fidzu : ubuntu

If you've followed the news in the United States of America, you've probably seen something called a "government shutdown". In non-USA terms, the legislature is refusing to grant supply to the executive. In parliamentary systems of government, the government would fall and there would be an election. In the United States we just get this current weird situation where parts of the government are funded and other parts aren't. Especially disconcerting is that the majority of federal law enforcement agencies have their employees working without pay until the impasse is resolved.

You might be thinking that that is an academic exercise that you have no connection to at all. As a member of the community, though, I've been recalled to duty Thursday and I won't be paid at all until this impasse is resolved. Thursday will be the 27th day of this debacle. I've probably made it a bit more real for you now compared to any news reports you've seen on the BBC, CanBC, AusBC, or from your favorite wire service.

Currently the legal guidance offered is that the civilian staff returning to duty without pay will be prosecuted under a choice of statutes if they set up "GoFundMe"-type efforts to seek funds to ease the lack of cashflow. One possibility is just as a criminal ethics violation but another is under the prohibition on accepting bribes. Due to some perverse consequences of how various mandatory separation payments are structured and the current constitutional prohibitions on payments without valid appropriations as well as due to restrictions on what the HR staff can do right now, I technically cannot quit my job at the moment.

Remember, I am working to build up Erie Looking Productions and am still seeking clients as well as jobs for handling. There is a version of a resume posted to LinkedIn and my mobility is constrained temporarily while some tricky things would have to be worked out. Problems are not insurmountable but they certainly are big. Once the current unpleasantness is resolved, I am more than likely able to cross borders to places in the English-speaking Pacific to work if I don't find something based in the USA.

As to software-related matters, the fiddling with Greenstone that I had coming up is on hold. I really wanted to see if I could get it to compile on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ that runs Ubuntu. It doesn't seem too cross-architecture portable. It does seem like an excellent candidate for snapcrafters to take a try working on, though.

17 Jan 2019 4:17am GMT

I've had quite a number of performance-related issues with Micron 1100 Series M.2 SATA SSDs in various constellations over the last 18 months. Turns out a firmware update to a rather "secret" version fixes that.

The post Updating Micron 1100 Series SSD firmware on Linux appeared first on LIEBERBIBER.

16 Jan 2019 6:13pm GMT

Like each month, here comes a report about the work of paid contributors to Debian LTS.

Individual reports

In December, about 224 work hours have been dispatched among 13 paid contributors. Their reports are available:

• Abhijith PA did 8 hours (out of 8 hours allocated).
• Antoine Beaupré did 24 hours (out of 24 hours allocated).
• Ben Hutchings did 15 hours (out of 20 hours allocated, thus keeping 5 extra hours for January).
• Brian May did 10 hours (out of 10 hours allocated).
• Chris Lamb did 18 hours (out of 18 hours allocated).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 44 hours (out of 30 hours allocated + 39.25 extra hours, thus keeping 25.25 extra hours for January).
• Hugo Lefeuvre did 20 hours (out of 20 hours allocated).
• Lucas Kanashiro did 3 hours (out of 4 hours allocated, thus keeping one extra hour for January).
• Markus Koschany did 30 hours (out of 30 hours allocated).
• Mike Gabriel did 21 hours (out of 10 hours allocated and 1 extra hour from November and 10 hours additionally allocated during the month).
• Ola Lundqvist did 8 hours (out of 8 hours allocated + 7 extra hours, thus keeping 7 extra hours for January).
• Roberto C. Sanchez did 12.75 hours (out of 12 hours allocated + 0.75 extra hours from November).
• Thorsten Alteholz did 30 hours (out of 30 hours allocated).

Evolution of the situation

In December we managed to dispatch all the hours available to contributors again, and we had one new contributor in training. Still, we continue to be looking for new contributors. Please contact Holger if you are interested to become a paid LTS contributor.

The security tracker currently lists 37 packages with a known CVE and the dla-needed.txt file has 31 packages needing an update.

