Someday I want to implement a different kind of Rust UI toolkit. Rather than implement the whole stack, including widgets, text rendering, and 2D graphics rendering in pure, mostly cross-platform Rust, this would be a wrapper over classic platform-native widgets (yes, including Win32), like wxWidgets or SWT (the latter was better last time I checked, ~10 years ago). This Rust toolkit could have an API like Masonry (crates.io/crates/masonry), but it wouldn't render its own widgets like Masonry.
I'll be surprised if anyone is willing to fund that work, though. Aside from myself and the handful of blind developers writing applications using wx, I don't see a lot of developers specifically wanting this. Maybe it would win over the anti-bloat crowd though, at least, those who aren't opposed to using Rust in the first place.
Do any of my blind followers remember OtsJuke, now OtsAV? It's a program for automatically playing music with cross-fading, dynamic range compression, interspersed liners, etc., for DJs and radio stations. Some hobbyist blind Internet broadcasters used it in the early 2000s, when it was screen-reader-accessible (if only by accident) and not too expensive. It hasn't been accessible for a while now, but it always impressed me with how light and fast to start it was.
Even the Ots installer was a custom application. In striking contrast to the InstallShield installers of the day, it started instantly, with an opening sound effect, plus a sound effect for each transition between screens. Then the application itself also started instantly, with an opening sound effect, even on my 1999 laptop (in the early 2000s).
My long-time ambition is to someday develop a desktop app like _that_. I've never yet had the freedom to do that on the job, and maybe I never will.
I would want my application to be cross-platform though. As much as I'm settled into using WIndows as my primary OS, I have no desire to be unnecessarily tied to it.
I'm not ignorant of the downside of Ots's focus on optimization. In 2002, I stopped using OtsJuke because I wanted my music collection to be in Vorbis, but OtsJuke could only play MP3. Actually it played its own file format that IIUC was based on the MP3 encoding, but with a custom per-file header instead of per-frame headers. The cost of having that instant-starting self-contained executable was no plugin system.
OH yeah. Well, actually, you should know I remember it. I used it. I never knew what became of it. That was such great software; sad it went by way of inaccessibility.
@trendless because COVID vaccines won't be paid by the federal government anymore, Québec will recommend 75+ instead of 60+ next year due to their cost/efficiency calculation. Too expensive! Younger people don't die enough!
We're all going to need so much more healthcare later...
Debian contributors have been meeting around the world over the past few months to fix RC bugs for Debian 13 "trixie" in Bug Squashing Parties. Check the list of past BSPs at wiki.debian.org/BSP #Debian #Debian13 #trixie #BSP
TORSERV: Host a Static Website on the Dark Web in Under 1 Minute
"Hosting a Tor hidden service — also known as an onion site — typically requires in-depth technical skills and manual configuration. With TorServ, you can host a static website anonymously in seconds, without touching any config files."
This software deserves some attention. It could be useful for at-risk people who need to publish while protecting identity.
🆕 blog! “How long does it take to upgrade an eBook?”
The older I get, the more comfortable I become with complaining. Not merely moaning on social media, but writing a direct email to the perpetrator of some annoyance.
I'd purchased an eBook and was appalled by how crappy the accessibility was. If you don't know, modern ePub books are just HTML…
Now up on the OSHWA site! Our third Healthware Highlight exploring the ways that MakeGood INC is working with 3D printing and accessible design with folks with disabilities. They can do incredible things with the support of community and being engaged with person first design work! Check it out here: oshwa.org/announcements/health…
Substack’s extremist ecosystem is flourishing. “The Nazi push alert was only possible because of Substack’s continued commitment to not only hosting but actively promoting authoritarian, Nazi-sympathizing, and other bigoted forms of extremism.” theracket.news/p/substack-s-ex…
I don't care what people who I otherwise respect like Om Malik and Dana Blankenhorn say about network effects blah blah blah . It is wrong to be on a platform that openly allows hate speech. If the Nazi Party's newspaper paid you $USD1000 / month in 1939 to write an op-ed monthly would you do it? No. om.co/2025/08/03/the-why-of-su… is wrong. sorry not sorry Om et al!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not for the first time, the newsletter platform Substack is coming under criticism for hosting and now (accidentally) promoting Nazi content. Today, John Gruber of Daring Fireball is leading this c…
I really hate the framing of "content with which you fundamentally disagree." It's Nazis. It's not content, it's Nazis. I don't just disagree with it, it's Nazis. If we can't draw the line at fucking Nazis, I'm pretty sure there are no actual lessons history can teach us.
