Welcome to the Age of the Coward—where billion-dollar corporations crumble faster than a wet paper bag, and craven CEOs like Bob Iger and Tim Cook prove their “values” were just expensive PR stunts with an expiration date. theindex.media/this-is-the-age…
The Age of the Coward is here, where America’s most powerful corporations, once eager to preach their values, now fold like cheap umbrellas at the first gust of political wind.
I don't think the video is up yet, but I believe in this FOSDEM talk it was mentioned that the model was still something like 200MB, so that might be optimistic: fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event…
@mjg59 I was. The problem was that stickermule turned out to be a rabid trumper so if anyone has suggestions for reasonably priced UK sticker printers...
Ich habe gnome3 von der ersten version an geliebt und es ist noch viel besser geworden. Immer wieder versuche ich andere Desktop aber kehre immer wieder zu gnome zurück.
🇺🇳 Some folks have asked how our efforts are going helping governments be good open source citizens as they leverage free software to provide public services.
🎉 The answer is: Things are going very well, and they're getting better every week.
📋 With 4 months until UN Open Source week, here's a current update from our UNDP team:
🇺🇳 Our UNDP digital team is taking on really meaningful and interesting work in helping countries use technology in ethical, responsible ways. And filling a bunch of #internships. Fully #remote, around the world, and flexible around individuals' schedules.
🏦 While there's a stipend, it's low. Our leadership is working hard to break a long history of unpaid internships in the #UN, but there is still a distance to go for fair pay.
The Linux App Summit (LAS) is designed to accelerate the growth of the Linux application ecosystem by bringing together everyone involved in creating a great Linux application user experience.
For anyone interested, I recently uploaded a folder of NOAA Weather Radio audio examples that I scraped from the Wayback Machine. datajake.braillescreen.net/tts…
We talked to the wonderful @Robin today on the show all about getting to grips with Windows, with a particular focus on Outlook and the File Explorer. Robin recorded a more detailed demonstration for all to enjoy - check it out here doubletaponair.com/finding-you…
In this episode of Double Tap, Steven Scott and Shaun Preece welcome Robin Christopherson from AbilityNet to demonstrate how accessible and efficient Microsoft Outlook can be with JAWS screen reader.
The blast radius of a toxic contributor in an open source project is mostly invisible.
If you're a community leader you need to understand that for every prominent developer loudly driven out there were hundreds, maybe thousands of people who could have done great work, who could have been your next generation, looking at how your people treat people, at the bar your community has set for decency or dignity, silently taking their talents elsewhere, that you didn't see.
With a heavy heart, we announce the resignation of Asahi Linux founder Hector Martin. Our project is continuing with new collective governance. Our statement is on our project blog.
Linus unwilling to say "I will take the NACK into consideration, but I'm not going to let one maintainer unilaterally unravel the agreement between R4L contributors and the Linux kernel community", and instead letting the discussion fester like this – is absolutely his failure as a project leader.
Last weekend the Open Film Database (ofdb.cc) received another update, which included the migration from #WordPress (Blog) and #DokuWiki (Wiki) to #Drupal, front-end improvements for TV shows, improved cast editing, and more!
The #OFDb is a database for movies and TV shows with its data published under an open license (Open Database License). Everyone can participate and add more titles. The more the merrier!
The Open Film Database (OFDb) is a free and open database for movies and TV shows. She is maintained by the community and published under an open license.
Biometrics are a convenient and secure way to authenticate our devices. Many of us use and trust the biometrics of our devices without much thought, but are they really secure? With so many options, which ones are the best?
Hey guys, I'm back, haven't posted in ages. Just wanted to let you know I just released the fourth episode of my relatively new podcast, access Tech Weekly. My The website isn't updated yet, I wanna do that over the next few days. anchor.fm/s/ffd2b25c/podcast/p…
Someone should refresh these benchmarks and test a modern #pycurl against python requests.
