mastodon - Link to source
Brailab, the Hungarian-only speech synth people love to make beatbox with random consonant-combos and yet I grew up with, is now updated to use a faster wrapper architecture and modernized with NVDA 2025.3. This does lay the groundwork for Brailab to work across future NVDA versions, as the audio it produces is now piped directly into memory with the wrapper rather than the DLL just piping it to the Windows audio API. eurpod.com/brailab-2025.nvda-a…
This entry was edited (11 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Y’all realise that the entire computer industry just pivoted to ‘AI Support’. Manufacturers of components (GPUs, CPUs, storage, RAM) are either exiting the consumer market (ex: Micron, Samsung) or severely limiting their offerings (NVIDIA, AMD, Samsung). Instead they are making products specifically catered and offered to AI/datacentre use.

You thought not being able to upgrade your RAM was a problem. Wait until you can’t buy a computer, and only rent one.

mastodon - Link to source
What can I say. Brailab wrapper works. It has some quirks but I built one. Now onto firstbite. I heard the voice, it won't be no Doubletalk style, because it is SmoothTalker 4 whereas I believe the other was version 3. But it does sound cool. I like that voice. Sort of like a hybrid of Keynote and old eloquence. I got it working under XP. But modern Windows, it has a memory corruption errors.
This entry was edited (13 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Mark Carney took a cabinet committee name and speech ideas from billionnaire-funded pro-AI and oil&gas booster group 'Build Canada' last May.

DeSmog and National Observer wrote about it 2 weeks ago and The Tyee wrote about the DOGE proponents among them in February but no legacy media have followed up. #media #cdnpoli

The Tech CEOs Who Want a DOGE for Canada
thetyee.ca/News/2025/02/28/Tec…
Ottawa hands corporate leaders 50 roles in government
nationalobserver.com/2025/12/1…

Cabinet Committee Mandate and Membership Current as of May 13, 2025 Cabinet committees carry out most of the day-to-day work of the Cabinet. Committees have their own members and areas of responsibility, which are set by the Prime Minister. The Treasury Board is the exception, as its mandate and membership are established in law. The current Cabinet committees are: *Priorities, Planning and Strategy. * Operations and Parliamentary Affairs e Treasury Board « National Security Council * Build Canada * Government Transformation / Government Efficiency. * Secure and Sovereign Canada * Quality of Life and Well-Being * Incident Response Group

The Tech CEOs Who Want a DOGE for Canada | The Tyee

Many supporters of a group called Build Canada are also interested in Elon Musk’s effort to slash government spending.
Jen St. Denis (The Tyee)
#media #cdnpoli

mastodon - Link to source
There's a topic on the AudioGames forum where someone was asking if the Blastbay Film Score Themes CDs are available anywhere. Philip Bennefall has kindly made most of these available. The exception is the Epic Romance CD to which he sold the rights a few years ago. His links are available for a limited time, so I've downloaded them and combined everything into one zip file, around 1.5 gigabytes. These files are in wav format. The AudioGames topic has a link where you can purchase the Epic Romance pack, again as wavs, so I am not including that since it's still for sale. Share and enjoy!
Zip file: bluegrasspals.com/BlastbayFilm…
AudioGames forum topic: forum.audiogames.net/topic/581…

mastodon - Link to source

Every goto in the Linux kernel / Just another day on the linux-kernel mailing list

(rave edit)

youtube.com/watch?v=v1Mfirg2-Z…


Every goto in the Linux kernel / Just another day on the linux-kernel mailing list

Visualization of every goto statement in the Linux 6.17 source code.Commentary from a 2003 linux-kernel mailing list discussion about the use of goto.Created...
YouTube

akkoma - Link to source

how can we cut our CI times by 50–90% and reduce our dependency on #github actions, securely and cheaply enough for a large public #rustlang codebase?

we did exactly that for @servo by building a self-hosted runner system that does virtual machine orchestration under the hood, all for barely 400 EUR/month!

talk video:
youtube.com/watch?v=-W1mSXdlRq…

blog post:
azabani.com/2025/12/18/shoestr…

slide that reads: How much faster? - mach try full workflow: 61m30s → 25m47s (−58%) - linux-unit-tests job: 34m29s → 3m15s (−90%) - windows-unit-tests job: 59m14s → 8m4s (−86%) - lint job: 11m54s → 2m25s (−79%) - wpt jobs: 25m35s → 20m50s (−18%) - But we also went from 20 runners → 3 runners

