No nic, tak teda R.I.P Motoristi 🤣🤣
so after a lot of work, thanks to a few people, here are some links of interest, some of you may want these, others, may not. note, that I was not responsible for creating the contents contained in these archives, I'm just the host of the archives. Hey, you might even like these as test files for speedtests, lol! Firstly, here's the original main menu early years 7 zip file, covering 2000 to 2008, raw from the ACBRadio FTP server, curtisy of @sclower. file size: 5.51GB. downloads.shaned.net/MainMenu_… Next, curtisy of @gallagher123123 is a zip file where he reorganized, into one folder, per year, this same collection from 2000 to 2008. It looks like he also combined show segments into one file per show. file size: 24.5GB. Why it's almost 4 times the size of the previous file, I don't know, lol! downloads.shaned.net/MainMenu2… Next, curtisy of files provided by @Bri we have a main menu archive, organized into a folder for each year, and one file per show, for 2009 to 2015. File size: 18.5GB downloads.shaned.net/MainMenu2… and finally, you want everything from both zip files in one massive zip file, covering 2000-2015? Of course you do! note: this does not include the contents of the 7zip package. File size: 43.1GB downloads.shaned.net/MainMenu2… I hope these archives are of interest, to someone. note these links are perminant, and will not change. Enjoy!
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From Clawdbot to Moltbot: How a C&D, Crypto Scammers, and 10 Seconds of Chaos Took Down the Internet's Hottest AI Project
dev.to/sivarampg/from-clawdbot…
dev.to/sivarampg/from-clawdbot…
From Clawdbot to Moltbot: How a C&D, Crypto Scammers, and 10 Seconds of Chaos Took Down the Internet's Hottest AI Project
The 72-Hour Unraveling of Open Source's Fastest-Growing Star Three days ago, Clawdbot was...Sivaram (DEV Community)
I wish I wasn't so irrationally irritated with the folks who pick out my github username from gods know where and ping me in random issues or pull requests for random "Fix this!" or "Merge that!" reasons.
It's often not even my own project. Used to happen with Godot for a while, at a point when I hadn't merged any PRs in like 5-6 years. Often I don't even have merge rights on the project.
It's wrong, sure, but idiots gonna idiot whether or not my blood pressure spikes about it.
Just seems so entitled, though. "Hey random person! Do my thing now!" Fuck off.
For These Women, Grok's Sexualized Images Are Personal
rollingstone.com/culture/cultu…
But our ( 
) Minister of Chatbots say there is nothing they can do.
Apple and Google can't remove the app from their appstore because it is allowed to break the policies in place. (that would leave the website, but the point stands)
VISA and Mastercard still accept the payments because they have a double standard in censorship. One is about puritanistm, the other one is about allowing to break the law.
For These Women, Grok's Sexualized Images Are Personal
Elon Musk’s AI image generator has been used to create non-consensual intimate images on X. Meet some of the women affected by it.Ella Chakarian (Rolling Stone)
We’ll be out in force at @fosdem '26 at the end of this week, with eight talks on a wide variety of topics—the latest on @servo, GStreamer work, graphics stacks, MathML interop, WebAssembly runtimes, handing out Servo stickers, and more! #FOSDEM2026 igalia.com/2026/01/26/Igalia-a…
Igalia at FOSDEM ’26 | Igalia
Igalia is an open source consultancy specialised in the development of innovative projects and solutions.Igalia
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RE: social.vivaldi.net/@LonM/11596…
UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too!
*Your* privacy and right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
LonM (@LonM@vivaldi.net)
@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social You might be interested in giving this petition opposing the motion a signal boost: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/754408LonM (Vivaldi Social)
reshared this
The government has to discover that there is an illegal VPN being used in the first place.
It is quite possible for millions of VPNs to be made available to UK children, hosted all over the world. Perhaps hosted by children, sharing the small monthly server costs. Quite secret, extremely difficult to find.
The proposed law could only ever hope to apply to a few big VPN companies. Which just moves the VPN usage by children underground, where other dangers lurk.
"We don't need to worry, because the govt will not be able to enforce it" is the counterpart to legislators who say "we don't need to put in detailed definitions & restrictions, because we trust police & prosecutors to use the powers responsibly".
History has proven both are always true until they aren't.
History has proven both are always true until they aren't.
I've read this quote multiple times, over the years:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
It turns out it's from a comment on a blog post moaning about liberals: crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l…
The rest of the comment is a lot more interesting than the pithy quote, because it cuts through a lot of the usual noise in leftist discourse.
Thanks to you, I was able to message the author of the comment for permission to print it out as a zine. Thanks for rooting up the source!
