André Polykanine

I am reading a horror story in Braille.
Someone is gonna die, I can feel it.

Le Conseil constitutionnel censure l'interdiction des réseaux sociaux aux moins de 15 ans - https://www.france24.com/fr/france/20260814-le-conseil-constitutionnel-censure-l-interdiction-des-r%C3%A9seaux-sociaux-aux-moins-de-15-ans

> Le Conseil constitutionnel a censuré vendredi l'interdiction des réseaux sociaux aux moins de 15 ans, invoquant "une atteinte disproportionnée" à leur liberté d'expression. Cette mesure est notamment défendue par le président Emmanuel Macron, qui vient de charger le Premier ministre de "travailler" à la rédaction d'une nouvelle version de l'interdiction.

Tant mieux !

Had a really interesting maintainer experience today that I think perfectly captures the nuance of the current AI coding situation.
I got an AI-generated PR on Paperback from a new contributor with a very small GitHub profile. My default stance isn't anti-AI and I've even used Claude on Paperback's codebase as recently as yesterday, but open source is getting flooded with automated slop, so I left a polite comment asking for a bit of human-written justification for the feature and confirming if they had actually tested it manually, and I received a well-thought-out, genuine response. The contributor is a long-time computer scientist who doesn't know Rust, using Claude Code to build an accessibility feature to make Paperback optionally match NVDA's browse mode navigation that directly improves their daily workflow. They tested it on their end, I double-checked the diff and edge cases on mine, everything looked great, and it got merged.
To me, this hits the exact middle ground of how AI in OSS should work: A knowledgeable developer used a tool to bridge a gap and ship a genuinely valuable accessibility feature to an app they use. If I had a strict "no AI" policy, this contribution would have been shut down immediately, and both the project and the user would be worse off for it. But still, human oversight is mandatory. If maintainers just let everything slip through without pushback, repositories quickly get overrun with untested slop PRs.

I got my CPACC 5 years ago. At the time the test was through survey monkey and I did not have the same opportunities as everyone else to flag and review questions. The training course from IAAP had all kinds of issues, I had to use the Deque training materials. Once I got my certification, I found the process of putting info in to renew it each year confusing, overwhelming and inaccessible. I finally let it run out. I feel like an accessibility certification, obtaining it and keeping it should be accessible. My employer also wanted me to take the trusted tester certification, which cannot be done without sighted assistance. Overall, my feeling is that most anyone can get the paper, but when the process is not accessible, those of us who face access barriers are pushed out of holding certifications that really don’t matter since we have lived experience.

I received the following announcement via email from Adi Kushnir of AccessMind. Although Adi's signature states that the announcement is only meant for the intended recipient and cannot be distributed, Adi has assured me that this announcement can be shared.

Announcing the first public beta of Runa TTS: bringing the high quality, natural sounding voices from ReadSpeaker to VoiceOver and other apps that rely on Apple's speech synthesis API's.
Dear Apple users community,
AccessMind is proud to announce the first public beta of Runa TTS, a new text-to-speech engine for iOS that brings high quality, natural sounding, neural voices from ReadSpeaker, a global pioneer in the field of human-like TTS technology, to be used with VoiceOver, as well as other applications that use Apple's speech synthesis APIs.
Enjoy classics such as Paul, Kate and Julie from the Neo speech days, or new voices in 50 languages, including English, Arabic, Hebrew, French, German, Spanish, and many others.
The application also includes some advanced features, such as:
• Voice Profiles, allowing you to configure various settings such as speech rate, pitch, and maximum volume per-voice, and forcing them even if VoiceOver is set to different values.
• Automatic language switching based on Unicode characters for Arabic, Latin, Hebrew, Russian, and Greek even if VoiceOver does not support it in your language or region, configured on a per-voice profile level.
• iCloud sync between devices to make sure all voice profiles and voice settings stay up to date between devices.
• In a future update, Siri shortcuts will be introduced for switching voice profiles on the fly.

