FLOSS Project Planets

This is a lighter month due to holidays (and also I’m trying not to burn out), but I tried to fit in a bit of KDE anyway. It’s all bugfixes anyway because of the feature freeze!

Not mentioned is a bunch of really boring busywork like unbreaking the stable branches of Gear applications due to the CI format changing.

Tokodon #

Bugfix Fixed a bunch of papercuts with the Android build, and the new nightlies should be appearing in the F-Droid repository soon! It’s mostly adding missing icons and making sure it looks good in qqc2-breeze-style (the style we use on Android and Plasma Mobile.) 24.02

Bugfix Fixed Akkoma and Pleroma tags not being detected correctly, they should open in Tokodon instead of your web browser again! 24.02

Plasma #

Bugfix KScreenLocker CI now runs supported tests, see the KillTest fixes and pamTest fix. Failing tests also make the pipeline visibly fail, as it should. (Unfortunately, the pipeline as of writing fails to due some unrelated regression?) 6.0

Bugfix The lockscreen greeter now handles even the fallback theme failing, and display the “please unlock using loginctl” message instead of a black screen. 6.0

Bugfix Improves the QtQuickControls style selection mechanism to work around a possible regression in Qt6. This should stop applications from mysteriously not opening in the rare (but unsupported) cases where our official styles aren’t installed/loading. 6.0

Kirigami #

Bugfix Fixed a bunch of TextArea bugs that affected mobile form factors, such as Plasma Mobile and Android. This is mostly for Tokodon (because we abuse TextAreas a lot in scrolling content) but it can help other applications too! The selectByMouse property is now respected, the cursor handles should show up less. 6.0

Bugfix Invisible MenuItems in qqc2-breeze-style are collapsed like in qqc2-desktop-style. Mobile applications should no longer have elongated menus with lots of blank space! 6.0

Bugfix You can finally right-click with a touchpad in qqc2-desktop-style TextFields again! This bug has been driving me up a wall when testing our Qt6 stuff. 6.0

Feature When the Kirigami theme plugin fails to load, the error message will soon be a bit more descriptive. This should make it easier for non-developers to figure out why Kirigami applications don’t look correct. 6.0

Android #

Bugfix Fixed KWeather not launching on Android because it needed QApplication. I didn’t know QtCharts is QWidgets-based! 24.02

I also went around and fixed up a bunch of other mobile applications with Android contributions too small to mention. Applications like Qrca, Kongress, etc.

NeoChat #

Bugfix Prevent the NeoChat notification daemon from sticking around forever although that should rarely happen. 24.02

Outside of KDE #

Nagged for a new QtKeychain release due to a critical bug that would cause applications to never open KWallet5. Please also nag your distributions to package 0.14.2 soon! Anything using QtKeychain 0.14.1 or below won’t work in Plasma 6. This doesn’t affect people in the dev session, because QtKeychain should be built from git.

Helping the Gentoo KDE Team with packaging Plasma 6 and KDE Gear 6. I managed to update my desktop to Plasma 6 and submitted fixes to get it closer to working. I also added Arianna, PlasmaTube and MpvQt packages.

My work in KDE for November 2023

My Work in KDE

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Posted on December 30, 2023

By the influencers on the famous proprietary video platform1.

When I’m crafting with no powertools I tend to watch videos, and this autumn I’ve seen a few in a row that were making red wool dresses, at least one or two medieval kirtles. I don’t remember which channels they were, and I’ve decided not to go back and look for them, at least for a time.

Anyway, my brain suddenly decided that I needed a red wool dress, fitted enough to give some bust support. I had already made a dress that satisfied the latter requirement and I still had more than half of the red wool faille I’ve used for the Garibaldi blouse (still not blogged, but I will get to it), and this time I wanted it to be ready for this winter.

While the pattern I was going to use is Victorian, it was designed for underwear, and this was designed to be outerwear, so from the very start I decided not to bother too much with any kind of historical details or techniques.

I knew that I didn’t have enough fabric to add a flounce to the hem, as in the cotton dress, but then I remembered that some time ago I fell for a piece of fringed trim in black, white and red. I did a quick check that the red wasn’t clashing (it wasn’t) and I knew I had a plan for the hem decoration.

