Yeah, yeah, Dithering for president! Vote for Dithering!

In most cases, you really have to have eagle eyes to spot the difference anyways. At least on a computer screen. Printed out is a different case, there you probably need a soft spot for pixel graphics.

Though some images, when they're about to be converted to 256 colours, do look better without dithering. It's completly situational. My favourite way of dithering is the Bayer-cross-pattern, too. It looks very old-style!

Edit: Found an example of bad dithering. It often ruins my single-coloured plains with these dots.

Ah, I was just asking "square or circle" because it looked to be difficult to put "older than Windows 10" and "modern video streaming" well together. Video watching should be no problem at all. I'm using my 15 year old Windows XP machine for Invidious (Youtube) videos for example absolutely flawlessly. However streaming is a different thing. Those platforms aren't very tolerant and demand for lots of computing power and bandwidth from what I've seen and therefore I hope you can go far with an older computer.

In the case of Windows 7 support being dropped for some programs, you still have the old programs on your disk. If it's for private use, why not using the Photoshop version for Windows 95 for example? Still, a very capable program on highly obsolete hardware. And at least it doesn't bother for how long you use it and pulls off sabotage updates from the web! It really depends on the features, if they're that significant, but I can't judge that for your programs and probably only using them will tell.

I have a computer at work with everything it needs for me to work on work-related things. So I don't need that much for home. As long as it runs smoothly

That's how it should be: You have to be paid to use the abomination of Windows 10. Not the other way around, buying it to use it.

Considering the difficulties with especially modern laptops opening the supersmooth and superflat case, yes, it can be quite a hard time to repair some of those. Although consider if something fatally breaks, you can slaughter the thing completly and extract the hard disk no matter what. And there would be your data.

But that's why I tend to favour the clunky desktops, because they don't clog up with dust that fast. Switching hard disks is also easier.

Square or circle? Both at the same time will be difficult...

Would a desktop be an option? You could go radical for a fanless Mini-Desktop. But they have less power, so you might get to the limit when playing games. Probably the art stuff would clog such a machine up too.

Depends on the kind of games and processing demands of course. I'd say, get a used Windows 7 machine and see, if it's capable of all the things you'd like to try. At least you shouldn't lose too much money on it, if it's not good enough. Disk space can be upgraded easily. An SSD would surely be a big boost and is 100% worth upgrading.

Eventually, you'd get into problems with the newer programs, that have higher demands every year. That's how the computer industry goes. You can do a nearly unlimited amount of stuff with the old machines. But it will get difficult when you need the newer stuff, streaming for example. That will require a lot of power.

Maybe your laptop just needs some cleaning. Can you open it up? Maybe you can find a tutorial online, as some laptops are trickier than others to open. Also, this experience will make your brain grow in size, then you're almost ready for Linux, if you're looking for an alternative to get away from Windows. Have you tried Linux before?

A home made card game. A simplified Yu-Gi-Oh clone I developed as a kid needed some polish. Now it's well tested and balanced, but ideas keep flowing in. On my table, simulated tournaments are taking place, me playing against myself with different cards. So I can figure out, if all works well. However playing with someone else, who has a sensitive feel for gameplay, brought the level of improvement much more forward, than just simulating duels.

All the graphics are ripped from Deviantart. This is saddening... all these talented artists, making beautiful paintings of whatever... dragons, machines, insects, witches, necklaces, surreal shapes, I can't give something back to them. This is a zero dollar budget operation for me, too. All I have are the ideas and MS Paint for the layout. The cards are printed on a photo printer at a little grocery store, making them wobbly, but at least solid enough for shuffling.

I think if someone would want to make produce something commercially, just buy some art from Deviantart or similar sites. There is lots and lots of great art there. I don't know if AI can compete with that. It would probably take too many tries to let the AI produce something, that you had in mind as a title image.

Many customistaion options, nice nice, but what about an option to disable all the customisation options?

I have a feeling that this might get out of hand. It's nice that you try out new things, but for the reading experience, a clean look would be more helpful. Some fonts aren't particularly well suited for being readable, too.

