Category: News

Nominations are now open for the F-Droid board of directors! The
all-volunteer board serves the F-Droid community of users, developers, and
contributors, working to advance the cause of mobile device user freedom.

There are potentially four seats open on the board. These seats are open
because the term lengths for last year’s initial cohort of directors were intentionally staggered, so that
only approximately half the seats would be open each year. The directors
whose terms are ending in this cycle may either step down or choose to seek
re-election. Newly elected directors will serve two-year terms.

Please send your candidate nominations by email to
board-nominations@fdroid.net no later
than March 19th Anywhere On Earth. You may nominate yourself or others. If
nominating others, please first confirm that the nominee is in fact
interested, send one email per nominee, and copy that nominee on the email
you send to us. In the nominations, please include a description of why you
think the candidate would make an excellent board member – links to work
online may be helpful to include. We will confirm receipt of each
nomination.

Candidates do not need to be developers. In fact, we need a diverse set of
backgrounds and life experiences on the board, with a range of skills and
perspectives, in order to succeed. Current areas of board focus include
organizational governance and legal affairs, fundraising and financial
management, and community conduct and mediation.

Board members are expected to attend a monthly meeting by free software
video call, of about an hour in length, and to do a few hours of work
related to specific projects and subcommittees between those meetings. The
first meeting that newly elected board members will attend will be on April
18, 2024 (meetings are currently on the third Thursday of each month at
16:00 UTC).

Nominations will be reviewed and voted on by the current board members. More
information about the process and the organization’s other policies can be
found in our statutes with Commons
Conservancy.

Please submit your nominations by
March 19th, and share this invitation widely, to help inspire many other
nominations. The board can do a lot to help F-Droid grow as a technical
project and a global community, but we need people passionate about the
cause of freedom on mobile devices to take on the challenges we face. With
all of the public attention currently on the ways Apple and Google run their
mobile app stores, this is an incredibly exciting – and important – time
to get involved!

John Sullivan, Vice Chair, F-Droid Board of Directors

KDE Plasma 6 has been released – and this is an important release with two massive low-level stack upgrades. With Plasma 6, our technology stack has undergone two major upgrades: a transition to the latest version of our application framework, Qt, and a migration to the modern Linux graphics platform, Wayland. We have done our best to ensure that these changes are as smooth and unnoticeable to the users as possible, so when you install this update, you will see the same familiar desktop environment that you know and love. But these under-the-hood upgrades benefit Plasma’s security, efficiency, and performance, and improve support for modern hardware. Thus Plasma delivers an overall more reliable user experience, while paving the way for many more improvements in the future. Aside from this, there’s so much in this release it’s hard to know where to begin. My favourite is the overhaul of KDE’s default Breeze theme, which now uses far, far fewer frames, meaning there’s fewer borders-on-borders. Spacing has also been made more consistent within Breeze. Both of these efforts make KDE applications and UI elements look a bit less cluttered and busy, which, while easily missed if you don’t look for it, certainly cleans things up nicely. Another important improvements is the addition of support for HDR displays and colour management. Plasma on Wayland now has partial support for High Dynamic Range (HDR). On supported monitors and software, this will provide you with richer and deeper colors for your games, videos, and visual creations. Set an ICC profile for each screen individually and Plasma will adjust the colors accordingly. Applications are still limited to the sRGB color space, but we are working on increasing the number of supported color spaces soon. To improve Plasma’s accessibility, we added support for color blindness correction filters. This helps with protanopia, deuteranopia or tritanopia. Of course, this release is accompanied by updates to a large number of KDE applications, and several default settings in KDE have been changed as well to better suit what most users would expect. Plasma Search has been overhauled as well, making it faster and less resource-intensive, and giving users the ability to better control how search results are displayed. There’s a lot more here, so be sure to dive into the release announcement, KDE Plasma 6 will find its way to your distribution or operating system of choice over the coming weeks and months.

Pawan Kalyan Speech At Grand Launch Event of Health on US Mobile App.
హెల్త్ ఆన్ అస్ యాప్ ఉంటే భద్రత మన దగ్గర ఉన్నట్టే – పవన్ కళ్యాణ్

#pawankalyan
#healthonusmobileapplaunchevent
#mobileapp
#pawankalyanunvelling
#launchevent

~ED.234~PR.39~HT.286~

Chaos has a ginormous mouth!

