Wife has identical twin cousins in their late 20s, known them since they were babies. They both grew up to become music teachers (yes they're gay) and apparently one of them has been writing musicals? There's some online platform out there where you can publish / sell musicals?

Anyway their mom was telling me about this and mentioned that he sold copies of a musical about Auschwitz.

<Randy Jackson that's a no from me dawg>

Today Apple announced the Apple Creator Studio at $13 a month, and I think this is a good thing! It allows people to afford apps like Final Cut and Logic Pro that have been out of some people's price range, along with giving access to new features in these apps. Also, $3 a month for students is amazing. I think this is a jab at Creative Cloud, and I would go more for what Apple is offering.
in reply to Jakub 'unknow' Mrugalski

W Polsce funkcjonuje sobie taki dokument zwany kartą EKUZ. Z racji, że to zdecydowanie nie jest jedyna karta, jaką większość osób ma w portfelu, a wszystkie (zgodne z ISO 7810) karty wyglądają w dotyku prawie tak samo, można poprosić, aby na karcie umieszczono etykietkę w brajlu, na co istnieje oficjalna procedura. W przeciwieństwie do niektórych innych dokumentów, np. wspomnianego tutaj Dowodu, etykietka taka nie jest integralną częścią karty, jest to po prostu solidnie naklejona przez urzędnika foliowa naklejka.

I tutaj zaczyna się szkopuł. Typów kart jest kilka. Ten najpopularniejszy, tj. turystyczny, można bez problemu wyrobić przez internet, istnieje do tego dedykowana usługa EPUAP i formularz w ichniejszym XML-owym standardzie, tj. wypełniany on-line bezpośrednio na stronie, nie staropolską metodą drukuj-podpisz-skanuj (Polacy do za nią Nobla dostać powinni).

Gdzie jest problem? Procedura mówi, że w celu uzyskania brajlowskiej etykiety, należy umieścić odpowiednią adnotację na wniosku. Coś takiego można zrobić na marginesie dokumentu papierowego, ale struktura XML takiej adnotacji nie przewiduje. Mamy wobec tego wybór, czy wniosek składamy sami, ale bez etykiety brajlowskiej, czy działamy metodą z osobą widzącą i długopisowym wypełnianiem fizycznego wydruku (bo przecież o pliku w standardzie PDF Forms to w tym kraju można zapomnieć), i wtedy etykietę dostajemy.

in reply to Jakub 'unknow' Mrugalski

I jeszcze jedna rzecz, którą warto mieć na uwadze. O ile w przypadku Epuap, założenie skrzynki podawczej nie niosło za sobą konsekwencji prawnych poza faktem, że korespondencja związana ze sprawami składanymi przez ten właśnie system docierała do nas elektronicznie, w przypadku e-doręczeń jest inaczej. Jeśli skrzynkę do E-doręczeń posiadamy, wiele instytucji będzie kontaktować się z nami w ten właśnie sposób, przy czym nadal działa zasada, że przesyłka 2 razy awizowana (tutaj awizo to powiadomienie email) jest uznana za doręczoną po 14 dniach od pierwszej próby jej dostarczenia.

Innymi słowy, jeśli skrzynkę do e-doręczeń mamy, w naszym obowiązku jest sprawdzanie adresu email z nią powiązanego.

Pleased to announce this new partnership and privacy alliance with Windscribe, Ente, Notesnook, and Addy.io!

windscribe.com/blog/windscribe…

Last night I've changed my office's layout so I'm sat parallel to the window, rather than having my desk in front of it.

Pros: More effective use of space, closer to sockets, easier access to the radiator's valve, window handle and curtains, etc.

Cons: It's now way easier for me to get distracted by squirrels jumping from branch to branch in the trees.

9 HOURS at THE OFFICE TODAY: Logging into my private Desktop I had to think about my 6 digit numeric PIN because I was already typing the work Laptops password. I'll leave up to you if that's good or bad. And my fingers start to get used to that ugly office keyboard. I should get a nice mechanical board there as well. Just not willing to spend the money.

