● 06.27.23

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● Links 27/06/2023: Graphics Work and Face-Saving Red Bait (IBM) Spin

Posted in News Roundup at 2:14 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNU/Linux

Kernel Space

• Another Linux Kernel release is here! This comes just months after the release of Linux Kernel 6.3, right on schedule.

• This release offers many improvements, such as initial Apple M2 silicon support, storage enhancements, better sensor monitoring, and more.

• Even though this is not a major upgrade for regular users, it caters to a specific group of users who want to take advantage of the better hardware/software support on offer.

Graphics Stack

• Development on NVK kicked off almost nine months ago and it looks like the open-source NVIDIA Vulkan driver is getting more mature and in a pretty decent state for Linux gaming.

• Since then, NVK gained support for older, pre-Turing NVIDIA graphics cards from the Maxwell and Kepler series, support for geometry, tessellation, and transform feedback to support modern video games, as well as better support for the DXVK Vulkan-based implementation of D3D9, D3D10, and D3D11 for Linux / Wine.

• What two weeks!

• Taking from where I left at the last update, I made progress in understanding the format of the buffer that contains the weights and biases. The bit of knowledge that made a difference was realising that the format is optimized so that each NN core can efficiently access the portion of it that it needs, without having to do any parsing or decoding. Knowing that also helped in guessing what some fields in the parameter structure are for.

• With that, I  was able to correctly run a convolution on a small matrix with arbitrary weights and biases.

• The biggest roadblock in this area currently is understanding how I need to program the output unit in the NN so the output data is in the desired scale. There are a series of fields that influence how the output values are processed before being placed in the output buffer, and I don’t really know how they work yet. They are called post_shift and post_mult and the first correlates moderately (r=0.78) to the quantization scale of the output. I know that the post_shift field does what it says, to the right, but to understand what value I need in each situation I feel I need to understand better how the hardware works and what could be the initial values at the end of the convolution and before the output unit. I will be reading a bunch of research papers about NN-accelerating silicon in the summer.

• That said, replacing the OpenCL kernels in TensorFlow Lite’s GPU delegate that do convolutions with the fixed units turned out to be a worse idea than I initially thought. This is because that delegate is completely oriented towards float-first hardware such as GPUs and this accelerator is integer only.

• A consequence of this is that TFLite inserts a dequantize operation at the start of the graph and a quantize at the end, to match the desired intput and output formats of a fully quantized model while feeding floats to the GPU. We need integers, so would be having to quantize after TFLite’s dequantization and vice versa. Also, the other operations in the graph expect floats as well… This is certainly the wrong path to take for performance in a bandwidth-constrained device as all embedded boards are, so I had to go back to the drawing board.

Instructionals/Technical

• Ubuntu is a popular operating system used by millions of users across the world. While it comes with a pre-installed web browser, many users prefer using Google Chrome for its speed, security, and functionality. In this article, we will discuss how to Install Google Chrome on Ubuntu.

• One of the most common problems we all face with our systems is identifying large files that take up precious disk space. Whether you are a seasoned Linux user or a beginner, efficiently managing disk space is a necessary skill everyone should know. In this article, we will discuss different methods to find large files in your Linux system to help you recover valuable disk space.

• Borders in a document can improve your document’s readability and overall aesthetics. It applies to both online and physical printed documents. LibreOffice and OpenOffice Writer provide simple tools for adding borders to various elements within your documents.

Distributions and Operating Systems

SUSE/OpenSUSE

• Technology has layers. A lot like the ogre’s onion analogy in Shrek, technology comes in layers because we have an upper front-end user interface layer, a middleware connectivity layer and a lower substrate back-end, all of which must function in beautiful harmony if we are to enjoy apps the way we want them. We can classify technology stacks into tiers that extend beyond those three basic forms, but you get the point i.e. the modern digital stack is a fabric of interlaced services, functions, computing resources and threads.

• It’s not hard to extend the fabric analogy further, when we need to fix tears, breaks, misconfigurations and frailties in our IT systems today, we talk about ‘patching’ with application code designed to remediate, update and obviate the risk of an IT service becoming further degraded, less function or (at worst) compromized from a security perspective.

