TIL that the sixth largest pipe organ in the world is contained within the home of a man from Alabama called Barry Norris.
According to Wikipedia, it has 11,200 pipes.
By comparison, the Royal Albert Hall's organ (which TIL is called The Voice of Jupiter, which is an amazing name) has just 9,999 pipes. Tiny. Pathetic.
'It’s the world’s first “preservation archive” for music which is fully open (meaning it can easily be mirrored by anyone with enough disk space), with 86 million music files, representing around 99.6% of listens.'
We backed up Spotify (metadata and music files). It’s distributed in bulk torrents (~300TB). It’s the world’s first “preservation archive” for music which is fully open (meaning it can easily be mirrored by anyone with enough disk space), with 86 mil…
Self hosting a Postgres or MySQL/MariaDB database is often treated like a horror story told around a campfire, a narrative carefully created by big cloud providers over the last decade. But is it actually "terrifying," or just a lost art of Sysadmining? This post talks the reality of self hosting versus managed cloud versions like AWS RDS, cutting through the marketing to look at the actual trade offs for both IT pros and developers.
(For people uncomfortable with hugs but who want the badge regardless, I can of course make exceptions, but the badge name and description do say you got a Foxbrush hug)
Hey, budds. Just a reminder that it's that time of year when we all try to be just a little happier and leave the negative bullshit behind for a while?
like... I've seen so so much whining just on my home tl the last few days and to be perfectly blunt, some of yall really need a reason to smile.
Please stop fighting each other. please stop being so radically opinionated that you can't have a conversation with any level of nuance. Please just walk away if people aren't serving you anymore. Please stop.
Yes. This. I realized last night that I am for worse contributing to this and I'm sorry. Probably too late, but ehh. Definitely had an oh shit/wake up call moment last night.
@Bri Hugs. We all have those. It wasn't even directed at a single person or group, I just... It's been really bloody intense the last few weeks and I'm kinda tired.
I agree with you 100%, which is why I even got to the point I did, but I realize that was not the way at all and I was only contributing to it, not helping.
@Bri I can admit to not helping all that and I could have just left things alone. My give a damn was just busted a few days ago and needed some repairs.
@MariahL oh I know I made an ass out of myself. It's a common occurance for me, but it hasn't happened in a while and I would like it to not do that again thank you very much.
@Bri @MariahL Mine was busted the second I'd asked to be removed from a very toxic conversation and my wish was not respected. That's when I lost all of my cool and became an ass with the whole cookie thing. For the part I played in that, for any anger or whatever I've posted over the last few weeks I'm sorry. Christmas this year holds no weight for me at all and I've found it honestly beyond hard to find any happiness or joy apart from a few good things. This is the second Christmas I am spending physically alone on this college campus and I'm just not taking it well.
@MariahL @ky0les @Bri I think the point I wanted to make was mostly that, I would never expect people to be happy just because it's the holidays. That's not fair. But more that people try to be cognisant and not be the reason other people's happiness gets lessoned. Does that make sense? Is that fair?
1. Kwanzaa is a made up holiday. 2. So is every other holiday. 3. Anyone can celebrate Kwanzaa. 4. It was created by Black, (mostly American and Christian*) people in the 1970s to celebrate Black history and the influence of African culture in the African diaspora and to assert the presence of Black people in US culture. 5. Most Black Americans don't celebrate Kwanzaa. 6. It is not a holiday tied to any particular religion.
Ich konnte in einem Gespräch mit einer Bekannten gestern mal wieder die Empfehlung für den Schattenspringer von @Fuchskind anbringen. Die Empfehlung wurde mit Freuden aufgenommen und wird vermutlich in dieser Familie zeitnah verbreitet werden. Ich hoffe, ein zurzeit siebenjähriges autistisches Kind wird es mit einigen anderen aus der Familie dadurch in Zukunft leichter haben.
Ich will auch mal bei der lokalen Bibliothek schauen. Falls sie es noch nicht haben, werde ich fragen, ob sie es ins Sortiment aufnehmen, wenn ich es ihnen schenke.
