This post will give you a quick intro to the basics of GUI programming for SerenityOS. A one-line introduction that covers the article perfectly. A rarity, indeed. We covered SerenityOS late last year.

Many older VPN offerings are “way too huge and complex, and it’s basically impossible to overview and verify if they are secure or not,” says Jan Jonsson, CEO of VPN service provider Mullvad, which powers Firefox maker Mozilla’s new VPN service. That explains some of the excitement around WireGuard, an open source VPN software and protocol that will soon be part of the Linux kernel—the heart of the open source operating system that powers everything from web servers to Android phones to cars. I’ve always been wary of the countless VPN services littering YouTube and podcast sponsor slots, since you can never be quite sure if you can trust them. Luckily I don’t need a VPN, but I’m glad Linux is getting it built-in.

The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen. The current coronavirus outbreak is showing us once again just how dependent the world is on Chinese manufacturing. The companies implicated in this report – technology companies in particular, since this is OSNews – need all these Chinese workers to function, to exist, and to grow their revenue and Cayman Islands money piles even more, more, more. Do you really think Tim Cook loses one night of sleep over a few thousand Muslims ground to minced meat between the cogs of his manufacturing empire?

While open source software is taking over the world, a push for open source hardware has been quietly building. The RISC-V Foundation has been pushing its open sourced instruction set architecture for chips based on the long-established paradigms for reduced instruction set computing. And one of its most vocal advocates is Calista Redmond, the chief executive of the RISC-V Foundation, which is working to promote its adoption. This is a slow burn. RISC-V won’t change the world overnight, but will slowly but surely seep into every corner of the computing industry – and looking at the incompatible, closed-source mess that is the ARM world, we really need RISC-V on all those millions of embedded devices we use every day.

In software development, and especially Google’s development cycles, there’s usually a point where the developers “eat their own dogfood” or use their own work, before letting normal users try it. It seems that Google’s long-in-development Fuchsia OS may finally be reaching this “dogfood” stage. And yet, we’re still no closer to what, exactly, Fuchsia is going to be for.

The SeaMonkey project is a community effort to develop the SeaMonkey Internet Application Suite (see below). Such a software suite was previously made popular by Netscape and Mozilla, and the SeaMonkey project continues to develop and deliver high-quality updates to this concept. Containing an Internet browser, email & newsgroup client with an included web feed reader, HTML editor, IRC chat and web development tools, SeaMonkey is sure to appeal to advanced users, web developers and corporate users. SeaMonkey has been around for a while, and I’m sure many of you are familiar with it. It’s effectively a modern continuation of the more classic Mozilla browser, the Mozilla Application Suite, which also included a news reader, email client, and so on. Not exactly the kind of thing most people want to use today, but there must still be a place for it in today’s era. That being said, the project just released its latest new version, 2.53.1, so I figured I’d highlight it here.

Are you constantly annoyed that your smartphone battery dies before the rest of the phone? Angry about the wastage that creates? Well, leaked EU proposals could force smartphone manufacturers to to make all batteries removable. That would mean that all brands wanting to sell in the EU would have to make sure each phone has a battery that can be removed by the user – and that even would include Apple, the company most resistant to legislation around its iPhone designs, if attempts to make it change ports in the past is anything to go by. This makes perfect sense. People are keeping their phones for longer and longer, so the ability to easily and quickly replace the battery is a big boon.

I stopped there because we had to get back to work, but without even leaving the Finder and Desktop I was able to find a bunch of things that long-time Mac users had never known about because they never discovered them in their daily use. None of this is meant to say macOS is garbage or anything like that. It’s just interesting to see when people who love the Mac and are so critical of “discoverability” on the iPad. I’m not even saying the iPad is better than the Mac here, I’m just saying that “discoverability” is one of the big things that has people in a tizzy right now about the iPad, but I think some are laying into the iPad harder than is warranted. You have no idea how many undiscoverable or obtuse features, functions, tricks, and so on you take for granted when using old, established platforms like Windows or macOS.

