I love how steadily Linux ecosystem gets better and better over the years. I am at an event where I have some spare time in the back of our booth, so I'm slowly installing my new homelab minipc and I needed to provide connectivity to it. I have two network interfaces on my laptop, so I started remembering how to set up routing and dhcp server on the command line, then I remembered it's a workstation, so I need to take care of NetworkManager to not cause any issues, only to find out that there's actually an option called "Shared to other computers" on the interface in NetworkManager GUI, so I ticked it and ... it just works. It started dhcp server and started masquerading the subnet via default route.

Oh, and you can find the leases in "/var/lib/NetworkManager/dnsmasq-<interface name>.leases"

#linux #linuxtips #networking

Oh hey it's December. Time to pull out this silly little Christmas MIDI again. I still know basically nothing about it.
The earliest I can trace it back to is a file called RXMAS93.ZIP with a timestamp of November 15, 1993, which appeared on several 90s shareware CDs, though none of them seem to indicate the source.
MIDI: drive.google.com/uc?id=1-8tW2P….
Thanks to @datajake1999 the album is also now on YouTube. youtube.com/watch?v=9RXWKpGZmC…
This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

Matt Campbell reshared this.

Trans musicians of fedi, I come to you with a plea for help!

Do you have any footage of yourself playing gigs that you 1) have the rights to and 2) would permit the use of?

Can be as short as ten seconds. Big stage, small pub, camera phone or professional cam, doesn't matter, just as long as it it's from a gig and looks the part. Audio not required.

I'm working on a trans-themed music video for a cover song and I'd love to cut a little montage of performances in the last chorus.

If that call speaks to you, I'd be delighted if you replied or DM'd me!

#AskFedi #TransMusicians

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

When was the last time you took a flight to anywhere for any reason? #poll #pleaseBoost (and don't get picky on the time descriptions because you know full well what I mean in the limited characters)

  • In the last 24 hours (1%, 23 votes)
  • In the last week (2%, 42 votes)
  • In the last month (8%, 128 votes)
  • In the last year (31%, 492 votes)
  • Over a year ago (35%, 566 votes)
  • So long ago I don't remember (17%, 276 votes)
  • I've never flown (3%, 62 votes)
1589 voters. Poll end: 3 weeks ago

putain on croyait être tranquille un moment, mais il est repassé par la fenêtre et on est bien baisés :
Chat Control, le retour !

euroweeklynews.com/2025/11/29/…

(en passant donnez à @LaQuadrature on va avoir besoin de se défendre, là)

#UnionEuropéenne
#UnionFasciste
#Tech
#Chat
#Controle
#Messagerie
#Surveillance
#ViePrivée
#Chiffrement
#BackDoorPourLesGentilsBienSûrMonCul
#TousSuspects
#DeltaChat

Seems like #GTK 4 really discourages using drag and drop as a method of sorting lists. My implementation is reaching 200+ lines. I get that it's not very accessible, and maybe impossible on devices without a mouse. But I'm struggling to think of an alternative for large lists of items such as music playlists. Using Up/Down buttons to move an item from position 1 to position 100 seems like a lot of presses... #gnome

#Vaguetooting: equating* objecting to systemd to MAGA is a level of bullshirt I've never seen before, nor thought possible.

*Disclaimer: This equating is an interpretation of a person's statement. That interpretation may be incorrect. Also, some people who object to systemd are indeed horrible people with horrible ideas/ideals/ideologies.

P.S. Using "don't divide us" as a dialectical hammer to quash debate is pretty forking awful. For the millionth time, what the fork is systemd, really?!? Because if you say "it's an init system," I'm going to put you in the same category as people who way "lol linux is just a kernel" and "I asked ChatGPT..."

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
in reply to ToTheStone

But XLibre was started not because of developer's anti-vaxer views.

Why some forks and new programs created by left/right radicals — is another question. I think this "happens" because mass-media always ready to promote some hot content which will start flamewars and give a lot of views for these media. I suppose, in reality a lot of OpenSource projects still started by a usual people, who don't have radical views and just love to code. But these projects are not visible, because today :drgn_sigh: looks like popular to "change the world", "make actions", "fight with something" or "for something" and other loud words instead of silent, small and consecutive actions.

"Better to seem than to be"

#TLDR: Quad9 will be discontinuing support within DNS-over-HTTPS (DOH) using HTTP/1.1 on December 15, 2025.

