tl;dr: https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns
In the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, controvery arose about
dealings between him and the (also now-late) MIT AI scientist Marvin
Minsky, and about MIT administration actions related to Epstein.
Richard M. Stallman is intimately associated with not just the Free
Software Foundation (that he created) but with MIT CSAIL (Computer
Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) operation. Fairly
recently, there was a discussion on one of CSAIL's unadvertised and
privately archived mailing lists, csail-related, where Stallman posted
comments.[1] Those comments (mostly about matters peripheral to the
late Dr. Minsky) became known to MIT alumna, grad student, and
mechanical engineer Selam Jie Gano, who is said to have been sent them
by a subscriber. Ms. Gano was very incensed by Stallman's views that
she asserted were, among other things, 'defending Epstein'. She
publishes an essay on Medium entitled 'Remove Richard Stallman. And
everyone else horrible in tech':
https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794
She also provided what is asserted to be the entire thread to Vice.com's
regular 'Motherboard' feature, which published a rather inaccurate piece
based largely on her allegations, though providing a curated copy of the
mailing list thread with all participant names except Stallman's blacked
out.
Article:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-…
Direct link to Vice.com/Motherboard's curated thread copy:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html?em…
Quite a number of other outfits have picked up the story in various
ways. Stallman responded by objecting (with perfect justification, as
far as I can see) that in no way was he defending Epstein; that this is
just not at all what he said.
The persons now running Software Freedom Conservancy took advantage of
this squalor by 'calling for' Richard to retire from the free software
organisation & movement he created (unsigned because they have _that_
little moral backbone).
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/
There was also pressure for Richard to resign from his position at
CSAIL (where ISTR he's been Visiting Professor). He has now done so,
citing 'pressure on MIT' -- along with resigning as President and Board
of Directors member at Free Software Foundation.
IMO, this affair (e.g., things like the unsigned editorial from the
jackals at Software Freedom Conservancy) has opportunism written all
over it.
One of the less-sucky bits of news/analysis (apparently just before
things came to a head) was here:
https://fudzilla.com/news/49393-stallman-defends-himself-over-epstein-comme…https://lwn.net/ have not yet caught up with events, and can be expected
as usual to be guarded to a fault when they do.
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/ has some
discussion, but likewise has not caught up with events.
[1] None of what I'm writing here imply endorsement of Richard's
assertions in the mailing list thread, by the way. In fact, I very much
do not concur with some, and would have, among other things, politely
corrected his factually incorrect understanding of the legal concept of
'assault'.
--
Cheers, Views expressed are my own.
Rick Moen
rick(a)linuxmafia.com
McQ! (4x80)
Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand
hexadecimal and f the rest.
Also saw the following variant:
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: the 1 who understands
hexadecimal and f the rest.
aaronco36(a)sdf.org
---
Another trending topic that tonight's BALUG meeting attendees might
consider discussing in-person is that of
o RMS's controversial resignation from FSF and from MIT CSAIL.
See at least these earlier BALUG-Talk posts before this
one, today, at ...
- https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2019-September/000174.html
- https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2019-September/000175.html
- https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2019-September/000176.html
aaronco36(a)sdf.org
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 20:31:53 -0700
From: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu>
> REMINDER: BALUG MEETING TOMORROW!:
> From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu>
> To: BALUG-Announce <balug-announce(a)lists.balug.org>
> Subject: BALUG: meeting: Tu 2019-09-17 & other BALUG News
> ------------------------------
> For our 2019-09-17 (3rd Tuesday) BALUG meeting:
> We don't have a specific speaker/presentation lined up for this meeting,
> however ...
> Bring topics/questions you'd like to discuss - many interesting
> discussions/meetings happen that way.
> We may well also discuss some topical item(s) at least some of us have
> been working on or poking about recently, e.g.:
> o WordPress - site migrations, self-hosting, plugins, backup, ...
> o DNS, DNSSEC, AAAA & CAA records, letencrypt.org & certs, etc.
> o virtualization & live (host) migrations
> o automatic web site updates, shell/scripting languages, crontab/at/...
