schestowitz.com

Stevie Wonder in Manchester

Stevie Wonder coming here again

Quotas Are Not Common Sense

Quality matters

Long Ago (And Far Away)

Simple, but still brilliant, still one of my favourites.

Cheap But Unfit for Purpose and Unsafe

Appliances have gotten worse (less safe, less reliable), even branded goods from NIMA [1, 2] because people like “cheap” and companies are cheapening the production processes, materials, quality control

A Fishy Week

So far, so good

Enzo Has Started Better Than Pep

EnzoFC seems to be getting better over time

Linus Torvalds Again Complains That LLM Slop (That Nobody Audits) Overwhelms the Linux Kernel

could not help but notice the wordings of Torvalds, as uttered in writing this past Sunday. This is not the first time he expresses (apprehensively, his boss is the Linux Foundation, bribed by the slop industry) concerns about Linux slipping out of developers’ control only to become a bloated pig that few people understand.

Art, Not Slop

used to find it disturbing when some football clubs shared slop, especially in social control media, about their squad.

Always Pleased With Manchester Pets & Aquatics at Ardwick

had a very productive day today, especially all the “fish tank” stuff. At one point we discussed the options available to us, then I left home just in time to reach the pet store at 9AM (when it opens). I spent a long time looking at all the animals and could see the people who ran the shop really love animals. One was hugging the lizard while cleaning its cage; the lizard would not let go when he came to the fish section to help and advise me. They also checked things on a computer system to give me expert advice when I asked questions.

999

think I won’t remember to check this again in 3 hours, but it’ll soon be 999 days and 9 hours, 9 minutes, 9 seconds since last reboot.

Internet Society

From Curiosity to Confidence: CodificaKids Builds Digital Trust in Rural Brazil

Walking home one afternoon through the streets of São José do Alegre, a quiet rural town in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, João heard a notification ping and pulled out his phone.

Community Snapshot—August

Around the world, our community works locally, regionally, and globally to keep the Internet a force for good: open, globally connected, secure, and trustworthy.

LinuxGizmos.com

x86 compute module features Intel Core Ultra 200V with up to 115 TOPS

The LattePanda Mu Ultra measures 60 x 69.6mm and uses an AMI UEFI BIOS stored on a 256Mbit SPI device. The module is available with either an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V or Core Ultra 7 256V processor, both featuring eight CPU cores and eight threads. The 226V operates at up to 4.5GHz and integrates an Intel Arc 130V GPU with seven Xe cores, together with an Intel AI Boost NPU rated at up to 40 TOPS. LattePanda lists up to 53 TOPS from the GPU and 97 TOPS of combined INT8 performance across the CPU, GPU, and NPU.

i.MX95 SMARC module offers LPDDR5, Wi-Fi 6 and PCIe Gen3

MYIR’s MYC-JMX95X is a SMARC 2.2 System-on-Module based on NXP’s i.MX95 processor. The module features six Cortex-A55 cores, Cortex-M7 and Cortex-M33 auxiliary cores, a 2-TOPS NPU, LPDDR5 memory, eMMC storage, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and a range of high-speed expansion interfaces.

ODROID-M1S goes Lite with 2GB RAM, NVMe and 4K video

The ODROID-M1S Lite is based on Rockchip’s RK3566 processor, which integrates four Arm Cortex-A55 cores operating at up to 1.8GHz, a Mali-G52 GPU with two execution engines, and an RKNN neural processing unit rated at up to 0.8 TOPS of INT8 performance.

9to5Linux

OpenSSL 4.1 Promises Support for DTLS 1.3, IKEV2 KDF, and GREASE, Alpha Out Now

OpenSSL 4.1 promises support for the DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security) 1.3 protocol, support for the GREASE (Generate Random Extensions And Sustain Extensibility) mechanism to prevent extensibility failures in the TLS ecosystem, support for the IKEV2 KDF cryptographic mechanism, and initial support for the Elbrus2000 (e2k) architecture.

KDE Frameworks 6.30 Improves Baloo File Indexer, KWallet, and System Monitor

The monthly KDE Frameworks releases continue, and KDE Frameworks 6.30 is here to improve in-window dialogs in Kirigami-based apps to be better highlighted against the rest of the window content when using a dark theme and update Plasma System Monitor graphs to request “tabular numerals” for the legends when using a font that supports them, improving alignment.

NVIDIA 615 Linux Graphics Driver Improves Support for Vulkan-Native Games

The NVIDIA 615 graphics driver series introduces support for revision 2 of the VK_NV_low_latency Vulkan extension to enable out-of-the-box Proton support for NVIDIA Reflex in Vulkan-native games, support for cgroups-based memory partitioning, and support for the VK_EXT_cluster_acceleration_structure Vulkan extension.

MocaccinoOS 26.09 Adds x86-64-v3 Optimized Builds for Improved Performance

Still powered by the long-term supported Linux 6.18 LTS kernel series, namely Linux 6.18.50, MocaccinoOS 26.09 improves Intel CPU/platform support, including for Raptor Lake systems, improves ASUS ROG/Armoury hardware support for asusctl, and adds optional x86-64-v3 optimized builds for improved performance on supported modern CPUs.

KDE Plasma 6.7.5 Desktop Environment Is Out with Many Improvements and Fixes

Coming more than a month after KDE Plasma 6.7.4, the KDE Plasma 6.7.5 release is here to improve the way HDR content looks when using an ICC profile, improve the Spectacle utility to be faster at taking screenshots, and update Discover only to offer to open and install DEB packages on distros that natively support it.

GStreamer 1.28.7 Open-Source Multimedia Framework Adds Support for OpenCV 5

Coming about a month after GStreamer 1.28.6, the GStreamer 1.28.7 release is here to add support for building against OpenCV 5, add a missing API version suffix in the HIP support library filename, restore gap event sending in the MPEG-PS demuxer, and limit the number of remote sources being tracked in the rtprecv element.

Tor Project blog

New Release: Tor Browser 15.0.22

This version includes important security updates to Tor.

Tor VPN Beta: What we've learned building our own VPN for Android from scratch

And for years, we heard this again and again in our user research. People wanted a simple way to protect their entire device, which inspired the idea for Tor VPN back in 2021. We focused on Android first, where the need was greatest and where we could reach the most users in censored regions. We built Tor VPN Beta as a first version, with the expectation that we would learn from real-world use. And when we first launched Tor VPN Beta for Android in a limited release last fall, the primary use case quickly became much clearer: unblock the internet. This has shaped how we've prioritized development and user support in the time since the initial launch, and how we think about the product moving forward.