● 01.23.23

Gemini version available ♊︎

● Links 23/01/2023: Many Pgpool-II Releases, risiOS 37 Reviewed

Posted in News Roundup at 1:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

• Welcome to this week’s Linux Weekly Roundup. We had a good week in the world of Linux releases with the releases of SparkyLinux 2023.01 and Parrot OS 5.2 beta1.

Audiocasts/Shows

• I made a new video about improvements, modifications, and tweaks I made to my tablets: overlay sheet (Photodon), keyboard tray (Cintweak), a real bug issue under the glasses, and a too-grainy overlay surface for the Intuos Pro Large.

• **kunitconversion** , **kwallet** , **kwallet-pam** , **kwalletmanager** , the **kwave** audio editor, **kwayland** , **kwayland-integration** , **kwayland- server** , **kwidgetsaddons** , **kwin** , **kwindowsystem** , **kwordquiz** flash card app, **kwrited** to receive **write** and **wall** notifications, **kxmlgui** , and **kxmlrpcclient** from the Slackware **kde** package set. $ kwin_wayland_wrapper $ QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland kwrite

Instructionals/Technical

• In this post, you will learn how to install PostGIS Extension for PostgreSQL using Ubuntu 22.04, but it is perfectly applicable to other systems.

• Python is a versatile programming language widely used for various purposes, i.e., scientific computing, data analysis, and web development. It is often considered one of the best programming languages for beginners, but also widely used by experienced developers due to its vast array of libraries and frameworks. Python is a primary scripting language for Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions, which makes it a catalyst for various operations on Ubuntu.

• A few weeks ago I opened an account on Digital Ocean to start my own cloud server. Not long after that I took a workshop on Shiny and, although it was too technical with nothing new for me, I learn a couple of things unrelated to R. The speaker was talking about the importance of making your portfolio showing your apps instead of sharing the link to your code as most of us do. I thought it makes sense since anybody who sees our GitHub account can take whatever they want from it, and at the end is only code, which many recruiters and managers are not familiar with. On the other hand if you show some apps you can definitely impress your audience. And so, since Digital Ocean gives you 200 USD of credit for the first 2 months, I decided to try and install my own Shiny server there.

WINE or Emulation

• The Wine development release 8.0-rc5 is now available. This is expected to be the last release candidate before the final 8.0.

Games

• Between 2023-01-15 and 2023-01-22 there were 79 new games validated for the Steam Deck. We use numerous features to prepare that Best Steam Deck Games list, such as popularity, rankings, and more.

Distributions and Operating Systems

Reviews

• risiOS is a young distribution which is based on Fedora. As with its parent, risiOS uses the GNOME desktop by default. Unlike its parent, risiOS uses the zsh command line shell instead of bash. The project also introduces a few key features which set it apart from Fedora in an attempt to make it easier to set up.

• [...]

• At first, risiOS looks and acts very much like its parent. risiOS offers to perform a self-check of the install media, boots the GNOME desktop, and pops up a window asking if we want to try or install the distribution. Apart from the custom wallpaper, the experience feels exactly like Fedora at this point.

• Likewise, the Anaconda installer offers the same experience on risiOS as it does on Fedora. We’re asked to pick our language, then shown a hub screen where we can access modules to set our time zone and keyboard layout, and partition the disk. This stage is quite straight forward and, when taking automated partitioning, we can get through the installer’s steps in under a minute.

• The one odd aspect of installing the distribution came at the end when Anaconda finished and a notification popped up to tell me the desktop’s theme had been changed, though no visual change occurred.

• When a newly installed copy of risiOS first boots it starts up a graphical wizard which walks us through enabling location services, optionally enabling problem reporting, asks us if we want to set up third-party software repositories, and offers to connect us with on-line cloud accounts. The ultimate step asks us to make up a username and password for ourselves. So far, risiOS was acting just like Fedora.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Spent some quality Sunday time today refurbishing some older mini PCs that had been gathering dust so I could run a few personal projects. One of the projects I’ve had on my to-do list an embarrassingly long time is to set up Pi-hole for ad blocking / filtering. If I’d known it’d be that easy I’d have done it a long time ago!

• I installed Pi-hole on an ancient Core i3 NUC with 8GB of RAM running Debian. It took about two minutes, five if you count reading some documentation and maybe seven minutes if you count logging into the admin interface and quickly setting my laptop and phone to use Pi-hole for testing.

• A few days before launching the Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 with HDR and autofocus, Raspberry Pi Trading asked me whether I would be interested in reviewing the new modules, and sent me three samples: the standard module, the Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 Wide, as well as the NoIR version that lacks an IR filter and is better suited for night shots.

• It took a full week for DHL to send the package to my house, but I’ve now had time to review the new Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3, mostly with libcamera, but also Picamera2, focusing on the new features such as HDR, autofocus, and wide angle. I also had a quick try at the Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 NoIR but without IR lights.

