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I really don’t understand why braille is so expensive. I’m not even talking about multiline refreshable braille displays or whatever the new tech craze is. I just mean printing braille on a surface. The thing that makes braille the most useful. The Perkins braille writer is $800–not the new one that’s supposed to be modernized, the one I went to school with that’s existed since the ’50s. The new one is 2000 dollars! Or the LoganTech thing you can type on to make labels, that’s $1100! Why?

—@objectinspace

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House GOP: There’s no such thing as “systemic racism”, it’s a myth.

Also House GOP: “The military was never intended to be, you know, inclusive.” This amendment will block all military funding until the Pentagon gets rid of these woke diversity programs. “And it has nothing to do with colored people”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/14/gop-lawmaker-says-he-misspoke-referring-colored-people-house-floor/

—@kennwhite

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I’m exhausted and kinda grumpy so I probably shouldn’t post this today but I will. We as blind people want to have our pictures described to us, which is great. But why then are we posting audio without descriptions of what the audio contains for those who can’t hear? We know what it’s like, so why are we passing that along to others? And we have plenty of characters so there’s no reason for links without any additional text. Too often we don’t think beyond ourselves.

—@technolass

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Shit, i just realized. Remember Brandolini’s law?

> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

LLMs becoming increasingly available has significantly lowered the cost of bullshit, making Brandolini’s Law obsolete, but not in the good direction…

—@nicuveo

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But seriously, people who don’t support #open #standards, how are we gonna achieve a #StarTrek future where we can easily have video calls among ships from different planets and races, including #Klingons and #Romulan ships?

Do you think the #Ferengi created a video call app to unite races from all over the Universe and they’ll never take advantage of owning that app?

Would you trust the #Ferengi? Then why you trust the tech bros?

—@nulliver

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A vision of a composable interface, where objects like battery power, wi-fi status, the desktop, current time or weather outside, new mail counter, new Mastodon mentions counter, or disk space, can all be connected to a sound, or Tts, or a screen reader, or a *Messages* window like Emacs, just, everything configurable, for everyone. Let’s say your disk space is running low. Set percentage of disk space to a small sound. Or set the current weather to a soft soundscape. Just, things like that. Make computing good again, and beautiful for everyone, because everyone sees, or hears, or feels, beauty differently.

—@devinprater

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Today I learned about wet bulb temperature:

It’s the lowest temperature in a given environment that can be reached by evaporating water (e.g. sweating). At 100% relative air humidity the regular ambient temperature and wet bulb are the same. At lower humidity wet bulb is lower because the air can still absorb additional vapor. Humans generally can’t survive for long at wet bulb temperatures of 35°C (95°F) and higher.

This measurement might become much more widely used as dangerous heat conditions become more common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

Edit: there’s newer studies that indicate the wet-bulb limit for humans to be a lot lower even https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00738.2021

—@esther

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“Why do you use Signal and all this Encryption!
Do you have anything to hide? 😡“

Yes! I do!

– The color of my underwear
– My friends’ cats photos
– My failed gym class grades
– My first attempt at “portrait”
– The outcome of my last meal
– The weird mole on my left toe
– How much I cried watching Star Trek
– How much cheese there is in my fridge
– My failed knitting experiment
– The horrible poem I just wrote
– My bank card pin number
– My social security number
– My main password
– The web search history for your birthday gift

Privacy is a Human Right! ✊

Not sharing publicly what you do not wish to share is your right! 🔒✨

#Privacy #Encryption #E2EE #RootForE2EE 🎉

—@Em0nM4stodon