on mastodon I really enjoy moshidon. It doesn't really work with Sharkey so I've been using Aria recently, which the ui is a bit funky for but ain't bad
Typically Linux distros have a live system to run an installer that installs a second system. What if instead, we booted from the ISO into the installed system and saved it to disk in the background while already using the system. I call it prêt-à-booter image, and I have made a demo for GNOME OS. youtube.com/watch?v=3gG96DwtUg…
This demo shows what could be the future of GNOME installer. Instead of having a live image that can install another instance of the system, what boots into ...
I wonder who might be willing to fund an overhaul of Java accessibility on Windows, particularly for frameworks that run on top of AWT like Swing and the desktop version of Jetpack Compose. The old Java Access Bridge for Windows was necessary back when there was nothing but Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA). But today, Java should implement UI Automation.
It's too far back in my timeline, but I just installed blip, a free file transferring application on Windows. It works on other platforms too. The link I used was on a blog post where they discussed how it worked with Voiceover on the Mac. On windows? 100 percent inaccessible. I can't navigate anything at all. I pushed enter and it took me to a license agreement page. That's all I can get it to do. What a blah. I imagine it works fine on Android. How is there anything on Windows that is just 0 navigation at all. I can't move the navigator object in NVDA or anything. Absolutely nothing, like it's a video game. That's pretty rare to find something that bad.
If I were to take on this project, I would probably use my own AccessKit (accesskit.dev/) as a basis for a new Java-to-native accessibility bridge, at least on Windows. That would save the effort of doing a new ground-up UI Automation implementation. Then we could see how AccessKit compares to the existing Java accessibility implementations on macOS and Linux. Judging by the post I just linked, Java accessibility seems to be in better shape on macOS than on Windows.
@pvagner Linux does not seem in a good state either. On Archlinux, I was not able to make say, Ghidra talk, even that the java ATK bridge was installed and seemingly even configured to be loaded.
#XMPP enthusiasts out there: what would you say the ultimate Achilles heel of the XMPP ecosystem is, at present? Fragmentation of clients? What?
My sense is that it's this: when one goes to store an XMPP address in one's addressbook, there doesn't seem to be standard way to store an XMPP address. #Android doesn't have that as an allowable field, and #Thunderbird and #Nextcloud have an "Instant Messaging" field, where the type can be set to "XMPP". But are these two compatible with each other when trying to sync between them? Edit: Yes, but there's a catch: *the XMPP address must be prefixed with "xmpp:"*
So "user@foo.bar" is not an OK XMPP address, but "xmpp:user@foo.bar" is.
Then to make matters worse, now there's a wish to change the labeling of "XMPP Address" to "Chat ID": gultsch.social/@daniel/1140129…
It might be a long time before the address synchy-ness ever works again between Android <-> #Davx5 <-> Nextcloud <->Thunderbird
Note: Android allows a "Jabber" type for an IM address, where you *don't* prefix the address with "xmpp:".
(#DeltaChat gets to gloat hard here, as they have plain-old email addresses)
The address book field is a non-problem for most users IMHO. If you have a single XMPP account, your roster effectively act as your XMPP addressbook and non-tech savvy users do not look further.
If you're still recommending #Signal, you may have missed the tech oligarchs' takeover of the US government. The best time to recommend European alternatives was 8 years ago; the second best is now.
the only part of XMPP I am nervous about is security. Signal's marketing is quite open in how the communication is secured and how they are improving it over time. For example they already use ML-KEM for key exchange? Algorithm that should withstand quantum computing. In XMPP we have years old OMEMO and no info about future extensions. And I really don't know where we stand. 🤷♂️
Hi Daniel, It's not a matter of government, many european government are shit like US government. As almost always are governments. Anyway, XMPP at the moment I think is the best choice that a person can make to chat.
I'm sure your message is well-intentioned but this is a dangerous and misguided suggestion.
For now @signalapp remains the best option for accessible secure messaging. Right now - especially with the US government being completely rogue - we need secure, vetted, private means to communicate and organize.
When there is a company that provides Signal's guarantees based in the EU, I will gladly use it. Until then, Signal is your best bet for private communications with others.
Are you joking? XMPP is cool, but it's nowhere near to Signal in terms of security. Signal's security model is so tight that it does not really matter from which country main servers are provided, as it was proven to court Signal has minimal info about your metadata, let alone message contents. Please do not mislead people and talk shit about Signal.
XMPP is a messaging protocol (among other things) that needs no introduction to any technical audience. Its various implementations have proliferated through technical communities for decades. Many…
Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) is now blocking links to "Signal.me," a URL used by the Signal encrypted messaging to share your account info with another person.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.
@debacle wrench is cheaper now, but will it be cheaper in 5 years? Messages can be collected now and cracked later but data in those messages can still be relevant for the attacker then. Plus you have to add the new tech adoption speed, which seems especially slow in XMPP. That's why ML-KEM was standardized now and that's why I am asking.
@norbert If you’re still recommending #Signal you know that it is still the best choice for secure messaging for a wide range of users. Takeover of the government doesn’t change anything about how Signal operates.
Ummm, I have updated to @Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox daily 137 20250214 and subsequently 20250216 and I have embarassing issue with it. I can't send emails. When pressing ctrl+enter or corresponding item from the File menu, nothing happens. I'm on linux. Let's look into the bugzilla if someone else has found it too.
