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Russell Coker: Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review
After the VoLTE saga [1] and the problems with battery life on the PinePhonePro [2] (which lasted 4 hours while idle with the screen off in my last test a few weeks ago) I’m running a Galaxy Note 9 [3] with the default Samsung OS as my daily driver.
I don’t think that many people will be rushing out to buy a 2018 phone regardless of my review. For someone who wants a phone of such age (which has decent hardware and a low price) then good options are the Pixel phones which are all supported by LineageOS.
I recommend not buying this phone due to the fact that it doesn’t have support for VoLTE with LineageOS (and presumably any other non-Samsung Android build) and doesn’t have support from any other OS. The One Plus 6/6T has Mobian support [4] as well as LineageOS support and is worth considering.
The Note 9 still has capable hardware by today’s standards. A 6.4″ display is about as big as most people want in their pocket and 2960×1440 resolution in that size (516dpi) is probably as high as most people can see without a magnifying glass. The model I’m using has 8G of RAM which is as much as the laptop I was using at the start of this year. I don’t think that many people will have things that they actually want to do on a phone which needs more hardware than this. The only hardware feature in new phones which beats this is the large folding screen in some recent phones, but $2500+ (the price of such phones in Australia) is too much IMHO and the second hand market for folding phones is poor due to the apparently high incidence of screens breaking.
The Note 9 has the “Dex” environment for running as a laptop if you connect it to a USB-C dock. It can run nicely with a 4K monitor with USB keyboard and mouse. The UI is very similar to that of older versions of Windows.
The Samsung version of Android seems mostly less useful than the stock Google version or the LineageOS version. The Samsung keyboard flags words such as “gay” as spelling errors and it can’t be uninstalled even when you install a better keyboard app. There is a “Bixby” button on the side of the phone to launch the Bixby voice recognition app which can’t be mapped to any useful purpose, The Google keyboard has a voice dictation option which I will try out some time but that’s all I desire in terms of voice recognition. There are alerts about Samsung special deals and configuration options including something about signing in to some service and having it donate money to charity, I doubt that any users want such features. Apart from Dex the Samsung Android build is a good advert for LineageOS.
The screen has curved sides for no good reason. This makes it more difficult to make a protective phone case as a case can’t extend beyond the screen at the sides and therefore if it’s dropped and hits an edge (step, table, etc) then the glass can make direct contact with something. Also the curved sides reflect sunlight in all directions, this means that the user has to go to more effort to avoid reflecting the sun into their eyes and that a passenger can more easily reflect sunlight into the eyes of a car driver. It’s an impressive engineering feat to make a curved touch-screen but it doesn’t do any good for users.
The stylus is good as always and the screen is AMOLED so it doesn’t waste much power when in dark mode. There is a configuration option to display a clock all the time when the screen is locked because that apparently doesn’t use much power. I haven’t felt inclined to enable the always on screen but it’s a nice feature for those who like such things.
The VoLTE implementation is apparently a bit unusual so it’s not supported by LineageOS and didn’t work on Droidian for the small amount of time that Droidian supported it.
Generally this phone is quite nice hardware it’s just a pity that it demonstrates all of the downsides to buying a non-Pixel phone.
- [1] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2024/07/01/volte-australia/
- [2] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2023/10/11/pinephone-status/
- [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Note_9
- [4] https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/OnePlus/OnePlus6
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Gunnar Wolf: Scholarly spam • «Wulfenia»
I just got one of those utterly funny spam messages… And yes, I recognize everybody likes building a name for themselves. But some spammers are downright silly.
I just got the following mail:
From: Hermine Wolf <hwolf850@gmail.com> To: me, obviously 😉 Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2024 22:18:58 -0700 Subject: Make sure that your manuscript gets indexed and showcased in the prestigious Scopus database soon. Message-ID: <CAEZZb3XCXSc_YOeR7KtnoSK4i3OhD=FH7u+A5xSMsYvhQZojQA@mail.gmail.com> This message has visual elements included. If they don't display, please update your email preferences. *Dear Esteemed Author,* Upon careful examination of your recent research articles available online, we are excited to invite you to submit your latest work to our esteemed journal, '*WULFENIA*'. Renowned for upholding high standards of excellence in peer-reviewed academic research spanning various fields, our journal is committed to promoting innovative ideas and driving advancements in theoretical and applied sciences, engineering, natural sciences, and social sciences. 'WULFENIA' takes pride in its impressive 5-year impact factor of *1.000* and is highly respected in prestigious databases including the Science Citation Index Expanded (ISI Thomson Reuters), Index Copernicus, Elsevier BIOBASE, and BIOSIS Previews. *Wulfenia submission page:* [image: research--check.png][image: scrutiny-table-chat.png][image: exchange-check.png][image: interaction.png] . Please don't reply to this email We sincerely value your consideration of 'WULFENIA' as a platform to present your scholarly work. We eagerly anticipate receiving your valuable contributions. *Best regards,* Professor Dr. Vienna S. FranzWho cares what Wulfenia is about? It’s about you, my stupid Wolf cousin!
