Fuck online dating. Some YMCA people swipe for a friend for hours now and it is not only boring but also kinda racist the way they just constantly judge on the appearance of the suggested people. These days we no longer meet to htalk, we meet to that kind of bullshit.
That's what I ask you. Something random about online dating and then friends meeting to swipe to look at peoples looks and being racists? That sounds a bit weird to me or I'm clearly missing context
@McOi Basically any online dating app these days is a feed with suggested profiles, you swipe left and right to like/unlike, very generally. So that's where the swiping comes from. And well, as you can imagine 90% of that decision whether to like/not comes from looking at the images people put on their profile there. And then of course if you're a group or random bored young adults you can make a bunch of random weird/stupid and also racist comments about said pictures.
Ah kayyyy I see. Idk where racism comes from though, thought germany is a typical lean left sosioity and any youth would call you racist rather than being one themself. But ofc things can change after 4 years, how would I know.
It still needs a lot of work, but I just used NVDARC on iOS to control my Mac using NVDARC's Be Controlled mode, to connect a bluetooth keyboard to my Mac. All on the touch screen.
Wow, processing images with M4 Pro makes quite a big difference as compared to, say, M2 pro. I just replaced ChatGPT and Gemini for VOCR with Gemma3:27B and the latency is quite quite impressive. It’s tiny bit slower, but still bearable. I am impressed so far!
I've been thinking about these things too. If people are actually using it I'll spend a little time improving it. I've also been thinking about changing it so we prep a zfs filesystem with the base and just clone it for the deployment. It's faster this way and will also be saving disk space with bclones.
Today being World #Braille Day, I acknowledge that to most, it's a series of random-seeming dots on elevators or ATM's. To me, and other #blind people, it's the gateway to literacy, education, and success.
My parents made me learn it and print simultaneously, suspecting my usable vision wouldn't last forever. They were right.
But thanks to Braille, I'm functionally literte, and I attribute much of my life's personal and professional success to this dotted code.
Introducing Whack A Braille! A new Blind-first and a11y-first audio-based game aimed at increasing typing skills and #Braille literacy. Multiple game and input modes, fun sounds, and you earn tickets with each round that you can use to get silly prizes when you cash out at the Prize Counter! Practice your Perkins typing with the home-row setting and your grade 2 symbols and word signs. I'm still iterating, but enjoy this initial release. Go whack some moles! marconius.com/fun/whackABraill…
What the EU fails to achieve, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain and Uruguay are succeeding in doing.
This evening, they issued a statement condemning the aggression against #Venezuela as contrary to international law and warning against ‘leading’ the country in order to exploit its resources.
Full text:
Statement from Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay regarding the events in Venezuela
Presidency of the Government - 4.1.2026
The Governments of Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay, in light of the gravity of the events that have occurred in Venezuela and reaffirming their adherence to the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, jointly express the following positions:
1. We express our deep concern and rejection of the military actions carried out unilaterally on Venezuelan territory, which contravene fundamental principles of international law, particularly the prohibition of the use and threat of force, and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of States, enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. These actions constitute an extremely dangerous precedent for peace and regional security and endanger the civilian population.
2. We reiterate that the situation in Venezuela must be resolved exclusively through peaceful means, through dialogue, negotiation, and respect for the will of the Venezuelan people in all its expressions, without external interference and in accordance with international law. We reaffirm that only an inclusive political process, led by Venezuelans, can lead to a democratic, sustainable solution that respects human dignity.
3. We reaffirm the character of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, built on mutual respect, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and non-intervention, and we call for regional unity, beyond political differences, in the face of any action that jeopardizes regional stability. Likewise, we urge the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Member States of the relevant multilateral mechanisms to use their good offices to contribute to the de-escalation of tensions and the preservation of regional peace.
