Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-17.

Red Alert: ICANN and Verisign Proposal Would Allow Any Government In The World To Seize Domain Names – FreeSpeech.com

Tags: tech, dns, politics

Concerning moves on the ICANN side… already in the agreements around .com and now trying to make its way into .net.

https://freespeech.com/2023/04/19/red-alert-icann-and-verisign-proposal-would-allow-any-government-in-the-world-to-seize-domain-names/

NitroKey disappoints me

Tags: tech, smartphone, android

Yep, disappointing indeed… I got a phone with a third party ROM and had to debug the A-GPS in there (don’t ask), it’s indeed reaching to this website as well. There’s enough to criticize without crying wolf for nothing.

https://blog.brixit.nl/nitrokey-dissapoints-me/

GitHub Copilot Emits GPL. Codeium Does Not. | Codeium

Tags: tech, ai, copilot, foss, ethics, law

Are we surprised? Not at all… this is an ethical problem, this is a legal risk. The alternatives will hopefully know better.

https://codeium.com/blog/copilot-trains-on-gpl-codeium-does-not

[2304.09655] How Secure is Code Generated by ChatGPT?

Tags: tech, ai, gpt, security

Interesting experiment even though it’s still early days for this kind of research and we’d need more such evaluations. They found that it produces mostly insecure code. This is not really surprising in the end, this manipulates language but has not execution model. It can be fixed only by coupling to some outside system.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.09655

Announcing Babylon.js 6.0. Our mission is to build one of the most… | by Babylon.js | Apr, 2023 | Medium

Tags: tech, web, 3d

This is really a huge update. Brings in lots of features which were clearly missing.

https://babylonjs.medium.com/announcing-babylon-js-6-0-dcb5f1662e3a

The weird world of Windows file paths | Fileside

Tags: tech, windows, filesystem

Definitely complicated to identify and resolve paths on this platform. I had to deal with it from time to time and this can definitely turn into a pain in the neck.

https://www.fileside.app/blog/2023-03-17_windows-file-paths/

Are pull requests bad because they originate from open-source development?

Tags: tech, foss, git, codereview, mob-programming, criticism

Since I’ve seen this argument floating around more than once, it’s nice to have a properly done rebuttal of it. This is nicely done, listing the own bias of the author, still in the end that shows the logical flaw of the argument.

https://blog.ploeh.dk/2023/04/24/are-pull-requests-bad-because-they-originate-from-open-source-development/

Best practices for writing code comments - Stack Overflow Blog

Tags: tech, programming, comments

Good article on when to use comments or not. Also gives a few tips on how to write them properly.

https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/23/best-practices-for-writing-code-comments/

Results summary: 2023 Annual C++ Developer Survey “Lite” : Standard C++

Tags: tech, c++

Interesting results. This gives a couple of insights in terms or adoption, perception of problems by people on C++ projects and tooling. It’s definitely worth skimming through.

https://isocpp.org//blog/2023/04/results-summary-2023-annual-cpp-developer-survey-lite

50 Shades of Rust Or emerging Rust GUIs in a WASM world

Tags: tech, rust, gui

This is currently a real zoo. I knew about a few of them but not that many. I guess it will slowly converge toward a few major options.

https://monadical.com/posts/shades-of-rust-gui-library-list.html#Pet-Sematary

Nine ways to shoot yourself in the foot with PostgreSQL

Tags: tech, databases, postgresql, performance

Nice set of tips, I knew a few but not all of them. The discussion around CTEs is interesting.

https://philbooth.me/blog/nine-ways-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-with-postgresql

Measuring the Impact of False Sharing

Tags: tech, multithreading, performance

Nice exploration of false sharing on performances in several hardware scenarii. A couple of surprises along the way.

https://alic.dev/blog/false-sharing.html

Leverage the richness of HTTP status codes

Tags: tech, http, web, api

There are many more useful codes than are generally used. We shouldn’t shy away from using them when it makes sense, it also means the client side must be ready for them. Very often client code makes wrong assumptions on the possible codes.

https://blog.frankel.ch/leverage-richness-http-status-codes/

Characterizing Tech Debt

Tags: tech, technical-debt, craftsmanship

Nice short post listing the main positions (and linking to corresponding articles) on the debate around technical debt. Worth mulling over all those.

