mastodon - Link to source
Apple Vision Accessibility: the 2023 AppleVis Report Card | AppleVis applevis.com/blog/apple-vision…

Apple Vision Accessibility: the 2023 AppleVis Report Card | AppleVis

We are thrilled to unveil our 2023 Apple Vision Accessibility Report Card, which provides valuable insights into the experiences and opinions of visually impaired community members who rely on VoiceOver, Braille support, or the low vision features on…
www.applevis.com

mastodon - Link to source

Users in Ireland are reporting that Three is blocking access to Tuta Mail.

If you are using #ThreeIreland, could you please check whether you can access Tuta: tuta.com/

Thank you! 🙏


Secure email: Tutanota free encrypted email.

Tutanota is the secure email service, built in Germany. Use encrypted emails on all devices with our open source email client, mobile apps & desktop clients.
Tutanota
#threeireland

mastodon - Link to source

Oof. Wie Heise berichtet, löscht #Google aus dem Playstore installierte GEKAUFTE Apps von Smartphones – zum Beispiel wenn diese aus dem Playstore entfernt wurden. Auch andere Apps wie z.B. den Google Kalender, wenn eine neuere Version eine neuere #Android Version benötigt als das eigene Gerät installiert hat. Natürlich nur zu Eurer Sicherheit…

Da bin ich echt froh, dass meine Geräte "entgoogelt" sind.

heise.de/news/Play-Store-Googl…

Bericht: Google löscht im Play Store gekaufte Apps von Smartphones

Google löscht im Play Store gekaufte Apps von Geräten, wie aus einem Bericht von Googlewatchblog hervorgeht.
Marie-Claire Koch (heise online)
#android #google
in reply to IzzyOnDroid ✅

mastodon - Link to source

IzzyOnDroid ✅

@Lapidarius Ah, eine Kaskade. Googlewatchblog bezieht sich seinerseits auf einen Bericht von AndroidPolice: androidpolice.com/google-silen… Und der Artikel ist deutlich ausführlicher. Und er sagt: Kein Hinweis (weder an die Devs noch an die Nutzer).

Welcher Dienst? Vermutlich Play Services. Ob Abmelden reicht? Ich bezweifle es (der Dienst läuft ja trotzdem, sieht, was installiert ist und hat Kontakt zu den Google Servern.


Why is Google allowed to remove purchases from our Play Store accounts without telling us?

Users are starting to get fed up with games disappearing from their accounts without any explanation
Luke Mandato (AndroidPolice)
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

IzzyOnDroid ✅

@Lapidarius Das kommt dann noch hinzu: Google's "Knebel-Klausel". Hat der Hersteller sein Gerät von Google zertifizieren lassen, darf er keine Google-freie Variante verkaufen. Die wenigsten sind versiert genug (oder trauen sich), da dann selbst Hand anzulegen. Und nicht immer gibt es die benötigte App außerhalb des "walled garden" (wobei ich mit TinyWeatherGermany von @Billie alle Wetterinformationen (und Warnungen) habe, die ich brauche – aber das war ja nur ein Beispiel).
@Billie

mastodon - Link to source

Just three plant species, wheat, maize and rice, account for 60% of all food eaten globally. Crop science expert, Prof Tafadzwanashe Mabhaudhi, argues that many of Africa’s 30,000 edible plants must be revived.
#Food #Farming #Agriculture #Crops #Africa #Wheat #Rice #Maize #PlantScience

60% of Africa's food is based on wheat, rice and maize – the continent's crop treasure trove is being neglected
theconversation.com/60-of-afri…


60% of Africa's food is based on wheat, rice and maize – the continent's crop treasure trove is being neglected

Just three plant species – wheat, maize and rice – account for 60% of all food eaten globally. A crop science expert argues that many of Africa’s 30,000 edible plants must be revived.
The Conversation
#food #africa #farming #agriculture #plantscience #maize #rice #wheat #crops

gotosocial - Link to source
I am glad to finally get the courage to share blogs! So here is mine, a blog that has two blogs. But you get it. rant.li/apple-in-bulgarian/ and rant.li/thesystem/ The system, because a reference to Blakes7 #Blakes7 It's great! The other blog is aimed primarily at Bulgarian users but if you would like to translate and read the page, go on. #blogging #blog #writing I am new to this, so bare with me, please. It is enough I decided to share. I'll be fixing the CSS soon, hopefully, but I need to get my exams out of the way first.
#blog #writing #blogging #blakes7

mastodon - Link to source

So, you have decided to leave Substack! Good for you! Now what?

Ghost is a popular alternative. @caseynewton's Platformer and now Molly White's @molly0xfff Citation Needed are choosing Ghost. Here is a guide written by Molly detailing how she migrated to Ghost >>> citationneeded.news/substack-t…

Another is WordPress Newsletter, which now federates with Mastodon! @hildabast has a great guide on how to move your newsletter to WordPress >>> absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2023/…

Whatever you choose, congratulations!


