mastodon - Link to source
Winterdienst in Finnland: "Jeder einzelne Beschäftigte des Räumdienstes muss regelmäßig selbst auf seinen Routen radeln. Wenn die Nutzer besonders zufrieden sind, kann es Boni geben. Die Wege sind breit genug, damit dieselben großen Maschinen darauf fahren können wie auf den Autostraßen."
spiegel.de/auto/fahrrad-im-win…

Finnischer Stadtplaner über Winterradeln: »Beim Schneeräumen zeigen Städte, wen sie schützen wollen und wen nicht«

Im nordfinnischen Oulu herrschen monatelang strenger Frost und Dunkelheit – trotzdem fahren viele Menschen rund ums Jahr Fahrrad. Stadtplaner Pekka Tahkola erklärt, wie Radfahrer sich für den Winter begeistern können.
Arvid Haitsch (DER SPIEGEL)

mastodon - Link to source

Went to an aquarium supply store last night and was delighted to see the staff in N95 masks and all customers still required to wear masks also. I wish I saw more places still doing this. The sign behind the till particularly got me 😂

“COVID-19 SURCHARGES
$50 If we have to explain about masks
$100 If we have to hear why you disagree”

Anyway if you need any fish-related supplies, go support Aquarium Central. 🫧🐠🐟🐠🐟

#YEG #CovidIsNotOver

One of several printed signs on a cork board behind the cash register; the others are fish-related information or diagrams, but this one reads: MASKS REQUIRED "What about my rights" Our private property, our rights first "Masks don't work" Wear an N95 respirator "It's the cold/flu" Heard of long COVID? Guess not "I have a Medical Excuse" You shouldn't be out during COVID "I've already had COVID" Doesn't stop transmission COVID-19 SURCHARGES $50 If we have to explain about masks $100 If we have to hear why you disagree
A printed paper sign taped to the front door of the shop. Black text reads: AQUARIUM CENTRAL MASK REQUIRED Exemption: Small Children Under 36" tall FREE MASKS INSIDE ON ENTRANCE RIGHT WALL Thanks for your respect Our motto: Keeping fish diseases and mean anti-maskers out since 2020
#CovidIsNotOver #yeg

mastodon - Link to source

Trump says U.S. doesn't need CUSMA trade deal, takes aim at Canada

ctvnews.ca/canada/article/we-d…

So here is what should happen but will not.

Remove tariff on EV from China, the 100% meant to protect the American lobby

Repeal the anti-jailbreak provision of Harper Bill C-11 as suggested by @pluralistic

Make Canada the center of right to repair. This will fuck companies like HP, Apple, TESLA, John Deere, etc.

#cdnpoli


‘We don’t need cars made in Canada’: Trump calls CUSMA ‘irrelevant’ and takes aim at Canada

U.S. President Donald Trump visited a Ford factory in Dearborn, Mich., Tuesday and dismissed the relevance of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, saying the U.S. doesn’t need the trade deal and that “Canada would love it.”
Dorcas Marfo (CTVNews)
#cdnpoli @Cory Doctorow
in reply to Hubert Figuière

mastodon - Link to source

ShutterBugged

No surveilence is ok, and there definitely should be privacy laws.

But do you really think chinese cars *won't* come with it? It is a known fact that they surveil drivers in ways that extend beyond those of other automakers.

P.S. and you haven't addressed other points either. What do you say to canadian manufacturing workers on a japanese or european-owned production line?

This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source

EU calls FOSS experts to come and talk about FOSS for the EU. @sesivany Koho zainteresujeme z ceska?

cadeproject.org/updates/europe…

#eu #foss #opensource #consultation


European Commission launches consultation on building open digital ecosystems in the EU - CADE – Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment

The European Commission has published a call for evidence for an upcoming initiative titled Towards European open digital ecosystems, inviting stakeholders to provide input ahead of a planned Communication to the European Parliament and the Council e…
CADE – Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment
#foss #opensource #EU #consultation @Jiří Eischmann
in reply to Hubert Figuière

mastodon - Link to source

Hubert Figuière

Even before we knew it was a nazi bar (aka before the c-suite said it was ok they fund nazi writers, which is way before they actually promoted nazi content with spam) it was sketchy. There is that thing I was following that would be in the category of "computing history, first person account". It started revealing all the anti-pattern that prelude enshittification, something medium exhibited.
in reply to André Polykanine