@poploser @roland also dislike Om’s analysis here because it sidesteps the most critical part. Peddling hate is lucrative — but it’s still peddling hate. Is evil only unacceptable when it’s unprofitable?
Love LibreOffice development? Want to turn your passion into a paid job? We are The Document Foundation (TDF), the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice.
😡 "A Canadian company is providing the muscle for a new Florida detention centre dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” — & the Canadian govt isn’t ruling out working with the security giant in the future. …
Quebec-based GardaWorld, which has reportedly been awarded a US$8-million contract for work on the U.S. detention site, has also been awarded > $100 million in Canadian government contracts since Carney won the Liberal leadership in March …"
“This wishy-washy stance when it comes to jaw-dropping cruelty tied to the U.S. is yet another stroke in an increasingly clear portrait: one of PM Mark Carney with his elbows firmly planted to his sides when it comes to big business.”
“This wishy-washy stance when it comes to jaw-dropping cruelty tied to the U.S. is yet another stroke in an increasingly clear portrait: one of PM Mark Carney with his elbows firmly planted to his sides when it comes to big business.”
Hardly a day goes by without President Donald Trump boasting about the record tariff revenue the US government has been collecting since he ratcheted up taxes on almost every imported good.
We at Tuta offer an end-to-end encrypted calendar alternative to Google. If you're interested in finding out more do take a look at our website tuta.com or feel free to ask here. 🔒
ICYMI: earlier this week I wrote a blog post disclosing my tech stack… arguing that anyone who writes about technology should be transparent about the tools they use.
TL;DR: I’m doing well on the software front. Hardware? Not so much: 🍎
Let's normalize sharing the tech we use - and the platforms we purposefully avoid. I'm sharing my tech stack in this post to let you judge for yourselves if I'm "walking the talk" when I discuss resistance to Big Tech.
We had the privilege to chat with Matthias Baenz, a seasoned tax lawyer about why secure communication is non-negotiable in the legal field, and why he chose Tuta to protect his clients’ confidentiality.
Netušil jsem, že Svijany dělají nealko. Jednu dobu dělali slušné pivo, ale údajně to šlo poslední dobou do kopru. Navíc majitel je babišonek. denikn.cz/644208/majitel-pivov…
Pivovar Svijany hlásí kvůli pandemii ztráty v desítkách milionů korun, jeho majitel Tomáš Kučera ale věří, že v dlouhodobém horizontu je to jen „malinkatá etapa“.
To mi řekla výčepní, ale možná se spletla. Protože mi nejdřív natočila klasické pivo. Zjistím zítra co tam mají. On myslím ani Permon nedělá nealko pivo.
Now that my one joke post about how there are only seven posts on LinkedIn has comfortably done better numbers than everything else I'd ever put on that godforsaken cringe factory of a website combined, I can only conclude that what people really want from LinkedIn is a momentary respite from LinkedIn.
There are only seven Linkedin posts:
“My pre-literate child accidentally microdosed on an adversity. Did they react like a normal human infant? No! They said something suspiciously adult. Here’s what it taught me about b2b sales.
it’s not its primary use, but LinkedIn is also baffingly bad to get eyeballs on your writings. You get more likes on your LinkedIn posts than visits coming from there, it’s purely performative appreciation.
Over the past 12 months I’ve had 49.2K visits on my website, and 299 came from LinkedIn. Post anything with “stoked to,” “celebrating,” or “starting an adventure” and you’re showered with empty likes.
It's frankly absurd, and I think - and I want to rope @grimalkina into discussions like this basically 100% of the time - that there's something deeply, pathologically _wrong_ with working cultures where people feel the least bit compelled seek out this kind of meager, hollow, empty-calorie high-fructose-corn-syrup relationship-microdosing version of human connection on a regular basis.
What nightmare working culture has people self-medicating on a hit of parasocial emoji?
my uneducated guess is that people want to get some form of recognition they don’t get at work (or elsewhere?) and treat LinkedIn praise as transactional. If I like their post, surely they will like mine?
