🔗 Understanding Cumulative Risk -- The health implications of repeated COVID infections longshadowofcovid.substack.com…
Welcome to the home of the Cane and Able navigators. Follow this account to keep up with all
the latest happenings with the CaneAndAble.social Mastodon instance for blind people, as well as handy tips and tricks for mastodon and the Fediverse in general.
At CaneAndAble.social, we’re passionate about the benefits of social network that no one individual can control, no matter how wealthy they are. That has benefits for blind people, who wish to participate in social media via a range of access technology on many platforms. Mastodon’s openness means that anyone with the skills can create an app for the Fediverse, and that’s good news. We are always sure to have accessible means of participating fully. If the accessibility of one app happens to break, or it is no longer developed, there are others, and there are few barriers to entry for new developers.
So, about this name of ours. How did we get it, and what does it mean? It is a pun. For those unaware, there is a story in the Bible, Genesis to be precise, chapter 4 to be preciser, (OK that’s not an actual word), of two brothers, Cain and Abel. But changing the spelling to Cane and Able sends a powerful message. The white cane blind people use for travel is seen as an international symbol of our independence. Able, as in ability, reflects the values by which many blind people live our lives.
So often, we are limited not by our blindness, but by other people’s perceptions of it. This manifests itself when we’re passed over for a job, because an employer closes their eyes and can’t imagine how they would do the job if they couldn’t see, and concludes that we can’t do it either. Limited perceptions result in us struggling to get the accommodations we need to succeed in education, to function optimally with technology, and so many other pursuits. CaneAndAble.social is a slightly tongue-in-cheek way of making an important statement. Our blindness doesn’t mean we’re not capable.
You will have read the rules before signing up here, so we won’t revisit them in this post. But here are a few things that make our community special.
First, while there are other instances where blind people hang out, CaneAndAble.social is a domain that is up-front about our blindness, much like there are other communities on Mastodon that directly identify with many other minorities. It clearly speaks to the kind of people we serve. This helps with discovery. You know that by looking for people on CaneAndAble.social, you’ll find blind people like you. Over time, you will find more businesses serving the blind community as well.
Second, our friendly team are here to help with any questions you have about using Mastodon accessibly. Direct your requests to this account by mentioning it. Not only will the navigators, Lynette and Jonathan, do what we can, but other people who follow this account have plenty of knowledge to share too. We know that Mastodon is a bit of a different way to do social media, but it represents a better future and we want you to have the help you need to make the most of it.
Third, you have room to express yourself with clarity and courtesy. Mastodon by default gives you 500 characters per post. CaneAndAble.social gives you a whopping 10,000. If you find that’s not enough for a legitimate reason, we’ll gladly consider increasing it.
Fourth, one of the things we often hear from new community members who join us is, “dude, this thing is fast!” And it is. We take good infrastructure, and providing you with a quality service, seriously.
Fifth, Some instances have chosen to block Threads, the Meta social network that is now part of the Fediverse. We have chosen not to do this, because we support people being in touch with as wide a group of people as possible. As technology evolves, we will embrace bridges to other social networks.
The site’s Community Manager is Lynette, @lynessence, and Jonathan, @JonathanMosen, chips in and pays the bills.
We strive to bring you a reliable, helpful, friendly community and are so glad you’re here. Let us know if we can help with anything.
4/20
#20albums20days
Yeeessss, github.com/mozilla/standards-p… recently opened my eyes to this fact.
The scope of a modern browser is truly 🤯
Since @loshmi and @jwz 's post about the #enshittification of #FireFox yesterday, I've been test-driving #webbrowsers suggested by people in response to my request for suggestions of browser alternatives. I thought I'd give a quick review in case anyone else is interested.
Suggestions:
@JayLittle Zen Browser
Downloaded AppImage of Zen. Feels very similar to FF, as it is based on it, but has a Vertical Tabs interface, which I don't like. I ran with it all morning, but it feels too alien to me. Import option only showed Chrome, not FF, but FF Sync is supported, and worked, so I have all my FF passwords, bookmarks and history. Gmail, ebay, Youtube all work.
Installed Epiphany from stock Debian repo. Very minimalist feel (which I kind of like). Says it supports FF Sync, but I couldn't get it to work - just displays a dialog saying "something went wrong". Gmail, ebay, Youtube all work, albeit with manually entered credentials.
@eliteamdgamer #Floorp #servo and #ladybird
Floorp makes you agree to a privacy agreement which is in Japanese, and I couldn't find an English version, so I have not tried. Servo looks interesting, but I don't get the impression it's "production ready" yet. Ladybird, as far as I know is developed by some rather bigoted techbros, so also not tried. Sorry eliteamdgamer, but thanks for the suggestions.
Installed LibreWolf from external repository (followed easy instructions to add to my apt/sources) so it will get updated with my normal system updates. Again, import option only showed Chrome, not FF, but FF Sync is supported (after tweaks in about:config to enable it), and it worked, so I have all my FF passwords, bookmarks and history. Gmail, ebay, Youtube all work.
So, in summary, I now have three extra browsers installed, and am feeling more positive about not having to resort to Chromium any more. I'm favouring LibreWolf at the moment, as it feels a lot more homely. Will continue flitting between all of these for a week or so, as I need to use other websites I haven't yet tested. I'll be surprised if anything flat out fails to work, but time will tell.
