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Sorry folks, no Thunderbird live streaming today.
Got swamped with some important 2025 document planning and other priorities so I'm forced to postpone it.
See you next week!



Along with flash floods, we're also dealing with flash droughts — a new term for me.

"Where has all the rain gone? Bone-dry October strikes much of US"
phys.org/news/2024-10-bone-dry…

h/t @primonatura
#drought #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming



Oh thank god I have a reason to stop being nice to the fucking Walmart greeter.

“Facial Recognition That Tracks Suspicious Friendliness Is Coming to a Store Near You”
gizmodo.com/facial-recognition…

(This is clearly me making a joke — I don’t go to Walmart; I have to harass the greeter at their home.)



Dnes je to ako cez sezónu až na to že nás je o čašníka menej.


Have you voted yet?

#Vote #Election #Election2024 #Poll

  • 📬 Yes! (Mail in ballot) (54%, 28 votes)
  • 🗳️ Yes! (Early voting) (27%, 14 votes)
  • 🇺🇸 Not yet - going on Election Day (15%, 8 votes)
  • 😕 I’m not sure I’m voting (0%, 0 votes)
  • 😡 I am not voting (2%, 1 vote)
51 voters. Poll end: 4 days ago

in reply to Hubert Figuière

@hub Hahaha another option that needs to be added!

I envy you not having to go through this process. 🇨🇦

in reply to Tyler McGee

@hub with US having such a big impact on our lives, I don't feel it that way at least. I'd be willing to walk for miles to vote in this election, if I could
in reply to Zeeshan Ali Khan 🇺🇦

@zeenix @hub That’s a fair point. Sometimes I feel bad that the rest of the world has to be so involved in our drama.
in reply to Tyler McGee

@zeenix when the US sneeze, Canada catches a cold.

Also we regularly get fucked over with "free trade" (it's only free for the kleptoligarchs)



Apparently Github copiloted the notification mail.... I get HTML entities in plain text now.


here's an example of a recent event that ChatGPT Search can now help with, the launch of Fantastical for Windows. When I asked for info about this and whether it was accessible to blind people using Windows screen readers, it says:

Fantastical, a highly regarded calendar application previously exclusive to Apple devices, has expanded its reach by launching a Windows version on October 29, 2024. This development allows users to experience Fantastical’s intuitive design and robust features on Windows PCs.

The Windows version mirrors the functionality of its Mac counterpart, offering:

• Natural Language Event Creation: Users can create events by typing phrases like “Lunch with Tim Cook on Tuesday at Caffè Macs on Apple’s campus,” and the app will automatically parse the details to set up the event accordingly.
• Calendar Sets: This feature enables users to group specific calendars together, allowing for easy toggling between different sets based on context, such as work or personal schedules.
• Multiple Calendar Views: Fantastical provides various views, including Day, Week, Month, Quarter, and Year, to accommodate different planning needs.
• Task Integration: The app supports task management through integration with services like Google Tasks, Microsoft 365 Tasks, and Todoist, enabling users to manage their to-do lists alongside their calendar events.
• Conference Call Detection: Fantastical automatically detects conference call links in calendar invites and creates a join button in the event list, facilitating quick access to virtual meetings.

Existing users with a Flexibits Premium subscription can access the Windows version at no additional cost, ensuring a seamless experience across devices. The subscription, priced at $4.75 per month when billed annually, unlocks all premium features across platforms.

While the current release is not optimized for Arm-native devices, Flexibits has indicated that an Arm version is in development.

This expansion to Windows marks a significant milestone for Fantastical, broadening its user base and providing a cohesive calendaring experience for individuals operating across multiple platforms.

As of now, there is limited information available regarding the accessibility of Fantastical for Windows for blind users utilizing screen readers. The official announcement and documentation do not provide specific details about compatibility with screen readers such as Narrator, NVDA, or JAWS.

Given the importance of accessibility in software applications, it’s advisable to directly contact Flexibits, the developer of Fantastical, to inquire about the current state of screen reader support and any planned accessibility enhancements. This approach will provide the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding the application’s usability with screen readers.

in reply to Jonathan Mosen

Far too much information. The question wasn’t "what is fantastical and is it accessible?" The answer should have simply been "The developer of Fantastical has not provided accessibility information as part of its Windows application release announcement."
in reply to aaron

@fireborn As you can read in my original post, I asked about the launch, as well as accessibility. It took the two points in order and could not have answered the accessibility question any differently because there is no information on the web about accessibility, so it was completely accurate.


Since I posted a link to my RSS feeds, I've served 1900 web requests, 1300 of which have some variant of Mastodon in the user agent. (Some have a lowercase m; most have a capital one.) I never took time to look at logs when posting links to things I control before, and this is hardly enough to count as a DDoS. Still interesting to see the Mastodon hug of death in action. This doesn't account for other fediverse software either, like Akkoma or GoToSocial.
in reply to Tristan

oof, that's interesting. Would make sense though that clients are trying to grab URL snippets (or Masto servers when serving it to clients) so I'm not surprised, hopefully it won't explode in boosts to become manageable. I've noticed the same when posting links to blog posts on my sites, the first few hours get higher visit counts but they may not all be unique visitors as much as crawlers grabbing URL data.