Data dokáží docela překvapit, co myslíte? Celá 1/4 elektřiny vyrobené v roce 2024 v Maďarsku byla ze solární panelů. Před pěti lety to bylo pouhých 7 %. Podíl FVE na české výrobě elektřiny byl v roce 2024 5,5 %. (0,9 % vítr, 7,1 % z biomasy a 3,6 % z vody).
Je to celkem marginální rozdíl. Vzal jsem kalkulačku re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/, zabodl ji někde doprostřed Maďarska a spočítalo mi to roční výrobu 1 kWp na 1260 kWh. Když jsem to samé udělal u Česka, vyšlo mi 1130 kWh. Mají tam tedy podstatně větší instalovanou kapacitu.
New MindMaker FlexVoice Add-on: fixes crashes. Normalizes punctuation and other things in wrapper. Not perfect, but getting there. rate control works. eurpod.com/flexvoice.nvda-addo…
@pitermach yeah totally. I don't see it as a draily driver at all. Like, it's not the greatest sounding thing. I actually like BestSpeech more than it. I did it mainly to get another engine working that's a software synth. I figured, it's out there, I'm on break, what better thing to do than poke around this weird SDK. Ha. I'm happy with this final driver, at least people can try it and see what they think.
Yup, I know there is at least one person who really wanted this. Totally agree about BeSTSpeech though, that's one I actually found myself actively using for a while.
@pitermach I use BestSpeech sometimes, but for cases where you normally wouldn't hear Keynote Gold. Like when playing a round of battlegrounds in hearthstone. I don't know why but doing that amuses me. A lot.
FlexVoice 0.6: Fixes more normalizations for acronyms in wrapper. This will mean that "NVDA" is pronounced now, and many other things that started with 3 consonants. Try: eurpod.com/flexvoice.nvda-addo…
Lol it says replee instead of reply, I'm testing this out and it also seems to have trouble keeping up with typing, like it skips letters if you type too quickly, the letters get entered fine, just it doesn't do a good job of interupting with each character.
@alexchapman yeah, not surprised there. there's a very, very odd quirk in this engine that took me hours, I mean hours to solve. it cannot announce consonants on their own. That is, letters like S, K, and any digit, crashed the engine fully. I had to write into the wrapper a normalizer that basically makes these have full spellings: "es" for S, "cee" for C, "dee" for D, all that. Wow. What work. What buggy engine.
Hey do you think you can please give me a little help with the adon? I can't look to get it working in the latest version of NVDA. If you need certain info of my setup please let me know.
@GoemonIshikawa yeah no idea. on 2025.3.3 here,, I just reinstalled the copy I published, fom scratch, it's running fine. no clue. I haven't slept for well over 30 hours now my patience is low.
Oh I see, yeah don't worry I'll figure it out or if not and something chages that'll happen too. You do some fine work helping the others with the first started Keynote project, and you're working on this too. You shouldn't be up for cloce to 3 days at this man. Get some sleep and I'll talk to you later when you get back up if you're ready for it. Happy christmas king!
@GoemonIshikawa I'm wondering if maybe en-us locale is required or something. I know some have gotten it working, so that to me is for sure super odd of a quirk if it's tied to something like that.
@GoemonIshikawa It's something to do with the rapper. File "ctypes\__init__.pyc", line 376, in __init__ FileNotFoundError: Could not find module 'C:\Users\Thomas Grant\AppData\Roaming\nvda\addons\Flexvoice\synthDrivers\fvwrap.dll' (or one of its dependencies). Try using the full path with constructor syntax. INFO - synthDriverHandler.setSynth (14:20:47.500) - MainThread (37148): Falling back to previous synthDriver ibmeci INFO - synthDriverHandler.setSynth (14:20:47.751) - MainThread (37148): Loaded synthDriver ibmeci
@GoemonIshikawa @TomGrant91 you can always try to manually grab that file out of the nvda-addon itself and seeing if when you paste it Defender starts yelling about it. Even if you have downloads excluded, it would still be upset once it gets copied into the NVDA add-on directory itself, so it could be deleting it right after? not sure.
