One really cool NVDA feature that I'm absolutely loving is the thing it does where if I run scoop update * or another command that gives me a fuckton of console output, it'll just lock up and freeze, often continuing to read terminal messages while I'm focused on the desktop, and sometimes even crash if I'm unlucky. I'm sure an insane amount of development time went into this, so kudos! Loving it!

To be clear, I don't begrudge NV Access this too hard. I still donate to them and realize how hard making a free and open source Windows screen reader is. But this has happened to me at least 10 times this week, so I'm annoyed.

Für blinde Folgende: Ich nutze jetzt ungefähr 1 Stunde lang Waterfox und kann bisher mit NVDA unter Win 11 keine Probleme feststellen. Webseiten kann ich lesen, Menü und zwischen Tabs navigieren, in den Settings war ich auch schon. Sieht bisher gut aus. Aber natürlich kann es sein, dass ich trotzdem noch Probleme entdecke. Aber angesichts aktueller Firefoxentwicklungen mag ich das.
in reply to Sandra Pilz

Ja, das kann ich auch machen, dann schaltet sich die Oberfläche auch auf deutsch um. Aber VoiceOver bekommt das nicht mit und nutzt weiter eine englische Stimme, auch für Dinge wie "Taste" oder "Kontrollkästchen". Das liegt an MacOS, Waterfox teilt dem Betriebssystem nicht mit, dass es all diese Sprachen wirklich an Bord hat. Das sind ja alles interne Webseiten, die da angezeigt werden, und das ist abgekoppelt von der Basisgeschichte im Betriebssystem.

Today's #FreeSoftwareAdvent appreciation is for some of the Free Software languages that bring me both joy and income: Python & Golang

I've used Python at $DAYJOB since version 2.3 (it got woefully stuck at 2.4 for WAAAAY too long, and finally switched to 3.x some time in the last 2–3 years) and it simplified so many automation tasks there. I've used dozens of programming languages in my life for various tasks, and the hard part is rarely *writing* the code, but rather *reading* the code. And I find it a LOT easier to come back and read old Python code than just about any other language.

Meanwhile, Golang saved my bacon on a short-term contracting project where TB of (simple) CSV files needed to be processed, cross-referenced. Being able to spin up a pool of multithreading Go processes, have built in locking and hash-map structures, and operate on raw input buffers of bytes shaved a 3-day manual process down to about an hour involving running a single command. I find it pretty readable too, feeling a bit like C while ditching some of the most cumbersome aspects.

in reply to André Polykanine

Totally agreed. And everytime #MushroomFM blows up, which is every year at this time, I keep wondering where the new Tweesecake is at, hopefully with functioning filters and mutes. Good on them for doing their thing, but I want nothing to do with it, so therefore, it truly is spam to me. And we need a way to block it on a popular client, if only for ourselves.

В России заблокировали приложение для слепых Be My Eyes

Все, что оно делало — помогало незрячим ориентироваться в пространстве.

В нем можно было связываться с волонтерами через видеосвязь или просить ИИ описывать происходящее вокруг — видеозвонки внутри сервиса как раз и могли стать причиной блокировки.

Официально в реестр оно пока не внесено, но в Be My Eyes подтвердили, что доступ из России ограничен
hi-tech.mail.ru/news/139605-v-…

in reply to Игорь Минхерц

Подтверждаю, сейчас стон и вой стоит в слепецком сообществе по этому поводу. Собственно, предположение одно: если ты оператор связи (а BeMyEyes позволяет контактировать с волонтёрами), то нужно регистрироваться в каком-то российском реестре (сорри, я не в РФ, не знаю точно, как это называется). Потому и заблочили.

Just helped someone on Be My Eyes, he was walking from his house to a shop about 10 minutes away.

Helped him navigate the streets and cross the road and so on. Luckily he lived in the UK so I knew what I was seeing 😅

He was wearing Meta’s AI glasses, which help him a lot but don’t currently describe things like lamp posts/scaffolding etc, which was where I was needed.

He made the call from the glasses also, and it was great that I could see what he could see also.

One of my favourite things is helping people on Be My Eyes 😍

Such a great app.

#blind #blindness

This entry was edited (1 day ago)

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in reply to Bill Dengler

@bill oh that's interesting! I'll have to look into that new one then. Could be worth it. I think the $200 is web only, unlimited to chat in pro mode (or at least, I haven't seen usage restrictions at all on web search / conversations.) So it could be worthwhile if your token use ondemand for the pro models exceed that amount, perhaps, but the API per-cost option is more flexible with letting you use it in projects and such.

On Dec 27th at 3PM Eastern, one week from today, REAPER Made Easy's end of year wrap up/live listening party will be happening. This is where we hang out on a live stream and listen to a bunch of the productions people have done with REAPER and OSARA throughout the year.
If you've got something you'd like to share, we're all ears! Send it in here:
dropbox.com/request/mB2KhxVunz…

Anything you've made this year, anywhere in the world, in any language, with any amount of experience is welcome. The only limitations are one production per person so we can play as many of them as possible, and the majority of what we're listening to needs to have been made using REAPER/OSARA.

Feel free to post questions in this thread or via DM if there's anything you're not sure of. Boosts for reach appreciated.

Looking forward to hearing what everyone's been cookin'!

Scott and Jen

As an Open Source developer in Germany, I'd greatly benefit if our work was officially recognized as voluntary service (Ehrenamt).

If you are located in Germany, please help by signing this petition: openpetition.de/petition/blog/…

Thank you for your support! (Please do not sign if you are not living in Germany.)

