RE: https://social.chinwag.org/@abc_bot/117533143525359428

From the article:

> When schoolteacher Ranya Farhat voted in the Israeli election for the very first time this week she, like many Arab Israelis, did not believe it would affect the outcome.
>
> But on Tuesday a record turnout of Arabs, many of whom identify as Palestinian citizens of Israel, tipped the political scales and turned the Arab-majority parties into kingmakers in a deadlocked result.

Deadlock is a lot better than what they've had for a long time, where basically the Palestinian groups got completely ignored. *Now*, the major parties have to work with this group in order to gain government.

Voting *does* have an impact. Hopefully this is a step towards better times for #Palestine … we'll have to see.

US people: your turn to do similar is coming up this Tuesday. That silent ⅔ majority… this is your moment. Even if you're happy with the status quo (hard to see how you would be), vote for whoever's currently in power if that's who you're happy with.

If you're not happy, then go vote for the opposition: it's going to be a question of who you can bargain best with, rather than seeking perfection. You won't get a "perfect" candidate, so seek the "least worst" candidate. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good — because that's what landed you in this situation today.

#USPol

https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/work_items/18512 is the #PHP tracker for #AlpineLinux

Shut down all my PHP-enabled web servers for now… I'll deal with patching them in the morning, nothing I run is critical enough to need it to stay up overnight.

You know you're right to start screaming when you see `AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA` in the base64 dump of a private key.

#eMudhra

RE: https://mastodon.au/@Heliograph/117370292392486645

Add to that, the username `SERVICEBOT` (possibly with some digits replacing letters), last observed on `vivaldi.social`.

Wonderful, so there's a "notification" bot that's going around badgering people to "verify" their accounts.

Username of `NOTIFICATION` (sometimes with some letters replaced with digits)… so far observed on `mastodon.social` (blocked) and `vivaldi.social` (reported).

The irony being, one of the targets that was asked to verify, is my fire bot. The body text is the same aside from the account mentioned, right down to the hyperlink. The body text uses some non-Latin character set to emulate small capital letters (Cyrillic maybe?)l.

Clearly, this is an impersonation scam. Report and block. Do not follow the link unless you're prepared for malware.

#FediBlock #MastoAdmin

Silly electronics question for people… I'm building a circuit that needs to drive a LED dot matrix panel, which means I need a beefy 5V DC-DC power supply to step down from 12V.

I found a suitable candidate: the Meanwell NID100-5. 5V 11A output. I'll be using it next to radio equipment, so class-B filtering is _very_ desirable. The NID100 can be used without filtering for class-A (industrial) applications, but for class-B you need filters.

Below is the recommended circuit. I'm a little stumped with the inductor. This is not a symbol I'm familiar with. It is taken from the datasheet: https://configurable.meanwell.com/webapp/product/search.aspx?prod=NID100

- https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricalEngineering/comments/a853u2/what_does_this_inductor_symbol_mean/ suggests it's a "differential mode inductor"
- https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/meanwell-nid100-dcdc-module-inductor-selection/ calls it a common-mode choke

The literature I can find says a differential mode inductor has two terminals, this appears to be a four-terminal device with two coils, mutually coupled somehow.

Right now I have a Kicad schematic with a Wurth Electric 7448421016 subbed in there: https://www.we-online.com/components/products/datasheet/7448421016.pdf

Is this the right type of filter here? Should maybe the connections on FL1 be swapped around to invert the phase? (e.g. swap pins 2 & 3, or 1 & 4)

#Electronics #MeanwellNID100

RE: https://beige.party/@book/117344879612745266

Any former `mastodon.social` followers of @book, they accidentally slipped up and hit the wrong button by mistake, blocking more than intended. (Happens to the best of us.)

If you were previously following Book, they'd appreciate a re-follow.

"No I don't want you playing with NetBSD, my attention requirements are greater." #Caturday #CatsOfMastodon

Today, I received the redundancy letter. End of November, I'll be free.

13 full-time years… doubt I'll have that sort of innings again. (Plus a couple as a contractor, so 15 in total.)

