"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
Wellp, I tried to integrate the logic from the old IPA file into my NVSpeech, now it sounds like someone's squeezing his balls very tightly each word, oh no. This is not how it used to sound I'm sure. Not all exclaiming and shreaking wildly.
often when you see messaging like "we all need to do our part" it's a kind of cynical justification for cutting some essential, centralized, mostly-efficient public service in favor of an ad-hoc, individualist approach that externalizes the issue and disclaims responsibility for neglect and poor outcomes. if you protest such a change, or suggest that perhaps some problems are better dealt with collectively by pooling resources, then it must be you who are lacking the collective spirit!
you will see things like "plans for recycling center abandoned" and "sanitation workers vote to strike over low pay and poor conditions" and "campaign launched to encourage recycling" and "water company admits wastage due to underinvestment" and "here's how you can save water and Save Our Planet"
this specific form of greenwashing is so successful and has basically normalized the idea that we should be satisfied with a gradually-worsening quality of life. people will genuinely get angry with you if you bring it up, and point to leaflets with stock photos of immaculate, smiling actors who are overjoyed to have remembered to switch off the water while brushing their teeth, rather than perhaps the idea that somebody needs to be paid a living wage to fix the pipes, or dig a new reservoir
every 5 years the spokesman of the You Can Recycle! trade organization says "no seriously we can actually recycle plastic now, so remember to recycle plastic" and you recycle plastic and then 5 years later there's a video of your empty coca cola bottles and your aunt's labubus and a couple of hundred thousand blu ray boxes all on fire on a riverbank. and the new spokesman of the You Can Recycle! trade organization is like "we promise this won't happen again" and the old spokesman is now at Exxon
Mimochodem, prvnรญ nervovรฝ kolaps v prรกci pro rok 2026. Jsem se zase tak vytoฤil, ลพe jsem musel odejรญt domลฏ. Chovรกnรญ nฤkterรฝch lidรญ, na to mi ani ty ADHD tabulky nestaฤรญ kurva.
Earlier today I learned that pip includes a bunch of telemetry data in the HTTP User-Agent header for every request it makes, and has for >10 years (with increasing amounts of info): github.com/pypa/pip/blob/545edโฆNot only is this not opt-in (as any telemetry should be), but there isn't even an opt-out. I'm still shocked and not sure what conclusions to draw from this, except: This is not okay! โโ I remember there was quite an uproar when Go tried to add opt-out telemetry a while back, and rightly so. How did I never hear about Python doing this before? Sure, less details, but still sending telemetry without ever asking for consent.
I like #Python, I want to keep using it, but can I if core tooling ignores user consent like this? And what other key development tools (Python or otherwise) have things like that and I just haven't noticed yet?
Not sure if that's the only place where anything is done with this, but at least in this instance it seems to ignore any of the more privacy invasive and non UA-fitting info anyway. ๐ค
(Like a UA saying "I'm pip x.y on python 3.z" seems somewhat reasonable to me, the rest not so much.)
A place to talk about packaging Python software and the tooling to make that possible. Use this category for discussions relating to anything packaging in Python, including but not limited to: PyPI / Warehouse pip setuptools wheel virtualenv Pipโฆ
(Maybe rather just "pip vX.Y" would be enough. The python version this is running under isn't really of anyone's concern that would encounter the UA...)
The U.K. government is warning of continued malicious activity from Russian-aligned hacktivist groups targeting critical infrastructure and local government organizations in the country in disruptive denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Updated Readme at github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlayโฆ with more engine variables. It's getting quite large and very, very language nerdy. But ah well, I must slowly begin to accept it: I'm turning into a language nerd.
Well, a LegacyPitchMode setting will be nice. It'll replicate that sound NVSpeechPlayer had before they moved to using Espeak's calculations for pitch curves. Next update it's planned for. The constants I'd be copying are right there: 25000, 1.5, 1.2, 8, 1.75, and the stressInflection decay rules.
