SmokeInFog

• Cheetah speed with a redesigned render loop and a 2x faster escape code parser that uses SIMD CPU vector instruction to parse data in parallel (#7005)
• A new benchmark kitten (kitten __benchmark__) to measure terminal throughput performance
• Graphics protocol: Add a new delete mode for deleting images whose ids fall within a range. Useful for bulk deletion (#7080)
• Keyboard protocol: Fix the Enter, Tab and Backspace keys generating spurious release events even when report all keys as escape codes is not set (#7136)
• macOS: The command line args from macos-launch-services-cmdline are now prefixed to any args from open --args rather than overwriting them (#7135)
• Allow specifying where the new tab is created for detach_window (#7134)
• hints kitten: The option to set the text color for hints now allows arbitrary colors (#7150)
• icat kitten: Add a command line argument to override terminal window size detection (#7165)
• A new action toggle_tab to easily switch to and back from a tab with a single shortcut (#7203)
• When clearing terminal add a new type to_cursor_scroll which can be used to clear to prompt while moving cleared lines into the scrollback
• Fix a performance bottleneck when dealing with thousands of small images (#7080)
• kitten @ ls: Return the timestamp at which the window was created (#7178)
• hints kitten: Use default editor rather than hardcoding vim to open file at specific line (#7186)
• Remote control: Fix --match argument not working for @ls, @send-key, @set-background-image (#7192)
• Keyboard protocol: Do not deliver a fake key release events on OS window focus out for engaged modifiers (#7196)
• Ignore startup_session when kitty is invoked with command line options specifying a command to run (#7198)
• Box drawing: Specialize rendering for the Fira Code progress bar/spinner glyphs

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/9006187

Over the past week or so there has been a serious spam problem hitting mastodon and rest of the fediverse especially misskey over on the japanese side of things and the story behind it is absolutely wild.

• kitten @ load-config: Allow (re)loading kitty.conf via remote control
• Remote control: Allow running mappable actions via remote control (kitten @ action)
• kitten @ send-text: Add a new option to automatically wrap the sent text in bracketed paste escape codes if the program in the destination window has turned on bracketed paste.
• Fix a single key mapping not overriding a previously defined multi-key mapping
• macOS: Fix kitten @ select-window leaving the keyboard in a partially functional state (#7074)
• Graphics protocol: Improve display of images using Unicode placeholders or row/column boxes by resizing them using linear instead of nearest neighbor interpolation on the GPU (#7070)
• When matching URLs use the definition of legal characters in URLs from the WHATWG spec rather than older standards (#7095)
• hints kitten: Respect the kitty url_excluded_characters option (#7075)
• macOS: Fix an abort when changing OS window chrome for a full screen window via remote control or the themes kitten (#7106)
• Special case rendering of some more box drawing characters using shades from the block of symbols for legacy computing (#7110)
• A new close_other_os_windows to close non active OS windows (#7113)

• macOS: Fix a regression in the previous release that broke overriding keyboard shortcuts for actions present in the global menu bar (#7016)
• Fix a regression in the previous release that caused multi-key sequences to not abort when pressing an unknown key (#7022)
• Fix a regression in the previous release that caused kitten @ launch --cwd=current to fail over SSH (#7028)
• Fix a regression in the previous release that caused kitten @ send-text with a match tab parameter to send text twice to the active window (#7027)
• Fix a regression in the previous release that caused overriding of existing multi-key mappings to fail (#7044, #7058)
• Wayland+NVIDIA: Do not request an sRGB output buffer as a bug in Wayland causes kitty to not start (#7021)

• Conditional mappings depending on the state of the focused window

• Support for Modal mappings such as in modal editors like vim

• A new option notify_on_cmd_finish to show a desktop notification when a long running command finishes (#6817)

• A new action send_key to simplify mapping key presses to other keys without needing send_text

• Allow focusing previously active OS windows via nth_os_window (#7009)

• Wayland: Fix a regression in the previous release that broke copying to clipboard under wl-roots based compositors in some circumstances (#6890)

• macOS: Fix some combining characters not being rendered (#6898)

• macOS: Fix returning from full screen via the button when the titlebar is hidden not hiding the buttons (#6883)

• macOS: Fix newly created OS windows not always appearing on the “active” monitor (#6932)

• Font fallback: Fix the font used to render a character sometimes dependent on the order in which characters appear on screen (#6865)

• panel kitten: Fix rendering with non-zero margin/padding in kitty.conf (#6923)

• kitty keyboard protocol: Specify the behavior of the modifier bits during modifier key events (#6913)

• Wayland: Enable support for the new cursor-shape protocol so that the mouse cursor is always rendered at the correct size in compositors that support this protocol (#6914)

• GNOME Wayland: Fix remembered window size smaller than actual size (#6946)

• Mouse reporting: Fix incorrect position reported for windows with padding (#6950)

• Fix focus_visible_window not switching to other window in stack layout when only two windows are present (#6970)

Video description:

Mint 21.3 is still based on Ubuntu 22.04 and its super old kernel, version 5.15. You do get the Mesa drivers version 23, but you don't get the latest Nvidia drivers either, you're still on 535.

So, you can select that new Wayland session from the login screen. I tested this on a spare laptop that uses an Intel Xe integrated GPU, and also has a dedicated Nvidia GPU.

At first glance, everything seems to work ok, but it's an experimental session, and it's missing a few things. OBS, for example, has no source for the display: Cinnamon doesn't seem to support the screen sharing protocol through pipewire, so OBS has nothing to display here. You won't be sharing your screen to anyone just yet.

Another issue I encountered is the lack of any sudo graphical prompt: anytime I needed to install a package or update the system, I had to use the command line.