Mark your calendar 🗓️ and please share, especially if you know someone who will be affected!

Full story here 👉 quad9.net/news/blog/doh-http-1…

#DOH #DNS #infosec

Some #PeerTube video accounts to follow on assorted topics:

EXERCISE
@3morereps_workouts - Fitness instructor doing exercise & yoga videos

HISTORY
@premodernist - Univ. lecturer on history, from ancient to modern
@athenaproductions - Irreverent/sweary videos about bits of history, philosophy
@historical - Assorted public domain films from history

LANGUAGES
@moosesconlangs - Videos on constructed languages including Esperanto
@robert_riley - Educational videos about basics of English language

Die Distanz hinter den großen Begriffen

Man begegnet in diesen digitalen Räumen Menschen, die reden, als wären sie ständig auf einer Bühne.
Sie werfen mit Begriffen um sich wie Selbstbestimmung, Systemkritik, Dekonstruktion, Freiheit ..
ein ganzes Arsenal an Haltungen.
Alles klingt groß, reflektiert, fast so, als könnte man damit jedes Versäumnis übertünchen.
Und hinter dieser Kulisse liegt etwas Seltsames: Eine Unfähigkeit, Nähe auszuhalten.
Nicht aus Bosheit, sondern aus einer Mischung aus Unsicherheit, Eitelkeit und der Angst, dass echte Begegnung die eigene Rolle zerkratzt.
Also wird jede Annäherung sofort in einen Diskurs verwandelt.
Anstatt „Ja, lass uns mal treffen“, kommt ein Vortrag darüber, wie wichtig Freiheit ist, wie vorsichtig man mit sozialen Energien umgehen müsse, wie anspruchsvoll das eigene Innenleben sei.
Alles klingt nach Tiefe, doch es dient nur dazu, nicht in Berührung zu kommen.
Man selbst kommt schlicht herüber,
nicht mit einem Manifest, sondern mit einem offenen Blick. Nicht weil man besonders tugendhaft wäre, sondern weil das der Normalzustand ist.
Gerade, wenn man aus einer Gegend stammt, in der Nähe nicht als Bedrohung galt, sondern als Teil des Überlebens.
Wo man sich nicht mit Fremdwörtern schützen musste, sondern einfach da war.
Und dann prallt dieses einfache Dasein
auf ein Milieu, das sich in Selbstinszenierung eingerichtet hat.
In dem hat man sich angewöhnt,
Verbindlichkeit als Risiko zu sehen
und Distanz als Reife. Der Ton ist glatt, die Miene souverän, doch in Wahrheit ist da eine enorme Brüchigkeit.
Völlig absurd wird es,
wenn man diese Oberflächenkritik ausspricht und sofort Zuspruch bekommt, von denselben Menschen,
die exakt so leben.
Sie stimmen begeistert zu, als hätten sie nie im Leben die eigene Rolle im Spiegel betrachtet.
Wie ein Chor, der seine eigene Partitur nicht kennt.
Sie reden über Ausbeutung,
über den Kapitalismus,
über Sklaverei in der Arbeitswelt,
als hätten sie das Monopol auf moralische Sensibilität.
Doch wenn es darum geht, einem Menschen einfach respektvoll zu begegnen, ohne Maskottchen-Rolle,
ohne taktische Distanz, ohne Selbstdarstellung, ist plötzlich nichts mehr da.
Keine Verbindlichkeit, keine Wärme, keine Bereitschaft zur Realität.
Nur Begriffe, die wie Schutzwälle stehen
zwischen ihnen und jedem Moment,
der nicht kontrollierbar ist.
Und man bleibt zurück, nicht erschüttert,
sondern irritiert darüber, wie sehr manche Freiheit predigen und doch vor jeder Form von Begegnung zurückschrecken.
Wie sehr sie Weltanalysen liefern
und gleichzeitig die einfachste Form menschlicher Nähe nicht ertragen.
Es ist ein Muster, das überall auftauchen kann, Menschen, die sich selbst für kritisch halten, aber nie merken,
dass sie kritische Distanz mit menschlicher Abwesenheit verwechseln.

