There are some random accounts that do not look like the original creator. I highly discourage from such titles like this post, because we don’t know. “Ventoy” (creator) did not respond as far as I can see.

Edit: Even if it looks legitimate, it can be impersonating to gain trust. Don’t blindly trust random people from new accounts.

To be honest I found the comparison with the physical newspaper a bit out of place. Its always interesting to read the perspective from someone behind the scene. But I cannot comment here, because I never read newspaper (i’m old enough, just not interested).

But overall the video is entertaining and doesn’t do much bullshit or like that. I knew most of the stuff anyway, but didn’t know how bad Google got, because I don’t use Google (directly) since years. And certainly I don’t search for stuff to buy.

Not only: 1. Ads, 2. SEO, 3. AI

Well not using Google or at least not directly. Besides alternative search engines with their own engine, there are also meta search engines that utilizes Google and probably other unique engines as well. This does not solve all problems, but at least you don’t get the ads from Google and won’t get tracked by Google either (so searches are not limited to your region or what you searched already).

And in case of the open source meta engine Searx it will show results from multiple engines and display from which engine the results are. All without the ad nonsense. And while being able to configure it the way you want. My point is, you don’t have to use Google directly or at all.

Inkscape is a blast! I do some (simple) icons and the features are amazing. As for the new version 1.4:

• The new Filter Gallery is really nice, but usually I don’t use filters anyway.
• The Swatches Dialog makes my life easier too, but for whatever reason I don’t get the color names. It only shows the color codes s #669900. Anyone know where to set this?
• Unified Font Browser is also now up to standards and makes it a breeze to play around with fonts. No longer do I need to explicitly apply, just left click from the list will automatically update the canvas text.
• Shape Builder is really a cool functionality and I always love to use it. It saves so much time when needed, or can lead to unexpected cool effects. Now it works with raster images, to cut parts out. But they can’t be edited or Trace Bitmap unfortunately. The article talks about Release Clip and unlink clone, but I don’t know how to unlink clone. Hopefully this can be worked on to make it more seemless and easy. Shape Builder in general is OP (over powered).
• Dash Icon set is nice, I’m trying it out currently. Each icon is clear.

I really think Cosmic is the ideal desktop, at least from the idea what they want to do. But I don’t want rely on it as its not proven yet (I mean with first release). Maybe in a few years from now.

I have my gripes with Gnome, so won’t go into it now. Not very healthy doing that. :D I do think if you use Gnome as intended and without (or almost none) extensions, and use Gnome Apps for the most part, and don’t need to customize each and every corner, AND embrace the Gnome way of doing things, then I agree it is probably the best DE. But these are lot of ifs and buts. I don’t know if most people fall into this category, I certainly don’t.

And on top of it is how Gnome… well I said I won’t go into it now. :D I’m sure you are familiar with all of this.

No need to change the identity of having many options and customization in KDE. This is why we have a choice of multiple desktop environments (and window managers too). If there was no XFCE or Gnome as an alternative, or even the upcoming COSMIC desktop, then I would agree to slim down KDE.

I used Gnome 2, Unity and Gnome 3 all for multiple years and have experience in XFCE as well. Really KDE is not much more buggy than Gnome 3 in example. In fact, I had lot of problems in Gnome 3 such as always breaking extensions and other limitations as well, why I switched to KDE in the first place. I was about to go back to tiling window managers, but KDE works good. I encountered with every desktop environment and window manager problems like these. So to me KDE is not really worse.

This does not apply here, because this is not my workflow where I rely on a bug. Its literally how the system should work. Sorry, but this time this is total out of place comic reference. Edit: In example I do not do anything differently. It just did not save the value, which I set manually back every time. Its not a different workflow.

there are a couple of regressions we’re tracking, particularly around the areas of external monitor brightness

Oh no, please don’t! This release finally fixed the monitor brightness issue I had. It finally saves the brightness value and restores it after reboot. I had to set it manually after each boot before! Whatever regression you have, this fixed an issue for me. :D

We have already the technology for sharing with P2P, lot of Torrent websites. The problem is, sharing with P2P is illegal, if you don’t have the rights to. Internet Archive is different, because they have special rights we users don’t have, such as being a library in the US with rights of a library.

In example Internet Archive is allowed to share books, but only lend one at a time for each real local copy they have.

Downloading from Internet Archive is harmless and only Internet Archive and your ISP knows your IP when doing so. But with P2P (if we are talking about Torrents) everyone who connects to it knows the IP from everyone else. There is a higher risk for uploading stuff, or sharing with others. Basically the government can join the P2P network and suddenly see everyone.