In a money-based economy, this means that people earn money from their work and spend that money on the products made by others. When technology makes people more productive, less work is needed for the same output, and the value of the resulting product is reduced. 2/4
Unless we have an economy that is no longer based on money, highly autonomous systems would eliminate value. This is unlikely to be a mission that would attract billions in funding from investors who hope to share in all the money OpenAI plans to earn in the future. 4/4
I didnโt read this as โeconomicโ as in a natural limit on the price floor due to resource scarcity etc, but somthing that openAIโs investors can control as long as MSFT and Musk occasionally have a phone call
AI captions do not conform to #WCAG they usually require a lot of work to make them usable
The highest-risk areas for real harm are: (1) named entities/numbers, (2) multi-speaker attribution, (3) timing/readability, and (4) hallucinated โcorrections.โ
It is depressing to see how many interesting articles I come across when researching for our newsletter that are published on X. That's like writing on the toilet wall of the local racist dive barโฆ
In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid. ICE has said the app's results are a โdefinitiveโ determination of someone's immigration status.
In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid.
How did you spend the first few weeks of the year? Bob has stoned AI fun, but are there places where it's not as smart as he thinks it should be? Bob finally got his speaker!
Over a month since I made a complaint about accessibility and quality of their 9 year old cinema, Showcase have finally responded. For context - we went to see Wicked 2 on my Not Birthday last month. We booked the accessible row but non-wheelchair so I could take Roach but have a recliner seat. Paid extra for Xplus or "crystal clear definition" and "breathtaking, multidimensional sound". Spent a fortune on some impressively mediocre snacks.
Issue 1 - The seat didn't recline (broken) but it wasn't busy so we just moved along Issue 2 - The screen quality was awful - there were swirly patterns all over the image throughout, which was really distracting Issue 3 - The audio quality was possibly the worst I've ever experienced in a cinema. We could only hear it coming from the front because the accessible row had a high wall behind in where the regular stadium seating started so we were essentially in front of a baffle that blocked/muffled all the sound coming from the sides, meaning the mix was really odd in places.
We approached a staff member afterwards to make a complaint or at least let them know about the broken seat. They called a manager but I didn't want to hang around any more as I was feeling pretty overstimulated by that point and just wanted to go home. So I used their contact form online the next day.
I got a one line response a couple of days later asking if we'd received anything when we spoke to the staff member. I confirmed we hadn't. I got no further communication from them despite chasing it twice, until today. Here is the response pasted directly.
"Thank you for the email below and we sinceely apologise for the experience you received in particular as it was your birthday to enjoy the reclining seat. Wheelchair spaces are provided on the Gallery level as well as the low level between screens 1-6 except screen 4 , each row has is separated by a wall which does not impact the sound but provided adequate leg space for reclining the chairs and guest access. I, sincerely apologise you have not had the correct response and it is unfortuante you did not speak with a manager on the day as the feedback would have been addressed with return tickets offered . As a gesture of goodwill I would like to extend two complimenatry tickets to return in the near future, in hope you will accept them, please your full postal address."
Firstly, it is just terribly written for a person responsible for customer service. Maybe I'm being picky but there's a typo in the first sentence ffs. Secondly, flat out telling me I'm incorrect about the sound being impacted by a solid wall is... a choice. And then asking for more personal information so they can send two free tickets to go back? Bold. Their entire ticketing system is online so I'm not entirely sure why they couldn't just be emailed. No mention of them ghosting me for a month or the screen quality.
But say I even wanted to go back, how would it be different? I checked out the gallery option, wondering why we hadn't seen it when we booked before. I couldn't find any available accessible tickets in the gallery in any showings I checked, until I realised that area is only available in the evening - we went mid afternoon. It's also at least ยฃ10-15 more expensive and the actual wheelchair options? Right at the back in the corner of course! And you don't get a seat, just a space for your chair. Because ambulatory wheelchair users don't exist. What do you mean your chair doesn't recline? Ah, sucks to be you!
Of course you can just book regular seats in the gallery section and assume there's somewhere to store your wheelchair. Given the gallery has its own bar I wouldn't imagine that'd be too difficult, assuming they allow you to do that.
So if you're an ambulatory wheelchair user or can't do stairs and donโt want to sit right at the front: - You can only go to the cinema in the evening - It'll cost you ยฃ44-50 for two, not including drinks or snacks - It'll be less if you're happy to sit in your wheelchair AND you have a CEA card as you'll get a free carer seat, BUT you have to sit at the back in the corner with the worst view of the screen - You may or may not be able to store your chair/mobility aid somewhere nearby If you're a full time wheelchair user, even less choice. If you're also going alone, it's not even cheaper - you're paying the same price as everyone else for an empty space to park.
