FLOSS Project Planets

Plasma 6.2 will be released in just three days! In the end we did revert the notification changes I mentioned last week, so users of Plasma 6.2 won’t experience any new issues with notifications. The list of verified 6.2 regressions is extremely small, with most being low importance. We will of course eventually get them fixed anyway! But they aren’t release blockers.

Notable New Features

Distros can now customize the set of apps shown on Discover’s homepage in the “Editor’s Choice” section (Jarred Wilson, Plasma 6.3.0. Link)

Notable UI Improvements

We’ve returned to the older style of default audio device naming from Plasma 6.1, plus a few extra heuristics to hopefully make it even better when using PipeWire. And don’t worry, the new feature to rename devices remains present (Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Discover now only shows the total size of available updates once it’s finished checking for them, so the number is always accurate and doesn’t bounce around (Soumyadeep Ghosh, Plasma 6.3.0. Link)

Notable Bug Fixes

Fixed the most common Plasma crash on X11, which was often encountered when waking up a sleeping monitor (Marco Martin, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Fixed a common case where KWin could crash when using Overview to search for stuff (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Fixed two a somewhat common seemingly random Plasma crashes (Fushan Wen, Plasma 6.2.0. Link 1 and link 2)

Fixed an issue that could, under certain circumstances, cause KWin to freeze when connecting or disconnecting an external monitor to a laptop (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Fixed a bug that could cause System Monitor sensors configured with certain combinations of faces and sensors to become permanently invisible! (Arjen Hiemstra, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Improved the robustness of Plasma’s startup code, so that it doesn’t fail to launch when the kactivitymanagerd daemon is slow (David Edmundson, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Fixed an issue that could cause animations to get stuck on certain screens with the Adaptive Sync feature turned on (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Removed the animations from Plasma’s Pager widget because they were too subtle to notice most of the time, and triggered a Qt bug that wrecks laptop battery life with auto-hidden panels. The Qt bug is under investigation, but at least now you should hit it less often (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Fixed one of the bugs that could cause icon positions on the desktop to get reset after monitors turned off and back on again. This may also fix a very common similar bug where positions get reset when the resolution changes; that’s still being verified. And of course there may be other bugs with positioning as well, but this was one of them and it’s fixed now! Others are under Investigation (Akseli Lahtinen, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Fixed KWin’s “Toggle Raise and Lower” functionality so that it does in fact lower the window again (Jarek Janik, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Fixed a regression that caused the title of any components using Kirigami.OverlaySheet to be vertically mis-positioned (Fushan Wen, Frameworks 6.7. Link)

Changing regional settings for your user is now more reliable in the case where your distro or its installer set the value of all of the LC_* properties at a systemwide level — as apparently happens on Ubuntu (Han Young, Plasma 6.2.0. Link)

Made sure that pointer acceleration in XWayland games with screen scaling is the same as in native Wayland apps (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 6.2.1. Link)

Other bug information of note:

• 2 Very high priority Plasma bug (up from 1 last week). Current list of bugs
• 30 15-minute Plasma bugs (down from 33 last week). Current list of bugs
• 137 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed over the last week. Full list of bugs

How You Can Help

You know what? Have a rest. It’s not feasible to work all the time; breaks are important too. Everyone’s been working so hard on Plasma 6.2, and I think the results are going to be great. Make sure not to neglect your mental health! Rest when you need it. Were all humans with physical bodies.

Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover additional ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite! Or consider donating instead! That helps too.

Although I've never written about them, I've been interested in music synthesisers for ages. My colleagues know this. Whilst I've been off sick, they had a whip-round and bought me a voucher for Andertons, a UK-based music store, to cheer me up.

I'm absolutely floored by this generosity. And so, I'm now on a quest to buy a synthesizer! Although, not my first one.

Alesis Micron on my desk, taunting me

I bought my first synth, an Alesis Micron, from a colleague at $oldjob, 16 years ago. For various reasons, I've struggled to engage with it, and it's mostly been gathering dust on my desk in all that time. (I might write more about the Micron in a later blog post). "Bad Gear" sums it up better than I could:

So, I'm not truly buying my "first" synth, but for all intents and purposes I'm on a similar journey to if I was, and I thought it might be fun to write about it.

Goals

I want something which has as many of its parameters presented physically, as knobs or sliders etc., as possible. One reason I've failed to engage with the Micron (so far) is it's at the other end of this spectrum, with hundreds of tunable parameters but a small handful of knobs. To change parameters you have to go diving into menus presented on a really old-fashioned, small LCD display. If you know what you are looking for, you can probably find it; but if you just want to experiment and play around, it's off-putting.

Secondly, I want something I can use away from a computer, as much as possible. Computers are my day-job, largely dominate my existing hobbies, and are unavoidable even in some of the others (like 3d printing). Most of the computers I interact with run Linux. And for all its strengths, audio management is not one of them. If I'm going to carve out some of my extremely limited leisure time to explore this stuff, I don't to spend any of it (at least now) fighting Pulseaudio/ALSA/Pipewire/JACK/OSS/whatever, or any of the other foibles that might crop up1.

Thirdly, I'd like something which, in its soul, is an instrument. You can get some amazing little synth boxes with a huge number of features in them. Something with a limited number of features but which really feels well put together would suit me better.

So… next time, I'll write about the 2-3 top candidates on my list. Can you guess what they might be?

1. To give another example. The other day I sat down to try and use the Micron, which had its audio out wired into an external audio interface, in turn plugged into my laptop's Thunderbolt dock. For a while I couldn't figure out why I couldn't hear anything, until I realised the Thunderbolt dock was having "a moment" and not presenting its USB devices to the laptop. Hobby time window gone!↩

We’re excited to announce the October 2024 release of the Python and Jupyter extensions for Visual Studio Code!