• Hello everyone, and welcome to another Friday Product Post here at SparkFun Electronics! This week, we have two new Qwiic Temperature Sensors for you in two form factors! Both of these boards feature the highly accurate STTS22H sensor from STMicroelectronics. These two boards are a great addition to the Qwiic Ecosystem and come in a Standard and Micro form-factor. Following that, we have an updated version of the classic SparkFun LiPo Fuel Gauge as well as a new SMA cable.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

SaaS/Back End/Databases

• Pgpool-II is a tool to add useful features to PostgreSQL…

• Nordic PGDay 2023 will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, on March 21, 2023 at the Hilton Hotel Slussen. It features a full day with a track of PostgreSQL presentations from both Nordic and global PostgreSQL experts, covering a wide range of topics, and a sponsor track with presentations showcasing innovative products and services from our fantastic partners.

Programming/Development

• This is the latest post about gui_engine, the ongoing saga to run GUI apps in the initrd…

R

• How to Measure Execution Time in R, To compare the execution times of different expressions, use R’s microbenchmark package.

• Traditionally the excitation noise of spatial and temporal models is Gaussian. Take, for instance, an AR1 (autoregressive of order 1) process, where the increments \(x_{i+1}-\rho x_i, \ \ |\rho|<1\) are assumed to follow a Gaussian distribution. However, it is easy to find datasets that contain inherently non-Gaussian features, such as sudden jumps or spikes, that adversely affect the inferences and predictions made from Gaussian models. In this post, we introduce a specific class of non-Gaussian models, their advantages over Gaussian models, and their Bayesian implementation in Stan and R-INLA, two well-established platforms for statistical modeling.

• I have been watching the survival TV series ‘Alone,’ where 10 survivalists are dropped in an extremely remote area and must fend for themselves. I am super impressed by their skills, endurance, and mental fortitude. To last 100 days in the Arctic winter living off the land is truly impressive.

• True to form, I’ve collected the data and I am sharing it here in the {alone} R package.

• This is the final part of a series of three blog posts about using the {shinytest2} package to develop automated tests for shiny applications.

• Back in July 2022 at rstudio::conf(2022), Posit (formerly RStudio) announced the release of Shiny for Python. I wanted to see how the two compared – so I built the same Shiny app twice! This blog post highlights a few of the differences, and things that were a little tricky switching to Shiny for Python.

Python

Standards/Consortia

• Imagine you have a RESTful API that has been serving thousands of users. You’ve been maintaining the code, and now it’s time to add a critical new feature – versioning. Often overlooked, API versioning is probably the most important part of the API infrastructure.

Leftovers

• The world of Shubeik Lubeik is an intricate alternate history in which wishes are real, and must be refined from a kind of raw wish-stuff that has to be dug out of the earth.

• The problem with having written this many books is providing a catalog of them. One day I might do a print catalog just for giggles, but not today.

• I’ve published more than 20 books, and I still get nervous in the few months leading up to a new book’s release. It’s one thing for my agent, my editor and my wife to like one of my novels – but what about the rest of the world? Will the book soar, or bomb? I’ve had books do both, and the latter is No Fun. Scarifying, even.

Science

• Quantum states are incredibly delicate, and easily destroyed. But the perfect solution could lie in imperfect crystals.

• Researchers at Penn Engineering have created a chip that outstrips the security and robustness of existing quantum communications hardware. Their technology communicates in “qudits,” doubling the quantum information space of any previous on-chip laser.

• Liang Feng, Professor in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Electrical Systems and Engineering (ESE), along with MSE postdoctoral fellow Zhifeng Zhang and ESE Ph.D. student Haoqi Zhao, debuted the technology in a recent study published in Nature. The group worked in collaboration with scientists from the Polytechnic University of Milan, the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems, Duke University and the City University of New York (CUNY).

• No cameras, keyboards, sensor gloves, or VR motion trackers required

• Human society is on the verge of transforming from an information society to an intelligent society, where optimized computing can autonomously solve practical, real-world problems. Critically, this transition is dependent on the continued development of advanced computing theories and algorithms that impart varying degrees of intelligence to computing systems through autonomous perception, information gathering, analysis and reasoning—functions once reserved only for living organisms.

Security

• Smart appliances could stop working properly after just two years because manufacturers are failing to provide tech updates, according to Which?. Research by the consumer champion found products like expensive dishwashers, TVs, and washing machines – which might be expected to last more than a decade – are “being abandoned” by brands.

• A lack of software support from firms means devices do not get updated.

• The older they get, the risk of online hacking also increases, Which? says.

• It found that “hardly any brands even came close to matching their expected lifespan” with their smart update policies, while others failed to respond when they were asked to clarify the length of support.

• Products’ operating systems need updates, because if support ends, then their functionality cannot improve. The updates also include security patches, which can fix flaws if any come to light.

Defence/Aggression

• It’s now more than 300 days since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the conflict has intensified rather than subsided, with Ukrainian leaders expressing fears of impending mass infantry attacks from Russia and U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announcing this week that the U.S. will send Ukraine $1.8 billion in military aid, including a Patriot missile battery.

