Very excited to announce that @dinum is now a silver member of the Matrix Fdn to support the project backing Tchap, the secure msging app for the French gov. 🚀
Hoping this will encourage others as we start a Matrix for Public Sector working group at the Matrix Conf. 🚦
@aks it's improving, but not sustainable yet - the Foundation needs more members like DINUM to step up. youtu.be/UfbTkWKtaFk?list=PLl5… explains firsthand.
https://media.ccc.de/v/matrix-conf-2025-81434-the-matrix-org-foundation-updatesThis session will present the latest updates from the Foundation itself, and t...
It feels like the major tech companies have followed a Journey of discovering The Hardest Way Possible why quality assurance is so important, gradually ramped up quality assurance, dramatically improved the quality of their software, until the senior engineers who pushed for this retire, and then a guy who thinks he knows everything because he's read both "What They Teach You At Harvard Business School" and "What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School" says to himself "why are we paying for all this quality assurance? the quality is clearly fine, we don't need it!"
I was at a Schnauzer dog group meetup over the weekend and it was a little surprising to meet Giant Schnauzer owners who had no idea what toe cancer is.
And then before we left, I'm pretty sure I spotted toe cancer on another owner's dog. I urged them to get it checked immediately because if you don't amputate it's a death sentence as it will metastasize.
There's not a whole lot you can do about it, it's a type of skin cancer that seems prevalent in black coated dogs that have a blue-ish tint to their skin. The silver and black or pepper-and-salt Giants don't have it.
I'm also especially on edge right now because my last giant had a toe cancer and my current dog Betty had a nail break badly and the entire nail had to be cut off near the base and getting this healed is a pain in the ass as it does bleed a lot (edit: not really "bleed".. more like a scab that just keeps getting disturbed, but cutting a nail back that far is going to be problematic).
I'm checking it constantly for any strange signs that there could be tumor growth that was misdiagnosed, as a tumor could potentially weaken the nail and cause this. Previous dog had 3 biopsies before they finally confirmed it even though I was screaming TOE CANCER at them the whole time.
HOWEVER
her nail issue started with the side getting badly chipped and then the structure was just weakened which doesn't track with a tumor inside or at the base. But I can't stop thinking the bad thoughts, ya know?
I know it's not my responsibility to go download every random desktop application that comes across my timeline, link aggregators I follow, etc., to see what toolkit/framework it's using and whether it's accessible. But I do it anyway. I guess it's an indication that we're a long, long way from accessible by default.
Today I saw a link to a new app called Judo, a GUI front-end for the up-and-coming Jujutsu version control system. And sure enough, this Judo app isn't accessible with NVDA on Windows. The interesting part is that it's because the app uses the JVM, and when I run it with NVDA, it shows a "Failed to launch JVM" error. The JVM packaging tool probably removed the Java Access Bridge.
I'm honestly surprised a modern application was written in Java. I thought Java was more or less relegated to niche use cases or legacy applications these days.
@alexhall From what I saw on the comment thread on Lobsters (the link aggregator where I found this), it looks like it's actually using Kotlin, probably with Jetpack Compose (the Android Kotlin UI toolkit that JetBrains ported to desktop).
I long for the days where we can just be excited about the new thing/app/hardware, not ohh but is it going to be accessible, and how many hacks do we need to do to make it accessible
I think it also means we're a long way from expecting nearly everything to be inaccessible except programs specifically written for the blind and no one to care about it. So at least things are going in the right direction and more and more people are thinking everything should be accessible by default, and if you ask a company to make something accessible and they say they don't care, that is considered very bad. Even the fact that some companies try to hide that they don't care by making another excuse is a good sign because it means awareness of the necessity of accessibility is going up.
A funny case study of the 21st century “software engineering” at its best.
As result of #AWS failure, a number of commercial products stopped working that relied on AWS hosted services. Such as the Eight Sleep Pod beds.
Yes, physical beds for sleeping relied on AWS to work. And it was not some kind of extremely sophisticated “AI” processing, but simple schedule “make warmer”, “make colder”, “raise/lower” etc. All that was controlled through AWS.
