GreyBeard

I haven’t touched Photoshop since like CS2 I think, so really can’t compare the two, but I will say that GIMP 3 was a huge enancenent to GIMP. It now has non-destructive editing. For my common uses, this is giant. Not having to redo 8 steps because I decided step 1 wasn’t right is so nice.

Of course Photoshop has done that for ages. My only point was that previous perceptions might be a little dated. And with the 3 update came with huge backend changes that will hopefully accelerate other feature development. Of course I’m sell on hope, but I’m excited for the future of GIMP. Also, now that 3 is out, they have been hinting that that are open to talk about a name change, which I think would be healthy if they want increased usage.

Doesn’t the US already have full sanctions with Russia? So literally no trade is happening with them, so a tarrif would be pointless? Maybe I missed trump removing the sanctions at some point in his onslaught of nonsense.

For most people, the thought of replacing an outlet or switch is daunting to say the least. My IKEA smart bulbs are going on 7 years old and still working great.

I did replace every single outlet and switch in my house when I moved in, but that was before I knew about ZigBee or Zwave, and well before matter existed.

I don’t feel the need to replace most of my switches and half of my outlets again.

Any smart lights I’ve seen always turn on when going from no power to power. It’s a little annoying when the power blinks and half the house lights up, but it means physical switches always work.

Disasters do happen. Hurricanes are a big problem that often take out everything you mentioned except for starlink. And starlink has several problems, being owned by a Nazi is certainly one of them.

If you want to practice investing, give the 1984 hit video game Drug Wars a shot.

I replaced pocketcast with Antennapod a year or so ago. It took some time to adjust, but I’m quite satisified with it now. I feel like I’m slowly converting over at an F-Droid stack on my phone. About all I have left from the Play store are streaming apps and banking apps. I should look into replacing the banking apps with PWAs.

Roku started as a streaming media box. You paid them money, they gave you a box that could play Netflix and Youtube. It was a simple transaction. Unfortunately, at some point they decided to start selling/giving their OS to TV manufacturers. This was actually nice at the start. You got a smart TV who’s “Smarts” were designed by competent people. A revolution at the time. But the drive to drop prices lower and lower meant that there was no margin on the TV, which means Roku had to investigate other ways of making their revenue, AKA Ads and selling data.

Of course, the stand alone box probably would have went that way anyways, but at least with selling a dedicated box, there is a clear financial benefit without the need to get invasive.

I generally agree with you, GIMP is way behind the commercial options. And is almost unusable by the lay person and is lacking features a professional needs, which leads it to be almost useless for the majority of people. I use it, but also get frustrated at it every time I do. Let’s hope 3 really is an inclection point.

I agree with your core point, if the watermark is a maker’s mark, then it would be wrong to remove it.

Depends on the watermark that is being removed. So many memes out there have random watermarks on them of some crappy facebook account or random website that has nothing to do with the content, they just slap their logo on everything they share.

I think you will find progress accelerate with the release of 3. They did a lot of groundwork and factoring, it’s one of the reasons it took so long. But now that the work is done, it will allow for more rapid changes in the future. I’m hoping it will be kinda like Blender 2.8 or Godot 3.

Chrome is (basically) already open source. That’s why there are a million crappy browsers out there, they are Chromium clones. Google could give Chrome to the Chromium project and cut ties with Chromium, I suppose.