I'm finally ready to sacrifice my self esteem and faith in humanity at the altar of dating apps. My question for those of you with more experience with them is this - do different apps attract noticeably different pools of users? What have you noticed comparing the populations on different apps? Which wound up working best for you, if any of them did?

Any that had particular features that bothered you? I've been using Hinge for like a day and already discovered they have a separate queue for your best matches that they demand a premium currency to message :/

Personally I'm none too keen on this new action focus that SquareEnix has taken the series but many people like it.

What really has me second guessing myself are the graphics. They seem not necessarily bad but dated and/or lower budget than I expect from a main series release. Their character models still suffer from lack of mocap especially facial details. The backgrounds are lackluster and the textures basic. Even during one of their much touted Epic Eikon battles they use a completely gray background?! I feel like my PS5 hardware is taking a nap while playing this game.

Edit: turns out that after adjusting settings on both the game and my TV everything looks much better. For some reason my usual game profile on my TV made everything look super washed out. Between that and the beginning of the game being pretty monotone for the first bit with the game look super washed out and without detail.

One of the main driving factors of the series have always been the progression tree. Historically unique awesome visual representations of the skills you can gain with varying paths to choose from. FF16 has a basic interface that essentially amounts to equippable skills with (so far) no exploratory elements whatsoever.

Lastly the main protagonist seems almost like a clone of final fantasy FFXV character. The clothes are similar, his backstory is similar, and his skills are similar.

I understand that I'm probably aging out of their target demographic and I'm especially curious on younger people's thoughts on it.

Edit: After about 30 hours and almost at the end of the game it has grown on me a bit. The combat while still super easy at least it is more fun with added Eikons. The side missions get a bit better towards the last third of the game and some of the hunts are pretty challenging. I'm still disappointed in the lack of RPG elements such as, skill trees, elemenal and status mechanics, and equipment variety but I've enjoyed the game and can at least appreciate the accessibility to a wider audience.

Living in northern Virginia, it seems like half of newly-constructed homes are earmarked for "active adult" 55 and up communities.

Is there a financial incentive above and beyond normal residential construction that these are popping up more?

It seems like a newer trend that's picked up in the last 5 or 10 years.

Edit 1: Thank you all for the input and sharing your perspective. It's just been a question hanging in the back of my mind as I've been driving around in recent months.

So like many others, I'm a refugee from the Rexxit, and the collaborative, positive enthusiasm here is infectious.

I've had an odd observation about my brief time here - when I think I can contribute to a thread, I find myself trying to step up my posting game - doing a bit of extra research, making sure I add links, and double checking my grammar (as best as I can!). I want my thoughts to have value or be meaningful here, moreso than anywhere I've contributed to in the past.

Do others feel the same way?

I have been (without paying attention) been reading more and more articles/op-eds etc from substack, usually linked from reddit or as of late, from here on Tildes. I decided to sign up and create an account for myself and found the list of suggested substacks to subscribe to fairly run-of-the-mill and not very enticing.

So, what are your favourite substacks? Which substacks raise topics new to you, challenge your perspectives, captures your attention for longer than intended?

While pondering an off-grid microcontroller project, I got to wondering: A light sensor can obviously detect day vs night. So it could be used as a very cheap way to set a device's clock - but how accurately? To within an hour? A few minutes? How would you do it?

Questions that arose from this include:

• Should it detect dawn/dusk (light <-> dark transition), or noon/midnight (brighest/darkest time) ?
• How do dawn/dusk times relate to clock time? Does it depend on lat/long?
• If using dawn/dusk, what light level threshold to use?
• The same threshold for dawn & dusk, or different ones?
• Better to detect a darker threshold (start of dawn, end of dusk) or a lighter one?
• Some days will be lighter/darker than others, so how to manage averaging of times?
• How accurate could it be made?

My naïve first stab at this would be: Pick a light threshold. Record the dawn/dusk times according to that threshold. Average them, call that "noon", and gradually tweak the clock time over several days to bring it into line with the sensed/calculated "noon" - but a searching for graphs of sunrise/sunset times quickly showed that the midpoint of sunrise & sunset is not noon.

Googling threw up lots of results for sensor lights combining a clock and a photocell, but I couldn't find anything about using the photocell to set the clock. So does anyone know if this has been tried before? Is it a non-starter for some reason?

Edit:

Perhaps it's worth sharing the project I had in mind, which is a rain alarm so I can rush out and get the washing in from the line when it starts to rain. I was thinking how annoying it would be if I left it switched on and it rained in the middle of the night and the alarm woke me up. So I decided should automatically avoid triggering during the sleeping hours of night (say 10pm to 8am). My first thought was a photocell so it wouldn't trigger when it's dark. Then I remembered that it gets light at 3am at the moment, which wouldn't work. So it needs a clock. How to set the clock:

• Manually - Needs a user interface with buttons and a display. Seems overkill just for a clock.
• Serial port - Clunky to plug a laptop in just to set the clock.
• WiFi - Needs a username and password or WPS, and an ESP32 or similar - again seems overkill just to get the time.
• GPS - also overkill and expensive.

(I'm not looking for simple lists of YouTube channels that you like.) _{even though I'm about to dump a list of channels that I like}

There's a lot of YouTube cooking content. I was wondering what you look for in that content, and what you want to avoid?

I don't have a particularly coherent answer - I like a mix of content.

I do like plain and simple information, or informative content that gives details about technique or science or why a thing is done the way it is. Examples of this would be America's Test Kitchen, or J. Kenji López-Alt or Helen Rennie, or French Cooking Academy.