#Bruchzone #Zwischenwelten #Innensichten #friedisinniert #Theoriefassade

Federal Appeals Court disqualifies Alina Habba from serving as US Attorney for NJ

abc7ny.com/post/federal-appeal…
via ABC7NY App

Speech-to-text right from your terminal?? 🎤

⚡ **ostt** — A terminal-based recorder & speech-to-text transcription tool.

💯 Real-time waveform visualization with dBFS volume metering & clipping detection.

⬇️ Demo by the author below

🦀 Written in Rust & built with @ratatui_rs

⭐ GitHub: github.com/kristoferlund/ostt

#rustlang #ratatui #tui #audiotech #tts #transcription #terminal

reshared this

Well, it's December 01, which means it's time to drag Sammy out of his box again.

This silly little song, which was probably someone's throw-away recording for a morning show in the 70s, has a story behind it, at least for me.

On Christmas Eve 1992, Brad Krantz played a song on Asheboro, NorthCarolina's WKRR, called Sammy the Christmas Snake, on his morning talk show.
It just so happened that my brother had a few boomboxes recording local radio stations to capture the essence of a Carolina Christmas that morning, when Sammy the Christmas snake played on Brad's show.
As I was 8 years old at the time, and my brother and I liked this silly little song so much, we decided to make it tradition to play it every Christmas morning before going upstairs for the "good stuff".
Unfortunately, however, in 1994, my brother went off to college, and the tape was lost somewhere. Naturally, it was the only copy we had.

A few years after that, Brad was fired from WKRR, and I lost track of him. I emailed one of the guys at the station around 2001 or so, to see if they knew where Sammy the Christmas Snake might be, or at least knew who recorded it. I was told that Brad took their only copy with him when he went to Charlotte, and they had no idea who actually wrote or recorded the song, only that Brad got it from someone in Boston.

In the summer of 2004, WZTK, a new FM talk station owned and operated by Curtis Media was launched. And, guess what? Brad Krantz is back with the Brad and Brit show.

I emailed him in August of 2004 just to politely ask if he still had Sammy the Christmas Snake, and asked if he would play it on his show over the holiday season. He said he would, that it was apparently widely requested, and said "thank you for remembering Sammy".

So, I started my audio recorder on December first to try and record Sammy the Christmas Snake for my own personal amusement, seeing as how I have been looking for it for 12 years on and off at this point. Apparently, Brad had expected this, and made sure to talk or play IDs at every possible opening in the song, which, as you can imagine, infuriated me. Yep, this was war!

I kept the recorder going every weekday morning through December 21, 2004, to see if he would slip and forget to play an ID in the same places.

Finally, on December 21, 2004, I had enough pieces to reconstruct it!

I ended up running seven different copies of the song as played on the Brad and Brit Show through my favorite audio editor, taking the best parts from each, to get the relatively unmutilated version of Sammy the Christmas Snake, albeit with a few compromises. The song came from a slightly scratchy record, dubbed to who knows what media, played over an FM radio station. After editing, there were differences in equalization in some parts of the song, most likely due to Brad playing the track back through a different player or channel on the station's console, but considering it was the only version of the song I could find anywhere, and, as of December 2025, I still have no idea who recorded it, my edit was good enough.

I wanted to share the song as widely as possible, thanks to my beef with Brad, and this was before the existence of Youtube, so I put it on a webpage with links to contact Brad and Brit, and thank them for allowing us to have access to such a wonderful song. This, of course, was in response to Brad's claim that he had exclusive rites to it, which I thought was completely unfair. There's no need to keep Sammy in a box like that!

Several years went by, and someone uploaded my edit of Sammy to Youtube. It has now been featured in several different videos, but it's obvious that it's my edit, and I've yet to find another version of it anywhere, online or offline.

There were some things that bugged me about my original 2004 edit, which I could now fix with tools and skills I didn't have at the time, so, on December 1, 2018, I fixed some small timing issues that existed between splices, reduced crackles, pops and rumble, made the equalization a little more consistent, got rid of some noise, and performed a few other touch-ups. This is the result. It's still not perfect, but it's better than it was, and certainly cleaner than any other version on Youtube as of December 1, 2018.

I'm still looking for a real copy of this song, or, at the very least, an idea of who recorded it. There is some speculation on the comments of this Youtube video.

I was told that this song also featured on a morning show on WNAP in Indianapolis, Indiana, around 1978-1982.

A few years ago, my edit was played on WKRR again, where it all started for me. Go figure.

