I should be getting a Steam Deck soon and plan to spend a lot of time diving into old console libraries.

What are some games from previous generations that you recommend revisiting today? That is: games you feel have aged well and that aren’t readily available via a re-release or re-master elsewhere.

Any console and any recommendation is fair game, but I’m definitely interested in the kinds of recommendations that aren’t likely to show up in “The 25 Best Games for the [Console Name]”-type articles out there. I already know Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid are great for the PSOne, for example, but what about the thousands of other games for the system? Give me some deep cuts!

I'm mostly interested in metro/subways, but also over the ground systems and rapid transit in general.

Mostly the vehicles themselves, the rails, and the related technologies. I mean, I do enjoy the city planning bits, but some channels focus too much on the design and evolution of the lines and I don't like that, looking at a map is not really enticing to me. A healthy mix would be nice, some engineering deep dives mixed with history, urban planning, and a lot of train porn! (Not rule 34 lol).

Thanks!

I know we already have more than enough launchers for the PC platform, but are there any recommendations for the one that can rule them all, with the controller functionality and presentation of Steam's Big Picture Mode, but also with the modularity and ease of setup of GOG Galaxy? Or is it pretty much one of the above as far as easy options go?

Edit: Took a look at Playnite, really impressed. Deeper impressions in the thread.

I love mailing lists! They are my preferred way of discussing interesting topics with people. Please share your favourite lists, and any directories or search engines you know of. 🙂

• nettime - net art and media crit
• JISCMail - UK academic listserv

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that you love
that you think deserves more love

Tell us what it is, and why.

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I recently got my home internet upgraded to 10 Gb/s. I currently have the following hardware:

• 10 Gb/s fiber modem (from the ISP)
• 1 Gb/s ASUS combo router/AP/switch (needs replacement)
• 2.5 Gb/s 4 port switch (not currently in use)
• 5 Gb/s USB C ethernet adapter

My ASUS router is the bottleneck in my current setup. My actual internet speeds are more in the 2-5 Gb/s range when plugged directly into the modem. So I'd be happy if I can get 2.5 Gb/s hardware between my laptops and the modem. That makes my existing ASUS router the bottleneck and in need of replacement. Is there a good, relatively cheap, standalone router (no switch or AP) I can build/buy that supports >1Gb/s speeds? Or is there a good all-in-one solution that isn't way too expensive? I'd honestly prefer to have different components each doing just one job.

I already tried hooking the switch into the modem directly to see what happens. Under that configuration only one device plugged into the switch has internet access.

I'm making a big fat party mix. Right now its mostly house and related genres

• Walker & Royce, VNSSA - Rave Grave
• Salvatore Ganacci - Horse
• Mikey Lion - Burn with Me

I don't really know anything about these genres, so I'm tumbling down the rabbit hole and adding anything that seems alright.

Anyway, give me your party jams. I'm totally cool with more indie dancey stuff like Toro y Moi's Freelance or El Guincho's Bombay -- this is stuff I actually listen to, so there will be a bunch of this.

Any help is appreciated! If you're listing EDM stuff and can also include genres, that'd be super handy. This is still a cultural blindspot for me.

Final update: See here.

Update: Thank you ALL for your valuable feedback. I'm definitely looking into refurbished models now and I have a lot better grasp on what what I should be considering. I'm going to do some digging and a ridiculous amount of overshopping over the next couple of days, and then I'll let you all know what my final pick is!

Hey techy Tildes! I'm back with another support request from you knowledgeable and helpful folks.

I need a laptop that does exactly three things: gets me online, displays PDFs, and runs office software. I have a large number of online courses that I have to take in the coming years, and I need something that I can just grab while on my couch or in bed to work on papers and assignments, hence the 13" size preference. Long battery life would be highly preferable.

I looked for options that come with Linux preinstalled, but there's really nothing available that hits what I'm looking for -- there isn't much of a market for 13". As such, my plan is to just buy a standard Windows laptop and then put Linux on it, but I have no idea which particular hardware will play nice with a Linux installation. Budget would be sub-$500 (if possible). I don't need the laptop to do anything other than stay on for a long time and let me type, so I have no need for a powerhouse.

