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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
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completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
Location Ottawa
Birthday 1987-12-20
Pronouns he/him (EN)
xmpp fastfinge@im.interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@esoteric_programmer Yup! As long as it has an OpenAI compatible endpoint. Ollama and llm studio are also supported.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
And Roger Wilco before that lol
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
apps.apple.com/ca/app/goguma-irc/id6470394620if you want a mobile irc client this one seems fully accessible
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@mcourcel Yup!
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
My AI agent went on this rant completely unprompted. I hate how correct it is:

• XML/XMPP: “Painful, but the pain has structure.”,
• JSON/YAML/Matrix: “Elegant until you ask it to synchronize reality.”,
• Discord: “Works because one company owns the problem and your soul.”,
• Email: “Federated messaging, but cursed by capitalism and SPF records.”,
• ActivityPub: “What if every server interpreted the spec with vibes?”,
• IRC: “functionally immortal, socially abandoned, and still somehow the only one where send text to channel mostly means send text to channel instead of participate in a distributed cryptographic ontology incident.”
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
The Agent Solution I Actually Settled On: After bouncing between OpenClaw, Codex, Perplexity Computer, Spacebot, and a bunch of other systems, Hermes Agent is the one I've settled on. stuff.interfree.ca/2026/05/24/the-agent-solution.html
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@MostlyBlindGamer AdiIRC on Windows. And Halloy on mac apparently: github.com/squidowl/halloy
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@MostlyBlindGamer Upgraded while I was at it. It now supports push notifications, typing indicators, and custom client metadata. If you have a client that supports those things. I think one does? Maybe?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@MostlyBlindGamer Sure, go for it. Though just as well we didn't before because it apparently kept falling over. Finally read the manual and discovered how to properly get ergo to correctly load its new ssl cert (hint: sighup).
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Finally got some time to configure irc.rblind.com to not die when it loses its SSL certificate because letsencrypt renews it. So many people use that it was down for, ummm, three months and nobody noticed or complained. Oh well. It's up now and should stay that way, finally.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@NVAccess @cachondo @MostlyBlindGamer @prism Thanks! I wasn’t sure if that was just reflecting on the issue or stating policy for the core codebase. I think part of my problem is I work corporate all day. I’m used to OKRs, clear goals and deliverables, and reading and writing strategic statements and so on. My default desire is for something like a foundation to do the same. But as nv access grows it’s doing less of that. And to me, that feels like lack of direction. It may or may not be, but that’s certainly a factor in how I interpret events.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@twynn @NVAccess @cachondo @MostlyBlindGamer @prism Yup, I saw the discussion. It seemed to stop without settling anything.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
Nothing like typing quickly and realizing you typed "hitgub" instead of "github" and wondering why it's not working. If only someone wasn't squatting on that domain; codeberg should just rename itself hitgub!
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@prism @cachondo @NVAccess @MostlyBlindGamer Yes, I subscribe it and read every issue. And again, that documents how they’re doing the work, and the progress of that work. Not why it was decided to do that work at all. The soundpack thing is actually a good example. More community feedback is fine. But eventually, there needs to be a decider. Who can say “Doing X is most in line with NVDA’s mission, vision and strategy because of Y. So we’ve decided that we’re doing X.” I might disagree with either X or Y. But the reasoning is there. The strategy is there. Without that overall vision and strategy, what happened, happens. Everyone argues for months and nobody does anything. Or someone just decides and does something for reasons only clear to them, and outside of any framework or overall goal for the project.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@prism @cachondo @NVAccess @MostlyBlindGamer Another example of the lack in overall direction. NVDA seems to have no policy that I can find about AI generated code. But looking at the open pull requests, nobody has submitted any fully AI generated code. Waiting until it happens and then deciding is the kind of reactive stance that leads to bad, poorly thought out decisions. And this is strategic direction that needs to be provided by NV Access, not me, some random dude online.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@prism @cachondo @NVAccess @MostlyBlindGamer Hmm, no. I want them to be more proactive about strategic direction. Getting a feature or pull request, and deciding each time “does this belong in NVDA” is going to lead to problems. The questions like what should addons do? What should be in core? What should addons not do? Why is NVDA deciding to do what it’s doing this year? Should all be clearly understood by everyone. When the strategic direction is set, we can all make decisions about what to work on, what to request, etc, based on that direction. Without it, things just…kind of happen. And that’s not sustainable.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@prism @cachondo @NVAccess @MostlyBlindGamer I read those, in the course of writing up a feature request for PGP signing of addons. Then I scrapped the feature, because I realized I have no idea what a feature request needs to go ahead, how priority is decided, etc. My fear was that it would happen if someone decided to code it, and not happen if nobody wanted to code it. And that’s just not how to build complicated things. So I decided it’d be better not to waste even more developer time by submitting the feature request at all and risking someone just does it and things get even more bogged down.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@prism @cachondo @NVAccess @MostlyBlindGamer A practical example, because you’re trying to understand. If I propose a feature request to add a full fledged email client into core, I do all the work myself, and I create the pull request, does it get merged? What I’m hearing is that maybe it does, because someone else did all the work. This is my understanding of how both screen mag and on device image descriptions got into core. If it doesn’t, and obviously it shouldn’t, I can’t find the strategic direction around questions like “What belongs in NVDA at all?” That would make stopping this work quick and easy. Without this strong overarching strategic discussion, the discussion I pointed out I wasn’t finding in my article, and that is not just a pull request for a feature or change with no discussion of “why do this” or “should this be done at all”, only “how should we do this” discussion that takes the other two questions as assumed, eventually everything gets into core. And making changes and fixes gets harder and harder. At some point (maybe years from now, but eventually) everything just grinds to a halt.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@prism @cachondo @NVAccess @MostlyBlindGamer And doing so misses the point entirely. Past decisions were made. The work is done, now. As I stated both in the introduction and the conclusion, the thing that concerns me is the pattern of decision making without strategic discussion I couldn’t find. When I point it out, I get pointed to implementation level discussion, IE the “how” and not the “why” or the “should we”. Re-litigating past decisions gets no closer to being more strategic about future decisions. There purpose is, once again, as I said in the article, to demonstrate the pattern I’ve noticed.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1mo
@prism @cachondo @NVAccess @MostlyBlindGamer I’m also unsure how opening an article stating that NVDA is still the best screen reader available, before criticizing the way it seems to make recent decisions, then closing with a plea for people to donate more money to it, counts as “railing against it”.
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