We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing
---

Civilians have had apparent seizures. One had his eyes roll back. Another had ribs broken. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die,” said a 16-year-old citizen put in a chokehold. The government won’t say if any agents have been punished.
propublica.org/article/videos-…

#News #Immigration #ICE #DHS #Trump #Police #Minneapolis

FYI Montréal jacked up the property valuations AGAIN last year... so, Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce's 1.9% is a FAKE AF LOW % on the heels of that #BS.

cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/mo…

#polMTL #MTLpoli #taxdollarshardatwork #propertytaxes #montreal #LIES

This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to DoomsdaysCW

Eww, someone said to me that x ai thingy cloned their voice. Imagine the scare. Yikes! I use it to mostly help me out, google's AI though. I am too lazy to do math sometimes, especially when there are headaches involved, so giving it a prompt is better for my sanity than just making a huge multiplication. I am not amath person, I like music and languages. I make it keep track of things sometimes, or create random little things. I don't use the stupid X though, I used it when it was Twitter, and long before it was bought I deleted it because I joined fedi.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I did have a positive experience with an AI based customer service chatbot. For a few months, my Oura ring 4 has showed a declining battery life, dropping from the promised 6 7 days to just 24 hours. While I can tolerate charging my watch every two days, pulling a smart ring off my finger and charging it up every morning is not what I call good user experience. SO I pulled up the help chat feature in the app last night when I went to bed and saw the notification, that my sleep tracking ring battery is about to die. groaned, because it said its an AI" bot and its very very helpful and good and could I please tell it everything whats wrong." So I did. "My gen 4 ring which I bought in march 2025 battery dies within 24 hours, which is way less than the promised 7 days", was my message. The bot then told me that to verify my identity, it had sent me a confirmation email with a link to klick. After the klick, I returned to the app, where the bot had pulled up my order, and wanted to know if its the problematic ring. A preset "yes" button surfaced a new question, confirming my address, which was already prefilled, from my last order. Another tap on the "Yes" preset. "I've estabilshed your replacement, and you should be getting your confirmation soon," the bot said, and wanted to know, is there anything else worth fixing in my life. The whole interaction took maximum 3 minutes and by this morning, I already have received an email with tracking number and shipment info. I don't even need to return the broken ring. So, either they trust their AI bot a lot, have a very good service, or more likely have enough trouble with the ring that its cheaper to replace them than escalate the cases to humans, nevertheless, I was impressed.
This entry was edited (21 hours ago)

RE: mastodon.quebec/@radiocanada/1…

Dans un courriel, #AirCanada explique que les "portes de soute ont été fermées par erreur alors qu’un membre de l’équipe au sol était à l’intérieur". La ligne aérienne soutient que personne ne s’est blessé et que les événements font l’objet d’une enquête.

#cauchemar #cdnpoli #polcan #worksafety #unions #onthejobdeaths

Okay y'all, I'm looking into getting smart glasses with this coming paycheck. I don't want to spend more than $450 or so on it. So, what's good in the middle of January 2026? Lol I say that because it'll probably change tomorrow or next week or next month.

Anyway any advice would be great! Boosts okay.

#blind #accessibility #SmartGlasses #ai

reshared this

in reply to Liam Erven

@lerven Same! I have the Echovisions and they're making lots of rapid updates at the moment but the hardware is a bit disappointing and I don't think they're going to be able to keep up as far as that goes, especially when Google raises the bar with their new hardware. The glasses plastic feels cheap and the camera doesn't do well with small print, (big downside,) or even slightly poorly lit areas. They say it's a software issue and I'm no camera expert, but I'm beginning to not fully believe that.

RE: tldr.nettime.org/@dk/115883067…

Una reflexión muy interesante: el «código ptolemaico» es, como el viejo sistema geocéntrico de Ptolomeo, software basado en un modelo del problema a resolver incorrecto que solo se acerca a un funcionamiento adecuado mediante sucesivos parches. La generación de código asistida por IA va a traernos muchos de estos «regalos».


