Airacast: Convention Time!

July means it’s time to hit the road for the conventions of the American Council of the Blind and the National Federation of the Blind. Jenine Stanley and Everette Bacon go over everything you’ll need to know from traveling to and from Dallas and New Orleans to where we are in the respective exhibit halls and when you can catch our workshops, plus a convention deal from the Customer Care team. But wait! There’s more! It’s “Aira on the Go!” With our Q3 Giveaway. Find out what you could win just by using one of our transportation-related offers.

Listen Now🎧: pnc.st/s/airacast/7e808010/con…

Questions or comments about this podcast? Email us at airacast@aira.io.
Learn more about visual interpreting at www.aira.io.

Check out the ACB National Conference and Convention at acbconvention.org.
Check out the NFB convention at nfb.org/convention.

There's some slightly confusing messaging on Freedom Scientific's convention specials page.
vispero.com/events/acb-2025/
It states:
" 10% off all Home Annual Licenses and Home Time-Based SMA s"

For kicks, I called FS to see if there was a chance that I could renew my license a day earlier before the discounts kick in. The salesperson I spoke withh was very nice but said that this was for new license purchasers. I thought I missed this but their Web site clearly does not indicate this and I really believe that it should if this is the case.
He said that I could purchase a new license but this would change my serial number. Many JAWS users wouldn't care if their serial number changed if it meant getting a license at a discount. However, I have lots of third party software from Hartgen Consultancy that is tied to my current serial number. I know I could ask Hartgen Consultancy if they could substitute my old serial number with the new one but I might have to do the same thing again in a year if FS only offers discounts for new license purchases.
I told the salesperson, who again was extremely nice and very professional, that I wasn't going to quibble over a 10% discount but I suggested that they change the messaging on their Web site to reflect this to avoid calls from upset users who will be unable to renew their home annual license at the discounted price. I told him that I personally felt that they should honor it based on their Web site's messaging but that I wasn't willing to get into a fight over around a $10.00 discount. Other users will, however, and FS really needs to look at this.
The bottom line is that either their Convention Specials Web page should indicate that this discount is for new purchases of a Home Annual license or they should allow current Home Annual license holders to renew with the discounted price if they won't change the messaging on the Web page.

@freedomscientific

This entry was edited (5 months ago)
in reply to David Goldfield

I agree with everything you're saying here about the Home Annual License. I feel as of late, from what it seems, Freedom Scientific hasn't been very good at communicating all of the details about their products, in small fine print on their website, if you get what I'm saying, and in a way, this is only an opinion, but that's bad for business.
This entry was edited (5 months ago)

Does anyone happen to know what values I'd put in an `upgrade` HTTP response header when sending an HTTP 426 to tell a client that it needs to upgrade to TLS 1.2 or 1.3?

The HTTP spec says "The server *MUST* send an Upgrade header"
httpwg.org/specs/rfc9110.html#…

...but I can't find any examples. The `upgrade` spec says the format of the value is `protocol-name ["/" protocol-version]` - so presumably e.g. `TLS/1.3`?
httpwg.org/specs/rfc9110.html#…

It won't work for old clients obv but...trying to be correct.

in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

@bagder @SimmerVigor Agreed. We're doing a trial of retiring TLS 1.0 & 1.1 which is a soft disabling - We'll return a custom error page with info & a path to contact us for any requests to our websites over 1.0 or 1.1.
Obv this means we complete the HTTP request/response which gives us the opportunity to be more helpful to the client. TBH, until our TLS lib removes 1.0/1.1 it *could* stay like this. I'm basically just trying to "bring the audience with us" as far as possible.

The progress bars in F-Droid's new design look odd. Did some research into the material 3 spec and why there's a strange blue dot at the end: gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient…

Maybe someone wants to improve the colour choices here?

This entry was edited (5 months ago)

the ban hammer strikes again as the slop counter increases...

hackerone.com/reports/3231321

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

this one reminds me of the "vulnerability reports" we would sometimes get when I worked at Telegram. Where someone would claim that it's a severe vulnerability that messages, including ones from secret chats, are stored unencrypted in a database that is only accessible on rooted/jailbroken devices. And that was before AI. People would write these by hand and never stop to think it through.

TIL about Nagashi Somen

"... As temperatures increase across Japan, residents and tourists in the western region of Okayama are embracing a delightful and traditional way to cool down, Nagashi Somen, a treasured summer ritual in Japan.

