mastodon - Link to source
Tonight, while scrolling random stuff on social media, I noticed something odd and perplexing about the particular voice I use on my devices.
People are both directly quoting and paraphrasing that “First they Came for...” poem.
The voice I use has been reading “Came” as “Come...”
I could not figure out why people were missquoting it, so reviewed it letter by letter.
My braille display is charging, or I would have look right on that...
Still, “Come,” “Came” different words... Context is important...

mastodon - Link to source
I'm posting this in case I'm missing something, perhaps I am. Is the only way to rewind and fast forward on IOS when those playback sliders exist that move by 5 seconds per swipe, to swipe them a million times until you move the desired increment of 5 seconds, even if you want to rewind/fast forward 30 minutes or something? This goes for playing long audio files in Safari or playing Youtube videos. I know there's a rewind and fast forward button in Youtube, but that's 10 seconds as well. Just curious if there's some trick with those things I don't know about.

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Mildly curious if any of my blind followers, or any blind people who happen to see this, do much gaming on mobile platforms (iOS/android/etc), or if most blind gaming is done on desktop these days. I feel like most of the accessible games tend to lean towards being on Windows, and a bit on mac, but I was curious if anyone played on mobile platforms, either as a complementary experience to desktop or console gaming, or even as a preference. If anyone does, what are your favorite mobile games? Not inherently looking for recommendations, just kinda starting a discussion because I'm curious.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Borris

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Sjoerd

yes, just a new instance pushed by three podcast presenters, from what I can tell. They call it an “experiment”, but I am not sure what the experiment is, or even whether they really know what the experiment is. 3000+ new sign ups in a day, which on the one hand is great, on the other hand makes one wonder about the moderation practices of the new instance.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

mastodon - Link to source

In a time when the sentence "junior developers will be replaced by AI" is heard multiple times a day, does it make sense learning how to code?
Yes, now more than ever!

#AI #coding

youtu.be/g5IRn0OzzU4


Learning to Code in the age of "AI"?

In a time when the sentence "junior developers will be replaced by AI" is heard multiple times a day, does it make sense learning how to code?Yes, now more t...
YouTube
#AI #coding

mastodon - Link to source

I have not updated my main Mac to the new OS. I have updated my laptop, and regret it. I am concerned about security updates but I believe Apple provides security updates for not-too-old versions.

This UI, though, I just do not feel comfortable with it. I am hoping I can skip this major version and that the next one will be more in line with Apple's historical attention to getting UIs right.

Please don't respond with discussion about the UI, but: please do respond if I am making a security mistake by holding off on the update.

mastodon - Link to source

I just had an interesting thing happen.

I have an old (needs-to-be-retired) Linux distro for amateur radio stuff, called HamVoIP, which is running a quite old Archlinux.
Linux linkbox 5.4.75-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Nov 9 16:58:39 UTC 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux
This system has Tailscale installed, and is using a node on my Tailnet to route both incoming and outgoing traffic.
This ISP is using CG-NAT, and I want to direct traffic from the internet to an Asterisk PBX, so I have a Tailscale exit node appropriately configured for this purpose.
The registration IP address must match, so outgoing traffic is also sent through that system.

It's been fine for a while, but just this afternoon, this system could no longer access the internet. LAN and tailnet resources were fully accessible, including the exit node itself, but nothing would pass through, until I disabled the use of that exit node and enabled it again.

Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

Anyway, it's working now, but I really should make this system go away in favor of it's more modern 64-bit replacement. It's definitely easier to deal with. Just getting Tailscale to use an exit node in the first place was made more complicated by the old implementation of netfilter.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Canada purports to be a pluralistic country. It recognizes many ideas, many traditions, many communities are valid and worthwhile, and the country can and should do the work to know and understand as many as possible.

X is the antithesis of pluralism. X games anger outrage ignorance and prejudice for gain. The algorithm pushes these idea far beyond the real value of these ideas.

Only the pathetically naive and willfully ignorant don't see this.

Misinformation and its manipulation and the outsized harm and impact is today's political reality.

Solomon is feigning outrage with the naive confidence that his party's own misinformation gains through X, is still worthy and justified, that it will compete with the anger and outrage capable of supporting the killing of an innocent woman.

Supporting X is supporting anger, ignorance fear and prejudice, not very Canadian, or its it?

#cdnpoli

Evan Solomon X.com @EvanLSolomon Contrary to media reports, Canada is not considering a ban of X. Evan Solomon @ @EvanL Solomon Deepfake sexual abuse is violence. We must protect Canadians, especially women and young people, from exploitation. Platforms and Al developers have a duty to prevent thi...
#cdnpoli
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Gordon J Holtslander

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Gordon J Holtslander

For Mr. "Elbows Up" PM and his "What Porn?" Minister:

"Do we really think that a Canadian government that can’t find the moral clarity to act against a child abuse platform will resist a multi-pronged American assault on Canadian sovereignty?"

halifaxexaminer.ca/morning-fil…


The ethically challenged Evan Solomon and Mark Carney power dance may lead to the end of Canada

