The face of a someone, removed from leading two separate Internet communication protocols/platforms. Here is to many more!

There is not many designers I follow and even less, who I follow ironically. One of them is Peter Arnell, the guy I “admire”, for being able to create stupid shit, write even stupider explanations and sell it to companies, for tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2008, his group designed the very logo, that Pepsi used until now and justified its greatness, by 27 pages of the dumbest shit ever put on paper, that I sometimes quote to this day. Sadly all great things, must come to an end.After 15 years of small changes, Pepsi decided, to get rid of the logo completely, along with making their garbage drink, even more unhealthy and pushing the allegedly cancer causing sugar-free version.

I will never have a proper Arnell logo for myself, along with the book of nonsense, that you get with one - especially not after writing this and considering, I probably won’t make that much money, during my entire life. Still in the spirit of great graphical genius Peter Arnell, I humbly submit one sketch of my current logo, with added nonsense, that completely fails to rival his.

If you have any logos, or want to try doing this, with anything I ever drew, please do it now and send me the results - might the spirit of the Arnell design process, never die!

Omg! I’m always playing on those pixel placing canvases, where it’s usually an endless war of factions or just things being attacked for no reason, but now someone did the most wholesome thing imaginable and drew another inugami facing mine and drew them shaking paws.

It’s not going to stay free for too long. GitHub is going to start charging 10$/month per user for personal licenses and double that price, for every corporate employee - source

They also already announced Copilot 365, priced at an even more ridiculous 30$/month/user, for the corpo customers, that 365 package applies to - source

The recommendations page be like:

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci I’m never too serious about code theft, because as developers, we all do a little copying and pasting from SO, or smashing the keyboard, until the code works somehow. Despite that, it’s still bullshit, that this was targeting all the open-source developers, who did not consent and probably also violating all kinds of open-source licenses in the process, yet at the end, it’s the proprietary developers and companies, who profit the most from it, despite contributing nothing, or the bare minimum.

@prologic@twtxt.net Depends, if it can fix the Yarn app.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
cons:
It takes work
Pros:
Now you get to be the one, sitting in the dark, drinking beer, blasting loud indie music through headphones, writing the edgy READ ME.txt files, you’ve seen included with things, you downloaded as a kid.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org It’s a meme template :D

Oh god, If I don’t repent for my sins and end up in hell - I’m pretty sure part of my punishment will be having to watch the Discord soydevs, attempt to program an Android file picker in RN, for all of eternity - as it will never be accomplished. All while I scream at them in pure agony, far greater than the one caused by my skin melting in lava.

You have to have a photo (cannot be an image, even if the extension is the same) in a specific directory, taken by the phones camera, for this file picker to function. How is code this bad even possible, unless it’s on purpose.

@prologic@twtxt.net Looks like yet another one of those scams, where a custom version of Chat GPT (machine learning at best, in no way even close to real AI), is shoved into a human-shaped torso and presented as FutureBot5000.

Still kinda sad how guy 1, had to invent a woman shaped and voiced android, to have something resembling a woman, he can yell “shut up” at. 😂

@prologic@twtxt.net I really don’t think so, as even Googles attempts to filter out content inappropriate for children failed miserably. As far as I know, the only front-end that even comes anywhere close to your requirements is Invideous, but unless you’re willing to give up child filers and see some trending, you’d probably have to fork it and change quite a few things.

Yes, disabling any and all notifications and sounds is an absolute must.

The Discord app itself used to be at least usable, long before all their stupid redesigns, rewrites, additions no-one asked for and new monetization gimmicks.

DEATH TO INCOMPETENT REACT REWRITES

Well I might be partly biased, because it is the platform, where I’m by far the most popular and one where my bot development and art started. They even reserved “@thecanine” for me.

Still all I wish them is the Skype future and most users moving to better alternatives, like Revolt.chat.

I just got the Windows 11 update, that adds the new folders, volume bar design and some other “features”. I don’t even know how many people have it now, or what kind of an update it was, but I thought it looked alright and didn’t mind it, until Microsoft tried to sneak all the bloatware I spent a day+ removing back in, through some background process, I luckily noticed and quickly destroyed.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Now we finally know what you look like and that you’re insane - getting your bachelors in math. 🥴

@bender@twtxt.net You’re the first person, to ever tell me that. I was testing the last minor rewrite, along with my friend from US, who had no trouble accessing it and all of my US VPN IPs connect too.

