The 80386DX was the first x86 CPU to be 32-bit and have an on-chip MMU. And nothing else: no cache, no FPU.

The FPU was a discrete part, the 80387DX.

Because OS/2 1.x didn’t support the 80386, and so couldn’t run DOS apps well, and so flopped, the 16-bit 80286 kept selling well. It ran DOS fast and it could run Windows 2/286 and Windows 3 in Standard Mode which was good enough. It could only address 16MB of RAM but that was fantastically expensive and it was more than enough for DOS and Windows 3.

So, because DOS still ruled, Intel made a cost-reduced version of the 80386DX, the 80386SX. This had a 16-bit data bus, so it could use cheaper 16-bit motherboards and 16-bit wide RAM, still limited to a max of 16MB. Still enough.

That needed a maths copro for hardware floating point, too: a different part, the 80387SX.

Then Windows 3 came along, which was also good enough, and started a move in PC apps to GUIs. Windows 3.1 (1992) was better still.

So Intel had a 2nd go at the 32-bit chip market with the 80486, marketed as the "486". This integrated a better 386DX-compatible CPU core with a few extra instructions, complete with MMU, plus a 387-style FPU, plus a small amount of L1 cache, all onto one die.

But it was expensive, and didn’t sell well.

Also, all the 3rd party x86 makers leapt on the bandwagon and integrated the extra instructions into 16-bit bus 386SX compatible chips and branded them as 486s: the Cyrix and IBM "486slc" for instance. This ate into sales of the real 486.

So Intel came up with an ethically very dodgy borderline scam: it shipped 486s with the FPU disabled, calling them the "486DX" to reuse the branding that distinguished the 32-bit-bus models of 386 from the 16-bit-bus.

People don’t understand stuff like bus widths or part numbers, as your post demonstrates, and I mean no offense. They don’t.

So now there was a new model of 486, the 486SX with a disabled FPU, and the 486DX with it still turned on.

The "SX" model needed a new motherboard with a 2nd CPU socket that accepted a "floating point co-processor", called the "487", which was nothing of the kind. The "SX" was a lie and so was the "487 copro". The 487 was a 2nd complete 486 chip that disabled the original and took over.

But it reused the older branding, which is what you’ve remembered.

Later, briefly, Intel made a cheaper cost-reduced 486SX with a smaller die with no FPU present, but not many of them. The clock-doubled 486DX2 took over quite quickly and killed the 486DX and 486SX market.

Some commentators speculated that the 486DX vs 486SX marketing thing allowed Intel to sell defective 486s in which the FPU didn’t work but if it did that was a tiny tiny number: a rounding error.

 

comments

https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/89795.html

AI literacy for teachers and students all over the world

date: 2023-11-15, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)

I am delighted to announce that the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind are building a global network of educational organisations to bring AI literacy to teachers and students all over the world, starting with Canada, Kenya, and Romania. Experience AI  We launched Experience AI in September 2022 to help teachers and students learn about…

The post AI literacy for teachers and students all over the world appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/experience-ai-canada-kenya-romania/

ASCII art in motd

date: 2023-11-15, from: Miek Giebin blog

I wanted a nicer login experience (see image above) when logging into my server. For this I used the following sites, tools and steps. https://www.svgrepo.com/ https://asciiart.club/ Little Go program from below Steps: Search a nice SVG image at “svgrepo” and save it; Upload it to “asciiart”, and generate an ASCII art you are happy with; Download the BBCode variant of the image and (if you want colors) run the program to translate [color=#.

https://miek.nl/2023/november/15/ascii-art-in-motd/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-15, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I did my 500th Peloton ride today.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/14.html#a024109

.NET 8 released

date: 2023-11-15, from: OS News

With this release, .NET reshapes the way we build intelligent, cloud-native applications and high-traffic services that scale on demand. Whether you’re deploying to Linux or Windows, using containers or a cloud app model of your choice, .NET 8 makes building these apps easier. It includes a set of proven libraries that are used today by the many high-scale services at Microsoft to help you with fundamental challenges around observability, resiliency, scalability, manageability, and more. Integrate large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT directly into your .NET app. Use a single powerful component model to handle all your web UI needs with Blazor. Deploy your mobile applications to the latest version of iOS and Android with .NET MAUI. Discover new language enhancements that make your code more concise and expressive with C# 12. It’s still wild to me to that Microsoft provides detailed installation instructions for .NET for a variety of Linux distributions, down to stuff like Alpine.

https://www.osnews.com/story/137845/net-8-released/

Google Play tightens up rules for Android app developers to require testing, increased app review

date: 2023-11-15, from: OS News

Google today is announcing strengthened protections for Android developers publishing apps to its Google Play store. The changes are a part of Google’s broader efforts at keeping low-quality and unsafe apps out of its app store and off consumers’ devices, which also recently included the launch of a new real-time app scanning feature to combat malicious apps. Today, the company says it will now require new Android developers with personal accounts to test their app with a minimum of 20 people for at least 2 weeks prior to publication. It additionally plans to increase its investment in the app review processes, warning of potential slowdowns in approvals for a small number of apps as these changes roll out. At first glance, this sounds like a good idea – more testing leads to better applications, is the reasoning – but it’s going to be a massive burden for many small indie developers to even find 20 testers. In my experience, it’s usually the small indie teams or individual developers that make the best applications on Android, while the large, well-known brands release steady streams of garbage. In other words, this is going to disproportionately affect the wrong people.

https://www.osnews.com/story/137843/google-play-tightens-up-rules-for-android-app-developers-to-require-testing-increased-app-review/

Wednesday 15 November, 2023

date: 2023-11-15, from: John Naughton’s online diary

Neil McGregor Former Director of the British Museum, photographed in Cambridge in 2017 after a lecture. Quote of the Day “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and … Continue reading →

https://memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-15-november-2023/38813/

Conversation enders

date: 2023-11-14, from: Manu - I write blog

Years ago I wanted to do a deep dive on Japanese aesthetics and I needed a list of good books to read on the subject. Rather than googling for books, I sent an email to a fellow human being and asked for recommendations.

I had to wait a few days but what I got in return was something that I could have never google myself and more importantly a new human connection was born, one I still treasure today.

