The Amarok Development Squad is happy to announce the immediate availability of Amarok 3.1.1, the first bugfix release for Amarok 3.1 "Tricks of the Light"!

3.1.1 features a number of small improvements and bug fixes, including miscellaneous fixes for toolbars and the return of tag dialog autocompletions, a functionality that initially got lost during the Qt5/KF5 port. However, most of the work has again happened under the hood to improve the codebase's Qt6/KF6 compatibility. For the 3.2 version coming up later this year, the KDE frameworks dependency will be raised to 5.108. This should allow replacing the remaining deprecated KF5 functionalities; one of the final barriers preventing Qt6/KF6 based builds from succeeding.

Changes since 3.1.0

CHANGES:

• Most of the context view QML items ported from QtControls 1 to QtControls 2
• Default to no fadeout on pause and stop (BR 491603)

BUGFIXES:

• Actually show the file browser panel toolbar
• Fix track editor autocompletions (BR 491520)
• Ensure home icon is shown in browser breadcrumb widgets (BR 491354)

Getting Amarok

In addition to source code, Amarok is available for installation from many distributions' package repositories, which are likely to get updated to 3.1.1 soon, as well as the flatpak available on flathub.

Packager section

You can find the tarball package on download.kde.org and it has been signed with Tuomas Nurmi's GPG key.

Three weeks ago, I attended KDE Akademy 2024 in Würzburg, Germany. It was pretty exciting to meet my KDE friends after one year since last Akademy 2023!

Travel drama

Ideally whole trip should’ve taken just ~18 hours door-to-door but thanks to Lufthansa whole travel turned out to be of 48 hours in total including layovers. Flight cancellation and rebooking caused by travel to start way earlier than planned (Thursday 5:00 AM instead of planned 07:00 PM) and had to spend insane amount of time in layover.

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-39.

We have lift-off! Element X, Call and Server Suite are ready!

Tags: tech, matrix, ux

Definitely a big announcement for Matrix. Could it be the beginning of going mainstream? I suspect it’ll be now or never. I’m slightly concerned about the desktop support being apparently ignored, the UX there is far from great still.

https://element.io/blog/we-have-lift-off-element-x-call-and-server-suite-are-ready/

Firefox tracks you with “privacy preserving” feature

Tags: tech, mozilla, privacy, surveillance, gdpr

It was to be expected that complaints against Mozilla could happen in Europe. They’ve been asking for it lately…

https://noyb.eu/en/firefox-tracks-you-privacy-preserving-feature

No Data Lasts Forever

Tags: tech, data, culture, history, ecology

Excellent piece, we’re a civilisation whose culture is built on shifting sands and… toy plastics. Guess what will survive us?

https://lilysthings.org/blog/no-data-lasts-forever/

They stole my voice with AI | Jeff Geerling

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, criticism, law

This is clearly less high profile than the Scarlett Johanssen vs OpenAI one. Still this shows it has the potential to become a widespread (even though shady) practice. This might need some regulation fairly soon.

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/they-stole-my-voice-ai

Forget ChatGPT: why researchers now run small AIs on their laptops

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, science

This is indeed important to be able to run such models locally. Will still require more optimization but it’s slowly getting there. The reproducibility it brings is especially necessary for science.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02998-y

OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model Applications

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, security, safety

People are putting LLM related feature out there too hastily for my taste. At least they should keep in mind the security and safety implications.

https://owasp.org/www-project-top-10-for-large-language-model-applications/

Millions of Vehicles Could Be Hacked and Tracked Thanks to a Simple Website Bug

Tags: tech, automotive, security

Could we just stop connecting cars with web access for features we don’t really need? Please?

https://www.wired.com/story/kia-web-vulnerability-vehicle-hack-track/

Peering Forward: C++’s next decade

Tags: tech, c++, security, safety

Lots of good stuff definitely coming. This should definitely help make it more approachable to lots of people.

https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2024/blob/main/Presentations/Peering_Forward_Cpps_Next_Decade.pdf

Eliminating Memory Safety Vulnerabilities at the Source

Tags: tech, c++, rust, security, safety

Excellent proof of why you don’t want to “rewrite it all in Rust”. It’s important to respect the old code and focus on applying safety practices on the new code. This is also why the upcoming changes to C++ are worth it, it might improve the interoperability factor almost for free.

https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html

Committing to Rust in the kernel

Tags: tech, linux, kernel, rust

Despite the drama, Rust is slowly making its way into the kernel.

