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#AudioMo Day 16: In December of 2013 I visited #Estonia to go and visit @jakobrosin for the first time.
I decided to record as much of the plane-flight from the baggage hold as I could manage, so I set my Olympus LS-100 going, attached some mics to the suitcase straps internally and sent it on it's way.
Here, we have 9 minutes of what I like to call 'Ethereal Suitcase Music' as it wends it's merry way from baggage check-in to the plane.
Listen for the really strange and as yet unidentified noises the recorder captured at points along it's journey.
If you have any ideas what these might be, I'd be very curious. I've been waiting for over 11 years to find out.

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It’s funny to watch how with time the collection of local LLMs on my computer shrank to two only: Gemma3:27B and nomic-embed-text. Llama3.2 is pretty much gone, both the text and the vision models. :) I might get a better embedding model if one comes along, but for now nomic-embed-text seems to be doing what I need. Rest is cloud-based.

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IOS 26 is going to make it possible to add ringtones using the share sheet. Tech sites are not hyping this up enough because you still have to create the ringtone, but I know lots of us know how to do that already and just need the easy way to add it to our phone without going through iTunes. And now, approximately 14 years after Apple supposedly untethered the iPhone from the computer, we have it. So now if you go to one of those ringtone sites, or someone texts you an audio file, or you’re handy with Hokusai or some other audio editor for the iPhone, you can make your own ringtones without a billion steps. Like everything else Apple has done in recently years, it’s taken so long for such a basic feature to arrive that it’s hard for me to even be excited about it, but I sure won’t miss blundering my way through iMazing.

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Dear Fedi friends,

By now you might have seen the post announcing the release of my promotional video for the Fediverse. But in case you have boosts turned off, here we go: news.elenarossini.com/fedivers…

I posted about it this morning from my #GoToSocial account because I have a 5000 character limit there. And I had so many people to thank for their help. It really takes a village.

Thank you for all the wonderful feedback so far ❤️

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Czech-speaking friends, how legit is supraphonline.cz/ for buying FLAC albums?

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Přátelé, kamarádi i nepřátelé a nekamarádi :)

Pokud tvoříte, nebo chcete tvořit obsah na #VHSky a potřebujete se poradit, nebo nám jen doporučit nějakej kanál, kterej ještě nemirrorujem, tak nám @Archos nahodil #Matrix místnost právě pro tyto případy.

Často se mi stává, že mě kontaktujete DM tady na #Fediverse, tohle bude funkčnější, rychlejší a možná někdo zareaguje rychleji, než já :)

matrix.to/#/#vhsky:mxchat.cz

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Accessibility is an area #Mixxx has struggled with for a long time, and as an all-volunteer project we have struggled to recruit devs to address it. If you have a passion for accessibility and are interested in a chance to have a big impact, hit us up.

cdm.link/apple-at-wwdc-on-acce…

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Hey y'all! I put the iPadOS 26 beta on my iPad Pro M4 and must say while many general things feel quite allright, there are definitely some areas that are very beta with regards to VoiceOver. Control Center doesn't talk at all, the multitasking control at the top of apps isn't accessible, in Files, none of the file or folder names read, and so far, I haven't found a way to activate the much talked about menu bar in Mail, Notes or any other app. So yeah, unlike previous years, the beta feels like a beta indeed from the getgo. Has any other VoiceOver user experimented with the beta on iPad and found ways to accomplish accessing the menu bar?

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GNOME: goes out of its way to pay for accessibility work that no company wants to pay for, regardless all the billions they make

The Register:

> As we have said before, we suspect this disconnect between younger, keener developers who don't know or care about late 20th century user interface standards or accessibility concerns, but who strongly want to junk what they perceive as legacy baggage, are behind the moves to deprecate and remove X11 – which is very much still going ahead.

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So I should be releasing a comprehensive 2 and a half hour Zoom H2 Essential audio tutorial covering all accessibility options plus everything else with in the next week. From recording to IOS control, it should be all there. It will be on YouTube and also available as zipped mp3s. I will also be including links, resources and articles regarding H2E features. Please cut me some slack since this is my first project of this kind so the editing might be a little rough.

