**UPDATE-very grateful that volunteer has been procured! I'm looking for someone in #Canada (preferably #Alberta ) who would be willing to receive (by mail) TWO different Apple 6.08 800k boot disks to see if you can boot your Mac Plus or SE from them. They simply get immediately ejected on my Mac Plus and this would help me troubleshoot the drive (which i've recently replaced). I will of course pay for shipping both ways. I live in Canmore, Alberta #retrocomputing
I’m having a bad ear day today. It happens to me sometimes, I get a day or three where one ear is basically useless. I am very thankful for Braille, because I proofed an important report using speech to the best of my current ability, and it all sounded fine and the spell checker reported no errors. But when I did a final check with Braille, I found I had written “paradigm shit” instead of “paradigm shift”. Oops, that would have been more than mildly embarrassing if I’d sent that off.
Stop the spread of AI Slop. Support your fellow human beings by investing your valuable time in their efforts. Not everything has to be a financial transaction. In this case, all it costs is a little time, which you’re clearly wasting right this very minute.
I invite you to come look around. Authentic stories, artfully told, and always 100% human. Sign up for free alerts to new stories. No spam. Just fantastic tales.
I tell stories. Most of them are true. A catalog of my many thoughts, rants, essays, and letters. I care little for your outrage, but I do feel your pain.
Today I learned about a particularly vile piece of shit corp, Bright Data. Web scraping as a service. They boast about having 150 million IP addresses from residential IPs and "real user devices" (I can't imagine that it's with the user's consent) and being able to scrape petabytes. They brag about their ability to defeat captchas, turning websites into AI data. Like every possible gross thing you can think of all wrapped up in a package with a shiny website bow.
Bright Data is awful, and their home users are willing participants, they offee "free" VPN service in exchange for exit nodes, like a malevolent TOR, their home users are presumably doing something "naughty" that they dont want their ISP or more legit VPNs knowing about. Bright Data probably sells the flow data anyway because they are deeply unethical.
At Vivaldi we continue to make choices that are different from our competitors. We have chosen to not integrate AI or crypto, but instead we integrate a wealth of other features, based on the wishes of our users.
We are a European company with most of the team based in Norway and Iceland, a few around Europe and a couple in the US.
Our servers are based in Iceland.
If you want to get away from Big Tech, maybe give us a try? If you are already using Vivaldi, maybe introduce your friends?
It’s a web browser. But fun. It comes with a bunch of clever features built-in. It’s super flexible and does not track you. Get the Vivaldi browser for desktop, mobile, and your car!
Last time I tried Vivaldi, I recall facing some #accessibility issues. Have you chosen to prioritize that aspect of user requested improvement, or should I look elsewhere? :)
Wondering if the end game here will be Trump saying "Fine you can keep Greenland but only if you keep a ton of NATO troops here" and then he can go "I made made NATO do their jobs, now we're safer than ever" RT: med-mastodon.com/users/cbarber…
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Troops from France, Germany, Norway, Sweden & other NATO allies are arriving in Greenland amid tensions over Trump’s repeated push for U.S. control of the island.
Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok won’t be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal, according to a statement posted on X.
Saying bye to our princess tomorrow. She has a new mass in her lung right next to her heart, and a potential carcinoma in her GI. That’s 2 big things on top of her chronic other 10 things we’ve been managing for the last 8 years.
We didn’t know what to expect, adopting a senior kitty, but we found love and joy, that felt different from having a pet as a baby: that she knew life before us, and she chose and loved us as hard as we chose and loved her.
A single click mounted a covert, multistage attack against Copilot Exploit exfiltrating data from chat histories worked even after users closed chat windows. arstechnica.com/security/2026/…
Update Version 2.6 released for the Brailliant BI20X, Brailliant BI40X and the Mantis Q40. More information can be found here: humanware.com/en-usa/news/prod…
We’re thrilled to announce the release of our latest firmware update for the Brailliant BI X and Mantis braille display! This update introduces learning braille tables, a recording application and support for the upcoming eBraille format.
So, it's a bit unclear from the description. Does the recorder only exist on the BI40X or both 20 and 40? It says BiX only, but calls out the 40 specifically.
@BorrisInABox IMO they've always had pretty rough release notes, 40 only since that is the only display with a microphone. IMO a braille display does not need a microphone.
@BorrisInABox I could at least understand the speakers if they wanted to add support for NLS audio or something like that, or the TTS that they have already. I think that is a great idea, you have a little of a braille n speak thing going on without all the new fancy gadgetry of newer devices in that space.
@jpellis2008 That's why I said for my specific use case. I pretty much only use it as a terminal and notepad, can't hear the speech anyway. So I personally don't care about it, but others might.
