Well, What is on my raspberry pi 4

The first thing I install is my client for the cloud based notes application. I use simplenote. It has the advantage that it is available on all the major platforms. There is a terminal client called sncli. This is my go to client.
The next thing is to install terminology for the terminal. After trying out many, I observed that terminology is the fastest on the pi.
i3 window manager. I cannot live without it. None of my Gnu/Linux installations is complete without this. It is lightweight, easily configurable and simple.
For the browser, since I have started using computers I have sided with Firefox. I am at home with this browser. I install noscript, ublock, privacy badger and dark reader plugins. I like it. It has always met my expectations.
For the application launcher i go with rofi. The run menu is shown in a small window in the bottom left corner of my monitor.
For searching on the command line I use ddgr(DuckDuckgo client for the terminal) and surfraw. After installing surfraw I install a small script called menu-sufraw available on github. This integrates beautifully with rofi. Must try.
For the office suite, My choice was OpenOffice before it went to the butcher's table with the Apache foundation. Now it is libreoffice. I like it. It gets the job done.
For my text editor, wait, wait, I use both Neovim and Doom emacs as demanded by the situation. I use emacs with the client/server model. It is quick and very snappy to start and to work.
Feh for my wallpaper needs.
There is one more plugin which I install on firefox, it is called play-with. This I combine with mpv. We now have an awesome combination for playing streaming content on the pi. For this configuration to work there is one more piece of software required and that is youtube-dl. A beautiful example of the unix philosophy working for the modern age of the internet.
Not to forget that all the apps are in dark mode, if available. I like the dark mode. It has been excellent for my eyes. Even now when firefox flashes before loading a tab, I close my eyes for a while. Thank you, Apple, only for bringing the dark mode into vogue.
My hardware setup is already discussed in one of my previous posts.
font-awesome for that "graphics" in the terminal.
d2code for the font, wherever possible. I like its legibility.
I use i3status showing the date, time, empty space, processor speed and the temperature.

Thanks to all the devs/users of all the freedom software. My respect to one and all without which this post wouldn't exist.

raspberry pi os 64 bit on the raspberry pi 4(4 GB)

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any damage to your pi for following any of the instruction below. These instructions are what I have used  on my pi. There might be no gurantee that it might work on yours. You have been warned.

So, now you know that there is a 64 bit beta OS for the raspberry pi. I dont know about you, but from the day I bought the pi 4 I always wanted to run the 64 bit version of any Gnu/Linux distro. I tried many flavors. I tried ubuntu, manjaro and gentoo. I rolled back to the 32 bit raspbian because it was a complete and highly optimized OS for the rpi 4. But I was sad that though the board supports 64 bit OS, we were holding back on its capabilities. The problem as always while distro-hopping is that you have to re-start majority of your configuration and app installs. So, things in the home directory can be moved easily, but other tiny optimizations we do, we forget it. This process has to start afresh. It is not an easy thing to do. The rpi does not fly in terms of computing power.

Anyhow, we are now holding the efforts of the rpi foundation in releasing a 64 bit OS with a more beefy pi with 8 GB. That will be happy news for people running servers on their pis. For us desktop users, the 4GB version will be fine for a certain amount of time. That is a very subjective line. Let us not dwell more on it. It is indeed time to laud the efforts of the rpi foundation for supporting pis from the first generation to the present with OS updates across the devices. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank the rpi foundation and the numerous contributors, beta testers and users for bringing the 64 bit OS to our favorite pi.

Thanks is also for bringing the USB boot support. This make the rpi application more universal. I had a pi 4 which had the sd card slot damaged. I taped the sd card in the slot with much difficulty and then flashed the latest bootloader. There we have it, the pi is now alive again. Thanks again to every person involved.

To start off with the USB boot support.

1. Download the latest 64 bit beta raspberry pi OS(raspbian is now renamed to this)
2. Install it on your spare sd card(8GB min is recommended)
3. Boot your rpi from this sd card
4. You now get a taste of your new rpi os 64 bit
5. Go through the setup and it will automatically upgrade all the packages.
6. reboot
7. sudo apt-get update
8. sudo apt-get upgrade
9. sudo rpi-update          ---Now, be careful here. This installs the bleeding edge kernel an other bleeding edge blobs. This is also a disclaimer regarding any damage to you pi after this. You are on your own. I have done it and many others as well and have not faced any issues.
10. reboot
11. sudo apt-get update
12. sudo apt-get upgrade
13. reboot
14. sudo nvim /etc/default/rpi-eeprom-update
    and change the "critical" to "beta"
15. reboot
16. cd /lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/beta/
17. check the latest files starting with pieeprom-
18. Now run
    sudo rpi-eeprom-update -d -f /lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/beta/latest-file from step 17
19. poweroff
20. Repeat step 1 and 2 with your ssd
23. unmount the ssd and re-connect again
24. Now the boot partition which is a fat partition will get mounted or you have to mount it on your GNU/Linux.
25. Open the file config.txt and edit the file with the following information regarding the overclocking of your pi(A disclaimer again here. This overclock has been safe on my pi with a fan connected and with heat sinks on the processor and the graphics unit. I am not responsible for any damage to you pi)

