Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

Ryabitsev: Tracking kernel development with korgalore - LWN.net

2026-01-20T21:34:31.000Z

Konstantin Ryabitsev has put up a blog post about korgalore, a tool he has written to circumvent delivery problems experienced by kernel developers using the large, centralized email systems.

We cannot fix email delivery, but we can sidestep it entirely. Public-inbox archives like lore.kernel.org store all mailing list traffic in git repositories. In its simplest configuration, korgalore can shallow-clone these repositories directly and upload any new messages straight to your mailbox using the provider's API.

Remote authentication bypass in telnetd - LWN.net

2026-01-20T20:45:46.000Z

One would assume that most LWN readers stopped running network-accessible telnet services some number of decades ago. For the rest of you, this security advisory from Simon Josefsson is worthy of note:

The telnetd server invokes /usr/bin/login (normally running as root) passing the value of the USER environment variable received from the client as the last parameter.
If the client supplies a carefully crafted USER environment value being the string "-f root", and passes the telnet(1) -a or --login parameter to send this USER environment to the server, the client will be automatically logged in as root bypassing normal authentication processes.

Emacs and whisper.el :Trying out different speech-to-text backends and models - Sacha Chua

2026-01-20T19:21:46.000Z

I was curious about parakeet because I heard that it was faster than Whisper on the HuggingFace leaderboard. When I installed it and got it running on my laptop (CPU only, no GPU), it seemed like my results were a little faster than whisper.cpp with the large model, but much slower than whisper.cpp with the base model. The base model is decent for quick dictation, so I got curious about other backends and other models.

In order to try natrys/whisper.el with other backends, I needed to work around how whisper.el validates the model names and sends requests to the servers. Here's the quick and dirty code for doing so, in case you want to try it out for yourself.

(defvar my-whisper-url-format "http://%s:%d/transcribe")
(defun whisper--transcribe-via-local-server ()
  "Transcribe audio using the local whisper server."
  (message "[-] Transcribing via local server")
  (whisper--setup-mode-line :show 'transcribing)
  (whisper--ensure-server)
  (setq whisper--transcribing-process
        (whisper--process-curl-request
         (format my-whisper-url-format whisper-server-host whisper-server-port)
         (list "Content-Type: multipart/form-data")
         (list (concat "file=@" whisper--temp-file)
               "temperature=0.0"
               "temperature_inc=0.2"
               "response_format=json"
               (concat "model=" whisper-model)
               (concat "language=" whisper-language)))))
(defun whisper--check-model-consistency () t)

Then I have this function for trying things out.

(defun my-test-whisper-api (url &optional args)
  (with-temp-buffer
    (apply #'call-process "curl" nil t nil "-s"
           url
         (append (mapcan
                  (lambda (h) (list "-H" h))
                  (list "Content-Type: multipart/form-data"))
                 (mapcan
                  (lambda (h) (list "-F" h))
                  (list (concat "file=@" whisper--temp-file)
                        "temperature=0.0"
                        "temperature_inc=0.2"
                        "response_format=verbose_json"
                        (concat "language=" whisper-language)))
                 args))
    (message "%s %s" (buffer-string) url)))

Here's the audio file. It is around 10 seconds long. I run the benchmark 3 times and report the average time.

Download the audio

Download

Code for running the benchmarks

(mapcar
 (lambda (group)
   (let ((whisper--temp-file "/home/sacha/recordings/whisper/2026-01-19-14-17-53.wav"))
     ;; warm up the model
     (eval (cadr group))
     (list
      (format "%.3f"
              (/ (car
                  (benchmark-call (lambda () (eval (cadr group))) times))
                 times))
      (car group))))
 '(
   ("parakeet"
    (my-test-whisper-api
     (format "http://%s:%d/v1/audio/transcriptions" whisper-server-host 5092)))
   ("whisper.cpp base-q4_0"
    (my-test-whisper-api
     (format "http://%s:%d/inference" whisper-server-host 8642)))
   ("speaches whisper-base"
    (my-test-whisper-api
     (format "http://%s:%d/v1/audio/transcriptions" whisper-server-host 8001)
     (list "-F" "model=Systran/faster-whisper-base")))
   ("speaches whisper-base.en"
    (my-test-whisper-api
     (format "http://%s:%d/v1/audio/transcriptions" whisper-server-host 8001)
     (list "-F" "model=Systran/faster-whisper-base.en")))
   ("speaches whisper-small"
    (my-test-whisper-api
     (format "http://%s:%d/v1/audio/transcriptions" whisper-server-host 8001)
     (list "-F" "model=Systran/faster-whisper-small")))
   ("speaches whisper-small.en"
    (my-test-whisper-api
     (format "http://%s:%d/v1/audio/transcriptions" whisper-server-host 8001)
     (list "-F" "model=Systran/faster-whisper-small.en")))
   ("speaches lorneluo/whisper-small-ct2-int8"
    (my-test-whisper-api
     (format "http://%s:%d/v1/audio/transcriptions" whisper-server-host 8001)
     (list "-F" "model=lorneluo/whisper-small-ct2-int8")))
   ;; needed export TORCH_FORCE_NO_WEIGHTS_ONLY_LOAD=1
   ("whisperx-server Systran/faster-whisper-small"
    (my-test-whisper-api
     (format "http://%s:%d/transcribe" whisper-server-host 8002)))))

