CerebralHawks

I feel like once they open that door, they shouldn’t get to decide who walks through it. Either they support AI using their characters, or they don’t. I mean, they’re certainly well within their rights to say none of them can do it, and I would support that if that was the way they went, but no, they said one company could use their IP to train its data. It’s a rat race. They’re all going to use it.

Huh. Notepad++ is only for Windows?

I used to use EditPad when I used Windows. There was something that royally pissed me off about it, but I can’t recall now. I know there was kind of a shenanigans with the name. EditPad Lite was free and there was an EditPad Pro, but IIRC the free one was just fine for most people (and I do believe in paying for software you enjoy using). I dunno, it did something, but now, mostly I just remember it being very good.

I have a Mac now and we have TextEdit. It’s never made me want more from a notepad app. Notepad used to suck in Windows. We have it at work and I quite like it. It has Markdown support, but you can disable that if you want. It also has Copilot AI in it, but that can also be disabled. It has Dark Mode which is pretty much all I wanted from my notepad app. I actually quite like my Windows 11 setup at work, but I like my Macs at home a bit better. I also know I don’t have much room to criticise Windows if I’m not running Linux, and there’s no point in bragging about Linux from a Mint or Ubuntu installation; these days you kinda have to use Arch (which you built from source) to really call yourself a Linux user. The rest of us are just plebeians.

Of course if you’re using N++ as an IDE, that’s different. I don’t even want line numbers (visual distraction).

I’m not sure what an anime festival is, but I’ve been to a bunch of anime conventions.

Most of them aren’t strictly anime. They will have an anime theme and a bunch of Japanese-themed entertainment, but you will find Trekkers, Whovians, Marvel/DC fanatics, Star Wars people (Warsians? I feel like that never caught on) and everything in between. People go there and play D&D, Magic: The Gathering, and other card/tabletop games. If you’re lucky you might find a more niche one like Cyberpunk or Starfinder. And those guys love teaching newcomers!

One thing I’d say is Do. Your. Research. You will want to know what amenities the hotels have. If you can find one with a kitchenette (stove and fridge), you can bring in food and cook in your hotel room/suite and save a ton of money. Yes the room will cost more per night, but you need to know two things. One, how expensive food is around the convention due to the scarcity caused by the demand. Two, how much food you’ll need. If you bring in a cooler with milk, eggs, and some other stuff, and get it into the fridge, and you can just make all your stuff? You will save a ton. But you need to know what they have. Also if they do breakfast buffet in the morning, that’s a huge plus. I would say go down there and focus on protein (eggs and meat, plus fruit juice for energy), and then throw a bunch of carbs (muffins, toast/bread, bagels) on a plate and exfil that up to your room. Snack on it throughout the day. If you’re an anime nerd, you probably love ramen. Ramen is super easy to make in a hotel room if you have a microwave. It’s not the best for you, but hey, you’re on vacation! If you do need to order, tip your delivery driver well! Driving through con traffic is hell. Better if you can avoid takeout/delivery entirely though.

Of course you’ll want to get autographs and such, but it’s better to make memories. Autographs are getting really fucking expensive. And really, what’s the point? Honestly. It costs you nothing to say hi, and at times, the guests will have no line and they’ll be bored. Playing on their phone or whatever. Go up and tell them you appreciated them in something. Strike up a conversation. If they don’t have someone with them, ask them if they wanna grab a coffee — or, if you’re feeling lucky, a drink at the bar. (Just be careful with this.)

There are people at anime cons way cooler than voice actors, though. Cosplayers themselves are generally pretty cool, but I go for the artists. Some of my favourite artists have staff, so you might not even meet the artist. Be aware of who’s staff and who’s an artist. They’ll usually tell you. I’ve met staff where the artist isn’t even there. I’ve met “staff” where the person selling is actually the mom and the dad, and what you thought was their little bratty child on the iPad ignoring you, is actually the artist! In any case, I feel like connecting with the artists is one of the coolest things you can do there. I also have way too much anime art…

This is good advice. However (more toward OP), be advised that call recording laws like “two-party consent” (which means both parties must agree to the call) only means the call cannot be admissible in court if recorded improperly, not that you can’t record it or that the recording is illegal.

