So far today, I'm watching my football team struggle in the playoffs, learning a new synth, and doing laundry. All feel a lot better than endlessly looking for/at bad news!
I say this as a reminder to myself as much as anyone, but you probably did enough doomscrolling yesterday. Try to spend less of your day inflicting massive psychic damage on yourself.
This is really cool, had no idea you guys got Macintalk to run on Windows. Was just looking at the voice files and as an experiment tried opening them in Text Edit, you can modify all parameters and create your own custom voices. Wish I could get these to run on my actual Mac to test out.
@ZBennoui you actually can do that, with a python script that I had Gemini create that allows you to edit the binary macintalk voice files. I've been doing all of this windows macintalk/wintalker experimentation stuff for awhile: it started with 2 python scripts, 1 that would allow you to edit the binary voice description files that are used with OSX and IOS10, and another one that allows you to convert and embed markers into wave files, the (PCMWave) files that are located in some of the macintalk voice folders. But recently, I got claude code and was like, hey what else can I do with this old codebase? and, the macintalk speak window was created! speaking of that, I’m going to push an update soon that allows you to read from text files with an -f argument, and also wavs now write silently and save at 22,050 HZ: before I release that though I am going to try to add 2 missing original macintalk voices that were not in the original wintalker codebase, albert and bahh. I also need to find a better way to do markers, might have the original PCMWave marker script have a thing that can save to .mkr or something, or just thro claude code a hex dump of one of the PCMWave files that has the markers in it and just add support for those, that sounds like a better option: what do you guys think I should go with?
Just installed FastSM. So far it's working great, but think the update check feature is buggy or something as it says version 0.4.1 is available with a random commit string that changes each time. I just installed 0.4.1 a few minutes ago. Other than that, I like it so far.
When I learned Trump had won the election I feared violence. My biggest fear was that right-wing death squads would target liberals, and that law enforcement would turn a blind eye, or be forced to do so. It just hadn't occurred to me that it would be so-called "law-enforcement" that would be doing the killing directly, under the protection of the government. But of course that's what Trump would want. He feels powerful when he can be cruel without consequence. #8647
This is going to sound a bit weird, but it might be a good idea to purchase a shortwave radio if you haven't got one already. They're quite cheap and small, you can buy one and store it long term just in case.
Shortwave is the only way to receive news and information internationally without relying on the internet or satellite. It might be a useful fallback to receive news from the outside world if your country's media and internet are ever restricted or closed down.
If you've never used one, it's like a normal radio but the frequencies reach around the world. Every country used to have its own station.
la APK de ArcaneChat pesa menos (solo 13-15MB para quien instala de google play)
con el paso del tiempo las diferencias se han reducido ya que en general muchas de las mejoras de ArcaneChat terminan en la app oficial eventualmente
ArcaneChat es Delta Chat + cosas extra, al final es cuestion de gustos y necesidades cual usar, son interoperables por lo que da igual cual uses para chatear con otros usuarios
I made a joke yesterday about the fact that we'd be fine with China as long as they don't keep us from making the second season of Heated Rivalry, and Trump actually posted today that he hoped China would leave hockey alone when taking over us.
Can't even make jokes anymore, everything becomes true 😅
Shutdown leaves no alternative database to look up sites in Nova Scotia, expert says
The announcement has caused alarm in heritage circles across the country and in Nova Scotia in particular.
Launched in 2004, the register is a national searchable database of historic places recognized by federal, provincial, territorial and local governments. It contains about 13,500 listings.
When launched, the site described listings as "places that shape our lives, describe our history, and represent the diverse character of our country."
The majority of organizing happening in Minnesota isn’t just peaceful, it’s INVISIBLE. Moms showing up who won’t be interviewed on TV, people whose ICE patrols don’t turn into viral video. The grocery runs, the donations, the people filming bc they happen to be there. Please remember this.
I wish every Blind person could own these. They are two globes. The one on the right is a relief globe, with the land masses outlined with fabric paint to make them textured. The globe on the right is an Intelo-globe. The stylus allows you to choose a mode, geography, geology etc. then run the stylus over the globe and hear information spoken. They were game-changers for me, and I still like to explore them. Not entirely tangentially, I was startled to discover how close Greenland is to Canadian territory like Elsmere Island.
