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Ron Garret wrote an insightful refutation to 2nd amendment arguments [1].

Interesting article from the UK about British Gas losing a civil suit about bill collecting techniques that are harassment [2]. This should be a criminal offence investigated by the police and prosecuted by the CPS.

David Brin wrote a new version of his essay about dealing with blackmail in the US political system [3].

Cory Doctorow gave an insightful lecture about Enshittification for the Transmediale festival in Berlin [4]. This link has video and a transcript, I read the transcript.

The Cut has an insightful article by a journalist who gave $50k in cash to a scammer and compares the scam to techniques used to extort false confessions [5].

Truth Dig has an informative article about how Nick Bostrom is racist and how his advocacy of eugenics influences Effective Altruism and a lot of Silicon Valley [6].

Bruce Scneier and Nathan Sanders wrote an insightful article about the problems with a frontier flogan for AI development [7].

Brian Krebs wrote an informative article about the links between Chinese APT companies and the Chinese government [8].

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/2cyrnulm
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/24bfy2x7
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/277o2wt3
• [4] https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/27sl85ml
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/25vtw89m
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/26m7h9ro
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/2ajjetba

Related posts:

1. Links March 2024 Bruce Schneier wrote an interesting blog post about his workshop...
2. Links January 2024 Long Now has an insightful article about domestication that considers...
3. Links April 2021 Dr Justin Lehmiller’s blog post comparing his official (academic style)...

53rd issue of Andrei Neagoie's must-read monthly Python Newsletter: Whitehouse Recommends Python, Memory Footprint, Let's Talk About Devin, and much more. Read the full newsletter to get up-to-date with everything you need to know from last month.

I’m assuming you are reading this because you are already convinced that migrating your Drupal 7 site to Drupal 10 is not just a proactive measure but a strategic move for your organization. But to anyone else on your team it looks like an unnecessary big project to rebuild the website when it’ll look and feel the same (we always recommend redesigns or additional features during a D7 to D10 Migration). We get it. For folks not in the know, this seems like a waste of funds. However, with Drupal 7 coming to an end in about 9 months (January 5th, 2025), the urgency to transition becomes increasingly stressful. We know you know, but you still have your team members (or your boss!) left to convince. Let’s make it easier for you with this article. Understanding the impact of Drupal 7 End of Life Before you talk to your team about why you need to migrate to Drupal 10, let’s examine some of the implications of persisting with Drupal 7.  No more security updates or advisories for core, contributed modules and themes. The Drupal Security Team may publicly post moderate to less critical issues affecting Drupal 7 in the public issue queue for resolution, provided they are not widely exploitable. Unsupported Drupal 7 contributed modules or themes won't be eligible for new maintainership or reclassification as supported. If you’re currently using them, it is a good idea to take ownership or be a maintainer of those projects. PHP version 5.5 and below will now be supported. This lack of support could lead to compatibility issues, security vulnerabilities, and potential performance drawbacks. If your Drupal 7 website is running on Windows, you will no longer receive security fixes for Windows-related issues. It is recommended to move to a different operating system. You will no longer receive assistance for tasks associated with Drupal 7, such as documentation navigation, automated testing, packaging, and other related activities. Making the case for Drupal 7 to 10 migration to your team Let’s give you some powerful pointers to discuss with your team to get buy-in on the Drupal 7 to 10 migration. Remarkably Enhanced User Experience for Content Editors and Site Builders in D10 There are 3 things that matter a lot to content editors and site builders :   User-friendly admin interface - It should allow for efficient content creation, editing, and site management without requiring extensive technical knowledge. Customization - This includes options for customizing layouts, adding new features, and integrating third-party tools and services. Media management - To upload, organize, and embed images, videos, and other multimedia content within articles. Claro admin theme Drupal 10’s new Claro admin theme (a part of core) offers a clean, modern and user-friendly interface to help organize and find what you need easily. Olivero is the new default front-end theme now and it comes with a modern look and feel. The theme integrates seamlessly with all of Drupal’s features and is the most accessible theme (WCAG level AA compliant) till now. The flexible Layout builder module is now in core and it is now easier to create pages and customize layouts the way you want. The modern and functional media management system makes it simpler to upload, reuse, and manage media assets on your Drupal site. Optimized Website Performance and SEO Improvements With every new release, Drupal is getting better at delivering performance. With Drupal 10’s new and improved caching mechanisms, BigPipe technology, optimized codebase, and effective content delivery mechanisms, your website can now load faster and offer a great user experience. It incorporates various enhancements to boost performance in content rendering and HTTP responses. With Drupal 10, you can implement lazy loading for embedded content and responsive images, significantly enhancing load times. Additionally, the introduction of the new JS minification feature dynamically reduces code and markup, thereby further improving performance. The new Single Directory Component (SDC) approach of theming your website is a revolutionary step towards frontend development which also greatly improves website performance by groupong together files necessary to render components (Twig, CSS, JS). And don’t forget, better website performance also means a better SEO ranking on search engines. Managing Content is Easier Now that you've settled into using Drupal 7 for a while, you might feel like managing content is pretty straightforward. But hold on – let me tell you about Drupal 10, where things get even smoother and more user-friendly. With Drupal 10, organizing your content consistently becomes much simpler. You can reuse existing fields easily and create new ones more smoothly, all in one place. Editing content is smoother too, with text fields that ensure your text looks just right. Plus, managing older versions of your content, whether it's in blocks or pages, is a breeze with the new unified editing experience. The new CKEditor 5 version offers an enhanced content editing experience. Its features like drag-and-drop image insertion, real-time collaboration, and seamless integration with Drupal's content management system make creating and editing content very simple. Its customizable toolbar allows you to tailor the editing experience to suit your specific needs. You also easily copy and paste content from Word/Google Docs to the editor without worrying about formatting as it automatically removes any markup. Improved Security And no, we’re not just talking about the lack of security support for Drupal 7 after Jan 2025. Because of the way it has been built and due to its many modern dependencies, Drupal 10 is now more secure than it has ever been. As you may already be aware, Drupal has been aligning its release cycles with its dependencies, including PHP and Symfony, since version 8. This means that as PHP versions continue to evolve, older versions like Drupal 7 may become incompatible with the latest PHP releases. This lack of compatibility can leave your Drupal 7 site vulnerable to security risks and other issues. Drupal 10 relies on the latest versions of Symfony (6) and PHP (8.1), making it more secure and better performing.  Twig, Drupal 10's default template engine, not only simplifies the development process but also enhances security by preventing direct database interactions within the code. This prevents vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting and code injections. By default, Drupal 10 strengthens website security by suggesting users choose stronger passwords, minimizing unauthorized access risks through parameters like minimum length and complexity. The Time is Now! The urgency for you to address the Drupal 7 migration depends on the complexity of your website. The more extensive your site's content and features, the longer the migration process will likely take. It’s going to take even longer if you have many custom modules and features. But you don’t want to rush the process. We have seen (and fixed) a lot of bad migrations (like a lot!), most of them done in haste or without proper planning. With a 9-month window to Drupal 7 end-of-life starting now, we believe this is the optimal time to initiate your migration process. A Drupal 7 to 10 migration is going to be a complete rebuild (which is why it takes time) but once you’re on Drupal 10, future upgrades are going to be very, very easy.  Don’t forget to check out this article that features our Drupal experts discussing what’s new in Drupal 10 in detail. You can even catch up with the video of this panel discussion. Final Thoughts If you’re thinking this migration (Drupal 7 to Drupal 10) is going to be your last big transition, you are absolutely right. Because even though Drupal continues to innovate, progress and release further versions, your website will now only need effortless and straightforward upgrades. Yes, upgrades will remain easy forever. So what next? Start looking for a Drupal certified migration partner (like Specbee) and get a site audit (we’ll do it for you for free!) so you know how much time you have to start the migration process.

