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opus4: build all articles - tgtimes - The Gopher Times
git clone git://bitreich.org/tgtimes git://enlrupgkhuxnvlhsf6lc3fziv5h2hhfrinws…
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---
commit 6af3e24c4b5e54a33ad442faafdb720e054dfab0
parent 9f80d704e5144f0eba06cf1fa881433b1ef1d7f5
Author: Josuah Demangeon <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2022 16:26:03 +0200
opus4: build all articles
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A opus4/article-20h-interview.mw | 272 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++…
A opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-06T… | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
A opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-07T… | 87 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++…
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A opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-27T… | 34 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++…
A opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-29T… | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-31T… | 35 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++…
M opus4/article-gopherml-molasses-cl… | 2 +-
M opus4/article-tgtimes-bbc-reviving… | 31 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++…
A opus4/article-tgtimes-high-tech-lo… | 74 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++…
A opus4/article-tgtimes-st-lazare-tr… | 40 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++…
A opus4/article-tgtimes-what-on-mars… | 64 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++…
M opus4/tgtimes4.mw | 18 +++++++++++++++---
M opus4/tgtimes4.pdf | 0
M opus4/tgtimes4.txt | 859 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-…
M tmac.w | 2 +-
19 files changed, 1585 insertions(+), 76 deletions(-)
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diff --git a/bitreich/news.gph b/bitreich/news.gph
@@ -4,6 +4,24 @@
[0|Atom news feed|/news.atom.xml|server|port]
___[ News Aggregator ]
+[0|2022-04-01 – »Bitreich migrating to Windows Server 2022« by 20h|/usr/20…
+[0|2022-03-29 – »Bitreich Council allows secret voting.« by 20h|/usr/20h/p…
+[0|2022-03-27 – »FreeDOOMDay results.« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-03-27T20…
+[0|2022-03-26 – »Memecache atom feed now available!« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog…
+[0|2022-03-25 – »FreeDOOMDay on 2022-03-27 20:00 CEST« by 20h|/usr/20h/phl…
+[0|2022-03-25 – »New Bitreich Project: rfcommd« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022…
+[0|2022-03-05 – »sfeed 1.3 was released. I want to thank all people who gav…
+[0|2022-03-06 – »2022-03-06 GangBAN aftermaths.« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/202…
+[0|2022-03-03 – »GangBAN on 2022-03-06.« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-03-03T…
+[0|2022-02-27 – »Brcon2022 Date and Week; CfP« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-…
+[0|2022-02-13 – »Gopher Vulture Standard« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-02-13…
+[0|2022-02-10 – »Reed-alert no release« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-02-10T1…
+[0|2022-02-09 – »Brcon2022 Weekend Poll« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-02-09T…
+[0|2022-02-06 – »sfeed 1.2 was released. I want to thank all people who gav…
+[0|2022-02-05 – »Free BitreichCoin Mining« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-02-0…
+[0|2022-02-05 – »BitreichNFT released.« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-02-05T1…
+[0|2022-02-04 – »Bitreich Gameroom now with 27 games!« by 20h|/usr/20h/phl…
+[0|2022-01-30 – »Brcon2022 Month Poll« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-01-30T20…
[0|2022-01-19 – »GangBAN on 2022-01-23!« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-01-19T…
[0|2022-01-16 – »BitTwiddle - Your daily bit twiddle.« by 20h|/usr/20h/phl…
[0|2022-01-15 – »Welcome Trinity!« by 20h|/usr/20h/phlog/2022-01-15T18-41-…
diff --git a/opus4/article-20h-interview.mw b/opus4/article-20h-interview.mw
@@ -0,0 +1,272 @@
+.SH 20h
+Breaking free from medical devices
+.
+.PP
+Unlike most USB gadgets around, medical devices require a specification
+to be proven fit for handling patients data.
+This makes doctor-hacking difficult for the sake of better control
+over what is allowed for medical use.
+.
+.PP
+While this may sound as a non-starter for many, not all doctors are
+discouraged.
+Interview with 20h:
+.
+.QP
+You are __20h__, a doctor in Falken, the best village to live in
+in Germany, is that correct?
+.
+.PP
+Yes.
+.
+.QP
+You managed to do some hacking around a medical device.
+What was it?
+How did it help you in your diagnostics?
+.
+.PP
+I wrote \fCrfcommd\fR to have my spirometer print out the results
+to a standard printer.
+It helps me having a more detailed view on the results.
+.
+.PP
+The normal printout is just like 8 centimeters wide.
+Now it is A4.
+.
+.PP
+I plan on using rfcommd to read out ECG data from a ECG for further
+analysis.
+.
+.PP
+The collecting computer is a gentoo hardened on x86_64, with a
+standard bluetooth dongle, sending the print jobs via TCP/IP to a
+network printer.
+.
+.PP
+For printing there is a cups installation, converting the PCL output
+of the spirometer to postscript for the network printer.
+.
+.QP
+What software were provided to collect the data on a computer?
+On which kind of system was that running?
+.
+.PP
+Before rfcommd there was no collection of the data.
+The spirometer has some built-in printer,
+which is very expensive and the printout is small.
+.
+.QP
+Are you using it often?
+.
+.PP
+I/We are using it every day for printing out spirometry (lung
+function) results.
+.
+.PP
+By the way.
+A secondary function why rfcommd has filters: We have
+a sterilization device, which has a serial printout of sterilization
+runs.
+.
+.PP
+This is what rfcommd does print out too.
+.
+.PP
+The features of rfcommd moved from: Accept every rfcomm request to
+having filters per device mac, was because of those two devices.
+.
+.PP
+But it will allow to have the ecg readout as a filter for free.
+.
+.QP
+It had limited interaction, and yet you managed to made it available
+from a linux computer.
+How did you do it?
+.
+.PP
+First I had a python script using pybluez to offer some bluetooth
+printer service, which bluetooth clients connect to and send print
+jobs.
+.
+.PP
+But I migrated this to some C implementation and generalized it as
+rfcommd so it is more modular for me and others can reuse it too.
+.
+.PP
+Bluez stack had some rfcomm client application, but it was removed
+in newer version because they hate commandline users.
+.
+.QP
+Was it difficult? How long did it take?
+.
+.PP
+Digging around bluetooth is difficult.
+It looks similar to TCP/IP, but is its own terminology, protocols
+and principles.
+Look at rfcommd for how to announce some service.
+.
+.PP
+It took me two weekends to write rfcommd as it is now.
+.
+.QP
+What would you advise to designers of such devices to make everyone's
+life easier?
+.
+.PP
+If you mean medical devices: Please open source all firmware and
+open up all schematics.
+In ten years you will be dead or in pension but still people can
+extend or update your devices.
+.
+.PP
+And second: Never have specific assumptions and fool end users into
+costly standard.
+You never know better than your users.
+.
+.PP
+For example in the spirometry description, they say, that only some
+bluetooth printers are compatible.
+.
+.PP
+This is due to the bluetooth standard not having defined, *what*
+is sent to bluetooth printers.
+.
+.PP
+It should be the minimum, to define this, as it is in the USB
+printing standard.
+.
+.QP
+What kind of protocol interface would have been the easiest?
+.
