prose - Blogging with emails

The software developer prx, his website is available at https://ybad.name/ (en/fr), released a new software called prose to publish a blog by sending emails.

I really like this idea, while this doesn’t suit my needs at all, I wanted to write about it.

What's up with K-9 Mail?

The release of the latest stable version of K-9 Mail (5.600) was in September 2018, nearly two years ago. So, of course, many of you have been wondering if K-9 Mail is dead. I’m happy to inform you that this is not the case. Work on K-9 Mail was slow at times, but it has never really stopped.

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Some features that were available in 5.600 are still missing because we haven’t had the time to restore them. Some have been deliberately removed because we didn’t consider them important enough to justify the maintenance burden.
We would like to release a new stable version as soon as possible. There’s only one feature that we had to remove, but without which we don’t want to ship a new stable version of the app: Push (IMAP IDLE). After it has been added again, we’ll spend some time focusing on fixing bugs reported by beta testers, and then we’ll release the next stable version of K-9 Mail, 5.800.

AsBlocks Project Uses Gutenberg to Create a Collaborative Writing Environment

The Gutenberg team is currently immersed in bringing full-site editing capabilities to the block editor as part of Phase 2 in the project’s longterm roadmap. Meanwhile, Gutenberg engineer Riad Benguella has been experimenting with ideas for the collaboration features coming in Phase 3, which aims to deliver a more intuitive way to co-author content.
Today, Benguella unveiled a collaborative writing prototype called AsBlocks that is built using the Gutenberg editor. It is an example of the editor working outside of WordPress. AsBlocks provides an end-to-end encrypted writing environment that can be shared to other users with a link, while the server itself cannot decrypt the content.
In the video demo below you can see a user adds some content, clicks the share button, and is presented with an option to share a link for a live collaboration session (Write) or a link for read-only access (Read). The session is private and only users with the link can access the post.

Programming languages: Java still rules over Python and JavaScript as primary language

Java, JavaScript and Python are invariably the three most popular programming languages in several indexes, but their exact order varies depending on how the ranking is calculated. Lately most have placed JavaScript and Python ahead of or equal to Java.

But a new survey from Czech IDE maker JetBrains has found that Java, historically the most popular programming language, is still the top main language used by developers.

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JetBrains asked developers to pick up to three languages they consider their primary programming language. In this context, JavaScript comes out on top (39%), followed Java (37%), and Python (31%).

JetBrains analyst Sichkarenko Anastassiya explained the apparent discrepancy by saying each languages' position – first, second or third – was assigned a weighting to produce an overall popularity ranking.

The company also told The Register that Java's superior ranking as a primary language comes down to lots of developers using JavaScript as part of a project, but its use falls when considering where developers spend most of their time.

GitLab Acquires Security Companies Peach Tech and Fuzzit

DevOps company GitLab on Thursday announced the acquisition of software security testing firms Peach Tech and Fuzzit in an effort to expand its DevSecOps offering.

Functional Code is Honest Code

This isn’t typical in OO code. Sometimes I joke that if I were to rewrite Working Effectively with Legacy Code I’d call it Working Effectively with Object-Oriented Code. So many of the techniques around gaining testability involve parameterizing classes and methods so that all of the inputs and outputs are explicit and mockable under test. You don’t have an embedded call to, say, the file system in a class. You pass in a reference to that capability as a constructor or method argument. This makes an OO system, broadly functional. That is, to say, it is honest. You can look at the signatures and see what is possible. Maybe some mutation happens a function body. You increment a local variable rather than using a fold. That's ok. If it doesn't leak through the interface (the call), you have referential transparency at the call. The signature tells you the full story.

Listen to the Hedge Podcast 39 to Learn about the Open Standards Everywhere Project

What is our Open Standards Everywhere (OSE) project all about? How did it get started? What are the project goals? What are some of the challenges web server operators face? How can we work together to make web servers more secure and available?

Recently Russ White and his team interviewed me on The Hedge Podcast Episode 39 to discuss all these questions and much more. I’ve known Russ for a good number of years and it was fun to talk with him and his co-hosts Eyvonne Sharp and Tom Ammon about all things related to the OSE project. I hope you enjoy listening to the episode as much as we enjoyed having the conversation!

ECDSA: Handle with Care

The elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) is a common digital signature scheme that we see in many of our code reviews. It has some desirable properties, but can also be very fragile. For example, LadderLeak was published just a couple of weeks ago, which demonstrated the feasibility of key recovery with a side channel attack that reveals less than one bit of the secret nonce.

This Guy Accidentally Took a Photo That Crashes Android Smartphones

Amateur photographer Gaurav Agrawal had no idea his spectacular picture of St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana could end up mercilessly crashing countless Android phones.

But if it was set as the wallpaper on smartphones running the Android 10 operating system, the phones started acting up, switching off and on repeatedly.

“I didn’t do anything intentionally,” Agrawal told the BBC. “I’m sad that people ended up having issues.”

The image, edited in Adobe Lightroom and uploaded to Flickr, didn’t seem to cause any issues on iPhones. But thanks to a tiny snafu during the export of the image, Agrawal unintentionally turned his gorgeous landscape photo into an Android-killing threat.

Medical Device Repair Again Threatened With Copyright Claims

Medical providers face countless challenges in responding to the COVID pandemic, and copyright shouldn’t have to be one of them. Hundreds of volunteers came together to create the Medical Device Repair Database posted to the repair information website iFixit, providing medical practitioners and technicians an easy-to-use, annotated, and indexed resource to help them keep devices in good repair. The database includes documentation for mission-critical devices relevant to the COVID pandemic and has been widely praised as a tool for caregivers and those supporting them.

Despite this, Steris Corporation contacted iFixit to demand that their products’ documentation be taken down on copyright grounds. As the name suggests, Steris makes sterilization-related devices used to prevent contamination and the spread of disease. Unlike disease, though, the spread of repair information enhances public health and Steris should leave it alone.

Removing "Annoying" Windows 10 Features is a DMCA Violation, Microsoft Says

Ninjutsu OS, a new software tool that heavily modifies Windows 10 with a huge number of tweaks, mods and extra tools, has been hit with a DMCA complaint by Microsoft. According to the copyright notice, the customizing, tweaking and disabling of Windows 10 features, even when that improves privacy, amounts to a violation of Microsoft's software license.

OpenAI launches an API to commercialize its research

OpenAI today announced the launch of an API for accessing new natural language processing models its researchers developed, including the recently released GPT-3. The company claims that, unlike most AI systems designed for one use case, the API provides a general-purpose “text in, text out” interface, allowing users to try it out on virtually any English language task.

IOVlabs Joins Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger to Accelerate Enterprise and Government Adoption of Blockchain