mastodon - Link to source
New: NV Speech Player finally gets a "pause mode" setting, like Eloquence has. This should not chew into lines with say-all, but rather does clause-based punctuation pause detection. And, it does appear to work. You can choose between "off," "short," and "long." This should solve a lot of complaints around words "merging together" after punctuation. I also began my first pass at abstracting parts of the driver out: _frontend.py and _dll_loader.py. Logging was also improved, I cleaned up over 40 try/catch exceptions, We're not trying to play Pokemon here.
download: eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlay…
Oh! and for those wondering "where's classic pitch?" It's located in the Voice settings dialog, you'll find it as a checkbox.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Tamas G

mastodon - Link to source

Cleverson

thanks for the last corrections concerning m/n between vowel and consonant for pt-br. Now, I've just added a phoneme which I've called "brã", for Brazilian ã, which consisted of a single change: take ã and change cf4 from 3300 to 2600. then I added to pt-br.yaml:
- from: "ã"
to: "brã"
Now, when I command it to speak a word like "região", the new phoneme appears to be used, but it's much less stressed and somewhat shortened, or at least de-emphasised. Can you give a look please?
in reply to Cleverson

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@clv1 hmm. try and replace your packs folder at eurpod.com/synths/packs-ptUpda… - I'm experimenting on this one. What you’re hearing isn’t really “less stress,” it’s that the new vowel is darker, so it feels less punchy even if the timing didn’t change. In our latest pack we kept your approach, but made the change in a more balanced way so the synth doesn’t “half use” the old sound: we added a dedicated Brazilian ã variant and mapped pt-br to use it, making sure the vowel stays consistent across the voice filters. If you still want it to pop more, the best next tweak is a tiny loudness bump on that new ã variant rather than changing stress/timing.
@Cleverson
in reply to Zvonimir Stanecic

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@asael @clv1 haha not sure. Depends on how well base pairs are defined right now. You could always add it inside the driver, here we have the list of languages, if you formatted it the same way as that string and used HR for Croatian it would speak today but with perhaps missing sounds. Then we map those missing sounds to specific phoneme pairs in hr.yaml. Generally many sounds can be reused across languages but there's definitely edge cases especially with glides, fronted sounds, ETC.
@Zvonimir Stanecic @Cleverson
in reply to Tamas G

mastodon - Link to source

Cleverson

Now to another issue: I need the distinction to be more noticeable when there is an r between consonant and vowel, i.e. in syllables like bra, cra, fra, tra, the consonants probably need to be more separate from each other. I have added some settings to pt-br.yaml, namely those concerning stop gaps, but I don't know yet how to deal with them... What is the correct setting for this case?

mastodon - Link to source
Our parliament holds 101 members + bunch of officers in the parliament + a ministry which deals with finances. They recently passed a law, which, apparently by error, made all gambling websites except from paying taxes in Estonia. Loss in tens of millions of euros, which in Estonias view is a considerable sum. Now, to avoid this situation in the future, they are talking about implementing AI in law making and in the process. What could possibly go wrong.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Jakob Rosin

mastodon - Link to source

Noel Romey

Whatever the AI says is right. Yours is probably better than mine since your AI is the best AI the world has ever seen. Therefore you are the best person, with the best skills. Just an FYI, I'd like to purchase Estonia because why not? I could make Estonia a big data center. I need it because @BorrisInABox and @FreakyFwoof are all running AIS on their Macs which might be bigger than mine and yours combined. So gimme. Gimme gimme gimme ... urp.
@Andre Louis @Borris

mastodon - Link to source
My partner and I visited Norway and hiked (a surprisingly short hike) to a place called Litlefjellet -This was the view!
Litlefjellet, Norwegian for ‘Little Mountain’, is the name of the center mountain. Plus, we found the iconic pond that perfectly reflects the whole scene.
I loved it so much that I decided to make it into wood art! I hope you love it, too
#woodart #artandairplanes #art #woodworking #wood #norway #mountains #hiking #sun
Circular wooden artwork depicting a mountain range in Norway featuring a sunburst sky and a reflection scene.
#art #hiking #woodworking #mountains #norway #sun #wood #woodart #artandairplanes

mastodon - Link to source
My wife and I are fortunate to be in Iceland at the moment, and we managed to capture a timelapse of last night’s aurora. It was one of those moments in my life when I could hardly believe my own eyes. Enjoy!
#aurora #iceland #timelapse
#iceland #timelapse #aurora

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source
If you run a mastodon instance, it's time to upgrade. There are some security issues fixed in the version released today: github.com/mastodon/mastodon/r…