This release includes the following announcements:

• Run Python tests with coverage
• Default Python problem matcher
• Python language server mode

If you’re interested, you can check the full list of improvements in our changelogs for the Python, Jupyter and Pylance extensions.

Run Python tests with coverage

You can now run Python tests with coverage in VS Code! Test coverage is a measure of how much of your code is covered by your tests, which can help you identify areas of your code that are not being fully tested.

To run tests with coverage enabled, select the coverage run icon in the Test Explorer or the “Run with coverage” option from any menu you normally trigger test runs from. The Python extension will run coverage using the pytest-cov plugin if you are using pytest, or with coverage.py for unittest.

Note: Before running tests with coverage, make sure to install the correct testing coverage package for your project.

Once the coverage run is complete, lines will be highlighted in the editor for line level coverage. Test coverage results will appear as a “Test Coverage” sub-tab in the Test Explorer, which you can also navigate to with Testing: Focus on Test Coverage View in Command Palette (F1)). On this panel you can view line coverage metrics for each file and folder in your workspace.

For more information on running Python tests with coverage, see our Python test coverage documentation. For general information on test coverage, see VS Code’s Test Coverage documentation.

Default Python problem matcher

We are excited to announce support for one of our longest request features: there is now a default Python problem matcher! Aiming to simplifying issue tracking in your Python code and offering more contextual feedback, a problem matcher scans the task’s output for errors and warnings and displays them in the Problems panel, enhancing your development workflow. To integrate it, add "problemMatcher": "$python" to your tasks in task.json.

Below is an example of a task.json file that uses the default problem matcher for Python:

{ "version": "2.0.0", "tasks": [ { "label": "Run Python", "type": "shell", "command": "${command:python.interpreterPath}", "args": [ "${file}" ], "problemMatcher": "$python" } ] }

For more information on tasks and problem matchers, visit VS Code’s Tasks documentation.

Pylance language server mode

There’s a new setting python.analysis.languageServerMode that enables you to choose between our current IntelliSense experience or a lightweight one that is optimized for performance. If you don’t require the full breadth of IntelliSense capabilities and prefer Pylance to be as resource-friendly as possible, you can set python.analysis.languageServerMode to light. Otherwise, to continue with the experience you have with Pylance today, you can leave out the setting entirely or explicitly set it to default .

This new functionality overrides the default values of the following settings:

Setting light mode default mode “python.analysis.exclude” [“**”] [] “python.analysis.useLibraryCodeForTypes” false true “python.analysis.enablePytestSupport” false true “python.analysis.indexing” false true

The settings above can still be changed individually to override the default values.

Shell integration in Python terminal REPL

The Python extension now includes a python.terminal.shellIntegration.enabled setting to enable a better terminal experience on MacOS and Linux machines. When enabled, this setting runs a PYTHONSTARTUP script before you launch the Python REPL in the terminal (for example, by typing and entering python), allowing you to leverage terminal shell integrations such as command decorations, re-run command and run recent commands.

Other Changes and Enhancements

We have also added small enhancements and fixed issues requested by users that should improve your experience working with Python and Jupyter Notebooks in Visual Studio Code. Some notable changes include:

• Experimental Implement Abstract Classes with Copilot Code Action available for GitHub Copilot users using Pylance. Enable by adding "python.analysis.aiCodeActions": {"implementAbstractClasses": true} in your User settings.json
• Fixed duplicate Python executable code when sending code to the Terminal REPL by using executeCommand rather than sendText for the activation command in @vscode#23929

We would also like to extend special thanks to this month’s contributors:

• @edgarrmondragon Add uv.lock to file associations in vscode-python#23991
• @vishrutss Remove redundant @typescript-eslint/no-explicit-any suppression in vscode-python#24091

Try out these new improvements by downloading the Python extension and the Jupyter extension from the Marketplace, or install them directly from the extensions view in Visual Studio Code (Ctrl + Shift + X or ⌘ + ⇧ + X). You can learn more about Python support in Visual Studio Code in the documentation. If you run into any problems or have suggestions, please file an issue on the Python VS Code GitHub page.

The post Python in Visual Studio Code – October 2024 Release appeared first on Python.

Takeaway: Federal agencies face significant challenges in creating modern, accessible, and user-friendly websites, falling short of accessibility standards and user expectations. DUSWDS is a solution to these challenges. It is a USWDS-aligned Drupal distribution specifically designed for federal agencies to meet accessibility requirements, improve user experience, and save time and resources on development and maintenance.

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-40.

W3C 30th anniversary clip

Tags: tech, web, history

Excellent clip for the W3C 30th anniversary. Shows the big milestones and evolution of the WWW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TfUBuIZkmQ

OpenFreeMap

Tags: tech, foss, map

An excellent service to provide. Let’s hope it stays sustainable, the risk is commercial leeches not giving back a dime. Be responsible, sponsor it if you use it commercially.

https://openfreemap.org/

Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD’s strategic move toward broader adoption | FreeBSD Foundation

Tags: tech, freebsd, laptop

Unexpected but definitely welcome. Let’s wish them luck in this endeavor.

https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/why-laptop-support-why-now-freebsds-strategic-move-toward-broader-adoption/

The Public Domain Problem

Tags: tech, copyright, public-domain, commons

Putting things in the public domain voluntarily is indeed more difficult than it should be. The best tool we got is CC0, but it still raises (probably unwarranted) concerns for software.

https://dpk.land/pubdmn.txt

Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public!

