WebKit hands WebAuthn ceremonies to the operating system's credential service, which issues the HTTPS request itself, directly from the device and unaware of any proxy the host app configured. A page can set rpId to a host of its choosing, and the fetch fires even without user interaction: with mediation: "conditional" and no UI ever appears. [...]

Because the fetch is issued by the operating system's credential service rather than by Safari, it never enters Private Relay's proxied path. The destination server sees the device's real IP address either way.

I am not sure what happened, but my interests have changed significantly, and… I haven’t blogged, I haven’t done any open source work, and didn’t even process any pictures for the entire year. Not because anything went bad, just… new stuff, new interests, life changes.

However, still alive, and still struggling with sports, and with sleep :)

On the positive side, on a recent mid-length flight, I thought — I haven’t done any work on Corydalis, since last year I closed quite of a few of my “must have” features, so probably, nothing else to do for now, right? I opened an editor and started thinking about ideas, and surprised! One hour later, I had written down enough ideas for a couple of months of work. So now just need to find the time… but can’t wait for the planned things!

Stay well!

• Black with Black Ocean Band - $699.99 ($99 off)


• Natural with Anchor Blue Ocean Band - $699.99 ($99 off)


• Natural with Blue/Bright Blue Trail Loop (M/L) - $699.97 ($99 off)


• Black with Black Milanese Loop (Large) - $799.99 ($99 off)


• Natural Milanese Loop (Large) - $799.99 ($99 off)

Apple

• AirPods 4 - $99.99 ($30 off)


• AirPods Pro 3 - $199.99 ($50 off)


• 14-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Pro, 2TB) - $2,499.00 ($500 off)


• 14-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Max, 2TB) - $3,599.00 ($500 off)


• 16-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Max, 36GB, 2TB) - $3,999.00 ($400 off)


• 16-inch MacBook Pro (M5 Max, 48GB, 2TB) - $4,499.00 ($500 off)

TVs

• 55-inch Toshiba C350 4K Smart Fire TV - $249.99 ($150 off)


• 65-inch Samsung U7900 4K Smart TV - $329.99 ($140 off)


• 65-inch LG UA7050 4K Smart TV - $329.99 ($160 off)


• 98-inch Hisense QLED 4K Smart Google TV - $1,499.99 ($800 off)


• 65-inch Samsung The Frame TV (2025) - $1,299.99 ($300 off)


• 65-inch LG OLED 4K Smart TV - $1,399.99 ($1,300 off)

Monitors

• 34-inch LG UltraWide 100Hz Monitor - $209.99 ($90 off)


• 34-inch Samsung ViewFinity S5 Monitor - $229.99 ($100 off)


• 34-inch LG UltraGear Curved Monitor - $399.99 ($100 off)


• 27-inch Alienware Gaming Monitor - $699.99 ($200 off)

Audio

• Beats Pill - $99.99 ($50 off)


• Beats Solo 4 Headphones - $129.99 ($70 off)


• Beats Studio Pro Headphones - $169.99 ($180 off)


• Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones - $329.99 ($45 off)


• Sony Bravia Theater Bar 6 - $549.99 ($150 off)

I'm tired, I want to do go bed. I click "sleep" on gnome shell, nothing happens.

Swearwords.

I want to go to bed. I might have want to put my laptop in a bag and run to catch a train. I hate when this happens.

systemd-inhibit --list --mode=block doesn't help much:

$ systemd-inhibit --list --mode=block
WHO    UID  USER   PID  COMM            WHAT                                                     WHY                        MODE
enrico 1000 enrico 3042 gsd-power       handle-lid-switch                                        External monitor attached… block
enrico 1000 enrico 3037 gsd-media-keys  handle-power-key:handle-suspend-key:handle-hibernate-key GNOME handling keypresses  block
enrico 1000 enrico 2878 gnome-session-b sleep                                                    user session inhibited     block

After much googling I found out about gnome-session-inhibit:

$ gnome-session-inhibit  --list
mutter: idle-inhibit (idle)
/usr/lib/chromium/chromium: Playing audio (suspend)

Found the right tab in chromium, paused playing, sleep works again.

My sleep was a good half an hour overdue, and all I got for it was to write this blog post.

