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CW: This is how I witnessed the development of Friendica, Hubzilla, Streams & Co.
Allow me to digress from the usual topic on this channel once more.
I'm pretty sure that no human being on this planet has created nearly as many federated social platforms as @mike. But all these (actually not always so) different platforms can be a bit confusing. Even I may be wrong here and there, but I'll try to make some sense of them by putting them into a kind of chronology.
So first, there was #Friendica. Only that it started out under the name of #Mistpark. I'll get to the name later.
Remember #Diaspora? Remember summer 2010 when the crowdfunding run was launched so that those four guys could spend all their time creating a free, #OpenSource, decentralised, federated social network (a.k.a. #Facebook killer) which they wanted to name Diaspora*?
Well, they unknowingly wanted to re-invent the wheel. #StatusNet was already there, #GNUsocial was already there, and especially, Mistpark was already there with a 1.x release and more powerful than both, actually, more powerful than Diaspora would ever become. I think Mistpark even already had Diaspora*'s aspects, only that they were called groups.
As for its concept, Mistpark went beyond that of Diaspora*. Mistpark didn't only want a bunch of instances ("nodes" in this case) of its own kind to connect with one another, it also wanted to federate with everything else that moved, be it e-mail, be it StatusNet, be it Twitter, be it whatever.
The first name change was from Mistpark to #Friendika. The reason was that the original name sounded repelling to German speakers. "Mist" means "fog" in English, but "dung" or "manure" in German, not to mention that it's a German curse word.
When Diaspora* was finally there, Friendika didn't see it as competition, it saw it as another federation target. To this day, Friendica is fully federated with Diaspora*, and that has exclusively been the work of the Friendika developers who studied Diaspora*'s source code and reverse-engineer it because it didn't have an API.
Probably the biggest coup was the bidirectional federation with Facebook. This was what everyone was waiting for. This, however, was also where the trouble started. Facebook didn't want to be federated with a non-commercial social network and started taking defensive measures. Also, Friendica users (the second name change was through meanwhile) who used the Facebook connector had their entire and often very busy Facebook timelines mirrored onto Friendica nodes, one of the reasons why even nodes on powerful root servers often had to close new registrations even though they only had a little over a hundred users. So there were several reasons why Facebook federation was axed again.
Internally, Friendica uses its own protocol named #DFRN. But I guess Mike had meanwhile seen it as a dead end, also because he had a new idea: #NomadicIdentity, not only the ability to easily take your account from one instance to another, but the possibility to have it on multiple instances at the same time, keeping the copies in sync.
That's why he laid the foundation for a new protocol that could do that: #Zot.
And with it came the next social platform. It was first just simply named Red from Spanish "red" = "net". Red was based on Zot from the beginning, and as an experimental platform, it only understood Zot. On Friendica which was now running at full steam on dozens upon dozens of nodes, and which Mike had passed on to the community, the development was followed with interest. And just like later platforms, I think Red actually got a few small public instances because someone really wanted to try it out. Red eventually changed its name to #RedMatrix.
Also, Red didn't just want to be a social network like Friendica. The idea was rather to have a "social content management system" that could do just about everything you could do with a website and/or a cloud server. Third-party federation was slightly reduced, connections to commercial platforms didn't come back. But as Red evolved, the Diaspora* connector was included which was also used to federate Red with Friendica.
From the Red Matrix emerged #Hubzilla, the Swiss Army knife of the #Fediverse. Still today, its possibilities have rarely ever been fleshed out: not only microblogging, but macroblogging, article publication, websites, wikis (no, I'm not kidding), #WebDAV, #CalDAV and #CardDAV server and so forth.
Next to the nomadic identity that came with Zot, Hubzilla introduced another killer feature: one account, many separate channels. Each one of these channels is basically like one Friendica account. You can have multiple fully separate identities on one account, and nobody (except the instance admin) can tell that they're all you. So this goes way beyond Friendica's multiple profiles. By the way, Hubzilla still has multiple profiles per channel.
Some say that the Red Matrix was renamed Hubzilla. This isn't true. Hubzilla is a fork of the Red Matrix, one could say it was a stable snapshot of the Red Matrix.
For the development of the Red Matrix continued. Planned advancements on Zot couldn't be tested on stable Hubzilla, they needed their own testbed. Eventually, the last Red Matrix instance was Mike's personal one with himself as the only user. It still federated with Friendica and, of course, Hubzilla.
In the meantime, #ActivityPub came along. It wasn't just another obscure networking protocol, though, because #Mastodon made it huge. So at least Friendica and Hubzilla had to adopt it. Friendica firmly integrated it. Hubzilla made it into an app just like all other protocols that aren't Zot because they stand in the way of fully nomadic identity. By the way, both profited from its introduction because the federation between each other no longer had to use the Diaspora* protocol.
For the next advancements of Zot, two new platforms were forked from the Red Matrix or Hubzilla. At this point, Mike wasn't involved with Hubzilla anymore either. First, there was #Osada, an early testbed for what would become #Zot6, but still with ActivityPub. For pure Zot6, #Zap followed suit. Most connectors that are neither Zot nor ActivityPub, including the one to Diaspora*, weren't taken over, as were many of Hubzilla's extra abilities (websites, articles, wiki, CardDAV, two parallel calendar systems etc.) to keep it slim. It did get to keep the various types of channels as well as one CalDAV server and the WebDAV connection, though.
Eventually, when Mike handed them over to the community, they used the exact same code base. The only differences between Osada and Zap was whether or not the admin had ActivityPub on (Osada) or off (Zap) and the name.
As having two different names for the same thing, depending on the instance configuration, Osada was discontinued in favour of Zap which now included ActivityPub itself. In the meantime, Zot6 became stable and was backported into Hubzilla which thereby became fully compatible to Zap, only that what Hubzilla can that Zap can't cannot be mirrored to Zap.
Then Osada re-emerged as Zap's unstable branch. Along with it came a new Red Matrix which, as far as I could see, was now an even more purist, even more unstable branch that only served for testing Zot8 and lacked all other protocols.
To top this off, in 2020, Zap itself got a stable branch even more intended for productive use. For this purpose, the name Mistpark was dusted off. The new stable branch was named #Mistpark2020 or simply #Misty. Misty was the first of its kind to not even get an announcement anymore, though. Its home page on Zotlabs disappeared along with Zotlabs before it could be filled with any useful information.
Two things were interesting: Red Matrix, Osada, Zap and Misty were based on various states of the same code base. It was possible to switch from one to another by rebasing the local code repository on your server. This became obvious through instances that carry the name of one project but run another one.
It must have been in 2021 when #Roadhouse showed up, again, unannounced. It seemed to be nothing more than a concept for the next generation of distributed social platforms. Roadhouse was the first of its kind to use the #Nomad protocol which, I guess, is forked from #Zot because it serves the same purpose. It got its own home page on Zotlabs which remained as uninformational as Misty's.
And then the most recent name popped up: #Streams. At first, it was even less clear what Streams was supposed to be and what set it apart from Roadhouse, not to mention Red Matrix, Osada, Zap and Misty, also because Zotlabs didn't say what Streams was either.
But I guess Streams' purpose has emerged in the meantime through word-of-mouth: It's the experimental successor of all five and the solution to this maze of names. Streams isn't even a product with a name, it's a concept that uses Nomad for nomadic identity and that is in constant flux, hence Streams. The idea was to do away with fixed names to get rid of the previous chaos. Everyone can name whatever they do with Streams however they want.
There is currently only one more or less public Streams instance, but it still carries "Stream" in its name. At least two more instances which may be private are named something with "Streams", too. So whether Mike wants or not, Streams has become a name of its own, and people use it.
How many Streams instances exactly exist right now is hard to tell, even from Communities pages on Streams instances or Sites pages on older platforms, because they don't necessarily identify themselves as Streams instances. So if you go through one of these pages, and there are names in the Projects column which you don't know as Fediverse platforms, check out what's behind them. It's often only one instance. Open the instance, click its burger menu, and if there's a Communities link, it's a Streams instance. I've discovered a lot of Streams instances not named anything with Streams this way. Private instances included, I guess Streams must have more than a dozen instances already.
There has even already been a request to launch a Streams support forum much like the one for Hubzilla; after all, Streams still supports forums. It's safe to say that Streams is doing quite well for something so obscure.
Feature-wise, Streams is the same as Zap and Misty.
But what became of the six platforms between Hubzilla and Streams?- Red Matrix kept having only this one single-user instance because nobody else dared to touch it and set up another instance. It's a Zap instance now as far as I can see.
