mastodon - Link to source

I'm not sure why Alberta Wexiteers wanting to join the US is suddenly a big story about treason 11 months after Jeffrey Rath went on Fox&Friends to announce it and DeSmog wrote about it.
Except that Premier Eby only just read about the separatists ask for $500bn US credit in the Financial Times yesterday. #abpoli #media

CBC radio was all omigod about it this morning, although they don't like the word treason any more than they like the word genocide.
They also gave AB Premier Smith a big pass, saying its not her fault, even though it was Smith who actually altered Alberta election law to help the future separatist referendum succeed.

desmog.com/2025/05/20/meet-the…

DeSmog, May 20, 2035 : Meet the Calgary Lawyer Pitching Alberta to the U.S. as the 51st State Jeffrey Rath recently went on Fox & Friends to discuss the oil-rich province “becoming a U.S. territory.” By Danielle Paradis on May 20, 2025 @ 03:00 PDT JEFFREY RATH | LAWYER FROM ALBERTA, CANADA CANADIAN LAWYER LEADS MOVEMENT TO HAVE ALBERTA JOIN THE U.S. Jeffrey Rath told "Fox and Friends" that he is a part of "hundreds of interested Albertans” who want to head down to Washington to explore becoming a U.S. territory or state. Credit: Fox News/YouTube Screenshot of Rath on Fox.

Meet the Calgary Lawyer Pitching Alberta to the U.S. as the 51st State - DeSmog

Jeffrey Rath recently went on Fox & Friends to discuss the oil-rich province "becoming a U.S. territory."
Danielle Paradis (DeSmog)
#media #abpoli
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source
Ahahahaha. You all are going to laugh when I tell you why UK English sounds messed up in SpeechPlayer. I fixed it. It was a bug in the driver, well two: (A) always pass En-GB (not EN) to Espeak, and (B) make sure the YAML rules apply in the NVDA driver. As a result, UK rules were simplified, and it's back to sounding like UK sounded in the initial SpeechPlayer. I should probably release this for UK folks.
This entry was edited (17 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source
I haven't seen an llm that does things flawlessly, in that when you tell it to do a task that it theoretically has done before, it's always going to do it the exact same way every time. That's why I don't use Alexa Plus for example. Many times it will, sure, but sometimes it's gonna hickup and not do the thing you asked, saying it can't help with that, or try to do something else entirely. That's why I went back to the normal one. I like using them in environments where I can say no, that's not right, fix that, or I can fix it myself. That's why I use them for coding, and only in languages where I can read and correct the generated code.
in reply to Stevo

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@TheQuinbox yep. Think I feel the same way about this. As much as I'd love to pick up Rust learning, not knowing at least how classes, functions, objects, mutexes (for C stuff) work, threadding, locking, ETC... Shifting your mental model to Rust's... The LLM could probably write me something but then I lose all ability to debug it myself and point to lines and exactly say where to refactor and what. So probably to pick up a new language I'd use a combo of LLM and classical learning (IE read a damn tutorial) LOL.
@Quin

mastodon - Link to source

#XMPP Summit

The next topic is #Onion #Routing 🧅

The XMPP Summit:
xmpp.org/2025/11/xmpp-summit-2…

Meet us at #FOSDEM 2026, too!

#jabber #chat #opensource #messaging #federation #Brussels, #Belgium #opensource #rtc #e2ee

The XMPP Logo

XMPP Summit 28 | XMPP - The universal messaging standard

The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) is exited to announce the 28th XMPP Summit taking place in Brussels, Belgium next year - just before FOSDEM 2026. The XSF invites everyone interested in development of the XMPP protocol to attend, and discuss all …
xmpp.org
#xmpp #opensource #Jabber #federation #fosdem #chat #onion #messaging #belgium #brussels #rtc #e2ee #routing

mastodon - Link to source

Me and a friend were talking last night, and she had some good ideas for AccessiWeather, including ISS tracking and the like. I thought, that's a bit out of scope for a weather app, so...

Hey everyone,

Just published AccessiSky, a companion app to AccessiWeather on GitHub.

"Stay connected to what's above."

While AccessiWeather handles weather forecasts and alerts, AccessiSky tracks what's happening in the sky:

- ISS (international space station) pass predictions for your location
- Moon phases and rise/set times
- Sunrise, sunset, and twilight times
- Meteor shower calendar
- Planet visibility — which planets are up tonight
- Eclipse calendar through 2030
- Aurora forecasts and space weather
- Tonight's Summary — a quick overview of everything happening tonight

Same accessibility focus as AccessiWeather, full screen reader support. Uses free APIs, no accounts needed.

github.com/Orinks/AccessiSky


GitHub - Orinks/AccessiSky: Stay connected to what's above — accessible sky tracking for everyone

Stay connected to what's above — accessible sky tracking for everyone - Orinks/AccessiSky
GitHub

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Born this day in 1919, Fred Korematsu, one of the bravest and most honorable of American patriots.