@Thunderbird: Free Your Inbox I have discovered this is not a bug but some kind of corruption in my thunderbird profile. This is printed to the console while trying to send an email. All the sqlite files in the profile folder have some content, none of them is corrupted according to sqlite3 pragma integrity_check; but I still can't figure it out.
@matt Yup, I've even used it. But SetWindowSubclass is a lot more convenient. I assume it just does the same thing behind the scenes, but I'm always happier to use something with less potential footguns (assuming it doesn't involve rewriting or re-learning the world).
When creating an account on Wikipedia and all other Wikimedia projects, you still have to fill in a captcha with no accessible alternative, apart from asking someone to create one for you. The issue ticket about this will be 20 years old next year and still nothing's being done about it. phabricator.wikimedia.org/T684…
I just migrated my personal #XMPP server based on #Prosody to its own #selfhosted server. I could not believe how easy it was, including transferring configuration, accounts, stored messages/files, etc.
BTW, the new server is just tiny, with 1GB of RAM, and it still seems to use only a fraction of it.
I suppose this is the result of dealing with an amazing protocol (XMPP) coupled with an excellent piece of technology (Prosody) 👏
Pro tip: save the QR code somewhere and whenever you want to re-setup simply scan it again . Also great to help other not so tech savvy users by simply giving them a QR code!
@SanskritFritz for example put the manually created davx5:// URL into duckduck.go search field and add qr! behind it. It will display the QR for you which you can save or send somewhere else
@radasbona that is not possible yet since the internals of DAVx5 are spread between the system and davx5 and a lot can go wrong when importing data back. we are currently refactoring a lot of stuff and hope to provide better backup possibilities in the (not so far) future!
Wow, that is truly amazing! Didn't realize that, although now that I think about it, the first OSARA tutorial I listened to was the series on the AudioPizza podcast done by Garth Humphreys, and that was in 2017 I think. And of course, later the "ten things" series done by Scott. Nowadays, I can't imagine using another DAW any more, OSARA and REAPER just work so damn well.
@Marco Zehe @Jamie Teh Yes I can't write it better but I have to add that you helped to make it happen again. Not only we have access to computers, musicians and audio enthusiasts have equal access to high quality sound engineering and music production since #osara has been introduced. Congrats on such an achievement!
As of Ableton Move V1.3, released a few days ago, you can now sample from audio sent to the USB C port. This is useful enough as it is stated, I.E. you can make a sound with a synth on your Mac or PC, then instantly sample it into Move without rendering and uploading a wave file, or connecting a line input and sampling it through the Move DAC. However, for those of us who rely on accessibility, there is another hidden benefit.
Let's say you're on an airplane or something. You have an iPhone or Android with USB C, and you want to access Move Manager at move.local, so you can use the built-in web-based screen reader. Traditionally, this needs a Wi-Fi connection, but since you're on a plane, that doesn't work. The Move's USB C port also acts as an Ethernet connection, so you can theoretically just plug your phone into USB C, then open your browser and go to move.local. Yep, that works fine, except... oops, you're also a Voiceover/talkback/some other screen reader user, and audio gets routed away from the phone to absolutely nowhere... at least, that used to be the case. Now, you can select USB C in the sample mode, and it will pipe audio from whatever is sent to that port to Move's built-in speakers or the headphone jack. Thus, it's now possible for blind and visually impaired operators to use Move's screen reader when completely offline, with no way to access Wi-Fi without having to deal with a bunch of splitters, cables and mixers. I bet they didn't even think of that use-case, but I'm happy to see it.
Since sample mode doesn't talk yet, the best way I've found to make this work is to connect your device to Move's USB C port, wait until speech goes away, press sample, then click the wheel until your device starts making noise through Move's output. There are now three options that are toggled when clicking the wheel on the first item in sample mode. The default is to record from Move's mic/line-in, second is resampling, and third is USB C. The USB C option, far as I can tell, only appears when a device is connected to the USB C port.
Unfortunately, this year I could not join nor organize any in-person celebration, BUT of course I want to share my gratitude to the many, countless #FreeSoftware services I don’t merely use, but actually depend on.
Last year, I decided to focus only on #YunoHost, because it would have been crazy to list all the projects I use and I love.
This time, even if I will most certainly forget someone, I am challenging myself to mention all the #LibreSoftware my life is powered by.
#Obtainium, for making me directly download apps on my phone, and @fdroidorg for distributing them
#AuroraStore, for proxying the download of apps I am doomed to get from Google Play
@element, for developing #Synapse, even though the new proprietary Synapse Pro is VERY PROBLEMATIC AND DISAPPOINTING
#Fractal, for being the most beautiful and awesome #Matrix client ever
@signalapp, for keeping me connected with the people I love
@Mastodon, for also maintaining a feature-packed experimental fork (#GlitchSoc), that is what Pan runs
#Tuba and #Moshidon, for being the most beautiful and awesome #Mastodon clients ever
#Firefox, for still remaining the best possible #browser choice, despite #Mozilla’s governance messiness
@openstreetmap, for allowing us to find the right path, both literally and metaphorically!
