I’m impressed to see that my #Neovim extension to send HTTP requests directly from the editor (it basically emulates the logic of IDEs like VSCode and IntelliJ with .http files) has already reached 65 stars! ⭐️
There already a couple of feature requests that I’d like to tackle (I don’t open Github that often, so I missed the past 2-3 months of notifications), but I’m really struggling with time.
#Platypush takes most of my time, as I’m trying to wrap everything for the first stable release (it only took about 8 years!). The Platypush web extension, the Platypush Android app, the madblog blogging platform and the RSS viewer browser extension take my remaining (unpaid) development time. And there’s still sporadic work I’m doing on Mopidy, Jellyfin, OpenLineage and other projects.
I released nvim-http as a toy one-shot personal project, covering what I perceived as a gap in the Neovim plugins and hoping that I wouldn’t have to come back to it again. But, 65 stars and 10 open issues later, it seems like others liked the idea too - and it’s probably fair to implement the improvements that they’re asking.
Is there anybody out there who’s familiar enough with #Python (or if you want to rewrite in #Lua, feel free to do it too, as I’ve been toying with the idea a bit already) and uses Neovim who would like to give me a hand with this project? I’m happy to add new maintainers/contributors if they can prove enough proficiency with Python and/or writing Vim/Neovim plugins. Otherwise I may eventually respond to all the open feature requests, but squeezing in another project to maintain regularly may prove tricky for me.
A #Fediverse#tip that I’ve only discovered recently (and from what I see is not very used yet): #groups through Guppe.
While full-blown groups aren’t supported yet (at least not on any ActivityPub implementations I know of), you can join/create groups on the fly by following @some-group@a.gup.pe.
If the group already exists, you’ll join it. Otherwise, it’ll be created.
Then just tag @some-group@a.gup.pe in a post that you want to submit to a group, and it’ll be broadcast to anyone who follows the Guppe account.
When thinking of the potential impacts of #AI on software development, and whether it’s going to be replacement, augmentation, or a mix or both, it’s useful to keep in mind the example of Excel - or Scratch, or Node-RED, or other low-code frameworks.
Excel and Low Code tools have existed for many decades. So why does the software development profession still exist? Why do people still write code instead of spreadsheets with a sprinkle of formulas and macros or diagram blocks to run everything?
(Of course, I know of a few businesses that use Excel/Google sheets like production databases or ETL pipelines, unfortunately I’ve even worked in a few of them, but in all the examples I know of things ended up in absolute shitstorms).
It goes back to thinking of software development as just writing code. For complex problems, we need people who can effectively manage that complexity and translate the business problems from real world domain to digital models. And deploy, debug, maintain and scale up those digital models.
If you’re able to build a wooden shed from YouTube tutorials without the help of a civil engineer, doesn’t mean you can/should do the same for a 10 story building. If you go about learning how to do this properly, then you slowly become a civil engineer.
Banning China from accessing advanced silicon meant only one thing: that China is now at the frontline of innovation on an open architecture like #RiscV, while America is throwing its money at a dead body like #Intel.
“We like #Ubuntu LTS / #Debian stable because they make your system stable, predictable and easy to maintain, while #Arch and friends make it too easy to break”.
If I had a penny every time I heard this argument, I’d probably be a millionaire by now.
In the meantime, I’ve been forced to migrate from Arch to Ubuntu LTS on my work laptop because the Palo Alto endpoint security crapware (calling it a piece of software would be an offense to anyone who takes software development seriously) is only compatible with Ubuntu LTS. And, without that endpoint security crapware, you are not compliant™.
My Arch system worked flawlessly. Some stuff installed via pacman, some installed via AUR, one system upgrade a week, and everything worked well together.
A few weeks into my adventure with Ubuntu LTS, and I already feel like it’s a castle of matchsticks just one step away from crumbling.
The packages on apt are ancient because the distro is ancient (almost two years old). Want to get reasonably recent versions of Neovim, Node.js, Docker, Firefox or Wayland? Well, are you ok with just forgetting about it?
So I’ve already ended up with a horrific mix of apt, PPAs, backports, Snaps, and just compiling a lot of software from source because (like in the case of Neovim, foot or i3) all the solutions currently supported on Ubuntu LTS are either outdated, broken or incompatible with the rest of the system.
To be clear, I can’t recall the last time that I had to manually compile some popular piece of software from sources on Arch because I was provided with no alternative.
And I don’t even want to think what’s going to happen when Palo Alto finally updates their crap and I can finally run a dist-upgrade. Now I understand why many say “instead of upgrading Debian/Ubuntu, just reinstall it”. Last time I’ve had to install Arch on my personal laptop from scratch, it was in 2016, just after purchasing it.
Do people really use this crap and convince themselves that it’s easier than Arch?
In the past months, more and more companies have forced their users into private arbitration agreements to avoid lawsuits and class actions.
But few have gone as far as #Roku - the device gets completely disabled until the user accepts the new arbitration rules.
