Drew Mochak

👨🏻‍🦯🇺🇸 Once Alaskan/bay area hippy, current southerner. I use AI to make games playable by the blind. Can almost say "vibe coder" without shame. Former Google, WhatsApp accessibility grand poobah. Reformed podcaster. Content producer and voice actor. Twitch streamer. I beat The Last Of Us on grounded with the screen off! Writer, drummer, vocalist,... and a snappy dresser.

pronouns: he/him
Mass Effect: Redux https://mass-effect-REDUX.ghost.io
Use my TTS voice and give me pennies!: https://elevenlabs.io/app/voice-lab/share/a585977f123e5c0fb79f7a8ea1710063491ffd15083e47c575e9c34a9f3d7cb4/t9pa8vZ7tCoTLCLirl6c
Talk to my AI agent! (at your own risk): https://elevenlabs.io/app/talk-to?agent_id=vuhWqTz5UZn8Isow117n

Public Key

npub1dvvjghcxpfnusrhkfw4rj6ayt2gzflelyu440084uh83ttdt370qeuftz5

NIP-05 Address

prism_at_infosec.exchange@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxkxfyturq5e7gpmmyh23edwj94ypyluljw26hhn67tnc44k4cl8spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsthkvan

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1dvvjghcxpfnusrhkfw4rj6ayt2gzflelyu440084uh83ttdt370qeuftz5

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Last Notes

2026-10-17 04:59:26 UTC

I'm more upset than I've been in a while.
Windows 11 sets the default documents folder to onedrive\documents. Anything that gets saved there gets backed up to one drive. This includes various save games, all my Reaper stuff, and various other odds and ends that I like to, you know, save.
To save disc space, OneDrive also defaults to files being online-only. They're not stored on your device, they're just listed there. So despite what they call it, this is in fact not a backup at all, because it doesn't create an extra copy. It is actually just transferring your most precious, irreplacible, personal files to Microsoft in the background, and trusting that nothing will happen. You can see where this is going, but just to underline the point with a bleeding fucking dagger, I did not ask for any of this, I just clicked save like I have done for the last twenty or so years of my life using Windows.
Since I don't care about and have never intentionally used onedrive, I signed out of it. Flash forward six months, the files that I thought were on my computer (because I can go see them there in the folder) are in fact gone from my hard drive, and also Onedrive nuked them from orbit.
Years of my life, gone without a trace. Thanks so much, Microsoft. Whoever came up with all those ideas probably got massive performance bonuses, because we're in the worst timeline.
Goodnight.

2026-10-13 20:00:07 UTC

When people ask me what Mastodon is, I have started telling them it is the social media for antisocial people. I think this has legs and we should use it.
If you have thoughts you'd like to express, but are paralized by fear of them being read, Mastodon is the place for you! Post whatever you want, secure in the knowledge that nothing you say will go viral or impact your job in any way. No one will track you or try to sell you ads; you're just not worth it. Sign up to Mastodon and never worry about anything you do mattering again.

2026-09-22 17:33:25 UTC

RE: https://tomkahe.com/@GiftArticles/117315793275145006
least surprising headline ever
#note1ptv…5k5y

2026-09-10 06:22:56 UTC

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I don't really see what about this is new, per se. You could always hit record on a phone and then transcribe the audio later. This lowers the bar for entry of all that but it was always a possibility.

2026-09-09 21:36:44 UTC

RE: https://sunny.garden/@targea_caramar/117243214896611096
Getting mad at me for things I never said is not a constructive use of your time. I'm blocking you now, for your own sake.

2026-09-08 19:02:08 UTC

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Why TF would he do that?

2026-09-03 17:33:59 UTC

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@libreoffice/117207898326483679
But but but who will write all my writing for me?
#note18fd…4rjj

2026-08-18 21:07:47 UTC

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FWIW, Mastodon V4.4, which was released last July, is supported until the end of this year. I would expect V4 to receive support for a fairly long time after 5.x comes out months from now. By which time I'm fairly confident anyone who is so inclined will have found a way to either forward port the current UI to 5.x or backport things they want from 5.x into a new fork of V4.x. The choice will always be yours.

2026-08-18 14:55:03 UTC

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Germany managed it just fine, we'll do okay.

2026-08-18 14:52:44 UTC

RE: https://journa.host/@theintercept/117117006822734077
War's going great LMAO
#note1h7h…7ys9

2026-08-06 16:08:39 UTC

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I've also noticed the google class actions going to spam. I'd suggest the FTC look into this, if we hadn't systematicly dismantled the government's ability to do things (thx orange man!)

