Chessament 1.0.0 has been released. Chessament is a chess tournament manager. It supports individual Swiss-system tournaments.

Chessament allows to run a full tournament, from registering the players to calculating the standings. To ease the entering of players you can use the rating list of the International Chess Federation.

Chessament aims to be backwards compatible with tournaments created with previous versions of the program as long as possible.

Packagers

The package is available on download.kde.org and it’s signed with my PGP key.

Binary releases for Windows and Linux (as Flatpak) will be available soon.

I am happy to announce that Dolphin has a new view mode: Columns. Each column shows one folder. Select a folder and its content opens in the next column, so the path from the folder you opened down to your selection stays on screen. This layout is known as Miller columns, after Mark S. Miller, who created it in 1980.

It is now in the master branch of Dolphin, not yet in Dolphin 26.12. We can still bring it into 26.12 until November 12th, if the testers find it ready. Otherwise it will ship in Dolphin 27.04. Either way it needs testers, so read on.

A bit of history

Dolphin had a column view from KDE 4.0, built on Qt's QColumnView. When Peter Penz moved the views to the new KItemViews engine for Dolphin 2.0 in 2011, the column view was not ported, and it was gone. Bug 387455, "Column view in Dolphin", was opened in 2017. With 32 people in CC, it has been one of the most requested features. It is now closed.

Sebastian's start

In February 2026 Sebastian Englbrecht opened MR !1185, a first Miller columns view built on KItemViews. After a few weeks of review he handed it over to me, and I continued it until MR !1524 was merged. He wrote:

Yeah, thank you very much meven for taking this to and over the finish line. I came to my limits and wouldn't have been able to polish it this well.

Thank you Sebastian, without your first version this would not exist.

What it does

• The folder that you open is the first column. Up, Back and the breadcrumb add its parent in front.
• A folder or an archive that you select opens the next column. Left, Right and Return move between the columns.
• The location bar, the window title, New Folder, Paste and the terminal panel follow the last column.
• Columns fit their content by default, or use a fixed width. Drag a handle to resize a column, double click it to fit the columns.
• Sort, grouping, hidden files, zoom and previews apply to every column, and a restored session brings back the open columns.
• Ctrl+4 switches to the mode, and Settings > View > Columns has its options.

The Columns mode is in the Dolphin application only for now. Konqueror and other apps that embed Dolphin's file view do not offer it yet.

The testers

The view behaves the way it does because people tried it and told us what was wrong, in more than 600 comments. Lluc Pallejà tested nearly every interaction and filed over a hundred comments with screencasts. Nate Graham did the UX review. Roke Julian Lockhart Beedell, Alexander Wilms, Karol, Kai Uwe Broulik, Leopold Luley, Akseli Lahtinen, Felix Ernst, Blenux, Ke, Linux ForAll and others found bugs and argued the details. Kudos to all of you.

Please test it

Whether the view goes into Dolphin 26.12 is decided on November 12th, see the KDE Gear 26.12 schedule. Until then, it needs people using it on their own folders, with their own habits.

On Arch Linux, the dolphin-git package from the AUR builds Dolphin from master. On any distribution, kde-builder can build it:

kde-builder dolphin
kde-builder --run dolphin

If your distribution ships a recent KDE Frameworks, as Arch Linux or Fedora do, add --no-include-dependencies to build Dolphin alone. Then switch to Columns with Ctrl+4.

Try your daily navigation, the keyboard, long names, large or remote folders, drag and drop, and resizing the window. Tell us also how it feels that the first column is the folder that you opened, as reviewers disagreed on this.

Please report bugs in the view-engine: columns mode component of Dolphin, with the steps and a screenshot or screencast when you can. General impressions are welcome in the comments of this post.

That's all, folks.

Eike’s lovely new terminal Kwi depends on the latest releases of ghostty-vt library. This means you should probably build it yourself as distros will often be slower than Eike. :)

Ghostty is written in Zig, but it supports cmake and is, therefore, buildable by kde-builder, just add the following lines to your kde-builder.yaml:

project ghostty:
    repository: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty.git

It surprises me how many non-KDE projects I have in my kde-builder.yaml every time I open it.

