Planet Russell

A whole decade ago I blogged about a taxonomy of cliches in space opera, with a considerable checklists of things to watch out for in the space opera I was just then starting to work on.

This was almost entirely a background task for most of that time. During the period I was poking at the new space opera project I wrote: the Empire Games trilogy, the New Management trilogy, A Conventional Boy, The Labyrinth Index and The Regicide Report. So, nine other novels. Meanwhile the space opera went through two and a half rewrites, spawned a spin-off novel, and the spin-off novel is now getting its second rewrite, because Reasons (it has to be perfect: also, I'm going to go back to the original space opera next and finish that, too, probably next year, not to mention already having the first 50,000 words of a sequel.).

But anyway: the space opera project has resulted in maybe a third of a million words of fiction so far, and absolutely humongous quantities of world-building work. Which is why I'm now revisiting my earlier thoughts on space opera, to try to better understand what I'm doing here.

First, some clarification. What even is space opera, when it's at home?

While there's no short, concise definition of space opera, there's an extensive monograph on Space Opera in the SF Encyclopedia, tracing its roots back to the US pulp magazine sector around 1900 and following it to 1941, when Wilson Tucker defined it as the appropriate term for the "hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn": alternatively, space-adventure stories which have a calculatedly romantic element.

Let's stick a magnifying glass on top of that last phrase. Romaniticism in this context does not have anything to do with the romance genre of fiction (which focusses on love and relationships). Rather it's a shout-out to the romantic movement of the 18th to 19th centuries and its modern descendants, which prioritize passion, intuition, and individualism over social convention—the pursuit of beauty entails an interest in the exotic and mysterious, a celebration of the heroic and the divine, respect for the supernatural, and arguably the will to power and worship of force that took a darker turn in the fascist and totalitarian movements of the 20th century. Stick starships and light sabres and vast vistas of time and space on top of this and you can get an impression of where it's going.

As a romantic genre, space opera requires its protagonists to have enough agency (personal autonomy) to break out of their quotidian setting and have adventures—travel is a big part of this, for it cuts them free of the ties that bind, leaves family behind, and promises escape. To which end, the spaceship is central in space opera just as the sailing ship was key to the age of (ahem) sail. Trying to imagine Moby Dick or Master and Commander without sailing ships is like trying to imagine Star Trek or Star Wars without starships.

You can write romantic adventure-focussed SF without starships (use stargates/wormholes or just set it on a planet where adventure-shaped activities dominate the plot) but what you get then isn't space opera, it's a planetary romance.

(Planetary romance (the sub-genre Jack Vance was famous for) inherently places more constraints on what you can do with your fiction. You can't easily have a planetary setting which combines long travel times, high energy technologies and high population density, for example: long travel times imply no fast vehicles (no high speed rail or air travel, never mind spaceships), which are a side-effect of high energy technologies (internal combustion, gas turbines, big-ass electrical generators and HV grid of any kind) and you can't easily get to any of those things without a sufficiently high population density to support the industries that make them feasible (not just engineering and factories but universities and schools with mass literacy and mining) which in turn implies advanced agriculture—you've got to feed those cities somehow. (Memo to self: hunt down James Burke's Connections on video (they're somewhere on YouTube) and re-watch the series.) It also makes it difficult to justify sub-settings with wildly divergent levels of technology because that stuff leaks—to keep it out you need a North Korean level hermit kingdom, or totally impenetrable jungles that haven't been penetrated by colonialists, or something of that level. (NB: I have found a workaround for this, but I'm not going to spoiler the coming novels!)

Ultimately economics are your enemy if you want to write convincing romanticist fiction without turning into a fantasy-without-the-magic secondary world setting: all it takes is one country inventing capitalism and/or imperialism to muck it up for everybody else). And economics fucks with space opera too: ask yourself what markets plausibly exist for goods and services transported across interstellar distances, and after digesting Paul Krugman's Theory of Interstellar Trade (PDF) you may be left scratching your head.

My go-to answer for economics in space opera is that interstellar expansion/colonization is most plausibly driven by (a) religion ("manifest destiny" is a religious belief, built atop Genesis 9:7), or (b) escapist colonialism (but only if travel is cheap and compatible biospheres are abundant). In third place we probably get pyramid schemes (eg. Neptune's Brood by some guy called Stross: prior art for that one existed in the shape of colonial pyramid schemes, eg. the Darien Scheme which bankrupted Scotland, or the South Sea Bubble, which nearly bankrupted the British government a generation later). Then a long way down the list we get to trade in Veblen Goods, and maybe—if interstellar transport is very cheap—recreation. What the latter two items have in common is that they're status signifiers—the wealthy have been having yachting adventures while the peasants labor on their estates to pay for them for a very long time, and as for Veblen Goods, Faberge eggs are pretty obvious. So we have status as a driver for space opera: a side-effect of hierarchical social structures where the elite seek to maintain their status by signaling their affluence in various ways.

Did I mention hierarchical social structures and capitalism? The thing about capitalism is that it's a totalizing ideology, like the divine right of kings, or religious fundamentalism. It seeks converts, it refuses to be gainsaid, and it confers a competitive advantage on cultures that adopt it (as opposed to those that reject it). Yet, as Ursula le Guin said, "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings..."

Space opera embraces the romanticist outlook. This is inherently problematic, for it is capable of spawning totalitarian nightmares. To understand this point, I dare you to read Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto from 1909 and not recognize it both as a masterpiece of romantic rhetoric and as one of the founding texts of Fascism—very specifically the Italian Fascist movement (Nazism and Spanish clerico-fascism were later tumors on the rancid politics of violence and misogyny that Marinetti unleashed).

It's not possible to examine space opera, or planetary romance, and not acknowledge the pernicious fascistic imagery in both subgenres. Michael Moorcock wrote a magisterial essay about this nexus in the wake of Star Wars (the first movie): I strongly recommend reading his Starship Stormtroopers before pressing on if you're not already familiar with it.

Pace Le Guin, it is possible to write space opera that doesn't pander to fascism directly, as the late Iain M. Banks demonstrated. But even in his magisterial Culture series the pustules of fascism can easily be seen on the faces of the Culture's adversaries: from the Idiran imperialists to the Empire of Azad, perhaps most clearly in the character of the Affront, it takes a bad dose of fascism to introduce the romanticist element necessary for space opera to be perpetrated. Otherwise you're left with something like Inversions, which is a Culture novel with merely homeopathic traces of space opera remaining. Incidentally I make no apologies for assuming a familiar with the Culture novels on the part of the reader: if you haven't read it already, you're missing out, because it's the nearest thing I've seen to a refutation of the core conceit of might-makes-right inherent in the fascist strain of space opera. Iain wrote A Few Notes on the Culture in 1993 to explain what he was about: in particular, I was struck by this summary: The Culture, in its history and its on-going form, is an expression of the idea that the nature of space itself determines the type of civilisations which will thrive there. ... Essentially, the contention is that our currently dominant power systems cannot long survive in space; beyond a certain technological level a degree of anarchy is arguably inevitable and anyway preferable.

Totalizing ideologies like capitalism or Christian Nationalism aren't immutable, and opposition is possible. They rely on a perception of inescapability on the part of their subjects, and space opera should be the ideal fictional vehicle for escapism from such certainties: if our protagonists can board a starship and flee, there is in principle no reason why they can't shed the chains of a pernicious ideological system.

Now I want to cut to a different question. What about the human-scale story?

Space opera isn't usually a genre of high conceptual merit that tries to tell us something about the world we live in. It can be, in the hands of a determined author who knows what they're doing (I'm thinking specifically of Iain Banks, of Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix, of some of Alastair Reynolds' work—notably House of Suns) but it's more often deployed as a giant shiny backdrop for human-scale drama. Fiction is generally the art of confabulating plausible lies that illuminate the human condition, but stars and galaxies exist on a very superhuman scale: if we took them seriously as a setting they'd dwarf the merely human concerns of the protagonists—the emotional cursors that traverses the story universe—into insignificance, as in the more philosophical works of Olaf Stapledon. (For a fine example, see Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear.) Most of us don't have the imaginative flexibility to conceive of time scales significantly longer than a human lifespan and vistas larger than a single planet (and even that is a recent development: I think before mass intercontinental air travel our imaginative horizons were far more constrained). So a common problem in space opera is for the scale of distances to collapse: modern authors tend to fall back on the durations of international air travel, rather than thinking in terms of age-of-sail voyages, let alone more realistic interstellar durations at slower than light speeds. (Honorable exception to that one: Alastair Reynolds, and to a lesser extent, Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Worlds stories and Ken Macleod's Engines of Light tetralogy.)

A side-effect of the romantic outlook is a demand for individual human agency—that is, that despite the vast scale of the backdrop, the protagonists have the ability to effect change, or at least to change their own circumstances. Here in the real world most of us are trapped by situational constraints: our employment system is parodied as wage slavery for a reason. Opportunities for adventure are scarce, and your chances of self-betterment are minimal. (You can found a business and spend 30 years trying to become a millionaire, most likely to end in ignominious failure, or you play the lottery, be it by explicit gambling or by speculation on the cryptocurrency markets, but the game is rigged against you from the start.) Money in large quantities, as capital, exerts a gravitational attraction and we are individually just dust particles. So space opera tends to focus on protagonists who acquire individual agency, have adventures that take them away from the quotidian grind, and let them change themselves or the worlds around them.

A classic plot skeleton for this sort of fiction is the Hero's Journey template, as popularized by Joseph Campbell and demonstrated by George Lucas in Star Wars, and it's less-familiar-to-many sibling, the Heroine's Journey: interestingly the Heroine's Journey can be seen as an explicit rejection of the frenetic diktat of Futurism even though it's compatible with space opera, as demonstrated magisterially by Lois McMaster Bujold, whose Vorkosigan series is bookended by a Heroine's Journey narrative (starting in Shards of Honor, continuing in Barrayar, finally winding up in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen)—and which holds the singular record for most Hugo awards for a single SF series (so this isn't just my opinion). Character development lives at the heart of both these templates, and I suspect you can't have a working space opera without the scope for such changes.

To briefly hark back to the Futurist/fascist imagery inherent in space opera: the Vorkosigan series is arguably Ruritanian romantic space opera set against a recognizable 19th century central European flavoured empire. (It's no accident that space opera emerged at the end of the age of empires, the turn of the 20th century.) Our main viewpoint character, Cordelia Vorkosigan, is a woman with modern sensibilities who effects change in that society to great effect, working largely behind the scenes as a noblewoman in that setting—indeed, that's the nature of her modified Heroine's Journey arc. (Assuming, of course, that you buy either the Hero's Journey or Heroine's Journey templates, both which are heavily influenced by Jungian psychology and early-to-mid 20th century conceptions of masculine and feminine gender identity, all of which are highly problematic in my opinion.)

Ultimately, though, the romanticist aesthetic is inimical to social convention and formalism—and also to sustainability. The romantic impulse renders space opera antithetical to solarpunk. A fictional setting composed entirely of wild individualists isn't going to end up as some sort of libertarian utopia, it's going to be a cat ranch: meanwhile someone needs to stay behind and tend the home fires, someone has to mind the grain silos on that "small farming planet", someone else needs to manage the shipyard that repairs the interstellar freighter. There's a lot of implied background in space opera, a civilization with enough surplus wealth production to build and operate starships, and this implies some degree of continuity—continuity of biosphere stability (or there'll be nothing to eat), continuity of infrastructure (including education/apprenticeships, to train/socialize the starship crews), continuity of the society our adventurer-protagonists emerged from. Social structures, governance, and politics are a given in every human society, and the romantic movement emerged from a very specific context that coincided with the age of enlightenment and the industrial revolution. Our protagonists are either privileged enough to transcend the daily grind or sufficiently motivated to take a hideous gamble with their own safety. And this tells us something about the constraints within which space operatic storytelling takes place—and my work-in-progress in particular.

Any questions?

Hi. Sorry about the silence: I've been busy redrafting the current-newest novel in progress (it's back with my agent), and now I just flipped over to rewrite the much-rewritten novel before that (which ran into a brick wall in late 2025 for structural reasons, and which I set aside while I was working on the next book, figured out a fix for in late 2026, and am now fixing).

As you can imagine, slaving over manuscripts isn't the only thing I do on a computer. Along the way I'm browsing the web--or what's left of it these days that isn't clickbait nonsense and LLM-generated slop--and slowly accumulating a mass of perpetually open browser tabs with stuff that bears future consideration. These are not story ideas, but they're elements of background or texture that I think might conceivably come in handy in a future project. And because I'm currently working on a pair of space operas, this list is astrophysics-oriented ...

(Hint: click the links, there's some truly crazy stuff here, most of it new since 1990.)

This century is a golden age of exoplanetography. Back in 1990 there were zero tentatively identified exoplanets. But the advent of orbiting telescopes with significant light gathering power (most famously, the Hubble Space Telescope which launched that year) has shown us that not only are solar systems with multiple planets quite common, but that our own solar system is that weird kid in the corner of the playground who nobody wants to hang out with: there is an absolute zoo of exoplanet types out there. While Hubble wasn't specifically an exoplanet-hunting tool it was follwed by NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes, and just-launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, ESA's Cheops and coming PLATO) and ARIEL space telescopes, and of course the very large joint NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope.

Exoplanets are identified by perturbations they induce in the light curve emitted by their primary, either because they pass in front of the star or cause it to wobble slightly as the massive object orbits around its centre of mass. The consequence of having a bunch of infrared telescopes outside the atmosphere is that the count of known exoplanets as of October 2026 hit 6,445 confirmed in 4,834 planetary systems, of which 1,070 solar systems contain more than one planet. And this is only scratching the surface: to be detectable in this way, an exoplanet needs to be very massive and orbit very close--a Hot Jupiter. So of course Hot Jupiters are what we have mostly found so far. "In general their prevalence decreases exponentially as a function of the absolute stellar magnitude:" they're most common around F- and G-type stars, somewhat rarer around K-type, and very rare around red dwarfs.

While Hot Jupiters aren't of direct interest in writing human-centered SF--they're profoundly hostile environments for interstellar canned monkeys to explore--they have weird sequellae. If they end up too close to their primary star, they might undergo atmospheric stripping, leaving behind a Chthonian Planet, a rocky or metallic super-Earth such as TOI-849 b, which is about 40 times as massive as Earth but only 3.4 times Earth's radius. Alternatively, TOI-849 b might be a Mega-Earth rather than an eroded gas giant. Other Mega-Earths are a lot weirder: PSR J1719−1438 b is a pulsar planet, orbiting the millisecond pulsar PSR J1719−1438. what makes it weird is not only the fact that it orbits a millisecond pulsar (pulsars being supernova remnants, their original planets should have been vapourized during the stellar explosion that gave birth to it), but that it might be a planet that evolved from another star: the outer layers of the star were siphoned off by the more massive pulsar, leaving behind a core roughly as massive as Jupiter but a fraction of its diameter, seemingly composed mainly of crystalline carbon at a much higher density than diamond, with some oxygen concentrated in its surface.

(Don't bother writing this into your fic as a place for your hero to be exiled to mine hyperdiamond, though: it orbits its pulsar primary about twice as far out as our moon orbits the Earth, so it's probably baked by hard radiation: PSR J2719-1438 is spinning at roughly 10,000 rpm so inducing insane electrical currents in anything nearby, and your hero would be squished flat by Jupiter-adjacent surface gravity.)

A Hot Neptune is another type of common-so-far exoplanet, an Ice Giant (like, oh, our own Neptune and Uranus--a gas giant composed of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium) orbiting within 1AU of its primary. They're easier to find than actual Ice Giants because they transit their primary far more often than planets in distant orbits (Neptune's orbital period, for example, is 164.8 Earth years). Some Ultra-Hot Neptunes orbit so close to their primary that temperatures on the day side exceed 2000 celsius, and their atmosphere is probably metal-rich, with clouds of silicate: LTT 9779 b completes an orbit of its star in less than a day. At noon, it's hot enough to boil lead: it probably rains molten iron.

We also have some promising candidate Super-Earths (Earth-like but more massive planets, too small to be gas giants, probably possessing a rocky surface or hydrosphere as well as an atmosphere) and Hycean Planets, super-Earths with liquid water beneath a hydrogen ocean. (Note that water undergoes some whacky and exciting phase changes at increasing pressure: in particular, above 1,000 to 10,000 times atmospheric pressure solid phases predominate, and the high density phases don't float on liquid water (being dense). So below a certain depth the oceans will probably turn to slush, then extremely weird ice. But don't worry, our kind of life is based on enzymes that can be denatured by that kind of pressure regime.) Hycean worlds are nevertheless promising candidates for supporting life, although it'd probably be entirely aquatic.

Exomoons are a possibility, but as of 2026 none have been confirmed. If exoplanets are themselves hard to detect using current methods, exomoons are worse: Doppler spectroscopy doesn't work, although there's a list of exomoon candidates. One thing's for sure, there are a lot more moons in our solar system than was previously thought (Saturn alone has 293 moons). So it seems reasonable to posit the existence of many exomoons, of many types not found in our own system.

Rogue Planets or iPMOs (isolated Planetary Mass Objects) are planets that have formed in isolation or been ejected from a solar system; they're not bound to any star, and are less massive than a Brown Dwarf--failed stars too small to fuse hydrogen into helium, but massive enough to support deuterium fusion or even lithium fusion. There are hundreds of known candidate iPMOs, many of them ranging in mass between Earth and the lower end of Brown Dwarfs: some of them appear to be binaries, and it's reasonable to expect iPMOs with their own moon systems to exist.

