Self-hosting a database, particularly Postgres, is often more cost-effective and offers similar reliability to managed services like AWS RDS. While managed services handle operational tasks, self-hosting provides more control and cost savings, especially for those with high-traffic applications. The author argues that the pendulum has swung too far towards managed services and encourages teams to consider self-hosting for their databases.

Sulthiame reduced breathing interruptions in sleep apnea patients, pointing toward a viable drug treatment. A European clinical trial has found that the drug sulthiame can reduce breathing pauses and improve sleep quality in people with obstructive sleep apnea, with researchers from the Universit

Let’s Encrypt is introducing several updates to the certificates we issue, including new root certificates, the deprecation of TLS client authentication, and shortening certificate lifetimes. To help roll out changes gradually, we’re making use of ACME profiles to allow users to have control over when some of these changes take place. For most users, no action is required. Let’s Encrypt has generated two new Root Certification Authorities (CAs) and six new Intermediate CAs, which we’re collecti...

A collection of bad practices in HTML, copied from real websites.

German regulators have declared accessibility overlays a barrier to certification, stating they cannot reliably assess websites using them. Organizations should avoid overlays and instead conduct proper accessibility audits and implement genuine, code-level accessibility solutions.

Bluetooth 6.0, announced in September 2024, introduces several new features, including Bluetooth Channel Sounding for improved device positioning and tracking, and Decision-Based Advertising Filtering for faster device pairing and switching. It also enhances ISOAL for better reliability and reduced latency, and introduces the LC3plus codec for improved audio quality. While still rare in 2025, Bluetooth 6.0 is expected to become more prevalent in devices by 2026.

Many accessibility hacks, like electric toothbrushes and Aga cookers, were originally designed for people with disabilities but are now widely used. These innovations, along with features like tactile packaging and smart glasses, benefit everyone by improving efficiency and convenience. The author, a blind person, highlights how these tools enhance their daily life and emphasizes the need for a more inclusive perspective on accessibility.

Google TalkBack version 16.2 introduces several new features, including text formatting reporting, a double-tap gesture for voice dictation with Gboard, and Browse Mode for quick web page navigation. The Enhanced keymap is required for Browse Mode and offers customizable shortcuts. Additional features include gesture assignments for date, time, and battery percentage, split tap to activate focused items, and an option to announce keyboard keys faster.

The author explores the characteristics that make accessibility overlays problematic, focusing on toolbars, automated accessibility fixes, and unethical marketing. The author argues that toolbars should not imply support for specific disabilities, automated fixes should be purpose-built and not generalized, and marketing should not mislead users about compliance. The author uses their own WP Accessibility plugin and Elementor’s A11y plugin as examples to illustrate these points.

Hannah, a young employee, discovered a way to reimage thin clients in-house, saving her company £600 per device and six weeks of downtime. Her boss, recognizing the cost savings, allowed her to play her new Nintendo GameCube at work while overseeing the process.

A few thoughts on the idea that domains should be everyone’s “internet handles”.

Starting January 20, 2026, Amazon will allow authors to offer DRM-free ebooks in EPUB and PDF formats through Kindle Direct Publishing. Authors can opt-in to this feature for their existing titles by changing the DRM status in the KDP author portal.

Kim Kardashian failed the California bar exam after apprenticing for over six years. A lawyer cited ChatGPT’s usage policies in a wrongful-death complaint, highlighting the importance of understanding AI limitations. A Crooked Beverage Company co-founder faces felony theft charges for allegedly stealing over $75,000.

Leo, an IT support worker in the early 1990s, accidentally used a high-priority queue to run a job, completing it much faster than expected. This discovery led to a change in procedure, allowing the night shift to verify job outputs and close files, improving efficiency and resilience.

Contribute to svanichkin/say development by creating an account on GitHub.

A design agency client wanted to implement a “fuck off contact page,” prioritizing aesthetics over user experience. Despite the designer’s objections, the client’s vision prevailed, leading to a disappointing outcome. The designer reflects on the importance of educating clients about the design process and the potential pitfalls of discounted pricing.

