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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
Admin
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
6mo
@quanin @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @jonathan859 @mcourcel Yup. It's like everything home related: if you don't know what you're buying, you're going to be sold something that sucks. I'm a computer expert, so I buy smart home tech. But I would never purchase, say, my own windows or flooring. I have a trusted guy to buy that stuff for me.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@quanin @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @mcourcel Ah, I pay for the utilities here. And frequent zoom meetings mean I need to have the lights on for that. I also record a lot of videos for various purposes, so have special lighting setups for 4k stuff.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@quanin @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @jonathan859 @mcourcel Yup. I went with switchbot for that exact reason. You don't even replace the key, so you get to use your current housekeys. And they use NFC to unlock, so they're smart devices, but no actual internet connection is required.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@quanin @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @mcourcel I did my lights because it saves me money. As a blindy I keep forgetting to turn them off. So smart switches and home automation ended up being a savings. Similarly, when I'm away, I set the temperature to be different than I'm at home. I couldn't really do that with an inaccessible thermostat, and again, it saves me a few bucks. My smart doorbell lowers my home insurance, so again, savings. The oven and laundry and dishwasher and instantpot being connected didn't save me anything, but they're the only way to get access to the touch screens. So yeah, I live in a smart home these days.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@quanin @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @mcourcel I have homepods. I need to get things done, so I don't get the choice to opt out.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@quanin @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @mcourcel Samsung is putting ads on there $3,000 smart fridges. So yes. But sadly, if you want accessibility, you don't really get that choice. Thermostats with just a couple buttons are pretty much gone, for example. It's a touch screen now, and that means an app for us.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@quanin @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @mcourcel It doesn't matter. If the internet goes out, I'll be stuck in my smart bed and cooked alive anyway. www.pcworld.com/article/2948826/these-smart-beds-began-roasting-their-owners-during-aws-outage.html
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@pixelate @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @quanin @mcourcel GNU IS NOT LINUX!
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@quanin @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @mcourcel And by Linux, I assume you mean LinuxIO, the cloud-based agentic AI solution for autonomous 24/7 web 3.0 devops and rapid LLM deployment?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @quanin @mcourcel Yup. You need to whitelist facebook.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@pixelate @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @quanin @mcourcel The obvious solution is just put every file on the blockchain and then something something cryptography hash mining something something distributed something something free market Yay! Success!
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@dhamlinmusic @lynessence @quanin @mcourcel I think that says more about how fragile and broken TalkBack is. I have an Android phone for work and I had to replace talkback to get anything done. And it's still not as smooth as IOS.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@quanin @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @pixelate @mcourcel DocuSign on IOS is fine if you're not using the app, and you click the button for screen readers. It's one of the only places on the internet where you should; it's not an overlay, it actually fixes things.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@pixelate @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @quanin @mcourcel The problem PDFs still solve, that no other file format is even trying to do, is that it makes it obvious (if you know where and how to look) if a PDF file was modified after generation. That's why they get used for contracts.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@pixelate @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @quanin @mcourcel You could also be thinking of survey monkey. It used to do that.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@lynessence @dhamlinmusic @pixelate @quanin @mcourcel I think it has to do with how they require the signature. If it's a button where you can click, it works fine. But they can require you to draw it on the document, or attach a photo, and those don't work.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@pixelate @dhamlinmusic @lynessence @quanin @mcourcel But making accessible PDFs is possible! All you need is fifty thousand hours of training directly from Adobe, two software packages nobody has ever heard of before, and for making accessible pdfs to be your full time job. Either that or you could just hire one of the people from the thousands of ads I get in my Linkedin messages every day from companies nobody has ever heard of who specialize in pdf remediation.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@jonathan859 @Fragglemuppet @simon That and people who decide to just call you a nickname without asking. Does that annoy you, too, Johnny?
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@crossgolf_rebel I don't know if people have changed, or if there are just more people worth blocking. I have about 50 spam accounts blocked, for example.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
6mo
@andrew Also, I think there might be clients that will automatically split long posts into 1/N without them doing anything. And an accessible interface that's better than the visual one? Impossible! LOL JK