I will admit this is somewhat of a selfish topic as I am struggling to make a decision about selling or keeping a used car I own. I have two vehicles, a relatively newer model crossover which is our primary family car, and my daily driver when running errands with the baby. Our second car is an '06 Acura RSX which is a little coupe (although, it's quite practical and spacious for a coupe)

Our current situation is that my wife works less than a mile from home, and I am a stay at home dad. My wife generally walks or rides our electric scooter to work, while very rarely (extremely snowy or rainy days) we will load up and drive her down the road. The result of this is that the RSX sits unused a lot of the time, except for specific times like when she takes the baby somewhere on the weekend and I have errands to run as well, or when the crossover is otherwise occupied (oil changes, tire rotation etc)

For these reasons, we have been considering selling the RSX. Since used car prices have been spiking it would pay off all of our remaining debt on the crossover, and leave us with a few thousand in the bank. It's not a huge amount of money but it will save us a few hundred a month. We are not well-off on a single income, but we're not struggling by any means.

My hesitancy is basically two economic reasons and one personal:

1. With the tariff insanity, used car prices do seem to be spiking and I don't think (or know if) we're necessarily at the price peak. I would regret selling it and having the price jump 25% a few months later.

2. Because of the same reasons, replacing it in a year or two when I want to go back to work might end up costing us more than we made from selling it. My daughter is 18 months now and we'll probably be looking to get her into daycare by 2.5-3 years old.

3. As for the personal reason, I just really like this car. I bought it outright from the insurance payment on my first real car getting totaled, and it has gotten me through some tough times in my life. I have done a lot of work on it to make it "my" car. I love the fact that it's from the era where cars were just machines, but its still modern enough for tech upgrades, and parts for it (both OEM and third party) are basically everywhere. It's cheap to work on and barely needs work to begin with. That being said, it does need a few things done that might be outside of my skill set in the next year or so. I might be able to manage a serpentine belt replacement, but the front control arm bushings are wearing out and it seems like you need a lot of specialized tools for that replacement so I'm not sure I'm confident in doing it myself.

As for the less "me specific" portion of the conversation, I'm just curious what the smart people of Tildes think about what's going to happen in the near/mid future in the US regarding the car market, used cars, the transition to electric vehicles, and what you're thinking about in regards buying, selling, or holding vehicles in these uncertain times.

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?

I am planning to use Plaid API and have a spring boot backend but given that I will be storing my financial information (such as whatever the Plaid API needs me to store to use their endpoints as well as just the transactions on my credit and chequing account), the security of the data is obviously crucial. and I think my problem is I don't know what I don't know.

I have a basic idea of what kind of things I need to protect against.

1. WIll have to use Spring security (or whatever is best) for thing like protecting against xss and csrf
2. I need to ensure that the PostgreSQL database is encrypted

but beyond that, I don't know much about the nuances of each type of security and customizations I should be on the look-out for. wonder if there's a trustworthy resource for at least detailing for me the kind of security I need to implement on either the Spring or PostgreSQL side of things?

So a my building charged me for a clogged toilet repair that turned into a total replacement.

Its listed as a plumbing damage charge, I don't believe they have a basis to charge for that. What should I do?

Also my insurance company interestingly didnt renew my tenant insurance policy ive had fot years with no change.

Should I ask them to provide the documented charge and consider filing a claim with my insurance seeing as they're dropping me anyway? Should I ensure I have a new policy before I file that claim

Not proud but proudly not ashamed

In the notification setting, I have untoggled both options but then I am wondering how can I mark a comment as read if I dont actually want to vote, label, reply or anything?

I am used to the reddit interface where iirc, you can just hit a button for toggle that state on a comment.

How many languages y'all speak? From how many different language families? How many scripts can you read? Any special grammatical quirks that your languages have?

It doesn't matter if it's A2 level or C2 level, share it with us!

I wasn’t sure whether I should file this under ~movies, ~music, or ~society, so I put it here. Feel free to move it elsewhere.

I had a thought this morning: I’m confused about the attention-seeking behavior of famous and wealthy celebrities in the music or film industries, past their peak.

From my point of view, as someone who is neither famous nor wealthy, I think that if I ever reached that level, then I would be more than happy when people stop paying attention to me, and instead start swooning for newer, younger artists on their way to stardom.

It would signal to me that my time to be in the spotlight is over, that it’s my turn to pass on the torch, and that I can now ride into the sunset, content to potentially have several decades of time left for me to just enjoy a quiet, cozy life, making use of my money to amuse myself as well as to invest it in worthy causes, so that I not only leave behind a legacy of fame and wealth, but also improve the lives of other people.

Every famous and wealthy musician or actor could do this.

