mastodon - Link to source

Had to run an errand today that involved navigating what I consider to be one of the worst intersections in the city - it's between two shopping areas and just slow and clogged and everyone is always grumpy.

Two people were standing OUT IN THE RAIN, making giant bubbles that would float into the intersection and interact with everyone. It was total magic.

Person standing on a corner in a busy retail development, holding up two sticks with rope between them, that have been dipped in bubble soap and create these massive floaty, rolly bubbles set free into the roadway, shiny iridescent blobs of joy.

mastodon - Link to source
This is one of my many favorite artists. I wanna' be her when I grow up! #womenmusician #americana
youtube.com/watch?v=BoQctt3WEy…

Brandi Carlile: Tiny Desk Concert

Ann Powers | December 3, 2025Brandi Carlile has a way of making any performance feel like a tête-à-tête, a deep emotional exchange between friends that just ...
YouTube
#americana #womenmusician
in reply to Jessica the VI Artist🎚️🎹🌈

mastodon - Link to source

Zach Bennoui

Ok fun fact that I found out a few weeks ago. All the way back in like 2007/8 when Logic Pro 8 was released, Apple included one of Brandi's songs (Late Morning Lullaby) as a project to demo what the software was capable of. They've been doing this for years, but I actually thought she was a relatively new artist and didn't know she'd been releasing stuff all the way back then. Also love Tiny Desk, great series with a really diverse range of artists.
in reply to Jack-Frostodon

mastodon - Link to source

miki

@jackf723 @jscholes And afaik the more radios you have, the more certification pain you get from all the countries you're trying to sell to.

AT is one of the worst markets to be in from that perspective, since you're mostly selling to individuals, you don't have high volume to spread the costs over, and your customers are extremely geographically diverse.

@James Scholes @Jack-Frostodon
in reply to miki

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Jack-Frostodon

@miki @jscholes Cellular certification over here is insane, the FCC's rubber-stamp cost has to be in the 5 figures which is a major hit when selling at low volume. There was a time when it wasn't that way, the last vestidges of that in the AT space being the Levelstar Orion and the Braille+18 which had modems. Figure that predated the big phone manufacturer lobby (Apple and Samsung, most likely) to rais the rates to be unattainable for most.
@miki @James Scholes
in reply to miki

mastodon - Link to source

Jack-Frostodon

@miki @jscholes The SensePlayer and Orbit Player, both of which use the same Mediatech Helio P35 SoC, have cellular modules. Well, the SensePlayer does, the Orbit Player might actually not since it doesn't produce an IMEI like hte SensePlayer. Figure in the case of the SensePlayer it was because the only SoC's available to Hims/Selvas were those, and given chip shortage and all, it was probably best to claim plausible deniability so long as the modem was left inactive.
@miki @James Scholes
in reply to Jack-Frostodon

mastodon - Link to source

Simon Jaeger

@jackf723 @miki @jscholes Does it actually have cellular capability enabled? I didn't think it did.
Yeah, at this point I'm just resigned to using an Android phone as a hotspot or whatever. Maybe the thing that will push me to buy an ARM laptop will be cellular. Kind of a shame we're not at the point where Humanware could just use one of those.
@miki @James Scholes @Jack-Frostodon

mastodon - Link to source
Medical Question

Sensitive content

mastodon - Link to source
*sighs* I should not need to say this but... Telling someone to "get over" their mental condition or neurodivergence doesn't work. Nobody, no matter their condition, should ever, *ever* have to hear "get over it," "just be normal," or anything implying their brain can just be normalized, controlled or that they're making it up. Sure, I'm sure some people in the world fake mental disorders or other neurodivergence, but most of us aren't. Most of us are just trying to survive in a world that's rarely if ever accommodating to us and our needs, depending on what those needs are. Hearing that we should just get over ourselves never, ever helps, and often does more harm than good. You know a neurodivergent person? Great! so then you help them with whatever they're struggling with. You accommodate them. You ask how you can make their sensitivity, anxiety, stress level, focus, or whatever else easier in your environment. You absolutely do not tell them to get over themselves or just be fine with things you might think are completely fine and nondisruptive, but that might thoroughly disrupt them. Your experience of tolerable isn't everyone's experience of tolerable. Demanding someone to get over a sensitivity won't make it any less stressful to them. Don't do this. It's not cool. Ever
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

mastodon - Link to source

After years designing and scaling web and mobile applications using React and Node.js, I am now actively looking for a full-time, remote FullStack position.

