I read a book titled “The Design of Everyday Things” in college that greatly influenced my design philosophy as an engineer. The author’s main point was “doors should not need owners manuals.” This example clearly fails that test.
@mort Well yes, I've known tech authors still working on the documentation when the product itself is already at sea on the way to market from the factory in China.
@TimWardCam @mort NO LOVE for modern electronics where the paper manual is a 10cm square glossy white pamphlet printed in pale grey 4-point type that's so tiny and illegible I need to photograph and enlarge it before I realize it's not the manual, it's just the warranty declaration.
@TimWardCam @mort Anything that requires someone(the manufacturer) to maintain a digital copy on a functional server somewhere is an inevitable locus for enshittification. Doubly so, if that was an intentional choice by that particular someone(the manufacturer). You definitely know they don’t care at best, and at worst they’re looking for a rug to pull.
@su_liam @mort Another one is a textbook I've got which contains URLs for additional online study material.
Which doesn't exist.
I emailed the author and he said that the original publisher sold the label to another publisher, who carried on selling the stock of books containing the URL, and then the original publisher simply deleted the web site.
Thinking about forgiveness lately and wondering if it's such a good thing. If we forgive bad people (certain politicians, CEOs, misogynists, racists, criminals, etc.) while they refuse to change, where does that get us? OTOH if we use e.g. ostracism as a tool, does that improve the problematic thoughts & behaviour, or entrench it? In other words, how do we best convince people to be less rubbish?
Any resources would be appreciated, whether regarding individuals or societies. #BoostsWelcome
I don't have any resources at hand either. My current thoughts: in many cases forgiveness can be a lever to shape or improve behaviour. It's not exactly the same, but it's why in criminal law you don't go after people who attempt a crime but give up; or reduce the penalty if they cooperate with justice. Because, if they have nothing to gain from correcting their behaviour, they might as well continue being maximally bad. I also think people can and do change.
Les géants du web centralisent nos vies numériques en échange de leurs services Les communautés du logiciel libre offrent des services alternatifs éthiques Le réseau Framasoft souhaite le démontreren les hébergeant
As tempting as it might seem, do not try something at home.
How's this for a headline?
Superglue and self-extraction: Britain’s desperate ‘DIY dentistry’ is a painful reality | Francisco Garcia | The Guardian theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
❗️Рубио заявил NBC News, что Венесуэлу «больше нельзя превращать в центр управления операциями» для Ирана, России, Китая, кубинских разведчиков или «Хезболлы».
@jdking92 AI was already accepting job applications, so it was only a matter of time before people started using it to apply. Soon it will devolve into the machines cueing each other to get you employed.
@jdking92 Except it means that someone who doesn't wholeheartedly embrace AI for this purpose becomes effectively locked out of the job market, which was already bad enough, and also what if it halusinates bits of your resume or something and then the interview people ask you about stuff that didn't happen?
@x0 @jdking92 "somebody who doesn't wholeheartedly embrace the internet" is also locked out. And in that case, you just say that. Not like interviewers haven't ever taken the wrong resume from the pile / misremembered which candidate had which point.
@x0 @jdking92 We'll have to do something about this, sooner or later. Resumes basically worked because there was friction when sending them, now companies are inundated with bullshit resumes. Most people I know of are falling back to networks, referrals and OSS contributions (which can also help bootstrap networks and referrals if you're strategic about which projects you contribute to).
Can screen readers translate alt text? Text in general? If not, do they at least read the language correctly?
Sight reading, I can pick my way through a lot of not-English; German, Spanish, even a bit of Russian, and from that I can puzzle out a bit of related languages.
Does that work with a screen reader? Or does it read out the eg. German text with English phonetics and make a total hash of it?
It depends. If the user speaks both languages, and the lang attribute on the HTML has been set correctly, then the screen reader will read the correct text in the correct language. If the HTML lang attribute is not set, the user can change the language manually using a screen reader hotkey. However, these things assume the user has installed and configured voices that speak both languages. For example, I currently do not have a Russian voice installed (because I don't understand Russian anyway), so my screen reader will just read out unicode character codes, because it has no way of pronouncing the Russian alphabet. There are also addons that can recognize the language text is written in, and change the screen reader language automatically even if the language attribute isn't set, but most folks don't bother with these. As for translation: there are third party addons that can take all the text spoken by a screen reader, translate it into another language, and then speak it. However, this introduces lag, and sends everything the screen reader says off to a third party translation service. I would only use something like this if I was, for example, playing a Japanese game where I knew all text would be in Japanese, so my screen reader would just translate to English before speaking. I wouldn't just leave it on all the time.