But so many of them don’t. They choose to, instead, do everything they can to stay in the limelight. They pull extreme stunts with which they harm themselves, which ironically, in many cases only end up embarrassing in the eyes of the world anyway. And they do all of this to retain the attention of people who have long forgotten about them.

What for? I don’t get it.

Is it really so that fame and wealth just corrupts a person to such an extent that they become addicted to being the center of attention?

This thought, by the way, came about because I’ve become aware of many such “extreme and dangerous attention-seeking stunts” from many celebrities in the last few weeks. It’s not about one celebrity in particular. It’s been a thought that has been brewing in my head for a while.

I tried looking through the docs but couldn't find an answer to this question: What is the nature of the link that is established to the sys-admin and devs of tildes for an account and the invite account?

as in, do they store the invite code that I used to create this account permanently and will be able to link that invite back to the issuing user? so that my account and the issuing user will always be linked in that way?

Hello tilderunners! Apologies for the delay on this thread, I was out of town and realized I hadn't posted last week. I'm posting to collect everyone's YAML for their intended Archipelago run and confirm if we have enough people to go.

For anyone out of the know, Archipelago is a large multiworld randomizer across multiple games. I made an FAQ over here with some details and info. If it sounds vaguely interesting, don't be intimidated and come on in! It's as crazy as it sounds, but not nearly as hard as you think it'll be.

Let's put a hard cutoff of 9 PM ET on the night of Thursday, May 8th to post your YAML(s) in this thread. The YAMLs have to bake in at the beginning - we can't add you later! So please try to get them in then, or let me know if you'll be a bit late so we can push the start a little bit. If a majority of people cannot make the Thursday night time, I can push the date, so please let me know - I'm thinking if we hit ~7 YAMLs posted and ready for the start time we'll go. There are often a lot of checks at the beginning, so it's typically best to be around for the start to be around for the opening chaos. It's still asynchronous, though - if you can start playing within the first 24 hours, that should be fine!

I'm not sure what the best way to attach the YAML would be, so I'm going to suggest posting a spoilered code block that I can throw into a text file. If anyone has a better idea, please throw it in here. I've also thrown a discord server together if you want to join and stream or chat while you play! Technically I've got a separate emojis one with Nitro if that's better for the audio quality boost, but this might be fine for now.

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!

There used to be lively discussion about this topic.

For context: I find it fairly obvious that the Israeli government is deliberately attempting to wipe out the Palestinian people in a way that is slow/ambiguous enough to perhaps not officially qualify as genocide in a legal sense, but that is nevertheless effectively genocide from an emotionally aware human perspective.

I've mostly steered clear of the related conversation because many people seemed to have gotten tangled up in the legal definitions, as if Tildes were a branch of the International Court of Justice, which made me feel like the humanitarian view is getting dismissed or implied as being inferior. I wanted to see if this approach or its popularity on Tildes might have shifted with the new developments, such as Israel blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza and its recent plans to seize the area and hand aid distribution to private companies.

Am I somehow just not able to find the megathread? I believe I may have tried to filter it out earlier but it's not on my filters list and I'm unsure if there are other ways to hide content on Tildes that I may have forgotten about.

I was reading the potential gatorade-esque business idea thread @daychilde put up the other day and it got me thinking about all the potential business ideas my partner and I have been kicking around. I'm hoping folks can post their prospective business ideas here and folks within those industries and provide feedback, insight, or hurdles to the ideas. Kind of like the hobby thread from a few weeks ago. Excited to hear what everyone is thinking about!

Other than using the Atom One Dark theme instead of default theme, I also:

• View at 80% zoom (in desktop)
• Use the Tildes Formatting Toolbar userscript (not sure who wrote this or where the install link is but I'm sure someone in the comments can say)

And that's it for me! Which is relatively speaking almost no personal customization for me. (I also have a universal stylus sheet that removes ligatures on the entire internet but I don't think that does anything here)

What does everyone else do? What do you recommend?

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.

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!

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.

Im just kind of done with Windows and 10 has been stable, but 11 seems to be even more intrusive and I find all the AI 'assistance' to be incredibly annoying. Im just kind of done with MS and Office and I want to try something else.

I dont have many needs. I run LibreOffice spreadsheet and word processor and the only other software I need to work is CORELdraw and CORELpaint as I still do a fair bit of design work on them and Ive been using them for 30 years so I dont want to switch. Other than that its just browsing (Firefox), email (Thunderbird) and TurboTax.

My question is how do I know whats going to work until I try it? And which version of Linux is easiest and most stable? I dont want to have to keep upgrading, I just want a stable usable fairly easy to learn OS that works with what Ive got as Im unlikely to be changing much. Suggestions?

