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?

Please share why it's your favourite took, avoiding as many spoilers as you can.

Mine is Episode 45 of Darknet Diaries, Xbox Underground (and also Part 02).

It is about a group of hackers called the XBox Underground who infiltrated the networks of major video game companies. Their motives started out harmless, with members of the group enjoying playing early versions of games. However, things take a serious turn and there are many twists and turns as the story unfolds.

It's so good that I have listened to it every year since it first came out.

Fourth movie with a running time of 100 minutes or less is Marcel The Shell With Shoes On (90 minutes) from 2021

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Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.

The final movie for January is next Monday on the 29th with The Iron Giant

Hello Tildes,

I am currently taking DSA in college and struggling a lot with the math and algorithms. Recently had to solve Karatsuba questions and I don't even know what I wrote down on the paper. I have been trying to look for videos on this and only really came away with a vague understanding.

What I've noticed is that I struggle with solving the math part of the questions.

For example: "Describe a divide and conquer algorithm to compute the square
of an n-digit integer in O(n log3 5) time, by reducing to the squaring of five [n/3]-digit
integers"

I have zero clue how I am supposed to understand the latter half of the question. It makes no sense to me beyond I am supposed to be multiplying squared numbers. How do I even begin to turn this into an algorithm? What is the solution even supposed to look like?

Needless to say, I've struggled with math my entire life and I've been trying for years to be decent with it, and I have nothing to show for it.

So, do you have any recommendations that could simplify the math needed for DSA? Videos are preferred but I will textbook recommendations as well.

Thank you, and have a good day!

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.

I have looked at various editors, but those I came across all had their own build-in file navigator which they insisted you'd use. I always hate that; it's the one thing I dislike about Godot. So is there one where you can simply open your .md files directly from Windows?

Edit: What I'm after is WYSIWYG, not just synstax highlighting.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Way back in the day, I used to run a fan site for a game that ended up teaching me a lot about PHP, perl, databases and so on. Currently, I'm looking to rebuild that site, but PHP nuke is now hopelessly outdated and joomla/Drupal are not the direction I want to go in. So far, I've found php-fusion (from GoDaddys cpanel installer) which seems close, but I'm curious if there is a closer analog out there.

The ideal for me is the old school blocks down the sides with content in the middle layout, with add-ons like forums, image gallery etc. Cheers for any help 😁

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

So I recently got back from a very comforting trip to my motherland in Taiwan. I always joke that when I get back from Asia my Chinese gets better by a lot.

One thing I kinda wish I was better at was reading Traditional Chinese, since it's one of the barriers I have for fully communicating with my family and dimishes my confidence when navigating Taiwan.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fluent in speaking, I've had full on conversations with native Taiwanese and they're always surprised that I'm from America.

At the same time I feel like I should be keeping up with the news and general day to day life in Taiwan, since I plan on visiting more often because my grandparents are getting older and I really miss the country a lot.

I know we have a couple of people who are in East Asian countries/Taiwanese/Taiwanese-adjacent, I was wondering if y'all had any suggestions on things like news channels on YouTube or day in the life content that I can follow along with and match characters to practice my reading a bit. I can read at maybe a kindergarten level if that helps LOL.

Watching the drama around kagi unfold and it has me wondering how much you take into consideration a creator's view on things like homophobia, sexism, racism, etc. when deciding to use a product. I think most of us have a bar somewhere (I would imagine very few on this website would ever consider registering on an altright platform), so where is that bar for you? What about art? Have you boycotted JKR or dropped your opinion about Picasso because they're transphobic and misogynistic respectively? Is it about the general vibe of a product or piece of media, or are you more discerning? What goes into this decision and why?

We are planning a trip to Norway in February (toward the end).

The plan is to arrive into Oslo and take the first flight to Tromso, and spend several days there enjoying the city and embarking on several activities including:

• Fjord River Boat Tour
• Dog Sledding
• Aurora Chasing
• (maybe) Cross Country Skiing
• Visiting the Ice Domes
• Visiting Museums
• Visiting a spa

On the way back we'd like to visit Bergen for a couple of days and have yet to plan this part at all.