There’s also the fact that your boss is in the room. They will see who and what you like, and what you write.
LinkedIn has the same vibe as the watercooler in the company of The All Seeing Eye or Sauron.
The fascinating part of the dynamic is that (1) your boss is in the room and (2) your HR department, because recruiters are paying for access to the data, can see who at your company is updating their profiles and CVs, and when.
It's pretty incredible, and no wonder people both feel like it's required to engage with them and desperate for escape.
Trotz prekärer Finanzlage organisierte die Gnome Stiftung ein Entwicklerinnen- und Entwicklertreffen in Italien, um über die Zukunft des Projektes zu beraten.
I sometimes think about text-to-speech in comparison to visual text rendering. For the latter, there's a whole suite of different solutions, from segmented LCDs (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmente…) to monospace bitmap fonts to proportional vector (e.g. TrueType) fonts. And somewhere in the current genAI boom, I'm sure someone is generating something that looks like handwriting. But in TTS, the industry largely jumped to generating human-sounding speech from human voices as soon as they could.
It seems to me that, from a technical point of view, good formant synthesis is the TTS analogue of modern proportional fonts. But I see why most of the world doesn't see it that way. Humanity had centuries of getting used to reading typeset text before computers came along. Listening to speech that's obviously synthetic has no such precedent.
What got me thinking about this is that doing text rendering on a microcontroller is commonplace. Maybe not using a full TrueType stack, but at least using proportional bitmap fonts. But to do TTS on a microcontroller, you have to use a technique that's broadly considered archaic.
The current preference for human-sounding TTS, except for blind power-users, is as if all text in a GUI were rendered using generative models that emulate handwriting. Maybe that would have happened in an alternate history where computers somehow came before typesetting.
as a sighted text to speech user, I find context dependent voices - be it deliberately synthetic or deliberately humanlike - roughly match my preferences for fonts. I want my code read cold and robotic, but comments comforting and soothing. It also makes it much easier to hear multiple voices at the same time.
@letoram Interesting. I guess another way of comparing TTS voices to fonts is that robotic voices are like monospace fonts while human-like voices are like proportional fonts.
I'll be honest, I didn't think I could get Hacktivate working on iPhone, but… 😎 It's really packed with fun cybersecurity challenges, and it's both enjoyable to play *and* enjoyable to build. I can't wait to share it with you all!
@nuno_nuno I'll be adding accessibility support for VoiceOver, Switch Control, Voice Control, Reduce Motion, and more, but – and this is a massive but – it will never be a great VoiceOver experience. Some tasks are things like "look through 500 lines of binary gibberish to find GPS coordinates at the end," and I don't think that can be exposed to VoiceOver in any meaningful way.
Well, I worked with helping to make experiences accessible. I can't say for now because I haven't hehe seen the game yet but when I do, I hope we can discuss it further.
Random pop song that just popped in my head: "Try" by Pink. youtube.com/watch?v=yTCDVfMz15… Not anything particularly special, just that a random phrase made me think of it, and I think it's a good song.
Official Video for "Try" by P!nkListen to P!nk: https://Pink.lnk.to/listenYDSubscribe to the official P!nk YouTube channel: https://Pink.lnk.to/subscribeYDWa...
400 years to Proxima Centauri means velocity of roughly 1% of c. To accelerate to that, then decelerate, takes energy on the order of 1-2% of the ship's rest mass.
Ship is 36 miles (50km) long.
So it obviously masses many gigatonnes (1 cubic kilometer of water—0.15 the density of steel—masses 1 billion tonnes). Conservatively this masses 10-100gt.
Fusion bomb yield is about 2% of the payload mass. Our current 10,000 H-bombs probably contain 1000kg of fuel.
@nyrath Upshot: I think this thing will take 100-1000 years of our current worldwide civilizational energy budget to propel.
And at the other end? Congratulations: a colony of 2400 people is at least 3 orders of magnitude too small to sustain a self-training technology base able to service an autonomous space colony. (Because resupply with finished products is impossible at that range.)
TLDR: magic wands or scientific breakthroughs required.
. It is wrong to be on a platform that openly allows hate speech. If the Nazi Party's newspaper paid you $USD1000 / month in 1939 to write an op-ed monthly would you do it? No. 
Fiona Ebner
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