Aluminium is not build quality. It makes lying stuff inside cheap. And feels horrible on skin contact.
The good ThinkPads with Magnesium feel much better (both for hand and lap) and are lighter. And the expensive and complicated build allows maintenance (replacing a keyboard is a bless on the X13). Lenovo is just stupid and also allows to purchase low quality screens, low quality frames and even a Windows. A thing that Apple never allows, you cannot purchase a bad configuration.
The MBAs at Apple figured out much earlier, that a rigid metal frame is cheap and gives the impression of quality.
Aside from that?
Customers are guilty, wanting a shiny and quick solution. And governments and companies by following ultra rigid and outright stupid purchasing guide (ISO craziness and “we can drop Windows, we invested another 300.000 in a Windows only Application).
YMMV. I never had any issues holding a mac laptop. I know people think they are sharp but I genuinely struggle to replicate this when it comes up. As I am typing this comment the laptop is resting on my chest with the entire weight of either hand resting on the sharp side edge of this mac. When I type I move my right arm so that the soft fleshy part under the wrist is now resting with full weight on the sharp edge of the mac. No pain or any discomfort doing this. Currently pressing down as hard as I can on that edge just so see. Again, no clue what people are doing to be in discomfort here. Lead hands? Skin condition? Not sure.
I haven't abused this m series mac as much. But my old original aluminum unibody from 2012, that thing lasted about 12 years until water damage took it out. It fell to the floor on every corner multiple times. None are perfectly round anymore due to the force of the impacts. Never shattered the screen or affected anything with the computer.
I have a friend who ran over his with his f150. That did end up putting some cracks into the screen, but it still worked and he still used it in that state for a couple years at least.
I’m thankful for the STF. Germany is one of the few countries doing something. But it is not strategic software-development.
* They don’t employ software-developers. No safety for the developers. No control over developers.
* It is only temporary.
* The projects need to apply repeatingly for funding. Wasting time and resources and chausing worries.
The how planet needs Linux, BSD, cURL, ffmpeg, Flatpak. We need to ensure that this work for the people.
We feed for 30 years constantly money into monopolies. We shall feed the next century constantly money into things the people need.
Many developers of Linux and GCC are paid. Because companies decided it is necessary.
I don't really agree here. I think what they are doing is pretty strategic, especially given the relatively limited money they have.
There's basically two sides to funding software that are actually rather different
1. Accelerator phase: getting the software to a point where it can reasonably replace some foreign closed source enterprise option (i.e. feature devlopment). This sort of thing is often highly speculative. It should be project based, with concrete deliverables, and done with a non-permanent grant. If things go reasonably well, then there can be followup grants. This is what the STA focuses on, and is a major gap in the FOSS world.
2. Established phase: Once the software is actually ready for adoption (thanks to help from the STA!), and gets integrated into government functions, then the agencies that *use* the software should be setting up enterprise support contracts that give long-term support and stability to the projects they've adopted. A good example of this would be Nextcloud who has multiple such contracts with different parts of Germany (also other European organizations). This part is better off being done by the agency that *uses* the software, rather than having the STA do it. Some of these agencies do in fact also have internal software developers that work on Nextcloud.
I don't think it's a shortcoming of the STA that they're focused on point 1 rather than point 2, I think if they were forced to do both, they'd actually be less effective at what they're doing.
The STA is basically trying to fill the role that venture capital plays in getting a startup ready to take on customers, except the STA doesn't take an ownership stake, and they focus on FOSS.
> They don’t employ software-developers. No safety for the developers. No control over developers.
Thank god they don't employ them. It would be terrible for everyone involved, especially for the developers. The government in Germany is a terrible employer for someone with high work ethics and a dedication to their craft. They crush your soul with bureaucracy and drain your spirit with rules and regulation. On top of that, they pay is ridiculously bad. I'm a principle engineer at a private company and some government agency thought they could poach me with 4k a month, LOL, that's not enough to pay rent and put food on the table for a family of 3 in my city (remember, we pay ~50% in tax and social contributions).
The construction would be a private company that works with the government. That exists already - I had applied for one before - and the pay was completely competitive, for German salaries. 80K.
What kind of program was that? Permanent employment contract (no "Befristung") without any co-financing through private investors, private grants, or the company's revenue?
