#software trial included

[gremlinvapor]

God you are so right. hold on.🤚

Idk if anyone has done this before but who the fk is Gojoe? 🤨

[SERENITY’S COMMISSION IS OPEN]

[tofupixel]

⭐ So you want to learn pixel art? ⭐

🔹 Part 1 of ??? - The Basics!

Edit: Now available in Google Doc format if you don't have a Tumblr account 🥰

Hello, my name is Tofu and I'm a professional pixel artist. I have been supporting myself with freelance pixel art since 2020, when I was let go from my job during the pandemic.

My progress, from 2017 to 2024. IMO the only thing that really matters is time and effort, not some kind of natural talent for art.

This guide will not be comprehensive, as nobody should be expected to read allat. Instead I will lean heavily on my own experience, and share what worked for me, so take everything with a grain of salt. This is a guide, not a tutorial. Cheers!

🔹 Do I need money?

NO!!! Pixel art is one of the most accessible mediums out there.

I still use a mouse because I prefer it to a tablet! You won't be at any disadvantage here if you can't afford the best hardware or software.

Because our canvases are typically very small, you don't need a good PC to run a good brush engine or anything like that.

✨Did you know? One of the most skilled and beloved pixel artists uses MS PAINT! Wow!!

🔹 What software should I use?

Here are some of the most popular programs I see my friends and peers using. Stars show how much I recommend the software for beginners! ⭐

💰 Paid options:

⭐⭐⭐ Aseprite (for PC) - $19.99

This is what I and many other pixel artists use. You may find when applying to jobs that they require some knowledge of Aseprite. Since it has become so popular, companies like that you can swap raw files between artists.

Aseprite is amazingly customizable, with custom skins, scripts and extensions on Itch.io, both free and paid.

If you have ever used any art software before, it has most of the same features and should feel fairly familiar to use. It features a robust animation suite and a tilemap feature, which have saved me thousands of hours of labour in my work. The software is also being updated all the time, and the developers listen to the users. I really recommend Aseprite!

⭐ Photoshop (for PC) - Monthly $$

A decent option for those who already are used to the PS interface. Requires some setup to get it ready for pixel-perfect art, but there are plenty of tutorials for doing so.

Animation is also much more tedious on PS which you may want to consider before investing time!

⭐⭐ ProMotion NG (for PC) - $19.00

An advanced and powerful software which has many features Aseprite does not, including Colour Cycling and animated tiles.

⭐⭐⭐ Pixquare (for iOS) - $7.99 - $19.99 (30% off with code 'tofu'!!)

Probably the best app available for iPad users, in active development, with new features added all the time.

Look! My buddy Jon recommends it highly, and uses it often.

One cool thing about Pixquare is that it takes Aseprite raw files! Many of my friends use it to work on the same project, both in their office and on the go.

⭐ Procreate (for iOS) - $12.99

If you have access to Procreate already, it's a decent option to get used to doing pixel art. It does however require some setup. Artist Pixebo is famously using Procreate, and they have tutorials of their own if you want to learn.

⭐⭐ ReSprite iOS and Android. (free trial, but:) $19.99 premium or $$ monthly

ReSprite is VERY similar in terms of UI to Aseprite, so I can recommend it. They just launched their Android release!

🆓 Free options:

⭐⭐⭐ Libresprite (for PC)

Libresprite is an alternative to Aseprite. It is very, very similar, to the point where documentation for Aseprite will be helpful to Libresprite users.

⭐⭐ Pixilart (for PC and mobile)

A free in-browser app, and also a mobile app! It is tied to the website Pixilart, where artists upload and share their work. A good option for those also looking to get involved in a community.

⭐⭐ Dotpict (for mobile)

Dotpict is similar to Pixilart, with a mobile app tied to a website, but it's a Japanese service. Did you know that in Japanese, pixel art is called 'Dot Art'? Dotpict can be a great way to connect with a different community of pixel artists! They also have prompts and challenges often.

🔹 So I got my software, now what?

◽Nice! Now it's time for the basics of pixel art.

❗ WAIT ❗ Before this section, I want to add a little disclaimer. All of these rules/guidelines can be broken at will, and some 'no-nos' can look amazing when done intentionally.

The pixel-art fundamentals can be exceedingly helpful to new artists, who may feel lost or overwhelmed by choice. But if you feel they restrict you too harshly, don't force yourself! At the end of the day it's your art, and you shouldn't try to contort yourself into what people think a pixel artist 'should be'. What matters is your own artistic expression. 💕👍

◽Phew! With that out of the way...

🔸"The Rules"

There are few hard 'rules' of pixel art, mostly about scaling and exporting. Some of these things will frequently trip up newbies if they aren't aware, and are easy to overlook.

����Scaling method

There are a couple ways of scaling your art. The default in most art programs, and the entire internet, is Bi-linear scaling, which usually works out fine for most purposes. But as pixel artists, we need a different method.

Both are scaled up x10. See the difference?

On the left is scaled using Bilinear, and on the right is using Nearest-Neighbor. We love seeing those pixels stay crisp and clean, so we use nearest-neighbor. 

(Most pixel-art programs have nearest-neighbor enabled by default! So this may not apply to you, but it's important to know.)

🔹Mixels

Mixels are when there are different (mixed) pixel sizes in the same image.

Here I have scaled up my art- the left is 200%, and the right is 150%. Yuck!

As we can see, the "pixel" sizes end up different. We generally try to scale our work by multiples of 100 - 200%, 300% etc. rather than 150%. At larger scales however, the minute differences in pixel sizes are hardly noticeable!

Mixels are also sometimes seen when an artist scales up their work, then continues drawing on it with a 1 pixel brush.

Many would say that this is not great looking! This type of pixels can be indicative of a beginner artist. But there are plenty of creative pixel artists out there who mixels intentionally, making something modern and cool.

