Ironically, AI has boomeranged from surpassing human intelligence to having us spot it like a dove in a pond. So now, leave in all the little flubs to make it a bit more clear that a person at least typed this in a keyboard, you know?

This morning I found a receipt in my kitchen. It was from my roommate, who had ordered pizza from Dominoes the night before. When I looked at it, I was shocked. There was a single line item on the order, two large pizzas for the sum of $75.98 USD. I thought, "what the hell is this? How is he spending so much on pizza? And the junk they sell at Dominos? They don't even make the crust there!"

But then I looked down to the actual amount paid and it had a discount: $54.00 off the price for buying two of them. So the effective price was a much more reasonable $10.99 each. That's less than a third of the sticker price. After tax and an in-house delivery fee, it was still under half of that price.

I don't eat out that often, and fast food is especially rare for me, so I've been fairly insulated from this, but it seems that this kind of thing is happening everywhere. One pizza place I do get food from occasionally is Pieology. Their pizzas were roughly $10 not too long ago, but in recent years those prices have ballooned, with some locations asking for $15 for the same pizza order. But the secret is that they are actually still selling pizzas for those prices if you use their app - it's just that instead of giving you the real price, you get free "perks", which is your choice of a drink, cookie, and things to that effect. I never go to McDonalds, but I've heard endless complaining about how expensive it is. The retort I hear is, "you better get the app". The app is a privacy nightmare that requires practically every permission it could ask for in order to function, so rather than actually getting deals you're just subsidizing the cost of your food with the sale of your personal data.

There's almost no way to definitively prove this, but one argument that I find compelling as to why restaurants are doing this is because of delivery apps. Delivery apps take omission from the purchase price, and people really don't like seeing that they're paying more for things on the apps than they would be in the stores, so shops are raising the base price of their food in order to make things seem more fair, while offering in-store discounts so that they don't lose out on revenue from lower-income people who wouldn't order from delivery apps. If that's the case, that would mean that people ordering from those delivery apps are not only paying more for the privilege, but they are actively pushing up the prices for everyone else as well. And that's just ridiculous.

Can be viewed here

Is this just the usual pointless Apple fanfare?

I'm not very techy so I'm just wondering why this is a big deal. It seems to me it's just a different theme of sorts? But in this video MKBHD is making it out to be a really big deal. Is it like technologically super impressive? What's the big deal?

The party tonight consisted of

• Jeff, half-elf Druid 5 / Fighter 3 / Magus* 4
• Lee, gray elf Fighter 4 / Magic-User 4 / Thief 5
• Oryn, high elf Magic-User 5 / Thief 6
  • Henchman Takeshi, human Ranger 4
• Varda, human dual-class** Cleric 6 -> Magic-User 3
  • Henchman Rudy, halfling Druid 2 / Thief 3
• Vordt, half-ogre Cleric 4 / Fighter 4
  *Magus is a custom subclass of Magic-User I created.
  **Varda intends to become an occultist, another custom class of mine; becoming one functions similarly to bard, where you begin as Cleric, transition to Magic-User, and then finally become a proper occultist.

To recap the prior session, the party went into the dungeon again and explored a new direction, finding a long hallway with bas reliefs in brass decorating the walls. Behind a set of brass double-doors was a 90' by 40' chamber with four major points of interest.

• An oblong, 4' tall x 10' wide altar with a basin filled with water and treasure.
• A fountain streaming endless water without overflowing.
• Four pillars with gargoyles atop them, unmoving.
• A drape along the south wall covering something.
  After a cursory search, Rudy set to looting the basin, which triggered the entire altar to begin rolling forward and the marine life carved into it to animate. Rudy jumped out of the way as several combatants closed in. Many attacks and spells were slung its way, and it lashed out with teeth, tentacles, and pincers as it slowly rolled to face individual combatants. As Lee was caught by the fury of the altar, the gargoyles animated and began flying in to harass the party. Though the altar was defeated, the gargoyles seemed keen on taking Takeshi out, as by the end of that round he is bleeding on the floor. Varda then invokes a chant and uses a limited wish to revive Lee and transport everyone to a safe location. As everyone blinked, they found themselves in the domicile of the two old clerics hiding out in Woodpine, sage and incense filling their noses rather than the brine of the altar chamber.