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this week I found out that when you start the Debian Linux instaler with speech, and it detects multiple soundcards, it cycles between them and you can press enter to choose the one that actually works. Most installers just pick a random soundcard and send speech through it. Maybe it picks the internal speakers, maybe it picks the digital output that has nothing hooked up to it. If you can't hear your machine, you'll have no idea the installer started, and good luck switching soundcards after that. As far as I know, the Windows installer certainly doesn't have a soundcard selection for narrator.
This would never be a problem with Debian installations because it will just keep cycling through the soundcards until the speech becomes audible. I know we all love to hate on Linux accessibility, but sometimes the thought that goes into the design of the simplest things is really quite impressive. This is also very on-brand for Linux and I'm definitely here for it.
At the time when this happened, I was on a call with Aira and had forgotten to turn up my speakers, so I know the machine displays a "Press enter to select device 1", "Press enter to select device 2..." prommpt, but I can't 100% confirm that the speech follows along. It seems like a safe assumption though, and at some point I'll do a proper test with multiple outputs and make a recording.
This entry was edited (3 months ago)

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If you are blind and have multiple computers, and especially if you live on the edge and don't have a monitor hooked up to one of those computers, having a capture card really is a game changer.
I have a cheap one that I need to replace. But even with that cheap one, I was just able to call Aira from my laptop and select the capture card as my video device, rather than my camera.
Then, I hooked the capture card up to a mini PC that needed an OS reinstall, and the Aira agent was able to read the display output in real time.
From that point, it took us about 30 seconds to get into the boot menu of the mini PC and select the USB drive.
Even without account for Aira, having a way to reliably capture the output of a computer is infinitely useful. All you need is an app that can take a picture or video from that device and interpret it as-needed. That could be an OCR reader, an AI describer like Be My Eyes, or a calling app so you can ask a friend to look at it.
It certainly beats needing to position the camera in front of a screen, and in the case of the mini PC, it saves me from having to set up a screen in the first place.

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Fenrir, the screen reader, has some cool new features. It now tries to detect and do progress bar beeping to let you know something is progressing, it has rising tones for numeric progress, e.g. 95% or single pitch tones for non numeric progress, e.g. dd's download progress indicator. It can also automatically resume speech when the prompt returns. So, if you have a long process with a progress indicator, and you want to monitor it but don't want all the chatter, just silence speech until prompt returns with Fenrir+numpad_plus and have beeps for progress with speech returned when the process finishes. Latest tagged version: 2025.06.07.

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in reply to Winter blue tardis

@Winter blue tardis🇧🇬🇭🇺 @Jayson Smith @Nick Giannak III The 25 port requirement is for self hosting #chatmail relay not for using the app. There are apps for other platforms such as deltachat for IOS, deltachat or arcanechat for android.
As for the deltachat-desktop app interface, unfortunatelly it's an electron app. However it's best used with the screen reader switched into focus mode.
I'll try to give you a bit of overview explaining how I am using it.
When I launch deltachat-desktop the focus is placed into a search field. If you alt+tab from its window and return back the focus will move to the chat input area if you have active conversation.
Regardless of which of these is in focus use tab and shift+tab to navigate at this point.
So I'll use the search field as a starting point as if you have no conversations this is the element you will land on after creating or importing your account from the backup.
Tabbing away from the search field you will land on the Scan QR code button. You can activate it to share your code for others to scan or to scan a code from someone else. Also we are all blind here in this conversation so I guess we won't be scanning QR codes, we'll copy and paste invite links that is also supported here. So the QR code dialog has two tabs QR invite code and Scan QR code. These are exposed as buttons to screen readers. If you activate one of these buttons the content in this dialog window changes. If you would like to join the chat you will press Scan QR code here and you will find the Paste button.
I assume QR code or invite links handling is now a bit clearer so I'll continue describing the main window.
When using tab to navigate pressing the tab key while the Scan QR button on the main window is in focus, you will land in the list of conversations. You can use up and down arrow key to navigate, enter key to activate here. Unfortunatelly the items are again exposed as buttons so it might be a bit embarrasing at first.
If you continue navigating with the tab key from the list of conversations you will land on the new conversation button.
If you continue with the tab key you will move from the new conversation button into the active conversation window. The conversation name is presented. Activating the button named after the active conversation will open a dialog window with user profile of your chat partner or profile of a group chat if the active conversation is a group chat indeed. In the profile window you can see last seen info of the chat partner, their signature, their chat handle, a button for sending them a message that is mainly usefull when you are looking at a profile of a group member, and an ability to share the contact with other contacts. There is a profile menu button that displays a context sensitive menu with more actions such as setting your own local display name for the contact.
I'm now done explaining the profile window and imagine we are back in the active conversation view focused on the chat name button.
Using tab key to navigate from here lands on the tabs changing the main conversation content. You can use these to change from conversation to the media.
Then there is a main menu button. In fact it includes conversation specific menu entries such as search in chat, dissapearing messages and others.
Moving forward with the tab key from the main menu button you will land on the message list of the active conversation. Use up and down arrow to navigate here to read the messages. And use applications key or shift+F10 to open a context menu for the selected message. Text messages have no other content but audio messages, messages with reactions or other attachments might have other focusable elements in the tab order. I think this part is pretty self explanatory once you manage to start chatting. One thing other messengers don't have is shared apps. Apps can be posted to the chat and message with the app will have a button to start the app that will then open in a new window. There are various apps made for deltachat and other webxdc capable messengers, such as the shopping list, simple group collaborative editor and similar. I am looking to the future when more screen reader users will adopt this and we can bring some of the fun things we liked to enjoy back in the days on IRC such as playing quiz or card games in the chat. This might be a nice platform for allowing this.
Then there is an attachment button, visually it's to the left of the chat input area, then chat input area it-self, smileys and record voice messages button.
After the record voice message button you will wrap to the top, of the application window landing on the profile chooser. This part needs a bit of a11y love as the profile names are not exposed to screen readers. These have role tab and you can use up and down arrow keys to navigate here. The last item in this list is a create profile button.
Yes, you can have multiple chat profiles if you like. And it's really damn easy to create a new deltachat profile. The most valuable thing on your profile is the list of contacts as you are verified criptographically. Loosing the empty profile is not a problem as you can create a new one whenever you like.
The final destination of this walkthrough through the deltachat-desktop main window is the settings button.

