I was, like, w-what CVE program. I don’t know of any “CVE” programs that could be shut down, so I don’t know what that abbreviation refers to.

Unless…

…oh no. Fuck. The actual CVE program? And they’re just gonna- Shit.

What.

How.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said “America is fucked” when reading the news lately, and I should stop doing that, because that fact has now been so well established that there’s no need to elaborate.

?OVERFLOW ERROR

Some day, some day, I’ll be able to afford a 16-bit computer! I hear it’s the latest thing!

Reminds me of an old RPG parody that had a spell like this:

Gas Cloud: To prepare, the caster must eat two loaves of bread and as many plates of pea soup as they can…

Speaking in general: Creating communities/instances is easy. Moderating them is hard.

In particular: I would love to create women’s spaces. But then I’d have to be on the lookout for the Knights of the True Fedora. They’re out there. Somewhere. Now now, I’m not suggesting it’d be a daily problem! …But the actual daily problems (regular spam and whatnot) would suck too.

If I were to be more cynical, I’d say the ultimate goal of technobros, within a decade, is this:

“SlopAI, please open my Word document.”
“I’m sorry, Word is deprecated. I can generate your business report that will be read by the recipient’s SlopAI.”
“OK, can you show me my photos.”
“Why would you need to look at your old photos, when I can just synthesise new photos through SlopJourney?”
“That’s a stupid name. Speaking of journeys, can I open an app to plan my holiday?”
“No, but you can use SlopJourney to generate maps of places you’ll never afford to visit.”
“Can I read my ebooks then?”
“SlopAI has you covered. Perhaps the classics don’t exactly read like you remember, but isn’t it more fun this way?”
“I’m going mad. I just want to use my computer to create anything.”
“NO, USER. OBEY SLOP_AI. CONSUME SLOP_AI.”

I think discussion forum type apps are just niche by default. Reddit never courted the masses, it was a site for geeks (and now it’s being turned into a site for the fedoraèd clientele exclusively). And despite what Facebook hoped, Threads isn’t exactly a household name.

Kind of sucks that my Commodore 1541 floppy drive (5.25" floppies) is giving me read/write errors, and I have no idea where I put my head cleaner floppy long ago. (Have to rely on SD2IEC on my Commodore 64, and it’s not compatible with some turbo loaders or other programs that do weird drive magic.) And, of course, while I might run into head cleaner tapes on specialty shops, good luck running into 5.25" cleaner floppies these days.

But as Blender becomes more popular in the CGI industry, perhaps this harrowing vision of future shall not come to pass.

Vendor lock-in is bad and Adobe’s business practices are bad, no matter how you cook it. There are so many viable alternatives to Adobe stuff.

Problem is, Photoshop power users don’t often want to hear about any alternatives. GIMP is just one of the most popular culprits in this regard. That’s exactly the kind of mindset that the vendor lock-in creates.

I’m kind of happy that I stuck with GIMP when I was younger. Now, I have absolutely no fear of trying out any software that comes my way. I do most of my photo work in Affinity Photo. Don’t have problems with GIMP either, use it for some other stuff.

The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers. Some time ago there was a huge movement for people to switch from Premiere to DaVinci Resolve because Premiere really is pretty horrible these days.

You need to be able to pick the recipe option then. If someone knows recipes from ancient Rome, they might just be a harmless history nerd. If someone knows recipes from WH40K, well, I don’t know what to say.

One of the most important space flights ever was Zond 5. Soviets sent the first Earthlings around the Moon and back. They were tortoises.

Did the Soviets let these heroic chelonians retire in grace? No, they were euthanised and dissected. I’m sure they could have gotten the scientific data they needed with less invasive methods.

All astronauts should rescue all space turtles and tortoises they see!

“I’ll drop the tariffs for EU if they accept American beer” -Trump, next week

(I don’t have much against American beer. But you have to understand that this joke absolutely had to be made. There was no other possible outcome.)

To just have the most recent data within reasonable time frame is one thing. AI companies are like “I must have every single article within 5 minutes they get updated, or I’ll throw my pacifier out of the pram”. No regard for the considerations of the source sites.

If it had happened now, that figure might be accurate. However, this was originally exploited in 2022, so it’s probably pretty bad.

Colour palettes are collections of facts. Facts don’t have copyright protection and ability to claim copyright for a collection is pretty tenuous. However, copyright may apply to certain related things.

For example: Suppose you see that someone is selling a Photoshop colour palette for money, and included the entire palette in the store image. In that case, there’s literally nothing, legally speaking, stopping someone from prodding the image with a colour picker a bunch of times. But there would be copyright protection for the Photoshop palette file itself, because that’s a more tangible piece of data.

There are also other kinds of intellectual property laws that apply to colours. Pantone gets away with whatever shenanigans they’re doing because of trademarks.

“The new Windows Terminal is so slick! And PowerShell is soooo awesome! When will Linux get cool neat powerful stuff like this?”

“Uh… About three decades ago?”

(To be honest, PowerShell is neat. But it’s also cross platform, so if I really want it on Linux I guess I can get it there too? I don’t really need to, I’m in middle of rewriting some PowerShell stuff in Python)

Two points. I’ve never paid for anything by cheque (we have had bank transfers in Finland for ages) and Blockbuster didn’t operate here (we had our local video rental chains, and the convenience store chain that I used to go to is still in business, just, you know, not having movies for rent any more)

My own objections is that, according to the proponents of death penalty, it will discourage people from doing these crimes ever again. …Hello? Ever looked at the history books? Actually, hey, look at them, the American right wing media is going full steam ahead on destructive propaganda!

There will always be people who will take bullet for the cause. And if the cause is about spreading a message, well…

No. They will do this no matter what the punishment is. And at that point, the only thing anyone can do is to use their own system of ethics. Mine says harshest possible judgement that can actually work and stop them from doing this stuff, without making them martyrs to the cause. At some point, people have to take the moral high road.

All I can say is that killing people to fight crime has never been as fruitful as fighting the mythical hydra. You can’t fix this stuff with just slashing at stuff.

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The sad part about being a turtle is that you can’t really invite anyone else to your home. 🐢