the first minutes of the video is from the original track, but I switched out the audio with the soundtrack from the San Quentin live CD. A little out of syn...
Source code: Lib/importlib/__init__.py Introduction: The purpose of the importlib package is three-fold. One is to provide the implementation of the import statement (and thus, by extension, the__i...
The gradual obliteration of theme customization in everyday software is one of the things I regret the most, whenever I think about how we interacted with computers as I was growing up.
The vast majority of today's kids will never leave the sanitized computer experience of auto white/dark themes and hamburger menus. Having their local music player (no internet required, what a concept!) wrapped in a Kare Kano skin (🤍) would be unthinkable.
And yet, there's more soul in this single skin made by a random person just for the fun of it than in all the legions of UI/UX designers justifying their existence through ad placement maximization metrics.
If you own a Tesla, your car is covered in cameras that take images reviewed by Tesla employees, who share them with each other, joke about them, and make them into memes.
Did you catch the recent ACB Vispero Presentation - Five Outlook Tips for increasing Productivity? In case you missed it, the archive is now available: acb-community.pinecast.co/epis…
We’ve been alerted to an issue that a small number of users are experiencing after installing the May update of JAWS 2024. If you have installed this update and can’t read web pages or email messag…
Street Art on Child Labor in front of Apple store (Madrid, Spain) ❤ Eduardo Relero also did this drawing for Amnesty Hannover of child labor in the extraction of Cobalt in Congo for the global manufacture of electric cars: streetartutopia.com/street-art…
3D Street Artist Eduardo ReleroBy Eduardo Relero at Puerta del Sol, Madrid, Spain.Painting for Amnesty in front of Apple store Madrid to bring awareness to the illegal exploitation of ch
wow! A team of researchers from Western University in London, #Ontario have discovered a potential path toward a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as #ALS.
New research out of London, Ont.'s Western University is shedding light on a potential cure for ALS, with the goal of conducting human clinical trials within the next five years.
TIL: some discount stickers in #AlbertHeijn contain the expiration date of the product. After that date, the self scan app will prevent you from buying it and also trigger a check by an employee during payment.
@elin i think maybe to stop you from peeling a sticker off of something you previously bought and then bringing it with you and putting it on a new one
@marlies @elin I don't think that is the case. The discount stickers are made tamper evident to prevent reapplying them. Also why would someone put so much effort into moving stickers when you can just shoplift.
What happens if you instant clone Microsoft Sam, and then use speech to speech and a sample of the actual Microsoft Sam voice to drive the instant clone? I was apparently bored enough to find out.
not gonna lie but some words like "foreground" and "push button" really did stay the same, but then there are places where a slightly different forming sticks out for another word. Fascinating. (Oh, but at least that voice wouldn't say "crotch" as "crows' nest" - still the best Sam thing to me beyond the Soi Soi thing.)
Here's that instant cloned voice complaining about foreground windows. This time, I used text to speech rather than speech to speech, and spliced between two takes. Anyone who ever used Narrator in Windows 2000 or Windows XP will understand this.
Heh, then there's Narrator in Windows 7 with Microsoft Anna, and how often all you got was "tab" with an annoying inflection and nothing else as you navigated the operating system.
@jcsteh I wonder if the samples for Mary and Anna were recorded by the same woman because the timbre of them sound quite similar to me. Mind you it's a while since I've heard Anna though.
Wow so they really did remove the CodeFactory Vocalizer already from the Play Store. It's just, gone. play.google.com/store/apps/det… leads to a not found. I wonder who will pick up the project then.
@Lprazdnik yeah I think so - similar to Eloquence, if it's purchased you can find it in your library of prior apps, but new users won't be able to get onto it anymore.
@Rich @Lprazdnik can one of y'all try and figure out how to make Smart Voice work with vocalizer voices? Because that's really what we need. You can also sideload vocalizer and still buy the voices last I checked, but they might take down the server and that one still relies on phoning home. If it can't phone home, it breaks spectacularly and renders your talkback unusable. Smart Voice: poretsky.github.io/android/sma…
@simon @Lprazdnik Do you have APK Extracter? If you can find a way to decompile the CodeFactory app you may be able to access the voice files and add it to that thing.
