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There are some amazing people who provide all kinds of support about Thunderbird, whether it's here or in our official Mozilla Support (SUMO) site! If you've ever wondered how to get involved there, or are just curious how it works, our most recent Office Hours shows you the ins and outs of tackling community questions. You don't need a cape to be a Thunderbird superhero (also, no capes!), just skill, knowledge, and time!

blog.thunderbird.net/2024/08/v…

#Thunderbird #OpenSource #Community



“Capitalism”: The system that ensures, whenever human interaction with a large corporation is required, a lengthy wait on hold will occur because “we are busier than usual”, and that while on hold, the caller will repeatedly be reminded that if they just went away and used the Web site, everything would be fine.


Agree! BTW, it’s a much-discussed issue and the solutions are on the way! dragonscave.space/@miki/113006…


Idea:

Image recognition apps for the blind should do an OCR pass on the image first, and include any text found in the prompt. The LLM should be told not to do its own OCR and to rely on the text provided.

LLMs are notoriously bad at OCR, particularly for non-English languages. To make things worse, unlike normal OCR engines, their badness doesn't result in typos and garbled text, but in perfectly understandable and grammatically valid text that says something very different than what's actually included in the image.

An OCR pass should help "ground" the LLMs here.




I am falling in love with the “equalizer” feature in in VOiceOver’s speech settings in iOS18. The world is not the same when I toggle it off. :)
in reply to victor tsaran

I feel I haven’t been able to use most voices because their lower frequencies compete too much with noise going on around me. I wonder if this will change that or if I’m too attached to Samantha compact.
in reply to victor tsaran

I am too. The compact Zoe voice is far more tolerable with EQ applied. It doesn't sound as tunnely.


Having the Meta glasses is kind of like having a really nice car with a speed limiter on it. It's an Android-powered pair of glasses with wi-fi, bluetooth, really good microphones, and a camera. It could be a tinkerer's dream, but instead it only runs one AI, only lets you video call on Meta's apps (which is not vender lock-in so much as iOS limitations), can't record audio-only, and can only record 3-minute videos. I have one because it's still pretty damn convenient, and I am hoping it expands beyond what it is now, and I regret nothing, so this is a pretty pointless paragraph. I have yet to try a video call on WhatsApp, mostly because my mother is visiting right now, but I am excited for that part. I do have the impression Meta is not done adding functionality, and I'm excited to see what they do with them. I have no idea how popular these are outside the blind community—I'm really not sure what people would do with them in a normal context—but I am still enjoying them.
in reply to simon.old

I think it's like a telegraph of the glasses. They will only get better and better from here. But oh the battery... A better battery is what we need first and foremost!


sneaking this into a (hidden credits) part of the interface, coming soon to a consumer device near you 😜 @bagder


#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid today brings you 4 updated and 2 added apps:

* Volume Percent Calculator: Calculate alcohol mass, content and volume in drinks
* Passwords to remember: Generates human speakable and readable passwords

Both apps have #reproducibleBuilds 🥳

Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with the #IzzyOnDroid repo :awesome:



For users of Slack on iOS, the latest version provides a bug fix for VoiceOver users. From the release notes:

What’s New
Version History
Aug 21, 2024 Version 24.08.30
Bug Fixes

• Fixed: With VoiceOver enabled, some DMs simply would not open, no matter how much double-tapping you did. VoiceOver was built for increased accessibility, not to make messages literally inaccessible. Our sincere apologies.

apps.apple.com/us/app/slack/id…



I'm so excited to be going to the matrix conference in Berlin in 3 weeks. Me, Jan and @CvG6666 are going to the conference on behalf of @fairkom to meet the community, be part of this rich exchange and also hopefully showcase some of our undertakings.

We're hoping to make new friends and learn about interesting new projects related to the matrix eco system.

@matrix

in reply to Chagai Friedlander

We are a bit jealous that we can't all come along! But with you guys we are very well represented and are happy that @fairkom can also be there. we are very excited to hear what you will report!

Here's the schedule: 2024.matrix.org/schedule/



Flipping the Script: Exploring New Paradigms in Secure Mobile Computing
puri.sm/posts/flipping-the-scr…
#MadeInUSA #OpenSource #GovTech


‼️Hey!! Tusky 26.1 is out!!!! 🎉🎉

We have fixed some issues 👇

- Fixed a bug where Tusky sometimes mixes up timelines and/or notifications of accounts ✅
- Fixed two bugs where Tusky would not provide the translation option even the server is configured correctly ✅
- Fixed a rare bug that sometimes made Tusky crash at startup ✅
- Fixed a bug where the timeline would randomly jump to the position of the last "show more" placeholder clicked on "oldest first" reading order ✅

And added new things 👇

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Jennifer Moore 😷

The behaviour I would _like_ is that whether I come back via the app switcher or whether I come back via the icon ("coming in the front door again" as I sometimes think of it), it shows me whatever I was last doing.
in reply to Jennifer Moore 😷

@unchartedworlds Hi! Sorry, it is a known bug, and we are working to solve it. Will keep everybody posted when it is solved.