Can anyone point me in the right direction with some recommendations?

I'm going to be building a simple blog for myself.

Partially I just want something really simple and customizable, and also it will be a fun little programming project.

I'll be using PHP and mySQL for the backend. I won't be using any sort of framework as it shouldn't be necessary for a very simple blog. I'm fairly comfortable with JavaScript.

What I'm imagining is some sort of JavaScript library I can just download, link to my html and then turn a textarea into a simple wysiwyg editor. It could be as simple as a markdown editor or something with a little more features.

It has to be free. Open source would be a plus.

If anyone has any recommendations or advice I would be very grateful. Thanks!

Choose one album
that you love
that you think deserves more love

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I did a fresh install of Foobar2000 [1] for the first time since it came out. I'm rebuilding playlists and figured I'd do some digging for some new ones. My old list had a bunch from somafm, Luxuria, the BBC ones, and a few others. Here's a list of some ones I dug up tonight. If you have any other good ones that are indie, hip hop, jazz, exotica, or really well-curated EDM, list 'em up! Bonus points for direct links to the stream.

• 90.9fm WDCB
• Luxuria Music Radio
• BBC6
• BBC3
• WWOZ
• KEXP
• BBC1XTRA
• Pigpen Radio (Internet-Radio.com)
• The Current
• Arctic Outpost

By "not too specific to the UK", I mean something that can be enjoyed and understood (on a cultural level, not the language - subtitles take care of that) by someone who is not part of that culture. For reference, I really enjoyed The IT Crowd and Peep Show. Thanks!

Hi folks! I am, unfortunately, probably going to have to build a new PC soon; my beloved Thelio-r1 is slowly failing, and while my original plan was to buy a Ryzen 7 5800X and keep riding this PC for another three to five years, I don't know that I'll actually be able to make that work.

I like the NXT H510 I used for my boyfriend's gaming build, but the thermal performance isn't amazing and, most importantly, I hate tempered glass!

Yes, I understand that people want to show off their (ridiculously!) expensive components. I understand that lots of things have RGB. However, metal is cheaper, easier to work with, doesn't shatter, and I can modify it if I need to.

So, does anyone know of a good mid-tower PC case with decent airflow, up-to-date features (no 5 inch bays, good cable management hardpoints, a cable hiding bay, etc.), and no tempered glass or, preferably, acrylic?

Thank you!

One of the greatest sources of stress in my life right now is noise. This is consistent with the (presently unconfirmed) hypothesis that I'm probably on the spectrum.

I live in a very noisy neighborhood, with many sources of loud music several days a week. I use a regular headphone to try to isolate myself, but they're not always effective. I was thinking of purchasing a noise canceling headphone (NCH). I'd listen mostly to podcasts and white noise. Hence the title question: can these headphones cancel variable non-regular noises like loud music around me? And to what degree?

Product recommendations are welcomed, with a focus on great noise canceling. I have a preference for over the ear headphones, but that's not a hard requirement. Other than that I don't have any requirements.

Thanks!

Hey folks.

May someone recommend a good web dev community out there for quality discussions?

Right now I'm using Vue for a project and I'm wrestling with architectural decisions. I'd love for a place where I can discuss different approaches' trade-offs and merits.

Many thanks. :)

A lot of game engines are geared towards making full-fat games with 3D graphics and animations and sound effects and all that jazz. What if, instead, I want to make something dead simple, graphics-less, and minimalistic -- like Wordle? What's the best way to get to something like that (almost more of a digital toy than a full-fledged game)?

It doesn't have to be web-based at all (though it can be if that's easier? I'm genuinely not sure). My preference would be for open-source engines/tools, but that's not a necessity.

I used to use a random FOSS Python program to manage my blog. The software honestly wasn't the best (partially my own fault for not setting it up super well) and I stopped using it, lost my blog's source code, and haven't updated the blog in a long time because of that. So I'm looking for a static site generator that is simple, well maintained, and no-frills.

