Working on two Backtalk things, a plugin that adds a "move to center" command, and a way to type a PIN code to unlock phone with Braille.

The president of the United States fabricated a nonexistent cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine and announced it on his social media platform. The lie was immediately exposed: Russia attacked a power plant in Kharkiv and Ukraine said it was unaware of any cease-fire.

Shouldn't that be the lede?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/11/world/europe/trump-zelensky-diesel-energy-russia-.html?unlocked_article_code=1.H1E.VwGL.k0n76o489a5k&smid=url-share

I love it when NVDA doesn't start automatically on a secure desktop... until you press Ctrl+Win+Enter to get Narrator up. I realise that this is probably just Ease of Access being unreliable, but it's hard not to read it as NVDA going "Ohshit, they're going to use another screen reader, I had best start behaving!"

For years, I haven’t been able to leave VoiceOver on when I’m not using a Mac because otherwise I have to listen to it say, “authentication application application” once per minute indefinitely. https://mastodon.online/@AppleVis/117423160938192258

OMG the cartridge version of Flight Simulator II on my 130XE boots *instantly* versus waiting for a whole disk image to boot over SIO <3

It's raining and the dog comes in. I've got the towel in hand to wipe her down, but she's meandering towards the dining room, so I tell her to get back here in a firm tone, which she does. I then get down and touch the towel to just below her neck to wipe her off before doing her paws and she flinches as though she expects to be hit. Even after all these years, that reflex is still there.

She was a rescue, and her profile indicated that there was abuse in her past. She's still got some of her quirks; improved over time, but still there. I'll be honest and say I've been rougher than I ought to be in the past on dogs. I never beat them or kicked them, but if I was frustrated at a dog, I'd yell or if they were doing something they shouldn't out on the leash, I'd roughly yank them back.

This little girl got me to stop doing that shit because in no way does she deserve to be made to feel nervous in her own home like something's gonna happen to her. So I make it a point that no matter what, my outward presentation doesn't match my inward one. There are times when her little mind games irritate me, but I try not to let it show.

If you care at all about your dog, especially if you have a rescue with abuse in its past, just remember, the outward marks heal, the inner ones never do.

@valiant8086 I have the SSH service running on my computer so if that happens I can go to another system, SSH into my system, then taskkill /f /im nvda.exe

Blind and visually impaired people fear smart glasses backlash https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmx2qlz7ney2o

so, because I was disappointed with microsoft's key remapping implementation, partly because of how limited it seems to be and partly because I had to come down from a future platform release to an earlyer insider build just to try this, have nopilot! this tool properly converts your copilot key to right control. NVDA sees it as right control, not windows+shift+f23 like microsoft's implementation, or many AHK scripts. the project is at https://github.com/aryanchoudharypro/nopilot and the direct download is at https://github.com/aryanchoudharypro/nopilot/releases/download/v0.1.0/nopilot.exe

Like openai I am also making 20 billion less than expected this year

My YouTube experience on Android is now so much better thanks to this <2KB Backtalk script by @Aryan and I. https://github.com/trypsynth/backtalk-scripts/blob/master/youtube-actions.js

export const manifest = {
  id: "youtube-actions",
  name: "YouTube video actions",
  version: "1.4",
  author: "Aryan Choudhary and Quin Gillespie",
  minApiVersion: 1,
  testedApiVersion: 2,
  description:
    "Skips the buttons inside each video, mix and playlist in YouTube lists, " +
    "and puts them in its Actions menu instead.",
  apps: ["com.google.android.youtube"],
  permissions: ["screen", "actions", "speech", "input"],
  rules: [
    { match: { className: "Button", inside: { clickable: true, textContains: "play video" } }, hide: true },
    { match: { className: "Button", inside: { clickable: true, textContains: "play Short" } }, hide: true },
    { match: { className: "Button", inside: { clickable: true, textContains: "Mix - " } }, hide: true },
    // A playlist in History has no name of its own, so its menu is told by being inside something to press.
    {
      match: {
        className: "Button",
        contentDescription: "Action menu",
        inside: { className: "Button", clickable: true },
      },
      hide: true,
    },
  ],
};

const MAX_BUTTONS = 8;

const isVideo = (item) => item.clickable && /play (video|short)|^mix - /i.test(item.contentDescription || "");

// "Action menu for <video title>" repeats the title the user just heard.
const title = (label) => (label.startsWith("Action menu for") ? "Action menu" : label.replace(/[.:]+$/, ""));

backtalk.onActions((item) => {
  if (!item.clickable || !(isVideo(item) || item.className.endsWith("Button"))) return;
  return item
    .findAll({ className: "Button" }, MAX_BUTTONS)
    .filter((button) => button.contentDescription && !button.equals(item) && !isVideo(button))
    .map((button) => ({ title: title(button.contentDescription), run: () => button.click() }));
});

Thanks to all who anonomously donated to my firmware colection. Keeping your names out of this archive, I gift it back to the community: Https://eurpod.com/synths/blazie-firmware-collection-2026-10-11.zip - this date will shift as new archives are created with anything else found by others. Readme explains the basics, and MD5Sums are in manifest.json. includes emulator firmwares grouped by model type, as well as: All programs and games we have so far.

Still looking for Blazie-emu preview1 0.8 feedback: Folks who use JAWS: did the Braille dots show for you? Are there key conflicts with alt+shift+left and right especially if type-lite firmware ever turns up? (right now, none has so far, but that's OK. They were less popular over the BT models.)

The vOICe vision BCI depends on third-party academic studies as well as blind end users for establishing credibility and demonstrating functional benefit. There is no funding for clinical studies tied to the project itself. In other words, we need you! https://www.seeingwithsound.com/BCI.html

Seven Months on a Neo: Can an 8 GB Mac Handle App Development? https://beckyk102125.substack.com/p/seven-months-on-a-neo-can-an-8-gb

thanks to ai, saying you're "dating a model" is a lot less likely to impress anyone nowadays

Blind and visually impaired people fear smart glasses backlash
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmx2qlz7ney2o

Plenty of tools give AI agents memory now: of projects, decisions, code, even shared across many sessions.

I’m curious about a step further. Should an agent also remember things about itself? Not work notes, but where it tends to go wrong, what it likes, a name, traits that build up over time.

Would you want that in an agent you work with every day? Or is it unnecessary, or even creepy?

#AskFedi #AI #LLM #AIAgents #Philosophy

Okay. So I'm chatting to this autistic rando who added me on fb. And this is actually really fascinating. He's sending me photos but of cute things. Not himself. And I'm having iOS describe the images. I'm appreciating the art, but I'm doing so as word pictures. And there's this part of me that's like, oh. So that's what sighted people do. They just, boom. Oh boom that's cute. Boom. Oh lol. Oh eeeeee! Hearts! Pumpkins! Ghosties! AI is feeding me the visual data I've been craving. Just differently.