Joining the #fosdem translations room today was fun, also spontaneously taking over A/V duty for the room was a nice experience. @orangesunny brought a great energy into the room despite the very hot air and the locked windows. Thank you!
Any #Blind folks had any luck with de-Googled #Android? How out-of-date and crappy is TalkBack? If I used that rather than the stock Android that comes with a Pixel, how much will I hate everything?
Masto, I can mention you then, have several people interested in it. But I wanna honestly share more other stuff as well so I should finally move my ass and get something like a blog up.
Have a look through @prism’s timeline. He recently got a fairphone, which ships with a Degoogled OS in the US. Sounds like it was kind of out of date though because Google doesn’t release the newest sources.
@pvagner @pitermach @prism GrapheneOS comes with our own fork of the open source TalkBack which we'll be updating soon. We recently built our own high quality text-to-speech implementation with a model we made ourselves with open source training data because we couldn't find any high quality open source options. Our text-to-speech is going to launch on our App Store soon and then will be included in GrapheneOS to have it working out-of-the-box followed by setup wizard integration.
@GrapheneOS @pvagner @pitermach @prism Yes please, this is more than necessary lol. Took me about half an hour to guide someone to install E-Speak on there, longer than flashing the entire OS lol.
@GrapheneOS @prism lets hope it is more responsive than most text to speech engines as blind folk need start stop start stop responsiveness in a way sighted people don't
@pitermach @prism Murena Fairphones aren't a safe option due to lack of basic privacy and security patches. They include their own invasive services including sending data to third party services from OpenAI and others without user consent. Despite the marketing, they have highly privileged integration for Google apps and services along with always connecting to Google servers anyway. Strongly recommend reading the info at discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134… and the linked 3rd party articles.
@pitermach @prism Android 16 QPR2 was released to the Android Open Source Project on launch date. That's not why /e/ lags far behind on updates to AOSP. They lag even further behind on updates to the Linux kernel and other components including drivers and firmware. It's just not properly maintained and privacy/security are not prioritized despite the marketing. /e/ is a fork of LineageOS which lags behind Android releases itself but /e/ takes much longer to move to ship updates.
Going through my discover weekly and the first six tracks are 5 AI and 1 actual artist. Time to update my script that uses souloverai to get rid of them on my spotify.
Planned obsolescence is when a CO detector not even plugged in does chirp displaying "end". And it's written on it so that without glasses I can't read it.
So, rather than watch the rest of the performers bow out of gigs, he's just going to close it down for construction? Can't wait to see what he does with the place. From WaPo:
"Trump plans to close Kennedy Center for about two years, starting in July. Under the proposal, the Kennedy Center could close on July 4, coinciding with America’s 250th anniversary."
“I have determined that The Trump Kennedy Center, if temporarily closed for Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding, can be, without question, the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “In other words, if we don’t close, the quality of Construction will not be nearly as good, and the time to completion, because of interruptions with Audiences from the many Events using the Facility, will be much longer. The temporary closure will produce a much faster and higher quality result!”
I recently had a stranger comment they've never seen someone tie their shoes as fast as me before and I just went "uhh, yeah I guess..." not realizing that I was doing this knot BECAUSE I LOVED THIS SITE DECADES AGO and it must seem alien to some people
The way you share to social is not to copy the txt, but to do select all, then CTRL+Shift+C. You shared the text file, so the person has to save it and open it that way. When you share as clipboard it looks a little different and can be parsed by the addon with either CTRL+V or CTRL+Shift+V.
Aah, it didn't parse here but we know that you used the text file not the sharing method, the parser should parse those normally, but since we're using the hash tag now, you shouldn't really need to.
When I look up that hash tag, nobody else included them but I didn't know at the time that I'd sort of vibe-invented a really useful music sharing method. lol
I never thought I'd say this but I am not changing my mind until I am sure things have changed back to what they were. #Republicans, y'all need to shapen up and I mean to the maximum degree. The republican party used to be a place where those who care about business and small governmental structures could do well. The republican party had ideals I could agree with, now, not all the way, for example, the #LGBTQ stance is old fashioned and outdated, and the whole focus on #Religion is a little forced, but the republican party were constitutionalists. I say were because now that our "fine" president #Trump is in office, we have gotten to a state where the constitution essentially means very little at this point.
