Hey everyone,

It’s my first post here so my apologies if I mess something up.

Recently I’ve been refreshing my YouTube homepage constantly because I feel like it’s either:
A.) Suggesting me things I’ve already seen before
B.) Suggesting me things I have no interest in

So I’m going to go straight to the source and find some good YouTuber Channels I may have not heard of.

I primarily enjoy gaming critiques, history topics & natural disaster docs (kind of random I know), videos detailing scammers (SBF, Elizabeth Holmes, etc) but I don’t limit myself to these, I’m pretty much open to anything as long as it’s entertaining and/or informative… preferably both.

YouTubers I currently watch:

• NeverKnowsBest
• LiamTriforce
• Knowing Better
• Internet Historian
• Ordinary Things
• RennsReviews
• Scott The Woz
• SAWS
• ADoseOfBuckley
• DAngelo Wallace

Any recommendations are seriously appreciated. I don’t limit myself to a specific genre, but longer form content is definitely preferable.

There have been recent posts that reflect in-depth knowledge and significant effort to provide comprehensive information on a topic (examples here and here).

Yes, it's possible to bookmark these posts for individual reference. However, Tildes doesn't have a pinning feature given the current very loose organization of subjects/interest communities.

In that absence, I'd like to suggest a globally used ".wiki" sub-tag appended to topics, to narrow search results to highly informative entries on a subject.

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

I'd go ahead and add the .wiki sub-tag to a couple of entries myself, but I've lost tagging privileges after a long stretch of inactivity. Please consider that I'm interested in volunteering again.

Have you been visiting just too many different social media platforms lately, checking them out to see what the deal is? Well, same here. It feels like I've been a guest every night in different houses for the past month and I must say: I am exhausted.

But it's not over, far from it.

And I'm here to give you a heads up: we've witnessed platforms dying in the past, I'm guessing most of us have been a part of some sort of digital exodus before but I have a feeling that this one is going to be more painful.

Mainly because we've created so much data over the years and the majority of it got collected by centralised platforms. There are very few ways to take it with us and move elsewhere, it's all locked in.

Backing up your data now would also be a good idea, before some CEO comes with up the plan that it should be a paid feature.

I just want to say that this is all to be expected because the social web is in a transition period, and that golden bookmark doesn't exist yet. However, I think there are some contenders for it. What I want to ask is: where will you go next?

I've got some ideas, feel free to add your preference if I'm missing anything.

• Threads: Meta's Twitter clone that will be out some time this summer. It will be a federated (ActivityPub-enabled) platform.
• Bluesky: Jack Dorsey-backed Twitter clone. This one is also federated but it uses AT Protocol.
• Mastodon: The Twitter clone. It's got a fairly large userbase now, with lots of instances to choose from.
• Blog: Maybe it's not a bad idea to set up shop on a platform like Micro.blog (which is ActivityPub-enabled and has got community features built-in) and lead a quiet digital life.
• Threadiverse: Reddit-alikes.

I see we can filter by topic tags (https://tildes.net/settings/filters), and that's nice.

What I'd also like to be able to do is filter out by site:somedomain.com.

I went to look at the tildes source code, but, in my brief visit, it didn't strike me as something I could quickly cobble a pull request together for.

The main thing I want this for is to filter out YouTube. Nothing wrong with other people liking Tildes recommendation of YT videos, but I come to Tildes for things to read, not things to watch.

This is a general ask for those that successfully made pivots in their overall careers. What was your experience like? Why did you make it? Did you feel like when you made the pivot you were starting from the bottom? or did you gradually change roles within a single company to ease yourself into the transition?

I'm currently trying to make a change of career (hence the question). My goal is to pivot out of a market research role into a software engineer focused role. Worry constantly creeps in about feasibility. I make good money in the role I'm in so could I take a possible hit to my salary if I had to start in a junior role? I turn 29 this year, and part of me worries if I'm too far down the path to make such a big change. Now, I've tempered some of the fear as I know I could apply my knowledge of research to create tools I've seen the industry in need of. I've dabbled in common languages like HTML, CSS, Lua, JS, Python, and R during my time in research.

Now, I think I've compiled the 3 hardest questions regarding my specific apprehension of moving into software development:

1. Is there like a collectively agreed all-around language that everyone should start with?
2. Is there a formal way to learn a coding language?
3. Even with such little experience, could I still build a solid career in the field?

I don't expect anyone to answer those last three if they don't want to, but I'd love to hear about any and all experiences with career pivots.