Once you download and install the application, focus will land on the “manage voices” tab, allowing you to download voices and filter them by language, quality, etc. 2 qualities are available for each voice: standard and enhanced. We strongly recommend using the enhanced quality.
Every voice will be a switch button, when checked, it will be added to the queue, and a button to install all selected voices will appear at the bottom of the screen, before the tab bar. Activating this button will install all selected voices. If voices are installed, checking them will cause a button to remove all selected voices to appear instead.
Once installed, you can add the voices to Voiceover using the VoiceOver speech settings, including configuring them as primary, and adding them to the rotor.
The settings tab, contains all the advanced features, such as Voice profiles, and iCloud syncing. Both are disabled by default, to avoid confusion.

Important notes
• Due to bugs with iOS 27, language switching by Unicode characters will not work properly if configured through our engine, it will only work through VoiceOver with the way Apple has chosen to implement it. We will communicate with Apple to hopefully get this fixed.
• There are no bundled voices with the app. You have to download the voices you wish to use from the manage voices tab.

Feedback during the public beta
Please send all your questions, comments, and queries, to: adi@accessmind.net

Pricing
Pricing for the final product, including subscription or perpetual licensing models, has not been decided yet. The public beta will be available to try for free at least until September.

Installing the public beta
Please use the following TestFlight link to install the public beta of Runa TTS on your devices:
https://testflight.apple.com/join/bJQ5UpWQ

We look forward to hearing from you!
Adi Kushnir
This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual(s) addressed in the message. If you aren't the named addressee, you should not disseminate, distribute, or copy this e-mail. If you aren't the intended recipient, you aren'tified that disclosing, distributing, or copying this e-mail is strictly prohibited.

AccessMind LLC. All rights reserved.

I know Mastodon hates LLM's and AI. So here goes!

I recently got access to trusted access of cyber capabilities of both openai and anthropic, which also allows you to weaponize security vulnerabilities.

The speed at which these parrots can find bugs and be creative enough to exploit them is staggering.

I recently pointed an LLM at an kernel fix that was reachable by an unprivileged namespace on Debian and it fully weaponized it, without too much me prompting it in the right direction, in about 7-9 hours.

I don't think open-source and companies will know what's coming for them once these open-source weight models will have broader reach and get better at exploiting vulnerabilities on a massive scale as anyone can access them.

The bottom line I think is, you cannot patch faster than the attackers can easily chain all kinds of vulnerabilities together and just move laterally on an incredibly fast pace.

I've started reporting vulnerabilities to all kinds of projects and the majority have trouble or patching issues found. There's not enough maintainers, or there's simply none anymore.

I've been getting quite worried about what our future will look like for data privacy. I think outright not running an LLM over your codebase to find critical security vulnerabilities because of your moral stance will keep us more insecure.

Please run an LLM over your code base if it's internet facing or something critical, we thank you!

Can't wait for the discussions on this!

Code is art. I work at a studio full of ungodly talented artists, but I will still die on this hill. Code is often messy and dirty and it's a pain to create and get right but the results reflect the personality of the creator and the pain of the creation. Just like the rest of art. Sometimes you have to look at the source code to see that, but it's there if you look for it, hidden beneath the surface.

AI generated code is not art.

(10/10)

'Inside the Dystopian World of Germany's Free Speech Crackdown' https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/07/27/0037219/inside-the-dystopian-world-of-germanys-free-speech-crackdown?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon

Україна у 2027 році хоче створити прототип Patriot – систему ППО Freya, – заявив заступник секретаря РНБО для Reuters.

Freya має стати дешевшою європейською альтернативою Patriot для перехоплення балістичних ракет.

Парень приехал в Африку и сыграл «The Lion Sleeps Tonight» настоящему льву

Ничего необычного — просто мужчина приехал в Африку, достал гитару и исполнил «The Lion Sleeps Tonight» прямо перед настоящим львом, который, судя по всему, оказался благодарным слушателем.

Не каждый день увидишь концерт, где между артистом и публикой буквально один неверный аккорд.

Уровень уверенности в себе, до которого большинству из нас ещё очень далеко.

https://t.me/tefidacom