3.694	parakeet
2.484	whisper.cpp base-q4_0
1.547	speaches whisper-base
1.425	speaches whisper-base.en
4.076	speaches whisper-small
3.735	speaches whisper-small.en
2.870	speaches lorneluo/whisper-small-ct2-int8
4.537	whisperx-server Systran/faster-whisper-small

I tried it with:

parakeet
whisper.cpp (as whisper.el sets it up)
speaches, which is a front-end for faster-whisper, and
whisperx-server, which is a front-end for whisperx

Looks like speaches + faster-whisper-base is the winner for now. I like how speaches lets me switch models on the fly, so maybe I can use base.en generally and switch to base when I want to try dictating in French. Here's how I've set it up to use the server I just set up.

(setq whisper-server-port 8001 whisper-model "Systran/faster-whisper-base.en"
      my-whisper-url-format "http://%s:%d/v1/audio/transcriptions")

At some point, I'll override whisper--ensure-server so that starting it up is smoother.

Benchmark notes: I have a Lenovo P52 laptop (released 2018) with an Intel Core i7-8850H (6 cores, 12 threads; 2.6 GHz base / 4.3 GHz turbo) with 64GB RAM and an SSD. I haven't figured out how to get the GPU working under Ubuntu yet.

View org source for this post

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

"Nobody's reinventing the wheel" with Marathon's mechanics, says former art boss, so the visual design needed to take risks - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-20T18:01:31.000Z

Marathon's franchise art director Joseph Cross left Bungie in December, shortly after the Destiny developers announced a March 2026 release window for the sci-fi shooter reboot. Now, he’s talking about what it was like to work on the game, which has a fair bit of lingering negative press to contend with – extended delays, mass studio layoffs and restructuring, repeated accusations of plagiarism , money troubles owing to Bungie’s ailing shooter Destiny 2, and apathy about blockbuster live service games at large, epitomised by the cancelling of Sony’s once-touted Concord.

The Democrats of the Seven Kingdoms - McSweeney’s

2026-01-20T18:01:00.000Z

“As support for abolishing ICE grows among Democratic voters, party leadership continues to argue for reform instead.” —Salon

- - -

The Delegation to the Wall

When word reached King’s Landing that the dead were stirring beyond the Wall, the brave Democrats of the Seven Kingdoms sent a delegation north. They did not bring dragonglass, nor men for the Night’s Watch, nor coin to repair the Wall where it wept with meltwater. They brought parchment marked with sternly written words.

The Lord Commander thanked them while a savage wind cut through his heavy cloak and the dead moaned incessantly down below. The letters expressed concern about the White Walkers, but urged restraint. They reminded the Wildlings, should they be listening, that their murderous behavior did not represent who the Realm was. The delegation stayed long enough to be seen shivering as they glanced briefly northward, then rode south, satisfied that the issue had been thoroughly acknowledged.

The Edict on Names

As the dead marched inexorably south, nearly 90 percent of the Realm insisted on calling them monsters, abominations, and evil incarnate. The Democrats of the Seven Kingdoms cautioned against such language.

They proposed referring to the White Walkers as “nontraditional state actors” and urged all to consider how such incendiary labels might escalate tensions.

A Listening Tour in the Riverlands

Deep in the Riverlands, smallfolk had begun to vanish. Some were taken by raiders, some by famine, some by dark creatures in the dead of night that no one dared name aloud. The Democrats of the Seven Kingdoms arrived with colorful tents and an ancient octogenarian septon to advise them, and asked the people to speak freely.

The people did. They spoke of burned fields and stolen children and soldiers who took innocence first and paid for their crimes never. One man said his wife had been dragged into the river at dusk and came back wrong. A woman said the gods had turned their faces away.

