The Engineering Workflow team at Mozilla is happy to announce that Phabricator and Lando are now ready for use with mozilla-central! This represents about a year of work integrating Phabricator with our systems and building out Lando.
There are more details in my post to the dev.platform list.
Ian Hanomansing@cbcian
OK. So maybe I’m inordinately nostalgic about seeing this on store shelves. Now, any chance I can find a Consumers… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has revealed the 2nd gen Ryzen Threadripper processor and 7nm Radeon Vega GPU, both set to launch later this year. The US chip maker also unveiled new updates on EPYC processor at its fully-loaded Computex press conference this morning. “Our upcoming 7nm and 12nm products build on the momentum of our […]
I’d ever heard of
Cœur de pirate until she popped up on my radio a few weeks ago. She’s from Québéc and
I think the name best translates as “Pirate’s Heart”, but she’s bilingual and at one point referred to herself as “Her Pirate Heart”,
which is cool too. Anyhow, the singing is in French and is very beautiful, and also an oasis of peace in among all the loud male
music I’ve been hosting here recently.
I don’t know much more about this piratic performer than what you can read on her Web site or
on Wikipedia. The songs are soft, sparsely arranged, and if I had
to choose one adjective to describe them it’d be “feminine”. Also, the piano lines are caressingly lovely.
But if you come here seeking guitar solos or a backbeat you will be disappointed.
Her voice is unique, conventionally beautiful and also unashamedly nasal; I love it.
I’m no judge of the finer points of French accents but
I thought I could recognize Québécois French, and that’s not what I think I’m hearing. Also, when she speaks English her accent is
completely absent to my ear, which means Middle Canadian.
Somnambule means “sleepwalking”, and the lyrics here are lusciously, lyrically romantic:
Les doutes d'une incrédule se perdent dans la nuit
Et tout s'est décidé
Je ne vis que d'idéaux, de mots cassés
Je tente d'être complétée
D'amour et d'inconnu
Spotify
playlist.
This tune on
iTunes,
Amazon,
Spotify.
Now, Somnambule is my favorite among the songs by Ms Pirate that I’ve heard so far, and here’s a nice
live take in a church.
But my favorite online live performance is a totally-live two-song set:
Place de la Republique & Adieu, beautifully captured in an empty room
on a beat-up old piano, somewhere in Toronto. The second song cuts deeper.
I like to do two things at work: figure new things out and explain what I figured out. That’s what makes me an analyst. The way I look at it, ignoring overhead (like filing expense reports and political scheming), people do three useful things at work: Figure new things out. Use knowledge to get things … Continued
Security focused laptop maker moves forward with manufacture of developer kits and other key milestones in bringing the Librem 5 to market in January 2019
SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 6, 2018 – Purism, the social purpose corporation which designs and produces popular privacy conscious hardware and software, has announced that its groundbreaking Librem 5 smartphone is currently on schedule for its planned January 2019 delivery date seven months after its crowdfunding campaign raised nearly $2.5 million for the project.
The Librem 5 will be the world’s first community-owned smartphone ecosystem that gives users complete control over their mobile device.
The company has finalized specifications for the Librem 5 hardware platform, and has placed the order to its fabricators for developer kits, which share the same base specifications as the final phone design that will be manufactured by Purism.
Mockups of the latest planned phone case design. Images do not represent the development kit.
Significant progress has also been made to the design of the phone hardware and the development of key applications such as:
A finalized case design and UI shell
A Calls application for making normal cellular calls
A Contacts application
Starting at $599—less than the cost of many popular smartphones—the Librem 5 will give users unprecedented control and security with features unavailable on any other mainstream smartphone, including:
Native VoIP capabilities
End-to-end encryption of texts messages
Encrypted calling
Convenient preconfigured VPN services for enhanced web browsing protection
3G/4G modem
Edit or develop on the source code, which will be made publicly available
Enable hardware kill switches for the camera, microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth and baseband
Utilize a slot for an encryption smartcard such as Purism’s upcoming Librem Key developed in partnership with Nitrokey
There is increasing concern among users around personal data they give up through Android and iOS smartphones, including digital voice assistants like Apple’s Siri or Google Assistant, or even “smart home” devices like the Amazon Echo: WiFi connections, application installations, basic location services, and voice recognition capabilities managed on corporate servers have proven to be less than airtight. Purism hopes to address those concerns by manufacturing phones that will operate with free/libre and open source software within the kernel, the operating system, and all software applications. Purism has built a strong reputation within the GNU/Linux community by delivering laptops designed to specifically meet user concern about digital privacy, chip-by-chip, line-by-line, to respect our common rights to privacy, security, and freedom.
