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RE: mas.to/@AccessibilityLU/115921…

Here's one of the projects that has kept us really busy these past six months: developing a Luxembourgish text-to-speech system for screen readers used by blind people.

We hope you like the result!

Many thanks to our partners Ministry for Digitalisation, Zenter fir d'Lëtzebuerger Sprooch, Centre pour le développement des compétences relatives à la vue, LouderPages and to all the contributors of the RHvoice project.


Accessibility Luxembourg (@AccessibilityLU@mas.to)

Attached: 1 image 🗣️ Welcome Mia and Mil, two new voices designed to read texts in Luxembourgish using screen readers. They are making progress, but sometimes still struggle a little with Dicks' language.
Accessibility Luxembourg (mas.to)
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Dear everybody:

Everything is so much easier to understand, once you realize that the Gold-foil-King is a Mafioso, who only know mafioso methods, and only use mafioso methods.

The letter to the .no PM is classical mafia:

"Nice country you have there, pity if something happened to it. Better think careful about who gets those peace-prices, capisce ?"

EU needs to stop pussying around, and go full in and stand up to the bully.

If not now, when ?

This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source
A twenty-minute power failure has given me the opportunity to listen to and operate VHF and UHF amateur radio bands, and come to the conclusion that electrically operated devices are around 80% of my noise floor on weak signals. So my getting out of this place will probably do me better than getting a better antenna. A better antenna would likely amplify the noise, and make weak signals even more useless.
This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Borris

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Adam MacLeod

@BorrisInABox Wow! That's better than a Shari can do in the same room! LOL. This machine isn't that powerful enough for me, I doubt I could key it with no duck, and with no duck, its about S7 at the top of my building. Its on the fire station about three minutes by fire truck from here. But I'm sure it would do a lot better if I went up there with the power off. I used to live in the east end, and there was a 400 watt repeater with a four-bay sintclair litterally a three minute walk from me, and that, I could hear S9 with no duck, and key it up too.
@Borris
in reply to Adam MacLeod

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Borris

I don't remember how much power this repeater put out, but it was near the top of a 1100 foot commercial tower. Man, that was a really nice repeater site. There were two repeaters up there. Unfortunately, time and bureaucracy have done what they do, and everything amateur radio was basically left to rot up there when things broke, and they couldn't get the very expensive climbers to go up there and fix stuff when the elevator broke, and the people who owned the tower wouldn't fix it. That happened fairly recently. One of the two repeaters up there was essentially running on a piece of coax for an antenna for a while. Still got out a few miles anyway just because of how high up it was compared to the surrounding terrain. Lol

akkoma - Link to source

The flood of #enshittification that #Broadcom unleashed upon #VMware and its customers after acquiring it, and its seismic waves in the whole IT supply chain, are a testament of how bad managers who seek for short-term revenue hikes without thinking of the long-term are a cancer, and walking ticking bombs for the tech industry.

theregister.com/2026/01/15/del…

We all know what Broadcom did to VMware after acquiring it. VMware was turned overnight into Broadcom’s cash cow, they hiked prices by 3x in some cases, scrapped perpetual licenses, forced all customers into more expensive subscriptions, said that they only wanted to focus on the most profitable customers and fuck everyone else, all while worsening customer support and providing literally zero added value and features to the product.

Basically a parasitic acquisition solely focused on sucking all the vital lymph out of another product - pure Oracle textbook.

When you play such stunts with individual customers, unfortunately, it works most of the times. Individuals don’t have much leverage, nor choice if there is too much concentration in a certain market. They may complain, but often they swallow the bitter bite.

Things are different when you play them in huge corporate products that are an integral part of the IT infrastructure we all use.

It turns out that among the businesses who were disgruntled when Broadcom suddenly cancelled their VMware perpetual licenses there was Tesco.

But Tesco didn’t acquire VMware licenses directly from Broadcom, of course. They acquired them through a reseller of hardware and software licenses - Computacenter. So Tesco sued them instead for failing to provide them the licenses that they were contractually bound to provide.