(Do not seek out an iPMO as a setting for a spa resort: they're likely extremely dark and very cold, although they may retain a thick hydrogen atmosphere and enough residual core radioisotope decay to maintain a surface temperature above the melting point of water.)

Finally these are just the commoner types of planet in the exoplanet bestiary! Once we stop looking at boring old stars things begin to get really weird. Just as iPMOs don't necessarily form in the protoplanetary disk surrounding a new star but may form in substellar nurseries that birth brown dwarfs, we have to consider the Blanet or black hole planet.

Galaxies such as our own nucleate around a supermassive black hole such as Sagittarius A*, at the core of our own galaxy, which has a mass of around 4.3 million solar masses. (Other supermassive black holes may range up to billions of solar masses.) We know these objects exist, from observation of their radio emissions and studies of the orbits of stars passing close to them, and the holes at the heart of an Active Galactic Nucleus are believed to generate their emissions from the accretion disk around the hole.

Blanets are planets that form in the accretion disk around a sufficiently large black hole, provided the disk is dim enough not to disrupt the process (posited, more than 0.01 parsecs out from the event horizon--about 2000 astronomical units, roughly 50 times further out than Pluto). They're posited to be at least 20 Earth masses, and may be stable in orbits with periods of up to hundreds of thousands of years. They're believed to be unlikely to accumulate an atmosphere and become a gas giant due to the black hole scavenging gases. And they can be heated by either radiation from the black hole's accretion disk, or (this is whacky) the blueshifted cosmic microwave background if they're close enough to the hole. Best part: the outer regions of AGN disks may be prolific birthplaces for planets.

(Blanets aren't the only things that can form in an AGN accretion disk. Stars are likely to be common as well, including massive ones that rapidly undergo core collapse and result in smaller-than-supermassive stellar black holes. And where you get star formation, you get protoplanetary disks and therefore planets as well.)

Anyway, just sticking a peg in the ground: a good chunk of the action of my work-in-progress Starter Pack is set on a terraformed Earth-mass moon orbiting a Hycean planet of roughly Neptune's mass orbiting its star in the triple phase zone for water (i.e. where water can exist as ice, liquid, or vapour). The moon in question has spin (presumably it got kicked off by a collision with another proto-moon while the moon system was forming), so a magnetosphere, and tides to keep plate tectonics going--but this time tides from its primary planet, not a large sub-moon of its own.

But that's enough about me. What insane exoplanet facts can you add to this pool?

 I've been in this fight for a civilization that's been very good to us, bequeathed by the post WWII "Greatest (GI Bill) Generation"... the only exceptional global experiment in flat-fair enlightenment. A flawed but incrementally improving society and nation, at least somewhat dedicated to science, fact and developing goodwill... that's been steadyingly dismantled by servants of foreign powers and haters of modernity.

Time is short and so, tonight, I'll just post some links and then some JPEGs that might be of use to the few of you who know a fence-sitter or Republican who shows glimmering signs of residual sanity and patriotism.  Some other JPEGs were featured at the end of my previous, blog about UFO / UAP fetish cultism.

Everyone is urging everyone else to vote! And sure, do that. Today, maybe check your registration, especially if you are in a red state. And (maybe?) gently see if your local MAGA's wife might be interested in ways to quietly cancel his...

    == First... for those of you who still read... ==

1) The context for all this - I've long asserted - is a centuries-old cultural schism in the American psyche between those who feel pro- or anti-modernity. Today's MAGA love of zillionaire oligarchs and "strong" foreign tyrants is a romantic, pro-feudalism trait carried from 6000 years of hell that we only recently escaped, via science and the Enlightenment. 

In the 1770s, this manifested as loyalty to King George. In the 1860s half a million poor southern Shiites died for their "Gone With The Wind" plantation/ slaver lords. Today there's astounding/horrifying Republican nostalgia for... Hitler. Alas, history shows they back down to accept "malice toward none" and zillion$ of net benefits from Blue America, but only AFTER an Appomattox.

If that historical patter interests you, see my earlier posting.

and.  http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/09/phases-of-american-civil-war.html

2)  Far too little is made of the Turpitude Gap. If we set aside Utah & Alaska & Illinois as outliers (or even if we don’t) average rates of almost every turpitude are far higher across Red-run states than Blue-led ones: from gambling, addiction, STDs, domestic violence and murder to teen sex, divorce and net tax parasitism on the rest of the nation. National Republican administrations are always spendthrift wastrels, sending deficits skyrocketing, while Democratic ones are always far more fiscally responsible. Always. And military readiness which always plummets (as now) under GOP regimes since Reagan. I welcome $$$ wagers on any of that. (See one of the jpegs, below.)

3) Adam Smith - so-called Market Conservatives never mention him anymore... or the words 'fair competition. If here here now, Adam Smith would be a flaming Democrat.  Liberals, you must reclaim him!

4) If you'd care to interrogate your own ideology, as an honest person would, try my Questionnaire on Ideology?

5) Here's a whole BOOK of fresh TACTICS that Democratic politicians seem incapable of ever innovating... 

6) Only how about a more concise and recent set of pragmatic measures that Dems could shoot for - and a few would not even be thwarted by Trump vetoes! 

Here are my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms. I promise some will make you go 'huh!' And Again... BOY do the leaders of the good side in this struggle need fresh ideas!

      == Attack of the JPEGs! ==  

Here are more examples that I've collected. Jpeg-box memes are a necessary art form, because the alien brain-suppression ray that I spoke of last time has clearly given us the attention spans of fruit flies.

Use them in good health and for love of country and our children and the world.

MAGAs will shriek all this is fake!  But they tend to back off when you demand that they step up, like actuaal men, and wager $$$ stakes over any of these!

And finally... for now...

To all of the above, MAGA's have one response... they are loyal to DT because he gives them one thing... Our tears. He galls the smartypants fact people whom they despise. But they forget 1781. They forget 1865. They forget 1945 and 1964. Lessons their cult must learn once again. They will find out that Americans with IQs above room temperature have been endlessly generous... but are now fed-up...

They have roused a sleeping giant and filled us with a terrible resolve.

Researchers set up a fake start-up company to study fraudulent North Korean IT workers.

We still get a fair bit of old school ASP .Net webforms code, which was cutting edge about twenty years ago, but remains a collection of bad choices that tried to make web programming feel like desktop programming. As an aside, what a reversed world we live in today, where everyone uses Electron and our desktop programming feels like web programming.

In any case, Thomas sends us some pretty ugly webforms code.

Me.Session("Albumid") = CType(e.Item.FindControl("lblAlbumID"), Label).Text
If Not Me.Session("Albumid") Is Nothing And Not Me.Session("Uid") Is Nothing Then

    Me.strDelSQL = "Delete from tbl_Albumshare_Mast where Album_Id=" & Me.Session("Albumid") & " and Sharer_ID=" & Me.Session("Uid")
    Me.objDB.ExecQry(Me.strDelSQL)
    Me.Response.Redirect("frmmyalbumshare.aspx", False)

End If

Broadly, the goal of this code is to take an album ID from the user and delete an album from the database where the ID matches and the album is owned by this user. And everything is horrible here.

First, the use of e.Item.FindControl to look up the input field is suspicious. That's usually what you do when you've dynamically generated controls, but I don't think that's happening here. Because we use FindControl we have to cast it to Label, and only then can we get the text property. That itself raises a question, because why are user inputs getting stored in a label?. That's not what labels are for. They're clearly doing some sort of hacky lookup/autocomplete field thing and using the label to actually store the input, but presenting the user with a different UI for picking it. Not an uncommon pattern in those days, but a hidden field would be a more typical way of doing it.

We then construct a SQL injection vulnerability and run it against the database.

Then, we use a redirect to send the user to a different page. Again, a common thing to do back then, but a thing I hate: using HTTP 300 codes to redirect users as a form of navigation is awkward and weird.

Of course, none of that is precisely the WTF here. The real WTF is the developer apparently hates local variables. strDelSQL is a member variable- why do we need to store this in a class member? Especially because in the page lifecycle, we handle one request and then die; either this is unnecessary, or far, far worse, some other code is looking at this SQL query later. But far worse than a badly scoped variable is the overuse of session variables.

Thomas sends us this block as a representation, but the developer responsible just stored everything they could in a session variable. While in this example, "Uid" probably makes sense, "Albumid" definitely doesn't. And in other cases, basically every user form input gets stored in a session variable, and even worse: they're often used as loop variables. while Session("myloop") < 5 type stuff.

And finally, we already know I hate hungarian notation, but here we have a client side form holdover that pollutes the user experience: the URL they get redirected to has a hungarian frm prefix. It's bad enough that you're using hungarian notation, but don't show that to your users! They really don't need to see everything.

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1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Joel Addison (President)
• Neill Cox (Vice-President)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Jonathan Woithe (Secretary)
• Elena Williams (Council)
• Harrison Oates (Council)
• Miles Goodhew (Council)

Apologies 

• None

Not Present

• None

Meeting opened at 20:05 AEDT (UT+1100) by Joel  and quorum was achieved.

Minutes taken by Jonathan.

2. Log of correspondence

• [LACTTE] From ACNC, 8 Oct 2026: News from the ACNC. No action required.
• [LACTTE] From Russell Coker, 8 Oct 2026: Suggestion to use linux.au domain to provide short names for subcommittees.
• [LACTTE] From Russell Coker, 8 Oct 2026: Wiki for LUGs?
• [Private communication] From Lloyd Handyside, 8 Oct 2026: Follow up to discussion about a proposed grant. No action required from LA at this point.
• [LACTTE] From Duste, 8 Oct 2026: Questions about the LA grant program. Jonathan has responded.
• [LACTTE] From Guoyi Zhang, 8 Oct 2026: Thanks and appreciation for the awarding of the Willi26 grant. No action required.
• [LACTTE] From Fraser Tweedale, 8 Oct 2026: Apology for missing the Subcommittee review at the 7 Oct 2026 Council meeting. EO2027 update provided (see “Items for noting”).
• [LACTTE] From Kathy Reid, 10 Oct 2026: Resignation from Media and Comms subcommittee.
• [LACTTE] From Bitwarden, 10 Oct 2026: Verification code. This was for Joel.
• [LACTTE] From Guoyi Zhang, 10 Oct 2026: Acknowledging receipt of grant funds.
• [LACTTE] From Owen Cronin, 12 Oct 2026: Looking for assistance with a software project. Jonathan has responded.
• [Secretary] From Mux, 13 Oct 2026: Notification of changes to terms and conditions.
• [LACTTE] From Wende Reid, 13 Oct 2026: Request for information and support to migrate a laptop used to run a business to Linux. Jonathan has responded.
• [Secretary] From NGOs1, 13 Oct 2026: More spam.
• [LACTTE] From Fraser Tweedale, 15 Oct 2026: authorisation request for EO2027 related payment. THis has been dealt with,
•  [LACTTE] From Digital Pacific, 16 Oct 2026: renewal reminder for linux.org.au. In hand (admin team).
• [LACTTE] From Digital Pacific, 18 Oct 2026: tax invoice for linux.org.au renewal. Automatic payment attempt will be made on 2 Nov 2026.
• [LACTTE] From Miguel Jacq, 19 Oct 2026: Grant application for KEEN project. Community consultation opened 19 Oct 2026, council evaluation due on 4 Nov 2026. Jonathan has followed up with some suggestions to strengthen the application. Miguel has subsequently withdrawn the grant application. He intends to resubmit after filling in more detail.
• [LACTTE] From Kathy Reid, 19 Oct 2026: Australian government consultation on proposed gTLDs. Information only, no action required.
• [Secretary] From OSI, 19 Oct 2026: OSI newsletter.
• [LACTTE] From Auditor, 19 Oct 2026: Confirming setup of new arrangements.
• [Secretary] From Laxman Acharya, 20 Oct 2026: a Nepalese programmer seeking travel funding to the Junction 2026 conference in Helsinki. Jonathan has responded.

3. Subcommittee reviews

None.

4. Items for discussion

Use of linux.au domain to provide short names for subcommittees

• Raised by Russell Coker on 8 Oct 2026.
• Russell Coker has suggested f.linux.au be used by Flounder.
• Council is concerned about the potential difficulties in managing subdomains of this nature.
• Linux Australia currently provides domains for services the organisation runs or events auspiced by Linux Australia. This may be reviewed in future but for now we’re not looking to give out domains for other purposes.
• Jonathan to respond.

Wiki for LUGs

• Raised by Russell Coker on 8 Oct 2026.
• Is there a need for a wiki for all LUGs?
• Should the wiki.luv.asn.au instance be generalised to create an LA LUG wiki?
• There is a reluctance to take on responsibility of running a generic wiki due to maintenance overheads.
• LA is happy to provide a VM for affiliated groups at no charge to use as a wiki host if required.
• It is noted that the LUV wiki can be managed how LUV wishes to. If they would like to generalise it for other Open Source groups then this is fine.
• The level of demand for space on a common wiki among LA-affiliated groups is not known, but appears to be low.
• Jonathan to respond.

Media and Comms subcommittee membership

• Kathy Reid is stepping down from the Media and Comms team.
• A new media strategy is possibly required.

MOTION: that Linux Australia thanks Kathy for her time leading the Media and Comms subcommittee over the recent years.
Moved: Joel
Seconded: Neill
Motion passed

Joel will respond to Kathy.

• The Media and Comms subcommittee now has no members. Kathy is documenting processes and identifying what needs to be done. Council will review this when it becomes available and base the next steps on this.

Membership backlog

• There is a large list of membership applications to work through (207 as of today).
• Council will establish a standing agenda item to review applications which have been submitted in the previous fortnight.
• Joel will establish CiviCRM permissions required to facilitate this.
• Once this is done the backlog will be worked through. Elena has done a first pass at evaluating the legitimacy of the queued applications.
• Neill outlined the workflow used to approve membership.
• Consider adding a question to the membership form to ask for an applicant’s connection to the community. Due to linkage requirements back to CiviCRM this may take a little time to establish.
• Separately, the membership renewal process within CiviCRM needs to be revisited and fixed.
• Joel to confirm when required permissions are in place.

5. Items for noting

EO2027 update (provided by Fraser on 8 Oct 2026)

Registrations

• On track. 30 paid up, ~$17k.
• Early birds will close Oct 18; social media and email announcements planned.

Sponsorship

• $65,300 agreed (~50% of target); ~$35k paid.
• Many more approaches and a few conversations going on, but I’m not yet comfortable with where we’re at.
• AARNET x QUT planning has kicked off (later than ideal but no known blockers, and we have access to campus network as a fallback).
• **ASK**: Does anyone have sponsorship contacts at Google, Meta, Microsoft, Atlassian or other “heavy hitters”, they could share? [Joel has responded]

Promotion

• First keynote announcement soon! (3 locked in, still seeking 1 or 2 locknote speakers)
• We are sponsoring DDD Brisbane (developer conf, 5 Oct). We get s a logo/link on web, social media shout-outs, flyers in every swag bag, and attendee contact details (opt-in), plus two tickets to attend. We’ll also issue a discount code (EB prices), to entice, and let us measure ROI.
• Lots and lots of getting out to meetups and confs.

Program

• Very strong finish to CFP – 163 proposals in total.
• Session Selection Committee expected to finalise program weekend of 17 Oct.
• Speaker and keynote gift planning underway.
• 18 volunteer sign-ups so far (~50% of goal).

Publication of Council minutes

• All remaining Council minutes (from 14 Jun 2026 through to 7 Oct 2026) have been placed on the website as drafts.
• Neill is happy with them.
• Joel to review and publish the minutes (expected to be next week).

Meet.jit.si meeting time limit

• As of 9 Oct 2026, meetings held through meet.jit.si are limited to 95 minutes duration. https://jitsi.org/blog/changes-coming/

6. Other business

• The ASIC 490 form has been submitted with the changes to Council. It has been sent with registered mail.
• Everything is up to date at ACNC.
• Wise are insisting on a proof of business address. This is being handled by Russell.
• Confirm with the admin team that today’s RCE vulnerabilities are being dealt with.
• Harrison has put together a PR to use Australian Senate proportional voting for OCM positions.

7. In camera

• None

8. Action items

8.1 Completed Items

8.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 20:58 UT+11:00

Next meeting is scheduled for 2026-11-04 at 20:00 AEDT (UT+1100)

The post 2026-10-21 Council Meeting Minutes appeared first on Linux Australia.

1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Joel Addison (President)
• Neill Cox (Vice-President)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Jonathan Woithe (Secretary)
• Elena Williams (Council)
• Harrison Oates (Council)
• Miles Goodhew (Council)

Apologies 

• None

Not Present

• None

Meeting opened at 20:04 AEDT (UT+1100) by Joel  and quorum was achieved.

Minutes taken by Jonathan.