Like in previous cases, it’s opt-out rather than opt-in, opt-out requests must be mailed on physical paper to the company itself (but I guess that a fax, a telegram or some smoke signals may work as well), and the opt-out window only lasts a few days. This has become a common pattern - when you don’t want somebody to do something, you just increase the friction of the process to nearly ridiculous levels.
Legislators ought to act fast. The right of suing an offender and call them accountable in front of the law is a fundamental democratic right just like voting. Forced arbitration processes are a denial of our fundamental democratic rights. And we’re letting a bunch of companies be above the law by simply dropping an updated T&Cs email in our box.
I wish that #Python developers didn’t write their libraries with asyncio.get_event_loop() and loop.add_signal_handler everywhere like it’s JavaScript.
I know that managing the lifecycle of your own loops can be a hassle in Python (and I wish that the asyncio API did a better job at it), but writing Python libraries in the async JS flavour is basically a guarantee of being thread-unsafe and thread-incompatible.
add_signal_handler uses the set_wakeup_fd C API under the hood, which only works if the file descriptors are initialized in the interpreter’s main thread.
I’m now working on rewriting the #Telegram integration in #Platypush (it’s been broken since the Telegram bot API migrated to the new asyncio paradigm). Since the new code uses get_event_loop and add_signal_handler everywhere, I have to come up with a complex architecture that involves at least a separate process for the Telegram listener (with its own event loop which uses the bot API), another thread as a bridge to run commands on the loop using run_coroutine_threadsafe, and at least two inter-process queues to send commands and receive responses with the integration thread which runs on the main application process.
To all the Python library developers out there: I know that it’s tempting to use the asyncio API like it’s JavaScript, and forget that your code may run in multi-threaded contexts. But please, try and go the extra step and manage the lifecycle of your own loops. Prefer new_event_loop+set_event_loop over a bare get_event_loop. Avoid add_signal_handler if possible, instead opt for asyncio.Event with an option to specify a compatible event class instance (like threading.Event or multiprocess.Event), so we can easily adapt your library’s synchronization mechanisms to our projects’ concurrency models rather than the other way around.
Many users of your libraries who want to run them in a separate thread will very very grateful for helping you keep their code simpler.
We may still have to use the *_coroutine_threadsafe APIs as a proxy, but at least we won’t have to come up with multi-process architectures and communication protocols to accommodate your library’s constraints.
Under the #GDPR terms, consent or refusal for processing and selling personal data must be given freely.
Users must always be in control of their data and decide what they want to share, without paying fees for this freedom.
You can’t give users a choice between breaking the law (by taking away the possibility of choosing what can be shared), or asking users to pay a premium for law compliance.
Just like thieves don’t get contracts along the lines “you can steal from these shops, and if shop owners want to keep you away from their goods then they have to pay an antitheft fee to make up for your lost theft revenue”.
#Meta’s “privacy tax” is just like Apple’s alleged “3rd-party store tax”: users are not supposed to give a single fuck about the “likely financial loss” that a business will go through if a regulating body finds their practices to be illegal and requires the business model to change.
If revenue acquired through illegal means was never supposed to be there in the first place, then there are no losses to be charged to the consumers.
Four more #Python packages connected to North Korean hackers.
They contain a test.py file that decodes an intermediary DLL which generates a payload (disguised as IconCache.db) which in turn connects to a command-and-control server.
While ordinary citizens are increasingly asked to save energy both during heatwaves and blizzards, #Bitcoin miners won’t give up a single inch when it comes to their alleged right of burning energy to figure out which string has a hash with a certain number of leading zeros - just because a perverse system of financial incentives disguised as a cryptocurrency has decided that this inefficient waste of resources matters more than people consuming energy to heat/light their homes.
When Bratcher talks, you can immediately recognize the sociopath redneck cowboy talking points. The plan for measuring how much energy miners consume is part of a “politically motivated campaign“ from Biden and his administration (not a legitimate attempt of getting transparency into the consumption of shared resources), “an attack against legitimate American businesses seeking to make the lives of bitcoin miners, their employees, and their communities too difficult“ (if they feel like their consumption of energy is justified and proportionate then why measuring it would threaten businesses and those who work there?) and an “attack against personal freedom“ (what about the principle that your freedom ends where somebody else’s freedom begins?).
Proof-of-work has no place in a world with limited resources. It was a good proof-of-concept 15 years ago, and we should have never allowed a whole business model to be built around it. Unfortunately, a tiny but very loud minority who has built their fortunes around this unsustainable business model are now trying to convince us that it’s their right to waste everybody’s energy, and that we should thank them for defending everybody’s freedom.
Remember the names of these folks next time you are asked to reduce your consumption of electricity. And tell your kids about them too - they’ll probably outlive us and inherit a planet that will be more hostile towards life, and they need to know whose fault it was if our planet ended up like that.
Pro #Palestine protest in front of my office today.
I've been stuck inside of the office for a few hours together with my wife and kid, as they also came visiting today.
But I couldn't sympathize more with the protesters.
I've raised ethical questions many times about our choice of doing business with hotels and apartments that stand on stolen lands.
