Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

Unionised French Ubisoft workers put out call for an international strike held by all current employees - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-28T19:02:11.000Z

Last week, Ubisoft announced a major restructure that saw multiple games cancelled, including the Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time Remake, and more concerningly prospectively put layoffs on the horizon. Now, following an agreement made by a group of organised Ubisoft workers across multiple French unions, a call for an international strike across all studios at the company has been put out.

Mourning Didier Spaier - LWN.net

2026-01-28T18:41:25.000Z

We have received the sad news that Didier Spaier, maintainer of the blind-friendly Slackware-based Slint distribution, has recently passed away. Philippe Delavalade, who posted the announcement to the Slint mailing list, said:

Early 2015, I asked on the slackware list if brltty could be added in the installer; Didier answered promptly that he could do it on slint. Afterwards, he worked hard so that slint became as accessible as possible for visually impaired people.

You all know that all these years, he tried and succeeded to answer as quickly as possible to our issues and questions.

He will be irreplaceable.

OSI pauses 2026 board election cycle - LWN.net

2026-01-28T18:13:39.000Z

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has announced that it will not be holding the 2026 spring board election. Instead, it will be creating a working group to "review and improve OSI's board member selection process" and provide recommendations by September 2026:

The public election process was designed to gather community priorities and improve board member selection, while final appointments remained with the board.

Over time, that nuance has become a source of understandable confusion for community members. Many reasonably expected elections to function as elections normally do, and in fact, the board has generally adopted the electorate's recommendations. When a process feels unclear, trust suffers. When trust suffers, engagement becomes harder. This is especially problematic for an organization whose mission depends on legitimacy and credibility. [...]

OSI tried its experiment for the right reasons, but a variety of factors resulted in "elections" that are performatively democratic while being gameable and representative of only a small group, and we've learned from the results. Now we are making space to align our director selection process with our bylaws, to rebuild trust, and to develop better, more durable and truly representative participation in which the global stakeholder community can be heard.

LWN covered the previous OSI election in March 2025.

Scare off legally distinct Victorian Ghostbusters with your legion of spirits in Ghost Keeper, out in early access now - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-28T17:56:38.000Z

I like playing a game where I get to defend myself from/ take down the likes of ghouls, ghosts, demons and other such and much paranormal, supernatural beasties, but how about a game where you're the one doing the haunting? Ghost Keeper! Is a strategy, puzzley game where you "lead your fearsome minions against the living" by attempting to scare them off, and just launched in early access today.

[$] Open source for phones: postmarketOS - LWN.net

2026-01-28T17:46:40.000Z

Phones running Linux are ubiquitous these days and it has been that way since Android started working toward dominance in the smartphone market. Unfortunately, Android has slowly increased its freedom-unfriendliness and has become something of a privacy nightmare. In a talk entitled "We need an open-source phone OS" at Open Source Summit Japan 2025, Luca Weiss described the smartphone landscape and gave an overview of postmarketOS as an alternative Linux operating system for mobile handsets.

NVIDIA security bulletin for January 2026 reveals new GPU driver security issues - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-28T17:14:56.000Z

NVIDIA today made public a fresh security bulletin to details some more security issues discovered in the GPU drivers - here's the details.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Assassin's Creed designer claims Ubisoft have suspended him for "alleged breach of the duty of loyalty" over new RTO policy - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-28T16:43:53.000Z

An Assassin's Creed level designer has claimed that Ubisoft have put him on unpaid disciplinary leave for speaking out publicly against the company’s recently introduced requirement that staff return to the office full-time.

Emacs: This year, I will... / Cette année, je vais... - Sacha Chua

2026-01-28T16:28:40.000Z

In English

Inspired by the Emacs Carnival theme for January, this year, I will:

