I was inspired by a post from @FreakyFwoof talking about DC++, and took a brief jaunt down memory lane.
In the last 5 years, Limewire evolved into some kind of vibe coded file sharing and AI platform. (https://www.limewire.com/)
Napster is now “Visible AI agents with voice, video and memory” (https://www.napster.com)
BearShare is now an AI slop music blog.
Is some LLM out there recommending that people hoodwink old file sharing company names for completely unrelated projects as a strategy? Brand resurrection? Capitalizing on nostalgia? Just coincidence?

In Austin Texas, I went outside after Talarico one and could hear cheering in the distance. And then I went to bed to fireworks. And now it is another day and I feel so much lighter. There is an incredible amount of work to be done but for now, just this week, I am taking the win. Thank you America and every single person’s vote that mattered to make this happen. It’s certainly unreal to have been part of the blue wave in Texas, only having lived here for a few years. We were here when it happened.

Just bought a game from Steam after seeing it on BlindGaming.net and looking for tutorials on how to play it?

Check out the new Audios & Video page, with over 100 different games covered:
https://blindgaming.net/creators/

This page will let you sort game playthroughs by game or creator. Additionally, each game page now has an Audios and Video section, linking you to the relevant content when possible, so you don't need to switch pages to learn more about your game.

Let me know what you think about the UI, it's up for debate and I'd still call this beta quality. If you're a blind creator that's not included here and you'd like to be, also let me know.

Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, had a message for an employee in the company’s security Slack channel who urged the company to at least take a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August. “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.”
In a follow-up message, Yen reiterated his point: “only losers think like that.” His ultimate message for the team was to “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”

“In the last few months, Yen set up an email address for employees to contact if they come across anything blocking adoption of AI at Proton, so leadership can “ruthlessly smash everything that stands in the way of AI velocity;” Proton installed software on workers’ computers that track how much AI code the company is generating; and Yen said this is the last year that Proton will hire engineers at all, and instead only hire people to build things with AI.”

Good lord I’m glad I never fell prey to Proton, which never in a million years gave me the vibes of a company that was actually serious about privacy/security, like ever.

**Data is inconclusive and may have gaps.

There are now 204 PC games being tracked in the Blind Gaming Database, 156 of which explicitly rely on mods for access, 32 of which have native accessibility, and 16 of which are ambiguous (requiring OCR or other work arounds to play).

There are some takeaways from this data:

1. At some point in October, we crossed over 200 mainstream games that have some form of accessibility available to the blind.
2. of the 154 accessibility mods, 118 of them are on GitHub, and 53 of those were created in the last 6 months.
3. In contrast, 6 PC games were released with native accessibility support in the last year.

There is some discussion to be had about mods incentivizing studios to not work on accessibility, but I think the numbers have spoken. Also, much like us, studios have had access to the same large language models and have yet to really do anything with them for accessibility.

Support your modders.

The Blind Gaming Database now has a handful of automated fediverse accounts that you can use to get live updates:

New games: @games
New mod releases: @mods
US deals: @deals
Canadian deals: @deals_ca
EU deals: @deals_eu
UK deals: @deals_uk

More regions to come, plus Bluesky, once this initial batch have been working for a while.

#accessibility #blind #gaming

I’m finally down to 4 domains with NameCheap after slowly transferring domains away for probably 5 years now. They were cheap, once upon a time.

With all the WordPress drama and PHP vulnerabilities, what are people using for brand new websites and blogs these days? Specifically something that provides an interface for a non-technical person to update it. Ghost? Some WordPress fork? This is for a client, and they truly could not care less about static sites, Federation, ActivityPub, and all of the other things Mastodon would consider requirements.

The iPad Mini received a price hike earlier this year to the already unconscionable $599. Now, the latest iPad Mini 8 starts at $699.
Reference for scale: The cheapest 11-inch iPad Pro was $799 just three years ago.
I'm tired, boss.

This isn't to say we can't, but it is to say that if we want something that will last we need to take steps like rewriting proprietary braille drivers and Humanware software, not being incredibly invasive, making all changes temporary where we can (the last two here are not necessarily legally required). Etc.