I've been on reddit (yes, Im embarrassed that I haven't quit the cocaine) for about 15 years now. The changes in the last year or so have been noticeable.

For one thing, the worst of the ranting trolls are gone. I used to occasionally get some replies from people who obviously were just out to get a reaction, usually by swearing and name calling with the kind of grammar skills you'd expect from an angry 9 yr old who just discovered how to log on. Those have largely disappeared. But I have a hard time believing that trolls are gone off the net, so is it just better moderation? Or has reddit just implemented more auto rules that squelch the noisy juvenile behavior?

Secondly, Ive noticed the discussions becoming much more detailed. It was typical, especially in political subs, to see the only comments that got strongly upvoted, were short quips, the more smart ass the better, and then for those to be followed by a long succession of similar quips. That still happens, but Ive noticed a lot more lengthy discussion with redditors actually disovering they can create paragraphs and debate more maturely. Is that a change in human behavior? Or are those not likely humans?

And some behavior really has me suspicious. In particular I have gotten the same reply several times to a comment. It will say, "Thank you for sharing your comment, I appreciate it. Could you tell me more about your _______?". This COULD be a human, but the fact that it always starts the same and then asks me for further engagement really has me wondering, if for no other reason than I dont recall the average redditor being that polite.

Ive also noted some strange comment patterns. Yesterday I interacted with a poster and then checked their post history. Over 10,000 comments and they were ALL in the last few months during the run up to the Canadian election and ALL were against one party. Only 4 posts but 10,000 comments?. If there are NO posts in any other sub that seems very suspicious. Either a bot or someone hired to do as much damage as possible?

Reddit has changed. Its now publicly owned. And like all other social media it lives on engagement so I have no doubt that it will do whatever it takes with AI bots to keep people online and engaged. But how good are they? I just hate being 'taken for a ride' by a bot and a company. But how do you ever know if its a human or a bot you're talking to?

I used to make soap and body products, and I really enjoyed it. I loved making nice-smelling things that people really liked. We were really on the verge of online sales, so we went to markets and sold that way. Didn't end up taking off just because we really didn't get the sales base. Online would have helped.

I was talking recently to my wife about making her some gatorade-type hydration beverage with electrolytes. Because we're trying to save money where we can.

I was looking up what goes into most electrolyte products, and pricing them out. What's annoying is that it would be around $75 to get what I needed. But that would give me around 1000 ½L servings, give or take.

And with that, I went down the rabbit hole of "Why not see if I can package some up and sell?"

At the most basic level, it would probably cost around $1.50 to create a 100-serving jar, which I could probably label and sell for something like $10 - which sounds like huge profit, but I think is probably around a reasonable level. Which would mean around 10¢ per serving to my customers.

As I've been expanding on the idea, I feel I could offer mutiple versions:

• The basic one that has no flavor or sweetner, just the electrolytes
• Flavored cersions with sugar for energy, artificial sweetener for folks like me who don't want the sugar but might want the electrolyes
• Custom blends on demand, i.e. since I have to limit my salt and potassium but could benefit from the magnesium and calcium, I might have a flavored artificial-sweetner one with just two electrolytes. I could have main flavors with color (as it makes them taste better, yay silly brains) but offer no-color blends for those that preferred

Paired with an online shop, I think it might be enough to be interesting to people - being able to offer more flavors than the norm. And things I'm not sure some have though of - being able to add this to a protein shake, so flavors relevant to that might be interesting (i.e. getting to play with some "dessert" flavours that would be weird in a drink).

I've got a ton of research to do - and to see how I could start hopefully under cottage food laws with less registrations and fees.

But I'm curious to know if this sounds interesting, what ideas you have, and most importantly, if you've run your own small hobby style business in any relevant sort of way, what advice and ideas you might have to help me as I look at this possibility.

Basically, I'm trying to keep afloat here, and I'm not picking up business clients as quickly as I need, and I think doing this would not only be fun, but perhaps profitable as well.

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.

After talking about it a few months ago my copy of the game finally arrived. @MimicSquid and I met up in San Francisco today and finally got to play Hide&Seek. It was a good time and it was neat to have a better sense of how the game plays instead of just watching it on Nebula. We're planning on playing again in the not too distant future, so if anyone would like to join in on the next one, please let one of us know (we both thought that it would play better with at least three players).

Message for Deimos or anyone else on Tildes development

I'm putting this here after writing the rest of my post, but could we please get an "expand edit window" option, unless there is one and I'm blind? The preview window's great but the edit window's locked to 6 lines and I would appreciate some more since it would make editing a long post like this much easier. Thanks.

