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I used to believe the biggest problem with long-term support (LTS) distributions was the significant delays in offering stability and feature improvements from the latest versions of applications, but as of a couple of minutes ago, I now believe the biggest problem with them is the significant delays in offering the majority of accessibility improvements within the stack AND individual applications.
toot.cafe/users/matt/statuses/…

Matt Campbell

2026-01-03 02:28:22

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Incidentally, on the topic of LTS distros where Orca works well on Wayland, particularly with GNOME, I regret that the implementation of proper keystroke monitoring and grabbing, which I prototyped in mid 2024 and which someone else brought to production in time for GNOME 48, didn't get there in time for RHEL 10, which ships GNOME 47. Maybe I could have done more to bring that important functionality to production sooner, but my efforts were focused elsewhere in the second half of 2024.

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Welcome to the second part of the new years 2026 stream with me, @ivan_soto, @BrailleScreen, @draeand, Carter Temm and any others who end up joining for a second night of New years fun! We'll spend the first bit of time answering any pending questions from yesterday's stream, and then things are going to get very upbeat and enjoyable, you'll have to listen and find out why! anyaud.io/listen?audio=T8s4g-m…

New years day 2026 stream part 2 – The Any Audio Network

anyaud.io
@Patrick W @Ivan Soto @Ethin Probst
in reply to ShotgunSpoon

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Sam Tupy

@ShotgunSpoon It's back for the moment, but indeed, it could stay down at any time should we have any reason to do that. In this case I got so tired after the streams I forgot to push a commit to git with the latest stabilizing change, thus when someone else on the team updated the server it reverted my stabilizing change and it crashed until I woke up. Others on the team will have more access to restart completely broken servers soon enough, I went from lets pwn anyone who gets my code 6 years ago to lets actually let some of my friends help me develop this thing, meanwhile dumping a bunch of other code and prereleases at the community and find that, to mine and the game's detriment, it's taking a second for my spirit to be ready to give up even more control in the form of letting others have any sort of ssh access to my server to fix such things haha. I'll get there very soon but I can only do so much character development in so much time hahaha
@ShotgunSpoon

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I want to design and build websites for people who want to own their website and stop depending on platforms

My initial idea was to sell the templates individually for $19, or offer a bundle of 100 templates for $250

However, I’ve also been thinking about a different approach: fundraising.
If I can raise a certain amount upfront, I could build the 100 templates and release them for free under an open-source license, so anyone can use them, customize them, and own them

lacasitadelmarkup.com/

La Casita del Markup

a web template marketplace where you can find beautiful css and html
lacasitadelmarkup.com

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What I’m up to in 2026

Sensitive content

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The FBI spied on a private Signal group chat of immigrants’ rights activists who were organizing “courtwatch” efforts in New York City this spring. Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller, condemned the FBI’s report in a statement, saying the “FBI surveillance tactic is ripped straight out of the J Edgar Hoover playbook”. theguardian.com/us-news/2025/n…

The FBI spied on a Signal group chat of immigration activists, records reveal

Exclusive: Agency accessed private conversations of New York ‘courtwatch’ group that was observing public hearings
Sam Levin (The Guardian)

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Carney promises 2026 will see huge economic growth that will absolutely not include you

thebeaverton.com/2026/01/carne…

Not even reading like satire.


Carney promises 2026 will see huge economic growth that will absolutely not include you - The Beaverton

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Mark Carney has vowed that 2026 will see huge economic growth for Canada's GDP, manufacturing, and exports, none of which will redound to you in the slightest.
Ian MacIntyre (The Beaverton)

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Here's an idea: someone should produce a series of ebooks that teach how to use GNOME and popular applications (e.g. Firefox and LibreOffice) with Orca, in a systematic way with activities for each concept or task, then use the proceeds from sales of those ebooks to help fund development of Orca and the free desktop accessibility stack in general, as NV Access has done with NVDA and their training ebooks. I think there would be a market for that.

Federico Mena Quintero reshared this.

in reply to Matt Campbell

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miki

and I'd say:

1. Pair this with a blind-friendly distro that has everything configured (you'd need NFB/ACB support for this, as you probably need the metaphorical "company letterhead" to get secure boot certified).

2. Autotranslate into all the languages via LLMs. Sure, human translations are better than automatic translations, but automatic translations are better than nothing. Source: Not a native English speaker, I've actually relied on them back when Google Translate was borderline unusable.

3. Preferrably, pair this with scripts that can "walk through" the scenarios described in the book, making sure Orca output stays consistent as versions change. You could also this to automatically record multilingual walkthroughs, with human-written commentary between the steps.

in reply to miki

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miki

NVAccess basically ignores 80+% of the addressable market with their basic training materials. While NVDA itself is translatable (and actively translated), everything else, including their website, is pretty much as hostile to international visitors as you can get. This is pretty hypocritical, as the English-speaking countries are the ones where you're most likely to get either JAWS, government-sponsored AT training, or both.
in reply to miki

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Matt Campbell

I doubt we'd need a fully custom distro, with its own boot loader and unified kernel image that would need to be specially signed for Secure Boot. A stock boot loader and UKI from one of the major distros should be enough. For the rest of the distro, a Debian Pure Blend (debian.org/blends/) might be enough.

I really like the idea of using the training activities as regression tests.

