Hello! Could you please recommend some hard science fiction books? I am struggling to find a good one. My favorites are Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts, but I have failed to find anything similar.

I also enjoyed The Martian by Andy Weir and The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, though in my opinion, these aren't quite what I would call hard science fiction.

Additionally, I enjoyed books that blend fiction and non-fiction, like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.

What are your favorite hard science fiction books?

Imagine that your Steam account (or whatever other type of video games collections you have) gets permanently and irreversibly erased. Which of the titles you used to have would you then buy again without any hesitation?

I've been working on a few artistic endeavors recently, and have found myself grasping for inspiration. Tildes has such a lively group of creators, as we see many put on display every year in November, and I'd love to know where you all draw your inspiration from! I'm leaving this purposely vague, anything is on the table: people, places, objects, ideas, music, whatever!

There have been a few interesting bits of news here and there over the holiday period as well as notable developments, along with the usual political squabbling, that people might be interesting in skimming or catching up on. These posts are grouped by topic and in reverse chronological order (except the pledges of support section that reads better chronologically) as best as possible (mods feel free to edit the post itself if needed).

Also, just today there is news that Finland seizes Russia-linked tanker suspected of cutting vital undersea cables (please take discussion to the Tildes thread) and now Sweden's Social Democrats want to activate NATO's Article 4 after the cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea.

(Thank you to @KapteinB, @cffabro, @skybrian, and the other people who have helped post many of these links and alternative sources!)

December 2024:

Russia and Ukraine swap at least 300 prisoners in exchange deal

Russia suffered 421,000 casualties in 2024, 'highest price' since start of invasion, Syrskyi says and allegedly ~785,000 Russian troops since the beginning of the invasion in February of 2022.

Injured North Korean soldier captured by Ukraine has died, says South Korea

‘I thought it was fake news’: secrecy around North Koreans fighting in Kursk

“We were told in the morning to prepare for a special type of patient,” said one of the medical staff at the hospital who treated North Koreans.

“We’d heard rumours that North Koreans were fighting there, but I didn’t believe it. No one had actually seen them before,” the medic said.

More than 1,000 North Korean military casualties in Ukraine war, says South Korea

Ukraine faces difficult decisions over acute shortage of frontline troops - "Depleted army is increasingly made up of older men, but Zelenskyy is reluctant to lower mobilisation age from 25"

Kyiv reveals total Ukraine casualties in Putin’s war for first time - "Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 370,000 wounded. That compares with 600,000 dead and wounded reported for Russia."

In December, Perun released a video which quotes material about Ukraine's intelligence support of Syrian opposition forces that I hadn't heard before. At the 49:00 mark he says that Ukraine provided essential information (and basics) to Syrian rebel forces on drone usage, 3D printer schematics, and release mechanisms. Here's an imgur link to the report's summary that was posted to X/Twitter.

Pledges of support:

In June it was announced that the Annual allied military aid, [to that point, would be] $60 billion for next four years

In July 39 tanks, HIMARS and ammunition: Germany covertly hands over huge shipment of weapons to Ukraine

In late December the Biden administration pledges additional military aid to Ukraine amid Russia war - "... extensive support including a planned delivery of hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets and hundreds of armored vehicles by mid-January."

Interesting articles and information from 2024:

‘The forest will survive’: the volunteers saving Kharkiv's war-charred woodland

In September, Ukraine strikes two Russian munition depots, says military. This comes after numerous drone strikes on Russian oil facilities in August, July, and January.

‘I can do the same job as a man’: Ukraine’s first frontline female commander on war, grief – and her hope for the future - If you only read one article on this page it should be this one. This is a great interview and the person who took that portrait photo knew exactly what they were doing. I want her portrait to be painted and hung in the Louvre!

Revealed: Russia anticipated [August] Kursk incursion months in advance, seized papers show - As well, Ukraine's Kursk Offensive, launched in August and still holding their ground, has an entire wiki page.

A night with the drone squad targeting Russian forces in micro battles

Kyiv's drone suppliers are ramping up production of computer-guided drones that are cheap and can't be electronically jammed

Frontline report: Ukraine ignites Russian strategic bases, flames span from Crimea to Urals

New Yorker magazine interview: The Ukrainian President on how to end the war with Russia, the empty rhetoric of Vladimir Putin, and what the U.S. election could mean for the fate of his country

Interview with Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi: ‘I know we will win – and how’: Ukraine’s top general on turning the tables against Russia

Reuters interview excerpts: Ukraine President Zelenskiy speaks to Reuters in exclusive interview

Oleh Sentsov, Ukrainian director turns accidental footage into a film

In his home near Ukraine's front line with Russia, Yurii makes a stand

Putin's Unsustainable Spending Spree: How the War in Ukraine Will Overheat the Russian Economy

Valerii Zaluzhnyi: top Ukraine general who rivals president for popularity: Volodymyr Zelenskiy seems ready to risk firing his armed forces chief in a deepening rift that has shone a light on Kyiv’s frailties

Previous megathreads:

I'll update this more in a little while.

