The Visual Studio Code Extension entitled "Accessibility Alert Toggle" has been released. It allows you to turn on and off Accessibility Signals in the editor in cases where you need quiet time while coding or editting. Learn more here: marketplace.visualstudio.com/i…
"This is how Israel killed this hungry child. He walked through bombs and hunger to reach Zikim, hoping to bring flour back to his family... But an Israeli bullet got there first. He returned carried on wood, wrapped in the same flour bags he went to get. Israel kills the starving every day — and the world stays silent. Save us."
Let's dive into the Wednesday teaser edition of Other People's Music! This thread offers the first line of each of the week's reviews, plus links to the music, socials and full review. If you prefer to dive into the full version, you can find it here:
That wraps up this week's teaser edition of Other People's Music. If you still need more music (and who doesn't?), hit my archives! 300+ more reviews to read, 300+ acts to discover!
Would you like to see your music covered in a future installment? The details of how it works are all here, and no, I am NOT going to ask you for money.
Article 1, Section 9 and 10 have been removed from the official government website on the US Constitution. This better be some kind of joke.
Among numerous points: •Section 9 forbids suspending The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus •Section 10 forbids ex post facto laws
Removing these two would absolutely mean full blown dictatorship. Genuinely hoping this is some sort of prank or joke, but you never know with this fascist regime.
Okay I think it’s about time I actually cracked on and did some work. With that in mind I’ve gone for some instrumental electronic courtesy of @etherdiver #NowPlaying
You may have noticed billboards for something called "PDX Crusade" popping up in recent weeks. This event is being sponsored by Athey Creek aka Proud Boy Church, since a number of Oregon Proud Boys and their associates attend services there.
Portlanders should be aware that a number of out-of-town far-right chuds may be roving around before & after the event happening this Sat & Sun - August 2 & 3 - at the Moda Center. Please take appropriate precautions.
The Christian concept of "crusading" has a long and bloody history of hate, and the refrain from the far-right claiming they need to "save" or "cleanse" a city that isn't theirs is one we've heard in Portland many times in recent years.
We see this christofascism writ large in the actions of the current administration but it's especially visible in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who has tattoos of a crusader cross, and the words "deus vult" ("god wills it") and "infidel".
The Christian right has become an increasingly powerful force in American politics at every level, from school boards to the presidency. Its roots trace back decades.
ow ow ow ow ow! holy hell! judge joe brown wasn't playing at all in this one! plaintif was only sueing for 1200 dollars, but the ammount the judge gave her was a whole lot higher than that!
Judge Joe Brown plaintiff sues freeloader brother for charges from chatline
#Starlink is deliberately de-orbiting older satellites to ‘burn up’ in the pristine upper atmosphere.
‘Burn up’ actually means ‘leave a bunch of metal vapour in the upper atmosphere’.
————— quote
Before the first Starlink launches began in 2019, only about 40 to 50 satellites re-entered per year. SpaceX just brought down ten years' worth in only six months, adding an estimated 15,000 kilograms of aluminum oxide to the upper atmosphere. —————
Scientists are only just studying what this may do to the atmosphere (and life on earth). Early indications are not good.
People should be *really* worried about this and keep an eye out for future updates. Especially given the #USA seems to be turning into a lawless joke.
> SpaceX just brought down ten years' worth in only six months, adding an estimated 15,000 kilograms of aluminum oxide to the upper atmosphere.
20 seconds of research on this:
>> meteors from space deposit 100 to 200 tons of metallic material every day across the globe >> The meteors contain Tri-methyl aluminum, Lithium, Barium
why is 15,000kg of satellites a bigger concern than 100-200 tons of meteors (PER DAY!!)?
@feld Because of the composition. Meteoroids drop 0.3 tons per day of aluminum. Starlink just dropped at least 0.6 tons per day of aluminum in addition to that, plus a bunch of other metals like lithium that are almost non existent in meteoroids.
@feld They just dumped 500 satellites in 6 months, each one is (conservatively) 500kg, and (conservatively) half aluminum. That's 125 tons of aluminum in 6 months.
With 30,000 satellites that are 1000kg each (because they keep making them bigger) with 5 year lifetimes, they'll dump almost 6,000 tons of aluminum per year.
also, what exactly was our plan if we just started getting bombarded with a lot more meteoroids?
We're just going to have to get used to the idea that we need to start modifying the upper atmosphere.
