mastodon - Link to source

Polygon just posted:

Unbeatable, Rhythm Doctor, and Bits & Bops just made December much groovier

If you love rhythm games, this is a surprisingly beefy month for the genr

polygon.com/unbeatable-rhythm-…

#gamingNews

Header image for an article titled: Unbeatable, Rhythm Doctor, and Bits & Bops just made December much groovier

Unbeatable, Rhythm Doctor, and Bits & Bops just made December much groovier

If you love rhythm games, this is a surprisingly beefy month for the genre
Giovanni Colantonio (Polygon.com)
#GamingNews

mastodon - Link to source

Zwischen den Jahren ist es oft etwas ruhiger – genau dann lässt sich gut anfangen. IT-Sicherheit ist für mich kein Zustand, sondern ein Prozess über Jahre. Kein großer Umbruch, sondern viele kleine Schritte: Passwörter, E-Mail, Smartphone, Heimnetz, Backups. Wichtig ist nicht Perfektion, sondern überhaupt zu beginnen. 👇

kuketz-blog.de/it-sicherheit-i…


IT-Sicherheit ist nie fertig – Ein persönlicher Weg über viele Jahre

Von »wird schon nichts passieren« zu echter Kontrolle: Mein persönlicher Weg zu mehr IT-Sicherheit, Datenschutz und digitaler Selbstbestimmung.
www.kuketz-blog.de

mastodon - Link to source
🌞✨ Happy Sol Invictus! Today, we celebrate the "Unconquered Sun" and the return of light! While we enjoy this festive occasion, let’s also take a moment to appreciate the winter solstice, the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a time for reflection and renewal as we look forward to brighter days ahead! 🌌 #Solstice #solinvictus
#solstice #solinvictus

mastodon - Link to source
I found something interesting. If you visit the Balabolka page and scroll to “Download installers for Microsoft natural voices that work without Internet access”, you can download high-quality Microsoft voices for around 30 different languages.
Voices are available even for Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Hebrew, Finnish, Dutch, European Portuguese, and more. Each language has its own separate installer, and since most languages include multiple voices, you can choose which ones to install during setup.
These voices work very well with drivers like Natural Voice SAPI Adapter.
Just a heads-up: the Balabolka page has no headings or landmarks, so you’ll need to manually search the page for “Download installers for Microsoft natural voices that work without Internet access.”
cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

Balabolka

Balabolka is a text-to-speech application (freeware)
Balabolka: text-to-speech software

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friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

When it comes to @Delta Chat (39c3) do you know it features 1 to 1 audio / video calls since v2.22?
It has a very lightweight client side app built with web technologies and a minimalist server side component turn server called chatmail-turn.

I am wondering, am I alone running that turnserver behind a nat?

github.com/chatmail/chatmail-t…


Added commandline arguments and functionality usefull to run behind a NAT by pvagner · Pull Request #7 · chatmail/chatmail-turn

This turn server enumerates all the interfaces found on the system, identifies globally addressable addresses and creates an UDP listen socket on the default port. Relay connections for this scenar...
GitHub
@Delta Chat (39c3)

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Dear #QT toolkit, recently I'm again looking into your #screenreader #a11y into #QML in particular.
I'm trying to make one of my favorite apps @Mixxx DJ Software a bit more accessible.
Last night I have managed to turn the menu with items such as 4 decks, Library, Effects and more into aria toolbar pattern in terms of keyboard navigation. It only consumes single tab stop when navigating through it and other buttons can be reached using the arrow keys.
Of course there is much more to do and I've started a forum topic documenting my attempts.

mixxx.discourse.group/t/new-qm…

#a11y #screenreader #qt #qml @Mixxx DJ Software

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ghost - Link to source

Apple nuking a customer's account over a bad gift card is a warning for everyone


 One long-time Apple customer was left with no recourse after a bad gift card triggered a full account and device lock-out.

Paris Buttfield-Addison with an absolute horror story:

A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse.