It’s 2023 and I could probably ask the same question to some AI-chat-thingy and it would probably spit out a very comprehensive list of books—that may or may not exist—in 20 seconds. That’s fine but it’s also a conversation ender.

https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/62VSDoayQ3Rj1hvB

Cursorless Is Alien Magic From the Future

date: 2023-11-14, from: Michael Tsai

Xe Iaso (via Hacker News): Cursorless is a plugin that integrates with voice control software to let you do AST level code editing with your voice. This is crazy alien magic from the future. […] The most magic parts about this are the ideas of destinations and targets when it comes to cursorless inputs. Targets […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/14/cursorless-is-alien-magic-from-the-future/

On-Crash Backtraces in Swift

date: 2023-11-14, from: Michael Tsai

Alastair Houghton: Prior to Swift 5.9, all you would get when your program fails is a message from the parent process (often the shell) telling you that the child process crashed[…] […] Now, instead of the opaque message above, the result looks something like this[…] […] This new feature greatly improves the on-crash debugging experience […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/14/on-crash-backtraces-in-swift/

Computers Are Magical; Computers Are Awful

date: 2023-11-14, from: Michael Tsai

Nick Heer: I was reminded of Nikita Prokopov’s classic post today — “People Expect Technology to Suck Because It Actually Sucks” — in much the same way I think of it many days but, and especially, today. These are all things which happened today from when I woke up[…] […] None of the problems above […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/14/computers-are-magical-computers-are-awful/

Google AdSense Changes From CPC to CPM

date: 2023-11-14, from: Michael Tsai

Dan Taylor (via Hacker News): Today, website owners use a combination of direct sales, ad networks and sell-side platforms to sell their ad space, often using multiple technologies simultaneously. This is why we are making two changes: updating AdSense’s revenue-share structure and moving to paying publishers by impression. These changes will provide a consistent way […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/14/google-adsense-changes-from-cpc-to-cpm/

Riding the Rails to San Juan Capistrano

date: 2023-11-14, from: Transiting Los Angeles

A train ride to San Juan Capistrano is one of the best day trips you can do from Los Angeles. Find out how to get there and what you can see when you arrive.

https://transitinglosangeles.com/2023/11/14/san-juan-capistrano/

How to add an index to your PDF

date: 2023-11-14, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog

How to add an index to your PDF

I mean, it’s great if you want to write a bunch of Perl scripts. But really… do you? Or indeed: Would you rather like to learn Perl or LaTeX? 🥶 ❓ 🤷‍♂️ ❓ 🥵

I like my Markdown → HTML + CSS → PDF pipeline. For new PDFs of mine, I try to use this setup rather than relying on LaTeX. It’s true, LaTeX documents probably look better in the end. But I don’t write enough LaTeX at the end of the day. Everything is always tricky to find. Packages are hard to pick. I always end up on some StackExchange site and nothing is ever simple.

Now, the Markdown → HTML + CSS → PDF pipeline isn’t simple, either. But it uses HTML and CSS and I use those two more often. I can look at the temporary HTML file using my browser. When I have questions, I end up on the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) and it’s not too bad. It’s the kind of bad that I’m used to.

I’m not sure I’m doing a great job selling this. Remember how many years ago I tried to be objective about it all and concluded that using Libre Office would be the most efficient tool. You can go back and read the blog post from 2010. But I guess I got burned back in the last millenium when Word 5.1 was new and liked to crash, and Open Office was not great either, and Abi Word was too limited.

I learned to love Emacs and LaTeX and I don’t want to go back to those graphical user interfaces. Somehow they make it hard to use styles correctly and consistenly. So text-based it is!

What follows is a short summary of how the Markdown → HTML + CSS → PDF pipeline works.

There are a number of things you need:

• a bunch of Markdown files, which you write using your favourite text editor
• a program to turn Markdown into HTML; I use Python with the Markdown module but any other command line tool would do
• a CSS file to format the HTML generated
• a program to turn HTML and CSS into PDF; the one I use is called weasyprint

Weasyprint is also written in Python, which shouldn’t matter too much – except that I have Debian installed and the weasyprint it comes with doesn’t know how to hyphenate my text, which is bad news when you’re writing a German text with long words. And what German text doesn’t have long words? We love smashing words together!

This leads me to an immediate problem that LaTeX solves but that weasyprint does not: In German, you can’t have ligatures connecting parts of a word that are themselves smashed-together words. For example, the word Auffahrt (up-drive, also known as Ascension Day) consists of the prefix “auf” and the word “fahrt” so you can’t use the ff ligature. There’s a LaTeX package for that, selnolig.

A while ago I wrote a Perl script that takes this file and does the right thing for HTML: it inserts ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER characters in all those places. This Perl script is called keine-ligaturen, no ligatures.

So I need that.

Now, the Python’s Markdown module doesn’t generate a stand-alone HTML file. I need to provide my own prefix and suffix.

prefix is where I define the language to use for hyphenation and the CSS file to use for the formatting.

<!doctype html>
<html lang=de>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8"/>
    <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="Horte.css"/>
  </head>
  <body>

suffix is the file where I close the html and body tags I opened in the prefix file.

</body>
</html>

I tie all of this together in my Makefile. Here’s how it might work.

SHELL=/bin/bash
KAPITEL=$(sort $(wildcard [0-9A-F]-*.md))

all: Horte.pdf

%.pdf: %.html %.css
    weasyprint $< $@

%.html: %.html.tmp prefix suffix append-index
    cat prefix $< suffix | perl append-index > $@

%.html.tmp: %.md
    python3 -m markdown \n
        --extension=markdown.extensions.attr_list \
        --extension=markdown.extensions.tables \
        --extension markdown.extensions.smarty \
        $< \
    | keine-ligaturen > $@

Horte.md: Titelblatt.md Lizenz.md $(KAPITEL)
    date '+<p class="timestamp">%F</p>' > timestamp
    cat Titelblatt.md timestamp $(KAPITEL) Lizenz.md > $@

clean:
    rm -f Horte.md Horte.html Horte.html.tmp \
          Horte.pdf

So this is what happens:

• all the Markdown files are concatenated into Horte.md (and a timestamp is added after the titlepage)
• the Markdown file is turned into a temporary HTML file called Horte.html.tmp using the Python Markdown module and the German ligature breaks are added by the keine-ligaturen Perl script
• the temporary HTML file is concatenated with the prefix and sufix files to form the real HTML file, called Horte.html and here yet another Perl script is used: append-index (more about that below)
• finally, the HTML file is turned into PDF using weasyprint resulting in Horte.pdf

Now we’re finally getting to the script I wanted to talk about this entire time. What’s the role of append-index? It parses the HTML file and determines which terms should be in the index using XPath. And then it adds an index at the end.