+.PP
+The easiest protocol interface, also considering security and data
+protection standard, would be ssh over TCP/IP.
+Everyone knows SSH, it can be integrated into everything and it is
+easily upgradable to newer security standards.
+.
+.QP
+What does it permits to do that was not possible before?
+.
+.PP
+With the spirometry data ready as simple text data, I can further
+process it using standard unix tools, in case I ever need this.
+.
+.QP
+Are other people using it in the practice as well? Even indirectly?
+.
+.PP
+My nurses use it mainly.
+They press the »print« button on the spirometry device and it prints
+the results.
+.
+.PP
+I, as doctor, only see the printed out results and explain them to
+patients.
+.
+.QP
+Do she does not have to use command line interface for that?
+.
+.PP
+No, it's all practical.
+The spirometer starts its bluetooth client for rfcommd and rfcommd
+runs the spirofilter printing filter script, which invokes lpr(1).
+.
+.QP
+Are there many situations like that, where cumbersome interfaces
+makes life harder for working with medical devices?
+.
+.PP
+Yes, it's built into all medical devices to enforce proprietary and
+expensive Windows software to be bought.
+.
+.PP
+For example the newer version of my ECG device has some undocumented
+network mode.
+The ECG standard I will be using over serial was defined in 1990.
+Since then old devices only got bluetooth and ethernet, but did
+nothing else new.
+.
+.PP
+The price stayed the same, of course.
+.
+.QP
+Do you think designers would benefits themself from offering another
+interface that is easier to use?
+.
+.PP
+In the short term viewpoint it protects you from competitors to
+enter the market.
+But in the long run, this now stops me from easily processing patient
+data for further research.
+I am using a 25 yr old ECG and some 10 yr old spirometer.
+.
+.QP
+What could have motivated the designers to use something this-much
+cumbersome?
+[not asked, already answered]
+.
+.QP
+Are there any similarities in other devices to reuse the existing
+work you just did?
+.
+.PP
+Yes.
+Bluetooth is the new hype in medical devices.
+All those smart devices for body measurement are for example BLE,
+some insecure bluetooth standard to read out key=value from bluetooth
+clients.
+Some bled(8) should be easy to write.
+.
+.PP
+Nearly every medical device still has some serial port, either for
+communication or measurement.
+.
+.PP
+For measurement this will never die out, since raw data is required.
+.
+.PP
+And some serial2bluetooth, that's what I am using for my practical
+examples.
+.
+.QP
+Would it have been possible to build such device yourself from
+parts, but with sane interfaces instead?
+.
+.PP
+Building such a device is not the hard part.
+The hard part is licensing the device as being a medical device.
+.
+.PP
+I am, as a doctor, am allowed to license some medical device for
+my patients.
+But if I'd want to sell or give this device to some other doctor,
+I'd need some EU medical device license.
+.
+.PP
+This is a complex process.
+.
+.PP
+You have severial medical device classes.
+Some always require some EU-wide licensing.
+.
+.PP
+The logic of some ECG is very simple.
+But licensing it for selling is what makes it expensive and/or keeps
+the competition low.
+.
+.QP
+What do you advise to people also stuck with cumbersome device, but
+without reverse engineer superpowers?
+.
+.PP
+Force the device producers to open up standards.
+Write into contracts, that devices have to be interoperable, so
+producers need to adapt.
+.
+.PP
+It's the same for software.
+If you can't write it on your own, force them to open up standards,
+because you want to extend the software.
+.
+.PP
+For extension of software, reverse engineering is legal.
diff --git a/opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-06T21-20-12-652045.mw b/opus4/artic…
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+.SH 20h
+2022-03-06 GangBAN aftermaths
+.
+.PP
+This Sunday was a fun one.
+After lunch we had the supertuxkart tournament of five(!) players competing ag…
+All kind of CPUs and hardware setups participates and rushed off the cliffs.
+.
+.PP
+In the evening there was the huge OpenRA battlefield.
+Sadly the hardware requirement of OpenRA is too high, so only two players coul…
+But this time against seven other AIs.
+The humans won multiple times!
+.
+.PP
+See you at the next GangBAN!
+.
+.PP
+Sincerely yours,
+.
+.PP
+20h Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)
diff --git a/opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-07T13-00-00-133769.mw b/opus4/artic…
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+.SH Hiltjo
+sfeed 1.3 released
+.
+.PP
+sfeed 1.3 was released.
+I want to thank all people who gave feedback.
+.
+.PP
+sfeed is a tool to convert RSS or Atom feeds from XML to a TAB-separated
+file.
+.
+.PP
+It can be found at:
+.
+.IP -
+git://git.codemadness.org/sfeed
+.
+.IP -
+gopher://codemadness.org/1/git/sfeed
+.
+.IP -
+https://codemadness.org/releases/sfeed/
+.
+.IP -
+gopher://codemadness.org/1/releases/sfeed/
+.
+.PP
+sfeed has the following notable changes compared to 1.2:
+.
+.NH 2
+Fixes
+.
+.IP -
+Fix a compiler warning with some curses implementations, like NetBSD
+curses.
+.
+.IP -
+sfeed_curses: add keybinds for the home key and the default home
+and end key for urxvt.
+.
+.IP -
+sfeed_curses: fix a redraw when reloading a file with a feed file
+read from stdin and using an URL file and changing this URL file
+externally.
+.
+.IP -
+sfeed_curses: cast character for SFEED_AUTOCMD to unsigned char to
+allow character sequences outside the ASCII range.
+.
+.NH 2
+Documentation
+.
+.IP -
+README: add an example script to count new and unread items.
+This can be useful for some statusbar indicator (asked about by
+e-mail).
+.
+.IP -
+Small code-style, comments and documentation improvements and fixes.
+.
+.NH 2
+Testsuite improvements
+.
+.PP
+The testsuite repo has had improvements to test the most important
+code paths of sfeed_curses in an automated way (currently 95%
+automated coverage).
+The sfeed.c and xml.c parser coverage has also near 100% coverage.
+.
+.PP
+The goal is to find bugs and avoid regressions.
+.
+.PP
+The input/sfeed/realworld/ directory contains files with various
+feeds from popular systems to more obscure ones.
+These may be useful to test other RSS/Atom programs aswell.
+.
+.PP
+These tests can be found here:
+.
+.DS
+https://git.codemadness.org/sfeed_tests/
+gopher://codemadness.org/1/git/sfeed_tests/
+.DE
+.
+.PP
+Thanks, Hiltjo
diff --git a/opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-25T18-22-39-498139.mw b/opus4/artic…
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+.SH 20h
+New Bitreich Project: rfcommd
+.
+.PP
+There is a new project on bitreich: rfcommd.
+Rfcommd is a daemon sitting on top of your bluez/bluetooth stack, waiting …
+The daemon will then run scripts or daemons on that new rfcomm connect…
+This can be used to create a custom bluetooth printer without buying so…
+See the filter spirofilter in the repository for some pcl printer script.
+.DS
+gopher://bitreich.org/1/scm/rfcommd
+.DE
+.PP
+Here is the first release:
+.DS
+gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz
+gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz.sha512sum
+ftp://[email protected]/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz
+ftp://[email protected]/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz.sha512sum
+gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz
+gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz.sha512sum
+ftp://[email protected]/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz
+ftp://[email protected]/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz.sha512sum
+.DE
+All questions and comments welcome!