Drupal Starshot blog: Join the Drupal Starshot team as a track lead
Drupal Starshot seeks track leads to drive key project components. Apply by July 31st and help bring Drupal Starshot to life!
The Drupal Starshot initiative has been making significant progress behind the scenes, and I'm excited to share some updates with the community.
Leadership team formation and product definitionOver the past few months, we've been working diligently on Drupal Starshot. One of our first steps was to appoint a leadership team to guide the project. With the leadership team in place as well as the new Starshot Advisory Council, we shifted our focus to defining the product. We've made substantial progress on this front and will be sharing more details about the product strategy in the coming weeks.
Introducing Drupal Starshot tracksWe already started to break down the initiative into manageable components, and are introducing the concept of "tracks". Tracks are smaller, focused parts of the Drupal Starshot project that allow for targeted development and contributions. We've already published the first set of tracks on the Drupal Starshot issue queue on Drupal.org.
Example tracks include:
- Creating Drupal Recipes for features like contact forms, advanced search, events, SEO and more.
- Enhancing the Drupal installer to enable Recipes during installation.
- Updating Drupal.org for Starshot, including product marketing and a trial experience.
While many tracks are technical and need help from developers, most of the tracks need contribution from designers, UX experts, marketers, testers and site builders.
Recruiting more track leadsSeveral tracks already have track leads and have made significant progress:
- Matt Glaman is spearheading the development of a trial experience.
- The marketing team, led by Suzanne Dergacheva, is crafting product marketing documentation.
- Martin Anderson-Clutz has been appointed as the track lead for event management.
However, we need many additional track leads to drive our remaining tracks to completion.
We're now accepting applications for track lead positions. Interested individuals and organizations can apply by completing our application form. The application window closes on July 31st, two weeks from today.
Key responsibilities of a track leadTrack leads can be individuals, teams, or organizations, including Drupal Certified Partners. While technical expertise is beneficial, the role primarily focuses on strategic coordination and project management. Key responsibilities include:
- Defining and validating requirements to ensure the track meets the expectations of our target audience.
- Developing and maintaining a prioritized task list, including creating milestones and timelines.
- Overseeing and driving the track's implementation.
- Collaborating with key stakeholders, including the Drupal Starshot leadership team, module maintainers, the marketing team, etc.
- Communicating progress to the community (e.g. blogging).
After the application deadline, the Drupal Starshot Leadership Team will review the applications and appoint track leads. We expect to announce the selected track leads in the first week of August.
While the application period is open, we will be available to answer any questions you may have. Feel free to reach out to us through the Drupal.org issue queue, or join us in an upcoming zoom meeting (details to be announced / figured out).
Looking ahead to DrupalCon BarcelonaOur goal is to make significant progress on these tracks by DrupalCon Barcelona, where we plan to showcase the advancements we've made. We're excited about the momentum building around Drupal Starshot and can't wait to see the contributions from the community.
If you're passionate about Drupal and want to play a key role in shaping its future, consider applying for a track lead position.
Stay tuned for more updates on Drupal Starshot, and thank you for your continued support of the Drupal community.
— Dries Buytaert
Nonprofit Drupal posts: July Drupal for Nonprofits Chat
Join us THURSDAY, July 18 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.) We'll be taking August off, so this is the last chat of the summer.
We don't have anything specific on the agenda this month, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss anything that's on our minds at the intersection of Drupal and nonprofits. Got something specific you want to talk about? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google doc: https://nten.org/drupal/notes!
All nonprofit Drupal devs and users, regardless of experience level, are always welcome on this call.
This free call is sponsored by NTEN.org and open to everyone.