This turned out even longer than I anticipated, I'm sorry. It is just SO frustrating. Even more so when you get responses like this.
I really wish I could get a job in accessibility auditing, campaigning, consulting or something. I want to make this shit better somehow. It shouldnโt be like this, any of it.
I can never remember the braille symbol for the hash tag, but Perplexity just came to the rescue. I find I'm using AI more and more lately. #accessibility #a11y #braille
Buenas! Llevo casi 3 dรญas peleando con asterisk y no logro hacerlo entrar en razรณn. Intento configurarlo para WebRTC pero no ha podido ser jajaja. Lo mรกs a lo que he llegado es a establecer una llamada pero no escucho nada en el cliente web, tampoco puedo llamar a otros clientes o extensiones desde รฉl. En Asterisk dice que todo estรก en orden, pero no me termina de ir bien. Alguien ha tenido experiencias con Asterisk y WebRTC? el transporte por UDP funciona bien, eso sรญ.
A US Marine, traveling home after a tour of Iraq just before Thanksgiving, boarded an extremely overcrowded Amtrak train heading west from Penn Station. He searched up and down the carriages for a seat, but the only one available was being occupied by a fancy French womanโs poodle.
The Marine coughed politely and said, โMaโam, would you please place your dog on the floor so I can sit down?โ
Without even looking up, she sniffed and muttered, โYou Americans are so very rude. Canโt you see my little girl Trixy-Woo is using that seat?โ
Exhausted, the Marine walked the length of the train again - still no seat. He returned and asked once more, โPlease, maโam. Iโm really tired. Could you move your dog so I can sit?โ
She laughed and said loudly, โNot only are you Americans rude, but also pig-headed and arrogant as well!โ
That was it.
As the train had not yet left the station, the Marine picked up the poodle, dropped it out the window onto the platform, and sat down.
The woman shrieked, โIs there any man here who will defend my honor? This American thug must be put in his place!โ
A well-dressed, refined Englishman sitting nearby calmly looked up and said to the Marine, โSir, I find you Americans do many things the wrong way. You prefer coffee over tea, drive on the wrong side of the roadโฆ and now it seems -
Youโve thrown the wrong bitch out the window.โ
In breaking sports news, McGonagall contemplates firing captain Oliver Wood after Gryffindorโs heartbreaking loss to Hufflepuff. This is a developing story.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor. A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota -- one of the protestโs organizers -- shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting โICE outโ and โJustice for Renee Good.โ The 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activities. The protesters allege that one of the churchโs pastors โ David Easterwood โ also leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that have involved violent tacticsand illegal arrests.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization "Racial Justice Network", dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agentsโ actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
โWhen you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community and all the harm that they have caused, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,โ said Armstrong, who added she is an ordained reverend.
โIf people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community, then they need to check their theology and they need to check their hearts.โ apnews.com/article/minnesota-iโฆ
When I was a kid on a school trip to the Wedgwood factory, I desperately needed the loo. Teacher said there were none. I snuck off and pissed into a vat. Later learned it was clay for fine china.
I do miss my IBMTTS on 64-bit NVDA. Sigh. Eloquence is good but I'll always stay in that minority of people who likes the 22K IBMTTS, so back to 2025.3 we go. I'll keep the alpha around as a portable copy though so I can still experiment and update it once in awhile. Can't believe magnification feature is already in the alphas though, a bit surprising that they're already working on 2026.2, wow, shocked there a bit.
Oh, magnification will be great to see. I should check out the alphas at some point, though I'd prefer waiting for the betas but well. A portable will do I guess.
@ppatel yeah, I wish. No news on my TL about that yet. I think if anything the same out-of-process host can be reused to wrap it though I'd imagine, might be able to feed GPT both zips of Eloquence X64 NVDA and the IBMTTS, say, "here you go, modernize it." I'd laugh if that worked in one go.
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...
@wiljames oh yeah, using it. But Eloquence is not the same as IBMTTS, and only 11 KHZ Sample rate (it never had a sample rate combobox in NVDA settings because Eloquence doesn't expose this, IBMTTS does.)
