Back in the beginning, when I got into it. When it was three guys in Copenhagen just making a little cool game engine for us Mac users. And yes, I am that old a Unity user ... my member registration number on their forums is in the low single digits. I recall I beat even David Helgason registering, in fact (who is also a super nice guy btw).

I hope Joachim and the others are still having fun after this broo-ha-ha cause they are ultra-cool and super friendly guys. Hi guys.

Then WTF was his intention? Why would he even contact someone he doesn't know with messages like that? Seriously, has everyone lost their common sense?

OMG, I knew Unity when it was just three or four guys in Copenhagen making a useable gaming engine for us Mac folks. I think I'm the 4th registered user on the forums, beating even one of the founders. 7,000. Just wow. Sad news but again, 7,000?

Every single artist practices by reproducing (as exactly as possible) works by the greats on the field. It's how we learn technical skills, composition, etc. I have never met a working artist who hasn't sat in a gallery and sketched a Matisse or whomever to practice their skills and to understand visual things like light and shadow, composition, subject, etc better.

As an artist of more than 40 years, I wonder if I changed a few words if this makes it sound any less evil? Let's see ...
1. Look at hundreds of images in galleries and online
2. Use them as data / inputs into my brain
3. Produce some artwork based on the general rules I've learned and what I've seen that intrigues or influences me.

I think the issue is simply the scale at which a machine can do step 1, because that step is no different than what any artist does, just at a smaller scale. We've all learned our craft on the shoulders of giants and create work that in some ways are influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by what we've seen over our lifetimes of looking at art. It's a rare thing that anyone produces anything remotely "new" these days, sorry.

I wonder if that is the fundamental issue for artists unsettled by that technology? That it's technology reproducing what an artist does (viewing an being influenced) on such a scale? I don't know, carry on.

... has nothing at all to do with the sewer of out-and-proud racists, Nazis, conspiracy nuts, anti-vaxxers, misogynists, and folks re-posting the NZ mosque massacre that Elon's "team" could not catch on his precious platform? If Elon were all for free speech (as so many use the term incorrectly anyway) he should be happy Apple was exercising their rights, no? Elon needs to go back to where he came from, like his supporters tell anyone not US born, no? Oh, right, he's white and rich, sorry, forgot rules don't apply to white narcissists born in Africa. *hypocrites*

But no one created a game that showed that possibility.

I was trying to create one.

The working title was "Dental Hygienist Tiffany Lets the Dentists Fill Her Cavities". It was about a dental hygienist, Tiffany, at a dental convention in Las Vegas that was coincidentally being held in a convention centre adjacent to the Adult Video Award show. It was a 3D, MMORPG featuring 16 online at a time. There was even a sequel planned.

Google didn't seem to be interested.

"So, Bob, we have a real problem. Adobe XD sucks balls and no one uses it. What are we gonna do?"

"Well, Andy, let's not try to actually make a decent UX design tool on our own, let's just buy Figma or Sketch, instead. Then we can take the best parts of that, mess it up by adding the Adobe magic, add it to CC and charge a shitload for it, and done. One competitor gone. Cool?"

This. If this turns out to be true, that just made my next year's recommendation to the executive team re: UX design software licenses (as head of design), a lot easier. I'll reach out to the Sketch people (Bohemian Coding) later today, in fact.

Tell me this is April 1st? Someone? Anyone? Sigh ..... I've been doing this for 30 years, this design thing. I remember Illustrator 88 and Aldus PageMaker and Quark when it was merely a toddler at version 1.0. Macromedia and Hypercard. I've used both Figma and Sketch extensively, but moved over into an org that had Figma as its main tool. Alright by me, they are mostly the same in terms of functionality anyway. But Adobe possibly buying Figma? No, that'll end Figma for me. And thankfully, I'm head of UX, and can take that decision meaning it's far more than one license they'll not get. We'll hold onto our old files and Figma software to view them, but going forward if Adobe acquires them? Makes them subscription based and clutters it with overhead and useless "features"? Adobe's loss is Bohemian Coding's gain. Way to go Adobe ... if you can't compete (as you've shown for years you can't in this space), you buy and crush.

Since 1980, productivity by the average US worker is up nearly 62% Wages, over, have. only climbed 17% during that same time. So the question is, to the billionaire CEOs who make 300x the average workers wages now (compared to merely 20x back in the 1960s) ... HOW MUCH FUCKING HARDER DO YOU WANT US TO WORK FOR YOU?????? PS. The average US worker would be making more than $160,000/year if our wages had kept pace with CEO wage increases.

So every transaction from card "123456B" that is registered with the government (which it will need to be to hold said currency) to phone 1-555-555-1234 can be tracked? Just a guess. It is not at all like (relatively untraceable) cash.

It's on a piece of hardware, a physical card or your phone. That's enough to identify who you are.

Yes, that line about "there is no personal computing without personal agency" made me immediately think, "That's so rich coming from a company that send reams of data back to the mothership". Until I get a control panel that shows me *everything* that is being sent, and allows me to turn off whatever data I do not want being fed back, this is just another form of corporate BS. I am really thinking that Linux is the way forward (as long as World of Tanks runs well).

Was coming to post exactly this. Another of my childhood heroes, gone. Well lived, sir.

Yup. This is what the right has wanted for the past four decades. Diminished "nanny state government", free market of ideas, corporations policing themselves and always able to do better than the public sector. And when they get it, and those same (psychopathic) corporations actually flex their muscle and do something these so-called free-market lovers don't like, they whine like the leftie snowflakes they complain about all the time. Twitter's decision is Orwellian only to those who have never f0ing read Orwell. Hypocrites, the lot of them. Deal with it. Twitter's house, Twitters rules. Don't like it? Build your own Twitter.

As a recent article on Alternet said, "The ideological zeitgeist of the Reagan-Thatcher era was that the privately owned corporate sector was better qualified and better structured to have control over the flow of news and information in society. This shift was framed as more than just an issue of policy, it was framed as an issue of morality: to empower the human spirit by allowing it to break free of the repressive shackles of state control, reveling in the natural democracy and common sense of consumer choice.

Sucks when you get what you wish for, huh?

P.S. I've never met a real libertarian in my entire life, at least not one who remembers what the *fourth* institution is that sniffles an individual's freedom. And iif they do know the history of social libertarianism, (France, 1850s) they conveniently forget. :)