Figma is like Micro$oft: they dominated the market, rested on their laurels, and charged *a lot* more because everyone "has" to use them.

Now, to be fair, Figma did originally earn their position: their tool was significantly better than (say) InVision. But that was years ago, and the first meaningful news to come from the company since are these "us too" knockoffs.

Maybe they'll knock it out of the park, like they originally did with Figma ... but I suspect they'll be like other fat and lazy companies, and these new products will just be ... bad knockoffs.

Lots. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fappdb.winehq.org%2F can show you the status of most programs, if you want to see for yourself.

Virtualization (ie. running Windows inside another OS, like Linux) ... and that's pretty much it. WINE is the only serious game in town.

There is this thing called Proton that Steam created, which helps the Steam Deck run a lot of games (that previously weren't supported under WINE). However, Proton isn't really a separate tool, it's just a set of libraries that enhance WINE.

Truer words were never spoken.

Maybe not that exactly, but they wouldn't need to. They can already tell "our piece of crap mockbuster was one of the first things new user X watched", and that would give them a pretty good idea that user X signed up (at least in part) to watch the crappy mockbuster.

It's not just that they're "a few dudes". Tons of successful and *user-satisfying* software has been made by small teams of "a few dudes".

The Gimp's team fatal flaw isn't their size, it's their lack of interest in satisfying anyone but hardcore existing Gimp users.

You don'ts seem to understand that there is no abstractly "intuitive UI" in existence: the phrase can only mean something in a particular context. Intuitive UI can only be intuitive *to a set of users*.

And in the context of "anyone except an established Gimp user in 2025" ... Gimp's UI is *objectively* bad and unintuitive. Put 10 average people in front of Gimp and ask them to accomplish a certain task in an hour. Then put 10 more in front of a tool with intuitive UI (eg. Photoshop, or even some web-based graphics programs): the users using Gimp will accomplish less.

The Gimp team is actively hostile to UI improvements. If you don't believe me, just check their bug queue: it's *full* of reasonable suggestions that they've categorically rejected.

Really, all you need to know is that they've kept their offensive name after all these years. The Gimp people are convinced everything they do is great, and couldn't possibly be better (even when it's transparently obvious that it could be).

Yeah, it's clear they just didn't want him as a candidate. If they hadn't been biased against him, any reasonable person would have allowed the application in.

Firefox is a dying browser. In 2024 they lost over 1% of the total desktop market share (7.57% to 6.26%, per https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgs.statcounter.com%2Fbro...) ... and they don't even register on mobile (1%). That's a loss of 17% (of what they had) in one year ... and they didn't just start losing!

Just like a failing for-profit company, they're casting about for a way to be relevant, and think adding the buzzword of the day (AI) will do that. But just like any failing company, they got there by sucking at executing, so *of course* they're going to do the same with their buzzword.

It's all so (tragically) common and predictable.

Often, you just found code somewhere and then typed it in yourself. But everyone hated doing that, so as soon as it became cost-effective the books and magazines would come with floppy disks (or later CD-ROMs).

I don't remember having disks in magazines by 1988 (though they might have come in some coding books?), so I think you either paid for a boxed library (with disks inside), or you bought the magazines/books and typed their code in yourself. And really, I don't think there were a ton of libraries back then: you mostly just used what came with your language, maybe purchased a library or two (if you were a professional coding shop), and you wrote everything else yourself.

>You can't just go edit the code to fix it for your case and push it to your team's repo, and send a patch to the owner if you think it helps.

Actually, you can, and I've had to do it (sadly more than once). You can:

* patch the code in the `node_modules` on your server (and be careful about not letting `npm i` overwrite the fix)
* copy the code (from node_modules) into your project, modify it, and change all your imports to reference it there
* you can do a true fork (of the original project), modify it, build it, and install it

That being said, none of those options are fun. The first two requires working with the "compiled" (transpiled) code, which is miserable, while the second one requires building/maintaining the fork, plus you have to learn and implement the author's build system ... which they probably haven't publicly documented.

The standard model is to start with a (minimal) product and improve its "market fit" by acquiring customers and iterating. There's a very good reason why that's the standard model: history has shown that if you just take a ton of cash and cloister yourself to build the "perfect product", at the end you're likely to have a "perfect product" that no one actually wants to buy.

That being said ... venture funding is already one step up from gambling, and even with the standard model something like one in ten startups fail. Also, building AI company does require substantial up-front investment.

So yeah, this is probably a terrible idea, but like I said, so are most venture investments. It probably has as much chance of success as any other startup, with a much bigger payoff if it does succeed.

Only if the courts determine that the First Amendment trumps (no pun intended) whatever law/concern the government puts forward against it.

Now you'd think that would make the social networks safe, since our courts are supposed to operate on precedent, and there's a whole lot of first amendment law precedent ... but we have a Supreme Court that has shown it's willing to completely throw out precedent, and literally just make the law up when they feel like it.

With such a court, none of our constitutional protections are guaranteed.

Why was this downvoted? It's a documented fact that (all else being equal) immigration is good economically for everyone.

From Benefits of Immigration Outweigh the Costs:

And this is not just some crazy left-wing liberal position: the essay I quoted came from the George W. Bush Institute!

Does anyone remember when people had very serious debates about how calculators were making the human race stupider? Anyone? Bueller?

We have this same exact (dumb) discussion anytime we invent a new tool that helps save us brain cycles, and it always sounds like everyone involved is the preacher's wife on the Simpsons ("won't someone please think of the children?!?"). In other words, they don't have rational concerns, just irrational fear.

Sure there will be some growing pains, as there is with any new tech ... but in ten years we're all going to be laughing about this discussion ... the same way we now laugh at concerns over calculators.