https://justinblank.com/notebooks/characterizingtechdebt.html

Distractions Cause Bad Code | nicholas@web

Tags: tech, notifications, remote-working, focus

So much this, managing notifications and making sure not to get disturbed when we need to focus is essential in our line of work.

https://ntietz.com/blog/distractions-cause-bad-code/

What complex systems can teach us about building software

Tags: tech, architecture, complexity, product-management, project-management

Interesting train of thoughts. Indeed we should keep in mind that large scale software is almost always a complex adaptative system, even more so if we don’t forget the people developing it and not just focusing on the code. This can give us guidelines on how to organize the development.

Also does a good recap about what a complex system is and how it behaves. Definitely worth a read at least for this.

https://sookocheff.com/post/systems/what-complex-systems-can-teach-us-about-building-software/

Navigating the Transition from Individual Contributor to Tech Lead | by grant | Apr, 2023 | Medium

Tags: tech, tech-lead

If regularly see people propelled tech leads without really knowing what it means. This short post is a good summary of the skills one needs to build to fit the role.

https://medium.com/@bullyCOP/navigating-the-transition-from-individual-contributor-to-tech-lead-fbf8b29b878e

Key practice: Aligned, autonomous cross-disciplinary teams. | by Jason Yip | Apr, 2023 | Medium

Tags: tech, product-management

What the title say. This is especially important for product development. This is not emphasized enough in the article I think but the “aligned autonomy” section is a crucial part of this. I very often see in teams either alignment or autonomy, it’s rarer to see teams with both.

https://jchyip.medium.com/key-practice-aligned-autonomous-cross-disciplinary-teams-d73c1cddc352

Rescuing a project in progress

Tags: project-management

Very good advice: stop, status, selection, focus, finish, next. If it feels like “stop starting and start finishing”, it’s probably no surprise.

https://world.hey.com/jason/rescuing-a-project-in-progress-d31883f7

Some mistakes I made as a new manager | benkuhn.net

Tags: tech, management

Nice post full of good advises for new (or not so new) managers.

https://www.benkuhn.net/newmgr/

Why the Brain’s Connections to the Body Are Crisscrossed | Quanta Magazine

Tags: neuroscience, geometry, science

We still don’t really know (actually it’s super hard to have a definitive reason on this topic). This article presents more of a theory based on geometry… and this is interesting, we often don’t think about this kind of things.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-brains-connections-to-the-body-are-crisscrossed-20230419/

Researchers Taught Parrots to Video Call Other Parrots

Tags: tech, science, surprising

OK definitely surprising research. Some of the results are interesting. Clearly it shows a high level of socializing with those birds.

https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/04/21/parrots-talking-video-calls/

Bye for now!

The FOSSASIA Summit 2023, held from April 13-15 at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Singapore, As an exhibitor for KDE at the FOSSASIA Summit 2023, I had an incredible experience showcasing our latest projects, networking with industry professionals, and engaging with attendees from all walks of life. I was thrilled to be part of such an esteemed gathering of like-minded individuals, all of whom were dedicated to advancing the field of open-source software development.

For context, FOSSASIA is an organization developing open source software applications and open hardware together with a global community from its base in Asia. Its goal is to provide access to open technologies, science applications and knowledge that improve people’s lives. FOSSASIA was established 2009 by Hong Phuc Dang and Mario Behling. Visit https://fossasia.org to learn more about the summit.

Getting back to the activities, our booth at the exhibition hall was bustling with activity throughout the three-day event, as developers, engineers, students, and enthusiasts stopped by to learn more about our latest offerings. I was particularly proud to showcase our flagship product, the Plasma desktop environment, along with KDE Connect, Dolphin, Konsole and other applications and tools that we have developed for the open-source community.

As I explained the features and benefits of our software to attendees, I was struck by the level of interest and enthusiasm that they showed for our products. It was clear to me that we are making a real difference in the lives of users around the world.

Beyond showcasing our products, the event was filled with informative keynote sessions and panel discussions, featuring speakers from around the world who shared their experiences and insights on open-source software development. As an exhibitor, I was particularly impressed by the discussions on collaboration and the importance of building sustainable communities around open-source projects. It was clear to me that the open-source community is dedicated to advancing the field of software development in a collaborative and sustainable way, and I am proud to be a part of that community.

