Earlier this year, someone bought me some gorgeous bath bombs from Lush, and having decided to by myself some more, I've discovered that in January they renamed three of their bath bombs to "Diversity", "Equity", and "Inclusion", in protest against Trump's Executive Order.
Did you know your MacBook has a sensor that knows the exact angle of the screen hinge?
It’s not exposed as a public API, but I figured out a way to read it and make it sound like an old wooden door.
Our high tech proprietary nanotechnology lens coating has been tested to be compatible with wiping it with a halfway clean t-shirt. For best result use a clean t-shirt on our camera lenses.
It's kinda funny, but it's real: consider a modern prescription glasses with anti-glare and self-adjusting (tinting) lenses, say by Zeiss. You get out of a ACed cooled car and they get fogged. At best you have a handkerchief, at worst - only what's on you.
Слышу голос из прекрасного далёка, Голос утренний в серебряной росе: Он зовёт меня на битву Рагнарёка, Будет битва, и на ней полягут все!
Где Гарм лает громко, И стелется позёмка, И виден издалёка Корабль мертвецов, С горящего востока Спешу на голос рога, На битву Рагнарёка Во имя праотцов!
Цікаво, що буде з українським будинком після того, як з нього знімуть риштування війни. Оптимістично припустимо, що це все-таки колись трапиться. Поки що має...
ok, going through my followers here, i don't need 14 year old kids following me. instant block on them ones. I'm not being funny but if your 14 you don't need to be interacting with a 37 year old man. creepy in my view.
Yeah, but... Were you on social media all the time? These kids today are. They are almost zombified. I didn't start using social media without supervision until I was 16/17, until then, family knew my paswords.
Neither did mine, but they did worry about the safety of the internet, especially because I am multilingual, and so they did not understand a lot of things that were not in our language, there was almost nothing back then, to add to it.
@cachondo @tardis When I was 13 I went on newsgroups and made a tit of myself in front of people who were much older and wiser than me. Quite a lot of whom I now follow on Mastodon. I learnt a lot from them.
Oh, facebook makes you want to cringe at them, nasty stuff. I don't use it, but I keep it because family and what not. I post the occasional rant, but accessibility is broken.
@andrew @tardis the problem with saying that things were different back then is that things were different back then in every other era, too. When adults use the 'it was different in my day' formula, they're not considering that the now they're in is also the now the young people are in. Just because it's not the now of their youth there's this perception it can't be the now of anyone else's, either.
Ya, I don't think kids should be on social media, and that without supervision. Maybe my family was more controlling, maybe I just have unresolved passed, but I don't think, especially in today's times, that being on social media at a young age is safe.
Had a shittily busy weekend, probably as per for the foreseeable with baby on the way but an utterly avoidable second run to Bristol was not on the cards. Torrential rain made the journey both less comfortable and more dangerous. Picked up a bit of a tummy bug from somewhere.
Ouch feel better. You all ready for baby? We're more or less done, though the car seat is still not installed, the fiance has been on leave for 2+ weeks already.
A second full sized crib? You having twins? We have the mini crib all set up, there was quite a bit we did not need as we still had it since our daughter just turned 4. Also the sibling in law and their spouse have a 10 month old, and one of the fiance's friends has a 6 month old, so we have resources for hand me, downs.
První zářijová #birellovka Jen jsem v zatáčce potkal pitomce co jel jak blázen v protisměru. Bylo to fakt o centimetry, být tam svodidla neměl bych kam uhnout. Fakt nechápu, debil jeden.
@aikencz To taky nechápu, to je i u nás. Sice cyklostezka, ale jezdí tam i děti a pak jedou silničkáři v balíku naplno, protože je tam segment na Stravě Je to v lidech no. 🤷
Tady se asi projevil i ten stádní efekt. Podobně třeba stádo chodců na úzkém chodníku taky zhusta nemá chuť uhýbat protijdoucímu chodci. Nebo když na silnici začne pomalou kolonu předjíždět jeden, přidávají se další, aniž by vůbec viděli dopředu a měli přehled o situaci.