🔹Saving Your Files

We usually save our still images as .PNGs as they don’t create any JPEG artifacts or loss of quality. It's a little hard to see here, but there are some artifacts, and it looks a little blurry. It also makes the art very hard to work with if we are importing a JPEG.

For animations .GIF is good, but be careful of the 256 colour limit. Try to avoid using too many blending mode layers or gradients when working with animations. If you aren’t careful, your animation could flash afterwards, as the .GIF tries to reduce colours wherever it can. It doesn’t look great!

Here's an old piece from 2021 where I experienced .GIF lossiness, because I used gradients and transparency, resulting in way too many colours.

🔹Pixel Art Fundamentals - Techniques and Jargon

❗❗Confused about Jaggies? Anti-Aliasing? Banding? Dithering? THIS THREAD is for you❗❗ << it's a link, click it!!

As far as I'm concerned, this is THE tutorial of all time for understanding pixel art. These are techniques created and named by the community of people who actually put the list together, some of the best pixel artists alive currently. Please read it!!

🔸How To Learn

Okay, so you have your software, and you're all ready to start. But maybe you need some more guidance? Try these tutorials and resources! It can be helpful to work along with a tutorial until you build your confidence up.

⭐⭐ Pixel Logic (A Digital Book) - $10 A very comprehensive visual guide book by a very skilled and established artist in the industry. I own a copy myself.

⭐⭐⭐ StudioMiniBoss - free A collection of visual tutorials, by the artist that worked on Celeste! When starting out, if I got stuck, I would go and scour his tutorials and see how he did it.

⭐ Lospec Tutorials - free A very large collection of various tutorials from all over the internet. There is a lot to sift through here if you have the time.

⭐⭐⭐ Cyangmou's Tutorials - free (tipping optional) Cyangmou is one of the most respected and accomplished modern pixel artists, and he has amassed a HUGE collection of free and incredibly well-educated visual tutorials. He also hosts an educational stream every week on Twitch called 'pixelart for beginners'.

⭐⭐⭐ Youtube Tutorials - free There are hundreds, if not thousands of tutorials on YouTube, but it can be tricky to find the good ones. My personal recommendations are MortMort, Brandon, and AdamCYounis- these guys really know what they're talking about!

🔸 How to choose a canvas size

When looking at pixel art turorials, we may see people suggest things like 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64. These are standard sizes for pixel art games with tiles. However, if you're just making a drawing, you don't necessarily need to use a standard canvas size like that.

What I like to think about when choosing a canvas size for my illustrations is 'what features do I think it is important to represent?' And make my canvas as small as possible, while still leaving room for my most important elements.

Imagine I have characters in a scene like this:

I made my canvas as small as possible (232 x 314), but just big enough to represent the features and have them be recognizable (it's Good Omens fanart 😤)!! If I had made it any bigger, I would be working on it for ever, due to how much more foliage I would have to render.

If you want to do an illustration and you're not sure, just start at somewhere around 100x100 - 200x200 and go from there.

It's perfectly okay to crop your canvas, or scale it up, or crunch your art down at any point if you think you need a different size. I do it all the time! It only takes a bit of cleanup to get you back to where you were.

🔸Where To Post

Outside of just regular socials, Twitter, Tumblr, Deviantart, Instagram etc, there are a few places that lean more towards pixel art that you might not have heard of.

⭐ Lospec Lospec is a low-res focused art website. Some pieces get given a 'monthly masterpiece' award. Not incredibly active, but I believe there are more features being added often.

⭐⭐ Pixilart Pixilart is a very popular pixel art community, with an app tied to it. The community tends to lean on the young side, so this is a low-pressure place to post with an relaxed vibe.

⭐⭐ Pixeljoint Pixeljoint is one of the big, old-school pixel art websites. You can only upload your art unscaled (1x) because there is a built-in zoom viewer. It has a bit of a reputation for being elitist (back in the 00s it was), but in my experience it's not like that any more. This is a fine place for a pixel artist to post if they are really interested in learning, and the history. The Hall of Fame has some of the most famous / impressive pixel art pieces that paved the way for the work we are doing today.

⭐⭐⭐ Cafe Dot Cafe Dot is my art server so I'm a little biased here. 🍵 It was created during the recent social media turbulence. We wanted a place to post art with no algorithms, and no NFT or AI chuds. We have a heavy no-self-promotion rule, and are more interested in community than skill or exclusivity. The other thing is that we have some kind of verification system- you must apply to be a Creator before you can post in the Art feed, or use voice. This helps combat the people who just want to self-promo and dip, or cause trouble, as well as weed out AI/NFT people. Until then, you are still welcome to post in any of the threads or channels. There is a lot to do in Cafe Dot. I host events weekly, so check the threads!

⭐⭐/r/pixelart The pixel art subreddit is pretty active! I've also heard some of my friends found work through posting here, so it's worth a try if you're looking. However, it is still Reddit- so if you're sensitive to rude people, or criticism you didn't ask for, you may want to avoid this one. Lol

🔸 Where To Find Work

You need money? I got you! As someone who mostly gets scouted on social media, I can share a few tips with you:

Put your email / portfolio in your bio Recruiters don't have all that much time to find artists, make it as easy as possible for someone to find your important information!

Clean up your profile If your profile feed is all full of memes, most people will just tab out rather than sift through. Doesn't apply as much to Tumblr if you have an art tag people can look at.

Post regularly, and repost Activity beats everything in the social media game. It's like rolling the dice, and the more you post the more chances you have. You have to have no shame, it's all business baby

Outside of just posting regularly and hoping people reach out to you, it can be hard to know where to look. Here are a few places you can sign up to and post around on.

