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Version:next-20200405 (linux-next) Released:2020-04-05

This waterfall is beside my yard. When it's running, I know my water tanks are full and the spring is not dry.

Also it's computer controlled, for times when I don't want to hear it. I'll also use the computer control later on to avoid running the pump excessively and wearing it out, and for some safety features like not running when the water is frozen.

This is a whole hillside of pipes, water tanks, pumps, solar panels, all controlled by a GPIO port. Easy enough; the pump controller has a float switch input and the GPIO drives a 4n35 optoisolator to open or close that circuit. Hard part will be burying all the cable to the pump. And then all the landscaping around the waterfall.

There's a bit of lag to turning it on and off. It can take over an hour for it to start flowing, and around half an hour to stop. The water level has to get high enough in the water tanks to overcome some airlocks and complicated hydrodynamic flow stuff. Then when it stops, all that excess water has to drain back down.

Anyway, enjoy my soothing afternoon project and/or massive rube goldberg machine, I certainly am.

FTP master

This month I accepted 156 packages and rejected 26. The overall number of packages that got accepted was 203.

Debian LTS

This was my sixty ninth month that I did some work for the Debian LTS initiative, started by Raphael Hertzog at Freexian.

This month my all in all workload has been 30h. During that time I did LTS uploads of:

• [DLA 2156-1] e2fsprogs security update for one CVE
• [DLA 2157-1] weechat security update for three CVEs
• [DLA 2160-1] php5 security update for two CVEs
• [DLA 2164-1] gst-plugins-bad0.10 security update for four CVEs
• [DLA 2165-1] apng2gif security update for one CVE

Also my work on graphicsmagic was accepted which resulted in:

• [DSA 4640-1] graphicsmagick security update in Buster and Strech for 16 CVEs

Further I sent debdiffs of weechat/stretch, weechat/buster, e2fsprogs/stretch to the corresponding maintainers but got no feedback yet.

As there have been lots of no-dsa-CVEs accumulated for wireshark, I started to work on them but could not upload yet.

Last but not least I did some days of frontdesk duties.

Debian ELTS

This month was the twenty first ELTS month.

During my really allocated time I uploaded:

• ELA-218-1 for e2fsprogs
• ELA-220-1 for php5
• ELA-221-1 for nss

I also did some days of frontdesk duties.

Other stuff

Unfortunately this month again strange things happened outside Debian and the discussions within Debian did not stop. Nonetheless I got some stuff done.

I improved packaging of …

• … duktape
• … gengetopt and also fixed an FTBFS
• … pollen

I sponsored uploads of …

• … ocf-spec-core
• … theme-d-gnome

Sorry to all people who also requested sponsoring, but sometimes things happen and your upload might be delayed.

I uploaded new upstream versions of …

• … libctl
• … libosmocore
• … mpb
• … pyicloud
• … pywws

On my Go challenge I uploaded:
golang-github-dreamitgetit-statuscake, golang-github-ensighten-udnssdk, golang-github-apparentlymart-go-dump, golang-github-suapapa-go-eddystone, golang-github-joyent-gosdc, golang-github-nrdcg-goinwx, golang-github-bmatcuk-doublestar, golang-github-go-xorm-core, golang-github-svanharmelen-jsonapi, golang-github-goji-httpauth, golang-github-phpdave11-gofpdi

Version:next-20200404 (linux-next) Released:2020-04-04

Before uploading stuff to Debian, I build in a clean chroot, and then run piuparts, autopkgtest and lintian. For some of my packages this can take around an hour on my laptop, which is fairly old. Normally I don’t mind waiting, but sometimes I want to put my laptop away, and then it would be good for things to be faster. It occurred to me that I could make use of my builds.sr.ht account to run these tests on more powerful hardware.

