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The surprisingly deep reason why teens are calling everyone “chat.” "...The term, originally used in contexts like “chat, this real?” to “chat, am I cooked?” stems from the world of Twitch and Discord, as streamers ask their audience for clarification, support, and answers where viewers can communicate with the streamer through text. But now, it’s become adopted as IRL slang, used in any context, for any reason" slate.com/technology/2024/11/c…


United States government mulling a potential merger between Intel and AMD notebookcheck.net/United-State…


I had no idea that North Carolina allows spouses to share a voting booth. Both must consent to that, but of course an abused (or otherwise scared or intimidated) spouse isn't going to complain.

ncnewsline.com/2024/10/25/alam…

h/t @MissGayle @Burnt_Veggies @cafechatnoir
#uspol #voting #NorthCarolina



As OpenAI and Meta introduce LLM-driven searchbots, I'd like to once again remind people that neither LLMs nor chatbots are good technology for information access.

A thread, with links:

Chirag Shah and I wrote about this in two academic papers:
2022: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498366…
2024: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649468

We also have an op-ed from Dec 2022:
iai.tv/articles/all-knowing-ma…

>>



in reply to David Goldfield

I love how the first sign mentioned on the site is pop up adds, then I have to go past an add to keep reading.


Christmas Music Starts Early Across The Country radioinsight.com/headlines/285…

in reply to David Goldfield

Hi. Do you have an email list you post a lot of these tidbits. Sometimes I don't feel social media, but I'd like to see these things.
in reply to Eden Linnea

@EdenLinnea Hi, and thanks for asking. Many of the items that I post to Mastodon covering blindness technology get distributed to my Tech-VI announcement list. There are some items that I post to Mastodon which don't get posted to Tech-VI, as some of them are out of scope for that list.
To subscribe via email, send email to
tech-vi+subscribe@groups.io
The main page, which contains an RSS feed and a message archive, is available at
www.groups.io/g/tech-vi




Hi all, it's me, An Old. Quick election reminders:

- If you are in line before the polls officially close, STAY IN LINE. You are entitled to cast your vote.
- DO NOT TRUST calls/texts/posts/TikToks from now until Weds. Deepfakes will be rampant.

Classic scams:
"your voting location has moved"
"your group votes on Weds" <- old Jim Crow shit
"have your payment ready" <- poll taxes are illegal

Vote! No later than Tuesday, even by mail! Demand a provisional ballot if anything goes wrong!
#USPol



Ooh, wish I had the unlock code for this one, but it was my free article for the week.
Polish Radio Station Uses A.I. to Interview Dead Nobel Laureate nytimes.com/2024/11/03/world/e…
in reply to Tamas G

I wonder sometimes if it’s an AI-produced story. I just can’t find, for the best of me, the actual audio samples. I did find the original interview though, I mean in text! It’s funny, not funny.


I appreciate living in a place where a ten year old comes to your door for Halloween dressed as Google AI and if you consent, recites the recipe for gasoline spaghetti.


The people have spoken, I'll try my best to ruin everything!


listen, I've had my moments, but at least I've never mansplained Margaret Atwood's book to Margaret Atwood


People who wear glasses are disabled, BTW. We need disability aids to function as an active part of society. If you wear glasses, you are disabled; your disability is just one that happens to be highly (if not totally) accommodated. It is generally considered reasonable to insist that you need your glasses and cannot cope well without them, and glasses are readily available and prescriptions for them not heavily gated. Touching or taking them without your permission is considered rude and cruel.
in reply to Xauri'EL Zwaan

This is by far the most popular social media post I have ever written lol. To be clear, as a person who wears glasses myself, I am well aware that financial cost is a major barrier to many people having glasses. These things tend to lie on a spectrum. The main point is how normalized glasses are, how wearing them rarely even excites comment. People who wear glasses aren't "brave" or "inspirational". To most, we're just treated as normal people living our lives


More and more as I try to untie myself from giant social networks, I find myself wishing that Fediverse software like Mastodon wasn't so seemingly allergic to algorithms. I don't think it should be algorithm driven, but if I'm new and I want to get a feed full of content that does have engagement, I think that should be possible. If I want to follow people who my friends follow, I shouldn't have to just look through all their followers lists. I don't know how you strike a balance and avoid excluding people, but it sometimes feels like we're too far in the other direction. I don't want to have to give people an entire checklist of ways to find people and content once they join, because then those people will be more resistant to joining. There has to be a happier medium between mindless algorithm-assisted scrolling and what we have now. And yes, I did post this with the expectation that people will tell me I'm wrong and I welcome that.
in reply to Simon Jaeger (Procrastodon)

I think the “explore” tab does some of that, but I think I know what you mean. Some twitterness would be nice, I mean, the good old Twitterness, not the Elon one.
in reply to victor tsaran

@vick21 You're right about the explore tab. There are some interesting functions in there that I could probably spend more time using.



