mastodon - Link to source

Finally did my end of year donation spree today. This time of year there's often matching campaigns or the like.

I know it's been a rough year for many and being able to donate to things is a privilege. If you can't donate to causes, just try and be kind.

I'm gonna highlight some of the groups/causes I donated to in this thread. Perhaps it will inspire others.

🧵

in reply to nirik

mastodon - Link to source

nirik

Finally finally. 😄 I have some monthly donations (patreon, librepay, etc).

Two I would like to shout out:

Friends of #gnome Started a monthly bit to help them out. I use gnome all the time and it's gotten so great:

blogs.gnome.org/foundation/202…

and #techdirt They do a great job reporting on legal / free speach / tech intersections. See techdirt.com/2025/03/04/why-te…


Join Friends of GNOME

This post was contributed by the Fundraising Committee from the GNOME Foundation. This week we are launching an end-of-year fundraising campaign with a simple goal: to reach 1,500 Friends of GNOME...
mariamaj (GNOME Foundation)
#gnome #techdirt

mastodon - Link to source

I’m happy to announce the 12th annual Holiday season Conversations giveaway. 🎄☃️

The federated instant messaging client is now available for free on Google Play until New Year’s Eve. 🧨🎆

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. Enjoy #39C3.

play.google.com/store/apps/det…

#XMPP #Jabber #Conversations_im #DigitalSovereignty #Fediverse


Conversations (Jabber / XMPP) - Apps on Google Play

Federated instant messaging for your mobile device (Jabber, XMPP, Snikket)
play.google.com
#xmpp #fediverse #Jabber #digitalsovereignty #conversations_im #39c3

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source

Do you know the true story of John Mastodon?

He’s the one who took the corporate socials on.

He gave his code to everyone, for any platform you might run.

John Mastodon (ft. Andre Louis [@Onj])
~ #Dgar

dgar.bandcamp.com/track/john-m…

Grab your free copy:
Buy Track name your price
Enter $0.00

Happy holidays from #DgarMusic.
🫶🤗
#Music #bandcamp


John Mastodon (ft. Andre Louis), by Dgar

track by Dgar
Dgar
#music #bandcamp #dgar #dgarmusic @Onj 🎶
This entry was edited (9 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Eh, pls #boost my request to #getfedihired, if you could spare two clicks? 🥺

I've been humming and hawing about posting this, it feels strange, something about generational guilt & working class shame & ... but it's either this or start putting my CV through LLMs to include every buzzword on the listing I'm applying to. I haven't been able to stomach that, even though I presume that's a lot of my competition.

I simply can't get to an interview. Historically, I've done three interviews and got the job each time, because I'm a real human being who is friendly and chatty and presents himself sincerely (or, that's my guess, anyway).

#Christmas miracles appreciated!

In #Ireland with my partner, but we've lived in different places and would move happily. I've a year experience doing an IT support role the last year, but have transitioned to this stuff later than usual.

Before I've done: bartender; bicycle courier for Deliveroo in #Berlin for two years (best job ever); private tutor for five years in #Lyon (mostly piano but also maths, Irish, English, flute, tin whistle); bookies clerk for a short period; a few other odd bits - one highlight was writing reviews for a theatre company.

Oh, very comfortably fluent in #French, pretty fluent in #Irish (my first love), and intermediate #German (which I would love to have a chance to go back speaking and learning).

Tech-wise, it's been mostly on the #Linux / #Emacs / #Lisp side of things. I would happily work on anything that is one or more of challenging, interesting, useful, or moral.

Money doesn't rule me. I want to live with a humane level of comfort, that's all.

CVs and references available, DMs open. Thanks so much for any and all help!