They spend a week licking their wounds and allowing the clerics to tend to them, then set out again. Oryn casts invisbility, 10' radius on the party as they leave town and travel to the Temple dungeon. They work their way back to the altar room and have an easier time clearing out the gargoyles, afterwards noticing that these appear to be zombies wearing cloaks. All but one of the cloaks were too damaged to be of any use or value, so they remove the one and continue on.

They enter a room whose main attraction is a pool with a triton in it. The triton telepathically connects with the party and pleads for assistance before a kraken is summoned through his sacrifice and they all die. Varda, through knowledge granted by their patron, is slowly becoming suspect of the situation. The triton pleads individually with several party members, attempting to suggest they enter the pool and remove his chains, unbeknownst to them; I am rolling their saves in secret and they're passing them. Lee attempts to shoot it with an arrow, and the arrow dissolves before reaching the triton.

Finally, its gaze meets with Vordt's, who was ready to leave, and he fails the save. Vordt begins removing his armor to jump into the pool. Lee (4'9" 191 lbs accounting for gear) attempts to stop Vordt (7'8" 441 lbs accounts for gear) via grappling. He gets a lucky waist cinch that is immediately broken by Vordt as he lands a knee to Lee's jaw, dealing a staggering 11 points of subdual damage to him, but he takes it like a champ as he sits out, stunned from the blow.

Jeff casts web in a wall between Vordt and the pool as they figure out how best to handle him as Oryn and Takeshi move to open the door behind them. Varda, in a desperate attempt to save Vordt, utilizes a clerical dispel magic and fails to remove the charm from Vordt. Varda then utilizes their anything item to turn it into a rope of entanglement, which then hogties Vordt.

The party drags Vordt out of the dungeon safely and regains his senses the following day, shortly before the rope returns to its original form, t hen makes the several-day journey back to town to split the loot. Varda will receive no XP this go around, but the gems the party found elsewhere amounted to the PC shares totalling about 3700 gold each. Oh, and Oryn is now partially gargoyle, as they put on that cloak I mentioned earlier and then took it off.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like dogs, artificial intelligence and ozzy osbourne. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was a nosey parker.

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 was about to recommend wordpress.com (free tier) to someone and realized I have no idea if I should. I am not a tech person but I should have an idea of what to suggest when someone even less technical ask me for advice. Did it all die down? Is Wordpress safe to use now?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like scurvy, names.user and emoji. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was keeping the minutes.

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've been recently thinking about the impact of fictional characters from tv shows/movies can have on our lives. Have you ever felt influenced by a particular character or show?

For me, the show Mr. Robot coincided with my decision to pivot to cybersecurity. There were a lot of other factors that made me switch, but it was undeniable that the show (and the main character, Elliot) played a sizable role. It's been a decade since it first aired, and I’m still grateful for that change I made.

Curious to know if anyone else have a similar experience?

I didn't know where to categorize this. It's not current, kinda politics, kinda tech, kinda a lot of things, but mostly I guess, I was just freaked out and wanted to share/discuss.

I read about this guy 40-50 years ago in The Readers Digest, have never heard anything about him since then, until the other day, a forum chat reminded me and I went rabbit-holing...

John Aristotle Phillips did an independent research project for his Physics degree at Princeton, on how to build a simple nuclear explosive device, including explicit instructions on how and why and etc. His larger goal was to help stop nuclear material proliferation by showing that there were no "secrets" left, no tech hurdles for anyone with a brain, except that of actually acquiring weapons-grade material.

His advisor was no less than Freeman Dyson, who gave him an 'A' and then immediately pulled the paper out of circulation. A couple months later, the Pakistani govt called Phillips, asking to buy a copy of his paper.

So, that's the background. It was his claim to fame back in the '70s.

From there, he went into politics, and etc etc, long story short, he's a top data broker. For decades now, he has been the CEO of one of the biggest US data trawling corporations, holding detailed personal info on at least 175M Americans (as of 2007 - doubtless, it's more today), which they use to help get politicians elected.

"Aristotle has served every occupant of the White House since Ronald Reagan, and consults for several top political action committees."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aristotle_Phillips#Aristotle,_Inc.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone who's devoted his life to gathering info about other people, there doesn't seem to be all that much out there about him or his company.

So, my gut tells me he has become "a bad guy", just my automatic reaction to anyone who deals in this field ... But, IDK, bigger picture is just, I don't know how to process this info. Maybe there's nothing to process, it is what it is.

IDK. Just looking for other people's perspectives, I guess.