This might be possible with public grants, but I've never seen it. They usually come with additional strings attached, such as being a de minimis subsidy (limited to 300k in a rolling 3 year window), requiring private co-funding (e.g. 50% for the whole project), being limited to a couple of months or maybe 2-3 years max, etc., so for competitive pay, you must almost always rely on some kind of "mixed financing": every penny above the salary that TVöD allows must be acquired from sources other than the gran. ymmv, part of the lack of attractiveness of public funding is the fact that each program differs in a million different ways.
It was a normal developer position (with PhD bonus possibly) at a private enterprise that only worked on public projects. No Befristung, no other surprises I got aware of. I was also a bit surprised that this existed, because with private-public constructs like Fraunhofer there usually are the limitations you mentioned (and the low salary). Here the limitations probably didn't exist as the company was 100% private.
I don't think the Fellowship qualifies as "working for STF". These people are being paid/supported for the work they do in their own projects. They're not being paid to work on/work for STF to help them steer/analyze/control the other projects that are being funded.
EDIT: OPs comment can be understood in multiple ways: Should STF hire Developers to work on their own projects, or should they hire Developers to understand/guide/manage the funded projects in a better way.
>> The projects need to apply repeatingly for funding.
> Still better than no funding at all.
Exactly, plus no grantor I know operates on a blank check basis, its always budgeting, prioritisation, and new applications and grants are for a specific period, can come in tranches, etc. Just how these things work, Germany or not.
> Compensation is based on the collective agreement for the public sector in Germany (TVöD-Bund) and will range from €64,000 to €82,000 per year for a full-time position, including 30 days of vacation, depending on qualifications and experience.
LOL. That's €32,122 net for a full time position. And you're not even allowed to work from a place in southern Europe where you can actually live from that amount of money.
It's more like €40,000-50,000 after taxes and contributions to health care, social security and the German pension fund. Enough for a modest lifestyle in Germany. Many OSS contributors aren't motivated by money after all.
Go to https://www.nettolohn.de and enter 64000€, choose Berlin, keep the rest. That's not enough for a modest lifestyle for a family, proven by the fact that with such an income, you're already entitled for social benefits (Wohngeld) in an average German city of 200.000 inhabitants for a family of 4: https://www.wohngeld.org/einkommen/#Wohngeldtabellen_fuer_Mi...
This is the government telling you: you can come work full time for us, but you'll not be able to provide for your family, that's why you can stand in line with all those who don't work at all to claim your benefits.
Assuming you don't pay Kirchensteuer, it's almost €40,000.
> you're already entitled for social benefits (Wohngeld)
No, you're slightly above the threshold but in any case this doesn't say much. If you're talking about families, I'd also assume that your partner earns a little extra.
Anyway, the median gross income in Germany is €54,000, so you seem to be implying that the majority of Germans are unable to live a decent life. Maybe you should talk more to people outside your social bubble?
The point isn't how much Google spends on stuff in general, it's their wallet. What's important is how much they contribute back to the development of the tools they actively use to fill that wallet.
They contribute a lot of open source software themselves, you can probably find a better example of a company benefitting from such but not contributing much
Just to be clear, that wasn't a judgment value either way from my side.
This being said I would expect they contribute a lot for ffmpeg, which was mentioned explicitly, since this is such a critical building block for them.
The crazy thing is that there is a model where governments / states / localities can migrate away from windows / Microsoft 365 ... and use part of the savings to fund open-source
if this was done across Europe we'd have sovereign open-source tech stack that is strong, well funded, and used by 10s of millions in the EU alone.
I have no idea why simple ideas like this are not persuade instead lots of incoherent, almost desperate distributed efforts are preferred.
ultimately I do believe that the bureaucrats in the EU are insanely disconnected from reality.
The process you're describing is underway. Schleswig-Holstein, Munich, Leon, and the Austrian military all come to mind as recent examples of that sort of migration, and then pivoting savings into support contracts for open source.
That process is super important yes, but what about cases where the relevant government bodies don't think the open source offering is ready yet for them?
That is where the STF steps in, and gives funding to open source projects so that they can develop to a point where their software is ready for stable adoption by governments.
this is what I mean by distributed, unconcentrated change.
you will never make meaningful progress by those initiatives, there should be an echo of the US investment in data centers or china's investment in EVs.
bigger, systematic, with immediate impact on the software / cloud stack in the EU first and globally.