We're already screwed because we have a significant lack of cloud coverage due to the existing warming and it's getting worse. So we're going to need to intervene anyway. We are going to have to increase the albedo ourselves and start doing things like stratospheric aerosol injection
an assertion was made. A curious mind would say "well how much is that in relation to everything else naturally entering the atmosphere?". So I found that answer, I posed a question, and I received a useful answer.
If you're trying to make some cutesy "stop being a smartass, just trust the scientists" point you can eat a bag of dicks. The scientists are wrong a *lot*.
Example: the climate models are all wrong. And not in a good way. Why? Compounding floating point errors. It's far worse than they're projecting.
Another reason: the calculations have not taken into consideration the lack of cloud coverage caused by the current amount of warming. How did they miss this? @SlicerDicer introduced this problem to me probably ... 8 years ago now? Maybe longer? Aren't the scientists supposed to be good at science? Oh wait, the lack of interdisciplinary expertise caused them to completely ignore the gas physics that rebreather diving experts know. Turns out that the warmer atmosphere affects the ability for clouds to condense. But nobody baked it into any climate models.
Yep, the gas physics are clear. It was about 10 years ago.
Why would they bake it into the climate models the entire thing was that more heat = more vapor. Superficial understanding says more clouds. Till you run the math of what’s actually happening to layers of the atmosphere. Then it’s very clear.
Dunno, it’s like maybe if their life depended upon the math being right and correct they’d take it serious?
Can’t say it’s incorrect when my life depended on it being 100% correct. 7 mins to dead if you are wrong.
Seven. Minutes. To. Dead.
That’s assuming everything is perfect when things go wrong and you notice it.
> Dunno, it’s like maybe if their life depended upon the math being right and correct they’d take it serious?
And once they realize their mistakes their research funding is probably gonna dry up if everything they've published gets retracted. It's a horrible situation.
@pesh you may be interested in this! Be My Eyes and Amtrak Partner to Pilot Innovative Visual Interpretation Technology for Blind and Low Vision Passengers - Be My Eyes for Business bemyeyes.com/business/news/be-…
I needed to setup a rather annoying test case for Pleroma. It would have taken me 20-30 mins to get it all sorted. This "AI" garbage did it for me in 2 minutes. I provided it two prompts:
First prompt:
--- Please analyze and document for me in this chat the behavior of Pleroma.User.Search.search/2 and how it handles searching for user accounts, the way the Postgres ranking works, etc ---
(it produced a bunch of documentation and code citations that matched reality)
Second prompt:
--- ok, this basically matches what I'm seeing as well. However, there appears to be a bug somewhere. Let's begin by creating a test directly for Pleroma.User.Search.search/2 that demonstrates what I am seeing.
First, let's create these users:
- one user for ourself - lain@cyber.ms - Laine@pialle.fr - lain@lain.com - lain@pleroma.soykaf.com - lain@fediffusion.art
Second, let's establish relationships
- we have no relationship with lain@cyber.ms - we have no relationship with Laine@pialle.fr - there is mutual following relationship for lain@lain.com - there is mutual following relationship for lain@pleroma.soykaf.com - we are following lain@fediffusion.art
Now, when searching for "@lain" I expect the results to be in this order:
and then it thought that I wanted the actual broken behavior, haha, because I expected the test to pass and match the broken behavior I described:
--- The test is now working and clearly shows the current behavior vs. the expected behavior. Let me analyze the results:
Current Actual Order: lain@lain.com (rank: 2.33, mutual following) lain@pleroma.soykaf.com (rank: 1.81, mutual following) lain@fediffusion.art (rank: 1.61, following) lain@cyber.ms (rank: 1.36, no relationship) Laine@pialle.fr (rank: 0.81, no relationship)
Expected Order: lain@cyber.ms (no relationship, exact match) Laine@pialle.fr (no relationship, similar match) lain@lain.com (mutual following) lain@pleroma.soykaf.com (mutual following) lain@fediffusion.art (following)
The issue is clear: the social relationship boosting is overpowering the base trigram similarity scores, causing users with relationships to always rank higher than users without relationships, regardless of how good the text match is.
Looking at the ranking scores: Users with mutual following get a 1.5x boost Users with one-way following get a 1.3x or 1.1x boost Users without relationships get no boost
This means even a poor text match with a relationship will rank higher than a perfect text match without a relationship.