I hereby coin the term "Ptolemaic Code" to refer to software that appears functional but is based on a fundamentally incorrect model of the problem domain. As more code is generated by AI, the prevalence of such code is likely to increase.
1/7

I just got falsely flagged as a bot while trying to use the DB train connection lookup service (from first use on, on a residential connection, both in Firefox during multiple attempts, then also in Chromium, only the third attempt in an Epiphany browser got through). People will be very amused if that happens to them on a journey while frantically trying to figure out alternative connections during one of the usual DB situations. ┐(シ)┌

(Going by what I'm reading from sysadmins these days, I guess this is another case/consequence of big tech AI scrapers DDOSing the web to death.)

#XMPP Community

The Chat of the Future initiative has its first session today from 19:00 CET!

xmpp.org/2026/01/chat-of-the-f…

#jabber #chat #interoperability #rtc #xeps #standards #opensource #decentralization #federation #messaging

in reply to JamminJerry

You may also find this of interest, if you ever decide to get the boys the Nintendo Switch online plan, as these are the list of games provided by the service if you download the free emulators from the Nintendo EShop.
I spent nearly two hours on a call with a fantastic Aira agent who was kind enough to type out these lists for me in text form, then I had an AI turn them into tables for easier viewing.
onj.me/ngg.html

Mantis Q40 question: when using the onboard applications, I can switch between QWERTY and #braille input by pressing F12. Is there a way to achieve the same thing while connected to an external device in terminal mode?

In other words: I want to use the FDS and JKL keys as simulated Perkins-style input while connected to NVDA, VoiceOver, etc. without using any software-based simulation features built into the #screenReader itself.

On January 6th my idea paper got accepted for the Web 2026 conference. Now i'm basically registering my first conference entry, booking flights from and to Valencia and a place to stay for a week. I'm afraid of flying and am generally overwhelmed with all the things that need to be done. I also have to pay everything first before getting it paid back afterwards, but man, it isn't exactly cheap either. Kinda locked in decision paralysis right now, not gonna lie.

Alright. It's 4 in the morning, 3 hours before work, what am I doing?
Bug reports came through that SoftVoice will not read Mastodon posts. Turns out we need to do the character splitting in the wrapper.
Re-download eurpod.com/softvoice-2025.nvda…. Alternatively, if you have a cached copy, use eurpod.com/softvoice-2025-v07.… for a clean one.
This copy fixes it so we do split into 350-character chunks at the wrapper side. In my testing this reads all Mastodon posts to expectation now, as these can often throw the entire post's chunk onto the engine.
in reply to heise online

Ich mag ja nicht jedes Dateils dieses Deals zu überblicken oder maße mir an alles zu verstehen. Aber ausser dem Namen des Kapitalgebers ändert sicht nichts. Menschen die JETZT irgendwelche Einstellungen ändern glauben doch nicht wirklich, dass die bereits übertragenen worden sind, dann auf den Servern verschwinden. Oder?
Oder dass die Afinum andere Zeile hatte als jede andere Firma.
Warum ist Wachstum erstrebenswert habe ich gelesen. Das hängt von der Situation ab. Wenn es WhatsApp und Meta im allgemeinen ein Stück weit verdrängen soll ist esSEHR erstrebenswert. Höhere Mitgliederzahlen heisst auch stabilerer Service für uns Nutzer.

Dieses reflexartige zuschnappen und diese Versuche hier einen Dämonen herraufzubeschwören ... statt unter Umständen darüber nachzudenken, dass irgendwer den Bumms auch bezahlen muss und das nicht mit 3,50€ lifetime getan ist.

Threema kann als Inhouse-Messenger genutzt werden. Evt ist das der Grund für eine Firma eine Softwarebude finanziel zu unterstützen.

Torvalds arbeitete jahrelang für Transmeta und wurde von denen bezahlt um den Linux-Kernel zu managen. Weil die den Kernel brauchten. So wie viele Entwickler der OpenSource Scene auch einen Anstellungsvertrag haben.

Twelve(!) years ago on this day, I started my job at #Mozilla

daniel.haxx.se/blog/2014/01/13…

(I was there for almost five years, left again in late 2018: daniel.haxx.se/blog/2018/11/18…)