Something relevant to working on the Braille Reader is that this is not like cracking the firmware of the BrailleNote MPower/Apex or some old synthesizer from a legal perspective. This is for all intents and purposes a series of devices that are still commercially sold, still used by hundreds of thousands of people everyday, and could still get me legally in trouble, especially if I distribute internal binaries from Humanware/APH. If this isn't done correctly, they'll just patch this in the next install, DMCA the hell out of me, and then no one will be happy and I will have probably nixed some professional relationships in the process. A lot of blind people seem to be haphazardly applying reverse engineering techniques while not thinking about the consequences and I'd rather not kick that hornet's nest.
This is a situation where you attach a flash drive and the entire display reboots and roots itself, technically a CVE. Someone could use this to hijack personal files from another person's display if they really wanted to, and I imagine Humanware will be incredibly motivated to address that, as they should be.

I’d also love drivers for USB-C audio at some point but I need to stop with the scope creep here.

Things that I've gotten working so far on the NLS eReader: a braille shell, Tailscale networking, "Development Tools" submenu, editor package, working volume buttons, enhanced speech settings so you can toggle between more than the two voices that come with stock. Rewrote the unlocker to not use any proprietary Humanware drivers. Oh, right. The eReader doesn't ship with Acapela, so installing the "nls-speech" package will enable eSpeak which is included in all copies of Bread, for some reason. Then we have other packages for doubletalk, Dectalk, Pico and BestSpeech which will also work on non-NLS devices. The package manager is almost done, then I think I'll be ready for something for people to test and play around with.

This is either an expert troll or someone that is just utterly, profoundly devoid of any intelligence whatsoever. I’m kind of tired of LLMs enabling this level of idiocy.
let suspiciousPixels = 0;
for (let i = 0; i < data.length; i += 4) {
const r = data[i], g = data[i+1], b = data[i+2];
if ((r > 120 && r > b + 30 && g < r - 10) || (r > 140 && g > 100 && b < 80)) suspiciousPixels++;
}
const isDirty = (suspiciousPixels / (data.length / 4)) > 0.05;

setTimeout(() => {
updateStatus(isDirty ? "Result: Not clean. Please wipe again." : "Result: Clean.", isDirty);
}, 500);
}

“• The interface is designed for keyboard and screen-reader use with aria-live and semantic headings.
• For best results, use strong lighting and aim the target area inside the dashed box.”

Well done.

I see the APplevis post got taken down, so I’ll do you one better:
“A lightweight, privacy-first Web/H5 visual helper for checking whether a surface or wipe appears to have blood, yellow staining, or brown/possible fecal staining. The app runs locally in the browser and uses the device camera for image analysis without uploading photos.”
https://github.com/PattyBule/accessible-hygiene-helper
Now you can use it for free without a subscription! You’re welcome.

I'm doing this a little bit unconventionally in that it's much like Cydia. The image resets the SSH password, installs development tools where you can toggle SSH (off by default), then we install Entware/opkg. Modifications to the actual firmware live in packages, since everything on the device already runs under root anyway and we can do binary patching or modify settings. This is done for legal reasons, but also convenience, modularity, and not having to release updates for people to manually install. There will be a UI for package management that pulls from a repository, with metadata on which package canr un on each device. This way feels the most scalable, and it also lets people make their own repositories if they care. I may trash this idea, please don’t take me seriously.

I think one of the most exciting things about this project is that once it's all said and done, all Braille Reader devices will be able to read books via speech using OpenEVV and any other synthesizer we want. The Brailliant BI40X, Brailliant BI20X, NLS eReader, Mantis Q40 and Chameleon 20 all contain a SAMA5D3 microchip, running an ARM Cortex-A5 CPU with 256 MB of RAM (~110 available after Baker starts) running at 536MHz, which is more than enough for speech to keep up rather nicely. Especially exciting for eReader users, where your previously inert headphone jack will make this possible there, too.