There are two parts to the script. In the first part, the terms to index are collected.

• the HMTL is parsed and an XPath expression is used to search for strings to index (in this case: H3 headings and bold text in blockquotes if they have the ref class)
• if the term has no id, an id is computed based on the term to index; a number is appended if the id computed turns out to be a duplicate
• every term is associated with a list of ids (in case a term appears multiple times)

In the second part, the HTML for the Index page is assembled. Every term is printed, followed by a link for every id recorded above. The text of the link is a ZERO WIDTH SPACE so that it doesn’t look weird in the PDF. The actual page number to use is still unknown at this point because only the PDF generator knows about the pages! See below for more.

use Modern::Perl '2018';
use XML::LibXML;

undef $/;
my $doc = XML::LibXML->load_html(string => <STDIN>);

my @nodes = $doc->findnodes('//h3 | //blockquote/p/strong[@class="ref"]'),

my %terms;
my %n;
for my $node (@nodes) {
  my $content = $node->getAttribute('ref') || $node->textContent;
  next unless length($content) > 1;
  my $id = $node->getAttribute('id');
  if (not $id) {
    $id = lc($content);
    $id =~ tr/A-Za-z//cd;
    $n{$id}++;
    $id .= $n{$id} if $n{$id} > 1;
    $node->setAttribute('id', $id);
  }
  $terms{$content} //= [];
  push(@{$terms{$content}}, $id);
  $node->setAttribute('class', 'indexed');
}
my @body = $doc->findnodes('//body');
$body[0]->appendTextNode("\n");
my $div = XML::LibXML::Element->new('div');
$div->setAttribute('id', 'index');
$body[0]->appendChild($div);
$div->appendTextNode("\n");
my $h2 = XML::LibXML::Element->new('h2');
$h2->appendTextNode('Index');
$div->appendChild($h2);
$div->appendTextNode("\n");
for my $term (sort keys %terms) {
  my $p = XML::LibXML::Element->new('p');
  $div->appendChild($p);
  $p->appendTextNode($term);
  for my $id (@{$terms{$term}}) {
    my $an = XML::LibXML::Element->new('a');
    $an->setAttribute('class', 'ref');
    $an->setAttribute('href', '#' . $id);
    $an->appendTextNode("​"); # zero-width space to prevent minimizing
    $p->appendChild($an);
  }
  $div->appendTextNode("\n");
}

print $doc;

Here is some example Markdown illustrating the functionality:

Elfen verwenden gerne grosse [Raubkatzen](#katze) zum Schutz ihrer Lager.

> **Pumas**{: .ref ref="Puma"} (1W6-3) TW 3 RK 14 1W6 RW +1 BW 24 ML 7
> EP 300

### Raubkatzen {: #katze}

> **Puma**{: .ref} TW 3 RK 14 1W6 RW +1 BW 24 ML 7 EP 300

The XPath expression find the following terms:

• “Pumas” because of class="ref" and determines that the term to use is “Puma” (singular) because of ref="Puma"
• “Raubkatzen” because it’s a H3 heading
• “Puma” because of class="ref" and this time the term is the text content

HTML generated for the Index:

<div id="index">
<h2>Index</h2>
…
<p>Puma<a class="ref" href="#puma">​</a><a class="ref" href="#puma2">​</a></p>
<p>Raubkatzen<a class="ref" href="#katze">​</a></p>
…
</div>

The magic for page numbers is in the CSS, namely in the last rule where it says that the content of index links is a space and target-counter(attr(href), page).

/* index */
#index {
    columns: 3;
    column-gap: 2ex;
    font-size: 11pt;
    line-height: 13pt;
    text-align: left;
}
#index h2 {
    column-span: all;
}
#index p {
    margin: 0;
    padding-left: 1em;
    text-indent: -1em;
}
#index a {
    color: inherit;
    text-decoration: none;
}
#index a::after {
    content: ' ' target-counter(attr(href), page);
}

See for yourself:

#Markdown #Perl #Programming

https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2023-11-10-index-markdown

A Steely Dan tribute band

date: 2023-11-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News

Another in the series of fantasy concerts, locations and fans.

“In Madison Square Garden in NYC. A tribute band for Steely Dan. The audience are New Yorkers. Very well educated and well behaved.”

Madison Square and Steely Dan.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/14/171154.html?title=aSteelyDanTributeBand

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I’ve often felt I should be able to stay in places I’ve lived sort of on an emeritus basis. A certain number of days a year based on the number of years I’ve lived there and maybe the number of people who live there who’d like to go out for a walk or a meal.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/14.html#a170757

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

date: 2023-11-14, updated: 2023-11-08, from: Bruce Schneier blog

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:

• I’m speaking at the AI Summit New York on December 6, 2023.

The list is maintained on this page.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/upcoming-speaking-engagements-32.html

Deno Subhosting: the easiest and most secure way to run untrusted multi-tenant code

date: 2023-11-14, updated: 2023-11-14, from: Deno blog

Subhosting is a new way to leverage Deno Deploy’s fast, scalable multi-tenant v8 isolate cloud to run your users code securely.

https://deno.com/blog/subhosting

Alameda’s On-Ramp

date: 2023-11-14, from: David Rosenthal’s blog

Alameda was Tether’s largest non-exchange customer between 2020 and 2022, with blockchain data showing it received almost $40 billion in transfers of its stablecoin USDT directly from the company — equal to roughly 20% of all USDT tokens ever issued.

The vast amount has raised questions about where Alameda got the money to fund the issuance of the stablecoin, which is typically used as a dollar proxy and is the world’s most traded cryptocurrency. That even led to speculation Alameda might have used other means to help fund the purchases, similar to its bets on startups or dealings with lenders.

Tether’s incoming chief executive Paolo Ardoino appeared to clear up the mystery in a social media post this month, reiterating an earlier statement that the hedge fund wired dollars to Tether in exchange for the cryptocurrency.

“This was one major on-ramp, maybe the major on-ramp” for traders seeking access to USDT, said Jonathan Reiter, CEO of blockchain analytics firm ChainArgos. “It is certainly peculiar that FTX, which is now alleged to have run an essentially fraudulent exchange, still somehow managed to intermediate tens of billions in one-way flow from USD into USDT.”

bank acccounts are the absolute most valuable thing — you have to set up a bunch of different companies, a lot of different bank accounts just to facilitate trades that aren’t that big, maybe $50K. The moment you tell them this is for a USDT trade, you’re basically asking them to shut your bank account down.

