V17's recent activity

  1. Comment on What lesser-known alternative would you recommend as a substitute for something more popular? in ~talk

    V17
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    I feel like we should mention that While the license doesn't run out, you only get updates until the next major version They have made their release cycle faster since the latest major version -...

    mainly only cost you fifty quid once, forever

    I feel like we should mention that

    • While the license doesn't run out, you only get updates until the next major version
    • They have made their release cycle faster since the latest major version - it took 7 years to get from 1.3 (initial release) to 2.0, and then we moved from 2.0 to 2.6 in about 2,5 years, so the payment now lasts shorter (and I don't think the development itself is much faster)
    • They were acquired by Canva recently, which likely somewhat increases the risks of enshittification

    With that said I also use them and like them, it's still a good deal (especially when compared to Adobe). Adobe applications have more features overall and they'll always have the advantage of cloud features like AI fill (Serif only plans to add neural net features that can be run locally at this moment), adobe fonts, creative cloud as a whole etc.

    But Affinity has the advantage of not having 3 decades of developmental baggage and as a result it's faster, more intuitive, the three applications are fully interconnected and share GUI axioms, hotkeys etc. Plus they're not exactly reinventing the wheel here, so they seem to choose well on what features to prioritize. I recently had to work in InDesign and I was shocked by how slow it was in the most basic features like switching between standard select tool and text tool or pdf export, and by how aggressively it had to optimize (reduce visual quality and accuracy) just when scrolling around the document, plus by the fact that they couldn't unite some GUI basics with Photoshop.

    9 votes

  2. Comment on What if we made advertising illegal? in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    It would, but that's so far in the realm of fantasy and "if only everyone would just" reasoning that it's not really worth discussing. Compromises like mandatory style guidelines for...

    It would, but that's so far in the realm of fantasy and "if only everyone would just" reasoning that it's not really worth discussing. Compromises like mandatory style guidelines for advertisements pushed by individual cities (or even city districts) are something that actually has a chance of happening.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on What if we made advertising illegal? in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    The issue, like with so many regulations, is again that this hurts small and new businesses the most while large corporations will easily adapt. That's bad for everyone, small businesses are good...

    The issue, like with so many regulations, is again that this hurts small and new businesses the most while large corporations will easily adapt. That's bad for everyone, small businesses are good (and honestly necessary) for local economies, bring innovation and competition.

    I only have experience with selling small numbers of "luxury" products (loudspeakers for about 1k USD with tax, so nothing super expensive, but not something that you really need), but in that area even with todays costs it's not uncommon that in the very beginning, when you're lowest on cash, if you don't get very lucky with word of mouth you spend 800 USD on advertising to sell one 1k product, covering only material costs (which are often higher at the beginning, before manufacturing larger batches). Until the advertising snowballs a tiny bit, you just work for free and hope for the best.

    At this moment, it is still often possible to start a tiny business with very little cash if you do it smart, and grow from there. But most of them still fail and most people still never even try. We should think really hard whether any regulations that would increase this hurdle are worth it.

    7 votes

  4. Comment on What if we made advertising illegal? in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    Adding to this. I hate advertising, but after having some experience with starting a tiny startup there is no way I could do without it, as it exists now. Getting people to even know that our...

    My small business, which uses very tasteful but necessary advertising (small niche publishing), would go under in an instant.

    Adding to this.

    I hate advertising, but after having some experience with starting a tiny startup there is no way I could do without it, as it exists now. Getting people to even know that our product exists was by far the most difficult thing for us.

    It feels like almost all of the people in this thread have no idea how hard this is in most situations when you're starting out. I think people don't fully realize that so many potential regulations that would work against overgrown corporations which piss everyone off would hurt small businesses even more, which goes against all of our interests, and quite often there's no realistic (let alone fair) way to discern between those two groups.

    9 votes

  5. Comment on What if we made advertising illegal? in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    We also did this in Czechia around highways and "first class" roads (90 km/h speed limit, usually just one lane in each direction but expected highish traffic), which is much easier to push...

