A great talk on SteamOS progress to effective boot loaders for atomic OS updates.How to produce something that will allow instant updates and instant fallbacks when updating a whole OS image - lots of explanation - and it's good when three or four people who are directly interested in problems and solutions round, for example, Secure Boot are in the room.Jessica Clarke on CHERI, Morello and security protections in hardware, software and programming hardware which has verifiable pointers and routines. A couple of flourishes which had the room breaking out in applause.Roberto Sanchez and Santiago Rincon on suggestions for LTS and ways forward. The presentation very clearly set out what LTS is, is not, and maybe should be.Last presentation of the day was from Ian Jackson on a potential change to git based working and tagging. Then lots of chasing around to get people out of the building. Thanks very much to the Arm personnel, especially the security staff who have been helpful throughout the day with getting us all in and out
Thanks to all involved with Arm, Codethink and Pexip for hosting and sponsorship without which this would not have been possible.
There is a bit of context that needs to be shared before I get to this and would be a long one. For reasons known and unknown, I have a lot of sudden electricity outages. Not just me, all those who are on my line. A discussion with a lineman revealed that around 200+ families and businesses are on the same line and when for whatever reason the electricity goes for all. Even some of the traffic lights don t work. This affects software more than hardware or in some cases, both. And more specifically HDD s are vulnerable. I had bought an APC unit several years for precisely this, but over period of time it just couldn t function and trips also when the electricity goes out. It s been 6-7 years so can t even ask customer service to fix the issue and from whatever discussions I have had with APC personnel, the only meaningful difference is to buy a new unit but even then not sure this is an issue that can be resolved, even with that.
That comes to the issue that happens once in a while where the system fsck is unable to repair /home and you need to use an external pen drive for the same. This is my how my hdd stacks up / is on dev/sda7 /boot is on /dev/sda6, /boot/efi is on /dev/sda2 and /home is on /dev/sda8 so theoretically, if /home for some reason doesn t work I should be able drop down on /dev/sda7, unmount /dev/sda8, run fsck and carry on with my work. I tried it number of times but it didn t work. I was dropping down on tty1 and attempting the same, no dice as root/superuser getting the barest x-term. So first I tried asking couple of friends who live nearby me. Unfortunately, both are MS-Windows users and both use what are called as company-owned laptops . Surfing on those systems were a nightmare. Especially the number of pop-ups of ads that the web has become. And to think about how much harassment ublock origin has saved me over the years. One of the more interesting bits from both their devices were showing all and any downloads from fosshub was showing up as malware. I dunno how much of that is true or not as haven t had to use it as most software we get through debian archives or if needed, download from github or wherever and run/install it and you are in business. Some of them even get compiled into a good .deb package but that s outside the conversation atm. My only experience with fosshub was few years before the pandemic and that was good. I dunno if fosshub really has malware or malwarebytes was giving false positives. It also isn t easy to upload a 600 MB+ ISO file somewhere to see whether it really has malware or not. I used to know of a site or two where you could upload a suspicious file and almost 20-30 famous and known antivirus and anti-malware engines would check it and tell you the result. Unfortunately, I have forgotten the URL and seeing things from MS-Windows perspective, things have gotten way worse than before.
So left with no choice, I turned to the local LUG for help. Fortunately, my mobile does have e-mail and I could use gmail to solicit help. While there could have been any number of live CD s that could have helped but one of my first experiences with GNU/Linux was that of Knoppix that I had got from Linux For You (now known as OSFY) sometime in 2003. IIRC, had read an interview of Mr. Klaus Knopper as well and was impressed by it. In those days, Debian wasn t accessible to non-technical users then and Knoppix was a good tool to see it. In fact, think he was the first to come up with the idea of a Live CD and run with it while Canonical/Ubuntu took another 2 years to do it. I think both the CD and the interview by distrowatch was shared by LFY in those early days. Of course, later the story changes after he got married, but I think that is more about Adriane rather than Knoppix. So Vishal Rao helped me out. I got an HP USB 3.2 32GB Type C OTG Flash Drive x5600c (Grey & Black) from a local hardware dealer around similar price point. The dealer is a big one and has almost 200+ people scattered around the city doing channel sales who in turn sell to end users. Asking one of the representatives about their opinion on stopping electronic imports (apparently more things were added later to the list including all sorts of sundry items from digital cameras to shavers and whatnot.) The gentleman replied that he hopes that it would not happen otherwise more than 90% would have to leave their jobs. They already have started into lighting fixtures (LED bulbs, tubelights etc.) but even those would come in the same ban
The main argument as have shared before is that Indian Govt. thinks we need our home grown CPU and while I have no issues with that, as shared before except for RISC-V there is no other space where India could look into doing that. Especially after the Chip Act, Biden has made that any new fabs or any new thing in chip fabrication will only be shared with Five Eyes only. Also, while India is looking to generate about 2000 GW by 2030 by solar, China has an ambitious 20,000 GW generation capacity by the end of this year and the Chinese are the ones who are actually driving down the module prices. The Chinese are also automating their factories as if there s no tomorrow. The end result of both is that China will continue to be the world s factory floor for the foreseeable future and whoever may try whatever policies, it probably is gonna be difficult to compete with them on prices of electronic products. That s the reason the U.S. has been trying so that China doesn t get the latest technology but that perhaps is a story for another day.
HP USB 3.2 Type C OTG Flash Drive x5600c
For people who have had read this blog they know that most of the flash drives today are MLC Drives and do not have the longevity of the SLC Drives. For those who maybe are new, this short brochure/explainer from Kingston should enhance your understanding. SLC Drives are rare and expensive. There are also a huge number of counterfeit flash drives available in the market and almost all the companies efforts whether it s Kingston, HP or any other manufacturer, they have been like a drop in the bucket. Coming back to the topic at hand. While there are some tools that can help you to figure out whether a pen drive is genuine or not. While there are products that can tell you whether they are genuine or not (basically by probing the memory controller and the info. you get from that.) that probably is a discussion left for another day. It took me couple of days and finally I was able to find time to go Vishal s place. The journey of back and forth lasted almost 6 hours, with crazy traffic jams. Tells you why Pune or specifically the Swargate, Hadapsar patch really needs a Metro. While an in-principle nod has been given, it probably is more than 5-7 years or more before we actually have a functioning metro. Even the current route the Metro has was supposed to be done almost 5 years to the date and even the modified plan was of 3 years ago. And even now, most of the Stations still need a lot of work to be done. PMC, Deccan as examples etc. still have loads to be done. Even PMT (Pune Muncipal Transport) that that is supposed to do the last mile connections via its buses has been putting half-hearted attempts
Vishal Rao
While Vishal had apparently seen me and perhaps we had also interacted, this was my first memory of him although we have been on a few boards now and then including stackexchange. He was genuine and warm and shared 4-5 distros with me, including Knoppix and System Rescue as shared by Arun Khan. While this is and was the first time I had heard about Ventoy apparently Vishal has been using it for couple of years now. It s a simple shell script that you need to download and run on your pen drive and then just dump all the .iso images. The easiest way to explain ventoy is that it looks and feels like Grub. Which also reminds me an interaction I had with Vishal on mobile. While troubleshooting the issue, I was unsure whether it was filesystem that was the issue or also systemd was corrupted. Vishal reminded me of putting fastboot to the kernel parameters to see if I m able to boot without fscking and get into userspace i.e. /home. Although journalctl and systemctl were responding even on tty1 still was a bit apprehensive. Using fastboot was able to mount the whole thing and get into userspace and that told me that it s only some of the inodes that need clearing and there probably are some orphaned inodes. While Vishal had got a mini-pc he uses that a server, downloads stuff to it and then downloads stuff from it. From both privacy, backup etc. it is a better way to do things but then you need to laptop to access it. I am sure he probably uses it for virtualization and other ways as well but we just didn t have time for that discussion. Also a mini-pc can set you back anywhere from 25 to 40k depending on the mini-pc and the RAM and the SSD. And you need either a lappy or an Raspberry Pi with some kinda visual display to interact with the mini-pc. While he did share some of the things, there probably could have been a far longer interaction just on that but probably best left for another day.
Now at my end, the system I had bought is about 5-6 years old. At that time it only had 6 USB 2.0 drives and 2 USB 3.0 (A) drives.
The above image does tell of the various form factors. One of the other things is that I found the pendrive and its connectors to be extremely fiddly. It took me number of times fiddling around with it when I was finally able to put in and able to access the pen drive partitions. Unfortunately, was unable to see/use systemrescue but Knoppix booted up fine. I mounted the partitions briefly to see where is what and sure enough /dev/sda8 showed my /home files and folders. Unmounted it, then used $fsck -y /dev/sda8 and back in business.
This concludes what happened.
Updates Quite a bit was left out on the original post, part of which I didn t know and partly stuff which is interesting and perhaps need a blog post of their own. It s sad I won t be part of debconf otherwise who knows what else I would have come to know.
One of the interesting bits that I came to know about last week is the Alibaba T-Head T-Head TH1520 RISC-V CPU and saw it first being demoed on a laptop and then a standalone tablet. The laptop is an interesting proposition considering Alibaba opened up it s chip thing only couple of years ago. To have an SOC within 18 months and then under production for lappies and tablets is practically unheard of especially of a newbie/startup. Even AMD took 3-4 years for its first chip.It seems they (Alibaba) would be parceling them out by quarter end 2023 and another 1000 pieces/Units first quarter next year, while the scale is nothing compared to the behemoths, I think this would be more as a matter of getting feedback on both the hardware and software. The value proposition is much better than what most of us get, at least in India. For example, they are doing a warranty for 5 years and also giving spare parts. RISC-V has been having a lot of resurgence in China in part as its an open standard and partly development will be far cheaper and faster than trying x86 or x86-64. If you look into both the manufacturers, due to monopoly, both of them now give 5-8% increment per year, and if you look back in history, you would find that when more chips were in competition, they used to give 15-20% performance increment per year.
2. While Vishal did share with me what he used and the various ways he uses the mini-pc, I did have a fun speculating on what he could use it. As shared by Romane as his case has shared, the first thing to my mind was backups. Filesystems are notorious in the sense they can be corrupted or can be prone to be corrupted very easily as can be seen above . Backups certainly make a lot of sense, especially rsync.
The other thing that came to my mind was having some sort of A.I. and chat server. IIRC, somebody has put quite a bit of open source public domain data in debian servers that could be used to run either a chatbot or an A.I. or both and use that similar to how chatGPT but with much limited scope than what chatgpt uses. I was also thinking a media server which Vishal did share he does. I may probably visit him sometime to see what choices he did and what he learned in the process, if anything.
Another thing that could be done is just take a dump of any of commodity markets or any markets and have some sort of predictive A.I. or whatever. A whole bunch of people have scammed thousands of Indian users on this, but if you do it on your own and for your own purposes to aid you buy and sell stocks or whatever commodity you may fancy. After all, nowadays markets themselves are virtual.
While Vishal s mini-pc doesn t have any graphics, if it was an AMD APU mini-pc, something like this he could have hosted games in the way of thick server, thin client where all graphics processing happens on the server rather than the client. With virtual reality I think the case for the same case could be made or much more. The only problem with VR/AR is that we don t really have mass-market googles, eye pieces or headset. The only notable project that Google has/had in that place is the Google VR Cardboard headset and the experience is not that great or at least was not that great few years back when I could hear and experience the same. Most of the VR headsets say for example the Meta Quest 2 is for around INR 44k/- while Quest 3 is INR 50k+ and officially not available. As have shared before, the holy grail of VR would be when it falls below INR 10k/- so it becomes just another accessory, not something you really have to save for. There also isn t much content on that but then that is also the whole chicken or egg situation. This again is a non-stop discussion as so much has been happening in that space it needs its own blog post/article whatever.
Till later.
Kaalkoot
This post would be mature and would talk about death and other things. So if there are young kids or whatever kindly refrain from reading it.
Just saw this series in 2 days. In a way the series encompasses all that which is wrong in India and partly the World perhaps. IMDB describes it as A police officer must deal with society s and his mother s pressure to marry, as well as frequent bullying and pressure from his superiors. But that hardly does justice to either the story or the script or the various ebbs and flows it takes. A very bit part of the series of the series is about patriarchy and the various forms it takes. It tells how we would use women and then throw them, many a times by willing relatives who want to save face . And it s so many ways and so many times that people do not even pay attention. I will not share the story as it needs to be experienced as well as the many paths the story takes as well as many paths it could have taken.
What is remarkable about this series is that everyone is grey apart from the women who are victims in all of these. Even our hero, the protagonist uses it to take advantage of a woman. There are multiple stories and timelines that are just touched upon. For e.g. curing the gay and boasting he has cured many guys and now have their married with families. How many families suffered god only knows, both sexes dissatisfied At the end of the series while a slightly progressive end is shown, in reality you are left wondering whether the decision taken by the protagonist and the woman having just no agency. The hero knowing he is superior to her because of her perceived weakness. A deep-rooted malaise that is difficult to break out of. His father too and the relationship the hero longs for to have with his father who is no more. He does share some of his feelings with his mum, which touches the cord of probably every child whose mother father left them early and all those things they wanted to talk or would have chatted out if they knew this would be the last conversation they will ever have with them. Couldn t even say sorry for all the wrongs and the pain we have given them. There are just too many layers in the webseries that I would need to see it a few times to be aware of. I could sense the undercurrents but sometimes you need to see such series or movies multiple times to understand them or it could simply be the case of me being just too thick. There are also poems and poems as we know may have multiple meanings and is or can be more contextual to the person reading it rather than the creator.