I don't have a pulse on this like I used to, but are there still big new arcade games being developed and made?

If I went to an arcade, could I play new stuff from the past few years, or is it going to be primarily old cabinets that have been maintained?

How many arcades are still out there anyway? Have they been able to survive against the widespread proliferation of consoles, phone gaming, home VR, etc.?

I'm curious as to whether arcade gaming is still alive or if it's a dead or dying art.

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!

Inspired by a conversation with my mom about how our poor dog didn't get fed until 5:08 instead of 5:00, poor thing seemed convinced we forgot she needed food. Mom joked that Zoey would call the ASPCA to report animal abuse for starving her. And I realized it's really good animals can't call because the lines would be flooded with reports of their humans closing bedroom doors or daring to stop playing after 45 minutes outside on a snowy day.

So, what silly complaints would your pets make?

Hey tilderinos,

Self-described resident roboticist here, Not really sure if this is needed, but as people tend to quote/@ me on threads semi-regularly, you might notice @drannex has disappeared, but you can find me at @macleod now. Thanks @Deimos for the change!

Drannex is a really old username that I've never really enjoyed since I stopped being twelve a rather long time ago, much longer than joining here. So it's dead now.

I'm most known online as tumblr user @macleod anyway, and my website is macleod.ee to match. Homeowner has a meow in it? Glitter coffee? the dress meme? yeah, that was me (or partially). I'm sorry. Plus, it's my irl name anyway and I rather like it (muh-kloud).

Anyways, consider this a reintroduction or notice that my username has changed.

cheers, and remember, there can be only one ⚔️.

Recently I was approached by someone who begged me to financially help them for a personal problem I could sympathize with. I was just approached on the street. There were several reasons why I did eventually give them part of what they asked for. Partly since they seemed sincere and partly because they have shown me some papers and an id card. Also since they turned down a smaller sum and offered to repay it which I refused. Some people can well damn seem as what they want to seem, papers can be printed and reused and id can be fake or they can just count on relatively small sums and lack of evidence to dissuade legal action and honestly I don't even know if it would count as crime justice system would pursue.

For context what I gave them was about third to half of a cheap month's rent so not truly substantial but also not trivial.

If they did something constructive with it then that is well. If they did something not so good then now I unknowingly funded that and if they just tallied it as good day's work then what I did is simply stupid. I would like to live in a society where this was just not a thing as in anyone not actually malicious would not be in a position to need to do anything like that but where we live it is statistically likely that I am just an idiot.

In retrospect the halfway I went about it also strikes me. If I believed them and they were genuine I could have given them what they wanted as it would not be all that much more financially impactful. If I didn't and they weren't I should have just walked away as all the other people did and in not doing so I enabled someone at something.

What is truly stupid of me regardless of anything else is at the end when I just didn't know I effectively flipped a coin, as in looked whether the time on my phone was odd or even to decide, though I did flip it a few times.

Noted smoked meats enthusiast Mark Zuckerberg has recently been running around collecting ML experts for a project involving an organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs, which is set to feature compute clusters with names like "Prometheus" and "Hyperion", and which will attempt to "deliver" superintelligence.

Isn't this sort of behavior on the list of things people are absolutely not to be allowed to do? Or has something changed and we now feel it's safe for Mark Zuckerberg to be allowed control of a piece of equipment that can outsmart all his enemies and also Mark Zuckerberg? Are we all safely convinced he will fail?

If it cannot be permitted, who is responsible for not permitting it?

Presumably, my understanding of Cloudflare is too simple, too rudimentary, or even entirely lacking in some aspects.

As far as I understand it, the main feature is just faster and more reliable access to sites, right?

If I host a website on a server in New York, and someone tries to look at it in Tokyo ... that's a long distance and a lot of potential hops to retrieve the file(s) directly from the NY machine. Cloudflare provides closer-location mirrors of websites so there is less lag time, plus having multiple copies makes my website more readily/reliably available.

That's good, I get that, especially for big, professional business-critical-type sites/services.

But it's not actually essential, is it? Anyone, anywhere on Earth could still visit my NY website w/o the existence of Cloudflare.

Is there more to Cloudflare than this? I realize they are getting into a variety of 2ndary "value-added"-type features, like their own "are you a robot" tests and probably a bunch of other stuff I don't know about ... but fundamentally, are they actually necessary for the Internet?

Why is Cloudflare such a big deal?