take more notes, perhaps with the help of speech recognition
- Now I can manage my time better since the kiddo can study more independently, but I still have to manage interruptions from my life and from my own brain. If I write or dictate notes while I think or work, I can get back into things more easily. Speech recognition allows me to capture more thoughts, even if the results need a fair bit of reviewing and revising. I'm looking forward to checking out the ideas others have shared, such as configuring more transient.el interfaces and adding more tweaks to my Org Mode publishing.
stream to think out loud
- My daily routines are gradually becoming more predictable, so I might be able to schedule streams or jump onto one to share ideas. If I do a live broadcast, I can learn from the questions and comments I get. Fridays at 10:30 AM seems like a good time for that, and when possible, I can also do it spontaneously.
record videos to share what I learn, and package my functions to make them reusable when possible
- Like the previous points, sharing my ideas and my work can help others and start conversations. If I improve subed-record.el to combine video and audio recordings with screenshots and subtitles, I might be able to create videos more easily.
write more in French and improve my environment for this purpose
- I like the mental stimulation of writing in another language. Lots of other people are learning languages too, so we might be able to help each other. For example, my functions for highlighting new words and grammatical errors could be useful.
practice speaking by making audio recordings with the help of subed-record and speech synthesis to improve my pronunciation
- The advantage of implementing this in Emacs is that I can customize my workflow. For example, I want to write my draft and then record the audio sentence by sentence after listening to an example. I also want to see if I can more easily edit a recording of my session with my tutor so that I can keep only my last pronunciation attempts.
improve processes for EmacsConf and Emacs News
- I might be able to organize much of it by myself, but other volunteers might also be able to help, which would be even better. I want to create the infrastructure to manage several virtual meetings simultaneously, probably with speech recognition, audio spatialization, and lots of keyboard shortcuts. I also want to improve my subtitling process.

The more I do in Emacs, the more I think of ideas for improvement…

En français

Sur le thème du Carnaval d'Emacs pour janvier - Cette année, je vais :

prendre plus de notes, peut-être avec l'aide de la reconnaissance vocale
- Même si je peux mieux gérer mon temps maintenant que ma fille peut étudier de manière plus indépendante, je dois toujours gérer les interruptions de ma vie et de mon propre cerveau. Si j'écris ou dicte des notes pendant que je pense ou que je travaille, je reprendrai le fil de mes pensées plus facilement. La reconnaissance vocale me permet de capter plus de pensées, même si les résultats nécessitent de revoir et de réviser. Je suis enthousiasmée par les idées que d'autres partagent, comme la configuration de l'interface transient.el et l'amélioration de la publication d'Org Mode.
streamer pour réfléchir à voix haute
- Mes routines quotidiennes deviennent plus prévisibles petit à petit, je peux donc planifier des événements ou me lancer dans le streaming pour partager des idées. Si je fais une diffusion en direct, je peux profiter des questions et des commentaires que je reçois. Le vendredi à 10h30 semble être un bon moment pour ça, et quand c'est possible, je peux aussi le faire spontanément.
enregistrer des vidéos pour partager ce que j'apprends, et packager mes fonctions pour les rendre réutilisables quand c'est possible
- Comme les éléments précédents, partager mes idées et mon travail peut aider d'autres personnes et lancer des conversations. Si j'améliore subed-record.el pour combiner des enregistrements vidéo et audio avec des captures d'écran et des sous-titres, je peux créer des vidéos plus facilement.
écrire davantage en français et améliorer mon environnement à cet effet
- J'apprécie la stimulation mentale d'écrire dans une autre langue. Beaucoup de gens apprennent d'autres langues, donc nous pouvons nous aider. Par exemple, mes fonctions pour surligner les nouveaux mots et les erreurs grammaticales pourraient être utiles.
pratiquer l'expression orale en faisant des enregistrements audio avec l'aide de subed-record et la synthèse vocale pour améliorer ma prononciation
- L'avantage de l'implémentation dans Emacs est que je peux personnaliser mon flux de travail. Par exemple, je veux écrire mon brouillon, puis enregistrer l'audio phrase par phrase après l'avoir écouté. Je veux aussi modifier un enregistrement de mon rendez-vous avec ma tutrice pour que je garde seulement mes dernières essaies de prononciation.
améliorer les processus pour EmacsConf et Emacs News
- Il se peut que je puisse l'organiser en grande partie par moi-même, mais il se peut aussi que d'autres bénévoles m'aident, ce qui serait encore mieux. Je veux créer l'infrastructure pour gérer plusieurs réunions virtuelles simultanément, probablement grâce à la reconnaissance vocale, la spatialisation audio, et de nombreux raccourcis clavier. Je veux aussi améliorer mon processus de sous-titrage.

