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in reply to George Takei 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏽

We've got all kind of "funny security rules". But, not being allowed to cut the cake yourself FOR SAFETY REASONS? At a STEAKHOUSE? How do they serve the steaks I wonder…


Veo mucha reflexión sobre Bluesky y personas que se van allí. Os dejo la mía, es muy simple.
Yo no necesito que el fediverso sea enorme. No me importa si llega a ese punto, entiendo que es el objetivo y será mejor que un Bluesky o lo que hay ahora mismo, pero yo no lo necesito ni tengo prisa porque ocurra.
Yo uso la tecnología que me parece más sana a nivel ético y estoy con un grupo de personas que me gusta mucho. Ya está, no necesito más.
Iba a poner un mensaje del palo "no gastéis vuestras energías en analizar redes centralizadas" pero entiendo que es un tema interesante y podemos hacer muchas cosas a la vez. Pero yo en lo particular no lo haré. Quien quiera interactuar conmigo en redes sociales ya sabe dónde estoy, lo digo siempre que tengo opción aunque predique en el desierto.


I'm not at all confident about hosting Procrastodon on an 8 GB instance. We are already at 6.5 GB and I haven't even migrated my followers over. It hardly knows about any users or posts; it's basically the most pathetically tiny instance you could imagine at this point. But if I go up even one more VPS size, I may as well get a dedicated server. Maybe it'll be fine, but I don't want to migrate myself and others there, and then discover that the server just doesn't handle that kind of load.
I was already getting read timeouts (with a five-seconed timeout) when using FediFetcher on a local Procrastodon user account.
@quanin I think you were running on 8 GB. How's that working out for you? Did you do anything to optimise that?
in reply to Simon Jaeger (old account)

Yeah, you probably will need something better for a multiuser instance. Either that or change the backend.


Pohoda, ľudia budú v pohode, nič viac si neprajem.


A byproduct of accessibility. This week I have observed it for a second time: a child was playing with a ticket machine on the public transport here. Those can talk so that a blind person can purchase the ticket independently. Before you begin, you have to choose the language for the spoken instructions and each choice is pronounced in the corresponding language, so English for English, deutsch for German etc. The kids are, either by themselves or with the help of their parents, flicking between the available languages, trying to repeat the foreign words. QDos to the Austrian child ppronouncing the word "Cestina", also the one saying "Mom, do the Italiano thing again" - priceless. I think we have found the new favorite educational toy in this place. #Accessibility #A11y #UniversalDesign #Blind

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in reply to Paweł Masarczyk

Quick, tell someone to manufacture toy transit machines. It's no different that the pretend cash registers we had back in the day.
in reply to Summer Dawn and Company

@RandomFire Oh yeah, I have played with one of those and also the telephone box, even had a plastic toy magnetic card and some pretend coins for those. It would have to be a pretty good simulation, though, so that the accessibility features are preserved.


Hello everyone. My name is Masaki from Japan. I am blind. I am a physical therapist teaching and researching at a university in Japan.


Tak mamutovo má už díky @archos taky v4.3.0!❤️ Líbí se mi to. Hlavně pole pro odesílání je teď mnohem zřejmější. Věřím, že lidi budou méně zapomínat přepínat jazyk.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Smoon

Právě jsem v nové verzi odhalil další fajn věc. Když na jméno účtu najedete myší, rozbalí se přímo na místě medajlonek. Sice to asi nebude mít moc užitnou hodnotu, ale je to hezké. 😃
This entry was edited (1 week ago)


En unos minutos comenzará la presentación del Informe Político de Antonio Maíllo en la Coordinadora Federal de Izquierda Unida.

📌 Puedes escuchar la ponencia de comienzo del órgano en este enlace: youtube.com/live/8nLFb5FquIY



Good news and bad news.
#Conversations_im 2.17.0 has support for emoji reactions 🎉
Since @Codeberg appears to be under constant DDoS attacks they have added pretty strict rate limits that the @fdroidorg build server keeps running into. 😞
Another build cycle just failed and it's unclear when 2.17.0 will be available on F-Droid.
Maybe Codeberg and F-Droid can back channel an allow list or something? 🙏

Štěpán Škorpil reshared this.

in reply to Daniel Gultsch

That's cool! Does it need some special for muc? I see it works in direct chats but not our muc.
in reply to Benjamin

@blindcoder Message Reactions need support for "Occupant IDs" on the server that hosts the MUC.

