Category: News

Testing wanted: execute-only on amd64

Posted on by Michael G

On the
tech@ mailing list,
Theo de Raadt (deraadt@)
has issued a
request for testing
of patch(es) for execute-only (xonly)
binaries on amd64.
The message is quite long, but well worth reading in its entirety
for those interested.
Selected highlights include:

Some of you have probably noticed activity about "xonly" happening
to a bunch of architectures.  First arm64, then riscv64, then hppa,
and ongoing efforts with octeon, sparc64 (sun4u only), and more of this
is going to come in the future.

Like past work decades ago (and I suppose continually also) on W^X, and
increasing use of c, the idea here is to have code (text segments)
not be readable.  Or in a more generic sense, if you mprotect a region
with only PROT_EXEC, it is not readable.
[…]

But most of us have amd64 machines.  Thrilling news:

Read more…

GNU Health: Jérôme Lejeune Foundation adopts GNU Health

Posted on by Michael G

We start 2023 with exciting news for the medical and scientific community!

GNU Health has been adopted by he Jérôme Lejeune foundation, a leading organization in the research and management of trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) and other intellectual disabilities of genetic origin.

Lejeune foundation has its headquarters in France, with offices in Argentina, the United States and Spain.

On December 2022, the faculty of engineering from the University of Entre Rios, represented by the dean Diego Campana and the head of the school of Public Health, Fernando Sassetti, formalized the agreement with the president of the Lejeune foundation in Argentina, Luz Morano.

The same month, I met in Madrid with the medical director and IT team of the Lejeune foundation Spain.

Luz Morano declared “[GNU Health] goes beyond the Foundation, providing the health professionals the specific features to manage a patient with trisomy 21. We are putting a project in the hands of humanity“

[GNU Health] goes beyond the Foundation, providing the health professionals the specific features to manage a patient with trisomy 21. We are putting a project in the hands of humanity

Luz Morano, President of Lejeune Foundation, Argentina

Morano also stated: “GNU Health will pave the road for the medical management, and let us focus on our two other missions: Research and the defense of patient rights“

GNU Health: Jérôme Lejeune Foundation adopts GNU Health

The agreement is in the context of the GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions that UNER has with GNU Solidario. In this sense, Fernando Sassetti explained “It provides tools for an integrative approach of those people with certain pathologies that due to the reduced number are not managed in the best way. This will benefit the organizations and health professionals, that today lack the means to do so in the best way and timely manner. It benefits the patients, in their right to have an integral health record.”

Research and Open Science

The adoption of GNUHealth by the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation opens new exciting avenues for the scientific community. In addition to the clinical management and medical history, GNU Health will enable scientists to dive into the fields of genomics, epigenetics and exposomics, gathering and processing information from multiple contexts and subjects, thanks to the distributed nature of the GNU Health Federation.

The GNU Health HMIS counts many packages and features, some of them of special interest for this project. In addition to the specific customizations for the foundation, the packages already present in GNUHealth, such as obstetrics, pediatrics, genomics, socioeconomics or lifestyle will provide a holistic approach to the person with trisomy 21 and other related conditions.

All of this will be done using exclusively Free/Libre software and open science.

People before Patients

Trisomy 21 poses challenges for the individual, their family, health professionals and the society. The scientific community needs to push the research to shed light on the etiology, physiopathology and associated clinical manifestations, such as heart defects, blood disorders or Alzheimer’s.

Most importantly, as part of the scientific community, we must put a stop to the discrimination and stigmatization. We must tear down the barriers and walls built on our societies that prevent the inclusion of individuals with trisomy 21.

As part of this effort, GNU Health provides the WHO International Classification on Functioning, disability and health (ICF). In other words, is not just the health condition or disorder we may have, but how the environmental factors and barriers influence the normal functioning and integration as individuals in the society. Many times, those physical, artificial barriers present in our daily lives are way more pernicious than the condition itself.

The strong focus of GNU Health in Social Medicine, and the way we perceive medicine as a social science will help improving the life of the person living with trisomy 21, and contribute to the much needed healing process in our societies. We need to work on the molecular basis of the health conditions, but little can be done if without empathetic, inclusive and supportive societies so people can live and enjoy life with dignity, no matter their health or socioeconomic status.

Projects like this represent the spirit of GNU Health and make me immensely proud to be part of this community.

