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Today, our team had the great privilege of interviewing Sarah Herrlinger, senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives at Apple, about the new accessibility features coming later this year to Apple software. Full podcast (including transcript) coming tomorrow!

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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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in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦
I’m not low vision, but I am still going to check this out. This is so cool! I wish I could have my drivers license. Come on autonomous vehicles, hurry up and get here already!
in reply to Lynette
Given the GPS in my phone can't reliably direct me to the place I'm trying to go half the time, I'm gonna hold off on trusting self-driving cars lest I leave my house intending to visit Toronto and end up in the river.
in reply to James H
@quanin@lynessence with the many issues around public transport, most of the time my flight or train gets rerouted and that happens to me anyway. Or the human cab driver drops me somewhere random and leaves. At least a self driving car would take me to the wrong place in comfort.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦
You're not wrong. But your first mistake in this case is using any of the Ottawa taxi companies. Granted the plural of anecdote is not data, but I've never had that problem with Uber. I can count on one hand the positive experiences I've had with Ottawa's one taxi company pretending to be three.
in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦
Huh. I wonder what the difference is. Generally speaking if I'm actively communicating with the driver they develop a clue. If we ever do that thing where we meet in-person we should compare notes or something.
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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 (Tuesday, May 27, 2025, 3:15 PM)

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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…

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This is Theodosii Spassov, probably one of my top 3 Bulgarian kaval players, with slow melody. It's a great demo of what the Bulgarian kaval can do; big range, kaba, vocal drone/harmonisation, sound effects, various levels of breathiness, ornaments like hlopki, mordents, vibrato. Particularly notable in this one is circular breathing, both for the 2nd kaval drone, which is quite common, but also in the main melody. Virtuosic stuff!
#Music #Ethnomusicology #WorldMusic
youtube.com/watch?v=yyEGr717-R…

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#MyHeritage has a new feature called Cousin Finder, which finds your relatives through shared ancestors. It found me a 'cousin' with whom I share an ancestor born in 1622. That's a rather extreme cousin search. 😄
#genealogy #familytree #rodokmeny

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hay humans, boosts appreciated. I'm trying to find out who in the US plays the blind sport Showdown. I know that several states have tables, and that there are players who have done it recently. Trying to figure out whose connected to that scene, where they get their tables and if we can establish some international cooperation. Shout me if anyone knows anything.

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Dearest fediverse, can you please teach me how to count to twelve in your own language? For instance, here’s Dutch:

Dutch: een, twee, drie, vier, vijf, zes, zeven, acht, negen, tien, elf, twaalf

(I already know how to count in Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish, I think)

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in reply to Paweł Masarczyk

@Paweł Masarczyk @Vasilis Here is how you can say numbers from one to twelve in romani:
yekh, duy, trin, shtar, panj, shov, efta, oxto, eňa, desh, desh u yekh, desh u duy

Interesting reading and site you might like to look at in order to find numbering for other languages: languagesandnumbers.com/how-to…

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Seen many blind people advocating for Audible's AI narration instead of having narrators they don't like record the audiobook and its takes like this that make me super ashamed of some in my own community. I can't even think of what to call these people.

The reasoning is that an AI voice won't be busy or expensive so we can get more audiobooks and just... I strongly suspect these are Blind people that hate audiobooks and want them gone or otherwise reduced in pop culture. I can't understand the logic otherwise.

#AI #Audible

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in reply to Robert Kingett
Yeah this is a dumb take. I go to Audible or other places like that to get books read by humans. If I want AI, I can just get a book from Bookshare and load it up in Eleven Labs reader or use one of the many TTS APIs from Google or Microsoft to make my own audio book. That not only gives you more choice in terms of voices but also doesn't fool people who may not be able to detect AI generated audio into thinking they're listening to a real human voice actor.
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Hi everyone. Please share this far and wide.
An Open Letter to OpenAI and Jony Ive: Building an Accessible Future Together
By Mike Calvo, CEO and Co-founder, Pneuma Solutions
Dear Sam Altman and Jony Ive:
As a community of passionate consumers and advocates, we are excited about the merger between OpenAI and io, Jony Ive’s visionary company. This collaboration holds real promise for groundbreaking innovation. We want to make sure that the future you're building includes the millions of people with disabilities who can benefit from it.
Jony, your legacy at Apple transformed how accessibility was viewed in technology. From VoiceOver to your commitment to inclusive design, you helped raise the bar for what accessibility should look like. Sam, OpenAI’s work with platforms like Be My Eyes has already proven how AI can enhance lives. Your combined track records show that accessibility can be a foundation, not just a feature.
But we’ve also seen what happens when companies overlook that foundation. The Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 launched with high expectations, yet they failed to meaningfully include our community. These products were missed opportunities. They serve as reminders of why it’s so important to involve disabled users from day one.
Our community is not a small corner of the market. We are early adopters, loyal customers, and passionate users of technology that works for us. If you truly want to innovate, then bring us in early. We urge you to connect with organizations that represent a wide range of disabilities and to invite community members to participate as beta testers and advisors.
Because nothing about us should be decided without us.
This is a chance to create something truly inclusive, to honor the accessibility legacy you’ve already helped shape, and to build a future where everyone benefits. We’re here. We’re ready to collaborate. Let’s make sure this next chapter of innovation includes all of us.
Sincerely,
Mike Calvo
CEO and Co-founder
Pneuma Solutions

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Tak jsme se ženou nechali od @sesivany navézt do editace @osmcz přes StreetComplete a řešíme takové ontologické dilema: Je klasická pražská mozaika ze své podstaty spíše dlažbou nrbo dlažební kostkou?