The constitution is the one document that makes sure that we as citizens, for which I am proud to say I am one, are given are inalienable rights. The founding fathers, as flawed as they were, and trust me, I know how flawed they were but I'm not trying to get in that right now, tried their best and went to war against a tyranical King, sorry Brits, love you guys, to make sure that we the people are given the power of governing ourselves with representatives we choose. Trump has made the constitution something to use as a weapon. He has broken laws multiple times in office, while having the power to not have consequences for the laws he has broken. Trump has used his powers without any responsibility. He has almost caused several international insidents with countries who now no longer trust us fully, because he made these countries mad at us. Denmark, Canada, France, Greenland, Mexico, and many other nations who were once our friends but no longer want a part of us right now. Domestically, we are not in a good state. The immigrations and customs enforcement organization has been braking the law as well, killing people, hurting people, ripping children from their mothers and fathers, causing problems in cities and towns across the nation. ICE is nothing but a bunch of sanctioned thugs who deserve nothing but the harshest punishments under the constitution made by a court, and done under a speedy trial of our peers. The economy is not doing well. Sure, those who can afford it are richly rewarded from the booms in the markets but those who can't namely, us younger people receive very little reprieve from the inflation and total disaster that the president and his administration have caused. Food, shelter, electricity, even our luxuries that we receive that we want if we want them cost double or tripple what they should, and its because the president has done very little to curve pricing, and these companies run up the bill for us and get away with it because they can. I'm a capitalist, I'll always be a capitalist, however, I am for fair prices. A good or service that can make a proffit should make a proffit, but it shouldn't be at the expense of those who need that good or service. Trump has hurt our poorest citizens, food stamps are no longer what they used to be, healthcare for those who need it is harder to get, homes, even just renting is more expensive than its ever been. This isn't how a president should be.
A president should be one who serves. A president should be one who colaberates with their international neighbors. A president isn't one who insults people for having questions about what they do in office, because freedom of the press is important. A president should be presidential in tone when they speak to their citizens. A president shouldn't go on revenge plots to ruin people's careers because they are critical of their policies. A president takes responsibility for what they do in office, even Nixon did when he resigned for the good of the country. A president helps the markets be stable. A president knows when to back off when things don't work. A president listens to congress and takes their opinions into account from both parties. A president helps the towns and cities do better, not worse. A president helps immigrants, without immigrants, America wouldn't be what it is now. A president doesn't destroy the department of education, a department without whom people who need educational assistance, our poorest citizens, citizens with disabilities, from Kindergarten to College, have an education worthy of the highest excellence. A president doesn't make it harder for people with disabilities to get the support they need so they can find jobs, do well in the workforce and make a living for themselves. A president doesn't put out propaganda and they especially don't associate, with written prouf, with a person who knowingly hurt children for the rest of their lives. A president doesn't cover it up by causing international insidents with nations we like, and last but not least, a president isn't one with 34 convicted felonies under the constitution, done with a fair and speedy public trial. I say this and Trump is the exact opposite of all of this.
I declare, and its in written record so that nobody here can deny that I wrote it. Until the Republican party shapes up and becomes what they used to be, they will never get my vote. Until I see John Mccain levels of respect and honor and humility in office once more. Until I see people who aren't causing problems, who are actually helping to lower prices and make lives better for citizens, not just the business owners, they will not get my vote. #Democrats, though I may not agree with all of your views and especially not the anti-capitalist anti-business stance you seem to tout like a flag from the rafters, just know that you will get my vote. You get my vote because I've seen nothing but respect, honor, strength and courage that Trump and his band of fools will never have and that is admirable and you deserve all the praise given to you by those who already support you. #UsPol, #Politics
While I agree with this, I'm honestly having a hard time understanding why you're seemingly coming to this realization now. We knew all of this before he came back into office, they laid out exactly what they were planning on doing, yet people voted for him anyway. We even had the first time around, he incited an insurrection and his supporters violently stormed the capital on live TV for all to see. At that point, I thought it was over, I figured after Biden got in this shit would be over with, and we would never have to see Trump again, but I was wrong. Now he's caused so much more damage and honestly I have no idea how we come back from this. I know ultimately we'll get back to a sane country where ICE isn't roaming the streets, terrorizing citizens and snatching people, the administration isn't acting like a bunch of petty 12-year-olds just looking for attention, but all of this was easily avoided, and we couldn't even do that.