 over_voltage=6
 arm_freq=2140
 arm_freq_min=400
 gpu_freq=750

26. If you had slower ssd speeds previously dont forget to enter the quirks into the file cmdline.txt
27. Connect your ssd to your usb3 port of the pi and remove the sd card.
28. Power on the pi
29. If your boot is painfully slow then you should refer to this post. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=245931


Enjoy the fruits of freedom software and its ethos. Dont forget to spread the ethics of freedom software and this may not include the price you paid for the software.

India, A million mutinees now by V. S. Naipul

A common thread to be observed about anything you want to read and watch about India is that the sources are from people outside India. It is like we Indians lack the ability to look inward. We are so used to see the other state, the other country, the other city. We know so less about ourselves, our locality, our country but somehow we seem to know a great deal about he "other". It is a shocking and fascinating thing. So when Naipul came to India, he saw what we ourselves dont want to see. He saw that we dont want to see. He saw a million mutinees for which the people opened up. There are other trillions which people did not open about. There were several of his mutinees he couldn't prod further because people wouldn't. They wanted him to leave it as it is. If knowing about a country is knowing about its extremes, then to know India, you should be reading this. Indians should read this book. Every Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist & the other plethora of unscientific societies should read this book. It is like a mirror held up to them. People visiting India should read this book. They know the extremes and they know that safe zone now. India is easy to travel an move about in that safe zone.

I loved the book. It is well written. It is well researched. And majority of the people he has talked to are real people and somehow he has made them comfortable to talk about things which people dont talk in their normal sense of mind. It is not a secret. It is just that we dont want to talk about it. He has understood that modern India as it stands today would have been a million pieces if not for the modern advent and administration of the British. But at the same time he has laid bare the brutality, unjustness, usurping, Plundering, Caste politics, Famines and many other synonyms related to these words. What I liked about his choice of interviewees is their innate purity. Everyone wants to be good. Every one wants to do good. But they are result of circumstances. Circumstances are staged by one group and the results spread across the community creating chasms between individuals. These chasms then end up in physical barriers. These then extend to fighting for rights. This then gives rise to leaders, sects, followers and what not.

I loved the way the history seamlessly gels with the present in Naipul's India. The transition from historical perspective to the present is one of the best I have read in any book. It is like India itself where the old co-exists with the modern seamlessly. I love this flow. It just shows how beautifully the author has envisioned India in his travel. Once he catches a thread, on a majority of cases he has followed it on his own because he was not ready to be biassed. This though is awesome. Once he sees that a particular individual is pushing certain things down his throat, he will take only what he thinks applies and then travels around to confirm or negate it with completely unknown individuals.

When you talk about India, foreign nationals and the commercial media is bemused by the mystic rather than the core India. They are also interested in the destitute. So here again, the author has added sufficient amount of both these aspects. But I did not mind much since he tries to juxtapose the mystic, the destitution, the middle class, the affluent class, the billionaires in a complete round up. So if any reader is expecting just "slumdog millionaire" he will be disappointing. This is much more. The narrative is not linear, and I liked that style of writing. It is like when you start to have a preset image of India, he will stop you and take you on a different ride. Only this time, your thoughts change to something else and when you come back to the same topic, you no longer have that previous notion.

The book is thoroughly entertaining and bold in certain aspects. The bold aspects are cleverly hidden and is available only to the more interested and demanding reader. It is not a book to finish in one sitting. It has to be savored. It has to be understood. Ultimately the author is happy with how India has turned out. The last few pages become dull after so much action in the majority of the portion. It appeared as thought the author was finished. He was tired and he couldnt find anything more interesting. And one more noticeable thing is the coverage of south India. Normally majority of the authors stop at the middle and the northern part of India and dont look south. But the author here has spent sufficient amount of time in the south also. There is good work on periyar of Tamilnadu and the wodeyars of Karnataka. All in all, the book is a testament to the never die spirit of India.

