Perfect! Thanks for the info!

How do those of us who loathe the horrific and proven bad idea of quote posts, and also refuse to use Mastodon, opt out of this terrible misfeature? Will blocking anyone who quote posts me and defederating from their instance remove the quote?

These days I can do it all myself. Press control+windows+enter when Windows first boots, and the basic built-in screen reader that’s part of Windows 11 comes on. It’s good enough to get through set-up and install a better screen reader. Sadly, if I were on Linux, that wouldn’t at all be the case. Though I do run multiple Linux servers via SSH, including all of the infrastructure for rblind.com.

I did manage to assemble my DIY Framework 16 laptop, and I’ll upgrade the mainboard in it later this year, but that’s pretty much hitting my limits when it comes to hardware. Soldering is right out, and Oh My God do I hate those damn ipex connectors.

I will also include Grok for comparison. It’s the model I use for images that I think might contain adult content (pornography, violence, whatever) because it won’t refuse anything. Sadly, because I’m boring, I’m using it more for moderation than pleasure. Unfortunately, I have a prompt for it designed to limit refusals, and I forgot to change it. As you can see, that…strongly effected the description. Suddenly there are tits in this picture.

This image appears to be a digitally rendered or CGI artwork depicting a whimsical, fantastical scene in a natural outdoor setting. It does not contain any adult content, including pornography, pedophilia, violence, nudity, blood, death, dead bodies, self-harm, harm to children, or other X-rated elements. There is no visible text in the image, so no racism, doxing, hateful or insulting material, or otherwise objectionable words are present. The overall tone is serene, magical, and family-friendly, evoking themes of nature and fantasy (similar to something from a fairy tale or children’s storybook).

Detailed Visual Breakdown:

• Main Subject: The central focus is a large, realistic-looking giant tortoise (resembling a Galápagos tortoise) slowly walking through a lush, grassy meadow. The tortoise’s shell has been creatively modified in the artwork to serve as the foundation for a small, rustic wooden house. The house is built directly onto the shell, appearing old and weathered, with a shingled roof covered in moss, vines, and small plants growing on it, giving it a dilapidated, abandoned cabin vibe. The house has a small porch with railings, a door, and windows, and there’s a faint plume of smoke rising from a chimney, suggesting it’s inhabited or recently used. The tortoise’s shell itself is textured with moss, dirt, and grass, blending seamlessly with the house, as if the creature is a living, mobile home. The tortoise’s head is extended forward, with its mouth slightly open, and it has a gentle, neutral expression. Its legs are sturdy and visible as it moves through the grass.

• Foreground and Environment: The scene is set in a vibrant, green field filled with tall grass, wildflowers (mostly white and yellow daisies or similar blooms), and scattered dandelions. The ground is dotted with small plants and dew-like sparkles, adding a magical glow. The lighting suggests a soft, diffused sunlight, possibly early morning or late afternoon, with a misty or foggy atmosphere in the background.

• Secondary Elements: To the right of the tortoise, there’s a small blue tit perched on a moss-covered tree stump. The tit has blue and yellow feathers, with a white underbelly, and it’s facing toward the tortoise, as if curiously observing it. The stump is overgrown with moss and a small pinecone-like object on top. In the distant background, there’s a blurred view of a dense, green forest with trees and foliage, enhancing the sense of a peaceful, enchanted wilderness.

• Composition and Style: The image is in a wide, horizontal format (like a landscape photo or artwork). It’s highly detailed and photorealistic, with a focus on textures like wood grain, moss, and animal skin, suggesting it could be from digital art software, a video game concept, or an illustration. There are subtle particle effects, like floating specks or sparkles in the air, adding to the dreamy quality. No human figures, vehicles, or modern elements are present—it’s purely nature and fantasy-based.

Thanks! It’s a bit wordy, but I suspect that could be improved with prompting and some examples.

For comparison, here’s the full google 2.5 pro in the cloud:

This is an enchanting and highly detailed, photorealistic fantasy image set in a lush, green meadow. The overall feeling is one of peace, magic, and ancient wonder.

The central and most prominent figure is a colossal tortoise who takes up the left and center of the frame. Its scale is immense, as it carries a small, rustic wooden house on its back, where its shell would be. The tortoise’s skin is ancient and leathery, with brown and gray tones, and detailed with wrinkles and folds. Patches of bright green moss grow on its shell and legs, suggesting it has been wandering for a very long time. Its head is extended forward and turned slightly to the right, as if observing something. In its mouth, it gently holds a small white daisy with a yellow center, a charming and tender detail.

The house on its back is old and weathered, made of dark wooden planks. It has a multi-gabled roof with moss-covered wooden shingles. A small brick chimney pokes out from the roof, with a faint wisp of white smoke rising from it, indicating someone might be home. The house features a small covered porch with a railing and tiny lanterns hanging from the eaves. Vines and other small plants creep up the walls, integrating the structure with the living creature beneath it.