@Rich @simon interesting, might be worth a try. lol I asked Gemini for more info on how I can get both synths to work and wish I wouldn't. It referenced BlindHelp, of all sources.
@Lprazdnik @Rich @simon Are you serious? But then again are we surprised? I guess what worries me is that more people will use that unofficial APK file (it had letters at the end with each new version like Vocalizer_e_tts_1.2.3L.apk) - it's unofficial and not even licensed, so sadly I can't condone its longterm use. I'm hoping someone can now see a chance to step in that space as we need licensed copies once possible.
@Lprazdnik @simon I wonder if Tifloteknia will take over like they did with NVDA. This is exactly why I'm glad I never purchased a CodeFactory product. On the Windows side, that would've been seventy dollars down the drain.
lol I did, but I also sent the receipt back to work and got it paid back through an invoice, so... What can I say. That was like two years ago and people didn't think it would happen. I sort of suspected it because I'm not sure what else Code Factory really maintain - and going codefactory.es gives you a 403 forbidden error now, so the ship has officially sunk, perhaps. (update: use codefactoryglobal.com)
@Rich @simon Unfortunately I paid for the android TTS myself and got the NVDA add-on through work. I'm seriously wondering what they're doing now that they seem to be dissolving all their products.
@Lprazdnik @Rich @simon well I thought the licensing system was provided more through Google Play Services billing, rather than, say, a remote CodeFactory server. But I'm less sure about individual voice licenses, and even less sure about where those downloads would reside, because all that might link back to the main Codefactory.es site. Still can't believe it's just 403 forbidden. No shutdown message, no "hey we're sorry to our customers." Just wow
@Rich @Lprazdnik The Android version of vocalizer most certainly reaches out to some sort of licensing system, whether it's just verifying a play license or actually going to codefactory servers. If you have no internet connection at the wrong time, it will stop working and just speak "Please register Vocalizer TTS" for every possible string.
@simon @Rich @Lprazdnik yeah, I think that's definitely a Play atestation - I recall it also being an issue when trying to use, say, the Raspberry Pi Android that had no Play services. So it's really Google's way of licensing that sort of saves that, somewhat, but barely if even.
@simon Looks like their global site is still up, so likely their licensing server is too because the announcement did not make any mention of Vocalizer and Eloquence for SAPI5 going away: codefactoryglobal.com/usecases… @Rich @Tamasg @Lprazdnik
ah this is great, so their site just changed to codefactoryglobal.com/ - there's still a home page there, so yay, the company is still around somewhat :D I will also say that a quick flip through their site and to see them only advertise Cerence TTS products, well a bit heartbreaking of a feeling for sure.
Also, considering they are no longer selling their NVDA add-on, what's Codefactory doing these days? Are they just slowly disappearing from the webiverse?
@pixelate Exactly why I'm glad I never gave that company any of my business. They screwed people over that bought Eloquence for Android, the big announcement with NVDA 2024, and now this?
@thunderbird Your podcast has media file enclosures with 6 steps of redirection. pdst.fm/e/dts.podtrac.com/redi… Feed Validators say that apple will only follow 5 of them and I think one analytics step is enough, 0 would be even better. I think you should axe the intermediary steps.
Storm Dragon pushed changes to the master branch of the I38 project Prefer xfce4 notofication daemon. It only works with latest orca from git currently, so fall back to notification-daemon if xfce4 notification daemon is not available but notoification-daemon is, otherwise no notifiactions at all.
@fireborn A couple of things. Fir, and most importantly, it doesn't get full, with notification-daemon, it had the possibility to stop showing notifications after a while because it would fill up. The only way to get it back was to restart it. Second, it actually creates a temperary window for notofications, which means we can have a specific sound for notifications. Well I hope we can at least, will be working on that.