#CAQASTROPHE! The CAQ pissed away an inherited surplus on its wishlist, which didn't include healthcare spending, and now the CAQ healthcare minister says healthcare spending is becoming untenable... and 1M+ Quebeckers STILL DO NOT HAVE A FAMILY DOCTOR.

montrealgazette.com/news/quebe… #assnat #QCpoli #polQC #cdnpoli #polcan #CAQBS #CAQLIES



So... this was a fun compiler bug: the D8 Java to DEX compiler (part of the Android toolchain) eliminated a redundant field load if running the class's static initialiser was known to be free of side effects, which ended up accidentally depending on the sharding of the input, which is dependent on the number of CPU cores used during the build.

issuetracker.google.com/issues…

I made a small example to illustrate why this optimisation is only valid when the class initialiser doesn't have side effects (or the initialiser is guaranteed to have run already, which is the case for a base class of the current one):

gist.github.com/obfusk/8382214…

#ReproducibleBuilds



Welcome to the RB family, Hash Checker 🥳

apt.izzysoft.de/packages/com.s…

Hash Checker is an app for generating and comparison MD5, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 and CRC-32 hashes from files or text. Thanks to the efforts by its dev, today's release is now RB :awesome:

#reproducibleBuilds #IzzyOnDroid


in reply to transcaffeine

Rainald Grebe hatte mal eine Textzeile:

> Ich steh Schönhauser vor dem Schmerzzentrum Berlin
> Schöner Name, doch ich spüre rein gar nichts

youtube.com/watch?v=KY_3A7PL66…

Hat mich irgendwie daran erinnert :)




We’re excited to announce a new Access Partnership with Walmart! Learn more about it here: aira.io/aira-at-walmart/
.
.
#AccessibleRetail #InclusiveShopping #DisabilityAccess #OnMyTerms #AccessForAll

reshared this




'Infinite monkey theorem' challenged by Australian mathematicians "...if given an infinite amount of time, a monkey pressing keys on a typewriter would eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare.
Known as the "infinite monkey theorem", the thought-experiment has long been used to explain the principles of probability and randomness." bbc.com/news/articles/c748kmvw…


It's been over two years since the initial release of the CLAP API for making audio effects and virtual instruments. Has the project been successful? Let's find out!

librearts.org/2024/11/clap-api…



Praying mantis on a plant, by Suzuki Shonen (ca. 1890).


Daniel's weekly report November 1, 2024

lists.haxx.se/pipermail/daniel…

FOSDEM, ABI, source code age, release prep, hackerone, slowember, deleting cookies, rock-solid, MVP



Notice how the cryptotechbro edgelord response to problems is to colonise space and go to Mars.

So... migration.

Their immediate, knee jerk intuitive reaction to big problems in their environment is to migrate.

Yet hate migrants.

Hmm, interesting.

#CryptoTechBro #EdgeLord #Musk #Immigrants


in reply to Tuta

Hi My Tuta Team
Can you guide us or provide a video tutorial creating a tuta account on Tor browser 😂👻😂😂😂😂😂


»Zu den folgenschwersten Irrtümern gehörte bisher, daß man der Jugend alles sie anscheinend Gefährdende fernhalten wollte. Nein, nahebringen muß man es ihr, damit sie richtig sehen und richtig denken lernt. […] Mit der Muttermilch sollen sie es elnsaugen: Fortschritt muß sich zu allererst auf dem Gebiet der *Liebe* bemerkbar machen, auf dem Felde der verkrüppelten Menschenliebe.«

(Franziska Mann in "Den Erwachenden", 1921)

Ein #eBook, dass mit der nächsten Batch in meine Biblliothek kommt.

in reply to IzzyOnDroid ✅

Can you please mark you german tweets as such, so that the translate button appears! Thanks!
in reply to Samantaz Fox

@SamantazFox I try my best, but unfortunately forget it far too often, apologies! Working on it – but as usual, I cannot promise what I'm not sure being able to fulfill ("will do so every time now")…

That said: thanks for your nudging me. It helps me to improve knowing there are people I'd help with that. And not "a vague group", but *specific* people. So yeah, keep nudging 😉



Dear iPhone, Please Stop Saying My Friends Are 'Dead' cnet.com/tech/mobile/dear-ipho…

Sean Randall reshared this.



Teaching how to create sketchnotes is one of my big passions, but nothing compares the joy when seeing others thrive with it! @acbdev created a sketchnote for my talk from this week, and I couldn’t be any prouder. I mean look at it!!! Thank you so much Anna ❤️ I love it!

