by communist meetup standards we had a really big turnout at the communist meetup! but yeah, the fabulous flinta cruising part was like way way way bigger!
First we're way over capacity for the small conference room 6. Relocating to a bigger conference room. There are too many people on the escalator, escalator shuts off. Bigger conference room is closed. Relocate to yet another conference room. Communists who are at that conference room are nice to switch rooms with us.
So out of the blue I got a request for access to a 10 year old Google Docs file. This request also came from someone who actually might be interested in that file, so I contacted him. Turns out he was making **exercise schedules** and had asked Google Gemini for help, and Gemini decided it needed access to my document on a new government law (from 2015). So be careful out there!
It depends. On the web an alt text must be concise. Everything that is important, makes sense, is mentioned somewhere in the text, is to be conveyed. but conciseness is first. Here on social networks, I'd say, completeness is the first and even more important than conciseness. For instance, if you post a meme, describe it even if it's super lengthy. Like: "Three panels from left to right, on the first panel there is a man..." and on and on you go. It's important because *the image* is the unique thing you share, I have to laugh, to think, to be angry or emotional about *the image* itself, without any context basically. Ask further questions, I'm glad to answer everything.
Unfortunately, sometimes the important information is only in the image, not in the text. In such cases, it would need to be in the alt text. (Or the page needs an editor to get the important information back into the text.)
@0x7700e6 Because if you are reading an article, you generally don't want a huge alt text that would distract you from your reading. Even less you want it for images like logos, avatars, social network badges and so on. Also, both in and out of social networks avoid phrasing like "This is an image depicting..." (I know it's an image, my screen reader tells me about it); "This is the avatar of Jane Doe" ("Jane Doe" is enough).
@menelion If I post a well-known meme, is it OK to just say, for example "the Drake meme, with X then Y" or should I be doing "a four panel meme. On the first row left panel a man reacts negatively to the panel on the right showing X, then on the next row he reacts positively to the panel on the right showing Y". @0x7700e6 @micr0
@stib @0x7700e6 I'd do the second, sorry to bother you with that. Because we blindies are kinda... behind the graphic memes. You could probably possibly put a link to a description but rather don't because different clients and different browsers don't allow clicking links in alt, it would be plain text so... unfortunately probably you have to describe, at least for the first time.
@menelion @stib @0x7700e6 I did not know links didn’t always work, thanks for that. On mastodon, does the alt for videos work? It doesn’t for me using the web interface, but maybe screen readers are a little better in that regard? And come to think of it, is an alt description on video helpful?
@avuko @stib @0x7700e6 It's helpful for the deaf, at least a rough description so they could probably send the video to a software for captions (I'm not sure but I imagine this is possible). For us blindies it's helpful when the video is super visual, like only music and kitties playing, for example, or a guy/girl is assembling, drawing, painting, knitting something etc., where there are no words.
@avuko @stib @0x7700e6 For example, my sighted wife likes to watch videos where a Japanese guy shows small apartments in Japan. He never speaks, only sometimes he adds some subtitles in very simple English, as my wife has just said. Maybe he is ashamed of his English pronunciation, maybe he's simply a shy person, I don't know, but he does amazing videos, but super visual. There ideally audio description or at least a decent alt text would work, especially if you share it for a reason (for example, you liked a particular apartment he was showing).
Oh! Thank you for this: I (wrongly) thought that conciseness on social media would be preferred, except where maybe the post contains only an image, of the image is particularly detailed.
I sometimes also might add a commentary or a quip in my alt text - perhaps in response to the post's text, or to add context, or my own reaction. Is this poor practice, though, do you think?
@clickhere @stib @0x7700e6 Commentary in alt texts? Yes, I'd say it's not so good, because not everyone even pays attention to alt texts, and sometimes it's harder to read them if they are super long.
@menelion @0x7700e6 There are dozens of sites where you can overlay your text on popular images to create memes without having to use an image editing program, I wonder if there are any that come with #AltText pre-generated. Eg. in the "Drake meme" format it would supply the image description and substitute your text for X and Y. If not there's my next billion dollar startup, ready to go.