Of course Gnome could have shown me its inhibitor list instead of doing nothing, since it has that information, but it didn't.

What I really would expect is that if I intentionally click a suspend button, audio and video playing wouldn't inhibit the suspend. Maybe in a future version of Gnome?

"Boaters have been asking for a modern infotainment system for years," says Jelte Liebrand, Founder and CEO of Savvy Navvy. "Plan your trip on the couch, step aboard, and it is already at the helm. No complicated ways to synchronise things; it just works. Savvy Navvy for CarPlay works on iOS and Android with any compatible display. I'm thrilled to see Crest and Balise put CarPlay in front of their boaters."

The Corporate Monitor Issue

Some time ago I worked in the IT department of a company that had a corporate standard of two 27″ FUllHD (either 1920*1080 or 1920*1200) monitors for the desktop. I was pushing to make the standard be one 32″ 4K monitor or the two cheaper monitors. They ended up making one 27″ 4K monitor an option which was still a better option for many users than two FullHD monitors due to having twice the pixels even though it had half the screen area. It was a surprise to me when hardly anyone took up that option.

One man who worked there brought a wide curved monitor from home and ran with one of the FullHD monitors on each side of that. As an employee in the IT department I had concerns about expensive personal equipment being used in the office regarding who’s going to pay the bill if it gets broken. But I was assured that it was his old monitor that he didn’t need after buying a better one for gaming at home and he wouldn’t be too upset if something happened to it.

This isn’t the only time I’ve witnessed such problems of companies paying large salaries for skilled people and providing poor equipment for them to do the work. One previous time I raised a OH&S issue because the outdated monitors were so blurry but the company determined that the monitors wouldn’t cause health problems and spending $150 per employee on better replacements was a waste of money.

Computer hardware tends to become cheaper over time and one thing that has become really cheap recently is portable monitors. Kogan has a 15.6″ FullHD monitor with USB-C and mini-HDMI inputs for $89 [1]. It wouldn’t be difficult for someone to put one of those on each side of the monitor or monitors that their employer provides and put them in a desk drawer at the end of the day to minimise risk. The same Kogan page has a 16″ monitor with 2560*1600 resolution for $189.

Company Ownership

I previously wrote about the potential benefits to companies in not owning all those keyboards, mice, and headsets when they could just give each employee the money and have them buy their own [2]. I don’t think we are at the stage where that can be applied to monitors as the cheapest price for a decent monitor is about $500 which takes it out of the disposable price range that keyboards and mice are in. Also from an IT support perspective there are real support issues with monitors and cables having compatibility issues. But paying small amounts of money to reimburse employees who buy cheap portable monitors to supplement their main monitor is a more reasonable option. For some people that will allow noteworthy improvements in work performance.

Who Will it Help?

I don’t think that adding such portable monitors will directly help the majority of workers. I think that to maximise performance and efficiency we need to chase the long tail of improvements. Big monitors, really big monitors (65″ at a larger distance), multiple monitors, standing desks, and whatever else people want.

There was some research from Microsoft some years ago (back when 27″ was a really big monitor) showing that some tasks had a 50% increase in performance with a larger monitor. Now that 27″ is about the smallest monitor size commonly available the potential for improvement is reduced. Probably most workers now already have monitors that provide the benefits to them that the “big monitors” in Microsoft research provided. But there will always be some portion of the user base who will benefit. If you can get a 50% performance boost for 1% of the users that’s really worth doing. If you can get a 0.5% benefit for 100% of the users that is also worth doing and will theoretically give equal benefits.

Costs of Employees

It is claimed that the total cost of an employee including all overheads of management and providing office facilities etc amounts to twice their base salary. If that is the case then a minimum wage employee in Australia costs $100k per year, someone at the low end of the IT pay scale costs $200k, and someone at the high end of the IT scale is around $400k. It seems clearly worthwhile to spend $1000 in hardware purchases for a $100k employee who declares that it will really help their work, anything which is noticeable to the user is going to be more than a 1% difference in performance.

For someone at the high end of the IT pay scale spending $40,000 on hardware to improve their performance could pay for itself. This is not only due to direct return on investment but because the people who do such work are often in key roles in important projects. If there’s too much work for one person on minimum wage to do then you just hire another person. You can’t hire another senior IT person and have them just do the work, it can take months to get up to speed.