Also, if it's not a western, colonial European, or east-Asian language, screen reader support for it will be terrible. As far as I'm aware, there is zero support for any indigenous languages spoken by the people living in what are now Canada and the United States, in any screen reader or text to speech voice, anywhere. Same goes for many middle-eastern and African languages, as well as stuff like Irish Gaelic. If you speak those languages and are blind, your only real choice is...learn a different language and never use your phone or computer to read anything in your native language. Somehow, I doubt anyone on the fediverse is surprised by this.
Today is World Braille Day, a time to honor the birthday of Louis Braille and the importance of braille literacy. Join the Braille Revival League of NY at 6pm ET for a Louis Braille birthday celebration. Join on ACB Media 6, Clubhouse, and Zoom. Email community@acb.org for info.
@samtupy I do apreciate being able to propperly unleash my fury on the battlefield once more! What a great end to the night, can't wait to do it again tomorrow. ShotgunSpoon finally stopped screaming on the Foresty area of the killingground map after the torture he got from conquering the killingground with 132 kills.
I did look at something called Keep Audio Alive. It did something similar, but with a program footprint of 100 megs. All because they decided to code it in, you guessed it, Electron. Waste of resources.
For those who have old bluetooth... and non-bluetooth audio devices that love to turn themselves off after nano seconds of them powering up, then SoundKeeper by veg is for you. Be sure to read the readMe file, as you might have to tweak the commandline. veg.by/en/projects/soundkeeper…
For Christmas entertaining, I froze ice cubes with small berries in them. In a few, I concealed Mentos mints. It was excellent watching people's reactions when the ice melted enough for their Cokes to suddenly erupt for no apparent reason
I've just managed to do a quick audio editing job using NVDA Remote Controller and Sonobus on my iPhone with a bluetooth keyboard connected to my Windows laptop at home 500 miles away. It's not something I'd want to do too often, mostly because Sonobus on was kinda jittery, but it was enough to get the thing done.
@jakobrosin The NVDA part is only very slightly laggier than the usual VoiceOver junk. Sonobus, maybe 50 MS or so, because of my actual network latency, but it bounced around a little, then caught up with itself.
@jakobrosin I am using a local NVDARemote server on a Raspberry Pi on my Tailnet. I don't like the idea of NVDA hosting the connection, because I've seen instances where clients dropped. Restarting NVDA would fix it, but you can't, because it broke. So I use an external controller that can be restarted separately over SSH if it breaks like that, and it has. So I'm glad I did that, or I'd have lost access to my machines.
If you use #eloquence in #NVDA, an extremely uninteresting bugfix is now available. Previously, automatic language switching in NVDA didn't work for any language with a dialect specified, like English United States. This is now fixed. It literally just changes from calling languages en-gb and en-us to calling them en_gb and en_us to make NVDA happy. But if you need that, you can get the bugfix here: github.com/fastfinge/eloquence_64/releases/tag/v6
This is just a bugfix release to ensure Auto Language switching works for languages with dialects. Previously, NVDA could not switch to using any language with a dialect during auto language switch...
I've not had chance to play with my hardware project with the baby, but I occasionally still kick the monologue system from 1993. I'd love a software-based doubletalk, but ... well. not making too much progress. This is the raw audio data and that's about as far as I've gotten.
@cachondo LOL it's the next dubstep hit! I think the blastbay voices might be our best bet. However, he's got to do something about the phonimizer. The voice quality is good, but it's based on the CMU dictionaries, so there are just way too many pronunciation issues.
Hey, all. I've created a WhatsApp community for language learning, which currently has English to Spanish, French, and German. If anyone wants to join, please message me privately, and then let me know which group you'd like to be added to.
It's weird reading an interesting book in your dreams, because when you wake up, you realize that you have to write it first if you want to continue reading it.
