Reminder that "sometime not long after December 15th", the botsin.space server, a home to many of your favorite creative bots, will be entering a read-only mode, before its planned shutdown.

(The server will run until at least March 2025.)

botwiki.org/blog/botsin-space-…

Hope most of you bot admins managed to migrate by now!

#BotsInSpace #fediverse #CreativeBots #bots

FindMyDevice je open-source služba pro nalezení ztraceného mobilu
infoek.cz/findmydevice-je-open…

V dnešní době se nevyplácí krást mobilní telefony, jelikož mohou obsahovat různé bezpečnostní aplikace. Každý chytrý mobil má již od výrobce funkci pro jeho nalezení v případě ztráty. Funguje to dobře a zachránit to může mobil za několik desítek tisíc Kč. Kam ale tato data o mém pohybu na mapě vlastně tečou? Samozřejmě většinou do Googlu, Applu a dalších velkých společností. Někomu to vůbec nevadí, což je v pořádku, ale někomu to zkrátka vadí. Jaká je alternativa?

Apple Intelligence AI mangles headlines so badly the BBC officially complains

pivot-to-ai.com/2024/12/15/app…

(yes dark mode is broken, looking into it)

OpenStreetMap Currently Down (Now read-only)


The whole site is down and I can't upload any changesets. It doesn't appear maintenance related.

You can see some stats here:

prometheus.openstreetmap.org/d…

en.osm.town/@osm_tech/11365487…

Hopefully this is not another purposeful attack on OSM.

Edit: Site is up now, but the database is read-only. See: en.osm.town/@osm_tech/11365663…

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Eevoltic [she/her]

There is also a thread in the community forum with some background info:
community.openstreetmap.org/t/…
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Two Russian oil tankers have been badly damaged in the Black Sea, causing an oil spill, authorities in Russia have said.

Footage released by Russia's Southern Transport Prosecutor's Office showed the bow of one tanker completely broken off, with streaks of oil visible in the water.

#news #Russia

Alright folks, if you miss SoftVoice, here's an updated add-on compatible with NVDA 2024.4: eurpod.com/softvoice2024.nvda-…
- install this over your copy. What it fixed mainly was converting this to use Python3, and I had to fix some pretty nasty recursion issues caused by the set_variant property calling itself. To resolve, I had to make private and public properties for these variables and assign these more carefully there. Indexing is now handled by storing all indexes in speech_list along with the text. Also, When sv_EVENT_SPEECH_DONE (1001) occurs, we retrieve self.last_spoken_indexes and call synthIndexReached for each index. This should add proper indexing support, though testing is appreciated.
Well darn. Say-all fully is still broken, so this is just basic indexing support.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Timothy Wynn

@twynn yeah that's an odd one. I wonder if SoftVoice sends things in larger chunks. Basically, from what I can gather anyway, NVDA sends text to the synth in chunks and expects synthIndexReached notifications within or at the end of these chunks. If the synth only sends indexes at the very end of the entire text or not at all until the chunk completes, NVDA won't have intermediate landmarks to continue from, causing say-all to sstop like this. It's fascinating to me that this works in BestSpeech probably because for us we are having the ability to get these index notifications back after chunks there.

linux-game-manager
Storm Dragon pushed changes to the testing branch of the linux-game-manager project updated install games function. Inallations are now handled in files in the .install directory. This may be horribly broken, for stability, use the master branch.

Really interesting interview on Volts.wtf with @doctorow - Can we avoid the enshittification of clean-energy tech?

volts.wtf/p/can-we-avoid-the-e…

They cover a lot of really interesting aspects of #ClimateChange, technology and #OpenSource. There are so many good innovators in the clean tech space, yet even with good motives, the incentives can drive towards #enshittification.

Happy Birthday, Zamenhof! 🎉💚

Today, we celebrate the 165th birthday of Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof, the visionary creator of Esperanto. His goal was to establish a language that would facilitate communication among people from different countries and cultures, thereby contributing to peace and cooperation among nations.

Esperanto is now the most successful planned language in the world, with millions of speakers in over 120 countries. It is utilized on the internet, in social media, and even in some universities and institutions. But Esperanto is not just a language—it's a movement. It represents a community of individuals united by the common goal of promoting peace, unity, cultural richness, understanding, and cooperation among all people. Esperanto is a language of hope, unity, and love.