Any locals or people who have already visited: Is there anything you think would be a shame to miss out on while we're there? Anything you think is a waste of time and / or money?

We are doing this trip on a budget. Ultimately, Norway is expensive so "on a budget" means, we're taking cheap flights and not staying in luxury accommodation for the most part.

One last thing: I am planning to propose on this trip. I would love any advice on somewhere romantic to actually pop the question. My current plan is to do it on the aurora chasing trip if we get lucky, but otherwise I need a couple of backup plans.

A different thread reminded me of this unique for me and frustrating but enlightening experience.

This war of mine is a survival game where you have to manage food, building equipment, scavenging, security, stealth, possibly weapons and the morale of your companions for an unknown period of time until the siege is lifted. The art is beautiful but simple. The pace is slow. The emotions are profound. At the end of the game there are different stories for how your companions lives progress depending on how well or poorly you handled the circumstances of the game. It is very easy to die.

It is the only war game I have seen where you are a civilian.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Heyyy Tilderinos! I'm getting my first tat tomorrow - planning on a Lopunny and Mega Lopunny on my bicep that I'd love to turn into a patchwork sleeve of my other favorite Pokemon down the line. Bouncing between really excited and really nervous! What's some general advice you'd give?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like capitalism, society and company culture. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was mystified.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

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?

This started as a post on asking about how long you think you could survive a massive supply chain disruption and associated collapse of authorities ability to intervene.

But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to paint a picture of a postwar context. Post-Yugoslavian War, post-Korean War, etc. Also, I don’t know if we’ve had any recent memories of sudden, total plunges into anarchy.

I wonder if the modern economy has lengthened the farm-to-table too much that no one could reasonably expect to sustain themselves for any longer than they have food in storage.

What strategies would you use/did you use to survive? Did society break down into roving gangs? If such a thing happened now, do you feel like you could weather the storm?

You can thank my being snowed in the last few days and watching World War Z, The Last of Us, Book of Elijah, Elysium, the Alone TV series and the Band of Brothers for inspiring this post.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

(That title is kind of awkward, feel free to suggest a better one.)

I came across aini's channel on Youtube a while back. She does videos on different topics focused on East Asia. Her most recent video being "Why Chinese People Will Choose $5 Over $10".

I'm especially interested in native creators; those who can present a personal view from the inside. Even more so for countries that are not as well-covered for whatever reason—like places with less technological access or government limitation.

My own preference is for a more analytical presentation. I.e. looking through an academic lens incorporating sociology, psychology, etc, rather than "footage of daily life". That style is still welcome, of course!

I recently bought a banjo and have started the journey of learning how to play. It's my first instrument but I have been having a blast so far, which got me wondering — what have you all been playing recently? This is not a reoccurring post, but maybe it could be, so let's use this as a place to talk about music-making related things: what have you been practicing, what techniques are you stuck on, what have you been playing around with, etc? Feel free to share or ask for advice.

I work remotely for a US tech start-up, and my work is flying me out for our company kickoff in Santa Barbara at the end of February. Because I want to spend as little time in Berlin February weather as possible and I want to meet up with some local(-ish) relatives, I'm flying in a week earlier than necessary. As a result, however, I'm going to have some free time to fill.

The biggest thing is that I'm going to have to find and pay for my own lodging while I'm there until the work event starts and I can check into the hotel my company booked. So if anyone has any personal experience with some cheap-but-not-sketchy lodging options in LA or Santa Barbara, I especially welcome that. I'm flying into LAX so I'm able to stay there before going down to Santa Barbara for the actual work event if it's cheaper or there's more to do there (which I kinda assume is the case on both counts, idk).

I've heard LA is generally pretty expensive. I'm not a huge party animal by any means, but I figure I should do more when I'm there than sitting in my hotel reading (especially if I want to kick the jetlag before all the work stuff starts). So I'd also love any recommendations for cheap but interesting stuff to do while I'm there. My cursory Google searches have turned up a bunch of Hollywood tourist type stuff and recommendations for outdoorsy activities like hiking, neither of which is my speed. But surely there's gotta be some interesting stuff for a nerdy introvert to check out!