@organicmaps, for being the simplest, cleanest, yet feature-rich #OSM client and navigation app
@protonvpn, for making me browse safely from/to anywhere in the planet and @protonprivacy #ProtonMail, for hosting my email, despite the latest alarming political statements…
@libreoffice, for allowing me to draft documents with ease, the last of which was my #CV
#LanguageTool, for preventing me from making embarassing spelling mistakes
@photoprism, for safely storing and indexing all my photographic memories, on Aby, and for providing stellar and friendly support too!
#Actual, for moderating the very likely risk of ending up completely broke, since it forces me to manage my finances consciously and coherently
@readeck, for storing and sorting ALL my varied and overwhelming inputs
@nextcloud, for storing and synchronizing my data, for its #calendar, its #tasks, and all its awesome apps
#Rustdesk, for preventing my friends and family members from going crazy, by allowing me to remotely connect to their devices and directly address the issues they have
@forgejo, for giving us a chance to truly control and collectively develop the sources of our software, but most importantly @Codeberg, for RESISTING, RESISTING, RESISTING, despite the hatred and attacks nazi assholes throw at them
@musicbrainz for keeping music knowledge open and free, and @ListenBrainz for scrobbling the crazy music I listen to
The @fsfe, for promoting this celebration and fighting the good fight!
Lastly, but most importantly, the biggest thank you goes to all the free software libraries and dependencies the above mentioned #software are made of/built with, including #C, #JavaScript, #Python, #Rust, and all community-maintained programming languages.
I don't think the video is up yet, but I believe in this FOSDEM talk it was mentioned that the model was still something like 200MB, so that might be optimistic: fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event…
For at least the last 15 years, the translations of GNOME into Czech have been in excellent condition. With each release, I would only report that everything was translated, and for the last few years, this was also true the vast majority of the documentation. However, last year things started to falter. Contributors who had been carrying this for many years left, and there is no one to take over after them. Therefore, we have decided to admit it publicly: GNOME currently has no Czech translators, and unless someone new takes over, the translations will gradually decline.
Personally, I started working on GNOME translations in 2008 when I began translating my favorite groupware client – Evolution. At that time, the leadership of the translation team was taken over by Petr Kovář, who was later joined by Marek Černocký who maintained the translations for many years and did an enormous amount of work. Thanks to him, GNOME was almost 100% translated into Czech, including the documentation. However, both have completely withdrawn from the translations. For a while, they were replaced by Vojtěch Perník and Daniel Rusek, but the former has also left, and Dan has now come to the conclusion that he can no longer carry on the translations alone.
I suggested to Dan that instead of trying to appeal to those who the GNOME translations have relied on for nearly two decades—who have already contributed a lot and are probably facing some form of burnout or have simply moved on to something else after so many years—it would be better to reach out to the broader community to see if there is someone from a new generation who would be willing and energetic enough to take over the translations. Just as we did nearly two decades ago.
It may turn out that an essential part of this process will be that the GNOME translations into Czech will decline for some time.Because the same people have been doing the job for so many years, the community has gotten used to taking excellent translations for granted. But it is not. Someone has to do the work. As more and more English terms appear in the GNOME interface, perhaps dissatisfaction will motivate someone to do something about it. After all, that was the motivation for the previous generation to get involved.
If someone like that comes forward, Dan and I are willing to help them with training and gradually hand over the project. We may both continue to contribute in a limited capacity, but the project needs someone new, ideally not just one person, but several, because carrying it alone is a path to burnout. Interested parties can contact us in the mailing list of the Czech translation team at diskuze-l10n-cz@lists.openalt.org.
have you considered organizing a translathon at the Brno Red Hat office? The String Freeze is coming soon, so that would be a good opportunity to get people involved and maybe find the next generation.
We'll see if there is any interest. I've been too busy lately to organize a hackfest just in case someone shows up. I've talked to several people who showed some interest, but pretty much everyone was put off by the GNOME's l10n infra. Damn Lies haven't evolved at all in the last 15 years. We old timers don't mind it or may even welcome it, but these days people are used to better UX. I wonder this could also significantly contribute to this situation. :(
If you inspire/coax someone to write better/additional tools that could also be a good outcome. I'm far enough from this problem (in multiple ways) that I'm unlikely to help myself, but I like the way that this thread lays out the problem and does what y'all can to invite in new contributors.
@Brno Hat Oh btw most likelly this is known already, however the same can be said about slovak translations of gnome apps. I'm trying to update 1 or 2 of my favorite apps each year, there are too few maintainers and I'd welcome anyone capable and keen on joining to try translating or updating translation of their favorite apps. Later on perhaps we'll manage to improve the overal outcome.
@pvagner Vtostian gnome translation is also done by just one person, but the difference is that he doesn't want to form the team. He is trying to do monopoly, and that's why me as a young person gave up. I don't want to fight with somebody who doesn't accept help.
Amazon is removing the ability to download purchased Kindle content, which is the only way to read it on my Kobo or elsewhere. What this means is I will no longer be purchasing (“a license to”–ick) any books by the mostly independent authors who exclusively publish there; just cancelled preorders.
@FreakyFwoof @jscholes Yeah, I conveniently located myself to Paris for this weekend. But the worry, but russia flips the switch early, leaving Estonia without power was real. Power generator sales were soaring in january.