This build manifest seems to work:

# BEGIN CONFIGURABLE sources: - https://salsa.debian.org/perl-team/modules/packages/libgit-annex-perl.git environment: source: libgit-annex-perl quilt: auto # END CONFIGURABLE image: debian/unstable packages: - autopkgtest - devscripts - dgit - lintian - piuparts - sbuild tasks: - setup: | cd $source source_version=$(dpkg-parsechangelog -SVersion) echo "source_version=$source_version" >>~/.buildenv git deborig || origtargz sudo sbuild-createchroot --command-prefix=eatmydata --include=eatmydata unstable /srv/chroot/unstable-amd64-sbuild sudo sbuild-adduser $USER - build: | cd $source dgit --quilt=$quilt sbuild -d unstable --no-run-lintian - lintian: | lintian ${source}_${source_version}_multi.changes - piuparts: | sudo piuparts --no-eatmydata --schroot unstable-amd64-sbuild ${source}_${source_version}_multi.changes - autopkgtest: | autopkgtest ${source}_${source_version}_multi.changes -- schroot unstable-amd64-sbuild

And here’s my script.

Sonic Mania

Sonic Mania is a really lovely homage to the classic 90s Sonic the Hedgehog platform games. Featuring more or less the classic gameplay, and expanded versions of the original levels, with lots of secrets, surprises and easter eggs for fans of the original. On my recommendation a friend of mine bought it for her daughter's birthday recently but her daughter will now have to prise her mum off it! Currently on sale at 30% off (£11.19). The one complaint I have about it is the lack of females in the roster of 5 playable characters.

Butcher is a Doom-esque aesthetic, very violent side-scrolling shooter/platformer, currently on sale at 70% off (just £2.69, the price of a coffee). I've played it for about 10 minutes during coffee breaks and it's fun, hard, and pretty intense. The sound track is great, and available to buy separately but only if you own or buy the original game from the same store, which is a strange restriction. It's also on Spotify.

A new (upstream) simdjson release was announced by Daniel Lemire earlier this week, and my Twitter mentions have been running red-hot ever since as he was kind enough to tag me. Do look at that blog post, there is some impressive work in there. We wrapped up the (still very simple) rcppsimdjson around it last night and shipped it this morning.

RcppSimdJson wraps the fantastic and genuinely impressive simdjson library by Daniel Lemire. Via some very clever algorithmic engineering to obtain largely branch-free code, coupled with modern C++ and newer compiler instructions, it results in parsing gigabytes of JSON parsed per second which is quite mindboggling. For illustration, I highly recommend the video of the recent talk by Daniel Lemire at QCon (which was also voted best talk). The best-case performance is ‘faster than CPU speed’ as use of parallel SIMD instructions and careful branch avoidance can lead to less than one cpu cycle use per byte parsed.

This release brings upstream 0.3 (and 0.3.1) plus a minor tweak (also shipped back upstream). Our full NEWS entry follows.

Changes in version 0.0.4 (2020-04-03)

• Upgraded to new upstream releases 0.3 and 0.3.1 (Dirk in #9 closing #8)

• Updated example validateJSON to API changes.

But because Daniel is such a fantastic upstream developer to collaborate with, he even filed a full feature-request ‘maybe you can consider upgrading’ as issue #8 at our repo containing the fully detailed list of changes. As it is so impressive I will simple quote the upper half of just the major changes:

Highlights

• Multi-Document Parsing: Read a bundle of JSON documents (ndjson) 2-4x faster than doing it individually. API docs / Design Details
• Simplified API: The API has been completely revamped for ease of use, including a new JSON navigation API and fluent support for error code and exception styles of error handling with a single API. Docs
• Exact Float Parsing: Now simdjson parses floats flawlessly without any performance loss (https://github.com/simdjson/simdjson/pull/558). Blog Post
• Even Faster: The fastest parser got faster! With a shiny new UTF-8 validator and meticulously refactored SIMD core, simdjson 0.3 is 15% faster than before, running at 2.5 GB/s (where 0.2 ran at 2.2 GB/s).

For questions, suggestions, or issues please use the issue tracker at the GitHub repo.

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for this release.

If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub. For the first year, GitHub will match your contributions.

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

For various personal projects and things, past and present (including my personal site) I use IkiWiki, which (by modern standards) is a bit of a pain to set up and maintain. For that reason I find it hard to recommend to people. It would be nice to fire up a snapshot of an existing IkiWiki instance to test what the outcome of some changes might be. That's cumbersome enough at the moment that I haven't bothered to do it more than once. Separately, some months ago I did a routine upgrade of Debian for the web server running this site, and my IkiWiki installation broke for the first time in ten years. I've never had issues like this before.