"PyCurl is much faster than Requests (or other HTTP client libraries), generally completing smaller requests 2-3x as fast, and requires 3-10x less CPU time" (nine years ago)
Laid-off Meta employees blast Zuckerberg for running the ‘cruelest tech company out there’ as some claim they were blindsided after parental leave | Yahoo Finance (yes, Fortune covered this too, but I'm not supporting clicks for them until they make their CMS output more accessible link text.) finance.yahoo.com/news/laid-of…
Want a less chatty BlindShell Classic 2? In this under 4-minute episode, we show you how to cut down on extra menu announcements for smoother navigation.
25 years ago, on February 13, 2000 the final "Peanuts" comic strip was released. It followed the death of Charles M. Schulz the day before, as he passed away only a few hours before its publication, serving as his final farewell to his readers.
@luv4music1231 When I was a kid, a bunch of us blind kids in North America got a book from Twin Vision. It was a Peanuts book, called "Home is on Top of a Doghouse". Almost all of the pictures in the book had extremely well-done tactiles, as well as a transcriber's note description. For the few pictures where they weren't able to do a tactile, we still got the description. It was an absolutely awesome, awesome book!
@luv4music1231 It really was. It was one of three such books I remember getting. Another was Famous Quotations. It only had one tactile, but that was of a space suit worn by Neil Armstrong. The third book, even cooler than the first, was called The Shapes of Musical Instruments. In addition to all the instruments, there was a tactile showing the seating arrangement for a standard orchestra.
@luv4music1231 @Bruce I would have loved to have felt those tactiles. The main books or magazines that I remember were the annual Expectations books. I also remember another book about a car named Marty and there was a tactile image of a car but I can't remember the title. Hadn't thought about that book in decades.
I figured it out! A lot of reports of alarms on iOS not sounding for people have emerged (as far back as even last May, phonearena.com/news/annoying-i…, and then early this year: nypost.com/2025/01/14/tech/iph…) I know why now. If you set multiple alarms, iPhone will only sound them for 10 minutes. Should your alarms not be turned off and this 10-minute time is up (say, because you slept through it), the first alarm is stuck waiting in queue, and subsequently scheduled alarms will never sound but go off. The moment you dismiss that first alarm, all of those others will magically begin sounding every 10 minutes as you dismiss them in horror, realizing that Apple's operating system is not able to properly queue alarms. And yes, this is in iOS 18.3. I've been struggling with this pattern all week, it has made me late to my first meeting Monday because I woke up too late and scrambled too long to get ready, ETC. Not good.
For at least the third time in the last year or so, iPhone users are complaining on social media that their alarms are not working properly, with Apple once again promising to deliver a fix for ...
I bet if someone tested that, you could pretty reliably repro the bug after. Just create multiple alarms, about 15 minutes apart (or 10 minutes +), don't snooze or dismiss the first alarm. See if any subsequent alarms go off, and I can almost bet that they will not. My best guess is that alarms are all run on a single thread, so until that thread has returned as finished with the first alarm, the others after just can't execute properly.
A good solid workaround: Go into the options for each alarm, and uncheck the "snooze" toggle. This will mean that (A) you will not have a snooze option when it goes off, but more importantly, (B) it will continue sounding through 10 minutes. Still not ideal, especially as what I'll often do is set different tones and vibrations to gradually make them more annoying through each alarm, but what else can I do, I guess. This way there's hope I could dismiss that first one and the others after it would sound, even if on a delay from me sleeping off the firrst 10 minutes. Sigh.
UI/UX Design Studio Manager Laurel Terlesky's #fosdem talk is online! Explore Thunderbird's journey toward a cohesive, scalable, and data-informed open-source design system that unites desktop, Thunderbird for Android, and beyond.
Matrix Bridges sind letztlich Dienste, die eine Verbindung zwischen dem Matrix-Ökosystem und anderen Messaging-Plattformen wie Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp und vielen weiteren herstellen.
