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So You Think You Know Git? - FOSDEM 2024
  • Mercurial has comparable features (though maybe not obvious to someone accustomed to git) without the usability problems that still plague git nearly two decades later. Hg's interface was made with humans in mind. Git's was made to cut you.

    (And it has cut so very many people that it's consistently among the most popular topics in Q&A forums, and has even inspired comics.)

    Thankfully, git's early cross-platform shortcomings were eventually fixed, so that's at least some progress. I hope its UI and docs eventually get some love, too.

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    Codeberg.org Opinions?
  • The interface is the best I know of, a lot like pre-Microsoft github. Especially important to me is that It doesn't intercept my browser's built-in shortcuts like github now does, or require javascript or bury things under submenus like gitlab does.

    The promise of federation is appealing, too.

    I plan to use it for new public projects, and might even move my old ones over.

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    FLOSS communities right now
  • My guess: The kids who used Discord for gaming grew up, and just went with the familiar thing when starting new communities and projects.

    Also, Discord did heavy marketing early on, until it carved out a network effect. So here we are.

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    FLOSS communities right now
  • On the bright side:

    Aggressive garbage collection and automatic thread locking are optional settings in most web forum software I've seen.

    Lemmy shares some of the important parts of Usenet, and could develop into something that comes close.

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    FLOSS communities right now
    • Terrible format for archiving knowledge
    • Terrible tool for retrieving knowledge
    • Locks community access behind a corporate license agreement
    • Hands control of community-created content to a corporation
    • Prevents indexing by web search engines
    • Antithetical to interoperability
    • Privacy-hostile

    A web forum is far better in most cases. If you can't manage to run your own, there are plenty of lemmy servers that will do it for you. Even an email list (with searchable archives) would be better than Discord.

    If you have collaborative documents that outgrow the forum format, use a wiki.

    If real-time chat is needed, irc or matrix.

    A project hosting its community on Discord is a project that won't get my contributions.

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    Strings do too many things
  • disallow list of known bad email providers.

    Imagine giving someone your phone number, and having them say you have to get a different one because they don't like some of the digits in it.

    I have seen this nonsense more times than I care to remember. Please don't build systems this way.

    If you're trying to do bot detection or the like, use a different approach. Blacklisting email addresses based on domain or any other pattern does a poor job of it and creates an awful user experience.

    (And if it prevents people from using spam-fighting tools like forwarding services, then it's directly user-hostile, and makes the world a worse place.)

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    Strings do too many things
  • Checking MX in your application means you needlessly fail on transient outages, like when a DNS server is rebooting or a net link hiccups. When it happens, the error flag your app puts on the user's email address is likely to confuse or frustrate them, will definitely waste their time, and may drive them away and/or generate support calls.

    Also, MX records are not required. Edit to clarify: So checking MX in your application means you fail 100% of the time on some perfectly valid email domains. Good luck to the users and support staff who have to troubleshoot that, because there's nothing wrong with the email address or domain; the problem is your application doing something it should not.

    Better to just hand the verification message off to your mail server, which knows how to handle these things. You can flag the address if your outgoing mail server refuses to accept it.

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    Strings do too many things
  • By the way, please don’t write regex to try to validate email addresses. Seriously.

    Amen.

    There are libraries for that; some of them are even good.

    Spoiler alert: Few of them are good, and those few are so simple that you might as well not use a library.

    The only way to correctly validate an email address is to send a message to it, and verify that it arrived.

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    Disney invests $1.5bn in Epic Games and announces major Fortnite partnership
  • he’s gone off the rails in the last 6-12 months - complaining about needing more linux devs

    It's also ironic in light of his history of loudly bashing linux and linux game development.

    I can't think of anything good to say about Tim Sweeney.

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    Steam Next Fest February 2024 is live
  • I might give Backpack Battles a try. It doesn't look like my usual style, but I heard there's some good strategy under the surface, and I like that it's made with Godot.

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    Here's how 2 sentences in the Constitution rose from obscurity to ensnare Donald Trump
  • Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

    Section 3: Disqualification from office for insurrection or rebellion

    Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

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    Apparently *all* of the DND 5.5 physical sourcebook team was let go during Hasbro's December layoffs
  • Are there any 5.5 physical sourcebooks? Were they ever planned at all?

    I haven't been following One D&D news, but I got the impression they were focusing on a subscription-only model, so I've been planning to stick with my 5e books or switch to an ORC-licensed system.

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    *Permanently Deleted*
  • This is misleading. Matrix respects the e2ee setting that you choose when creating a room, and it's enabled by default.

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  • www.statnews.com Scientists document first-ever transmitted Alzheimer’s cases, tied to no-longer-used medical procedure

    Scientists document the first-ever transmitted Alzheimer’s cases, tied to a no-longer-used medical procedure.

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    github.com Release GE-Proton8-28 Released · GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom

    fixed [S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; no appID found. from being reported when running non-steam games non-steam games will now run using wine inside proton rather than calling steam.exe with ...