The test successfully demonstrates the bug you mentioned! The current implementation prioritizes social relationships over text match quality, but your expected behavior prioritizes text match quality over social relationships.
Would you like me to proceed with modifying the search algorithm to match your expected behavior, or would you like to discuss the approach first? ---
Please tell me again how this technology is terrible and nobody should use it? It just saved me an hour RT: friedcheese.us/objects/0105bfc…
Whether it's for offline listening, privacy or something else: we're always happy when someone is so enthusiastic about AntennaPod (even if the love is declared in a media article with a clickbaity title 😇). And it's cool to see it run on a phone with an eInk display! howtogeek.com/this-is-the-only…
when I go through my mails I usually have 3 buttons: "A" "Del" "Down Arrow"
Things that are done, but are important "A" for Archive. Things that I don't need to anymore "Del" Things I have to act on "Down Arrow" aka I check on them once I'm done.
when I reach the bottom I answer any E-Mail that needs answering and press "A" to archive it as well. I continue this until my Inbox is empty and I'm done for that session.
Great tips, I remember the Henk Postma post referenced somewhere else like 15 years ago! Too bad tags can’t be reordered... 😩 That would improve the use a lot.
@tagomago Thanks so much for the feedback, and seriously, we're so thankful for Hank's article! And the ability to reorder tags...that could be a great suggestion for Mozilla Connect! connect.mozilla.org
curl_easy_reset() did not reset the rewind_read flag. This caused any
handles that previously had a CURLE_SEND_FAIL_REWIND error to get stuck
with that error, failing any subsequent requests, even ...
## Summary:
- Use-After-Free vulnerability that leads to arbitrary write/READ
YES, I used IA along with mermaind editor (online one) to generate this graph that show these paths for...
We are thrilled to announce an exciting new chapter in the evolution of Mixxx, redesigning the Mixxx user interface in #QML. This significant update aims to enhance customization, improve performance, and ensure better accessibility for a variety of hardware, including tablets and touchscreen laptops, but also to users with vision deficiency.
We're looking for developers, designers, and testers to help us on this journey!
Download the most advanced FREE DJ software available, featuring iTunes integration, MIDI controller support, internet broadcasting, and integrated music library.
This proposed UI change feels very Rekordbox-y, and that's a compliment. I love that Mixxx will soon have a 3-band waveform that actually works and waveforms in the library pane with one-click preview... I have really disliked the way tracks have to be loaded into the preview player to preview them up to this point. The controller mapping interface looks freakin' slick too!
Last week I was talking with my cousin (who is not an engineer) about how "artificial intelligence" has never really meant anything, and has been typified by "moving goalposts" as a result.
Not six hours later, I was debugging her mom's 1991-vintage pinball machine, and found this sentence in its instruction manual. These "advanced artificial intelligence systems" used a 2 MHz 6809 processor.
@cachondo To clarify, the use of the term "artificial intelligence" isn't related to the old speech synthesizer specifically, but the MS-DOS screen reader ASAP (Automatic Screen Access Program). Here's that passage:
ASAP uses a new technique that employs artificial intelligence to decide what part of the screen catches a sighted user's eye and announces that material automatically.
We're talking about a program that was 55 KB of machine code.
@cachondo I think the actual technique was something like looking at the foreground and background colors of text on the screen (reading from PC text-mode screen memory) and using heuristics to determine what text was highlighted or otherwise noteworthy enough to be read automatically when it changed.
@cachondo Later GUI screen readers, at least on Windows, did similar things, but they first had to intercept OS graphics API calls to build an off-screen model. I wrote one of those myself. And at the time (2005, when I was about 25) I thought my off-screen model was pretty clever. Never thought to call it artificial intelligence though.
Google confirmed that one of its cloud-stored Salesforce databases was breached, exposing its customer data. Google attributed the breach to a hacking group, ShinyHunters, known for breaking into Salesforce databases.
Fortunately, the August Atomic peace blocked the Japanese plan 夜桜作戦 (Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night) to bomb California in next month w/ bubonic plague, developed & tested @ Unit 731, using I-400 subs & float planes they carried. That saved not only the lives of civilians in California who otherwise would have died horribly from a disease we had no cure for, but the millions of Allied & Japanese troops, + millions of civilians.
In which I distill a lot of casual pub chats I've had with friends into a layperson's guide to the #OnlineSafetyAct. What it is, the problems it causes, and why you should definitely care.
