Each month, we create a post to keep you abreast of news and happenings regarding the server, discuss recent events, and to act as town square for the community.

🌟 Community Highlights 🌟

• !Audiobooks@slrpnk.net - Share and discuss interesting books of an audible nature!
• !Lunarpunk@slrpnk.net - Explore the darker aesthetics of Solarpunk.
• !Soilscience@slrpnk.net - A science based community to discuss and learn all things related to soils (Get all up in that dirt! Woah, hold up, okay that's like maybe too much dirt- Oh you're eating it. No that's cool, I'm chill with it now).

🏵️ Meta Post Image Breakdown: Cempasúchil 🏵️

Cempasúchil, also called marigolds, is the flower traditionally used to honor the dead during Dia de los Muertos. Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a multi-day Mexican Holiday. It is celebrated the first two days of November, with November 1st dedicated to the remembrance of dead children.

⛔ Defederation from MAGA.place and HillariousChaos.com ⛔

We briefly broke our habit of not commenting on electoral political developments in !meta in December 2024 when we reported that the United States had elected a fascist government. Our characterization of Trump's regime and the MAGA movement as a US-localized version of the regimes of Mussolini, Franco, and Hilter has only been proven more and more prescient, as masked government agents attacking and kidnapping protestors, citizens, and immigrants in defiance of the rule of law. Trump's regime builds expensive concentration facilities and gaudy palatial vanity projects while pushing working Americans deeper into poverty.

We've joined instances from DBZer0.com to Lemmy.world in adding maga.place to our blocklist, defederating SLRPNK.net from the servers entirely. This prevents them from attracting new users by federating our posts and comments, and prevents their users from harassing SLRPNK members. The maga.place instance joined the Fediverse one month ago, and appeared on our radar when the admin began appearing in SLRPNK posts and communities.

We're not the first to block Hilariouschaos.com either, which also hosts fascist content and tolerates right-wing trolls. We've been side-eyeing this server for a while, but the eager collaboration between HC users and maga.place has made the fascist trends on HC unambiguous enough to take action.

This is consistent with our defederation standards. We've always encouraged good faith discussion between a spectrum of ideological and political positions, and stood up for our members to moderate their communities according to their politics, even when it contradicts our own. We have also ejected members who consistently engage in trolling, bad faith argument, and spreading demonstrably false information. When an instance has cultivated a significant culture of trolls and bad faith actors, we have defederated from those instances. We've blocked Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml on that basis.

Our blocklist is not limited to instances that tolerate modern forms of fascism, but all fascist instances belong on our blocklist. Fascism is a fundamentally irrational political position, and is impossible to defend rhetorically with good-faith argument. Reality is the source of ideological truth. Among people who hold these positions, this relationship is flipped, and ideological truth is the source of reality. This is why they so easily dismiss evidence out of hand that contradicts their narrative, and the Admin of maga.place's reliance on claims of 'fake news' regardless of the source and credibility illustrates this point.

Several servers we federate do not block maga.place. This means maga.place won't see your posts or comments on these servers, and you won't see content posted from maga.place to these servers either since we began the block. It also means members of these servers will see content from both us and maga.place, and may encourage more fascists to join these instances to get around the block. Posts on these servers will appear alongside posts from blocked servers, despite there being no other interaction besides proximity.

We encourage other admins to add maga.place to their blocklist as well to prevent cultivating a fascist audience. Trolling is a form of censorship, a performance of irrationality intended to frustrate people engaging in good faith and drive them away from platforms that tolerate this behavior. The casual dismissal of scientific consensus without evidence and other irrational antics takes a much darker turn once the political power of trolls is great enough to make their critics disappear. Incarceration, deportation, and murder for political thought are all much more significant forms of censorship in comparison to federation blocks.

While most instances institute these blocks without comment, others engage in a form of internal comment or debate. Sh.itjust.works engaged in a public discussion, and is currenly voting on the issue (only SJW members should participate in the vote thread). A similar discussion occurred on Lemmy.ca, and they ultimately decided to defederate.