/r/INAT INAT (I Need A Team) is a subreddit for finding a team to work with. You can post your portfolio here, or browse for people who need artists.

/r/GameDevClassifieds Same as above, but specifically for game-related projects.

Remote Game Jobs / Work With Indies Like Indeed but for game jobs. Browse them often, or get email notifications.

VGen VGen is a website specifically for commissions. You need a code from another verified artist before you can upgrade your account and sell, so ask around on social media or ask your friends. Once your account is upgraded, you can make a 'menu' of services people can purchase, and they send you an offer which you are able to accept, decline, or counter.

The evil websites of doom: Fiverr and Upwork I don't recommend them!! They take a big cut of your profit, and the sites are teeming with NFT and AI people hoping to make a quick buck. The site is also extremely oversaturated and competitive, resulting in a race to the bottom (the cheapest, the fastest, doing the most for the least). Imagine the kind of clients who go to these websites, looking for the cheapest option. But if you're really desperate...

🔸 Community

I do really recommend getting involved in a community. Finding like-minded friends can help you stay motivated to keep drawing. One day, those friends you met when you were just starting out may become your peers in the industry. Making friends is a game changer!

Discord servers Nowadays, the forums of old are mostly abandoned, and people split off into many different servers. Cafe Dot, Pixel Art Discord (PAD), and if you can stomach scrolling past all the AI slop, you can browse Discord servers here.

Twitch Streams Twitch has kind of a bad reputation for being home to some of the more edgy gamers online, but the pixel art community is extremely welcoming and inclusive. Some of the people I met on Twitch are my friends to this day, and we've even worked together on different projects! Browse pixel art streams here, or follow some I recommend: NickWoz, JDZombi, CupOhJoe, GrayLure, LumpyTouch, FrankiePixelShow, MortMort, Sodor, NateyCakes, NyuraKim, ShinySeabass, I could go on for ever really... There are a lot of good eggs on Pixel Art Twitch.

🔸 Other Helpful Websites

Palettes Lospec has a huge collection of user-made palettes, for any artist who has trouble choosing their colours, or just wants to try something fun. Rejected Palettes is full of palettes that didn't quite make it onto Lospec, ran by people who believe there are no bad colours.

The Spriters Resource TSR is an incredible website where users can upload spritesheets and tilesets from games. You can browse for your favourite childhood game, and see how they made it! This website has helped me so much in understanding how game assets come together in a scene.

VGMaps Similar to the above, except there are entire maps laid out how they would be played. This is incredible if you have to do level design, or for mocking up a scene for fun.

Game UI Database Not pixel-art specific, but UI is a very challenging part of graphics, so this site can be a game-changer for finding good references!

Retronator A digital newspaper for pixel-art lovers! New game releases, tutorials, and artworks!

Itch.io A website where people can upload, games, assets, tools... An amazing hub for game devs and game fans alike. A few of my favourite tools: Tiled, PICO-8, Pixel Composer, Juice FX, Magic Pencil for Aseprite

🔸 The End?

This is just part 1 for now, so please drop me a follow to see any more guides I release in the future. I plan on doing some writeups on how I choose colours, how to practise, and more!

I'm not an expert by any means, but everything I did to get to where I am is outlined in this guide. Pixel art is my passion, my job and my hobby! I want pixel art to be recognized everywhere as an art-form, a medium of its own outside of game-art or computer graphics!

This guide took me a long time, and took a lot of research and experience. Consider following me or supporting me if you are feeling generous.

And good luck to all the fledgling pixel artists, I hope you'll continue and have fun. I hope my guide helped you, and don't hesitate to send me an ask if you have any questions! 💕

My other tutorials (so far): How to draw Simple Grass for a game Hue Shifting

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[ostdrossel]

The Robins have returned and are beginning to reclaim the yard, cleaning things up and taking over the bird bath. The first one looks very pretty with some leucism, the white specks on the head, which can be caused by several things, including genetics. I love Robins and am happy to see them back. Also, they are the state bird of Michigan!

(It took me forever to get this post ready because I had deleted the first clip from the SD card accidentally and had to retrieve it by installing a recovery trial software on my second computer because I had already used it on my other computer months ago and did not want to pay. Sigh.)

(Description: You see a bird bath on the ground. A female Cardinal takes off when a Robin arrives. The Robin removes two leaves from the bath, takes a bath and leaves. Then another Robin appears, lets a call out and also takes off.)

[lightyaoigami]

☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ how to resume ⋆｡ﾟ☾｡⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎ ﾟ

after 10 years & 6 jobs in corporate america, i would like to share how to game the system. we all want the biggest payoff for the least amount of work, right?

know thine enemy: beating the robots

i see a lot of misinformation about how AI is used to scrape resumes. i can't speak for every company but most corporations use what is called applicant tracking software (ATS).

no respectable company is using chatgpt to sort applications. i don't know how you'd even write the prompt to get a consumer-facing product to do this. i guarantee that target, walmart, bank of america, whatever, they are all using B2B SaaS enterprise solutions. there is not one hiring manager plinking away at at a large language model.