Alameda received around $39.6 billion in USDT tokens from Tether’s treasury wallet, according to on-chain data tracking its wallets, as labeled by the Arkham Intelligence platform.

Meanwhile wallets connected to FTX sent $3.9 billion in USDT tokens back to Tether, all during the crash of TerraUSD and Luna in May 2022 — meaning that Alameda largely transferred the tokens it received to other entities, rather than cashing it out for dollars with Tether directly. It’s worth noting that this may not record all of FTX or Alameda’s redeemed tokens due to the way Tether swaps its coins between different blockchains, according to Coinbase’s Conor Grogan, who updated Alameda’s USDT total after most of its transactions were first reported by Protos in 2021.

To mint or redeem USDT, FTX would transfer funds via its own accounts at Tether’s Bahamas-based bank Deltec Bank or a US-based correspondent bank, Bankman-Fried said in a series of social media posts in 2021. A popular solution utilized by Tether and other crypto firms were banking networks established by Signature Bank and Silvergate Bank, both of which collapsed earlier this year.

A rough estimate using transactional data for USDT’s main two networks — Ethereum and Tron, which support about 98% of USDT’s current circulation — shows Tether has issued about $190 billion in USDT between its inception and Oct. 20, according to analysis by ChainArgos.

Conversely, Tether has redeemed about $108 billion in its lifetime. The difference is about $82 billion, compared with around $84 billion in circulation. The discrepancy can be attributed to the amount of USDT trading on other blockchains, according to ChainArgos.

“This does not really look like a market-maker or trading firm as those terms are normally used. It looks more like a money changer,” said Reiter.

Inflows and outflows from Alameda’s main wallet each month were almost equal, Reiter said, indicating that the main purpose for the mints was most likely to facilitate USDT purchases on behalf of FTX and its customers. This is supported by Bankman-Fried’s statements that FTX would transfer funds via bank accounts to Tether, in addition to evidence submitted to his trial which alleged that FTX often relied on Alameda’s bank accounts for exchange purposes.

“These guys were running a one-way USD to USDT bureau de change,” said Reiter, adding that any USDT that Alameda actually held on to was never in large size relative to its minting activity.

Source

Although most attention is focused on the use of Tether on the Ethereum blockchain, the reality is the bulk of transactions occur on TRON for a simple reason — low or zero transaction fees.
…
Using data from ChainArgos, 50 so-called “whale wallets” for USDT on the TRON blockchain were analyzed in the weeks leading up to, and following, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

From the chart above, it’s clear that the 50 biggest wallets that transact in Tether on TRON saw a larger cluster of activity just before and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

None of the wallets (as far as has been identified) are wallets belonging to cryptocurrency exchanges.

one of those wallet addresses:

TCTrwC2rxGFRS74XihgdMkp5mLYGezdrDL

(the “Alameda Wallet”) also happens to be the wallet used by Alameda Research (yes that one) to deposit funds into cryptocurrency exchange FTX.com.

Even as the trial of FTX.com founder Sam Bankman-Fried proceeds in earnest, the Alameda Wallet saw a massive $300 mm in Tether flow into it, occurring just days before the Russian invasion.

Of particular note was this wallet address:

TYZseM53iSPB75aN1V5N762GgzAjBp7PcX

which sent a whopping $194 mm USDT in just two weeks around the time of the invasion.

And a quick Google search of the address reveals Telegram (the messaging service) posts by “The Ghost of New Russia” containing this wallet address that appeared to be raising funds for Russia’s invasion.

On further analysis, this wallet, and others with large USDT transactions in the run-up to the Russian invasion are part of a massive Russian-Kazakh pyramid scheme that had already been blacklisted by the Russian central bank in 2022.

After the USDT is collected into:

TYZseM53iSPB75aN1V5N762GgzAjBp7PcX

it’s then withdrawn into a collection of wallets, but with two in particularly large sizes:

1. TXxU8LJ9wwQxUdg1YNP7LPz4YSXB5guhc5
2. TCtVdT6XSoWcQifTHbBzFcuaUDX9oo8Yr5

Then there’s a few withdrawals for less than $2 mm, almost as if someone is taking their “commission” or “fees” for facilitating the transactions.

What happens next is relatively predictable, from these withdrawal wallets, the USDT was sent to cryptocurrency exchange Binance, probably for the final cashing out into fiat currency.

One possible explanation is Russia’s heavy use of the Wagner Group — mercenaries closely affiliated with the Kremlin, but disavowed when convenient.

And as is known, mercenaries, whether at the Battle of Waterloo or the Donbas, need to be paid, whether in gold, or a hard currency like the dollar, failing which Tether will do.

This explanation becomes all the more plausible because the shadowy Wagner Group has been operating in the Donbas since 2014.

So if Russia wanted to wage an all-out invasion of Ukraine, and the Wagner Group needed to recruit mercenaries in a hurry without an audit trail linked to the Kremlin, what better way than using stablecoins such as Tether?

And if a Wagner Group mercenary wanted to ensure he’d get paid no matter what, which would he prefer, the ruble against a backdrop of soon-to-be sanctioned Russian banks, or Tether on TRON?

that’s why it’s so important to monitor stablecoin flows — because they can provide an orthogonal data point that most fund and risk managers may miss.

Whether as an indicator of leverage or risk appetite, or as a precursor to a potentially economically destabilizing conflict, stablecoin flows are becoming an increasingly important metric to monitor.

https://blog.dshr.org/2023/11/alamedas-on-ramp.html

curl on 100 operating systems

date: 2023-11-14, from: Daniel Stenberg Blog

In a recent pull-request for curl, I clarified to the contributor that their change would only be accepted and merged into curl’s git code repository if they made sure that the change was done in a way so that it did not break (testing) for and on legacy platforms. In that thread, I could almost … Continue reading curl on 100 operating systems →

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/11/14/curl-on-100-operating-systems/

What 5G Fixed Wireless Boom Can Teach Us About Technology

date: 2023-11-14, from: Om Malik blog

The 5G Home Broadband is booming. However, the journey of fixed wireless access has neither been simple, easy, nor cheap. This recent boom teaches us a big lesson: the unpredictable and often arduous journey of technology breakthroughs.

https://om.co/2023/11/14/what-5g-fixed-wireless-boom-can-teach-us-about-technology/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

