Carol Chen cybette@identi.ca

https://dot.kde.org/2018/02/14/kde-love-story-translating-kalzium-chinese

"A KDE Love Story: Translating Kalzium into Chinese", an amazing journey as told by Franklin Weng.

#ILoveFS

府城舊與新 Old and New in Tainan

http://media.academia.tw/u/trc/m/tainan-3493/
http://media.academia.tw/u/trc/m/tainan-3498/

There is a new KDE Slimbook on sale as from today. The KDE Slimbook II is svelte and smart on the outside, but powerful and fast on the inside.

To start with, it comes with a choice between an Intel i5: 2.5 GHz Turbo Boost 3.1 GHz - 3M Cache CPU, or an Intel i7: 2.7 GHz Turbo Boost 3.5 GHz with a 4M Cache. This makes the KDE Slimbook II 15% faster on average than its predecessor. The RAM has also been upgraded, and the KDE Slimbook now sports 4, 8, or 16 GBs of DDR4 RAM which is 33% faster than the DDR3 RAM installed on last year's model.

Other things to look forward to include:

• a crisp FullHD 13.3'' screen,
• the dual hard drive bay that gives you room for a second hard disk,
• a bigger multi-touch touchpad that supports all kinds of gestures and clicks,
• a slick backlit keyboard, more powerful WiFi antennas,
• and 3 full-sized USB ports, one of which is the new reversible USB-C standard.

You can check out the KDE Slimbook's full specs here (note that the Katana II is made by the same people and is the same hardware, but does not come with KDE neon pre-installed and pre-configured).

The KDE community has worked closely with Slimbook to make sure that everything works as it should. After test-running the KDE Slimbook II extensively, we can confirm it is sleek, we can confirm it is powerful, and we can confirm that beginners and power users alike will enjoy this full-featured and modern Plasma-based laptop.

dot.kde.org/2018/02/08/new-kde-slimbook-ii-sleek-and-powerful-plasma-based-ultrabook

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Niiiice =)

New year, new releases!

Today I'm releasing a new version of AkariXB, my bot for the decentralized Jabber/XMPP network with a graphical interface.

Some of the main changes include:

• Honor "Send Messages To" setting in Activities.
• Log outgoing private messages in corresponding chat module tab.
• Ability to detach processes for commands of "Run program" type. *** Previously defined commands of this type will need to be reconfigured. *** (This means it can launch GUI programs).
• Keyword-based commands will list possible queries when no parameter is given.
• Qt 4 is no longer supported.

Release post: jancoding.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/akarixb-v0-5-is-out

Cheers! 🤖 beep!!

Phew!

HPR on the radio stated that they haven't received any emergency broadcast and officials were tweeting there is no alarm before I received this alert.

However, this alert did test that Hawaii's emergency management agency's (HEMA) website can't handle the flood of traffic from such alerts. I wonder if that was what they were really testing...

Like every year, I've just renewed my support for Software Freedom Conservancy.

The victims people at Conservancy are doing the hard and/or boring work of dealing with lawyers, accountants and other undeads so that we hackers don't have to, and this alone should be enough to earn our support.

btw, there are still a few days, until january 15th, to have your donations count twice thanks to a matching donation.

[Edit: fixed formatting broken by the passage friendica -> pump.io]

RT Charles Worthington‏ @cew821

Happy holidays, pumpers! 🎄

I've just released a new version of my Pump.io client, Dianara. The main change since v1.4.0 is the ability to save and restore drafts in the post editor. (Full CHANGELOG is here)

As announced some time ago, v1.3.7 was the last version to support Qt 4.x. Qt 5 is required since 1.4.0. The bad news is that, at this time, users of distributions such as Debian 9 can't build with the version of QOAuth present in their repositories, based on Qt 4. Current Debian Testing/Sid is fine though. Debian 9 might get the required versions in backports at some point.

