Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

Reading Papers And Taking Notes With Org Roam - Irreal

2025-09-18T17:14:04.000Z

Kiran Gopinathan has a very interesting video on how she uses Emacs, Org-Roam, and Zotero to do her literature reviews. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, Literature Reviews are the process of reading papers related to your current research topic. Typically there are a lot of papers and you have to take notes as you go along so that you can draw it all together for your own research and papers.

Her video serves as a real life example of a Zettelkasten in action. A she reads a paper, she takes notes and, critically, links them to the other papers she’s read on the current topic. Her workflow involves storing the papers in Zotero and automatically updating her BibTeX file as new papers are introduced.

You can see Gopinathan’s method in action in her video. Things move along fairly rapidly and can difficult to follow so you have to beardown when watching it but it’s worth the effort. Even if you’re not an academic, it’s easy to see how the process could be useful for organizing your own data.

Although she doesn’t mention it in the video, her Org-Roam configuration is available online in this Gist. Take a look at it if you’re interested in her method. The video is 16 minutes, 6 seconds long so it should be fairly easy to fit into your day. On the other hand, you may want to watch it more than once to wring out all the information it contains.

Tencent accuse Sony of trying "to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture" with their Horizon copyright lawsuit - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-09-18T17:02:30.000Z

This afternoon, a choice of two raging videogame lawsuits to report on. Firstly, a snippet from the on-going courtroom scrap between former Unknown Worlds executives and Krafton over the state of Subnautica 2's development, in which the former accuse the latter of changing their story about why the executives were fired.

I've decided not to write that one up because it feels like we are entering the realm of potshots over minutiae, rather than learning anything genuinely new about Subnautica 2 or its creators, but if you're interested, GamesIndustry.biz has your back. The parallel Tencent/Sony bust-up has the virtue of relative novelty. It gives me a whole different kind of headache. What's going on with this one, then?

NVIDIA are investing $5 billion in Intel to develop new chips together - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-09-18T16:48:55.000Z

A huge announcement for the entire computing industry came today, with NVIDIA and Intel teaming up to make new chips for data centre and consumers too.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Yes, Hollow Knight: Silksong has "some moments of steep difficulty" Team Cherry admit, but have you considered going for a pre-boss walk - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-09-18T16:10:19.000Z

Something Hollow Knight: Silksong-related has happened at an Australian museum again. This time, rather than the game being confirmed for an appearance back when it was still infinitely mysterious and sans release date, it's Team Cherry devs addressing just how difficult their creation is, following plenty of post-release discourse on the subject.

This follows the metroidvania's first patch making a couple of its early bosses a bit easier to tackle, amid debate as to whether it's just good and hard, or pushes into unnecessarily annoying slog territory via the likes of bench placement and hazards being able to deal out two masks of damage. As with every FromSoft game since time itself began with the release of Demon's Souls, where you stand on that bickering will likely depend on how prepared you are to spend hours battling one foe over and over again.

Dying Light: The Beast is out, dark, Steam Deck Verified - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-09-18T16:01:06.000Z

Parkoury zombie bludgeoner Dying Light: The Beast has, literally just this minute, gone on sale, which means the review embargo curtain has lifted on RPS to reveal... an empty chair with an IOU stuck to it.

This one is my bad, rather than because of any cheeky code withholding. I’d simply underestimated how many trillions of PC games were also out this week, and had to abandon my charge through The Beast to help keep the undermanned Treehouse on top of things elsewhere. Still, we’ll shortly be bringing you a full, likely much better appraisal from RPS veteran Dominic Tarason (thaaaaaanks Dominic), and in penance, I offer some initial impressions from my couple of hours with the game’s opening.

[$] Extending the time-slice-extension discussion - LWN.net

2025-09-18T15:30:18.000Z

Time-slice extension is a proposed scheduler feature that would allow a user-space process to request to not be preempted for a short period while it executes a critical section. It is an idea that has been circulating for years, but efforts to implement it became more serious in February of this year. The latest developer to make an attempt at time-slice extension is Thomas Gleixner, who has posted a new patch set with a reworked API. Chances are good that this implementation is close to what will actually be adopted by the kernel.

Modding-friendly arcade racer Formula Legends is out now - works well on Linux / Steam Deck - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-09-18T15:04:31.000Z

If you have the need for speed but don't want to play one of the various full simulators, perhaps Formula Legends might be just the ticket you need.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Rust 1.90.0 released - LWN.net

2025-09-18T14:56:39.000Z

Version 1.90.0 of the Rust language has been released. Changes include switching to the LLD linker by default, the addition of support for workspace publishing to cargo, and the usual set of stabilized APIs.