For all of these reasons I've just dusted off an old experiment of mine now renamed Opinionated IkiWiki. It's IkiWiki in a container, configured to be usable out-of-the-box, with some opinionated configuration decisions made for you. The intention is you should be able to fire up this container and immediately have a useful IkiWiki instance to work from. It should hopefully be easier to clone an existing wiki— content, configuration and all—for experimentation.

You can check out the source at GitHub, and grab container images from quay.io. Or fire one up immediately at http://127.0.0.1:8080 with something like

podman run --rm -ti -p 8080:8080 \ quay.io/jdowland/opinionated-ikiwiki:latest

This was a good excuse to learn about multi-stage container builds and explore quay.io.

Feedback gratefully received: As GitHub issues, comments here, or mail.

Version:next-20200403 (linux-next) Released:2020-04-03

I have written before about getting updated packages for KDE/Plasma on Debian. In the meantime I have moved all package building to the openSUSE Build Service, thus I am able to provide builds for Debian/testing, both i386 and amd64 architectures.

For those in hurry: new binary packages that can be used on both Debian/testing and Debian/sid can be obtained for both i386 and amd64 archs here:

Debian/testing:

deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-plasma/Debian_Testing ./

Debian/unstable:

deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/npreining:/debian-plasma/Debian_Unstable ./

To make these repositories work out of the box, you need to import my OBS gpg key: obs-npreining.asc, best to download it and put the file into /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/obs-npreining.asc.

The sources for the above binaries are available at the OBS site for the debian-plasma sub-project, but I will also try to keep them apt-get-able on my server as before:

deb-src https://www.preining.info/debian unstable kde

I have choosen the openSUSE build service because of its ease to push new packages, and automatic resolution of package dependencies within the same repository. No need to compile the packages myself, nor search for the correct order. I have also added a few new packages and updates (dolphin, umbrello, kwalletmanager, kompare,…), at the moment we are at 131 packages that got updated. If you have requests for update, drop me an email!

Enjoy

Norbert

A new release 0.4.12 of RQuantLib arrived on CRAN today, and was uploaded to Debian as well.

QuantLib is a very comprehensice free/open-source library for quantitative finance; RQuantLib connects it to the R environment and language.

This version does relatively little. When QuantLib 1.18 came out, I immediately did my usual bit of packaging it for Debian as well creating binaries via my Ubuntu PPA so that I could test the package against it. And a few call from RQuantLib are now hitting interface functions marked as ‘deprecated’ leading to compiler nags. So I fixed that in PR #146. And today CRAN sent me email to please fix in the released version—so I rolled this up as 0.4.12. Not other changes.

Changes in RQuantLib version 0.4.12 (2020-04-01)

• Changes in RQuantLib code:

  • Calls deprecated-in-QuantLib 1.18 were updated (Dirk in #146).

Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the this release. As always, more detailed information is on the RQuantLib page. Questions, comments etc should go to the new rquantlib-devel mailing list. Issue tickets can be filed at the GitHub repo.

If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub. For the first year, GitHub will match your contributions.

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

Version:4.4.218 (longterm) Released:2020-04-02 Source:linux-4.4.218.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-4.4.218.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-4.4.218

Version:4.9.218 (longterm) Released:2020-04-02 Source:linux-4.9.218.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-4.9.218.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-4.9.218

Version:4.14.175 (longterm) Released:2020-04-02 Source:linux-4.14.175.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-4.14.175.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-4.14.175

Version:4.19.114 (longterm) Released:2020-04-02 Source:linux-4.19.114.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-4.19.114.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-4.19.114

Version:5.4.30 (longterm) Released:2020-04-02 Source:linux-5.4.30.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-5.4.30.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-5.4.30

Version:5.5.15 (stable) Released:2020-04-02 Source:linux-5.5.15.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-5.5.15.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-5.5.15

Update: Seems this is a Firefox specific bug in the Slack Webapplication, it works in Chrome and the Slack Electron Application as it should. Tested with Firefox ESR on Debian/buster and Firefox 74 on OS X.