> o Lists, forums, & management thereof
> o [L]UG management, dos/don'ts, venues, ...
Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu):
>o At this meeting - we'll have a someone with 20 years experience using
> and doing systems administration of Debian.
Hey, I've been administering Debian since 2.1 'slink', as well, so that
makes two decades for me, too. (The Official Debian installer was
rather dreadful, then, and the replacement d-i installer introduced with
'sarge' (3.1) is miles better.
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller
> >o Debian Birthday ("born" 2019-08-16) / Debian @ 25 / Debian Day /
> > Debian Appreciation Day
I see that 'Debian Day' aka 'Debian Appreciation Day' is the anniversary
of when the late Ian Murdock founded the project on 1993-08-16.
Personally, I would want to count from the release date of the first
public beta, v. 0.90, on 1994-01-26. Over 25 years either way, though.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/historic-linux/distributions/debian-0.91/ChangeL…
A posting quoted below has just been retroactively removed from
BerkeleyLUG's Google Group archive by LUG original founder Jack
Deslippe, who was kind enough to so inform me of that action (for which
my genuine thanks). His cited reason: 'I think it uses unnecessary
language in places when describing the individual'.
I of course respect Jack's right to make decisions for that Google Group.
In my view, this account of events today used _absolutely necessary_
language describing the individual and his actions (and in alluding to
similar actions at many prior meetings). I posted it in public
_specifically_ because repeated attempts to privately fix this problem
failed and instead it worsened -- and specifically to create a public
record. Thus this re-post: to un-disappear my comments.
(Views expressed are my own.)
----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> -----
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2018 14:28:34 -0800
From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com>
To: BerkeleyLUG <berkeleylug(a)googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: AC Power, Wi-Fi but not from venue itself: Re: BerkeleyLUG
meetup this Sunday 2018-11-11 12Noon STANDARD Time at 85C Bakery
Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu):
> Have had 4 of us here so far ...
But also, now, two fewer, following the latest round of John Regan aka
Giovanni aka whatever-it-is-this-week misconduct right there, today, at the
BerkeleyLUG table.
I've had a near-contemporaneous account of what happened. Sadly, I had
a conflicting obligation in Milpitas, otherwise I most certainly would
have brought a screeching halt to this nonsense. Honestly, hasn't John
wrecked enough BerkeleyLUG meetings already, or do y'all intend to keep
just sitting there and only reacting long after the fact, and with little
or no consequence?
What I heard happening was: John Regan walked in and saw three women
sitting at the table BerkeleyLUG traditionally uses. He started
hassling the women and telling them they had to move because this is a
reserved table. Michael Paoli reminded John that no, this is not a
reserved table and never is one, nor are any of the others downstairs.
John ignored Michael, continued to give the women a hard time, and
advised them that he was finding them another table. Kim Davalos spoke
up to reiterate what Michael P. said, that _no_, this is not a reserved
table. John told the women that they should ignore Kim because she
arrived late. After being thus browbeaten, the women finally got up and
moved elsewhere.
After the fact, 85c Bakery management confirmed exactly what Michael and
Kim had said, and were informed of the repeatedly and continually
misbehaving person who evidently needs stronger social control so he
can no longer run amok at BerkeleyLUG. Arrangements were made with the
manager in the future for them to step in sooner the next time this
person cannot behave in a civilised fashion to require him to
immediately leave.
Today's incident, like many of the others John has inflicted on
BerkeleyLUG this year, are in my view simply disgraceful and should be
curbed instantly rather than indulged. Already, the _immediate_
result of today's incident was that two regulars, disgusted with
the failure to enforce obvious standards of acceptable behaviour, walked
out and went elsewhere.
I've privately warned after past incidents that permitting this clown to
run amok at BerkeleyLUG is quite likely to destroy the group if proper
corrective action is not taken. Today, I'm reiterating that warning
publicly.
You already know what to do. End this. Next time, stop sitting on your
tochises, get up, and do it. Seriously, people, this isn't even
difficult to figure out. (See also .signature.)
