Firing?

Out of a cannon?

Into the sun?

Pretty please?

You just are getting the fruits of those advancements due to politics.

I’m not entirely sure what you are meaning with that. So forgive me if I’m misunderstanding you. But the fruits of those advancements (loss of privacy, destruction of the environment, etc…) are not political (or at least they shouldn’t be). They are very real and very dangerous consequences of an economic system that demands continuous growth for the benefit of shareholders.

Think of it this way. In project management we learn about stakeholders. When making corporate decisions, a stakeholder is defined as “any person, entiry, or thing that will be affected by that decision, good or bad”. If a company decides that they are going to cut health benefits, who is going to be affected by that decision. The employees, negatively. The shareholders, positively. The consumer, potentially positively if those savings equate to lower costs for the company’s products.

When techology was new, the decisions that were being made included us the end-user. We were a stakeholder that was considered when facebook/twitter/google would decide to add a feature, or remove a feature, or whatever. Around the same time that advertising revenue overtook subscription models and premium services as the way for these tech companies to make money, WE stopped being stakeholders. Any tech advance after that, stopped being about us and started being about profit extraction. If we didn’t like the change, well fuck us…we were now just the product because the advertisers were the ones paying the bills.

Just because on the rare occasion, these corporations happen to put out a product that has potential to improve things, doesn’t make it better, because WE, the users were never asked whether we wanted it, or whether or not we were willing to accept that tradeoffs that came along with it.

It’s like building a new sweat-shop in India in order to put out a new style of running shoe without bothering to do any market research to figure out if your customer base actually wants it or not. Because we, the customer base don’t fucking matter anymore.

Gimp is designed entirely to be personalized to whatever workflow works best for you. You open some tabs that you want. Pin some tool boxes. move them around to anywhere on the screen, etc…

You can easily make it look like Photoshop if you want. Or you can make it look and function however you want.

Hell, I have three different layouts for Gimp that I use regularly. One for photo editing that keeps the colour and light functions front and centre. One for drawing, which keeps the symmetry tools, colour picker, brushes and paint dynamics front and centre. And one for some basic graphic design, with fonts, gradients, etc… front and centre.

That’s literally it’s design ethos.

If you’re not willing to spend five minutes doing that, that’s fine. But that’s entirely on you, not them.

The only reason people think this is way is because they didn’t live through analog tech, for them it is retro or nostalgia and they romanticize it because when they do use it, there are no downsides.

Yeah…no…sorry. But you’re deluded.

I’m exactly that generation that you speak of. I grew up Analog, came of age in my early twenties with the first popularization of the internet, and am now getting old while the internet enshitifies.

You are correct that early tech is better than analog, most definitely. Those early days of just about everything (internet, smartphones, computer gaming, etc…) were amazing and I loved them. It was new and exciting. We built the fucking internet with our bulletin boards, and myspace pages, and blogs and forums.

What you are referring to; what we’re living in now, is NOT that. We’ve gone past the phase where technology was legitimately better than Analog and we are well into the phase where the technology doesn’t work for us anymore. It works for the billionaires

Somewhere in the mid 2010’s, we stopped being the reason technology keeps progressing, and we became the product that the internet was selling to companies (our data, our tracking, our metrics).

Would I dearly love to go back to an early to late 2000’s version of the internet and tech in general, maybe all the way up to 2012. Absolutely. But if that’s not possible, than yes…Analog is definitely better than what we have now, even if it does take a bit more time.

Convenience is only convenience if you don’t have to sell your soul to get it. Maybe you’ll figure that out when you’re a big boy.

If the great AI companies tank (I can only hope) and the services they provide - whatever those may be - faill, how much is it going to affect companies?

It depends on how far along all this bullshit is when the fall comes.

Right now, the companies that are selling AI to everyone, if it all comes crashing down…fuck em. They released this cancer and they can deal with the consequences (Anthopic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, etc…)

But the companies that fell for it and actually purchased their product, they’ll simply purge the A.I. out of their systems, rehire a bunch of developers, and get on with their lives. And that’s really for the same reason that A.I. will crash in the first place:

it’s not necessary in order to successfully run a business.

