I don't truly know if the fact that I recently started using GNOME as my default desktop environment has anything to do with this or not, but the fact is that my root disk has been filling up pretty quick lately. When I checked, the culprit appeared to be very large (over 4GB) systemd journal logs. As it turned out, other people also ran into it. See, for instance, this blog entry explaining how to free up disk space by clearing the systemd journal logs published on the Ubuntu Handbook website. In my case, the following commands did the trick:

# journalctl --disk-usage

# journalctl --rotate

# journalctl --vacuum-time=2days

The blog entry has other suggestions that may make sense in your case. {link to this entry}

As part of my recent efforts to try new things, I decided to switch from neomutt to Thunderbird as the default email client for my work account. So, I had to configure it to connect to Microsoft 365. To my surprise, it was way easier than I thought. The only issue I ran into was that Thunderbird did not display all my folders by default. However, these instructions clearly explain both how to configure it and how to subscribe to whichever folders you want to view. {link to this entry}

I recently decided to give GNOME another try. Actually, I have nothing against GNOME. I like it quite a bit. Even when they released GNOME 3 and plenty of people complained about the new GNOME Shell and the (admittedly) big changes in the interface. I find their desktop environment quite elegant, featureful yet simple, stable and easy to use. But for the last couple of years, I've been running bspwm, and i3 before that. As I've written elsewhere, from time to time, I like to switch to a different window manager or desktop environment. Just to dislodge old habits and force myself to try something new. That's always a good thing, I think.

In any case, upon starting to use GNOME as a daily driver again, I ran into a couple of issues. First of all, after I made some changes to the GNOME Shell themes, GDM stopped showing any user icons at the graphical login window. Also, after I logged in, I didn't see any user accounts in the GNOME settings. I found the solution to that problem here. Basically, check the relevant file(s) under /var/lib/AccountsService/users, and make sure the value of SystemAccount is set to false. Then, log out and log back in, or reboot. Second, the OpenWeather extension for GNOME Shell showed broken icons. Or, to put it a different way, it always showed the icon of a cloud with an annoying orange warning symbol on it, regardless of the actual weather conditions. It was pretty clear that the icons themselves were broken. Well, the solution to that other problem came from here. Just install the package gnome-icon-theme. {link to this entry}

Seen in a recent thread on Reddit where someone was asking for recommended O'Reilly books to learn Python. Here is a very good summary of the different O'Reilly book series:

"Learning" books are for beginners to the topic. The covers tend to have baby animals, or at least cute animals. That doesn't mean they're for children, though.

"Programming" books take you from no knowledge to intermediate. They're more thorough than the Learning books.

"Cookbooks" are for those with intermediate knowledge. They don't just teach tricks and recipes but best practices.

A "Nutshell" is a reference of language, tools, and standard library. Java in a Nutshell, for example, keeps getting more enormous because the library gets more enormous. Standard library docs can always be looked up online these days. So, unless a Nutshell has something really interesting to say about various parts of the library, it's pointless as a standard library reference. I remember Alex Martelli's old Python in a Nutshell struck me as especially informative about the standard library. Anyway, I see fewer "Nutshell" books these days because the internet can serve as a reference.

"Pocket Guides" are tiny Nutshells, tiny reference books of the language, tools, and most commonly used parts of the standard library.

Overall, I have to agree with people who say that, although some O'Reilly books are not nearly as good, for the most, any of their books is a good resource for beginning and intermediate users. Or, to put it in a more colloquial way, getting an O'Reilly book is usually a safe bet, at least when compared to the competition. I own quite a few of them, and always found them to be very useful and, again, overall, of a very good quality. {link to this entry}

A couple of days ago, we read in the news that GoodRx had been fined for sharing private health data with Facebook, Google, and others. This is certainly something that we could see comming a long time ago. I seriously doubt it surprises anyone. As our data becomes a prized commodity, we lose control of it, especially in an era clearly characterized by corporate surveillance. It goes to prove that, as many suspected years ago, governments are not our only concern. Corporations are arguably more of a problem due to the pervasiveness and popularity of their digital services. To me, the following statement from the article is a clearly exponent of today's corporate mentality:

Under a settlement, California-based GoodRx also accepted that it will be prohibited going forward from sharing user health data with third parties for advertising purposes, the FTC said. GoodRx admitted no wrongdoing and said in a blog post that it settled “to avoid the time and expense of protracted litigation.” The agreement is pending federal court approval.

In other words, they see these practices as "business as usual". {link to this entry}