I bet the people at ETI never even came close to imagining their Eloquence technology living on as an ancient 32-bit dll in the computer of almost every blind person 20+ year safter they stopped working on it.
This made me wonder what's the oldest (compiled) program still in wide use.
Microsoft's equation editor comes close I think, I remember them having to hire some security company to reverse-engineer that for them and fix a vulnerability.
@matt Some people say yes, some people say no (and that it's emulated). Each position is usually held with absolute conviction, with the inevitable result that nobody knows anything for certain. @TheQuinbox
@jscholes @matt It's pretty obvious what's going on if you look at the symbols (.tbd) file (available in the guts of the Xcode Mac OS SDK, and the disassembly o the actual DLL. Definitely a very different beast than the win32 dlls.
@miki I would expect it to be different from the Win32 DLLs even if emulated, because I don't think anybody thinks they're emulating Win32. A better comparison might be with the libs for Linux, but not sure. @matt @TheQuinbox
@jscholes @matt And in other news, it turns out Codex (on 5.2 xhigh) can now, with minimal prompting, find its way through Mac OS's system frameworks, and reverse-engineer the ECI implementation differences well enough to produce a working program that speaks to a wav file via Eloquence. The parameters are off, as is expected for an LLM with no audio capabilities which cannot hear its own output, but God is it impressive. The whole process took 20 minutes and fit in the five-hour usage limit on the $15 subscription. Pre LLMs, getting 90% there took me about two days of highly-focused work I think.
@matt Yup. And weird ones at that, definitely not transpiles of win32 DLLs as some claim. They have symbols for the unexported C++ functions and methods for one, which the win32 ones don't seem to, at least the copies I have. They also don't rely on the filesystem for library / settings discovery at all, instead having an undocumented eciSetIniContent function (which really doesn't like \r, that was half a day wasted). They also crash when you instantiate with eciNew, requiring you to use an undocumented eciNew2 (which the win32 dlls also have, but which nobody seems to be using and which isn't in the OSS headers). Also no audio support afaik, just wave buffers.
It is rather beautiful here in Oulu 🇫🇮, right now. Absolutely no filters needed at all 🤌 -20°C, wind chill -28°C.
This is one of our main cycling and walking routes (#8) and here we have a 5 km stretch with ZERO at-grade crossings with motor traffic. I repeat, it's physically impossible to meet any motor traffic here. So it is very peaceful, safe and comfortable to ride and walk completely uninterrupted. Just bliss.
Not everyone can afford a smartphone. Stop making it the primary, and sometimes the only, interface for day to day services. It's like when companies move their customer facing information onto Discord. It's shit. Fucking stop it.
The last week I've seen/been part of a few discussions regarding #Matrix on Mastodon and Lemmy. To help the world heal - let me offer this tiny suggestion:
If your views on Matrix come from pre-Element X client times, just scrap those and be open to the fact that things are different now.
I was there. I was burnt by having to support family members with encryption key issues. I had to abandon Dendrite as server software.
Since I switched to a dockerised Synapse and all (extended) family members now using Element X we've had absolutely zero issues. None. Zilch.
... and those family members range from 9 to 78 years of age. Matrix is our daily driver, on Android, iOS, macOS, Linux and Windows.
I am trying to figure out what replies @avilewis (or his team) have made on the Fediverse since he joined. I can't see any. That can't be true? A candidate for a party leadership that ignore those that could elect him?
Or maybe it's just the usual fare of Write Only accounts. Like Politician that don't listens to their constituants.
He's only got the one reply to anyone at the moment atm, a shoutout to a Green Party guy advocating stronger Green-NDP ties.
Otherwise the feed is all campaigning.
His various platforms are not that bad, but I see nothing so far that says these platforms stand any better a chance of being implemented by one of us as by a governing NDP led by him.
I mean Canada Mastodon is like a handful of people with next to no real life resonance. Canadian Pokemon fans outnumber us voting.
There are actually a lot of Avi supporters and campaign volunteers here on Mastodon.
But I do get your point. While it's quite difficult for politicians and wannabe politicians to live their lives on social media (otherwise they'd do nothing else). There is a kind of "balance" to be found between being purely "broadcast" and spending your life on social media. That balance hasn't been found yet and therefore the default is "broadcast".
@leftylabourtech Notice how I said "or his team". My MP called me "extremist" on the place that was Twitter back then (when it was not owned by the apartheid-car-space-nazi) because I opposed to shitty pieces of legislation that passed, so there is that.
This post has been on my mind for a few days now, so I’m going to say something about it. 🧵
The Minister of AI having an "ongoing engagement" with the government of Israel on technology and AI is deeply concerning. No, it’s just plain wrong. It makes Canada vulnerable to international legal consequences, and it takes Canada far down the wrong path.
The post itself radiates the same kind of defiant impunity we’ve seen from both Israel and the Trump administration when it comes to flouting international law.
It's the same minister that see nothing wrong with the service formerly know as Twitter (on which you still post, btw, but you probably ignored my previous question like you'll ignore this one) that has turned into a CSAM generator under its nazi ownership (something that is currently a violation of the Criminal Code). So....
Powered by FrankenPHP & Caddy for automatic SSL, blazing performance, and zero configuration headaches. Perfect for solo podcasters and entire podcast networks alike.
⚠️ Security first: download and review the script before running it with sudo! Read all the details: 👉blog.castopod.org/castopod-ins…
Install Castopod with a single command. The official installation script handles all dependencies, SSL certificates, database configuration, and security hardening automatically.
It would be very helpful if there was an interactive install script which doesn't require to install a webserver and a database system, but rather is capable of using already installed webserver and database system. Very important: don't force a certain webserver or a certain database server on the users! Give them the freedom to use Apache or any other webserver and a decent database like PostgreSQL or SQLite3 on smaller systems.
