ESU is inherently bullshit. So they’re going to make security upgrades for the OS millions of people are using, but you only get them if you pay? Even though they’re committing dev time to make and deploy them, the SECURITY upgrades to the OS yhat millions have already paid for?

What a grift. Either you’re paying ESU and there’s no dev work (free moneyyy!) or it’s literally a ‘protection fee’ for dev work they’re doing anyway (nyeehhh nice PC ye got there, be a shame if we extorted you for it)

That’s just the money their making itself. When it comes down to what are we subscribing for, it keeps being ads again. They keep deciding that subscriptions make money by removing ads.

Like, why not subscriptions that actually add something gainful? Subscribe to stream your games to any TV, subscribe to get dog food delivered to your house monthly, subscribe to Socks of the Month Club. Those things exist in other industries, but tech?? Nope, it’s just ads, or subscribe to less ads.

Are techbros so bland that they really can’t think of literally any fucking way to make money that isn’t just ‘ads’?

Thank you, I’m not American but MS has so many ‘features’ that have been destroying my sanity, I will look into this tool when I’m back at my desktop 👍

If you’re in the US,

Is it US specific, or do you just mean if you’re not in the EU?

Oh, here we just call those ice blocks. As in, ALL of those are called ice blocks in Australia and New Zealand.

There are ice creams on a stick (eg Magnum) which are ice creams in a chocolate shell, but in your picture all those are all very clearly water-based ice blocks.

I think snowcone if it’s crushed ice with flavour syrup added (though Snowcone might be a brand name that Americans just use for all of them)

Or sorbet if it’s frozen fruit puree

Was thinking of th giant ice block at first, forgot about them scooping health code violations

Isn’t the MO for venture capitalists to run businesses into the ground, make them owe debt to themselves, cannibalise businesses from the inside and then run away with a profit while they bankrupt?

Not surprising to make a decision that kills a business because the entire point is to kill the golden goose

I think its more likely that the abstaining countries rely on America for trade or military in some way and don’t want to aggravate them politically but clearly aren’t willing to vote alongside them.

Tell me about it. NZ has the most right-wing neo-liberal pro-American-politicking cabinet we’ve had in a long long time. (The PM is also so incompetent he’s polling the lowest approval we’ve had for a long time, possibly ever). They got in power off the backs of post-Covid economic hardship, despite having no proposed solutions other than funding landlords and cutting environmental policy.

If it had been put to the citizens, I believe we would’ve been for it. But the current cabinet doesn’t want to piss off American partners no doubt, hoping abstaining let’s them sit on the fence a little longer while pretending we’re ultimately n9t the bad guy. That will be the reason for most of those abstaining.

I’m disgusted.

Yes. It would be necessary to live a modern life, given almost everything we use/eat comes from some unethical source. We abstain from the things that are important to us, according to our values. Lyrically if a song does not itself promote [terrible thing] then the music can be separated from an artist that does.

However if it is important to you that your listening does not generate income for those people, don’t listen to their music in apps (eg Spotify, who pays based on plays), nor on their official YT channels (which are likely monetised).

Also, be mindful that playing/listening to it around others is a form of ‘conspicuous consumption’, one of many ways our actions become ‘Word of Mouth’ advertising. This may lead others to believe you support the artists specifically, and depending on their values, they may be derisive or hostile. (Or, they agree with [terrible thing] and believe you are alike.)

Oh no, the mines will be so bad for my authentic supple human skin, and my favourite mammilian activity of breathing air

I like em dashes. I learned the alt code for en and em dashes just so I could use them easily on a computer. There is a difference between a hypen and an en dash, and a double-hyphen is but a simulacrum of the em dash!

• Hyphen is just for double-barrelled words
• An en dash is useful – at least sometimes – for inserting side thoughts
• ah boy I sure hope an em dash doesn’t interrupt m—

But let’s be real, I type kinda formally, like an AI, sooo

Phone proximity is used, so if your phone is in proximity to his, the algorythm can note a relationship between his interests and yours- or even the interests of people who also interact with him.

It’s possible his behaviour is learned from a narcissistic parent, or that enough of his customers are involved in learning about narcissism. OR you also mightve been at a Cafe near a clinic for long enough your phone tried to ping the office wifi, and you just noticed it because of your interactions with him.

Google also uses your relationships, so maybe a person you know is interested, or you watched a video about (blank) and a lot of those viewers also watched narcissism videos. Your brain is asking the connection to the contractor because it’s an intuitive logical leap.

Phones spy on us in a dozen different ways, mostly pattern recognition. They track location without GPS (by recording wifi pings), and track interests without the microphone. So they can claim they’re not tracking those specific things while still gathering scary amounts of data.

Inflame was the original word for ‘to ignite’ - to set aflame, to set on fire. We still see if in metaphor, ‘inflammatory argument’ or ‘inflamed passion’, for example.

So an inflammable object was one you can inflame (or enflame). The word ‘flammable’ came about later, probably to reduce confusion for people who thought it mean ‘un-flameable’.

These days we use flammable on labels for safety reasons, but inflame is still peppered throughout language in metaphor and medicine, and both are correct.

Moat of the teams I see hiring designers are still using Adobe, and printshops take .ai files. But most of the solo designers I know use Affinity, and I’ve heard of one (albeit small) team that has swapped to Affinity for their whole team.

Affinity was just bought by Canva so idk how it might evolve over time, or if v3 will make compromises I don’t agree with. But I got v1 during Covid, loved it, converted to v2 as soon as it was available, still love it. Using all of them on the same file in the same window feels amazing.

Another downside is that designers rarely make asset packs for Affinity. But I’m pretty sure Affinity is able to import brush pack formats from one of the other big names, just not sure which (likely Adboe’s .abr)

I don’t like painting in Photo though, but that might be because I’m so used to Krita, which is designed for illustration in the first place. (They’re great, I might donate to them again actually)

I use Affinity Suite for work. Paid for it once, have it forever. Free updates until new editions, which are discounted if you own an older edition. Buy it for one platform (Windows), that’s a license for that edition of any other platform too. AND they regularly go on special, often to 50% off.

It doesn’t have AI content generation, but it does a few things Adobe doesn’t - like being able to use Photo and Designer from INSIDE Publisher, seamless like its a single program!

Affinity Photo (Photoshop), Designer (Illustrator), and Publisher (InDesign). Then Krita for raster illustration. That’s all I need as a professional

This is what I do, except I would add 700 and 236 at the end.

Well except I would probably add 700 and 116 or something, because my working memory fucking sucks and my brain drops digits very easily when there’s more than 1

I might. Then I can subtract 74 to get 74*14, and subtract 28 to get 72*13.

I don’t generally do that to ‘weird’ numbers, I usually get closer to multiples of 5, 9, 10, or 11.

But a computer stores information differently. Perhaps it moves closer to numbers with simpler binary addresses.

That’s what he said, too.