I’ll give my smart-ass answer first before deliving into my serious answer.

Smart-ass: Yes…tangible literally means “possible to touch”. So yeah…digital stuff isn’t, by definition “tangible” in the way that records, cds, etc… are. You’ve never “touched” an mp3 file. You’ve never “touched” a streaming movie like you handle a DVD or a VHS tape.

Now…to my serious answer: I’ve long been working on what started as an article, became a treatise, and is now morphing into a non-fiction book about that very concept. Still a very long way to go, and with my stop-and-start creative blocks, it may never get done, but I felt it was important to write it all down while I still have a functioning brain. (I’m not getting any younger)

I’ve added to it for years every time a new thought about it comes to me, talking about what I call “Patina” (the tendency for mechanical things like typewriters and camera lenses to age individually, almost developing a personality as they age) and equating it with the Japanese concept of Tsukomogami (the idea that physical things gain a soul after 100 years)

they release a subpar product, and then it fizzles.

I’m disappointed they’re jumping on AI bullshit. But I have to wholeheartedly disagree with you about the “sub par product”.

• My Asus desktop has been chugging along for a decade.
• My Asus Chromebook Flip has been going with no issues for at least four or five (though it’s long since been flipped to Linux)
• The Asus laptop I had before THAT is older than the desktop and quite happily living it’s retirement as a home-theatre PC connected to my television.

I have quite literally never had Asus hardware break down on me.

Probably around the same time that Adolph makes a comeback.

Cool. Thanks for the info. I must have been on the Flatpak for so long that I just never noticed.

Which version of the plugin did you install. There’s a whole bunch of them when you type flatpak install gimp. The resynthesizer version that works with gimp3 flatpak is number 20 in my screenshot. The one that has the 3

Not sure. I’d assume its the same as the flatpak with a bit more work involved in deconstructing the apk file, adding the plugin to the proper folder and then recompiling.

Unless this has been fixed in newer versions, it should be pointed out that ReSynthesizer relies on an older version of Python that most distrobutions don’t have anymore, so unless your using the flatpak, which has all of those dependencies still built in, it won’t work.

As a Canadian living north of the nut-hatch, I wish I had the money to excercise my dual citizenship and get out of here to Portugal, or anywhere else in the EU.

As far as I’m concerned, unionization should be government mandated for every company everywhere in every industry.

But unfortunately we live in hell.

Call me when someone puts GrapheneOS onto old unsold Blackberry Passports. I’d be all over that. I think I’m one of the few who LOVED that design swing-and-a-miss.

“Here’s a dumb phone to take with you so that you can leave your smart phone at home and not be constantly addicted to it.”

Ummmm…have they forgotten that tablet’s exist? Just get a dumb phone and use your tablet when you’re at home. You don’t need another fucking device.

My smartphone has nothing on it as far as games, social media, etc… It’s got calendar, phone, email, etc…

The fun stuff in on my tablet at home.

Why the fuck would I need another device so that I can keep TWO devices at home?

This is just idiot marketing departments trying to wriggle their greedy little dicks into a population that is waking up to their own technology addiction. Here…fight your technology addiction with…more technology.

Humanity is fucking doomed.

After literally decades of sending manufacturing overseas, there is NO WAY Trumpistan pivots back to domestic production in time to prevent complete anarchy in its streets.

At this point, every single country should be embargoing the US. It’s well past that point that we cut them off from the world stage entirely economically.

They’d make for some mighty fine eatin’.

I see what you’re saying. But to me it’s very much a “You can’t swim in the sewer without getting covered in shit” morality-play.

The very act of providing a service that earns more than a billion dollars by necessity requires the cooperation of a number of different entities. As you described, Ticket Master, Publishers, Distributors, etc… So while they themselves might not be directly exploiting people, they have to interact and make use of partners that do if they want to play in that billionaire paddling pool.

To me, exploitation by association is still exploitation.

But that’s me. Everyone is welcome to their own opinion.

Cant we outlaw corporations and continue as we are? Sure would be nice.

I think the world would do better if all of us shrank a bit to be more mindful of a community economy.

If my neighbour down the street woodworks in his spare time and makes bespoke tables and chairs, I’ll do everything I can to go buy from him rather than a corporation (for example)

Growing up on an Acreage, it was more common for us to buy a half a side of beef or pork from the farmer next door than to go to the grocery store. Same for vegetables from farmer’s markets or similar community markets.

It’s less about criminalizing corporations and more about refusing to reward them for making their profits off the backs of poverty wages and government subsidies…

Let me put it this way.

It’s possible to become a millionaire through a combination of hardwork, brains, luck and timing.

It’s impossible to become a billionaire after that without exploiting others, whether that is workers, employees, investors…whoever.

In other words, it’s possible to be an honest millionaire, but not an honest billionaire.

So the amount of wealth a person is entitled to is the amount that they can earn with their own labour without exploiting others in order to do so.

So if you own a furniture store, and you pay your employees a living wage, give benefits, etc… and after that you’re successful enough to be a millionaire…great. You deserve it. If you’re an employer and you own a furniture store, and in order to become a millionaire you have to pay your workers minimum wage and rely on unfair labour practices to inflate your profits…you don’t deserve it.

I use the furniture store example because I worked for just such a guy. Family run business. Paid us all well enough. Gave us benefits. Made sure we were taken care of. Treated us like family. And he was financially very successful while managing to do so. Could he have made even MORE if he had taken it from wages and benefits…sure. But that wasn’t the type of person he was.

To me, THAT example is capitalism working as it should in it’s purest form. Corporatization is just a bastardization of the concept created by venture capitalists and shareholders.

Mine was the laser as well. Unfortunately it was years and years ago and I just tossed it away like an idiot. My collection from then on began collecting dust until last year when I decided to take one of my old Android Phones and a Razer Kishi and turn it into a handheld emulator.

Yeah. I guess I’m too old to understand the drive for better and better graphics.

To me, you don’t repaint a new version of the Mona Lisa just because we have better paints available today.

Graphics (for me) peaked in the 360/PS3 era when games started to nail smooth “movement”. After that it was just about making things more and more photorealistic, which is so completely uninteresting to me because I’m playing a game.

For the last little while now, I’ve been finding that my most played games have been on my old 360 that I decided to plug in again, and my old old PS2 collection that I ripped and loaded to an emulator because the old hardware broke a long time ago.

Third place is “new to me” games that I finally buy when they go on a good sale years after they were “new” (is. RDR2 and Cyberpunk)

I haven’t bought a new AAA title in years on console because I can’t justify the cost.