Tags: tech, patents

Always happy to see a patent troll bite the dust.

https://blog.cloudflare.com/patent-troll-sable-pays-up/

Improving online advertising through product and infrastructure

Tags: tech, mozilla, advertisement, surveillance

Mozilla is clearly loosing its way, this is sad to watch. I guess the forks which remove the online advertising measures will become more popular.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/improving-online-advertising/

Microsoft details security/privacy overhaul for Windows Recall ahead of relaunch

Tags: tech, microsoft, ai, machine-learning, surveillance, privacy

They’re trying a come back… of course they added layers of security to pretend it’s all solved and shiny. They totally ignore the social implications or if something like this even needs to be done. At least one can remove it… for now…

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/microsoft-details-security-privacy-overhaul-for-windows-recall-ahead-of-relaunch/

Don’t believe the hype: AGI is far from inevitable

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, cognition, neuroscience, philosophy, mathematics, logic, research

This is a short article summarizing a research paper at the surface level. It is clearly the last nail in the coffin for the generative AI grand marketing claims. Of course, I recommend reading the actual research paper (link at the end) but if you prefer this very short form, here it is. It’s clearly time to go back to the initial goals of the AI field: understanding cognition. The latest industrial trends tend to confuse too much the map with the territory.

https://www.ru.nl/en/research/research-news/dont-believe-the-hype-agi-is-far-from-inevitable

The insatiable hunger of (Open)AI

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

If you run the number, we actually can’t afford this kind of generative AI arm race. It’s completely unsustainable both for training and during use…

https://wimvanderbauwhede.codeberg.page/articles/the-insatiable-hunger-of-openai/

New AI trick: ‘synthetic human memories’

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, fake, fake-news

Maybe extrapolating a bit more than it should. Still this leads to worrying uses of AI generated images.

https://machinesociety.ai/p/new-ai-trick-synthetic-human-memories

Ethical Applications of AI to Public Sector Problems - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, ethics

Good article about the ethical implications of using AI in systems. I like the distinction about assistive vs automated. It’s not perfect as it underestimates the “asleep at the steering wheel” effects, but this is a good starting point.

https://jacobian.org/2024/oct/1/ethical-public-sector-ai/

Devs gaining little (if anything) from AI coding assistants

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, productivity

Unsurprisingly the productivity gains announced for coding assistants have been greatly exaggerated. There might be cases of strong gains but it’s still unclear in which niches this is going to happen.

https://www.cio.com/article/3540579/devs-gaining-little-if-anything-from-ai-coding-assistants.html?amp=1

Lies, Damn Lies, And Surveys About AI – ideatrash

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, marketing, criticism

Or why we shouldn’t trust marketing survey… they definitely confuse perception and actual results. Worse they do it on purpose.

https://ideatrash.net/2024/09/lies-damn-lies-and-surveys-about-ai.html

Sorry, GenAI is NOT going to 10x computer programming

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, copilot, productivity

How shocking! This was all hype? Not surprised since we’ve seen the referenced papers before, but put all together it makes things really clear.

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/sorry-genai-is-not-going-to-10x-computer

Inside Elon Musk’s AI party at OpenAI’s old headquarters

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

The arm race is still on-going at a furious pace. Still wondering how messy it will be when this bubble bursts.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/3/24261160/elon-musk-xai-recruiting-party-openai-dev-day-sam-altman

I am tired of AI

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

I definitely agree with this. I’m sick of the grand claims around what is essentially a parlor trick. Could we tone down the marketing enough so that we can properly think about making useful products again?

https://www.ontestautomation.com/i-am-tired-of-ai/

Were RNNs All We Needed?

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

OK, this paper picked my curiosity. The limitations of the experiments makes me wonder if some threshold effects aren’t ignored. Still this is a good indication that the question is worth pursuing further.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.01201

I-XRAY

Tags: tech, social-media, scam, ai, machine-learning

Doxxing will get easier and easier. Con men are likely paying attention.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iWCqmaOUKhKjcKSktIwC3NNANoFP7vPsRvcbOIup_BA/mobilebasic

Hacking Kia: Remotely Controlling Cars With Just a License Plate

Tags: tech, automotive, security

More details about the KIA security issue. Clearly securing the embedded systems is not worth much if it is then all exposed via unsafe web services.

https://samcurry.net/hacking-kia

Attacking UNIX Systems via CUPS, Part I

Tags: tech, linux, security

This one is definitely a bad one. Looks like CUPS is a weak part of the ecosystem, especially when coupled with zeroconf. I wouldn’t be surprised to see macOS being affected too.

https://www.evilsocket.net/2024/09/26/Attacking-UNIX-systems-via-CUPS-Part-I/

Collaborative Text Editing with Eg-walker: Better, Faster, Smaller

Tags: tests, crdt, collaborative

This could be a game changer to collaborative editing. Clearly a good competitor to CRDTs, should make it easier to build such features without a central server.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.14252

Modes Considered Harmful

Tags: tech, distributed, reliability

Interesting point. You likely need to be careful with fallback modes especially in distributed systems. They might bring even more issues when the system is already under stress.

https://a-nickels-worth.dev/posts/modesharm/

std::array in C++ isn’t slower than array in C

Tags: tech, c++, programming, safety, performance

If you still needed to be convinced you need to use std::array and std::span, here is the proof.

https://pvs-studio.com/en/blog/posts/cpp/1164/

Code Generation in Rust vs C++26

Tags: tech, c++, rust, metaprogramming

Interesting comparison of the different choices made in Rust and the upcoming C++26 for code generation. It’s fascinating how they managed to have such facilities in Rust while having no introspection. C++ going the opposite direction will have a very different feel both in term of use or of implementation.

https://brevzin.github.io/c++/2024/09/30/annotations/

The Fastest Mutexes

Tags: tech, multithreading, performance, system

Nice results. Interesting implementation too. I wonder if some of it will make its way to the glibc or musl.

https://justine.lol/mutex/

Less htmx is More

Tags: tech, web, frontend, htmx

As it gets more adoption people are figuring out ways to use htmx properly and not abuse what should be niche features.

https://unplannedobsolescence.com/blog/less-htmx-is-more/

Three small proposals for putting “hyper” back in the hypertext

Tags: tech, web, frontend, html, htmx

Interesting proposals, let’s see how far they go. They could bring most of the benefits of htmx and similar straight in HTML.

https://alexanderpetros.com/triptych/

Changelogs and Release Notes

Tags: tech, foss, project-management

We keep saying they’re not the same. This article does a good job highlighting the differences and explaining why you need both.

https://harihareswara.net/posts/2024/changelogs-and-release-notes/

Learning to Call BS

Tags: tech, product-management

Good idea on how product managers should behave to facilitate requirements handling. I wish more of them would do this.

https://kevinyien.com/blog/bs.html

The world will need less energy after the energy transition

Tags: tech, energy, ecology, economics

Interesting analysis… I wonder if and how Jevons paradox will get in the way though.