Release post: https://jancoding.wordpress.com/2017/12/30/release-of-dianara-v1-4-1/

Cheers! 🙌w

EDIT: I've found this great information source to keep track of package versions across GNU distributions: repology.org/metapackage/dianara/versions Neat!

Meltdown and Spectre

https://xkcd.com/1938/

Happy 🐃 year, pumpers! =)

🖖

Happy solstice!!

Enjoy your gift! Even if that keyboard looks painful xD

「科技藝術實驗計畫」徵選，自即日起開放申請至2017年12月29日止。

關於徵件的說明與辦法請見連結：
https://drive.google.com/open?id=17eALao94wxLqod9CC9TXlGAEAml_Nw_z

相關申請疑問或參考表格等請訊息：
labdptw@gmail.com

自由時報 2017-11-20 報導：
〈文化部「科技藝術實驗創新輔導推動計畫」起跑 年底前徵召6團隊〉
http://ent.ltn.com.tw/news/breakingnews/2258854

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文化部委託超維度互動股份有限公司辦理「科技藝術實驗創新及輔導推動計畫」,工作包括徵選優秀團隊提出科技藝術實驗計畫。在團隊創作實驗期間,並提供資源及專業諮詢,陪伴輔導各團隊進行實驗計畫之創作及執行。

計畫申請應以科技藝術為主要對象、實驗性為核心。創作計畫的團隊組成不限制所串聯的、合作的領域與範疇，包含國內外等。可盡情想像外，申請案也盡可能有完整的構想、以及細節規劃。每案最高補助額度為新臺幣 60 萬元整。

https://youtu.be/orpmOTAvS80

法羅群島是丹麥的自治領地，位於挪威和冰島之間。影片中小島屬於這群島。島民在旁鄰的無人島上放牧綿羊。一年有幾次坐人力纜車到島上圈羊回來拍賣，收入作公益。影片有些長，人文地景有意思。

"Stakkurin is a sea stack, hundreds of feet above the ocean, at the northernmost point of the island of Streymoy in the Faroe Islands.

The owners of Stakkurin have sheep grazing there and once a year they use a human pulled cable car to go out and bring back the sheep to sell at an auction in the village Tjörnuvík.

The money from auction goes to benefit the community of Tjörnuvík, and was used to build the community house."

via https://social.coop/@risabee/99079497566501267

A new phone or computer can be the highlight of the holidays,but with proprietary software lurking under the wrapping paper,your thoughtful gift may be more naughty than nice…This guide introduces better devices from ethical companies,no creepy remote deletion of files or punitive and mean rules about copying and sharing.Just products and software that respect the freedom and privacy of your loved ones.
https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v8/

via https://diasp.eu/posts/6350840 

Who knew that, as part of working on linux-libre-firmware, I'd also need to resurrect development of an assembler that's been unmaintained for 20 years?

Fed up with YouTube? Let’s build a free libre alternative that combines federated hosting and peer2peer viewing.
Learn more and support the PeerTube project here: https://framatube.org/#en

My new backpack!



I started this project in august (pattern and material list) / september (actual sewing) and finally, this evening, it is usable!

It wasn't the only project running (not even the only *sewing* project), but still it took enough time that I'm glad I can finally use it, even if right now it doesn't really have any real advantage over what I could have bought from any store for less money than I spent on materials (but I have many leftovers — and plans to use at least part of them)

It also was pretty challenging, both for my skills and for my home sewing machine, and there are a few things that could have been done better (and maybe they will, in the next backpack I'll make?)



But is it really done? No, that webbing in the front (and sides) is there to attach extensions, and I have at least a couple planned (one easy, that I will do soon, and another complex one that will wait until I've recovered from the project fatigue with something completely different).

I'm also still waiting for the buckles that will close the compression straps in the front (not that they are really needed now that there are no extensions to keep compressed), but they are details I can take care of later.