--
Cheers, "I am a member of a civilization (IAAMOAC). Step back
Rick Moen from anger. Study how awful our ancestors had it, yet
rick(a)linuxmafia.com they struggled to get you here. Repay them by appreciating
McQ! (4x80) the civilization you inherited." -- David Brin
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BerkeleyLUG" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to berkeleylug+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com.
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For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from suhail(a)hackerearth.com -----
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2018 15:34:05 +0530
From: "Suhail Ameen" <suhail(a)hackerearth.com>
Subject: [HackerEarth] Partnership RISC-V Linux Hackathon - RISC-V Summit
To: balug-contact(a)balug.org
Hey there,
My name is Suhail and I lead the community efforts at HackerEarth
<http://hackerearth.com/>, one of the fastest growing developer communities
in the world with over 2+ million developers. I am reaching out to you
regarding a possible partnership and collaboration opportunity.
On 4th and 5th December, RISC-V Summit
<https://tmt.knect365.com/risc-v-summit/> will be held in Santa Clara
Convention Center. We are hosting a hackathon in association with Western
Digital where we would like developers to hack on a soft RISC-V CPU running
Linux on the low-cost Avalanche FPGA board
<https://www.microsemi.com/existing-parts/parts/139680>. You can find more
details about the hackathon here
<https://www.hackerearth.com/sprints/risc-v-linux-hackathon>.
We would like to invite Bay Area Linux User Groups to be one of our
community partners for the hackathon. I personally believe we can
collaborate as communities and make this hackathon a success.
Please do reply to this email if you would be interested in partnering with
us, I am hoping we can have a long and mutually beneficial partnership.
Regards
Suhail
ᐧ
--
What we learned by analyzing more than 1000 innovation campaigns -
hck.re/measuringInnovation
<https://www.hackerearth.com/innovation/resources/whitepapers/measuring-inno…>.
----- End forwarded message -----
/proc and /sys filesystems ...
Some bits from yesterday's BALUG meeting.
There was some response and more information that also
came up on the SF-LUG list:
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2018q3/013428.htmlhttp://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2018q3/013430.html
And (mostly) from the BALUG meeting ...
mostly lots of folks various favorite bits and other things
/proc and /sys discussed:
Is it virtual? Don't have dmidecode(8) or similar?
$ cat /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/product_name
Can even work that into use in a script, e.g.
#!/bin/sh
#... case ...
'Bochs'|'HVM domU'|'VMware'*|'VirtualBox')
The above would respectively match virtual machines of (at least some
of) the varieties:
QEMU/KVM
Xen
VMware
VirtualBox
I have /dev/sda and /dev/sdb as internal drives,
I insert two USB flash drives at about the same time, giving me now also
/dev/sdc and /dev/sdd.
One's about 2 GB in size, and the other about 32 GB.
Which is which?
$ grep . /sys/block/sd[cd]/size
/sys/block/sdc/size:4089856
/sys/block/sdd/size:62530624
$
What are their exact sizes?
... Oh, we also have that above - in the number of 512 byte blocks
I'm done with /dev/sdc, I pull it out.
$ ls -d /dev/sd[c-z]
/dev/sdd
$
At present I'm not using /dev/sdd (nothing having it open or mounted
from it, etc.), I'd really like it as /dev/sdc rather than sdb, but I
don't feel like taking my fingers away from the keyboard or adding the
wear and tear to the USB connectors.
This removes it:
# echo 1 > /sys/block/sdd/device/delete
#
$ ls -d /dev/sd[c-z] 2>>/dev/null
$
This scans for drives:
# (>>/dev/null 2>&1 ls -d /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/scan && for tmp
in /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/scan; do echo '- - -' > "$tmp"; done)
#
$ ls -d /dev/sd[c-z] && grep . /sys/block/sd[c-z]/size
/dev/sdc
62530624
$
I plug in an additional USB flash device:
$ ls -d /dev/sd[c-z]
/dev/sdc
/dev/sdd
$
What if their sizes weren't all that different, but I wanted to know
which was which?