Alright, so I fell down a rabbit hole of trying to understand a whole bunch of techy things that I don't fully understand and could use some help:

What I'm looking for: a pair of Bluetooth wireless earbuds that I can pair with my computer, with low enough latency that it won't impair my enjoyment in casual gaming/video watching

What I understand so far: Almost nothing. 😔 I get that Bluetooth will always have some level of latency, but, beyond that, I've got nothing. I'm so confused.

There are lots of different versions of Bluetooth, and then there are different Bluetooth protocols within that, and then different audio codecs, and each piece of hardware seems to support completely different combinations of those, and I'm not sure if the devices have to match configurations or even how to figure out what my computer supports? It seems Bluetooth will gracefully fall back to worse codecs/protocols if better ones are incompatible, but I don't really want to buy something that's just going to fall back to its worst usecase.

I also don't know what's an "acceptable" level of latency. What's reasonable versus what's intolerable?

It also seems like the information I read online is subject to rapid decay. I read a bunch of stuff only a few years old saying I should look for aptX Low Latency capability, but then I read very recent posts saying that's dead and to go with aptX Adaptive instead. Meanwhile there are a handful of gaming-focused headsets that say they're low latency but don't really say how (e.g. Razer's Hammerhead). And some, like Samsung's buds, having a "gaming mode" but it only works on special hardware.

Also, how do I know what my computer itself will support? Is there anything I can do from the computer side to reduce latency, or is that strictly a function of what my hardware supports and which earbuds I buy?

My usecase:

My computer is a System 76 Oryx Pro (5) running Pop!_OS 21.10. I think its Bluetooth adapter is version 5.1 (though I'm not confident on that). I do not know which protocols/codecs it supports, nor how to find that out.

Audio quality isn't too important. These will be for everyday video-watching and gaming, which is what's prompting the latency requirement. I'd rather them be responsive than rich.

Active noise cancelling would be nice to have (especially if it has a toggleable transparency mode), but I don't know if ANC adds latency and is therefore incompatible with what I'm wanting.

I don't have a specific budget for it, and that's honestly the least important requirement. If the solution exists I'm fine paying for it (within reason, of course). These will end up getting used for thousands of hours, so even a big price difference upfront will even out over time.

I'd appreciate any help anyone can offer in pointing me in the right direction on this!

Hello everyone,

I usually do my own research, and then I try to find multiple matching results and afterwards, read specifically in detail about each recommendation, but, I have to be honest that for UPS recommendations that I’ve seen, it seems to be a very personal recommendation depending on the wattage and connected devices.

First of all, most people recommend CyberPower or APC, but I’ve also seen some recommendations for Eaton. Is there any other brand that I should be looking into?

The devices I would like to connect to a UPS would be: desktop, TV, Apple TV, NAS, router and probably my Nintendo Switch.

There are some general things I've found out while searching that I think I would like some confirmation:

• I actually think I should buy two UPS's, or? I think just one for the desktop and another one just for the remaining devices, since the desktop uses a lot more wattage.
• Pure Sine Wave: It does not matter for smaller stuff (routers, etc) but it seems that anything above 70 W, it should use a UPS with this. So, that would mean I need pure sine wave, since my desktop and TV definitely use more than 70 W of power.
• Some people said to search for a UPS with line conditioning so that you always get a perfect sine wave. Would you agree?
• USB connection (not a faux USB!) so that the NAS detects the power failure and shuts down gracefully.
• It is important that the UPS has removable battery for better longevity.

How would I choose a UPS? Do I need to see the total wattage of all my devices and then pick the UPS accordingly? Anything I'm missing?

My budget would be up to €100 or €150 in case it is really worth it.

Thank you in advance for all replies.

It's a very hard topic to research lately because of the crypto-bros lately and it's very hard to trust a stranger on youtube spouting financial advice.

Can tildes suggest any must-read books and/or resources to become more financially literate?

Background: I'm a software engineer from Germany, I'm making decent salary, but I've always been incredibly bad with money. I just spend what I need and almost never look after my financial state. The result, as you can imagine, is a very low rate of savings and a lot of unrealized gains.

Honestly, it's kind of embarrassing to ask, I lucked into a great industry, but has been so irresponsible with my money, I guess the first step is acceptance.

Hey everyone!