I'm totally lost, I'm still trying to figure out what the Conservatives are trying to conserve. Seems to me like it's all the rules, regulations and laws that we have spent since the Renaissance trying to be rid of. . .. .. But then I'm an anarchistic what would I know about this politics stuff
Как говориться, быстро зарелизил — быстро и багфикс готовь!
Fun fact, there are 120 settings to tweak which are language related in NV Speech Player. Yeah, no more settings for sure. We're done. Let's either (A) tweak the settings we have, or (B) actually use them well in language packs. LOL. This is a bit insane to find out. 120 settings.
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Hey when I'm finished with the formant stuff from praat, how would I send em to you to ad into nvspeechplayer?
@GoemonIshikawa would be very curious. Is this a data containing CF1 to CF6 values (and Parallel formants too) or just like, here's the frequency and sound for a specific IPA symbol? Either way, some kind of file, even if it's JSON or text works, it doesn't have to be the same format as my current data is but I can pull useful info out of it both manually and probably AI to see how it helps.
Actually it gives info for all 6 formants and the bandwidth for said formants, as I've updated the Yaml files with em. I've only updated one phoneme as a test, but it looks to work, but I can't look to test it out with any words like code for the O phoneme.
While we're here, you know what would be fun, for someone to make a collection of all these old synths and stuff em into one collection for people to just do stuff with no screen readers attached!
@GoemonIshikawa Lol, or an application that just lets you load / choose which wrapper, and engine, then you could have a Speak / convert to wav window the universally covered a bunch of these old synths. Haha. How fun of an idea but totally illegal too. Well, making the app itself is totally legal, because it's just reusing wrappers that talk to the engines which makes that a bit ironic. What's more in a gray area are the wrappers themselves, since they technically do link against comercial products, but I'm not worried with how extinct the companies behind those synths are these days.
In our journey to #DigitalSovereignty, here's where we are:
- Domain registration: TransIP and Prolocation 🇳🇱
- Email, calendar, collaborative writing, and more: mailbox.org 🇩🇪
- Document store: Tresorit 🇨🇭
- Critical infra hosting: Hetzner 🇩🇪
- Discourse hosting: Communiteq 🇳🇱
- Security: 1Password.eu 🇨🇦/🇪🇺 and Yubico 🇸🇪
Next up: GitHub —> Codeberg 🇩🇪
To-do: Slack —> Zulip, Matrix, Mattermost?
#OpenSource #DNS #BGP
Wondering. Ice and border patrol don't wear uniforms / show their faces apparently because of doxing. Why do police show their faces, have badges with their names on them, etc., and don't worry about doxing? Is it mostly that police actually being reasonable people? I just figure that Ice might be respected more if they acted human. Did Ice have badges in the past? I know masking is new. Doesn't make sense at all.
Les pubs vont arriver dans Whatsapp cette année en Europe.
Il est temps de passer à la version Premium qui:
- n’a pas de pub
- n’a pas d’IA intégrée obligatoire
- ne vous espionne pas et ne récolte pas vos données
- améliore grandement votre sécurité et votre vie privée.
- permet de discuter exclusivement avec les autres utilisateurs Premium.
Et le meilleur c’est que cette version Premium est pour le moment gratuite (le paiement est facultatif).
Alors installez-la !
Elle s’appelle : "Signal"
Y a plus punk que Signal quand même, un truc qui paye son CEO à 7 chiffres avec vos dons, est basé aux USA, et dans lequel on a aucun moyen de participer... ha si, avec des dons.
: ah mais oui, clairement, y’a plus punk. Mais Signal reste pour le moment pour moi le juste milieu entre "utilisable selon mes critêres éthiques" et "utilisable par mon entourage" (effet réseau, toussa… ]
Pour Briar, ce sera la prochaine migration 
Les migrations de gens pas passionnés par l'informatique étant compliquées, je préfère éviter de recommander un silo duquel on devra encore s'échapper quand il se merdifiera, soit parce qu'il devra devenir rentable, soit pour se plier à la législation du pays qui l'héberge et se fascise à vitesse grand V. En plus, j'aime bien les trucs qu'on peut bidouiller et s'approprier, plutôt que ce qu'on me donne à utiliser sans possibilité de participer à sa gouvernance.
