This is why sighthounds are the best doggos. No other pupper can be a large dog while still taking up that little space, by shedding an entire superfluous dimension.

Well I’m never getting that thought out of my head.

The following trait should be added under Sonic: “frees animals from villain who has turned them into robots”.

And the following under Musk: “kills animals by implanting robot chips in their brains”.

There’s also the risk that the AI might decide that the best way of testing the company’s new product is to unleash it on the general public without any safety testing or thought of the consequences. That would be an absolute disaster.

When AI can sit in a large chair and make money off the backs of others all day

Arguably this is the only thing AI can do. Would AI even exist if not for the huge datasets derived from other people’s hard work? All the money AI will generate is based exclusively off the backs of others.

And they produce dairy-free milk, whereas mammal milk is definitely of the dairy variety.

Yeah, I do feel this reality has been severely missold. There should be an inquiry.

Not too bad. How are you?

Hello friend! It’s lovely to meet you! :)

I am definitely happy to be friends. :)

I’ve been a late adopter of every version of Windows I’ve ever used - and I skipped 8 too, switching to 10 around the same time you did because my software required it. It does seem the best way to avoid most of the problems: Microsoft has moved on to pulling its old tricks on the newest version, and there are more tools for modifying the old version. So I figure I’ll switch to 11 or 12 when Microsoft is doing awful things with 13.

I’m very glad that my definitely-100%-legit copy of Windows 10 seems to have no idea how to upgrade to 11. It still gets other updates, my hardware is definitely compatible. The thought of upgrading to 11 just never seems to enter its mind. I suspect I’ll be sticking with Windows 10 for a long, long time, until either Microsoft give up on this ridiculous idea in response to customer backlash, or Linux becomes a viable option for my usecase (Nvidia GPU, lots of proprietary software that I need to use for university and future career). It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve held onto an older version of Windows for a protracted period of time, skipping a dreadful iteration or two, and then upgrading when Microsoft have learned their lesson.

“Dragon of Ash and Stars” by H. Leighton Dickson is definitely worth a read.

I would play this campaign.

It’s definitely my dream to one day find a campaign where I can play a character like this.

If you ever get a chance to use the train heading into the south west (the Paddington to Penzance route), I recommend it for one solid reason: the view on the Exeter to Newton Abbott stretch is absolutely phenomenal. It’s worth seeing at least once. :)

I think public transport can end up in a vicious circle. It gets cut so it’s less convenient, so less people use it, which leads to companies and governments saying “well nobody is using this, why are we spending money on it?” so it gets cut further, so fewer people use it, and so on. They miss the fact that they need to spend more on it so it’s more convenient.

Our PM is definitely not surviving the next election (which will be happening in 10 months maximum, and there are pervasive rumours it’ll be scheduled for 9 weeks time, to coincide with local government elections). I’ve been watching the polls closely for the last year or so, and both Sunak’s personal ratings and that of the Conservative party are abysmal. The main opposition party, Labour, are not terribly inspirational right now, but their ties to the unions (including both rail unions) are pretty strong, and one of their policies (that they haven’t yet U-turned on, AFAIK) is taking the rail companies back into public ownership as the contracts expire.

I actually think even the Conservatives would struggle to abolish the railways, anyway, even if they win the next election. Far too many of the elderly they need to vote for them rely on public transport, as do a lot of the middle and upper middle professional workers in the south east.

The railways in the UK are definitely better around the cities. Both the overground and underground trains in London are incredible, and getting to cities in the south east and around the midlands is decently quick. But it slows right down the more rural you get, where it’s no faster than going by car and is significantly more expensive. If I drove from here to London (about 250 miles), in my car it’d be about a half a tank of fuel (£35-£40). Doing the same journey by train takes the same time, but costs double. I do it anyway, because the thought of driving on the M25 fills me with dread, but the train is often a hellish experience. Better enforcement of rules would help (noisy people not permitted in the quiet car, children not permitted to run rampant, etc).

Brit here. They didn’t rip out our rail system, they just privatised it. Due to the overwhelming need for shareholder profits and dividends, all the money the newly privatised rail companies made went into paying shareholders rather than investment in infrastructure. Meanwhile, the buses are technically local government funded, but run by private companies, who cut routes that aren’t profitable. In rural areas, this is most of them - my village gets a bus once every 90 minutes now, which is not often enough to encourage usage when a car allows you to drive into the town, do your shopping, and then be home again in less time than that.

You know what was actually gamechanging last year? My village got it’s own grocery shop! It is now possible to walk to a shop to buy food! And I think that is ultimately going to be the solution to reducing reliance on cars: set up services in the places people live, then they won’t need to use a car as often. The 15-minute city principle works in rural areas too!

I don’t know if the default Windows photo viewer itself does any of the editing stuff anymore.

It does, and it’s also available on Windows 10. Pretty sure I also have it on my Windows 11 laptop. I use it fairly regularly when all I’m doing is simple stuff like rotating or cropping, because it’s quicker than opening Photoshop.

In Windows, the built-in Photos program(?) does most of what you want. Literally go to the folder where the images are, right click, choose “Open with” and then “Photos”. It’ll open the image in a very, very simple image viewer, where you can move back and forth between images in the same folder, and it has options for rotating, cropping, editing brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. The only thing missing is a mirror image option.

I use Photos pretty regularly, if all I need to do is crop or rotate an image, because its integration into Windows means it’s significantly faster than opening a proper image editor. It’s also really good for reviewing a whole batch of photos, as again its integration into Windows means you can delete an unwanted image within Photos and it’ll remove it from the folder as well.

It’s not open source, so maybe not quite what you’re looking for, but it’s definitely completely free and already part of Windows.