#Software Development Germany

[manektechgermany]

Unlock Innovative Software Solutions with ManekTech Germany – Your Top Software Development Company for Custom Software Services in Germany.

[ds4u]

Dreamsoft4u at GITEX Europe 2025 | Showcasing Innovation, Tech Trends & Future Solutions

Join Dreamsoft4u at GITEX Europe 2025 — where innovation meets opportunity! 🌍✨ Explore how Dreamsoft4u is leading the charge in custom software development, healthcare IT solutions, telemedicine innovations, and cutting-edge technologies. 🔵 Discover Dreamsoft4u's latest projects and tech breakthroughs 🔵 Witness industry-defining solutions in action 🔵 Connect with global tech leaders and innovators

Stay future-ready with Dreamsoft4u at GITEX Europe 2025!

View Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxhHIX7q3nc

[merakitechnology-1]

How to create and publish a blog on Odoo 18 websites

Want to publish blogs on your Odoo 18 website but not sure where to start? Our latest blog takes you through a simple, step-by-step guide to help you create and publish engaging blog posts using Odoo 18 Website Builder – no coding required! Perfect for content creators, marketers, and business owners using Odoo’s Community Edition. Learn how to: Set up your blog Customize your layout Add SEO-friendly content And hit publish with confidence! Click here to learn more

[prowebdesigners]

How Professional Designers Can Help

At Professional Designers, we specialize in creating bespoke web design services tailored to meet the needs of Swiss businesses. By focusing on both UX and UI, we ensure that our clients’ websites are not only visually appealing but also highly functional and user-friendly. Whether you need a website redesign or a complete overhaul of your website development services, our team of expert web designers in Schweiz can help boost customer engagement and retention.

[sapphiresoftware]

Top Software Development Company in Germany | Software Development Services

We are Top Software Development Company in Germany, specializing in product management, specification, design, implementation, and ongoing support. Overcome any business challenge today.  Their knowledge of best practices ensures high-quality, scalable, and durable Software Development Services in Germany. By selecting a renowned organization, you have access to a diversified talent pool with specialized expertise, ensuring that specialists in each field focus on your project. 

[eov-blogs]

A basic introduction to Next.js

What is Next.js? 

Next.js is a latest and popular React framework for building full-stack web applications. You use React Components to build user interfaces, and Next.js for additional features and optimizations. Next.js also abstract and automatically configures tooling needed for React, like bundling, compiling, and more. This allows you to focus on building your application instead of spending time with configuration.     

Whether you’re an individual developer or part of a larger team, Next.js can help you build interactive, dynamic, and fast React applications. 

What are the benefits of using Next.js over React?  

Faster Initial Page Loads: Next.js supports server-side rendering (SSR), which means that the initial HTML of your pages is rendered on the server before being sent to the client. This can significantly improve the performance of your pages, especially for SEO and for users with slow internet connections.

Static site generation: Next.js also supports static site generation (SSG), which means that you can pre-render your pages at build time. This can further improve the performance of your pages, as the client will not have to wait for the pages to be rendered on the server. 

Improved SEO: Because Next.js supports SSR and SSG, search engines can easily crawl and index your content, leading to better search engine rankings compared to client-side-rendered applications. SSR also makes your pages more SEO-friendly, as search engines can index the rendered HTML. This can help your pages rank higher in search results. 

Built-in routing: Next.js comes with a file-based routing system, which makes it easy to create complex and dynamic routes without the need for additional routing libraries. In React, you’d typically need a separate routing library like React Router. 

Automatic Code Splitting: Next.js automatically splits your JavaScript code into smaller chunks that are loaded only when needed. This reduces the initial load time and helps improve performance.  

API Routes: You can create API endpoints directly within your Next.js application using the /pages/api directory, simplifying serverless API development. 

Hot Module Replacement (HMR): Next.js supports HMR, which allows you to see changes in your code without a full-page refresh during development. 

Internationalization (i18n): Next.js offers built-in support for internationalization, making it easier to create multilingual websites. 

