Google have really stolen an accessibility march on Apple with image descriptions with rich detail, built right into Talkback.
No more sharing to other apps, just focus on an image, single tap with three fingers and select Describe Image.
Browsing images on social media has never been so interesting or easy.
Here is an example, taken at Bewdly safari park:

A rhinoceros is standing in a grassy field in front of a wooden fence. The rhinoceros is facing the left of the image, its head is down and its long horn is visible. The rhinoceros is gray in color with a large, bulbous body and short, thick legs. The grass in the field is a vibrant green. The fence is made of brown wood and has a wire mesh on top. Beyond the fence, there are trees with green foliage. The image is taken from a slightly elevated angle. The time is 11:29.
Thank you Google. As a totally blind person from birth, I never thought I would be interested in pictures, I love them now.

This thread highlights one of the things I don’t like the most about people on the fedi: the insufferable arrogance of people (usually tech folks) who think this place should stick to their narrow vision and openly disparage anything that deviates from from that.

The beauty of the fedi is we can literally do anything we want here. It doesn’t have to be one way or the other. There is enough space on the internet for us to have our own special little places.

The dogma I see from people complaining about not wanting ads, when you are literally promoting stuff in your bio or not wanting influencers when we boost the sentiments we agree with and saying everything should be free when being on the fedi costs money is so ridiculous it’s beginning to border on straight up bigotry. It’s ok if one doesn’t like these things, but fighting to keep them out of the fedi because of that is replicating the centralized environments we say we allegedly one to get away from.

Not having these things is not what differentiates the fedi from centralized platforms. Giving people the tools to build whatever experience they want safely is what is going to put this place over the top.

Anything less than that and it’s just recreating less featured versions of stuff we already have.

Mekka does a good job of laying out why basing the direction of the fedi based on what we don’t like is a losing game, especially when those dislikes are based on shallow and myopic points.

hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/113…

Just learned about Emissary, the social web toolkit.

At first glance, it looks like an extensible server that lets you define/extend ActivityPub types with your own, or with custom workflows/access rules.

Now I have to keep myself from going down a million rabbit holes with this. Tempted to dust off my old federated Steam/Itch game/digital project distribution idea, seems a whole lot more doable with something like Emissary than entirely from scratch.

Im being told that its too early for any keyboard for a #caturday

#uConsole

I don't think people fully grasp just how expensive this AI nonsense is. Each simple Chat-GPT inquiry uses on average a half liter of water and 0.14 kWh.

If one of ten Americans make a weekly inquiry, that's enough water to cover Rhode Island's consumption for a day and a half, and enough electricity to power DC for 20 days.
washingtonpost.com/technology/…

Neválí se vám někomu za rozum plonková grafika od #AMD? RX 6600 nebo něco podobnýho okolo 3k?

Moje letitá RX 560 už má svý nejlepší roky za sebou :D

#bazar

Awesome to see that message hammered again and again: digital tools have become infrastructure!

#matrixConf

The sheer size of that crowd! The community is excited to see what authentication is going to look like in Matrix in the very near future

#matrixConf

Think it's got a bit of a problem knowing what language I want.

[deangelisdf/write2audiobook: A powerful tool designed to convert text-based documents into engaging audiobooks. Perfect for anyone looking to make reading more accessible, whether for people with visual impairments or for those who simply prefer listening on the go.](github.com/deangelisdf/write2a…)

🪞 Introducing Mirror Hall, an app to turn any Linux devices into a second wireless monitor!

We use semi-custom P2P screen sharing optimized for low latency. Only Mutter-based DEs are currently supported as *senders*, whereas all DEs work as receivers.

This is our first unstable release, sp please be kind and report issues. If you are an #ARM user, we would love your help testing the gstreamer pipeline on new phones!

notes.nokun.eu/post/2024-09-22…

#linux #opensource #foss #gnome #apps #gstreamer

Things spotted on market day in small city Aotearoa #newzealand

A small human (3?) stomping behind his family, swinging a bag of spinach around his head like it's the world's healthiest morning star. Doing his best fierce face.

A woman (60s?) in a wheelchair, rolling up to the display counter on a cheese truck, winking to the small humans at her side and snaffling cheese samples while out of the eyeline of the servers. Small humans' giggles are definitely giving the game away.

A woman kneels next to a small human in front of a sausage truck. Says "Why don't we compromise? We can buy some sausages and cook them at home so it's cheaper." Small human looks at her for a long moment before thrusting his hands out dramatically, asking, "But will it be an EXPERIENCE?!"

Two women approaching a plant stall. The older (80s) is bent with osteoporosis and wearing a pretty floral dress. The younger (50s) is dressed in sensible jeans and hoodie. The younger says to the older "If you try and steal a cutting Mum, I'll be so cross with you." Older woman laughs wickedly.

Two men (20s?) in pirate regalia selling jewelry from a stand in front of their camper van. Small human asks if they are pirates and is delighted when they confirm that they are indeed pirates and give him a pirate hat to wear. His dad takes a picture of him beaming while wearing it.

Any typos spotted in this post are protesting about the fact that they weren't offered the full sausage experience at today's markets.

I remember thinking “damn, covid is gonna suck but people gotta support universal healthcare after this” and that just… didn’t materialize.

Then I was like “wow, long covid sounds bad but at least this we’ll get more people to research ME/CFS and such” but now it seems like long covid is just gonna get swept under the rug like ME/CFS has this whole time.

I’m sick of this shit.

A bit last-minute this time, but we have a hackfest/release event coming up next weekend in Berlin feat. @postmarketOS, @p2panda, and more!

More details to follow, but here's a teaser :P

#gnome #postmarketos #localfirst #berlin