On Android, long press home button activates Google Assistant that can OCR the current screen and translate immediately. Unironically one of the only two features keeping me on Android until now.
On iOS 26 you can do basically the same thing. Take a screenshot (power button + volume up), click the thumbnail of the screenshot that appears. You'll see the screenshot full screen and there is a 'translate' button (along some other AI stuff).
Unless the App Developer has chosen to blanket deny screenshots. This is common on view accepting payment information but blanket application is also common.
macOS does this, too, along with other text manipulation features in screenshots and arbitrary image and video files opened in Preview, QuickTime Player (and apps using an embedded player), and Safari. High quality, local, system-provided OCR is a godsend sometimes.
Like with all things Google, this feature wasn't available in Gemini (or only available on some devices) last I checked. With Gemini going to replace Google Assistant in the future, this is yet another useful feature that Google will be taking away from Android.
Nah man, trigger the "circle to search" feature (on my phone I use gestures and I hold down on the bottom center of the screen) and you can draw a line over ANY text to highlight it instantly, even text within an image. Perhaps the best feature I've ever been given during an update.
Circle to Search is not available for all devices. My Fairphone 4 doesn't have it and there are plenty of other devices where it's not allowed by Google yet.
If you open an image with Google Lens (or select the image in the Google Search app, which seems to result in the same thing) Google does by default an image web search and shows you similar pictures, but it also displays a blue "translate" button on the right, which activates OCR and text selection, and optional translation. Though it doesn't seem possible to avoid it doing the image web search first, which might be problematic for private pictures.
Interesting. I screenshot then send to Google Lens which is obviously more of a hassle than what you're describing. But I have gestures enabled and so no home button. I wonder what is the gesture-equivalent of long-pressing on home.
On my Pixel 5, if you swipe from the bottom bar up (as if you are gesturing to close the app), near the bottom some options will appear: Screenshot or Select. The Select mode is an OCR enabled text selection.
This just takes me to the horizontal scrolling list of apps displayed as screenshots of the app.
I can swipe from the bottom corner to bring up "Gemini" but that doesn't have an option to OCR the screen. Android is so diverse - people always end up talking about their unique and differing experiences, unfortunately.
yeah definitely my favourite feature on android too that I use multiple times per day. Unlike the people saying taking a screenshot is basically the same on iOS - no it isn't. This moves the whole display into an ephemeral screenshot and you can copy text, translate, all kinds of things, without the delay of taking a screenshot, or worrying about that file hanging around permanently after.
Super ironic that often images are the most accessible way to share text data these days but that's what enshittification brought us.
> activates Google Assistant that can OCR the current screen
=>
> activates Google Assistant that can copy a bunch of your personal data for eternal storage with Alphabet, building your personal profile there - with your permission, instead of them having to find some kind of excuse to obtain it
I prefer this easy solution: Print the website (with a printer), take a photo of the printed page, run the photo through OCR software. As simple as that.
I prefer this easy solution: Take a photograph of the website, develop the film, send it off to a transcription service, received the printed copy in the mail, take a digital picture of the document, run it through OCR software. As simple as that.
This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China. Every year, neighboring countries of China like Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam sent envoys to Imperial China, paying gold, women, and exotic products, in return for recognition of their sovereignty (subject to the supreme authority of Chinese emperor), military protection, and access to trade routes within China.
It is interesting to see the resurgence of such imperial practices in modern-day America. I think it worked out quite well for the Tang dynasty, but arguably that was because all East Asian feudal states were authoritarian monarchy back then. A logical next step would be for POTUS to declare himself as the supreme leader of the world, emend educational materials to propound the idea that the US is superior to other tributary states, quell all internal cries of undemocratic practices, and ban books that promote historical knowledge to avoid unnecessary dissent.
> This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China. Every year, neighboring countries of China like Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam sent envoys to Imperial China, paying gold, women, and exotic products, in return for recognition of their sovereignty (subject to the supreme authority of Chinese emperor), military protection, and access to trade routes within China.
The most irritating thing is that I specifically didn't want to see a return to form for this for China, but I never imagined that America in the 21st Century would somehow get there first. It was just out of fucking nowhere.
The prospects for the working class disappeared when you moved manufacturing to China. The population was subsequently dumbed down because there was no money for schools(except for the rich elite).
Probably because you’re talking about a whole different thing than what I was responding to. America shaking down Japan and Korea to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars wasn’t even on my bingo card for 2025, but perhaps your bingo card was more prophetic.
Usually I read these “how could you/they not see this coming?” statements less in reference to a specific occurrence and more like “Given this man’s profound and enduring disinterest in history, culture, economics and the global political process, along with his demonstrated venality, how could you not see that bad things would happen, this being an example…”
> prospects for the working class disappeared when you moved manufacturing to China
I think the prospects of the working class died with the crisis signaling the end of the USSR and by extension communist/socialist circles. After all it was the only counter-balance that instilled a baseline fear of violent uprising from the workers class in the heart of the wealthy class.
And in a way the final nail came with the free reign liberal policies that followed with Thatcher e Reagan, not so much about offshoring in itself.