Agreed. Often typing out URL is just faster, but it depends on the URL. Also it depends on the situation and how good you are at it. In example to use the camera, I just hit one app and hold it to scan in a second. Compare this to click browser app, new tab, click url area and start typing. Maybe you make a typo or you did not, but read carefully three times so you don’t land on a wrong site. Maybe its cold days and you don’t like typing right now. Also helpful for people who have difficulties in typing for whatever reason. But if you were already holding the phone with the browser, then its less of a deal.

Also there is this surprise effect (as you already mentioned), which makes people curious too. It has error correction as well. So if there is a missing dot in the “i”, then you don’t need to try lowercase L or whatever.

• Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi (PSX, 1997)

Note, I am not a heavy phone user and didn’t buy one in years. So my view is limited and I have no idea how the current market is working. So don’t take my replies as “he knows better”, but more like “what he thinks”.

Fdroid can’t be installed by any Android? Its a shop that is installed once like Android store and then it manages and updates all apps from that store. Google is in a similar position like Steam, where the monopoly is only about market share. But the platform is still open.

You also open the phones to potential scammer to have identical looking website and instruct users to install app that steal identity.

Yes, but that is not Googles fault or task. Every shop has to make sure its secure and is outside of Googles responsibility. So this point is completely irrelevant for the discussions about being a monopoly. It’s like saying Steam is responsible for virus and identity theft because someone installed an application on another launcher, just because Steam is seen as a monopoly (I don’t agree Steam being a monopoly, just tried to explain what I mean with context to Android).

How? Android always allowed for side loading applications, even entire shops.

This is about Proton, not about a programming language. Besides that, C# is actually cross platform.

GIMP, Inkscape, Krita, Upscayl, ImageMagick, Background remover AI

GIMP and Inkscape. I use GIMP for all kind of image editing off course, and use Inkscape to create logos and icons. Both great tools. I wish GIMP had a few basic shape tools too and non destructive editing. Soon we get non destructive editing in early future, but basic shape tools will be added in a later future.

I have Krita installed too, but for general purpose editing and want to replace GIMP with it. Because Krita adresses some issues I have with GIMP, but it does not feel good in editing to me. Maybe I’m just not used to it, even after years of trying over and over again. It has extensive vector layers and non destructive editing, great, but the font tool sucks.

I also have Upscayl installed since a while, to play around with upscaling images. First it was nice, but over time I’m no longer happy with it. Especially with higher end resolutions, the image contain unnatural and wrong parts that stand out.

For background removal I use GIMP. Its a manual step with the integrated background removal tool, but you have to mask areas as foreground and background. If the image is not low quality and the boundaries are not too fuzzy, then it works well “sometimes”. But I assume you ask for a more easy to use and more automated tool, preferably an AI tool right? I have such a tool bookmarked, its a browser online tool, but never used it so far: Background remover AI

As other tools, I use commandline converter and editor ImageMagick! Its nice to be able to script simple stuff and bulk edit them (20 thousand and more in a few minutes), such as crops from screenshots. Or at work I could create simple text based images out of a text file (it was for my shop back then… long time ago :-( ).

I am not a CMYK user, so this is just an assumption. The tools are RGB related and not CMYK. In example I can setup a softproof view of the image and see the colors how it would look like in CMYK. Then select the brush tool, choose color blue 0000ff and when painting it looks nothing alike, because it is interpreted as a different color to view; much more muted and almost purple. But its still blue in the background and all filters and tools will interpret it as RGB blue when making calculations. The channels of the image is still RGB instead CMYK. There is always this guesswork and interpretation involved, which would probably be not there if there was full native CMYK support.

Edit: Tools and filters in example have sliders for RGB colors, but not CMYK. You still need to think in RGB and you have to think how it converts to CMYK at the same time. Not ideal for people who are used to native CMYK editing in other tools.

I hope too, because there are plans post v3.0: https://developer.gimp.org/core/roadmap/

It’s still not full CMYK. Only import and export gets true CMYK support, and editing is still RGB (but with CMYK print preview). They said full support is planned for the future, as they have too much to worry about at the moment. With 3.0 they lay the ground for future features.

Actually *nix isn’t a Regular Expression, because the star operator * requires a preceding character or object to apply to. This is a wildcard for the shell style globbing, where a single star doesn’t require a second object.