The growth of the Internet and of free software was during a time of [relative] peace and hope, after the end of the cold war [in Europe]. It was ideal and we forgot about war, dictatorship and other nasty things.
Purely corporate speak from Mastodon official, boring and self-serving. (And insisting that new users should be directed to one specific instance, but no longer mastodon.social, but mandatory Mastodon and have to agree with the terms of use.)
youtube.com/watch?v=Al-DyhsmY0… Melania - Movie Review Melania Movie Review - Melania Trump hits the big screen thanks to a nice gift from Amazon. Buckle up as we watch her walk into different rooms like some sort of 1st lady zombie. She has things to say but I'm not sure she means them. This movie sucks.
Melania Movie Review - Melania Trump hits the big screen thanks to a nice gift from Amazon. Buckle up as we watch her walk into different rooms like some sor...
Nesháníte někdo šikovnou holku do týmu? Potkávali jsme se na akcích, kde jsem zajišťoval techniku. Takže z má strany jen ty nejlepší reference, zaslouží si to za svůj profesionální přístup k práci a přátelské vystupování. Kontakt rád předám.
I do not understand why the Melania movie gets no views… I mean, this Bruce Springsteen song called "Streets of Minneapolis" has gotten 3 million views in under 24 hours.
He does not want to walk up. He does not want to be carried up. He doesn’t want to go through the door. He wants to sit at the bottom of the stairs and scream.
Tomorrow at @fosdem : @benjaminbellamy will launch @podlibre ! Podlibre: Podcast Audio Editing for the AI Age 🚀 Track: Audio, Video & Graphics Creation 🏠 Room: UA2.220 (Guillissen) 📅 Day: Sunday Feb 1st ⏰ Start (UTC+1): 12:10 👉 fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event…
1. Record yourself (or someone) saying a small set of diphones or even just sustained vowels/consonants 2. Extract the residual (what's left after you inverse-filter out the formants) 3. Use THAT as the excitation source instead of the mathematical LF pulse 4. The formant filters would shape it, but the "texture" would be real voice It's basically what CELP/LPC vocoders do, but in reverse - instead of coding speech, you're generating it with a hybrid source. Tools like Praat, STRAIGHT, or various MATLAB/Python libraries can do this. The result sounds like a weird buzzy/creaky "brrrrr" - not like speech at all, because all the "vowel-ness" has been taken out.
I wish the Roddenberry Estate would release the files of majel barrett doing it this way. I remember in an interview they mentioned it that they recorded it in chunks so they could always get the computer to say whatever they wanted in the future.
If you’re interested in participating in this experiment, please let us know by filling out this form.
(sorry it’s in Google docs)
https://forms.gle/7uRui5VnMPfEYAgq8
5/6
The two weeks before a launch, it is SOP for NASA astronauts to wear respirators and avoid crowds so that they don't jeopardize the mission with an illness. What do you do before your big events? Do you take care to protect yourself and others? Or do you just wing it and hope you don't get yourself or others sick at the event?
MiniDebConf Kanpur 2026 is a regional Debian conference that will happen at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, March 14th (Sat) & 15th (Sun), 2026
I just published a new post on my Substack. If you’re a blind and disabled student, this one may hit close to home. I wrote about the quiet panic that comes with syllabi and textbooks and the very real difference between “accessible eventually” and “accessible now." This isn’t a jab at professors or disability services. It’s about how systems are set up, why timing matters, and why tools like OpenStax can completely change a semester by removing the wait. If you teach, design curricula, or care about access in higher ed, I hope this offers some perspective. Boosts would be appreciated so this can reach educators and more students. #Accessibility #DisabilityInSTEM #HigherEd #OpenStax open.substack.com/pub/accessin…
can you please add the alt text to the image itself? I have blind and low vision friends in tech who wouldn't know what this image is outside of "image" if I boosted it right now.
iOS just gave me the following automatic description of an image on a website. a pair of black headphones next to black text on a white background that might be a hospital. Yeah, I'm guessing it probably isn't a hospital. No idea about the rest, either.
Mit recable holst du dir reparierbare Ladekabel, fair in Deutschland produziert, ans Smartphone oder an den Laptop. USB-A, USB-C, Micro-USB, Lightning – wir haben sie alle!
I am still amazed that these super polished "simple" apps exist in the oss world. The likes of Fragments, Decibels and other apps with a completely different approach to the "mission control" UX, here's Ear Tag. A super simple music metadata editor that is a godsend for occasional music producers like myself. Thank you, @knuxify:postmarketos.org. It is a joy to use.
Now in the #FOSDEM live stream: Holger introducing #autocrypt2, a mechanism to protect against store-now-decrypt-later attacks, to be introduced in Delta!
I can’t remember where I saw it, but I feel like today is a good time to revisit the concept of “Vegan + bacon”.
People often avoid making small positive changes because they get caught up in trying to go all the way. For example, “I could never go vegan. I love bacon too much”.
So then go vegan plus bacon. Or vegetarian plus bacon. Or just switch to oat milk and eat more vegetables. Whatever small change you can make is good
Pitermach
in reply to Quin • • •Mohamed Al-Hajamy 💾
in reply to Quin • • •I still wonder if its speed algorithm was specifically tested on blind people or if it just happened to work out really well.
miki
in reply to Quin • • •This made me wonder what's the oldest (compiled) program still in wide use.
Microsoft's equation editor comes close I think, I remember them having to hire some security company to reverse-engineer that for them and fix a vulnerability.
Matt Campbell
in reply to Quin • • •James Scholes
in reply to Matt Campbell • • •miki
in reply to James Scholes • • •James Scholes
in reply to miki • • •miki
in reply to miki • • •miki
in reply to Matt Campbell • • •