We have too many modes of writing. I just wrote a post that’s also a tweet. Why didn’t it go to my followers on all the social nets I’m on? Why do I have to use a different editor to post to each of the services? That’s the point of textcasting, btw.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/14.html#a144157

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

Someone must be working on a ChatGPT for SQL databases. I want to talk to my friend the chatbot, so it can write the queries for me. All the time. For example, instead of asking ChatGPT how to ask for the number of rows in a table, it could just tell me how many rows there are.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/14.html#a144104

Huawei is ditching Android app support with ‘HarmonyOS Next’

date: 2023-11-14, from: OS News

It’s definitely clear that Huawei is pulling the plug on Android apps, but it’s still rather hard to believe that the company is throwing away Android (AOSP) entirely. For that, we’ll just have to wait and see, as more digging can be done when “Next” hits the scene next year. The Chinese market is big enough to sustain its own application ecosystem, and many western services are banned in China anyway, so the Play Store is of lesser value there. It makes sense for Huawei to not waste time and resources on maintaining Android application compatibility.

https://www.osnews.com/story/137840/huawei-is-ditching-android-app-support-with-harmonyos-next/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-14, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

Report that news.scripting.com wasn’t working. Fixed.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/14.html#a140237

Don’t waste money on a math coprocessor they said

date: 2023-11-14, from: OS News

I tried to launch BattleTech over and over and had zero success. I couldn’t figure out why it was struggling on my model 80 board, where it runs just great on 86Box. What is going on? One thing I had stumbled upon was that if I launched an ancient Infocom game in a DOS box, and then launched BattleTech it had a much higher chance of running. But this did not always equate to it working. How is launching an old COM file from the early 80’s excise the ‘devil’ of some 1988 EXE from running? As the title suggests, it’s got to do with the math coprocessor. I know I say this often, but I’m so glad people dive into these sorts of things decades later to figure out what’s going on. It makes for great reading.

https://www.osnews.com/story/137838/dont-waste-money-on-a-math-coprocessor-they-said/

RISC-V with Linux 6.7 gains optimized TLB flushing, software shadow call stacks

date: 2023-11-14, from: OS News

Phoronix listed some of the major work happening in 6.7 for the RISC-V architecture: Merged last week was support for cbo.zero in user-space, support for CBOs on ACPI-based RISC-V systems, support for software shadow call stacks, improvements for the T-Head cache flushing operations, and other clean-ups and fixes. Meanwhile sent out today was a secondary pull request of more RISC-V changes for Linux 6.7. This latest pull has support for handling misaligned accesses in S-mode, performance improvements for TLB flushing, support for many new relocations in the module loader, and other enhancements. Momentum is definitely going for RISC-V.

https://www.osnews.com/story/137836/risc-v-with-linux-6-7-gains-optimized-tlb-flushing-software-shadow-call-stacks/

Sunny suggestion for a student project

date: 2023-11-14, from: Status-Q blog

I think this would be a fun student project. I would certainly have enjoyed it. Here’s a year’s worth of my solar-generation data. My roof is oriented approximately 5 degrees west of south. How close can you get to discovering where I live, from this data alone? How can you improve your estimate by incorporating Continue Reading

https://statusq.org/archives/2023/11/14/11800/

Sanitize HTML and SVG?

date: 2023-11-14, from: Alex Schroeder’s Blog

Sanitize HTML and SVG?

Would you do it? Is “writing your own website” an activity that could be described as “untrusted user generated content”? I get the feeling that perhaps it is not! It is your site, you are writing the thing, so it’s trusted. Your visitors need to trust you, too.

Now, in order for an attacker to hurt your visitors, they would need to get access to the file system via the web server somehow.

Do you feel that the situation changes when there’s a service like Oddmu that generates the HTML based on Markdown?

I guess the source remains the same, you’re writing the Markdown, therefore the HTML, and so on. But now the attack surface is larger: attackers can attack either the web server (the reverse proxy in front) or the service itself (in the backend). I don’t run the service in a “demilitarized zone” (DMZ) – what a word! – so there’s that.

The reason I’m wondering about all that is because I wonder whether I need to sanitize the output of the Markdown to HTML conversion using a library like bluemonday.

bluemonday takes untrusted user generated content as an input, and will return HTML that has been sanitised against an allowlist of approved HTML elements and attributes so that you can safely include the content in your web page.

Hm. Even if Oddmu is used by a group of people, I would still assume that they trust each other. In such a context, there are no “untrusted users”.

So why not take the easy route and just apply sanitization always? The reason is that I sometimes (rarely!) include SVG in my Markdown, like in 2022-06-30 How to communicate dungeon maps to players.

Yesterday evening and this morning I spent a fair amount of time writing code that adds SVG validation to a bluemonday policy. You can take a look in issue #196. It’s awful. And I suspect that the specs will keep changing over time and so I will keep running into issues. It would be much easier to just drop it.

#Oddµ #Web #SVG

2023-11-14 I removed the sanitization code from Oddµ. Thanks for the feedback, @Sandra.

https://alexschroeder.ch/view/2023-11-09-sanitize

How .tk Became a TLD for Scammers

date: 2023-11-14, updated: 2023-11-08, from: Bruce Schneier blog

Sad story of Tokelau, and how its top-level domain “became the unwitting host to the dark underworld by providing a never-ending supply of domain names that could be weaponized against internet users. Scammers began using .tk websites to do everything from harvesting passwords and payment information to displaying pop-up ads or delivering malware.”

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/how-tk-became-a-tld-for-scammers.html

Code Editor update: Support for HTML and mobile devices

date: 2023-11-14, from: Raspberry Pi (.org)

Earlier this year, we launched our Code Editor, a free online tool to help make learning text-based programming simple and accessible for kids age 9 and up. We focus on supporting the needs of young people who are learning programming at school, in Code Clubs and CoderDojos, and at home. Today, we have two exciting…

The post Code Editor update: Support for HTML and mobile devices  appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/html-code-editor/

An update on our work in Africa

date: 2023-11-14, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)

It’s been a little over a year since Ken Okolo last provided an update on our work in Africa and quite a lot has happened in the last 12 months…

The post An update on our work in Africa appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/an-update-on-our-work-in-africa/

Cracking a “Developer Tools Killer” script…

date: 2023-11-14, from: Chris Heilmann

The other day I got an email from somebody who took one of my developer tools courses and he said he found a website that cannot be debugged. So I looked, found a nasty script and show you how to work around that one. You can watch the video on YouTube or read on… I […]

https://christianheilmann.com/2023/11/14/cracking-a-developer-tools-killer-script/

