today's leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 27, 2022

• FOSS Weekly #26 - Ubuntu Touch 24, Asahi Updates, WSL GA, Stable Diffusion V2 - more | FOSS Weekly

  Here is your weekly review of open source software. Some big releases and interesting updates from the Asahi Linux team.

• Linux Around The World: USA - Rhode Island - LinuxLinks

  We cover events and user groups that are running in the US state of Rhode Island. This article forms part of our Linux Around The World series.

• Twitter migration

  Mastodon ain’t Twitter. Its design and available features are slightly different, as a matter of philosophy.

• Libre Arts - Upscayl vs Upscaler

  There’s a lot of conversation about using AI and neural networks in art lately. One direction this technology is evolving in is producing better looking upscaled images. The software has to pretty much paint in the details that weren’t there originally which requires some training.

  We’ve seen algorithms like waifu2x in the past, then there was ESRGAN, Gigapixel by Topaz and others, and now the latest iteration is Real-ESRGAN which attempts to make the original technology better suited for dealing with real-life use cases.

• Crowdfunding Elgato Key Lights - Georges Stavracas

  Since I created Boatswain, earlier this year, a lot has happened. Recently it was accepted as part of the GNOME Circle! As the app gets more popular, people are asking for more useful features that I cannot implement without having access to the actual hardware they depend on.

  Specifically, I’ve received multiple requests to integrate Boatswain with Elgato Key Lights. This makes a lot of sense, and I’m happy to do so, but without hardware for testing the changes it’s not feasible. Of course, this is free software, someone with sufficient programming skills could contribute that feature; but as it turns out, the intersection of people using Linux, GNOME, Boatswain, Elgato Key Lights, and knows how to program in C + GObject is minuscule, so that’s unlikely to happen.

• Helm: The Kubernetes Package Manager - Earthly Blog

  For production and hybrid cloud environments, manual deployments with Kubernetes are time consuming and non reusable. As you deploy different applications with similar configuration settings to Kubernetes, you’ll have a large number of YAML files and substantial duplication; this makes the applications difficult to maintain. This is where Helm can help.

• Using Canary Deployments in Kubernetes - Earthly Blog

  Has a seemingly harmless update ever caused your application to fail in production? Canary deployments, like the proverbial canary in a coal mine, can help you mitigate the chaotic outcomes of such updates that can potentially cause critical downtime.

  Canary deployments are based on the routing of user traffic such that you can compare, test, and observe the behavior of any update for a small percentage of users. They are an important roll-out strategy in Kubernetes, especially when tweaks, updates, or entirely new deployments need to be tested. A canary deployment is an improved iteration of an existing deployment that includes all the necessary dependencies and application code. It exists alongside the original deployment and allows you to compare the behavior of different versions of your application side by side. It helps you test new features on a small percentage of users with minimal downtime and less impact on user experience.

  In this article, you’ll learn about canary deployments, why they’re important, and how to use them to optimize your deployment process. You’ll also learn how to fit them into an automatic CI/CD framework.

• PostgreSQL: Call for Proposals is open for Citus Con: An Event for Postgres 2023!

  The 2nd annual Citus Con: An Event for Postgres will happen Apr 18-19, 2023 and the Call for Speakers is now open, until Feb 5, 2023! We can’t wait to see your talk proposals about what you do with the world's most advanced open source database.

  Citus Con: An Event for Postgres is a free and virtual developer event organized by the Postgres & Citus database teams at Microsoft and no travel is involved. Of course there’s a code of conduct too. To make things easy for speakers, we’ll take care of the video recording and production, both for the livestream and on-demand talks. Talks are 25 minutes long and must be in English.

• Google releases patch for zero-day Chrome vulnerability - SiliconANGLE

  Google LLC has begun rolling out a patch for a high-severity security vulnerability that affects the desktop version of its Chrome browser.

  The company disclosed the move in a Thursday blog post. The vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2022-4135, affects the Windows, Mac and Linux editions of Chrome. Google stated that the patch will roll out over the coming days and weeks.

• Working with depression

  Been struggling with depression over the past couple of weeks. Some of this is seasonal (with the shortening of the days), though I wouldn’t say it always happens. Last year at this time I recall feeling the opposite of depressed: that probably had to do with the fact that I knew I was leaving my previous job at Mozilla and wanted to get as much done as possible. Sometimes a highly motivating life situation can keep it in abeyance. Nonetheless, it’s here now, again, and demands to be dealt with.

  [...]

  And yet despite my best efforts, it’s not always enough. I do all of the things in the second list, and yet still find myself suffering in all the ways described by the first. What do I do then?

  I try to understand that there really isn’t an escape from unpleasant feeling, and that it’s just part of life: glorious and beautiful in its complexity. I try to be curious about what’s going on, even if I think it’s all happened before. If that’s not possible, I at least try to be present with it. That’s all I can do.