🐍🧪 Python 3.13.0 is due out in October 2024 and work is underway to implement *experimental support* for PEP 703 "Making the Global Interpreter Lock Optional in CPython".
As the Steering Council noted in their acceptance of the PEP, to succeed it's important to have community support.
I wrote a little guide on how you can help test out the beta in your project, and help us find bugs in CPython:
* ZipXtract: extract and create archives (ZipXtract is also available at F-Droid.org; the difference is the variant served here supports additional compression formats which are not entirely libre, like unrar, so it's marked NonFreeComp at IoD)
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).
Digital accessibility is a civil right for people with disabilities. Join disability rights attorney Jessie Weber as she provides background on the legal landscape and shares recent developments, trends, and upcoming activities in the digital accessi…
Arch Linux Ports Date proposed: 2024-03-11 RFC MR: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/rfcs/-/merge_requests/32 Summary Introduce "Arch Linux Ports" as testbed for unofficial architectures until they are integrated in the main Arch Linux repositor…
Just a few weeks from launch, here is the trailer for my new book DARK WIRE, on how the FBI secretly ran an encrypted chat app to wiretap the world. Some of this is body cam footage of raids I obtained; others are videos of Anom phones being made provided by sources.
Preorder for behind the scenes content of how I investigated this insane story, and use DW20 for 20% off: hachettebookgroup.com/titles/j…
The inside story of the largest law-enforcement sting operation ever, in which the FBI made its own tech start-up to wiretap the world, shows how cunning bot...
The #GNOMEAsia2024 intent to bid is due tomorrow! If you are interested in bringing GNOME Asia to your city make sure to let us know by submitting an intent to bid by May 15. More details on how to submit here: foundation.gnome.org/2024/04/3…
Last year on the show Mike Buckley and I discussed the day that AI would be quick enough to give us real-time description. Incredible that it's come so quickly. I think this is the most life-changing video I've ever seen. Check out the future of Be my AI. vimeo.com/945587840
This is bloody amazing! I will certainly be glad to have a flatrate mobile data plan for this when outside. There must be copious amounts of data flowing back and forth for this to work. Just wow!
SquareSpace just went private again. They sold to a private equity firm, which likely means squeezing customers for profit and eventually selling off for parts.
If you have a website there, it's time to consider other options. And you'll be starting from scratch, since they don't play nice with others.
It’s great but also very expensive if you are reading / hearing much with ElevenLabs’ voices. 0.24 USD per 1,000 characters if I remember right if your quota is reached. And you need the $22 plan for the „unlimited“ characters.
you know, I don't feel bad for anyone caught in the self driving car shenanigans. The smart people will use it to get metrics for a variety of sensors that can improve road safety, a lot of the telemetry gathered by self driving car tests has been really cool. youtube.com/watch?v=ridS396W2B… Volvo for instance does a lot of cool things in regards to experimental safety devices. If you're still working at Tesla with its misleading marketing regarding FSD which is just a fancy driver's assist... I mean don't get me wrong I feel bad for all of the tesla employees that got shafted after en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_I…. elon's acquisition. I feel bad for those hardworking engineers who put in the effort to make a reliable car, and who didn't get a say in what Elon marketed the cars as.
One of the things I've always found fascinating was the discussion regarding the philosophy of "What should our self driving car do if there is a choice between killing a family of 5 or killing the driver". I mean, for starters that's not really a solved problem, people have differing opinions on that. Maybe, and this is crazy you wouldn't have been in the position to "solve" that problem if you didn't create it in the first place. All of these philosophical debates about something that genuinely can happen in the real world and must be prepared for because nobody wants to be used as an example by regulatory bodies of what not to do. Yet Tesla seems pretty damn insistent on being a leader of industry, teaching people the mistakes not to make and losing a bunch of trust.
Watch a test and explanation of the system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH4F7J7AAFEOn a test track in the new Volvo FH, together with test drivers, you ge...
I think there's eventually going to be a state where self driving cars are statistically safer than human drivers (who are pretty awful a lot of the time), but not above the point of having philosophical problems about safety decisions, or even about who is at fault.