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je suppose que la seule raison qui fait que sur signal on est encore "tranquilles" c'est que, pour l'instant, ça reste petit (comparé aux whatsapp et compagnie) et du coup ça passe encore un peu sous les radars. Mais pour l'instant je vois pas mieux que ça. J'ai beau utiliser DeltaChat et Matrix dans des cercles d'initiés, je vois pas trop comment ça pourrait être étendu autant que signal aujourd'hui @ploum
tu n'as pas cité le 3ème protocole, le plus permacomputing-friendly, le plus facile à déployer sur un grille-pain connecté, qui n'appartient à aucune entité privée à but lucratif, dont la gouvernance est ouverte et démocratique et sur lequel mon opinion n'est absolument pas biaisée... :drumroll: the eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
oui bah alors c'est pas moi qu'il faut convaincre hein, mais les gens tu leur fais pas adopter un protocole, tu leur fais adopter une application 😬
This entry was edited (3 days ago)
je suis OK que c'est compliqué, mais je trouve justement intéressant de profiter d'occasions pour montrer que tout n'est pas "app", mais qu'il existe un truc qui peut être utilisé par plusieurs apps, proposé par plusieurs fournisseurs, et que tout marche ensemble, même si les couleurs sont différentes, bref parler d'interopérabilité et de déminitelisation de nos vies numériques. Je suis ambitieux je sais, mais j'aime pas le capitalisme c'est plus fort que moi !
Sauf que malheureusement, le commun des mortels s'en fout de tout ça. Les gens installent les trucs ou il ya du monde. Les trucs qui se font racheter par les gafam.
Et c'est de la merde, mais c'est comme ça.
Et c'est de la merde, mais c'est comme ça.
Moi je suis une gens et toi aussi. Tu es conscient des implications de tes choix en matière d'informatique, super, mais probablement pas dans tous les domaines. Mépriser « les gens » ne fait pas avancer le schmilblick dans le bon sens à mon humble avis. Un peu d'optimisme, merde ! (c'est dur en ce moment je sais)
(c'est dur en ce moment je sais)
atalk (alphatalk) proposerait-il un partage de position ? (Utile en trek)
f-droid.org/packages/org.atalk…
Sinon, un autre client obtient vos faveurs ?
aTalk | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
XMPP/Jabber client with encrypted instant messaging and video callsf-droid.org
@tivasyk Je suis d'une autre paroisse, mais deltachat ça m'excite déjà un peu plus que signal, oui. Décentralisation, protocole ouvert, pas d'hostilité aux clients alternatifs, autohebergeable, pas de nécessité d'avoir un smartphone avec OS mainstream... Je punk-valide, du haut de mon autorité de wannabe-punk (en fait je suis plutôt un quinoa-bobolchevique, mais c'est un secret ne me balance pas).
just a test from FastSM.
@theblindgamer50 I'm getting a failed to set voice error when I use my custom voice with the Macintalk speak window.
Badly formatted voice file, or if you're using a wave file, not the right format. Should be 11025 kHz 8-bit mono.
Das "Heizungsgesetz" habe eine "enorme Unsicherheit in den Markt gebracht", sagte Katherina Reiche heute beim Handelsblatt-Energiegipfel.
Zumindest für den Wärmepumpen-Markt scheint diese aber überwunden zu sein: Dort wurde mit 299.000 verkauften Geräten 2025 das bisher zweitbeste Ergebnis erzielt, wie der Branchenverband heute mitteilte. (1/4)
Ich darf korrigieren: Die orchestrierte Kampagne und Verunglimpfung der Wärmepumpentechnologie, die Verzerrung der Historie und Inhalts des Gesetzentwurfs, persönliche Angriffe auf #habeck durch die #niemehrcducsu und #springer sowie das Durchstechen einer Vorabversion des Gesetzes durch die #fdp haben enorme Unsicherheit in den Markt gebracht.
Und ich darf ergänzen: Und die Inkompetenz und Fossil-Industrienähe von #gaskathie, die offensichtlich die Erneuerbaren ausbremsen will, bringt nun auch weiterhin Unsicherheit in den Markt.
Augenscheinlich ist sie jedoch glücklicherweise auch darin wenig erfolgreich. Es lebe die Inkompetenz!
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No TVL, to je fakt bizár.
Tahle Babišova čtyřletá schovávačka před spravedlností bude stát celou zemi ostudu, která ČR posune mezi země třetího světa
seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/domaci-…
„Naprosto neakceptovatelné.“ Petr Pavel obvinil ministra Macinku z vydírání
Prezident Petr Pavel na mimořádné tiskové konferenci obvinil ministra zahraničí Petra Macinku z vydírání.Barbora Kučerová (Seznam Zprávy)
Equipment failure slows REM service between Bois-Franc and Côte-de-Liesse
montreal.citynews.ca/2026/01/2…
The heavy rail that was on that line, that was barely 25 year old when it was taken down, didn't have these issues
Equipment failure slows REM service between Bois-Franc and Côte-de-Liesse
REM service is running at reduced speed in both directions between the Bois-Franc and Côte-de-Liesse stations due to an equipment failure.Jessica Barile (CityNews Montreal)
it should be noted that to get notified one has to subscribe to the CSAM generator that used to be known as Twitter.
