Hahahaha. What if I asked an AI to rewrite the SpeechPlayer repo to work on Linux. Good dear God. I bet it would be a disaster full of bugs. I'm tempted though, just make it a new branch first and go from there. Also building a speech-dispatcher module for you Linux nerds. Really, really don't know how that will go. Now that's vibe coding to the max, I have zero familiarity with Linux argtypes and such when avoiding Windows headers. Like, zilch.
in reply to Matt Campbell

@matt oooh yeah, but that's even a bigger refactor, moving away from C++ to it, but it's also a less mess for cross-compiling. I also have no idea if there's a different UI toolkit I'd need to use for things like the phoneme tool, as it's written in basic win32 for now, something I had familiarity with from college and high school days, but also like, locks me into C++ for it pretty bad, so a cross-platform UI solution would be needed before it got too many more dialogs and settings. I could have used Python / WX, but then of course you're including all the precompiled Python runtime and can't make it as lean.

NV Speech Sapi does not have an official distributed release and probably will not until it breaks out of ESpeak's phonemizer. Sorry y'all. But because we link against libespeak, it's technically a big no-no to even have it around. Perhaps that could be an experimental project, to rebuild NVSpeech Sapi with Gruut, but damn, a 700 megabyte SAPI engine? people would cry.

Vanadium version 144.0.7559.109.0 released


Changes in version 144.0.7559.109.0:

  • update to Chromium 144.0.7559.109
  • activate Nordic EasyList for Danish, Finnish, Icelandic and Swedish rather than only Norwegian (both variants) and Greenlandic (this change has been included since Vanadium Config version 150)
  • add EasyList Adblock Warning Removal List (this change has been included since Vanadium Config version 151)
  • extend rebranding of Chrome/Chromium to Vanadium

A full list of changes from the previous release (version 144.0.7559.90.0) is available through the Git commit log between the releases.

This update is available to GrapheneOS users via our app repository and will also be bundled into the next OS release. Vanadium isn't yet officially available for users outside GrapheneOS, although we plan to do that eventually. It won't be able to provide the WebView outside GrapheneOS and will have missing hardening and other features.

in reply to Andrew Nesbitt

for forges, you might wish to add @Codeberg (Germany, EU). Not sure where Sourcehut sits (is it NL, @sir ?)

So there ARE alternatives. And as already pointed out in another comment by @jens , Forgejo/Gitea can be self-hosted as well. And at least for Forgejo, Federation is upcoming IIRC, to take another hurdle (separate registrations) from self-hosted installs.

But yeah, that list reads horrible, re "sovereignty" 😢

Now it's really work time. Off to meetings while I tune phonemes in the background with my tools and AI. Tools are what make the world of difference. If you don't have them, you don't have your foundation to stand on. Tools that can give you data, look at the patterns in different ways, see if they can be stress tested in other contexts, ETC. What would we ever do without darn tools.

Another phoneme editor fix: If phoneme's fields, like _isSemivowel are not defined for the given phoneme, allow you to add it by choosing it in the list and setting a value for it. This will make adding new state-variables to phonemes easier. Remember: Flags like _isSemiVowel, _isVoiced, _isStop, are for the engine to know how to treat the sound, not for the sound itself to change. These don't influence Klatt params as much as sound timing, and which rules get applied to that phoneme token when it's used.

It was interesting to read up on the AI assisted code review at lesswrong.com/posts/7aJwgbMEiK…

For context: I'm personally responsible for at least 29 curl CVEs. Out of the recent 6 CVEs mentioned in the blog post I found two. This gives me some perspective, I think.

I do not utilise AI tools in my vulnerability research. I am also fiercely critical of harmful proliferation of AI. This is due to the unsustainable way it is currently pushed, and use of as marketing ploy and gimmick rather than producing measurable benefit to users. This leads to negative impacts on economy, education & learning, not to mention impacts to nature due to wasteful use of energy.

This doesn't mean I am against AI. I have written by own AI tooling (fully local RAG with support for arbitrary number of models running on local nodes, implemented in python). I found the usefulness of such tool to be limited at best. It is somewhat useful in mass analysis of large document bases, but the level of analysis is superficial at best. These AI models are after all just language models, and do not have any true understanding or intelligence.

And here is the gist of it: The current tools are not intelligent. Understanding this limitation is the key of successful deployment and utilisation of AI tools. The tools can be useful in certain tasks, but they do not replace true intelligence.