Computacenter, on its hand, didn’t acquire VMware licenses directly either. They were provided with the Dell servers they sold, as Dell was an authorized VMware reseller. So Computacenter sued Dell.

Dell, on its hand, says that it has no fault if Broadcom has suddenly changed VMware’s pricing model, and that they are the ones who broke contracts with the whole downstream supply chain. So Dell sued Broadcom.

And there we go. A chain of 3 lawsuits between 4 giants across the whole IT supply chain in order to call a parasitic company accountable.

What a mess. But I guess that the manager who proposed to squeeze annual recurring revenue got his/her fat quarterly bonus home after things seemed to work for the first year.

This is also your daily reminder that as a sysadmin you must use only FOSS products supported by the community and by strong foundations - and contribute back to them once their success becomes your success too.

Enough with the “but stability - but support - but licenses - but my manager” corporate bullshit.

The cost of writing your own little qemu CI/CD pipeline to spin up your virtual machines is much lower than the risk of your corporate subscription getting suddenly enshittified by chains of wrong financial incentives at any place in your upstream supply chain, and having to spend years of tears on expensive long-chain lawsuits.

And, even if things go bad, the cost of migrating out of proprietary and non-standard implementations is usually much higher than the cost of migrating to a compatible fork.


Dell wants £10m+ from VMware if Tesco case goes against it

Exclusive: Retail giant's disty, reseller, and vendor all say they can't and won't sell
Simon Sharwood (The Register)
#enshittification #vmware #broadcom
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in reply to Tamas G

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Cleverson

Good morning. In Portuguese words where you have m or n after a vowel and before a consonant, the m/n is pronounced more or less clearly depending on the dialect. In any case, I believe that pronouncing it would be more standard. Thus, in a word like "antes", instead of ˈɐ̃ŋt͡ʃys, it should be ˈɐ̃ŋnt͡ʃys. Likewise, in the word "amplo", it should be ˈɐ̃mmplʊ instead of ˈɐ̃mplʊ. Is it possible to do please?
in reply to Cleverson

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@clv1 Hey! Yep, this is possible, and we can do it cleanly in the language pack — no engine change needed.
What’s happening is that eSpeak often "compresses" those cases into a nasal vowel plus a single nasal marker before the consonant. So you get something like "nasal A + nasal marker + T…", which is why "antes" looks like it’s missing a clear "n", and "amplo" doesn’t have that stronger "m" feel.
What I changed in the Portuguese pack is this: When eSpeak outputs that nasal marker before a consonant, we insert a clear "n” sound right after it. That makes "antes” come out closer to what you described (you can hear the consonant more explicitly). For cases like "amplo”, when a nasal vowel is followed by "m” before another consonant, we strengthen the "m” a bit (by doubling it), so it doesn’t get swallowed.
The nice part: you don’t need "five maps, one per vowel”. You can write rules that target the nasal marker itself (or target "nasal vowel + m/n before consonant”), so it works across all nasal vowels.
About making it a global engine rule: I wouldn’t rush that, because this is genuinely dialect/style-dependent in Portuguese. Some speakers expect a clearer "n/m” closure, others prefer the more nasalized vowel with a lighter consonant. Packs let us choose a "more standard / clearer” pronunciation for Portuguese without changing how other languages behave (or forcing one Portuguese style for everyone).
eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlay…
@Cleverson
in reply to Cleverson

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@clv1 If you want to experiment yourself, the easiest approach is:
1.
identify the nasal marker eSpeak uses in these contexts,
2.
add a single replacement that inserts “n” after it when the next sound is a consonant,
3.
add another replacement that strengthens “m” only when it appears after a nasal vowel and before a consonant.
If you share 5–10 words that are still off after this (pt-pt vs pt-br), we can tune the rule so it doesn’t affect cases like “ng” clusters where you don’t want an extra “n”.
@Cleverson
in reply to Tamas G