Note: Writing Tools aren’t designed to work with this type of content.

A VPS was hacked, causing high CPU usage due to a crypto miner. The attacker exploited a vulnerability in Umami, a self-hosted analytics service. The user took steps to secure the server, including removing Prometheus, updating Umami, and adding a Hetzner Firewall.

The author explored using Chrome’s on-device AI to generate random JSON objects based on a given name and JSON shape. They built a demo where users input a name and JSON structure, and the AI generates a random JSON object with sensible data. The author encountered challenges with the AI’s output format and used a library to generate JSON schemas from sample data, ultimately achieving near-perfect results.

A list of video games accessible to the blind is provided, categorized by level of accessibility. The list includes fully accessible games with audio description, mostly accessible games requiring sighted assistance or mods, and playable games without specific accessibility features. The list is a work in progress, and users are encouraged to share their experiences and suggest additional games.

How an XKCD comic led to teaching myself graph theory — a journey through NP-hard problems, PQ-trees, and layered graph algorithms.

Accessibility is not a purely technical problem that can be solved with code. It is about people and their varying needs, contexts, and expectations. While claiming something is “accessible” is not inherently bad, it is more honest to explain the specific accessibility features it offers.

Kohler’s Dekoda smart camera, which analyzes toilet bowl images for gut health advice, uses TLS encryption for data in transit, not end-to-end encryption as the company claims. This distinction is important for user privacy, as it implies Kohler can access the images. Kohler states that user data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and that algorithms are trained on de-identified data.

Micron is exiting the Crucial consumer business to focus on the more profitable AI-driven data centre market. While Crucial will close by February 2026, Micron will continue to support products under warranty.

New global research from Disability:IN and LinkedIn reveals a powerful workforce trend: professionals with disabilities are advancing- but often by switching firms to do so. Explore the research that will shape your workforce strategy for years to come.

Jim, a reader, recounts a time in the early 1990s when he worked for an online bookstore. While testing the new platform, Jim forgot to disable a site crawler’s ability to add items to the shopping cart, resulting in a cart worth over $50,000. This caused a major disruption for the bookstore, but Jim was able to fix the issue and keep his job.

On the space of minds and the optimizations that give rise to them.

1801 - Joseph Marie Jacquard uses punch cards to instruct a loom to weave "hello, world" into a tapestry. Redditers of the time are not imp...

AI large language models have been heralded as revolutionary in the world of accessibility. But in order to create a more accessible internet, those with disabilities need to be included in the process of training the technology, advocates say.

Welcome to watchTowr vs the Internet, part 68.

That feeling you’re experiencing? Dread. You should be used to it by now.

As is fast becoming an unofficial and, apparently, frowned upon tradition - we identified incredible amounts of publicly exposed passwords, secrets, keys and more for very sensitive environments

How about this for a truism: a book is a book, and something that is not a book is not a book. This post will knock your socks off if you are inclined to affirm this statement, because in medieval …

Grab yours while supplies last. Apple has launched a limited edition iPhone grip and stand, designed by Bailey Hikawa "through an extensive interview...

Two years ago, I wrote: Microsoft-the-company does not care about Infocom. But a lot of people in Microsoft must care. Microsoft is heavily populated by greying GenX nerds just like me. Folks who grew up with the first home computers and fondly ...

After reading the book The AWK Programming Language (recommended!), I was planning to try AWK out on this year’s Advent of Code. Having some time off from work this week, I tried to implement one of the problems in it to get some practice, set up my tooling, see how hard AWK would be, and… I found I’m FP-pilled.

Baltimore, MD (November 18, 2025): The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is proud to announce a partnership with ElevenLabs, bringing the innovative ElevenReader platform to blind readers across the United States.

Download Art of Fauna: Cozy Puzzles by Klemens Strasser on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more games like Art of Fauna:…

Cloudflare suffered a service outage on November 18, 2025. The outage was triggered by a bug in generation logic for a Bot Management feature file causing many Cloudflare services to be affected.