*sigh* submitted an issue asking for some accessibility work to be done to a software package and the response was "there's no audience for this, someone who actually uses a screen reader should submit this request". I am definitely not the person to reply to this and have no idea how to do so in a reasonable manner.

#accessibility

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess @nellie_m @pixelate @FreakyFwoof I just realized y'all are the NVDA devs; I don't have access to a Windows machine, so I've never tried it, but I've heard great things! Thanks for what you do, and thanks for being on fedi, it's exciting to see you here!
in reply to Sam Whited

Thank you! It's great to be here - such a wonderful community!


Welcome to the RB family, Innertune 🥳

apt.izzysoft.de/packages/com.m…

InnerTune is a fork of InnerTune – a Material 3 YouTube Music client for Android.

Thanks to Malopieds (the author of this fork) for making this possible :awesome:

#reproducibleBuilds #IzzyOnDroid



who are these lunatics answering phone calls from unknown numbers and why are we polling them for election opinions?


Not if you delete your fucking account. #OneWeirdTrick press.coop/@Gizmodo/1134213933…


NVDA 2024.4 doesn't seem to read auto-completion info in chrome anymore, anyone have ideas as to what I can do to fix this? I hope it's just a me thing.
in reply to Andre Louis

@twynn Thanks Andre, I can replicate on Gmail's login page - what site are you looking at? I originally tried with the autocomplete suggestions on google.com and that DOES seem to work. I created an issue at: github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issue…

Please do comment on the issue with any extra info there.

in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess @twynn Anything. Everything. From homebridge to PiHole to anything that wants my name/other details. Every single site I've personally tried since 2024.4 has failed. I can't think of one that hasn't.
in reply to Andre Louis

@twynn It does seem to be a change in Chrome - I tried 2024.3 and 2021.3.5 and it worked exactly the same for me.
in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess @twynn I just added a comment on GitHub to this issue confirming the same thing is happening on my system.
in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess @twynn While we're talking about changes in chromium, is anyone else getting the weird thing where cursor movement by caracter in edit fields is just, slow and half the time reports the wrong character now? Especially on DIscord I notice this, with regular text mind you not mentions and fancy embeds.
in reply to x0

@x0 @NVAccess @twynn I've seen this behavior more in Chromium-based UIs (like Slack) if there's a multiline field with multiple lines of text inserted. Depending on which line you are on, I think the cursoring can be offset by one or two positions, which is interesting and I suspect may have to do with the factors of how the line breaks are calculated in relation to the cursoring, but it's just a hunch for me.
in reply to Tamas G

Or text wrapping. That's probably a separate issue though. I know it behaves a bit strangely when you try to focus a user mention in discord but like, it would. It's a button in an edit field.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Andre Louis

@twynn It's really no different to any other site - you need to create an account, but that only requires an email address (and creating a password).

It's just comments here will get lost and people fixing the problem will only look at the issue itself.

in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess @twynn Yeah with respect, that is bullsh**. Reporting an issue on GitHub requires a bunch of extra steps, including:

- Navigating to the right repository;
- Finding the new isue button;
- Picking the correct issue type;
- Figuring out the issue creation interface;
- Filling out the issue template which involves figuring out what bits can be removed and what bits can't be;
- providing logs/other reproduction evidence.

While it is absolutely true that all of this is possible and for a lot of folks not all that hard, it is also true that for a significant amount of users this is way, way more than they want to bother with. I don't have a solution to this, perhaps a UI for users to report issues from within NVDA might lower the entry threshold, but let's not be dismissive about the complexities of filing/interacting with GitHub issues here

in reply to Florian

This explanation is already complicated. With respect, you guys need a simpler way of bug reporting. Especially with the amount of people who use NVDA. Not everyone is going to bother creating a github account. It also goes from the fact that, github is complicated for most people who don't have knowledge of how a lot of things work. Github is complicated even for some of us who know how to report bugs. Let's just be realistic. It might've worked before, but it's not going to work that well nowadays.
in reply to Мира🇧🇬🇭🇺

@tardis @zersiax @NVAccess @twynn yeah, I think the cognative load to use GitHub is quite high if you are not coming from the dev space and know some of it already. I get that this is just a comment on an issue and you are amazing for pre-creating it at 17360, but for someone to go through account creation and profile config just to add a single comment is a bit too much. And yeah, sadly a good solution will probably be harder to implement.
in reply to Florian

@zersiax In fairness, 90% of that is NOT true IN THIS CASE given my suggestion to Andre to look on GitHubt was AFTER I had created an issue with the details he provided, and I included a direct link to the issue.