4. We express our concern regarding any attempt at government control, administration or external appropriation of natural or strategic resources, which is incompatible with international law and threatens the political, economic and social stability of the region.
domingo, 4 de enero de 2026. La Moncloa. 04/01/2026. Comunicado de España, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, México y Uruguay frente a los hechos ocurridos en Venezuela [Prensa/Actualidad/Presidencia del Gobierno]
I don't know about you, but the neural TTS models, like the ones you hear from Gemini and ChatGPT do not sound all that natural to me. They are sort of natural but sound weird to my ear. The intonation, inflections, etc... I can't quite explain.
To me, neural TTS MODELS like Gemini and GPT sound like something that’s always pre planning what comes next. They don’t sound genuine. They sound natural, but at the same time kind of fake. Between Gemini and GPT, I’d say GPT is better at sounding natural, but it still doesn’t sound like a real person at all.
@PinkSnowFlake I know this is arguable, but I just wish they stopped inserting those Ums" and other similar utterances. This is actually what gives them away... :)
Yeah, exactly, that’s what gives it away and makes it sound fake. Someone on my team hates that too, he always says it makes the AI TTS models sound drunk. And yeah, it really does feel like that 😅
@PinkSnowFlake I will say, we need those disfluencies, though. Things like uhm, urr, etc. are language/region defining and are necessary for actual natural sounding speech. It's just that they are currently done super-badly. But let's be fair, 10X better than even 3 years ago, so it's getting there. I remember the first time I heard a TTS smile. IBM did a demo of the sentence, "These cookies are delicious!". This was over a decade ago. It's geting there.
@sinabahram @PinkSnowFlake Yeah, I am not saying we don't need them. I am just saying that, as of today, they sound very natural. THis in turn makes the neural TTS speakers sound weird! BTW, slows down the communication as well. I can at least speak for myself! :)
@PinkSnowFlake Totally agree. Although, what really bothres me is the downward sweeping tone/mumble that happens ocasionally. That really makes the OpenAI Soul voice in particular sound drunk. The best I've heard is either ChatterBox or VibeVoice, but even those are just so not just there yet. Fingers crossed that 2026 will yield a proper open source TTS with emotional queues.
I 100% agree. AI speech quality has improved by an order of magnitude, and it is continuing to get better every quarter. But, natural sounding voices? No, I'm sorry, we haven't past that particular threshold just yet.
Heya, asking my fellow kinky nerds because my DuckDuckGo-fu hasn't given me results: is there any software that makes connected sextoys usable like smartwatches and other wearables, so they can vibrate (or anything else) when you get notifications, an alarm rings, or anything else? I know of buttplug.io and I guess there could be some way to achieve an Intiface <=> Wearable API bridge, but I haven't found any project doing so
NGL it's mainly out of curiosity, but I know at least 2 ppl that would be interested about this
Braille is often thought of as being outdated & not used because there's technology instead, however, I personally know people who still use it.
They use tech, but there's cases where braille gives autonomy & confidence faster & easier than with tech.
Last year Spain made it mandatory for accessible labels on products, braille and/or QR codes, especially on products where it's needed for safety, integrity & quality of life.
I love reading large threads of people with absolutely zero clue about stuff, and zero historical perspective about how stuff works, but throwing around absolutes like “this thing is unacceptable” or “the project is blocking everybody”. It’s literally hilarious to witness the extent of lack of self awareness.
20 years ago I would have parachuted into the thread with a flamethrower and unlimited amount of Molotov bottles; these days, however? Nah, waste of electrons. I guess that’s what you call “character development”
None of this history happened in private venues; there are primary sources available to anybody who wants to educate themselves. If you don’t want to, though, I’ll just point and laugh from afar
Remember that virtually all of the economic strife in Venezuela is not occurring because of “socialism,” but because of sanctions imposed in a response to Venezuela kicking foreign corporations out and nationalizing those industries. Same as with Cuba.
The plight of the people of Venezuela, just as with Cuba, has predominantly been the fault of the US government having a tantrum on behalf of its giant corporations.
