Aus meiner Sicht ist der #DIday von @marcuwekling eine sehr gute Gelegenheit, das #Fediverse für den Mainstream-Diskurs relevanter zu machen – und damit die Gesellschaft unabhängiger von X, Insta, TikTok etc.
Das ist aber kein Selbstläufer, sondern braucht Aktivismus. Ein sehr wichtiger Hebel sind naheliegenderweise Multiplikator:innen, z.B. Streamer oder Youtuber. Um diese fürs Fediverse zu gewinnen, könnte dedizierte Crowd-Lobby-Arbeit helfen, also z.B. Koordiniert Kommentare schreiben und hochvoten oder das Fediverse in den Commuity-Discord-Servern thematisieren.
Alleine macht das weder Sinn noch Spaß, darum habe ich mal eine Signal Gruppe gegründet. Wer mitmachen will ist herzlich willkommen.
The people who dislike The Algorithm™ are either consumers who basically just want an RSS feed reader (nothing wrong with that) or people who brought audiences over from other platforms.
If you’re trying to create something and find an audience for it on the #Fediverse, you need some sort of recommendation algorithm. Otherwise, you’re just posting into the void.
I'd be interested to know how fellow blind (especially blind-from-birth) cane users manage with independent travel. For my part, my spatial orientation/brain mapping abilities are shocking, and I can't walk in a straight line, so the immediate fear of my support network is I won't be safe. Does anyone else have this problem? If so how do you, or did you, get around it? Or is it something I'll just have to accept?
@menelion Navigating with a white cane is something that I’ve been doing since I was very young. I was fortunate to have extremely good instructors and I really was motivated to be as independent as possible. Walking a straight line is something I generally do quite well. I also rely a lot on audio cues. I live in Toronto, so there is a huge public transit system including buses, subway, street cars, etc. I think spatial awareness is something that can be learned. I also think that some people have it naturally. I’ve seen people that lost vision later in life really struggle with spatial awareness. I’ve also seen a few cases where people were fantastic at it. I’ve seen the same for people who were born blind.
@gtbray @menelion It is my intention too. I’m getting over a really nasty cold that I came down with just after Christmas so as long as that’s better than yes.
@TomGrant91 I too have a certain difficulty walking straight, but in practice, whenever I need to walk alone, there are always refferences such as building walls or the sidewalk edge.
@clv1 @TomGrant91 What happens if the edge turns away though? How do you know whether you've veered or whether it is in fact the edge turning a corner? And then if you're told when it turns you need to continue going straight?
@clv1 @TomGrant91 Yup. That's what I do. But then it turns and my instinct is to follow it, but the idea is not to follow it because that leads into the park, or into someone's drive.
@clv1 @TomGrant91 Yeah. The trickiest point right now isn't knowing where the turning leads, but knowing whether it is the path turning away or you. And if it's the path, and it's not an entry you want to turn into, you've somehow then got to walk in a straight line until you find the next shoreline. And that's the part where they're scratching their heads and thinking, "yeah, if we weren't with him right now he'd be as lost as a sheep."
@TomGrant91 This is a real risk, yes. I've myself run into it a few times many years ago. I haven't gone out to walk since some time, but I believe having a GPS on a smartphone in your pocket, or smart glasses as mentioned, can reduce a lot such risk.
I'll let my rehab officer know and we can try that next time I go out. Haven't got glasses yet, will definitely have to look into those, but I do have a phone so GPS could be really useful for now assuming I can actually get a decent signal from it. Again, worth a go.
I've always had support since day one, be that my mother or somebody I'm walking with. I had cane suppport at my primary school ages from year 5 onwards, and throughout the home I'm OK, but the outside world, I'll never ever be properly independent which sucks. As I have the epilepsy as well I need a carer 24/7 all year round. Looking after a dog? No way, I've got myself to look after as well, plus the dog, I'd probably forget to do something. I would hate forgetting to feed it or clean it etc. So always cane for me. Recently though I have got my meta smart glasses which are helping me along the way.
@TomGrant91 I do travel on my own, sometimes to quite far-flung places but I make sure I have assistance on the way, such as if I'm going by train, then I book via Passenger Assistance etc. If Uber, then I like to be met at the other end, usually because I have heavy equipment with me, that kind of thing. It's not always possible so it's very dependent on the situation I suppose.