    We also did this in Czechia around highways and "first class" roads (90 km/h speed limit, usually just one lane in each direction but expected highish traffic), which is much easier to push through than something like regulating advertisements within cities since there's a very clear issue with firstly billboards being designed to take away your attention while you drive and secondly with them being a big hazard when an accident does happen and a car hits a billboard pole - at highway speeds that's usually a death sentence.

    During that whole ordeal we realized that some billboard companies are a literal mafia, operating semi-illegally, beating up or threatening anti-billboard activists or even competitors etc. So it took a years long fight (law applies since 2017), but nowadays it's finally done and it's great. Google maps probably won't have it on street view yet.

    A great thing is that it brought the issue of the billboard lobby and mafia-like practices to the public, so it increased the number of anti-advertisement activists and made politicians and bureaucrats finally care a bit. Because the issue is that we do actually have some laws that regulate advertisement in public spaces, nothing radical, but there are rules, however neither side gave a shit about them and now they're being forced to, so far only in some places. So the activists don't even need to be radical either, they just push people to do their jobs and enforce laws, which is great because our society usually does not respect too activisty-looking activists but these ones nobody minds.

    There has also been some push for local advertisement manuals prescribing things like color schemes and maximum sizes that apply around certain areas (typically historical centers of cities), which can reduce a lot of the visually ugliest and most aggressive stuff and applies even to things like branded restaurant parasols (no branding over xx size and only one allowed color for example) etc. I think this is a great compromise.

    5 votes

  6. Comment on Megathread: April Fools' Day 2025 on the internet in ~talk

    V17
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    Here's a private one: my friend works as a dev for a faculty of computer science and they quickly cobbled together an "ASCII-art" (actually short-unicode-art) console version of /r/place that...

    Here's a private one: my friend works as a dev for a faculty of computer science and they quickly cobbled together an "ASCII-art" (actually short-unicode-art) console version of /r/place that appears for everyone who logs in through ssh today.

    So far it's not very interesting, it seems like it hasn't spread around that much yet. It's 1 pm here, so most of the traffic is likely yet to come. And of course the unix guys were going to create a perfect Nix logo.

    edit: it is indeed getting slightly more busy and you can now watch it in realtime actually not, it wasn't made for actual traffic lol, maybe later. Everything here was made literally last minute, so right now the realtime display crashed.

    edit2: Here's what it looks like now, 4:27 pm CEST.

    edit3: uncrashed, realtime again

    16 votes

  7. Comment on Megathread: April Fools' Day 2025 on the internet in ~talk

    V17
    Link Parent
    I wonder how many times this has happened in different games. I can't remember which one it was, but one april fool's joke was implemented as a real game mode in Arma.

    started as a joke but is supposedly now in development.

    I wonder how many times this has happened in different games. I can't remember which one it was, but one april fool's joke was implemented as a real game mode in Arma.

    9 votes

  8. Comment on Why I recommend against Brave in ~tech

    V17
    Link Parent
    Similar experience here. I use a Xiaomi phone, those are somewhat known for having a bit too aggressive battery management, which may interfere with apps running in the background. However in...

    Similar experience here. I use a Xiaomi phone, those are somewhat known for having a bit too aggressive battery management, which may interfere with apps running in the background.

    However in reality the only app that I used which had a problem with this (and it happened all the time) was Firefox.

    There are few things more infuriating than when you have to login to some place that uses 2-factor authentization, so you switch away from Firefox into a 2-factor app for literally no more than 15 seconds to confirm, and as you switch back you find out that Firefox apparently stopped, started, loaded a cached version of the page and promptly reloaded it, interrupting the login process and forcing me to do the whole thing again, sometimes three times before it worked. This also caused some minor annoyance regularly in sites like reddit - I put the phone away, reopened it 10 minutes later and it showed the cached version but immediately after reloaded the whole page, completely losing the position on the page, which sometimes changed in the meantime (as votes changed and new comments appeared).