Milí spoluobčané, co ste si to tam dosadili za burany?
hrad.cz/cs/pro-media/tiskove-z…
hrad.cz/cs/pro-media/tiskove-z…
We'd like to invite you to our #BoF session at #FOSDEM It's on Saturday at 13.00 in room K4.401. This is a meet-and-greet for everyone who is part of, or interested in, the #NGIZero ecosystem. We'll bring drinks and snacks :).
Preceding us at 12.00 in the same room is the BoF about the Open Internet Stack calls from @EUCommission the follow-up programme to #NGI.
For these and many more NGI Zero related talks and events at FOSDEM see: nlnet.nl/events/20260131/FOSDE…
Preceding us at 12.00 in the same room is the BoF about the Open Internet Stack calls from @EUCommission the follow-up programme to #NGI.
For these and many more NGI Zero related talks and events at FOSDEM see: nlnet.nl/events/20260131/FOSDE…
Why are all the talks/events I'd like to attend at the same time (just in different locations) – including the talk I give myself? 😢 4 events relevant for our project, but only 3 of us are at FOSDEM, and we need to keep our stand covered as well…
Nevertheless, looking forward to meet you again! 🤗
that's actually a good thing. Showing that fosdem has so many good talks and events :).
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hmm. I wonder if releasing on GitHub might be easier for folks, rather than Eurpod. I am considering doing this and keeping one file there. This might break my old posts, but GitHub releases are more trackable, the repo is frozen at that tag, ETC. There's just clear benefits to release them always as a pair (editor + Add-on) whenever I make a change. From here on out, I think that's going to happen.
This entry was edited (3 days ago)
🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 likes this.
that sounds fine, maybe a auto check like ibm or a keystoke when in the settings panel.
Saw a reference to Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’ this morning, which was funny because just yesterday I was explaining to someone it’s where one of my key prioritizing heuristics comes from.
There’s a proverb in the book that goes something like “Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”
Of course, logically this makes no sense—everything that happened twice is a thing that also happened once.
But I take it to mean “Once something goes wrong twice, it’s time to pay attention.” Once could be a fluke. Twice means there’s something going on. The second time it happens is where the phase change from noise to signal begins.
This entry was edited (3 days ago)
Winter storm thankfully produced sleet instead of ice. Sidewalks & steps are still a mess. Neighbors were clearing sidewalks yesterday but stopped short of our section. Sweet.
I submitted a proposal for a lightning talk for #FOSDEM . It's about .... from street-level hack to open cultural production.
pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026…
#openart #foss #creativecommons
./make art: A Creative Commons Theater Experiment FOSDEM 2026
It began as a small patch for a real-world bug: holes in the road. A few hackers chose action over complaints and the result was a Creative Commons theater play, performed in Sofia, Bulgaria.pretalx.fosdem.org
I knew there was another reason I went back to Windows 10. Seriously, how the fuck do people still trust this shit? youtube.com/watch?v=sx8fA8zAoQ…
Windows 11 January Update Can Stop Your PC From Booting
🚨 Windows 11 January Update Can Stop Your PC From Booting 🚨In this video, we break down a serious issue caused by the January Windows 11 update that can pr...YouTube
I have no idea what any of that means, but I enrolled my PC into another year of updates just via settings, and thus it still works fine.
Do you like nonsense?
Today, for the second time in my life, I have been asked to convert a "pirate" copy of an old (50y+) movie into the DCP format, for a cinephile club. Not because they do not want to pay the copyright holders, they actually did. But that did not give them access to any copy of the movie, they are on their own.
The previous time, the distributor would only send them a French-dubbed version, which was a no-no for them.
They are not even obscure unknown movies, but classics. 🤦♀️
Today, for the second time in my life, I have been asked to convert a "pirate" copy of an old (50y+) movie into the DCP format, for a cinephile club. Not because they do not want to pay the copyright holders, they actually did. But that did not give them access to any copy of the movie, they are on their own.
The previous time, the distributor would only send them a French-dubbed version, which was a no-no for them.
They are not even obscure unknown movies, but classics. 🤦♀️
Convert flv (Flash Video files) to MP4?
Is it possible? Safely? (I'm not keen on clicking on some of the links on a search. Are there downsides? Does anyone know?
Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.
OK, do you still have *a* file you want to try and convert? I'm happy to try anyway if so. If not I can give you a direct command to enter into ffmpeg that should work.
Native Instruments GmbH is in preliminary insolvency.