From ejabberd 23.10 this is available with a module called mod_muc_occupantid

docs.ejabberd.im/admin/configu…

There is also something for @prosodyim but I can’t tell you what version or module you need.



Food Recall: Frozen Waffles

Sensitive content



A person tries to build the most inaccessible website possible but still get a 100 on lighthouse. Loved this experiment! matuzo.at/blog/building-the-mo… #Accessibility #WebDev #HTML #StaticSite

in reply to Federico Mena Quintero

It's good they gave the sound and foley guys prominent billing in the credits. It really enhanced the film.


En un año en Gaza han matado a más de 15000 niños. Niños como el tuyo y el mío. Niños inocentes, como el tuyo y el mio. Niños con ganas de jugar, como el tuyo y el mio. Niños que soñaban con tener un futuro, como el tuyo y el mío...
No dejemos de hablar de Palestina.


I'm currently hanging on my teamtalk server at 97.107.140.118 default ports in the social circle lounge channel, should anyone want to talk to my nerdy self. :)
in reply to Monty Icenogle

And as another way to get names for your stuff there's always dynamic dns as long as you don't have too many hostnames.


I'm seriously considering getting my own domain again, something I haven't done in years. I would then associate all my servers with my domain, and where I have web servers, I can finally play around with setting up HTTPS, to make modern browsers happy. What is a good Domain Registrar to use for totally blind nerds these days? I'll likely register my domain of choice, and set my DNS records up via Akamai, since they are the most accessible control panel of literally anyone. All thoughts welcome.
in reply to Monty Icenogle

I'm an #aws man so I use them for most things when I can as long as the pricing works for me.
#aws


mne tie syry chutia dosť a ten Volovec skúsim nechať vyschnúť, nejako, a ten druhý neviem ako sa volá ale na úrovni "Volovec" z desiatich na ôsmich #za_rohom
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I love my Spectrum gigabit Internet connection, it's performing beautifully, so long as I don't use WiFi that is. Downstream on my laptop Wi-Fi is so jittery and all over the road speed wise that it's not even funny. I've literally watched a file download go from a burst high speed of about 350-500 Megabit per second, to literally as low as 6 or 7 megabits! If I hardwire the laptop to my router, and perform the exact same file download from the exact same location, the file comes blazing in at over 800 megabits per second rock solid stable! Uploads are unaffected, and work absolutely perfectly regardless of if I'm on Wi-Fi or not. I'm pretty sure this is simply due to Wi-Fi interference in the area, and it's a safe bet I probably can't do a thing about it, but I can honestly say I've never seen a home Internet connection perform this poorly on Wi-Fi. For logistical reasons, I can't currently run an ethernet cable between where my laptop normally sits, and where the Internet equipment is located, but I sure as hell am tempted to try something in the near future, if I can't find a solution to the poor performance on Wi-Fi on my laptop. I also need to do further testing to see if it's just my laptop or my phone as well. Early tests would seem to indicate this may be an issue unique to my laptop, but I need to do further phone download tests to verify this. But if it comes down to it, I'll be purchasing a 25 foot ethernet cable, and giving myself a hardwired connection between the Internet and my laptop, the fun part will be explaining why I need the cable set up to my tech ignorant sister. Well time will tell I guess. In the meantime I'll continue to run whatever tests I can
in reply to Monty Icenogle

Wired is always best if you've got lots of data you want to transfer to and from it.
in reply to Khronos

Wired is just better in every way for data transfer. It's science.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)


Documenting Unicode bidirectional embedding and the Ahem font for my #Outreachy interns.


I have learned this evening that WhatsApp voice messages cut you off after 30 minutes. This might help some of you long, long ramblers out there...
in reply to Matthew J

voice memos is better for that sort of stuff anyway, whatsapp does not let you switch apps to look things up and such. And yes, I did a 90-minute one once.


It's time for BEE FACTS

For every donation to this link, I will post one (1) fact about bees!

secure.actblue.com/donate/mast…

in reply to Sarah Taber

These little green bees are sweat bees. They're called that because they love salt & might come get some from you if you're sweaty.

They're solitary, sting but not very hard, and most of them nest in bare patches of dirt next to plants.

Plant flowers & leave some bare spots!

in reply to Sarah Taber

Honeybees are famous for working hard, but if you watch a hive, most of them spend a lot of time just chillin out on the honeycomb.

So when people tell you you gotta "be a good worker bee".... now you know the secret to their work ethic. Secure housing, affordable food, & naps.

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The Dynamic Island is the accessibility gift that keeps on giving. Today's bug: keyboard events not reaching a web page in Safari while the island was non-empty.