Ah I like it that we now have so many TLDs and matching on those seems to go bad more often now. Last occassion is Slack (which I think is a pile of shit written by morons, but that is a different story) which somehow does not properly match on .co domains. Leading to this auto linking:

Now I'm not sure if someone enocountered the same issue, or people just registered random domains just because they could. I found registrations for

• resolv.co
• pam.co
• sysctl.co
• so.co (ld.so.co woud've been really cute)

I've a few more .conf files in /etc which could be interesting in an IT environment, but for the sake of playing with it I registered nsswitch.co at godaddy. I do not want to endorse them in anyway, but for the first year it's only 13.08EUR right now, which is okay to pay for a stupid demo. So if you feel like it, you can probably register something stupid for yourself to play around with. I do not intent to renew this domain next year, so be aware of what happens then with the next owner.

Sometimes, in our day-to-day-interactions, communication becomes disruptive, resembling a chain of reactions to reactions to reactions. Sometimes we lose the capacity to express our ideas and feelings. Sometimes communication just gets stuck, maybe conflict breaks out. When we see these same patterns over and over again, this might be due to the ever same roles that we adopt and play. Learnt in childhood, these roles are deeply ingrained in our adult selves, and acted out as unconscious scripts. Until we notice and work on them.

This is a post inspired by contents from my mediation training.

In the 1960s, Stephen Karpman has thought of a model of human communication that maps the destructive interactions which occur between people. This map is known as the drama triangle.

Karpman defined three roles that interact with each other. We can play one role at work, and a different one at home, and another one with our children. Or we can switch from one role to the other in just one conversation. The three roles are:

• The Persecutor. I'm right. It's all your fault. The Persecutor acts out criticism, accusation, and condemnation. Their behavior is controlling, blaming, shaming, oppressive, hurtful, angry, authoritarian, superior. They know everything better, they laugh about others, bully, shame, or belittle them. The Persecutor discounts others' value, looking down on them. Persecutor's thought: I'm okay, you're not okay.
• The Victim. I'm blameless. Poor me. The Victim feels not accepted by others, oppressed, helpless, hopeless, powerless, ashamed, inferior. The Victim thinks they are unable or not good enough to solve problems on their own. The Victim discounts themselves. Victim's thought: I'm not okay, you're okay.
• The Rescuer. I'm good. Let me help you! The Rescuer is a person who has unsolicited and unlimited advice concerning the Victim's problems. They think for the Victim, and comfort them, generally without having been asked to do so. The Rescuer acts seemingly to help the Victim but rescuing mostly helps them to feel better themselves, as it allows them to ignore their own anxieties, worries, or shortcomings. The Rescuer needs a Victim to rescue, effectively keeping the Victim powerless. The Rescuer discounts others' abilities to think and act for themselves, looking down on them. Rescuer's thought: I'm okay, you're not okay.

Does this sound familiar?

"Involvement in an unhealthy drama triangle is not something another person is doing to you. It's something you are doing with another person or persons." Well, to be more precise, it's something that we are all doing to each other: "Drama triangles form when participants who are predispositioned to adopt the roles of a drama triangle come together over an issue." (quoted from: Escaping conflict and the Karpman Drama Triangle.)

People act out these roles to meet personal (often unconscious) needs. But each of these roles is toxic in that it sees others as problems to react to. In not being able to see that we take on these roles, we keep the triangle going, like in a dispute in which one word provokes another until someone leaves, slamming the door. This is drama. When we are stuck in the drama triangle, no one wins because all three roles "cause pain", "perpetuate shame [and] guilt", and "keep people caught in dysfunctional behavior" (quoted from Lynne Namka: The Drama Triangle, Three Roles of Victim-hood).

How to get out of the drama triangle

Awareness. To get out of the triangle, it is foremost suggested to be aware of its existence. I agree, it helps. I see it everywhere now.

Identifying one's role and starting to act differently. While we switch roles, we generally take on a preferred role that we act out most of the time, and that was learnt in childhood. (I found a test to identify one's common primary role — in German.)