Not remotely what you want to see. Will keep tabs on this one in a tough time. Details:
Native Instruments GmbH is in preliminary insolvency - CDM Create Digital Music
According to insolvency documents, Berlin-based Native Instruments GmbH (also parent to iZotope, Plugin Alliance, and Brainworx) is in preliminary insolvency proceedings.Peter Kirn (CDM Create Digital Music)
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@FreakyFwoof And whatever happens I hope to all hell their incredible work to keep their products accessible to everyone including their BVI (Blind and Visually Impaired) users remains. I hate insolvancies like this because there's no guarantee that the folks who get broken up will land in good hands for those of us who use products on the daily. :(
@the_spc I've made this company the backbone of my musical career for the last 10 years so trust me, I hope the same...
@FreakyFwoof Makes me want to scrape together the money and grap there A series 61 key...yesterday. *sighs* I want so bad. I wanted it before this, but now so bad.
@the_spc Did you see my accessibility video about it I did a couple weeks ago? I love this keyboard. Best thing I've ever owned honestly.
@FreakyFwoof I did, but I haven't watched it yet. It's 245 USD, and I have no job, dammit. *sighs*
But dammit *lust item*
But dammit *lust item*
@the_spc Linked here. Thanks as always sir. universeodon.com/@FreakyFwoof/…
Native Instruments did a 14-minute video on the accessibility features of their MK3 keyboards, barely enough time to even cover what the thing does, let alone the keyboard functions, not to mention it wasn't done by a blind user, the target audience.
I wasn't a fan, so I made my own video and I *still* didn't get through everything to do with it.
Anyway, here's a more than three times longer video at 48 minutes instead.#InspiredBySound - Native Instruments Kontrol MK3 Accessibility Demonstration youtu.be/cMkm51Utijs
Audio download: onj.me/media/%23InspiredBySoun…
#InspiredBySound - Native Instruments Kontrol MK3 Accessibility Demonstration
In this video we take a tour of the Native Instruments Komplete MK3 keyboard.It's packed full of features and functions that were never accessible to blind u...YouTube
@FreakyFwoof Sweeet, you saved me the trip back to your timeline. I thought I'd favorited the damn thing. Have now.
You may find this worth checking out. It just came out. Authored by my good friend Tim Burgess.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
Andre Louis reshared this.
@FreakyFwoof we don't know native instruments future but would it be worth doing a youtuve chat about accessible alternatives to the Native Instruments suites/ software?
@FreakyFwoof ok so what does that mean for blind artists? do we just stop creating? I think there is a discussion to be had
@RyanF NI isn't dying, it will probably just change. We wait and see like everyone else. I'm not worried personally.
I'm sure you'll have already seen this, your sources are way better than mine but in case you haven't: blog.native-instruments.com/st…
@FreakyFwoof @the_spc Here's the unusual situation: because *so much* is owed to creditors, the future of these products is really secured. You have to sell it to pay the debts, and the insolvency process makes that happen.
I'm happy to remind would-be future owners of how important accessibility is to that value proposition.
Andre Louis reshared this.
High‑pass RMS (a good proxy for “sharp edge”):
d͡z alone:
HP RMS > 2kHz: 0.0201 → 0.0150 (≈ 25% less)
“words” (ending only):
HP RMS > 2kHz: 0.01337 → 0.01048 (≈ 22% less)
And the overall RMS stayed basically the same, so it shouldn’t sound “weak”, just less prickly.
d͡z alone:
HP RMS > 2kHz: 0.0201 → 0.0150 (≈ 25% less)
“words” (ending only):
HP RMS > 2kHz: 0.01337 → 0.01048 (≈ 22% less)
And the overall RMS stayed basically the same, so it shouldn’t sound “weak”, just less prickly.
Canada should deny entry to anyone associated with ICE or CPB. Wearing masks to commit murders, it could be any of them, how do we know?
The d͡z version showed sharper energy around high frequencies (3–8kHz). To fix this, I redistributed the energy by adjusting various parameters, including pa6 and pa5. Next update. Words like " words" and "sounds" have less sharpness already but it didn't lose its sound.
I once again have built up a number of posts I thought were too mad to post but made me laugh so I didn't delete them. They lay festering in my drafts. It feels wrong to delete them for some reason. So I'm going to amnesty post those babies here now so I can be free of the responsibility of them.
Sorry I didn't boost that banger you tooted but I was taking stock of my life. I'm back now and promise never to leave again. X
For anyone new who's wondering - if you boost and fave at the same time it means you love me and you can't take it back
My book, Accessibility For Everyone, is now free and online as a website.
The book was first published by A Book Apart in 2017 but it holds up! It covers web accessibility for designers, developers, content folks, and really everyone who works in tech.