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency

Bye for now!

In this quiz, you’ll test your understanding of Python’s Iterators and Iterables.

By working through this quiz, you’ll revisit how to create and work with iterators and iterables, understand the differences between them, and review how to use generator functions and the yield statement.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

KDE e.V., the non-profit organization supporting the KDE community, and the Kdenlive team are looking for proactive contractors to implement some features in the Kdenlive video editor. Two positions are currently open:

• OpenTimelineIO integration: this will require implementing a C++ module in Kdenlive to allow importing and exporting using this open standard, to allow exchanging project files with other applications. Please see the job ad for more details about this contracting opportunity.

• Audiowaveform integration: this will require rewriting the code used to generate and display the audio waveforms in Kdenlive using the audiowaveform library. This should bring faster and more precise waveforms in the timeline. Please see the job ad for more details about this contracting opportunity. We are looking forward to your application.

SPDX-License-Identifier: GFDL-1.3-or-later --> QCoro 0.11.0 Release Announcement

A long over-due release which has accumulated a bunch of bugfixes but also some fancy new features…read on!

As always, big thanks to everyone who reported issues and contributed to QCoro. Your help is much appreciated!

QCoro::LazyTask<T>

The biggest new features in this release is the brand-new QCoro::LazyTask<T>. It’s a new return type that you can use for your coroutines. It differs from QCoro::Task<T> in that, as the name suggest, the coroutine is evaluated lazily. What that means is when you call a coroutine that returns LazyTask, it will return imediately without executing the body of the coroutine. The body will be executed only once you co_await on the returned LazyTask object.

This is different from the behavior of QCoro::Task<T>, which is eager, meaning that it will start executing the body immediately when called (like a regular function call).

QCoro::LazyTask<int> myWorker() { qDebug() << "Starting worker"; co_return 42; } QCoro::Task<> mainCoroutine() { qDebug() << "Creating worker"; const auto task = myWorker(); qDebug() << "Awaiting on worker"; const auto result = co_await task; // do something with the result }

This will result in the following output:

mainCoroutine(): Creating worker mainCoroutine(): Awaiting on worker myWorker(): Starting worker

If myWorker() were a QCoro::Task<T> as we know it, the output would look like this:

mainCoroutine(): Creating worker myWorker(): Starting worker mainCoroutine(): Awaiting on worker

The fact that the body of a QCoro::LazyTask<T> coroutine is only executed when co_awaited has one very important implication: it must not be used for Qt slots, Q_INVOKABLEs or, in general, for any coroutine that may be executed directly by the Qt event loop. The reason is, that the Qt event loop is not aware of coroutines (or QCoro), so it will never co_await on the returned QCoro::LazyTask object - which means that the code inside the coroutine would never get executed. This is the reason why the good old QCoro::Task<T> is an eager coroutine - to ensure the body of the coroutine gets executed even when called from the Qt event loop and not co_awaited.

For more details, see the documentation of QCoro::LazyTask<T>.

Defined Semantics for Awaiting Default-Constructed and Moved-From Tasks

This is something that wasn’t clearely defined until now (both in the docs and in the code), which is what happens when you try to co_await on a default-constructed QCoro::Task<T> (or QCoro::LazyTask<T>):

co_await QCoro::Task<>(); // will hang indefinitely!

Previously this would trigger a Q_ASSERT in debug build and most likely a crash in production build. Starting with QCoro 0.11, awaiting such task will print a qWarning() and will hang indefinitely.

The same applies to awaiting a moved-from task, which is identical to a default-constructed task:

QCoro::LazyTask<int> task = myTask(); handleTask(std::move(task)); co_await task; // will hang indefinitely!` Compiler Support

We have dropped official support for older compilers. Since QCoro 0.11, the officially supported compilers are:

• GCC >= 11
• Clang >= 15
• MSVC >= 19.40 (Visual Studio 17 2022)
• AppleClang >= 15 (Xcode 15.2)

QCoro might still compile or work with older versions of those compilers, but we no longer test it and do not guarantee that it will work correctly.

The reason is that coroutine implementation in older versions of GCC and clang were buggy and behaved differently than they do in newer versions, so making sure that QCoro behaves correctly across wide range of compilers was getting more difficult as we implemented more and more complex and advanced features.

Other Features and Changes

A coroutine-friendly version of QFuture::takeResult() is now available in the form of QCoroFuture::takeResult() when building QCoro against Qt 6 (#217).

QCoro::waitFor(QCoro::Task<T>) no longer requires that the task return type T is default-constructible (#223, Joey Richey)

Bugfixes

• Suppress Clang error when building against Android NDK <= 25 (#204, Daniel Vrátil)
• Fixed missing QtGui dependency in QCoroQuick module (#209, Andreas Sturmlechner)
• Fixed QCoroIODevice::write() always returning 0 instead of bytes written (#211, Daniel Vrátil)
• Fixed unchecked std::optional access in QCoroIODevice::write
• Fixed awaiting on signal emission with qCoro() would resume the awaiter in the sender’s thread context (#213, Daniel Vrátil)
• Fixed build wilth clang 18 due to missing #include <exception> (#220, Micah Terhaar)
• Fixed crash when QNetworkAccessManager is destroyed from a coroutine awaiting on a network reply (#231, Daniel Vrátil)

Full changelog

See changelog on Github

Support

If you enjoy using QCoro, consider supporting its development on GitHub Sponsors or buy me a coffee on Ko-fi (after all, more coffee means more code, right?).