I also like recipes that I can actually make. I prefer recipes that don't have a massive array of ingredients that I don't have. Examples are Brian Lagerstrom (I like the way he tends to use a limited amount of equipment and he gives alternatives for ingredients if he thinks some thing is going to be hard to get) Not another cooking show has some nice recipes (his grilled cheese and tomato soup is fantastic).

Some channels I watch have Michelin Starred chefs discussing a recipe. I like watching this because I can't replicate most of it, but I can get ideas for improving taste or texture. Italia Squisita has a lot of content, and some of their videos are comparing a traditional Italian recipe (and these are excellent) with an elevated restaurant version. The staff canteen is a bit frustrating - it's almost exactly what I want, but it ends up missing the mark a bit. But they talk to chefs, mostly in the UK, about being a chef or about a dish. La pâte de Dom is self-taught, but they have a high level of skill in pastry.

And here's a list of videos that I can't categorise, and why I like them.

The Biryani Expert (sadly, channel appears not to be making content any more) taught me that biryani covers a quite wide range of different dishes.

Sheldo's Kitchen He seems like a nice bloke, and his food looks really nice and achievable to make. Again, sadly, he doesn't seem to have made any videos for a while, and he was saying that he has a lot on. But he has a calm style and I liked his content.

Cool Daddy, YummyBoy and Street Foods TV expose me to a lot of food that I'm not used to. I can't recreate a lot of it (I don't have a camel I can cut up and cook but it gives me ideas for new ways to combine ingredients or new flavour profiles to try.

So, what do you look for in content?

(In this thread I avoided dunking on creators, because there's a few that I really don't enjoy but I don't think me yelling about them is good discussion. _{But I'd totally join in if someone created another thread}.

This is a good time to repeat the prompt made by @0d_billie back in 2020, and I will also reuse the questions in their post.

So are any tilderen martial artists? If so, tell me about it!

• What do you practice?
• How long have you done it?
• How does it benefit you?
• Do you attend classes or practice solo?
• Would you recommend your martial art to a beginner?

I'm curious to know what martial ars everyone likes the most, and why!

i've been climbing for a few years now, and am realising my mindset, patterns, etc need changing. on the other hand i want to continue to enjoy climbing as a hobby, and not treat it like a grueling workout/job/torture.

what do you do on the wall, off the wall, and outside of climbing itself (i.e. daily life) to help you improve?

Recently went to a Baskin Robbins, and I was surprised by how indecisive I was. I ended up going with a childhood favourite of mine (cotton candy), but it was far too sweet for me now. I'm curious, what are your favourite ice cream flavours? What interesting combinations have you tried? Any weird ice cream flavours you've tried before?

I've had the same secured credit card through my bank for years; I only use it for car rentals and when my debit card gets declined on international online purchases. It's very easy to maintain as there are no fees and I always pay off the balance within the week; however, there are also no rewards. I know that a lot of credit cards out there have cashback rewards, and it seems like kind of a waste not to take advantage of that. But there are so many different ones that it's horribly overwhelming for me to try to research which one(s) might be a good choice. Costco has one which would have probably been an easy choice if I were able to spend more money there, but as of currently I have very little space and only hold a membership for gas.

So, do any of you lovely folks have recommendations to give me a starting point for what to look into? What cards have you used and been happy with?

ETA: I am in the US!

Hi everyone - newly minted Tildes user and Reddit refugee.

I want to know how many of my fellow DIY amateur (or absolute pro) musicians are around, and where your recent jams are posted.

What kind of music do you like making - what's your workflow?

He says he wants the "man-machine" built with the likeness of Maria in order to "sow discord" amongst the workers. Maria is the one who is preaching a message of hope/faith and therefore keeping a revolution at bay. For how much longer, who knows. The point is, she is giving the workers hope and preventing violence.

Why would Johann want a version of Maria that encourages a revolution (death to the machines!)? It is in Johann's best interest if the workers stay succumbed, as his bourgeoisie lifestyle is dependent on their work.

(First post, sorry if the tags are bad.)

Hi! Growing up a boy, I was always too afraid to read Romance. I didn't want to get made fun of or give anyone clues about the way I felt about my gender and sexuality.

Besides the fact I identify as transfemme, I'm also much older and don't give a shit what anyone thinks now.

Can anyone recommend me a romance novel? I wanna add the genre to my reading. Fantasy/sci-fi splashed in would be cool but not required at all.

Please tell me your FAVORITE romance novel as opposed to the "classes" or "the best". I wanna know what you like. I think that will end up with more unique and specific vibes.

Ty xoxo

Recently NordVPN rolled out an update which forced users to use an encrypted username and password combination when connecting through OpenVPN. I haven't seen any posts on this here, and it took me way longer than I want to admit troubleshooting this issue because I knew my original credentials were correct.

If you use a gluetun container for routing any of other containers traffic, you might have recently noticed a 500 Internal Service Error in your Health Status and when you check your logs you will find a AUTH_FAILED message.

Solution below:

1. Go to NordVPN website and log in (using your normal credentials)
2. Under accounts, services, click NordVPN
3. Click "Set up NordVPN Manually" at the bottom of the page
4. You will receive an email verification code, using whatever email you have set up for your NordVPN services. Type this code into the popup window.
5. Copy your new encrypted credentials for your Open VPN client settings.

This is my first post, please add tags as required.

It seems like every game these days is just some idle clicker or some other lazy game that tries to peddle in app purchases.

Is there anything that actually is worth playing still, for someone that usually plays PC games?

For anyone that grows their own veg it's coming up to the zucchini/courgette glut season. To prepare can you give your best recipes? Anything will do salads, baking, frying, pickling... I'm willing to give anything a try so they don't go to waste.