Like in Acmlmboard, another great forum software, see the attachments an example of kuribo64. The customisation options make reading on that forum less enjoyable. And people doing this nonsense of using terrible font colours on terrible unsteady backgrounds, why the heck.

So maybe have an option to ignore all designs and display everything on a standard background with the standard font?

Aye, "adventures" aren't just crashing down the Amazon river with a wrecked boat. It's about exceeding the range of travel with whatever, bicycle, car, train. Or walking on foot to places you've never walked before. Exploring of the unknown lands. Herzogs films really show these times, when it was done in the big scale. It's like Christoph Columbus setting sail to new grounds, but to put it to a smaller perspective, everyone can reach new grounds overcoming own borders.

In a shorter film about the native tribes in the Amazon rainforest, Herzog filmed the moment of these people getting for the first time in their life a hand on a metallic pot. Fascinated, perplexed about this unknown material. Maybe that was in the Seventies or Eighties, I don't recall exactly.

Herzog also describes, with a piece of melancholy, the so called "progress" that shaped the lives of the native tribes. Blue jeans and motocycles. So these times of true adventures are over, says Herzog. With that he means to get in contact with people who really never got their glimpse on the modern, western society.
I'm not sure, if that's true about the whole world though. But the modern western world surely looks advantageous, looking at the hard facts like metal. But those can't be gathered from nature directly, need complex structures... the trade has been made. The tribe people became modern and need a job now to get on.

Now that's a moral question, everyone has to answer for himself/herself. Maybe it would have happened anyways, the tribes' land probably would have been grabbed by some money-driven force. Besides that, there are always various things to look at on colonialism. Is the life of tribes people "easier" now? Which way of living is more sustainable? Would we fat-asses like to go to the rainforest and sip at caoutchouc trees to get the raw material out? While all of a sudden a venomous snake appears?

Anyways, Werner Herzog really showed this foreign world to us. And that's what I appeciate about him. He surely influenced me a lot, so that I build wooden frames from branches now.

HTML 4, the former HTML standard, so that's an old book here. On the cover it says: 550 pages with a CD-ROM for 20 Euros. Nowadays you get it for 2 Euros online.

If you go through the whole thing, it will answer questions that you don't even know to formulate yet. So it can be a good inspiration, especially for starters.

Off Topic:
@/home/user/: Aye, I'm currently using Salix, excellent Linux. But Windows really got too untidy with Windows 8. If we're comparing those, I think you're right, a user-friendly Linux would be easier to use. 
Although I think it's undeniable, that some free software programs have "unoptimised" user interfaces than their big-money commercial counterparts (hate Apple with me, but they do that job properly of designing their interfaces, so that non-programmers have a good time with their device too). I'd expect something like that to happen with a free chatbot too, it being unoptimised and therefore fall behind. Like with search engines, which is all about the big fat company who display the best matching search results, because they are one step ahead.

The best console to be barely recognised must be the PC Engine / TurboGrafix 16. I love it for so many great soundtracks. Technically it's also the interesting time of switching from sequenced music (MIDI or the C64 for example) to pre-recorded full songs (like an MP3 file), affected by the swtich from cartridges to CD discs allowing more data to be stored, which the PC Engine with accessories could use both. Surprising how fast the japanese composers picked up the new possiblities right from the beginning to make gigantic orchestra like arrangements!

My assumption is: No. Those who have the money and manpower will rule the place, so the big companies. And they will make money out of everything they can. So why not snatching the input text and sell it to an ad company? Unless there would be a market for those who scream for Privacy.

Probably 99% of smartphones with "questionable" privacy behaviour, probably 98% of the young people having one of those. Sorry, nevermind. I never asked for a market... it's too sad to think about.

Also, the established players have patents all over the place that no one can touch. Can a couple of freaks do it "simpler"? Hot damn, it has to be machine to answer to every question possible. It looks to be too complex.
Even then, would that chatbot be "useable"? Linux-level of useable? So useable only for freaks with clunky brain structures?

Just assuming, I have no idea. Just my "feeling" about the topic of chatbots.

I want a typewriter, please...