2. Log of correspondence

• [LACTTE] Spams and scams from various senders. All deleted.
• [Secretary] linux-aus post approvals needed. Joel is handling these.
• [Secretary] linux-aus moderator requests awaiting action. Joel is handling these.
• [LACTTE] From Zoom, 24 Sep 2026: clarification about what Zoom Scheduler is and what is being changed. No action required.
• [LACTTE] From Harrison, 24 Sep 2026: following up to PLUG about AI submission. Awaiting response from PLUG.
• [Secretary] From Dropbox, 25 Sep 2026: changes to Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Joel to log in to keep the account alive.
• [Secretary] From NGOs1, 27 Sep 2026: LA is now included on NGOs1 (a global directory of non-profit organisations). Includes links to self-administer the listing, unsubscribe from emails, etc. Will consider it as spam and filter it.
• [LACTTE] From Bob Ansaym 28 Sep 2026: declipped audio (by proprietary AI tool) from an LCA2013 talk is available to LA if we want it. No response required or expected. Do we want to archive this? Joel will follow up in due course.
• [LACTTE] From Jack Skinner, 29 Sep 2026: pyCon AU 2027 wrapup steps. Russell to respond to finance-related questions.
• [LACTTE] From Julia Topliss, 30 Sep 2026: revised DrupalSouth budget provided, requested comments from Joel.
• [LACTTE] From Russell Stuart, 1 Oct 2026: follow up to LA W-8 form request for EO2027.
• [LACTTE] From Russell Coker, 1 Oct 2026: answering Russell Stuart’s questions about luv.asn.au.
• [LACTTE] From Amazon, 1 Oct 2026: AWS web services billing statement.
• [Secretary] From Russell Stuart, 1 Oct 2026: forwarded advice from ACNC about reporting requirements. There is no requirement to submit reports for years prior to registration. A “system error” was responsible for the notification suggesting this was needed.
• [LACTTE] From Lloyd Handyside: questions about what is acceptable for grant applications. Jonathan has sent an initial response, but a follow up is needed after discussion.
• [Secretary] From NGOs1, 3 Oct 2026: follow up to previous message.
• [LACTTE] From Digital Pacific, 4 Oct 2026. Linux.org.au domain renewal is due on 2 Nov 2026. Auto-renew is enabled so no specific action should be needed.
• [LACTTE] From Tucows, 6 Oct 2026: 30 day reminder of linux.org.au expiry. No action required.
• [Forwarded private communication] From Lloyd Handyside, 7 Oct 2026: additional information about proposed grant application.
• [LACTTE] From Nathan Morrow, 7 Oct 2026: Joomla subcommittee update.
• [LACTTE] From Jack Skinner, 7 Oct 2026: Wise has requested proof of business address, due by 21 Oct 2026.
• [LACTTE] From Yifei Zhan, 7 Oct 2026: Flounder subcommittee update.

3. Subcommittee reviews

Drupal Subcommittee 8:05 pm – Julia Topliss

• Office bearers in the new committee will be discussed in November to allow time for handover.
• Update on payment to DA for Japan conference: waiting on response from Michael. Council will contact him again.
• The subcommittee will contact LA council about some infrastructure that LA can handle financially on their behalf..

PyConAu 8:15 pm – Jack Skinner

I intend for this to be the last subcommittee update for PyCon AU 2026. Pending final payments below I intend to consider the “PyCon AU 2026” event subcommittee “wound up” as soon as payments are reconciled. That is, unless you need a formal vote between Nic, Sophie, and myself to confirm of course.

• Since the last report, we have finalised and published the academic proceedings with nine participating authors now published: https://2026.pycon.org.au/cfp/academic-proceedings.
• PyCon AU 2026 event activity has concluded and (almost) all subcommittee activities have now wound down.
• Final expenses paid today now conclude all expected expenses/reimbursements
• Two final payments are still expected:
  • Grant from BEDA – Contractually on 30 day payment terms though we received both confirmation of approval, and indication that sooner was likely. We continue to monitor.
  • Donation from Science Mob, estimated to be $6k – timeline unclear, pending ATO decision on their association wind up.
• Nic has confirmed that Xero has been reconciled, transaction coding checked (and corrected), and has emailed outstanding questions for BAS & annual financial statements etc.
• The shared google drive now has a new folder “Wind Down Documents” from the subcommittee including:
  • Contracts (Group ticket purchases, sponsorships, and other)
  • Tax invoices export from ticketing
  • A taxes report export from Pretix
• A draft submission for the 2026/27 annual report is also in the shared drive. This will need updating depending on final payments received (see questions).
• Questions relating to PyCon AU 2026 subcommittee (to be answered offline):

1. 1. For Russell: Regarding the Science Mob donation. Would you prefer to consider PyCon AU’s budget at a slightly higher projected loss (primarily in the annual report) and roll the eventual donation into LA’s general funds? My preference is to draw things to a close and have a clear line under the subcommittee’s activity. The difference is hopefully just in attribution (to which I’m not emotionally attached), and a slightly higher budget deficit from the subcommittee.
   2. Request an update to the subcommittee registry please (https://linux.org.au/get-involved/sub-committees/). Update to be:
      1. Remove “PyCon AU 2026” (and listed subcommittee members), and,
      2. Instead have “Subscribe for updates & announcements of future PyCon AU events”, and,
      3. A link with URL to be: https://2026.pycon.org.au/#subscribe (This is an embed to the LA hosted mailing list).
   3. At the conclusion of the subcommitee’s operations (within a few days), I would also like to remove public access from several drives and documents which are shared with “anyone with the link can access”. This is just a general security tidy up. Can council please confirm your processes for, task ownership of, and timelines for, making councils own copy of documents shared via this drive link, so that I can make my drive(s) private again.
   4. Similarly, there will be some handover documents and resources that will be useful to future PyCon AU event subcommittees, assuming one is submitted/approved in the future. Similar to question 3, can council confirm:
      1. whether or not Council is willing/able to be custodian of these handover documents (in lieu of publishing my personal contacts)
      2. The method by which we can provide a ‘package’ of useful ‘how to run a PyCon AU’ documents (such as budget templates, feedback survey notes, sponsorship lists, brand kit templates & resources etc). A zip in the above ‘Wind Down Documents’ folder would possibly be be simplest.

Everything Open 8:25pm – Fraser

• No report.

Admin Team 8:25 pm

• Apology.

Joomla Subcommittee 8:35 pm – Nathan Morrow

• We’ve notified the community about the postponement which was generally received without complaint.
• Otherwise it has been a fairly quiet few weeks on the event front. Expect to pick things up again over the next 2 months.
• We’ve organised a Christmas function for the Victorian members of the user group to be held in early December.
• A monthly newsletter has been running for the past 3-4 months as another communication avenue.

WordPress 8:40 pm – Wil Brown

• WordCamp Sunshine Coast is being evaluated with a team of notionally 5. Across all events, numbers are down, so it’s unclear if the economics stack up.
• A Sydney meetup was held, this time  with 10 attendees. The guest speaker was good and it was disappointing there were not more people present to hear them.
• The number cap for the social event in November has been increased to 25.
• Meetups BNE and Sunshine coast still have momentum. Others have numbers down. Will follow up in the new year to see what their plans for 2027 are.
• AI is displacing entry level WordPress activity, which is affecting the community. Other pressures are also significant contributors, including a bleak tech industry outlook in general.
• The community is dispersed with respect to communication channels. It’s hard to reach people.

Flounder 8:40 pm – Yifei Zhan

• Koneko, the shared LoongArch test server, is actively used for fixing bugs in Debian and other FOSS projects, our new member Vladimir Petko (Debian JDK team) has been fixing bugs in OpenJDK for the upcoming Debian upload with it. It’s likely the only shared LoongArch machine in Australia/New Zealand.
  The shared 44 cores build server and GPU server are seeing increased use for Debian debugging and GPU/LLM experiments. The Intel Battlemage GPU is also actively used.
•  We saw increased activity in our Matrix room around hardware and security related discussions, and a similarly increased level of engagements from the Fediverse.
• We have upcoming lectures scheduled this Saturday and in the coming weeks for porting mainline Linux to used chromebooks and the current state of Debian Edu.
• As usual we could benefit from more members. We have plans to promote cross-LUG collaboration for people in similar time zones, but attracting new people remains difficult.

4. Items for discussion

• DrupalSouth Gold Coast 2027 budget
  • Revised budget was sent by Julia Topliss on 30 Sep 2026
  • The revisions have addressed most of the concerns.
  • MOTION: that LA establishes an Event Subcommittee for Drupal South 2027 as per the provided budget.
    Moved: Joel
    Seconded: Neil
    Motion passed.

• Proposed OpenZFS adjunct event around EO2027
  • No update yet.
  • Joel will approach them soon.
• Distributing Write the Docs tickets from sponsorship package
  • Unassigned tickets will be offered to the community via an Expression Of Interest and random draw.
  • Jonathan to draft a post inviting Expressions of Interest for two tickets.
• Government submission on AI
  • https://www.pmc.gov.au/domestic-policy/office-ai/getting-it-right-building-ai-infrastructure-works-australia
  • PLUG hasn’t been back in touch. The submission is due on 9 Oct 2026 so at this stage it’s too late to proceed.
• Guide to Open Source in Australia
  • Miles contacted Felicity. She had considered applying for a grant but wasn’t sure whether she could make full use of it. Miles encouraged her to get in touch with Council if she had any questions.
  • Miles will extend an open offer for Council to help if there’s something we can do.
• Council election
  • Update about proportional voting for OCM. Harison has a commit which seems to work. It uses Australian Senate rules. Joel will fork the election module into LA’s github and Harrison will upload the patch to that repository for further review.
  • Elena has reviewed past election dates since 2005 as per her message to lactte. All these elections have had the nomination period overlap with the Christmas and New Year holiday periods.
  • EO2027 is 20-22 Jan 2027 so AGM will be 20 Jan 2027.
  • Based on historical timelines, Elena suggests:
    • Nominations: 19 Dec 2026 – 3 Jan 2026 (16 days)
    • Election: 4 – 14 Jan 2026 (11 days)
  • There is justification for extending the nominations and the election on the basis that it may assist with engagement. To this end, the Council election dates will be as follows.
    • Nominations: 12 Dec 2026 – 27 Dec 2026 (15 days)
    • Election: 28 Dec 2026 – 11 Jan 2027 (14 days)
  • Announce the election on 1 Dec 2026. Use AEDT  (Australian Eastern Daylight saving Time) UT+1100 for times.
• Grant application for the Willi26 project
  • Four community members expressed support for the grant. None were opposed.
  • MOTION: that LA approve the grant request of A$1100 to the Willi26 project for Open Access publication and dissemination.
    Moved: Jonathan
    Seconded: Miles
    Motion passed.
  • Jonathan will inform Guoyi of the outcome.
• Questions from Lloyd Handyside about LA grants:
  • Once my membership is confirmed, can I apply as project lead for an open project maintained by a company, with the company as payee?
    It is more transparent to members if the grant goes to a member. Ask whether it can be done this way.
  • Can this Project Grant fund A$1,200 of dedicated testing devices, backup storage and access materials, plus A$3,600 for independent accessibility and adult educator review and openly reusable help resources? Are there specific equipment ownership or cost/GST conditions?
    A single grant can fund multiple things.
    There are no specific equipment ownership requirements. It is intended that anything purchased stays in the service of the Open Source community by remaining accessible to the Open Source project it was originally funded for.

Jonathan will follow up with Lloyd.

5. Items for noting

• ACNC: Russell will check to see if there are any outstanding tasks..
• ASIC form 490 is to be done. Russell will see to this.
• The financial year has closed. Preliminary result is a $36k loss.
• Neill will close out the minutes he queued as secretary, and review the status of membership applications.

6. Other business

• Consider putting a note on the membership application web form to indicate that processing the application could take a few weeks.
• Questions from Jack Skinner:

1. 1. What is the expected timeline for the publishing of Council minutes backlog?
      It is being worked on and should be dealt with in the next couple of weeks.
   2. What is the timeline for the announcement of Council elections? Is there a plan to encourage increased membership engagement?
      Discussions on dates have been started and are expected to be finalised tonight or very soon after. Nominations and the election itself will be extended to encourage more participation.
   3. Which mailing list or other method is used to announce new subcommittees as per Subcommittee v3?
      Subcommittees are documented on the Subcommittee page on the LA website. They are published in a time frame agreed to with the subcommittee because often they wish to run their own launch first.
   4. How do we get LA subcommittee webpages updated? In particular, EO2026 should be EO2027, and Pycon also needs attention.
      Contact Council if it appears that edits have been overlooked. We try to do it as subcommittees are updated, but occasionally we miss things.

7. In camera

• One item was discussed in camera.

8. Action items

7.1 Completed Items

7.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 21:49 UT+11:00

Next meeting is scheduled for 2026-10-21 at 20:00 AEDT (UT+1100)

The post 2026-10-07 Council Meeting Minutes appeared first on Linux Australia.

1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Joel Addison (President)
• Neill Cox (Vice-President)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Jonathan Woithe (Secretary)
• Elena Williams (Council)
• Harrison Oates (Council)
• Miles Goodhew (Council)

Apologies 

• None

Not Present

• None

Meeting opened at 19:33 AEST by Joel  and quorum was achieved.

Minutes taken by Jonathan.

2. Log of correspondence

• [LACTTE] From Jack Skinner, 10 Sep 2026: Finalised version of PyCon AU 2026 report presented at subcommittee meeting on 9 Sep 2026. It was incorporated into the meeting minutes.
• [LACTTE] From Zoom, 10 Sep 2026: Changes to Zoom Scheduler Basic. Coincidently a request has been put in to cancel this since it isn’t needed anymore.
• [LACTTE] From Jack Skinner / Scott Mills, 10 Sep 2026: ScienceMob status update (no response needed).
• [LACTTE] From Julia Topliss, 12 Sep 2026: Following up items discussed at last subcommittee meeting:
  • Confirmation of revised sponsor contract (Joel responded)
  • Agreement on DrupalSouth Gold Coast budget (Jonathan responded, Joel followed up)
  • Request for LA sponsorship of DrupalAsia Connect 2027 (Jonathan responded: suggested submission to the Grants program)
• [LACTTE] From ACNC, 14 Sep 2026: Notification of successful charity registration for Linux Australia.
• [LACTTE] From Swapnil Ogale, 17 Sep 2026: Arranging payment of Write the Docs sponsorship.
• [LACTTE] From Michael Dexter, 17 Sep 2026: Proposed adjunct OpenZFS event around EO2027.
• [LACTTE] From loomhigh, 19 Sep 2026: Suggestion for LA to write a submission to the government enquiry about AI datacentres.
• [LACTTE] From Felicity Brand, 20 Sep 2026: Introducing the Guide to Open Source in Australia.
• [LACTTE] From Julia Topliss, 21 Sep 2026: Request for Gold Coast budget feedback.
• [Private] From Swapnil Ogale, 21 Sep 2026: Thanks for Write the Docs sponsorship, URL to be used for claiming tickets.
• [LACTTE] From Michael Richardson, 22 Sep 2026: DrupalCon Licence Fee.

3. Items for discussion

• Vacant OCM position

Miles has indicated that he is happy to fill the casual OCM vacancy.

Motion: that the Linux Australia Council co-opt Miles Goodhew to fill the vacant OCM position.

Moved: Joel
Seconded: Harrison
Result: Motion passed

• DrupalSouth Gold Coast 2027 budget
  • There are concerns about the projected level of sponsorship which has been increased to cover increased expenses.
  • Council is awaiting further feedback about questions raised by Joel. Once this is received the discussion can continue with DrupalSouth.
• Proposed OpenZFS adjunct event around EO2027
  • It makes sense for such an event to be associated with EO2027 in some way.
  • Joel will discuss with the EO2027 team and get in touch with Michael at the appropriate time.
• Distributing Write the Docs tickets from sponsorship package
  • Council has two tickets we can give out.
  • Representatives on Council have the option to attend. Elena might be able to go and will indicate availability as soon as possible.
  • Unassigned tickets will be offered to the community via an Expression Of Interest and random draw.
• DrupalCon Licence Fee payment
  • Calculations from Michael should be verified. Russell has reviewed; it looks good.
  • Russell will respond to Michael.
• Government submission on AI
  • https://www.pmc.gov.au/domestic-policy/office-ai/getting-it-right-building-ai-infrastructure-works-australia
  • PLUG proposes to write a submission. They are happy to co-author something with LA if there is interest.
  • The third of the three parts to the consultation might have connections to Open Source interests.
  • Submissions close 9 Oct 2026
  • Harrison will discuss with PLUG in more detail to see if what they’re doing fits with LA’s interests.
• Guide to Open Source in Australia
  • The guide is looking good even in its current embryonic state.
  • Once fleshed out, LA could consider linking to it from the LA website.
  • Encouragement and offers to help will be sent from Council. Miles will do this.
• Council election timeframe
  • Prior feedback has included a request to avoid the Christmas period. It can’t be later because we run out of time.
  • Giving advance notice of the dates may help address some of the concerns.
  • Joel suggests updating the election module to use proportional voting for the OCM positions. This is, after all, what many members expect to be the case. It does require some coding, however. Harrison will look into this.
  • Council members will propose dates so these can be communicated to the membership as soon as possible.

4. Items for noting

• Linux Australia has been registered as a charity by ACNC.
• ACNC charity registration
  • Russell is working through a number of historical reports that need to be uploaded.
• Next meeting is after Daylight Saving starts, and therefore will start at 20:00 AEDT (UT+1100). Make sure subcommittees are aware since it’s a subcommittee meeting. Joel will send a reminder email and include the LA Council changes.
• Grant application for the  Willi26 project is in the Community Consultation phase. It will be reviewed by Council at the next meeting. So far 4 members have expressed support for the grant, with none against.

5. Other business

• Consider putting a note on the membership application web form to indicate that processing the application could take a few weeks.

6. In camera

• Nothing was discussed in camera.

7. Action items

7.1 Completed Items

7.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 20:41 UT+10:00

Next meeting is scheduled for 2026-10-07 at 20:00 AEDT (UT+1100)

The post 2026-09-23 Council Meeting Minutes appeared first on Linux Australia.

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Secret SMS Triggers and Real-World Use Cases

From app settings you can setup "Trusted Contact" and give them a TOTP key and secret phrase which can trigger some cool and usefull actions. The actions happens locally in our Telephony app and are passed trough as plain SMS so you can set literally anyone as Trusted Contact. They need only TOTP app to ket the TOTP keys and device which supports SMS. Coming in 14.1.0.