My focus has always been on solving tough technical problems and building systems that last. I enjoy creating maintainable solutions and have a background in developing products that significantly boost efficiency and customer retention.

Any leads or introductions to teams building great products would be genuinely appreciated!

#FediHired

#fedihired

mastodon - Link to source
Ranting about how stupid cultural superiority is.

Sensitive content

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TIL that Kenyan workers have been used so much to train AI systems, that standard writing by Kenyan people is often flagged as AI generated while it is not (which means that they can get discriminated for jobs / exams etc)
marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-…

Edit: many people raised below that the article is talking about texts written in very classically trained English detected as AI generated, which is the case for many Kenyans. It is documented that many Kenyan workers have been hired to train LLMs, but I made an assumption that it was the reason for this detection while it may not be. Sorry about that, thanks for the feedback (and feel free to continue the discussion here)


I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.

I'm calm. I'm calm. I promise.
Marcus Olang' (this man's mind)
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

reshared this

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Welcome to our last In-Process blog post for 2025! nvaccess.org/post/in-process-1…

In this edition:
- Holiday Season Trading Hours
- NVDA with Digitech Reece
- World Blindness Summit Presentation
- Finding Things

Do check it out, have a wonderful break if you are having time off or a holiday, spend time with loved ones, and we look forward to catching up with everyone in 2026!

#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #Accessibility #Christmas #NewYear

Screenshot of YouTube cover image for NVDA with Digitech Reece video, showing Reece working at his computer, with "Watch on YouTube" and play buttons visible)

NV Access | In-Process 16th December 2025

www.nvaccess.org
#Accessibility #screenreader #nvdasr #nvda #christmas #newyear
in reply to NV Access

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

Following on from that last In-Process, I (Quentin) am mostly off until the a week or so into January. I will pop in from time to time just to make sure everything is running smoothly, but if you need a reply from us specifically, unless it's urgent (eg the website is down), we likely won't get back to you until the new year. If you need help with NVDA, please do check the resources in the "Holiday season trading hours" article in the blog. Happy New Year everyone!
This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Zach Bennoui reshared this.

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The death of the internet as we know it is real and very much happening in front of our eyes

"Google AI summaries are ruining the livelihoods of recipe writers: ‘It’s an extinction event’"
theguardian.com/technology/202…


Google AI summaries are ruining the livelihoods of recipe writers: ‘It’s an extinction event’

AI Mode is mangling recipes by merging instructions from multiple creators – and causing them huge dips in ad traffic
Aimee Levitt (The Guardian)

mastodon - Link to source
President Trump signs an executive order designating fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/202…

Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Designates Fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction – The White House

DEFENDING AMERICA FROM A CHEMICAL WEAPON: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order designating illicit fentanyl and its core precursor
The White House
in reply to victor tsaran

mastodon - Link to source

Matt May

@vick21 Fentanyl is objectively terrifying. Pretty narrow band between a recreational dose and a fatal one. Cheap to make, hard to detect in transit, and now it's being fabricated all over.

Basically, any pill or powder being sold on the street could be cut with fentanyl, if not 100%, because it's cheaper and easier to procure than other drugs. That's how most people die from it.

@victor tsaran
in reply to Mahmoud

mastodon - Link to source

Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox

Thanks for trying the Android app, and we're sorry notifications aren't working! Please see the article at Settings > Getting Help > Settings > "Configure push...", then enable push and Notifications in Manage folders > [folder]. Also enable notifications under Settings > [account] > Notifications > "New mail.." and your phone's notification settings in Settings > Notifications > Messages. (Also, make sure Thunderbird doesn't have reduced battery usage!)