Founder and CEO Todd Weaver
“The progress we’ve made over the last seven months is exciting, and it is a thrill to see the Librem 5 that much closer to getting into users’ hands,” said Todd Weaver, founder and CEO at Purism. “We have an extremely qualified team of engineers and designers building the Librem 5 according to schedule, as well as our proven manufacturing capabilities to meet our delivery goals.”
Purism is a veteran of successful crowdfunding campaigns with more than $5 million raised over the past two years and a track record of delivering on products. The company is still accepting pre-orders of the Librem 5 smartphone here: https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5.
About Purism
Purism is a Social Purpose Corporation devoted to bringing security, privacy, software freedom, and digital independence to everyone’s personal computing experience.
With operations based in San Francisco (California) and around the world, Purism manufactures premium-quality laptops and phones, creating beautiful and powerful devices meant to protect users’ digital lives without requiring a compromise on ease of use. Purism designs and assembles its hardware by carefully selecting internationally sourced components to be privacy-respecting and fully Free-Software-compliant. Security and privacy-centric features come built-in with every product Purism makes, making security and privacy the simpler, logical choice for individuals and businesses.
Media Contact
Marie Williams, Coderella / Purism
+1 415-689-4029
pr@puri.smSee also the Purism press room for additional tools and announcements.
You could just use your phone for driving directions, but a dedicated GPS device makes navigating easier, works where you don’t have coverage, and frees up the phone for other uses. The Garmin DriveSmart 55 stands out because it combines best-in-class directions, points-of-interest data, driver alerts, and free map updates with the best multi-touch display we’ve seen on any GPS unit.
Sonos just announced that AirPlay 2 is coming to “newer” Sonos speakers in July. Unlike using Apple Music on the HomePod, it will stream music from your phone instead of directly over the internet. However, unlike the HomePod you will be able to control some of the AirPlay 2 music with Alexa. You can launch music on your iOS device in all the normal ways, including with Siri.
Essentially, Sonos’ software system is able to be aware of what is playing on your speakers, no matter the source, It’s a clever way to make AirPlay 2 a little more useful. Once the music is playing via AirPlay 2, you can use Alexa to pause, go to the next track, and even ask what’s playing.
For the platform-agnostic user – the exact user Sonos has focused on pitching its products to lately – this kind of blending together of different assistants and ecosystems may carry a lot of appeal. Since Alexa is the sole voice service currently available on Sonos speakers, the ability to control AirPlay 2 playback Amazon's assistant is key. I do wonder, though, if mixing and matching different services might be overly confusing for the average user. With AirPlay 2 support, you'll be able to use Siri on your iPhone to start streaming audio to a Sonos speaker, but you can't start that playback with Alexa. Once audio's already playing, though, that's when Alexa steps in. I appreciate the variety of options, but it sounds like those options bring with them a lot of restrictions to remember.
As for hardware compatibility of AirPlay 2, it will be available on a limited number of Sonos devices:
AirPlay 2 will work with the Sonos One, (second generation) Play 5, and Playbase (and, ahem, “future products”). But if you have older speakers, owning any of those newer ones will make AirPlay 2 work with all of them.
That last line is intriguing, though unclear. Older devices can't actually become AirPlay 2 speakers, otherwise they would appear in the Home app as HomeKit devices – however, it makes sense that an existing HomeKit device that talks to older Sonos devices could serve as a translator of sorts, relaying AirPlay 2 commands over Sonos-native protocols.
We'll see how it all works when AirPlay 2 support arrives next month.
Sonos One is a smart speaker for the kitchen. It's in the 200 € range and competes with everything from the Echo to the Homepod. But none of the other vendors has anything for the living room, where you may want to connect to the TV as well as listen to music. Sonos has Playbar and Playbase, but they are in the 800 € range and way too expensive for many people.
Enter the Sonos Beam, a compact three channel sound bar, for $399 (before tax) or 449 € (incl. tax). It can do everything Sonos One can do, plus it connects to your TV via HDMI. It needs HDMI-ARC (Audio Return Channel) and wants HDMI-CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) for perfect integration between TV control and Sonos speaker. If you don't have that, you can connect it via a dongle the same way you would connect a Playbar or Playbase.
Sonos Beam has far-field microphones to pick up sound from the room so you can speak with Alexa and other voice assistants in the future. It will play Stereo PCM, Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital 5.1 just like Playbar and Playbase. It is both a stereo speaker for music and a 3.0 soundbar for TV. You can add additional Sonos speakers for 3.1 (SUB) or 5.1 (SUB + two other backchannels).