Provided to YouTube by Believe UKwannabe poet · Sodywannabe poet℗ Sody under exclusive license to Believe UKReleased on: 2024-05-24Producer: Dylan NashCompos...
I say this with deep respect for the people who view AI technology as dangerous and upheaving. It is. But some technological changes can't be undone. We'll never be pre-steam engine again, or pre-electricity. AI is here and we have to cope with it, whether we like it or not.
Just in case folk aren’t aware, the latest email scam involves someone in your contacts messaging you to say that they urgently need to buy something but are ill with laryngitis so can’t speak to you. It’s a fiarly obvious scam, but I know of 1 person who has fallen for it. Beware.
After signing an Executive Order for the "Great American Recovery Initiative" in the Oval Office, President Trump did not take reporters' questions.Stay Conn...
you know what, fuck it, im choosing violence today. notbyai.fyi is an ai industry op and i can fucking prove it.
tl;dr: it's actually pretty pro-ai, it's made by an ai bro, and it's directly enriching ai companies by giving them your data
the analytics and tracking cookies from known major ai companies: bing (microsoft), youtube (google), clarity (microsoft). these cookies last anywhere from 6 months to over a year
the "chart" directly under their mission statement specifically calls out the problem of training ai on ai-generated images
the first paragraph in their mission statement begins by mentioning "help audiences identify human-generated content" and then ends with some real tescreal shit about the advancement of humanity
The Not By AI® badges are created to encourage more humans to produce original content and help audiences identify human-generated content. The ultimate goal is to make sure humanity continues to advance.
this quote from further down their mission statement makes it clear that the site is definitely pro-AI, and has yet more tescreal pro-ai-but-what-if-it-replaces-us shit
It is worth mentioning that AI technologies mark a major milestone in the history of technology and the Not By AI badge is not designed to discourage the use of AI. Instead, it is to make sure that, while we celebrate the achievement, we work with AI instead of being replaced by AI.
and the 90% rule, which explicitly allows ai. for-profit is only allowed if you pay them. you have to pay an ai bro money to declare that your for-profit work is at least 90% ai free. dystopian.
if you estimate that at least 90% of your content is created by humans, you are eligible to add the badges into your website, blog, art, film, essay, books, podcast, or whatever your project is for non-commercial use, and, with a subscription, commercial use.
and continues into explicitly allowing AI even more, and their first example is for legal documents
The 90% can include using AI for inspiration purposes, supporting legal documents such as privacy policies (assuming that legal content is not the main focus of your content or service), non-user-facing content such as SEO tags, and grammatical error and typo checks.
their about page (notbyai.fyi/about) has a quote from billionaire warren buffet which is just weirdo shit (warren buffet cares deeply about eugenicist things like poor countries having too many people)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is cool and we embrace it. But when it comes to solving complex business problems, we don’t just press a few keys to generate answers with ChatGPT. We research, interview, brainstorm, and go through a human-centric process to come up with content and solutions that are tailored to your unique business need.
there you go. its made by an ai bro. its full of tescreal shit. its literally not even anti-ai, and its letting ai companies track you. this is ai shit.
A caregiver guide to the iCanConnect program, covering eligibility, equipment, training, and how families support people with combined vision and hearing loss.