A lot of companies with numbers you can call will say that the call may be recorded, regardless of where you call from. This is good because it covers their side of the consent. They cannot legally only consent to their own recording. Even in a state with one-party consent, once they consent to their own recording, if you record that, they just consented to yours. They might fight this if it goes to trial (it won’t), but if you are in a one-party consent area, you can argue that you can disagree with being recorded and still have a right to call if you have business with them. They will argue and say your consent is absolute because you stayed on the line. If they say that, they’re fucked — their consent becomes absolute as well. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” for the most part. Also, with an iPhone, when you start recording, it plays a similar message. If you do that while they have you on hold, they won’t record it, but it will be recorded on your end. They can’t say “you played the warning while you were on hold, we couldn’t hear it” because then you could say you couldn’t hear their warning while you were on hold. After all, some smartphones handle hold for you, alerting you when a human comes on the line. Therefore, if you did not hear the warning and it’s still valid, the same is true for them.

Alternatively, be more honest and start the recording when a human gets on the line. If they refuse to continue the conversation, you can at least assume they are up to no good. That should tell you all you need to know.

I think a lot of companies operate on similar principles to a cult. When it benefits them, they say they are like a family. When it doesn’t, know you can be replaced in an instant. People who don’t have a life outside of work, or they do but it involves people from work almost exclusively. And companies that have cult-like ideas or ideals. Even some aspects of professionalism (such as dress code or uniforms) are cult-like in nature. The military sees value in dehumanising people, by making them simple cogs in the machine, and private industry likes to emulate this.

The question is, can you leave? A true cult won’t let you. That’s the difference with a lot of companies. If you get out, you are basically out. They may not re-hire you, but they shouldn’t interfere with your life beyond that point. Cults absolutely will.

Corporate VPNs don’t make it look like you’re in a third world country, though.

If I’m working for a megacorp in New York and I work from home, I would use a VPN on my company issued laptop to make the corp’s network think I’m on the intranet, and thus, it’s okay to serve me intranet resources and secure files. If I go to a location based site (such as Google Maps), I’ll still show up in New York, not Bumfuck Egypt.

I don’t think they’ll ban corporate VPNs. I think they will go after the privacy respecting ones, though. And if you’re a hobbyist using a VPN for your server and it’s not masking your location, I think that’s something that will be allowed. All these regional restrictions though, like on porn sites, I do think they will go after companies that let you defeat those restrictions.

I think the VPN companies think so, which is why they’re offering fire sales on 3-10 year plans. I don’t think they expect to have to provide the service for that long.

It’s insulting because there are a lot of LGBTQ+ voice actors who want to do this but the powers that be won’t greenlight it.

Look at Amazon’s relationship with Trump, Trump’s positions on LGBTQ+ people, and ask why Amazon is doing this. They aren’t contractually obligated to do so. They are doing various animation projects and paying real voice actors. Though Hazbin Hotel is pretty gay, and so is Helluva Boss (same people/same universe). The only other animation project I know at Amazon is Mighty Nein, and I wanna say those guys are LGBTQ+ friendly but I’m not sure they’re on the spectrum. So I don’t wanna say Amazon is acting prejudicial here, but it smells.

Wasn’t this posted like a week ago without the paywall?

I never go into the LEGO store nearest to me because they use customers as advertisement: you’re forced to queue up outside the store to show others there’s interest, even when they aren’t that busy. (Maybe it’s theft deterrent/security?) Either way, I’m not gonna be their billboard: either I can browse and shop, or I can’t — I won’t advertise for them. (Maybe I can hold up a sign saying “LEGO Sucks” or something like that? I dunno. Weird ass store.)

But if they just let me in to shop, I’d buy like half of those. LEGO minifigs aren’t even that cool, but there isn’t a lot of Animal Crossing merch out there. I’d rather buy from a local artist though, sometimes you see them at conventions, they make custom minifigs. And they don’t make you shill for them.

So do we really think that everyone who works at Google or Microsoft is a bad person? Let me remind you that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has given billions to charity. He’s probably not a saint, but is he a net positive or a net negative to the world?

