Hello Community,

iPad is three years old now, and many tech blogs are writing stories to reflect what has changed. More than 100 million of them have been sold, alongside other popular tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7. But originally the reception was quite sceptical.

I’ve bought a Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook, model NP530U3C-A08IT to be exact, and Italian version. Its a 13″ laptop, 1,5kg with a 128Gb SSD disk. I received with it another 120 Gb SSD disk, which I have used to install Debian Wheezy, keeping the original disk with a never booted Windows 8 apart. It is [...]

Hi Everyone,

It’s been a while since my last update (over a month!) so it’s a good time to talk about what’s been going on.

Firstly, GVFS 1.16 is out – so that’s the first stable release with the MTP backend in it. w00t!

Before you wonder, it doesn’t include my work to support the Android Direct I/O extensions (that allow normal read/write access to files on the device). I’ve now got those to a point where I’m ready to get them in, but I’m waiting on a review in bugzilla. Since my last update, all the libmtp changes have been merged and released in version 1.1.16.

The second big thing I’ve done is completely change how mtp URIs work. In previous posts, I’ve talked about how I was putting entity IDs as path elements to save having to maintain an ID->filename mapping, and then relying on the gvfs display and copy name properties to make the files appear to have normal names when looked at. I ultimately decided to abandon this approach for a couple of reasons. The main one is that with Direct I/O support, every application that can operate on files can be used with an MTP device, and most of those apps don’t know anything about gvfs and can’t use the special properties. The second reason is that there are edge cases where it’s impossible to tell if you’re looking at a filename that’s all numbers or an entity ID. So, I’ve added a mapping system and URIs now use filenames.

Finally, I’ve fixed a bug in gvfs that only got triggered when unmounting an mtp device in Ubuntu 13.04 betas. The code in question hasn’t changed in gvfs for a long time, but the bug didn’t appear anywhere else. Still, there is a real code problem in there, so I’ve got a fix out for it.

I’ve updated my with builds that contain all these pending patches (although the raring gvfs got updated while mine was building so it’s now considered out-of-date) and the new libmtp, so please try the new stuff out.

For the curious, here are the GNOME bugzilla entries tracking these changes:

• Add support for Android direct I/O extensions
• Implement filename cache to enable name based URIs
• gvfsmonitor.c: backend_died needs to take a ref while unsubscribing subscribers

Enjoy!

As mentioned before, we are creating an Open Source department that will focus on key open source technologies.  The Open Source department  is in  Silicon Valley - as part of my Advanced Software Platform organization  in Samsung Research America.But there is also an office in London, UK - as part of Samsung European Research Institute (with a smaller satellite office in Helsinki, Finland).  So if you are also living in those countries and want to be in contact with those guys, you can also send us your CV and we will channel  them  to the relevant offices.We are hiring sw developers on the following: Linux Kernel, Webkit, jQuery, Android, Hadoop, Tizen, EFL, FFMpeg, Gstreamer, LLVM, Cassandra, Cloudstack, HBase, U-boot, WEbinos, Openstack, Chromium OS, Lighttpd, Linaro, Cairo, Node.js, Wayland, and Xen.  This is not an exhaustive list, this list will grow  and we are potentially interested in any open source project that might move the needle - so there is no harm in contacting us anyway - if only to chat.We will support the option to work remotely depending on your personal situation and we are also trying to build some core team here in Silicon Valley.So if you are currently involved in any of these projects/technologies (or similar/related projects) as a contributor, committer, reviewer, maintainer, etc., and enjoy collaborating with the global community of open source developers, you can contact us by going through the site or sending me your CV directly.That is the gist of it – if you want more details (about the content of the job, the requirements, etc…), go to http://careers.us.samsung.com/, enter as location San Jose and as keyword: open source.Thanks

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Proposed referendum to tidy up Community Council election process before change in scope

When the Hildon Foundation was formed the by-laws provided for a Hildon Foundation Council to replace the Maemo Community Council, as an interface with Nokia is no longer needed. The stated intention of the primary author of the by-laws, Craig Woodward, was that the Maemo Community Council would transition directly into the Hildon Foundation Council and that these were not two separate councils, but a change primarily in name. There has been some disagreement on this point from certain community members, who hold the opinion that the Maemo Community Council has no authority over the Hildon Foundation since it is not the Hildon Foundation Council.

I’m very happy about this release. Thanks to hard choices that we dared to make in the past we are now breaking new ground and giving GNOME some of the tools it needs to be the premier free software operating system. It’s been a long way since I spent an entire GUADEC porting good old epiphany to this newfangled thing called “WebKit”, and what a ride it has been.

This site is using cookies. Some of them are to track you as I use Google Analytics. Other may keep your name/email/website when you write comments on my blog.

We have new law here in European Union that visitors should get notification when website is using cookies. You know — privacy stuff etc. Lot of people does not even have any idea what this whole noise is about. There are websites for them with all that not even needed information — your search engine will point you there (and use few cookies in meantime).

I do not plan to add any of those annoying popups which will tell that there are cookies in use. Once you see such one you get cookie — cause website needs a way to remember that you clicked “yes, I know, get off my screen” button. You will not see such one here.

There is a text box in right column about cookies — go, read, decide would you read my blog or not. It is your choice and always was.

PS. I added tags into post just to get this post shown on each RSS aggregator I am/was listed.

UPDATE: added small header.

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All rights reserved © Marcin Juszkiewicz
Cookies blabla… was originally posted on Marcin Juszkiewicz website

Google Glass is coming this year, a wearable display that can keep you connected at all the times and supply information and instructions when you need them. And it can record video or take pictures of whatever you see, when you want it to.

I just tried Graph Search. I was on the waiting list as this was going to be good.  Not good as in useful-good, but good as in just plain fun.
Candy to the mind ..with the possibility to feed the little stalker that lies in all of us.
I have to say that the first 15 minutes were the best fun I had on the Internet since Google put a decent search engine out there. The sheer pleasure of finding meaningless facts about people kept me going... until the experience inevitably lead me down  memory lane as I encountered forgotten photos of myself commented or liked somewhere by somebody who was but a digital ghosts from Christmas past.

Thus, I oscillated between the state of mind of a poet and that of a trashy tabloid journalist for a quarter of an hour, but the effect kind of wears thin after a while...
In the end, you really do have to be a marketeer at heart to get a kick out of knowing that  there are over 100 female individuals in Bogota, Columbia, who both like Oreo cookies AND Origami....
But that only 7 individuals in Lisbon, Portugal like Oreo AND Mickey...
I shudder to think of the poor and alienated soul that will work the analytics on this one, desperately trying to find some sort of sickening and twisted correlation. ( Was Origami boosting the cookies sales? Or was Mickey suppressing Oreo? And how to factor in the Hispanic versus Lusophone aspect of the equation? What did it all mean?)

But, as my excitement wound down, I realized that I might be missing a little historical perspective.
After all, a few tries and the tool did allow me to find who were the "People who are Muslims " and living in my area, enlighten me to the fact that  there are "People who are Jewish and living in Ireland" as well as tell if my friends knew of any "Men who are interested in Men" or "People who like the Republican Party" .
The tool does seem equally adequate for either left or right wing dictatorship as well as any sort of genocide/bashing/hate crime that one may have in mind.

Bottom line: fun tool probably good for business, but - in case you have not done it already - you might want to tune your privacy setting and trim a bit your profiles if you don't want to be totally exposed.