In addition to networking with other industry professionals, I also had the opportunity to engage with potential users of our software. I was delighted to see the level of interest and enthusiasm from attendees, many of whom were eager to learn more about our software and its features. As I explained the benefits of using open-source software, I was struck by the level of curiosity and enthusiasm that attendees showed for our products.

I also met some old accomplices from KDE and local technical communities from Delhi. Anu Mittal, now working at a company in Singapore, attended the conference and also spent time with me, manning the booth and talking to many visitors at our booth about KDE software. I also met Raju Devidas, a Debian developer who has been contributing to Debian for more than a decade. He was manning the Debian booth along with a few other developers from Sri Lanka.

Overall, the FOSSASIA Summit 2023 was a resounding success for me as an exhibitor for KDE. I was able to showcase our latest products, engage with attendees, and collaborate with other industry professionals. I look forward to participating in future FOSSASIA Summits and continuing to contribute to the growth and development of the open-source community.

You can find the event photos here. I hope that these photos will help you experience some of the highlights of the summit!

I will post a few photos from the album above.

Gallery

I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to KDE e.V. for sponsoring my visit to the FOSSASIA Summit 2023 as an exhibitor for KDE. Without their support, I would not have had the opportunity to showcase our latest products and engage with attendees at this important event. Their continued support for the development of open-source software and the promotion of collaborative communities is truly inspiring, and I am honored to be a part of the KDE community. I look forward to continuing to contribute to the success and growth of our community, and I am grateful for their support in helping me make this visit to FOSSASIA Summit a resounding success.

I’m happy to announce the first bugfix release of Arianna. This release contains a lot of improvements to the accessibility of Arianna. Thanks a lot to @bgtlover@linuxrocks.online who reported many accessibility issues. Aside from fixing some bugs in Arianna, this also resulted in fixes in Kirigami, Kirigami Addons and Qt, which are on a seperate release schedule so not every bug fixes is already available. I’ll write a seperate blog post which will go into the technical details.

Aside from the accessibility fixes, this release fixes a few crashes when parsing some books. Thanks to those who tried Arianna and reported bugs (with backtrace!).

And finally, this release also improve the translations coverage, with for example Galician being one of the new supported language.

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 ;)

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.

New Falkon version 23.04.0 is being released as part of KDE Gear.

Notable changes

There is a handful of changes in this release.

KWallet

The format under which the passwords are stored has changed from Binary to Map. The passwords can now be viewed from within KWalletManager and even edited. While editing and adding new ones I would be careful with the data field and updated that as well. (This is some Falkon password internal mechanic) The Folder under which the passwords are stored changed from Falkon to FalkonPasswords. This was done to not overwrite the old passwords and potentialy ruin them during the migration to new format.

Support for dark color scheme

Note: This is NOT browser dark mode support.

Falkon internal pages now respect the dark color scheme, if it is forced through chromium flags in environment variable.

A small demonstration can be seen below. The color scheme might not be the best since it was designed on display with weird color settings.

Changelog

• Look for spellchecking dictionaries at location specified by QTWEBENGINE_DICTIONARIES_PATH environment variable
• Show QtWebEngine version on Falkon Config page
• Implement prefers-color-scheme (dark mode) for internal pages
• Add option to enable GPU acceleration (by Hao Chi Kiang)
• PyFalkon: addBookmark - make C++ own parameters (fixes potential crash)
• KWallet: Store passwords in a map format
• History: Don’t delete all items under dates when filtering
• AdBlock: Workaround for “Blocked content” page
• AddressBar: Search with default search engine by default
• Fix crash when adding new folder to the bookmark toolbar
• Fix: Bookmarks folder disappears when moving it onto itself

Download: ffalkon-23.04.0.tar.xz (sig signed with EBC3FC294452C6D8)

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-16.

