Tootfinder

Freie Alternative zu Google und Apple: Free Software Foundation plant LibrePhone
Die Free Software Foundation (FSF) will mit dem LibrePhone Projekt eine freie Alternative zu Android und iOS entwickeln. Es wäre nicht der erste Anlauf der FSF.

»Freie Alternative zu Google und Apple — Free Software Foundation plant LibrePhone:
Die Free Software Foundation (@…) will mit dem LibrePhone Projekt eine freie Alternative zu Android und iOS entwickeln. Es wäre nicht der erste Anlauf der FSF.«
Da bin ich mal gespannt was sich da ergibt und wie es von den Mobile-Herstellern eingesetzt oder verweigert wird.

Freie Alternative zu Google und Apple: Free Software Foundation plant LibrePhone
Die Free Software Foundation (FSF) will mit dem LibrePhone Projekt eine freie Alternative zu Android und iOS entwickeln. Es wäre nicht der erste Anlauf der FSF.

"Freie Alternative zu #Google und #Apple: Free Software Foundation plant #LibrePhone"

Zum Abend noch einige der heute besonders häufig geteilten #News:
Freie Alternative zu Google und Apple: Free Software Foundation plant LibrePhone

Validation of collision-free spheres of Stewart-Gough platforms for constant orientations using the Application Programming Interface of a CAD software
Bibekananda Patra, Rajeevlochana G. Chittawadigi, Sandipan Bandyopadhyay
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08408

Validation of collision-free spheres of Stewart-Gough platforms for constant orientations using the Application Programming Interface of a CAD software
This paper presents a method of validation of the size of the largest collision-free sphere (CFS) of a 6-6 Stewart-Gough platform manipulator (SGPM) for a given orientation of its moving platform (MP) using the Application Programming Interface (API) of a CAD software. The position of the MP is updated via the API in an automated manner over a set of samples within a shell enclosing the surface of the CFS. For each pose of the manipulator, each pair of legs is investigated for mutual collisions…

https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-right-racists/75986/833

Framework supporting far-right racists?
The problem is that OSS (and especially FLOSS) is inherently political. The idea that we (and not some company controlled by billionaires) should have the final say over how we use our devices is political. The idea that software should be free to modify and transparent to users is political, as it puts control (and therefore power) in the hands of the users (rather than the company or organization making the software). The other, more specific problem here is that Framework made this politica…

Sometimes I lose followers, sometimes I gain new ones, that’s just part of staying true to my beliefs in anarcho-syndicalism, Linux, Free Software, Bandcamp, and the other things that matter to me.
I’m the happiest when I connect with like minded people who share these values and engage with today’s struggles in ways that resonate with what I believe in.
https:…

Whoa. My @… talk was accepted. Come and join the only talk that will not be recorded.
https://pretalx.linuxdays.cz/linuxdays-2025/talk/KGHCKC/

FOSS tools to fight back! LinuxDays 2025
Everyone is trying to control your communication. The reasons vary from simple curiosity to pure commercial interest, all the way to using it to control one's thoughts. Are there any ways to fight back, and why are free software and open-source tools a good alternative to the ones you use? As cypherpunks, do we have the obligation to help people be ready for the worst, or should we only take care of ourselves? In this talk, I will cover my experience with fighting back against #chatcontrol …

Saying #NO is not a free action in the world of #softwareengineering
https://sh…

"I would like to propose that IPs of [NTP] pool-members should not be allowed to host [Tor exit nodes] simultaneously under the same IP."
or put another way, "my employer paid for this whizzy firewall but it complains when we make it talk to a free service run by a volunteer because of other software the volunteer runs. Please educate your volunteers about how they need to go about providing this free service to us."

Great article by Michal Ganzarcik for Shiftmag explaining the nuances of "Just say no" in a career space (Software Development theme, but I believe it applies to work in general).
I especially love the last line under "What's the solution?":
> **Don’t reward or idolize overwork.** Encourage a culture that values balance and sustainable effort over relentless hustle.

⭐ "Crisis engineering, digital resilience, and free software" | @… | @…

Doing #Gentoo these days feels like being a small cell of unpaid volunteers opposing the enshittification of software. On one side, we're put up against a horde of full-time corporate developers. On the other, against young ambitious volunteers with lots of free time. And both can rapidly spew tons of mediocre code, and doing things wrong is so much easier than doing things right.
(Just to be clear, I'm not saying every corporation or every youngster does things wrong — there are people who care on the other side too.)