@stib @0x7700e6 there are ways of generating alt texts, but they are all AI-based, and it seems that Mastodon is quite a… not friendly community for AI, unfortunately.
@VincentTunru Yes, from the standard's perspective. but from my personal perspective, I'd prefer the alt on the image. Because I might want to show her to someone, for example. Like "See, here's my CEO" 😊
@menelion If I may ask: I'll occasionally do alt texts like "Screenshot of XY user interface." Would you consider "screenshot" also useless information here and prefer "XY user interface"?
the flinta cruising party was super cute, and we where very happy to trade rooms so they would have more space, but we we're actually surprised how many people came to the communist meetup, we where expecting a much smaller group, lot's of communists and commie curious foks at #39c3, see you all next year.
very much reminds me of the first commie-curious session I did in 2017 (#34c3). We booked the smallest room we could find because we thought it would be a small group; it ended up more crowded than a sauna at Vabali during Aufguss
It's true: the more technical background and pre-conceptions you have, the more more likely you run into trouble with #deltachat 😂 Don't think so much! 😉
@wmd there are many computer people pretty happy with #deltachat ... who value precisely that they can use it with their families and friends easily, though.
With a lot of alternative software, the complaint is that it is only usable by specialists. We are pretty happy that in our case it is more the specialists who need to work harder and read the FAQ to understand that some lines of traditional thinking about eg email and pgp do not apply delta.chat/en/help
What is Delta Chat? Delta Chat is a reliable, decentralized and secure instant messaging app, available for mobile and desktop platforms. Instant creation of private chat profiles with secure and i...
I don't understand why combining delta with Thunderbird (a client mostly for cleartext mail), or importing some cryptographic key is required to value delta's architectures. Do you hack a different cryptographic key into your signal database, and otherwise don't feel confident to recommend it?
@hpk I think as mailclients go, thunderbird is one that gets combined most with pgp? Some people value their trust chains and have very well checked keys, or they want to generate their custom key. Because you can, you get "closer to the metal". Signal doesn't offer it, so it might be a loss or just not considered. That deltachat uses pgp invites people to think im their typical pgo ways/workflows. 🤷🏼♀️
What is Delta Chat? Delta Chat is a reliable, decentralized and secure instant messaging app, available for mobile and desktop platforms. Instant creation of private chat profiles with secure and i...
we are aware of the confusion (it was the whole point of the top level post after all) and doing our best to explain things, and the history of decisions. You seemed to suggest we should make sure to accommodate gpg and Thunderbird users because they are key multipliers, but frankly, we don't think the current state of these tools provides good examples or guidance for secure group messaging ala signal.
@hpk 1) I was part explaining as hpk said they didn't understand. 2) I don't think you need to facilitate thunderbird+gpg users, just that as deltachat is advertised a lot as being based on mail+pgp, it's good to be aware there is a key audience that can get confused by it.
If you tell me something is based on ssh, but I can't do the usual ssh features/flow I'll also be confused if not frustrated. 🤷🏼♀️
@wmd @hpk we are not advertising mail+pgp in the app, and also not in the web site or app stores of today. It's true that until April 2024 we emphasized mail+pgp more towards users and that's probably the background you remember and argue from. Today, we use email and openpgp for interoperability, and to benefit from a massive ecosystem of software and established understandings and code. But the goal is that users can stay pretty unaware about these underpinnings.
@wmd @hpk luckily, the vast majority of today's users don't have the historical baggage, and quite a few read our posts and docs of the last 20 months where we repetitively try to convey and clarify what we are doing and why :) it's still going to haunt us, obviously :)
Important talk by @Mer__edith and Udbhav Tiwari on the immediate and serious threat to privacy and data security posed by "Agentic AI" like MS Copilot and similar.
I'm not sure if I've damaged my laptop's keyboard, but I just noticed that I cannot type e and follow it with t in rapid succession, or only the e will register. But I'll be back home soon and back to primarily using an external keyboard, so it won't matter as much anymore.