+.PP
+Please send them to:
+.DS
+Christoph Lohmann <[email protected]>
+.DE
+.PP
+or come on bitreich.org IRC #bitreich-en.
+.PP
+Have fun!
diff --git a/opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-25T18-32-52-134235.mw b/opus4/artic…
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+.SH
+FreeDOOMDay on 2022-03-27
+.PP
+In comemoration of the beginning summer time in central Europe, we will celeb…
+.DS
+https://www.chocolate-doom.org
+.DE
+.PP
+This is a doom variant which runs on nearly every machine out there and suppor…
+.DS
+https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Three_screen_mode
+.DE
+.PP
+Please try to install the FreeDOOM wad files as a base:
+.DS
+https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Freedoom
+.DE
+.PP
+See you on Sunday!
+.PP
+Sincerely yours,
+.PP
+20h Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)
+.DS
+
+.DE
+.PP
+
diff --git a/opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-26T19-55-05-578948.mw b/opus4/artic…
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+.SH
+Memecache atom feed
+.PP
+Thanks to the innovation from the Netherlands,
+we can now offer an atom feed for the memecache at bitreich.org:
+.DS
+gopher://bitreich.org/0/memecache/news.atom
+.DE
+.PP
+Please subscribe for your newest meme pleasure!
+.PP
+Sincerely yours,
+.PP
+20h Chief Meme Officer (CMO)
diff --git a/opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-27T20-00-55-040395.mw b/opus4/artic…
@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+.SH
+FreeDOOMDay results
+.PP
+Thanks to everyone participating in our first tryout to play doom over our bit…
+It worked out pretty well.
+In the end we played the freedm.wad of freedoom.
+.PP
+Some statistics: Maximum up and down bandwidth required was 14 kbytes/s.
+Maximum CPU usage here: 2% of one core.
+RAM: 400 kb.
+.PP
+Chocolate Doom is compatible to vanilla doom.
+Everyone having some old DOS doom can join in using rfcommd:
+.DS
+git://bitreich.org/rfcommd
+.DE
+.PP
+Just attach a serial2bluetooth dongle and some bluetooth dongle in your linux …
+.DS
+gopher://bitreich.org/1/scm/rfcommd/commit/9b77ca90e9cf4ca7cd9521e6756dc2b833c…
+.DE
+.PP
+This will automatically connect your serial connection to a doom server over t…
+Change it to bitreich.org and the standard port and you are set.
+.PP
+Of course you can use socat from some ttyUSB0 or ttyS0 too.
+Nothing stops you, but your own laziness.
+The possibilities are endless.
+.PP
+See you next time, with whatever machine you can find and which runs DOOM!
+.PP
+Sincerely yours,
+.PP
+20h Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)
diff --git a/opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-29T17-17-55-362953.mw b/opus4/artic…
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+.SH 20h
+Secret voting for Bitreich Council
+.PP
+Bitreich is always ahead in its structure, organisation and technology.
+So is our democracy:
+.
+.DS
+gopher://bitreich.org/1/scm/bitreich-council/commit/f43daad938405d966c158a12b6…
+.DE
+.
+.PP
+The majority of council members has decided, that:
+.QP
+Secret voting is possible on certain topics.
+When council members vote in secret, they need to vote under a bedcover.
+Multiple council members can be under one bedcover.
+.PP
+Bitreich is reacting to the decision of Debian to introduce back chamber corru…
+.DS
+https://lwn.net/Articles/889444/
+.DE
+.PP
+This is completely prevented in the Bitreich model, since multiple council mem…
+.PP
+Sincerely yours,
+.PP
+20h Chief Democracy Officer (CDO)
diff --git a/opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-31T18-15-46-415338.mw b/opus4/artic…
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+.SH
+Bitreich migrating to Windows Server 2022
+.
+.PP
+Yesterday the last SSH.com license we had expired.
+We are now unable to access Linux on the old bitreich.org servers.
+In an approach to modernize Bitreich, the council decided to go further:
+.
+.IP -
+Windows Server 2022 will be the new server OS for growing our
+business opportunities and fast deployment of critical workloads
+such as SQL Server with confidence using 48TB of memory, 64 sockets,
+and 2048 logical cores.
+.
+.IP -
+Irc.bitreich.org will be replaced by Microsoft Teams to create a
+more engaging meeting experience with together mode.
+Focus on faces, pick up on nonverbal cues, and easily see who is
+talking.
+.
+.IP -
+The ed(1) cloud will be replaced by Microsoft Office 365 to connect
+and empower every employee, from the office to the frontline worker,
+with a Microsoft 365 solution that enhances productivity and drives
+innovation.
+.
+.PP
+We hope to see you on the new services, which enrich your daily
+business life.
+.
+.PP
+Sincerely yours,
+.
+.PP
+20h Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
diff --git a/opus4/article-gopherml-molasses-client.mw b/opus4/article-gopherml…
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
.SH gopherml
-Molasses Gopher and Gemini Client
+Molasses Gopher/Gemini Client
.
.PP
Jonathan Simpson is announcing a new Gopher client: Molasses.
diff --git a/opus4/article-tgtimes-bbc-reviving-the-radio.mw b/opus4/article-tg…
@@ -29,3 +29,34 @@ can be received clearly in Kyiv and parts of Russia.
.DS
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/millions-of-russians-turn-to-bbc-news
.DE
+.
+.PP
+Shortly after, possessing a shortwave radio device at home became
+forbidden, proving that in spite of being a low-technology solution,
+it was efficient enough to disturb the control of the press by the
+government.
+.
+.PP
+This showcases how quickly-deployed and resilient simple technologies
+can be in comparison to fragile, high-tech interdependent ecosystems.
+.
+.PP
+Radio is also trivially interfaced with high-tech: Any person with
+access to a source of information and an analog emitter may start
+reading a daily digest of news read from web newspapers.
+.
+.PP
+Given instructions, a receiver is also very easy to build with
+scavenged parts. An antenna is simply a wire producing an input
+signal, that after demodulation, becomes a sound signal to be fed
+to a speaker.
+.
+.PP
+It also shows the benefits of putting all the technically difficult
+parts onto the side of the content producer helps with adoption of
+a new technology: Making the client device/software trivial and safe
+to build, setup and use.
+.
+.DS
+https://hackaday.com/2022/03/17/owning-a-shortwave-radio
+.DE
diff --git a/opus4/article-tgtimes-high-tech-low-life.mw b/opus4/article-tgtime…
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+.SH tgtimes
+High-Tech, Low-Life
+.
+.IP "High-Tech"
+Refers to the ability to use complex tools created by engineering,
+or in the absence of a large corporation to build them, hacking
+things together.
+.
+.PP "Low-Life"
+Refers to those put aside by society, such as criminal or drug
+dealer, making itself edgy; or hobos and beggars, pushed to the
+edge by more or less everyone.
+.
+.PP
+One way to develop the idea of High-Tech Low-Life would be a
+criminal using modern tools such to empower its crimes.
