mastodon - Link to source
Today is a company holiday in the US I think, but I sat in on an AI best practices meeting anyhow, since I still know next to nothing about AI, and upper management cares about it.
Someone made a comment that AI will change the nature of technical/development positions.
So I wonder, will it? I presume it will, in some way, since most change has consequences, but I feel like it's too early to say how or to what extent?
It's fascinating how much change there is right now, both in terms of technology created by humans and the ecology of the planet due to humans.
I think about the Mesozoic Era and how long it lasted and how there must have been long states of stasis, with each generation of any given life form essentially playing the same role as the last.
But maybe long periods of stasis followed by relatively rapid bursts of change constitute the norm (the meteor that ended the Mesozoic initiating the latter, for instance).
So I wonder if/when we will enter another period of relative calm and what it will look like, but it feels impossible to say.
I presume that life 20 years from now will be similar to life in 2025 but different in some ways, and life in 2065 will be similar to 2045 but different in some ways, and so on, but, if I were to fall asleep and wake up 1,000 years from now, then the world would be utterly unrecognizable to me.

glitchsoc - Link to source

"Cow Tools 🐮" : Brown Swiss (cow) in Austria has been discovered using tools in multiple ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees

theguardian.com/science/2026/j…

archive.ph/i4DW1

#Cows

A brown cow using a long stick to scratch her back

Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows

Brown Swiss in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees
Ian Sample (The Guardian)
#cows
This entry was edited (4 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

From the 17 January edition of The Week:
"The US Consumer Product Safety Commission keeps a database of the various items that people in America have got stuck in their rectums. The most recent
data shows that about 4,000 people (average age: 43) seek hospital treatment for such mishaps per year. Among the items recorded were beard clippers, a sandal, uncooked pasta, a dog chew toy, an egg, a turkey baster, a pair of glasses and a shampoo bottle."

The mind is not the only thing that boggles 😂

mastodon - Link to source
Also, people can now play around with a new setting: legacyPitchInflectionScale (default 0.58) - if you feel like it's overly inflected, lowering it while having the LegacyPitchMode set to true will improve things. I realized what made him sound like his balls were squeezed. The default inflection on the 2016 era driver used inflection 35, but we now us inflection 60 at default. So that scale setting will help. Or you can lower the inflection itself in your setting to the desired effect. The formula we do: effectiveInflection = inflection * legacyPitchInflectionScale
This entry was edited (4 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source
often when you see messaging like "we all need to do our part" it's a kind of cynical justification for cutting some essential, centralized, mostly-efficient public service in favor of an ad-hoc, individualist approach that externalizes the issue and disclaims responsibility for neglect and poor outcomes. if you protest such a change, or suggest that perhaps some problems are better dealt with collectively by pooling resources, then it must be you who are lacking the collective spirit!
in reply to josef

mastodon - Link to source

josef

this specific form of greenwashing is so successful and has basically normalized the idea that we should be satisfied with a gradually-worsening quality of life. people will genuinely get angry with you if you bring it up, and point to leaflets with stock photos of immaculate, smiling actors who are overjoyed to have remembered to switch off the water while brushing their teeth, rather than perhaps the idea that somebody needs to be paid a living wage to fix the pipes, or dig a new reservoir
in reply to josef

mastodon - Link to source

josef

every 5 years the spokesman of the You Can Recycle! trade organization says "no seriously we can actually recycle plastic now, so remember to recycle plastic" and you recycle plastic and then 5 years later there's a video of your empty coca cola bottles and your aunt's labubus and a couple of hundred thousand blu ray boxes all on fire on a riverbank. and the new spokesman of the You Can Recycle! trade organization is like "we promise this won't happen again" and the old spokesman is now at Exxon

sharkey - Link to source

Earlier today I learned that pip includes a bunch of telemetry data in the HTTP User-Agent header for every request it makes, and has for >10 years (with increasing amounts of info): github.com/pypa/pip/blob/545ed…Not only is this not opt-in (as any telemetry should be), but there isn't even an opt-out. I'm still shocked and not sure what conclusions to draw from this, except: This is not okay! ​:neocat_scream_stare:​
I remember there was quite an uproar when Go tried to add opt-out telemetry a while back, and rightly so. How did I never hear about Python doing this before? Sure, less details, but still sending telemetry without ever asking for consent.

I like #Python, I want to keep using it, but can I if core tooling ignores user consent like this? And what other key development tools (Python or otherwise) have things like that and I just haven't noticed yet?


pip/src/pip/_internal/network/session.py at 545eda389c41478e2f99d23212254d757d8c2cef · pypa/pip

The Python package installer. Contribute to pypa/pip development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub
#python
in reply to Bubu

sharkey - Link to source

Fiona

Yeah, tool and version should be fine, that's to common expectation of what's in a User-Agent. Certainly debatable if it was ever a good idea, but it's from times when the internet seemed less dangerous (whether it was… not sure).

I've seen some documentation on how to access the data (requires a Google account, though), but the thing that's bothering me is that they collect it without consent in the first place. And there isn't even an opt-out (which I'd still consider problematic, but at least it'd show they considered user privacy).

Analyzing PyPI package downloads - Python Packaging User Guide

packaging.python.org

mastodon - Link to source
Well, a LegacyPitchMode setting will be nice. It'll replicate that sound NVSpeechPlayer had before they moved to using Espeak's calculations for pitch curves. Next update it's planned for. The constants I'd be copying are right there: 25000, 1.5, 1.2, 8, 1.75, and the stressInflection decay rules.
This entry was edited (4 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid. ICE has said the app's results are a “definitive” determination of someone's immigration status.

