mastodon - Link to source

What is with these websites with seemingly random soft hyphens ­ placed everywhere?

Here's an example. It makes reading with a screen reader very difficult.
When research­ing a famous his­tor­i­cal fig­ure, access to their work and mate­ri­als usu­al­ly proves to be one of the biggest obsta­cles. But things are much more dif­fi­cult for those writ­ing about the life of Marie Curie, the sci­en­tist who, along her with hus­band Pierre, dis­cov­ered polo­ni­um and radi­um and birthed the idea of par­ti­cle physics. Her note­books, her cloth­ing, her fur­ni­ture (not to men­tion her lab), pret­ty much every­thing sur­viv­ing from her Parisian sub­ur­ban house, is radioac­tive, and will be for 1,500 years or more.

openculture.com/2023/11/marie-…


Marie Curie's Research Papers Are Still Radioactive a Century Later

Image by The Wellcome Trust When researching a famous historical figure, access to their work and materials usually proves to be one of the biggest obstacles.
OC (Openculture.com)

mastodon - Link to source

Canceled my Spotify subscription this year and started using @AntennaPod, and my god what an update to my QoL.

No algorithms shoving perceived interests down my throat, no analytics tracking my every move, and no ads other than any the shows themselves decided to embed in an episode.

Seriously, if you can, give it a shot for at least a week, or swing a donation their way. We all need projects like these to flourish

antennapod.org/


AntennaPod – The Open Podcast Player

AntennaPod is a podcast player that is completely open. The app is open-source and you can subscribe to any RSS feed. AntennaPod is built by volunteers without commercial intere...
AntennaPod
@AntennaPod

mastodon - Link to source

On my way to Brussels for XMPP summit then FOSDEM. Contact me here or on XMPP if you want to discuss Libervia, see a demo, or talk about related topics (XMPP Pubsub, e2ee, activityPub or email gateways, forums, multiparty A/V calls, metadata reduction, serverless, data policy, etc).

You can also directly come to our booth (XMPP & Realtime Lounge).

Please note that this year we are in AW level 1 instead of the usual location.

#Libervia #XMPP #summit #FOSDEM #Brussels

#xmpp #libervia #fosdem #brussels #summit
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source
So far with Moltbot, just on their web interface I have:
Sent a message to A T Guys support using the contact form on the website, getting around the CAPTCHA
Rickrolled myself by having it find Rick Astley on my computer and play using Winamp
Created a 20 song playlist of 90s bangers from files on my hard drive
Connected with Home Assistant and controled my speakers
Taken a screenshot of my computer
This thing can do good and very bad things. But wow the potential is there however you define it.

gotosocial - Link to source

Reading the "European agentic AI landscape" report and it doesn't start well. And note, I'm not per se opposed to AI. But this sort of unjustified affirmation of the consequent bothers me:

"The EU must address systemic barriers that limit its ability to
strengthen the agentic AI ecosystem and generate value."

Oh, really, must it now? Why then I suppose no-one could have anything to argue against that.

mastodon - Link to source

Please help sign this online petition.

A new bill in Indonesia would massively expand censorship of LGBT+ content online. Tell lawmakers to reject this dangerous legislation now!

This petition was created by their partners at the Pelangi Nusantara.

action.allout.org/en/m/a68f74a…

#lgbt #indonesia #humanrights #censorship


Stop Indonesia’s bill to censor LGBT+ lives online

Indonesia is moving to ban LGBT+ content across digital platforms. Activists warn this will fuel harassment and arrests. Urge lawmakers to reject the Broadcasting Bill and defend free expression – censorship is not protection.
action.allout.org
#censorship #HumanRights #lgbt #indonesia

gotosocial - Link to source

Leyendo noticias de Administración electrónica, acabo de ver esto, que se presenta como favorable, y a mi no me lo parece (y eso que yo sí pienso que la IA y los LLMs pueden tener utilidad).

"Europa destina ahora una mayor proporción de capital riesgo a la IA agentic que Estados Unidos, con Francia y Alemania emergiendo como los principales centros. Una constelación más amplia de ciudades innovadoras, como Ámsterdam, Estocolmo, Múnich y Barcelona, ​​está fortaleciendo el papel de Europa en este espacio. Los financiadores públicos, como el EIC y el EIT Health, desempeñan un importante papel catalizador, atrayendo a los principales inversores globales al ecosistema europeo de IA agentic."

mastodon - Link to source

The iPad was announced 16 years ago today. How?

How has it been that long?
How has the iPad not made PCs irrelevant yet?
How long until Apple just admits that iPad OS is a failed experiment with 7 too many window management options that make using the iPad more frictionful than a real computer at almost every single use case.

I still use mine almost every day but if my current 2018 iPad Pro stopped working for some reason I’m not sure I’d replace it. It just doesn’t quite know what it’s for. Still.

mastodon - Link to source
I tell ya, you could give Windows the newest and even better hardware in tons, and it would still be sluggish, laggy, unresponsive, straight up ignore input or take a minute to process, especially when booting up. This is a fucking top tier Lenovo laptop, I don't care how much bloatware there is on there, you have the resources, go and use them man, no reason to have my screenreader lag, only process one out of 3 keys and force me to reboot before even having done anything.

mastodon - Link to source
I tried using Claude Code on the desktop app today. Not to get technical, but Claude's where it's at if you're working on a large project like I am. It helps me follow a plan through beginning to end in an ordered way. Chatgpt is useful for other things, but this thing's generally accessible, is a great code pair, and it's willing to teach me as we go so I can do some of the coding. Heaven't started coding a lot yet, but I have a plan file outlined, and I'll start a refactor tomorrow.