The actual post

There has been a lot of gaming buzz regarding extraction shooters as of late, with the closed alpha of Bungie's Marathon currently underway, the second tech test of Embark Studio's ARC Raiders starting just now, and the recent news of the cancellation of a Titanfall extraction shooter from EA/Respawn. As someone who's played and enjoyed extraction shooters before I've been following these and observing the discourse surrounding them (except the Titanfall one, I didn't even know that was a thing til the news of its cancellation) and I've been somewhat dismayed to see a lot of confusion, mixed messaging, and general disdain for the genre. So I've decided to put my own thoughts and definitions of it down here, and clear up the most common misconceptions or falsehoods I've seen repeated ad nauseam elsewhere.

A brief introduction to extraction shooters

First off, what IS an extraction shooter, what makes it different from other shooters, notably battle royales, and which games qualify as extraction shooters? An extraction shooter, as its core gameplay loop, is a shooter where you enter a map with loot and AI enemies scattered about, and the goal is to gather loot and extract from the map with it. However, you need to get out alive - should you die, you will lose everything (with some exceptions) in your inventory, including the gear you went in with. On top of that, the most popular and successful extraction shooters are PvEvP - you will be competing with other real players for loot, and taking loot off their bodies can be just as profitable if not more so than taking it from PvE enemies. It is optional though, and it is entirely viable to play as a "rat", sneaking around and gathering loot without drawing attention and extracting without anyone noticing.

Not a battle royale

Extraction shooters are also frequently confused with battle royales as both games have players inserted into a PvP map where they scavenge gear. However, the similarities more or less end there. With battle royales, you do not risk losing your items on death as all players are dropped in with nothing and don't have a stash to draw from or store items in, so any "loot" found is merely a means of securing victory for the current round. PvP is also mandatory, as the goal is not to get loot but to be the last team/person standing. To facilitate this in a timely manner, battle royales have a shrinking map mechanic that forces the remaining players into a smaller playable area as time goes on to force them into a confrontation. Extraction shooters do not force PvP or have shrinking maps but do have their own ways of drawing players towards each other, through loot-rich points of interest and extraction zones. Some parts of the map will have greater quality and/or quantity of loot, which will naturally draw players in, and there are a few designated areas where you can actually leave with your loot which will also increase your odds of encountering other players either trying to take your loot before you can leave, or trying to leave themselves. Because it is not forced though, PvP encounters are a much more unpredictable and organic experience in extraction shooters.

What extraction shooters are out there?

So which games count as extraction shooters? The current leaders in the genre, which also happen to be some of the longest-lasting ones, are Escape From Tarkov (EFT) and Hunt: Showdown. EFT is a rather hardcore modern military FPS with a heavy focus on realism - guns are extremely customizable, ammo types and armor can make a huge difference, bullets are extremely lethal even from AI enemies, and a good headshot will drop even the most geared and armored player so there's always risk. It has a cult following but its hardcore emphasis makes it unapproachable for most. It also has periodic progression wipes where players have to start over from scratch to keep things fresh and more fair for newcomers, but is a major turnoff for players that don't like to lose what they've earned. Hunt is an FPS set at the end of the 19th century with a bit of dark magic/voodoo theme. Guns are reflective of the times and rather limited in terms of rate of fire and reload speed, which results in more drawn-out firefights where every bullet counts. For each round, the focus isn't to get loot around the map but rather to track and hunt down a bounty boss monster, then extract with that bounty. These two games are what will come to mind first when extraction shooters are mentioned, EFT more so.

I won't go over cancelled (Titanfall), discontinued (The Cycle: Frontier), or side game-mode (The Division's dark zone/survival) extraction shooters here, which is basically almost all of them sadly, so I'll talk about the two biggest up-and-coming ones instead, Marathon and ARC Raiders.

Marathon and the surrounding controversy

Marathon is a sci-fi FPS that uses the lore of Bungie's Marathon trilogy from the 90's as its setting. You play as a "runner" in a robotic shell scavenging the remains of the colony on Tau Ceti IV for scrap to fulfill contracts for the megacorporations involved in the colony's development who now seek to find out what went wrong. It checks the usual boxes for an extraction shooter - you go in with your own loadout, scavenge at points of interest to fill your limited inventory, defeat PvE enemies and other runners for loot opportunities, and try to extract alive before time's up. There are a couple things of note that have resulted in mixed opinions:

• The art direction for runners, gear, and architecture is a sort of mass-produced, neon-colored, smoothed plastic, blocky style, which is a "love it or hate it" kind of thing.
• The gunplay is very similar to that of Destiny, Bungie's last game, which in my opinion is very solid. However, they did make the decision to have mouse magnetism enabled for PC (your cursor will magnetize to targets) to give it more parity with console players, and that has been very unpopular.
• The only queueing option is teams of 3 and the devs have stood their ground on not having a solo or duo player queue, which is a turn-off for players that prefer solo, or don't want to play with randoms and don't have 2 friends to play with.
• Players do not have full customization of their runners but must choose from 6 runner archetypes that have a set of abilities and a specific look, which can be partially changed with a skin. This is also largely unpopular, as Bungie's past titles have featured high levels of cosmetic customization and this feels largely restrictive and monetization-focused instead.
• There is no option for proximity voice chat, which the devs have said was excluded to protect players from toxicity. This has also proved to be very unpopular.
• It will have seasonal progression wipes which will reset faction reputation and clean out player vaults, which is unpopular among players that like to hoard their loot, especially many Destiny players.
• Supposedly there will be more "raid-like" PvE experiences on an as-of-yet unreleased map that takes place aboard the Marathon colony ship, but how mechanically complex those are or whether or not that will be enough to attract PvE-oriented players is pure speculation at this point.
• It will not be free-to-play, but rather released at a "premium" but not full game price point, which most people are assuming to be $40 USD.

The game is set to release in September this year, but based on the feedback Bungie is getting from players in this very first alpha, they will need to take this feedback very seriously and make a number of changes in the few months they have left, or risk a very rocky release and potentially financial failure. Many players seem to want Marathon and Bungie to fail, notably vitriolic Destiny veterans that feel like they were snubbed out of Destiny 3 for this, but as someone with over 2000 hours in Destiny 2 myself I want it to succeed, whether I play it or not. I'd rather there be more fun and successful games than major failures, and wishing for something to fail just because it isn't what you want is incredibly petty.

ARC Raiders, the underdog

ARC Raiders is a third person shooter set in a post-apocalypse where robots called ARC have devastated the surface of Earth and humanity has retreated underground, sending "raiders" to the surface to scavenge for tech and goods. It's developed by Embark Studios, which is made up of ex-DICE (Battlefield) developers, and their other title is the well-received but niche PvP shooter The Finals. Mechanics-wise, there isn't anything particularly unique about this extraction shooter - limited mobility, limited inventory space, PvE enemies, points of interest, extraction points, etc. However, it seems to check all the boxes of what players want and it does it well while making the experience more casual and accessible:

• There are "safe pockets" where players can store a few loot items they won't lose on death (Tarkov does also have this, Marathon and Hunt do not).
• There is proximity voice, and also a quick emote menu for giving vocal commands, directions, and responses.
• The art direction is realistic post-apocalypse with high graphical fidelity and semi-futuristic robots, which is "safe", but still good looking.
• The audio design is phenomenal. Distant gunfire, supersonic cracks of rounds, bullets ricocheting off surfaces, large bots stomping around from blocks away, player footsteps on different surfaces and within enclosed spaces, quadcopter drones buzzing, larger bots with unsettling and deep "roars", and more.
• There isn't a solo or duo-only queue, but there is solo-matching priority at least, so you're more likely to be placed with other solo players.
• There is a clear progression path in the form of a workshop you can upgrade with scavenged materials, and a deep skill tree with multiple branches.
• Raiders are not class or hero-based and are freely customizable by the players in terms of loadout and appearance.
• Chaff PvE enemies are relatively easy to defeat but still dangerous. Aside from eliminating them as threats, they can drop materials or items to recharge your shields so they're not just a waste of ammo. Non-chaff PvE enemies can be significantly more dangerous and harder to defeat but will have valuable loot.
• There is already an example of a PvE "boss" robot guarding a point of interest which requires some mechanics to collect the loot within it. The boss itself is very challenging to defeat, even with multiple teams fighting it, but should reward top-tier loot.
• While the game was initially announced as free-to-play, the devs have since switched to selling it at at $40 USD.
• There are "battle passes" in the game in the form of shops players can unlock using a currency that is earnable in-game, or purchased with real money (like warbonds from Helldivers 2 for any helldivers reading this).

Overall, the game is shaping up to be a more accessible extraction shooter for the wider gaming audience and very serious competition for Marathon. No official release date has been announced but they are planning on releasing some time this year.

The stigma around extraction shooters

I've mentioned various things about extraction shooters that may be contributing to their unpopularity amongst the wider gaming audience throughout the post, but for the sake of cohesiveness and for all the folks that just want a TL;DR, I will collate and expand on those ideas here:

• Confusion with battle royales - I've seen some people confuse extraction shooters with battle royales and say "the market is oversaturated with extraction shooters, dead trend chasing game" or something along those lines. It's hard to call a market oversaturated when there's only 2 successful and very niche games in it, but if you incorrectly lump all the battle royales in that makes more sense.

• Escape From Tarkov is a bad poster child - When people do think of extraction shooters (and not mistakenly battle royales), they will default to EFT, which is notoriously hardcore and "sweaty". It would be the same as never having played an RPG, and being introduced to it with Dark Souls, which would understandably turn away anyone that isn't looking for that kind of experience.