The politics of voting on the Fediverse probably deserves its own discussion; at SLRPNK, we wear our ethos on our sleeve, and we feel acting within the bounds of our server's ideals should not require a bureaucratic process. We are committed to transparency and open discussion, hence we walk a middle ground between seeking a formal public mandate and silent executive action.

Due to the nature of our server, most of what I've said is probably taken for granted by most of our members. Solidarity and coalition building are powerful tools in resistance to fascism. I've dedicated a large portion of this meta post to this discussion in solidarity with all of the members of other platforms who are also calling for their admins to defederate from instances that encourage fascist trolls. I'm tagging the admins of several instances who still federate to welcome them to join the conversation here and on Sh.itjust.works as well.

⚡Solar-powered Servers ☀️

Since we are getting into the dark months of the year again here is a quick update on how our solar-power production is going: In October it has been rather rainy at out server location (due to several Atlantic storms passing by), therefore only 67% of the total electricity needs could be covered by the solar panels. The average over the last three months was 83%, with the downward trend starting in September (88%). The additional grid-power was mostly wind and geothermal energy and the good news is that this nearby geothermal power-plant is currently being renovated and expanded (and will include a modern thermal spa soon as well, yay).

📡 Technical Updates 📡

We did a quick server OS update earlier today, which went smoothly, so there isn't much to report on. Overall we have still some pending hardware changes to reduce energy consumption a bit, and those will require some unscheduled server restarts. We also discussed the updated plans for the potential Piefed migration in the server upgrade thread here, tl;dr: the main blockers should be gone now, but we need to set up a Piefed test instance and investigate the database structure for creating a migration script. As a preparation, we already have a working object storage setup on our servers now, which should make media storage easier to expand in the future. The first test case for it is a new PeerTube instance that our hosting organization f-hub.org recently added.

💬 Open Discussion 💬

Now it’s your turn to share whatever you’d like down below; your thoughts, ideas, concerns, hopes, or anything related to the server. If you have a new community you’d like to shine a spotlight, shine away! If you’re a new user wanting to say hi, feel free to post an introduction 😀

SLRPNK Community Resources:

• Community Wiki - Moderators, you can create your own Wiki here for your communities!
• Movim Chat - Open to all members (use your SLRPNK login credentials)
• Etherpad - Collaborative document editor

::: spoiler ⬛ Union Resources 🟥
These are unions from around the world who can train you to become an effective organizer to form a grassroots union with your co-workers!

• 🌍 Global: IWW (Français) - (Español)
• 🇦🇷 Argentina: FORA
• 🇦🇺 Australia: ASF-IWA
• 🇧🇷 Brazil: FOB
• 🇧🇬 Bulgaria: ARS, CITUB
• 🇩🇪 Germany: FAU
• 🇬🇷 Greece: ESE
• 🇮🇹 Italy: USI
• 🇳🇱 🇧🇪 Netherlands & Belgium: Vriji Bond
• 🇪🇸 Spain: CNT
• 🇸🇪 Sweden: SAC
• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: UVW
  :::

poVoq

2025-10-26 23:08:14

Scheduled maintenance for server upgrades next weekend

Likely Saturday, 1st of November.

We need to do some server OS upgrades and a some other things that will cause a few hours downtime.

Maybe I will already start with some smaller things this week, that should only cause a short down-time for reboots.

Once that is done, I will look into running a Piefed test instance to investigate how to do the database migration from Lemmy. If everything goes smoothly, we might be able to do the Lemmy to Piefed migration end of this year or early next year.

Here is the unlisted demo video from their newsletter:

Key bits:

After acquiring Serif last year, Canva is now relaunching its Adobe-rivalling Affinity creative suite as a new all-in-one app for photo editing, vector illustration, and page layouts. Unlike Affinity’s previous Designer, Photo, and Publisher software, which were a one-time $70 purchase, Canva’s announcement stresses that the new Affinity app is “free forever” and won’t require a subscription.