So, how was someone able to hack these documents, undoing the redactions that the DOJ of all people had put in place, and reveal the information for all to see? I hope you are sitting down, because it’s going to knock your socks off: “I simply highlighted the text, copied it, and pasted it in a document,” Krassenstein said.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The French government on Dec 30 postponed a ban on plastic throwaway cups by four years to 2030 because of difficulties finding alternatives. The ban was meant to start on Jan 1.
@BorrisInABox I feel your pain brother! Just got an iPhone 16E… My first iPhone without a home button… I HATE IT!!! I'll probably come around though like everybody else. Lol happy new year my friend, thanks for keeping me entertained on here.🤗
@theblindjoe @BorrisInABox Hi. I know that I don't especially like not having a home button, either. I assigned an easier gesture, two finger swipe right to go home, and two finger swipe left to go to the app switcher. If you want any directions on how to do that, I can tell you. It sure makes the students I teach feel better about not having a home button.
@CreativeChris @theblindjoe I personally would find it easier to just swipe up from the bottom with one finger than to use two fingers swiping right. Anyway, not having a home button bothers me a lot less than not having touch ID and a headphone jack.
I am blind. Seeing people who think I'm not worth the effort fill my timeline with AltBot generated AI stuff that isn't even accurate in lots of cases.
Human alt text is always better, because it doesn´t focus on ocular seeing. Seeing people think, and AltBot was designed around that notion, that blind people must compensate for missing "eye-seeing", but that's not the case. I am interested in the meaning of an image to you, its maker or publisher.
Again, human alt text is better, also because it strengthens reciprocity between seeing and blind people. AltBot doesn't but it makes seeing people believe they have done their bit for accessibility. In actuality, the reverse is often true.
Honestly this constant back and forth is the only thing I'd think about in this case. I understand if you feel exhausted working on this alone, or if you don't get enough donations or anything. But this tool has helped many, and rather AI description than no description. Some sighted don't bother and that won't change just because, idk, that person thinks they'll feel more guilty when no AI produces the description for them. I'll lose information most of the time. I can still decide whether I want to generate or read the description. But let's say it's just a generic text, or poster, or dashboard, someone just didn't bother describing. Right I could ask them, but would the original poster actually bother adding the alt text afterward? In the least cases. Yeah maybe some nice other sighted person will describe it. But then the difference is not too big anymore, if you get what I mean. Don't let these little comments from all sides get so close to your acting. That's just my take, and I probably don't have a lot room to talk here.
To clarify, I don't completely disagree with the original post's opinion, but that doesn't mean that altbot is useless. And if they don't want to see the descriptions, you know happy block or mute button.
@jonathan859 blocking the bot doesn’t block its descriptions when people copy them into the alt text. There is no opt-out, whereas there’s an opt-in on your own device: you can use your screen reader’s machine learning translation feature.
Screen reader user here. IMO what you've been doing so far is way more helpful than harmful. After reading the thread, I reckon experimenting with a couple of questions/prompts that could guide someone who's not sure what to write would be an excellent addition. Maybe users land on some choices that set their intended usage. IE someone who chooses "help me figure out what good alt text would be" gets the questions, whereas someone who chooses "I can't type my own alt text right this second" gets a generated description hashtagged for filtering.
Saw the Fediverse described as where elder millennial, Gen X and boomers go to retire from the internet, and immediately felt the peace that passes all understanding wash over me. None of us have to struggle any longer. We completed our time.
Since the last time I checked, it seems that Keycron has been fully integrated into QMK. They have their own folder and layout files and everything. I want to modify my V1. The problem is that it's been years since I made a new layout in QMK and flashed a keyboard. I don't remember quite how I did it last time, and I've moved to a new laptop since then.
J'ai ouvert le flux du hashtag #BrigitteBardot. Tant de haine, tant de joie de sa mort… Absolument dégoûtant. Oui, c'était une femme ayant des propos controversés (par contre, je suis d'accord avec certains de ses propos quand-même), mais c'était une icône du cinéma, une légende internationale, une femme avec beaucoup de talent.