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/991062/b0df468b40b21f5d/

Waiting for many things at once with io_uring

Tags: tech, linux, system

Wondering what io_uring is for? This is a good explanation.

https://mazzo.li/posts/uring-multiplex.html

Overview of cross-architecture portability problems – Michał Górny

Tags: tech, cpu, portability

Nice list of common portability issues one can encounter at the machine architecture level. But don’t be fooled, this doesn’t have implications only for C and C++, those problems leak in higher level languages as well.

https://blogs.gentoo.org/mgorny/2024/09/23/overview-of-cross-architecture-portability-problems/

The Python Package Index Should Get Rid Of Its Training Wheels

Tags: tech, python

Interesting problem I didn’t realize PyPI had. Indeed I hope they start looking into reproducibility issue to reduce the bandwidth and space they use.

https://kristoff.it/blog/python-training-wheels/

Refactoring Python with Tree-sitter & Jedi

Tags: tech, python, refactoring

Interesting trick to help with project wide renames for Python codebases.

https://jackevans.bearblog.dev/refactoring-python-with-tree-sitter-jedi/

I Like Makefiles

Tags: tech, tools

What can I say? I love Makefiles as well.

https://switowski.com/blog/i-like-makefiles/

git-absorb: git commit –fixup, but automatic

Tags: tech, tools, version-control, git

Ooh! This looks like a really neat improvement. I wonder how reliable this is, I’ll definitely test it.

https://github.com/tummychow/git-absorb

similar, but different

Tags: tech, software, design

Nice short post about cohesion in software design. Also gives clue about what proxy we can use to gauge this cohesion.

https://explaining.software/archive/similar-but-different/

Resilient Microservice Applications, by Design, and without the Chaos

Tags: tech, architecture, microservices, reliability, research

I’m obviously not in love with the complexity this type of architecture brings. That being said, this thesis brings an interesting approach to better detect failure scenarios in such systems.

https://christophermeiklejohn.com/publications/cmeiklej_phd_s3d_2024.pdf

Conway’s law

Tags: tech, architecture, organization, conway

This law is unfortunately too little known. Here is a nice and short primer. Be careful though, it’s short but packed with information, might require more reading around the concepts highlighted in this article.

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Conway%27s+law

DORA Metrics At Work. How we doubled our team’s delivery…

Tags: tech, project-management, quality, metrics

When I read the content of this article I wonder how useful the metrics really were. I mean clearly they helped the team realize which changes to bring… but the practice changes were all somewhat conventional in a way. You go a long way when you focus on quality and create the space for it.

https://medium.com/booking-com-development/dora-metrics-at-work-46c835a86a89

Bye for now!

Krita 5.2.5 has a critical bug (493774), please dowload Krita 5.2.6 instead!

Krita 5.2.5 is here, bringing over 50 bugfixes since 5.2.3 (5.2.4 was a Windows-specific hotfix). Major fixes have been done to audio playback, transform mask calculation and more!

In addition to the core team, special thanks to Maciej Jesionowski, Ralek Kolemios, Freya Lupen, Michael Genda, Rasyuqa A. H., Simon Ra and Sam James for a variety of fixes!

Changes since 5.2.3:

