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2026-09-27 13:58:01 GMT

I know some #blind people around here have been involved in #3dprinting, and I'd be very grateful for their advice and comments from anyone else. I have two boards which I have gotten firmware for. These are small boards, they connect through USB C, and they work for what I want. My difficulty is that, though they're sold at retail, they are really boards. They don't have any plastic casing around them. I want that casing. I have found designs online which the models say will suit but first, it's a statement from the models, I don't believe it. Secondly, I'm lost on how to produce them at an even reasonable price, let alone about what happens if they don't work. If I may ask, where do I start? I only need three or four prints, I'm not buying a printer just for that. Is there a consultant who won't be absolutely earthshaking in pricing to see whether it will work? Is there some solution I'm missing to figure out which case will work in reality and have it printed? Boosts are very welcome.#accessibility #printing #design #homeassistant

2026-07-01 12:14:02 GMT

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@nprofile…awd8 This is one of my favorites. There is a good deal of her work at https://www.fadedpage.com/sc/montgomery.php A Tangled Web is very funny and a joy to read generally, though the Anne books have overshadowed it.

2026-05-29 02:01:59 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh I don't think so. The vast majority of people would be like you if they lightened up on social media, no matter whhen they were born. If people got input from, say, 2-300 people a year, they could form their own views, and those views would be based on the personality of the person forming them, his experiences, etc. The fact is that people get opinions, usually in very short chunks without evidence, from thousands, or tens of thousands, a year, and they form their views based on the loudest people, or what they most often see.

2026-05-29 01:30:16 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh With respect, I would argue you are normal for 1980 or 1990. I mean for most people there was no earthshaking tribal affiliation when it came to politics until social media or, to push it back a bit, talk radio, came into the picture. Mr. Smith would vote for party A, but party A was not some sort of identity, his political position was not really part of his identity, it was just his view on the world at the moment. It could and did change. Most sadly, that has become far less the case recently, and I don't by any means say that just for one side. Polarization is one thing, we've seen that before, but completely going into an echo chamber and never coming out is really something new under the sun. In 1980, you wouldn't have had to avoid topics around your friends, you would have just disagreed more or less politely.

2026-05-20 22:51:20 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh Again, obviously so. Humans can. The question is whether they do or will. Does the evidence you've seen indicate that they do or will, or does it show that they just throw up whatever the AI produces? What I've seen is mainly the latter, I'm sorry to say.

2026-05-20 22:43:21 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh Umm, yes? I mean obviously, yes. Nobody blames AI for anything, they can't. It's a computer. Do I blame Windows when it crashes? Certainly not. I blame the dev. The problem is that people with low standards assume that, because there are a ton of words on the page, or a ton of code in the editor, that's somehow a benefit. It's a benefit to them because they don't want to do the work, or want the work done by themselves or their employees to appear to be better than it is. In fact, producing wordy garbage is not a benefit to the world. If your code is inefficient, that's not a benefit to the world. If your image description is wrong, that's not a benefit to the world. Basically, the problem is with people who pretend that just because something pops out, that's fine and they've done what they need to do.

2026-05-20 22:38:46 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh I agree with this. The only part I would disagree with is when you say "humans control what the AI is capable of". With respect, they don't. They control what they are able to get out of the AI through prompting, and they control whether anyone else sees that. That control is more than enough to assign praise and blame.

2026-05-20 22:36:32 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh The problem with most people's use of AI is that what it produces is crap and people just want to throw it out there. I'm sorry for the bluntness, but that's what I'm seeing. The quality is just bad. This is least obvious with code and most obvious with writing and music. I think "you're using AI", has become the new "your work is bad". Personally, I prefer the latter. If I'm producing garbage, then it's garbage whether an LLM wrote most of it or whether I wrote it myself. The fact that an LLM wrote some of it doesn't mean it's somehow more excusable. The difficulty, of course, is that most people want to get it over with. They don't want to code/write/describe/compose the music, they just want to get the credit for having done so. If you want the credit, produce good work. Whether you do that with the assistance of an LLM is not particularly important. The question is whether your work is up to a decent standard.