Long live the freedom software movement

There have been many examples of organizations taking up GPLd code and trying to spin a business model around it(Let us call it organization A). The catch here is that the code is available in the public under GPL. If an individual or another corporation(Let us call it organization B) sees that the offering is costly and the terms offered are too stifling they still have the access to the same code. Let us say that that A has now sweetened the deal with improvements and additions to the code base and offers that as the premium to B. Now, B has the option of taking the improved deal form A or asking for A to give out the improvements to the original code base since the original code base was GPLd. This is where A loses its head. This is where A drops its towel. This is where many organizations understand that it is not a viable model.

But there have been examples of organizations making money out of GPLd software. The important ones coming to the mind is Redhat and Suse. At a time when even redhat didnt have a commercial offering, suse had only the commercial offering. All these people started working "around" GPLd software. They did not work much "on" the GPLd software. Whatever utilities they developed to wrap around the GPLd software making the users adopt GPLd software was aimed with ease of use and technical support and customization for the clients. This worked and companies were successful with this. The object of business is profit maximization. There are plenty of strategies to do it. The problems while doing business with GPLd software is the ethical dilemmas. You want to be true to the GNU philosophy and you have to maximize shareholders profits. As you start wanting more returns from GPLd software that is where you start spiraling down. That is where you are extracting blood instead of milk from the cow's udder. Now, the money you are making is blood money.

Now comes a biggie who thinks that he knows how to make more money from GPLd software and buys the smaller and a better ethical vendor. Without even having a plan to integrate the ethics and the working of this company. The integration plan is one of the most vital thing for a successful takeover. You decide whether you want the smaller firm to continue with its ethics or completely break it down and merge with your profit making culture. There is no road in between. Many mergers and acquisitions have failed because of this. For big corporations it is better you kill it totally like google or microsoft. Take out whatever assets that can be proprietarized and throw out the GPLd ones. The problem arises when you think of proprietarizing GPLd code. There might be plenty of code written by the acquired company under GPL. But just because you wrote it, you dont own it. It is in the GNU world.

Efforts are on to kill the free software movement. Efforts are on to destroy the free software foundation. Efforts are on to kill the GPL. And this time it is a totally co-ordinated effort from all the bigs. We dont know how it is going to end. But we know for sure that the GPL document has stood its test of time. It has been framed with the core human societal values at its core. It has not been framed for profiteering. It has been framed with the basic human ethic of "sharing". They all thought that they bring down RMS they bring down GPL. They are wrong. They should have done it the other way round, then it might have worked. But, now it is not working. People are sratching their heads. All their lawyers and PRs are working overtime to malign the GPL.

So, clearly now is the time to advertise freedom software. Now is the time for all the individuals and ethical groups to spread the word of freedom software. Now is the time to share. Now is the time to side with the free software foundation and identify the blobs in the free software foundation and replace them with GPLd code since we have already lost the Linux foundation for the blobs. Now is the time to start GPLd software. Yes they are not flashy, Yes they are not easy to use. Now is the time to make them flashy. Make them more usable. Make them more known to the public. Now is the time to celebrate the contributions of one and all made to the freedom software world. Now is the time to provide due recognition to all the developers who work both for earning and for human ethics. Now is the time to spread the names across the public network. Now is the time to dig out the the name sof the contributors on which all the proprietary world of software is standing. Now is the time to tell that Macos and ios are visual shells on BSD code. Now is the time to shout that the flashy PS4s are just an interface to the awesome BSD code. Above all now is the time I request all developers developing for fun for serious ethics to please release their code under GPL and not under any other permissive licenses.

As a long time GPLd software user, I salute all the freedom software developers and thank them from the bottom of my heart for providing the world an ethical alternative.

Long live GPL. Long live RMS. Long live the sharing ethos.

Education and logic

All this while the world has been telling that education is what is going to save the world from illogical conclusions. Yes, education has been successful on many accounts. It has been instrumental in telling the people about their past follies. It has been instrumental in making the people to read what is being presented to them. Is education the know-how of reading? Is education the imbibing of logical thought? Is education the know-how of writing a language. Is the result of education to read? What is education. In India there are night classes for the under-privileged and the senior people. The stress is on learning the alphabet, framing words and understand the dictionary meaning of the words. So once they can read a newspaper, they are educated. Now, what after the person can read a newspaper? Is education not bothered about how he should interpret it? Or should education not bother about the interpretation. Should the interpretation be forced on to the reader like in some countries? Should the interpretation be allowed to run free in all directions like in some countries. What is really the purpose of education? Is it to create a more radical consumer of goods/services/information?

