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    1. How would you feel about a PC building/tech deals group?

      Yeah that's the question. I was thinking of the possibility of posting deals here. But it might just eat up the other tech content here. That's not my goal, but I'd like to start a PC...

      Yeah that's the question. I was thinking of the possibility of posting deals here. But it might just eat up the other tech content here. That's not my goal, but I'd like to start a PC building\support\tech deals tilde.

      22 votes
    2. Help with converting PDF to Excel and back to PDF?

      I may be asking a dumb question or going about this wrong but I'm not sure what to do here. So right now, I receive an estimation from one company in a PDF. It has a bunch of fields such as...

      I may be asking a dumb question or going about this wrong but I'm not sure what to do here.

      So right now, I receive an estimation from one company in a PDF. It has a bunch of fields such as customer name, product, address, etc. Then I type that data and put it into Excel, where I add additional data that I have. From there I have a second PDF which has form fields that I fill with the data of the Excel spreadsheet.

      My problem is with the first PDF that I get from this other company, unless I am doing something wrong I am unable to get that first PDF to show the data as fields. If I convert the first PDF into an Excel then the table data is very messy.

      The amount of typing or copy and paste that it's not hard but it is time consuming. What is the best way for me to go about doing this? I've been Googling things but I'm not sure the right words of action I'm looking for.

      I hope this all makes sense, but if not please ask questions and I'll do my best to try and clarify further.

      12 votes
    3. Have you ever had your phone number spoofed?

      This is currently going on with me. Someone has spoofed my home phone number, and has been using it to call other people. Whenever the other person misses the spoofer's call they end up calling...

      This is currently going on with me. Someone has spoofed my home phone number, and has been using it to call other people. Whenever the other person misses the spoofer's call they end up calling me. I have answered quite the handful of calls from this. It has been happening since Wednesday, and it has gotten often enough that I have been carrying around a wireless phone in my pocket. I did end up reporting it to the fcc, but that hasn't done anything yet.

      Anyway this gets me wondering, have you ever had your phone number spoofed? If so, how did you deal with it?

      23 votes
    4. Calling all analog photographers and cinematographers of Tildes

      As a hobbyist, I do digital and film photography, but I tend towards film unless the situation calls for it (like doing motorsports photography, for example). I'm curious how many of this smaller...

      As a hobbyist, I do digital and film photography, but I tend towards film unless the situation calls for it (like doing motorsports photography, for example).

      I'm curious how many of this smaller community shoot film, and what everyone's relationship with film is. Do you shoot casually? Professionally? Part of this post is trying to gauge how much interest there could be in the occasional discussion of analog photography subjects. Would love to hear anything you have to say on the subject, be it film itself, gear (liking or collecting gear is not a bad thing!), or the process of shooting on analog formats.

      If anyone is in the CA Bay Area there is a film group (organized through the Meetup app) that does semi-regular meets that we'd love to have more participants in.

      Feel free to drop a link to wherever you post your work, if you do. I've really been enjoying posting on Glass for the last 6 months. It's paid but sure as hell beats Instagram, in my opinion.

      26 votes
    5. Suggestions for a road trip playlist

      I am going on a road trip with my family, including two young kids. I want to build a massive playlist for this, as we will be in the car for probably 30 hours round trip. I’m looking to branch...

      I am going on a road trip with my family, including two young kids. I want to build a massive playlist for this, as we will be in the car for probably 30 hours round trip. I’m looking to branch out and add some stuff that I haven’t heard of before, but also I want to keep it PG (no swearing, sex, drugs, etc.)

      Open to all genres and styles.

      11 votes
    6. Any people who do not consider themselves part of the "community"?

      I would probably be considered asexual, but I've never really tied too much if my identity to it or anything. The reason being that I find myself a little put off by the political nature of social...

      I would probably be considered asexual, but I've never really tied too much if my identity to it or anything.

      The reason being that I find myself a little put off by the political nature of social advocacy. I'm non straight and non white and non neurotypical, but never in the "popular" kind if way. I'm not BIPOC or LGBTQ or whatever the hip neurological problem to have is.

      I'm wondering if anyone else has this kind of perspective. I realize asking this in an LGBT forum is probably not likely to reach people that feel alienated from identifying with the LGBT community, but I'm just seeing if there's other lurkers like me on.