DATA FILE: MODULATION OF BETA-ADRENOCEPTOR-STIMULATED cAMP SIGNALLING KINETICS BY GRK2 IN A CELLULAR MODEL

date: 2023-11-14, from: ETH Zurich, recently added

Weinmann, Christian

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/641999

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

You know I don’t always like the same soda. Sometimes it’s Diet Coke, and other times, Diet Dr Pepper. But for the last year or so the drink of choice around these parts is Fresca. But you know what’s funny. No matter what my favored drink is, it’s always the one you can’t get at the local supermarket. Always sold out. Very weird.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/13.html#a220910

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Permissions Requests

date: 2023-11-13, from: Michael Tsai

Jason Snell (Reddit, Hacker News): Due to an extremely weird series of troubleshooting maneuvers, I recently found myself having to set my Mac up from scratch without migrating any of my preferences for the first time in longer than I’d like to admit.[…]More than anything else, though, the experience reminded me that Apple has a […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/13/a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-permissions-requests/

Final Cut Pro 10.7 and Final Cut Pro for iPad 1.3

date: 2023-11-13, from: Michael Tsai

Apple: Final Cut Pro now includes improvements in timeline navigation and organization, as well as new ways to simplify complex edits. The apps leverage the power-efficient performance of Apple silicon along with an all-new machine learning model for Object Tracker, and export speeds are turbocharged on Mac models powered by multiple media engines. Final Cut […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/13/final-cut-pro-10-7-and-final-cut-pro-for-ipad-1-3/

iPhone Parts Pairing

date: 2023-11-13, from: Michael Tsai

Tripp Mickle, Ella Koeze, and Brian X. Chen (via Hacker News): Unlike cars, which can be repaired with generic parts by auto shops and do-it-yourself mechanics, new iPhones are coded to recognize the serial numbers for original components and may malfunction if the parts are changed.This year, seven iPhone parts can trigger issues during repairs, […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/13/iphone-parts-pairing/

Fitbit Charge 6 and Google Pixel Watch 2

date: 2023-11-13, from: Michael Tsai

Victoria Song: Fitbit is back with the Charge 6 — and on paper, this one feels like the most Fitbit-y Fitbit since Google actively began folding the company into its ecosystem. Not only has the price been lowered from $179.95 to $159.95 but the device also adds an improved heart rate tracking algorithm, compatibility with […]

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/11/13/fitbit-charge-6-and-google-pixel-watch-2/

Do You Use It? Apple Services

date: 2023-11-13, from: TidBITS blog

Read original article

https://tidbits.com/2023/11/13/do-you-use-it-apple-services/

LittleBITS: Email Delivery Problem and Blocking Spambot Accounts

date: 2023-11-13, from: TidBITS blog

https://tidbits.com/2023/11/13/littlebits-email-delivery-problem-and-blocking-spambot-accounts/

GarageBand 10.4.9

date: 2023-11-13, from: TidBITS blog

https://tidbits.com/watchlist/garageband-10-4-9/

Retrobatch 2.0

date: 2023-11-13, from: TidBITS blog

https://tidbits.com/watchlist/retrobatch-2-0/

BusyCal 2023.4.4

date: 2023-11-13, from: TidBITS blog

https://tidbits.com/watchlist/busycal-2023-4-4/

Debugging SQL with LLMS

date: 2023-11-13, from: John Udell blog

Here’s the latest installment in the series on LLM-assisted coding over at The New Stack: Techniques for Using LLMs to Improve SQL Queries. The join was failing because the two network_interfaces columns contained JSONB objects with differing shapes; Postgres’ JSONB containment operator, @>, couldn’t match them. Since the JSONB objects are arrays, and since the … Continue reading Debugging SQL with LLMS

https://blog.jonudell.net/2023/11/13/debugging-sql-with-llms/

Nice Morning View

date: 2023-11-13, from: Miek Giebin blog

A foggy morning view.

https://miek.nl/2023/november/13/nice-morning-view/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

Mastodon is like CP/M. Bluesky is like the Apple II. Threads is like the IBM PC (though not nearly as open). And Twitter is.. hmmm.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/13.html#a171031

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

Bluesky has a hidden feature no one knows about yet. 😄

http://scripting.com/2023/11/13.html#a171018

Proxmox on the Raspberry Pi 4 – First Looks

date: 2023-11-13, from: How to Raspberry

Now that we’ve got Proxmox running on the Raspberry Pi 4, let’s take a little look around. Once you’re logged in, let’s explore the “Datacenter” in the upper left. This is a listing of all the Pis in the cluster. We haven’t clustered yet, so there is just this one. Click on Summary in the […]

https://www.howtoraspberry.com/2023/11/proxmox-on-the-raspberry-pi-4-first-looks/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-13, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

I just got a link to a story on The Information about my longtime friend Guy Kawasaki. We had a couple of great adventures together, early in our careers, and I’ll never forget the moment when he gave me the idea that blasted my company out of poverty to success. I would have loved to read the article, but to do so I’d have to sign on, and I’m sure they would sell my address, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to subscribe. So as much as it pained me, I hit the back button and wrote this post to say I would have been happy to spend $1 to read the article, and authenticate myself with a service I control (ie no selling my identity thank you). We’ve been around this block so many times. The writing world of the web is full of disappointment like this. I’ve written this post 100,000 times by now.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/13.html#a160521

(#eklzdvq) Oh so that’s what the geo-info is use for - sunrise and sunset.

It reminds be about that is very useful for online meetings across t …

date: 2023-11-13, updated: 2023-11-13, from: Darch (sørenpeter) neotxt blog

Oh so that’s what the geo-info is use for - sunrise and sunset.
It reminds be about https://poleclock.com/ that is very useful for online meetings across timezone - like when we were having our yarn social calls back in the days

https://neotxt.dk/twt/dkxckvq

Ten Ways AI Will Change Democracy

date: 2023-11-13, updated: 2023-11-08, from: Bruce Schneier blog

Artificial intelligence will change so many aspects of society, largely in ways that we cannot conceive of yet. Democracy, and the systems of governance that surround it, will be no exception. In this short essay, I want to move beyond the “AI-generated disinformation” trope and speculate on some of the ways AI will change how democracy functions—in both large and small ways.