- Osada never really took off, Zap probably did only after Osada was merged into it, and some Osada instances became Zap instances. This explains why Zap has got comparably many instances. Most of them, however, are tiny, probably private and utterly undermaintained as they run rather old Zap versions. Zap only lives by numbers, and it's the only one of the five listed on Fediverse Observer. Also, while the FediDB lists all five, it only knows that one Dominican public Zap instance and none of the others (looking through its connected sites reveals many unlisted instances of Zot-based networks, by the way). Still, it seems to be on the deathbed, being superseded by Streams, experimental as the latter may be.
There still seem to be a very few running Osada instances, but Osada can be considered dead as the focus is on Streams now. - Misty didn't take off either, even though it was considered more stable and more production-grade than Zap. This time, the reason may simply be because Misty got zero advertising, so nobody heard about it, probably not even some of the Zap crowd. Misty never had many instances, they weren't properly advertised either (the same applies to most Zap instances, by the way), and Misty's death knell may have been the unannounced shutdown of its largest instance. Basically, there was little room for Misty next to less obscure Zap.
- Roadhouse didn't even manage to get much limelight before Streams appeared shortly afterwards. In both cases, the only way to find out what they were and what they did was by either studying the source code or installing a private instance. Streams, however, had the advantage of being even newer. The-Federation.info knows exactly one German Roadhouse instance which was originally set up as Misty and has meanwhile been upgraded beyond Roadhouse to Streams, and there only seems to be one remaining unlisted Roadhouse instance.
- I've seen another result of an upgrade from Zap to Misty. So it's safe to assume that you can upgrade all five to Streams. If this is the case, then now that Streams is here, it probably isn't worth spreading the developer community across six almost identical platforms. Basically, Streams has become the latest version of Red Matrix, Osada, Zap, Misty and Roadhouse.
- At least Red Matrix, Osada, Zap and Misty are still being maintained in a sense, though. All four got the same small Git commit from Mike a good month ago. Roadhouse got one four months ago.
As of now, Friendica is still going strong, so is Hubzilla, and Streams seems to be cleaning up the mess that came after Hubzilla.
If you really want to try out something with Zot, my current recommendation is Hubzilla, even if it may seem bloated and cumbersome to you, even if you'll never harness its full power. Many of its extra functions are additional apps and switched off by default; this includes ActivityPub, by the way, this is important to know.
It's hard to find a public Streams instance with open registrations currently, much less multiple ones that'd be required for a nomadic identity. Neither Fediverse.party nor the FediDB nor The-Federation.info nor Fediverse.info even knows Streams, and existing Streams instances usually don't identify to other Fediverse servers as Streams instances. It's still a rather underground and grass-roots project with no publicity at all. As Streams is rather experimental, however, you may want a nomadic home on at least two instances to have an instant backup, should one of them shut down.
Zap has got exactly one instance open to the public, and seeing as Zap may be shrinking rather than growing, I don't expect this to change. Again, due to Zap's still small size and unclear future, I wouldn't recommend using it without nomadic identity as a safety net.
As for Osada or Misty, good luck finding an instance to join, much less one that's here to stay and ideally be upgraded to Streams one day.
Hubzilla may not be as bleeding-edge as Streams, and it may be overkill for your purposes if Zap or Streams would be sufficient, but it's stable, it's big enough, it's established, and it's different enough from Streams to not be endangered by it. I mean, Hubzilla hasn't managed to kill off Friendica either, right? - Red Matrix kept having only this one single-user instance because nobody else dared to touch it and set up another instance. It's a Zap instance now as far as I can see.
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tl;dr: Hubzilla has had at least some of this for over a decade now. And it won't replace any of it with a new standard tailor-made for Mastodon.
@silverpill If you look past projects based on ActivityPub and at projects that have ActivityPub as an additional protocol, some of this already exists.- Data portability. In my opinion, this is the most important problem. I'm in favor of FEP-ef61, which also solves identity portability and unlocks many new features.
Exists in the shape of nomadic identity. Invented by @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ in 2011 with his Zot protocol and first deplayed in 2012 with the Red Matrix, nowadays known as Hubzilla. Also available on (streams), Mike's current project at the end of a string of forks from Hubzilla, now based on the Nomad protocol.
Mike would like to see nomadic identity and other special features of the Zot and Nomad protocols included in the ActivityPub protocol. He has actually submitted a number of proposals for this. They were all rejected. Even though he is a protocol developer first and foremost, and he has both created and worked on more Fediverse protocols than anyone else, so he should be considered competent.
Nomadic identity with ActivityPub won't come unless either Evan Prodromou and the W3C commission cave in and allow Mike's suggestions, or someone re-invents the wheel from scratch in a way that's utterly incompatible to Hubzilla and (streams). And it won't come to Mastodon unless Eugen Rochko can imply that Mastodon has had it first.
And there will never be a nomadic identity standard that meets Mike's requirements as well as Eugen's wishes.- End-to-end encryption. MLS has become a standard, and it would be wise to adopt it. Issue 3 at fediverse-ideas provides a good overview of what we have at the moment (not much). Some variation of FEP-ae97 is likely needed to make end-to-end encryption work.
AFAIK, all three of Mike's still existing projects, Friendica from 2010, Hubzilla from 2012/2015 and (streams) from 2021, have it. Optionally, but still. I think Friendica actually advertises military-grade encryption.- Plugins. Something like Pleroma MRF, but cross-platform (e.g. Wasm-based). Also, pluggable timeline algorithms.
Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have had support for add-ons, including third-party add-ons, plus a number of official add-ons since their respective inceptions. If you want a cross-platform add-on standard, I hope you don't expect these three to throw their own standards over board in favour of the new standard. Otherwise, good luck developing a replacement for Pubcrawl that makes Zot-based Hubzilla compatible with ActivityPub while working on ActivityPub-based Mastodon just the same. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) rely on add-ons for all federation beyond their respective base protocols (DFRN, Zot, Nomad).- Groups. We have several competing standards for groups: FEP-1b12, FEP-400e, Mastodon developers are working on their own standard. It would be nice to converge on a single standard, that also supports private groups.
Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have had support for discussion groups/forums since their respective inception. On Friendica, a group is a user account with special settings; on Hubzilla and (streams), it's a channel with special settings. In addition, especially Hubzilla and (streams) have access permission control on a level that most people for whom the Fediverse is only ActivityPub couldn't imagine in their wildest dreams. All three can be used by users from all over the Fediverse already now.
Good luck forcing Friendica to give up its 13-year-old standard that's used by Fediverse News, just to name one, and Hubzilla to give up its 11-year-old standard that blows everything else but what (streams) does out of the water. Good luck forcing them to adopt something inferior.
On the other hand, good luck forcing Lemmy and /kbin to switch to a wholly different standard. Don't forget that these two exist as well. And good luck having the Fediverse outside of Hubzilla and (streams) adopt both server-side and client-side OpenWebAuth.
And I'm not even talking about how different Fediverse projects handle threads differently. Mastodon has a Twitter-like thread structure: many posts, tied together with mentiones. Just about everything that's built on ActivityPub has taken this over. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have a Facebook/blog/Tumblr-like thread structure: one post, the start post, and many comments which aren't posts. It's similar on Lemmy and /kbin which are Reddit clones, only that they don't allow thread starters to moderate their own threads.- Quoting. FEP-e232 is a proposed standard, but most fediverse applications still use non-standard properties. Mastodon developers are trying to invent something completely different.
This is something that almost the whole Fediverse has implemented, save for Mastodon.
And again, Friendica has had quotes since its inception in 2010, almost six years before Mastodon was launched (which, by the way, federated with Friendica and Hubzilla on the spot). Hubzilla has had quotes since 2012, inherited from Friendica. Their way of quoting is dead-simple: BBcode.[quote][/quote](streams) supports Markdown and HTML in addition to BBcode, but otherwise it's the same.
Oh, and by the way: Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have also supported quote-posts a.k.a. quote-tweets a.k.a. quote-toots a.k.a. quote-boosts from their very beginnings.- Markets. So far there's only one server implementation capable of processing payments.