In 1942 president Roosevelt ordered that persons he deemed threats to national security be relocated from the west coast to detention camps inland. 125,000 people, two-third of them American citizens, had to give up their homes, their jobs, and their businesses.

Korematsu resisted every step of the way. When he was rejected from military service (probably on account of his ancestry) he took work as a Navy shipyard welder.

Later that year Roosevelt's order came down. Korematsu went into hiding, but was found, arrested, and convicted. He was sentenced to five years' probation and he and his family were relocated to a prison camp in Utah.

Korematsu appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944, the Supreme Court's decision was to uphold the president's judgments about national security matters, however panicked or racist they might be. In the U.S., the case law was (and is) that if the president wants to strip 80,000 citizens of their rights, the courts can do nothing to stop it if the claimed purpose is national security.

Some say the decision was overturned in 2018. It was not. And, although current Chief Justice John Roberts has written "The forcible relocation of U.S. citizens to concentration camps, solely and explicitly on the basis of race, is objectively unlawful and outside the scope of Presidential authority", the Supreme Court seems determined to repeat the errors of the Korematsu case, to accept at face value and take as unreviewable, the president's representations, no matter how obviously bad faith, and no matter the cost.

Post announcing the relocation order. In lager letters: "INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE ANCESTRY". Farther down: "All Japanese persons, both alien and non-alien, will be evacuated from the above designated area by 12:00 o'clock biib Tuesday, APril 7, 1942.”
This entry was edited (18 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Winter hits the hardest in crisis zones.

This week, another EU Humanitarian Air Bridge flight to Gaza delivered 48 tonnes of supplies.

Since October 2023, over €550 million in aid, including health supplies, shelter, and educational items, has been delivered to Palestinians on behalf of EU and humanitarian partners.

The EU remains the largest international donor of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

Learn how ➡️ link.europa.eu/bKMF48

A cargo pallet loaded with supplies is being lifted onto an airplane at night. The pallet is secured with netting, and the scene is illuminated by airport lighting. The aircraft has a blue and white design, and a mobile staircase is positioned beside it. The background is dark, and the tarmac is wet, reflecting the lights.
Two large pallets of humanitarian supplies are loaded onto airport trolleys on a tarmac at night. The pallets are wrapped in plastic and secured with netting, with labels indicating they contain Humanitarian aid supplies. The scene is dimly lit, with a dark sky overhead and no other visible people or aircraft nearby.

Palestine*

The EU has been providing humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in need since 2000, supporting vulnerable families affected by emergencies and shocks.
European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations

mastodon - Link to source

Sensitive content

#xmpp #opensource #Jabber #federation #fosdem #chat #messaging #belgium #brussels #rtc #e2ee @Guus der Kinderen
This entry was edited (17 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

RE: social.tchncs.de/@kuketzblog/1…

the question is not "is Signal big tech?" but "am I using and supporting big tech if I use and donate to signal?" and the answer is YES

#Signal #BigTech

Kuketz-Blog 🛡 (@kuketzblog@social.tchncs.de)

Ist der Messenger Signal »Big Tech« – oder nicht? https://www.kuketz-blog.de/ist-der-messenger-signal-big-tech-oder-nicht/
Kuketz-Blog 🛡 (Mastodon)
#signal #bigtech

mastodon - Link to source
Tengo una duda existencial del primer mundo friki. Quiero experimentar con inteligencias artificiales en local. Para empezar, además de informarme mucho, me hace falta un hardware dedicado. Además del precio está cual escoger. Las máquinas más preparadas del mercado funcionan bajo Windows o se puede usar equivalente en Linux. Y son dos mundos que no manejo con soltura. Así que me da miedo a quedarme con un caro pisapapeles. ¿Alguna opinión?

mastodon - Link to source

Fact of the day: the Ford Edsel ("a 1950s flop so notorious that it’s taught in business schools to this day") outsold the Cybertruck 2:1, "in a country with half the population."

ebsco.com/research-starters/hi…

(h/t Luke Savage in the American Prospect, prospect.org/2026/01/30/teslas…)


Tesla’s Wile E. Coyote Moment Is Here

But how long can Elon Musk keep running on air? Potentially quite a long time.
Ryan Cooper (The American Prospect)
This entry was edited (20 hours ago)
in reply to Hiisikoloart

mastodon - Link to source

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

In theory, it’s people who care a lot about audio quality. They often claim to have better than average frequency range in their ears (many do, but a lot claim to hear things only bats can actually hear).

For a long time, a lot of consumer audio equipment was pretty terrible, so there were real reasons for wanting something better, I remember listening to a CD that I’d heard many times on my CD player and ripped to my iPad and discovering that CD player from the ‘80s had completely lost a load of low-volume bits and there was material that would probably have been audible on an expensive player in the ‘80s and was easily audible on a cheap player in the early 2000s.

At the same time, the Loudness War happened. Music execs found that people were more likely to like music if it was loud the first time they heard it. So they started making CDs louder. But CDs have a fixed dynamic range, so making it loader lost detail. They couldn’t do this with records because the needle would jump out of the track, so we had a weird period where LPs had better audio fidelity than CDs. Unfortunately, LPs are really finicky and it’s very easy to scratch them if you don’t perfectly balance the stylus to avoid more than minuscule pressure on the surface.