Release v4.5.5 · mastodon/mastodon

Upgrade overview This release contains upgrade notes that deviate from the norm: ℹ️ Requires assets recompilation For more information, view the complete release notes and scroll down to the upgrad...
GitHub

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source
Oh goodness, the internet is saying that the new Trek show that just came out is super cringey. Why oh why do they keep pulling this garbage? I'm all for DEI stuff, but can't it be done without making it so cringey that people just check out? Honestly, as a person who is both blind and gay, it's kind of insulting that something this aweful is supposed to help people like me feel more excepted and whatnot in society. #GetALife
#getalife

mastodon - Link to source
The applyVoiceToFrame function loops through all frame fields (47) for each frame, which is heavy. Since only a handful of fields are modified by voices, precomputing the operations for each voice once could significantly boost performance. By mapping the voice operations to a precomputed list, I can reduce the 94 lookups per frame. That will help things out here a lot I think.

mastodon - Link to source
Thank goodness. I already fixed that language switching bug. No new link because it's so close to V4's release that V4's link was updated. If you really want it, grab the V4 link with another browser. This one also updates it so notification doesn't have a slight W sound in it, so yeah. That's fixed too. Now I can really work on refactoring and not adding updates for next version. Oh yay.
in reply to Angle🖇

pleroma - Link to source

feld

re: Discourse: America, Civil War
we also have to consider whether or not people are willing to lower their standard of living/safety by that much. You're going to have to give up a lot to wage a real war. Systems will break down, supply lines will dry up, suddenly you're wondering where to even get food from as the store shelves go empty and people start to panic AND PROBABLY TURN ON YOU FOR CREATING THIS PROBLEM

mastodon - Link to source
I type really fast. Too fast for eSpeakup apparently, because I was installing Debian 13 in VMWare Workstation 25H2 just now, got to the part where I enter my full name for my user account, started quickly typing my name, got as far as typing "Stu H" before eSpeakup just fell over and died. No problem, I'll restart the VM and try again. The exact same thing happened at the exact same point in setup. This is the state of Linux accessibility in 2026.

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source
Deal Alert! Visible Drops Its Price to $19 a Month for 26 Months — Here’s How You Can Save on a Mobile Plan Today cordcuttersnews.com/deal-alert…

Deal Alert! Visible Drops Its Price to $19 a Month for 26 Months — Here's How You Can Save on a Mobile Plan Today | Cord Cutters News

Visible is making 2026 the year to switch with one of its best long-term offers yet. For a limited time, new customers can get Visible’s base plan for just $19 per month for 26 months when they use the promo code SWITCH26 at signup.
Raymond McCain (Cord Cutters News)

mastodon - Link to source

Okay y'all, first public, alpha, version of Elmud! Basically, the install script should handle everything for you, if you're on Termux for Android, Linux, or Mac. Hopefully. If not, just load-file elmud.el and it'll load emacspeak-elmud.el too. If you need a screen reader, set up and use Emacspeak. For soundpacks, we have one automatically load for Erion MUD and Cosmic Rage. Those are the two I've found easily downloadable. So the client just downloads the sounds for you when you choose those two MUD's. You can also make your own gag or sound triggers. I'll put it up on Github soon but for now:

dropbox.com/scl/fi/6cqp28s6zqp…

3elmud #emacs #emacspeak #foss #mud

#foss #emacs #emacspeak #MUD

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in reply to Khronos

mastodon - Link to source

Devin Prater :blind:

@khronos You'll need the Emacs package, so do pkg i emacs, then git clone github.com/tvraman/emacspeak, and then make inside the emacspeak directory, then get a speech engine working, I recommend just going with Espeak when starting out, make Espeak. If it doesn't work have AI fix it up. Then git clone ElMud, run the install script, and in Emacs, M-x ElMud.

GitHub - tvraman/emacspeak: Emacspeak --- The Complete Audio Desktop

Emacspeak --- The Complete Audio Desktop. Contribute to tvraman/emacspeak development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub
@Khronos

Khronos reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source
Today was nice; didn't have any new things demanding my attention, so just pushed a few existing things forward. Also managed to get back to looking at bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?i…. Found that, with my test, some text doesn't show up in the AT-SPI hierarchy if I just remove the conditionals mentioned in the bug. I'd really need access to the WebKit slack, since there is apparently some discussion there, but, when I try to join (from the Getting Started link on webkit.org), I get a message saying that the invite has expired. I wonder if the link works for other people. I emailed someone at Apple the other day; hoping that he gets back to me.