2026-07-22 14:14:44 UTC

I know I'm like five years late on this but the humanware e-reader is legit cool, I couldn't care less about it as a book reader but you can also make it a braille display which it is very good at and can't argue with the price ($0!) I do have to laugh at the vestigial audio controls. The existence of a jack and buttons implies the existence of an audio processor. Why not just.... go all the way with it? But whatever.

2026-07-21 17:43:12 UTC

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The next thing they will sell is the list of firms who have signed up.

2026-07-13 16:25:39 UTC

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"I don't want growth" is such a wacky, fediverse-only take

2026-06-23 03:21:54 UTC

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Or if you want something, you know, not from the 1980s, there's a whole lot of people (and some of them are on feddy!) who kept making free ones after Infocom went bust, many of them are fantastic. I could literally list good text adventures all day, and now I gotta be careful in case some of them are reading this thread ;) there is the XYZZY awards to recognize outstanding IF and a competition every year. You can just play the winners from those for days and never get a bad experience. Just, again, maybe not one you're into.

2026-06-23 03:19:38 UTC

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SO MANY!!! Um. Pretty much everything Infocom did was a masterpiece. It just depends on what genre you're into, if you want more story than puzzles and such. Steve Meretzki (the guy who wrote the H2G game) also wrote A Mind Forever Voyaging which is a more story-focused distopic political thing. He also wrote Planetfall (and a sequel called stationfall) which is more lighthearted and also scifi with a good mix of both. Trinity is another great story one about the atomic bomb. Then there are the Zorks/Enchanter series which are fantasy and more puzzle focused. Or the mystery ones Suspect/Deadline/The Witness where you're trying to solve a murder. They are all great, literally can't go wrong. I like Suspended because it is the most different, conceptually, where instead of controlling a player you control someone who... controls other machines.

2026-06-22 14:17:10 UTC

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if you think HHGTTG was hard you should try suspended (both are hard, but for very different reasons) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game)

2026-06-22 14:05:22 UTC

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I LOVE THEM!

2026-06-15 15:47:09 UTC

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Anyway thank you for writing up what was basically my life until recently.

2026-06-15 15:36:05 UTC

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Very much this--I can get pretty good results out of it, because I (not to toot my own horn,) am a genius. I know precisely how it must function and test it riggorously before submitting If you just say, "here's a thing, fix it" it usually doesn't work the first time. But if you stick with it you'll either get it to a good place or realize your problems were deeper than you thought, which is still useful.

2026-06-15 14:35:57 UTC

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I asked the WhatsApp people if my various vibe-coded accessibility fixes to their web app would create thrash for them reviewing baby's first code, and the answer was that basically they were already doing that from everyone else, so, no.

2026-06-15 14:22:55 UTC

I don't hate the AI, I just want to be able to murder it at a moment's notice.

2026-06-12 03:48:50 UTC

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Wow I never thought of that.

2026-06-05 17:32:14 UTC

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LOL I just figure you'll probably get people wanting to argue with you over it.

2026-06-05 17:28:48 UTC

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I can't believe you just did that to your own mentions.

2026-06-05 05:22:41 UTC

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I--what? Why are you jabbering at me?

2026-06-04 21:54:18 UTC

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I didn't ask if it was insurmountable. My question was if you, personally, are willing to surmount it.

2026-06-04 21:24:00 UTC

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Sir, you are badly confused. As far as I know the only people who can add characters to Date Everything are the developers at Sassy Chap games. Which is fine, since I have no intention to add any characters, AI or otherwise.
Are you a bot?
Are you drunk?

2026-06-04 18:59:05 UTC

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Cool! Would you be willing to describe all of the intro, friend, love and hate poses for the characters in Date Everything!? There are about a hundred of them, I'm told, so about four hundred in total. This is part of an open source project so I can't compensate you unfortunately, but happy to give you a credit :-)

2026-06-04 18:49:42 UTC

What #LLM do y'all prefer for writing image descriptions? Gemini, yes?

2026-05-22 23:37:32 UTC

What's a good place to get preprogrammed NFC tags/keychains that also have a QR code printed on them?

2026-05-14 18:02:15 UTC

RE: https://indieweb.social/@jautero/116278929118822547
Sorry my being alive isn't interesting enough to the right people, I'll work on that
#note1xzj…h92l

2026-04-07 18:44:43 UTC

Starting to think Democracy was a mistake.

2026-03-23 00:28:09 UTC

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This is a curious statement. Who does set the priority of a free and open source project, if not the developer? Is that not the whole point?

2026-03-22 18:58:50 UTC

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Sorry but are there not relevent accessibility laws that are also not specific to a certain state or country? In fact they have been around much longer, so if anything, accessibility should be a higher priority.