Zamenhof's vision is more relevant than ever. In an era of increasing globalization and interconnectedness, Esperanto provides an opportunity for people from diverse cultures and countries to communicate and collaborate without language barriers.

Moreover, Esperanto serves as a valuable tool for inclusion and accessibility, thanks to its simplicity and regular structure. It not only eases communication between speakers of different native languages but also supports neurodiverse individuals who may struggle with learning natural languages or navigating irregular writing systems like English orthography. Thus, Esperanto can promote accessibility in education.

What makes Esperanto so special? Its simple, logical grammar and vocabulary derived from the most common European roots make it incredibly easy to learn. Its phonetic spelling features one sound per letter and one letter for every sound, unlike English or French. Beyond its practical benefits, Esperanto embodies the noble ideals of mutual understanding, cultural exchange, and the brotherhood of all people.

In our increasingly interconnected world, Esperanto has found new life on the internet, where online communities and resources allow learners to connect across borders. It is truly a language of the digital age, used for everything from casual conversation to academic discourse.

As we celebrate Zamenhof's 165th birthday, let us embrace his timeless vision of a more harmonious world, where Esperanto serves as a bridge between cultures. By learning this beautiful language, we honor the legacy of its creator and take a meaningful step toward a more peaceful and productive coexistence for all.

Happy birthday, Zamenhof! Your dream lives on. ✨ Thank you for your inexhaustible legacy and the inspiration you have given us all. Let us unite humanity and reach for the stars! ✨

---

**Interesting Facts about Esperanto 🌎💚:**

* Esperanto is the 14th most used language on the internet, according to 2022 statistics.
* The website "Duolingo" offers an Esperanto course, which is one of the most popular courses on the platform.
* The University of Amsterdam includes an Esperanto course as part of its program in international communication.

#Zamenhof #Esperanto #Peace #Coexistence #InternationalLanguage #Revival #CulturalRichness #Zamenhof165 #EsperantoOnTheInternet #LingvoInternacia #Planlingvo #Naskiĝtago #FelichanNaskiĝtagon #ZamenhofTago #ZamenhofDay #KulturaRicheco #Paco #Kunlaboro #a11y #inclusion #accessibility

in reply to Cory Doctorow

Long thread/11

Sensitive content

in reply to Cory Doctorow

Long thread/12

Sensitive content

I heard two words mentioned in this post, "light" and "years". How many light years away are Apple glasses then? :) mastodon.social/@appleinsider/…

I'm sorry y'all, think my work on the synthesizer will end here for now. It's already 1 in the afternoon, wow. Started around 9, but I think I've done all I could to make the add-on more thread-safe and use proper pointers. I'm leaving y'all with a 0.08 treat: Abbreviations check box. This is in the latest v0.08 copy of the add-on. Next to number processing, it should disable the setting and not use them when unchecked. (eurpod.com/BestSpeak.nvda-addo…)
This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Borris

yeah, not here oddly. What's interesting to me is how it appears as though the soundcard sampling set and latency can impact when and where people are hearing the weird artifact noise, the more this deepens the more misterious the issue actually gets :D
I also wish we had multiple versions of the DLL to play around with, maybe there's a more stable later revision out there in some obscure package.
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Ok Y'all. I uploaded a new copy of the BeSTSpeak Add-on: This time we:
- Re-init the engine from scratch before every chunk.
- Shut down and unload the DLL after each chunk.
- Use a background thread but with a lock around TtsWav.
- On cancel, we try to shut up. If it doesn't stop mid-chunk, we still eventually finish and then re-init.
- Indexes only if not canceled, doneSpeaking always fired.
- We store the handle as self.handle, a POINTER(c_long), rather than a simple c_long. This matches the engine’s expected long* type, reducing the risk of memory access violations.
- V0.7 hotfix: add "number processing" checkbox to voice settings.
Please download and test from: eurpod.com/BestSpeak.nvda-addo…
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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A Secret Stocking-Stuffer Summit: Google TalkBack, Samsung TalkBack, and Jieshuo’s Christmas Confession accessibleandroid.com/a-secret…