2026-05-20 22:28:49 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh I'm confused. If it's here to stay and an accomplished fact, why does the opinion of other people matter? What you seem to be saying is that "it's here, so shut up". I agree with the first part of that sentence. I disagree with the second. There are many horrible things about humanity in general. Why should we shut up about them, even though they will not go away? Maybe we can fix some of the problems. AI has many excellent uses but the desperation to find problems for it to solve is not helpful and is, in fact, making things worse for people who like and need it to solve real problems.

2026-04-24 17:42:25 GMT

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@nprofile…awd8 Same here, except for the chargers. I actually find they're getting cheaper, around $3-4 per cable if you buy them in two or three packs. A few people are pumping out usb C jack to lightning plug units, which are nice. I have an SE2 and will, I hope, be keeping it around for quite a while yet. I also have 2 original SEs which I'm using to get messages to my PC through the headphone jack. I still don't see the point, as things stand, of the new stuff except for the USB C port, which I want for easy splitting.

2026-04-11 20:04:56 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh @nprofile…65zm I agree you're not being ageist, but I think you are simply wrong. That is, you are just making factual errors, not wrong in being ageist. You say you don't want "someone who most likely will die shortly after they leave office gets to decide how those of us who have decades to live get to live.". Carter lived to the age of 100. Bush Sr. lived to the age of 94. Hoover lived to the age of 90. Reagan lived to the age of 93... The point I'm making is that, even if the president leaves office at 84, there's still a decade of life left looking at an average. There may well be more than that. With respect, the fact you're relying on is just not there, it's just not accurate. You also say "just on a cognitive scale, older people have a disadvantage". Would you be good enough to provide evidence for this? Also, wouldn't the best way to resolve this not be a matter of age, but a matter of just giving a standard and reasonable cognitive test in public? Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with ageism, it's often the wise thing to follow. I just think you're relying on factual errors here.

2026-03-30 05:48:04 GMT

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@nprofile…awd8 I've had good luck with this one https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat I have found it fairly usable, and it's written in powershell so can be read by anyone. You may also wish to think about an external keyboard, they're cheap, you have a machine which you're used to and which you've set up to your desires, and so on. I always hate moving machines when it's not a true upgrade. It's necessary sometimes, I know, but it's always annoying, at least for me.

2026-01-29 01:47:59 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh I've been through northwestern europe, what I meant by Spain was that I've never done southern europe or, for that matter, the eastern part. All I can say is "if you say so". I always found everything far more expensive, particularly given VAT. Maybe you're right, though, I never did anything at a convenience store, though I did at grocery stores, restaurants, electronics, clothes, etc.

2026-01-29 00:32:20 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh this has not been my experience, though I haven't been to Spain. What do you find cheaper in Europe?

2026-01-26 00:33:15 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh You're just ahead of the people around you, right? They will experience the same things, just later. Sometimes a person can't really understand something until he has gone through it. Your suffering is bad, it's not unique. In my case it was the hearing issues. In other people's case, it's being constantly tired. In still others, it's a spinal injury and they can't walk at all. I mean we are all going to lose all these capabilities eventually, surely? It's just that some do earlier than others.

2026-01-25 23:54:23 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh I know the feeling though I don't do games. I spent a good deal of time getting books on tape in drips. I now have more books than I can read, and there's a good chance I can get anything I want. It's wonderful!

2026-01-21 00:58:30 GMT

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@nprofile…awd8 I agree. I admire the general patience of blind people, though it's apparently legendary, a guy wrote about it more than a hundred years ago now. I only wish it were in a better cause. Note that this is a VO issue, VO on OSX is more broken than on iOS. My suggestion, which is a form of surrender but I have better things to do with my time than to fight battles with software, is just to use nvda RC to control your PC from the iPhone. You can get the size of the phone with the power of the PC so long as you have internet access from both devices. What you don't get is the programs on the phone, but given that it's often writing and navigation that's a pain, you can still use apps on the phone which don't require much of that. My sympathies, as I said, this is just giving up, but I'm not interested in fighting with something that Apple could easily fix but won't.

2026-01-12 18:16:42 GMT

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@nprofile…awd8 I'm wondering if this is a visual thing. Maybe if it gets scuffed up or something, that's a problem. Honestly, I don't care about the visuals as a blind person, and don't care very much about other peoples' views since my technology rarely leaves its bag. The only exception is the braille display. Anyhow, just throwing things at the wall, do more blind people use their stuff until it's either no longer usable or until it's just broken?