Firefox may soon reject Cookie prompts automatically - gHacks Tech News

Tags: tech, surveillance, mozilla

This will be a welcome feature. There are extensions of course but at least users will have it by default when it lands.

https://www.ghacks.net/2023/04/17/firefox-may-interact-with-cookie-prompts-automatically-soon/

Microsoft plugging more ads into Windows 11 Start Menu • The Register

Tags: tech, microsoft, windows, surveillance, attention-economy

What not to do… this is slowly alienating the users.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/microsoft_windows_start_ads/

Google Assured OSS

Tags: tech, foss, supply-chain

This is a good thing that Google makes such a move. Still, it could be so much more. Tidelift still seems to be the best offer for securing your dependencies.

https://sethmlarson.dev/google-assured-oss

KeePassXC Audit Report – KeePassXC

Tags: tech, security, keepassxc

Good milestone for this project I’ve been using for a long while now.

https://keepassxc.org/blog/2023-04-15-audit-report/

GPT-4 is a Risky Dependency for FOSS Projects - Alys Brooks

Tags: tech, ai, gpt, foss, ethics, copyright, vendor-lockin

Definitely this! Major FOSS projects should think twice before giving their street creds to such closed systems. They’ve been produced with dubious ethics and copyright practices and since they’re usable only through APIs the induced vendor lock-in will be strong.

http://www.alysbrooks.com/gpt-4-is-a-risky-dependency-for-foss-projects.html

Training ChatGPT AI Required 185,000 Gallons of Water: Study

Tags: tech, ai, neural-networks, climate, gpt

There’s the carbon footprint but of course there’s also the water consumption… and with increased droughts this will become more and more of a problem.

https://gizmodo.com/chatgpt-ai-water-185000-gallons-training-nuclear-1850324249

Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data | WIRED

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

This was only a matter of time. It’ll be interesting to see how this will unfold. Potentially it could turn into lawsuit cases being built up, it could also mean content producers get a cut down the line… of course could be both. Since FOSS code also ends up in training those models I’m even wondering if that could lead to money going back to the authors. We’ll see where that goes.

https://www.wired.com/story/stack-overflow-will-charge-ai-giants-for-training-data/

[2302.10866] Hyena Hierarchy: Towards Larger Convolutional Language Models

Tags: tech, ai, gpt, machine-learning

OK, this is a pre-print so to take with a truckload of salt. If further nice results get built up on this it could turn out interesting though. This is a much more intellectually satisfying approach than the current arm race of “let’s throw bigger models at the problem”. This has the potentially of reducing the computational complexity of those models, this is definitely welcome in term of energy and hardware requirements. Let’s wait and see…

https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10866

Zip-NeRF

Tags: tech, 3d, ai, machine-learning

This is impressive results. Clearly much less artifacts than on previous such models.

https://jonbarron.info/zipnerf/

nvtop: GPUs process monitoring for AMD, Intel and NVIDIA

Tags: tech, gpu, tools

Nice tool for monitoring how processes use the GPU.

https://github.com/Syllo/nvtop

WebGPU Fundamentals

Tags: tech, web, webgpu, gpu, 3d

Looks like a nice reference about WebGPU. Unsurprisingly it covers some 3D basics as well.

https://webgpufundamentals.org/

Defining interfaces in C++: concepts versus inheritance – Daniel Lemire’s blog

Tags: tech, c++, performance

Shouldn’t come as a surprise if you paid attention to C++ evolutions for the past 30 years. We’re now reaping the fruits though, so it’s really become easy to keep both options in sight when designing. This is especially important for performance sensitive code.

Nothing really new here (apart from the “how easy it is these days!”)… Still it needs to be reminded on a regular basis. :-)

https://lemire.me/blog/2023/04/20/defining-interfaces-in-c-concepts-versus-inheritance/

mjg59 | PSA: upgrade your LUKS key derivation function

Tags: tech, cryptography, storage, security

This is definitely something to keep in mind and check if you have any LUKS encrypted storage. The key might be less protected than you think.