The story of King Midas is a cautionary tale about adding the `async` keyword to a code base.


My almost universally applicable design tip is to make the font you’re using a little bigger


I just upgraded my 2 year old #framework laptop with a 2.8k display and 3.5kg hinges. It feels like a brand new machine. I love this product.


This is a very specific need. I need to find someone who has an Everest-d v5 braille embosser with a 1365 motherboard. There is an sd card in that device I need an image of so that I might get my machine up and running again. If anyone can help me, please reach out.


¿Sabéis eso que dicen de "todos los políticos tendrían que ser expertos para poder ser elegidos"? Totalmente de acuerdo. Ni un político que no se haya leído de cabo a rabo La Pequeña Espasa y haya resuelto todos los ejercicios de Hartshorne's Algebraic Geometry.



they live glasses but for tech industry comment pieces 😎

reshared this




Have you shared or joined our #SupportOutreachy campaign yet?

Outreachy is calling out for your help. You can donate as an individual or ask your employer to sponsor us as an organization.

You can also support us by joining our #SupportOutreachy campaign.

Help us keep the Outreachy work and impact going.

Outreachy needs you!

Read our blog post and learn how you can contribute: outreachy.org/blog/2024-08-14/…



Idea:

Image recognition apps for the blind should do an OCR pass on the image first, and include any text found in the prompt. The LLM should be told not to do its own OCR and to rely on the text provided.

LLMs are notoriously bad at OCR, particularly for non-English languages. To make things worse, unlike normal OCR engines, their badness doesn't result in typos and garbled text, but in perfectly understandable and grammatically valid text that says something very different than what's actually included in the image.

An OCR pass should help "ground" the LLMs here.

in reply to Jamie Teh

@jcsteh @vick21 1. Do OCR. Tesseract or whatever, there are good models aplenty.

2. Dear LLM, please describe this image. Do not try to perform text recognition, assume that the text provided below is correct and complete, except for possible typos.

You could also use this technique when finetuning, giving it images with lots of foreign-language text, but with the correct text already provided in the prompt.

in reply to Mikołaj Hołysz

@vick21 It could still mutate the provided text on output as a halucination, though. Also, I wonder how well this would work where the text isn't in a single block or where OCR doesn't get the order right but where the order could easily have been inferred by the LLM? Restaurant menus are a good example of both cases.


CN workers are NOT on strike. Their employer has locked them out. It's an important distinction and I've already seen news outlets get it wrong.


J'ai passé 4 jours à retoucher 3 photos que j'ai prises de ma tante harpiste qui va bientôt mourir.

Elle voulait des 4x6", alors je suis allé chez #JeanCoutu pour les faire imprimer au comptoir… pur désastre.

Même si je prépare du ratio 6x4 « au pixel près », leur équipement crop quand même, et ajoute de la grosse compression JPEG low-bitrate (alors que j'avais apporté des PNG); couleurs faussées, perte de détails partout.

Suggestions pour un bon service d'impression #photographie au #Québec?

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Hubert Figuière

@hub Possible, mais j'ai comme un doute que leur software est plus con que ça, surtout si ça balance par WiFi, et puis vu comment leur machine croppe à gogo déjà c'est déjà disqualifié de ce côté là ;)
in reply to Jeff Fortin T.

le truc c’est que JPEG exif 2.1 est le format natif des caméras. Pas PNG. Pour le crop je sais pas.


It's time for the job hunt again. If you've been enjoying my posts now's your chance to see how I work!

If anyone has NY-based or remote #UX or #ProductManagement roles at the Lead/Manager/Director level, please sent them my way!

And if not - I'd still appreciate the signal boost.

#FediHired #GetFediHired #Jobhunt



Anti-nuclear activists, and a minority of the population, including many 'progressives', dismiss the best solution to climate change out of hand.

#Meme

#Meme
This entry was edited (2 months ago)


Universal International Studios and Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door are set to develop a TV adaptation of Matt Dinniman's novel Dungeon Crawler Carl. deadline.com/2024/08/dungeon-c…


One complaint about Shokz: the "battery low" status isn't useful. The battery can be high, medium, or low. When it's low, you might have ten minutes of power left, or you might have two hours. There's no way to check. I wish it gave me a percentage to the nearest ten--100%, 90%, 80%, and so on.
in reply to Alex Hall

@jackf723 That's good to know. I've had mine for four years by now and I've done that quite a few times, haven't noticed a difference yet.

I feel like they'll physically disintegrate before the battery becomes an issue, they've already started doing that.

I'm not too mad though, I use them very heavily and have gotten a ton of mileage out of them.

in reply to Mikołaj Hołysz

@miki And considering how quickly they do charge, it's more or less a non-issue anyhow. My only legitimate gripe is Bluetooth being the only wireless protocol supported for the coms headsets. That's just a non-starter, and you know it's bad when even non-screenreader users who use this headset for its intended use are complaining about the lag. And nno, they weren't gamers. Rather people watching videos and noticing hte video and audio were out of sync.


