Please join us for our monthly webinar scheduled for Tuesday, July 1 at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. We’ll be introducing a new feature which will be included
in the next BT Speak update. You will also have a chance to ask questions and provide feedback to the team at Blazie Technologies.
Below is the Zoom meeting link.
us02web.zoom.us/j/81033758140?…

Meeting ID: 810 3375 8140
Passcode: 024541

One tap mobile
+13017158592,,81033758140#,,,,*024541# US (Washington DC)

Dial by your location
• +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)

Meeting ID: 810 3375 8140
Passcode: 024541

Find your local number:
us02web.zoom.us/u/kdw2FlsDDS

I have taken to looking for Copilot AI in GitHub responses before filing issues. If it’s there, I don’t file. Feeling a bit validated here:
hails.org/@hailey/114752144098…

(limited alt to come, but if you want more ask OP…)


Sent a pull request to Audacity fixing a crash bug I'd been running into frequently. The cause was an out-of-bounds memmove. Classic C++ areas.

Anyway I got a fucking copilot review on my PR which left two comments, both completely wrong, one of which suggesting I reintroduce the out of bounds memory access. I'm furious!


Alas I've just ordered a WIFI enabled, AI washing machine; and the copyright doesn't even include CURL; I thought the 5 year warranty would enable be to ask @bagder for advice on getting my clothes cleaner.
Still, it seems to have everything else, NuttX and contiki low power OSs (neither of which I've come across), Uboot, wpa_supplicant, cJSON, FatFS
(They've had fun misprocessing the GPL text as html or something)

opensource.samsung.com/opensou…

in reply to rooktallon

@rooktallon I think that the contents of all of these archives of vintage blindness software, manuals, periodicals, etc., should definitely be uploaded to the @internetarchive just as someone did with Playback. I'm willing to assist with this but I won't have time in the next few weeks. If anyone has the time to do it, please feel free.

Israeli Soldiers Killed at Least 410 People at Food Aid Sites in Gaza This Month

*This* is the story

#BBC #Glastonbury #StopGenocide #Palestine #Gaza #StopTheGenocide

theintercept.com/2025/06/27/is…

L'un de mes artists favoris de tous les époques et peuples.
« Captain, don't you leave me,
Clear away in the morning,
There's no one here that needs me,
Oh, bring her round. » #Mastobada
youtube.com/watch?v=tT-HSu7SpH…

Purism- CNN Report

In a recent CNN report, skepticism surrounds the Trump Organization’s claim that its new “T1” smartphone is “Made in the USA.”

Experts, including Todd Weaver, CEO of Purism, challenged the claim, citing striking similarities between the T1 and a low-cost Chinese phone, the Revvl 7 Pro 5G, made by Wingtech, a Chinese manufacturer.

Weaver emphasized the logistical and technical difficulty of building a phone in the U.S.

Learn more at Purism:
puri.sm/posts/cnn-report-puris…

#Mastobada "capitaine"

Michel Tonnerre – Quinze marins

🎶 C'est Bill, le second du corsaire,
Le capitaine Flint en colère
Qu'est revenu du royaume des morts
Pour hanter la cache au trésor.

Quinze marins sur le bahut du mort
Yop là ho ! une bouteille de rhum
À boire et le diable avait réglé leur sort
Yop là ho ! une bouteille de rhum 🎶

youtu.be/hZCiMezDvMY

in reply to Ash_Crow

#Mastobada "capitaine"

Tri Yann – Le bal des morts-vivants

🎶 Tel un épouvantail entre un vieux capitaine
Croulant sous les médailles, de ferraille sonnant

"J'ai perdu chair et peau, mes yeux dans les tempêtes
Je n'ai plus que mes os, broyés par l'océan" 🎶

youtube.com/watch?v=6fhxZv8vrS…

Wszedł w życie European Accessibility Act. No i ciekawe jak to będzie. Podobnie jak z klauzulami niedozwolonymi pewnie pojawią się spryciarze szantażujący małe sklepy, bo nie wstawiły alta.

A co z dużymi? Co z Allegro, które jak wynika z artykułu ma duże problemy z dostępnością i na razie ich nie rozwiązuje?

subiektywnieofinansach.pl/pan-…

#dostępność

in reply to Robert Drózd

Z tego co rozumiem, w przeciwieństwie do Amerykańskiego ADA, coś takiego (niestety) w Europie nie ma sensu.

W USA to osoba niepełnosprawna wytacza proces, który może odwołać po osiągnięciu porozumienia z oskarżonym, tzw. settlement. Z racji, że w Amerykańskim systemie prawnym nie pokrywamy opłat za obsługę prawną strony przeciwnej, niezależnie od wyniku procesu, często bardziej opłaca się zapłacić trollowi, nawet jeżeli troll nie ma racji i sprawa jest do wygrania.

Tutaj takie "trollowanie" ma zdecydowanie mniej sensu. Każda sprawa musi i tak przejść przez urzędy, a osoba trollująca ma zdecydowanie mniej możliwości pójścia na ugodę. Spodziewam się też, że ewentualne kary (zwłaszcza te dla trolla) będą w rzeczywistości zdecydowanie mniejsze, co zniechęci do takich praktyk.

IMO ten Amerykański system wcale nie jest taki zły jak go malują, ale to już insza inszość.

I know why c: is the first Windows drive letter, but I had no idea about most of the rest of this. Mounting into folders? Hard links? I never knew Windows could do any of this. youtube.com/watch?v=7Rbw953DXg…
in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

Counterpoint:

Nobody is typing those strings in. They cut and paste, and the most often done modification is "remove this particular bit".

A string in a config is far superior to some sort of GUI for this, as some people will simply check or uncheck all the boxes. 99% of the time I've modified the cyphersuite I've been in a ssh session - please, no GUI.

The best alternative is a frequent patch cadence by the software provider, and maybe some ugly error messages ("you are using known-bad cipher XYZ - pausing 300 seconds" on startup) or even an abort if someone is trying to use known-bad ciphers. If people don't patch promptly, that's on them, the world needs people to serve as examples of what not to do...

The real issue here is obsolete blog posts and overly-trusting "admins" who treat the cyphersuite as voodoo - and checkboxes won't fix them.

📣 Do-It-Blind (DIB) online Besprechung am Montag, 30. Juni, um 19:00 Uhr. Du bist eingeladen! Wöchentlich am Montag besprechen wir neue Formen der digitalen und inklusiven Zusammenarbeit. Mach mit! 🛠️ #make #blind #inklusion bbb.metalab.at/rooms/joh-szv-o…

75% of web traffic flows through Google's Chromium. Apple controls Safari. American companies control how billions access the web.

Building a competitive browser alternative: ~€50-70M annually, 3-4 years. @servo proves it's technically possible with a small team.

The challenge isn't technical, it's institutional: can democratic societies coordinate long-term tech projects?

Read more: tarakiyee.com/digital-sovereig…
#DigitalSovereignty


Digital Sovereignty in Practice: Web Browsers as a Reality Check


Reading in Servo’s latest weekly report that it’s now passing 1.7 million Web Platform Subtests, I started wondering: How much investment would it build it into a competitive, independent browser, in the context of all this talk on digital sovereignty?

Servo is an experimental web browser engine written in Rust, originally developed by Mozilla Research as a memory-safe, parallel alternative to traditional browser engines like Gecko and WebKit. After Mozilla laid off the entire Servo team in 2020, the project was transferred to Linux Foundation Europe, where it continues to be developed with minimal funding from individual donors and Igalia, a team of just five engineers. Servo’s progress demonstrates what’s possible with intentional investment in independent browser projects.

As initiatives like EuroStack propose €300 billion investments in digital infrastructure and researchers proposing comprehensive roadmaps for “reclaiming digital sovereignty” through democratic, public-led digital stacks, browsers are an ideal test case to ground these ambitious visions in reality.