If you have a Playbar or Playbase, you don't want Beam, unless you are missing voice control. It is super important for Sonos to reach new customers, who will eventually buy more Sonos speakers. I am not one of those people.
Sonos Beam will start shipping six weeks from now. You can also expect AirPlay 2 support on One, Beam, Play:5 and Playbase in July.
This article describes the latest in "an arms race by large retail chains to offer education benefits... service-industry employers have started or expanded programs to offer free or greatly-discounted tuition to all of their employees, often delivered in an online format." The spokespeople in the article take pains to say there's no watering down of standards that results from this association (of course, though, it works out well for Walmart if the university denies the employees admission).
Safari Technology Preview Release 58 is now available for download for macOS High Sierra. With this release, Safari Technology Preview is now available for betas of macOS Mojave. If you already have Safari Technology Preview installed on macOS High Sierra, you can update from the Mac App Store’s Updates tab.
This release covers the same revisions of WebKit from Safari Technology Preview 57, but includes new Safari and WebKit features that will be present in Safari 12. The following Safari 12 features are new to Safari Technology Preview 58:
Icons in Tabs. You can enable showing website icons in tabs in Safari’s Tabs preferences.
Automatic Strong Passwords. Safari automatically generates strong, unique passwords when signing up for accounts or changing passwords on websites. New to Safari 12 and Safari Technology Preview 58, generated passwords can be customized using the passwordrules attribute. See Apple’s Password Rules Validation Tool for more information.
Many more WebKit features in Safari 12 are present in this release of Safari Technology Preview and have been in past releases. You can read more about these changes and many others in What’s New in Safari 12.
At the corner of Davie & Denman, on my way to several errands, I found a scene that is oh-so Vancouver.
It’s got English Bay, the North Shore Mountains, bike racks, benches, freighters, palm trees, a Mobi station, dog walker, and a photographer snapping the famous “A-maze-ing Laughter” sculptures by Yue Minjun (which also form a maze).
And a quick service announcement today. Due to recently announced ownership changes at Github, I’ve decided to move my open source software repositories I had there for many years over to GitLab. At 250k projects per day that are moving, I seem to be not the only one. So long Github, and thanks for all the fish!
A lot of the cycle-paths in this area are made of concrete rather than asphalt. When I first moved here it seemed a slightly odd choice because concrete is a more expensive material. I was surprised that we were getting the premium product while drivers on roads alongside those cycle-paths had the "cut-price" asphalt (immaculately laid, mind you).
The advantages of concrete have become more
About 20 years ago, the typical question about Hong Kong culture might have dwelled on whether there’s a lingering presence of British colonial rule.
This question is hardly the one to ask today (in Gordon Price’s words, “not so much“); rather, what are the effects of globalization on this city of 7.4 million, the fourth-most densely-populated city in the world?
Photos and thoughts from our editor-in-chief below — among other things, he’s finding a set of values and concerns that might ring familiar to North Americans: housing affordability concerns, strong commitment to public works, an even stronger commitment to retail consumption, and architecture that, at the very least, makes you stop and think — “where have I seen this before?”
For a long time Mozilla’s JS team and others have been using https://arewefastyet.com to track the JS engine performance against various benchmarks.
Screenshot of landing page
In the last little while, there’s been work moving those benchmarks to another continuous integration system and we have the metrics in Mozilla’s Perfherder. This rewrite will focus on using the new generated data.
If you’re curious on the details about the UI refresh please visit this document. Feel free to add feedback. Stay tuned for an update next month.
This could be due in no small part, of course, to candidates being sorted in alphabetical order on the ballots themselves.
But thanks to a motion by Clr. Andrea Reimer, moved earlier this spring and voted on this morning, this will change for future civic elections.
Except for the Vancouver School Board.
Council: motion on randomized ballots goes to a vote. Councillors Ball, Carr and De Genova opposed but the motion passes. Municipal election ballot for Mayor, Council and Park Board will be randomized. Over to you @VSB39
Google doesn’t release new developer previews for Android on a regular, or even semi-regular basis. But there is finally a new one for developers and adventurous individuals to download.
Continue reading →
This has nothing to do with education (except for the very sensible advice to teachers that sometimes children are very anxious and afraid, even if they seem to be really bright and outgoing). But it's the sort of thing that should be said and should be read, and because Wil Wheaton is the sort of person who has tried to do good with his 'lowest life difficulty' setting, I'm posting it here. It's a good article and worth reading.