Huh, this turned to be a looong post. I believe it clears a few things up for you.

Thinking more about it perhaps I should report some of the little things such as avoid using button roles for the list items, consider using roving tab index for the tabs so only one of them is focusable at a time to get rid of a bit of confusion to the @Delta Chat github issues.

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I prompted Eleven Labs to create a sound effect with the following: “A joyful jingle that combines the sound of mirrors, crystal glasses, water drops, brushes and aspen trees.”
Among a few choices I got, this one really caught my attention! #AudioMo
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For day 2 of #AudioMo, have a listen in while I use AI to solve a visual problem at work. Audio quality's not the best because I was just using a phone speaker, not the sort of recording I'd sell or anything!

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in reply to Andre Louis

@FreakyFwoof @Scott Well there was that one time ...

I got off the train in the rain. I must have been 10, 11 years old. No phone. No announcements of the stops, either, not on my local valleys line. I had to count stops and hope, as a rule. Clearly, as I plodded on and nothing felt familiar, I realised I'd miscounted on this occasion.

So the rain keeps blattering and blustering and I keep walking, there's fences and walls and I hope that soon I'll come to something vaguely familiar. I have 10p for a phone box if I can find one, or i'll just ask the next person I hear.
I pause.
I hear someone, maybe.
I walk a bit further on.
Yes, that does sound like breathing.
"Hello," I exclaim!
"I presume Caerphilly is back the other way? Could you tell me where I am, please?"

The answer was a nay, I could not be told.
I was talking to a horse.

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While DAVx⁵ is a client-server sync tool we often get questions if there is a possibility to sync in server to server. We had a nice talk today with the creator @whynothugo from pimsync who does work on a tool that does exactly that.

Check out the project here if you're interested:

pimsync.whynothugo.nl/

We also added it to our FAQ: davx5.com/faq/synchronization/…

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To my fellow blind people:
This is the month of AudioMo. If you will be participating and if you're one that benefits from #AltText on photos, take the time to reciprocate when posting your audio.
Let's not have 'one rule for you, another for me' rule going on.
Practice what we preach. If you benefit from alt-text, add it to your audio description. Many people benefit from knowing what the audio is before clicking on it.
In the same way some images are NSFW, some of your audio might not be either. It may be loud, it may be noises of your pets which could cause pets at the other end to go wild and so on.

