Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-24.

Artilect needs some help

Tags: tech, community

You might remember we were hosted in Toulouse for the KDEPIM Sprint this year. Very nice venue, they do other things locally of course. They need to raise some money to get to the next level. It’d be nice to see them receive lots of love. Head to their fundraising page! (in french though)

https://www.helloasso.com/associations/artilect/collectes/artilect-fablab

‘No regrets,’ says Edward Snowden, after 10 years in exile | Edward Snowden | The Guardian

Tags: tech, surveillance

Things improved a bit… they also got worse in a way. This stays an ongoing fight for the years to come.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/08/no-regrets-says-edward-snowden-after-10-years-in-exile

Reddit’s users and moderators are revolting against its CEO - The Verge

Tags: tech, reddit, social-media

Another centralized tool for communication going down the drain. I wonder what the IPO will look like in this case.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/10/23756476/reddit-protest-api-changes-apollo-third-party-apps

What Reddit Got Wrong | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Tags: tech, reddit, social-media

Excellent summary of the situation regarding the Reddit debacle.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/what-reddit-got-wrong

Killing Community @ marginalia.nu

Tags: tech, business, social-media, community

Interesting and provoking thought… Indeed it’s hard to build communities while also aiming for rapid and constant growth. There’s no chance of having communities properly stabilize which leads to the tribalism and bad behavior we see on social media.

https://www.marginalia.nu/log/82_killing_community/

Every Signature is Broken: On the Insecurity of Microsoft Office’s OOXML Signatures | USENIX

Tags: tech, cryptography, security

Signature of digital documents is definitely not as safe as we would like. All the serious formats have known flaws at this point.

https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentation/rohlmann

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2023

Tags: tech

The results of this annual survey are available. A few interesting insights in there even though I find some of the categorization weird. For instance why splitting so much in details the various Linux flavors? If they didn’t it’d show them as the most popular option for professional use. There are a few other cases where one might want to aggregate by hand or split in several groups among questions.

Here are some of the takeaways I found:

• it’s interesting to see PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite reigning supreme in the database space on several metrics;
• there’s clearly something going on with Rust which is once again among the favorites;
• also notable is the popularity of the Phoenix framework which is probably driving the Elixir adoption;
• I find interesting and ironic the raise of Markdown for sharing information, it feels like it could become the de facto standard in some organizations while staying in the shadow of Confluence and Notion;
• a big surprise to me is that it feels like Matrix has potential to make a dent into the communication tools space for the coming years (there are early signals in the survey in my opinion, we’ll see if that gets confirmed);
• it looks like hybrid and remote work are here to stay, some people went back to being fully in-person but not that many.

It’s also the first time they integrate the use from AI tools but that doesn’t give any surprising or interesting insight yet. It just confirms the hype and the domination of a couple of giant players.

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/

LLMs are good at playing you

Tags: tech, ai, gpt

Nice piece which shows how easy it is to get such models to produce nonsense.

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/llms-are-better-than-you-think-at

Language Model Sketchbook, or Why I Hate Chatbots

Tags: tech, ai, gpt, ux

Interesting ideas for using large language models. There is a world beyond the chatbot interface and it might bring more value to users and avoid some of the pitfalls of anthropomorphisation.

https://maggieappleton.com/lm-sketchbook

An America-less Internet | NthBrock

Tags: tech, internet, distributed, dns, geography

Interesting experiment… with surprising results in places. What stays available or not is not necessarily what one would think. It’s not that easy to be flexible and available across regions.

https://www.nthbrock.com/posts/americaless-internet/

How much memory is needed to run 1M Erlang processes? - Hauleth

Tags: tech, multithreading, performance, memory, benchmarking, erlang

Deep dive on a proper benchmarking and implementation for 1M task on the Erlang runtime. Clearly the previous benchmark had room for improvements.

https://hauleth.dev/post/beam-process-memory-usage/

A comprehensive study of bloated dependencies in the Maven ecosystem | SpringerLink