Migrating from Substack to self-hosted Ghost: the details

I migrated Citation Needed from Substack to self-hosted Ghost. Here is exactly how I did that.
Molly White (Citation Needed)
@Casey Newton @Hilda Bastian @Molly White
This entry was edited (2 years ago)
in reply to Mastodon Migration

pleroma - Link to source

Jason J.G. White

I've heard comments suggesting that there is a movement, at least among Linux and open-source software enthusiasts, toward static site generators such as Hugo. If I were to set up a server for longer-form posting, I would need to choose between a content management system such as WordPress and the static generator option.
I don't think I'm about to start a blog at the moment, so this is somewhat hypothetical, but it would nonetheless be interesting to understand why people who can comfortably use either would choose one approach over the other.

glitchsoc - Link to source

There's a post that made it on the main of HN about text compression with PNG. There's nothing surprising about it, PNG is using Deflate, which is LZ77, which is the basically the same thing as zip and gzip.

It is much more interesting, in my opinion, to try lossy compression algorithms. How about an image compressed by MP3? Let's start with a screenshot of Princess Maker saved as RGBA data - 868 KB.

Open this raw data as unsigned 8-bit PCM, and export to MP3 in different bitrates. Then load MP3 and export back as unsigned 8-bit PCM. Then read back this as RGBA image.

128 kbps MP3 is 322KB, which is less than RAW image (or uncompressed BMP), and hey look, it almost fully preserved the colours. 32 kbps file is only 86KB, but all the colour information is lost.

Fun part: exporting image as RGB will give much worse results, as alpha-channel works as sort of separator for pixels

Original screenshot - anime girl in red dress in front of a fancy window. There's calendar, and there's some interface on the side of the screen
Import settings - unsigned 8-bit PCM, little-endian, mono
image->audio->mp3->audio->image pipeline, mp3 128 kbps. The colours are off, but otherwise the image is fine
image->audio->mp3->audio->image pipeline, mp3 32 kbps. The image is a bit blurry, and there are no colours
in reply to Julian Gonggrijp

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

yes and no! MP3 actually uses a patented psychoacoustic model after the FFT to cut off things that supposedly aren't heard or understood by human ears or brains. So it's a bit of a surprise to be able to see individual pixels (in fonts for example, or small details) so clearly even when the codec settings are set to minimum. MP3 operates on chunks of 1152 samples (if I'm not mistaken), so each group of 288 pixels might significantly affect each other.
Vorbis has more variability with sample size and it's psychoacoustic model. From a forum:

Psychacoustics masking is done through an Absolute Threshold of Hearing model. The masking curves are strange they are not derived from Fletch-Munson curves, but instead from an "emperical adjusted" set of "Ehmer Curves".

in reply to Nina Kalinina

glitchsoc - Link to source

Nina Kalinina

"LOL I EXPORTED A SONG AS JPEG" aka
Experimental answer to "should/could you use JPEG instead of MP3 for music compression?"

Boring answer: "shouldn't, but could"

Fun answer: let's try!

There were two things I wanted to test:
1) Audio treated as RGB vs audio treated as greyscale JPEG. JPEG _could_ compress color component of the image more than luma, so greyscale JPEG should give better audio quality.
2) How well JPEG will fare compared to MP3.

RAW audio was 485 KB.
MP3 "insane" was 354KB.
MP3 "VBR low" was 103KB.
MP3 "fixed 8kbps" was 45KB and still OK to listen to.

JPG RGB 90% was 117KB and the quality was between low VBR and fixed. It got noise though.

Grey 90% at 174KB was better than VBR low, but got some noise too.

Grey Potato (0%) at 11KB was horror.
Grey Less Potato (10%) at 30KB resembles very poor radio reception.

This is Grey 90% JPEG converted back to WAV:
drive.google.com/file/d/1gtxBx…

This is "less than 8kbps MP3" Grey Less Potato: drive.google.com/file/d/1Yco3F…

All files: drive.google.com/drive/folders…

"Noise" - it's a short song encoded in greyscale JPEG
The same song, encoded in RGB JPEG. Also noise with some patters

JPEG audio compression – Disk Google

drive.google.com
This entry was edited (2 years ago)

mastodon - Link to source
VOCR v2.0.0-alpha.13: It now supports GPT, Ollama, Llama.cpp. Use models submenu in settings. @vick21 @talon @pixelate @KyleBorah @FreakyFwoof @Bri @pitermach github.com/chigkim/VOCR/releas…

Release VOCR v2.0.0-alpha.13 · chigkim/VOCR

Changelog Ollama support Use original screenshot resolution instead of window resolution point except explore mode. New Workflow: Use Command+Control+Shift+W/V to set the target to a window/VOCurs...
GitHub
@Pitermach @Talon @victor tsaran @Kyle Borah @Andre Louis @Devin Prater :blind:

mastodon - Link to source

It's a double release day!