Then I spent a week finishing other projects, and the more I thought about this dress, the more I was tempted to have spiral lacing at the front rather than buttons, as a nod to the kirtle inspiration. It may end up be a bit of a hassle, but if it is too much I can always add a hidden zipper on a side seam, and only have to undo a bit of the lacing around the neckhole to wear the dress.

Finally, I could start working on the dress: I cut all of the main pieces, and since the seam lines were quite curved I marked them with tailor’s tacks, which I don’t exactly enjoy doing or removing, but are the only method that was guaranteed to survive while manipulating this fabric (and not leave traces afterwards).

While cutting the front pieces I accidentally cut the high neck line instead of the one I had used on the cotton dress: I decided to go for it also on the back pieces and decide later whether I wanted to lower it.

Since this is a modern dress, with no historical accuracy at all, and I have access to a serger, I decided to use some dark blue cotton voile I’ve had in my stash for quite some time, cut into bias strip, to bind the raw edges before sewing. This works significantly better than bought bias tape, which is a bit too stiff for this.

For the front opening, I’ve decided to reinforce the areas where the lacing holes will be with cotton: I’ve used some other navy blue cotton, also from the stash, and added two lines of cording to stiffen the front edge.

So I’ve cut the front in two pieces rather than on the fold, sewn the reinforcements to the sewing allowances in such a way that the corded edge was aligned with the center front and then sewn the bottom of the front seam from just before the end of the reinforcements to the hem.

The allowances are then folded back, and then they are kept in place by the worked lacing holes. The cotton was pinked, while for the wool I used the selvedge of the fabric and there was no need for any finishing.

Behind the opening I’ve added a modesty placket: I’ve cut a strip of red wool, a strip of cotton, folded the edge of the strip of cotton to the center, added cording to the long sides, pressed the allowances of the wool towards the wrong side, and then handstitched the cotton to the wool, wrong sides facing. This was finally handstitched to one side of the sewing allowance of the center front.

I’ve also decided to add real pockets, rather than just slits, and for some reason I decided to add them by hand after I had sewn the dress, so I’ve left opening in the side back seams, where the slits were in the cotton dress. I’ve also already worn the dress, but haven’t added the pockets yet, as I’m still debating about their shape. This will be fixed in the near future.

Another thing that will have to be fixed is the trim situation: I like the fringe at the bottom, and I had enough to also make a belt, but this makes the top of the dress a bit empty. I can’t use the same fringe tape, as it is too wide, but it would be nice to have something smaller that matches the patterned part. And I think I can make something suitable with tablet weaving, but I’m not sure on which materials to use, so it will have to be on hold for a while, until I decide on the supplies and have the time for making it.

Another improvement I’d like to add are detached sleeves, both matching (I should still have just enough fabric) and contrasting, but first I want to learn more about real kirtle construction, and maybe start making sleeves that would be suitable also for a real kirtle.

Meanwhile, I’ve worn it on Christmas (over my 1700s menswear shirt with big sleeves) and may wear it again tomorrow (if I bother to dress up to spend New Year’s Eve at home :D )

1. yep, that’s YouTube, of course.↩︎

Read all parts of the series Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4

I’ve been wanting to write this post for over a year, but lacked energy and time. Before 2023 is coming to an end, I want to close this series and share some more insights with you and hopefully provide you with a smile here and there.

For this round of interviews, four more kids around the ages of 8 to 13 were interviewed, 3 of them have a US background—these 3 interviews were done by a friend who recorded these interviews for me, thank you!

As opposed to the previous interviews, these four kids have parents who have a more technical professional background. And this seems to make a difference: even though none of these kids actually knew much better how the internet really works than the other kids that I interviewed, specifically in terms of physical infrastructures, they were much more confident in using the internet, they were able to more correctly name things they see on the internet, and they had partly radical ideas about what they would like to learn or what they would want to change about the internet!

Looking at these results, I think it’s safe to say that social reproduction is at work and that we need to improve education for kids who do not profit from this type of social and cultural wealth at home.

But let’s dive into the details.

