I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with Posteo. Their features list is very good for the pittance they charge per month.

I was able to use that trick to cancel my Adobe sub without a cancellation fee and then bought Affinity Photo 2 right after. I’ve integrated it fully into my workflow now and won’t ever look back.

Fuck Adobe and fuck their stranglehold on creative industries.

Giant anteater

With AWD I’d be more concerned with the fuel consumption.

It’s where they keep all the cheese.

Not that I am aware of. Though one time someone made a Facebook account using my email. I was able to log in by requesting a password reset, then I posted a status message (or whatever) that said “Get your own goddamn email” and then changed to the password to gibberish and filed a account deletion request.

Capitalism is all about short-term profit. These sorts of long-term questions and concerns are not things shareholders and investors think or care about.

Further proof of this: Climate change.

And this is why most users should not be opting in to preview updates.

This is true but only to a point. I have 64GB of RAM and I have seen Photoshop overshoot that and start eating up 20gb of page file. Working with the exact same files in Affinity Photo - it uses a quarter of that.

There is a difference between “Efficiently use available memory for program functions” and “Fill all available memory with bloat and poorly coded rubbish”

If your software’s function can be replicated using only 1/4 of system memory then your software is poorly written. Which Photoshop is.

I dumped my Adobe sub and grabbed Affinity Photo a while ago. It does 95% of the things Photoshop does (and 100% of what I need) for a one-time payment that is a fraction of the cost of an Adobe payment. It’s runs so so SO much better than PS. I very often saw Photoshop using up to 40gb of RAM and Affinity Photo uses 9gb doing the exact same work with the same files.

Removing Creative Cloud and it’s 838 different processes was amazing. Like finally watching your toilet flush after it’s been clogged.

All of this just to give rich shareholders even more money.

Microsoft is constantly experimenting with how far they can push users into a corner and get away with it. There might be a day when Microsoft caves and releases a Windows that is more like what we wanted, but I imagine it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. We have not yet seen the worst MS has to offer force upon us.

It also has rapidly-ballooning expenses with basically no income model other than a donation link.

I want a decent new art platform as much as everyone else but I’m not moving my entire portfolio over to a new service that, honestly, looks like it’ll be dead in 6-12 months.

Grass is green, water is wet, the sky is blue, and privacy settings don’t do anything.

Local loose-leaf. Although I do enjoy Ahmad Tea loose leaf. It’s very high quality for the price.

None. It is never acceptable imho.

We do not choose where we are born or the social class we are born into. Forcing someone to sacrifice their life in the name of an entity they did not choose, likely have no/limited loyalty for, or might even be actively oppressed by - is wrong.

Looking in my settings landing page, I see ads for MS365, Copilot, and OneDrive.

I’ve had to cave and use some services (for work reasons) that I’d swore I would never use. No matter how much we value privacy and look for alternative software/services when possible - we still have to eat and pay bills.

If you are in the same boat and you must use services like that, then my advice would be to keep it strictly business. Keep your personal details and personal social connections to a minimum unless where it would be otherwise beneficial for work purposes.

Even with her guard up, Shadowheart’s character is still more varied. Her reactions are more mixed and you can really see her bluntness and pragmatism come through. Her responses vary from indifference, apathy, rudeness, hostility, and moments of care and tenderness. Astarion in Act 1 is just an asshole all the time. I also feel that some of his reactions clash with his character and don’t make sense. Don’t get me wrong; I think he’s a good character but I can also see why so many want nothing to do with him.

Astarion is particularly annoying in Act 1 for some reason, with 99% of his reactions just being him hating anything that is remotely positive. His reactions (and character in general) in the following acts is a lot more fleshed out and varied.