Nicolas Fella @nicofee@fosstodon.org
Open sourcerer and connector of things @kde
KDABian
he/him
Joined Aug 2019
A FOSS tale
1. Plasma makes a minor change in something to be spec compliant
2. A third-party app that is not spec-compliant breaks in a minor way
3. Issues are reported to both Plasma and the app
4. I state that I'm not willing to work around broken apps in this case and suggest multiple ways of fixing this properly
5. Some random person that does not seem like a regular contributor to the app gets mad at me and starts insulting me
Don't be that person
Nicolas Fella
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Make a Linux App
Nicolas Fella
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. @kde #Plasma Virtual Sprint 2020 group picture! Thanks to #BigBlueButton for making this meeting possible.
Nicolas Fella
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Nicolas Fella
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Nicolas Fella
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KDE Plasma 5.19 is out and it is sleeker and more polished than ever. Check out the new and beautiful photographic avatars, clean and consistent desktop components and widgets, and the easy-to-use System Settings and Discover software center.
Nicolas Fella
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just a note to the programmers on here: if your work involves ai, neural networks, or other expensive algorithms designed to replace human judgement, consider how much it's truly meant to be more equitable and/or efficient and whether it meets that goal. if it doesn't and you're just automating existing judgement at great expense, the purpose of including a neural network is to obfuscate culpability
this is not theoretical
How to hide your homophobia:
1) Declare LGBTQ issues as 'political'.
2) Declare that 'political' things shouldn't be discussed.
3) ???
4) No profit. Homophobia benefits no one.
Nicolas Fella
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There is a real problem in the free software community and tech in general about homophobia, racism and sexism. The same thing happened in a popular Arch Linux Telegram channel, then they changed the channel logo but in a lot more violent. This is not OK.
Nicolas Fella
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I added a pride KDE logo to r/kde and a few hours later there was already a thread needing some heavy moderation :( https://new.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/guxu7a/why_is_the_kde_logo_a_rainbow/
We absolutely must talk about the lifes of the people using and producing our software.
We must talk about how surveillance reinforces power structures.
We must talk about how software, algorithms and AI can be discriminatory.
We must talk about how our software affects people's lifes.
Shouldn't-be-hot take: Tech never was unpolitical and must never ever be
Nicolas Fella
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Blog post: What's up with K-9 Mail?
I'm not sure what's worse:
People writing #!/usr/bin/env python assuming python2 or people writing #!/usr/bin/env python2 in full conciousness
Nicolas Fella
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I have been working hard to bring back support for browsing remote music through UPnP/DLNA. I posted a summary of this work: https://mgallienkde.wordpress.com/2020/05/23/upnp-dlna-support-in-elisa/
Currently basic browsing is working but much work on stabilizing, adding automated tests and writing documentation is needed.
Hot take: In most stories a la "We achieved 400x performance gain by rewriting it in $LANGUAGE" the speedup is not because of $LANGUAGE but because you spent time and braincells rethinking and rearchitecting your problem/solution
Nicolas Fella
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Microsoft just named a project without googling the name before. Spoiler: It already exists, and it's a KDE project. Thanks Microsoft. https://github.com/dotnet/maui/issues/35
Open sourcerer and connector of things @kde
KDABian
he/him
Joined Aug 2019