At the end, while it does show a positive end, in reality I feel there is no redemption for us. I am talking about men. We are too proud, too haughty and too insecure. And if things don t go the way we want, it s the women who pay the price
I am not going to talk about any news either about Manipur or anywhere else because hate crimes have become normal. An RPF personnel plans, and goes from coach to coach to find Muslims and shoot them and then say only the tallest leaders in RW should be voted for. A mob then burns down Muslim s homes and businesses, all par for the course. The mentally unstable moniker taken right from the American far-right notebook.
The Americans have taken it much further than anyone else using open carry and stand your ground, laws to make blacks afraid and going further. I don t really wanna go down that route as it s a whole another pandora s box and what little I have read tells me it starts from the very beginning when the European settlers invaded America and took indigenous people s lands and giving it the moniker of Wild West . Just too much to deal with.
Mental Health
But these spate of bad news, of murders, rapes and whatnot does take a toll on the mental health of people. Take this tweet as instance
I think the above tweet is an expression that is felt by many Indians, whatsoever their religion might be. Most of them unable to express it as many have responsibilities in which they are the only caretakers or the only earner in the family. So even though, we have huge inflation especially in foods and whatnot the daily struggle to put food on the table extinguishes everything else.
And for those who may want to go through for whatever reasons, there is nothing like MAID in India. There was a good debate that I saw few months ago about it, and I think both the for and against miss a very crucial point. People have their own idea or imagination of what dignity in living as well as dignity of dying. I was seeing some videos of NHS doctors (UK) where many doctors couldn t do anything as their patients died as they couldn t pay bills for heating. Many of the patients wanted the doctors to end their suffering. The case against it is that people should reach out and have community services. While that is a great theory, practically it is difficult. Whether it is in dense populated area like Pune (population around 10 odd million) or the whole country of Japan which is heavily being depopulated, in both the extreme scenarios the access to mental health is and would be low. And even if there is someway that the Government, the community, business community etc. come altogether and solve it, it just shifts the problem. All the shit, our fears, our uncertainties, our doubts we unload on the medical health professional but where do they go to get rid of it. It s a vicious circular problem. I did read somewhere that mental health professionals are four times prone to suicide than other doctors. And all emergency care professionals like firefighters and whatnot are again 4 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. How much those stats are true, have no clue as again most of such kinds of data is not collected by NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) in India. In fact, NCRB often describes such deaths as accidental deaths as otherwise the person would be termed as loser or something else. Even in and after death, people are worried about labels. But that I guess is what s it all about. I do not know but do guess most of the 160 odd countries would have similar issues and most of them keep quiet about it.
Till later
Utkarsh Gupta
did 0.0h (out of 0h assigned and 25.5h from previous period), thus carrying over 25.5h to the next month.
Evolution of the situation
In June, we have released 40 DLAs.
Notable security updates in June included mariadb-10.3, openssl, and golang-go.crypto. The mariadb-10.3 package was synchronized with the latest upstream maintenance release, version 10.3.39. The openssl package was patched to correct several flaws with certificate validation and with object identifier parsing. Finally, the golang-go.crypto package was updated to address several vulnerabilities, and several associated Go packages were rebuilt in order to properly incorporate the update.
LTS contributor Sylvain has been hard at work with some behind-the-scenes improvements to internal tooling and documentation. His efforts are helping to improve the efficiency of all LTS contributors and also helping to improve the quality of their work, making our LTS updates more timely and of higher quality.
LTS contributor Lee Garrett began working on a testing framework specifically for Samba. Given the critical role which Samba plays in many deployments, the tremendous impact which regressions can have in those cases, and the unique testing requirements of Samba, this work will certainly result in increased confidence around our Samba updates for LTS.
LTS contributor Emilio Pozuelo Monfort has begun preparatory work for the upcoming Firefox ESR version 115 release. Firefox ESR (and the related Thunderbird ESR) requires special work to maintain up to date in LTS. Mozilla do not release individual patches for CVEs, and our policy is to incorporate new ESR releases from Mozilla into LTS. Most updates are minor updates, but once a year Mozilla will release a major update as they move to a new major version for ESR. The update to a new major ESR version entails many related updates to toolchain and other packages. The preparations that Emilio has begun will ensure that once the 115 ESR release is made, updated packages will be available in LTS with minimal delay.
Another highlight of behind-the-scenes work is our Front Desk personnel. While we often focus on the work which results in published package updates, much work is also involved in reviewing new vulnerabilities and triaging them (i.e., determining if they affect one or more packages in LTS and then determining the severity of those which are applicable). These intrepid contributors (Emilio Pozuelo Monfort, Markus Koschany, Ola Lundqvist, Sylvain Beucler, and Thorsten Alteholz for the month of June) reviewed dozens of vulnerabilities and made decisions about how those vulnerabilities should be dealt with.
Back in Cambridge for a point release weekend. Lots of people turning up - it comes to something when large monitors, a desktop machine require two or three trips to the car and there's still a crate of leads to go.As ever, lots of banter - computer renovations and updates were done yesterday - if they hadn't been, I'd have had at least another expert engineer on hand.This is *definitely* the place to be rather than at the other end of an IRC chat.This is *not* the release for Debian Bookworm: that will be on June 10th/11th - likely to be the same personnel, same place. There was a release of Debian Bookworm RC2 media yesterday incorporating fixes up to date.
Department of Education confirms 12,544 Ukrainian pupils currently enrolled in Irish schools
#GreensInGovernment
The Department of Education can confirm that as of 1 November, 12,544 Ukrainian pupils have been enrolled in schools across Ireland. Out of that figure, 7,948 of these pupils have been accommodated in primary schools while 4,596 pupils have enrolled in post-primary schools.
To assist with the transition of Ukrainian refugees and their families into Irish schools Regional Education and Language Teams (REALT) continue to operate, hosted by the 16 regional education and training boards around Ireland and staffed by regionally based education support personnel.
These teams are ensuring that clear, accessible information flows are in place between schools, local education support services and national support structures in relation to people arriving from Ukraine.
Information for parents in Ukrainian and Russian on accessing school places is available on gov.ie/Ukraine.
The Department will continue to publish figures on the enrolment of Ukrainian children each month.
Politics
I have been reading books, both fiction and non-fiction for a long long time. My first book was a comic most probably when I was down with Malaria when I was a kid. I must be around 4-5 years old. Over the years, books have given me great joy and I continue to find nuggets of useful information, both in fiction as well as non-fiction books. So here s to sharing something and how that can lead you to a rabbit hole. This entry would be a bit NSFW as far as language is concerned.
NYPD Red 5 by James Patterson First of all, have no clue as to why James Patterson s popularity has been falling. He used to be right there with Lee Child and others, but not so much now. While I try to be mysterious about books, I would give a bit of heads-up so people know what to expect. This is probably more towards the Adult crowd as there is a bit of sex as well as quite a few grey characters. The NYPD Red is a sort of elite police task force that basically is for celebrities. In the book series, they do a lot of ass-kissing (figuratively more than literally).
Now the reason I have always liked fiction is that however wild the assumption or presumption is, it does have somewhere a grain of truth. And each and every time I read a book or two, that gets cemented. One of the statements in the book told something about how 9/11 took a lot of police personnel out of the game. First, there were a number of policemen who were patrolling the Two Towers, so they perished literally during the explosion. Then there were policemen who were given the cases to close the cases (bring the cases to conclusion). When you are investigating your own brethren or even civilians who perished 9/11 they must have experienced emotional trauma and no outlet. Mental health even in cops is the same and given similar help as you and me (i.e. next to none.) But both of these were my assumptions. The only statement that was in the book was they lost a lot of bench strength. Even NYFD (New York Fire Department). This led me to me to With Crime At Record Lows, Should NYC Have Fewer Cops? This is more right-wing sentiment and in fact, there have been calls to defund the police. This led me to https://cbcny.org/ and one specific graph. Unfortunately, this tells the story from 2010-2022 but not before. I was looking for data from around 1999 to 2005 because that will tell whether or not it happened.
Then I remembered reading in newspapers the year or two later how 9/11 had led NYC to recession. I looked up online and for sure NY was booming before 9/11. One can argue that NYC could come down and that is pretty much possible, everything that goes up comes down, it s a law of nature but it would have been steady rather than abrupt. And once you are in recession, the first thing to go is personnel. So people both from NYPD and NYFD were let go, even though they were needed the most then. As you can see, a single statement in a book can take you to places & time literally.
Edit: Addition 11th September There were quite a few people who also died from New York Port Authority and they also lost quite a number of people directly and indirectly and did a lot of patrolling of the water bodies near NYC. Later on, even in their department, there were a lot of early retirements.
Kosovo
A couple of days back I had a look at the Debconf 2023 BOF that was done in Kosovo. One of the interesting things that happened during the BOF is when a woman participant chimed in and asks India to recognize Kosovo. Immediately it triggered me and I opened the Kosovo Wikipedia page to get some understanding of the topic. Reading up on it, came to know Russia didn t agree and doesn t recognize Kosovo. Mr. Modi likes Putin and India imports a lot of its oil from Russia. Unrelatedly, but still useful, we rejected to join IPEF. Earlier, we had rejected China s BRI. India has never been as vulnerable as she is now. Our foreign balance has reached record lows. Now India has been importing quite a bit of Russian crude and has been buying arms and ammunition from them. We are also scheduled to buy a couple of warships and submarines etc. We even took arms and ammunition from them on lease. So we can t afford that they are displeased with India. Even though Russia has more than friendly relations with both China and Pakistan. At the same time, the U.S. is back to aiding Pakistan which the mainstream media in India refuses to even cover. And to top all of this, we have the Chip 4 Alliance but that needs its own article, truth be told but we will do with a paragraph
Edit Addition 11th September Seems Kosovo isn t unique in that situation, there are 3-4 states like that. A brief look at worldpopulationreview tells you there are many more.
Chip 4 Alliance
For almost a decade I have been screaming about this on my blog as well as everywhere that chip fabrication is a national security thing. And for years, most people deny it. And now we have chip 4 alliance. Now to understand this, you have to understand that China for almost a decade, somewhere around 2014 or so came up with something called the big fund . Now one can argue one way or the other how successful the fund has been, but it has, without doubt, created ripples so strong that the U.S., Taiwan, Japan, and probably South Korea will join and try to stem the tide. Interestingly, in this grouping, South Korea is the weakest in the statements and what they have been saying. Within the group itself, there is a lot of tension and China would use that and there are a number of unresolved issues between the three countries that both China & Russia would exploit. For e.g. the Comfort women between South Korea and Japan. Or the 1985 Accord Agreement between Japan and the U.S.
Now people need to understand this, this is not just about China but also about us. If China has 5-6x times India s GDP and their research budget is at the very least 100x times what India spends, how do you think we will be self-reliant? Whom are we fooling? Are we not tired of fooling ourselves In diplomacy, countries use leverage. Sadly, we let go of some of our most experienced negotiators in 2014 and since then have been singing in the wind
Accessibility, Jitsi, IRC, Element-Desktop
The Wikipedia page on Accessibility says the following Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both direct access (i.e. unassisted) and indirect access meaning compatibility with a person s assistive technology. Now IRC or Internet Relay Chat has been accessible for a long time. I know of even blind people who have been able to navigate IRC quite effortlessly as there has been a lot of work done to make sure all the joints speak to each other so people with one or more disabilities still can use, and contribute without an issue. It does help that IRC and many clients have been there since the 1970s so most of them have had more than enough time to get all the bugs fixed and both text-to-speech and speech-to-text work brilliantly on IRC. Newer software like Jitsi or for that matter Telegram is lacking those features. A few days ago, discovered on Telegram I was shared that Samsung Voice input is also able to do the same. The Samsung Voice Input works wonder as it translates voice to text, I have not yet tried the text-to-speech but perhaps somebody can and they can share whatever the results can be one way or the other. I have tried element-desktop both on the desktop as well as mobile phone and it has been disappointing, to say the least. On the desktop, it is unruly and freezes once in a while, and is buggy. The mobile version is a little better but that s not saying a lot. I prefer the desktop version as I can use the full-size keyboard. The bug I reported has been there since its Riot days. I had put up a bug report even then. All in all, yesterday was disappointing
My current server is somewhat aged. I bought it new in July 2014 with a 6-core Xeon E5-2630L, 32 GB RAM and 4x 3.5 hot-swappable drives. Gladly I had the opportunity to extend the memory to 128 GB RAM at no additional cost by using memory from my ex-employer. It also has 4x 2 TB WD Red HDDs with 5400 rpm hooked up to the SATA backplane, but unfortunately only two of them are SATA-3 with 6 Gbit/s.
The new server is a used/refurbished Supermicro server with 2x 14-core Xeon E5-2683 and 256 GB RAM and 4x 3.5 hot-swappable drives. It also came with a Hardware-RAID SAS/SATA 8-port controller with BBU. I also ordered two slim drive kits (MCP-220-81504-0N & MCP-220-81506-0N) to be able to use 2x 3.5 slots for rotational HDDs as a cheap storage. Right now I added 2x 128 GB Supermicro SATA DOMs, 4x WD Red 4 TB SSDs and a Sonnet Fusion 4 4 Silent and 4x 1 TB Seagate Firecuda 520 NVMe disks.
And here the issue starts:
The NVMe should be capable of 4-5 GB/s, but they are connected to a PCIe 3.0 x16 port via the Sonnet Fusion 4 4, which itself features a PCIe bridge, so bifurbacation is not necessary.
When doing some tests with bonnie++ I get around 1 GB/s transfer rates out of a RAID10 setup with all 4 NVMes. In fact, regardless of the RAID level there are only transfer rates of about 1 1.2 GB/s with bonnie++. (All software RAIDs with mdadm.)
But also when constructing a RAID each NVMe gives around 300-600 MB/s in sync speed except for one exception: RAID1.
