Tacky animated GIFs (flames, “under construction,” blinking “new” signs), eye-catching colors, and scrolling text with the long-gone <marquee> HTML tag: it’s all there. The Geocities Time Machine transforms any modern website into a masterpiece from the 1990s — or any site from that era hosted on the beloved Geocities. The image to the side is of this Manual “Geocitified.” Hot tip by Antonio.
The folks in the free software community have a knack for coming up with clever names for their creations. Just look at GNU (GNU’s Not Unix) and Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) as prime examples.
On Mastodon, Simon Tatham shared the story of nano and its double-meaning naming.
The GNU nano text editor is named by analogy, after an earlier (non-Free) editor with a very similar UI, called pico. The name puns on SI prefixes: “like pico, but a bit bigger.”
pico was derived from the email client Pine: it’s the built-in editor Pine used for composing emails, pulled out and turned into a standalone tool. Short for PIne COmposer, as far as I know.
And Pine was also named by analogy, after an earlier email client called Elm.
So nano has two instances of “name a program by analogy to a previous one” in the history of how it got its name. (Not counting the step in between where pine gave rise to pico, because that wasn’t by analogy.)
Can anyone think of a longer chain than that, involving three or more generations of naming-by-analogy? Or is nano the record holder?
In the replies, they also mentioned Micro, another editor that aims to be a bit more feature-rich than GNU nano.
Short Trip is a tram ride through a universe of anthropomorphic cats that, as the name suggests, is quite short. However, that doesn’t mean it was quick to built: Alexander Perrin spent five years (!) completing this beautiful hand-animated illustration. (More details.) The sound effects are pleasant as well. If you prefer, there’s a version that “adds a new ‘scheduled’ mode that integrates with the computer’s clock to create an itinerary for the tram” available for purchase on Steam.
The stable version of Fedora Linux 42 is now available, featuring Gnome 48 in the Workstation edition and a new edition based on KDE Plasma (6.3.4), which has been promoted to the same status as Workstation in this cycle. Despite sharing the same status, the naming logic is different; the team is aware of the confusion and states that “we’ll get that figured out eventually.”
Anaconda, the Fedora installer, has received a significant update that makes the automatic disk partitioner smarter, adds the option to reinstall the system, and improves handling of dual boot. For now, it’s on by default only in Fedora Workstation (the edition with Gnome).
Oh, and a last-minute bug slipped through:
[…] just booting the Live media adds an unexpected entry to the UEFI boot loader even when Fedora Linux 42 is not installed to the local system.
The issue is purely cosmetic, but it’s good to be aware of it in advance. Here are the instructions on how to remove the entry.
If you think mechanical keyboards with blue switches are annoying, get ready because things can always get worse: the free app Kwack (macOS) plays a “quack!” with every keystroke.
Pinta 3.0 is out. The new version of the lightweight image editor is built on the GTK 4 and Libadwaita, a much-welcomed modernization of the app.
While this alone brings a host of given improvements to Pinta, it’s not the only new feature. There are visible changes (new icons, menu, color picker, and smart layers) as well as under-the-hood enhancements (dynamic adjustments for different screen sizes and orientations, better gesture support, increased speed, and hopefully fewer crashes).
Support for add-ins, which was temporarily removed in the 2.x series, is back. For now, only two have been ported, but the developers say that “more are likely to be ported to the new release and future releases.”
Pinta’s origins trace back to being a multiplatform Windows’ Paint.NET alternative, meaning it aims to be a simple yet capable image editor; the missing link between Paint and Photoshop. The code is open source and the app is available on Linux, macOS (now with support for Apple Silicon), OpenBSD, and Windows.
— Reuben Son.
In “Quiet Time”, Reuben delves into the genesis, reinterpretations, and paradigm shifts found in ambient music — a delightful coincidence in light of this post I recently published. Bonus points for starting with a quote from Clarice Lispector.
The Oaksun studio developed a mobile-optimized VR experience that showcases properties in a super immersive way. (It works well on both phones and computers, without the need for a virtual reality headset.) Meanwhile, in the real world, we have to deal with those hostage-style photos in rental listings…
Hello! I’m Jônatas. I’m a developer and I also teach programming topics on my YouTube channel. Here, I work as a developer, take online German classes, stream on Twitch, and create videos for YouTube.