I'm happy to have been able to attend my first in-person KDE event, the Automation & Systematization Sprint in Berlin. Previously, my contributions to KDE have consisted of submitting and triaging bug reports. During this weekend, I was able to meet some of the KDE team in person, and become more involved. I've started working with the Bugzilla Bot code, and plan to start digging into the automated test code.

The Bugzilla product list had fallen out of date, so first I updated that (yay, my first accepted MR!). I also started working on using the GitLab API to automate these updates. In the near future, I'll be tackling some requested improvements to the Bugzilla Bot. This will lessen the amount of boring manual bug chores and free people up to do more valuable work.

Thanks to the KDE team for being so friendly and willing to help me learn the development environment. I'm happy to have found more ways to contribute that I enjoy, and will be valuable to the project.

Recently I revisited my previous interest in seL4 - a fast, highly assured operating system microkernel for building secure systems.

The seL4 Microkit tutorial uses a simple Wordle game example to teach the basics of seL4 Microkit (formerly known as the seL4 Core Platform), which is a framework for creating static embedded systems on top of the seL4 microkernel. Microkit is also at the core of LionsOS, a new project to make seL4 accessible to a wider audience.

The tutorial is easy to follow, needing few prerequisites beyond a QEMU emulator and an AArch64 cross-compiler toolchain (Microkit being limited to 64-bit ARM systems currently). Use of an emulator makes for a quick test-debug cycle with a couple of Makefile targets, so time is spent focusing on walking through the Microkit concepts rather than on tooling issues.

This is an unusually good learning experience, probably because of the academic origins of the project itself. The Diátaxis documentation framework would class this as truly a “tutorial” rather than a “how-to guide” - you do learn a lot by implementing the exercises.

The Amarok Development Squad is happy to announce the immediate availability of Amarok 3.0 "Castaway"!

The new 3.0 is the first stable Qt5/KDE Frameworks 5 based version of Amarok, and first stable release since 2018, when the final Qt4 based version 2.9.0 was released.

The road to 3.0 has not been a short one. Much of the Qt5/KF5 porting was done in 2015 already, but finishing and polishing everything up has been a slow, sometimes ongoing and sometimes stalled process ever since. 3.0 Alpha was released in February 2021 and has been since used by many people, as have been nightly builds of git master available for various distributions. Now in the past few months, an effort was made to get everything ready for a proper 3.0 release.