Buried at the end of this year's installment of my semi-annual series on network and device reality is a mystery: multiple, independent data sets from the Web Performance community indicate sites built as Single-Page Applications ("SPAs") receive, on…
I bought myself a new keyboard with Christmas money, and after just a day of using it, I'm honestly kind of stunned by how much of a difference it's making. I picked up a Keychron K10 Max from Amazon and got it yesterday, and I don't think I ever want to go back to a membrane keyboard again. For context: before this, I was using a Logitech Ergo K860. It's a split, membrane keyboard that a lot of people like for ergonomics, and it did help in some ways — but for me, it was also limiting. My hands don't stay neatly parked in one position, and the enforced split often worked against how I naturally move. It also wasn't rechargeable, and the large built-in wrist rest (which I know some people love) mostly became a dirt-collecting obstacle that I had to work around. Another big factor for me is that I often work from bed. That means my keyboard isn't sitting on a perfectly stable desk. It's on a tray, my lap, or bedding that shifts as I move. The Logitech Ergo K860 is very light, which sounds nice on paper, but in practice it meant the keyboard was easy to knock around, slide out of position, or tilt unexpectedly. Combined with the split layout, that meant I was constantly re-orienting myself instead of just typing. The Keychron, by contrast, is noticeably heavier — and that turns out to be a feature. It stays put. It doesn’t drift when my hands move. It feels planted in a way that reduces both physical effort and mental overhead. I don't have to think about where the keyboard is; I can just use it. For a bed-based workflow, that stability matters more than I realized. With chronic pain, hand fatigue, and accessibility needs, keyboards are not a neutral tool. They shape how long I can work, how accurately I can type, and how much energy I spend compensating instead of thinking. This new keyboard feels solid, responsive, and predictable in a way I didn't realize I was missing. The keys register cleanly without requiring force, and the feedback is clear without being harsh. I'm not fighting the keyboard anymore. It's just doing what I ask. What surprised me even more is how much better the software side feels from an accessibility perspective. Keychron's Launcher and its use of QMK are far more usable for me than Logitech Options Plus ever was. Being able to work with something that’s web-based, text-oriented, and closer to open standards makes a huge difference as a screen reader user. I can reason about what the keyboard is doing instead of wrestling with a visually dense, mouse-centric interface. That matters a lot. When your primary interface to the computer is the keyboard, both the hardware and the configuration tools need to cooperate with you. I know mechanical keyboards aren't new, but this is my first one, and I finally understand why people say they'll never go back. For me, this isn't about aesthetics or trends. It's about having a tool that respects my body and my access needs and lets me focus on the work itself. I'm really grateful I was able to get this, and I'm genuinely excited to keep dialing it in. Sometimes the right piece of hardware, paired with software that doesn’t fight you, doesn’t just improve comfort. It quietly expands what feels possible. #Accessibility #DisabledTech #AssistiveTechnology #ScreenReader #NVDA #MechanicalKeyboards #Keychron @accessibility @disability @spoonies @mastoblind
I always wonder why people like mechanical keyboards, and sorry, but even now I didn't understand from your post, except for robustness and heaviness, here I concur. However, I started on a mechanical one in the 90s, and my go-to keyboard now is a Logitech K270. Isn't a mechanical keyboard heavier to type on? I'm a quick typer, so it's important for me.
@menelion Different switches have different levels of operating force and actuation points. Both of those influence how much force you need to have keys register. Hull Effect switches let you adjust the actuation point which can help if you're a light-fingered typist. I'm a heavy typer so my strokes always bottom out. Silent switches thankfully cushion that and reduce the sound. It can be tough to get exactly what suits you best. (1/2)
The next time I get back into the Keychron game, which hopefully will be in a few months, I'll have to play around with the Keychron launcher. I didn't even know that it was a thing. What kind of stuff can you do with it? Like can you give me examples of how you use it?
@jmd2000 I have a Q6Max, if the launcher is accessible somehow please tell me, because in my opinion it's a weird mess of unlabeled buttons and clickables.
@jonathan859 Is the q 6 max good? I had the k 5, and I liked that one. I just don't want anything too complicated. I just wana plug in a keyboard and start using it.
@jonathan859 @jmd2000 Yeah the launcher isn't great. I've managed to remap one key and update firmware, but I had to get help from ChatGPT with the key remapping because the interface was confusing. I thought it was more accessible than it actually is when I tried it the first time.
To celebrate the first official Digital Independence Day - with some help of other #opensource enthusiasts - we convinced someone from my family: ✅ to install #Linux on their Mac computer, ✅ created a #Mastodon account for them, ✅ and assisted them in the transition.
We are again watching world media be willingly manipulated. Parroting the propaganda they’ve been fed. Normalising international criminality. Sane-washing what is patently not so, and ignoring globally irresponsible behaviour.
A case in point is watching them bend over backwards to try and make coherent the patently incoherent, contradictory rationale the Trump administration has given for its actions in Venezuela.
Drugs: If the Trump regime cared about drug trafficking, they would not have pardoned the Honduran ex-president convicted of it.
The attacks on Venezuelan ‘drug boats’ were spectacle and priming. For months, the media helped prime the public for what happened yesterday.
But how does kidnapping Maduro and his wife stop cocaine being trafficked to the US? It doesn’t. But Trump supporters cannot think in abstracts. They’ve been fed an image of Maduro as Tony Montana.
Democracy: Trump doesn’t care about democracy in his own country (he made extreme efforts to destabilise the electoral process in his own country) and certainly not in Venezuela. Additionally, his own supporters are not fans of historic US efforts at nation building. But this move gives his base something to argue about an chew on. Meanwhile the non-Trump republicans really like a good military in the middle of the night show.