I'm not arguing that GitHub is the easiest site for everyone to use - but in this case, I did do most of the work.

The reason for encouraging people to use GitHub is that is where the developers are - the ones who fix issues. If they have a question, they won't find you here to ask.

in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess You still need a GitHub account to begin with, which a lot of non-developers quite simply have no use for whatsoever apart from meeting NVDA in the middle, you need to work how the interface works which has like 1000 things in it that the average non-developer isn't going to need/use, find your way to the correct issue which at times is easy if you're given a direct link but at times really isn't, etc.
GitHub's great for developers and open-source enthusiasts. You're not dealing with developers. You're dealing with end users who in no way agreed, nor want, to help you develop a tool they need to get work done. You're dealing with people who are happy they got a free alternative to a 1000-dollar+ product that nevertheless needs to work exactly like they want it to, and that's not a fair hand, but it's the one you're dealt. So yes, you did most of the work, but the remaining work is going to make users not bother because you're asking plumbers to sign up for MIT
in reply to Florian

It's not like reporting bugs against most paid products is any better. Try reporting a bug against an Apple product, for example. Even assuming you manage it, you have the added advantage there that it'll go into a void and you'll never know whether there was any progress on it. Users aren't required to comment on GitHub. They just shouldn't necessarily expect any progress on bugs they report if they don't. There aren't staff paid to spend hours every day making sure comments from 5000 different places end up somewhere they can be actionable.
This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Florian

@zersiax @NVAccess Well put. I wonder how many people want to raise an issue but don't because of dealing with GitHub.
in reply to Kara Goldfinch

@zersiax @KaraLG84 @NVAccess Sure, but those same people will happily figure out (and create accounts for) Facebook, Instagram, some random forum, Reddit, shopping site or whatever which is likely far less accessible. And that's entirely their prerogative. It's all a matter of priorities and that's fine.Some of the process described here is also inaccurate. There's a link to the NVDA GitHub repo in quite a lot of places, so the user doesn't have to find the repository. Users are often provided direct links to the new bug form or the issue they are interested in.
in reply to Jamie Teh

@jcsteh @KaraLG84 @NVAccess I thik forums, shopping sites etc. have far more of a ROI for the regular user, though. Forums have friends on them, reddit is a longterm thing that they can use for a whole bunch of different types of discussion, shopping sites are for buying stuff. Github ... is jsut because some developer doesn't want to meet them halfway and insists on having users make this account for maybe the one specific issue they're wanting to report/weigh in on that they may never ever need again afterwards. Not saying that never happens anywhere else but it does up the friction by a good bit
in reply to Florian

@zersiax @KaraLG84 @NVAccess I totally agree the ROI is likely lower, which is why I said it's all a matter of priorities. Maybe it just doesn't matter enough to the user to have their issue reported, and that's totally fine; that's their choice.
If we were talking about a paid product here, I might agree that it's reasonable for users to be met where they are: email, social media, whatever. If that's important to paying customers, you could have a dedicated person paid to do just that: maintain various support channels and make sure things get to the right place. But we're not talking about a paid product. Part of the expectation when you aren't paying for something should be that you don't get some of these niceties. We still want a way for users to report problems, sure, but they might have to go to just a little more effort to do that if it really matters to them.
in reply to Jamie Teh

@jcsteh @zersiax @KaraLG84 Also worth mentioning that we DO meet users where they are. I did create the issue which started this thread. I recommended the user subscribe to it on GitHub in case there were any follow up questions etc, but I regularly create issues from emailed questions, social media posts etc. Try emailing Google and asking them to file an issue for you on one of their products....
in reply to NV Access

That's true. Every time I mention NVAccess to complain, no matter how frustrated and uncharitable I might be, whoever is behind this account always replies and, if it's something that should be tracked, they make an issue for me and send me the link.
This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Florian