Image Optimization: It includes automatic image optimization, where images are optimized and served in various formats (e.g., WebP) for better performance. 

What are the additional Key Features of Next.js?  

Hot Module Replacement (HMR): Next.js supports HMR, allowing for instant code changes during development without a full-page refresh. This speeds up the development process and enhances the developer experience.

Production-Ready Optimizations: Next.js includes built-in optimizations for production deployments, such as automatic code splitting, asset optimization, and serverless deployments. This ensures that your application is production-ready with minimal effort. 

Data Fetching: Next.js provides multiple methods for data fetching, including getServerSideProps, getStaticProps, and getInitialProps, making it easy to fetch data on both the server and the client side. 

Internationalization: Next.js offers built-in support for internationalization, making it easier to create multilingual applications. 

Environment Variables: You can use environment variables in Next.js to manage configuration options securely and efficiently. 

CSS Support: Next.js allows you to use various CSS solutions, including CSS Modules, styled-components, and more. It also offers automatic CSS code splitting. 

Middleware Support: You can use middleware functions to customize the behavior of the server, making it versatile for handling various scenarios and authentication. 

Error Handling: Next.js provides robust error handling capabilities, including custom error pages and error boundary components to gracefully handle errors in your application. 

Community and Ecosystem: Next.js has a thriving community, a rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions, and is backed by Vercel, a cloud platform for deploying Next.js applications, which simplifies deployment and scaling. 

Automatic Static Optimization: Next.js automatically optimizes the delivery of static assets like images, fonts, and JavaScript files to improve performance. 

Conclusion 

Next.js is a React framework that offers advantages over plain React, including server-side rendering (SSR), static site generation (SSG), automatic code splitting, SEO-friendliness, and built-in features for routing, CSS, and API handling. It’s suitable for a wide range of applications, from static websites to dynamic web apps, eCommerce sites, content management systems, and more. Next.js simplifies development tasks, improves performance, and enhances SEO, making it a valuable tool in the React ecosystem. 

In our subsequent blogs, we will cover more on how we have sought help of Next.js to deliver software products to our clients. If you are looking for app development partners, feel free to contact our team now!

[moatemfarid]

🚨Don't stop helping🫶🍉

Hi, I am Motasem from Gaza. For the past 11 months, my family and I have been enduring unimaginable suffering — facing genocide, starvation, homelessness, and severe health issues. We’ve been left without any source of income, and we’ve lost our home, food, water, and access to basic medicine. We are a hardworking family; I used to work as a software developer, and my brothers were engineers. But now, everything has been stripped away from us.

This my donation link:

We are desperately in need of support to survive these conditions and rebuild our lives. Any help, no matter how small, will go a long way in providing us with food, water, and medical supplies. Please consider sharing our story and contributing if you can. Your kindness can help us survive this tragedy and bring hope back to our lives.

[amalgamasreal]

Updated Personal Infosec Post

Been awhile since I've had one of these posts part deus: but I figure with all that's going on in the world it's time to make another one and get some stuff out there for people. A lot of the information I'm going to go over you can find here:

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/

So if you'd like to just click the link and ignore the rest of the post that's fine, I strongly recommend checking out the Privacy Guides. Browsers: There's a number to go with but for this post going forward I'm going to recommend Firefox. I know that the Privacy Guides lists Brave and Safari as possible options but Brave is Chrome based now and Safari has ties to Apple. Mullvad is also an option but that's for your more experienced users so I'll leave that up to them to work out. Browser Extensions:

uBlock Origin: content blocker that blocks ads, trackers, and fingerprinting scripts. Notable for being the only ad blocker that still works on Youtube.

Privacy Badger: Content blocker that specifically blocks trackers and fingerprinting scripts. This one will catch things that uBlock doesn't catch but does not work for ads.

Facebook Container: "but I don't have facebook" you might say. Doesn't matter, Meta/Facebook still has trackers out there in EVERYTHING and this containerizes them off away from everything else.

Bitwarden: Password vaulting software, don't trust the password saving features of your browsers, this has multiple layers of security to prevent your passwords from being stolen.