@GoemonIshikawa @TomGrant91 I put up a 0.95 version where I used the min build flag, so it should compile less stuff into that wrapper. maybe less chances for flagging, it's how the first add-ons were compiled. so you could try that instead in case it keeps the file upon install.
@FreakyFwoof @GoemonIshikawa Good to hear Andre. So what is your overall opinion on this compared to orpheus? I would prefer that or bestspeech compared to flexvoice, but it certainly is a good synth to play with
@TomGrant91 @GoemonIshikawa Nothing's ever gonna replace Orpheus for me, this isn't even in the top 10, but it's always nice to have new synths to play with. I've noticed it can't say the letter 'R' if written by itself. Oh, it can't even say the word 'Noticed' lol
@FreakyFwoof @TomGrant91 @GoemonIshikawa LOL I think for the R thing I'll have to have it do a replacement for all R with "arr". Also words with apostrophes need improvement. But ah well. It's at a way better place than BestSpeech original ever was in the start ha.
@TomGrant91 @GoemonIshikawa When I try to read my last post, it completely doesn't say anything. totally weird. Always fun to see the weird idiosyncrasies that new synths show up.
ahaha I'm just glad it's no longer taking down people's NVDA in a big logless crash. Not even any fun sounds to follow or proceed it with like BestSpeech days, that's what made this one so disappointing, somehow errors are a thousand times more fun when there's some weird effect it comes with than just a boring one. Ah well. I suppose a bunch of consonants together might throw the wrapper off although it's unlikely, I tried throwing some pretty extreme cases at it xD
@TomGrant91 @GoemonIshikawa Oh it's great fun typing random characters into synths like a child. Yep, still do that. They can have some very... Extreme reactions in some cases lol
@FreakyFwoof @GoemonIshikawa I do that all the time. I have a document called squeezy fweep I just created and it can't say squeezy fweep.txt - notepad. It misses out the word completely Squeezy notepad!
@TomGrant91 @GoemonIshikawa Go through various Mastodon posts, some will just get entirely skipped, at least they do here. Not even just mine, plenty of others.
that's so oddd, for sure not happening to me at all. Like, even all mentions have read so far. At faster rates though I find this voice gets a bit muffled, it's odd. Slower somehow is more clear. Hmm, tried to scroll with 3-second firing of arrow keys through masto posts, still read. hw odd that one.
@TomGrant91 @GoemonIshikawa In the file 'MindmakerPresentation' is this line... What on earth do they mean by this? Perhaps I'm better off not knowing.
''SoulSim Ltd. is offering is a popular and highly targeted web property for teenage girls. '
MindMaker FlexVoice 1.0: Fixes apostrophe words to speak correctly, letter R on its own is pronounced. This puts driver at a 1.0 stable state. Edge-case quirks may remain, but considering the wrapper now needs to do the work the engine should be doing with letter normalizing, those may be harder to solve. I consider this one a success even if it is not a favorite TTS voice. eurpod.com/flexvoice.nvda-addo…
ok. I haven't slept. It's 6 in the morning. Last update to this thing. We now have proper pitch control. MindMaker FlexVoice 0.7. All bugs be damned, I'm going to bed. eurpod.com/flexvoice.nvda-addo…
@TomGrant91 ha, I'd say better, at least unless you were to feed it a very large number it's not likely to crash your NVDA. So a lot more stable than that early driver was.
Praising you lots again. I remember when I was making your timeline of likes go nuts last year with bestspeech-old. Giving suggestions and the like. Roll on the same with flexvoice.
@TomGrant91 ha. thing is, I actually like BestSpeech somewhat more, maybe not as much as Eloquence but it's up there. This one? No way. It has trash pronouncing on a lot of words. It would require a huge dictionary to fix it up all, so to me it's more of a toy synth than a real one sadly. I guess that does make me a bit less dedicated to it overall.
