Programming Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jan 14, 2026

• Vidit Bhargava ☛ The assembly-line-ification of App Icons

  Undoubtedly, no one can say that the newer icons are "better" than the older ones. They're more consistent, yes, they "scale" across platforms and sizes while maintaining visual sameness (consistency as corporate designers will tell you).

  They're meant for an assembly line of app icons that must be pushed out, in order to satisfy every thing but the want of a good visual design.

• Andrew Nesbitt ☛ Package Manager Glossary

  These are the definitions I use when writing about package management and in my work on ecosyste.ms, Libraries.io, and git-pkgs. The same word often means different things in npm, pip, Cargo, and Bundler, so I’ve noted where ecosystems diverge. This is a living document; contributions welcome.

• [Old] Atlantic Council ☛ Avoiding the success trap: Toward policy for open-source software as infrastructure

  High-profile security incidents involving open-source software (OSS) have brought the ubiquity of OSS and the unique challenges its communities face to the attention of policymakers in the United States, EU, and beyond. For policymakers seeking to support the security and sustainability of OSS as a shared resource, this report builds on an important perspective on open-source software: OSS as Infrastructure. OSS is code published under a license that allows anyone to inspect, modify, and re-distribute the source code. This helps developers share and re-use solutions to common problems, creating such efficiencies that some estimate that 97 percent of software depends on OSS. OSS ranges from small components for illustrating graphs to entire operating systems. Contributors include individuals working in their free time, staff at large companies, foundations, and many others. The ecosystem is community-based, with many governance structures to manage contributions and maintenance.

  This report compares OSS to three infrastructure systems—water management systems, capital markets, and networks of roads and bridges—and draws on existing policy vehicles from each to suggest policy that supports the sustainability and security of OSS as a communally beneficial resource.

• Ruby ☛ Ruby 3.2.10 Released

  Ruby 3.2.10 has been released.

  Please see the GitHub releases for further details.

• Ruby ☛ Ruby 4.0.1 Released

  Ruby 4.0.1 has been released.

  This release includes a bugfix for spurious wakeup from Kernel#sleep when subprocess exits in another thread, along with other bugfixes. Please see the GitHub releases for further details.

• Steinar H Gunderson ☛ Steinar H. Gunderson: plocate 1.1.24 released

  I've released version 1.1.24 of plocate, as usual dominated by small patches from external contributors. The changelog is below: [...]

• Python

  • Linux.org ☛ Python Series Part 22: Tkinter Entry Widgets - Part 2

    We can now continue with the Entry Object for Python.

    Hopefully, you have gone over Part 1 before continuing on here.Font

    Since we can change the colors, why not the font as well? You need to make sure that any font you use exists on the system where the Python code is being executed.

    On my system, I am running Ubuntu, so I have a font named ‘ubuntu’.