Drupal integrations with Popular Cloud Services: AWS vs MS Azure vs GCP Editor Fri, 10/04/2024 - 15:39

Welcome to the world of cloud integration, where popular cloud services such as AWS, Azure, and GCP are the keys to a Drupal site's success.
Imagine that you've finished your Drupal website. It turned out fantastic, but the basic options are not enough for you. So you can't wait to unleash its full potential. This is where cloud services come into play. They are your site's superhero assistants.
Today, our Drupal team plans to look at the benefits of these cloud services and how AWS, Azure, and GCP can take your Drupal website to a new performance, scalability, and security. Get ready to revolutionize your online presence and, of course, leave your competitors behind.

Authored by Nadiia Nykolaichuk.

We are excited to announce and welcome Freexian into Debian Partners.

Freexian specializes in Free Software with a particular focus on Debian GNU/Linux. Freexian can assist with consulting, training, technical support, packaging, or software development on projects involving use or development of Free software.

All of Freexian's employees and partners are well-known contributors in the Free Software community, a choice that is integral to Freexian's business model.

About the Debian Partners Program

The Debian Partners Program was created to recognize companies and organizations that help and provide continuous support to the project with services, finances, equipment, vendor support, and a slew of other technical and non-technical services.

Partners provide critical assistance, help, and support which has advanced and continues to further our work in providing the 'Universal Operating System' to the world.

Thank you Freexian!

I am huge fan of obsidian.md and just other day I was trying to “convert” Akseli. One pain point he mentioned that it does not quite allow him to get reminders for the todo list created in obsidian. I have been doing little bit of “hack” to workaround this, and I thought I’d write a blog post about this so that others can also make use of it. How to use this First of all, following plugins are used (ignore PlantUML)

EuroPython 2024 talks about security About • Blog • Newsletter • Links EuroPython 2024 talks about security

Published 2024-10-04 by Seth Larson
Reading time: minutes

EuroPython 2024 which occurred back in July 2024 has published the talk recordings to YouTube earlier this week. I've been under the weather for most of this week, but have had a chance to listen to a few of the security-related talks in-between resting.

Counting down for Cyber Resilience Act: Updates and expectations

This talk was delivered by Python Software Foundation Executive Director Deb Nicholson and and Board Member Cheuk Ting Ho. The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is coming, and it'll affect more software than just the software written in the EU. Deb and Cheuk describe the recent developments in the CRA like the creation of a new entity called the "Open Source Steward" and how open source foundations and maintainers are preparing for the CRA.

For the rest of this year and next year I am focusing on getting the Python ecosystem ready for software security regulations like the CRA and SSDF from the United States.

Starting with improving the Software Bill-of-Materials (SBOM) story for Python, because this is required by both (and likely, future) regulations. Knowing what software you are running is an important first step towards being able to secure that same software.

To collaborate with other open source foundations and projects on this work, I've joined the Open Regulatory Compliance Working Group hosted by the Eclipse Foundation.

Towards licensing standardization in Python packaging

This talk was given by Karolina Surma and it detailed all the work that goes into researching, writing, and having a Python packaging standard accepted (spoiler: it's a lot!). Karolina is working on PEP 639 which is for adopting the SPDX licensing expression and identifier standards in Python as they are the current state of the art for modeling complex licensing situations accurately for machine (and human) consumption.

This work is very important for Software Bill-of-Materials, as they require accurate license information in this exact format. Thanks to Karolina, C.A.M. Gerlach, and many others for working for years on this PEP, it will be useful to so many uers once adopted!

The Update Framework (TUF) joins PyPI

This talk was given by Kairo de Araujo and Lukas Pühringer and it detailed the history and current status of The Update Framework (TUF) integration into the Python Package Index.

TUF provides better integrity guarantees for software repositories like PyPI like making it more difficult to "compel" the index to serve the incorrect artifacts and to make a compromise of PyPI easier to roll-back and be certain that files hadn't been modified. For a full history and latest status, you can view PEP 458 and the top-level GitHub issue for Warehouse.

I was around for the original key-signing ceremony for the PyPI TUF root keys which was live-streamed back in October 2020. Time flies, huh.

Writing Python like it's Rust: more robust code with type hints

This talk was given by Jakub Beránek about using type hints for more robust Python code. Having written a case-study on urllib3's adoption of type hints to find defects that testing and other tooling missed I highly recommend type hints for Python code as well:

Accelerating Python with Rust: The PyO3 Revolution

This talk was given by Roshan R Chandar about using PyO3 and Rust in Python modules.

Automatic Trusted Publishing with PyPI

This talk was given by Facundo Tuesca on using Trusted Publishing for authenticating with PyPI to publish packages.

Zero Trust APIs with Python

This talk was given by Jose Haro Peralta on how to design and implement secure web APIs using Python, data validation with Pydantic, and testing your APIs using tooling for detecting common security defects.

Best practices for securely consuming open source in Python

This talk was given by Cira Carey which highlights many of today's threats targetting open source consumers. Users should be aware of these when selecting projects to download and install.

Thanks for reading! ♡ Did you find this article helpful and want more content like it? Get notified of new posts by subscribing to the RSS feed or the email newsletter.

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Earlier this week I considered whether I should finally switch away from virtualenvwrapper to using local .venv managed by direnv.

I’ve never seriously used direnv, but I’ve been hearing Jeff and Hynek talk about their use of direnv for a while.

After a few days, I’ve finally stumbled into a setup that works great for me. I’d like to note the basics of this setup as well as some fancy additions that are specific to my own use case.