ls -d /sys/block/sd[cd]/device/*
$ (cd /sys/block && grep . sd[c-z]/device/vendor sd[c-z]/device/model) | sort
sdc/device/model:Cruzer Blade
sdc/device/vendor:SanDisk
sdd/device/model:USB 2.0
sdd/device/vendor:
$
/proc/[0-9]* - PIDs (and that much will match not only Linux, but also
as far as I'm aware, any other *nix flavor (notably Unix) that also has
a mounted /proc filesystem)
/proc/[!0-9]* - lots of other interesting/useful non-PID stuff
/proc/PID/fd/* - open file descriptors for the PID - these are
represented as symbolic links to the physical pathname of the file (at
least for filesystem files), if the file is unlinked, it will have
" (deleted)" on the end; 0 is stdin, 1 stdout, 2 stderr.
I have some PID of some something I'm unfamiliar with - maybe it's
undocumented ... maybe I want to know if it's writing some log
information ... may be quite useful to look at /proc/PID/fd/[12] - it
may possibly be there, ... or possibly some other file(s) it has open
(especially if it's not using syslog).
File unlinked, but need to save/retrieve the data (it's still
open by the PID)?:
$ cat /proc/PID/fd/file_descriptor_number > file_to_save_data_in
/proc/PID/environ - what's in the environment (each ASCII null terminated)
/proc/PID/exe - the binary executable
/proc/PID/cwd - Current Working Directory
When exactly did that process start?
$ stat -c '%z' /proc/PID
Grew (or shrunk) the size of a device (e.g. LUN), want the kernel to
know about it? E.g.:
# echo 1 > /sys/block/sdb/device/rescan
/proc/cpuinfo - lots of useful information about the CPU(s), flags may
be of particular note (e.g. is your CPU 64 or 32 bit - how old of which
kernel/distribution can it still run ... or run without additional
kernel parameters to enable use of some CPU feature present on the CPU
but which the CPU doesn't "advertise"). What CPU hardware bugs are
worked around (or partially so) via kernel software? How many cores? ...
/proc/cmdline - what arguments were given to the kernel at boot?
/proc/version - kernel version
/proc/sys - a precursor to the /sys filesystem, also much kernel
information and tunable parameters there - see also sysctl(8)
/proc/mounts - kernel's idea of what's mounted and how - this is
especially useful when /etc/mtab doesn't fully or well provide that
information. Note that for many distributions, /etc/mtab may be a
symbolic link to /proc/mounts.
Especially the /proc filesystem, and also /sys filesystem are relatively
essential in Linux. E.g. without /proc filesystem mounted, many common
utilities, e.g. ps(1), won't work.
Backup /proc and /sys filesystems? You generally would *not* want to do
that. They're pseudo (/"virtual") filesystems, most notably reflecting
lots of state information of the current running system. But they're
ephemeral/volatile - prior contents don't really matter at all after a
reboot.
If one cares about competitiveness among ISPs, choice,
and generally having quality options, this is one to pay attention to
and take action on.
If you prefer negligible choices, and ISP services to only be provided by
the large monopoly/oligopoly players, and generally with poor quality,
higher prices, and most or all other players squeezed out, then feel
free to completely and totally ignore this.
----- Forwarded message from mdurkin(a)rawbw.com -----
Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2018 00:03:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Mike Durkin" <mdurkin(a)rawbw.com>
Subject: Raw Bandwidth and other competitive Internet access
providers need your help at the FCC today!
To: michael.paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu
Dear Raw Bandwidth Customer or former customer:
It's a rarity that I email all of our customers (and some former
customers), but we are at a critical moment for competitive Internet
access, so I hope you'll excuse the intrusion.
In early May, USTelecom, a lobbying group headed by large incumbent
monopoly phone companies AT&T and Verizon, filed a petition at the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) to "forbear", that is to no longer enforce,
provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which are critical to many
independent Internet access providers like Raw Bandwidth reaching its
customers with service. The Telecom Act rewrite in 1996 requires the
incumbent phone companies to unbundle and rent discrete network elements to
competitors at regulated rates--especially elements such as the pairs
of copper wire running through the streets that they have a monopoly
over and have no competition for--so that competitive providers
can also use the elements in their services. I am writing to ask
you to take action by filing comments at the FCC in support of independent
Internet access providers (we'll help you do it), to tell the FCC what
it means to you to have choice in your Internet provider, and to urge
them to deny the petition. (The petition would also affect competition
for voice phone service.)