    This has been a known bug for years.

    On top of that tabs sometimes straight up crashed when loading specific sites.

    Switched to Brave and I've had zero issues since.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on Tips on attending a metal fest in Europe in ~travel

    V17
    Link Parent
    As much as I dislike pragocentrism, if you only have a couple days, it's probably best to just go to Prague. It's a beautiful city with lots to see and do, whether that's architecture, galleries,...
    • Exemplary

    As much as I dislike pragocentrism, if you only have a couple days, it's probably best to just go to Prague. It's a beautiful city with lots to see and do, whether that's architecture, galleries, clubs (visit Cross Club if you go, at least for a beer if you don't find music you like, it's touristy and the atmosphere is not as good as it used to be, but it's still a world unique) or just walking around and getting mildly drunk in beer gardens (prices of beer are still good outside of tourist traps). Jazz Dock is a great jazz club, if you're into that.

    If you're from a region with a different climate or landscape and enjoy hiking, then Czechia has a lot to offer - a dense network of well marked tourist trails and some areas that are quite beautiful and relatively diverse considering how small the country is. I'm particularly a fan of Šumava (woody hills and mountains), Vysočina ("highlands", partially grassy and partially woody hills) and southern Moravia (lowlands with vineyards and some pictoresque villages). However there's imo no sense in going to those places for just a day unless you're already nearby.

    A trip to Brno, located in southern Moravia, which also offers interesting architecture, including some related stuff like huge empty 100+ years old underground water reservoirs and a network of baroque cellars, plus it has some of the best bars in Czechia and is overall much more chill than Prague because there are very few tourists, followed by a day in the actual countryside with the vineyards etc. that is nearby, might be doable and interesting.

    3 votes

  10. Comment on Tips on attending a metal fest in Europe in ~travel

    V17
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    Your date fits right between Obscene Extreme (which may not be what you want, but it surely is what you need) and Brutal Assault, which is good because otherwise I think it would have been a shame...

    Your date fits right between Obscene Extreme (which may not be what you want, but it surely is what you need) and Brutal Assault, which is good because otherwise I think it would have been a shame not to extend your trip locations to Czechia. Baden in Blut looks good and I wouldn't worry about language too much. Can't exactly speak about german festivals, but here in Czechia festivals are always full of foreigners and everyone in the festival crew expects this. With the visitors it can be hit or miss, but with enough beer (which in Germany should be a given) you'll make friends regardless of language.

    4 votes

  11. Comment on Tips on attending a metal fest in Europe in ~travel

    V17
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Adding to this. You need hearing protection to any kind of music festival, it can be useful even for jazz festivals. I used to be a metal drummer and metal shows in clubs were some of the loudest,...

    Adding to this. You need hearing protection to any kind of music festival, it can be useful even for jazz festivals.

    I used to be a metal drummer and metal shows in clubs were some of the loudest, louder than raves for example. Outdoor festivals doing any kind of modern music tend to be about equally loud.

    The cheapest earplug with usable sound that I know of is Alpine WorkSafe - it reduces about 20 dB (enough to be in the pit) and has okayish frequency response (better than some of the musicians plugs - their quality varies a lot and most manufacturers choose not to publish their frequency measurement data for that reason) despite being marketed for work, and a pair costs about 12€ I think. However no earplugs apart from 200€ custom molded ones get anywhere close to flat frequency response, so what helps is to wear the plugs all the time so your ears get used to the sound and your brain compensates.

    Also clean your ears well before the festival so the plugs don't get plugged with earwax, which further reduces treble.

    Even the cheap foam earplugs are fine in a pinch

    And if even those are not available, roll up a small bit of paper tissue and stick it in your ears. Seriously. When the sound is loud enough, even this increases comfort and reduces damage.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on Rodent for dinner? US residents encouraged to eat invasive nutria. in ~enviro

    V17
    Link Parent
    You made me google rabbit sausages and they're uncommon and kind of expensive, but one that's mixed rabbit/pork is available near me. Seems like lunch for thursday is sorted. Oh, and I found a...