-
Join the call: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81817469653
-
Meeting ID: 818 1746 9653
Passcode: 551681 -
One tap mobile:
+16699006833,,81817469653# US (San Jose)
+13462487799,,81817469653# US (Houston) -
Dial by your location:
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) -
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kpV1o65N
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- Follow along on Google Docs: https://nten.org/drupal/notes
PyCoder’s Weekly: Issue #638 (July 16, 2024)
#638 – JULY 16, 2024
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In this course, Philipp helps you customize your Visual Studio Code settings to switch from a basic cluttered look to a clean presentable look. This is not just pleasant on the eyes, but also gives you a nice user interface if you want to share on a Zoom call or screen recording.
REAL PYTHON course
A PyPI admin accidentally leaked credentials into a Docker container. It has since been fixed and the credentials revoked. This is the report by that same admin outlining what happened and how to help prevent similar mistakes in the future.
EE DURBIN
Discover how to create, accelerate, and deploy data pipelines with RAPIDS for GPU-accelerated data science workflows. Take one of our Data Science courses for free when you join the NVIDIA Developer Program →
NVIDIA sponsor
An overview of the ongoing efforts to improve and roll out support for free-threaded CPython throughout the Python open source ecosystem. Associated Hacker News discussion.
RALF GOMMERS
KIWIPYCON.NZ • Shared by Kiwi PyCon
Quiz: Split Datasets With scikit-learn.train_test_split() Python Jobs Python Tutorial Writer (Anywhere) Python Video Course Instructor (Anywhere) Articles & Tutorials Free, Unbelievably Stupid Wi-Fi on Long-Haul Flights Deep in a need to procrastinate on a flight between London and San Francisco, Robert discovered that changing his name on an airline’s frequent flyer account was free over the plane’s WiFi. What’s a developer to do? Work on their tickets? No, create an entire TCP/IP protocol using this loophole. The result is the PySkyWiFi package.
ROBERT HEATON
Have you wondered about graph theory and how to start exploring it in Python? What resources and Python libraries can you use to experiment and learn more? This week on the show, former co-host David Amos returns to talk about what he’s been up to and share his knowledge about graph theory in Python.
REAL PYTHON
This collection of thoughts outlines how Evan approaches coding, with the understanding that this might change in the future. His beliefs include using spikes, the difference between simple and easy, a preference for enums over booleans, and more.
EVAN HAHN
Have you ever had the situation where you’ve got a nested loop and need to break out of the outer one? One way of dealing with this problem is refactoring the loop to use a generator. This post shows you how.
RODRIGO GIRÃO SERRÃO
There are so many conferences and so many videos, you can’t possibly watch them all. This post shows you how to extract information to summarize a talk so you can quickly decide what you want to watch.
GONÇALO VALÉRIO
Learn how to build a functional pastebin service using Python and Flask. This tutorial covers web development basics, file handling, and syntax highlighting.
MUHAMMAD RAZA
This blog post shows how failing to use functools.wraps can cause issues with FlaskAPI. Learn why you should always use wraps and what went wrong.
SUYOG DAHAL
Overview of Python’s Package management ecosystem in 2024 and associated Hacker News Discussion
LARRY DU
Rich Pixels, a package from one of the folks at Textual, allows you to create images in your terminal and display them.
MIKE DRISCOLL
This tutorial discusses the rules and conventions for choosing Python function names and why they’re important.
REAL PYTHON
This tutorial looks at how use HTMX with FastAPI by creating a simple todo web app and deploying it on Render.
PAUL ESCH-LAURENT • Shared by Michael Herman
EVIDENTLYAI.COM • Shared by Daria Maliugina
reladiff: High-Perf Diffing of Large Datasets Across Databases Yen: The Last Python Environment Manager You’ll Ever NeedGITHUB.COM/TUSHARSADHWANI • Shared by Tushar Sadhwani
Events Weekly Real Python Office Hours Q&A (Virtual) July 17, 2024
REALPYTHON.COM
July 18, 2024
MEETUP.COM
July 18, 2024
PYLADIES.COM
July 19 to July 20, 2024
MEETUP.COM
July 24, 2024
MEETUP.COM
July 24, 2024
MEETUP.COM
July 27 to July 28, 2024
PYOHIO.ORG
Happy Pythoning!
This was PyCoder’s Weekly Issue #638.
