After a particularly grueling and frustrating week at work, I was driving home from picking up my daughter from school, and there were several different honking exchanges at this one stoplight. This is Pittsburgh, which is more midwest than east coast, so I rarely hear anyone honk, and almost never the sustained angry honks I was hearing. I thought, "They must be having the kind of week I'm having."

A bit later, I found myself alone on the road, no other cars visible either way. I thought, maybe I could honk. So I did. A nice long one. And it felt very good. I did it again a bit later. Still cathartic. I finally had to stop because my 10 year old was going to die of embarrassment.

So that's my recommendation. Get out there and let out a big honk. Not at anyone, not road rage, just let loose a little.

What are your other outlets for relieving stress?

When I was a kid, I remember going to a book store with my Mom and asking for a recommendation from the clerk there for something in the fantasy genre. He kindly pointed me to the Dark Elf trilogy by R. A. Salvatore. I noticed that it had a Forgotten Realms logo on the cover, and when I went back to the store I noticed other books with that logo as well. That was my introduction to a setting that is shared between authors who can write stories in the same universe.

On the smaller end, there are settings where 2 (or a few) authors collaborate (like the Malazan universe), while on the larger side of things you have settings with dozens to potentially hundreds of authors (like Warhammer 40k, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc).

Some quick questions I thought of that might be interesting below, but please feel free to share anything you'd like about this topic!

• What was the first shared setting you read books in?
• Do you have a favorite shared literary setting?
• Do you mind the varying quality of the books in shared settings?
• Do you find yourself more likely to read a book in this shared setting compared to a book outside the setting?
• Are there any books in that setting that you don't recommend people read?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I'm currently working on decluttering, and coming up with processes to stop clutter from building up in the future.

Even after getting rid of a bunch of junk, I'll be left with a ton of stuff that historically has just "floated around" my living space (cables, adapters, small tools, stationary, batteries, etc...).

I'd ideally want a bunch of appropriately sized containers that I can organize stuff into. I'd love for each box to be some tesselation of a standard volume, so that I can arrange and stack those containers neatly in a drawer or on a desk.

If you happen to work with 3D printing, this may sound a lot like Gridfinity, a modular open-source grid storage system. And I agree! Gridfinity's goals completely meet and shoot past what I'm looking for. But I currently have no interest in investing the money or time into buying a 3D printer and making prints. And there doesn't appear to be an obvious commercial version outside of "random" folks on Etsy.

I also considered getting a Drawer Grid like you'd see in a Maker Space. I might end up getting this if I can't find a better option, though I'd prefer a storage solution I can stuff in a drawer.

I was curious if:

• Anyone had any product recommendations that might fit the bill
• Anyone had any thoughts on the organizational endeavor itself, and if there are any ways I could be going about this better.

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?

Its 2am and I should be asleep so I'm sorry if this is maybe just a weird midnight rant.

Today I saw a news article on the other site about aggressive monkeys with covid and herpes escaping a crashed semi truck.

My first reaction was "is this headline a joke" and I couldn't tell. Then I looked at the source (action news 5 or channel 5 action news, or... something) and even opened the page to have a look for clues of it being fake and without digging deeper I just couldn't tell if it was a legitimate news site or not. So I read the (short) article and looked for clues and it sounded probably legitimate. There was a photo of the scene with a monkey at the rear of a trailer but af this point I can't instantly spot AI images and who knows if it isn't just an old photo. Then I go to the reddit comment and they're parroting additional "facts" but nothing that felt substantial.

I felt very struck by the feeling that I don't know if I can trust any information online unless it's REALLY from a trusted source, and I'm not really sure what sources I can trust anymore.

Is this just me? Have you felt a significant change in the last few months? AI is playing a big part in my distrust, but Im also seeing echo chambers somehow get even worse.

Also, it found out later that the monkeys weren't knfected with a bunch of viruses, it was some sort of miss-communication.

A wizard has cursed you with billions of dollars! Why is that a curse? Because unless you spend it immediately* on something ridiculous** you'll become like the worst, asshole-iest billionaire you can think of. (Fill in your own blank).

Saving the world is out, philanthropy is out (unless it's utterly ridiculous), clever tricks to make the world better by finding a loophole and trying to outwit the wizard's curse are out.

If you try something that could be started with an "um actually" 🤓☝️you end up naming all your children and companies with the same letter before the end of the day, got it? Spirit of the rules!
I'm watching you. ತ⁠_⁠ʖ⁠ತ

*A project might take time but you're going all in on it, cash up front
** The point is that it's pointless. It might be accidentally useful but it's pointless.

ETA: I have been unjustly rate limited and will be replying when I can. Please take this opportunity to reconsider your charitable works and other attempts at public good and get back to airships and Animorphs movies. Ty

use postman quite a bit at work as a backend developer and the recent updates have added alot more bloatware to the program.

All I want is a simple program that does HTTP requests and not get account promo and collections and their cloud stuff shoved down my throat.

And my work computer is maintained by a central system so I can't freeze my Postman application at a past level, it auto-updates.

So I am wondering if there is a good alternative that just does HTTP requests and nothing else?

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.

A prototypical example of what I am looking for would be fruit juice. Where I am at the only options for something that isn't orange or apple are overpriced lemonades with about thirty to fifty percent fruit content and truly expensive 100% ones.

Usually I simply buy the expensive ones and add 1-2 parts water ending up with better tasting juice at same or less cost.

Another step would be squeezing fresh fruit yourself but that adds time, space, complexity and money costs.

What things can be done in a typical kitchen without buying additional single purpose appliances? Sufficiently multipurpose ones or small tools are fine. Basically I want to reduce the number of steps in which the food is industrially processed.

As some of y'all know, I moved recently to NYC (Brooklyn specifically) and now that I've settled in a bit more, I was wondering about volunteering my time to help out the less fortunate, especially with the holidays and everything going on with the government shutdown.

I've been juggling the thought of doing a soup kitchen or something but just wondering if anyone else had any interesting/unique/critical need things that they do! I hardly do volunteering unfortunately, always was more of a donating my money kinda guy.

I did fairly well on my SAT's, (10 years ago so idk how much help I can be) but I was thinking of volunteering to teach kids or something but not too sure if a weekly commitment is too much for me or not.

Pretty much the title. I want to move away from OEM 1st party controllers due to quality and inevitable joystick drift. I have an 8bitdo Ultimate, but it's not working for me on CachyOS.

Anyone else have experience with good quality controllers on Linux? The Flydigi Vader Pro 5 caught my attention, and I am a pretty competitive person for certain games (mainly Halo 3 and Halo Infinite), and like tight controls for platformers and souls-like games as well.

Edit: I primarily used my controllers wireless, especially on the living room PC. I am more okay with wired on my personal computer.

Found a solution!!

Edit as of Tuesday, October 28th 2025: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1iceer5/8bitdo_controller_fixes_for_linux_my_impressions/

Fixes for 8BitDo controllers running under Linux.

sudo mkdir /etc/udev/rules.d

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-8bitdo-xinput.rules

ACTION=="add", ATTRS{idVendor}=="2dc8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="3106", RUN+="/sbin/modprobe xpad", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'echo 2dc8 3106 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/xpad/new_id'"

sudo udevadm control --reload

Change Product ID according to your controller:

Product ID 8BitDo Ultimate/Ultimate C 2,4Ghz: 3106

Product ID 8BitDo Ultimate 3-Mode 2,4Ghz: 200f / alternate Product ID: 201b

Product ID 8BitDo Ultimate 2C 2,4GhZ: 310a