Programming Leftovers

• Godot Engine - Fog Volumes arrive in Godot 4.0

  On top of the existing non-volumetric fog, Godot 4.0 introduces a new type of fog: Volumetric Fog. For the 4.0 release, we decided to take Volumetric Fog one step further with the addition of FogVolumes. These allow users to dynamically place fog and control complex fog effects with shaders. This post starts off with a high-level description of what FogVolumes are and how to use them, and then includes some technical details about what is going on under the hood and how we get them to render so fast.

• Commercial add-on: Qt VNC Server

  "VNC" (or Virtual Network Computing) compatibility has a long history in Qt, and we are now improving this story with Qt 6.4.

• Gitly is an Open Source GitHub and GitLab Alternative

  GitHub and GitLab are free web-based version control system and collaboration platforms for developers. While, they are free on certain aspects, many developers and companies like to have their own version control system self-hosted on their servers. [...] Gitly is released under the GPL-3.0 License.

• 3 steps to create an awesome UX in a CLI application

  As I was sitting in a meeting room, speaking with one of my teammates, our manager walked in with the rest of the dev team. The door slammed shut and our manager revealed that he had a big announcement. What unfolded before our eyes was the next project we were going to develop—an open source CLI (command line interface) application. In this article, I'd like to share what I learned during our development process, and specifically what I wish I had known before we began developing Datree's CLI. Perhaps the next person can use these tips to create a great CLI application faster. My name is Noaa Barki. I've been a full-stack developer for over six years, and I'll let you in on a little secret—I have a superpower: My interest and expertise are evenly split between back-end and front-end development. I simply cannot choose one without the other. [...] Use CLI commands that are named in a SINGLE form and VERB-NOUN format. This allows the command to be read like an imperative or request, for example: Computer, start app! Minimize with the total number of commands you use, and don't rush to introduce new verbs to new commands. This makes it easier for users to remember command names.

• SQL Like Multiple Values

  “The SQL LIKE operator allows performing logical evaluation for any matching records. Using the LIKE operator, you can specify single or multiple conditions. This allows you to perform an action such as select, delete, and updating any columns or records that match the specified conditions. It is mainly paired with a where clause to set the conditions. In this tutorial, we will look at the workings of the LIKE clause and how we can use it to specify multiple conditions.”

• JSON Multi-Line String

  “JSON is a popular data-interchange format that has been widely adopted across the development community. However, JSON has strict schema and formatting tools. JSON does not natively support multi-line strings. This can be quite frustrating when looking for flexibility and storing large texts. Let us discuss a simple workaround and how we can use multiline strings.”

• PostgreSQL Cascade Delete

  “When working with PostgreSQL databases, you will encounter instances where you must drop records from a table. Before running a delete query, it is important to ensure that the table does not leave any incomplete relationships between tables. In PostgreSQL, we can use the CASCADE DELETE feature to accomplish this. This feature allows a delete operation to remove the specified records and any foreign keys that reference them. Using this article, we will review how to perform a cascade delete in PostgreSQL.”

• Kibana Server Not Ready Yet

  “Kibana is a free and open-source analytics and visualization platform for Elasticsearch. It provides a browser-based graphical interface for interacting with your Elasticsearch database. It is very simple and intuitive. You can perform operations such as search, view, update, delete and query all the indices in your Elasticsearch cluster. When it comes to visualization, it offers a wide range of options, including charts, tables, maps, etc. However, Elasticsearch and Kibana have a notorious reputation for being difficult to set up and configure, especially when getting started.

• TOTP with Perl and Authen::OATH | Lester Hightower [blogs.perl.org]

  I wrote this post after seeing Flavio Poletti's blog post entitled OATH Toolkit. I have been a fan of time-based one time passwords (TOTP) for many years. In fact, I used Mobile-OTP in commercial applications for several years before the Initiative for Open Authentication (OATH) and OATH/TOTP were codified in RFC6238. Now-a-days, OATH/TOTP is the best choice for time-based one time passwords, and has been for at least a decade.

• ERROR: 'flock' trapped by operation mask at /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl/Storable.pm

What’s new in KDE Plasma 5.25

To test KDE Plasma 5.25, I installed a new virtual machine using the KDE Neon distribution. At first, I attempted to use the testing release, but that failed every time I ran the installer. Instead, I opted to go the stable route, which offers a lovely presentation of what KDE Plasma 5.25 is all about. I will warn you even the stable version of KDE Neon (as shipped with KDE 5.25) isn’t exactly the most stable desktop I’ve ever tried. In fact, I found KWin regularly crashed on me. Is this a product of Neon or KDE 5.25? We may never know. It took me a few installs, but I eventually managed to get a reliable desktop up and running.

Syria, John Lennon & Debian WIPO panel appointed

The presiding panelist is Matthew Kennedy. He has worked at the WTO Secretariat in Geneva. He gained his Master of International and Comparative Law at ULB in Brussels, the same venue that hosts the FOSDEM conference where Molly de Blanc infamously used cat pictures to promote shaming the developers. Each party to the dispute was asked to propose three candidates. From the list proposed by Jonathan Saul Cohen, acting for the cabal, WIPO has selected Clive Thorne of British law firm McCarthy Denning.