After the recent move, the site is now most likely hosted in the DFW Datacenter, located within the US. That’s not anything new either, as despite being European, I think the vast majority of my stuff, runs somewhere on your continent.

If this isn’t just some temporary outage, you might have to contact your ISP and demand a working service. I’m still checking here, but it doesn’t look like there’s any problems on my end.

@prologic@twtxt.net That is unfortunate, but it probably applies to all heavily pixelated fonts, so if you’re aiming for that aesthetic, you don’t have a more accessible choice.

I only use those fonts on my website, where this issue can be mitigated, by turning off external fonts (in the browser settings), or using a screen reader.

This is not a perfect solution, but knowing that, I try to keep screen reader compatibility a high priority, during site rewrites. Along with making sure, the site looks alright, with the usual default browser fonts.

If anyone remembers my rant, about the strange Club Penguin sequel, that requested very personal information and documents for verification - it somehow got even stranger. I got a couple more e-mails from them, trying to get me to finish my registration, before I set my spam filter, to get rid of future reminders.

For some reason completely beyond my understanding, after a few months passed, their system just automatically assumed that I went through with it and sent me the following e-mail, congratulating me for doing so:

Sure enough, this is not just a “rogue mail server” and my account just somehow works now, without any of the requested info.

I off-course did the responsible thing, clicked the big yellow button and downloaded the apk file onto my primary phone, installed it and gave it the requested permission, to install other things. It installed the promised Club Penguin sequel “Party Parrot World”, that still despite being a separate thing, could only be launched through the original app, that was called “Hideaway”.

To cut it “short”, it is a “technically functional multiplayer game”, in the loosest definition of all those words. It barely even loads and clicking almost anything breaks it. I have only seen a glimpse of one other player for a second, so I’m not even sure, it wasn’t some NPC, missplaced there by one of the many present bugs. Lastly there just wasn’t anything to do, besides walking around, going through the buggy menu, that usually broke the “game”, so much it had to be relaunched, or trying to find “minigames”, that either said coming soon, or were not playable on mobile.

I might still return to this thing down the line, out of pure curiosity, but a masterpiece it is not.

@adi@twtxt.net That one is also nice, but not all too pixely. Don’t even know if I’d consider it a pixelated font, rather than just a “low resolution looking” one. 🤔

@adi@twtxt.net Depends on what you’re looking for. If you want something a little bigger, but still very pixelated and don’t mind it only supporting English.
You can take the one used on my site( https://thecanine.ueuo.com )

You should keep in mind, that it’s more or less ripped from “Hypnospace Outlaw”, so probably not good for commercial use.

A smaller, most languages supporting and more commercially usable pixelfont is “uni05_53” by Craig Kroeger.
Sadly the version of this font, listed on the vast majority (if not all) font sites, includes a small error, that makes it unusable, for some European languages.

A fix for that was made by me, after getting Craigs permission, so if you like this font, it’s better to download my version of it, from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vEXYneABo6tAXdz2e0Er915uiiP5aFh-/

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org It’s just floofy hair and big ears.

@prologic@twtxt.net Twitter has ditched the bird logo, in favor of the uni code character “𝕏”.

The company behind it is now called “X Corp.” and the site can also be accessed, by going to https://x.com .

Once the rebrand is finished, the site will just be called “X”, with “the everything app” as the new tagline/slogan.

Dumb (but related) shitpost, made by me: https://youtube.com/shorts/GxeYI7ZBdk4?feature=share

New profile picture. 🎉

Can’t wait until this site joins the trend and becomes “y.com” - the everything protocol.

🥁 The dumb shit of the day award goes to:

*yes this also breaks alternative front-end and people without an account, can’t even use the “real site”, at all.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org for sure, I also block ads wherever possible. What Opera does now (among other things), is sponsor creators/“influencers” to talk about it, pays to show up, on top of browser-related Google searches and occupies the tiny amount of ad space, that I do not block, to help cover some projects server costs.
But to be transparent, some of that is surely targeted at me, only because I was researching it - and the Google spyware somehow noticed.

Now I want to give Pulse browser a fair try. It’s still in alfa, but it’s one of the few forks of Firefox, that try to change and simplify things, offer a bit of a unique look and it comes with Ublock origin built-in.