The true problem is money in politics. No, this has nothing to do with Musk. Musk is just visible, but it's been going on in the US for a long, long time.
Other countries have limits on campaign donations, for example at the federal level in Canada:
* no donations are allowed by corporations
* individuals may only donate $1750 to the party, and $1750 to the local candidate
* people running for office can donate to their own campaign, to the tune of $5000
* leadership candidates (eg, for Prime Minister) can donate $25k to their own campaign
You want the "working class" to have more of a say? Make candidates beholden to normal people to get elected. Destroy the machinery of big-business donations for campaign, and campaign management funding.
That's it. That's the biggest, most significant fix, right there.
>...After all it was the only counter-balance that instilled a baseline fear of violent uprising from the workers class in the heart of the wealthy class.
Are people claiming that the USSR provided a valid counter-balance for the working class? At any rate, if the chances of political violence have actually decreased in democracies due to the end of the USSR, isn't that a good thing?
Yes! Western states had to ensure that life was better in a Capitalist country. Hence unions were tolerated, along with human rights, rule of law, anti corruption etc etc.
Unions have never been tolerated - they seized what little power they have through actual economic force. The kind that no king or government can oppose for long.
Human rights and fighting graft don't have very much to do with the USSR, unless you ignore the centuries or history there before the Communist Manifesto was even written.
Neither Trump, nor anybody in the Republican party is, and has never been, and will never be some kind of champion of the working class. If you're in it, you're just a useful idiot to him.
What you're seeing isn't a consequence of the working class finally acting in its interests by getting behind a billionaire slumlord and conman. What you're seeing is the consequence of billionaires figuring out that if you distract the working class with divisive identity politics and plain old bullshit (Trans athletes! The gays grooming your children! Antifa supersoldiers stealing elections! Socialist death panels killing granny!), you can swindle it out of anything.
Trump and his friends would have had no legs in a society that hasn't been thoroughly and irreparably broken by this stupidity and the normalization thereof.
> This "pay up for trade access" is similar to the tributary system of feudal China.
The two systems are fundamentally different. In the ancient Chinese tributary system, based on the principle of "厚往薄来" China's reciprocation had to exceed the value of the tribute, thereby providing tangible benefits to the tributary states. This practice even led to later restrictions on the frequency of tribute missions from certain countries
I wish the western allies would dump their US bonds to drive bond yields into the ground and threaten US budgets, like the military one, that relying on cheap debt.
But this is a difficult decision to make, do you sacrifice possible (less likely) future earnings to destabilize a super power to save it from fascism but in turn risking a power vacuum to your disadvantage?
Id take this gamble but im a mere democratic citizen, that doesnt care about global pro-fascism support, like other right leaning governments do.
>I wish the western allies would dump their US bonds to drive bond yields into the ground
Dumping bonds would increase supply and drive down prices, but that increases yields because yields is the difference between the price you paid vs the face value of the bond.
When US bonds enter the secondary market at a discount, buyers are inclined to prefer them over the US-offerend ones who need to raise interest rates to stay competitve, so making them more expensive for the US.
Bond yield is the return an investor will realize on a bond, so driving down prices decreases yields. Sure, it can increase the absolute value of yield as it heads into the negative...
Undermining the USD doesn't help. Vacuum politics are not better. Vacuum politics lead to where we are today. Too many years of choosing "the least bad option" doesn't lead to a good place.
Let's take all this negative energy and do something better than criticize. Let's harness the energy into good action. What's something we all can agree is good for everybody and start a discussion around that? I'm not saying all crticism is a bad thing. I'd just like to see us all work together to accomplish something good.
I'll try to get the ball rolling, but if somebody has a better ball, I'm happy to go there.
I prefer free trade. I think everybody benefits if we lower trade barriers. But it needs to be "fair". Allowing corporation A to dump hazardous refuse cheaply into the river, but denying the same to corporation B is not fair to B and not all around good. So are there any good ideas about how to allow goods from different jurisdictions to compete by the same rules without Nationalistic interference?
Unfortunately there are all kinds of interdependencies that would make such a move quite risky. But you're right in that that is one way in which the screws can be put on.
I think what's most interesting to me is that they're also the party who's favorite amendment was written specifically to quell the rise of such leaders. They have explicitly talked about how that amendment was to protect the US from demagogues and autocrats.
They've been fairly quiet about that recently and I'm curious how they'll make that pivot. It's only a matter of time before someone on the left starts suggesting their constituents exercise that right in at least a symbolic nature. I've seen a rise in the exercise of this right by socialist groups and other radicals. But even if it is all symbolic it sets the stage for a powder keg moment. But if the right doesn't restrict this right then how far can they go and keep their heads?
It's morbidly fascinating and terrifying to me how they so successfully turned the right's worst nightmares into wet dreams. I do wonder, how far can it go? But I've never not wanted to know the answer to a question so much in my life. Please, I do not want to find out[0]
[0] no, you can't literally answer this. It can only be learned through the experience. So don't reply to me as if you have an exact answer, you only have speculation. But if you have a time machine, I'd appreciate next week's lotto numbers (and the week after ;)
> But if the right doesn't restrict this right then how far can they go and keep their heads?