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📣 Liberux NEXX is now live on crowdfunding! 🚀

After months of development and testing, we're introducing the most powerful Linux smartphone: RK3588S, 32 GB RAM, 5G, Debian 13 + GNOME Mobile, and total privacy with hardware killswitches. 🎉

🔼 Now upgraded to 512 GB of storage and European-made.
Support mobile freedom and reserve your unit in the next 30 days:

🔗 igg.me/at/liberux-nexx

#LiberuxNEXX #linuxphones #privacy #opensource

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At the end of their first date, a young man takes his favorite girl home. Emboldened by the night, he decides to try for that important first kiss.
With an air of confidence, he leans with his hand against the wall and, smiling, he says to her, "Darling, how 'bout a goodnight kiss?"
Horrified, she replies, "Are you mad? My parents will see us!"
"Oh come on! Who's gonna see us at this hour?"
"No, please. Can you imagine if we get caught?"
"Oh come on, there's nobody around, they're all sleeping!"
"No way. It's just too risky!"
"Oh please, please, I like you so much!!"
"No, no, and no. I like you too, but I just can't!"
"Pleeeeease?..."
Out of the blue, the porch light goes on, and the girl's sister shows up in her pajamas, hair disheveled. In a sleepy voice the sister says: "Dad says to go ahead and give him a kiss. Or I can do it. Or if need be, he'll come down himself and do it. But for crying out loud tell him to take his hand off the intercom button!"

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Over the past week or so, I've been hacking away at a fun little project. Paperback, my second shot at a cross-platform ebook and document reader. Quinread, the one I wrote while in high school was in Python and didn't use great coding practices, and all the other existing solutions seem unmaintained or don't behave how I want, so in typical me fashion, I'm writing my own. It's written in C++ with wxWidgets, so it'll hopefully be cross-platform, although I've currently only tested on Windows. It's entirely open source, and under the MIT license. I can't make any promises about this project other than to say that I genuinely enjoy working on it and don't see any reason to stop, but it both starts up and loads giant documents incredibly fast. github.com/trypsynth/Paperback…
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One of my closest and longest friends is starting a new YouTube channel documenting his journey to fulfill a life-long dream of his. Even though he's low vision, through a new program available in Ontario, he has the opportunity to gain his drivers license via the use of a bioptic telescope. If you love cars as much as he does, are just curious, or are a low vision person interested in what a program like this could mean for you, check out his first video on the channel! As far as I know, this is the first time someone has documented the journey of learning to drive with a bioptic telescope from day one, from the perspective of a person with a disability, rather than a doctor or other medical professional. You can find the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GZdw1CzYtI#a11y#cars#driving#accessibility#disability

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Exodus of IPv4 from War-torn Ukraine | Kentik Blog
kentik.com/blog/exodus-of-ipv4…

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Dost podstatný důvod proč nepoužívat Telegram: Pavel Durov se chlubí chystanou roční smlouvou s xAI, která přinese Grok do Telegramu, čímž Telegram získá 300 milionů dolarů. coindesk.com/business/2025/05/…

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Almost exactly a year ago, I found a subreddit called r/TimeTravel. The first post was someone asking a very simple question: How can I go back to the past and change things? I thought this was a troll subreddit, to be honest. So, I wrote a troll comment, which I'll paste below. But I'm writing this post a year later because I just got a private message from someone, asking if my time travel trick really worked. This is not even close to the first message I've received in response to this comment. Someone even bought the laptop I referenced.

---

Look for a used IBM Thinkpad 700. Install the earliest beta build of Windows 95 (March 1993, when it was still just codenamed Chicago). Open two instances of the date/time settings. Change one of them to 11:11 AM on April 1, 1948. Change the other to 11:11 AM on January 4, 1984. Press okay on both as quickly as possible.

Then, disconnect the laptop from the power source (although you might want to bring the charger with you, to return to other timelines). Go back into date/time settings and change the date and time to whenever you want to travel.

If you don't disconnect the laptop from the power source, it will try and transport as much of the connecting wall as it can, which usually leads to some truly fucked up shit. DO NOT FORGET TO UNPLUG YOUR THINKPAD.

Every time you reboot you have to redo the simultaneous date setting. If you're going back before electricity, for goodness sake bring a solar charger.