Hm... my broken video cassette recorders had too many problems with the electronics. Nothing I can get my hands on. One even had a capacitor leak so badly, that thick clouds of smoke evapourated from it, like a fog machine. That even stank after two days!

I'd love to say, just replace it with one from the scrap, which would probably still be functional. But the fortuneate days of abandoned VCRs standing by the street will have gone in a couple of years.

Audio Cassette decks are easier to fix I think. If the rewinding the tape doesn't work properly, then the belts have aged too much and gotten too long. I've heard about someone "cooking" the rubber belts in hot water, making them shrink slightly, adding some tension. But I found it more reliable to buy some new belts.

Does this count: EyeToy Groove for the PS2. That one really gets out of hand like a sport session on the higher difficulties.
These simple move-based games like the Eyetoy and the Kinect got developed into complex controllers (starting with the Wii controller for example), definetly something different than just jumping around in front of a camera. So a game genre that faded into obscurity. Undeserved, when everyone could play these dance games on a laptop.

I don't think that issue has that much to do with trust. Site hosters get hacked, so site become malicious, it happens. This web garden looks nice and dandy, but maybe a static image of the sites and a "report" button would be enough against that security nightmare of Frames or Iframes.

Travelling across the internet without some kind of script blocker is a whole nightmare in itself!

Business is important. It's necessary to think about these money things. If our life would be a video game, this would be the meta thing to look for (unless you're rich already), even for the scrappiest anarchist. Has to pay his rent too. Sure, life was easier as a child. The mind had more room to circle around. But if the workplace is fine, it shouldn't consume you too much. At least that's my expectation.

My small company example:
Previous workplace in a small family company failed because of this little son of the boss could behave like a son of a b... well then you know, it's not your game that's worth winning.
Incest phenomenon in the family company there.
First generation has the bite to build up a buisness.
Second generation can afford to mediocre.
Third gen, completly uninterested in the topic, but feels an obligation to take over the company in some years. Should really, hand on heart, reject his parents business and do something completly different. But is mentally too weak and dependant on the family. This will ruin the company 100% if no proper decision is made there, because it gets on all the other employees nerves, to have to deal with people who can behave like "the axe in the forest" without consequences.

Despite these troubles, the small team was very efficent to work with. It all depends on the people. One ass ruins everything, if you don't have the room to get some "professional" distance inbetween. The only solution is to look elsewhere, if that problem can't be solved. It sounds like you guys really suffer for too long in bad circumstances. There have to be options out there, even in the niche.

Just a tiny little detail, and this story could have gone completly different. Little boy wanted to go to Australia, work and travel, find some inspiration. But no, those plans were turned to dust with the major lockdowns. So the guy was bored and came back to the family company, to be bored there. So I quit after two years of having a good time there.

My best job was the least well paid job unfortuneatly, as a bicycle courier with a purple women's bicycle from the scrapyard in the cheapest possible city around here. After "paid sport" as I called it, I got behind my computer and started to program for 8 hours straight like a maniac. Wasn't well thought enough unfortuneatly (I blame it on the forced health insurance) so I was broke after two years, but what a gold combination: sport and programming at the same time!

Business is really more fun than a strategy game.

Melon, you show some taste.

Let me add to Fitzcaraldo, that there was an actual ship being dragged over an actual mountain. Herzog said, it had to look realistic. No animation tricks used!
Of all the films ever made, this must have been the single biggest, most difficult thing to have been made for a film on the whole planet. Dragging a ship all mechanical (with human-powered winches) over the mountain in the Amazonas with its poison snakes in the heat of the jungle. With a raging crazy-man playing the main role (Klaus Kinski). Including deliberately wrecking the ship with all the cast on-board for the finale in the dangerous cascades of the Amazon river.

On one hand, Herzog goes over morale limits to make his films. Cut down a trees in the rainforest for his movie. Destroy land. Having basically hundereds of "slaves" of foreign cultures to do all the dirty jobs. Resulting in one of the most abitious films ever planned being finished.
I'm deeply twisted with this. For me, Herzog is a adventerous giant, having finished Fitzcaraldo. I wonder if this could have been achieved a bit "nicer" maybe.