Accessibility For Everyone by Laura Kalbag
Read the book online for free.accessibilityforeveryone.site
🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 likes this.
reshared this
Alright, work meetings. No SpeechPlayer updates for a bit. Someone's asking for Russian, really can't promise that'd be ready by next driver with how complex it is of a language. If I add Russian I'd also be tempted with Ukranian, Belarusian, and Serbian. so it would come in with similar languages, just as we have all the Germanic ones, and then each would get their own tuning treatments. But large work. The initial scaffolding I can make, native speakers I can't just birth out of my stomach.
This entry was edited (3 days ago)
Working on another vibe-coded text game. I need to find a place to put these. Should they go up on LWorks or somewhere else?
well, they are good on lworks site, but you should also look into the super egghunt page caue at the moment people can't buy the game. it says ordering information is coming soon.
Today's Web Design Update: groups.google.com/a/d.umn.edu/…
Featuring @Ted_drake, @onsman, @matuzo, @wilco,
@ozewai, @SteveFaulkner, @brucelawson, @aardrian, @schalkneethling, @mgifford, and more.
Subscribe info: d.umn.edu/itss/training/online…
#Accessibility #A11y #WebDesign
Web Design References: Webdev Newsletter
Web Design References: News and info about web design and development. The site advocates accessibility, usability, web standards and many related topics.www.d.umn.edu
RE: mastodon.social/@laura_carlson…
great work by @mgifford highlighted in this issue.
Laura Carlson (@laura_carlson@mastodon.social)
Today's Web Design Update: https://groups.google.com/a/d.umn.edu/g/webdev/c/piHu9SEO8P8 Featuring @Ted_drake, @onsman@aus.social, @matuzo, @wilco@mastodon.nl, @ozewai, @SteveFaulkner, @brucelawson@vivaldi.net, @aardrian@toot.Laura Carlson (Mastodon)
I don't know. My partner (Jess) asked if I'm building this for other people or myself. I feel like I'm building it for other people but I really should be happy with it for myself at least. My only goal was to get this thing working in modern NVDA. Then US English lead us to other languages, people asked if they can have theirs, and then it turned into this big sad project. But maybe I shouldn't feel so sad over it. For myself, it sounds nearly there. Yes some words are off, and some things still stick out a bit sharp, like the word words, ironically. But I can understand and use it, probably 80% of the time I am instead of Eloquence. In that way, mission accomplished, and we have a big robust frontend to tune, so I probably should feel less sad about it.
The key is to realize this can't be only your project. Think of it like you're founding an organization that needs to persist over the years. You're already doing that work, by documenting everything really well, and giving lots of people other features they can use. As well as creating tools. But your goal should be getting it into a state you, personally, like, and then in moving towards having other people in charge of different things. So all you do is final tests and sign off on releases.
@fastfinge I just made a massive tools update, formant_trajectory.py and the frame inspector use lang_pack.py and a simple_yaml.py to parse it in a less strict way. So now it's really solid on tooling. People can do tests against them, and build languages easier. I think you're right, hopefully it can get to a point where I'm sitting back and accepting PRs from people tuning phonemes, and carefully weighing bigger changes to anything with the community, liaison for improving it. But this is so so far away from that, although interest is definitely picking up and the more I can simplify tools and add them in many ways I'm hoping the flexibility will make it shine for it. Whether you use the phoneme editor, the frame inspector / trajectory tool, now you really have a way to dig into the rules.
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What I've been playing with, and why you haven't heard much from me, is trying to create some good way to extract formants from existing sounds, in an accessible way. Thus far, though, nothing has worked, or been as accessible as I want it to be. It involves matlab and other terrible things. But what I really really want is something where I can put in a second of sound and get an estimate of all the formants and transitions, and then use the tools you created to compare them. But I haven't gotten close enough to have anything to share.
But what has been helpful is using your tool to show me just how wrong everything I have tried for formant estimation actually is. So it's been useful in that I can generate audio with known values, give it to my formant estimation attempt, and know that my estimated data is incorrect.
So one thing to think about: If people change settings in the NVDA addon, then you release an update, it looks like there settings aren't always updated. And it's really, really easy to break subtle things. If I were you I might consider adding a reset to defaults button in the addon. Because otherwise you're going to get feedback from people who toggled a checkbox like co-articulation without thinking about any of the associated settings and now wonder why everything sounds bad.
@fastfinge I think we can. If we shipped a .defaults folder with the untouched language files, then the person just hits "reset to defaults" in the NV Speech Player panel, and boom. We just copy over the files from .defaults and they have unchanged settings. But sadly it can't live in the voice panel, because you cannot put buttons there. So it has to live in the NV Speech Player settings area near the top.