I'm also a very food-motivated traveler, so any particular restaurant recommendations for while I'm there are very welcome -- especially stuff that's hard for me to find in Germany. Latin American food is especially high on my list ofc, and I'm also on the lookout for good wing places, since I know both of those things are very hard to find at home in Berlin. But I also welcome other recommendations, especially stuff that isn't gonna come up in a quick google search. Or authentic Chinese food (even though I'm not going to SF, I learned how to say 洛杉矶 in Chinese class back in the day so LA's gotta have at least somthing 😅). I'm also a coffee person, so I'd love to know about any particular standout local coffee shops (even though I'm sure there's way more than I could try in even a month in a city the size of LA).

I typically listen to music and discover new music through YouTube, but the gradual creep of ads and the possibility of videos being deleted in the future has made me interested in building up a personal library of tracks on my own computer instead of streaming.

What do you use to manage your songs, and buy songs when you find ones you like?

My main computer runs Debian so I'd prefer Linux compatible options, but I'd be interested I hearing whatever other people use regardless.

I just completed this puzzle (although it's missing 1 piece, which I wrote to them to see if they can replace because the alternative would be to buy a 2nd copy and shift through 4500 pieces to find the one I need). I want to hang it on my wall!

Edit: Found the missing piece!!!

Right now it's on my living room floor (pencil for scale) on 9 pieces of poster board that I taped together. But, I am not sure if this is the best surface to permanently attach it to. Does anyone have any recommendation on how to glue/seal this & mount it?

I also want to apply some kind of protective coat in addition to just gluing it together/to something to prevent damage, so if the method to do that is different from the method to mount it I'm also interested in that.

I'm looking for an article that was posted on Tildes in the last year I believe, on online communities and moderation.

I think it was a link to someones personal blog and the author was female. It talked about the challenges of moderating communities with free speech as a core value, because all it takes is a few bad actors pushing that to it's limits and it completely derails the community and puts too much strain on moderators.

The article itself was very good, but I also remember the discussion on tildes was a very good read as well. I have tried searching tildes, using google and chatGPT4 and while I can find a lot of good threads related to this topic, I can't seem to find this one with the article.

Does anyone remember this article/thread?

I realize it's maybe a long shot and it's just a vague memory, so I apologize if this is an annoying post, but it doesn't hurt to ask?

I find myself in an unusual situation wanting to play PC games that can't suck me in. Bear with me, this is a weird and specific request.

Ideally I want something I can easily pick up and put down maybe 1-2 times an hour between tasks. Chess or Risk came to mind, but I don't want something that mandates input or else you forfeit. Also thought of Civ, but in the past I've played that for hours at a time. I haven't found a setting that could force me to slow down, but maybe there's a mod I could use? Seems like I need something that either has built-in cooldowns or allows custom time controls.

Maybe there's some mobile games that are on PC that would fall into this category? I played "Egg, Inc" years ago, but remember the cooldowns started to extend into days which is when I stopped.

For reference, I typically play via Steam, Epic, or GOG and I like these game genres: strategy, RTS, tower defense, puzzle/logic, city building, simulation, automation, and exploration. But since there's probably not many games like this I'm definitely willing to branch out!

Personally, I like to check the South Park Controversies Page every now and then.

The page on Quantum Entanglement is fascinating and has so many rabbit hole links that lead to other rabbit holes themselves. I still go back and re-read them here and there to improve my understanding and check for laymen's updates without all pop-science nonsense you encounter elsewhere.

I'll come back and post a few more when I can think of them!

Hi everyone!

I am moving to Colorado from Oregon late February and will be driving with my cat. I am shipping my belongings separately so it’s just us in the car.