• On December 21, in greeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House and considering his appeal for nearly $50 billion in additional aid for Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden made clear his intention to continue sending weaponry to Ukraine until Russia is defeated in the battlefield, saying, “The American people have been with you every step of the way, and we will stay with you.”

• In the misbegotten days of my youth when I was a flaming Maoist, one of the rituals was criticism/self-criticism—or, among insiders, crit/self-crit. Each comrade was supposed to subject themselves to group criticism at meetings’ end and also to fess up to their own transgressions.

• American linguist and philosopher Prof Noam Chomsky predicts a grim future for the world as the superpowers are at loggerheads over establishing supremacy centering on the Russia-Ukraine war.

• In April, soon after the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, he had suggested that Kyiv should settle its disputes with Russia by making some concessions.

• “There have been possibilities for a settlement all the way along. They are diminishing. The prospects are grim…blame is widely shared,” Prof Chomsky, who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, said in an interview with Dhaka Tribune on Wednesday.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview aired on Sunday that he was ready to negotiate with all parties involved in the war in Ukraine but Kyiv’s Western backers, who have been providing military and diplomatic support, have refused to engage in talks.

• Think of the F-35 jet fighter as the nightmare of the Pentagon budget in miniature. Manufactured by Lockheed Martin, it was to be the next F-16, a workhorse for the Air Force, the Marines, and the Navy. It’s now believed that, over the decades to come, the F-35 will cost Americans at least $1.7 trillion to produce, which, by the way, is about $5,000 for every one of us

Environment

Energy/Pollution

• How military spending accelerates climate breakdown

• The total mass of plastic on our planet is now twice the mass of all living mammals, according to the report.

Finance

• Yanis Varoufakis explains that the issue is neither vanity nor public service, but rather the need to acquire cloud capital.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Asserting that a woman or a girl is killed every 11 minutes by an intimate partner or a family member, UN chief Antonio Guterres has said that violence against them is the most pervasive human rights violation in the world and called on governments to implement national action plans that tackle this scourge.

• Secretary-general Guterres made these remarks ahead of the International Day for the ‘Elimination of Violence Against Women’ which is observed on November 25.

• “Violence against women and girls is the most pervasive human rights violation in the world. Every 11 minutes, a woman or a girl is killed by an intimate partner or family member and we know that other stresses, from the COVID-19 pandemic to economic turmoil, inevitably lead to even more physical and verbal abuse,” Guterres said.

Gemini* and Gopher

Personal

• Yesterday (2022-01-20) I visited a museum of nuclear science. They had artifacts from WWII, replicas of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a MiG jet fighter from the Soviet Union. It was an absolutely incredible set of exhibits; I had no idea that the bombs were so large and that Los Alamos was a complete small town hidden by the government. There’d be no way to make a town like that now.

• After visiting the museum, I went on a hike through the foothills of the mountains nearby. It was an amazing view, and I was glad that I visited in the winter: it started to snow! I uploaded a photo of the view, please excuse the dithering.

• Some days make you wonder how random the picks really are. “A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector” on Christmas Day? Probably intentional. “The Queen Is Dead” after the Queen of England died? Well, the site is British. “If I Could Only Remember My Name” by David Crosby 4 days after he died? Probably a coincidence. Probably just a frequency illusion / “the Baader Meinhof phenomenon”.

• Anyway. I broke a rule I have of trying not to read up about albums before writing some thoughts down. From this I learned about the wide variety of guests on the album (The Grateful Dead! Most of the rest of CSNY! Santana). Career retrospectives also pick a few of these songs as highlights of his career.

• Shit. The anxiety is back. Took a train ride yesterday. The sound

• seemed so loud. Someone brought a screaming young human onboard.

• At the mall I could feel my skin sort of prickly, like having

• low electric current run through my arms. Today feeling deflated

• and out of breath. Been sleeping horribly and felt like my chest

• is being constricted when in bed. Also feeling itchy and my face

• feels hot.

• Is it a tragedy to be niche? Being truly niche means you are

• interested in something that you can’t explain to people outside.

• If you could explain it, the niche would be absorbed into the

• mainstream.

• If your niche happens to be something the mainstream thinks “old”

• does this make your niche depressive? There are times something

• old is preserved in a niche to be later used for the good of the

• mainstream.

• Looking back on the past week, it occurred to me that right now we’re all extremely spoiled by how crazy little friction there is to learning almost any topic out there.

• If there’s a topic I’m struggling to grasp from lectures or textbooks, it’s so easy to find someone online who can explain it clearly and concisely. I learn best by studying others as they work through problems. Opportunities to do that don’t always come up in lectures and it’s rare to see a textbook replicate that experience. Looking up a video though? I can learn completely at my own pace and usually understand the concept in around 10 minutes. If I don’t like the way one person online teaches, there’s so many others I can turn to. And so much of it is free!

• Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter. Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. Permalink  Send this to a friend

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