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According to The Information (paywalled), Meta is reportedly developing facial recognition capabilities for its Ray-Ban smart glasses -- technology it previously avoided due to privacy concerns. 404 Media's Joseph Cox writes: The move is an obvious about-face from Meta. It's also interesting to me because Meta's PR chewed my ass off when I dared to report in October that a pair of students took Meta's Ray-Ban glasses and combined them with off-the-shelf facial recognition technology. That tool, which the students called I-XRAY, captured a person's face, ran it through an easy to access facial recognition service called Pimeyes, then went a step further and pulled up information about the subject from across the web, including their home address and phone number. When I contacted Meta for comment for that story, Dave Arnold, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email he had one question for me. "That Pimeyes facial recognition technology could be used with ANY camera, correct? In other words, this isn't something that only is possible because of Meta Ray-Bans? If so, I think that's an important point to note in the piece," he wrote. This is true. But entirely misses the point of why the students created the tool with Meta's Ray-Ban glasses. They said themselves in a demonstration video they identified dozens of people without their knowledge. You do that by wearing a pair of glasses that look like any other. Meta's Ray-Ban's do have a light that turns on when it's recording, but according to the new report, Meta is questioning whether new versions of its glasses need this.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Numerous coffee establishments across the US are actively restricting internet access and laptop use as they push back against remote workers monopolizing their spaces for hours. New York's Devocion chain limits WiFi to two-hour windows on weekdays and eliminates it entirely on weekends, while Detroit's Alba coffee shop has operated without WiFi since its 2023 opening. Some venues have resorted to physically taping over electrical outlets. DC-based cafe Elle initially launched without WiFi but reversed course after receiving negative Google reviews, implementing a compromise with access restricted to Monday-Thursday, 8am-3pm, with a 90-minute usage cap. The restrictions primarily aim to increase customer turnover, improve sales figures, and restore the community atmosphere that extended laptop sessions often diminish.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A Florida bill, which would have required social media companies to provide an encryption backdoor for allowing police to access user accounts and private messages, has failed to pass into law. The Social Media Use by Minors bill was "indefinitely postponed" and "withdrawn from consideration" in the Florida House of Representatives earlier this week. Lawmakers in the Florida Senate had already voted to advance the legislation, but a bill requires both legislative chambers to pass before it can become law. The bill would have required social media firms to "provide a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when law enforcement obtains a subpoena," which are typically issued by law enforcement agencies and without judicial oversight. Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the bill "dangerous and dumb." Security professionals have long argued that it is impossible to create a secure backdoor that cannot also be maliciously abused, and encryption backdoors put user data at risk of data breaches.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just days after a radar and communications outage at Newark Liberty International Airport, the FAA confirmed a second incident on May 9 that disrupted radar and radio contact for 90 seconds due to a telecom failure at Philadelphia TRACON. "As of 12:30PM ET, FlightAware stats showed 292 total delays for flights into or out of Newark, which is also experiencing delays due to runway construction," reports The Verge. From the report: After the first outage on April 28th, an air traffic controller who had been on duty that day told CNN it "...was the most dangerous situation you could have." CNN reports that after a change made last July, the airport's radar and radio communication flows over a single data feed from a facility in New York, where controllers used to manage Newark's flights, to Philadelphia. The FAA has announced a plan to replace the current copper connection with fiber, as well as adding "three new, high-bandwidth telecommunications connections between the New York-based STARS and the Philadelphia TRACON," and more air traffic controllers. Until those and other changes are made, the agency also said a new backup system is being deployed in Philadelphia, but it's unclear when that will be available. NBC News reports the Friday outage affected a limited number of sectors, but it's another incident in the string of issues that have highlighted the problems with the airport's aging control system and lack of staffing. [...] A statement from the FAA said, "Frequent equipment and telecommunications outages can be stressful for controllers. Some controllers at the Philadelphia TRACON who work Newark arrivals and departures have taken time off to recover from the stress of multiple recent outages."