The current browser landscape reveals how concentrated digital control has become. Roughly 75% of global web traffic flows through browsers based on Google’s Chromium engine; not just Chrome, but Microsoft Edge, Samsung, and dozens of others. Apple’s Safari dominates iOS but remains locked to their ecosystem. Firefox, once a genuine alternative, has declined to under 5% market share globally. This means American companies control how billions of users worldwide access the web. Every search, transaction, and digital service flows through infrastructure ultimately controlled by Silicon Valley. For societies valuing their independence and sovereignty, this represents a fundamental vulnerability that recent geopolitical events have made impossible to ignore.

Digital infrastructure is as important as energy or transportation networks. Unlike physical infrastructure, however, digital systems can be controlled remotely, updated unilaterally, and modified to serve the interests of their controllers rather than their users. Browsers exemplify this challenge because they’re both critical and seemingly replaceable. In theory, anyone can build a browser. The web standards are open, and rendering engines like Servo prove it’s technically feasible.

In practice, building browsers requires sustained investment, institutional coordination, and overcoming network effects that entrench existing players. If democratic societies can successfully coordinate to build and maintain competitive browser alternatives, it demonstrates their capacity for more complex digital sovereignty goals. If they cannot, it reveals the institutional gaps that need addressing.

Firefox offers important lessons about the challenges facing independent browsers. Mozilla has indeed faced difficulties: declining market share, organizational challenges, and ongoing technical issues. The organization has also alienated its most dedicated supporters by pivoting toward advertising, AI initiatives and cutting their impactful public advocacy programs.

However, Firefox remains the only major browser engine not controlled by Apple or Google, serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Its struggles reflect structural challenges that any alternative browser would face: the enormous engineering effort required to maintain web compatibility, the network effects favouring dominant platforms, and the difficulty of sustaining long-term technical projects through diverse funding sources.

Servo’s recent progress illustrates both the potential and the resource constraints of independent browser development. Since 2023, Igalia’s team of just five engineers has increased Servo’s Web Platform Test pass rate from 40.8% to 62.0%, added Android support, and made the engine embeddable in other applications, even demonstrating better performance than Chromium on Raspberry Pi. This progress on a shoestring budget shows what focused investment could achieve, while also highlighting how resource-constrained independent browser development remains.

Yet, building a competitive alternative browser infrastructure would require substantial but manageable investment. Here is a ballpark estimation I made based on existing browsers: Annual operating costs would include:

  • Engineering Team of ±50 developers, designers, managers etc.: €15 million.
  • Quality Assurance and Testing Infrastructure: €10 million
  • Security Auditing and Vulnerability Management: €10 million
  • Standards and Specification Development: €5 million.

At this point I would just round up to around 50-70 million annually, which I’m sure would comfortably cover everything I missed. The proposed EuroStack initiative already envisions €300 billion over multiple years. Browsers represent a tiny fraction of what democratic societies already spend on strategic infrastructure. This calculation proves that the cost isn’t the primary barrier: the European Space Agency for example has had a budget of €7.8 billion in 2024. Europe can afford to build a browser.

It would probably take around 3-4 years to fully build an alternative browser from scratch, less so if it’s a fork of one of the existing ones. Forking Chromium/Gecko or building upon Servo’s foundation could reduce this timeline to 18-24 months for basic functionality, though achieving full web compatibility and market readiness would still require several additional years of refinement. The initial development sprint needs to be followed by a sustained engineering effort needed afterward, for maintaining compatibility with evolving web standards, fixing security vulnerabilities, and keeping pace with performance improvements.

The core challenge isn’t technical; it’s institutional. How do you sustain long-term technical projects through democratic processes that span multiple countries with different priorities, resources, and political systems? Successful models exist. The European Space Agency coordinates complex multi-national technical projects. CERN manages cutting-edge research infrastructure across dozens of countries. The Internet Engineering Task Force maintains critical internet standards through voluntary coordination among global stakeholders. The “Reclaiming Digital Sovereignity” proposal specifically addresses this challenge by advocating for “new public institutions with state and civil society representation” to govern universal digital platforms, alongside “multilateral agreements on principles and rules for the internet” as safeguards for autonomous, democratically governed solutions.