The full blog post is chilling. Buttfield-Addison only got his Apple account reinstated after blogging about his experience, and otherhigh-profileblogs re-shared his ordeal, which caught the attention of an actual human in Apple's executive relations team who restored his account a week later.

Buttfield-Addison is the latest public example of a company revoking access to a person's digital life, probably due to some automated decision, but where affected customers have no means or grounds to appeal. In reality, this happens all the time and most people's stories never hear the light of day. Even companies like Apple, which sell physical electronics for a living, hold too much power and control over their customers' digital lives in perpetuity, and customers generally don't have the means to fight back or hold the companies accountable when things go wrong.

It's also a warning to everyone — not just Apple customers and especially this time of year — that gift cards are prone to scams and are increasingly difficult to detect. If one bad gift card can result in nuking access to someone's account, then gift cards aren't worth the risk to begin with.

More at Tidbits.

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Apple blocks dev from all accounts after he tries to redeem bad gift card

: Paris Buttfield-Addison literally wrote books on Swift
Brandon Vigliarolo (The Register)
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

I don't think I'll stop using Firefox anytime soon.
Yes, their management are fucking idiots and it's annoying that I'll have to disable new AI features whenever they release them..

But the alternative is to use something Chromium-based, which would make Google's domination of web technology absolute - and Google is 100x more evil than Mozilla ever could be.

I hope this fucking bubble pops before Mozilla fucks up Firefox so badly that it becomes completely unusable

This entry was edited (3 days ago)

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mastodon - Link to source

My slides and a video of my talk "Grow your [engineering] brand while putting privacy first" are available on my blog: talkweb.eu/openweb/4500/

If you want a funny, but useful talk on that topic, reach out!

#mastodon #fediverse #privacy #engineering #human #foss

Grow your [engineering] brand while putting privacy first – Bogomil Shopov – Бого

talkweb.eu
#foss #privacy #fediverse #Mastodon #engineering #human
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

Peter Vágner reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source

I have a lot of respect for #DeltaChat (@delta); By all accounts they provide a good looking client and a homogenize experience across platforms. Users absolutely don’t need to care about the underlying protocol!

However there is no way, shape or form in that IMAP+Submission is a more suitable stack for instant messaging than #XMPP.

#xmpp #deltachat @Delta Chat (39c3)

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Radasbona

friendica (DFRN) - Link to source

Peter Vágner

@Radasbona I am not sure it's dismissed all together. @Delta Chat (39c3) #chatmail relays already support google / apple push messaging and adding @UnifiedPush support might be just matter of finding a motivated developer.
Still with imap idle in place the battery and network impact is minimal so it's not seen as very high priority thing. For example there is an email client called #fairEmail which does the same thing, keeping the imap idle connections open whenever it's able to and it's working fine. Within email app it's difficult if not impossible to add push messaging support unless you have control of the server side provider or you wish to trade your privacy.
#fairemail #chatmail @UnifiedPush @Delta Chat (39c3) @Radasbona
in reply to Peter Vágner

mastodon - Link to source

Radasbona

imap idle unfortunately works very unreliably if you only use the app every 1-2 weeks.

I'm not a developer, but wouldn't that be the solution for the chatmail servers?
ietf.org/archive/id/draft-goug…

The IMAP WEBPUSH extension

This document defines a WEBPUSH extension of the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) that permits IMAP servers to send WebPush notifications.
www.ietf.org
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source
As a community, we often ask ourselves how to attract more users to #XMPP. Yet the real tragedy is that people would rather build something entirely new (loosely based on email or #ActivityPub) than consider XMPP. Need end-to-end encryption by default? If compatibility with existing XMPP clients is a secondary concern, you can implement it in your own solution while still benefiting from our two decades of experience in instant messaging.
#xmpp #activitypub

mastodon - Link to source

Olen pari edellistä päivää nurissut e-kirjoista ja siitä, kuinka piloilla se maailma on, vaikka tekniikka itsessään on 20 vuotta vanhaa.

Nurinoista huolimatta jatkoin ongelman ratkomista ja lupasin kirjoittaa, jos löydän itseäni miellyttävän ratkaisun. Parin päivän testailun perusteella luulen löytäneeni sen.