@jakobrosin @FreakyFwoof @jscholes I hope Estonia will soon switch to other energy sources. Syncing with the European energy network is a good first step. I am sort of surprised that Estonia still depends on Russia in anything. Good move re Paris.
@vick21 @FreakyFwoof @jscholes I'm honestly surprised that our border to russia is still open. Have no idea why, while everyone else has had a clear decision on it.
It's not perfect, but it's quite usable, you can sync encrypted notes up to a server and use it anywhere, like on your phone, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. It has collaboration as well, so you can share an entire notebook and work on things together. It has around 200 official plugins, like a journal mode, you can make notes public so people can read it, and a lot of cool things that just work out of the box. It can send you native notifications as well from a todo list.
Yeah it's nice. I got the basic cloud plan with edu discount cuz I'm not confident enough in my hosting skills but once that subscription expires, which won't be that soon, I might also try selfhosting.
It recently became accessible, yes. I tried it a year or two ago and it was unusable but there has been a lot of work put into it and now it has everything I ever need, including templates which none of the notetaking apps had so far.
It's defenitly! The only thing I've considered as a bit annoying so far is the settings dialog on windows, because whenever I switch tabs its telling me some randomm setting from the task, like I switch to general and NVDA is already saying something about English US even though I haven't even moved to that languages list but I was to lazy to report and no idea how to properly formulate that and it doesn't make it unusable or something so heh. The general experience is fine. Also on android and I appriciate that because my previous app was ok on windows but horrible on mobile.
Managed to get it to build on ARM since it was missing a dependency, also half of the environment variables are missing from the .envSample, but for the most part it's quite straightforward. Let me know if you need some help in the future, it's really worth it just for the collaboration part alone.
Call with a universal credit agent a couple of days ago. 'So can you upload a CV?' 'Yes sure, I can do that.' 'How will you do that, can you use a computer?' 'Yep, no problem.' 'How do you do that, do you use bra-lay?' 'What?' 'Bra-lay.' 'Oh, you mean Braille?...' 'Yes, yes. Braille. That's it.' 'Well, I can read braille but I will use a screen-reader.' 'Oh, you use a screen-reader?'
Yep, that's how my call went. I've heard of some weirdness in my time but 'Bra-lay' for Braille, that, is a special kind of special right there.
We have enabled Fast Authentication Streamlining Tokens (XEP-0484) on conversations.im. This completes a set of extensions designed to significantly improve the speed, reliability, and security of login.
could you share some details about what needed to be done to enable this on the server side? I would especially be interested in the modules that need to be configured for Prosody (if that is what's powering conversations.im )
I did a static analysis on the DeepSeek Android app
tl;dr it does aggressive device fingerprinting, root detection, has anti-tampering mechanisms, bundles native code and has dynamic code loading and execution facilities
none of which should be necessary for an app like this
#Movuary day 3 brings you a classic example of why I should not be allowed to make music like this, whatever this is supposed to be. I don't know how to classify it, and I wrote it. Creapy broken jazzy dub and bass? I dunno...
#Movuary day 4 is far less complex or refined than anything I've done so far. I had a bad night's sleep, and a roaring headache, so I woke up and made this thing. Pretty much just slapped it down and said "to hell with it."
For #Movuary day 5, I decided to do something a little different. Thus, Cheap Plastic Oxygene was born. This is a cover of Oxygene, Pt. 4 (1976), using slightly tweeked stock sounds from the Move, except for the drums, which I found from a sample pack of vintage drum machines.
I ran into a whole bunch of limitations making this one. There was more I wanted to do, but I ran out of space in the clips, and didn't have any spare pads left for resampling without further compromising stuff. There are a couple of glitches, which I left in there, because imperfections FTW, or something.
With apologies to Jean-Michel Jarre for butchering his fantastic work.
#movuary day 7 isn't a track. Not exactly. It's an attempt to simulate shortwave radio conditions using a groovebox, which is, let's just say, not ideal, and certainly outside of the intended scope for such a thing. This was done by automating the parameters of a compressor, a phaser with it's frequency turned down all the way, and a couple of different high pass filters over time. The radio noise was sampled by plugging my Tecsun PL-990X shortwave radio into Move's line input, and tuning to a frequency somewhere around the 40m band with nothing going on.
I did this soon after I got my Move, but touched it up a bit since then.
#Movuary day 9: When Flipper the Dolphin (now known as Deejay Flippa) isn't saving people in the waters of the Florida Keys in the 1960s or whatever, he's in the studio making mad beats about the injustices of the world, with his man Calquale.wav from the 1995 Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia.
Yes, I was, in fact, rather bored a while back. Interestingly, by original Ableton Move broke while I was making this, so I didn't get to finish it until I got the replacement unit.
I have posted this before, but this is a slightly different mix with a couple of bugs fixed and new ones added.
Several years ago, I had a dream. In that dream, someone (not me) was standing, watching as everything they knew and loved was burned in a fire. There was a sequence playing in the background. This is my attempt to somewhat re-create what I heard, at least in part, in this dream.
#movuary day 11: Ya Got Me. This is based on samples from my Franklin Language Master 6000 SE talking dictionary. I sampled the really dirty pulse wave it produces in test mode, as well as some common phrases. This was all made with just three tracks, because I couldn't think of what to do with a fourth one. It's pretty busy as-is.
