• Activity
  • Votes
  • Comments
  • New
  • All activity
    1. What's a song that you initially didn't enjoy, but it grew on you over time and is now a favorite?

      Title. As I peruse new, and new to me, music I generally average about 4-5 songs a month being added to my playlists. More often than not a song will just click immediately and get added, but...

      Title.

      As I peruse new, and new to me, music I generally average about 4-5 songs a month being added to my playlists. More often than not a song will just click immediately and get added, but sometimes it'll be an older song on an album I have heard/owned prior and found a new enjoyment of it or, more rarely, I'll be introduced to a song and end up liking it more as I listen to it over some period of time.

      23 votes
    2. Looking for an Android tablet with some probably unreachable requirements

      Hello. I'm currently in the market for an Android tablet, not strictly for my personal usage, but for my family so there's one easily reachable touch screen computer around the house. The problems...

      Hello. I'm currently in the market for an Android tablet, not strictly for my personal usage, but for my family so there's one easily reachable touch screen computer around the house. The problems start with my requirements, which are... not exactly tablet market friendly:

      • Available in France (and without overly high shipping costs)
      • Long term manufacturer support so it isn't subject to suddenly become e-waste because they decided to stop providing updates after like 1 major Android release
      • Ability to install an Android distribution that doesn't rely on Google apps such as LineageOS + microG
      • Sufficient specs to use a web browser and play videos without issues.
      • I'd like the model to be easy to repair in the same vein as the Fairphone but that's lower priority

      The budget is best defined as "probably not enough" (I don't think I can afford to spend much more than ~400€). Given that I suspect from my initial search not yielding much that fitting all the requirements is impossible especially within that budget, do you have pointers on models that provide an acceptable compromise for what I'm looking for, or that somehow do match all the criteria?

      Hilariously, the closest candidate so far within budget seems to be... The Google Pixel tablet, which despite being a Google product has a fairly straightforward way to get an unGoogled ROM on it.

      15 votes
    3. Moving to the other side of the Earth

      The company I work for just announced they want to open a new office abroad, in Australia to be specific. We’re based in Denmark, and they’re hoping to have one person from here moving there,...

      The company I work for just announced they want to open a new office abroad, in Australia to be specific. We’re based in Denmark, and they’re hoping to have one person from here moving there, working full time.
      We already have an office in the US, so it’s not an entirely new thing for us to open an office abroad.
      However, I’m really thinking about letting the company know that I would like to go, and I think there is a pretty good chance that they would let me. My wife is open to the idea too. We have one child (she would be just over 3 when we would have to move), so it’s really good timing too…

      Have any of you tried something like this? What was your experience like?

      31 votes
    4. Can VLC or some other Windows program shuffle through a playlist without ever repeating a file, while also storing that state for future sessions?

      I am using Windows 10. That is perhaps a silly question to ask, but I did not find an answer. Suppose that I have a playlist with 100 videos on VLC or some other video player. I wish for it to...

      I am using Windows 10.

      That is perhaps a silly question to ask, but I did not find an answer.

      Suppose that I have a playlist with 100 videos on VLC or some other video player. I wish for it to play all the one hundred files in random order, with the exception that any video that was already played (or, possibly, played to completion) will be excluded, and will not be played again. A video not played to completion would resume from where it stopped.

      This should be persistent, so the next time I fire up the playlist it starts from where I left it and also remembers the videos that were already played and should be skipped. Ideally, upon completion of the playlist, I should be able to learn that it was complete, so I could get new videos/episodes of whatever shows I am shuffling.

      Thanks!

      EDIT: I understand I can actually pre-shuffle the playlist to get something very similar to what I am asking. However, I would rather not know what is coming next. Like it used to be when I watched TV back in the day. Thanks! ;)

      12 votes
    5. Can anyone recommend a translation of the Odyssey?

      My wife and I are planning on reading the Odyssey this year and we have to pick an translation. I've always struggled to read in translation, mostly because I get paralyzed choosing — it feels...

      My wife and I are planning on reading the Odyssey this year and we have to pick an translation. I've always struggled to read in translation, mostly because I get paralyzed choosing — it feels like a big choice, and if I end up not liking the book I can never tell if it was inherent to the story or because of the translation.

      Can anyone help me out here? I don't mind if it is prose vs poetry, but we are doing this for fun, so I would prioritize readability over faithfulness to the Greek. I don't want anything that sounds too modern, but I also don't want to have very modern language take me out of the epic setting. I am currently leaning the Wilson translation, based on some excerpts I have read, but I am open to being convinced otherwise. Thanks!

      EDIT:

      Thank you to all who recommended some translations. I am narrowed down to between Fagles and Wilson, and intend to do some side by side comparisons to choose a final one before diving in!

      14 votes
    6. If eyes emitted light, could they still see?

      Ok, this is one of those thoughts I have in my brain and that I can't quite get rid of. It breaks down into a couple of questions. For the purposes of this, I'm aware that what eyes see is the...

      Ok, this is one of those thoughts I have in my brain and that I can't quite get rid of.
      It breaks down into a couple of questions. For the purposes of this, I'm aware that what eyes see is the reflection of light bouncing off objects, but I'm curious the impact on the visibility of both objects and other lights.

