FSF/GNU: Alyssa Rosenzweig, Sonali Singhal, DataBasin + DataBasinKit 1.0

• Introducing Alyssa Rosenzweig, intern with the FSF tech team

  Howdy there, fellow cyber denizens; 'tis I, Alyssa Rosenzweig, your friendly local biological life form! I'm a certified goofball, licensed to be silly under the GPLv3, but more importantly, I'm passionate about free software's role in society. I'm excited to join the Free Software Foundation as an intern this summer to expand my understanding of our movement. Well, that, and purchasing my first propeller beanie in strict compliance with the FSF office dress code! Anywho, I hail from a family of engineers and was introduced to programming at an early age. As a miniature humanoid, I discovered that practice let me hit buttons on a keyboard and have my textual protagonist dance on my terminal -- that was cool! Mimicking those around me, I hacked with an Apple laptop, running macOS, compiling in Xcode, and talking on Skype. I was vaguely aware of the free software ethos, so sometimes I liberated my code. Sometimes I did not. I was little more than a button masher with a flashing TTY; I wrote video games while inside a video game, my life firewalled from reality.

• Sonali's Progress on the Free Software Directory, weeks 1-2

  The last few weeks have been very enlightening. I learned about MediaWiki extensions, like MobileFrontend, CSS, vim, and other mobile extensions. I installed MobileFrontend, and resolved a few issues I faced regarding HeaderTabs and in-line view. It feels great to have been able to get the basic structure for mobile view by now. As a part of my project to make the Free Software Directory mobile friendly, I can add extensions, modify the code, and format the pages the way I like. I have complete freedom to experiment on their development site as much as I want. It's wonderful to be able to work on something I really enjoy under the guidance of experienced mentors.

• DataBasin + DataBasinKit 1.0 released

  DataBasin is a tool to access and work with SalesForce.com. It allows to perform queries remotely, export and import data, inspect single records and describe objects. DataBasinKit is its underlying framework which implements the APIs in Objective-C. Works on GNUstep (major Unix variants and MinGW on windows) and natively on macOS.

Android Leftovers

• Save money on RAVPower wireless chargers for iPhone and Android smartphones

• How to get Android-P-like features on any phone right now

• Android phones run old software and break more than iOS, report suggests

• Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite leaks with Android One onboard [UPDATE: And non-lite!]

• Samsung's first Android Go phone takes a major step towards release

A look at Ubuntu 18.04 Budgie

I like this. I like this a lot. It’s exactly what I’d been hoping it would be, after the previous failures at a happy Budgie desktop. I haven’t used it for long enough to get as deep into messing with it as I probably will in the future, so maybe I’ll find issues at that time; but Ubuntu 18.04 Budgie is seeming to be a quite solid, attractive, and easy to use system for people who want even more eyecandy, or are sick of the usual environments.

KDE Applications 18.04 Reaches End of Life, KDE Apps 18.08 Coming August 16

Coming about a five weeks after the release of the second maintenance update, the KDE Applications 18.04.3 point release is now available with a number of bug fixes, translation updates, and other improvements to make sure the open-source software suite offers users a stable and pleasant experience. About 20 bug fixes have been recorded for KDE Applications 18.04.3 to improve applications like Ark, Cantor, Dolphin, Gwenview, JuK, Kate, KFind, KGPG, KMag, KMail, KNotes, Konsole, Kontact, Marble, and Okular, as well as numerous other core components. A full changelog is available here for your reading pleasure.