2026-01-03 02:19:15 GMT

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@nprofile…9vmh @nprofile…xt9m umm, I suppose, but they're used for a ton of other stuff to. I've seen them used as a kind of bed warmer for feet, for people whohave muscle pain, for people whose hands and feet get cold in the winter...

2025-12-28 20:35:37 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x @nprofile…r84m @nprofile…9u5m There are places in the world which make the US look like a peaceful park. Have you read P. J. O'Rork's view on driving in the third world? Again, having said all that, death is a guarantee, it's just the how and when to be settled. If we look at years of lifetimes provided, I think cars would come out ahead, even with the very loose ways they're now used.

2025-12-28 20:32:09 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x @nprofile…r84m @nprofile…9u5m It's probably tens of thousands. Actually, now that I look it up, it's between 35 and 40 thousand a year in the US alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year Again, though, keep in mind that the death rate for human beings was, is, and will remain 100%. I mean people die. We "give birth astride a grave". Even just concentrating on deaths, the question is "do cars, as currently used, save more lives than they cost?". I think the answer to that question is yes, particularly if we think about what cars allow to be brought to people and the work they allow to get done.

2025-12-28 20:25:13 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x @nprofile…r84m @nprofile…9u5m Morbid has never been a problem for most people setting policy. We know very well that a certain number of deaths are inseparable from the majority of actions people take. Preserving the number of human lives on earth has never been something people are interested in as they act, only as they talk. Also, there's another side to that argument. How many kids will die because their parents couldn't pass the driving test and couldn't get them to the hospital in time? How much suffering will people go through because they can't drive to work? What jobs won't get done because nobody can pay for a good driver, since there would be so few of them?

2025-12-28 20:20:08 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x @nprofile…r84m @nprofile…9u5m If the society went blind or started losing their sight, the main problem would be food production :) Seriously, though, I get it, but there is an argument to be made that, to keep society basically running, the driving test needs to be passed by anyone with a pulse, and the thousands of dead people which result from that simple test are acceptable damage. I'm not sure if that's a great argument, but it's an argument.

2025-12-28 20:14:13 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x @nprofile…r84m @nprofile…9u5m I wasn't saying we were. I was saying that we had a view on how difficult life is without a car. If the majority, or even a significant minority, of people had our problems, there would be serious trouble for the economy specifically and society more generally.

2025-12-28 20:11:35 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x @nprofile…r84m @nprofile…9u5m I don't know about uniquely. It's definitely more evident in the US, but it's a problen in many places where population density isn't there. Have you tried public transport in rural africa, just for example? Even in Urban Africa.

2025-12-28 20:05:51 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x @nprofile…r84m @nprofile…9u5m My difficulty is that I agree with the first part of your message. It's a difficulty because what happens to the guy who can't pass the difficult test, but lives in a rural area and needs to drive to work? Do you let him and his kids starve? A difficult test and lack of bribery/sympathy would be great, but I think there's an argument to be made that more people would suffer with no bad drivers on the road than actually suffer now. How exactly is the bad driver supposed to get around? We should understand this better than anyone, we can't use cars.

2025-12-28 19:34:05 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x @nprofile…r84m @nprofile…9u5m Feel free to generalize, in my view, just not based on age because the evidence is against it. How else are you going to make up your mind about anything except by generalizing?

2025-12-28 19:24:09 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x @nprofile…9u5m @nprofile…r84m With respect, what makes you think they would regret if they were younger? Remember, the policies they make don't really effect the rich, do they? They effect the poor. The rich are fine. All the things you pointed out earlier (expense/housing/costs) wouldn't matter to you if you were richer. These people are usually richer. What makes you think it would matter to them?>

2025-12-24 18:07:45 GMT

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@nprofile…kx0x If I may add to this, it's too early, in my respectful view. Given the current pricing, this needs another five or so years to determine, first, the reliability of these units and the ability of these units to drop in price.

2025-12-14 02:12:26 GMT

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@nprofile…6ljh I've never seen the point of those. Why not just toss all of them? Are you planning to sell the chair? @nprofile…65lr

2025-11-27 09:24:09 GMT

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@nprofile…t2xr You may want to consider making tech-vi an exception. https://groups.io/g/tech-vi It's announce only and I can state from experience that @nprofile…328j who runs it, allows the most useful stuff on it and does not flood the inbox.

