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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
blog https://stuff.interfree.ca/
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@evilcookies98 But do they have liver and onions?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
Issue filed here: codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/1836
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
Unfortunately, I can't migrate my repos to . I get: "Error 1062 (23000): Duplicate entry '394640-' for key 'UQE_release_n'". Seems codeberg doesn't support something about my workflow.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
So I wanted to try guide on a real accessibility issue. However, it seems that has finally fixed their . Now, if you tab into the field, you're told what you need to type to get past it. Good job codeberg!
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
Final update: The developer is now on Mastodon via @andrew_guide.

Update: The developer has removed the ability to download Guide until the security issues mentioned in the linked thread are fixed.

Update: this product contains some code flaws that are concerning from a security perspective, beyond just giving control of your computer to an LLM. You might want to read this thread before installing the product: toot.cafe/@matt/114258349401221651

Update: I've exchanged some long emails with Andrew, the lead developer. He's open to dialogue, and moving the project in the right direction: well-scoped single tasks, more granular controls and permissions, etc. He doesn't strike me as an maximalist can and should do everything all the time kind of guy. He's also investigating deeper screen reader interaction, to let AI just do the things we can't do that it's best at. I stand by my thoughts that the project isn't yet ready for prime time. But as someone else in the thread said, I don't think it should be written off entirely as yet another "AI will save us from inaccessibility" hype train. There is, in fact, something here if it gets polished and scoped a bit more.

Just tried guide for fun. It's supposed to be an app to use to help folks get things done. I asked "Where are the best liver and onions in Ottawa?" It:
1. Decided it needed to search the web.
2. Thought that the "stardew access" icon on my desktop was a kind of web browser, so clicked it.
3. Imagined an "accept cookies" dialogue it needed to accept.
4. Decided that didn't work, so looked for Google Chrome (I don't have chrome installed on that machine)
5. Finally opened edge from the start menu. By the way, it just...left Stardew open and running. Because apparently having Stardew Valley running in the background is a vital part of finding liver and onions in Ottawa.
6. Opened a random extension from my edge toolbar (goodlinks).
7. Clicked the address bar and loaded google.com, instead of just doing the search right from the address bar.
8. Got blocked because it couldn't sign into my Google account, even though it could have also searched from the Google homepage.

To be fair to AI, that was the kind of open-ended task AI is terrible at. If I had asked it to check an inaccessible checkbox, or read a screenshot, or something, I'm sure it would have been fine.

Anyway, I'm still better at using a computer than an AI. So is my 87 year old grandfather, for that matter. www.guideinteraction.com
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
Seriously, who are these people both getting the entire afternoon off work, and who can also afford tickets to the home opener? It’s apparently packed for a spring afternoon game.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@munchkinbear @serrebi @NightDrake Just someting I maintain for myself. Don't promote it hugely because nobody uses IRC anymore. And the client it's based on doesn't seem to be maintained.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@munchkinbear @serrebi @NightDrake github.com/fastfinge/adispeak
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@NightDrake Adispeak on windows is what I make
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
So the Rblind.com server is extremely busy! So busy, in fact, that it was down for four months and nobody noticed. Anyway, it's back now; irc.rblind.com if you want that.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jcsteh @jscholes @FreakyFwoof I actually find it slightly better to navigate on Windows. Mac gets deeply confused by the channel list that should really be a treeview sometimes.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@jscholes @FreakyFwoof Also there are some tab traps. Sometimes you can't get to stuff like the close participants button and have to just tab around that dialogue forever.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@bermudianbrit @FreakyFwoof There's a setting in Zoom to only send each person the summary of the parts of the meeting they were there for.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@quanin @FreakyFwoof It is. Things work on one machine fine, and don't work on another one. And both machines are identical hardware created from a corporate image. I dunno. I think it's because Zoom created their own accessibility stack instead of using a library like AccessKit, so the way they implement the API's isn't battle-tested the way it is for other apps.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@FreakyFwoof Yes, AI summaries are amazing. We have Zoom's sales management thing, so I can actually get insights across multiple meetings. Wonderful when I'm meeting with two or three different teams about the same project.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@FreakyFwoof Access to stuff like in-meeting chat and files has been slowly getting more and more awkward on Zoom. The calendar synchronization sometimes just quits for no reason. Sometimes sending calendar invites aren't sent with the settings you configured for them. Sometimes pre-meeting notifications just don't happen. Raise hand and other interactions often don't get read out. Sometimes the recording and AI disclaimers don't get screen reader focus. The same happens to poles sometimes. Especially on mac, sometimes sharing audio from a screen share just breaks for no reason. Where I work, we use Zoom for everything (meetings, corporate chat, files, whiteboards, documents, notes, contact and calendar management, the phone system), so I'm often in five or six hours of Zoom meetings a day. The meeting quality itself has stayed excellent. But it's all the other things around it on Zoom that are slowly getting worse. And it's those same things that are slowly improving on Teams.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@FreakyFwoof It's better than it used to be. And zoom is worse than it used to be. I suspect at some point they'll intersect and everything will suck.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
Man, Joplin is so good. The issue is just remembering to use it! I'm just so used to opening notepad and writing random notes and saving them to a textfile somewhere and then losing the textfile.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@atherjammoa The Stardew installer can't be used because the latest Stardew update needs new mods, and they're still pulling the old ones.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@TSchulte Yeah, that was my problem.
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