Thanks to our sponsors

New sponsors are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
• • TOSHIBA (for 39 months)
  • GitHub (for 30 months)
  • Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 7 months)
• Gold sponsors:
• • The Positive Internet (for 55 months)
  • Blablacar (for 54 months)
  • Linode (for 44 months)
  • Babiel GmbH (for 33 months)
  • Plat'Home (for 33 months)
• Silver sponsors:
• • Domeneshop AS (for 55 months)
  • Nantes Métropole (for 49 months)
  • Dalenys (for 45 months)
  • Univention GmbH (for 40 months)
  • Université Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 40 months)
  • Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 34 months)
  • maxcluster GmbH (for 28 months)
  • Exonet B.V. (for 24 months)
  • Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 18 months)
  • Vente-privee.com (for 15 months)
  • CINECA (for 7 months)
  • Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires Étrangères
• Bronze sponsors:
• • Evolix (for 55 months)
  • Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 55 months)
  • MyTux (for 54 months)
  • Intevation GmbH (for 52 months)
  • Linuxhotel GmbH (for 52 months)
  • Daevel SARL (for 51 months)
  • Bitfolk LTD (for 49 months)
  • Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 49 months)
  • NUMLOG (for 49 months)
  • Greenbone Networks GmbH (for 48 months)
  • WinGo AG (for 48 months)
  • Ecole Centrale de Nantes - LHEEA (for 44 months)
  • Sig-I/O (for 42 months)
  • Entr'ouvert (for 39 months)
  • Adfinis SyGroup AG (for 37 months)
  • GNI MEDIA (for 31 months)
  • Laboratoire LEGI - UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 31 months)
  • Quarantainenet BV (for 31 months)
  • Bearstech (for 23 months)
  • LiHAS (for 23 months)
  • People Doc (for 19 months)
  • Catalyst IT Ltd (for 17 months)
  • Demarcq SAS (for 11 months)
  • TrapX Security (for 8 months)
  • NCC Group (for 5 months)

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15 Jan 2019 10:26am GMT

I know I'm very late, but I really wanted to talk about this year Google Summer of Code.

For the third year in a row, I was a mentor. And this year I have a huge deception to share. I'm really sad. This week, I'v received the GSoC 2011 t-shirt. They sent me the wrong size. XXXL. I can use it as a sleeping bag with my girlfriend. I'm really disappointed.

Hopefully, GSoC is not only about receiving a t-shirt. It is also about mentoring a student.

Nearly two years ago, I started working on a complete refactoring of GTG. The code was a mess, with a lot of duplicate everywhere, with two bugs appearing while you were trying to solve one, etc.

I abstracted the structure we were using in several places and started to write a library to handle those "Acyclical Directed Graphs". As usual, it appeared that development was taking longer than expected. Weeks turned into months. Then, when it started to look good, I discovered that I forgot one critical point: thread-awareness. I felt hopeless.

Because I didn't had the motivation to do that heavy work, I proposed it as a Summer of Code project to a very motivated student: Izidor Matušov^[1].

Words doesn't do any justice to the excellent work that Izidor did this summer. He's simply awesome. Some students are goods because they have previous experience. Izidor kicks asses. He learns so quickly, he's so assertive. The work was even harder than what we anticipated. But he managed to achieve everything, including feeding me with cookies at the Desktop Summit, where we met and had an awesome hacking week.

As much as I'm deceipted about the t-shirt, I'm delighted about the work achieved this summer. Izidor now knows GTG nearly as much as I do. He's taking initiatives, like organizing an online GTG hackfest on November 26th^[2] and he's a bug-answering machine.

Dear Google, GNOME foundation and Lanedo^[3], I would like to thank you. Thanks to your support:

1. I received a worthless piece of clothes that travelled half of the world in order to clean my cat's dirtiness.
2. GTG 0.2.9 should be released before the end of the year
3. GTG gained a new co-maintainer
4. I gained a new friend. And it probably worth everything else.

Congratulations, co-maintainer Izidor. And welcome to the community!

06 Nov 2011 6:23pm GMT

Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME !
Part 4 : Kill The Double Click

When I started installing the best desktop possible for Marie and Jean, we were still in the GNOME 2.X era. GNOME 3 solved my previous concerns. No in the way I envisioned it, but solved them anyway. No more desktop icons, no more tray icons.

But now that I'm introducing Marie and Jean to GNOME 3, I still have some concerns. And one of that main concern is the infamous double-click!

Do you remember? Jean is a very brilliant mind, even though he never used a computer during his whole life. As a reasoning scientist, he was trying to find the logic behind my teaching.

During one of our first lesson, "Using the mouse", the conversation went like this:
- How do I know if I have to click or double click?
- Well, you double-click on icon and simple click on links and buttons.
- How do I know what is a button or an icon?
- …

Since that time, I've tried many times to find a logic behind single or double clicking. There is not. You have to learn it by experience. And it is totally, utterly pointless.

I also realized that a single click was something really hard for Jean. Achieving to click on a given point without moving the mouse is really hard for older people. Then, ask them to click twice, with a completely arbitrary speed, without moving the mouse, not to quickly, not to slowly. Impossible.

Marie, on her side, was double-clicking everywhere. And, surprisingly, it works most of the time.

So, why do we have double-click in some places? Because we want to be able to select an item without "activating" it. How often does it happen? Never for Jean. Very rarely for Marie.

To summarize, we are making the most frequent action very hard to nearly impossible in order to allow a very rare action?

I tried to disable completely the double-clicking in Nautilus.

Do you know what?

It works. Even for me. I had chronic pain in my hand and disabling double-click was a relief. I explained to Marie to never double-click anymore. She's still double-clicking from time to time but everything works even better than before. Jean was eventually able to launch a file from within Nautilus.

