This was inspired by a conversation in the What are your reading thread. I found myself wanting a larger discussion, so I'm asking here.
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?
Hi All, I've just been prescribed the generic version of Vyvanse and had a bit of sticker shock when I was rung up at my local pharmacy. Even with insurance it was nearly $300 for a months worth pills. I realize this is a problem likely unique to the United States, but I'm wondering how other folks are navigating the costs. While I can afford the medication, the idea of taking on a car sized monthly payment for the pills is really unpalatable. Do folks have any tricks or tips for getting the medication at a lower rate, switching to different medications (i.e. adderall or ritalin), or finding a secondary to cover prescriptions? I've read about Goodrx or SingleCare may be more affordable. Does anyone have experience with those providers?
As a side note, I oversee selection of our company health plan/insurance. While I'd rather not change for the sake of co-workers who have established their primary care physicians with our current offering, I have the ability to change it for 2026. If there folks have providers who cover more of the costs I'm open to hearing it.
Beyond the costs, does anyone have any advice or guidance for things to watch out for as I start taking the medication? Tomorrow is my first day and I'm a combination of excited and anxious.
Thanks!
I recently watched Rūrangi (2020) and appreciated it1 for having a story centered on a trans man and his experiences.
I’m interested in recommendations of other media featuring trans men/masc individuals. I want to cast a broad net, especially if there are other people who might find this useful, so:
Now, I’ll also add some more parameters for what I’m looking for specifically if you’re looking to recommend to me personally rather than in general. Don’t limit your recommendations to just these, though. I’m ultimately open to anything and want this topic to be valuable to others with different tastes/preferences as well:
1. While I did enjoy it, I thought the pacing of the movie was really odd. It wasn’t until after I watched it that I learned it was originally broadcast as a series and was later cut into a single film (which explains the pacing issues). For anyone interested in watching it, I assume the series version does a better job with pacing than the film version.
I absolutely love the premise of a time-loop. I find them fascinating, and there are so many variations to explore. Inevitably, I find myself fantasizing about waking up in my own younger body and the shenanigans I would get up to with so much future knowledge (before existential dread of meeting the same people and creating the same family kick in).
And plenty more besides.
I'll share some of my favourite examples in a comment, but please share your favourites and tell us why you love them.
This thread is aimed toward discussing video game mods, whether that be major overhauls, more tame additions to what is otherwise still pretty much the base game, simple QoL stuff, tech demos showing off black magic the game's engine only begrudgingly accepts to let happen, mods you're making yourself, modpacks, or anything else that is related.
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.
I am a scientist who has semi-frequently written code in C (and other compiled languages like Fortran). When it comes time to compile, I typically tape together a Makefile from past projects and hope for the best, but even then I spend more time than I'd like to admit trying to figure out why my project is not being compiled or linked correctly. I've had a hard time finding any resources that aren't extremely surface level, or else are not behind some type of paywall. Can anyone recommend me some reading so that I can confidently write Makefiles and compile programs and actually understand what the different flags and commands are doing? I don't need extreme "under the hood" information as I don't intend to do things like write my own compiler, I just want to understand the process a little better. Help a scientist out!
I'm trying to go beyond Reddit and Tildes when it comes to some particular interests. I dislike Federated websites due to their usability issues, but I also get the impression that they try to replicate or improve on Twitter. I never used or cared for Twitter in the first place.
I found TrekBBS which looks great, but I was wondering about similar forums for my other interests, such as science fiction literature, classic movies, etc.
So I am curious to know about everyone's favorite old-school forums that are still active and cool!
The websites are not required to be actually old, as long as they work similarly to traditional internet forums.
My iPhone 14 Pro has been at 84% battery health for almost a year now. Anecdotally the battery lasts significantly less time than it did previously, even when it was already at 84% health. I think it may just be a stale calculation, and my actual battery health is significantly lower. If I can get it to show as less than 80%, I can get AppleCare to replace it. Does anyone here know how to get the iPhone to recalculate this value?
I have Coconut batter on the Mac, and it can check the battery health for an iPhone attached with a cable. It uses a different formula, so it gives me a health of 87%. However it also shows history for when I have run it in the past, and when I tested it almost 100 charge cycles ago, it also read 87%. I don't know how any battery can go almost 100 charge cycles with zero degradation (537 to 617 cycles, so it's not like it's a fresh battery).
That's all. And apologies if it's insulting to any resident Finns. I like this one: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=GHGPdS9MkA4&si=UFJvOu9lPyCBlgpE Mokoma - Sinne missa aamu sarastaa
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?
I currently have a Corsair Dark Core Pro SE that I like a lot. My scroll wheel is messed up though. I am kind of in the trenches (who isn't these days), and am looking for some good old retail therapy.
My big ticket items:
I am not opposed to just buying another of my current mouse, I can't tell if there is anything really comparable. I also don't really understand/care for my mouse being lightweight.
Deep cut question though is if anyone has any experience with trackballs, I kind of want to try it out but ultimately I don't really know what I am doing. I really just use my computer casually, and I don't play any competitive games just casual.
Any recs? Thanks, happy to answer any questions too.