The last maintenance release of the 26.08 series is out with the usual batch of stability fixes and workflow improvements. Project management is more robust, with improvements to recovering corrupted projects, autosave behavior, and handling of archived projects. Other highlights include fixes to several crashes and freezes, keyframe copying, custom effects and improved undo/redo performance.

Under the hood, we fixed compatibility with Qt 6.12 and added improvements to the regression test suite and packaging build-related fixes. This version also includes a fix on MacOS for a Qt related startup crash triggered by the latest MacOS updates.

Kdenlive needs your support

Our small team has been working for years to build an intuitive open source video editor that does not track you, does not use your data, and respects your privacy. However, to ensure a proper development requires resources, so please consider a donation if you enjoy using Kdenlive - even small amounts can make a big difference.

For the full changelog continue reading on kdenlive.org.

Make sure you commit anything you want to end up in the KDE Gear 26.12 releases to them

Next Dates:  
  November 12, 2026, 23:59 UTC: 26.12 Freeze and Beta (26.11.80) tarball creation
  November 13, 2026: 26.12 Beta (26.11.80) release
  November 26, 2026, 23:59 UTC: 26.12 RC (26.11.90) tarball creation
  November 27, 2026: 26.12 RC (26.11.90) Release
  December 3, 2026, 23:59 UTC: 26.12 tarball creation
  December 4, 2026: 26.12 packages released to packagers
  December 10, 2026: 26.12 Release

https://community.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_Gear_26.12_Schedule

Welcome to a new issue of This Week in Plasma!

This week many widgets shipped with Plasma got quite a bit of polish. Feature work and performance work were also notable this week… really, a bit of everything! Have a look:

Notable new features

Plasma 6.9

There’s a new picture of the day wallpaper plugin that displays art made by noted FOSS artist David Revoy. (Guillermo Villafuerte, kdeplasma-addons MR #1150)

You can now choose the position of OSD popups on the screen, if the default position doesn’t work for you. (Mathias Schuh, KDE Bugzilla #501654)

Running systemd-ask-password --no-tty in systemd-257 or higher now shows a nice KDE-style password prompt. (Daan De Meyer, plasma-workspace #6433)

Plasma Browser Integration now supports the Glide browser. (Jan Buchar, plasma-browser-integration MR #178)

Notable UI improvements

Plasma 6.6.8

You can now click to focus the Calculator widget and then interact with it using the keyboard as expected. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1191)

The Media Frame widget now changes the image displayed in its compact form immediately when the slideshow displayed in the popup advances to the next image, rather than after a delay. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1199)

Plasma 6.8.3

Opening the font dialog from the Digital Clock widget now pre-selects the currently-used font. (Niccolò Venerandi, plasma-workspace MR #7348)

Plasma 6.9

Widgets added to the desktop are now created at a size that makes them large enough to be useful without any cut-off content. (Felix Desyatirikov, plasma-workspace MR #7342 and bluedevil MR #274)

Spinning a mouse wheel over a scrollable horizontal row of Task Manager thumbnails now scrolls them, as expected. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #448504)

The way multiple panels interact with one another at screen corners has been improved in a variety of ways. (Niccolò Venerandi, plasma-workspace MR #7330)

Multiple graph styles used in System Monitor widgets are now presented in a nicer and more appropriate way when used on a panel. (Niccolò Venerandi, libksysguard MR #498)

New

Old

The Calculator widget now animates the buttons being pressed when you interact with it using the keyboard rather than the pointer. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1190)

The Dictionary, Disk Quota, and Konsole Profiles widgets now use up-to-date behaviors and styling for their list views. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1192, kdeplasma-addons MR #1193, and kdeplasma-addons MR #1220)

Launcher menus now use “natural sorting”, meaning something like “Transformers 10” is shown after “Transformers 9”, rather than after “Transformers 1”. (Peder Bergan, KDE Bugzilla #524466)

Searching for a keyboard layout on System Settings’ Keyboard Layouts page now works a lot more intuitively. (Tobias Fella, plasma-desktop MR #4060)