Já to chápal užitně, že je narozdíl od kočičích hlav ok pro vozík, podpatky nebo skateboard, tudíž dlažba.

Teď jsem si ale všiml, že jiní to karegorizují jako kostky a jakože musím uznat, že se skládá z kostek...

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in reply to FifiSch
některé tagy nemají jasně vymezené hranice, což bývá předmětem dlouhých diskusí na fóru. Člověk by se tak neměl trápit tím, že stejnou věc někdo jiný označuje jinak, pokud se jedná o podobné materiály.
Dlažební kostky (sett) mají být nahrubo opracované přírodní kameny do podoby kostky, mezery mezi nimi jsou zpravidla větší. Dlažba (paving stones) může být jak z přírodního, tak umělého materiálu, má dokonalejší tvar a je zpravidla vydlážděná s menšími mezerami.
To, co je na fotce, jsou za mě dlažební kostky, ale ani s dlažbou člověk velkou chybu neudělá.
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While at #SightCity yesterday, I was introduced to a line of Braille displays called b.note by Eurobraille. Intriguingly, they are powered by a Raspberry Pi, using Debian Linux as their OS. Apparently there's a developer mode, which allows users to connect to it via ssh, and even extend functionality using Python scripts. I'm already in the market for a new display and now very strongly considering getting one of these, especially since I quite liked the keyboard and Braille modules as well.

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in reply to Alex Hall
@alexhall But yes, this display does use the more traditional piezoelectric Braille cells. I was personally happy about that, as they do feel very similar to the Handy Tech Active Star which I'm currently using, and which is also sadly in the process of slowly falling apart. To be fair though, I have been using this display for around 10 years, which means it has actually outlived all the other tech on my desk right now.
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Ukraine is home to the world’s longest musical instrument - the trembita, a traditional wooden alpine horn that can reach up to 8 meters (26 feet) in length. Used primarily by the Hutsuls of the Carpathian Mountains, the trembita is crafted from hollowed spruce or pine, split and rejoined, then wrapped in birch bark. Despite its massive size, the instrument is lightweight and portable, designed to carry sound across great distances in mountainous terrain.
The trembita has been used for centuries, primarily not as a musical instrument in the conventional sense, but as a tool of communication. In the remote highlands, where settlements were scattered and roads were scarce, the trembita served as a kind of natural radio. It announced births, deaths, funerals, seasonal migrations, the return of shepherds, or emergencies like wolf sightings or raids. Each call followed a specific pattern, immediately recognizable to those familiar with its codes.
Mentions of similar long alpine horns exist as far back as the medieval period. In the 16th and 17th centuries, records from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth note the use of long horns in the Carpathians, likely early references to the trembita. The instrument also appears in traditional Ukrainian folklore, poetry, and Hutsul legends, often associated with nature, spiritual rituals, and transitions between life and death. In some traditions, it was said that the trembita's sound could guide a soul to the afterlife.
The trembita was also used in religious and seasonal rituals - especially around Christmas and Easter - often in combination with carols or ceremonial processions. In some areas, trembitas would announce the arrival of guests or the start of a festival. During the Soviet era, the trembita was repurposed as a folkloric showpiece in state-sanctioned performances, which helped preserve it, even if its original role diminished.
Yet, it was not forgotten and remains widely used today, despite the attempts by the Soviet Union to gradually suppress Ukrainian culture, language, and anything related to its rich and noble history.

#Ukraine #UkraineFacts #DidYouKnow

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I literally just made a bootable live cd for nixos to boot into a browser on a whim for a test. I had 0 knowledge of this 10 minutes ago and 5 of those minutes was writing the iso to the usb stick. Nix surprises me again. And you can make any type of image you want... digitalocean, ec2, hyperv, vmware, etc. Its nuts:
github.com/nix-community/nixos…

#nixos

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🚨 *Attention!* We were made aware of a fake “KeePassXC Password Manager Pro” repository on GitHub that links to unverified external binary downloads.
- There is NO Pro version of KeePassXC!
- You get all the “Pro” features with the regular version.
Please download KeePassXC only from trusted distribution channels linked on keepassxc.org/ !