The time loop topic has a few entries of media where the time loop is a twist/spoiler, and made me think of how hard it is to recommend books/media where the reveal is part of what makes it impactful.
Two I can think of off the top of my head are
The Girl with all the Gifts by Mike Carey
We are all completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Very different genres and topics and I can't at all think of how to describe either one without spoiling it.
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!
“Your area” is intentionally vague and could be:
Basically, it’s something that is specific to you, but that you think still would be interesting to people outside of “your area.”
Both fiction and nonfiction alike are valid. Also, be sure to explain why you think the book has appeal beyond its range.
I sometimes use chatGPT to proofread longer texts (like 1000+ words) I write in English. Although this is not my first language, I often find myself writing in English even outside of internet forums. That is because if I read or watch something in English, and that thing motivates me to write, my brain organically gravitates toward it.
My English is pretty good and I am reasonably confident communicating in that language, but it will never be the same as my native language. So I will often run my stuff through Grammarly and chatGPT. If you wanna say "This will teach you bad habits", please don't. Things like Grammarly and Google Translate taught me so much and improved my English so much, that I am a bit tired of that line of reasoning. I read most of my books in English. I'm not a beginner so I can and do check for all the changes, and vet them myself as I don't always agree with them.
With GPT, I usually just ask it to elaborate a critique rather than spit out a corrected version. Truth be told, when I did ask for a corrected version, it made plenty of sensible corrections that didn't really alter anything other than that. So I guess I just wanna know everyone's feelings about this. Suppose I write a bunch, have GPT correct it for me, compare it with the original and verify every correction. Is that something you would look at unfavorably?
Thanks!
Anyone watching? That interception by Philly was great!
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.
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?
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
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.
Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.
It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...
Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!
The behavior of a bluetooth device when it reaches low battery is never advertised, and a lot of the time no one even mentions it in the reviews. My experience is that most devices give you an audio warning on repeat until you charge it, which is obviously bad design.
Can anyone recommend a bluetooth receiver that doesn't do this? I've heard that apple airpods only warn you once or twice, but my preference is for a battery-powered bluetooth receiver that lets me plug in wired headphones. I'm still interested in hearing about other bluetooth headphones though.
If there's nothing on the market, it might be interesting to try and build something. There must be bluetooth modules you can buy, but I wonder if they would have the same problem. Maybe you can modify the firmware? If anyone out there is hardware-hacking bluetooth devices, let me know.
I've been rereading The Fellowship of the Ring and saw the mention of Hobbits having their coming of age at 33.
"At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three."
It made me wonder what all of your opinions are on adulthood/coming of age. Some questions I thought might be interesting around this topic include:
Curious to see your thoughts on this!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
Welp, I'm mildly allergic to nuts... and I'm trying to give up as much sugar as possible. What the hell do people snack on that is outside of this? I don't want to wind up making a ramp of carrot or anything
Fix an annoyance.
Take out a level.
Revamp a system.
Expand a world.
Etc.
Pick a game, any game, and tell us what ONE thing about it you would change, and why. It doesn’t have to be feasible or reasonable or whatnot. You’ve got a magic wand with one charge left.
Also, your goal CAN be to make the game better, but it doesn’t have to be! Maybe you want to make the game more challenging. More chaotic. More hilarious. More broken.
Entirely up to you!
Also, you only get one change per game, but it’s fine to talk about what you would do for more than one game.
A huge thank you to everyone who responded to my hair thinning post.
Here’s where I landed:
Minoxidil is toxic to dogs and I’ve got a little fur buddy, and finasteride prevents me from donating blood and platelets, and that’s a new thing for me that I don’t want to give up. So, bald it is! I plan on shaving my head this coming summer.
In the eventual absence of hair on my head though, I’d like to grow more on my face and keep it longer — something that’ll require actual grooming and upkeep. I’ve had a beard for a long time now, but I keep it quite short.
So, what are all of my do’s and don’ts/tips and tricks for growing (and maintaining) a glorious beard?
Also, I want this to be beneficial to ANYONE looking for beard info, so feel free to give short beard tips too.
I get that it’s supposed to make things more secure, but it feels like a constant chore every time I try to log in somewhere. Grab a code from my phone. Check my email. Open an authenticator app. Repeat this process for every single account, over and over.
I know there are tools like YubiKey that are supposed to make 2FA easier, but the reality is that most websites don’t even support them.
I already use a password manager, and all my passwords are long, randomized, and secure. Is there something I am missing that makes this easier, or is this just as infuriating for everyone else?
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.
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like asthma, tildes community fork and rant. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was out of the loop.
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!
I am looking for a heat pump system that:
I have already found one provider at Multiaqua, but they are redesigning their unit and it is currently not available. I hear that Dandelion seems to make something like this, but I can't buy from them. I have a quote for a conventional air-to-air minisplit system, but the cost is really high and it seems like I should at least look for some alternative.
This seems hard to find, and I'm not sure why.
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
I've gone down the rabbit hole of self-hosting, and I'm wondering if I should try self-hosting my blog. The blog is currently on Netlify. I've left it there because I figure their infrastructure is much better than mine... but part of that is a CDN, and, despite the performance benefits, I'm not thrilled about the privacy implications of subjecting my users to that. I'm torn on that point.