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/66429.html

🐧 linuxwave

Tags: tech, music, funny, linux

Looks like a funny tool to generate music.

https://orhun.dev/linuxwave/

A love letter to make - kmaasrud

Tags: tech, tools

This is indeed one of my favorite tools. Of course, I use it a bit less nowadays… still, I should have written this letter.

https://kmaasrud.com/blog/make

Keep Stuff Linkable (Crash Lime)

Tags: tech, blog, web, linking

Good reminder that links are the soul of the world wide web!

https://animaomnium.github.io/keep-stuff-linkable/

Writing for interfaces - WWDC22 - Videos - Apple Developer

Tags: tech, ux, gui

Plenty of good advises for dealing with text in interfaces. It’s a bit too much focused on phone and watch for my taste glancing over challenges specific to larger form factors. Still this can be useful to keep in mind.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10037/

Load Balancing

Tags: tech, web, server, performance, http

Nice post explaining the common algorithms used for load balancing. Each having their own trade offs of course. Well done with tiny simulations.

https://samwho.dev/load-balancing/

Offline Is Just Online With Extreme Latency - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Tags: tech, networking, latency, internet

Interesting way to look at the problem, definitely thought provoking.

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/offline-is-online-with-extreme-latency/

Making a Linux home server sleep on idle and wake on demand — the simple way | Daniel P. Gross

Tags: tech, self-hosting, power

Very interesting trick, definitely something worth doing if you want to host something at home and keep the power consumption low.

https://dgross.ca/blog/linux-home-server-auto-sleep/

Evidence - Business Intelligence as Code

Tags: tech, business-intelligence, reporting, markdown, data-visualization, web

Interesting tool… this is generally done with tools where you’re captured into a GUI. Moving this to text and static generation opens the door to proper versioning etc.

https://evidence.dev/

Becoming a more self-directing Staff+ individual contributor | LeadDev

Tags: tech, leadership, management

Interesting approach to get a better understanding and awareness of your surroundings as a tech lead or lead dev.

https://leaddev.com/personal-development/becoming-more-self-directing-staff-individual-contributor

An Interview Process That Works For Me

Tags: hr, hiring, interviews

Wow, that’s a very thorough hiring and interview process. I’m not sure all organizations have the luxury to do all of it. Still plenty of interesting nuggets in there, it gave me a couple of ideas on how to reword or change some of the control questions I usually use.

https://blog.colinbreck.com/an-interview-process-that-works-for-me/

Expiring vs. Long-Term Knowledge · Collab Fund

Tags: information, knowledge

So much this. It’s important to keep in mind what will last and what is the buzz of the day. Especially since the lines between news and entertainment became so blurry.

https://collabfund.com/blog/expiring-vs-lt-knowledge/

Why do ships use “port” and “starboard” instead of “left” and “right?”

Tags: history, culture

I actually always wondered about this, now I know. :-)

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/port-starboard.html

Space Elevator

Tags: science, geospatial, funny

Very nice resource if you wondered about the journey to space.

https://neal.fun/space-elevator/

Bye for now!

I’m happy to announce the first release of FutureSQL, a library for accessing SQLite (and other databases) in Qt projects without blocking.

It also features a migration system and automatic result deserialization.

For examples, please have a look at the README.

You can fetch the release from KDE’s download server. It is signed with my PGP key C3D7CAFBF442353F95F69F4AA81E075ABEC80A7E, which you can fetch from keys.openpgp.org.

Please let me know if you find any issues.

Dear digiKam fans and users,

After two years of development and bugs triage, and tests, the digiKam team is proud to present the new major version 8.0.0 of its open source digital photo manager.

See below the list of most important features coming with this release.

New Online Documentation

A huge Application as digiKam needs good documentation for end users, and is well written with plenty of screen-shots and screen-casts. We have been working many months to migrate and proof-read the old digiKam documentation based on DocBook format to a new architecture, more simple, easy to maintain, and translatable. After 20 years, we left the DocBook manual for the modern Sphinx/ReStructuredText framework. This one is really a pleasure to use by documentation writers.

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-15.

The Free Software Foundation is dying

Tags: tech, foss, criticism

I don’t necessarily agree with the fine points in the proposed actions. That said the diagnosis is unfortunately very true I think.

https://drewdevault.com/2023/04/11/2023-04-11-The-FSF-is-dying.html

The time to figure out how to use generative AI and large language models in your code is now

Tags: tech, gpt, ai, programming

I’m still doubtful about it but maybe I’m wrong so a counterpoint to my own opinions. Of course this is a purely productivity standpoint in here which overlooks my main concerns with how this is currently deployed and used.