We will be traveling through Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. I have never been through any of these states, particularly this time of year. My planned route is

Day 1 - Portland, OR -> Boise, ID
Day 2 - Boise, ID -> Salt Lake City, UT
Day 3 - Salt Lake City, UT -> Grand Junction, CO
Day 4 - Grand Junction, CO -> Denver, CO

Because of the time of year, I wanted to see if anyone had tips for traveling this route. I have checked average temperatures for the cities I’ll be stopping in for that time of year but I know that’s not the full story. I’m also going to get my car checked out before the long drive to make sure all is well. I have all season tires that are newer and chains already in the car.

I have a first aid kit, will bring a few blankets and some food/water for both me and the cat (Marge), a battery pack, and a few days of clothes for the traveling. That’s all I could think of.

Does anyone have suggestions or tips for this 1200+ mile trip? Also, my cat has only ever been in the car for about 3 hours at most. She’s sometimes anxious and sometimes chill. If anyone has suggestions for traveling with a cat in the car for up to 7 hours per day, that would also be appreciated!

I'm traveling with my wife to Italy (Rome, Florence) for our Honeymoon. We're American and looking for any suggestions on what to bring/wear, tips/tricks we might need to know, or anything you feel would be relevant. We have a basic itinerary with some guided tours through the "main" tourist attractions like the Vatican, Colosseum, The Pantheon, The Accademia Gallery, the Uffizi Gallery, and a few day trips. But we know not everything is going to take all day.

Do you have recommendations for things to do to "fill" the day? Anything to avoid? Things to bring that we might not think of? Any general tips/thoughts would be appreciated.

We got our first silent movie (almost) with Charlie Chaplin's City Lights from 1931.

IMDb
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How familiar are you with silent films and Charlie Chaplin? Is a movie that is more than 90 years old still worth watching today? Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.

Rest of the schedule for January is:

• 22nd: Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
• 29th: The Iron Giant

Hi all,

I'm looking for some advice as a first time visitor to SE Asia. I'm an experienced traveller I've just not made it to that part of the world yet. To give some context on my trip, I recently lost somebody very close to me, it was very sudden and painful and I'm just coming around to sitting with it after the surreality of being in it. Planning funerals, scattering ashes etc.

I don't suspect I'll find any answers travelling but I do have a strong desire to be as far away from where I am currently as possible and to just press pause for a while. I will be working while I'm away (unfortunately I cannot afford the time off) so I guess that is a factor too.

I am not interested in partying or the noise of major cities so where possible I guess I would like to avoid that.

My trip is planned for April and May. All I have so far is starting in Hanoi and ending in Singapore.

Any advice on routes/places to visit on the way are appreciated. As ever thanks to this wonderful community.

My weekly D&D group has been running for a number of years now and unfortunately our current DM is suffering from some pretty severe burnout at the moment (both in life and D&D in general). I think ultimately we're going to end up shuttering our D&D campaign, and may well never pick the game up again as we've almost all soured on WotC/Hasbro after the OGL debacle.

This week we entertained ourselves by messing around with image generation (velociraptor nun was a favorite result and became a bit of a running theme through the evening) but the fun in that can only last so long. We've also had some nights playing games like Dead by Daylight and Midnight Ghost Haunt but those are typically games we reserve for around Halloween. We also play some of the Jackbox Party Pack games, but they're only moderately fun to be honest.

We're usually a group of 7, and this particular formation of the friend group has been meeting almost exclusively online and will probably want to continue that way for the foreseeable future. I'd like some suggestions for games we could play together (either video game or TTRPG that works well online) that are: mostly cooperative or at least team based (we're not very competitive), something that won't become repetitive and dry after a couple of sessions (goal-oriented I guess), and something that we don't have to pay a subscription for. The ability to drop in or out as life dictates would be a plus too. Any thoughts?

There was a brief mention of the Amish and their self-sufficiency in the Capitalism topic that got me thinking, so I thought that I'd share my thoughts and start another discussion.

My understanding of the Amish way of life - as someone who is probably thousands of miles away from them - is that they are not really self-sufficient insomuch as they are insular. They don't like to rely on the government, but they heavily rely on their community.

