schestowitz.com

Made It to 4 Digits!

An uptime of 1000 days

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.

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.

9to5Linux

Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS Is Now Available for Download with Linux 7.0 and Mesa 26.2

Coming six months after Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS, the Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS point release is here as an up-to-date installation medium, which includes all the latest software updates and security patches, for those who want to deploy the long-term supported Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) operating system on new computers without having to download hundreds of updated packages from the repositories after the installation.

COSMIC 1.8 Desktop Environment Is Officially Out, Improves Touchscreen Support

COSMIC 1.8 comes two weeks after COSMIC 1.7 as a hefty release that improves touchscreen support, makes server-side decorations configurable, improves the screenshot tool, adds support for starting X11 windows minimized, improves mouse capture support, and improves support for hybrid GPU laptops.

KDE Plasma 6.8 Desktop Environment Is Now Available for Public Beta Testing

Some of the highlights of KDE Plasma 6.8 include triple buffering for NVIDIA GPUs enabled by default, support for recording audio in Spectacle during screen recording, and automatic logic support for Plasma Login Manager on distros with older systemd versions, such as KDE neon.

Calamares 3.4.3 Linux Graphical Installer Improves Disk Partitioning, Locale

Coming six months after Calamares 3.4.2, the Calamares 3.4.3 release is here to improve disk partitioning by adding support for the latest KPMcore release, improve the partition-needs-alignment behavior, and no longer accidentally mark /boot as the EFI boot partition, which could break with systemd-gpt-auto-generator.

KDE Gear 26.08.1 Is Out with More Improvements for Your Favorite KDE Apps

KDE Gear 26.08.1 is here to fix the orientation of an arrow within the plasmoid of the KDE Connect app, fix opening the room map from a talk in the Kongress companion application for conferences, and fix a crash in the Okular document viewer that occurred when saving documents.

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.

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.

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.