Tags: tech, java, dependencies, supply-chain

Very interesting study on dependencies. This is specific to the Maven ecosystem so too early to generalize the findings to other similar ecosystems. This indicates at least the difficulties of managing dependencies, especially the transitive ones. Also tries to define the “dependencies bloat” problem.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-020-09914-8

60 terrible tips for a C++ developer

Tags: tech, programming, c++

Funny list of anti-patterns. Not all of it is C++ specific in there, but some are good reminders of the hidden traps in the language.

https://pvs-studio.com/en/blog/posts/cpp/1053/

AsyncIO

Tags: tech, python, asynchronous, multithreading

A piece criticizing the asyncio approach in Python (especially considering the performance tradeoffs in this language). Also provides viable alternatives.

https://charlesleifer.com/blog/asyncio/

Describing Descriptors | Pydon’t 🐍 | Mathspp

Tags: tech, python, metaprogramming

Interesting feature from the Python language. Lots of features are actually built on top of it.

https://mathspp.com/blog/pydonts/describing-descriptors

GitHub - imsnif/diskonaut: Terminal disk space navigator 🔭

Tags: tech, tools, command-line

Might come in handy when Filelight is not available, I could see myself using this over SSH connections.

https://github.com/imsnif/diskonaut

CLI tool to insert spacers in command output to provide visual markers of when things happened

Tags: tech, tools, command-line, logging

Interesting little tool, can come in handy.

https://github.com/samwho/spacer

Some tests are stronger than others • Buttondown

Tags: tech, tests

Interesting way to reason about tests and classify them. I think it can be more useful than the strict “unit” vs “integration” that is way too widespread.

https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/some-tests-are-stronger-than-others/

ignore the code: Anti-Personas

Tags: tech, product-management, ux

Interesting idea, personas help with producing features, something is needed to prevent features we don’t wante.

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2023/06/13/anti_personas/

Jim Highsmith, Co-creator of the Agile Manifesto, Storyteller, Adventurer - YouTube

Tags: tech, agile, values

The interview is overall very interesting (I advise listening to it in full). It’s nice to have such an historical perspective. At 15:00 there’s a question which prompt a very important explanation of why the word “over” was chosen and repeated in the agile manifesto. Unfortunately it’s been often misinterpreted…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VW8YNSVYX4&t=900s

Removing uncertainty: the tip of the iceberg

Tags: tech, risk, project-management, product-management, deployment, architecture

Good piece on how to reduce uncertainty before something is built and ready to be in front of users. It starts with prototyping but goes all the way to feature flags and deployment

https://theengineeringmanager.substack.com/p/removing-uncertainty-the-tip-of-the

Tindall On Software Delays

Tags: tech, project-management, product-management, history

Very interesting! This is really old wisdom which should be more widespread. A few words of caution in there for everyone, me included.

https://two-wrongs.com/tindall-on-software-delays.html

Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems « the jsomers.net blog

Tags: productivity

Interesting point of view… it’s also about the perceived cost of a task. Of course this means one needs to get faster through practice, it’s not about delivering botched work.

https://jsomers.net/blog/speed-matters

Johnny•Decimal

Tags: tech, productivity, organization

Interesting way to organize your data. This gives a library feel for sure. At least it makes me curious.

https://johnnydecimal.com/

UNIHIKER - A single board computer brings you brand new experience.

Tags: tech, hardware, embedded

Looks like an interesting device to tinker with.

https://www.unihiker.com/

Bye for now!

Recap

Welcome back! Last time, I successfully completed the development of the Bundle Creator up to the Resource Chooser page. This page now allows us to easily select resource items by applying filters based on tags or names. I’ve introduced some UI improvements, including the ability to click-to-select, the addition of a convenient Remove Selected button and the introduction of a visually appealing grid view to replace the traditional list view. These enhancements enhance the overall user experience and provide a more streamlined resource selection process.