    You made me google rabbit sausages and they're uncommon and kind of expensive, but one that's mixed rabbit/pork is available near me. Seems like lunch for thursday is sorted. Oh, and I found a recipe for nutria sausages, but not actual sausages for sale here.

    Speaking of mildly controversial sausage meats, horse sausages are great as well.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Rodent for dinner? US residents encouraged to eat invasive nutria. in ~enviro

    V17
    Link Parent
    I like some game meat, but rabbits, apart from having a distinct taste that's imo less pleasant than boars, deer and other large animals, are weirdly dry. They're a traditional source of meat...

    I like some game meat, but rabbits, apart from having a distinct taste that's imo less pleasant than boars, deer and other large animals, are weirdly dry. They're a traditional source of meat where I'm from because they're so easy and cheap to breed almost every rural home used to have a few for meat, but their consumption reduced dramatically once we stopped being poor, so if nutria meat tastes similar, it's unlikely to become a hit.

    3 votes

  14. Comment on My sixteen-month theanine self-experiment in ~health

    V17
    Link Parent
    I don't believe that's all there is because I experienced a consistent difference between different teas and it also tended to only happen after second or third steeping of the leaves, when most...

    I do think a lot of the people who experience a calming effect from things like tea underestimate how much of the effect comes from the experience and ritual of making the tea and sipping a tasty warm beverage, as opposed to being the effects of a specific chemical.

    I don't believe that's all there is because I experienced a consistent difference between different teas and it also tended to only happen after second or third steeping of the leaves, when most caffeine is flushed out. It only happened with relatively expensive high quality green teas, but not with all of them, it was not a function of price.

    After all there are other active chemicals in tea than just theanine, and this could also be the effect of some interactions between them. It's been some time since I read anything about this, but iirc for example gamma-aminobutyric acid, which is present in teas in various quantities, may or may not have a small calming effect on its own, but it likely somewhat reduces the effect of caffeine itself and reduces "caffeine crash".

    6 votes

  15. Comment on My sixteen-month theanine self-experiment in ~health

    V17
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    Interesting and well-done. I think the probability of "it works, just not on me" is a bit higher than he suggests: there are some types of supplements for which the difference between responders...

    Interesting and well-done. I think the probability of "it works, just not on me" is a bit higher than he suggests: there are some types of supplements for which the difference between responders and non-responders can be really stark and the group of responders may be quite small because they all have some tiny metabolic issue causing something like reduced bioavailabililty and in time defficiency. Amino acids tend to be in this group because a slight deficiency can be caused by stress in some cases or by a gut microbiome dysfunction, and unlike genetic issues related to amino acids this doesn't tend to cause big issues that one would be aware of. edit: Forgot to add, since the responder to non-responder ratio is rather small, it tends to produce inconclusive or even negative study results unless closely examined, which would fit here.

    Still, it doesn't seem super likely. Anecdotally I also used to get calming effects from high quality green teas and did not feel anything similar from an entirely non-blinded test of theanine.

    12 votes

  16. Comment on Disney scales back ‘Snow White’ Hollywood premiere amid Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot controversies in ~movies

    V17
    Link Parent
    This is not that important and I'm not really arguing with you, just for the record because I recently looked into that: it was not just tumblr, which was still considered the craziest, it was...

    This is not that important and I'm not really arguing with you, just for the record because I recently looked into that: it was not just tumblr, which was still considered the craziest, it was very much on reddit and also on some more ideological traditional media already - recently when David Lynch died I looked through some articles about him and found several about him being a disgusting sexist and his movies being misogynistic, and reddit discussions on similar topics, much more aggressive than you would find now, and they were from around that era.

