John Goerzen: Make the Internet Yours Again With an Instant Mesh Network
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10319-make-the-internet-yours-again-with-an-instant-mesh-network
January 8, 2022, 3:57 AM
I’m going to lead with the technical punch line, and then explain it:
Yggdrasil Network is an opportunistic mesh that can be deployed privately or as part of a global-scale network.  Each node gets a stable IPv6 address (or even an entire /64) that is derived from its public key and is bound to that node as long as the node wants it (of course, it can generate a new keypair anytime) and is valid wherever the node joins the mesh.  All traffic is end-to-end encrypted.
Yggdrasil will automaticall...
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Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 199 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-199-released/
January 7, 2022, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 199. This version includes the following changes:
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Support both variants of "odt2txt", including the one provided by unoconv.
  (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#298)
[ Jelle van der Waa ]
* Add external tool reference on Arch Linux for xb-tool.
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
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Jacob Adams: Linux Hibernation Documentation
https://tookmund.com/2022/01/hibernate-docs
January 6, 2022, 12:00 AM
Recently I’ve been curious about how hibernation works on Linux,
as it’s an interesting interaction between hardware and software.
There are some notes in the Arch wiki
and the kernel documentation
(as well as some kernel documentation on debugging hibernation
and on sleep states more generally),
and of course the ACPI Specification
The Formal Definition
ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is,
according to the spec,
“an architecture-independent power management and configura...
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Reproducible Builds: Reproducible Builds in December 2021
https://reproducible-builds.org/reports/2021-12/
January 5, 2022, 2:44 PM
Welcome to the December 2021 report from the Reproducible Builds project! In these reports, we try and summarise what we have been up to over the past month, as well as what else has been occurring in the world of software supply-chain security.
As a quick recap of what reproducible builds is trying to address, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, almost all software is distributed to end users as pre-compiled binaries. The motivation behind the reprod...
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Jonathan Wiltshire: Continuing adventures of the mystery cable
https://www.jwiltshire.org.uk/2022/01/05/continuing-adventures-of-the-mystery-cable/
January 5, 2022, 1:39 PM
My 4×2 has been in action again, trying to find the remainder of the mystery sometimes-4mm/sometimes-2.5mm/sometimes-1.5mm cable. It finally appeared in the tiniest gap possible between back wall and joist.
As we had suspected by tracing everything else, the junction is an unfused union of all three cable types with a 230V 32A circuit breaker on one end and a light switch on the other. So in the event of fault current at the kitchen lights, the 1.5mm cable is definitely going to burn out and...
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Thomas Lange: FAI.me service now support backports for Debian 11 (bullseye)
http://blog.fai-project.org/posts/faime-bpo-2/
January 5, 2022, 11:46 AM
The FAI.me service for creating customized installation and cloud
images now supports a backports kernel for the stable release Debian 11
(aka bullseye). If you enable the backports option, you will currently
get kernel 5.14. This will help you if you have newer
hardware that is not support by the default kernel 5.10.
The backports option is also still available for the images when using
the old Debian 10 (buster) release.
The URL of the FAI.me service is
   https://fai-project.org/FAIme/
FAI...
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Russell Coker: Terrorists Inspired by Fiction
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/01/05/terrorists-inspired-by-fiction/
January 4, 2022, 11:00 PM
The Tom Clancy book Debt of Honor published in August 1994 first introduced the concept of a heavy passenger aircraft being used as a weapon by terrorists against a well defended building. In April 1994 there was an attempt to hijack and deliberately crash FedEx flight 705. It’s possible for a book to be changed 4 months before publication, but it seems unlikely that a significant plot point in a series of books was changed in such a small amount of time so it’s likely that Tom Clancy got th...
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Jelmer Vernooij: Personal Streaming Audio Server
https://www.jelmer.uk/navidrome.html
January 4, 2022, 6:00 PM
For a while now, I’ve been looking for a good way to stream music from my home
music collection on my phone.
There are quite a few options for music servers that support streaming. However,
Android apps that can stream music from one of those servers tend to be
unmaintained, clunky or slow (or more than one of those).
It is possible to use something that runs in a web server, but that means
no offline caching - which can be quite convenient in spots without
connectivity, such as the Undergro...
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Jonathan McDowell: Upgrading from a CC2531 to a CC2538 Zigbee coordinator
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2022/01/new-zigbee-coordinator.html
January 4, 2022, 3:50 PM
Previously I setup a CC2531 as a Zigbee coordinator for my home automation. This has turned out to be a good move, with the 4 gang wireless switch being particularly useful. However the range of the CC2531 is fairly poor; it has a simple PCB antenna. It’s also a very basic device. I set about trying to improve the range and scalability and settled upon a CC2538 + CC2592 device, which feature an MMCX antenna connector. This device also has the advantage that it’s ARM based, which I’m hopefu...
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Russell Coker: Big Smart TVs
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/01/04/big-smart-tvs/
January 4, 2022, 11:37 AM
Recently a relative who owned a 50″ Plasma TV asked me for advice on getting a new TV. Looking at the options all the TVs seem to be smart TVs (running Android with built in support for YouTube and Netflix) and most of them seem to be 4K resolution. 4K doesn’t provide much benefit now as most people don’t have BlueRay DVD players and discs, there aren’t a lot of 4K YouTube videos, and most streaming services don’t offer 4K resolution. But as 4K doesn’t cost much more it doesn’t mak...
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Russell Coker: Curiosity Stream
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2022/01/04/curiosity-stream/
January 4, 2022, 5:27 AM
I have recently signed up for the Curiosity Stream [1] documentary site, this is designed to be like Netflix but for non-fiction content only. The service costs $US15 per annum or $52US per annum for 4K (I think the 4K service was about $US120 per annum when I signed up). The extra price for 4K seems excessive, while it is in line with the bandwidth requirements a large portion of the costs of the service would be about user support and running the service reliably for which 4K makes little diff...
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Paul Wise: FLOSS Activities December 2021
http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2022/01/04/floss-activities/
January 3, 2022, 11:35 PM
Focus
This month I didn't have any particular focus.
I just worked on issues in my info bubble.
Changes
plac:
release cleanup
bibliogram-docs:
update a feed checkbox
duck:
add indicator phrases
(1
2
3)
Debian Planets:
remove BlackWeb
Debian package uploads:
purple-discord,
python-plac,
sptag
(1
2
3),
mpv-mpris,
typer
Debian wiki pages:
AndriusMerkys/PackagingInSeconds,
Derivatives/Census/BlackWeb,
EmbeddedCopies,
Hardening/Goals,
InstallingDebianOn,
InstallingDebianOn/RaspberryPi,
WordPress
...
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Ian Jackson: Debian’s approach to Rust - Dependency handling
https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/10559.html
January 3, 2022, 6:35 PM
tl;dr: Faithfully following upstream semver, in Debian package dependencies, is a bad idea.
Introduction
I have been involved in Debian for a very long time. And I’ve been working with Rust for a few years now. Late last year I had cause to try to work on Rust things within Debian.
When I did, I found it very difficult. The Debian Rust Team were very helpful. However, the workflow and tooling require very large amounts of manual clerical work - work which it is almost impossible to do correctl...

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