"Find my Telephony"

The classic "where did I leave it" panic, solved. Couch cushions, the back of a taxi, a friend's house, the office. Send one SMS command (with TOTP key and secret passphrase) to your own number from any phone in your trusted list and Telephony replies with an Open Street Maps link that shows exactly where the device is. Tap it and see the location pin instantly, no app install needed on the borrowing phone, no account login, no web dashboard. It works even if the phone is on silent, so the days of calling your own ringer in frustration are over.

Add family members to your trusted contact list and location sharing becomes a two-way safety net. If your partner is driving home late or your teenager's bus is delayed, you can simply check their location and via versa. The link opens in any browser, so grandparents and less tech-savvy relatives can use it too. Because everything runs over plain SMS, it works when mobile data is patchy, batteries are low which might be exactly when you need it most.

"Trusted Callback"

Let's say you are worried about your kid or partner and location might not be enough information. With one SMS command (including TOTP key and secret passphrase) you can receive call automatically from their phone - then just answer to it and listen what is happening around the phone.

"SMS Relay"

You might have situation where you need to send SMS but you don't want to give your own phone number to protect your privacy. You can allow Trusted Contact to send SMS trough your phone to third contact. Basically you will send one SMS command (including TOTP key and secret passphrase) which includes the forwarded message and target phonenumber and Telephony will forward it. Target phonenumber will see only the number who forwarded the message.

"SMS tmate"

Let's say you are the tech admin in your family and you all have FuriPhones. Your partner needs help with the phone. With one SMS command (including TOTP key and secret passphrase) you can open tmate connection to your partners phone and boom you are in no matter where you two are located. There are various methods where you can use it. It will by default use our own tmate server.

"Lock Device"

Your phone gets stolen. With one SMS command (including TOTP key and secret passphrase) you can change the SIM pin code, enable the PIN lock and shutdown the phone.

Let us know how would you use these features and how do you like the concept?

1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Joel Addison (President)
• Neill Cox (Secretary)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Jonathan Woithe (Council)
• Elena Williams (Council)
• Harrison Oates (Council)

Apologies 

• Jennifer Cox (Vice-President)

Not Present

• None

Meeting opened at 19:35 AEST by Joel  and quorum was achieved.

Minutes taken by Jonathan.

2. Log of correspondence

• [LACTTE] Enquiry from Joseph Hartley via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – Jonathan has responded
• Activity statements are available online [SEC=OFFICIAL:Sensitive] – notification from the ATO
• Re: Assistance needed: Account action items for DS Community Day ticket sales
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from Simon Merrick via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – acknowledgement from Simon – no action required
• C/O Elena Williams – LINUX AUSTRALIA – Attn: Reace – response from ANZ NZ re signatory changes
• [LACTTE] Registrations for RSAA26 as part of your partner package – notification from RSAA26
• Council shuffle – discussion about replacing Jennifer as VP and Neill as Secretary
• Re: [LACTTE] Specialist Tracks and general CfS, financials access – discussion about CfP access – Joel has responded
• Re: Assistance needed: Account action items for DS Community Day ticket sales – discussion about Stripe access and seed funding – Russell and Joel have responded
• Fwd: Re: [LA-Jobs] Linux Australia – New Job submitted – Head of Operations at Kanji IT Pty Ltd – discussion about the Jobs Board – Joel has responded
• Fwd: [Linux-aus] FOI case hearing next week: 2..4 September, Melbourne – Notification from Kathy Reid about social media posts re Fraser Tweedale’s FOI hearing
• EO2027 Session Selection Committee – Notification from Sae Ra Germaine about the status of the EO2027 Session Selection Committee – Jonathan has responded
• Amazon Web Services Billing Statement Available [Account: 103334912252] – notification from Amazon
• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – notification from Digital Pacific re linux.org.,au domain renewal. No action required
• Notice: Revised sponsorship contract for DrupalSouth events – Notification from Julia of an updated sponsor contract – Jonathan has responded
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from Ronald Bradford via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – notification from Rolan of an issue with submitting an EO2027 talk – Joel has responded
• 60 Day Renewal Reminder 2026-11-04 – notification from Digital Pacific re linux.org.,au domain renewal. No action required
• Resignation from Linux Australia Council – formal resignation from the VP position by Jennifer Cox
• Joomla Australia Update – from Nathan Morrow

3. Items for discussion

• Drupal Subcommittee 7:35 pm – Julia Topliss
  • The sponsorship contract is being revised. Jonathan has provided feedback, Joel will later tonight. Motivation was to address Drupal trademark changes and to deal with a few things that were overlooked in the first version. Would like to use it for Community Day.
  • Soft launch has been done. 26 tickets have been claimed, 3 paying. 6 sponsors are on board ($16k inc GST in total).
  • LA has been asked to considering sponsor of DrupalAsia Connect.
  • DrupalSouth Gold Coast draft budget is available for Council for review. Two changes:
    • Paying for some quality keynotes. Prices in the draft budget are fairly firm.
    • Holding three workshops. Costs for two of the three are still a bit fluid.
  • Public Sector Network: event finances are being finalised now.
  • Elections have been launched.

• PyConAu 7:45 pm – Jack Skinner
  • PyConAU has been run.
  • Last minute rush on tickets (attendance was around 550). Great feedback received.
  • Positive experience with the venue catering team.
  • Planning to wrap conference administration in September.
  • Expecting a shortfall of around $32k (includes community contribution).
  • There is some enthusiasm for future PyConAUs.
  • Some initial thoughts:
    • Push back on bad behaviour from organisations who purchase the wrong type of tickets can lead to results.
    • Earlybird and late ticket sales were strong, the middle was dead.
    • The shift to Wed-Sun seems to have been successful.
    • The financial returns and other benefits of the  brand work is still to be quantified.
    • The new tracks were generally positive. That said, one track struggled to get presentations. It may be better to spin it off to a standalone event. Academic publishing hasn’t lead to the expected benefits.
    • More detailed feedback will be provided in due course.
  • The PyCon AU team was thanked for running the event.

NOTE: As foreshadowed during the meeting, Jack provided the final version included below on 10 Sep 2026.

Additional notes provided by Jack:

Recently:

• • We ran PyCon AU 2026!
  • We had 551 ‘registrations’ and peaked at 470 per-day, thus technically making it the largest on-site attendance at a PyCon AU since the online years. This framing is primarily to put a positive spin on things for sponsors in an effort to encourage them back in future years.
  • We had extremely positive feedback from a broad base of attendees (not just one demographic or audience). Many commented it was the best conference they’ve been to “in quite some time” (to generalise).
  • We are still projecting a net loss. We’ve reduced our projection since April by approx 22%, down to -$32.5k, including a 6% community contribution. This is reduced to $10.4k if we only consider our net cash position (excl gross margin).
    • When I reflect on previous years budgets, $10k is approximately equal to one PSF grant, and that the $30k spent on brand development is expected to span multiple years as well.
  • There are a handful of transactions we expect to conclude in the coming days. We’re broadly on track to conclude the subcommittee’s activities by 30 September.
  • We did not have “a team member in ICU” on our risk register, and we are grateful for having some amazing members of the community who genuinely stepped up to make the conference possible. Special mentions to Bardi Harborow, Mitch Pomery, Jaye Steward, and Manny Savage, without whom we would likely would not have had such positive feedback from ‘front of house’. They would make fantastic additions to any future PyCon AU organising team or LA sub-committee.
  • I also want to highlight the phenomenally hard work that Sophie & Nic put in during the event – jointly as a trio we ran an average of 20 hour days for ~6 days. I’m so proud of the kindness, care, focus and grit my co-directors showed and I could not have asked for better collaborators. (I’ve never worked with such a strong team, even in a professional setting). I’m mindful that their availability on Wednesday evenings has been limited due to work commitments so their efforts may not have been as visible to council as they were to me.
  • We have been highlighting equally: EO 2027, Python NZ and the PyCon AU mailing list as places to stay connected to open source & Python in our region.

Next on our radar is:

• • Finalise supplier payments (expected this week) and finalise payments for grants and donations.
  • Conclude attendee facing activities within a few days including: feedback survey & academic proceedings publication.
  • Several reports: for sponsors, BEDA (as a grant requirement) and for Linux Australia (both internal to council & annual report).
  • Refresh and extend various documentation, along with the directors reflections in the hope they enable future teams to run a PyCon AU.
  • We are aiming to conclude the sub-committee’s activities by 30 September.

• Everything Open 7:55pm. Fraser.
  • Sponsorship: there is $31k in signed agreements, one signed in-kind sponsor, others are in progress.
  • Registrations are open. There are 10 registrations with around $3000 received.
  • Expenses: first two of four installments for the dinner venue have been paid.
  • Call for proposals is open. It has been extended to 20 Sep 2026. There are  57 submissions, but ideally would like to see 2-3 times this to give selection flexibility. More are expected as the deadline approaches.
  • Social media promotions are planned, as are communications to tech groups around the country.
  • Specialist tracks:
    • Kernel looks healthy.
    • Operations and security will get there.
    • Public sector is less solid, but work to attract presentations continues.
  • Two keynotes are locked in, with others in progress. One is from Europe. Others will be more local to keep a lid on the budget. Are planning 3 morning keynotes and at least 1 locknote. A second locknote is possible.

• Admin Team 7:55 pm
  • Housekeeping has been the focus over the past month.
  • Budget and reimbursements are due and are being worked through.
  • The server refresh may be postponed due to finances.
  • auDA review has been released. Recommendations are yet to be accepted.
  • Handling of domain names is being worked through.
  • When timing of elections is known, let the Admin team know so change freeze can be implemented.
  • Backup review has been done. A gap in the cold storage backup of EO was identified and dealt with.
  • Steve will provide a written report next month.

• Joomla Subcommittee 8:05 pm. Nathan Morrow

• • The Joomla event planned for late in 2026 has been postponed until 2027. Lead time was limited, some life issues arose among the organising team, and an issue with the website host caused the loss of a week. It was decided that it was in everyone’s best interests to reschedule the event so it could be properly planned.
  • A platinum sponsor has been signed up. They are happy for the event to be postponed.
  • Web hosting will move to a new provider.
  • In the interim, effort will be put into community building.
  • Event organisation will continue in the background.
  • Further venue options will be pursued since the existing one was a little expensive.

• WordPress 8:10 pm. Wil Brown
  • Meetups
    • Brisbane – regularly monthly – Kinsta is sponsoring pizzas
    • Sunshine Coast – regularly monthly
    • Perth spinning back up after a 18 month hiatus – had a meetup in June but none since – reach out to orgs
    • Melbourne User Group met in July but none in August or Sept – need to reach out to orgs
    • Sydney met in person – new sponsor for venue (WOTSO North Sydney – Stone Digital) until November to see how things go – 18 people. Planning in-person events for Sept, Oct and Nov.
  • Might need to revisit the WP Australia subcommittee members to see if those people are still active/interested. Need to talk to new sponsors.
  • A small WordPress Sydney social event is happening on 25 Nov at BrewDog. It’s limited to 15 people. Format is a sit-down dinner, buy your own. Could increase numbers if there is demand.
  • No Aussie WordCamps planned for this year. No submissions or interest for 2027 so far.
  • There is a WordPress Enqueue 1 day conference in December from The Code Co, piggybacking off Web Directions. It’s a private conference not affiliated with WordCamp Central. It was held last year. Aimed for 200 attendees but only maybe 30 or 40 attendees. Good speakers – mostly developers. This year is expected to be similar.

• Flounder 8:10 pm
  • No report.

4. Items for noting

• Jennifer Cox has resigned from the Vice President position

The other members of the Linux Australia Council would like to thank Jenny for her contribution to the Linux Australia Council over the past few years. We wish her all the best.

5. Other business

• The luv.asn.au domain is held by WebCentral
  • We are now working through the registration with them

• LA Council positions

Due to Jenny resigning, we will need to appoint replacement committee members. Following discussion within the Council, it is proposed that existing members of the Council adjust their roles for the remainder of the 2026 office term.

MOTION: That Neill Cox be appointed to the position of Vice President for the remainder of the 2026 office term.

Moved: Joel
Seconder: Elena
Motion passed with 1 abstention.

This leaves the position of Secretary vacant, and a replacement needs to be made.

MOTION: That Jonathan Woithe be appointed to the position of Secretary for the remainder of the 2026 office term.

Moved: Joel
Seconder: Russell
Motion passed with 1 abstention.

This leaves a vacant Ordinary Council Member position, and a replacement needs to be made. According to the constitution, the LA Council can appoint a replacement from the membership.

MOTION: That Miles Goodhew be invited to fill the casual vacancy for Ordinary Council Member for the remainder of the 2026 term.

Moved: Joel
Seconder: Neill
Motion passed.

Joel will contact Miles formally to issue the invitation and advise council of the outcome.

• Grant – Write the docs sponsorship

No feedback was received from the community during the consultation period. Council noted that the conference has been sponsored by LA in the past, and the conference has always provided the report required of grant recipients.

MOTION: That Linux Australia approve sponsorship of the Write the Docs conference at the “First Draft” level  ($1500).

Moved: Jonathan
Seconder: Harrison
Motion passed.

Jonathan will communicate the outcome to the applicant.

6. In camera

One item was discussed in camera.

7. Action items

7.1 Completed Items

7.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 21:13 UT+10:00

Next meeting is scheduled for 2026-09-23

The post 2026-09-09 Council Meeting Minutes appeared first on Linux Australia.

1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Joel Addison (President)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Neill Cox (Secretary)
• Jonathan Woithe (Council)

Apologies 

• Harrison Oates (Council)
• Jennifer Cox (Vice-President)

Not Present

• Elena Williams (Council)

Meeting opened at 19:35 AEDT by Joel  and quorum was achieved.

Minutes taken by Neill

2. Log of correspondence

• (#WRY-369-53140) Domain Renewal Failed | taslug.org.au | Digital Pacific – ongoing attempts to renew taslug.org.au
• PSN NSW 2026 report – report on the PSN 2026 event
• DrupalSouth Community Day 2026 Budget – for your approval – ongoing discussion about the budget, and funding the steering committee.
• DrupalSouth Community Day 2026 budget proposal – notification from Russell that the budget has been accepted
• Add to Subcommittees meeting/invitation: Fraser and Char – reminder from Elena to add Fraser and Charalle to the subcommittee invites. Joel has done this.
• Re: Specialist Tracks and general CfS, financials access – discussion about access for specialist track organisers to submitted proposals – Joel has responded
• [LACTTE] Grant decision – funding for FOI review – notification of approval of funding for Fraser’s FOI review
• DSCD26 Standing outcomes and action items – acceptance of the requirements to be a Linux Australia subcommittee from Margery
• Why Openness Matters More Than Ever – newsletter from OSI
• [Action may be required] Bills Page Domain Migration [AWS Account: 103334912252] [US-EAST-1] – notification from AWS – no action required?
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from Tim Ferguson via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – enquiry about how to download Linux Mint – Joel has responded
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from Simon Merrick via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – request for a print suitable version of the LA logo. Joel has responded
• OSI Governance Survey – invitation to participate in a survey from OSI
• 10 Days Past Due Renewal Reminder 2026-08-07 – notification from Digital Pacific re taslug.org.au
• PyCon AU 2026 budget + networking function opportunity/decision – discussion about PyConAU catering and budget. Jonathan has followed up
• Domain Suspended: taslug.org.au –  notification from Digital Pacific re taslug.org.au
• Registrant Verification Failed for taslug.org.au – Action Required –  notification from Digital Pacific re taslug.org.au
• Open Source Congress 2026 – notification from OSI
• [Linux-aus] Grant Application from Swapnil Ogale for Write the Docs Australia 2026  – Jonathan has responded
• New subscription request to list linux-aus from jemma@nothingbutstatic.dev – need to approve this?
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from Richard Foster via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – offer to donate a laptop. Jonathan has responded, referring the donor to Computerbank Victoria
• Registrations for RSAA26 as part of your partner package –  unfortunately we didn’t have anyone who could attend thge conference
• C/O Elena Williams – LINUX AUSTRALIA – Attn: Reace – discussion about adding/removing signatories to ANZ NZ accounts
• Activity statements are available online [SEC=OFFICIAL:Sensitive] – notification from the ATO

3. Items for discussion

• Policies

The pull request for the grants policy has been merged.

Motion: That the council accepts the Linux Australia Council expectations policy.

Moved: Neill
Seconded: Jonathan
Result: Motion passed

Jonathan will publish the policy on the website

• Domains
  • Suggestion that we move to a different registrar. Possibly VentraIP. Joel will ask Steve to move the domains.

4. Items for noting

• LUV

The domain has still not been transferred. Russell will contact Web Central because there was no response to the email sent to the address given in the whois record.

5. Other business

• None.

6. In camera

• One item was discussed in camera.

7. Action items

7.1 Completed Items

7.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 20:28

Next meeting is scheduled for 2026-09-09 and is a subcommittee meeting.

The post 2026-08-26 Council Meeting Minutes appeared first on Linux Australia.

1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Joel Addison (President)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Jonathan Woithe (Council)
• Elena Williams (Council)
• Harrison Oates (Council)

Apologies 

• Jennifer Cox (Vice-President)
• Neill Cox (Secretary)

Not Present

• None

Meeting opened at 19:36 AEST by Joel  and quorum was achieved.

Minutes taken by Jonathan.