Majority of our educational tools rely on "laws". We are told that we are not to question them. If this is not accepted by the child then the future of his education is a mess. Because all the future information he will get will be based on these laws. If the basic premise is not accepted then the kid will have a hard time to come to terms with the present world. If he accepts, it is smooth travel. He will come out a brick in the wall. Now, the thing is if given an option of accepting or not accepting, if the child chooses non-acceptance of the present laws of physics, of moral sciences, of mathematics, of logic, he has to make some of his own and he does make them as he progresses over his journey of life. This will be made based on his experiences, his interactions, his feedback, his successes, his failures,....The resultant human might become a brick in the wall, a special brick in the wall, a hammer which breaks and disturbs the wall, a builder who brings more brick into the wall. So the result can be pro-system and anti-system. Now, again, the meaning of system and anti-system might be different for different people based on their education.

So how should the educational system work? Should the system put only the questions and extract answers for all the questions from the student? Where does the student search for the answers? If he searches it within the present system, he will agree or disagree. If he disagrees will the educational system allow it and allow him to continue to the next question or try to play logic with his answers? Once the kid comes out with his answers how will he be able to cross-check his results? How is he going to cross-reference his conclusion. How is he going to validate his conclusion. Normally conclusions related to politics/society happens immediately. Either you like it or dont or you are not concerned/affected by the conclusions. Drawing a conclusion is one thing but pushing it down the throat of others is another. There are plenty of people in the "not concerned" sphere. These people can be very easily converted to the other side with a slight nudge normally through emotion altering strategies. The happiness of making people agree on your ideals is un-parallelled and this is exactly what is happening with f^&*b*&* and other walled social networks. All these networks are feeding on exactly this aspect of human education. Either they re-inforce the previous education or try to negate it emotionally. All this is again happening for identity. So, is the job of education to give identity, The general syllabus for all the students point to the fact that we want all kids to grow up in the same "particular" way, the same identity.

Will education save the world? Will education give the superpower of reading what is offered and analyze it, fact check it, prove it right or wrong. Will education make all people logicians? Will all the people of the world be logicians? Will logic rule the world and beat out all the ready to eat "isms"?Will.....?

Work from home is the need of the hour

The present pandemic in the world has bought to the fore a prime mistake in the industry. The mentality of the present industry is a carry over from the industrial revolution. The entire work force has to be brought into a walled fortress and hold them for a minimum number of hours under a different setup and set of laws different from the societal setup. The precursor to the industrial revolution was the cottage industry. Every society had its equilibrium by specialists doing what they do best and continue to do so for centuries. Majority of the cottage industry were highly skilled and carefully guarded secrets. Very rarely did finished goods cross the local society. Every society had its dress code based on the raw material and the ability of the tailor in the locality. Majority of the procedures were available in the house of the creator.

Now it is all about nationwide/global markets. Highly skilled jobs have been broken down to easily assimilated steps which can be done by anybody. There are not much crafts which can be called a secret in the present scenario. All the goods created so were physical in nature. It made sense to create the most economical process flow to minimize the costs. This industry also gave birth to the service industry which are truly global. But still there are mom and dad service centers who cater to the last mile.

The one industry which blindly followed the strategies of the physical industry is the software industry. The work content are poles apart. The software industry does not need to collect all the contributors under one concrete building. The industry works on collaboration and there have been many tools available for collaboration through the public network. The industry also employs a considerable number of people and the earnings are also supposed to be good. This industry contributes most to the usage of roads/vehicles since this industry works three shifts. There are not many physical industries which can run all the three shifts with the same efficiency. Code written at home or at desk are no different. In fact, the disturbances of the open office or the cramping of the closed ones dont augur well for the motivation of the contributors.

It is now high time the industry and the government wakes up and stops this movement of the work force. The software and the call center/remote service industry have to start working from home. This will reduce the load on the roads and the infrastructure can be utilized for other purposes. This would also result in stabilizing the real estate prices. This would also stop investment in projects like we-work. This can be utilized in improving the public network backbone. This sort of work culture can employ well deserving remote employees who cant come down to the cities for a job. This would in turn provide opportunity for remote workers in villages to do an evening/night job combined with agriculture and other familial activities. This is perfect for the female staff to take care of their kids and their education. There are many occasions where high earning couples are not having time to contribute for their kids. Just a mere presence of the parents in the house can mean a lot for the kids. This gives an opportunity for real flexi hours based on the commitment of the parents like sending the kid for school and then collecting him back.

