glitchsoc - Link to source
Discussion of AI, CSAM on X, hypocrisy

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mastodon - Link to source
Right now it relies on eSpeak only for one thing: turning text into phonemes. The actual sound generation, timing, and prosody all live elsewhere.
The big question ahead: how hard would it be to decouple from eSpeak and build our own text→phoneme layer?
The answer is: non-trivial, but very doable — especially for languages like Hungarian, where spelling is regular and stress rules are simple.
The hard part isn’t DSP. The engine already works.
The real work is linguistic: normalization, phoneme rules, edge cases, and a lot of listening and iteration.
It’s the kind of challenge that rewards patience more than clever tricks — and honestly, that’s part of the appeal.

mastodon - Link to source
Victory adds Braille to its amps at no extra charge for blind players like @bermudianbrit thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/…

Victory adds Braille to its amps at no extra charge for blind players like myself - Amps Discussions on theFretBoard

For those that haven't seen this initiative: https://mixdownmag.com.au/news/victory-amplification-reveals-world-first-braille-guitar-amp/
theFretBoard
@Matthew J

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mastodon - Link to source
I recently had a need for a recursive C++ lambda that captures variables. This isn't possible in the intuitive way; you get:
error: variable 'someVar' declared with deduced type 'auto' cannot appear in its own initializer.
It turns out you can achieve this (albeit a bit horribly) by passing the lambda to itself! See this article for details: artificial-mind.net/blog/2020/…

Recursive Lambdas in C++

auto fib = [](int n) { if (n
artificial::mind blog

Peter Vágner reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source
Oi. I feel so bad for creating more projects for myself. But eh not really. It gives me a lot of learning, and actually if anything I can look into how NV SpeechPlayer does synthesis forming itself, something I can't do so well with other synths. Even if it wasn't completed and early stages, and later they got into Espeak, doesn't mean it's a throwaway project.
This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Kaveinthran

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@kaveinthran Yeah, part of me is curious what improvements I could make to the synthesis itself, but getting ahead of myself a bit. Just getting it working / built for more modern NVDA is a good first goal LOL. The key thing you have there is the SpeechWaveGenerator which to make from scratch would take me something like weeks or months. So already I think just having it for re-use is huge. @NVAccess @jcsteh
@NV Access @Jamie Teh @Kaveinthran

mastodon - Link to source
Was bei der Debatte über Besteuerung von Unternehmenserben oft zu kurz kommt: Öffentliche Infrastruktur ist das Fundament, auf dem erfolgreiche Unternehmen überhaupt erst entstehen konnten. Straßen, Sicherheit, Bildung, Rechtsstaat - ohne das alles gäbe es diesen Reichtum nicht. Oft wird das in politischen Debatten nicht explizit benannt. Vielleicht, weil es zu offensichtlich ist für einige.
in reply to Katharina Nocun

mastodon - Link to source

Katharina Nocun

Trotzdem sollten wir es immer wieder klar sagen. Gerade marktradikale Akteure setzen gerne auf die Erzählung vom „sinnlosen Staat“ vs. „effiziente Unternehmen“, um gegen Steuern zu wettern. Ein Extrembeispiel für solche Narrative sind libertäre TechBros aus dem Silicon Valley. Dabei wäre die ganze IT-Branche undenkbar ohne Vorarbeit aus der öffentlich finanzierten Forschung & massive staatliche Förderung. Dieses wichtige „Detail“ wird gerne weggelassen, weil es nicht zur Ideologie passt.

mastodon - Link to source
Forked and maintaining it here: github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlay…
Thanks @NVAccess for splitting this repo off before the merge into Espeak, at the very least this will be kept up to date to work in NVDA 2025.X and later 2026. Along with other wrappers I maintain I'm adding this one to my projects. Let's see what comes of it tonight, at the very least reviving it to some extent will be a success I think. Since I now have the source it may eventually be possible to modernize this DLL as a 64-bit module as well, as a later goal.

GitHub - tgeczy/NVSpeechPlayer: A Klatt-based speech synthesis engine written in c++

A Klatt-based speech synthesis engine written in c++ - tgeczy/NVSpeechPlayer
GitHub
@NV Access
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source
I did try an early build of SpeechPlayer in Espeak, and in 2021 it already sounded the same as it does today. So what we know as "edward" and the various "klatt" voices are using the ideas from NV Speech Player, but what happened was, rather than maintaining it as another project, NVAccess decided to merge the ideas for how SpeechPlayer worked back into Espeak. This avoided them from needing to maintain another project as well, and merge back research or ideas into Espeak itself. A noble goal, but in the process they destroyed a bit of the experimentation that made NV Speech Player so unique.

mastodon - Link to source
I can't sleep. I'm really missing NV Speech player and it's keeping me awake, that aching feeling in my heart. When you could change all those parameters in the voice dialog related to NV Speech player. Before its ideas were merged into Espeak code you know. I just can't live without that beautiful slider interface, making the voice sound all weird.
(And thanks to Jake's site for still keeping this one archived, truly)
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Accounts from Montreal protesters detail police violence

thelinknewspaper.ca/article/ac…


Accounts from Montreal protesters detail police violence | News

Demonstrators in Montreal discuss their recent experiences with police aggression. As systemic barriers prevent victims from seeking justice, some victims of police violence have taken matters into their own hands.
thelinknewspaper.ca

mastodon - Link to source

Well, that's interesting.

