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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
Today 16 app updates were “bug fixes and improvements.” But I really enjoyed the one app that said “Bug improvements”. I really hope they didn’t just forget the phrase “fixes and” and the update really does consist of improved bugs. The same bugs, just now they’re worse!
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Andre Louis @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com
4w
@fastfinge Something about space time continuum, drunk too much coffee, took the afternoon off. Yep.
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Devin Prater ​:blind:​ @pixelate@tweesecake.social
4w
@FreakyFwoof @fastfinge YouTube lol.
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Andre Louis @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com
4w
@pixelate @fastfinge Yes. And the app is buggy and clearly failing some QC checks.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
@FreakyFwoof @pixelate Now that you release your own app, isn’t it fun how angry you get to be at apps like YouTube that go out the door with bugs you wouldn’t let into an app release? Even though they’re a trillion dollar company?
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Andre Louis @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com
4w
@fastfinge @pixelate OOOo yes, very damn much. And if there is a stupid bug in mine and it's told to me, I push a release with a single item in the changelog because I don't need to funnel through 512 corporate people and release on a deadline. I just... Do it. Some guy on github has been filing issue after issue and I'm happy about it. It's nice someone cares enough to do so.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
@FreakyFwoof @pixelate Thought I had this morning actually. You should make an opt in and totally optional thing, where people upload there system info to you, and then it builds like a website of the average machine configuration of your app users. I suspect most of us are screen reader folks, so it’d be interesting to compare with the stats from other places. Do blind people upgrade slower? Or faster? Do we all have 3 tb hard drives and no video card? Do we tend to have less available RAM and CPU because of screen readers? That kind of thing. I bet the folks at the BBC would be super interested. Maybe they’d even fund a bit of it.
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Andre Louis @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com
4w
@fastfinge @pixelate Oh wow I love that idea. It could use the anonymised report option to do that.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
@FreakyFwoof @pixelate It would also probably be super helpful to people like NVDA. Is it safe to stop supporting Windows 10? How many people have enough resources to run an AI model if they included one? How many people still have 32 bit machines? Etc.
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Josh @Orinks@mastodon.stickbear.me
4w
@fastfinge @FreakyFwoof @pixelate Vercel would probably be good to whip up a prototype of that.
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Andre Louis @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com
4w
@Orinks @fastfinge @pixelate What's that?
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Josh @Orinks@mastodon.stickbear.me
4w
@FreakyFwoof @fastfinge @pixelate Website hosting that has a pretty nice free tier and allows you to make backend APIs and such. Can't do that type of thing on shared hosting like Dreamhost etc. If you have a VPS you're good though, can do anything you want.
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Andre Louis @FreakyFwoof@universeodon.com
4w
@Orinks @fastfinge @pixelate Aah I see. I do have a vps, so will attempt there.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
@FreakyFwoof @Orinks @pixelate You also don’t even really need powerful hosting. Like, you could make an account where the app uploads reports via FTP or something. Then run a script every hour that gets the new reports and regenerates the pages with all the statistics. That way you don’t have to worry about the security issues of running your own server all the time.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
@FreakyFwoof @Orinks @pixelate The only problem I can’t figure out how to solve is detecting unique machines. Like if I upload the same report 7000 times it could mess up the stats.
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James Scholes @jscholes@dragonscave.space
4w
@fastfinge This isn't intended as a negative comment on the underlying idea, but I'm curious: why do you think the BBC specifically would be interested in that? @FreakyFwoof @pixelate
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
@jscholes @FreakyFwoof @pixelate Mostly they came to mind because the BBC and gov.uk are some of the few organizations publicly releasing any kind of accessibility data, outside of web focused organizations like webaim. If I want to know approximately how many PWD own a smart TV, or whatever, those are the only two places I would expect to have that sort of data. And the BBC cares about 4K and 8k streaming etc. So they were just the ones who jumped to mind as being interested in a project like that.
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James Scholes @jscholes@dragonscave.space
4w
@fastfinge Thanks! I was struggling to link the two things in my mind. @FreakyFwoof @pixelate
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
@jscholes @FreakyFwoof @pixelate I mean I’m sure a lot of companies would also be interested. Including the place where I work. But all the companies would insist the data be private and belong only to us, because capitalism.
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James Scholes @jscholes@dragonscave.space
4w
@fastfinge Don't be surprised if the BBC goes down that route before long. They are desperately trying to work out what their future funding looks like, and to date it's involved cutting a lot of services and people while locking other things down. @FreakyFwoof @pixelate
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
@jscholes @FreakyFwoof @pixelate At least from the outside, a lot of the changes actually make sense. The Internet means there’s no good reason for me as a foreigner to pay somebody else for BBC programming. They’re one of the few (only?) broadcasting organizations with a wide enough pool of content that I could be persuaded to sign up for a BBC subscription. But until recently, it was either free, completely unavailable, or only available through a service run by the Canadian cable companies. Similarly, I suspect most people listening to BBC podcasts every day aren’t British tax payers. So a move to ads and/or a subscription made sense. And once again, the BBC is one of the only organizations with enough content to pull it off.
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James Scholes @jscholes@dragonscave.space
4w
@fastfinge Let's hope. All previous attempts by the BBC to run for-profit services have quietly but miserably failed.

A recent idea seems to be more selling of their catalogue to other British streaming services that are also free or ad-supported. Which is questionable given that everyone who can legally access those can already use the BBC iPlayer for free and without ads.

I suspect a significant subset of their content was never licensed with international or commercial distribution in mind. @FreakyFwoof @pixelate
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
4w
@jscholes @FreakyFwoof @pixelate Huh, weird. They actually seem to be doing the same here; we get ads for something called BritBox, that seems to combine British programming from the BBC, ITV, and God knows where else.My understanding/hope was that the BBC wanted to cut them out.Because they’re an annoying middle man and don’t carry audio description. But maybe that reseller model is what they’re going to lean into? But that’s a silly way to go about it. Because BBC can (and should!) be able to sell me a service I pay for that includes British TV, podcasts, magazines, written news articles, etc. All of the above are good enough that as a non-British person I’d have no issue paying my share. Whereas I resent paying BritBox for TV, and Apple for podcasts, and someone else for the two good science magazines the BBC puts out, and Apple News for ad free BBC news, etc. All while BBC probably makes less money as I pay more.
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Devin Prater ​:blind:​ @pixelate@tweesecake.social
4w
@fastfinge Or maybe they just wanted to see if anyone noticed. :)
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