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

Says the windows user. The other tends to disagree, which means, points straight at me. Honestly though, I only use windows when I am visiting elderly grandparents, and I have a windows in the house, but even then I am dragging two macs around because. I mean I can even game on mac these days why do I need windows, again? But yeah, I don't like win 11. I am glad I still have a computer with 10 on it, and I will install any tweek under the known sky, if it lets me keep what I have. I don't care about support or security, or whatever. Just that, 10 is better than 11.
in reply to Winter blue tardis

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

I mean, damn it. I tried windows for year, 20 years on windows, and only about, five on mac. I just, never want to look at windows again, unless it's for work, or because I want to run games specifically on windows. I just don't see things I can't do on mac I can do on windows, even microsoft's apps are better, which is ridiculous. I would like to guess that you're not using the actual explorer, but from that post, you probably are. Anyway, I also had huge issues with windows audio, and because I am losing hearing, hehe. Something always breaks, somehow, and I have to fix it, all the time. IT gets tiring after a while. I love NVDA though, I won't lie, that's probably the only thing I like windows for, and it's not for windows itself, it's for the option to have NVDA. And yes I have a watch and an iPad and a phone, actually two of them, a retired one I will use for work, but I have android too. So me and the war between mac and windows doesn't apply. Still though, when people report that windows works, the apps work, etc. without the mother of scripting scripts and addons, I will be super happy, because ms is vibe coding these days, so much that they even visually had an update where the password field was a blank. Thingy on the screen. What in the name of OS coding is that? LOL. I guess windows 10 is dead for good now, but I am still running it. Also, windows is getting heavier and heavier on Ram usage, and its ram usage is just so... Inifficient, that we had 1000tabs in excel, and mac never complained, launched it on windows, and my 16Gb weren't enough, for some odd reason. Haha. I would love me laptops with awesome specs, but neither do I have the money, nor do I want stuff that weighs five KG because you know, gaming laptops, but actually for work. :D
in reply to Winter blue tardis

mastodon - Link to source

André Polykanine

@tardis I use a terminal every day, so yes, for me it's a necessity. Probably I need to see a working Mac somewhere. but when I last saw it, it was a pain to work in the browser, for example. Don't know about VS Code for Mac these days, which I also need. Also, on windows I have WSL that allows me to have basically a lightweight Linux environment for console development.
@Winter blue tardis
in reply to André Polykanine

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

Oh, there's tdsr both for linux and mac. I mean, if the linux terminal works well, it wouldn't exist for it, but apparently, it exists. IT works well with mac, for now. Except, my speech framework was bugged, so I had to delete espeak, and now I has 0 Bulgarian readability, hehe. Browser is good, browser is like an iPhone with a keyboard, in some ways, I see it as more logical. Also, the options to customise stuff for visually impaired users is huge, better than on windows in some cases, my colleague said so.
in reply to André Polykanine

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

I mean, if you mean that I could use my braille display on mac, without using a keyboard for everything, then yes, braille support probably sucks, but it doesn't. You could connect braille displays on mac way before you could with NVDA, without downloading any drivers, etc. And now that focus have added HID toggles and stuff, it's awesome. MacOs looks so much like a freakin phone now, kind of. IF you're on an iPhone, switching won't even be hard, except the shortcuts. You can assign so many more things in VO now that didn't work before. Now, if they fix a few annoying bugs, it'll be great, but they haven't yet.
in reply to André Polykanine

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

I don't think you can customise braille tables, because libloui and apple's braille tables, but libloui is for example broken for bulgarian, so is apple's and we have written feedback, I just guess a lot of users have to do that. But you don't need language profiles, because you can switch with just cmd vo shift between tables. Mac has two rotor-like things. One is like the one on the phone, the other one has voices, braille tables, rate, volume, pitch, etc. So I have three or so braille tables. And yeah, I think you can reverse assign your panning keys, or change the auto advance speed, assign keys on the display to do that, etc. Maybe there's a way to customise liblouis tables, but I am not sure, maybe there isn't. I haven't looked extensively into that.
in reply to André Polykanine

gotosocial - Link to source

Winter blue tardis

Oh yeah, I can make cursors non-blinking, I can tell the status cells to screw off, I can make underlines, italics, whatever the heck I want to do with the thing. The only thing I can't do, is update the focus via mac, but that's an fs issue, not my issue. I have windows for that. IT actually fell into a bootloop, and I had to flash its firmware twice, it sucked.

mastodon - Link to source

Hey #a11y folks,

I started writing an article about how you can sneak in #accessibility fixes (as a developer or designer) without telling your boss.