Regardless of how many NVMe disks in a RAID1 setup the sync speed is up to 2.5 GB/s for each of the NVMe disks. So the lower transfer rates with bonnie++ or other RAID levels shouldn t be limited by bus speed nor by CPU speed. Alas, atop shows upto 100% CPU usage for all tests. I even tested
In my understanding RAID10 should perform similar to RAID1 in terms of syncing and better and while bonnie++ tests (up to 2x write and 4x read speed compared to a single disk).
For the bonnie++ tests I even made some tests that are available here. You can find the test parameters listed in the hostname column: Baldur is the hostname, then followed by the layout (near-2, far-2, offset-2), chunk size and concurrency of bonnie++. In the end there was no big impact of the chunk size of the RAID.
So, now I m wondering what the reason for the slow performance of those 4x NVMe disks is? Bus speed of the PCIe 3.0 x16 shouldn t be the cause, because I assume that the software RAID will need to transfer the blocks in RAID1 as well as in RAID10 over the bus. Same goes for the CPU: the amount of CPU work should be roughly the same for RAID1 and for RAID10. RAID10 should even have an advantage because the blocks only need to be synced to 2 disks in a stripe set.
Bonnie++ tests are a different topic for sure. But when testing reading with dd from the md-devices I only get around 1-1.5 GB/s as well. Even when using LVM RAID instead of LVM on top of md RAID.
All NVMe disks are already set to 4k and IO scheduler is set to mq-deadline.
Is there anything I could do to improve the performance of the NVMe disks? On the other head, pure transfer rates are not that important to a server that runs a dozen of VMs. Here the improved IOPS performance over rotation disks is a clear performance gain. But I m still curious if I could get maybe 2 GB/s out of a RAID10 setup with the NVMe disks. Then again having two independent RAID1 setups for MariaDB and for PostgreSQL databases might be a better choice over a single RAID10 setup?
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants Issac Newton, 1675. Although it should be credited to 12th century Bernard of Chartres. You will know why I have shared this, probably at the beginning of Civil Aviation history itself.
Comments on the BBI court case which happened in Kenya, then and the subsequent appeal.
I am not going to share much about the coverage of the BBI appeal as Gautam Bhatia has shared quite eloquently his observations, both on the initial case and the subsequent appeal which lasted 5 days in Kenya and was shown all around the world thanks to YouTube. One of the interesting points which stuck with me was that in Kenya, sign language is one of the official languages. And in fact, I was able to read quite a bit about the various sign languages which are there in Kenya. It just boggles the mind that there are countries that also give importance to such even though they are not as rich or as developed as we call developed economies. I probably might give more space and give more depth as it does carry some important judicial jurisprudence which is and which will be felt around the world. How does India react or doesn t is probably another matter altogether But yes, it needs it own space, maybe after some more time.
Report on Standing Committee on IP Regulation in India and the false promises.
Again, I do not want to take much time in sharing details about what the report contains, as the report can be found here. I have uploaded it on WordPress, in case of an issue. An observation on the same subject can be found here. At least, to me and probably those who have been following the IP space as either using/working on free software or even IP would be aware that the issues shared have been known since 1994. And it does benefit the industry rather than the country. This way, the rent-seekers, and monopolists win. There is ample literature that shared how rich countries had weak regulation for decades and even centuries till it was advantageous for them to have strong IP. One can look at the history of Europe and the United States for it. We can also look at the history of our neighbor China, which for the last 5 decades has used some provision of IP and disregarded many others. But these words are of no use, as the policies done and shared are by the rich for the rich.
Fighting between two State Borders
Ironically or because of it, two BJP ruled states Assam and Mizoram fought between themselves. In which 6 policemen died. While the history of the two states is complicated it becomes a bit more complicated when one goes back into Assam and ULFA history and comes to know that ULFA could not have become that powerful until and unless, the Marwaris, people of my clan had not given generous donations to them. They thought it was a good investment, which later would turn out to be untrue. Those who think ULFA has declined, or whatever, still don t have answers to this or this.
Interestingly, both the Chief Ministers approached the Home Minister (Mr. Amit Shah) of BJP. Mr. Shah was supposed to be the Chanakya but in many instances, including this one, he decided to stay away. His statement was on the lines of you guys figure it out yourself.
There is a poem that was shared by the late poet Rahat Indori. I am sharing the same below as an image and will attempt to put a rough translation.
kisi ke baap ka hindustan todi hain Rahat Indori
Poets, whether in India or elsewhere, are known to speak truth to power and are a bit of a rebel. This poem by Rahat Indori is provocatively titled Kisi ke baap ka Hindustan todi hai , It challenges the majoritarian idea that Hindustan/India only belongs to the majoritarian religion. He also challenges as well as asserts at the same time that every Indian citizen, regardless of whatever his or her religion might be, is an Indian and can assert India as his home. While the whole poem is compelling in itself, for me what hits home is in the second stanza
:Lagegi Aag to aayege ghat kayi zad me, Yaha pe sirf hamara makan todi hai
The meaning is simple yet subtle, he uses Aag or Fire as a symbol of hate sharing that if hate spreads, it won t be his home alone that will be torched. If one wants to literally understand what he meant, I present to you the cult Russian movie No Escapes or Ogon as it is known in Russian.
If one were to decipher why the Russian film doesn t talk about climate change, one has to view it from the prism of what their leader Vladimir Putin has said and done over the years. As can be seen even in there, the situation is far more complex than one imagines. Although, it is interesting to note that he decried Climate change as man-made till as late as last year and was on the side of Trump throughout his presidency. This was in 2017 as well as perhaps this. Interestingly, there was a change in tenor and note just a couple of weeks back, but that could be only politicking or much more. Statements that are not backed by legislation and application are usually just a whitewash. We would have to wait to see what concrete steps are taken by Putin, Kremlin, and their Duma before saying either way.
Civil Aviation and the broad structure
Civil Aviation is a large topic and I would not be able to do justice to it all in one article/blog post. So, for e.g. I will not be getting into Aircraft (Boeing, Airbus, Comac etc., etc.) or the new electric aircraft as that will just make the blog post long. I will not be also talking about cargo or Visa or many such topics, as all of them actually would and do need their own space. So this would be much more limited to Airports and to some extent airlines, as one cannot survive without the other. The primary reason for doing this is there is and has been a lot of myth-making in India about Civil Aviation in general, whether it has to do with Civil Aviation history or whatever passes as of policy in India.
A little early history
Man has always looked at the stars and envisaged himself or herself as a bird, flying with gay abandon. In fact, there have been many paintings, sculptors who imagined how we would fly. The Steam Engine itself was invented in 82 BCE. But the attempt to fly was done by a certain Monk called Brother Elmer of Malmesbury who attempted the same in 1010., shortly after the birth of the rudimentary steam engine The most famous of all would be Leonardo da Vinci for his amazing sketches of flying machines in 1493. There were a couple of books by Cyrano de Bergerac, apparently wrote two books, both sadly published after his death. Interestingly, you can find both the book and the gentleman in the Project Gutenberg archives. How much of M/s Cyrano s exploits were his own and how much embellished by M/S Curtis, maybe a friend, a lover who knows, but it does give the air of the swashbuckling adventurer of the time which many men aspired to in that time. So, why not an author???
L Autre Monde: ou les tats et Empires de la Lune (Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon) and Les tats et Empires du Soleil (The States and Empires of the Sun). These two French books apparently had a lot of references to flying machines. Both of them were authored by Cyrano de Bergerac. Both of these were sadly published after his death, one apparently in 1656 and the other one a couple of years later.
By the 17th century, while it had become easy to know and measure the latitude, measuring longitude was a problem. In fact, it can be argued and probably successfully that India wouldn t have been under British rule or UK wouldn t have been a naval superpower if it hadn t solved the longitudinal problem. Over the years, the British Royal Navy suffered many blows, one of the most famous or infamous among them might be the Scilly naval disaster of 1707 which led to the death of 2000 odd British Royal naval personnel and led to Queen Anne, who was ruling over England at that time via Parliament and called it the Longitude Act which basically was an open competition for anybody to fix the problem and carried the prize money of 20,000. While nobody could claim the whole prize, many did get smaller amounts depending upon the achievements.
The best and the nearest who came was John Harrison who made the first sea-watch and with modifications, over the years it became miniaturized to a pocket-sized Marine chronometer although, I doubt the ones used today look anything in those days. But if that had not been invented, we surely would have been freed long ago. The assumption being that the East India Company would have dashed onto rocks so many times, that the whole exercise would have been futile. The downside of it is that maritime trade routes that are being used today and the commerce would not have been. Neither would have aircraft or space for that matter, or at the very least delayed by how many years or decades, nobody knows. If one wants to read about the Longitudinal problem, one can get the famous book Longitude .
In many mythologies, including Indian and Arabian tales, in which we had the flying carpet which would let its passengers go from one place to the next. Then there is also mention of Pushpak Vimana in ancient texts, but those secrets remain secrets. Think how much foreign exchange India could make by both using it and exporting the same worldwide. And I m being serious. There are many who believe in it, but sadly, the ones who know the secret don t seem to want India s progress. Just think of the carbon credits that India could have, which itself would make India a superpower. And I m being serious.
Western Ideas and Implementation.
Even in the late and early 18th century, there were many machines that were designed to have controlled flight, but it was only the Wright Flyer that was able to demonstrate a controlled flight in 1903. The ones who came pretty close to what the Wrights achieved were the people by the name of Cayley and Langley. They actually studied what the pioneers had done. They looked at what Otto Lilienthal had done, as he had done a lot of hang-gliding and put a lot of literature in the public domain then.
Furthermore, they also consulted Octave Chanute. The whole system and history of the same are a bit complicated, but it does give a window to what happened then. So, it won t be wrong to say that whatever the Wright Brothers accomplished would probably not have been possible or would have taken years or maybe even decades if that literature and experiments, drawings, etc. in the commons were not available. So, while they did experimentation, they also looked at what other people were doing and had done which was in public domain/commons.
They also did a lot of testing, which gave them new insights. Even the propulsion system they used in the 1903 flight was a design by Nicolaus Otto. In fact, the Aircraft would not have been born if the Chinese had not invented kites in the early sixth century A.D. One also has to credit Issac Newton because of the three laws of motion, again without which none of the above could have happened. What is credited to the Wilbur brothers is not just they made the Kitty Hawk, they also made it commercial as they sold it and variations of the design to the American Air Force and also made a pilot school where pilots were trained for warfighting. 119 odd pilots came out of that school. The Wrights thought that air supremacy would end the war early, but this turned out to be a false hope.
Competition and Those Magnificent Men and their flying machines
One of the first competitions to unlock creativity was the English Channel crossing offer made by Daily Mail. This was successfully done by the Frenchman Louis Bl riot. You can read his account here. There were quite a few competitions before World War 1 broke out. There is a beautiful, humorous movie that does dedicate itself to imagining how things would have gone in that time. In fact, there have been two movies, this one and an earlier movie called Sky Riders made many a youth dream. The other movie sadly is not yet in the public domain, and when it will be nobody knows, but if you see it or even read it, it gives you goosebumps.
World War 1 and Improvements to Aircraft
World War 1 is remembered as the Great War or the War to end all wars in an attempt at irony. It did a lot of destruction of both people and property, and in fact, laid the foundation of World War 2. At the same time, if World War 1 hadn t happened then Airpower, Plane technology would have taken decades. Even medicine and medical techniques became revolutionary due to World War 1. In order to be brief, I am not sharing much about World War 1 otherwise that itself would become its own blog post. And while it had its heroes and villains who, when, why could be tackled perhaps another time.
The Guggenheim Family and the birth of Civil Aviation
If one has to credit one family for the birth of the Civil Aviation, it has to be the Guggenheim family. Again, I would not like to dwell much as much of their contribution has already been noted here.
There are quite a few things still that need to be said and pointed out. First and foremost is the fact that they made lessons about flying from grade school to college and afterward till college and beyond which were in the syllabus, whereas in the Indian schooling system, there is nothing like that to date. Here, in India, even in Engineering courses, you don t have much info. Unless until you go for professional Aviation or Aeronautical courses and most of these courses cost a bomb so either the very rich or the very determined (with loans) only go for that, at least that s what my friends have shared. And there is no guarantee you will get a job after that, especially in today s climate.
Even their fund, grants, and prizes which were given to people for various people so that improvements could be made to the United States Civil Aviation. This, as shared in the report/blog post shared, was in response to what the younger child/brother saw as Europe having a large advantage both in Military and Civil Aviation. They also made several grants in several Universities which would not only do notable work during their lifetime but carry on the legacy researching on different aspects of Aircraft.
One point that should be noted is that Europe was far ahead even then of the U.S. which prompted the younger son. There had already been talks of civil/civilian flights on European routes, although much different from what either of us can imagine today. Even with everything that the U.S. had going for her and still has, Europe is the one which has better airports, better facilities, better everything than the U.S. has even today. If you look at the lists of the Airports for better value of money or facilities, you would find many Airports from Europe, some from Asia, and only a few from the U.S. even though they are some of the most frequent users of the service. But that debate and arguments I would have to leave for perhaps the next blog post as there is still a lot to be covered between the 1930s, 1950s, and today. The Guggenheims archives does a fantastic job of sharing part of the story till the 1950s, but there is also quite a bit which it doesn t. I will probably start from that in the next blog post and then carry on ahead.
Lastly, before I wind up, I have to share why I felt the need to write, capture and share this part of Aviation history. The plain and simple reason being, many of the people I meet either on the web, on Twitter or even in real life, many of them are just unaware of how this whole thing came about. The unawareness in my fellow brothers and sisters is just shocking, overwhelming. At least, by sharing these articles, I at least would be able to guide them or at least let them know how it all came to be and where things are going and not just be so clueless. Till later.