They've already started talking about banning trans people from owning guns (based on the wildly bigoted premise that being trans is a dangerous mental illness).
If that goes through, I would expect to see other queer people next on the list, with similar justifications.
Or possibly they'd just jump straight to banning all left-wing people from owning guns, based on their declaration that we're "domestic terrorists". (Yes, they're talking about doing that, too.)
> "“We have to do something about this. We have to treat these people. We have to get them off the streets, and we have to get them off the internet, and we can't let them communicate with each other,” he insisted."
> "“I'm all about free speech, but this is a virus, this is a cancer that's spreading across this country,” Jackson concluded. “That’s going to do great damage to normal, hard-working, law-abiding people.”"
> "The hard-right lawmaker, meanwhile, is not the only member of Congress who has seemingly called for transgender people to be locked up in mental institutions."
> "Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) – who spearheaded the effort to bar trans women from using Capitol Hill bathrooms that don't correspond with their sex assigned at birth – repeatedly used anti-trans slurs while saying transgender people are “mentally ill” and “should be in a straitjacket.”"
Actual Nazi language. Aligns with the Fox News hosts talking about bringing back Aktion T4,
> A logical next step would be for POTUS to declare himself as the supreme leader of the world, emend educational materials to propound the idea that the US is superior to other tributary states, quell all internal cries of undemocratic practices, and ban books that promote historical knowledge to avoid unnecessary dissent
My brother in Christ, you Americans do this already and have been doing this at least since the end of WW2. Ever wondered why communism couldn't spread in Northern Europe, South America or many places of Asia?
> supreme leader of the world, emend educational materials to propound the idea that the US is superior to other tributary states, quell all internal cries of undemocratic practices, and ban books that promote historical knowledge to avoid unnecessary dissent.
You mean just make what is already de-facto practice, de-jure ?
How the hell is Nepal more peaceful than China or Bolivia? Last week the country has had extremely violent protests, with widespread vandalism and arson leading to inadvertent murder of political leaders, as well as many prison breakouts.
I was right there during the protests (as a tourist) and it was such a bizarre situation.
The thing started with the police _killing_ more than 10 children. And after that the crowd went after places like police stations, some palaces and the parliament. Most politicians fled, but the ones that were caught up were mostly bitten up, not killed.
As someone from Eastern Europe, who lived through the fall of the Soviet Union, it all seemed remarkably chill and peaceful - people were really after justice, not vengeance.
Prisons were mostly filled by political prisoners, though some bad apples took advantage to escape as well.
Being just a few kilometres away from the epicentre of things, it all felt very chill, people on the streets were very happy, police were ok, military was smiling and chatty - they were giving people water and trying to “look helpful”
Just the media wants to portray chaos cause that’s what’s driving the clicks, but the situation on the ground was quite ok.
The people did a quick *discord* vote, chose an interim president - who is someone everyone in the country agrees is one of the few incorruptible and honest people, and they will apparently have a proper election at some point when things settle down.
As “revolution” goes this seems like the most sane one I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few …
Protest are often like this. Where it’s going on it is very intense but just on a side street people can be sitting quietly sipping latte like nothing special is happening.
The police also killed 19 people but your comment doesn’t mention that.
In addition the military has not taken over, but currently seems to be honoring the demand of the protestors for new leadership and addressing the widespread corruption in the nation.
It’s too early to call, to be sure. But I’m hopeful that there can be a peaceful transition from here towards something better for Nepal.
The components of the index are all sourced from stuff like various UN agencies or Amnesty reports, so even if the report is compiled instantly, it probably trails by 6 months on average.
If you click on a county it gives you a breakdown. China scored 5/5 for Nuclear and Heavy weapons, 4.5/5 for political terror, and 4/5 for neighboring country relations.
Man, I am glad I don't have to work with any developers for whom having to write "className" (which has been in the DOM standard since 2000) over "class" is a deal-breaker.
To be fair though, that's not a JSX restriction, that's a React choice. (In my own JSX-based library, I allow `class="thing"` and `for="some-id"` just fine as simple synonyms of className and htmlFor.)
My first exposure to the expression problem is the book Crafting Interpreters, Section 5.3.1,[1] which is very similar to the GP comment. The subsection is a short few paragraphs, with one or two tables for illustration, and it was one of the most eureka moments of my programming career. Ever since then, I see this trade-off everywhere, and I get reminded that engineering is all about finding the best trade-off and that the holy-grail of a perfect language or design is a waste of time.
From the blog of Anna's Archive (the most authentic shadow library / libgen frontend):
> There is a new entrant: WeLib. They appear to have mirrored most of our collection, and use a fork of our codebase. We have copied some of their user interface improvements, and are grateful for that push. Sadly, we are not seeing them share any new collections, nor share their codebase improvements. Since they haven’t shown commitment to contributing back to the ecosystem, we advise extreme caution. We recommend not using them.