The Bundle Creator Wizard

As mentioned in previous blog posts, the Bundle Creator consists of four pages: the Resource Chooser, Tag Chooser, Bundle Details, and Save to pages. These pages can be seen in the wizard’s side widget, and users can navigate between them using the Next and Back buttons. The Tag Chooser page retains a similar design to the Embed Tags page from the previous version of the bundle creator. It offers a familiar interface for users to select and embed tags to their new bundle. Similarly, the Bundle Details page maintains consistency with the previous bundle creator, where one can fill out the bundle name, author, website etc.

The inclusion of the Save to Page adds a crucial final step to the bundle creation process. It provides a summary of the bundle details, which includes the number of selected resource items per resource type, and the tags chosen for embedding. This comprehensive summary allows users to review and confirm their bundle’s content before finalizing the creation process.

By dividing the bundle creation process into these distinct and user-friendly pages, particularly for beginners, the Bundle Creator offers a streamlined and intuitive experience. Users can efficiently navigate through each step, making informed decisions and customizing their bundles according to their specific needs.

I have added a small tool button that allows switching between grid view and list view in both the resource manager and bundle creator, providing convenience to the users. Additionally, I have made the icons in the bundle creator more consistent.

Merge Request

My merge request can be viewed here.

Plans ahead

In the upcoming weeks, I would be working on adding the editing bundles feature, as well as improving the Choose Tags section. This requires some UI related feedback, and if you’re interested to help out, please feel free to drop a comment on this post I created on Krita Artists Forum!

Hello world,

This is my third blog post for Google Summer of Code 2023 where I will be sharing what I was able to accomplish in the first two weeks.

The first task I worked on was implementing the account moderation tool. This tool enables moderators/admins of an instance to view all the accounts available on the server and take action against them.

Before starting with its implementation, I requested Carl to schedule a meeting so that I could gain a better understanding of the implementation process. He advised me to study the already implemented SocialGraph page, along with other helpful insights.

Initially, when attempting to receive raw JSON data from the /api/v1/admin/accounts endpoint, I encountered a 403 error response. Upon spending some time debugging my code I couldn’t determine what I was doing wrong and so I finally resorted to asking for help in the Tokodon matrix chat, where redstrate❣️ helped me identify that we didn’t have the necessary scope set in Tokodon to access admin endpoints.

After setting the correct scope, I was finally able to make network requests to the admin endpoint 🥳. I decided to implement a QAbstractListModel to expose all the data and required properties in the QML UI. With this in mind, I created a new class AccountsToolModel that inherited from QAbstractListModel. For making all the filter options functional I created QProperty instances with the necessary READ, WRITE and NOTIFY methods.

To display the admin-related information for an account, I parsed the received JSON data and created a new method AbstractAccount::adminIdentityLookup which will populate QProperty instances of AdminAccountInfo to store all the required information for the moderation tool. Once all the cpp backend was ready, I started with the qml implementation, figuring out the best way in which the data can be presented.

Once the UI was implemented, I encountered an issue with pagination not functioning correctly. After debugging the issue, I discovered that when requesting a response for the next page using the v2 endpoint, the response received was actually v1. This discrepancy messed up the query parameters and rendered pagination impossible. To address this issue, I implemented a simple code block: url = url.toString().replace("/v1/", "/v2/");. This replacement fixed the problem and allowed proper pagination to occur.

To ensure the issue was addressed, I reported it on Mastodon’s GitHub repository. You can find the detailed report here.

At the end of the first two weeks the initial page of Account Moderation tool was implemented whose Merge Request can be tracked here. I also made significant progress towards developing next page of the account tool during these weeks.

Images showing implemented Account Moderation tool

Next I am working on implementing the second page of account Moderation tool and report Moderation tool :)

I will be writing regular blog posts on my website. You can read my previous blog-posts and follow my progress here

I’m happy to announce the 1.1 release of Arianna. Arianna is a small ePub reader application I started with Niccolo some time ago. Like most of my open source applications, it is built on top of Qt and Kirigami.