Net positive and net negative… there are 8 billion people and that in and of itself is a problem. Should we fault every human on the planet for being part of the problem? “I was just following orders,” someone in the comments said. Biological directives to mate and reproduce and raise a family. Two people having more than two children between them are increasing the population. If you have three kids, and you’re the father, if there are two different mothers, it’s the same equation. Three adults replaced by three children (after so many years). But population is increasing, not decreasing. We’re all part of the problem. Are we all evil?

That’s not the way I see it. I don’t think it’s fair to judge the individual by the group. I think a person can still be a good person even if they’re part of something that is not good. If you agree with me on overpopulation but not the company in OP’s post, do you draw the line at being able to help it? Like if you’re one of 12 kids you can’t help that, so maybe you adopt when you’re ready to have kids, instead of actually bringing more into the world? So most people can’t help where they work on account of your hopes and wishes won’t pay their bills. You can will them to do the right thing, but you’re not the one responsible for paying their bills, and if they get their lights shut off, their car taken, or evicted, you can draw the shades and say “that’s not my problem.” So why should you get a say? Are you willing to support their families? No, you are not.

But at the same time, I also recognise that some organisations are evil, some governments are evil, and those who enable them do own some responsibility for that. I just don’t think it’s the final say in who a person is.

Is a domain name strictly necessary though? You would need a static IP. I thought you needed something like a VPS or VPN — I know what a VPN is, but I think it was something with a similar acronym — and that was a service that cost money.

With Plex it just works. When I load up Plex on a remote machine, first it tells me my server is offline, because my server is a Mac and Macs are sleepy bois, so it wakes up the Mac, which wakes up the drives, and then the server loads up and I can play pretty much anything.

I’ve ran Jellyfin on both Mac (current setup) and Windows/Intel. I like Jellyfin overall, and it does some cool things Plex doesn’t. Like you can fix details Plex won’t let you. Like for some reason it only lists the foreign actors in anime, you can manually specify the English voices if you want. Plex doesn’t let you do that and AFAIK there’s no way to. (There should be an API out there that taps into a service that lets you access any language cast, and there should be a way to set it to dynamically change the cast to whatever language you have selected.) But anyway, Jellyfin is somewhat fine, but to use it on other devices (e.g. an Apple TV box on the same network), you have to do a fair bit of configuring. It’s not just, log into the account on your phone and type in the text on the screen. Jellyfin doesn’t even prioritise Apple development, but they have come a long way.

This is for remote streaming. Can Jellyfin be accessed outside the network? I thought that was the difference.

Like if I didn’t like Plex and I ran Jellyfin (and I have done), I could access it locally but I couldn’t access it, say, from a hotel a thousand miles away. Or it requires a lot more work (and maybe some paid service) to do.

Plex may have gone up, but a bunch of us got it for $100 or less years ago and we are not affected by the new limitations. Still free for our family members accessing remotely. Wasn’t free for us to set up.

Everyone else is asking why and here I am wondering why an American company would use the English spelling of aluminium instead of the American spelling “aluminum” (Americans drop the last I).

Or maybe the author just wrote it in English out of habit and the word looks like the American version at a glance. But it’s something I notice.

Okay, so you can actually get physical keyboards for phones. Matter of fact, I’m typing on a mechanical keyboard on my Mac. If I really wanted to, I could reach in front, flip the switch from “USB C” to “BT” and pair it to my phone. And then I’m typing on a mechanical keyboard… on my iPhone. (Works just as well with Android. Not sure about now, but back in the day, CTRL+ALT+DEL would reboot Android. No confirmation. Screen goes black and then it’s booting up. Fun times. Not sure how to do that on a Mac keyboard though. CTRL+⌘+DEL? Maybe. I dunno.

But I have an iPhone, I don’t really do a lot of typing on it. As far as I know, Apple never made a good keyboard, hardware or software. I tolerate the one on my MacBook. It IS good, for a laptop keyboard… but it’s a laptop keyboard. Absolutely fucking atrocious that official Mac desktop keyboards are also laptop keyboards. “Because thin”, I guess? Fucking stupid. If I wanna type on a phone, I actually enable hotspot on the iPhone, put it down, and pick up my old Galaxy S10. Gboard is awesome on Android, but it sucks on iOS.