It never has been. We’ve all been doing just fine for decades, and we’ll get along just fine again once all the shit-peddlers go belly up.

It’s not a coincidence that that percentage matches unusually well with the number of Americans who can’t read past a sixth grade level…

A Rockstar version of Starfield/Fallout/Elderscrolls

Bethesda has become so goddamned lazy in their game mechanic design. Its 2026…an NPC should be at least smart enough to know I’m still fucking there if I leave their field of view.

Or whether I’ve already joined and completed their mortal enemies quest line and behave accordingly towards me as a result…

Or even just realising that of your company just got hacked, even if you didn’t witness it, it might have something to do with the stranger that was fucking around in your server room…

Or at least react when I bump into them…

I dearly love Bethesda’s open worlds. I love the settings, the stories etc… There are no games I would rather “live in”, for lack of a better word. But those worlds deserve far far better NPC/faction mechanics

In the age of DNA, this is most certainly NOT impossible.

Why not?

It’s a protein, so it really just depends on what your eating with them. As long as you’re getting balanced nutrition, there’s no reason Chicken Wings can’t be the protein choice every day.

each according to his or her abilities and each according to his or her needs

That’s not anarchism. That’s literally a direct quote from the Communist Manifesto.

I get what you’re saying. I agree with what you’re saying. It’s why I’d guess most of us are here on Lemmy. Why most of us probably use Android. And why most of us are likely Linux/FOSS entusiasts.

Because the communist one two punch of a) From each according to their capacity to each according to their needs, and b) Give a Brick, get a house.

But those things aren’t a function of anarchism at all.

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Nothing ever changes except which marginalised group they target. But its always… ALWAYS the same strategy; get them fighting a culture war so that they are too distracted to notice the real enemy.

I’ve spent 20 days waiting for a part from China to (hopefully) repair my 18 year old very basic fridge because I refuse to get some stupid fucking touchscreen internet connected advertising box.

I fucking hate the modern world.

That, to me, is the truly ironic part.

It’s not that anyone is going to thank him. He’s an asshole and let him die in ignominy. But if we can survive his fucking around, there is a better world on the other side of it where one country doesn’t get to lord over anyone else.

i wonder how long they work shopped THAT slogan for…

I always accept the job from Burke to blow up Megaton. Then rat him out to the Sheriff. Burke kills the sheriff while I don’t intervene. I kill Burke, and I get a good early Chinese Assault Rifle and duster and hat.

I’m the Sheriff now, bitches…

You can then disarm the bomb and claim the house by talking to the dead sheriff’s son.

(I tried to then mes and get his son into a slave collar, but he was immune, which was a pity)

They seem to forget that there is an election coming up in less than 2 months

If you think his regime will let the election results stand if it doesn’t go in his favour, you’re delusional.

No one is calling for violence because they think he’s “still popular” and has the country by the throat.

They’re warning all of the “he’s unpopular and we’ll vote them all out in November crowd” that you’d be stupid to not be ready to stand up for those results with necessary force. Because there is NO WAY in hell, democrats are winning the midterms as long as Trump has anything to say or do about it.

By all means, wait for November. But you’d be stupid if you don’t have your guillotine sharpened and ready to go for the very next morning.

I can’t remember the which is which. I just remember that Avgas and 100ll are the two types of aviation fuel. My brain doesn’t have the ability to remember which is which. Which is probably why it’s a good thing I’m not a pilot…

No one mentioned 9-11. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.

When I was in the fifth grade, I wrote a series of short stories about five cats driving around in a '57 Chevy solving crimes.

I’d take foolscap, fold it in half and draw a cover for the issues.

The point of this story is that even those covers had better, more dynamic graphic design fundamentals that the soulless piece of shit on the shelf here. And I was 10…

The entire point of jet fuel is that it DOESN’T “blow up easily”, though.

unlike gasoline, It actually takes quite a bit of effort to ignite avgas in it’s liquid form because it’s designed to be aerosolized before being ignited.