      22 votes
    7. What are your favorite Postgres features?

      You could use any SQL database to create a few tables, insert some data, and do queries, while ignoring anything vendor-specific. But Postgres has a lot of other features and many extensions. What...

      You could use any SQL database to create a few tables, insert some data, and do queries, while ignoring anything vendor-specific. But Postgres has a lot of other features and many extensions. What do you recommend checking out beyond the basics?

      I've used a lot of databases, but it's been many years, so I assume things have changed quite a bit. I skimmed a few PostgreSQL release notes and learned that there's now a MERGE statement that looks pretty handy. (It's standard SQL.) And from Neon's list of supported extensions, the plv8 extension caught my eye. It would let me write stored procedures in JavaScript. Does anyone use that? Do you use stored procedures at all?

      I wonder what Tildes uses?

      (To keep discussion organized, please write about one feature per top-level comment.)

      17 votes
    8. What have you been listening to this week?

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as...

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

      Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

      You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

      http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

      Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

      24 votes
    9. Best word processor for Ubuntu?

      Hey folks, looking for recommendations. What's your go to word processor on Ubuntu? (EDIT: For regular writing, not a text editor for coding.) I haven't been the biggest fan of Libre office tbh...

      Hey folks, looking for recommendations. What's your go to word processor on Ubuntu? (EDIT: For regular writing, not a text editor for coding.) I haven't been the biggest fan of Libre office tbh (please don't hate me...) There were just several bugs in Writer that made it unusable for me. I'm curious about alternatives. I read that WPS office is on ubuntu, but I've always found it to run kind of slow (however, my experience was on Windows.).

      I don't need a lot of fancy utilities, but would enjoy something a little more beautiful than notepad++ :) My biggest concern is just that it's a stable software. I'm OK with glitches or UI bugs, just nothing that's going to crash and burn and corrupt my work. (I mention this because there are several newer word processors made by single developers, and I'm a little weary to use them because I don't genuinely know how stable the software is.) I'm also not a fan of software that saves in some special format where you rely on that software to open it (or have to go through hoops to convert it.)

      Any recommends?

      EDIT: I'm new to Ubuntu, in case it makes a difference.

      31 votes
    10. Thoughts on the Proton app suite on Apple products?

      I am curious to see what other peoples experience has been with all of their apps? I made the decision to switch to proton for mail, drive, calendar and vpn 7 months ago. I wanted to get away from...

      I am curious to see what other peoples experience has been with all of their apps?

      I made the decision to switch to proton for mail, drive, calendar and vpn 7 months ago. I wanted to get away from having all my stuff tied to apple/google/microsoft. While it has been pretty solid for the most part, especially with android. The same cannot be said for their iOS/iPadOS apps at all. This will be my personal observation from my experience with iOS/iPadOS apps.

      Mail - Pretty solid all around experience, timely notifications on incoming mail. I have 4 email addresses setup based on the type of account I used for them. I only get bothered by the emails that I would need to see and the rest get checked around once a day. Recently the whole app on both iPad and iPhone has just slowed down so much. Opening the app is frustratingly slow, while everything loads in. I will get a new email and click on the notification and the app will sometimes load the last email I viewed and not the one from the notification. I have cleared the cache and signed out and then back in and it still has this behavior.

      Drive - This one is the biggest pain point for me. On iPhone the app crashes when you try to watch a video in landscape mode. This is a pretty basic feature in 2023 if you ask me. I did report the bug, to which they said they are aware and have no timeline for when it will be fixed. The next biggest issue with drive on iOS/iPadOS is that you can only upload 1 file at a time. If you do multiple files if not all, almost all of them will fail to upload. You have to do it 1 file at a time. Reported this and was told the same thing I was about the landscape mode. Seems odd to not want to fix a core function of a cloud storage app as soon as possible.

      VPN - I really enjoy this vpn and have paid for just the vpn in past. Now it constantly disconnects or gets stuck in connecting. I can’t use quick connect unless I manually pick a country connect then disconnect. After that I can use quick connect with out any issues. This happens without having secure core toggle on. This is happening on both my iPad and iPhone. Waiting on them to actually help trouble shoot this after sending them a bug report.