P.S. I took pictures and notes, and the pattern is already on git, but a full tutorial will have to wait, probably even months, as now I have a bit of sewing backlog.

http://media.academia.tw/u/trc/collection/nan-shan-cemetery/

I asked Jeanette about her plan for the weekend when I met her at the conference banquet. The conference had brought friends and acquaintances to Tainan, my home city. When she mentioned Oliver were planning to take her and David to a cemetery Saturday morning, I immediately asked to join them. Oliver has been surveying and researching tombstones all over Taiwan. His findings are presented in meetings like this one in Tainan. Several times I sit in his talks. I knew I would not want to miss a field trip organized by him.

We met at 8:30 at Jeanette's hotel. By car, about 9 am we were already at the Nan Shan Cemetery. Oliver expertly walked us into a maze of old and not so old tombs in this massive public cemetery, pointing out things to look at and explaining them on the way. He took us to a tomb from the Dutch period, probably the oldest tomb in the island. From the inscription on the tombstone the person was buried in 1642 (崇禎十五年), a time this island was yet to be claimed by any Chinese emperor. The tombstone proclaimed however the buried person, a Chinese, a subject of the Ming emperor (皇明). The tomb is now a designated cultural site (Class 3). We explored a part of the cemetery mostly used in the Japanese period. The Japanese tomb styles there are totally new to me. The three-hour field trip ended at the Christian quarter. Oliver led us to the tomb of Thomas Barclay (1849 -- 1935, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Barclay_(missionary)) and those of other missionaries. Young missionaries from the England and Scotland would serve long years in this island called Formosa. Some would die soon after they arrived. Many of them would rest here in Tainan.

It was very crowded on the train. I was on the first car and was squeezed to the very front. Standing beside the driver booth, by luck I saw this young boy and the driver gazing each other. People on the street were waving hands at us, and taking pictures of the train as it slowly left Pingsi (平溪).

Earlier we had lunch at Wanggu (望古), an obscure stop on the Pingsi line. The occasion was the 70th birthday of Prof. Lin, a mentor of many of those who were gathering that day.

http://media.academia.tw/u/trc/collection/pingsi-station/

Following up on an earlier thought about Mastodon/identica/pumpio/pubhubsuburb/etc...

I suppose that I am less convinced than are others about the notion that 'federatable services' ought to be identical with 'everyone run your own server'. In truth, what I want from a communication platform is the ability to _choose_ plus the existence of some service provider that I can align with.

How many email providers are there? Statistics are a bit hard to come by, but this bundle of stats: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-the-major-Email-Service-Providers suggests that there are eleventeen or a dozen that, collectively, account for the majority of the email sent every day.

That's fine; that's enough to ensure that they are interoperable, and for the majority of people who cannot and should not spend their time worrying about adminning their own MTA, they have choices. The choice threshold also means that there are niche players, such as the lavabit-like options for those with specific technical requirements.

I would greatly prefer it if the next iteration of federated microblogging would focus on standing up a good service and allowing their competitor to do the same. No significant advantage comes from there being 700 Mastodon services to choose from, and my gut feeling is that the initial "sign up for pump.io and get shuttled to random.domain.name for the rest of your life" deployment strategy hurt more than it helped.

It would have been better, in my estimation, to find a sustainable home for identi.ca as a high-quality hub, and to allow other hubs to grow up on their own if their communities warranted them.

Now we have Mastodon, repeating that same initial-barrier-to-entry mistake: "want to use the service? First sit through a boring lecture about network protocols, then go look at a list of third-party services that we claim no responsibility for. Good luck, sucker".

And what's the gain from forcing new users through that cheese grater? DO they get a better service or experience at the other end of it? No, certainly not. Do they end up rolling the dice and choosing a service that they then are unhappy with hundreds of messages later, either because it goes down or changes its T&C? Maybe. And that's a minus.

Bottom line: If we had eleventeen good, interoperable microblogging services available on the web today, that'd be plenty. It's a shame that we don't have any large, freedom-centered organizations willing to run one — instead we have the debilitating 'choose-your-mom-and-pop-adventure' problem and a new protocol suite / software stack every five years.

But maybe that's just me.