Free, Libre, and Open Source Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 16, 2026

• University of Toronto ☛ Grafana dashboards are a marvel of the modern web environment

  But Grafana is not merely an impressive piece of software; it's an impressive piece of web based software. Grafana dashboards are web pages and are typically built in a GUI through the web. So today I also said: [...]

• [Old] Tom Ryder ☛ Actually using ed

  The classic ed editor is a really good example of a sparse, minimal, standard Unix tool that does one thing, and does it well. Because there are so many good screen-oriented editors for Unix, there’s seldom very much call for using ed, unless you’re working on very old or very limited hardware that won’t run anything else.

  However, if part of the reason you use vi is because you think it will always be there (it may not be), then you should learn ed too. If your terminal is broken and neither vi nor nano will work, or you break it some other way, your choices may well be between cat and ed. Or even the grand heresy of sed -i…

• ZipSlip-Stream WriteUp | InCTF 2026 CTF Finals | First and Only Blood

  Introduction

  This challenge felt tough. Even though I was the only person who solved this challenge, it's also the case that this is the only challenge I was able to solve in 8 hours.

  Since there were special protections against the use of Hey Hi (AI) and LLMs, it felt especially good after solving this challenge.

• Tom's Hardware ☛ Devs blame backdoored Windows for VLC media player bug that causes 33-second delay when playing MP3 files — creators allege Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Defender blocking plugin cache is to blame

  VLC developers say a backdoored Windows 11 issue involving Abusive Monopolist Microsoft Defender can interfere with the media player's plugin cache and cause unusually long playback delays.

• Unicorn Media ☛ Alpha-Stage NeoSearch Brings Openness to Search

  The Apache-licensed project seeks to elevate independent sources, demote SEO spam, and ultimately loosen Big Tech’s grip on web search.

• Events

  • Sven Hoexter: FrOSCon 2026: TLS Talk

    Info: German content only, sorry.

    I was pondering for the past three years if I should give some sort of TLS basics talk at FrOSCon. I finally stepped up this year and gave that talk today, with the title "TLS, mTLS, SNI, ECH, CAA, HTTPS, PKI, Zertifikate und ein bisschen PQC".

  • Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) ☛ Linux Plumbers Conference: Linux Plumbers Conference 2026 is now SOLD OUT!

    It has become a trend for us now. Linux Plumbers Conference 2026 that is to be held in Prague on October 5th through to the 7th is now sold out.

• SaaS/Back End/Databases

  • Michael Tsai ☛ SQLite WAL-Reset Bug

    Of course, it helps that he knew to look in the checkpoint code, but you could imagine using tools like this to quickly investigate hypotheses when you don’t already know the answer.

  • Tailscale ☛ How Tailscale helped find the SQLite WAL-Reset bug

    At the end of last year, our uptime was pretty shaky. You can see this trend on our status page, and that instability continued into the new year. Many of these outages were caused by a single bug, deep in SQLite. It took months of intense forensics to track it down.