Inspired by an old topic from 2021 on here: https://tild.es/uti
How do you think?
Have you ever thought about how you think?

Do you have a voice in your head? Is it your own voice? Do you think in visuals? How strong are the visuals?

Let's have a conversation about it. We all think differently!

As an exercise, if I asked you to sit down and solve a cross word in silence, how would you think it through?

Edit: thanks for all the very interesting and very insightful replies! I've been reading them today and I really appreciate everyone's input.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

I'm going to set up my first home server with an Intel NUC, but I can't decide what OS to use. Ubuntu seems popular but I like Pop!_OS and am not sure if that would be a good option. Then there's TrueNas and Unraid, but as a newbie, what's the best choice?

I'm also just curious what everyone else is using :)

Edit: Thank you for your great responses!

I have the following on my fonts.conf

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <alias>
    <family>system-ui</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>FreeSans</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>

But when websites use font-family: system-ui firefox just ignores this and uses Cantarell anyway, which I don't even know where it is getting it from. (Not Firefox font preferences).

Any idea how to make firefox respect my fonts.conf?

This is Linux with i3.

I know the topic is very generic, but post any resources that helped you to learn making music, be it learning playing instruments or mixing.

For me, justinguitar.com helped in learning guitar from scratch. Lessons are spread out pretty well to not make very big jumps in complexity, and I love Justin's presenting.

Lately, I've been working on a game in Godot. I've having a lot of fun, but I keep stressing out about my codebase becoming bad. I'm worrying about amassing technical debt, and having to rewrite huge amounts of code because of bad practices.

I've been reading best practices documentation for Godot, and learning about game programming patterns, but it's still a worry for me.

I'm wondering if this is a normal feeling, and how more experienced developers manage it.

I was typing a comment in a gaming thread and I wanted to say something that may have been a spoiler. As I was looking through the formatting doc, I noticed it had a ton of different things you could do, but I couldn’t find a way to hide something behind a spoiler—I was wondering if there was a way to add a “spoiler” text feature.

Essentially this , but block out the word or phrase (I just wanted a reason to use one of the formatting options, honestly).

Thanks!

Hello everyone,

I have been craving a sort of game genre, but I'm not quite sure what it is or if it really exists as a genre at all.
It is a game with a lot of existential twists to it. I could call it Mystery though I feel it falls short.
The main story tends to be a complete upheaval of what we thought was the basic premise. Think of it like paradigm shift: the game.
They also tend to be games that you can really only play once. Lucky for me my memory is horrible.

So far I came up with these games:

• Outer Wilds
• Enderal (which is a "total conversion mod for Skyrim", but an amazing game)
• The Forgotten City
• Paradise Killer

Most of these have some kind of cycle involved in them, but I'm not sure if that's coincidental. All of them have you learn how the world works and it's never really what you first expected.
They tend to be light in battle, which is probably a skill issue bias on my part.

Honorary mention to:

• Strange Horticulture
• Horizon Zero Dawn, but the sequel less so (although still a very good game)
• The Zero Escape series, although I haven't played the first one yet
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (as it really breaks away expectations you got from earlier games too, and the existential dread is dripping off it)
• Nier Automata
• Doki Doki Literature Club

Do you know any others? Or do you know a good match to this list?
What do you think kind of links all this? Feel like playing one of these games?

I've been a computer scientist in the field of AI for almost 15 years. Much of my time has been devoted to classical AI; things like planning, reasoning, clustering, induction, logic, etc. This has included (but had rarely been my focus) machine learning tasks (lots of Case-Based Reasoning). For whatever reason though, the deep learning trend never really interested me until recently. It really just felt like they were claiming huge AI advancements when all they really found was an impressive way to store learned data (I know this is an understatement).

Over time my opinion on that has changed slightly, and I have been blown away with the boom that is happening with transformers (GPTs specifically) and large language models. Open source projects are creating models comparable to OpenAIs behemoths with far less training and parameters which is making me take another look into GPTs.

What I find surprising though is that they seem to have only experimented with language. As far as I understand the inputs/outputs, the language is tokenized into bytes before prediction anyway. Why does it seem like (or rather the community act like) the technology can only be used for LLMs?

For example, what about a planning domain? You can specify actions in a domain in such a manner that tokenization would be trivial, and have far fewer tokens then raw text. Similarly you could generate a near infinite amount of training data if you wanted via other planning algorithms or simulations. Is there some obvious flaw I'm not seeing? Other examples might include behavior and/or state prediction.