    Bust mostly I just remember it because it all annoyed me when it was happening.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on The Sims 1 music is...different in ~games

    V17
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    All of this is really interesting context. But without wanting to seem combative, as a musician who plays music that is partially similar (and yeah, most of such music is from the 50s or 60s) I...

    All of this is really interesting context. But without wanting to seem combative, as a musician who plays music that is partially similar (and yeah, most of such music is from the 50s or 60s) I just don't hear it in there, apart from obviously referencing a different era. My interpretation is that Will Wright chose this music because of the era it comes from and because of its energy, which helped create the image he was going for, but there is nothing strange or subversive about the music itself - if anything it may provide a contrast to a sim running around a house on fire by not being strange or complicated.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on Disney scales back ‘Snow White’ Hollywood premiere amid Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot controversies in ~movies

    V17
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    I don't fully agree. 2014 was definitely already peak "internet intersectional feminism" and for example articles denouncing real or imagined sexism or racism in any kinds of popular media were...

    I don't fully agree. 2014 was definitely already peak "internet intersectional feminism" and for example articles denouncing real or imagined sexism or racism in any kinds of popular media were definitely a thing, but it's likely true that cancellation attempts were much less of a thing or that the online activism would not extend on issues like dwarfism yet.

    6 votes

  19. Comment on The Sims 1 music is...different in ~games

    V17
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    I think this is to some degree necessary if you want music that's accessible to the mainstream. I'm not educated in this genre, but I wouldn't expect anything else. I play in a jazz band that...

    I've got a few composer friends and family who coincidentally grew up on The Sims; their professional opinion is that the music is kinda dreck. Especially the build mode piano music, as part of a modern classical / neoclassical/ whatever genre you want to call it movement of stuff that often pushes nothing and sounds really similar, sometimes because it's pop masquerading as classical.

    I think this is to some degree necessary if you want music that's accessible to the mainstream. I'm not educated in this genre, but I wouldn't expect anything else.

    I play in a jazz band that focuses on various subgenres mostly from 40s till 70s that are playful and digestible for non-jazz people but still interesting - some classic standards, some swing, 50s lounge and bossa, some Sinatra, some Brubeck... From this point of view some of the soundtrack's jazz songs are really good, they have great atmosphere, they have useful forms that allow for interesting improvisation when played live, and they have a core that's likeable for the "educated masses", not just jazz musicians. And indeed we actually play the two linked songs, Central Park Sunday and UpDown Town, and people seem to like them.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on Disney scales back ‘Snow White’ Hollywood premiere amid Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot controversies in ~movies

    V17
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    I don't think it's just that. The Hobbit trilogy was released just over a decade ago when social justice was already a big social trend, it had the same situation with different non-dwarf actors,...

    I don't think Gimli et al were "problematic" in their time, in large part because that was over 20 years ago now. Times and the conversation have changed and moved on, and I suspect there may be different opinions about the dwarves and their representation in Lord of the Rings.

    I don't think it's just that. The Hobbit trilogy was released just over a decade ago when social justice was already a big social trend, it had the same situation with different non-dwarf actors, and I don't remember any controversy back then.

    I think controversy like that tends to follow movies that are easy targets, usually those that are already expected to be bad due to other things. This was not the case at all with LOTR, but it was to some small degree the case with Hobbit - it wasn't super popular with LOTR fans and doing it as a trilogy was perceived as a cash grab (imo deservedly so). But for some reason the criticism did not arrive despite that, at least in the mainsteam.

    With Snow White iirc the controversy only came when Disney released a couple stills and people found out it looks like Snow White and the Seven Diversity Hires (and also snow white is arguably clearly not better looking than the queen), which was a bad idea to begin with. If the film's production looked like it was as serious as LOTR, I'm sure some people would have complained anyway, but I do not believe the complaints would have received anywhere near as much attention as they received here. When it looks like it's going to be a crappy cashgrab that nobody wanted, it's a controversy magnet.

    8 votes