Affinity’s one-time-purchase model was one of the most appealing things about its older software offerings, standing in stark contrast to Adobe’s controversial subscription-based creative suite. While Canva’s own design platform can be used for free, it also locks most of its capabilities behind subscription paywalls, which raised concerns that Affinity would adopt Canva’s subscription-based approach following the acquisition. The company is trying to put those fears to rest for good by repeatedly mentioning how “free” the new Affinity app is, but the AI integrations will likely be met with some resistance by creatives who oppose the technology.

I'm glad they didn't add any subscription pricing, and while I don't know if they'll actually be able to fund it through the optional AI subscriptions alone, at least it can be used offline for those who want any AI things. Now my only complaint is the lack of a solid Linux client.

Affinity’s new design platform combines everything into one app

After acquiring Serif last year, Canva is now relaunching Affinity as a new all-in-one app for photo editing, vector illustration, and page layouts

^{Jess Weatherbed (The Verge)}

Here is the unlisted demo video from their newsletter:

Key bits:

After acquiring Serif last year, Canva is now relaunching its Adobe-rivalling Affinity creative suite as a new all-in-one app for photo editing, vector illustration, and page layouts. Unlike Affinity’s previous Designer, Photo, and Publisher software, which were a one-time $70 purchase, Canva’s announcement stresses that the new Affinity app is “free forever” and won’t require a subscription.

Affinity’s one-time-purchase model was one of the most appealing things about its older software offerings, standing in stark contrast to Adobe’s controversial subscription-based creative suite. While Canva’s own design platform can be used for free, it also locks most of its capabilities behind subscription paywalls, which raised concerns that Affinity would adopt Canva’s subscription-based approach following the acquisition. The company is trying to put those fears to rest for good by repeatedly mentioning how “free” the new Affinity app is, but the AI integrations will likely be met with some resistance by creatives who oppose the technology.

I'm glad they didn't add any subscription pricing, and while I don't know if they'll actually be able to fund it through the optional AI subscriptions alone, at least it can be used offline for those who want any AI things. Now my only complaint is the lack of a solid Linux client.

Affinity’s new design platform combines everything into one app

After acquiring Serif last year, Canva is now relaunching Affinity as a new all-in-one app for photo editing, vector illustration, and page layouts

^{Jess Weatherbed (The Verge)}

"I think the big companies are betting on it causing massive job replacement by AI, because that's where the big money is going to be."

‘Godfather of AI’ says tech giants can’t profit from their astronomical investments unless human labor is replaced

^{Jason Ma (Fortune)}

Seth Meyers made fun of President Donald Trump’s recent speech about steam and electric catapults

Archived version: archive.is/20251101233508/inde…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

President suggests being anti-Trump is ‘probably illegal’ in bizarre rant about Seth Meyers

^{Katie Hawkinson (The Independent)}

Washington’s special envoy for Syria has branded Lebanon “a failed state”, exposing the United States’ growing frustration with Beirut’s paralysed political system while signalling unflinching support for Israel’s regional aggression.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/middleeastey…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

US envoy calls Lebanon a ‘failed state’ and backs Israeli aggression

^{Middle East Eye}

Catching up with the latest viral TikToks on your smartphone or getting lost in mobile gaming can be a strain on the eyes. E Ink alternatives are few and far between, and they can be pricey for what you get. Bigme has now launched more budget-friendly options.

E Ink goes mobile with budget eye-friendly smartphone

Catching up with the latest viral TikToks on your smartphone can be a strain on the eyes. E Ink alternatives are few and far between, and they can be pricey for what you get. Bigme has now launched more budget-friendly options.

^{Paul Ridden (New Atlas)}

The Asian fast fashion giant says it delisted the items "immediately" from its website and is investigating.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/bbc.com/news…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Shein accused of selling childlike sex dolls in France

^{Dearbail Jordan (BBC News)}

Google Ads are not going anywhere. Eventually, AI Search results on Google and likely other properties will have ads.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-confirms-ai-search-will-have-ads-but-they-may-look-different/

The University of Pennsylvania suffered a cybersecurity incident on Friday, where students and alumni received a series of offensive emails from various University email addresses, claiming that data was stolen in a breach.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/offensive-we-got-hacked-emails-sent-in-penn-security-incident/

3.27.0 Hotfix 5

• Fixed a rare bug where Ailith's "Conjure a wall of the Dreamer's Flame" could damage players instead of monsters after the Breach Hive encounter had ended.

