Hoist with their own petard
Brandon Thomas is a proper software engineer who used his own skills + AI to reverse engineer the whole Adobe Suite in Rust. He was pissed off at what he called Adobe’s ‘scummy practices’ – like charging you a fee to cancel your subscription.
Me, I’m exercised at the subscription model to begin with. I know it suits Adobe, but it didn’t suit me. As a retired graphic artist, I couldn’t justify paying a monthly fee just to play Photoshop and do some light desktop publishing.
I’ve got the last standalone version of Photoshop on my main machine, frozen in aspic. This laptop uses Elements, which is 95% of the whole Photoshop. For desktop publishing, I use Affinity Publisher, which I bought a perpetual license for just before they made it free (frownyface.jpg).
Anyway, link to the free ArtCraft suite is here. I haven’t tried it yet. Absolutely nobody is crying for Adobe, which has made itself very unpopular over the years.
I asked the robot where “hoist with your own petard” comes from and it said Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A petard was a small explosive charge used to blow doors and such, but it’s from the French pétard, meaning fart. So, lifted by your own bomb (or fart). A second robot confirms. Funny, I’m sure I once read a very complicated explanation involving explosives on poles.
Posted: October 12th, 2026 under personal.
Comments: 6
Comments
Comment from ExpressoBold Pureblood
Time: October 12, 2026, 6:40 pm
YAY, Captain Petard!
Comment from Uncle AL
Time: October 12, 2026, 7:37 pm
The source has escaped my memory but I’ve always understood Hoist with his own petard¹ to describe someone who left a booby trap for someone else but screwed up and triggered it himself, blowing his own butt UP.
As for explosives on poles, I think you’re describing Bangalore Torpedoes. Those are used by sappers to, among other things, detonate explosives from a safe (safe-ish) distance.
1. It’s “petar” in the original Hamlet Act III Scene 4 (I looked it up).
Comment from technochitlin
Time: October 13, 2026, 11:47 am
Bots. Bots everywhere.
Oh yeah- Adobe deserves every bad thing that happens to them.
Comment from blake (buy my books!)
Time: October 13, 2026, 6:26 pm
I always thought Adobe shoulda/coulda/woulda been beloved among tech giants. They really put the kosh on that.
Comment from Uncle AL
Time: October 13, 2026, 7:36 pm
1. Adobe started out with a nice product
2. They expanded it to a “suite”
3. They force-fed it digital lard
4. It became a big fat bloated pig
5. Adobe added lipstick to make it more attractive
6. Now Adobe wants us to subscribe and pay every month to keep looking at the ugly pig
Hey, Adobe honchos!
C’mon over here and lick the pig poop off my boots.
Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: October 15, 2026, 9:39 pm
Hamlet speaks of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whom he has guessed are working with Claudius against him:
There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way,
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard: and ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon…
Hamlet refers to medieval/renaissance siegecraft, where “sappers” would dig “mines” under fortifications and detonate gunpowder charges. R and G carry a letter from Claudius, directing the King of England to execute Hamlet, but Hamlet substitutes a letter ordering them executed.
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