Common usecases should work quite well, and in addition to fixing KF5 port related regressions reported in pre-releases, 3.0 features many bugfixes and implemented features for longstanding issues, the oldest such documented being from 2009. However, with more than 20 years of development history, it is likely that not every feature Amarok has been tested thoroughly in the new release, and specifically some Internet services that have changed their API in recent years are not available, at least for now. It might well be that getting them in better state wouldn't require huge effort, however, so if you know your way with Qt and KDE Frameworks and your favourite Internet music service does not work with Amarok 3.0, you are extremely welcome to join in and help!

In the following months, minor releases containing small fixes and additions, based on both newly reported and longer-standing bug reports and feature requests, are to be expected. Work on porting to Amarok to Qt6/KDE Frameworks 6 should start in the following months, the goal being to have a usable Qt6/KF6 based beta version in 2024 still.

One should observe that due to scripting framework port from QtScript to QJSEngine still being a work in progress, previous Amarok 2.x scripts are often not compatible. The script API documentation at community wiki is also partially out of date. Additionally, due to incompatibilities and other issues, KNewStuff downloading of scripts is disabled for the time being. Having script support in more polished shape is something to work on after an initial Qt6/KF6 version starts to be usable. It is also evident that the web site and community wiki pages largely originate from more than ten years ago, and contain partially outdated information. Some work on refreshing them and pruning the documentation to make it more maintainable is likely to happen during the following months.

Now it's time to Rediscover Your Music in the 2020's! Changes since 3.0 Beta (2.9.82) FEATURES:

• Added a visual hint that context view applets can be resized in edit mode.
• Display missing metadata errors in Wikipedia applet UI.
• Add a button to stop automatic Wikipedia page updating. (BR 485813)

CHANGES:

• Replace defunct lyricwiki with lyrics.ovh as lyrics provider for now. (BR 455937)
• Show only relevant items in wikipedia applet right click menu (BR 323941), use monobook skin for opened links and silently ignore non-wikipedia links.
• Don't show non-functional play mode controls in dynamic mode (BR 287055)

BUGFIXES:

• Fix loading of some Flickr photos in the photos context view applet and show more relevant photos. (BR 317108)
• Fix playlist inline play control slider knob & draw playlist delegate icons with higher DPI.
• Fix searching for composer and album info for local files in Wikipedia applet.
• Don't remove wrong songs from collection when contents of a folder, whose name is a substring of another collection folder, are changed (BR 475528)
• Prefer symbolic systray icon to fix colours in Plasma6 systray (BR 485748)

The complete ChangeLog, which includes the pre-releases, is available in the git repository.

To provide some insight on the road from 2.9.0 to 3.0.0, statistics collected from git repository are presented:

Commits and added/removed lines of code between 2.9.0 and 3.0 alpha (2.9.71)

l10n daemon script: 117 commits, +898, -192
Heiko Becker: 72 commits, +5641, -2112
Laurent Montel: 69 commits, +9478, -9697
Aroonav Mishra: 65 commits, +15474, -6808
Pino Toscano: 31 commits, +6892, -1637
Malte Veerman: 30 commits, +19466, -29990
Olivier CHURLAUD: 27 commits, +1106, -474
Yuri Chornoivan: 19 commits, +966, -806
Pedro de Carvalho Gomes: 8 commits, +145, -407
Pedro Gomes: 7 commits, +7222, -805
Luigi Toscano: 7 commits, +15, -14
Mark Kretschmann: 6 commits, +27, -17
Wolfgang Bauer: 5 commits, +31, -7
Tuomas Nurmi: 4 commits, +39, -23
Stefan Derkits: 4 commits, +20, -19
Andreas Sturmlechner: 3 commits, +189, -75
Aditya Dev Sharma: 3 commits, +47, -46
Stephan Wezel: 2 commits, +12, -7
Andreas Sturmlechner: 2 commits, +8, -6
Andreas Hartmetz: 2 commits, +2, -2
Victor Mataré: 1 commits, +7, -3
Tobias C. Berner: 1 commits, +5, -1
Thiago Sueto: 1 commits, +1, -1
Sven Eckelmann: 1 commits, +5, -3
Somsubhra Bairi: 1 commits, +1, -1
Simon Depiets: 1 commits, +2, -2
Rishabh Gupta: 1 commits, +1, -4
Nicolas Lécureuil: 1 commits, +4, -2
Nate Graham: 1 commits, +7, -7
Johnny Jazeix: 1 commits, +2, -2
Elbin Pallimalil: 1 commits, +11, -5
Christophe Giboudeaux: 1 commits, +1, -2
Antonio Rojas: 1 commits, +1, -0
Alexandr Akulich: 1 commits, +1, -1
Albert Astals Cid: 1 commits, +1, -0

