André Polykanine

We are thrilled to share that Sriram Ramanathan was named Vice President of Engineering at Vispero. Sriram joined us in 2007 as a JAWS engineer and has led the development of our kiosk screen reading solutions, our transition to cloud-based services, and the applied AI team behind Vispero Companion. In his new role, he will lead Engineering across our software portfolio and shape how AI and emerging technologies build the next generation of accessible products. Join us in celebrating Sriram!

"Track Position: 33 seconds of 2562047788015215 hours 30 minutes 7 seconds, adjustable."

Можно ли найти работу не по диплому? Стоит ли это делать? Если да, то как?
Об этом мы решили поговорить 1 сентября. А заодно представить проекты нового сезона и подвести итоги лета на нашем канале.
Участники: Павел Каплан, Настя Кузовкова, Богдан Онищенко, Андрей Поликанин, Инна Силова, Кристина Тельпук, Олег Шевкун.
Дата выхода: 01.09.2026.
https://tiflo.info/pro-kanal/pro-kanal-uchimsya-rabotaem-otkryvaem-sezon/
#Про_канал

I tried to ask priests about that, but received no viable answer, maybe I'll try more because it really interests me, how Christians perceive it.
I received however an interesting answer from a Jewish woman: she said, at least according to some rabbis (dear Jewish friends, correct me, but, as we say in Russian, "I sold it for the price I bought it"), that it's more of a symbolism that Adam was created. That means, he was the first man (and Eve, the first woman) to have spiritual experience and to communicate with God himself, so there were other humans, just not spiritually enlightened. Again, it's what I was told, but to be honest, this subject has always interested me from the theological perspective. I'm not a Christian, but learning religions is always interesting.

RotaryCell converts a traditional rotary telephone into a self-contained, battery-powered, portable cellular telephone without modifying the original telephone.

The design continues to use the original handset, rotary dial, switch-hook, mechanical ringer, network block, and existing jacks. The added electronics mount reversibly inside the case; no original telephone parts need to be drilled, cut, or permanently altered.
https://github.com/fregacmols/RotaryCell

7 days without a pun can make one weak.

Throwing rubbish in a landfill is (usually) better for the environment than recycling it. With few exceptions, recycling ends up emitting more CO2 and costing more money, while landfills are cheap and secure.

- Recycling mid-tier plastics (like plastic bottles or butter tubs) costs thousands of dollars per ton of CO2 saved. It's cheaper to do direct air CO2 capture than that! And there is no shortage of plastic, nor any problem with sequestering it in the ground once we're done with it.

- Modern landfills are extraordinarily secure and are *much* more than just big piles of trash. They capture 75%–95% of methane gas. Groundwater contamination is doesn't really happen with landfills built since 1990. A study of 31 landfills built since 1988 in NY found no adverse effect at all on local groundwater quality.

- The crusade against single-use plastics has driven us to products that use far more materials and energy and would need to be used an absurd number of times to actually be an improvement. A steel straw needs to be used 150 times to be worth using. A ceramic mug needs to be used 1,000 times to beat a polystyrene cup. A cotton bag needs to be reused 173 times to beat single-use.

- Some things ARE worth recycling. Recycling metal saves a huge amount of energy and material – recycling aluminium saves 95% of the energy spent on making fresh stuff. So we do a lot of it already: about 30% of steel worldwide is recycled.

Modern, well-run landfills cause minimal environmental damage. We have plenty of space for them – less than 0.01% of the US is used for landfill and only about 0.02% of Germany. We can even build on top of old landfills, so the land area is not spent permanently.

New in @worksinprogmag, @robertwiblin and @chalmermagne on why it's usually best to just bury your trash. https://worksinprogress.co/issue/just-bury-your-trash/

I just released Dialect, a free and open source Android launcher where your home screen is a T9 phone dialpad.
Type digits like an old feature phone to filter your installed apps and launch them. Press 3, then 4, and Discord comes up, since D is 3 and I is 4. Each key press narrows the list, and Enter launches the top match.
It has full TalkBack support: key labels read like a real phone dialpad, Enter announces exactly which app it will launch.
1.0 is out now, fully open source, on GitHub. Feedback, bug reports, and contributions welcome.
https://github.com/aaron-gh/Dialect/releases/latest
#Android #Accessibility #a11y #OpenSource #TalkBack #FOSS #AndroidDev #Launcher

I think it's telling that two days ago, the most popular post on the Fediverse was one talking "weaponized antisemitism", the idea that Jews make up the experience of hate or label things as hate to gain power/sympathy.

#Fediverse #JewHatred

Tagging @TheQuinbox, the developer deserves to read such a review.