Fedora Family / IBM

• I spent a lot of time walking this weekend thinking about the reaction from our industry to my last blog post. We’ve been called evil; I was called an IBM exec who was installed to turn Red Hat closed source — and that’s only the “nice” stuff. So let’s clear things up.

• “CentOS Stream will now be the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases…” Red Hat posted this week on its blog, arguing that “The engagement around CentOS Stream, the engineering levels of investment, and the new priorities we’re addressing for customers and partners now make maintaining separate, redundant, repositories inefficient.”

• Long-time Slashdot reader slack_justyb notes this means patches and changes will now hit CentOS Stream before actually hitting RHEL, which “will make it difficult for other distributions such as Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, and Oracle Linux to provide assured binary compatibility as their only source now will be ahead of what RHEL is actually using.”

• AlmaLinux has weighed in on Red Hat’s controversial decision to restrict access to its source code, saying the community distro will need to come up with “a new solution.”

• Red Hat riled the Linux community with news that it would restrict access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code to paying customers. The news immediately cast doubt on Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux, two community enterprise distros that offer 1:1 compatibility with RHEL.

• Rocky Linux quickly posted a message reassuring users that everything would continue on and that customers would not be impacted by Red Hat’s change. AlmaLinux has similarly weighed in, although the organization is taking a measured approach. Writing for the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, Board Chair benny Vasquez highlighted what many others have noted, namely that the RHEL license appears to prohibit “re-publishing sources acquired through the customer portal,” likely eliminating the possibility of simply acquiring an RHEL license and using it to maintain AlmaLinux.

• Red Hat has quietly expanded the number of entitlements in the Developer Subscription for Individuals program from 16 to 240.

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Individual Developer Subscription is an initiative launched by Red Hat in February 2021, two months after the company discontinued the existence of CentOS. The goal is clear – to give CentOS users a free alternative to migrate their systems to RHEL.

• After signing up in the Red Hat Customer Portal, the program allows you to freely download, install, and register Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Then you can freely use it and receive updates for it.

• Red Hat’s Mike McGrath responds to the many criticisms aimed at the company since it changed its policy regarding RHEL source code.

Open Hardware/Modding

• Libre Computer teases a new board designed to beat the highest-end Raspberry Pi.

• Kevin McAleer has programmed a Tamagotchi-like project called the Picotamachibi that uses the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller.

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• After almost a year of hard work, Libreboot 20230625 is out now as a hefty update that introduces support for new mainboards for both laptops and desktops, including HP EliteBook 2570p, HP 8300 USDT, and Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L, which was removed from previous Libreboot versions.

• While the devs are still working on improving hardware support, Libreboot currently works well on Acer G43T-AM3, Apple iMac 5,2, Intel D510MO and D410PT desktop motherboards, as well as on Apple MacBook1,1 and MacBook2,1, Dell Latitude E6400, HP EliteBook 2560p, and HP EliteBook Folio 9470m.

Programming/Development

• Maybe the most important part of your IBM i modernization strategy should be modernizing the tools you are using to develop and maintain your applications. Most of the application development world has moved to tools centered around using Git for version control. There is no reason IBM i developers cannot do the same thing. IBM is solidly behind this strategy with their new Merlin product and most of the change management vendors have some kind of Git integration.

Shell/Bash/Zsh/Ksh

• As a system administrator, developer, or tech enthusiast, you will often find yourself interacting with Bash or another Unix shell.

• Bash scripting is an integral part of managing and working on Unix-like systems, and the pipe operator (|) is an incredibly powerful tool in the Bash scripting toolkit. Despite its simple appearance, it’s a cornerstone of efficient command line operations, streamlining processes and enabling complex data manipulation.

Leftovers

• We at the International Center for 9/11 Justice are thrilled to announce the release of the official trailer for Peace, War and 9/11.

• Layoffs create traumatic times for many. Find ways to break through the frustration and pain. For those that stay, your ability to influence the business can grow. 🪴

• [...]

• In my experience, some of the decisions are made based on data that you can’t see at a publicly traded company. Sometimes a company sheds employees simply because everyone in their market sector is doing it and they’re looking for a temporary bump in the stock price. And then there are those situations where a company chooses to end a product line or project.

• These decisions are often made at a high level within the company and done in such a way to avoid any type of employment-related lawsuits. That brings me to my next topic.