Printed ✅
Hung on my wall ✅
#sketchnote #PragmaConf24



Twice, now, I have started reading it to find it incomplete.
It is finished.
I am going to start it again one more time and I hope the ending is satisfying.
archiveofourown.org/works/4551…
in reply to Sean Randall

I tried keeping up with the individual chapters as they were released, but that never works for me. I'm like, wasn't Harry in Ravenclaw last time I read this? I thought Justin Finch-Fletchley was dead! Oh... wrong story.
in reply to James Scholes

@jscholes I can't do that. if I see a fic is incomplete I put it in rotation to check again. But I don't sit and read at the computer anymore, I think the last book I did that with was out in 2011.


Sausage-maker thinks he’s found the answer to Germany’s raccoon problem "... A butcher in northeast Germany has come up with what he believes is an innovative solution to the country’s growing raccoon problem: turning them into sausages and other meat products. " cnn.com/2024/10/31/travel/racc…


🕒Z #NowPlaying If you like the sound of new #country, then join Chrissie Cochrane at the top of the hour for Chrissie's Country:: the best in new country with some old favourites thrown in the mix. Get in touch via our text message board at theglobalvoice.info/chatroom and listen at theglobalvoice.info:8443/broad… #TGVRadio #folk #rock 🎶🎹🎸🎻🪕🤠🛻


I know it's only November, but I'd like to make a request: if you are buying toys for kids in the next couple of months, and think you might have old ones that you want to clear out, please consider donating them before the holidays rather than after. Shelters and charities always get a glut of donations in January, but they'd be more useful to the families who need them now rather than then. Thank you.


"Dear Colton Scott,

This email is to confirm that your [...] password has been reset."

Ok Colton, are you good now? Maybe using my email address for that service was not the best idea.

in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

I got the domain I'm using for my mails "used" a couple of years ago, so it was previously registered by another person.

There was a Paypal account tied to it and I constantly got the password reset mails until I disabled the address tied to the account.

This was annoying, especially since I had no idea how to get in touch with the owner.

This entry was edited (5 days ago)
in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

I hold some first name domains in .de and have set up a catchall mail account for them. Got some interesting accounts in past years, but not anymore recently. I guess more accounts are bound to phone numbers now instead of email addresses.


Everyone should read the brilliant @emptywheel 's new piece on Musk and X/Twitter. We know what he has done over there is bad, but the depths of the criminal depravity can only be described as horrific. Empywheel has been on the case for over a decade, and has done a great job of laying it out here:

emptywheel.net/2024/11/01/elon…



"Jezz Bezos and Elon Musk emit more carbon pollution in 90 minutes than the average human does in their entire life."
...
“Half of the world’s emissions come from the richest 10% of people. The wealthiest 1% by income account for 16% of emissions, which is more than the poorest two-thirds of people in the world,”

gizmodo.com/billionaires-are-t…
#inequality #CarbonFootprint

reshared this



Gentle, biannual reminder that RSS is great and can be another tool in your toolbox to curate your online experience, improve mental health, and stay informed. It's also a much more accessible way to consume news if you have a client that handles full-text extraction. I've just updated my public list of RSS feeds after going nearly a whole year without doing so: tristanb.me/feeds/. this is a comprehensive list of most of the feeds that I follow, split up by category. #RSS #accessibility

reshared this

in reply to Tristan

What's your setup for following those now? There are a lot of reader options and I have no idea what's considered good and up-to-date. Do you still sync them on a server?
in reply to Simon Jaeger (Procrastodon)

@simon I self-host miniflux.app/ and use lire on mobile, which has native support for Miniflux out of the box. Lire provides native push notifications and the ability to edit, add, or remove feeds/folders, and the Miniflux web app is an exemplary experience with great keyboard support when on desktop. I haven't changed this setup in years and it just works™️.
in reply to Tristan

Miniflux is fantastic. I have been running a private instance for years without issues, except when reddit blocks it.

On the Mac, you can use NetNewsWire, which uses the Googld Reader API integration, it works quite well.

in reply to Erion

@erion @simon I didn't realize NetNewsWire could hook into Google Reader compatible things. This is good to know. I've had it installed for years and never really got too deep into using it.
in reply to Tristan

The only reason why I am aware is because I didn't really want to read via the browser and Miniflux does not provide an aggregated rss feed to subscribe to. I really need to sit down one day and just send them a PR.
in reply to Tristan

IMO, email / imap is a far better protocol for this than RSS. Unread statuses and the articles themselves sync between devices, so do folders, and it's all interoperable and supported by almost anything.


“Oxfam identified 23 superyachts owned by 18 billionaires and estimates the average annual carbon footprint of each of these yachts to be 5,672 tonnes, which is more than three times the emissions of the #billionaires’ private jets... This is equivalent to 860 years of emissions for the average person in the world, and 5,600 times the average of someone in the global poorest 50%.”

#ClimateEmergency

gizmodo.com/billionaires-are-t…