282117 – AX: USE(ATSPI) ports should consider walking the DOM to the build accessibility tree like non-ATSPI ports after bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=281749

WebKit Bugzilla

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Peter Vágner

mastodon - Link to source

Mike Gorse

@pvagner What I was describing is similar to that, but I was only seeing it with a patched local version. I was hoping that it might fix this evolution crash that I'm seeing when I try to authenticate a gmail account--that was really the thing that I'm most interested in trying to fix right now--but it seems not to make any difference. Anyway, is what you're describing something that you're seeing with an unpatched WebKit? If so, is there a bug open for it?
@Peter Vágner

mastodon - Link to source
Oohaohaohaoaha I already see a bug comin' But it's so tricky to solve: When you change to another language, say, from the one current, it doesn't reload the configuration data for that language from the new pack. Gosh darn. It's good at updating it when the synth reloads, as it syncs the settings with the ones in config, but not so good upon a language change. Fixing that one now. Then it really is modularization time, this driver is horrendous in size and a lot of it is frontend and DLL loading stuff that will need splitting out now that we support both X64 and x86 too. (the driver itself should work on NVDA 2023.2 and above though)
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source
NVSpeechPlayer update: dedicated settings panel with editable language pack data. This allows you to also edit a language pack in notepad and reload the synthesizer, then reapply the pack configuration - that part was tricky, but it will read them when reloading the driver.
Voice settings panel: Anything with "lang:" starting before it are new comboboxes you can also tune. This applies realtime as you change, whereas the settings page helps you edit a language not currently in use.
New settings added: spellingDiphthongMode, stressedVowelHiatusGapMs, stressedVowelHiatusFadeMs.
Next update will mainly be a driver cleanup, as we can use getters/setters more efficiently for the new YAML parsing. The goal was to first get a stable settings panel and pack reloading so people can mess with settings realtime.
eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlay…
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source
So I’m just curious, has anyone actually thought to ask the people who live in #Greenland what they think or what they want? Because I’ve seen precious little evidence that anyone has. It seems that they’re being treated like the non-player characters #Musk used to talk about. I brought this up on a #Facebook post earlier today, and someone told me that 50,000 or 60,000 people live there, the implication being what they thought didn’t really matter. Meanwhile, we are seeing the dealmaking skills that so many people thought made #Trump a great President, though these skills begin and end with acting like a mob boss. #USPol
#facebook #Trump #uspol #musk #greenland
in reply to Kevin LaRose, no ICE please

mastodon - Link to source

Mike Gorse

Well, I've heard people discussing it (on the BBC, for instance), but not Donald Tramp or the people who approve of him. I just saw a couple of my relatives share a fb post saying that Europe doesn't pay its fair share in terms of defense and Greenland is important for security and the US can't spend large amounts of money on defense projects there if we don't own it (it said nothing about what the people of Greenland would or wouldn't want).

hometown - Link to source

My hyperfixation of the moment is getting 10Gb networking in my apartment.

My in-apartment build+backup server has 10Gb Ethernet as does my new laptop dock.

I also have two systems with 2.5Gb Ethernet, so I want a switch that has all that and a few extra ports for future expansion.

I thought fiber for 10Gb would be difficult, but it looks like it's end user friendly now? I'd just have to buy a switch with SFP+ ports and plug in all the pieces, huh!

mastodon - Link to source

lol seclists.org/oss-sec/2026/q1/8…

telnetd server invokes /usr/bin/login (normally running as root) passing the value of the USER environment variable received from the client as the last parameter.

If the client supply a carefully crafted USER environment value being the string "-f root", and passes the telnet(1) -a or --login parameter to send this USER environment to the server, the client will be automatically logged in as root bypassing normal authentication processes

In telnetd for a decade 💀


oss-sec: GNU InetUtils Security Advisory: remote authentication by-pass in telnetd

seclists.org
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Bri🥰

mastodon - Link to source

YourFavoriteAtheist🇨🇦

@Bri I wouldn't be surprised if the developer started charging us out the ass for it. Like all the greedy developers for accessible apps do. I mean come on. I live in my parents basement, and I'm 50 something. Do you really think I can afford all these ridiculous insane charges for what these greedy developers charge? I mean, I already have huge Xbox game purchase bills to pay. I don't need this on top of everything else!
@Bri🥰

mastodon - Link to source
Okay, I finally decided to check out what everyone is on about and try Braille screen input on my IPhone.
I definitely needed to look for and read some instructions, since I needed to know how to calibrate it, and how to enter a space, and how to erase the last character that I entered.
Anyhow, as an experiment, I went into Notes and tried typing "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" with touch typing and then with Braille screen input, timing myself.
Took me around 40 seconds touch typing and around 35 seconds with BSI. I might be able to do BSI faster if I practiced some. With touch typing, I feel like I'm slowed down waiting for Voiceover to tell me if I, in fact, typed the correct key.
⇧