• The catastrophic implosion of a submersible near the wreckage of the Titanic is a sobering moment for another extreme and risky tourism industry: private human spaceflight.

• Why it matters: It’s not a matter of if, but when a deadly accident will rock the commercial human spaceflight industry, experts say.

• Donald Reid had a passion for applying himself to challenging problems, and in many ways his life’s work was that of developing a prototype submersible aircraft — or flying submarine — for which his son Bruce was a test pilot. [Jesse Moody] brought to our attention a fantastic documentary he created (with a short teaser trailer here) in which he interviews Bruce, and in the process teaches us all about a story that spanned decades and formed an important part of aviation history. Bruce experienced his share of hair-raising moments while testing the craft, but still has all of his fingers and limbs. Still, in his own words, “you wouldn’t be doing that kind of testing today!”

Education

• “…the program will concentrate on enhancing literacy, numeracy, and socio-emotional skills…”

Hardware

• The so-called father of capitalism was not available for comment, so we talked to another economist, Adam C. Smith.

• Smith appreciated the beauty and allure of intricate systems.

• One of the keys to making money with manufacturing is to find something that you can make a lot of. Most small manufacturers have one or two “bread and butter” items that can be cranked out in quantity, which of course has a quality all its own. The problem with that approach, though, is that it runs the risk of being boring. And what better way to avoid that than by automating your high-volume job, with something like this automated  CNC work cell?

• Back in the last century, especially in the ’40s to the ’60s, one of the major home decor trends was to install various home appliances, like the television or stereo, into its own piece of furniture. These were usually bulky, awkward, and incredibly heavy. And, since real life inspires art, most of the futuristic sci-fi technology we saw in movies and TV of the time was similarly conspicuous and physical. Not so with modern technology, though, where the trend now is to hide it out of the way and forget it exists. But [dermbrian] wanted some of his modern technology to have some of the mid-century visibility aesthetic so he made some modifications to his Amazon Echo.

• Interfacing biological and electrical systems has traditionally been done with metal electrodes, but something flexible can be more biocompatible. One possible option is 3D-printed bioelectric hydrogels.

Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

• The area used for organic agricultural production in the EU continues to increase, according to Eurostat data published June 22.

• Losing significant amounts of weight may soon be as easy as taking a daily pill. New research released Sunday shows high-dose oral versions of the medication in the blockbuster drugs Ozepmic and Wegovy may work as well as the popular injections — even in hard-to-treat people with diabetes. Drugmaker Novo Nordisk said it intends to seek approval for a weight-loss pill in the U.S. later this year. The company didn’t say how much the new pills would cost or how widely available they’ll be.

• Crews are testing the water and air quality along a stretch of the Yellowstone River where train cars carrying hazardous materials fell into the waterway following a bridge collapse. Seven cars carrying hot asphalt and molten sulfur fell into the rushing river Saturday morning in a rural area near the town of Columbus. The extent of the danger posed to the river isn’t known, but a spokesperson for the train’s operator, Montana Rail Link, says modeling suggests that the substances aren’t likely to move very far downstream. The Environmental Protection Agency says toxic gases haven’t been detected in the air.

• Strawberry growers picked the first harvest right before Midsummer. This is much later than last year, when strawberries grown in open areas could be purchased by the beginning of June. Strawberry yields will be lower and prices higher than last year, Latvian Radio reported on June 26.

• Initial assessment indicates compromised rail cars contained molten sulfur and asphalt. Both substances solidify rapidly when exposed to cooler temperatures.

• Buoyed by the midterms, Democrats believe reproductive rights remain one of the most powerful campaign weapons in their arsenal.

• >No one at BPOM has been accused of wrongdoing.

• Tulare Lake re-emerged after intense storms battered the state this winter, and will likely remain in the Central Valley for months — and maybe years — to come.

• A contentious New York City policy to send more mentally ill homeless people to hospitals has helped some move into permanent homes.

• A Small Town Fights Back Against Dairy Expansion.

Security

• Security updates have been issued by Debian (bind9 and owslib), Fedora (dav1d, dotnet6.0, dotnet7.0, mingw-dbus, vim, and wabt), and SUSE (cloud-init and golang-github-vpenso-prometheus_slurm_exporter).