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GNU Taler news: Video interview with Özgur Kesim on age-restricted digital cash
GNU Taler news: Video interview with Isidor Walliman, creator of the Netzbon regional currency in Basel
Dave Hibberd: What I've been up to in Open Ham Radio - July 2024
Drupal.org blog: Drupal.org login flow is changing
The Drupal Association engineering team is preparing to switch over to our new single sign-on solution for user login. This is an important step in our work to upgrade Drupal.org, and in the future will give you the ability to use your Drupal.org identity in new ways.
The Drupal Association engineering team is preparing to switch over to our new single sign-on solution for user login. This is an important step in our work to upgrade Drupal.org, and in the future will give you the ability to use your Drupal.org identity in new ways.
The switch-over is scheduled for:
- Thursday 25 July - from 9am to 11am Pacific (4pm-6pm UTC).
During this window you will be unable to login to Drupal.org or edit your profile, and may not be able to access related services which use your Drupal identity, such as git.drupalcode.org.
When we make this change, the login experience will look different.
If you are an existing userWhen you click to login or create an account you will be redirected to: accounts.drupal.org
You will log in with your existing Drupal.org username or email and your current password, and your two factor authentication code if you have TFA enabled.
Once you log in, you will have to change your password.
If you have Two Factor Authentication enabled, you will also have to set up a new seed.
After that, you'll be taken back to Drupal.org as normal. You should be directed back to the path you came from.
If you are creating a new accountWhen you click 'create account' on Drupal.org you will be taken to the new account creation page:
After you complete the basic information, you will be taken to the Drupal.org welcome page to fill out the rest of your user profile.
If you need to change your account informationThe majority of your account information will continue to live in your Drupal.org profile, however, some basic account information will now be stored and updated in the Drupal.org SSO system.
When you click to edit your first and last name, username, password, email address, or enable two factor authentication you'll be taken to the account page:
Setting up Two Factor AuthenticationThis account settings page is also where you can change your Two Factor Authentication settings. You can use the 'Account Security' tab in the sidebar to navigate to the Two Factor setup process:
If you need to reset your passwordIf you have forgotten your password, you can reset your password from the login page:
You will receive a password reset email from noreply@drupal.org allowing you to change your password.
If you encounter any issues with your account, please contact us at help@drupal.org
We want to thank two of our partners for supporting this project.
Cloud-IAM is our SSO partner. Cloud-IAM is a privacy centric provider of hosted solutions for Keycloak, an open source identity management service. They are enthusiastic supporters of the Drupal community, and would like to offer any site owners and agencies who are looking for their own identity and access management service 10% off, with promo code: DRUPAL10.
Our implementation partner on this project was Tag1Consulting. Tag1Consulting is a global team of Drupal experts working with clients from non-profits to the Fortune 500, and is one of the top contributors to Drupal. They have been the Drupal Association's infrastructure partner for many years.
tasklist @ Savannah: Cleaning out old jobs
When I opened this Savannah project I imported items from the old GNU tasklist document. 20 years later all of the context has been lost (if there ever was any) so now if anyone asks about these tasks it just leads to frustration on everyone's part.
I therefore deleted the original help wanted entries that date back to 2003. If anyone wants to help the GNU project, the best way to do that is to pick one of the FSF's High-Priority projects:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects
LabPlot 2.11 released
Say hello to LabPlot 2.11!
This brand new release comes with many new features, improvements and performance enhancements in several areas, as well as support for more data formats and visualisation types.
The main new features are outlined below. For a more detailed overview of the changes in this release, please refer to the ChangeLog file.
The source code of LabPlot, the Flatpak and Snap packages for Linux, as well as the installer for Windows and the image for MacOS are available from our download page.
What’s new in 2.11? WorksheetThis release includes more visualisations, usability improvements and a new worksheet preview panel:
- You can now use Lollipop, Q-Q and KDE plots
- We have implemented error bars for bar plots
- There is a new preview panel for all available worksheets in the project
- You can use the navigation panel in the presenter widget to select, zoom and navigate in the presenter mode
- You can lock worksheet elements to prevent accidental changes
- LabPlot 2.11 allows you to show or hide the entry in the legend for all supported plot types and not just xy-curve
- You can give your worksheets a fresh new look with the Dracula theme
Spreadsheets gain more functions and operations to modify, generate and understand the data:
- We have extended the search and replace features
- You can check statistical properties of the parent in a new child spreadsheet
- We have added sparklines in the header of a spreadsheet
- LabPlot 2.11 comes with spreadsheet linking to synchronize the number of rows across multiple spreadsheets
- We have implemented triangular distributions for PDF, CDF, and pseudorandom number generation
- Equidistant value generation has been extended
Analysis tools added to LabPlot 2.11 include:
- Note showing the fit results
- Faster computation of the baseline removal (we switched to Eigen3 internally)
LabPlot 2.11 adds support for new file formats and multiple optimizations to improve the handling of edge-case scenarios:
- You can now import Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) files.