+A transaction giving the bad guys the big guns. Not helpful.
+.
+.PP
+But another way to portray it is someone rejected by its surroundings,
+seeking support through technological tools. May it be as a source of
+direct income, or as a way to get informed, or inform its surrounding,
+perhaps the entire world such as what did happen with the late
+revolts in China.
+.
+.PP
+The "High Tech, Low Life" (2012) documentary shows us that it is
+not an alternate science-fiction plot, but a phenomenon happenning
+today.
+.
+.PP
+Giving High-Tech toys to poor population sounds more like a GAFAM
+plan to rule over the thirld-world while looking like a humanitarian
+hero saving the world, but a bit of honesty would reveal that it is
+closer to offering the Low-Life people to the High-Tech corps, by
+extending further the frontiers of ad-tech.
+.
+.PP
+Giving entertainment platform is probably not the most urgent kind
+of technology people without a meal a day is going to need. What
+about a tractor though? In its simplest form, in China again, a 55
+years-old lady farmer started to use a hoverboard (board onto which
+to stand, with a wheel on left and right) to change 3 hours of daily
+walk to carry the vegetables harvested, into 40 minutes riding this
+board.
+.
+.DS
+https://nextshark.com/chinese-farmer-hoverboard-life/
+https://www.chinanews.com.cn/tp/hd2011/2018/02-13/800254.shtml
+.DE
+.
+.PP
+Or what about deploying long-range point-to-point wireless links
+in west Africa to circumvent the poor power and inexistant cable
+infrastructure, as well as escape the lobby and regulations that
+take over the few IT resources of that country?
+.
+.DS
+http://www.melissadensmore.com/papers/m4d08-mho-reassessing.pdf
+.DE
+.
+.PP
+Or even trying to figure out how to make small solar or wind-power
+stations that are affordable enough for the budget of a small
+off-grid village (with a few subventions)? Or an on-street display
+continuously showing live job offers?
+.
+.QP
+Open-sourced a driver for the community?
+Installed Linux on an old laptop for someone in need?
+Convincing the boss to make the project open-source?
+Attended a surprising situation of that kind?
+Tell us your story of High-Tech given to Low-Life on #bitreich-en
+IRC channel on the irc.bitreich.org server
diff --git a/opus4/article-tgtimes-st-lazare-transforms.mw b/opus4/article-tgti…
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+.SH tgtimes
+St-Lazare's Paris Train Station
+.
+.PP
+Ah! The \fISaint Lazare\fR train station. Emblem of the Parisian
+train station, and today still looking like on the painting by the
+XIXth century painter Monet.
+.
+.PP
+This typical look were somehow preserved regardless of the modernisation
+of the train equipments. Lately, new equipments have been installed to
+prevent fraud: ticket barriers are now surrounding all the stations and
+their surrounding, only letting those owning a ticket onto the station.
+.
+.PP
+Not unexpected from a train company for a country with fraud around
+10% on long train lines. Mr. Monet would probably still be able to come
+and settle down for painting the train station nowaday, although to the
+price of a ticket to anywhere.
+.
+.PP
+Yet the devices themself seems not of the greatest comfort to both
+fraudsters, beggars frequently coming where most passengers are,
+and legitimate passengers alike. While it might be improved shortly,
+there is an high error rate for passengers trying to insert their
+ticket or NFC card.
+.
+.PP
+In case of a misunderstanding of how to use these devices, the train
+stations are not overcrowded with staff to welcome passengers in need
+for information, and it would take a bit of time.
+.
+.PP
+Setting-up a new solution seems a difficult challenge, putting in
+compromise price to setup, comfort of use, reliability, finding the
+new staff in charge of maintenance... A reminder that technical
+solutions only solve technical problems.
+.
+.PP
+https://lenouvelautomobiliste.fr/actualites/39949/des-portes-pour-transformer-…
diff --git a/opus4/article-tgtimes-what-on-mars.mw b/opus4/article-tgtimes-what…
@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+.SH tgtimes
+What really happened on Mars?
+.
+.PP
+What can possibly go wrong while sending a device entirely controlled
+by software on a remote location where noone would ever be able to
+go for a long while? The question opens a vast field of answers.
+.
+.PP
+1997, Pathfinder, a solar-powered ground lander and station, with
+VxWorks proprietary real time operating system onboard, embedding
+an 6-wheeled Sojourner rover with custom firmware, landed on Mars.
+.
+.PP
+During a field data collection mission a priority inversion did
+happen on the Pathfinder station total loss of control for the time
+of a reboot.
+.
+.PP
+The bug was reproduced on earth and patched, latter explained on a
+mailing list, published online.
+.
+.DS
+https://www.cs.unc.edu/~anderson/teach/comp790/papers/mars_pathfinder_long_ver…
+.DE
+.
+.PP
+At its core, most operating systems are built around a scheduler
+that orchestrates execution of many tasks onto one or several CPUs.
+It is a critical piece of software in the case of real-time operating
+systems, that must ensure to deliver some actions right on time.
+.
+.PP
+Complex systems may be unfit for such purposes, and software
+simplicity has found its way through experimenting how complex
+systems may end-up in difficult-to-debug situations.
+.
+.PP
+Picturing oneself in charge of reproducing a bug on earth for
+something that went wrong on another planet, with a patch expected
+for next Monday is a strong pressure toward keeping systems simple
+and easier to debug.
+.
+.PP
+Although, the Mars operating system landscape is not all VxWorks and
+nothing else. For instance, the RTEMS system, Real-Time Executive
+for Multiprocessor Systems was open-sourced from US army 1993 and is
+today actively maintained by both corporations and the open source
+community.
+.
+.PP
+Being part of Google Summer of Code, it is also welcoming newcomers
+to real-time operating system development, who might be able to
+contribute to embedded software making its way onto space.
+.
+.DS
+https://www.rtems.org/
+.DE
+.
+.PP
+While the ISS project was put at threat by the current events in
+Ukraine involving all nations, outter-space still represents a middle
+ground where all sides have a same objective and can collaborate:
+extending the horizons above what could be reached before.
diff --git a/opus4/tgtimes4.mw b/opus4/tgtimes4.mw
@@ -1,14 +1,26 @@
.TL
The Gopher Times
.AB
-Opus 4 - Gopher news and more - Mar. 2022
+Opus 4 - Gopher news and more - Apr. 2022
.AE
.
