Peter Vágner reshared this.

I'm using Paperback more and more these days. Unlike QRead, which I still need for Bookshare DAISY files, Paperback removes all the unnecessary blank lines between paragraphs and pages, and you can't imagine how nice that feels! It also loads books incredibly fast, no matter how large your EPUB or PDF files are. Huge kudos to the developer, and here's hoping DAISY support gets added soon so I can fully switch over.
github.com/trypsynth/paperback
@TheQuinbox
@Quin

Peter Vágner reshared this.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

To jsem na sebe zase upletl bič. Přihlásil jsem si přednášku na #LinuxDays2025. Je už zítra. Doufám, že dcerka dnes bude spinkací, jinak budou slajdy zejtra dost děravé.
Jinak kdybyste mě chtěli slyšet koktat něco o tom co selhostinguju a jak to jde, můžete se stavit ve 13h do posluchárny 105 na FIT ČVUT v Dejvicích. 😬

Peter Vágner reshared this.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

For the past 3 years, I’ve been part of the Google Accessibility Trusted Tester program, where people with disabilities test unreleased products and give direct feedback to engineers. In my article, I share how the program works, how I’ve maximized participation, the experience I’ve gained, and why more companies should follow Google’s lead in compensating disabled testers.
linkedin.com/pulse/my-experien…

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

I just pushed a new edit.video release. 🔥

- Faster video processing on modern browsers with Mediabunny
- New output quality controls
- Improvements to video trimming controls
- Optionally load demo video
- Drag n' drop to edit video files
- Sticky fullscreen mode

100% Free

Peter Vágner reshared this.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

This is a concern for anyone using F-Droid, including users of Privacy Browaer Android.

F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository – f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/goog…

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Soren Stoutner

Здраствуйте,мне кажется они всегда хотели больше контроля,и хорошо что есть #opensource приложение,я не могу пожертвовать по личным причинам, но я занимаюсь продвижением #deltachat и возможно ещё буду #mastodon
трекеров всё больше и больше,в одной простой игре может быть 30+ трекера...😔
Peter Vágner reshared this.

#introduction:

Welcome to #StroongeCast, a husband and wife team consisting of Andre and Kirsten Louis who live in London. On this podcast, we explore anything that makes us question the world—from relationships and parenting to school memories and beyond. Join our family chats for lively discussions, fun stories, and plenty of curious moments.

Going forward we will post all new episode links to this account before any others.

Subscribe: onj.me/stroongecast

Feel free to follow our main accounts here on the fediverse as well.
Andre: @FreakyFwoof
Kirsten: @MoonCat

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to StroongeCast

Did you know: There are many completely *free* sample libraries these days, some could help you end up in writing for your next film, documentary, podcast or TV show?

Andre wrote this piece of intro music for the podcast using purely *free* libraries and nothing else.

#InspiredBySound - Musical Breakdown - #StroongeCast Podcast Music: youtu.be/Ra7prQ6d9Pw

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

Andre Louis reshared this.

in reply to StroongeCast

We record #StroongeCast episodes on Thursdays consistently now, meaning that youtube members can listen early if they so wish.
If we can find a way to do that for everyone else, we will. Until then however, if you want your fix a day early, please become a youtube member at any level.
youtube.com/@TheOnjLouis/join

StroongeCast reshared this.

1 / 2: Did you know @GNOME Files aka #nautilus has a nifty feature where it can batch rename files? Advanced features include adding sequential numbering, using placeholders and doing search and replace on the names of selected files. #ScreenReader #a11y is preserved.
In order to use it just select multiple files and find Rename item in the shift+F10 popup menu or simply press F2. Also... Don't be shy to press the add button in the batch rename dialog.
Peter Vágner reshared this.

Gauging user interest! Over the last few weeks I have been working on a website that can auto describe YouTube videos. I am aware that the solution has already been created for windows, however, I don’t want to leave mobile users and non-Windows users out in the cold. I have already experimented with a desktop app and it works quite well. Would this be of interest to the community?
This entry was edited (3 months ago)

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

libxml2's sole maintainer Nick Wellnhofer steps down, meaning libxml2 is now no longer maintained.

discourse.gnome.org/t/stepping…

It's hard to estimate just how many companies depend on this software and critical security updates to the library, so I'm certain many will quickly step up and offer sponsorship to ensure a fundamental dependency doesn't just deteriorate without proper support.

Any day now.