mastodon - Link to source
Eloquence for Android is available to me, with early access. If you want to find out if it's available to you, just search the play store for "Eloquence" and look for the one called "Eloquence text to speech." I didn't need to click a link or do anything special; I'm not on CodeFactory's radar at all.
The news is pretty much all good. There's a new rate boost option that will help a lot with reading apps that arbitrarily cap the maximum speech rate at 300 or 400 percent, which is basically every reading app I could find. This was a major pain point of the previous version of Eloquence, and it wasn't even CodeFactory's fault, so it's nice to see this added as an option.
Otherwise, it should be familiar to anyone who used the old version. I can't remember if there was a way to remove intonation pauses in the previous version but this new one has a checkbox for it. It has a sample rate selection, and like before, I actually enjoy the 16KHZ version. The higher sample rate on iOS causes Eloquence to sound like it has no teeth, but the Android version has always sounded more natural, and it adds much-needed clarity when using low-quality earbuds.
As for the subscription, it's $3/month for me. I'm not sure if that's Canadian or US dollars, so it might be less than $3 for Americans. There's also a $30/year option. Considering Eloquence was originally a one-time purchase of $20, this seems like a good balance. Android is the affordable option for a lot of people, and $3 USD goes a long way in other countries, so I imagine this was their attempt to get as many people subscribed as possible. Let's not forget that the price for subscriptions can change at any time, so this could be an introductory price or a forever price.
My main question is whether a failed license validation will cause the synth to stop functioning, leaving the user with no way to use their own phone. CodeFactory also resells Vocalizer voices, and those are lifetime licenses, but I've had two different phones become unusable after being turned on with no internet connection. In one case, I had to get sighted help to connect to the wi-fi where I was staying, so CodeFactory could connect to its licensing server to--idk, verify the definition for the word "lifetime" I guess. So I sincerely hope the fallback mechanism has been improved here, because rendering someone's phone unusable is a serious potential safety issue.
I know people will probably crack this, for good reason, but I would urge everyone to only install this hypothetical crack to circumvent the licensing restrictions and keep the subscription active. CodeFactory did create this port and if we all just steal it for free, they'll make no money from it. That's not a win for anyone, and it will cause them to abandon it the way they did the first one.

hometown - Link to source
Big news from the Video Game History Foundation - they’ve come into a huge collection of previously-inaccessible Sega Channel data. Largely unseen since it originally broadcast in 1994-1997. gamehistory.org/segachannel/

The Secrets of Sega Channel: VGHF recovers over 100 Sega Channel ROMs (and more) | Video Game History Foundation

Our project to preserve the history of Sega Channel — including over 100 new Sega Channel ROMs.
Phil Salvador (Video Game History Foundation)

mastodon - Link to source
Eloquence on Android first impressions: CodeFactory still doesn't seem to know how to make an Android TTS voice properly, because it does not interrupt how it should at fast rates, same as Vocalizer. With RHVoice, if I flick through an app quickly, it starts speaking the start of every string as I flick. Eloquence, though? If I flick twice super fast it'll just keep reading the very first string until it's done, and then move onto the final one. #YouHadOneJob
#youhadonejob

Dennis reshared this.

in reply to Jamie Teh

mastodon - Link to source

Andre Louis

@jcsteh @Scott @KaraLG84 I wish I'd recorded it, but once they sent me a build that was so responsive that turning one of the controls at high-speed read the beginning of everything you passed through. I said 'I want that one! give me that one!' They didn't. Now if you turn too quickly, you just miss things as I guess, not being a programmer, it has a poll rate or some shit, so if you're over it, it skips. I want a responsiveness slider. Give me a responsiveness slider.
@Jamie Teh @Scott @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@FreakyFwoof @Scott @KaraLG84 Rule number 1 in speech related accessibility: responsiveness is of utmost importance, almost over everything else, unless prioritising it would cause the information to be inaccurate. I don't know why so many people struggle to understand this, especially since the same people would probably be horrified if their buttery smooth scrolling had even the slightest hiccup or dropped a single frame. Apple could take a lesson here too.
@Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@FreakyFwoof @Scott @KaraLG84 I used to think this delay was some communication lag between KK and the host, but it isn't, because transport buttons, etc. respond very quickly. With OSARA, the DAW buttons end up reading faster than KK's own controls do. That means it's very likely an artificial delay, which is utterly infuriating. It annoyed me enough that I spent a little bit of time trying to see if there was some way I could reverse engineer their protocol and write my own helper, but I didn't get anywhere.
@Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Chi Kim