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wearable startup Whoop just announced its new Whoop 5.0 fitness tracker yesterday, but some existing users are already calling foul. From a report: Previously, Whoop said people who had been members for at least six months would get free upgrades to next-generation hardware. Now, the company says that members hoping to upgrade from a Whoop 4.0 to 5.0 will have to pay up. Whoop is a bit different from other fitness trackers in that it runs entirely on a subscription membership model. Most wearable makers that have subscriptions will charge you for the hardware, and then customers have the option of subscribing to get extra data or features. A good example is the Oura Ring, where you buy the ring and then have the option of paying a monthly $6 subscription. Whoop, however, has until now said that you get the hardware for "free" while paying a heftier annual subscription. Previously, Whoop promised users that whenever new hardware was released, existing members would be able to upgrade free of charge so long as they'd been a member for at least six months.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A U.S. senator introduced a bill on Friday that would direct the Commerce Department to require location verification mechanisms for export-controlled AI chips, in an effort to curb China's access to advanced semiconductor technology. From a report: Called the "Chip Security Act," the bill calls for AI chips under export regulations, and products containing those chips, to be fitted with location-tracking systems to help detect diversion, smuggling or other unauthorized use of the product. "With these enhanced security measures, we can continue to expand access to U.S. technology without compromising our national security," Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said. The bill also calls for companies exporting the AI chips to report to the Bureau of Industry and Security if their products have been diverted away from their intended location or subject to tampering attempts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Software firm 37signals is completing its migration from AWS to on-premises infrastructure, expecting to save $1.3 million annually on storage costs alone. CTO David Heinemeier Hansson announced the company has begun migrating 18 petabytes of data from Amazon S3 to Pure Storage arrays costing $1.5 million upfront but only $200,000 yearly to operate. AWS waived $250,000 in data egress fees for the transition, which will allow 37signals to completely delete its AWS account this summer. The company has already slashed $2 million in annual costs after replacing cloud compute with $700,000 worth of Dell servers in 2024. "Cloud can be a good choice in certain circumstances, but the industry pulled a fast one convincing everyone it's the only way," wrote Hansson, who began the repatriation effort in 2022 after discovering their annual AWS bill exceeded $3.2 million.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A comprehensive analysis in Science Advances reveals that humans have explored less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor -- an area equivalent to merely one-tenth the size of Belgium. Oceanographer Katherine Bell and colleagues at the Ocean Discovery League compiled data from approximately 44,000 deep-sea dives conducted between 1958 and 2024, finding that expeditions have concentrated overwhelmingly around waters near the United States, Japan, and New Zealand. The study exposes significant gaps in ocean exploration, with vast regions -- particularly the Indian Ocean -- remaining virtually untouched by direct observation. Much of the existing dive data remains inaccessible to scientists, locked away by private companies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The GNOME Foundation is delighted to announce the appointment of Steven Deobald as our new Executive Director. Steven brings decades of experience in free software, open design, and open documentation efforts to the Foundation, and we are excited to have him lead our organization into its next chapter.