• Correctly adjust audio playback when animation framerate is changed.
• Fix no layer being activated on opening a document (Bug 490375)
• [mlt] Fix incorrect usage of get_frame API (Bug 489146)
• Fix forbidden cursor blinking when switching tools with shortcuts (Bug 490255)
• Fix conflicts between mouse and touch actions requested concurrently (Bug 489537)
• Only check for the presence of bt2020PQColorSpace on Windows (Bug 490301)
• Run macdeployqt after searching for missing libs (Bug 490181)
• Fix crash when deleting composition
• Fix scaling down image with 1px grid spacing (Bug 490898)
• Fix layer activation issue when opening multiple documents (Bug 490843)
• Make clip-board pasting code a bit more robust (Bug 490636)
• Fix a number of issues with frame generation (Bug 486417)
• A number of changes related to qt6 port changes.
• Fix black canvas appearing when "Limit animation frame size" is active (Bug 486417)
• WebP: fix colorspace export issue when dithering is enabled (Bug 491231)
• WebP: preserve color profile on export if color model is RGB(A)
• Fix layer selection when a layer was removed while view was inactive
• Fix On-Canvas Brush Editor's decimal sliders (Bug 447800, Bug 457744)
• Make sure file layers are updated when image size or resolution changes (Bug 467257, Bug 470110)
• Fix Advanced Export of the image with filter masks or layer styles (Bug 476980)
• Avoid memory leak in the advanced export function
• Fix mipmaps not being regenerated after transformation was finished or cancelled (Bug 480973)
• [Gentoo] Don't use xsimd::default_arch in the pixel scaler code
• KisZug: Fix ODR violation for map_*
• Fix a crash in Filter Brush when changing the filter type (Bug 478419)
• PSD: Don't test reference layer for homogenous check (Bug 492236)
• Fix an assert that should have been a safe assert (Bug 491665)
• Set minimum freetype version to 2.11 (Bug 489377)
• Set Krita Default on restoring defaults (Bug 488478)
• Fix loading translated news (Bug 489477)
• Make sure that older files with simple transform masks load fine & Fix infinite loop with combination of clone + transform-mask-on-source (Bug 492320)
• Fix more cycling updates in clone/transform-masks combinations (Bug 443766)
• Fix incorrect threaded image access in multiple clone layers (Bug 449964)
• TIFF: Ignore resolution if set to 0 (Bug 473090)
• Specific Color Selector: Update labels fox HSX (Bug 475551)
• Specific Color Selector: Fix RGB sliders changing length (Bug 453649)
• Specific Color Selector: Fix float slider step 1 -> 0.01
• Specific Color Selector: Fix holding down spinbox arrows (Bug 453366)
• Fix clone layers resetting the animation cache (Bug 484353)
• Fix an assert when trying to activate an image snapshot (Bug 492114)
• Fix redo actions to appear when undoing juggler-compressed actions (Bug 491186)
• Update cache when cloning perspective assistants (Bug 493185)
• Fix a warning on undoing flattening a group (Bug 474122)
• Relink clones to the new layer when flattening (Bug 476514)
• Fix onion skins rendering on layers with a transform masks (Bug 457136)
• Fix perspective value for hovering pixel
• Fix Move and Transform tool to work with Pass-Through groups (Bug 457957)
• JPEG XL: Export: implement streaming encoding and progress reporting
• Deselect selection when pasting from the clipboard (Bug 459162)

I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 2.0 on the Chrome Web Store and Microsoft Edge Add-ons page. This release updates the extension to Manifest Version 3 which will be required by Chrome soon. The major version bump reflects the amount of work it has taken to achieve this port.

Plasma Browser Integration bridges the gap between your browser and the Plasma desktop. It lets you share links, find browser tabs and visited websites in KRunner, monitor download progress in the notification center, and control music and video playback anytime from within Plasma, or even from your phone using KDE Connect!

Despite the version number, there aren’t many user-facing changes. This release comes with the usual translation updates, however. Since this release doesn’t bring any advantage to Firefox users over the previous 1.9.1, it will not be provided on the Mozilla add-ons store.

We have taken the opportunity of reworking the extension manifest to make the “history” permission mandatory. When the browser history KRunner module was originally added, the permission was optional as we feared it might scare users away when presented with a scary permission warning when updating the extension.

(also see the Changelog Page on our Community Wiki)

Since dolphin-plugins 24.05, you can git clone from dolphin with dolphin-plugins git plugin.

Once the plugins are installed and Git is enabled in the context menu settings, you have this context menu action available:

And this shows this git clone dialog (with my french locale):

You can paste a git repository url and it will fetch its branches. If you happen to have a url in your clipboard or a git clone command line, it will directly extract it as the repository url.

This was spearheaded by Nikolai Krasheninnikov, thanks. I participated a bit as well and reviewed it.

There is still opportunity to improve the git implementation, like having a better commit dialog. That would be a nice and simple new contributor opportunity :)

Changelog

• Correction bug 485366: Differnce in different Report-Selections (2)
• Correction bug 484156: "Monthly Report" Last month grahic failure
• Correction bug 489784: Importing a QIF the account type is changed
• Correction bug 492287: Skrooge 2.32.0 freezes while opening existing .skg files, but import is fast
• Correction bug 493062: Another Problem with QIF and Character "/"
• Correction bug: Fix mimetype of .sta file
• Correction bug: Remove dependency on QCA. So, old password protected files are no more supported.
• Correction bug: Fix translation issue in "Incomes vs Expenditures" dashboard widget

The beta of Kubuntu Oracular Oriole (to become 24.10 in October) has now been released, and is available for download.