#Patienteninfo

Viele meiner Patientinnen notieren ihren Zyklus im Kalender. Manche benutzen auch Apps.

Falls ich dafür auch eine App benutzen wollt, empfehle ich euch dringend keine aus dem GooglePlayStore, denn die enthalten alle Tracker und sind unzuverlässig. Außerdem wollen wir unsere intimen Gesundheitsdaten nicht durch die Welt posaunen.

Also, falls ich eine App dazu benutzen möchtet, kann ich "Drip" aus dem F-Droid Store empfehlen.
Projektseite:
prototypefund.de/project/drip/

F-Droid Store:
f-droid.org/de/packages/com.dr…

Drip bei Mastodon:
@dripapp

P.S. Falls ihr generelle Fragen zum F-Droid Store habt:
mobilsicher.de/ratgeber/so-ins…
Oder mich fragen.

#frauen #periode #zyklus #menstruation #fdroid #dripapp



Welcome to the RB family, PhantomProcessesSavior 🤩 After we figured what JDK was used, and with some help concerning a missing dependency, we finally made it:

apt.izzysoft.de/packages/com.y…

(xposed module to keep Android 12 from killing subprocesses)

#reproducibleBuilds #IzzyOnDroid



As I rework my Emacs configuration, I am reminded once again of the many reasons why I like Emacs. Currently, I especially appreciate the quality of the documentation (available not only for Emacs but also for many established packages).

Importantly, the keyboard interaction is the primary and expected means of using the application, not an afterthought to pointer-based graphical input. The documentation reflects this priority, as does the design of the software.

There are no compromises made in the flexibility and efficacy of features to cater to non-technical users of software - people who don't know basic programming concepts and who don't enjoy learning to use powerful, complex tools. This focus is liberating. Efficiency of interaction for the experienced user is a priority.

Emacs has been evolving for decades, and it remains as relevant now as it ever was. I first learned to use it in the mid 1990s, and that investment has more than been repaid. If you're going to learn to use software well, it's advantageous to choose tools that are likely to remain relevant and useful over the long run. The UNIX shell and utilities, Emacs, Vi, LaTeX and Git, among others, have all been in this category for me.
#Emacs #Linux

in reply to Martin Stemplinger

@mstempl @clv0 Regrettably not, and I generally agree with T.V. Raman that for people who rely on a spoken (or, I would add, Braille) interface, having to interact with the Javascript-intensive Web is far from optimal. The resurgence of natural language interaction that we're starting to observe may improve matters, however, and it would presumably be more Emacs-compatible as well.


For the hard of thinking at the back, let's be completely clear on this, "Carbon Credits" are just another form of Greenwash. Once we accept that and stop trying to continue using fossil carbon, we can finally start thinking about real solutions to the Climate Crisis.

No amount of magical thinking is going to get us out of the Climate Crisis, until we fully accept that extraction and use of fossil carbon is the problem, and we have to stop using it now. Not is 20 or 30 years time but NOW!



Petra Pau hat die Bundesregierung nach rechtsextremen Straftaten im ersten Halbjahr 2024 gefragt. Die Antwort:

Statistisch werden jeden Tag 54 rechtsextreme Straftaten registriert, darunter täglich 2 Gewalttaten. Das Dunkelfeld dürfte noch höher liegen.





Just a reminder to folks using Picture Smart remember we're dealing with AI here. I got sent a screenshot of a log output and asked Picture Smart to read the log, wherein it read out a whole bunch of inaccurate information about Google Cloud, the information getting more sketchier by the end. I wasn't even working with Google Cloud so not sure why it decided to do that.


There will be some that say how can 9,300 union railway workers cause the national railway system to stop. That is the wrong number. It should be said how can TWO companies (companies are legal persons) lockout and stop 9,300 people from working hence shutting down our rail system? For profit.


What are the most common languages spoken by fediverse users? My (biased) view is that they are:

English
German
Spanish
Dutch
French

In that order. But, how could such a survey be done? A random sample? Do you see a very different set of languages on a regular basis?

in reply to myrmepropagandist

I get a fair amount of Finnish and Malay but that's probably a function of the people I follow. Very hard to know given the fedi is a network without a centre.


🎉 We're excited to welcome ClouDNS as a GNOME sponsor! Their DDoS-protected anycast DNS and monitoring service have replaced our self-hosted solutions, reducing maintenance overhead. Thanks, ClouDNS, for supporting open source!
cloudns.net/


Just udpated my WriteFreely instance to 0.15. Looking forward to GTS compatibility though.


The Librem 11: Your digital freedom, in tablet form. Secure, private, and powered by PureOS. #Librem11 #DigitalFreedom #PureOS
puri.sm/products/librem-11/