Yesterday I installed some OpenSource Software on my Laptop. As it also has a donation page, I donated 5€.
Since a couple of years I try to donate whenever I install OpenSource Software. Something between 5€-15€. Especially in the age of "Free"Apps that are bloated with Ads, I want to honor when a software comes just as is with a friendly hint to a donation page.
(I really try to avoid resetting my machines as this always comes with a couple of donations...)

A good thing this is not available in the EU....
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/this-free-app-pays-you-to-record-your-calls-for-ai-training-and-its-a-hit/

This Free App Pays You to Record Your Calls for AI Training, and It's a Hit
Neon is one of the top-downloaded free apps on the iOS App Store.

Tomorrow is a regular edition of Tech Pizza Monday, though we are discussing to make the second Monday of the month a special edition. Come join us, won’t you? Details at the Luma link. #Toronto #tech #pizza

Free Software is inherently political. It always has been.
https://peakd.com/programming/@crell/free-software-is-political

I was looking for my dishwasher manual. I noticed next to the manual, a link that said "Free Open Source Software". Curious, I clicked on it, and it's a long list of licenses and copyright information that is used in the dishwasher. Ctrl-F, and sure enough - my name's on the list.
I feel like I should have gotten a discount on the dishwasher, or at the very least access to its firmware source code! 🤠

It's even worse among junior and would-be sysadmins.
I constantly see people worried about mature free email software that goes for a year or more without new releases or even commits. That can be reasonable for complex tools, but sometimes a piece of software is small enough in scope that it can be *done* and actually bug-free.
The only way old software goes bad is when it is asked to work in an environment that it was not built for.

Huh, how time flies. 6 or 7 years ago, at the OER Foundation, for whom I work as Open Source Technologist, we decided to replace our MailChimp with, eventually, a self-hosted instance of Mautic (https://mautic.org) to communicate with learners taking courses in our online open university courses (

Folks creating free and open software for the common good: here’s a checklist of everything else you should be doing so corporations can make the best use of your free labour.
I mean, sure, some good security tips here and worth reading anyway but do fuck off with holding free software developers to account for supply chain attacks. It’s your fucking supply chain, not ours, you fucking corporation.

Adobe launches its Premiere video editing software on iPhone for the first time; general editing is free, but Adobe charges for credits to generate AI content (Chris Welch/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-…

Neural Network Acceleration on MPSoC board: Integrating SLAC's SNL, Rogue Software and Auto-SNL
Hamza Ezzaoui Rahali, Abhilasha Dave, Larry Ruckman, Mohammad Mehdi Rahimifar, Audrey C. Therrien, James J. Russel, Ryan T. Herbst
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21739

Neural Network Acceleration on MPSoC board: Integrating SLAC's SNL, Rogue Software and Auto-SNL
The LCLS-II Free Electron Laser (FEL) will generate X-ray pulses for beamline experiments at rates of up to 1~MHz, with detectors producing data throughputs exceeding 1 TB/s. Managing such massive data streams presents significant challenges, as transmission and storage infrastructures become prohibitively expensive. Machine learning (ML) offers a promising solution for real-time data reduction, but conventional implementations introduce excessive latency, making them unsuitable for high-speed …

FSF announces Librephone project https://www.fsf.org/news/librephone-project
"The Free Software Foundation announced its project to bring mobile phone freedom to users. "Librephone" is an initiative to reverse-engineer obstacles preventing mobile phone freedom until its goal is…

Aha!!! This is one of the pieces I was trying and failing to think of upthread, from the always excellent @… (and I’m embarrassed that I couldn’t bring it to mind earlier, sorry Jennifer, it’s so good and so important):
https://jenniferplusplus.com/the-free-software-commons/
15/

Please don't upload my code on GitHub
This is a call to free/libre and open source software developers to not upload the work of others to GitHub.
🚫 #NoGitHub

If Affinity really cares about the creatives, they (& all other design companies, hopefully Adobe too?) should have form a group to create a file format standard. As long as the design format is proprietary, there's not much "freedom" here, even if the software is free, paid-once or subscription-based.
Sketch is actually almost there, at least for UI/vector designs (