      A. If eyes emitted any light, could they still see anything at all?
      B. If eyes emitted, for example, red light, could they see everything except red items? What about red lights? Does this change if the light is green or violet?
      B.1. If they can't red things would they just be invisible?
      B.2. If they can't see red lights, would it matter if the red light they're seeing is brighter or dimmer, and would it still be an invisible/blank space?
      C. I'm not sure how infrared interacts here but I know animals that sense infrared do emit it, is there a reason that's different, if it's different.

      The internet is mostly not super helpful with this, since eyes don't emit light, just reflect it and look glowy, but yeah, anyway... thanks for entertaining my weird fixation.

      17 votes
    7. Do you think stressful games are kind of bad for your health?

      I like to play games, but lately I've been avoiding certain types because I think they are not good for my health. At least, they don't make me feel well afterward. For me, this is a particular...

      I like to play games, but lately I've been avoiding certain types because I think they are not good for my health. At least, they don't make me feel well afterward. For me, this is a particular type of game that requires a very high level of skill, concentration, and dexterity.
      I noticed this years ago when I would play online multiplayer. After the game, I would feel extremely aggressive and I could tell that my blood pressure must have been much higher than normal.

      More recently, I notice this on very difficult games such as Elden Ring, specifically the boss fights. After playing for a while I have the same feeling that I would have if I had just walked away from a near fatal accident or something. Then sometimes that evening I would have trouble sleeping.

      I'm sure my physiology is different than other people. I seem to retain adrenaline/cortisol levels longer than most others. And I know that some people find the adrenaline high to be one of the main points of gaming. Still, I wonder if in general it isn't good for people to stress themselves like this when they aren't burning it off with physical activity.

      I read about this online a little bit. There seem to have been some studies about it that were mostly inconclusive. Most of the findings are more interested in games being a substitute for more physical activity, so gamers may be more sedentary or overweight than normal.

      27 votes
    8. What is your weirdest kitchen appliance and what do you think of it?

      As a regular baker with whole grain wheat, I'm consistantly disappointed by the quality of flour I am buying, so I have finally got to the point where I have placed an order for some from an...

      As a regular baker with whole grain wheat, I'm consistantly disappointed by the quality of flour I am buying, so I have finally got to the point where I have placed an order for some from an online source - in this case, Azure Standard. They make a big deal about their process, using a unifine mill - apparently something they had a hand in reviving when it had commercially failed. In trying to figure out why this was such a big deal I went into a bit of a black hole looking into wheat milling.

      Part of that was learning about home mills. It seems almost insane to me, but people buy some very expensive mills in order to make the best quality breads. You can even buy impact mills, the same general concept that makes Azure's unifine mill such an attractive proposition, and it looks like a popular manufacturer in that niche has just introduced one that's less than $200, which I think makes it pretty attractive for less, uh, intense bakers.

      I've been seeing a lot of weird kitchen appliances in recent years. Thermomix cookers have been a big thing for a few years. "Smart" or "AI" Ovens have been in the news a lot more recently, and it wasn't too long ago that sous vide specific cookers and electric pressure cookers were unusual. An odd one that I'm particularly interested in is a soymilk maker, which will grind, filter, and cook them.

      Do you own a weird kitchen appliance? What do you think of them? Is it something you think other home cooks would like to have?

      44 votes
    9. TV Tuesdays Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      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.

      7 votes
    10. Midweek Movie Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      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.

      9 votes
    11. [SOLVED] LG C4 TV annoying brightness changes

      SOLVED Bit of a long shot here because this is one of those issues where I search for the problem and you get a sea of replies like "have you checked the settings?" or "have you tried changing...

      SOLVED
      Bit of a long shot here because this is one of those issues where I search for the problem and you get a sea of replies like "have you checked the settings?" or "have you tried changing HDMI cables".

      I just got a brand new LG OLED TV and I'm happy, but I've been watching Arcane on it and I notice jarring changes in brightness through the episode.
      I'm playing through a native app (Stremio) on WebOS and it's not the source file, I've tested the same file on two different monitors and it's fine.
      I went through the settings and disabled every autocorrect and "boost" capability the TV has to try and diagnose it, and the first pass did seem to improve the rate of changes, but it still happens maybe once every 5 mins of watch time.
      From what I can tell it seems to be picking up particular colour/brightness changes in the source (Arcane is full of then being so vivid) and when it does, it just changes the brightness of the whole display.
      I'm no expert here, I'm also colour blind, so I won't categorically claim it is definitely brightness changing, it could be contract or colour, I'm not sure, but it looks like brightness because the whole picture gets darker or lighter.

      I wondered if it was actually flip flopping between SDR and HDR which honestly, it might be. If it is I have no idea how to fix that, as the TV seems to have no option to enable or disable HDR on native apps.

      Any advice, thoughts, things to try would be appreciated. I'm technically orientated but I don't really know much about changing picture settings to be honest, I tend to pick the most basic/neutral setting and leave it like that.

      Edit: I've dug out the old 4k firestick as suggested and don't get the flickering at all through that. Also running through the guide below helped make the picture look even better! Thanks everyone!
      I might yet grab the service remote though and see if I can make the native apps work, then I can retire the firestick for good.

      13 votes