eclexic

Please boost this toot!
https://mstdn.social/@theeclecticdyslexic/116169411669556587. Even though it's old, it's important! My job right now is to replace gesture typing in #Heliboard; It helps to have more people contributing data, or spreading the word around!

I'm an Industrialised information consumption apparatus, FOSS fanatic, misguided believer in a better world, and owner of too many opinions.

If you follow me for Heliboard stuff, send me a message I will follow you back.

Public Key

npub1qdsvgylg3sv2aqllqh4ten05750lyqd3t7rhta52p2x9g4vhatvsvjzlxz

NIP-05 Address

theeclecticdyslexic@mstdn-social.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqxcxyz05gcx9ws0lst64ueh6028ljqxc4lpm4769q4rz52kt74kgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsp4hpgk

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1qdsvgylg3sv2aqllqh4ten05750lyqd3t7rhta52p2x9g4vhatvsvjzlxz

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Last Notes

2026-08-11 03:27:32 UTC

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@nprofile…jlkz Awesome! I hope you can use it and basically never think about it. :-)

2026-08-10 07:27:24 UTC

#fossy last day, what a ride...
All the people I got to talk to. I only just finished, and truly I am tired. If this were a go one more day, I might not survive.

2026-07-27 16:44:52 UTC

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@nprofile…gfkp I do think you are right.
They should actually welcome this, following their rhetoric. It's an opportunity to prove they are 100x engineers. Fork everything from codeberg. Then, they can vibe everything, and we will see what versions see public adoption. Call it the "marketplace of commits" lol.
The fact that they are instead crybullying about this means this has nothing to do with the merits of the tech. We are being left behind. They don't need us. We are slow luddites. right?

2026-07-27 16:32:45 UTC

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@nprofile…np2h Did you print bases for the marker cards? We have some of those. They are printed so that the card stock the tokens are on holds tight enough into the base that you can pick them up by the card. It is pretty cool actually having our pathfinder pawns style tokens on top of a TV that has our battle map on it. Let's us have nice art on the tokens, and I get to use the software from https://www.megasploot.com/ to make our battle and world maps.

2026-07-27 16:00:39 UTC

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@nprofile…np2h these are some fancy toys. My group just uses a table I made out of a flat screen TV, and we only get maps when I have the time to draw a new one. 🫠

2026-07-14 16:26:15 UTC

Just got data from a heliboard fork for the first time. Well, it's possible it's happened before and the application name wasn't changed in the fork. Can't seem to find the fork though... KBoard 2.5.6, the only KBoard I've found seems abandoned, isn't a heliboard fork, and has a higher version number.

2026-07-14 05:48:31 UTC

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@nprofile…uptt
It's my opinion that people don't change settings and will use LLMs for mundane tasks easily covered by existing tools, because most interfaces are inscrutable to most users. They don't even know what they don't know, because discoverability is basically not a thing in most interfaces.
They aren't stupid, the interfaces are wrong. I don't know how to fix them, but they are wrong. It should not take the number of hours I have spent to learn to use a computer effortlessly.

2026-07-13 00:13:05 UTC

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@nprofile…awd8 Ehhh, I mean whatever. I personally think command of the English language is far more impressive than knowing rust.
Maybe that's my bias though. I find natural languages incredibly hard, but find all popular programming languages have enough common structure they feel somewhat interchangeable.
Learning the quirks of programming languages is much easier than the fact I can't ask a compiler if I used my semi colon correctly, when joining two related sentences.

2026-07-12 23:48:42 UTC

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@nprofile…awd8 Honestly, in my opinion... The average tech enthusiast has probably had a more negative impact on computing than the vast majority of tech illiterate artists.

2026-07-10 19:18:32 UTC

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#Heliboard 4.0 just released on github; it will be on fdroid soon. 4.0 includes opt-in background data gathering!
Collecting gestures from daily use has some privacy risk; I made a video about how to leverage our privacy safeguards.
Boosts please!
PT: https://makertube.net/w/pPywMiF7kjumFfMrQKHzoU
YT: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VJLzVEhY2PY
Text (WIP): https://github.com/HeliBorg/HeliBoard/wiki/Background-Gesture-Data-Gathering
Active gathering was also changed to focus on common words. We still want active gathering data; background data is a supplement not a replacement!
2/3

2026-07-09 23:20:36 UTC

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@nprofile…awd8 I could maaaaayyyybe understand if it was really really common that you would have to interact with a deaf person, and they figured typically the deaf people could get by reading lips?.. but I just don't think this is the consideration being made.

2026-07-09 23:15:54 UTC

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@nprofile…awd8 This is actually comical to me. This sitcom plotline writes itself. I am just imagining scenes where every time someone speaks, the sign language interpreter starts signing at the blind person, in compliance with their job while knowing this achieves nothing.

2026-07-07 18:13:48 UTC

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@nprofile…kwdk The part I think people miss about scrapers is they don't only scrape for building training sets... but there is also scraping being done at inference time, because of RAG.
You aren't just paying for them to steal your data once, you are paying for them to slightly improve their inference results as they offload the cost of maintaining the database they already assembled onto your server at runtime.
This applies not only to frontier but also to local models!

2026-07-07 00:34:59 UTC

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@nprofile…awd8 I know a movie where the author thought it was better than their book, and they were being 100% honest... and were correct! Cloud Atlas, book by David Mitchell, Directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer.
I don't know how it plays with described video though. I think it would be a very difficult to listen to movie... There are a ton of visual details that would not translate well to being laid out plainly in described video. The kind of details that take many many watches to find.