So, to listen to the highest-quality music, you needed a moderately expensive record deck, a decent amplifier (and pre-amp: again, LPs are annoying to play), and speakers. And it was fairly noticeable if you got any of these wrong.

But then DACs got a lot better. Cheap USB audio adaptors for computers had much better precision than anything available in the ‘80s, and could be placed outside of the case and away from RF interference from the computer. AAC audio supports a variable dynamic range (so bumping the loudness is just a scaling factor, not a loss of precision). Baseline speaker and amplifier quality improved a lot. By the mid 2000s, fairly cheap equipment gave better sound quality than anything you could buy in the ‘90s.

By then, an entire industry had grown up to cater to people who wanted the best sound quality possible and an even larger group of people who wanted to be seen as having the best sound quality. It moved from music appreciation to conspicuous consumption as a primary market driver. And that made it a ripe target for scams.

For analogue things, there were obvious things you could sell, like cables with gold-plated connectors. Gold is a good conductor and, unlike copper, doesn’t corrode, so this would make a difference (whether the difference is audible is another matter). But the move to mostly digital paths made this harder. You got very silly things like ‘audiophile grade’ Ethernet cables and optical connectors, which ignored the fact that the digital protocols had built-in error correction and that audio is staggeringly low bandwidth in comparison to other things carried over these connections so there’s space for a lot of error correction. A load of these things can be run over a wire coathanger with no loss in quality.

The entire ecosystem became dominated by very silly things. But they’re all quite interesting because they have some plausible-looking science behind them, which then goes off in a nonsense direction. For example, Ethernet is an electrical protocol, so signal quality matters. Gold is a good conductor. Gold connectors on Ethernet cables will reduce signal degradation. Pay no attention to the fact that the Ethernet standard is specified based on specifically rated cables and won’t be any better on ones with marginally better connectors.

My guess from the picture is that someone has noticed that electrical noise from a power supply can be a problem and has built something that looks very plausibly like it would solve that.

mastodon - Link to source

#XMPP Summit

After the break, @Goffi presented about #Data Policy: xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/data…

The XMPP Summit:
xmpp.org/2025/11/xmpp-summit-2…

Meet us at #FOSDEM 2026, too!

#jabber #chat #opensource #messaging #federation #Brussels, #Belgium #opensource #rtc

The XMPP Logo

XMPP Summit 28 | XMPP - The universal messaging standard

The XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) is exited to announce the 28th XMPP Summit taking place in Brussels, Belgium next year - just before FOSDEM 2026. The XSF invites everyone interested in development of the XMPP protocol to attend, and discuss all …
xmpp.org
#xmpp #opensource #Jabber #federation #fosdem #chat #data #messaging #belgium #brussels #rtc @Goffi
This entry was edited (19 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Several of our teams will be at #fosdem26 ... we'll introduce our PQC and Reliable Deletion ("forward secrecy") efforts, and give an overview over multi-relay #chatmail architectures. Or catch us on the booth or some sunny place outside :)

delta.chat/fosdem26.html

invite link for public fosdem26 group
attention: consider joining with a dedicated conference chat profile because large public groups can attract trolls. Your private profiles are safe/unaffected then.

i.delta.chat/#6CBFF8FFD505C0FD…


Message privately on Delta Chat

Tap the invite link to start
i.delta.chat
#chatmail #fosdem26

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moments of terror: I went to put the rog to charge, it was at 21%. NVDA says something like charging 21% and stops talking. Keyboard, unresponsive. Control buttons, nothing. Pressing the off button, nothing happened. I held it for a while, no response, no vibration, no sound, no nothing. Take off the headphone, nothing. I held the button to force the shutdown, I read the screen with seeng AI, just the rog text, standard from Asus. After a few tries, he woke up. Every blind man's nightmare.

glitchsoc - Link to source
Už je s tím trapnej. Nezná nic jiného než cla.
🚘 Tys mě nepustil na přechodu, uvalím na tebe 100% cla.
♟️ Porazils mě v člověče nezlob se, cla!
🍽️ Cože? Dneska mám vyndat nádobí z myčky já? Cla!
💃Smím prosit? Ne? Cla!
🚋 Koukej mě pustit sednout. Jinak, cla!
🍞 Splesnivěl mi chleba, cla!
🎓 Dostal jsem kouli z matiky, cla!
#Trump
#Trump
This entry was edited (20 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

The Prize for Excellence in Open Source … goes to…

Greg Kroah-Hartman, Fellow at the The #Linux Foundation!

We could think of no one more deserving of this Award than Greg - who has ensured through maintaining of different kernel subsystems and the Linux kernel stable releases that thousands of devices function seamlessly and securely.

The Prize for Excellence was presented by the European Open Source Academy, @bagder

awards.europeanopensource.acad…

| European Open Source Academy

awards.europeanopensource.academy
#linux @daniel:// stenberg://

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