Off the top, Krita and Inkscape. Haven’t transitioned yet, but I have ceased receiving updates. Next OS workflow will no longer involve affinity.

To anyone promoting Affinity, they’ve sold out to Canva, a Venture Capital fueled mega corp looking for a public offering. Enchittification is inevitable.

Please look for FOSS alternatives instead.

I’m not thoroughly aware of their dealings, but these amounts of private investment aren’t going to pay for themselves. If you raise 100 million, investors typically want a billion back, or more.

From the looks of it, Bitwarden might’ve tried to go with the Open Source model to get free development resources, trust (because it’s an open source PASSWORD manager), and general goodwill. But now that they’ve deemed that got enough of a market share (or investors are starting to breathe down their necks), it’s time to start raising the walled garden.

Even if they claim after the fact that it was a “Bug” that the client couldn’t be built without their proprietary sdk. The very fact one exists is a bad enough sign, specially when its influence is spreading.

VC is a devil’s bargain. Raising VC money is NEVER a good sign.

I wonder~ I wonder~ I wonder whyyyy…

deleted by creator

Not strange at all. Even though it was a success, it wasn’t a cash cow and only had limited ability to be milked though micro transactions and other revenue opportunities.

When the axe comes, all that matters is the numbers in the balance sheet. Creativity, enjoyment and artistic value be damned.

Still saves a ton of time from learning from either somewhat related tutorials. Garbage courses. Or digging through the modern spam infested web.

It’s a decent tutor, never said that it’s perfect. I will not hesitate that using it as an assistant has bumped up my productivity and learning by roughly 50% when it comes to programming.

Of course, it has it’s myriad problems, specially in bleeding edge fields like AI development with libraries iterating sometimes nightly. As well as it’s trend to not exactly teach, but instead answer your specific question. So you still need to have some initiative and still rely on a few human resources.

HOWEVER, I do agree that blindly copy pasting code from an AI is a TERRIBLE idea. And all the buzz about AI developers seems like a disaster waiting to happen (and it certainly will!).

Correction, AI in the LLM/Diffusion sense is a decent tutor for cheap. Can cobble together rough temp art, and if used by an actually capable artist, make cool stuff.

Anything else and it’s a garbage firehose, it’s the undisputed king of mediocrity. Which, given the standards of SPAM and the modern web, is exactly what it’s being used for.

What a shame.

I initially thought about installing UBlacklist on Firefox and block the spam, but then I had a thought? Let us do the HouseFresh.com test on Duck Duck Go and see how far up it is?

Apparently, Housefresh.com stands behind world famous Air Purifier reviewers like:

• Best Buy
• popular mechanics
• CBSnews
• NationalGeographic
• PCMagazine
• Rollingstone
• Yahoo
• UsNews
• Forbes
• Choice
• MrGadget.com.au
• CNET
• Amazon
• TopConsumerReviews
• Bustle
• ConsumerReports
• Parents
• Health
• bhg
• thekitchn
• rd
• learnmetrics
• homedepot
• iheartdogs
• telegraph
• msn
• livestrong
• sethlui
• nytimes
• reviewed.usatoday
• popsci
• oransi
• healthline
• seattleweekly
• bestreviews
• thesprucepets
• tomsguide
• gearhungry
• consumertestedreviews
• bobvila
• prevention
• nbcnews
• nypost
• foodandwine
• consumeradvice.in
• news.com.au
• esquire
• gq
• wsj
• verywellhealth
• consumerreports
• moderncastle
• consumeranalysis
• independent.co.uk
• hollywoodreporter
• hgtv
• consumersadvocate
• thehindu
• toptenreviews
• people.com
• popsci
• money
• endadget
• businessinsider
• gearpatrol
• trustedreviews
• digitaltrends
• menshealth
• howtogeek
• techyearlab
• nymag
• livescience
• portugal(what?)
• nj
• iqair
• mashable
• billboard
• prevention
• techhive
• architecturaldigest
• huffpost
• reviewed.usatoday
• realsimple
• techradar
• wired

Well, nevermind guess. I can have either HouseFresh and literally nothing else. Or an ocean of spam, intermixed with the rare human written article that was produced by the main branch of the publisher, rather than its SEO garbage chute.

The web search is a lost cause. No wonder Kagi keeps growing in popularity.

(Also keep in mind, in that giant list? Some of those websites are so GOOD at their Air Purifying review job that they get to be featured more than once, thrice even at times)

If the assignments are in Maya, you’ll have a hard time passing the class in Blender.

Long story short:

• They pledge to keep the status quo. (IE perpetual licenses in new versions)
• Development is going to speed up.
• Subscriptions are 99% coming. (Albeit optional at least at the start)
• Free in schools. (IE training new artists in the Canva ecosystem. So they can be milked later. Here’s a personal anecdote: Maya, the paid 3D alternative to Blender is free in schools. Come out of school and it’s 235$ a month)

&

• Now throw all those pledges out because words mean nothing. This is not a partnership, this is an acquisition, and unless the contract is provided for us, in writing of the agreed upon terms. Nothing else matters but the actions that we’ll see in the near future.

Sigh… Why…? Why is it too hard? Why is it that in this day and age, we can’t simply have something we pay for and keep with no worries. Once I started owning software, Affinity was my choice. They had a long track record of not selling out, retaining high standards and a fairly priced transaction.

You pay for good software, the company works hard to make the software better, and then sells you a better version that you can upgrade at your own choice. Plain, simple and honest.

Nothing lasts in this day and age.

You used to be something Serif, but now you’re in the big leagues along with Adobe, and against them you’re nothing.

Undramatic PS: Affinity Designer is damn solid, like it more than big A’s Illustrator, shame I’m now afraid of pressing the update button >:(

EDIT:

What a straightforward and clear way to put it, thank you kindly!

Been a Windows user for a really long time. A few times I tried to switch over to Linux, but it just wasn’t doable for a myriad of reasons. Windows 11, I have words with it. Many bad ones, but thankfully there are many users like me that for one reason or another did not switch and put time in to beat the badness out of it via mods.

Windows 12… I’m not so sure if I’ll even “upgrade” to it. It really depends on how much Microsoft decides to wire up the OS to their servers. Look, I wouldn’t mind at all if I could have “smart” tools with AI assistance, but the problem for me is the lack of choice. Currently, if you don’t use their crap software, what mostly travels over the wire is telemetry, and if you go offline no harm done. But make no mistake, useful AI models are too fat to run on most computers. Heck I built mine with AI in mind, but will Microsoft even give me the choice of using my own AIs? (Here’s a hint, it starts with N, has a V and ends with an R)

But what if the OS starts requiring it to be online only because of their AI features? Maybe we’ll have to start paying for Windows again in subscriptions to pay for the obligatory AI? Or what about scrubbing options away from the settings so you can’t “misuse” your own device and have to ask nicely to their AI to do it for you?

There is a road here, and I do not like it. Thank goodness Linux is better than it has ever been.

PS: As for the notepad thing, I’m completely in agreement that it should remain without AI. Such a simple tool for scribbling down notes should be kept lean, simple and fast. Things that Microsoft and their engineers have long forgotten how to do.

Displaying images, truly a technological breakthrough for the modern era!

Pardon me if I may inquire, but how exactly does Xiaomi’s gallery fail, at being a gallery application? Morbid curiosity if you will.

Without any ratings for customer satisfaction. I might as well sack the entire support staff, don’t bother with AI and I’ll get a answered query to F off in 0 minutes and 100% savings.