Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 14/02/2023: Plasma 5.27 and Russia Builds M OS



  • GNU/Linux

    • Desktop/Laptop

      • Giz ChinaA new operating system has been released in Russia

        The Russian software market has welcomed a new operating system called “M OS,” which is based on the Linux kernel. The operating system is specifically designed for use in educational institutions and is being developed by the Department of Information Technologies of the city of Moscow. The team responsible for the development of electronic services and IT systems in the capital has collaborated with Russian developers to create “M OS.”

        A team of 25 developers has worked on the development of “M OS”. And the distribution kit took six months to develop. The product is already supplied to Moscow schools as part of personal computers, laptops, and interactive panels. The Moscow Electronic School (MES) project team is supporting and developing “M OS.”

    • Server

      • Nicholas Tietz-SokolskyA systems design perspective on why chess.com's servers have been melting | nicholas@web

        January 2023 was a rough month if you wanted to play chess on the most popular chess website, chess.com. Their service has been experiencing an unprecedented amount downtime because of a huge influx of users. There have been days where it's all but unusable. It's frustrating as a user! It's also surely frustrating for the business behind the site.

        Chess has reached an all-time peak in popularity. In January 2023, Google search traffic exceeded the boom from the release of The Queen's Gambit. There's a huge influx of new or returning players, and they flock to the site with the obvious domain. Chess.com's app has hit #1 most downloaded free game on the iOS app store.

        Part of doing good systems design is planning for capacity. A general rule of thumb is that you should design a system for up to a certain amount of growth. Beyond some point, architectural requirements will be dramatically different. Planning for capacity does not mean planning for infinite capacity, but what may realistically happen.

    • Audiocasts/Shows

      • Late Night Linux – Episode 216

        Canonical’s latest Ubuntu PR blunder, Mastodon and the fediverse are doing a lot better than some journalists seem to think, yet another telemetry row, the company behind Mycroft is struggling, KDE Korner, and more. €  News We now have a Discord server (as well as the Telegram group, Matrix room, and IRC channel).

    • Instructionals/Technical

    • Games

    • Desktop Environments/WMs

      • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

        • KDEPlasma 5.27 Beta

          Today we are bringing you the preview version of KDE's Plasma 5.27 release. Plasma 5.27 Beta is aimed at testers, developers, and bug-hunters. As well as our lightweight and feature rich Linux Desktop this release adds a Bigscreen version of Plasma for use on televisions.

          To help KDE developers iron out bugs and solve issues, install Plasma 5.27 Beta and test run the features listed below. Please report bugs to our bug tracker.

          The final version of Plasma 5.27 will become available for the general public on the 14th of February.

        • 9to5LinuxKDE Plasma 5.27 LTS Desktop Is Out with New Welcome App, Tiling, and More

          Highlights of KDE Plasma 5.27 include a new Plasma Welcome app that helps newcomers to the KDE Plasma desktop environment easily and quickly configure various aspects like enabling Plasma Vaults, connecting their online accounts or mobile devices, adding more apps, etc.

          Another cool new feature in KDE Plasma 5.27 is tiling support for those with a large monitor. Tiling can be enabled and configured by pressing the Meta(Super)+T keyboard shortcut and there are three layouts to choose from. Windows can be placed in the tiled layout by holding Shift and dragging them to the edge of the screen until they stick.

        • Linux MagazineKDE Plasma 5.27 Slated for a Valentine's Day Release
        • KDEKDE Eco Handbook: "Applying The Blue Angel Criteria To Free Software"

          Today is "I ❤ Free Software!" day and KDE Eco is proud to announce the publication of the first edition of the measurement handbook "Applying The Blue Angel Criteria To Free Software: A Handbook To Certify Software As Sustainable".

          You can view the handbook at our website, where you can also download the PDF release for offline reading or for sharing with a friend or colleague.

  • Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

    • Web Browsers/Web Servers

      • Chromium

      • Mozilla

        • Niko Matsakis: Return type notation (send bounds, part 2)

          In theprevious post, I introduced the “send bound” problem, which refers to the need to add aSendbound to the future returned by an async function. I want to start talking about some of the ideas that have been floating around for how to solve this problem. I consider this a bit of an open problem, in that I think we know a lot of the ingredients, but there is a bit of a “delicate balance” to finding the right syntax and so forth. To start with, though, I want to introduce Return Type Notation, which is an idea that Tyler Mandry and I came up with for referring to the type returned by a trait method.

  • Productivity Software/LibreOffice/Calligra

  • FSF

    • FSFI Love Free Software Day is here: Share your love, software, and a video

      The act of sharing takes effort because sharing anything requires us to take time out of our day to share with another person. It takes compassion because we must think of others and what their wants and/or needs may be. It also takes courage. This is because we must fight against our own doubt, battling against any feelings of failure or rejection. We must also courageously defend the freedom to share, as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS) threaten to erode people's ability and opportunities to share, even among those living under the same roof.

  • Programming/Development

    • Jussi PakkanenJussi Pakkanen: Plain C API design, the real world Kobayashi Maru test

      Designing APIs is hard. Designing good APIs that future people will not instantly classify as "total crap" is even harder. There are typically many competing requirements such as:

      • API stability
      • ABI stability (if you are into that sort of thing, some are not)
      • Maximize the amount of functionality supported
      • Minimize the number of functions exposed
      • Make the API as easy as possible to use
      • Make the API as difficult as possible to use incorrectly (preferably it should be impossible)
      • Make the API as easy as possible to use from scripting languages
    • Barry KaulerContinuing internationalization integrated into easy.sfs

      I posted about the abandonment of langpacks a couple of days ago:

      https://bkhome.org/news/202302/easysfs-internationalized-langpack-pets-abandoned.html

      The last couple of days there has been intense coding, implementing the details internationalization integrated into easy.sfs, or as a single "nls.sfs".

      Changes to /usr/local/petget/installpkg.sh, major changes to /usr/local/momanager/momanager, and in woofQ changes to 2createpackages and 3buildeasydistro....

    • Anders BorchSvelte Was Made By Vue Fans

      I actually like the declarative feel of Svelte. I just don't like that it reminds me of a product which endorses malware. I don't think that is something to want to emulate.

    • Reilly Tucker SiemensParsing TFTP in Rust

      For those who don't know, TFTP is the Trivial File Transfer Protocol, a simple means of reading and writing files over a network. Initially defined in the early 80s, the protocol was updated by RFC 1350 in 1992. In this post I'll only cover RFC 1350. Extensions like RFC 2347, which adds a 6th packet type, won't be covered.

    • University of TorontoThe case for atomic types in programming languages

      However, I feel that that the lie of atomic types is a genuine improvement in almost all cases, because of the increase in usability and safety. The problem with only having atomic operations is the same as with optional error checking; you have to remember to always use them, even if the types you're operating on can be used with ordinary operations. As we all know, people can forget this, or they can think that they're clever enough to use non-atomic operations in this one special circumstance that is surely harmless.

    • RachelMore than five whys and "layer eight" problems

      Perhaps you've heard of the OSI model of networking, where you have seven layers as a way to talk about what's going on in the "stack". I've seen some brilliantly snarky T-shirts that talk about "layer eight" and sometimes beyond as things like "corporate politics" and "management" and all of that good stuff.

      It turns out that when you start doing this root-cause analysis and really keep after it, the "squishy human realm" is actually the no-longer-hypothetical "layer eight" from those T-shirts.

