Although I think Steve Jobs was a real piece of shit, his product instincts were often on point, and his message in this video really stuck with me. I think companies shoehorning AI in everything would do well to start with something useful they want to enable and work backwards to the technology as he described here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=48j493tfO-o

I love me some self-hosted ML models, such as Fooocus.

It’s a jack of all trades for sure, but it also has features paid software doesn’t, like it’s 2d animation system with Grease Pencil. There are also paid extensions on BlenderMarket and the like that make it more competitive with more specialized features in other software. Extensions are GPL licensed, so I’m happy to pay for them as opposed to the rest of the toxic CG ecosystem where everything is subscription-only.

Edit:

I wish all paid software were GPL. It’s nice buying something and being able to look at and change the code, write code that calls their code, or even snag a bit of it for to use in your own thing.

Convincing your employer to reduce AWS costs, or better yet, go with a different cloud provider would likely have more financial impact than boycotting the portion of the company that represents a smaller percentage of their operating profit.

Wait until the 15th to order everything you were going to order this week. That will show them!