Something is changing my default output device to 24 bit 96 khz. It is annoing, because it doesnt change the imput device, so Reaper can not open it in wasapi. Today it probably broke my vdo ninja recording, which was half a speed. It seems that this happens after lenovo or windows update. Lets see if I can create some script which will monitor it and let me know when this happens again

Yesterday an open-source developer Christian has released life changing update to the privacy respecting #android app called #MakeACopy. The app now features so called #accessibility mode that is enabling #screenReader users to take pictures of the paper documents independently.
Accessibility guide is available on github.
The latest prerelease version provides clear Accessibility guidance phrases with screen readers such as Talkback, Corvus, Jieshuo and others that can handle announcement accessibility event.

I am verry happy about this. We are now getting privacy respecting open-source based screen reader accessible solution that performs very well and is easy to use.

The prerelease version can be downloaded at
github.com/egdels/makeacopy/re…

reshared this

I have just found a nice document scanning app for android that can do automatic edge detection, cropping, multipage scanning, OCR, PDF export and more.
It's called #makeacopy and it's using #tesseract engine to perform the OCR directly on the device with no internet connectivity requirement at all.
The app has almost full #a11y support for screen reader users in the sense that all the controls are clearly labelled and it's easy to navigate.
I can't resist and I have asked the developer if it would be doable to add a screen reader compatible notifications making the automatic edge detection somehow accessible as well.
Now I'd appreciate comments from low vision screen reader users, mobility trainers, people assisting other blind people or others who might be able to tell if my idea is viable and how much you like it?
Here is link to the github issue I have started: github.com/egdels/makeacopy/is…

Thanks for looking into it.

reshared this

Zoom released New firmware for H1E. I am sending this again because i broke the first post.

  • You can set imput gain during recording but i don't know exact buttons
  • You can record and export to mp3
  • You can record with AI noise isolator. It analyzes the noise during first 3 seconds to get noise profile. you can enable it with shortcut, the third button in the top row (button which marks during recording) or in rec settings. Not bad but it filters just high frequencies.
    Do you guys testet this? @Andre Louis @Borris @Tomecki
    zoomcorp.com/en/jp/handheld-re…

On my side Microsoft 365 generates NDR when I send the message to non existing email address using outlook online but does not generate NDR when sending a message to same non existing email address from thunderbird or other app sending emails through microsoft 365 SMTP server.
This sounds strange to me and I can't find a way to make it generate NDR aka bounce messages for messages submitted through SMTP.

Recently, I discovered Mynoise.net by @Stéphane (Dr. P). Sometimes, when I cant sleep or need background noise for boring work, I use various background soundscapes. Here is my article about Mynoise from the blind users experience. Long post follows:

Getting Started


  • We won’t install or configure anything.
  • Simply open the page mynoise.netmynoise.net in your web browser.
  • Activate, for example, the link windSeaRainNoiseGenerator (wind, sea, and rain noise generator).
  • Since browsers block autoplay by default, enable focus mode and press the letter p twice. The first press pauses playback, and the second resumes it. At this point, you should already hear the sound of the sea and wind noise.

Here you can also try other soundscapes, such as Rain on a Tent or Fireworks. I recommend opening the Full List. The soundscapes are organized under headings.

Playback Control


At this point, the possibilities of Mynoise are just beginning. Each player can be customized. Although the ambiance differs, the controls are always the same. Let’s take another look at the previously mentioned Wind, Sea, and Rain Noise.

Presets


Under the heading Presets, you’ll find buttons with various predefined settings. Activating them changes the sound’s characteristics. For instance, you can choose Breaking Waves or Irish Summer.

Under User Stories, you’ll find user comments. By activating a comment, the sound’s parameters adjust to the same configuration used by that commenter.

How to Create Your Own Background


Let’s say you want to manually adjust the balance between wind, waves, rain, and so on. Each player consists of ten sliders whose volume you can control. Here’s how:

  • Enable focus mode in your screenreader.
  • Press Enter to deselect all sliders.
  • Choose one of the sliders using numbers 0–9.
  • Adjust the volume with the + or keys.
  • Press Enter twice to deselect all sliders.
  • Choose another slider (0–9).
  • Adjust the volume again with + or .
  • If you’re satisfied but find the overall sound too loud, you can lower the volume with J and raise it with K.
  • You can also generate a random setting by pressing the ? (question mark)key.


