news
Free, Libre, and Open Source Software and Web Leftovers
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Protesilaos Stavrou ☛ Emacs live refinements for Denote at 2026-10-30 14:45 Europe/Athens
Denote is a simple note-taking tool for Emacs. It is based on the idea that notes should follow a predictable and descriptive file-naming scheme. The file name must offer a clear indication of what the note is about, without reference to any other metadata. Denote basically streamlines the creation of such files while providing facilities to link between them.
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Feld ☛ Kallisti: Mumble Evolved
Well, Lain finally scratched that itch from a different angle: just rip out the core and rebuild the rest. Make a web client a primary feature. Still keep the Mumble protocol intact by making the web client go through a server-side proxy.
Brilliant. I didn't think that was feasible, but I'm just not ambitious enough I guess.
It's time for the wider world to learn about Kallisti.
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Google ☛ This Week in Open Source for October 30, 2026 [Ed: Openwashing by proprietary GAFAM and surveillance firm]
Right before Halloween weekend, it feels fitting to ask what actually haunts open source communities right now—from supply-chain ghosts lurking in commit histories and the hidden cost of maintaining isolated "zombie" forks to models wearing open source costumes without sharing what is under the mask. Across this week's reads, maintainers, researchers, and engineers share how they are keeping the lights on: setting clear community boundaries for AI contributions, wiring human sign-off and cost guardrails directly into automated workflows, and co-building open infrastructure across hardware stacks. Technology only serves people when the humans doing the work stay in control of the machinery—and transparent, inspectable tools remain our best defense against things that go bump in the night.
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New Releases
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Instant Messaging Freedom ☛ Pidgin 3.0 Alpha 4 2.98.0 has been released! - Pidgin - Instant Messaging Freedom's Discourse
We are ecstatic to announce that we have released the fourth alpha version of Pidgin 3.0!!! This release has an official version number of 2.98.0. We will continue releasing in this fashion until we are ready for 3.0.0 which will be the release we consider ready for end users. You can read more about our development phases here.
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Web Browsers/Web Servers/Feed Readers
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Nicolas Seriot ☛ How curl was accidentally Turing-complete for nine months
From curl 8.12 through 8.16, config files could slice variable values and include other config files without an explicit depth cap. Together, these features let curl simulate any two-counter Minsky program. Under the usual idealization of unbounded strings and resources, this construction was Turing-complete.
Curl 8.17.0 added a five-level include cap that breaks this reduction.
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Kyle Reddoch ☛ How I Made My Website Fit the iPhone Duo's Two Screens
Width alone misses the constraint. A width-only mobile breakpoint handles the closed screen’s narrow column, but it says nothing about how much vertical space the welcome block or article header consumes. Inner landscape is wide enough for my desktop navigation, yet only about as tall as the closed screen.
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FSF / Software Freedom / Digital Sovereignty
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FOSS Force ☛ Denmark’s Digital Sovereignty Effort Stalls Amid Government Shakeup
An unfinished Collabora trial has been cast as an open source failure. The timeline tells a different story.
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