@FreakyFwoof that's why I want to try it out, rather than going to London, say, then getting an Uber, then going back to Banbury. I am more interested in the driverless car stuff though
@FreakyFwoof @TomGrant91 I used to get taxis a lot myself. They took me to the wrong place once or twice though, so that kinda scared me away from them until I can be more independent at knowing where I am and where I'm going even in unknown scenarios, if that makes sense.
@FreakyFwoof @TomGrant91 Not sure where you are located but if something goes wrong then you can always ask someone for help. I tend to use Blindsquare a lot if I am in an Uber then I can work out which side of the road its likely to be and if the driver has dropped me off in relatively the right place.
@andrew @TomGrant91 BlindSquare has been my goto for years, yep. Partly because I did all the sounds for it, but also because I have a list of favourites with more than 300 places in it, I'm super-familiar with the interface and it's just hard to use something else.
Had pretty good spacial awareness and a lot of calm/confidence built up over years of learning firsthand that I always get to a place in the end even if I go a bit wiggly along the way. Post lockdowns, both were shot. The calm/confidence got hit harder than the awareness but that wasn't an immediately obvious ratio. Been restoring both gradually over the last little while, it took more practice than felt natural initially, but think I'm over the hump now. Still not back to where I used to be in terms of travel being just a thing I do without much thought though.
All that to ask, how often are you able to get out with the white whacker and how long are those walks at the moment?
@Scott Right now, only get out with rehab. And because I can't tell the difference between the path turning and me veering, and the fact that I need a shoreline to stay on a straight path, she doesn't think it will be easy to teach me so independent travel might not be possible. And then I'm thinking, surely others have this problem and know how to manage it safely... So yeah. Hence why I asked.
@Scott Well I do live on a road, so I actually thought there was quite a bit of traffic, but apparently that's mostly on another road that must be quite close by. The road I live on isn't actually that busy.
Have they tried describing what's coming up then you walk it? EG, there are 3 driveways, then a side road, then some railings, the turning you want is after those. This might seem like it's not making progress straight away because obviously rehab isn't gonna be around to audio describe your next 50 steps in advance all the time, but for now, it might help if you knew what the situation is each time the shoreline ends. You'll probably still drift around a bit, but knowing that you're goal is to get across the gap might help to resist the temptation to trace the shoreline no matter what.
@Scott I think my instinct is only that strong because I know without it I have that tendency to veer. So it's like, is this the path turning or is this me veering? And I never know unless they do describe it. And then when they say, don't turn here, I just can't seem to walk a straight line to the other side.
Yeah gotcha. The numbers exercise might still help with that. Like, it's one thing knowing you've got a tendency to veer, it's likely a more helpful thing to have some real-time data on how much that's happening and know when you're making corrections for it.
Another thing, try having them stand on the other side of a gap in the shoreline and assign numbers to your direction. IE, 5 could be straight, 4 to 1 is veering left, 6 to 10 is veering right. Get them saying a number every couple of steps. Retrace that a bunch of times if you need to, see whether it helps you to gauge what walking straighter feels like. Picked it up from running with newly blind kids when I was younger.
@Scott Oh wow, that's interesting. I was just thinking it would definitely be a good indicator of how much I veer, but wasn't sure how it would help me walk straighter. But then I realised if I know how much I veer then the more the numbers correct me the more fine training I get that might help me naturally compensate for it. That's a really good idea. Thanks.
Veering is natural, but self-correction is something that can be learned. I can't learn a route in one sitting, no matter how simple, so because I can't write conveniently, I ramble into an audio recorder and codify notes into actual usable instructions later, noting down especially what my tendencies are. Posture can really help for alignment, i.e., where your head, shoulders, hips, and feet are pointing. If you hearing it good, scanning before crossing the street can really help align.
