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• Post #4168893

  I'm curious about something. Why do people like internet radio so much? Radio at all, for that matter? To me, radio just means ads I can't skip or pay my way out of, song choices I can't influence in any way, listening to songs I don't like, and not being able to tell an algorithm what I do and don't like so future music selections can be improved.

• Post #3812689

  Someone at work vibe-coded an attempt to collate data so he could use plain language queries to get information about company products and orders. He wanted to make his job easier and himself more efficient. The problem is that he's not at all trained in computer science. He nearly took down our ticketing system because the script was logging in every few seconds, and he was feeding company/customer data to commercial LLMs. He also never told us in IT about any of this. 1/2

• Post #3722799

  I had to use Teams the other day. I think a big part of what I hate about web apps on desktop is how flat they are, and how they never use hotkeys. A normal app has a menu bar, hotkeys on buttons, tabs to keep things organized, and more. Web apps seem to just throw everything onto the screen, requiring screen reader users to wear out the tab key. If hotkeys exist, they aren't part of button titles; you have to open a separate page and memorize what you need.

• Post #3718307

  RE: https://mastodon.online/@AppleVis/116895795553967047 I gave this a quick try. The combination of haptics and a tower defense game meant for blind people intrigued me. It's actually pretty good. I only tried it for a minute, because I'm technically at work, but I'll definitely put more time in later. I expected adaptations that were barely there, with no haptic distinctions, but that's not the case. If you like this kind of thing, try it out.

• Post #3710650

  I like my Meater thermometer. It's a wireless cooking thermometer, perfect for cooking meat. However, it feels very, very weird to come back to my computer an hour after dinner, only to find an email asking me to rate the experience of cooking a pork loin with my thermometer. I know we have no privacy anymore, but this feels especially invasive and dystopian for some reason.

• Post #3704569

  A while ago, I bought and recommended the CMF Headphones Pro. They work wired or over bluetooth, they are comfortable, ANC is shockingly good for the price, and the controls are all tactile. Today, I discovered a major flaw that potential buyers should know about: you can't use the mic over any wired connections, only bluetooth. https://support.nothing.tech/hc/en-us/articles/39520867660561-Why-can-t-I-use-the-microphone-for-calls-when-I-plug-in-the-3-5mm-aux-in-audio-cable

• Post #3646697

  I planned poorly today. But I also don't want to spend money on delivery. Today's dinner: a can of beans followed by some potato crowns. Technically, it's protein and starch/carbs. I could do with more green, but beans are quite healthy on their own. Still... Oops.

• Post #3646696

  I spent about 45 minutes tonight playing a video game with a friend. He's sighted, I'm not, but we both played Diablo IV. There were some pain points, like him having to tell me where to go almost constantly as we explored a dungeon. Still, it was fun to fight enemies together. He described what we were seeing, while the game told me about enemies and objects.

• Post #3646695

  @FreakyFwoof I finally tried Clipman. I have no feedback yet as I only just set it up. I do have a question, though. Why do hotkeys require two modifiers? I've gotten used to ctrl-` and, if I replace Ditto, I'd like to keep that hotkey.

• Post #3646694

  Clipman is a clipboard manager for Windows and macOS. Every time you copy anything to your clipboard, Clipman remembers it. You can review past items, find something you copied a while ago, pin items to find quickly, and even assign hotkeys to paste items. Now it does templates. I often need to write the current date as 2026-07-06. I can press alt-shift-d, and the current date is pasted in that format for me. It was made with screen reader users in mind, too. https://github.com/OnjLouis/Clipman

• Post #3646693

  I thought I'd finally try Tailscale. I signed in with Apple, but accidentally used Hide My Email. I wanted to sign out so I could try again, but nothing I try will get the user menu to expand. Space, enter, routing the mouse and clicking. And no, the menu didn't open at the bottom of the page, how they do sometimes. Annoying.

• Post #3646692

  Edit: all fixed! That was very weird. I'm never trying that again. I gave the Google TTS add-on a try. Now NVDA starts, makes an error sound, and has no speech. I have deleted the add-on folder, and I have told NVDA to restart with add-ons disabled. No luck. I tried to open my config file in Notepad Plus Plus, but it turns out Narrator can't use that app. Here's noping regular Notepad doesn't do bad things to my file. The NVDA log shows nothing out of the ordinar...

• Post #3611409

  A while ago, I was looking for a way to get all the episodes of podcasts locally. I just found this, which seems to do exactly what I wanted. I haven't tried it yet. https://github.com/lightpohl/podcast-dl

• Post #3543042

  I feel awkward asking this, because torrenting has such a negative image for many people. But I'd like to get unencrypted copies of things I already own. Maybe the app is inaccessible, maybe I just don't want to have my content controlled by a company who could shut me off at any time. So... What's the most accessible way to torrent? What do I need to know? Yes, I know about Libation for Audible. I'm not talking about Audible.