ATS scans your resume in comparison to the job posting, parses which resumes contain key words, and presents the recruiter and/or hiring manager with resumes with a high "score." the goal of writing your resume is to get your "score" as high as possible.

but tumblr user lightyaoigami, how do i beat the robots?

great question, y/n. you will want to seek out an ATS resume checker. i have personally found success with jobscan, which is not free, but works extremely well. there is a free trial period, and other ATS scanners are in fact free. some of these tools are so sophisticated that they can actually help build your resume from scratch with your input. i wrote my own resume and used jobscan to compare it to the applications i was finishing.

do not use chatgpt to write your resume or cover letter. it is painfully obvious. here is a tutorial on how to use jobscan. for the zillionth time i do not work for jobscan nor am i a #jobscanpartner i am just a person who used this tool to land a job at a challenging time.

the resume checkers will tell you what words and/or phrases you need to shoehorn into your bullet points - i.e., if you are applying for a job that requires you to be a strong collaborator, the resume checker might suggest you include the phrase "cross-functional teams." you can easily re-word your bullets to include this with a little noodling.

don't i need a cover letter?

it depends on the job. after you have about 5 years of experience, i would say that they are largely unnecessary. while i was laid off, i applied to about 100 jobs in a three-month period (#blessed to have been hired quickly). i did not submit a cover letter for any of them, and i had a solid rate of phone screens/interviews after submission despite not having a cover letter. if you are absolutely required to write one, do not have chatgpt do it for you. use a guide from a human being who knows what they are talking about, like ask a manager or betterup.

but i don't even know where to start!

i know it's hard, but you have to have a bit of entrepreneurial spirit here. google duckduckgo is your friend. don't pull any bean soup what-about-me-isms. if you truly don't know where to start, look for an ATS-optimized resume template.

a word about neurodivergence and job applications

i, like many of you, am autistic. i am intimately familiar with how painful it is to expend limited energy on this demoralizing task only to have your "reward" be an equally, if not more so, demoralizing work experience. i don't have a lot of advice for this beyond craft your worksona like you're making a d&d character (or a fursona or a sim or an OC or whatever made up blorbo generator you personally enjoy).

and, remember, while a lot of office work is really uncomfortable and involves stuff like "talking in meetings" and "answering the phone," these things are not an inherent risk. discomfort is not tantamount to danger, and we all have to do uncomfortable things in order to thrive. there are a lot of ways to do this and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. not everyone can mask for extended periods, so be your own judge of what you can or can't do.

i like to think of work as a drag show where i perform this other personality in exchange for money. it is much easier to do this than to fight tooth and nail to be unmasked at work, which can be a risk to your livelihood and peace of mind. i don't think it's a good thing that we have to mask at work, but it's an important survival skill.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ good luck ⋆｡ﾟ☾｡⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎ ﾟ｡⋆

[ceterisparibus116]

he WAsn'T EVen WearInG hIS maGICal AmUlet

I can't. I have to do an actual explanation of why this analysis was brilliant.

So the motion in limine is actually a combination of a motion in limine brought by the Defense (with the goal of excluding reference to Hector's other life) and a hearing on the prosecutor's intent to use evidence of the defendant's prior wrongs at trial.

Matt is arguing under what's commonly known as 403* (the rule that excludes relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially* outweighed by the danger of undue prejudice).

The prosecutor, however, is arguing under what's commonly known as 404* (the rule which permits the state to introduce evidence or prior wrongs as long as the evidence is not being introduced to argue that the defendant has a propensity for such wrongdoing).

Whenever a prosecutor wants to introduce evidence of prior bad acts, the defense attorney hackles bristle. "But Your Honor! The jury is supposed to determine whether this particular defendant committed that particular crime on that particular occasion against that particular victim. Whatever other misbehavior my client gets up to at other times is irrelevant. Clearly the prosecutor is just trying to sneak in a propensity argument, and suggest to the jury that my client has a propensity for wrongdoing and therefore should be convicted of the crime at hand without sufficient evidence!"

To which the prosecutor responds: "I would never. I am using this evidence for some other purpose, not propensity." What purpose might that be? Literally anything the prosecutor can think of. Because unlike what a defense attorney tried to argue literally today, Rule 404 provides examples of possible non-propensity uses of evidence, but does not exclude other possible non-propensity uses.

Literally, the only limit is the prosecutor's creativity, and what the judge condones.

So, what non-propensity uses does the Hawk have for the evidence of Hector's alter ego?

A pattern of behavior;

Motive ("that drove Hector Ayala to kill Officer [?] on that subway platform")

Pattern of behavior here might be referring to a plan? Idk, but "plan" often comes into play when identity is at issue, e.g. "the defendant was caught last year stealing from a bank last year using this special computer software that no one else owns and now this latest bank was burgled with the same software, which is evidence that the defendant is also the person responsible for the latest burglary." But Hector's identity isn't at issue here; everyone knows he was the guy on the platform. So that's not a very strong argument to introduce evidence of prior wrongdoing, which still has to survive the 403 analysis, and it's harder for evidence to survive that when its probative value is weakened.

I think the stronger argument is #2: motive to kill (or, put another way, absence of mistake or accident).

So how is a judge to determine whether evidence is really being introduced to show propensity (inadmissible) vs something like motive (admissible)? Well. If you have one instance in which the defendant appears to be deliberately targeting people to receive extrajudicial violence, and you have a second instance in which the defense is trying to argue that the defendant just stumbled upon a scene of violence and jumped in to protect the victim...you want to determine which facts create either similarities or distinctions between the two instances.

Such as...hypothetically...the presence or absence of a magical amulet.

*Note that New York refuses to be like the rest of the nation and has their own fancy numbering system for their rules of evidence, so 403 is actually 4.06 (and they don't actually include the "substantially" adjective which! I am shocked! And appalled!) and 404 is actually 4.38.

[radmari]

A transgender woman who sued a women-only social media app for alleged gender discrimination has been awarded $10,000 plus costs after a judge found she had been indirectly discriminated against in a landmark decision that tested the meaning and scope of the Sex Discrimination Act.

Roxanne Tickle, a transgender woman from regional New South Wales, sued the women-only social media platform Giggle for Girls and its CEO, Sall Grover, claiming she was unlawfully barred from using the app in 2021 after the firm and Grover said she was a man.

On Friday morning, federal court justice Robert Bromwich said the respondents considered “sex” to mean the unchangeable sex of a person at birth.

“These arguments failed because the view propounded by the respondents conflicted with a long history of cases decided by courts going back over 30 years. Those … cases established that on its ordinary meaning sex is changeable,” he said.