The boy and the aliens

(I’ll be mostly transribing the interview, which was short, and which I find difficult to sum up because… some of the questions are written in a way to encourage the kids to tell a story, and this particular kid had a thing going on with aliens.)

He’s a 13 year old boy living in the US. He has his own computer, which technically belongs to his school but can be used by him freely and he can also take it home.

He’s the first kid saying he’s reading the news on the internet; he does not actually use social media, besides sometimes watching TikTok.

When asked: Imagine that aliens land and come to you and say: “We’ve heard about this internet thing you all talk about, what is it?” What do you tell them? he replied:

Well, I mean they’re aliens, so I don’t know if I wanna tell them much.

(Parents laughing in the background.)

Let’s assume they’re friendly aliens.

Well, I would say you can look anything up and play different games. And there are alien games. But mostly the enemies are aliens which you might be a little offended by. And you can get work done, if you needed to spy on humans. There’s cameras, you can film yourself, yeah. And you can text people and call people who are far away…

And what would be in a drawing that would explain the internet?

And here’s what he explains about his drawing:

First, I would draw what I see when you open a new tab, Google.

On the right side of the drawing we see something like Twitch.

I don’t wanna offend the aliens, but you can film yourself playing a game, so here is the alien and he’s playing a game.

And then you can ask questions like: How did aliens come to the Earth? And the answer will be here (below). And there’ll be different websites that you can click on.

And you can also look up “Who won the alien contest?” And that would be Usmushgagu, and that guy won the alien contest.

Do you think the information about alien intergalactic football is already on the internet?

Yeah! That’s how fast the internet is.

On the bottom of the drawing we see an iPhone and an instant messaging software.

There’s also a device called an iPhone and with it you can text your friends. So here’s the alien asking: “How was ur day?” and the friend might answer “IDK” [I don’t know].

Imagine that a wise and friendly dragon could teach you one thing about the internet that you’ve always wanted to know. What would you ask the dragon to teach you about?

Is there a way you don’t have to pay for any channels or subscriptions and you can get through any firewall?

Imagine you could make the internet better for everyone. What would you do first?

Well you wouldn’t have to pay for it [paywalls].

Can you describe what happens between your device and a website when you visit a website?

Well, it takes 0.025 seconds. […] It’s connecting.

Wow, that’s indeed fast! We were not able to obtain more details about what is that fast thing that’s happening exactly…

The software engineer’s kid

This kid identifies as neither boy nor girl, is 10 years old and lives in Germany. Their father works as a software engineer, or in the words of the child:

My dad knows everything.

The kid has a laptop and a mobile phone, both with parental control—they don’t think that the controlling is fair.

This kid uses the internet foremostly for listening to music and watching prank channels on Youtube but also to work with Purple Mash (a teaching platform for the computing curriculum used at their school), finding 3d printing models (that they ask their father to print with them because they did not manage to use the printer by themselves yet). Interestingly, and very differently from the non-tech-parent kids, this kid insists on using Firefox and Signal - the latter is not only used by their dad to tell them to come downstairs for dinner, but also to call their grandmother. This kid also shops online, with the help of the father who does the actual shopping for them using money that the kid earned by reading books.

If you would need to explain to an alien who has landed on Earth what the internet is, what would you tell them?

The internet is something where you search, for example, you can look for music. You can also watch videos from around the world, and you can program stuff.

Like most of the kids interviewed, this kid uses the internet mostly for media consumption, but with the difference that they also engage with technology by way of programming using Purple Mash.

In their drawing we see a Youtube prank channel on a screen, an external trackpad on the right (likely it’s not a touch screen), and headphones. Notice how there is no keyboard, or maybe it’s folded away.

If you could ask a nice and friendly dragon anything you’d like to learn about the internet, what would it be?

How do I shutdown my dad’s computer… forever?

And what is it that he would do to improve the internet for everyone?

Contrary to the kid living in the US, they think that

It takes too much time to load stuff!

I wonder if this kid experiences the internet as being slow because they use the mobile network or because their connection somehow gets throttled as a way to control media consumption, or if the German internet infrastructure is just so much worse in certain regions…

If you could improve the internet for everyone, what would you do first?

