Posts by Wil Palen

KDE Plasma 6.3 released – and 6.3.1 is already here

lol, y'all sound like a bunch of sentimental greybeards :)

'In the past everything was better.'

I loved KDE3, and yes, they messed up for KDE4. It's also partly the distribution's fault, for shipping KDE4 way too soon. But I think from KDE5 (.6 something) onwards the KDE team has done a remarkable job with shifting dependencies (e.g. Qt4 was radically different from Qt3, but there's many others), shifting requirements like compositing, wayland, audio+video frameworks, all while keeping the good olde xorg stack fully usable.

It's not perfect, and you might not like the direction it is taking, but all-in-all I'd say it's in a pretty good place right now.

oh BTW, you can change the font of the clock nowadays, just right-click and configure.

FuriPhone FLX1: A Debian-powered brick that puts GNOME in your back pocket

Sailfish is dead.

There's nothing new in Sailfish 5 compared to 4, development has slowed to a trickle for years already.

You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

Re: Great article...

Great article, very much on point

Maybe do one for money as well, I can see similarities..

Bitcoin:

1) freedom

2) but scary

Fiat:

1) you can't own it. It's a claim on the bank. You may think you can 'own' paper bills, but they're still just claims to a counterparty.

2) it's about control

Bitcoin worse for the climate than beef, say economists

Re: Lying with numbers

Not sure why you're downvoted, because you're right.

Bitcoin mining is the most green of all industries; using stranded energy (otherwise impossible to use), taking out methane emissions (net negative carbon offset), using energy when there's a surplus, not using it when there's a deficit etc.

Those that criticize bitcoin energy use are also ignoring the energy the entire banking system uses, (estimates vary, but it's an order of magnitude bigger than what bitcoin mining consumes) which bitcoin has the potential to largely replace.

Rust code in Linux kernel looks more likely as language team lead promises support

Re: Is there a reason we need YAPL?

Mozilla's Webrender (Quantum Render)/Servo is made using Rust.

Rust usually rivals C/C++ performance, within a few %

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/Quantum_Render

Click here to see the New Zealand livestream mass-murder vid! This is the internet Facebook, YouTube, Twitter built!

Re: Murder and rape are ALWAYS illegal

Murder is illegal, UNLESS it's called war, THEN it's all of a sudden legal, and in many cases you're marked as unpatriotic or a traitor if you anti-war..

The phone OS that muggers wouldn't touch is back from the dead

Re: Sailfish

You should get the new Sony Xperia X with Sailfish then, butter smooth. And I'm still amazed to see regular updates arriving, even for the older models. That's something the competition just can't equal.

The future of Python: Concurrency devoured, Node.js next on menu

Is the GIL gone yet?

No? Wake me up when it is.

Feature-rich Vivaldi rolls out, offering power users a choice

just great

Have been using Vivaldi for a few months now. It's very fast and it has never crashed on me the last 3 beta releases. I really enjoy the UI color following the color scheme of the visited site!

Some gripes;

F11/Fullscreen - from here I cannot seem to reach the menu or tabs

Save Open Tabs as Session - This includes all tabs from all windows in a session. I'd rather see this implemented as saving all tabs in a single window.

Sick of Chrome vs Firefox? Check out these 3 NEW browsers

Great Innovator

"don't forget that once upon a time IE was the great innovator of the web. For example, IE gave the world Ajax, the ability to refresh certain parts of the page without reloading the whole thing. Without that contribution, the web as we know it would simply not exist."

I just love this thinly veiled sarcasm :)

Penguin porn? NO! Linux folk in #LCA2015 standoff

Re: And this is why #TwitterIsBollocks

nothing more effective than a good crisis to plead for more centralisation

Happy Friday the 13th! It's Programmers' Day

That, is Overflow Day

Larry Ellison: Google is ABSOLUTELY EVIL, but NSA is ESSENTIAL

'''If some people don't like what NSA is doing, Ellison argued, the trick is to vote the spying programs away. "The great thing is that we live in a democracy. If we don't like what NSA is doing, we can just get rid of the government and put in a different government," he said.'''

He is.. insane

Can't agree on a coding style? Maybe the NEW YORK TIMES can help

Re: Dont dis El Reg!

IF (!fucked_up) 8=={

heh I thought this was no start of a compound statement, but instead a single unhappy-face-smiley statement. As in

IF (!fucked_up) 8=={;

This makes the other unhappy face unreachable code though

Fanbois smash iPhone 5s much sooner than iPhone 3s ... but WHY?

Re: Maybe they needed a reason to upgrade to a Nokia

You can pry my Nokia N9 from my cold dead hands!

...unless sent to factory for RMA, which happened twice. Last time I sent it back they replaced everything; body, glass, screen, even the battery. Now this is service.

Unreal: Epic’s would-be Doom... er... Quake killer

Yes that was awesome!

MULTI KILL.. ULTRA KILL.. MONSTER KILL... UNSTOPPABLE :)

Some time ago I've been playing Xonotic which I find quite similar in feel to UT. But I sorely miss the rich selection in commands and taunts UT had. Remember "My house!", "anyone else want some?", "And stay down!", "see ya", "Medic!" ??

BlackBerry's retro-look QWERTY Q5 mobe: Resentment by design

port apps

"BlackBerry is actively encouraging Android developers to port their apps"

before doing so, maybe read this first : http://openwhatsapp.org/

Review: Beagleboard Beaglebone Black

ordering now..

After all the problems I had with the crappy USB host driver (crashes, even when only using ethernet), the BCM2835's half-assed USB hardware host implementation needing software handling of microframe interrupts, eating away at the already limited CPU power, and the low quality of the on-board audio DAC (effectively 10 bits, with regular clicks every second or so) I gave up on the RaspPi for my purposes.

