A pretty quick work trip has been planned. I will fly into Heathrow Saturday morning. I'll have until Sunday evening to get to Warwick. I'll be in Warwick for 5 days before flying back out the next Saturday.

I'm looking for any general advice but also if there is anything specific to the following:

• I'm going to book my own hotel in London the Saturday night I fly in. Saturday and Sunday are essentially my "tourist" days. Where is good to stay? Not too concerned with price.
• I'm taking a train to Warwick and mostly have that figured out but is there an app or pass that I should add to my Apple wallet for transit around London?
• I like museums of all types. Are there any in particular I should check out?
• Any classic pubs or restaurants I should try to get to?
• Once the week starts I don't think I'll have much time to do touristy stuff and I won't have a car. Any recommendations on things around Warwick/Birmingham that I can get to some evenings via train or bus?

I've made a strong effort toward intentional news exposure by trying to limit the times I run across news articles. This has "minimized" my exposure to the times when I specifically look to read news sources.

I'd be curious to know if anyone here is accomplishing something similar by filtering out Tildes tags and, if so, what does your list look like? Seems to be a hard balance between quieting the unwanted news posts and not limiting exposure to posts and articles I'd like to see.

With the recent news about Synapse, I am a little on edge with the safety of my money. I am currently living in France for school, and am hoping to immigrate here permanently. All of my savings is in USD, so I need a way to easily and cheaply convert between USD and EUR, and be able to spend EUR locally. After a ton of research, I decided to move almost all of my banking to Wise. They don't offer traditional banking features like in-person branches or checks, but I didn't use those anyway. I can get a local bank number in any of the many countries they support. The savings account APY is insanely high (higher than I have seen from even the best high yield savings accounts. I have a debit card that allows me to spend directly from any one of my bank account currencies, and auto convert to other supported currencies. And the USD account is insured by FDIC passthrough insurance.

In the thread about the Synapse collapse, people were saying that passthrough FDIC insurance doesn't always mean that the customer's money is actually insured. And apparently some fintech services will just lie about what is covered by FDIC insurance. I am not a lawyer, and I have no idea how to validate Wise's claims about passthrough FDIC insurance.

I was recently able to open a France bank account, which was surprisingly difficult. (To open a bank account you need proof of address, like a cell phone or electricity bill. I don't pay for utilities in my school apartment, and to get a cell phone plan I need a bank account. That was fun to try and navigate.) I have these bank accounts currently: my Wise account with US USD, Belgium EUR, and UK GBP, a US Credit Union account, and a French EUR bank account. My US credit union and French banks give a very low or zero APY, so keeping my money in my Wise accounts is preferable for that reason. But I also can't afford to loose all my savings if Wise collapses. My question is this: Is Wise safe enough for general money storage, or should I use it just for converting between currencies and keeping a small amount for spending? If Wise isn't safe, what about another similar product? I have heard of Revolut, but I didn't do much research since Wise seemed better for my use case.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like chrome, users and wicked. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was researching.

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!

Only a few days left!

Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!
Finish your Backlog Burning by December 1st!

Quick links:

• Backlog Bingo Site
• Week 1 Discussion and Event Guidelines
• Week 2 Discussion
• Week 3 Discussion
• Week 4 Discussion

Week 4 Recap

10 participants played 9 bingo cards and moved 27 games out of their backlogs!

• 4 people played Flow bingo cards
• 5 people played Flux bingo cards
• 1 person played free choice

There were FIVE bingo wins.

Congratulations to:

• u/aphoenix
• u/CrazyProfessor02
• u/Evie
• u/kfwyre
• u/Wes

Thus far, a total of 114 games have been played for the November 2024 Backlog Burner.

Week 4 Game List:

• Assemble With Care
• Between Horizons
• Card Shark
• Crying Suns
• Duskers
• Encased
• Europa Universalis IV
• Gearshifters
• Girls Like Robots
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker
• Hourglass
• Keylocker
• Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
• METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN
• Mighty Switch Force! Collection
• Outer Wilds
• Pattern
• Pistol Whip
• Ragnarock
• Spiritfarer
• Star Citizen
• Sticky Business
• Tank Team
• The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
• UpGun
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• Xenoblade Chronicles X

Good race, fun race, but overshadowed by the baffling stewarding decisions and race direction.

What appeared to be a mirror that broke off a car is in the middle of the track, and no VSC or something to grab it? Then two cars get punctures, possibly from driving over that debris, one right after another in basically same place, but no safety car or anything called until a few laps later?

Then add on the harsh penalties. Plus Max's weird penalty for impeding-but-not-really from yesterday where he lost P1 after quali. As it's said, nothing as consistent as the inconsistent stewarding.

On a positive note, glad to see Zhou finally in the points! On his penultimate drive, no less. Only Sargeant and Bottas remain without points this year. Maybe Bottas will get some in his final race.

At least we'll get a down-to-the-wire championship showdown in Abu Dhabi. Ferrari vs McLaren for P1 in the WCC. Who are you all rooting for?