My old virtualenvwrapper workflow

First, I’d like to note my old workflow that I’m trying to roughly recreate:

1. I type mkvenv3 <project_name> to create a new virtual environment for the current project directory and activate it
2. I type workon <project_name> when I want to workon that project: this activates the correct virtual environment and changes to the project directory

The initial setup I thought of allows me to:

1. Run echo layout python > .envrc && direnv allow to create a virtual environment for the current project and activate it
2. Change directories into the project directory to automatically activate the virtual environment

The more complex setup I eventually settled on allows me to:

1. Run venv <project_name> to create a virtual environment for the current project and activate it
2. Run workon <project_name> to change directories into the project (which automatically activates the virtual environment)

The initial setup

First, I installed direnv and added this to my ~/.zshrc file:

1 eval "$(direnv hook zsh)"

Then whenever I wanted to create a virtual environment for a new project I created a .envrc file in that directory, which looked like this:

1 layout python

Then I ran direnv allow to allow, as direnv instructed me to, to allow the new virtual environment to be automatically created and activated.

That’s pretty much it.

Unfortunately, I did not like this initial setup.

No shell prompt?

The first problem was that the virtual environment’s prompt didn’t show up in my shell prompt. This is due to a direnv not allowing modification of the PS1 shell prompt. That means I’d need to modify my shell configuration to show the correct virtual environment name myself.

So I added this to my ~/.zshrc file to show the virtual environment name at the beginning of my prompt:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 # Add direnv-activated venv to prompt show_virtual_env() { if [[ -n "$VIRTUAL_ENV_PROMPT" && -n "$DIRENV_DIR" ]]; then echo "($(basename $VIRTUAL_ENV_PROMPT)) " fi } PS1='$(show_virtual_env)'$PS1 Wrong virtual environment directory

The next problem was that the virtual environment was placed in .direnv/python3.12. I wanted each virtual environment to be in a .venv directory instead.

To do that, I made a .config/direnv/direnvrc file that customized the python layout:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 layout_python() { if [[ -d ".venv" ]]; then VIRTUAL_ENV="$(pwd)/.venv" fi if [[ -z $VIRTUAL_ENV || ! -d $VIRTUAL_ENV ]]; then log_status "No virtual environment exists. Executing \`python -m venv .venv\`." python -m venv .venv VIRTUAL_ENV="$(pwd)/.venv" fi # Activate the virtual environment . $VIRTUAL_ENV/bin/activate } Loading, unloading, loading, unloading…

I also didn’t like the loading and unloading messages that showed up each time I changed directories. I removed those by clearing the DIRENV_LOG_FORMAT variable in my ~/.zshrc configuration:

1 export DIRENV_LOG_FORMAT= The more advanced setup

I don’t like it when all my virtual environment prompts show up as .venv. I want ever prompt to be the name of the actual project… which is usually the directory name.

I also really wanted to be able to type venv to create a new virtual environment, activate it, and create the .envrc file for my automatically.

Additionally, I thought it would be really handy if I could type workon <project_name> to change directories to a specific project.

I made two aliases in my ~/.zshrc configuration for all of this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 venv() { local venv_name=${1:-$(basename "$PWD")} local projects_file="$HOME/.projects" # Check if .envrc already exists if [ -f .envrc ]; then echo "Error: .envrc already exists" >&2 return 1 fi # Create venv if ! python3 -m venv --prompt "$venv_name"; then echo "Error: Failed to create venv" >&2 return 1 fi # Create .envrc echo "layout python" > .envrc # Append project name and directory to projects file echo "${venv_name} = ${PWD}" >> $projects_file # Allow direnv to immediately activate the virtual environment direnv allow } workon() { local project_name="$1" local projects_file="$HOME/.projects" local project_dir # Check for projects config file if [[ ! -f "$projects_file" ]]; then echo "Error: $projects_file not found" >&2 return 1 fi # Get the project directory for the given project name project_dir=$(grep -E "^$project_name\s*=" "$projects_file" | sed 's/^[^=]*=\s*//') # Ensure a project directory was found if [[ -z "$project_dir" ]]; then echo "Error: Project '$project_name' not found in $projects_file" >&2 return 1 fi # Ensure the project directory exists if [[ ! -d "$project_dir" ]]; then echo "Error: Directory $project_dir does not exist" >&2 return 1 fi # Change directories cd "$project_dir" }

Now I can type this to create a .venv virtual environment in my current directory, which has a prompt named after the current directory, activate it, and create a .envrc file which will automatically activate that virtual environment (thanks to that ~/.config/direnv/direnvrc file) whenever I change into that directory:

1 $ venv

If I wanted to customized the prompt name for the virtual environment, I could do this:

1 $ venv my_project

When I wanted to start working on that project later, I can either change into that directory or if I’m feeling lazy I can simply type:

1 $ workon my_project

That reads from my ~/.projects file to look up the project directory to switch to.

Switching to uv

I also decided to try using uv for all of this, since it’s faster at creating virtual environments. One benefit of uv is that it tries to select the correct Python version for the project, if it sees a version noted in a pyproject.toml file.

Another benefit of using uv, is that I should also be able to update the venv to use a specific version of Python with something like --python 3.12.

Here are the updated shell aliases for the ~/.zshrc for uv:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 venv() { local venv_name local dir_name=$(basename "$PWD") # If there are no arguments or the last argument starts with a dash, use dir_name if [ $# -eq 0 ] || [[ "${!#}" == -* ]]; then venv_name="$dir_name" else venv_name="${!#}" set -- "${@:1:$#-1}" fi # Check if .envrc already exists if [ -f .envrc ]; then echo "Error: .envrc already exists" >&2 return 1 fi # Create venv using uv with all passed arguments if ! uv venv --seed --prompt "$@" "$venv_name"; then echo "Error: Failed to create venv" >&2 return 1 fi # Create .envrc echo "layout python" > .envrc # Append to ~/.projects echo "${venv_name} = ${PWD}" >> ~/.projects # Allow direnv to immediately activate the virtual environment direnv allow } Switching to starship

I also decided to try out using Starship to customize my shell this week.