My setup starts with a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro Gen 7, a company that makes Linux-focused laptops in Europe and has its own operating system, TuxedoOS. However, I use Arch Linux with the Cosmic Desktop; for recording, I switch to KDE Plasma instead of Cosmic.
With all eyes on the launch of Apple Intelligence in Brazil and other markets, an almost overlooked feature in iOS 18.4 emerged: ambient music buttons right in the Control Center.
There are four options: Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing. They join the background sounds introduced in iOS 15 back in 2021, bolstering the arsenal for those overwhelmed by the noise of modern life. Thank you, Apple! 🙏
My excitement soon turned to frustration when I discovered that the Music app had to be installed for the iOS 18.4 ambient music feature to work. At first, I assumed this meant you needed an active Apple Music subscription—which, for me, is not the case.
I set that thought aside until I read this post showcasing the feature without any reference to Apple Music. Could it be that you don’t need a paid subscription for it? I downloaded the Music app and… indeed, you don’t need a subscription to enjoy the ambient music on iOS 18.4.
This discovery led me to another “issue”: having duplicate apps. I listen to music from *.mp3 files using the Doppi app. When I first embraced this lifestyle (believe me, it’s a lifestyle), I did check out the Music app, but I dismissed it for various reasons I can’t fully recall, aside from the fact that it won’t play *.flac files.
Returning to that point, the Music app still can’t handle *.flac files, though it does support ALAC, Apple’s lossless music format. I only have a few albums in *.flac—and you can probably guess where this is going.
I discovered two apps that can convert these files: XLD (macOS only) and Audio Converter (available for both macOS and Windows). Before resorting to a new app, I checked if ffmpeg—a command-line tool for converting media formats—could do the trick. Naturally, it could.
Further research led me to this script that converts files to *.m4a (the ALAC file format), preserving all metadata and even embedding an album cover image in the newly generated files.
Simply download the flac-to-alac.sh file, then run it like so:
$ ./flac-to-alac.sh /path/to/original/album /path/to/output
The script’s creator warns not to add a trailing slash (/) at the end of any path. “This is a primitive script so treat it so.” In its simplicity and quirks, it works beautifully.
Once the conversion is complete, just drag the songs into the macOS Music app, connect your iPhone via cable, and sync your library through Finder.
One extra step I took was logging out and disabling everything related to Apple Music and the iTunes Store. I may have sacrificed some conveniences, like wireless syncing (although I suspect that depends on having an Apple Music subscription), but given all the horror stories about Apple messing with users’ music files, I think using a cable to transfer music is totally worth the extra effort — it’s a rare occurrence for me, anyway.
This Wednesday (the 9th) we’re celebrating CSS Naked Day. You see, CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, which is basically the “clothes” of a website — a super simple yet powerful language for styling web pages. Take a look at ours.
I thought I’d jump in on the fun! Just for today. Tomorrow (the 10th) the site will be back to normal.
Who needs Photoshop for simple things? The free website Curved Text Generator does what its name suggests: create curved texts. There are two creation modes, a free draw one and other with the “pen”, in which points and curvatures are spread on the canvas as if they were coordinates. And, of course, some customization options, such as font family and size, colors, and spacing.
WordPress is switching from three major releases a year to just one. This new cadence kicks in for 2025 — with WordPress 6.8, scheduled for next Tuesday (April 15th), set to be the only release for the year.
The change was announced during an online meeting with core contributors on March 27th, as reported by The Repository. Some of the contributors who attended the meeting shared their frustration, feeling that Matt Mullenweg, the project’s lead, had already made up his mind to slow the release cadence ahead of the discussion.
Earlier this month, Automattic let go of 16% of its workforce — about 280 folks spread across 90 countries.
It’s worth noting that the cascade of bad news for WordPress seems to have started when Matt impulsively got himself and Automattic tangled in a legal battle with WP Engine over… well, who knows what exactly.