For those on 2023.3 we have a security point release, NVDA 2023.3.1. We encourage all users to update to this stable release. Full info & download at: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2023-3-…

For those on the 2024.1 betas, we have a new one - 2024.1 Beta 4 includes the security patch above, plus more - read all the info and download from: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2024-1b…

#NVDA #NVDASr #ScreenReader #A11y #Accessibility #News #Breaking

Screenshot of NVDA notification area icon, shown close up and at an angle.

NVDA 2023.3.1 Released

NV Access is pleased to announce that version 2023.3.1 of NVDA, the free screen reader for Microsoft Windows, is now available for download. This is a security patch release to fix a security issue…
NV Access
#a11y #Accessibility #screenreader #nvdasr #News #breaking #nvda

David Goldfield reshared this.

in reply to Sukil Etxenike

mastodon - Link to source

NV Access

@sukiletxe Thanks Sukil, good question - I believe we are still updating the advisory itself. It will be available soon on the security advisories page at: github.com/nvaccess/nvda/secur… - we've also updated the release announcement as re-reading it, it is very unclear when that link will become available. Apologies for the confusion, and thanks for the question.

GitHub

GitHub is where people build software. More than 100 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over 420 million projects.
GitHub
@Sukil Etxenike

mastodon - Link to source

IGF reviews: visual novels. Okay, a lot of the games in my last post were visual novels, but I need some kind of categorization or the posts would all collide.

- Saltsea Chronicles
- End of Lines
- Solace State
- Windy Meadow: A Roadwarden Tale

Plus mention of Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood and The Wreck, which are reviewed on my blog already.

blog.zarfhome.com/2024/01/2024…

#IGF #Reviews

2024 IGF nominees: visual novels

Next up: visual novels, and games expanding on the idea of the visual novel. Yes, we had some of that yesterday. I gotta split up the list somehow. Saltsea Chronicles End of Lines Solace State Windy Meadow: A Roadwarden Tale The Cosmic Wheel ...
Zarf Updates
#reviews #igf

mastodon - Link to source

Recordáis la respuesta a una reseña negativa de la titular de una pizzería italiana en la que se invitaba a no volver al local al autor de la reseña hasta que no fuera más humano?
Esta tarde han encontrado en el río cercano a la población el cadáver de la titular de la pizzería. No se saben las causas del fallecimiento.

Giovanna Pedretti, trovata morta la titolare della pizzeria Le Vignole: il locale era finito nella bufera per la recensione su disabili e gay
ilmessaggero.it/italia/giovann…


Giovanna Pedretti, trovata morta la titolare della pizzeria Le Vignole: il locale era finito nella bufera per

Il cadavere di Giovanna Pedretti, la titolare della pizzeria Le Vignole di Sant’Angelo...
Redazione Web (Il Messaggero)

mastodon - Link to source

#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid today with 18 updated and 1 added apps:

* AppSearcher: lightweight search engine for Android

Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with #FDroid and the #IzzySoftRepo :awesome:


IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository

This is a repository of apps to be used with F-Droid. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).
IzzyOnDroid App Repo
#android #free #fdroid #apps #AndroidAppRain #IzzySoftRepo

mastodon - Link to source

Falsehoods programmers believe about… Biometrics

(For the new reader, there is a famous essay called Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names. It has since spawned a long list of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About....)

Everyone has fingerprints!

The BBC has a grim tale of a family with a genetic mutation which means they have no fingerprints. It det

shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/false…

#/etc/ #design #falsehoods #policy #security

#security #design #policy #falsehoods

mastodon - Link to source

Two first days since launch of Cosmic Collapse have been really great!
😍 100% positive reviews!

You can still pick it up at 20% discount!
store.steampowered.com/app/270…

#indiegame #pixelart #pico8

Save 20% on Cosmic Collapse on Steam

Merge planets together in this puzzle game with soft physics. Can you make it to the sun? Can you merge two suns? Find out for science!
store.steampowered.com
#pixelart #indiegame #pico8

gotosocial - Link to source
New Kiramoji version (v3.4), now with swatch/internet time support!
If you are a Caddy 2 user, now the Caddyfile is greatly simplified, thanks to a reported bug being fixed for Caddy-CGI 2. Grab your copy at github.com/Flameborn/Kiramoji/…

Release V3.4 · Flameborn/Kiramoji

This release adds swatch/internet time support when displaying dates (thanks @chaoskaiser72), and simplifies the Caddyfile for Caddy 2.
GitHub

Peter Vágner reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source

I love this Hacker News comment: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3…

> Arguing that things are impossible is, along with pessimism and doomerism, a cheap low effort way to look smart and profound. It’s much easier than actually doing anything and since doing things is hard and often fails it sets you up to say “ha ha told you so.”

[...]

> All advancement depends on people who don’t care if they look dumb or foolish.

Arguing that things are impossible is, along with pessimism and doomerism, a che... | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com
⇧