2025-11-27 09:18:14 GMT

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@nprofile…t2xr I have a feeling, though this is just a guess, that it will be a completely new app when it's done. I'm sure the announcement will be broadcast throughout masto and will show up on most other news sites for our tech.

2025-11-27 09:04:08 GMT

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@nprofile…t2xr I know TC is being rewritten and do hope that it will contain some sort of spotify support. Before that, though, and if you use NVDA, https://github.com/InfiArtt/accessify-play offers an interface for spotify. I don't say "an accessible interface", the spotify app is accessible. It's a pleasant interface, it's better to use than spotify, in my experience.

2025-11-24 20:16:03 GMT

Ok, so this is another of those weird questions which I post because people here use their brains more than most. I want to have one NVDA Remote client control two machines at the same time. That is, I want my laptop to control my desktop and my second desktop, but I want both desktop1 and desktop2 to have their NVDA heard through the laptop at the same time. I also want to switch back and forth between the two machines, as well as to and from the laptop itself, with a keystroke. There are two solutions I've found for this, but both are a bit of a mess. I can use thenvdaremote:// URLs to disconnect from desktop1 and connect to desktop2 with one keystroke, and have another keystroke to do the reverse. The problem there is that I can't hear both machines' NVDA at the same time. Also, and this isn't as big a deal, I'm just a perfectionist, switching takes a few seconds. Secondly, I can run a virtual machine and have that connected to desktop2, with the host machine connected to desktop1. That allows easy switching of the keyboard, just alt+tab to the VM window and hit ctrl+g when I want to control desktop2. It also allows both desktops to have their NVDA run through the speaker at the same time and also, which is very nice, allows braille to swap with any display which supports channels. The problem there is the latency of the VM audio, which I can't seem to shrink. It seems a bit overkill, I may say, to run an entire windows OS just for NVDA remote in a VM. Does anyone have any better solutions. Can anyone think of something which would get all three things running, fast switching, simultaneous NVDA, and no latency? Ideas would be very gratefully received and boosts would be appreciated. #NVDA #blind #a11y #screenreader #remote #nvdaremote

2025-11-20 20:40:08 GMT

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@nprofile…lx0q They, like the workers at every other organization I know of, want to make money and look good, though maybe not in that order. The vast majority of people employed at these organizations, and I leave aside the people working when the organization has just started up, I'm talking about established organizations, couldn't care less about those the organization is intended to serve. In this case, the justification is "more blind people are going to benefit from the greater availability of books than are going to be harmed by losing work". I have no idea whether that's even true.

2025-11-17 00:18:49 GMT

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@nprofile…af6k @nprofile…kx0x I'm sure you've already done this, but I've learned that my assumptions sometimes stink. You have installed the braille extender add-on for NVDA, right? https://github.com/AAClause/BrailleExtender

2025-11-07 16:03:17 GMT

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@nprofile…lx0q Yes, that puts it well, thank you. I'm sorry to have to say that, but VO on iOS is rapidly heading towards the astonishingly bad state of VO on the mac. I seriously wish you were wrong here, but you're not.

2025-10-21 21:17:28 GMT

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@nprofile…838d With respect, your perfectly reasonable annoyance doesn't mean decentralized social media is not the best. It still could be, indeed I think it is, the best available. It's still quite bad, but everything else is significantly worse. Even here... I'm a bit confused about how centralizing would help, it would just make life slightly harder for anyone trying to impersonate. See, just for example, "Keanu Reeves is Not in Love With You" https://www.amazon.com/Keanu-Reeves-Not-Love-You/dp/1789651638 @nprofile…u5d9