Active echolocation also helps quite a bit, even if my mental-mapping skills aren't where I like them to be. It takes me longer to get where I need to be, but that can decrease with time and familiarity: tech.aph.org/eaf.epub
One other thing the O&M specialist said is to figure out what you're using to lead, i.e., head, hips, whatever, because you can then make sure that is straight and the rest of your body will follow. For example, because I rely quite a bit on passive echolocation, my head does the leading, so if I am aware of that, I need to make sure that's going straight before I move. I forget what they call it, but figuring out how long it takes you to get to a corner also helps you to turn into a +
driveway or know you're at a corner. Listen out for background noise, as you can hear the difference between you being at a corner or at a driveway too.
@clv1 @twynn Never even heard of it. It's only a relatively small market-town/villagey type place I live in and I can't even find a singing teacher here, so I doubt it. Probably have to travel out.
🎉 Happy New Year 2026! 🎊 To all our followers on the Fediverse: thank you for being here, for interacting with us, and for sharing our messages. You give us faith in decentralization and prove that it works! 🌐💪 […]
We hope all podcasters will keep on podcasting in 2026, and that many new creators will give it a try. Podcasting is one of the last social networks not entirely controlled by a big corporation. We need diversity, not algorithms! 📻 Thank you to all podcasters who trust us with hosting their creations on Castopod. It means the world to us! […]
In 2025, we reached 1,000 active podcasts on Castopod, with over 43,000 episodes published! Our community has grown to 800+ GitHub stars, 30+ language translations by 70+ volunteer translators, and 200+ contributors. […]
Web Performance Calendar day 31 article 2/5: Keerthana Krishnan on making friends with Chrome DevTools and transforming it into a powerful tool for deep understanding, debugging, and improving of real-world web performance
Most developers open Chrome DevTools, check a couple of network requests, maybe refresh the page once or twice — and that's it.
I used to do the same.
Over time, DevTools became something else entirely for me.
ja dneska dojel garmin vyzvy, ktere mi chybely. 10km kolo venku s juniorem na snehu, to byla sranda a 55km doma na trenazeru, to me bolelo o trochu vic :)
#HappyNewYear China, but it's not Chinese New Year, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia-Bali, Brunei Darussalam, Australia- Perth, and most of Mongolia.
As 2025 comes to a close, we’re proud to reflect on a remarkable year for the GNOME community, one defined by innovation, global collaboration, and meaningful contributions from around the world.
# Major Software Milestone:
Our releases represent six months of dedicated work by our vibrant community.
We also hosted and participated in key events this year that strengthened our global ties:
• GNOME Asia Summit 2025 in Tokyo, Japan: celebrating community growth and knowledge sharing across Asia.
• GUADEC 2025 in Brescia, Italy: our flagship annual conference that brought together contributors, maintainers, students, and partners from across the globe.
• GNOME LATAM 2025 Aguascalientes, Mexico: our LATAM community organised their annual conference. A space dedicated to collaboration, learning and discussion of Open Source in LATAM.
These gatherings fueled collaboration, nurtured new contributors, and helped shape the roadmap for future GNOME releases and initiatives.
None of this progress would be possible without our contributors, volunteers, organizers, and users, including developers, designers, translators, mentors, and advocates. Your passion and commitment to free software continue to drive GNOME forward.
Here’s to an even more innovative and inclusive 2026!
I tried to enable the #GNOME screen reader (aka orca) to test the #accessibility of some application.
I have little experience with screen readers, but the GNOME experience after enabling the screen reader appears to be super bad. I can barely understand the voice. The speech synthesis is horrible, I have heard better in the 90s.
Is this the expected state of free software screen readers? How can I get something usable?
Wel yeeeah, Linux is by far not the best thing to test something for accessibility. I mean, if you want something to be accessible for the blind, the vast majority of us blindies use Windows and smartphones.
@menelion it really sounds like that you need to use commercial systems if you have to rely on a screen reader. In all honesty I had expected the situation to be better in the free software world. Not necessarily great, but at least somewhat usable.
As it stands out of the box you are basically lost. At best you need someone with vision and a lot of Linux administration experience to set something workable up for you. At least that's the impression I got.
that's it. Nice to talk to you because you are asking adequate questions and take adequate outcomes. Unfortunately, most of the FOSS developers are like… "You need accessibility? Fix it on your own". If you have some time, read this article. This man, the author, is very knowledgeable and he's also on Mastodon @fireborn: fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-w…
@menelion Thanks for the nice words. The article was very interesting. It even seems things have gotten worse in some areas.
