Lying here with a Godawful flu on new years eve, realizing this will be the first year in my adult life where I won't be staying up until midnight, and having that thing. You know, the grumpy #reader thing. Where you go "I want a good book to #read! Right now! That will make me happy and not sick!" But you're grumpy and sick and cranky, so every book on your TBR pile isn't good enough and you throw them out of the pram in a tantrum. Then you go through your Goodreads recommendations for a while, sniffling snot and muttering "Does nobody write any good books anymore? I just want a good book! I must have read all the good books already. All of these books are stupid. Why do they let stupid people write stupid books." So you look through your list of comfort books for a re-read, but it turns out all of those books are also either bad or boring and you hate them, and this must, somehow, be somebody else's fault. I guess I'll just put on some stupid YouTube videos if I can get the stupid app on my stupid phone to work and probably fall asleep between coughing and shivering with a fever. All because nobody writes any good books, anymore. I'd like you all to know that this is your fault. #bookstodon

Honestly, good riddance to 2025.
Bad year for my country for sure, but also not a particularly good year for me personally for various reasons.
Still, joy was had and gains were made. Got my first proper bank account, gained a bit more independence around the house, and best of all, I got all three of the Roland Sound Canvases I've been wanting for nearly three years.
This entry was edited (4 hours ago)

The Technological Genius reshared this.

in reply to André Polykanine

Дадада, значит совпадаем в ощущениях. Сколько раз слышал его, всё время такие ассоциации возникают. Вот и 20 минут назад перед футболом включили и вспомнил что хотел поставить такой опыт с кем-нибудь кто в теме.

As Bulgaria is joining the Eurozone tonight, the following changes have been applied in Liberapay.

- The Bulgarian lev (BGN) has disappeared from donation forms.
- All existing donations and scheduled payments in that currency have been converted to the Euro.
- All accounts which had the lev as their main currency have been switched to the Euro.

Congratulations to Bulgaria, and happy new year to everyone!

Aus meiner Sicht ist der #DIday von @marcuwekling eine sehr gute Gelegenheit, das #Fediverse für den Mainstream-Diskurs relevanter zu machen – und damit die Gesellschaft unabhängiger von X, Insta, TikTok etc.

Das ist aber kein Selbstläufer, sondern braucht Aktivismus. Ein sehr wichtiger Hebel sind naheliegenderweise Multiplikator:innen, z.B. Streamer oder Youtuber. Um diese fürs Fediverse zu gewinnen, könnte dedizierte Crowd-Lobby-Arbeit helfen, also z.B. Koordiniert Kommentare schreiben und hochvoten oder das Fediverse in den Commuity-Discord-Servern thematisieren.

Alleine macht das weder Sinn noch Spaß, darum habe ich mal eine Signal Gruppe gegründet. Wer mitmachen will ist herzlich willkommen.

signal.group/#CjQKIAbMYQ5sq9bz…

#39c3 #saveSocial #didit

in reply to CarK

Ich glaube wir brauchen unsere eigenen (PeerTube) streamer und video creator. Die Leute gehen dahin wo der (exklusive) content ist.

Ohne recommdation algorithm ist es aber extrem schwer sich hier eine audience aufzubauen und der wird teilweise auch aktiv abgelehnt.

gultsch.social/@daniel/1157628…


RE: mastodon.social/@dansup/115758…

The people who dislike The Algorithm™ are either consumers who basically just want an RSS feed reader (nothing wrong with that) or people who brought audiences over from other platforms.

If you’re trying to create something and find an audience for it on the #Fediverse, you need some sort of recommendation algorithm. Otherwise, you’re just posting into the void.

#ActivityPub #Mastodon


I'd be interested to know how fellow blind (especially blind-from-birth) cane users manage with independent travel.
For my part, my spatial orientation/brain mapping abilities are shocking, and I can't walk in a straight line, so the immediate fear of my support network is I won't be safe. Does anyone else have this problem? If so how do you, or did you, get around it? Or is it something I'll just have to accept?

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in reply to Castopod

We hope all podcasters will keep on podcasting in 2026, and that many new creators will give it a try.
Podcasting is one of the last social networks not entirely controlled by a big corporation.
We need diversity, not algorithms! 📻
Thank you to all podcasters who trust us with hosting their creations on Castopod.
It means the world to us!
[…]

Web Performance Calendar day 31 article 2/5: Keerthana Krishnan on making friends with Chrome DevTools and transforming it into a powerful tool for deep understanding, debugging, and improving of real-world web performance

calendar.perfplanet.com/2025/c…

in reply to GNOME

# Thank You to Our Global Community

None of this progress would be possible without our contributors, volunteers, organizers, and users, including developers, designers, translators, mentors, and advocates.
Your passion and commitment to free software continue to drive GNOME forward.

Here’s to an even more innovative and inclusive 2026!

#GNOME #OpenSource #Community #GNOME49 #GUADEC2025 #GNOMEAsia #GNOMELatam #YearInReview

This entry was edited (6 hours ago)

I tried to enable the #GNOME screen reader (aka orca) to test the #accessibility of some application.