2025-10-17 17:31:02 GMT

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@nprofile…lx0q With respect, all the pushback I've seen against streaming isn't about what form the media takes, it's about who controls the media. Speaking as a blind man, I thought of throwing a party when I threw out my last CD. I own no physical media, it's a pain to store, find the thing you want, label (it has to be braille or one of the labeling systems for the blind which are more trouble than they're worth in most cases), a pain to add to, and so on. Let's not talk about braille books, let's just not, it's too painful. I also don't subscribe to any streaming services because all my media is on a few drives and backed up to a few more. I agree with all the annoyance at streaming but all the issues raised about physical media in the article can be overcome without a streaming subscription. Young people, renters and others who move around fairly often, refugees, the homeless, and people who downsize can store their media on Micro SD cards. The problem with those is finding lost ones, not moving them around or storing them. You can very easily carry around 20 of them in one pocket. People who have issues putting stuff in drives can store their media on anything which suits them, and in any case, controlling a computer is far easier than swapping out one cd/tape/record for another. I'm not nostalgic, so I have never seen the difficulties with streaming as streaming is bad because physical media is good. Rather, I have seen the argument, with which I agree, that streaming is bad because you don't control the content you want to listen to. It could go away because of anything from a bad internet connection to someone in a bad mood at a company or at the streaming service itself. Physical media may be a privilege, I don't know, I've never bothered, but controllable media actually makes life easier for most of the groups in the article. @nprofile…dj90

2025-10-15 15:45:19 GMT

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@nprofile…6ljh @nprofile…65lr Yes, they really should make things clear. It should be on the page and plainly written. I'm sorry it wasn't and that they seem to have changed things.

2025-10-15 13:02:55 GMT

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@nprofile…6ljh @nprofile…65lr As I said, it's been a while since I used it, though I still have it on my machine. Anyhow, the software can definitely be purchased and definitely has a trial version. When I launch mine, it says "Switch Free Version
This free version of Switch is licensed only for non-commercial use.
Please either:
Certify that Switch is being used for non-commercial, home use only
Select this option to verify that it is being used in accordance with the license at home
only.
View pricing for a commercial license for the Plus edition
The Plus edition license also enables more features in Switch.
When you register, this prompt will no longer be displayed every time you run Switch.
I have no clue what the extra features are, I've never used it on anything except a home machine. It does work to convert files in all the uses I've made of it, and I have had it installed for some years.

2025-10-15 02:42:16 GMT

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@nprofile…6ljh It's been quite a while since I've used it, but https://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html still seems to be available. @nprofile…65lr

2025-10-12 11:19:42 GMT

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@nprofile…ex04 It's just a number. There is a problem generally with things that sound precise but don't provide the evidence on which they base their precise-sounding claim. They may just be making it up based on guesses and hope.

2025-09-12 02:19:10 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr The same may be said of fascist, communist, cuk (SP), and antifa. These words used to have a meaning, sometimes quite long ago, communist in the 20s and 30s of the last century, they just don't now. They're just ways of venting emotions, and that's why I don't take any of them seriously. It's like someone saying "you're yucky" on the playground. It means nothing except that the speaker doesn't like the person being addressed.

2025-08-26 21:37:15 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr Keep in mind that blindness makes it exponentially harder. It is, of course, very hard for everyone.

2025-08-20 01:39:54 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr Certainly not the K380 or K380S. I have both, neither is full-sized. The K780 is, if that's what you're thinking of, but keep in mind it has a stand on the back for devices so it's a bit big and takes up quite a bit of space. The K360 is also full-sized, but has been discontinued. The K250 seems to be its replacement and is also full-sized. Note that the K360 and K250 are not multi-device out of the box. The K380/K380S are.

2025-08-20 01:27:40 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr The K380 and K380S are not full-sized. They do not have a number pad. They are, however, excellent, particularly the K380S which has standard function keys.

2025-08-06 17:45:18 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr The vast majority of the population in North America has issues with cash not because of the amount they get but because of the amount they spend. I don't remember who said this, it's quite a well-known statement but posessions are like salt water. The more you buy, the higher your baseline. People seem unable to maintain that baseline when their income rises. They just keep buying stuff in a search for happiness which will never come from that stuff and, in the worst cases, you end up with a guy with a bunch of unopenned boxes in his closet. Money may well be able to buy you happiness, but spending it at a retail store, or on vacations/travel/whatever, is not the way to make it do so.

2025-07-18 23:56:04 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr @nprofile…x7ke Well yes, but how is that different from current tyrants? Most of their countries are not really behind them, I remind you of both Pol Pot and Macias Nguema(can you support somebody while not actually being alive?). Most people, and you can be as misanthropic as you like and admit this, most people are not anxious to do great evil, but most people are also cowards. Sadly, as the last hundred years have shown us, to be a coward is enough to enable the evil. Sometimes stopping the evil is only done by another evil, but then of course, you shift to the new evil, sometimes not even changing families (again, I remind you of what happened to Macias).

