Notices by Tobias Bernard (tbernard@mastodon.social)

Wait the camera bumps were optional this whole time?? https://www.theverge.com/news/631826/google-pixel-9a-specs-price-availability

@jimmac Not sure I buy that it's because of physics anymore, when Google just shipped the same camera for 5 years and nobody complained, because it's all software anyway...

My completely unscientific hot take is that the huge camera bumps are mostly a camera quality placebo and a way to upsell people on the more expensive phones.

If the future is that we need to wait 5s every time a GNOME Gitlab page loads, maybe we should at least show something interesting - how about random tips or excerpts from the HIG?

"Never use the label 'OK' on a button"

"Margins should be multiples of 6px, e.g. 12, 18, 24"

"Button labels should use Title Case"

"Don't ask for confirmation when you could have undo instead"

and so on :)

Looking over the guidelines I'd guess the trick is probably in setting the requirements such that only Windows/MS Office/AutoCAD/etc can meet them?

Very interesting document though, they have decision making flow charts and everything:

https://www.agid.gov.it/sites/default/files/repository_files/lg-acquisizione-e-riuso-software-per-pa-docs_pubblicata.pdf

In the section about requirements it says you need to take "cost of data migration, installation, personalization, training staff" etc. into account.

I guess with that you can basically always make a case to just keep the current thing?

@gubi @maymage @fsfe So in theory someone could sue over the fact that e.g. Windows was chosen in a specific procurement decision, it's just that nobody has tried?

I recently learned that the Italian government is only allowed to buy proprietary software after it has determined that there isn't a free software option. IIUC they're also required to publish any code they write (or commission to be written) under a free license.

https://www.agid.gov.it/it/design-servizi/riuso-open-source/linee-guida-acquisizione-riuso-software-pa

However, at least as far as I know Windows, Office, et al are being used everywhere in public administration, and even e.g. public transport apps are proprietary. What gives?

Hold on, there's another even better one https://www.theverge.com/news/623765/xiaomi-realme-camera-concepts-modular-lens-mwc-2025

Called it 5 years ago: The future of phones is all-screen front, all-camera back, ugly all around 🌈

https://www.theverge.com/phone-review/621670/xiaomi-15-ultra-review-camera-periscope-price-specs-price

My 2019 posts:

https://mastodon.social/@tbernard/102773247780949242

https://mastodon.social/@tbernard/102774177475616519

Cool to see this new effort by @niccolove! There's way too much misinformation out there as a result of the general disconnect between developers and free software "media". Kudos for seizing the means of communication o/

https://thelibre.news

Drum Machine has been accepted into Circle! It's a delightful little app to play with drum patterns and prototype track ideas. Give it a try, I had a lot of fun playing with it during review 🥁 ✨

https://apps.gnome.org/DrumMachine

The Disks GTK4/Libadwaita port landed in GNOME OS Nightly, looking fantastic 🙌

We're starting off the new year with an exciting new edition of Unboiling The Ocean! Join us for a discussion about peer-to-peer UX and threat models.

We have some special guests and questions to discuss, but mostly the plan is to have an open discussion around these topics to inform the design and development of the Aardvark text editor project.

Join us on Monday January 27 at 19:00 at @offline in Neukölln!

#p2panda #aardvark #gnome #berlin

PSA: I'm stepping down from putting together an STF application for 2025.

Reflecting on our experiences with the STF project last year, I no longer think the GNOME Foundation is a good venue to organize development collectively. Even if the Foundation's current issues are fixed, we've seen how risky it is to centralize development in a single structure.

My hope is that we'll learn from this and find more sustainable, decentralized ways of organizing going forward.

https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2025/01/07/re-decentralizing

I blogged about our recent Aardvark hackfest with the @p2panda crew!

https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2024/12/18/aardvark

#localfirst #aardvark #gnome #p2panda

It (somewhat) works!!!

#aardvark #p2panda

Doing some software archaeology with @jimmac today, looking at webOS on the Touchpad and Palm Pre.

It's very cool to see how far ahead of its time this was, and also how many elements from it survived in GNOME in some form! And of course, the multitasking is still unmatched by any more recent mobile platform :)

#webOS #palmPre #gnome

🎅🐼 Save the date 🐼🎅

We're having a release event for the new @p2panda stack, and a hackfest to start working on a new native GTK local-first collaborative text editor!

Join us December 7-8 in Berlin (location and details TBA)

#p2panda #p2p #localfirst #gnome #gtk #berlin

Update: Here's a quick draft for a pre-review checklist https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Circle/-/merge_requests/116

I've been trying to do more Circle reviews lately, and I've noticed that a lot of apps have very similar papercuts. Some of the classics are:

- Not using the standard keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl+, for opening preferences) https://developer.gnome.org/hig/reference/keyboard.html
- Missing a11y labels on buttons
- Longer blocks of text not being screen reader accessible
- Focus borders being weirdly shaped/glitchy

Maybe having a little checklist for app devs to do themselves before applying could catch some of these?