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.

As of July 1st, all articles are behind a paywall. This includes all historical articles (going back decades, apparently), including any and all InternetArchive copies -- so RIP every Wikipedia link that has ever referenced them as a source. A free-registration option gets you access to 3 articles per month. A proper subscription is $230/year.

A freelance journalist who has been published with them in the past had this to say about it, which I thought was enlightening and, well, thoughtful.

On SpaceNews going paywalled, and the broader disregard for archiving in journalism.

I reviewed his stuff a bit, and I like his writing, so I added his RSS link to my feed (while simultaneously deleting my SpaceNews link), and on a whim--because he has his email right there on his "About" page, I emailed him to tell him that I liked his article and I just replaced SpaceNews with him.

Like, an hour later, I received a response from him, reminding me that he focuses primarily on the Moon, and that he loves RSS and is happy to hear people still use it.

And it was so refreshing to connect--almost directly--with an actual human being writing news.

Just thought I'd share.

Oh, I also want to comment on that price ... $230/year is--IMHO--wildly overpriced. But almost immediately, it also occurred to me that they probably lost more readership going from $0/year to $1/year, than going from $1 to $230 so, you know, business-wise, I suppose it's not exactly a horrible decision.

But I'd like to hear other people's opinions on that price, too.

This is the twelfth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Our next book will be Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky at the end of April.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself. Also, this month will be slightly different. I have been exceptionally busy and didn't finish the book this time. I am hoping that you all who did read it will come up with interesting questions in addition to your comments/ reviews.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

I'm starting to use AI increasingly, and am getting some value out of it. I'm curious if paying for paid tiers of the big players (in particular, ChatGPT and Claude) provides significantly better responses.

I'm aware that the paid tiers offer more features and benefits than just higher response quality. For me, those are just nice-to-haves, and not my primary concern.

My main uses of AI are software development and foreign language learning. So far, I've used the free versions of ChatGPT and Claude, as well as "proxies," including Github Copilot and Duck.ai. For both my use cases, I've found the responses usually good and helpful. I just maintain a healthy skepticism about the correctness of the answers, and challenge, test, and double check where needed (especially testing suggested code when developing software).

Have you found response quality to be noticeably and significantly better with paid tiers? I was just randomly thinking, and it occurred to me that the cost of an AI subscription is in the same ballpark as a subscription to a language learning service like Duolingo. So, if I can get value from AI that approaches what I'd get from a dedicated language learning service (even if it doesn't quite match or exceed it), then also getting the value of general AI in the same subscription should make things quite valuable and worth it. Not to mention possibly getting better software development assistance in the same package.

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.

Piano keys are familiar and easy enough to draw if you're not trying to be exact, but if you want label the dimensions with their exact measurements (like in a CAD drawing), it turns into a math puzzle. The problem comes from the groups of two and three black keys.

This article explains it like this:

If you've ever looked closely at a piano keyboard you may have
noticed that the widths of the white keys are not all the same
at the back ends (where they pass between the black keys). Of
course, if you think about it for a minute, it's clear they
couldn't possibly all be the same width, assuming the black keys
are all identical (with non-zero width) and the white keys all
have equal widths at the front ends, because the only simultaneous
solution of 3W=3w+2b and 4W=4w+3b is with b=0.

To unpack that a bit: in that equation, 'W' is the width of each white key at the front (which should all be the same), 'w' is the width of a white key at the back, and 'b' is the width of a black key.) The first equation is for the group of two black keys (separating C, D, and E) and the second equation is for the three black keys separating F through B.

Since it's mathematically impossible, a constraint needs to be relaxed. The article describes ways to make the white keys have slightly different widths at the back.

If we set c=e=(W-5B/8) and a=b=d=f=g=(W-3B/4) we have a maximum
discrepancy of only B/8, and quite a few actual pianos use this
pattern as well. However, the absolute optimum arrangement is to
set c=d=e=(W-2B/3) and f=g=a=b=(W-3B/4), which gives a maximum
discrepancy of just B/12. This pattern is used on many keyboards,
e.g. the Roland PC-100.

When actually building a musical instrument (instead of just drawing the keyboard), there is a further constraint, described in this article:

The black keys on a piano keyboard, instead of always being centered on the dividing line between the two white keys they lie between, are spaced so that the twelve keys which make up an octave are spaced equally as they enter the internal mechanism of the instrument.