A solo parent asked what they can do to resist ICE without putting themselves in the line of fire, knowing that their death would orphan their kid. Here are a few ideas.
If you're new to Signal, it might feel a little overwhelming to get the hang of, but you can get it set up and working pretty quickly. ssd.eff.org/module/how-to-use-…
Download location: Google Play Store, Apple App Store
System requirements: Android 5 or later, iOS 13 or later
Version used in this guide: Android: 7.38.6 iPhone: 7.5.
Please check out delta.chat and spread the use about this messenger.
Developed in Germany, end-to-end-encryption by design, using email-infrastructure (therfore cannot get turned off by an authoritarian state), including applets, like polls, todo-lists, calendar, collaborative work on documents, games, ...
I use it with several people and really can recommend it :)
Am I the only person that is sad the Sense Player is dead? It could've been such an awesome device for third party apps, games, media players ETC. I haven't used mine in a few months, since the battery died, I am going between orbit player and good old BookSense XT. I don't feel like paying $50 for a new battery.
Well, we could barely walk outside this morning, almost slipped on some melted ice. Only stayed out there for a few minutes. Holy shit it was cold. there is snow on the walkways on some trees and grass. we took some pictures, though not sure if this server will behave if we upload anything. It didn't, the last time we tried it, earlier this week. -- Altheda/lillianna
Ugh, at some point in the recent past Apple News started intercepting cut-and-paste and wrapping it in a copyright notice. Which means if you want to search for a thing mentioned in an article, you need to paste into Notes, and then copy it again.
Hello @Bri, I was wondering if you could add the capability of making your own soundpacks on the NVDA Remote Controller app? I can't find a place where the soundpacks are stored, unless I'm missing something.
@Bri Love seeing your hobbiest project, I am reminded of similar person with the same passion, not sure if you are aware of Jamal Mazrui, a great Blind programmer active in the late 2000's and early 2010's creating great tools, like edsharp, for text editing and file dir a feature rich file directory. He also open sourced many of his tools and frameworks that he played with, there are many Blind folks that still have ed sharp installed in their system. github.com/jamalmazrui
If Democrats in Congress want to fight Trump regime’s fascism, these steps are a start. 1. Vote no on DHS funding bill. 2. Repeal the multi-year $75 billion funding for ICE. 3. End qualified immunity for ICE agents. 4. Investigate and prosecute every single ICE agent who broke the law. 1/2
Hey everyone. Tonight at 6 PM Eastern, Sonic Synergy goes live for another 3 hour tour: through the back roads of crazy conversation. Tonight, we lay out some of our plans, hopes and dreams for the upcoming year, both for the show and all of our crazy endeavors that we hope to follow through with. We want to hear from you. Whacha got planned for the year? We are powered by your calls and texts to (833) 452-4452. very NSFW and not for everyone. Listen Live at sonicsynergy.space/live
It's so excruciatinglyannoying to wait until Native Instruments clears up the serial number for my Komplete Kontrol keyboard. It was bought second-hand... And it's the weekend in Germany! I cannot download NI Accessibility Helper. Yes, I can do some stuff thanks to VOCR but it's highly inefficient and time-consuming! :)
Pressure on Senators •is working•. Previously head-in-sand centrist Senators are actually coming out to vote against ICE funding. Their positions are still weak and insufficient, and more need to cave to pressure — but they are visibly buckling.
Again, we should not and must not wait on elected officials to save us — they will not — but we can and should deploy pressure on them as a strategic tool in moments when that can be useful.
Can Walz discharge all the members of the MN National Guard and then immediately swear them all in as State Troopers?
If so, this would be a clever way to prevent them from being federalized and allow them to push out ICE. And then when it's all over just swear them all back in as Guard members again
Yeah it's a lot of paperwork but you gotta fight lawfare with lawfare
Friendly reminder of why #Google is just plain evil: they've taking down #IzzyOnDroid (a third party Open Source Android "app store" like #FDroid) *twice* in the past 30 days over false positive malware scanning.