Onboarding to the app required the user to upload a selfie verified as female by KairosAI gender detection software and then by Grover. Tickle was barred after initially being allowed to join the platform – which was shut down in August 2022.

The judge said the evidence did not establish Tickle was excluded from Giggle directly “by reason of her gender identity although it remains possible that this was the real but unproven reason”.  Rather, the indirect discrimination case succeeded because Tickle was excluded from the use of the social media app “because she did not look sufficiently female”.

Bromwich disagreed with Grover and Giggle’s arguments about the constitutionality of the protections for gender identity in the Act – in line with the position of the sex discrimination commissioner.

Tickle had sought damages and aggravated damages amounting to $200,000, claiming that persistent misgendering by Grover resulted in constant anxiety and occasional suicidal thoughts.

In his written decision, Bromwich drew attention to the behaviour of Grover, including laughing at a caricature of Tickle during the trial.

“[Grover’s] explanation, that it was funny in the context of the courtroom, was obviously disingenuous. It was offensive and belittling and had no legitimate place in the respondents prosecuting their case.”

Tickle said Friday’s decision showed transgender people could stand up for themselves.

“I’m pleased by the outcome of my case and I hope it is healing for trans and gender diverse people. The ruling shows that all women are protected from discrimination,” she said outside court.

“I brought my case to show trans people that you can be brave and you can stand up for yourself. I can now get on with the rest of my life and have a coffee down the road with my friends, play hockey with my team and put this horribleness behind me.”

Changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013 made it unlawful under federal law to discriminate against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.

It is the first time alleged gender identity discrimination has been heard by Australia’s federal court and goes to the heart of how gender identity – and being a woman - is interpreted. The outcome is likely to have wide-reaching implications for male and female spaces and activities and is being watched around the world.

Over the course of a three-day hearing in April, the court heard that Tickle had lived as a woman since 2017, had a female birth certificate and gender affirmation surgery and “feels in her mind that psychologically she is a woman”.

Tickle’s barrister Georgina Costello KC said that “Ms Tickle is a woman” but that “the respondents flatly deny that fact”.

Giggle and Grover’s team asserted that the case must focus on biological sex.

“Sex is discriminatory, it always has been and always will be … biological sex must prevail,” barrister Bridie Nolan said.

Grover told the court that she would not address Tickle as “Ms” and that, even if a transgender woman presented as female, had gender affirmation surgery, lived as a female and held female identity documents, Grover would still see her as a “biological male”.

The court heard that Grover started the app, intended as an “online refuge”, after receiving trauma therapy for social media abuse while living in the US.

The Australian Human Rights Commission acted as a friend of the court. Barrister Zelie Heger told the court that sex was no longer defined in the Sex Discrimination Act but that “importantly the Act recognises that a person’s sex is not limited to [being a man or a woman]”.

The case has been closely followed by both women’s and trans rights supporters, with Bromwich admitting “this was never going to be an easy case for anybody”.

Tickle received support from the Grata Fund, while a crowdfunding campaign set up to cover Giggle for Girls’ legal costs raised over $520,000.

Ignoring the tone of the article because I haven’t found a non-biased one yet, I’m so fucking over this shit. I’m disappointed in our court systems and what this precedent will mean for the rights of girls and women across the country.

[stevebattle]

Dudley and Mushka (1979), David Schaefer of NCR, Waterloo, Ontario, Roger Sanderson of the University of Waterloo, Bob Norton of Hamilton, Ontario, and John Ditner of the University of Waterloo (1979). "Not all micromice at the finals contained microprocessors. Dudley and Mushka, two Canadian entries, managed to solve the maze with simple IC logic. Both had been built from the same basic design, and each solved the maze on its last run in 252 and 94.74 s respectively. Dudley was entered by David Schaefer of NCR, Waterloo, Ontario, and Roger Sanderson of the University of Waterloo. Mushka, which won the runner-up smart prize, was entered by Bob Norton of Hamilton, Ontario, and John Ditner of the University of Waterloo. The original designs for Dudley and Mushka called for a 1602 microprocessor, a Model 2758 EPROM with 1k x 8b of memory, a peripheral interface adapter IC, and three infrared sensors. The sensors were to detect the presence of walls around the mouse and to allow it to negotiate the maze without touching the walls. A software algorithm that would have provided the mouse with learning capability on successive trials was to be included. All of this was scrapped at the last minute, however, in favor of a simpler logic circuit due to insufficient time before the finals to do this." – The amazing micromice: see how they won, by Roger Allan, IEEE spectrum September 1979.

[batwynn]

Heads up animators:

MOHO animation software (Debut) is a tiny bit of a scam.

Someone recently gifted this software to me after we went through the features list because they thought it would be something I could work with when getting back into animation. I went through the list, looked at their videos, etc. and decided, yeah, I could work with this. We also decided I probably didn't need the $399.99 version as it had a bunch of features I would probably not need when I'm just getting back into animation again for the first time in years... and the fact that it's fourhundredfuckingdollars. The major deciding point of getting this, for me, was the third option on the screenshot below:

The screenshot shows features for Moho Debut and Moho Pro. The specific feature is Smart Bones, where it says "Can create 2 smart bones per file" and there is simply a check mark in the Moho Pro side. To my understanding, this was a limited version of the same feature. Much like their trial version also had limited features of the paid for versions. In fact, I tried specifically just the Moho Debut trial version to specifically to see what I'd be using and nothing outside of that scope in the pro version. When you try it, it opens up a file with something already made, animated, etc. Including Smart Bones. A shit ton of smart bones.