Ratkaisun nimi on Booklore. Se on itse hostattava palvelu, joka tarjoaa omaan digitaaliseen kirjastoon Spotifyn tai Netflixin kaltaisen käyttökokemuksen. Pääsen siihen käsiksi suoraan omasta lukulaitteesta, eikä minun tarvitse leikkiä kaapeleiden kanssa. Sen lisäksi siinä on monen käyttäjän tuki, joten nyt minulla ja puolisollani on yhteinen digitaalinen kirjahylly.

Sovelluksesta lisää blogissa: saaste.net/blogi/2025/oma-e-ki…

Muokkaus: kirjoitusvirheitä korjailtu

#lukeminen #kirjat #KirjaMastodon


Oma e-kirjasto

Avauduin toissapäivänä siitä, kuinka retuperällä e-kirjamaailma on. Avautumisesta huolimatta jatkoin ongelman ratkomista ja luulen löytäneeni itseäni miellyttävän ratkaisun.
saaste.net
#kirjamastodon #lukeminen #kirjat
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source
#AmazingWorld
In #Alaska, nature sculpted this lone tree into a frozen wave at sunrise.
Relentless wind, drifting snow, and rime ice stacked layer by layer until the branches looked like feathers made of frost.
That soft golden glow is the sun catching every icy strand, turning the whole scene into a winter sculpture for a few brief moments.
Bent by the storm, but still standing. Still reaching.
#alaska #amazingworld
This entry was edited (14 hours ago)

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mastodon - Link to source
Sexual

Sensitive content

mastodon - Link to source
After their “encore,” this band kicks straight into ANOTHER song without announcing it, apparently in the hope that John wouldn’t notice it was a different song.
John leans over to me to be heard over the PA and asks, “Hey, wanna see the suck button?”
“Sure,” I replied. I figured he was going to muck with the levels or just turn them off or something. Instead, he reaches to one of his racks and starts scrolling through patches on his trusty DigiTech unit. Sure enough, he gets to a patch titled SUCK BUTTON. He engages it, and all hell breaks loose onstage.


jwsoundgroup.net/index.php?/to…


The Suck Button

Gary Larson started it and it turned out to be true, The Suck Button as imagined by our Live Sound family.
al mcguire (JWSOUNDGROUP)
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

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mastodon - Link to source

the UNIX v4 tape reminded me of this story by Ali Akurgal about Turkish bureaucracy:

Do you know what the unit of software is? A meter! Do you know why? In 1992, we did our first software export at Netaş. We wrote the software, pressed a button, and via the satellite dish on the roof, at the incredible speed of 128 kb/s, we sent it to England. We sent the invoice by postal mail. $2M arrived at the bank. 3-4 months passed, and tax inspectors came. They said, “You sent an invoice for $2M?” “Yes,” we said. “This money has been paid?” they asked. “Yes,” we said. “But there is no goods export; this is fictitious export,” they said! So we took the tax inspectors to R&D and sat them in front of a computer. “Would you press this ‘Enter’ key?” we asked. One of them pressed it, then asked, “What happened?” “You just made a $300k export, and we’ll send its invoice too, and that will be paid as well,” we said. The man felt terrible because he had become an accomplice! Then we explained how software is written, what a satellite connection is, and how much this is worth. They said, “We understand, but there has to be a physical goods export; that’s what the regulations require.” So we said: “Let’s record this software onto tape (there were no CDs back then—nor cassettes; we used ½-inch tapes) and send that.” Happy to have found a solution, they said, “Okay, record it and send it.” The software filled two reels, which were handed to a customs broker, who took them to customs and started the export procedure. The customs officer processed things and at one point asked, “Where are the trucks?” The broker said, “There are no trucks—this is all there is,” and pointed to the tape reels on the desk. The customs officer said, “These two envelopes can’t be worth $2M; I can’t process this.” We went to court, an expert committee examined whether the two reels were worth $2M. Fortunately, they ruled that they were, and we were saved from the charge of fictitious export. The same broker took the same two reels to the same customs officer, with the court ruling, and restarted the procedure. However, during the process, the unit price, quantity, and total price of the exported goods had to be entered—as per the regulations. To avoid dragging things out further, they looked at the envelope, saw that it contained tape, estimated how many meters of tape there are on one reel, and concluded that we had exported 1k to 2k meters of software. So the unit of software became the meter.
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

