HexesofVexes

Really neat post, I’d not heard of a few of these (never knew libre office draw could edit pdfs!).

Couple of extra ones:

Note taking and pdf annotation: Xournal++ is amazing, it’s also great to use on larger whiteboard screens. Plug and play support for scribe tablets on both windows and Linux.

Emulation (up to ps1): Mednafen is lightweight and comes with a gui. It also supports recording, though not netplay.

Ebook management/reading: Calibre - allows easy importing and exporting of ebooks to devices, also has a great built in search letting you find DRM free versions of a book.

Yup, Google are launching their yearly attempt to convince folks YouTube premium is worth it.

Think of this time not as an annoyance, but as a time to reflect on how shitty Google has become.

Hah, jokes on them, my university is too poor to afford copilot.

Oh thank god… I thought he’d draw it out even longer.

Here’s a fun thought - push a law through demanding a minimal level of service with forced nationalisation at the cost of the shareholders if it isn’t met (government pays share price, but proceeds go towards settling company debt first rather than being paid out to shareholders).

Give them a way to fail that doesn’t hurt the people who rely on the services, and punish running up unsustainable debt in one joyous law.

I mean, here is a thought, if an AI tool uses creative commons data, then it’s derivatives fall under creative commons. I.e. stop charging for AI tools and people will stop complaining.

Operation archive the archive?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/513049/alphabet-annual-global-income/

Let’s pause a moment and just appreciate how much money Alphabet actually make net (after expenses). $73,795,000,000 last year - higher than the GDP of entire nations, in profit.

The “bad” year, 2022 that drove all this change, they only made $59,972,000,000 net. Oh how terrible (!)

5 years ago, they made $34,343,000,000 net, so they’ve more than doubled profits.

Take a moment to appreciate that, and really consider if they “need” the money.

[X] Member of the EU. [X] One of the wealthiest nations on earth. [X] The best healthcare on earth. [X] One of the strongest higher education sectors on earth.

All sounds good to me.

The first was lost to the old voting for the young. The second fled with austerity - slowly eroding the wealth of a nation. The third succumbed to a slow cancer of underfunding and an unfolding demographic crisis. The fourth is about to fall due to nationalism and massive underfunding.

Edit: corrected nationalisation to nationalism because sleepy hex is slow hex!