Waterfox is what i'm currently using in fact, and for years at that, as my main driver.
@cybervegan @loshmi @jwz @JayLittle @aspragg @eliteamdgamer
@Ezzy @hazelnoot well it’s hosted on hetzner servers. the top post listed pieces of software, not hosting providers.
honestly pleroma is below my threshold for “automatically be very suspicious of this instance” given how it’s still popular for single-user instances. in replies, i singled out the top three but not the top four for a reason.
I've just gotten an automated email, send via Mutt/1.5.21 (released 2010-09-15), from the root user, on a server whose timezone is most likely set to UTC+2.
This is from an institution that has all my personal data.
Seeing stuff like this makes me extremely unsympathetic to the "Google shouldn't be handling email in public institutions" crowd. At least Google knows how to do IT infrastructure, because these people clearly don't, and I know for a fact they have more IT infrastructure and people working on IT than the vast majority of public institutions here. Despite that fact, those things still happen.
Maybe it's time to admit that we lost?
I'm just going to say it. Whoever designed the new notifications layout and design for Mastodon needs to go back to the drawing board (and UI design school). In some cases, esp if you start off with a tag, it looks and works horribly. (desktop view). Way worse than the old way just a month or two ago.
#mastodon #fediverse #design #uidesign
A guy was playing golf one day and he got lost.
He saw a lady up ahead of him and went to her and said, "Can you please help me, I don't know what Hole I'm on."
She told him "You are one hole behind me. I'm on 7; you're on 6."
He thanked her and continued playing golf.
Later, he got lost again.
He saw the same lady and went to her again kind of embarrassed.
"I'm sorry to bother you again but I'm lost; can you please tell me what hole I'm on."
She told him, "You are one hole behind me. I'm on 14; you are on 13."
Again, he thanked her and continued playing golf.
When he finished he saw her in the clubhouse.
He went up to her and asked if he could buy her a drink for helping him out.
She accepted.
As they were drinking and talking, he asked her what she did for a living.
"I'm in sales," she said.
He replied, "No kidding; so am I."
"What do you sell?"
She responded that it was too embarrassing to tell; but after he kept pleading to know what she sold, she finally said that she would tell him if he promised not to laugh.
He promised.
She said, "I sell sanitary napkins."
He immediately fell to the floor laughing hysterically.
She said, "You promised you wouldn't laugh".
He replied (still with tears in his eyes), "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it. I sell toilet paper..... I'm still one Hole behind you." 😂😂😂
Many calendars use email to send reminders. Unfortunately, this can overshare data with mail servers & 3rd-party notification services.
At Tuta, we're doing something different.
👉 tuta.com/calendar
Our zero-knowledge calendar keeps you up to speed without sharing information with Google.
#degoogle #privacy #calendar #encryption #zeroknowledge
And please also fix this quite old bug on Android.
Thanks.
One more thing: pinch to zoom would be great too.
@mdalves One more thing: pinch to zoom would be great too.
This. Absolutely. Our work day is much longer than 5.5 hours 🙁
Or, even better, show more hours per screen.
I'm launching a hosting provider which gives heavily discounted resources to open-source and non-profit projects!
80% cheaper than digitalocean
40% cheaper than hetzner
while i'm still testing my infrastructure i'm offering your first instance with 2 cores & 2 ram gig for free(!) so i can test how my hardware performs on production.
if you're interested you can check out the site or just reply/dm me!
wedotyou.net/
(edit: go follow the mastodon as well! @wedotyou )
(edit 2: if you’re curious about our specifications, policies, and detailed pricing, it’s all on our help center: help.wedotyou.net/ )
We’re in the middle of a climate crisis and AI is sucking up entire nations worth of energy and water so people can make horrible art, turn in plagiarized essays, and post in social media.
How is this a thing?
Wanna know something sweet?
My mum, who passed away earlier this year, was part of a Thursday coffee group. Her and her ladies would alternate between each others houses every week. They had done this for 30+ years.
Anyway, the ladies were quick to “offer” her spot to my dad when she was no longer around to take it, and he accepted. So for the last few months he’s been part of the Thursday coffee group, getting all the gossip and generally hanging out with the crew.
When I spoke to my mum and dad every weekend on FaceTime, I’d get the latest gossip from coffee time from my mum, and now I get it from my dad instead.
So just know, although there is a lot of horrific crap that goes on in this world, there are plenty of sweet human moments as well. They just don’t make for good headlines.
Around the year 2000 I saw a news item about Napster. They had a bunch of university students show and explain it.
Now I already knew how it worked, because I had it installed at home too. But my poor connection struggled to get beyond 8 KB/s and on TV I saw those students downloading with whopping 100+ KB/s speeds no problem.
And that's what motivated me to go to uni lol
Andii אַנדִֽי
in reply to trendless • • •"Two years ago, one of us (A.C.) made a prediction in Fortune Magazine that a few years of ‘learning to live with’ COVID (i.e., pretending it doesn’t exist) would lead to a billion cases of Long COVID. A recent estimate pegs the total incidence so far at 400 million cases of Long COVID. Long COVID is well on its way to becoming the world’s most common disease."