Would it make more sense if this Sovereign Tech Agency behaved less like a Sovereign Tech Fund and simply hired the developers? Or is civil servants developing OSS commodities too much of a heresy?
> is civil servants developing OSS commodities too much of a heresy
I see two problems here for Germany. First, the salaries of civil servants are regulated, and might be not what most developers, even German ones, expect. In addition civil servant status is bundled with privileges and duties that make it painful to lay it down. Most developers are used to job flexibility though, especially as, as I said, the salaries are not going to be great.
Second, there is a decision by the Constitutional Court that prohibits the state from competing with the market. Temporary grants to independent actors are among other things a way to work around it.
The first part boils down to any civil servant: inflexibility and lower wages aren't for everyone, but it should not be impossible to attract talent intrinsically motivated to contribute to public cause. Especially when it's OSS.
The second part is a bit closer to the heresy angle: new public management forbids competing with "free market". Of course, many EU governments have always found and used all kinds of loopholes to support "independent enterprises" like railways, airlines, power companies and banks once they become too big to fail.
Maybe commodity open source software has reached that level too...
I agree on the second point. I assume we all know that this weird EU free market religion is harmful. The EU would be 1000% better for us, without the economy stuff it was originally build upon.
Free markets are dysfunctional and never fair. How we now? Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta proof it every day. The US and China don’t even care about fairness. Why they should?
Someone mentioned above the limited money STF has. I agree. I did not considered it noteworthy.
There is also the option of structural funding (Strukturförderung in german) where important organizations receive multi-year contracts instead of short term project funding.
We do all this self-congratulation around funding OSS companies and then end up with OSS companies that exist only thanks to government subsidization. Why? Isn’t governmental control over funding what we hate about Microsoft? What is so bad about letting real customers decide which companies need funding?
Governments are real customers. The German government, I guess, pays about 30 times more annually to Microsoft than the budget of the STF. The other component of sovereign tech is that governments are actually using FOSS. There is some room there for improvement.
Then charge a fair price for your work (ie the software you deliver). That's the completely fair solution for all sides of the equation. People who don't want your stuff don't get stuck with the bill and people who do want your stuff aren't taking it for free.
> The STF is run by politologists with no clue. They fund flashy web apps that they "understand" and packaging.
That is complete nonsense. Where do you get this "information"?
https://www.sovereign.tech/tech lists OpenSSL, rusttls, Junit, pipewire, samba, varnish-cache, curl, Fortran, even friggin GNU coreutils and others. None of those are "flashy web apps".
Generates entire websites with AI Slop. Instead of sending a single text mail with three links and the words please make that certificate.
No. He wastes the time of all personnel. Wastes energy. And hides the important message in a wall of text (I was the only person which recognized, that he requires the certificate…it was hidden in a side box).
Right now we re-implementing every frogging tool which was ever developed by more experienced people.
Excuse the long letter, I hadn’t the time to write a short one.
a) Solution X does it generally better than Y and their solution is *ported*.
b) Adapt to solution Y. The end.
Most of the time it is b. Because Vim shall not be Emacs. Linux shall not be Windows. And macOS shall not be Windows either.
Do you remember that foolish Windows-Themes on Linux? Luckily GNOME has killed custom theming. And Apple also. Custom theming is a horrible mess aside from areas where it is intentionally (e.g. Vim color schemes).
But it is also possible that Gimp moves to option A. At some point and they are interested in user-interface improvements. Most people just want to use Single-Window-Mode which shall be default for many years.
c) There's a sane, standard way of doing things that everybody is familiar with, but you do decide to actively go against it for decades because you like doing things your way, and if anyone has anything to say about it they're "free to fork" and you "don't owe anyone anything", but despite that, everyone should use your thing because it's free and you're the good guy, and otherwise they're supporting the empire of evil.
This is why Krita is sweeping the floor with gimp - sane UI that's way closer to Photoshop. You need to rebind 5 things and you can use it.
> Luckily GNOME has killed custom theming
Same deal. What do you care what I do with my computer? GNOME is hanging on by nature of being the default, but very few people pick it when they have the choice. It will be dead in 10 years.
> you do decide to actively go against it for decades because you like doing things your way
Perhaps there's a good reason why a developer or a group of developers decide to do things a certain way.