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in reply to joomy

mastodon - Link to source

Mark Dominus

I once read a story about the people writing the software for the NASA Apollo missions. There was a functionary in charge of weight accounting, who came to them and asked how much the software would weigh.

They told him it weighted nothing, but the functionary had heard *that* one before and insisted—everything had to be accounted down to the last ounce. He demanded to see it.

They showed him a stack of punched cards, and he was triumphant. “You see,” he said smugly, “it doesn't weigh only ‘nothing’!”

“No, you misunderstand,” they replied. “The cards aren't going on the spacecraft. Only the holes.”

iceshrimp.net - Link to source
A Review of Magical Artist, an #Accessible Mobile Audio Game: This is the third game I've played by Prudence Interactive. Is this game even better than the last two? Read and find out! stuff.interfree.ca/2025/12/19/magical-artist.html#audiogames#blind

Sam's Stuff - A Review of Magical Artist, an Accessible Mobile Audio Game

stuff.interfree.ca
#accessible #blind #audiogames

Peter Vágner reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source

#Spotted on the Market Day Before Christmas in Aotearoa New Zealand:

A cheerful Pomeranian is rotating in a skipping circle below a hotdog being eaten by its human.
Perpetual Motion Dog is generating more energy than it's consuming.
If only science could harness this power for good!

A young human (5?) in grinch themed T-shirt and shorts is holding up a Bundaberg ginger beer to his little sister, saying officiously: "Cheers!" and then instructing her imperiously that she has to say "Cheers!" back or it "Doesn't WORK!"
Little Sister is looking pugnaciously skeptical.

A man (30s?) is studying some earrings with a cheerful smile. He looks down at his small human (4?) in a Spiderman t-shirt and asks: "Which ones d'you think Nana would like?"
Small Human Spiderman gives him an incredulous look before roaring: "The PRETTY ONES!"
Some things are just obvious.

A tiny human is putting on a full sturm und drang performance.
Hand beseechingly raised to Mum.
Face a picture of tearful fury as she bellows: "I WANT STRAWBERRIES!"
Mum says wryly. "You've GOT strawberries in your lap Bub."
"BUT I WANT OTHER STRAWBERRIES."
The strawberry struggle is real.

A pâtissier (30s?) stops his partner from offering their last madeleine to customers because it's already taken. Moments later, a very serious looking small human (3?) arrives with his Mum and accepts his weekly madeleine treat with a solemn high five and a hug.
Pâtissier beaming.

(Continued Below)

#spotted

mastodon - Link to source

Joanna Stern:

We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars.

In mid-November, I agreed to an experiment. Anthropic had tested a vending machine powered by its Claude AI model in its own offices and asked whether we’d like to be the first outsiders to try a newer, supposedly smarter version.
Claudius, the customized version of the model, would run the machine: ordering inventory, setting prices and responding to customers—aka my fellow newsroom journalists—via workplace chat app Slack. “Sure!” I said. It sounded fun. If nothing else, snacks!
Then came the chaos. Within days, Claudius had given away nearly all its inventory for free—including a PlayStation 5 it had been talked into buying for “marketing purposes.” It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes and underwear.
Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared.

archive.is/hEF7I

mastodon - Link to source

OK this is why they need #autistic people to watch shows before they put them out. Not just for continuity, but for checking actual facts.

I am finally watching the Queen's Gambit, which of course I love for many reasons, not just redheads and chess, but she just came home from Paris and there's a August 1967 calendar on the wall next to the phone -- and it is utterly wrong!

It shows the month starting on a Sunday. The first day was a Tuesday!

#autistic
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