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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Considering Microsoft is dropping support for Windows Mixed Reality devices with Windows 11 24H2, effectively sending millions of otherwise perfectly fine VR headsets to landfill with no recourse. I can see them releasing a handheld with a “custom” version of Windows that allows users to install Steam, GOG, Epic, etc… then bait and switch with a future “feature update” that makes compatibility “too hard” to support or a “security risk”. Maybe the desktop mode is a “developer only” option that gets disabled, or you have to enable third party apps like in windows 10 S and that ability gets taken away. I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft.

    Maybe I’m just peeved at Microsoft for deciding that my VR headset will be E-waste even though the hardware is fine, or ignoring the concept of user consent by enabling OneDrive cloud backups for local folders by default while basically forcing you to create a Microsoft account to install Windows if you don’t know the right sequence of arcane f-ing rituals to create a local account. But I don’t trust them…











  • Ah yes those powerless companies that have simply no choice but to destroy our biosphere.

    It’s not like they can use the money that they’re currently using to lobby against environmental regulation and oversight for heavier oversight, regulations and *gasp* penalties instead… Yes it’s literally impossible to take a principled stance at the expense of literally any amount of profit. Besides, who needs clean air and livable temperatures anyway?

    No it must be the consumer who must wade through the sea of greenwashing and propaganda spread by companies who have no problem outright lying about their carbon emissions to everyone’s faces. Because it’s just so easy for everyone to know the complete supply chain of every product they buy. Simple really.

    Edit: After looking through your comment history I can’t help but think what you said was meant as more of a call to action for people rather than stepping to bat for multinationals as if they are helpless victims with no agency. Apologies if my comment came across as mean spirited I’ve just been on edge recently due to certain undisclosed life events. I’ll keep my base comment as is for archival though.



  • This is a list of all the open source software I have come across and use frequently to semi frequently. There will likely be some overlap with stuff everyone has already posted.

    Photography and Image manipulation

    • Darktable → RAW photo processing
    • GIMP→ Photoshop alternative
    • Krita → Digital painting (have only used it a bit, but I hear it’s good)
    • Inkscape → Vector Graphics
    • Automatic1111 → Diffusion model AI toolkit (mostly Stable Diffusion but also has extensions for other diffusion based models like OpenAI’s Shap-E)

    3D modeling and Printing

    • Blender → 3D Modeling, sculpting, 2D animation, compositing all rolled together (simply one of the best examples of FOSS)
    • Meshroom → Photogrammetry
    • PrusaSlicer → 3D printing slicer based on Slic3r

    Video editing and Processing

    • Kdenlive → Genuinely good video editor
    • FFMPEG → Command line media toolkit (very complex but also works on android through Termux)
    • Instant NeRF → Neural Radiance Fields, think photoscan to a 3D representation (not meant to make 3D meshes unfortunately)

    Misc

    • Calibre → E-book management
    • Serge → Self hosted Local LLM’s made a bit easier to deal with
    • Firefox → Web browser

    FOSS I’m excited for

    • DragGAN → Manipulate images by intuitively dragging, more on this here and here (official code being released this month but there are already projects based on the paper with working examples)
    • CoDi → “Composable Diffusion” Any2Any conversion Txt2Vid, Vid2Audio, Audio+Txt2Img, whatever
    • Neuralangelo → Promises to be NeRF’s for 3D models (don’t know if it will be FOSS but I’m hopeful)