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I've often used the verb "stallmanising" to mean being such a cunt about your perfectly reasonable cause that you actively turn people against it.

Ta-Nehesi Coates conversation with Peter Beinart:

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/…

If you are like me and can never do podcasts, you can read the transcript on the link above.


"The clash between the stories we tell & the reality of life on the ground"

Podcast Episode · Occupied Thoughts · 10/17/2024 · 40m
Apple Podcasts

stallman-report.org/

The thing that frustrates me about this is that the #FreeSoftware community wastes so much fucking time on #Stallman. So much time and effort is wasted on the eccentricities of one man, even though anyone with a gram of sense can see that this man is unfit to lead the social movement for our digital liberation.

And we are so utterly beholden to him. So much of our language and framing is Stallmanesque, sometimes undeservedly. My biggest pet hate is the narrative that 'you, the user, will be free if you use Free Software'. No you won't, especially not if you are not technically inclined. We are freed together as a community, not as individuals. The system of collaboration and the sharing of our digital infrastructure makes this thing liberating for all of us, not my ability to patch better Esperanto support into glibc.

And it's not like this movement needs a single leader, or that there aren't already extremely talented and dedicated leader figures in our community.

And it's not like there aren't problems with our community that aren't related to Stallman. There are so many people (men…) who make this community less lovely than it is.

But instead of lifting up other voices, or addressing other toxicity, we're stuck endlessly dealing with this one eccentric man.

The Stallman report

October 14th, 2024 Richard Stallman (aka “RMS”) is the founder of GNU and the Free Software Foundation and present-day voting member of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) board of directors and “Chief GNUisance” of the GNU project.
The Stallman report
#FreeSoftware #stallman
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

I was reading and thinking about a post discussing the Stallman Report¹ and a section leapt out and resonated for me:

"My biggest pet hate is the narrative that 'you, the user, will be free if you use Free Software'. No you won't, especially not if you are not technically inclined. We are freed together as a community, not as individuals."

And it crystallized a thought that has been knocking around my mind for months: …

1/2

¹: todon.eu/@carmenbianca/1133247… / @carmenbianca , ht: @mos_8502

Carmen Bianca BAKKER (@carmenbianca@todon.eu)

https://stallman-report.org/ The thing that frustrates me about this is that the #FreeSoftware community wastes so much fucking time on #Stallman.
Todon.eu
@Carmen Bianca BAKKER @mos_8502
in reply to Ben Zanin

Ben Zanin
Ben Zanin
• •

Software being Free (or open source, or zero cost, or even "open core" (gag)) does legitimately help developers - those very few.

But there is another role: the folks who specifically assist others to navigate up knowledge and skill gradients, and who work to diminish those gradients: the distro maintainers, the package testers & integrators, the sysadmins, the community moderators.

It is fine to want freedom yourself but we *must* work for each other's freedom too.

2/2

Drove by this pile of traffic barriers recently. I was mesmerized.

Oh boy, why nobody told me about this? friction.graphics/

Friction

Friction is a powerful and versatile motion graphics application that allows you to create vector and raster animations for web and video platforms with ease.
friction.graphics
in reply to Aleca

Amadeus Maximilian
Amadeus Maximilian
• •

oh this looks cool! 👀

Too bad there is no macOS build. 😅 But all the more reason to fire up a Linux machine again. 👌

No one does the Qt 4 dance anymore, these days. This says a lot about society youtube.com/watch?v=NbTEVbQLC8…

Qt 4 dance

Boy-band style singing and dancing programmers! Viewer comments: "eurotrash", "beyond embarrassing", "best viewed while under the influence of a mind alterin...
YouTube

All the members of my band are currently sick but it's too late to cancel the rehearsal room so I guess I'll spend the next 2 hours playing all the instruments and run circles around the drum kit

That you admired Richard Stallman when you were a young coder just entering the world of open source development is no mark against you -- abusers are like that.

Where judgment of you comes in is now -- you're an adult, you know your asshole from your elbow, and you have been shown evidence of who the man actually is. What you say and do in response to that -- that's what defines what kind of person you are.

The Ahem font is the best font and I won't be taking questions.
in reply to Federico Mena Quintero

junkman
junkman
• •

I didn't know about it until this.