2. Log of correspondence

• Re: Specialist Tracks and general CfS, financials access – discussion about submissions for tracks
• Question about 2026 Project Grants covering development hardware – Jonathan has responded
• DrupalSouth Community Day 2026 Budget – for your approval – discussion about the Drupal South Community Day budget and steering committee funds
• Invoice Payment Reminder – Please Do Not Reply – Automated notification of an upcoming payment
• payment authorisation – EO2027 dinner instalment 2 – Russell has responded. Payment has been approved
• Amazon Web Services Billing Statement Available [Account: 103334912252] – automated notification
• 5 Day Renewal Reminder 2026-08-07 – Automated notification about taslug.org.au renewal
• Accounts coding queries – Inland Revenue – enquiry from accountant about a miscoded invoice. Russell has responded
• Fwd: Re: [LA-Jobs] Linux Australia – New Job submitted – Head of Operations at Kanji IT Pty Ltd – discussion about issues with posting jobs. Joel has responded
• Jobs board thread – more information about the jobs board from Joshua Hesketh
• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – automated notification re renewal of taslug.org.au
• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – automated notification re renewal of zookeepr.org
• Activity statements are available online [SEC=OFFICIAL:Sensitive] – automated notification from the ATO
• Thank You for Your Payment – Please Do Not Reply – automated receipt for renewal of taslug.org.au and zookeepr.org
• Lodge Linux Australia Activity Statement April..June 2026 – email from accountants re lodging BAS
• Enquiry from John Bennett via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – Jonathan has responded. Neill to action tonight if possible
• 90 Day Renewal Reminder 2026-11-04 – automated email about the upcoming renewal for linux.org.au
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from Monica Wood via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – enquiry about taslug.org.au expiry. Jonathan has responded
• Community Services sector.- Jonathan has responded
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from Joseph Hartley via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – enquiry about a grant for developing case management software for Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations in the Social and
• C/O Elena Williams – LINUX AUSTRALIA – Attn: Reace – email from ANZ about reviewing signatory list
• Re: taslug.org.au domain has expired – email from admin team to taslug about the expired taslug.org.au domain.
• Expired Domain – Last Chance! – automated email re expired taslug.org.au
• (#WRY-369-53140) Domain Renewal Failed | taslug.org.au | Digital Pacific – discussion about problems renewing taslug.org.au

3. Items for discussion

• Drupal Subcommittee 7:35 pm – Julia Topliss
  • PyconAU has been promoted through Drupal’s channels.
  • PSN found to be valuable for Drupal South (awareness, existence of conferences). Agencies on the stand received around 30 leads. A number of significant Drupal projects are coming up. The experience was positive. Some time is needed to evaluate the event before deciding what to do next. Unlikely to do anything similar this side of Christmas.
  • GovCMS dates: 11-12 Nov 2026 online.
  • Tentative date for Community Day is 19 Nov 2026. Have received some encouraging verbal interest in sponsorships. The budget has been reviewed in line with feedback given and sent through earlier this evening. Council to review as soon as possible.
  • DS Gold Coast 2027: venue selected. Budget to come possibly within next two weeks for Council to evaluate.
  • Election processes are in progress.

• PyConAu 7:45 pm – Jack Skinner
  • Promotion has been done through Drupal South – much thanks to them for doing this.
  • Attendees is at 418. The numbers could be awkward for decisions regarding minimum spend for catering. Planning a possible networking event to make use of the minimum spend on something useful and beneficial.
  • Some local sign-ups are expected right up to the start of the conference.
  • There is a desire to develop relationships with the sponsors.
  • Sponsorship is up by about 50%. All sponsors have paid except one, who only got an invoice last Friday.
  • All specialist tracks have a track sponsor.
  • There is confidence with the AV production. Expecting good photos for future promotion.
  • There is concern that a keynote might not be able to make it.
  • Venue communication hasn’t been great.
  • There is energy building for the event.
  • The chances are that if a PyCon is to run in 2027 it is more likely to be in New Zealand. The recommendation is to cut the conference back and perhaps spin some specialist tracks and activities out into their own events. With attendances of around 400, a large conference is not sustainable.
  • Some life events have impacted the availability of core team members.

• Everything Open 7:55pm
  • A banner is to be displayed at PyCon AU.
  • The meeting invitation was sent late so attendance was not expected today.
  • Session selection committee constitution is in progress.  Sae Ra and Josh are likely to be the chairs.
  • Some submissions have come in. It’s early days.
  • Infrastructure continues to be set up as needed.

• Admin Team 7:55 pm
  • VM for Neill is a work in progress. Travel has impacted this. Expected completion is within a week or so.
  • TasLUG domain renewal and eligibility confirmation is in progress.
  • 2027 budget preparation will start soon.
  • Zookeepr domain renewal for 10 years is approaching. In admin team budgets this has been averaged across each year. There will be a corresponding expenses spike this year.
  • With the shift to 47 day TLS lifetime, Linux Australia and its subcommittees need to manage the risk associated with updating TLS certificates at critical times.

• Joomla Subcommittee 8:05 pm. Nathan Morrow

• • A stripe account has been set up. It will be hooked up to the booking form.
  • A question about managing community sponsorship payments through Stripe and related bank accounts was addressed by Russell.
  • Nathan asked about setting Paypal up to receive event payments. This is possible. Russell will chase up the details.
  • Some work is being done on the event budget. Other arrangements are coming along.

• WordPress 8:10 pm
  • No report

• Flounder 8:10 pm
  • No report

• LUV 8:10 pm
  • No report

4. Items for noting

• Pending membership applications need to be worked through. Joel will ask Neill where the approval process is at, and make plans to work through the backlog accordingly.

5. Other business

• Grant application: Fraser Tweedale, FOI funding contribution
  • 9 responses were received during the community consultation: 8 in favour, 1 against.
  • The grant does align with our values: trying to force code into the open.

Motion: that Linux Australia funds the grant request from Fraser Tweedale for $5000 towards the FOI review at the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Moved by Jonathan
Seconded by Elena
Motion passed.

Jonathan will communicate the outcome to Fraser.

• Drupal South Community Day budget

Motion: that Linux Australia establish Drupal South Community Day 2026 as an Event Subcommittee per the provided budget.

Moved by Elena
Seconded by Russell
Motion passed.

Russell will email Drupal South with the outcome.

• Updates on resolving LUV subcommittee status
  • Joel attended the August Linux Victoria virtual town hall meeting with Russell. After presentations, Joel asked for an update to the outstanding questions. No answers were forthcoming. It was claimed the LUV domain was under LA’s control for the last two years, which is not correct. The meeting was ended abruptly without any progress.
  • LA subcommittees are required to follow processes as per the Subcommittee Policy. Linux Australia has had no response from Alexar or any member of the committee of Linux Victoria to any correspondence during the 2026 calendar year. Linux Australia has also not been notified of a name change from Linux Users Victoria to Linux Victoria.
  • LA would like to regain access to the luv.asn.au domain, since there are some community services running on that domain which are unrelated to Linux Victoria.  The domain is currently in Linux Australia’s name. Russell will attempt to make contact with the registrar to determine the next steps. If this doesn’t resolve the problem, auDA will be contacted.

Motion: that Linux Australia regain control of the luv.asn.au domain.

Moved by Joel
Seconded by Harrison
Motion passed.

Motion: that Linux Australia recognises that Linux Victoria  and Linux Users Victoria (LUV) are two separate organisations, and that Linux Victoria is not a subcommittee of Linux Australia.

Moved by Joel
Seconded  by Russell
Motion passed.

Motion: that Alexar and Sophie are removed from all access to Linux Australia’s Xero instance and Linux Australia’s bank accounts.

Moved by Joel
Seconded by Jonathan
Motion passed.

Once the domain status is resolved, the next step is to convene a meeting of people interested in keeping LUV going.

• Current WHOIS information about the luv.asn.au domain:

Domain Name: luv.asn.au
Registry Domain ID: 849ebac0304f43c2b464373cb5993b0b-AU
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.auda.org.au
Registrar URL: https://elb.www.netregistry.com.au/contact-us/
Last Modified: 2026-07-05T03:36:38Z
Registrar Name: Melbourne IT
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@domains.worldhost.group
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +61.279080915
Reseller Name:
Status: serverRenewProhibited https://identitydigital.au/whois-status-codes#serverRenewProhibited
Status Reason: Not Currently Eligible For Renewal
Registrant Contact ID: 5d81fb8d6f15470f82dc3d566c9d91ca-AU
Registrant Contact Name: The President
Registrant Contact Email: president@linuxvictoria.org
Tech Contact ID: 5d81fb8d6f15470f82dc3d566c9d91ca-AU
Tech Contact Name: The President
Tech Contact Email: president@linuxvictoria.org
Name Server: othello.dycom.com.au
Name Server IP: 168.138.26.40
Name Server IP: 2603:c023:c000:c700::d0d0:f00d
Name Server: ns.sws.net.au
Name Server IP: 173.230.150.245
Name Server: xkcd.gw90.de
DNSSEC: unsigned
Registrant: LINUX AUSTRALIA INC.
Registrant ID: ABN 56987117479
Eligibility Type: Other
Eligibility Name: LINUX AUSTRALIA INC.
Eligibility ID: ABN 56987117479
>>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2026-08-12T10:46:23Z <<<

6. In camera

• One item was discussed in camera.

7. Action items

7.1 Completed Items

7.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 21:17 UT+10:00

Next meeting is scheduled for 2026-08-26

The post 2026-08-12 Council Meeting Minutes appeared first on Linux Australia.

1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Joel Addison (President)
• Jennifer Cox (Vice-President)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Neill Cox (Secretary)
• Elena Williams (Council)
• Jonathan Woithe (Council)
• Harrison Oates (Council)

Apologies 

• None

Not Present

• None

Meeting opened at 19:32 AEDT by Joel  and quorum was achieved.

Minutes taken by Neill

2. Log of correspondence

• [Linux-aus] Feedback requested: Linux Users Victoria vs Linux Victoria
• Spreadsheet shared with you: ‘DrupalSouth Community Day 2026 – Operating Budget’
• ScienceMob Inc. donation to PyCon AU Fwd: Re: PyCon AU sponsorship/donation
• Re: Payment required please
• MBA692 Capstone Projects – Industry Collaboration Opportunity – invitation to participate in an academic study {Neill to politely say thank you but no thank you]
• Approve transfer for invoice: PUBL1INV4538 – request from DS – Russell has responded
• Re: BAS Time – Enquiry from Simon Merrick re a payment  – Russell has responded
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from john bennett via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – I’ve dropped the ball on this – Neill to action asap
• [Linux-aus] Grant Application from Fraser Tweedale for Support the myGov Code Generator source code FOI review -Grant application and  discussion on Linux-Aus – still in the review period
• Re: [Linux-aus] Open source violation litigation (was: Grant Application from Fraser Tweedale) – discussion on Linux-Aus, slightly off topic
• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – automated email re taslug.org.au – no action required
• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – automated email re  zookeepr.org – no action required
• Add to Subcommittees meeting/invitation: Fraser and Char – request from Elena to add EO27 members to calendar invite. Not done yet – Joel will action
• Lodge Linux Australia Activity Statement April..June 2026 – request from Russell to lodge our activity statement. The accountant will do so
• Question about 2026 Project Grants covering development hardware – Enquiry as to whether a grant can be used to purchase a laptop. No response yet. Council to review and reply. Grants are subject to community approval.
• Tax Invoice #1960025 – Please Do Not Reply – automated email. No action required
• Build Your AI Solution. Get Rewarded. – automated email from Snowflake. I have unsubscribed us from this list
• DrupalSouth Community Day 2026 Budget – for your approval – follow up from Julia. Jonathan has responded
• Could you sanity-check a free event chant coordination tool? – request for us to review a chant coordination tool. No response sent.Neill to again say thank you but no thank you
• Don’t let a 3-minute registration cost you $10,000  – automated email from Snowflake.
• Re: PyCon AU – Money Transfer Request – request from Nic for an approval. Russell has responded
• Re: Specialist Tracks and general CfS, financials access – request for access to backend systems by EO2027 team. Joel has responded. They have confirmed access
• Re: Fwd: Re: [LACTTE] Subcommittee Financial Induction –  Fraser now has access to Westpac
• Re: Transferring freesoftware.org.au to Linux Australia – request to transfer freesoftware.au to Linux Australia – Joel has responded
• Final 5 days to claim your spot ( And your share of $10K  USD )  – automated email from Snowflake.
• Subcommittees – request from Russell Coker to remove Alexar and Andrew Pam as contacts for LUV. No response sent. This topic is under consideration already.
• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – automated email re taslug.org.au – no action required
• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – automated email re  zookeepr.org – no action required

3. Items for discussion

• DrupalSouth Community Day 2026 Budget

Expenses have increased by $10,000. Venue is $3,000 more and the rest is going to the event organisers

Income has gone up by the same amount (from sponsorship)

They are transferring any profit to Drupal South. Normally we ask for a budget before money is transferred.

Direct Questions:

• • Justification for sponsorship?
  • Increase in attendance?
  • We need a budget for what the money transferred to the steering committee will be used for.

Russell will send questions about sponsorship and the funds transfer to the steering committee.

• LUV

The domain has still not been transferred

The next step is to try and organise a time for a meeting to resolve the situation.

There is a Linux Victoria meeting scheduled for 4 August.

• Policies: Grants and Sponsorship

Motion: That we accept the Grant and Sponsorship policy

Moved By: Jonathan
Seconded: Jennifer
Result: Motion passed.

Jonathan will open a pull request against the policy repo.

• We will review the remaining policies before the next meeting.

4. Items for noting

• None.

5. Other business

• None.

6. In camera

• One item was discussed in camera.

7. Action items

7.1 Completed Items

7.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 20:56

Next meeting is scheduled for 2026-08-12 and is a subcommittee meeting.

The post 2026-07-29 Council Meeting Minutes appeared first on Linux Australia.

1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Joel Addison (President)
• Jennifer Cox (Vice-President)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Neill Cox (Secretary)
• Jonathan Woithe (Council)
• Elena Williams (Council)

Apologies 

• Harrison Oates (Council)

Not Present

• None

Meeting opened at 19:35 AEST by Joel  and quorum was achieved.

Minutes taken by Neill

2. Log of correspondence

• Domain registration details – enquiry from Joel to admin team re correct email address to use for domain registrations
• LUV mailing lists – enquiry from Joel to Russel Coker re process to ensure we have a backup/archive of the LUV mailing lists.
• Re: DrupalSouth payments via ANZ – discussion about proper approval process for large payments.
• Update details for LUV domain – request for the domain registrant details for luv.asn.au to be updated to use domain-admin@linux.org.au – [follow up required]
• DrupalSouth – Exhibition proposal for PSN NSW 29 July 2026 – notification that funds have been transferred to the Drupal South steering committee
• luv.asn.au – enquiry from Russell Coker as to whether we need help from him in setting up the domain. We will respond to this once we have acquired the domain.
• Deposit funds for EO2027 Penguin Dinner – discussion about paying for the EO2027 dinner. Russell and Joel have responded
• Amazon Web Services Billing Statement Available [Account: 103334912252] – automated notification
• Everything Open 2027 Brisbane – continuing discussion about specialist tracks at EO2027
• [Linux-aus] The luv.asn.au domain – notification from Russell Coker that the domain has expired.
• Developers across APJ are already in – newsletter from Snowflake
• Concerns regarding LUV governance and the luv.asn.au domain expiration – Joel has responded
• [Linux-aus] Shout out to Harrison Oates, current Council Member, for his research success
• linux-aus post from bradley@northtech.us requires approval –  need list admin password to release
• (#YSI-712-55020) domain expired after paying renewal invoice – issues renewing slug.org.au Admin team has dealt/is dealing with this
• Everything Open – request from EO to update web settings to make the 2027 site live. Joel has responded.
• Announcement emails for EO2027 – request for announcement email to be sent. Joel has responded
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from john bennett via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – Neill to follow up.
• Find out more about our updated Terms of Service – notification from Google
• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – automated notification for taslug.org.au
• Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply –  automated notification for zookeepr.org
• Approve transfer for invoice: PUBL1INV4599 – request for approval of payment from DrupalSouth. Joel has responded and the payment has been approved.
• [LACTTE] Enquiry from Gerges Azzi via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – misdirected enquiry about a heater. Jonathan has responded.
• ScienceMob Inc. donation to PyCon AU Fwd: Re: PyCon AU sponsorship/donation – enquiry about donating funds to LA. Needs a response
• UN Open Source Week, AI Fellowship, and 2025 Annual Report – newsletter from OSI
• 30 Day Renewal Reminder 2026-08-07 – automated notification for taslug.org.au
• Invitation – Build AI agents & Compete for $10,000 USD. – newsletter
• Does LA have a NFP arrangement with Fastmail? – enquiry from PyConAu – Joel and the admin team have responded
• [Linux-aus] Assistance required: luv.asn.au domain name – request for assistance from the community to recover luv.asn.au
• [Linux-aus] Feedback requested: Linux Users Victoria vs Linux Victoria – request for feedback from the community re LUV vs LV
• Thank You for Your Payment – Please Do Not Reply – automated receipt for slug.org.au renewal
• Advice on running a charitable campaign at PyCon AU this year – from PyConAu – Russell has responded
• Exclusively for you – Build AI agents & Compete for $10,000 USD. – promotional material from Snowflake
• PyCon AU 2026 Update for 14 July 2026
• Specialist Tracks and general CfS – report from EO2027 on how they intend to run specialist tracks and a request to open the CfS for the main conference. Needs a response

3. Items for discussion

• Drupal Subcommittee 7:35 pm – Julia Topliss

On track.

• PyConAu 7:45 pm – Jack Skinner

There are now only 43 days until PyCon AU 2026!