Commits and added/removed lines of code between 3.0 alpha 2.9.71 and 3.0.0

l10n daemon script: 317 commits, +1597783, -75585
Tuomas Nurmi: 147 commits, +3813, -1550
Friedrich W. H. Kossebau: 9 commits, +1075, -1044
Jürgen Thomann: 8 commits, +130, -101
Heiko Becker: 8 commits, +187, -19
Pino Toscano: 6 commits, +3361, -24
Toni Asensi Esteve: 4 commits, +100, -13
Pedro de Carvalho Gomes: 4 commits, +51, -9
Mihkel Tõnnov: 4 commits, +4486, -800
Zixing Liu: 2 commits, +140, -8
Fabian Vogt: 2 commits, +9, -0
David Faure: 2 commits, +4047, -15
Damir Islamov: 2 commits, +401, -420
Yuri Chornoivan: 1 commits, +1, -1
Sebastian Engel: 1 commits, +21, -21
Nicolas Fella: 1 commits, +1, -1
Nicolás Alvarez: 1 commits, +7, -7
Nate Graham: 1 commits, +1, -0
Matthias Mailänder: 1 commits, +5, -0
Jonathan Esk-Riddell: 1 commits, +2, -6
Jakob Meng: 1 commits, +1, -1
Heiko Becker: 1 commits, +17, -17
Christophe Giboudeaux: 1 commits, +3, -4
Carl Schwan: 1 commits, +7, -2
Boris Pek: 1 commits, +1, -1
Andreas Sturmlechner: 1 commits, +2, -0

Packager section

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

Today we are talking about Drupal 11 Readiness, What you need to think about, and PHPStan with guest Matt Glaman. We’ll also cover MRN as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: [www.talkingDrupal.com/448https://www.talkingDrupal.com/448)

Topics

• What do we mean by Drupal 11 Readiness
• How will this be different than 9 and 10
• Top 5 tips
• D11 Meeting and slack channel
• Will this be easier
• Major issues
• What is PHPStan
• How does it play a role
• How is PHPStan Drupal different than PHPStan
• Does using PHPStan with drupal reduce the need for tests
• How do you see it evolving over the next few years
• Drupal 12 wishlist

Resources

• PHPStan Drupal
• PHPStan
• Herodevs DrupalCon Party
• Smart date BC calls
• Contrib semantic versioning thoughts
• Change records
  • Drop is always moving
• Project analysis
• Gabor article Drupal rector
• Project update working group
• LTS even odd
• PHP version
• PHP stan rule levels
• Title issue

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Matt Glaman - mglaman.dev mglaman

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted an easy way to generate detailed release notes for your contrib projects? There’s a web app for that
• Module name/project name:
  • MRN which is short for Maintainer / Module Release Notes
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Aug 2022 by today’s guest Matt Glaman
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, latest updates were earlier this year
  • Code project at https://github.com/mglaman/drupal-mrn has 13 open issues
• Usage stats:
  • Currently no usage reporting, but a tool I’ve been using a ton lately as I get modules ready for Drupal 11
• Module features and usage
  • It’s very simple to use, you just enter the machine name of your project, and then the numbers of the releases you want it to compare
  • It will generate the structure for your release note, include a spot for you to write a summary at the top, a list of contributors that links to their profiles, and a list of issues
  • Previously part of Matt’s drupalorg CLI project, MRN is now a lambda function on AWS, so there’s nothing to download or install
  • I like that you can choose which tags you want to compare, so if the release is part of a branch that doesn’t yet have a stable release, I’ll put a comparison to the previous release in the branch at the top, and then a comparison to the current stable release below it, so people can see the full list of everything new they’ll get by moving from the stable release
  • It’s worth noting that because this works from the git history, you need to make sure you credit everyone properly before clicking to merge an MR in the Drupal.org UI. You can give credit to other people after the fact using the checkbox and they’ll get contribution credits, but won’t be included in the release notes generated by MRN

We can’t wait to welcome Jay Miller, Kate Chapman, Simon Willison, and Sumana Harihareswara to our stage as PyCon US keynote speakers this year.

We asked each of our keynote speakers: 

• What excites them about the Python community? 

• What they’re looking forward to doing at PyCon US? 

• What can we expect from their keynote speech? 

• And any advice they’d like to share with the Python community. 

Check out our interviews with each of our keynote speakers below! 

Jay Miller

"I fully believe I owe my entire tech career to the Python community. I met so many amazing people that I would become long lasting friends with."

Kate Chapman

"I'm excited to connect with people who are passionate about free and open source software and to learn about technologies that I haven't spent much time with."

Simon Willison"Take advantage of the fact that so many people from the worldwide Python community are in the same place at the same time for just a couple of days. Everybody here wants to talk to you. And you should assume that anyone who you think is interesting will find you interesting as well and will want to hear from you."

Sumana Harihareswara

"I do stand-up comedy and theater. I take it seriously, my responsibility to educate and entertain if you're sitting in front of me for 40 minutes."

Register Now

Don’t miss out on meeting our keynote speakers in person! Register now for PyCon US before we sell out. As a note, some of our tutorials are already sold out, as well as our hotel room blocks. There are only a few short weeks left before the conference, so don’t wait, register today!

Stay in the Loop

The PyCon US website has all the information you need to know about attending our conference. In order to catch all the latest news, be sure to:

• Subscribe to the PyCon US Blog
• Follow @PyCon and @thePSF on Twitter/X
• Follow @pycon@fosstodon.org and @ThePSF@fosstodon.org on Mastodon,
• The PSF on LinkedIn
• And subscribe to PyCon US 2024 News!

Engage with our community on social media by using our official hashtag: #PyConUS.

Thank you for supporting the Python community. We can’t wait to meet you all in Pittsburgh in a few short weeks!

