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Jolla reveal strategy, UI and Qt Creator-based SDK at Slush 2012

Jolla is once again foremost in the minds of many mobile OS enthusiasts and open-source aficionados with more information being revealed regarding their strategy and future. The launch of their official website and a slick video partway between a teaser and a product video give a definite sense of progress and should inspire confidence in everyone holding their breath for a product launch.

Cybercom is adapting its operations in Sweden, Singapore and Finland to improve the efficiency. Actions include cuts of the group overhead costs and reductions in the number of employees. The measures are expected to provide annual cost savings of approximately SEK 45 million.

I’m a bit puzzled. I think anyone that works in the IT business today know how vital the testing is, and that it takes all shapes and forms. You have everything from actually poking the 1’s and 0’s with an oversized stick until it breaks to from afar analyzing the “if’s and the maybe’s”. My point is that testing is a whole lot more than just “that stuff that happens just before the code is delivered”.  With that in mind I’m a bit puzzled on how many fresh out school workers, and still in school for that matter, I meet that has almost no clue that testing even exists. Usually the only experience from testing they have is that they made some attempt on unit testing in a java school project or similar. I must say I have kind of the same experience from school, apart from writing very few and extremely simple unit tests I can’t remember ever hearing anything about it.

I hope I’m wrong and the schools actually got kickass courses within all areas of testing, someone please prove me wrong!

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Half year ago I got Tizen development platform device. Played a bit with it and then put in a drawer due to other things to do.

Today I looked again at Tizen. Nothing changed. Git repositories still scream “****@#$!$ *** *** you developers!” due to lack of any commits other than code drop bombs.

So if someone (from Europe) wants this device — be first to comment. Sending with DHL and you pay for posting.

Related posts:

1. Tizen: first impressions
2. Complaining
3. ARMology

I hosted a workshop regarding web security tonight where the main objective was to actually hack into something (a demo app). A part from actually letting the group investigate/test the site for XSS vulnerabilities, bad implementations and overall horrible architecture the idea was to show how easy a small “flaw” can become a major problem. Very few people will be worried by seeing some demo page just showing some “alert window” displaying the word test or something. I think/hope my approach by actually showing how all these “small” flaws together actually made it so the “evil hacker” could perform a session hijacking and get complete access to the demo app highlighted that even the smallest flaw could end up being something very serious.  I’m pretty sure quite a few of these flaws would only make the usual web developer (or tester for that matter) shrug their shoulders and move on saying, “nothing serious…”, this while the “evil hacker” stand on the other side of the fence saying “just smile and wave boys, just smile and wave” (bonus points if you know the movie reference! ).

The group did very well and even though most of them had no previous experience of these things the group together identified all the flaws needed to actually do the session hijacking. Well done!

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This week has been a busy one for a hacker-nomad. Weekend in Paris for the JS.everywhere conference, then on Monday a talk at the Hamburg JavaScript meetup. And now I'm in Helsinki. Slush, the conference I'm attending, is the biggest start-up event in Nordic countries. But even at that, it seems the Jolla announcements of today have been able to hijack most of the buzz around the event.

Somehow it hurts.

I remember back in 2002 when we were debating the proposed Anglican-Methodist Covenant, I was the awkward bugger who stood up in our local District Synod and voiced the question "If this were about entering into Covenant with a denomination in which black men were forbidden to become Bishops, would we be having the debate at all?"

After a suitable pause for the very audible gasp, and time for one or two to recover from the vapours, I stepped down: point made. Two things followed in the debate. One was that in entering this covenant it was recognised that we were asking our Methodist women to make some sacrifice. The other was a loud reassurance that our brothers and sisters in the Church of England were on a journey, and we should walk with them rather than stand aloof. On that basis, our synod duly voted in the Covenant.

Today we have seen that enough of those brothers and sisters have no intention of travelling anywhere to cause the journey for all of them to come to a standstill.

A small (Methodist) part of me wants to say "Ok, can we cancel the Covenant now until they get their act together?".

But the greater, more caring part of me weeps for the pain this decision has caused and will continue to cause those wonderful women - and men - who have been called by God and who faithfully serve Him in the church every day. Those no-voters probably don't even realise that in refusing certain areas of service to women they are denigrating the service of all those faithful women, ordained and lay, by indicating that in the Official Opinion of the church they are somehow 'lesser'.

There will be a lot of pain and a fair few tears in the Church of England tonight. But tomorrow those hurt priests and their congregations will be back doing what they do best, trying to serve God in the communities in which they're set. It is all those faithful brothers and sisters that we're in Covenant with. And those brothers and sisters we sit with tonight as they come to terms with a vote that brings a long process to an end, at least for now. Maybe the subject can be raised again in a few years, but tonight we, your Covenant partners will sit down beside you, hold your hands, share your pain and wait. And we will pray with you and for you.

Somehow it hurts.

I remember back in 2002 when we were debating the proposed Anglican-Methodist Covenant, I was the awkward bugger who stood up in our local District Synod and voiced the question "If this were about entering into Covenant with a denomination in which black men were forbidden to become Bishops, would we be having the debate at all?"

After a suitable pause for the very audible gasp, and time for one or two to recover from the vapours, I stepped down: point made. Two things followed in the debate. One was that in entering this covenant it was recognised that we were asking our Methodist women to make some sacrifice. The other was a loud reassurance that our brothers and sisters in the Church of England were on a journey, and we should walk with them rather than stand aloof. On that basis, our synod duly voted in the Covenant.

Today we have seen that enough of those brothers and sisters have no intention of travelling anywhere to cause the journey for all of them to come to a standstill.

A small (Methodist) part of me wants to say "Ok, can we cancel the Covenant now until they get their act together?".

But the greater, more caring part of me weeps for the pain this decision has caused and will continue to cause those wonderful women - and men - who have been called by God and who faithfully serve Him in the church every day. Those no-voters probably don't even realise that in refusing certain areas of service to women they are denigrating the service of all those faithful women, ordained and lay, by indicating that in the Official Opinion of the church they are somehow 'lesser'.

There will be a lot of pain and a fair few tears in the Church of England tonight. But tomorrow those hurt priests and their congregations will be back doing what they do best, trying to serve God in the communities in which they're set. It is all those faithful brothers and sisters that we're in Covenant with. And those brothers and sisters we sit with tonight as they come to terms with a vote that brings a long process to an end, at least for now. Maybe the subject can be raised again in a few years, but tonight we, your Covenant partners will sit down beside you, hold your hands, share your pain and wait. And we will pray with you and for you.

The compatibility layer for applications packed as .apk (that are running natively and use OpenGL ES) has seen its source code released yesterday. Supports Maemo 5 (Fremantle) and MeeGo 1.2 (Harmattan), which means your N900, N950 and N9 are covered. Documentation is provided in the source, and the wrapper generator scripts are also released. Looking forward to contributions and new modules from the community. Details can be found on the apkenv website.

TodayLast week I finally joined the Wikimedia Foundation, with my US visa renewed and all the bureaucratic requirements in place. I work at the Platform Engineering team, reporting to Sumana Harihareswara and having other (remote) neighbors like Guillaume Paumier, Chris McMachon and Andre Klapper (of GNOME & Maemo/MeeGo fame, what a coincidence!). I feel happy. I feel honored. I’m ready to do my best contributing to the Wikimedia (with m) movement, one of the most impressive collaborative projects nowadays.