this week I found out that when you start the Debian Linux instaler with speech, and it detects multiple soundcards, it cycles between them and you can press enter to choose the one that actually works. Most installers just pick a random soundcard and send speech through it. Maybe it picks the internal speakers, maybe it picks the digital output that has nothing hooked up to it. If you can't hear your machine, you'll have no idea the installer started, and good luck switching soundcards after that. As far as I know, the Windows installer certainly doesn't have a soundcard selection for narrator. This would never be a problem with Debian installations because it will just keep cycling through the soundcards until the speech becomes audible. I know we all love to hate on Linux accessibility, but sometimes the thought that goes into the design of the simplest things is really quite impressive. This is also very on-brand for Linux and I'm definitely here for it. At the time when this happened, I was on a call with Aira and had forgotten to turn up my speakers, so I know the machine displays a "Press enter to select device 1", "Press enter to select device 2..." prommpt, but I can't 100% confirm that the speech follows along. It seems like a safe assumption though, and at some point I'll do a proper test with multiple outputs and make a recording.
@vick21 When the installer first starts, you have to press s (and I think enter). That enables speech during the rest of the installation. Other than that, no.
Yep. I discovered that a few years ago. Also discovered, very much by accident, that it will automatically detect a Braille display, because I just happened to have one plugged in, and was very surprised to see it start displaying things.
@BorrisInABox I learned this from someone else who learned it by accident. Even though Narrator has support for Braille now, it sure doesn't work on the install and setup screens. So Linux wins again.
Things go from bad to worse for Elmo, the incels' favourite crush.
"French Tesla customers file lawsuit over brand becoming 'extreme-right' symbol. A group of Tesla customers in France are demanding that their lease contracts be terminated and legal costs be reimbursed over the "direct and concrete" damage suffered from the brand's association with Elon Musk's activities in the Trump administration and his support for far-right parties in Europe."
A group of Tesla customers in France are demanding that their lease contracts be terminated and legal costs be reimbursed over the "direct and concrete" damage suffered from the brand's association with Elon Musk's activities in the Trump administrat…
It's explicitly free of any "DEI" or similar discriminatory policies. The above is an excerpt of the README. Due to DEI being a wide arrangement of definitions, practices and policies: could you ou...
In May, we began preparing to port to Android 16 despite our most active senior developer responsible for leading OS development being unavailable (https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114359660453627718).
Předchozí toot, na který byla moje odpověď původně psána, mi zmizel pod rukama - její rychlé zjevení je způsobeno copypastem. Vlákno od GOS jsem četl už předtím. Srovnání užitečnosti Googlu a kurev je triviální, pokud si laskavý čtenář chce udělat důkaz, činí tak na vlastní náklady.
Já si sem a tam vzpomenu na tuhle starou zkušenost RNDr. Olšáka. Ten člověk má mnoho svých výstředností, ale můžeme říct, že tohle trefil. petr.olsak.net/zkusenost-gog.h…
@m4iler Jo, přesně – ať se to radši všechno pořádně vyladí. Jen mě teda trochu děsí, že chtějí vlastní zařízení. To by pro mě byla asi konečná… ale to je zatím hudba budoucnosti.
All the years I’ve spent playing casual #rpg mobile games, and I still haven’t managed to train autocorrect that spell books are a thing. When do I get personalized #ai again?
@RegGuy As far as I know they aren’t a thing. Though my next campaign is absolutely going to contain smell books now. A swell smell hell well spell book?
The Man in #Seat61 seems like a relic from a forgotten age of the #Internet.
Seat61.com is a genuinely useful website created by just one guy, a train travel enthusiast who has curated a vast array of information that will help anyone who would like to travel in #Europe by #train
He is not trying to sell you anything and there are no adverts (apart from a few affiliate ids).
His website has won various "best travel website" awards. Notably the last one was in 2012.