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3693089/the-ai-singularity-is-here.html

Free Dolly: Introducing the World’s First Open and Commercially Viable Instruction-Tuned LLM - The Databricks Blog

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt

This is important. We need truly open generator models. This can’t be left in the hands of a few with only API access, especially since they lack basic transparency.

https://www.databricks.com/blog/2023/04/12/dolly-first-open-commercially-viable-instruction-tuned-llm

FAIR Animated Drawings: Home

Tags: tech, drawing, animation, tools

Neat tool for animating your own drawings. Impressive results for sure.

https://fairanimateddrawings.com/site/home

Run an open source-powered virtual conference! – Máirín Duffy

Tags: tech, foss, conference, video, messaging

Nice recipe on what can be used to run a virtual conference using only Free Software.

https://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2023/04/10/run-an-open-source-powered-virtual-conference/

Extracting the Essential Simplicity of the Internet | February 2023 | Communications of the ACM

Tags: tech, networking, internet, history

Excellent piece which summarises the big design decisions behind the Internet. It’s very didactic, also highlights the flaw toward the end. This is reference material.

https://m-cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/2/268956-extracting-the-essential-simplicity-of-the-internet/fulltext

CAN Injection: keyless car theft | Dr. Ken Tindell

Tags: tech, embedded, can, security, automotive

This is an incredibly informative deep dive regarding a new attack on CAN buses. Also proposes potential fixes. Let’s see how car makers deal with it.

https://kentindell.github.io/2023/04/03/can-injection/

How does database sharding work?

Tags: tech, databases, sharding

Good overview on database sharding. Points to a couple of tools which can help in some situations.

https://planetscale.com/blog/how-does-database-sharding-work

SQL Maxis: Why We Ditched RabbitMQ And Replaced It With A Postgres Queue

Tags: tech, messaging, databases, rabbitmq, postgresql, architecture, complexity

They were probably using RabbitMQ for the wrong scenario in the first place. That said it’s a good reminder that sometimes a simpler architecture is what you want and it can bring benefits.

https://www.prequel.co/blog/sql-maxis-why-we-ditched-rabbitmq-and-replaced-it-with-a-postgres-queue

Making most of Java: Features that you should use as a Java developer – MICROIDEATION

Tags: tech, programming, java

Need to update your Java knowledge because it evolved quite a bit? Here is a little list of the features to focus on.

https://blog.microideation.com/2023/04/05/supercharge-your-java-development-must-know-advanced-features-for-every-java-dev/

Inspirel - Articles - Testing Allocation Failures

Tags: tech, memory, tests, c++

Often overlooked in test cases. Still it’s not that complicated to setup.

http://www.inspirel.com/articles/Testing_Allocation_Failures.html

Quickly formatting a stack of commits

Tags: tech, git, tools

Neat git trick, could be useful from time to time.

https://blog.waleedkhan.name/formatting-a-commit-stack/

Numbers To Know For Managing (Software Teams) | Stay SaaSy

Tags: tech, management

I’m not necessarily convinced by all of those. Still there are interesting ballpark numbers I didn’t have on my radar as far as management goes.

https://staysaasy.com/management/2023/03/20/numbers-to-manage-by.html

Two types of software engineers - by Thorsten Ball

Tags: tech, team, engineering

Another way to look at the fact that software engineering is a team sport. Missing this fact can lead to problems.

https://registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/two-types-of-software-engineers

Re-thinking Presentations. - by Rishad Tobaccowala

Tags: presentation, business, meetings

Hm… interesting framework. Especially for me, I know I tend to be too verbose. Definitely something I’m willing to try.

https://rishad.substack.com/p/re-thinking-presentations

Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars

Tags: science, physics, astronomy

This is a surprising and fascinating discovery. The scale of such events is mind bending.

https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-010

Bye for now!

Today, we bring you a quick report on the Maui Project’s progress after our previous 2.2.2 release; here you will find some detailed information on the new features, bug fixes, and improvements that have been made to the Maui set of apps and frameworks.

To follow the Maui Project’s development or say hi, you can join us on Telegram: https://t.me/mauiproject.

We are present on Twitter and Mastodon:

• https://twitter.com/maui_project.
• https://mastodon.technology/@mauiproject.

What’s new?

