mastodon - Link to source

Over the weekend, did you see the much-shared story on Reddit by a supposed whistleblower?

It started like this: "I’m a developer for a major food delivery app. The 'Priority Fee' and 'Driver Benefit Fee' go 100% to the company. The driver sees $0 of it. I’m posting this from a library Wi-Fi on a burner laptop because I am technically under a massive NDA. I don’t care anymore."

Well, it was a fake.
platformer.news/fake-uber-eats…

#journalism #AI


Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit

A “whistleblower” tried to corroborate his viral post with AI-generated evidence. This is how I caught him. PLUS: Grok's image-generation crisis, and the rapture over Claude Opus 4.5
Casey Newton (Platformer)
#AI #journalism
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

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RE: fed.interfree.ca/notes/ah4xrew…

Interesting commentary on the differences in voice preferences by screen reader users and typical sighted users. My step dad has his Apple Maps voice set to an Australian man because it's "nicer" to listen to and he enjoys the dialect differences (car park vs parking lot). Such a different approach from the efficiency screen reader users typically want.

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

2026-01-05 16:25:11

iceshrimp.net - Link to source

The State of Modern AI Text To Speech Systems for Screen Reader Users: The past year has seen an explosion in new text to speech engines based on neural networks, large language models, and machine learning. But has any of this advancement offered anything to those using screen readers? stuff.interfree.ca/2026/01/05/ai-tts-for-screenreaders.html#ai#tts#llm#accessibility#a11y#screenreaders

Sam's Stuff - The State of Modern AI Text To Speech Systems for Screen Reader Users

stuff.interfree.ca
in reply to Amber Hinds

iceshrimp.net - Link to source

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

To be fair to your step dad, Karen and Lee, the popular Australian voices found on most GPS devices, as well as on IOS, originally developed by Scansoft, later purchased by Nuance, then transferred to Cerence Automotive, before finally getting owned by Microsoft, are some of the nicest text to speech voices ever made for casual listening. Largely this is due to whomever was in charge of recording and curating the data back in 2002. They did an excellent job editing and aligning the recordings for use with the concatenative synthesis technology that was available at the time, resulting in the Australian voices sounding noticeably better than all of the other English options, even though they all used the same underlying methods. The fact the data capture was so high quality has meant that as technology and training methods improve, those voices have continued to remain a step ahead. The female version of the voice your father is almost certainly using is based on this woman: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Jacobsen
If all of my favourite, fast and efficient voices were ripped away from me, those Australian voices are probably what I'd revert to. They're not as fast as I would like, but at least they're clear and accurate. Your step dad has good taste.

Australian singer, Siri voice

Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)

mastodon - Link to source

BREAKING: After 58 years, Trump dissolves the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB served as the primary funder for PBS, NPR and local TV and radio stations. Now it is no more.

Meanwhile, billionaires continue to buy up major legacy media to prevent criticism of Trump.

My human rights newsletter remains unapologetic in fact-checked research and justice-centered writing. No required paid sub. Never a paywall. Join us: lets-address-this-with-qasim-r…


Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid

A deep dive into the human rights issues affecting humanity. Pulling from my experience as a human rights lawyer—I bring the receipts to disentangle fact from fiction and advance the fight for univers
Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid

mastodon - Link to source

Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit

platformer.news/fake-uber-eats…

Turns out a Reddit anonymous post was a hoax. And fortunately there are still reporters that fact check.


Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit

A “whistleblower” tried to corroborate his viral post with AI-generated evidence. This is how I caught him. PLUS: Grok's image-generation crisis, and the rapture over Claude Opus 4.5
Casey Newton (Platformer)

mastodon - Link to source
The author of a viral Reddit thread alleging fraud at a food delivery company tried to back up his claim by sending me AI-generated documents. Today I'm publishing those documents in the hopes that it helps other reporter see what we're up against in the age of AI platformer.news/fake-uber-eats…

Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit

A “whistleblower” tried to corroborate his viral post with AI-generated evidence. This is how I caught him. PLUS: Grok's image-generation crisis, and the rapture over Claude Opus 4.5
Casey Newton (Platformer)

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mastodon - Link to source
404 Sight not Found for January 5, 2026 – Puppies and Pennsylvania lerven.me/podcast/404-sight-no…

404 Sight not Found for January 5, 2026 – Puppies and Pennsylvania

Join Liam and Alyssa for the first podcast of 2026. Learn about Guide dog schools, strange city names, and find out what the Ervens are looking forward to in the new year.
Liam's Live Streams

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mastodon - Link to source

Completely different topic, so ripping this quote out of the context from the article I just boosted:

"I wonder how much Venezuelan sensitive information was in fact stored on Google/Microsoft services and accessed by the US military to prepare their recent strike."