NVSpeechPlayer now works with 64-bit NVDA. This is great news, and the fix was very easy to do, not a lot of refactoring. I wish the same could be said for other synthesizers, but ah well. Let's just feel lucky and enjoy that feeling while we can. Download: eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlayโฆ (works on older 2025.3 NVDA too, no need to worry there.) Also includes more Portuguese language rules. Includes the new settings for diphthongs transitions: autoTieDiphthongs, and autoDiphthongOffglideToSemivowel.
I have a dumb question. I use ESpeak daily, but the one built into NVDA. I have the SAPI wrapper for ESpeak NG as well, though its speech seems different from what I get with NVDA. What does the Speech Player package do that's different?
oh, that's not a dumb question at all, and one I've been trying to figure out too. I think the main difference, and I examined the DSP engine code in both and it looks the same, is that the Espeak SpeechPlayer gets fed through other layers of Espeak: The IPA is normalized in-engine, sample rate is up-converted a little I think to 22050 from 16000, and it has to go through another DSP that Espeak itself uses. It's really my best guess without like, tearing apart the entire massive sourcecode for Espeak and figuring out how they normalize the IPA to different formant sounds than the one done with the standalone frontend. We have to do the hard work ourselves with saying, "these IPA symbols make these sounds and here are the exact pronouncing rules for them for each language, and here's what Espeak fed us as the IPA for that word."
I just installed it. It sounds very different from what I'm used to. Kind of a more Doubletalk feel in the way it says some things. That said, the Max voice isn't there, and that's my default voice, so that may be part of it. It's a very cool thing to work on, and I imagine you're learning a ton about IPA rules, phonemes, and other nuts and bolts of speech synthesis.
@alexhall I think I figured it out. Thereโs a helper in sPlayer.c that literally adds samples from eSpeakโs consonant wave data into the buffer that SpeechPlayer just generated. This is used for voiced consonants where eSpeak wants a recorded/noise-ish component (think โvโ, โzโ, etc.) on top of the voiced part. That gets mixed together with SpeechPlayer's wave output.
@alexhall So vowels and the voiced core are synthesized from parameters (formants, bandwidths, pitch, amplitude). But, for some consonant-y bits, eSpeak can add a prebuilt waveform snippet on top of the generated audio. Think of it as โstir in a bit of recorded/noise-ish textureโ rather than โplay a full recorded phonemeโ. Itโs not like a big concatenative TTS database. Itโs more like a set of tiny wave fragments that help certain sounds. That was interesting to discover in all this.
I wanted to ask you some more questions about NVSpeechPlayer. Is the goal to modernize it and improve the existing languages too? And I was just curious, does the phoneme editor allow me to change intonation rules and then use this with the NVDA add-on? Or are the phoneme editor and the add-on entirely separate things?
@BTyson Yep! the goal is both: modernize NVSpeechPlayer and steadily improve the language quality over time. The big change is that language behavior is now mostly "data-driven" through YAML packs instead of being locked into the old Python runtime pipeline. That means dialect fixes and language improvements donโt require rebuilding the DLL. people can contribute and iterate on packs much faster. About the phoneme editor vs the NVDA add-on: theyโre not separate. The editor works with the same packs the NVDA add-on loads. So you can either:
point the editor at the packs folder inside your NVDA add-on, or edit packs elsewhere and then drop them into the add-on. So any phoneme or language-pack changes you make in the editor can be used by NVDA immediately, as long as NVDA is loading that same packs folder. For intonation: yes, within the limits of what the frontend supports. The editor lets you change the same kinds of timing and pitch/intonation rules that are described in the README (stress scaling, stop closures, segment boundaries, clause intonation shapes, etc.). If something isnโt expressible in the YAML model, then it would require an engine/frontend code change - but a lot of the practical โspeech feelโ is already in the pack settings and intonation sections.
@BTyson so in almost all cases itโll still speak, youโll just end up with speech that sounds odd. Things like changing pitch ranges, stress scaling, boundary fades, or the shape of an intonation contour can make it sound monotone, sing-songy, over-emphatic, choppy, etc., but they usually wonโt stop audio or crash it.
Awesome. I have some things I want to try to do to improve its intonation, that was my biggest issue with it when they made the intonation more like eSpeak's. I don't like eSpeak's intonation at all, but knowing that I can modify intonation here I think could help with that.