This milestone features images for Kubuntu and other Ubuntu flavours.

Pre-releases of Kubuntu Mantic Minotaur are not recommended for:

• Anyone needing a stable system
• Regular users who are not aware of pre-release issues
• Anyone in a production environment with data or workflows that need to be reliable

They are, however, recommended for:

• Regular users who want to help us test by finding, reporting, and/or fixing bugs
• Kubuntu, KDE, and Qt developers
• Other Ubuntu flavour developers

The Beta includes some software updates that are ready for broader testing. However, it is an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs.

We STRONGLY advise testers to read the Kubuntu 24.10 Beta release notes before installing, and in particular the section on ‘Known issues‘.

You can also find more information about the entire 24.10 release (base, kernel, graphics etc) in the main Ubuntu Beta release notes and announcement.



To enable Flatpaks in KDE’s Discover in Kubuntu 24.10, run this command:

sudo apt install flatpak plasma-discover-backend-flatpak


To enable the largest Flatpak repository, run this command:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo


Log out and log back in (or restart) to re-initialize the XDG_DATA_DIRS variable, otherwise, newly installed Flatpak apps will not run or appear in the startup menu.

This blog post provides the heads-up about planned tablet input changes that are brewing for Plasma 6.3. KWin provides support for the tablet input protocol, but things are different on the client side. Some apps support it, some do not. If an application supports the tablet input protocol, great, it will receive tablet input events as is. On the other hand, if the application does not support the tablet input protocol, then KWin will fake tablet input as pointer input. In Plasma 6.3, KWin will stop doing that and I think that we should briefly talk what led us to such a decision and what impact it will have.

Originally, when the tablet input protocol support had landed in KWin, there were still pretty few applications and toolkits that supported it. Emulating tablet input was a fairly reasonable decision, otherwise you would have likely not been able to use tablet in the Plasma Wayland session at all. As time went by, more and more clients gained native support for the tablet protocol. Unfortunately, in meanwhile, we had also started noticing various issues with tablet emulation.

So, what’s the reasonable thing to do about it? Fix the bugs of course. And we did. But there is still a set of issues that cannot be addressed without bringing more complexity in already too complex code that we are struggling to keep afloat. Enough is enough.

Q: What’s new in 6.3?

A: Starting since 6.3, tablet input emulation will be deprecated and disabled by default. Note that you can enable it back by setting the KWIN_WAYLAND_EMULATE_TABLET=1 environment variable.

Q: When will tablet input emulation be dropped?

A: There is no concrete milestone at the moment.

Q: What does it mean to you? (as a user)

A: Hopefully, nothing. The major toolkits such as GTK, Qt, and SDL already provide support for the tablet protocol, so does Xwayland. So, you should be able to use tablet without any issues in X11 applications or Wayland native applications that use the aforementioned toolkits. Chromium/Electron still does not provide native support for tablet input on Wayland, but it’s also worth noting that most of those applications run through Xwayland by default unless the user sets some command-line arguments.

If your favorite application does not work with tablets, please tell it to the developers of that application so they know that there’s demand for such an operation mode.

Q: What should I do? (as a toolkit developer)

A: Please add support for tablets! If your toolkit already supports the tablet input protocol, wonderful, no work to do. \o/

Q: Is KWin alone by stopping emulating tablet input?

A: No, it is not. Mutter (the Wayland compositor in GNOME Shell) doesn’t emulate tablet input either.

Closing words

Deprecating tablet emulation is disappointing but the options that we have are not great either. It’s either bring in more complexity in order to fix the existing issues (plus even more code to ensure that the pointer focus is managed correctly when using both pointer and tablet) into an already too complex codebase or just do nothing special about applications that don’t opt in into tablet input. Hopefully, the remaining applications and toolkits that still miss tablet support add it in the near future. If you have more thoughts about it, please reach out to us at our matrix room.

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-38.

Is Tor still safe to use?

Tags: tech, tor, privacy

The quick answer is yes. The longer answer is that more effort is still required to ensure the network has enough diversity of nodes to stay healthy.

https://blog.torproject.org/tor-is-still-safe/

The Subprime AI Crisis

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, business, economics, criticism

This is a very harsh and bleak view on the current generative AI craze. Clearly it survives on some sort of weird faith that things will magically improve. Some decision makers clearly run fully on said faith and lost all kind of realistic view of the situation. They are just very disconnected from the user’s needs.