@cachondo I still have the Language Master manual in text format, because of course I do, and test mode isn't mentioned there. I had no idea about it either until a previous thread on here about the Language Master
@cachondo Oh no re throwing out everything re the Language Master. My own story with them was bizarre, too: I had a government-owned one (bought by our Vision Impairment Service) from age eight to thirteen, until it broke. When I was aged 11, a local charity raised money to buy me one of my own, but the volume control on it broke within three months and it became unusable. That charity also helped me buy a Braille Scrabble set, which I got much more use out of
@graham it felt like an incredible bit of microelectronics to me at the time. All my sighted friends had these ridiculous printed dictionaries where people had torn out pages and scribbled over things and I had this fantastic gadget.
@cachondo @graham My brother got one in 1994 before he went to college. I kept trying to hide it so he would hopefully not find it before he left for school. Didn't work. I was sad.
@cachondo Yeah it was amazing ... and did so much more than a printed dictionary ever could. I went from a 6-volume Braille children's dictionary that didn't even have the word cat, to the language master ... saying it was "like night and day" doesn't even cut it
@graham also I've never found a software version that is as good. I mean in terms of having the homophones, thesaurus, parts of speech and everything. It's mad that the best dictionary i have ever used across a bunch of metrics is a similar age to me.
@graham @cachondo I only found it by accident. Don't know what lead me to it. I think @FreakyFwoof either told me about it, or we both just started typing in random double and triple hyphen things to see what they did.
@KaraLG84 @FreakyFwoof @graham I'd not heard the demo before. Pretty cool that it actually says a number of phrases in there rather than doing every single thing word-by-word as it normally does. so far I've seen that --- does the tones and --demo does the demo. ---n makes weird noises. I've not seen anything else.
@KaraLG84 @FreakyFwoof @graham sorry, I did mean to write that ---p does the octave tones. Why p? who knows. I'd love to be able to emulate this thing for ever.
#movuary day 12: This is not a keygen. It is, however, a sequence I made from memory after hearing one in the early 2000s, not having heard it for years before that. I have since heard the original. I got some notes wrong, but oh well. I'm keeping it like that. This also happens to be a variation on the Alf theme, composed by Alf Clausen. An Alf for an Alf. How convenient!
In 1998 (May 19, 1998, specifically), I downloaded some weird, not at all accessible MIDI sequencer thing. I don't remember the name of it. Seems like maybe it had the word art in it somewhere. Anyhow, I opened it, and clicked on a bunch of unlabeled graphics with my screen reader, which produced this odd thing in E flat pentatonic major. So, because I'm feeling very uninspired at the moment, I hooked a MIDI interface up to move, and another one to my computer, recorded this MIDI file into Move, added a drum track, and now I'm posting it here. The Melody is unedited from it's original, except for one note that I didn't like.
This is a much extended version of one of my earliest Move projects, using a bunch of samples I recorded of my Perkins Brailler from 1962 as the drum track.
Several years ago, @FreakyFwoof showed me an advert for gillette energizing moisturiser, featuring the phrase "Winter hates your face." Makes me laugh every time I hear it, especially the way this guy said it.
So, back in December, during a particularly cold, snowy day, I demucsed stems from it, so much as I could, and imported elements into Move to have some fun with it. This is the result.
Drums, bass, the vocal, and the mod-like power chord electric guitar all come from the original advert.
In December, I had a goal to cover Harold Faltermire's Axel F for the 40th anniversary of the movie Beverly Hills Cop, which was December 5, 2024, using Ableton Move, so I did that. Being a product of 1984 myself, it just seemed like a good idea. At the time I did it, this was the most complicated sequence I had ever done on this little four track groovebox. Don't think that's the case anymore. It's also a demonstration that you can really do a lot with only four tracks and a little creativity. There are lots of "but it only has four tracks" Move haters out there.
There is absolutely no way I will ever get the sounds exactly right using a tool like this. In this case, I'm aiming for close enough to be recognizable, both in terms of the sound and the sequence.
All sounds were stock, except for the kick and snare drums, which really could have been stock, but I found slightly better versions of those sounds in a sample pack and used them instead of the stock versions.
This is an idea that I sequenced originally in May of 2006 on my Yamaha Motif, now redone in Move. It's still about as finished as it was in 2006, I.E. not at all, really, but I'm posting it anyway.
I woke up this morning with the chord progression from Black Street's 'My Paradise" stuck in my head, so I moved it... kind of. It's also a good excuse to have some solo fun with a synth lead sound.
For this one, I hooked up a MIDI keyboard, though I played most of the e-piano part on the pads. I made about 90% of this sequence without using the Move's screen reader.
Well, yeah, but that's also the name of the track.
I woke up this morning feeling crappy, stuffy and headache-y, so I sampled a bunch of angry metal noises from a library called Black Metal, as well as a couple of Korg iKaossilator loops I made in 2016, synced using Ableton Link and sampled from my iPhone using a direct USB C connection (no external DAC), told my non-existent Sharp EL-640 to keep reminding me that it's Thursday, and made a track out of all that.
Appropriately enough, I was dealing with quite an annoying little bug in the current Move beta firmware while making this, so I was rather angry and annoyed. Totally fits.
