I really shouldn't subtoot, but... but...

Reading some AI criticism. I have my divergences with it, but that's neither here nor there.

But someone appealed to Searle. The substrate is magic Searle. The "it's implausible that a system may do something if I can't imagine it" Searle. The "computers do simulated addition" Searle.

Really?

It's fine to dislike AI (whether the entire research programme or the current incarnation that has taken it over by synecdoche) but because brains are made of meat and meat is magic? Seriously?

Sunday reading: The Right Wants a Reichstag Fire

I wrote about the murder of Charlie Kirk, political violence in the United States, and the Trumpists’ desire to find a pretext for purges and mass arrests.

This week’s piece:

thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/th…

The Right Wants a Reichstag Fire

The military patrolling in the streets, an assassination, and a movement longing for escalation. America is teetering on the brink

^{Thomas Zimmer (Democracy Americana)}

Deshalb nehme ich jedes Semester den Stress auf mich, mir mein #Semesterticket als Plastikkarte zu erkämpfen 🤷🏻‍♀️ (ok, nicht nur deshalb, aber auch).

rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2025…

Es ist wirklich ein Trauerspiel, was sich #BVG und #SBahn da erlauben. Aber ist in Zeiten von #Digitalisierungswahn ja nicht neues, dass #Digitalisierung (v.a. in Kombination mit #Digitalisierungszwang) meist nichts anderes heißt, als Arbeit und Verantwortung auf Nutzer_innen/Kund_innen/Patient_innen etc. abzuwälzen.
Und das "Argument" mit der unzumutbaren Ausweiskontrolle für Kontros ist an Lächerlichkeit kaum zu überbieten. Fast 2 Jahrzehnte lang wurden Semestertickets genau so kontrolliert, Papier/Plastikkarte + Lichtbildausweis.

Das alles ließe sich vermeiden (und unterm Strich vermutlich auch 'ne Menge Kosten und Folgekosten sparen), wenn wir den #ÖPNV endlich Schritt für Schritt zu einer kostenfreien echten Alternative aus- und umbauen würden, echte #Daseinsvorsorge halt.

Warum Kunden von BVG und S-Bahn ohne Handy-Empfang Strafen drohen können

Ein Student wird in der Berliner U-Bahn kontrolliert. Sein Handy hat keinen Empfang, deshalb zeigt er einen Screenshot seines Tickets, später auch das Ticket in der App. Trotzdem wird er bestraft - zurecht, sagt die BVG. Von Klaas-Wilhelm Brandenburg

^www.rbb24.de

An elderly couple was on a flight to Hawaii, celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary—a golden getaway they'd dreamed of for years. Everything was smooth… until the captain's voice came over the intercom:

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have an emergency. All engines have failed. We’re making an emergency landing on a small island below. We should survive the landing—but there’s a chance we may never be found and could be stranded here indefinitely.”

With remarkable skill, the pilots guided the plane down safely onto a remote, deserted beach. Passengers disembarked, shaken but alive.

As the couple sat in the sand, catching their breath, the husband turned to his wife and asked quietly,
“Did you pay the car loan before we left?”

She shook her head. “No… I meant to, but I didn’t get around to it.”

“What about the credit card bill?”

“Oh no… I forgot that one too.”

“And the hospital bill from last month?”

Her eyes widened. “I didn’t pay that either!”

Without a word, he suddenly threw his arms around her, lifting her into the air with the kind of joy he hadn’t shown in decades.

She laughed in surprise. “What are you doing? We just crash-landed in the middle of nowhere!”

He beamed.
“I’m thrilled! If we owe all that money, trust me—they’ll definitely come looking for us.”

New germinating idea: Accessibility Excellence. Now, I'm sure people like @JonathanMosen have made approximately 9001 podcast episodes about this, but in the wake of Google's own AI gallery app, which lets people use AI models offline on their phone including image description and audio transcription, released with no accessibility, I think we need to converge as a community on an idea of accessibility excellence. We need to dismiss ads of a company that seeks to prop us up to show how their stuff is accessible, even though there is clearly a systemic issue of inaccessibility in the company. Gemini on iOS is more accessible than Gemini on Android. TalkBack still doesn't have basic screen reader features like a pronunciation dictionary and support for all features on even older Braille displays like the Braille Edge. Google Play Books does not automatically scroll pages while reading a book, like Apple Books, Kindle, and many other book reading apps on iOS do. Even Kindle on Android does this, but Google's own app doesn't. Gmail on Android has no way to navigate between messages in a conversation or thread, while Apple's Mail app can, making reading threads of email on iOS fast and easy. There is no way on Android to have TalkBack suspend touch interaction in apps, so gamers still have to turn off the screen reader to play accessible games. Apple users haven't had to do that in years. Even though there are tags on the Play Store for apps accessible with TalkBack, the idea has fallen by the wayside like so many other accessibility ideas that Google forgot and Apple has just embarked upon with accessibility labels. These aren't vibes, or subjective feelings. Like I said in my most recent Accessible Android article, how can we expect small companies or indie developers to make their apps accessible, when we can't get Google to listen to us and take us seriously? We need to take each others' accessibility concerns seriously, especially for Braille. Many people who are blind use Android, yes. Many people like it. And that's okay. But it could, and should, be so much better. There should be competition between these company's accessibility departments, not a kind of sluggish, aimless ambling around in concentric circles by one while the other presses ahead. Yes, TalkBack's Gemini AI descriptions are great, and when I use my Android phone, it's a very attractive feature. Perhaps next year VoiceOver will get something like it.

We shouldn't give any of these huge corporations an inch of duct tape accessibility, because once it's done, they'll build upon that poor foundation, and the whole structure will be so much less effective than it needs to be. Accessibility should be solid, no matter what company does it. But if a screen reader comes with a device, and is made by the company that makes the OS, there's no excuse for rickety accessibility.

Ai Edge Gallery Accessibility Bug Report: github.com/google-ai-edge/gall…

Google's Pixel 10 Accessibility Article: store.google.com/intl/en/ideas…

#accessibility #blind #google #technology #tech #android

Accessibility Feedback for EdgeGallery Application

Hello, Thank you for this exciting work. However, I recently installed the EdgeGallery application, and my Talkback screen reader is unable to correctly recognize the application's functions. Even ...

^{inspector3535 (GitHub)}