Plus j'en fais dans Emacs, plus je pense à des idées d'amélioration…

Thanks to Christian Tietze for hosting!

View org source for this post

You can comment on Mastodon or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Kitty Cards - Irreal

2026-01-28T16:20:32.000Z

Álvaro Ramírez and Vaarnan Drolia have introduced a really interesting app. At least I guess you would call it an app. It’s actually just a Web page that lets you build your own custom Apple Wallet cards. It’s easy to use. You simply bring up the Web page, click on and fill in the fields you need on the sample card—including scanning for a bar code—and click on the “Add to Apple Wallet” button.

If you’re an Apple Wallet user, you may like this app. You can take any physical card with a bar code and add it to your Apple Wallet. Then you have one less card to carry around.

Arc Raiders and The Finals hit by "extensive, co-ordinated DDoS attacks", according to developers Embark - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-28T16:00:41.000Z

Arc Raiders and The Finals developers Embark have warned players that the two shooters have been hit by "extensive, co-ordinated DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks". The studio said these attacks were "ongoing" in a post put out at 11:59 AM GMT today.

PC Gamer on the scx_horoscope scheduler - LWN.net

2026-01-28T16:00:06.000Z

PC Gamer has run an amusing review of the scx_horoscope scheduler for Linux, which uses astrology to optimize scheduling decisions.

The scheduler is full of bizarre features, like its ability to perform real planetary calculations based on accurate geocentric planetary positions, lunar phase scheduling (the full moon gives a 1.4x boost to tasking, apparently) and "zodiac-based task classification".
That latter feature is easily one of my favourite bits. Specific planetary bodies "rule" over specific system tasks, so the Sun is in charge of critical system processes, the Moon (tied to emotions, of course) rules over interactive tasks, and Jupiter is assigned to memory-heavy applications, among others.

[$] Who should vote in Fedora elections? - LWN.net

2026-01-28T15:51:06.000Z

Creating fair governance models for open-source projects is not easy; defining criteria for participants to receive membership and voting rights is a particularly thorny problem for projects that have elections for representative bodies. The Fedora Council, the project's top-level governance body, is wrestling with that conundrum now. This was triggered by a Fedora special-interest group (SIG) granting temporary membership to at least one person for the sole purpose of allowing them to vote in the most recent Fedora Engineering Steering Council (FESCo) election. That opened a large can of worms about what it means to be a contributor and how contributors can be identified for voting purposes.

Netflix Animation Studios are now funding Blender development - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-28T15:45:01.000Z

Blender, the free and open source 3D creation software has pulled in another major supporter, with Netflix now funding future development.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

PC hardware makers Zotac warn memory shortages "raise concerns about the very survival of graphics card manufacturers" - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-28T15:23:58.000Z

The Korean arm of graphics card, mini PC, and handheld producers Zotac have shared an assessment of the ongoing memory shortage crisis that makes for bleak reading – even by RAMnarök standards. In a seemingly legitimate post on their Korean retail site, spotted and translated by TXiXXeR user harukaze5719, Zotac Korea write that "The current situation is extremely serious – serious enough to raise concerns about the very survival of graphics card manufacturers and distributors going forward."

GOG now using AI generated images on their store - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-28T15:16:04.000Z

AI continues to be everywhere, and now it's appearing on the GOG store too most recently a big banner for their New Year Sale.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Dwarf Legacy turns Tolkien's sturdy miners into bullet hell mountaineers - don't mythril the demo - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-28T15:14:05.000Z

Remember in The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers when Gandalf falls down the big chasm with the Balrog, smacking the sawdust out of it while plummeting towards the waters of the underworld? Well, give Gandalf a gun, play that sequence in reverse, and swap the Balrog for a flock of Space Invaders, and you are playing something like the demo for Dwarf Legacy – a “bullet-hell precision platformer” from Wulo Games about a dwarf clambering up the inside of a mountain.

Oh wait, Gandalf needs to be listening to crunchy dancefloor music to complete the analogy. Also, he needs to stop periodically to buy better guns from a blacksmith. I’m pretty sure this is still within Peter Jackson’s budget.