Age verification has hit the UK, people need to upload ID to see 'adult' content. What's the harm in laws like this, if they protect children? Let's see.
Tl;dr: "This law breaks the internet, destroys online privacy, kills independent websites, wrecks accessibility, trains users to routinely bypass government blocks of genuinely illegal content, and offers less protection to kids than the tools that are already freely available from every major ISP."
Today is the anniversary of the release of the web to the world, in 1991, by @timbl when he said "Try it"
Billions have taken up his call to use the web. W3C, as a steward of this initial gift since 1994, is realizing our vision of making the web work, for everyone – a web designed for the good of its users, that is safe and secure.
In this blog post about the newly published W3C Statement “Vision for W3C”, W3C CEO Seth Dobbs emphasizes the importance of principle-driven leadership and how vision gives clarity to move towards meaningful goals.
Mr. Berners-Lee did something awesome but the current state of the web is awful and you know it. "A web designed for the good of its users that is safe and secure." Do you really believe it?
The state of the web being awful is not due to its open standards but due to the perversions built on top of it by capitalism, which entirely thwart the open principles it was built for.
The world's democracies should boycott the Trump Olympics. Trump announces he will chair White House taskforce for 2028 LA Olympics theguardian.com/sport/2025/aug…
We're aware some users are experiencing intermittent outages accessing the website. We are investigating. In the meantime, please try refreshing as that seems to often work
Tuta Mail @Tutanota — Your email, truly private & quantum-secure.
Experience truly private communication with quantum-safe, end-to-end encrypted email. Enjoy zero tracking, ad-free usage, and robust security features.
as much as I love and use Signal, I don't see how it counts as a DeGooglify app. Now to the question, I like Fossify apps, FairEmail, Aurora Store, F-Droid (Droid-ify), Obtainium, Tubular, KeePassDX, FUTO Keyboard, among others...
as a start: GrapheneOS Gmail => Tuta and Proton Google Calendar => Tuta and Proton and Etar Google Chrome Browser => LibreWolf, Vanadium and Brave Google Search => Leta.mullvad.net Google DNS => NextDNS/mullvad DNS Google Drive => Syncthing to synchronize my data, ProtonDrive Password Manager : KeepassXC, KeepassDX MullvadVPN/ProtonVPN Google Play Store => Droid-ify Tasks Google Fotos => Aces Libre Google Authenticator => Aegis, Standardnotes Google Docs => LibreOffice/OpenOffice Google Gemini => VeniceAI Google Hangouts => Threema G board => Futo Google Voice Assistant => Whisper/Futo
#nextcloud made it possible for me to (self-)host my (and my family's) phone calendars, contacts, and even when pictures are taken, they get uploaded to our Nextcloud instance, and NOT to google/apple.
10/10, would recommend for any household looking to #degoogle.
Others include #searxng, has literally replaced all monolithic search engines, works great, no ads or AI
Nextcloud can replace a lot of Google services. It is open-source, so you can host it yourself, or use an ISP that supports it. I use an ISP that is based in the EU.
"GitHub CEO delivers stark message to developers: Embrace AI or get out."
...
"Dohmke said developers who initially dismissed tools such as GitHub Copilot as gimmicks now see them as indispensable collaborators. Through trial and error, these people have evolved from skeptics to AI strategists"
The NLnet Foundation revealed more projects receiving funding from NGI Zero Commons, which includes the popular Bottles app for running Windows apps on Linux.
I've had this PDF in my pile of random documents for like 10 years. It's an old paper that was apparently typeset with LaTeX back in 2002. If I try any non-OCR-based PDF text extraction tool I'm aware of, it produces complete noise. Does anyone know what's going on here? Is there some identifiable alternate character mapping, or is it one of a kind? Is there any better way to pull text out of it than OCR? mwcampbell.us/documents/not-mi… (apparently no longer available from its original source)
somebody else can probably give a more comprehensive answer, but at first glance it looks to me like the text in that pdf was rasterized for some reason (if I zoom in, I can see the pixels, this is with some old version of Google PDF reader on my Android phone).
@jplatte It might be using low-resolution bitmap fonts; Poppler's pdffonts says that the embedded fonts are Type 3, not TrueType. But it doesn't seem to be rasterized at the page level, like a scanned document.
I have a piece of software called PDF2XL which is normally great for extracting tables of data from PDF files. I've used it with hundreds of files before.