“I’m incredibly excited to serve the GNOME Foundation as its new full-time Executive Director,” said Steven Deobald. “The global network of contributors that makes up the GNOME community is awe-inspiring. I’m thrilled to serve the community in this role. GNOME’s clear mission as a universal computing environment for everyone, everywhere has remained consistent for a quarter century—that kind of continuity is exceptional.”

Steven has been a GNOME user since 2002 and has been involved in numerous free software initiatives throughout his career. His professional background spans technical leadership, business development, and nonprofit work, and he was one of the founding members of Nilenso, India’s first worker-owned tech cooperative. Having worked with projects like XTDB and Endatabas and founding India’s first employee-own, he brings valuable experience in open source product development. Based in Halifax, Canada, Steven is well-positioned to collaborate with our global community across time zones.

“Steven’s wealth of experience in open source communities and his clear understanding of GNOME’s mission make him the ideal leader for the Foundation at this time,” said Robert McQueen, GNOME Foundation Board President. “His vision for transparency and financial resilience aligns perfectly with our goals as we support and grow the diversity and sustainability of GNOME’s free software personal computing ecosystem.”

Steven plans to focus on increasing transparency about the people and processes behind GNOME, reestablishing the Foundation’s financial stability, and building resilience across finances, people, documentation, and processes to ensure GNOME thrives for decades to come. You can read more from Steven in his introductory post on his GNOME blog.

Heartfelt Thanks to Richard Littauer

The GNOME Foundation extends its deepest gratitude to Richard Littauer, who has served as Interim Executive Director for the past ten months. Despite initially signing on for just two months while simultaneously moving to New Zealand and beginning a PhD program, Richard extended his commitment to ensure stability during our search for a permanent director.

During his tenure, Richard worked closely with the board and staff to pass a balanced budget, secure additional funding, support successful events including GUADEC, and navigate numerous challenges facing the Foundation. His dedication to ensuring GNOME’s continued success, often while working across challenging time zones, has been invaluable.

“I knew this day would come at some point,” Richard shared in his farewell post. “My time has been exceedingly difficult… I feel that I have done very little; all of the gains happened with the help of others.” Richard’s humility belies the significant impact he made during his time with us, creating a solid foundation for our new Executive Director.

Richard will return full-time to his PhD studies at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, but remains available to the GNOME community and can be reached via Mastodon, his website, or at richard@gnome.org.

Looking Ahead

As we welcome Steven and thank Richard, we also recognize the dedicated contributors, volunteers, staff, and board members who keep GNOME thriving. The Foundation remains committed to supporting the development of a free and accessible desktop environment for all users around the world.

The GNOME community can look forward to meeting Steven at upcoming events and through community channels. We encourage everyone to join us in welcoming him to the GNOME family and supporting his vision for the Foundation’s future.

Version:next-20250509 (linux-next) Released:2025-05-09

Version:6.14.6 (stable) Released:2025-05-09 Source:linux-6.14.6.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.14.6.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.14.6

Version:6.12.28 (longterm) Released:2025-05-09 Source:linux-6.12.28.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.12.28.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.12.28

Version:6.6.90 (longterm) Released:2025-05-09 Source:linux-6.6.90.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.6.90.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.6.90

Version:6.1.138 (longterm) Released:2025-05-09 Source:linux-6.1.138.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-6.1.138.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-6.1.138

Version:5.15.182 (longterm) Released:2025-05-09 Source:linux-5.15.182.tar.xz PGP Signature:linux-5.15.182.tar.sign Patch:full (incremental) ChangeLog:ChangeLog-5.15.182

During this quarter, all employees are asked to become familiar with using AI technologies. In the last months I explored using AI for code editing and pull request reviews, but I wrote about that separately. But today is another Red Hat day of learning, so I looked at something more hands-on: Install and run InstructLab on my own laptop again, and experiment with it. TL/DR: This just reinforced my experience from the last two years about AI being too bad and too expensive for what I would expect it to do.

Goal In the Cockpit team we spend a lot of our time on PR reviews. That’s time well spent – we all learn from each other, it keeps the code quality high and ourselves honest. But most certainly there is room for optimization: There are always silly or boring things like typos, inconsistent formatting, or inefficient algorithms; and humans also have selective and subjective sight, i.e. are often missing things.

Update on what happened across the GNOME project in the week from May 02 to May 09.

GNOME Foundation

steven announces

We have our first Foundation Report since I joined as ED! I hope these are less verbose and less rambling in the future… and also less focused on the minutiae of what I spent my week on. With each passing week, they will (hopefully) come to encompass more of what’s going on at the Foundation, at a higher level. For now, I’m meeting many, many lovely folks and finding out just how hard everyone is working.

Read the long ramble on my blog.

Internships

Felipe Borges announces

We are happy to announce that five contributors are joining the GNOME community as part of Google Summer of Code 2025!

This year’s contributors will work on backend isolation in GNOME Papers, adding eBPF profiling to Sysprof, adding printing support in GNOME Crosswords, and Vala’s XML/JSON/YAML integration improvements. Let’s give them a warm welcome!

In the coming days, our new contributors will begin onboarding in our community channels and services. Stay tuned to Planet GNOME to read their introduction blog posts and learn more about their projects.

If you want to learn more about Google Summer of Code internships with GNOME, visit gsoc.gnome.org.