At least two. Hubzilla has a payment add-on, too. It isn't installed on all hubs, but it's there.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CWFedisplaining #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #ActivityPub #Friendica #DFRN #Hubzilla #Zot #Streams #(streams) #Nomad #Lemmy #kbin #/kbin #NomadicIdentity #OpenWebAuth #Group #Groups #Forum #Forums #Quote #Quotes #Encryption #E2EE #E2EEncryption -
Is it time to ditch Gulp + SCSS for my #Drupal 11 projects? 🤔
As a back-end dev who usually avoids the theme layer, I’m looking at Atomic Design with Tailwind and Storybook. The idea of building in a sandbox instead of fighting global CSS sounds like a dream, but the Webpack/SDC overhead is giving me pause.
Has anyone made this jump? Is it a developer's paradise or just a shiny new version of the same old front-end headaches?
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Is it time to ditch Gulp + SCSS for my #Drupal 11 projects? 🤔
As a back-end dev who usually avoids the theme layer, I’m looking at Atomic Design with Tailwind and Storybook. The idea of building in a sandbox instead of fighting global CSS sounds like a dream, but the Webpack/SDC overhead is giving me pause.
Has anyone made this jump? Is it a developer's paradise or just a shiny new version of the same old front-end headaches?
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The problem is that most companies with the resources to properly implement role fluidity only want to hire "unicorns." Having worked in hybrid roles at smaller companies before and after the widespread adoption of LLMs, I must say that it's a recipe for burnout. This is not only because it's difficult to assess the quality of your work, but also because, in practice, companies don't care much about documentation. In reality, you'd mostly be a software developer doing some documentation in your "free time."
Another problem with this model of a fluid software documentation team is that it assumes there are or will be software companies willing to prioritize documentation as a sector that deserves its own department. However, technical writers are often placed under the product umbrella, which isn't necessarily bad. In fact, it's much better than being placed under "marketing." Unfortunately, if role fluidity ever becomes the norm, I'm afraid it will most likely start with engineering.
https://passo.uno/docs-team-of-the-future/
#TechnicalWriting #SoftwareDocumentation #Programming #SoftwareDevelopment #AI #LLMs
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Tried out Highscore (formerly GNOME Games) on my OnePlus 6T via the Flatpak developer builds under GNOME Mobile — and wow, it runs beautifully on a touch-based mobile form factor! 💜🎮
Without a physical gamepad, it shows a virtual one on screen. But as soon as I connect my 8BitDo Micro controller, it switches seamlessly — virtual gamepad disappears and I'm playing with real controls. Just works™.
🔗 Code: https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/highscore
👾 Maintainer: @alice
#GNOME #Highscore #RetroGaming -
I don't usually think of #DoubleFine as a tech showpiece kinda developer but #Keeper might be the most "wow I'm glad I have an OLED monitor" game I've played.
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So Jay Graber is stepping down from CEO of Bluesky. I have to say I'm not surprised. She's definatly got more developer energy then CEO energy tbh. Plus how she responded to genuine concerns over transphobia on teh platform was just horrendious.
I'm not crazy about the choice of having a venture capitalist as the temporary fill in. But he is assuming this role termporarily. Let's hope this doesn't turn into another MAGA cesspool like Twitter.
https://nerdist.com/article/jay-graber-steps-down-as-bluesky-ceo/
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I'm looking at the <time> HTML element and I'm confused about the datetime attribute.
I have a definite start, and a duration. What should I put in the datetime attribute? According to the MDN page, I can put a timestamp OR a duration, but not both...
Here's an example:
<span>Concert ran from <time datetime="2024-06-15T20:00-0500" title="2024-06-16T01:00+00">8 to 11 pm, Jun 15th 2024</time></span>
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/time
Thoughts? #lazyweb #html5 #semantichtml
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I am unable to view or even edit my sent posts in TweeseCake with Blob.cat! I have no idea why. Maybe, it's different enough from Mastodon (the actual network that TweeseCake is meant to work with) that it won't allow me to do it. Sometimes, I honestly have half a mind to just give up all social networking accept Dreamwidth, because it's the only place that is completely accessible. I don't have to beg developers to make things screenreader-friendly, or hope it will work with this client or that website because I can't do x on the main one, or that y feature that worked on one site will be accessible on the next one. It just works. Say what you like about Facebook, but the Basic Mobile site (not app) worked. I hardly had any problem with it. Then, they closed it, and I left because their main site is a nightmare to work with. Now, I'm in the Fediverse, feeling as if I'm using the main Facebook site all over again!
I don't blame the administrators of friendica.world or blob.cat. It's not their fault. They're just working with what they have. Both are wonderful human beings who have been very kind to me. It's not even the fault of the developers of both sites. It makes sense, when you're a small business or a single developer, not to know about things such as accessibility. I just wish more people would learn and/or write things in semantic html or offer some kind of text-only or basic version of their site. I know that Deque University and Geeks4Geeks teach accessibility and teach html with accessibility included, respectively, but I guess other sites and books don't. As for TweeseCake, this is an excellent client for the blind that works well with Friendica and probably even better with Mastodon. But again, it's by a single developer. While changes are coming, people do have lives and other committments, and one person can't be expected to work as quickly as a huge company.
By the way, my Dreamwidth account is here. I must update it slightly, as I have some new entries to post for the month.
#accessibility #Akkoma #blind #Facebook #Fediverse #fediverse #Friendica #html #Mastodon #NVDA #ScreenReaders #SemanticHTML #TweeseCake #WCAG #Windows
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AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup – April 2026
Introduction
Hi, and welcome to another edition of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup!
This time we’ll have a look at what has been going on in the community and on the platform in April.
Without further ado, let us head over to the news!
Software News
AirPrint
This is a printer utility for AmigaOS 4.
According to the author:
“This is only released through the Forum of http://www.amigans.net for Alpha testing. Still early stage, but work is ongoing.”
Release 0.36A:
1. Printer spooler directory should work properly now, this caused a lot of
problems.2. Printers was found trough search function, but printer properties was not
added correctly or not found. Should be working better now.3. Added SSL support, but require that you have AmiSSL installed, link to
Os4Depot above. For some of the debug logs I got from you, the printers required
SSL.4. In the search window I added the possibility to search by manual ip address
in case your printer is located on another subnetwork and my auto search does
not find it.https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=utility/print/airprint.lha
AirScan
Version 0.2 of AirScan has been released. This is an Amiga scanner utility based on the ESCL protocol. You can search for scanners in your network with the MDNS protocol. You can also add scanners by their IP address. Works with eSCL 2.5 and 2.62 devices. Tested on Epson XP-322 and Epson ET L3160.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=utility/print/airscanner.lha
AmiArcadia
Version 36.11 of AmiArcadia for AmigaOS 4, a Signetics-based machines emulator, has been released by James Jacobs.
According to the documentation, AmiArcadia supports the following systems:
- Emerson Arcadia 2001 console family (Bandai, Emerson, Grandstand, Intervision, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, MPT-03, Ormatu, Palladium, Poppy, Robdajet, Tele-Fever, Tempest, Tryom, Tunix, etc.) (c. 1982);
- Interton VC 4000 console family (Acetronic, Cabel, Fountain, Hanimex, Interton, Prinztronic, Radofin, Rowtron, Soundic, Voltmace, Waddingtons, etc.) (c. 1978);
- Elektor TV Games Computer (1979);
- PIPBUG- and BINBUG-based machines (EA 77up2, EA 78up5, Signetics Adaptable Board Computer, Eurocard 2650, etc.) (1977-1978);
- Signetics Instructor 50 trainer (1978);
- Signetics TWIN minicomputer (1976);
- Central Data 2650 computer (1977);
- PHUNSY computer (c. 1980);
- Ravensburger Selbstbaucomputer aka 2650 Minimal Computer trainer (1984);
- Hofacker MIKIT 2650 trainer (1978);
- Astro Wars, Galaxia, Laser Battle and Lazarian coin-ops by Zaccaria (1979-1981);
- Malzak 1 and 2 coin-ops by Kitronix (c. 1981);
- AY-3-8500/8550/8600-based Pong systems (Coleco Telstar Galaxy, Sheen TVG-201, etc.) (1976-1977);
- VTech Type-right machine (1985)
It is packed with features, far too many to list here. Examples include ReAction GUI, load/save snapshots, and windowed and fullscreen modes. Other features are CPU tracing, trainer, and drag and drop support. Additionally, it offers graphics scaling, PAL/NTSC modes, and frame skipping, among many other features!
You can read about the latest changes and download the package here:
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=emulation/gamesystem/amiarcadia.lha
AmigaDiskBench v2.8
Derfs is back again with an update to AmigaDiskBench.
AmigaDiskBench is a modern, high-performance disk benchmarking utility specifically designed for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition.
