Am definitely human.
Krita is such a horrible crashy mess - most of the time all I need is good old MS Paint (plus free rotate) but I after two decades of Linux I’ve yet to find a paint app that doesn’t overcomplicate everything with layers and selectors and modes. 😭
I read a similar story about how a child (of parents who were fighting a lot) had a teddy bear who came alive at night to “fight the nightmare monsters” which were, somehow, real. That poor teddy looked worse for wear as time went on, it was a real tear jerker. (I’m totally not tearing up just thinking about it, you’re cutting onions ya bastard)
Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I am very carefully trying to find a space to share with people what I’m building … I don’t want to be blocked for selling things (I’m really not), but I hope to find a place to start a conversation about what an actually user friendly offering could look like.
I cannot believe that these existing offerings must be so expensive, and so enshittified. Where is the open source mentality?
Here’s a short and very incomplete list of things that could be done differently:
I’m still far from an alpha product and haven’t even secured a domain yet. Still laying the technical groundwork and reading research papers.
Poly or not - there are exactly two things that make it incredibly hard to get out of Gmail, and one of them is most certainly the advanced calendar sharing features. I have 13 calendars, including the ones shared with family and kids and partners. It’s a lot, but it’s not more than I really need.
The other one is, how does one migrate email into something imap/smpte given over a decade’s worth of emails with more than one label.
I do! I switched from KDE 3.5 (whenever that was current). I love KDE’s approach to making everything adjustable (as opposed to Gnome’s “you’ll get one button and you better love it”) but with KDE 4 on the horizon it seemed to bloat too much for my tastes.
I love how it’s a (for me) perfect mix of making a ton of things adjustable while appearing extremely no-frills. Easy on the ram, CPU, and eyes. 👌
Good questions.
That first one’s a real head-scratcher: who would ever want to be the very first member on a dating app? I hear Tinder had “launch parties” but then I’m sure they had about 100% more funding that I do (which is none). In fact, what even is the smallest useful density of users? It’s obviously quite varied across geography, it won’t matter if there are 100.000 real people if they’re all in Belgium (sorry, Belgium).
One approach to lessen scammers is to require phone numbers rather than email addresses, and yes I’m aware that “lessen” does not equate “fix” – not by a long shot. There’s plans for supporting national eID’s of various target countries, but that should/will be a voluntary thing for users, but not every nation has a solution that “random apps” can build an integration with. Another remedy, I’m afraid to say, is to have no free tier - in fact my plan is to have only a paid tier, but also only one paid tier (reasonably priced, even) so everyone get’s access to everything on a level playing field. Then peer review and moderation (if people can be made to be arsed about it).
Lastly, one way to answer that is the wry practical perspective of (a) having few users (in the beginning at least), (b) don’t aim globally, © efficient data schema, (d) offer relatively low-res photos (eg. 800px should be “good enough” for a 3-inch-wide display), plus a bunch of other practicalities. Seriously, you don’t need “real time”, if you can’t be patient enough to wait for ¼ second between swipes, you’re probably not going to be a fun date anyhow. The real selling point is the features, not the performance.
«Dating apps don’t sell love. They sell the feeling that it is one premium upgrade away.» is exactly the sentiment I want to combat. If the user can trust that there isn’t “just one more payment” holding them back, what might they truly want out of a dating app? I’m guessing one thing is “honesty”.
I am very carefully trying to find a space to share with people that I’m building yet another dating app. Ugh, yes, but…
I cannot believe that these offerings must be so expensive, and so enshittified. Where is the open source mentality?
I don’t want to be blocked for selling things (I’m really not), but I hope to find a place to start a conversation about what an actually user friendly offering could look like.
I’m building a dating app. (yes, seriously)
I’m using personal calling cards, so not in a business context. Mine only have the few pieces of information I can trust to never change (name, phone, email) and are made to look very vintage - but have a QR code with the same info on the back, because I know that people want digital.
My overall experience is that it’s very convenient in the moment, and leaves an impression of a rare and slightly quirky exchange. I’ve never had a negative reaction.
Oh boy, story time. This was six years ago (and a machine translation of what I wrote back then).
My daughter doubts that the tooth fairy exists.
She mentioned this today on the way home from school. Then we had a little chat about how “believing in X” versus “X exists” relate to one-other.
I then asked if we could find out if the tooth fairy exists? We could, for example, set a trap: then we could see for ourselves! My daughter thought that was too cruel and anyway, imagine if something happened to the tooth fairy? All right, but we can make something that won’t harm the fairy … but no, she doesn’t want the fairy to get caught. Fine, then we can put the tooth on a plate of flour so we can see the tracks? No, because fairies can fly! Then maybe we can make a little “roof” so the tooth fairy has to land and crawl? Yes, that was accepted.
…But how big is such a tooth fairy really? I have to admit that I’ve never considered that … have you? I made a roof out of a plastic container, but Inara thought that a fairy is definitely smaller, so we settled for a corner of the roof - yes, now the fairy can’t fly under!
I’ve also talked to Inara about whether “no footprints” means “the tooth fairy doesn’t exist” and whether “footprints” means "the tooth fairy exists (or whether there might be fairies even if there are no footprints). So now we’re waiting anxiously to see if we can see any traces tomorrow! (Hint: yes, there are traces: you can see that the tooth fairy has been on her knees and tried to reach the tooth, but couldn’t. So there’s a small letter instead of a coin.)
Oh yes, how we lie to the coming generation… Forgive me, daughter!
The following day after school, she had brought a friend home and I casually asked if she’d checked on the trap? She had not! They both raced up to her room and I could hear the shouts of glee. They definitely believed in the tooth fairy! But also, my daughter was somewhat distraught and wrote an apology letter for having teased the fairy and ask for forgiveness. Such a sweet kiddo. Still is.
“and you are of course his… niece?” 🤭
“Warning: Do not look into laser with remaining eye”
Seconded! At least, about the brand loyalty, can’t speak to the claim of them being stagnant.
I’m 51. I’m on my 3rd laser printer, ever. I shudder to think about how many inkjets I would’ve gone through, judging by the struggles I have seen in other households of just my own family.
First one was a giant thing from Oki whose main beauty was that it did proper PostScript and had both ethernet (10-base T) and AppleTalk, which we needed. The other ones were from Brother, first a black and white model and now a colour thing with duplex and a scanner. Not great for photos but everything else it just owns.
I’ve been nothing but thrilled with every single OnePlus I’ve ever had. Some bought used, some new. My current 10 Plus Pro (stock OS due to banks and shit) I must’ve dropped 200 times before the screen finally cracked just the other day (too expensive to fix but it still works fine).
That how you get this guy
Is it a boulder? Might be tofu.
So, usb devices that are connected to your laptop, or the laptop’s usb sockets themselves?
I’m just curious about the choice of elements used to construct those letters in the signage, as those beams and angles aren’t in the game (even the testing version) although the devs have udsættes about an upcoming update with steeper roofs (which, I suppose, implies steeper beams, too).
I wonder if it’s any mod? I’m on Linux and AFAIK mods don’t work under Proton.
Rude.
Also, I should be sleeping, not scrolling…
In Sierra’s Space Quest game, there’s a hallway with two doors leading to restrooms. Enter through either door, and you’ll get to the exact same room, with both doors visible.
I, as a very young teen, thought this was a funny commentary on “given the multitude of races, what even matters the genders of one species?” I don’t really believe they were that progressive - this was in the 80s even before the aids scare - but that “what does it matter” point has stuck with me ever since.