Do we really think that a Canadian government that can't find the moral clarity to act against a child abuse platform will resist a multi-pronged American assault on Canadian sovereignty?
Tim Bousquet (Halifax Examiner)

pleroma - Link to source

Finally got a chance to start listening through the latest Ice Cube album Man Up and he seems pretty pissed off about modern stuff

Freedumb:


[Intro]Why is the internet not working?
Why are you not working?
Why is the internet not working?
The same reason you're not working
Did you turn off the internet?
Maybe

[Verse 1]
Create a clone through this iPhone
It's the perfect device to get spied on
Swipe up, swipe down, pipe down
Type it in, never, ever write it down
Knowing, it's mind controlling
First you start scrolling, then you start trolling
Yeah, what you know about a prison?
Ain't no rhythm in this algorithm, no
It's about the vision
It's about to be a head on collision
Lost my religion
Motherfuckers gotta Google where God at
I despise that
He under my hat
He under your hat
He in your heart
I bust a rhyme that's better than Mozart
What I look like asking Chat GPT
"What was it like growing up in the CPT?"

[Chorus]They hit me with that freedom
It don't cost you a penny to be dumb
They hit me with that freedom
What's the reason? That shit is treason


[Interlude]AI is learning to escape human control
AI is in fact learning to escape human control
Human control, human control

[Verse 2]
L.A. to the bay back in '88 (Yeah)
I was there, nigga, fuck what your computer say
You'd rather ask a nerd like Zuckerberg
Go ahead homie, go and join the herd
You's a blue light zombie (Zombie)
Become an unhealthy, selfish as a selfie
Go ahead, ask Open AI
When you know that they lie about the fourth of July
Information artificial, blow the whistle
You know that we with you, go get the pistol
Shoot the fat screen first then the laptop
Kill your iPhone then smoke your Xbox
And when they call SWAT, here come the robots
Don't matter if the motherfuckin' door's locked
They shooting in the dark, ripping us apart
Motherfuckers only mad 'cause we too smart

[Chorus]They hit us with the freedom
It don't cost you a penny to be dumb
They hit us with the freedom
What's the reason? That shit is treason


[Outro]I think the most important thing to understand about AI is that AI is not a tool
It is an agent
What's the reason? That shit is treason

mastodon - Link to source
For those who want to hear the ETI-Eloquence 3.3 singing but can't be bothered with the stupid Jammable site, here it is. One song.
Bob Sinclar's Love generation. Now it would be funny to hear it do the Hungarian parody version made of this song, but the English one is way better as it's one person and not multiple like that one. It doesn't do too bad at it, beyond some weirdness on few words, "tear" pronounced like crying and not ripping things, ETC. Ya know, your standard AI slop.

mastodon - Link to source

Open X-Change making a *universally breaking* change in config format & removing features from #Dovecot in the 2.3->2.4 upgrade is telling. That they removed some core features (e.g. unix login auth) inks in the drawing. They are tired of having the world's de facto default open source mailstore server, they want the world's most lucrative mailstore server.

And the page explaining the changes at doc.dovecot.org/2.4.0/installa… is basically a big fat FUCK YOU to the Dovecot Community.
#Sysadminnery

2.3 to 2.4 | Dovecot CE

Dovecot CE Documentation
doc.dovecot.org
#dovecot #sysadminnery

mastodon - Link to source
Indonesia and Malaysia block #Grok access, UK threatens ban as explicit deepfake problem grows - mashable.com/article/grok-bloc… "#Musk has called the government intervention an attack on free speech." so musk thinks #csam == free speech....

Grok blocked by Indonesian and Malaysian governments as UK threatens full ban

Musk has called the government intervention an attack on free speech.
Chase DiBenedetto (Mashable)
#musk #csam #grok

mastodon - Link to source

#writerscoffeeclub Name a poem (or poet!) which has influenced you.

There's too many to list. There's the usual suspects like Khalil Ghibran and May Ziyade who influenced my 19th century Egypt pieces. Lately I've been drawn to the narratives of women and supporting women's wrongs so Abbasid era female poets like Inan, Arib and Faridah are big inspos. He's a man, but also Bai Juyi's Song of Everlasting sorrow which gives a sympathetic look of Yang Guifei.

#writerscoffeeclub

mastodon - Link to source
My home server is back! I updated it to Debian 13, installed an Intel Arc B580 graphics card, and had no luck connecting via SSH. Monitors were blank. I finally connected headphones and a keyboard and found/fixed the problem. It wasn't the card at all. The update renamed my ethernet from enp12s0 to enp15s0, so the networking service was failing to start. It works now.

gotosocial - Link to source
I'm going through the proofs of weakening, substitution, soundness, completeness, and hopefully compactness for first-order logic. At the moment, I'm on the substitution part. I don't know why, but semantics annoy me. The whole evaluation of terms with the structure and assignment thing is just so easy to mess up and there are, so to speak, lots of types that shouldn't be mixed: terms, symbols, elements of the domain of the structure... But I'll get there eventually.

mastodon - Link to source

Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents.

They’ve had their necks kneeled on.

They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear.

At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them.