Arguably Nepal's most well-known folk song, though not that old, Resham Firiri's melody is catchy and its lyrics open to interpretation. The title means "silk flutter"; flutter in an onomatopoeic sense. Many think of a silk scarf blowing in the wind, but it may actually refer to a bee flying past during a walk, and telling it what you've seen, etc..
“Buzzing bee, buzzing bee. Shall we fly over or sit at the hilltop? Buzzing bee."
#Music #Ethnomusicology #WorldMusic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwDBE-87NWE

And finally, Paperback for Android is in public Google play testing! Click on the following link to join the beta, and please do report any bugs as GitHub issues! https://play.google.com/apps/testing/dev.paperback.android

Developing critical software with AI tooling without any real understanding of what you're building is worse than not building it at all. The illusion of developer expertise can make everything a lot worse.

#ResponsibleSoftwareDevelopment

I've just released version 0.9.2 of Paperback, my accessible, light-weight, cross-platform ebook and document reader! Changelog:

• Audio books no longer make your screen reader read out a run of spaces when you focus the text field.
• Audio books now name the file as you step through them by section.
• Audio books now report their real length, rather than claiming every file in them runs for 24 hours.
• Closing the Web View with Escape no longer throws up a debug alert after you have followed a link inside it.
• Copying after Select All now gives you the whole document, instead of only the part of it currently loaded.
• Find now cuts straight to the line it found, rather than making you sit through the screen reader reading out the window again as focus returns to the book.
• Fixed EPUB's that carry a stray ZIP64 block refusing to open with "Invalid local file header".
• Fixed long documents walking back to their start while a screen reader read continuously through them.
• Links in the WebView now take you to the section they point at, rather than failing with "File not found".
• The automatic "Document reloaded" announcement no longer cuts your screen reader off mid sentence, instead waiting for it to finish what it was saying.
• The Settings dialog's General tab now tabs through its options in the order they appear on screen, with the update channel directly after the check for updates option.
• Windows will now always show "Paperback" in the Open With menu, rather than the program's full tagline.
• Word Count and Document Info now show how many files an audio book holds, and how long it runs in total.Download at https://paperback.dev/downloadsEnjoy!

This account has moved. We're bringing together decades of assistive technology innovation and accessibility expertise under one name, Vispero. Follow us here: @Vispero

RE: https://mastodon.social/@fesshole/117192209577405921

It makes me remember this joke I heard in russian:
— do you know what's good about tea?
— No, what?
— You can bring it to the office.
— Okay.
— do you know what's good about whisky?
— No, what?
— It has the same color as tea!

We're excited to introduce Vispero Voice: JAWS and ZoomText Community, a new Facebook group built for our JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion customers. Connect with each other, get tips and updates directly from our team, and keep the conversation going after our webinars.

Join us and introduce yourself: https://www.facebook.com/groups/visperovoice

Interesting, why in German? At least I see the website in German.

@menelion

Вчера радикальные леваки затравили дядьку (я ретвитил) за использование ИИ, а он после крупного инсульта и парализован

Вся эта травля, как мне кажется, - от осознания своего бессилия и несостоятельности.

Человеку состоявшемуся и/или самодостаточному не нужно искать кого-то и гнобить их во имя высокой цели ради ощущения себя частью чего-то великого.

И здесь может, конечно, показаться, что я хочу всех поделить на высоких и состоявшихся и остальных, но вообще нет. Не всегда целиком от человека зависит может ли он состояться в жизни или нет.

Я уже видел посты на тему, что нам наплевать, что вам это помогает, вот в Африке, грубо говоря, дети голодают

Мне на серьёзных щах писали тут в тредах, что "AI" во-первых убивает (вот буквально), а во-вторых что ещё и бесполезен.
Это такая очень запущенная форма выдавания желаемого за действительное. На все новости об исследованиях в медицине, науке, etc - глазки закрываем. На новость о том, что кто-то поконсил с собой после чата - смотрим внимательно и не думаем критически, не задумываемся о том, что если человек был в таком состоянии - может быть это общество из кожаных мешков вокруг его к этому привело.

Говорю, мне всё это дичайше напоминает промышленную революцию XIX века в Великобритании, прям ощущение, что снова её по истории прохожу.

Всё как всегда кончится грандиозным reality check для всех. Те, кто захотят остаться жить в своём выдуманном мире - ну печально, но это уже их дело.

@menelion Это, конечно, здравый смысл. Но проблема в том, что сейчас появились люди, для которых стало важно притаскивать свои политические убеждения в софт. То есть софт стал не целью проекта по разработке этого софта, а средством в достижении политических целей.

И такие вот новости - глоток свежего воздуха. Ну либо это просто ещё не все разработчики старой школы (типа Торвальдса) умерли и были замещены людьми, у которых цель оправдывает средства и можно приносить в жертву своей идеологии проекты.

Хочется верить, что здравый смысл как минимум местами побеждает. Иначе можно удариться в "траву зеленее" и вечный "приход в упадок".