Endless Legend 2's early access launch is a triumph of asymmetrical 4X design, but I do wish it were even stranger - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2025-09-18T14:32:42.000Z

As the ravening shitbeetles of the Edwinphage overran the coral fortifications of the neighbouring Aspect kingdom, filling the air with the moist crunch of mandible on polyp, it occurred to me that I don't feel as much like a horrible doomsday cockroach as I should. We'll circle back to that feeling. Endless Legend 2 launches into early access on 22nd September, and I've now spent around 20 hours with it. I've previously praised its new/reborn factions and retreating ocean mechanic, and I plan to carry on praising, but there are definitely some more comprehensive issues I'd love Amplitude to address as this splendid scarab of a turn-based strategy game rumbles toward 1.0.

Security updates for Thursday - LWN.net

2025-09-18T14:28:08.000Z

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gnutls, mysql:8.4, opentelemetry-collector, and python-cryptography), Debian (nextcloud-desktop), Fedora (chromium, firefox, forgejo, gitleaks, kernel, kernel-headers, lemonldap-ng, perl-Cpanel-JSON-XS, and python-pip), Red Hat (firefox and libxml2), Slackware (expat and mozilla), SUSE (avahi, bluez, cups, curl, firefox-esr, gdk-pixbuf, gstreamer, java-1_8_0-ibm, krb5, net-tools, podman, raptor, sevctl, tkimg, ucode-intel, and vim), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-fips, linux-azure-fips, linux-gcp-fips, and linux-gcp-6.14, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-6.14).

Bluefin LTS released - LWN.net

2025-09-18T14:24:09.000Z

The Universal Blue project has announced the release of Bluefin LTS, an image-based distribution similar to Bluefin that uses CentOS Stream 10 and EPEL instead of Fedora as its base:

Bluefin LTS ships with Linux 6.12.0, which is the kernel for the lifetime of release. An optional hwe branch with new kernels is available, offering the same modern kernel you'll find in Bluefin and Bluefin GTS. Both vanilla and HWE ISOs are available, and you can always choose to switch back and forth after installation. [...]

Bluefin LTS provides a backported GNOME desktop so that you are not left behind. This is an important thing for us. James has been diligently working on GNOME backports with the upstream CentOS community, and we feel bringing modern GNOME desktops to an LTS makes sense.

Alabaster Dawn from the devs of CrossCode has a demo out now - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-09-18T14:00:42.000Z

Radical Fish Games known for the awesome CrossCode have just put a demo for their next action-RPG with Alabaster Dawn now available to test.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Tails 7.0 released - LWN.net

2025-09-18T13:52:28.000Z

Version 7.0 of the Tails portable operating system has been released. This is the first version of Tails based on Linux 6.12.43, Debian 13 ("trixie") and GNOME 48. It uses ztsd instead of xz to compress the USB and ISO images to deliver a faster start time on most computers. The release is dedicated to the memory of Lunar, "a traveling companion for Tails, a Tor volunteer, Free Software hacker, and community organizer":

Lunar has always been by our side throughout Tails' history. From the first baby steps of the project that eventually became Tails, to the merge with Tor, he's provided sensible technical suggestions, out-of-the-box product design ideas, outreach support, and caring organizational advice.

Outside of Tor, Lunar worked on highly successful Free Software projects such as the Debian project, the Linux distribution on which Tails is based, and the Reproducible Builds project, which helps us verify the integrity of Tails releases.

See the changelog for a full list of fixes, upgraded applications, and removals. LWN covered Tails Project team leader intrigeri's DebConf25 talk in July.

Go catch some creatures with the Critter Chaos Humble Bundle - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-09-18T13:47:15.000Z

Love creature collecting games? You should check out the Critter Chaos Humble Bundle that's live now with another 8 great games.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Dying Light: The Beast rated Steam Deck Verified ahead of release - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-09-18T13:29:28.000Z

A few hours before Dying Light: The Beast releases today, Valve put up a green tick for it to be Steam Deck Verified and SteamOS Compatible.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Obscure Emacs package appreciation: backup-walker - Sacha Chua

2025-09-18T13:19:03.000Z

The Emacs Carnival theme for September is obscure packages, which made me think of how the backup-walker package saved me from having to write some code all over again. Something went wrong when I was editing my config in Org Mode. I probably accidentally deleted a subtree due to over-enthusiastic speed commands. (… Maybe I should make my k shortcut for my-org-cut-subtree-or-list-item only work in my Inbox.org and news.org files.) Chunks of my literate Emacs configuration were gone, including the code that defined my-org-insert-link-dwim. Before I noticed, I'd already exported my (now slightly shorter) Emacs configuration file with org-babel-tangle and restarted Emacs. I couldn't recover the definition from memory using symbol-function. I couldn't use vundo to browse the Emacs undo tree. As usual, I'd been neglecting to commit my config changes to Git, so I couldn't restore a previous version. Oops.

