KDE is correcting a long-standing mismatch between file-copy notifications and what has actually reached removable storage. Since a bug report was opened in 2011, Plasma’s progress indicators and completion messages could show a copy to a USB drive as finished once the data had entered the computer’s local cache, even though it was still waiting to be written to the device. This was especially consequential when moving files, because the originals could be deleted while the copies remained only in memory. The issue attracted more than 77 comments and 17 duplicate reports, but proving when data was truly written without slowing every copy took years.
KDE Frameworks 6.32, expected next month, will use Linux’s sync_file_range() call so KIO can wait for the relevant data to be written before reporting completion. Developers identified this call shortly after the original report, but getting it right proved difficult: earlier attempts waited for the wrong writeback window, so they did not actually wait for the data being written. Other efforts included warning users when ejecting a device that it was still writing, and testing cachestat(), which can report dirty data but only for one file at a time. The change resolves a persistent usability problem by making copy notifications correspond more closely to the point at which files are safely on the USB drive.
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Awake is a Git-friendly API client designed to keep API work in version control and support team collaboration. The open-source project describes itself as Git-native and supports REST and OpenAPI workflows. (github.com)
Mission-critical C++ teams are reducing junior hiring while demanding senior-level skills, risking a future shortage of experienced engineers. Mentorship and code review build expertise that automated tools cannot replace. (news.ycombinator.com)
Shellport is an iPhone app for SSH and Mosh terminals, remote file management, server and service dashboards, and database queries. It requires no server agent or account and includes on-device keys, VPN tunnels, and port forwarding; the app is still in development. (shellport.app)
Delta treats AI threads as collaborative documents, letting users annotate prompts, agent responses, tool calls, and code. Its team built a custom editor because live, changing interface elements made the indexes in a conventional code-editor design unreliable. (delta.dev)
Quack adds a client-server protocol to DuckDB, and Ramona C. Truta tests the network overhead with a reproducible SQL benchmarking lab. The experiments use cold runs, repeated measurements, and verifiable result capsules. (ramonactruta.substack.com)
AI-generated code has made it easy to add features, but the growing number of user flows has created tangled behavior, missed edge cases, and UI bugs. The developer asks how to keep the codebase coherent and maintain quality when coding with AI agents. (news.ycombinator.com)
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