You can now use the “Forward” button on your fancy mouse to trigger actions on the desktop. (Niccolò Venerandi, KDE Bugzilla #494216)

You can now open the clipboard settings from its Meta+V popup, just like you already can from its panel widget popup. (Kai Uwe Broulik, plasma-workspace MR #7345)

Frameworks 6.32

When using a non-integer scale factor, icons throughout Plasma and Kirigami-based apps are now a little bit less blurry and pixelated, and also don’t wiggle around so much while their parent window is being resized. (Arjen Hiemstra, Ilya Fedin, and Eike Hein, KDE Bugzilla #522336, KDE Bugzilla #527335, and kirigami MR #2225 respectively)

Notable bug fixes

Plasma 6.6.8

Keyboard navigation within the list of timers in the Timers widget now works as expected. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1247)

The “Timer finished” message you can configure the Timer widget to show is no longer hardcoded to English by default. (Christoph Wolk, KDE Bugzilla #413374)

Plasma 6.8.3

Fixed a recent regression that made KWin crash when a DisplayLink screen was connected. (Xaver Hugl, KDE Bugzilla #527984)

Fixed a case where System Monitor could crash when you scrolled around after killing some processes. (Arjen Hiemstra, KDE Bugzilla #502879)

Plasma no longer lets you use scripting to set a panel’s spacing value to 0, since that would make Plasma freeze when its widgets were dragged to rearrange them. (Niccolò Venerandi, KDE Bugzilla #528228)

Using the Pager widget’s “Selecting current virtual desktop: Shows the desktop” setting no longer triggers rapid flashing when you scroll over it. (Niccolò Venerandi, KDE Bugzilla #471241)

Using the Minimize All widget to minimize and then restore all windows now restores focus to the previously-focused window as well. (Niccolò Venerandi, KDE Bugzilla #450137)

Fixed an issue that could make icon positions sometimes get scrambled on multi-screen setups when one screen was disconnected at the same time as another one was connected. (Błażej Szczygieł, plasma-desktop MR #4163)

Fixed an issue that could break the layout on System Settings’ Display Configuration page if you used it to turn off a screen and then immediately reverted that change. (Błażej Szczygieł, KDE Bugzilla #527131)

Timers saved in the Timer widget can once again be dragged around to re-order them. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1224)

Plasma 6.9

Fixed an issue that could freeze an RDP stream initiated from the very confusingly-named “Windows App” RDP client app for macOS. (Chris Maria, krdp MR #289)

Opening the color dialog from the Color Picker widget no longer makes Plasma freeze while it’s open. (Madhur Dhillon, KDE Bugzilla #525094)

When the Timer widget is placed in a vertical panel, it no longer acts as a trap for the Up and Down arrow keys when focusing widgets with the keyboard. (Christoph Wolk, kdeplasma-addons MR #1225)

Rapidly clicking on the “Previous Image” and “Next Image” buttons on the Media Frame widget no longer sometimes tries to open the current image in an external app. (Niccolò Venerandi, KDE Bugzilla #371832)

Notable in performance & technical

Plasma 6.8.3

Spectacle’s “background mode” feature is now a little bit faster to launch and consumes less memory. (Frog Chen, spectacle MR #621)

Plasma 6.9

Plasma no longer leaks a little bit of memory when you right-click on files or folders on the desktop. (Zühtü Eren İncekara, plasma-desktop MR #4152)

Fixed a couple of memory leaks in System Monitor. (Méven Car, libksysguard MR #479)

Spectacle is now faster to launch in general. (Kai Uwe Broulik, spectacle MR #618, spectacle MR #619, and spectacle MR #620)

System Settings’ Accessibility page is now much faster to load. (Tobias Fella, plasma-desktop MR #4183)

System Settings’ Spell Check page was ported to Qt Quick, giving it a more modern UI and opening the door for faster and easier future improvements. (Tobias Fella, plasma-desktop MR #3975)

How you can help

KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.