• PvP and losing progress - The game always having a PvP element is already discouraging to PvE-focused players, and this is only made worse by the chance to lose your gear if you die. Many players are strongly opposed to losing progress, and losing multiple times in a row due to other players defeating them when they just want to do PvE and get some loot is an awful experience that they don't have to have in a different type of game.

• Progression wipes are anathema to hoarders - On top of potentially losing progress on a round-to-round basis, seasonal progression wipes also threaten to reset progress entirely between seasons, While they are effective at keeping things fresh, players that like to have 400+ items stored away in their vault that they will never use and just admire from time to time revile this concept. Less hoard-minded players may be concerned about their potential inability to max out their progression, the fear of missing out induced by temporary progression, or the pointlessness of even progressing if it gets wiped anyway.

I didn't read any of that, are extraction shooters for me or not?

Well, that depends. If you:

• Don't mind or enjoy a mixed PvEvP experience
• Are ok with the idea of loot and progression being temporary
• Like the higher stakes of potentially losing your inventory and gear, or taking someone else's
• Are ok with inventory management, even in the middle of a round
• Are not terrible at shooters

Then yes, extraction shooters may be fun for you! They certainly aren't for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with not enjoying one or the genre in general, but if you do, they offer a very unique gaming experience. If you are interested, keep an eye on ARC Raiders and Marathon - they aim to be more accessible than previous extraction shooters and it's a lot easier to get in on a new game than join one with a veteran playerbase.

I watch Amazon Prime Video with Librewolf, but today I got the error message below. I already have DRM enabled. Any ideas how to fix this?

Prime Video is incompatible with your current operating system or web browser. You must update to watch Prime Video titles. Review the Prime Video system requirements. If the problem continues, please contact Amazon Customer Service and refer to error 7132.

Edit:

I fixed the problem by removing Librewolf and reinstalling it.

Miami Grand Prix
Miami International Autodrome
May 2-4, 2025

Sprint Race Qualification:
Friday, May 2, 2025 - 20:30 UTC / 16:30p US EDT

Sprint Race:
Saturday, May 3, 2025 - 16:00 UTC / 12:00p US EDT

Grand Prix Qualification:
Saturday, May 3, 2025 - 18:00 UTC / 2:00p US EDT

Grand Prix:
Sunday, May 4, 2025 - 18:00 UTC / 2:00p US EDT

See your local time here

Next race:

Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix
Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari
Sunday, May 18, 2025

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 guys.

I'm trying to make the connection between my system and Sourcehut. I created my Ssh key and added pub key to the Sourcehut. Added the private key with the ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 code after the "eval" thing.

Whenever I try ssh git@sr.ht, it asks for password. I do not know what password it is and I'm entering my passphrase but it says permission denied.

On Github side, I managed everything without problem tho. Any hints?

EDIT: I removed Git and SSH keys completely. Reinstalled Git again. Followed the instructions step by step for the SSH keys and it worked this time. I have no idea what I did different this time but it works now after 3 hours of hell.. I suspect that I made a typo in config file in SSH directory. Thanks for comments guys! I love you all!

I have been planning to make the switch to Linux as a daily driver for a while and have researched many different distros. I have seen a lot of discussion online about Bazzite and other similar distros based on Fedora Atomic. It sounds like it would be more stable, and less likely for you to accidentally break something, but installing software other than Flatpaks requires running it in some kind of container such as Distrobox. Some people say it's annoying, others say it's good since you mess up the container rather than your system.

I have used SteamOS on Steam Deck, and notice that things have "just worked" more than what I have personally seen with "normal" distros on laptops or desktops. For example, I've never really had any issues installing things and running software on SteamOS, but someone I know using Mint has seen seemingly minor things cause massive glitches on their system, or they've run into strange difficulty just installing certain programs like Steam. Would one of these types of distros, especially Bazzite which specifically is trying to be like SteamOS, be closer to that Steam Deck experience?

Has anyone here tried one of these distros and had any thoughts? Anything you loved, or was anything a deal breaker?

1. Introduction

I have, on many occasions, considered creating a fiction writing and feedback exchange workshop on Tildes. As these things often go, I exaggerated in my plans, detailing them endlessly without ever putting them into action. This post is an attempt to break the cycle of procrastination, and I am doing so by forcing myself to adopt a much simpler approach.

2. Goals

The main goal of the Tildes Short Story Exchange is to allow people to get feedback on their short stories. Is it any good? How can I improve it?

