I don't know why I've been seeing this pop up around me regularly lately, but I have. So apparently this needs to be said: it is never, *never* okay to pick and choose who you use the right pronouns, name, and terminology for. You are not allowed to use one person's preferred pronouns, but then refuse to use another's preferred name or pronouns. You are not allowed to make excuses as to why one person's chosen name is too hard, but another person's is not. You use the chosen name and pronouns of anyone and everyone around you. Nobody has any right to pick and choose whose identity is valid and whose is not. Just. Support. Everyone. Who. Is. Identifying. In. Good. Faith. And. Not. Harming. Anyone. Else. Fuck sake.
@bagder I have a question: what are you using for lighting your your release videos? I a novice with videos/streaming but wanna start with a reasonable setup.
I do them during daytime so that I can take advantage of daylight from my ceiling windows as I'm not too happy with the light setup otherwise. Still in my TODO to improve.
I've completed my studio setup/patching for my new album, which is already in progress. The piece de resistance is a Manley Core channel strip. It quickly helped make the best clean electric guitar sound I've ever gotten. (Audio proof via some noodling)
Elec gtr --> Manley Core bussed to Ursa Major Stargate --> MXR Layers pedal
Also interesting: there is ZERO buzz or hum from my guitar when it runs through the Manley. This is the best preamp I've ever owned.
a reminder that elitism is to be outlawed in any and all social circles and -interactions
its completely ok to not have a fancy nixos setup with niri, and to use something stock that works for you instead its completely ok to use vscode instead of helix or nvim or whatever, and vice versa! its completely ok if you do not have the spoons, energy or frankly if you just do not want to switch off of windows/linux/$distro because it feels comfy to you
do what sparks joy for you. "cringe" is not real. you are pawsome.
happy new year everyone! I hope everyone focuses on loving themselves instead of driving hard to fit in with those around you. autostraddle.com/queer-resolut…
If you see something you like on here, don't be scared to give it a favourite ⭐ !
If you really like something, you might want to also boost it 🔁 (which shares it with your followers).
There is no algorithm on here, so you can like and share whatever you want without any additional side effects.
Your timeline on here is entirely in your direct control, it isn't going to push stuff at you or hide stuff just because you liked or shared something.
Imagine as part of "Elbows Up" having a Government legislative program to guarantee a right to repair, with an emphasis on reducing e-waste (sustainability) and curbing anti competitive practice. This would include banning DRM.
- repeal DMCA-style anti-circumvention crap - prohibit non replacable batteries - require supply of repair instruction and parts - prohibit part keying
We got Portugal to remove protection from anti circumvention crap that forbids legal uses of works, because if it prevents them, then it's no longer "effective technological protection measures". It's not hard to understand the effects of that, right? Right? ;)
Linux is good now. The author had enough of Windows and Microsoft shenanigans. I'm brave enough to say it: Linux is good now, and if you want to feel like you actually own your PC, make 2026 the year of Linux on (your) desktop
Most people hate it when Microsoft shoves AI into Windows and every Office app. The Linux community is thankful for this obsession. Keep it up, Microsoft! Thanks to you we have a better chance of seeing the "Year of the Linux Desktop" :)
This is a repository of apps to be used with your F-Droid client. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).
Launched Notepad on Windows 11 and found that they 1) added CoPilot and 2) automatically logged me into an account. I don't use a Microsoft account for Windows but one is required to install Office. They had no business reusing that signin for any software outside of Office. I just want a damned plain text editor.
Nothing like a talk with a fellow web advocate to remind you that your blog article backlog is filled with intentions longing to get out into the world.
X now lets any user AI-edit other users’ images without consent, with no opt-out option for uploaders, allowing unauthorized changes and NSFW edits that have sparked backlash over privacy and copyright concerns alternativeto.net/news/2026/1/…
@ebassi Oh, gosh, you are right; these at-spi2-core xml docs have a lot of issues. I'll see if I can get anything fixed up before I have to release the alpha.
Я сегодня поддался на уговоры сестры и решил дать шанс отечественному кинематографу — пошли мы в кино на фильм «Буратино».
Ну, что сказать, я думал, будет хуже. То есть и это было не очень, но из зала всё же никто не ушёл до конца сеанса. Но когда в фильме самыми симпатичными оказываются нарисованные, и даже не второстепенные персонажи — это говорит не в пользу фильма. Ну ладно, кроме троицы мультяшных тараканов симпатию вызывал и нарисованный же деревянный мальчик, сам Буратино.
Остальные персонажи были абсолютно никакие. Папа Карло был в разы деревяннее своего сына. Карабас не был страшным. Его труппа, — Пьеро, Мальвина, Арлекин и Артемон, — даже не деревянные, картонные. От Дуремара вообще только уши запомнились.