I agree with bestspeech. But I love the fact with that, I created a voice dictionary for that. So you know the way eloquence puts the intonation properly for control panel, bestspeech can't. Put a hyphen in there? You're laughing. So I got lots of modifications in its voice dictionary.
Just read from a #ccc toot that German Bundestag is ... Aagaaaiin ... Trying to bring IP collection / storing into discussion... While all the previous attempts have been ruled illegal by highest German court
, Is a tool to be used along with other additions. They do not claim to be anything else but what they say. Degoogle, DeMicrosoft and and more, get a VPN, run Linux among other things. If enough people cut the Abuse Cord, governments will cave
It's definitely been an interesting time here at LGA. TSA was being extra slow and TSA-ish today. I had a Ubiquiti U6 Mesh access point in my suitcase, which looks suspiciously like an aerosol can, so they had pointed questions about that.
Then, the gate for my flight changed five times. First, it was gate 30, then 31, back to 30, then 18, then 29.
So I'm sitting here at gate 29 hoping for the best. I should be boarding in a few minutes, so there is still time for a couple more gate changes just for fun.
I was flying out of panama City Beach Florida and didn't have my "real" ID. Instead of doing the usual hey we're going to have to do a swab of your hands, they took the extra step. I didn't even go through the damn metal detector, no no. They did a full pat down which was a bit much for multiple reasons, even my meet and assist said so. Plus I had recently been in the hospital and had dealt with sooooo many people touching me at once I was still a bit edgy when it came to being touched by unknown folks. I already have issues with that anyway, the hospital visit had just made it worse. That TSA experience did not help.
it was incredibly stupid. I've never had something like that happen and I've flown under a lot of different circumstances. Even flying with my now retired guide dog was never that much of an issue, though I have had some issues after security when it came to dog travel but that's a different ball game entirely.
Fortunately, my gate wasn't changed again, and I'm now on the plane using AA WiFi. I can't get Ookla Speedtest to work, even through an exit node, but fast.com says I have 36 megs down. So that's cute. In case anyone cares, my IP address is 164.86.16.207
Wow! I figured this would be at least a bit more interesting. IP appears to be from Ashburn, Virginia, United States (20149). The latitude and longitude coordinates are 39.043800354, -77.4873962402. The ISP is Intelsat Global Service Corporation. The timezone is America/New_York.
@KaraLG84 @remixman I saw it recently on a United flight and earlier on a Delta flight. None of those were regionals. I haven't seen it on an international flight.
@ppatel @remixman And it’s easy to get an adaptor, so you can plug any wired headset you have into it, which would be way better than any headset the flight attendants would give you.
That's a rather oddly low flight level for a commercial flight. Perhaps the weather. But you should hear the engines working extra hard at that level. The atmosphere is still rather dense there.
Adventní countdown dnes doběhl, Stromečkovice jsou za rohem, takže nám nezbývá, než vám popřát pěkné Vánoce, pod jedli hodně investičních paměťových modulů a do nového roku rychlé internetové připojení. Slibujeme, že i příští rok budeme u nás na OSCLOUD makat na lepším a svobodnějším pracovním i zábavním prostředí na internetu!
@GuloGulo Aha kolena, tak to mě mrzí. Tak aspoň kolo, tam ta kolena nedostanou takový záhul a třeba se to časem zlepší. Já teda teď běhám fakt pomalu, ještě před pár lety jsem dával půlmaraton za 1:40, to už asi nikdy nedám 😀 @OttovonWenkoff
Manžel má 1-2 stupeň artrózy kolene, a říkal, že mu kolo, v jeho případě rotoped pomáhá. Byť jsem slyšela, že na kosti a klouby je dobré silové posilování s vlastni váhou těla. @GuloGulo @OttovonWenkoff
Jo kolo je super Mám už elektro, každý výlet mi začíná 3-5km stoupáním a moje fyzička už není co bývala. Pak mám ještě eliptický trenažér, to je taky super.