@BTyson yeah, feel free to just tweak all of them, it's always easy to go back by rewriting the default pack. Sadly the core strategy (how it decides where the nucleus is, how it assigns prehead/head/tail, how it picks pitch accents based on syntax), packs wonโt rewrite that logic. Packs can tune the parameters of the strategy, but they wonโt invent a new one. That's on the engine. But if we can somehow know exactly what it is about the intonation that's off compared to Eloquence, we can rewrite this at the core, so I welcome feedback for that.
Is it possible to gain any insite by reading IPA.py from the ee80f4d commit? If you, for instance, run NVDA 2016.1, with the later Speech Player commits that sound more like eSpeak, replacing IPA.py from the old ee80f4d commit will bring back that intonation. So while it's not directly compatible, I wonder if it's possible to read that to get bits and pieces from it?
@BTyson yeah. you can just add that section as is and see how it sounds after switching synths and then going back. I'm not sure, this sounds too flat for me, but maybe you have good ears to tweak it to sound like it did before.
@BTyson not only that, but you can actually define it per symbol like this: (add to the end as well) ",": preHeadStart: 52 preHeadEnd: 56 headExtendFrom: 0 headStart: 64 headEnd: 60 headSteps: [100] headStressEndDelta: -4 headUnstressedRunStartDelta: -2 headUnstressedRunEndDelta: -2 nucleus0Start: 56 nucleus0End: 62 nucleusStart: 60 nucleusEnd: 52 tailStart: 52 tailEnd: 62
@BTyson ipa.py from that era had three main traits that made it feel more โEloquence-like.โ Specifically, the pitch shaping, stress accents, and vowel durations were crucial parts.
I wanted to let you know that I restarted NVDA with the synth set to speech player, and it currently doesn't speak when NVDA first starts, and I have to re-load the synthesizer to get it to speak again.
@BTyson ah darn. Can't repro that one at all, and I tried with both 2025.3 and 2026.1 - hmm. I wonder if it changed between the new and old driver updates, I'll check though just to make that sure.
@BTyson oh crap. Well, I'll check to make sure we call the audio output device in a compatible way for 2024.4, I don't think we do a try block for it so that might explain it for sure. They changed it later on. But I'm glad people are testing it on older NVDA because I do still need that compatibility. Ideally as far back as 2024.1 if I can.
@BTyson oh darn. I must have regressed that one, we used to attach index events together to prevent that from happening, which can help. It's still in the older driver code so I can patch it back though.
@BTyson the current model uses eSpeak's ipa_convert.py percent values, with downward inflection from tailEnd adjustments. But that can be adjusted in the packs. I did look at the IPA.py from that commit but it didn't change fundementally how things get calculated, no insights were gained there. Are you sure sure that's the commit where it still sounded less donward-inflectiony?
I'll have to pull down the git repo, but that's definitely one of them, yes. It isn't the last one, but running that one definitely yields that. I forget where that repo is these days. Is it on GitHub?
@BTyson The few cases that can effectively "break" output are more like config mistakes than "bad intonation," for example: Invalid YAML / parse errors (the pack wonโt load), Referencing a phoneme key that doesnโt exist (depending on how strict the loader is, it may drop sounds or fail the pack), or Setting extreme values that cause the signal to go silent or clip badly (e.g., voice amplitude to 0, or crazy boundary gaps that chew up everything).
@blindndangerous @prism LOL people are thinking of the Espeak variants :) This one only had 4 voices they originally made for it. Edward though isn't the wrong thought: It's what this is now today in Espeak. So if you choose "edward" or any of the "ed" variants you're getting SpeechPlayer fed through Espeak directly, but a lot of people say it sounded different once they integrated as that voice.
@ppatel @fireborn yeah, now that we have language-specific rules, it's easy enough to bring back some of those at least, but breaking them globally to sound UK is not ideal. That's why, OK? Once this added multilingualness, the base phonemes had to change slightly. So now we can't undo all that work without just making them language-specific either. That's the grapple there. If we reverted every single IPA sound back to how it was in 2014, it would sound like an American with a speech impediment
Happy Martin Luther King Jr day. He said so many profound things and taught us so many valuable lessons, but this is the quote that resonates strongest with me. To me, itโs even more important than ever when we all have the potential to be keyboard warriors and spread global disharmony with a few key presses. But in any aspect of life, they are words to keep in mind when we feel we have been wronged and the poison of vengeance is pulsing through our veins.