@nomad Jo, takové znám. Třeba u nás je jeden chodník oficiálně cyklostezkou, protože dotace tehdy byly akorát na cyklostezky 😉
Nejlepší je ale "mrzačící zařízení" na konci. Cyklista je buď zlikvidován tím zařízením, nebo před ním seskočí do vozovky, kde ho sejme projíždějící auto. Leda by tedy zastavil nebo hodně zpomalil 🙃
Hlavně, že jsi v pořádku. Za tento rok jsem takových dementů potkal nespočet. Já si dneska nedal #birellovka ale k pštrosí klobáse na oběd jsem si dal bezinkovou limču a malé pivo, takže jsem si udělal takový radler.
Child B: "Why are people happier the smaller [younger] they are?" Child A: "Because everything looks so much bigger to them. Biscuits are huge, cookies are like mountains! A bread roll or a slice of cake is massive. If you're big all those things are so much smaller, and you get less."
I've only been online for 15 minutes and seen at least 3 blind people putting video's of their emergency alert recordings up for other people to listen to. I have not, as yet, heard any screen reader say the welsh bit properly.
The fact that our government have asked us to "keep our cool" during this says all you need to worry about, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm looking for an intersection that might not exist, but if it does I'd be excited.
I already know: - People study interventions for ecological thinking: e.g., increasing climate awareness, increasing climate action - People do work on climate-aware computing, green software
Question for my #blind followers: Would you be interested in buying, and if so, how much would you be willing to pay, for a screenless Linux-based computer with Braille keyboard and TTS output, like the BT Speak (blazietech.com/bt-speak-pro), but with these distinguishing features:
- Actually open-source software - RK3588 SoC (4 performance cores, 4 low-power cores) - Faster and more robust software updates - Option to boot from SD card (full-sized), for fearless OS tinkering
- Hopefully better power management because of the RK3588's low-power cores (the Pi CM4 uses only performance cores) - More seamless combination of traditional and GUI modes, e.g. shared clipboard, through a custom Wayland-based shell
This isn't related to my company Pneuma Solutions, just personal daydreaming about a project I want to do sometime. And I don't have time to actually start on it in earnest yet. So just gauging interest.
@clv0 I've read a few times now that the cost of importing the BT Speak is a problem. If I can actually afford to do this project at some point, I'd strongly consider releasing the hardware designs as open source so local companies could manufacture them locally as long as they can import the parts.
To be clear, I'm not an electrical or mechanical engineer, so I'd have to hire someone to design the board and case. My contribution would be the software side. I'd probably want to reduce the cost and risks of board design by using a system-on-module (SoM) for the SoC, RAM, and maybe WiFi, though that would increase the per-unit cost.
I think I'd rather either have qwerty input, because BRLTTY can only do computer Braille anyway, or like, qwerty but with a Braille mode where you can use the home row as Braille input. If that makes sense. One of the main issues I found when using the BT Speak is that it's portable, but when I take it places, I don't want the TTS being all loud and distracting others. I guess a headphone jack or really good Bluetooth support would help. Or, the ability to drive the whole thing from a Braille display.
@pixelate I'm way more proficient with QWERTY myself. And there's a lot to like about it; a case with a reasonably sized QWERTY keyboard would be bigger, meaning more room for the main board and heatsink for passive cooling. I just wonder how much demand there is for the smaller size enabled by the Braille keyboard.
@mcourcel @pixelate For me, and this is from someone who was seriously desperate for a 3.5 MM jack, USB c is making it much easier to do without it. There are USB to hearing aid bridges now, if you want a 3.5 jack, you can have it with a cable rather than with a box, and connection just isn't a problem anymore. Loss of sound doesn't happen often enough to make a mess.
@mcourcel If I only did Braille or QWERTY for the first model, which one would you want? A screenless device with a reasonably sized QWERTY keyboard could still be smaller than a mainstream laptop with a screen and touchpad, but not as small as something like the BT Speak with its Braille keyboard.