The Democrats nodded gravely while promising nothing concrete, as was their way. A framework for a peace plan was developed. Later, in a warm hall with wine, crisp capons, and steaming boar that fell easily from the bone, the Democrats agreed the suffering was real, but the language around it needed softening.

The Brief Matter of the Wildlings

Many in Westeros demanded that the Free Folk beyond the Wall be welcomed south, if only to swell the ranks against greater threats. A small minority warned that this would upset affluent bannermen with deep coffers, who disliked the look of their shaggy, unkempt beards.

The Democrats of the Seven Kingdoms proposed a compromise: The Free Folk could be acknowledged as people, in principle, while remaining north of the Wall, in practice.

The Roundtable at White Harbor

A meeting was convened between a flesh-hungry wight and a Stark of Winterfell, the kingdom most at risk of the Night King’s wrath.

Maesters were appointed to moderate. Debate rules were read aloud. Each side was encouraged to share their essential truths. By the end of the discussion, there was very little of the Stark left.

Afterward, the Democrats of the Seven Kingdoms celebrated the robust exchange of ideas.

A Journey to the Iron Islands

Seeking unity, the Democrats of the Seven Kingdoms sailed west to reason with the Ironborn, who were actively raiding the coast. They brought proposals of mutual respect, economic incentives, and a shared vision of peace.

The Ironborn took their ships, their silver, and several delegates. Later, the Democrats who lived praised the “frank dialogue” and vowed to continue civic engagement.

The Flickering Fire

As the snows deepened and the dead marched on King’s Landing, the Democrats of the Seven Kingdoms issued one final statement. It acknowledged the living’s fears in the face of absolute evil, yet urged them not to overreact.

Somewhere on the Kingsroad, a hedge knight and his young squire used the note to create a fire that fought the creeping cold and kept them alive till morning.

It was not much—nearly nothing, in fact—but the meager warmth it afforded was still slightly more than anything proposed by the Democrats of the Seven Kingdoms. The donors were happy, however, and that’s really all one could ask for these days.

Mozilla introduces Firefox Nightly RPM package repository - LWN.net

2026-01-20T17:26:37.000Z

Mozilla has announced a repository with Firefox Nightly channel packages for RPM-based Linux distributions such as CentOS Stream, Fedora, and openSUSE. Mozilla has provided a Debian repository since 2023.

Note that this repository only includes the nightly builds of The firefox-nightly package. Mozilla is not providing stable builds as RPMs at this time. However, the package will not conflict with a distribution's regular firefox package; both packages can be installed at the same time for those who wish to test the nightly builds. See the blog post for instructions on setting up the repository.

Find out if you can run a Marathon with the extraction shooter's system requirements - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-20T17:05:51.000Z

Following such recent news highlights as "It’s out on March 5th" and "It’s got that Ben Starr guy in it," Marathon’s announce-o-blaster continues firing with a newly unveiled set of PC system requirements. As seen on the Bungie FPS’s Steam page, they’re nicely accommodating to cheapo rigs and older tech, though are missing any storage requirements.

I knew I'd enjoy Rubato's demo from the moment the Earth blew up and I fell in the toilet - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-20T16:48:15.000Z

Rubato is "an experimental, 2D physics-based take on the collect-a-thon genre", according to developer dconn, which doesn't really do justice to the below trailer full of screaming skulls and Mode 7 first-person driving bits and fleeting Minecraft references and PS1-era dancefloors. I guess I'm too used to the watering down of "experimental" as a descriptor. The blurb doesn't even communicate that you play as a frog. Seemingly. Fortunately, there is a demo. Please watch the trailer while I go play it.

[$] An alternate path for immutable distributions - LWN.net

2026-01-20T16:22:09.000Z

LWN has had a number of articles on immutable distributions, such as Bluefin and Bazzite, in recent years. These distributions have taken a variety of approaches, including using rpm-ostree, filesystem snapshots, and bootable container (bootc) images. But those approaches, especially the latter, lead to extra complexity for a user attempting to install new software, instead of just using the existing package manager. AshOS (Any Snapshot Hierarchical OS) is an experimental AGPL-3-licensed "meta-distribution" that tried a different approach more in line with traditional package management. Although the project is no longer updated, it remains usable, and can still shed some light on a potential alternate path for users worried about adopting bootc-based approaches.