Mid-year 2024 updates and news megathread that covered developments such as announcements of North Korea providing materiel and manpower, changes in NATO leadership, the sacking of several Russian defense ministers, Eastern European security pacts, and changes to Ukrainian defense leadership.

February 2024 megathread that covers Ukraine's withdrawal from Avdiivka, the shooting down of more than one Russian A-50 AWACS, trade sanctions, and some articles about drone swarming tech.

To find more posts about these topics, use the 2022 russian invasion of ukraine tag.

I've been the sole developer for my company's website for over a decade now. It's gone through a bunch of evolutions throughout the years, but I've been sidetracked lately and have let things stagnate as far as maintenance goes. Now, I'm looking to do some upgrades for security purposes and I'm trying to wrap my head around everything.

Some facts:

• PHP 8.0.12
• MySQL 5.7
• Symfony 5.4
• Web server is currently Apache only because that's what I've always used. I'm open to nginx or other options.
• Running on a Google Cloud VPS with Ubuntu 20.04
• I also use Google Cloud Storage to host thousands of images

My first thought was to take baby steps and start by upgrading Symfony as much as possible. However, the next major version (6.0) requires PHP 8.0.2. Symfony 6.1 requires PHP 8.1. Symfony 7.2 (the current release) requires PHP 8.2. So, then it just makes sense to upgrade PHP to the latest version.

However, I am terrified of upgrading PHP in the current (outdated) Ubuntu environment. So I might as well upgrade the distro while I'm at it.

And then, MySQL 5.7 is no longer supported, so I might as well bring that up to date too (8.0, I believe).

There will be no baby steps. I'm gonna have to just upgrade everything all at once. Which then leads me to my next question: should I stick with the self-managed VPS, or is it time to look at something like Google App Engine or Fly.io that is a little bit more managed and "locked down" than what I'm doing right now? Should I look into just going with Docker instead?

Put another way, if I'm going to start from ~scratch, what's the modern best practice to host all of this, given that I'm going to have to upgrade a bunch of different things all at once? (Turns out the "baby step" of upgrading Symfony will actually have to come last since I need to hit these prerequisites first).

Please let me know if I've left anything out. PS, security is a pretty big concern for us because we manage user auth, so I'm all for anything the cloud providers can do to take some of that responsibility away from me.

Last night while my wife was going through my Spotify to pick a song to listen to while I was driving, she mentioned that 90% of my library consists of instrumentals. (Most of which are game OSTs) I find it much more pleasant to listen to, instead of song with lyrics.

Which made me wonder, there might be some hidden/not so hidden gems that I might be missing out on!
Please share your favorite game OSTs with everyone. (New gems, old gems! Either the entire OST or even 1 song of a game! we don't discriminate!)

Bonus point if it's on Spotify

What I currently listen to:

• Armored core 6
• Shadow of the Erdtree
• God of War: Ragnarok
• Nier: Automata
• Devil May Cry 5
• Celeste
• Scarlet Nexus
• Zenless Zone Zero
• Silent Hill
• Flipwitch (Which I understand to be an 18+ game, which I have NEVER played. I just happened to find the OST on shuffle and it got me addicted. Try the song "A Witch's Thoughts")
• Cult of the Lamb
• Fable
• Atelier series

What were your favorite games that you played, and why did you feel that way about them?

They do not have to be games released in 2024. Anything you played this year is fair... game.

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?

Hey all!

So I was thinking of how when looking at privacy, having a platform being a walled garden (i.e. data not being found on search engines) can feel like a worse experience for what is regarded as the open internet.

I don't have a solid solution for this. So my question to you is,

How do you respect privacy while sharing content for search engines on a platform?

There are, in my extremely well-informed and unbiased opinion, not enough discussions about creative writing here on Tildes. Let’s change that. If this gets any meaningful amount of interest, I’ll make it a recurring thing (hence the date in the title—look at me, being all forward-thinking)! 😸

Your goal: Write a creative short story based on the prompt provided and post it in this thread.
Deadline: Per ISO 8601, 2025-01-21T23:59:59-05:00. Here’s a link to decode that mess for non-robots. Two-weeks-ish from the posting of this topic, basically.
Prize: A $20 Proton code! I’m sure all of you insufferable delightful privacy nerds advocates already know what Proton is, but here’s a link for completeness’s sake. It’s already purchased, so you don’t have to worry about any sudden impoverishment robbing you of that sweet, sweet encryption.