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Cleverson

Regarding last issue, i.e. m and n after a vowel and before a consonant:
words containing am/an are quite good, e.g. amplo, antes;
Words containing em/en are good too, e.g. sempre, sente;
As for words containing im/in, and om/on, I still cannot hear a clear m/n, e.g. cinto, sinto, pomba, ronco.
Lastly, in words containing um/un, there appears to have a disjunction between u and n, e.g. mundo.

mastodon - Link to source
I've found another interface to the Wayback Machine like The Old Net called Wayback Classic. Just enter a URL and hit lookup, and the site shows you capture dates for the URL in a nice table format. Click on a month in the table to see entries for that year and month. Unlike The Old Net, WBC will take you to the actual web.archive.org entry rather than giving you a site within a site. wayback-classic.net/

Wayback Classic

A frontend to search and browse the Wayback Machine from old browsers
wayback-classic.net

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Today is the ten year anniversary for one of the best email series I ever received. The "Instagram and Spotify hacking ring" one.

daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19…


“Subject: Urgent Warning”

Back in December I got a desperate email from this person. A woman who said her Instagram had been hacked and since she found my contact info in the app she mailed me and asked for help.
daniel.haxx.se
in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

mastodon - Link to source

The Psychotic Network Ferret

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mastodon - Link to source

Hey @Tutanota do you know mubi.com considers tuta.com email addresses invalid? I tried to convince their customer support its their problem but they're giving me some resonse which makes no sense. Is there something y'all can do?

#Mubi #Tuta #degoogle #privacy

Screenshot of email from mubi support saying: Hello Akshay, Unfortunately, there's little we can do about this on our end. The team thinks this is occurring because tuta.com is a privacy-oriented email service, designed for off grid usage. You might try adjusting settings in tuta.com itself and seeing if that helps. Otherwise, we recommend using a different email address. Our apologies for the inconvenience. Best regards,

MUBI: Watch and Discover Movies

Watch truly great cinema. Wherever you are. From iconic, award-winning directors to emerging auteurs. Transformative films from all over the world. Stream Now. Download to watch Offline. Start your free 7 day trial now.
MUBI
#privacy #degoogle #tuta #Mubi @Tuta
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in reply to Aryan

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Jonathan

opinion

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Once again, the buy #European is trending. What are your favorite European brands? 🇪🇺

In our latest guide, we take a look at the best European products you can use 👉️ tuta.com/blog/boycott-us-choos…

#BuyEuropean #PrivacyFirst #GDPR #DigitalSovereignty #PrivacyTech

The EU stars with the app icons of European products around them.

Boycott US products? New tariffs make people choose European products. Are we seeing a trend? | Tuta

With the growing movement to boycott US products and services, more people are choosing European alternatives. Let’s take a look at the best European products you can use.
Tuta
#gdpr #european #digitalsovereignty #privacyfirst #buyeuropean #privacytech

mastodon - Link to source

Who has still a #FOSS project hosted on #GitHub? Why?

Don't you prefer a development platform that is aligned with the values of free software?

Did you consider migrating to e.g. @Codeberg? Is there something holding you back?

codeberg.org/about

#opensource #software #git #gitforge #bigtech


Codeberg.org

Codeberg is a non-profit community-led organization that aims to help free and open source projects prosper by giving them a safe and friendly home.
Codeberg.org
#foss #opensource #software #github #git #bigtech #gitforge @Codeberg

mastodon - Link to source
People, with #Greenland raising awareness of our massive 24/7 dependence on US clouds for vital services, I made a list of what (government) stuff would break here under US sanctions. It is EXTREMELY depressing. Can I suggest that people also make a list like this one for their own countries? It is getting quite some traction here: berthub.eu/articles/posts/dash…

Dashboard totale Amerikaanse afhankelijkheden - Bert Hubert's writings

Hier een lijst organisaties die voor hun primaire missie totaal afhankelijk zijn van Amerikaanse clouds, en waarbij de maatschappij ontwricht zou worden als ze hun werk niet meer konden doen, bijvoorbeeld door sancties over Groenland.
Bert Hubert's writings
#greenland

mastodon - Link to source

Last February, I did a thing, which I called #Movuary, in which I sequenced a new track (almost) every day of the month of February with my then relatively new Ableton Move groove box.