Roll with It Typing, my self-voicing accessible browser-based app with @Marconius , is two days old. Marco has fixed the accuracy of typing stats, added controls for how the practice is spoken, and created a field where you can paste up to 36 lines of your own and type from that. Custom typing practice is new to the accessible typing coach space: you won't get this from any other guide marconius.com/fun/rollWithIt/
We’re giving away two of the new ones for free to two random people who boost and favorite this post! Winners will be announced on December 25th, just like last year.
If you’d like to support our server and projects like these, donations are always welcome:
Interested in **supporting this instance?** :blobcatreachrev::MastodonDE::blobfoxfloofreach:
Feel free to **donate** using one of the below links:
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China cracked the US ‘super code’ that controls most power grids in the world. Breakthrough could shake-up global tech markets with nations able to run their own grids and break away from US dominance. 🎉
In addition to achieving an average computational efficiency that surpasses leading American solvers by 14 per cent, Tianquan’s computational error is also 23 per cent lower than that of US solvers and the computational stability is 21 per cent superior.
OSCloud je komunitní, open-source a bez reklam. Běží díky lidem, kteří chtějí svobodné a soukromí respektující služby.
🎄 Vánoce jsou dobrá chvíle zastavit se a podpořit projekty, které dávají smysl. 👉 Pokud vám OSCloud dává smysl, zvažte finanční podporu. Pomůžete udržet infrastrukturu a rozvoj služeb pro všechny. oscloud.cz/co-to-bude-stat/ #oscloud #opensource
Oh for fuck sakes! Don't fucking ask me a question if you aren't interested in the response and going to ignore after. I don't have the patience for games. My give a damnhas fled to another planet and right now I don't think it has plans to return
Blah. Debugging code at midnight was still not my idea of vacation. Sigh. I just cannot relax and not do computer-related work, without some type of work I'm just nothing.
@FreakyFwoof Here they worked immediately. But for some people a restart was necessary. And have you placed them, by default of course, in C:\TTS and applied both reg files?
@JamminJerry will be curious how people find lag on these voices. At this point it's probably a more hopeful project for me than this Mindmaker voice, especially as that one has some very oddities in pronouncing things wrong (like "Tim" as "time", "gemini as Gemeeni" and such) - so I'd imagine, yeah, this voice will do better. Ha.
@Tamasg Hmm. It's quite responsive over here on my machine with a great CPU and lots of RAM. But it's definitely a bit laggier than Microsoft non-HD voices. And its pronunciation is great. @JamminJerry @FreakyFwoof
Actually no. The latest Windows 11 dev release only provides these two US English HD voices. But this seems to be the beginning, like the previous high-quality voices. Microsoft may well extend this so-called HD upgrade to other voices in the near future. At this time we just have access to these two offline HD voices, and even these haven't been released to the official channel. The rest are not HD though they are high-quality. @JamminJerry
@JamminJerry I was thinking you could probably combine the 32/64 registry files into one, less work if people need to modify. A single find & replace gets both jobs done, you know?
I was only thinking of putting it there as that is where you are suppose to unzip the other voices, so I just thought keep it simple, and put it there as well.
@JamminJerry So, I installed 32-bit and 64-bit adapters, downloaded Ava and Andrew, stuck them in c:\tts, ran the reg files, but I only seem to have the online voices. Am I missing something obvious?
@BorrisInABox @JamminJerry That was me for a while. I only ran the 64 bit at first, then realised I should fix that. Try restarting NVDA if it still doesn't pick up. It eventually did for me.
@BorrisInABox You can open the installer and uncheck "Enable Microsoft Edge online voices" to get rid of the online voices. The Close button applies any settings, so no need to uninstall and reinstall. You should have at least silent spots where NVDA expects Andrew and Ava, even if the voice data was extracted to the wrong location. Is this not the case for you? You can also press Alt+DownArrow to open the list of voices without actually changing them. @FreakyFwoof @JamminJerry @amir
So, anyone tried this on arm yet? My potentially fastest Windows machine right now is an arm virtual machine running on a Macbook M4. There's an arm adapter, but I don't know how that works. Haven't attempted it yet myself.