To be honest, I can understand how especially screen reader accessibility is rather difficult for developers not currently affected by accessibility issues.
I have some experience with it from years ago, but not much. But I try to learn and improve.
Yes, and I'm sincere because you are one of the very small amount of people who talk to me like this. I even once heard things like "Let's first ditch Windows, and then make Linux accessible". They simply don't understand that for us screen reader accessibility is the same as a display and a mouse for everyone else. If you want to improve something, ask Aaron, he's far more knowledgeable in Linux world than me (I'm a Windows-and-SSH-to-Linux guy). Also, there is Orca mailing list (I don't know the address but you might google for it). There you can find Joanmarie Diggs, an absolute gem of development, the main person who is behind Orca and continues the fight for years and years. Everyone will be grateful if people like you help her.
@menelion @fireborn This isn't true, please do not say this :( There's a lot of developers and contributors working on improving the situation, it's just very difficult, and it's even harder to do it in your spare, free time.
@tragivictoria @fireborn I sincerely apologize to all of you who really make change to accessibility. I'm just super tired about this ending year's pressure. so often I heard "ditch GAFAM!!! Right now!!11!!" and faced hostility or indeference when I was telling this is *impossible* for us, even if I wanted to do it.
@menelion The only reason we have any accessibility at all is because Sun invested in it for their Solaris decades ago. Sadly corpos arent eager to invest in this.
@menelion This year it was revolutionary for me to discover "Piper" voices that can be used with Orca (instead of the default espeak voice): mastodon.social/@nekohayo/1150…
Attached: 1 video
@joojmachine@ursal.zone
Oh my god, Pied JUST WORKS!
I can't believe my ears! :psyduck:
I just installed Pied's flatpak package, let it install Piper, then downloaded the best English voice I could find ("Lessac", the basis for mos…
For me, going from espeak's voice to the Pied "Lessac" voice for Orca, was like going from Earth to Mars. Sure I guess if you compare to what proprietary speech synthesis systems do nowadays it would be like going from Mars to Phobos, but that's a much smaller difference than Earth to Mars…
Let's do the math. Experts estimate it takes 10,000 #AI queries to match the energy of one single car trip across town. I don't have a car. I don't drive. So, until you stop driving to the store, maybe don't lecture a #Blind woman about the 'environmental cost' of having a family photo or a cat picture described to her. My #Accessibility tool costs the planet less energy in a year than your car does in a week.
Question to screen reader users, just because I'm curious:
If I write using the occasional homophone, perhaps to make a pun, is that something that is completely lost to you, unless something clues you in to the fact that there might be spelling shenanigans going on?
For example, if I had posted the other day, "I can't wait to see Santa's slay!", would you just have assumed that that last word was "sleigh", and never noticed that it was "slay"? #accessibility #ScreenReaders
It depends, different users would give you different answers. I have a Braille display and often use a specific TTS that would make it different for me. So I personally have no difficulties.
#Blind #Linux #Accessibility / #a11y folks, I need a #ScreenReader #accessible #email client that supports calendar and contacts integration with #Outlook and #GoogleWorkspace. Thunderbird is out because I cannot find reliable instructions on connecting it to my Outlook contacts. Anyone who suggests that I should either switch back to Windows or use my phone for email will be playfully booped over the head with a pool noodle. Kidding. Seriously though, recommendations welcome. Thanks. #BlindMasto #BlindMastodon #BlindFedi #MailClient #EmailClient
On this last day of the year, I want to congratulate France for its termination of the ARENH law 🥳
This law, in full "Accès régulé à l'électricité nucléaire historique" or "Regulated access to historic nuclear electricity" was a law that was introduced in 2010 by the then French government under president Sarkozy, that ostensibly aimed to introduce an "energy market" in France.
It worked like this: EDF was forced to make available 100 TWh annually to third party companies that could buy this for a mere 4 cents per kWh. These companies then sold it for "market prices" to consumers. You'd be correct to think that this was a massive forced subsidy by EDF to create its own competition.
To add insult to injury EDF was then forced to buy back the energy that these companies couldn't sell, 𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴.
