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So, I've pushed out the final version of the Epoch Init System 1.2.0 "Peroxide". It's mostly a bugfix release and cleans up most of the nasty code in Epoch. Here's the tarball: http://universe2.us/epoch_1.2.0.tar.gz

I probably could have done more to it, but I wanted to just finish and get the release out so I could roll an update for my personal distro with the new version of Epoch in it. Nonetheless, this release should be pretty stable and is a recommended update. It is safe to update 1.0 and 1.1 releases to 1.2.0 without rebooting. Replace the 'epoch' binary with the new version and then run 'epoch reexec'. Check /var/log/system.log and it should tell you that you've been updated to 1.2.0. NOTE: if you do NOT run 'epoch reexec' after replacing the binary, your root filesystem will not be able to be remounted read-only on system shutdown and that could lead to data loss.
There is no good reason I can think of that you would not want to run 'epoch reexec'.

Here is a list of changes:

Changes since 1.1.1:

* Cleaned up a huge amount of code that was just fugly as hell. This is the big change.
* Removed unsigned long abuse caused by my (at the time) severe OCD.
* New service status output format. Looks cleaner.
* Extremely deprecated AlignStatusReports attribute completely removed. I doubt even one person will be affected by this.
* Add three new attributes: StartingStatusFormat, FinishedStatusFormat, and
StatusNames to manually specify an alternate service status output format.

* Specific bugfixes:
        * Don't set a config problem check to WARNING after we already found a FAILURE.
        * Fix overwriting service messages, caused by our old status format.
        * Fix inaccurate reporting of scheduled shutdown times, now report seconds too.

Maybe it's the season.

Anyway here's me quoting RT.com quoting Obama (whe-heey nested quotations):

‘“We cannot have a society in which some dictators someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States because if somebody is able to intimidate us out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing once they see a documentary that they don't like or news reports that they don't like,” Obama said.’

( source )

Damn right.

Obama & the US made precisely this point four years ago according to the New York Times:

‘When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,” according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.’

( source )

Because it is completely different when it is not an entertainment movie but instead a list containing some of the biggest and most central papers in five countries as well as large number of irrelevant smaller ones. It doesn't compare at all and has to be far more unimportant than Hollywood fiction.

If the task is to record history for the future then it is of particular unimportance since no one will ever use it for anything sensible:

‘An error message pops up every time a search is performed with the word “WikiLeaks”.

It’s not entirely clear when the US National Archives decided to block these searches.’

‘The Library of Congress went further by blocking access to WikiLeaks content from its server in 2010.

The American Library Association suggested this violated the First Amendment rights of internet users to receive information.

“The Library of Congress’s decision is a violation of the First Amendment and a violation of the American Library Association’s Bill of Rights. Moreover, it is a violation of the professional ethics of librarians to always provide free access to all information,” their statement said.’

( source )

Nor does it take much for the banhammer to fall, as is right, rumor is enough, rumor is fact:

‘The directive states:

        “We have received information from our higher headquarters regarding a potential new leaker of classified information. Although no formal validation has occurred, we thought it prudent to warn all employees and subordinate commands. Please do not go to any website entitled “The Intercept” for it may very well contain classified material.

        As a reminder to all personnel who have ever signed a non-disclosure agreement, we have an ongoing responsibility to protect classified material in all of its various forms. Viewing potentially classified material (even material already wrongfully released in the public domain) from unclassified equipment will cause you long term security issues. This is considered a security violation.”

A military insider subject to the ban said that several employees expressed concerns after being told by commanders that it was “illegal and a violation of national security” to read publicly available news reports on The Intercept.

“Even though I have a top secret security clearance, I am still forbidden to read anything on the website,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. “I find this very disturbing that they are threatening us and telling us what websites and news publishers we are allowed to read or not.”’

( source )

Got IRCiv back to a working state after reworking authentication to make use of new features now built into exec. Also makes use of included alias definition, init and startup directives.

New features include map image cropping (no more huge black areas), a crop_map flag, use of notice instead of pm for private status messages, queuing of messages triggered by actions of other players, use of bot IRC message handling pause/unpause for robustness against command flooding (mainly to prevent corruption of memory shared by scripts running in parallel), a game-list command, and ability to load and save all game data to files.

