For Christmas entertaining, I froze ice cubes with small berries in them. In a few, I concealed Mentos mints. It was excellent watching people's reactions when the ice melted enough for their Cokes to suddenly erupt for no apparent reason
I've just managed to do a quick audio editing job using NVDA Remote Controller and Sonobus on my iPhone with a bluetooth keyboard connected to my Windows laptop at home 500 miles away. It's not something I'd want to do too often, mostly because Sonobus on was kinda jittery, but it was enough to get the thing done.
@jakobrosin The NVDA part is only very slightly laggier than the usual VoiceOver junk. Sonobus, maybe 50 MS or so, because of my actual network latency, but it bounced around a little, then caught up with itself.
@jakobrosin I am using a local NVDARemote server on a Raspberry Pi on my Tailnet. I don't like the idea of NVDA hosting the connection, because I've seen instances where clients dropped. Restarting NVDA would fix it, but you can't, because it broke. So I use an external controller that can be restarted separately over SSH if it breaks like that, and it has. So I'm glad I did that, or I'd have lost access to my machines.
If you use #eloquence in #NVDA, an extremely uninteresting bugfix is now available. Previously, automatic language switching in NVDA didn't work for any language with a dialect specified, like English United States. This is now fixed. It literally just changes from calling languages en-gb and en-us to calling them en_gb and en_us to make NVDA happy. But if you need that, you can get the bugfix here: github.com/fastfinge/eloquence_64/releases/tag/v6
This is just a bugfix release to ensure Auto Language switching works for languages with dialects. Previously, NVDA could not switch to using any language with a dialect during auto language switch...
I've not had chance to play with my hardware project with the baby, but I occasionally still kick the monologue system from 1993. I'd love a software-based doubletalk, but ... well. not making too much progress. This is the raw audio data and that's about as far as I've gotten.
@cachondo LOL it's the next dubstep hit! I think the blastbay voices might be our best bet. However, he's got to do something about the phonimizer. The voice quality is good, but it's based on the CMU dictionaries, so there are just way too many pronunciation issues.
Hey, all. I've created a WhatsApp community for language learning, which currently has English to Spanish, French, and German. If anyone wants to join, please message me privately, and then let me know which group you'd like to be added to.
It's weird reading an interesting book in your dreams, because when you wake up, you realize that you have to write it first if you want to continue reading it.
Buried at the end of this year's installment of my semi-annual series on network and device reality is a mystery: multiple, independent data sets from the Web Performance community indicate sites built as Single-Page Applications ("SPAs") receive, on…
I bought myself a new keyboard with Christmas money, and after just a day of using it, I'm honestly kind of stunned by how much of a difference it's making. I picked up a Keychron K10 Max from Amazon and got it yesterday, and I don't think I ever want to go back to a membrane keyboard again. For context: before this, I was using a Logitech Ergo K860. It's a split, membrane keyboard that a lot of people like for ergonomics, and it did help in some ways — but for me, it was also limiting. My hands don't stay neatly parked in one position, and the enforced split often worked against how I naturally move. It also wasn't rechargeable, and the large built-in wrist rest (which I know some people love) mostly became a dirt-collecting obstacle that I had to work around. Another big factor for me is that I often work from bed. That means my keyboard isn't sitting on a perfectly stable desk. It's on a tray, my lap, or bedding that shifts as I move. The Logitech Ergo K860 is very light, which sounds nice on paper, but in practice it meant the keyboard was easy to knock around, slide out of position, or tilt unexpectedly. Combined with the split layout, that meant I was constantly re-orienting myself instead of just typing. The Keychron, by contrast, is noticeably heavier — and that turns out to be a feature. It stays put. It doesn’t drift when my hands move. It feels planted in a way that reduces both physical effort and mental overhead. I don't have to think about where the keyboard is; I can just use it. For a bed-based workflow, that stability matters more than I realized. With chronic pain, hand fatigue, and accessibility needs, keyboards are not a neutral tool. They shape how long I can work, how accurately I can type, and how much energy I spend compensating instead of thinking. This new keyboard feels solid, responsive, and predictable in a way I didn't realize I was missing. The keys register cleanly without requiring force, and the feedback is clear without being harsh. I'm not fighting the keyboard anymore. It's just doing what I ask. What surprised me even more is how much better the software side feels from an accessibility perspective. Keychron's Launcher and its use of QMK are far more usable for me than Logitech Options Plus ever was. Being able to work with something that’s web-based, text-oriented, and closer to open standards makes a huge difference as a screen reader user. I can reason about what the keyboard is doing instead of wrestling with a visually dense, mouse-centric interface. That matters a lot. When your primary interface to the computer is the keyboard, both the hardware and the configuration tools need to cooperate with you. I know mechanical keyboards aren't new, but this is my first one, and I finally understand why people say they'll never go back. For me, this isn't about aesthetics or trends. It's about having a tool that respects my body and my access needs and lets me focus on the work itself. I'm really grateful I was able to get this, and I'm genuinely excited to keep dialing it in. Sometimes the right piece of hardware, paired with software that doesn’t fight you, doesn’t just improve comfort. It quietly expands what feels possible. #Accessibility #DisabledTech #AssistiveTechnology #ScreenReader #NVDA #MechanicalKeyboards #Keychron @accessibility @disability @spoonies @mastoblind
I always wonder why people like mechanical keyboards, and sorry, but even now I didn't understand from your post, except for robustness and heaviness, here I concur. However, I started on a mechanical one in the 90s, and my go-to keyboard now is a Logitech K270. Isn't a mechanical keyboard heavier to type on? I'm a quick typer, so it's important for me.