From the description it reads like the monospacest of monospace fonts, which sounds nice

Also this Tuesday morning up at Whiskeytown, a Steller's Jay combing the moss on an oak tree for stashed acorns.

#Birds #Birding

A Steller's Jay is seen from behind perched on a vertical moss covered large oak trunk. The bird has a black head and crest, blue forehead stripes, black shoulders and blue back.
#birds #birding

I just heard there's a virus making people forget 80s rock bands.

Sensitive content

The latest Glide demo video shows how it handles stairs, which I appreciate. Honestly, most of what Glide does sounds great to me, but I'm still concerned about how you'd manage stairs in some cases. Stairs with a railing are easy, but not all stairs have railings, and some stairs aren't consistent in height, distance apart, angle, etc. This stuff is trivial to manage with a cane or dog because of the constant contact, but with Glide, you would have to rely entirely on what you can feel with your feet for stairs. I'm sure it's possible, but I feel like it would be a lot slower and more awkward.
in reply to Jamie Teh

Bruce Toews
Bruce Toews
• •
@technocounselor Then head over to England, where they have a spiral staircase fetish. And how does it work on escalators?
@Allison Meloy
in reply to Jamie Teh

Scarlet Phoenix Collective
Scarlet Phoenix Collective
• •
We're pretty sure if you mention that to them, they'd take that into consideration. They're always looking for feedback; that would be important for them to know. -T

Volovec #za_rohom
#za_rohom

ChatGPT for Windows is out. Alt + Space allows you to jump directly into ChatGPT. I was hoping we could change that keyboard shortcut as to not conflict with other functions for that keyboard combination.
in reply to Jeff Bishop

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
• •
Eww, that's nasty. It globally overrides that keystroke. I guess most sighted developers now are unfamiliar with the normal function of that keystroke in Windows.
in reply to Matt Campbell

Tamas G
Tamas G
• •
@matt all I gotta say is, clickable menu button collapsed subMenu clickable Attach files button section multi line editable Message ChatGPT out of section clickable Send prompt. :P
@Matt Campbell

stále používam to "som" sa mi to nepáči
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Like, “three citizens united”? masto.ai/@rbreich/113319832058…

Robert Reich (@rbreich@masto.ai)

Three billionaires donated $220 million to Donald Trump between July and September. Read that back. Three people. $200 million. In just three months. Citizens United is among the worst decisions in history. It corrupts our system every day.
Mastodon

Well this is certainly interesting. On Series 10 #AppleWatch using #Voiceover, a two-finger triple tap seems to toggle speech, as well as a three-finger double tap. Is there a way to enable Voiceover Help like you can on iPhone with a four-finger double tap so that I can see what gestures are actually registering? I don't know if my fingers are just too fat and so magic tap isn't working or what. I have activated the hand gesture for this though, and it doesn't work either. So I'm just stuck. I love my magic tap gesture, and the fact I can't get it to work at all on the Apple Watch is really obnoxious.
#voiceover #applewatch
in reply to 🌟Kira Aeva🌟

Tamas G
Tamas G
• •
ahaha yeah that works on my series 9 too, and 4-finger double-tap does launch help, and it does say that 2-finger double-tap is magic tap. What's more amusing: You can even do 4-finger tripple tap for live recognition. Sure, a camera will also magically spring out of the top of your screen that wasn't there before and begin telling you what's around. In all reality though it could have used the iPhone camera but it does not appear to do so.
in reply to Tamas G

🌟Kira Aeva🌟
🌟Kira Aeva🌟
• •
@Tamasg Okay, I'll have to try that. The fact that two-finger double tap doesn't seem to be doing what it's supposed to do is maddening. So perhaps I can get the four-finger double tap to work and see if I'm actually doing the gesture right.
@Tamas G

majiteľka je top

Woof. techcrunch.com/2024/10/17/elon…

Elon Musk's X is changing its privacy policy to allow third parties to train AI on your posts | TechCrunch

On Wednesday, social network X (formerly Twitter) updated its Privacy Policy to indicate that it would allow third-party "collaborators" to train their AI
Sarah Perez (TechCrunch)

