The new Mac Mini looks great, wow. New chip, 16GB base memory, five USB-C ports (three with Thunderbolt), and probably minimal fan noise. That $599 base model will be a better computer than almost every desktop PC under $1,000, as long as you're okay with macOS.
apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/app…
Apple’s all-new Mac mini is more mighty, more mini, and built for Apple Intelligence
Apple today unveiled the all-new Mac mini powered by the M4 and new M4 Pro chips, and redesigned around Apple silicon so it’s even smaller.Apple
urbanists.social/@straphanger/…
𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇 (@straphanger@urbanists.social)
Attached: 1 image BREAKING: #Canada's government is going ahead with high-speed—not just high-frequency—rail between #Quebec City and #Toronto Bullet trains will reach speeds of up to 300 kilometres (186 mph) per hour.Urbanists.Social
Jeff Bezos describing journalism as “our profession” in an op-ed defending his decision to kill the Washington Post’s Harris endorsement
#WaPo
Oh, you can now close the #NVDA speech viewer with alt+F4?
Wish I'd copied what I wanted out of it before blitzing...
But who knows. If alt+f4 didn't work once perhaps I got so frustrated I just gave up once and never looked back!
Wait... we're getting $200 from the government? Why am I eligible? I shouldn't be eligible. Omg I hate the Cons.
Some more charity money I guess... Damn it, our politicians are useless.
PSA: I ferociously guard my senior developers' code review attention span. If you use "AI" / LLMs / ChatGPT / Copilot to submit Outreachy/GSoC project proposals or merge requests to one of my #FLOSS #opensource projects, I will quickly detect your bullshit, challenge you, and ban you.
This PSA, unfortunately, is brought to you by experience.
Hey all! Our son's boyfriend is working on a project to develop a compendium of Transmasc Comfort Characters from books, movies, TV, and video games.
He'd love it if you'd fill out this survey with your favorite characters! Whether their transmasc status is canon or not - if that character comforts you, please include them.
Please BOOST! :)
Edit: Fixed - you can now submit multiple characters!
#TransMasc #Trans #TransJoy #TransSurvey #TransFic #TransStories
Transmasc Comfort Characters
Welcome! Your answers here will be added to my ongoing compendium of canon and implied transmasculine characters in media. By completing this survey, you are doing a lot to support the transmasc community!s.surveyplanet.com
Casualty of Bill C-18 ? I think so.
The Beaverton Is Dying. Unless You Save It
What do people think of this response to ‘generate detailed Alt Text’ by Gemini:
Here is some detailed alt text for the image you provided:
Alt Text:
A large, menacing grey cat, reminiscent of a monster, stands on its hind legs with its front paws raised. It has glowing yellow eyes and a wide, toothy grin. The cat is surrounded by a fiery aura as it emits a powerful beam of energy from its mouth. The beam is directed towards the Empire State Building in New York City, which is engulfed in flames. The city skyline is visible in the background, with tall buildings and smoke rising from the destruction. The overall tone of the image is chaotic and destructive, evoking a sense of fear and awe.
Additional Notes:
• You may want to adjust the description of the cat's appearance based on its specific characteristics.
• If the image is part of a larger context (like a movie poster or book cover), you could add a brief reference to that context.
• The alt text should be concise and informative, providing a clear description of the image without being overly detailed.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
#Accessibility #AI #AIsoftheBlind #AltText #Blind #ComputerVision
I can't see the image myself, but where I was seeing this would matter.
The description is great as a longer form piece. But I can see a time not too far away when that's the standard way of having alt text on book covers or thumbnails in search results.
Then I go from just wanting "a monstrous cat shooting energy at the Empire State Building" to no alt text at all depending on where I am and what I'm doing.
That brief descriptor would suit me on a product page of a shop, for instance, but I'd find having that in my search results or list of products annoying enough, to say nothing of the hundred words you have there.
There is a mechanism in html for longer descriptions that is very rarely used. Perhaps it could be revived for this sort of thing.
youtube.com/watch?v=nROK4cjQVX…
I grew up with TNG era star Trek. The iconic sounds of the Enterprise D, Voyager, and DS9 "feel" like Trek to me.