ClearURLs: Allows you to copy and paste URL's without any trackers attached to them.

VPN: Note: VPN software doesn't make you anonymous, no matter what your favorite youtuber tells you, but it does make it harder for your data to be tracked and it makes it less open for whatever public network you're presently connected to.

Mozilla VPN: If you get the annual subscription it's ~$60/year and it comes with an extension that you can install into Firefox.

Mullvad VPN: Is a fast and inexpensive VPN with a serious focus on transparency and security. They have been in operation since 2009. Mullvad is based in Sweden and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for payment methods that allow it.

Email Provider: Note: By now you've probably realized that Gmail, Outlook, and basically all of the major "free" e-mail service providers are scraping your e-mail data to use for ad data. There are more secure services that can get you away from that but if you'd like the same storage levels you have on Gmail/Ol utlook.com you'll need to pay.

Tuta: Secure, end-to-end encrypted, been around a very long time, and offers a free option up to 1gb.

Mailbox.org: Is an email service with a focus on being secure, ad-free, and privately powered by 100% eco-friendly energy. They have been in operation since 2014. Mailbox.org is based in Berlin, Germany. Accounts start with up to 2GB storage, which can be upgraded as needed.

Email Client:

Thunderbird: a free, open-source, cross-platform email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP, IRC, Matrix) client developed by the Thunderbird community, and previously by the Mozilla Foundation.

FairMail (Android Only): minimal, open-source email app which uses open standards (IMAP, SMTP, OpenPGP), has several out of the box privacy features, and minimizes data and battery usage.

Cloud Storage:

Tresorit: Encrypted cloud storage owned by the national postal service of Switzerland. Received MULTIPLE awards for their security stats.

Peergos: decentralized and open-source, allows for you to set up your own cloud storage, but will require a certain level of expertise.

Microsoft Office Replacements:

LibreOffice: free and open-source, updates regularly, and has the majority of the same functions as base level Microsoft Office.

OnlyOffice: cloud-based, free

FreeOffice: Personal licenses are free, probably the closest to a fully office suite replacement.

Chat Clients: Note: As you've heard SMS and even WhatsApp and some other popular chat clients are basically open season right now. These are a couple of options to replace those. Note2: Signal has had some reports of security flaws, the service it was built on was originally built for the US Government, and it is based within the CONUS thus is susceptible to US subpoenas. Take that as you will.

Signal: Provides IM and calling securely and encrypted, has multiple layers of data hardening to prevent intrusion and exfil of data.

Molly (Android OS only): Alternative client to Signal. Routes communications through the TOR Network.

Briar: Encrypted IM client that connects to other clients through the TOR Network, can also chat via wifi or bluetooth.

SimpleX: Truly anonymous account creation, fully encrypted end to end, available for Android and iOS.

Now for the last bit, I know that the majority of people are on Windows or macOS, but if you can get on Linux I would strongly recommend it. pop_OS, Ubuntu, and Mint are super easy distros to use and install. They all have very easy to follow instructions on how to install them on your PC and if you'd like to just test them out all you need is a thumb drive to boot off of to run in demo mode. For more secure distributions for the more advanced users the options are: Whonix, Tails (Live USB only), and Qubes OS.

On a personal note I use Arch Linux, but I WOULD NOT recommend this be anyone's first distro as it requires at least a base level understanding of Linux and liberal use of the Arch Linux Wiki. If you game through Steam their Proton emulator in compatibility mode works wonders, I'm presently playing a major studio game that released in 2024 with no Linux support on it and once I got my drivers installed it's looked great. There are some learning curves to get around, but the benefit of the Linux community is that there's always people out there willing to help. I hope some of this information helps you and look out for yourself, it's starting to look scarier than normal out there.

[reality-detective]

Q Phone or named Pi phone - Information and video demonstration

Say goodbye to all our 'spy phones'.

Then we can get rid of those ugly and dangerous cell towers everywhere.

The Q phone has been developed and manufactured in Germany and the UK with final software updates in the US.

This smartphone is three-dimensional and of the highest quality.