I like small, so would go for the braille keyboard, but a nice and quiet keyboard. But I am torn, as you say about the room you gain with a qwerty keyboard. That would giv eyou more room for creativity. I have seen some really small qwerty keyboards, so it may be doable.
@mcourcel On price, there are so many factors that go into that that it would be irresponsible for me to make public guesses about what the price would be. One thing I'll say though is that I want the device to exist and be affordable more than I want to make money off it, so I'd include a low margin in my price calculations.
@mcourcel @pixelate It would be interesting to base it on a mainstream SBC. Given the reduction in cost, I would be willing to compromise on a BT or USB keyboard, whether braille or QWERTY. It wouldn't be one device, but it would save huge amounts in manufacturing and some of that can be passed on to the consumer.
@techsinger Once you factor in the need for a battery and charging circuitry, I'm not sure how much one would gain from using an off-the-shelf SBC as opposed to a system-on-module (SoM). I definitely plan to use a SoM, and there are a couple of such options for the RK3588 chip, to reduce board design cost and risks.
I definitely think using the RK3588 would be a good idea for performance and power efficiency, although I wonder if a device as small as the BT Speak could be made with it since when people have asked Blazie about making a BT Speak based on the Raspberry Pi CM5 the BT Braille uses instead of the CM4, they said that they would need to make the device bigger for better cooling and battery I think it was. By the way the speed and robustness of the software update process has been improved with the September BT Speak update, and I would think you could boot from a micro SD card (although not full-sized and the Raspberry Pi 4 SD card reader is pretty slow), although I haven't tried doing that. But the RK3588 seems like the fastest ARM CPU that has been put on an SBC right now and is significantly better than the CM4 and even the CM5, so that would be nice. Price is hard to judge for me because for a while I was convinced I wouldn't buy a BT Speak because it was too expensive and then when I went to the convention the prospect of an open Linux computer in a small device with a Braille keyboard was so tempting for me that I got it. But if this device was more expensive than the BT Speak it would become even harder to justify considering the price of getting a mainstream SBC, a USB battery, and a Braille keyboard like the Orbit Writer. The form factor of everything in one device is definitely appealing though but there is a point when it’s not worth it anymore; where that point is is hard to judge though.
Regarding a QWERTY device, I think the bigger you make it, the more comparable it gets to a full laptop. And if you have a QWERTY device based on the RK3588, and the Optima comes out which will be based on the Framework and be a laptop without a screen and a Braille display below the keyboard, I would definitely go for the Optima because at that point the Optima probably wouldn't be any less portable and the Intel Core or Ryzen processors would be significantly more powerful but still have good battery life. So I think a Braille keyboard is best for something like this because you can make it small and portable but still powerful for its size without competing with laptops.
An idea I've had is to make a Linux environment based on NixOS that could run on the BT Speak, the BT Braille, the Optima, and probably mainstream devices too like laptops and SBCs. Then I could write my own applications for something like a traditional mode (I haven't planned exactly how that would work yet but I would definitely want it to synchronize things like the clipboard with other environments), and provide easy access to other environments like the desktop, the shell, Emacs, Android apps on Waydroid, Windows in a VM on the more powerful devices, etc, which each environment having its screen reader set up for easy control with a Braille keyboard, common speech and Braille output through Speech Dispatcher or Spiel and BRLTTY, etc. Maybe you could focus on the software first and create something that can run on the BT Speak and then make a hardware board that could also run your Linux environment.
I was thinking this the entire time. It is so frustrating. The worst thing you can do is just give them no attention. This is what they want. You have to make it too boring for them. See it, report it, move right on.