Do you have any stories you would like to share that I could use for the article?

I did it by silently adding landmark elements and a skip link, updating global focus styles so that they're consistent and accessible and other evil shenanigans. 😈

#blog #html #css #javascript #WebDev #frontend

#a11y #Accessibility #blog #webdev #html #javascript #css #frontend

mastodon - Link to source

It's Nid-de-poule season! :D [It's always Nid-de-poule season in Montréal!]

Via the 311 app, I've reported more than 40 potholes since January 1... the best is when they ask for a photo!

FYI 75% of these potholes in CDN-NDG existed BEFORE Winter proper... the borough just lets the snow fill them and freeze over. LOL

montreal.citynews.ca/2026/01/1… #polMTL #MTLpoli #potholepalooza #niddepoulooza #nidsdepoule #montreal #potholes


Number of potholes already piling up in Montreal

If vehicular slalom were an Olympic event at next month’s Winter Games, a Montrealer would surely take the top prize. Montreal drivers swerving left and right to avoid potholes has become a typical sight this January.
News Staff (CityNews Montreal)
#polmtl #montreal #mtlpoli #nidsdepoule #potholes #potholepalooza #niddepoulooza

mastodon - Link to source

I'm a forty-five-year-old man, and I've been using desktop web browsers for twenty-eight of them, and only a few months ago I learned how to highlight text that is a hyperlink without clicking the link: by holding Alt why highlighting. I use it many times a day now. How did even use the web before that?

In case you still didn't know it, now you do.

Thank you @jhsoby for teaching me this.

@Jon Harald Søby

glitchsoc - Link to source

SelfHosting week2, phase 1.
Setup: Hostinger provider, KVM2 VPS plan. 2 CPU cores, 8 GB RAM, 100 GB storage, Debian 12, YunoHost 12.1.39 stable, WordPress 6.9 branch.
WordPress procedure, I assumed it had to be the easiest, where I am mostly skilled in; obviously, it wasn't.
First of all, because YunoHost installs a plugin called "Companion auto update" which gives an error just on admin page. F-off to it. In that case I deactivated it through terminal, but I found the error's origin thanks to an LLM which interpreted the log for me. If I were unexperienced with web sites advanced configurations, I couldn't have figured it out.
My current multilingual approach on production website, has been a very satisfying experience but I'm noticing it requires too much attention in long term; full-site editing (gutenberg), manual template switch for each English or Italian post, some custom code to manage search and taxonomies. But any deep maintenance could break everything.

So I decided to follow an advice from @2ndkauboy a German blogger who wrote about MultiLingualPress, plug-in connected to MultiSite WordPress platforms during Advent period in his "Plugin Advent Calendar".
Having a VPS now I assumed to be 100% free to perform Multisite and began to build it: YunoHost's WordPress installer asked me if I wanted MultiSite or not, I confirmed YES.
The first obstacle was it did not work as I desired: my idea was to get "domain.extension/" as main site while "domain.extension/english" as second language website but YunoHost refused to place WordPress into the main directory, namely subdomain.domain.extension/, with multisite setup on.
So I removed WordPress from @yunohost by command: "sudo yunohost app remove wordpress"
Re-installed through the same script, sudo yunohost app install wordpress, this time answering "NO" to multisite option, and it accepted to provide the / directory as location.
Enabled MultiSite manually by editing wp-config.php file and installing it, then added extra-lines in the wp-config as well, after the network creation, using subdirectories for multisite setup. YunoHost uses nginx, so I went to modify the subdomain's WordPress nginx configuration; in that case as well, LLM helped me.
But then came trouble: I was logged off WordPress admin. No way to recover the password, no way to access its dashboard.
So, I gave up.
Tried another day: remove, re-install, set MultiSite manually. This time I used another e-mail address and when I got stuck, I managed to reset its password. But after setting main and secondary web sites, the result was wp-admin on main site worked, while /english/wp-admin returned an error: "ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS".
No way to make it work at all!
So, I resigned. Removed, re-installed with multi-site on natively, by setting the path to subdomain.domain.ext/wp/
having /wp/ and /wp/english/ seemed to be the less evil.
In the end the too_many_redirects error was still there, and disappeared only when I added this string:
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
into the nginx WordPress-specific configuration, under the "location" setting.
Not bad, I assumed it was OK.
But installing MultilingualPress, the plugin suggested by the German blogger of before, wp-admin returned a critical error. Maybe a database, or something else.
Increased the php memory to 256M in wp-config.php and the multilingual press then resulted as active, in the network setup.
So I tried to connect the two blogs, setting related languages and trying to flag relations one another.
But nothing worked. The relations weren't flagged, and going to network / plugins, returned an error again.
So, in the end, I've resigned at the moment, to create two subdomains. English and Italian. Where I have two separate WordPress installations.
I'd like to try again the Multisite experience, though.
#accessibility #a11y #debian #multilingual #multisite #SelfHost #SelfHosting #WordPress #Yunohost