@menelion Different switches have different levels of operating force and actuation points. Both of those influence how much force you need to have keys register. Hull Effect switches let you adjust the actuation point which can help if you're a light-fingered typist. I'm a heavy typer so my strokes always bottom out. Silent switches thankfully cushion that and reduce the sound. It can be tough to get exactly what suits you best. (1/2)
To celebrate the first official Digital Independence Day - with some help of other #opensource enthusiasts - we convinced someone from my family: ✅ to install #Linux on their Mac computer, ✅ created a #Mastodon account for them, ✅ and assisted them in the transition.
We are again watching world media be willingly manipulated. Parroting the propaganda they’ve been fed. Normalising international criminality. Sane-washing what is patently not so, and ignoring globally irresponsible behaviour.
A case in point is watching them bend over backwards to try and make coherent the patently incoherent, contradictory rationale the Trump administration has given for its actions in Venezuela.
Drugs: If the Trump regime cared about drug trafficking, they would not have pardoned the Honduran ex-president convicted of it.
The attacks on Venezuelan ‘drug boats’ were spectacle and priming. For months, the media helped prime the public for what happened yesterday.
But how does kidnapping Maduro and his wife stop cocaine being trafficked to the US? It doesn’t. But Trump supporters cannot think in abstracts. They’ve been fed an image of Maduro as Tony Montana.
Democracy: Trump doesn’t care about democracy in his own country (he made extreme efforts to destabilise the electoral process in his own country) and certainly not in Venezuela. Additionally, his own supporters are not fans of historic US efforts at nation building. But this move gives his base something to argue about an chew on. Meanwhile the non-Trump republicans really like a good military in the middle of the night show.
What they’ve done in Venezuela leaves is a dangerous power vacuum.
Oil: Trump doesn’t care about oil, but he does care about oil companies who contribute to his growing financial wealth. He absolutely doesn’t care if Venezuela’s oil producing infrastructure is crumbling. He cares only about the graft he can extract when he opens the field to corporations who can make a business of ‘revitalizing’ it.
While some of those around him may dream of returning to an imperial US, Trump doesn’t have dreams like that. He dreams of staying in power and gilded ballrooms.
Spheres of influence: There are, without a doubt, those within the Trump administration who do think in the abstract. They don’t give a shit about Venezuela either, but this act signals to China and Russia that a new world order, made up of aggressive spheres of regional influence is perfectly okay with them.
But Trump can’t even mentally conceive of something that broad or abstract. For him, this strike is a way to stop the media attention on Epstein and inflation.
If Trump loses power in the midterms, his graft game is up. While SCOTUS might grant him unlimited criminal power, the one arm of government that can over-ride SCOTUS and curtail his criminality is congress.
What Trump knows is that Americans love a spectacle. They can be for it - the right loves a good show of force - or against it, but it doesn’t actually matter, because it shifts attention away from the concrete realities of inflation, healthcare insurance and his association with Epstein.
Trump cannot think longterm, but those around him do. Giving tacit permission for China to invade Taiwan or Russia to take over Ukraine also paves the way for the US acquisition of the parts of the world they want. And an extreme rise in militarism which requires the suspension of all sorts of everyday rights that are taken for granted in stable democracies.