Seems appropriate to post this today, though it's a thing I made back in October, then finished in November after getting my replacement Move.
I've been away from home for a little over six months, and I'm going back in a few hours, with trepidation for various reasons. Yep, time is up, indeed.
This is based around the dingdong sound from my Radio Shack Vox Clock II talking clock, and the spoken words "time is up." Also features a cheap Russian-made watch going ticktock in the background throughout much of the piece.
So, Onj sent me an unfinished set to play with, thus, I played with it. This originally had drums, keys, and a pluck/almost e-piano sounding thing. I added a sign wave lead and an organ, hastily recorded with my Hamond-suzuki XK-2 a few minutes before leaving for the airport, so I didn't have time to do anything truly exciting with the organ. It was a one-shot recording. Did weird broken stuff with the track, because jazz is broken.
This is what happens when I don't at all take anything seriously, and do something odd with the four random sounds it throws at me when creating a new set.
While my day 4 submission was just an automation salad from the move, the day 7 #Movuary is a bit more regulated attempt at automation. iOs veterans will definitely recognise the samples used here.
Check out the official Ableton Move website: https://www.ableton.com/en/move/Ableton Move is the first piece of hardware I've personally been excited by in y...
@fireborn Yeah, but you can add lots of your own too. It ships with 64 GB of internal storage. It's non-removable and you upload using it's web-based move manager, but at least you can.
@fireborn If you look through the uploads, you'll hear stuff that Patrick, Kara and Jakob have also done. Some of those contain external samples. Yesterday I did one using samples from a Perkins Brailler for example.
Get it connected to your phone's access point/personal hotspot. Plug your phone into the line input of the Move. Monitor both with headphones. Everything talks, woohoo.
@fireborn Yep. Whatever is on the line input is passed through to the output jack, unless you are using the resample function, which... yeah, I do that a lot. Haven't done that while on the go yet, though, so I'll figure that one out when I get to that point, I guess. Braille display?
@fireborn Also, to see just how powerful and cool this is, look up the associated Movuary hash-tag and se what others are doing with it. This thing absolutely rocks.
#NextCloud #accessibility is highly impacted by this thing that seems very small. What they did is they removed (!) the Copy Public Link from the context menu in their File Explorer integration. I don't know who to call, but I'm pretty sure we need to create more noise in there. I'm thinking about starting a petition. Please join me! github.com/nextcloud/desktop/i… // CC @nextcloud
Hi, The public share link has been removed with the 3.15 client version. Could it be possible to bring back this feature ? Below, a screen from a right click on a folder/file with the 3.14.3 client...
Yup, I absolutely agree. Sounds stupid but that was a very big reason for me to not spin up NC on my new server again, the clients GUI is garbage anyway, and use GoogleDrive instead. I know it's not the same, and I wish NC would get more useable again, but I'm sick of that kinda half accessible weird crap they're doing with the desktop client, the rest is acceptable imo.
Seafile's web interface was more accessible last I checked. And there was a long standing horrific data deletion bug that caused me to immediately avoid Nextcloud
Expected behaviour Nextcloud Desktop should not remove files from the server that are not gone from the machine. Actual behaviour Two days ago, Nextcloud desktop removed all my files from the serve...
can you open a new issue about accessibility concerns in regards to removal of the Copy Public Link option? It's good to have a dedicated report to review and address it.
Are there any news on this so far? Like, I know the GH issue is still desatesfying, but do you plan to do more yet? Like, I'm so bored I would actually get up a nextcloud again but that link generation thing makes me not doing it.
@jonathan859 As suggested by an actual person from NextCloud, I will create a separate issue about accessibility implications of this removal. Also, I'm considering trying SeaFile as an alternative. I tried also OCIS (it's kind of a new OwnCloud thing), but there sharing seems to be over-complicated.
Experimented yesterday with Fedora’s KDE spin… I was shocked by the level of accessibility, although it wasn’t perfect. My primary issues with it were that I had to use a lot of Orca’s navigation commands to read panels in the systems settings app, and I had major issues with Konsole, the default terminal app. I wasn’t able to read any of the information in that particular apps interface using Orca. I also tried the Fedora workstation edition, which uses Gnome as it’s a desktop environment. Let’s just say that was not worth my time. Had accessibility issues there as well, and surprisingly it was worse than the experience I had with KDE. I know KDE defaults to Wayland, as does Gnome, but KDE’s accessibility implementation seems to be a lot better than what Gnome has under Wayland, with the exceptions I’ve previously mentioned. Incidentally, the X 11 experience with Gnome is actually worse now than it was previously. For example, the terminal app does not even open for me. I should also note that all this is under Fedora 41, so people aren’t confused. #A11Y #Accessibility #Blind #Experiments #Linux #Fedora41 #KDePlasma #Gnome #Wayland #X11
@tyrylu @JRepin the best example that I can think of off the top of my head is when using the terminal app while Orca is running, you cannot stop speech by hitting the control key. As a matter of fact, all the typical Orca keyboard commands seem to have issues. Another example that comes to mind is specific to Tuba, but also seems to affect other GTK4 apps like Dino… when attempting to read text while Orca is running, it doesn’t always read everything out fully. For example, when attempting to read posts in Tuba, I can see who sent the post, the time of the post, but not the actual text of the post. Also, I can’t always just arrow down to move onto the next post as Orca won’t read through a list like that reliably.