The Tor Project now has a status page which shows the state of
our major services.
You can check status.torprojet.org for news about major outages
in Tor services, including v3 and v2 onion services, directory
authorities, our website (torproject.org), and the
check.torproject.org tool. The status page also displays outages
related to Tor internal services, like our GitLab instance.
This post documents why we launched
status.torproject.org, how the service was
built, and how it works.
Why a status page
The first step in setting up a service page was to realize we needed
one in the first place. I surveyed internal users at the end of
2020 to see what could be improved, and one of the suggestions that
came up was to "document downtimes of one hour or longer" and
generally improve communications around monitoring. The latter is
still on the sysadmin roadmap, but a status page seemed like a
good solution for the former.
We already have two monitoring tools in the sysadmin team: Icinga
(a fork of Nagios) and Prometheus, with Grafana
dashboards. But those are hard to understand for users. Worse, they
also tend to generate false positives, and don't clearly show users
which issues are critical.
In the end, a manually curated dashboard provides important usability
benefits over an automated system, and all major organisations have
one.
Picking the right tool
It wasn't my first foray in status page design. In another life, I had
setup a status page using a tool called Cachet. That was already
a great improvement over the previous solutions, which were to use
first a wiki and then a blog to post updates. But Cachet is a complex
Laravel app, which also requires a web browser to update. It
generally requires more maintenance than what we'd like, needing silly
things like a SQL database and PHP web server.
So when I found cstate, I was pretty excited. It's basically a
theme for the Hugo static site generator, which means that it's a
set of HTML, CSS, and a sprinkle of Javascript. And being based on
Hugo means that the site is generated from a set of Markdown
files and the result is just plain HTML that can be hosted on any web
server on the planet.
Deployment
At first, I wanted to deploy the site through GitLab CI, but at
that time we didn't have GitLab pages set up. Even though we do have
GitLab pages set up now, it's not (yet) integrated with our
mirroring infrastructure. So, for now, the source is hosted and built
in our legacy git and Jenkins services.
It is nice to have the content hosted in a git repository: sysadmins can just
edit Markdown in the git repository and push to deploy changes, no web browser
required. And it's trivial to setup a local environment to preview changes:
hugo serve --baseUrl=http://localhost/
firefox https://localhost:1313/
Only the sysadmin team and gitolite administrators have access to the
repository, at this stage, but that could be improved if
necessary. Merge requests can also be issued on the GitLab
repository and then pushed by authorized personnel later on,
naturally.
Availability
One of the concerns I have is that the site is hosted inside our normal mirror
infrastructure. Naturally, if an outage occurs there, the site goes down. But
I figured it's a bridge we'll cross when we get there. Because it's so easy to
build the site from scratch, it's actually trivial to host a copy of the site
on any GitLab server, thanks to the .gitlab-ci.yml file shipped (but not
currently used) in the repository. If push comes to shove, we can just publish
the site elsewhere and point DNS there.
And, of course, if DNS fails us, then we're in trouble, but that's the
situation anyway: we can always register a new domain name for the status page
when we need to. It doesn't seem like a priority at the moment.
Comments and feedback are welcome!
Host to Kanchenjunga, the world s third-highest mountain peak and the endangered Red Panda, Sikkim is a state in northeastern India. Nestled between Nepal, Tibet (China), Bhutan and West Bengal (India), the state offers a smorgasbord of cultures and cuisines. That said, it s hardly surprising that the old spice route meanders through western Sikkim, connecting Lhasa with the ports of Bengal. Although the latter could also be attributed to cardamom (kali elaichi), a perennial herb native to Sikkim, which the state is the second-largest producer of, globally. Lastly, having been to and lived in India, all my life, I can confidently say Sikkim is one of the cleanest & safest regions in India, making it ideal for first-time backpackers.
Brief History
17th century: The Kingdom of Sikkim is founded by the Namgyal dynasty and ruled by Buddhist priest-kings known as the Chogyal.
1890: Sikkim becomes a princely state of British India.
1947: Sikkim continues its protectorate status with the Union of India, post-Indian-independence.
1973: Anti-royalist riots take place in front of the Chogyal's palace, by Nepalis seeking greater representation.
1975: Referendum leads to the deposition of the monarchy and Sikkim joins India as its 22nd state.
Languages
Official: English, Nepali, Sikkimese/Bhotia and Lepcha
Though Hindi and Nepali share the same script (Devanagari), they are not mutually intelligible. Yet, most people in Sikkim can understand and speak Hindi.
Ethnicity
Nepalis: Migrated in large numbers (from Nepal) and soon became the dominant community
Bhutias: People of Tibetan origin. Major inhabitants in Northern Sikkim.
Lepchas: Original inhabitants of Sikkim
Food
Tibetan/Nepali dishes (mostly consumed during winter)
Thukpa: Noodle soup, rich in spices and vegetables. Usually contains some form of meat. Common variations: Thenthuk and Gyathuk
Momos: Steamed or fried dumplings, usually with a meat filling.
Saadheko: Spicy marinated chicken salad.
Gundruk Soup: A soup made from Gundruk, a fermented leafy green vegetable.
Sinki : A fermented radish tap-root product, traditionally consumed as a base for soup and as a pickle. Eerily similar to Kimchi.
While pork and beef are pretty common, finding vegetarian dishes is equally easy.
Staple: Dal-Bhat with Subzi. Rice is a lot more common than wheat (rice) possibly due to greater carb content and proximity to West Bengal, India s largest producer of Rice.
Good places to eat in Gangtok
Hamro Bhansa Ghar, Nimtho (Nepali)
Taste of Tibet
Dragon Wok (Chinese & Japanese)
Buddhism in Sikkim
Bayul Demojong (Sikkim), is the most sacred Land in the Himalayas as per the belief of the Northern Buddhists and various religious texts.
Sikkim was blessed by Guru Padmasambhava, the great Buddhist saint who visited Sikkim in the 8th century and consecrated the land.
However, Buddhism is said to have reached Sikkim only in the 17th century with the arrival of three Tibetan monks viz. Rigdzin Goedki Demthruchen, Mon Kathok Sonam Gyaltshen & Rigdzin Legden Je at Yuksom. Together, they established a Buddhist monastery.
In 1642 they crowned Phuntsog Namgyal as the first monarch of Sikkim and gave him the title of Chogyal, or Dharma Raja.
The faith became popular through its royal patronage and soon many villages had their own monastery.
Today Sikkim has over 200 monasteries.
Major monasteries
Rumtek Monastery, 20Km from Gangtok
Lingdum/Ranka Monastery, 17Km from Gangtok
Phodong Monastery, 28Km from Gangtok
Ralang Monastery, 10Km from Ravangla
Tsuklakhang Monastery, Royal Palace, Gangtok
Enchey Monastery, Gangtok
Tashiding Monastery, 35Km from Ravangla
Reaching Sikkim
Gangtok, being the capital, is easiest to reach amongst other regions, by public transport and shared cabs.
About 20 minutes from Siliguri and 4 hours from Gangtok.
Reserved cabs cost about INR 3000. Shared cabs from INR 350.
By Road:
NH10 connects Siliguri to Gangtok
If you can t find buses plying to Gangtok directly, reach Siliguri and then take a cab to Gangtok.
Sikkim Nationalised Transport Div. also runs hourly buses between Siliguri and Gangtok and daily buses on other common routes. They re cheaper than shared cabs.
Wizzride also operates shared cabs between Siliguri/Bagdogra/NJP, Gangtok and Darjeeling. They cost about the same as shared cabs but pack in half as many people in luxury cars (Innova, Xylo, etc.) and are hence more comfortable.
The easiest & most economical way to explore North Sikkim is the 3D/2N package offered by shared-cab drivers.
This includes food, permits, cab rides and accommodation (1N in Lachen and 1N in Lachung)
The accommodation on both nights are at homestays with bare necessities, so keep your hopes low.
In the spirit of sustainable tourism, you ll be asked to discard single-use plastic bottles, so please carry a bottle that you can refill along the way.
Zero Point and Gurdongmer Lake are snow-capped throughout the year
3D/2N Shared-cab Package Itinerary
Day 1
Gangtok (10am) - Chungthang - Lachung (stay)
Day 2
Pre-lunch : Lachung (6am) - Yumthang Valley [12,139ft] - Zero Point - Lachung [15,300ft]
Post-lunch : Lachung - Chungthang - Lachen (stay)
Day 3
Pre-lunch : Lachen (5am) - Kala Patthar - Gurdongmer Lake [16,910ft] - Lachen
Post-lunch : Lachen - Chungthang - Gangtok (7pm)
This itinerary is idealistic and depends on the level of snowfall.
Some drivers might switch up Day 2 and 3 itineraries by visiting Lachen and then Lachung, depending upon the weather.
Areas beyond Lachen & Lachung are heavily militarized since the Indo-China border is only a few miles away.
East Sikkim
Zuluk and Silk Route
Time needed: 2D/1N
Zuluk [9,400ft] is a small hamlet with an excellent view of the eastern Himalayan range including the Kanchenjunga.
Was once a transit point to the historic Silk Route from Tibet (Lhasa) to India (West Bengal).
The drive from Gangtok to Zuluk takes at least four hours. Hence, it makes sense to spend the night at a homestay and space out your trip to Zuluk
Tsomgo Lake and Nathula
Time Needed : 1D
A Protected Area Permit is required to visit these places, due to their proximity to the Chinese border
Located on the Indo-Tibetan border crossing of the Old Silk Route, it is one of the three open trading posts between India and China.
Plays a key role in the Sino-Indian Trade and also serves as an official Border Personnel Meeting(BPM) Point.
May get cordoned off by the Indian Army in event of heavy snowfall or for other security reasons.
West Sikkim
Time needed: 3N/1N
Hostels at Pelling : Mochilerro Ostillo
Itinerary
Day 1: Gangtok - Ravangla - Pelling
Leave Gangtok early, for Ravangla through the Temi Tea Estate route.
Spend some time at the tea garden and then visit Buddha Park at Ravangla
Head to Pelling from Ravangla
Day 2: Pelling sightseeing
Hire a cab and visit Skywalk, Pemayangtse Monastery, Rabdentse Ruins, Kecheopalri Lake, Kanchenjunga Falls.
Day 3: Pelling - Gangtok/Siliguri
Wake up early to catch a glimpse of Kanchenjunga at the Pelling Helipad around sunrise
Head back to Gangtok on a shared-cab
You could take a bus/taxi back to Siliguri if Pelling is your last stop.
Darjeeling
In my opinion, Darjeeling is lovely for a two-day detour on your way back to Bagdogra/Siliguri and not any longer (unless you re a Bengali couple on a honeymoon)
Once a part of Sikkim, Darjeeling was ceded to the East India Company after a series of wars, with Sikkim briefly receiving a grant from EIC for gifting Darjeeling to the latter
Post-independence, Darjeeling was merged with the state of West Bengal.
Reach Darjeeling by noon and check in to your Hostel. I stayed at Hideout.
Spend the evening visiting either a monastery (or the Batasia Loop), Nehru Road and Mall Road.
Grab dinner at Glenary whilst listening to live music.
Day 2:
Wake up early to catch the sunrise and a glimpse of Kanchenjunga at Tiger Hill. Since Tiger Hill is 10km from Darjeeling and requires a permit, book your taxi in advance.
Alternatively, if you don t want to get up at 4am or shell out INR1500 on the cab to Tiger Hill, walk to the Kanchenjunga View Point down Mall Road
Next, queue up outside Keventers for breakfast with a view in a century-old cafe
Get a cab at Gandhi Road and visit a tea garden (Happy Valley is the closest) and the Ropeway. I was lucky to meet 6 other backpackers at my hostel and we ended up pooling the cab at INR 200 per person, with INR 1400 being on the expensive side, but you could bargain.
Get lunch, buy some tea at Golden Tips, pack your bags and hop on a shared-cab back to Siliguri. It took us about 4hrs to reach Siliguri, with an hour to spare before my train.
If you ve still got time on your hands, then check out the Peace Pagoda and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (Toy Train). At INR 1500, I found the latter to be too expensive and skipped it.
Tips and hacks
Download offline maps, especially when you re exploring Northern Sikkim.
Food and booze are the cheapest in Gangtok. Stash up before heading to other regions.
In rural areas and some cafes, you may get to try Rhododendron Wine, made from Rhododendron arboreum a.k.a Gurans. Its production is a little hush-hush since the flower is considered holy and is also the National Flower of Nepal.
If you don t want to invest in a new jacket, boots or a pair of gloves, you can always rent them at nominal rates from your hotel or little stores around tourist sites.
Check the weather of a region before heading there. Low visibility and precipitation can quite literally dampen your experience.
Keep your itinerary flexible to accommodate for rest and impromptu plans.
Shops and restaurants close by 8pm in Sikkim and Darjeeling. Plan for the same.
Carry
a couple of extra pairs of socks (woollen, if possible)
a pair of slippers to wear indoors
a reusable water bottle
an umbrella
a power bank
a couple of tablets of Diamox. Helps deal with altitude sickness
extra clothes and wet bags since you may not get a chance to wash/dry your clothes
a few passport size photographs
Shared-cab hacks
Intercity rides can be exhausting. If you can afford it, pay for an additional seat.
Call shotgun on the drives beyond Lachen and Lachung. The views are breathtaking.
Return cabs tend to be cheaper (WB cabs travelling from SK and vice-versa)
Cost
My median daily expenditure (back when I went to Sikkim in early March 2021) was INR 1350.
This includes stay (bunk bed), food, wine and transit (shared cabs)
In my defence, I splurged on food, wine and extra seats in shared cabs, but if you re on a budget, you could easily get by on INR 1 - 1.2k per day.