This year I've started getting into music collecting, and I'm wondering what everyone around here uses/recommends to manage a music collection. Basically what I'm after is software where:

1. I can pick the albums that I own.
2. I can pick albums that I want to own.
3. I get notifications when one of tmy tracked artists releases a new album.
4. Should not be a mobile exclusive app.

I've looked at Discogs but this one goes a level of complexity beyond what I need (It tracks all the different releases of a same album) and MusicBrainz which seems more what I'm after but not sure if it does #3; though I could supplement that with a different service. Looking for suggestions on software available online or self-hosted.

I have an HTPC (a shitty asRock beebox) away from my main router and all. For the most part the wireless signal is fine, but it can act up at times or completely cut out.

The design of the beebox is bad for wireless. I get a more consistent connection running from USB C > USB hub > USB Wireless stick -- but it still isn't great.

I'm thinking I should just bit the bullet and use ethernet. Would it be better to go with powerline or a wireless bridge for this? The reviews for powerline stuff are all over the board.

The HTPC pulls everything off the LAN, so outside speeds are about 99% irrelevant. The most it'll ever pull is metadata for Kodi's library, and even then it doesn't pull a lot.

Which is best? I'm running an RT AC68U running Merlin if that matters. I also saw a lot of gripes re: the AI Mesh stuff.

We have 2 boys, one of which is 4 months old and my wife is looking for new ways to share updates with friends and family. She doesn't want pictures publicly available anymore but still wants to cast a wide net to many different people. I think she's open to a newsletter of some sort that would allow people to opt in or unsubscribe.

What's the best way to manage a newsletter like this? I want her effort to be the same as Facebook. She can add photos and text to a "post" all from her iPhone and then it gets emailed to everyone that we've added to a list.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Define “major platforms” and “noteworthy” however you like, but I’m thinking of this as stuff you can’t find on Steam/Origin/GOG, etc.

I’m interested in people surfacing things like small itch.io projects or standalone downloads from the creator’s website or abandonware that’s never seen the light of day in digital distribution or cool romhacks — anything that’s worth a look but that someone would really have to go digging in order to find.

Hey all, I'm transitioning from a plain old software engineer at my company to tech lead (first in responsibility, then eventually in title)!

I'm very excited about the opportunity, but the role is new, both for my company and personally. Would anyone have recommended reading I could peruse? I'd love to get a solid footing for what I should be doing as a tech lead, and how I can do it well!

I just ordered an Instant Pot Pro Crisp 11-in-1 w/ Air Fryer Combo (8 Quart).

There are a lot of gnarly videos out there. I'm a good cook and really only want this for the pressure cooker, but I figured that the dehydrator and air fryer might be handy. Also, it looks classier than the other models.

If you have some good recipes, please share! I pretty much like everything and can cook absolutely anything thrown at me.

Previous threads:

• 2020 from kfwyre
• 2018 from MindsRedMill

I want to switch out the name of a certain "technology" on any website with "sand castle" in the hopes that my daily browsing gets a lot funnier. if it works i will as well think of a good word for any POTUS and maybe musk and bezos :'-)

I thouht it might maybe work with ublock? i have never done anything advanced with it so i dont know.

Hello everyone.

The other day, Firefox Monitor warned me that my personal e-mail was found on a data leak from Gravatar (belongs to Automattic; WordPress's parent company). Funnily, I don't have any account (and never had) with them, but nevertheless, I tried to log in, and it failed. I tried to recover my password, and it said "no e-mail found". Maybe a false positive from Firefox's side?

Anyway, that situation got me thinking that I should never use my personal email except on super important websites. For example, with Christmas gift buying, I've used my personal e-mail on multiple online websites (I usually try to avoid Amazon) and I shouldn't have done that.

Of course, Firefox recommended their own service Firefox Relay, which it does look interesting. Afterwards, I've searched on HackerNews to see what other people recommended.

These were the recommendations (apart from FF Relay):

• SimpleLogin
• AnonAddy

A few questions:

1. Do you use any of these three services?
2. How happy are you with the service that you use?
3. Is there something better?