Debian Pure Blends

www.debian.org

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Wow, so excited! My replacement Cadence arrived today. Tactile Engineering were kind enough to also include for us four hard-shell cases, so both Jess and myself get two of them, one for each Braille display unit. These cases are rectangular and pocketable, with a nice pocket for a charging cable on the inside, and a strap that you can secure over the display whilst it is in the case to keep it from moving around. Really like them, it'll really be useful for my international travels.
New display works perfect, no uncalibrated pins causing troubles on it.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

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I was asked by a family member why it was taking so long to paste something large into a new Microsoft Word document on their computer, I sarcastically replied it was because it takes a while to upload it all to the copilot AI nonense first. And then I realized accidentally I might be right...I disabled copilot in Word and it went back to being instant again

So that's cool that Microsoft seems uploading everything you paste into a new Word doc to their servers now.

reshared this

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“‘If a fire occurs in the cabin, if we land on water, don’t check on the immigrants. Just make sure that you and the guards and the people that work for the government get off," one flight attendant was told.

“It was as if the detainees’ lives were worthless,’” said another.

Revisit our #3 most-read story of 2025: propublica.org/article/inside-…

#ICE #Immigration #Deportation #Immigrants #Aviation #Journalism


Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time”

Flight attendants for GlobalX, a private charter airline used in migrant deportations, say life on board wasn’t what they signed up for.
McKenzie Funk (ProPublica)
#journalism #aviation #immigration #immigrants #ice #deportation

reshared this

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How is the English word “detergent” pronounced where you live?

#poll #pronunciation #regionalism

  • / dɪˈtɜr gənt / a hard “g”; as in “get” (0%, 0 votes)
  • / dɪˈtɜr dʒənt / a softer “g”; like “jet” (100%, 14 votes)
  • Use both pronunciations (0%, 0 votes)
  • Neither — just call it soap (0%, 0 votes)
14 voters. Poll end: 2 weeks ago

#poll #pronunciation #Regionalism

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From Facebook: 🤣 Embarrassing Medical Exams – Doctor Stories You Can’t Make Up
1. The Wrong Cab

A man bursts into the ER shouting, “My wife’s having a baby in the cab!”

I grab my kit, dash outside, fling open a taxi door, lift the woman’s dress, and start pulling off her underwear.

That’s when I realize—there are six cabs lined up.

I was in the wrong one.

— Dr. Mark MacDonald
2. Big Breaths

During rounds, I place my stethoscope on an elderly woman’s chest.

“Big breaths,” I instruct.

She sighs and replies, “Yes… they used to be.”

— Dr. Richard Byrnes
3. The Internal Fart

I had to deliver the worst news: “I’m so sorry. Your husband has passed away from a massive myocardial infarction.”

Minutes later, I overhear her telling the family, “He died of a massive internal fart.”

— Dr. Susan Steinberg
4. The Patch Problem

At a check-up, a man complains about one of his medications.

“Which one?” I ask.

“The patch,” he says. “The nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours. Now I’m running out of places to stick it!”

I ask him to undress.

He has over fifty patches plastered on his body.

(Instructions now clearly say: remove old patch first.)

— Dr. Rebecca St. Clair
5. Bedridden?

While meeting a new elderly patient, I ask gently, “How long have you been bedridden?”

She looks puzzled and says, “Not since my husband died—about 20 years.”

— Dr. Steven Swanson
6. Kentucky Jelly

Checking on a patient one morning, I ask, “How’s breakfast?”

“Good,” he says, “except for the Kentucky Jelly. Can’t get used to the taste.”

Curious, I ask to see it. He hands me a foil packet of KY Jelly.

— Dr. Leonard Kransdorf
7. Keep Off the Grass

A punky young woman comes in with appendicitis—purple Mohawk, tattoos, piercings.

On the operating table, we discover green-dyed pubic hair and a tattoo above it that says: “Keep off the grass.”

After surgery, the surgeon couldn’t resist writing on the bandage: “Sorry… had to mow the lawn.”

— Anonymous RN
8. The Whistling Exam

As a young OB resident, I was embarrassed doing pelvic exams, so I developed a nervous habit—whistling.

One day, mid-exam, a patient bursts out laughing.

Blushing, I ask, “Sorry… did I tickle you?”

Through tears she gasps, “No, doctor… but the song you were whistling was ‘I Wish I Was an Oscar Mayer Wiener.’”

— Name withheld for obvious reasons
9. Baby’s First Visit

At a baby’s first check-up, I ask the mother if he’s breastfed or bottle-fed.

“Breastfed,” she says.

“Alright,” I reply. “Strip down to your waist.”

She complies. I carefully pinch, knead, and examine, then shake my head.

“No wonder this baby’s underweight—you don’t have any milk!”

She calmly replies, “I know. I’m his grandmother. But thanks for checking.”

😂
🔥

in reply to victor tsaran

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André Polykanine

@vick21 Yes, I also heard much positive about Iranians as people. BTW, if you don't know, I highly recommend you Farya Faraji on YouTube. He lives in Canada for a long time now and he makes lots of songs in different languages, but what I like about him especially is his epic talks where he tells about Oriental music from a native perspective, not from a Westerner's view. Absolutely must watch for someone interested in music theory.
@victor tsaran

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#SelfHost week 0.
Phase 1:
in the end I've chosen hostinger. As a first approach. It has a very frustrating interface on adding records when referring to DNS, and even in state/province while registering domain's contact info.
They are combo boxes, detected as edit boxes through #accessibility equipments.
Now waiting for it to propagate dns on #YunoHost 's admin interface on a subdomain.
Installed yuno host via terminal, then even post-installation done via terminal: yunohost tools postinstall or whatever it was.
Had some trouble with letsencrypt in the end, but now they should be solved.
Phase 2 will be installing an app, I'll get to it as soon as everything's on track.
Even thinking of placing #WordPress English speaking blog there. Let's see.
#Accessibility #selfhost #wordpress #yunohost
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