JDPoZ

JDPoZ , 1 hour ago

Dammit! And here I was thinking corporations had suddenly developed a conscience that put decency above profit... Stupid stupid stupid me. /s

JDPoZ , 4 days ago (edited 4 days ago)

The biggest issue with GIMP is its weird UX choices. They should just make it more like Adobe's UX. I know there's tools that bring it closer, but the fact still is that they do some really dumb shit when it comes to experience decisions. Like if I want to change the font of what I'm typing, it works like this...
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2f57b518-29cc-4fbb-8aaf-9849bb5e80d2.gif

I have to TYPE in the font I want, no dropdown, and the font selection toolbar off to the side just straight up doesn't apply to what I've typed or selected... and this is AFTER I ran one of those GIMP retrofit tools that tries to make it more in line with Photoshop.

Seriously, I've used Photoshop since 5.5 (not CS 5.5... FIVE POINT FIVE in 1999), and I STILL have to watch a tutorial for almost every single action I could intuit in 5 seconds from Adobe's garbage malware tool.

That being said... the one important thing that GIMP is not... is Adobe garbage malware... GIMP just has a janky UX that no one's going to bother fixing b/c the tool is free so no complaining!

And in any case, just like with Blender coming on to the scene in earnest like a decade ago to end Autodesk's defacto monopoly with its $$$$ per year licensing scheme for proprietary 3D modelling tools... with Adobe rapidly getting worse, and just like with Unity's "pay us per install" debacle made people jump ship to Godot - never to look back... I'd bet that GIMP is going to begin accelerating its improvement... or that Krita will do the same and overtake it in popularity.

...And once that happens, Adobe is cooked. And it can't happen soon enough.

JDPoZ , 7 days ago

Obligatory Keith Olbermann video about Citizens United ruling that kinda started the rapid exponential acceleration of our descent in to full on oligopoly.

JDPoZ , 7 days ago

But without even just the cool space station to just stare at longingly…

JDPoZ , 1 month ago

for those not from the US, I highly recommend watching the YouTube channel “Not Just Bikes” to get a better understanding of how absolutely dogshit the US is for anyone without a car.

Not only is public transit non-existent… you are nearly constantly under threat of being hit by a car as a pedestrian - as things like sidewalks, street crossing safe areas, etc. are all spotty at best… not to mention how trucks and SUVs now are bigger than ever so chances are higher than they’ve ever been before that you won’t be seen before being run over.

JDPoZ , 1 month ago

Synology’s smaller units are great and with a few docker configs you are ready to go.

JDPoZ , 1 month ago

Thread MVP ^

JDPoZ , 1 month ago

For some reason I imagine that scene in of one of the first few episodes of the HBO mini-series Chernobyl, when they wade into the water near the exploded reactor and their flashlights just immediately die due to the massive amount of radiation and the episode ends in darkness with the crew’s Geiger counters just going absolute ape-shit sounding like a singular continuous tone.

JDPoZ , 1 month ago

Puts are where it’s at anyway. Hard to predict good moves… easy to see dumb ones that will hurt shortly after they are made.

JDPoZ , 1 month ago

My god… are you… me? Same exact shit. Created my YT account 14 years ago. Made some vids… some got some views… eventually I got a few dollars deposited like for 3 years. Probably totaled the same $100 you mentioned then boom. Shut down.

JDPoZ , 1 month ago

That was your first thought watching the Halo show? 😅 I mean… yeah that’s important but uhhhh… I’m not ashamed to admit that wasn’t probably my first thought.

JDPoZ , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Stable Diffusion has been easily locally installed and runnable on any decent GPU for 2 years at this point.

Combine that with Civitai.com for easy to download and run models of almost anything you can imagine - IP, celebrity, concepts, etc… and the possibilities have been endless.

In fact, with completely free apps like Draw Things on iOS, which allows you to run it on YOUR PHONE locally - where you can download models, tweak, customize, hand it images directly from your mobile device’s library… making this stuff is now trivial on the go.