    • fixed [S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; no appID found. from being reported when running non-steam games
    • non-steam games will now run using wine inside proton rather than calling steam.exe with wine then the game inside steam -- this goes alongside the API failure fix
    • controller axis patch added from 8-27 has been removed as it is now properly upstreamed
    • added ULWGL support for non-steam games (https://github.com/Open-Wine-Components/ULWGL)
    • beamng VR patch removed per request by developers, they have stated they will fix the issue in 0.32 (https://www.beamng.com/threads/experimental-virtual-reality.94206/page-27#post-1674152)
    • black desert online now works

    Protonfixes:

    • now using ULWGL-protonfixes
    • can now call the winetricks gui using util.protontricks('gui')
    • winetricks now performs an internet check before attempting any downloads
    • fixed long standing issue with protontricks not being able to install dotnet4* using anything newer than proton 5. works now and no longer requires proton 5.
    • fixed dll overwrites in winetricks, no longer need to maintain a massive list of specific overwriteable dlls in proton
    • protonfixes added for Catherine Classic -- videos now fully working
    • protonfixes added for Ys Origin -- videos now fully working
    • protonfixes for Age of Wonders -- videos now fully working
    • protonfixes added for Model 2 emulator
    • protonfixes added for Alien Breed: Impact
    • protonfixes added for Alien Breed 2: Assault
    • protonfixes added for Alien Breed 3: Descent
    • protonfixes added for Black Desert Online NOSTEAM=1 option. Launch game like NOSTEAM=1 %command% to launch non-steam standalone version.
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    electrek.co The US government opens 22 million acres of federal lands to solar

    The Biden administration has updated the roadmap for solar development to 22 million acres of federal lands in the US West.

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    www.cnx-software.com Debian 12 and Linux upstreaming for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC - CNX Software

    Progress about Debian 12 support and Linux upstreaming for the 4.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite 12-core Arm SoC for laptops and mobile PCs

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    forums.larian.com Hotfix #17 Now Live! Version Number: 4.1.1.4494476

    Hello everyone, We’ve got another hotfix for you today, fixing a few bugs, blockers, and issues. Poor Gale - we know your pain, sometimes it’s easy to read something into a situation that wasn’t there. We’ve sat him down and explained that if someone doesn’t offer him a shoe to ...

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    github.com Release v0.5.15 · lutris/lutris

    Fix some crashes happening when using Wayland and a high DPI gaming mouse Fix crash when opening the system preferences tab for a game Reduced the locales list to a predefined one (let us know if y...

    • Fix some crashes happening when using Wayland and a high DPI gaming mouse
    • Fix crash when opening the system preferences tab for a game
    • Reduced the locales list to a predefined one (let us know if you need yours added)
    • Fix Lutris not expanding "~" in paths
    • Download runtime components from the main window, the "updating runtime" dialog appearing before Lutris opens has been removed
    • Add the ability to open a location in your file browser from file picker widgets
    • Add the ability to select, remove, or stop multiple games in the Lutris window
    • Redesigned 'Uninstall Game' dialog now completely removes games by default
    • Fix the export / import feature
    • Show an animation when a game is launched
    • Add the ability to disable Wine auto-updates at the expense of losing support
    • Add playtime editing in the game preferences
    • Move game files, runners to the trash instead of deleting them they are uninstalled
    • Add "Updates" tab in Preferences control and check for updates and correct missing media in the 'Games' view.
    • Add "Storage" tab in Preferences to control game and installer cache location
    • Expand "System" tab in Preferences with more system information but less brown.
    • Add "Run Task Manager" command for Wine games
    • Add two new, smaller banner sizes for itch.io games.
    • Ignore Wine virtual desktop setting when using Wine-GE/Proton to avoid crash
    • Ignore MangoHUD setting when launching Steam to avoid crash
    • Sync Steam playtimes with the Lutris library
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    edition.cnn.com Are fingerprints unique? Not really, AI-based study says | CNN

    A new study seemingly upends a long-accepted truth about fingerprints: They are not, a Columbia University undergraduate and his colleagues argue, all unique.

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    forum.openwrt.org OpenWrt One - celebrating 20 years of OpenWrt

    @blogic posted following on the OpenWrt mailing list for developers: tl;dr In 2024 the OpenWrt project turns 20 years! Let's celebrate this anniversary by launching our own first and fully upstream supported hardware design. If the community likes the idea outlined below in greater details, we w...

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    www.theguardian.com Iceland’s ‘bike whisperer’: the vigilante who finds stolen bicycles – and helps thieves change

    Bjartmar Leósson says at first he was motivated by his anger at Reykjavík’s bike thieves. Now he empathises with them

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    https:// forums.larian.com /ubbthreads.php

    (This hotfix was released a few days ago, but I figured some people might still like to look over the changes.)

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    www.japantimes.co.jp Radioactivity detected in Fukushima worker's nose

    Radioactive materials may have touched the worker's face on Monday as he took off a full-face mask after finishing his work.

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    w4games.com W4 Games raises $15M to drive video game development inflection with Godot Engine

    OSS Capital leads the Series A funding alongside Naval Ravikant and a group of angels including Justin Hoffman, Larry Augustin, Alex Atallah, Thomas Dohmke, Diogo Monica, Scott Williamson.

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    www.techdirt.com Judge Allows Major ‘Right To Repair’ Lawsuit Against John Deere To Move Forward

    Last year agricultural equipment giant John Deere found itself on the receiving end of an antitrust lawsuit for its efforts to monopolize tractor repair. The lawsuits noted that the company consist…

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