Сюжет — набор каких-то малосвязанных между собой сцен. У персонажей нет толком ни мотивации, ни характеров. Кадры как будто надёрганы из разных фильмов. С какого перепуга Базилио выглядит как Дракула Тима Бёртона? Почему Тортилла живёт в «Наутилусе» капитана Немо? И в каком водоёме? Моря на общих планах города я не заметил. Прожжёные жулики Алиса и Базилио почему-то вдруг проникаются к Буратино любовью и отпускают его обратно к папе в тележке, полной курток для Карло...
Музыку потырили из советского фильма, это как само собой разумеется. Но переделали тексты, и не в лучшую сторону. Кот и лиса вообще зачем-то пели на итальянском с переводом субтитрами, но совершенно левый какой-то текст...
То есть всё плохо получается? Ну, тараканы были забавные, ещё и сцена во время титров, когда таракан Антон (похоже, русский эмигрант) давал детям вредные советы. Буратино был неплохо нарисован, и был очаровательно наивен. На удивление Артемон, у которого на весь фильм был едва ли десяток слов (не фраз даже), пытался что-то сыграть, но ему просто нечего было. Ну, и да, как сказала моя сестра — ярко и зрелищно.
I made a few attempts to edit a post, confused as to why the option to do so wasn't appearing in the Mastodon interface. Then I remembered that I clear cookies in my browser every year and I was signed out and needed to log back in again. Go me, or something.
Twitter’s Grok AI is now being used by people to undress women, as verified by the BBC. Twitter refused to reply, simply saying “legacy media lies”. It isn’t a lie.
In the UK it is illegal to create or share non-consensual intimate images, including via AI. The UK gov say they are investigating.
Obvious thing is happening btw - no world leader is willing to speak up about it. Because Elon is close to Trump and the administration - he's a protected person, basically.
The GenAI industry is also a protected industry - e.g. copyright law doesn't apply, either.
Here's an (cropped) example btw, of Grok casually taking the dress of an actress from Stranger Things (who is 14).
A few years ago this kind of thing would have been a major news story. But now, eh, it's just billionaires and their toys. Grok isn't even in "Spicy" mode (yes, an actual feature).
I'm not sure when this changed, but yelling "whose phone is this" and "I'm being pulled over" at siri no longer disable biometrics on iOS 26.1. This means the only methods of quickly turning off biometrics are to set up SOS and tap the side button 5 times or restart your phone. Restarting is much stronger anyway since it wipes the decryption keys that are loaded after the first unlock. Plan accordingly if you use finger or face unlocks and are wary of law enforcement. #iPhone #siri #biometrics #cybersecurity #apple
quickly tap volume up, let go, tap volume down, let go, hold power until the power off menu shows up. Biometrics are now disabled until you enter your passcode. In case you didn't know. If you did, I'm sorry.
Political scientist Samuel Bagg explains why social identity is at the root of the misinformation crisis -- which calls for something deeper than factchecking.
I'm a bit late to the happy new years party, but I thought I'd join by announcing my new TTS library, Prism. The library distinguishes itself by having a trivially extensible back-end architecture and registry, and doesn't crash or exhibit any odd behavior when a back-end is unavailable. The repository is quite bare-bones at the moment but I plan on writing a manual soon. You can find the library here: github.com/ethindp/prism
The Platform-agnostic Reader Interface library for Speech and Messages: a new universal text-to-speech and screen reader abstraction library - ethindp/prism
I just scrolled past a bunch of posts from people whose display names were just fancy unicode characters of some sort, or that's what I'm guessing anyways. If your display name has special characters that my screen reader won't pick up, I"m not reading your posts. Please people, for the love of all that is good and holy have more in your username than special characters!
hey y'all know those little aluminum dome things they use on tiny keyboards, where they buckle in? do you know what those are called or any resources about them? i think they might be neat for something im designing
#SelfHosting week 0: Phase 0. Choosing domain name for self hosting: plusbrothers.online seems available. the .net is my main website based on #WordPress Considering also plusbrothers.community but who knows if it's possible. Something that warns users that's the same site but with other purposes. What to do there: Mastodon instance with more than 500 characters if possible. Then Castopod, and maybe a WordPress to transfer English blog there. Finally, choosing the most appropriate VPS server where to install #YunoHost currently confronting most famous VPS vendors' websites user interface for #accessibility - this is a showcase for customer care. Less accessible means less disability-friendly, that means "I'd prefer you don't come to us". Hostinger has an accessibility statement but it's very superficial and maybe copy-pasted from a template just because obliged by european laws, not for real care.
#AskFedi what screen readers are people using these days?
With folks moving to more secure browsers, I feel like it’s time to find new ones for website accessibility audits. Curious how others are treating the browser upheaval & accessibility?
I’m working on this for one of my #nonprofit clients and to grow out our accessibility resources for communicators.