@zersiax @jcsteh @KaraLG84 Whatever reporting system we used would almost certainly involve the user creating an account. Try reporting an issue against Windows, or Chrome, Firefox, any other piece of software and you generally need to have it create an account on often something which is unique to that product. Ok you may not use GitHub for anything but NVDA, but it's no harder to use than anything else and it IS accessible.
in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess @zersiax @jcsteh @KaraLG84 I'm sorry, but I echo Florian. average user does not care/does not have the technical knowledge to work around github. Hell, I consider myself a fairly technical user, and I find submitting issues on github annoying at best. With things like jaws, all they have to do is send an email. Now, I know that would not work with NVAccess, but something simpler would benifit the screen reader tremendously.
in reply to Yadiel Sotomayor

@NVAccess @zersiax @jcsteh @KaraLG84 A huge reason why JAWS is still very much the default in affluent countries is how technical NVDA and its documentation tends to be. Especially for new users. Every student I have worked with mentions that. There is no doubt NVDA is superior in many ways, but until NVDA becomes more approachable, it will mainly be used by highly technical people, or those who do not have any other choice.
in reply to Yadiel Sotomayor

@ysotomayor @zersiax @jcsteh @KaraLG84 That is feedback I have not heard previously! Our Basic Training for NVDA tends to be highly praised for how readable and well structured it is. We have also recently included a quick start guide in the use guide and as previously mentioned, we will create issues if you email or message us (and I'm engaged in this thread). I'm really not sure what more you want us to do to be approachable and easy to contact? (Genuine question)
in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess @zersiax @jcsteh @KaraLG84 wow, what a huge thread this has turned into.

The cool new trend in open source software is private Discord servers. GitHub is public and searchable - you can even add a thumbs up to an issue.

As a developer, I prefer to get bugs handled by a customer service team and feature requests handled by the sales and product teams. I would very much like to not ask my users any questions.

That just goes to show 1. GitHub isn’t ideal for anybody and 2. other systems have their own problems, not the least of which are accessibility and the impact of layers between users and developers.

For what it’s worth, I know I could call NV Access for support at a pretty reasonable rate. If somebody has a problem and talks about it on here, another user may take the initiative and replicate and report it. There are also mailing lists.

We can, at the same time, recognize that there are constraints that make GitHub the least bad option for NV Access, from a customer support side, and that it’s neither an insurmountable obstacle nor the only option to get support.

in reply to Florian

@zersiax I agree to that. I am a Dev myself but rarely fill Issues on github because i am to worried to do things wrong. Once I tried filling an Issue the Project emediately closed it without a good Explanation, just throwing Keywords at me. @NVAccess @FreakyFwoof @twynn
in reply to Svenja

@svenja NVDA? Or another project? If you can give me a link, a number, your GitHub username or anything I can use to find your issue, I'd be happy to have a look and work out what may have happened?
in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess its another Project, don't worry, I just wanted to say its not that easy. If you are interested I can send you the Link nevertheless :-)
in reply to Svenja

@svenja Ah no problem. You may get grumbled at for an NVDA issue which doesn't follow the template, but usually a genuine issue will be accepted and the issue wording will be fixed up if needed.




#time please boost far and wide, thanks

  • year-round standard time (67%, 867 votes)
  • year-round daylight saving time (22%, 294 votes)
  • keep switching back and forth (9%, 128 votes)
1289 voters. Poll end: 2 days ago

#time


When the world gets a bit too much for you, play more music, listen to more music. Just get lost in that for a while.

reshared this



You know you’ve really messed up the spelling of a word when even spellcheck can’t figure out what you were trying to spell out.


Who will win?

  • the vacuum cleaner (89%, 33 votes)
  • the speakers playing while I vacuum (10%, 4 votes)
37 voters. Poll end: 2 days ago

in reply to Federico Mena Quintero

@nekohayo I tend to pause everything when I use cutting tools. I don't want lose fingers with the table saw.

in reply to SuspiciousDuck

Evidentne rovnaká firma ako to bolo pri falošnom webe o Korčokovi. A evidentne už mali túto doménu pripravenú dosť dlho. Autor sa ale bude určite iba zase vyhovárať, že s tým nič nemá a jeho firma bola zneužitá, rovnako ako to robil ohľadom jeho prvého webu.
This entry was edited (3 days ago)


#Synology #NAS users: If you use Synology’s Photos app, read about this critical vulnerability. infosec.exchange/@kimzetter/11…


apparently toy capsule machines run about $100 🤔
in reply to aeva

i'm tempted to buy one and fill it up with art and weird stuff and set it up in my living room and encourage guests to take a few and play it up like it's a magic capsule machine that periodically refills itself with new and exciting mysteries
in reply to aeva

dumb conceptual art idea

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in reply to victor tsaran

@vick21 You'd still have to charge them up on the regular, so they'd die at random times. Personally wouldn't bother. These are Behringer XM8500 dynamics connected to a Raspberry Pi.
in reply to Andre Louis

I guess, my issue is that I cannot make these mics stationary at the moment, so would love an opportunity to remove / install them at will.