Ich stelle einen #OpenTalk-Raum zur Verfügung und möchte damit gleichzeitig einen Stresstest machen (bis zu 200 Teilnehmer:innen gehen rein, daher teilt und boostet, so viel ihr könnt)! Ihr braucht nur einen Browser – und Zeit.
Emerged from the #Jabber #community in 1999 and originally designed to provide an open and #decentralised alternative to #ICQ and #MSN, XMPP evolved to an independent alternative for todays #chat apps. #rtc #whatsapp #signal
We’ll be in Brussels showcasing Bliss OS, Waydroid, SmartDock and more from our open-source ecosystem, alongside @IzzyOnDroid and our friends @shiftphone at booth UD2-02.
We’re excited to share what’s next for the BlissLabs ecosystem.
This builds on the hotfix in 2.41.2 to also fix .pkpass files explicitly stating ISO-8859-1 as format.
It also forcibly sets the barcode format of all existing cards to ISO-8859-1 on upgrade. This used to be the only format supported in Catima, so this reverts any sudden barcode changes.
We may need another bugfix release to get this all right. If you understand UTF-8, *please* join in in github.com/CatimaLoyalty/Andro….
STR Scan your source pkpass/website with https://zügli.app/ to verify the D-Ticket works. Import pkpass file. Click save without changing the binary data shown there. Scan it from Catima with https...
Those of you who use the #Deutschlandticket are likely affected in 2.41.0 - 2.41.2. And scanning a Deutschlandticket with your camera or from a PDF file (not using a .pkpass file) will likely not work correctly.
The current workaround for both cases is to manually set the "Barcode encoding" field in the card setting to "ISO-8859-1".
Not currently sure how to fix scanning Deutschlandtickets with the camera without breaking the issue 2.41.0 was meant to fix by adding barcode encoding support :(
I decided to just quickly release 2.41.4 and disable the automatic barcode encoding detection for now. Breaking Deutschlandticket is definitely one of the worst things that could have happened and I don't want people to get stranded in Germany.
Yes, from 2.41.0 - 2.41.3 Deutschlandticket is fully unusable based on the information I have. This includes Deutschlandtickets added to Catima before 2.41.0
In 2.41.4 both pkpass and scanned with camera Deutschlandtickets should work again as they did in 2.40.X and existing tickets will be fixed on installing the update with no user intervention needed.
Edit: 2.41.3 should deal with the pkpass correctly already, but 2.41.4 will fix also non-pkpass
You are the best!!! Instead of going to bed, cause it's late and your day starts early, you take care of your Catima users and give us another update to fix the DE-Ticket issue! Chapeau! 🎩 👍
Saludos, estimados fediversenses: Me asomo por quienes me habéis mencionado. Primero, toda mi gratitud por vuestros mensajes y por el tiempo de preguntarse cómo lo estaba pasando. En este momento estoy bien, dentro de la coyuntura que vive el país. Mi cercanía de zona militar y Fuerte Tiuna nos afectó de manera indirecta: un minuto antes del sobrevuelo se fue el servicio eléctrico. La interrupción nos dejó sin servicios básicos durante 31h. En mi zona residencial se vive una calma singular. No hemos observado violencia. la información oficial que disponemos es la activación de un Estado de Conmoción Externa. Hoy recibimos ayuda de mi compi de grado; mi núcleo lo constituye mi hermana y dos personas de la tercera edad con demencia que no pueden quedarse sin supervisión. Somos docentes universitarias, nuestro salario mensual no supera los $10 (ya no tengo el empleo2), así pues, buscamos formas de resolver las necesidades más fundamentales y este amigo que es como mi hermano, nos ayudó para que mi hermana no saliera sola a las calles hoy. Hay mucha desinformación y rumores, no voy a entrar en eso. Tampoco voy a hablar de política. Mi resumen es que hemos vivido en casa 31 h muy difíciles; da igual cuanta narrativa use, no alcanzaréis a comprenderlo y estoy muy agotada para engancharme en explicaciones innecesarias. todavía tengo que evaluar (dependiendo de mis glucemias) si la insulina que pude comprar (gracias a la ayuda de amigos del extranjero) no se fastidió por la falla en la refrigeración. Si os interesa mi experiencia, solo os puedo decir que no hay nada más duro que la incertidumbre y el miedo. En este momento hay que tener serenidad, paciencia y cautela. Evitar rumores y conclusiones precipitadas.