Patch Notes - 3.27.0 Hotfix 5 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

3.27.0 Hotfix 4

• Fixed an issue where Hardcore Keepers characters that died could not access the Graft Locker in Standard Keepers. This change only applies in new instances.
• Fixed an instance crash.

Patch Notes - 3.27.0 Hotfix 4 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

3.27.0 Hotfix 3

• Fixed a bug where Earnings Tabs at Faustus were being hidden by the Hide Remove-only Tabs Option.
• Fixed an issue with patching for Windows 7 and 8 users.
• Fixed 4 client crashes.

You will need to restart your client to receive the changes in this patch.

Patch Notes - 3.27.0 Hotfix 3 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

3.27.0 Hotfix 2

• Fixed a bug where incorrect items could be placed in your Off-hand Weapon slots. We are investigating a fix for characters that have placed items in these slots before the hotfix was deployed.
• Fixed 3 instance crashes.

Patch Notes - 3.27.0 Hotfix 2 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

3.27.0 Hotfix

• Fixed a bug where Breaches were not appearing in Keepers Private Leagues.

Patch Notes - 3.27.0 Hotfix - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

Gyeongju (South Korea) (AFP) – Canadian premier Mark Carney on Saturday called his talks with China's leader Xi Jinping a "turning point" in restoring their battered ties, adding he raised tricky topics with Beijing like foreign interference.

Carney also confirmed from the APEC summit in South Korea that he had apologised to Donald Trump over an anti-tariff ad campaign that prompted the US president to raise tariffs on Canada.

Canada's relations with China have been among the worst of any Western nation, but on Friday Carney and Xi held the first formal talks between the countries' leaders since 2017, as both manage Trump's trade onslaught.

"This meeting marked a turning point in our bilateral relationship. We have now unlocked a path forward," Carney told reporters.

Xi also invited Carney to visit China.

A Canadian statement said that the leaders discussed "respective sensitivities regarding issues including agriculture and agri-food products, such as canola, as well as seafood and electric vehicles."

Carney said that he brought up alleged Chinese influence in Canadian elections, saying that it was "important to have that discussion" in order to get relations "back on track".

Ties fell into a deep freeze in 2018 after the arrest of a senior Chinese telecom executive on a US warrant in Vancouver and China's retaliatory detention of two Canadians on espionage charges.

Ottawa and Beijing have since engaged in tit-for-tat tariffs including on Canadian canola, an oilseed crop used to make cooking oil, animal meal and biodiesel.

Trump last Saturday hiked tariffs on Canada by 10 percent after a "fake" anti-tariff ad campaign that featured late US president Ronald Reagan.

The US president flatly rejected any resumption of trade negotiations even after Carney said sorry for the ad.

"I did apologise to the president. The president was offended," Carney said on Saturday, while insisting he was relaxed about when talks would resume.

"After all the noise of this week, Canada still has the best trade deal of any country with the US," he said.

"We can spend our time watching Truth Social worrying about the reactions of individuals. We are staying calm," he said.

"We'll wait until they're ready."

He added that he took heart from the Toronto Blue Jays who are fighting to become the first Canadian team to win the baseball World Series since 1993.

"They take risk, they're aggressive, and they're a team... And our Canada is taking risks, and we are a team," Carney said. "I will confess that I was looking at my phone during session two of APEC."

Canada PM says Xi talks 'turning point', apologises to Trump

^RFI

cross-posted from: feddit.it/post/23350094

what are your experiences using game controllers with linux, I'm especially interested in the xbox series s controller because it's the one I have, but I'm also interested in other controllers. From my experience the latency is disappointing, but I have no way of proving it.