I Created a Beautiful Ambience—How Can I Return to It?


The author thought of that, too. Press B to find the Save as URL button. After pressing it, a URL containing your custom parameters will appear in an edit field. You can copy this link to your clipboard and save it as a bookmark. That’s how it works in Firefox. Chrome, on the other hand, will automatically reload the page with the new URL. You can share this URL as usual—for this article, I created This Noise as an example.

Can I Combine “Rain on a Tent” and a “Crackling Fireplace”?


Yes, and there are two ways to do it. If you’ve been experimenting with the site for a while, you might have opened one soundscape in one browser tab and another in a second tab. However, this setup is difficult to save or share. Fortunately, you can create a single page that combines multiple generators—up to ten soundscapes in one! This way, you can really make something like a Campfire in the Rain. Here’s how:

  • Open your first soundscape, e.g. Rain on a Tent.
  • Reset the sliders to zero and adjust them as you wish, as described earlier.
  • Press C to save your current setting.
    – In another tab, open the main Mynoise page and find your second soundscape.
    – Open a new generator, for example Fireplace.
    – Adjust everything again as you like.
    – Press C again to save it.
    – Use Shift+C to save all settings together.
    – The page will ask for a name.
    – Enter a name and confirm.
    – You can now save the page as a bookmark or copy and share the URL.


Mobile App


Unfortunately, Mobile app is not accessible for blind users yet. You can still use Mynoise in your smartphone’s web browser. The easiest way is to share the custom links you prepared on your computer. That way, you’ll always have your favorite sounds at hand—for example, to help you sleep.

The author also offers online radios featuring some of the sounds. You can find them in the RadioBrowser database by searching for Mynoise. Additionally, there’s a podcast called Pomodoro Sessions, so you can enjoy your favorite soundscapes right in your podcast app.

Conclusion


The author is open to discussing accessibility. Thanks to this, button labels have already been added to the player pages. To celebrate finishing this article—and your reading it all the way through—you can listen to Fireworks.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

WhatsApp changes its terms to bar general-purpose chatbots from its platform. Meta said that the new chatbot use cases placed a lot of burden on its system with increased message volume and required a different kind of support, which the company wasn’t ready for. Really? I think that Meta just wants to force users to use Meta AI. techcrunch.com/2025/10/18/what…

I’m currently working on an interesting project. Last year, I met a former homeless man named Peter. He lost all his money to gambling. On the streets, he sold a street magazine, and later he started writing his own book. Today, most of his income comes from selling that book.
He wanted to create an audiobook. Since the budget was small, we did it like this: I gave him a Zoom H1N recorder. He locked himself in a relatively quiet room and gradually recorded the entire book. He sent me the raw material, which I ran through @Auphonic to remove background noise and room echo and to balance the loudness levels.
Now I just need to remove the mistakes and create the music background. It won’t be full studio quality — but honestly, I’ve heard “studio” recordings that sounded much worse than what we’re working on now.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

Another nice talk at @OpenAlt starts at 12:00 in some 40 minutes.
Improve the world map with @MapComplete .
Watch it at this link if you like.
vhsky.cz/w/9Hdaqab9CvbPwhk1VnD…
Or see the schedule here: talks.openalt.cz/openalt-2025/…

reshared this

I've just discovered Michal Hrušecký is talking about @Delta Chat on the @OpenAlt conference.
The talk is in czech.
He had a similar talk a few weeks ago:
talks.openalt.cz/openalt-2025/…

OpenAlt reshared this.

I know this is not a support site or programming course but I can't figure this thing out. If you do know #rust perhaps you can give me a helping hand. I am trying to contribute to an app.

I'd like to parse ipv4 addresses given as command line argument values.
I have got two arguments accepting ipv4 address.
If I specify single such option all is fine.
If I specify both, I 'm getting error like this:

thread 'main' (624061) panicked at /home/peto/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-1949cf8c6b5b557f/clap-3.2.25/src/parser/matches/arg_matches.rs:1879:13:
Must use `Arg::allow_invalid_utf8` with `_os` lookups at `[hash: A8F400C40154F09]`