It's probably a good idea. Just so that if someone is giving feedback, or complaining about something, that you can't hear or reproduce, it's easy to say "Please press reset and make sure you still have this problem."
Something about the new release sounds really good! I can get up to 80 without having issues understanding. Before it was around 65.
haha maybe some of the phoneme tuning with the formant trajectory tool? Here's what's crazy. You can give an AI those tools, and if it has a container environment like Claude / OpenAI do, they will happily execute it and generate the spectrogram PNG, do the math on the frequency variation without loss of the sound's shape, ETC. But you have to do it in clusters or groups of particularly sibilant phonemes. It's hard, hard work, because if you just tell an AI, "here's the phonemes, tune them", it'll make a big lispy mess out of it. I tried that too. But if you give it targeted instructions on what about the sound is off, here's your 4 tools, your YAML parser, get it done, yes, it'll happily tune with specifics like that.
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So weirdly, I'm using this voice pretty much exclusively at work. It's perfect for reading emails and generating reports and proofreading my writing and stuff. But for home use, I'm still not finding it a good fit for reading fanfic or ebooks or articles. It's...not relaxing? I can't identify if it's just Eloquence is what I'm used to, or if it's something about the voice.
@fastfinge you know what? I'm sort of in the same boat as you, but I also like it for playing audio games like Mist World. It's not bad for it. But the moment I start reading longer things or news articles for personal time off, Eloquence wins. I don't know if it's the prosody that we're still getting from Espeak or what either.
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IMHO it's also due to the fact that Eloquence Us English Reed, despite sounding robotic, is relatively good at mimicking human intonation patterns. Now I say relatively because it's got its own quirks, but it's very much acceptable overall. And it has some sort of fullness that I can't find in the likes of eSpeak.
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@amir @fastfinge hmm. I made a version of speechplayer.dll that improves things, more so at 22050 than 44100. We now have a burstyness calculator as part of speech wave generator, scaling at different sample rates. Took about an hour of the lunch away, but ah well. It definitely helped though and we can always tune how aggressive or not the thresholds are at various sample rates now. Big win that way.
@fastfinge There's something about these voices that sound similar to ESpeak that give me a headache if I listen to them for more than half an hour. I can notice the fatigue every time.
@ppatel @fastfinge so what do y'all think. Give up on project until we know a better phonemizer path (or multiple if we needed that for multilingual coverage, but that gets dicey and bloated fast.) Haha. Phoneme table tuning works up to a point, and rules will help make words like "you" on their own not be cut off as fast, sure. But I don't think it will change how words get stressed and where, and besides the "classic" pitch mode that tries to really override intonation we can't create a different shape on how things are pronounced without creating a million word-specific rules Espeak might sound odd on (which En-us.YAML already has a lot of, it would just need even more sadly.) Thing is though, all those rules could no longer apply when you switch phonemizers, so I really am stuck on progress until this is unblocked there.
@fastfinge You can only take it so far. With your current set of tools, there's enough to make improvements to how ESpeak operates. I've been watching to see if your project would come close enough to Eloquence, hoping that we wouldn't have to write a completely new speech engine. I was considering starting a one from scratch. I'll have more time starting next month. With good community input and contributions, I think we can have something in a year or so.
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@ppatel@Tamasg Good luck with that. The more I dig in, the more complex it all gets. But you could make a big difference if you focused on the phonemizer (IE going from text to IPA). Then we wouldn't depend on espeak at all anymore, and would effectively be a speech engine from scratch. The phoneme editor includes support for third party phonemizers already, so you can test easily.
@fastfinge @ppatel I think it would definitely be interesting to explore non-Klatt implementations, like Diphone synthesis, although considering Eloquence did it with Klatt is why I kind of stuck with improving Speech Player. I've considered extending frames, ETC, but then realized that the 47 we have are probably the good core set, and adding more resonators / (cascade and parallel) wouldn't really improve clarity because we have all the fundemental ones needed for a proper Klatt model already, it's just a matter of (A) continuing to tune phonemes and (B) allowing for DSP tweaks like the new Tilt one that change voicing shape, ETC. So no breaking the frame struct unless there's absolutely something that can't be represented in phoneme data or the DSP layer - it would have to have a clear distinction in architecture to b be added.
I've never heard Diphone synthesis that sounds good. That's pretty much what festival and flight do.
@fastfinge @ppatel OK y'all, new branch: voicingtone_struct_break - right now I warn you, it makes things more clicky on words like notification and thirty. But this will try to reshape filters and resonators based on the Qlatt repo. For now it adds a new tuning knob: t.noiseGlottalModDepth to enable Qlatt-like noise AM (voiced only) ranges from 0 to 1. Also a DSP verion check function so breaking the struct won't cause weirdnesses with mismatched files. This will probably be more major work as DSP improvements are added and won't get merged until it's not clicky for sure.