So, I primarily use this controller in bluetooth mode using xpadneo. There's definitely noticeable latency, but in most games it's fine, I played through a lot of games without bother... until I played Conker: Live and Reloaded. On the infamous race level, it took me like two days to pass it, and I only made some progress when i connected the cable and dropped BT. Even that was fine though, It was just one old game and just one level, there could be a number of things to blame for that.
Come hollow knight, as the game got harder after beating Hornet, it quickly became apparent that I couldn't get far without the cable, save for traversing the world, still, not that bad... until I got to fight radiance. It has been extremely frustrating, I tried it for days and eventually I started just doing a few attempts every few days, without any improvement, finding it hard to get to the second phase. Today I visited my parents and in the late evening decided to try it on a windows computer I left here, mind you, the last time I played was more than a week ago. So, I start the game, plug the same controller in, with the same cable, I beat Radiance on the fucking first try, with half health bar left...

It literally happened 10 minutes ago, I'm still riled up, this doesn't make sense, this has to be latency, there is no way I got that better just like that, It is literally impossible.

So, after all that, I need to unfuck the latency of my controller someway... Ok, it's fine on most games, but this situation is... frustrating

edinbruh

2025-11-01 22:52:27

Gamepad latency of the XBOX series S controller

what are your experiences using game controllers with linux, I'm especially interested in the xbox series s controller because it's the one I have, but I'm also interested in other controllers. From my experience the latency is disappointing, but I have no way of proving it.

So, I primarily use this controller in bluetooth mode using xpadneo. There's definitely noticeable latency, but in most games it's fine, I played through a lot of games without bother... until I played Conker: Live and Reloaded. On the infamous race level, it took me like two days to pass it, and I only made some progress when i connected the cable and dropped BT. Even that was fine though, It was just one old game and just one level, there could be a number of things to blame for that.
Come hollow knight, as the game got harder after beating Hornet, it quickly became apparent that I couldn't get far without the cable, save for traversing the world, still, not that bad... until I got to fight radiance. It has been extremely frustrating, I tried it for days and eventually I started just doing a few attempts every few days, without any improvement, finding it hard to get to the second phase. Today I visited my parents and in the late evening decided to try it on a windows computer I left here, mind you, the last time I played was more than a week ago. So, I start the game, plug the same controller in, with the same cable, I beat Radiance on the fucking first try, with half health bar left...

It literally happened 10 minutes ago, I'm still riled up, this doesn't make sense, this has to be latency, there is no way I got that better just like that, It is literally impossible.

So, after all that, I need to unfuck the latency of my controller someway... Ok, it's fine on most games, but this situation is... frustrating

what are your experiences using game controllers with linux, I'm especially interested in the xbox series s controller because it's the one I have, but I'm also interested in other controllers. From my experience the latency is disappointing, but I have no way of proving it.

So, I primarily use this controller in bluetooth mode using xpadneo. There's definitely noticeable latency, but in most games it's fine, I played through a lot of games without bother... until I played Conker: Live and Reloaded. On the infamous race level, it took me like two days to pass it, and I only made some progress when i connected the cable and dropped BT. Even that was fine though, It was just one old game and just one level, there could be a number of things to blame for that.
Come hollow knight, as the game got harder after beating Hornet, it quickly became apparent that I couldn't get far without the cable, save for traversing the world, still, not that bad... until I got to fight radiance. It has been extremely frustrating, I tried it for days and eventually I started just doing a few attempts every few days, without any improvement, finding it hard to get to the second phase. Today I visited my parents and in the late evening decided to try it on a windows computer I left here, mind you, the last time I played was more than a week ago. So, I start the game, plug the same controller in, with the same cable, I beat Radiance on the fucking first try, with half health bar left...

It literally happened 10 minutes ago, I'm still riled up, this doesn't make sense, this has to be latency, there is no way I got that better just like that, It is literally impossible.

So, after all that, I need to unfuck the latency of my controller someway... Ok, it's fine on most games, but this situation is... frustrating

youtu.be/Ugew7tXiU38

voxelmatters.com/filament2-unv…

State of the Bird September 2025

The State of the Bird is a recap of what has been happening in the project.

You can find the previous posts via the #state-of-the-bird tag.

Retrospective

Our last State of the Bird was October 20th 2025 and can be found here.

Metrics

We have a number of metrics we keep an eye on which you can see below.

Contributors

The number of contributors continues to fluctuate a bit, but that's expected for a volunteer project.