Motivational theories are to be re-written, Managerial roles are to be re-configured and definitely will create jobs for people to maintain the public network infrastructure. Improvements should always be welcome and learning should be continuous and inclusive. I request all the software companies to completely shift to remote working and give opportunities to the most remote locations and identify and support capable people wherever they are. The pandemic demands minimum amount of people available in the out. Make the world a better place.

Bring back the feed readers and push back the algoritms

In the present world of social networking, the corporations have pushed us into the push method of giving information. That is information is forced through our throat. It is a torture but with golden and platinum tools. It is like we have been manipulated to enjoy the torture. The torture of forced feed of information. The information which is curated by the 1%. There was a time before the explosion of the public network, the 1% did not have "real" information of the remaining 99%. It was just a vague idea that people are in misery in general and they have to be maintained so. But, today, the corporations know the level and extent of misery of every individual and this information is extracted to the maximum. The information is available free with the consent of the individual. No need of any special sponsored survey, which was happening before the era of the public network. Data of the people was only with the government. Corporations would cozy up with the governments for the data. Now, it is not so. It is the other way round, the governments are cozying up with the corporations. That is the amount of data available with them. All this is because the corporations are modelling the behavior and acts of the individual by carefully curating the information which will be bombarded to the user. The user will have no option but to digest it. In the beginning he might resist. But the same data is coated with sugar in another pushed information. Until you "like" the information you will be bombarded with the same info in plenty other forms, hidden.

This push strategy does not give the user any sort of freedom regarding choice of avoiding it. If you search for a certain information, the search result which is payed for is pushed to you. You think that you are pulling the result from the search engine. But taking your query as an input with various other personal information, the search result is "personalized" and "pushed" to you. Whatever is presented to you would not be what you really wanted. But, you will be told, this "is" what you searched for. The same with all the social networking algorithms. The name algorithm is a fancy name for the service provided to puss what he wants to tell you regarding any subject you search for with your hashtag. Hashtags are not for the convenience of the individual users. It is for the convenience of the corporations. Just see the amount of hashtags in any post sponsored. The hashtag is one key which is visible to the user. There are plenty in the metadata of sponsored posts which will be used to feed to you based on the metadata collected from your likes and dislikes. Dont think that your dislikes are neglected. Dislikes grab more of your eyeballs than the things you like. If you come across a post which you like, you will see the subject and like it without even reading it. It is not the same with your dislikes. You want to read through and pat yourself on your back for you being correct.

This is the time for Feed readers. The feed reader which google killed. The feedreader which mozilla, the ethical browser wants all the users to forget. Now, what is so great about the rss/atom feeds. Well to start with the technology is tried and tested and works beautifully. It is simple to implement. Whenever I have requested a website maintainer of my interest for adding feed support, it was done in a days time. It is so human. This is a pull strategy of getting updated information from your preferred/trusted information provider. It supports individual websites. That is the websites run by individuals. It supports blogs, which again was killed and pushed to obscurity by all the social networking behemoths. Blogs are so simple and beautiful.

A simple website is a treat to watch and browse. They appear the same in the most featured and also the minimum browsers. If I like the content on and individual's website, I will subscribe to his feed. Only when I ask my feedreader to refresh do I get information regarding any new posts. If I dont want to read, then I will not refresh my feed. This feed is chosen by me. There is no algorithm here. It might be suggested to me from a friend, But, I have the choice of going through his content and to subscribe or not. Once you like an article, since you read only the first few lines, you are going to visit the page. You are now supporting him by visiting his page and may or may not click on some ads, so that the content creator earns money. If the created content is so good, you can donate to him and encourage him to continued to do more. It is a win win situation for both the creator and the consumer. The creator need not worry about people from other domains reading, not understanding it and providing shitbag of comments. The creator is the king as should be. He should have the full rights as to whether any comments should be kept up or not. It is his content. You might not like it, and you may unsubscribe. The creator will find other fans, but, the consumer might not find more capable content creators. The feeds give ample opportunities for both the creators and consumers.

If you are a content creator, kindly add RSS/atom support to your website/blog. And if you are a consumer, support your content creator by using feed readers and supporting the creator directly without any intermediary who is making money out of the creator and also the consumer. Let us make the public network a better place.