Browser development could follow similar patterns: international frameworks that respect national sovereignty while enabling coordinated action, governance structures that balance technical expertise with democratic accountability, and funding mechanisms that provide stability across political cycles. The Reclaiming Digital Sovereignity’s report’s emphasis on “democratic international consortia” and “public knowledge networks led by a new public international research agency” provides concrete institutional models that could be adapted for browser development. Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency represents another model for public investment in digital infrastructure for the public interest.

With all that being said, browsers represent one of the more achievable digital sovereignty goals. They’re built on open standards, rely heavily on open source components, and face fewer network effects than platform-based services. Other areas of the technology stack would be far more challenging, and far less open.

Success here would demonstrate that democratic societies can coordinate effectively on complex technical infrastructure and pass the first hurdle. Failure would reveal institutional gaps that need addressing before attempting more ambitious digital sovereignty goals. Democratic digital sovereignty is challenging but feasible, if societies are willing to think institutionally, invest sustainably, and build incrementally rather than trying to recreate Silicon Valley with different ownership structures.

Ultimately, the real question isn’t whether democratic societies can build alternative technologies, but whether they can build the democratic institutions necessary to govern them effectively across the complex realities of international coordination, competing priorities, and long-term sustainability. I believe browsers offer an ideal place to start testing these institutional innovations. The technical challenges are surmountable. The institutional ones remain to be proven.

Views expressed are personal and do not represent any organization.

#digitalSovereignity #funding #internetStandards #openSource #publicInterest


Take a technical dive into Open Document Format (ODF), the native format of #LibreOffice and available in many other office suites: blog.documentfoundation.org/bl… #foss #OpenSource

Is "sovereign washing" the new "privacy washing"?

Microsoft, Google, and AWS recently published “sovereign clouds”.

❌ BUT digital sovereignty doesn’t come from shiny new product names such as these “sovereign clouds” - which still must hand out data to US without a warrant based on the CLOUD Act and FISA.

✅ Digital sovereignty comes from full European legal and technical control. Everything else is nothing more than sovereign washing.

👉 tuta.com/blog/sovereign-washin…

Tuta reshared this.

in reply to Bart Knubben

@bartknubben Actually, we used to use a small German provider, but had to switch because they could not defend adequately against attacks, see here: tuta.com/blog/ddos-dns-attack

We don't like having to use AWS, but for the domain, we must use something big as for some reason we're a high-profile target for attacks. 🤔

What alternatives would you suggest (we'd love to switch to something better!)?

61 Years Ago Today NBC Approves Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” Pilot Script: A Bold New Vision for Television cordcuttersnews.com/61-years-a…

Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 6th July 2025


Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.


(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Also, happy 4th July in advance...I guess.)

in reply to BlueMonday1984

I had applied to a job and it screened me verbally with an AI bot. I find it strange talking to an AI bot that gives no indication of whether it is following what I am saying like a real human does with "uh huh" or what not. It asked me if I ever did Docker and I answered I transitioned a system to Docker. But I had done an awkward pause after the word transition so the AI bot congratulated me on my gender transition and it was on to the next question.
This entry was edited (5 months ago)

I have lived to tell the tale of my first Waymo ride in LA, as I was there for a work event, and so was Waymo. With a discount code in hand, I took it for a solo spin. What a surreal and empowering experience! The app is accessible with a screen reader, and you can turn on audio descriptions under Accessibility preferences, so the car will announce the streets it turns onto along the journey. Here's some audio from a video I took with the Meta glasses.

reshared this

It's a busy day! NVDA 2025.2 Beta 1 is now out: nvaccess.org/post/nvda-2025-2b…

AND In-Process is also out: nvaccess.org/post/in-process-3… - covering all about NVDA 2025.1, NV Access in the Forbes Accessibility 100, five quick things to try with NVDA 2025.1, and a small end of financial year request: nvaccess.org/post/in-process-3…