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@chikim @Scott @FreakyFwoof @KaraLG84 Makes sense. That's honestly what I thought, but I got the impression somewhere from NI that it used auto mapping features in some DAWs or something and I assumed those mappings were somehow more sensible. Apparently, I misled myself. On the flip side, this should be fairly straightforward to implement in REAPER. Famous last words.
@Chi Kim @Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Jamie Teh

mastodon - Link to source

Scott

@jcsteh @chikim @FreakyFwoof @KaraLG84 Hmm I thought they were doing some nice sorting or something as well. So two questions:
1. Is using the controller to twiddle DAW params still subject to the same delayed speech response?
2. If there's nothing complicated happening, does that mean ReaKontrol could do this with hardware other than MK3 Jamie?
@Jamie Teh @Chi Kim @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@Scott Regarding 2, I wondered that too. The issue is that ReaKontrol doesn't get feedback from the knobs and page buttons unless you're in the mixer view, at which point the user probably wants to use them for the mixer. We could probably have a "fake" mixer view which gets enabled when you press the 4d encoder while in the mixer view or something like that, but it's definitely weird. Plus ReaKontrol doesn't get anything when you touch the knobs, only when you turn them, so you couldn't query the value. @chikim @FreakyFwoof @TheQuinbox @KaraLG84
@Quin @Chi Kim @Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Jamie Teh

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@Scott Personally, I don't buy NI's argument that this stuff is only possible with Mk3. Mk3 does more of it on the keyboard hardware itself, sure, but that's no reason they couldn't have done it with Mk2. They'd have to move the display and accessibility rendering out of the KK plugin and into a separate service, but it should still be possible. I think they just chose not to. Of course, I'm not an NI dev, so maybe there's something I'm missing. @chikim @FreakyFwoof @TheQuinbox @KaraLG84
@Quin @Chi Kim @Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Jamie Teh

mastodon - Link to source

Zach Bennoui

@jcsteh @Scott @chikim @FreakyFwoof @KaraLG84 Yeah maybe it's just a matter of resources. I get the impression they're trying to make their actual software more accessible without the keyboard as well, latest Kontakt update is a good example of this. I can now at least browse presets comfortably without using KK, but I hope they'll make editing accessible from the GUI as well.
@Jamie Teh @Chi Kim @Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@Scott If there aren't, that seems like something that could probably be done in ReaKontrol - it would just pretend that only the parameters you chose exist in the order you chose them - but the question is how to set up those templates. I actually wonder whether it might be worth exposing a fake plugin which gives you all the parameters you added to the TCP. That way, you could use track templates to get you just the parameters you regularly use. @chikim @FreakyFwoof @TheQuinbox @KaraLG84
@Quin @Chi Kim @Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@Scott Oh haha, I didn't realise they didn't have a UI for it. Doing it with config files wouldn't be too hard, but how non-OSARA users would get the parameter numbers is an interesting question. Honestly, it probably wouldn't be that hard to build a UI for it either. I'd just rather do... just about anything else. @chikim @FreakyFwoof @TheQuinbox @KaraLG84
@Quin @Chi Kim @Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@Scott You could do that I guess, though it makes the config a bit harder to deal with.
VST: ReaEQ (Cockos) = Freq-Low Shelf | Gain-Low Shelf | BW-Low Shelf
Maybe it needs to be YAML or something like that so we can do items on separate lines:
VST: ReaEQ (Cockos):
- Freq-Low Shelf
- Gain-Low Shelf
- BW-Low Shelf
But anyway, this is a way off, so no idea why I'm musing on it.
@chikim @FreakyFwoof @TheQuinbox @KaraLG84
@Quin @Chi Kim @Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source

