Thought this was neat. Wanted to share. https://neovim.io/doc/user/insert.html#i_CTRL-E https://neovim.io/doc/user/insert.html#i_CTRL-Y
What are you reading currently? Fiction or non-fiction or poetry, any genre, any language! Tell us what you're reading, and talk about it a bit.
I have been in a group chat with 2 of my closet friends for more than 10 years now, and we have been using Facebook messenger for that entire time. However, there has always been interest in migrating to a different platform, but so far we have not been able to land on a good alternative. We have gotten very used to some of the messenger features and have disliked alternatives for lacking these features. I was wondering if anyone could suggest some solutions here, up to and including a DIY (maybe IRC?) approach.
The features we really liked from messenger:
Features we really do not need and in fact get in the way:
Features that aren't necessary but could be nice:
Does anyone have suggestions for alternatives to messenger that hit these points? We have tried Discord, but found it was way too feature heavy for how we use it, and lacked some really basic features we liked from messenger. Whatsapp was a decent replacement, but lack of themes and emoji hotkey made it less enjoyable for us than messenger, plus it is also a Meta platform which eliminated one of the main reasons we wanted to switch.
I have half a mind to set up an IRC channel for us, but it's been many years at this point since I've used IRC, so I don't know what that ecosystem is like these days, and how easy it would be to get my non-tech-savvy friends on board.
(perhaps this is better suited to ~tech, but I am posting here with an eye towards DIY solutions, although to reiterate I would also be happy with an out-of-the-box alternative)
I'm still a beginner at Godot. I've been playing with Godot and 3D scenes. It's great finally feeling comfortable enough to navigate the UI from watching the tutorials from Zenva/Humble Bundle.
Recently something that sounds straightforward took a long time for me to figure out: Fading in a 3D mesh. The solution is simple:
@onready var mesh: MeshInstance3D = find_child("body-mesh")
func _ready() -> void:
_set_material_alpha(0)
SomeSingleton.some_signal.connect(_fade_in)
func _set_material_alpha(alpha: float) -> void:
var material: Material = mesh.get_active_material(0)
if material is StandardMaterial3D:
material.transparency = BaseMaterial3D.TRANSPARENCY_ALPHA_DEPTH_PRE_PASS
material.depth_draw_mode = BaseMaterial3D.DEPTH_DRAW_ALWAYS
material.albedo_color.a = alpha
func _fade_in() -> void:
var tween = create_tween()
tween.set_ease(Tween.EASE_IN)
tween.tween_method(_set_material_alpha, 0.0, 1.0, fade_in_duration_seconds)
The key being setting the material properties and using its albedo color to update transparency. The depth draw mode is needed, otherwise the result is ugly with jagged pixels during the tween.
Getting to the solution was the hard part. Searching forum posts I was led down some rabbit holes like using shaders—overkill for this situation. (There is a cool site though, for when I do end up needing custom shaders: https://godotshaders.com/.) Asking an LLM also didn't help much, probably because my prompt was wrong. I tried again just now and it gave me something closer to a correct solution, but missing some parts like the depth draw mode, which (by trial-and-error and reading the docs) I found is necessary for a good quality render, when using transparency.
Another small pitfall I found was that trying to change the material.transparency caused stutter. I was trying to disable transparency when the mesh was at 100% alpha, since I figured opaque rendering is cheaper. However I speculate the engine recompiles the shader when I turn off transparency, which causes the stutter. So I don't modify the material.transparency beyond that initial setting.
Also thought I'd mention, I'm using free placeholder art assets from https://kenney.nl/ - an amazing resource.
During this I learned that adding shaders to an imported 3D model in Godot is somewhat convoluted:
shader_material.set_shader_parameter("color", Color(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, alpha))This didn't work so well for me though, because the shader I was using was changing the ALBEDO and turning things white. If I knew anything about 3D programming I'd probably find a way to update the existing color value at each pixel, instead of setting albedo white everywhere. The end result of the shader I was using was that the models were turning too white. So that was a dead end.
Anyway mainly leaving this here as reference for posterity. Feel free to share a story or constructive feedback if there's anything.
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like privacy, andrew mountbatten windsor and audiophiles. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was out of the loop.
But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!
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.
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Does anyone here use a tablet for note taking?