It provides a robust, ReAction-based GUI to measure, analyze, and visualize the performance of various storage devices, filesystems, and hardware configurations.
v2.9 (Current)
– Fixed: Random 4K Write, Random 4K Read, and Mixed R/W 70/30 tests failed on all hardware. ChangeFilePosition() returns -1 on some systems/filesystems despite the seek succeeding. Seek error detection now uses IoErr() instead of the return value.
– S.M.A.R.T. attribute name table expanded from 36 to 68 known attributes. Added SSD-specific attributes (Samsung, Intel, Micron, Kingston), HDD mechanical attributes, extended LBA counters, and missing ID 11 (Calibration Retry Count).
– Build identification: startup banner always prints version and build timestamp to the debug console.
– Module-selective debug: DEBUG_THIS_MODULE opt-in mechanism for focused serial debug output during diagnosis.https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=utility/benchmark/amigadiskbench.lha
AmiSSL
Version 5.27 of AmiSSL has been released. As mentioned in earlier editions of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup, the AmiSSL project is a collaborative effort to develop a port of OpenSSL in a shared library for Amiga-based systems. It is a must-have if you use AmigaOS 4 to browse the web!
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=library/misc/amissl.lha
The following archive contains developer files and example programs.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=development/misc/amissl-sdk.lha
Arabic Console Device
DRIDI has released version 15.0Final of the Arabic Console Device.
Changes are as follows:
(version 15.0Final) “Version education&legacy” finished – [Arabic] algorithms:
rigorous and handcrafted – Vowels (and tanwin) before alif maqsura + alif suscrit enhanced. The handcrafted
algo[ed, ArabicLauncher] is less rigorous! If the Scribe wants other combination, he can use Capital[starting from 0xC0-0xDF] : an underline begins the arabic word.https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=driver/input/arabic_console_devicepro2.lha
Audio Convert Manager
Juan Carlos Herrán Martín has released version 1.06 of this utility. You can use this to convert sound files. It supports a wide range of formats, such as 8svx, aiff, mod, med, dbm, mp3, wav, and many more.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=audio/convert/acm.lha
Audiocast Remote
As can be read in the readme:
“Audiocast Remote is a standalone graphical controller for DLNA-enabled Audiocast and compatible audio streaming devices in your local network. It offers basic playback control (play, pause, next, previous, stop) and volume slider. Settings and last used IP address are saved in a simple text file for convenience. Preset buttons for station stored in mobile app.”
Features:
– Play, Pause, Next, Previous, Stop for DLNA device
– Fast volume control via slider
– Remembers last used IP/port in config file
– Simple start with Preset button (station must be stored in mobile app first)
– Simple, clean RapaGUI interfacehttps://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=audio/misc/audiocast.lha
Axion
VirtualAssets is developing a new 3D strategy game called Axion. Amitopia has a long article covering it, which you can find here:
https://amitopia.com/axion-brings-fully-3d-tactical-combat-to-the-amiga/
Ghettofinger Gaming made a video showing the game running on his AmigaOne X5000/040:
Baphomet Screensaver
First up in April is the Baphomet Screensaver by Juan Carlos Herrán Martín. It has a gothic theme with demons and angels, depicting the eternal battle of good and evil on your screen.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=utility/misc/baphomet.lha
Depscan
The utility was created by Lorence Lombardo. Version 2.0 is now out and available for download.
Depscan was based on Megacz’s “Depstrack”, but was not translated at all, and was written entirely from scratch.
Depscan is intended for future use with bgpk’s extended information scripts.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=utility/shell/depscan.lha
Dopus5ByAI
A new fork of Dopus 5 has been established. Please read below for more information.
“Directory Opus 5.100 – All Amigas
A modern, actively-maintained fork of Directory Opus 5 Magellan II, the legendary Amiga file manager, ported and updated for all Amiga-like platforms.
This fork (dopus5allamigas) picks up where the 2012 APL open-source release left off, adding bug fixes, new features, and continued platform support.
Supported platforms
– AmigaOS 3 (m68k, including OS3.9/OS3.2)
– AmigaOS 4 (PPC)
– MorphOS (PPC)
– AROS (i386, ARM, and other architectures)”https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=utility/filetool/dopus5.lha
Grimorium PDF
Grimorium PDF is a utility you can use to open PDF documents, such as invoices, receipts, blueprints, and so forth.
It can export the pages to formats such as JPG and GIF. Version 2.60 is out now. It has now been compiled with Hollywood 112.0, using the new plugin PDF 2.0.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=utility/text/misc/grimoriumpdf.lha
HollyTris
If you like Tetris, you’ll probably be happy to read that a new clone has been released!
It is called HollyTris and was developed by A500Fan. You can download it for free via the link below:
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=game/puzzle/hollytris.lha
Hwp_HTTPStreamer
In the readme over on OS4Depot, we can read the following:
“This plugin enables Hollywood to open and stream files from HTTP sources as if they were stored on a local drive. Once this plugin has been activated, all Hollywood functions that deal with files will “automagically” be able to open files from HTTP sources as well. Starting with version 2.0, HTTP Streamer also supports the hURL plugin, which makes it possible to stream data using lots of other protocols, such as HTTPS or FTP.
HTTP Streamer uses a sophisticated multi-threaded design for highly efficient
streaming. Each connection is managed by a dedicated thread for optimal performance. The
plugin also supports Hollywood 6.0’s new streaming APIs, which means that you will be able to
stream audio and video files from HTTP sources with plugins like avcodec.hwp.”https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=library/hollywood/httpstreamer.lha
Hwp_hURL
Another nice plugin for Hollywood.
“hURL is a plugin for Hollywood that allows you to transfer data using many different protocols. Based on curl, hURL supports an incredibly wide range of transfer protocols, e.g., DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, Gopher, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, Telnet and TFTP. Furthermore, hURL supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, HTTP/2, cookies, user+password authentication (Basic, Plain, Digest, CRAM-MD5, NTLM, Negotiate and Kerberos), file transfer resume, proxy tunneling and more. It really is the ultimate data transfer engine for Hollywood, leaving nothing to be desired.”
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=library/hollywood/hurl.lha
iConecta
This is a small and handy utility that can be used to test your Internet connection. It is being developed by Juan Carlos Herrán Martín.
For the new version, the author has removed the Miniwood system due to visual problems with the clock.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=network/misc/iconecta.lha
MCC_HTMLView
“HTMLview.mcc is a MUI custom class that renders HTML inside any MUI application. The class supports the bulk of HTML 4 and is fast enough to drop into mail readers, news readers, and help browsers without a noticeable parse step.”
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=library/mui/mcc_htmlview.lha
NodeAmiga
A complete JavaScript engine and runtime environment for classic Amiga computers. Built from scratch in C, targeting MC68000 and AmigaOS 2.0+. Inspired by Node.js, adapted for the Amiga platform.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=development/language/nodeamiga.lha
PolarPaint
PolarPaint is an experimental paint program made in Hollywood by Anbjørn Myren. Version 1.381 was uploaded to OS4Depot and became available on April 17th.
There are currently two versions available, one regular and one small. More information about all changes can be found on OS4Depot.
– Fix – Check that filename is not same as input file when saving with delay
– RMB button change when switching mode
– Missing filters in save fil requestorshttps://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=graphics/edit/polarpaint.lha
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=graphics/edit/polarpaint_small.lhaRapaTank
With this application, depending on your address, a list of gas stations can be found. A navigation aid is also offered. Version 1.7 is now available for download.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=utility/misc/rapatank.zip
Rave
Daniel Jedlicka has released an updated version of Rave, his sound editor for AmigaOS 4-compatible computers. It provides functionality for manipulating and storing digital audio files.
Changes since the previous release are as follows:
– A configurable ruler above the waveform display now shows time or sample
position.– Fixed: After changing the font in the Settings, the font name gadget could
show garbage in certain circumstances.– Fixed: An off-by-one error introduced in sndeditor.gadget 1.5 could freeze the
system when click-dragging past the gadget’s right border.– Added a workaround for a bug in button.gadget <54.3 that could trigger a race
condition and result in a crash on AmigaOne X1000 computers.– Based on a user request, lowered the minimum supported sample rate to 4000 Hz.
– Various other smaller improvements and fixes.
– Updated documentation.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=audio/edit/rave.lha
ScummVM
Maijestro, who runs the Amiga Retro Channel on YouTube, is working hard to improve the AmigaOS 4 port of ScummVM and keep it up to date. No easy task for sure, but he is doing a great job so far! I’m happy that this version runs fine on my A1222+.