But this means that the "key caps" for the white keys should be slightly off-center compared to whatever rod or lever they're attached to. The author speculates about how to divide this up using various units.

(They seem quite annoying to 3D print.)

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!

I'm in the planning stages of a custom setting for a new campaign I'm aiming to start next year with my current table. We're doing PF2's Kingmaker and AD&D's Temple of Elemental Evil in the meantime.

The game is to be Viking themed, in that the starting locale and civilization will be structured in similar ways to the coastal Scandinavian settlements and there will be an on/off season. During the on season, they will board boats and sail many hundreds of miles across water to distant lands to find dungeons and ruins to loot, with a clock they have to keep an eye on; the expedition can only afford to be out for so long, and they need to ultimately make a profit. During the off season, they will be home and can spend time locally engaging in low-tier politics, explore the untamed parts of the continent, or both.

I'm intending for gods to play a more concrete and available part in this game and have been chewing on how best to represent that mechanically. I discovered that one of D&D 5e's supplements for a Magic: The Gathering setting, Mythic Odysseys of Theros, does something similar and has mechanics for tracking Piety with a given deity, which comes with boons at specific breakpoints. I liked the idea, though I'd be making my own boons for my pantheon rather than use these as-is, especially since I wouldn't be running this game in 5e, but rather in AD&D 1e.

I have a group chat with a few of my players that I can trust for this kind of thing to bounce ideas off of for various things, so I put this forth to them and got their thoughts. They universally thought the example boons from 5e were too personal and individual for the kind of stuff Norse gods would get up to, and there wasn't really a way to track a given deity's disdain of you in a similar manner. They also didn't like that you could track the Piety with a discrete score and could reliably measure when your next boon would be.

What we settled on doing is utilizing my custom tarot effects we're already doing in my regular AD&D campaign, but having it apply in certain regions or during certain stretches of adventure. This would allow for randomly coming across an avatar of a god and earning a minor boon or bane for assisting or denying them.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like forums, stardew valley and whatever. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was boggled of the mind.

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!

Hi everyone - we're closing in on the end of the tournament with only 4 games left. Questions for discussion:

• Did you make a bracket with Riot's Pick'Em?
  • If you did, how's your bracket looking?
• What games have you watched?
  • Which games have surprised you most?
• Are you enjoying the Fearless Drafts? (For those curious, Riot updated how teams draft during each Best of 5. After a champ has been played, it's banned for the remaining Bo5.)
• What team(s) are you cheering for?

Tonight is

If you haven't been keeping up, now is the perfect time to jump in if you enjoy watching pro-play League of Legends. The vods from previous games are available on Youtube (and I assume Twitch but I haven't checked). I don't really play much league, but watching is very fun with friends and we've been having nightly hang-outs on Discord to watch together.

A fancier way is here — but either is great.

—-

For those using iOS with a bookmark on their homescreen, you may have been plagued like me with Tildes opening in a private window instead of the session where you’re logged in.

I don’t know why I didn’t think about this sooner, but it’s so easy

Shortcuts > New > Create New Tab > Open URL (remove the variable and put in https://tildes.net) > context menu next to the title of the shortcut > Add to Homescreen > Photo (left image option) > select your tildes logo that i forgot to tell you to save

… done. Now Tildes will always open Safari in an authenticated session. ezpz.

This is the fifteenth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing A House with Good Bones by T Kingfisher. Our next book will be the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride at the end of July.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

Done in quotes because sometimes shows get cancelled or otherwise abandoned and other times it has a final season or only had one season and was properly finished. Either way, same result.

I don't have the patience or time to keep track of what series is having what new season come out at what point. I prefer to just wait for it all to be done and then watch in my own time. Even if it is one of the very few series I watch that isn't "done" I still don't do the weekly episode thing. I just wait for it all to come out and then watch as I please.

That said, I have a backlog of series that are on my to-watch list, either suggested by friends or I saw a trailer that looked good, but they sit there at present because there's so much utter shit SEO spam websites that you can't get a clear answer if a new season is coming or a series is done or not.

British Grand Prix
Red Bull Ring
July 4-6, 2025

Grand Prix:
Sunday, July 6, 2025 - 14:00 UTC / 10:00a US EDT

See your local times here

Next race:

Belgian Grand Prix
Silverstone Circuit
July 25-27, 2025

I'm embarking on a new phase in my life and am frankly pretty darned excited about it. My only child is off in college now and I find myself with extra time I didn't used to have. As such, some younger friends of mine have been reaching out and asking me to join them for "shenanigans" in the form of online video games. Mind you, I haven't played games since the mid 90s, so while this sounds exciting, it also is quite intimidating.