I had a lovely dream as a child that one day, my computer would sound like their computers.
I imagined that the different background sounds used throughout the series would represent different apps (engineering for the windows control panel, for example), defaulting to that generic ship hum in every other app.
The swoosh of doors would match me alt+tabbing between apps in the way they herald a change of room on the show.
Text popping up would generate a computer chirp based on the text: Dialog titles with questions marks in them in particular, or perhaps progress indicators.
Certain keypresses would generate tones, again, perhaps app depending. You could extend that to focused controls, too.
the list of things I need to code when I have time is so long, I'll probably still be dreaming about this when I retire.
It may well drive me mad if I ever made it.
Of course it's the sort of project people could very easily make sound packs for.
You might want a calm lake whilst reading your emails and some birdsong or something when on the web, for instance.
So it wouldn't need to be a Trek-based app specifically.
I wrote an addon for Skype to list birthdays and received support requests for nearly 20 years, 15 of which after Skype had depricated the API feature.
I'm possibly too long in the tooth to keep up with modern software development practices.
✅ Hoy se ha aprobado, a iniciativa nuestra, una PNL para condenar la ofensiva israelí sobre Palestina 🇵🇸 , exigir el desmantelamiento de las colonias y apoyar al TIJ y CPI en los procesos por violaciones de DDHH a la población y presos políticos.
📌 Puedes ver el vídeo completo de la defensa de la propuesta por Enrique Santiago aquí
youtube.com/watch?v=RZZE5kxUCP…
Enrique Santiago: «Israel sigue asesinando a presos y presas políticas palestinas impunemente»
Enrique Santiago, diputado y portavoz parlamentario de IU en el Congreso de los Diputados, interviene en la Comisión de Exteriores para presentar una Proposi...YouTube
Okay, where comes that myth from, especially in Germany, that alternative text should fit into one line of Braille (80 characters), otherwise it might not be accessible? As far as I can tell, Braille displays can navigate more than 80 characters in alternative texts and users don’t have a problem with it, right?
*sigh*
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✊🏼 Así ganó un pueblo a la expansión eólica: A Groba contra las multinacionales energéticas.
Por Raúl García Amoedo.
elsaltodiario.com/galicia/asi-…
Así ganó un pueblo a la expansión eólica: A Groba contra las multinacionales energéticas
Activistas del Instituto de Estudios Miñoráns y de la asociación SOS Serra de la Groba reflexionan sobre sus recientes victorias judiciales frente las empresas promotoras de parques eólicos en la zona del Val Miñor (Pontevedra)www.elsaltodiario.com
Y presentáis la obstaculización de la transición energética como algo positivo?
fueron capaces de presentar 80 recursos administrativos, uno por cada parque eólico proyectado en Galicia. Actualmente, y gracias a su trabajo y el de muchas otras asociaciones, han conseguido la paralización cautelar de 59 proyectos.
Esto os parece la victoria de algo?
Pues a mi no.
There's a very weird but common misconception that people on disability benefits are somehow a "drain on the economy." But 100% of that money will be spent, on things like rent, mortgage, insurance, food, clothing, and so on. That's money that immediately goes to business owners and, if those business owners aren't hoarding wealth, will cycle through the rest of the economy.
Drains on the economy are where money stops moving, like, for example, when it reaches wealthy billionaires.
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bad-faith-times.ghost.io/trump…
> And we as a people, especially millennials and Gen X-ers prone to such intense nostalgia, must also reject the 80s, which I know you hate to hear, but that you must hear. It is essential in the fight against fascism.
I recognize that I've indulged in 80s nostalgia quite a bit in the past year or so, especially retreating into my childhood Apple II memories. No more. Time to live in the present.
Trump, 80s Nostalgia, And The Rejection of Fascism
Yearning for the 1980s lies at the heart of the fascist project, whether millennials and Gen X-ers like it or notDenny Carter (Bad Faith Times)
Auf die #Erfahrungen und #Eindrücke von @Prediger_EF@kirche.social in der Anglikanischen #Kirche bin ich gespannt.