There’s even a funny quote in there: “Generative AI must seem kind of magical when your entire life is either being in a meeting or reading an email”.

When this bubble bursts, it’s hard to predict what the fallout will be on the tech industry… for sure it won’t be pretty. It also begs the question: what is this industry going to do next? There’s clearly no plan after generative AI.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/

Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer stirs turmoil over smog in Memphis

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, politics, ecology

Need to illustrate how much the current AI arm race is an ecological and social problem? Here is a very pathological case. This is what you get when you let the tycoons behind this completely unchecked.

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/11/nx-s1-5088134/elon-musk-ai-xai-supercomputer-memphis-pollution

Larry Ellison’s AI-Powered Surveillance Dystopia Is Already Here

Tags: tech, oracle, surveillance

People are gasping in horror with Larry Ellison’s latest claims… but really they should realize he’s not dreaming big. All of that is already here in one form or another. Maybe it was time to protest years ago?

https://www.404media.co/larry-ellisons-ai-powered-surveillance-dystopia-is-already-here/

Turning Everyday Gadgets into Bombs is a Bad Idea

Tags: tech, security, war, battery

Or why we should all be concerned and condemn the latest pager and walkie-talkie attacks. They clearly opened a Pandora’s box, it’d be surprising not to see more of those from various organizations. The funds and efforts required make it affordable enough.

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/turning-everyday-gadgets-into-bombs-is-a-bad-idea/

Oracle, it’s time to free JavaScript™

Tags: tech, javascript, trademark, law, oracle

This is a good initiative. It makes no sense for Oracle to still cling onto JavaScript as a trademark.

https://javascript.tm/

Safe C++

Tags: tech, c++

Interesting proposal for a superset of C++ bringing a safe subset. Could it be a way to improve C++ use for the coming decade?

https://safecpp.org/

Threads, asynchronous IO, and cancellation

Tags: tech, asynchronous, multithreading, io

Or why going through an event loop might be more work initially but will make some things easier longer term. Nice way to frame how threads are bringing some opaque state.

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/ThreadsAsyncIOAndCancellation

Real-time Linux is officially part of the kernel after decades of debate

Tags: tech, linux, kernel, realtime

Definitely good news if you have to maintain a real-time Linux system for industrial use. No more patches to carry over.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/real-time-linux-is-officially-part-of-the-kernel-after-decades-of-debate/

Writing an OS in Rust

Tags: tech, kernel, rust

An interesting endeavor to create you own OS using another language than one of the usual ones.

https://os.phil-opp.com/

Backup strategies for SQLite in production

Tags: tech, databases, sqlite, backup

Wish to use SQLite in production? You better have a good backup strategy. This article explains the main available options.

https://oldmoe.blog/2024/04/30/backup-strategies-for-sqlite-in-production/

6 Techniques I Use to Create a Great User Experience for Shell Scripts

Tags: tech, shell, scripting

Shell scripts deserve to be well designed like this indeed.

https://nochlin.com/blog/6-techniques-i-use-to-create-a-great-user-experience-for-shell-scripts

DirectX Adopting SPIR-V as the Interchange Format of the Future

Tags: tech, shader, vulkan, directx

This is good news. DirectX being the other big graphics API if it adopts SPIR-V as interchange format it’ll open the way to more shader reuses.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-adopting-spir-v/

PixiJS | The HTML5 Creation Engine

Tags: tech, web, frontend, webgpu, 2d, graphics

Looks like an interesting tool to have in the box for 2D effects on the web.

https://pixijs.com/

Good forms

Tags: tech, gui, html, web, frontend, complexity

A good list to design HTML forms. The bar is indeed high and there’s value in simplicity.

https://daverupert.com/2024/09/good-forms/

The Undeniable Utility Of CSS :has

Tags: tech, web, frontend, css

This is indeed an interesting new CSS selector. Opens the door to doing more in a declarative way and with less Javascript.

https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/has/

Goodhart’s Law in Software Engineering

Tags: tech, management, metrics

We should definitely be more wary of metrics indeed. They help for a while, but at some point you’ll necessarily get unfortunately burnt by them. The only fallback is “good judgement”… do what you can with this.

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/goodharts-law-in-software-engineering/

Building Aggressively Helpful Teams

Tags: tech, team, management

Nice tricks to help the team jell. I should try this more.

https://brittonbroderick.com/2024/08/18/building-aggressively-helpful-teams/

Bye for now!