🕛Z #NowPlaying at the top of the hour, 2 hours of relaxing #NewAge, #ambient, and #meditationmusic on Northern Lights: The New Age Show, #live with Kelly Sapergia. More information is at ksapergia.net/northernlights/. Tune in either by visiting theglobalvoice.info and clicking on the Listen Live link, or go directly to theglobalvoice.info:8443/broad… #TGVRadio #audio #radio 📺🗣️📻🎶🎙️🌌🌈🫣🫰🩵🪬🫶

Welcome to The Global Voice - The Global Voice

The Global Voice brings together an international team of broadcasters, producers and radio journalists to present for you a wide range of entertaining and informative programs.
The Global Voice
#audio #radio #nowplaying #ambient #live #newage #meditationmusic #tgvradio

ľudia mi vravia že mám dvadsaťštyri.. to určitě :kekw:

Bitcoin price drops under $67K as investors chase profit in stocks - Bitcoin pulled back from its range high as investors moved to greener pa... - cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin… #securities #markets #stocks #biden #court #macro #jobs #tsmc #nvda

Bitcoin price drops under $67K as investors chase profit in stocks 

Bitcoin lost a bit of its upside momentum, but a court case victory could lead to a swift trend reversal.
Marcel Pechman (Cointelegraph)
#jobs #markets #macro #nvda #stocks #biden #court #tsmc #securities
in reply to Crypto News

NV Access
NV Access
• •
Is there any chance we can encourage you to trend #NVIDIA when that's the company you mean, please? I know what their NASDAQ handle is, but #NVDA is much more widely known as the name of the screen reader we make and the #NVDA hashtag is very widely used for the screen reader. It will save both our communities polluting each other's feeds. If you'd like to find out more about the screen reader, our website is nvaccess.org/ - Thank you!

NV Access

Empowering lives through non-visual access to technology
NV Access
#nvidia #nvda

Just got an idea for us freelancers. We should setup a system where we buy consulting capital. At a very very low price. Then we sell these bits of capital to the client to perform the consulting (work is done). This would be capital gain. Only 50% are taxable (below 250K), which mean you'd pay half the taxes than for the hard earned labour.

Let's game the system the millionaires abuse.

(don't take this as a valid thing)

As a #developer sometimes you'll see #code comments like this. Often, you'll be the one writing it. #webdev #memes #programming
Stack of books on a bookshelf holding it up with the words "These books are here for an essential structural purposes. They are not for sale" written on the sides of the books from top to bottom.
#webdev #programming #code #developer #memes

As we all know, our leaders are very excellent at “informed decision making”. That’s great, because the research is very clear:
1. more destinations accessible by bike -> more biking
2. more safe infrastructure -> more accessible destinations
3. more bikes -> less congestion
4. removing car lanes -> less congestion
🧵
in reply to Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD

Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD
Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD
• •

2. Adding safe cycling infrastructure on arterial roads unlocks more destinations for more people, making practical cycling much more convenient and much more likely.

cbc.ca/news/science/pandemic-b…

In the U of T study, researchers mapped the provincial capital's entire cycling network using city and survey data. It was discovered that the COVID-19 cycling lanes increased cyclists' road access to stores and jobs by 10.4 per cent to 22.3 per cent and increased access to parks by 6.3 per cent. The image shows a map of Toronto with the change in accessible area as a result of COVID bike lanes. Large parts of downtown are highlighted as well as large sections of Scarborough near new infrastructure.
in reply to Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD

Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD
Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD
• •

3. The more people travel by bike, the less car congestion. Adding bike infrastructure need not increase congestion even in the short term!