The Python standard library ships with a testing framework named unittest, which you can use to write automated tests for your code. The unittest package has an object-oriented approach where test cases derive from a base class, which has several useful methods.

The framework supports many features that will help you write consistent unit tests for your code. These features include test cases, fixtures, test suites, and test discovery capabilities.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

• Write unittest tests with the TestCase class
• Explore the assert methods that TestCase provides
• Use unittest from the command line
• Group test cases using the TestSuite class
• Create fixtures to handle setup and teardown logic

To get the most out of this tutorial, you should be familiar with some important Python concepts, such as object-oriented programming, inheritance, and assertions. Having a good understanding of code testing is a plus.

Free Bonus: Click here to download the free sample code that shows you how to use Python’s unittest to write tests for your code.

Take the Quiz: Test your knowledge with our interactive “Python's unittest: Writing Unit Tests for Your Code” quiz. You’ll receive a score upon completion to help you track your learning progress:

Interactive Quiz

Python's unittest: Writing Unit Tests for Your Code

In this quiz, you'll test your understanding of Python testing with the unittest framework from the standard library. With this knowledge, you'll be able to create basic tests, execute them, and find bugs before your users do.

Testing Your Python Code

Code testing or software testing is a fundamental part of a modern software development cycle. Through code testing, you can verify that a given software project works as expected and fulfills its requirements. Testing enforces code quality and robustness.

You’ll do code testing during the development stage of an application or project. You’ll write tests that isolate sections of your code and verify its correctness. A well-written battery or suite of tests can also serve as documentation for the project at hand.

You’ll find several different concepts and techniques around testing. Most of them surpass the scope of this tutorial. However, unit test is an important and relevant concept. A unit test is a test that operates on an individual unit of software. A unit test aims to validate that the tested unit works as designed.

A unit is often a small part of a program that takes a few inputs and produces an output. Functions, methods, and other callables are good examples of units that you’d need to test.

In Python, there are several tools to help you write, organize, run, and automate your unit test. In the Python standard library, you’ll find two of these tools:

1. doctest
2. unittest

Python’s doctest module is a lightweight testing framework that provides quick and straightforward test automation. It can read the test cases from your project’s documentation and your code’s docstrings. This framework is shipped with the Python interpreter as part of the batteries-included philosophy.

Note: To dive deeper into doctest, check out the Python’s doctest: Document and Test Your Code at Once tutorial.

The unittest package is also a testing framework. However, it provides a more complete solution than doctest. In the following sections, you’ll learn and work with unittest to create suitable unit tests for your Python code.

Getting to Know Python’s unittest

The unittest package provides a unit test framework inspired by JUnit, which is a unit test framework for the Java language. The unittest framework is directly available in the standard library, so you don’t have to install anything to use this tool.

The framework uses an object-oriented approach and supports some essential concepts that facilitate test creation, organization, preparation, and automation:

• Test case: An individual unit of testing. It examines the output for a given input set.
• Test suite: A collection of test cases, test suites, or both. They’re grouped and executed as a whole.
• Test fixture: A group of actions required to set up an environment for testing. It also includes the teardown processes after the tests run.
• Test runner: A component that handles the execution of tests and communicates the results to the user.

In the following sections, you’ll dive into using the unittest package to create test cases, suites of tests, fixtures, and, of course, run your tests.

Organizing Your Tests With the TestCase Class

The unittest package defines the TestCase class, which is primarily designed for writing unit tests. To start writing your test cases, you just need to import the class and subclass it. Then, you’ll add methods whose names should begin with test. These methods will test a given unit of code using different inputs and check for the expected results.

Here’s a quick test case that tests the built-in abs() function:

Read the full article at https://realpython.com/python-unittest/ »

[ 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 ]

On behalf of the Nikola team, I am pleased to announce the immediate availability of Nikola v8.3.1. This release fixes some small bugs, including some introduced by the new Nikola Plugin Manager.

The minimum Python version supported is now 3.8, and we have adopted a formal policy to define the Python versions supported by Nikola.

What is Nikola?

Nikola is a static site and blog generator, written in Python. It can use Mako and Jinja2 templates, and input in many popular markup formats, such as reStructuredText and Markdown — and can even turn Jupyter Notebooks into blog posts! It also supports image galleries, and is multilingual. Nikola is flexible, and page builds are extremely fast, courtesy of doit (which is rebuilding only what has been changed).

Find out more at the website: https://getnikola.com/

Downloads

Install using pip install Nikola.

Changes Features

• Support passing --poll to nikola auto to better deal with symlink farms.

Bugfixes

• Remove insecure HTTP fallback from nikola plugin

• Fix the nikola plugin command not working (Issue #3736, #3737)

• Fix nikola new_post --available-formats crashing with TypeError (Issue #3750)

• Fix the new plugin manager not loading plugins if the plugin folder is a symlink (Issue #3741)

• Fix the nikola plugin command not working (Issue #3736)

• Remove no longer used leftovers of annotations support (Issue #3764)

Other

• Nikola now requires Python 3.8 or newer.

• Nikola has adopted a policy for Python version support, promising support for versions supported by the Python core team, Ubuntu LTS, or Debian stable, and taking into consideration Debian oldstable and PyPy.