UPDATE: That was likely Ocon's last race with Alpine. Rumor, which Sky Sports appears to be confirming, is that he'll be out in Abu Dhabi, with Alpine reserve driver, Jack Doohan in for the last race. This is so Ocon can do post-season testing with Haas.

Next race:

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Yas Marina Circuit
Sunday, December 8

So this isn't your usual art request.

I'm currently looking for REAL photos of either a tiger up close, or African Savannah at sunset with animals in silhouette. Do a Google or Bing search, I dare you.

Where have all the real images gone? Everything is an AI generated crap-fest. Where can I go to find real photographs these days?

I've tried looking through the old Bing Wallpaper archives and found a few decent images there, but Adobe, iStock, everywhere I look it is all computer generated. What happened to real photography?

Thanks.

Edit: Flikr seems to be the place that isn't infested with AI yet!

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.

I recently upgraded to a pixel 9 pro and noticed that the higher resolution resulted in text that was often too small.

I went to my settings and increased my font size to 125%. However, I noticed that this doesn't seem to apply to titles on Tildes, at least not in a uniform way.

It's hard to say without going back to my old phone, which I can't easily do right now, but I do think I recall title font size varying depending on the length of the title. But perhaps the difference wasn't as drastic on my old phone due to the difference in resolution? Perhaps the titles with smaller font sizes were still easy to see so I didn't really notice? It's just very noticable on this phone. I don't want to increase zoom on Chrome for every website just to solve this issue.

Ideas?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Middle East war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

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?

for some time now, this is a question I have pondered alot.

I was not unfamiliar with the slave history of the U.S. and knew it was a big reason for the Civil War, I became more aware of the current racial issues in America courtesy of The Daily Show and the George Floyd riots (along with binging Watchmen) turbo-charged my desire to know more about it.

and I read Night by Elie Wiesel when I was in high school and recently read Maus, neither of which are shy to fully express the horrors the Jews went through in the Holocaust.

And the recent discovery of unmarked graves of Indigenous children from Residential school in Canada have sent me down that rabbit-hole of learning exactly what the catholic church was up to in these parts.

But I think where I get stuck is I believe that everyone is capable of empathy for a fellow human being. besides the psychopaths and sociopaths, I think we all have an innate capability to care when we see someone crying or in a bad place.

And yet, those atrocities suggest that we can be condition to turn off our ability for empathy to quite an extreme degree? Is that something that can happen to all of us?

Not sure if this thread will be taken down as I don't know the potential for this to start a good discussion, just wasn't sure where else to post it.

I work in IT, and was the caregiver for both my parents as they aged. You'd think I would be the one that people turn to to ask this question, and yet I have been utterly frustrated by my attempts to find such.

I have a few folks who are extended family and friends that are now in the early/mid stages of different forms of dementia, and a real pain point is that they no longer have the capacity to recognize ads, and will unfailingly click and install scam apps via the Apple store. Think things like 'cleaner' apps that have a $50/week subscription fee, and other abusive tactics. The #1 subject I get called about is some ad popping up after they've finished a puzzle, and now they think they're out of space, and in a panic.

This is not a small problem. The coloring and puzzles they can still do bring them happiness and stability through their day; removal of the ipads entirely causes them a lot of stress. (TV is nothing but ragebait, and a non-starter. They do have books on tape, but get tired of listening rather quickly.)

I have been completely unable to locate ad-free, paid versions of these types of apps. I'm not looking for free. I don't care about the cost. I just need apps that only do what they say they do, and don't have unexpected pop-ups, ads, or anything else, and I thought perhaps the folks here might know of some.

Any ideas?

[edit] Only five hours in, and I've already gotten more insightful, helpful responses than anywhere else I've asked. You all are the best.

Seeing the courts go after Google's monopoly and the unintended consequences to Mozilla (and therefore Firefox) that can happen if the courts make it illegal for Google to pay to be the default search engine, it goes me thinking about Chrome/Chromium.

I know that the courts are trying to force Google to give up its control of Chrome (I don't even know how that is possible for the government to tell a tech company that it is not allowed to develop a tech product it created itself) but it seems to me that Google maintaining Chrome is not really a problem in and of itself. there are many browsers available to folks and if you as a user want to be completely plugged into the google ecosystem at the detriment of your online privacy, that is your choice to make.

the real issue seems to me that a user should have the exact same experience browsing a google website on chrome vs an alternative.

But that made me wonder if (like stopping Google being able to pay to be the default search engine) Google was forced to give up its control of Chrome, what are the possible negative consequences of that to users? and would forcing Google to instead relinquish its control of chromium alleviate those issues?

I dont know how many people here play Runescape, but the latest seasonal League has just started a day or two ago.

It is a temporary event during which you start a new profile and all the xp rates and drop rates are boosted considerably, making it really fast to level up and progress.

Ive been having a blast with it. Its a fun way to try out skills you dont typically enjoy and get up to hogh level quickly.

For those playing, what relics and areas have you chosen? Ive unlocked Kandarin as my first area and am currently levelling slayer so I can finally try out the trident of the seas on my ironman account.

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.