Your prompt: Write about someone who finds out their everyday routine has been secretly impactful to strangers in ways they never imagined.

I’m not one much for rules, so there aren’t many:

1. It must be creative writing. Creative fiction and creative non-fiction are both allowed, but if you’re going the second route, ensure you have a strong understanding of what creative non-fiction “feels” like.
2. There aren’t any hard length limits, but the internet tells me that “short story,” as a term, tends to be defined as 1,000–7,500 words. Because I always uncritically believe whatever the first search result I read on the internet tells me, you should probably aim for that range or it may count as a soft demerit. Also, only one submission per person.
3. The winner will be decided entirely by my personal whims, not comment votes. If I let it be decided by votes, the first commenter would basically auto-win, so we’re committing the greatest internet faux pas: relying on subjective judgment. 🙀 That having been said, I have varied tastes and high media literacy (if I may say so), so you should be fine. Probably. Giving a character my name and making her the best person in the world will definitely help your chances.
4. It must be written just for this thread; no previous work. I mean, I have no way of verifying that you didn’t start before now, I guess, but I’ll spot-check a sentence or two online to ensure originality.
5. If you post your full story as a comment in this thread, use collapsible formatting. Collapsible formatting keeps the thread navigable and respectful of others’ submissions. If your work relies on formatting beyond Tildes's simple markdown/images/et cetera, you’re allowed to host a document file/webpage somewhere and link it here, too.

Have at it, and I hope y’all have fun! All of you, whether you’re writing or not, are heavily encouraged to comment your feedback for posted work as a reply! Don’t let your fellow waves feel unappreciated. Putting yourself out there is scary.

(Also, yes, the survey is closed and it’s being actively processed. I promise we’re working on it! It takes time to make pictures and read 577 individual responses to a long survey.)

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

All previous Save Point topics

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

I'd just like to say that I never make meta posts like this one, but for some reason this topic has really struck a chord with me on this Wednesday evening...

We recently lost a user from Tildes. I don't know which day, but I'd already noticed they weren't around a few days before I did some digging into it. The names here are not important. But this user had been a prolific poster over the last six months. As someone on Tildes who does a lot of tagging, they were high up on my 'user interaction list' in the passive way that comes from amending tags can do.

Some departing users leave all of their contributions behind, along with their username, never to be seen from again. Perhaps they regenerate with a new handle or perhaps they find pastures fresh elsewhere. Some users take all of their topics with them, along with the conversations, the ideas, the thoughts, and in my mind a little piece of the Tildes community. The latter is what happened here with our prolific user.

This has made me unusually sad. There are lots of users I miss on a personal connection level, whether that be the status they held in the community, or simply missing the elegance of their prose. Sometimes they return and I smile at my keyboard. Sometimes I check how they're doing by looking on Reddit. The sadness here comes from a feeling that when a prolific user leaves with their topics, it feels like a library user leaving the country with their borrowed library books. I've never been very good with analogies.

People talk about link rot and video game preservation and the walled gardens of the internet and it feels like this mourning over lost information from a link aggregator with a close-knit community bound up in it fits in there somewhere in the discourse.

In a comment to this topic I'm going to link to as many of the lost topics as I was able to find. These will be direct links to the articles, not to the Tildes discussion. I don't want this act to feel like grave-robbing by linking to deleted Tildes pages.

This is the end of my hopefully only foray into meta posting. I don't think I have the wordsmith-ery for it.

I got this error message this morning when making content ( replying to a thread ) first thing in my Tildes.net session

https://paste.pics/SN1N0

Oddly, I didn't have any trouble making a new thread ( this one ), just replying to existing threads.

It happened on only the second comment I tried to make this morning.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

So bit more than one month ago my very old Microsoft Sidewinder X4 keyboard broke the membrane on the 'A' key, meaning it was effectively kaput. I decided that I wanted to try a mechanical.

The Search

My use-cases are as follows, in the order of importance:

1. Gaming
2. Programming
3. General typing

These were the first requirements I settled on, based on my limited knowledge of mechanical keyboards:

• ISO nordic layout
• Full size: Because I make heavy use of both numpad and the insert-delete-home-end-page island of keys. Whatever it is called. I have zero interest in compromising on the standard layout.
• Nice to have: Metal body
• Nice to have: General high-quality
• Nice to have: Wireless, but only if 2.4Gz.
• Nice to have: Tactile switches
• Nice to have: Backlit keys
• Nice to have: Simple elegant aesthetic. I especially want to avoid typical gamer aesthetic.
• Budget basically unlimited