That said, I'm on cable internet, so my upstream is abysmal. My site is mostly text and the site is low traffic, so maybe it's not a problem. What do you think? What are some of the implications of self-hosting the blog that I'm not considering?
Edit: Wanted to clarify a couple of things I realize weren't clear in my original posting. I'm already self-hosting a few dozen services from home on my own hardware. Port 80 and 443 both work, and I'm already running a Caddy reverse proxy to proxy to the other services. My question is less about whether self-hosting is a good idea and whether I should be keeping my blog on Netlify for the reasons above. My biggest concerns are the privacy implications of keeping with Netlify and their CDN vs. the performance implications of losing the CDN and serving via a ~30Mbps upstream connection.
Thank you for all the comments so far!
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.
Its screen and touchpad work as well as they always have, even though it's largely been gathering dust beneath my desk for the past two years. It's obsolete and too slow for modern (read: under 7 years old) macOS, but it's not broken.
I could install Linux and set up a server, but my Pi has already filled that role.
This topic came to mind because a friend sent two truly broken laptops—including a MBP of similar vintage to the one discussed here—home with me to send to electronics recycling. Kicking about for other opinions before I add this computer to the pile.
Hey folks!
I've recently become quite enamoured with a game called Empyrion Galactic Survival, because as a science fiction author, it gave me a chance to build and fly some of the ships from my books. So much so in fact, that I went and started a YouTube channel in order to "sell" them to other players (they're all free on Nexus, the videos I made just remind me of car reviews so far lol).
Now, Empyrion only goes so far in scratching the creative itch, and I'm on the hunt for more of its I'll to build and experiment with. I'm looking forward to playing with Space Engineers 2 when it drops, but are there any others you can recommend? It needn't be constrained to space games either... I'm a fan of all things mechanical, but mostly those I can hot rod a bit and paint flames on.
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'm a Linux and big old tower PC guy. I know next to nothing about laptops or Windows. Is it possible to keep a Windows 11 laptop closed, but still be able to turn it on and off?
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?
As I write this, I’m using a $10 foot massager from Temu that my wife bought. I thought it was totally stupid but it gets nightly use. We lie on the couch and just let it run.
Edit2: it looks like the LINGTENG one on Amazon - probably white labeled from same factory, nothing special about it but we like the simplicity.
What has anyone else found surprisingly useful?
Edit -
Here are some things that came in mind as I was walking around:
MASH is a show I grew up with that is an excellent example. It's touching, inspiring and funny.
Just curious since the recent DeepSeek panic.
What do you like? Companies/ETFs?
What do you do? Buy and hold/Trade/Options (Calls/puts, LEAPs, spreads)?
What areas do you think will see massive change (gain/loss)?
Pretty sure this is my first or second topic post, so apologies if the opener is too short.
I just finished reading I hate the new internet post, in which the OP stated:
Every social medium is just bots. The front page of Reddit is easily 35% easily detectable bots at least and who knows what the rest is comprised of.
Why couldn't we create a bot database, which I imagine would work similarly to uBlock for ads? There would be a number of signals to attempt to classify users of social media sites (likely human, likely bot, etc.) in addition to user-provided feedback ("I think this person is a bot" or "this account is me -- definitely not a bot").
An extension could then be attached to the database to provide visual changes to social media platforms ("WARNING! LIKELY BOT!") or simply hide bot posts/comments.
Off the top of my head, some bot signals:
On the crowdsourced side, there would have to be some rules in place to prevent profile bombing, etc.
All in all, I could see something like this adding a bit of human value back to the various social media platforms AND I would think it would lead to higher advertisement click rates (bots will become less valuable over time on a given platform and decide to invest their resources elsewhere, while "human" user engagement increases at the same time).
If this concept already exists, I apologize. I only did a very quick google.
I really like the Laird Superfood Coffee Creamer (Reduced Sugar Version) but their products are becoming increasingly hard to find in Canada. Can anyone recommend an alternative?
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?
Kid has just started getting into Star Wars, which is great because I could buy a set of light sabres for Christmas and no what do you mean that was for the kid it absolutely wasn't a present for myself as well. Anyway, countless hours of duelling later...
We have watched the "first" two films (ep 4 and 5) and plan to watch the remaining movies at some points. A few grabbing-my-arm scary moments but it's OK because "the good guys always win, right Daddy?"
We're playing Lego Star Wars together on the Playstation, which is brilliant fun. Their face when they blew up the Death Star all by themselves was fantastic. Everyone was excited for the rest of the day.
We are hitting the phonics books, of which there is plenty. Kid loves books and stories but isn't such a fan of reading for themselves as yet - but will ask me to let them read to me if there are Star Wars books on the pile, which is great.
However, that's where my Star Wars knowledge ends. I know there's a whole boatload of EU stuff out there, but I have no idea what it is, or what of it is suitable (or not) for a six year old. Any suggestions? We have a rotating selection of streaming services live at any given time, but I'm ok with the occasional venture into choppier waters if needed.