Matt Panhans @mpanhans@librem.one

"This is the technology worth developing"

Paraphrasing @yabellini's closing statement:

The #RStats community is a great example of a technology that:
- helps people and not exploits them
- is at the service of the people using science

This powerful talk shows how truly valuable and necessary our community of practices are. If you are part of @rOpenSci, @DSLC, @thecarpentries, etc, this talk will fill you with joy.

If you have not yet joined one of these communities, take a look! We can all become stronger in our practice together!

https://rstats.me/@yabellini/115004001032958710

To elaborate on my hostility against WebKit: WebKit does nothing but get in my way whenever I work on literally any website.

When I rewrote nouveau's website in late 2023, the website worked perfectly fine on Firefox (Gecko) and Chromium (Blink), but was broken on Epiphany/Safari (WebKit). The logo, which is an SVG, would not adapt to dark style, because, to this day, WebKit still does not support prefers-color-scheme in SVGs. So, as a workaround, instead of having one SVG file for both color schemes, we have one SVG file for light style, and one for dark style.

Another example: On my website, some elements are intentionally made to be unselectable using user-select: none;, such as the command-line decoration and the “Table of Contents” text, but on WebKit, these elements are still selectable because WebKit still does not properly support the user-select property. And no, using the vendor prefix is completely unacceptable, especially considering that it behaves differently.

Lastly, WebKit does not yet fully support the ::marker pseudo-element. This means, in my articles, the numbered list items in the table of contents are completely wrong and don't follow the same numbers as headings.

I just want to clarify that my hostility towards WebKit is purely targeted at Apple's lack of involvement with WebKit, not the browsers using it. Apple has consistently shown that they don't care about WebKit, because otherwise browsers like Safari and Epiphany would have worked as well as they do on Firefox and Chromium. There's absolutely no reason to force WebKit onto iOS and iPadOS if they're not even willing to invest in WebKit. Likewise, Apple employees working on WebKit should really stop calling themselves a “WebKit evangelist”. So yes, this is 100% on Apple.

#RIP “Jim Lovell, the astronaut who commanded the famous Apollo 13 mission, has died, NASA announced Friday. He was 97.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jim-lovell-dies-age-97-apollo-13-commander/

I had the Blueberry talk with GPT5. https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2025/08/07/blueberry-hill/

This feels super awkward to ask, but I'm trying to crowdfund a used M2 MacBook for #postmarketOS development. My current ARM laptop can't safely run VMs (have to choose between virtualization or battery monitoring 😅). Daily-driving new hardware has helped me improve other ports (e.g. ThinkPad X13s), so this would help me work more efficiently and advance the M-series port in pmOS!

https://ko-fi.com/craftyguy/goal

🇯🇵 Japan has officially banned Apple’s iOS browser engine restrictions.

Starting Dec 2025, iPhones must allow real Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi and others to run their own engines, just like on desktop.

This is a major step forward for browser competition.

Full analysis here:

/1
https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/japan-apple-must-lift-engine-ban-by-december/

Excited to share that Bottles has been selected by the NLnet Foundation as part of the February 2025 NGI0 Commons Fund. One of only 40 projects supported in this round. Full announcement here: https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20250804-announcement-grants-CommonsFund.html

#linux #windows #opensource #FundingNews #gaming #FOSS #NLNet

Enough is enough—I dumped Google’s worsening search for Kagi
I like how the search engine is the product instead of me .
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/enough-is-enough-i-dumped-googles-worsening-search-for-kagi/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#Tuba v0.10.0 is now available, with many new features and bug fixes!

✨ Highlights:
- New Composer
- Grouped Notifications
- Play media from third-party services in-app with Clapper
- In-app web browser
- Collapse long posts
- Mastodon quotes
- Iceshrimp Drive
- 'Featured' Profile tab
- Local-only posting
- Search History
- Alt text from file metadata
🧵

As always, there are too many changes to list here, if you're more interested, check out the full release changelog:
https://github.com/GeopJr/Tuba/releases/tag/v0.10.0

postmarketOS in 2025-07!

* apk3
* /usr merge
* immutable postmarketOS
* Fairphone 6, iPhone X, Lynx R1
* New project for improving audio reliability
* postmarketOS joined the GNOME Advisory Board
* PCBs arrived
* Events: FOSSY, DEF CON, FrOSCon
* MSM8917 modem
* Plasma Camera 2.0.0

https://postmarketos.org/blog/2025/08/03/pmOS-update-2025-07/

#fossy2025 #defcon33 #froscon20 #linux

R code by Adam Bonica showing his analysis that only 1.6% of more than $600 million raised by Democratic political spam texts actually went to candidates! #RStats 👀👀
https://github.com/abonica/Mothership-Strategies-FEC-Analysis/blob/main/mothership_complete_api_analysis.R
His blog post: https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mothership-vortex-an-investigation https://www.threads.com/@rickhasen1/post/DM6S6oqSsEE

I am an unpaid volunteer, I run five websites and five accounts helping people use Mastodon and the wider Fediverse. These all cause bills each month, which I pay.

If you want to help these sites & accounts keep going, you can buy me a coffee:

➡️ https://ko-fi.com/fedithing

(No registration, choose any amount, all currencies work.)

Alternatively, become a patron:

➡️ https://liberapay.com/FediThing

All support very greatly appreciated! 🙂

❤️ @FediTips, @FediFollows, @FediVideo, @FediGarden & @homegrown

Newsletter: In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder.

Here’s how to use #RSS.

https://www.citationneeded.news/curate-with-rss/

You should be using RSS.

Molly White has a good intro: Far from being the new hotness attracting glitzy feature stories in tech media or billions in venture funding, RSS has been around for 25 years. [...] Many, if not most, websites publish an RSS...
https://jwz.org/b/yksN

BOOK PROJECT: History of Economic Thought
One project I might spend a solid month on this fall is to try turn my history of economic thought lecture notes into a ms. for a relevant “history of economic thought” book—that is, a book that starts with (a) the need, if we are to be prosperous, to both have and coördinate a societal division of labor at scale, (b) the value of the market system as a way of achieving that coördination, and (c ) all the things that…
https://braddelong.substack.com/p/book-project-history-of-economic
#adam-smith

I was using mastodon before it was cool.

Narrator: that's currently.

I don't want to brag, but somebody got first place in the Stardew Valley Fair today, and it wasn't Pierre. 💅🏼

“Bruno Latour, Designer” by Cameron Tonkinwise
https://buttondown.com/otherworlds/archive/ow-10-bruno-latour-designer-by-cameron-tonkinwise/

#Design #ANT

How bachata rose from Dominican Republic’s brothels and shantytowns to become a global sensation https://theconversation.com/how-bachata-rose-from-dominican-republics-brothels-and-shantytowns-to-become-a-global-sensation-260886