The AI tooling AISLE are developing certainly is one of the better uses of AI, and definitely surpasses all my personal dabbling around it. It is clear that the tool does find vulnerabilities. The key question is how much hallucinations and false positives it produces: If the tool generates thousands of FPs and the true findings are hidden among them this limits the value and usefulness of the tool (of course it doesn't entirely negate it, many tools produce false positives). In short: The quality of the findings is key, and poor signal-to-noise ratio is highly undesirable.

Either way, I think there is a future for AI tools and they definitely will be helpful in vulnerability research.

I personally will keep exercising my wetware for this work, however.

#cybersecurity #infosec #vulnerabilityresearch #thoughtoftheday

This entry was edited (34 minutes ago)

I fixed the number "four", and words like "pour" "door" to sound good in Speech Player for US English: the "oh" sound is no longer short, by adding a schwa stop for it.
Also tuned words like "pool" and "tool" to sound less Mid-Atlantic. Some of you were telling me Speech Player sounds a bit like Stewie from Family guy, and you know, I can see it.

Based on this deranged slop flood out of @mozilla : stateof.mozilla.org/

1) I'm happier about my decision to stop using Firefox.
2) I'm going to stop using @thunderbird .

Which is a shame, because Thunderbird is still the best mail client, and Firefox brought us hope in the IE days.

Thanks for making everything worse @mozilla .

#mozilla #firefox #thunderbird #slop

Ktoré potraviny riedia krv a chránia pred trombózou?

▪️Kelp - Prírodné antikoagulanty. Môže znižovať viskozitu krvi.

▪️Cesnak - Obsahuje fytoncídy. Nielenže znižuje viskozitu krvi, ale pomáha aj neutralizovať širokú škálu toxínov. Podporuje kardiovaskulárne zdravie.

▪️Kurkuma - Riedi a čistí krv.

▪️Olivový olej - Vďaka svojim antioxidačným vlastnostiam znižuje aktivitu krvných doštičiek.

▪️Harmanček - Potláča aktivitu krvných doštičiek a zabraňuje zrážaniu krvi.

▪️Horčica - Omega 3 a vitamín B6 znižujú viskozitu krvi, čistia obehový systém a posilňujú cievy.

▪️Mastné ryby - vďaka Omega 3 zlepšujú medzibunkový metabolizmus, čím zabraňujú trombóze.

▪️Zázvor - normalizuje krvný obeh. Znižuje krvný tlak a podporuje normálny prietok krvi. Obsahuje salicylát, prírodný analóg aspirínu.

#zdravie

Haha. I'm genuinely impressed with this idea, not just because it's simple in the brute force, but that unprompted repeated iteration like that could get AI to write shippable code. Notice I didn't call it "quality" code. I still think it would be a massive main function with nothing modularized, overly-lengthy comments at every section (which in itself isn't bad, but AI adds dashes and other comment formatting that take up space), and little bugs that are not accounted for. Heck, when AI built the phoneme editor (which was my first real "end to end vibe-coded" project), look at how many accessibility fundamentals it missed despite my custom instructions talking about WCAG and making sure it meets it. Clear to me there's also a fundamental "training tuning overrides custom instructions" problem, even though the AI checks to follow them, if any of the context doesn't match or fit, it ignores it. (Perhaps because I was writing a C++ program, it thought, WCAG doesn't apply!)
'Ralph Wiggum' loop prompts Claude to vibe-clone commercial software for $10 an hour
theregister.com/2026/01/27/ral…

France is rolling out Visio, a homegrown secure videoconferencing platform, to all government employees by 2027.

The move aims to replace American tools like Teams, Zoom and Webex that currently fragment public administration communications and create security vulnerabilities.

The platform already has 40,000 regular users and is being deployed to 200,000 agents. Major institutions like CNRS are switching over this quarter, with CNRS replacing Zoom for its 34,000 staff and 120,000 affiliated researchers by late March.

Visio runs on French sovereign cloud infrastructure certified by ANSSI, uses AI transcription technology from French startup Pyannote, and will add real-time subtitling from French AI lab Kyutai by summer 2026. Beyond security and digital sovereignty, the switch generates real savings of about 1 million euros per year for every 100,000 users leaving paid license solutions.