"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction."
First two posts are "ableist nonsense" about the sign language translator; and "they got the betazoid wrong". My brother in Surak: TNG got betazoid powers wrong, DS9 broke canon for Trills, and Voyager fucked Borgs beyond recognition (with the help of First Contact). Canon is not a really thing in the Star Trek writers room.
This is a specific trekkie brain injury: the idea that Star Trek series are strongly bound by rules that can't ever change for economic reasons or narrative expedience, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You stare at Star Trek long enough and you start to believe that any deviation is caused by writers not understanding the lore, when it's just a case of people making a television show on Earth over the course of 60 years
I'd be surprised if Ron Moore ever thought different; after all, he's the guy that took the "I Can't Believe It's Not Russiansโข" Klingon of TOS, ignored them, and then wrote the book on their society and culture, starting from TNG and with DS9. If he had to adhere to the existing lore, we would not have had 80% of the Klingon stories we have today
Si he solicitado [el alta de] asistencia sanitaria a une cรณnyugue, alrededor de cuantos dรญas laborales se puede demorar [en aparecer como beneficiarie]?
Pregunto esto para espaรฑa.
Compartid porfi. Si me dais cifras de 2025 o cercanas me sirve, para hacerme una idea de como estรก el panorama.
viene en el ET: Artรญculo 37. Descanso semanal, fiestas y permisos. 3|. La persona trabajadora, previo aviso y justificaciรณn, podrรก ausentarse del trabajo, con derecho a remuneraciรณn, por alguno de los motivos y por el tiempo siguiente: b|) Cinco dรญas por accidente o enfermedad graves, hospitalizaciรณn o intervenciรณn quirรบrgica sin hospitalizaciรณn que precise reposo domiciliario del cรณnyuge, pareja de hecho o parientes hasta el segundo grado por consanguineidad o afinidad, incluido el familiar consanguรญneo de la pareja de hecho, asรญ como de cualquier otra persona distinta de las anteriores, que conviva con la persona trabajadora en el mismo domicilio y que requiera el cuidado efectivo de aquella.
I think that's a no-brainer right now that Europe should pursue digital sovereignty aggressively.
It's not about MS Office vs Libre Office, it's about banking apps, cloud services, your phone, your daily life. Which is a way bigger leverage #Trump has about your daily life. #FOSS is security.
I watched the first two episodes of Starfleet Academy, after consciously trying to stay out of the Star Trek fandom's catastrophising about it, as well as avoiding the obvious attempts at pre-emptively shit on it by the chuds, and I have some thoughts about the series.
No spoilers, but I think the series started very well. The cast of adults is great, and the young characters are an interesting bunch. The series clearly has a lot of talent, both in front and behind the cameras. Shout out to Holly Hunter playing a chaos gremlin captain that sits on her bridge chair like a cat; Paul Giamatti for his scenery chewing; and Gina Yashere for her big Nigerian London Mom vibes
It's too early to tell, but what I've seen so far intrigues me enough to watch the rest of the showโof course I'm not going to subscribe to Paramount Plus because fuck David Ellison; just like with his dad, never fall into the trap of anthropomorphising an Ellison. I'll do what I've done with Disco and SNW: I'll buy the season pass when it's out, and get the BluRays for my collection.