When I survey how artificial intelligence might upend different aspects of modern society, democracy included, I look at four different dimensions of change: speed, scale, scope, and sophistication. Look for places where changes in degree result in changes of kind. Those are where the societal upheavals will happen…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/11/ten-ways-ai-will-change-democracy.html

How to Install Proxmox 8 on a Raspberry Pi Cluster

date: 2023-11-13, from: How to Raspberry

Proxmox? Proxmox is awesome! Proxmox is the perfect hosting platform for all your VMs! Proxmox lets you easily build and break down full virtual machines and containers. They sell it better themselves. From the proxmox.com website: Proxmox Virtual Environment is a complete open-source platform for enterprise virtualization. With the built-in web interface you can easily […]

https://www.howtoraspberry.com/2023/11/how-to-install-proxmox-8-on-a-raspberry-pi-cluster/

Build a file server with Raspberry Pi 5 | #MagPiMonday

date: 2023-11-13, from: Raspberry Pi News (.com)

This #MagPiMonday, learn how to make a better NAS with the new features of Raspberry Pi 5.

The post Build a file server with Raspberry Pi 5 | #MagPiMonday appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/build-a-file-server-with-raspberry-pi-5-magpimonday/

The world has enough minerals for low-carbon electricity

date: 2023-11-13, from: Hannah Richie at Substack

Total reserves are not the issue – mine construction and geopolitical risks are likely to be larger barriers to progress.

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/minerals-for-electricity

@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2023-11-13, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)

The problem with Bloomberg leaks on Apple products it is that they are undistinguishable from fanfic.

https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111400511950306952

Monday 13 November, 2023

date: 2023-11-13, from: John Naughton’s online diary

Bike Park Seen on a riverside walk on Saturday. Quote of the Day “Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.” Ambrose Bierce (from his Devil’s … Continue reading →

https://memex.naughtons.org/monday-13-november-2023/38807/

The Apple Network Server’s all-too-secret weapon: PPC Toolbox

date: 2023-11-13, from: OS News

However, there was a secret weapon hidden in ANS AIX most of us at the time never knew about. Built-in to the operating system was a fully Unix-native AppleTalk stack and support for receiving and sending Apple Events, surfaced in the form of Apple’s disk administration tools and AppleShare. But Apple had a much more expansive vision for this feature: full server-client “symbiotic” applications that could do their number-crunching on the ANS and present the results on a desktop Mac. Using the Program-to-Program Communication Toolbox (“PPCToolbox”), and because AIX’s throughput far exceeded anything the classic Mac OS ever could ever handle, an ANS could augment a whole bunch of Macs at once that didn’t have to stop to do the work themselves. Well, today we’re going to write one of those “symbiotic” applications doing something this little Mystic Color Classic could never efficiently do itself — accessing and processing a JSON API over TLS 1.3 — and demonstrate not only how such an client application looked on the Mac side, but also how the server component worked on the AIX side. If you’re lucky enough to have an ANS running AIX too, you can even compile and run it yourself. But before we do that, it might be a little instructive to talk about how the Apple Network Server came to run AIX in the first place. I had no idea the ANS could do this. That’s an incredibly cool feature, and clearly fits in the whole “the network is the computer” idea that dominated the late ’90s.

https://www.osnews.com/story/137832/the-apple-network-servers-all-too-secret-weapon-ppc-toolbox/

Episode 120 - Simply COSMAC

date: 2023-11-13, from: Advent of Computing

https://adventofcomputing.libsyn.com/episode-120-simply-cosmac

How a kernel developer made my styluses work again on newer kernels

date: 2023-11-13, from: OS News

Remember when we linked to David Revoy’s story about how his drawing pen’s buttons stopped working properly due to a Linux kernel update? Well, it turns out that Linux kernel developers took this one up, and a fix is already being tested. This solution is still W.I.P. and I still have some homework to send more data about my tablets after this blog post, but in overall I’m already using a newer kernel (Linux workstation 6.5.10-200.fc38.x86_64) and I don’t have the problem with the eraser mode on the top button of my XPPen Artist 24 Pro and XPPen Artist 16 Pro Gen2 styluses. The buttons are also now perfectly customisable via xsetwacom CLI tool. Yay! That’s why I wanted to share this blog-post as soon as possible. Be sure to read the whole article for an in-depth explanation of what’s being done to fix this.

https://www.osnews.com/story/137830/how-a-kernel-developer-made-my-styluses-work-again-on-newer-kernels/

Proposal: an HTML element for spoilers

date: 2023-11-12, from: Tilde.news

Comments

https://seirdy.one/posts/2023/11/12/spoiler-element/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

If Threads is serious about being open, what’s preventing them from adding a simple posting API and outbound RSS. Very lightweight well-established technology. We could start building around it now.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/12.html#a183520

@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2023-11-12, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)

No VT100 or VAX 11/780 will be left behind.

La Terminal on VisionOS (there is a higher resolution version on Twitter):

https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111398962783946711

@Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed (date: 2023-11-12, from: Miguel de Icaza Mastondon feed)

Previously on LOST:

https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111302428298515374

Progress on Godot on iPad.

Making Godot launch a game on the iPad was a lot more work than I anticipated as you can't run separate processes on iOS. But I got it working:

397 files changed, 7644 insertions(+), 3184 deletions(-)

Shown ARM binary on the Mac, since my physical iPad is downstairs:

https://mastodon.social/@Migueldeicaza/111398952199848083

New Outlook sends passwords, mails and other data to Microsoft

date: 2023-11-12, from: OS News

“Microsoft steals access data” – When the well-known German IT portal “Heise Online” uses such drastic words in its headline, then something is up. If Microsoft has its way, all Windows users will have to switch to the latest version of Microsoft Outlook. But: Not only can the IMAP and SMTP access data of your e-mail account be transferred to Microsoft, but all e-mails in the INBOX can also be copied to the Microsoft servers, even if you have your mailbox with a completely different provider such as mailbox.org. They’re going to use it for AI, I’m assuming. In any event, don’t use the new Outlook – it’s a web app anyway and there’s better clients for Windows. I think. I’m not sure people are still developing e-mail clients for Windows.

https://www.osnews.com/story/137828/new-outlook-sends-passwords-mails-and-other-data-to-microsoft/

