Category: English

What year is it, NUUG?

The Norwegian Unix User Group is celebrating its 40th anniversary on August 10. I was invited to speak at the event and initially accepted, but after learning of the schedule for the event, which was not communicated to me at the time, I have decided to withdraw.

The Norwegian Unix User Group was founded in 1984, and is celebrating its 40th anniversary on August 10. A short while ago, I was approached by a member of the organizing team (whom I shall not name) and asked to speak at the event as a representative of the Norwegian BSD community. I was given no information about the event beyond what was expected of me (a 30-minute presentation on the topic of my choice) and the names of some of the other speakers. After some hesitation, as I was having a hard time coming up with a topic that I felt would fit the occasion, I initially accepted.

One thing I found odd was that NUUG’s own event calendar (archive) has no information about the event beyond a time and a place. I get that the list of speakers is not yet finalized, even though there’s less than a month to go, but there is literally nothing beyond “more information to come”. All the links just point back to the same page.

Screenshot of NUUG’s event calendar as of 2024-07-12

This morning, someone pointed out to me that there is a registration page (archive) for the event (which, again, NUUG’s own website does not link to or even mention!) with extensive information about the event. And that information… is not good.

Screenshot of a portion of the registration page for NUUG's 40th anniversary celebration, which includes the finale of Miss Norway 2024 and an opportunity to take photos with the contestants.
Screenshot of a portion of the registration page as of 2024-07-12

tl;dr: the event is collocated with the Miss Norway 2024 finals and attendees are promised opportunities to have their pictures taken with the winners and runners-up.

WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK, NUUG?

It goes without saying that I will not be speaking at this event. I will try to turn my presentation (which I’d only outlined, not written yet) into a blog post, but no promises. It would have been a reflection on what “Unix” actually means (beyond the simple fact of the trademark) and how that has changed over the years.

If you’re a member (and perhaps even if you’re not), I encourage you to contact NUUG and let them know your thoughts on this matter.

EDIT: I have written to NUUG to ask them to either change their plans for the event, in which case I will be happy to attend and speak, or cancel my membership. I will update this post again when (if) they respond.

EDIT 2024-08-07: I have yet to receive an official response from NUUG. I’ve been told out-of-band that my email has been received and my membership canceled, but I appear to still be on the mailing list. In the meantime, Norwegian magazine kode24 has written a piece on the topic, citing my tweet and this blog post, which kicked up a bit of a fuss on Twitter. Knut Yrvin chose to respond directly to my month-old tweet with a strawman and insults while Malin Bruland rode to his defense with the same strawman. I am not impressed.

DNS over TLS in FreeBSD with Quad9

It has come to my attention that Quad9 have a blog post providing incorrect instructions for how to set up a FreeBSD system to use their service. I have attempted to get in touch with the author and get him to correct it but have received no response. So here, for the benefit of the Great Search Engine Gods, is the correct procedure; see my earlier post on the topic for more details on how it works.

# cat >/etc/rc.conf.d/local_unbound <<EOF
local_unbound_enable="yes"
local_unbound_tls="yes"
local_unbound_forwarders="9.9.9.9@853#dns.quad9.net 149.112.112.112@853#dns.quad9.net 2620:fe::fe@853#dns.quad9.net 2620:fe::9@853#dns.quad9.net"
EOF
# service local_unbound setup
# service local_unbound restart

No need to reboot.

Note that if you only have IPv4, you may experience slightly degraded performance unless you leave out the IPv6 addresses from the local_unbound_forwarders line (and vice versa in the unlikely scenario where you only have IPv6).

wtf, zsh

wtf, zsh

wtf, zsh

% uname -sr
FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE-p10
% for sh in sh csh bash zsh ; do printf "%-8s" $sh ; $sh -c 'echo \\x21' ; done 
sh      \x21
csh     \x21
bash    \x21
zsh     !
% cowsay wtf, zsh       
 __________ 
< wtf, zsh >
 ---------- 
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

I mean. Bruh. I know it’s intentional & documented & can be turned off, but every other shell defaults to POSIX semantics…

BTW:

% ln -s =zsh /tmp/sh
% /tmp/sh -c 'echo \x21'
\x21

Netlink, auditing, and counting bytes

In which we find bugs in both the kernel and userspace parts of the Linux audit subsystem.

I’ve been messing around with Linux auditing lately, because of reasons, and ended up having to replicate most of libaudit, because of other reasons, and in the process I found bugs in both the kernel and userspace parts of the Linux audit subsystem.

Continue reading “Netlink, auditing, and counting bytes”

On dinosaurs and context

Some of you may know that the 2020 Hugo Award ceremony was held last night¹ and that it was hosted by George R. R. Martin. Some of you may have heard that it did not go well. Some of you may already know what happened, more or less. I watched it live, and unsurprisingly, I have opinions.

This post is not a blow-by-blow account of events or any sort of clever analysis or deep thoughts on how to move forward. Better minds than mine have already taken care of that; see for instance Natalie Luhrs’s take on the affair. Instead, I would like to offer a little bit of context for those who heard what happened (or watched it happen) and have a vague idea that it was bad but do not understand why everybody is so upset and do not want to jump down the rabbit hole of SFF fandom drama.

Continue reading “On dinosaurs and context”