I added this to my ~/.zshrc:

1 eval "$(starship init zsh)"

And removed this, which is no longer needed since Starship will be managing the shell for me:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 # Add direnv-activated venv to prompt show_virtual_env() { if [[ -n "$VIRTUAL_ENV_PROMPT" && -n "$DIRENV_DIR" ]]; then echo "($(basename $VIRTUAL_ENV_PROMPT)) " fi } PS1='$(show_virtual_env)'$PS1

I also switched my python layout for direnv to just set the $VIRTUAL_ENV variable and add the $VIRTUAL_ENV/bin directory to my PATH, since the $VIRTUAL_ENV_PROMPT variable isn’t needed for Starship to pick up the prompt:

1 2 3 4 5 layout_python() { VIRTUAL_ENV="$(pwd)/.venv" PATH_add "$VIRTUAL_ENV/bin" export VIRTUAL_ENV }

I also made a very boring Starship configuration in ~/.config/starship.toml:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 format = """ $python\ $directory\ $git_branch\ $git_state\ $character""" add_newline = false [python] format = '([(\($virtualenv\) )]($style))' style = "bright-black" [directory] style = "bright-blue" [character] success_symbol = "[\\$](black)" error_symbol = "[\\$](bright-red)" vimcmd_symbol = "[❮](green)" [git_branch] format = "[$symbol$branch]($style) " style = "bright-purple" [git_state] format = '\([$state( $progress_current/$progress_total)]($style)\) ' style = "purple" [cmd_duration.disabled]

I setup such a boring configuration because when I’m teaching, I don’t want my students to be confused or distracted by a prompt that has considerably more information in it than their default prompt may have.

The biggest downside of switching to Starship has been my own earworm-oriented brain. As I update my Starship configuration files, I’ve repeatedly heard David Bowie singing “I’m a Starmaaan”. 🎶

Ground control to major TOML

After all of that, I realized that I could additionally use different Starship configurations for different directories by putting a STARSHIP_CONFIG variable in specific layouts. After that realization, I made my configuration even more vanilla and made some alternative configurations in my ~/.config/direnv/direnvrc file:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 layout_python() { VIRTUAL_ENV="$(pwd)/.venv" PATH_add "$VIRTUAL_ENV/bin" export VIRTUAL_ENV export STARSHIP_CONFIG=/home/trey/.config/starship/python.toml } layout_git() { export STARSHIP_CONFIG=/home/trey/.config/starship/git.toml }

Those other two configuration files are fancier, as I have no concern about them distracting my students since I’ll never be within those directories while teaching.

You can find those files in my dotfiles repository.

The necessary tools

So I replaced virtualenvwrapper with direnv, uv, and Starship. Though direnv was is doing most of the important work here. The use of uv and Starship were just bonuses.

I am also hoping to eventually replace my pipx use with uv and once uv supports adding python3.x commands to my PATH, I may replace my use of pyenv with uv as well.

Thanks to all who participated in my Mastodon thread as I fumbled through discovering this setup.

KStars v3.7.3 is released on 2024.10.03 for Windows, MacOS & Linux. It's a bi-monthly bug-fix release with a couple of exciting features.

Extension Interface

Ed Lee contributed the Extension Interface for KStars.

Extensions are small programs that can be added to interact with KStars/Ekos/INDI in order to provide extra functions and features. Extensions are separate from KStars. They are not provided as part of this software. Only a means to call them is provided for convenience. Make sure that you understand the requirements and risks of using an extension.

Three extensions are ready for release:

• FireCapture launcher (FC_launcher): disconnects the current primary camera INDI driver and launches FireCapture. Upon close restarts the INDI driver.
• KStars Backup (KS_backup): provides a GUI for the archiving and restoration of KStars/INDI (and optionally others) configuration directories to/from .tar.gz archives/
• Sirial_EEA: provides live stacking of the preview job from the Capture Module and displays it auto-stretched in the Ekos preview window.

Each extension must have a companion configuration file also located in the extensions directory, named the same as the executable with the addition of a .conf eg: an extension named example must also have a configuration file named example.conf A configuration file is a plain text file that provides configuration settings to the extension program and usage information to the user. A configuration file is only valid if it contains a line starting with: minimum_kstars_version=x.y.z The x.y.z is the minimum release of KStars that the extension is designed/tested against. This value is checked against the current KStars KSTARS_VERSION macro defined in version.h and must be equal or lower for the extension to be considered valid. The extension should also check that this minimum_kstars_version string matches what it expects.

Optionally each extension can also provide an icon file for display in the Extension drop down list. Again the naming should match the extension executable with a valid file extension (.jpg, .bmp, .gif, .png or .svg) and be placed in the same extensions directory. A default icon is used for any extension that does not provide it's own icon.

Several new DBus functions/signals are added to enable general extension use and for a specific upcoming extension.
Multi-Target SchedulerWolfgang Reissenberger continued the development of multi-camera acquisition and now scheduling with many exciting updates!
Multi-Camera SchedulingWith this new release it is possible to create and run schedules for two or more optical trains in parallel within the same KStars instance. All mount related events like slewing, dithering, alignment and meridian flip are synchronized, i.e. capturing on all optical trains takes these events into account.
Lead and follower jobsIf you want to run capturing on multiple optical trains in parallel, you need to decide, which of the optical trains is the lead job, which defines the target and the scheduling criteria. All other optical trains will be follower jobs, for which only the capture sequence to be used is relevant.
Job SynchronizationEkos ensures that no mount motion happens while one of the optical trains is capturing to avoid star trails.

In case of dithering, the capture module decides what to do as soon as dithering is requested, depending on the setup of the lead job. If the remaining capture time of a follower train is more than 50% of the lead job exposure time, capturing of the follower train is stopped and restarted after dithering. If the remaining capture time is less than 50%, the Capture module waits for the follower to finish its capture.