It will become one of the main credit tools and most urgent expenditures in daily life for retail consumption and domestic and international commercial business. and is a subserver to exploit and maintain the quantum system with Stellar + Starlink.

This is a $500 billion manufacturing operation in three countries. And some other countries like Japan..

They are built in various warehouses around the world. Q phones will be delivered free of charge to everyone in the world.

This Quantum Space Q Phone will be used for internet connectivity...texting and calling...banking...voting and more.

It has a 3D interactive holographic display. (watch video)

QFS will create a private Internet network running on triple code and perhaps an 8G network for SATCOM. 🤔

[nullnvoid911]

How do I manage to cite thousands of photos?

I have officially passed 1,000 posts cited on this blog! That's 1000 posts of riots, exercises, mildly disgruntled guys in balaclavas, whatever.

If you were wondering if I do all the citing myself, you'd be correct! Every citation has been agonizingly researched by me. Is it a waste of time? Definitely. But I'm too far in to stop now...

However, it's not all by hand. I'm a software developer by trade, so I did make something to help with citation. Using the Tumblr API, these are the tools I made to make the process just a bit less painful!

You may have noticed all of my posts follow a certain format. Well, this is why! The citations view brings up my most recent unattributed post for me to add a citation to. Then, I can search multiple reverse image websites to find the source!

Google Lens is usually best for most things (even Russian pictures on VK and official military websites). TinEye is great for photos that are heavily cropped, or are stock, since they're sponsored by Adobe and Alamy. Everything else, including Yandex, kind of sucks.

I can also create new posts using this tool, which you've probably seen recently:

Throughout it all I've developed an auto tagging system that picks up on keywords inside the posts I write. This list goes on and on! Who knew there were so many special forces with three letter acronyms...

BRI SEK AOS KSK BAC B2R CDI DSI СБУ DSU BMD KSM SAS JTF! Which ones can you name?

You may have seen me delete posts that you liked. That was the job of the duplicate remover, which helps me find and delete identical posts. Even I forget what I've reblogged...

Of course, I have to fetch all 6000 images first and compare them using a unique "perceptual hash", but... it's worth it!

Through all my editing, posting, sorting, and loading, I need to keep an eye on the Tumblr API limits. I can actually reach them with the amount of posts I'm making...

And that's pretty much it! I probably won't release the tool since I doubt anyone would actually want to waste time doing this, but I'm pretty proud of it.

I might make a post later about the things I've found, but here are some fun facts:

France and Germany make up almost half of my entire list. For reference, the USA is about 40!

137 posts are marked with #needs-attribution, or about one in ten. 14 are under #needs-more-info. The sources for these are lost to time :(

There's a limit of 1000 likes per day. I've reached it...

There's a limit of 1000 posts in the queue, which I've pretty much been at since I started this blog. However, my current "cited" backlog is about 10 days long at 25 posts per day.

I still have about 3500 posts left to go before everything's done...

Thanks for sticking with me as I add summaries to posts that most people would have probably liked more if it was just the picture :^)

Maybe my captions are making things... too real?

[merakitechnology-1]

How to Configure Payment Providers in Odoo 17: A Step-by-Step Guide

Expanding your business’s payment options can significantly improve your customer’s experience by making transactions smoother and more convenient. Odoo 17 offers seamless integration with various payment providers, making it easier to set up diverse payment methods for your eCommerce platform.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through configuring payment providers in Odoo 17. Whether you’re new to Odoo or looking to enhance your payment infrastructure, this step-by-step approach will help you get started.

Prerequisites

Before you proceed, ensure the following:

The Accounting module is installed and activated in your Odoo instance.

You have the API credentials for the payment provider you want to integrate.

Step 1: Manage Payment Providers

Go to Accounting in your Odoo dashboard.

Navigate to the Configuration menu.

Select Payment Providers from the dropdown list.

Step 2: Install Payment Acquirer Modules

Odoo supports a variety of payment gateways, each with unique features and configuration processes.

Search for the payment provider you want to integrate (e.g., PayPal, Stripe, Razorpay).

Click Install to add the relevant payment acquirer module.