For a 9-day trip, I ended up shelling out nearly INR 15k, including 2AC trains to & from Kolkata
Note : Summer (March to May) and Autumn (October to December) are peak seasons, and thereby more expensive to travel around.
Souvenirs and things you should buy
Buddhist souvenirs :
Colourful Prayer Flags (great for tying on bikes or behind car windshields)
Miniature Prayer/Mani Wheels
Lucky Charms, Pendants and Key Chains
Cham Dance masks and robes
Singing Bowls
Common symbols: Om mani padme hum, Ashtamangala, Zodiac signs
The people who are pro-Government and in this case pro-Corporate do not have any success stories that they can share. Hence, most of the time the arguments are that the other are bad. For e.g. quite a few people argue that we don t need farmers, we can just order from restaurant. They have completely disassociated the idea that even then you need farmers as unless the farmers put the seed in, till the soil and wait for the rains or have irrigation you won t get ripe vegetables which then has to be taken out, and somehow sold to the wholesaler from where it comes to the restaurant and then to your plate. Sadly, even the farm-to-fork infographics are so depressingly sad, you want to look away. If you see the infographic you see it is just not non-veg but also vegetarian food grains which go under lot of questionable practices. Even, with such scenarios that is done by corporations our people want to go ahead. I will share stories from other countries which tell how they are doing more.
The Soldier-Farmer
Another sad part of these protests have been soldiers who have been returning their medals. The ones who oppose have the gall to say they should return the cash rewards they got. So just like farmers, seems soldiers also do not need money to survive. They are supposed to live only on air and water. This is after the present Govt. has reduced their pensions after retirement and that too without any discussion
GOI pensions to ex-servicemen
Now I nor anybody else would have minded if these conditions were shared going forward rather than doing it retrospectively. People who usually go to the army are not in it for money but for the adventure and glory they bring. But they do also have a family and have a family responsibility. In most other countries, the soldier and his families are well-looked after. If you know that even after you die, the Government would look after your family, you will do your best. Unfortunately, many veterans in India themselves are asked to help by many war widows as the widows don t get family pensions. The proposal naturally has left many miffed. In fact many of the veterans who used to advise people to join the armed forces now advise young people to pursue civilian life and careers. This is when Indian Army has been ironically having shortage of officers from well over a decade and stresses felt by Army personnel also known for a long time.
Even under this nationalistic Government, if it cannot take care of its soldiers, then forget about others.
India Defence Spending vis-a-vis other countries.
Now it is nobody s argument that India needs to improve its tooth-to-tail ratio but this is the wrong way to go about it. I would probably talk about that some other time as that totally needs its whole place.
Even OROP, which was the mandate of this Government hasn t had been done in full as there are quite a few cases in the Supreme Court. Almost all the cases have been heard and only decisions have to be given which the SC for whatever reason doesn t want to give. They just keep changing the date of the hearing. Nowadays, in many suits/cases, the SC asks for fresh hearings even though all the old records are there. This is a newish phenomena which is being observed in SC. Why is it being done? Your guess is as good as mine. One thing for sure has changed, the SC which used to be citizen-focussed or enabler of human rights and used to be held as a beacon for judicial activism has changed but these are other topics which need their own space.
Update 16/12/2020 The SC recommends setting up a committee to discuss farmer issues. And this is nothing new. This is called death by committee. When there is already so much literature on the subject, including the works done by Swaminathan Commission. There has been 6 reports which do look at farmer issues in a holistic manner. This is the Supreme Court giving an escape route to GOI. They also have abstained from having a whole session citing Covid. This is when the ruling Govt. is putting a massive 1000 crore on a new building on which the SC has put on hold. And even then the GOI went ahead and did a Bhoomi-Pujan (traditional ceremony when making a new construction from scratch.)
Naturally due to the double whammy of both the pension reforms and now the laws to make corporate farming more aggressive has left a deep impact on the soldier-farmer that the state does not think or feel for him.
Even the United States farm-aid eloquently describes how corporate farming has made independent farmers suffer. You read that, and it seems it is as the state of our farmers here in India. Even their average land-holding has dropped a bit. I have shared about the state of farmers in India, in twoblog posts previously. And it is not just farm owners who have had it bad, even farm workers in U.S. The issue may look to be about the pandemic but goes far deeper.
The Israeli Model
The Israelis have always used collective farming and do have a large share in farming there. The old model called Kibbutz is what made Israelis self-sufficient in food and water and actually are world-leaders where they export their services to other nations on the same thing.
France
Just like many other countries, France also seems to have favored farmer co-operatives. Almost 75% of all farmers are in co-operatives.
Italy
The country world-famous for its wines and cheese are made by its co-operatives. In fact co-ops are the buzzword it seems in Italy, more so in Northern Italy.
Asian economies
Even Asian economies, especially East Asian economies by and large have been turning to co-operatives.
Brazil
Now Brazil is almost 40% more than India. In fact, in most of the indices, Brazil beats India handsomely. So one would be forgiven to think that Brazil must have corporate farming. But nothing could be further from the truth. The only downer is that they have high crime in some areas. Otherwise, they are in many ways better than India. In fact, I was surprised a few years ago to learn about Mercsour. I would have to admit though I learned much about Brazil when Debian was holding a debconf about a year back. Otherwise, I had known about the country for number of years but apart from its carnival and samba, hadn t known much about it. I did come to know that most of Latin America also loves spices as much as Indians do. They show that love by using hot sauces. I do one day wanna try one of their sauces to see what makes it tick. I do know they like to barbecuevegetables as much as barbecuing non-veg food. This is going a bit OT but then that s the foodie in me Conclusion
I could have shared more countries which have chosen the co-operative way rather than corporate farming and that is simply because they know what is best for their people and what is best even politically. The new farm laws are neither grounded in farmer s welfare nor anything else. The Govt. has been trying to undermine the farmers for years together. In fact, Madhya Pradesh has openly said that they will not allow farmers from other states to sell in their state. Although, even before these laws there was nothing to restrict the farmer from selling his produce anywhere in the country. Angering the farmers is not good politics as was found sometime back but guessing some lessons need to be re-learned.
One comment though, on social media I have seen many people especially youngsters having no real understanding of what inflation is all about. For e.g. if you ask them how come we are having a sort of record inflation in a technical recession (there has been a contraction, actually) and you see them putting themselves into bigger and bigger ditches. This does explain in part why the BJP wins in elections. If you do more rhetoric, which BJP is good as, rather than educating people than you are bound to win. You don t need plans, you don t need a vision, just rhetoric will do. What more evidence is needed when the economy is and was in a worse shape even before the pandemic and BJP won. I would probably write about that as that again needs lot of background and understanding as well as related terms.
As the United States tries, in fits and starts, to have a meaningful
discussion about long-standing police racism, brutality, overreach,
corruption, and murder, I've realized that my theoretical understanding of
the history of and alternative frameworks for law enforcement is woefully
lacking. Starting with a book by a conservative white guy is not the most
ideal of approaches, but it's what I already had on hand, and it won't be
the last book I read and review on this topic. (Most of my research so
far has been in podcast form. I don't review those here, but I can
recommend Ezra Klein's interviews with
Ta-Nehisi Coates,
Paul Butler, and, most strongly,
sujatha baliga.)
Rise of the Warrior Cop is from 2013 and has had several moments of
fame, no doubt helped by Balko's connections to the conservative and
libertarian right. One of the frustrating facts of US politics is that
critiques of the justice system from the right (and from white men) get
more media attention than critiques from the left. That said, it's a
generally well-respected book on the factual history of the topic, and
police brutality and civil rights are among the points on which I have
stopped-clock agreements with US libertarians.
This book is very, very libertarian.
In my callow youth, I was an ardent libertarian, so I've read a lot of US
libertarian literature. It's a genre with its own conventions that become
obvious when you read enough of it, and Rise of the Warrior Cop
goes through them like a checklist. Use the Roman Republic (never the
Roman Empire) as the starting point for any political discussion, check.
Analyze the topic in the context of pre-revolutionary America, check.
Spend considerable effort on discerning the opinions of the US founders on
the topic since their opinions are always relevant to the modern world,
check. Locate some point in the past (preferably before 1960) where the
political issue was as good as it has ever been, check. Frame all changes
since then as an erosion of rights through government overreach, check.
Present your solution as a return to a previous era of respect for civil
rights, check. Once you start recognizing the genre conventions, their
prevalence in libertarian writing is almost comical.
The framing chapters therefore leave a bit to be desired, but the meat of
the book is a useful resource. Starting with the 1970s and its use as a
campaigning tool by Nixon, Balko traces a useful history of the war on
drugs. And starting with the 1980s, the number of cites to primary
sources and the evidence of Balko's own research increases considerably.
If you want to know how US police turned into military cosplayers with
body armor, heavy weapons, and armored vehicles, this book provides a lot
of context and history.
One of the reasons why I view libertarians as allies of convenience on
this specific issue is that drug legalization and disgust with the war on
drugs have been libertarian issues for decades. Ideologically honest
libertarians (and Balko appears to be one) are inherently skeptical of the
police, so when the police overreach in an area of libertarian interest,
they notice. Balko makes a solid argument, backed up with statistics,
specific programs, legislation, and court cases, that the drug war and its
accompanying lies about heavily-armed drug dealers and their supposed
threat to police officers was the fuel for the growth of SWAT teams,
no-knock search warrants, erosion of legal protections for criminal
defendants, and de facto license for the police to ignore the scope and
sometimes even the existence of warrants.
This book is useful support for the argument that fears for the safety of
officers underlying the militarization of police forces are imaginary.
One telling point that Balko makes repeatedly and backs with statistical
and anecdotal evidence is that the police generally do not use raid
tactics on dangerous criminals. On the contrary, aggressive raids are
more likely to be used on the least dangerous criminals because they're
faster, they're fun for the police (they provide an adrenaline high and
let them play with toys), and they're essentially risk-free. If the
police believe someone is truly dangerous, they're more likely to use
careful surveillance and to conduct a quiet arrest at an unexpected
moment. The middle-of-the-night armed break-ins with battering rams, tear
gas, and flash-bangs are, tellingly, used against the less dangerous
suspects.
This is part of Balko's overall argument that police equipment and tactics
have become untethered from any realistic threat and have become cultural.
He traces an acceleration of that trend to 9/11 and the resulting
obsession with terrorism, which further opened the spigot of military
hardware and "special forces" training. This became a point of
competition between police departments, with small town forces that had
never seen a terrorist and had almost no chance of a terrorist incident
demanding their own armored vehicles. I've encountered this bizarre
terrorism justification personally; one of the reasons my local police
department gave in a public hearing for not having a policy against
shooting at moving vehicles was "but what if terrorism?" I don't believe
there has ever been a local terrorist attack.
SWAT in such places didn't involve the special training or dedicated
personnel of large city forces; instead, it was a part-time duty for
normal police officers, and frequently they were encouraged to practice
SWAT tactics by using them at random for some otherwise normal arrest or
search. Balko argues that those raids were more exciting than normal
police work, leading to a flood of volunteers for that duty and a tendency
to use them as much as possible. That in turn normalizes disconnecting
police tactics from the underlying crime or situational risk.
So far, so good. But despite the information I was able to extract from
it, I have mixed feelings about Rise of the Warrior Cop as a whole.
At the least, it has substantial limitations.
First, I don't trust the historical survey of policing in this book.
Libertarian writing makes for bad history. The constraints of the genre
require overusing only a few points of reference, treating every opinion
of the US founders as holy writ, and tying forward progress to a return to
a previous era, all of which interfere with good analysis. Balko also
didn't do the research for the historical survey, as is clear from the
footnotes. The citations are all to other people's histories, not to
primary sources. He's summarizing other people's histories, and you'll
almost certainly get better history by finding well-respected historians
who cover the same ground. (That said, if you're not familiar with Peel's
policing principles, this is a good introduction.)
Second, and this too is unfortunately predictable in a libertarian
treatment, race rarely appears in this book. If Balko published the same
book today, I'm sure he would say more about race, but even in 2013 its
absence is strange. I was struck while reading by how many examples of
excessive police force were raids on west coast pot farms; yes, I'm sure
that was traumatic, but it's not the demographic I would name as the most
vulnerable to or affected by police brutality. West coast pot growers
are, however, mostly white.
I have no idea why Balko made that choice. Perhaps he thought his target
audience would be more persuaded by his argument if he focused on white
victims. Perhaps he thought it was an easier and less complicated story
to tell. Perhaps, like a lot of libertarians, he doesn't believe racism
has a significant impact on society because it would be a market failure.
Perhaps those were the people who more readily came to mind. But to talk
about police militarization, denial of civil rights, and police brutality
in the United States without putting race at the center of both the
history and the societal effects leaves a gaping hole in the analysis.
Given that lack of engagement, I also am dubious of Balko's policy
prescriptions. His reform suggestions aren't unreasonable, but they stay
firmly in the centrist and incrementalist camp and would benefit white
people more than black people. Transparency, accountability, and cultural
changes are all fine and good, but the cultural change Balko is focused on
is less aggressive arrest tactics, more use of mediation, and better
physical fitness. I would not object to those things (well, maybe the
last, which seemed odd), but we need to have a discussion about police
white supremacist organizations, the prevalence of spousal abuse, and the
police tendency to see themselves not as public servants but as embattled
warriors who are misunderstood by the naive sheep they are defending.
And, of course, you won't find in Rise of the Warrior Cop any
thoughtful wrestling with whether there are alternative approaches to
community safety, whether punitive rather than restorative justice is
effective, or whether crime is a symptom of deeper societal problems we
could address but refuse to. The most radical suggestion Balko has is to
legalize drugs, which is both the predictable libertarian position and, as
we have seen from recent events in the United States, far from the only
problem of overcriminalization.