This is simplified version of my code showcasing the issue:
```
use std::net::{IpAddr, Ipv4Addr};
use clap::{App, AppSettings, Arg, value_parser};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Error> {
let mut app = App::new("Server APP")
.about("My super cool app")
.setting(AppSettings::DeriveDisplayOrder)
.setting(AppSettings::SubcommandsNegateReqs)
.arg(
Arg::with_name("socket")
.required(true)
.takes_value(true)
.long("socket")
.help("Unix socket path"),
)
.arg(
Arg::with_name("relayaddress")
.required(false)
.takes_value(true)
.long("relay-address")
.value_parser(value_parser!(Ipv4Addr))
.help("External relay ipv4 address used together with --listen-address to run behind a nat"),
)
.arg(
Arg::with_name("listenaddress")
.required(false)
.takes_value(true)
.long("listen-address")
.value_parser(value_parser!(Ipv4Addr))
.help("Local listen ipv4 address used together with --relay-address to run behind a nat"),
);
let matches = app.clone().get_matches();
if matches.is_present("relayaddress") & matches.is_present("listenaddress") {
let external_ip = IpAddr::V4(matches.get_one::<Ipv4Addr>("relayaddress").expect("Invalid address"));
let local_ip = IpAddr::V4(
matches.get_one::<Ipv4Addr>("listenaddress").expect("Invalid address"));
println!("Listening on local IP: {local_ip}");
println!("Relaying through external IP: {external_ip}");
}}
```

#rust #rustlang #programming #fedihelp

in reply to Peter Vágner

I know this is not a support site or programming course but I can't figure this thing out. If you do know #rust perhaps you can give me a helping hand. I am trying to contribute to an app.

Sensitive content

in reply to Federico Mena Quintero

I know this is not a support site or programming course but I can't figure this thing out. If you do know #rust perhaps you can give me a helping hand. I am trying to contribute to an app.
@Federico Mena Quintero Oh, huge thanks for taking a look. Yes it's clap 3. It's not my decision, I'm attempting to contribute to an existing project so if I can make it work without major changes that might be helpfull. As I don't feel qualified for making decisions when it comes to this. I'm novice when it comes to #rust.
--socket argument is required, other two arguments are supposed to be used together and this condition is tested at runtime.
So if I specify all three command line arguments, I am always getting that error.
I have attempted using os::str and casting but the issue remains. I am simply compiling the app with cargo build --release.
Have you been just adding stuff I may have overlooked when trying to simplify for posting or did you actually changed something please?
in reply to Federico Mena Quintero

I know this is not a support site or programming course but I can't figure this thing out. If you do know #rust perhaps you can give me a helping hand. I am trying to contribute to an app.
@Federico Mena Quintero I've figured it out finally. The issue was not parsing ipv4 addresses but using matches.from_os() on the socket argument.
I have changed it to use std::path::PathBuf and it's working fine for me now.
Huge thanks for friendly hint and looking at my code.

Today I finally experienced Samsung’s HIYA spam blocking in action. It works perfectly — except that my food delivery courier couldn’t reach me. Clever guy though, he called again from a hidden number. I later found his repeated calls under “Other calls.” No idea why he ended up in the spam filter; it doesn’t seem like there’s a way to unblock him. Maybe adding him to my contacts would help…

This project looks promising. It looks like amazing replacement for Station playlist. Supports playlists, automation, looping. I sometimes play music during family events using SPL, maybe on next I will try this. Seems that my next procrastination moment will be with this. github.com/michaldziwisz/sara. Latest release at github.com/michaldziwisz/sara/…

reshared this

in reply to Paweł Masarczyk

@Piciok @pvagner I’m glad the project caught your interest. To be honest, I’ve put it on hold for now because I ran into problems I couldn’t quite overcome — at least not easily with AI. However, I’ll definitely come back to it someday, since I’ve always wanted to build my own live broadcasting system; I just lacked the coding skills. Yes, SARA will be designed primarily around the traditional model of a live radio DJ — using a mixer, sound card (preferably several), and absolutely no virtual mixers or anything like that.
in reply to Paweł Masarczyk

@Piciok @pvagner I’m pleased to share that I’ve returned to working on SARA. The latest version is now hitting GitHub, featuring an improved audio engine, an NVDA add-on that tames the excessive verbosity of WX controls, and the ability to paste items from the clipboard — including folders. A word of caution, though: inserting large numbers of files is still quite slow for now.
In the next release, I’m planning something no other accessible broadcasting software offers: a dedicated playlist for reading news and easily triggering service sound cues — a feature typically found only in professional systems used for preparing news bulletins. gitrls.com/michaldziwisz/sara/ If there are any features you’re missing in programs like StationPlaylist or RadioBoss, be sure to let me know. Just keep in mind that for now SARA is meant to be operated mainly by a human — full automation will probably come later. :)

I really want to test this


For a few years I've been aware of this website that purports to be able to unlock shopping cart wheels using the speaker on your phone, but i finally had an excuse to try and and i remembered in the moment.

