Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 02, 2026

• [Old] Ubunlog ☛ Mumble 1.4 has already been released and comes with many changes and news

  After little more than two years of development the release of the new version of the Mumble platform 1.4 was announced, which is focused on creating voice chats that provide low latency and high voice quality.

  Unlike centralized services, Mumble allows you to store user data on your own servers and fully control how it works of the infrastructure, if necessary, by connecting additional controller scripts, to write that a special API based on the Ice and GRPC protocols is available.

  In particular, you can use existing user bases for authentication or connect sound bots that can, for example, play music. It is possible to manage the server through a web interface. Users can search for friends on different servers.

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

  • Robert Birming ☛ My blogging journey

    I published my first post on February 16, 2023. Since then, I've tried a few other platforms as well, and also used different domain names.

    Lately, though, I've come to realize that I can't hop around forever. As of October 5, 2025, I'm using robertbirming.com and host it on Bear.

  • Naty S ☛ A Dating Matter: Hugo, Indiekit, and Node

    A few weeks ago, I noticed some of my Hugo sort functions weren’t working. For example, I want Hugo to sort the most recent pages based on the date or lastmod front matter parameter (param). Not sure when it broke, or if it was always broke; but it would not sort the date correctly when a page did not contain a lastmod param, i.e., pages with only a date param, despite being newer, would not go to the top of the list.

• GNU Projects

  • [Repeat] MJ Fransen ☛ Having fun with Chicken Scheme

    Having fun with Chicken Scheme

    Switch from Guile Scheme to Chicken Scheme

    Lately have been dabbling in Guile Scheme. Guile Scheme is very fast and since is it the main development environment for Guix, its popularity is rising.

• Licensing / Legal

  • Laurie Voss ☛ Did OpenAI hack Hugging Face or didn't they?

    The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is famously broad, and to the best of my understanding it wants roughly four things: you accessed a computer, you weren't authorised to, you did it on purpose, and something bad resulted. No malice required, no profit motive, and "something bad" includes simply obtaining information.

    So what happened here? Access to someone else's production systems? Yes. Authorised? Very much not; they used stolen credentials, which from what I've read probably drags identity fraud law in as well. Information obtained? OpenAI says so in writing. Harm? Hugging Face rebuilt compromised nodes, rotated secrets, and hired outside forensics specialists, which is well past the dollar threshold in damages that the law requires.

  • Michael Lopp ☛ The Apple Upgrade Situation

    That was just the deal; the steal was that it was low effort every single year to get a new phone. I’d re-up for a new phone, and Apple would forgive the remaining payments of the loan because I’d signed up for another 24 months. Oh, and bonus, AppleCare was included, which was a total steal because I hate iPhone cases (iPhones are designed to be felt) and, uh, also I have been known to drop my phone.

    Felt fair. The Apple bet was that users would embrace the original plan, were going to re-up regularly, and Apple would refurb the phone on a strong used market. That bet ended on a Tuesday. Apple retired the Upgrade Program and replaced it with Apple Upgrade: a Klarna-financed lease covering iPhones, Watches, iPads, and Macs. The loan became a lease. And it feels different.

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Data

    • Rlang ☛ Little useless-useful R functions – Honest geographical location signposts

      And fundamental question is, how correct these distances are? Or even, one should ask, how honest a particular signpost is, regarding the current standpoint.

      So let’s put this utterly most fundamental question to the test 🙂🙂 And since it is vacation time, you can grab the R code and check it yourself 🙂🙂

• Programming/Development

  • Didier Stevens ☛ Overview of Content Published in July

    Here is an overview of content I published in July: SANS ISC Diary entries: Wireshark 4.6.7 Released zipdump.py: Metadata Encoding