@helenasteinhaus auf dem #39c3 über Bürgergeld, Bezahlkarte, lügende Politiker und ekelhafte Flegel. Retrööten und Reply: Furchbar gern, eigner Upload irgendwo: never ever! #sketchnotes #graphicrecording
I'm a communist. I respect not everyone on the left is a communist or has to be a communist. There are many people of good will and honesty and so on who are not, and might never become, communists.
But the way some people will disclaim "I'm not a communist" as soon as possible, that does make me nervous. Don't want to be a communist, fine, don't be one; but making it sound like it's a cult or a disease or a crime? That's slightly alarming.
Does anyone have the manual for the old Sable audio RPG maker? Specifically looking for inspiration to make the Godot tilemap editor accessible and reading its manual might help.
Alternately, are there any good and documented accessible tilemap editors whose docs I can look to for inspiration?
Vous avez entendu les AI bros dire qu'il fallait mettre des datacenters dans l'espace ? Bah c'est une immense connerie. "The short version: this is an absolutely terrible idea, and really makes zero sense whatsoever. There are multiple reasons for this, but they all amount to saying that the kind of electronics needed to make a datacenter work, particularly a datacenter deploying AI capacity in the form of GPUs and TPUs, is exactly the opposite of what works in space." taranis.ie/datacenters-in-spac…
I have disabled every fucking piece of AI bullshit I can find from Firefox and DESPITE THAT today I got ambushed by a new ASK AN AI CHATBOT line in a fucking image context menu
Every year around this time, I make my “This year really could have been an email” joke, but this year really couldn’t have been. There was just too much 2025.
A large amount of insulin was found at #39C3. Anyone who can describe how it is packaged and where it was probably lost can pick it up from us at CERT.
Blind math students, how do you organize substitutions? Examples include double u-sub and maybe dimensional analysis. I need help. My brain falls apart after so many lines. Informed comments/advice/suggestions only please
I obviously haven't done this in a few years, but I used to work with a two-editor workflow, where one editor was the entire solution, the other was the most important lines / results that I knew I'd need to recall in the future.
#39c3 .ending .. quite an enjoyable blast, and thanks to all the wonderful people just dropping by to say "thank you, it all works very nice for us"! 🥰 Certainly raised team spirits :)
This year around, apart from one #chatmail relay setup workshop we didn't do any registered events at congress. Pushing out releases, Illnesses and engagements in various other organizing prevented more public sessions. Next ones will be around #fosdem2026 where also several of us will be around. Cheers!
Well, I saw on slovak local donating organization some adult NSFW content in the footer of the page. It was not visible, it was just read by screenreaders.
@ondrosik TeamTalk's homepage had one of those as well. Apparently the link itself was tiny such that people couldn't see it, but it was probably used to get more clicks on the site or something. In that case it was a compromised wordpress installation I think. I see the Amazon thing as well.
Many people redact PDF content by covering it up with a black or white rectangle, forgetting that, unlike in purely visual formats, that operation does basically nothing in PDF. The content is still there, the renderer is just instructed to draw a white rectangle which occupies the same position and covers it visually.
Sometimes, you can also find sloppy employees leaving notes to other people working on the PDF, especially if the documents are only intended for print, and the electronic version is only given out in special circumstances.
@miki Thanks, you reminded me to post about the Epstine files which can be "hacked" via this "method" (the hacking method being you read them normally in your browser)
@miki @pitermach @ondrosik If you are playing Codenames in a browser, you can cheat by hitting insert+f on the hidden card. Nine times out of ten it will tell you the color.
Add support for UTF-8 barcodes
Add duplicate option to main screen and reorder options slightly
Fix column count setting not being applied to group card list
Remove theme colour support
Reduce max ...
This is also the first release using Jetpack Compose, Google's "new" UI toolkit. It is only used in the About activity for now but the plan is to eventually use this in all activities instead of the old Android XML layout engine, which Google is definitely giving less priority for bugfixes and features.
I would like to specifically thank @theimpulson and @Iamlooker for helping me out so much while I was trying to wrap my head around it, your help has been amazing.
Every day I scroll through my feed and I see proud announcements like:
“First Alpha Relase of HyperTurboWidget available"
or
“Version 2.7.1 now with improved glorb handlers!”
or
“Flux Capacitor version 4.5 is out”
… and I sit there wondering if I should be excited, terrified, or calling a licensed electrician.