The 5th Doctor's era began 44 years ago on this day, 4th January 1982, with Season 19's Castrovalva - Peter Davison's first story as the Fifth Doctor. 😀 #DoctorWho
The problem with having a laptop with extremely excellent battery life is that I didn't realize it was on battery power for literally almost 24 hours, until it shut down. OOPS!
Mine isn't that long but long enough to make the user forget that he's on battery power. I have two programs to solve it, but both are for Windows only, unfortunately. The stand-alone is masonasons.me/pages/bnt.php and the NVDA add-on is github.com/vrivrixd/BatteryLev… This is hardly a difficult job for any app, these are just the ones I've found. My problem is that if they're speech only, I can easily ignore them.
So one of the problems with automated #translation based on #AI is that it's in this weird, awkward place now where it's not good enough to seem native, but it is good enough not to be immediately obvious. I had forgotten I set my browser to automatically translate pages in several languages to English for me. Then I clicked on a #fanfic, read the first couple chapters, and was getting really annoyed why one character kept changing Gender's, and the name of a location wasn't consistent from chapter to chapter. Turns out the author was writing in #Spanish, I hadn't noticed the language tag, and when I clicked the browser just automatically translated without clearly telling me. Thank goodness I realized, just in time, before I posted a comment on her work pointing out the issues with writing quality and offering editing help! Yikes! That doesn't mean that I'm against Machine Translation or even think it's a bad thing. But as it gets better and better, and starts living in this awkward uncanny valley, we really need to carefully rethink user interfaces. Maybe disable all form inputs until the user clicks "I'm aware this was translated" somewhere? I had the comment all written, folks; I was that close to posting. Maybe put "translated from" in some obvious place like the title bar? I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that we need to be putting way more thought into it.
The latest version of Mona can auto translate posts using Apple's on device translation models, and for me that feature was worth upgrading alone even if that doesn't yet do every language I want so I still need to do some manual translation. Anyway in that case it does clearly indicate when a post was auto translated. I suspect the browser does too on the screen but screen readers don't announce this. That could definitely be improved.
@pitermach Even Mona only indicates it after reading the text. IMHO, it should be before! I can see myself replying to a toot in a language the author doesn't speak.
The biggest change in my lifetime which I have seen and experienced was going from a society where most people had a base level of trust. We have gone from that to *everything* being a scam by default and nothing you see or read is real.
nice beer, great brewery. I only live a few miles away so am lucky to be able to drink it as often as I want. Damn! There goes another New Year's resolution.
All of you must hope with all your best hopes for my old iPod, because he's being a difficult kid, or should I say, grandpa? He's 6th gen, so if anyone has any outlandish tips, I am all up for them, if there's a hack way to extract the data, that'll be awesome too. Grins.
You're not imagining it. I'm on here less. Not because I'm mad at anyone or anything but because whenever I scroll through here, I see plenty of news posts and very little from actual people. Any tips on how I can fix that without performing excessive technical labor?
Hubert Figuière
in reply to Federico Mena Quintero • • •James Just James
in reply to Federico Mena Quintero • • •Federico Mena Quintero
in reply to James Just James • • •@purpleidea this is not for backups, but (gulp) for the main photo storage. I have backups in a spinning HDD.
What should I research about SSDs without power? I don't mind keeping this thing plugged in, but still.