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

It turns out that you can already run GUI Linux programs in the new Linux terminal app on Android 16, before Google releases the official GUI support. First I switched the audio system to pipewire in the VM by installing the pipewire-audio package, then I installed xrdp (an RDP server for X11), and pipewire-modules-xrdp, for audio support. Then I installed mate-desktop-environment and orca, enabled accessibility in Mate with "gsettings set org.mate.interface accessibility true", and enabled Orca to start automatically with "gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-reader-enabled true". Then I set the password for the default "droid" user with "sudo passwd droid", and created ~/.xinitrc with "#!/bin/sh" and "mate-session", and made it executable with "chmod +x ~/.xinitrc"" After doing all of this, I pressed the third unlabeled button in the Terminal app to open its menu, went to "Port control" and enabled port 3389. Then I installed Windows App from the Play Store and I added a PC with hostname 127.0.0.1, and added a user with the name "droid" and the password I set. When I connected to it, Orca started speaking, and after turning TalkBack off by holding the volume keys, I could control the Linux system with my Bluetooth keyboard, including using the Control and Alt keys, and after putting Orca in laptop mode (by running "orca -s" to open the preferences dialog), I could perform Orca commands with the caps lock key, although sometimes it types a letter instead and it toggles Android's caps lock state (which is separate from Linux's), but pressing caps lock once toggles it off again.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

The XMPP Interop Testing project helps ensure XMPP servers and clients play nicely together by providing specification test automation.

New update:
✔️ Option to fail runs if some tests were "impossible" to execute.
✔️ Flexible account provisioning

Details on the blog: xmpp-interop-testing.github.io…

The development journey that @fishbowler and I have been taking was made possible by a grant from @nlnet 🙏. The grant has now concluded, and we’re deeply thankful for their support!

#XMPP #interop #testing

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

We had to start charging the electric car from the grid this week due to bad weather and shorter days, but between this week and mid-April, when we got the car, we charged it exclusively from solar power. Six months and six thousand kilometers. Not bad.

#ElectricVehicle #electromobility #renewables #photovoltaic #renewableenergy

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Schmaker

@schmaker before getting an electric car we paid 2.5-3k CZK for gasoline per month. The average petrol consumption cost was 3 CZK/km for the petrol car. When I charge from the solar system I only count the cost of missed opportunity for not being able to sell the energy to the grid. It's 1.25 CZK/kWh and with the average EV consumption of 15 kWh/100 km the cost per km is 0.2 CZK. 15 times lower.
Peter Vágner reshared this.

Anyone using #Tammy as a #Matrix messenger client?

What do you think about it? Why do you use it? How much do you use it? On which device type is it installed? What features do you miss?

  • Yes. (15%, 3 votes)
  • No, but already tried it. (5%, 1 vote)
  • No, but heard about it. (15%, 3 votes)
  • No, never heard about it. (65%, 13 votes)
20 voters. Poll end: 3 months ago

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Benedict

First of all: Thank you for your work!
I use it on Android alongside with other #Matrix Clients.
So far I remember, the onboarding was good. Generelly it feels fast (after) sync.
The chatlist items, for me, could have a little bit more padding. The gui with the bubble style in the Chats I don't like much.
It's nice to have some settings for gui. The accent color could have more options.
Peter Vágner reshared this.

Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

Link: github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issue…
Discussion: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…

#youtube

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

lue is a TUI ebook reader with text to speech (TTS) support.

It can read EPUB / DOCX / PDF / TXT / files, supports 100+ languages, highlights words in sync, saves your progress, has themes and more.

Starry Eyes (superstarryeyes on GitHub) made lue using Rich, a Python library by @textualize and is Terminal Tool of the Week! ⭐️

terminaltrove.com/lue/

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

Here it is, my new, self-hosted home in the #Fediverse running on #GoToSocial! This is really exciting stuff, now I’m truly living the Fedi spirit by supporting decentralization. If you're reading this and don't mind, I'd greatly appreciate a boost of this post to help my tiny new instance discover more servers. Thanks! #NewFedi #FediAdmin #Selfhosting

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in reply to Talon

Thanks so much for clarifying and for the explanations! I was under the impression that boosting would indeed result in my server pulling in more posts from other instances, but I guess that was a misconception on my part having seen others doing this after spinning up a new server. I did follow many of the people who boosted though as a way to say thank-you, so perhaps this actually did help extend my server's reach by extension :-). GTS does not support relays yet sadly, although it is on their roadmap, I only realized it after I'd already configured most things so there was no turning back. That being said though, I do feel GTS is absolutely the right choice for my single-user scenario, setting up Mastodon or one of its forks would likely be overkill for my small Fedi home. That being said, I did find this project which seems interesting, maybe I should look into setting this up: codeberg.org/tante/hypebot
Peter Vágner reshared this.