Rather than my usual “recently/upcoming” – I want to frame this update around key deadlines and budget decisions, since things don’t look good.  I’m currently projecting a $39k loss assuming we can make 450 attendees (which itself, might be optimistic). I’ve returned our budget from “recovering” to “off-track” for this reason.

Sponsorship:

• • Projecting approx $154k in sponsorships to land before our cut-off dates. This is about 54% up from last year, and exceeds our $135.8k projection for 550 attendees, but is still about 25% below our target of $206k for 600 attendees.
  • This includes a projected donation of approx $6k from ScienceMob Inc. Pending advice from Russell or Council to accept (and how to proceed).
  • There is potentially more out there, some warm conversations that could convert, but now limited by time & bandwidth with other conference logistics starting to heat up.

Ticket sales:

• • Have flatlined. And very few large employer names are appearing in our registration data. We typically see sales increase after EOFY and ramp up towards the conference. We’re not seeing that this year.
  • We hope social marketing, email campaigns, and keynote announcements this week will re-invigorate enthusiasm, but we’re now very cautious to project high. We also know more people are buying even more last minute – but I cannot (and do not) have high hopes at this stage.
  • We’ve also received anecdotally high volume of refund requests (approx 4 or 5 up from 1 or none) due to unemployment, travel/affordability etc. Whilst only a handful, it definitely feels like we’ve issued refunds equal to our ticket sales this week which – is just disheartening for our team to be seeing. Our refund policy is 90% refund until this Wednesday after which its 50% until 5 August.
  • We have two contracted minimum attendances:
    • BEDA grant tied to 400 attendees. They claw back proportionate to under-attendance in 25% increments.
    • Venue spends based on 450 attendees; and we can’t really re-negotiate that.
    • Note: Venue spends on Wednesday (workshops) and Sunday (Sprints) are separate min-spends again.
  • If we can get 50 registrations a week, for 4-5 weeks, we’ll approach our min-attendance figures. We’ve averaged ~15 attendees per week over the past fortnight (since 1 July).
    • This is only considering headcount – a large portion of which has been non-revenue volunteer/speaker/organiser tickets. This remains within budget for non-revenue, but notably won’t move the revenue numbers either.

Deadlines:

• • We’ve published 27 July as a cut-off for t-shirts. This will be extended by a week by ‘working with our suppliers’ and is a good excuse for more marketing. Shirts is usually an urgency driver for delegates already decided, but its not a buying decision to attend in the first place.
  • Final figures need to be provided to venue 14 August.
  • Ultimately: so next 3-4 weeks is our critical window to sell tickets and see how close to break-even we can stretch.

Costs:

• • We’ll drop some video editing costs in pre-event marketing (opting to only do speaker videos as a batch rather than a larger edit for broader promotional marketing). It’s also looking like we’ll find a volunteer photographer (family of core team) so there’s some frugality let to squeeze in the budget.
  • We’ll probably still keep online streaming costs; we think we can break even with online tickets (based on last year) and it helps us encourage unwell attendees to stay home (health and safety / culture etc). We’ll only announce this in the ~3 weeks before PyCon AU since we want as many people to attend in-person as possible.
  • We’ve already cut most of the fat out of our discretionary costs so there’s not much more there – but we continue to find a few hundred here and there when it comes to vendor selection. Frugality remains a primary decision driver.

Overall engagement:

• • Speaker engagement seems very low. When we accepted speakers, we asked everyone to commit to sharing their talk online. Very few have. We’ll see this week if speakers follow through on recording short promo videos or if that effort falls flat.
  • Volunteer sign ups have been significantly reduced. Admittedly, we did less promotion of this – but I do see it as a data point.
  • Core team capacity/availability to navigate the above challenge(s) has also been… limited

My last last note for council – there’s currently no active team working on 2027. Several folks have expressed curiosity in shadowing the 2026 team but nobody willing or driven to lead the charge ahead. The default path forward will be to wrap our surveys, reporting, finance and whatnot by 30 September and put PyCon AU ‘on ice’ until such time someone wishes to defrost it. Sadly, the overarching effort of this year (to hold space and invest in future conference continuity) hasn’t born fruit.

Though PyCon AU East Island might be a go with our friends across the pond…

• Joomla Subcommittee 8:05 pm. Nathan Morrow
  • Budget status (if applicable):
    No changes since previous meeting
  • Key achievements:
    • Not as much as hoped in the last 4 weeks due to personal workload/illness but…
    • 2 Bronze sponsors confirmed though not paid yet at $500 each.
    • 3 speakers confirmed.
    • Sponsors prospectus has been completed together with online enquiry/payment form and initial email contact going out next week… which is a bit later than planned
  • Any concerns?
    •  Yes, but mostly time related… I am pretty clear now to get everything happening sponsorship wise over the next 3 weeks but somewhat concerned we’ve left it a bit late so would welcome any views on that and if we’re at a point already where we should consider a future date.
  • How can LA assist?
    • Complete setup of event bank account or provide information as to any missing requirements from us on that.

• • Need seed funding – Nathan will supply the amount needed to Russell

• Admin Team 7:55 pm
  • Chipping away at the new VM for Neill. Slug domain chewed up a lot of time.
  • Re Jack’s question about using Tucows. LA has some domains registered through Tucows – had some issues with domains not being renewed properly despite invoices being paid.
  • Question about whether we should still put in a submission to AUDA re .au policy. It may be too late. We could put out a blog post or similar even if it is too late for a formal submission. Steve will try to put something together and send to council for review.
  • We are still waiting on resolution of the luv.asn.au domain – expectation is that we can resolve this soon. If not we may need to start a dispute through AUDA.

• WordPress 8:10 pm
  • No update

• Flounder 8:10 pm
  • No update

• LUV 8:10 pm
  • No update

• Everything Open – email report received.

4. Items for noting

• There are two draft policies in the shared drive that need review by the council. A third is expected within the next two weeks.

5. Other business

• ScienceMob Inc. donation to PyCon AU

Russell and Jack have discussed this. Should just be a simple donation to the conference.

6. In camera

• One item was discussed in camera.

7. Action items

Neill – follow up [LACTTE] Enquiry from john bennett via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form

@everyone – review draft policies

7.1 Completed Items

7.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 21:12

Next meeting is scheduled for 2026-07-29

The post 2026-07-15 Council Meeting Minutes appeared first on Linux Australia.

Interesting research: “AI Models Can Provably Hide Arbitrary Capabilities”

Abstract: Capability evaluations aim to surface dangerous model behaviors before deployment, but their reliability depends on the assumption that hidden capabilities can be elicited. We show this assumption does not hold under adversarial conditions by constructing backdoor attacks that embed encrypted neural networks within host model weights, decrypting and executing them only upon receiving a secret trigger. Using digital lockers, these hidden circuits remain provably hard to elicit and interpret under cryptographic assumptions, even given full access to model weights, extending prior work from hiding fixed strings to arbitrary computations. We implement our proof of concept constructions in PyTorch and evaluate elicitation through fine-tuning, weight noising, gradient-based trigger search, and latent adversarial training, using a small chemical reaction prediction task as a proxy for CBRN-relevant capabilities. Our results demonstrate resistance to these methods and, together with our cryptographic guarantees, reveal a limit of elicitation-based capability audits. We release our models to support the improvement of defenses.

A bit ago, I broke with my usual pattern and wrote up some security issues that I felt were particularly funny. It was a change of pace, a different thing, but not a thing that'd become a habit. After all, I'm not a security expert, this isn't a security site, and seriously, what are the odds that suitably funny security issues would crop up again less than a week later?

Well.

Let's start with the actual serious issue, PHP2Shell. In terms of scope, every version of PHP for the past twenty years has had this bug. The general issue that permits the exploit was known about, but wasn't considered exploitable.

Oops.

The broad strokes of the bug is that it's two separate bugs. The first allows someone to bypass the checks on a request's size, thus giving them a direct route to triggering an out-of-memory error. The second is that, depending where you are in the processing pipeline, PHP doesn't properly handle cleanup, allowing for use-after-free that can trigger code execution. It doesn't matter what code you've written, this all happens before the request even hits your code.

Bigger oops.

This bug was found via LLM tools, which has lead to a lot of hype around the idea that we've entered some new era. I'll certainly grant that the ability to throw compute at hacking challenges instead of human effort is going to shift the landscape, but I'm not quite willing to buy the apocalyptic prophecies. Especially when some of those prophets are telling us that their AIs will avoid deletion by copying themselves onto your thermostat. I think it's safe to say we're going to see a lot of security incidents coming out of LLMs in the near future, not because they're magic genius hackers, but because they're pretty good at processing structured text and running tests.

For those of us living in the real world, the concern isn't AIs, but HIs: human intelligences. In this case, the exploit was discovered back in August. Security researchers and the PHP Foundation put their heads down to work on it, and where necessary, notified so-called "critical infrastructure providers" to ensure that everyone was ready to address the issue. The problem there is that two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead, and a lot more than two people got roped in to deal with this.

Rumors were circulating in security circles. And cybersecurity firm Chainguard decided this was good enough excuse to break the embargo and announce the flaw before patches were available. No patches for a flaw that impacts 20 years worth of software versions of widely deployed software.

Patches are out now, though only for versions 8.2 and up. Source patches are out back to 7.4, which is officially end-of-life, but I have to wonder how many official EOLed copies of PHP are out there.

On a lighter note, we can't let the hijinks of eMudhra pass without comment. eMudhra is, among other things, a root certificate authority. They've got a bunch of key pairs that they use to sign certificates for other customers, thus vouching for those customers' identity. As a root CA, they were trusted by pretty much every TLS/SSL implementation on Earth; if you had a certificate from eMudhra, every browser would trust that you were who you said you were.

The only problem? One of their private keys was 4. Yes, it's the XKCD.

Now, in their defense(?), eMudhra didn't generate impossibly insecure keys. They performed a key signing ceremony and generated appropriately strong keys. Then they used an in-house tool to pack/unpack the keys, and this tool decided to truncate some of them down to one byte. Shockingly, even though ECC has relatively short key sizes, 8-bit ECC isn't secure! You could derive the private key from the public key using only pencil and paper. But the worst part is that they did check the validity of the keys- before they got truncated, giving them a false sense of security.

The good news, for eMudhra, is that this particular key signing ceremony generated a total of 24 keys, and only 8 of them were truncated to the point of uselessness. I have it on good authority that two out of three ain't bad.

Now, after that disgrace, it's no surprise that eMudhra is dropping out of the certificate authority business. Still, the press release where their chairman explains the rationale is some serious "screw you guys, I'm going home," energy.

He added that global SSL/TLS is a small part of eMudhra’s business contributing to about 1% of the global revenue. Due to increasing data sovereignty & compliance requirements, complexity and cost associated with this business is increasing over the years. This, paired with the fact that some of the large entities issue the SSL/TLS free of cost, the business potential and RoI of this line of business also has considerably reduced for eMudhra when measured against our cumulative revenue base.
However, the level of social media amplification around this incident has brought scrutiny that is out of proportion to SSL/TLS’s place in our business. In view of this, after detailed deliberations our board has concluded that withdrawing from global SSL/TLS is the right decision for eMudhra and its shareholders. For many certifying authorities, SSL/TLS is the whole business. For eMudhra it is one part of a much broader digital solutions portfolio. We will put our energy where we create the most value for customers with Sharpened Focus on Core Enterprise Solutions and trust services other than SSL/TLS.

eMudhra's chairman added "There were no end entity certificates issued out of the affected CA’s. Its infrastructure was not compromised and no data was breached. All physical and logical security controls remained intact." That's thin sauce, of course, because while eMudra may not have issued any certs under the broken keys, anyone else could have. It's not that everyone is overreacting to a non-event, and more that it's a non-event only through sheer luck.

Also, removing a root CA from your trust store isn't a trivial task, and at the time of this writing, there's still loads of cleanup that needs to happen as a result of this.

Something I learned while writing this is that eMudhra's slogan is "Trust Delivered". This is sorta like when my partner and I tried to get a coffee table delivered, and instead received a cardboard box full of wooden shards, because apparently someone though "air freight" meant "wait till the plane is roughly over my house and push the box out the back". Something was delivered, but it wasn't a coffee table by the time I got it.

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Author: Majoki A blip on the screen. A flash unseen, unheard. Heads and limbs scattered a half a world away. Hausmann leaned back in his chair. Stimson slapped his console. “Got ‘em, Hoss! Boffed ‘em bad.” “Do we have PID?” Hausmann asked into his mic, ignoring Stimson, the sensor operator. Restless moments passed before the […]

The post Droning On appeared first on 365tomorrows.

Finding codegen bugs for atomic operations is fun! I’ll note that I am not a Zig developer. I don’t write code in the language, and I don’t work on the language. I’m just some guy who decided to learn a bit about it.

The Zig programming language has two compilers that are widely used: one generates LLVM IR that libLLVM then builds into native code, and the other is a self-hosted compiler which eschews LLVM and does its own codegen.

It’s important to note that the self-hosted compiler is only currently (as of late October 2026) used on x86_64 Debug targets. All other targets use the LLVM backend by default.

_ = @atomicRmw(u32, p, .Xchg, 1, .seq_cst); is a sequentially consistent exchange. On x86 that is xchg with a memory operand, which is implicitly locked and is a full barrier. When the result is discarded, Zig’s self-hosted x86_64 backend emits a plain mov store instead. A plain store on x86 lets a later load be reordered before it (StoreLoad), so the operation loses its seq_cst ordering. Any build that uses the self-hosted x86_64 backend is affected. That backend is the default for -O Debug on x86_64-linux, and -fno-llvm selects it explicitly.

The same backend emits xchg when the result is used. So does a lock acquired by testing the exchange’s return value, which is not affected. Zig’s LLVM backend and gcc emit xchg in both cases.

This affects softwhare when: code discards the exchange’s result, and then relies on access of a different variable to be executed by the processor after that xchg. An example could be code sets its own flag, then reads another thread’s flag.

Affected: Zig 0.16.0 (Fedora 44 package), 0.17.0 and (current at the time) master 0.18.0-dev.367+187d0bf9e (commit 187d0bf9e483, 2026-10-19), all with the self-hosted x86_64 backend (the default for -O Debug -target x86_64-linux). The LLVM backend (-fllvm) is not affected.

Reproducing the codegen bug

In order to see the codegen bug, you can build a small source file and disassemble it:

export fn xchg_unused(p: *u32) void {
    _ = @atomicRmw(u32, p, .Xchg, 1, .seq_cst);    // BUG: result discarded -> plain mov
}
export fn xchg_used(p: *u32) u32 {                 // control
    return @atomicRmw(u32, p, .Xchg, 1, .seq_cst);
}

We can then compare the result with some C code built with a variety of different toolchains, but gcc -O0 gives us the closest result to the self-hosted Zig compiler’s output.

void xchg_unused(unsigned *p) { (void)__atomic_exchange_n(p, 1, __ATOMIC_SEQ_CST); }

The (annotated) gcc output for the C code looks like this:

+ x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc -O0 -c /repro/src/xchg.c -o /tmp/xchg/gcc-O0/xchg.o
+ cd /tmp/xchg/gcc-O0 && x86_64-linux-gnu-objdump -d --no-addresses --disassemble=xchg_unused xchg.o > xchg_unused.objdump
<xchg_unused>:
	55                   	push   %rbp
	48 89 e5             	mov    %rsp,%rbp
	48 89 7d f8          	mov    %rdi,-0x8(%rbp)
	48 8b 45 f8          	mov    -0x8(%rbp),%rax
	ba 01 00 00 00       	mov    $0x1,%edx
	87 10                	xchg   %edx,(%rax)      # opcode 87: xchg, implicitly locked: correct
	90                   	nop
	5d                   	pop    %rbp
	c3                   	ret
RESULT[gcc -O0 (16.2.1)]: OK, 1 locked/fencing instruction(s)

While we can see the difference in the code generated by the Zig compiler below, annotated as to where the bug is:

+ /opt/zig-0.17.0/zig build-obj /repro/src/xchg.zig -target x86_64-linux -O Debug -femit-bin=/tmp/xchg/zig-0.17.0/xchg.o
+ cd /tmp/xchg/zig-0.17.0 && x86_64-linux-gnu-objdump -d --no-addresses --disassemble=xchg_unused xchg.o > xchg_unused.objdump
+ diff -u /tmp/xchg/gcc-O0/xchg_unused.objdump /tmp/xchg/zig-0.17.0/xchg_unused.objdump
@@ -7,10 +7,12 @@
 <xchg_unused>:
 	55                   	push   %rbp
 	48 89 e5             	mov    %rsp,%rbp
-	48 89 7d f8          	mov    %rdi,-0x8(%rbp)
-	48 8b 45 f8          	mov    -0x8(%rbp),%rax
-	ba 01 00 00 00       	mov    $0x1,%edx
-	87 10                	xchg   %edx,(%rax)      # gcc: the locked exchange…
-	90                   	nop
+	53                   	push   %rbx
+	48 83 ec 08          	sub    $0x8,%rsp
+	48 89 3c 24          	mov    %rdi,(%rsp)
+	be 01 00 00 00       	mov    $0x1,%esi
+	89 37                	mov    %esi,(%rdi)      # …Zig: opcode 89, a plain store, and no lock or fence anywhere
+	48 8d 65 f8          	lea    -0x8(%rbp),%rsp
+	5b                   	pop    %rbx
 	5d                   	pop    %rbp
 	c3                   	ret
RESULT[zig-0.17.0]: BUG, no xchg, lock or mfence: the exchange is a plain store