If you're interested in contributing you can find some documentation here including ways that don't require knowing how to program.

[chart type="bar" backgroundColors="#db3a83,#e76a2a,#4cdc8b" title="Contibutors" xAxisTitle="Time Frame" ]2025-05 | 2025-06 | 2025-07 | 2025-08 | 2025-09 | 2025-10Developers | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 |Crazy Patch Writers | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |Casual | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |[/chart]

Review Requests

Review requests are what we call our code reviews and is the way that all code is accepted into our code bases. This is a look at how many were open and closed each month.

[chart type="bar" backgroundColors="#db3a83,#e76a2a" title="Review Requests" xAxisTitle="Time Frame" ]2025-05 | 2025-06 | 2025-07 | 2025-08 | 2025-09 | 2025-10Open | 26 | 20 | 42 | 61 | 48 | 47 |Closed | 22 | 25 | 39 | 57 | 56 | 45 |[/chart]

Issues

This is a look at the number of issues that were opened in our issue tracker as well as how many were closed by month. We don't create issues for everything we do, this is still good to look at as it will include bugs and other issues users have brought to our attention.

[chart type="bar" backgroundColors="#db3a83,#e76a2a" title="Issues" xAxisTitle="Time Frame" ]2025-05 | 2025-06 | 2025-07 | 2025-08 | 2025-09 | 2025-10Open | 6 | 11 | 11 | 16 | 6 | 7 |Closed | 5 | 10 | 3 | 11 | 7 | 19 |[/chart]

Commits

This is a break down of commits to each project per month. In most cases a review request is just a single commit, but this chart helps to see what projects are being worked on.

As you can see, Pidgin 3 activity continues to dominate everything else.

[chart type="bar" backgroundColors="#ed207b,#9eb83b,#e5bb13,#0088cc,#b3b5b4,#8c6238,#231f20,#f1592a,#ffea61,#bf1e2e,#0088cc,#57e389,#7f007f" title="Commits" xAxisTitle="Time Frame" ]2025-05 | 2025-06 | 2025-07 | 2025-08 | 2025-09 | 2025-10 |Pidgin 3 | 15 | 10 | 25 | 51 | 46 | 33 |Pidgin 2 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |Gaim 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |GPlugin | 2 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 |HASL | 1 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 |Birb | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 4 |Xeme | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |Ibis | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 |Hiya | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |Myna | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 |Seagull | 0 | 13 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 3 |Traversity | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |retro-purple | 38 | 48 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 |[/chart]

Infrastructure

Jetbrains Hub, our Identity Provider, and Reviewboard have been moved from Kubernetes to a VPS to help deal with the on going AI scrappers and other malicious users. More services will probably be moved in the future but these two had to be done sooner too keep development running.

Also registrations are currently disabled in Hub due to these issues as well, they will open back up eventually, but right now it's easier to just leave them disabled.

#pidgin3

Pidgin 3 is our next generation universal chat client whose goal is to give you the best experience possible when using modern chat networks.

Retrospective

There was a lot of maintenance this month, but we still found time to clean up a lot of the conversation window and continue working towards the new account settings API.

Highlights

• Fixed some issues scan build found (RR 4195)
• Updated the metafino.xml file so things will appear correctly in app stores (RR 4193)
• Modernized PidginPresenceIcon (RR 4210)
• Show presence messages in the members lists of conversations (RR 4216)
• Implement XEP-0302 for coloring names for all users (RR 4211)
• Added a tool-tip showing the number of available and unavailable members to the search entry in the conversation members list (RR 4217)
• Added an icon for the streaming presence primitive (RR 4218)
• Added a Purple.Connection.set_presence virtual function to tell protocols when to change their presence (RR 4219)
• Removed the Purple.Connection:protocol property (RR 4221)
• IRCv3: Clear presence messages for contacts switch to an available presence (RR 4228)
• Updated Purple.PresenceManager to track the active presence by an index (RR 4226)
• Moved a number of virtual functions from Purple.Protocol to Purple.Connection (RR 4225)
• Added a badges property to Purple.Conversation (RR 4231)
• Updated the credential providers to use the account id and name instead of username. (RR 4238, RR 4239, RR 4240)
• Removed the KWallet credential provier (RR 4241)

Releases

None

Future Plans

• The account options API is in the process of being replaced by a new AccountSetting API.
• Finish getting presence implemented.