404media.co/ices-facial-recogn…


ICE’s Facial Recognition App Misidentified a Woman. Twice

In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid.
Joseph Cox (404 Media)

mastodon - Link to source
V long rant about accessibility at the cinema

Sensitive content

#Accessibility #Disabled #wheelchairuser
This entry was edited (4 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source
Buenas! Llevo casi 3 días peleando con asterisk y no logro hacerlo entrar en razón. Intento configurarlo para WebRTC pero no ha podido ser jajaja. Lo más a lo que he llegado es a establecer una llamada pero no escucho nada en el cliente web, tampoco puedo llamar a otros clientes o extensiones desde él. En Asterisk dice que todo está en orden, pero no me termina de ir bien. Alguien ha tenido experiencias con Asterisk y WebRTC? el transporte por UDP funciona bien, eso sí.

mastodon - Link to source

A US Marine, traveling home after a tour of Iraq just before Thanksgiving, boarded an extremely overcrowded Amtrak train heading west from Penn Station. He searched up and down the carriages for a seat, but the only one available was being occupied by a fancy French woman’s poodle.

The Marine coughed politely and said,
“Ma’am, would you please place your dog on the floor so I can sit down?”

Without even looking up, she sniffed and muttered,
“You Americans are so very rude. Can’t you see my little girl Trixy-Woo is using that seat?”

Exhausted, the Marine walked the length of the train again - still no seat. He returned and asked once more,
“Please, ma’am. I’m really tired. Could you move your dog so I can sit?”

She laughed and said loudly,
“Not only are you Americans rude, but also pig-headed and arrogant as well!”

That was it.

As the train had not yet left the station, the Marine picked up the poodle, dropped it out the window onto the platform, and sat down.

The woman shrieked, “Is there any man here who will defend my honor? This American thug must be put in his place!”

A well-dressed, refined Englishman sitting nearby calmly looked up and said to the Marine,
“Sir, I find you Americans do many things the wrong way. You prefer coffee over tea, drive on the wrong side of the road… and now it seems -

You’ve thrown the wrong bitch out the window.”

mastodon - Link to source

The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor.
A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota -- one of the protest’s organizers -- shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting
“ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”
The 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activities.
The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors
— David Easterwood
— also leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that have involved violent tacticsand illegal arrests.

Nekima Levy Armstrong,
who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization
"Racial Justice Network",
dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

“When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community
and all the harm that they have caused,
to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,”
said Armstrong,
who added she is an ordained reverend.

“If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community,
then they need to check their theology and they need to check their hearts.”
apnews.com/article/minnesota-i…

This entry was edited (4 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source
I do miss my IBMTTS on 64-bit NVDA. Sigh. Eloquence is good but I'll always stay in that minority of people who likes the 22K IBMTTS, so back to 2025.3 we go. I'll keep the alpha around as a portable copy though so I can still experiment and update it once in awhile. Can't believe magnification feature is already in the alphas though, a bit surprising that they're already working on 2026.2, wow, shocked there a bit.
This entry was edited (4 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source
NVSpeechPlayer now works with 64-bit NVDA. This is great news, and the fix was very easy to do, not a lot of refactoring. I wish the same could be said for other synthesizers, but ah well. Let's just feel lucky and enjoy that feeling while we can. Download: eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlay… (works on older 2025.3 NVDA too, no need to worry there.)
Also includes more Portuguese language rules. Includes the new settings for diphthongs transitions: autoTieDiphthongs, and autoDiphthongOffglideToSemivowel.
in reply to Pratik Patel

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@ppatel @fireborn yeah, now that we have language-specific rules, it's easy enough to bring back some of those at least, but breaking them globally to sound UK is not ideal. That's why, OK? Once this added multilingualness, the base phonemes had to change slightly. So now we can't undo all that work without just making them language-specific either. That's the grapple there. If we reverted every single IPA sound back to how it was in 2014, it would sound like an American with a speech impediment
@aaron @Pratik Patel

mastodon - Link to source

Happy Martin Luther King Jr day. He said so many profound things and taught us so many valuable lessons, but this is the quote that resonates strongest with me. To me, it’s even more important than ever when we all have the potential to be keyboard warriors and spread global disharmony with a few key presses. But in any aspect of life, they are words to keep in mind when we feel we have been wronged and the poison of vengeance is pulsing through our veins.

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction."

reshared this

in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

mastodon - Link to source

Emmanuele Bassi

This is a specific trekkie brain injury: the idea that Star Trek series are strongly bound by rules that can't ever change for economic reasons or narrative expedience, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You stare at Star Trek long enough and you start to believe that any deviation is caused by writers not understanding the lore, when it's just a case of people making a television show on Earth over the course of 60 years
This entry was edited (4 days ago)

gotosocial - Link to source

Si he solicitado [el alta de] asistencia sanitaria a une cónyugue, alrededor de cuantos días laborales se puede demorar [en aparecer como beneficiarie]?

Pregunto esto para españa.

Compartid porfi. Si me dais cifras de 2025 o cercanas me sirve, para hacerme una idea de como está el panorama.

This entry was edited (4 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

I think that's a no-brainer right now that Europe should pursue digital sovereignty aggressively.

It's not about MS Office vs Libre Office, it's about banking apps, cloud services, your phone, your daily life. Which is a way bigger leverage #Trump has about your daily life. #FOSS is security.

#linux

#linux #foss #Trump
This entry was edited (5 days ago)
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