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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: May 22nd, 2023

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  • It’s not that far-fetched, PDFs in my opinion are closer to vector graphics than to document formats like odt and docx. They have no understanding of format if not using advanced features, like a table in a PDF is just spaced text with lines between them, and text is just independently placed letters. In fact the space symbol doesn’t exist in most PDFs, it’s just that two letters were spaced further apart. So they basically are multiple canvases that are being painted on with letters, lines, fill areas and even bitmap graphics.

    Modern PDF actually does further in the direction of a document format by providing the content in a structured way, mostly for accessibility, but also for making the format suitable for automatic processing the contained data.



  • This would be somewhat interesting if it wasn’t for the fact that most of the countries in BRICS had massive human rights issues themselves or weren’t otherwise problematic:

    Brazil: massive problems under Bolsonaro, luckily he’s no longer president

    Russia: was against Ukraine, Mafia gas station state, oppression of homosexuals. Assassinated Nationals on foreign soil.

    India: Hindu ethnostate with a caste system, also assassinated Nationals on foreign soil.

    China: destabilizing source that uses economic influence to sabotage Western ones through state-sponsored espionage and other measures. Oppression of religious groups (Uighur, abduction of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima…), massive surveillance of its own population…

    South Africa: actually probably the best of the bunch since apartheid ended though definitely not without issues

    If they want so much, they can have their own financial system, but no other country can be forced to participate. It’s just nose again to detract from their own crimes. Which is a shame because they’re important topics that are being hijacked by these assholes. Especially the point of “unilateral protectionist measures” by a group that China is a member of is morning but ridiculous.

















  • It’s also that they basically raised a generation of users who never had to pirate. Truth is 20 years ago there was literally no alternative to pirating. So you either figured it out or you’d have to drive to the store.

    Nowadays, most consumers have gotten complacent, which is understandable given how good the legal alternatives were at one point.

    However, while the initial steps might be a bit more difficult nowadays (I strongly advise against torrenting without a paid VPN), getting to a convenient setup is much easier nowadays. The *arrs, jellyfin, Kodi, docker, Android devices connected to a big screen etc. enable anyone willing to spend the time to create a setup that can rival commercial offerings.

    Just to emphasize, I don’t condone piracy here, but the direction the industry is going is unsurprisingly off-putting.