New accessibility feature coming to Firefox, an "AI powered" alt-text generator.

"Starting in Firefox 130, we will automatically generate an alt text and let the user validate it. So every time an image is added, we get an array of pixels we pass to the ML engine and a few seconds after, we get a string corresponding to a description of this image (see the code).

...

Our alt text generator is far from perfect, but we want to take an iterative approach and improve it in the open.

...

We are currently working on improving the image-to-text datasets and model with what we’ve described in this blog post..."

based

image:

screenshot of a Tweet from Running With Scissors reading

"We've been told our games are too expensive in some countries but we've been using Steam's recommended pricing for a while. We trust Valve enough to not change this. If our games are still too expensive for you, you can pirate them until you have enough to support us."

"Researchers have developed a highly robust material with an extremely low density by constructing a structure using DNA and subsequently coating it in glass."

“I am a big fan of Iron Man movies, and I have always wondered how to create a better armor for Iron Man. It must be very light for him to fly faster. It must be very strong to protect him from enemies’ attacks. Our new material is five times lighter but four times stronger than steel. So, our glass nanolattices would be much better than any other structural materials to create an improved armor for Iron Man.”

im just glad someone is doing the real research

this is a great song, i'd give a description but i think you'll get more from it if you go in blind. have an open mind.

Lyrics:

It's your young voice that's keeping me holding on

To my dull life, to my dull life

And it's your young voice that's keeping me holding on

To my dull life, to my dull life

(repeat and fade)

this browser-based game tests your ability to create the perfect password. overcome various insane password rules to crack the code. awesome, super goofy puzzle-type experience. it's unique and a lot of fun :)

https://neal.fun/password-game/

Anyone who's been using privacy-respecting frontends for some time will recognise Piped. A YouTube frontend with no ads, integrated SponsorBlock, return dislikes, and a customisable UI.

Piped also allows you to subscribe to as many channels as you want without ever logging into a Google account. You can export your subs list from YouTube and import them to Piped seamlessly.

If you've never heard of it, give it a glance at https://piped.video. For more instances, check here.

We're reaching the end of an era wherein billions of dollars of investor money was shovelled into tech startups to build large user-bases, and now those companies (now monoliths) are beginning to constrict their user-bases and squeeze for every single penny they can possibly extract. Fair or not.

Now more than ever, it's important for us to step back and reconsider whether we want to be billboards for these companies anymore.

For anyone unfamiliar, some good resources to have when starting your degoogling journey are below:

Privacy Guides - A list of privacy-respecting services you can use.

Plexus - A crowdsourced information bank of service compatibility with degoogled devices.

This random PDF - A study from 2018 detailing data that Google tracks about its' users.

Thinking of self-hosting some basic tools; SearxNG, Bitwarden, Lemmy.

What kind of tools are you self-hosting right now? Which ones are easy to manage, which ones are awkward? 👀

What do you guys think of the idea of smart homes? I could make a basic setup using https://home-assistant.io to control my home temperature and lighting; the tools for doing this are everywhere nowadays and implementation doesn't seem too horrific anymore.

But setting aside what I "can" do, is this something that I "should" do? How can a person implement this without connecting any devices to the internet?

"Apple has created a new Game Porting Toolkit that’s similar to the work Valve has done with Proton and the Steam Deck. It’s powered by source code from CrossOver, a Wine-based solution for running Windows games on macOS. Apple’s tool will instantly translate Windows games to run on macOS, allowing developers to launch an unmodified version of a Windows game on a Mac and see how well it runs before fully porting a game."

The new software will allow Mac users* (see edit) to play 'Windows games' on their Apple silicon (M1/M2) devices. With development, this has the potential to bring gaming to Apple.

*EDIT: The Game Porting Toolkit is designed for developers to see how their game performs on Apple silicone to entice devs to create native ports. Thanks to commenters for pointing out this distinction. The CrossOver project on which it is built, I believe, is designed for end-users to run software on their Mac clients.

If you're like me, you want to see how Reddit looks mid-protest but don't want to give Reddit any direct web traffic or contributing to their ad revenue. That's where Libreddit comes in, see github.

Libreddit is a privacy-respecting frontend for Reddit, so you don't need to worry about supporting them.

A list of instances can be found here. If you don't care about instances, just click here.

Happy protesting.

EDIT: User @Malin@omg.qa made a point about web traffic, I adjusted above to reflect more accurately. Reddit will still be gaining web traffic, however not directly. This also means a loss of advertising revenue for Reddit. If you are going to check Reddit regardless, this is the best way to do it as far as I know.