Arianna is both an ePub viewer and a library management app. Internally, Arianna uses Baloo to find your existing ePub files in your device and categorize them.

New features

Arianna can now display the table of content of a book. This supports complex hierarchies of headings.

Arianna now provides you with the metadata about your books.

Additionally, you can now disable the reading progress on the library page if it distracts you.

Bug fixes

You can now read books without requiring an internet connection. We also fixed various crashes happening when indexing your books.

Get Involved

If you are interested in helping, don’t hesitate to reach out in the Arianna matrix channel (#arianna:kde.org) and I will be happy to guide you.

I also regularly post about my progress on Arianna (and other KDE apps) on my Mastodon account, so don’t hesitate to follow me there ;) We also now have an official Mastodon account for Arianna @arianna@kde.social.

And in case you missed it, as a member of KDE’s fundraising working group, I need to remind you that KDE e.V., the non-profit behind the KDE community accepts donations.

Packager section

You can find the package on download.kde.org and it has been signed with my GPG key.

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-23.

Our Right To Challenge Junk Patents Is Under Threat  | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Tags: tech, patents, law

This is bound to make the US patent system even worse than it already is…

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/our-right-challenge-junk-patents-under-threat

Vision Pro

Tags: tech, apple, ux, ar, vr, xr

Probably the best analysis of the new Apple device I’ve seen so far. Focuses more on the design of the user experience and compares with the strategy behind other similar devices. There are likely a lesson or two to be drawn from it.

https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Vision%20Pro

Developers are lazy, thus Flatpak

Tags: tech, linux, packaging, flatpak

A good reminder that Flatpak is no silver bullet. It’s a bit of a rant at times still it has some good points in particular the security implications are not always properly conveyed to the users. Some thinking might be required regarding what’s lost compared to “traditional” packaging approaches.

https://blog.brixit.nl/developers-are-lazy-thus-flatpak/

ugrep - A faster, user-friendly and compatible grep replacement.

Tags: tech, tools, command-line

There’s a new grep alternative in town. Looks really fast and has an interesting interactive mode. Definitely something to check out.

https://github.com/Genivia/ugrep

Debugging Outside Your Comfort Zone: Diving Beneath a Trusted Abstraction

Tags: tech, complexity, architecture, config, debugging, automation

Very interesting case full of lessons. Of course, increasing the complexity of the system overall can lead to such hard to find issues. It’s also a tale into how seemingly innocuous settings can interact in unexpected ways. I also like the lessons learn pointing to the fact that you can and should debug even the systems you use through abstractions, diving into the code is almost always a good thing (even if in this particular case it wasn’t strictly necessary in the end). And last but not least it shows the tension between mastery and automation… the more you automate the least you master the system, and at the same time this automation is necessary for building resilience in the system.

https://www.infoq.com/articles/debugging-beneath-trusted-abstraction/

graydon2 | The Rust I Wanted Had No Future

Tags: tech, rust, language, design, community

Interesting post, highlights why it’s better when languages are designed in a more community fashion (make sure to read until the conclusion). At least in term of popularity it seems to help.

https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html

PEP 695 – Type Parameter Syntax | peps.python.org

Tags: tech, python, pyright, type-systems

This will hopefully solve most of the oddities in the generic types syntax of Python. Will be available with CPython 3.12 and will need support from type checkers of course.

https://peps.python.org/pep-0695/

The Many Problems with Celery | Log Blog Kebab

Tags: tech, python, celery

Celery is a popular solution for job queues in the Python world… it’s far from perfect though. This list of fixes to make it safer to use is welcome if you’re stuck with it.

https://steve.dignam.xyz/2023/05/20/many-problems-with-celery/

ReactPy

Tags: tech, python, frontend

OK, that looks like an interesting idea for the frontend bits if your stack is mainly Python based. Still very young though.

https://reactpy.dev/docs/index.html

GitHub - bloomberg/pystack: 🔍 🐍 Like pstack but for Python!