I understand why this book is so frequently mentioned on-line, and its
author's political views may make it more palatable to some people than a
more race-centered or radical perspective. But I don't think this is the
best or most useful book on police violence that one could read today. I
hope to find a better one in upcoming reviews.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Sorry for not being on blog for sometime, the last few months have been brutal. While I am externally ok, because of the lockdown I sensed major hearing loss. First, I thought it may be a hallucination or something but as it persisted for days, I got myself checked and found out that I got 80% hearing loss in my right ear. How and why I don t know. Is this NIHL or some other kind of hearing loss is yet to be ascertained. I do live what is and used to be one of the busiest roads in the city, now for last few months not so much. On top of it, you have various other noises.
Tinnitus
I also experienced Tinnitus which again I perceived to be a hallucination but found it s not. I have no clue if my eiplepsy has anything to do with hearing loss or both are different. I did discover that while today we know that something like Tinnitus exists, just 10-15 years back, people might mistake it for madness. In a way it is madness because you are constantly hearing sound, music etc. 24 7 , that is enough to drive anybody mad.
During this brief period, did learn what an Otoscope is . I did get audiometry tests done but need to get at least a second or if possible also a third opinion but those will have to wait as the audio clinics are about 8-10 kms. away. In the open-close-open-close environment just makes it impossible to figure out the time, date and get it done. After that is done then probably get a hearing device, probably a Siemens Signia hearing aid. The hearing aids are damn expensive, almost 50k per piece and they probably have a lifetime of about 5-6 years, so it s a bit of a expensive proposition. I also need a second or/and third opinion on the audiometry profile so I know things are correct. All of these things are gonna take time.
Pandemic Situation in India and Testing
Coincidentally, was talking to couple of people about this. It is sad to see that we have the third highest number of covid cases at 1/10th the tests we are doing vis-a-vis U.S.A. According to statistical site ourworldindata , we seem to be testing 0.22 per thousand people compared to 2.28 people per thousand done by United States. Sadly it doesn t give the breakup of the tests, from what I read the PCR tests are better than the antibody tests, a primer shares the difference between the two tests. IIRC, the antibody tests are far cheaper than the swab tests but swab tests are far more accurate as it looks for the virus s genetic material (RNA) . Anyways coming to the numbers, U.S. has a population of roughly 35 crores taking a little bit liberty from numbers given at popclock . India meanwhile has 135 crore or almost four times the population of U.S. and the amount of testing done is 1/10th as shared above. Just goes to share where the GOI priorities lie . We are running out of beds, ventilators and whatever else there is. Whatever resources are there are being used for covid patients and they are being charged a bomb. I have couple of hospitals near my place and the cost of a bed in an isolation ward is upward of INR 100k and if you need a ventilator then add another 50k . And in moment of rarity, the differences between charges of private and public are zero. Meaning there is immense profiteering happening it seems in the medical world. Heck, even the Govt. is on the act where they are charging 18% GST on sanitizers. If this is not looting then I dunno what is.
Example of Medical Bills people have to pay.
China, Nepal & Diplomacy
While everybody today knows how China has intruded and captured quite a part of Ladakh, this wasn t the case when they started in April. That time Ajai Shukla had shared this with the top defence personnel but nothing came of it. Then on May 30th he broke/shared the news with the rest of the world and was immediately branded anti-national, person on Chinese payroll and what not. This is when he and Pravin Sawnhey of Force Magazine had both been warning of the same from last year itself. Pravin, has a youtube channel and had been warning India against Chinese intentions from 2015 and even before that. He had warned repeatedly that our obsession with the Pakistan border meant that we were taking eyes of the border with China which spans almost 2300 odd kms. going all the way to Arunachal Pradesh. A good map which shows the conflict can be found at dw.com which I am sharing/reproducing below India-China Border Areas Copyright DW.com 2020
Note:- I am sharing a neutral party s rendering of the border disputes or somebody who doesn t have much at stake as the two countries have so that things could be looked at little objectively.
The Prime Minister on the other hand, made the comment which made galvanising a made-up word into verb . It means to go without coming in. In fact, several news sites shared the statement told by the Prime Minister and the majority of people were shocked. In fact, there had been reports that he gave the current CDS, General Rawat, a person of his own choosing, a peace of his mind. But what lead to this confrontation in the first place ? I think many pieces are part of that puzzle, one of the pieces are surely the cutting of defense budget for the last 6 years, Even this year, if you look at the budget slashes done in the earlier part of the year when he shared how HAL had to raise loans from the market to pay salaries of its own people. Later he shared how the Govt. was planning to slash the defence budget. Interestingly, he had also shared some of the reasons which reaffirm that it is the only the Govt. which can solve some of the issues/conundrum
First, it must recognize that our firms competing for global orders are up against rivals that are being supported by their home governments with tax and export incentives and infrastructure that almost invariably surpasses India s. Our government must provide its aerospace firms with a level playing field, if not a competitive advantage. The greatest deterrent to growth our companies face is the high cost of capital and lack of access to funds. In several cases, Indian MSMEs have had to turn down offers to build components and assemblies for global OEM supply chains simply because the cost of capital to create the shop floor and train the personnel was too high. This resulted in a loss of business and a missed opportunity for creating jobs and skills. To overcome this, the government could create a sector specific A&D Fund to provide low cost capital quickly to enable our MSMEs to grab fleeting business opportunities. Ajai Shukla, blogpost 13th March 2020 .
And then reporting on 11th May 2020 itself, CDS Gen. Rawat himself commented on saving the budget, they were in poor taste but still he shared what he thought about it. So, at the end of it one part of the story. The other part of the story probably lies in India s relations with its neighbors and lack of numbers in diplomats and diplomacy. So let me cover both the things one by one .
Diplomats, lack of numbers and hence the hands we are dealth with
When Mr. Modi started his first term, he used the term Maximum Governance, Minimum Government but sadly cut those places where it indeed needs more people, one of which is diplomacy. A slightly dated 2012 article/opinion shared writes that India needs to engage with the rest of the world and do with higher number. Cut to 2020 and the numbers more or less remain the same . What Mr. Modi tried to do is instead of using diplomats, he tried to use his charm and hugopolicy for lack of a better term. 6 years later, here we are. After 200 trips abroad, not a single trade agreement to show what he done. I could go on but both time and energy are not on my side hence now switching to Nepal
Nepal, once friend, now enemy ?
Nepal had been a friend of India for 70 odd years, what changed in the last few years that it changed from friend to enemy ? There had been two incidents in recent memory that changed the status quo. The first is the 2015 Nepal blockade . Now one could argue it either way but the truth is that Nepal understood that it is heavily dependent on India hence as any sovereign country would do in its interest it also started courting China for imports so there is some balance.
The second one though is one of our own making. On December 16, 2014 RBI allowed Nepali citizens to have cash upto INR 25,000/- . Then in 2016 when demonetization was announced, they said that people could exchange only upto INR 4,500/- which was far below the limit shared above. And btw, before people start blaming just RBI for the decision, FEMA decisions are taken jointly by the finance ministry (FE) as well as ministry of external affairs (MEA) . So without them knowing the decision could not have been taken when announcing it. The result of lowering of demonetization is what made Nepal move more into Chinese hands and this has been shared by number of people in numerous articles in different websites. The wire interview with the vice-chairman of Niti Ayog is pretty interesting. The argument that Nepal show give an estimate of how much old money is there falls flat when in demonetization itself, it was thought of that around 30-40% was black money and would not be returned but by RBI s own admissions all 99.3% of the money was returned. Perhaps they should have consulted Prof. Arun Kumar of JNU who has extensivelywritten and studied the topic before doing that fool-hardy step. It is the reason that since then, an economy which was searing at 9% has been contracting ever since, I could give a dozen articles stating that, but for the moment, just one will suffice. The slowing economy and the sharp divisions between people based on either outlook, religion or whatever also encouraged China to attack us. This year is not good for India. The only thing I hope Indians and people all over do is just maintain physical distances, masks and somehow survive till middle of next year without getting infected when probably most of the vaccine candidates have been trialed, results are in and we have a ready vaccine. I do hope that at least for once, ICMR shares data even after the vaccine is approved, whichever vaccine. Till later.
I was gonna use this blog post to share about the migrant worker woes as there has been multiple stories doing the rounds. For e.g. a story which caught the idea of few people but most of us, i.e. middle-class people are so much into our own thing that we care a fig leaf about what happens to migrants. This should not be a story coming from a humane society but it seems India is no different than any other country of the world and in not a good way. Allow me to share
Or for those who don t like youtube, here s an alternative link
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=JGEgZq_1jmc
Now the above two editorial shares two stories, one of Trump retaliatory threat to India in the Q&A of the journalist. In fact, Trump has upped the ante on visa sanctions as India buckled so easily under pressure.
There have been other stories doing the rounds how people who have illnesses who need HCQ in India are either dying or are close to death because of unavailability of HCQ in the medicine shop. There have been reports in Pune as well as South Mumbai (one of the poshest localities in Mumbai/Bombay) that medicine shops are running empty or emptier. There have been so many stories on that, with reporters going to shops and asking owners of the medicine shops and shop-owners being clueless.
I think the best article which vividly describes the Government of India (GOI) response to the pandemic is the free-to-read article shared by Arundhati Roy in Financial Times. It has reduced so much of my work or sharing that it s unbelievable. And she has shared it with pictures and all so I can share other aspects of how the pandemic has been affecting India and bringing the worst out in the Government in its our of need. In fact, not surprisingly though, apparently there was also a pro-Israel similar thing which happened in Africa too . As India has too few friends now globally, hence it decided to give a free pass to them.
Government of India, news agencies and paid News
One of the attempts the state tried to do, although very late IMHO is that it tried to reach out to the opposition i.e. Congress party and the others. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, who is the Congress president asked that the Government should not run any of its ads on private television channels for a period of two years. There had been plenty of articles, both by medianama and others who have alleged that at least from the last 6 odd years, Government ads. comprise of almost 50-60% advertising budget of a channel advertising budget. This has been discussed also in medianama s roundtable on online content which happened few months back. While an edited version is out there on YT, this was full two day s event which happened across two different cities.
or the alternative to youtube
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=c1PhWR1-Urs
It was as if the roundtable discussions were not enough, Mrs. Gandhi clarion call was answered by News Broadcaster s Association (NBA) and this is what they had to say
News Broadcasters Association reply to Mrs. Gandhi
To put it simply, NBA deplored the suggestion by Mrs. Gandhi and even called the economy in recession and all they had were the Government s own advertising budget to justify their existence. The statements in themselves are highly pregnant and reveal both the relationship that the media, print or mainstream news channels have with the Government of India. Now if you see that, doesn t it make sense that media always slants the story from the Government s perspective rather than remaining neutral. If my bread basket were on the onus of me siding with the Govt. that is what most sane persons would do, otherwise they would resign and leave which many reporters who had a conscience did.
Interestingly enough, the NBA statement didn t just end there but also used the word recession , this is the term that Government of India (GOI) hates and has in turn has been maintaining the word, terminology slowdown . While from a layman s perspective the two terms may seem to be similar, if India has indeed been in recession then the tools and the decisions that should have been taken by GOI should have been much different than what they took. Interestingly, enough GOI has refrained from saying anything on the matter which only reveals their own interests in the matter. Also if an association head is making the statement, it is more than likely that he consulted a lawyer or two and used application of mind while drafting the response. In other words, or put more simply, this was a very carefully drafted letter because they know that tomorrow the opposition party may come into power so they don t want to upset the power dynamics too much.
Privacy issues arising due to the Pandemic
On the same Financial Times, two stories which dealt with the possible privacy violations due to the Pandemic have been doing the rounds. The first one, by Yuval Noah Harari is more exploratory by nature and makes some very good points without going far too deep into specific instances of recent times but rather goes into history and past instances where Governments have used the pandemics to exert more control over their populace and drive their agenda. I especially liked the last few lines which he shared in his op-ed
Even if the current administration eventually changes tack and comes up with a global plan of action, few would follow a leader who never takes responsibility, who never admits mistakes, and who routinely takes all the credit for himself while leaving all the blame to others. Yuval Noah Harari . The whole statement could right fit onto the American President which he was talking about while at the same time, fits right into the current Indian Prime Minister, Boris Johnson of UK and perhaps Jair Bolsanaro of Brazil. All these three-four individuals have in common is that most of them belong to right-wing and hence cater only to the rich industrialist s agenda. While I don t know about Jair Bolsanaro much, at least three out of four had to turn to socialism and had to give some bailout packages to the public at large, even though continuing to undermine their own actions. More on this probably a bit down the line.
The second story shared by Nic Fildes and Javier Espinoza who broke the story of various surveillance attempts and the privacy concerns that people have. Even the Indian PMO has asked this data and because there was no protest by the civil society, a token protest was done by COAI (Cellular Operator Association of India) but beyond that nothing, I am guessing because the civil society didn t make much noise as everybody is busy with their own concerns of safety and things going on, it s possible that such data may have gone to the Government. There is not much new here that people who had been working on the privacy issues know, it s just how easy Governments are finding to do it. The part of informed consent is really a misnomer . Governments lie all the time, for e.g. in the UK, did the leave party and people take informed consent, no they pushed their own agenda. This is and will be similar in many countries of the world.
False Socialism by RW parties
In at least the three countries I have observing, simply due to available time, that lot of false promises are being made by our leaders and more often than not, the bailouts will be given to already rich industrialists. An op-ed by Vivek Kaul, who initially went by his handle which means somebody who is educated but unemployed. While Vivek has been one-man army in revealing most of the Government s mischiefs especially as fudging numbers are concerned among other things, there have been others too. As far as the US is concerned, an e-zine called free press (literally) has been sharing Trump s hollowness and proclamations for U.S. . Far more interestingly, I found New York times investigated and found a cache of e-mails starting from early January, which they are calling Red Dawn . The cache is undeniable proof that medical personnel in the U.S. were very much concerned since January 2020 but it was only after other countries started lock-down that U.S. had to follow suit. I am sure Indian medical professionals may have done similar mail exchanges but we will never know as the Indian media isn t independent enough.