#opensource #germany

Zwischen den Jahren ist es oft etwas ruhiger – genau dann lässt sich gut anfangen. IT-Sicherheit ist für mich kein Zustand, sondern ein Prozess über Jahre. Kein großer Umbruch, sondern viele kleine Schritte: Passwörter, E-Mail, Smartphone, Heimnetz, Backups. Wichtig ist nicht Perfektion, sondern überhaupt zu beginnen. 👇

kuketz-blog.de/it-sicherheit-i…

🌞✨ Happy Sol Invictus! Today, we celebrate the "Unconquered Sun" and the return of light! While we enjoy this festive occasion, let’s also take a moment to appreciate the winter solstice, the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a time for reflection and renewal as we look forward to brighter days ahead! 🌌 #Solstice #solinvictus

I found something interesting. If you visit the Balabolka page and scroll to “Download installers for Microsoft natural voices that work without Internet access”, you can download high-quality Microsoft voices for around 30 different languages.
Voices are available even for Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Hebrew, Finnish, Dutch, European Portuguese, and more. Each language has its own separate installer, and since most languages include multiple voices, you can choose which ones to install during setup.
These voices work very well with drivers like Natural Voice SAPI Adapter.
Just a heads-up: the Balabolka page has no headings or landmarks, so you’ll need to manually search the page for “Download installers for Microsoft natural voices that work without Internet access.”
cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

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When it comes to @Delta Chat (39c3) do you know it features 1 to 1 audio / video calls since v2.22?
It has a very lightweight client side app built with web technologies and a minimalist server side component turn server called chatmail-turn.

I am wondering, am I alone running that turnserver behind a nat?

github.com/chatmail/chatmail-t…

Dear #QT toolkit, recently I'm again looking into your #screenreader #a11y into #QML in particular.
I'm trying to make one of my favorite apps @Mixxx DJ Software a bit more accessible.
Last night I have managed to turn the menu with items such as 4 decks, Library, Effects and more into aria toolbar pattern in terms of keyboard navigation. It only consumes single tab stop when navigating through it and other buttons can be reached using the arrow keys.
Of course there is much more to do and I've started a forum topic documenting my attempts.

mixxx.discourse.group/t/new-qm…

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Apple nuking a customer's account over a bad gift card is a warning for everyone


One long-time Apple customer was left with no recourse after a bad gift card triggered a full account and device lock-out.

Paris Buttfield-Addison with an absolute horror story:

A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse.


The full blog post is chilling. Buttfield-Addison only got his Apple account reinstated after blogging about his experience, and otherhigh-profileblogs re-shared his ordeal, which caught the attention of an actual human in Apple's executive relations team who restored his account a week later.

Buttfield-Addison is the latest public example of a company revoking access to a person's digital life, probably due to some automated decision, but where affected customers have no means or grounds to appeal. In reality, this happens all the time and most people's stories never hear the light of day. Even companies like Apple, which sell physical electronics for a living, hold too much power and control over their customers' digital lives in perpetuity, and customers generally don't have the means to fight back or hold the companies accountable when things go wrong.

It's also a warning to everyone — not just Apple customers and especially this time of year — that gift cards are prone to scams and are increasingly difficult to detect. If one bad gift card can result in nuking access to someone's account, then gift cards aren't worth the risk to begin with.

More at Tidbits.

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This entry was edited (1 day ago)

I don't think I'll stop using Firefox anytime soon.
Yes, their management are fucking idiots and it's annoying that I'll have to disable new AI features whenever they release them..

But the alternative is to use something Chromium-based, which would make Google's domination of web technology absolute - and Google is 100x more evil than Mozilla ever could be.

I hope this fucking bubble pops before Mozilla fucks up Firefox so badly that it becomes completely unusable

This entry was edited (2 days ago)

reshared this

My slides and a video of my talk "Grow your [engineering] brand while putting privacy first" are available on my blog: talkweb.eu/openweb/4500/

If you want a funny, but useful talk on that topic, reach out!

#mastodon #fediverse #privacy #engineering #human #foss

This entry was edited (1 day ago)

Peter Vágner reshared this.

I have a lot of respect for #DeltaChat (@delta); By all accounts they provide a good looking client and a homogenize experience across platforms. Users absolutely don’t need to care about the underlying protocol!

However there is no way, shape or form in that IMAP+Submission is a more suitable stack for instant messaging than #XMPP.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Radasbona

@Radasbona I am not sure it's dismissed all together. @Delta Chat (39c3) #chatmail relays already support google / apple push messaging and adding @UnifiedPush support might be just matter of finding a motivated developer.
Still with imap idle in place the battery and network impact is minimal so it's not seen as very high priority thing. For example there is an email client called #fairEmail which does the same thing, keeping the imap idle connections open whenever it's able to and it's working fine. Within email app it's difficult if not impossible to add push messaging support unless you have control of the server side provider or you wish to trade your privacy.
in reply to Peter Vágner

imap idle unfortunately works very unreliably if you only use the app every 1-2 weeks.

I'm not a developer, but wouldn't that be the solution for the chatmail servers?
ietf.org/archive/id/draft-goug…

This entry was edited (2 hours ago)

As a community, we often ask ourselves how to attract more users to #XMPP. Yet the real tragedy is that people would rather build something entirely new (loosely based on email or #ActivityPub) than consider XMPP. Need end-to-end encryption by default? If compatibility with existing XMPP clients is a secondary concern, you can implement it in your own solution while still benefiting from our two decades of experience in instant messaging.