I'm not saying that out of the box a standard GPT architecture is a guaranteed success for plan learning/planning... But it seems like it should be viable and no one is trying?

Have you done pride events with or at your company? Mine is going to be in the parade and I can walk with them. CFO is gay and they have been very helpful with my transition so I don't feel like they are faking it.

For others, how has your workplace acted or have they done anything related?

I'm curious who has made it to ~music now that the influx has settled down a bit. What were your old musical haunts? Old blogs? Obscure youtube channels? Various music subreddits? /mu/? Tell us a bit about your musical tastes and take the time to drop a couple tracks in the favorite songs thread. Also, welcome to Tildes. :)

The Framework laptop is a completely modular, upgradeable laptop that comes pretty close to higher end laptops in terms of performance and "feel". For those of you who have/want a Framework laptop, what does your build look like?

I've got:

• 11th Gen Framework with Intel i5 (not the most powerful, but I wanted to get something quickly and relatively inexpensively)
• Dual booting Ubuntu and Fedora right now since they appear to have the best Linux compatibility and Framework community support
• Expansion ports: USB-C on the left and right so I can plug the charger in from a multitude of angles and directions! And I've got a grab bag of MicroSD, standard USB, etc. that can be switched out.
• I'll upgrade the system at some point -- unsure of whether I should stick with Intel or move to the new AMD board. I guess I'm not really sure of the benefits of doing so...

What OS are you using? What's your laptop build, and what plans do you have in the future? Have you had any major issues thus far?

This is a place to post your ideas about what to do about Tildes groups and tags. I'm going to write about some problems (as I see them) and save my ideas about solutions for the comments.

The taxonomy problem

We have tags and groups and they are somewhat arbitrary. A tag could be a group someday. A group can be downgraded to a tag if it's not used much.

Topics can have multiple tags, but they can be in only one group (and its ancestor groups).

It's hard to pick the right group. An example: a post about animals could go in ~enviro (for wildlife), ~hobbies (for pets), or ~science (for a scientific study). So where do you put news article about a scientific study of the effects of house cats on wildlife?

Adding ~animals seems like it would be a good thing because now you have an obvious place to find all the posts about animals. Animal lovers rejoice! But from a taxonomy point of view, it makes things worse, because now you have another place where you could logically put an article and another place to go looking for it. More groups means more edges and more edge cases. It's enough to make you wish for crossposts.

The competition problem

Tags are better for taxonomy, so why not just have tags? Because classifying topics isn't the only thing we want to do. As Deimos wrote about, eventually we'd like to have somewhat more independent communities, closer to subreddits but hopefully without their downsides. It would be nice if subreddits that wanted to migrate to Tildes could actually do it. We also want to have a good mix of topics on the front page, while allowing some groups to have a lot more posts than others.

I'll start with an analogy: if a school has only one sport that matters, the people who are good at that sport win socially, and other people don't have as much of a chance. But if you have multiple sports and clubs that people care about, there are more ways to win at something. I don't believe pretending everyone is a winner works all that well, but more ways to win promotes diversity and creates useful social ambiguity.

The front page of Tildes is the most visible and has limited space. That creates an all-against-all competition between topics. We also have groups with their own leaderboards, but they are lesser competitions and it's unclear if they matter yet. (I'm using them more, though.) Meanwhile, each topic has an independent leaderboard for its comments that doesn't conflict with any other game. (Maybe that's why I like megathreads?)

I haven't been thinking of Tildes in terms of leaderboards, but maybe it can explain why old-timers are often reluctant to post topics? We aren't really trying to win, but we have ideas about fair play. When there's only one game anyone cares about, we don't want to drown out other worthy topics by entering too many contestants. We're also a bit reluctant to enter anything that's too specialized into the competition, because it doesn't "deserve" the attention. It's not a worthy contestant and it's just gonna lose.

Also, sometimes this isn't a game you want to win. Entering a controversial topic into a competition can get you unwanted attention, and that's often no prize at all. When a game isn't one you wanted to enter, getting attention is more like losing than winning.

For the front page, I expect this problem will get worse with more people. Entering the competition brings more attention than before.

Note: thinking of a topic listing as a leaderboard for a game is only an analogy and I don't mean to promote competitiveness. They weren't designed to be leaderboards and I think we'd like to see design changes that reduce competitiveness. There are known downsides to competition that we don't want, like "cheating" to win with "unworthy" strategies and the rules-lawyering and jealousy that come with that.