Heute Abend:
onlinekirche.ekmd.de/veranstal…
#FediKirche
Kalender
Onlinekirche der EKM - Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube & Co werden für viele Menschen zu Strukturgebern im digitalen Alltag. Kirche kommt in diesen Lebensbereichen aber nur selten vor.onlinekirche.ekmd.de
I keep waiting for people with that fashy "BDFL is the best form of government" take to understand the reason Democracy took off as a form of government is the madness of kings.
From: @ianb
mastodon.well.com/@ianb/113389…
We want to support the journalists; so boycott Amazon and encourage Bezos to sell the Washington Post to someone who gives a shit.
Washington Post writers say don’t dump subscriptions over non-endorsement
theguardian.com/media/2024/oct…
#WashingtonPost #JeffBezos #WaPo #Journalism #FreePress #BoycottAmazon #EatTheBillionaires #USPol
Washington Post writers say don’t dump subscriptions over non-endorsement
Fears for effect on jobs at newspaper owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos that declined to back a presidential candidateEdward Helmore (The Guardian)
And here is the confirmation of what everybody knew about the WaPo refusing to endorse…
Bezos is in talks to buy the Space Division of Boeing.
jalopnik.com/boeing-might-be-q…
Boeing Might Be Quitting Space With A Potential Division Sale To Jeff Bezos
Boeing's new CEO is willing to sell basically everything to keep its core business afloatRyan Erik King (Jalopnik)
Siri, show me what happens when a company purges dissenting voices and becomes a cult of personality.
theregister.com/2024/10/28/wor…
WordPress forces user conf organizers to share social media credentials, arousing suspicions
One told to take down posts that said nice things about WP EngineSimon Sharwood (The Register)
I asked Amazon's "AI", Rufus, to summarize my space opera novella "The Warrior Within" for me. Here's what it told me:
"The Warrior Within is a 1980 fantasy novel by Angus McIntyre. It follows the story of a young man named Aric who lives in a world where magic and technology coexist. Aric discovers he has the ability to tap into an ancient power called the "Warrior Within" which allows him to become a powerful warrior.”
(TWW was published in 2018. There is no one in it named Aric)
1/
#AI
I confess, I like Rufus's flattering description of my writing. But the information it confidently trots out is utterly divorced from reality.
In fairness, Rufus did better when asked about less obscure books, and resisted my attempts to persuade it that “Anna Karenina" was a cozy murder mystery by Virginia Woolf.
But an AI that breaks down badly on edge cases is worse than useless.
4/
I don't understand why you would deploy something that looks like an information retrieval tool, but simply invents things when it doesn't know the answer.
No one would design a database system that returned random data if a query failed to match any records. (Except perhaps in a specialized application such as a game).
The argument “but it gets it right MOST of the time" cuts no ice. That actually makes it WORSE, because it's harder to tell when the robot is fabricating answers.
5/
Open Safari, and type this into the address bar:
applefeedback://
Hit Return and tada… The Feedback Assistant app will magically appear!
@robin_kipp I've started to think I'm the only one with two issues combined into one...
My rotor does nothing, at all, doesn't even reduce VO speech volume, and on top of that, the 100% volume is now insanely loud to the point where the tts is distorted. I have to use 70% or 80% to get what it was at before. I wish we could downgrade the watch.
@robin_kipp Yeah it's become either insanely louder for some reason, or they did something else that messed it up and makes it feel like they boosted the volume way too much.
Fun fact. Toying with the VO volume in the settings here also does nothing. What about on your side?
I'm a published author - in Chinese. Four years ago now.
daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/10/29…
Everything curl in Chinese
The other day we celebrated everything curl turning 5 years old, and not too long after that I got myself this printed copy of the Chinese translation in my hands! This version of the book is available for sale on Amazon and the translation was done …daniel.haxx.se
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Andrew Hodgson
in reply to Matt Campbell • • •