Deleted Bluesky, to once again, post here exclusively. When do I get the 50 million exclusivity contract, to keep me here, or at least a new version of the app?

Opera browser: my final disavowal

While the Internet is being flooded by a record amount of Opera ads, affiliate program members and new hardcore defenders, while I - as someone, who has been using it without a break, for more than 10 years, have had enough and I’ve finally decided to uninstall it.

Part of the reason for this decision, was the new Opera One UI update, that I not only found incredibly ugly and uninspired, but also worsening the already abysmal performance of the browser, as well as adding to the already gigantic pile of bugs within.

All of this, came after a few very frustrating weeks, where the browser constantly crashed, under the weight of its own AI bloat. Every time any text was selected, it was trying to load some ridiculous AI integrations on top, but always crashing and loosing all the opened tabs.
After the UI update, the whole browser somehow felt even more wonky and laggy.

Even for those, who might be fans of the new UI and all the added “features”, that now include a built in generic anime girl game and stupid cartoon noises, upon clicking almost anything, in the “gaming version” of this browser, the growing concerns about this browsers spyware-like connections, to all kinds of mysterious servers, should at least be considered and looked into further. Not to mention the extra problems, that come with them being a Chinese-ran company, storing this data in China.
Quick summary: https://youtu.be/NV8akIgfDqQ

Int the interest of brevity, I won’t go further into the pointless social media arguments they engage in, their past promoting predatory loans, them inserting affiliate links (to the sites you visit through tiles), running a very questionable free VPN service, hidden extensions, that cannot be removed and god knows what else.

Either way Opera, you were an alright browser - many, many years ago. Sadly all I can say now, is “rest in piss, you won’t ever be missed!”.

Experiencing some “red screen of death”

@prologic@twtxt.net …and looks like a teenagers MySpace page, with the big emojifilled randomly colored text, with “Relatable Memes” TM, after every single sentence.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Like it or not (it’s also a “not” in my book), that’s the direction, most search engine are heading. It’s also heard to imagine it being illegal, because they’ve been scraping and letting you search images for decades and won the lawsuit, they got into by scanning and scraping books.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci I’m 99% sure, that won’t be the case. I’d be really surprised, if the instances, willing to host illegal content, weren’t somehow blocked by default.

Even the sites hosting gore and archiving illegal shooting cams, always have an effective way to remove illegal pornography. If anyone made a site without that option, no-one would ever want to host it and the only users happy to stay on it, would be pedophiles.

There are a few Mastodon instances like that, made by and for pedophiles, hosted in places with loose laws, but they’re completely defederated, even from those ran by “free speech absolutists”, as well as the few, straigh up advocating neo-nazism.

@xuu@txt.sour.is Thank you for the info. I definitely wouldn’t mind one, despite originally wanting to join, through some other instance. Since they’re also promising seamless instance switching, this should hopefully be a non-issue.

So the news is telling me, Bluesky is the hottest new decentralized thing, with parole waiting month to join, or buying invite codes of ebay, for thousands of dollars.

Yet there’s not one other instance out there, for people to join this decentralized paradise. Idk, just sounds a little sussy to me.

I know there was stems.social, but when people tried joining it, they cried “abuse” and shut it down - so no, it doesn’t count.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Quite a few people do. It’s not even that hard, as you can fill them retroactively - there’s even tutorials, like this one: https://dev.to/codesandtags/how-to-generate-pixel-art-in-your-github-activity-2e6k

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci I’ve looked into it myself and funnily enough, the best take might have been some random comment, saying it’s only popular, because it’s invite only and people are having trouble getting in.

Further, as there are not many actual users, people seem to be projecting all of their hopes and dreams onto it, while waiting in the endless joining line, or falling for “pay for invite” scams. Yes, those somehow exist and cost anywhere from 20 to 100$ - no refunds.

Sure, it’s still not exactly ethical and probably not even legal, in some cases, but at the end of the day, it’s at the very least something.