In honour of the very odd pairing of Microsoft with Git, where's a Chrome extension that makes Github look like Windows XP. As to the developing story, "Some people believe Microsoft really has changed, but others are skeptical. Whatever your take on the situation I think we can all agree that XP’s color scheme makes Github look way better."
I like concept maps - I used to make huge ones when I was a student - but they're the sort of thing that I think has never really made the transition to digital media. I think they just need bigger screens. And pencils, maybe. Geoff Cain: "I find myself thinking over and over again, quarter after quarter, semester after semester, how import tools like free writing, drawing, and concept maps are to thinking. However, I find that not all tools are created equal – especially when used in the wild." He lists a few: C-Map Tools, Inspiration, Lucid Chart, and CMap Cloud. Be sure to have a look at the slides at the bottom of the article.
In April, Price Tags published a post on the UBC announcement regarding their desire to fund the remaining dollars — possibly up to $1 billion, depending on how you parse the extant project information floating in the ether (or who you know) — to bring the Millennium Line extension all the way to campus.
It remains our most-viewed post of 2018. It’s also our most-commented upon piece of all time. That’s 10,000+ posts over a dozen years.
So we decided to provide an update. Just one problem.
UBC is mum on any updates to their generous offer and unwilling to go on record with the media until details are sorted out with co-stakeholders, chief among them Translink and the City of Vancouver.
So there’s no way of knowing what the cost and the timeline may ultimately look like. But what about the rationale? It’s the reasons for a Skytrain extension in the first place that blew up our original post.
Here’s where we go to our new friend Uytae Lee of About Here. Uytae does these pretty slick, entertaining and informative explainer videos on urban planning issues, and they’re worth a good look.
This one about the Millennium Line extension clocks in at 5m30s, with the premise “why in the world would an extension end at Arbutus?” No, not for the Fletcher’s Fabricare, though it still has that killer ’50s mojo.
Uytae lays out all the data, and even tacks on the requisite UBC update at the end. Have a look:
Setting aside the project’s weird, baking product inspired name, ‘Marzipan,’ Apple’s upcoming cross-platform iOS-to-macOS development framework, is a great and long-overdue move by the tech giant that could have far-reaching improvements on its desktop operating system.
While Apple will always state otherwise publicly, as the iPhone and iOS have increased in popularity over the past decade, macOS has slowly evolved into an afterthought — though this year’s WWDC has placed an uncharacteristic, but welcome emphasis on the desktop and laptop operating system.
Mojave, the latest version of macOS, brings with it a number of interesting features, including the often-requested Dark Mode, News app (which isn’t coming to Canada), Voice Memos app, Stocks app and even a Home app that looks and feels like it was ported directly from iOS, touchscreen oriented buttons and all.
A completely revamped desktop App Store — curated by the same editorial team behind Apple’s iOS marketplace — that aims to help improve App discoverability, one of macOS’ most significant issues from both a consumer and developer perspective, is also on the way.
All this seems to be part of what looks like a conscious effort on Apple’s part to encourage developers to either return to creating apps for its desktop OS, or to at the very least consider it a viable option.
In some sense, the new App Store is only the first step in Apple’s plan to revitalize macOS’ app ecosystem, with the more significant push coming in 2019 through the launch of the aforementioned cross-platform development framework, making the process of bringing an app to macOS from iOS, much simpler for developers, according to the company.
One thing is clear though, at least if you take Apple’s strong statement during its WWDC’s keynote seriously — iOS and macOS will not be unified into one universal platform anytime soon. Marzipan’s goal is to make it easier for developers to port over their iOS apps to macOS, with some subtle changes that are focused on altering how the user interacts with the app’s UI because Apple’s desktop OS system doesn’t feature touchscreen interaction — and according to Apple, it likely never will.
This approach to app development is reminiscent of Microsoft’s seemingly defunct universal app strategy that aimed for apps to universally run across Windows 10, Xbox One and the company’s dead Windows Phone operating system. Parallels can also be drawn to Google allowing Android apps to run on some Chrome OS devices like the Mountain View, California-based tech giant’s PixelBook.
That said, the situation Apple is in when it comes to macOS apps has some distinct differences.
For one, unlike Microsoft’s digital retail platform, the App Store is absolutely massive and finely curated, with Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, recently stating that over the past decade, Apple has paid out $100 billion to app developers. Apple also retains significant control over which apps are approved in both its iOS App Store and macOS App Store, which allows the company to avoid the mess most Android apps become when running on Chrome OS.
