurricane Electric BGP Toolkit.

• AS17436 ICICIBANK Ltd, Banking, Mumbai
• AS24055 Deutsche Bank AG-India Internet AS
• AS38029 Citibank N.A. - ISP Peering, Chennai, India
• AS38468 ASN for Yes Bank
• AS45644 SBI-EMS-NET-IN
• AS59194 Central Bank of India
• AS131283 HDFC Bank House
• AS132440 Unity Small Finance Bank Pvt. Ltd.
• AS132946 Ujjivan Small Finance Bank Ltd
• AS132989 Sangli Urban Co-operative Bank Ltd
• AS133640 Indian Overseas Bank
• AS133657 IndusInd Bank Ltd
• AS134909 The South Indian Bank Ltd
• AS135086 Axis Bank Limited
• AS135745 UCO Bank
• AS135819 Chaitanya Godavari Grameena Bank
• AS136252 The Bank of Baroda Limited
• AS136324 IDBI Bank Ltd
• AS136622 Equitas Small Finance Bank Ltd
• AS136680 Bank of Maharashtra
• AS136707 The Kalupur Commercial Co-operative Bank Limited
• AS137104 India Post Payments Bank Limited
• AS137108 Bank of India
• AS137130 Punjab National Bank
• AS137662 IDFC Bank Ltd
• AS137670 Canara Bank
• AS138318 The Visakhapatnam Cooperative Bank Ltd
• AS140156 Karnataka Gramin Bank
• AS141222 Telangana State Coorperative Apex Bank Ltd
• AS141561 Punjab and Sind Bank
• AS146870 TJSB Sahakari Bank Ltd
• AS149202 The Jammu And Kashmir Bank Pvt Ltd
• AS149528 Indian Bank
• AS149603 Suryoday Small Finance Bank Limited
• AS150029 The Karnataka Bank Ltd
• AS151172 CSB Bank Ltd
• AS151692 Small Industries Development Bank of India

Other noteable mentions:

• AS141857 National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development
• AS151773 Reserve Bank Information Technology Pvt Ltd

Let me know if I m missing someone. Many thanks to Saswata Sarkar for helping with the list.

DebConf24, the 25th annual Debian Developer Conference, is taking place in Busan, Republic of Korea from July 28th to August 4th, 2024. Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at Pukyong National University, Busan, to participate and work in a conference exclusively ran by volunteers. Today the main conference starts with around 340 expected attendants and over 100 scheduled activities, including 45-minute and 20-minute talks, Bird of a Feather ("BoF") team meetings, workshops, a job fair, as well as a variety of other events. The full schedule is updated each day, including activities planned ad-hoc by attendees over the course of the conference. If you would like to engage remotely, you can follow the video streams available from the DebConf24 website for the events happening in the three talk rooms: Bada, Somin and Pado. Or you can join the conversations happening inside the talk rooms via the OFTC IRC network in the #debconf-bada, #debconf-somin, and #debconf-pado channels. Please also join us in the #debconf channel for common discussions related to DebConf. You can also follow the live coverage of news about DebConf24 provided by our micronews service or the @debian profile on your favorite social network. DebConf is committed to a safe and welcoming environment for all participants. Please see our Code of Conduct page for more information on this. Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf24, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Proxmox, Infomaniak and Wind River.

In April, I started migrating orphaned Debian packages without any version control system listed in debian/control to git. This morning, my Debian QA page finally reached 200 QA packages migrated. In reality there are a few more, as the packages uploaded by someone else after my initial upload have disappeared from my QA uploads list. As I am running out of steam and will most likely focus on other parts of Debian moving forward, I hope someone else will find time to continue the migration to bring the number of orphaned packages without any version control system down to zero. Here is the updated recipe if someone want to help out. To locate packages to work on, the following one-liner can be used:

PGPASSWORD="udd-mirror" psql --port=5432 --host=udd-mirror.debian.net \
  --username=udd-mirror udd -c "select source from sources \
   where release = 'sid' and (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' \
   OR vcs_browser ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL \
   OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%' \
   order by random() limit 10;"

Pick a random package from the list and run the latest edition of the script debian-snap-to-salsa with the package name as the argument to prepare a git repository with the existing packaging. This will download old Debian packages from snapshot.debian.org. Note that very recent uploads will not be included, so check out the package on tracker.debian.org. Next, run gbp buildpackage --git-ignore-new to verify that the package build as it should, and then visit https://salsa.debian.org/debian/ and make sure there is not already a git repository for the package there. I also did git log -p debian/control and look for vcs entries to check if the package used to have a git repository on Alioth, and see if it can be a useful starting point moving forward. If all this check out, I created a new gitlab project below the Debian group on salsa, push the package source there and upload a new version. I tend to also ensure build hardening is enabled, if it prove to be easy, and check if I can easily fix any lintian issues or bug reports. If the process took more than 20 minutes, I dropped it and moved on to another package. If I found patches in debian/patches/ that were not yet passed upstream, I would send an email to make sure upstream know about them. This has proved to be a valuable step, and caused several new releases for software that initially appeared abandoned. :) As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address 15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.