When AWS stopped working users started complaining that their beds got stuck in weird positions and users were unable to control them. So yes, a bed say in Netherlands stopped working because it could not retrieve instructions from US server which were sent there by the person physically present on said bed.
And the bonus: each bed sent 20 GB of telemetry data to AWS each month.
@michal don't underestimate your role :) you created one of the first #chatmail relays and kept it running ever since ... apart from the service to some hundreds of users this provides it also helped our motivations, and motivation is a key driver for any collective community-driven project :)
thank you, it means a lot! I guess you're right about motivation. Without it, we would be nowhere and the tech wouldn't move forward. So let's keep on going 🥳
Good morning! I am looking for contract work. If you have 10-15 hours a week of work on a well defined technical project (‘we need to move 6 websites by this date’, ‘we need to hire a team to do an infra migration’, ‘we need to complete an accessibility audit and figure out next steps’, ‘we need to improve our docs / our onboarding process’), let me know.
I am a technical product manager who likes to be the ‘glue’ in sticky technical situations and figure out how to come out of it with useful and usable software. I’m based in San Francisco but I also have years of experience working in Asia and Europe, and can navigate time zones / remote teams / cultures / communication styles. I have experience in working in open source.
Send me an email: adrianna@futureethics.ai
If you also need help getting to ‘well defined technical project’, I can also help!
I'm a bit late to this, but as always, @pluralistic is a crucial and clear voice on the issues we face today.
These anti-jailbreaking laws were designed as a tool of economic extraction, a way to protect American tech companies' sky-high fees and rampant privacy invasions by making it illegal, everywhere, for anyone to alter how these devices work without the manufacturer's permission.
"Introduction to Web Accessibility" is a free course designed for people of all roles and all experience levels, so regardless of your background, there's something you can learn here.
Get a strong foundation in digital accessibility to make your websites and apps work well for people with disabilities, meet international standards, and provide a better user experience for everyone.
"Today, another mad dictator is threatening the world's infrastructure. For the rest of the world to escape dictators' demands, they will have to accelerate their independence from American tech – not just Russian gas."
As you might have come to expect and astute as ever, @pluralistic laying down the facts on American tech subservience.
"It's well past time for a post-American internet. Every device and every service should be designed so that the people who use them have the final say over how they work. Manufacturers' back doors and digital locks that prevent us from updating our devices with software of our choosing were never a good idea. Today, they're a catastrophe."
I'm very sad. My Bi40X won't connect over its stupid HID protocol over Linux and Debian and Bluez and BRLTTY 6.8. I'm so, so sad, I could cry over this. Mostly out of frustration, as it's just a mounting things on Linux that keep me away, so really I wouldn't be crying over it but over all of it. Linux, you thwart me once again. How the heck will I use you as a fulltime OS if it means giving up HID Braille over Bluetooth? Ugh.
I hate repeating myself, but it's these things... Linux on the desktotp just has these issues... Anyhow, have you tried the solution from www.virtualhere.com and does it work for you, if I may ask? Definitely longer range than BT and it looks to the machine like a USB connection.
May I know, how can we fix it? I'd love to learn linux and use it as a primary, as I love free things and transparency is cool because I learn from watching others do things. That's why I like good people because I can use the good things people do as influince when bettering myself or doing something in my life. I love learning and I do it every day, and it's sad that the BRLTTY is broken for you. I hope apart from this though, that you are having a good day, and that you manage to somehow sort out this problem. Are you on I'd presume arch linux? That's how You're on latest BRLTTY unless your not? Maybe you're one of those smart folks who gentoo your way through life? Maybe you're a roling rocker and you prefer solid Debian? I should've used the roling rocker reference for arch, but rock solid, roling rock, yeh. Have a great day, and thanks for sharing this saddening news.
Amazon wants me to verify my identity as a developer for the Amazon appstore, all because of a failed attempt at launching an Amazon Alexa skill a few years ago that I wouldn't personally use myself, because I have no Alexa devices.