Besides the common bug fixes, some of the highlights include a refactor and cleanup of some of the MauiKit Frameworks, and new and improved Maui Apps, with support for true black color style, improved startup times, faster GPS scanning, more options in the settings app, and a brand new QPA Theme plugin for Cask to make Qt apps look and feel better under Maui Shell, among many other tweaks and refinements.

On the road to Maui 3. Focused on the framework and the apps. working on the new apps to bring them up paired with the most stable ones.

Porting to Qt6

MauiMan and MauiKit will be the two first projects to be ported, the progress so far has not been very active but now that all Plasma and KDE Libraries are now Qt6 in master, work on this area will be resumed.

https://invent.kde.org/maui/mauikit/-/issues/35

Maui Shell

For this new development cycle, the focus is on the MauiKit Frameworks and Maui Apps, however, a few fixes will land in the stack of the Maui Shell. Here are a few of the highlights so far.

Cask

• Fix bugs on dragging around CSD surfaces.
• Now uses the new MauiMan InputDevices keymap properties.
• Now uses the new QPA Theme and set the right env var to make use of it.
• Other Qt applications now look better with the new Maui QPA Theme.
• Tweaked the padding of the Chrome title bars.

Maui Settings

• The Theme module view has been refactored and split into subpages for better readability.
• Added a new sub-page to support picking custom color schemes.
• New QPA Theme plugin.
• Added a new Fonts subpage in Theme.
• Added entry to pick a custom wallpaper source directory in the Background module view.
• Organize the sidebar modules by categories.
• Can now filter the sidebar categories with keywords.
• Display an error message when a module could not be loaded correctly.
• Added the new InputDevices modules view with initial support for keyboard keymap options.
• Tweaked the About module view.
• Added a filter field for the Icons subpage.

MauiMan

• The Theme module gained new props for the fonts: DefaultFont, SmallFont, and MonospaceFont.
• Initial work has been started for the InputDevices module, starting with the keyboard keymaps options.

MauiKit Frameworks

MauiKit Core components have seen many fixes and improvements, from consistency in the UI and UX department, fixes in binding loops bugs, implementation cleanups, and new features or existing ones being exposed.

Overall you will notice an even more cohesive usage of padding, margins, and spacing in elements and content views. More work towards making it perfectly suitable for desktop and mobile use.

Gained support for two new styles: Inverted and TrueBlack, among many other fixes listed down below:

Core

• The FlexLisItem control is now based on a Grid allowing finer control over the layout. The property columns is exposed to determine the initial layout, and child items can now be positioned using the attached properties from Layout. By default, the FlexListItem has 2 columns in wide mode and goes to 1 column on constrained widths, but if you need to position more items you can increment the number of columns.
• Fixed the Android Gradle build files referencing the manifest.
• The Style font properties were refined and no longer use bad point sizes. Now the font properties rely on the wide system preferences for the default font, small font, and monospaced font, this is done via the QPA Theme plugin. As a result of the refactoring now all Maui Apps will correctly redraw the fonts when they’re changed from the system settings.
• Correct the size and style of the Switch control for consistency.
• React to icon theme changes from the system settings.
• Use the QPA style hints and expose some of them in the Style object, such as whether to show icons in menus: Maui.Style.menusHaveIcons.
• Fixed the ComboBox popup implicit height.
• New controls added: FontPicker and FontPickerDialog, which allow picking font family, best-fitted sizes, style, and filters for only monospaced fonts; and display a preview.
• Now the rendering of the buttons and menu items contents no longer uses the QQC2 hidden implementation and instead uses the new IconLabel control.
• Fixes to the color styles: dark, light, and custom. The custom style uses the Plasma custom color scheme definitions from files.
• Fixed the masking area of the image in the IconItem control.
• Removed the BasicToolButton, now that all buttons use the new Iconlabel implementation.
• Chip control now is checkable and no longer displays tooltips unless needed.
• The TabView control has been refactored and now using it is much easy, besides adding new tabs dynamically via the functions, tabs can now also be declared as children and it will work. Also, there is no longer the need to set the child tab sizes, the TabView will resize the children to fit. In the refactoring process, there were also fixes for the DnD reordering of tabs and focusing. The TabViewInfo attached properties gained new props: TabViewInfo.tabIcon and TabViewInfo.tabColor.
• The MauiKit-based apps now have a new true black color scheme alternative, that can be activated from the app itself using the Maui.Style.trueBlack option, or globally from MauiMan.
• Maintain a uniform height for the ToolActions control.
• A few new CSD styles have been added, and the Dynamic one, which relied on applet-window-buttons, has been removed.
• New ToastArea for in-app notifications, which allows having multiple notifications stacked. This is better than the previous implementation based on a Dialog. The ToastArea can be easily dismissed and individual notifications can be swiped off via touch or closed via mouse clicks.
• Added notification sounds taken from the free Material resources.
• Fixes the FloatingButton control sizing.