Hi y’all. I’m thinking about buying a laptop, I already have it picked out and it seems to have good specs for the price. Since around 2016, my phone has been my main computing device. I briefly got acquainted with windows 11 a few years ago when I was using a small windows tablet lightly and sporadically. I used to be a fairly proficient or at least mediocre windows user 10 years ago and more. I just need to get familiar with things enough to be efficient again. I also would like to get more in to gaming. I like playing games and I have friends and a partner who game, and I feel like I’m missing out by not having pursued this earlier. I intend to use NVDA unless or until there’s something I come across that it can’t do. I plan to read the windows screenreader primer, which I believe just came out with its 3rd edition. My question is, would anybody be interested in helping me get back up to speed? Or helping me learn about games I can play with no vision? No pressure either way, I’ll figure things out a little at a time. But back when I was new with computers and games, knowing people made a world of difference. So I appreciate anything people are willing to give, whether it’s time or resources or anything else.
I went ahead and bought the laptop. I have started reading the Windows Screenreader Primer which is on its 4th edition, not 3rd. I’ve also gotten lots of input from here, Ramblio, and friends. My boyfriend even researched whether this particular laptop would be able to handle certain games. I’m a little intimidated by the prospect of getting as efficient with things as I used to be, but I know it just takes time. I went ahead and bought a gaming headset and a usb hub since this thing seems to have very few ports.
The only annoying thing about the implementation now is you have to read the original message before you can read the reply, it might be better to have that as a separate element or something. Or maybe just have an action that says "read original message" or similar.
Alright, I'm living up to the "vortex" that I used to use as a handle or part of a handle in various places. While looking at something else, I noticed that the at-spi2-core docs were lying and saying that every single enum value has existed since the beginning of time. Hopefully I've just fixed that and not broken something else while mucking around, but it was like a vortex hitting the docs, so no guarantees. Also just made a pyatspi maintenance release (and sent it to Tumbleweed). And now I'm done with anything remotely productive for today. I want some Thai food, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow.
Haven't heard of this app yet, but am wondering if I should check it out. What makes it cool, does it give you more control than most other apps over the mic processing/profiles being used? Have always wanted something like that for IOS.
I don't know about this one, but Twisted Wave (both the editor and free recorder version) allows you to bypass processing, select from three onboard mics in mono, or record in stereo (requires processing, because it's processing that makes stereo work in the first place). If I want a good, clean mono recording, I will often use the bottom mic in mono with no processing, then normalize/process later, since the iPhone has a very low fixed hardware gain at 30%.
@musicalman What I personally like about it is that you can record from the internal microphone/microphones and still use a bluetooth headset at the same time.
If you haven't figured it out yet, its in channel, Built-in Mic Stereo. If it doesn't show up try selecting stereo first then going back to that screen.
Lol I relate to this so hard, although in my case it's "stop being sad and go make a banger in Ableton / Logic / Reaper / whatever other DAW decides to become accessible next..."
I'm having an A&W chocolate Sundae pop. When you bring the can to your nose, you get an amazing chocolate aroma. It's weird and good at the same time. I wonder what it would taste if used as an ice cream float.
Ready for something that's going to blow your mind, especially my fellow folks with disabilities? Hold onto to your hats and other accessories because this one is wild. The other day, I got a text from an Orientation and Mobility instructor that I had worked with back in the day. For those who are confused, to put it simply, an Orientation and Mobility instructor is the person who teaches someone with a visual impairment how to get from point a to point b without getting killed. Anyway, said instructor asked for permission to use old pictures she had of me for a retirement party slideshow. I said yes. Nothing too out there, at least not yet. A friend of mine who also worked with her got the same text message, but then more. This instructor asked for a memory video to be recorded on a platform that's not accessible, which my friend explained to her. Instead of understanding, she straight up asked him if his sister could help him record the video. Okay fine, general populace deciding to be ignorant is one thing, but someone who teaches independence? This is a level of what the fuck I don't know if I can deal with.
@ZBennoui @shefoof Nah, I know it was the instructor. My friend was having the same conversation with her, he had been in contact with her before me, and also this woman texted my mother of all people because she saved her cell number from the application to the job readiness summer program she was working with me at when I was 16. Nope, it was her.
@ZBennoui @shefoof She texted my mom first, then she texted me. It was weird as hell for sure. I remember why I stopped keeping in contact with her, she could be a bit much sometimes.
@ZBennoui @shefoof Wait. Wait wait wait wait. She didn't even bother to text you first, but went straight to your mom to ask if it was ok instead of contacting you directly? Yo that's literally fucked.
@ZBennoui @shefoof Oh oh. That's way less of an annoyance, but still. Oooof. I'm still freezing out over her asking if a family member or friend could help you shoot the video. There's nothing that says you had to use the site she gave you. Hell you probably could have shot it on your phone and sent it to her, and I imagine it would have been ok. VO tells you if you're in frame.
@jdking92 @ZBennoui @shefoof She didn't ask me, my friend got asked first and he messed with the platform or whatever and something was weird on the accessibility side of things. He told her that whatever she wanted done wasn't accessible, my guess was she wanted some sort of video recorded so it could be automatically added to a memory slideshow or something, one of those things where you can't just send a video you have to record through the site or whatever, I don't know, but I didn't see it, and honestly she's lucky she got told no by him and not me, I wish she would have asked if someone could help me, I wouldn't have been nice like my friend was. I'm already over stupid people.