"Verification should only take a few minutes. Please have your government-issued ID readily available."
Thunderbird 144 is out now! Exchange support is closer to officially landing, dragging and dropping your folders is easier, and we're adding new ways to keep your email safe!
And what about the migration to the release version for the Flatpak users? Flatpak was the recommended way to install Thunderbird on Linux, but incoherently, there is no info about when it will be possible to switch to the newly recommended release channel when using Flatpak!
@pejiji Right now, the plan is to switch to the Release channel by default on Flatpak next summer, around the same time that the new ESR would come out (June/July). Sorry we haven't communicated more about this, and we'll try and find better ways to get the word out about our Linux packaging updates!
@frankps No, but the work we're doing will help us start work on the Graph API protocol. We'll have upcoming posts that we'll share here all about our upcoming EWS support and future plans!
@frankps This sounds like a bug we're investigating! Do you mind checking out bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.… to see if this matches what's happening? You can comment on/follow the bug if it's a match!
Not quite. We simply can't configure smtp.office365.com with OAUTH2 on Thunderbird Mobile. Thunderbird Desktop for Linux and macOS seem to not have the same problem. Thunderbird Mobile worked last spring when I played with an Android phone.
Now I tried with a Fairphone 4 with latest /e/ OS an ran in to the same problem again.
@frankps Thanks for the update! Is it an educational account? This is a known issue that we are working on in the current beta (14.0b3). Can you see if the Beta app will configure your SMTP correctly? If this is with a non-educational account, can you open a new bug report at github.com/thunderbird/thunder… ?
Yes, we are an academic institution (university) with A licenses. And the upcoming release solves our problem configuring smtp.office365.com. Thank you! When is it planned released?
🌕 How do you communicate during a Moonwalk crisis?
At The Matrix Conference, Aileen (@esa / German Aerospace Center) and Jan-Lucas (@FAU) showed how Element and @matrix enabled real-time crisis communication on a simulated moonwalk at the LUNA Analog Facility.
https://media.ccc.de/v/matrix-conf-2025-81581-texting-through-the-silence-medical-care-over-matrix-with-delay-during-a-simulated-moonwalkTwenty seconds is a ...
RB5009 update: still no luck. I absolutely can't get it to reset and I don't know why. When I connect to it, it says the DHCP server address is 172.16.18.0, which isn't an address I remember typing. I was using 172.16.0.0/12, and wanted DHCP to use 172.18.0.0/16, but I must have mistyped something. I have the netinstaller program and will try that next, but I need the right RouterOS image and I don't know if I need ARM or ARM64. There's a download for all images, but I couldn't find it.
Alright, sweet Fedipeeps. Time to confront this topic again. Oh yes, what topic you ask? Suno V5! I jumped in the game by trying to get it to cover a really amazing violin piece I was shown by my grandmother when visiting Hungary after college. If anything after this, listen to more of her work. Melinda Dumitrescu. Don't let AI ruin things like the talents of an amazing player of actual instruments. Anyway. I tried to cover a song by hers called Magnificat. (youtube.com/watch?v=FzM86As71k…) - Instruments here switch off really nicely, and honestly it's one of the most uplifting 3-minute pieces I've heard in a long time. This is ultimate test for Suno, because the flute, guitar, violin, all play off on each other into a crescendo, and well, you need soul, heart to understand why and what's going on. It requires emotion. How did Suno do? I'm never publishing it, because it's not right, but you can listen for yourself, I told it to make it more Celtic and cover it that way, style influence to 100. That flute player sounds so rookie and only warms up somewhat later. The original is way better, 100%. Suno's geting there but I'm so not impressed with the no heart it has.
Venue clean, all remaining items packed. Good-bye Kaleidoscoop, thanks a lot to all volunteers, the @matrix foundation, our sponsors, our speakers and my friends @thibaultamartin and @HarHarLinks for rocking the #MatrixConf2025.
Akseli
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@dinum