Fender apparently bought Presonus in 2021, which I didn't hear about until just now, and it looks like they are perhaps killing the Presonus brand, starting with their DAW, recently rebranded as Fender Studio Pro.

I am way out of the loop when it comes to this gear stuff, I guess. That's what happens when you get locked into an environment where you can't explore such things for several years. So it goes.

I don't really know what to think about that. Fender hasn't been the most kind caretaker of brands over the years, that's for sure.

My Fender... uh... Presonus Studio Live 16.4.2 digital console is stuck in storage possibly forever, and I'm honestly not sure if I would want to use it these days anyway on account of it's audio interface being firewire 400 instead of something more modern. That made a lot of sense back then, but not anymore.

mastodon - Link to source
There was a bug recently introduced in the latest Accessiweather nightly build which improved app startup performance. The explain weather button wasn't visible even though everything was configured. Bug now fixed on the dev branch in tonight's nightly build in around 30 minutes or so when it runs.

misskey - Link to source

i'm probably going to be told tomorrow that i'm being laid off, so if anyone has a lead on a decent remote embedded software engineering or unix/linux systems job, i've got a resume to send you.

i don't like discussing the specifics of who my past clients have been in public. however, my most recent position was contracting with the kernel team of a major CDN and cloud services provider that i know many people on fedi are also current or former employees of, maintaining their internal linux distribution (an customized Ubuntu downstream) for their custom server platforms, porting forward and cleaning up patchsets to newer versions of the distribution, fixing issues in toolchains and libraries, etc.

i've also done embedded software work for a large variety of devices including medical, cellular technology, and industrial control equipment, in addition to some consumer products. i've done board bringup and BSP development with Yocto/Openembedded, Buildroot, FreeRTOS, etc, on most major SoC and microcontroller families. when doing business logic, I am most comfortable in C and Lua, but fine working with C++ codebases, and can learn to work with other languages if a project needs it.

boosts appreciated.

mastodon - Link to source
Hi @Bri I'm just trying out FastSM and I really like it. I was wondering if it's possible to also include mentions in the notifications buffer by chance? This is one thing I've come to rely on in Pinafore/TWBlue as it makes checking notifications super easy. You could still keep the separate mentions buffer but I just thought it could be easier to see all notifications/events in one place on the notifications buffer if mentions (replies) are there too. Thanks for putting this together, it is a really cool Mastodon client.
@Bri🥰

mastodon - Link to source

sfconservancy.org/sustainer/

This is the toughest time to work at a charity. When a charity posts its fundraiser, the total ask has been vetted 100 times: it's the amount that the org needs to keep going for the coming year.

Unlike your local PBS/NPR station, #SFC doesn't have a service we can interrupt to
pitch appeals for donations (& we probably wouldn't even if we did).

#SFC is short $48k with just days to go.

If you want me & my colleagues to work for #SoftwareFreedom in 2026, please give.

Support Conservancy!

Software freedom is critical to many of today’s most pressing social issues, but it’s only effective when FOSS is for everyone. Support Conservancy today to help make that happen!
Software Freedom Conservancy
#softwarefreedom #sfc
This entry was edited (3 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

One of several drummers on the station, HKC Radio would like to wish a very Happy Birthday to Sonic Synergy's own Christina Campbell! Sadly, we can't have Warren Haynes jumping out of a cake for you, we do hope that your birthday has all the rhythm you could want and does not contain tumor milk.

Catch her and Kevin Sunday at 6 PM EST!

glitchsoc - Link to source

Hey lovelies 🩷

We think we've possibly got a few followers and mutuals who are blind and use some kinds of iOS mobile devices, right?

Enquiring because of a random encounter with another plural trans+ being on Reddit, who advised that they're legally blind and had not found any suitably accessible way to access the fediverse.

Can anybody advise whether there are any such ways, so we can give them some way or ways to join the friendlier fediverse community?

If not, they're stuck largely with Reddit and Bluesky 😅😔

The topic only came up after we advised that we'd found fedi to be much more plural friendly and accepting that most other such places... especially Reddit.

For clarity, we have zero experience of iOS and are not blind (at least presently at least), so we'd appreciate any firsthand experiences very much 🫶🏻

#AskFedi #iOS #accessibility

#Accessibility #askfedi #ios
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