The article discusses the importance of operating systems adapting to modern hardware advancements for better performance and efficiency. It emphasizes the need for OS research and development to keep pace with hardware evolution. The speaker highlights the potential benefits of rethinking the OS-hardware relationship.

Link: usenix.org/conference/osdi21/p…
Comments: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…



Just heard about this new terminal, Ghostty.

Seems pretty cool.

github.com/ghostty-org

youtube.com/watch?v=RGlj4dcdWg…

Patiently awaiting an invite to the beta. :terminal:



Got my COVID and flu jabs and now I can't wait to fall into a feverish stupor tomorrow and actually enjoy the new season of The Rings of Power.


The article discusses how QUIC, a protocol designed for fast internet connections, faces performance challenges under certain conditions. Through experimental data, the authors conclude that QUIC is not optimal over fast networks and suggest potential improvements to enhance its speed and efficiency.

Link: arxiv.org/abs/2310.09423
Comments: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…




Blind Reaper users: Is there anything like GoldWave's expression evaluator for Reaper, and accessible? That thing is one of my biggest ways of getting inspiration to make sounds.
in reply to Quin

Intriguing. I never knew about the Goldwave expression evaluator. REAPER has JSFX which allows you to write real time effects in a scripting language, which should allow you to do all of that, but it's still much more involved/tedious than just typing an expression in a text box.
in reply to Jamie Teh

@jcsteh It's amazing for creativity purposes, at least if you like numbers like I do. My favorite is to make up a really wacky equation, then apply a ton of filters and effects to it. Reaper has way more options for those, but just can't find an expression evaluator. JSFX sounds interesting, thanks for the sort of recommendation. :)


This article was published on the 10th anniversary of the article "40 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."

And on the 20th anniversary of the article "30 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."

And on the 30th anniversary of the article "20 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."

And on the 40th anniversary of the article "10 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."

And on the 15th anniversary of the article "35 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."

And on the 13th anniversary of the article "37 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."

And on the third anniversary of the article "47 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."

And on the 44th anniversary of the article "Six years of tax cuts for the rich failed to tric

cbsnews.com/news/tax-cuts-rich…



Fantastic wide-ranging discussion about websites and browsers for a generalist to be aware of. You don't need to know how to do everything, but you DO need a huge contextual awareness across the stack to solve hard problems. Even a hint. 13min
youtu.be/-Ln-8QM8KhQ

I emphasize how important even knowledge of a thing being a thing helps. And it will seem utterly useless in the moment. It matters later, you will be completely surprised random tech stuff you did 20 years earlier randomly comes up as important. Try things, even Linux.

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Video makers: caption your damn videos. Spend a bit of time on it. Your viewers will thank you.
in reply to Veronica Explains

Now, if your video is scripted, as mine often are, I have a much simpler solution:

1. In YouTube Studio, after uploading the video, I upload the script inside the "subtitles" tab.
2. I wait like an hour before publishing the video

That's it. I don't think creators have much excuse anymore for poor captions. Other than you just don't want as many folks to enjoy your work.

in reply to Veronica Explains

Another thing about proper captions is that it's often framed as "helping deaf/hard of hearing folks", and that's accurate and valid, but there's more.

For me as an English speaker, it helps my viewers for whom English isn't their first language, as they can read along.

It also helps folks who watch your videos with the sound off/low... such as folks in public, folks in quiet spaces, folks in bed, folks with young kids...

...you know, pretty much everyone at some point in their lives.



Últimamente hemos tenido un microcorte eléctrico diario. No sé que leches pasa con la red, pero me está tocando las narices. No es de nuestro piso ya que pasa en varios edificios del barrio.


Mahasen Al Khateeb, a Palestinian #digital #illustrator, used to draw children stories and teach Procreate. She skilfully painted the suffering of her people in north Gaza using her stylus. It was her only outlet from a year of pain, horror and genocide.

Today the US-backed zionist regime killed her. Rest in peace Mahasen 💔

@mahasen_ktheeb on IG

#Gaza #Palestine #Genocide #ArmsEmbargoNow #USA #Israel





A friend shared this thought with me, and, to be honest, I find it a little depressing.


What makes me angriest about covid is that we allowed the very worst of us, a loud, bullying minority, dictate how our governments would handle the pandemic. We did not mask long enough, no covid money went to improving indoor air quality, we allowed anti-vaxxers to dictate public safety measures and make their choice our choice. Measures we did take eliminated a strain of flu. If our governments hadn’t caved, we could’ve stopped covid before all the mutations.