The US far right needs to be able to point at monstrous aggressive instability to force through their goals of a white, christian US.
It is hard to keep your eye on two games being played at the same time. But this is what has been happening all along. This is why the hard right white Christian nationalists in the US tolerate (and even embrace) Trump.
Not because he has the ability to agree with them ideologically, but because his flagrant global irresponsibility destabilises settled orders enough to make their goals possible.
Should you attend FOSDEM this year, make sure to drop by our stand – and maybe also listen to our talks I've just updated the news post at our OpenCollective with details for you, see opencollective.com/izzyondroid…
At our stand, you will find us (with stickers), @SylvieLorxu (the Cat Ima!) also with Catima stickers, @electrikjesus with Bliss goodies, and our friends from @shiftphones with their goodies.
Seamos serios: lo del "derecho internacional" dejó de tener sentido (si no antes) con lo de las armas de destrucción masiva de Irak. EEUU lleva 80 años siendo el matón de occidente. Lo cual no quiere decir que haya que dejar de decirlo, pero creo que es un hecho que todo lo "internacional" no funciona cuando se trata de EEUU. Ni siquiera sirvió para atajar el conflicto entre Rusia y Ucrania. Si me equivoco en algo me decís, que me gusta aprender de estas cosas. Pero creo que no voy muy desencaminado.
No sé, en mis días pesimistas también lo veo así. Por otra parte, las relaciones internacionales la mayoría del tiempo se rigen por los principios del DIP; los tratados y las costumbres se suelen cumplir, los mecanismos de autotutela mantienen las infracciones como una excepción. Pero es verdad que la capacidad de constreñir el comportamiento de las potencias es limitada. Aun así, quizá se trata de una ficción (como todo lo que es intersubjetivo) que se convierte progresivamente en realidad en la medida en que actuamos como si importase.
I used to be on the team that wrote/maintains that feature and as you can see, the logic can be fuzzy at best. In this case looks like someone specifically crafted a (I assume fake?) go dependency on curl
Mun lähes päivälleen vuoden vanhan GTS-instanssin datat on 7.9 G ja federoituja instansseja on reippaat 6000. Yllättävän maltillista on ollut, odotin pahempaa.
Tämän kanssa puljaaminen viimeistään on myös opettanut mulle sen että Sqlite on aivan riittävän hyvä kanta useimpiin itsehostattuihin hommiin. Miten monta turhaa Postgresiä sitä onkin tullut pystytettyä.
I took a look at some of those reports. Why are they so long and annoying to read? At least some of them were actually reviewed by humans before submitting, yet they are so cumbersome to read like they were shown by an llm.
I believe many people actually think they have a better case when they do a 300 line report instead of a succinct 30 line one. Even when expanded by AI to a word salad of 270 lines of pointless ramblings.
I mean, that's what we've all been taught though, right?
I had points deducted from papers with the comment "The text includes everything that is required, it was just too short" and a few weeks ago my 13yo came home with the same comment on a test ... :)
The sad future seems to be full of people using AI to expand the text before sending it to look professional, and the receiver using AI to get a summary of that text.
Zda se ze @Ptakobouda konecne funguje. Zatim to necham takhle a nebudu na to sahat. V budoucnu to premigruju na iphone a doplnim identifikaci ptaku - proste to napise "sykorka!" nebo "vrabec!" no.
done with all of them! Most things I now host myself, but I know that's not a possibility for most people. For Messengers I really like @delta and run my own chatmail server, but most people I have on Signal.
Yeah pretty much any of the "small tech" options are better and more private, but privacy and security are worthless without intersectionality, so it's difficult to recommend Brave run by a bigot, or Proton whose CEO liked to "both sides" fascism. They too would be stood up there on inauguration day in a heartbeat if they had the chance.
I wish TutaCalendar could read/autoimport both my Outlook and iCloud Calendar, perhaps even add a simple way to sync it with the Calendar on Gnome (fedora linux) ... if already possible, make an easy guide 😊
I like the list, except for KeePassXC. They now use AI to build the product, and doubled-down when confronted on this. That project can no longer be trusted.
just a note for everyone on the thread that Ecosia and qwant are working on an independent index together blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-… - might only be for French users at first though
We’ve started delivering independent search results from our European-based index. This will help us build the kind of ethical and fair internet we believe in.