This is where I venture in some analysis of the first two episodes, just because they stayed in my brain for a day or two after watching. There's still a lot of uncover, and things can go sideways pretty fast, so I don't want to extrapolate future behaviour from the pilot and the first episodeโฆ
As an Old School TNG Trekkieโข, the "Starfleet Academy" spin off has been in the fan discourse for a long time; back in the late '90s/early '00s discourse typically took the shape of "let's go back to the TOS era character when they were young", because the Star Trek fandom always had this predictable reactionary/nostalgic streak, which was counterbalanced by the "get that prelapsarian fuckery away from me and give me new characters to love" progressive currentโฆ
I think the reason why the Starfleet Academy concept kinda works now, as opposed to then, is that the reactionary current that took over the fandom as a response to Discovery got hit by Strange New Worldsโa series that, at its best, takes nostalgia and turns it on its head. Instead of the Academy of Kirk/Spock/McCoy, we got the first five year mission with a different set of legendsโฆ
This freed up the part of the fandom that saw Discovery grow up from its grimdark season 1 and 2 into a series dedicated to building bridges and hope in the face of trauma, picking up the pieces of a broken, divided, and confrontational world; the part that is now trying to seed the next generation of the fandom, teaching new (and old) folks how to deal with Star Trek againโฆ
Instead of looking at the past as a way to retreat into the comfy socks of the future as imagined by our parents and grandparents, we get pushed into a future trying to rebuild itselfโand that future doubles for both the Star Trek and general SF fandom. Instead of going further and further dark (both figuratively and literally, just look at how Picard was staged and lit), we got bright, airy setsโฆ
I don't know if this effort will pan out, and we're going to get a long running series with a rotating cast going farther into the future, like the showrunners seem to indicate. At this point, just like with Discovery, I value a lot more a valiant effort even if that may ultimately fall short, than a safe bet on whatever grimdark slop they'll give us next if things don't change.
๐ฃ๏ธ 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. ๐ง Would you like to help them? Come and test them out, and let us know what you think: gd.lu/15pM9q
This is the latest development at the start of the year: Mia and Mil, two new voices to reproduce texts in Luxembourgish as faithfully as possible. Come and see how you can help us get to grips with them.
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'Lรซtzebuerger Sprooch, Centre pour le dรฉveloppement des compรฉtences relatives ร la vue, LouderPages and to all the contributors of the RHvoice project.
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๐ฃ๏ธ 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.
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.
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.
I wish that were the case at home. My noise problems are mostly caused by a crappy solar inverter, so it just keeps on running when the power goes out.
@BorrisInABox Well, I suppose I have a half hour edge, since that's all I'd get out of the uPS running all my gear. But I'm pretty certain the majority of the noise on signals here is the elevator machine room. When I go up to the 15th floor and stand in the elevator, the AC noise is actually its own modulation.
Yep, that would do it. I have a dedicated battery I can run my radio stuff on, for what it's worth. I've never fully tested it to see how long it will last transmitting and receiving, powering three different mobile radios for different bands and the like. It's a 50 amp battery.
@BorrisInABox I'd think you'd get probably a good ten hours out of that battery with heavy high power transmitter use. A hell of a lot more if you were only receiving.
@BorrisInABox As in, there is a repeater than I can get with no rubber duck on, its so strong. And when that repeater was active, and i took off the duck, the aC noise was modulating in with the weak repeater signal.
When I lived in Greensboro in the early 90s, we had a repeater that was so strong I could go down to the basement, take the duck off of the HT, go to low power, key the repeater, and still get about an S7 on the repeaters S meter. If anything clobbered that machine, then it would have been extremely bad times.
@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.
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
@BorrisInABox Bummer that it had to end that way. Definitely a shweet tower! Unfortunately, that awesome repeater I was so closed to got moved around a few times for commercial and political reasons, and just most recently in 2022 got bullied off their commercial tower, no explanation, just: "You have seven days, get your shit off." That repeater hasn't come back.
Suggesting to someone that they should simply 'disable [harmful] feature' after it has caused them harm is like suggesting that they should 'ask for mercy' after they were killed
funny how all the platforms that design this way (Apples liquid glass, Discords nitro anti-features) are all proprietary and can only offer the illusion of user choice by letting you make the experience worse
LukeAlmighty ๐จ๐ฟ
in reply to Archos • • •ฤeskรฝ politickรฝ humor nenรกvidรญm, protoลพe nikdy nemรก pointu ani hloubku.
Tento vtip je vzรกcnรก vรฝjimka.
Archos
in reply to LukeAlmighty ๐จ๐ฟ • • •๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ ๐ง๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐พ๐๐๐
in reply to Archos • • •Aspoล hashtag, aลฅ se to dรก blokovat... Plรญz ๐
Archos
in reply to ๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ ๐ง๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐พ๐๐๐ • • •๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ ๐ง๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐พ๐๐๐
in reply to Archos • • •Sorry, je toho vลกeho zu viel...
Archos
in reply to ๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ ๐ง๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐พ๐๐๐ • • •Unreed
in reply to Archos • • •Archos
in reply to Unreed • • •