But how do we act differently? We need to take another look at that uncanny triangle.

From the drama triangle to the winner triangle

I found it insightful to ask what benefit each role could potentially bring into the interaction.
Acey Choy has created the Winner triangle, in 1990, as an attempt to transform social interactions away from drama. Her winner triangle shifts our perceptions of the roles: the Victim becomes the Vulnerable, the Rescuer becomes the Caring, the Persecutor becomes the Assertive.

Persecutor Rescuer Assertive Caring I'm right. I'm good. I have needs. I'm listening. ---------------------- ---------------------- \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \/ \/ Victim Vulnerable I'm blameless. I'm struggling. Karpman Dreaded Drama Triangle Choy's Winner Triangle

The Assertive "I have needs." has a calling, aims at change, initiates, and gives feedback. Skills to learn: The Assertive needs to learn to identify their needs, communicate them, and negotiate with others on eye level without shaming, punishing, or belittling them. The Assertive needs to learn to give constructive feedback, without dismissing others. (In the workplace, it could be helpful to have a space for this.) The Assertive could benefit from learning to use I-Statements.

The Caring "I'm listening." shows good will and sensitivity, cares, is empathic and supportive. Skills to learn: The Caring needs to learn to respect the boundaries of others: trusting their abilities to think, problem solve and talk for themselves. Therefore, the Caring could benefit from improving their active listening skills. Furthermore the Caring needs to learn to identify and respect their own boundaries and not to do things only because it makes them feel better about themselves.

The Vulnerable "I'm struggling." has the skill of seeing and naming problems. Skills to learn: The Vulnerable needs to learn to acknowledge their feelings and needs, practice self-awareness, and self-compassion. They need to untie their self-esteem from the validation of other people. They need to learn to take care of themselves, and to strengthen their problem solving and decision making skills.

What has this got to do with autonomy and power structures?

Each of these interactions is embedded in larger society, and, as said above, we learn these roles from childhood. Therefore, we perpetually reproduce power structures, and learnt behavior. I doubt that fixing this on an individual level is sufficient to transform our interactions outside of small groups, families or work places. Although that would be a good start.

We can see that the triangle holds together because the Victim, seemingly devoid of a way to handle their own needs, transfers care of their needs to the Rescuer, thereby giving up on their autonomy. The Rescuer is provided by the Victim with a sense of autonomy, knowledge, and power, that only works while denying the Victim their autonomy. At the same time, the Persecutor denies everyone else's needs and autonomy, and feels powerful by dismissing others. I've recently mentioned the importance of autonomy in order to avoid burnout, and as a means to control one's own life. If the Rescuer can acknowledge being in the triangle, and give the Victim autonomy, by supporting them with compassion, empathy, and guidance, and at the same time respecting their own boundaries, we could find even more ways to escape the drama triangle.

Notes

My description of the roles was heavily inspired by the article Escaping Conflict and the Karpman Drama Triangle that has a lot more detail on how to escape the triangle, and how to recognize when we're moving into one of the roles. While the article is informing families living with a person suffering from a spectrum of Borderline Personality Disorder, the content applies to any dysfunctional interaction.

mi writes: Researchers have discovered evidence that Antarctica supported a swampy rainforest as "recently" as 90 million years ago, according to a new study. "Even during months of darkness, swampy temperate rainforests were able to grow close to the South Pole, revealing an even warmer climate than we expected," said Tina van de Flierdt, study co-author and professor in the Imperial College London's Department of Earth Science and Engineering. The researchers took CT scans of a slice of the seafloor near the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. They revealed pristine samples of forest soil, pollen, spores and even root systems so well preserved that they could identify cell structures. The researchers say that the warming effect caused by higher carbon dioxide levels created the right conditions for a rainforest environment. "The average daytime temperature was 53 degrees Fahrenheit," reports CNN. "River and swamp temperatures were likely around 68 degrees Fahrenheit. And the Antarctic summer temperature was likely around 66 degrees Fahrenheit. They estimate rainfall reached about 97 inches per year -- about the same as Wales today."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.