The following items are still in the works from the last state of the bird.

• Add persistence to the scheduler.
• Add persistence to the contact manager, this needs to be done so we can fix some issues with direct messages being restored correctly.
• Gary has started an out of tree protocol plugin to help figure out how the voice and video API will work.

As always, you can view the burn down chart for our next release here.

#pidgin2

Pidgin 2 is our stable "production" release of a universal chat client. Meaning that you can use it as a single interface to many chat networks!

Retrospective

We're still planning on doing a 2.15.0 release, but we haven't moved forward on this at all this month.

Highlights

None

Releases

None

Future Plans

We still need to finish up the build environment packages so we can upgrade GTK on windows and get that all into the installer. We also need to remember to update the spell checking dictionaries as we haven't done that in awhile.

#gaim 3

As announced in the last State of the Bird, we've started an additional user interface to keep the look and feel of Pidgin 2 and Gaim before it in GTK4 and we've chosen to name it Gaim.

Retrospective

No new work this month. We've put things on pause until the account settings rewrite is finished. We need to be able to create accounts to move forward and don't want to write a bunch of code just to rewrite it very soon afterwards.

Highlights

None

Releases

None

Future Plans

Once the account settings API is finished up we're going to start moving pretty quickly here.

#gplugin

GPlugin is our GObject based plugin library that is used in Pidgin 3.

Retrospective

Nothing much this month, everything is working well enough for now.

Highlights

Nothing notably

Releases

None

Future Plans

We're going to continue moving forward with the GLib.List -> Gio.ListModel changes and eventually have GPlugin.Manager implement Gio.ListModel.

#hasl

HASL is the Hassle-free Authentication and Security Layer library. It implements SASL in a modern and easy use way compared to the existing libraries.

Retrospective

No activity this month.

Highlights

Nothing notable

Releases

None

Future Plans

We have been in the progress of implementing the SCRAM Mechanisms which will be included in the next release.

#birb

Birb is a library of GLib utilities that we use across all of our projects.

Retrospective

We're getting ready for the next release and doing some cleanup to get there.

Highlights

• Add Birb.str_matches (RR 4230)
• Remove Birb.Filter and Birb.CustomFilter (RR 4236)

Releases

None

Future Plans

We have an open review request (RR 4235) which adds a base helper class for formatting a Pango.AttrList to various formats. We will add some basic HTML and Markdown formatters in the future as well.

#xeme

Xeme is our XMPP integration library. It is the basis for both the Link Local Messaging (Bonjour) and XMPP protocols in Pidgin 3. It is still early in development and has not yet had a release.

Retrospective

No activity this month.

Highlights

None

Releases

None

Future Plans

Everything! Seriously though, we're looking to get back to this in the near future.

Ibis

#ircv3-library is our IRCv3 integration library. It has seen a lot of active development as it is used in the IRCv3 protocol plugin in Pidgin 3.

We are nearing known feature completion on it and expect to do a 1.0 release in the near future.

Retrospective

No notable activity this month.

Highlights

None

Releases

None

Future Plans

Continue working through the open issues and watching new IRCv3 specifications for things we should be including.

Once the formatting API lands in Birb we will be adding outgoing formatting support.

#hiya

Hiya is a new client abstraction library for mDNS. It was created to help make implementation of the Link Local Messaging protocol easier as we would have to abstract out the different platform implementations and by putting it in a library that abstraction can be used by other projects.

Hiya has not yet had a release.

#myna

Myna is a new integration library for Matrix. It is still extremely early in development.

#sqlite3-helper-library

Seagull is a new library we created to make working with SQLite feel more like a GLIB/GNOME library and force usage of prepared statements with named parameters and other similar things.

Retrospective

Only a few changes this month driven by some serialization requires in Purple 3.