Click here for a detailed explanation of each step.

Step 3: Activate a Payment Provider

Once you’ve installed the necessary modules:

Click the Activate button next to your desired payment provider.

This will open the configuration form specific to that provider.

Step 4: Configure Payment Provider Settings

Now, let’s customize the settings for your chosen payment provider.

Credentials Tab

Enter your API credentials (e.g., API keys, Merchant ID).

2. Configuration Tab

Customize these settings:

Payment Methods: Specify supported methods (e.g., credit cards, PayPal).

Maximum Amount: Set transaction limits.

Supported Currencies: Define which currencies can be processed.

Supported Countries: Add geographical restrictions if needed.

3. Messages Tab

Create custom messages for different transaction statuses:

Pending Message: “Your payment has been successfully processed but is awaiting approval.”

Done Message: “Your payment has been successfully processed.”

Cancelled Message: “Your payment has been cancelled.”

Step 5: Set Up Payment Methods

Navigate to Payment Methods under the Configuration menu.

Create a new payment method or edit an existing one linked to the configured provider.

Ensure the payment method is enabled for online transactions.

Click here for a detailed explanation of each step.

Need Help?

Setting up payment providers can feel overwhelming, but with the right guidance, it’s a breeze. If you’re looking for a budget-friendly and hassle-free solution for your Odoo website, Meraki Technology is here to help!

Contact us today for expert advice, technical support, or any assistance you need. Let us simplify the process for you.

[hundsrose]

Global Protest Day: Stand Against Germany’s Racist Deportation Policies and Its Crackdown on Palestine Solidarity

Date: 12th of April 2025

On Saturday the 12th of April, we call on people worldwide to unite in a Global Protest Day against Germany’s escalating repression of Palestine solidarity and its racist deportation policies targeting marginalized communities.

After deporting four Gazan comrades in February, Germany now wants to deport three EU citizens and one US citizen for their involvement in the pro-Palestine movement. Germany’s crackdown on Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists, as well as its aggressive deportation practices, is part of a broader attempt to silence dissent and violate the basic rights of refugees, migrants, and activists. 

This is a critical moment to stand together and demand justice for all those facing deportation and repression in Germany.

What you can do:

Organize protests at German embassies, consulates, or local institutions. Take to the streets and make your voice heard! If you are in Berlin/Brandenburg join the protest at Leopoldplatz in Wedding at 2pm

Speak out against ALL DEPORTATIONS! Let Germany know that the world will not stand by while it kills, abducts and deports illegalized people.

Target German border profiteers - Call out, boycott and disrupt German companies that profit from deportations, from airline companies to surveillance software developers and prison construction companies. 

Amplify voices and actions on social media—#BoycottGermany, #Stopdeportationsingermany #AbolishFrontex, #NoHumanIsIllegal, #FortressEurope, #ThisPactKills

This Global Protest Day is a call to people everywhere—no matter where you are, your solidarity matters. This is a global movement and we are all connected – Let's stand in internationalist solidarity with one another against repression, stand for a free Palestine, stand for freedom of movement for everyone! Dismantle the deportation machine everywhere!

Together, we can make a difference. Let’s take to the streets, raise our voices, and demand freedom and justice for all.

ALL OUT ON APRIL 12th!

[octuscle]

I need to take a work trip to Germany, Leipzig to be precise. Should be a nice change from my NYC life.

I guess, your suitcase won't make it to Frankfurt... Then I guess I have to organize a replacement. Damn Airlines!

The only thing I can offer you so spontaneously is an old army backpack from GDR stocks, covered with graffiti tags, stickers and patches. Pretty heavy... And maybe not necessarily suitable for your classic suit… So, take your rucksckand head to the airport train station. Your train to Leipzig will depart in 20 minutes.

Shit, Frankfurt airport is bigger then expected. When you arrive, you thaught, that you missed your train. But luckily, the train is delayed by 15 minutes. Enough time, to relaxe. And for a smoke. You search the side pockets of the backpack. No cigarettes. But tobacco, cigarette paper. And weed. Shit, that could have ended badly at customs...