GNOME Core Apps and Libraries Video Player (Showtime) ↗

Watch without distraction

kramo says

Video Player (codenamed Showtime) is replacing Videos (Totem) as GNOME’s default video player.

It will be included in GNOME 49, but it can already be installed from Flathub.

Third Party Projects

Jan Lukas says

I’ve released the first version of Typewriter to flathub. It is a, as of now, basic Typst editor with built-in live preview, template browser and export dialog. If you’re interested in a local-first Typst experience come join and contribute code and ideas.

Gitlab flathub

ranfdev announces

I’m announcing that DistroShelf is finally available on flathub ! Sometimes, there are certain programs that aren’t available on your favorite distro… They are available for Ubuntu, but you don’t want to reinstall your OS just for that program.

* DistroShelf enters the chat *

It enables you to run containers that are highly integrated with your host system, using distrobox. In other words, it lets you install that program you want, inside a Ubuntu container. Then, you can use the program as if it were installed on your real distro! The program will see all your folders, all your devices… as you expect.

But you can run more than simple ubuntu containers! You can run pretty much any distro you want. I use it to run a development environment with the latest and greatest tools, inside an arch linux container.

Try it while it’s hot!

Parabolic ↗

Download web video and audio.

Nick says

Parabolic V2025.5.0 is here!

This release contains a complete redesign of the Qt/Windows app that features a much more modern experience. yt-dlp was also updated to the latest version to fix many website validation issues and some other features/fixes were added.

Please note, as many of you may have seen already, development of Parabolic and the set of Nickvision apps has slowed down. This is due to me starting a new full-time job and thus leaving only the weekends for me to work on these projects. This does not mean I am stopping development, it just means that releases, updates, and fixes will unfortunately take longer now. I appreciate all of your support and patience for these updates. Any C++ developers who would like to work on the projects with me as well are more than welcome too and are encouraged to reach out to me on Matrix!

Here’s the full changelog:

• Added the display of the file size of a format if it is available
• Fixed an issue where file paths were not truncated correctly
• Redesigned the Qt app for a more modern desktop experience
• Updated yt-dlp to fix some website validation issues

GNOME Websites

Felipe Borges announces

It’s alive! Welcome to the new planet.gnome.org!

A few months ago, I announced that I was working on a new implementation of Planet GNOME, powered by GitLab Pages. This work has reached a point where we’re ready to flip the switch and replace the old Planet website.

This was only possible thanks to various other contributors, such as Jakub Steiner, who did a fantastic job with the design and style, and Alexandre Franke, who helped with various papercuts, ideas, and improvements.

As with any software, there might be regressions and issues. It would be a great help if you report any problems you find.

If you are subscribed to the old Planet’s RSS feed, you don’t need to do anything. But if you are subscribed to the Atom feed at https://planet.gnome.org/atom.xml, you will have to switch to the RSS address at https://planet.gnome.org/rss20.xml

Miscellaneous

Sid says

GNOME GitLab now uses macOS runners sponsored by MacStadium for managing our macOS CI pipeline. The setup consists of 2 Mac mini (M1, 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD) along with Orka (Orchestration with Kubernetes on Apple) virtualization. This is a significant bump in hardware specs compared to the current solution, allowing us to run more builds simultaneously. Thanks to MacStadium for sponsoring this infrastructure upgrade!

For more details refer to https://blogs.gnome.org/sid/2025/04/27/macstadium-sponsors-gnome-macos-ci-infrastructure/.

That’s all for this week!

See you next week, and be sure to stop by #thisweek:gnome.org with updates on your own projects!

I'm usually not a huge fan of personal growth books. As I pointed out in my Blinkist review, most books of this genre are 300 pages long when all the content would fit on 20. I read Deep Work by Cal Newport, with an open but skeptical mind.

A case for deep work

The book is split in two main sections. In the first section, the author makes a case for deep work. He argues that deep work is economically viable because it can help you learn new skills fast, a distinctive trait to successful people in tech, especially when competing with increasingly intelligent machines. This argument is surprisingly timely now, at the peak of the AI bubble.