3. Why only short stories?

Although there are many writing genres people like to share, short stories are among the most practical. They can be read much more quickly than novels and novellas, and their evaluation is simpler than what poetry requires. A simple, defined, and easy-to-understand prompt is conducive to creation. Every month, participants will know that the Tildes Short Story Exchange is a place to get feedback on short stories. They will feel compelled to write as a result.

4. Position on LLMs

This is a workshop for humans. Producing human connection is one of its main goals. Because of that, all submissions must be human-generated, both in full and in part. That said, LLMs can be used for the same things traditional tools such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word have been used for in the past: proofreading. Additionally, it is allowed to use LLMs to assist in the translation into English of text that you wrote yourself.

5. About the submissions

For the purposes of the TSSE, a short story is a work of fiction with 7,500 words or less. This is based on the classification by both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Stories that go a little above that will, of course, be accepted within reason. All submissions must be in English.

6. How to submit your short story

You may use any website, blog, format, or platform to share your story!

If you are inclined to share a PDF, please also share your story in a format that is open, allowing it to be easily converted and better displayed on mobile devices such as phones, tablets, Kindles, etc. Some good formats for that are .docx, rtf, odt, epub, mobi, txt, md (markdown).

If you are sharing your story on something like Google Drive or Microsoft Office Online, make sure to set the appropriate permissions!

I will make an effort to read and provide feedback on as many submissions as I can, and if you share it in an open format it will at the very least have me as a reader!

You may also use detail markdown blocks to paste your story on Tildes itself (see "Expandable sections" on Tildes docs here).

7. Example submissions

All short story submissions should be top-level comments on the TSSE posts.

I drafted below an example submission that I encourage you to use. There are a few additional suggestions in there!

Title: My Super Cool Story
Genre(s): Science fiction, romance
Expected feedback: In this story I need feedback on story, language, everything. You can be as ruthless as you want. I can take it!
File: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/

Title: The Day My Dog Died
Genre(s): Drama
Expected feedback: I'm really insecure about the ending. This is a very personal story—be gentle with me!
File: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/

8. How to provide feedback?

All feedback should be a direct response to short story submissions.

Feedback should always follow the guidelines put forth by the writer, but anything that is not explicitly prohibited can be understood to be allowed. There will be no strict rules on how feedback must be written, but I would suggest that everyone provide something potentially helpful to the improvement of the story. That is, of course, highly subjective.

9. How are rules going to be enforced?

Given that I am a regular Tildes user with no administrative privileges, all rules in this project will serve merely as guidelines that I suggest participants follow. There will be no enforcement or consequence for not following the guidelines. That means there will be no score, and no “feedback points” will be awarded. It is suggested that everyone seeking feedback provide at least one piece of feedback prior to posting their own story. But that will be entirely based on the “honor system” and no admonitions will be made toward those who seek feedback without providing it.

10. What will be the schedule?

The TSSE will feature one post on the 1st day of each month. This is to help with mnemonics so people always remember when it will happen. That will help them get their “creative mojo” working every month.

Exceptionally for this first edition, given that it is already May 3rd, the Tildes Short Story Exchange – First Edition will go up next Monday (May 5th) and remain as the current post until June 1st, when it will be replaced.

Within that period, everyone will be free to post their short stories and their feedback at their own leisure.

The schedule may change to once every 2 months if there is not enough activity.

I've been wanting to tell the Tildes community about a favorite podcast of mine, The Film Reroll, an improv. comedy show which plays through your favorite movies as TTRPGs and totally ruins them (their words, I love the show and think the cast is amazing), and would love to hear about any podcasts y'all listen to that you might want to recommend to others!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like blackouts, misconceptions and epic games v apple. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was hawk-eyed.

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!

For me it's:

Pants below the natural waist. What can I say, I grew up during the Britney Spears' Time.

Long socks with shorts. Also, invisible socks, apparently I just hate crew or 1/4 crew socks.

ADDENDUM.
This popped up in my feed I see that no one has defended capri pants, yet...I like how at some point in society, a "cupped" clothed ass was considered so provocative.

That is such an infinite subject that a lot of people are passionate about. It could easily be a scheduled post. So this time I am the one doing it. Any misconception is welcome as long as it is something you genuinely care about!

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.

It's been a long time since I've done any "serious" programming, but I have long held a desire to recreate an app that's been out of development for a decade, and I reckon I'd do fine if given the right direction.

Googling for this gives me either "no code" platforms, which is zero of the fun and basically what I do at work, or documentation that has skipped the first ten steps because it assumes you know the prerequisites already. Help?

So. I have what I'm sure is not a unique problem, but sure is an interesting one.

The people who built my house built the foundation wrong. Instead of digging a hole, then digging a deeper trench for a foundation, which insures the foundation is on compacted soil, they made a mold around the edge of the hole. Then put some sand on top.