In the lovely Yamanori Valley of Maniwa City, a restaurant with over 40 years of history has reopened for the season, offering guests the chance to enjoy Nagashi Somen.

These thin wheat noodles flow down a bamboo conduit filled with icy spring water. Diners use chopsticks to catch the noodles as they pass by, dip them in a savoury broth or a thin soup, and gulp them down in true Japanese fashion."

🚨 Gmail ads aren’t just annoying - they may be illegal. 🚨

Google could pay €525M for breaking privacy laws.
👉 tuta.com/blog/gmail-ads-annoyi…

This is a BIG WIN for #privacy 🔒💥

What's your reason for having switched to Tuta?

Signal on desktop flickers and makes me feel ill, but they won't do anything about it. Workaround is to use a cli flag, but I don't use it from cli? Really want Signal to go mainstream but hard to recommend

github.com/signalapp/Signal-De…

Freedom Scientific has published info on convention specials.
For #ACB25:
Convention Specials:
Visit us in the exhibit hall to take advantage of our summer show specials. Mention discount code JAWS30 to receive the specials listed below.
• 10% off all Home Annual Licenses and Home Time-Based SMA’s
Special pricing is offered to ACB convention registrants—both in-person and virtually, valid July 2-31, 2025. Register at the ACB website. Call 1-800-444-4443 to redeem.
vispero.com/events/acb-2025/

For #NFB25
Visit us in the exhibit hall to take advantage of our summer show specials. Mention discount code JAWS30 to receive the specials listed below.
• 10% off all Home Annual Licenses and Home Time-Based SMA’s
Special pricing is offered to NFB convention registrants—both in-person and virtually, valid July 2-31, 2025. Register at the NFB website. Call 1-800-444-4443 to redeem.
vispero.com/events/nfb-2025/

This entry was edited (5 months ago)
in reply to David Goldfield

Regarding the convention specials from Freedom Scientific, I'm disappointed that home annual licenses are only being discounted at 10% as a convention special; I believe it was 20% in previous years. It's also interesting that we so far haven't seen discounts on any of their hardware, such as video magnifiers and Focus Braille displays.
This entry was edited (5 months ago)
in reply to David Goldfield

Given all of the trouble I've had with my Focus display, purchased back in 2020, I'll never get another. Cells kept going out on it to the point of where it's totally useless to me. It is the worse piece of assistive technology I've ever purchased. It was in the shop under warranty as much as I got to get any quality use from the thing. I wouldn't wish my experience on anyone.
in reply to David Goldfield

@Bruce I haven’t had any dealings with Learning Ally since 2009. I joined them when I was taking some classes at a local community college and thought I could get the books I needed more easily there. Turns out #Bookshare actually served me better and it wasn’t worth the subscription price, can’t remember how much it was now. I grew up with it when it was known as RFB, and while it was great to get the books I needed, good heavens, the narration could be dreadful! I would take AI over that.

"Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations" The book," Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced", costs $169.
Yet more reason to be skeptical about #AI salespeople.
retractionwatch.com/2025/06/30…
#AI

Wow, so that was what you were doing when you weren’t sleeping last night! It’s only 7:30 AM but it’s already a good day! Please take a moment to welcome my bride aboard the #Mastodon train if you have the notion, and let’s see if we can push her follower count past 1. LOL #GoodMorning mastodon.social/@sarahblarose/…

Kavu nemeleme!

Do tohohle jednokafackeho claimu jsme narazili jako do zdi, kdyz jsme kupovali pytlik kafe na posledni chvili na chatovy vylet. Tenkrat to byl problem, protoze jsme potrebovali rychle kafe pro hodne lidi a mlynek jsme nemeli. Zachranil nas az stary industrialni mlynek na recepci krajskeho uradu.

Obsluha jednokafe byla prisna. Nenamleli bysme ani vlastni babicce!

Uz tenkrat jsem mel napad na happening pujcit si mlynek a tech 250g tam na miste rucne protocit. Dnes, pri zaucovani slecny brigadnice, jsem se dozvedel, ze jejich nazor je podobny. Pro neodbytne #mampravonamleti maji pripravenou odpoved v podobe zapujcky hario slim mlynku.