      Calendar - Is the most useless app they have every put out. I was so excited to finally dial this calendar app in when I got my iPad. Only to find out that they don’t have an iPad version of their calendar. Which makes no sense because that is an app that can really shine on an iPad when do well. This whole app just feels like an after thought and they only have it just to say we have a calendar app too.

      I feel that compared to when I started using all of their apps back in December. The quality and stability of the apps has really taken a hit. I understand that they probably have a focus on building their brand with an app suite based on privacy. I feel like the quality is really taking a hit especially with iOS/iPadOS versions of the apps. The obvious answer is to just switch back to android and save myself the headache of apple. The reason for apple is a whole post in its own and I want to keep this one on topic.

      For clarification, I have been using the iOS versions since December. I was switching between pixel 7 pro and 14 pro max every few weeks. Having an eco system of apps not based on either platform was also why I chose proton everything.

      11 votes
    11. What wiring decisions do you wish you made when building a house?

      I’m building a house and will have ample opportunity to walk with the builder to specify outlets, cat 6, and coax runs and locations. What sorts of little things do you wish you had done in your...

      I’m building a house and will have ample opportunity to walk with the builder to specify outlets, cat 6, and coax runs and locations. What sorts of little things do you wish you had done in your house or would be useful?

      I plan to run cat 6 from mostly every room (some in multiple locations) to the office where my servers will be. I will also be running a few runs of cat 6 out to the shop for future connectivity out there. Anything else that might be useful?

      36 votes
    12. Introductions | June 2023, part 2

      The previous introductions thread was only a few days ago, but it's getting pretty long and we expect more people. So here's another one! This is a place for new users to post an introduction with...

      The previous introductions thread was only a few days ago, but it's getting pretty long and we expect more people. So here's another one!

      This is a place for new users to post an introduction with a few fun facts about themselves. You will find the post box at the bottom the page. Maybe say hi to someone else you see while scrolling down?

      If you like, you can also write something about yourself in your profile. See "Edit your user bio" on the settings page. Anyone who clicks on your username will see it in your profile. (It appears on the right side of the page.)

      You can find out more about how to use Tildes in this topic: New users: Ask your questions about Tildes here!

      120 votes
    13. Reddit technical issues seem to be leading to comments still being visible on the site that users assumed were deleted

      Edit: This might be a caching issue - Tildes mods have edited this post's title accordingly. Anyway, this issue is concerning, as many people deleted their comments and accounts. Now the accounts...

      Edit:

      This might be a caching issue - Tildes mods have edited this post's title accordingly.

      Anyway, this issue is concerning, as many people deleted their comments and accounts. Now the accounts are gone but the comments are back. Intentional or not, Reddit should fix this asap and communicate. This isn't acceptable.

      Edit 2, 16 days after the original post:

      For the 4th or 5th time, comments are popping back. Most of them in their original form, very few (2 out of 25) still edited as "[deleted]"

      Original post:

      (I know, more reddit stuff, sorry)

      On June 16, four days after the beginning of the current Reddit protests, some users were reporting that their deleted comments were getting restored:

      There were doubts if this was intentional or a bug caused by the blackout, or some rollbacks. Hanlon's razor, etc.

      I then personally mass-edited my comments to "[removed]" two days ago, and lo & behold, they're getting edited back. And from what I've seen, there's definitely a pattern:

      • All restored comments are at least 8-12 months old, so several pages deep in the comments history
      • 90% of them are about programming, a few of them on my country's subreddit.
        • (More than half of my comments are on gaming subreddits, they're still edited as "[removed]")
      • The vast majority of them have responses
        • (Though most of my comments also have responses)
      • They're edited back in "small waves". 15-20 this morning, 4 this evening (so far).

      I'm now editing them back twice, hoping that Reddit only keeps the previous version of a comment.

      I find Reddit's behavior to be absolutely shameful. I've been on internet forums for nearly 25 years, and I've never seen a site unilaterally and silently decide to un-delete or (un-)edit comments. Never.

      It feels like a golden rule of internet has been broken, and I'm surprised to not see more talks about it.

      94 votes
    14. Which apps do you use for your mental health and wellbeing, if any?

      I have lost my r/finch community, and am feeling curious to see if there are any folks here who also find apps can be helpful for their mental health. I struggle with anxiety and am processing a...

