Seeing how Android adopted it 4 years later, it’s pretty obvious that Apple made it the de-facto standard. I agree with you, something like JPEG XT or really any other open format would have been a great choice, but they made HEIC the standard, which requires a license. Dick move.

What other image format supports HDR and modern compression algorithms that don’t require a license?

There, ftfy. You answer the question.

I literally said it was easy to do.

Yeah it’s a bit of a tossup between them. Apple definitely chose it to be a dick. However, Microsoft could rectify it easily if they wanted to.

Both HEVC and HEIC thought cost money, and the vast majority of windows users will never use the codecs. Including the license with every copy of Windows is added cost to the end user that they receive no benefit from, so I understand why they would leave it out. HEVC prompts you if you try to play to go to the store and buy the license, which is good for your entire account. Honestly it’s not a terrible thing to do. I was one of the 1% of people who would play HEVC natively on Windows, so yeah the $3 license made sense

Wow this question is all over the place. I want to call out the privacy bit though. The fediverse is NOT private. You are anonymous, and really pseudo anonymous. Everything you post here is shared with anyone listening though. There are guidelines for how to implement the protocol, but they are not rules. Things like deletes do not have to be honored. Any gov agency can spin up an instance and listen.

We can act like we’re anonymous, but unless your hosting your own somewhere far off with no logs and zero way to trace it back to you, you’re still open. Open web means open, it’s what we want. The open web means no single entity can shut down the whole of the fediverse. The flip side is that you are also out there in the open.

Situation - You run a discord server for alt right and weirdly obsessed about the military dudes. You have a secret clearance. Do you -

[ ] Share secret intel with people who have no need to see or know about it

[ ] Do nothing

Note: There are no political or military reasons to share this info, only ego boosting yourself. 30 seconds on the clock.

Write who you are imagining, who you think the person is - don’t cater to anyone. Not right, not left, you are the author, write who you think it should be.

Oh my friend, let me introduce you to Batocera

The surface is one of my go-to examples of Microsoft’s ineptitude. The surface is honestly an amazing tablet. It works very well, great battery life, and you can either use a standard tablet mode or it as a full Windows machine. For businesses too it was a slam-dunk, where since it’s Windows it already interfaces with most IT systems out of the box, no special setup or store integrations or Apple stuff, it’d work with Microsoft AD. Unfortunately it followed the pattern.

• They gave up on tablets before fully vetting the market
• Apple lands the iPad, and it takes off, is groundbreaking
• Microsoft got butthurt that Apple made profit on a thing they gave up on
• They take years coming up with the Surface, in the meantime every 3rd party came out with an Android one that was slow and choppy so the people have all decided iPad was the winner
• Microsoft hired thousands of engineers and pivoted the entire world to touch, forcing Windows 8 down everyone’s throats, making the public hate it
• Surface finally lands, but everyone already hates the interface, and anyone who wants a tablet already has one
• Microsoft quietly lays off everyone. Surface is still around, but on life support.

Microsoft following the same pattern.

• There is a need in the market they are aware of, but don’t care
• Someone else makes a huge splash by doing a great job
• Microsoft gets butthurt that someone else is making profit
• They take way too long coming up with a rival
• Microsoft hires thousands of engineers to work on the product
• The rival is way too late to market, and everyone has already chosen the cool product
• Microsoft quietly lays people off and kills off the product

Like any vice honestly. It can be fun and enjoyable. Too much and then you need to get some help and it will affect you. Forcing it out of your life, however, is not actually dealing with your problems but rather just hiding from them. Finding the balance is the goal.

A true recovered alcoholic isn’t someone who demands his friends stop drinking when they are around him. That’s someone who is trying to hide from it. A true recovered alcoholic is someone who can see their friends enjoy a drink and say “no thanks” when asked.

Man I feel you there. The apathy is real. I feel for those who are innocent who are really going to be hurt by this. I’ve stopped caring about anyone who voted for it. You’re on the lower income but can’t afford food? Too bad he’s coming for food stamps. Bootstraps. Grandma needs Medicaid but voted red? Sorry grandma, better get a job.

For all those who truly voted to try to save these things, my heart goes out to them. The rest though, it’s going to be painful.

The ironic thing is that they did it all to own the libs. The thing is though, the vast majority of “libs” I see push for these programs for others, not themselves. But these people can’t even comprehend that we want to help people and assume we want free stuff. All the while it’s them that we were probably helping the most. It’s absolutely asinine

Every time I fall in! There’s a ledge right there rook! Even if you can’t swim it’s inches away! Just grab on!

Apparently every stream in Thedas right now is 10 feet deep

This was a lyft in Vegas a couple years back. Taking an autonomous one was more expensive, but I chose it for novelty. That was already on top of Lyft/Uber being more than taxis.

In my experience taxis now are cheaper than uber/lyft. Not autonomous, but coming home from the airport the trains weren’t running for maintenance or something, and an uber was 160 dollars. No joking, that’s how much - base. Taxi was about 50.

oh freaking awesome, this looks amazing! Thank you so much for this!

“so it’s a taxi”. Basically all it was, except I surprisingly trusted taxi drivers more. For the cost, I’d rather just take mass transit

Hey I used to live in Des Moines! I agree with you. Iowans treat Des Moines like a city. “I have to go into the city today”. No you don’t. You have to go into town. Des Moines is a big town, it’s not a city.

They refuse to believe they’re a city, any time they’re faced with acknowledging they might be becoming a city they do something regressive to it to try to prevent it. Built out not up. Kill all mass transit ideas. Anything diverse happening? Let’s keep that in check. They are a city of 300k that want to run it like a small town. Then the politics, just yuck the people who run it.

There were some fun places, the east side had some good bars, the keg stand in WDM was my stomping ground for a while, but so many people are just happy to have their strip malls and chain restaurants. Oh my god we got a Texas Roadhouse, I remember it made the news when Des Moines got one. God forbid anyone try an actual good local place.

Depending what you want to dive into I can definitely tell you more good and bad

Time to start self hosting these for my friends

I’ll say hot take here, but I’m not sure this is the right solution, or at least it should be decided on a case by case basis and depends on how unsafe it is. They should be removed from society for a time absolutely, but not prison.

Stalking is a mental health issue, a fascination and obsession. I think it warrants being put into a mental health institution for rehabilitation. Prison isn’t going to help, it just removes the problem, but rehabilitation might

I can always tell with food. In the Midwest you don’t dare use any spice except salt and maybe some rosemary on Christmas. Anything else is too fancy. The West Coast has their own style, northeast has chowder and seafood, except salmon which is the PNW. Interesting how they all separate.

I remember driving through the Midwest and I just wanted a sparkling water. Anything bubbly. They had coolers and coolers of soda and added sugar drinks, two small things of actual water, and one thing of liquid death, with added sugar. Wild place