Comedy point and click adventure Shadows of the Afterland launches February 10th - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-28T14:23:10.000Z

Aruma Studios have announced that their supernatural comedy point and click adventure Shadows of the Afterland is set for launch now on February 10th.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Security updates for Wednesday - LWN.net

2026-01-28T14:09:50.000Z

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (java-1.8.0-openjdk), Debian (openssl), Fedora (assimp, chromium, curl, freerdp, gimp, and harfbuzz), Mageia (glibc, haproxy, iperf, and python-pyasn1), Red Hat (image-builder, openssl, and osbuild-composer), Slackware (mozilla), SUSE (avahi, cups, gio-branding-upstream, google-osconfig-agent, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, java-21-openjdk, kernel-firmware, libmatio-devel, libopenjp2-7, nodejs22, php8, python-python-multipart, python311-urllib3_1, qemu, and xen), and Ubuntu (ffmpeg, jaraco.context, openssl, and openssl, openssl1.0).

Earth Must Die publishers say an "alien orgy depicted as a gyrating lump on the floor" left the game's Steam launch "unclear" - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-28T14:08:51.000Z

What Steam operators Valve are and aren't prepared to allow onto their storefront has been a major talking point for the past year or so, especially when it comes to mature or sexually-themed content. Our Edwin's done some fine reporting on the topic and how it relates to payment processors, as well as delving into individual cases like Santa Ragione's Horses.

Now, the developers of point-and-click comedy Earth Must Die say things looked "unclear" for a bit in terms of whether they'd be able to launch on Steam, with the platform then offering a thumbs up after reviewing footage of an "alien orgy".

Cake Scientists Say This Is the Healthiest Way to Eat an Entire Cake Off a Cake Stand, Top Down, in One Sitting (Sponsored by the Remaindered Cake Association) - McSweeney’s

2026-01-28T13:00:00.000Z

Take your time.
You have to eat the whole cake, but you don’t have to eat it all in thirty seconds. A sitting can take as long as you need. Pacing yourself will reduce the risk of choking. Do the smart thing and slow down while you eat the entire cake off a cake stand, top down, in one sitting.

Don’t eat anything else the rest of the day.
An entire cake is high in calories, fat, and sugar. You’re going to eat the whole cake off a cake stand, top down, in one sitting, so the best thing you can do for your health is avoid taking in any more of those things in the lead-up to eating the cake. We won’t lie to you; you’ll still exceed your recommended daily allotment of calories, fat, and sugar—an entire cake is big. But this will limit the damage.

Be in good shape.
It’s best to embark on eating an entire cake off a cake stand, top down, in one sitting after many years of a diet high in whole fruits and vegetables, plus lean protein, along with at least thirty minutes of exercise five times per week. That way, your body is more likely to be able to take the impact of the cake.

Make sure what you’re eating is really cake and not something more dangerous.
Look down. Smell what you’re eating in its entirety off a cake stand, top down, in one sitting. Note its texture. Is it actually cake? Don’t eat sponges, rubber washers, razor blades, poison, and so forth. Whatever the shortcomings of the cake may be, experts agree that it’s way better than those other things. Also, make sure the cake is on a cake stand and not, for example, a rabid animal that might attack you.

Livestream your cake-eating and charge admission to offset medical costs.
Veterans of whole-cake-eating-top-down-off-a-cake-stand-in-one-sitting will tell you that, no matter how responsibly you plan to make this the healthiest it can be, stuff happens. Don’t wind up with metaphorical frosting all over your face if, despite your best efforts, you end up requiring medical care. Charge $5 a pop and set the funds aside in case you need a doctor.

Be in the moment and have fun.
You only live once, and this experience of eating an entire cake off a cake stand, top down, in one sitting, will not come around again. Even if you do it again, which many do, each individual entire-cake-eating-in-one-sitting-off-a-cake-stand-from-the-top-down is its own animal. Practice mindfulness and feel all of the sensations. Taste the Boston crème filling on your tongue. Smell the vanilla aroma. Feel the ganache on the tip of your nose. Hear the screams of your friends and neighbors asking what you’re doing, and enjoy the official song of the Remaindered Cake Association, “You Are Doing the Right Thing (Eat the Whole Cake).”