      I have lost my r/finch community, and am feeling curious to see if there are any folks here who also find apps can be helpful for their mental health.

      I struggle with anxiety and am processing a lot of grief, and may or may not have ADHD (I am in the process of getting tested, but it takes a while). My experiences with therapy are a bit mixed, so I am currently going down the route of trying to DIY my wellness a little. Starting simple with things like, sleep more, try to focus on drinking enough, go out in nature, switching off podcasts and phones and reading more. It's actually helped me, bit by bit.

      One of my 'tools' is an app called finch, a virtual pet that encourages you to set goals, check in how you are feeling, journal, do mindful breathing and such. I tried many things and this app is the one that stuck and actually works.

      Just wanted to ask, do any others here use wellness apps? And have they worked for you? Which do you recommend?

      Just to be clear, I mean apps that work as a stand alone solution, rather than apps like 'better help' which ultimately just connect you to a therapist. Although Better Help has its uses too!

      30 votes
    15. Any modded Minecraft players around here?

      I personally cannot stand playing vanilla minecraft anymore and always play modded, recently ive been playing through Create: Astral and its so much fun. I love the steampunk factories of create...

      I personally cannot stand playing vanilla minecraft anymore and always play modded, recently ive been playing through Create: Astral and its so much fun. I love the steampunk factories of create and even though im terrible at automating its still so much fun to just mess around. I was wondering if anybody else has any other favorite modpacks they've been playing recently.

      31 votes
    16. Purchase a Chromebook or "regular" laptop?

      I'm looking to buy a new device and have started to look at chromebooks to see if it would be a suitable option. My use cases are pretty mundane: Online banking and other similar services Emailing...

      I'm looking to buy a new device and have started to look at chromebooks to see if it would be a suitable option. My use cases are pretty mundane:

      • Online banking and other similar services
      • Emailing
      • As a tool for GMing RPG campaigns (probably managed through some online service)
      • Stream video while traveling (eg Netflix, YouTube)
      • Note taking & drawing (possibly with a stylus)
      • Occasionally ssh to remote machines

      Arguably the heaviest of these would be streaming, but I guess most devices can handle that decently. Since I won't be doing any gaming or heavy dev work (on the actual machine) I figured I don't really have very high hardware requirements. As such perhaps a chromebook would be a good option. There are some downsides, mainly for me that it is heavily tied to the Google ecosystem. Can chromebooks be easily jailbroken and run a lightweight window manager on Linux? If so does the device retain its battery life okish? Could I still use a stylus with the device? Would I be better off buying a cheap laptop and install linux on that?

      Finally I've read that Google cancled their Pixelbook 2 last year. Has there been any updates or rumors of it coming back (I tend to like Google's hardware)?

      24 votes
    17. What is your favorite “so bad it’s good” movie?

      We all have that one special movie that makes other people raise their eyebrows. Maybe it’s a movie they just don’t get, maybe it’s super campy, or maybe it really is bad but it still owns some...

      We all have that one special movie that makes other people raise their eyebrows. Maybe it’s a movie they just don’t get, maybe it’s super campy, or maybe it really is bad but it still owns some real estate in your heart for your own reasons.

      Mine is the obscure ‘Saturday the 14th Strikes Back’. It truly is awful. It has nothing to do with its horror parody prequel, the acting is uneven, the story is unmoored - but it’s zany. Lots of unexpected absurdities. I won’t force this movie on anyone, but it was a regular comfort rental for me back in the day.

      So, what’s yours?

      47 votes
    18. VR headsets, what do I need to know?

      I had last year my first and only experience with VR, at home with a friend. I dont even remember what the product was, but the experience was just amazing. Ever since I wanted to get a Headset...

      I had last year my first and only experience with VR, at home with a friend. I dont even remember what the product was, but the experience was just amazing. Ever since I wanted to get a Headset myself, but now I don't even where to start.
      What do I need to know to make a good decision, as these products are quite expensive?
      What should I look for? What are important details?

      I want mainly to play some games. That one day we just played beat saber and superhot.
      What other experiences are worth exploring?
      I have an ok linux (gaming) pc, it was beefy once, but it got quite some years now :-)
      I saw there are standalone products as well?

      32 votes