Well, this can be extended even further if you are into experiments - LOL! There's a newer, non-official installer of NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter with Microsoft.CognitiveServices.Speech updated to 1.46.0. Download from Google Drive - link at the end. Delete old versions of NaturalVoiceSAPIAdapter and install the new one. Now Ava and Andrew become more HD-like. And now you can switch between HD and regular voice versions by editing the EnableHDVoice=yes (EnableHDVoice=no) parameter in the 1033.INI file in the voice folder. drive.google.com/drive/folders…
now for my stupid question of the day. I didn't think you could do it, but based on your message, you can, so can you install both? I have the normal NVDA, but I also have the alpha version that is 64 bit.
@JamminJerry Install both, no unless you pick a diffrerent location, but run both reg files, yes. Alpha will pick up on 64, standard will pick up on 32.
I didn't break them! they work! woohoo! it does seem a bit laggy though. I am using ava right now. I saw all of the online voices too, and they seem to work as well, but I was trying to find the offline ones, but I eventually found them. lol. they were above the blasbay studios voice I baught.
this isn't just the lag. there is a slight, how do I explain it, from time to time, when it starts talking there is a very tiny jerk? pause? something like that when it starts talking. it is very small, and it isn't all the time.
@JamminJerry Andrew is less expressive though a lot more than other MS voices. I really like both. Just a shame Microsoft hasn't opened them for use with other screen readers. That's why we should resort to this type of so-called data mining of sorts.
you ask, and I shall deliver. this took me several times to record though. one time I didn't have the right button pushed on the mixer. another time I had more than just the NVDA channel in the recording. one time I didn't have any channels selected, so it was just a silent file, but after several attempts, here you go. I personally think there should be a bit more of a pause at the between paragraphs, but that is just me.
sadly I can't edit the post in tweesecake, because I have found if I do, it removes the attachment. I would have to remove it, and just do a new reply.
@JamminJerry Funny thing, Ava on my machine is lower pitched even though it's set to 50, and sounds quite a bit different than in your recording. Strange times.
people are probibly going to disagree with me, but at least to me, this voice sounds a little bit like the cortona voice. like I said, this is just me though. maybe I am way off.
@JamminJerry I'm beginning to wonder whether it's actually working properly. Both Andrew and Ava are in my case, Ivona voices, so though the name says one thing, the voice is another, which was already installed on my system.
@JamminJerry I think it's not using that voice at all, like I say. It's using some other voice on the system already, and claiming it's Andrew or Ava. I can't prove it apart from on my own system, but compare the sound of the voices you have, to things already on your system.
In the first draft of the Black Mirror episode for this scenario, a Waymo exec has a medical crisis and the ambulance can't get there on time because the streets are choked with Waymos.
In the final script, Waymo invites PG&E employees to their blowout holiday party, with free Waymo pickups. Most of the staff is in those Waymos when the power goes out; they're stuck all over the city, unable to solve the problem.
SF’s is having a massive power outage. We ended up having to drive across SF to find a laundromat to dry our soaking wet laundry. Here’s my two observations: every third block is a traffic jam caused by a confused Waymo that doesn’t know how to handle these intersections with no power. Why are the Waymo’s even allowed to drive right now?
Also, considering how much of our city’s budget goes to the cops, why aren’t any of them directing traffic? I mean, it’s not like SFPD is busy solving crime…
SF’s is having a massive power outage. We ended up having to drive across SF to find a laundromat to dry our soaking wet laundry. Here’s my two observations: every third block is a traffic jam caused by a confused Waymo that doesn’t know how to handle these intersections with no power. Why are the Waymo’s even allowed to drive right now?
Also, considering how much of our city’s budget goes to the cops, why aren’t any of them directing traffic? I mean, it’s not like SFPD is busy solving crime…
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DennisL
in reply to Matt May • • •