-.so opus4/article-tgtimes-carrying-the-cross.mw
-.so opus4/article-ganssle-fortran-compiler.mw
.so opus4/article-gopherml-molasses-client.mw
+.so opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-07T13-00-00-133769.mw
.so opus4/article-tgtimes-bbc-reviving-the-radio.mw
+.so opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-25T18-22-39-498139.mw
+.so opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-06T21-20-12-652045.mw
+.so opus4/article-20h-interview.mw
+.so opus4/article-tgtimes-carrying-the-cross.mw
+.so opus4/article-ganssle-fortran-compiler.mw
+.so opus4/article-tgtimes-high-tech-low-life.mw
.so opus4/article-tgtimes-bistromatik.mw
+.so opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-25T18-32-52-134235.mw
.so opus4/article-tgtimes-national-library-medecine.mw
+.so opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-26T19-55-05-578948.mw
+.so opus4/article-tgtimes-st-lazare-transforms.mw
+.so opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-27T20-00-55-040395.mw
+.so opus4/article-tgtimes-what-on-mars.mw
+.so opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-29T17-17-55-362953.mw
.so opus4/article-tmpout-2.mw
+.so opus4/article-bitreich-2022-03-31T18-15-46-415338.mw
.so opus4/footer.mw
diff --git a/opus4/tgtimes4.pdf b/opus4/tgtimes4.pdf
Binary files differ.
diff --git a/opus4/tgtimes4.txt b/opus4/tgtimes4.txt
@@ -5,12 +5,457 @@
____________________________________________________________
- Opus 4 - Gopher news and more - Mar. 2022
+ Opus 4 - Gopher news and more - Apr. 2022
____________________________________________________________
+ Molasses Gopher/Gemini Client gopherml
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Jonathan Simpson is announcing a new Gopher client:
+ Molasses.
+
+ >> A new gopher client, Molasses, is now available for
+ general use. It is a multi-platform graphical client
+ that runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
+
+ Leveraging functionnal programming with Racket, the
+ binaries come battery included, bundling the racket
+ runtime code, famous for building-up robust graphical
+ user interfaces straight from the core language
+ libraries.
+
+ Inline images, multiple tabs, keyboard navigation,
+ Gopher and Gemini support, opening external http://
+ links on an external browser, Molasses has everything
+ one might expect to browse the little Internet.
+
+ >> Feedback is welcome and appreciated.
+
+ https://github.com/jjsimpso/molasses/
+
+
+
+ sfeed 1.3 released Hiltjo
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ sfeed 1.3 was released. I want to thank all people
+ who gave feedback.
+
+ sfeed is a tool to convert RSS or Atom feeds from XML
+ to a TAB-separated file.
+
+ It can be found at:
+
+ - git://git.codemadness.org/sfeed
+
+ - gopher://codemadness.org/1/git/sfeed
+
+ - https://codemadness.org/releases/sfeed/
+
+ - gopher://codemadness.org/1/releases/sfeed/
+
+ sfeed has the following notable changes compared to
+ 1.2: Fixes
+
+ - Fix a compiler warning with some curses
+ implementations, like NetBSD curses.
+
+ - sfeed_curses: add keybinds for the home key and the
+ default home and end key for urxvt.
+
+ - sfeed_curses: fix a redraw when reloading a file
+ with a feed file read from stdin and using an URL
+ file and changing this URL file externally.
+
+ - sfeed_curses: cast character for SFEED_AUTOCMD to
+ unsigned char to allow character sequences outside
+ the ASCII range. Documentation
+
+ - README: add an example script to count new and
+ unread items. This can be useful for some statusbar
+ indicator (asked about by e-mail).
+
+ - Small code-style, comments and documentation
+ improvements and fixes. Testsuite improvements
+
+ The testsuite repo has had improvements to test the
+ most important code paths of sfeed_curses in an
+ automated way (currently 95% automated coverage). The
+ sfeed.c and xml.c parser coverage has also near 100%
+ coverage.
+
+ The goal is to find bugs and avoid regressions.
+
+ The input/sfeed/realworld/ directory contains files
+ with various feeds from popular systems to more
+ obscure ones. These may be useful to test other
+ RSS/Atom programs aswell.
+
+ These tests can be found here:
+
+ https://git.codemadness.org/sfeed_tests/
+ gopher://codemadness.org/1/git/sfeed_tests/
+
+ Thanks, Hiltjo
+
+
+
+
+ BBC Reviving the Plain Old Radio tgtimes
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ BBC, one of the earliest if not the first radio
+ broadcasting ever, comes back to using a WWII era
+ technology, to overcome limitation Russia imposes over
+ Ukraine.
+
+ In between a rain of missiles and a short moment of
+ temporary peace, fetching information on what is
+ happening around is a relief, maybe even a requirement
+ for survival.
+
+ Internet infrastructure of Ukraine are being impacted,
+ and the backbone getting shackled by all kind of
+ limitations, provoked the BBC news bulletin to be
+ unreachable.
+
+ A more primitive way to broadcast critical headlines
+ than Internet: shortwave radio, which can live off a
+ simple emitter for covering a large region.
+
+ >> It has launched two new shortwave frequencies in
+ the region for four hours of World Service English
+ news a day. These frequencies can be received clearly
+ in Kyiv and parts of Russia.
+
+ https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/millions-of-russians-turn-to-bbc-news
+
+ Shortly after, possessing a shortwave radio device at
+ home became forbidden, proving that in spite of being
+ a low-technology solution, it was efficient enough to
+ disturb the control of the press by the government.
+
+ This showcases how quickly-deployed and resilient
+ simple technologies can be in comparison to fragile,
+ high-tech interdependent ecosystems.
+
+ Radio is also trivially interfaced with high-tech: Any
+ person with access to a source of information and an
+ analog emitter may start reading a daily digest of
+ news read from web newspapers.
+
+ Given instructions, a receiver is also very easy to
+ build with scavenged parts. An antenna is simply a
+ wire producing an input signal, that after
+ demodulation, becomes a sound signal to be fed to a
+ speaker.
+
+ It also shows the benefits of putting all the
+ technically difficult parts onto the side of the
+ content producer helps with adoption of a new
+ technology: Making the client device/software trivial
+ and safe to build, setup and use.
+
+ https://hackaday.com/2022/03/17/owning-a-shortwave-radio
+
+
+
+ New Bitreich Project: rfcommd 20h
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ There is a new project on bitreich: rfcommd. Rfcommd
+ is a daemon sitting on top of your bluez/bluetooth
+ stack, waiting for RFCOMM devices to connect. The
+ daemon will then run scripts or daemons on that
+ new rfcomm connection. This can be used to
+ create a custom bluetooth printer without buying
+ some dedicated hardware device. See the filter
+ spirofilter in the repository for some pcl printer
+ script.
+
+ gopher://bitreich.org/1/scm/rfcommd
+
+ Here is the first release:
+
+ gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz
+ gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz.sha512sum
+ ftp://[email protected]/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz
+ ftp://[email protected]/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.lz.sha512sum
+ gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz
+ gopher://bitreich.org/9/scm/rfcommd/tag/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz.sha512sum
+ ftp://[email protected]/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz
+ ftp://[email protected]/releases/rfcommd/rfcommd-v0.2.tar.gz.sha512sum
+ All questions and comments welcome!
+
+ Please send them to:
+
+ Christoph Lohmann <[email protected]>
+
+ or come on bitreich.org IRC #bitreich-en.
+
+ Have fun!
+
+
+
+
+ 2022-03-06 GangBAN aftermaths 20h
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ This Sunday was a fun one. After lunch we had the
+ supertuxkart tournament of five(!) players competing
+ against eachother on various tracks. All kind of CPUs
+ and hardware setups participates and rushed off the
+ cliffs.
+
+ In the evening there was the huge OpenRA battlefield.
+ Sadly the hardware requirement of OpenRA is too high,
+ so only two players could participate. But this time
+ against seven other AIs. The humans won multiple
+ times!
+
+ See you at the next GangBAN!