Now, as far as trace typing… I dunno. I just got used to it. Been doing it for 15 years. If I know the word, I kinda… just trace it. On Android, it’s VERY forgiving. On an iPhone, it’ll do some weird and straight up dumb corrections, like “and” gets changed to “Abe”. Who the fuck is Abe? Someone who worked on the keyboard? I don’t know anyone called Abe. But the keyboard automatically inserts his name in place of “and” half the time. So yeah, I don’t like typing on iPhones. On Android though? Well, going back to what OP said about it being kind of like sign language? You don’t really think about it. You just do it. As far as how superior it is? Really comes down to personal preference. When Swype had the patent/whatever on it, they said it was faster, but they were kinda biased. Back then, you couldn’t buy the app. Your phone’s manufacturer had to buy and preload it. Now everyone can do it, including iPhone (they call it “QuickPath”) (albeit badly) and Swype isn’t really a thing anymore. I think it’s faster. For me it is. But I’m with you, I prefer typing on a mechanical keyboard. Just feels better.

This reply would be half as long if I were on Android. Couple sentences if I were on my iPhone. But you got me on my Mac. With the good keyboard. Sorry. ;)

Especially trace typing.

Blows my mind that in 2025, people still look at me like a wizard when I do it. Like, “you know you don’t have to press each button like a Neanderthal, you can just trace the word from letter to letter and it mostly works.” And then the blue line or “tail” that follows your finger just mesmerises them. Like bro, I’ve been doing this since like 2010, were you whelped in a barn, my good sir?

To clarify, in iOS 18 and prior, it’s going to be the proprietary WiFi protocol in AirDrop. In iOS 26 onward, it’s WiFi Aware, which is an open protocol (that Apple contributes to).

For me, this mirrors the USB issue. So everyone thinks that Apple went with Lightning because they wanted to sell cables. No, Apple is on the USB committee or council or whatever TF it is. And they were always going to replace 30-pin with USB, but they were about to release the spec on USB 3 and Apple was all in… until they saw the plug. They said “hell no” and went to Intel to develop Lightning. Unfortunately Lightning still used USB 2 speeds, but it fit what they wanted.

What Apple said “hell no” to is actually USB-B. The one that looks like a B if you look at it dead on. It was Micro USB A, but with an extra plug to the side. The Galaxy S5 used this, and so did the Note 4… and not too many other phones. The gimmick was you could continue using Micro USB A, what most Android phones used, but you’d be limited in speed and charge power. The new USB would give you more of both. Also, USB B did not go away. I have an external hard drive enclosure and a USB hub that require it. They’re also fairly recent, too. But it’s USB-C on the other end. And they get USB 3 speeds. But I never unplug/replug them so I don’t care. A lot of portable hard drives and SSDs use it on the drive side (it’s still USB-C going to your phone or computer).

Apple, like other companies, is involved with a lot of tech. They don’t use all of it, but they are involved with it. So when people say Apple turned their back on an open standard to make something proprietary… usually there’s a reason. Oh, and yeah, they definitely wanted to sell those proprietary cables… but that’s not to say they didn’t have a good reason for not making a USB-B iPhone. And the thing is… that connector only lasted for one generation on Samsung. Most OEMs straight up skipped it. Many stuck with USB Micro A until USB C. Apple doesn’t do things for just one generation if they can help it. (I mean, there was the smaller notch that only existed on the iPhone 13, but I think they used it on the 16e as well.)

Any PC, laptop, or tablet running spyware Windows 11. Not any.

In looks, maybe if you squint? Lions are felines; bears are not canines. They are not related.

Coyotes and wolves are the wild equivalent, but they aren’t much bigger. I think the largest canines that exist today have been domesticated, like the Saint Bernard and the Great Dane. There are others, but those are the popular ones. Also, I think you could breed the wild out of coyotes and wolves if you tried. I’ve never heard of anyone keeping coyotes as pets, but wolves? Sure. Especially wolf cross-breeds with domesticated breeds.

Unless you get on the other side of an end zone. Then you should be safe. (American football joke. The Chicago Bears’ unofficial motto is “maybe next year.” Though they’ve been doing good this year.)