Over the period that this law was in effect, from July 2011 to today, EDF accrued tens of billions of debt. Now that this law is expiring EDF can finally raise their prices, from 4 to 7 cents per kWh, and start investing again in new nuclear builds and pay off that debt.
It is perhaps hard to ascertain the intent of the lawmakers back in 2010, but this type of law would be ideal if you wanted to kill the nuclear sector, which almost succeeded!
Fortunately, this nightmare is now over and we now live in a world where the French value their nuclear assets and are set to expand it by building up to 14 more large reactors in the coming years.
Le dispositif de l’accès régulé à l’électricité nucléaire historique (ARENH) a été instauré par la loi n° 2010-1488 du 7 décembre 2010 portant nouvelle organisation du marché de l’électricité (dite loi « NOME »).
There's a new duplicity release that fixes some major regressions in password handling. I'm not really sure how I've unofficially become the person keeping it up to date in Tumbleweed, but I should get on it.
The whole point of society - all of this - is so that we are all enriched together, that collectively our lives should be better. We invented farms so folks wouldn’t starve.
But a couple thousand years ago a few assholes decided that personal enrichment is the most important thing. For the most part, we’re still going along with that bullshit.
The only way we survive is if we move back to shared enrichment. This coming year, think carefully about how you’re spending your money and labor.
#microsoft just sent me an email telling me an alert in Microsoft Defender needed my attention. The alert was that my pc is fine, but that I'm able to protect 4 more devices.
I have a question ... DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO GET HACKED? Don't throw false positives at users like that, the f*** is wrong with you? #adpocalypse
I just noticed Deque changed its logo from the combined ‘D’ and ‘Q’ letterform (visually representing the pronunciation) to the ‘AI’ anus (or “AInus”) of the big LLM purveyors.
I bet this was for Deque’s 100% WCAG ‘AI’ coverage, which must be getting released today to honor its March promise.
A humorous exploration of the uncanny resemblance between AI company logos and human anatomy. Discover why circular, gradient-based designs dominate the AI industry, and what this design convergence tells us about branding in tech.
Happy New Year's eve! I am off until Monday so can read and just relax. My nail tech rescheduled my appointment and I got my nails done last night instead of this Saturday which makes me happy. My nails have a magnetic polish undercoat of blue with a little pattern and a blue sparkle overlay. They are very festive. Tonight we'll go out for an early dinner of Thai food and then I'll just read until I get tired. Maybe I'll make it til midnight, maybe I won't! Smile.
Sounds like it should be a nice evening. Thai food is always good. There's a Thai food truck a couple blocks from me, but it seems it's only open Friday and Saturday evenings right now. Maybe I'll order Chinese. Anyway, happy new year! And caneandable is a nice name for a server!
Some friends who live down the street from me asked if I'd install Pi-hole on their network after seeing how flawlessly it works here. So, earlier this week, I brought a Raspberry Pi over to their place that i'd configured here. I assigned a static IP address once it was on their network, and it was off to the races. The most difficult part is working with ISP-supplied equipment and the limitations therein. Lots of fun manual configuration of DNS and the like.
@lerven Ha, yes, yes, it is! That's actually what I have, and hence, all the settings you have to disable on their modem thing before you can connect your own router. Happy to help if you need.
I might make this a weekend project. I have a pi here doing nothing. I'll need to make sure it won't negatively effect anything. If I remember correctly, this may cause our network extenders to no longer function.
@lerven I have been meaning to pick up a pi for this reason but just haven't yet. What does it do for you? I know youtube adds are still gonna get through, sadly, but, that's what I have a browser extention for.
I can already hear some fireworks through my street microphones in the distance. If nothing goes wrong, I might be able to actually share the stream for a while so you can listen to some fireworks at 12 AM German time. Not sure yet though. Need to setup my reverse proxi.
Are you still going to do all the clocks going off at midnight thing again? or do you still have a recording of that chaos. I don't know why but everything happening at once cracks me up. Best noise ever.
Additionally I sent 10€ to @oscloud. I don't use their services regularly, but I like what they do (and enjoyed this years @openalt_konference streaming through @vhsky).
Thank to all working on #FOSS and making this world a better place!