JDPoZ , 2 months ago

Some VPNs like Mullvad actually have an option in their app to block ads, gambling stuff, etc.

They don’t catch everything, but work pretty well.

JDPoZ , 3 months ago

AI making shitty content is a symptom… unbridled unlimited greed is the cause.

Some rich asshole - probably someone who would burn their own children alive if it meant a short-term increase in profit margins - thought they’d make more money by stripping it bare and attempting to cash in for a single quarter rather than any sort of long-term investment.

And this is the consequence.

JDPoZ , 3 months ago

You frame the issue incorrectly.

You see - it’s not some poor IT guy fucking things up (I mean ultimately the IT guy is the one who probably pressed the button, but no IT department acts independently from the system it exists within).

It’s AT&T not having the adequate amount of funding set aside to cover for redundancies + probably adequate staffing.

See… AT&T wants to make the biggest fucking profit margin possible… everything else be damned.

Say what you will about the ineptitude of government, but given funding, the government doesn’t have an incentive to make things shittier specifically just to get some sort of larger profit margin.

Yeah the DMV sucks, but Medicare works well… mostly because Republicans slice and diced budgets as much as they can get away with everywhere they can… and it’s much harder for them to sneak cuts to Medicare - which would clearly and directly affect senior citizens, who would then be less likely to vote for Republicans again no matter what culture war bullshit they spew from the billionaire owned cable TV they stay glued to.

JDPoZ , 4 months ago

I can assure you I have… and the real root of the problem is not the AMOUNT charged by fees… it’s the fact that there is ANY sort of fee that the bank is allowed to charge you on top of the fact that people don’t have enough money to keep an account solvent.

JDPoZ , 4 months ago

Feels like I’m probably gonna get dogged on for this as some will just call it self-promotion, but I’ve been making “content” for a long long long time - I think my oldest personal completely original YouTube video is like 14 yrs old… and I used to just make it for the fun of it.

The problem came when my own stuff started getting bogus takedowns and copyright claims and other people sticking ads into my work or claiming that because 2 seconds of my 20-minute long video essay has a clip from a popular movie, I should get no revenue for the other 19 minutes and 58 seconds of detailed analysis… or that - because I chose to use the cartoon theme music from the 1980s animated show for the background music for a 2+ week project on a highly detailed transforming 3D model animation, I should get zero credit or possible revenue from it…

My choice was either to delete my shit to spite them and move it somewhere else or just give up…

Sometimes I said fuck them and deleted it. Other times I moved it somewhere else. Other times I shifted what I spent time on.

Now though, I honestly try to put stuff up not ONLY for the fun of it, but to try and make some sort of tiny bit of money.

My job contract with a company I had been with for 10+ years ended at the end of last year… and I got a new 6-month contract position at a different company… but it pays way less.

Being able to make content “just for the fun of it” is nice and easier when you’re young and still on your parents’ dime, but that’s kind of a luxury to some of us older folks who are now just also looking to secure some sort of income in an increasingly shitty world where there are no safety nets, and no job seems safe from elimination.

The worst part is that - over the years as Google and other companies have increased the requirements for being able to have any sort of monetization whatsoever, I went from making a couple hundred bucks a year to not even qualifying anymore to be a YouTube partner.

Now with 1,100+ subscribers and over 1.1 million views on all the stuff on my channel (some of which is honestly garbage or just the best versions of otherwise maybe lost media I do NOT own and so am NOT complaining about a lack of making revenue on), I still have yet to make enough from any of the stuff that IS my original work over that 14+ years to even have it be significant to show up as required on my taxes.

JDPoZ , 4 months ago

Ah yes. Good ol JXMOX… a household name in quality electronics.

So glad this is the world we live in where a cat that’s attacking a keyboard can provide company names that fart in and out of existence every month on the monolithic online shopping monopoly site we all basically are forced to use if we need anything since RadioShack, Fry’s, and every single other boutique electronics shop is gone.