“I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time…” - President Trump
I’m still trying to process this… I just won my first ever Grammy 🏆
Winner for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella for Super Mario Praise Break, arranged by Bryan Carter, Charlie Rosen, and myself with The 8-Bit Big Band. Deeply grateful to God, my collaborators, and everyone who’s supported this journey.
A large stage at an awards show viewed from the audience.
A wide red-orange screen fills the upper center with text: ARRANGEMENT, INSTRUMENTAL OR A CAPPELLA SUPER MARIO PRAISE BREAK BRYAN CARTER, CHARLIE ROSEN & MATTHEW WHITAKER, ARRANGERS (THE 8-BIT BIG BAND)
Stage lights and rigging visible above. Musicians and instruments (drums, keyboards, percussion) on stage behind a few people in suits near microphones. Audience rows of seated people fill the foreground; one person in a suit stands in the aisle near the left front.
>> yeah they copied it from something I said in bugzilla years ago
>>> oh god, I did a technically incorrect (but likely fine) posix shell comparison of [ $? == 1 ] instead of [ $? -eq 1 ] and now everyone is pasting that everywhere
For any Stardew Valley players using the Stardew Access mod, how do you drop an item you're carrying? By mistake, I managed to pick up the bed in my house, but am not sure how to drop it. I bring up the inventory with E, move to the bed, press Left Bracket until it says "Empty", then move all the way to the Drop button and press Left Bracket. At that point, I hear a descending noise, what sounds like footsteps, then I appear to be holding the item again. What am I doing wrong?
You don't use the drop item button, you move to where yo uwant the bed, face the direction, make sure ther is enough room and on the number row select the bed, then use the C or X, Ifroget which places the bed down. I would also recommend getting the Glue your Furniture Down mod to prevent this in future.
You may need to change the config to True for beds to prevent you picking them up, the config file lets you selet what items are forbidden from being picked up.
It is the config file in the Glue Furniture Down folder in the Mods folder, each mod, or at least some, have a config file, just open it in notepad and yo suhould be able to edit and save it.
A “phonemeSource” tag in the frontend handle + PassContext. hmm. Default it to "espeak" (so nothing changes today), but allow callers to set it. Yes. Add a new optional API (non-breaking) like: nvspFrontend_setPhonemeSource(handle, "espeak") Store it in the handle state. Pass it into PassContext so every pass can check it. This way we get different types of passes for different phonemizers if we wanted, rather than making this thing so central to ESpeak. Hmm. Maybe that would make me feel better.
Here’s a quick showdown if you’re thinking of leaving proprietary Android behind:
Murena / e‑OS (Fairphone 4):
Price: €449‑€499 CPU: Snapdragon 750G (≈ 1.9 k Geekbench multi) – decent but slower GPU: Adreno 619 (≈ 1.1 TFLOPS) RAM/Storage: 6 / 8 GB RAM, UFS 2.1 Security: Standard verified boot, no dedicated security chip Updates: Depends on LineageOS – often lagging behind Google’s patches Pros: Modular, repair‑friendly, microG gives partial Play‑Services compatibility
Graphene OS on Pixal 7: (You could use any Pixal phone from the 4 up to the pixal 10 fold and Tablet)
Price: $599 (~€560) CPU: Google Tensor G2 (≈ 3.4 k Geekbench multi) – ~2× faster than Murena GPU: Mali‑G710 MP7 (good for everyday gaming) RAM/Storage: 8 GB RAM, UFS 3.1 Security: Titan M2 security co‑processor + hardware‑backed keystore, verified boot, attestation Updates: Monthly security patches, 5 years guaranteed Pros: Strongest hardware‑rooted security on a consumer phone, pure Android stack (no Google services when using Graphene OS) Why switch?
Better hardware trust – Titan M2 beats standard boot‑loaders. Faster updates – stay protected without waiting for LineageOS. Higher performance – smoother multitasking & AI tasks. True de‑Googling – Graphene OS runs a clean, auditable Android fork. 💭 If you value privacy and solid performance, the Pixel 7 + Graphene OS is the more compelling upgrade, even at a modest price premium.