KDE’s annual fundraiser has raised 35% of the funds we’re hoping for, but with two months left in the year, we need your help to get it over the finish line! If you can, consider making a donation.

Beyond that, you can help KDE by directly getting involved in any other projects. Donating time is actually more impactful than donating money. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist.

You can also help out by making a donation! This helps cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keeps KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get a new Plasma feature or a bug fix mentioned here

Push a commit to the relevant merge request on invent.kde.org.

Here's the data!

Thank you all for filling the survey I mentioned in my other post here. We got 1518 full responses total, which is a lot!

Without further ado, here's the data in charts.

FYI: I am not a data scientist, just a random guy trying to piece up something.

General usage statistics

First I want to go through some general usage stuff.

What is your desktop icon usage like?

In general, people tend to actually not use them much. They still may have some icons, but they get mostly ignored.

A lot of people use the desktop as a place to store temporary files they're working on, then presumably move them somewhere else when done with them. As a to-do list of sorts.

Then there's shortcuts to applications people use a daily.

Lastly, not as many store files on desktop regularly.

So to me it seems that people ignore them most of the time, but use them as shortcuts for apps to do work, or just need a temporary place for something they're working on.

Note that this was a multichoice question. I allowed people to pick "I don't really use desktop icons", because I believed all these could be true at the same time: People don't necessarily think about them often, but they use them.

Average desktop icon amount

I calculated the average of the icon values, and it seems the average of everyone is 9 icons on desktop.

There were some people typing in 128937128973987 or similar so I removed those. Sorry, I don't believe you! Send me proof!

But the largest amount I'm willing to believe was 150 icons. That's a lot!

Automatic or manual sorting?

This is surprisingly even. I expected way more people move icons around, but it's literally 60/40 situation.

Icons on side of monitor when screen changes

Here's the real juicy parts: How do we want icons to behave when something happens?

When icons are placed on the side of the monitor, and screen resolution changes, we did not really know what users want the icons to actually do.. Until now!

The survey had users to make choice between example images. I have added the images here as a refresher.

Monitor resolution expands

Leave icons at current position.

Move icons to the new resolution.

Overwhelming majority of you want the icons to move to the new resolution and not stay in the current position, which I find interesting, as some might find that a bit jarring! But in a way, it makes sense.

Monitor resolution shrinks

Rearrange icons to fit the new resolution in their original form.

Rearrange them automatically to new position, from start.

This had even more overwhelming majority! Only 71 of you want the automated arrangement. So this preference is quite clear!

Monitor resolution shrinks, but the area where you move new icons has already some icons

Move all icons, to make room for the others.

Rearrange them automatically to new position, from start.

Here 1/3 of the people wanted them to be automatic and start over from the beginning. Moving all icons makes sense, but I think it's going to be more difficult to make and more bug prone.

Desktop is full of icons

You have added so many files on the desktop that it's full, then you add some more! We wanted to know what should happen in this case.

Add a scrollbar so you can scroll for more icons!

Tell user the desktop cant show more icons, but they can be found from Desktop folder.

Show user an "overflow menu" that has the icons that do not fit inside a popup.

Most of you seem to want the popup, which makes sense as this is very much what happens on mobile: When there's a lot of icons on the screen, and you try to add more, they turn into folders instead.

I was surprised the scrollbar was the second choice, as that's already what happens on Plasma, and I have heard so many times that it's confusing.

My personal favorite, the warning, is at third. It's my favorite because it's the least complex. :)

Monitor is changed to vertical mode

A usecase I very rarely encounter, but felt like we should look into anyway.

Keep icons where they are, just rotate them in place.

Rearrange icons so that they are somewhat close to the original arrangement.

Most of you want a rearrangement, though rotating in place seems to fit many as well. I would prefer rotating in place as implementor as it's the simplest, since we do not have to relayout everything.

Monitor disconnection

This is one of the most difficult ones to solve, as screens often behave weirdly when plugged/unplugged. Sometimes we do not know fully if the screen is ready or not, reporting back weird resolution, etc..

As a note for this question, the reverse would happen: The icons would be back on the reconnected screen.

