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A US Marine, traveling home after a tour of Iraq just before Thanksgiving, boarded an extremely overcrowded Amtrak train heading west from Penn Station. He searched up and down the carriages for a seat, but the only one available was being occupied by a fancy French woman’s poodle.

The Marine coughed politely and said,
“Ma’am, would you please place your dog on the floor so I can sit down?”

Without even looking up, she sniffed and muttered,
“You Americans are so very rude. Can’t you see my little girl Trixy-Woo is using that seat?”

Exhausted, the Marine walked the length of the train again - still no seat. He returned and asked once more,
“Please, ma’am. I’m really tired. Could you move your dog so I can sit?”

She laughed and said loudly,
“Not only are you Americans rude, but also pig-headed and arrogant as well!”

That was it.

As the train had not yet left the station, the Marine picked up the poodle, dropped it out the window onto the platform, and sat down.

The woman shrieked, “Is there any man here who will defend my honor? This American thug must be put in his place!”

A well-dressed, refined Englishman sitting nearby calmly looked up and said to the Marine,
“Sir, I find you Americans do many things the wrong way. You prefer coffee over tea, drive on the wrong side of the road… and now it seems -

You’ve thrown the wrong bitch out the window.”

mastodon - Link to source

The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor.
A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota -- one of the protest’s organizers -- shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting
“ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”
The 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activities.
The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors
— David Easterwood
— also leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that have involved violent tacticsand illegal arrests.

Nekima Levy Armstrong,
who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization
"Racial Justice Network",
dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

“When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community
and all the harm that they have caused,
to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,”
said Armstrong,
who added she is an ordained reverend.

“If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community,
then they need to check their theology and they need to check their hearts.”
apnews.com/article/minnesota-i…

This entry was edited (23 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source
I do miss my IBMTTS on 64-bit NVDA. Sigh. Eloquence is good but I'll always stay in that minority of people who likes the 22K IBMTTS, so back to 2025.3 we go. I'll keep the alpha around as a portable copy though so I can still experiment and update it once in awhile. Can't believe magnification feature is already in the alphas though, a bit surprising that they're already working on 2026.2, wow, shocked there a bit.
This entry was edited (13 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source
NVSpeechPlayer now works with 64-bit NVDA. This is great news, and the fix was very easy to do, not a lot of refactoring. I wish the same could be said for other synthesizers, but ah well. Let's just feel lucky and enjoy that feeling while we can. Download: eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlay… (works on older 2025.3 NVDA too, no need to worry there.)
Also includes more Portuguese language rules. Includes the new settings for diphthongs transitions: autoTieDiphthongs, and autoDiphthongOffglideToSemivowel.
in reply to Pratik Patel

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@ppatel @fireborn yeah, now that we have language-specific rules, it's easy enough to bring back some of those at least, but breaking them globally to sound UK is not ideal. That's why, OK? Once this added multilingualness, the base phonemes had to change slightly. So now we can't undo all that work without just making them language-specific either. That's the grapple there. If we reverted every single IPA sound back to how it was in 2014, it would sound like an American with a speech impediment
@aaron @Pratik Patel

mastodon - Link to source

Happy Martin Luther King Jr day. He said so many profound things and taught us so many valuable lessons, but this is the quote that resonates strongest with me. To me, it’s even more important than ever when we all have the potential to be keyboard warriors and spread global disharmony with a few key presses. But in any aspect of life, they are words to keep in mind when we feel we have been wronged and the poison of vengeance is pulsing through our veins.

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction."

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in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

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Emmanuele Bassi

This is a specific trekkie brain injury: the idea that Star Trek series are strongly bound by rules that can't ever change for economic reasons or narrative expedience, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You stare at Star Trek long enough and you start to believe that any deviation is caused by writers not understanding the lore, when it's just a case of people making a television show on Earth over the course of 60 years
This entry was edited (13 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

I think that's a no-brainer right now that Europe should pursue digital sovereignty aggressively.

It's not about MS Office vs Libre Office, it's about banking apps, cloud services, your phone, your daily life. Which is a way bigger leverage #Trump has about your daily life. #FOSS is security.