So far I have gotten my hands on a ROG Ally X. It's a nifty looking handheld that I have been assured would allow me to play a lot of the games my buddies play, but my eyes aren't what they used to be and the screen, however nice, isn't quite big enough for my needs.

Time to get a dock!

I was able to find a one for this thing, which is very cool, but now I'm thinking I'm going to drive my wife crazy shouting at the device to talk to my buddies. I assume I need a decent headset, but which one? These things seem to run the range in prices. Do I need it to be wireless?

Also, I'm guessing it would be good to have some sort of controller so I'm not on top of the screen, again, what fits the middle of the road? Cordless? Do I want a trackpad? Is that even a thing?

I am overloaded with options.

Basically, I'm a dad who has discovered he has a lot more time on his hands than he expected and good (and patient) friends who want to spend time with him, but I'm way out of my depth trying to plot a modest path forward (without spending silly money).

Anyway, thanks for making an old guy coming to the hobby feel welcome!

Sometimes getting into a new hobby can leave you feel like you don't even know where to start. What equipment do you need? What is a good starter project? Are there any safety concerns? What are some of the tricky hurdles to getting started or good tips for getting better?

This thread is a place to ask questions about a hobby you're interested in and others to give insight. There are no "stupid questions"!

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.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like us senate, viktor orban and knowledge management. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was mystified.

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 have changed my email more than once, just as part of customizing my online identity and all that.

and that obviously required me to login into any accounts I had and updating the email associated with them.

the most common workflow I have found is
login -> navigate to settings page -> edit the email field to the new email -> go to the inbox for the new email -> click confirm on confirmation email

then you can go to that website and do the forgot password, provide your email and change the password and get complete control.

I have always found that workflow weird cause it's the most prevalent one I have come across and seems so susceptible to tampering.

if someone leaves their laptop unattended for 3-4 minutes in public while visiting a bathroom (which happened often in the library of my university), there was nothing preventing me from going to their Facebook or whatever account they had open on their computer, changing the email to my own email and then clicking confirm on my inbox once I am back at my desk.

and most people don't have 2FA so that would effectively give me control of their account.
Hell, my university once had a potential data breach and they were 99.999% sure the data was not actually accessed by a malicious actor but still sent a mass email saying that they were advising everyone to change their passwords. a classmate of mine in the software systems program's attitude was basically "oh well, who cares?" and I just facepalmed internally.

there are maybe 3 websites I have come across that instead first send a confirmation email to your current inbox and after you confirm on that, then you get a confirmation email on the new email inbox. which isn't perfect but I feel like it's a bit more sensical and the best you can do without involving 2FA.

even then, that's also susceptible to the situation I described above if the user is always logged into their email.

I find it odd that websites don't prompt for a password as part of the email update process (or better yet 2FA with an app as even prompting for a password isn't a guarantee if the user has the password manager as an extension in their browser and they recently unlocked it before leaving their session unattended) to ensure that email changes are always done by the account owner.

I am a big fan of Cloudflare Tunnels, it's let me muck about with quite a few low risk apps and it's been fun.

one thing that's always bothered me though is the SSL setup.

According to their website, only enterprise users are allowed to manage their own TLS private keys.

I can kinda understand the logic behind free accounts not having that perk.

But if you are someone who really doesn't like cloudflare reading your traffic or you are a business, it seems odd to me that it's not being demanded of cloudflare that they make it more available for paid users to not expose their TLS private keys to cloudflare.

Why are so many folks OK with cloudflare essentially being able to read all their traffic?

or am I overestimating how many people are using the Pro and Business account? is the majority of their users just Free or Enterprise?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like lego.island, 2025 iran israel war and the onion. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was puzzled.

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!

Austrian Grand Prix
Red Bull Ring
June 27-29, 2025

Grand Prix Qualifying:
Saturday, June 28, 2025 - 14:00 UTC / 10:00a US EDT

Grand Prix:
Sunday, June 29, 2025 - 13:00 UTC / 9:00a US EDT

See your local times here

Next race:

British Grand Prix
Silverstone Circuit
Sunday, July 6, 2025

I was recently thinking of a new way to describe to my spouse (and to myself) how my mind works when it comes to performing tasks. This is a regularly occuring conversation, as her needs and mine often run counter to each other and leave us both frustrated. I have trouble understanding even my own reactions to things, let alone hers, so I try to explain them in new terms occasionally to see if it makes things click.