Minister David Amiel frames this as essential to protecting sensitive government data and scientific exchanges from exposure to non-European actors while supporting French tech companies.

numerique.gouv.fr/sinformer/es… #France #Greenland #MAGA #DonaldTrump #tarrifs #France #Google #MicrosofTeams

lemmus.org/post/19676136

#Greenland #Minneapolis #ICE

This entry was edited (2 hours ago)
in reply to R. Scott (i47i)

2/3

THE PROVEN TRACK RECORD:

France isn't experimenting—they've been doing this successfully for 20 years. The French Gendarmerie (national police, 100,000+ employees) pioneered this approach:

TIMELINE:
• 2005: Migrated from MS Office to OpenOffice
• 2008: Started Ubuntu desktop deployment (GendBuntu)
• 2014: Majority migration complete
• 2024: 97% of workstations running Linux (103,164 computers!)

FINANCIAL IMPACT:
• €2 million/year in licensing cost savings
• Additional savings from eliminating 4,500 servers
• Total 2004-2008: ~€50 million saved

STRATEGIC INVESTMENT:
In October 2025, France became the FIRST national government to officially partner with the Matrix Foundation—not just using it, but funding its development and participating in strategic decisions. This ensures the protocol evolves to meet European government needs.

So when we say France is "building bundles," they're really packaging, hardening, and supporting mature upstream FOSS (Linux, PostgreSQL, Matrix, etc.) with French hosting, governance, and integration—not reinventing everything from scratch.

GendBuntu: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBunt…

Gendarmerie case study: canonical.com/blog/la-gendarme…

#Matrix
(2/3)

This entry was edited (3 hours ago)
in reply to R. Scott (i47i)

3/3

HOW EASY IS IT TO MOVE FROM MICROSOFT?

TECHNICALLY: Very feasible. Strong FOSS alternatives exist for everything:
Windows → Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora)

Office → OnlyOffice, LibreOffice

Exchange/Teams → Matrix/Element, Nextcloud

SQL Server → PostgreSQL, MariaDB

Benefits: No per-seat licenses, data sovereignty, transparent security, longer hardware life, no forced obsolescence.

THE REAL CHALLENGE: Organizational, not technical

Legacy Windows-only apps & VBA macros (need rewriting or VMs)

User retraining & change management (people lose muscle memory)

Political will & leadership commitment (critical!)

External partner expectations (.docx, Outlook, Teams)

SUCCESS FACTORS (proven by Lyon & Gendarmerie):
• Strong political backing at highest levels
• Adequate budget & realistic timeline
• Comprehensive training programs
• Willingness to maintain hybrid systems during transition
• Local/regional procurement (Lyon: 100% French contractors)

CURRENT MOMENTUM:
Denmark, Germany (Schleswig-Holstein), Netherlands, Italy, and Slovenia are all pursuing similar digital sovereignty initiatives through FOSS

Bottom line: #France proves that digital sovereignty through open source works at massive scale (103K+ workstations). They're not reinventing wheels—they're making smart use of mature, proven technology with European hosting and governance.

Lyon Register article: theregister.com/2025/06/26/lyo…

#OpenSource #DigitalSovereignty #Linux #FOSS #France #Lyon #PublicSector #Ubuntu #Matrix #GendBuntu #Europe #Microsoft

(3/3)

Another reason why I wish more appliances still had physical buttons and knobs, aside from the obvious tactile one, is that it's an easy way for you to have a personal default setting.

My countertop dishwasher for example has only touch buttons. They are a pain to trigger, especially with wet hands, and it always starts at the energy- and water-saving programme, so helpfully named "1", which takes about 2 hours. Whereas I prefer the short programme, which takes only 30 minutes, since it's the only programme that doesn't include a drying cycle, and it usually cleans well-enough. I usually prefer to just open the door afterwards, pull the rack out on top of it, and let it air-dry while its contents are still hot. It's programme 3 though, so I'll have to press that programme-select button twice. every... single... time...

Whereas if the programme-select was just a physical knob, I could just leave it on programme 3. I also like to always have it start with a 5-minute steam, which could also just be a physical switch, instead of a non-tactile area I have to press every time. Hell, make it a knob that sets the duration of the steam session.

Even better; instead of mildly different predefined programmes, give me a whole bunch of knobs for pre-wash temperature and duration, main programme temperature and duration, rinse cycle. Put a nice, user-replaceable, LED above each of them that indicates which cycle it's currently in, and one shared countdown timer display, and I'm a happy camper.