Domestic violence and Patriarchy
There have been numerous reports of domestic violence against women going up, in fact two prominentpublications have shared pieces about how domestic violence has gone up in India since the lockdown but the mainstream press is busy with its own tropes, the reasons already stated above. In fact, interestingly enough, most women can t wear loose fitting clothes inside the house because of the near ones being there 24 7 . This was being shared as India is going through summer where heat waves are common and most families do not have access to A/C s and rely on either a fan or just ventilation to help them out. I can t write more about this as simply I m not a woman so I haven t had to face the pressures that they have to every day. Interestingly though, there was a piece shared by arre. Interestingly, also arre whose content I have shared a few times on my blog has gone from light, funny to be much darker and more serious tone. Whether this is due to the times we live in is something that a social scientist or a social anthropologist may look into in the times to come.
One of the good things though, there hasn t been any grid failures as no industrial activity is happening (at all). In fact SEB s (State Electricity Boards) has shown a de-growth in electricity uptake as no industrial activity has been taken. While they haven t reduced any prices (which they ideally should have) as everybody is suffering.
Loot and price rise
Again, don t think it is an Indian issue but perhaps may be the same globally. Because of broken supply chains, there are both real and artificial shortages happening which is leading to reasonable and unreasonable price hikes in the market. Fresh veggies which were normally between INR 10/- to INR 20/- for 250 gm have reached INR 40/- 50/- and even above. Many of the things that we have to become depend upon are not there anymore. The shortage of plastic bottles being case in point.
Aryan Plastic bottle
This and many others like these pictures have been shared on social media but it seems the Government is busy doing something else. The only thing we know for sure is that the lock-down period is only gonna increase, no word about PPE s (Personal Protection Equipment) or face masks or anything else. While India has ordered some, those orders are being diverted to US or EU. In fact, many doctors who have asked for the same have been arrested, sacked or suspended for asking such inconvenient questions, although whether in BJP ruled states or otherwise. In fact, the Centre has suspended MPLADS funds , members of parliament get funds which they can use to provide relief work or whatever they think the money is best to spend upon.
Conditions of Labor in the Pandemic
Another sort of depressing story has been how the Supreme Court CJI Justice SA Bobde has made statements and refrained from playing any role in directing the Center to provide relief to the daily wage laborers. In fact, Mr. Bobde made statements such as why they need salaries if they are getting food. This was shared by barandbench, a site curated by lawyers and reporters alike. Both livelaw as well as barandbench have worked to enhance people s awareness about the legal happenings in our High Courts and Supreme Court. And while sadly, they cannot cover all, they at least do attempt to cover a bit of what s hot atm.
The Chief Justice who draws a salary of INR 250,000 per month besides other perks is perhaps unaware or doesn t care about fate of millions of casual workers, 400 460 million workers who will face abject poverty and by extension even if there are 4 members of the family so probably 1.2 billion people will fall below the poverty line. Three, four major sectors are going to be severely impacted, namely Agriculture, Construction and then MSME (Micro, small and medium enterprises) which cover everything from autos, industrial components, FMCG, electronics, you name it, it s done by the MSME sector. We know that the Rabi crop, even though it was gonna be a bumper crop this year will rot away in the fields. Even the Kharif crop whose window for sowing is at the most 2-3 weeks will not be able to get it done in time. In fact, with the extended lockdown of another 21 days, people will probably return home after 2 months by which time they would have nothing to do there as well as here in the cities. Another good report was done by the wire, the mainstream media has already left the station.
Ministry of Public Health
There was an article penned by Dr. Edmond Fernandes which he published last year. The low salary along with the complexities that Indian doctors are and may face in the near future are just mind-boggling.
The Loss
Losses have already started pouring in. Just today Air Deccan has ceased all its operations. I had loved Mr. Gopinath s airline which was started in the early 2000 s. While I won t bore you with the history, most of it can be seen from simplify Deccan . This I believe is just the start and it s only after the few months after the lock-down has been lifted would we really know the true extent of losses everywhere. And the more lenghthier the lockdown, the more difficult it would be businesses to ramp back. People have already diagnosed at the very least 15-20 sectors of the economy which would be hit and another similar or more number of sectors which will have first and second-order of losses and ramp-downs. While some guesses are being made, many are wildly optimistic and many are wildly pessimistic, as shared we would only know the results when the lockdown is opened up.
Predictions for the future
While things are very much in the air, some predictions can be made or rationally deduced. For instance, investments made in automation and IT would remain and perhaps even accelerate a little. Logistics models would need to be re-worked and maybe, just maybe there would be talk and action in making local supply chains a bit more robust. Financing is going to be a huge issue for at least 6 months to a year. Infrastructure projects which require huge amount of cash upfront will either have to be re-worked or delayed, how they will affect projects like Pune Metro and other such projects only time will tell.
Raghuram Rajan
Raghuram Rajan was recently asked if he would come back and let bygones be bygones. Raghuram in his own roundabout way said no. He is right now with Chicago Booth doing the work that he always love. Why would he leave that and be right in the middle of the messes other people have made. He probably gets more money, more freedom and probably has a class full of potential future economists.
Immigration Control, Conferences and thought experiment
There are so many clueless people out there, who don t know why it takes so long for any visa to be processed. From what little I know, it is to verify who you say you are and you have valid reason to enter the country. The people from home ministry verify credentials, as well as probably check with lists of known criminals and their networks world-wide. They probably have programs for such scenarios and are part and parcel of their everyday work. The same applies to immigration control at Airports. there has been a huge gap at immigration counters and the numbers of passengers who were flying internationally to and fro from India. While in India, we call them as Ministry of Home Affairs, in U.S. it s Department of Homeland security, other countries using similar jargons.
Now even before this pandemic happened, the number of people who are supposed to do border control and check people was way less and there have been scenes of Air rage especially in Indian airports after people came after a long-distance flight.
Now there are couple of thought experiments, just day before yesterday scientists discovered six new coronaviruses in bats and scientists in Iceland found 40 odd mutations of the virus on people. Now are countries going to ban people from Iceland as in time the icelandic people probably would have anti-bodies on all the forty odd mutations. Now if and when they come in contact onto others who have not, what would happen ? And this is not specifically about one space or ethnicity or whatever, microbes and viruses have been longer on earth than we have. In our greed we have made viruses resistant to antibiotics. While Mr. Trump says as he discovered it today, this has been known to the medical fraternity since tht 1950 s. CDC s own chart shows it. We cannot live in fear of a virus, the only way we can beat it is by understanding it and using science. Jon Cohen shared some of the incredible ways science is looking to beat this thing
or as again an alternative to youtube
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=MPVG_n3w_vM
One of the most troubling question is how the differently-abled communities which don t have media coverage at the best of times, haven t had any media coverage at all during the pandemic. What are their stories and what they are experiencing ? How are they coping ? Are there anyways we could help each other ? By not having those stories, we perhaps have left them more vulnerable than we intend. And what does that speak about us, as people or as a community or a society ?
Silver Linings
While there is not a lot to be positive about, one interesting project I came about is openbreath.tech . This is an idea, venture started by IISER (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research) , IUCAA (Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics). They are collaborating with octogeneraian Capt (Retd) Rustom Barucha from Barucha Instrumentation and Control, besides IndoGenius, New Delhi, and King s College, London. The first two institutes are from my home town, Pune. While I don t know much of the specifics of this idea other than that there is an existing Barucha ventilator which they hope to open-source and make it easier for people to produce their own. While I have more questions than answers at this point, this is something hopefully to watch out for in the coming days and weeks.
The other jolly bit of good news has come from Punjab where after several decades, people in Northern Punjab are finally able to see the Himalayas or the Himalayan mountain range.
Dhauladhar range Northern Punjab Copyright CNN.Com
There you have it, What I have covered is barely scratching the surface. As a large section of the media only focuses on one narrative, other stories and narratives are lost. Be safe, till later.
First of all, congratulations to all those who got us 2022 Debconf, so we will finally have a debconf in India. There is of course, lot of work to be done between now and then. For those who would be looking forward to visit India and especially Kochi I would suggest you to hear this enriching tale
I am sorry I used youtube link but it is too good a podcast not to be shared. Those who don t want youtube can use the invidio.us link for the same as shared below.
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=BvjgKuKmnQ4
I am sure there are lot more details, questions, answers etc. but would direct them gently to Praveen, Shruti, Balasankar and the rest who are from Kochi to answer if you have any questions about that history.
National Science Day, GMRT 2020
First, as always, we are and were grateful to both NCRA as well as GMRT for taking such good care of us. Even though Akshat was not around, probably getting engaged, a few of us were there. About 6-7 from the Mozilla Nasik while the rest representing the foss community. Here is a small picture which commentrates the event
National Science Day, GMRT 2020
While there is and was a lot to share about the event. For e.g. Akshay had bought RPI- Zero as well as RPI-2 (Raspberry Pi s ) and showed some things. He had also bought up a Debian stable live drive with persistence although the glare from the sun was too much that we couldn t show it to clearly to students. This was also the case with RPI but still we shared what and how much we could. Maybe next year, we either ask them to have double screens or give us dark room so we can showcase things much better. We did try playing with contrast and all but it didn t have much of an effect . Of course in another stall few students had used RPI s as part of their projects so at times we did tell some of the newbies to go to those stalls and see and ask about those projects so they would have a much wider experience of things. The Mozilla people were pushing VR as well as Mozilla lite the browser for the mobile.
We also gossiped quite a bit. I shared about indicatelts , a third-party certificate extension although I dunno if I should file a wnpp about it or not. We didn t have a good experience of when I had put an RFP (Request for Package) which was accepted for an extension which had similar functionality which we later come to know was sharing the sites people were using the extension to call home and share both the URL and the IP Address they were using it from. Sadly, didn t leave a good taste in mouth
Delhi Riots
One thing I have been disappointed with is the lack of general awareness about things especially in the youth. We have people who didn t know that for e.g. in the Delhi riots which happened recently the law and order (Police) lies with Home Minister of India, Amit Shah. This is perhaps the only capital in the world which has its own Chief Minister but doesn t have any say on its law and order. And this has been the case for last 70 years i.e. since independance. The closest I know so far is the UK but they too changed their tune in 2012. India and especially Delhi seems to be in a time-capsule which while being dysfunctional somehow is made to work. In many ways, it s three body or a body split into three personalities which often makes governance a messy issue but that probably is a topic for another day. In fact, scroll had written a beautiful editorial that full statehood for Delhi was not only Arvind Kejriwal s call (AAP) but also something that both BJP as well as Congress had asked in the past. In fact, nothing about the policing is in AAP s power. All salaries, postings, transfers of police personnel everything is done by the Home Ministry, so if any blame has to be given it has to be given to the Home Ministry for the same.
American Capitalism and Ventilators
America had been having a history of high cost healthcare as can be seen in this edition of USA today from 2017 . The Affordable Care Act was signed as a law by President Obama in 2010 which Mr. Trump curtailed when he came into power couple of years back. An estimated 80,000 people died due to seasonal flu in 2018-19 . Similarly, anywhere between 24-63,000 have supposed to have died from Last October to February-March this year. Now if the richest country can t take care of their population which is 1/3rd of the population of this country while at the same time United States has thrice the area that India has. This I am sharing as seasonal flu also strikes the elderly as well as young children more than adults. So in one senses, the vulnerable groups overlap although from some of the recent stats, for Covid-19 even those who are 20+ are also vulnerable but that s another story altogether.
If you see the CDC graph of the seasonal flu it is clear that American health experts knew about it. One another common factor which joins both the seasonal flu and covid is both need ventilators for the most serious cases. So, in 2007 it was decided that the number of ventilators needed to be ramped up, they had approximately 62k ventilators at that point in time all over U.S. The U.S. in 2010, asked for bids and got bid from a small californian company called Newport Medic Instruments. The price of the ventilators was approximately INR 700000 at 2010 prices, while Newport said they would be able to mass-produce at INR 200000 at 2010 prices. The company got the order and they started designing the model which needed to be certified by FDA. By 2011, they got the product ready when a big company called Covidgen bought Newport Medic and shutdown the project. This was shared in a press release in 2012. The whole story was broken by New York Times again, just a few days ago which highlighted how America s capitalism rough shod over public health and put people s life unnecessarily in jeopardy. If those new-age ventilators would have been a reality then not just U.S. but India and many other countries would have bought the ventilators as every county has same/similar needs but are unable to pay the high cost which in many cases would be passed on to their citizens either as price of service, or by raising taxes or a mixture of both with public being none the wiser. Due to dearth of ventilators and specialized people to operate it and space, there is possibility that many countries including India may have to make tough choices like Italian doctors had to make as to who to give ventilator to and have the mental and emotional guilt which would be associated with the choices made.
Some science coverage about diseases in wire and other publications
Since Covid coverage broke out, the wire has been bringing variousreports of India s handling of various epidemics, mysteries, some solved, some still remaining unsolved due to lack of interest or funding or both. The Nipah virus has been amply discussed in the movie Virus (2019) which I shared in the last blog post and how easily it could have been similar to Italy in Kerala. Thankfully, only 24 people including a nurse succumbed to that outbreak as shared in the movie. I had shared about Kerala nurses professionalism when I was in hospital couple of years back. It s no wonder that their understanding of hygeine and nursing procedures are a cut above the rest hence they are sought after not just in India but world-over including US and UK and the middle-east. Another study on respitory illness was bought to my attention by my friend Pavithran.