Today's random throwback: in the 80's, the Polish TV broadcast programme which explained different scientific phenomena and technological advancements, often using imported TV material from abroad, e.g. the UK. Turns out there was an episode from the beginning of 1983 on blindness tech at the time. The whole thing is in Polish but contains sounds of the first electronic Braille typewriter manufactured in Poland, an experimental speech synthesizer, a system to read punchcards, a calculator beeping numbers in a Morse-like system and others. Would be fun to have an English translation and audiodescription for it some day. youtu.be/HQyFfMpWvRk #Blind #Accessiblity #Retro #Tech
Alfabet Braille'a, syntezator mowy, elektroniczny analizator obrazu i inne urządzenia pomocne niewidomymNr odcinka : 253Nr odcinka dostępnego: 134Data premie...
You could re-upload the video, and check the dub option. I watch Russian based videos of tourist going to North Korea, because they are the most breakthrough rules ability.
BlueZ profiles aren’t hot-potatoes you can toss around without planning. Since I had such a huge Pipewire headache this weekend, I wrote my findings into a Linux script. Please check it out and run it if you find it safe. It does everything: Installs pipewire, writes an espeakup override if you have it it'll be useful, stops LightDM from spawning its own socket and using the shared /tmp/pulse.soc instead, and just, works to move Bluetooth syncs from HFP to A2DP. Again, verify verify. I had GPT help me write it so I cannot give it 100% trust. eurpod.com/setup-pipewire-a11y… Looping in @fireborn and @storm, other Linux geeks, love you all, PLEASE weigh in. :D
this isn't totally in my field of knowledge, e.g. I use USB headset and nodm as my display manager, but it looks mostly fine. If it works, and you have sound on boot, this may not be helpful.
I noticed that you enable the user services for pipewire:
But unless I missed it linger isn't enabled for $TUSER so sound may not start at boot. If you have problems with no sound, try adding the following around where those services get enabled:
I updated the script. It is now 8 KB. It has a --h flag for help text, but essentially: You can choose to enable lingering or not, and if Espeakup as a service is not found, it's enabled for you. This is because the Espeakup.service does expect pipewire to be loaded by the user in that override, so it's sort of like, fake lingering, but per service. It's still not great for multi-user setups, which is why I didn't make lingering explicit, but it's still good for single users. In all cases, the shared socket will mean audio works anyway, hats off for that nice socket script.
ah, argh. you wanna know today? Upgrading pipewire from 1.2.X to 1.4.X for the LEAudio Bluetooth bits I wanted. Well well. Turns out, the Stormux script sets WirePlumber 0.4-style Lua tweaks. On WirePlumber 0.5 those are ignored, so BlueZ endpoints don’t come up until your full user session finishes and policy loads. O, M, G. Also disable seat monitoring so WirePlumber registers BlueZ endpoints without a logged-in seat. (This is the key for pre-login use.) But it's really not about the shared pulse socket. You would just need to move your “no suspend” ALSA tweak to wireplumber.conf.d rules. Oh, and the Bluetooth tweak. so: "cat > "$xdgPath/wireplumber/bluetooth.conf.d/50-autoconnect.conf" <<'EOF' # WirePlumber 0.5 bluez5.auto-connect = [ a2dp_sink hfp_hf hsp_hs ] bluez5.default.profile = "a2dp-sink" EOF
I updated this script: new commandline options appear! --no-linger Do not enable systemd lingering for the target user. --mask-lightdm-audio Mask LightDM's PipeWire/WirePlumber/Pulse bridges so the greeter *only* uses the shared /tmp/pulse.sock (use if you see BlueZ conflicts). Beyond this, some bug fixes! • Now, we check better whether ESpeakUp is installed. systemctl status returns non-zero if the unit isn’t active, which made the script print “not installed” even when the unit exists (or is momentarily restarting). We now go based on LoadState. • Use curl if present, fall back to wget. (Some minimal installs don’t have wget.) • Don’t hard-code X/Wayland display ":0" - (Broaden the espeakup override so it skips any display, not just :0.) • Keep the "prefer A2DP" restart tidy, the unit file is reloaded before restart and we don't yank out existing profiles or connections like in the first script. Enjoy! Link again: eurpod.com/setup-pipewire-a11y…
“There is indeed such a thing as a dumb question, and learning to ask the right questions may be the most valuable fruit of a good education.
