Hey, we’re back, and I didn’t have to do anything, because it wasn’t me who broke anything. I’ll take the win!

Different but kind of related: try to avoid finding the “best setup” and over specializing in it. I started using the eloquence speech synthesizer in 1997. It hasn’t had any updates since 2002. But I got so good at listening to it at extreme rates of speed, that it’s now nearly impossible for me to switch to something else. I have to go through all kinds of silly nonsense to keep this ancient 32-bit synth running on modern platforms. If I had only forced myself to use multiple different synthesizers, even if I was slightly slower with each individual one, I now wouldn’t have this horrible lock-in. When I am finally forced to switch to something else, it’s going to slow me down for months or possibly years, because of how much I’ve over-specialized in understanding eloquence at over 800 words per minute, and how much of my workflow I’ve built around my ability to listen that quickly.

For those of us using screen readers, this is a way bigger deal. Honestly I probably shouldn’t use a bluetooth headset and a bluetooth keyboard for my banking. We focus so much on SSL/HTTPS and wifi security, but I wonder how much effort goes into wireless keyboard security? Not nearly as much, I’d bet.

the fact that credentials go stale immediately upon leaving.

One of our moderators is also having this problem. Unfortunately, I’m not, and no matter what I do, I can’t replicate it. Once I log in, I stay logged in. So as the admin of the server, it’s quite difficult for me to fix. Could you let me know what browser and version of Windows you’re using? I’m not sure that will help, as I’ve tested on both Firefox and Edge on Windows 11, and stayed logged in for days at a time. But the more data the better!

about 9 downarrows to get to the the content.

So once you get to the h1, almost everything up until the content is a link or button. So in NVDA, you can just press n (skip to next block of text) once or twice, and you’ll be there.

The reason we’re still listed as Alpha is because we need someone to retheme Lemmy, and nobody has had the time or money to find and pay someone to do it. If you think screen readers are hard, try using Lemmy with screen magnification. It’s not ideal. We’ll be remaining in alpha until we can find a designer to work on these issues.

However, in the meantime, Thunder on IOS and android is an excellent mobile app for Lemmy. There are also a few desktop apps, but none of them are more accessible than the web interface yet.

Problem was that I usually only discovered the issue when I went to read the book lol

I never did that, my connection was too slow to want to take up someone’s DCC slot for like a day to get an entire movie. Remember all the frustrating idiots who would share .lit files, but forget to remove the DRM from them?

Ah, good to know. Back in my day, when we had to walk a hundred miles to school in the snow, up hill both ways, IRC was the only place to get ebooks. I’m guessing it’s just the old users clinging on now.

Man, I’m getting flashbacks to my days running omenserve on undernet. I had no idea people were still doing this! How does the content compare to places like Anna’s archive these days?

Also the features it ads are really nice. Cross-platform, SSL support, JSON, etc. If I actually had any game ideas, NVGT is what I’d use.

Prophecy approved companion is excellent! It gave me all the feels. It’s both extremely funny, and extremely poignant as the main character learns who she is, what’s really going on, and her intended roll in it all. It’s one of the few series where the reader knows exactly what’s happening from the start, but the fact the main character being slow to catch on isn’t frustrating.

I’ve sold two systems used with no issue. Just factory reset and it’s fine. Yes, I could lock the buyer out. Best thing to do is transfer system ownership to them in person. In a public place of course.

I dunno, the sub I got 9 years ago is still going strong. The play fives they quote unquote bricked still work on the s1, for Spotify connect and Apple Music. The only unusable equipment is some 20 year old zone controllers. Sonos stuff is supported for years longer than literally any other tech brand. And I’m sure I’ll get a pretty decent price when I start selling off my Sonos stuff on Tuesday.

Also, if you don’t feel comfortable building bookworm from source yourself, and you feel like you can trust me, Here’s a build of the latest bookworm code from github for 64-bit Windows: https://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/rd388d

If you use Bookworm and use the built-in support for espeak, you can get up to 600 words per minute or so. Dectalk can go well over 900 words per minute. As far as I know, cocoa tops out at around 500 words per minute. So all of the options accept piper should be fine for you.

No, Mistral 7B can’t describe or work with images. Thanks for answering!

It really depends on your use case. If you want something that sounds pretty okay, and is decently fast, Piper fits the bill. However, this is just a command line TTS system; you’ll need to build all the supporting infrastructure if you want it to read audiobooks. https://github.com/rhasspy/piper

An extension for the free and open source NVDA screen reader to use piper lives here: https://github.com/mush42/piper-nvda

If you want something that can run in realtime, though sounds somewhat robotic, you want dectalk. This repo comes with libraries and dlls, as well as several sample applications. Note, however, that the licensing status of this code is…uh…dubious to say the least. Dectalk was abandonware for years, and the developer leaked the sourcecode on a mailing list in the 2000’s. However, ownership of the code was recently re-established, and Dectalk is now a commercial product once again. But the new owners haven’t come after the repo yet: https://github.com/dectalk/dectalk

If you want a robotic but realtime voice that’s fully FOSS with known licensing status, you want espeak-ng: https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng

If you want a fully fledged software application to read things to you, but don’t need a screen reader and don’t want to build scripts yourself, you want bookworm: https://github.com/blindpandas/bookworm

Note, however, that you should build bookworm from source. While the author accepts pull requests, because of his circumstances, he’s no longer able to build new releases: https://github.com/blindpandas/bookworm/discussions/224

If you are okay with using closed-source freeware, Balabolka is another way to go to get a full text to speech reader: https://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

Can Mistral describe images yet? Not sure if it’s multi-modal or not. If it could that would be a super useful feature for those of us over on rblind.com. And/or is the code available somewhere for us to hack in something like openrouter and spin up a copy?

And the vast majority of my addons are already working! Good job making this a much smoother release than it has been in previous years.

Mostly it’s free and the interface is more accessible.

Wow! Is there a decent open source magnifier yet though?