News

The Drop Times: Gábor Hojtsy and Pamela Barone Share Their Perspectives on Starshot

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Explore the transformative vision behind Drupal Starshot through the insights of Gábor Hojtsy and Pamela Barone. This ambitious initiative addresses Drupal’s past criticisms by enhancing user experience and accessibility with innovative UI improvements and pre-packaged feature sets. Delve into the potential and challenges of Starshot and understand how the leadership team is steering Drupal towards a more user-friendly future.

Python 3.13.0 beta 3 released

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I’m pleased to announce the release of Python 3.13 beta 3.

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3130b3/

 

This is a beta preview of Python 3.13

Python 3.13 is still in development. This release, 3.13.0b3, is the third of four beta release previews of 3.13.

Beta release previews are intended to give the wider community the
opportunity to test new features and bug fixes and to prepare their
projects to support the new feature release.

We strongly encourage maintainers of third-party Python projects to test with 3.13 during the beta phase and report issues found to the Python bug tracker
as soon as possible. While the release is planned to be feature
complete entering the beta phase, it is possible that features may be
modified or, in rare cases, deleted up until the start of the release
candidate phase (Tuesday 2024-07-30). Our goal is to have no ABI changes
after beta 4 and as few code changes as possible after 3.13.0rc1, the
first release candidate. To achieve that, it will be extremely important to get as much exposure for 3.13 as possible during the beta phase.

 

Please keep in mind that this is a preview release and its use is not recommended for production environments.

 

Major new features of the 3.13 series, compared to 3.12

Some of the new major new features and changes in Python 3.13 are:

New features

  • A new and improved interactive interpreter , based on PyPy’s, featuring multi-line editing and color support, as well as colorized exception tracebacks .
  • An experimental free-threaded build mode , which disables the Global Interpreter Lock, allowing threads to run more concurrently. The build mode is available as an experimental feature in the Windows and macOS installers as well.
  • A preliminary, experimental JIT , providing the ground work for significant performance improvements.
  • The (cyclic) garbage collector is now incremental , which should mean shorter pauses for collection in programs with a lot of objects.
  • A modified version of mimalloc is now included, optional but enabled by default if supported by the platform, and required for the free-threaded build mode.
  • Docstrings now have their leading indentation stripped, reducing memory use and the size of .pyc files. (Most tools handling docstrings already strip leading indentation.)
  • The dbm module has a new dbm.sqlite3 backend that is used by default when creating new files.
  • The minimum supported macOS version was changed from 10.9 to 10.13 (High Sierra). Older macOS versions will not be supported going forward.

Typing

Removals and new deprecations

  • PEP 594 (Removing dead batteries from the standard library) scheduled removals of many deprecated modules: aifc, audioop, chunk, cgi, cgitb, crypt, imghdr, mailcap, msilib, nis, nntplib, ossaudiodev, pipes, sndhdr, spwd, sunau, telnetlib, uu, xdrlib, lib2to3.
  • Many other removals of deprecated classes, functions and methods in various standard library modules.
  • C API removals and deprecations. (Some removals present in alpha 1 were reverted in alpha 2, as the removals were deemed too disruptive at this time.)
  • New deprecations, most of which are scheduled for removal from Python 3.15 or 3.16.

(Hey, fellow core developer, if a feature you find important is missing from this list, let Thomas know.)

For more details on the changes to Python 3.13, see What’s new in Python 3.13 . The next pre-release of Python 3.13 will be 3.13.0b4, currently scheduled for 2024-07-16.

 

More resources

 

Enjoy the new releases

Thanks to all of the many volunteers who help make Python Development
and these releases possible! Please consider supporting our efforts by
volunteering yourself or through organization contributions to the
Python Software Foundation.

Your release team,
Thomas Wouters
Łukasz Langa
Ned Deily
Steve Dower 

 

Transform Firefox into the ultimate minimalist browser

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Transform Firefox into the ultimate minimalist browser

Ever feel like the internet is always… yelling? From pop-up windows and ads that autoplay to the sheer size of the internet, a lot of things scream for our attention. This makes it difficult to get things done. Firefox has privacy at its core, making it a great choice for those who want to minimize […]

The post Transform Firefox into the ultimate minimalist browser appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

GNU Health: Migrar, migrant, migràrem

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GNU Health: Migrar, migrant, migràrem

The title of this article, “Migrar, migrant, migràrem“, comes from a beautiful poem written by Laia Porcar[1], that inspired the strikingly profound painting by Sara Belles [2] “Jo per tu, fill meu“. The artists reflect the migrants ordeal to provide a better life to their children and families, even at the cost of losing their own lives.