I also got some inconsistencies in the place where menus appeared, there were also a few things that I couldn't find, like changing the keyboard layout in the Wayland session, the "layouts" tab doesn't appear in the settings where it should be. The gestures of Cinnamon also don't work here for now, you can enable them, but they won't do anything.

The hot corners did work though, with their nice animations and features, but there were some weird graphical things happening. Some settings pages also seemed to have some sort of infinite scroll and didn't stop at their own content, which was a bit weird.

After that, I tried the Wayland session on Nvidia, and, all the problems I had experienced previously were still there, obviously, because they all are missing features in that experimental session, so no reason to expect them to work better here. But I also didn't get any other issue that I didn't see in the wayland session with the Mesa drivers.

So just as a little experiment, I also decided to run a game in the Wayland session, namely Warhammer 40K Mechanicus:

• Wayland + Intel: 25-32 FPS
• Wayland + Nvidia: 60-65 FPS
• X11 + Intel: 32-37 FPS
• X11 + Nvidia: 65-75 FPS

Ok, so now, let's talk about the other changes in Linux Mint 21.3. In terms of apps updates, Hypnotix, the TV watching app now lets you set channels as favorites. You can also create your own custom TV channels if you want.

Cinnamon will also now let you download Actions. These are add-ons for the file manager, that will appear in the right click context menu, letting you do, well, custom actions.

Warpinator, the file sharing app now lets you connect to a device manually by just entering its IP address of scanning a QR code. The Sticky Notes app can now be managed by DBus, meaning you can manage notes using scripts, and the bulk rename tool of Mint now supports drag and drop and thumbnails.

As per the desktop itself, you can now use 75% fractional scaling on X11 if you want that, you can also set keybinds to change the window opacity again, you can disable stylus buttons if you use that sort of hardware, and gestures got a bit better with the ability to set a gesture to zoom in on the desktop.

The average liter of bottled water has nearly a quarter million invisible pieces of ever so tiny nanoplastics, detected and categorized for the first time by a microscope using dual lasers.

Scientists long figured there were lots of these microscopic plastic pieces, but until researchers at Columbia and Rutgers universities did their calculations they never knew how many or what kind. Looking at five samples each of three common bottled water brands, researchers found particle levels ranged from 110,000 to 400,000 per liter, averaging at around 240,000 according to a study in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These are particles that are less than a micron in size. There are 25,400 microns — also called micrometers because it is a millionth of a meter — in an inch. A human hair is about 83 microns wide.

Previous studies have looked at slightly bigger microplastics that range from the visible 5 millimeters, less than a quarter of an inch, to one micron. About 10 to 100 times more nanoplastics than microplastics were discovered in bottled water, the study found.

. . .

Offensive vs. Defensive Nationalism

This conflict shows a harmful confusion, among the Russians and their supporters, between the state as a nation in the ethnic sense and the state as an administrative entity.

A state that wants to base its legitimacy on cultural unity must be small; it is otherwise doomed to meet the hostility of others. A Francophone Swiss citizen, although culturally linked to his or her language, does not aspire to belong to France, and France does not try to invade French-speaking Switzerland under this pretext. Further, national identities can change quickly: Francophone Belgians have a different identity from French people. France itself went through an operation of internal colonialism to destroy Provençal, Languedoc, Picard, Savoyard, Breton, and other cultures and eradicate their languages under a centralized identity. Nationality is never defined and never fixed; administration is.

Cultural unity can make sense, but only in the form of something reduced such as a city-state –I would even go so far as to say that a state only works well in this way. In this case, nationalism is defensive — Catalan, Basque or Christian Lebanese — but in the case of a large state like Russia, nationalism becomes offensive. Notice that under the Pax Romana or the Pax Ottomana, there were no large states, but city-states gathered in an empire whose role was distant. But there is loose empire and rigid nation-state like empire, the latter being represented by Russia .

. . .

The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return.

As the cracked and baking river bank towers up on either side of us, Oliveira Tikuna is starting to have doubts about this journey. He’s trying to get to his village, in a metal canoe built to navigate the smallest creeks of the Amazon.

Bom Jesus de Igapo Grande is a community of 40 families in the middle of the forest and has been badly affected by the worst drought recorded in the region.

There was no water to shower. Bananas, cassava, chestnuts and acai crops spoiled because they can’t get to the city fast enough.

And the head of the village, Oliveira’s father, warned anyone elderly or unwell to move closer to town, because they are dangerously far from a hospital.

Oliveira wanted to show us what was happening. He warned it would be a long trip.

But as we turn from the broad Solimões river into the creek that winds towards his village, even he is taken aback. In parts it’s reduced to a trickle no more than 1m (3.3ft) wide. Before long, the boat is lodged in the river bed. It’s time to get out and pull.

. . .

Archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20231222185134/https://www.npr.org/2023/12/22/1221128897/masha-gessen-essay-israel-gaza-germany-hannah-arendt-prize

Prominent Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen received a prestigious award for political thought over the weekend, in a ceremony that almost didn't happen due to backlash over their recent writings on Israel-Gaza.

Israel's air-and-ground assault on Gaza has killed more than 20,000 people in the 10 weeks since the Hamas-led attack on Israel killed some 1,200 people and took more than 240 others hostage.

Gessen, who is Jewish and whose family lost loved ones in the Holocaust, has been criticized for a New Yorker essay published earlier this month in which they likened the Gaza Strip to the WWII-era ghettos that Nazis developed to segregate and control Jewish people in occupied Europe.

Gessen argues in the essay that treating the Holocaust as a "singular event," unlike anything that has occurred before or after in history, not only is incorrect but makes it impossible to learn lessons from the Holocaust that are needed to prevent future genocides.

. . .