The FBI spied on a private Signal group chat of immigrants’ rights activists who were organizing “courtwatch” efforts in New York City this spring. Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller, condemned the FBI’s report in a statement, saying the “FBI surveillance tactic is ripped straight out of the J Edgar Hoover playbook”. theguardian.com/us-news/2025/n…
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Mark Carney has vowed that 2026 will see huge economic growth for Canada's GDP, manufacturing, and exports, none of which will redound to you in the slightest.
Here's an idea: someone should produce a series of ebooks that teach how to use GNOME and popular applications (e.g. Firefox and LibreOffice) with Orca, in a systematic way with activities for each concept or task, then use the proceeds from sales of those ebooks to help fund development of Orca and the free desktop accessibility stack in general, as NV Access has done with NVDA and their training ebooks. I think there would be a market for that.
I've been working through the NVDA basic training ebook, which covers the basics of using Windows with NVDA, with a blind high-school student. I've been repeatedly frustrated with how the book has to cover the variations between versions of Windows, and how Windows still nonetheless surprises us both by deviating from the book in some way. His Notepad had Copilot enabled, and I had to figure out how to go into Settings and turn that off.
Of course, GNOME and (especially?) Firefox are subject to UI churn as well, and Mozilla is now adding AI where people don't necessarily want it. But maybe it's not as bad (yet?) as what Microsoft has been doing with Windows 11.
One possible mitigation might be if the training material was aligned with a recent LTS distro. Maybe the recently released Debian 13 (trixie)?
this makes me wonder if alternatively/additionally we should create a screen reader training app that walks you through concepts like moving through different kinds of navigation etc so that you’re less relying on specific steps and more building skills for problem solving
Yeah I was just thinking we could remove the issues of UI churn by making some interfaces specifically meant to practice navigation concepts and then document them in the app itself so that you don’t have the documentation not matching the reality of the exercise
Incidentally, on the topic of LTS distros where Orca works well on Wayland, particularly with GNOME, I regret that the implementation of proper keystroke monitoring and grabbing, which I prototyped in mid 2024 and which someone else brought to production in time for GNOME 48, didn't get there in time for RHEL 10, which ships GNOME 47. Maybe I could have done more to bring that important functionality to production sooner, but my efforts were focused elsewhere in the second half of 2024.
please don't blame yourself over something Red Hat did not pay you to do (presumably). Looking at the GNOME Release Calendar, 47 is no longer supported; by using 47, they're essentially in unsupported territory, so beyond that this is 100% on them.
though Red Hat _does_ backport features if there is a good reason of doing so, so maybe it makes sense to bring it up. But without a paying customer (well.. all state agencies here) pushing for it, there isn't a big incentive to do so.
However if it's deemed to be important, it might get backported by Red Hat engineers.
Correction: RHEL 10 backported the keyboard monitor implementation in Mutter, and updated at-spi2-core and Orca to versions with that feature. Thanks to @AdrianVovk for pointing out that this was likely.
Still, I think it might be better to align with Debian 13 (trixie), which ships GNOME 48, for my training idea, both because it has a slightly newer version of GNOME (and presumably other components too), and because the upstream distro is fully free.
@AdrianVovk So what distro would you recommend for somebody like me who is quite an experienced user but not a developer? My last linux experiments I had with a Raspi5 where i tried to build my own mini computer with a qwerty keyboard inspired by the BTSpeak. But unfortunately Orca didn‘t work well on raspberry PI OS and i didn‘t manage to fix this by using another desktop.
I agree, any help I coudl get woudl be very nice indeed. Though I'm teaching my self mait. SOme of orka's commands especially for the internet are very layered.
1. Pair this with a blind-friendly distro that has everything configured (you'd need NFB/ACB support for this, as you probably need the metaphorical "company letterhead" to get secure boot certified).
2. Autotranslate into all the languages via LLMs. Sure, human translations are better than automatic translations, but automatic translations are better than nothing. Source: Not a native English speaker, I've actually relied on them back when Google Translate was borderline unusable.