GNU Health[3] is a Social project with some technology behind and the mission at Sea-Eye is one of the best examples. After all, GNU Solidario[4] is a NGO that focuses in the advancement of Social Medicine.

We live a world of injustice. Concentration of power, social gradient and poverty rates keep on the rise. Artificial intelligence is on the hands of mega private corporations, targeting our privacy and feeding the macabre business of war. The fight for scarce natural resources such as lithium or coltan creates coups in impoverished countries. Nature and non-human animals are used and abused as mere commodities. Our world turns a blind eye to the systematic crushing and eradication of civilian population by powerful armies. As a result, we live in a world where migration is not a choice, but the only way out for millions of human beings, even at the risk of becoming anonymous victims in the Atlantic ocean or Mediterranean sea mass graveyards.

GNU Health: Migrar, migrant, migràrem
“Jo per tu, fill meu”, by Sara Belles

But there is hope. The Sea-Eye mission is the end result of a network of solidarity, cooperation and empathy. The Free Software movement started by Richard Stallman[5]; Julian Sassencheidt message in Mastodon and his presentation at GNU Health Con 2023[6] ; The work of our representative in Germany, Gerald Wiese; the Chaos Computer Club[7]; the team from L’Aurora[8] providing logistic support to the Search and Rescue vessels; the phenomenal Sea-Eye family who made me feel at home: The cook, crew on deck, the logistics and medical team who stood stoically intensive hours of GNU Health training. Of course, Selene, the heart of GNU Solidario and the one that looks after the human and non-human family members while I’m away.

You will hardly see these people in the news, because most corporate-backed media neglect them and their organizations. Unlike some billionaire “philanthropists” that take the media spotlight, these anonymous heroes stand on the right side of history, making a difference on the present and future of those who need it most, with very limited resources.

Collage of several pictures during my stay at the Sea-eye

We’re very happy and proud to see that GNU Health can be of help to Sea-Eye in tasks such as guests registration, health evaluations, reporting, statistics and stock management. This is just the beginning and we will be optimizing and adding functionality on successive missions. That said, GNU Health will always play a secondary role compared to picking up somebody from the water and giving them a welcoming hug. Again, we’re a social project with a bit of technology behind.

Drawings made by the children rescued at the Sea-eye

I’d like to finish with a reflection on the picture I took to some of the drawings done by children during their stay at the Sea-Eye. The drawings exist because the Sea-eye crew rescued those kids. Otherwise, their corpses would be at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea, along with thousands who tragically perished trying to find dignity in this world. Thank you, Sea-eye. You are priceless.

A final note: shame on those countries and governments that detain and punish Search and Rescue vessels. Saving lives is not a crime.

Love, freedom and happy hacking

You can obtain Sara Belles painting and Laia Porcar poem from L’Aurora solidarity shop[8]

  1. Laia Porcar : https://laravalerateatre.com/qui-som/
  2. Sara Belles . https://sarabelles.es/
  3. The GNU Health project. https://www.gnuhealth.org
  4. GNU Solidario. Advancing Social Medicine https://www.gnusolidario.org
  5. The GNU Operating System. https://www.gnu.org
  6. Search and rescue on the central Mediterranean migratory route . https://https://www.gnuhealthcon.org/2023/presentations/GHCon2023-Friday-07-Julian_Sassenscheidt-Search_and_rescue_on_the_central_Mediterranean_migratory_route.pdf
  7. The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) . https://www.ccc.de/en/
  8. L’Aurora suport. https://aurorasuport.org/

225K downloads/week? Those are rookie numbers, lets update Termux!

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This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Thursday, 27 Jun 2024, Week 26

Community News

Mumla, Voice chat on Mumble servers, was updated to 3.6.11, adding more languages and polish. While Mumla started as a fork of the discontinued Plumble, it’s actually now in a “maintenance only” mode as the main developer can’t cater to the speed of development needed. If you can lend a hand, do join its code forge.