#linux #emacs #boost #german #lisp #french #Berlin #ireland #getfedihired #christmas #irish #lyon

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source
Guten Morgen! Ich wünsche euch einen schönen, geruhsamen und nach euren Wünschen verlaufenden Heiligabend! Und dann zwei Weihnachtsfeiertage, die natürlich auch genau nach euren Vorstellungen verlaufen mögen. Die einen werden's feiern, die anderen werden ob der Familienverpflichtungen gequält aufstöhnen, die nächsten werden's ignorieren, und all das ist voll OK! Nichts davon ist falsch. ❤️

mastodon - Link to source
Brailab, the Hungarian-only speech synth people love to make beatbox with random consonant-combos and yet I grew up with, is now updated to use a faster wrapper architecture and modernized with NVDA 2025.3. This does lay the groundwork for Brailab to work across future NVDA versions, as the audio it produces is now piped directly into memory with the wrapper rather than the DLL just piping it to the Windows audio API. eurpod.com/brailab-2025.nvda-a…
This entry was edited (9 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Y’all realise that the entire computer industry just pivoted to ‘AI Support’. Manufacturers of components (GPUs, CPUs, storage, RAM) are either exiting the consumer market (ex: Micron, Samsung) or severely limiting their offerings (NVIDIA, AMD, Samsung). Instead they are making products specifically catered and offered to AI/datacentre use.

You thought not being able to upgrade your RAM was a problem. Wait until you can’t buy a computer, and only rent one.

mastodon - Link to source
What can I say. Brailab wrapper works. It has some quirks but I built one. Now onto firstbite. I heard the voice, it won't be no Doubletalk style, because it is SmoothTalker 4 whereas I believe the other was version 3. But it does sound cool. I like that voice. Sort of like a hybrid of Keynote and old eloquence. I got it working under XP. But modern Windows, it has a memory corruption errors.
This entry was edited (11 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Mark Carney took a cabinet committee name and speech ideas from billionnaire-funded pro-AI and oil&gas booster group 'Build Canada' last May.

DeSmog and National Observer wrote about it 2 weeks ago and The Tyee wrote about the DOGE proponents among them in February but no legacy media have followed up. #media #cdnpoli

The Tech CEOs Who Want a DOGE for Canada
thetyee.ca/News/2025/02/28/Tec…
Ottawa hands corporate leaders 50 roles in government
nationalobserver.com/2025/12/1…

Cabinet Committee Mandate and Membership Current as of May 13, 2025 Cabinet committees carry out most of the day-to-day work of the Cabinet. Committees have their own members and areas of responsibility, which are set by the Prime Minister. The Treasury Board is the exception, as its mandate and membership are established in law. The current Cabinet committees are: *Priorities, Planning and Strategy. * Operations and Parliamentary Affairs e Treasury Board « National Security Council * Build Canada * Government Transformation / Government Efficiency. * Secure and Sovereign Canada * Quality of Life and Well-Being * Incident Response Group

The Tech CEOs Who Want a DOGE for Canada | The Tyee

Many supporters of a group called Build Canada are also interested in Elon Musk’s effort to slash government spending.
Jen St. Denis (The Tyee)
#media #cdnpoli

mastodon - Link to source
There's a topic on the AudioGames forum where someone was asking if the Blastbay Film Score Themes CDs are available anywhere. Philip Bennefall has kindly made most of these available. The exception is the Epic Romance CD to which he sold the rights a few years ago. His links are available for a limited time, so I've downloaded them and combined everything into one zip file, around 1.5 gigabytes. These files are in wav format. The AudioGames topic has a link where you can purchase the Epic Romance pack, again as wavs, so I am not including that since it's still for sale. Share and enjoy!
Zip file: bluegrasspals.com/BlastbayFilm…
AudioGames forum topic: forum.audiogames.net/topic/581…

mastodon - Link to source

Every goto in the Linux kernel / Just another day on the linux-kernel mailing list

(rave edit)

youtube.com/watch?v=v1Mfirg2-Z…


Every goto in the Linux kernel / Just another day on the linux-kernel mailing list