We are receiving reports that Google flags our repo as "having dangerous apps" or being a "dangerous site" – texts being very vague, no proof given (nor did they inform us). They also link to a page they call "Transparency Report" – which is of the same vagueness, but definitely not transparent (transparencyreport.google.com/…)
We're not aware of any such dangerous content. All apps on our repo are properly scanned, see izzyondroid.org/about/security…
it's things like this, which hinder the adoption of open source software. I today had an unproductive discussion online with someone who sells why Apple products are the best out there and I annoyed that guy by saying that Linux on a laptop could perform better, but the thing it's always an uphill battle.
Hardware companies not cooperating, laws, no funding, no market, etc.
@phantasus Yeah. Linux is great! But how is anyone ever going to find out when you can barely ever buy it preinstalled (at least not in any "normal" store)?
And then with all the extra fighting we have to do with smaller teams and less budget to not have our existence be censored by the big players, we are even expected to meet higher standards than them (nobody calls Google Play "scary" despite all the malware cases they've had while we had none...)
Right now, the frontend wil compile on all platforms, including Linux. SpeechPlayer itself though relies on windows.h so it does not compile, so that would need to be made cross-platform, for those asking. I purposefully tried to keep Frontend very platform-agnostic to avoid headaches later.
I do want to add Gemination though, kind of itching to for Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese, these languages use it, and without rules that help them, they just won't sound good on their own unless you do lots of YAML hacks. Also that word sounds cool. Gemination and geminates.
It's really nice now. Like, all I need to do for a new setting is: 1. Create passes/liquid_dynamics.cpp, or whatever rule I want. 2. Add my settings to LanguagePack 3. Register it in pass_pipeline.cpp 4. Done The core engine stays clean. Each rule lives in its own file where you can tune it, break it, fix it, without touching anything else. Honestly this would be an old 1990s TTS engineer's dream and that's a good feeling.
“Can we just stop equating success with short-term economic growth? What if we used usefulness and longevity? What if we gave more value to the fundamental technological infrastructure instead of the shiny new marketing gimmick used to empty naive wallets? Well, I guess that if we changed how we measure success, Europe would be incredibly successful.”
Y'all I want to get in the hot tub and not code for the day I hope that's acceptable. We added a lot of stuff today, now I hope languages can take advantage of these new settings. Only by adding good structured rules can we make this thing sound better. Now that the frontend is moduler. So I'm going to update packs from here on out probably, mainly English ones, make words like "good" and "book" sound less British, stuff like that, but I really want to lock the frontend down a bit with some more modularization like this and then worry about extending it as languages need it. It's now as easy as adding a new CPP in /frontend/passes for any extr things, that makes me very happy. I'm not going to keep bloating ipa_engine.cpp with more rules.
Cate Blanchett as Steve Jobs Natasha Lyonne as Steve Wozniak Maya Hawke as Susan Kare Kathryn Hahn as Phil Schiller David Tennant as Craig Federighi Shohreh Aghdashloo as Johny Srouji Emma Thompson as Johny Ive
and Tilda Swinton as Apple Legal. All of them. Every single one played by Tilda.
Zach Bennoui
in reply to Jayson Smith • • •theblindgamer50
in reply to Zach Bennoui • • •I've been doing all of this windows macintalk/wintalker experimentation stuff for awhile: it started with 2 python scripts, 1 that would allow you to edit the binary voice description files that are used with OSX and IOS10, and another one that allows you to convert and embed markers into wave files, the (PCMWave) files that are located in some of the macintalk voice folders.
But recently, I got claude code and was like, hey what else can I do with this old codebase? and, the macintalk speak window was created! speaking of that, I’m going to push an update soon that allows you to read from text files with an -f argument, and also wavs now write silently and save at 22,050 HZ: before I release that though I am going to try to add 2 missing original macintalk voices that were not in the original wintalker codebase, albert and bahh.
I also need to find a better way to do markers, might have the original PCMWave marker script have a thing that can save to .mkr or something, or just thro claude code a hex dump of one of the PCMWave files that has the markers in it and just add support for those, that sounds like a better option: what do you guys think I should go with?