Many essays on ChatGPT pose various questions to the software, but I want to pose one to the engineers developing these Large Language Models (LLMs) and to the enthusiastic adopters of this technology: What is the problem for which LLMs are the solution?”
I so wish I could write accessible desktop apps in Rust. I'm tired of debugging C++-specific bullshit, like a use after free in the wxFrame destructor. Where's the compiler that'll warn me about dangling pointers? I miss it!
@modulux And then you're locked to Windows, and that crate hasn't been touched in a couple years. I really really wish we had something like wxWidgets for Rust, but that'll likely never happen, so I'm just waiting for the day that Slint has perfect access kit integration.
Right, exactly. There's no good cross-platform solution. In theory, one day, Qt or gtk might work as well. So far I never managed to get anything working properly though. wx would be ideal, I agree.
If I remember correctly, gtk doesn't (yet) provide a11y information on windows. At least that seemed to be the conclusion when I tried to build against it and got nothing to work.
I recently saw somebody ask Is Fedora accessible now ? To which I want to say: yes! But this question does not really have a simple yes-or-no answer. There is lots of nuance to it. A better...
"Accessible recruitment is more than a policy - it’s a way to ensure that every candidate can perform at their best, and each role is filled by the person most capable of doing it." tetralogical.com/blog/2025/08/…
Accessible recruitment is more than a policy - it’s a way to ensure that every candidate can perform at their best, and each role is filled by the person most capable of doing it.
Les normes culturelles afghanes, qui interdisent tout contact physique entre les hommes et les femmes qui n'appartiennent pas à la même famille, ont poussé les secouristes majoritairement masculins à ne pas venir en aide aux femmes.
Jeden z umelcu si na Unreleased hodil lekce kytary. Bez meho pricineni. Coz me tesi zaprve proto, ze nase samoobsluha funguje a za druhe, ze ten nastroj lidi vyuzivaji kreativne.
Sem se kouknul borcovi na IG a tam toto. Jako wtf.
Loudly shouting at #Microsoft to stop forcing "AI" on #GitHub users might lead to some sort of success. Until the next shiny thing comes along.
I took stock, understood what is really happening, that you are accepting to be locked in to a walled garden that you do not control.
So I silently packed up my stuff a while ago and moved to a place and community that accepts, respects and defends my freedom. My repos have moved to #codeberg, I am running my own #forgejo instance and build runners.
I also moved to @Codeberg. But I was really shocked when I saw that Github has 97% of the public git forge market. It thought it'd be like 80%. 97% is total dominance. We have a lot of work to do.
@sesivany I think the main problem is that it is not easy to get code into GitHub, or actually any Git hosting platform/software, unless you have an account there.
The first thing I'd do is build bridges between the platforms to make it easy to pull code from any git hosting to any other git hosting.
Okay, I'm unsure of what to do. I have been unhappy about the way masto is managed, and how people flud local with replies. Poll: Should we merge this account with our plural, or not, or should we keep them separate? We just need some help, lovely people, and we'll appreciate you even more. That is not to say we don't appreciate you, but we will do even more of it. I love fedi, and go to social will be hard to host, hence the poll.
Dneska máme poslední den dovolené. Vyrazili jsme na vrch Hochwurzen, nahoru lanovkou a dolu tříkolkami 😎 Výhled z 1820 metrů je pořád krásný. S @hana #Dovolena #Hochwurzen #Alps #Nature #Mountains
Morning all, well, that’s one human drain of a person got rid of and they won’t be let back in this time! I’m up, had my breakfast and a good cup of tea, listened to some great music. I hope you have a lovely day!
Oof, that sounds like bleh. Seriously, sometimes people can be real big idiots, unaware of their actions. I'm here if you need someone to listen, or you know just a person you can always reach out too. And a hug for you. :)
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