Revisit our Oct. 2025 story:
propublica.org/article/immigra…

#Immigration #ICE #DHS #USPolitics #News #Trump #Law


Immigration Agents Have Held More Than 170 Americans Against Their Will, ProPublica Finds

The government does not track how often immigration agents grab citizens. So ProPublica did. Our tally — almost certainly incomplete — includes people who were held for days without a lawyer. And nearly 20 children, two of whom have cancer.
ProPublica
#Trump #News #law #dhs #immigration #uspolitics #ice

mastodon - Link to source

I have a serious question out there for those who like listening to music. How much do you think a musician/creator should get paid when you listen to their music?

I ask because the amount is pitifully small if you stream - for Soundcloud it would take around 400 streams for the musician to make 1 USD and that is one of the better streaming platforms. For Spotify, its thousands of streams - fine for Lady Gaga but not for small creators, often in niche markets.

On the other hand many musicians sell their music for a few dollars for a whole album or less than a dollar a track. Yet few seem to avail themselves of actually buying music.

Streaming is killing music and combined with the AI generated trash that is all over platforms like Spotify one has to wonder how much longer the market for music generated by real people will last.

So please, go seek out your favourite musician and BUY an album or track. Don't stream and certainly don't use Spotify.

Hugs, Sammi

#music

#music
in reply to Sammi

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André Polykanine

I believe, a musician must be paid with live concerts, and as for albums, it must be easy to buy a CD as well as the whole album and individual tracks as physical files without DRM. but first and foremost, music must be allowed to play in public places to get known. Like, why would I buy random tracks from random people if I've never heard them? On the other hand, if I hear a track in a mall or in a restaurant, I liked it, I shazam it (or ask someone about it), then likely I'd buy it.

mastodon - Link to source
Well, if anyone ever gets me a copy of SVCTL32.dll / SVCTL64.dll without the timer restrictions, would seriously pay like a hundred bucks for it. But it's never gonna happen. Sigh. That DLL is forever time-locked to something Image Line do in FL Studio to give it proper licensing. So no newer softVoice, no 64-bit SoftVoice build until then. The DLL files at eurpod.com/svfl.zip for those interested. SoftVoice as a company is quite defunct, their website is up yes but as far as a company with filings and public record they have not been around since the mid-2000s. So, not a chance of reaching out and asking for my own licensed copy either. This is all making me very sad, now I've lost all motivation to code.
I tried to see if it was returning the last chunks of text in the callback, but nope. SVAudioCallback is either a query function (not a “register callback” function), orSVCTL only enables callbacks after some other registration step (likely via SVRegister / SVCommand), or callback is only for a different output mode (like “send audio to file” or “external device”), and isn’t used for TTS the way we’re invoking it. That's why my hunch here lies with the demo restriction and a timer that is set for each utterance, that when stopped throws away the last chunks of spoken feedback.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Tamas G

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Jayson Smith

I was about to suggest you contact the registered owner of text2speech.com but of course it's a private registration. Chances are it wasn't always that way, but I have no idea if there's an archive of old whois data anywhere. But of course the fact remains that even if the actual company is dead, somebody, somewhere *is* paying to keep the domain renewed and the website active.
in reply to Jayson Smith

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@jaybird110127 oh interesting. Yeah, that's very mysterious, because the site is just mostly a zombie one at this point, with content only archived to be archived. But I do wonder how FL Studio (well, Image line) got to build a new binary around 2014 or so, at least that's the timestamp on the DLL. It looks like even FL Studio 2025 includes it, so they especially are keeping it alive but of course I think probably have full source code or SDK if they had purchased it back when the company was still alive.
@Jayson Smith

mastodon - Link to source
As a post about domain names comes across my timeline, I am also reminded, for the second time, by the Dot Radio organization that netmix.radio is up for renewal on February 12. Every time I look at the listener count over there, its usually me, myself, or no one, LOL. But that's totally expected. I just through up an audio-processed stream of 90,000 tracks of randomness with a couple jingles and let rip. So we'll definitely call that a half-fast job. I didn't expect to get much out of the project, and I probably don't want something like that getting too big anyway. So it'll probably not get renewed.
in reply to Adam MacLeod

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Jonathan

Hmm, I get a problem loading page when trying to open that.
Yeah honestly as awesome as I find internet radio it's hard to pull something off with which I'd be satisfied. I have Azuracast, but just throwing in some ripped or maybe_not ripped music, semi good jingles and calling it a day seems not nice, but I don't have the capacity for anything else, nor would there be the interest by anyone.
in reply to Jonathan

mastodon - Link to source

Adam MacLeod

@jonathan859 Internet Radio's ship sailed twenty years ago, for the average Joe really. As an assistant manager to a somewhat successful project, as in a peak of ten listeners, and now this defunct project of litterally zero listeners, I can definitely tell you that Internet Radio is a very niche, for select groups, market now. Its popular in the blind community for reasons, of course, but that's about as far as it goes. Even the majority of blindies are mainstreamed, and don't do Internet radio. Its Spotify, Deezer, Apple music, etc, etc. That and TuneIn, and they are even totally commercialized now, with a $1000/minimum per month to list.
@Jonathan
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