#linux

#linux #foss #Trump
This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

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Emmanuele Bassi

No spoilers, but I think the series started very well. The cast of adults is great, and the young characters are an interesting bunch. The series clearly has a lot of talent, both in front and behind the cameras. Shout out to Holly Hunter playing a chaos gremlin captain that sits on her bridge chair like a cat; Paul Giamatti for his scenery chewing; and Gina Yashere for her big Nigerian London Mom vibes
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

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Emmanuele Bassi

It's too early to tell, but what I've seen so far intrigues me enough to watch the rest of the show—of course I'm not going to subscribe to Paramount Plus because fuck David Ellison; just like with his dad, never fall into the trap of anthropomorphising an Ellison. I'll do what I've done with Disco and SNW: I'll buy the season pass when it's out, and get the BluRays for my collection.
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

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Emmanuele Bassi

As an Old School TNG Trekkie™, the "Starfleet Academy" spin off has been in the fan discourse for a long time; back in the late '90s/early '00s discourse typically took the shape of "let's go back to the TOS era character when they were young", because the Star Trek fandom always had this predictable reactionary/nostalgic streak, which was counterbalanced by the "get that prelapsarian fuckery away from me and give me new characters to love" progressive current…
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

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Emmanuele Bassi

I think the reason why the Starfleet Academy concept kinda works now, as opposed to then, is that the reactionary current that took over the fandom as a response to Discovery got hit by Strange New Worlds—a series that, at its best, takes nostalgia and turns it on its head. Instead of the Academy of Kirk/Spock/McCoy, we got the first five year mission with a different set of legends…
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

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Emmanuele Bassi

This freed up the part of the fandom that saw Discovery grow up from its grimdark season 1 and 2 into a series dedicated to building bridges and hope in the face of trauma, picking up the pieces of a broken, divided, and confrontational world; the part that is now trying to seed the next generation of the fandom, teaching new (and old) folks how to deal with Star Trek again…
This entry was edited (12 hours ago)
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

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Emmanuele Bassi

Instead of looking at the past as a way to retreat into the comfy socks of the future as imagined by our parents and grandparents, we get pushed into a future trying to rebuild itself—and that future doubles for both the Star Trek and general SF fandom. Instead of going further and further dark (both figuratively and literally, just look at how Picard was staged and lit), we got bright, airy sets…
in reply to Emmanuele Bassi

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Emmanuele Bassi

I don't know if this effort will pan out, and we're going to get a long running series with a rotating cast going farther into the future, like the showrunners seem to indicate. At this point, just like with Discovery, I value a lot more a valiant effort even if that may ultimately fall short, than a safe bet on whatever grimdark slop they'll give us next if things don't change.

#startrek #starfleetacademy

#startrek #starfleetacademy

mastodon - Link to source
🗣️ Welcome Mia and Mil, two new voices designed to read texts in Luxembourgish using screen readers. They are making progress, but sometimes still struggle a little with Dicks' language.
🔧 Would you like to help them? Come and test them out, and let us know what you think: gd.lu/15pM9q
Photo of a blind person using a smartphone with a screen reader

Be part of the Luxembourgish screen reader adventure

This is the latest development at the start of the year: Mia and Mil, two new voices to reproduce texts in Luxembourgish as faithfully as possible. Come and see how you can help us get to grips with them.
Digital accessibility portal of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

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RE: mas.to/@AccessibilityLU/115921…

Here's one of the projects that has kept us really busy these past six months: developing a Luxembourgish text-to-speech system for screen readers used by blind people.

We hope you like the result!

Many thanks to our partners Ministry for Digitalisation, Zenter fir d'Lëtzebuerger Sprooch, Centre pour le développement des compétences relatives à la vue, LouderPages and to all the contributors of the RHvoice project.


Accessibility Luxembourg (@AccessibilityLU@mas.to)

Attached: 1 image 🗣️ Welcome Mia and Mil, two new voices designed to read texts in Luxembourgish using screen readers. They are making progress, but sometimes still struggle a little with Dicks' language.
Accessibility Luxembourg (mas.to)
This entry was edited (15 hours ago)

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Dear everybody:

Everything is so much easier to understand, once you realize that the Gold-foil-King is a Mafioso, who only know mafioso methods, and only use mafioso methods.

The letter to the .no PM is classical mafia:

"Nice country you have there, pity if something happened to it. Better think careful about who gets those peace-prices, capisce ?"

EU needs to stop pussying around, and go full in and stand up to the bully.

If not now, when ?