For the meridian flip and re-alignment: both are controlled by the lead job. All running follower capturing sequences are stopped and restarted after a successful completion of the respective action.
Recommendations

• The lead job should have the longest exposure times, especially if dithering is used.
• If you use re-focusing, consider to not suspend guiding during focusing, since the other optical train might capture in parallel.
• Configure the same optical train in the Align module that you use in the lead job. This is important if you use the re-alignment check option of the scheduler.

Do not use the Force re-alignment before re-starting jobs, since each new iteration of the lead job stops capturing of the follower trains. Consider using Verify captured image position every n frames instead, since this option triggers re-alignment only if it is necessary.Adhoc focus with Multi-Camera setupsWolfgang Reissenberger added support for simultaneous parallel focusing when you are running multi-camera setup. It would be a good idea to disable Suspend Guiding so that guiding is unaffected when focusing operation commences.Invent Multi-Star Guide Star

Hy Murveit introduced an experimental Multi-Star parameter. In the original (conservative) multi-star guiding implementation, although many stars contributed to the computed guiding drift computation, there still was one more important star that anchored the scheme.

With this change, all the guide stars contribute equally to the guiding calculations. This removes the risk that an unfortunate selection of a double star for the more-important main guide star would degrade performance.

Improvements & Bug fixes

• Fix crash on ekos reconnect
• Scheduler end-time display fix
• Focus Filter Offsets fix
• Add altitude graphs to scheduler
• Allow Flat re-calibration on the fly

This week, I spent my time mostly looking at issues tagged with "Editor Experience".

In this quiz, you’ll test your understanding of Python’s import statement and related topics.

By working through this quiz, you’ll revisit how to use modules in your scripts and import modules dynamically at runtime.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

A lot has happened again around KDE Itinerary since the previous summary post two month ago: A new two-level trip/timeline view, extended public transport location search, a new website and more public transport data coverage to name just a few things.

New Features Per-trip timeline

The probably biggest change is the replacement of the single combined timeline view that Itinerary had since its beginning with a two-level view consisting of a list of trips and a per-trip timeline view.

Trip list view.

Work on prerequisites for this has been featured in the past two summary blog posts already, such as the more explicit trip grouping controls and the staging area for about to be imported data.

Per-trip actions.

As trip grouping has become more relevant with this, there’s now multiple ways to explicitly control this:

• Merge two adjacent trips.
• Split an existing trip.
• Select which trip newly added content belongs to.

New transport icons

Another visually very noticeable change are the new transport icons by Andy Betts, replacing the previously used incoherent mix of different icon styles.

Breeze icons for modes of transport. Extended location search

The location picker for public transport searches can now also search for addresses instead of just stop names. Whether a result is a stop or an address can be distinguished by an icon, and more information about location results are shown when available (such as city, state/region and/or country), to help with identifying different places with the same name.

Searching for public transport stops and addresses.

Address search is only supported with the Transitous backend so far.

Another new way of getting to a location for a public transport search is via geo: URIs passed from other applications, which Itinerary can now handle on Linux and on Android.

Infrastructure Work New Website

Thanks to work by Carl on allowing to customize the automatically generated apps.kde.org pages, Itinerary now has a much nicer website, reusing some of the great content created for the KDE for Travelers page.

Transitous

The work on Transitous and MOTIS would deserve its own post, so this is just scratching the surface here, focusing on changes most impactful for Itinerary users.

• New base schedule coverage in France, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Turkey and USA.
• New real-time data coverage in Croatia and Germany.
• Support for via routing, transfer time settings and GTFS shapes in MOTIS (which yet has to be made available to our clients though).
• Upgraded hardware thanks to an SSD donation, which should improve routing performance.

Matrix-based trip synchronization

The foundational work around explicit trip management in the past months has also cleared the path for synchronizing trips over Matrix. As mentioned in a previous post the work on this has now started.

Synchronization increases the requirements on precise change tracking and change notification, and it adds another path how data can change. The current implementation has been a bit sloppy in that regard, and improvements for this have already been integrated. This should fix timeline entries not updating correctly after an edit or receiving public transport data updates.

Fixes & Improvements Travel document extractor

• New or improved extractors for BlablaBus, booking.com, DB, Entur, Eurostar, Eventim, Flixbus, Italo, Koleo, MAV, Reisnordland ferries, Reservix, SNCB, SNCF, Sunnycars, United Airlines and VDV e-tickets.
• Support for importing Deutsche Bahn journey sharing links.

All of this has been made possible thanks to your travel document donations!

Public transport data

• Added access to BLS (Basel, Switzerland) and KVB (Cologne, Germany) public transport data.
• Fixed access to BVG (Berlin, Germany) and ZVV (Zürich, Switzerland) public transport data.
• Fixed missing intermediate stops in French long-distance trains, caused by incomplete data reported by ÖBB.
• Migrated to a new train coach layout API in Germany, increasing the coverage for regional and local trains as well as increasing the level of detail for vehicle feature information such as the quantity rather than just the presence of bike or wheelchair spaces.
• Improve data merging when location names are provided in localized and ASCII-transliterated forms.

Indoor map

• Improved display of semi-transparent logos in dark mode in element info dialog.
• Avoid element info dialog resizes during logo or image loading.
• Show bus station quay numbers on the map.

Bus station quay numbers. Itinerary app

• Fix some combo boxes not opening correctly in mobile mode.
• Use the more compact seat display from the timeline view also on details pages.
• Fix particularly long URLs not being detected as such during importing.
• Allow to create events in any OSM building.
• Fix showing arrival/departure times for disembark-only intermediate stops.
• Android’s dark mode is now respected automatically.
• Allow editing flight boarding groups.
• Show per-day sections in public transport journey search results.

How you can help

Feedback and travel document samples are very much welcome, as are all other forms of contributions. Feel free to join us in the KDE Itinerary Matrix channel.