Arrowing should definitely work. The Tuba and other GTK 4 app issues regarding Orca not reading everything or in weird ways, yes, that is the aftermatch of Libadwaita using list items as almost a generic container, and of the fact that we did not solve the situation where you have an a11y label for the item, and its content as well, in some cases, you need both, so Orca does it, which is chatty sometimes, e. g. in Tuba. And, the keyboard handling thing will be fixed in Gnome 48.
@Lukáš Tyrychtr @Jure Repinc @Gregarious I would be interested to know how do you guys use the @Dino #XMPP messaging app with a #screenReader? When I launch it it opens one of my recent conversations. Input box has the focus. I can't figure out how to use the keyboard to navigate to the incoming chat, to the toolbar, to the menu and similar. I can use ctrl+tab to cycle through open conversations. I am using version 0.4.4.
This will be most likely an app specific issue, but I have no experience with this particular app, so I can't say more, but a bug report, at least to track the fact, would be advised.
I see blindies asking this and that and the other about VMWare workstation, so let me say that if you have any questions about doing stuff in VMWare Workstation, I'm your guy. I have near 8 years of experience, research, testing and tools on my side. Want VMWare Tools for Windows Vista and 7? Sure thing. Want a Windows XP VM with JAWS 9.0? I'll build you a Windows XP VM with JAWS 9.0. Shoot, want a Windows 98 VM? I can make you a fucking Windows 98 VM pretty easily.
Fun fact: Did you know you can open the quick settings from within Windows setup OOBE screen using Windows +A and disable Wi-fi from there? That's right. No need for messy commands. Just, go in there before it asks you to connect to a network, and toggle Wi-fi off. Can't believe they don't block the quick settings pannel.
We are excited to announce the National Federation of the Blind Radio Network (NFBRN). Broadcasting 24/7, this dynamic station brings together a diverse mix of content from the organized blind movement, including legendary speeches, Braille Monitor articles, recent podcasts, convention highlights, uplifting stories, and live events. And there is more to come. Send your feedback to communications@nfb.org.
NFBRN is available on any Amazon device by opening "Nation's Blind."
@JonathanMosen I can't access the station from my Alexa app as it doesn't appear to recognize "Nation's Blind". Hope there's a direct Url to listen on another device or something.
Be wary when adding additional context only for #screenReader users. An example:
Say you're working on an e-commerce site, and some products have two prices to show how great a sale discount is. The before and after is made visually apparent via some aspect of text formatting, and you want to make it explicit for screen reader users too.
The first step is to ask if this is necessary. If a user encounters two consecutive prices and one is lower than the other, they may intuitively understand what's going on without any explicit signposting, and can verify how much they're gonna pay during the checkout process. Only your users can provide this verdict.
If it's determined that some additional context is helpful, you could format it as something like: "Was $14.99, now $8.99" (optionally swapping the prices). It's short and punchy in braille and speech, perfectly descriptive of the situation at hand, and mirrors how it may be spoken out loud on an ad.
Resist the temptation to go further than this. You do not need to say "original price: $14.99, current sale price: $8.99". This is much longer and more verbose, while adding nothing. It also implies that you think screen reader users need to be told what a price is and explained the concept of a sale, even though you're not doing so for other audiences.
You also don't need to spell out the word "dollars", format the price in words, repeat the product name, and so on. If you find yourself with screen-reader-only text like: "The current price of 500 Grams of Premium Oolong Tea was fourteen dollars and ninety-nine cents, and is now on sale for eight dollars and ninety-nine cents", it has gone way too far.
In short: Set out to identify the problems that actually need solving, and only solve those problems.
Enter departure station name - Mandatory field - The autocomplete information will be displayed after entering the first character. Use the UP and DOWN arrows to move between the subsequent results. Use the ENTER button to confirm the station selection. menu pop up edit text
@miki I encountered some dropdowns on a survey recently that essentially followed this script. Only they also slipped in the unhelpful sentence, "touch devices are also supported", at the end. As it happens I was using a touch device and it took me about five minutes to work out how to select a value.
Promised I'll be dropping in with examples of good #A11y in different countries and then I broke the promise. Coincidentally, I was asked to fill in a survey where one of the questions was about this very subject so I'll share one of the examples I gave there. In Austria, the qualified electronic signature is one of the state e-government services. A tool was built to allow screen reader users to insert their e-signature into any PDF document. The signature can be both visible and / or just a digital finger print, possible to verify through a qualifying verification tool. The visible signature can be inserted in one of three ways: 1. You place it right at the end of the document. If there's place enough, it should land in the line below the last one where there is content, otherwise, a new page is created. 2. The provider of the document can first place a QR code at a place in the document they choose, then the signee can replace this QR code with their own signature. 3. The provider of the document can determine coordinates in pixels where the signature should be placed and the signee enters them on their side to place the signature. pdf.egiz.gv.at/ #Accessibility #Austria #Blind
HTe #Movuary continues. A challenge to produce something with the #AbletonMove every day in february. Todays submission is my attempt to create a typical rap beat. Deep bass, some claps and bells are a thing in this little loop. Enjoy.