What they’ve done in Venezuela leaves is a dangerous power vacuum.
Oil: Trump doesn’t care about oil, but he does care about oil companies who contribute to his growing financial wealth. He absolutely doesn’t care if Venezuela’s oil producing infrastructure is crumbling. He cares only about the graft he can extract when he opens the field to corporations who can make a business of ‘revitalizing’ it.
While some of those around him may dream of returning to an imperial US, Trump doesn’t have dreams like that. He dreams of staying in power and gilded ballrooms.
Spheres of influence: There are, without a doubt, those within the Trump administration who do think in the abstract. They don’t give a shit about Venezuela either, but this act signals to China and Russia that a new world order, made up of aggressive spheres of regional influence is perfectly okay with them.
But Trump can’t even mentally conceive of something that broad or abstract. For him, this strike is a way to stop the media attention on Epstein and inflation.
If Trump loses power in the midterms, his graft game is up. While SCOTUS might grant him unlimited criminal power, the one arm of government that can over-ride SCOTUS and curtail his criminality is congress.
What Trump knows is that Americans love a spectacle. They can be for it - the right loves a good show of force - or against it, but it doesn’t actually matter, because it shifts attention away from the concrete realities of inflation, healthcare insurance and his association with Epstein.
Trump cannot think longterm, but those around him do. Giving tacit permission for China to invade Taiwan or Russia to take over Ukraine also paves the way for the US acquisition of the parts of the world they want. And an extreme rise in militarism which requires the suspension of all sorts of everyday rights that are taken for granted in stable democracies.
The US far right needs to be able to point at monstrous aggressive instability to force through their goals of a white, christian US.
It is hard to keep your eye on two games being played at the same time. But this is what has been happening all along. This is why the hard right white Christian nationalists in the US tolerate (and even embrace) Trump.
Not because he has the ability to agree with them ideologically, but because his flagrant global irresponsibility destabilises settled orders enough to make their goals possible.
Should you attend FOSDEM this year, make sure to drop by our stand – and maybe also listen to our talks I've just updated the news post at our OpenCollective with details for you, see opencollective.com/izzyondroid…
At our stand, you will find us (with stickers), @SylvieLorxu (the Cat Ima!) also with Catima stickers, @electrikjesus with Bliss goodies, and our friends from @shiftphones with their goodies.
Seamos serios: lo del "derecho internacional" dejó de tener sentido (si no antes) con lo de las armas de destrucción masiva de Irak. EEUU lleva 80 años siendo el matón de occidente. Lo cual no quiere decir que haya que dejar de decirlo, pero creo que es un hecho que todo lo "internacional" no funciona cuando se trata de EEUU. Ni siquiera sirvió para atajar el conflicto entre Rusia y Ucrania. Si me equivoco en algo me decís, que me gusta aprender de estas cosas. Pero creo que no voy muy desencaminado.
No sé, en mis días pesimistas también lo veo así. Por otra parte, las relaciones internacionales la mayoría del tiempo se rigen por los principios del DIP; los tratados y las costumbres se suelen cumplir, los mecanismos de autotutela mantienen las infracciones como una excepción. Pero es verdad que la capacidad de constreñir el comportamiento de las potencias es limitada. Aun así, quizá se trata de una ficción (como todo lo que es intersubjetivo) que se convierte progresivamente en realidad en la medida en que actuamos como si importase.
I used to be on the team that wrote/maintains that feature and as you can see, the logic can be fuzzy at best. In this case looks like someone specifically crafted a (I assume fake?) go dependency on curl
Mun lähes päivälleen vuoden vanhan GTS-instanssin datat on 7.9 G ja federoituja instansseja on reippaat 6000. Yllättävän maltillista on ollut, odotin pahempaa.
Tämän kanssa puljaaminen viimeistään on myös opettanut mulle sen että Sqlite on aivan riittävän hyvä kanta useimpiin itsehostattuihin hommiin. Miten monta turhaa Postgresiä sitä onkin tullut pystytettyä.
I've just updated the news post at our OpenCollective with details for you, see opencollective.com/izzyondroid…
Greg Kemp
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Mirko Schenk
in reply to Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE • • •Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
in reply to Mirko Schenk • • •Charlie Stross
in reply to Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE • • •Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •@mort Yeah, I had one of those with something bought recently.
The warranty pamphlet *did* have a QR code which it said would take you to the instruction manual ... but actually it took you to a 404.
su_liam
in reply to Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE • • •Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
in reply to su_liam • • •@su_liam @mort Another one is a textbook I've got which contains URLs for additional online study material.
Which doesn't exist.
I emailed the author and he said that the original publisher sold the label to another publisher, who carried on selling the stock of books containing the URL, and then the original publisher simply deleted the web site.