This entry was edited (16 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source
A twenty-minute power failure has given me the opportunity to listen to and operate VHF and UHF amateur radio bands, and come to the conclusion that electrically operated devices are around 80% of my noise floor on weak signals. So my getting out of this place will probably do me better than getting a better antenna. A better antenna would likely amplify the noise, and make weak signals even more useless.
This entry was edited (14 hours ago)
in reply to Borris

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Adam MacLeod

@BorrisInABox Wow! That's better than a Shari can do in the same room! LOL. This machine isn't that powerful enough for me, I doubt I could key it with no duck, and with no duck, its about S7 at the top of my building. Its on the fire station about three minutes by fire truck from here. But I'm sure it would do a lot better if I went up there with the power off. I used to live in the east end, and there was a 400 watt repeater with a four-bay sintclair litterally a three minute walk from me, and that, I could hear S9 with no duck, and key it up too.
@Borris
in reply to Adam MacLeod

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Borris

I don't remember how much power this repeater put out, but it was near the top of a 1100 foot commercial tower. Man, that was a really nice repeater site. There were two repeaters up there. Unfortunately, time and bureaucracy have done what they do, and everything amateur radio was basically left to rot up there when things broke, and they couldn't get the very expensive climbers to go up there and fix stuff when the elevator broke, and the people who owned the tower wouldn't fix it. That happened fairly recently. One of the two repeaters up there was essentially running on a piece of coax for an antenna for a while. Still got out a few miles anyway just because of how high up it was compared to the surrounding terrain. Lol

akkoma - Link to source

The flood of #enshittification that #Broadcom unleashed upon #VMware and its customers after acquiring it, and its seismic waves in the whole IT supply chain, are a testament of how bad managers who seek for short-term revenue hikes without thinking of the long-term are a cancer, and walking ticking bombs for the tech industry.

theregister.com/2026/01/15/del…

We all know what Broadcom did to VMware after acquiring it. VMware was turned overnight into Broadcom’s cash cow, they hiked prices by 3x in some cases, scrapped perpetual licenses, forced all customers into more expensive subscriptions, said that they only wanted to focus on the most profitable customers and fuck everyone else, all while worsening customer support and providing literally zero added value and features to the product.

Basically a parasitic acquisition solely focused on sucking all the vital lymph out of another product - pure Oracle textbook.

When you play such stunts with individual customers, unfortunately, it works most of the times. Individuals don’t have much leverage, nor choice if there is too much concentration in a certain market. They may complain, but often they swallow the bitter bite.

Things are different when you play them in huge corporate products that are an integral part of the IT infrastructure we all use.

It turns out that among the businesses who were disgruntled when Broadcom suddenly cancelled their VMware perpetual licenses there was Tesco.

But Tesco didn’t acquire VMware licenses directly from Broadcom, of course. They acquired them through a reseller of hardware and software licenses - Computacenter. So Tesco sued them instead for failing to provide them the licenses that they were contractually bound to provide.

Computacenter, on its hand, didn’t acquire VMware licenses directly either. They were provided with the Dell servers they sold, as Dell was an authorized VMware reseller. So Computacenter sued Dell.

Dell, on its hand, says that it has no fault if Broadcom has suddenly changed VMware’s pricing model, and that they are the ones who broke contracts with the whole downstream supply chain. So Dell sued Broadcom.

And there we go. A chain of 3 lawsuits between 4 giants across the whole IT supply chain in order to call a parasitic company accountable.

What a mess. But I guess that the manager who proposed to squeeze annual recurring revenue got his/her fat quarterly bonus home after things seemed to work for the first year.

This is also your daily reminder that as a sysadmin you must use only FOSS products supported by the community and by strong foundations - and contribute back to them once their success becomes your success too.

Enough with the “but stability - but support - but licenses - but my manager” corporate bullshit.

The cost of writing your own little qemu CI/CD pipeline to spin up your virtual machines is much lower than the risk of your corporate subscription getting suddenly enshittified by chains of wrong financial incentives at any place in your upstream supply chain, and having to spend years of tears on expensive long-chain lawsuits.

And, even if things go bad, the cost of migrating out of proprietary and non-standard implementations is usually much higher than the cost of migrating to a compatible fork.