Join the #civ channel in soylent IRC. Must be identified with NickServ to play. Type "~civ init" to initialize your player.
Note that IRCiv is not fully playable yet and is very much a work in progress in early stages of development.

Sample test gameplay:

<civ_test_player> ~civ u
<crutchy> ~civ d
<exec> #civ crutchy => player "civ_test_player" moved a unit within your field of vision
<exec> #civ crutchy => successfully moved settler down from (66,39) to (66,40)
<exec> #civ crutchy => you moved a unit within the field of vision of player "civ_test_player"
<exec> #civ crutchy => http://irciv.us.to/?pid=3
<exec> #civ crutchy => 1/2, warrior, +100, (76,26)
<crutchy> ~civ ?
<exec> QUICK START GUIDE
<exec> unit movement: (left|l),(right|r),(up|u),(down|d)
<exec> settler actions: (build|b)
<exec> player functions: (help|?),status,init,flag/unflag,set/unset
<exec> flags: public_status,grid,coords,city_names,crop_map
<exec> http://sylnt.us/irciv
<crutchy> ~civ unflag public_status
<exec> flag "public_status" unset for player "crutchy"
<crutchy> ~civ d
-exec- #civ crutchy => successfully moved warrior down from (76,26) to (76,27)
-exec- #civ crutchy => http://irciv.us.to/?pid=3
-exec- #civ crutchy => 0/2, settler, +100, (66,40)
<crutchy> ~civ d
-exec- #civ crutchy => successfully moved settler down from (66,40) to (66,41)
-exec- #civ crutchy => you moved a unit within the field of vision of player "civ_test_player"
-exec- #civ crutchy => http://irciv.us.to/?pid=3
-exec- #civ crutchy => 1/2, warrior, +100, (76,27)

Example map:
http://irciv.us.to/?pid=2

--
http://sylnt.us/irciv
https://github.com/crutchy-/exec-irc-bot/tree/master/scripts/irciv

A couple weeks ago I was having a conversation about smoking with someone and they posited this argument in favor of smoking being illegal near entrances and exits after I'd pointed out that the danger from second-hand smoke in an open-air environment was so minuscule as to not exist: The smell offends me.

That went up one side of me and down the other and today I say to everyone using being offended as an argument for anything what I said to him: I do not care.

No, that is not me being an asshole. That is me refusing to allow you to mold the world to suit you at my expense. You have no natural, societal, legal, or God given right to not be offended in this life. And neither should you.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Those, right there, are your chief three rights. It's quite important to note that you do not have a right to happiness but only to its pursuit. Also, the the end of each is precisely located where you would start infringing on the same for anyone else. Taken together with all the other rights enumerated in the Constitution, there is a further right that is very much implicit but I believe should have been explicit: The right to be an asshole. Beyond Life and Liberty, I would go as far as to say it is our most fundamental right.

You're probably thinking I am an asshole about now. Why would I say something like being an asshole is one of our most fundamental rights? It's simple, really; because anyone at any time can call anyone else an asshole for any old arbitrary reason. If this has any bearing on the rights of the person being accused of being an asshole, then they do not really have those rights and never did in the first place. All their rights are subject to sanction or removal by cultural fiat. No due process whatsoever. Only if you have the right to offend anyone, at any time, without fear of oppression are any of your other rights secure.

Large portions of our political landscape have always been made up of unscrupulous bastards who incessantly try to convince you that offending someone is bad or wrong. See this for what it is: an attempt to get you to place chains of your own making upon yourself. They know they cannot force you to behave according to their approval or disapproval, so they attempt to shame you into doing so by being offended. There is no difference today between the puritanical right and the Social Justice Warrior on the left in this; the tactic itself is as identical as it is reprehensible.

So, convince me of your position by logical or moral argument all you like. Tell me I should do or think something because it offends you though? You can jam that right up your shitter and blow some fucking bubbles with it, you fascist asshole.

So, that girl from the previous entries and I had a second date yesterday.

I picked her up and took her out to the mountains for a short hike to a canyon that has frozen waterfalls, and then we had lunch at a place that makes flatbread pizzas.

I think she was still pretty nervous, because I had to make most of the conversation for the first 1/2 of the day. After a while she started opening up and talking a lot more. She seems like a really nice person, but I don't think that we are very compatible.