As of May 2025, Brad Krantz has passed away, so if he actually knew anything about the origins of this song, we can't ask him now.

youtube.com/watch?v=o0eWo6qvZO…

Lyrics, sung by a guy with a New England accent sped up and singing with himself to the backing of a Fender Rhodes, some flutes, drums, bass and a glockenspiel are as follows:

There are such cute little Christmas galoots...
Little angels, and reindeer, and snowflakes that fly.
But from all those yule underdogs fondling my memory logs,
one multiple vertebrae kind of a guy.

Sammy the Christmas Snake
hid in the corner of Santa's workshop.
Sammy the Christmas Snake
bit all the elves and made all the work stop.
Hid in the stockings, he hid up the flue,
bit on Rudolph 'til his nose turned blue,
ain't no tellin' what a Christmas snake'll do...
*hiss, hiss, hiss*
Merry Christmas

Sammy the Christmas Snake
had peppermint stripes and pointy ol' fangs.
Sammy the Christmas snake
he hides in the holly where the mistletoe hangs.
Hid in the stockings, he hid up the flue,
he bit on old Santa and Misses Santa Too! OH!
Sammy the Christmas Snake
*hiss, hiss, hiss*
Merry Christmas.

Come on kids, sing with me!

Now, Santa lived with Herb the Christmas Dwarf at Santa's house,
and no one liked him much since he bit Sid, the Christmas Mouse.
'Til Rick the Christmas Mongoose went berserk and tried to wreck,
the sleigh and Sammy saved the day when he broke Rick's Christmas neck.
HEY!

Sammy the Christmas Snake
Now there ain't a ban on anacondas in the arctic.
Sammy that ol' Christmas Snake
Now those elves don't chase him with that forked stick.

What a merry mood he has all the girls and boys in,
givin' out the cheer and holdin' back the poison...

Sammy the Christmas Snake
Hey! Hey!
*Hiss, hiss, hiss*
MERRY CHRISTMASSSSS!

Is it me, or did Slack adjust some focus behaviors in the reactions dialog? Others on Slack: Please check for me.
In the past, I could right arrow from the search field into "frequently used" and pick an emoji. Now, right arrowing just announces: "Search property page." No indication what I land on, nothing about an active emoji highlighted. This is making reacting to Slack messages nearly impossible for me.
in reply to James Scholes

ah interesting! I am running Windows Store 4.47.59 64-bit (ARM) of Slack. But it does smell like some sort of UIA mis-fire so will try rebooting the machine too, a Slack restart didn't change it. The store version is for sure more performant but can sometimes get odd focusing quirks too I've noticed in general. Really appreciate you checking this on your side.
This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

Think my best snag was the AirPods Max for 150 off, since they sold it for 399 instead of the retail $549 price. Easier to swallow. Even in 2025 they are one of the best (if not the best) headphones I own. Bluetooth 5.0 is a bit crappy, H1 chip has not aged well. For those reasons I would never pick them up as full retail price.
However: The all-metal construction, premium magnetic earcups, superb ANC that still rivals the QC Ultra but falls slightly short of XM6 in blocking rumbles, type-C audio, and comfort make it all worthwhile in 2025.
The XM6 might be a little better, but it is all plastic and terrible workmanship for what you pay. QC Ultra upped the game with metal hinges, but what you pay for in the max is that all-metal cups and surprisingly repairable design with easy to change earcups. The Sonos Ace, if you don't want Apple's ecosystem, is the closest contender, but may not win on comfort to some. Others will appreciate the Sonos Ace for being lighter (The max are very heavy cans.)
I have multiple Apple devices so for me this was worth to buy, as the Airpods Max auto-sync to all of them. I already had the AirPods Pro 3, and because those have smaller 11MM drivers, they will never produce the depth of the max. Not to mention a lot of the bass-forward nature of the AirPods Pro 3 comes from DSP (Digital signal processing) tricks.
So, there you have it. My honest review. No, the max are not bad, but also, not for everyone, and other solid ones exist today like it.
in reply to MariahL

@MariahL I was actually shocked at how low-lag they have even on standard SBC codec and Bluetooth. It's nowhere as good as AptX or one of those 2.4 dongle headphones, but good enough that compared to QC Ultra with SBC and AAC codecs, there's a lot less lag. I'd say around 80-90MS for the Max. I will have to see how well they age, people say the white one turns yellow around the foam and band over time. I got the blue one. It's good to know the lightning one still works for you though, good sign there, and since you have the converter, the type-C version is not worth the upgrade.
in reply to MariahL