I asked the management several times why we are contributing to stealing revenue away from Palestinians and moving it to those who have been illegally occupying their lands for decades, in violation of many UN resolutions.
I asked several times why we severed our business links with Crimea after Russia illegally occupied it, but people on our website can still still book their holidays on occupied Palestinian territories.
I asked how can we say that we stand so much for diversity, inclusion and justice, while we remain horribly silent on what's happening in the Middle East - maybe gay people are a bit "more equal" than Palestinians, or maybe it's just because initiatives like the gay pride give much more visibility and it's considered less controversial than standing with Muslim people who are dying under the Israeli bombs amid the deafening silence of the West?
All I got back was either silence, or answers along the lines of "the company won't change its position unless it affects its bottom line".
Well, I hope that a few dozens of angry protesters, and their calls for boycotting #Booking, will affect our bottom line and our public image much more than I could do.
For the first time, while we were all trapped inside of our office, I heard some of my colleagues discussing if what Israel is doing is fair - that's usually considered a highly political topic that should be avoided in professional settings. Did it really take a bunch of university students trapping us inside for a couple of hours to wake up and realize that there's a whole world out our shiny bubble, that with great power comes great responsibility, that where and with whom we do business impacts the real world, and that when you're so big you can't afford to just leave politics out, because everything you do at large scale is political?
And I would also like to call out our management for the poor management of the issue.
They blocked all the doors of the office and let nobody in or out for hours.
I asked to walk out and stand in solidarity with the protesters, to no avail. I wrote on our social platform that we should be allowed to have a forum to discuss these issues and bring our message, as employees, to the management, just for my comment to be removed and comments on the original post about the protest being blocked.
If you feel like boycotting Booking after this, I feel your point and I fully understand you. I'd do the same if I wasn't working for them. I wish we had better ways, as employees, to get even our own voices heard.
In the unbelievable world of today, #BDS and #UNRWA are 'terrorists' and the #Israel indiscriminate butchering of people in #Gaza is 'legitimate self-defense'.
#Apple: "If some developers don't want to abide to our store's exploitative rules, they're always free to release their apps as PWAs".
Also Apple: "We're killing PWAs overnight with no notice and no migration plan, from now on they'll just open in a Safari window, and we're going to break their access to notifications and storage. Btw, we're only going to break them in the EU".
The Register used the right term for this act: malicious compliance. Or retaliation against the DMA for forcing them not to be jerks, I guess.
I've followed antitrust rulings in the EU since the early times of Internet Explorer. And I've never, ever seen a company being as uncooperative, retaliatory and invested in aggressive lobbying as Apple. It really makes you wonder whether all the worst sociopaths in the world just decided to go and work for the same employer.
I’m not sure who’s to blame in the #EU for giving up to the lobbying efforts of #Apple and #Microsoft (I can’t think of anything short of public official corruption behind the last minute reversal of the #DMA definition of “gatekeeper” for the two most valuable companies in the world), but these are some consequences of this decision:
If Apple isn’t labelled as a gatekeeper when it comes to #iMessage (an app used by 1.3B people), then they won’t have to comply and open up their walled garden to 3rd-party clients, while, for example, Messenger and WhatsApp will have to.
If Microsoft isn’t labelled as a gatekeeper when it comes to #Edge (a piece of software installed as the default browser on an OS used by at least 1.5B people), then they’ll be free to keep rewriting https:// URLs as microsoft-edge:https:// just for the sake of intercepting everything and breaking compatibility, they’ll no longer have to provide browser selection pop-ups on fresh Windows installations, and they can keep opening all the web views and PWA on Windows devices in their own browser without providing alternatives - while, for example, Chrome and Safari will have to comply.
Shame on the EU for bending to them. Shame on these companies. Shame on their filthy lobbying efforts. Shame on everybody who uses their products.
The DMA and the “gatekeeper” definition was supposed to be the proof that these companies are now run by responsible adults. Being a “gatekeeper” is the acknowledgment that you are running platforms used by billions, and with great power comes great responsibility - towards society, towards the rules of the open market, towards your own competitors.
My employer might be included on the list soon as well, and I’m more than happy to comply. Large tech companies like ours have enjoyed lavish profits and outrageous market shares and ignored anti-competition laws for too long: now it’s time to prove that we’re all grown ups who want to play by the rules.
Instead, Apple and Microsoft have unleashed their overpaid legal counsels and lobbying crews, who have engaged in a pathetic dance to gaslight Brussels officials, and force them to say that one of the largest messaging platforms and one of the most used browser in the world, run by the two companies with the highest evaluation in the world, for some reason are not expected to play by the rules written for everyone else.
Shame on them, and shame on the childish selfish sociopaths who run them.
@fabio
"Following a thorough assessment of all arguments, taking into account input by relevant stakeholders, and after hearing the Digital Markets Advisory Committee, the Commission found that iMessage, Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising do not qualify as gatekeeper services."
@fabio@simon I doubt MS/Apple bamboozled the politicians. It's more likely the politicians are protecting their own personal investments. Happens all of the time.