> This is why Krita is sweeping the floor with gimp
Aside from the fact that these programs are intended for pretty different things, the impression I have is that GIMP has a much larger install-base than Krita and more people are aware of it. Far from "sweeping the floor".
> GNOME is hanging on by nature of being the default
Or perhaps some people (and enterprises) want a polished OOTB desktop experience without having to deal with KDE's bugs and Windows-like design language. There are plenty of GNOME installs on Arch Linux for example, where you can't speak of any "defaults" with regards to desktop environments.[0]
> Do you remember that foolish Windows-Themes on Linux? Luckily GNOME has killed custom theming.
In what way has GNOME killed theming? There are lots of themes available on [1] and some of the most downloaded ones are consistently imitations of the latest macOS or Windows style.
Reading from Wikipedia Spirit sounds like a horrible low-cost Airline like Ryanair. Why should we rescue something which hurts employees and passengers?
If it would be TWA or PanAm my reaction would be positive.
The "low cost" in Ultra-Low-Cost-Carrier refers to the operating costs to the company, not the cost they charge for goods and services. Though they usually come in tandem.
No. It is using a central “well known server” and requires internet.
Test:
* Does it work in an airplane?
* Does it work in a submarine?
* Does it work in the mountains, when a thunderstorm is approach and you need to share the GPX?
Basically my Garmin Edge and iPhone can do this. Magic-Wormhole fails in all test cases.
Implementation shall be able to negoiate a connection locally (e.g. Bluetooth) and upgrade to peer-to-peer WiFi if need (Garmin doesn’t need that part, GPX are usually smaller than 1024 KB).
Modifications can be made to do that minimal peer exchange over BT. They may already exist, but I haven't used that part yet.
It seems like a lot of extra work to reinvent the wheel and get the security wrong instead of extending a well established protocol with many other tools built on top of it.
I think the author meant that she was just trying to work on her slides, and was hoping that by quitting/restarting, the bug would temporarily go away, so she could continue working on what she actually wanted to work on, and not go down a debugging rabbit hole.
Certainly the determinism made it easier to fix, but the determinism also meant that she had to stop what she was doing and fix it right now, which is... "sadly".
I suffered with Java from
Any, Maven and Gradle (the oldest is the the best). After reading about GNU Autotools I was wondering why the C/C++ folks still suffer? Right at that time Meson appeared and I skipped the suffering.
* No XML
* Simple to read and understand
* Simple to manage dependencies
* Simple to use options
Meson merges the crappy state of C/C++ tooling with something like Cargo in the worst way possible: by forcing you to handle the complexity of both. Nothing about Meson is simple, unless you're using it in Rust, in which case you're better off with Cargo.
In C++ you don't get lockfiles, you don't get automatic dependency install, you don't get local dependencies, there's no package registry, no version support, no dependency-wide feature flags (this is an incoherent mess in Meson), no notion of workspaces, etc.
Compared to Cargo, Meson isn't even in the same galaxy. And even compared to CMake, Meson is yet another incompatible incremental "improvement" that offers basically nothing other than cute syntax (which in an era when AI writes all of your build system anyway, doesn't even matter). I'd much rather just pick CMake and move on.
Build system generators (like Meson, autotools, CMake or any other one) can't solve programming language module and packaging problems, even in principle. So, it's not clear what your argument is here.
> I’m still surprised how people ignore Meson. Please test it :)
I did just that a few years ago and found it rather inconvenient and inflexible, so I went back to ignoring it. But YMMV I suppose.
Meson is indeed nice, but has very poor support for GPU compilation compared to CMake. I've had a lot of success adopting the practices described in this talk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Kg8TOTKjU. I thought I knew a lot of CMake, but file sets definitely make things a
lot simpler.
The good ThinkPads with Magnesium feel much better (both for hand and lap) and are lighter. And the expensive and complicated build allows maintenance (replacing a keyboard is a bless on the X13). Lenovo is just stupid and also allows to purchase low quality screens, low quality frames and even a Windows. A thing that Apple never allows, you cannot purchase a bad configuration.
The MBAs at Apple figured out much earlier, that a rigid metal frame is cheap and gives the impression of quality.
Aside from that?
Customers are guilty, wanting a shiny and quick solution. And governments and companies by following ultra rigid and outright stupid purchasing guide (ISO craziness and “we can drop Windows, we invested another 300.000 in a Windows only Application).
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