Good considerations, though I use your rival, Proton, for mail specifically. Ecosia is allegedly for tree spiking from what I read, so I use something like Startpage or DDG without the AI features.
Gerne hätte ich Tutanota weitergenutzt, wenn mein Account nicht einfach nach 6 Monaten ohne Login gelöscht worden wäre. Die E-Mail-Adresse war für bestimmte Fälle gedacht. Zum Glück habe ich dadurch keine wichtigen Daten verloren. Die Wiederherstellung mittels Bezahlaccount werte ich als extrem negativ!
Ich hoffe trotzdem, dass Tutanota sich entwickelt und evtl. irgendwann die kostenfreien Accounts lebenslang ohne Nutzungszwang laufen.
My moral compass is aligned such that I would rather pay a little bit of tax than move my operations to the US, but I truly believe that granting non-profit status to open-source projects in Germany would be a net positive for the economy.
why isn't that possible? I think this depends more on the legal structure of the entity "owning" the project and not on the license, should even work for closed source projects.
@robert non-profit / social benefit status (Gemeinnützigkeit) are only granted to specific kinds of businesses (for example religious, sports, arts & culture and a few more). Open Source / free software development isn’t one of them.
As part of our commitment to supporting the growth and operational capabilities of Mastodon, we have established a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity in the United States aimed at facilitating our efforts, including being able to receive tax-deductible U.S.
I don't think that developing open source alone should be a sufficient criterium to obtain fiscal non-profit status. There are a bunch of examples of software that is open source but commercial and clearly profit-orientated at the same time, cf. debian (clearly non-profit) vs. ubuntu/canonical (clearly commercial and profit-orientated).
Also, we don't want to open new avenues for bigtech to avoid paying tayes. We don't want a way for companies to spin out their "open source but not free" software (cf. Tivo) development into subcompanies that are tax-exempt non profits.
A way to do this proberly could be to add a criterium like "strengthening of sovereignty in IT matters"
@robert I agree, but I also needed a word that fits into a Mastodon post. I can leave the legal definition to someone else.
It's normal that the lines around that get blurred. It's pretty common for organisations to have two arms. A for profit one and a non profit one.
In any case keeping software engineers in Germany instead of incentivicing them to move their business to the US is a net positive for the economy irregardless of moral opinions.
Announcing Jabboratory, a partner collective of @joinjabber Jabboratory aims to be for the people who already have an XMPP account and want to help improve XMPP and the Jabber network.
We use the same CoC as JoinJabber and all the same governance documents. All of them being by Vojkruco codeberg.org/Vojkruco/Cooperat… and we are hosted under the Vojkruco umbrella.
Some of the things we do are: - specifications (called XCSPs in Jabboratory), - developer help/documentation and implementation collaboration - improve XMPP/Jabber network socially (safer spaces, blocklists, outreach, organizing events, pushing for a better non-tech culture, etc.) or anything else that includes improving XMPP and Jabber network as a whole.
We aim for diversity of ideas, include people directly in all aspects of decision making (protocol, implementations, social, etc.) and build a space where people feel safe to talk, ask for help, bring up any kind of ideas and work with others to implement said ideas. By the community for the community with inclusive decision making to serve the people affected.
you are welcome to join our lounge room here -> invite.joinjabber.org/#lounge@… It is strictly non-tech because we aim for inclusivity, but we do of course have other channels some of them being tech related🙂
We already have some implementations, servers, and XMPP collectives involved (including JoinJabber) and we are all building a better XMPP and Jabber network together 🙂
On January 4, 1999, Jabber was first announced to the public¹.
Twenty-seven years later, Jabber—or XMPP, as it became known after standardization through the #IETF—remains the only truly vendor-independent, federated instant messaging platform.
In almost three decades, XMPP has never stopped evolving and remains our best tool for digital independence.
Jeremie writes
"Jabber is a new
project I recently started to create a complete open-source
platform for Instant Messaging with transparent communication
to other IM systems(ICQ, AIM, etc).
It's for private #chat like Briar or Delta, it's for group chat like IRC or Matrix, it's for #IoT like MQTT or AMQP, it's for #socialNetworks like ActivityPub or Diaspora.
"Jabber—or XMPP, as it became known after standardization through the #IETF—remains the only truly vendor-independent, federated instant messaging platform."