He then explains that deep work is rare because in the absence of clear indicators of productivity, most people default to appearing very active shuffling things around. This argument clearly resonated with my experience for all my career.

Newport closes the first section by explaining why deep work is actually important for us humans because it limits our exposure to pettiness, makes us empirically happier than shallow work, and because it helps us find meaning to our work.

Rules for deep work

In the second section, the author lays out the four rules to enable deep work:

1. Decide the length of your deep work sessions, establish a ritual for them, keep track of your consistency and hold yourself accountable to it, and refrain from overworking since it decreases your global productivity.
2. Since the Internet can be very distracting, establish some time blocks with Internet and some without, and enforce the rule strictly even if it seems silly.
3. Pick up the right tools for your job by assessing the positive but also the negative impact. Most of the time that means "get off social media." Also avoid fast-paced entertainment since it can undo all the day training and embrace boredom as a way to train your focus.
4. Use every minute of your day intentionally by scheduling them, even if that means redoing your schedule several time as new priorities emerge. Quantify the depth of your work and ask your boss for a shallow work budget. Finish early so your day is tightly time boxed and shallow work becomes even more expensive (so easier to refuse). Become hard to reach so you don't spend your day in your inbox.

An insightful book

Like in all personal growth books, storytelling takes many pages in Deep Work, but here it supports nicely the argument of the author. The book was pleasant to read and helped me question my relationship to technology and work.

In the first section the author backs his claims about the importance of focus with evidences from academic studies. Of course since the second section is all about establishing new rules to allow deep work, it's not possible to have proofs that it works. With that said, I bought a late edition and would have liked an "augmented" conclusion with evidence from people who used the methodology successfully in the real world.

You can find my key takeaways from the book by having a look at my reading notes.

I would like to have my blog indexed on GNOME Planet. GNOME Planet’s repo, however, doesn’t appear to be licensed – there’s no note about the license on https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/planet-web, and no license file in the repo.

It would be difficult to add a license now, as there have been thousands of commits to the repo, with a lot of individual contributors. Relicensing might require contacting each one of these authors.

But I don’t like committing to repositories which are not licensed. I’m not even sure I can – do I maintain my copyright, or does the new owner? How would that fall out in court? In which jurisdiction is gnome-planet – the US?

So I asked ChatGPT (itself a pretty odd legal move) whether I could license a commit. Unsurprisingly, it says that no, you can’t, because a repository is a work in itself, and that license would take over. This is obviously garbage. When I asked it to clarify, it said that you might be able to, but it would “violate norms”. Sure, that seems accurate, but I am glad that ChatGPT is not my lawyer.

I figure, if my work is my work, there’s no reason I can’t license a change to a file. Whether not that license will be enforced is anyone’s guess, but legally, I should be responsible for my own lines of code. So, I opened this pull-request: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Infrastructure/planet-web/-/merge_requests/163. I noted in the commit that the license is an MIT license, and then I noted that in the PR comment field, too.

Technically, the MIT license demands that the license be shared with the commit. So I’ve just amended the commit to include the license, too, which satisfies my needs.

I don’t think that there will ever be a technical issue with licensing for this repo. And I don’t know if Felipe will merge my commit. But it is an interesting experiment.

➜ planet-web git:(feat/add-my-feed) git show HEAD commit 3acaff792c635e9c277d892f37b45997b0b57d70 (HEAD -> feat/add-my-feed, richardlitt/feat/add-my-feed) Author: Richard Littauer <richard+github@burntfen.com> Date: Tue May 6 09:38:38 2025 +1200 Adding my ID This commit is licensed under an MIT license. MIT License Copyright (c) 2025 Richard Littauer Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice (including the next paragraph) shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. diff --git a/config/gnome/config.ini b/config/gnome/config.ini index 9ea71857..4829be43 100644 --- a/config/gnome/config.ini +++ b/config/gnome/config.ini @@ -3513,3 +3513,7 @@ outreachy = 1 [https://conduct.gnome.org/feed/] name = Code of Conduct Committee #nick = + +[https://blogs.gnome.org/richardlitt/feed/] +name = Richard Littauer's blog +nick = richardlitt