#a11y #Accessibility #debian #selfhost #wordpress #selfhosting #yunohost #multilingual #multisite @Bernhard Kau @YunoHost

mastodon - Link to source
I have issues with the way Games Workshop does some things. But I have to give them props for their stance on AI usage. #Warhammer boardgamewire.com/index.php/20…

Games Workshop bans AI use in its designs, celebrates record half-year results -

Company CEO Kevin Rountree said the £6bn business was strongly committed to protecting its IP and respecting its human creators.
Mike Didymus-True (boardgamewire.com)
#warhammer

mastodon - Link to source

My granddaughter is 3 months old, and I spend a lot of time complimenting her.

Telling her how pretty she is, or how clever she is, or how strong she is, or how fat she has got, or how good she is at sleeping. How good she is at blowing bubbles. How clever she is to fill a nappy...

and I thought, when does all this stop?

I feel like we should be congratulating each other for all these minor things.

So well done, if you've been to the toilet today. And well done for eating, and yay you if you had a drink earlier, and you stayed asleep throughout your nap? .Well done! 👏

Look at you! Doing so well at existing! Keep that shit up

This entry was edited (2 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Long biographical story of my mom, on the occasion of her birthday:

Today is my mom's birthday. She is 85 years old, which means she predates the entry of the United States in WWII by almost a year. That blows my mind sometimes

Imagine all the changes an 85 year old has seen over the years. Before marrying, her father had benefitted from FDR's CCC, a New Deal government work relief program that provided much-needed jobs as we crawled out of the Great Depression. Conditions took a long time to improve around the world. The little family started out in a small home in a rural area of the Midwest. Her mother had two vegetable gardens: one for the family, and one to sell to others. Her dad hunted for their suppers, which were often pheasant or squirrel. Her mom eventually got a job for Look magazine. Her father eventually got a job offer to work for a factory in California. They had few possessions when they moved and they made mom auction off her small shoebox of toys, promising her a new toy in California. That was her most cherished possession growing up, a stuffed Panda Bear she named Punkin.

The family started out in Compton. Mom experienced firsthand what racial inequality was like, and the injustice of it informed her politics for the rest of her life. (Much like the shock of coming across her great grandfather's marriage certificate which listed her Hopi great grandmother as "property.")

Just as the Depression lingered longer than history textbooks imply, the 1954 landmark Supreme Court ruling that made educational resources equal and ended segregation in schools did not have an immediate effect. Mom went to school before Plessy vs. Ferguson was even overturned, and the underfunding of Black schools was obvious. Not only was there no library at her school, but no books at home. Mom stole a dictionary and began reading it, to learn on her own.

The family moved to a different suburb soon after, a small home on a quiet street, with a surprisingly huge backyard featuring a grove of avocado trees. There was a cabin out back, where her dad and his friends would smoke cigars and play poker. At one point, he had to step away and he let mom take his place. She had learned by observing, and to everyone's surprise, she won. Besides learning to play poker, her dad taught her how to box, which came in handy when two mean girls wanted to fight her. The school wanted to punish her for defending herself, which they still do today, unfortunately.

She was an excellent student, and fulfilled her dream to attend UCLA, (several years ahead of Lew Alcindor). This made mom the first person in her family to have ever gone to college, let alone graduate school.

Mom met my dad in 1959, and they married a few years later. My dad was in the Air Force at the time, working as a cartographer. He had been stationed in Alaska before it had become a state, and he was so miserably cold there that it was the only state we were never allowed to visit.

Mom took time away from school while carrying me, and returned to graduate school only two weeks after I was born, with no help from anyone. They lived in a tiny apartment with a Murphy bed in the wall, and the only sink was in the bathroom, which is where she had to wash dishes. Our little family moved several times, to the beach and inland, until settling in a rented house and then buying the house next door, where there were often parties and extended family gatherings. Our next door neighbors were gay Nazis, which is a story in itself. Mom was very ahead of her time, and was already teaching me not to ever be racist, and that it was okay for men to be together, perfectly fine for a boy to wear a dress and carry a purse during dress up, and that there was no such thing as boy's or girl's toys.