But, if you're a newbie and don't know what is needed to make/use Smart Bones, you might not notice that further down on the list there is a missing check mark under "Actions"

Which you need to make and use Smart Bones to animate a HUGE amount of the stuff they show you in all their tutorials and videos. Something someone new to the software could not possibly know unless they went hours into tutorials and days into program use.

I'm also not the only one to assume that you can make Smart Bones in the Debut, considering they list it right there on their website.

But, no.

And maybe the website didn't imply that you can make smart bones in Debut back in 2016, but it sure as hell does now.

But what's this?

Oh, of course. We can't rely on your own fucking website to be factual, up to date, and true. Especially not when spending $60-$400 on software. Why would you ever assume they'd be accurate about their own programs?

So, I guess the lesson is:

Spend 60 days reading every single tutorial, every single forum post, and never trust anyone who says they don't have to be honest when selling you something right there in the fine print.

[mariacallous]

In March 2007, Google’s then senior executive in charge of acquisitions, David Drummond, emailed the company’s board of directors a case for buying DoubleClick. It was an obscure software developer that helped websites sell ads. But it had about 60 percent market share and could accelerate Google’s growth while keeping rivals at bay. A “Microsoft-owned DoubleClick represents a major competitive threat,” court papers show Drummond writing.

Three weeks later, on Friday the 13th, Google announced the acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. The US Department of Justice and 17 states including California and Colorado now allege that the day marked the beginning of Google’s unchecked dominance in online ads—and all the trouble that comes with it.

The government contends that controlling DoubleClick enabled Google to corner websites into doing business with its other services. That has resulted in Google allegedly monopolizing three big links of a vital digital advertising supply chain, which funnels over $12 billion in annual revenue to websites and apps in the US alone.

It’s a big amount. But a government expert estimates in court filings that if Google were not allegedly destroying its competition illegally, those publishers would be receiving up to an additional hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Starved of that potential funding, “publishers are pushed to put more ads on their websites, to put more content behind costly paywalls, or to cease business altogether,” the government alleges. It all adds up to a subpar experience on the web for consumers, Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser says.

“Google is able to extract hiked-up costs, and those are passed on to consumers,” he alleges. “The overall outcome we want is for consumers to have more access to content supported by advertising revenue and for people who are seeking advertising not to have to pay inflated costs.”

Google disputes the accusations.

Starting today, both sides’ arguments will be put to the test in what’s expected to be a weekslong trial before US district judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia. The government wants her to find that Google has violated federal antitrust law and then issue orders that restore competition. In a best-case scenario, according to several Google critics and experts in online ads who spoke with WIRED, internet users could find themselves more pleasantly informed and entertained.

It could take years for the ad market to shake out, says Adam Heimlich, a longtime digital ad executive who’s extensively researched Google. But over time, fresh competition could lower supply chain fees and increase innovation. That would drive “better monetization of websites and better quality of websites,” says Heimlich, who now runs AI software developer Chalice Custom Algorithms.

Tim Vanderhook, CEO of ad-buying software developer Viant Technology, which both competes and partners with Google, believes that consumers would encounter a greater variety of ads, fewer creepy ads, and pages less cluttered with ads. “A substantially improved browsing experience,” he says.

Of course, all depends on the outcome of the case. Over the past year, Google lost its two other antitrust trials—concerning illegal search and mobile app store monopolies. Though the verdicts are under appeal, they’ve made the company’s critics optimistic about the ad tech trial.

Google argues that it faces fierce competition from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. It further contends that customers benefited from each of the acquisitions, contracts, and features that the government is challenging. “Google has designed a set of products that work efficiently with each other and attract a valuable customer base,” the company’s attorneys wrote in a 359-page rebuttal.

For years, Google publicly has maintained that its ad tech projects wouldn’t harm clients or competition. “We will be able to help publishers and advertisers generate more revenue, which will fuel the creation of even more rich and diverse content on the internet,” Drummond testified in 2007 to US senators concerned about the DoubleClick deal’s impact on competition and privacy. US antitrust regulators at the time cleared the purchase. But at least one of them, in hindsight, has said he should have blocked it.

Deep Control

The Justice Department alleges that acquiring DoubleClick gave Google “a pool of captive publishers that now had fewer alternatives and faced substantial switching costs associated with changing to another publisher ad server.” The global market share of Google’s tool for publishers is now 91 percent, according to court papers. The company holds similar control over ad exchanges that broker deals (around 70 percent) and tools used by advertisers (85 percent), the court filings say.

Google’s dominance, the government argues, has “impaired the ability of publishers and advertisers to choose the ad tech tools they would prefer to use and diminished the number and quality of viable options available to them.”

The government alleges that Google staff spoke internally about how they have been earning an unfair portion of what advertisers spend on advertising, to the tune of over a third of every $1 spent in some cases.

Some of Google’s competitors want the tech giant to be broken up into multiple independent companies, so each of its advertising services competes on its own merits without the benefit of one pumping up another. The rivals also support rules that would bar Google from preferencing its own services. “What all in the industry are looking for is fair competition,” Viant’s Vanderhook says.

If Google ad tech alternatives win more business, not everyone is so sure that the users will notice a difference. “We’re talking about moving from the NYSE to Nasdaq,” Ari Paparo, a former DoubleClick and Google executive who now runs the media company Marketecture, tells WIRED. The technology behind the scenes may shift, but the experience for investors—or in this case, internet surfers—doesn’t.

Some advertising experts predict that if Google is broken up, users’ experiences would get even worse. Andrey Meshkov, chief technology officer of ad-block developer AdGuard, expects increasingly invasive tracking as competition intensifies. Products also may cost more because companies need to not only hire additional help to run ads but also buy more ads to achieve the same goals. “So the ad clutter is going to get worse,” Beth Egan, an ad executive turned Syracuse University associate professor, told reporters in a recent call arranged by a Google-funded advocacy group.

