Dirk Eddelbuettel: RProtoBuf 0.4.18: Multiple Updates
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/16#rprotobuf_0.4.18
December 16, 2021, 11:05 PM
A new release 0.4.18 of RProtoBuf arrived on CRAN earlier today. RProtoBuf provides R with bindings for the Google Protocol Buffers (“ProtoBuf”) data encoding and serialization library used and released by Google, and deployed very widely in numerous projects as a language and operating-system agnostic protocol.
This release, the first since March of last year, contains two contributed pull requests improving or extending the package, some internal maintance updating the CI setup as well as ...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: BH 1.78.0-0: New Upstream, Two New Libraries
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/16#bh_1.78.0-0.txt
December 16, 2021, 9:46 PM
Boost is a very large and comprehensive set of (peer-reviewed) libraries for the C++ programming language, containing well over 100 individual libraries. The BH package provides a sizeable subset of header-only libraries for (easier, no linking required) use by R. It is fairly widely used: the (partial) CRAN mirror logs (aggregated from the cloud mirrors) show over 28 million package downloads.
Version 1.78.0 of Boost was released in a few days ago on their schedule with April, August and Dece...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: BH 1.78.0-0: New Upstream, Two New Libraries
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/16#bh_1.78.0-0
December 16, 2021, 9:46 PM
Boost is a very large and comprehensive set of (peer-reviewed) libraries for the C++ programming language, containing well over 100 individual libraries. The BH package provides a sizeable subset of header-only libraries for (easier, no linking required) use by R. It is fairly widely used: the (partial) CRAN mirror logs (aggregated from the cloud mirrors) show over 28 million package downloads.
Version 1.78.0 of Boost was released in a few days ago on their schedule with April, August and Decemb...
--------------------
Raphaël Hertzog: Freexian’s report about Debian Long Term Support, November 2021
https://raphaelhertzog.com/2021/12/16/freexians-report-about-debian-long-term-support-november-2021/
December 16, 2021, 3:27 PM
Every month we review the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering. Please find the report for November below.
Debian project funding
Our project funding work continues with an active bid on the work of packaging a recent gradle in Debian. This month the bidder has been estimating the scope of the entire project.The Grow Your Ideas project page also has some ambitious initiatives that may evolve into a funded project. The project ideas on that page range from a new wiki for Debian, ...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: nanotime 0.3.5 on CRAN: Update
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/14#nanotime_0.3.5
December 15, 2021, 3:14 AM
Another (minor) nanotime release, now at version 0.3.5, just arrived at CRAN. It follows the updates RDieHarder 0.2.3 and RcppCCTZ 0.2.10 earlier today in bringing a patch kindly prepared by Tomas Kalibera for the upcoming (and very useful) ‘UCRT’ changes for Windows involving small build changes for the updated Windows toolchain.
nanotime relies on the RcppCCTZ package for (efficient) high(er) resolution time parsing and formatting up to nanosecond resolution, and the bit64 package for the ...
--------------------
Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppCCTZ 0.2.10: Updates
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/2021/12/14#rcppcctz_0.2.10
December 15, 2021, 12:10 AM
A new release 0.2.10 of RcppCCTZ is now on CRAN.
RcppCCTZ uses Rcpp to bring CCTZ to R. CCTZ is a C++ library for translating between absolute and civil times using the rules of a time zone. In fact, it is two libraries. One for dealing with civil time: human-readable dates and times, and one for converting between between absolute and civil times via time zones. And while CCTZ is made by Google(rs), it is not an official Google product. The RcppCCTZ page has a few usage examples and details. Th...
--------------------
Timo Jyrinki: Working and warming up cats
http://losca.blogspot.com/2021/12/working-and-warming-up-cats.html
December 14, 2021, 7:29 AM
How to disable internal keyboard/touchpad when a cat arrives        I’m using an external keyboard (1) and mouse (2), but the  laptop lid is usually still open for better cooling. That means the  internal keyboard (3) and touchpad (4) – made of comfortable materials –  are open to be used by a cat searching for warmth (7), in the obvious  “every time” case that a normal non-heated nest (6) is not enough.The problem is, everything goes chaotic at that point in the default  configuration...
--------------------
Andrej Shadura: Coffee gear upgrade
https://blog.shadura.me/2021/12/12/coffee-gear-upgrade/
December 12, 2021, 11:49 AM
Two weeks ago I decided to make myself a combined birthday and Christmas present and upgrade my coffee gear.
I’ve got my first espresso machine back in 2013, it was a cheap Saeco Philips Poemia, which made reasonably
drinkable coffee, but not being able to make good coffee made me increasingly unhappy about it. However,
since it worked, I wasn’t motivated enough to change anything — until it stopped working. One day the nut holding
the ‘shower screen’ broke, and I couldn’t replace it...
--------------------
Russell Coker: Some Ideas for Debian Security Improvements
https://etbe.coker.com.au/2021/12/12/ideas-debian-security-improvements/
December 12, 2021, 7:24 AM
Debian security is pretty good, but there’s always scope for improvement. Here are some ideas that I think could be used to improve things.
A security “wizard”, basically a set of scripts with support for plugins that will investigate your system and look for things that can be improved. It could give suggestions on LSMs that could be used, sysctl settings, lists of daemons running as root that possibly don’t need root privs, etc. Plugins could be for different daemons, so there could b...
--------------------
Molly de Blanc: Applications
http://deblanc.net/blog/2021/12/11/applications/
December 11, 2021, 9:07 PM
The first time I applied for grad school it was a bit of a lark. I was serious about it, I wanted to go, I had goals, and I am happy to be here now. However, it was a little fun. I took a white paper and crisped it up with the help of some friends who read it and provided comments. I wrote a personal statement, got some letters of recommendation, and generally felt pretty good about the process. It wasn’t stressful.
The second time I applied to grad school it was a slog. For several weeks I ga...
--------------------
Neil Williams: Diversity and gender
https://linux.codehelp.co.uk/diversity-and-gender.html
December 11, 2021, 12:20 PM
As a follow on to a previous blog entry of mine, Free and Open, I feel it
worthwhile to do my bit to dismantle the pseudo-science and over
simplification in the idea that gender is binary at a biological level.
TL;DR: Science simply does not support binary sexes or binary genders.
Truth is a bit more complicated.
There is certainty and there are binary answers in mathematics. Things
get less definitive in physics, certainly as soon as quantum is
broached. Processes become more of an equilibrium...
--------------------
Junichi Uekawa: Updated my raspberry pi to bullseye and no longer connects to network.
http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/diary/daily/2021-Dec-11.html.en#2021-Dec-11-10:10:51
December 11, 2021, 1:10 AM
Updated my raspberry pi to bullseye and no longer connects to network. Seems like eth0 got renamed.
  probably this thing that I was supposed to have migrated away from.
  Not entirely sure how to recover from this now.
--------------------
Reproducible Builds (diffoscope): diffoscope 196 released
https://diffoscope.org/news/diffoscope-196-released/
December 10, 2021, 12:00 AM
The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope
version 196. This version includes the following changes:
[ Roland Clobus ]
* Add a comment/annotation when the GNU_BUILD_ID field has been modified.
[ Brent Spillner ]
* Fix the "Black" version detection.
[ Chris Lamb ]
* Replace "token" with anonymous variable "x" in order to remove extra lines.
You find out more by visiting the project homepage....
--------------------
David Kalnischkies: APT for Advent of Code

Click here to read the complete article