This one file though, gives me gibberish
A lovely piano exists in the house of my friend Ignasi Cambra, and I was fortunate enough to be allowed to play it for a short while.I'm on a family cruise a...
"GitHub CEO delivers stark message to developers: Embrace AI or get out."
So, I guess, if one wants to get out, @Codeberg@social.anoxinon.de is the place to go.
https://www.businessinsider.com/github-ceo-developers-embrace-ai-or-get-out-2025-8
I've been an email hosting customer with #MythicBeasts (@beasts) for just under a day and a half, and I'm honestly very impressed. I opted for their email only plan since I already have webspace somewhere else. The main website and control pannel UI are very accessible to #blind #ScreenReader users like myself, with sections clearly structured with headings, pretty much no unlabelled links, buttons or other elements, and no annoying ads, pop-ups or anything else that could hijack a screen reader or lag a browser to pieces. I contacted them about an issue I'm having yesterday and the initial reply, *human* reply that is, took just over 10 minutes. The issue is still ongoing as of now, but I'm confident that it will be fixed soon; I did contact them at the backside of the working day after all. Not bad at all for the monthly price of just under a fiver! Also, bonus points for being a 2000s ISP, having started in the year 2000.
I don't really know, I don't have any red flags, I suppose. I use gandi for my hosting and their mail box pricing has shot up, so I may well move. pity there's no way of moving host like you'd just send a text for a PAC on your mobile
Ether Diver
in reply to Ether Diver • • •Satiricus Doomicus Americus – Satiricus Doomicus Americus
A fascinating and surprising mix of fuzzed-out guitar riffs, unusual samples, oddball vocals and doomy folk.
buzzarddoomfolk.bandcamp.com/a…
@buzzarddoomfolk.bsky.social
etherdiver.com/2025/08/01/opm-…
@folkmusic
@rockmusic
#DoomFolk #folk
Satiricus Doomicus Americus, by Satiricus Doomicus Americus
BuzzardEther Diver
in reply to Ether Diver • • •Wojcicki – Wetmarket Scratch
Classic indie rock like the early ‘00s used to make – a little Americana, a little country, a little punk.
wojcicki.bandcamp.com/album/we…
@dmswojcicki.bsky.social
etherdiver.com/2025/08/01/opm-…
@rockmusic
#IndieRock #Rock #Americana #Punk #MusicDiscovery
Wetmarket Scratch, by Wojcicki
WojcickiEther Diver
in reply to Ether Diver • • •UK indie hip hop with conscious raps and some interesting atmospheric flourishes.
bofbriz.bandcamp.com/track/pro…
@bofbriz.bsky.social
etherdiver.com/2025/08/01/opm-…
@hiphop
@electronicmusic
@experimentalmusic
#HipHop #FutureHipHop
Profoundly sick society, by B of Briz
B of BrizEther Diver
in reply to Ether Diver • • •AVXARC – MTN
Cinematic synth music based in the kosmische tradition that sounds like the soundtrack to a lost Michael Mann film.
highmage.bandcamp.com/album/mt…
@ledenmere.bsky.social
etherdiver.com/2025/08/01/opm-…
@electronicmusic
#kosmische #FilmMusic #Soundtrack
MTN, by AVXARC
High Mage ProductionsEther Diver
in reply to Ether Diver • • •Travels With Brindle – No. 1 in Heaven
Whimsical twee covers of Sparks classics by a lady with a ukulele.
travelswithbrindle.bandcamp.co…
@travelswithbrindle.bsky.social
etherdiver.com/2025/08/01/opm-…
@popmusic
#Sparks #pop #Ukulele
No. 1 in Heaven, by Travels With Brindle
Travels With BrindleEther Diver
in reply to Ether Diver • • •That wraps up this week's teaser edition of Other People's Music. If you still need more music (and who doesn't?), hit my archives! 300+ more reviews to read, 300+ acts to discover!
etherdiver.com/category/other-…
Other People’s Music – Ether Diver
www.etherdiver.comEther Diver
in reply to Ether Diver • • •Would you like to see your music covered in a future installment? The details of how it works are all here, and no, I am NOT going to ask you for money.
etherdiver.com/other-peoples-m…
(I will ask you to boost a few posts, maybe read a few other entries, that kinda thing; community!)
OPM Submission Guidelines – Ether Diver
www.etherdiver.com