As you can imagine, 60 years of settling has resulted in my foundation kind of sitting on tiny plateaus of compressed sand, and those plateaus are slowly eroding away. Especially in this one spot where there was water seeping in because they also did the grade wrong.

So anyhow, my understanding is that the best solution is to add a bunch of fill dirt into the 5ft "luxury crawlspace," compressor, and repeat until the dirt is at least level with the foundation footer. To the tune of approximately 60 cubic yards.

As you can imagine, this is an awful lot of dirt. And the only entrance to my crawlspace is a 10sqft hole at the back of the house, far from where dirt could be delivered.

How the hell am I supposed to do this? I feel like the most cost-effective way would be to have the exterior wall and floor of one bedroom ripped off so that the dirt can be pushed/poured directly in, and then an army of assistants spreads out the mess.

I'm sure I could ask a contractor (and will given scope of work), but I'm trying to get a rough feel for the work required so I know if I'm being completely ripped off.

Bottom line: I live in Western Pennsylvania in the US. I may shortly need to replace my aging Honda Ridgeline. I need a mid-sized truck/van/SUV that can be a good "road trip" car for a family of three that chronically overpacks.

What car do you like? What car buying or car selling wisdom do you have in the post-pandemic car market?

A while back I read an article about the development of a new Digg platform.

I signed up for an email list about new developments. I got invited to pay $5 USD to join a forum to see updates on their efforts and give suggestions.

I've been advocating for not implementing downvoting.

My reasoning is that having just upvotes like Tildes serves the original purpose of voting on content. It moves the better content towards the top and the poorer content towards the bottom. Downvoting at least on Reddit just becomes a middle finger for most cases.

I was surprised how many other people at this special forum were AGAINST that idea. They really want to be able to give people a middle finger.

Sadly, I saw a preview of the U.I. today and at least for new threads it had a "bury" link.

Oh well. I tried!

So I was raised in a religious household with prayer and such but due to things like a dysfunctional family where some members used religion in a very unhealthy way, combined with distrust I have developed over the years of any sort of authority (and some of the teachings that i disagreed with), I just couldn't fully reconcile being part of the religion I was raised in and left.

However, despite the complicated relationship I have with God (I am left unsure as to whether He exists and if He is truly loving), it has proven a useful outlet for my gratitude for life.

I see unhoused people around me, people struggling with drug addiction, I am friends with a nurse who works in a psych ward and they sometimes text me the saddest stories. combine that with the fact that I was laid off for 6 month during the tech layoff season (I was over the moon when I finally landed a job), I have a lot of gratitude for the fact that I have a job in something I am passionate about, can afford my lifestyle and and a roof over my head. basically the necessities.

And I find I have a need to direct this gratitude somewhere and the idea of God proves useful in these cases.

For people who don't believe in God, do you feel a need to express gratitude at anything and if so, how do you do it?

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!

Apologies if I've chosen the wrong topic for this one. My request is broad, so I'm not sure where it should go. Could have fit into an "education" topic, but that doesn't exist so… 🤷‍♂️

I stumbled onto the Manga Guide to Databases, and I'm having a lot of fun reading through it. It's reminded me of other media that is explicitly designed to teach a topic in a fun way. A few examples that stand out:

• The Little Schemer (book)- Teaches recursion in a really intuitive way through a narrative.
• Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~ (game)- Teaches you about Japan and Japanese culture through a visual novel.
• How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? (anime/manga)- Does more storytelling than teaching, but there's still a fair bit of teaching in here about how to get started working out

I really enjoy this kind of media, and I'd like to find more of it. What other media have you found that fits this description? Topic and medium doesn't matter as long as the delivery is effective. I don't even care if the media seems designed explicitly to teach the topic or if learning is just a pleasant side-effect of engaging with it.

Hello tilderinos! I'm currently on the hunt for a new job, and it's been a very long time since I've had to do any kind of real interviewing to compete for a position. I'm looking for some general tips and, if anyone is experienced in the field of education, tips specific to teacher interviews.

My strengths in interviews are that I'm generally a confident speaker, I know my field well, keep pace with recent developments, and have an enormous amount of experience to draw from.

My weaknesses are that I tend to ramble (adhd!), I lose track of multi part questions (adhd strikes again!), and I'm terrible at quickly recalling specific examples from my mountain of experience. I also feel that, especially when interviewing for positions a bit outside my experience (Eg a 2nd grade teaching position) I come across as naive at best and ignorant at worst.

I also generally have a hard time selling myself with words. I'm very much a man of action, and would love to demonstrate my skill firsthand, but that isn't terribly easy to do in an interview setting.

I hope this topic isn't too selfish of me and I appreciate any feedback I get! Thank you all.