But as management in corporations seems unable to recognise this cheap hardware employees can afford to buy with their own money can bridge the gap.

Job Interviews

In future when interviewing for jobs I’ll ask about the hardware that’s to be used. I won’t say “I’m not interested in this job offer because you don’t respect your employees enough to buy adequate hardware”, but I may make it a condition of working at a company that the hardware on my desk will not be obsolete.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/26bdng24
• [2] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2023/06/22/cheap-peripherals-work/

iPhone 18 Pro

iPhone 18 Pro Max

Foldable iPhone

Apple Watch Series 12

Apple Watch Ultra 4

Other Possibilities

• Home Hub - Apple is working on a home hub with a 7-inch square display. It can be used to control smart home products, view photos, make video calls, and display information. It will have full ‌Siri‌ AI integration, and it will run Apple apps. The hub could come as soon as 2026, but Apple might also hold it until early 2027.


• Apple TV 4K - Apple plans to refresh the Apple TV 4K with a new chip, more RAM, and a new networking chip.


• HomePod mini - Apple will refresh the HomePod mini this year, adding a faster chip and new color options.


• HomePod - The full-size HomePod could also get a new chip.


• Smart Home Camera - Apple has its own security camera in development, and it could launch alongside the home hub.

What's Not Launching

Likely Event Dates

The attacker was a takedown extortionist: someone who demands ransom from group owners in exchange for not targeting their communities. These extortionists use automated accounts to plant illegal content in public groups and then report it directly to Apple, attempting to trigger the removal of legitimate communities whose owners refused to pay them.

Welcome to post 58 in the R⁴ series.

R and the CRAN repositories maintain a very high level of what we might call “quality assurrance” by requiring that newly-added code does not break any existing dependencies. This is frequently called a “reverse-dependency check”. For any given CRAN package one can quickly determine it reverse dependencies. Calling tools::package_dependencies(pkgName, reverse=TRUE) will for a scalar or vector-valued argument return a named list with the reverse dependencies. It is then a matter of looping over this list. There are helper functions in base R as well as in contributed packages on and off CRAN. I also wrote my own with package prrd which, while possibly a wee bit specialised and under-documented has served me well to check on Rcpp and related packages which can indeed have a large number of reverse dependencies.

I recently looked into one of these contributed runner packages, and while I will refrain from naming its implementation language let me just mention that the term “cargo cult” may be a real thing here. What go me interested in this was the fact that if one has a simple-to-use runner then the fact that r2u makes it “fast, easy, reliable: pick all three” (to borrow its slogan) to deal with actual depencies if Ubuntu has indeed been selected as the host. We will maintain the position that if you can in fact integrate with the system-wide package management then any alternative per-repo package management approach not doing so will likely be dominated by an approach that does integrate with the system facilities. Which is what precisely what r2u does, and offers. And why it is used enough to by now have shipped eighty eight million binary packages. So I tested it for the reverse-dependency check task.

What I learned by looking into the (much more complicated) runner was that it at the end of the day it hands the actual task of running the reverse dependecies off to a helper function rev_check that is part of the xfun package by Yuhui. I quickly found that besides xfun we would also need its suggested dependency tinytex which in turn would error unless the tlmgr binary was present. So as the sole requirement (on an Ubuntu system with r2u) turns out to be

$ apt install r-cran-xfun r-cran-tinytex texlive-base

where we do it all in one apt call (as root in the container). (Given r2u we could also call install.packages(c("xfun","tinytext")) followed by apt install texlive-base but it is simpler for this setup step to be just one call).

With that we are basically done. I did this (twice) using a rocker/r2u container with r2u preinstalled, mounting a local work and scrap directory for the container. In it we expand the package to be tested (i.e. tar xaf pkgName_*tar.gz for a given source package pkgName from CRAN) and then just call with the package name and expanded direcrtory. I.e. I used this call to test my package AsioHeaders (which has just three reverse dependencies) to both name it and to point to the expanded source directory created for this purposed:

> system.time( res <- xfun::rev_check("AsioHeaders", src="AsioHeaders") )
## ... earlier output omitted for brevity here ...
   user  system elapsed 
 35.732   3.333 149.683 
> res
   httpgd ipaddress websocket 
        0         0         0 
> 

and about a good two minutes later I would get the timing result and the summary in variable res. As I checked the current CRAN version, the check was as expected free of concerns or issues.

