Affinity Tempts Adobe Users with 6-Month Free Trial of Creative Suite

Serif, the design software developer behind Affinity, has introduced a six-month free trial for its creative suite, offering Affinity Photo, Designer, and Publisher on Mac, Windows PC, and iPad. This move, along with a 50% discount on perpetual licenses, aims to attract Adobe users and reassure them of Affinity’s commitment to its one-time purchase pricing model despite its recent acquisition by Canva. The Verge reports: Affinity uses a one-time purchase pricing model that has earned it a loyal fanbase among creatives who are sick of paying for recurring subscriptions. Prices start at $69.99 for Affinity’s individual desktop apps or $164.99 for the entire suite, with a separate deal currently offering customers 50 percent off all perpetual licenses.

This discount, alongside the six-month free trial, is potentially geared at soothing concerns that Affinity would change its pricing model after being acquired by Canva earlier this year. “We’re saying ‘try everything and pay nothing’ because we understand making a change can be a big step, particularly for busy professionals,” said Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson. “Anyone who takes the trial is under absolutely no obligation to buy.”

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Substack Rival Ghost Federates Its First Newsletter

After teasing support for the fediverse earlier this year, the newsletter platform and Substack rival Ghost has finally delivered. “Over the past few days, Ghost says it has achieved two major milestones in its move to become a federated service,” reports TechCrunch. “Of note, it has federated its own newsletter, making it the first federated Ghost instance on the internet.” From the report: Users can follow the newsletter through their preferred federated app at @index@activitypub.ghost.org, though the company warns there will be bugs and issues as it continues to work on the platform’s integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon and other federated apps. “Having multiple Ghost instances in production successfully running ActivityPub is a huge milestone for us because it means that for the first time, we’re interacting with the wider fediverse. Not just theoretical local implementations and tests, but the real world wide social web,” the company shared in its announcement of the news.

In addition, Ghost’s ActivityPub GitHub repository is now fully open source. That means those interested in tracking Ghost’s progress toward federation can follow its code changes in real time, and anyone else can learn from, modify, distribute or contribute to its work. Developers who want to collaborate with Ghost are also being invited to get involved following this move. By offering a federated version of the newsletter, readers will have more choices on how they want to subscribe. That is, instead of only being able to follow the newsletter via email or the web, they also can track it using RSS or ActivityPub-powered apps, like Mastodon and others. Ghost said it will also develop a way for sites with paid subscribers to manage access via ActivityPub, but that functionality hasn’t yet rolled out with this initial test.

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Apple Approves Epic Games Store App For iOS

After two rejections, Apple has approved the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union. “This paves the way for Epic CEO Tim Sweeney to realize his long-stated goal of launching an alternative game store on Apple’s closed platform — at least in Europe,” reports Ars Technica. From the report: Apple announced plans to allow third-party app stores on iOS in the region earlier this year, complying with the letter of the law (though some say not the spirit) as required by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which was enacted in hopes of making platforms more open and competitive. Apple’s new policies allow for alternative app marketplaces but with some big caveats regarding the deal that app developers agree to.

The change followed years of contentious PR campaigns and court battles around the world between Epic and Apple, with Sweeney proclaiming that Apple’s app approval processes are anti-competitive and that its 30 percent cut of app revenues is unfair. Even after the shift, Apple is said to have rejected the Epic Games Store app twice. The rejections were over specific rules about the copy and shape of buttons within the app, though not about its primary function. […] Apple went ahead and approved the app despite the disagreement over the copy and button designs. However, AppleInsider reported that Apple will still require Epic to change the copy and buttons later.

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UK Tech Overtakes China as World’s Second Largest Country for Startup Funding Raised

“China may be the world’s second-largest economy,” writes Fortune’s news editor, “but when it comes to startup funding, the U.K. is punching above its weight.”

Startups in the U.K. raised $6.7 billion in funding during the first half of 2024, helping dethrone China and propelling the U.K. to second place globally for funds raised, according to a new report. Crucial to the U.K.’s success were a dozen funding rounds worth over $100 million each, including those of digital bank Monzo ($620 million), lender Abound ($862 million), and automated driving startup Wayve ($1.05 billion).

While the overall U.K. figure was down 2% year on year, according to data from global market intelligence platform Tracxn, it remained more robust than that of China, whose funding sat at $6.1 billion in H1 2024, helping the U.K. move into the No. 2 spot globally. The win is a milestone for the U.K. tech sector, which has remained under pressure owing to a string of challenges, including Brexit, COVID-19, and the subsequent global economic slowdown.