+
+ Sincerely yours,
+
+ 20h Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)
+
+
+
+ Breaking free from medical devices 20h
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Unlike most USB gadgets around, medical devices
+ require a specification to be proven fit for handling
+ patients data. This makes doctor-hacking difficult
+ for the sake of better control over what is allowed
+ for medical use.
+
+ While this may sound as a non-starter for many, not
+ all doctors are discouraged. Interview with 20h:
+
+ >> You are __20h__, a doctor in Falken, the best
+ village to live in in Germany, is that correct?
+
+ Yes.
+
+ >> You managed to do some hacking around a medical
+ device. What was it? How did it help you in your
+ diagnostics?
+
+ I wrote rfcommd to have my spirometer print out the
+ results to a standard printer. It helps me having a
+ more detailed view on the results.
+
+ The normal printout is just like 8 centimeters wide.
+ Now it is A4.
+
+ I plan on using rfcommd to read out ECG data from a
+ ECG for further analysis.
+
+ The collecting computer is a gentoo hardened on
+ x86_64, with a standard bluetooth dongle, sending the
+ print jobs via TCP/IP to a network printer.
+
+ For printing there is a cups installation, converting
+ the PCL output of the spirometer to postscript for the
+ network printer.
+
+ >> What software were provided to collect the data on
+ a computer? On which kind of system was that
+ running?
+
+ Before rfcommd there was no collection of the data.
+ The spirometer has some built-in printer, which is
+ very expensive and the printout is small.
+
+ >> Are you using it often?
+
+ I/We are using it every day for printing out
+ spirometry (lung function) results.
+
+ By the way. A secondary function why rfcommd has
+ filters: We have a sterilization device, which has a
+ serial printout of sterilization runs.
+
+ This is what rfcommd does print out too.
+
+ The features of rfcommd moved from: Accept every
+ rfcomm request to having filters per device mac, was
+ because of those two devices.
+
+ But it will allow to have the ecg readout as a filter
+ for free.
+
+ >> It had limited interaction, and yet you managed to
+ made it available from a linux computer. How did you
+ do it?
+
+ First I had a python script using pybluez to offer
+ some bluetooth printer service, which bluetooth
+ clients connect to and send print jobs.
+
+ But I migrated this to some C implementation and
+ generalized it as rfcommd so it is more modular for me
+ and others can reuse it too.
+
+ Bluez stack had some rfcomm client application, but it
+ was removed in newer version because they hate
+ commandline users.
+
+ >> Was it difficult? How long did it take?
+
+ Digging around bluetooth is difficult. It looks
+ similar to TCP/IP, but is its own terminology,
+ protocols and principles. Look at rfcommd for how to
+ announce some service.
+
+ It took me two weekends to write rfcommd as it is now.
+
+ >> What would you advise to designers of such devices
+ to make everyone's life easier?
+
+ If you mean medical devices: Please open source all
+ firmware and open up all schematics. In ten years you
+ will be dead or in pension but still people can extend
+ or update your devices.
+
+ And second: Never have specific assumptions and fool
+ end users into costly standard. You never know better
+ than your users.
+
+ For example in the spirometry description, they say,
+ that only some bluetooth printers are compatible.
+
+ This is due to the bluetooth standard not having
+ defined, *what* is sent to bluetooth printers.
+
+ It should be the minimum, to define this, as it is in
+ the USB printing standard.
+
+ >> What kind of protocol interface would have been the
+ easiest?
+
+ The easiest protocol interface, also considering
+ security and data protection standard, would be ssh
+ over TCP/IP. Everyone knows SSH, it can be integrated
+ into everything and it is easily upgradable to newer
+ security standards.
+
+ >> What does it permits to do that was not possible
+ before?
+
+ With the spirometry data ready as simple text data, I
+ can further process it using standard unix tools, in
+ case I ever need this.
+
+ >> Are other people using it in the practice as well?
+ Even indirectly?
+
+ My nurses use it mainly. They press the »print«
+ button on the spirometry device and it prints the
+ results.
+
+ I, as doctor, only see the printed out results and
+ explain them to patients.
+
+ >> Do she does not have to use command line interface
+ for that?
+
+ No, it's all practical. The spirometer starts its
+ bluetooth client for rfcommd and rfcommd runs the
+ spirofilter printing filter script, which invokes
+ lpr(1).
+
+ >> Are there many situations like that, where
+ cumbersome interfaces makes life harder for working
+ with medical devices?
+
+ Yes, it's built into all medical devices to enforce
+ proprietary and expensive Windows software to be
+ bought.
+
+ For example the newer version of my ECG device has
+ some undocumented network mode. The ECG standard I
+ will be using over serial was defined in 1990. Since
+ then old devices only got bluetooth and ethernet, but
+ did nothing else new.
+
+ The price stayed the same, of course.
+
+ >> Do you think designers would benefits themself from
+ offering another interface that is easier to use?
+
+ In the short term viewpoint it protects you from
+ competitors to enter the market. But in the long run,
+ this now stops me from easily processing patient data
+ for further research. I am using a 25 yr old ECG and
+ some 10 yr old spirometer.
+
+ >> What could have motivated the designers to use
+ something this-much cumbersome? [not asked, already
+ answered]
+
+ >> Are there any similarities in other devices to
+ reuse the existing work you just did?
+
+ Yes. Bluetooth is the new hype in medical devices.
+ All those smart devices for body measurement are for
+ example BLE, some insecure bluetooth standard to read
+ out key=value from bluetooth clients. Some bled(8)
+ should be easy to write.
+
+ Nearly every medical device still has some serial
+ port, either for communication or measurement.
+
+ For measurement this will never die out, since raw
+ data is required.
+
+ And some serial2bluetooth, that's what I am using for
+ my practical examples.
+
+ >> Would it have been possible to build such device
+ yourself from parts, but with sane interfaces
+ instead?
+
+ Building such a device is not the hard part. The hard
+ part is licensing the device as being a medical
+ device.
+
+ I am, as a doctor, am allowed to license some medical
+ device for my patients. But if I'd want to sell or
+ give this device to some other doctor, I'd need some
+ EU medical device license.
+
+ This is a complex process.
+
+ You have severial medical device classes. Some always
+ require some EU-wide licensing.
+
+ The logic of some ECG is very simple. But licensing
+ it for selling is what makes it expensive and/or keeps
+ the competition low.
+
+ >> What do you advise to people also stuck with
+ cumbersome device, but without reverse engineer
+ superpowers?
+
+ Force the device producers to open up standards.
+ Write into contracts, that devices have to be
+ interoperable, so producers need to adapt.
+
+ It's the same for software. If you can't write it on
+ your own, force them to open up standards, because you
+ want to extend the software.
+
+ For extension of software, reverse engineering is
+ legal.
+
+
+
+
Carrying the Cross tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
@@ -67,62 +512,73 @@ __________________________________________________________…
- Molasses Gopher and Gemini Client gopherml
-____________________________________________________________
-
- Jonathan Simpson is announcing a new Gopher client:
- Molasses.
-
- >> A new gopher client, Molasses, is now available for
- general use. It is a multi-platform graphical client
- that runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
-
- Leveraging functionnal programming with Racket, the
- binaries come battery included, bundling the racket
- runtime code, famous for building-up robust graphical
- user interfaces straight from the core language
- libraries.