Ahh, smoking this feels great. I really needed to decompress a bit after this whole travel shitshow. Don't take offense, but a middelaged man in a conservative suit and a classic haircut smoking weed with an army backpack on the platform of the airport station looks a bit special... You have to admit that, too, when you see your reflection in the window panes of the high-speed train rushing in.

No one had told you that you had better have made a seat reservation. The train is packed. Getting a seat is out of the question. With a little luck, you will still get a seat in the dining car. You order a beer (what else in Germany) and check the contents of your backpack. On top of it lies a hat. It looks funny, you put it on. Otherwise, the backpack is not necessarily neatly packed. Everything is stuffed in more like this. There's a MacBook... You open it. And of course you know the password. Feels perfectly normal to open it. As normal as your pierced earlobes feel.

It is a low-coding platform open to any Big Data AI application. You scroll through the application. Sure, the prototype of an app for digitizing queues in doctors' offices. You open the library of useer stories and start developing the app further. A few hours ago, you had no idea about software development.

It's 9:00 p.m. when you look out the window. Gotha train station. Wherever that may be. You are looking at your reflection. Let's see what the others think of the fact that you have let the beard grow out...

The train is half empty by now. You have not even noticed how it has emptied. It's still a good hour to Leipzig. You close the computer. That's it for today. You order another beer and the vegan curry. Actually, you're also in desperate need of a joint. But of course you can't smoke anywhere on this train.

But you take tobacco, weed, cigarette paper and your cigarette case, which you inherited from your grandfather. And while you're waiting for the food, you roll a few joints on reserve. It will be after 11:00 p.m. by the time you arrive at your shared apartment. But you assume that you will sit together until 01:00 or 02:00. Your roommates are all rather night owls....

You don't notice that you're wearing high-laced DocMarten's boots instead of welted penny loafers as you step off the train. You also don't notice that your hair has grown considerably longer and falls tousled under your hat into your forehead... You pause for a moment as you see the tattoos on the back of your hand as you light up a joint to tide you over until the bus leaves. And after asking the bus driver for a ticket to Connewitz, you wonder if you actually just spoke German with quite an American accent.

The elevator in your house is of course defective again. Old building from 1873, last renovated in 1980 or so. That was long before the fall of the Wall in the GDR. But the rent is cheap. And the atmosphere is energetic and creative. When you met Kevin, Lukas and Emma at university five years ago, you were immediately on the same wavelength. Even though you didn't speak a word of German back then. You would never have thought that a semester as an exchange student would turn into a lasting collaboration. The fact that you found an apartment together where you could work on your startup at the same time was a real stroke of luck.

Upstairs in the apartment, Kevin already opens the door for you. As if he had been waiting for you.

„Sieht heute gut aus”, you say with your strange American accent.

Kevin hugs you and answers „Dude, it's good to have you back! We have missed you! Tell me, do you have new tattoos? Looks hot! And did you bring weed from Amsterdam? Our dealer is on vacation... Shitty situation!“

“Of course, i’d never leave you without”, I say, opening up the cigarette case and offering you one of the hand-rolled contents.

Kevin grins. „What do you say we smoke the first one not at the kitchen table but on your bed? I missed you, stud!“

“I’m so tired after this trip, so the bed sounds just right.”

There is nothing left of your suit right now. Yes, you are still from NYC. But you weren't a lawyer then. You studied computer science. And that was a long time ago. Now you are a Leipziger by heart

You both lie on the bed. You take a deep drag. And blow the smoke into Kevin’s mouth with a deep French kiss. The bulge in your skinny jeans looks painful. “Oh man, Kevin, I need some relief!” you growl.

It doesn't take long and we both have the tank tops off. You discover Kevins new nipple piercings. And can't stop playing with them. And Kevins bulge starts to hurt too.

“Man, let me provide some relief”, he says. And open your jeans. Your boner jumps out of your boxers like a jack-in-the-box.