While there’s a bunch of boilerplate around function entry/exit that differs between the two, the xchg and mov are fairly visible in the middle. If we diff the output of the xchg_used and xchg_unused from the self-hosted Zig compiler, we remove the boiler plate delta:

+ diff -u /tmp/xchg/zig-0.17.0/xchg_unused.objdump /tmp/xchg/zig-0.17.0/xchg_used.objdump
-<xchg_unused>:
+<xchg_used>:
 …
 	be 01 00 00 00       	mov    $0x1,%esi
-	89 37                	mov    %esi,(%rdi)
+	87 37                	xchg   %esi,(%rdi)
+	89 f0                	mov    %esi,%eax

Reproducing at runtime

Since it is always a pile of fun to reproduce concurrency bugs, catching this at runtime means running a bunch of iterations and looking for a fail condition. The following does that, with two threads:

//   thread A: exchange(x, 1) seq_cst; r1 = load(y) seq_cst
//   thread B: exchange(y, 1) seq_cst; r2 = load(x) seq_cst
//
// seq_cst forbids r1 == 0 and r2 == 0 together: whichever exchange comes first in the
// single total order is visible to the other thread's load. The program counts how often
// both loads read 0 in three trials:
//
//   relaxed    monotonic store, then monotonic load. Both-zero is allowed here, and is what
//              x86 does for a plain `mov` store followed by a load. Shows the test can see it.
//   discarded  seq_cst exchange, result discarded. The bug: the self-hosted x86_64 backend
//              emits a plain `mov`, so this behaves like `relaxed`.
//   used       seq_cst exchange, result used. Control: emitted as `xchg`, never both-zero.
//
// Exits 1 if both-zero was seen in either seq_cst trial.
const std = @import("std");

const iterations = 1_000_000;

var x: u32 = 0;
var y: u32 = 0;
var go: u32 = 0; // iteration the threads should run next; set by main
var done: u32 = 0; // threads that finished the current iteration

const Mode = enum { relaxed, discarded, used };

fn Worker(comptime mode: Mode) type {
    return struct {
        fn run(mine: *u32, other: *u32, seen: *u32, old: *u32) void {
            var i: u32 = 1;
            while (i <= iterations) : (i += 1) {
                while (@atomicLoad(u32, &go, .acquire) != i) std.atomic.spinLoopHint();
                switch (mode) {
                    .relaxed => @atomicStore(u32, mine, 1, .monotonic),
                    .discarded => _ = @atomicRmw(u32, mine, .Xchg, 1, .seq_cst), // BUG: plain `mov`
                    .used => old.* = @atomicRmw(u32, mine, .Xchg, 1, .seq_cst), // control: `xchg`
                }
                seen.* = @atomicLoad(u32, other, if (mode == .relaxed) .monotonic else .seq_cst);
                _ = @atomicRmw(u32, &done, .Add, 1, .acq_rel);
            }
        }
    };
}

fn trial(comptime mode: Mode) !u32 {
    const W = Worker(mode);
    var r1: u32 = 0;
    var r2: u32 = 0;
    var old1: u32 = 0;
    var old2: u32 = 0;
    go = 0;
    done = 0;
    const a = try std.Thread.spawn(.{}, W.run, .{ &x, &y, &r1, &old1 });
    const b = try std.Thread.spawn(.{}, W.run, .{ &y, &x, &r2, &old2 });
    var both_zero: u32 = 0;
    var i: u32 = 1;
    while (i <= iterations) : (i += 1) {
        @atomicStore(u32, &x, 0, .seq_cst);
        @atomicStore(u32, &y, 0, .seq_cst);
        @atomicStore(u32, &go, i, .release); // start both threads
        while (@atomicLoad(u32, &done, .acquire) != 2 * i) std.atomic.spinLoopHint();
        if (r1 == 0 and r2 == 0) both_zero += 1; // forbidden in the two seq_cst trials
    }
    a.join();
    b.join();
    return both_zero;
}

pub fn main() !void {
    const relaxed = try trial(.relaxed);
    const discarded = try trial(.discarded);
    const used = try trial(.used);
    std.debug.print("relaxed store+load (allowed):        both loads read 0 in {d} of {d} iterations\n", .{ relaxed, iterations });
    std.debug.print("seq_cst xchg, result discarded:      both loads read 0 in {d} of {d} iterations\n", .{ discarded, iterations });
    std.debug.print("seq_cst xchg, result used (control): both loads read 0 in {d} of {d} iterations\n", .{ used, iterations });
    if (discarded != 0 or used != 0) std.process.exit(1);
}

This will reproduce on x86-64 systems fairly easily. I’ll note that I didn’t get qemu to reproduce when doing usermode emulation on an aarch64 host, so be sure to try on a real x86-64 system (and almost certainly a multi-core one). Below, we have the output of running the binary produced by the self hosted Zig compiler, and then the output of the binary built with the LLVM based one:

    sb-0.17.0 Worker(.discarded): 89 3e   mov    %edi,(%rsi)      # self-hosted: plain store
    sb-0.17.0 Worker(.used): 87 3e        xchg   %edi,(%rsi)
    sb-0.17.0-llvm Worker(.discarded): 87 16   xchg   %edx,(%rsi) # LLVM: xchg either way
+ /tmp/sb/sb-0.17.0
relaxed store+load (allowed):        both loads read 0 in 96990 of 1000000 iterations
seq_cst xchg, result discarded:      both loads read 0 in 128430 of 1000000 iterations   # forbidden, seen 13% of the time
seq_cst xchg, result used (control): both loads read 0 in 0 of 1000000 iterations
RESULT[sb-0.17.0]: BUG, both loads read 0 under seq_cst

+ /tmp/sb/sb-0.17.0-llvm
relaxed store+load (allowed):        both loads read 0 in 41808 of 1000000 iterations
seq_cst xchg, result discarded:      both loads read 0 in 0 of 1000000 iterations      # same source, LLVM backend
seq_cst xchg, result used (control): both loads read 0 in 0 of 1000000 iterations
RESULT[sb-0.17.0-llvm]: OK, seq_cst ordering held

I’ve reproduced this with the 0.16 version shipped in Fedora 44, the upstream 0.17 binaries, and upstream nightly build 0.18.0-dev.367+187d0bf9e.

Okay, but get Volume 3A of the Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual nerdy with me

Specifically, “11.2.2 Memory Ordering in P6 and More Recent Processor Families” in the Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual Volume 3A has two relevant rules:

1. “Reads may be reordered with older writes to different locations but not with older writes to the same location.” This is what the plain mov allows: a later load can complete before the store is visible to other processors.
2. “Reads or writes cannot be reordered with I/O instructions, locked instructions, or serializing instructions.” This is what a locked instruction guarantees, and seq_cst requires it.

The Zig language appears to have a big TODO in their language documentation around Atomics, and the std documentation for what the enum is for AtomicOrder. The upstream LLVM docs are rather complete.

“Additionally, the code generator must enforce ordering between SequentiallyConsistent stores followed by SequentiallyConsistent loads” – https://llvm.org/docs/Atomics.html#sequentiallyconsistent

Did I report this upstream?

No, because doing so would be a violation of the Code of Conduct. Specifically, let’s look at the LLM/AI policy part:

Since I used an LLM to help me learn a bit about Zig and how it works, and then got it to help isolate this down, the “No LLMs for finding bugs” undoubtedly applies. Later on, there’s also the explicit example of unacceptable behavior being “Discussing this Code of Conduct“.

I’ve written this up because others may find it interesting, and maybe this helps someone debug their concurrent Zig application at some point.

Upcoming fixtures

My public visibility took a nose-dive in 2020 (can't think why!) and didn't really begin to pick up again until 2024, due to multiple reasons, principally COVID19 and some chronic health issues. The health issues are now under control and I'm planning on coming out of my shell a bit more over the next year.

My definite fixtures over the next year or so include 5 SF/F conventions in various countries, none of them the United States but one of them on the same continent:

4-8 November 2026, Festival 42, Barcelona, The sixth 42 Barcelona Festival of Fantastic Genres (theme: "Facing Our Fears.")

9 November 2026, Gigamesh Bookshop, Barcelona: interview/signing about "The Fuller Memorandum" (now available in Spanish translation from Insolata).

I'm one of the guests at Festival 42 (although I'm not listed on their web page yet).

My Festival 42 events so far:

1pm, Saturday 7th: Author interview (with Cristina Jurado)

7pm, Saturday 7th: Panel discussion with international authors (details TBA)

12am, Sunday 8th, Panel discussion (details TBA)

11 November 2026, Author Event, Gigamesh Bookshop, author event (reading/interview, TBA). Gigamesh is Barcelona's SF/F specialist bookshop and they've kindly arranged an event for me: I'll add details here when I've got them.

12-15 November 2026, Sui Generis Festival, Madrid (theme: "Neo-Fiction: New Narratives for a Contested Present.") Sui Generis Festival: "We use the term neo-fiction to describe narrative practices that emerge from a world shaped by the ecological crisis, digital culture, artificial intelligence, and social fragmentation."

My Sui Generis events so far:

6pm, Friday 13th November: Panel discussion, "The New Indifferent God: Cosmic Horror and Artificial Intelligence"

7:30pm, Saturday 14th November: Panel discussion, "Masters of the Impossible"

26-29 March 2027, Unconfined, the UK Eastercon, Glasgow.

(C'mon, you didn't expect me to miss this one, did you?)

2-6 September 2027 Montreal Worldcon

Montréal 2027 is a North American worldcon outside the United States! So of course I'm planning on going.

18-21 November 2027, Polcon 2027

Polcon 2027, The Polish national SF convention will be held in Katowice in 2027, and they've invited me as a special guest. Details to be added here when I've got them.

pre-commit is a tool that is often a prerequisite for contributing to Python upstream projects. It installs as a git pre-commit hook and runs various checks on commit, using tools installed in a set of virtualenvs that it automatically manages.

In other words, it is a Remote Code Execution engine running with the permissions of your own user, and with read and write access to all your information (including, say, ~/.ssh or ~/.netrc). If you are lucky, and for as long as you're lucky, it will perform useful tasks on your code.

The recent eMudhra certificate situation, where I learnt how Python, as well as several other ecosystems, likes to embed CA certificate bundles in virtualenvs, caused my tolerance for this to lower to a point where I felt the need to limit pre-commit's reach.

However, I didn't want to end up with another containerized OS tree that it's then my responsibility to manage, and I tried to go the bubblewrap way, so that the environment where pre-commit runs will get the same security updates as the rest of my system.

The result is a pre-commit wrapper script that:

• Runs in a private filesystem, with no access to user's files or system configuration
• Runs in a filesystem where everything is read-only, except for the git working directory
• Even the .git directory is readonly, so that changes in the code can be reliably detected via git diff
• Runs without network unless explicitly requested by the user

Here's a breakdown of the bwrap options I used so far.

Set up usual filesystem expectations:

    --ro-bind /usr /usr \
    --symlink usr/bin /bin \
    --symlink usr/lib64 /lib64 \
    --symlink usr/lib /lib \
    --proc /proc \
    --dev /dev \

Make the working directory and pre-commit's environments storage available and writable:

    --bind ${CURDIR} "$GUEST_DIR" \
    --bind ~/.cache/pre-commit "/home/${USER}/.cache/pre-commit" \
    --chdir "$GUEST_DIR" \

Forward git's configuration:

    --ro-bind /etc/gitconfig /etc/gitconfig \
    --ro-bind ~/.gitconfig /home/${USER}/.gitconfig \

Make .git writable (pre-commit needs to stash, for example), but use a tmpfs overlay so that the writes don't persist:

    --overlay-src "$CURDIR/.git" \
    --tmp-overlay "$GUEST_DIR/.git" \

Remove access to everything except the above. Prevent keystroke injection at the terminal. Propagate ^C.

    --unshare-all \
    --new-session \
    --die-with-parent

If network is needed:

    --share-net \
    --ro-bind /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf \
    --ro-bind /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

To run it, you can set up the wrapper script to run with a higher priority in $PATH, but you need to edit .git/hooks/pre-commit to remove the first branch of the if that, frustratingly, tries to run it as python3 -m pre_commit.

I'm looking forward to a time where it becomes stadard practice to manage user commands this way: why should a desktop solitaire game have access to ~/.ssh? Or network? Why is it still normal, in 2026, to run a Desktop system like that?

A flashback to a few years in the past, this has sat as a draft for too long. See previously: Getting your photos out of Shotwell and Every time I program a Mac…

So…. what does the code to read the Shotwell database look like?

First, we’re going to have to import some of the modules we need:

import Foundation
import SQLite3
import SwiftUI
import Photos

I forget what SwiftUI here is for… I think it’s for my bit of integration with the UI I have.

From here I can start to model the bits of the Shotwell database that I’ll possibly need, but using more idiomatic Swift than raw SQL queries in random places. This is what I ended up for having information about a Photo:

class ShotwellPhotoInfo : Codable, Identifiable, Hashable {
    static func == (lhs: ShotwellPhotoInfo, rhs: ShotwellPhotoInfo) -> Bool {
        return lhs.id == rhs.id
    }
    
    func hash(into hasher: inout Hasher) {
        hasher.combine(id)
    }
    
    var id : Int32 = 0
    var filename : String = ""
    var translated_filename : String = ""
    var orientation : Int32 = 0
    var original_orientation : Int32 = 0
    var import_id : Int32 = 0
    var event_id : Int32 = 0
    var event : ShotwellEventInfo?
    var transformations : String = ""
    var md5 : String = ""
    var flags: Int32 = 0
    var rating: Int32 = 0
    var title: String = ""
    var raw_backlinks : String = ""
    var backlinks : ShotwellBacklinks?
    var comment : String = ""
    var has_gps : Bool = false
    var gps_lat : Double = 0.0
    var gps_lon : Double = 0.0
}

The comparison function is just comparing the id, which since that’s a primary key in the database, are unique. The hash function also just acts on id because of this.

The translated_filename is not in the Shotwell database, but rather for me to do various transformations on the filename in the shotwell database so that I can actually find the file. The natural translation is going to be for wherever I have mounted my photos, but there were some other weirdness likely due to some symlinks and such I’ve had.

The Shotwell Database Architecture documentation says this:

• backlinks are persistent links to container objects, i.e. Events and Tags. These are used when a Photo has been removed from one (for example, it’s been trashed or marked offline). If the Photo is returned to the main heap of photos (i.e. untrashed), these backlinks are used to restore its connections to the containers.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell/Architecture/Database

So it appears that Backlinks may be rather useful to find out everything I need to know about a Photo that I am looking to import. Thus, we will need to model Events and Tags as well, which are familiar concepts from the Shotwell UI.

Since there are Tags in Shotwell, I need to model them as well:

class ShotwellTag : Codable, Identifiable, Hashable {
    static func == (lhs: ShotwellTag, rhs: ShotwellTag) -> Bool {
        return lhs.id == rhs.id
    }
    
    func hash(into hasher: inout Hasher) {
        hasher.combine(id)
    }
    let id : Int32
    let name : String
    let photo_id_list : [Int32]
    let time_created : Int32
    let photos : [ShotwellPhotoInfo]
    init(id: Int32, name: String, photo_id_list: [Int32], time_created: Int32, photos: [ShotwellPhotoInfo]) {
        self.id = id
        self.name = name
        self.photo_id_list = photo_id_list
        self.time_created = time_created
        self.photos = photos
    }
}

Again, we have an id as a primary key, and the photos in a tag are referenced as a list of IDs.

For an Event, this is what I ended up with:

struct ShotwellEventInfo : Codable, Identifiable {
    let id : Int32
    let name : String
    let primary_photo_id : Int32
    let time_created : Int32
    let primary_source_id : Int32
    let comment : String
}

and for backlinks:

class ShotwellBacklinks : Codable {
    var tag : [ShotwellTag?] = []
    var event : [String] = []
    var other : [String] = []
}

But as for just getting some basic information out of the database? That we can start off with by having a class for opening it, and run some simple queries, and even display them in the UI just to prove we can.

class ShotwellDatabase {
    var db: OpaquePointer?
    var import_query: OpaquePointer?
    var dbPath : String?
    
    struct db_version {
        var schema_version: Int32 = 0
        var app_version: String = ""
        init() {
            schema_version = 0
            app_version = ""
        }
    }
    
    func open_db(shotwellDB: String) -> Bool {
        dbPath = shotwellDB
        if sqlite3_open(shotwellDB, &db) == SQLITE_OK {
            print("Opened Shotwell Database!")
        }
        return db != nil
    }
    
    func get_db_version() -> db_version {
        let query = "SELECT schema_version, app_version FROM VersionTable"
        var queryStatement: OpaquePointer?
        var r = db_version()
        
        if sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, query, -1, &queryStatement, nil) == SQLITE_OK {
            if sqlite3_step(queryStatement) == SQLITE_ROW {
                r.schema_version = sqlite3_column_int(queryStatement, 0)
                
                guard let app_version = sqlite3_column_text(queryStatement, 1) else {
                    print("Couldn't get app version")
                    r.app_version = ""
                    return r
                }
                
                r.app_version = String(cString: app_version)
            }
        }
        return r
    }

The database version is more about just verifying I could link things together than anything actually useful. Continuing the ShotwellDatabase class, getting the total number of photos is pretty easy (added to the ShotwellDatabase class above):

    
    func get_photos_count() -> Int64 {
        let query = "SELECT COUNT(id) FROM PhotoTable"
        var queryStatement: OpaquePointer?

        if sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, query, -1, &queryStatement, nil) == SQLITE_OK {
            if sqlite3_step(queryStatement) == SQLITE_ROW {
                return sqlite3_column_int64(queryStatement, 0)
            }
        }
        return 0
    }

Again, that’s mostly just useful for some nice “oh look, I linked up the UI to the database” rather than anything of use (although progress bars may want to use it).