2026-07-06 17:34:57 UTC

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@nprofile…awd8 this all tracks. Wish it didn't, but it does. I think this current generation has internalised previously unusual expressions of racism and sexism that I think people educating them never saw coming... because the kids learned it online.
I'm much more concerned about young men than I am young women, but I notice some trends that don't look awesome among young women as well. I think the biggest obstacle is the sheer volume of solipsistic experiences young people have by default.

2026-07-03 19:35:05 UTC

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@nprofile…awd8 uhhhh what?
So they don't have a web dev... how do they expect to act on anything they learn with the accessibility testing they do?
I am so confused. Good faith? Are they suggesting that you were not acting in good faith?

2026-07-03 05:41:41 UTC

What an experience. I really recommend listening to this essay in a quiet place with eyes closed.
#nevent1q…kl7c

2026-07-02 17:31:34 UTC

I had a lot of fun with a captive audience listening to me yammer about gesture typing & #heliboard.
It didn't get much traction, so I will boost a few more times.
I hope the VOD inspires one person to contribute! Making gesture typing work fast and reliably is a really hard, but fun, problem... Moreover, I can and will make sure you hit the ground running if you want to contribute!
https://tubefree.org/w/uhdVdshnQHyboPXW31JjF9
Reach me:
- here
- https://matrix.to/#/@eclexic:matrix.org
- my email is in heliboard's email export

2026-07-02 04:05:04 UTC

Hello #Heliboard users and #Russian speakers!
Would someone be able to help me with a Russian translation related to a bug? Send me a private mention if you are willing and able!

2026-06-26 04:52:02 UTC

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@nprofile…3q9y @nprofile…55k5 worked for me on my android (fairphone 4), but I was using firefox.
edit: downloded chrome just to check, worked there too!
Hope you figure out what happened there!

2026-06-11 02:18:51 UTC

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@nprofile…np2h That steep? oof.
I mean it is the same here, last I checked it was _cheaper_ to fly than to take a train... and it would take less than a third of the time.
Better believe the flight is more resource intense, but it is subsidised like no tomorrow.

2026-06-10 22:27:25 UTC

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@nprofile…egu8 @nprofile…0g3j I think that is because it is the wrong model to use for conceptualisation. In many cases it is both.

2026-05-31 22:55:06 UTC

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@nprofile…awd8 Have you considered maybe I want it to hallucinate new random links for me to attribute to the person whose linktree I am looking at.
Look pretty silly now don't you Robert? /s

2026-05-26 06:21:36 UTC

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@nprofile…np2h What are the worst ones you are hearing? I have plenty of complaints.
Most of them boil down to:
- chokepoint capitalism
- offloading work to someone else isn't automation
- destroying the commons as a business model
- slowing down validation is rarely worth speeding up input
- I don't trust anyone to do due diligence with it
- don't like the concepts of truth and chains of attribution being on fire
I probably missed one.
I am unsure how I feel about copyright being on fire.

2026-05-23 07:58:01 UTC

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@nprofile…vdqp
Yes they absolutely do fall for this! They don't need to catch many to make it worth it!

2026-05-17 05:49:05 UTC

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@nprofile…awd8 Are you using Linux?!
I have been on Linux for ages, but last I looked into it, the quality of screen readers was in the dumps. I heard several a visually impaired person lament the horrid experiences they had. This was years ago though. I am glad things are working well enough that it is something you like using!
Do you find the terminal _more_ or _less_ useful than the average app designed for sighted people on Linux?

2026-05-16 20:07:53 UTC

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@nprofile…uptt I mean, even with ethical training I'm not convinced the way LLMs impact the priors of culture is net positive.
It seems to me it is currently most effectively used to DoS attack, or otherwise mislead, human brains. I think it has accelerated nearly every problem we currently face much more than it has accelerated the solutions.

2026-05-14 19:39:29 UTC

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@nprofile…lhdz I was listening to something @nprofile…ugpy said recently, about the NLRB. He made the point that actually the NLRB was designed to put a violent labour revolution back in the bottle the only feasible way.
I think we might need to start thinking about copyright this way. If they are going to launder copyleft, maybe it is time to start laundering proprietary code that leaks. They have declared licenses dead, maybe we should believe them.

2026-04-28 06:00:03 UTC

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@nprofile…vdqp It sure is, if it is the last thing I do. This is my white whale.

2026-04-09 07:52:02 UTC

#Heliboard gesture data project's first batch has been run through the arcane scripts I wrote.
I only had to discard <1% of the gestures; those were duplicates. No obviously fake data!
269,845 gestures, 500+ contributors.
Only ~60% of the gestures are some form of English.
The other most common languages are:
German
Polish
French
Russian
Arabic
Swedish
Italian
There are other languages, with fewer than 1000 gestures, but I don't know their codes by heart... I will map those later!

2026-03-26 17:15:57 UTC

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@nprofile…zu4r where did you find this picture of me when I wake up in the morning?

2026-03-04 06:09:08 UTC

#Heliboard is gathering gesture typing data, so that we can implement a #FOSS alternative to the closed gesture typing library Heliboard currently relies on. The data we collect will be released under the CC BY-SA 4.0
I also made a video including details & instructions.
Boosts Please! The greater the diversity of people & languages in the data, the better we can test for correctness.
PT: https://makertube.net/w/cQECfDkuLGR9eUQquUEo4K
YT: https://youtu.be/CyjumVTWtJA
Text (instructions only):
https://github.com/Helium314/HeliBoard/wiki/Tutorial:-How-to-Contribute-Gesture-Data

2026-02-27 04:33:05 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0 I stole it from somewhere I can't remember, then gussied it up. 😅

2026-02-27 04:30:41 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0 Republicans, the sword that cut away freedoms.
Democrats, the shield that weathers the counterattacks to regain them.

2026-02-05 23:17:46 UTC

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@nprofile…nmr0 are these the ones you were talking about a couple weeks ago that you had a sudden urge to make? 🙂