I’d make a new Firefox app that loads the internet much faster.

The software engineer’s daughter

This girl is only 8 years old, she hates unicorns, and her dad is also a software engineer. She uses a smartphone, controlled by her parents. My impression of the interview is that at this age, kids slightly mix up the internet with the devices that they use to access the internet.

In her drawing, we see again Google - it’s clearly everywhere - and also the interfaces for calling and texting someone.

To explain what the internet is, besides the fact that one can use it for calling and listening to music, she says:

[The internet] is something that you can [use to] see someone who is far away, so that you don’t need to take time to get to them.

Now, that’s a great explanation, the internet providing the possibility for communication over a distance :)

If she could ask a friendly dragon something she always wanted to know, she’d ask how to make her phone come alive:

that it can talk to you, that it can see you, that it can smile and has eyes. It’s like a new family member, you can talk to it.

Sounds a bit like Siri, Alexa, or Furby, doesn’t it?

If you could improve the internet for everyone, what would you do first?

She’d have the phone be able to decide over her free time, her phone time. That would make the world better, not for the kids, but certainly for the parents.

The antifascist kid

This German boy’s dad has a background in electrotechnical engineering. He’s 10 years old and he told me he’s using the internet a lot for searching things for example about his passion: the firefighters. For him, the internet is:

An invisible world. A “virtual” world. But there’s also the darknet.

He told me he always watches that German show on public TV for kids that explains stuff: Checker Tobi. (In 2014, Checker Tobi actually produced an episode about the internet, which I’d criticize for having only male characters, except for one female character: a secretary—Google, a nice and friendly woman guiding the way through the huge library that’s the internet…)

This kid was the only one interviewed who managed to actually explain something about the internet, or rather about the hypertextual structure of the web. When I asked him to draw the internet, he made a drawing of a pin board. He explained:

Many items are attached to the pin board, and on the top left corner there’s a computer, for example with Youtube and one can navigate like that between all the items, and start again from the beginning when done.

When I asked if he knew what actually happens between the device and a website he visits, he put forth the hypothesis of the existence of some kind of

Waves, internet waves - all this stuff somehow needs to be transmitted.

What he’d like to learn:

How to get into the darknet? How do you become a Whitehat? I’ve heard these words on the internet, the internet makes me clever.

And what would he change on the internet if he could?

I want that right wing extreme stuff is not accessible anymore, or at least, that it rains turds (“Kackwürste”) whenever people watch such stuff. Or that people are always told: ‘This video is scum.’

I suspect that his father has been talking with him about these things, and maybe these are also subjects he heard about when listening to punk music (he told me he does), or browsing Youtube.

Future projects

To me this has been pretty insightful. I might share some more internet drawings by adults in the future, which I think are also really interesting, as they show very different things depending on the age of the person.

I’ve been using the information gathered to work on a children’s book… which I hope to be able to share with you next year.

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-52.

Drivers of social influence in the Twitter migration to Mastodon | Scientific Reports

Tags: tech, social-media, sociology, psychology, community, fediverse, twitter

Despite understandable limitations, this studies has a few interesting findings on how communities can more easily switch platforms (in this case from Twitter to Mastodon). At least one is a bit counter-intuitive.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48200-7

Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content - The Verge

Tags: tech, moderation, social-media

Another platform failing at proper moderation…

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24011232/substack-nazi-moderation-demonetization-hamish-mckenzie

How Big is YouTube? - Ethan Zuckerman

Tags: tech, social-media, google, research

An important question for proper statistics about the content itself. Surprisingly harder to get an answer to it than one would think.

https://ethanzuckerman.com/2023/12/22/how-big-is-youtube/

The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement - The Verge

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

It was only a question of time until we’d see such lawsuits appear. We’ll see where this one goes.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/27/24016212/new-york-times-openai-microsoft-lawsuit-copyright-infringement

The growing energy footprint of artificial intelligence - ScienceDirect

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, economics, energy, ecology

Very interesting paper about the energy footprint of the latest trend in generator models. The conclusion is fairly clear: we should think twice before using them.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435123003653#fig1

