for casual users, there are already open source alternatives to Adobe products. For professionals who can afford to pay the subscription, there is value in knowing a proper company is behind that subscription. This vibe coded clones, unless someone truly spends effort in making a good and working app, are pointless. But you can't get UX from screenshot. Proper UX is still the domain of humans, because this generation of AIs can't feel.

Affinity went free last year and I have been giving it a go. My main struggle is it's just so hard to find guides on how to do things, and LLMs hallucinate like crazy when you ask them how to do things in programs if they can't find a reddit post to wholesale rip it from. While this project would let me just look up photoshop guides and achieve the same result since the UI is the same.

> for casual users, there are already open source alternatives to Adobe products.

We need a better word than "alternatives" because they are, on the whole, partial-alternatives at best. Whether it's missing features (and I'm not talking about the esoteric here; I'm talking basic things like "expand the selection", etc.) or mind-boggling UX problems, they're all slightly deficient compared with Photoshop.

Which sucks.

The question is why you need the UX if models just deal with the software to get you what you want done without complaining - even if, perhaps especially if you’re a knowledgeable pro.

you can argue many things. This isn't arguing.

One can also argue that, exactly because there is the right to self-determination, there is a huge need for a inter-national and super-national organism to ensure that a right of some country doesn't jeopardise the rights of others.

Is the ICC the right organism? Maybe, maybe not; we can argue about that.

That seems to be what they are arguing. Not sure what you are arguing really.

You can point an LLM to a debugger in any language. You should measure token efficiency across different workflows to see if there is a programming language that is handled better by a LLM.

because certain political parties have made energy technologies part of their identities, which is... stupid.

I agree, but also equating LLMs with intelligence is wrong.

I'm heuristically less prone to continue reading an article starting with a false dichotomy, that is between how you see things as an atheist vs as a person having faith.

I like reading, and I read a lot. Still, I don't think it's right that a public service encourages reading. People must be free to do what they want in their free time, and this gamification stuff smells of imposing values and habits.

I'm against this idea of indoctrination of the population by a public entity, no matter which is the habit. I'm also against private companies doing this, which governments should focus on regulating instead of copying them.

If reading books is valuable, just as I think it is, people will find its value by trying.

> If reading books is valuable, just as I think it is, people will find its value by trying.

Eating healthy and exercising are both valuable, no one disputes that, and yet we’re not all doing both those things on the regular. Even those who tried it.

Books, like healthy eating, compete with massive industries who spend enormous amounts of money and resources to get you to do something else.

I’m not at all advocating for forcing people to read, but let’s please not be naive that everyone will simply do what’s best for themselves on their own.

this is true. We should focus on avoiding bad habits and forming good ones. But they are bad also because of the methods they use, because of the deliberate and systematic study of how the mind works and how to tweak it. It is also the method that needs to be changed, and using it for "good" habits is just as problematic. That is because we don't need others to decide what is "good" for us.

As for "we're all not doing both those things" I am sorry to contradict you. No one is perfect, but adopting simple strategies can help a lot. I know because it has been almost a year since I have done the following:

1) I deleted all my social media, except for Mastodon which I use very rarely since it's not that interesting, and it is ok to be so: no mind engineering on their side, even though I don't like the concept of social media in general and am still undecided whether to keep it or not.

2) I try not to eat junk food, or keep it at a minimum. What helps a lot is not buying food from restaurants, even good ones use an impressive amount of oil and fats that is not good for our system. Cooking for double what you cook and freezing is a good thing. Cook simple things and don't do complex recipes, they can taste mild at first, but with habit our mouth adapts and even a simple bowl of rice with vegetables tastes good.

3) I try to incorporate exercises into my daily routine. Some weightlifting at home, because I have 30 minutes every 2 or 3 days to do it, and since I work at home most of the times I cut transport time; if I were to work outside I'd pay a gym near my work, or go to a gym near my house to again cut transport time; I cycle to work (1:30h). The point is minimizing barriers between you and exercises. I read some of the atomic habits book a while ago and I think I am using some ideas from there, but I really can't remember.

4) I cut all TVs if not for movies; sometimes I watch TV series because my girlfriend like those, but they are a waste of time too.

Less is more.

People are free to do what they want in their free time, including the freedom to decide which incentive structures they follow. Having incentives to read just... sounds like a good thing to me.

You're also against public education, I guess? Kids should just figure out what's valuable and do that without having values and habits imposed on them.

I am against mandatory public education and for the existence of the possibility of free education for everyone. You shouldn't be paid to go to school though.

We are in 2026: why not a rotating globe?

Isn't this more like a 1997 website, though? ;-)

(I.e., all the webpages with a rotating globe with "News" spelled around it in the fashion of the animated Universal logo, embedded as an animated GIF [GIF89a].)

The point is to be seen fighting, not to have accurate maps.

In order to understand why this is pushed, consider that maps through history rarely have been only a tool for the technician. Maps usually conveyed a lot of social information, take a look at medieval ones to understand the point.

This explains why the UN is making such an otherwise stupid resolution from a mathematical point of view.