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Free Software, Coding, and Standards Leftovers
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N Recursions ☛ N Recursions: Tool for easily creating an AppImage on Linux for a Flutter app
When I created my Simple Notes Android app, I not only created APK files for it, I also built it to run on Linux. So it ended up having an executable file which would not run unless there were some extra supporting folders. This was messy, and I wanted a single file. I found that creating an AppImage was a good way to do this. There are a bunch of developer tools for the purpose. I chose the appimage tool to convert app directories to appImages.
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Licensing / Legal
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DuckLabs ☛ DuckLabs – DuckLabs to Join AWS, Projects to Remain Open Source
Today, we’re announcing that DuckLabs will join Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is expected to be effective in early September.
Our team will remain together in Amsterdam, continuing our work on DuckDB, DuckLake, Quack, and the broader community. Joining AWS gives us the resources and reach to bring this technology to many more developers and organizations, and to pursue ideas at a scale that would have been difficult for us to reach alone.
Most importantly, the foundations of the project will remain firmly in place. DuckDB and the other open-source components of the “Duck Stack” will remain free and open source under the MIT license, with the nonprofit DuckDB Foundation continuing its stewardship of the projects.
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Programming/Development
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Perl / Raku
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Rakulang ☛ Rakudo Weekly 2026.35 Infinity Revisited
Andrew Shitov published another episode of the “Raku: a language that counts to infinity” blog series, looking at infinite (lazy) sequences in Raku: Part 2 in which gather and take are highlighted, as well as the sum of an infinite range of integers.
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Standards/Consortia
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Trevmex ☛ trevmex's tumblings - The U.S. is more than just the US (according to the ISO)
This has happened to me more than once in my career in the video streaming business. The business folks sign a deal that lets people watch video, but only in the U.S. This is what we call geofencing. We use software like MaxMind and others to ensure people are where they say they are. Pretty straightforward. You tell the software the locations you want people to be able to watch from, and there you go.
Great. You launch your video streaming service in the U.S., and a few days later, you get a call from Puerto Rico. It turns out THEY are a part of the U.S., too. You, being a savvy and well-read person, of course, know this, so what is the problem?
The problem, it turns out, is that geofencing software determines location using a country code. More specifically, an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 3166 country code. And it ALSO turns out that for some silly reason, Puerto Rico has its OWN country code: PR! That is because ISO3166 isn’t a list of country codes. It is: [...]
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