    • New YorkerChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web

      This analogy to lossy compression is not just a way to understand ChatGPT’s facility at repackaging information found on the Web by using different words. It’s also a way to understand the “hallucinations,” or nonsensical answers to factual questions, to which large language models such as ChatGPT are all too prone. These hallucinations are compression artifacts, but—like the incorrect labels generated by the Xerox photocopier—they are plausible enough that identifying them requires comparing them against the originals, which in this case means either the Web or our own knowledge of the world. When we think about them this way, such hallucinations are anything but surprising; if a compression algorithm is designed to reconstruct text after ninety-nine per cent of the original has been discarded, we should expect that significant portions of what it generates will be entirely fabricated.

    • Vincent BernatBuilding a SQL-like language to filter flows

      Often, web interfaces expose a query builder to build such filters. I think combining a SQL-like language with an editor supporting completion, syntax highlighting, and linting is a better approach.

      The language parser is built with pigeon (Go) from a parsing expression grammar—or PEG. The editor component is CodeMirror (TypeScript).

    • Jussi PakkanenPlain C API design, the real world Kobayashi Maru test

      Designing APIs is hard. Designing good APIs that future people will not instantly classify as "total crap" is even harder. There are typically many competing requirements such as: [...]

    • ButtondownMaybe people do care about performance and reliability

      It’s well-established consensus that software is slower and more bloated than it was 20, 40 years ago. One explanation is that software engineers don’t care about their work. Another is that it’s the interplay of a lot of different factors and blaming it on apathetic devs is a convenient way to avoid understanding the actual problems.

    • Python

      • Didier StevensUpdate: xor-kpa.py Version 0.0.7

        I added extra plaintexts for the modulus of Cobalt Strike’s public RSA key. xor-kpa_V0_0_7.zip (http)MD5: FB8155E56234648CC3AFFD890BFE9043SHA256: 069DCA2A1901D448DBF2CF202B5CE49846EFCBAACB73BF35B20AA085AAB31BA9

    • Rust


* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.



Recent Techrights' Posts

Manchester United Dumped Microsoft Because Qualcomm Sort of Did
The Windows PCs were an utter failure
Kazakhstan Doesn't Need GAFAM Datacentres (Spy Hubs)
Suffice to say, as far as we can gather nothing came out from the empty (false) promises of GAFAM's "data centers in Kazakhstan"
Christmas Music Project: Back to When Music Was Music
now Canonical (or Ubuntu) says we should make available tens of gigabytes of disk space
 