As I sit here listening to the coffee percolating it occurs to me that it’s already 2026 in #Australia and other places across the International Date Line. Happy #NewYear to everyone no matter where you are. May 2026 be a better year than 2025, which in many ways isn’t really a high bar to get over.
If I add the triangles two and two into parallelograms I have now knitted 1000 parallelograms. . This project feels kind of endless, but now there are only 65 more parallelograms and an edge left before all of the weaving in of ends... Almost done. #knitting #handmade
Pues para terminar bien el año con una muy buena noticia: ya tenemos disponible en la App Store para iPhone mi última aplicación para leer libros: Vox libri apps.apple.com/us/app/vox-libr…
i'm sick and tired of things changing that I normally wouldn't care about. I don't wanna hear anything new about a ball drop or whatever, or my friends changing their plans last minute, or me not being able to do such and such or go wherever all the sudden even though I've planned for it to happen for a long period of time, I just want stuff to go as planned for five minutes I'm begging and pleading at this point I wanna finish my holiday break off at a good note and things aren't looking so good
my mom is helping me with my social media for my dj business advertising or whatever and I told her that I would prefer not to have an Instagram page because I don't agree with Instagram. we wanted to put emphasis on the fact that I'm blind so we can add some value for people hiring me and Instagram is a purely visual app and so I feel like it would be kind of counterproductive. so do you think that that's reasonable? because she told me that that's how I would get more advertising, and she knows what's best, and I need to expand outreach, but then again it's also my business that I'm running and I do not like Instagram as a platform
I think Instagram is kinda the Mastodon or Elten for Gen Z. It's difficult to describe, but yeah I think that a lot music-related stuff is also going on there, like artists connecting with their fans, posting stuff to their story, etc. People will probably check it more frequently or rather, specifically see your content if they follow you through the story rather than you know, dumb scrolling on TikTok or shorts. So I think for something like that IG might actually be useful, but I dislike Meta personally and have no account anymore. But there's the question whether you wanna stand with your values or try to gain attention. Since you guys use Meta anyway I guess go for it. I know several blind people using IG.
Am I the only one literally doing nothing on new Year’s Eve? like even considering just sleeping through like usual. The typical person spends this with their family, friends, or whatever sort of group, but honestly I'm not that kind of family person, my parents are going to friends but I don't see myself sitting around and eating for hours so well. Guess wasting my time nerding around in front of this computer, and recording some fireworks later. You know I'm actually bored of my own words at this point, I'm really not trying to make this sound like self-compassion all the time, but well, what can I say. It is how it is. I'm stuck in a weird state between hoping for 26, and not wanting to be naive and knowing stuff will probably stay the same.
I agree with the not doing anything part. I haven't really had fun spending time with my family on past events so see no hope there for me at least. I'm lucky enough to be going to somebody else's house later but yeah I know how you feel
It's just another night. I don't do alcohol, am not big on people past a few who I already see daily, and like a quiet life. With respect, the only thing I would disagree with you on is that it's a bad thing. I'm sure many people love different ways of celebrating, and that's absolutely great, I'm all in favor of celebration/joy/pleasure. I hope everyone who enjoys partying does it for days and remembers it for decades. I'm overjoyed to see people happy doing that sort of thing. It just doesn't make me particularly happy to do it myself.
FLOSS #MaintainerLife public service advisory: If you're filing a potential bug upstream in #GNOME, particularly on rapidly-improving apps like GNOME Calendar, please test the latest version, unmodified by third-parties. #Flatpak helps.
Don't come at me with a 4-years-old version cowboy-patched against our will by #Linux distros like Mint; I will send you downstream, like this: gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-c…
Being one of the core developers of GNOME Calendar, we do not support any of the versions provided and held back by Linux Mint. We would really appreciate...
#adpocalypse
Mr. Funk E. Dude
in reply to Mr. Funk E. Dude • • •Me: "Hey Fedi. What is 1+2?"
Fedi: "You should use base ten!"
Fedi: "Don't trust numbers!"
Fedi: "Why not 2-1 eh? Why are you discriminating against the minus symbol?"
Fedi: "Well actually..."
Me: 😮💨
André Polykanine
in reply to Mr. Funk E. Dude • • •