FileBrowsing

• Fixes to the Tagging DB thread-safe implementation.
• Tweak the TagDelegates and TagBar controls.
• Fixed the FileBrowser focus issues.
• Nicer FileBrowser dialogs.

ImageTools

• Make Tesseract and Leptonica required dependencies.
• Refactored the messy pointers implementation of the Geolocation classes and make it thread-safe.

Terminal – New!

• Fixed the issue with double pasting text
• Updated the custom adaptive color scheme, from picking it from a file to being declared in QML.
• The Adaptive color scheme now works better, by checking the brightness and other factors.
• The property hasActiveProcess now has a notify signal.
• Added new property: readOnly for cases when the terminal should not receive any user inputs, but still can use methods such as sendText or sendKeyPress, etc…
• Support highlighting search results in the history.
• Tweaked the search bar, with a dedicated button to jump through finds and more options.
• Added a virtual keyboard toggle floating button for mobile devices.

Maui Apps

Although in this new release cycle the focus was on Maui Shell projects, many of the Maui Apps received some love: new features, improvements, and updates.

Index

• Browser items focus issues have been fixed.
• A bug from the selection bar causing a failure to perform actions has been fixed.
• The PathBar arrow delegates are now better renderer antialias.
• Updated to use the new MauiKit ToastArea notifications.

Pix

• New layout with a global sidebar for navigation.
• Faster lookup of the GPS locations using concurrency.
• The new sidebar now lists tags, sources, and known categories.
• Split the viewer from the collection browser for faster startup time when only opening an image in the viewer.
• Escape keyboard shortcuts to go back from the browser.
• Fixes the navigation patterns, from the browser to the viewer.

Nota

• Fix crashing issues with the places sidebar under Android when external SD cards are present.
• Tweak the settings dialog entries order.
• Check the existence of a directory before opening the file dialog in such path.
• Escape keyboard shortcuts for exiting the recent documents view.
• Updated to the latest MauiKit changes.
• Collection views now display location tags if any are found.

Station

• Support for finding text and highlighting the results.
• Display warnings when trying to close a view with a running process.
• Display warning when trying to close the app but a process in some views is still running.
• Extend the translucency effect to the tab bar.
• Use the new MauiKit FontPicker control to pick a new font.
• Use the new MauiMan style property MonospacedFont as a default font.
• Fixes issues when focusing the terminal and opening the virtual keyboard on mobile devices.
• Make MauiKit-Terminal a required package.
• Added a placeholder message when there are no tabs opened.
• Added alerts when a process has been finished making use of the new Mauikit ToastArea notifications.
• Fixes the virtual keyboard not being opened when the terminal gets focused.
• Refactored the translucency entry to use a switch instead of a slider.

Paleta

• Updated to latest MauiKit changes.
• Notify using the new ToastArea.
• Display colors WCAG contrast ratio.

Bonsai

• Added support for more action commands, such as pull, stash, and status.
• Refactor the Project object to allow quick cloning of new projects.
• Now uses libkommit library instead of previous libgit2-based wrappers.

Fiery

• Now uses sidebar navigation for browsing the collection sources.

Arca

• Initial support for creating new archives from within the app.

And the rest of the fixes to the rest of the applications…

That’s it for now. Until the next blog post, that will be a bit closer to the 3.0.0 stable release.

To follow the Maui Project’s development or say hi, you can join us on Telegram: https://t.me/mauiproject.

We are present on Twitter and Mastodon:

• https://twitter.com/maui_project.
• https://mastodon.technology/@mauiproject.

New release schedule

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