Not in a rush for a new position, and to be honest in this job market, I'm not certain one will come up… but some time in 2027, I'll be starting to look around again.

```
Your request for Annual Leave for the period 31/8/2026 - 15/9/2026 has been
approved.
```

…ahh and we use up the annual leave too. Good, good. I guess I'll be packing up the desk tonight as I don't fancy lugging it home on the train tomorrow.

Thank-you `pip` and `venv` for trying to smuggle a `x86-64` binary into ` .deb` intended to run on a AM3358… this technique works really well for platform-independent builds!

```
Your request for Long Service Leave for the period 16/9/2026 - 26/11/2026 has
been approved.
```

Thank-you!!! One last stint before I'm out the door and hitting up the #FediHire tag.

Playing around with #NetBSD again… so I have a Intel NUC running it. One of the thing I frequently have to deal with, being an embedded software developer *and* an amateur radio operator, is #SerialPorts.

More often than not, USB serial ports. Now, I'm used to the Linux way of doing things, where everything is accessed through a /dev/tty* device.

We used to do it the BSD way with a device like /dev/cua0 (16550 UART on ISA 0x3f8 IRQ 4; COM1 for you DOS people) being your serial port ignoring carrier detect, and /dev/ttyS0 was the same serial port but required CD to be up. This got deprecated years ago, so /dev/cua0 disappeared, and we were left with /dev/ttyS0.

I grabbed a test rig I made for work, this is Zephyr RTOS on a Raspberry Pi Pico. It enumerates two CDC-ACM serial ports, one with the Zephyr shell, and the other is a USB serial port. You use the shell port to tell it how to route the RXD/TXD lines on the other serial port, with the board supporting RS-485, RS-422 and TTL serial. On Linux, it shows up as `/dev/ttyACM${n}` and `/dev/ttyACM$(( ${n} + 1 )`. `udev` also creates these symbolic links:

```
stuartl@rikishi ~ $ ls -l /dev/serial/by-id
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 usb-WideSky.Cloud_Pty_Ltd_WideSky_Hub_Test_Rig_E663AC91D3665F30-if00 -> ../../ttyACM0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 usb-WideSky.Cloud_Pty_Ltd_WideSky_Hub_Test_Rig_E663AC91D3665F30-if02 -> ../../ttyACM1
stuartl@rikishi ~ $ ls -l /dev/serial/by-path/
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:2:1.0 -> ../../ttyACM0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:2:1.2 -> ../../ttyACM1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 pci-0000:00:14.0-usbv2-0:2:1.0 -> ../../ttyACM0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 26 10:58 pci-0000:00:14.0-usbv2-0:2:1.2 -> ../../ttyACM1
```

This is handy because if I have two of these, it doesn't matter which gets detected first, I know which device is which. The links ending in `-if02` or `.2` will be the data port, and the `-if00` / `.0` ones will be the shell control port.

In NetBSD, I plug this same MCU in and I get 4 devices:
- `/dev/dtyU0`
- `/dev/dtyU1`
- `/dev/ttyU0`
- `/dev/ttyU1`

The files actually always exist, but they get mapped to this physical device when the driver detects it and enumerates it on USB.

If I plug in another dongle, I get another pair, a `/dev/dtyU2` and a `/dev/ttyU2`. The choice of `/dev/dtyU[012]` is dependent on which order the devices is detected… which on USB is indeterminate as they can be hotplugged.

The only clue I get is the `usbdevs -v`; it shows a device number and serial number information.

```
vk4msl-nbsd# usbdevs -v
Controller /dev/usb0:
addr 0: super speed, self powered, config 1, xHCI root hub(0x0000), NetBSD(0x0000), rev 1.00(0x0100)
port 1 disabled
port 2 disabled
port 3 disabled
port 4 disabled
Controller /dev/usb1:
addr 0: high speed, self powered, config 1, xHCI root hub(0x0000), NetBSD(0x0000), rev 1.00(0x0100)
port 1 powered
port 2 addr 17: full speed, power 100 mA, config 1, USB-Serial Controller D(0x2303), Prolific Technology Inc.(0x067b), rev 4.00(0x0400)
port 3 addr 1: low speed, power 100 mA, config 1, CASUE USB KB(0x6a21), vendor 2a7a(0x2a7a), rev 0.01(0x0001)
port 4 addr 18: full speed, self powered, config 1, WideSky Hub Test Rig(0x5678), WideSky.Cloud Pty Ltd(0x1234), rev 4.03(0x0403), serial E663AC91D3665F30
port 5 powered
port 6 powered
port 7 addr 3: full speed, self powered, config 1, product 0a2a(0x0a2a), Intel(0x8087), rev 0.01(0x0001)
port 8 powered
port 9 powered
port 10 powered
port 11 powered
…
```