A Fairphone 4 with /e/ has very poor privacy and absolutely atrocious security. It's years behind on a bunch of important privacy and security patches including having an end-of-life 4.19 kernel without updates available. They lag months behind on partial backports of patches.
/e/ has invasive services of their own including sending user data to OpenAI without consent. Despite their marketing, It always uses Google services and gives Google apps/services privileged access.
/e/ lags far further behind LineageOS on providing major OS updates and partial backports of patches to older releases. Those are far behind the standard pace which is itself far behind GrapheneOS.
LineageOS rolls back privacy and security a fair bit compared to the standard Android Open Source Projects, especially on most devices where many patches are missing. /e/ drastically reduces privacy and security compared to that. /e/ is not simply LineageOS with bundled apps/services.
GrapheneOS is a privacy and security hardened OS greatly improving those compared to the Android Open Source Project. /e/ is the opposite of that and is a far worse option than an iPhone for privacy and security. /e/ is not at all a safe option and it's not a legitimate a privacy project despite being marketed as one. No privacy project it telling users to use their supposedly private speech-to-text service which actually sends their sensitive speech data to OpenAI and much more.
Strongly recommend reading discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134… and the third party sources linked in there including the posts from Divested Computing, Mike Kuketz and the comparison from Eylenburg.
If you care at all about privacy and security, avoid /e/ and avoid Fairphones. Use an iPhone if you want a device with solid privacy and security without thinking about it. Don't fall for the false marketing of these phony privacy and security products. No device Murena sells is at all safe to use.
@nyovaya Fairphone 4 and Fairphone 5 already have an end-of-life kernel branch. Even the Fairphone 6 is not receiving proper updates. It's still on the initial yearly release of Android 15 rather than Android 16 QPR2 and still has the November 2025 patch level. Meanwhile, the patches for February 2026 through May 2026 are already nearly fully available for OEMs to ship early and June 2026 is beginning to get filled out now that the March 2026 patches are finalized.
@nyovaya What do you mean by modular? Having official replacement parts available for many years? iPhones and Pixels provide those. That's not really a modular device. It's not as if you can replace the SoC or other components to upgrade it over time and avoid end-of-life. An iPhone or Pixel gets proper update support over the long term while Fairphone fails to provide that even for the first year after launch and it's downhill from there. Samsung flagships get better updates.
@GrapheneOS @nyovaya My whole point was about how far off the mark the fairphone is. Thanks to folks at Graphene OS for making a truly remarkable Operating System for a phone I can go buy new $$ or secondhand $ and get the best in the market. Or even get the Pixal Tablet running Graphene OS! I ran Calyx OS on a new Google Nexus 5 (I think it was) for a short time years ago and it had me running back to the iPhone. I've now been on Graphene OS since the Pixal 7 came out and haven't looked back. Yes, the idea of a phone that is easier to repair or upgrade over time would be nice too. But I wouldn't choose one if I lost or lowered my security or privacy.
#fosdem2026 was another awesome success for the open source community this year. I had a blast showing off what all we do at BlissLabs and what all is possible for the Android community. Got to finally put a face to so many of the people I have collaborated with over the years, and I can't wait to come back!! Special shout out to @IzzyOnDroid , @shiftphones and @bene64 for helping show what an Open and Sustainable Ecosystem for Android could look like - From Hardware to Apps. You all rocked!!
it was incredible having this event with all of you! Enjoyed every minute of it, and hope we'll repeat that again next year! 🤗 @shiftphones @bene64 @SylvieLorxu
Honestly the biggest problem with #AI coding is that it lets me build things without having to think about what I want to build. It's happened twice now where the AI coded something perfectly, only for me to realize when I had exactly what I asked for, it wasn't what I needed or really wanted. I usually realize this during the act of building, and the act of building often helps me clarify what it is that I actually want.
Far as AI coding goes, I wonder if GitHub's specify program would help with that? Instead of vibes and vague prompts, it relies on drafting software specifications and using it purely as an implementer. Likely to get more predictable outputs that way.