2025-07-18 23:43:20 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr @nprofile…x7ke Again, the depths, not the surfaces. The appearances change, the realities stay the same. Having said that, plenty of people went after Leopold. If you think he was beloved by everyone, I would respectfully disagree. In fact, the reason he is such an example is because, even at his time, people knew what he was doing was evil and made that clear.

2025-07-18 23:40:42 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr If you say so. My respectful recommendation would be to read histories written closer to the times, rather than the current histories. Sadly, historians have descended into advocacy. Not that they ever weren't, you understand, but it's become a bit obvious recently. QAgain, I'm not a Catholic, and never have been, but I do know something about history and how it's told.

2025-07-18 23:36:43 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr @nprofile…x7ke Isn't he? Again, looking at the realities rather than the appearances, the depths rather than the surface, isn't he?

2025-07-18 23:35:00 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr umm... I'm not a catholic but everyone and everything deserves justice. That statement isn't anywhere near justice.

2025-07-18 23:31:59 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr Name a period when that has not been the case? The only two things that have changed are, first, the weapons used and secondly, the people doing the taking over and the people doing the losing. Also, I wasn't mentioning that, I was talking about your first statement about being cast out of society which, of course, had nothing to do with anyone fighting anybody.

2025-07-18 23:23:06 GMT

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@nprofile…ukrr With respect, your understanding of the 1800s is a bit... well, it's a bit limited.

2025-06-20 09:01:00 GMT

This is just a rant. Feel free to ignore, I just want to get it out in a place where I won't have to explain the alphabet to at least some of the people reading it. I have just spent a good four hours of my life, over the past two days, trying to get a cloud platform to connect to an appliance. That's not my problem, though. Technology often stinks, and why shouldn't it stink for me just like it does for everyone else? My problem is that, because I'm #blind and have a hearing impairment, I have to clean up a completely different mess from everyone else. The platform is reliant, and there is no way around it, on the scanning of a QR code to connect the items. Now, anyone is free to argue that I'm a horrible blind person for not being able to do this, I have no issue with being called whatever anyone wants. My question is why on earth should I have to learn this? A sighted person I got to scan it did it in less than twenty seconds. It took me a good four hours, I got a ton of good advice, most of it here actually, and I still didn't manage it. Again, I want to be clear. It's not the manufacturer's fault I'm blind. I am not exploding because I can't see the sunset, I'm not at all mad that I can't read body-language, I'm not remotely unhappy with anyone that I can't paint or see paintings. These are natural barriers because I was born as I am. I leave aside whether it was due to randomness or due to divine choice, it's irrelevant to what I'm saying here. My question is why do these natural barriers have to be at least tripled in height due to the thoughtlessness of manufacturers? Why is this actually getting worse as technology gets better? What stopped this particular manufacturer from using a long code which one could enter? It's the thoughtlessness and the striving for coolness and infinitesimal improvements in possible security which gets to me. Ten years ago, nobody would have used a QR code. Were they really that much less secure? Ten years ago, many products which now use touch screens would have used physical buttons. Were they really that much more expensive and were they really that much harder to manufacture? Ten years ago, many products would not have connected to the network. They would have been less accessible, even with physical buttons, than they have the potential to be now. Why is that potential not used? Why are things getting worse as the potential is there for them to get so much better? I'm also sick of the lies. Can we at least have some honesty from companies generally? The following should be the accessibility policy, clearly written on the accessibility page of the vast majority of companies making tech. "Accessibility, in itself, is of no importance or value to us. We will occasionally put in some accessibility features if there is public pressure, legal pressure, if our CEO or someone high up has some interest, or if some other contingent thing happens. We would like to tell disabled people who can't use our products, while waiting for that contingent thing to happen, to go to hell in their own way and leave us alone." Whenever I hear how important accessibility is to manufacturers, my gorge rises! You want to break the law because nobody is enforcing it? Fine. You want not to bother answering requests for accessibility? Perfect! You want to take routes which actually make your products worse and more expensive while making them inaccessible because they look better? No problem! Can you at least either shut up or tell the truth? Yes, I do feel better now, why do you ask? Seriously, though, thanks to anyone who's actually read this far, I just needed to express the annoyance somewhere. #a11y #technology

