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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • Andy@slrpnk.nettoTechnology@beehaw.orgThe problem with GIMP
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    1 month ago

    To add to this, I’ve been using GIMP on and off for a decade and I’ve never given any thought to the name. It’s all capitalized. I didn’t think it was a backronym, I thought it was just an acronym.

    I’ve used this in professional settings (I used to work in academic molecular bio), and I was very evangelical about it. Especially because we’re not doing high-level artistic work, we just sometimes need something for processing microscope images or making graphics for scientific publications.

    I’d say to any and everyone, “You know, you don’t have to pay an annual subscription fee for Photoshop: there’s this free, open-source program called GIMP that does most of what you need and you don’t have to pay a thing! Want me to install it for you?”

    I didn’t even think to be embarrassed about the name, and no one ever seemed to care in conversation. As others have said, the bigger impediments are people’s attachment to commercial software and interface challenges. This is just an absolutely silly complaint to make.







  • I generally agree. I think there are no great answers, but the expert they interviewed makes good points. The main point that resonates with me is the network effects: if everyone feels pressured to begin using tools because they feel like everyone else is on them, it’s very difficult for any parent to constrain their kid’s use.

    Age prohibitions aren’t very restrictive because they’re difficult to enforce. They’re basically just advice and a legal tool to go after the very most flagrant business targeting minors.

    As for the positive effects: that’s a great point. I want my kid to have access to explore cyberspace in the same way I want them to have access to explore our city and nearby wildlands. I want them to have as much freedom as possible while teaching them to recognize and avoid danger. I think in all these cases, exposure with supervision before gradually increasing unsupervised access to areas that have become familiar is the only strategy to achieve that that in aware of.


  • Sadly, it’s another hustle. If you spend enough time on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TIkTok, you may see ads for “business opportunities,” which include a bunch of ways to spend lots of wasted time on things that will supposedly give you “passive income”. A lot of them consist of stringing together crude tools to supposedly run a business without actually running anything. For instance, you can learn how to set up a business on Amazon where someone else manufactures your products and Amazon stores and ships them, and supposedly you’re now a business owner. Obviously, it doesn’t work.

    One version of this is becoming a “published author” by having stuff written either by ChatGPT or what are essentially slaves in the global south, and then self-publishing it as ebooks on Amazon.

    Again, there’s no real money or sense of accomplishment, but people are desperate, and so people try it.







  • I tried to build one, and the hardest thing was setting up route planning. But it was also way easier than it could’ve been, and if I’d wanted to, I could’ve solved my problem by buying more common, modern sensors.

    The field, I think, is moving along really well. There’s always things that could be easier, but I’m loathe to complain when so many people have made such great open source tools.

    I was using ROS with a Kinect 1 and an old Roomba, running on a Jetson Nano, btw.