JakeAl

try .scn files from SoftImage XSI. Need a way to convert them to a format that can be used in Blender or Maya/FBX without losing any of the structure. Autodesk basically told the old users to bugger off leaving them with Gigs of files they can't use anymore.

You lost me when you started talking about seeking money and what sells an idea to VCs, not value creation. If your goal is the money and not the product, ypu've already lost.

This is misleading when you dig into the data. For starters every state and nation does not record deaths and causes of death consistently, so there's a lot of apples and oranges comparisons going on. Second, in the US depending on the state, any death within 90 days of giving birth is labeled as a pregnancy-related death. The person could be hit by a car, or die of a drug-overdose, and it would be still be identified as a pregnancy related death.

All private companies do that. Ever heard of Virgin? It's Branson's MO. Create a company with a high public profile that's private. Hype it up and sell it based on the value of it's perception. Watch it go out of business years later or be sold to someone else buying it for the name/market share to pad their own numbers for their own reports. At the very least it ends up being good for a a tax write off by the new owner. This is how business works.

This is awesome. Now do stock options and every other derivative.

I'll do you one better. The Market Makers are Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street which are majority shareholders of 80% of the SP500. They control the price using swarms of HFT bots, most likely running Blackrock's Aladdin algo which they license. The largest shareholder of Blackrock, is Vanguard.

Didn't help Jeep when Biden did it, either. Stellantis is going out of business.

US debt to GDP ratio is >120%. By IMF definition that's an economic death spiral. The death spiral becomes irreversible by 2028 because by then the interest on the loans for all that money we've been printing for decades to prop up the fake economy will only cover the interest, no longer the principal, which will continue to accrue interest, meaning it can never be paid down and the US will be insolvent (cease to exist) by 2042. That road we've been kicking the can down for decades -- this is the end of it. Social Security will be insolvent in a decade. Medicare -- don't ask. Historically about this time 1 or all of 3 things happen: 1) Global Depression/Massive Austerity 2) World War 3) A new monetary system and all the things that go with that, most notably a new world order and loss of civil liberties and rights in exchange for security, housing, food (indentured servitude). The economy is quantifiably worse than it has ever been. Money in the economy is contracting (disappearing) at the highest rate in history (look up the M2 Real.) It just takes a while for the trickle of trickle down economics to make it all the way back to the spout. All those jobs they keep revising down after the fact turned out to be government jobs, so the only thing growing is actually the government, and the only economic growth is coming from fiscal (government) spending that has been slowly making it's way into the economy after years. It's pretty nuts. We're literally borrowing money from China to send to Ukraine and Gaza. Those illegal immigrants--I mean "refugees" are costing each taxpayer over $9,000 a year. Kids are born today owing the government over $100,000. Their kids, right now it'll be $250,000. Dark Age onset type stuff we're witnessing if you've ever read a book about how the Dark Ages (Bronze age, Fall of the Roman Empire) happened. You know that "This is Fine" meme. Yeah, that. Even Apple's growth rate is the slowest it's been in 5 years. Wall Street and Big Tech have been hoarding money and are pouring it all into the AI revolution so the robots can take over and restore order when the Technological Singularity happens by 2028 thanks to the billionaires Accelerationism plans. Good times if you like dystopian sci-fi movies. Next 20 years are going be a real hoot. I've always wanted a battle van. And thank Elon we'll finally have one that can be solar powered. Eat your heart out Mad Max. See you in the wasteland, cowboys.

I go through this every time I have to ask for a refund and tell a business I just want a refund so we can part ways instead of filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau and with the FTC.

This. Salesforce, is a great example of this. I can't tell you the number of companies that exist just building a simple application that does the one thing customers bought these bloated app suites to do that they liked and became burdened with the developers ecosystem or constant enhancements they make just to justify their dev teams existence. Adobe and Microsoft are also notorious for this, as well as just about every cloud company.

Been dealing with this since my 40s. And good luck hiding it on your resume, most application forms these days require dates and even addresses. I am also discriminated against based on location. Some companies won't even interview you unless you are local, even for remote jobs, even if you're willing to relocate.

On this note, the invention of the printing press led to The Reformation with the first printing of the Bible, which up until that point had been duplicated by monks by hand, and The Word controlled and interpreted by the Church, who wielded their power like modern governments and institutions deciding what is or is not mis- or disinformation.

I would say instead it's a PEOPLE problem, not a technology problem.

To quote Neil Postman, politics are downstream from technology, because the technology (medium) controls the message. Just look at BigTech interfering with the messages by labeling them "disinfo." If one wants to say BUSINESS POLITICS, then that's probably more accurate, but we haven't solved the Google, MS, DuckDuckGo, Meta interfering with search results problem so I don't think we can trust BigTech to not exploit users even more for their personal data, or trust them not to design AI so it inherently abuses it's power for BigTech's own ends, and they hold all the cards and have been guiding things in the interest of technocracy.