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@fastfinge @ppatel it does definitely sound different in the new branch. no clicks. added 3 new params:
•Noise glottal modulation (0-100, default 0) → maps to 0.0-1.0
• Pitch-sync F1 delta (0-100, default 50) → maps to 0-120 Hz (so 50 = 60 Hz)
• Pitch-sync B1 delta (0-100, default 50) → maps to 0-100 Hz (so 50 = 50 Hz)
•Noise glottal modulation (0-100, default 0) → maps to 0.0-1.0
• Pitch-sync F1 delta (0-100, default 50) → maps to 0-120 Hz (so 50 = 60 Hz)
• Pitch-sync B1 delta (0-100, default 50) → maps to 0-100 Hz (so 50 = 50 Hz)
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@ppatel @fastfinge it's nicer at keeping the voice same at higher sample rates, so no more "woah, the voice is so different at 11025!" surprise feeling, and there's a fullness I can't quite explain to it. Hmm. But the new sliders in the NVDA driver (need replacing of speechplayer.py / __init_.py) allow you to mess with the pitch-sync f1 delta and b1 delta values. And it makes a drastic diff when you twittle with them at opposing levels, I'm fascinated.
I have no idea if this is helpful, and I didn't manage to get it running yet. But...
Yeah, already see better things in this for nasalization modeling. They have way more sophisticated one on the open-source one. We could adjust how caNP is used by treating it as a "nasal pole gain" instead of a mix, applying it to the difference between NP output and input. That's what this one does instead.
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This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-…
The Enclosure feedback loop
speculation about the way (paid) software development will become LLM-onlymichiel.buddingh.eu
This goes much, much wider than programming and LLMs.
In general, the open source world looks with disdain at all kinds of automated feedback collection mechanisms, which the Silicon Valley Venture Capital tech ecosystem has wholeheartedly embraced. OSS is still stuck in the 1990s mindset of "if there's a problem, somebody will report this to us", and That... just isn't true.
What we're stuck with is OSS solutions with inferrior user experiences which nobody wants to use, instead of a compromise where OSS software collects more data than some people would have liked, but that software actually has some users and makes a difference in the world.
To be fair, there are some good arguments against this (it's much easier to protect user privacy if the only contributors to your code are employees with background checks), but that doesn't make this less of a problem.
ɔǝlɐɟnoZ ®
in reply to Archos • • •Archos
in reply to ɔǝlɐɟnoZ ® • • •ɔǝlɐɟnoZ ®
in reply to Archos • • •Ivan Stloukal 🍎
in reply to Archos • • •Tím nechci říct že skončí, ale bolet to bude určitě, tohle ho bude stát procenta
Archos
in reply to Ivan Stloukal 🍎 • • •ɔǝlɐɟnoZ ®
in reply to Archos • • •Ivan Stloukal 🍎
in reply to Archos • • •V tomto okamžiku by měl prezident říct “víte co, dám Andrejovi abolici, táhne se to dlouho, stejně nakonec dostane maximálně podmínku, tak to pojďme ukončit”.
A to bys viděl, jak by Macinka fičel. A Tomio by strachy seděl v koutě ve svém kulatém domečku 😇
A možná by na tom vydělala i ČR, protože Andrej by sice prskal na předchozí vládu, ale nechal by se vodit jak Hurvínek většinou lidi.
Archos
in reply to Ivan Stloukal 🍎 • • •Nejlepší byl pohled na tiskovce na Vojtěcha. Úplně bylo vidět, jak se mu honí hlavou, kam to zase vlez 😂
Petr Skála
in reply to Archos • • •ɔǝlɐɟnoZ ®
in reply to Ivan Stloukal 🍎 • • •To bude spis: Macinka je borec ze se neda, Pavel je komunista, Turek to je frajer, aspon tem Fialovejm poskokum nekdo ukaze...atd
Bures bude drzet hubu, radost z toho nema, ale jde mu o kriminal. A prachy! Hlavne prachy. Pokud ho v dotacich a jinejch smeckach ta banda kretenu podrzi tak je necha bejt.
Archos
in reply to ɔǝlɐɟnoZ ® • • •ɔǝlɐɟnoZ ®
in reply to Archos • • •Kateřina
in reply to Archos • • •Sᴀɴᴅʀᴜšᴋᴀ
in reply to Archos • • •Archos
in reply to Sᴀɴᴅʀᴜšᴋᴀ • • •