This is indeed a pretty interesting question to ponder. And if you're, say, Greenland, maybe consider your use of US cloud services...

mastodon - Link to source

Things would be very different if Harris was president. Democratic voters would be defending her attacks on other countries instead of opposing attacks by Trump.

Just like how they were out to brunch when Biden was increasing the military budget, financing genocide, attacking civil liberties, and killing hundreds of thousands of people when he switched to Trump's Covid strategy to please short term business interests.

mastodon - Link to source

So I'm going to NAM in a few weeks. I got a hotel room with a spa tub in it for the occasion, because I am a boujee bitch. There was an option during the booking to request braille signage, which I thought was pretty spiffy, so I selected it.

I just got a call from them to inform me that the braille signage is only available for the accessible rooms. Naturally the accessible rooms are just the regular rooms and don't have the upgraded tub. So So I decided to just keep things as is and do without the signage (as I have done my entire life)

How annoyed should I be about this?

in reply to Vincent van Itallie

mastodon - Link to source

Drew Mochak

@vitallie @miki I did enjoy it! The food is great, it's very walkable, the trains are solid and everyone I met was super nice. I think of moving there sometimes. But then I would have to learn dutch ;)

I think this is just a case where the ADA has succesfully bullied everyone in the US to do the right thing, which is good. I make a point of mentioning it when I stay in hotels (not that I think it will matter, but, you know, you gotta say something)

@miki @Vincent van Itallie
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

mastodon - Link to source
Welcome pojomi as #curl commit author 1430: github.com/curl/curl/pull/2018…

Fixed missing space in cookie header when using multiple -b flags by pojomi · Pull Request #20184 · curl/curl

Summary When using multiple -b flags, the Cookie header was missing a space after the semicolon separator. Bug behavior curl -b 'a=b' -b 'c=d' https://google.com/ Produced: Cookie: ...
GitHub
#curl

mastodon - Link to source

Today’s lesson: Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. A viral Reddit post about an unnamed food delivery company that delays customer orders takes all of the “driver benefit fee” was probably AI-generated. “Considering the delivery app industry track record of exploitation of its drivers, it’s easy to see why so many people believed this was the real thing,” Elissa Welle writes in her vetting of the post for @theverge. Read the rest of her report here:

flip.it/ZtSm6-

#Tech #AI #FoodDelivery #Apps #TechNews #Transportation


That viral Reddit post about food delivery apps was an AI scam

DoorDash and Uber Eats both deny the allegations in the viral Reddit “confession” post about a “major food delivery app,” and the post is likely AI slop.
Elissa Welle (The Verge)
#apps #AI #tech #transportation #technews #fooddelivery @The Verge

mastodon - Link to source

#XMPP #Extensions and #Specifications ( #XEP )

Read about the new XMPP Extensions and Specifications changes and updates in December 2025:
xmpp.org/2026/01/the-xmpp-news…

#jabber #chat #interoperability #rtc #xeps #standards #opensource #decentralization #federation #messaging

The XMPP Specs Banner

The XMPP Newsletter December 2025 | XMPP - The universal messaging standard

In this issue: Pack your bags and get ready for the XMPP Summit 28, take part on any or all of the three XMPP events on Fosdem 26 and the other two on the RHL26. Learn about Monal IM internals. Last JMP newsletter of the year. Update your clients …
xmpp.org
#xmpp #opensource #Jabber #federation #chat #interoperability #xep #decentralization #standards #messaging #rtc #extensions #specifications #xeps

mastodon - Link to source

Хегсет высмеял Путина и его "аналоговнетное оружие"

"Три ночи назад почти 200 наших лучших американцев вошли в центр Каракаса. И похоже, российская ПВО сработала не очень хорошо, не так ли?", - заявил глава Пентагона.

mastodon - Link to source

The XMPP Newsletter for December 2025 is out!