KDE Plasma 6.0 goes Wayland by default

date: 2023-11-12, from: OS News

Yep you read that right, we’ve decided to throw the lever and go Wayland by default! The three remaining showstoppers are in the process of being fixed and we expect them to be done soon–certainly before the final release of Plasma 6. So we wanted to make the change early to gather as much feedback as possible. Excellent news. Of course, distributions will still be able to opt for the unmaintained, deprecated X.org if they want to, but most distributions will opt for Wayland, as all the major ones have been doing for a while now.

https://www.osnews.com/story/137826/kde-plasma-6-0-goes-wayland-by-default/

FreeDOS Edlin 2.23

date: 2023-11-12, from: FreeDOS News

https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/news/2023/11/freedos-edlin-223/

New libm-0.6 and libmpi-0.2

date: 2023-11-12, from: FreeDOS News

https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/news/2023/11/new-libm-06-and-libmpi-02/

Southwest 2024 date confirmed

date: 2023-11-12, from: RiscOS Story

And a round-up of other show dates, whether known or likely! The time is almost here to say goodbye to 2023 and welcome in a whole new year, which we should probably call ‘2024’ – and if we’re looking at a new year, we may as well start thinking about the RISC OS shows that we’ll be attending, the first of which is usually the Southwest Show. Organised by R-Comp‘s Andrew Rawnsley and Orpheus Internet‘s Richard Brown – both also of RISC OS Developments – the show usually takes place…

https://www.riscository.com/2023/southwest-2024-date-confirmed/

Repairing and upgrading old RISC OS computers with ROUGOL – 27th November

date: 2023-11-12, from: RiscOS Story

The RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) usually holds its meetings on the third Monday of each month, but it has been pushed back a week for November – so if you have 20th November marked in your diaries, scrub it out and add 27th November. With the meeting that far off, it might seem unusual to see an announcement this early, but there’s a good reason for that. The topic for the meeting will be repairing and upgrading Archimedes and RISC OS machines. The group will be looking…

https://www.riscository.com/2023/repairing-old-kit-rougol-27th-november/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

Some news. I’ve been working with Automattic for most of this year on a new version of FeedLand that runs in their cloud. The advantage is it will scale like the most popular websites, as WordPress does. There have been lots of internal changes in the software, but at the same time, it still runs on a $10 a month Digital Ocean server, and on desktops as well. The next FeedLand works at all these levels, for a person, a workgroup and the world. Obviously, lots more to say about all this. 😄

http://scripting.com/2023/11/12.html#a142810

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

The great thing about the private Facebook group is I have invited friends from all stages of my life. People I knew in from high school, New Orleans, Madison, Palo Alto, Cambridge and Berkeley, NYC and Woodstock. Even people I knew as a child. People I only or mostly know virtually. Imho, people who won’t use Facebook miss out. Its greatest feature are the people who use it. It’s the kind of village we yearn for, at a DNA level. People you will never stop loving. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this group on the blog, but maybe I should do that more, because it’s a uniquely civilized, friendly and soul-nourishing online place, at least for me.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/12.html#a134833

Happy Diwali

date: 2023-11-12, from: Om Malik blog

Happy Diwali everyone. Diwali is the Festival of Lights. It symbolizes the spiritual ‘victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.’ We could all use some light in these dark times.

https://om.co/2023/11/12/happy-diwali-6/

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

But first I need to be able to interact ChatGPT-style with the archive I’ve already created. Yesterday I saw Guy Kawasaki’s chatbot, trained with transcripts of his podcast, and I have total LLM-envy. Guy says it was created for him by a company named Sentiyen.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/12.html#a133843

@Dave Winer’s Scripting News (date: 2023-11-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News)

Someday an author is going to construct a universe in a LLM and let users interact with it. That sounds boring, but here’s the interesting idea that led to it. Yesterday I asked ChatGPT to draw me a image of an ancient band performing in the desert with cacti as the audience. Then this morning I had the idea of moving the concert into the pond behind my house, except this time the audience are frogs. I have a private Facebook group where I tell the story of the pond, including the animals who come to visit. Some of them I invent, they don’t actually exist. And they have relationships with each other, at least in my mind. A natural thing to make part of this private group would be the LLM of all the animals, and their stories and relationships. And other people’s models could incorporate mine. This was an idea I had for SimCity, and the web of outlines, neither of which happened. Maybe it’ll happen in LLM-land.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/12.html#a133514

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

date: 2023-11-12, from: Status-Q blog

“We are experiencing an unusually large volume of calls at the moment. We apologise for the delay.  Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in turn.” My friend Andy Stanford-Clark was complaining about this on Twitter,  “No, there are an unexpectedly low number of people answering the phones at the moment. Don’t Continue Reading

https://statusq.org/archives/2023/11/12/11794/

Staying Dry and Stealthy

date: 2023-11-12, from: Status-Q blog

I’ve always been a little bit of a Gore-Tex skeptic.  While I have owned, and do currently own, several garments and shoes incorporating the fabric, I’ve always felt a little bit let-down by it. “If this is both waterproof and breathable”, I would ask myself as I ascended the hill in a slight drizzle, “then Continue Reading

https://statusq.org/archives/2023/11/12/11784/

PHP File Download Hit Counter

date: 2023-11-12, from: Dave Jarvis’ Blog

Describes technical hurdles while building a file download hit counter in PHP.

https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2023/11/12/php-download-hit-counter

Ancient band in Arizona desert

date: 2023-11-12, from: Dave Winer’s Scripting News

I asked for an ancient rock band performing on stage in the middle of the Arizona desert, and the audience members are all cacti, and they’re partying and grooving on the tunes.

Ancient band in Arizona desert with cacti audience.

http://scripting.com/2023/11/11/013609.html?title=ancientBandInArizonaDesert

Full Circle Weekly News 339

date: 2023-11-12, from: Full Circle Magazine

• Release of Ubuntu Sway Remix 23.10:

• GhostBSD 23.10.1:

• Release of Incus 0.2:

• Release of VLC 3.0.20:

• Midori 11 web browser based on the Floorp project:

• Release of Pale Moon 32.5:

• Release of Yggdrasil 0.5:

• Audacity 3.4:

• New version of the GNU Awk 5.3 interpreter:

• Release of Nitrux 3.1:

• OpenELA repositories for RHEL-compatible distributions:

• Release of Radix cross 1.9.212:

• New version of Exim 4.97 mail server:

Credits

• Host: @bardictriad, @zaivala
• Bumper: Canonical
• Theme Music: From The Dust - Stardust
• https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic
• CC BY 4.0

https://fullcirclemagazine.org/podcasts/podcast-339/