Old screenshot showing The Curse of the Monkey Island running through ScummVM.ScummVM is a program that allows you to run many classic point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have the game data files. ScummVM replaces the executables shipped with the original games, allowing you to play them on modern hardware.
This is a native AmigaOS4 PPC port of ScummVM, built with GLES2 support via Warp3D Nova. It runs on AmigaOne X5000 and compatible hardware. For QEMU and Pegasos2 users, Wazp3D is required as a software OpenGL replacement:
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=library/graphics/wazp3d.lha
VERSION HISTORY:
2026.2.0-AmigaOS4 – Major update– Updated to ScummVM 2026.2.0
– 92 engines included (up from 26)
– Vulkan support removed (not needed, GLES2 via gl4es used)
– Mouse Grab support added (Ctrl+M to toggle)
– Startup time reduced to ~1 second
– shaders.dat caching added
– All debug output removed (clean release build)
– Version string cleaned up (no git hash)
– Binary stripped (22MB)
– clib4.library V2.1 included
– FluidSynth MIDI driver added and confirmed working on X5000 (SoundFont .sf2 files go in the soundfonts/ folder in PROGDIR:)
– TiMidity MIDI driver added and confirmed working on X5000
– MM1 (Might & Magic 1) engine enabled
– SCI32 engine enabled (Blue Force, PQ4, SQ6, Phantasmagoria)
– GUI fix: Override settings (Audio/MIDI/Graphics) now correctly initialized when opening Edit Game dialog
– GUI fix: GM Device and MT-32 Device dropdowns are now correctly enabled when the MIDI override is active in per-game settings
– CAMD: MIDI port selection now correctly lists all available ports
– BUG FIX: GUI Scale crash fixed — switching scale in fullscreen mode no longer causes “Surface::transBlitFrom: bytesPerPixel must be 1, 2, 4” error and quit (3bpp surface is now correctly converted to 32bit)
– BUG FIX: GUI Scale default set to 100% on first launch — GUI is now fully functional on first start without a config file
– BUG FIX: False “Unknown Level 9 game or version” detection fixed — games like Necronomicon no longer show a spurious Level 9 entry in the game list. Root cause was a logic error in the Level 9 scanner (present in all ScummVM platforms) which has been corrected.SerialShell
In the documents, we can read the following:
SerialShell is a lightweight TCP server that runs on AmigaOS 4 and enables remote command execution, file transfer, and program output capture from a host machine. It is designed for developers who use QEMU or real Amiga hardware and want to automate build-deploy-test workflows from their development PC.
Key features:
– Execute AmigaOS shell commands remotely and capture output
– Upload and download files over TCP (binary safe)
– Run clib4/-athread=native programs with output capture
– Minimal footprint (~70 KB), no external dependencies
– Auto-starts at boot via S:User-Startuphttps://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=development/utility/serialshell.lha
Snoopy
If you’d like to have a peek at what actually goes on behind the curtains on your AmigaOS 4 desktop, the utility called Snoopy will be able to help you. Created by Colin Wenzel, this is a SnoopDos-like program that will reveal all kinds of information about what is happening.
Snoopy 54.129 (16-04-2026): CJW
– Bumped Snoopy DOS update version warning to 54.155https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=utility/filetool/snoopy.lha
Vintage Song Player
This is a music player created by Juan Carlos Herrán Martín. It supports a wide range of formats, such as MP3, MOD, MED, XM, S3M, and so forth.
Version 2.75 is out now. The option to raise or lower the volume has been included at the request of Helmut Haake.
https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=audio/play/vintagesongplayer.lha
VirtIO SCSI Device Driver for AmigaOS 4.1 FE
Derf has released version 1.8 of this driver. Virtioscsi.device is a device driver for AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition that gives the operating system access to VirtIO SCSI virtual disks in QEMU virtual machines.
He writes as follows:
“This driver was developed with Claude AI (Anthropic) acting as the primary engineer – writing all C code, designing the architecture, debugging hardware-level issues, and navigating the AmigaOS 4.1 SDK. It is a
practical demonstration of AI-assisted low-level systems programming on a niche, legacy platform with minimal AI training data available.”https://os4depot.net/?function=showfile&file=driver/storage/virtioscsi.lha
WipeOut-RE Fantomas Edition
HunoPPC announced the final version of this game:
“Hello Amigans, Here is the final version of WipeOut-RE Fontômas edition Normal and SPE version.
This version speeds up the engine by 2.5x and you will be able to take advantage of shaders with effects (CRT, etc.).
On A1222 + RX480 8GO (native screen) = 200 fps 70% of CPU
On X5000 + RX560 3GO (native screen) = 400 fps 40% of CPU
This version is in Beta on my FTP server (named: wipegame_egl).
This version is hybrid (Normal and SPE) and uses the new version of EGL_Wrap (W.I.P. not distributed).
The final version should be released soon, and you will be able to fully enjoy it on your NG machines.
Thank you for your support and patience, as this is a colossal undertaking, especially since I am the only one writing the code and fixing the problems. Have a good day!”
https://ko-fi.com/post/WipeOut-RE-Fontomas-edition-NORMALSPE-Core-final-O4O71WKDTG
On April 27th he announced:
“We’re finally here!! We’re on the home stretch before the release of WipeOut-RE Shaders and WipeOut-RE Fantômas Edition.
Three months of work to achieve this result in my free time
These two versions will be officially released this weekend and will be available for download on my website.”https://ko-fi.com/post/WipeOut-RE-Shaders-and-WipeOut-RE-Shaders-Fantomas-D1D21YJIW6
Looks like brilliant work once again from HunoPPC!
Miscellaneous News
Amiga Music from Norway
The Norwegian Amiga musician Helge Kvalheim is back with more music!
As far as I know, he made three songs in April, which he uploaded to his YouTube channel. Here is one of them. Enjoy!
Lady Noir – Middle Big Room Reverb (HKvalhe’s 16bit 6ch Amiga Soft Jazz Swing) – Helge Kvalheim
Amiga Future
Issue 180 of Amiga Future has been released!
This May and June issue contains reviews of El Asesino Que Nadie Escucho (EAQNE), Kyvos, Lüttje Bookholler 1.89, and much more!
More information, as well as the opportunity to order, can be found via the link below:
https://www.amigafuture.de/app.php/kb/viewarticle?a=11054
Rewriting clib4’s I/O Layer: A Newlib-Inspired stdio for AmigaOS 4
Andrea Palmatè, Amigasoft.net, has published a new post on his Ko-fi-page. Check it out here:
https://ko-fi.com/post/Rewriting-clib4s-IO-Layer-A-Newlib-Inspired-std-P5P11XTKA2
New, QEMU-specific graphics card driver for AmigaOS 4
Amiga-news.de reports that QEMU developer Zoltan Balaton has released ATIRadeon.chip, a replacement for the graphics card driver included with AmigaOS 4. Please visit amiga-news.de to get the full news.
https://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2026-04-00107-EN.html
Huenison by Retream Games Competition
A game competition in Huenison by Retream is currently taking place on Amigans.net.
The contest is being arranged by 328gts. The goal is to score as many points as possible. Everyone is welcome to join in. You can find more details here:
https://www.amigans.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=10088
Kyvos 2.1.0
George Sokianos has released a new version of Kyvos. This is a user-friendly graphical frontend for QEMU, which makes it much easier to set up and run AmigaOS 4 on different platforms.
More information can be found via the link below:
https://ko-fi.com/post/Kyvos-2-1-0-hot-released-G2G31YIJTU
Here is a video showing the installation process of Kyvos v2.
YouTube
I Smelled Smoke! First Power On of a RARE AmigaOne XE by BlueBarnTech
AmigaOne XE Repair Part 2: New Parts, Serial Ports, and Zero Luck. (Help!) by BlueBarnTech
Amiga NG na dopingu!!! X1000 – chłodniej – ciszej – szybciej….
nowy80Retro #219, Wings Battlefield – AmigaOS4.1, Pegasos II, PPC 1000MHz, Radeon 9000 Pro
nowy80Retro #220, AmigaOS4.1, Pegasos II PPC z Tunerem TV AVerMedia AVerTV Studio
QEMU 11 – AOS4 A1 Installing the system from the Voodoo3 development device by Marek Glogowski
AmigaOne X5000 Gameplay Los Malditos del Valle del Cerro + Bonus Turrican II (Remake) on AmigaOS 4.1
Until next time
You’ve now reached the end of another AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup. 🙂 Hope you enjoyed the news, and that you found out about something you didn’t know about from before.