I actually like Firefox's implementation because it is actually quite cheap (€12 per year), it is an easier way to support Firefox's development (instead of donation to the Mozilla Corporation) and I trust Firefox more on the security side of things. Nevertheless, the other two services seem more feature complete and I actually do not like that FF Relay "forces" you to use a domain like "alias@mozmail.com" or a custom domain like "alias@mydomain.mozmail.com". My goal would actually be "alias@mydomain.com" for my own contact with other people. On website registrations, @mozmail.com is okay, I guess.

I already have my own domain that I've bought from Namecheap and I think instead of associating an e-mail to my domain, I actually would prefer to use one of these services. The reason is that my website/e-mail domain could be reused if I stop paying. Some websites and/or people could have this e-mail and someone could impersonate me. With an e-mail forwarding service, I can easily and quickly delete/disable/change the alias. I'm not sure if I'm putting too much expectation on a forwarding service, but, I would like to know what do you think. 🙂

Hoping to generate discussion and have a few books recommended that have some of the following characteristics:

• foreboding discovery of a main character’s past
• a plot conflict that with a focus other than war or physical/political fighting
• preferable plot conflict examples: exploration, escape, grand heist, obtaining wisdom, treasure hunt
• undercurrent of a great unused power or magic that has been long lost

btw, I’m borrowing this format from r/Fantasy

Books I have liked:
Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series
Samantha Shannon The Priory of the Orange Tree
Michael Crichton The Eaters of the Dead
Lara Prior-Palmer (non-fiction) Rough Magic
Arthur C. Clarke (sci-fi) Rendezvous with Rama
Neal Stephenson (sci-fi) Anathem
Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive series

Traits like prose, characters, or settings you most enjoy:
Settings within the wilderness, crypts, large buildings/structures, caverns are all great.

Series vs. standalone preference:
No real preference, but longer is better I suppose.

Tone preference (lighthearted, grimdark, etc):
No strong preference, but mystical, ancient, and dark comes to mind.

Complexity/depth level:
Preferably on the more intricate side.

Thank you, let’s chat!

Hi Tildes,

I'm looking to introduce my children (aged 10 or so) to simple electronics (blinking lights, simple sensors, ...). I've played with Arduino in the past, but I see that there are now many competing options: Arduino, cheap rip-offs, RPi zero, adafruit, ESP32, ... It's easy to get lost!

Which do you recommend? Ideally, I'd like something cross-platform and open-source, easy to set up (ideally a kit with everything included), and of course not insanely expensive.

Edit: thanks everyone for the good advice! There are so many good options...

What are some VR games where the person in the headset can cast to a TV and the people watching can still participate/have fun?

For example, at a get-together over the summer, my friends and I played a hot seat version of I Expect You to Die 2. The person in the headset played the single-player game themselves, but everyone in the audience was able to watch the cast on the TV and help that person by giving them recommendations to try different things and help them solve the puzzles (or just recommend ridiculous stuff to see if the game will allow it). Even though the game is single-player, it worked really well as a communal experience and was a ton of fun for the whole room.

Any other recommendations for games like this we can try?

Note: we've already played Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
Target Hardware: Oculus Quest 1

I am considering the purchase of a Garmin GPS watch, but I don't want to run the bloated Garmin Connect app on my phone. Really all I want, is the ability to pull coordinates from my watch (.gpx files) and put them on my phone or computer. Does a privacy-respecting app like this exist?

I recently began thinking about how plants get their shape and discovered "morphogenesis" after some inept googling. It seems like a fascinating subject so I'd like to learn a bit more. I have some A-level university courses in chemistry and microbiology, but never dug too deep. So I am looking for suggestions on what to read up on in order to gain some understanding of how plants and other organisms get their shape. The ultimate goal is of course to plant my own house.

Hi all,

Yesterday I got the good news from my work that my remote work assignment is now permanent and I am free to live and work anywhere in the US. I get to keep my salary so really any place is on the table for me and I wanted to get some feedback and advice from those who live or have lived across the US.