While some Android apps work great on Chrome OS — such as Netflix, YouTube, Google Photos and Spotify — others, like Instagram and other social media platforms, are a cumbersome mess.
Since all iOS apps won’t just directly run on macOS and instead must first be optimized and approved, according to what Apple has revealed about the project so far, this issue will hopefully be avoided.
Apple says that tasks like adding mouse/keyboard input, resizing windows and other very basic macOS app features most users likely don’t even realize are a significant part of desktop apps, take a significant amount of time to implement. The goal of this development framework — which Apple is testing by bringing iOS apps like Home and Voice Memos to macOS — is to streamline the porting process, allowing developers to concentrate on app-specific optimization, rather than broader features.
If Apple can convince even a small number of the developers that have created the two million plus apps currently present in the iOS App Store, to port their projects over to macOS, this could result in a much-needed surge in useful, worthwhile apps hitting macOS’ digital marketplace.
To be clear, this universal app framework is still a ways off given that Apple says it’s still in the testing phases and won’t be available to developers until 2019.
It’s likely that we’ll learn more about Apple’s strategy to revitalize macOS’ App Store in the coming months.
Code in the iOS 12 beta hints that Face ID is coming to the iPad.
The code was discovered by iOS developer Guilherme Rambo, who tweeted screenshots and videos of the code in action, showing the set-up UI and settings menu.
The Face ID setup UI is finally working on iPad. Clearly not done yet as can be seen by the descriptions mentioning “iPhone”. But it’s a start pic.twitter.com/PVQgfbne15
iOS 12 also moves the clock from the top centre of the screen to the top left, like on the iPhone X. This could just be Apple working to unify the look between devices. However, other devices running the iOS 12 beta — like an iPhone 7 Plus — maintained their old clock position. The switch on iPad may point to a new notch design.
Apple has been working to unify other parts of iOS with the new software. Gesture controls, for example, are being unified. Users can access the Control Center by swiping down from the top-right corner of the display. Similarly to the iPhone X, swiping up on the dock returns users to the home screen.
This could hint at an iPhone X-style iPad with a Face ID notch and a near bezel-less display.
Apple’s TV App, which is available on the 4th-Generation Apple TV and iOS across iPhone and iPad, now supports live sports and news in Canada.
Previously, this feature was exclusive to the United States.
This means sports-focused apps such as DAZN, as well as news streaming platforms such as the CBC, will now show up in Apple’s TV App.
While this won’t be a huge deal for all Apple TV users — especially if you’re already familiar with jumping between multiple apps rapidly, like me — for those that are fans of sports, quick access to live games is now built-in.
A complete list of live television apps now featured in the Apple TV App can be found below:
• CBC — The app is free, but a $4.99 paid tier removes ads. • DAZN — A monthly subscription is priced at $20-per-month. DAZN features a variety of professional sports leagues, including the NFL, MLB, and various pro soccer leagues. You can find a full list here. • Sportsnet — A monthly subscription is priced at $24.99. • TSN GO — A cable subscription is required. • RDS GO — A cable subscription is required.
As it stands right, league-based apps like Rogers’ NHL Live and MLB TV aren’t available though the TV App, though Apple says this could change in the future.
It’s worth noting the TV app also handles sports content differently from television shows or movies. For instance, even if you don’t subscribe to a specific service, sports content from that platform will show up under the TV App’s specific tab. This isn’t the case with television shows or movies featured in the TV App, with Apple only pulling content from services you already subscribe to.
Apple says it made this shift in order to give TV App users a better idea of what live sports content is available through the Apple TV. Further, before a live event airs, it’s displayed as a thumbnail outlining what teams are playing, as well as the time of the game, but once the broadcast is underway, the thumbnail turns into a live feed of the event.
Users can also set specific teams to an in-app favourites list in order to receive notifications related to when games are airing, as well as specific times when you might want to tune into a close match.
The Apple TV App is pre-installed on every iPhone and iPad running iOS 11.2 and above, as well as the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV 4th generation.
AT WWDC 2018, Apple announced tvOS 12, the new version of its Apple TV operating system. While a minor upgrade over tvOS 11, tvOS 12 does feature a few notable upgrades over its predecessor, including Dolby Atmos support and password autofill.
Google doesn’t release new developer previews for Android on a regular, or even semi-regular basis. But there is finally a new one for developers and adventurous individuals to download.
Continue reading →
Price Tags.
pic.twitter.com/PVQgfbne15