Privacy/Surveillance

• Over 100 artists and 25 venues have joined a pledge to ban facial recognition at their shows and concerts.

Defence/Aggression

• Among the investigative steps WaPo treated as “cautious” in its 8,000 word story purporting to describe the January 6 investigation was the arrest of Owen Shroyer and the exploitation of his phone.

• The violent conflict in Sudan is expanding quickly.

• On Stephen Wright’s Vietnam War novel ‘Meditations in Green’

• Gunmen shot and killed a member of Pakistan’s minority Sikh community in an overnight attack in the northwestern city of Peshawar, police said on June 25.

• Chinese are overtaking the market in Kachin state, driving some out of business

• Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on June 25 departed for Washington, where he will meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramo, to discuss bilateral relations that will likely focus on the Armenian-backed breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

• A new, powerful fire broke out in a storage room at Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev’s EMCO arms company in Karnobat, eastern Bulgaria, the manufacturer told RFE/RL on June 25.

• The country has been the scene of deadly armed clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF since April 15.

• Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has travelled to 10 countries within his first year in office.

• President Marcos’ strongest ally Sara Duterte could also be the biggest threat to his presidency.

War in Ukraine

• Danish physicist Nils Bohr once said, ‘Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.’ The insurrection launched by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin on Saturday lasted a little over 24 hours.

• On Sunday, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda warned that if Belarus is to host Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, then NATO must strengthen its eastern flank.

• Vilnius hopes that US troops will remain permanently in the country, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Friday after meeting with a delegation of US senators visiting Lithuania.

• Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda on June 25 warned that if Belarus is to host Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, then NATO must strengthen its eastern flank.

• The “counterterrorism operation regime” that was declared in Moscow and the Moscow region in response to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt on June 24 has reportedly been lifted.

Environment

• In Rīga, Tērbatas Street, it is planned to install and try out green infrastructure solutions – covering walls and roofs with various plants, as well as setting up rain gardens to allow people to cool off during the hot summer days, Latvian Television reported on June 25.

• Soaring temperatures above 100 degrees are expected to linger across much of the state well into the coming week.

Finance

• THE ADJUSTMENTS to income taxation set forth in the government programme will result in the greatest cuts for high-income earners, indicate a provisional calculation made for Helsingin Sanomat by Mikael Kirkko-Jaakkola, the chief economist at the Taxpayers’ Association of Finland.

• The calculation is based on not only the measures laid out in the government programme but also the underlying data published by the Ministry of Finance.

• The House and Senate Armed Services Committees each finished their work on their respective versions of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act last week. Both bills include a 5.2% military pay raise, the largest since 2002.

• The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) decided it its third regular plenary meeting on Friday to add Croatia to its “grey list,” along with Cameroon and Vietnam.

• Mr Liang Shi, a self-made millionaire, hopes to earn a place at top-tier Sichuan University.

• When the Moscow Exchange opened on Monday morning, the value of the ruble fell to 87 against the dollar for the first time since March 29, 2022, and the exchange rate with the euro hit 95 rubles.

• Goldman Sachs is reportedly slashing 125 managing directors in the firm’s latest round of job cuts over the past 12 months, while big-four accounting firm KPMG laid out plans to slash 5% of its workforce, making them the latest major U.S. companies to conduct layoffs this year, following major cuts this month at Ford, Uber, Oracle, Grubhub and Spotify (see Forbes’ layoff tracker from the first quarter here).

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• According to the Israeli news site Walla, the US State Department has reinstated a ban on US government research funding going to support research projects conducted in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

• Donald Trump is looking to reclaim territory in Michigan that helped propel him to the White House but slipped from his grasp four years later. The former president spoke Sunday evening in suburban Detroit. That’s where he lost ground between 2016 and 2020 and would need to win it back if he becomes the 2024 Republican nominee. Michigan, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, flipped in 2016 to put Trump in the White House but then went for Democrat Joe Biden four years later. Trump spoke at Oakland County GOP’s Lincoln Day Dinner, where he was honored by the party as its “Man of the Decade.”

• The election in the Central American nation is marked by the exclusion of top candidates and calls to crack down on violent crime.