#NVDA #NVDAsr #ScreenReader #Accessibility #Blog #News #NewVersion #PreRelease #Beta #FLOSS #FOSS

Someone on the Blind Vintage Tech list posted a zip file containing two folders of digitized recordings of two computer magazines from the 1990s: Computer Folks and Bitstream.
Both of these magazines were originally distributed on cassette tapes. Computer Folks was recorded by Rich and Donna Ring. Rich, I believe, is deceased but Donna is still with us. The archive starts out with the September 1991 issue. The next issue, which I haven’t heard all of yet, has an interview with Deane Blazie.
Bitstream was recorded by Peter Ciali. I don’t have information on whether he is still with us or not. These magazines are fascinating as they really give you an idea of where we were at that time with blindness technology and how it evolved and grew. The link to this zip file is
dropbox.com/scl/fi/l76fmy1bu39…
That link may not be around for much longer so if you want this archive, I recommend downloading it sooner than later.

If anyone would like to subscribe to the Blind Vintage Tech list, send email to
Bvtc+subscribe@groups.io
This list, as its name implies, is for the discussion of older blindness tech; Sharp calculators, DOS and early Windows screen readers, Braille ‘n Speak; you get the idea.

reshared this

europesays.com/us/24265/ Down 48%, Should You Buy the Dip on Rigetti Computing? #Computing #futures #IndexMarketQuote #IndexMarketQuotes #IndexMarketSymbol #IndexMarketSymbols #indices #NVDA #NVIDIACorp #Technology #TheGlobeAndMail #UnitedStates #UnitedStates #US
in reply to US

Hi! Is there any chance we can encourage you to trend #NVIDIA when that's the company you mean, please? I know what their NASDAQ handle is, but #NVDA is much more widely known as the name of the screen reader we make and the #NVDA hashtag is very widely used for the screen reader. It will save both our communities polluting each other's feeds. If you'd like to find out more about the screen reader, our website is nvaccess.org/ - Thank you!

Microsoft says Windows 11 is 2x faster, except they used ancient PCs to benchmark Windows 10
techspot.com/news/108491-micro…

"As #space junk increases, more operators are choosing to launch without any #insurance at all. To compensate, companies are cutting back on the cost of satellites and launching more of them at faster rates, thus creating a feedback loop as the cheaper satellites break up more easily and add to the problem. Behind the predicament are two vectors moving in opposite directions: The cost of launching satellites is falling, while the cost of insuring them continues to soar.”

space.com/space-exploration/sa…

Chris Van Hollen explains that tax cuts for the wealthy don't expire, but other provisions, e.g., no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, DO PHASE OUT.

Republicans are lying to you. Again, and again.

#BigFuglyBill #BBB #TrumpDidThis #RepublicansDidThis #Project2025 #NoRepublicansEverAgain #USPol

Eggs were somehow considered too expensive so Americans voted to totally destroy our disaster emergency response services, our National Parks, Medicaid, energy development, and cancer research services.

It’s completely and utterly insane.

“When is cancer political?" Medical researchers, patients decry Trump admin's layoffs, budget cuts - CBS News:
cbsnews.com/news/when-is-cance…

#Nautilus #AMC #AMCplus #Disney.
The troubled series Nautilus has finally made it's way onto TV here. It will be broadcast tonight June 29 at 9pm Eastern on AMC and stream on AMC+. It's 10 episodes and has been cancelled. Disney+ produced it and passed after filming.

Nautilus | Official Trailer | Premieres June 29 | AMC+
youtu.be/6AjVpIqK6U8?si=Qla0S5…

in reply to Dennis A

#Nautilus #AMC #AMCplus #Disney
The reviews for Nautilus aren't that bad. It's a reimagining of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and apparently a much darker Indiana Jones. I might give it a try and just know that it's not coming back.

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Nautilus | Premieres June 29 | AMC+
youtu.be/X55WRUz9xE0?si=EOdZOH…