Sorry to be a bit harsh, I have no intention to offend you and I'm grateful for your effort as a blind guy. However, whatever your ideological inclinations are, if you want to make a solution accessible, ideally you need to test it with: JAWS and NVDA on windows, VoiceOver on iOS, TalkBack on Android, optionally Orca on Linux. Most of blind people do use Windows because it offers the most accessible experience on desktops, and for mobile platforms vary, but of course it's iOS and Android.
@menelion I’m not sure what would offend me about your response. The technical bit is detailed and helpful! Sadly, most of the small non-profit don’t have the time or funds for the level of work required for good accessibility so that’s what’s always challenging.
In this case, absolutely go Windows (NVDA at least, it's free and open-source), and at least one mobile platform, whatever you have, iOS or Android. that's a must.
I have a weird NVDA problem and hoping someone can help. I have a work laptop. It is quite locked down, but NVDA does run on it. When I use chrome, many elements don't read. buttons don't always read with their labels. many times there are only a couple of words on one line. sometimes I can't click links. It's a fresh installation and I have turned off using screen mode in browse mode settings. I've never seen this behavior before and not entirely sure what to do. Edge doesn't seem to behave in quite the same way. Any ideas folks?
yes. try changing the web render setting in about:flags. change it to one of the Direxct-X backends. Sometimes this can help Chrome, in my experience, weirdly.
Wow.. This is timely, i finished @pluralistic 's book #enshitification yesterday and today this pops up on my masto feed. Pretty shameful. I'm not sure if there's really a chance it'll get taken down. so i'll use my comically long character limit for good here.
"I’m posting this from a library Wi-Fi on a burner laptop because I am technically under a massive NDA. I don’t care anymore. I put in my two weeks yesterday and honestly, I hope they sue me. I’ve been sitting on this for about eight months, just watching the code getting pushed to production, and I can’t sleep at night knowing I helped build this machine.
You guys always suspect the algorithms are rigged against you, but the reality is actually so much more depressing than the conspiracy theories. I’m a backend engineer. I sit in the weekly sprint planning meetings where Product Managers (PMs) discuss how to squeeze another 0.4% margin out of "human assets" (that’s literally what they call drivers in the database schemas). They talk about these people like they are resource nodes in a video game, not fathers and mothers trying to pay rent.
First off, the "Priority Delivery" is a total scam. It was pitched to us as a "psychological value add." Like I said in the title, when you pay that extra $2.99, it changes a boolean flag in the order JSON, but the dispatch logic literally ignores it. It does nothing to speed you up.
We actually ran an A/B test last year where we didn't speed up the priority orders, we just purposefully delayed non-priority orders by 5 to 10 minutes to make the Priority ones "feel" faster by comparison. Management loved the results. We generated millions in pure profit just by making the standard service worse, not by making the premium service better.
But the thing that actually makes me sick—and the main reason I’m quitting—is the "Desperation Score." We have a hidden metric for drivers that tracks how desperate they are for cash based on their acceptance behavior.
If a driver usually logs on at 10 PM and accepts every garbage $3 order instantly without hesitation, the algo tags them as "High Desperation." Once they are tagged, the system then deliberately stops showing them high-paying orders. The logic is: "Why pay this guy $15 for a run when we know he’s desperate enough to do it for $6?" We save the good tips for the "casual" drivers to hook them in and gamify their experience, while the full-timers get grinded into dust.
Then there is the "Benefit Fee." You’ve probably seen that $1.50 "Regulatory Response Fee" or "Driver Benefits Fee" that appeared on your bill after the recent labor laws passed. The wording is designed to make you feel like you're helping the worker.
In reality, that money goes straight to a corporate slush fund used to lobby against driver unions. We have a specific internal cost center for "Policy Defense," and that fee feeds directly into it. You are literally paying for the high-end lawyers that are fighting to keep your delivery guy homeless.
And regarding tips, we're essentially doing Tip Theft 2.0. We don't "steal" them legally anymore because we got sued for that. Instead, we use predictive modeling to dynamically lower the base pay.
If the algo predicts you are a "high tipper" and you’ll likely drop $10, it offers the driver a measly $2 base pay. If you tip $0, it offers them $8 base pay just to get the food moved. The result is that your generosity isn't rewarding the driver; it’s subsidizing us. You’re paying their wage so we don't have to." social.lansky.name/@hn50/11582…
A confession from a mainstream food delivery app engineer
Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/confession/s/gbrh2zxeou
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461578
this is absolutely infuriating. Especially the bit about using the cash due to go to delivery drivers being used to prevent them from unionising. I don't use these services. I won't use Amazon at all because of Bezos' union-busing activities. I wish people were able to come together to support each other but capitalism has everyone competing against everyone else for the crumbs that fall from bourgeois tables. This relentless assault on the working classes has to stop.
daniel:// stenberg://
in reply to Enno T. Boland • • •