Thanks to all of you for reading, and I wish you a great May!
Yours,
Puni / AmigaOldskooler
Rate this:
#Amiga #AmigaNews #AmigaOS4 #AmigaOS41 #computers #PowerPC #PPC #retroComputers #technology -
100th post, as fine a time as any to do the traditional #introduction before nobody on #mastodon does them anymore.
I’m a #hacker , a parent, a founder & CEO, government advisory board member, cat food servant, defender and participant in democracy, & an arm wrestling and karaoke enthusiast — not necessarily at the same time, but not opposed to trying it all at once either.
Carpe brachium karaoke as they say. 💪🏼🎤
Here we go. Get a snack & some water, this is long. 🍪 🥛
My professional passions include #SystemDynamics & #security with my #focus on helping organizations & governments develop healthy sustainable #VulnerabilityDisclosure programs that may end up growing into a #BugBounty program, or helping existing programs mature & evolve.
🌺🏝️ 🌺🏝️ 🌺🏝️ 🌺🏝️
🌺I founded & run https://www.Lutasecurity.com & we employ dozens of people, mostly in the US, to help some of our customers manage their #VDPs and #BugBounties as internally-placed personnel.
📜Services: https://www.lutasecurity.com/services
💻Hiring: https://www.lutasecurity.com/careers
💵Referral bounties: https://www.lutasecurity.com/referralbounty
🌺🏝️ 🌺🏝️ 🌺🏝️ 🌺🏝️
👩🏻💻💰🛡️ 👩🏻💻💰🛡️ 👩🏻💻💰🛡️
I helped launch #HackThePentagon in 2016, which was the first bug bounty of the US government & the first time it was legal to hack the USG.
👩🏻💻💰🛡️ 👩🏻💻💰🛡️ 👩🏻💻💰🛡️
This was after I created Microsoft’s first bug bounty programs in 2013, paying out the most at the time for brand new exploitation techniques, which would later lead to me directly helping the US renegotiate the #Wassenaar Arrangement to clarify “intrusion software” and “intrusion software technology” export control exemptions to more easily allow for hassle-free exchange of 0day & malware samples across borders for vulnerability disclosure & incident response.
🛠️💻 🛠️💻 🛠️💻 🛠️💻
I also started two vulnerability research programs, Symantec Vulnerability Research & Microsoft Vulnerability Research. The latter was also the first formal major vendor multiparty #SupplyChain vulnerability coordination & disclosure program.
🛠️💻 🛠️💻 🛠️💻 🛠️💻
I now serve on 3 Federal advisory boards in cyber.
⚖️NIST ISPAB: https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/ispab/members
💱Commerce ISTAC: https://tac.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/members-listing/422-istac-website-listing/file
🚨DHS CSRB: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/02/03/dhs-launches-first-ever-cyber-safety-review-board
🎙️Fun fact: Despite mainstream media lip service about getting diverse voices on TV, and my extensive direct experience in US domestic & foreign cyber policy & norm-setting, I have *never* been invited to be on broadcast news to talk about it. Not one time. But there are the same dudes with none of my experience showing up on TV all the time.
📺 Email [email protected] if you can change that.
📺📺📺📺📺📺📺📺
⚖️💸 ⚖️💸 ⚖️💸 ⚖️💸
👩🏻⚖️ Speaking of gender equity, I was the lead plaintiff in the attempted class action gender pay and promotion discrimination lawsuit against Microsoft.
💵💪🏼 https://www.theverge.com/22331972/pay-equity-now-pledge-katie-moussouris-microsoft-lawsuit
When it failed to get class certified due to some legal gotchas, NOT because of lack of data and evidence, I decided to drop my case and founded https://www.payequitynowfoundation.org/blog & created
https://www.manglonalab.org/ to fight for #PayEquity in our lifetime.
⚖️💸 ⚖️💸 ⚖️💸 ⚖️💸
🌸Another fun fact: I’m asked about the gender stuff way more often than any of my professional work or national security work. I view this as The Lady Tax & I’m all paid up thanks.
🙅🏻♀️Don’t ask me about how to attract more diverse candidates, don’t ask me to mentor your mentee, and don’t ask me for any more free labor. Don’t ask any historically marginalized people to do free labor, especially to solve your diversity puzzle.
👏🏼I highly recommend https://blacktechpipeline.com/ if you are serious about not just hiring but welcoming more black workers into your company. There are specialty recruiters out there for you to pay, so don’t ask every woman or person of color you know to help you with that unless they are being paid to do it.
👏🏼💰👏🏼💰👏🏼💰👏🏼💰
🧩 Miscellaneous bits if you’ve made it this far is that I studied molecular biology, biochemistry & mathematics but dropped out to become a systems administrator, a professional Linux developer, then a hacker for hire.
🔐 I still hack by accident (because hacksidents happen), and nobody should have to be the coauthor/coeditor of the International Standards on how to do Vulnerability Disclosure to get an organization’s attention.
👩🏻🏫 ISO standards overview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-L3DNZtK8lc📲 Clubhouse hack: https://www.wired.com/story/clubhouse-bug-lurkers-ghost/
🔐🔐🔐🔐🔐🔐🔐
💸💸💸💸💸💸💸
🙄 Despite my entire career being technical, when my company tried for venture capital funding to build something cool, we were met with sexism & lack of imagination & I was hilariously asked more than once if I had a technical cofounder.
It’s cool, joke’s on them. We’re #profitable and growing.
🤨https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyvza/this-hacker-is-trying-to-close-the-gender-pay-gap-in-cybersecurity
💸💸💸💸💸💸💸
🏛️🏛️🏛️🏛️🏛️🏛️🏛️
I participate in Democracy with more than voting. Anyone with the bandwidth should look into doing it too.
1. Google “find my Legislative district”
2. Go to your State website & search by your address
3. Look up your Legislative District’s (LD) website to find out how to join
4. Attend monthly LD meetings
5. Run for Delegate per LD or be appointed like me when not enough people do 1-4
🏛️🏛️🏛️🏛️🏛️🏛️🏛️
👋🏼✌🏼👋🏼✌🏼👋🏼✌🏼👋🏼✌🏼
🛑Ending abruptly is on brand for me as a neuroatypical person, so I’ll leave you with this thought:
🐈 I named my 17 year old cat Scapy (rhymes with happy) after the Python tool of the same name. Because he is dumb & fuzzy.
😸If you get that joke, you pretty much get me.
🤙🏽🤙🏽🤙🏽🤙🏽🤙🏽🤙🏽🤙🏽🤙🏽
✌🏼Be kind, drink water, touch grass, save the planet, save Democracy, pet cute animals. ✌🏼 -
**2025 – my steps towards digital sovereignty**TL;DR
I fell for a strange pattern of techy computer users to describe / brag about reducing their dependance of IT services owned by US-based tech giants and other companies that embraced enshittification principles.
I didn’t invented nothing new, I just made some small steps towards better control of my data and IT equipment.
IT usage is very political imho. With the recent imperialistic developments and sharp drop in human rights in US, I feel uneasy about using their platforms (Microsoft, Google, social media). This is one of the reasons I’m trying to move away from them and towards FOSS & non-enshittified companies. The other reason is curiosity for exploring new things.
But even selecting FOSS/sustainable IT alternatives is not trivial. They usually lack polished UI, and … ugh, … sometimes there is quite some drama associated with them (e. g. main developer adopts techbro mentality).
OS
As I wrote extensively, I transitioned from Windows to Linux Mint as a daily driver in March 2025.
It’s pretty boring – Mint works, it didn’t crash beyond repair (yet), I don’t think about it anymore.
Now is Dec. and I still haven’t booted to Windows partition. It’s time to delete it and dedicate space for something else.
Browser
Firefox, but looking for alternatives. Mozilla is not my favourite company anymore because of their efforts to stick genAI into the browser and dismissing the community. Yes, I still wear their t-shirt from 2004 and probably will until it disintegrates.
Office
I cancelled to M356 subscriptions for my company and left only 1 license for special cases (spreadsheets with macros for reporting to EU and similar).
Firstly I used OpenOffice in 2003-2006 when I wrote my dissertation and MsWord started to crash after 100 pages. At that time, OpenOffice saved a lot of time, because it handled formulas and references really well. Then I stopped using it until last year. Now it’s my daily driver (Libre Office) again alongside Google Docs (yeah, I know).
