Notices by Talon (talon@dragonscave.space), page 6

bounce.wav

Should I post more blind Forza clips?

NAZIS RAUS

This GitHub hovercard thing is actually really bad. Get rid of it. I was never much one for custom scripts but since I have to use this crap for work, I might have to. I'm already in space with how much this drove me up the wall in just a few short minutes.

Non-disabled developer working on accessibility doesn't put keyboard/usage instructions in aria labels challenge 2024 (Impossible)!

In C# you can do:
someVar is > 10 and < 100 and not 6
and I think that's beautiful.

Show me something that a programming language you know can do that you just simply find syntactically pleasing!

I have a folder full of thousands of git repos that I've cloned over the years.
It's like a little hoard!
I wrote a script to move stuff around. Make things easier to find.
Always test your scripts. Always. I just ruined part of my hoard. :dragon_sob:
It wasn't important enough to keep regular backups. I'm not too hurt by it. But I'm still disappointed that I let this happen!

I dunno.wav

I really firmly believe that the answer to how do we fix computers using up so much energy in the world does not have to be rewrite it in Rust.

I saw another big thread about people talking at each other concerning Linux accessibility where one side goes "no this sucks" and the other side goes "But how?", and then it's a constant back and forth with no real resolution.
I wonder if a lot of this stems from the fact that a lot of people actually putting in work for Linux accessibility don't really need it? Like, for example if I boot up a Linux distro, sometimes I'll be able to do what I want, sometimes I won't. One of the biggest issues is that Orca and the accessibility stack will randomly fall over. Like I'll be in some app like Mate software update center or whatever and then it just stops reading. Even worse if Orca was playing a progress beep at the time, which then becomes stuck. So I have a constantly beeping unresponsive system. That's anything but pleasant. But here's the thing. These systems working together are complex. You can have just a slightly different config, or sometimes even just different apps open, and you'll get a completely different experience. Sometimes the update center works fine. Sometimes it doesn't. Telling me that this is a bug with the update center doesn't help because it's the screen reader that died, and without it, I can't do anything. So that's not the solution. The solution is clearly to make the screen reader or accessibility stack somehow work despite this.
But the real thing I'm trying to get at is that we're expecting a largely sighted developer base to fix this for us. Then they do some work, it works theoretically, so they throw on Orca and mess around for a few minutes and everything seems to work fine, so issue solved right? So off goes Orca, and back to visual working it is without a screen reader.
But not much longer and someone blind tries to use it, has lots of apps open, is doing complex and elaborate work, and something falls over again. So they report it. "Wait, but this was fixed wasn't it? Let me try." So they do. And it works for them. Can't reproduce, must be user error, and Orca gets disabled again and on with normal work.
And who can blame them? I mean this makes perfect sense right? We don't really want to use something we don't need to use. There's really no reason to keep using Orca if you can read the screen just fine.
Don't take this as fact. For example I know that there are at the very least a few blind devs and devs with assistive tech background working really hard on trying to make Linux accessibility better, and I'm not sure how many. But that's probably gonna take some time. Because if all this stuff was easy, we wouldn't even have all these issues right?
Anyway if you're working on Linux accessibility, don't take it personally. This is a hard problem to solve, and it's not your fault. Neither is it ours. If something sucks, listen to the ones who're complaining. It's the same stuff over and over. :)

@simon @tspivey @FreakyFwoof From the issue: I can see no point in setting up people with CAPS LOCK by default when that changes the behavior of the CAPS LOCK key when using it for its native purpose. That's just asking for unnecessary confusion, whether Narrator does it or not.
lol but the insert key is fine? That one also has a native purpose, you know. Also capslock is one of my least used keys for its intended purpose. In fact, every single time, and I do mean literally every single one as far back as my memory goes, turning capslock on was a mistake, and not something I actually wanted. Am I alone here? I always use laptop layout. Always. Even on desktop keyboards. I don't even have to think about it at all, it should be on by default.
You have two options. Option one only works on some keyboards, option 2 works on all keyboards. Which one do you pick? I know which one I'm picking.

Oh fucking god no Apple don't do it please don't do the Gemini thing please please don't do it I'm gonna throw literally all my tech out the window it's done it's over it's all over

Here is a quick tip for you on this fine day.
Should you ever find yourself in an international setting and need to very quickly start an all consuming argument, and who doesn't find themselves in this situation regularly, simply ask:
Is it a chicken burger or a chicken sandwich?
You're welcome.

A cool thing about JIT is that you can write code that should be slow as hell and it'll still perform OK.
A bad thing about JIT is that you can write code that should be slow as hell and it'll still perform OK.
A worse thing about JIT is that you can write code that should be hella fast but it's actually really slow.

While we're at it, garbage collection is weird because some things are slow as you'd expect, other things are fast as you'd expect, but then there are the cases where you really think GC should take more time than it does and GC takes more time than you think it should.

Look don't listen to me because I have absolutely no business running a business, but if you want to start a social media business it might be worth considering why all popular social media businesses have the monetization strategies they do. How many make money actually running the social media business instead of doing something else, like running their data harvesting and selling business, advertising business, and so on, even though they have the majority of active social media using people signed up to them.
This idle thought provided to you by a bunch of blog articles and youtube videos. I will not be running a social media business. Ever.
See, the cool thing about running a Mastodon instance is that it's small. It doesn't need to grow. In fact, it's better if it doesn't grow too much. This not only keeps federation healthy but also doesn't run the risk of making me go bankrupt. Also me and everyone else here on this instance has the same goal. Use the social media. That's it. That's the entire goal.
Social media sounds like a terrible business to be in. I feel for anyone who tries it as their core offering. Also maybe don't. Worth considering. :)

Just realized that this year the cave will turn 6 years old and I really don't know how to feel about that.

I'm happy that it's been active and alive for so long but also... this is a mastodon instance? 6 years old? Definitely doesn't feel like 6 years ago when I set it up but also somehow it feels longer than that? Oh gods

We went from mastodon to hometown to glitch, we went from server to server to server to server, we went from just me to around 230 to 240 active users and that number appears stable... I used to be able to keep attachments on the little virtual server but now it's so big that I can't. Our database is growing so much and we still have a very long way to go before it's big enough to be a problem but I don't even have a plan for what to do once we hit that limit. 6 years. Wonder what this place looks like in another 6.