#Fractal 10 had a couple regressions. We didn’t want our users to wait until Fractal 11 to get the fixes in their favorite #GNOME #Matrix client, so here is Fractal 10.1:
Due to a couple of unfortunate but important regressions in Fractal 10, we are releasing Fractal 10.1 so our users don’t have to wait too long for them to be addressed.
Haven't read it yet, but this looks like another interesting #fanfic: Harry Potter and The Great Escape To China - Part 1 by naughtypixie "Snape decides to save Lily's son. The measures are a touch drastic, but Harry isn't minding the results." archiveofourown.org/works/37143376/chapters/92664745#hp#harrypotter
Are we really marking anything remotely related to harry Potter as transphobic? That feels like going a bit far. I welcome disagreement from someone who has more skin in the game but I feel like it promotes the idea that supporting anything related to Harry Potter is also supporting the author as a person. Nothing about this post is transphobic, unless the fanfic is, which is something we'd probably want to know.
@TheQuinbox@simon Yup, as I said a bit down the thread, I don't CW fics by trans authors with trans characters. And I won't CW at all once JKR is dead and gone. But right now, she's a clear and present danger, and actively harmful.
I agree re: JKR herself. But I'm struggling to follow the thought process that leads to a CW being placed on any derivative work based on her creations.
I'm not trying to start an argument, I truly would like to understand it. Given your comments about JKR's status as a living being, I don't think you're purely asserting that Harry Potter itself contains transphobic aspects and therefore there's a risk that anything branching off from it will contain those as well.
It seems to go much deeper than that. Your comments read as though you think this is an issue of safety, and that you may not be the ally you hope to be unless you take these steps. But that doesn't compute in my brain at present, so happy to take some reading materials or further thoughts if you have and feel like providing them. @TheQuinbox @simon
@jscholes@TheQuinbox@simon Okay, let's start with the ways that a particular worldview is reflected in Harry Potter. , as a practicing Christian, I'm well grounded in fundamentalist beliefs. While Harry Potter was condemned by unthinking religious reactionaries, it is utterly, utterly soaking in both the good and true parts of the Christian faith, as well as the worst of our hatred and misguided heresy. From the Goblins that are obvious antisemitic Jew stand-ins (they have long noses and fingers, control all the money, have to be kept down to prevent rebellion, etc.) to the way the entire story depends on the existence of the soul (and a morality beyond death), to the pro-slavery allegory of house-elves ("Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart." -- Ephesians 6:5), to the way the only gay characters are either celibate or evil (Dumbledore, the celibate good gay and priest stand-in has to defeat Gellert Grindelwald, the evil gay), to the way the entire story is rooted in medieval alchemy and the concept of the alchemists journey of purification through Christe's refining fire. Without both the good and terrible of Christianity, you don't get Harry Potter. And it's not possible to remove that baggage from it. If that's something that interests you, I strongly recommend the book How Harry Cast His Spell by John Granger.
@jscholes@TheQuinbox@simon Now onto the aspects of safety. JKR spends the majority of her time posting on social media, and fundraising, for anti-transe causes. While she continues to do this, and remains in the forefront of the media and cultural zeitgeist, unexpected mentions of people enjoying works based on JKR's original books could absolutely be psychologically damaging. Especially if you grew up loving Harry Potter, as I and so many millions did, only to discover you're trans as an adult, and were betrayed by the author of a work you hold dear. If you love Harry Potter as much as I still do (and wish I didn't), those feelings of betrayal and grief aren't going to fade quickly. Especially because as someone who isn't trans, I still get to enjoy those things without that personal baggage. So I'm sure there's also some bitterness and Jealousy to go along with everything else. And yet, I, and many others, aren't going to just give up Harry Potter, a friend we've had from childhood. But the verry least we can do is CW discussion of the works.
@jscholes@TheQuinbox@simon Well, actually, I'll walk that back a tiny bit. You can remove or twist everything Christian in Harry Potter. If you Do, you get Methods of Rationality, an equally problematic work that claims that the western/European worldview that came down to us from the enlightenment is the only correct worldview, that emotions are bad, that nothing exists if it can't be measured, that people with low IQ are worthless and should die, along with a host of other unsavory implications. Though as someone who does believe in a soul, life after death, and objective morality, I will freely admit that as hateful as some of the things in Harry Potter might be, I'm still biased in favour of it over Methods of Rationality, and I find MIRI, LessWrong, and Eliezer Yudkowsky's other cults nearly physically sickening.
@jscholes@TheQuinbox@simon The various rationality cults, breeding hypocritical ideas like effective altruism and worse, are the biggest threat both to Christianity and the human race today. But most Christians are too busy fighting the gays and trans people to see what's coming as more and more of these people come to power. And, of course, banning stuff like Harry Potter because reasons, when it's way closer to the worldview of the people banning it than anything written in the past 50 years. Oh, good grief. I'm ranting. I could honestly do this for hours and hours. I'll stop, now. Thanks for listening to my TED talk. I sure am fun at parties! But the way people fail to understand Harry Potter always gets me going. And that always leads to me ranting about Methods of Rationality.
It isn't so common anymore unfortunately, at least not that I've seen, but I used to love when fanfic authors would make it clear in the summaries of their stories that they did not support JKR or the things she stood for.
@Fragglemuppet@simon Even then, though, the basic premise of the work is infected with the opinions of the person who authored it. Yes, it's possible to be transformational and remove those views, or for them not to come into it. However, JKR is a clear and present danger. I'll stop putting content warnings when: 1. She's dead, and can thus do no more harm. 2. If I'm linking a fic written by a trans author with trans characters.
Death of the author as a literary theory kind of requires that the author, you know, die. Especially in the case of JKR, where she still exerts control over the Harry Potter world, still makes money off of it, and spends that money in ways that support her views. When she's gone, none of those things will apply, and I would agree that at that point, a content warning is no longer a requirement.
But I'm wondering if I missed something. Did I maybe not see the first post? Quite possible the way Mastodon works. What made you post this story in the first place then?
@Fragglemuppet@simon Because not being a trans person, I am still able to read and enjoy Harry Potter and its related fanfics and works. However, I don't give the author any money, and I put a content warning on any Harry Potter related post I make, because I recognize that this aspect of my personality is harmful and unsafe for others. So the best way for me to be a person who's safe to be around is to put a warning on Harry Potter related posts.
@Fragglemuppet@simon Though Simon has a good point that I should be more specific. In future I'll probably use something like "Transphobia due to views expressed by the author of the original work" or something. Because he's correct that just slapping "transphobia" on the post is tarring the fanfic author with a brush they may not deserve.
This is a repository of apps to be used with your F-Droid client. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).
![What you think 10 year old GNOME looks like [screenshot of GNOME 2.10, March 2005]
What 10 year old GNOME actually looks like [screenshot of GNOME 3.16, March 2015]](https://fedi.ml/photo/preview/640/639150 "What you think 10 year old GNOME looks like [screenshot of GNOME 2.10, March 2005]
What 10 year old GNOME actually looks like [screenshot of GNOME 3.16, March 2015]")
Some folks have asked how our efforts are going helping governments be good open source citizens as they leverage free software to provide public services.
Vincent Tunru
in reply to Mike Gifford, CPWA • • •FOSDEM 2025 - The Firefox AI Platform
fosdem.orgMike Gifford, CPWA
in reply to Vincent Tunru • • •Chris Adams
in reply to Mike Gifford, CPWA • • •hey, neat! The project has a codecarbon file for tracking resource usage in it!
The repo is written in python l so it would be not too complicated to reuse the code in say… wagtail.
If there is a php or WASM version of the hugging face transformers library then you could run it in say… drupal I think.
Mike Gifford, CPWA
in reply to Chris Adams • • •