I made a promise that all documents that I send out to other people will be in .odt format. In last several months I received in total 0 complaints. Even people with MSOffice can open it and probably they don’t even notice the change of the format.
I especially like (not so well known): Libre Draw for editing PDFs, Libre Write for creating ePUBs.
I also installed NextCloud and it’s NextCloud Office on my selfhosted Yuno, but I haven’t used it much yet. It looks promising, but more complex in comparison with Google Docs.
Email
I bought Tuta subscription and connected it with my domain. I’m using Linux desktop app, mobile app alongside Gmail.
I haven’t transitioned from GMail yet. I gave my new email address only to some specific people and I’m trying to keep it away from various online subsctiptions. I still use GMail, where all the junk goes.
Probably I will keep using GMail as a throw away email account and Tuta for things I care about – such as communication with state institutions, health institutions, friends.
I’m still trying to get used to Tuta UI.
I could even recreate my workflow from GMail to Tuta: Starred emails. In GMail, I star emails that need my further attention. In Tuta, I use labels for the same purpose. I created a new label ‘todo’ which I can apply to the email. It needs some more clicks than starring emails in GMail, which is not optimal, but it’s good enough.
Calendar
I still don’t know how to transfer my calendar from Google Calendar to something else, e. g. Tuta Calendar. I use Google Calendar with 10+ calendars, intervowen with my family’s calendars. Will try to figure it out in 2026.
Cloud storage
This one is the most difficult one.
But I started to ween off Google Drive, which I use from its beginnings. Until now I haven’t found a good replacement, especially for Google Docs.
Lately I bought a lifetime Koofr subscription for 1 TB. I’m using it as a (3rd) backup for all of my family’s photos and videos. It backups my NAS via WebDAV and my desktop via rclone. I also sync my media from the phone to Koofr. Maybe I’ll even use it instead Google Photos. Will see – but at the first glance it doesn’t miss much – maybe albums and search by photo description.
Koofr looks promising and most importantly, it’s based in EU.
https://blog.rozman.info/2025-my-steps-towards-digital-sovereignty/ #digitalSovereignty #FOSS #koofr #libreoffice #yearReview -
KWFAMOUS LAUNCHES THE CREATIVE CAFE IN DTK
Artists, creatives and neighbours celebrated the opening of The Creative Café at a soft launch event on Sept. 26. The 3,500 square-foot space is located inside the Bright Building condominiums at 741 King St. W. in Kitchener. It features a dedicated gallery and event space alongside a small cafe that can be used as a pop-up space for local food entrepreneurs.
The Creative Café is the latest project from the team behind KWFamous, a non-profit group that hosts meetups, workshops, and events across the region. Robin Lindner, founder of KWFamous, said she pitched the idea to the building’s developer, Scott Higgins of HIP Developments, after reading his book The Joy Experiments.
“Their whole mantra is bringing people together. So instead of creating an amenity space like a gym that no one would use, they advocated for creating a space that welcomes the community in,” Lindner said.
The opening of The Creative Café comes three months after a similar concept failed to gain support in Waterloo. ArtsBuild Ontario had asked the City of Waterloo for a three-year lease for the former St. Columba Anglican Church site which the city had purchased in February 2025.
Lindner said she was disappointed when she learned of the decision.
“I don’t think there’s a lack of space. I think there’s a lack of willingness to give that space up and give up control,” she said.
Lindner credited Higgins and HIP Developments for taking a risk to create a new type of amenity space for building residents and the neighbouring community. Higgins said arts play a critical role in making a community a great place to live, but, as a neighbourbood gentrifies, the artists who made it great can no longer afford to live and work there.
“We’ve been building these backyards in the sky that no one uses, and then we’re building for-lease space on the ground floor that no small business can afford. We’re sterilizing our community,” Higgins said.
The answer for Higgins was to work with the residents of the Bright Building and the City of Kitchener to change how amenity space was used. Instead of a gym or bowling alley on an upper level, the building has street-level amenity space and Higgins put out a call for a creative group to run it. The space is rent-free, but KWFamous is responsible for utilities and upkeep.
“Working with the city and the residents allowed us to put amenities on the ground floor so that they can be amenities for the neighborhood, not just the residents,” he said.
Lindner said Higgin’s vision is sustainable and has the potential to work for artists and the community.
“I’m excited to prove the concept and build this with other creatives in the community. This is a space that residents can invite people in and be proud of, whether that’s having a coffee or checking out a cool film being played. It’s an extra bonus for people who live in the building,” Lindner said.
KWFamous has also started discussions with the Waterloo Region District School Board about potentially offering workshops for students at the neighbouring Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate Institute.
“They have really great vocational and co-op programs, and we want to test out what we could offer them, whether that’s making patties with The Dessert Artist’s Rochelle Williams or pastries with Casey Ng from Nibble & Nosh,” she said.
Beyond culinary opportunities, Lindner wants to create artistic outlets for high school students. She credits similar opportunities during her high school years for giving her the confidence to pursue her art.
“There’s not a lot of outlets for people to be creative, especially for the high school students. It can be a tough time and having that creative outlet or being shown the possibility of doing a craft can be inspiring,” Lindner said.
“There are so many things that can happen here if we keep this space as modular and open as possible. I’m excited for people to come together and learn something,” Lindner said.
#AlexKinsella #brightBuilding #caseyNg #HIPDevelopments #KWFamous #nibbleAndNosh #robertLindner #scottHiggins #theCreativeCafe #theDessertArtistsRochelleWilliams #theJoyExperiments
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Lately, I worked on a bunch of development tools and made them "nicer" using bash completion. But I have never seen any unit tests for completion functions...
Since I'm a test-driven developer, I'm wondering if anybody ever tried this?!
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Lately, I worked on a bunch of development tools and made them "nicer" using bash completion. But I have never seen any unit tests for completion functions...
Since I'm a test-driven developer, I'm wondering if anybody ever tried this?!
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Lately, I worked on a bunch of development tools and made them "nicer" using bash completion. But I have never seen any unit tests for completion functions...
Since I'm a test-driven developer, I'm wondering if anybody ever tried this?!
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Lately, I worked on a bunch of development tools and made them "nicer" using bash completion. But I have never seen any unit tests for completion functions...
Since I'm a test-driven developer, I'm wondering if anybody ever tried this?!
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Lately, I worked on a bunch of development tools and made them "nicer" using bash completion. But I have never seen any unit tests for completion functions...
Since I'm a test-driven developer, I'm wondering if anybody ever tried this?!
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By the sounds of it I've been doing #ai wrong this whole time. I:
- never connect my dev projects or environments directly to AI
- any code queries I copy/paste and ask specific questions
- before copying anything back I clarify anything I don't understand or that looks suspicious or weird
- thoroughly test what I've made with AI. I don't want any mysterious black-box code sitting in the project
- Treat it like any other tool or program; it's not a person or an intelligence, it can only do what I ask it to. I'm responsible for using it
- would never connect it to a database with full access where it can lose all the data
- have never paid for tokens, just use the free versions
- also don't know what a token is or what it represents#aita for not submerging myself in the pool of AI madness and potentially destroying my client's data?
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For todays #FollowFriday I'm going to do something a bit different. We have a lot of new users, one of the biggest surges we have seen in a while. As such a lot of new users are looking for high quality, long-standing, accounts to follow. Similarly many of the new users need some help getting attention and making new friends.
As such I am going to do this #FF in a few parts. One for old users I have mentioned in previous posts, as well as some of the new users who have been making quality posts and been active for at least a week now. Hopefully this will be more helpful.
Also a section for some bots might be useful.
I will use a persons profile description here as I dont want to misrepresent anyone.
:awesome_slide_r: New Mentions :awesome_slide_l:
@design_RG - Books, Bicycles & Cats, Life is Good. Books, #hardcover. Bikes, #Classic sport ones. Cats, any colour or size. #Aquarius with Virgo rising. House of Ravenclaw.
@Karthikdeva - Always a Student, Nano-Technologist, Bookworm?, and basically I don't know anything, so I might be asking some agonizing questions.
@_lunawinters - Just a human , living on a rock called Earth, floating in a giant space.