But Dina Srinivasan, a former ad executive who as an antitrust scholar wrote a Stanford Technology Law Review paper on Google’s dominance, says advertisers would end up paying lower fees, and the savings would be passed on to their customers. That future would mark an end to the spell Google allegedly cast with its DoubleClick deal. And it could happen even if Google wins in Virginia. A trial in a similar lawsuit filed by Texas, 15 other states, and Puerto Rico is scheduled for March.

[theoutcastrogue]

"Automattic Inc. and its founder have been sued by a WordPress hosting company that alleges an extortion scheme to extract payments for use of the trademark for the open source WordPress software. Hosting firm WP Engine sued Automattic and founder Matt Mullenweg in a complaint filed yesterday in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

"This is a case about abuse of power, extortion, and greed," the lawsuit said. "The misconduct at issue here is all the more shocking because it occurred in an unexpected place—the WordPress open source software community built on promises of the freedom to build, run, change, and redistribute without barriers or constraints, for all."

The lawsuit alleged that "over the last two weeks, Defendants have been carrying out a scheme to ban WPE from the WordPress community unless it agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars to Automattic for a purported trademark license that WPE does not even need."

The complaint says that Mullenweg blocked WP Engine "from updating the WordPress plugins that it publishes through wordpress.org," and "withdrew login credentials for individual employees at WPE, preventing them from logging into their personal accounts to access other wordpress.org resources, including the community Slack channels which are used to coordinate contributions to WordPress Core, the Trac system which allows contributors to propose work to do on WordPress, and the SubVersion system that manages code contributions."

The lawsuit makes accusations, including libel, slander, and attempted extortion, and demands a jury trial. The lawsuit was filed along with an exhibit that shows Automattic's demand for payment. A September 23 letter to WP Engine from Automattic's legal team suggests "a mere 8% royalty" on WP Engine's roughly $400 million in annual revenue, or about $32 million."

[miautastic-games-blog]

Just a small project i´ve been working on

Inglés/English

When I found out that the G5 series of My Little Pony had been cancelled, I had a nostalgic attack and decided to watch the Friendship is Magic series again, taking advantage of the fact that it is complete on YouTube, to refresh my memory and then watch the "complete" G5, something I haven't done yet because I don't have the money to pay for Netflix and I don´t want to risk with a pirate site to watch the movie :P. The thing is that while I was watching the series at some point I got the idea that the adventures of Twilight and friends would fit very well in an RPG style game, so I started digging around the fandom to see what kind of fangames I could find (don't even get me started on official mobile games, I'm against the business model of those kinds of games), but the thing is that, apart from some horror games like those of Princess Luna or the one of Applebloom in the town without cutie marks, some MMOs, the games based on the Fallout Equestria fanfic and that filthy game with Trixie, I didn't find anything that resembled the idea I had in mind (Don't get me wrong, a lot of those games look really fun, especially "that one") so I said to myself "Hey, what if I made that game?".

With this idea in mind I started to fantasize about what this videogame would be like and I had the idea of ​​making it in clickteam fusion, the same engine that the classic FNaF games are made in, a saga of which I am a fan, so I started to learn about the particularities of this software and to design prototypes for some mechanics that I want to include, such as a mission system and an inventory. What you see in the video is a practically finished version of a character customization system, which has several options so you can create the pony that best suits your personal tastes.

After much thought I decided to call this project "MLP: Harmony is Magic". As I already implied this is a fangame so it does not have the official license nor the support of Hasbro (hopefully not their wrath either). It will be inspired by G4, which includes the main series, the comics both canonical and non-canonical, some information taken from the books, and content related to Equestria Girls. In "Harmony is magic" you will take on the role of a pony who, along with his five friends, must face threats that will put the fate of Equestria in peril and overcome trials in which their friendship will be challenged. Explore this magical kingdom to meet and help its inhabitants and fight in turn-based combats against monsters such as Manticores, Little and Big Dippers, Vampire Ponies, Changelings and others that endanger the peace of the little equines, with the help of an enigmatic being that will not last long when it comes to lending its strength to restore harmony: the Tree.

I still have many things to work on, for example in the aesthetic section of the game, which I can tell it will be in a minimalist pixel-art style to resemble the aesthetic of the series. I also have to polish some mechanics and finish designing others, such as the special powers of each pony race or a cutie mark´s skills system inspired by Pokémon. When I have something more to show, I will return with another post; In the meantime, be happy, learn about friendship, drink water and whatever.

Meow.

=================================================Español/Spanish:

Cuando me enteré que habían cancelado la serie de la G5 de My Little Pony, tuve un ataque de nostalgia y decidí volver a ver la serie de La Magia de la Amistad aprovechando que esta completa en YouTube para refrescar mi memoria y luego ver "completa" la G5, cosa que no he hecho por el momento porque no tengo plata para pagar Netflix ni ganas de meterme en un sitio pirata para ver la película :P. El caso es que mientras miraba la serie en algún momento se me ocurrió la idea de que las aventuras de Twilight y amigas encajarían muy bien en un juego estilo RPG, así que me puse a hurgar en el fandom a ver que fangames podía encontrar (ni me hablen de los juegos para móviles oficiales, estoy en contra del modelo de negocio de esa clase de juegos), pero el caso es que, aparte de algunos juegos de terror como esos de la Princesa Luna o el de Applebloom en el pueblo sin cutie mark, algunos MMO, los juegos basados en el fanfic de Fallout Equestria y ese juego cochino con Trixie, no encontré nada que se pareciera a la idea que yo tenia en mente (no me malinterpreten, muchos de esos juegos se ven muy divertidos, sobre todo "ese") así que me dije "Oye, ¿y si yo hiciera ese juego?".