Don’t get me wrong, I love open source. I just have no idea what three quarters of these projects actually do. Are we talking about a web server? A file system? A middleware thingy that keeps the flux from overflowing into the space–time continuum?
So, dear OSS developers of the world: When you announce a new release, please give us (your adoring but slightly confused audience) just a tiny bit of context.
Tell us what your software does.
Tell us why this release is cool.
Tell us what it requires to work.
Example:
We are proud to announce Flux Capacitor version 4.5 is now avalaible. While it creates a nice wormhole to 1955, it requires an underlying gigawatt stack 1.21 to work reliably.
Because nobody wants to cheer enthusiastically for “v2.7.1” while secretly Googling “what is a glorb and why does it need handling”.
Fair reminder to remind me to remind people what Catima is in the release announcements.
Catima stands for **Ca**rd and **ti**cket **ma**nager, it's a little app to store store discount cards, event tickets, plane tickets, etc in. Basically anything with a barcode :)
Small update! I just released 2.41.1 to fix a visual regression in the new UI that mostly affected devices Android 14 and below (but also slightly affected Android 15 and up):
On Android 15, the icon colours can be wrong (white icons on white background). On Android 14 it looks even worse: My guess is that the Android 14 case can be fixed simply be explicitly enabling ed...
the #communist meetup at #39c3 was incredible. Great moment whan we switched rooms with the #FLINTA cruising group to give them more space, and got a round of applause. Very sweet.
A je to venku. Kazdy mame svou trinactou komnatu, veci co nikde nechceme ukazovat. Ale nez se to k vam dostane z uniku v Epstein files priznam se radsi sam. Jednou jsem jel na kole!
My personal stance on AI over the past 6 months has slowly shifted from being very strongly opposed to much more of an optimist. I still think that so much of the hype around it is overblown, it's being shoved in all sorts of places it doesn't need to be, etc., but since I started using AI coding agents, my productivity has gone through the roof. Notice too that I didn't say speed, because honestly I think I take longer to ship code now, but productivity. I actually get more done. I spend a while writing out a good prompt, let Claude run for 20-30 minutes while I go get some food and stimulants, then spend a couple/few hours at least tweaking the code, reviewing it, testing it, etc. But I can now just throw out ideas! If I want to quickly try adding oCR to Paperback, I can tell Claude to try it, go eat, then come back, read the code, learn not what to do when I try this later, and git reset. I forgot where I heard this, and I'm paraphrasing, but the quote goes something like: "AI does not create fast experts; it makes experts faster". Can definitely say that's been my experience. A lot of these dumb tiny AI startups will probably die, I hope AI browsers go to the software graveyard, etc., but LLMs are here to stay and honestly I've come around to it. I still get queezy when thinking about what it's doing to the environment, but also, humans are doing plenty of horrible things to the earth right now that I'm not even aware of that are taking out endangered species and eliminating lifeforms that make the chemical we need to survive, so with or without LLMs we're fucked and headed for global warming. That doesn't mean I don't think we should solve the problem, but it's not the only problem either.
A post full of adequacy and wisdom. Thank you Quinn. I'm even more optimistic about #AI, but I keep saying the only thing: it won't replace software engineers, doctors or whomever, it will just make their work faster. I always read the code emitted by AI, I always review it, but it's a tremenduously helpful tool in my toolbox, and even more, it's a helpful assistant. Have a great 2026!
@menelion As just a light user myself, and I still remember how to use a browser, I too, find it an aid not a replacement for common sense. A nuanced take. Thank you both for sharing your perspectives.
Re last: I absolutely love doing accessibility work with Jujutsu. Often I start with an inaccessible base and iterate my way out of the fog--fixing one accessibility issue only reveals another, and another. Git's model makes that tricky--make commits, then individually peel them off onto separate branches when it's time to merge.