To support this, r2u did indeed go off and install about sixty seven binary packages (and the total includes all binary dependencies fully resolved) delivering on the ‘just works’ promise by the r2u documentation.

As another check, I did the same for RcppAnnoy which has seven reverse dependencies and needed about two hundred CRAN packages to be installed. The full test took just over four minutes with the timing function reporting some nice gains from parallelisation as total user compute time was on the order of just under eight minutes. Again, test results were clean and free of worries as expected:

> system.time( res <- xfun::rev_check("RcppAnnoy", src="RcppAnnoy") )
## ... earlier output omitted for brevity here ...
   user  system elapsed 
471.765 378.220 266.855 
> res
   bbknnR  bigANNOY  blocking     scDHA    Seurat      uwot VectrixDB 
        0         0         0         0         0         0         0 
> 

Overall this was a rather useful quick excursion as it demonstrates that - existing functions can be used to orchestrate a reverse dependency check - with ‘reasonable’ dependency scale we can do this on a single machine quite easily taking advantage of parallel computing on multi-core machines - using r2u gives us fast, easy, reliable package installation making testing of packages we might not otherwise use or know a breeze - doing this in an ephemeral Docker container facilitates easy build-up of required resources and leaves no side effects behind which might affect our normal development environment

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub.

Now generally available

• Cisco Secure Access is an advanced enterprise browser integration for Edge for Business. As a single integrated connector, it brings not only secure access but also unified data protection and AI guardrails directly into the browser.
• Tanium Connector for Microsoft Edge for Business delivers real-time browser telemetry into Tanium Autonomous IT Platform, helping organizations gain deeper visibility into browser-based threats, close critical security blind spots, improve compliance validation, and strengthen overall endpoint security across the enterprise.
• Clever Classroom MFA TrustPass helps streamline logins in education environments by recognizing trusted devices in Edge for Business—reducing unnecessary MFA prompts while maintaining strong security.

Bringing it all together

We briefly removed Telegram from the App Store after our review found content that violates our strict guidelines prohibiting child sexual abuse material. The app was subsequently restored after the developer promptly removed the content and banned the user who posted it.

After seeing a video a few months ago demonstrating how a proprietary CAM solution uses machine learning and large language models to automatically generate CNC instructions, and successfully testing it on a real CNC, I began wondering if the same could be achieved with free software. I still do not know the answer, but I may be getting closer to finding out. Two weeks ago, I came across the video "I Connected Claude AI to FreeCAD (And It Models Parts Like an Engineer)" by Make Form, which introduced me to the FreeCAD MCP project. Even though the video creator apparently believes it is acceptable to download and run random binaries from the Internet on a local machine (his setup uses UCX), I do not. I would probably have left the project alone entirely if I had not noticed that all of its dependencies are already available in Debian. This significantly boosted my motivation, so I set out to test it using packages built from source on Debian rather than relying on untrusted binaries.

The first hurdle was that the MCP SDK for Python was not present on my Debian Forky test machine. I initially believed it was missing from Debian altogether, but it has been available in Debian Unstable for about a month and is only absent from Forky because some automated tests fail on architectures like riscv64 and s390. Fortunately, backporting it was straightforward using `apt-get source -b python3-mcp`. The next hurdle involved an outdated version of the Validators Python library. Since I am a member of Debian's Python team, which maintains this package, updating it to a sufficient version for FreeCAD MCP was relatively easy. I could not upgrade to the latest upstream release due to a new dependency on an Ethereum-related library, so I settled on a 2024 version.

