I'm a designer of 40+ years experience. I finally tried Figma the other day. 1. It was almost impossible to work out how to use it - oh the irony! 2. The masses of videos that they post are terribly produced and don't explain how Figma works, just features babbling talking heads and awful 1970s graphics patterns. 3. I expected to be launched into a nice intuitive canvas where I could drag and drop elements, enter text to caption them and so on. Nope! Awful UX. 4. Was obvious the app is owned by a huge over staffed corporation with no direction, just a desire to grow stock value through complex subscription models. More revenue for Adobe. I am closing our company account and going back to sketching UX concepts on my superb Amazon Scribe (Gen 1) and then creating proper mockups and such using Adobe Illustrator, draw.io and even the simple but useful to have it their, drawing app built into Google Docs. (Insert > Drawing > New) The latter two allow collaboration or sharing. What I really want when working remotely from my team is a huge eInk whiteboard for under £2000/$2000.

I have been reading (and loving) Slashdot for so long, I cannot remember. (When was it founded?) And other than The Register (whose previous editor I knew), Slashdot has remained outside the dumb creepy toxic hateful rude childish woke behaviour of The Verge, Reddit, WIRED and in particular, Gizmodo. But I am saddened to read the comments below this column on the Robotaxi trial. You may notice that a few days ago, Starship 10 exploded during fuelling for an engine test. Despite the huge fireball and such, not a singe person was injured, never mind killed. That's because SpaceX are very careful about safety. Likewise this small Robotaxi trial in Austin, Tesla were making sure that if something did go wrong, the chances of injury to pedestrians and/or passengers was remote. Nothing they did interfered with the ability of the software to control the vehicles autonomously. Now this has been achieved, with only one error (that did not result in any harm and the vehicle corrected itself), Tesla can move to the next level with more vehicles, less supervision etc in baby steps. Once they do that, we're talking Level 4 autonomy. Yes, they are late with FSD, but damn, it's taken no longer than the 10 years it took Sony, Philips, Toshiba, Matsushita etc to develop DVDs, a far less involved achievement. (I own a Model Y LR with FSD here in UK. Cannot use FSD yet, but I paid £6000 for it because I know it will eventually work, and as a software dev, understand some good things take time.)

He walked.

:) Slashdot wants me to type more here, so, la de dah, de dah, de lah. I do like a strong pick me up after a galactic snooze.

I love their stuff, just yesterday received a 140w GanPower charger with a little built in display. Anyway, thought they were founded by ex Google and Apple employees from USA.

Are you sure out crime rate is lower than Europe and USA? Keep an eye on X or some of our local newspapers that cover it better than the MSM. Two fatal stabbing within walking distance of my home in West Sussex on the seafront. But yes, you are spot on about our country frog boiling into an Orwellian state. British don't care and tend to say things like "If you haven't done anything wrong you have nothing to worry about." Yet thought crime is now a thing.

But faster, and black.

With what is going on here in Total Surveillance & Arrested for Hurty Words Land, you can bet true state sanctioned mind reading will become a thing within 5 years here. They are already about to ban & monitor banter (in person chat) in our last bastions of social liberty, the pub. All to stop us taking the pee out of men who pretend to be women because narsassistic tendancies by misgendering them.

But it will happen covertly somewhere like designer babies that have been offered since the late 1990s to 'parents' willing to pay. Saw an ad in the Palo Alto Weekly in the 1990s that allowed 'parents' to select the characteristics of their 'child'. Ad was by a biomed company trailing the technique. The ethical factors here are off the scale.

You win the Internet today, Big Ballz.

They start playing automatically in the background with loud obnoxious 'music'. Trying to mute or pause them is a faff. V stressful. Anti social too if you are in a quiet place without headphones and only intentionally playing audio or music. Should be banned.

Agreed.

As asking about politicians on chatGPT proves, the bias in AI is tangible, just like the woke nature of Wikipedia. I would like ALL AI data hosted on a large data store in a physical location. I want the ability to disconnect that server physically, and any connection with the outside world.

*small enough. #testies

I went into a posh gastro pub to work (and spend money on drinks and snacks), but an Asian woman was at a table behind me using the speakerphone to talk to someone, loudly too. I could not focus, even with my AirPods in. I kept looking at her initially politely as if to say, "Do you mind?". As I turned down the subtleness, no change. I ended up getting up to leave and mentioned this to one of the staff. His response, "That's my floor manager." I give up. I'm seeing this more and more in the UK, but always women, never males. I think they like the attention.