Do you have the ability to write code for Apple platforms? Do you know what MDM / device management is? Do you understand what Compliance is? Do you care about being able to use a Mac or iPad or iPhone for work or school?
Does the idea of dealing with the bugs that can crop up from things like "this needs to be reliably managed like a server, but a human randomly sleeps it mid-process and when it wakes up it's in a different country!" sound interesting to you?
If so - come be my direct co-worker!
Need to be able to be based in/work within the US, but the team itself is fully remote. Multiple positions open.
Feel free to DM me with questions
https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/details/200628824-0836/software-engineer-test-infrastructure

@… Boycotting software, especially when it is open source, because of the personal views of a single individual is small-minded and pointless. Nothing will change. The person in question does not care at all about your boycott, so I do not care either and will use a great free piece of software that will continue to exist whether I or anyone else boycotts that per…

Affinity just gave away their software for free.
https://www.affinity.studio

Compressed verification for post-quantum signatures with long-term public keys
Gustavo Banegas (LIX, GRACE), Ana\"elle Le D\'ev\'ehat (GRACE, LIX), Benjamin Smith (GRACE, LIX)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03098

Compressed verification for post-quantum signatures with long-term public keys
Many signature applications-such as root certificates, secure software updates, and authentication protocols-involve long-lived public keys that are transferred or installed once and then used for many verifications. This key longevity makes post-quantum signature schemes with conservative assumptions (e.g., structure-free lattices) attractive for long-term security. But many such schemes, especially those with short signatures, suffer from extremely large public keys. Even in scenarios where b…

I keep wondering what it would look like for free software developers to unionize and strike.

PSA: i now consider https://grebedoc.dev (and the underlying git-pages server software) feature-complete and production-ready, feel free to use it for all your "not supporting Microsoft-nee-GitHub" needs (or whatever other reasons you might have)!

"The Free Software Foundation has been sliding into irrelevance more and more by entirely failing to address its big Creepy Uncle problem. Open-Source has turned into a form of unpaid internship to be hired to make shitty apps that bring more surveillance and ads to our world."
https://aria.dog/barks/forklift…

Introducing the Forklift Certified License—Aria’s Barks
It's not following the OSI definition of open-source because i don't give a damn how capital defines its needs.

Anonymous help:
#OpenSource #FreeSoftware

Simulation of Lateral Impulse Induced Inertial Dilation at the Surface of a Vacuum-Exposed Granular Assembly
Eric Frizzell, Christine Hartzell
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04074 h…

Simulation of Lateral Impulse Induced Inertial Dilation at the Surface of a Vacuum-Exposed Granular Assembly
We demonstrate for the first time that a lateral impulse experienced by a granular channel can induce an inertial bulk dilation over long distances across a granular medium with a mechanically free surface. The surface dilation requires zero overburden pressure (exposure to vacuum) and is precipitated by the passing of waves traveling barely above the sound speed (> Mach 1.05). We simulate this phenomenon using open source Soft Sphere Discrete Element Method (SSDEM) software. We prepare channel…

Very interesting take/thread about aspects (i.e. lack) of #AI infosec, enforced usage and data exfiltration in domains not often talked about: nuclear engineering, violation of export control laws, liabilities pushed on employees...
https://

Richard Stallman: "Chatbots sind Bullshit-Generatoren"
Der Gründer der Free Software Foundation macht auf Europatour auch Halt in München. Dort mahnt er zu mehr Einsatz von Open Source – gerade beim Staat.
htt…

Remember the Photoshop competitor that didn't require a monthly subscription? #AffinityPhoto
You can no longer download/purchase their software and they are giving away the iPad version for free until the end of the month. And they are teasing something "big" coming up with a bunch of marketing-speak. Whenever a company talks about freedom, be weary.

This is so well deserved! cURL might be the single most important piece of software in the internet by now and Daniel Stenberg is giving away for free since decades. Such a humble and friendly character. Thank you very much!
From: @…

YouTube is like heroin because it pulls you in, hooks you, and slowly drains you. It is designed to be addictive and destructive, and that is exactly why it feels so hard to step away from it.
And yes, I know the excuse, maybe your favorite dealer has not set up shop on PeerTube. But that does not change the truth of the comparison.
PeerTube is like weed, it grows more naturally, it is gentler on you, and it still gives you a high without tearing apart your health and your lif…

I feel like there's a rule: the more expensive a piece of software is per seat, the worse the UI/UX/artwork is.
Random free mobile game? Probably looks really good (it has to, the art is what sells it so you watch the ads/buy powerups/whatever).
$100K /seat EDA tools? Parts of it are probably still using Motif.