Letos volím poštou

xn--ondej-kcb.v.nizozemsku.nl/2025/09/21/Letos_volim_postou.html

Zatímco v Česku vrcholí horká fáze kampaně, já už mám odvoleno. Spolu s více než dvaceti tisíci krajany jsem se rozhodl letos poprvé vyzkoušet korespondenční hlasování. To se dostalo do novely zákona o správě voleb a umožňuje Čechům žijícím v zahraničí…

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Yeah, I've updated my @Arch Linux to @GNOME 49.
There are some nifty #a11y related tweaks such as better labelling for gnome shell menus, refreshed settings UI, I like how presentation of various lists e.g. List of wireless networks is presented with screen reader including signal strength.

Thanks to everyone involved for the improvements.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

Hi, I'm micr0, the creator of Altbot.

Almost a year ago, your incredible generosity helped us raise the funds to buy the server that Altbot runs on today (locally and privately) It's been operating from my home ever since, and I'm so grateful for the support that made that possible.

But now, the situation has become unsustainable. My home network is under a sustained, targeted DDoS attack aimed at taking Altbot offline. And unfortunatly this isn't just a threat to the bot, it's a serious security and privacy concern for my family.

A lot of people are probabaly going to be asking the same question I did: "Who is doing this?"
but the honest answer is: I don't know, and I likely never will. These attacks are launched through botnets and proxies designed specifically to hide the source. Figuring out the "who" is nearly impossible. The only thing I can do is focus on the "how to stop it."

Running this critical service from a residential address is no longer viable. To protect Altbot and my family, we need to move the server to a professional data center with proper, enterprise DDoS mitigation.

The Goal: $2,880 to cover 12 months of secure colocation.

This will provide a secure, stable home for Altbot with:

  • Enterprise-grade DDoS protection
  • 99.95%+ uptime guarantee
  • 24/7 monitoring and security
  • Separation from my personal home network

Donations can be made via:

This isn't just about maintaining a service. It's about ensuring that an important accessibility tool remains available for everyone who depends on it, while also protecting my family's privacy and safety.

Please consider supporting if you can. If you're unable to donate, boosts are incredibly valuable for raising awareness.

Thank you for your support and for believing in Altbot's mission.

#Altbot #Accessibility

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

Version 0.3 of Paperback, my incredibly fast and light-weight ebook and document reader for Windows, is out! What's new:
• Fixed the table of contents in epub books with URL-encoded manifests.
• Fixed heading navigation in HTML documents containing multi-byte Unicode characters.
• Fixed high CPU usage in documents with long titles due to a regression in wxWidgets.
• Fixed loading UTF-8 text files.
• Fixed nested TOC items in EPub books putting your cursor at the wrong position.
• Fixed a crash on application exit in certain cases.
• Added a checkbox in the options dialog to enable or disable word wrap!
• It is now possible to donate to Paperback’s development, either through the new donate item in the help menu or through the sponsor this project link at the bottom of the GitHub repository’s main page.
• Markdown documents will now always have a title, and Paperback should now be able to load virtually any Markdown file.
• PDF documents will now always have a title, even if the metadata is missing.
• Switched PDF libraries to the one used in Chromium, leading to far more reliable PDF parsing across the board.
• You can now only have one instance of Paperback running at a time. Running paperback.exe with a filename while it’s already running will open that document in the already running instance.
• You can now press delete on a document in the tab control to close it.
Download: github.com/trypsynth/paperback…
Enjoy, star, open issues, open pull requests, do what you do.

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in reply to Jamie Teh

{Edit: Added citation}
Ah, not as far as I know. Requiem existed way back when for lossless decryption, but I don't think any of us have the right environment to make that work anymore. Sorry:
apprenticealf.wordpress.com/20…
@TheQuinbox
@Quin
This entry was edited (4 months ago)
in reply to Quin

True, and I suppose that's the important thing in the end. I made sure when I first started decrypting Kindle books that I (1) got it in the KF8 format that kept as much of the xhtml content untouched and (2) grabbed the KFX to get higher-quality images. I'm glad I switched my platform to something a little more frictionless though and am now just decrypting an EPUB. @jcsteh
in reply to Jamie Teh

@jcsteh I switched to Kobo and just decrypt with Codex and a super old version of Adobe Digital Editions. I know you can use modern DeDRM plugin as well, but I stuck with what works:
gist.github.com/tmthywynn8/d00…
@TheQuinbox
Peter Vágner reshared this.