Here is a good article that summarizes a lot of what's at stake:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/11/small-internet-providers-face-a-fight-f…
(Note this article says the FCC would vote on the petition on August
6th, but that's incorrect; August 6th was a filing deadline for
opening comments, and September 5th is the next deadline for reply
comments. The FCC won't vote on the petition until late this year
at the earliest, but informal comments need to be filed now.)
Explaining what's at stake takes a lot of words, so I've made a web
page that explains what the petition is all about, and also contains
links to help you easily file comments at the FCC (all done online) to
support competitive Internet access. Please take a look at the web
page and instructions here
http://www.rawbandwidth.com/clec/forbearancepetition.html
The short version is that if the FCC grants the petition as requested,
independent DSL and Ethernet over Copper providers like Raw Bandwidth
will see cost increases (due to removal of rate regulation from
monopoly network elements only available from incumbent monopoly providers
like AT&T--a single provider of the element to any particular location) that
will result in an increase in retail rates, and some coverage areas are
likely to be lost over time. The petition should not be granted under
the standards it is supposed to be judged on, and providers like Raw
Bandwidth are filing detailed rebuttals to the petition, but the current
FCC and political climate is one for gutting regulations, so despite that
it should be denied, there is a significant risk that it may be granted.
Please take the time to weigh in with the FCC and tell them how important
it is to you to have competitive choices at competitive prices, and urge
them to deny the petition. Your comments submitted to the FCC by
September 5th are important!
I don't intend to send any followups to this email by email so as
not to be any more intrusive. Instead I will post updates to the status
of the petition at the same web page
http://www.rawbandwidth.com/clec/forbearancepetition.html
including links to the FCC's decision once available and an explanation of
how the result affects our business and service to customers.
As always, thanks for your business and support!
Mike Durkin
Raw Bandwidth
mdurkin(a)rawbw.com
----- End forwarded message -----
(This happened automatically because the address has not been
deliverable for a long time.)
In case people had not heard, longtime Bay Area Linux activist Darlene
Wallach died of cancer on July 12, 2017.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help-fund-darlene-wallach-s-cancer-cure-…
----- Forwarded message from mailman-bounces(a)lists.balug.org -----
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2018 09:00:02 -0700
From: mailman-bounces(a)lists.balug.org
To: balug-talk-owner(a)lists.balug.org
Subject: BALUG-Talk unsubscribe notification
freepalestin(a)dslextreme.com has been removed from BALUG-Talk.
----- End forwarded message -----
Don't know about about this, but in case someone might
be interested and may find it of use/value:
----- Forwarded message from gary.gwaltney(a)ktcs.biz -----
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2018 10:10:24 +0000
From: "Gary Gwaltney" <gary.gwaltney(a)ktcs.biz>
Subject: PLEASE PASS TO MEMBERS
To: "balug-webmaster(a)balug.org" <balug-webmaster(a)balug.org>
Please share with your members:
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course<https://www.knowledgetransferinc.com/computer-training/courses/kt-rh199/rhc…> ? Virtual Class July 23-26<x-apple-data-detectors://3> Start time will 8:30pm
EDT<x-apple-data-detectors://4>
**Instructor has 32 years training Unix, Linux...our training manual
is by fats one the best resources for the students who are seeking
both the Certification and obtaining new skills. We have over 21 yrs
in providing the highest quality training!! This last minute offer is
an incredible opportunity for your members. Limited seat available!
Gary.gwaltney(a)ktcs.biz<mailto:Gary.gwaltney@ktcs.biz>
The course reviews the tasks covered in Red Hat® System Administration
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accelerated pace. On completion of course materials, you should be
prepared to take the Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)
exam.
Red Hat Price: $3,700
Member Price: $1,995 includes one exam voucher (value of $400) or
$2,495 includes two exam vouchers ($ 800 value)
Sent from my iPhone
----- End forwarded message -----