Tags: tech, python, debugging

Looks like a very powerful tool for debugging and analyzing processes involving a Python interpreter.

https://github.com/bloomberg/pystack

My Approach to Building Large Technical Projects – Mitchell Hashimoto

Tags: tech, project-management, architecture, tests

Nothing really new but well written. This highlights fairly well the importance of decomposing projects, having at least the broad strokes of the architecture laid down and how automated tests help drive the progress. It’s nice to see it all put together.

https://mitchellh.com/writing/building-large-technical-projects

Bye for now!

Hello world,

This is my second blog post for Google Summer of Code 2023, where I will share what I accomplished during the GSoC-23 community bonding period.

Community Bonding period

During this time GSoC contributors spend 3 weeks learning about their organization’s community and preparing for their coding project. They get to know mentors, read documentation, get up to speed to begin working on their projects

During the community bonding period, the organizers took two introductory sessions kick starting our journey. The first Welcome Session was about the best practices and tips for a successful Google Summer of Code. Following that, GSoC Contributor Summit took place, during which previous participants and mentors shared their experiences of being part of GSoC.

During this time I also got to interact with fellow GSoC contributors and learned more about their interesting projects and their plans .

Furthermore, I utilized this time to get a head-start on my project by familiarizing myself with QT’s model-view programming with the help of official QT's documentation and Tokodon’s source code. Additionally, I implemented the User-Interface of the button to be used to open the moderation tool. The merge request for which can be found here.

An image showing the User Interface of Tokodon with implemented entry point of moderation Tool can be found below.

Next I am working on implementing the account Moderation tool :)

I will be writing regular blog posts on my website. You can read my previous blog-posts and follow my progress here

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-22.

Japan Goes All In: Copyright Doesn’t Apply To AI Training

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, data, copyright, japan

This is looking like a bad move. Clearly the fault of western countries though which let things unfold ambiguously regarding copyright… Now Japan is weakening copyright for everyone.

https://technomancers.ai/japan-goes-all-in-copyright-doesnt-apply-to-ai-training/

Co-Writing with Opinionated Language Models Affects Users’ Views

Tags: tech, ai, gpt, ethics, influence

This is early research of course but still the results are interesting. Once again, we’re much easier to influence than we’d like.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.¹¹⁴⁵⁄_3544548.3581196

Turds

Tags: tech, ai, gpt, art

So close… and still. This is clearly still in the uncanny valley department at times.

https://novalis.org/blog/2023-05-30-turds.html

Reflections on Ten Years Past The Snowden Revelations

Tags: tech, internet, ietf, protocols, privacy, surveillance, attention-economy, security, history, politics

This is an excellent and needed work of contextualization. Ten years after, looking back at how the Snowden Revelations impacted the internet and the work done by the IETF. It also shows there is plenty more to do…

https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-farrell-tenyearsafter-00.html

How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul | Sim O.N.E. (Observations, Nonsense, Exaggerations)

Tags: tech, smartphone, attention-economy

This is a good point, this is a quality before quantity type of problem.

https://simone.org/tracking-screen-time/

Linear feeds are a dark pattern

Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse, ux, design

Clearly the UI design matters quite a bit in term of how addictive all those social network systems are. The alternative proposed here is interesting, I wish it’d be more widely implemented.

https://tilde.town/~dzwdz/blog/feeds.html

halting problem : Configuring portals

Tags: tech, desktop, foss, linux, flatpak

This looks like a move in the right direction regarding desktop portals on Linux.

https://www.bassi.io/articles/2023/05/29/configuring-portals/

Cornell Virtual Workshop: Vectorization

Tags: tech, performance, vector

Nice and thorough workshop on vectorization, where it comes from, what it can do and how you can write code which is easier to vectorize for the compiler.

https://cvw.cac.cornell.edu/vector/

How to discover all the data sources, low-fuss way

Tags: tech, architecture, data, storage

Interesting way to list all the data stores of your system and map them. Has the advantage of being very lean and simple to apply.

https://minimalmodeling.substack.com/p/how-to-discover-all-the-data-sources

On Software Dependency Engineering - HackMD

Tags: tech, supply-chain, foss

Interesting idea, for sure on a complex enough system just managing the dependencies can quickly become a full time job.

https://hackmd.io/@cflewis/Sk0gb9ILh

Feedback: I try to answer “how to become a systems engineer”

Tags: tech, system, engineering, software, expertise, learning

This rings true to me. What a messy path to get better at our craft!