Happy and healthy hacking!
Luis Falcon, MD
President, GNU Solidario

Links:

Atari 2600 hardware design: making something out of (almost) nothing

Posted on by Michael G
Recently over the holiday break, I became interested in the 2600’s hardware architecture and started reading everything that I could find about it. I knew that it was some kind of 6502-based system, and I’d heard mentions of “racing the beam”, but that’s as far as my knowledge went. I was shocked to discover how primitive the 2600 hardware was, even compared to contemporary 6502 systems like the Apple II, Commodore PET, and even Atari’s own 8-bit computers. The 2600 was a bit before my time – I’m from 1984 – and I’ve never even seen one in person. While I understand how important and influential the 2600 really was, I find the games and technology just a bit too primitive to enjoy today, whereas games for the NES I can still happily play today. I’m sure if you grew up with the 2600, you’d disagree.

The Problem With JioGames Cloud

Posted on by Michael G
Jiogames Cloud is Good but There’s a Problem.

I have tested the beta version of JioGames Cloud on my desktop.

JioGames Cloud is a cloud gaming service provided by Jio for free as it in Beta Testing.

The Gameplay was good but there is a catch.

Watch the video to know more.

If you like my work then LIKE | SHARE | SUBSCRIBE

Website – www.rktech.info

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/therktechofficial/

#jiocloudgaming #jiogames #cloudgaming #cloudgamingapp

Open d’Australie 2023 – Novak Djokovic : “The race for Grand Slam titles ? That’s why I keep…

Posted on by Michael G
Le favori de l’Open d’Australie 2023 est-il à 100% ? Mercredi, Novak Djokovic disputait un match d’entraînement contre Daniil Medvedev. Une occasion de prendre des repères et de monter en puissance à Melbourne, à quelques jours du début du premier grand rendez-vous de la saison. Mais voilà, Nole est apparu diminué. Touché à l’ischio-jambier gauche, le Serbe a été contraint de stopper sa séance après 36 minutes passées sur le court… La veille du tirage au sort et à quelques jours du début de l’épreuve, cette gêne tombait au mauvais moment pour l’ancien numéro 1 mondial. Finalement, ce dernier a pu jouer tranquillement vendredi mais le doute est là avant de débuter mardi contre Roberto Carballes Baena. “J’espère que ça ne sera pas un problème” a déclaré Djoko lors du media day.

abigen gem – Application Binary Interface (ABI) Contract Generator for Ruby

Posted on by Michael G
Hello, in the ongoing crypto winter ethereum & co. programming series I put together some more gems. The new abigen gem lets you generate ready-to-use (blockchain) contract services / function calls for ethereum & co. via application binary inferfaces (abis). Bonus: Via the new natspec gem you can even “auto-include” nat(ural) spec(ification) comments / documentation in the generated ruby code. See the pre-packaged auto-generated ruby classes in the ethlite-contracts gem, for some first real-world samples.

Mental Wellness Month at Open Mainframe Project

Posted on by Michael G

“January is Mental Wellness Month, and I think it’s the perfect time to talk about Neurodiversity. Simply said, neurodiversity is the difference among all of our brains, like fingerprints…no two are alike. Neurodivergency includes specific differences, such as autism, ADHD, anxiety or tic disorders (like Tourette’s). While neurodivergency is not a mental health or mental wellness […]

The post Mental Wellness Month at Open Mainframe Project appeared first on Linux.com.

gcl @ Savannah: GCL 2.6.14 has been released

Posted on by Michael G

Greetings!  The GCL team is happy to announce the release of version 2.6.14, the latest achievement in the ‘stable’ (as opposed to ‘development’) series.  Please see http://www.gnu.org/software/gcl for downloading information.

This is a cleanup release with respect to 2.6.13, with the primary goal of supporting current gcc-12 signed integer tree-vrp optimizations, on by default at -O2 or higher.

There are a few portability fixes: X86_64_RELOC_SIGNED_1 support on macosx, centos readline/configure fixes, and R_RISCV_CALL_PLT support on riscv64.

A fix to decode-universal-time is included, which is backward

incompatible with a workaround in currently released maxima.  The

gcl_cleanup… and/or master maxima branches in git have been adjusted accordingly.

‘si::help has been imported into the “USER” package.