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Once upon a time, a blonde became so sick of hearing blonde jokes that she had her hair cut and dyed brown. A few days later, as she was out driving around
the countryside, she stopped her car to let a flock of sheep pass.

Admiring the cute wooly creatures, she said to the shepherd, "If I can guess how many sheep you have, can I take one?"

The shepherd, always the gentleman, said, "Sure!" The blonde thought for a moment and, for no discernible reason, said, "352."

This being the correct number, the shepherd was, understandably, totally amazed, and exclaimed, "You're right! O.K., I'll keep to my end of the deal. Take
your pick of my flock."

The blonde carefully considered the entire flock and finally picked the one that was by far cuter and more playful than any of the others.

When she was done, the shepherd turned to her and said, "O.K., now I have a proposition for you. If I can guess your true hair color, can I have my dog
back?"

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I've started editing my way through a small collection of short stories formerly published in the New European Magazine between 1822 and 1823. Here's the first of eventually six stories: 'The Funeral' by Thomas Richards.

bydbach.hcommons.org/wandering…

#Wales #Literature #RomanticFiction #DigitalEdition #OpenAccess

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“Out of 949 visual media attached in your 673 public posts with visual media, 935 have alt text. That's about 99%. You're doing a great job!”

I’ll take it! Through it is tempting to go back and fix those outliers…

Check your account here: stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/1…

#AltText

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#Catima 2.35.0 is out!

This release lets you further tweak the barcode size in the fullscreen view and slightly improves barcode finding reliability when scanning or loading a barcode from an image or PDF file. It also fixes a crash when trying to load a pkpass file without a barcode in it.

Coming soon to an app store near you :)

github.com/CatimaLoyalty/Andro…

#Android #OpenSource #IzzyOnDroid #FDroid #GooglePlay #GitHub

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A bit under a year ago, my friend Michael Sheppard and I released our first album. I'm super excited to present our second album, Toward Hope.
Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/0xBJ5vL…
Apple Music: music.apple.com/au/album/towar…
YouTube: youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK…

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I just published my new instrumental called "Sea Time, the Sound Waves of Marbella" (for now on Youtube only).
Hope you like it! youtu.be/sxgSjdoMvbQ
#music #acoustic #instumental

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Also totally forgot to talk about this yesterday.
As a part of global accessibility awareness day, we put out a new update for the Be My Eyes app for Windows that is completely rebuild from the ground up. Along with giving us a better base to build amazing new features for desktop in the near future, this new app also fixes a lot of the accessibility issues that people have reported over the last 1.5 or so years.
In addition Chat History is now also available on Desktop, so you can start a conversation from mobile and continue it on desktop (and vice versa).

#a11y #bemyeyes #gaad #globalaccessibilityawarenessday
#blind #bme #tech
#disability #assistivetech

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Geeky stuff aside, let's enjoy the hottest friday party ever. @Marek Macko is on air again with his awesome show called #playgroundLive. #dance, #trance, a bit of #hardStyle, #eurodance, #90s and other party genres in an incredible live mix performance lasting a few hours spiced up with some random chat messages of fellow listeners and friends.
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My band The Velvet just released out newest single called When the smoke clears, TAke a listen here: youtube.com/watch?v=tILuLXqlXO… #metal #guitar #hammond #hardrock

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Gerade auf Droidblind gepostet: Das ist neu in TalkBack 16.0 droidblind.de/blog/talkback16

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I love #joplin so much. I find myself using it to publish long documents that I want others to read that are well formatted, but in plain HTML so can't be edited, and live on my server. Better than a PDF by far, and markdown makes including tables and other complicated layout easy. The only improvement I'd love is the ability to see how many visits a published note got. I don't need browser and IP and location and all that stuff. Just a number, so I can know if a link I shared with a single person was viewed by them.

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in reply to 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦

I've tried Obsidian, Silverbullet and Trilium Next, all of which had very significant accessibility issues I discovered within the first minute that made them not viable.

#Joplin was such a delight in comparison. There are minor bugs I've noticed, but nothing that prevents me from being productive. Thanks (@joplinapp for the amazing work.

The main thing I'm trying to figure out is setting up a build pipeline to export my public notes to .md and publishing it as a static site.

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Dear #Letsencrypt, you helped secure millions and millions of servers, not just web servers. But your announcement at letsencrypt.org/2025/05/14/end… about ending Ending TLS Client Authentication Certificate Support in 2026 because Google changes their requirements would result in your certificates becoming a possible risk for ensuring SMTP traffic. Please think again. Please.

1/5

This entry was edited (Friday, May 16, 2025, 10:42 AM)

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Here's the only sample we have of the CyberTalk synth, reading a part of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. You will hear the male voice first, than the female voice.

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*How secure is UnifiedPush?*

It’s a legitimate question that comes up from time to time. While the question is fairly short, the answer requires a few details. Behind the question of security, it’s also often about privacy.

unifiedpush.org/news/20250513_…

#UnifiedPush #PushNotifications #Android #FCM #Privacy

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