I still hate non-free software and will continue working on free software projects, my apps when I have the time, but I want my music to have a darker tone, and with all the posts on my blog I wrote as a young young fella, surrounding my artist name, it's impossible to have that effect. I don't feel like the autistic guy I presented myself as anymore, obsessed with suckless software and window managers and esperanto and niche shit. I still like this stuff, but they're not my life purpose.

A fun collection of random tools by an indie web developer:
#software #tools

Dear Reader,

Today I'm delighted to announce a Take Control book about a fantastic new Mac email app called #MailMaven. Developed by our friends at SmallCubed (best known for their popular MailSuite plugin for Apple Mail), MailMaven is a powerful and flexible alternative to apps like Apple Mail, Outlook, and Thunderbird.
The Manual is free from :

"Getting Hired to Work on FOSS - The Do-s, Don't-s and Pitfalls for Everyone Involved" is what my friend Till Adam talked about at #Akademy2025. He also has a short section on why Free Software is worth more compared to proprietary software, so you should take higher rates and principals should be willing to pay more. And he draws from experience of contracts that

Now I’m on my way to FrOSCon. On Sunday at 3 p.m., I will give a talk there on the democratisation of digital maps with Protomaps.
https://cusy.io/en/about/events/20th-froscon.html
@…

As fascism descends, you are going to need easy to access and use alternatives to Big Tech (aka Fascist Tech).
So maybe bookmark the Chatons collective site initiated by our friends at Framasoft with hosted versions of free-software services for collaborative writing, video conferencing, scheduling appointments, collaborative spreadsheets, file sharing, picture sharing, etc.

Managed to finish a Debian preseed file, some things will be prompted but the system you'll get:
- non-free/firmware/contrib repos
- barest gnome
- git/distrobox/ptyxis/flatpak/flathub/gnome software plugins
- the good ext manager
Let me know how it fares, VMs and IRL
https://chrislowles.com/deb

Nicht neues OS: FSFs LibrePhone-Projekt will Android befreien
Die Free Software Foundation hat erste Details zum LibrePhone Projekt veröffentlicht. Ziel sei dabei nicht die Entwicklung eines Smartphone-Betriebssystems.

Faced with the possibility of scrapping old computers on which Windows 11 is not supported by Microsoft: some users resort to hacking.
Others prefer a switch to free software, to no longer depend on Microsoft.
https://www.radio…

@… i would like to draw your attention to https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Main_Page
special:version has been entirely removed and there is no mention …

CGSecurity - Data recovery: TestDisk & PhotoRec
TestDisk and PhotoRec are free and open source data recovery software tools designed to recover lost partition, unerase deleted files, carve lost files.

A political appeal by a democratically minded European based on the dramatically changing situation and its consequences in the field of technology and IT:
Guys, if for whatever reason you are still working with Windows (or Apple, Google...), I can only urge you to take the current circumstances as a reason to switch to Linux and free software! Never has such a switch been more appropriate and important!
The end of Windows 10, Microsoft's coercion towards MS accounts and clou…

Come for the talking about free and open source technology for a free and open society and for the pizza, stay for the…wait, those are the only two things that our weekly meetup, Tech Pizza Mondays, is about.
RSVP at the Luma link or just show up! (If you just show up, we’re going to ask you how you found out about us.) September 17th, 6 PM, Victory Cafe, 440 Bloor St. W. #Toronto

A Reusable Library for Second-Order Orbital Optimization Using the Trust Region Method
Jonas Greiner, Ida-Marie H{\o}yvik, Susi Lehtola, Janus J. Eriksen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13931

A Reusable Library for Second-Order Orbital Optimization Using the Trust Region Method
We present a reusable, open-source software implementation of the second-order trust region algorithm in the new OpenTrustRegion library. We apply the implementation to the general-purpose optimization of molecular orbitals in various contexts within electronic-structure theory. Our permissibly licensed implementation can be included in any software package, be it free and open-source, academically licensed closed-source, or commercial. Detailing the implementation in OpenTrustRegion, we presen…

The ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$-character variety of $8_{18}$
Haimiao Chen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12203 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12203

The ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$-character variety of $8_{18}$
The knot $8_{18}$ is the first non-arborescent hyperbolic knot. In 2020, Paoluzzi and Porti found its ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$-character variety with the aid of a computer, but many details were omitted. In this paper, we determine the character variety by a software-free procedure, which is easy to follow and enlightening. Along the way, we develop an efficient method for working with simultaneous conjugacy classes of four elements of ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$.