'It's terrifying': The Everest climbs putting Sherpas in danger
by Tulsi Rauniyar
"Long portrayed as "superhuman" guides and porters, Sherpas face many dangers in the mountains and are beginning to tell their side of the story. Are there ways to make their work safer?"
youtube.com/watch?v=baR4logaaO… Jimmy Kimmel Tells the Truth About What’s REALLY Happening in LA. I've never heard him so angry before. He's not doing comedy: he's doing truth.
Jimmy talks about what’s actually happening in Los Angeles right now for those who believe the city is some kind of totalitarian hellscape, protesters voicin...
Doma nastalo nasrání, páneček naznal ze je jaro a čas odchlupit 😇 To dilema...Voda ve vaně, šampon... Fuuuuuj. Ale zase 20 minut nepřetržitého drbání ÚPLNĚ VŠUDE... Aaaaach... Musel jsem vytáhnout těžký kalibr, SEDITA piškotky ❤️
The Document Foundation and LibreOffice support the international campaign @endof10 https://endof10.org/ The countdown has begun. On 14 October 2025, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10.
Absolutely! Looking forward to leading on a campaign around this here at the #UniversityOfYork with the newly renamed FOSS society.
We're a Google university (which I don't love) but it does mean that most people rely almost exclusively on their browser. Hoping to get the university sustainability and comms teams involved so we can show people that, contrary to what Microsoft tells them, they don't need to bin their laptop just yet! 💻
Updates on our progress @yordevs (Haven't sorted the rebranding yet 😔)
As a long time user of the LibreOffice Suite. I can say with enthusiasm that it is so MUCH better, faster, compatible, feature complete and end user friendly that there isn't any real reason to use anything else. I was a former Microsoft Retailer and Certified for all of their products, including their servers. Office just became so cumbersome, and then with their subscription model, an ongoing and costly expense.I switched and never looked back.
@vol4life8657 Well, it's been worked on for years: libreoffice.org/get-help/acces… – And last year TDF took on a full-time accessibility developer. But is there something specific you want?
The June 2025 update for the BT Speak is now available for all BT Speak owners. We have a new, streamlined menu system along with improvements to Braille support and other enhancements. Read the details here. blazietech.com/june-2025-updat… #BTSpeak
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.
Want to own Google Beam, the company’s futuristic video calling system? You might need a loan because it costs $24,999 for a single unit. pcmag.com/news/googles-futuris…
"Part of our task in the face of generative AI is to make an argument for the value of thinking – laboured, painful, frustrating thinking."
"[W]e also need to hold our institutions accountable. [...] university administrators are highly susceptible to the temptations of technology-driven downsizing, big tech donations, and the appearance of being on the cutting edge."
Edward Dunsworth Two approaches dominate discussion about how professors should handle generative “artificial intelligence” in the classroom: give up or give in. Give up. Faced with a powerful new …
Avoiding generative models is the rational and responsible thing to do – follow-up to “Trusting your own judgement on ‘AI’”: baldurbjarnason.com/2025/follo…
This is the age old question about whether a label should override content. That absolutely makes sense for buttons, links, etc., but it's never been quite as clear for containers like paragraphs, table cells, etc. where there can be some nasty consequences if the label completely overrides the content.
I ran strace on curl and noticed that it is doing a lot of very short reads, of exactly 5 bytes, followed by a larger read.
strace Before
recvfrom(4, "\27\3\3@\30", 5, 0, NULL, NULL) = 5
...
Anytime is a free and open-source podcast player app. It is designed to be simple and easy to use, whilst including more modern features such as chapters,
Corrected Subject: an Article From HowtoGeek About the Benefits of RSS Feeds: Why I Still Get My News and Alerts From a 25 Year Old Tool groups.io/g/tech-vi/message/94…
Just a reminder that J.K.Rowling has said that any money she gets from the HP franchise she sees as support of her trans-phobia and she WILL funnel said funds towards further anti-trans and TERF activism.