My little brother was born shortly after my dad finished IBM school. IBM immediately moved us to Minnesota. There, dad worked as a computer programmer, and mom taught English, Speech and Drama at a local high school. She loved teaching and still misses it to this day. She realized that one of her students had run away from home and was living with a family who couldn't afford to care for her. After finding out that the girl's family didn't care that she was gone, mom took the initiative to get her moved in with us. We fixed up a room for her in the basement, and got her some much needed dental care. It was so hard on all of us that we couldn't take her with us when we moved, since we had never formally gotten custody. Mom arranged for her to stay with another family for her last year of high school, and she married soon after.

Mom divorced dad and we all moved back to California. Even though my dad had numerous affairs, my mom was seen by the family as a pariah because she moved into a apartment with her boyfriend, after the divorce He was kind, but didn't last.

Those were lean years. Because of the timing, in the middle of the school year, mom couldn't get a job as a teacher, and began working at IBM. Her supervisor realized immediately that she had untapped potential and she began moving up in the company. My first understanding of politics was when she was incensed that Nixon won re-election.

In a nearby city, she found a house for sale where the older couple were so anxious to sell that they let it go for what was left of the mortgage. Still working at IBM, she became a technical writer. She met a woman at IBM who seemed really cool, avant garde, a social norms rulebreaker. They started a relationship, in the not so welcoming 1970s. IBM sent us to Georgia. We sent the moving van ahead, and took two weeks in a Chinook camper to see the country. It was amazing. Mom directed our tour of the sights and experiences: of course, to visit the Hopi and honor them the best we could, to experience the unique fusion of Pueblo, Spanish, and Mexican food known as New Mexican food, Carlsbad Caverns, The Grand Canyon, the Space Center in Houston (which I thought was the most humid place on Earth until we got to New Orleans).

We eventually settled in Georgia. Two women could not buy a house together, so it had to be in my mom's girlfriend's name. Their relationship lasted ten years.

Mom had to move again, ('cause IBM) this time to Research Triangle Park where she became an information systems analyst, teaching technical writers the industry standards. She traveled extensively, putting the "International" in IBM. There, she met a man who wanted to marry almost immediately (red flag). They lasted four years. He had five children, including triplet boys, but only two came to live with them off and on.

When she retired from IBM, counting down to the minute during the last year, she returned to her first love: art. She had painted over the years, but it was in the fabric arts that her talent took off. She got into art quilting and was with a guild. She had a one woman art show and sold everything. To this day, she undersells her own jaw-dropping artistic talent.

That takes us up to today, where Alzheimer's is a bully that prevents her from doing things she loved, like reading books and creating art. She still has her movies, which she treasures and watches over and over again.

She has requested a small cake from a local specialty market. I think it's the least I can do.

If you've read all this, or even skimmed it, I thank you. I am biased, of course, but I think my mom has led an extraordinary life against all odds (I left out all the really bad parts.) And I'm lucky to know her. If she were not my mom, I would have sought her out as a friend.

More pics in next post.

1942 black and white photo of mom and her favorite cousin, hugging and looking into camera.
Mom, college graduation photo. Profile in black and white of a woman with short wavy hair, smiling. Traditional pearl necklace for photo.
Finally, color photos become more common. Mom, in 1967, giving a bottle of formula to my baby brother. She has peroxide blonde hair in the bouffant style of the time. She's wearing pink pants and a pink paisley top.
Mom, aged 30, at home, happily cradling a Siamese kitten. She is wearing an abstract print top with coral pants. The couch has that heavy raised felt design on the upholstery, dark moss green on a green background. A couple pictures and a hammered copper hanging are on the wall behind her. She sports a flip hairdo and the new acetate frame glasses that had come out.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to :thonk:

pleroma - Link to source

feld

@p nah, but around 2015 my wife was doing a lot of running events and it was about 3 weeks before a half marathon and she kept poking the bear, daring me to run it so I did like one 5 mile run and one 8 mile run and then showed up and crushed it, beat her by like 15 minutes

never ran like that again. I suffer from an affliction called "extreme boredom" and when doing long distance running I start thinking about how this is such an absolute waste of my time and wishing I was able to do something productive instead of being trapped in a mental prison cell.

Also I just got really hungry, almost peeled off to go to a diner to have brunch instead

I do like long distance cycling though, because the scenery is better

@:thonk:
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