-
- Inline images, multiple tabs, keyboard navigation,
- Gopher and Gemini support, opening external http://
- links on an external browser, Molasses has everything
- one might expect to browse the little Internet.
-
- >> Feedback is welcome and appreciated.
-
- https://github.com/jjsimpso/molasses/
-
-
-
- BBC Reviving the Plain Old Radio tgtimes
+ High-Tech, Low-Life tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
- BBC, one of the earliest if not the first radio
- broadcasting ever, comes back to using a WWII era
- technology, to overcome limitation Russia imposes over
- Ukraine.
-
- In between a rain of missiles and a short moment of
- temporary peace, fetching information on what is
- happening around is a relief, maybe even a requirement
- for survival.
-
- Internet infrastructure of Ukraine are being impacted,
- and the backbone getting shackled by all kind of
- limitations, provoked the BBC news bulletin to be
- unreachable.
-
- A more primitive way to broadcast critical headlines
- than Internet: shortwave radio, which can live off a
- simple emitter for covering a large region.
-
- >> It has launched two new shortwave frequencies in
- the region for four hours of World Service English
- news a day. These frequencies can be received clearly
- in Kyiv and parts of Russia.
-
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/millions-of-russians-turn-to-bbc-news
-
+ High-Tech Refers to the ability to use complex tools
+ created by engineering, or in the absence of a large
+ corporation to build them, hacking things together.
+
+ Refers to those put aside by society, such as criminal
+ or drug dealer, making itself edgy; or hobos and
+ beggars, pushed to the edge by more or less everyone.
+
+ One way to develop the idea of High-Tech Low-Life
+ would be a criminal using modern tools such to empower
+ its crimes. A transaction giving the bad guys the big
+ guns. Not helpful.
+
+ But another way to portray it is someone rejected by
+ its surroundings, seeking support through
+ technological tools. May it be as a source of direct
+ income, or as a way to get informed, or inform its
+ surrounding, perhaps the entire world such as what did
+ happen with the late revolts in China.
+
+ The "High Tech, Low Life" (2012) documentary shows us
+ that it is not an alternate science-fiction plot, but
+ a phenomenon happenning today.
+
+ Giving High-Tech toys to poor population sounds more
+ like a GAFAM plan to rule over the thirld-world while
+ looking like a humanitarian hero saving the world, but
+ a bit of honesty would reveal that it is closer to
+ offering the Low-Life people to the High-Tech corps,
+ by extending further the frontiers of ad-tech.
+
+ Giving entertainment platform is probably not the most
+ urgent kind of technology people without a meal a day
+ is going to need. What about a tractor though? In its
+ simplest form, in China again, a 55 years-old lady
+ farmer started to use a hoverboard (board onto which
+ to stand, with a wheel on left and right) to change 3
+ hours of daily walk to carry the vegetables harvested,
+ into 40 minutes riding this board.
+
+ https://nextshark.com/chinese-farmer-hoverboard-life/
+ https://www.chinanews.com.cn/tp/hd2011/2018/02-13/800254.shtml
+
+ Or what about deploying long-range point-to-point
+ wireless links in west Africa to circumvent the poor
+ power and inexistant cable infrastructure, as well as
+ escape the lobby and regulations that take over the
+ few IT resources of that country?
+
+ http://www.melissadensmore.com/papers/m4d08-mho-reassessing.pdf
+
+ Or even trying to figure out how to make small solar
+ or wind-power stations that are affordable enough for
+ the budget of a small off-grid village (with a few
+ subventions)? Or an on-street display continuously
+ showing live job offers?
+
+ >> Open-sourced a driver for the community? Installed
+ Linux on an old laptop for someone in need?
+ Convincing the boss to make the project open-source?
+ Attended a surprising situation of that kind? Tell
+ us your story of High-Tech given to Low-Life on
+ #bitreich-en IRC channel on the irc.bitreich.org
+ server
@@ -158,6 +614,35 @@ __________________________________________________________…
+ FreeDOOMDay on 2022-03-27
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ In comemoration of the beginning summer time in
+ central Europe, we will celebrate FreeDOOMDay! On
+ 2022-03-27 20:00 CEST (be careful!), we will play
+ chocolate-doom
+
+ https://www.chocolate-doom.org
+
+ This is a doom variant which runs on nearly every
+ machine out there and supports extra modes:
+
+ https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Three_screen_mode
+
+ Please try to install the FreeDOOM wad files as a
+ base:
+
+ https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Freedoom
+
+ See you on Sunday!
+
+ Sincerely yours,
+
+ 20h Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)
+
+
+
+
Gopher for Medical Research tgtimes
____________________________________________________________
@@ -166,21 +651,21 @@ _________________________________________________________…
medical documentation. You named it: PubMed itself
have been delivering documents through Gopher:
- Phone bookswith name, phone number and e-mail
+ Phone books with name, phone number and e-mail
addresses of those willing to submit it,
- Imageslike weathermaps,
+ Images like weathermaps,
- Audiosuch as 1992 presidential debates,
+ Audio such as 1992 presidential debates,
- Booksand all kind of publcations, also proposed to
+ Books and all kind of publcations, also proposed to
users as a way to publish their own content,
- Videosshort ones, but also on-demand movies!
+ Videos short ones, but also on-demand movies!
- Telnetinterfaces with login and password,
+ Telnet interfaces with login and password,
- Search enginesFor browsing this entire content.
+ Search engines For browsing this entire content.
The technical bulletin of March-April 1994 reveals as
much. While 1994 does not sounds like a world gifted
@@ -189,22 +674,23 @@ _________________________________________________________…
already widespread among providers, but much less used
as they are today:
- Spotifywere files through Gopher.
+ Spotify were files through Gopher.
- Netflixwere files through Gopher.
+ Netflix were files through Gopher.
- PubMed, ResearchGatewere files through Gopher.
+ PubMed, ResearchGate were files through Gopher.
- Instagramwere files through Gopher.
+ Instagram were files through Gopher.
- Facebookwere publication as files through Gopher.
+ Facebook were publication as files through Gopher.
- Amazon Kindlewere text files through Gopher.
+ Amazon Kindle were text files through Gopher.
- Office365were telnet interactive session, or WordStar,
- PostScript, and ASCII files through Gopher.
+ Office365 were telnet interactive session, or
+ WordStar, PostScript, and ASCII files through
+ Gopher.
- Googlewas either gopher search, or interactive telnet
+ Google was either gopher search, or interactive telnet
sessions, with sometimes powerful query languages,
permitting to filter the result held in the
databases: Searching for references about Italians
@@ -244,6 +730,203 @@ _________________________________________________________…
+ Memecache atom feed
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Thanks to the innovation from the Netherlands, we can
+ now offer an atom feed for the memecache at
+ bitreich.org:
+
+ gopher://bitreich.org/0/memecache/news.atom
+
+ Please subscribe for your newest meme pleasure!
+
+ Sincerely yours,
+
+ 20h Chief Meme Officer (CMO)
+
+
+
+ St-Lazare's Paris Train Station tgtimes
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Ah! The Saint Lazare train station. Emblem of the
+ Parisian train station, and today still looking like
+ on the painting by the XIXth century painter Monet.