Si rikam, ze prisel ten cas. Koupit si pytlicek. Vyzadovat pomleti. Pujcit si hario ... a vrhnout se na to pred zraky podporovatelu a kamer ... akorat ten mlynek je dost peklo, uz po dou davkach jsem doma skoro umiral ... a k tomu mam rad svuj filtr dost najemno. Dat 13 davek v kuse, to je tak na dve hodiny cisteho toceni ... a to mi nesmi v prubehu upadnout ruka ... vzdat to v pulce by bylo dost trapne.

Proto hledam podporu! Kdo by me chtel podporit v mleti kafe v jendom, vymyslime termin a vrhnu se na to.

#lbc #liberec #kafe

New app added to the Accessible Android apps directory: Music Folder Player accessible with minor issues accessibleandroid.com/app/musi… #Android #App

#Gnome #Files (#Nautilus) has a bulk rename tool for some time now, but literally every single time I try to use it I fail. Really, everytime I need to rename batch of files, I try it first in this tool, I recognize that my task is not possible done in it and than start totalcmd in wine just for this simple operation.
Are my needs so advanced? I don't think so.
For example now I want to add xml extension to all badly named log files. Impossible.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Štěpán Škorpil

Actually when you open rename tool, it prefills it with pattern [Original file name] and extension is completely omitted from renaming.

We need to not omit extensions, add them as separate place holder [Originial file extension] and just prefill them when rename dialog opens as [Original file name][Originial file extension]

This entry was edited (5 months ago)

Big update from our Documentation team – the #LibreOffice 25.2 user guides are now available! This is fantastic work, driven primarily by volunteers: blog.documentfoundation.org/bl… #foss #OpenSource

LibreOffice reshared this.

in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

Europe just giving money away to worthy OSS maintainers would be such a break.

Most normal EU projects are mired in anti-fraud rules. As a result, the money goes to the people who know how to game these rules while stil staying on the right side of the law.

It's not fraud by any legal definition, bbut it's basically fraud.

I genuinely hope this project is different.

I kick off the morning reviewing this document: "#EUSTF: A Study on the Economic, Legal, and Political Feasibility of an EU Sovereign Tech Fund"

A 42,000 words proposal to create a EU-wide version of the German Sovereign Tech Fund/Agency with a 350 million € fund over seven years. To fund critical open source infrastructure.

It even features the now mandatory xkcd 2347 image. xkcd.com/2347/

Color me positive.

Hice un vídeo para que puedas enviárselo a tus personas cercanas, explicando lo fácil que es dejar #WhatsApp, y por qué es importante hacerlo. 💬

fediverse.tv/w/35Lvufq1XW8ZVBT… (@ivangj@fediverse.tv)
También disponible en YouTube por si quieres evitar rozamientos 😅.

#SoftwareLibre #PeerTube #Chat #Signal #XMPP #DeltaChat #Matrix

This entry was edited (5 months ago)
in reply to Ivan GJ

Aunque el objetivo del vídeo es dejar a #WhatsApp en evidencia, también otorgo una parte no-despreciable del vídeo a #Signal, como la gran alternativa.

También nombro a #XMPP (vivo amenazado por la furia de @kyva), PERO:
Signal es el único "quita-y-pon" 🧩 que tenemos ahora mismo, para seguir conversando con **nuestros contactos telefónicos**, sin tener que ir preguntando a todo quisqui por su dirección.

Que ya los iremos metiendo en el saco federado, pero tú estate en Signal mientrastanto. 😉

OK so as people seem interested, here is a first Libervia-CLI tip.

`li` is the short alias for `libervia-cli`.

If you want to quickly upload a file to share it, you can use:

`li file upload -P your_file.ext`

`-P` shows a progress bar.

You can even encrypt it with the `-e` option in which case you'll have an `aesgcm:` with the decryption token as a fragment of the URL (the `#…` part).

You can then decrypt with `li file get`.

libervia.org/__b/doc/backend/l…

#libervia #cli #li #tips #xmpp

La version 2.3.1 de Gajim est sortie et est de nouveau disponible sur Windows (prévenez vos ami·es Windowsien·nes !) \o/

Une belle harmonisation graphique en passant à libadwaita, la barre de menu disparaît (les fonctionnalités sont réparties aux endroits cohérents), des boîtes de dialogue repensés, possibilité de masquer la barre de titre (pratique si comme moi on est sur un gestionnaire de fenêtre en tuile comme i3) et d'autres petites choses.

Toujours dispo en français bien sûr :
gajim.org/fr/posts/2025-06-29-…

#XMPP

#xmpp