A woman was outside the grocery store struggling to move her shopping car that was stuck because two of the wheels were locked

I remembered the website! So I put my phone near the wheels and played the sound. The wheels unlocked like magic. She was very happy. So cool.

begaydocrime.com/


If you are into #tranceMusic #uplifting #vocalTrance, have a listen to these stunning tracks

Paipy & Elles de Graaf - The Last Time

Driftmoon X XiJaro & Pitch - Rise Again

RAM & Arctic Moon & Stine Grove - A Billion Stars Above

in reply to ondrosik

@ondrosik I think this is a difference how #friendica generates the home timeline feed as compared to mastodon and other common #fediverse servers. Friendica also includes repies in the home timeline feed. There are apps that can filter out posts that are replies to other posts client side however TW Blue may not be able to do that I think.

Do you know that you can use Subtitle edit to transcribe audio? It has a relatively accessible guy so you can use Purfwiev's faster whisper xxl, cpp, cpp cublas, const-me. Longer post how to use it follows:

Installing Subtitle Edit


Download the program from the developer’s website. Navigate to the level 2 heading labeled “Files.”
If you want to install Subtitle Edit normally, download the first file, labeled setup.zip.
There is also a portable version available, labeled SE_version_number.zip.

If you decide to use the portable version, extract it and move on to the next section of this article. The installation itself is standard and straightforward.

A Note on Accessibility


NVDA cannot automatically obtain focus in lists.
To find out which item in the list is currently selected, move down with the arrow key to change the item, then press NVDA+TAB to hear which one is focused.

Initial Setup


  • In the menu bar, go to Video and activate Audio to text (Whisper).
  • When using this feature for the first time, the program may ask whether you want to download FFMPEG. This library allows Subtitle Edit to open many audio and video files, so confirm the download by pressing Yes.
  • Subtitle Edit will confirm that FFMPEG has been downloaded and then ask whether you want to download Purfwiev’s Faster Whisper – XXL. This is the interface for the Whisper model that we’ll use for transcription, so again confirm by pressing Yes.
  • The download will take a little while.
  • Once it’s complete, you’ll see the settings window. Press Tab until you reach the Languages and models section. In the list, select the language of your recording.
  • Press Tab to move to the Select model option, and then again to an unlabeled button.
  • After activating it, choose which model you want to use. Several models are available:
    • Small models require less processing power but are less accurate.
    • Large models take longer to transcribe, need more performance and disk space, but are more accurate.
      I recommend choosing Large-V3 at this step.


  • Wait again for the model to finish downloading.


Transcribing Your First Recording


  • Navigate to the Add button and press Space to activate it.
  • A standard file selection dialog will open. Change the file type to Audio files, find your audio file on the disk, and confirm.
  • Activate the Generate button.
  • Now, simply wait. The Subtitle Edit window doesn’t provide much feedback, but you can tell it’s working by the slower performance of your computer—or, if you’re on a laptop, by the increased fan noise.
  • When the transcription is done, Subtitle Edit will display a new window with an OK button.


We Got Subtitles, So One More Step


In the folder containing your original file, you’ll now find a new file with the .srt extension.
This is a subtitle file—it contains both the text and the timing information. Since we usually don’t need timestamps for transcription, we’ll remove them in Subtitle Edit as follows:

  • Press Ctrl+O (or go to File → Open) to bring up the standard open file dialog. Select the .srt file you just got.
  • In the menu bar, open File → Export → Plain text.
  • Choose Merge all lines, and leave Show line numbers and Show timecode unchecked.
  • Press Save as and save the file normally.

If you’re transcribing multiple recordings, it’s a good idea to close the current subtitle file by starting a new project using Ctrl+N or by choosing File → New.

Conclusion


Downloaded models can, of course, be reused, so future transcriptions will go faster.
In this example, I used Purfwiev’s Faster Whisper. If you want to use a different model, you can select it from the model list, and Subtitle Edit will automatically ask whether you’d like to download it.

Peter Vágner reshared this.