Back from vacation, I caught up on discussions about the kernel and had nice chats with my @igalia colleagues.

At the end of the day, I published a blog post about my Kworkflow talk at Kernel Recipes 2025 with speaker notes and live demo script. So that, you can check what I presented in more details.

https://melissawen.github.io/blog/2025/11/03/kworkflow-talk-at-kernel-recipes-2025

This blog post also reminded me how fun the #KR2025 days were.

""[…] In this article, we will do a deep dive into […] showing off #eBPF’s ability to poke deep within the #Linux #kernel internals to answer questions about the state of the running kernel.

The subject of our investigation is #netfilter, […] Which of the rules in my firewall ruleset caused the drop of a particular packet?

The goal of this article is to demonstrate how to answer this question. We can use this same approach to answer a myriad of questions about the kernel and to hook into pretty much any arbitrary point inside the kernel.""

https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2025/11/03/using-ebpf-attribute-packet-drops-netfilter-rules (written by @toke)

#LinuxKernel

I studied Artificial Intelligence for four years, and I am not touching LLM AIs with a ten-foot pole.

It's not really about the insane electricity demands, the water usage, tho that's a good reason. It's not even, if I'm honest, about the disastrous effect on the sum of all human art and knowledge.

It's because a) I've studied enough AI to know it's a trick, a sort of linguistic illusion, and b) I've studied enough everything else to understand that I'm not immune to such illusions.

Running a package update on my Arch system and it ends with:

(666/666) upgrading xdp-tools

Spooky indeed 👻 😱

My submission to the Competition Bureau of Canada about the new and current Android restrictions, https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en

Google has announced that it will stop permitting me from writing my own apps for Android unless I both register with them and seek their approval on an app-by-app basis.

I purchased Android because it was sold as "open source", rather than Apple's monopolistic "closed garden".

I have numerous non-Google apps, including the "Tailscale" network security program, and another to tell me when the next TTC bus will arrive. I've also written a toy Sudoku app for friends.

Google promises to keep me from down-loading these, and already makes it surpassing difficult by requiring a workaround, one which which is sarcastically called "side-loading", using a wired connection to my development machine.

Google has already banned programs to warn Americans about "ICE" raids at the request of the US government, and should not have the ability to do the same to Canadians at the US's behest.

It is, in my opinion, unacceptable for Google to impose these barriers on Canadian Citizens. For any other device, I can install a program I like by pressing a button on a web page. And I and other Canadians can write their own programs, and put them on a web page.

(see also https://keepandroidopen.org/)

Now this is ridiculously catchy.

And yes, I bow to my socialist vampire overlords 🙇‍♂️

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-funding-statement.html
🧵
https://www.python.org/sponsors/application/

I can somewhat empathize with wanting to "keep tech free of politics":

Many of us were drawn to tech because of a strong feeling of agency, and something that (for all it's emergent properties) is feasible to comprehend.

Alas.

As we grow up and mature, I think that's not a position that can be held to without appearing either negligently or intentionally naïve.

Any non-trivial tech is build by (and for) communities.

How we form those - and with whom - *is* political.

Sorry.

Worth your time:

https://terminal.ahumanfuture.co/posts/2025-10-17/the-world-is-something-that-we-make/

(can't recall link source; apologies if it was you!)

All modern digital Infrastructure

Thank you #xkcd

"Worse still, the techno-fascist assault on universities increasingly comes from within. In recent years, the AI industry has captured university administrations, co-opted faculty unions, and even enlisted individual teachers and researchers to promote its tools to colleagues and students."

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ai-will-not-save-higher-education-but-may-destroy-it-by-olivia-guest-and-iris-van-rooij-2025-10

@projectsyndicate.bsky.social @Iris

The Milky Way over Monument Valley
Credits: Tom Masterson
#nature #space #astrophotography

This is the Big Lie of #OpenSource.

(It is also bizarre for DHH to be quoting an LLM in this matter, but I digress)

Tech communities are *already* fractured. There is no "big tent". Instead, what happens is a slow brain drain. Troll-friendly spaces built on top of offensive edgelord culture inherently degrade over time…a shrinking pool of expertise as those with diverse perspectives & backgrounds go silent.

DHH is king of a noisy yet dying world. And ultimately the ecosystem always suffers.

Newsletter: Anatomy of a crypto meltdown

October 2025 brought the most dramatic crypto flash crash of all time, but it was only a dress rehearsal for the systemic crisis the industry is building toward.

https://www.citationneeded.news/anatomy-of-a-crypto-meltdown/

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpol #USpolitics

Hacker gets annoyed at Amazon’s Kindle apps, reverse-engineers the Kindle web reader’s protocol (which basically sends each page as a set of glyphs in a deliberately broken variant of SVG). Such obscurity, much security.

https://blog.pixelmelt.dev/kindle-web-drm/

Today I learnt that a German complained that #cyberpunk2077 used the wrong manhole standardisation. It's beautiful.

Journalist: "So what do you think long-distance air travel is going to look like in 2050?"

Climate Scientist *laughs derisively*: "By 2050, most long-distance holiday destinations will be uninhabitable, so I expect the majority of long-distance air traffic to be non-existent by 2050."

Phew. Hadn't heard it THAT bleakly during a live interview yet.

This is a Kodeviser. A code generator for the Danish 2FA system. It is free. You activate it on a website. You do not need an app or smartphone to access digital services in Denmark.

This is a Rejsekort. You tap it to pay on buses & trains. The new ticket system will include a card. You do not need an app or smartphone to travel on Danish public transport.

I keep seeing a viral toot that says you’re excluded from 2FA & public transport in Denmark if you have no app or phone. This is not true.

It's fine if you are struggling with the hard problems. Lord, we all are!

But the nihilistic assumption that NO ONE ELSE knows how to create change? Yeah that's gonna be a no from me.

If I listened to voices like this I would have given up years ago. Years ago. Every single step of my career people have said that's impossible, no one will care, no one will care about what you're doing, Cat, no one will care about the truth, or data, or evidence.

And they have always. Been. Wrong.

Facts 😅