I don't have a solution to any of this, but you might have a scenario where you have to choose between creating those moral problems, or knowingly increasing the number of people who are going to die in car accidents.
I don't really have a conclusion for my opinion on any of this stuff (despite spending some time thinking about it). I think we can confidently significantly reduce death and injury, it's probably a good idea to do that, even if the decision isn't perfect. I hope people with more grounding than a couple of ethics courses are thinking about this and come up with a more concrete conclusion than I am.
Self driving cars are stupid to me for a variety of reasons. They're incredibly complex systems, and with any complex system there is bound to be shortcomings. Really, the primary problem self driving cars are trying to address is the problem of human error behind the steering wheel. I think the effort would be better focused on other solutions to this problem, such as increasing public transportation to help clear up roads. Arguably self driving busses (even though I don't particularly like that either since we have trams, trains that would do a lot better with automated systems) would be a better goal in the short term.
We all heavily rely on cars in the US, and so self driving cars just helps to amplify that problem. Instead of taking the approach of "This isn't sustainable, we're giving out driver licenses' like candy due to the fact it's a requirement to move around". More stringent driver's ed would be a better place to start instead of automating out drivers. I am not one for abolishing cars entirely. I like driving, it's fun but we don't tend to see people riding horse carriages on the public road. I don't hate self driving cars because they provide some really cool engineering problems, telemetry that can be used elsewhere. I just think they're a fad. Reminds me of when everyone thought flying cars were gonna be the next big thing.
Cílové stoupání na Giru ovládl Francouz, Pogačar v klidu. Hirt si pohoršil. No vida i na Van Ryselu, lze vyhrát etapu na #GiroDItalia 👍👍 isport.blesk.cz/clanek/ostatni…
Desátou etapu Gira d'Italia s dlouhým stoupáním do cíle vyhrál francouzský cyklista Valentin Paret-Peintre. Slovinec Tadej Pogačar po volném pondělku na úvod druhého týdne závodu bez problémů udržel růžový trikot.
Wie geil ist das denn? Der Chaos Computer Club Essen hat das Grundgesetz nicht nur bei GitHub hochgeladen, sondern so aufbereitet, dass alle Änderungen durch Git Commits dargestellt sind und die Git Kommentare alle wesentlichen Infos enthalten.
Und natürlich haben die Bundespräsidenten mit korrektem Datum committed!
Ermöglichung des freiwilligen Dienstes von Frauen mit der Waffe in der Bundeswehr
-- Menzenbach et al., Änderungen des Grundgesetzes seit 1949 (WD 3 - 380/09), 2009
Signed-off-by: Johannes Rau, Bu...
Let’s talk about dark mode and accessibility! There’s a myth that dark mode is good for accessibility, because it improves text readability. It's not always true.
I would also cite the APCA Accessible Reading Criterion (ARC) which discusses where to reduce contrast. I’m not sold on 100% of it (I still believe in default font sizes!) but its contrast algorithm does take into account the ability to overdo contrast, and how existing contrast algorithms aren’t at all optimized for dark mode (at worst, they’re downright harmful).
The APCA Readability Criterion (ARC) provides a range of recommendations for making visual content on illuminated displays more accessible to all users, especially with visual impairments
Near Ouarzazate, me and @cobic have just met Czech cyclist Mirek and Slovenian cyclist Katya, who travel all around the world on their bicycles and live on the road and work as artists. I have introduced them to Mastodon and they are now @Cyclingnomads on our #fcz instance...
So if you want Cycling Nomads in Fediverse instead of just on Facebook and Instagram, don't hesitate and follow @Cyclingnomads !
Morgan le Fay/Merlin
in reply to David Goldfield • • •Rich W. Beardsley
in reply to David Goldfield • • •David Goldfield
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in reply to David Goldfield • • •Devin Prater :blind:
in reply to David Goldfield • • •David Goldfield
in reply to Devin Prater :blind: • • •Devin Prater :blind:
in reply to David Goldfield • • •Rich W. Beardsley
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