While I would personally be content moving to the middle of nowhere, my partner has been aching to get out of the suburbs of the Bay area and be around more people and things to do that wouldn't require her to drive places. Personally, I'm looking to take my rent price down to a maximum of ~$2100 per month for a 2 bedroom that will give us enough space to each do our remote work. Some places that I have been looking at are:

• San Diego, CA - not so affordable but has great dog beaches and vibrant downtown
• Chattanooga, TN - affordable but small for my partner and lacks the restaurant variety we have grown accustomed to in CA. Knoxville, TN may be a runner up.
• Kansas City, MO - I have nephews that I have neglected being a part of their life and this would put me within 30 minutes of being close to them. Apartments are dirt cheap in downtown.
• Richmond, VA - closer to my parents but haven't looked too into this. I grew up on the complete other side of VA but am willing to come back to the state .
• Chicago, IL - this place is massive and I have no idea what are the best places in the city to live vs. what to avoid. I have always heard Chicago is underrated and I'm not opposed to the cold. I like that they have tons to do but it isn't really close to family as I would like to be.

Anyways, I'm open to hearing about some underrated places and putting some time into researching them. Walkability and things to do are critical in selling the city to my partner who really doesn't want to drive to do anything.

I want to offset my carbon footprint, but I'm not sure what company (if any) is really making effective changes. Bill Gates says he pays $400/ton of CO2 he offsets - but the companies I've seen imply I can make my entire footprint of around 30 tons per year disappear for $150. That doesn't really line up. And with this being a product that isn't tangible I worry about the likelihood of being taken advantage of. How would I ever know if they're using my money in bad faith?

I've held off on buying any offsets so far because of these concerns.

I started tracking down commentary tracks for The Sopranos. Has anybody gone through them? If so, are they worth it? I try to do commentary tracks for everything I watch, but sometimes they're lame 'oh, I love this actor' 'this day was fun <no story or context>'

I'm mostly interested in backstory, technical details, etc.

A cursory search found only comedic, light-hearted, fantastical options.

I want something set in the late Pleistocene or early Holocene, roughly 50,000-8,000 years BCE. At least somewhat (pre-)historically accurate (no dinosaurs or wizards, only 2001-esque aliens, at most), incorporating at least the basics of what we now know of that era.

Either a single character or a small group (I'm envisioning something like Skyrim, or a Baldur's Gate style, or some kind of community-planner, like RimWorld or Dwarf Fortress).

Alternately, if anyone still remembers the The Clan of the Cave Bear (novel or movie), I want that, in game form.

Bonus points if it runs on Linux w/o Wine.

Does anything like this exist, or should I just sit down and make it? Danke

I often re-read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow around Halloween time. If you haven't read the original (published in 1819), it's a really fun read, with great descriptions of (obviously somewhat fictionalized) life in a town on the banks of the Hudson River in 1790.

What other short stories or books would you recommend for the Halloween season?

And no, I'm not talking about git. I'm looking for a tool that I can use in scripts to automate non-git tasks on GitHub such as creating new repositories, drafting releases, uploading assets to a release, etc.

I started dipping my toes into gh, GitHub's official cli tool, but when I created a repository it immediately cloned it, which is not what I want. I know I can just rm -rf the repo but ideally the tool I use would do only what I tell it and nothing more.

Reading the docs for hub, it might do what I want, although I have some reservations about the project after reading this post written by the developer: https://mislav.net/2020/01/github-cli/

I've also come across git-hub, which doesn't support creating repos AFAICT, and git-spindle, which doesn't support uploading assets.

Are there any other command line GitHub clients I should consider?

Which one do you use? What's your experience with it been like?

For all its flaws, Reddit is still a great news source, especially for niche areas. Unfortunately, more and more dark patterns are being added to Reddit's official site and apps. I'm reaching a saturation point and thinking I should probably switch to an alternative way of browsing it. I see a lot of apps aimed at browsing images/GIFs. I'd like something more similar to old/compact Reddit, optimized for text without distractions, but ideally less buggy. Any recommendations?

Edit: thanks all for your answers!

In about 20 days I'll be taking a cruise and will effectively have no internet access. It's going to be a long trip with many sea days, so I'm looking for something that I can pick up on moments when I just want a bit more stimulation. The last time I took a trip like this I ended up playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

I do have a preference for action-based titles since they tend to be easy to pick up and stop, but I also like games that require a bit of thought.