Gemini Links 27/12/2025: geminiprotocol.net Downtime and Capsular Gemlog Manager
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 26, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, December 26, 2025
Tossing Embarrassing News Under the Christmastime Bus
This isn't just some coincidence; those are conscious choices
Victim-Blaming in Debian
Verhelst previously did blame-shifting when Debian suicide clusters happened
IBM Cuts in Japan, Red Hat is Attached to a Sinking Ship
IBM, which controls Red Hat, is a rapidly shrinking company
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Supported by Unconventional Digital Bartering Communities
But no strings attached
Geminispace: 5,000 Capsules in 2026
There are 4.8k now
Gemini Links 26/12/2025: Careful What You Eat and "My Secret Santa"
Links for the day
The Indigenous Community Versus Corporate AstroTurt and 'Cancel Culture'
Good people will recognise exactly what's happening here and respond to it tactfully
Richard Stallman: Epstein is a Serial Rapist. Bill Epsteingate: Epstein is a Friend.
Supporting the FSF (or Richard Stallman) is supporting those who asserted Epstein had serially raped women
The Paradox of GAFAM: Saying You Protect Women, Appointing Abusers of Women to Run the Company
older articles
Censored by FreeBSD Core Team Secretary, Reinstated After Talking About it in Public
FreeBSD misfiring a CoC?
Links 26/12/2025: Chatbot Toys Terrorising Children, US Undeclared "War on Terror" Unilaterally Extends to Nigeria During Holidays
Links for the day
Links 26/12/2025: French Postal Services Under Russian Attack, U.S. Cheetos Accuse People Who Obstruct Information Warfare by Russia of "Censorship"
Links for the day
Debian's Daniel Kahn Gillmor is Wrong, Signal is No "Gold Standard" (It's Also Promoted by Proponents of Back Doors)
I'm not too sure why Debian or the ACLU would wish to associate with this
Next Year Will be the Year of Quantum, Just Like 2020, 2015, 2010, 2005 and So On
"Quantum" is the future
The Silent Power of Coercion Over Speech
The important thing is optics
So Simple That You Can Touch and Feel It
In light of recent experiences
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Under Attack by Cross-Network Spam Floods
So far we've been spared (our network has not been targeted at all) [...] Let's hope the spam won't discourage the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who still use IRC
An "AI-Infused" Windows
Microsoft Windows isn't becoming a worthless pile of garbage by accident
Microsoft Laid Off Over 30,000 People This Year, Coders Are "Too Expensive"
Go get some popcorn. Microsoft "slopware" is about to get real!
Critics Have Long Said Microsoft Produces "Slopware", Microsoft Wants to Prove Them Right
Slop instead of code is a step in the right direction?
The Top 8 Innovations of IBM in 2025
What innovations will come out from IBM in 2026?
And as the Year Turns...
The significance of new years isn't based on geology or astronomy or anything like that
Appliances Versus Computers
Replacing a computer inside an object of some kind or inside an appliance (which nowadays includes "modern" cars) isn't simple and isn't cheap
A Dark Side of Europe
They try hard to silence people who speak about these issues
Why People Love Techrights (and Also Loved "Boycott Novell")
I will continue to publish for many decades to come
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, December 25, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, December 25, 2025
Browsing Techrights With a GUI and 10 Megabytes of RAM Per Tab
Some people say it's not possible in 2025, maybe in part because they depend on very bloated software
A Tribute to Richard Stallman
It's about knowledge and sharing
Links 26/12/2025: Impermanence, Salt and Thermometer, Freetube
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/12/2025: Hibernation and TV Detox
Links for the day
Canonical is Making the Cost of PCs Very High, Due to Unnecessary Ubuntu Bloat
They say the reason for the price surge is LLM hype/frenzy
Canonical's Ubuntu is Bloatware
How did Ubuntu get so fat?
The EPO is a Very Vicious Organisation You Neither Wish to Join Nor Stay in for "Too Long"
Consider what the EPO thinks of its own workers, the staff that actually does real work
2026 Will Hopefully Turn Out to be Slopless
we seem to be starting the post-Christmas period on the right footing
Links 25/12/2025: Mail Carriers in "a Murky Future", Dihydroxyacetone Man’s "Chip Embargo Against China Backfiring Spectacularly"
Links for the day
The Register MS: All I Want For Xmas is Microsoft
they actually put effort into it
How to Win Nobel Prize for Peace
Do you get to Heaven (or peace platitudes) by sleeping with 72 virgins?
The Right to Repair (Especially When Products Are So Poorly Made)
Many electrical appliances fail often/quick and are nearly impossible to repair
Links 25/12/2025: Ample Cover-up Found in Jeffrey Epstein Files; ChatGPT Causes Psychosis, Not a Good Use Case
Links for the day
Giving Money to Free Software
In life, people must make sacrifices to do what's right and just
The Register MS: Don't Use Linux
That really says a lot about The Register MS
EPO People Power - Part XV - EPO Cocainegate to Resume This Weekend
The next installment (number 16) will probably come out this weekend
Microsoft: XBox is Going "Online", "Cloud"...
XBox as a console is pretty much dead
The Year of the Bubble
We hope that in 2026 the marketing liars will find some new buzzwords to latch onto and quit calling everything "AI"
Mozilla Firefox is a GAFAM Browser With Slop, Move to a Free Software Web Browser
on mobile the options would be more limited
libera.chat Was Under Attack Last Night
Several months from now libera.chat turns 5
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raises Over $300,000 Before Christmas
the FSF made it past $300,000
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 24, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 24, 2025