We really should talk more about why Nate Silver is not particularly liked by a lot of people who actually work with data.

"I would bet 60-40, 70-30 on lab leak probably"

This is just throwing random numbers on his hunches. He does this _all of the time_ and doesn't generally disclose (or even necessarily know to disclose) which pieces are his "hunches."

He mixes things that he puts into a model and fails to mention any validation beyond topline as well
hachyderm.io/@hrefna/113331563…



Spent some time today working on a little website to provide information about a bit of vintage computing history from my childhood, including a video demo (using emulation). I'm talking about Diversi-Tune, an early MIDI music program for the Apple IIGS, written by the late, great Bill Basham. divtune.com/ The website also briefly notes his later rewrite of Diversi-Tune for early-2000s Windows and web browsers, which he hosted at this domain. That version's harder to preserve.

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in reply to Matt Campbell

Yes, I said "the late, great Bill Basham". Sadly, he passed away in 2021. I asked his brother Mike for permission before I bought the domain, which expired and was put up for sale by GoDaddy. Mike Basham appreciates what I'm doing with this website.
in reply to Matt Campbell

I'm aware that, as I post this, the Internet Archive is still not fully back online, meaning that my link to the Apple IIGS version doesn't work. (I actually started working on the website a couple months ago.) I don't think the Apple IIGS disk image I happen to have is pristine. I could see if I can find a pristine disk image somewhere else and then host a copy. But hopefully the Internet Archive will be fully operational again soon.
in reply to Matt Campbell

I decided to self-host the video. I encoded it in both WebM and MP4 versions. (I did ask the Claude 3.5 Sonnet LLM to generate FFmpeg commands for me, but I reviewed and modified them.) Being low-resolution screen capture, the video compressed very well. I'd appreciate it if fully sighted folks can let me know if my encodings of the video have noticeable artifacts. I also uploaded a lossless version to YouTube. Of course, it's possible that YouTube's own encodings could add artifacts.
in reply to Matt Campbell

OK, now I've possibly spent too much time on this little side project. I decided to re-do the demo video. First, I decided I should emulate a ROM version 01 Apple IIGS rather than ROM version 3, since the former is what my family actually owned and what I used as a child. Then I decided to capture the video from MAME in its original aspect ratio, which looks wrong on modern displays because the Apple IIGS didn't have square pixels, and then scale it with FFmpeg.
in reply to Matt Campbell

And finally, about those FFmpeg commands, I decided to basically throw out the ones I had the Claude LLM generate for me, and instead try to build up my own by reading FFmpeg documentation. I originally justified using Claude on the grounds that FFmpeg has so many options that they're daunting for a non-expert. But in fact, FFmpeg has very good documentation, which I now reference on my detailed page about the video and how I made it: divtune.com/apple2gs_demo/

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Matt Campbell

I suppose the whole process, and my own mind, is still contaminated because I initially used an LLM. I can think of the following things that remain from my usage of Claude:

- The use of FFV1 as a lossless video codec. Presumably I would have found that in the FFmpeg documentation if I had really looked.
- The pixel format conversion to yuv420p to fix compatibility problems. Claude gave me that one for the MP4 version, and then I also applied it to WebM.
- The use of 256 Kbps for AAC.

in reply to Matt Campbell

Now, I have to mention that this program wasn't and isn't accessible to fully blind people. The documentation for Textalker GS, the one screen reader I'm aware of for the Apple IIGS, specifically mentioned Diversi-Tune as a program that could not be made accessible with that screen reader. This was a downside of Diversi-Tune's focus on efficiency, accessing the hardware directly rather than using even the primitive GUI toolkit (literally called the Toolbox) that the Apple IIGS offered.

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Que porra é essa, caralho?! 😡 Estão removendo árvores para dar visibilidades aos anúncios outdoor
oglobo.globo.com/google/amp/ri…
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Sofia ☭🇧🇷☭

There's some sort of weird anti-tree conspiracy happening in Rio, and apparently at least part of it is to do with giving more visibility to advertising billboards. Although I swear I've seen trees removed in places without billboards...but then again, it's hard to tell, because sometimes street trees do have to be removed for legitimate reasons


Amos Miller of Glidance released a new amazing video showing the capability of Glide, the mobility tool that he has created. If you have not seen this new video, and by the way it is described, then I highly encourage you to check it out... youtube.com/watch?v=Xq8ofapGxX…

#Blind #Mobility #AmosMiller #Glidance #Glide #Accessible