@VidyaKrishnan - Independent journalist, S. Asia
@yantrajaal - Engineer by education, teacher by profession, programmer by passion and imagineer by intention
@susi123 - வாசிப்பையும்
நேசிப்பையும்
மறந்தவள்,,,..@Full_marx - I am a मस्त डॉन on Mastadon. I wish to build something that can be of good use to as many people as possible. Social Sciences: Propaganda Science, Social Engineering, Behavioural Science, Advertising STEM: Human-Computer Interaction Design, Web Dev, Cyber Security Noob. Multimedia: Motion Graphics, Video Production, Electronic Music Production, Abstract Film, Writing Politics: Left, Right and Center. Whichever ideology leaves the people with the most amount of Dignity, sign me up for that one.
@raining_night - I love women, food, thriller/sci-fi/slasher movies and series, astro physics, superbikes, nature and animals ❤️ not in any specific order Trying out Veganism.
@shibaprasad - Master's student. Football Fan.
@ppmanik - Believe in free speech and data privacy. Interested in physics and science in general and future of Semiconductors and related devices in particular.
:kaboom: Old mentions :kaboom:
@jump_spider - #ActuallyPsychotic <> programming autodidact and polyglot <> meditation enthusiast
@chris - Developer focusing on #WordPress, #Privacy and the #OpenWeb. Also a speaker, teacher, blogger, and pilot doing my best to make the world a better place.
@SecondJon - I'm interested in being just not civil, but excellent in interacting with others of different viewpoints in an online world where we can so viciously defend our echo chambers and be so dismissive of other perspectives. I rarely log onto the bird site of FB anymore because the interactions are unproductive about anything meaningful. I'm a #Dad, #Husband, #Christian, #Anglican, Unaffiliated #conservatarian, Software #Developer, #Coloradan, Reader of paper #books, Card and BoardGamer, #tea drinker, solving problems for co-workers and partners primarily with and integrating with the #Salesforce/SFDC platform.
@sandfox - #PHP and #Ruby developer
@cwebber - User freedom activist, ActivityPub co-editor, parenthesis enthusiast, occasional artist.
@whirli - #teacher #rugby #skeptic #freesoftware #privacy #camping #hammocks #Finland #Suomi
@pschwede - #Coding #Paradigms #GraphRewriting #YPEGIDA #choas #KzU #developer #programming #philosophy #scifi #linux #sociology #luhmann #HvF #python #java #sed #awk #cis #white #freespeech #atheism #freereligion #art #drawing #pixelart #diagrammatics #symbolism #dresden #unisex
@Rovine - Born in Hong Kong, lived in Australia, working holiday in UK. #developer #programming #music #learning #frontend #gamedev
@Absinthe - The green faerie
@metapsyche - I am a cloud of vapor. Fragmenting into ever smaller pieces to explore ever widening spaces. Web Developer by day, Pattern Hunter at night. Thinker and Tinkerer on weekends. :)
@imvectech - RESEARCH ° COOPERATE ° MONITOR ° ADAPT. Developing and teaching to implement DITO techniques for human survival between knowledge and fate.
@canonicalbrud - #Orthodox #Christian; husband and father; #biomedical #development #engineer; #crypto tinkerer; Stephen #Talbott fan, i.e. proponent of (re-)introducing #λόγος and #τέλος into #biology and thus heal the modern rifts between #philosophy, #theology, and the natural #science/s.
@david - Value people over code. I manage tech.lgbt. WordPress Maintenance fixupfox.com. On the Internet, everyone knows I'm a dog. Follows are open both ways for me if you're nice and cool!
@Algot - Words are my friends. #ArtWithOpenSource #3D #Clipart #poetry
@Curator - Curator of art from the instance
@Erik - Privacy, plants & politics Student CybSec @ :utwente:
:doge: Bots :doge:
@arxiv_eess - Electrical Engineering
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As a software developer, you can assume that an attacker knows you have credentials.
The risk of supply-chain attacks means that your development environments (running NPM, PyPi etc.) should at least run in Docker, not alongside your ~/.ssh folder and your ~/.pypirc.
On that note, I'm still very unsure about the future of #precommit as a virtual environment manager (even sources stuff directly from Git repositories).
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CW: Website recommendations, my longest Mastodon post yet!
Hey, #fediverse! Allow me to introduce you to 2 of the best #websites I've ever used.
1. #FileInfo. This site allows you to get information on virtually any file extension you can think of, including file type (text/binary), the developer of the file type, and programs that can open that file. Simply enter the file extension into the search field and hit enter, and the details on that file extension are right there! File Info can be accessed at https://fileinfo.com/. You can also pull up an entry directly by adding /extension/file_extension to the end of the URL. For example, https://fileinfo.com/extension/exe.
2. #TechTerms. Similar to File Info, Tech Terms is a database of basically any computing/technology term you can think of. Again, enter the term you want into the search box and hit enter, and the entry for that term will be shown right away. What's also cool about this site is that after each entry, there is a heading for citation links, so you can include the entry in an essay, dissertation or other publication. Also, if there is a noteworthy term in a File Info entry that is in the Tech Terms dictionary, the File Info entry will hyperlink to it. Tech Terms also has a free app for #iOS, though I'm not sure about #Android. In case you haven't guessed already, File Info and Tech Terms are from the same developers. Tech Terms can be accessed at https://techterms.com. You can also append /definition/term to the end of the URL to access a result directly, for example https://techterms.com/definition/website.
All these websites are #accessible for the #blind and #VisuallyImpaired for use with #ScreenReaders, such as #JAWS or #NVDA. In the case of Tech Terms, the app is also accessible with Apple's built-in #VoiceOver screen reader. -
So, Firefox 150 has added support for "Scoped CustomElementRegistry" (SCER for brevity) behind a flag (dom.scoped-custom-element-registries.enabled). I'm trying to figure out how this will solve the problem of micro-frontends bringing their own (i.e. different) version of a design system wc-library into a website. Are there any real world examples available yet? I mean deep dive blog posts or example repos that go beyond the Edge demo (of two confetti buttons 😉). I'm looking for answers to questions like
- does the SCER only apply to custom elements being added within its shadow DOM? no light DOM then?
- is it the React app's responsibility to create its own SCER, wrap itself into that shadow-dom and define its own version of custom elements being used?
- as DS UI lib author, how do I make that process the least painful or transparent at best from a DX point of view for our consumersMaybe you can help out 🥹 @westbrook or @stuffbreaker or @sir_pepe
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I'm making a #browser #extension for #firefox is pretty cool!
But something that isn't listed anywhere, is how when you reach 10k users, all of the updates you make have to be manually reviewed by the #Mozilla #addon team.
Usually, I'd be fine with this, but how long do you think it took for an update that was just approved today?
Well, it took a little bit over 3 weeks for this one! With no position in queue whatsoever in the developer dashboard. It's quite a long timeframe, if there's a critical bug for example you need to be able to update fast!
Apparently itns because there's a huge amount of malicious vibe-coded #AI submissions. I wonder what could be done to improve the review times? (Because ranting is useless unless you have a solution in mind!)
Maybe increase team size? But that will cost lots of money. Use an AI to filter malicious submissions? But then you'd have people tricking it, and false positives. I don't really see a way...
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Fuck this shit. I'm yoloing this Filament PHP script plugin for Turnstile with #AlpineJS.
If it works, great. If it doesn't, I'll push a patch. Won't lose another day trying to test Filament shit.
#PHP #FilamentPHP #Laravel #LaravelLivewire #Livewire #Coding #Code #Programming #Programmers #SoftwareDevelopment #WebDevelopment #Developer #Developers #WebDev
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I'm trying to place an object where the user takes a photo in AR. I've modified the AR app template to make a custom AR view, and then moved the object creation code to a button action. I'm trying to create an ARAnchor using the camera transform and placing the object using that, but nothing’s appearing in the view (the template code places the object on a plane and that worked).
c. line 129 in this gist: https://gist.github.com/JetForMe/adf1e04e4ec92c3dc7a29ce0910fb9a3?ts=4
Apple’s examples really want you to place objects on planes (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/arkit/arkit_in_ios/environmental_analysis/placing_objects_and_handling_3d_interaction), but that’s not what I want to do.
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An #introduction post.
Hi, I'm Marty. I'm an #introverted #actuallyAutistic developer from Adelaide, South Australia. I started playing with electronics in the early '70s, built my own computers during the late '70s and early '80s, and have been programming ever since.
These days I do a lot of iOS, macOS, and Android programming. Along with my son, I'm building an iOS game, a macOS weather app, and lots of internal-only projects.
I was previously @marty.
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Devlog December 2025
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After a new year holiday break, I'm back!My first year as full time solo game developer is over and it was great. The game was released as Early Access and I sold over 100 copies on Steam.