With these requirements I eventually settled on Keychron Q6 Max with Jupiter Brown. But just before ordering one, I started thinking about the height of the keys on a normal old-school mechanical.
I don't remember when I have last used one, all my recent keyboard had been modern low-profile so I didn't have a reference for what I was buying other than images.
I started reading about wrist problems from keyboard height and the recommendation of a wrist rest. I looked at the Keychron options and saw that they only had rests that were completely detached from the keyboard.
Thing is that I move my keyboard around my desk a lot, so I figured that having a wrist-rest that was not attached would become an annoyance.
After this I decided to just stick to what I am used to and added another requirement:

• Low-profile

Unfortunately when you set requirements for 100%, ISO, and low-profile, then the otherwise extensive Keychron catalogue becomes super limited. So I started looking elsewhere.
At the time there was a new post about a search engine on the /r/MechanicalKeyboards front page.
Using this I discovered the Cherry MX 10.0N. This seemed like a good deal. High quality all-metal body.
The only real sticking point was that the switches are linear with very short actuation, but I liked the look of this keyboard so much that I decided I could probably learn to live with it.

The review

The keyboard looks great in person. The all-metal body feels very solid and high-quality. It's got good heft and sticks to the table. The entire board is very thin and feels good to rest on.
The keys also feel high quality with minimal wobbling, and long keys sound and feel the same whether pressed on the edge or in the middle.

That's all the good stuff. Now on to the less good.

The foot

The adjustable foot in the back has no real positions. Meaning that there is no point in adjusting it where it will click in place and stay there, and it is under constant spring pressure to return to the stowed position. This means that the only thing keeping the extended foot in place is the weight of the keyboard. As mentioned I move my keyboard around frequently, and this means that everytime I move it I have to readjust the foot.
Additionally, it's highest position is sort of a balancing point, meaning that it you are a bit off, or accidentally push the keyboard a bit in this position, then the foot will suddenly collapse.
It's a minor annoyance, but one that is unique to this keyboard since I don't see this kind of foot design anywhere else. Otherwise the full-length metal foot is really nice, if only they had added proper click positions in its travel.

The switches

As mentioned, these are linear with very short actuation. CHERRY MX LOW PROFILE RGB SPEED switches to be specific. My first thought when trying to type with these was "Oh my god I hate this, how can some prefer this?!".
Constant mistyping was the name of the game. I was so used to being able to slightly miss a key, but still only actuate the intended. But that doesn't fly with this keyboard. If you depress any key even the slightest, it WILL actuate.
For gaming I first didn't understand why I sometimes kept jumping. I eventually figured out its because the mere weight of my thumb resting on the spacebar can be enough to actuate it sometimes.

After 1 month of regular usage, I can confidently say that my thoughts are now "Oh my god I hate this, how can some prefer this?!". Okay, I improved my typing somewhat to maybe half my mistyping. Gaming is still a pain, and I've had to regularly rest my thumb on the table instead to stop the sudden jumping.
Unfortunately this keyboard does not have hot-swappable switches, so there is no fixing it unless I want to buy a soldering iron and replace every single key, which I am not willing to.

Key spacing

So while the keyboard is technically 100%, Cherry has still designed it to be as compact as possible. One area where they have shaved off the length is the spacing between the main keys and the arrows keys and those above. Aswell as on the other side with the numpad.
I didn't know this prior to puchasing this keyboard, but apparently this spacing is essential for my muscle memory to be able to find those keys. The lack of spacing has meant that maybe 25% of the time I use them, I press the wrong key.

Overall

Now the issue with the switches and spacing is really an issue of preference. These aren’t quality issues. They were designed this way because some people like it (somehow). So if this keyboard looks interesting to you, and these preference design choices don't bother you, then I can only recommend the Cherry MX 10.0N. It really is a very high quality keyboard.

For me though, I just can't overlook these choices, so I have started looking for another keyboard again. I'm currently split between the Cherry KW X ULP and Logitech G915 X Lightspeed. None of them are full-metal body unfortunately. The cherry one seems to be the higher quality, but the the key caps remind me of laptops keys, which I really hate the feel of. Maybe I'm overreacting to it. The Logitech one is lower quality, but has all the the features that I would want. If you know of something better then please do leave a comment. I might reconsider my low-profile requirement. I'll give it at least another month before I become serious about switching again.

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.

Any poly folks struggling with judgement from family, friends, or strangers? I'm openly bisexual and polyamorous to my friends and some family, and I've been steadily trying to let the veil down more lately. However, I've been feeling resented and mistrusted by folks -- some online and in person. These experiences aren't exclusive to conservative regions, either. A lot of the online hate I've received has been in Greater Boston community spaces, one of the cities with the most non-monogamous folks. I suppose I'm just feeling bad and isolated about it all. Would love to hear about experiences (good and bad) y'all have had!