Con esta idea en mente me puse a fantasear sobre como sería dicho videojuego y tuve la idea de hacerlo en clickteam fusion, el mismo motor en el que están hechos los juegos clásicos de FNaF, saga de la cual soy fanático, así que me puse a aprender sobre las particularidades de este software y a diseñar prototipos para algunas mecánicas que quiero incluir, como un sistema de misiones y un inventario. Lo que se ve en el video es una versión prácticamente finalizada de un sistema de personalización de personaje, el cual cuenta con varias opciones para que puedas crear el pony que más se ajuste a tus gustos personales.

Tras mucho pensar me decidí a llamar a este proyecto como "MLP: Harmony is Magic". Como ya di a entender esto es un fangame por lo que no cuenta con la licencia oficial ni mucho menos con el apoyo de Hasbro (esperemos que tampoco con su ira). Este estará inspirado en la G4, lo que incluye la serie principal, los comics tanto los canónicos como los canónicos, alguna información extraída de los libros, y el contenido relacionado con Equestria Girls. En "Harmony is magic" asumirás el rol de un pony que junto a sus cinco amigos deberán enfrentarse a amenazas que pondrán en jaque el destino de Equestria y superar pruebas en los que su amistad se verá desafiada. Explora este mágico reino para conocer y ayudar a sus habitantes y lucha en combates por turnos contra monstruos como Mantícoras, Osas Menores y Mayores, Ponis Vampiro, Cambiantes y demás que pongan en peligro la paz de los pequeños equinos, con la ayuda de un enigmático ser que no durará a la hora de prestar su fuerza para restaurar la armonía: el Árbol.

Aún tengo muchas cosas en las que trabajar, por ejemplo en el apartado gráfico y estético del juego, que ya les adelanto que será con un estilo pixel-art minimalista para parecerse a la serie. También debo pulir algunas mecánicas y terminar de diseñar otras, como los poderes especiales de cada raza de pony o el sistema de habilidades inspirado en el de Pokémon constituido por las cutie marks. Cuando tenga algo más que mostrar volveré con otra publicación; mientras tanto sean felices, aprendan sobre la amistad, beban agua y que se yo.

Miau.

(Por cierto, si bien soy latino me decidí a hacer este juego 100% en inglés para ir manejando mejor el idioma y todo eso)

[bellhopping]

you know, you never realize just how high the bar to entry for video creation is until you actually sit down and try to make one

every half decent piece of software asks for anywhere from 60 - 200 dollars upfront. all free software comes in any of 4 flavors - incredibly laggy, locked to mobile, barebones, or some mixture of all of the above. this doesn't even include the secret fifth flavor, "oh yeah we'll advertise it as a free software but as soon as you go onto the website you realize it's just a free trial." like there has to be some sort of blender/krita equivalent for video editing right; some piece of free, industry standard, open source software that can work well as an entry for beginners. why is that not a thing. I think I need to explode

[ameliasoulturner]

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[kayleigh-83]

Hi! I feel bad asking you this but would you consider your custom scripts for your screenshot edits? :)

I assume you meant sharing them? No problem! But keep in mind these actions will only work in Paint Shop Pro 8 (maybe other close versions of PSP but I really have no idea?). I'm fairly certain they wouldn't work in any other type of graphics editing program (Photoshop, Gimp etc).

I think PSP8 is basically abandonware at this point though and easily findable, I think I downloaded mine somewhere online years ago and today it tells me I'm on day 20,089 of my free 60 day trial!

There are two scripts I use - Screenshot Edits and Screenshot Edits Darker. They're the same but obviously, one results in a darker finished image. Both adjust curves for brightness/contrast, adjust saturation up a little (more about that below) and then apply the bloom effect I talked about and showed here.

I use the "darker" script for shots that only need a slight bit of brightening because they're already fairly bright and would become overexposed, or for dark shots that should stay relatively dark (like nighttime shots). I also tweak the saturation enhancement settings per image depending on its needs. Sometimes the "default" settings on the script are just right, but sometimes it will desaturate or oversaturate, so it sometimes needs a tweak. There's only a few variables to play with in that screen so you get a feel for it pretty easily.

These scripts don't include cropping or resizing, I do that manually.

Hope this helps! :) These scripts for me were in this folder path: D:\My PSP8 Files\Scripts-Trusted

But there is also a folder path on my computer called: C:\Program Files (x86)\Jasc Software Inc\Paint Shop Pro 8\Scripts-Trusted

So presumably either would work?? Not sure what the difference is! But just FYI!

Download (SFS) | Download (MF)

[oct2pus]

Hello, sorry to bother you, but you seem like one of the few around tumblr that has fun with CAD. Do you have any suggestions for us who'd love to learn CAD but pretty much has no schooling around us that teach these things? Thank you, love your blog!

I didn't have proper schooling I just learned through trial and error and tutorial videos (youtube is your best friend) and lots of googling/looking at forums. I also have the implicit requirement that I want to own my own tools so I don't tend to use the two largest 3d modeling softwares. The two main ones are Fusion360 (the most popular, but I don't know a good tutorial series for this) and OnShape. OnShape is browser based, Fusion360 is a windows application (get used to that if you want to do CAD work). I personally do 3d printing, and there are loads of youtubers who go into designing for 3d printing. I personally trust TeachingTech. This one uses OnShape.

I currently do my Modeling in FreeCAD, specifically the realthunder/link branch. which i believe is getting merged back into the proper "FreeCAD" soon(tm). I used this tutorial series by keep making.

I personally think he is a bit of a tool. but he showed me enough that I could learn either by trial and error or googling things I wanted to do. Just to avoid headaches, if you want to try FreeCAD i would recommend Ondsel instead, because its built from FreeCAD and includes a lot of things not currently in the stable release of FreeCAD (including the Link Branch I use). I'm simply familiar with the current UI and can't be assed to change.