As Seen on Facebook:

"Remember on Sunday to turn your clocks back one hour. Then remember on Tuesday NOT to set the country back 100 years!"

🤣 Russia has fined Google 2 undecillion roubles or USD$20 decillion for blocking Russian media on YT etc.

If not paid in 219 weeks that increases to USD$1 googol.

abc.net.au/news/2024-11-01/rus…

Russia is a laughing stock. Putin, you're a muppet. This is Austin Powers / Dr Evil level fines.

Russia has fined Google more money than there is in the entire world

Russia has slapped Google with a fine of $US20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 for blocking state media channels on YouTube.

^{Maddy Morwood (ABC News)}

Yesterday, my students presented our work at the ACM ASSETS conference. "Not Only Annpying. But Dangerous": Devising an Ecology of Protections for Photosensitive Social Media Users" dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/366…

In this study, we investigate prior work, conduct survey inquiries, and use co-design methods to explore how social media design choices influence exposure to dangerous flashing content which can trigger seizures, migraines, nausea, and disorientation for photosensitive users.

Through our analysis, we identify the current ecosystem of flashing content on the Internet, and propose a more robust ecology of protections, including on-device graphics filters that directly edit pixels buffers to prevent flashing before it occurs.

First, existing WCAG guidelines against auto-play of media need to be enforced. Second, users should have device level control over animation that may trigger flashing, and this control shpuld not be able to be reset by platforms that try to enforce autoplay to support their own ad revenue. Third, other users need to be aware of what makes content dangerous, so thay they may stop circulating it and causing accidental exposure. Fourth, creators need to know what makes content dangerous, and how they can test for danger, to prevent them from creating dangerous media in the first place. This includes corporate creators, like movie studios, whose ads for acrion movies have been a recent source of autoplaying strobing content in movie trailors posted via ad platforms. Fifth, platforms, including GIF libraries, but also all social platforms, need to implement reporting mechanisms specifically for flashing content which can remove that content from circulation. Sixth, there should be actual penalties for platforms and creators that do not react to, correct, and remove dangerous content, or who force auto-play on users.

And seventh, device manufacturers and operating system developers need to create on-device filters that eliminate flashing through simple real time post-processing. Machine Learning classification and prediction algorithms ARE NOT NECESSARY. We can do this with simple math. Yes it may sometimes look weird. But also people won't be dying in their sleep.

This work is very important to me, and I've been working on it (on the side) since 2017. I wasn't allowed to pursue it fully as a graduate student. As faculty, I still had to string the project together on wishes. And I'm still looking for a collaborator to work on the implementation, though if industry would just get their shit together and do it themselves, that'd be great.

#ASSETS2024 #accessibility #Epilepsy #migraine #photophobia #photosensitivity #NEISVoid #graphicsProgramming

“Not Only Annoying but Dangerous”: devising an ecology of protections for photosensitive social media users | Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

^{ACM Conferences}

👉 "The core issue is that open source contributors are not paid fairly. 60% of open-source maintainers are unpaid volunteers, and just 13% make a living as professional project maintainers, according to the 2023 State of the Open Source Maintainer Report."

Boosts appreciated 🚀

➡️ infoworld.com/article/3557846/…

#FreeSoftware #OpenSource #FOSS #FLOSS #SoftwareLibre #Business #KDE #Research #Science #NLnet #softwareDevelopment

How do we fund open source?

Experts with deep experience across open-source software communities share their opinions on how to sustain this critical ecosystem.

^{Bill Doerrfeld (InfoWorld)}

#deltachat_desktop finally has Automated E2E testing again! 👨‍🔬 🧪 🚀

Thanks to the desktop team and #deltachat_web for making this possible.

Also thanks to #playwright for making such a nice testing solution.

The article discusses VMware Workstation's move towards using upstream KVM instead of proprietary code. This change will likely improve compatibility and efficiency, benefiting users of the virtualization platform.

Link: phoronix.com/news/VMware-Works…
Comments: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…

VMware Workstation Shifting From Proprietary Code To Using Upstream KVM

This isn't an off-schedule April Fools' Joke or anything like that but an exciting sign of the times: VMware Workstation will be shifting off its proprietary base and onto leveraging the upstream Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) for virtualiz…

^{www.phoronix.com}

🗣️ CANADA, DO NOT LET THE FASCISTS TURN YOUR COUNTRY INTO A BAD COPY OF THE UNITED STATES
mastodon.world/@somecanuckchic…

seriously, the world needs to do a billionaire purge STAT

somecanuckchick

2024-11-01 01:09:54

Despicable. Alberta wants to police pronouns, sex education, and youth healthcare. cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/al… #cdnpoli #polcan

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is conducting research on the accessibility of health care for people with disabilities. They are looking for adults with disabilities or caregivers of adults with disabilities to take a short survey. The GAO will use the survey input in a report to Congress. Click here to access the survey:

gaosurvey.gao.gov/jfe/form/SV_…

Damn. I imagined that now that the M4 Mini is out, the M1 Mini would be super cheap on the used market.

Nope! They're still like $400 for a base model! For a four-year-old computer! A new M4 model is $600!

I mean, for Pete's sake, an M1 Mini with 16G RAM is like... $600... on ebay

why would anyone order that

Back in the old days, we used alt text because folks didn't always want to wait for them to download.

I'm sitting at the end of my driveway, ready to hand out candy, connected to the house wifi.

I'm not getting photos 🤣

I am currently very thankful for those who have added alt text to their images and videos!

#Halloween #a11y = #accessibility

Amazon reports Q3 AWS revenue up 19% YoY to $27.5B and AWS operating income of $10.4B, up from $7B in Q3 2023, and subscription sales up 11% to $11.3B (Annie Palmer/CNBC)

cnbc.com/2024/10/31/amazon-amz…
techmeme.com/241031/p46#a24103…

Amazon shares pop on earnings beat, cloud growth

The company's cloud and advertising units showed strong growth.

^{Annie Palmer (CNBC)}

"Yes, but Jason, if the super-rich left the UK, what would we do without their money?"

Precisely what we *have* been doing without their money, I imagine.

You can keep waiting, or start encrypting! 🔐🎃👻💀

Happy #Halloween everyone!