Have you ever lost one sock or one shoe after looking all over for days or weeks? Well don’t feel so bad, recently some scientists found their second ski at a research site after the ice melted for seven years!
Continue reading “Scientists find the other ski after seven years”Hacktoberfest 2021 is here!
It’s been one year since the spammageddon of Hacktoberfest requests and issues with contributing to only accepted opted-in repositories – but this year there are some good changes:
You can now use Gitlab for PRs.
Monetary donations are also encouraged for open source projects.
You can either get a shirt or plant a tree, for completing 4 PRs with improvements to participating open source projects.
Also, of course if you have a project yourself you maintain, you can add “Hacktoberfest” tag to get participants to find your repo. 🙂 What are some of the projects you might consider helping?
Continue reading “Hacktoberfest 2021 is here!”Common Sense (and basic arithmetic) are not so common anymore
During the past year many have been able to give each other a good amount of grace and empathy and not judge them by their race, inability to wear a mask, or whether they go to the grocery store once a week or once a month to reduce their risk. Business owners have shown concern by giving special hours for the at risk or unvaccinated to come and shop early hours. And many have been using tools like microcovid.org to gauge the risk their household should budget. However not all has been as it should be.
Continue reading “Common Sense (and basic arithmetic) are not so common anymore”Chrome 93 brings a different way of thinking
If you are using Chrome 93, you may have noticed recently the “Your connection is always secure unless Chrome tells you otherwise” in the location bar. This raises an interesting question – should the system be telling you that any site that you visit is secure? Should we be trusting Chrome in this regard?
Continue reading “Chrome 93 brings a different way of thinking”Pat 0.11 Review and setup… the long awaited update!
If you have used Ham radio and are on Linux, you most likely have used the Winlink program Pat, an open source interface to use Winlink over internet (and some radios if you have that set up). The long awaited new release now includes the forms feature! and other improvements! If you haven’t set it up here is a quick review:
Continue reading “Pat 0.11 Review and setup… the long awaited update!”Purism price increase scheduled for end of June
If you have been thinking of buying the new Librem phone now may be the best time to do so! The price will be increasing $100 according to a recent posting on their blog. And what better way to celebrate independence day than a device independent of many of the major tech giants’ updates? You can even buy a Librem phone that is built in USA… at over double the cost, however.
Continue reading “Purism price increase scheduled for end of June”Only a few days before T-mobile auto-opts-in advertising with your information
If you’ve been following the Purism mailing list you probably know now that on Apr 26 T-mobile will be able to use your data for “anonymized” advertising targeted to you. What does that mean for you and what can you do to opt out?
Continue reading “Only a few days before T-mobile auto-opts-in advertising with your information”Mathematicians submit proof of ErdÅ‘s Coloring Conjecture
Fifty years ago, several mathematicians at a dinner party were discussing graphs (points and lines, not chart graphs), and the generalization if you make the edges connecting a point (vertex) with another, able to connect multiple points. While working out the minimal number of colors in general, they found it to be an interesting problem, to test out and prove the next day… Well, that solution, to ErdÅ‘s, Faber, and Lovász’ problem was delayed for years and years!
Continue reading “Mathematicians submit proof of ErdÅ‘s Coloring Conjecture”App development with Librem 5
Purism’s blog recently posted a new howto on building a Librem 5 app. If you have been wanting to build a Linux app this is a great time to start with both phones and desktops running your app.
Continue reading “App development with Librem 5”Severe weather alerts with a simple Python script
If like many you have been starting gardens and planting rather than traveling and visiting in recent months, there is one important thing to consider lately – severe weather reports including frost on your crops. I noted there was a little red (!) alert icon on an Android weather widget, but there seems to be no such alert for desktop computer or Linux computer or phone. It is a fairly simple to make this alert though with a simple script:
Continue reading “Severe weather alerts with a simple Python script”