With JJ on the other hand, I can stack changes one on top of the other without even thinking about it. Fix accessibility issue, jj new, fix another, jj new. It's usually obvious from jj diff what I fixed, so I can jj edit and jj describe the changes later if I'm just in the zone and don't want to workshop a commit description right now. When it's time to pick apart PRs, jj rebase -s q -s r -s s -s t -d p rebases everything on the most recent upstream change at once, then I just jj edit q and jj bookmark set <branch-name> for each change. A jj git push --allow-new pushes everything at once. When the inevitable PR feedback arrives I just jj edit <bookmark name>, make the changes, and jj git push again. No need to explicitly re-commit since that happens automatically. Then when I want my own private build with all the new a11y goodness, jj new q r s t puts me in a brand new commit with everything merged. Find a new accessibility issue with code I've edited? No problem--just edit the code live on my change, jj absorb, and it merges that code into whichever revision in my history last touched it. If it's at all ambiguous, jj squash merges the changes into an explicit target, and a jj git push updates all the affected PRs without me having to think about it.
I speak up for migrants a lot. You know, because I am one. And because it’s the right thing to do. Every now and then, I get a Faragite telling me if I love migrants so much, I should house a refugee.
Passphrases vs. Passwords "Through 20 years of effort, we've successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess."
I worry non-technical people with too much power are going to read this and be emboldened continue the age-old tradition of using a password system where it discards the characters after their maximum (which suspiciously seems to always be 15 or 16 characters) but considers the truncated values to be different from the exact same 15 or 16 characters when you realise the password field to log in stops processing input at 15 or 16 characters.
In case one of those people reads this, 34,000 years sounds like a lot, but this is what computers can do right now. Five years ago, that same brute force would likely have taken orders of magnitude longer. Ideally, you want "Sol will go supernova before they brute force this password using the hardware available in [current date]"
Passphrases help keep the complexity more manageable, but someone already posted the XKCD. Just please, for fuck sake, don't be hostile to password manager users. A copy/paste is arguably more secure than just manually typing it in before we even consider how the password manager encrypts it.
here is one thing I think but for some reason the security industry seems to disagree with me. So let's say you have a password and it's 12 characters long. If you say in the requirements it must have 1 uppercase, 1 lowercase, 1 number, and 1 special character doesn't that actually simplify cracking as the hacker knows the requirements? Like assuming all those characters are allowed but not required isn't the possible number of passwords greater?
Really. Which computer? My laptop? An AI rig? What is the application of the password? How is it stored? How is it hashed? How is it applied? This table can't be taken literally.
UNIQUE passwords matter 1000x more than STRONG passwords. With very very few exceptions, password cracking shouldn't even be in a normal person's threat model. If somebody is cracking your password they already have your data from that platform. The only thing password cracking does is let them use your password to authenticate to other platforms, but that doesn't work if it's a unique password
We need to stop people to use long to complex passwords. That's not a useful thing to teach people. Instead, teach them to use a password manager and a unique password for every site!
and then your password manager stops working. Happened to me a few years back when the developer quit and the software stopped working at the next platform update. I now use a password protected local Excel file because I believe Excel will be available during my lifetime (71 yo)
this. On systems which allow long passwords, I'm now using very long phrases (think lines from songs — I'm not actually using lines from songs, but the phrases are of similar length). The benefit is I can remember them WITHOUT a password manager; and if I should forget them, I have a crib — but only I know what that crib is.
When people say: "billionaires shouldn't exist" that isn't a call to violence. "Being a billionaire" isn't some inherent property in the way that say, skin color is.
Wealth taxation is a perfectly acceptable way of eliminating all billionaires. That doesn't mean billionaires stop being people, they just stop being billionaires.
Mastodon* is in desperate need of a rebrand and a repositioning in the minds of the general public (imo).
There's no reason why a Mastodon address couldn't come with all the cachet of a public library card, or a PBS tote bag—that is to say something that signals “I am more than just a content creation machine for a corporation.”
It could be a status symbol for all the right reasons.
*The collective brand, so much as the general public sees Mastodon as such.
Dmytri
in reply to Emily 🏳️⚧️ (she/her) @ 39C3☎️8304 • • •Emily 🏳️⚧️ (she/her) @ 39C3☎️8304
in reply to Dmytri • • •MarcusG
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