Nekogram X, The third-party Telegram android app, was updated to 9.5.8 after an 8 month hiatus.

Plexus, Android App Compatibility, was updated to 2.0.3. The app is now build reproducible so F-Droid hosts the developer signed package. If you’ve installed it in the past please uninstall and install the new one.

SimpleX Chat, e2e encrypted messenger without any user IDs, was updated to 5.8.1. Messaging changes touch upon message routing, servers and themes, you can read more about these in the new developer blogpost.

Termux, Terminal emulator with packages, was updated to stable 0.118.1 and beta 0.119.0-beta.1 (manually install or opt-in to Beta versions) after two years. We are glad to see new development around this very beloved app (if we go by the download graphs at least) 🤷.

Removed Apps

2 apps were removed

Just Craigslist was hit by a trademark violation, but the app was no longer developed anyway so it got Archived. (#487)

Syphon, A privacy centric Matrix client, hasn’t seen any new releases for 2 years or any commits for the last year while being affected by some high severity CVE issues. While the source repo is not archived, some users have asked for this from upstream to signal that it is no longer developed at least. Users are advised to jump ship to the other developed clients like FluffyChat, SchildiChat or the new Element X. (#3288)

Newly Added Apps

4 apps were newly added
  • Koofr Vault – Client-side, zero-knowledge encrypted storage application by Koofr
  • OpenUSOS – Unofficial USOS app, for students in Poland
  • PocketTRacker – Reliably track the scores of your straight pool games
  • KitX Mobile – KitX Project’s mobile implementation, based on Flutter

Updated Apps

137 more apps were updated

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂

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You are welcome to join the TWIF forum thread. If you have any news from the community, post it there, maybe it will be featured next week 😉

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Windows 10 will be covered by 0patch, a third-party paid patching service

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So I learned something new today: there are companies that provide security patches for Windows that aren’t Microsoft. I never even considered this could be a thing, but it turns out that a paid service called 0patch seems to have been around for a long time, and the consensus seems to be that not only can it be trusted, it also sometimes provides patches sooner than Microsoft does. Today, 0patch announced it’ll also be providing this service for Windows 10 after the end of support next year. With October 2025, 0patch will “security-adopt” Windows 10 v22H2, and provide critical security patches for it for at least 5 more years – even longer if there’s demand on the market. We’re the only provider of unofficial security patches for Windows (“virtual patches” are not really patches), and we have done this many times before: after security-adopting Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 in January 2020, we took care of 6 versions of Windows 10 as their official support ended, security-adopted Windows 11 v21H2 to keep users who got stuck there secure, took care of Windows Server 2012 in October 2023 and adopted two popular Office versions – 2010 and 2013 – when they got abandoned by Microsoft. We’re still providing security patches for all of these. ↫ Mitja Kolsek on the 0patch blog This service implements patching through what it calls “micropatches”, which are very small sets of CPU instructions injected into running code in memory without modifying – in this case – Microsoft’s own code. These micropatches are applied by briefly stopping the offending program, injecting the fix, and continuing the program – without having to close the program or reboot. Of course, they can be unapplied in the same, non-disruptive way. The 0patch service will provide patches for 0days that Microsoft hasn’t fixed yet, patches for issues Microsoft won’t fix, and sometimes patches for third party code. As the headline clearly states, this service isn’t free, but honestly, at roughly 25 dollars plus tax per computer per year, it’s not exactly expensive, and definitely cheaper than Microsoft’s own Windows 10 Extended Security Update program it’s going to offer for Windows 10 after the end of support date next year. Diving a bit deeper into who is providing this service, it comes from a company called ACROS Security, a small company out of Slovenia. The company details its micropatches on its 0patch blog if you want more information on how each individual ones works. I still don’t know exactly what to make of this, and I definitely wouldn’t rely on something like this for mission-critical Windows computers or servers, but for something like a home PC that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11 but still works just fine, or perhaps some disposable virtual machines you’re using, this might be a good stopgap solution until you can upgrade to a better operating system, like Linux or one of the BSDs. Are there any people in the OSNews audience who’ve used 0patch, or perhaps a service similar to it?