They move to the remaining screen.

They aren't visible on the remaining screen.

I was expecting most to vote for the moving to the remaining screen, and I was right! However, I did not expect it to be this small divide.. A lot of you are fine with the icons not showing on the remaining screen!

Conclusions

Most of these things are what I expected, though I did not expect as much divide: I was expecting 90/10 divisions, not 60/40!

But thank you all for answering to the survey. I will have to properly mull over and plan now with all this data in my hands.

Note that this data does not decide anything, but it works as a guidance for us.

There's a lot of writing for me to read about the icons, so I will go through that over time. But thank you for these responses, as it will help us KDE folk figure out how to fix the desktop icon situation, as it's still bit flakey.

No promises when, but I want to get into it when I have gotten more Union bug fixes done.

Thank you again! Your help has been very valuable. <3

ps. Hope you don't mind my crappy charts. I am using chartjs for it, but if you have javascript off, you should see the images I took instead.

I didn’t post last week, but I did read a bit. Between this and some catching up this week… Behold the web review double issue for the week 2026-45!

Reading in decline? Barnes & Noble is un-Daunt-ed

Tags: tech, book

Bookshops still have a future and it can be bright. It looks like ebooks can’t displace regular books further.

https://chadcomello.com/reading-in-decline-barnes-noble-is-un-daunt-ed/

I discovered a sound that leaks your exact location (and it’s everywhere)

Tags: tech, physics, mathematics, osint

Very impressive stuff. This is an extremely powerful OSINT method to narrow down where some sound might have been recorded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UytYrhYLOKI

Serbia just elected the world’s brainiest parliament

Tags: politics, science, sociology

I guess this will be an interesting social experiment to follow in the coming years.

https://www.science.org/content/article/serbia-just-elected-world-s-brainiest-parliament

Overgrown, when plants invade your abandoned tabs

Tags: tech, browser, funny

This is a funny browser extension idea.

https://charliegerard.dev/blog/overgrown-extension/

Walker Playground

Tags: tech, web, funny

This is really cool. Makes me want to play Lemmings again.

https://markblah.github.io/lemmings/

Mastodon, The Only Good Choice

Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse

Of course it has some of the social media flaws bit the Fediverse is the only good option. At least it can’t seems to enshittify due to corporate capture.

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/07/05/Choose-Mastodon

This $48 e-paper display can be whatever you want it to be

Tags: tech, hardware, self-hosting

Interesting device. The self-hosting of the server part seems a bit involved still. It gives plenty of ideas of cool things to try though.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/11/this-48-e-paper-display-can-be-whatever-you-want-it-to-be/

Why big tech stopped building useful stuff

Tags: tech, innovation, business

The reasons invoked definitely make sense. It’s kind of the age of mediocrity and it’s really boring.

https://www.rubenerd.au/why-big-tech-stopped-building-useful-stuff/

Now Entering: The Era Of Bleh

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, innovation, business, organisation, craftsmanship

Interesting essay. It’s not really a differentiating productivity which businesses will find but a clear homogenization. When everyone will come up with the same ideas, everything will be tasteless and mediocre. Will we properly notice? Will it be an era where craftsmanship will be back?

https://www.noemamag.com/now-entering-the-era-of-bleh/

Why Wikimedia Is Speaking Up in a Major AI Copyright Case

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, wikipedia, copyright, law

Important statement from Wikimedia. The brief is likely to have quite some impact in the ongoing copyright cases around the LLM industry.

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/10/30/why-wikimedia-is-speaking-up-in-a-major-ai-copyright-case/

Navigating Open Source Software Development in the Generative AI Era

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, foss, community

Interesting report showing the impact of LLM based contributions on communities. Note the obvious limit of this survey being declarative. It gives some food for thought though.