The IRC protocol is a text-based protocol, with the simplest client being any socket program capable of connecting to the server. This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community.
We all just pretend the Matrix protocol with federation, builtin E2E encryption and several open source client and server implementations does not exist.
Element only develops the Rust and JS SDKs. And the libOLM crypto library of course. All other SDKs are community projects. On the server side, there is Conduit which forked into conduwuit which forked into Tuwunel which will eventually reach maturity, if the moon is in the right phase. The phone number mapping service is controlled by the foundation. You could use alternative ones or none.
As far as I can tell, work on the standard has slowed down due to being more and more complete. This is good for projects implementing it.
I think the entire ecosystem is on a good path. It needs fair competition between companies and community projects. Let's wait another 2 years and see what we get.
People complaining about how phones, the internet, and social media are destroying the world from their phones on the internet to a social media platform never stop amusing me.
Oh wow! Danke für das schöne Feedback! Das macht mich jetzt stolz. ❤️
Ich hab die Seite mit Eleventy als SSG aufgebaut, korrekt. Hab auf der „Über mich“ Seite ein bisschen über die Tools geschrieben, die im Einsatz sind. Ansonsten ist das mein HTML, CSS und JS und sonst nix.
Ja, Eleventy macht das einem ja auch einfach, sein eigenes HTML & co. zu verwenden, und zwingt einem nicht eine andere Programmiersprache auf wie Jeckyll oder so.
Ich hab' meine Archive der alten Blogs ja auch mit Eleventy gebaut, nach einem Tutorial für Eleventy von Andy Bell, das er 2020 veröffentlicht hatte und inzwischen als Open Source freigegeben hat. Das ist das erste Tutorial gewesen von einem SSG, bei dem ich das Gefühl hatte zu wissen, was ich tue. Jekkyl und Hugo habe ich vorher auch probiert und war höchst verwirrt.
Working on a piece of #music and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Still in very rough early stages, partner says she loves it, others think it's alright but nothing special. Very different from my usual stuff.
@arfy My hope is that you'll bring something in on the left, perhaps a fun sine-wave arp thing to fill out that side of the spectrum a bit. You have your bass more to the right, which leaves the left feeling all sad and lonely about itself. Definitely a peace of the puzzle missing, but not a huge one.
@FreakyFwoof Sounds are all from Native Instruments, I picked up the "Komplete Standard" bundle a couple of years ago on sale, it's pricey but the sounds are usually pretty excellent @arfy
@arfy Aah, well you're talking to a guy that's done videos for NI in the passed, they've done right by me so I hear you. If you saw the drum video walk through for Komplete 13, that was yours truly.
Eine frühere Freundin und ich haben uns mal per Lorm-Alphabet über einen der Machos unterhalten, der ebenfalls mit uns in einer Sauna saß. Wir haben kräftig über ihn abgelästert, und niemand hat's gemerkt.
L'enlèvement ou l'assassinat de chefs d'état ce n'est pas une spécialité US, la France aussi a fait ça très bien. Me viennent Toussaint Louverture, sylvanus Olympio, Maurice Yameogo, Moussa Traoré, Thomas Sankara ou Mohamed Jaffar aux Comores. Et puis on est assez forts dans le maintien de régimes pourris, tiens, comme il y a moins d'un mois, au #Bénin, le 7 décembre. C'est un peu passé sous les radars. "La politique françafrica, c'est du blaguer-tuer" disait Tiken Jah Fakoly
So I've just pushed a really early version of being able to control a Mac via NVDARemote to the NVDARC app, via a new Be controlled option in the settings page. Note/warning! Due to limitations in VoiceOver, the speech output is going to be less than desirable in a lot of cases, but at the moment, it's the best one can do. Thanks to @miki for igniting the spark in me to actually make this a reality. testflight.apple.com/join/edg8…
I've just updated the news post at our OpenCollective with details for you, see opencollective.com/izzyondroid…
#dobréRáno a pekný deň
Jakob Rosin
in reply to Borris • • •Borris
in reply to Jakob Rosin • • •Jakob Rosin
in reply to Borris • • •Borris
in reply to Jakob Rosin • • •Jakob Rosin
in reply to Borris • • •Borris
in reply to Jakob Rosin • • •@jakobrosin Yep, it works well.
BTW, I am currently writing to you using Tweesecake from my phone. How cute.
Tom Grant the tincel
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