blackseraph

Newsletter #29 - December 2024 (The death of ETAs)

Added 2024-12-22 01:48:45 +0000 UTC

Why I won't be doing ETAs anymore

As I'm writing this newsletter I feel horrible.

I wanted to bring you all exciting news, I hoped I'd be way further than I currently am, but there really isn't much I can say at this point other than I'm horribly late and sorry for all the ETAs I've set and missed, over and over again.

At times I feel like the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, always late, always out of time, rushing to get to where I need to be, but lets rewind and recap how we got here first.

I work as a software developer & reverse engineer, both on Patreon and off the platform.

Which means I have a day-job, that, no matter how much I dislike it, takes priority over projects of personal interest due to being contract-bound with penalties in play.

To avoid said penalties, I've been forced again and again to work overtime, skipping out on holidays in the process, which stole most, if not all the time I was hoping to use to make strides with GarlicOS, Duo, and other yet to-be-announced projects that are currently stuck in the early prototype phase.

The more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that giving ETAs for such projects wasn't going to work as long as I hold down this high intensity day-job.

All they did was give me anxiety whenever I was lagging behind my self-set schedule, regardless of what caused the delay or whether I was at fault or not.

But there's good news as well.

It is now the 22nd of December and I've just finished my last regular workshift of the year, which means that, as of tomorrow, I'll be on extended holiday until January 20th, giving me a chance to catch-up a little, even if ever so slightly.

The current state of projects (aka. where we pick up)

GarlicOS is at the point where several devices have working hardware-acceleration, albeit some of them still have rotation related issues that need to be ironed out.

Countless new devices are waiting in line to get their bootloader repositories cleaned up, documented and published.

Duo got hit by a regression in Windows 11 24H2 that affects its ability to sandbox instances.

A fix was being worked on, alongside a few other key improvements to its framebuffer capture code and instance start time, but the build needs some more work before it can be released to all of you.

From all of the affected projects, this one has been stalled by the day-job grind the least as there happened to be certain symbiotic elements at play, given how both my day-job's current primary project and Duo's new sandboxing feature make extensive use of virtualization technology.

A rough outline of what I have in mind for January

Christmas and New Year's Eve is just a few days away, and whether I'd like to admit it or not, I'm tired.

As such I'll be taking a small break until January 1st to spend with family and friends before, once again, resuming Patreon activities.

Given how Duo's next update is the project closest to completion, I'll be finishing that one up first, followed by an official GarlicOS build with hardware acceleration support for selected devices, as well as several new device bootloaders.

And, if there's enough time for it, I'd like to get to a point where I can put a little teaser out for my next work-in-progress project.

It is somewhat of a departure from well-tread ground, as it is something entirely new and niche, but I hope all of you will like it regardless.