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2023/05/30/eng/

Fold ‘N Fly » Paper Airplane Folding Instructions

Tags: paper, origami, funny

Who would have thought there are so many ways to make paper airplanes?

https://www.foldnfly.com/#/1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2

Bye for now!

KStars v3.6.5 is released on 2023.06.01 for MacOS, Linux, and Windows. It's a bi-monthly bugfix release with a couple of exciting features.

Sky Map Rotation

1. Rotate the sky-map freely: Shift + mouse drag on the sky map
2. Pick pre-defined orientations: Zenith Up / Zenith Down / North Up / North Down depending on the coordinate system being used
3. A magic mode for Dobsonians: The Erect Observer Correction feature, when selected along with Horizontal Coordinates / Zenith Down settings, will reproduce the orientation seen in the eyepiece of a Dobsonian. May need a one-time adjustment for your specific Dobsonian using the shift + drag feature.

Implementation of an optimal sub-exposure calculator based upon the work of, and presentation by, Dr Robin Glover. The calculator considers multiple inputs to determine a sub-exposure time which will provide minimal overall noise in the image:

• A sky quality measurement (SQM) for light pollution
• The optic focal length
• A filter bandwidth
• Camera read-noise (based upon gain/iso)
• An optional adjustment to the allowable increase in noise from light pollution

As inputs are adjusted the calculator will refresh graphic presentation of potential exposure times of the range of gains, and update calculated outputs. The output values are separated into two sections: one for the sub-exposure, and another for image stacks of various integration times.

The sub-exposure outputs are:

• the optimal sub-exposure time
• the count of electrons produced from light-pollution
• the shot noise, (noise from light pollution)
• the total exposure noise, (the combined noise from light-pollution and camera read-noise)

The image stack information is presented in a table showing:

• planned integration hours
• the count of exposures to reach the planned integration hours
• the actual stack (integration time) in seconds
• the noise for the stack
• a ration of stack time to noise, (as a indicator of quality)

An instance of the sub-exposure calculator can be started from a new 'clock' icon on the ekos capture screen. Multiple instances of the sub-exposure calculator can be started concurrently so that side-by-side comparisons can be made for variations in inputs.

Data for camera read-noise will be provided through individual xml files which will be user maintained and published in a repository. These camera data files persisted within a folder "exposure_calculator" under user/local/share/kstars. The calculator includes the capability to download camera files from a repository. Upon the initial start of the calculator at least one camera data file download will be mandatory before the calculator can be instantiated.

The intent is that camera data file names will be used to allow the calculator to select an appropriate camera data file based upon the device id of the active camera. (But some of the initial camera files were named using educated guesses, and will likely need to be re-named).

Rotator Dialog Improvements

Toni Schriber merged improvements and fixes for the Rotator Dialog. As shown in the illustrations the user interface is very simple and there is only one parameter to set: The Camera Position Angle. It is a very consistent term and easy to understand. The same Position Angle (PA) is also used in Alignment, Scheduler, and the Sky Map.

FWHM

# Of Stars

Fourier Power

Focus Aberration Inspector

Wolfgang Reissenberger introduced the mosaic view well known from PixInsight's AberrationInspector script that builds a mosaic from all image corners and center tiles such that they can be compared directly.

Supernovae are back

The last few releases was missing supernovae data since the online source that was providing the data decided to go offline. Thankfully, Philipp Auersperg-Castell communicated with the fine folks over the Transient Name Server (IAU Supernovae Working Group) to obtain daily supernovae updates and imported them to KStars. All Recent supernovae should be available now in KStars.