Supporting the HP franchise in any way, whether watching movies, buying merch, or being part of the new HP TV Show is explicity enabling and endorsing anti-trans and TERF activism. From: @xtaldave xtaldave.net/@xtaldave/1146637…
I feel slightly better about accidentally taking her out with my rucksack in Greenwich market now.
"Katherine Parkinson accepts Harry Potter role..."
https://www.thepinknews.
Přeloženo máme, tam by se maximálně doladily nějaké korekce. Namluvit nějakým co nejlepším mikrofonem do PC .. nevím odkud jsi, ale možná by se našel někdo v okolí s potřebnou technikou? Nevím, kde je místní třeba @Jan Sobotka, ale kdyby byl ochotnej, tak by to šlo možná udělat i v slušný kvalitě
📱 Switzerland is thinking about a drastic tightening of its surveillance law!
With the BÜPF revision, email providers could be forced to supply metadata to authorities in real time. Particularly affected: services that previously advertised strict data protection. End-to-end encryption remains protected, but your IP addresses, recipient data and locations would be monitored.
It's really harder and harder to understand why is #GNOME alienating itself more and more form the rest of the community. Looks like we'll end up with GTK only for GNOME and GNOME only for #Linux and #systemd. I have no problems with systemd in particular, but making it a hard requirement is a limiting factor.
@ebassi Hi, thanks for responding! I don't think anyone is against that, but is price for that having GNOME just for Linux/systemd? Am I wrong in assuming we'll end up with that?
the blog post explains how to cope with that, and if other platforms shipping GNOME had similar functionality, it would be easy to add; what's unacceptable is to let GNOME ship hacks that don't even get tested and can (and do) regress at any point. At least, if a downstream takes ownership of the hack with a patch, they can immediately fix it.
also: it's way too late to be surprised that Linux and systemd have the absolute majority of the market share; they get to dictate what kind of functionality is available, and other platforms need to adapt. We're not in the '80s/'90s any more, with a bunch of incompatible Unix versions all vying for dominance.
@ebassi I don't think anyone is surprised with systemd, I mean we are all using it, or majority at least. Although, I always thought of our ecosystem as one providing diversity and choice, not dominance. Maybe that's not viable down the line, and that's legit, you guys developing stuff know the best. If GNOME needs this kind of direction in order to be here, let it be. We'll see how that's gonna fly, though.
After some deliberation I decided to move my development stack from Windows to Linux.
I've been using windows for over 20 years and always loved it's backwards compatibility and stuff, but recently it has become borderline unusable and gets in the way of my work.
It took me like a single day to configure everything and it just works, and also works better than Windows too! I posted a thread of my reasoning and experience on BS (sorry):
Welcome to GUADEC 2025 GUADEC is the GNOME community’s largest conference, bringing together hundreds of users, contributors, community members, and enthusiastic supporters for a week of talks and workshops.
Couple of typos: - First paragraph: "then" should be "they" - Secure transport, first paragraph: first "have" should be "has" - Same Paragraph: "since" should be "for"
Apparently, if you have facebook or Instagram installed on your *Android* phone, Meta was able to track your browsing habits and link them to your real identity even if you never logged in on the web, used incognito mode or a VPN.
The more I learn about atmospheric chemistry, the more terrified and angry I am about satellite companies' blatant lack of consideration for how their actions will harm the atmosphere. I hope this gets a lot of press. Great work by a whole team of scientists, including @astrokiwi.bsky.social!
My takeaway: Satellite launches are undoing the recovery of the ozone layer that should be happening now that CFCs are banned. And this study doesn't even take into account metal deposition from reentries, which might be even worse!
When I teach climate change in my astro classes, I always give the recovery of the ozone layer as an example of how countries can work together to fix a giant problem (Montreal Protocol). I guess satellite companies are now destroying that too.
Apparently, if you have facebook or Instagram installed on your phone, #Meta was able to track your browsing habits and link them to your real identity even if you never logged in on the web, used incognito mode or a VPN. I hope Meta gets hit with every fine in the book.
)) @
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