I was already eyeballing the BeagleBone, but was held back by its price. Now this one comes along, I couldn't be happier!

Stop the Microsoft, Skype wedding, screams enraged Cisco in court

Re: Microsoft Lock-In.

I've moved to SIP on Linux, SIP on Android. SIP on older phones. It works, quite nicely even. Now I only have to educate my friends & family and cut through the blank stare I get when trying to explain..

Fedora cooks up new Linux for Raspberry Pi

Re: joe vs. vi

joe FTW!

Embedded systems vendors careless says Metasploit author

investing a little time in finding hardware that supports OpenWRT or OpenEmbedded takes time and maybe a little bit more money, but I feel a little safer because of it..

Linux in 2013: 'Freakishly awesome' – and who needs a fork?

Re: Important style question

Eek. I'm using it illegally for 16 years then (what facial hair length counts as beard?)

World's first petaflops super dumped on scrap heap

forget Crysis

.. Planetside 2 should benefit much more of all that parallelism, maybe even to planet scale :)

(added benefit is that they can scrap the *side from planetside, leaving planet)

Seagate squeezes out 4TB desktop monster

Re: best buy a couple @Danny 14

I thought that was a hip plural with a typo..

When open source eats itself, we win

Re: The good thing about diversity in open source software is...

This is only negative from a abstraction PoV. The ad-hoc mix&mash of electrical signals and peripherals to the SoC is what makes your router cheap.

You confuse purpose built software for general purpose full blown OS distributions.

How to destroy a brand-new Samsung laptop: Boot Linux on it

Re: Just STOP using Ubuntu

"Nothing ever gets fixed"

"Ubuntu fails on so many levels"

So true.. And they are contemplating going rolling-release *shudder*

Google donates 15,000 Raspberry Pis to UK schools

Net loss

Now if only the RaspberryPi wasn't so glitchy and unstable, it would be a benefit. I foresee hours and hours of wasted time because of hunting for bugs that don't exist (at least not in the student's code)

Nokia chucks another $250m at its mobile VC biz

grr

They should start funding Jolla immediately, demmit

Microsoft burgled, only the APPLE iPADS stolen - cops confirm

Amazing

Almost a year after Elop's burning platform speech, and people are still venting their frustration about Nokia's switch to WP. And I understand completely. You can pry my N9 from my cold dead hands!

Up your wormhole: Star Trek Deep Space 9 turns 20

Re: Terry Farrell - Dutch?

I think they confused her with Nicole de Boer, the 2nd Trill

Re: B5 was horrible

You think Lexx is 'sheit'?? It's genius! You have to be in the right mood though

Why do Smart TV UIs suck?

3 years back

.. when I decided to buy a TV, I went into a shop and decided on a certain brand and model range.

I asked the guy what the difference was between the various models in that range, since they looked the same, but had a quite steep price difference. He answered that it was the software. Without hesitation I settled on the cheapest model.

Since then XBMC has only improved, my phone has become quite a fancy remote control and with a few keystrokes I can switch to a full PC desktop w. browser for those few sources that are not accessible through the media center.

Extra bonus points: when I get a phonecall it mutes the music or pauses the video. awesome!

Woz: Microsoft's innovation lead 'worries me greatly'

sh!tlisted

Instead of innovating, they're actively stifling innovation.

As long as Apple 'innovates' by patenting stuff like this http://mashable.com/2012/11/16/apple-page-turn-patent/

.. and claiming they came up with it, they'll be on my sh!tlist

Software sucks these days - and just maybe it's all YOUR fault

It's the suits stupid

Judging from the way the contracting world works, I'm not surprised.

With few exceptions, all these contracting bureaus / 'headhunters' do is count the technical terms on your CV and match them against the terms on the function requirements. The highest number wins, regardless of actual competence (which is of course harder to measure, but hey, that should be their job)

So guy #1 with 2 years experience in framework A wins over girl #2 with 5 years experiene in similar frameworks B, C, D and E...

KDE 'annoys the hell of' Linus Torvalds

strange defaults

I like and use KDE, but the defaults you get on a fresh desktop are pretty strange. Trippy, for sure.

I mean, a blue shiny aura around windows, with a dull grey desktop and application look, that's just plain ugly. It's changeable though, once you find out where. Also, some KDE applications have very strange initial sizes, both the application window itself and the internal layout.

There's only one chance to make a first impression, and currently KDE fails, needlessly.

Windows 8 and the ‘Dad test’ stunts

Off topic maybe, but you have to admire the ninja skills of Microsoft to sell a mere theme as a totally new OS..

Linux-based Tizen mobile platform lives!

For me personally the N9 is far ahead of the competition, and for my next phone I will most likely go with Jolla or Tizen if it stays close to what Harmattan/N9 offers right now. With shelving Qt, Nokia threw away one of the best platforms that had a common platform for both smartphones and featurephones, which could have benefitted hugely from a trickle-down effect. Besides, those who dabbled with Qt/QML realize that it offers what HTML5 promises, but doesn't deliver.

And, who cares about millions of apps if most is substandard anyway. The iOS6 maps app debacle is just one example. Just compare that to what the N9 gives you for free, with lifetime updates, and no sucking sound emanating from your wallet. And not to mention walled gardens and obsessive corporate control. And on the other side of the fence, the android fans seem to be more focused on # of cores and clock ticks, like that matters. Or is it trendy to be mining bitcoins on the phone nowadays and in the process scorch the family jewels?