Want to install NVDA from the Windows command-line like a true geek you know you are? First open the command line by pressing windows+r, then type CMD followed by control+shift+Enter, saying alt+y to elevate your admin rights. At the command prompt, type: winget install nvaccess.nvda .and press enter. Wait for the magic to happen.

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

Deafblind advocate and lawyer Haben Girma speaks about why she works to remove access barriers for students with disabilities, including the importance of disability leadership and representation guiding inclusion and access to systems like education.

“Those individuals who’ve had to move forward as pioneers are particularly well-positioned to help their communities, whether as lawyers, or other advocates.”

#Deafblind #Blind #Leadership

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

Informal question for NVDA end users please: NVDA has many quick navigation keys (single letters you press to jump to the next element of a certain type on the web). I haven't included any here so as not to lead you - but what are your top FIVE most used of these?

I often introduce navigating on the web by mentioning a couple, but I want to make sure I am thinking of the same "common" ones as you. Please let me know your top 5?

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

Hey, lately, I've been generally unmotivated to contribute to free and open-source projects because I can't sustain myself long-term. I can't find any local or online job that allows me to make a positive impact and not feel depressed. I am not receiving a sufficient number of donations either.

I would really appreciate some donations. Your support would enable me to continue working on accessibility throughout @gnome and writing educational and informative articles.

You can donate to me via: Liberapay (preferred), Ko-fi, and GitHub Sponsors.

Boosts welcome and very much appreciated.

#MutualAidRequest #MutualAid

This entry was edited (4 months ago)
Peter Vágner reshared this.

Android is getting DHCPv6 (-PD) support. If you want to use it, be prepared to scrap your current addressing plans - each Android device will now consume a /64 on its own.

android-developers.googleblog.…

Peter Vágner reshared this.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

#GodotEngine 4.5 has finally arrived! 🎉

With this new release, we made meticulous efforts in order to amplify what is possible to do with our engine, guided by our goal of making gaming and game development for everyone!

godotengine.org/releases/4.5/

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Peter Vágner reshared this.

Yesterday 12 Sep at around 15:26, we started to hear some incredibly loud flying machines passing over Kilburn NW6, we're still not quite sure why.
I have mics in the back garden which come in handy at times like these, so I can provide you this recording.
Toward the latter part you'll hear @MoonCat speaking on the left-hand side as she comes out to investigate what's going on.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

What I often find such an interesting take in #accessibility discussions is this concept of "We will make it work for the majority first, and then add accessibility features".
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how accessibility, and therefore " features" of accessibility work.
For one, making something #accessible for #screenReaders often requires no visual modifications at all, and requires making calls early in the development cycle to not have to rewrite your entire UI using widgets that even support #assistive #technology. Once that call has been made, making elements accessible is often a matter of, what a concept, using the widgets the way they were meant to be used.

Hello @GrapheneOS screen-reader users and other #a11y friends,

There was an interesting debate going on at the end of may where screen reader users were asking for #tts engine included with GrapheneOS base system.
grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/…

I understand this is very unlikely to change in the near future as I am not aware of a TTS system that is open-source and modern enough to be included.
@Accessible Android has a list of TTS engines sorted by language at this page: accessibleandroid.com/list-of-…
Except of eSpeak-ng and RHVoice there is another opensource app called SherpaTTS that can use Piper TTS and Coqui based voices at: github.com/woheller69/ttsEngin…
Including eSpeak-ng, RHVoice, SherpaTTS and the list of TTS engines mentioned by accessible android, is there a viable TTS engine or at least one that is close enough to be viable to get included in the foreseable future?

Another approach I have been thinking about is to add / inject the TTS app or any other app I'd like as a part of the install process. It turns out I am not the only one speculating about that idea and it's not practical and feasible either as it's also breaking the security model.
It's been discussed recently at: discuss.grapheneos.org/d/25899…

Another way on how to install an app on an android device would be using adb install from a computer. I am not definatelly sure on this but GrapheneOS does not allow enabling ADB on production builds. In order to instal a TTS app over ADB we'd need to find a way on how to install GrapheneOS with ADB preenabled on first run. This is a huge security hole as well.