@MariahL ah yeah, the only downside, you can't charge them while plugged in. Unless, you can get a lightning splitter that has both charging and audio, wonder if that could work on a Max to get the same behavior as the Type-C one. Was very happy to know they can be used while plugged in, not so happy that the only way to really get them in that low power state where they disconnect is to put them in their case.
I do use them on Windows a lot too, it's good that my iPhone will still see its battery status even when its connected to my Windows side. It was a bit tricky to put it in pairing mode with the side-button hold trick but it does work, so I can still use it either on Apple stuff or on Windows depending on what I'm near.
in reply to MariahL

@MariahL I wil have to really put them through their pace next year when I go to Europe with that! I wonder how well they'd do on Airplane engine noise. Some say there was a firmware update that borked noise canceling, basically weakened it somewhere around the 4X version time. I did test them with things like our furnace side-by-side to the QC Ultra and XM6, and the only ones that slightly beat it were XM6 and the newer AirPods pro 3. Not shocked there, but the difference was super subtle and not enough that an entire noise of speech or the hum bled in through the max.
in reply to MariahL

@MariahL ah yeah, those had a sale but not quite at a deep discount, think the lowest I saw pro3 go for was 219 bucks. So around a 10 or 15% discount. I do think they'll stick around for a long time though so if you wait longer the patience reward will be worth it. They kept the Pro2 around for years. I still have them, the lightning pro2, but my left one has a problem where ANC doesn't work equal to the right one and transparency wavers voices. So had to pick them up when they launched and recycle them next time at Best Buy.

The best way to test the resilience of your service is: reboot the server. I mean it. Don't just restart the service, reboot the server. A story in two parts:

Part 1: a while ago I configured ZFS under my Talos Kubernetes cluster, and everything was fine, until I decided to reboot. When it came back, nothing was working, because I forgot to properly configure a way for Talos to read the ZFS volume encryption key.

Part 2: at some point I configured Audiobookshelf to store data on top of said ZFS volume. Everything was working fine for a few weeks, until I had to reboot the server again (for reasons). When it came back, I lost all my downloaded podcasts, because I had a typo on my configuration that was pointing to a directory outside of the PVC, so it mounted as an emptyDir volume.

Honestly, I should have known better. I had issues in the past when some servers went down because of power failures (battery didn't last) and they did not come back properly.

You gotta do a reboot/power test every once in a while, just like you have to test your backups on a regular basis.

#HomeLab #TalosLinux #ZFS #SRE #DevOps @homelab

RE: infosec.exchange/@WPalant/1156…

Another drama in the FLOSS world! (In history this time.) Forks and insinuations! Who could have guessed.

The other day, I thought yet again about how the formalized government of the USA was officially started because "The Thirteen Colonies" didn't like a nation (England) taxing them from abroad in addition to local taxes...

Yet the US is 1 of 3* countries worldwide that taxes its own citizens who live elsewhere _in addition_ to where they live.

(* The other two countries are the totalitarian dictatorships of Eritrea and North Korea.)

The free software movement shaped by GNU/Linux reminds us that control over our digital tools is essential to our freedom. Today, at the heart of this ongoing struggle, Jami embodies this philosophy by offering a genuinely free way to communicate.

Read our article Jami and the GNU/Linux Spirit: jami.net/jami-and-the-gnu-linu…

#Jami #OpenSource #P2P #PrivacyMatters

in reply to Adam Demasi

If you’re not familiar with it, in 2023, I set up an index of free downloads Microsoft deleted from their website. Almost everything they purged has been preserved in the Wayback Machine, but it’s hard to find what you need. This makes it easy to download from a source you can trust. legacyupdate.net/download-cent…

reshared this

It's December 1st, which means that throughout the entire month you should reserve 5-10 minutes every day to read a fantastic article about HTML. ❤️‍🔥

Check out what's hidden behind the first door.

htmhell.dev/adventcalendar?s=h…

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

My wonderful financial supporters have decided that my weekly updates of my work on GNOME will partially be public in the future!

Here is my first public weekly update about video thumbnailers, Pika Backup, translations for the GNOME website, and more

blogs.gnome.org/sophieh/2025/1…