More than calculators: Why large language models threaten learning, teaching, and education | by Amy J. Ko | Bits and Behavior | Dec, 2023 | Medium

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, school, learning, education

When underfunded schools systems preaching obedience and conformity meet something like large language models, this tips over the balance enough that no proper learning can really happen anymore. Time to reform our school systems?

https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/more-than-calculators-why-large-language-models-threaten-public-education-480dd5300939

You don’t need analytics on your blog

Tags: tech, blog, self-hosting, attention-economy

Definitely true… never had use for more than the server logs for understanding the traffic on my blog. No need to invade the privacy of people through their browser.

https://blog.yossarian.net/2023/12/24/You-dont-need-analytics-on-your-blog

Using Qt for Mobile in 2023 | Cameron Gaertner | Software Developer

Tags: tech, mobile, qt, android, ios

The experience is still not great on iOS and Android. This is in part due to the platforms design though, this still make Qt a great fit when you control the platform like for Plasma Mobile. For less friendly platforms this still limits the use to cases where you already have quite some Qt code. Still the same situation than a few years ago.

https://camg.me/qt-mobile-2023/

To Type or Not to Type: Quantifying Detectable Bugs in JavaScript

Tags: tech, javascript, type-systems, bug, quality

Interesting study, the amount of bugs which could have been prevented by the introduction of static typing in Javascript code bases is definitely impressive (15% is not a small amount in my opinion).

https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10064729/1/typestudy.pdf

Why large companies and fast-moving startups are banning merge commits

Tags: tech, git, version-control

It looks like git workflows using rebase are becoming the norm. People are actively trying to avoid merge commits in their repository history. Tooling support could be a bit better though.

https://graphite.dev/blog/why-ban-merge-commits

rscss - Styling CSS without losing your sanity

Tags: tech, css

Interesting guidelines for organizing CSS. This should avoid making things too much of a mess.

https://ricostacruz.com/rscss/

How to (and how not to) fix color banding

Tags: tech, graphics

Exploration of the causes of color banding and how to work around them.

https://blog.frost.kiwi/GLSL-noise-and-radial-gradient/

So You Want to Optimize Your Code?

Tags: tech, mozilla, observability, telemetry, profiling, optimization, performance

Very nice collection of stories from the trenches of Firefox development. Lots of lessons learned to unpack about optimizing for the right thing, tooling, telemetry and so on.

https://yoric.github.io/post/so-you-want-to-optimize-your-code/

John the Toolmaker

Tags: tech, tools, craftsmanship, developer-experience

It’s indeed important to hone your tools as well. Even though most things are not blocked due to tools, the right ones when well designed can make things easier.

https://two-wrongs.com/john-the-toolmaker

On chains and complex systems – Surfing Complexity

Tags: tech, complexity, reliability

Word of caution on how we tend to reason about complex systems. They don’t form a chain but a web, and that changes everything to understand how they can break.

https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2023/12/23/on-chains-and-complex-systems/

Cold-blooded software

Tags: tech, dependencies, maintenance

This is an interesting metaphor. I’ll try to keep it in mind.

https://dubroy.com/blog/cold-blooded-software/

Beyond Technical Aspects How Do Community Smells Influence the Intensity of Code Smells?

Tags: tech, community, smells, organization, quality

This study does a good job looking at the impact of community smells over the presence of code smells. This is an excellent reminder that the organization influences greatly the produced code.

https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid%3A426a340b-83a6-480b-bbac-0d711092c704/datastream/OBJ/download

The LinkedIn Developer Productivity and Happiness Framework

Tags: tech, linkedin, developer-experience, metrics, productivity

Interesting framework. I wouldn’t take everything at face value, but this looks like a good source of inspiration to design your own.

https://linkedin.github.io/dph-framework/

Explorers are bad leaders | Derek Sivers

Tags: tech, management, leadership

A bit too archetypal for my taste but there’s some truth to it. If you lean towards “explorer” (I think I do), it’s hard to be also a leader. Now you could be aware of your flaws and put tools in place to compensate for them when you need lead.

https://sive.rs/exled

Bye for now! And see you in 2024!