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/research/oss-development-gen-ai-era-2026?hsLang=en

Webinar: Copyrightability of LLM-generated code

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot, copyright, foss, law

Very interesting webinar. Lots of food for thought regarding LLM produced code being de facto public domain and the consequences. A bit frustrated it glances a bit over copyright infringement during the talk part but it’s explored more during the Q&A. Clearly it shows that there are still quite a few blurry lines so the legal risks are real. It looks like we’ll have to wait for court rulings and/or laws being clarified.

https://nlnet.nl/events/20261029/index.html

AI: EU Member States approve “digital expropriation” of Europeans for AI companies

Tags: tech, europe, law, privacy, ai, machine-learning, gpt

There’s really a problem with the EU Commission and Council… How can they swing positions like this?

https://noyb.eu/en/ai-eu-member-states-approve-digital-expropriation-europeans-ai-companies

Why I Resist Generative “AI”

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, criticism, ethics, ecology, cognition, politics

A good summary of everything that is wrong with the current LLM industrial complex.

https://estherweidauer.com/articles/why-resist-generative-ai.html

US data centers could wipe out 15 years’ worth of progress in greenhouse gas emissions

Tags: tech, infrastructure, ecology

Let’s hope most of the new data centers just won’t be built or get on line…

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/us-data-centers-could-wipe-out-15-years-worth-of-progress-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions-report-claims-buildouts-could-emit-as-much-carbon-dioxide-as-all-of-mexico

AI Isn’t Replacing SREs. It’s Deskilling Them.

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, reliability, learning, engineering

The question is explored from the SRE angle but it applies more widely. The deskilling in teams which automate as much as possible is real. What can you do them when you encounter something novel not covered by the automation? You’re quickly stuck.

https://newsletter.signoz.io/p/ai-isnt-replacing-sres-its-deskilling

Security advisory: openssh-server password authentication bypass

Tags: tech, ssh, security

OK, this is a really bad one. Check your alpine based machines and containers.

https://www.alpinelinux.org/posts/2026-11-05-openssh-password-authentication-bypass/

Be Aware of What’s in Your Logs

Tags: tech, debugging, logging, privacy

A bit lengthy but that point stands. When you send application logs it has privacy implications every time. Developers can and should try to limit the risks though.

https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/be-aware-of-whats-in-your-logs/

UUIDv7 doesn’t have the properties you think it does

Tags: tech, uuid

Don’t just blindly use it. Lots of properties will depend on the exact generator you use.

https://alexsci.com/blog/uuidv7-is-weird/

We can do better than line-buffered output

Tags: tech, terminal, system, performance

Indeed there are other approaches which can give better result.

https://nullprogram.com/blog/2026/11/05/

It’s the memory latency, stupid

Tags: tech, rust, memory, performance

Another illustration than the memory access patterns are the most important factor for performance.

https://pivotlake.io/blog/its-the-memory-latency-stupid/

Go concurrency distilled

Tags: tech, go, multithreading, asynchronous

Nice reference material on the Go concurrency primitives.

https://antonz.org/go-concurrency-distilled/

Avoid Public Functions Calling Other Public Functions

Tags: tech, programming, design, api

This is indeed a good guideline to follow when designing interfaces.

https://matklad.github.io/2026/10/29/pub-calls-pub.html

Thinking in Traits

Tags: tech, rust, type-systems

The writing is maybe lacking structure a bit. Still that gives a worthwhile tour of all the nice features one can build with a trait system and carefully designed APIs.

https://corrode.dev/blog/thinking-in-traits/

C++26 DIS failed, how does C++ survive?

Tags: tech, c++, standard

This is of course a big deal. Will the deadlock be solved? Will the language be able to move forward again with the bases of the institution quite shaken? Only time will tell.

https://andreasfertig.com/blog/2026/11/cpp26-dis-failed-how-does-cpp-survive/

In C++, = default and {} are not the same constructor

Tags: tech, c++, performance

Different safety profile but also different performance depending on the compiler. To keep in mind if there’s too much performance pressure.