My painting: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LRPJlv

“Open Your Heart” Sonic Adventure theme and Sonic Generations version:
By Crush 40:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJJluTzc1HAcuYabQq_77Gg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fo__Sh0nIg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gb_42k30YE

Rain effect by:
https://www.youtube.com/@AleksEffects
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyYbTgucQrw&list=LL&index=1

I fʊcking adore that song!

The only two mixes I found only had the vocals synced, so I decided to craft my own mix, and with the new and improved audacity, it was more satisfying than I though! XD

As a kid, I played Sonic Adventure and absolutely adored Open Your Heart and the final boss Perfect Chaos, I would put the song on repeat on my Dreamcast for hours! XD

But I disliked the designs of the characters besides perfect Chaos’s for being too cartoony for my tastes, which brings me to when the first more “realistic” design for that Sonic movie.

It looked like a halfling in a costume, XD and I made up the rule that Sonic’s head and legs must not be humanoid!

Experimenting a bit, I found out that his face realistically looks like that of a bear’s with a short muzzle, so there I went! XD

He actually looks kinda like a teddy bear, pretty cute!

Humanoid torso and arms for him worked, so for his legs, at first I thought of ostrich legs but that looked ridiculous, and I quickly moved away to something else.

Until today, or more exactly, yesterday I think, when I was sketching this new artwork and I remembered the maned wolf!

With elongated digits and a longer tail for balance, as well as an avian pelvis to avoid giving him a mammalian arse or a glaring nothing, XD and we’ve transcended the species of hedgehog! XD

Lastly, a realistic Sonic would not be blue or azur or whatever spectrum , so I coloured him a dark grey and had his spines reflect blue light from the sun like a blue macaw! XD

But realism is awful without any fantastical elements, so Sonic wields lightning and can conjure a glaive of lightning!

He can also only perform short bursts of near-sound speeds with lightning, but otherwise, I’d say realistic Sonic can reach the top speed of a cheetah.

And he would have a proper name, and I already made up one, Kairinazumi, combining the Japanese words for hedgehog and wind, meanwhile, “Sonic” would be his nickname.

And he’d have a healthy diet, whilst a mix of his Japanese and American personalities could work!

Otherwise, for some reason I liked the idea of Chaos having babirusa fangs! XD

Somehow, white glowing pupils over a saturated iris really brings out the madness in a being!

I imagine after Sonic pommels the madness out of Chaos, the both of them become good friends, XD which makes sense, considering Chaos wasn’t himself and wasn’t giving Sonic any other choice.

Chaos would be able to take on his titanic serpent form at will, with black pupils and a more floral green energy than radioactive one.

The Indian subcontinent is known for its profound cultural and linguistic diversity. The form of cultural expression, transmitted through generations via folk songs, folk tales,…

Discover how Jon Stewart is redefining the digital landscape with ZenSource—a game-changing platform fusing open-source flexibility with enterprise-grade capabilities. Uncover insights into the strategic use of Drupal, AI integration, and ultra-secure cloud hosting in revolutionizing customer experience platforms.

Dual booting Ruby is similar to any other dependency, but there are some important differences that we need to address to do it right. There are more ways to do this but we try to minimize the disruption to the normal development workflow as much as possible. With these ideas you can default to use the current Ruby version while also being able to use the next version on demand with a few commands.

www.mozilla.org/rise25/nominate/ On the heels of Mozilla’s Rise25 Awards in Berlin last year, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be returning once again with a special celebration that will take place in Dublin, Ireland later this year. The 2nd Annual Rise25 Awards will feature familiar categories, but with an emphasis on trustworthy AI. We will be […]

The post Mozilla Announces Call for Entries for the 2nd Annual Rise25 Awards in Dublin, Ireland appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.

GNU Parallel 20240222 (‘Навальный’) has been released. It is available for download at: lbry://@GnuParallel:4

Quote of the month:

 

  Stop paralyzing start parallelizing

    — @harshgandhi100@YouTube

 

New in this release:

• No new functionality
• Bug fixes and man page updates.

