It's fun to see the Familia Toledo on HN, I discovered them through the Spanish online communities quite some years ago.
There is some charm in their naivety mixed with their display of self-importance. IIRC their "own" operating systems used to be derived from MenuetOS and similar open source projects.
As a side note, one of the family member (Óscar Toledo) seems to have been performing well in the International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC).
Can you elaboraré more on the MenuetOS derivative? I've been trying to find a comprehensive (in fact, any) analysis of their OS (or any doc, review) without much success
It describes the visit of a group of members of a FOSS community Cofradia (https://cofradia.org) to the Toledo family somewhere in mid 00s. Several users stated that the OS "looked suspiciously like MenuetOS". This is the opinion of people active in FOSS communities that probably had contact and played with MenuetOS at that time.
The article also makes IMHO a fair reflection on the family and their merits. The father is of humble extraction, with actual knowledge of electronics and low level programming but without any formal education. His passion about the topic becomes cult-like at times, with the rest of the family following his lead.
"Familia Toledo do not manufactures G11 computers for direct sale to the public, they sell their prototypes to governments or original equipment manufactures." That's the One Laptop Per Child business model. Dead end.
You can get laptops on Alibaba starting at $80. If they just loaded their software onto them, something they could probably get the OEM to do for them, they'd be there. Instead of trying to cable stuff together with ribbon cables.
For $100, you can get a Windows 10 capable (but not including Windows 10) machine, with reasonable memory, disk, and WiFi.
It's not entirely obvious from OP's link, but it appears this offering is from 2005 or earlier (see this page listed in the "News" section: http://www.biyubi.com/computadora.html)
You can get a Raspberry Pi 4 for $35, add a $5 Micro SD card, a $5 cellphone charger, and a $10 keyboard/mouse combo, and you have a full fledged modern computer running a modern OS (Linux kernel 5.10) for $55. That is more in line with the DIY spirit of the subject, and certainly more capable, without requiring commercial software.
I taught a Linux workshop to blind/visually impaired in Virginia this summer.
orca is the main screen reader used in Linux. Most of them were familiar with Jaws on Windows. Orca offers a kinda similar screen reader experience but the hotkeys are different (ability to re-read a line, jump a word, jump a section, etc)
They were on laptops so I could still look over their shoulder if they needed help, but after a while they all got the hang of it and we were "off to the races". It was thrilling to see it click for them and to see such a completely different user experience.
The short of it is that he uses a screen reader. The thing reads out what is shown on the screen. Things like application title when you alt-tab, page contents on websites, field and button labels/names in forms when you tab through it, etc. I see that u/grendelt already gave some software examples; for mobile I might add that you could try Talkback (built into Android).
> It’s amazing to see someone in full sun using a phone, face not pointing at the phone.
Hello 2006! It was super convenient back when that was normal.
Me on a Nokia with barely a color screen and unlimited GPRS data: playing music/podcasts, reading news, chatting, taking pictures, listening to radio, watching short video clips after minutes of downloading.
Me today with more than a decade of innovation: playing music/podcasts/audiobooks, reading news, chatting, taking pictures, listening to streaming radio, using satellite navigation.
The difference is that in 2006, you didn't have to constantly look at a screen. You can be walking outside and watch where you're going, not even taking the phone out of your pocket for some things like switching songs or turning on a recording when the teacher was throwing a tantrum again (I was not the nicest teenager; I hope I do better now). We're trying to find workarounds for this using bluetooth headphones' buttons that don't work half the time or get passed to the wrong app (Newpipe, Antennapod, VLC, all can take audio focus) or by using long presses or double presses on buttons like power to quick start the camera, but it's very limited what one can do with those.
I've been in some really, really poor parts of the world, and nearly everyone's home I ever visited, they had a tv set. What they didn't have was round-the-clock electricity (sometimes it was scheduled, sometimes it was just off and on at random) or running water.
Alibaba, of course. There are lots of low-end laptops. Some are probably junk, and some aren't. Buy from a manufacturer, not a reseller. Quantity 1 will cost a bit more.
Plenty of second-hand windows pcs and monitors get thrown away daily by businesses, a flyer dropped online, the newspaper or the local shop would probably get you one for nothing
The interesting part here is the browser. It does not seem to stem from any major HTML engine known to me.
The history page is from 2005 and says about HTML 4.01. The English front page mentions advances in the browser (but HTML5 is not mentioned directly).
I wonder what can it be. The browser seems pretty custom, with support for POP3 (well, Opera used to have a built-in email client) and, in 2005 when it made sense, for ICQ. But a HTML + CSS engine is such a complex beast that very few really exist which would work tolerably with the modern Web.
I know a group of computer enthusiast back on that times where to visit Toledo house/factory.
All the hardware and computers built by themselves was true but the owner and the family were very jealous about giving details about it.
They were some kind of geniuses with no interest to profit by millions from their creations.
In Spanish web browsers are called "navegadores" (navigators, no doubt inspired by Netscape's product). This coming from Latin America it's an understandable translation quirk.
One of the most interesting things I found in the Familia Toledo site is the resources about Didxaza (also known as Zapotec) http://www.biyubi.com/did_consulta.php
reminds me of those cheap atom netbooks years ago entry level was around that price though they could not handle much browsing and word proccessing in a small portable form(video was a issue though). most today do a lot better in that form but are usually in the 250$ or so range for entry level.
I remember drinking the koolaid of the familia toledo back in 2006 hahaha back then their claims seemed way more realistic and "what if?" sort of thing, now they just feel outdated
> For some people the content of this site can create doubts or debate for their authenticity, we invite them to check that our scientific and technological research don't rest in words.
And then there's an expired SSL cert that I had to whitelist to continue viewing the page. How old is this webpage?
-Operating system totally graphic, it includes television
Easy to make fun of old design, but we use Word and Excel that is almost the same as in 95. And the best business programs is the ones without any need for GUI.
There is some charm in their naivety mixed with their display of self-importance. IIRC their "own" operating systems used to be derived from MenuetOS and similar open source projects.
As a side note, one of the family member (Óscar Toledo) seems to have been performing well in the International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC).