I could swear Google wasn’t broadly a thing yet. The startup I worked at in 1999 had an elevator pitch for how we “could be the next Yahoo.” Not a great thing to aspire to in retrospect, but Google wasn’t on our radar.

I left Facebook in 2014, having had to rejoin because in that era, you had to have an account to get a job. Which is another topic but worth keeping in mind.

If I don’t know why I’m somewhere, I leave. Rave, website, bar … these are all the same questions, just with less external pressure because you aren’t the product in the other two situations.

Remember what that landscape looked like. The only major players we know today that existed then are Microsoft and Apple, and Apple had just been bailed out by MS to get in front of antitrust issues. Amazon existed as a bookstore, Google was not around yet, Facebook would still be several years out … MySpace wasn’t yet around. AOL was still a behemoth. Adobe sold perpetual licenses.

This is a far more recent development.

There’s always the option to store things locally. You want to get fancy, you can set up a NAS for remote access.

Saying “isn’t X also doing Y” implies the behaviour itself isn’t the problem, when it is. Doesn’t matter who’s using dark patterns for rent-seeking; it matters that we’ve normalized it.

… they said Archly.

This is an underrepresented viewpoint. We are at the point of “find out,” which so many tech companies thought they could stay just to the other side of the line on. Thing is, you can only move the goalposts so often before they’re in someone’s yard, and they didn’t sign up for this shit.

It was OneDrive upgrade nagging that made me switch to Linux. Microsoft could have, you know, not done that and kept a user. They also could have not gone regressive with how the taskbar functions. Or any number of other things that were dismissive of users.

At a certain point, you’re sitting in ever warmer water in the pot, and it occurs that maybe you’re being turned into food. That’s when the Linux pots start looking appealing. This was a completely avoidable problem brought to you by greed.

Greed! Because we don’t think making a good product is what capitalism is about.

That is a uniquely awesome hed. And only strengthens my belief that 404 Media is going to make corporate journalism wish that they’d not shit the bed to the extent that viable alternative options sprang up.

Quick reminder that you are on Beehaw. There’s only one rule here, and this sort of dismissive take does not adhere to it. Please find something substantive to dismiss.

It’s an investment problem. No one is doing scalable wave power because the money is in offshore wind.

There’s no need of “slam” – or “eye,” “mull,” “Solons,” usw – in an era where you’re not writing a 1-42-4.

(1 column, 42pt, four lines)

use unsuitable software for years in the hopes that volunteer devs will eventually add the features they need.

There’s an opportunity here to unbundle Photoshop from itself.

Since my background is print, I can say for at least a few more weeks, there’s an audience interested in reading RAW, cropping, toning for both CMYK and RGB, scratch removal on negatives and cutouts. And literally nothing else.

And so now imagine anyone else. They don’t need CMYK. What the fuck is that, anyway?

That Photoshop has gained bloat is not something to emulate. FOSS shouldn’t try to replicate it so long as there’s a universal file format one can jump between apps to manipulate.

I bet it isn’t!

It’s not a word I often trot out; usually, “clusterfuck” suffices. The level of malice here instead of incompetence is enough to make Hanlon grow a beard, so here we have 'ne echte Schweinerei.

If you start from the assumption you’re using Quark 3.3, it’s not bad,

This was very much me, and for a rather stupid reason: My resume was in InDesign.

It would have served me well to realize InDesign resumes are a bad idea to get past ATS years ago, but I eventually came around.

I can still fire up CS6 in a VM; for my needs, CC never made sense. Like, seriously, for ID, layers and transparency and trapping and anything else I might need for offset or digital is taken care of. Illustrator has a competent Live Trace feature. Photoshop has the magnetic lasso, which is about as advanced as I need to get past cropping and toning. Audition lets me make really bad mashups.

The only subscription I have that is not a utility or insurance is Mullvad. I don’t want to rent anything on my computer, thank you very much. Yarr!

What I’m hearing is Scribus would be suitable if I’m deliriously tired and thinking in Quark 4.x shortcuts.

Talk about begging the question. Block all Meta domains at the router level, and … uh … don’t have an account.

I’ve been with Mullvad for over a year at this point. This sort of analysis (as well as being able to mail cash) makes me feel confident that I made the right choice to ignore every entreaty (before SponsorBlock) about NordVPN.

NordVPN: We have the budget to pay influencers, and it’s likely coming out of the U.S. Treasury.

That closing quote is ominous:

“Recall is currently in preview status,” Microsoft says on its website. “During this phase, we will collect customer feedback, develop more controls for enterprise customers to manage and govern Recall data, and improve the overall experience for users.”

I read “so, yeah, we built in all the telemetry connections we swear we’ll never use … just for testing, ya know?”

I have to believe at this point that a serious generation gap exists if there is an audience for this sort of constant monitoring. Because that’s what it is.

Where it goes and whether Microsoft can be trusted are of course very valid concerns, but Jesus tap-dancing Christ, this is surveillance before the data go anywhere. Add that to your AI assistant that works best with the camera on, et voila!

No doubt Google is going to say “hold my beer,” and there’s no pure Linux offramp on the overwhelming majority of Android hardware, so even if you’ve told Microsoft to fuck off …