WordPress Cookies, Debdelta
One of the most irritating things about WordPress is whenever I start a firefox session, WordPress aks for cookie selection. I make my choices but it’s not persistent. The next session the same thing happens again. It does keep my identity but for some unknown reason doesn’t respect the Cookie selection. I usually use Firefox ESR (102.13.0esr-1) on Testing.
Also, for more than a week I have found debdelta not working as it should. To give a brief history, the idea of debdelta is to save bandwidth, whether it 100 kbps or 1 mbit or whatever, the moment you give debdelta-upgrade it will try to see if there is a delta of the debs that you want to upgrade. The sequence is as follows or at least that is what I do –
$sudo apt update(updates the index files of apt and tells you how many packages are upgradable). IIRC, every 4-5 hours there is an index runs that basically catches any new debian packages. You can see the index generated dynamically each time you run the above command in/var/lib/apt/lists
2. $ sudo debdelta-upgrade – Now the debdelta algorithim goes to work. Debdelta has its own mirror. I think sometime after the indexes are updated, debdelta does it own run, probably an hour or two later. The algorithim sees how big the diff between the two packages and generates a delta. If the generated delta (diff.) between the old and the new is less than 70% then the generated delta is kept or otherwise thrown. The delta is kept in debdelta mirror. You can from 1 day history how big it is. And AFAIK, it is across all the hardware and platforms that Debian supports. My issue has been simply that debdelta just doesn’t work and even after debdelta-upgrade I am forced to get all the files from the server. Have shared more details here.
3. The last step is $ sudo aptitude upgrade or $ sudo aptitude install and give package names if you know some packages are broken or non-resolvable or have some bugs.
RISC
I had shared about RISC chips couple of weeks back. One of the things that I had forgotten to share that Android is also supporting RISC-V few months back. How I forgot that crucial bit of info. is beyond me. There are number of RISC-V coming out in the next few months to early 2024. One of the more interesting boards that came up in 2021/2022 was HiFive Unmatched. The problem is that the board although interesting on specs is out of reach of most Indians. I am sure most people would be aware of the chicken and egg problem and that is where it is. Pricing will be key component. If they get the pricing right and are able to produce in good numbers, we might see more of these boards soon. At least with Android that issue gets somewhat resolved. There is possibility that we may see more Android set-top boxes and whatnot paired with RISC paving more money for RISC development and a sort of virtuous cycle. While I’m in two minds, I decide not to share what chips are coming unless and until we know what the pricing is, otherwise they just become part of a hype cycle. But it’s definitely something to watch out for. One of the more interesting articles that I read last week also tells how Linux has crossed 3% desktop space and his views on the same. I do very much agree with his last paragraph but at the same time biased as am an old time desktop user. I just don’t find myself happy on small factor keyboards. I will leave the rest for some other time depending how things happen.
Manipur
Before I start sharing about Manipur, I should thank Praveen A. few years back, Praveen wanted to see the 7 sisters and in fact had even proposed to partially sponsor me so that we could together visit the 7 states of North-East. For reasons I don’t remember, I just wasn’t able to go. Probably some work and responsibilities at home. For almost 2.5 months now, Manipur, one of the States in the 7 states has been burning. There have been talks and sharing of genocidial murder of Christians in Manipur. This is not just me or some random person talking about, even BJP (the ruling party in the Center), their functionaries both in Manipur and its neighboring state Mizoram have been sharing. Mizoram’s State BJP President in fact resigned just few days back saying it’s state sponsored activity. Couple of days back, European Parliament held a session about Manipur and even passed a resolution. The BJP tried to hit back saying ‘Colonial Mindset’ but when asked if it’s the same when India invited European Parliamentarians to visit Kashmir in 2019, the silence is deafening. The Wire has interviewed all the prominent leaders and sort of players in Manipur politics but apart from calling Kukis foreigners they have no proof. In one of the interviews one of the Meitei leaders calls Kuki’s foreigners but doesn’t have any Government data to support his belief. The census of India was last held in 2011. People from the civil society have time and again asked the Government to do the census but GOI has been giving one excuse after another. They in fact, wanted to do a caste census but that too they themselves took on back foot probably as they believe that both census may give results not to their liking. In fact, this Government is also known as No Data Government as almost in everything, it denies data. I am not going to go to that otherwise would not be able to complete blog post till couple of days. I will just share this bit of info. that this Govt. hasn’t given Household Consumption Survey data for last four years. Going back to the topic though, neither the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the Defence Minister nobody has been able to utter the word ‘Manipur’ till date. I have no idea when they will wake up. People from all ethnicities have tried to make representations to GOI but no one has been able to meet them, neither the Kukis, nor the Nagas, nor the Meiteis even though it is a sensitive border area.
Libraries in Kerala
I wanted to end on a somewhat positive note. So just a few days back, the Miinistry of Culture shared the number of Libraries per state. As can be seen from the infographic, Kerala is a giant in that. If I do find a table, would share that as well, so those who can’t see can hear the data. Till later.
Experiences in the community 