Well, not the first time I've needed to rewrite code from scratch because of a brain hiccup. I started to reimplement the function. Then I remembered that I had other backups. I have a 2 TB SSD in my laptop, and I had configured Emacs to neatly save numbered backups in a separate directory, keeping all the versions without deleting any of the old ones.

(setq backup-directory-alist '(("\\.env$" . nil)
                               ("." . "~/.config/emacs/backups")))
(with-eval-after-load 'tramp
  (setq tramp-backup-directory-alist nil))
(setq delete-old-versions -1)
(setq version-control t)
(setq auto-save-file-name-transforms '((".*" "~/.config/emacs/auto-save-list/" t)))

At the moment, there are about 12,633 files adding up to 3 GB. Totally worth it for peace of mind. I could probably use grep to search for the function, but it wasn't easy to see what changed between versions.

I had learned about backup-walker in the process of writing about Thinking about time travel with the Emacs text editor, Org Mode, and backups. So I used backup-walker to flip through my file's numbered backups in much the same way that git-timemachine lets you flip through Git versions of a file. After M-x backup-walker-start, I tapped p to go through the previous backups. The diff it showed me made it easy to check with C-s (isearch-forward) if this was the version I was looking for. When I found the change, I pressed RET to load the version with the function in it. Once I found it, it was easy to restore that section. I also restored a couple of other sections that I'd accidentally deleted too, like the custom plain text publishing backend I use to export Emacs News with less punctuation. It took maybe 5 minutes to figure this out. Hooray for backup-walker!

Note that the backup-walker diff was the other way around from what I expected. It goes "diff new old" instead of "diff old new", so the green regions marked with + indicate stuff that was removed by the newer version (compared to the one a little older than it) and the red regions marked with - indicate stuff that was added. This could be useful if you think backwards in time, kind of like the Emacs Antinews file, but my mind doesn't quite work that way. I wanted it to look like a regular diff, with the additions in newer versions marked with +. Emacs being Emacs, I changed it. Here's an example showing what it looks like now:

Figure 1: backup-walker diffs going the direction I want them to: additions (+) marked in green, deletions (-) in red

The following code makes it behave the way I expect:

(defun my-backup-walker-refresh ()
  (let* ((index (cdr (assq :index backup-walker-data-alist)))
         (suffixes (cdr (assq :backup-suffix-list backup-walker-data-alist)))
         (prefix (cdr (assq :backup-prefix backup-walker-data-alist)))
         (right-file (concat prefix (nth index suffixes)))
         (right-version (format "%i" (backup-walker-get-version right-file)))
         diff-buff left-file left-version)
    (if (eq index 0)
        (setq left-file (cdr (assq :original-file backup-walker-data-alist))
              left-version "orig")
      (setq left-file (concat prefix (nth (1- index) suffixes))
            left-version (format "%i" (backup-walker-get-version left-file))))
    ;; we change this to go the other way here
    (setq diff-buf (diff-no-select right-file left-file nil 'noasync))
    (setq buffer-read-only nil)
    (delete-region (point-min) (point-max))
    (insert-buffer diff-buf)
    (set-buffer-modified-p nil)
    (setq buffer-read-only t)
    (force-mode-line-update)
    (setq header-line-format
          (concat (format "{{ ~%s~ → ~%s~ }} "
                          (propertize left-version 'face 'font-lock-variable-name-face)
                          (propertize right-version 'face 'font-lock-variable-name-face))
                  (if (nth (1+ index) suffixes)
                      (concat (propertize "<p>" 'face 'italic)
                              " ~"
                              (propertize (int-to-string
                                           (backup-walker-get-version (nth (1+ index) suffixes)))
                                          'face 'font-lock-keyword-face)
                              "~ ")
                    "")
                  (if (eq index 0)
                      ""
                    (concat (propertize "<n>" 'face 'italic)
                            " ~"
                            (propertize (int-to-string (backup-walker-get-version (nth (1- index) suffixes)))
                                        'face 'font-lock-keyword-face)
                            "~ "))
                  (propertize "<return>" 'face 'italic)
                  " open ~"
                  (propertize (propertize (int-to-string (backup-walker-get-version right-file))
                                          'face 'font-lock-keyword-face))
                  "~"))
    (kill-buffer diff-buf)))
(with-eval-after-load 'backup-walker
  (advice-add 'backup-walker-refresh :override #'my-backup-walker-refresh))

backup-walker is not actually a real package in the sense of M-x package-install, but fortunately, recent Emacs makes it easier to install from a repository. I needed to install it from https://github.com/lewang/backup-walker. It was written so long ago that I needed to defalias some functions that were removed in Emacs 26.1. Here's the use-package snippet from my configuration:

(use-package backup-walker
  :vc (:url "https://github.com/lewang/backup-walker")
  :commands backup-walker-start
  :init
  (defalias 'string-to-int 'string-to-number)  ; removed in 26.1
  (defalias 'display-buffer-other-window 'display-buffer))

So there's an obscure package recommendation: backup-walker. It hasn't been updated for more than a decade, and it's not even installable the regular way, but it's still handy.

I can imagine all sorts of ways this workflow could be even better. It might be nice to dust off backup-walker off, switch out the obsolete functions, add an option for the diff direction, and maybe sort things out so that you can reverse the diff, split hunks, and apply hunks to your original file. And maybe a way to walk the backup history for changes in a specific region? I suppose someone could make a spiffy Transient-based user interface to modernize it. But it's fine, it works. Maybe there's a more modern equivalent, but I didn't see anything in a quick search of M-x list-packages / N (package-menu-filter-by-name-or-description) for "backup~, except maybe vc-backup. (The original repo is missing, but you can read it via ELPA's copy.) Is there a general-purpose VC equivalent to git-timemachine? That might be useful.

I should really be saving things in proper version control, but this was a good backup. That reminds me: I should backup my backup backups. I had initially excluded my ~/.config directory from borgbackup because of the extra bits and bobs that I wouldn't need when restoring from backup (like all the Emacs packages I'd just re-download). But my file backups… Yeah, that's worth it. I changed my --exclude-from to --patterns-from and changing my borg-patterns file to look like this:

+ /home/sacha/.config/emacs/backups
- /home/sacha/.config/*
# ... other rules

May backup-walker save you from a future oops!

This is part of my Emacs configuration.

View org source for this post

You can comment on Mastodon or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Hack the system and cause chaos in the explosive top-down shooter DeadWire - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-09-18T12:39:30.000Z

A top-down shooter where anything from cars, cameras, electronics and even enemy implants can be rewired into chaotic chains of destruction in DeadWire.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 project fheroes2 version 1.1.11 has been released - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-09-18T12:13:23.000Z

Another fresh upgrade for the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 open source game engine fheroes2 with some major changes and bug fixes.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Guide: How to install Hollow Knight: Silksong mods on Linux, SteamOS and Steam Deck - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2025-09-18T12:08:36.000Z

Hollow Knight: Silksong can be a challenging game and it has an active modding scene - here's how to install Silksong mods on Linux, SteamOS and Steam Deck.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

The Friendly Nazis Next Door - McSweeney’s

2025-09-18T12:00:00.000Z

Everyone says that this new crop of American Nazis is really mean, but I, a white journalist, went out to talk to them for this profile, and they were actually really nice. I mean, sure, when I first met George Nathan Bedford Forrest Wallace on his compound, I was a little thrown off by his swastika hat, confederate flag T-shirt, and his pants, which had a crossed-out trans flag on each leg. All those hateful clothes made him seem a little mean.

But when he opened the front door of his bunker for me, and I thought, See, this is a guy with manners. He knows how to treat a lady.

His wife, Davida “Duke” Wallace, was also very nice. She introduced me to her knitting circle, which was six pleasant middle-aged ladies who were just sitting down for sweet tea and cake before they went back to their latest group knitting project. I was a little nervous when I saw that they were knitting a very large blanket that said GO BACK TO AFRICA, but they also served me a scrumptious lemon cake with raspberry filling. They even gave me the recipe.

And their kids couldn’t have been sweeter. Eleven-year-old George Wallace Junior and eight-year-old Strom Thurmond Wallace taught me how to play a game in the woods with their bow and arrows. I admit I was a little freaked out when they told me the game was called “The Great Re-Replacement Theory,” but I don’t know anything about the woods, and they kept me from crashing into poison ivy. Yeah, their game was a little edgy, but would truly terrible people help a stranger out like that?

Overall, I have to say that I really enjoyed my visit with the Wallaces. I obviously don’t share their worldview, but I think they’re friendly, kind folks who everyone in the country would be proud to call “neighbor.” Okay, maybe not everybody, but you know, most Americans.

- - -

Kashana Cauley’s latest novel is The Payback.