lacking is the knowledge that there are *two* devices allocated to device 18 (the test rig).

Given a `/dev/ttyU${n}` or `/dev/dtyU${n}` device node, how do I find out about the device attached to it? Seems assuming a device node is fraught with danger.

One gripe with the Argon One Up is WiFi performance seems to be weak. Reading the documentation, it appears the CM5 defaults to using a PCB-trace antenna which lives behind a massive heatsink inside the base of the laptop.

Not a recipe for success on microwave bands.

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/enable-external-antenna-connector-on-raspberry-pi-compute-module-45/ describes how to switch it to the "external" antenna, which is presumably better placed.

Doing this, it seems to receive a lot better.

#ArgonOneUp #CM4 #CM5

Been updating the OS on my old faithful (Panasonic CF-53), as well as setting up Gentoo on the Argon One Up CM5.

Package builds are demonstrably faster on the CM5 than the CF-53. As in big builds like `webkit-gtk` are building a lot faster on the CM5 than they are on the CF-53.

The CF-53 is a Core i5-3320M; hyperthreaded dual-core x86-64 running 2.6GHz, there's 8GB RAM.
The CM5 is a Broadcom BCM2712; quad-core ARM Cortex A76 running at 2.4GHz, and the module I have sports 16GB RAM.

The CM5 is leaving the old machine in the dust in all areas except video acceleration… haven't quite got that working in X11 yet (I'll move to Wayland when it's ready… it isn't now for my use case).

I guess I'll know more once I get more of my standard desktop applications up and running.

#CM5 #RaspberryPi #Gentoo

Anyone who thinks Australia ever had "one" culture, is ignorant.

Prior to European exploration, there would have been hundreds of indigenous "nations" spread across the continent in something more like continental Europe.

Some of those in the far north also traded with seafaring traders from South East Asia.

When Europeans *did* finally rock up, they brought with them a motley crew made up of English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and a smattering of other nationalities as well.

When exploration began through the centre, they took with them Middle-Eastern people who brought camel trains to the outback.

The gold rush brought people from northern Asia to our gold fields.

Multiculturalism has always been here. It won't go away just because some red-headded clown "doesn't like it". #auspol

Oookay, clear-fluids only… at the moment I'm just sticking to water and saving the good stuff (apple juice and iced tea) for when I'm faced with Gunk Pro tomorrow for breakfast and lunch.

Dinner tonight is gunk light.

Already I can tell my brain isn't working right … making a lot more silly mistakes than usual. *This* is why I take sick leave during that period … I just don't function well on such a restricted diet.

Normal-ish Breakfast and Lunch tomorrow… then I'm on clear-fluids only, with a light serving of Macrogol for dinner.

Ugh I hate colonoscopies! Be glad when it's all over with Thursday evening.

Now that I've had some time to wake up…

ICNS: Apple Icon image format — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Icon_Image_format
PGM: netpbm Portable Greymap Format — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Graymap_File_Format
XWD: X Window Dump — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xwd

I guess XWD meets the "legacy" tag given the X window system is nearly as old as I am… `netpbm` is a rather handy command-line suite of image processing tools that is current maintained open-source software and ICNS is the current format used by Apple MacOS X for its icons.

I guess you might deal with ICNS if you're doing software development for Apple systems. PGM might come up if you've got an image processing pipeline in a shell script.

I can't think of where you'd use XWD, there are easier mechanisms for taking a screenshot that don't involve esoteric formats.