Highlights

• Fixed some issues scan build found (RR 4207)
• Add suport for GLib.TimeZone (RR 4208)

Releases

None

Future Plans

We have a few features to fill out yet and a few ideas that need a bit more time in the oven.

More specific details can be found in our open issues.

#traversity

Traversity is a new library for traversing NATs. There are many different ways to traverse a NAT and the goal of Traversity is to hide that from developers who just need to traverse a NAT.

It is still early in development and has not yet had an official release.

#retro-prpl

retro-prpl is a new repository we've created on GitHub. This repository contains all of the abandoned protocols that have ever lived in our code base and is meant to make them easier to study and for people to use with services like Retro AIM Server, escargot, and NINA.

Retrospective

Nothing to report on this month.

Highlights

None

Releases

None

Future Plans

Right now we didn't add any support for protocol specific emojis because we completely forgot about them. Anyways we're looking at creating a custom emoji theme that will include everything for these retro protocols.

We're also trying to make sure that you can actually use this to connect to the self hosted clones, but we haven't gotten through verifying that and fixing what doesn't work.

Closing

We have a lot to do going forward but we're still striving hoping that the Experimental 5 release which is due 2025-12-31 will actually be Alpha 1. The distinction is whether not not we think the protocol specific APIs are stable enough for third party protocol developers.

We don't have this well defined yet, and it's more of a feel than anything, but we've had a few people tinkering with third party protocols with moderate success which is absolutely amazing!! So as they continue working on their protocols we're getting good feedback on basically everything which is extremely helpful!

We hope you all are enjoying the new format and if you have any questions of comments please leave them below!

Discuss this on our forum.

Matrix.org

Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications

^matrix.org

"The new device is built from arrays of resistive random-access memory (RRAM) cells.... The team was able to combine the speed of analog computation with the accuracy normally associated with digital processing. Crucially, the chip was manufactured using a commercial production process, meaning it could potentially be mass-produced."

Article is based on this paper: nature.com/articles/s41928-025…

Precise and scalable analogue matrix equation solving using resistive random-access memory chips - Nature Electronics

An analogue matrix solver that combines low-precision matrix inversion and high-precision matrix–vector multiplication can be used to solve inversion problems involving 16 × 16 real-valued matrices with precision comparable to 32-bit floating point.

^Nature

A Michigan defense lawyer is disputing FBI allegations that his 20-year-old client and four other young suspects were planning to carry out a terror attack on Halloween weekend.

Authorities with the FBI and in Michigan have offered few details about the case, however as he announced the arrests on Friday, FBI Director Kash Patel said more information would be released. Spokespersons for the state and national FBI and the U.S. Attorney in Detroit did not immediately respond to messages Saturday.

https://apnews.com/article/detroit-michigan-halloween-terror-plot-fbi-patel-d4758edbde0b18c19ca7b38f9e836904

Nearly 50% of 30 busiest airports facing absences as staff are forced to work without pay and shutdown hits 31st day

Nearly 50% of the 30 busiest US airports faced shortages of air traffic controllers, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Friday, leading to flight delays nationwide as a federal government shutdown hit its 31st day.

The absence of controllers on Friday is by far the most widespread since the shutdown began, with one of the worst-hit regions being New York, where 80% of air traffic controllers were out, the agency said.

At least 35 FAA facilities, including several at the largest US airports, reported staffing problems. Airports affected included facilities in New York City, Austin, Newark, Phoenix, Washington, Nashville, Dallas and Denver. At some airports, delays averaged one hour or more.

Flights delayed across US amid air traffic controller shortages as shutdown drags on

^{Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)}

Una cultura di egoismo sulla strada mette in rischio tutti con mezzi più leggeri. In questo contesto, tanti trovano sicurezza in mezzi ancora più pesanti, ma alla fine si trovano bloccati in enormi code.

Ci vuole poco per vedere oltre, ma non può succedere senza almeno un minimo di volontà.

A Milano in bici si rischia la vita tutti i giorni

Si investono in ciclabili solo 20 euro per abitante. La mappa degli incidenti che coinvolgono chi pedala mostra una città pericolosa (+36%...

^{Marta Abbà (MilanoToday)}