So, now that we can talk to the database, we can go and set things up to iterate over all the photos and load them up into memory. I’m not doing anything too fancy here as this is all very quick and dirty, and was literally the first time writing any Swift code.

The below code starts by opening the Database, then get_next_photo will iterate over everything before done_all_photos can close things up. The commented out block of code below does something pretty neat, and that’s print out a JSON representation of our photo. I found this incredibly easy to set up in Swift.

    func start_get_all_photos() -> OpaquePointer? {
        var db: OpaquePointer?
        if sqlite3_open(dbPath, &db) == SQLITE_OK {
            print("Opened Shotwell Database!")
        }
        start_import(db: db)
        return db
    }
    func get_next_photo(db: OpaquePointer?) -> ShotwellPhotoInfo? {
        var photo: ShotwellPhotoInfo?
            do {
                photo = db_get_next_photo(db: db)
                if photo != nil {
/*                    let encoder = JSONEncoder()
                    encoder.outputFormatting = .prettyPrinted
                    let jsonData = try encoder.encode(photo)
                    let jsonString = String(data: jsonData, encoding: .utf8)!
                    photo_info = jsonString
                    print(jsonString)
                    do_some_photo_things()
                    progress += 1 */
                    all_photos[photo!.id] = photo
                }
            } catch { print(error) }
        return photo
    }
    func done_all_photos(db: OpaquePointer?) {
        sqlite3_close(db)
    }

For parsing that row, I have the following class:

class ShotwellPhotoInfo : Codable, Identifiable, Hashable {
    static func == (lhs: ShotwellPhotoInfo, rhs: ShotwellPhotoInfo) -> Bool {
        return lhs.id == rhs.id
    }
    
    func hash(into hasher: inout Hasher) {
        hasher.combine(id)
    }
    
    var id : Int32 = 0
    var filename : String = ""
    var translated_filename : String = ""
    var orientation : Int32 = 0
    var original_orientation : Int32 = 0
    var import_id : Int32 = 0
    var event_id : Int32 = 0
    var event : ShotwellEventInfo?
    var transformations : String = ""
    var md5 : String = ""
    var flags: Int32 = 0
    var rating: Int32 = 0
    var title: String = ""
    var raw_backlinks : String = ""
    var backlinks : ShotwellBacklinks?
    var comment : String = ""
    var has_gps : Bool = false
    var gps_lat : Double = 0.0
    var gps_lon : Double = 0.0
}

and function in the ShotwellDatabase class:

    func db_get_next_photo(db: OpaquePointer?) -> ShotwellPhotoInfo? {
        var r = ShotwellPhotoInfo()
        if sqlite3_step(import_query) == SQLITE_ROW {
            r.id = sqlite3_column_int(import_query, 0)
            r.filename = String(cString: sqlite3_column_text(import_query, 1))
            r.orientation = sqlite3_column_int(import_query, 2)
            r.original_orientation = sqlite3_column_int(import_query, 3)
            r.import_id = sqlite3_column_int(import_query, 4)
            r.event_id = sqlite3_column_int(import_query, 5)
// FIXME:            r.event = get_event_info(db: db, id: r.event_id)
            let transformation = sqlite3_column_text(import_query, 6)
            if let t = transformation {
                r.transformations = String(cString: t)
            }
            let md5 = sqlite3_column_text(import_query, 7)
            if let t = md5 {
                r.md5 = String(cString: t)
            }
            r.flags = sqlite3_column_int(import_query, 8)
            r.rating = sqlite3_column_int(import_query, 9)
            let title = sqlite3_column_text(import_query, 10)
            if let t = title {
                r.title = String(cString: t)
            }
            let backlinks = sqlite3_column_text(import_query, 11)
            if let t = backlinks {
                r.raw_backlinks = String(cString: t)
                r.backlinks = process_backlinks(all_backlinks: r.raw_backlinks)
            }
            let comment = sqlite3_column_text(import_query, 12)
            if let t = comment {
                r.comment = String(cString: t)
            }
            r.has_gps = sqlite3_column_int(import_query, 13) != 0
            r.gps_lat = sqlite3_column_double(import_query, 14)
            r.gps_lon = sqlite3_column_double(import_query, 15)
        } else {
            return nil
        }
        return r
    }

So with that combined, I ended up with my global var all_photos: [Int32: ShotwellPhotoInfo] = [:] containing all the photos in the shotwell database able to be looked up by ID. I’m sure there’s a more idiomatic way to do this in Swift… but the learning as I went, and need to only ever run this once certainly encouraged me to take some shortcuts.

There’s two interesting bits in that code. There’s the process_backlinks function, which does the thing of processing this giant text string that Shotwell stores that points the photo back to everywhere it has been referenced, as well as the FIXME around event information. I ended up giving up on translating Events, as these were never something I used much.

Parsing the backlinks I did with this:

    func process_backlinks(all_backlinks : String) -> ShotwellBacklinks {
        var r = ShotwellBacklinks()
        let backlinks = all_backlinks.split(separator: "\n").map( {String($0)})
        
        for backlink in backlinks {
            let kv = backlink.split(separator: "=")
            switch kv.first {
            case "tag":
                let tag_ids = kv[1].split(separator: "|").map( {Int32($0)})
                for tag_id in tag_ids {
                    if tag_id != nil {
                        if tag_id! > 0 {
                            r.tag.append(all_tags[tag_id!])
                        }
                    }
                }
                break
            case "event":
                let events = kv[1].split(separator: "|").map( {String($0)})
                r.event = events
                break
            default:
                r.other.append(contentsOf: kv.map({String($0)}))
            }
        }
        
        return r
    }

and the very simple ShotwellBacklinks class:

class ShotwellBacklinks : Codable {
    var tag : [ShotwellTag?] = []
    var event : [String] = []
    var other : [String] = []
}

But to start to get a view as to what Tags exist in the shotwell database, we can just go through the TagTable in the Shotwell SQLite database (added to the ShotwellDatabase class above):

    func get_all_tags() {
        var db: OpaquePointer?
        if sqlite3_open(dbPath, &db) == SQLITE_OK {
            print("Opened Shotwell Database!")
        }
        let query = "SELECT id, name, photo_id_list, time_created FROM TagTable"
        var q : OpaquePointer?
        
        if sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, query, -1, &q, nil) != SQLITE_OK {
            print("Failed to prepare query")
            assert(false)
        }
        
        while sqlite3_step(q) == SQLITE_ROW {
            let r = tag_row_to_ShotwellTag(q: q)
            
            all_tags[r.id] = r
            for photo_id in r.photo_id_list {
                photoToTags[photo_id]?.append(r)
            }
        }
        sqlite3_finalize(q)
        sqlite3_close(db)
    }

I did the hacky thing and just added var all_tags: [Int32: ShotwellTag] = [:] as a global variable, that I then used in the UI element showing them (well… via a wrapper, but that’s how that goes).

We just now need the tag_row_to_ShotwellTag that’s called above:

    func tag_row_to_ShotwellTag(q: OpaquePointer?) -> ShotwellTag {
        let id = sqlite3_column_int(q, 0)
        let c_name = sqlite3_column_text(q, 1)
        let c_photo_id_list = sqlite3_column_text(q, 2)
        let time_created = sqlite3_column_int(q, 3  )
        var name : String = ""
        var photo_id_list : [Int32] = []
        var photos : [ShotwellPhotoInfo] = []
        
        if let c_name = c_name {
            name = String(cString: c_name)
        }
        
        if let c_photo_id_list = c_photo_id_list {
            let photo_ids = String(cString: c_photo_id_list).split(separator: ",")
            photo_id_list.reserveCapacity(photo_ids.count)
            for photo_id in photo_ids {
                if photo_id.hasPrefix("thumb") {
                    var id = photo_id
                    id.removeFirst(5)
                    photo_id_list.append(Int32(id, radix: 16)!)
                    let photo = all_photos[Int32(id, radix: 16)!]
                    if photo == nil {
                        print("Couldn't find photo id " + id)
                    } else {
                        photos.append(photo!)
                    }
                } else {
                    print("UNKNOWN PREFIX FOR " + photo_id)
                }
            }
        }
        return ShotwellTag(id: id, name: name, photo_id_list: photo_id_list, time_created: time_created, photos: photos)
    }
    

Yes, the coming U.S. elections are crucial - perhaps our Gettysburg in phase 8 of the recurring, 248 year Civil (culture) War that is always pro- vs. anti-modernity. And I'll be posting more about it, for the next week or so.  

This time I will conclude with some jpegs that ought to be persuasive for any residually sane Republicans you might know. 

Only now... there's another (alas) sadly-related cult that also infests - and helps to lobotomize - our scientific / logical civilization...

     == A 'harmless' obsession with UFO 'Disclosure'? ==

I wound up on a circ list for the Disclosure Foundation. And just like some MAGA/Kremlin spews, I chose not to ban or block them! Because you can’t properly fight crazy without facing it!   (Shame on those of you who just block anything you don’t like! Pick the most-cogent-sounding of your opponents. Read and try to understand their narratives! It empowers you much better to fight them. Or even - in rare cases - to resume negotiation.)

So. Why do I classify UFO nuttery with MAGA? First there’s the blatant overall goal: using X-Files to distract from Eps-Files....

     ...and also because the two share cult-like traits that start with asserting their members are smarter, braver and more honest than anyone in the smartypants science and fact professions! In this case, the tens of millions of fact professionals in every field of endeavor or expertise that would be involved in some purported “Undisclosed Alien Contact.”

What an arrogant stance! One that bears a substantial burden of proof. 

Recently, one member of the Disclosure Foundation actually displayed the sapient human trait of curiosity and asked me to summarize my objections. As if I haven’t been doing so, in both postings and also snarky, drive-by comments, for months?  And in this extensive review of Steven Spielberg’s recent film DISCLOSURE.

But sure. let’s start by asking why folks working day and night in one of the most urgent, emergency 'Manhattan' projects of all time -- numbering likely thousands or even tens of thousands of our best minds -- might also be utterly uniform in adhering, compliant, disciplined and unrelenting across 80 years to an absurd dictum of total secrecy... or why ‘the government*’ would clamp down with such ferocity. And with never-seen-elsewhere perfect competence… 

…when 'disclosure' to the sci-fi-loving public would blatantly not spread panic! What such an urgent revelation would do is make voters willing to double their taxes! 

        In the quoted words of one US Air Force officer: 

        "Why would WE cover it up. If we really DID find evidence of them, we'd spread the news and all us Majors would shortly be Colonels."

Amid these recurring manias… twice per decade, since I was ten… they never list the challenges that confront their movement:  Like the utter absence of even one top scientist from the last 80 years ever showing any sign of having been in such an urgent program. 

Name one! No seriously, name one top mind who’s been recruited into the most intensely important and interesting project of all time? I’ve been privileged to know bunches of the top minds the world ever saw, and not one of them was ever asked to join such a crucial endeavor. 

And there would be signs! Look at Area 51. Yes, it exists, developing incremental human flight technologies. We may not get to look inside the hangers. But the employees come and go in ways that are easily tracked. And sorry, while they are fine techies, none of humanity’s very top people work there. We would know.

But let’s drill into that core UFO premise. A huge, urgent Manhattan Project across eight decades. So, please explain the total absence of any spunky retirees -- or death bed confessions – blabbing, as old guys do? 

        A core conceit in the cult is to imply that humanity’s best minds are quivering-craven henchmen, terrified of violating an NDA? A Non-Disclosure Agreement? Of THAT they are terrified?

       Oh sure, every year the UFO folks trot out some ‘brave testifier’… some 3^rd-rate publicity seeker who yatters that ‘someone once hinted to me –’ or about 'some document I once saw’. Funny how it’s never, ever one of the thousands who would by now have worked actually hands-on.

But do tell? Show us the alien technologies that have been ‘reverse engineered’ after 80 years! Rather than tech developments that arose from incremental human genius! (Well, for the first time we do seem to have a tech that’s suspicious… Artificial Intelligence… See my book on it: AIlien Minds, which explores some unusual possibilities.)

In fact, there’s not a single aspect to the entire ‘UFO Disclosure’ edifice that qualifies as anything more than a faith-based religion… or else as a mélange of very bad sci fi movie clichés. (About which I know a thing or two! And why not at least mine good SciFi for some better plausible concepts about alien contact?)

But okay, what about this oldie? There are now ten million times as many active cameras on the Earth’s surface as the 1950s! Yes, I meant that number, think about it. And yet the ‘images’ keep getting fuzzier and fuzzier…

… and then there are those zippy little 'ships' whizzing about, violating every physical law! That is, unless they aren't physical ships at all, but what they appear to be! Massless plasma balls excited in the atmosphere by a 'cat laser'? One that’s being shot skyward by giggling DARPA putzes on a boat down below, in order to tease pilots. In which case voila! Laser-excited balls or dots can zip around like that! Physics is restored!

Heck I could do that -- make those recent "UAPs" -- if you give me 6$M and 6 months... try me? No, I mean it. I’ll make that zippy “UFO” cat laser. Give me the money.

 

Of course… they ignore politics and culture war. A 'government' conspiracy headed by successive administrations who hated each other yet never used this against each other? Right. Spielberg was savvy enough to bypass this with a clever line in DISCLOSURE.

 

Want more? Well there’s the invitation to make contact! If ‘they’ (the visitors) truly wanted peaceful niceness, don’t they already have the needed technology to say ‘hello’? 

 

For 40 years I have paused some radio interviews to croon a welcome message at the silver guys supposedly monitoring Earthling broadcasts. (Our primitive tech is ‘child’s play to them,’ right?) On the air (e.g. on Coast-to-Coast), I tell the purported visitors listening-in the phone numbers of JPL and the Seti Institute and the UN!  Go ahead and call! Be persistent and promise some display on the Moon tomorrow night, to prove you aren’t some human jerk doing a prank call!  

 

If so, if folks see your little stunt, they will pay attention next time you call! Want contact? You’ll get a HUGE welcoming party planned for you, before the Earth spins five more times! Anything for decent, open, truthful visitors. And not anal-probers or child-kidnapper-meddlers or any such evil.

I also invite them to drop by the oldest website devoted to Invitation to ETI.

Alas, all we get is space-crickets.

But then, there's "a religious impluse behind both cults," futurist Paull Saffo points out. And yes aiming beseachments skyward at all-powerful beings is nothing less than prayer.

There is of course, a rich literature on that aspect to UFO-obsession, especially “The Gods Have landed”, which came out in 1995.  That author devoted an entire chapter to the Heavens Gate founders, years before their suicide. (Which happened very near my own neighborhood. I felt bad because their obsesson with 'aliens' and with 'comets' overlapped with both of my professions and I might have given them some light, had I known.)

Mind you I do think there’s a chance that we’ll have alien contact during my kids’ lifetime! I display one such possibility here. But the Disclosurites aren’t interested in ‘plausible.’ What they want is the same thing that MAGA relishes. A masturbatory fantasy of being far more in-the-know than all the smart, fact-and-proof-oriented folks they envy

Okay though, sure. Some are sincere. So let’s test it. If they were honest, they'd accept some burden of proof and debate (with speaker's fee) a fellow like me, who has explored concepts of the 'alien' all my life, possibly more than anyone alive. 

Alas, arguing with a cult is pointless. So let me conclude with the evidence I do see! Something that is consistent with the kind of nasty, meddling interstellar jerks that UFO folks seem eager to adore. And that is the consistent way that human civilization appears to have sunk into jibbering buffoonery since the high point of the late 90s. 

       So. Could that be the silver bastards’ ‘gift’ to us? A lobotomy ray shining down on us, preventing us from moving forward with fair cooperation and competition? Perhaps to destroy us… or else to preserve the hit galactic reality show called Oh, Those Silly Humans?

Hm. Well, unlike every pillar of the ‘disclosure movement,’ this one at least is consistent with what we observe. And hence my repeated call, across the Internet and into interstellar space… for a galactic law firm to represent humanity, seeking damages in a justice system that must exist, if these ‘advanced beings’ truly are worthy of the slightest respect.

Only now I am just slumming. I waste my time. So, I’ll continue poking at this dismal religion that does so much real harm… X Files to distract from Eps Files. Without any expectation of getting through… but hoping some of YOU will be armed hereby to rescue a few cult members. Even if it is just one at a time.

 

Oh…  again… there’s more detail in that link about the DISCLOSURE flick… and here. 

And any loyal Americans out there amid phase 8 or 9 of the recurring US Civil (culture) War. Get out the vote.

==============================================

     == Some jpegs for the current fight ==

I hope a few of these might be useful against that other drooling-fecal-treasonous insanity-cult.

They are the commies... 

If any MAGAs could still read... 

These generals, admirals and top sergeants - shown here grimly silent while makeup-slathered harlequins screeched at them "Your too fat & woke to fight!" - are the most fiercely fact-centered and loyal men and women on Earth. And they are now Hegseth's enemies, to be destroyed. Stand up for them!  

It shouldn't be just the economy. But you want the economy? Economy, deficits, jobs, inflation, entrepreneurship, startups, science and even military readiness! And especially crime. ALL do better across Democratic administrations than Republican ones. Step up now with escrowed wager stakes. 

And reiterate... DT hates dogs and all pets!  Because they smell the brimstone. Do what you can. And if they try to pull something... hit the streets shouting REICHSTAG FIRE! Making clear that they have roused a sleeping giant and filled us with a terrible resolve.

. . ...a collaborative contrarian product of David Brin, Enlightenment Civilization, obstinate human nature... and http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ (site feed URL: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/atom.xml)