Jamie Teh

@FreakyFwoof @Scott @KaraLG84 I just sent an email to NI. Excerpts below:
Even with Mk2, I've always noticed that the responsiveness of the speech with the keyboard is rather sluggish. I always assumed this was a limitation specific to the hardware. However, with the NI Accessibility Helper, I'm noticing that the latency is high even when using the PC keyboard to navigate the zones, get help, etc.
Subjective measurement is tricky for developers, so let's get scientific. I used a SAPI5 voice implementation which allows me to get speech directly into the NVDA screen reader. NVDA can measure the time from a key press to when speech occurs. Here's what we get:
[NVDA log]
As you can see, there's a delay of over 300ms between the time a key is pressed and the time speech occurs. To ensure this isn't a delay elsewhere in the system, I tried outputting directly from a Python program to SAPI5:
[NVDA log]
Here, you can see that the time is only 45ms. That's still not ideal, but that's a great deal lower than the >300ms we see with NI Accessibility Helper.
As a totally blind screen reader user myself and someone who spent 10 years developing a screen reader full time, I can't emphasise enough the critical importance of responsiveness. It can make or break a delightful experience. Many users won't even understand exactly what is bothering them, but it will irritate them over time. To make this practical, if someone hears 10000 messages from NI Accessibility Helper (not unreasonable if they're browsing a lot of instruments and making a lot of parameter changes in a long session), at 300ms of latency per message, they've wasted 50 minutes of their time just waiting for speech that they could have spent making music.
Perhaps the concern is that the user will hear a lot of truncated speech if they scroll fast and so an artificial delay has been introduced. On the contrary, hearing truncated speech is far preferable to high latency and screen reader users are already very familiar with this when they move fast. If this is not a concern you are willing to dismiss or there are certain voices that have caused problems, perhaps a responsiveness setting could be introduced.
If this isn't the concern, it'd be great if this responsiveness problem could be investigated.
@Scott @Andre Louis @Kara Goldfinch
in reply to Brian Tatosky

mastodon - Link to source

Andre Louis

Three of the four I'll agree with. Zoom AI though, a silent note-taker, yeah. I'm here for that. I teach on zoom and at the end of an hour when I've covered more things than I can remember, having a recap for the student at the end of it is wonderful.
It may not be 100% accurate but it's better than me trying to take notes during, and remember what happened after.
The rest can go right away though, for sure.
I know my students have found it useful too.

mastodon - Link to source

As I was already complaining about #WUR I can add another nice episode from their IT:
As some of you might know, @thunderbird added native support for exchange. I immediately wanted to connect my uni-email and get rid of my wonky outlook-brave-webapp.
Of course, it did no go as expected: an error message told me that admin approval is needed.
So far so good, let's ask IT if they could change this, as thunderbird is the e-mail-clients with the oldest and best track record you could possibly have.

Reply from them: "We cannot provide access because we don't know what is done with the data gathered from your Office365 Account. You will need to use Microsoft Outlook."

#wur @Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox
in reply to Puntarella

mastodon - Link to source

Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox

Sorry for the delay! Thunderbird being a desktop client means the communication between the user's terminal and the organisation's mail server is direct without using a third-party server or a web application backend. It's probably best to point your IT department, for now, to our privacy policy to show what we do (and don't do!) with your data: thunderbird.net/en-US/privacy/

Thunderbird Privacy Policy

Thunderbird is a free email application that’s easy to set up and customize - and it’s loaded with great features!
Thunderbird
in reply to Mikalai

pleroma - Link to source

feld

@mikalai @collectifission it's a bug that affects me every single day. They have nothing more pressing than fixing what they've already made and actually building a fully integrated login manager so they can behave like a real OS.

All this rewriting everything every 2 years is nonsense. Maybe a lot has changed since I last used KDE 3 but I'm not seeing the fruits of their labor

@Emil Jacobs - Collectifission @Mikalai

mastodon - Link to source

My Ubuntu Summit talk is up! Where I talk about:
1. How Desktop UX is effectively dead
2. Why I hate the term UX/UI with the heat of 1000 suns
3. How OSS can actually innovate in #ux

youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bO…


Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? | Ubuntu Summit 25.10

This talk focuses on that evil little term “UX/UI,” which is responsible for so much confusion and tension in open-source projects. Not only does it unnecess...
YouTube
#UX
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