civitas.eu/resources/walking-c…

An infographic about a case study from New York: "New bike lanes shorten automobile travel times by 35% The average car journey on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan from 96th to 77th streets (1.6 km) was about 41⁄2 minutes, as measured by the New York City Depart- ment of Transportation. After on-road protected bike lanes were installed in 2011, it now takes only 3 minutes to travel the same segment. Less road space for automobiles did not result in more delay. On the contrary protected bike lanes benefitted all modes of transport and shortened travel times for motorists by 35%, even as total motor vehicle volume on the road remained constant. This is the result of smart traffic engineering, in this case adding exclusive turn lanes so cars waiting to turn left don't block lanes and drivers can see cyclists beside them."
Bike share programme eases congestion during city works The city of Bordeaux started a free bike sharing program in 2000 to keep the city accessible during construction of a new tramway. The programme was very successful and developed into a permanent scheme with 4,000 bicycles. In this period of dense traffic and congestion due to construction work, people took the easiest, cheapest and most practical mode of transport. While the car was used for 64% of trips before the construction began, it accounted for only 40% of trips in the city centre during the construction. Had the level of car use remained at 64% congestion would have been significantly worse. The bicycle became the mode of choice for 9% of all trips in the centre, and 4% across the entire city, compared to a share of 1-2% before the programme started. Pedestrian journeys also went up by 2% (from 22% to 24%) and public transport use increased from 9% to 10%.
Cycling improvements lead to 45% less car traffic and faster public transport In 2006 the city of Copenhagen transformed congested Nørrebrogade street: bicycle and pedestrian paths were widened, dedicated lanes for buses were installed and speed limits were lowered from 50 km/h to 40 km/h. Car traffic decreased by 45% in the neighbourhood, the travel time for buses fell by 10%, noise levels dropped by 50%, and the number of cyclists increased by 10%. The number of traffic accidents fell by 45% within 33 months. Employment and commercial revenues increased as well with 27 new businesses opening along the street, benefitting from increased delivery efficiency. The Nørrebrogade project increased the attractive- ness of the urban space and improved air quality.

CIVITAS

The CIVITAS Initiative works to make sustainable and smart urban mobility a reality for all in Europe and beyond.
civitas.eu

@GTK #Accessibility
Cambalache window editing accessibility properties and relations.
#Accessibility @GTK

reshared this

in reply to Juan Pablo Ugarte

Emmanuele Bassi
Emmanuele Bassi
• •
we’re missing a full taxonomy of roles and their attributes; right now, you have to go on the WAI-ARIA spec website and check manually which attributes apply to which roles

Kačica na baterky.
in reply to SuspiciousDuck

SuspiciousDuck
SuspiciousDuck
• •
Kde sú tie baterky v piči, v mozgu v tých šedých záderoch ty debil.

What are ear lobes for anyway?

I would encourage every Fediverse software project to implement a “dead-man switch" on registrations: if nobody with moderator permissions has been active in the last week, then disable new account creation.

The Fediverse has a significant number of abandoned instances that are used by bad actors to create accounts and send spam.

We implemented this in Mastodon (github.com/mastodon/mastodon/p…) and it has been highly effective.


Automatically switch from open to approved registrations in absence of moderators by ClearlyClaire · Pull Request #29318 · mastodon/mastodon

This is not meant to replace #29280, but supplement it to avoid unmonitored servers keeping open registrations indefinitely. Automatically switch away from open registrations if no user with the pe...
GitHub

Download ChatGPT for Windows from this link - apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nt1…

Não coloquem os vossos NIF em sites para verificar se os vossos NIF foram comprometidos. Não coloquem os vossos NIF em sites para verificar se os vossos NIF foram comprometidos. Não coloquem os vossos NIF em sites para verificar se os vossos NIF foram comprometidos.Não coloquem os vossos NIF em sites para verificar se os vossos NIF foram comprometidos. Não coloquem os vossos NIF em sites para verificar se os vossos NIF foram comprometidos.

Coding pro tip: at some point add assert.fail() or however it works in your system (add a deliberate unconditional failure) and run tests. See whether tests actually fail. Test setups tend to be complicated and error-prone and you'd be surprised what's not actually being tested.

Does anyone remember the old toys for the 80s and beyond?
Does anyone like old toys that they would like to hear again but also would like to have the chance to hear them in an entire new way?
Introducing the electronic toy lib!
The electronic toy library or TETL; is a passion project by a group of people that love the old toys and the fantastic sounds they make.
From direct recordings of toys that had a headphone and connectors on the boards, to recording via coils and even things like making direct boxes to directly record the toys and making recreations of what the toys would have sound like if different situations were to be in effect!
Also called the electronic toy archive, get ready to go down a wonderful adventure back to the past with: chips; tunes; and little speakers as you take a trip to the toy world!

youtube.com/@TheElectronicToyA…

#Nostalgia #Toys #Fun #Electronics #Electronic_Toys


The Electronic Toy Archive

We are a small community that enjoys electronic toys, most of which are not meant for our age group, (most of us are in our late teens to 20s), but we still like them for some weird reason.
YouTube
#fun #electronics #nostalgia #toys #electronic_toys

reshared this

Finally discovered where to go to turn off that damned "profile preview" popup that Mastodon introduced a while back.