Even in 2026's component hellscape, AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT is that rarest of things: a high-end GPU that’s still decent value - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-20T16:21:53.000Z

As we sink ever deeper into a squelching mire of memory shortages, price gouging, and abandonment in favour of AI fantasy farms, there is one word above all that game-playing PC owners should keep front and centre in our doomscroll-addled brains: "relatively."

Steam's 'complete the set' bundles can now be gifted, with bits your mates already own accounted for - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-20T15:42:07.000Z

If you've been waiting to bless one of your friends with an entire dump truck worth of games in a series they've enjoyed one entry of, then good news. Valve have made Steam's 'complete the set' bundles giftable, with prices adjusting to match whichever bits the recipient might already own - so you're not in danger of hurling someone their second copy of Fallout 4 on one storefront.

Pathologic 3 is a sickly horror story about time pretending to be an 'easier' game - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-20T15:38:06.000Z

The following contains abstracted discussion of my own experiences of disease.

Obey the Insect God brings live-action digitized sprite weirdness to action platformers - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-20T15:27:18.000Z

Remember how the original Mortal Kombat used live-action sprites for characters? Now imagine if someone stuck that style into a modernised action platformer.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

TMR Video - Irreal

2026-01-20T15:20:42.000Z

Despite what I wrote last time about tmr, I’ve come to realize that deep down I’m a timer nerd. As my family will tell you, I can be anal about following directions precisely. If the recipe says to beat the eggs for 30 seconds, I feel uncomfortable if I don’t have some way of measuring those 30 seconds more or less accurately.

Once I got my iWatch with it’s excellent and easy to use timer app, my inner timer nerd was released and now it seems I’m always using a timer for some reason or another. Given that I spend a huge amount of my time staring at a computer screen—most often in Emacs—it makes sense to be able to set and manage timers there too.

Prot to the rescue. His tmr package is just what you need to set and manage timers from within Emacs. He’s got a great video up that demonstrates tmr and its capabilities. It’s a lot more than just, “Beep after x seconds”. You can have multiple timers that you can set to fire after a given number of seconds, minutes, or hours. You can also set the timer to fire at a certain time.

You can add descriptions to each timer and display them all in a grid layout to see how much time, if any, is remaining in each timer, when it started, and when it will expire. You can also arrange to display the time remaining on each timer in the mode line if you like.

See Prot’s video for all the details. The video is 14 minutes, 32 seconds long so it should be easy to find time for it. Installation and configuration is easy so give it a try if you are also a timer nerd.

Survive an elevator trying to eat you in co-op horror KLETKA when it releases February 19 - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-20T14:52:29.000Z

A bunch of criminals sent down the depths of a massive structure using a living elevator - what could go wrong? Lots and you'll find out in KLETKA.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

RuneScape's Treasure Hunter microtransactions are now gone, restoring integrity as Jagex reveal integrity-focused 2026 plans integratively - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-20T14:42:48.000Z

Integrity. Inteh-gritty. In-teh-grih-teh. That's the word of the day when it comes to 2026 RuneScape, or at least it will be if the plans Jagex have just laid out work as intended. To be fair, pushing the big button that finally gets rid of those Treasure Hunter microtransactions folks vocally disliked is a good start.

Giving some Undertale and OMORI vibes, the strange looking Immortal Boy gets a new trailer - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-20T14:39:41.000Z

Immortal Boy is an upcoming retro-styled fantasy RPG adventure due out this year, and now it has a first proper full gameplay trailer.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

tinyBuild are shutting down and delisting Pandemic Express - Zombie Escape - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-20T14:23:32.000Z

We're about to say a permanent goodbye to another multiplayer title, as Pandemic Express - Zombie Escape is set to be fully shut down.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Security updates for Tuesday - LWN.net

2026-01-20T14:06:26.000Z

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gpsd-minimal, jmc, kernel, kernel-rt, and net-snmp), Debian (apache-log4j2 and dcmtk), Fedora (exim, gpsd, mysql8.0, mysql8.4, python-biopython, and rust-lru), Mageia (firefox, nss and thunderbird), Oracle (container-tools:rhel8, gpsd-minimal, jmc, kernel, net-snmp, and uek-kernel), Red Hat (net-snmp), SUSE (chromium, go, harfbuzz-devel, kernel, libsoup, rust1.91, rust1.92, and thunderbird), and Ubuntu (apache2, avahi, and python-urllib3).

Monster taming adventure Stories of Somnia is one to keep an eye on - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-20T14:05:52.000Z

Stories of Somnia is an upcoming mixture of real-time adventuring with monster taming and battling, one that looks quite sweet you need to keep an eye on.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.