• A public prosecutor in Tunisia on Friday appealed the decision to release opposition figure Chaima Issa from prison, according to local news. As a result, Issa was not able to leave prison on Friday. Issa’s lawyer told local news that the decision came after a counter order was given to the public prosecutor.

• The biggest print titles in the US continue to shed circulation in 2023.

• Around midday on Friday, June 16, ProPublica reporters Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan sent an email to Patricia McCabe, the Supreme Court’s spokesperson, with questions for Justice Samuel Alito about a forthcoming story on his fishing trip to Alaska with a hedge fund billionaire.

• We set a deadline of the following Tuesday at noon for a response.

• Members of the US House of Representatives introduced two resolutions on Friday, H.Res.547  and H.Res.538, that would expunge the impeachments of former President Donald Trump. Trump is the third US president to be impeached and the only president to be impeached twice. If passed, both resolutions would expunge Trump’s impeachments as if they had not […]

• A previously unnoticed change in Donald Trump’s online fund-raising appeals allows him to divert a sizable chunk of his 2024 contributions to a group that has spent millions to cover his legal fees.

• With their party out of power, some Republicans in the state are worried that the former president could cost Michigan its status as a swing state.

• The G.O.P. needs to have the reckoning with Trump that it vainly hoped would never be necessary.

• Last week, Indian Prime Minister Modi and US President Joe Biden declared that the partnership between their countries ‘spans the seas to the stars’.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has brushed off polling showing a fall in support for the ‘yes’ vote for the Indigenous voice referendum.

• The latest Newspoll released on Sunday showed the ‘no’ vote at 47 per cent and the ‘yes’ side on 43 per cent.

• Community organisations hosting events in support of an Indigenous voice to parliament will have access to a freshly-launched fund to help cover costs.

• It’s part of an effort to shift the voice debate away from politicians and into communities after federal parliament passed legislation to allow a referendum to take place.

• The turnout in Sunday’s elections was only 52.75%.

• Armed violence continues to severely affect Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, the Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Niger, and Senegal.

• Eleven presidential candidates have been cleared by the electoral authorities to contest in this year’s elections.

• Paavo Arhinmkäki (Left) said that he thought there would be no trains on Midsummer Eve.

• Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the conservative New Democracy party, won a second four-year term as prime minister of Greece.

• His party’s election victory comes as the country experiences strong economic growth, with voters seemingly willing to look past scandals and disasters that have tarnished his government.

• Arnon Milchan, a movie mogul, billionaire spy and old friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, is a key witness. He gave the Netanyahus gifts, he said, sometimes at their request.

• A torrent of sexual harassment accusations has prompted questions about the state of women’s rights on an island democracy that has long been one of Asia’s most progressive places.

• Indigenous women are challenging the country’s powerful elites in the elections on 25 June

• The modus operandi of the Deep State is to prepare the ground for destruction of any nation deemed a threat and to neutralize those individuals, foreign and domestic, considered a danger to the Controllers’ agenda.

Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

• Because I was in the public eye, somebody synthesized explicit videos of me.

• The world cannot afford for Australia to delay development as a critical minerals supplier, an international mining conference has been told.

• Calling out “misinformation”, federal opposition resources spokeswoman Susan McDonald warned delegates that the future of the sector is at risk if anti-mining sentiment is allowed to flourish.

Civil Rights/Policing

• Civil rights icon James Meredith fell outside the Mississippi Capitol at an event marking his 90th birthday. He suffered no visible injuries. Meredith tumbled forward onto a portable lectern that also toppled Sunday as he appeared before some 200 people. Those around him scrambled to help him into a wheelchair. A person close to the family said Meredith was doing better later Sunday and resting at home. White mobs rioted in 1962 when Meredith enrolled as the first Black student at the University of Mississippi. In 1966, a white man shot and wounded Meredith as he marched in the state to promote Black voting rights.

• Piles of drugs were torched to mark International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

*

• Mr Pita will need a majority of the votes from 750 MPs and senators to be elected prime minister.

Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

• The Australian Competition Tribunal has backed the ACCC’s decision to block the deal between telcos Telstra and TPG to share regional infrastructure. It is another blow for mobile coverage in the bush, so what’s the scam?

• The scam is the enduring travesty of Australia’s telecommunications policy – or rather, lack thereof.

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