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Tohle jsem nevěděl, strašné:

Zdravotní sestra Marie Navarová automaticky poskytla Heydrichovi první pomoc. Viděla zraněného člověka na chodníku, napřed si ani neuvědomila, o koho jde. Dostala za tu první pomoc odměnu, kterou dala na charitu. Pracovala ale pro odboj, tak skončila v koncentráku. Kvůli pomoci Heydrichovi a odměně ovšem byla braná jako kolaborantka, tak po válce pro změnu skončila na šest let v komunistickém vězení. Její manžel spáchal sebevraždu.

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Lol, lmao, etc.

You know at some point putting things on GitHub has to be considered a liability.

invariantlabs.ai/blog/mcp-gith…

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From @pluralistic :

"Just a QR Code" is a new site that generates QR codes, operating entirely in your browser, without transmitting any data to a server or trying to cram ads into your eyeballs. The fact that it runs entirely in-browser means you can save this webpage and work with an offline copy to generate QR codes forever – even if the site goes down:

justaqrcode.com/

QR code generators are mostly bad news, so this is great news.

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The Patreon for an upcoming MMO RPG audio game I'm working on is up. Would love it if you can promote this to your friends and on social media, and, if you feel compelled to support the project, become a patron! patreon.com/kpguild/about
#Kirandur #audiogame #blind
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📣 "Bridging Accessibility Barriers"
with Lukáš Tyrychtr ( @tyrylu ) at #GUADEC2025
📅 24 July 🕒 09:00 CEST 📍 Brescia

🧑‍🦯Making screen readers work on modern GNOME (Wayland + GTK 4) and pushing toward real accessibility.

🔗 events.gnome.org/event/259/con…

#Linux #GTK4 #Accessibility

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

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Do any #blind people reading this either own the (expensive) Monarch tactile graphics device or have access to one through school or work? If so, is it at all open to third-party apps running on the device itself? Failing that, has anyone figured out the specs of the computer that's certainly inside it? It's expensive enough that it would be great if it could serve as a blind person's general-purpose computer.

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in reply to Matt Campbell

Since the original post on this thread is still being boosted, I'll summarize and opine a bit on the answers that @pixelate posted in the thread.

The Monarch is running Android 13, and it does allow third-party applications to be installed, apparently by installing APK files.

The hardware is a Rockchip RK3566 system-on-chip with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 CPU and 4 GB of RAM. That's roughly comparable to a Raspberry Pi 3, and coincidentally the same SoC and amount of RAM as my Quartz64 SBC.

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in reply to Matt Campbell

@pixelate What I'm aiming to learn more about is what the Dot Pad can or can't do vs. the Monarch. I know the Monarch has more homegrown software but if the Dot has a suitable API, then it may be more appealing for the price. I know there is this. github.com/dotincorp/
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🌟 Excited to share Thorsten-Voice's YouTube channel! 🎥 🗣️🔊 ♿ 💬

Thorsten presents innovative TTS solutions and a variety of voice technologies, making it an excellent starting point for anyone interested in open-source text-to-speech. Whether you're a developer, accessibility advocate, or tech enthusiast, his channel offers valuable insights and resources. Don't miss out on this fantastic content! 🎬

follow hem here: @thorstenvoice
or on YouTube: youtube.com/@ThorstenMueller YouTube channel!

#Accessibility #FLOSS #TTS #ParlerTTS #OpenSource #VoiceTech #TextToSpeech #AI #CoquiAI #VoiceAssistant #Sprachassistent #MachineLearning #AccessibilityMatters #FLOSS #TTS #OpenSource #Inclusivity #FOSS #Coqui #AI #CoquiAI #VoiceAssistant #Sprachassistent #VoiceTechnology #KünstlicheStimme #MachineLearning #Python #Rhasspy #TextToSpeech #VoiceTech #STT #SpeechSynthesis #SpeechRecognition #Sprachsynthese #ArtificialVoice #VoiceCloning #Spracherkennung #CoquiTTS #voice #a11y #ScreenReader

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in reply to NV Access

@NVAccess Thorsten-Voice is my personal german only voice contribution working offline (no cloud).
But the tts software i used for training is "piper tts" which offers multiple voices in multiple languages (all locally on device, even raspberry pi) and according to their github readme it is integrated in "NVDA", but i do not have personal experience with it, yet.

github.com/rhasspy/piper?tab=r…