I have little experience with screen readers, but the GNOME experience after enabling the screen reader appears to be super bad. I can barely understand the voice. The speech synthesis is horrible, I have heard better in the 90s.

Is this the expected state of free software screen readers? How can I get something usable?

in reply to André Polykanine

@menelion it really sounds like that you need to use commercial systems if you have to rely on a screen reader. In all honesty I had expected the situation to be better in the free software world. Not necessarily great, but at least somewhat usable.

As it stands out of the box you are basically lost. At best you need someone with vision and a lot of Linux administration experience to set something workable up for you. At least that's the impression I got.

André Polykanine reshared this.

in reply to outsidecontext 🇺🇦🕊️

that's it. Nice to talk to you because you are asking adequate questions and take adequate outcomes. Unfortunately, most of the FOSS developers are like… "You need accessibility? Fix it on your own". If you have some time, read this article. This man, the author, is very knowledgeable and he's also on Mastodon @fireborn: fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-w…
in reply to André Polykanine

@menelion Thanks for the nice words. The article was very interesting. It even seems things have gotten worse in some areas.

To be honest, I can understand how especially screen reader accessibility is rather difficult for developers not currently affected by accessibility issues.

I have some experience with it from years ago, but not much. But I try to learn and improve.

in reply to outsidecontext 🇺🇦🕊️

Yes, and I'm sincere because you are one of the very small amount of people who talk to me like this. I even once heard things like "Let's first ditch Windows, and then make Linux accessible". They simply don't understand that for us screen reader accessibility is the same as a display and a mouse for everyone else. If you want to improve something, ask Aaron, he's far more knowledgeable in Linux world than me (I'm a Windows-and-SSH-to-Linux guy). Also, there is Orca mailing list (I don't know the address but you might google for it). There you can find Joanmarie Diggs, an absolute gem of development, the main person who is behind Orca and continues the fight for years and years. Everyone will be grateful if people like you help her.
in reply to outsidecontext 🇺🇦🕊️

@menelion This year it was revolutionary for me to discover "Piper" voices that can be used with Orca (instead of the default espeak voice): mastodon.social/@nekohayo/1150…
This entry was edited (4 hours ago)

Let's do the math. Experts estimate it takes 10,000 #AI queries to match the energy of one single car trip across town.
I don't have a car. I don't drive. So, until you stop driving to the store, maybe don't lecture a #Blind woman about the 'environmental cost' of having a family photo or a cat picture described to her. My #Accessibility tool costs the planet less energy in a year than your car does in a week.

reshared this

Question to screen reader users, just because I'm curious:

If I write using the occasional homophone, perhaps to make a pun, is that something that is completely lost to you, unless something clues you in to the fact that there might be spelling shenanigans going on?

For example, if I had posted the other day, "I can't wait to see Santa's slay!", would you just have assumed that that last word was "sleigh", and never noticed that it was "slay"? #accessibility #ScreenReaders

#Blind #Linux #Accessibility / #a11y folks, I need a #ScreenReader #accessible #email client that supports calendar and contacts integration with #Outlook and #GoogleWorkspace. Thunderbird is out because I cannot find reliable instructions on connecting it to my Outlook contacts. Anyone who suggests that I should either switch back to Windows or use my phone for email will be playfully booped over the head with a pool noodle. Kidding. Seriously though, recommendations welcome. Thanks. #BlindMasto #BlindMastodon #BlindFedi #MailClient #EmailClient

On this last day of the year, I want to congratulate France for its termination of the ARENH law 🥳

This law, in full "Accès régulé à l'électricité nucléaire historique" or "Regulated access to historic nuclear electricity" was a law that was introduced in 2010 by the then French government under president Sarkozy, that ostensibly aimed to introduce an "energy market" in France.

It worked like this: EDF was forced to make available 100 TWh annually to third party companies that could buy this for a mere 4 cents per kWh. These companies then sold it for "market prices" to consumers. You'd be correct to think that this was a massive forced subsidy by EDF to create its own competition.

To add insult to injury EDF was then forced to buy back the energy that these companies couldn't sell, 𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴.

Over the period that this law was in effect, from July 2011 to today, EDF accrued tens of billions of debt. Now that this law is expiring EDF can finally raise their prices, from 4 to 7 cents per kWh, and start investing again in new nuclear builds and pay off that debt.

It is perhaps hard to ascertain the intent of the lawmakers back in 2010, but this type of law would be ideal if you wanted to kill the nuclear sector, which almost succeeded!

Fortunately, this nightmare is now over and we now live in a world where the French value their nuclear assets and are set to expand it by building up to 14 more large reactors in the coming years.

Adieu ARENH 👋

More info on this law:

cre.fr/electricite/marche-de-g…

The whole point of society - all of this - is so that we are all enriched together, that collectively our lives should be better. We invented farms so folks wouldn’t starve.

But a couple thousand years ago a few assholes decided that personal enrichment is the most important thing. For the most part, we’re still going along with that bullshit.

The only way we survive is if we move back to shared enrichment. This coming year, think carefully about how you’re spending your money and labor.

This entry was edited (4 days ago)