Notices by Alex Hall (alexhall@mastodon.social)

@KaraLG84 Tom who? I got bored and didn't read past that bit.

Sorry, someone had to. But in short: yep, I'm pretty sure they have indeed gotten that bad. Also, Tom Scott is great.

I installed an add-on that, among other things, increases NVDA's pitch when something is in all caps, underlined, or italicized. It's neat to have this information, but holy text decorations, there's a lot! Random terms in articles are, it turns out, underlined. Random controls on webpages are in all caps. I knew commands in dockerfiles were in all caps, but now I'm reminded of it each time I read a line. I know I can turn this off, but it's still interesting to see how often emphasis is used.

I understand the theory. Hotkeys exist, some of which immediately do things (ctrl-g), others of which await input (alt-x). Buffers are places for text to live, from files, to the clipboard, to temporary scratchpads. There's neat stuff here. I just wish there were gentler introductions to it all.

I had some time at work while waiting for responses, so tried to get a little deeper into Emacs. I'm kind of getting some of it, but beyond the basic terms, I'm not sure. I wanted a PHP mode, for instance, and installed one after some problems. Now I have no idea what to do. Emacs is saying something about unbalanced parentheses, though my file is blank, and the config page for this mode assumes more Emacs knowledge than I have. I haven't even gotten to EmacSpeak or Speech-L yet.

I know I've talked about Ditto before, but I'm gonna do it again. I just wanted to paste something I last copied two weeks ago. Windows would have long since forgotten it in its clipboard history. I opened Ditto, typed a few characters, tabbed once to get to the results list, and hit enter to paste. Ditto is clipboard history done right, and everyone needs to know about it. https://ditto-cp.sourceforge.io/

I think The Verge recently changed something. As I read, I'm hearing Euro sign, broken bar, and other even less common symbols instead of apostrophes and quotes. It's annoying, because speech synthesizers don't know how to handle such symbols when they're used this way, so it can be distracting at best and hard to understand at worst.

FBI hacked thousands of computers to make malware uninstall itself https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/14/24343495/fbi-computer-hack-uninstall-plugx-malware

@frameworkcomputer I like my Framework 13. There are three things I'd change, though, in descending order.

First, QMK support for the keyboard. I'll buy a new input cover with no hesitation if one comes out with QMK.

Better wifi signal. I've tried MediaTech and two AX210 cards, but the signal is never that great. An external USB adapter works perfectly.

A more reliable fingerprint reader. Mine has gotten worse in recent weeks. Even before that, it wasn't perfect, but worked.

I still find bit.ly links in posts every so often. With all the social networks no longer counting the actual length of a URL against a post's character count, and with all the security implications of URL shorteners, why is this still a thing? Yes, there are a few other shorteners, too, but bit.ly seems to be the most common.

@anna They probably didn't, especially since the phone number was wrong. I don't doubt they were fake, I just don't get the scam if all the links were correct.

My mom got 2 emails from Paypal. One was a purchase update, the other was something about an invoice. Both were unrelated to her account and didn't use her name, so she thought they were fake. I looked through them, and they had only links to paypal.com. Even the links to view the transactions or report a scam went to paypal.com. She called Paypal, and they said the emails were phishing. How were they phishing if the links went to the official website? The phone number was fake, but that was it.

Request Tracker, an open-source issue tracker we use at work, has had almost completely inaccessible dropdowns ever since 5.0. In the last couple days, I've been poking around, trying to work out why. They use Bootstrap 4.6, which is way behind, and even Bootstrap 5.x seems to have accessibility problems. They take an unordered list, a text input, and a hidden input, and try to simulate a select element. You know what's fully accessible? A SELECT ELEMENT! Just use what's already there, people!

I have a question for any Irish or British followers I might have. I just checked out on a website, and it automatically made an account for me. The email I received said I should follow the link to "nominate my password." Is "nominate a password" a phrase? I'm fairly sure the company, McNeela Music, is based in Ireland, though I could be assuming that because of the instruments they focus on.

I never realized how wide a picture taken on iPhone is. It captures what I want, but there's also a bunch of stuff on the sides I don't want. If I want a picture of just something with minimal background, how do I do it? Is that what zooming is for?

I've never been a big braille reader, at least not for pleasure reading. I read many books and assignments during school in hard copy braille. But when reading, I prefer human narrators, then synthesized speech, then braille. I sometimes wonder if it's worth getting a copy of a book from NLS or Bookshare and putting it on my Orbit, reading only in braille. It's not convenient, the ergonomics aren't great, and it's slower. Still, I wonder if I'd enjoy it more than I expect.

I recently found a bakery that has perfect pecan pie squares. The crust is good, the filling has the right amount of sweetness and a great texture, and the nuts are good. It's what I want pecan pie to be. Both sadly and thankfully, this place isn't within walking distance.

In iPadOS 18, I'm liking BSI the more I use it. The command mode is cool, and I can see the appeal. But the text review stuff is almost nicer. I can move around, select, and edit, all in braille. Honestly, I prefer this to the rotor. Activating with the default gesture is easier the more I do it, and it doesn't seem possible to hit dots in such a way that exiting BSI accidentally is a problem. I kind of want this on my phone.

If you use a standard American English keyboard, do you use your right pinky to hit hyphen, equas, or backspace? I find I miss the first two more often than not, no matter how I work on it, so I often reach up with my right index finger instead. Backspace is easier to hit, being bigger and at the end of the row, but I still find myself using my right index or middle finger. I don't know why those three keys give me so much trouble.

My laptop is connected to a USB-C dock. The power just went out for about 20 seconds as the power company replaced our meter. The laptop, despite having a healthy, fully-charged battery, shut down. When it booted back up, it didn't start my startup apps, and all my stuff from before the shutdown was closed. All I can think is a power spike hit the dock, and then the laptop, so it panicked and turned itself off. It doesn't make sense, but I don't know how else to explain it.

@GreenSkyOverMe Nothing I or my coworker could think of, no.