Today, Firefox began the rollout of encrypted DNS over HTTPS (DoH) by default for US-based users. The rollout will continue over the next few weeks to confirm no major issues are discovered as this new protocol is enabled for Firefox’s US-based users. At the creation of the internet, these kinds of threats to people’s privacy and security were known, but not being exploited yet. Today, we know that unencrypted DNS is not only vulnerable to spying but is being exploited, and so we are helping the internet to make the shift to more secure alternatives. We do this by performing DNS lookups in an encrypted HTTPS connection. This helps hide your browsing history from attackers on the network, helps prevent data collection by third parties on the network that ties your computer to websites you visit. We can only hope other browsers will follow soon. This is a very important and great improvement.

Live Tiles have been a signature feature of the Windows OS interface since the launch of Windows 8. But these colorful, info-packed squares appear to be on their way into the trash bin. This should’ve been obvious to anyone who’s been keeping an eye on Windows development. Live tiles were amazing on Windows Phone, but never really fit desktop computing. I’m glad they’re going away.

Google is planning to move its British users’ accounts out of the control of European Union privacy regulators, placing them under U.S. jurisdiction instead, sources said. The shift, prompted by Britain’s exit from the EU, will leave the sensitive personal information of tens of millions with less protection and within easier reach of British law enforcement. Brexiteers getting what they wanted and deserve.

Apple Inc. is considering giving rival apps more prominence on iPhones and iPads and opening its HomePod speaker to third-party music services after criticism the company provides an unfair advantage to its in-house products. The technology giant is discussing whether to let users choose third-party web browser and mail applications as their default options on Apple’s mobile devices, replacing the company’s Safari browser and Mail app, according to people familiar with the matter. Since launching the App Store in 2008, Apple hasn’t allowed users to replace pre-installed apps such as these with third-party services. That has made it difficult for some developers to compete, and has raised concerns from lawmakers probing potential antitrust violations in the technology industry. Just the mere possibility of antitrust action is making Apple considering changes to improve competition – the strength of legal action. Of course, these concessions are way too little, and especially the EU will want more than just competing Safari skins – that’s all third-party iOS browsers really are – and mail clients.

One of the projects I have been watching with curiosity over the past year is /e/ (formerly Eelo), a mobile operating system that is based on Android, but with the pieces associated with Google’s software and services removed. The removed pieces have been replaced with alternatives, so that it still functions as a complete mobile operating system. DistroWatch is quite impressed with the release, while noting it still has some rough edges. The /e/ phone does not offer all the apps Android does, and it might not be entirely polished yet in the re-branding experience. However, it does provide a very solid, mostly Android compatible experience without the Google bits. The /e/ team offers a wider range of hardware support than most other iOS and Android competitors, it offers most of the popular Android apps people will probably want to use (I only discovered a few missing items I wanted), and the on-line cloud services are better than those of any other phone I’ve used (including Ubuntu One and Google). I’d certainly recommend /e/ for more technical users who can work around minor rough edges and who won’t get confused by the unusual branding and semi-frequent permission prompts. I’m not sure if I’d hand one of these phones over to an Android power-user who uses a lot of niche apps, but this phone would certainly do well in the hands of, for instance, my parents or other users who tend to interact with their phones for texting, phone calls, and the calendar without using many exotic applications. That’s quite impressive, and while unlikely, it would be great to have a stable, fully functional Android ROM that’s Google-free.

Why a rotary cellphone? Because in a finicky, annoying, touchscreen world of hyperconnected people using phones they have no control over or understanding of, I wanted something that would be entirely mine, personal, and absolutely tactile, while also giving me an excuse for not texting.  The point isn’t to be anachronistic. It’s to show that it’s possible to have a perfectly usable phone that goes as far from having a touchscreen as I can imagine, and which in some ways may actually be more functional. Genius.