Garrett LeSage @garrett@mastodon.xyz

Wow!! If you haven't seen the RC of Inkscape you're in for a treat! The UI has been vastly improved, and I'm sure there are many goodies under the hood as well... just testing now. Here's the official fediverse announcement:

https://mastodon.art/@inkscape/106179327218017974

and download link: https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.1/?latest=1

Thank you to all the contributors:)

#inkscape #mastoart #opensource #foss #vectorgraphics #opendesign

Happy May

stolen meme

hey all, here's a new computer thing I made! it's called the Nonsense Laboratory, and it's a series of weird little tools for manipulating the spelling and sound of words with machine learning: https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/nonsense-laboratory/

it's part of a series of projects launched yesterday showing the outcomes of the Artists + Machine Intelligence grant program, which you can learn more about here: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/ami-grants

I like the new #kdenlive 21.04! I just finished the edit of a new video tutorial with it (about 'shading', I'll post it later today) and the new auto-generated subtitle feature with speech recognition saves me 2h of work! (and surprisingly this one recognise my heavy French accent with a high percentage of success). Such a typing burden I did weekly to do less... Thanks again devs! And new keyframe actions are also lovely to use. 💜

More info about the release: https://kdenlive.org/en/2021/04/kdenlive-21-04-released/

Microsoft is asking for feedback regarding the next default font for their Office software. I don't care which wins, the only criterion important for me is the availability under a true free license so that the free software ecosystem is not left behind. With pain I remember a time when it was necessary to download Arial from the MS website (through ttf-mscorefonts-installer of course) because free distribution was not legally permitted for Linux-distros. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/04/28/beyond-calibri-finding-microsofts-next-default-font/

Today it dawned on me that many people may not be aware that you can do this in your #vim configuration to have built-in spell checking in e.g. Markdown files:

autocmd FileType markdown setlocal spell spelllang=en

There are key bindings to obtain suggestions and so on, “:help spell” will give you all the details.

"Cryptocurrency is one of the worst inventions of the 21st century. [...] It has failed to be a useful currency, invented a new class of internet abuse, further enriched the rich, wasted staggering amounts of electricity, hastened climate change, ruined hundreds of otherwise promising projects, provided a climate for hundreds of scams to flourish, created shortages and price hikes for consumer hardware, and injected perverse incentives into technology everywhere. Fuck cryptocurrency."

Cryptocurrency needs to be banned.

Novel concept: Tech should be good for its users.

Respectful of their privacy and have a positive impact on mental health (i.e. not purposefully addictive or promoting negativity).

type of guy who walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck. he’s a duck

Privacy isn’t just about whether some corporation has your raw data or not. If your own device is tracking your behaviour & profiling you to open you up to being manipulated by corporations, that is also a violation of your privacy. Brave and Apple violate your privacy by proxy.

Too many people still don't understand that you don't need to be a racist person or acting with malice to perpetuate racism and cause harm.

Boosts appreciated.
I'm close to moving back to Windows. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to hold oneself back, deny oneself better and easier accessibility in the name of open source, when many open source developers don't give a crap about accessibility, and/or don't educate themselves on it. KDE connect, GSConnect, all were inaccessible for one reason or another, not the least because of Gnome-shell's terrible accessibility issues. That was just the last straw. With the only thing holding me to Linux being Emacs+Emacspeak, I think its time to quit Linux and just use what actually works. It's interesting how being "free" just means being under the power and whim of other people, a mass of developers who have no insentive for accessibility, rather than a cohesive company who does. This is serious, and I want every developer to understand this, understand my deep frustration with FOSS.

#FOSS #Linux #KDE #a11y #accessibility #Windows #comunism #capitalism #software #developers