Read about the latest updates in the #XMPP universe and our #standards!
xmpp.org/2026/01/the-xmpp-news…

Enjoy reading! ☕

#jabber #chat #interoperability #rtc #opensource #decentralization #federation #messaging #newsletter

The XMPP Newsletter Banner

The XMPP Newsletter December 2025 | XMPP - The universal messaging standard

In this issue: Pack your bags and get ready for the XMPP Summit 28, take part on any or all of the three XMPP events on Fosdem 26 and the other two on the RHL26. Learn about Monal IM internals. Last JMP newsletter of the year. Update your clients …
xmpp.org
#xmpp #opensource #Jabber #federation #chat #interoperability #decentralization #newsletter #standards #messaging #rtc

Nicoco reshared this.

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The packaging of the Fairphone and it's accessories has braille! I have never seen any packaging other than medicine have braille. I'm so impressed. Even the location of the qr code is highlighted with embossing. It seems to say "scan qr code for help".

#fairphone #braille #phone #smartphone #packaging #accessibility #a11y #blind

Packaging of the Fairphone 6 with braille and a qr code.
#a11y #Accessibility #blind #fairphone #smartphone #braille #phone #packaging

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mastodon - Link to source
For anyone interested in older assistive technology (namely screen readers and speech synthesizers) I am now hosting a mirror of the Vintage Access Git repository on my website. The original can be found at github.com/nstockton/vintage-a…, and the mirror is at datajake.braillescreen.net/vin….

GitHub - nstockton/vintage-access: Archive of assistive technology software, manuals, and audio clips from the 1990s or prior.

Archive of assistive technology software, manuals, and audio clips from the 1990s or prior. - nstockton/vintage-access
GitHub

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glitchsoc - Link to source

Me: We all know PGP is bad because it forces you to support legacy bullshit like 1024-bit RSA keys, but I'm specifically going to write a blog post about email encryption as not just a technical challenge.

@delta: subtoots my blog post

Their source code: Disables TLS security to support legacy 1024-bit RSA.

github.com/chatmail/core/blob/…


core/src/net/tls.rs at 9d7db202256ee334260c7ebccc3ab6403ee59a6c · chatmail/core

Chatmail Rust Core library, used by Android/iOS/desktop chatmail apps, bindings and bots 📧 - chatmail/core
GitHub
@Delta Chat
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

Delta Chat

Is it too much to expect a bit of precision in your analysis and statements? Doing some click-bait comments like "their code: disables TLS security to support legacy 1024-bit RSA" is very misleading. The *opt-out* to allow 1024-bit RSA is for real-world people that can not change anything about the fact that the server they are using only offers RSA1024.
Most people just use the defaults, and the default is strict_tls checking, and that has been security-audited independently twice.

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

I have been notified about this #accessible text editor written in rust with a lot of interesting features.

github.com/Ambro86/Novapad/


GitHub - Ambro86/Novapad: Modern Notepad in Rust: read PDF/EPUB/DOCX, play MP3 audiobooks, create audiobooks with high-quality TTS, and manage bookmarks.

Modern Notepad in Rust: read PDF/EPUB/DOCX, play MP3 audiobooks, create audiobooks with high-quality TTS, and manage bookmarks. - Ambro86/Novapad
GitHub
#accessible

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RE: chaos.social/@delta/1158424466…

Encrypted content / headers / transport / etc. are great harm reduction, but by no means is it metadata avoidance (in the strict academic sense of what those words mean when applied to communications systems).

Third party actors (e.g. relay servers / network actors) can build correlative models using the *metadata* inherent in the communication protocol (source, destination, timing, frequency).

We have decades of research demonstrating the power of such models - let's not minimize them.

Delta Chat

2026-01-05 12:17:38

mastodon - Link to source

Don't believe those who loudly claim email can not avoid metadata! They are ignorant of our continuous works on minimizing metadata:

DONE:

- no phone number other identifying data needed
- no cleartext "Subject"
- no cleartext "To"
- randomized "Date"
- no IP addresses
- group/avatar/attachment/etc metadata only contained in encrypted message parts

Upcoming:

- servers to never see cryptographic ID metadata
- remove "threading" and auxilliary headers
- experiment with Sealed Sender


in reply to Sarah Jamie Lewis

mastodon - Link to source

Delta Chat

indeed, resistance against traffic correlation is a big challenge. Usually, for instant messaging Signal is used as a comparison basis. Its amazon/cloudflare/microsoft hosted servers, like chatmail relays and their hosters, can do adverserial traffic analysis, irrespective of how much metadata travels in the messages. The question maybe is if there is anything inherently not doable with the email system and in particular chatmail clients that can be done with Signal clients.
⇧