André Polykanine

@menelion@dragonscave.space · Joined ⁨Dec⁩ ⁨2021⁩

A married and happy geek living in Strasbourg, France. #Backend software engineer, #accessibility specialist.
My main programming languages are #PHP and #CSharp.
Pro-European right-centrist. Technical progress must not be stoppable.
#AI is our assistant, not our replacement nor our enemy.
Pagan, worshipper of Scandinavian gods.
This account is multilingual. Posts may contain strong language, not always behind a content warning, and personal opinions.
No alt text, no boost.

Spoken Languages
English, français, українська, русский, deutsch
About me in emojis
👩‍❤️‍👨, 👨‍💻, 🎙️, 🎹, 🚶‍♂️, 👨‍🦯, 🧝‍♂️, 🐉, 🚳, 🚊, 🚆, ✈️, 🐈; 🥖, 🥩, 🍫, 🍔, 🍟

André Polykanine boosted

Replying to @⁨Klimahandling@mastodon.social⁩

@Klimahandling
hey there! I understand wanting to support European alternatives, but let's be realistic too. The goal here is also to reach people. YouTube has billions of users, European alternatives currently do not. We have to strike a balance with communication objectives and digital sovereignty. And the EU does give grants and funding to European alternatives, so there is balance.
One day it may be possible to switch to Peertube, but currently, it simply isn't worth the investment. sorry

"The new left's war on people", by Nikos Sotirakopoulos youtube.com/watch?v=Xvn6D1rIEAM
that's exactly why I'm highly opposed and super angry with this ideology. "Have less because we said so" — no, F you.
"Capitalism is bad no matter what" — propose something else that would allow me and people around me live our *normal* civilized lives.
#FarLeft #Politics

YouTubeThe New Left's War on Peopleby Nikos Sotirakopoulos

Replying to @⁨zersiax@cupoftea.social⁩

@zersiax Sorry for my childish reaction, but I laughed out loud when I first knew you basically cannot guarantee that a newly installed addon won't break everything you are used to. In JAWS this problem simply doesn't exist because keyboard manager checks conflicts on key assignment. I wonder why NVDA couldn't check gesture conflicts on addon installation.

André Polykanine boosted

La bêtise du #wokisme :

La #chanteuse #néerlandaise #SophieStraat souhaitait créer un « #safespace » lors de son concert : demander aux « #hommes #blancs » de reculer pour laisser les premiers rangs aux « #filles, #queers et personnes de couleur»

👇

Trier les gens pour ce qu’ils sont, c’est de la #discrimination; demander à une personne de « reculer » pour sa couleur de peau : c’est du #racisme.

Des #antiracistes #racistes.

Source : #LeParisien

👇

leparisien.fr/culture-loisirs/

André Polykanine boosted

This might be a very unpopular opinion, or maybe it's just my depressed thoughts creeping in, but I really don't understand what the problem is if someone forgets your birthday. To be more specific, why do people remove their birthdays from social media just to see who remembers them?
For example, I'm the kind of person who has ADHD and a terrible memory. I sometimes forget my cousins' birthdays, not because they aren't important to me, but because my brain is always so distracted that I just can't help it. I love it when there are reminders because I do care about people, and I do want to wish them happy birthday. I just can't add every single person to my Google Calendar, which is why I find Facebook birthday notifications and similar notifications from other social media so useful. And if it's someone I don't really know, I'll just laugh at the notification because Facebook thinks it's someone I'm close to, but the last time I talked to that person was 10 years ago, and then move on. When it comes to my own birthday, I really don't mind if people are reminded of it in any way. Even if they see a notification or someone mentions it to them, it's still their choice whether to click that button, send me a message, or do anything at all. That means they thought about me for at least a second, and I really appreciate that. There will be people who wish me happy birthday in a private message or in person, and I appreciate that even more, and that's enough for me, even if it's only a few people. Maybe I'm just a terrible person, but I don't like blaming people for something that I sometimes do myself. I also don't think I'm the only person who forgets birthdays through no fault of their own. Plus, we all know that this world is a hypocritical and unfair place. There will always be people who choose others over us or forget about us, but why should that matter so much? As sad as it may be, we will also do it to people and might not even realise. Staying stubbern about it won't change anything.

André Polykanine boosted

Replying to @⁨miki@dragonscave.space⁩

@miki

Platforms which consider themselves moral stewards tend to keep making moral decisions, and it's almost inevitable that they'll eventually make one that you heavily disagree with.

There are two problems with that:

  • Moral decision doesn't have to be inaccessible or exclusive in other ways
  • Unfortunately so called "moral" decisions are often just political and not based on real science or solid proofs.

First is simple: resources are limited and for developers of Forgejo it could not only be out of scope, but even out of their awareness.
Example of the second option is LLM usage rules some project introduce. There are a lot of controversy in this matter and despite some people claiming that it's "rather obvious that %insert_their_opinion_here%", every argument they'll give you (if they bother to) most likely will have opposing arguments. And they won't be interested in a productive discussion. They'll most likely just want to shove the thing they don't like under the rug and feel good about it.

And if this thread would be a bit more popular, I'd be ready to bet on "there's no moral AI usage" comment appearing under my comment which would've been a good proof of what I'm talking about.

P.S. A better example of trying to think about the issue is SFC recommendations:
https://sfconservancy.org/llm-gen-ai/llm-backed-generative-ai-recommendations.html
Although I think that they leaned a bit more into the "anti-AI" movement, they shown consideration for both sides and tried to achieve something productive and inclusive. This deserves respect.

@menelion @pvagner

sfconservancy.orgLLM-gen-AI - Software Freedom ConservancyThe Software Freedom Conservancy provides a non-profit home and services to Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects.

Replying to @⁨miki@dragonscave.space⁩

@miki @pvagner Earlier I was resenting something like culpability because I had to tear myself in two between moral and practical. Now I'm absolutely 150% calm: I'm deprived of a basic sense, I need special requirements for me to work and live my full life, so #Accessibility is the only thing I care of. If a company preaches so-called "inclusion" and "diversity" and is super aware of people's pronouns, allows to select a gender from a list of fourteen items, has a carbon footprint on each page and writes long posts about why AI and "big tech" are evil, but absolutely doesn't give a flying F about me and my needs, I don't care how moral this company is, sorry for being harsh.

André Polykanine boosted

Samsung Smart Glasses launching this fall from Warby Parker and Gentle MonsterTom's GuideI just went hands-on with the new Samsung smart glasses — here’s why I’d pick them over Meta‘At Samsung, privacy is not afterthought’

Replying to @⁨pvagner@fedi.ml⁩

@pvagner @Codeberg @troed Sorry but "a friendly support" as an accessible CAPTCHA alternative is absolutely not an option in 2026. there are audio captchas, math captchas, checkbox based captchas, captchas where you have to pick the correct sound (like "Select which of the three is a cat meowing"), something I definitely forgot — and "contact support to register" is the most humiliating and discriminating option you can ever imagine. It implies human intervention, so it's not #Accessibility, it's a crutch. And I'm not even talking about LLM here.