With those dependencies in place, I proceeded to create a Debian package for FreeCAD MCP. I had previously submitted a request for packaging of FreeCAD MCP to gauge interest while deciding whether to prioritize maintaining it myself. Because salsa.debian.org blocks access from Tor users like myself, I published my draft packaging scripts in a Git repository on Codeberg as the Debian FreeCAD MCP project and got it working with the FreeCAD 1.1 version in Forky. I initially struggled with the button controls for the MCP feature, which led me to submit a pull request titled "Fixed startup sync of checkable toolbar buttons" proposing a fix. Once this confusion was resolved and the MCP setup was enabled via the GUI, I was able to run FreeCAD completely headless using `xvfb-run` on a machine without an X server to generate models. I am using a private LLM service running the Debian package of llama.cpp with the Qwen 3.6 model downloaded from Hugging Face, configured with a maximum context window of 105k tokens. I also tested the Bonsai model on my test laptop; initially, its context window was too small (8k and 16k could not accommodate the FreeCAD MCP instructions), but even after increasing it to 32k, it proved useless for generating FreeCAD models so far. I've used Claw Code, Aider and Open Code with my server so far, and for this test I ended up with OpenCode because it was easy to set up to use an MCP. Because none of my LLM services are set up to be multimodal (capable of processing both text and images in this case), I configured the MCP to return only textual feedback from FreeCAD. I am unsure if this is a major limitation, though I suspect it might be.

My testing experience remains limited, with no clear successes yet. Part of the issue likely stems from my ability to provide effective instructions for modeling 3D objects (I am relatively new to FreeCAD, English is not my first language, and I lack a precise vocabulary for describing construction features to an LLM). Nevertheless, the LLM has demonstrated the capacity to create 3D models in FreeCAD. In one of my first tests, I asked it to generate a cube and then produce CAM/G-code instructions for a CNC machine. It did output G-code (which remains untested), but I was surprised to find that it bypassed FreeCAD's built-in CAM module entirely and instead generated an external Python script to produce the code. This was not quite what I intended, though my instructions were probably unclear. The Qwen model with OpenCode seems to strongly prefer programming directly; it frequently executes Python snippets inside FreeCAD to achieve its goals rather than using the standard sketch-and-extrude workflow I am accustomed to. In another test, I asked the LLM to create a parameterized pipe assembly to see which of FreeCAD's parametric tools it would choose, but found no evidence of traditional parametric features in the output. When prompted, the LLM explained that the parameters were embedded directly in the Python script used to generate the model, rather than in native FreeCAD features. With more explicit instructions, it eventually created a FreeCAD spreadsheet to manage the parameters. The resulting model looked much closer to my expectations and could have been useful with further refinement. My so far last experiment was less successful: I asked it to design a pipe clamp, but the LLM repeatedly failed to position the clamping screws in a way that would actually secure the brackets around the pipe. It is unclear whether this limitation lies with the model, my prompt, or other factors.

Based on my testing so far, I am uncertain whether FreeCAD MCP is merely a fun toy or a genuinely useful tool. I will only commit time to maintaining it in Debian if it proves to be practically valuable. I would welcome feedback from anyone who has experience with the project, preferably via the original request-for-packaging mailing list thread. Alternatively, I am available in the FreeCAD and Debian AI IRC channels for further discussion.

As usual, if you use Bitcoin and wish to support my activities, please send donations to 15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.

• Copy text or other supported content on their iPhone and paste it directly on their Windows PC, and vice versa.


• Perform common productivity workflows without needing to foreground an app or take explicit repeated actions to initiate a transfer.


• Experience clipboard synchronization as a lightweight, continuous capability rather than a manual, app-driven operation.

To adopt this solution, you will need to adopt AccessorySetupKit in order for the user to consent to the necessary permissions allowing the pasteboard to be shared with your accessory. This solution will require the user to perform a one-time consent to sharing the pasteboard with each paired accessory that will receive this functionality.

• Round One, Ted Energy - Contestants have to introduce themselves in character and have a two-minute dance break. Judging will be based on optimism, posture, and presence, along with costume commitment and participation level.


• Round Two, Head Coach - Semifinalists will participate in a trivia game and will be judged on the level to which each participant embraces the Ted Lasso character. The round will be judged on trivia results, costume commitment, mustache authenticity (Apple says 'stick-ons OK; real grows extra credit'), and The Believe Factor (something unique and special).


• Round Three, Ted Talk - Each remaining contestant will present a 30- to 45-second pep talk to the crowd. It will be judged on how moved the crowd is, costume commitment, and Ted Energy.