Selection of one or multiple file with single mouse click

What about selection of files? I explained to Marie to draw a square with the mouse. And, yes, she found that absolutely intuitive. The only drawback I found so far was the inconsistency with lists, where double-clicking is still required. Marie called me one day because she tried to play a specific song in Rhythmbox. It wasn't working. I realize that she had to double-click on the song. "But you told me to never double click anymore!". Sorry Marie.

I'm myself incredibly frustrated by any system that requires double-click. Why do we still have double-click by default in GNOME3?


Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME !
Part 4 : Kill The Double Click


Picture by Dave Dugdale

05 Nov 2011 12:17pm GMT

Si vous deviez me décrire en deux mots, nul doute que fourbe et profiteur vous viendraient spontanément à la bouche. Paresseux, parasite et inutile suivraient de près. Et j'en suis fier. J'en ai même fait mon mode de vie.

Ma technique est simple mais éprouvée. Je croise un inconnu dans la rue à l'air affable. Tenez, prenez ce jeune homme à l'allure dynamique. Il s'appelle Jean, c'est ma prochaine victime. Il ne se doute encore de rien mais j'irai dormir dans le lit de sa femme tout en vidant son frigo.

Au premier abord, je fais le numéro du sympa-sociable, les circonstances m'ont conduit dans la rue, où j'ère sans but précis, mais je ne me plains pas, je ne quémande rien, au contraire, je refuse tout geste de pitié trop ostentatoire. J'ai ma fierté.

Lorsque Jean se propose de m'emmener manger à la maison, juste pour la soirée, je fais d'abord mine de ne pas être intéressé. Mais mes yeux acquiescent et Jean, en rigolant, insiste, me forçant presqu'à le suivre. Inutile de vous dire que c'est ce que j'attendais mais la victime doit croire qu'elle a l'initiative, c'est primordial.

Martine, la femme de Jean, n'est que moyennement contente de cet imprévu. Qu'à cela ne tienne, je fais mon charmeur, je séduis tout en ayant l'air de ne pas vouloir déranger. Je fais également un peu le pitre pour la dérider.

Et ça marche. Avant la fin de la soirée, elle discutera avec moi plus qu'avec Jean lui-même, ce dernier étant parfaitement inconscient du destin de proie que je lui réserve. De manière indirecte, je fais comprendre que je n'ai nul part où aller. Jean et Martine n'ont pas le cœur de me renvoyer seul dans le froid de la nuit. Ils se proposent donc de m'héberger, juste pour une nuit. Tandis que je m'installe confortablement sur le sofa, j'entends Martine descendre l'escalier. Elle est en déshabillé, prête à aller au lit.

- « Bonne nuit ! » me lance-t-elle avec un sourire innocent avant de remonter dare-dare dans sa chambre.

Je ricane. Je n'ai même pas eu besoin de répondre. Une seule soirée me suffit. Homme ou femme, nul ne me résiste. Je suis comme ça moi.

Bien entendu, le « seulement pour une nuit » se prolongera. Je commencerai doucement à faire comprendre mes goûts précis, envoyant Jean au supermarché afin de m'acheter ce que je souhaite. Lorsqu'elle rentre du travail, Martine a à peine un regard pour Jean. Elle se rue à l'intérieur pour voir comment je vais. Pendant ce temps-là, je me prélasse sur le canapé, je me balade un peu. Avec mon air faussement négligent, j'ai pris soin de casser quelques bibelots auxquels ils tenaient beaucoup, par pure cruauté.

Lorsque Jean partit quelques jours dans sa famille à l'étranger, je n'hésitai pas: je me glissai une nuit dans le lit de Martine, sans même lui demander, sans même m'annoncer. Elle prit un air faussement surpris mais je sais qu'elle n'attendait que cela. Elles sont toutes les mêmes. Jean nous a surpris en rentrant plus tôt. Cela ne lui a pas plu. Il m'a dit qu'il m'avait sorti de la rue, qu'il n'acceptait pas cela.

Par méchanceté, j'ai répondu en déféquant sur la moquette du salon. Il a pu tout nettoyer. Il n'était vraiment pas content mais Martine a fini par le convaincre de me garder et d'exercer le moindre de mes désirs.

Il faut dire qu'ils sont vraiment bien mes deux esclaves. Je dors dans leur lit, ils me nourrissent, nettoient sans que je n'aie besoin de faire attention à rien. Quoi que je fasse, ils me regardent avec un air attendri et me trouvent adorable. Même au milieu de la nuit, il suffit que je me mette à miauler pour qu'ils s'enquièrent immédiatement de mes besoins.

Des esclaves aussi dociles, c'est rare. Je vais les garder encore quelques temps.

28 Oct 2011 4:59pm GMT