Visualization of every goto statement in the Linux 6.17 source code.Commentary from a 2003 linux-kernel mailing list discussion about the use of goto.Created...
YouTube

akkoma - Link to source

how can we cut our CI times by 50–90% and reduce our dependency on #github actions, securely and cheaply enough for a large public #rustlang codebase?

we did exactly that for @servo by building a self-hosted runner system that does virtual machine orchestration under the hood, all for barely 400 EUR/month!

talk video:
youtube.com/watch?v=-W1mSXdlRq…

blog post:
azabani.com/2025/12/18/shoestr…

slide that reads: How much faster? - mach try full workflow: 61m30s → 25m47s (−58%) - linux-unit-tests job: 34m29s → 3m15s (−90%) - windows-unit-tests job: 59m14s → 8m4s (−86%) - lint job: 11m54s → 2m25s (−79%) - wpt jobs: 25m35s → 20m50s (−18%) - But we also went from 20 runners → 3 runners

Web engine CI on a shoestring budget

How we built a CI runner orchestration system that halved Servo’s build times for only 300 EUR a month.
www.azabani.com
#github #RustLang @Servo

mastodon - Link to source
Normally I love hearing airport announcements. But tonight, I wish the announcers at FLL would just shut up. It feels like the announcements are never-ending. This gate is loud. And there's a kid who seems to love the sound of their voice. And this chair is hurting my bum. And this is why I generally avoid flying at this time of year. But the first two flights I wanted didn't pan out. One sold out, and by the time my s.o realized his sister booked a flight for tomorrow, the one for yesterday had gotten too expensive. And, here we are.

mastodon - Link to source
Lately I've been thinking about how many things for blind people can unintentionally be a barrier in relationships/getting to know people. I find that a lot of friendships tend to begin from a shared interest. A game, a show, a movie, what have you. And so many of those things are off limits to a lot of blind people. Someone likes a popular game? Oh sorry, I can't play that with you, there are no accessibility mods or built in screen reader accommodations. Someone likes a given show? Sorry, that show has no audio description, you'll likely have to tell me half the visual/on screen stuff that's happening if you want me to get the same context you get. I swear this is not a pity seeking post. This is literally just some thoughts I've been having, I wish their weren't so many barriers to enjoying the same activities as sighted people, I'm sure a rift has been put into many potential relationships because so many common interests were stunted or outright impossible because of inaccessibility or barriers like this. Not to say that is the case in every relationship, I’m sure some great relationships have happened, but it is something I personally do experience very regularly and it gets really, really old
This entry was edited (16 hours ago)
in reply to Kaliah

mastodon - Link to source

Zach Bennoui

I'm honestly so happy I'm not the only one who feels this way. I also find as I get older, I get more and more tired of having to come up with workarounds just to use the same stuff everyone else can use with no problem. It's exhausting. You would think of field like music production would be extremely accessible, right? Like it's audio, surely blind people would be great at that. But no, much of the software simply is not usable or has enough accessibility issues so as to not make it worth it for me. That's definitely changing, more and more plug-ins and DAWs are becoming accessible, but even so there's always the risk of set accessibility going away or having problems that can't easily be fixed by the user.

mastodon - Link to source
I'm so sad I'm making C++ wrappers for everything. Brailab, SoftVoice, all of it. Let's make C++ wrappers for every janky little speech synth that cannot output its audio to NVWave Player. Let's just use the Minhooking method @samtupy used for his amazing BestSpeech wrapper. I've been looking for projects to do while off work. Ther's the projects. Eloquence 2.0? MinHook the fuck out of it. Spend hours, days, weeks debugging each synth. Why the fuck not. Sadness fills my soul deeply, and this helps numb it. I scratched my Cadence displays today because my keys were in my pocket and it left a gouge across the plastic. So yes, sadness fills my soul, deeply, I cannot believe I scratched up my new Braille display.
@Sam Tupy
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