3. Preferrably, pair this with scripts that can "walk through" the scenarios described in the book, making sure Orca output stays consistent as versions change. You could also this to automatically record multilingual walkthroughs, with human-written commentary between the steps.
NVAccess basically ignores 80+% of the addressable market with their basic training materials. While NVDA itself is translatable (and actively translated), everything else, including their website, is pretty much as hostile to international visitors as you can get. This is pretty hypocritical, as the English-speaking countries are the ones where you're most likely to get either JAWS, government-sponsored AT training, or both.
I doubt we'd need a fully custom distro, with its own boot loader and unified kernel image that would need to be specially signed for Secure Boot. A stock boot loader and UKI from one of the major distros should be enough. For the rest of the distro, a Debian Pure Blend (debian.org/blends/) might be enough.
I really like the idea of using the training activities as regression tests.
@hj I'm gonna be frank the Graphene guy(s) being complete schizos on fedi reinforces the fact that there's literally no other mobile operating system I want to use.
@prettygood @hj it's really concerning. They seem like people you can't trust because they'll ragequit or burn out trying to litigate every opinion on the planet instead of doing their jobs. If they don't burn your money on shitposting, they'll definitely do it on lawyer fees.
I also wish all friends a happy new year! We have been spending ours with a good friend from Canada, for the last 5 or so days she has been here and we've spent it watching shows, going out to bars and introducing her to Sopapillas as they're made here in New Mexico. What a grand old time.
also something new I learned: In Canada, "reading socks" are cozy, thick, often fleece-lined slipper socks designed for warmth and comfort while reading, popular in bookstores like Chapters/Indigo and sold by various Canadian retailers and artisans, featuring styles from simple fleece to Canadian-themed designs using wool or synthetic blends. Until now I have not heard the term "reading socks" used, but it makes perfect sense!
Wow, so excited! My replacement Cadence arrived today. Tactile Engineering were kind enough to also include for us four hard-shell cases, so both Jess and myself get two of them, one for each Braille display unit. These cases are rectangular and pocketable, with a nice pocket for a charging cable on the inside, and a strap that you can secure over the display whilst it is in the case to keep it from moving around. Really like them, it'll really be useful for my international travels. New display works perfect, no uncalibrated pins causing troubles on it.
I was asked by a family member why it was taking so long to paste something large into a new Microsoft Word document on their computer, I sarcastically replied it was because it takes a while to upload it all to the copilot AI nonense first. And then I realized accidentally I might be right...I disabled copilot in Word and it went back to being instant again
So that's cool that Microsoft seems uploading everything you paste into a new Word doc to their servers now.
[Blog Post] AppleVis Announces Winners of the 2025 Golden Apple Awards https://www.applevis.com/blog/applevis-announces-winners-2025-golden-apple-awards?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
“‘If a fire occurs in the cabin, if we land on water, don’t check on the immigrants. Just make sure that you and the guards and the people that work for the government get off," one flight attendant was told.
“It was as if the detainees’ lives were worthless,’” said another.
I'm doing a tutorial series on how to create custom Ghost themes and switching from WordPress and I really didn't want to make the usual boring thumbnail, so I decided to draw it. I'll ink it and color it by hand and fix any weird stuff digitally in Gimp. Doing things with your hands, what a concept
linux is fun because sometimes you boot up and your monitor goes "by the way, i'm 640x480 now :)" and you go "why are you 640x480 now?" and it goes "dunno :)"
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Mark Carney has vowed that 2026 will see huge economic growth for Canada's GDP, manufacturing, and exports, none of which will redound to you in the slightest.
Does anybody have a good recommendation for a book about the history of cooking ingredients? For example I'd love to read about how onions came to travel the world and be a staple in nearly every type of cooking.
Every time the people rise up, I hope against hope that this time, the regime will finally topple and that the people will have representative democracy.