• Post #3509271

  "America's 250th birthday is here!" proclaims Youtube. I tell it I'm not interested. "Shelf will be hidden for 0 days," is the response. Thanks a lot, Youtube. I love how you value what users want.

• Post #1923021

  I have been using VSCode for around 6 years. Several times per week, sometimes several times per day, I'll do a global search (ctrl-shift-f). This works great, except I hate tabbing a whole bunch of times to get from the search field to the results list. Today, I found out that ctrl-down will jump me right to the results. I don't want to know how many presses of tab, and how much annoyance, this shortcut could have saved me. It's a lot.

• Post #1898511

  There's always confusion about writing dates, especially between Britain and the United States. Month day year, or day month year? Slash, period, or hyphen as the separator? I wish all countries would adopt the obviously superior year-month-day format. It's unambiguous, save to use in file names (slashes aren't), and, if leading zeros are included, sorts by date even if sorted as string values. Happy 2023-11-06, everyone.

• Post #1307305

  I wish command line tools would make an output mode optimized for screen readers. I just did a no-cache build of four containers with compose. Instead of hearing random numbers constantly shouted at me, I'd love to have Docker make NVDA say the current step when something significant changes. "Building php_dev. Health check for mysql_dev. Check passed. Building web_dev." No fancy progress bars, no always-updating percentages, no detailed output. Direct that stuff to a f...

• Post #1104549

  Straight, as in a straight line, ends with g h t. Strait, like a water strait, has no g h. To pick a random example of such a thing, an example not at all chosen because of the actions of the insane moron in charge of my country, I'll go with the Strait of Hormuz. Just in case you have to know how to spell it right in the near future, for no particular reason.

• Post #946089

  RE: https://tldr.nettime.org/@remixtures/116340254810925367 But yes, we should all believe Microsoft's claims that they want to regain user trust and make Windows 11 more pleasant to use.

• Post #946087

  I just used FastSM to make a server-side filter. Now I want to test it. I will thus tag this post with one of the hashtags I included in the filter, to see what happens. For all you sports fans out there: I'm sorry that this post does not, in fact, have anything to do with #baseball

• Post #946085

  RE: https://dragonscave.space/@TheQuinbox/116346873808693566 With quote support, timeline ordering, streaming, and some of the other features, this might become my main Mastodon app. I love my invisible interface, but I appreciate the distraction argument.

• Post #925923

  Yesterday, I boosted a post with a music stem separator for Windows. I have since tried it, and it's amazing. The interface is simple and basic, and the outputs of my first test were great. It kept a bit of keyboard in the vocals, but that was the only problem, and it has a bunch of models I could try. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/jnicbs8cjc8orukpe8vhv/AA2n8ya1sWTvldMvyslOk_0?rlkey=au1g8jwx30xub8n9b5uks8gv5&e=1&dl=0

• Post #905527

  Someone made a command-line tool for finding deals on Audible, checking prices of saved books, and more. This just might be an amazing tool. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds great. https://github.com/chauduyphanvu/audible-deals

• Post #879827

  I'm looking for a new electric shaver. I expected a low-effort listicle or AI-generated slop, but this is surprisingly good. Assuming it's real, which it feels like it is, this guy just does a lot of razor testing and knows a lot about the various models and parts. If you're in the market, it's worth a read. I expect the whole site will be a good resource. https://shavercheck.com/best-electric-razor/

• Post #734881

  Claude Code on Windows: Can I open the response in an editor? I know about ctrl-g so I can edit my prompt in an editor, and that's useful. What Ii want to do now is open the most recent response in a program where I can more easily review it. It's annoying to read one of a list of things to do, do it, then have to nvda-arrow up past the item to get to the next one. A text editor would save my place.

• Post #726251

  As of today, Gnome 50 will be in Fedora 44, which is in beta. To test the cool new Gnome, you'll need to update to the Fedora beta. I haven't yet found out which version of Orca is included, but I'm very much hoping it's the latest one.

• Post #726250

  This is Microsoft’s plan to fix Windows 11 https://www.theverge.com/news/897834/microsoft-windows-11-quality-performance-commitments-changes

• Post #726249

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@alexhall/116263233265587948 Obviously, I don't believe any of this. I doubt Microsoft understands why people don't like Windows, and the claim that user feedback shows we "care deeply" about Windows is ridiculous. To most people, the operating system is just there to let them do things. What it is and how it works matters not at all. They just care that it works and familiar things stay consistent. Windows is familiar to most people...

• Post #726248

  Okay, this Claude thing is cool. I'm finding that I don't like having it do code changes, at least not yet, because it takes me longer to find and review what it did than it would have to make the changes myself. However, I'm doing an annoying merge, and Claude is proving very helpful in summarizing conflicts and suggesting actions.