• Remove polyfill from polyfill.io.

New draft of the Open Source AI Definition v.0.0.8 is live!

• The draft is ready for feedback. 
• The changelog: 
  • incorporated feedback from legal review in Gothenburg and 0.0.7
    • transformed Data transparency to Data information following feedback from the
    • separated the Out of scope section to a FAQ document 18
    • added mention of frictionless in the preamble
    • moved the definition of preferred form to make modifications to ML above the checklist
  • updated language to follow the latest version of the Model Openness Framework
  • added the legal requirements for optional components
  • the first incarnation of the FAQ added
• The next steps now include:
  • Widen the call for reviewers in the next couple of weeks
  • Test the Definition with more AI systems (Olmo, Phy, Mistral, etc)
  • Run a review workshop at PyCon US

Initial reactions 

• Question regarding why under “Preferred form to make modifications to machine-learning systems” and “model”, mention of model weights has been removed. 

Vote on how to describe the acceptable terms to receive documentation?

• As part of the next steps, we are continuing to review legal documents from different AI systems to test our definition. Should we describe the terms listed on the 0.0.8 draft under “checklist to evaluate machine learning systems”, should we consider them OSD Compliant or OSD Compatible?
  • This matters as it has different implications for documentation for the components in the class of Data transparency: There is no formal definition of “open documentation” and the OSI hasn’t reviewed licenses used for documentation.
• A user has concerns with both, stating that:
  • OSD-compliant means that documentation need to be under a license that fulfils all ten OSD criteria, and many of those are quite software-specific. This could be tricky, there is a reason why OSI hasn’t approved (m)any non-software licenses thus far.in its meaning. Many proprietary licenses are compatible with many (non-copyleft) OSD-compliant licenses, that It can lose its meaning.
• Maffulli replies stating that:
  • The main difference he sees lie in their perceived legal strictness, where “Compatible suggests a lightweight review that anyone can do”
  • He further suggests that OSI could create a special category of licenses for documentation only. When stating that documentation of Open Source AI needs to be available with OSD-compliant terms, do we need to create a special category of OSI Approved Licenses for documentation?
  • He further adds that he reads “compliant”, not in terms of existing licenes but rather in terms of the checklist
• Regarding creating a “special category of license for documentation only, a user adds:
  • “We need that the documentation is free from restrictions that would limits its circulation, including by requiring seeking additional permission or requiring royalties or requiring audited distribution or the likes.” and its scope therefore is quite limited.

FAQ document has been created 

• An FAQ needs to be written to address concerns heard often during the drafting process. The document is a work in progress and is waiting for contributions.

See if OSI is coming near you to host a workshop

• The Open Source AI Definition is going on tour to get a wide array of reviews. This is important to ensure through reviews and secure global significance. Check the dates of the roadshow.

The goal of KDE neon is to build all KDE’s software on a stable Ubuntu LTS base, we do it in an automated way and for the User edition have automated QA to deploy rapidly but safely. For the KDE 6 Megarelease there was a lot of updates and the system didn’t work as well as it ought, not all the update issues could be tested and this broke some the operating system on some people’s computer which is a horrible experience that should not happen.

What happened?

We were testing KF6, Plasma 6 and KDE Gear 24.04 in our unstable and testing repos for some time before the release. A week ahead of release we were building it in our User repo and testing upgrades. Jonathan, as release manager for both the MegaRelease and neon, travelled to Malaga to do an in person joint release with Paul from promo, this helped the coordinated release but lost some testing time. Some package transitions happened during the pre-release week which made the updates more complex than they had to be and meant extra work (for better end result in theory). Once the MegaRelease sources were published on Thursday the testing of Neon was ongoing and many later fixes were made to make for a successful upgrade on the tests. Neon’s KF6/Plasma6/KDE Gear 24.02 packages were published later on Thursday and Jonathan drove home, alas due to bad weather there was no internet available on the ferry limiting later fixes.

Although the semi automated upgrade tests passed this didn’t cover all cases and some people had incomplete upgrades due to packaging transitions being incomplete. This was fixed over the next day or two and also an update to the installer Calamares was brought in which turned out to have a bug with the final install setup so although upgrades now worked the ISO installs were broken. Quite horrible.

On the Monday Jonathan fixed some more upgrade issues and Calamares so the neon end of things was fixed but there remain other problems with KF6 and Plasma 6 which affect all distros and many of these have since been fixed and some are ongoing, many caused by the switch to Wayland or Akonadi switching to sqlite.

Issues?

There wasn’t one big problem that caught everyone. There was lots of small but significant problems which caught many people.

• KMyMoney package issues – needed a rebuild which we did after release
• Ocean sound theme not installed – new package which was added after release
• Palapeli packages in wrong location – an incomplete change that was made during the transition
• Video and pdf thumbnailers broken – these packages needed added to the main install
• KOrganizer had invalid dependency – that needed removed
• xwaylandvideobridge error on shared library – needed a rebuild
• libzxing needs soname bump – that transition needed completed
• akonadi not working on upgrade – for some reason some users had to manually reinstall the mysql akonadi backend
• Calamares install fails to happen – a bug from Calamares that was initially avoided but later included in our ISO
• OEM mode no longer worked – this affects Slimbook systems and some parts just needed ported to Plasma 6, ideally it would be code which was in Calamares and not in Neon

NVidia users had a number of issues often caused by the switch to Wayland. Most users can switch back to X11 to get it working but that is hardly a user friendly setup.