A lot of us here are leftists - some might even go so far as to call themselves socialists or communists. But for the most part we are advocating for government to provide support, and often it's the federal government rather than their local governments. For those of you who do, my question for you is this: why aren't you trying to help out the locals. And I don't just mean your city, I mean your neighborhood or even just your block.

I'm not talking about things like homeless shelters or nonprofits, I'm talking about mutual aid societies. People are complex; they don't just need things, they need people. They need assurance, motivation, and love. These are things that the government does not provide. The US Surgeon General state we are having a lonliness epidemic right now, and that it's majorly affecting people's health. We've had conversations about the lack of a third place but an even bigger problem is the death of our community hubs. It might be a good thing that people are getting less religious, but losing the church was a much bigger hit than people give credit.

We've had many comments in the past deriding "slacktivism". When you throw your voice into the void, you have no real power. But if you put your voice into your town hall, you have tremendous power. Giving money to the government is like having one billionth of a difference to a great many people, but helping out a person in your community is a huge impact in their life which might be the one thing they need to stop them from falling off a cliff. I don't think you'll find anything more socially gratifying.

I titled this "why don't you", but I'm also very much interested in hearing from people who do community work why they do and how they manage to fit it into their lives.

Kinda curious how many furries we have on Tildes. Personally I just got started with sewing and plushie making so I can make custom plushies of peoples fursonas. It's going well so far but it's convinced me to drop an absolute fortune on an embroidery machine so I can make better looking eyes and paws x.x

This is Album of the Week #16 ~ This week's album is Coil - Love's Secret Domain

Year of Release: 1991
Genre(s): Industrial
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 61 minutes
RYM | Listen! (Album.Link)

Excerpt from The Quietus:

... the combined musical impact of Love's Secret Domain remains undiminished: a sonic world erupting with mind-spinning ingenuity, that beneath its surface strangeness, holds more hooks and grooves than a Cenobite's playroom. As always with Coil, however, Love's Secret Domain is about more than music; it's an exploration of what it meant, in 1991, to be a deeply inquisitive consciousness, all channels on, all bandwidths open, trapped in a human body and surrounded by the joy, anger and madness of existence. It's a palimpsest of an incredibly potent time for London's underground cultures, a mindmap of spaces, now largely lost ...

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

--

Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

I'm returning home from a trip and am on my 4th layover in a nightmarish series of delayed flights and last minute changes; when I get home it will be 5 degrees (F) which was not the forecasted temp when I left, so I did not make any kind of preparations and left my car in uncovered long term parking, a 5-ish minute walk from the airport. It dipped into negative temps while I was gone and I'm terrified that I'll get back to a car with frozen locks and no lighter, lock de-freezer, hair dryer, etc, anything to help me get in. I've searched for advice but everything I've read seems to assume you're at home, not at a airport. I'm already so drained and exhausted and it will be late when I get there so I'm just trying to find something, anything that might be helpful in advance before I'm stuck standing outside in unexpectedly, dangerously frigid weather with no plan in jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie. Apologies if something like this has been posted, I couldn't find anything and feel like I'm about to collapse. Any advice is appreciated, even obvious things, I'm sure I may have overlooked something that would be clear to someone else. Posting this before I board my next flight in the hopes there may be some replies by the time I get home. Thank you for reading

Update: made it back, took an Uber home and will pick up my car either tomorrow or the day after during the day. I should have thought of it myself and feel silly that I didn't. Thank you all so much for the feedback, really saved me some stress, I probably shouldn't have driven home even had it not been so cold out with how tired I was. Will definitely use all the advice here to be more prepared when leaving during the winter in the future, no matter the forecast.

This can be something you want to tell a specific person in your life, or something that you want to tell anyone but are unable to (for any reason).

Share it here instead.

Also, for everyone reading the things posted here, please be empathetic and understanding. Remember that the person posting knows their situation far better than we do.

My theme for 2024 is to work on creative avenues, one of which is cooking. I want to expand my recipe book to include more show-off-y meals from a variety of regions. Are there any recommendations for recipes to try out?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.