today's leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 23, 2025

Distributions and Operating Systems

• BSD

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ 2006 Nintendo Wii hacked to run Infected Systems' blog — uses open-source NetBSD

    Alex Haydock is running his blog on an old Nintendo Wii using NetBSD — an open-source Unix-like operating system. It's a publicly accessible blog and the experiment is "ongoing."

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • SaaS/Back End/Databases

    • Daniel Janus ☛ No, really, you can’t branch Datomic from the past

      I have a love-hate relationship with Datomic. Datomic is a Clojure-based database based on a record of immutable facts; this post assumes a passing familiarity with it – if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend checking it out, it’s enlightening even if you end up not using it.

      I’ll leave ranting on the “hate” part for some other time; here, I’d like to focus on some of the love – and its limits.

  • Content Management Systems (CMS) / Static Site Generators (SSG)

    • Cyble Inc ☛ Critical CVE-2025-2636 Vulnerability In InstaWP Connect Plugin

      The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2025-2636, specifically impacts older versions of the plugin. Versions prior to 0.1.0.88 are at risk. This security flaw enables unauthorized attackers to remotely execute malicious PHP code on affected websites. If left unpatched, the vulnerability could lead to a variety of security breaches, including unauthorized access to sensitive data or even full website compromise.

    • Amos Wenger ☛ Open sourcing the home CMS

      But as soon as you consider open-sourcing something well, then you suddenly have a whole new different set of standards.

      My rationale for keeping it closed this whole time was: I don’t want to be maintaining this specific thing for everyone. It’s my thing.

  • Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

    • Open Data

      • Scoop News Group ☛ What the dismantling of the Education Department means for its data

        Even before issuing the executive order, the Trump administration slashed the agency’s workforce by 50%. Now, terminated Education officials hold doubts about what’s coming next for data collection and dissemination, pointing to specific concerns with grant programs and information sources, as well as a lack of remaining talent for data stewardship and management.