@ZBennoui @shefoof Oh man. yeah I imagine that could have posed a fair few problems. Stupid people legit suck all the balls. I can't stand them at the best of times, and this situation definitely would have made me throw hands and scream horrible things out the window.
@jdking92 @ZBennoui @shefoof I don't care how well-meaning you are when you say some stupid shit like that to me, I don't have to be nice, I don't care if there's this expectation that as a person with a disability I should be kind all the time, I don't live by that expectation and it's not my job to educate the ignorant. It's 2026. The internet exists if you can get past the bullshit, these things aren't hard to find answers to.
@ZBennoui @shefoof I definitely hear that loud and clear. Educating people really is exhausting and it's not our job to do that all the time. Like you said, the internet exists. If folks can't do web searches to get answers to their questions, they have bigger problems to worry about. I'll educate the people who clearly care about this sort of thing and are trying their hardest to be good folks, but the assholes of the world? Naa fuck them.
A critical vulnerability in Google's Fast Pair protocol can allow attackers to hijack Bluetooth audio accessories like wireless headphones and earbuds, track users, and eavesdrop on their conversations.
Hey, just a heads up, Bandcamp just announced they are banning all AI created music from their platform, and I could tell within two seconds of listening that this was created by Suno. I won't give my opinion on the music here, just putting it out there.
This song is currently included as a demo project in Apple's #LogicPro. I'm too young to have used Logic 9 when that was out so I'm not sure about those, but of all the demos that came with Logic Pro X and now 11, this one's my favorite by far. Wonder what Apple will do with Logic 12 coming out about two weeks from now. youtu.be/eTkFpdLogEg
SWING SWING! - https://EllieDixon.lnk.to/InCaseOfEmergencyIDTHE SWING MUSIC VIDEO IS HERE!! ⚾Hope you have a ball with this one ✨I wrote this song when I was...
I got one of those sextortion emails today. I sent it happily on its way too me@rescam.org. click this link to see the conversation as it unfolds or as it doesn't. this one seemed pretty eager to get money and nothing else. replay.rescam.org/?id=ed53334f…
remember, if you get any kind of scam email, forward the email to me@rescam.org. the scammer's time will be wasted by an AI chat bot pretending to be a victem. any time a scammer has to suffer is a good time.
We now have a working SAPI5 version of the Speechify engine that was used on NOAA Weather Radio from 2003 to 2016. Installation and setup instructions are included in the archive. datajake.braillescreen.net/TTS…. The default voice is Tom, however you can also use Jill by editing the voice name in config/SWIttsConfig.xml.
I’m SO excited to have finished my first round of prototypes for my new keyboard clicker fidgets!!
Remember Apples legendary iMac G3 computers from circa 1998-2005(ish)?! You’ll love my new project!
Custom designed keyboard clicker fidgets (with real switches) - available in rainbow 🌈 colours, printed with translucent filaments, topped with textured keycaps.
I strive to create creative, unique and useful fidgets. Let me know what you think!! (Listing coming in a few days!) #BrittBuilds3D
Strawberry Ice, Tangerine Ice, Lemon Ice, Apple Ice, Blueberry Ice, and Grape Ice. — Names all borrowed from Apple’s iMac G3 naming scheme. 🖥️
I crashed for a few hours, had some weird dreams. As a result, I woke up fully convinced that the baseball World Series winner was given the Margaret Hamilton award for excellence in baseball development. Wait, what?
@dodecahedron When I was a kid, I knew a bunch of team and player stats by virtue of Ryan. Could hold all kinds of educated conversations about junk I absolutely didn't care about in the least. Very excite.
funny thing is, if a conversation is happening I will completely understand every little doot dootofit, and 15 percent almost think about caring, untilI suddenly 100 percent do space not anymore.
I have this internal list that fake gets updated of, common football, basketball, and baseball players, from random teams, I can just make my talk sound goodif the other person knows nothing, but bullshit to anyone who does.
sorry i know this is an old post but holy moley that is the best battlebots tactic I've ever heard of. I mean I'm sure it wasn't *killer* bees, but it's brilliant
The West Bend QuikServe Toaster browns bread in less than two minutes, one of the fastest toasters on the market. Items are held to toast, then released to bottom serving tray. Toast, bagel, and gluten free settings.
The rise and fall of Stack Overflow is a case in point of the parasitic nature of LLMs. LLMs feed their models on places like Stack Overflow to be useful to users, so users flock to them to avoid the eternal snarky comments and just get an answer to their problem right away. But this is a dead end. No new answers will be generated if no one uses Stack Overflow or similar places.
What goes for Stack Overflow goes essentially for the whole internet. Like a mold growing on food, consuming it, and dying once the food is gone - LLMs will kill large parts of the 'old' internet before long.
Borris
in reply to Jonathan Mosen • • •