I was considering subscribing to Apple Arcade again since it would let me access a number of games I would enjoy, but I'm not sure how often it would need to contact Apple to confirm the status of my subscription. Data will be extremely expensive on this trip, especially when out at sea.

I’m trying to find movies where Rock and Roll is a character, not movies about the music.

Examples I can think of include:

Heavy Metal
Xanadu
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Rock and Rule

Maybe
Streets of Fire
The Hunger
Grease (technically a musical i guess)
Guardians of the Galaxy

I'm interested in reading some books with good plot twists and would love some recommendations.

BUT WAIT THERE'S A TWIST

Knowing that a twist is coming can inhibit its effectiveness, so I also want some recommendations in this thread that do not have twists. This means that I or anyone else consulting this thread for recommendations won't necessarily know if the given book we've chosen has a twist or not, which helps keep us on our toes.

I'm a software developer working with a small team, and our Google Drive folder tree of UI assets/illustrations/app icons/etc. is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with. Aside from proper versioning, symlinks would be a major plus. Both are kinda-sorta possible with GDrive, but not in a reliable way.

I'm happy to take on a reasonable amount of management myself, although the easier it is for the designers themselves to work with the software, the better. Paid solutions are fine, although open source would be preferable (even as a hosted service) to avoid vendor lock-in down the line.

My instinct is to go with git/GitHub on the basis that we're already deeply familiar with it from the dev side, the GitHub desktop app isn't too onerous for non-techies, and we're already paying for it. That said, I'd be very interested in anyone's real-world experience of git for multiple gigs of 10-200MB binary files. I've heard that it's not especially well suited, although that might be out of date knowledge?

Beyond that, I'm open to almost anything. I'm kind of surprised that I haven't been able to find a single "gold standard" piece of software here, in the way that git is for developers, but maybe I haven't been searching well enough? Any pointers in the right direction or stories of what has/hasn't worked for your teams would be a huge help!

I picked up 20 NFC tags (link) and they seem to be alright with iOS after I (re?)format them to NDEF.

Anyway, I have a few things setup:

• tap to play music in the dining room over a Google Home speaker
• tap to turn off some lights and prep for bed etc
• tap to change some Hue scenes

... and that's about it. I don't have trouble waking up to an alarm, so I don't need to go down that route. Anyone have any fun things you're doing with tags?

So I recently started working at a company that uses Slack (free tier), Google Drive and Google Docs. Being a privacy conscious person I decided to do some research to see if we could transition out of at least 1 of these tools.

For Slack I thought about Element. However I have a question: is it possible to create a closed channel (meaning no unauthorized person has access to or can discover the company chat) on Element with only the free tier (it's easier to convince my boss to transition if it doesn't add to the cost structure)?

For Google Drive I don't think there are other free options that offer the 15GB of storage we have. 10GB would probably be enough. But I am also open to paid solutions.
I found out about CryptPad. They offer cloud storage but one has to pay to be at the same level of Google (which is totally understandable). They also have productivity tools integrated with the storage solution which is great.
Maybe there is some cloud storage solution that doesn't have integrated productivity tools and offers more storage. I would like to know.

I'm open to suggestions and thoughts. My functions at the company have little to do with all this, I am just interested in open source and privacy. EDIT: I am not interested in self-hosting.

I bought a dozen duck eggs from the farmers market this week, hoping to add some pizazz to any dishes with egg this week. Was wondering if anyone had recommendations for dishes where duck eggs really shine or take it up a notch? Scrambled eggs will be on the menu this weekend. I have heard baking with these eggs is recommended as they have more yolk and are richer.

So the garden plot has succeeded beyond my wildest expectations, and I can't give away enough tomatoes, tomatillos, and hot peppers.

I'm averse to the risks and expense of home canning, but otherwise open to suggestions. There's a wide variety of heirloom cherry (if you can get seeds for "Brad's Atomic Grape", they taste amazing), Roma, and beefsteak types.

Tomatillos are getting roasted and made into salsa verde for freezing.

I'm going to make freezer salsa rojo, but any other suggestions or favorite recipes are welcome. [I do have a dehydrator, but that seems like cheating.]