Crosslisted article(s) found for cs.MS. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.MS/new
[1/1]:
- Matrix-Free Evaluation Strategies for Continuous and Discontinuous Galerkin Discretizations on Un...
Dominik Still, Niklas Fehn, Wolfgang A. Wall, Martin Kronbichler

Noch einige der zuletzt hier besonders häufig geteilten #News:
Richard Stallman: "Chatbots sind Bullshit-Generatoren"

Empirical Evaluation of Memory-Erasure Protocols
Reynaldo Gil-Pons, Sjouke Mauw, Rolando Trujillo-Rasua
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10224 https://arxiv.org/…

Empirical Evaluation of Memory-Erasure Protocols
Software-based memory-erasure protocols are two-party communication protocols where a verifier instructs a computational device to erase its memory and send a proof of erasure. They aim at guaranteeing that low-cost IoT devices are free of malware by putting them back into a safe state without requiring secure hardware or physical manipulation of the device. Several software-based memory-erasure protocols have been introduced and theoretically analysed. Yet, many of them have not been tested fo…

Are you in #Prague ? You must visit my talk entitled:
Disobey: #FOSS tools to fight back!
https://pretalx.linuxdays.cz/linux…

FOSS tools to fight back! LinuxDays 2025
Everyone is trying to control your communication. The reasons vary from simple curiosity to pure commercial interest, all the way to using it to control one's thoughts. Are there any ways to fight back, and why are free software and open-source tools a good alternative to the ones you use? As cypherpunks, do we have the obligation to help people be ready for the worst, or should we only take care of ourselves? In this talk, I will cover my experience with fighting back against #chatcontrol …

Meta-Analysis with JASP, Part I: Classical Approaches
Franti\v{s}ek Barto\v{s}, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Wolfgang Viechtbauer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09845 https://

Meta-Analysis with JASP, Part I: Classical Approaches
Meta-analyses play a crucial part in empirical science, enabling researchers to synthesize evidence across studies and draw more precise and generalizable conclusions. Despite their importance, access to advanced meta-analytic methodology is often limited to scientists and students with considerable expertise in computer programming. To lower the barrier for adoption, we have developed the Meta-Analysis module in JASP (https://jasp-stats.org/), a free and open-source software for statistical an…

#Framework #Omarchy…

The Omarchy/Framework thing
I want to state for the record that I love Framework’s products. They are incredibly friendly to Linux, to Free Software, and to the Right to Repair movement. If their stated mission didn’t so closely align to my own values—and if they weren’t jeopardizing their reputation

Quiet Friday nights are for updating our calendar. Event listings have been added into December. Subscribe at https://luma.com/techpizzamondays

Fast and Accurate Intersections on a Sphere
Hongyu Chen, Paul A. Ullrich, Julian Panetta
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09892 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.09892

Fast and Accurate Intersections on a Sphere
We introduce a fast, high-precision algorithm for calculating intersections between great circle arcs and lines of constant latitude on the unit sphere. We first propose a simplified intersection point formula with improved speed and numerical robustness over the ones traditionally implemented in geoscience software. We then show how algorithms based on the concept of error-free transformations (EFT) can be applied to evaluate this formula within a relative error bound that is on the order of m…

Etwas mehr der heute besonders häufig geteilten #News:
Nicht neues OS: FSFs LibrePhone-Projekt will Android befreien

It’s Monday again tomorrow, and that means we will host Tech Pizza Monday like we do every week! 440 Bloor St. W., 6 PM, August 18th. #Toronto #tech #pizza

🤚 Free Saturday
👉 Saturday spent working on Free Software
Highlights from #Gentoo:
• #Gemato is now compatible with #FreePG and mostly compatible with #SequoiaPGP chameleon.
• Prepared patches to support FreePG and SequoiaPGP chameleon as "gpg" symlink providers.
• #FlexiBLAS is now enabled by default on ~arch.
• Finally finished working on #PkgCheck check for missing #PyPI provenance checks.
• gpy-list-pkg-impls now includes "does this package have tests?" state, can optionally include PythonCompatUpdate results from PkgCheck and output mIRC colors. In other words, our IRC bot will now tell us when dependencies let us port new packages to #Python 3.14, and whether these packages have tests.