Most days, I actually tracked a new thing, but a few were previous sequences that got slight touch-ups.

That was a lot of fun, and got me to think about things in ways I otherwise wouldn't, so I think I'll do it again this year.

If you're curious, here's a very boring index page with everything I did last year, including Ableton bundles for you to play with in your own Move, Ableton Note, or Ableton Live.

BTW, I have still never actually used Ableton Live. Maybe I'll get around to that one of these days.

borris.me/audio/movuary2025/

If anyone else here wants to do the same, posting a new track produced with Ableton Move every day in February using the #Movuary hashtag, let's make this a movement, or something.

Index of /audio/movuary2025

www.borris.me
#movuary

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"In a long screed [yesterday] morning, Trump’s social media account said the president is placing tariffs of 10% on all goods from the countries currently protecting Greenland after February 1, and that the tariffs will increase to 25% on June 1."

~ Heather Cox Richardson

#Trump #Greenland #madman #tariffs #NATO #Europe #fascism
/1

heathercoxrichardson.substack.…


January 17, 2026

After the extraordinary pushback on President Donald J.
Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American)
#Trump #NATO #europe #fascism #tariffs #greenland #madman
in reply to William Lindsey

mastodon - Link to source

William Lindsey

"The monumental idiocy of Trump’s threat to impose a 10% tariff on eight European nations that do not support his bid to conquer Greenland cannot go unremarked.

Foreign nations do not pay tariffs on goods imported into the US. Tariffs are paid by US companies that import goods into the US. Those companies pass their costs onto US consumers."

~ Robert B. Hubbell

#Trump #Greenland #madman #tariffs #NATO #Europe #fascism
/5

roberthubbell.substack.com/p/s…


Sunday Comment Section Open 1/18/26

January 18, 2026
Robert B. Hubbell (Today's Edition Newsletter)
#Trump #NATO #europe #fascism #tariffs #greenland #madman
in reply to William Lindsey

mastodon - Link to source

William Lindsey

"French intelligence, working with Ukraine, deliberately fed false high-level intelligence to Trump’s regime to test whether it would leak. That information quickly surfaced in Russian channels, confirming their worst fears. As a result, France and other European services have effectively cut the United States out of critical intelligence flows related to Ukraine and broader security matters."

~ Ben Meiselas

#Trump #Putin #NATO
/6

meidasplus.com/p/sunday-aftern…


Sunday Afternoon News Updates — 1/18/26

My recap of today's top stories
Ben Meiselas (Meidas+)
#Trump #Putin #NATO

mastodon - Link to source
AI, Claude, funny, made-up religion

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Can we please make this happen for @ky0les who has been trying for days? Please #repost if you feel so inclined.

Sleepy #bounce #bonk #boing #bleep. Anyway... Still trying to make this happen for myself. They're taking costs owed now and need to be payed by Tuesday at the latest. I'm trying to get it done so I'm not the one holding everyone else up. Happy day. I am getting really burned out on having to do this.
I am trying to raise funds to attend the Northwest Percussion Festival this year with my percussion ensemble.
With my aid being taken away I have no funding in my college account to make this possible.
This years show is especially meaningful to me. I will be performing my original marimba piece, Circles, live for the first time outside of school. The piece has already been published, and this will be its debut performance in front of an audience that isn't made of other college students, which is both exciting and a little surreal.
While I am there, I will also be playing with the steel pan group, attending concerts and clinics, and spending time learning from and connecting with other percussionists. This festival is a big opportunity for growth, inspiration, and community.
My fundraising goal is open ended. Any amount helps with travel, lodging, registration, and general expenses. If you are able to donate or share this, I would be incredibly grateful.
Thank you for supporting my music and helping me bring this performance to life.
Donations can be either sent on Cashapp or Venmo. Both usernames are ky0les. #mutualaid #mutualAid #percussion

#MutualAid #percussion #repost #bounce #bonk #boing #bleep @Kyle Smith
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