There are actually other comments on this thread that provide other benefits besides trust, like modification tracing. There is more to it than just trust.

I didn’t say distributed. You are absolutely correct though. I was more observing that of all the BS tech bro babble that our Oligarch in Chief could spew into the universe, blockchain would be one that could be implemented reasonably.

I mean, technically SSA data might be a legitimate use of the blockchain. I am one of the biggest opponents of the whole mess, but there are use cases for a persistent immutable data record, and social security numbers would be one of them.

I really feel like you place a lot of faith in the competence and observational skills of the public at large.

I used Notepad++ for virtually all coding I did (Python, JS, various Markup Languages, Action Script back in the day, etc) for a couple decades. The only reason I use VSCode now is because I inherited a nightmare of a legacy spaghetti bowl and needed the function tracing to attempt to figure out anything. I still prefer N++ for most small projects.

Why? Because they feel the need to have local copies of sensitive financial information because… You know… They are computer security experts.

You seem to think that Trump didn’t add access keys for his idols the instant he got back in the door. He loves Putin and Kim Jun Il. They are like, his favorite drinking buddies.

The big difference between the a relational database and a spreadsheet is that “can do” clause in your sentence. In a relational database they MUST have those constraints to be related.

In the Microsoft ecosystem Access is the relational database. Excel is a table manager with fancy features.

Ohhhhh… I fucking hate this. I use Windows locally, but I do support for a render farm that runs on Linux. The number of times I have recieved “it works locally” tickets from an artist who decided to get clever and embed Windows paths in string literals in their scene makes me want to punch a puppy. They don’t even look at the application logs we provide to see that the paths threw errors. We handle repointing their file paths with symlinks normally, but when they use literals it literally fucks the system with escapes. I will never understand why Microsoft refuses to standardize to POSIX with the rest of the world. Aside from them being a US company with decision makers who still think freedom units make sense.

Ummm, 3DS is owned by Autodesk, so you may as well consider them the same thing for this conversation, and Arnold is a renderer (also owned by Autodesk) and not a DCC, so not really relevant unless you are specifically comparing Blender’s built-in render engines to it. The reason I am not is that there are lots of plugins for Blender which can output .ass files to be rendered by Arnold, so it can be utilized if you want to pay the subscription.

Blender is a DCC. Not one that I am super familiar with, I’m a Houdini guy myself, but honestly it is better in a lot of ways than the steaming piles of shit that Autodesk puts out. The question is not one of quality or feature at this point, but one of capital and market share where it counts. If they could figure out what is needed to get the likes of Disney or MPC on board, or even smaller (though arguably still very large/high profile) houses on-board, then they would be seeing much more investment.

Gonna call you out on this, at least partially. It was SideFX, a real threat of a proprietary vendor who has sizable market share in 3D/VFX, releasing an entirely perpetually free learning edition and a low cost indie license who put the screws on Autodesk. Blender contributed to the decision, but it was absolutely not the primary pressure source.

Source: I have a Masters Degree in VFX, have studied the industry for over 35 years, and have worked professionally in it for going on 15.

They are paranoid about foreign actors having personal data, not domestic ones. That said, the whole TikTok thing is as much about stifling international competition as it is about data privacy and who is getting/using said data. Meta, Alphabet, and their ilk all harvest much more data than TikTok, and sell it to data brokers. There is absolutely nothing stopping the Chinese government from just buying the data they would obtain from the mandatory data sharing forced upon Chinese companies.

TikTok took market share from Meta and Alphabet, Suckerberg and whoever is the head letter at Alphabet called up the Congressmen they bought and started making a fuss, so their boys on the hill found excuses to ban it.

I am not sayinf some of the excuses do not have kernels of merit, but they are largely overshadowed by the anticompetitive effect that it has.

Just to expand and answer your larger question, the US government does not respect the privacy of the citizens. The anti-data-brokerage legislation we did manage to get through only occurred AFTER the harvested data was used against those in office, and even then it was made an opt-out legislation which requires us to contact each brokerage firm individually and request, in writing, that our data be purged and we not be tracked. That exempts all new firms from the restrictions and relies on the individual to A. Know how to find the firms and B. Be able to manage contacting each one of them. What this has done is invented an entirely new service industry for removing OUR information from these brokerage firms. So we have to pay for privacy, yet again, making it something really reserved for the rich.

If you look at the other laws, things like license law and such, you will find that the US government has quite truly conspired to make sure that corporations have carte blanch to do whatever they want with those who use their services.

If I wasn’t shit with UI Dev I would offer as this sounds like a great app, but alas.

Damn it… I literally just found draw.io like 2 weeks ago.

For now. Remember that Project 2025 aims to dismantle both organizations and privitize the NWS’s activities.

Fact checking myself: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-what-project-2025-says-about-the-national-weather-service-and-noaa

Oh hell, I have not had that one yet. I am already leaning away from it with just the random pins showing up on my nav that were not searched for.

I hace been using noscript for like 15 years now. In my experience, it comes down to recognizing what is a required and superfluous or privacy invading 3rd party. Some websites can take me a while to get working, but I have had very few which I cannot figure out.

This is why I use a script blocker to block the scripts from marketing domains. From what I have been able to see the cookies aren’t written because the code that writes it is not allowed to execute. It also stops script injections and other malware payloads that require extra-domain linkages to scripts.

Plus all the political stuff. The man is patantly off his rocker.

Incompetence might even be a little harsh. Inexperience or incompetence maybe. I prefer inexperience.