At the end of the date, I took a peck on the lips, and left. I felt pretty used after the date. I thought that I had arranged for a pretty damn good date, I paid for everything, and not even a thank you. I'm not upset that I didn't get any action (quite the opposite... there was no chemistry, so it would have felt weird...), but just a simple thank you would have been very nice. I'm not even upset about paying for everything (I probably make double what she does), it's just that it felt like it was taken for granted... Maybe that is what I'm going to have to get used to.

I was really hoping that it would work out because just getting a first date was a terrible process filled with rejection.

Anyways, back to square one.

if you're in IRC and you wanna bring up a wiki section for discussion, type:

[[title|section]]

to output the wiki page section

eg:

[[IRC|Chat bot (Python)]]

outputs:

<exec> ELIZA module that uses Futurama personalities (to match the bot's current nick) Modify bot logging to match existing formats (mIRC preferably)
<exec> http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/IRC#Chat_bot_.28Python.29

This is a book review for the book "Opening Up: A Guide To Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships" by Tristan Taormino

http://www.amazon.ca/Opening-Up-Creating-Sustaining-Relationships/dp/157344295X

I don't really know the proper format and style for a book review, and I frankly don't care, so this might be in an unconventional style.

This is a book all about open relationships. The history, the different kinds, as well as some related topics - jealousy, setting rules and boundaries, dealing with problems, raising children, and a few others. For those that have been following my other journal entries, you will know that my wife and I are opening up our marriage. This book is often highly recommended to couples (or individuals) who want to explore open relationships.

The author sent out a questionnaire to collect data from people in nonmonogamous relationships, and the book incorporates the results of that questionnaire through stats and case studies that are sprinkled throughout the book. The book overs many different types of nonmonogamy - partnered nonmonogamy, swinging, ployamory, solo polyamory, polyfidelity, and also when one member is monogamous while the other is not. Each of these gets it's own chapter where the book explains each in detail.

From there, the book provides information and examples on how one might negotiate an open relationship, and deal with things while in one.

I read this book earlier this week, and really found it really helpful. I come from a large and pretty close family that is quite conservative, and so for me, nonmongamy is pretty foreign. This book really helped me wrap my head around everything, while providing examples of relationships that were working while being open.

This book definitely has a favourable bias towards open relationships, there were many case studies of relationships that were working, but very few (if any) of relationships that fell apart. This may have been intentional by the writer, or it may have been a result of the self selected respondents of the survey (people that it didn't work for might not have responded).

I find that this book helped me 'normalize' the concept of open relationships. My wife is currently reading it as well and is about 1/3 of the way through. She has enjoyed it this far, and has also said that it has really helped.

I agree with the many other people that have recommended this book. This is a must read for people interested or currently in open relationships.

-- Snow

So, if you haven't read my first journal entry, I would suggest you read that before reading this:

http://soylentnews.org/~Snow/journal/800

When I wrote that journal entry, I was really in a low place. My job sucked, my sex life was lacking, I had lost my self identity, and I was just generally confused with my life. It has been just under a month from that last entry. I wasn't entirely surprised by the response from that Journal. Many people identified with my struggles. I think that these problems are rather common, it's just that it's so personal, that no one really likes to talk about it.

Unfortunately, my job still sucks. I still feel undervalued, and not appreaciated. Right now, that is okay. It was really shitty though when I didn't really have anything working in my life. It's nice to have SOMETHING that is going right, be it your job, your relationships, or something else. Just something that makes you feel good.

In my previous entry, I revealed diffrent parts of my life. One was my frustration with my sex life. At around the same time as I wrote the journal entry, I had a chat with my wife and we decided to cut back her hours. We could easily make do with the cut to our income, and she would come home exhausted and just wanted to be alone. She is now working 4 days per week, and I could immediately see a difference. She was happier, I come home to a nice cooked dinner on Mondays, and I'm getting a lot more sex. Since having her hours cut back, I've been getting laid 3-4 times per week (except for period time, which is right now). She gets aroused more easily, and we have all around better sex. We bought some sex toys, and have been lightly eperimenting with new things.

It has been 4-5 months since we started discussing opening up our marriage. It's been an interesting experience. We spoke at length last night, and believe it or not, at this point we are both in agreement that so far, this has been a positive thing for our relationship. Let me explain... We have been together for a long time. Like any couple that has been together for a while, there are good times and bad times. There were times where we were teetering on the edge of breakup, but never quite pulled the trigger. Time would go on and things would change and get better. I didn't even realize it, but I really took her for granted.