Those new piercings… You just can’t help yourself… You’ve gotta feel them in my mouth! “Are they sensitive? Does it still hurt?” Kevin starts breathing more heavily. “What are you waiting for you prude Yank! They've been waiting for you for two weeks now!” You take a deep drag and blow the smoke over Kevins chest, which you caress with your tongue. Kevin moans “Fuck! You're doing so well! Sure it hurts. It's supposed to. You make me so fucking horny with your tongue! I love your tunnels on the earlobes!. I can not stop playing with them with my tongue.”

Dude, your dick is producing precum like a broken faucet. Kevin starts to massage it into your dick! You take one last drag from the joint, push the butt into the ashtray and blow the smoke over Kevins boner.

While Kevin rubs your hard dick, You begin licking his uncut cock. Damn man, these uncut European cocks will never not surprise you! Oh man, you love how it feels on your tongue.

Kevin doesn't stop breathing heavily, but still has to grin. “Fuck, admit it, you certainly didn't just talk about user interfaces with Milan and Sem in Amsterdam. You did practice your tongue game. Fuck, you know how to bring someone to ecstasy with the tip of your tongue!”

Oh man, Kevins precum just takes so good. You can’t get enough of it. Kevin reads your thoughts. “I want to lick your precum too. Let's make a 69! I need to suck your powerful circumcised cock.”

Yes, please!, you think in ecstasy. You just love how his balls feel in my mouth. And Kevin has fun to. You must have been sweating like a dog on the trip. Your balls are salty, your cock is deliciously cheesy. “Fuck, I can not tell you how I missed you.” Kevin moans.

He always feels so good, just keep going please, you think. His cock is so hard. His precum is spectacular. It’s like you’re in sync — in and out, in and out, in and out. “Fuck, your balls are so huge”, Kevin grunts. “I didn't jerk off all the time you ve been away. My balls are bursting”.

You both are perfectly synchron. Like one organism. “Please cum at the exact moment that I also cum. I want to make this old house shake.”, you think.You can’t wait to make you explode. Kevins moans “I can't take it much longer. Fuck, you are a master with your tongue. Fuck... Oh yeah... Yes! Fuuuuuuuck!”

Oh god! That was heavy. You both really try. But that was too much. Boy, what a load you both shot! Kevins cum is so thick! So potent! You ’ve got my whole mouth full, not able to swallow everything at once. You both exchange a deep French kiss. The cum runs from the corners of your mouths down our cheeks and necks. Kevin licks the cum traces from your skin. And you his. One last kiss, you pull up our pants again. And go to the kitchen with a joint. Lukas and Emma grin. The whole house could listen to you having sex.

“Incredible, as always, Kevin” You tell him, as you pass him the joint. And as if nothing had happened, you ask Emma if she has any new user stories for your app.

[canmom]

Animation Night 196: the Demoscene

Hey everyone! It's gonna be a short post today, because the hour is late, but I've been teasing this all week, soooooo~

This is a square-numbered animation night, our first in a while, and that means it's a night for something computer-related. And what is more true to the essence of computer animation than the demoscene?

And damn, what a topic. 'Computer art subculture' is the usual way of describing it, and that's accurate enough. But let's get into details...

A demo is a computer program which is kind of like a non-interactive game, and kind of like a music video. It generates images, usually synced to music, in realtime. But that doesn't quite get to the heart of it.

A demo is kind of a combination of art piece and coding challenge. The exact constraints vary: perhaps the whole program fits into a tiny size (such as 4kb). Or, it's made for a specific oldschool computer, such as the Amiga, taking advantage of the unique quirks of the hardware to push its graphics capabilities to the absolute limit.

Perhaps it's better to start with the history - a well-covered subject in books, articles and even documentaries, which I will have to cover extremely briefly. Back in the late 70s and 80s, when personal computing was really taking off with machines like the Commodore 64, copyright took a while to catch up - particularly in Europe. With network bandwidth far more limited than now, it became popular (relatively speaking) to distribute cracked software at events known as 'copy parties' - you'd bring along your files and exchange them for others.