Anyway, I came up with one that I found apt and kinda fun, if maybe a bit sad in places: a DnD 5e character sheet. For the purposes of this exercise, the sheet is for a sorcerer, not a wizard (learning new tasks happens slowly, almost at random) and the Frustration mechanic is effectively identical to Exhaustion in the PHB.

Here it is. I'm curious if any of you have thoughts on this or find it feeling familiar.

Spell list:

Cantrips:

Relax
Read
Eat
Get ready for bed ¹

1st level:

Choose to go to bed ²
Get ready to leave
Choose a meal
Prepare a meal
Work on dishes
Take out trash
Do laundry
Other chores
Do a favor (unasked)*

2nd level:

Do a favor (asked)*
Stifle frustration ³

3rd level:

Do a big favor (asked)*
Dismiss frustration ⁴

Feat - People Pleaser: When casting "Do a favor (unasked)", roll a d20. On a 15 or higher, cast as a cantrip instead. When casting "Do a favor (asked)", roll a d20. On a 5 or lower, add 1 level of frustration. When casting "Do a big favor (asked)", roll a d20. On a 10 or lower, add 1 level of frustration.

Feat - Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures: Regenerate 1 spell slot of any level. Add 1 level of frustration.

Feat - Self Soothe: whenever casting a cantrip, roll a d20. On a 19 or 20, remove 1 level of frustration.

Curse - Temper: whenever casting a spell of 1st level or higher, roll a d20 with advantage. On a 2 or lower, add a level of frustration.

Curse - Social Anxiety: when interacting with another character, roll a d20. On a 5 or lower, burn 1 spell slot or add 1 level of frustration.

¹ Must be cast on the turn following casting "Choose to go to bed." Otherwise, this becomes a 1st level spell.

² After casting this spell, any spell other than a cantrip must be cast one level higher than usual (e.g., 1st level spells can only be cast using 2nd level spell slots).

³ Temporarily remove 1 level of frustration. It returns after d20X10 minutes.

⁴ Permanently remove 1 level of frustration.

Well, I have a lot of stuff going on.

In May, I graduated with my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. That was good, and I was glad to do so. After that I took a short well deserved break. It feels so good not to have to go to class and listen to a lecture from a lecturer who doesn't want to be there.

Now that I have my degree, I need to find a job that uses that degree. (or any thing remotely related) That may sound simple enough, but it is tough.

I don't know what I want to do with my degree. That's hard for me to say, but it's true. Like I have always been looked at as someone who was "smart" and "had it together" or "had a straight path". Very much not. Anyway, I don't know what all that degree qualifies me for. I know it opens me up to the development field. I did a lot of programming through college and between, but it's not something I really enjoy. I am not particularly bad at it. It just not something I really want to be doing 100% of the time all the time. Then there is the IT field. I am not so sure where I really would like to go in IT though. Support is not really an ideal place for me. I am terrified of the idea of having to talk on a phone. I can do in person support better. Then there is infrastructure. I am kinda interested in infrastructure, but it is huge. I don't even know what to look for in that area. I am just a kid with a CS degree, I don't have this figured out.

I live in the middle of nowhere. or at least it feels like it (rural central Arkansas) You have to really look at the next city over for anything. Even then most things I see are out of the capital. There is nothing bad about any of this. I got my degree in the next city over, drove there every day. The capital is only 40 - 50 minutes away.

It feels like everyone wants to see experience. Either directly or indirectly. This is hard for me. I don't have any professional experience at all. I have some personal projects I have worked on. I do have those listed in my resume. I don't feel that helps that much. I spent my time getting that degree, not working.