Only the U.S. saw startups raise more capital in H1, with a combined $54.8 billion raised across some 2,654 funding rounds in the first half of the year.

The article’s last line? “With the arrival of new U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, many will be hoping that the first Labour government in 14 years will continue to support the U.K.’s position as a critical player in the global tech landscape.”

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Is AirBNB Really Worsening the Housing Crisis?

An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC:

On 21 June, Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni announced plans to ban short term rentals in the city starting in November 2028. The decision is designed to solve what Collboni described as “Barcelona’s biggest problem” — the housing crisis that has seen residents and workers priced out of the market — by returning the 10,000 apartments currently listed as short-term rentals on Airbnb and other platforms into the housing market… It’s all part of a wider theme: around the world. Airbnb — which dominates the short-term rental market with more than 50% of all online bookings — and others, including VRBO, Booking.com and Expedia.com, are being scrutinised at the same time as questions are being asked about who tourism is for, and where the balance lies between benefits for tourists and locals alike…

Recent years have seen a backlash against the brand, which is blamed for pushing up housing prices and affecting locals who feel they have been forced to live next door to unregulated hotels… The question is: does banning or restricting short-term rentals actually reduce housing prices or affect housing stock? Harvard Business Review’s study on the impact of the New York City ban, published earlier this year, concluded that in this case, short term rentals are not the biggest contributor to high rents, and that regulations, rather than bans, would offer better benefits to the city and locals alike. One clear result from the city’s ban has been that hotel room rates have hiked to a record average of $300 per night.

So why are tourism authorities and city councils doing it? Perhaps the real reason is that it’s not just about the numbers, it’s about how local people feel about tourism… Successful on paper or not, these bans send a signal to local people that politicians are listening to their concerns and will prioritise them over tourists. There is an alternative to outright bans, though. Many destinations, including Berlin, restrict owner-occupiers to a 90-day maximum rental period over a year, effectively allowing part-time hosts to continue to make a supplementary income while preventing professional hosts from buying up housing stock and turning it into full-time short-term rentals. The issue for all countries moving in this direction, including the UK, which proposes something similar, is about regulation. How do you do it and how much extra does it cost to do so?

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Developer Successfully Boots Up Linux on Google Drive

Its FOSS writes:
When it comes to Linux, we get to see some really cool, and sometimes quirky projects (read Hannah Montana Linux) that try to show off what’s possible, and that’s not a bad thing. One such quirky undertaking has recently surfaced, which sees a sophomore trying to one-up their friend, who had booted Linux off NFS. With their work, they have been able to run Arch Linux on Google Drive.

Their ultimate idea included FUSE (which allows running file-system code in userspace). The developer’s blog post explains that when Linux boots, “the kernel unpacks a temporary filesystem into RAM which has the tools to mount the real filesystem… it’s very helpful! We can mount a FUSE filesystem in that step and boot normally…. ”

Thankfully, Dracut makes it easy enough to build a custom initramfs… I decide to build this on top of Arch Linux because it’s relatively lightweight and I’m familiar with how it work.”
Doing testing in an Amazon S3 container, they built an EFI image — then spent days trying to enable networking… And the adventure continues. (“Would it be possible to manually switch the root without a specialized system call? What if I just chroot?”) After they’d made a few more tweaks, “I sit there, in front of my computer, staring. It can’t have been that easy, can it? Surely, this is a profane act, and the spirit of Dennis Ritchie ought’t’ve stopped me, right? Nobody stopped me, so I kept going…”

I build the unified EFI file, throw it on a USB drive under /BOOT/EFI, and stick it in my old server… This is my magnum opus. My Great Work. This is the mark I will leave on this planet long after I am gone: The Cloud Native Computer.
Despite how silly this project is, there are a few less-silly uses I can think of, like booting Linux off of SSH, or perhaps booting Linux off of a Git repository and tracking every change in Git using gitfs. The possibilities are endless, despite the middling usefulness.

If there is anything I know about technology, it’s that moving everything to The Cloud is the current trend. As such, I am prepared to commercialize this for any company wishing to leave their unreliable hardware storage behind and move entirely to The Cloud. Please request a quote if you are interested in True Cloud Native Computing.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what to do next with this. Maybe I should install Nix?

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