Web engine CI on a shoestring budget

How we built a CI runner orchestration system that halved Servo’s build times for only 300 EUR a month.
www.azabani.com
#github #RustLang @Servo

mastodon - Link to source
Normally I love hearing airport announcements. But tonight, I wish the announcers at FLL would just shut up. It feels like the announcements are never-ending. This gate is loud. And there's a kid who seems to love the sound of their voice. And this chair is hurting my bum. And this is why I generally avoid flying at this time of year. But the first two flights I wanted didn't pan out. One sold out, and by the time my s.o realized his sister booked a flight for tomorrow, the one for yesterday had gotten too expensive. And, here we are.

mastodon - Link to source
Lately I've been thinking about how many things for blind people can unintentionally be a barrier in relationships/getting to know people. I find that a lot of friendships tend to begin from a shared interest. A game, a show, a movie, what have you. And so many of those things are off limits to a lot of blind people. Someone likes a popular game? Oh sorry, I can't play that with you, there are no accessibility mods or built in screen reader accommodations. Someone likes a given show? Sorry, that show has no audio description, you'll likely have to tell me half the visual/on screen stuff that's happening if you want me to get the same context you get. I swear this is not a pity seeking post. This is literally just some thoughts I've been having, I wish their weren't so many barriers to enjoying the same activities as sighted people, I'm sure a rift has been put into many potential relationships because so many common interests were stunted or outright impossible because of inaccessibility or barriers like this. Not to say that is the case in every relationship, I’m sure some great relationships have happened, but it is something I personally do experience very regularly and it gets really, really old
This entry was edited (18 hours ago)
in reply to Kaliah

mastodon - Link to source

Zach Bennoui

I'm honestly so happy I'm not the only one who feels this way. I also find as I get older, I get more and more tired of having to come up with workarounds just to use the same stuff everyone else can use with no problem. It's exhausting. You would think of field like music production would be extremely accessible, right? Like it's audio, surely blind people would be great at that. But no, much of the software simply is not usable or has enough accessibility issues so as to not make it worth it for me. That's definitely changing, more and more plug-ins and DAWs are becoming accessible, but even so there's always the risk of set accessibility going away or having problems that can't easily be fixed by the user.

mastodon - Link to source
I'm so sad I'm making C++ wrappers for everything. Brailab, SoftVoice, all of it. Let's make C++ wrappers for every janky little speech synth that cannot output its audio to NVWave Player. Let's just use the Minhooking method @samtupy used for his amazing BestSpeech wrapper. I've been looking for projects to do while off work. Ther's the projects. Eloquence 2.0? MinHook the fuck out of it. Spend hours, days, weeks debugging each synth. Why the fuck not. Sadness fills my soul deeply, and this helps numb it. I scratched my Cadence displays today because my keys were in my pocket and it left a gouge across the plastic. So yes, sadness fills my soul, deeply, I cannot believe I scratched up my new Braille display.
@Sam Tupy

pleroma - Link to source

Multiple times this year I've seen people trying to crowdfund their open source work but won't tell me how much they need to continue working on it

What if I could have paid you the full amount you need? I'll never know, because you won't tell me. And I'm not interested in guessing, giving you money, and then you not doing it because you didn't get "enough".

mastodon - Link to source
Look y'all, since a few of you have asked about NVDA 2026.1 and my speech synths, I'm not going to start work on this until at least betas are out. @fastfinge has done a phenominal work starting around this, and his code helps me understand how such a thing would be done, but for one, I don't want an inter-process thing to be written in C++ but rather Python, sort of how he has it. Until #NVDASR develops their own adapter that developers can reuse for any DLL and just adapt function names or signatures to the workings of that speech synth, that process would become much, much easier. If that host process defined an API shape existing speech synths just hook into, I'm all for it. Then I'll begin that work, but not until then. Thanks for getting it, or not.
#nvdasr @🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦
This entry was edited (16 hours ago)
in reply to Luis Carlos

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@luiscarlosgonzalez LOL between Brailab, 3 versions of Eloquence, SoftVoice, SMPSoft, Flexvoice, I just will have my hands busy redoing all of it. Not going to look forward to that work, if there's a reason I get GPT 5 pro again, that'll be it because by hand to recode so many synths... Hopefully those other devs come out to do the work too, but it's never a 100% guarantee and NVDA can't commit devs to that work nor are they obligated to continue it after the initial release if they cannot. That's just the nature of open-source stuff, I myself won't have time to pick it up but I know @mush42 has been looking for new maintainers for his work. @fastfinge @ZBennoui
@Musharraf @Luis Carlos @Zach Bennoui @🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦
in reply to Luis Carlos

iceshrimp.net - Link to source

🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

If you want to do that with gemini-cli, make sure to give it access to a directory with the NVDA Addon developer guide, the API documentation for the synth you’re coding, and tell it where the NVDA repository is. The prompt should include each file name, and what it is. Then Gemini can read the documentation without searching the web, and that will save you a lot of time and tokens. If you have any header files or other bindings, also give it those.