Often, the groups who created the cracks would add a little intro to take credit for their hard work. With space at an absolute premium, these 'intros' would need to be tiny - perhaps just hundreds of bytes. But constraints breed creativity, and soon groups would compete to distinguish themselves with the most impressive intros. Perhaps you see where this is going...

I'm going to brush over a long and fascinating history here, because space is limited and I would rather try and dig into the history another time - I'm hardly the person to tell it, anyway. So let's just say this: the practice of making these intros, or more generally demos, very quickly grew into its own art form - if you didn't have cracked software you could just bring along a cool intro to the copy party. And as copyright law heated up and the cops started coming for copyparties, the nascent demoscene started to diverge from the warez scene, developing into its own, unique subculture - legal but still indebted to the hacker culture which birthed it.

Broadly speaking, the demoscene is organised around demoparties - big gatherings, largely taking place around Europe, where groups gather to enter their demos into competition, create new demos right there, and engage in related activities like live coding... or dorky shit like throwing keyboards as far as possible, don't ask me about that one. It's not all about creating demos either - over time, the categories have expanded to include music, digital art in general, 3D asset creation, etc. etc., unified more by the aesthetic of the scene than anything. Take a look at the entries for a party like Revision (the largest party, based in Germany, hosting about 800 guests each year) to get a sense of the broad scope of the scene.

But the core of it all is still demos! 4k, 8k, 64k, unlimited in size. PC, amiga. Demos have evolved a great deal over the decades, and it is hard to generalise too much. Still, in contrast to game graphics, which usually emphasise authored content, efficient streaming of assets etc. etc., the emphasis of the demoscene tends to be much more on procedural effects and more abstract visuals.

You can get a taste for what a winning demo looked like as of 2007 with debris. by the group Farbrausch, pouet.net's top-rated demo of all time: techno music, a camera flying over a cityscape as cubes stream around...

And here's one of the most popular 4kb demos, rendering a procedural snowy landscape with a bit of chromatic aberration to taste...

Modern demos have introduced tools like the node-based animation and sim software Notch, which shifts the emphasis away from programming a bit. Rainmaker, which won Revision's PC demo category this year, hardly attempts to optimise for file size, with its executable weighing in at a hefty half a gigabyte, but it certainly goes all out with all that data, hitting flashy scene after flashy scene...

Even in the space-contained categories like 64k and 4k, you can see a modern approach to HDR colour, grading, depth of field etc.:

Especially for the smaller categories of demo, the music tends to be procedurally generated - i.e., chiptunes - as well. But even without that constraint, there is a natural tendency towards many types of electronic music in the scene. After all, it's all about making computers do cool shit.

And to be clear, although technical flexing and generative art is definitely a big part of it, there's plenty of familiar animation stuff in here too. Successful demos tend to feature tight music sync, creative imagery, and definitely some kind of progression or flow in how the images are juxtaposed and how they fit the development of the music. If you felt really pretentious, you could compare it to poetry. I do feel really pretentious, so I will!

Where do you find demos? Unfortunately, there are now many dead links. pouet.net is still something of a hub, featuring a pretty exhaustive database of demos and a voting system to sort them by popularity, as well as providing a forum for the scene (hopefully not about to disappear as its main admin just announced his plans to quit). Demoscene.info tries to be a decent public-facing intro, with links to the major parties and groups that still mostly work. The scene.org awards celebrated a set of demos each year from 2002 to 2011. Youtube psenough reports weekly on what's happening in the scene. There's also Demozoo, a database similar to pouet.

We might also here mention the website Shadertoy, likely familiar to any graphics programmer, which was co-created by oldschool scener Inigo Quilez and carries much of the same spirit. Shadertoy lets you write fragment shaders in opengl to run in the browser, essentially a type of demo, and people use it for all sorts of shit.

So, that's a brief summary. Tonight, starting in just a minute, if you'd like to join me at twitch.tv/canmom, we'll be checking out a random cross-section of popular demos from across the last few decades. I'll be running them on my computer, if possible. I fully admit to being an outsider to the scene, yet to go to a demoparty and see it all in person, but I think it's cool as shit, so let's go explore it together for a couple of hours~