There might be a way to build my own flavour of GrapheneOS, but that's too involved, I'd need very powerfull machine for the actual build process and I would again compromise security by either disabling or handling future updates on my own building each new release on my own.

So given the current state I am afraid we screen reader users are out of luck and there is no way to get this thing running on my own with no help from someone else.

The end result is that I'll either get security or I can look elsewhere to get accessibility.

Please am I getting it right or might I have overlooked something that might help me to install GrapheneOS on my own?

Thanks for reading to the end

LunaticStrayDog reshared this.

in reply to Peter Vágner

One of our full time developers is actively working on building our own text-to-speech and speech-to-text integration. It's where all of their effort is currently going. None of the available apps are suitable for inclusion. None are modern enough aside from Sherpa and it has issues including high latency making it unsuitable for use with TalkBack. Our own implementation is going to be significantly better.

ADB works fine on GrapheneOS but you'd have to enable it.

in reply to boredsquirrel

@Rhababerbarbar We're making our own implementation for inclusion in GrapheneOS. It will be similar in design to Sherpa but faster. It will initially just be English. People can still install Sherpa and other TTS implementations if they want them. We just need something available out-of-the-box for blind users to install GrapheneOS and also basic usability. It's fine if people need to install other TTS implementations for other languages, etc. but we can add that too.
in reply to GrapheneOS

I have asked a friend and @GrapheneOS community chat members for the help with initial setup and now I am fully configured with RHVoice as my current TTS of choice.
Except of one GPS navigation app I am used to everything is working fine for me including proprietary stuff for my work like Microsoft Teams, banking apps including Poštová banka, George and Revolut and the other apps I like such as Bitwarden as a password manager, Arcanechat, Conversations, ElementX, FairEmail, Open Key Chain for chatting and emailing, Antennapod, BubbleUPNP, Foobar 2000, Kore, Voice, NewPipe, ytdlnis for podcasts, music, audiobooks and videos, , Catima for lojalty cards and tickets, some other apps. For downloading apps I am mainly using F-droid and Aurora store. I am not signed into the google account but I am using play services for push notifications and other compatibility reasons for apps which need it.

Thanks for everything you are doing, it's fantastic and I like it verry much.

in reply to Peter Vágner

All location-based apps should work, but some may expect network location to be available which it isn't by default. You can enable Network location and Wi-Fi scanning in Settings > Location > Location services if you want network location without needing to use Google Play for location. See grapheneos.org/features#networ….

If you installed apps before sandboxed Google Play and they depend on it, you may need to reinstall the apps depending on it so they detect it properly.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

If anyone is curious, my current Android setup is as follows:

I use #NeoStore or #Droidify (currently Neo Store, the new stats support is just too tempting) with the #IzzyOnDroid repo as primary app source, the #FDroid repo as secondary.

If I need something not on either of those, I will use #AuroraStore to access #GooglePlay.

Random APKs from GitHub or whatever only in very very specific cases. I will generally wait until the app drops on F-Droid or (preferably) IzzyOnDroid.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

in reply to Jessie Nabein

There's basically 2 situations where this can happen:

1. The app needs Google Play Services, if you disable this (on stock Android) you'll need to enable it. If you use a custom ROM, you probably want microG
2. The app detects if it's installed by Google Play, either a weak check (can be bypassed with `adb` and using the `-i` flag I think or a strong check and... yeah, no luck.

If you're on stock Android, I see no reason to use Aurora Store, it doesn't give more privacy :)

This entry was edited (4 months ago)
Peter Vágner reshared this.

Hey, can I borrow your ears for a couple of minutes? I'd like to show you something I wrote back in 2021.
I was in a contemplative mood and I sat down at my keyboard. I remember coming up with a motif that just really spoke to me on several levels.

Since everything I write is instrumental, I have to convey an entire story just in music and I don't always succeed but this time I really think I managed it.

Whether you're thinking of someone that makes you happy, or whether you're feeling sad due to loss or just lack of spoons, I think this track works in many situations.
I can't say I've written anything quite like it before or since.
Usually a track conveys a specific mood but not this one. I think it says whatever you want or need it to say.
I know some vocalists I've shown it to, really liked it but I haven't heard if they ever decided to add something to it just yet.
If you're someone who can sing or if you have a lovely flute line you want to add, please be my guest.

Opinions welcome of course, even if you hate it.
I know instrumental music isn't for everyone and that's fair.

I call it: 'Moments of Clarity'
youtu.be/FflClBzYvS4

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