• 16 Posts
  • 263 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • 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.



  • 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.




  • 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.


  • 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).



  • 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.