Something, that makes me think, that there could have been a scenario, where it was a voluntary community project, developers would gladly contribute some of their code and advise to - like some of them are already doing elsewhere.
Even with “art generation”, if credit was properly given and the thing showed all the artists, the final peace was inspired by and where to find and support them, it might have had a way warmer welcome.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Hard to say when exactly the downfall started, but there were many strange moments, in the last few years. There was the new ownership, some developers jumping ship and starting Vivaldi Browser, the whole company getting caught, for offering predatory loans, to Android users in poorer countries, in 2020 (https://www.engadget.com/2020-01-19-opera-accused-of-predatory-loan-apps.html),...

But at last, they found some success, with their gimmicky Opera GX “gaming browser”, they still pay youtubers to promote and I guess the promoted content within.

They also came up with a free VPN integration, that they later monetized and started taking pretty much every partner, willing to pay them, to get integrated into their main browser - an offer most appealing to small crypto/web 3.0 projects, trying to appear more promising, by having a browser company on board.

Quite predictably, the introduction of Chat GPT, has led to even more browser bloat. 🎉

Also since I’m already bringing up opera - I have genuinely no idea, what their dev team is smoking, as all their additions this year, have been this desperate:

From some cashback scam and TikTok integration…

…all the way to some “lonely men bait” and adding NFTs - a full year, after everyone stopped caring.

@marado@tilde.pt That’s all true, but to play the devils advocate for a moment, how many people here, ever even heard about JPEG-XL until now, or used it in any way?

My twtxt fork will only include nicknames, profile pictures, a thing that livestreams you whenever you open it and the upvote and downvote buttons - under every stream.

I’ll call it “Yarn.Anti-social” or “Blog TV”, since we all remember, how great this idea, worked the first time around. 😅

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci I think it recording the outside of the car, was known for a long time. Likely since they came up with that not so great self-driving project, that led to the need for a lot more data to improve it.

Sadly, people in tech, talking shit about their customers, doesn’t surprise me either. Not saying it’s excusable, I’ve just seen it happen, at many places, in the past.

The one thing, that surprises me, is it recording the inside. Even I, with all me skepticism, would still expect some bare minimum of privacy, when it comes to the things I’m doing and conversations I’m having, inside my own car.

Can we get a folder, for all the new android Yarn App builds, or something like that, so most users don’t have to be stuck, on this ancient version please?

I still have great memories, of playing Club Penguin as a child, or even playing it on a few private servers, at times, as a nostalgia-filled adult, after Disney destroyed and took down the original. Sadly most of those servers were either too obscure, broken, or not obscure enough, to avoid Disneys lawyers.

I was mildly excited, when I heard about a 3D sequel, made by some of the people, behind the original game (before Disney bought it), but this is suspicious at best.

Even if you made the funny penguin game from my childhood, I will not give you my social security number, nor my credit card info, to play the new one and I hope not many others will either.

*The sequel is called “Party Parrot World” and requires a “verified Hideaway account”, if you want to play it, or try some other two game things, that they are currently working on.

I said, I don’t want to hear any more Trump news, but seeing he’s still seething in all caps and some invalid characters, on his isolated bootleg site, made me chuckle.

The only way, this could get more pathetic, is if he starts spamming 5 emojis, after every word. 😂

To my surprise, some AI companies, might have to face the consequences of their art theft afterall. While the legal and corporate world, still couldn’t give less of a shit about the small artists, stability ai made the critical mistake, of using the ever so precious bland and generic stock images. Those are owned by companies, who for obvious reasons, hate AI, have extremely deep pockets and access to the right kind of lawyers.

They also have one other key advantage, that could win them the case. By slapping their watermark on millions of images, in the exact same place, the AI will start putting distorted versions of it, onto some images. Therefore, they can argue damage to their reputation, with evidence, to back it up.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66788385/getty-images-us-inc-v-stability-ai-inc/

@prologic@twtxt.net Thank you, this is it’s april fools version - still it’s really nice to hear this, since the regular version, is now somewhat in danger, thanks to the unwillingness of Czech ISPs, to provide IPv6 addresses, to their clients.

If you mean the illustration here, I have to disappoint you and admit, that the bottle was generated by AI, before being edited by me.

I have some exciting news to share! Celebrate the 3000 days of Canine anniversary, with this limited time offer. The ore-orders will launch soon, so get your wallets ready everyone!

While waiting, you can also check the post-modern redesign of the Flist site, currently being tested on: https://flist.glitch.me

@prologic@twtxt.net Thank you. It’s the not so great game, the last pixelart was also referencing.