We just had a GTK hackfest at FOSDEM. A good time for an update on whats new and exciting in GTK, with an eye towards 4.18.
Requirements
You can no longer call gdk_display_get_default() or gdk_display_open() before gtk_init(). This was causing problems due to incomplete initialization, so we made it fail with a (hopefully clear) error message. If you are affected by this, the usual fix is to just call gtk_init() as early as possible.
On Windows, we have a hard requirement on Windows 10 now. All older versions are long unsupported, and having to deal with a maze of ifdefs and unavailable APIs makes development harder than it should be. Dropping support for very old versions also simplifies the code down the stack, in Pango and GLib.
The same idea applies to macOS, where we now require macOS 10.15.
Spring cleaning
The old GL renderer has been removed. This may be unwelcome news for people stuck on very old drivers and hardware. But we will continue to make the new renderers work as well as possible on the hardware that they can support.
The X11 and Broadway backends have been deprecated, as a clear signal that we intend to remove them in the GTK 5. In the meantime, they continue to be available. We have also deprecated GtkShortcutsWindow, since it needs a new design. The replacement will appear in libadwaita, hopefully next cycle.
It is worth reminding everybody that there is no need to act on deprecations until you are actively porting your app to the next major version of GTK, which is not on the horizon yet.
Incremental improvements
Widget layout and size allocation has received quite a bit of attention this cycle, with the goal of improving performance (by avoiding binary search as much as possible) and correctness. Nevertheless, these changes have some potential for breakage, so if you see wrong or suboptimal layouts in applications, please let us know.
GTK has had difficulties for a while getting its pointer sizes right with fractional scaling on Wayland, but this should all be solved in GTK 4.18. No more huge pointers. Fixing this also required changes on the mutter side.
New beginnings
Accessibility in GTK 4.18 is taking a major step forward, with the new AccessKit backend, which gives us accessibility on Windows and macOS, for the very first time. The at-spi backend is still the default on Linux, and has seen a number of improvements as well.
And, maybe the biggest news: We have an Android backend now. It is still experimental, so you should expect some rough edges and loose ends. For example, there is no GL renderer support yet. But it is exciting that you can just try gtk4-demo on your phone now, and have it mostly work.
Oh hi. I wrote most of the code in the new GTK AccessKit backend. Still a work in progress, and it currently relies on an unreleased version of the accesskit-c package. I need to make some time to put in a bit more work on that before 4.18 comes out.
I don’t usually do this kind of evangelism, but if you’re looking for a reason to try #XMPP on #GlobalSwitchDay, now’s the perfect time: #Conversations_im is currently free on Google Play!
@frdl I've never used Nation-Scale Matrix Synapse myself. So probably the slow version 😉 But if you want WhatsApp functionality and more, then that's the tool of choice for me. Especially in combination with Jitsi.
I'm happy that #Matrix works for you. From a developer POV the dominance of Element (the company) is a huge liability and I prefer a standardization organization where I can actively participate without paying millions of dollars in member fees.
XMPP is a messaging protocol (among other things) that needs no introduction to any technical audience. Its various implementations have proliferated through technical communities for decades. Many…
I agree that xmpp connections work reliable. But a point is that users can not know which server is properly configured, can they? edit: I mean client to server connections. Unfortunately the protocol is not reliable regarding server to server connections.
I'm continuing my databending series with a look at MP3s. We'll talk about how to glitch and corrupt them into oblivion while still leaving them playable!
Very interesting post. I'm also really intrigued by the RSTelecom plugin, are you planning to make a compiled version of that available as well in the future?
@pitermach I was actually surprised I hadn't already done so when I linked the repository in this post the other day! The plugin doesn't have everything completed, but I can definitely make a compiled version. I unfortunately only have setups on Mac and Linux to compile it — I'll probably have to figure out a GitHub action or something to get a Windows version. What OS are you looking for?
I mentioned a lo-fi plugin I made with cell phone codecs, and I just published an initial release! There are some features that are still in the works, but there are plugin files available for macOS, and the codecs and downsampling work:
Lo-fi plugin with telecommunications codecs and glitching effects. Allows instruments to sound like a telephone line, cell phone, or video conference call! - reillypascal/RSTelecom
. Also great to help other not so tech savvy users by simply giving them a QR code!
)
Requirements
Mattie
in reply to jnpegay • • •Deb 🥱 ☕
in reply to Mattie • • •Yo!
I have been building a universal fedi client called #DhaagaApp
It supports all 3 biggest decentralized protocols (#mastoapi, #bluesky and #misskey)
It has pretty timelines, unique client-side features and a modern, aesthetic design.
It's available on Play Store and #IzzyonDroid
Do have a look, and share with your friends if you like it. ^^
I also post frequent devlogs and am always excited to receive feedback.
suvam.io/dhaaga
github.com/suvam0451/dhaaga
GitHub - suvam0451/dhaaga: Dhaaga - An indie SNS app that blends sleek design 💅, useful features ✨ and fun ways to discover and connect 🎉
GitHubreshared this
Peter Vágner reshared this.
Peter Vágner
in reply to jnpegay • •It's modern, in rapid development, has some great #screenReader #accessibility features and overal I like it verry much.