Possibility of extended lockdown in India
There was talk in the media of extended lockdown or better put an environment is being created so that an extended lockdown can be done. This is probably in part due to a mathematical model and its derivatives shared by two Indian-origin Cambridge scholars who predict that a minimum 49 days lockdown may be necessary to flatten the covid curve about a week back.
Predictions of the outcome of the current 21-day lockdown (Source: Rajesh Singh, R. Adhikari, Cambridge University)
Alternative lockdown strategies suggested by the Cambridge model (Source: Rajesh Singh, R. Adhikari, Cambridge University)
India caving to US pressure on Hydroxychloroquine
While there has been lot of speculation in U.S. about Hydroxychloroquine as the wonder cure, last night Mr. Trump threatened India in a response to a reporter that Mr. Modi has to say no for Hydroxychloroquine and there may be retaliations.
As shared before if youtube is not your cup you can see the same on invidio.us
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=YP-ewgoJPLw
Now while there have been several instances in the past of U.S. trying to bully India, going all the way back to 1954. In fact, in recent memory, there were sanctions on India by US under Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government (BJP) 1998 but he didn t buckle under the pressure and now we see our current PM taking down our own notification from a day ago and not just sharing Hydroxychloroquine but also Paracetemol to other countries so it would look as if India is sharing with other countries. Keep in mind, that India, Brazil haven t seen eye to eye on trade agreements of late and Paracetemol prices have risen in India. The price rise has been because the API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) for the same come from China where the supply chain will take time to be fixed and we would also have to open up, although should we, should we not is another question altogether. I talk about supply chains as lean supply chains were the talk since late 90 s when the Japanese introduced Just-in-time manufacturing which lead to lean supply chains as well as lot of outsourcing as consequence. Of course, the companies saved money but at the cost of flexibility and how this model was perhaps flawed was shared by a series of articles in Economist as early as 2004 when there were lot of shocks to that model and would be exaberated since then. There have been frequent shocks to these fragile ecosystem more since 2008 after the financial meltdown and this would put more companies out of business than ever before.
The MSME sector in India had already been severely impacted first by demonetization and then by the horrendous implementation of GST whose cries can be heard from all sectors. Also the frequent changing of GST taxes has made markets jumpy and investors unsure. With judgements such as retrospective taxes, AGR (Adjusted Gross Revenue) etc. it made not only the international investors scared, but also domestic investors. The flight of the capital has been noticeable. This I had shared before when Indian Government shared about LRS report which it hasn t since then. In fact Outlook Business had an interesting article about it where incidentally it talked about localcircles, a community networking platform where you get to know of lot of things and whom I am also a member of.
At the very end I apologize for not sharing the blog post before but then I was feeling down but then I m not the only one.
Everywhere I worked in the past, the only feedback that was asked of
employees was during a yearly evaluation meeting. These meetings always felt to me
like talking to Santa Claus and his Knecht Ruprecht. I was asked: Were you a good
employee last year? If yes, we might give you a raise. If no, admit all
your mistakes now, even if we already know everything, ho ho ho. And don't you talk about your feelings, or your
well-being, or say anything about the organization's (invisible)
hierarchies, otherwise we will put you on the "naughty list", and that's it with candy. The
yearly evaluation set aside, there was no other place to give feedback (except by escalating a matter by involving the Labour Court, if you happen to work in France, or going on strike, also mostly part of French culture).
Feedback allows to reflect on work processes, to situate oneself, and to get closure.
How surprised was I when, some years ago, I received an email from a
collaborator asking me: kindly for just few paragraphs (doesn t have to be
anything long) to hear from you about the process, your work, challenges
you had, or anything else you want to mention there.. Wow!
This simple email allowed me to reflect about:
What did I like about the project? What part of the work was fun, challenging, and creative?
What went well or was complicated? How did our meetings work out? Were they
productive? Was it easy for me to frame the work I have to do? Were expectations clearly defined? How were remarks
and proposals for improvement presented to me? Did people test my work
thoroughly and gave me useful feedback on mistakes or misunderstandings? Did I
have to do lots of unexpected work? Were file formats, texts or other input not
well formatted or unclear, or arrived late? Did I allocate enough time to the project? Was I late with delivering anything? Could I have done better?
What is my overall conclusion for this project? Between what
went well and what did not: were the issues, the workload, the
assignments manageable? Am I willing to work with this person again? If
yes, what needs to change? If no, why?
What am I grateful for? What can I thank my colleagues/collaborators for? Did they have great
communication skills, ideas, were they on time, did they voice issues early
enough? How did it feel to work with them?
How do we get to a feedback culture?
How do we get from German Christmas folklore, protestant work
ethics, and the deeply rooted principles of disciplining and punishing to a feedback culture on eye level? It sounds
a bit like going from the dark ages to a really cool science fiction utopia
with universal peace, telepathy, and magic between all sentient beings on all
inhabited planets in the cosmos at least that's how I imagined it as a child, just like some of my heroes did: the cosmonaut girl who saves Earth, the boy who talks to space flowers that give him the capacity to fly, and the little onion who fights for justice (the Italian author was so popular on our side of the iron curtain that a soviet astronomer named a minor planet after him. His wife meanwhile immortalized Karl Marx.) and some romantic part of me hangs on to these ideas.
Feedback is not always easy to hear and to give.
I-Statements
Giving and receiving feedback is hard in a culture where people learnt that
when they made a mistake they won't get candy. Or that they have to constantly please
other people because they are not worthy by themselves. This can lead to people
putting mistakes on one another. Every sentence that starts with You are
has the potential of creating a lot of hurt, and anger. Have you heard of I-Statements? They have very powerfully changed my
world view, as they shift from accusation to ownership of feelings. So
instead of telling someone Your writing style is impossible! You really need to change the way you write.,
with an I-Statement one could say I have a hard time understanding that
part of the text. I-Statements make cooperation possible.
Listening actively
Feedback is not about being right or wrong, it's first of all about being
able to see how another person has experienced a situation. Active listening is a tool that helps with understanding. It might seem easy, but needs quite
some practice and a safe space. One part of active listening is to restate what you hear the
other person say (by mirroring, or paraphrasing), to make sure you understood,
and make sure they know you understood what they were trying to say. You can
practise this: in a circle of three people, have one person tell how they
experienced a (possibly conflictual) situation, have one person do the active
listening, and the third person observing in order to give feedback to the
active listener about how they did. Then switch roles, for example
clockwise, until everyone has had every role.
Encouraging continuous feedback
A working feedback culture does not take place
only once a year. It needs to be a continuous process and therefore implemented
in meetings, teams, eventually on the level of a project. Making clear: Who can I talk to if
I experience an issue? is not different than telling developers and users where and how they can report a bug, or request a feature. A safe space to express feedback is key.
Encouraging multiple feedback channels
Some people might feel less empowered or more vulnerable over a channel than
others. Make sure to have different channels for receiving feedback such as
email, a point on each meeting agenda, a one-to-one meeting, or a poll.
Giving and receiving feedback on eye level
In a workplace that does not have a working feedback culture, feedback is
easily perceived as policing. If your feedback process consists of asking
people to upload a form to a cloud server every 3 months, and you notice that
some people don't do it, you could ask yourself if there is an issue with how
your colleagues perceive giving feedback in your organization. Do you meet
your colleagues on eye level when it comes to feedback? Do you take feedback
seriously and act on it? How do you deal with unpleasant feedback? How do
you react when colleagues don't meet your expectations? Can people participate
in the feedback process within their paid work time? Did everybody understand
what the feedback process is about?
Don't jump to conclusions
Humans are problem solving animals. When someone comes to us with a problem,
the first thing we want to do is to solve it, to help them. But sometimes this
is uncalled for, it can be disempowering, or prevent people from acquiring competences themselves, and it can even break people's boundaries. So
instead of asking What can I do for you?, try asking What do you
need right now? People will often reply something that you did not
expect at all.
Acting on feedback
Make sure you have a process to collect feedback (possibly anonymized) and
to regularly evaluate if the organization needs to implement changes to thrive.
Conclusion
I stumbled upon Hans-Christian Dany's critique of feedback again recently, therefore I need to make it clear: I'm not interested in improving capitalist work culture by using cybernetic principles of self-regulation through feedback. Instead, I am interested in improving cooperation between people who work either individually or in organizations on eye level. In this framework, I see feedback processes as profoundly anti-capitalist methods to improve cooperation while working towards common good.
Implementing these ideas should be doable: there are organizations who provide feedback training for example. This document, initially aiming at people in cooperatives, gives many insights on communication skills and
feedback, the agile and UX worlds do feedback "retrospectives". and otherwise I'll have to go and write science fiction stories for
children myself.
The indoor garden at Coll ge de Maisonneuve, the DebConf 17 venue
I'm currently at DebConf 17 in Montr al, back at DebConf for the first
time in 10 years (last time was DebConf 7 in Edinburgh). It's great to
put names to faces and meet more of my co-developers in person!
On Monday I gave a talk entitled A Debian maintainer's guide to
Flatpak , aiming to introduce
Debian developers to Flatpak, and show
how Flatpak and Debian (and Debian derivatives like SteamOS) can help
each other. It seems to have been quite well received, with people
generally positive about the idea of using Flatpak to deliver backports
and faster-moving leaf packages (games!) onto the stable base platform
that Debian is so good at providing.
A video of the talk is available from the Debian
Meetings Archive.
I've also put up my slides in the DebConf git-annex repository, with
some small edits to link to more source code:
A Debian maintainer's guide to Flatpak.
Source code for the slides
is also available from Collabora's git server.
The next step is to take my proof-of-concept for building
Flatpak runtimes and apps from Debian and SteamOS packages,
flatdeb, get it
a bit more production-ready, and perhaps start publishing some sample
runtimes from a cron job on a Debian or Collabora server. (By the way,
if you downloaded that source right after my talk, please update - I've
now pushed some late changes that were necessary to fix the 3D drivers
for my OpenArena demo.)
I don't think Debian will be going quite as far as
Endless any time soon: as
Cosimo outlined in the talk right before mine, they
deploy their Debian derivative as an immutable base OS with
libOSTree, with all the
user-installable modules above that coming from Flatpak. That model is
certainly an interesting thing to think about for Debian derivatives,
though: at Collabora we work on a lot of appliance-like embedded Debian
derivatives, with a lot of flexibility during development but very limited
state on deployed systems, and Endless' approach seems a perfect fit for
those situations.
[Edited 2017-08-16 to fix the link for the slides, and add links for the
video]
DebConf17, the 18th annual
Debian Conference, is taking place in Montreal, Canada
from August 6 to August 12, 2017.
Debian contributors from all over the world have come together at
Coll ge Maisonneuve
during the preceding week for DebCamp (focused on individual work
and team sprints for in-person collaboration developing Debian),
and the Open Day on August 5th (with presentations and workshops
of interest to a wide audience).
Today the main conference starts with nearly 400 attendants
and over 120 activities scheduled,
including 45- and 20-minute talks and team meetings,
workshops, a job fair, talks from invited speakers,
as well as a variety of other events.
The full schedule at
https://debconf17.debconf.org/schedule/
is updated every day, including activities planned ad-hoc
by attendees during the whole conference.
If you want to engage remotely, you can follow the
video streaming
of the events happening in the three talk rooms:
Buzz (the main auditorium), Rex, and Bo,
or join the conversation about what is happening
in the talk rooms:
#debconf17-buzz,
#debconf17-rex and
#debconf17-bo,
and the BoF (discussions) rooms: #debconf17-potato
and #debconf17-woody
(all those channels in the OFTC IRC network).
DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants.
See the DebConf Code of Conduct
and the Debian Code of Conduct for more details on this.
Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors
to support DebConf17, particularly our Platinum Sponsors
Savoir-Faire Linux,
Hewlett Packard Enterprise,
and Google.
Today, the day preceeding the official start of the annual Debian
Conference, is the Open Day at DebConf17,
at Coll ge Maisonneuve
in Montreal (Canada).
This day is open to the public with events of interest to a wide audience.
The schedule of today's events include, among others:
A Newbie's Newbie Guide to Debian
Ask Anything About Debian
Debian Packaging 101
Debian InstallFest
Presentations or workshops related to free software projects and local organizations.
There is a bit of context that needs to be shared before I get to this and would be a long one. For reasons known and unknown, I have a lot of sudden electricity outages. Not just me, all those who are on my line. A discussion with a lineman revealed that around 200+ families and businesses are on the same line and when for whatever reason the electricity goes for all. Even some of the traffic lights don t work. This affects software more than hardware or in some cases, both. And more specifically HDD s are vulnerable. I had bought an APC unit several years for precisely this, but over period of time it just couldn t function and trips also when the electricity goes out. It s been 6-7 years so can t even ask customer service to fix the issue and from whatever discussions I have had with APC personnel, the only meaningful difference is to buy a new unit but even then not sure this is an issue that can be resolved, even with that.
That comes to the issue that happens once in a while where the system fsck is unable to repair /home and you need to use an external pen drive for the same. This is my how my hdd stacks up 
The main argument as have shared before is that Indian Govt. thinks we need our home grown CPU and while I have no issues with that, as shared before except for RISC-V there is no other space where India could look into doing that. Especially after the Chip Act, Biden has made that any new fabs or any new thing in chip fabrication will only be shared with 
. Backups certainly make a lot of sense, especially 
Like each month, have a look at the work funded by 
Example of Medical Bills people have to pay. 
India-China Border Areas Copyright DW.com 2020 
Dhauladhar range Northern Punjab Copyright CNN.Com 
Everywhere I worked in the past, the only feedback that was asked of
employees was during a yearly evaluation meeting. These meetings always felt to me
like talking to Santa Claus and his 