Beautiful culture and very hospitable people, not to mention the amazing food! I wish them lots of success, but not sure if this can happen without military support.
@vick21 Yes, I also heard much positive about Iranians as people. BTW, if you don't know, I highly recommend you Farya Faraji on YouTube. He lives in Canada for a long time now and he makes lots of songs in different languages, but what I like about him especially is his epic talks where he tells about Oriental music from a native perspective, not from a Westerner's view. Absolutely must watch for someone interested in music theory.
I have felt annoyed and aggrieved by the 'let's be honest: we had no idea how bad this was gonna be- it's SHOCKING' year in review posts.
Motherfuckers, this is because you live in willful denial. Many of us told you and we aren't fucking Nostradamus- we knew because we simply **listened to what they said they planned to do** **knew and cared about people and communities who had been horrifically impacted last time** and **maintained a basic awareness of the last 100 years of Western history and noticed the places it rhymed**
This is not rocket science and I'm fucking pissed that amnesia and stupidity get to meme 'reality.'
#SelfHost week 0. Phase 1: in the end I've chosen hostinger. As a first approach. It has a very frustrating interface on adding records when referring to DNS, and even in state/province while registering domain's contact info. They are combo boxes, detected as edit boxes through #accessibility equipments. Now waiting for it to propagate dns on #YunoHost 's admin interface on a subdomain. Installed yuno host via terminal, then even post-installation done via terminal: yunohost tools postinstall or whatever it was. Had some trouble with letsencrypt in the end, but now they should be solved. Phase 2 will be installing an app, I'll get to it as soon as everything's on track. Even thinking of placing #WordPress English speaking blog there. Let's see.
@menelion It has several functions for beginners. I looked at Contabo but I didn't like the interface so much. Didn't look at Hetzner yet. But I think I can transfer my data somewhere else
Hetzner's interface was very accessible when I looked at it, but I found several threads where people told they deleted accounts out of the blue. What didn't you like about Contabo? I'm in search for a fast SSD/MVMe storage VPS in Europe.
I don't know why I've been seeing this pop up around me regularly lately, but I have. So apparently this needs to be said: it is never, *never* okay to pick and choose who you use the right pronouns, name, and terminology for. You are not allowed to use one person's preferred pronouns, but then refuse to use another's preferred name or pronouns. You are not allowed to make excuses as to why one person's chosen name is too hard, but another person's is not. You use the chosen name and pronouns of anyone and everyone around you. Nobody has any right to pick and choose whose identity is valid and whose is not. Just. Support. Everyone. Who. Is. Identifying. In. Good. Faith. And. Not. Harming. Anyone. Else. Fuck sake.
@bagder I have a question: what are you using for lighting your your release videos? I a novice with videos/streaming but wanna start with a reasonable setup.
I do them during daytime so that I can take advantage of daylight from my ceiling windows as I'm not too happy with the light setup otherwise. Still in my TODO to improve.
I've completed my studio setup/patching for my new album, which is already in progress. The piece de resistance is a Manley Core channel strip. It quickly helped make the best clean electric guitar sound I've ever gotten. (Audio proof via some noodling)
Elec gtr --> Manley Core bussed to Ursa Major Stargate --> MXR Layers pedal
Also interesting: there is ZERO buzz or hum from my guitar when it runs through the Manley. This is the best preamp I've ever owned.
a reminder that elitism is to be outlawed in any and all social circles and -interactions
its completely ok to not have a fancy nixos setup with niri, and to use something stock that works for you instead its completely ok to use vscode instead of helix or nvim or whatever, and vice versa! its completely ok if you do not have the spoons, energy or frankly if you just do not want to switch off of windows/linux/$distro because it feels comfy to you
do what sparks joy for you. "cringe" is not real. you are pawsome.
happy new year everyone! I hope everyone focuses on loving themselves instead of driving hard to fit in with those around you. autostraddle.com/queer-resolut…
Borris
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