Ideas?

Some rules for this "game": Please post one proposal per comment. If you have multiple independent ideas, you can post them separately, but post them together if they're interrelated.

If you were to set up someone with a brand new kitchen, what are the components that you would suggest to them for getting that 80% of functionality for 20% of the investment (Pareto Principle)? These are especially things that I would consider to be worth a healthy investment as a buy-once-have-it-forever situation. Some things that come to mind:

A cast-iron pan: high skillcap and can cook almost any type of food
Stainless Steel Stock Pot: cooks most things stovetop that the pan can't handle
Chef's Knife: A good quality, sharp knife makes all the difference in the kitchen
Mason Jars: Preserve food, bring them to bulk stores, drink water out of them... top-tier utility

Things that are on the fence in my mind:
desktop blender/immersion blender/food processor: I love all of these appliances, but how important are they? A food processor is maybe the highest utility & makes meal prep way easier. Also unlocks recipes like hummus and salsa.
a large cutting board: small cutting boards suck, but how high of a priority is upgrading it?

Let's have a discussion where you state your case for an individual appliance/tool (or argue one of these suggestions) and see what other people have to say!

Seeing that this is taking off a bit, I'm going to try compiling some of the response data here:

Level 0 - Starter Kit

• Stainless Steel Pan (+3)

• Aluminum Stock Pot (+3)

• Vegetable Peeler (+3)

• Plastic Cutting Board (+3)

• Spoons / Spatulas / Ladles (+3)

• Chef's Knife (+2)

• Paring Knife (+2)

• Serrated Knife (+1)

Level 1 - Booster Pack

• Weighing Scale (+4)
• Baking Trays (+2)

Level 1a - Cooking I

• Immersion Blender (+2)
• Box Grater (+2)
• Dutch Oven (+1)

Level 1b - Baking I

• 2L jug (+1)
• Measuring Cup (+2)
• Pain De Mie Tin (+2)
• Wire Rack (+1)

Level 2 - Intermediate

• Instant Read Thermometer (+1)

Level 2a - Cooking II

• Food Processor (+1)

Level 2b - Baking II

• Immersion Whisk (+2)

Level 3 - Advanced

• Cast Iron Pan
• Mason Jars
• Air Fryer

For the past week, I have been researching headphones/earbuds, buying them, and then cancelling the order immediately because I realized I was making a compromise on what I am wanting. Not a crazy amount of cancelled purchases, just maybe...three.

Anyways, I am in the market for the holy grail of headphones or earbuds that fits my needs but I am thinking I might have to buy multiple for the different scenarios that I am looking for. Which are:

• Preferably earbuds so I can take one out if I need to have an ear free for something.
• Great mic quality - I want to be able to use these for work call and when I go outside to walk. Really need something that handles wind and background noise pretty well that doesn't leave the other person on the phone annoyed talking to me. I don't want to walk around with a boom mic in front of face though.
• No preference on wired or wireless. If wired, I would like direct USB-C so I don't have to think about dongles or anything. I also read that mic quality degrades with Bluetooth? Not sure how accurate that is but the consensus I have read was that wired earbuds have better mics than Bluetooth. Wireless would be amazing if I knew that everything else worked well. I would take a short battery life to have top notch everything else.
• Decent sound quality for music. I already have a pair of aftershokz that I use for working out so I'm not stranger to compromised sound quality. But when I go out on walks I want to listen to language podcasts so I can hear clearly.
• Active noise cancelling - longshot but this would just be nice to have since I have gotten a taste for these with my Sony headphones.

I would be interested to hear your product recommendations or solutions to my wants. I have a feeling that the perfect product doesn't exist but at the bare minimum I would take something that sounds decent and has a good mic that handles outdoor sounds well. ANC and wireless are optional but would be very amazing to have.

I would be using these with a Samsung S22.

I’m training for a 10K race in September. The app I’m using this time includes tempo runs - I’ve never done one before! When I looked it up the speed advice was pretty vague (hard but controlled) or dependent on your race time (85-90% of your 5k race speed). I find both of these pretty confusing! I recently did a 7km race at an average speed of 6.20/km and did the jogging portion of this run at about that speed (I wasn’t trying to run fast in my 7km, only to finish!); I did the tempo portion of my run at about 5.45/km, but I found it pretty tough and also found it hard to maintain a speed without constantly checking my watch.

Any tips here?