mastodon - Link to source
OK, what are these big, awful, horrible problems which are supposed to befall me if I upgrade to the newest version of iOS as a voiceover user? Got a notification from Dice World and so of course immediately updated on my primary device because I’m that kind of stupid. So far, seems to be yet another massive wave of nothing. Thoughts welcome.

mastodon - Link to source

Remember folks, Apple also delayed the release of one of their show because the subject might offend the snowflakes in the white house

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sava…

So if you think their leadership is silent about what's happening, consider they are tacitaly supporting it.

journa.host/@theintercept/1159…

The Intercept (@theintercept@journa.host)

Internal Slack logs shared with The Intercept show outrage over Cook’s coziness with Trump and Apple's silence on Pretti's death. https://theintercept.com/2026/01/27/apple-tim-cook-trump-alex-pretti
The Intercept (Journa.host)
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Amazon exec accidentally sends layoff email a day early. Now people know there are layoffs but now need to wait until the official date to know if they were affected.

How stressful.

cnbc.com/2026/01/27/amazon-ina…


Amazon inadvertently announces cloud unit layoffs in email to employees

Amazon sent a notice out to staffers in an apparent error acknowledging "organizational changes" at the company.
Annie Palmer (CNBC)

mastodon - Link to source

Randos from FaceBook: Hi.
Me: Hi, I’m receiving a High volume of messages right now. But if you have something specific to share, let me know.
Them: Oh, I’m sorry. How’s it going?
Me: I’m busy. Did you need something?
Them: Oh, I just wanted to be your friend.

This has been the pattern with Messages there as of late, and it’s making me angry. It’s like, why should I have to come up with things to talk about with 20+ strangers in a given day? And, how’s it going is an open ended question. Not a specific share. Why is low effort engagement the new normal? Why is putting the emotional labor on someone else to make them drive an online conversation the new normal? Yes, I know I can block or restrict. And I do. That doesn’t change the pattern or the frustration. Mute one and three more like it come along.

mastodon - Link to source

#Eyedropper now supports the new session restore feature, so it will automatically restore picked colors across reboots.

Thanks to @AdrianVovk for the excellent guide!

#GNOME #GNOMEApps #GnomeCircle

#gnome #GNOMECircle #GnomeApps #eyedropper @Adrian Vovk
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source
NVSpeech Player with phoneme editor and NVDA Addon version 1.7.2
Very large release:
• Core: Initial support for Russian and Ukrainian with new phonemes and rules. Speakers of these languages are encouraged to contribute, especially once we get a version of the phoneme editor with internationalization.
• phoneme tuning: Softened sharp edges of some consonants using tools in repo.
• phoneme tuning: Improved UK English slightly to sound less Scottish in some areas.
• NVDA Driver: Adds "reset to default" option for restoring language pack defaults.
• NVDA driver: Check for updates button in settings now included.
• Phoneme Editor: Adds "refresh" option and keyboard shortcut to re-sync from the file if edited outside the editor.
• Phoneme editor: Adds shortcut for "save Language YAML" as well as Save Phonemes in the menu.
github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlay…
github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlay…
in reply to Goemon Ishikawa

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@GoemonIshikawa oooh yeah, it's sort of inbetween the two? But then it's weird because words like Paper didn't turn into Baper, so it might be specifically the soft-P variant of this. Eloquence had internal segment definitions. These were not clean IPA phonemes. They were closer to articulatory events: things like "alveolar stop release," "rhotic transition," "reduced vowel nucleus," "fricative tail," and so on. Many "phonemes" were actually sequences of micro-segments with baked-in motion. Then above that, Eloquence had a very aggressive rule engine. Context mattered more than identity. That's sort of why I built up 120 rules now, because they help form the start of that "context" type system, especially with having various passes to apply to the output. Voicing, noise, and motion were explicitly authored into the segment recipes. So to have that type of rule engine, would be really hard to do in conjunction with another phonemizer like ESpeak, unless we built that from scratch ourselves and the frontend was more closely then integrated with it.
@Goemon Ishikawa

mastodon - Link to source

So, random tip that some of you will probably find useful and others will be like, meh, I've known that for ages. Still I'm putting it out there because I'm literally ecstatic after learning this information, which I really should've looked up years ago.

So if I'm on a web site that has a lot of interesting links I want to check out, I will often open them in new tabs or windows, so that I can easily close them and return to the main page when done. To open a link in a new tab/window, I used to go to the context menu and hit the appropriate option. But in later versions of Brave (which is my primary browser), keyboard focus seems to have trouble staying in the context menu. Usually I have to open it, escape out of it, and open it again. Not sure why.

It turns out you don't even need to deal with that menu though, at least not for that. Shift enter opens a link in a new window, and control shift enter opens in new tab. I'll be honest, I don't enjoy learning random keystrokes because they're easy to forget, but these are two that are definitely going to save me time, and I will use them so much that I will remember them. As a third bonus keystroke, alt enter on a link will let you download the file it points to (it's the save link as option in the context menu). So yeah, hope at least one person finds this information useful.

Jonathan reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source
[Forum Topic] Launching app-suite.eu: AScan (Simplified OCR with Local AI) and AGram (Native Telegram Client) for macOS applevis.com/forum/macos-mac-a…

Launching app-suite.eu: AScan (Simplified OCR with Local AI) and AGram (Native Telegram Client) for macOS | AppleVis

Hi everyone, I am excited to introduce App-Suite.eu, a new home for macOS applications built from the ground up with a "Native Accessibility First" philosophy.
www.applevis.com

reshared this

⇧