2025-06-17 03:14:27 GMT

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@nprofile…pye9 One question, and you can feel free to ignore it, of course. Has the ship not sailed? It seems to me that everything that is published is going to be fed to an LLM, secretly if not openly. The LLMs themselves make it impossible, or almost impossible, to get specific training data out of them, so proving that it has been done is going to be hard, let alone proving who has done it. Note also that the folly of designers is training LLMs on the output of others, so it may be even true when someone says "we never fed that particular book into our data". My difficulty with your reader is that he's not actually reading. If you wanted to get an LLM's view of your work, why not skip the middleman and feed it to an LLM yourself?

2025-06-10 14:51:36 GMT

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@nprofile…pye9 the domain provider doteasy.com does this fairly well with the only problem being the webmail which uses Roundcube. Roundcube, generally stinks with screen readers, if I may say so. Having said that, life is a good deal less painful with a client, no matter what provider you're using (Thunderbird, Outlook (older versions only, MS has gone a bit off the deep end recently), Betterbird, etc). All the mail on the web I've worked with range from very bad to absolutely unusable. I admire your fortitude in using the Gmail web interface.

2024-02-19 19:09:40 GMT

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@npub1cxy…vryr I think the vast majority of human beings, including myself, can be described as a "bad person" the vast majority of the time. I don't see why anyone needs to know I think that about them, though, and I don't think that means I shouldn't interact with them, though obviously they shouldn't be trusted because part of being a bad person is not being trustworthy. So to answer your question, I never say ""I think you're a bad person and don't want anything to do with you..". How will their knowing I think that improve the situation? I don't have any issue in asking them for help as opposed to asking anyone else for help. Having said that, I hate asking anyone for help, I fail to see that what I want is their problem, but it's no different for those people who I think are the lowest of the low than for people who I think highly of. I have to ask for help allot, and there are many annoyances in that, but this particular one isn't one of them for me.

2023-10-24 22:03:22 GMT

I'm sure everyone who wants to know about this already does but, just in case anyone has, particularly if #blind or #DeafBlind, been looking for a local method of converting speech to text ... Whisper is an ML model from OpenAI which allows doing that. It can be used accessibly with all screen readers on Windows. Obviously, this is great for those of us with impaired hearing, it is certainly far more accurate than any of the speech to text programs I've seen, needs no training, and can handle background noise quite well. The audio duration limits are set by your hard drive space and the amount of time you're willing to put into transcription, I've transcribed several hours of audio without difficulty, it just takes time. It's available on Windows using https://github.com/Softcatala/whisper-ctranslate2 which just seems to need python. A GPU makes it faster, but it's usable on an I5 CPU. The model is also available online at https://freesubtitles.ai though that requires payment or waiting for long periods to transcribe limited amounts of audio. Thanks to @[email protected] for the pointer at whisper-ctranslate2. #whisper #SpeechToText

2023-08-21 23:28:16 GMT

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@npub1zak…d6uu Thanks very much for the offer, as to the experience, it's Phonak's hearing aid software, I don't know of anyone who has experience with it. If you're still interested, and if I may ask, what is your timezone? Also, how much would you like for the two hours and do you happen to have paypal?

2023-08-19 22:21:55 GMT

This is a weird request, but I figure the worst I can get for it is silence. I'm totally #blind and have very bad hearing. To set up a device through its inaccessible software, I'm in need of a sighted person for about an hour and a half to two hours who can access a computer remotely, speaks and reads English, and can describe images and graphs. The person needs to be quite patient with follow-up questions, needs to be willing to repeat if needed, as well as be able to click on items and describe what happens on the screen. The person needs to be fairly detail oriented because some of the images appear to have arrows and other ways to expand them, according to the manual. Though I'm happy to be reasonable, I have no clue how much to offer as payment, this is my first request of this kind. I'm posting it because I know we have some blind people here who may be able to point me towards someone who has done this before and may be willing to do it for such a short period. Boosts welcome, indeed, they're appreciated. #hearingimpaired #software #A11Y #accessibility #remote