This is just a small sample, there were more similar issues.

Review

Neon is a small team, Jonathan working on it (alongside release duties for Plasma and Frameworks) from Blue Systems and top volunteer helper Carlos with occasionally Harald and others helping out.

We had a review with KDE’s QA star Nate of what happened and why and mitigations and we also had two open calls with neon community members where they gave their feedback.

Ponderings

The Plasma 6 and KF6 upgrades in neon were too fragile and caused too much pain for many of our users.

There wasn’t one single problem and many people had a perfectly good experience doing the upgrade but too many people were caught with problems which will be painful when you are just wanting to have a useful Linux system.

Conclusions

Our constantly rolling release model and small team means we can’t guarantee total stability so we will stop using terms like “rock solid base” on our website and emphasise the new-ness factor.

When doing big updates test and if travelling bring in other people to do testing and fixes.

We can’t support NVidia hardware as we don’t have the skills, time, hardware or access to source to fix it.

Switching to Wayland was a choice of Plasma and after a decade in development a necessary choice but we should be aware of issues there and communicate those.

Get more QA on ISO images, currently we don’t have any prior to release which is going to lead to problems.

Consider if we can to upgrade QA on older snapshots as well as the current one.

Consider how to do more QA on KDE PIM apps.

Thanks to all our lovely users for staying with us, sorry to those who we let down and those who have left us. Thanks to our community for staying supporting of each other and us as developers. Of course there’s plenty of alternatives if you want a slower release cycle (Kubuntu have just made a new LTS with Plasma 5) but if you want the freshest software from KDE then neon continues to be a great place to get it.

Getting Smart Date Dialed Up to 11

I just tagged the first stable release for Smart Date 4.1, a year (almost to the day) since the first stable release of Smart Date 4.0. A lot of work went into this new release, but I'm thankful beyond words to the many people who helped shape it into what it is today.

mandclu Mon, 04/29/2024 - 06:14 Tags

• Drupal

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The Impact of Web Design on Conversion: Strategies and Tools for a Successful Web Project Editor Mon, 04/29/2024 - 13:01

Do you still doubt that web design directly affects the conversion of your Drupal site? Today, high-end web design goes beyond a simple and beautiful layout, well-optimized photos, or an eye-catching color scheme. If you neglect the connection between web design and conversion, your lead generation progress won’t help you realize your digital marketing objectives and desired ROI rates.
With the right choice of design strategies for conversions, novice professionals can drastically improve the target platform’s responsiveness and accessibility — with user journeys improved and bounce risks reduced. 

We are happy to announce the release of the Qt Visual Studio Tools version 3.2.0. Installation packages are now available at the Visual Studio Marketplace and download.qt.io.

This update of the Qt VS Tools extension adds experimental support for QML LSP server, as well as full support of the Qt VS Tools for Visual Studio 2022 on ARM64.



Qt MSBuild file support:

Alongside providing Qt-related MSBuild files within the Qt VS Tools package, we now offer them as a separate .zip download for your convenience. Starting from version 3.2.0, access the standalone Qt MSBuild files by visiting our public server download location: Official releases. 

Please refer to the project's Changelog for a list of all changes included in this release. Feel free to report any problems, or make any suggestions or comments, in the Qt Visual Studio Tools bug tracker.

API Testing in Pure English 2024-04-29, by Dariusz Suchojad How to test APIs in pure English

Do you have 20 minutes to learn how to test APIs in pure English, without any programming needed?

Great, the API testing tutorial is here.

Right after you complete it, you'll be able to write API tests as the one below.

Next steps:

• Read about how to build APIs that your tests will cover

More blog posts➤

Dear Readers,

This is your reminder that everyone has their path in life, so embrace the uniqueness of your journey.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

— Laozi (Lao Tzu), Tao Te Ching (Daodejing), Chapter 64

Instead of fixating on others' paths, focus on discovering what works best for you. Your journey to success unfolds uniquely, guided by your own rhythm and routine. Trust in your process and celebrate your progress along the way. Just as in the diverse Drupal community, where each contributor's unique experiences and skills enrich the whole, your unique contributions to your own life and the lives of others around you are invaluable. Embrace your individual journey, just as Drupal embraces the diversity of its community.

Drupal itself is built on the principle of open collaboration, fostering an environment where different perspectives lead to better solutions and innovations. This ethos extends beyond the technology, influencing the Drupal community to support each other's growth and development. The community thrives on the collective effort of individuals who bring their distinct paths and insights, contributing to the strength and flexibility of Drupal as a platform. As you walk your path, remember the power of a community that values each step of your journey.

Now, Let's take a moment to revisit the highlights from last week's coverage at The Drop Times.

Alka Elizabeth and Kazima Abbas, sub-editors at The Drop Times, spoke with Dominique de Cooman, the founder of Dropsolid. He discussed his journey, from his profound interest in Drupal to the establishment of his company, sparked by a pivotal experience at DrupalCon Munich in 2012. Read about his inspiring story here.