Since having conversations about opening up, I have been treating her much better. I don't know if it's because of guilt or appreciation of her acceptance of my situation, or something else, but I find myself wanting to do little things for her. She says that she notices a change for the better though, so that is good.

I was pretty depressed last journal entry because I wasn't having much luck with the dating website I was on, and it was just the cherry on top of everything else. Im happy to report that I had my first date in 12-13 years last night. I was really nervous - my hands were really clammy while I was waiting for her to arrive -- but it went really well. I had a lot of fun, and it was exciting to get to know someone new like that.

After the Date, my wife and I chatted for a couple hours about the date, life, and conventional monogamy. She says that in her heart, she is okay with the nonmonogmay, but her brain she is battling the ideas that we have all had impressed on us for our entire lives. Marriage is one man and one woman. They love each other unconditionally. Always. Everything is always perfect... blah, blah, blah. We couldn't think of one marriage that we know that was actually happy. We both refuse to raise kids in a broken household, so maybe there are other ways than the normal conventional style.

This whole experiance has been really weird. We are just taking things one day at a time, and going from there. Again, it's good to get my thoughts and feelings out, and who knows, there might be people that read that that can identify or benefit from my experience.

I'll try to keep posting every once and a while for those that wish to follow.

This last week has been really good :). Please feel free to comment below, and provide your advice or comments. If you have questions, I'll try to answer them.

-- Snow

one of the things i'm working lately is a bitbucket feed for soylent irc (similar to the #github feed)

it currently polls the events api url for one repo (uselessd) every 5 mins and spits out a message to #github if new code is pushed

i'm still trying to figure out how to relate changesets to commits listed in push events so that i can list affected files similar to the github feed. neither the atlassian api help nor google have been very helpful.

--
https://github.com/crutchy-/exec-irc-bot/blob/master/scripts/bitbucket_feed.php
http://sylnt.us/exec

So, one thing I do on Linux a lot is run loopback containers with encryption - this gives me a simple way of isolating data out and transferring it between machines without worrying about full disk/partition encryption.

How to do this on Linux is covered in places like this.

How to do this on BSD doesn't seem to be covered as well - so my best guess for loopback devices is below, culled from various sources.

It's a WIP, fairly untested as is, I have no idea how secure this actually is, the instructions are prone to editing, and if you actually use it for anything you're insane :)

First off a plain loopback

# Plain loopback device
dd if=/dev/zero of=tmp.dat bs=1024k count=1024

mdconfig -l
## The number we use for "-u" is the first number not in the list,
## using "0" here
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f tmp.dat -u 0
bsdlabel -w -B md0 auto ## Probably don't need the -B here...
newfs -m 0 md0a
mount /dev/md0a /media/

## Then unmount with
umount /media
mdconfig -d -u 0

## And remount with
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f tmp.dat -u 0
mount /dev/md0a /media/

Now the encrypted version...

## Encrypted loopback, using geli
dd if=/dev/zero of=crypt.dat bs=1024k count=1024

mdconfig -l
## The number we use is the first number not in the list,
## using 0 here
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f crypt.dat -u 0

# Make a keyfile, passphrase it and associate with the device
dd if=/dev/random of=volume.key bs=64 count=1
geli init -s 4096 -K volume.key /dev/md0
geli attach -k volume.key /dev/md0

## Give us md0.eli - Have a Paranoia Moment
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/md0.eli bs=1m

## And make stuff
newfs /dev/md0.eli
mount /dev/md0.eli /media

## Then unmount/disconnect with
umount /media
geli detach md0.eli
mdconfig -d -u 0

## And remount with
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f crypt.dat -u 0
geli attach -k volume.key /dev/md0
mount /dev/md0.eli /media

And making sure that persists

# Testing it....

mdconfig -a -t vnode -f crypt.dat -u 0
geli attach -k volume.key /dev/md0
mount /dev/md0.eli /media

dd if=/dev/random of=/media/test.dat bs=1M count=100
md5 /media/test.dat

## MD5 (test.dat) = "whatever"

umount /media
geli detach md0.eli
mdconfig -d -u 0
reboot

## Wait for it.... Log back in and....
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f crypt.dat -u 0
geli attach -k volume.key /dev/md0
mount /dev/md0.eli /media
md5 /media/test.dat

## and check the md5sum matched