#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid today brought you 16 updated apps, but also 2 apps were removed:

* DiviDoc contains a self-updater, and its author did not respond to our issue
* URL to PDF was rebranded to WebCapture more than a month ago, so the "old" app was removed

Further, several more apps could be confirmed as #reproducibleBuilds – bringing their total number here up to 315 (or relative: 26.2%).

Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with the #IzzyOnDroid repo :awesome:

in reply to IzzyOnDroid ✅

Re DiviDoc ... You commented on an old closed issue instead of opening a new dedicated one:

github.com/Armand31/Dividoc/is…

Whether or not the author cares I can't say but for most projects that is a good way to go unaddressed. Also for the sake of every other potential user checking out known issues...

in reply to Caleb Maclennan

@alerque Yes, I commented on the issue that introduced this, Caleb. And I've pinged the author explicitly, twice even. Apart from that, the project has not seen any commit since 2/2023, and Armand seems "gone" since June. So chances of this being addressed are rather low to non-existent.

Should it be addressed later, the app can easily be re-established, metadata have been archived and not deleted.



For many the Internet is Google. But Google profits massively from the data you share. The time has come to stop this unlimited data mining. That's why we are building Tuta. We do not track, log or share your information. And the best: No Ads.🥰🥰🥰
in reply to Tuta

you are right . But , unfortunately Big G has a lot of bots inside phones. Google hss stored anything about us . Only mode is a rooted device. Congratulations for last update on Tuta. Mail and Calendar.
in reply to Tuta

(1/?)

@Tutanota
> That's why we are building Tuta. We do not track, log or share your information. And the best: No Ads

Great stuff. Will you be implementing AutoCrypt, so people using Tuta can send encrypted email to people using other email services and apps, which also support the standard?

github.com/tutao/tutanota/issu…

Having to use Tuta's clients to access Tuta mail is pretty much the only thing that's been holding me back from using the service.

@Decentralize



What does one do with a new cotton t-shirt that has a big rectangle of vinyl print on the front... making it unwearable? Straight up cut it into rags?
in reply to Federico Mena Quintero

A) Is vinyl print solid color?
B) Does it have text/images on it?

If "A", take a Pilot marker and handwrite something funny.
If "B", yeah, cut it into rags.



Exceptionally frustrated

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in reply to Stephanie Appleby

Exceptionally frustrated

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uspol

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in reply to Blake C. Stacey

uspol

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Spotted on an evening walk on an isolated beach in Aotearoa #NewZealand

A small human (5?) holding up a kite so her older brother can get it in the air. She's an expert holder, picking it up every time it falls on the sand. The patience and optimism that it'll fly eventually seems infinite.

A man (30s?) with a thoughtful aspect pushing a wheelbarrow down to the water line. He's got all the gear for a perfect few hours fishing. A while later he's spotted in a deck chair next to a low table with a picnic on it while waiting for a catch.

A small group of young humans directed by a man (40s?) in setting up a sand-drawn rugby pitch. He's wearing a bucket hat and has the air of a dad on a mighty mission. Within minutes he has teams sorted and is running up and down the sand umpiring. This is serious business

Two grey haired naturists walking along the treeline on a quiet patch of the beach. From a distance they look like two tranquil, rather pink wild creatures happily holding hands as one of them points out different cloud formations crossing the skyline.

A couple of women (20s?) smooching while standing in ankle deep water. They pause to take a selfie and then one abruptly stoops and splashes the other. Shrieking, chasing and more smooching to follow.

Any typos spotted in this post are lost after being locked in overnight after the sunset gates were closed at this beach. If spotted give them a drink of water and a ride to the nearest town. They will appreciate breakfast.



Hey #openstreetmap people, i need your help again.
I'm using Overpass Turbo for the first time and struggling with a query that should be simple.
I've checked various help files but can't find anything.
I just want to show roads that have no speed limit. (So i know to go and fix that).

Something like:
nwr["highway"]["maxspeed"=null]

in reply to Simon Hobeck

thus should do the trick as well openstreetmap.org/user/Branko%…
in reply to Joost Schouppe

@joost_schouppe thanks, this is useful and essentially what I was looking for with Overpass.
I currently prefer MapComplete simply because I can quickly fix any missing values rather than jump between browser tabs.
Once I've completed the gaps, maybe then I can review older inputs.