All web developers know, at some level, that accessibility is important. But when push comes to shove, it can be hard to prioritize it above a bazillion other concerns when you’re trying to c…

According to a recent Google leak, we’re all to blame for poor quality search results. Summary and thoughts on Rand Fishkin's and Mike King's dropped dual reports on a large-scale leak of Google Search internal documentation for Content API Warehouse.

Greta works with a legacy tech stack, including a deprecated IDE from a defunct vendor, a dialect of C with limited compiler support, and a Pascal library with no source code. The code itself is problematic, with a monolithic main form, global state, and confusing file structures. Despite the challenges, Greta is happy with the team culture and is actively working on a .NET replacement.

Microsoft Word and PowerPoint for Windows now use generative AI to generate alt text for images. This new feature provides higher-quality, context-rich descriptions and gives users more control over when and how alt text is added. The update is available to Microsoft 365 users with Version 2510 or later.

Reflections on my time leading Mastodon and what's to come next.

PHP 8.5, releasing on November 20, 2025, introduces several new features. These include the pipe operator for easier function chaining, the ability to assign new values to cloned objects, and the #[NoDiscard] attribute to indicate required function return values. Other notable additions are closure improvements, backtraces for fatal errors, and built-in array_first() and array_last() functions.

Chase, a developer, accidentally left a box unchecked while updating an Amazon Machine Image, causing hundreds of 100 GB storage volumes to persist after instances terminated. This mistake resulted in a $40,000 AWS bill, which was partially forgiven. Chase advises setting alarms for unexpected cost increases.

Baidu unveiled ERNIE 5.0, a proprietary multimodal foundation model designed to process and generate content across text, images, audio, and video. The model, positioned as a global contender in the enterprise AI market, boasts competitive performance against OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, particularly in structured document understanding and visual chart reasoning. Alongside ERNIE 5.0, Baidu introduced major updates to its digital human platform, no-code tools, and general-purpose AI agents, aiming to expand its AI footprint beyond China.

Edit ~/.ssh/config and add “ConnectionAttempts 120” to automatically retry SSH connections for two minutes after a reboot.

UK charity launches new digital archive that champions the legacy of disability arts and activism for public access

Julia Evans offers programming zines, including free black and white ones and purchasable colour ones. The Wizard Zines Collection, featuring 15 zines, is available for $145, and the Secret Rules of the Terminal zine is new. Free resources include experiments, playgrounds, and posters.

The author reflects on their journey with Ruby, from discovering it in university to building a career around Ruby on Rails. They highlight the vibrant Ruby community, the influence of key figures like Matz and _why, and the impact of Rails on web development. The author emphasizes how Rails’ ease of use and rich ecosystem made it a game-changer, allowing for rapid prototyping and experimentation.

The Ruby on Rails community, once a welcoming space, has become increasingly hostile. The author, a trans woman, reflects on the community’s decline, highlighting the negative impact of David Hamburger Helper, a figure who embodies the community’s shift towards toxicity. The author also discusses the broader societal issues impacting the trans community, emphasizing the need for awareness and action.

The author expresses concern about the influence of wealthy individuals and corporations on the Ruby community, specifically highlighting Shopify’s financial influence on Rubygems. The author also criticizes David Hamburger Helper, a prominent Ruby community leader, for his controversial and divisive statements, particularly those targeting the transgender community. The author argues that such behaviour is harmful and contributes to a toxic environment within the community.

The author reflects on the negative impact of David’s actions on the Ruby and Rails communities, highlighting his domineering behaviour and the resulting decline of Ruby’s popularity. The author expresses disappointment in the current state of the tech industry, where creativity and programmer happiness are overshadowed by efficiency and conformity. They hope to influence those in David’s orbit to reconsider their support for him and to encourage the Ruby community to prioritize its core values.

The author criticizes the toxic behaviour of David Hamburger Helper, arguing that it is harming the Ruby community and pushing out marginalized groups. They call on Ruby maintainers to take action, suggesting a fork of the project if necessary, and urge the broader community to stand up against abuse and support a more inclusive future for Ruby. The author also highlights the importance of democratic governance in open-source projects, citing the Python Software Foundation’s recent decision to prioritize their values over funding.