+
+ This typical look were somehow preserved regardless of
+ the modernisation of the train equipments. Lately, new
+ equipments have been installed to prevent fraud:
+ ticket barriers are now surrounding all the stations
+ and their surrounding, only letting those owning a
+ ticket onto the station.
+
+ Not unexpected from a train company for a country with
+ fraud around 10% on long train lines. Mr. Monet would
+ probably still be able to come and settle down for
+ painting the train station nowaday, although to the
+ price of a ticket to anywhere.
+
+ Yet the devices themself seems not of the greatest
+ comfort to both fraudsters, beggars frequently coming
+ where most passengers are, and legitimate passengers
+ alike. While it might be improved shortly, there is an
+ high error rate for passengers trying to insert their
+ ticket or NFC card.
+
+ In case of a misunderstanding of how to use these
+ devices, the train stations are not overcrowded with
+ staff to welcome passengers in need for information,
+ and it would take a bit of time.
+
+ Setting-up a new solution seems a difficult challenge,
+ putting in compromise price to setup, comfort of use,
+ reliability, finding the new staff in charge of
+ maintenance... A reminder that technical solutions
+ only solve technical problems.
+
+ https://lenouvelautomobiliste.fr/actualites/39949/des-
+ portes-pour-transformer-la-vie-de-la-gare-
+ saint-lazare/
+
+
+
+ FreeDOOMDay results
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Thanks to everyone participating in our first tryout
+ to play doom over our bitreich infrastructure. It
+ worked out pretty well. In the end we played the
+ freedm.wad of freedoom.
+
+ Some statistics: Maximum up and down bandwidth
+ required was 14 kbytes/s. Maximum CPU usage here: 2%
+ of one core. RAM: 400 kb.
+
+ Chocolate Doom is compatible to vanilla doom.
+ Everyone having some old DOS doom can join in using
+ rfcommd:
+
+ git://bitreich.org/rfcommd
+
+ Just attach a serial2bluetooth dongle and some
+ bluetooth dongle in your linux machine, then use the
+ new added filter:
+
+ gopher://bitreich.org/1/scm/rfcommd/commit/9b77ca90e9cf4ca7cd9521e6756dc2b8…
+
+ This will automatically connect your serial connection
+ to a doom server over tcp/ip. Change it to
+ bitreich.org and the standard port and you are set.
+
+ Of course you can use socat from some ttyUSB0 or ttyS0
+ too. Nothing stops you, but your own laziness. The
+ possibilities are endless.
+
+ See you next time, with whatever machine you can find
+ and which runs DOOM!
+
+ Sincerely yours,
+
+ 20h Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)
+
+
+
+
+ What really happened on Mars? tgtimes
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ What can possibly go wrong while sending a device
+ entirely controlled by software on a remote location
+ where noone would ever be able to go for a long while?
+ The question opens a vast field of answers.
+
+ 1997, Pathfinder, a solar-powered ground lander and
+ station, with VxWorks proprietary real time operating
+ system onboard, embedding an 6-wheeled Sojourner rover
+ with custom firmware, landed on Mars.
+
+ During a field data collection mission a priority
+ inversion did happen on the Pathfinder station total
+ loss of control for the time of a reboot.
+
+ The bug was reproduced on earth and patched, latter
+ explained on a mailing list, published online.
+
+ https://www.cs.unc.edu/~anderson/teach/comp790/papers/mars_pathfinder_long_…
+
+ At its core, most operating systems are built around a
+ scheduler that orchestrates execution of many tasks
+ onto one or several CPUs. It is a critical piece of
+ software in the case of real-time operating systems,
+ that must ensure to deliver some actions right on
+ time.
+
+ Complex systems may be unfit for such purposes, and
+ software simplicity has found its way through
+ experimenting how complex systems may end-up in
+ difficult-to-debug situations.
+
+ Picturing oneself in charge of reproducing a bug on
+ earth for something that went wrong on another planet,
+ with a patch expected for next Monday is a strong
+ pressure toward keeping systems simple and easier to
+ debug.
+
+ Although, the Mars operating system landscape is not
+ all VxWorks and nothing else. For instance, the RTEMS
+ system, Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems
+ was open-sourced from US army 1993 and is today
+ actively maintained by both corporations and the open
+ source community.
+
+ Being part of Google Summer of Code, it is also
+ welcoming newcomers to real-time operating system
+ development, who might be able to contribute to
+ embedded software making its way onto space.
+
+ https://www.rtems.org/
+
+ While the ISS project was put at threat by the current
+ events in Ukraine involving all nations, outter-space
+ still represents a middle ground where all sides have
+ a same objective and can collaborate: extending the
+ horizons above what could be reached before.
+
+
+
+ Secret voting for Bitreich Council 20h
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Bitreich is always ahead in its structure,
+ organisation and technology. So is our democracy:
+
+ gopher://bitreich.org/1/scm/bitreich-council/commit/f43daad938405d966c158a1…
+
+ The majority of council members has decided, that:
+
+ >> Secret voting is possible on certain topics. When
+ council members vote in secret, they need to vote
+ under a bedcover. Multiple council members can be
+ under one bedcover.
+
+ Bitreich is reacting to the decision of Debian to
+ introduce back chamber corruption in its decision
+ making:
+
+ https://lwn.net/Articles/889444/
+
+ This is completely prevented in the Bitreich model,
+ since multiple council members are allowed under one
+ bedcover, while hidden from any eavesdropper in the
+ room.
+
+ Sincerely yours,
+
+ 20h Chief Democracy Officer (CDO)
+
+
+
TMP.0UT Volume 2 is Out tmpout
____________________________________________________________
@@ -274,6 +957,40 @@ __________________________________________________________…
+ Bitreich migrating to Windows Server 2022
+____________________________________________________________
+
+ Yesterday the last SSH.com license we had expired. We
+ are now unable to access Linux on the old bitreich.org
+ servers. In an approach to modernize Bitreich, the
+ council decided to go further:
+
+ - Windows Server 2022 will be the new server OS for
+ growing our business opportunities and fast
+ deployment of critical workloads such as SQL Server
+ with confidence using 48TB of memory, 64 sockets,
+ and 2048 logical cores.
+
+ - Irc.bitreich.org will be replaced by Microsoft Teams
+ to create a more engaging meeting experience with
+ together mode. Focus on faces, pick up on nonverbal
+ cues, and easily see who is talking.
+
+ - The ed(1) cloud will be replaced by Microsoft Office
+ 365 to connect and empower every employee, from the
+ office to the frontline worker, with a Microsoft 365
+ solution that enhances productivity and drives
+ innovation.
+
+ We hope to see you on the new services, which enrich
+ your daily business life.
+
+ Sincerely yours,
+
+ 20h Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
+
+
+
Publishing in The Gopher Times you
____________________________________________________________
diff --git a/tmac.w b/tmac.w
@@ -119,7 +119,7 @@
. in 2n
. ta 2n
. ti -2n
-\fB\\$1\fR\t\c
+\fB\\$1 \fR\t\c
..
.
.de QP \"start quoted paragraph
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