If you go to Preferences > Appearance, select "Disable profile preview on hover". Problem solved.

For the love of Pete that damn popup is annoying as hell. Always getting in the way. Glad they at least had the foresight to allow people to turn it off. Just irritated that it took me this long to find it.

But now you know (if you didn't already).

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Stop putting QR code on your posters in the city.

I don’t have my phone with me.

When I have it, I don’t want to open it.

When it is open, I don’t want to scan random stuff.

Just put the information on the posters. The date, the place, the price. Write them !

Add an URL to your website. One I could memorize, note down or even recognize later.

And no instagram/facebook. I want the information, not "follow".

You are not cool, you are simply losing a huge part of your potential audience.

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

My Twitter account is currently locked and I don't look at it, but I'm hard deleting it this month. If you have a Twitter account you don't read, I also recommend full deletion before Nov. 15. Here's why.

Twitter has their TOS now in an unusual state x.com/en/tos with two copies of the TOS printed one after the other, with a notice the new TOS goes active November 15.

The major difference I see is starting Nov 15 they give themselves explicit rights to train AI models on your posts.

"We have made some updates to our Terms of Service. This version of the Terms of Service will go into effect on November 15, 2024. Until then, the current Terms of Service continue to apply."
The current, and post-Nov.15 versions of the Twitter TOS (non EU version), the section granting Twitter a copyright license. Highlighted is the new text in the Nov. 15 version only: "including, for example, for use with and training of our machine learning and artificial intelligence models, whether generative or another type".

X Terms of Service

Read X's Terms of Service to understand the rules governing your access of all Twitter services.
twitter-com

I was curious to see what the ChatGPT app was like on desktop. As I suspected, it's basically a PWA, which means those who use the website on the desktop will have the same experience.. except for the enhancements that send the generated output to screen readers.
in reply to Leo

Tamas G
Tamas G
• •
not impressed. I was expecting this to allow for voice mode on desktop, which I'm sure will get added, but of course it's using Edge web view underneath because why wouldn't it be, and as a result some things are read differently, oddly things like using the G key or H to move through the entire conversation is less reliable for me, so yeah not impressed.
in reply to Tamas G

Leo
Leo
• •
@Tamasg It seems to me like every time they release a new update of any kind, they always find creative ways to mess something up.
@Tamas G

I used ChatGPT to write a JAWS function for me today. It's going to benefit quite a number of StationPlaylist users. I've got to say, it's really nice to have someone, or something, that can help me out. It took two attempts but it did a good job.
in reply to Brian Hartgen

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
• •
I'm surprised ChatGPT could write the JAWS scripting language at all, considering what must be a tiny amount of training data for that programming language.
in reply to Matt Campbell

Brian Hartgen
Brian Hartgen
• •
@matt It did a really good job surprisingly. Just a point I was struggling over. Had it not been for it though, people wouldn't have got this feature. So I was quite pleased with it.
@Matt Campbell
in reply to Matt Campbell

Jeffrey D. Stark
Jeffrey D. Stark
• •
@matt it has a pretty solid documentation and is pretty straight forward as a language but ya...
@Matt Campbell

The Jelly Max has arrived and is charging at its full 66-watt speed. It kind of reminds me of an iPhone 3GS, but thicker. People seem to find it overly chunky and I don't agree at all. With its curved edges, it feels great to hold, and the 5-inch screen is going to feel a lot more suitable for daily use than the 3-inch screen of the Jelly Star. I'm still disappointed at the lack of a headphone jack, but the Unihertz headphone jacks have bad microphone leakage and given its huge battery and my belated shift to using Bluetooth more often, that might not be such a bad thing.
in reply to Tech Singer

Bill Dengler
Bill Dengler
• •
@techsinger I actually do have a phone with two USB-C ports: store.planetcom.co.uk/products…

Astro Slide 5G

Cosmo Communicator is the ultimate portable computer, mobile device that fits in your pocket. Inspired by Psion devices and from the makers of the Gemini PDA, it has an excellent keyboard, dual-SIM mobile phone and a fantastic camera.
Planet Computers
@Tech Singer
⇧