mastodon - Link to source

Breaking News: A devastating setback in recent DOE notice that essentially eliminates the Randolph-Sheppard priority for Army dining facility contracts. We will fight to protect these jobs and opportunities. Read our press release at buff.ly/7CgdwnP

#BlindRights #RandolphSheppard

National Federation of the Blind logo, and text that reads, "December 23, 2025, We condemn the Department of Education’s decision to 'limit' (effectively eliminating) the Randolph-Sheppard priority in dining facility contracts on Department of the Army installations."
#blindrights #randolphsheppard

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source
Holy crap. So I'm sitting at a restaurant, and a cover started playing that I wanted to identify. I could hear it fairly well, like I could hear the song and tell that it was country, but there was a decent amount of background noise and people were trying to talk to me. I pulled up Shazam to identify it, and I was like, wondering if I'd have to yell at people to shut up and walk like an idiot to the speaker for it to pick it up, but I decided what the heck, I'll just try it at the table with all of the background. And it friggin got it. I'd have a tough time describing what I heard in sufficient detail to another person, but it caught it. I'm still trying to process this. Lol

glitchsoc - Link to source

My NordVPN subscription is expiring soon. Can someone recommend a VPN service? It can also be NordVPN. My requirements:
- Evade current/future EU surveylance
- Has to have a server in Israel that allows watching Kan that Kan doesn't block
- Allows routing all traffic over VPN with no contingencies (I don't do this at the moment, but who knows what the future holds)
- A Linux client
- No logging policy

Advantages:
- A Windows client
- Tor
- Residence outside the EU, US & UK

I think Proton & is Nord answer to all musts, but none wants.

Waiting for your ideas.

mastodon - Link to source
I'm trying to shift my perspective from "there was a glorious computer revolution that empowered the user and disrupted authority and we have fallen from the heights of its transcendental grace" and towards the more accurate "my formative years just happened to coincide with a period where a few technical innovations briefly conferred a small amount of power on individuals and labor, and capital has been efficiently reversing that small disruption ever since" but it sure doesn't *feel* like that

glitchsoc - Link to source

"Benzion Shemtov, #rabbi at #Chabad #Jewish Center at #Michigan State #University was out of the state when someone spray-painted #Nazi symbols on the doors and threw rocks at the windows of the center in the days following the #massacre at #BondiBeach in #Australia, where 15 people were #killed during a #Hanukkah celebration.

But when Shemtov returned to #EastLansing, he said he was greeted by numerous letters from the #MichiganState University community that the center serves.

“I got home and I got letters in the mail from people that are not even Jewish, just writing letters of support. It’s break right now. There’s no one in town…. just to see from #students that graduated and maybe came to us, students [that weren’t] necessarily so close with [us] perhaps because maybe they didn’t attend that much, but they were writing, this is their home, this was their home on campus,” Shemtov said. “This will always be their home.”

eastlansinginfo.news/east-lans…


East Lansing Jewish Center Vandalized after Bondi Massacre, Community Responds - East Lansing Info

ELPD is seeking assistance to find the person who spray painted Nazi symbols and threw rocks at a local Jewish center.
East Lansing Info
#nazi #jewish #australia #university #students #massacre #michigan #bondibeach #hanukkah #killed #rabbi #chabad #eastlansing #michiganstate

pleroma - Link to source

> Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.

Well now we know they're definitely true because lying to the FBI is a felony and they'd hang these people by their toes if they could

mastodon - Link to source
Struggling with Nerdbank #GitVersioning to do what I want it to do. Seems quite a simple task but for some reason I can't manage it.
I want it to increase the fourth version number upon a commit into master. I don't care what happens on non-master branch, it might be like 1.0.0-dev.123 or whatever, but the Master branch must be clean and must have increasing builds, like: 1.0.0.1, 1.0.0.2, 1.0.0.3 etc.
If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. #DotNet #Version
#dotnet #version #gitversioning

mastodon - Link to source
As consumers electronic becomes more expensive thanks to fairy tales strategies to add more zeros to someone's paycheck, and the "is this real or AI?" question will be the new norm on the Internet, falling back to local, memory efficient, and offline tools will be the way to safeguard our sanity.
Making these local tools convenient and easy to adopt will be key to their success, because at the end of the day privacy and ethics are widely ignored for the sake of profit, speed, and convenience
⇧