Anoop John, the founder and lead at The Drop Times, explores the scope and composition of the Drupal community. To get the full insights, read the article here. 

Ajith Thampi Joseph recounts his transition from traditional server setups to modern development tools in another feature. His article discusses the challenges he encountered and the solutions he implemented. Learn more about his journey here.

Acquia sets the stage for a memorable evening at DrupalCon Portland 2024 on Tuesday, May 7. This event promises an evening of fun-filled activities, including vintage arcade games, bowling, and karaoke. To know more, click on the link here.

Just one more week until DrupalCon Portland 2024 kicks off! The event is scheduled to run from May 6th to May 9th. Are you ready to dive into the excitement? We invite volunteers to join our team and help us cover the biggest open-source event in North America.

In collaboration with DubBot and Iowa's Department for the Blind, Lullabot will host a webinar on web accessibility on Thursday, May 16, 2024. This event coincides with Global Accessibility Awareness Day and aims to highlight common issues impacting individuals with disabilities. 

CTI Digital's webinar on "Navigating Drupal 7 End-of-Life: What To Do Next?" is scheduled for Friday, May 3, 2024. The webinar will be led by CTI Digital's Drupal Technical Director, David Bishop, and Sales Director, James Tillotson. 

EvolveDrupal returns to Montreal for its Second Edition on June 14, 2024. This event promises a day filled with learning, networking, and inspiration. Learn more about the event here.

Northern Commerce and Acquia have collaborated to host a free "Lunch & Learn" event titled "Unlocking the Digital Student Journey," aimed at providing insights into enhancing the digital experiences of students. Scheduled for Thursday, May 08, 2024, the event promises valuable discussions and strategies for navigating the evolving landscape of digital education.

NEDcamp 2024 is set to take place on November 15-16, inviting Drupal enthusiasts to mark their calendars for this exciting event. With a rich tradition of fostering collaboration and learning within the Drupal community, NEDcamp promises attendees engaging sessions and networking opportunities. Drupal events are held worldwide each week to keep Drupal enthusiasts engaged. A complete list of events for the week is available here.

Michael Anello has unveiled version 1.0.1 of the Drupal Markdown Easy module. This version boasts a minor bug fix, default configuration settings, Drupal 11 compatibility, and enhanced code quality, ensuring smoother markdown experiences for users. The Beautify HTML module for Drupal has been updated, introducing enhanced formatting tools to streamline HTML code editing. With these improvements, users can expect a more efficient and user-friendly experience working with HTML on Drupal websites.

Octahedroid has unveiled a new preview feature that facilitates decoupled Drupal and Next.js integration, empowering developers with advanced preview capabilities. This release marks a significant advancement in decoupled architecture, offering seamless content preview experiences for Drupal-powered websites using Next.js frontend frameworks.

Kevin Wall has introduced a groundbreaking new feature for Drupal module installation in collaboration with Accorbis, promising to simplify and streamline the process for users. With this innovation, Drupal users can expect a more efficient and user-friendly experience when installing modules, enhancing their website development workflows.

Scheduled for November 2024, PHP 8.4 brings enhanced security and functionality, providing developers with improved features and safeguards. Learn more here.

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Also, join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you,
Sincerely
Elma John
Sub-editor, The DropTimes.

Angie Byron, Community Director at Aiven and former Drupal Core Co-Maintainer, shares insights on her journey in tech. This interview explores her transition from Google Summer of Code participant to Drupal Product Manager, her advocacy for diversity in tech, and her work in fostering community collaboration.

I just bought a new USB PSU from AliExpress [1]. I got this to reduce the clutter in my bedroom, I charge my laptop, PineTime, and a few phones at the same time and a single PSU with lots of ports makes it easier. Also I bought a couple of really short USB-C cables as it’s been proven by both real life tests and mathematical modelling that shorter cables get tangled less. This power supply is based on Gallium Nitride (GaN) [2] technology which makes it efficient and cool.

One thing I only learned about after that purchase is the new USB PPS standard (see the USB Wikipedia page for details [3]). The PPS (Programmable Power Supply) standard allows (quoting Wikipedia) “allowing a voltage range of 3.3 to 21 V in 20 mV steps, and a current specified in 50 mA steps, to facilitate constant-voltage and constant-current charging”. What this means in practice (when phones support it which for me will probably be 2029 or something) is that the phone could receive power exactly matching the voltage needed for the battery and not have any voltage conversion inside the phone. Phones are designed to stop charging at a certain temperature, this probably doesn’t concern people in places like Northern Europe but in Australia it can be an issue. Removing the heat dissipation from inefficiencies in voltage change circuitry means the phone will be cooler when charging and can charge at a higher rate.

There is a “Certified USB Fast Charger” logo for chargers which do this, but it seems that at the moment they just include “PPS” in the feature list. So I highly recommend that GaN and PPS be on your feature list for your next USB PSU, but failing that the 240W PSU I bought for $36 was a good deal.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/29xxwow7
• [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_nitride#Transistors_and_power_ICs
• [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#USB_Power_Delivery

Related posts:

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2. Power Supplies and Wires For some time I’ve been wondering how the wire size...
3. Qi Phone Charging I have just bought a wireless phone charging system based...