The author reflects on their experience with the Ruby on Rails community, highlighting its fun and inclusive culture, while acknowledging its flaws and the presence of bad actors. They express disappointment with Ruby Central’s handling of a recent situation and criticize the far-right movement’s influence on trans rights. The author also shares their personal journey of growth and change, emphasizing the importance of kindness and vulnerability.

The non-alcoholic beverage market in Canada is growing, but prices remain high. This is due to the complex and costly production process, similar to alcoholic beverages, and the need to maintain a premium price point to ensure perceived quality. As the market matures, prices may decrease slightly, but non-alcoholic drinks are likely to remain premium products.

Cognixion is using Apple Vision Pro in a clinical study to explore how people with conditions like ALS and spinal cord injuries can communicate using brain signals, eye tracking, and AI. The study, which runs through April 2026, leverages Vision Pro’s high-resolution video passthrough and accessibility features like Eye Tracking and AssistiveTouch. This collaboration highlights how Apple’s accessibility framework, while not designed for medical use, is enabling significant advancements in healthcare technology.

A study of over 130,000 adults with insomnia found that long-term melatonin use (over a year) was associated with a higher risk of heart failure, hospitalization, and death. The study, presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2025, raises concerns about the safety of melatonin, a widely used sleep aid. Researchers emphasize the need for further research to assess melatonin’s cardiovascular safety.

A study of 130,828 adults with insomnia found a potential link between melatonin use and heart failure. The study, using data from the TriNetX network, compared 65,414 participants prescribed melatonin for at least a year to a control group. While the study raises safety concerns, it cannot prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship, highlighting the need for further research.

Contact 1-800-AHA-USA1 for public inquiries.

A government website rejected a strong, randomly generated password, requiring a manually selected one instead. The website’s password guidelines have since changed, but the author finds the situation ironic and concerning.

In the mid-1990s, a Unix administrator named Mason worked for a newspaper that started a dial-up ISP. He shared a prank email about “Internet Cleaning Day” with the ISP help desk manager, who believed it and planned to notify customers. Mason quickly clarified the joke, averting a potential customer service disaster.

A study assessed an LLM’s ability to generate accessible HTML code, revealing concerning shortcomings. The model demonstrated a superficial understanding of accessibility, often including unnecessary ARIA attributes and failing to address fundamental issues like form labelling and keyboard navigation. The findings underscore the need to improve training data to ensure AI-generated code adheres to accessibility best practices.

The text discusses the limitations of AI-generated code in terms of accessibility, highlighting issues like improper use of HTML elements, lack of error state management, and unnecessary JavaScript. It suggests that these limitations can be addressed by improving training data, fine-tuning models for accessibility, and integrating accessibility considerations into prompt engineering and IDE integrations. The author emphasizes the importance of prioritizing accessibility in AI-generated code to ensure a more inclusive web.

If you follow me on social media, one of the themes you’ll find I talk about fairly often related to accessibility is how text that isn’t shown visually needs to have better verificatio…

Stay sharp, and know the exits

Interac logo displayed in Toronto on August 23, 2023.

CBC News will provide live coverage of the Remembrance Day ceremony from Ottawa on Tuesday, including a moment of silence and the laying of a wreath by the Silver Cross Mother.

Meta’s smart glasses now feature a “quick connect” option, allowing users to create one-touch shortcuts for frequently used communication actions, reducing reliance on voice commands. This feature, similar to the Oakley Meta Vanguard’s “action button,” enables users to quickly message, call, or share media with a designated contact.

Fable’s new pay-per-project model provides quick feedback from disabled people using assistive technology. The service offers valuable insights into usability and accessibility, helping to improve the design and development process. The author received actionable feedback from seven participants, highlighting the importance of direct representation from disabled users.

Fable’s pay-per-project service provides valuable insights into how digital experiences work for disabled users. The service offers dedicated tools to communicate findings and improve accessibility. While the service is a gift, there are concerns about how organizations will interpret and act on the feedback, especially those without specialized training in inclusive user research.