Due to concerns that the launch button would funnel business to one vendor at the expense of others, Starshot leadership announced that the launch button would use WebAssembly to run site trials in a user’s browser without external hosting. This approach has the advantages of being able to run Drupal off line and not needing anyone to pay for hosting. However, it is technically challenging and will not work for everyone. Sites running in WebAssembly cannot be visited by others and are not persistent.

Dries Buytaert introduced the Starshot initiative at Drupalcon Portland 2024. The idea was to create a product for less technical users, one that could be installed and updated without using the command line, that would have the best content creation tools pre-installed and configured, and that could be customized without writing code.

At DrupalCon Portland 2022 people were talking about makers and takers. The fear was that companies that just take and use free software would outcompete companies that help to make it.

This is a test of the Drupal CMS launch button provided by Drupal Forge. This currently requires my domain to be manually added to the services.yml at drupalforge.org and the Drupal Forge Google API account.

Lately the technology and economic podcasts I listen to have been filled with speculation about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Friends and colleagues have worried. What if the capabilities of AI continue their exponential growth? If AI became more powerful than humans, could it be controlled? Would AI see humans as competition to be eliminated? What could we do to stop it? These threats sound new. In reality each of us has be dealing with threats like these our whole lives.

I was unable to update ddev yesterday due to a Homebrew error. This left ddev unusable. Apparently I had used the macOS system Ruby to install some Ruby gems in the past. Completely uninstalling and reinstalling Homebrew didn’t help. The only fix was to remove the Ruby gems I had installed with the system Ruby:

At the DrupalCon Portland community summit, we discussed how local meetup organizers could support each other by maintaining a shared slide show for meetups. I have started a slide show and am looking for volunteers to join me in building it. Leave a comment on the issue in the Event Organizers Working Group if you can help.

I had the privilege of meeting the Lakeland mayoral and city commission candidates on September 29 at an event hosted by the Lakeland Chamber of Commerce. I want to thank the Chamber of Commerce for organizing this event and the candidates for being willing to speak directly to individual voters like me. Ordinary citizens like me seemed to be a minority of those in attendance. For those who were not able to attend, here is a run-down of my impressions. With one exception, I think all the candidates would serve Lakeland well.

Google Calendar can share subscriptions with other devices, but it does not provide a way to find the option. To find it, go to https://calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect.

Last week, I wrote about how free software has to break out of the customer-vendor mindset. The customer-vendor mindset doesn’t work with free software because users don’t pay and developers don’t provide customer service. The free software community works on a build-what-you-use model. I ended by saying that the build-what-you-use model is not enough to sustain hero developers—people who contribute at a level that cannot be sustained by their own use of free software.