Notices by alcinnz (alcinnz@floss.social), page 3

The time for Linux Users Groups has returned.

IMO: this should include

. Help installing
. Workshops doing training on the OS and on specific packages
. Raspbian as a "getting started" platform, especially for anything pitched at teens
. The generation of localised documentation, especially how to do things entirely in the GUI
. Art groups running workshops followed by performances

I don't want to say most of the Zola themes haven't updated their code so RSS feeds work. I will just leave it at "many."

I found the problem and (sort of) the solution, but I am at odds as to how to fix it myself.

I tried to fix one theme per this Github issue but it didn't work. I'm just a new Zola user -- I haven't seen enough templates just yet.

https://github.com/getzola/zola/issues/2534

#zola #rust #rustlang #ssg #blogging

@prahou What problem? Some of those I'd consider strengths!

Computer science is based on foundational assumptions about which operations are fast vs which are slow. So when I design hypothetical hardware, that *can* change these underlying assumptions. But we needn't go that far!

Merely promising that you want modify any data changes performance considerations! Which is the route Haskell takes.

I quite like it, though I would advise picking compute-intensive tasks for Haskell! That's what its suited to!

@cliffwade I'm contractor, who currently has a home office!

At the base of this stack of resonators is some input audio, which may be:
* raw samples of a vowel sound,
* a special waveform (vWave, a.k.a. glotal flow wavefrom),
* or some hardcoded inputs to an initial resonator.
Into which we multiply-in breathing, represented by random noise shaped by a sine-wave.

We'll probably want to add additional sound-effects (e.g. subtle echoes), but that's the core logic! For making this Lua machine useful to the blind!

3/3 Fin for today!

I'm sure we can do better today even without ML, I'm sure our hypothetical Lua-Machine can do better... Which I understand @patchlore is working on...

But I'll describe the iconic model of a vocal tract a rushed Dennis Klatt implemented in the 1980s for a then-recently paralysed Prof. Stephen Hawking. Since that's what I'm familiar with!

The primary component of which is a "resonant" which is a multiply-sum over its 3 most-recent inputs. We stack a whole bunch of these!

2/3!

Once the computer figures out how to pronounce some text, how do we convert those "phonemes" into audio our speakers (& in turn our ears) understand? How'd we do so on our Lua machine?

First we need to enforce some emphasis rules, & interpret those phonemes to determine how to shape our computer's simulated vocal tract to produce those noises.

The voice you've selected (they're small, we can fit multiple) can tweak this vocal tract & pronunciation rules.

1/3?

* Convert indices, stripping/testing prefixes/suffixes, splitting, replacement, concatenation, hashing, comparison, converting from a Formatter, etc.
* Definition of the WStr type with implementations of various common traits, abstracting the other submodules.

1.5/1.5 Fin for today!
Tomorrow: Resume Twisted (in place of revisiting Gawk on LFS schedule) before finishing off Ruffle with its in-browser port!

Looking over Ruffle's (reimplementation of Flash in Rust) "wstr" component I see...

* Lookuptable for converting between upper & lower case.
* Some light abstractions for the public API.
* Utilities for iterating over UTF-8 or UTF-16 strings.
* Utils for taking slices of strings.
* A testsuite.
* Parsing numbers.
* Iterate over a string to find matching indices, producing an iterator.
* Abstraction around a byte-array, to prepare widestrings in.

1/2!

The global majority is very much interested in and engaged with the development and maintenance of free and open source ecosystems. I will die on this hill.

Would the internet exist today if the printing press didn’t come before it? - Jay "The History of the Web":
https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/would-the-internet-exist-today-if-the-printing-press-didnt-come-before-it/

A11y essentials every front-end developer should know - Martijn Hols:
https://martijnhols.nl/blog/accessibility-essentials-every-front-end-developer-should-know

Creating a11y systems to fix accessibility issues - Devon Persing @ Assistiv Labs:
https://assistivlabs.com/articles/accessibility-systems

How to create accessible PDFs - Dave Davies @ Insytful:
https://www.insytful.com/community/blog/pdf-accessibility-checklist-how-to-create-accessible-pdfs

Strategies for Continuous Improvement - Equal Entry:
https://equalentry.com/advancing-accessibility-strategies-for-continuous-improvement/

Considering a11y for people with cognitive disabilities and differences - Louise Clark, CPWA:
https://scribe.rip/considering-accessibility-for-people-with-cognitive-disabilities-and-differences-b208dc132a8c (Medium via Scribe)

Checking what type of node something is with JavaScript - Go Make Things:
https://gomakethings.com/checking-what-type-of-node-something-is-with-javascript/

Don’t Wrap Figure in a Link - Adrian Roselli:
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/01/dont-wrap-figure-in-a-link.html

Build for the Web, Build on the Web, Build with the Web - Harry Roberts "CSS Wizardry":
https://csswizardry.com/2025/01/build-for-the-web-build-on-the-web-build-with-the-web/

Moving on from React, a Year Later - Kelly Sutton:
https://kellysutton.com/2025/01/18/moving-on-from-react-a-year-later.html

The Four Most Dangerous Words to People with Disabilities - Access*ability:
https://buttondown.com/access-ability/archive/the-four-most-dangerous-words-to-people-with/

Fixing digital accessibility issues with the press of a button: too good to be true? - Roel van Gils @ 11 Ways:
https://www.elevenways.be/en/articles/overlays-digital-accessibility-fix-with-a-press-of-a-button

Bookshop.org is now selling ebooks

Up to 100 percent of the profits will go to indie bookstores.

https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/bookshoporg-is-now-selling-ebooks-113033975.html

#books #bookstodon #reading #bookstore #ebooks #indiebookstores

@kirtai Correction: WiiU. Slightly later.

Coppetti remarks that at the time gaming journalists were speculating on what CPU Nintendo would retaliate with. They were forgetting that Nintendo plays a different game!
Nintendo stuck with the same CPU from 2001 (2 generations ago), just 3 of them.

My principles for boosting generative AI discussion:

I avoid doing so unless its newsworthy that the author is taking a particular stance, or if I think the writing is valuable beyond the field of generative AI.

I will boost advice on how to avoid generative AI.

DeepSeek is newsworthy as is NVidia's stock-price drop, but most posts I see have hot-takes. Which I believe is premature. We'll see what comes from it!

(NOTE: I'm specifically saying "generative AI")

i cant believe ChatGPT lost its job to AI

@jbiserkov I disagree: Browsers are extremely careful to preserve backwards compatibility!

All the instability is added atop of the browser, they aren't responsible!