#FiXatoRants #appliances #accessibility #a11y #kitchenAppliances #kitchen #DearDesigner #knobhead

Here's an interesting thought to ponder. Flying is generally regarded as the safest transport method for human transportation. However, the modern jetliner flies at altitudes that under normal circumstances, humans could never survive. It's only thanks to things such as cabin pressurization, that even allows that to work. But I wonder, who was the first person or group of people that decided that it would even be possible to pressurize a cabin and allow humans to fly at much much higher altitudes? How did the idea that flying it altitudes above 30,000 feet would even be possible? Just some random thoughts I had as I enjoy my evening.

Alright, today I'm open to new names for NV Speech Player. I don't need to ask for permission to rename since it's GPLV2, it's actually a bigger problem if my fork is confused with the official one.
So I intend to break all my links. (I'll update them to the new files in my places on posts.)
SpeechPlayer-2025-V3 will become the "defacto" version, with multilingual support removed. It will be renamed to just SpeechPlayer-2025 after.
This will keep distinction between the two flavors and avoid people from thinking the one I'm forking is like the official NVAccess one.
Name ideas so far that sound not bad:
Pulse Player, Sonant Player, Voxera Player
This entry was edited (2 hours ago)
in reply to Nick Giannak III

@nick hmm. "Official" though means inheriting expectations about support, review, release cadence, and compatibility. A fork lets me move fast, break/reshape things, and make opinionated choices (like big sound-model changes) without people assuming NV Access signed off. If it sits under an NV Access org or looks "official," users may read that as endorsement. That can be uncomfortable for NV Access if they’re not actively resourcing it. We're already changing core synthesis behavior (waveform, packs, tooling). That’s exactly the point where "new project, with credit" is usually healthier than "official continuation."
in reply to James Scholes

see I wasn't really either, until I realized that I've now reshaped all three stages of the pipeline. The player (wave generator) itself, the IPA rules engine, and the way we talk to phonemizers (a bit loosened from Espeak's coupling.) If the fork diverged less keeping the "NV" name is OK, but with the trademark thing I didn't even know NVAccess has and this I think I got a bit sold on it.
This entry was edited (1 hour ago)

Ich habe erstaunlicherweise recht viel Zeit mit der Recherche zur #epa verbracht und kann die Apotheken Umschau als aktuellste Quelle zu dem Thema empfehlen.

apotheken-umschau.de/gesundhei…

#epa

So one of the reasons the Loops iOS was rejected was because we had a "Delete Account" button in settings...

But it opened a webview and required you to login.

Apparently, Apple requires frictionless deletion (something that Google does not)

So I added new Deletion and also Deactivation screens to handle that without leaving the app.

While annoying, kudos to Apple for putting users first ✨

github.com/joinloops/loops-exp…

Nichts wirklich ABSOLUT NICHTS ist lächerlicher als Konservative, die sich über vom Schneewetter völlig überforderten ÖPNV und Bahnausfälle beschweren.

IHR habt dieses Land so lange regiert wie keine andere Partei. IHR habt den Staat absichtlich heruntergewirtschaftet, ihm die Mittel entzogen seinen Aufgaben nachzukommen. IHR habt das Privatisierungsdesaster der Bahn maßgeblich angestoßen.

Das was IHR da draußen seht ist nichts anderes als die Früchte eurer "Arbeit".

Danke für nichts.

Well, it's official. I can finally kick good old crappy Adobe Reader to the curb. In comes Foxit PDF reader, as they've enabled accessibility support. Plus, I have found a portable version of it and it even lets you fill out PDF forms. So Adobe go bye bye and now I have something that is actually quite snappy to use. Yay! portableapps.com/apps/office/f…

reshared this

Ranskan kansalliskokous hyväksyi nuorten somekiellon: hs.fi/maailma/art-200001177528…

"Lakiesitystä on kritisoitu siitä, että se on liian yksinkertaistettu vastaus teknologian kielteisiin vaikutuksiin. Esimerkiksi maanantaina yhdeksän lastensuojelujärjestöä kehotti kansanedustajia asettamaan alustat vastuuseen, ei kieltämään lapsia sosiaalisesta mediasta."

#some #lapsetJaNuoret #somekielto

in reply to Sami Määttä

aikuiset helppojen ratkaisujen äärellä... Kuinkahan paljon näissä absoluuttisissa kielloissa on lopulta kyse siitä, että monille aikuisille ja erityisesti poliitikoille ajatus siitä, että he joutuisivat ehkä itse rajoittamaan omaa somenkäyttöään tai jopa lopettamaan sen, on liikaa? On helpompaa yrittää vaan rajata lapset ja nuoret pois kuin vastuuttaa alustoja toimimaan eettisemmin.