Dell wants £10m+ from VMware if Tesco case goes against it

Exclusive: Retail giant's disty, reseller, and vendor all say they can't and won't sell
Simon Sharwood (The Register)
#enshittification #vmware #broadcom
This entry was edited (15 hours ago)

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in reply to Tamas G

mastodon - Link to source

Cleverson

Good morning. In Portuguese words where you have m or n after a vowel and before a consonant, the m/n is pronounced more or less clearly depending on the dialect. In any case, I believe that pronouncing it would be more standard. Thus, in a word like "antes", instead of ˈɐ̃ŋt͡ʃys, it should be ˈɐ̃ŋnt͡ʃys. Likewise, in the word "amplo", it should be ˈɐ̃mmplʊ instead of ˈɐ̃mplʊ. Is it possible to do please?
in reply to Cleverson

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@clv1 Hey! Yep, this is possible, and we can do it cleanly in the language pack — no engine change needed.
What’s happening is that eSpeak often "compresses" those cases into a nasal vowel plus a single nasal marker before the consonant. So you get something like "nasal A + nasal marker + T…", which is why "antes" looks like it’s missing a clear "n", and "amplo" doesn’t have that stronger "m" feel.
What I changed in the Portuguese pack is this: When eSpeak outputs that nasal marker before a consonant, we insert a clear "n” sound right after it. That makes "antes” come out closer to what you described (you can hear the consonant more explicitly). For cases like "amplo”, when a nasal vowel is followed by "m” before another consonant, we strengthen the "m” a bit (by doubling it), so it doesn’t get swallowed.
The nice part: you don’t need "five maps, one per vowel”. You can write rules that target the nasal marker itself (or target "nasal vowel + m/n before consonant”), so it works across all nasal vowels.
About making it a global engine rule: I wouldn’t rush that, because this is genuinely dialect/style-dependent in Portuguese. Some speakers expect a clearer "n/m” closure, others prefer the more nasalized vowel with a lighter consonant. Packs let us choose a "more standard / clearer” pronunciation for Portuguese without changing how other languages behave (or forcing one Portuguese style for everyone).
eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlay…
@Cleverson
in reply to Cleverson

mastodon - Link to source

Tamas G

@clv1 If you want to experiment yourself, the easiest approach is:
1.
identify the nasal marker eSpeak uses in these contexts,
2.
add a single replacement that inserts “n” after it when the next sound is a consonant,
3.
add another replacement that strengthens “m” only when it appears after a nasal vowel and before a consonant.
If you share 5–10 words that are still off after this (pt-pt vs pt-br), we can tune the rule so it doesn’t affect cases like “ng” clusters where you don’t want an extra “n”.
@Cleverson
in reply to Tamas G

mastodon - Link to source

Cleverson

Regarding last issue, i.e. m and n after a vowel and before a consonant:
words containing am/an are quite good, e.g. amplo, antes;
Words containing em/en are good too, e.g. sempre, sente;
As for words containing im/in, and om/on, I still cannot hear a clear m/n, e.g. cinto, sinto, pomba, ronco.
Lastly, in words containing um/un, there appears to have a disjunction between u and n, e.g. mundo.

mastodon - Link to source
I've found another interface to the Wayback Machine like The Old Net called Wayback Classic. Just enter a URL and hit lookup, and the site shows you capture dates for the URL in a nice table format. Click on a month in the table to see entries for that year and month. Unlike The Old Net, WBC will take you to the actual web.archive.org entry rather than giving you a site within a site. wayback-classic.net/

Wayback Classic

A frontend to search and browse the Wayback Machine from old browsers
wayback-classic.net

mastodon - Link to source

Today is the ten year anniversary for one of the best email series I ever received. The "Instagram and Spotify hacking ring" one.

daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19…


“Subject: Urgent Warning”

Back in December I got a desperate email from this person. A woman who said her Instagram had been hacked and since she found my contact info in the app she mailed me and asked for help.
daniel.haxx.se
in reply to daniel:// stenberg://

mastodon - Link to source

The Psychotic Network Ferret

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This entry was edited (15 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Hey @Tutanota do you know mubi.com considers tuta.com email addresses invalid? I tried to convince their customer support its their problem but they're giving me some resonse which makes no sense. Is there something y'all can do?

#Mubi #Tuta #degoogle #privacy

Screenshot of email from mubi support saying: Hello Akshay, Unfortunately, there's little we can do about this on our end. The team thinks this is occurring because tuta.com is a privacy-oriented email service, designed for off grid usage. You might try adjusting settings in tuta.com itself and seeing if that helps. Otherwise, we recommend using a different email address. Our apologies for the inconvenience. Best regards,

MUBI: Watch and Discover Movies

Watch truly great cinema. Wherever you are. From iconic, award-winning directors to emerging auteurs. Transformative films from all over the world. Stream Now. Download to watch Offline. Start your free 7 day trial now.
MUBI
#privacy #degoogle #tuta #Mubi @Tuta
This entry was edited (17 hours ago)
in reply to Aryan

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Jonathan

opinion

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