Family is troublesome. In many many ways. They are always like "you need to get a job", "have you found anything yet", "are you filling out a job application". Like please leave me alone about this. I am doing what I am doing. You don't have to know every single thing about me. I am me, not you. Troublesome and frustrating. Another thing is they are stuck in the past. Two of them are going deaf. One of them is nuts, and does not know how to respect privacy at all. Its a lot. It leaves me with an annoying bootstrapping problem I have to solve. I still live with my parents, with my grandparents next house over. I have to get a place that is away from family. To do that I need to get a job. To really look hard, and even want to do so and not just do some and get frustrated, I need to get away from family. There are solutions. Just go elsewhere and look for stuff. Not easy when they always want to know where you are all the damn time. Always wanting you to keep them updated and know where you are. I have a few tricks, location services is very inaccurate when wifi is turned off. I also can just say "I am going somewhere", and when they ask more I just say "I am 23 blooming years old". Not the kind of trouble I want to go through all time. Family is frustrating. Even more so, when you are an introvert and just want to be alone for a while. When you get into actually doing something, they come to you to ask about something. "do you know where this [item] is?", "I need you to do this [task]". It's like they can sense when you are actually focus or are just vibing or actually happy. They go on and complain that you snap at them. When they were the ones that were interrupting a rare moment of focus, or appear out of nowhere. Annoying to say the least. Never the one to actually win. By default, "I am older and know more then you", "I gave birth to you". Saying I am in trouble when I do nothing wrong. Like when I got in trouble for going to my grandparents house early in the morning during the summer. Lost all trust that summer. Or when I shared some cinnamon rolls that I bought with my grandparents. Got into trouble for not bringing my parents any. It was just a kind gesture and I am made to feel like I don't care about anybody over it. Troublesome and difficult.

If you just read all that, thanks. I promise I am decently put together in real life. That is rawer then I would usually like to put out.

So far I still don't have a good title for this post so I guess I'll just add some more.
I have not found anything yet. I have not applied to many places yet. I did apply to a regional ISP and got an interview, but was rejected for lack of work history to show I can deal with phone support, and for potential lack of clarity. I applied to a local audio cable manufacturer, but was caught by ats or lack of checking. Actually applied to their website for that one. I have asked some of the local Facebook groups "who was hiring locally in CS / IT fields". I got a few responses from it. A pyramid scheme. Someone who would look at their employer. They didn't have anything open, but at least they have my information now. Someone who is likely looking more so for a general laborer then an IT person. I still kinda want to hear them out, but they still haven't said anything else to me. I have brushed up my LinkedIn. I have also signed up for more accounts then I would have liked. I have talked with a local employment agency, but I don't think they will find anything like what I am looking for.

Well, its a process, and I am just at the beginning. If you do have any advice for my job search I would be glad to read it.

TLDR: Dotz graduated and is looking for a job, then rants about family.

I've been thinking perhaps I'll need to get one of the desktop LLM UI. I've been out of touch with the state of the art of end user LLM as I've been exclusively using it via API, but tech-y people (who are not developers) mostly talk about the end-user products that I lack the knowledge of.

Ethical problems aside, the problem with non-API usage is, even if you pay, I can't find one that have better privacy policy than API. And the problem with API version is that it is not as good as the completed apps unless you want to reinvent the wheel. The apps also may include ads in the future, while API technically cannot as it would affect some downstream usecases.

As a dual use technology, the table doesn't include the extra retention period if they detect an abuse. Additionally, if you click on thumbs up/down it may also be recorded for the provider's employee to review.

I don't think OpenWebUI, self hosted models, etc. would suffice if they are not built to the same quality as the first party products. I know I'm probably asking for something that doesn't exists here, but at least I hope it will bring to people's attention that even if you're paying for the product you might not get the same privacy protection as API users.

Id never heard the terms satisfier or maximizer til I was having a discussion with my then girlfriend about the difference in the way we select things. The difference became apparent when she wanted to buy a new lawnmower. We walked into a big box store, she looked at a row of 10 mowers and said "I want that one" pointing at the second one. Being a maximizer I thought she meant that was her first choice out of the 10 options here but obviously we had two more stores and many more options to check out.

Nope.

She meant she had looked them over in 2 minutes and THAT mower was her final choice.

I honestly was quite surprised. "You don't wanna shop around? Compare features? Compare prices?" No, that's not what satisfiers do. Satisfiers just find the first thing that satisfies their needs and go with it.

Which is why my wife can select anything and everything very quickly and I end up making a spreadsheet to do a thorough cost benefit analysis on anything important. I even had one when I was dating for every woman I went out for coffee. And fortunately, she didn't - she just started reverse alphabetically and since my username was near the end of the alphabet I won the luck of the draw.

And here we are happily celebrating our 15th anniversary next week. Who says you gotta be the same to be compatible lol?

Are you a satisfier or a maximizer?

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.