You may already know this trick, but in just in case, I sometimes ask the agent to help me create a project requirements document first. I toss in what I want in terms of UI, behavior, potential platform/language/dependency info, and can find out fairly quickly, based on the result, where I've thought the idea out well enough to start coding it.
@sclower I suspect it would work better if I wrote the project requirements document myself. Then fed it into the AI for implementation. Maybe it would shift me from thinking "What do I want coded" and towards "What are my requirements". I tend to start thinking too low level, about what libraries I want to use and what language, when I still haven't one hundred percent laid out what I want to do. The example that prompted me to post was reformatting a set of files. If I'd have thought just a bit harder about what I actually needed, I would have ended up with three regular expressions and a batch script, not a C# DotNet app.
GPT is right. "right now it still sounds like eSpeak because, in a very real sense, it still is eSpeak… wearing your DSP as a costume." So sad. I'll always stay sad about this no matter how many sliders we add. Sadness fills my soul. Going to bed at 4 Pm I guess.
Realistically, what's wrong with eSpeak? I, as an English speaker anyway, never had a problem with its intonation pattern, it matches most things, I had a problem with its synthesis method, which this replaces, and some of its phonemes, which this doesn't necessarily follow.
@x0 it's interesting, Jess was telling me how "classic pitch" reminds them of the Braille & Speak, which is maybe why people asked for it back. But it's something about the way it stresses and intonates words, and then realizing that creating phonetic rules and normalizations that "fight Espeak's rules" will mean later troubles when switching to something new. I'm being pulled in two directions over it and it's a bit distraughtful. We can kind of "cheat" the system with multilingualness by using ESpeak, sure, but we're also locked into what it outputs and redefining it. Sure, we can write our own G2P layer, but then all hands off and new languages actually become harder to map out in some ways because lexicons and tables need to be added by ourselves. Ugh.
For what it's worth, my big dislike of eSpeak revolves around the harsh base triangle wave and the pre-recorded consonant samples. It looks like you've changed both, and that might be enough for me to try this when it's in a good place.
@sclower it it's interesting, if you turn up aspiration color to 100, glottal sharpness to 0, then suddenly consonant clicks really emerge. So if anything it's taught me just how much the DSP can help soften sharp phoneme transitions. It won't "magically" fix the sharper phonemes that click against the teeth feeling, but it can blend them better in with the source. With that high of an aspiration and not-pressed glottal feeling you're essentially asking to hear consonant clicks. And while SpeechPlayer didn't use the same triangle wave, the original one was very Sawtooth, which didn't help with consonant clicks really showing up. The cosign wave we're using now helped hide them too, so I think it was the better direction to move it in.
Don't get me wrong. I like AI music, I think it can do some really cool things, but but I don't want it on my spotify. I'd rather have it on suno or other platforms that specialize in it. Use AI music like a scratch pad. But that's just my opinion.
That was a great #FOSDEM again, met so many old friends and new people, saw interesting talks and had good technical discussions and some new ideas for things to try out now.
Some people I didn't run across, but the next event will come soon. :)
See you next year hopefully.
I'll be in Brussels for the #buildroot developer meetup still for the next three days.
@Scott I got it sorted (for now) I'll bug you later though. It is just silly stuff about setting up the git repo so I can move things from a dev branch to a main/release branch and preserve the commit history.
The neighbors are clearing our driveway of snow. There are four people in the house, and we're all in various states of not able to do it for different reasons. The little harf harf dog is not happy.
Has he been out in the snow or does he just stay in with puppy pad thingies like some small dogs do? I can't decide if I think he would harf at the snow to tell it to go away, or harf joyfully as he played in it. after careful consideration, I'll say it's both.
@ricky_enger well, the problem is we got enough snow that it pretty much completely buried him when he went outside, and he didn't really like that much.
@ricky_enger The dog my parents had before Watson (Dexter, the 25 pound Schnoodle) hated snow with a passion, until one day, he just didn't anymore. Don't know what changed for him. Too bad he died not long after.
Bogomil Shopov - Бого #FOSDEM
in reply to Niklas Korz • • •