GNU Parallel – For people who live life in the parallel lane.

If you like GNU Parallel record a video testimonial: Say who you are, what you use GNU Parallel for, how it helps you, and what you like most about it. Include a command that uses GNU Parallel if you feel like it.

About GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel is a shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers. A job can be a single command or a small script that has to be run for each of the lines in the input. The typical input is a list of files, a list of hosts, a list of users, a list of URLs, or a list of tables. A job can also be a command that reads from a pipe. GNU Parallel can then split the input and pipe it into commands in parallel.

If you use xargs and tee today you will find GNU Parallel very easy to use as GNU Parallel is written to have the same options as xargs. If you write loops in shell, you will find GNU Parallel may be able to replace most of the loops and make them run faster by running several jobs in parallel. GNU Parallel can even replace nested loops.

GNU Parallel makes sure output from the commands is the same output as you would get had you run the commands sequentially. This makes it possible to use output from GNU Parallel as input for other programs.

For example you can run this to convert all jpeg files into png and gif files and have a progress bar:

  parallel –bar convert {1} {1.}.{2} ::: *.jpg ::: png gif

Or you can generate big, medium, and small thumbnails of all jpeg files in sub dirs:

  find . -name ‘*.jpg’ |

    parallel convert -geometry {2} {1} {1//}/thumb{2}_{1/} :::: – ::: 50 100 200

You can find more about GNU Parallel at: http://www.gnu.org/s/parallel/

You can install GNU Parallel in just 10 seconds with:

    $ (wget -O – pi.dk/3 || lynx -source pi.dk/3 || curl pi.dk/3/ ||

       fetch -o – http://pi.dk/3 ) > install.sh

    $ sha1sum install.sh | grep 883c667e01eed62f975ad28b6d50e22a

    12345678 883c667e 01eed62f 975ad28b 6d50e22a

    $ md5sum install.sh | grep cc21b4c943fd03e93ae1ae49e28573c0

    cc21b4c9 43fd03e9 3ae1ae49 e28573c0

    $ sha512sum install.sh | grep ec113b49a54e705f86d51e784ebced224fdff3f52

    79945d9d 250b42a4 2067bb00 99da012e c113b49a 54e705f8 6d51e784 ebced224

    fdff3f52 ca588d64 e75f6033 61bd543f d631f592 2f87ceb2 ab034149 6df84a35

    $ bash install.sh

Watch the intro video on http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488BC6D1

Walk through the tutorial (man parallel_tutorial). Your command line will love you for it.

When using programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for publication please cite:

O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, March 2018, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014.

If you like GNU Parallel:

• Give a demo at your local user group/team/colleagues
• Post the intro videos on Reddit/Diaspora*/forums/blogs/ Identi.ca/Google+/Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/mailing lists
• Get the merchandise https://gnuparallel.threadless.com/designs/gnu-parallel
• Request or write a review for your favourite blog or magazine
• Request or build a package for your favourite distribution (if it is not already there)
• Invite me for your next conference

If you use programs that use GNU Parallel for research:

• Please cite GNU Parallel in you publications (use –citation)

If GNU Parallel saves you money:

• (Have your company) donate to FSF https://my.fsf.org/donate/

About GNU SQL

GNU sql aims to give a simple, unified interface for accessing databases through all the different databases’ command line clients. So far the focus has been on giving a common way to specify login information (protocol, username, password, hostname, and port number), size (database and table size), and running queries.

The database is addressed using a DBURL. If commands are left out you will get that database’s interactive shell.

When using GNU SQL for a publication please cite:

O. Tange (2011): GNU SQL – A Command Line Tool for Accessing Different Databases Using DBURLs, ;login: The USENIX Magazine, April 2011:29-32.

About GNU Niceload

GNU niceload slows down a program when the computer load average (or other system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. If the limit is a soft limit the program will be allowed to run for short amounts of time before being suspended again. If the limit is a hard limit the program will only be allowed to run when the system is below the limit.

OSI shares key takeaways from a recent listening session of the National Telecommunications and Information Agency conducted with Civil Society organizations about the benefits and risks associated with offering wide availability of model weights and other components of open and closed foundation models.