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/11/02/default-and-braces-are-not-the-same-constructor/

Modern C++ Is a Mindset, Not a Standard

Tags: tech, c++, safety

Indeed there’s an educational problem. Too much C++ code is wrote “the old way”.

https://www.modernescpp.com/index.php/cpp-and-memory-safety-part-2/

Pele · Mermaid diagrams as themeable SVG

Tags: tech, diagrams, tools

Looks like a very nice alternative to Mermaid.

https://pele.run/

Using maths to balance your heading styles

Tags: tech, typography, text, fonts, web, css

Interesting scale for headers in text content. The approach gives clearly good results.

https://www.craigabbott.co.uk/blog/2026/using-maths-to-balance-your-heading-styles/

The Polyglot’s Dilemma: Conformance Testing a Dozen Specs in as Many Languages

Tags: tech, tests, databases

Interesting approach used for MongoDB drivers. I’m not sure I’d have banked on YAML but having conformance tests in a single language is clearly a good bet.

https://emptysqua.re/blog/polyglots-dilemma/

Simple ways to prepare before facilitating a meeting

Tags: meetings, facilitation

Definitely looks like good advice if you need to facilitate a meeting.

https://www.improvesomething.today/simple-ways-to-prepare-before-facilitating-a-meeting/

The Real Kevin Bacon

Tags: tech, data-visualization, movie

Very nice exploration of the Hollywood movies social graph. It was believed Kevin Bacon was the centre of it all. The story is way more nuanced.

https://pudding.cool/2026/10/kevin-bacon/

How I Survived Late-Stage Cancer (A Fun Story)

Tags: health, medecine, science

Wondering how chemotherapy works? Here is one example.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5_Fayfx2NUM

Bye for now!

Kirigami Addons 1.16.1 is out! Kirigami Addons is a growing collection of nice components you can use in your Kirigami and QML applications.

This release mainly includes small bugfixes and two visual chances.

AboutPage

The about page provided by Kirigami Addons now display the release information more prominently (if any is available).

Time Picker

The time picker was completely redesigned. If you belonged to the minority who liked the tumbler timer picker, well bad news, it’s not that anymore.

The new design is directly inspired by the one from android.

Packager section

The actualy tarbal might take up to 24 hours to be published as it need to be processed by sysadmin, I just announced this before going in vacation.

You can find the package on download.kde.org (kirigami addons) as soon as it is available and it has been signed with my GPG key.

Renovate is a helpful tool that updates your dependencies automatically. This is cool, because it means you don’t have to track updates to your dependencies manually, which let’s be honest never really work. Renovate will just create a new merge request as soon as it detects an update.

This is particularly relevant now, with more and more vulnerabilities being detected in our software supply chain every day.

Setting things up

Renovate is super easy to set up by using its CLI in a GitLab pipeline.

The only particular point is that this needs to run in a repo that not everyone has access to, as it uses a GitLab access token to create MRs, so it is now in the sysadmin/renovate-bot in invent.

Rust

Renovate supports Cargo as a package manager by default, so the configuration is extremely short and the repos with Rust just need to be listed in kde-renovate.

If you maintain a Rust project, feel free to open a merge request to list your project there.

Craft

Craft is the most interesting project to benefit from this, as it is used to build our binaries for Android, Windows, macOS and more. It is also the most complex, as Renovate doesn’t natively support Craft, nor does it have a way to retrieve updates from Anitya, only from GitLab, GitHub, pip and other sources.

Adding Anitya support was easy with a custom data source:

 "customDatasources": {
 "release-monitoring": {
 "defaultRegistryUrlTemplate": "https://release-monitoring.org/api/v2/versions/?project_id={{{packageName}}}",
 "format": "json",
 "transformTemplates": [
 "{\"releases\": [stable_versions.{\"version\": $}]}"
 ]
 }
 },

This uses the releaseManagerId from the blueprints to match each blueprint to a project on Anitya.

Updating the blueprints is trickier, as they are written in Python, so I had to write a small script using Python’s ast module to modify them. It is a bit cursed, but it works as long as the blueprints follow the common structure with for ver in ["x.x.x", "y.y.y"]:.

The next step is to make sure all Craft blueprints contain a releaseManagerId, and this is where help would be much appreciated also checking that the PRs created by Renovate are correct and the new updated package build on every of our platforms.

Huge thanks to Ben and Hannah for setting this up and happy hacking!