- Templates for ASCII and Binary import filters allow you to save and load current filter settings
- There is a new feature that allows you to to specify the data range to be read (start/end values for columns and records) when importing from SQL databases
- LabpPlot can now gracefully handle out-of-memory situations when importing large amounts of data
- LabPlot 2.11 displays better error messages during the import
- We provide additional information about BLF files (application name with which the file was created with, etc.)
- We have made several fixes and improvements to the import of Origin’s OPJ files
The 2.11 release adds a number of usability enhancements to the Notebook interface:
- You can now export the notebook to PDF
- We provide statistics and a “plot data” action from the context menu in the project explorer for variables created in the Notebook
- There is a new option in the application settings to run a selected CAS engine on startup
Real Python: Exercises Course: Introduction to Web Scraping With Python
Web scraping is the process of collecting and parsing raw data from the Web, and the Python community has come up with some pretty powerful web scraping tools.
The Internet hosts the greatest source of information on the planet. Many disciplines, such as data science, business intelligence, and investigative reporting, can benefit enormously from collecting and analyzing data from websites.
In this course, you’ll practice:
- Parsing website data using string methods and regular expressions
- Parsing website data using an HTML parser
- Interacting with forms and other website components
[ 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 ]
Specbee: Personalizing Experiences in Drupal: CRMs, E-commerce Integration, and UTMs
GNU Taler news: Video interview with Christian Blättler on his work on tokens for unlinkable discounts and subscriptions
GNU Taler news: Video interview with Nic Eigel, co-author of the GNU Taler real-time auditor
Bits from Debian: Wind River Platinum Sponsor of DebConf24
We are pleased to announce that Wind River has committed to sponsor DebConf24 as a Platinum Sponsor.
For nearly 20 years, Wind River has led in commercial open source Linux solutions for mission-critical enterprise edge computing. With expertise across aerospace, automotive, industrial, telecom, more, the company is committed to open source through initiatives like eLxr, Yocto, Zephyr, and StarlingX.
With this commitment as Platinum Sponsor, Wind River is contributing to make possible our annual conference, and directly supporting the progress of Debian and Free Software, helping to strengthen the community that continues to collaborate on Debian projects throughout the rest of the year.
Wind River plans to announce an exiting new project based on Debian at this year's DebConf!
Thank you very much, Wind River, for your support of DebConf24!
Become a sponsor too!DebConf24 will take place from 28th July to 4th August 2024 in Busan, South Korea, and will be preceded by DebCamp, from 21st to 27th July 2024.
DebConf24 is accepting sponsors! Interested companies and organizations should contact the DebConf team through sponsors@debconf.org, or visit the DebConf24 website at https://debconf24.debconf.org/sponsors/become-a-sponsor/.
Kushal Das: Friends, the most important part of any conference
At the beginning one goes to the conferences to listen to the talks and make new contacts. You meet a lot of new faces every time. Over time a few of them will become great friends and then all conferences will become about friends.
We wait for the conferences so that we can meet our friends. I went back to PyCon US this year after 5 years, means I met many friends after 5 years. It was so happy feeling to see them again.
Last week I went to my first ever Euro Python in Prague, finally the visa was good in the right days of the year. This means I managed to meet more friends, a few of them just after a month (as they were present in PyCon US) and some after many many years. Really enjoyed the social event place selections by the organizers.
Personally the social events allowed me to go full scale nerd out on technical and social issues with friends. I was really missing these discussions. Heard more stories and discussed about fun ideas. One is below :)
$ python Python 3.12.4 (main, Jun 7 2024, 00:00:00) [GCC 14.1.1 20240607 (Red Hat 14.1.1-5)] on linux Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> hello 🤌🤌🤌 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> NameError: name 'hello' is not defined. Did you mean: 'help'? >>> [].set("different exception") 🤌🤌🤌 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'set' >>>