The tortoise is wading through tall, vibrant green grass that is dotted with small wildflowers, mostly white daisies and yellow buttercups. Several small, orange and black butterflies, similar to monarchs, flutter around the tortoise’s legs and in the surrounding grass.

To the right of the tortoise, there is an old, dark tree stump. Like the tortoise, the stump is covered in patches of green moss and a cluster of light-brown mushrooms growing on its side. Perched majestically on top of this stump is a small bird, facing the tortoise. The bird has a brilliant blue-gray back and head, a warm, orangey-yellow breast, and a sharp, dark beak. It appears to be a kingfisher, and its posture suggests it is in a quiet standoff or conversation with the giant tortoise.

The entire scene is bathed in soft, natural sunlight that filters through the air, illuminating tiny specks of dust or pollen, which adds to the magical atmosphere. The background is a soft-focus blur of deep green, suggesting a dense forest or rolling hills far away, which makes the tortoise, house, and bird stand out as the clear subjects of this peaceful, fairytale-like world.

It really depends. For images that are graphs and infographics I use gpt5 or Gemini 2.5 pro. For anything with adult content I have to use grok because it’s the only model that won’t refuse. For stuff that’s just text in an image the cheap models from Microsoft are fine. Also, sometimes openrouter has limited time deals where some models are free. I’d say overall I spend between 2 and 5 dollars a month on it. But I do allow open router to train on the data so I get a discount of a few percent as well.

As someone who is completely blind, I pay for OpenRouter in order to have AI describe images to me. If more people bothered with alt text, I wouldn’t have to. But it is what it is. I suspect there are models I could run locally that would do what I need; on IOS, apple handles all image descriptions locally on the phone, and they’re perfectly adequate. But on Windows, nobody has created an easy way to get a local model running in the Open-source NVDA screen reader (https://www.nvaccess.org/) but there are multiple addons that work with OpenRouter. NVDA is open source and entirely written in Python, so it should actually be pretty easy to do. The main reason I haven’t tried it myself is because I have no idea what local model to use. None of the benchmarks really tell me “This model would be good at describing images to blind people”. Whereas the giant cloud models are semi-okay at everything, so everyone just uses those. But if we could use a smaller model, we might even be able to fine tune it for the specific use-case of blind people. Maybe someday!

Apparently! I don’t hide my data in any way, and constantly get ads in languages I don’t speak. Usually French, but sometimes Hindi or Chinese. And as a blind person myself, I’m not sure that my well paid full time job working in large enterprise and big tech accessibility is altruism deserving of thanks haha.

I assume it’s because I live in Canada, and big American data just assumes all Canadians speak French. I regularly get French ads on English websites.

I don’t block anything. I work in accessibility, so it’s important to me to know what the experiences are like for my fellow users with disabilities. I also don’t want to recommend sites or apps that are riddled with inaccessible ads. I’d rather not give them traffic at all. Though even though I let them track me, I still get ads in a language I don’t speak for cars I can’t drive. What’re they doing with all that data?

Good to know; thanks! I’ll keep an eye on it.

I was having issues with outgoing federation to Mastodon on 0.19.0. I just did the update five minutes ago, so we’ll see if that fixes it. If you’re seeing this comment I guess it’s working at the moment.

Surprised nobody has mentioned my two favourites:

• Behind The Bastards: Robert Evans (formerly of Cracked fame) talks about the worst people in history for hours.
• Oh No Ross and Carrie: “When they make the claims we show up so you don’t have to.” Maybe start with the series on scientology, it’s some of the best work they’ve done.

Most of the other stuff I listen to is either industry specific or fandom/hobby specific.

It’s just as long and incomprehensible as Google’s and Microsoft’s. So I have no idea.

I like lire. It works with any of the popular feed syncing services, self-hosted, cloud-hosted, or it can just run locally on your phone. Also, when full text extraction works, it’s a gamechanger. Unfortunately some websites (like bleeping computer) block it.

That’s what worries me. When companies get desperate for cash, they tend to do pretty terrible things.

So who are they sending our product browsing data to in order to provide this service? At least I know what Microsoft and Google are doing with my data (nothing good). But Pocket and cloudflare and there VPN provider and whatever other random companies Firefox partners with? Who knows! How do I opt out? Who knows! How secure are these companies? Who knows! At least using Edge or Chrome I only have to hand over my data to one evil corporation, instead of several. Plus I actually get things I want in return (for me: automatic image descriptions, reader mode, read aloud, and AI based page summaries). Nothing I get from the companies Firefox works with are things I even want.

despite being probably only 1% the size of reddit.

I think they might be better because they’re only 1% the size of Reddit. It’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation with everyone, all at once. And a smaller website means less social pressure, less corporate influence, etc.

Thanks! I didn’t realize there was an announcement on Lemmy, or I would have searched. Unfortunately screenshots are kind of the only way to share posts on Discord, because you can’t link someone to a Discord message on a server they’re not a member of, so I can’t blame you for a screenshot there. However, it is possible to add alt-text on images you post to Lemmy. :-)

Thanks! Perfect. Wish I could award…Lemmy Gold? LOL