I've always used pen and paper for note taking when working or in/around the house. At one point when phones got bigger I did try moving to notes apps but they never clicked. Something about the glossy screen and the levels of fuss to take a note just didn't work.
I recently found out that there's e-ink tablets which try to emulate real note taking, like the Supernote which runs a custom firmware to make note taking as easy as possible. Or the Boox which is Android based, so it has way more apps, but it's got amazing reviews.
There's quite a lot, I'm curious if anyone here has actually used anything like this and what their thoughts are?
Looking at reviews, I'm drawn to the Supernote. But I'd love to hear some real use cases!
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We recommend you install our mod web-chat so that you can chat while in your web browser. It turns the server into an old-school chat room.
I've been on an interesting train of thought these past few days. I came across some criticism of a random old movie and I started thinking that the reason why I actually hate most modern movies is because they are all cowardly avoiding having any possible political interpretation for anything that happens in them. I've experienced movies that when the big fight scene starts, I'm falling asleep because I'm just so negatively invested in the characters or what will happen to them. That made me think about why so many boring, bland movies and shows keep being made, and it made me think of an opinion that the biggest reason why studios keep betting on blockbusters that are as boring as possible is that they are dependent on theatrical box office takings because streaming killed post-release revenue streams such as movie purchases.
I think that the reason for this is at least partially a symptom of the death of desire for physical media itself. Why deal with the inconvenience of physical media when you can just press a button and the movie starts playing? But at the same time I don't think this is entirely the fault of streaming services, but the fault of movie companies attempting to exert too much control over how people access their films.
I won't bore you with explanations of the limitations of streaming services. We've all been there, surely. They don't have what we want, the stuff we do want to see is spread out on a hundred different subscriptions, yada yada yada. So why do we not deal with them piecemeal? That answer comes with good news and bad news. Good news: you can! You can both buy and rent most movies that have ever been made. Bad news: it's an absolutely terrible deal if you do.
Right now there's at least three major services that allow you to buy digital movies: YouTube, Apple TV / iTunes Movies, and Prime Video. There's also the vestiges of the industry's "digital movies" initiative called Fandango at Home, previously Vudu - the one where you'd use a code you got with a DVD that said it included a digital copy. The problem with all of these services is obvious: if you buy a movie from them, you don't actually own it. They can and will take away access from you at any time for any reason they see fit.
There's an obvious solution to this: rental. It doesn't matter if they de-list a rental because you never had the illusion of ownership to begin with. But that has it's own problem: it's way too fucking expensive.
To put things into perspective, Blockbuster, before it closed down, would let you rent new releases for between $3-5 for a 1-2 day rental, while older movies could be between $1-3. Granted, this was before a lot of inflation, but those rentals also had the costs of running a store in expensive commercial real estate as well as the people who had to manage it, the cost of purchasing the media - sometimes at retail prices - and the cost of maintaining them (rewinding cassettes, cleaning and resurfacing discs, and replacing worn media).
Lets compare the cost of renting on Prime Video today.
Dicks the Musical is a somewhat niche movie unavailable to watch on streaming sites that came out more than two years ago, and the current price to rent it is $4.99. Five bucks. I should mention this is for a movie that I already watched on Hoopla via my library card for free.
Batman Returns is a blockbuster from 1992 and is available for $3.99. Four bucks. You get a one dollar discount if you want to watch something 30 years old. Fantastic.
The category that will really open your eyes is new movies. Zootopia 2 just became available for digital purchase, with no physical editions, and is not yet available on Disney+. If you want to purchase the film, it costs $29.99. Rental is $24.99. Frankly I cannot imagine a world in which the number of people who would pay for that rental exceeds the number of people who opted to pirate but would have paid if the price was at least half that.
If you forget that the major studios own their own streaming services, then this math really doesn't work out. Surely they are getting more money per stream through purchase and rental than they are with the fractional payment they would get from licensing it.
But of course you have to remember that they do own their own streaming services - it's part of why everyone's complaining after all. The major producers, by discouraging short term rentals and pushing streaming services (note that Prime Video will try to sell you one of those subscriptions if the title is available on one), they are attempting to move from producers of cultural products to yet another industry of rent seekers.
I'm frankly all out of ideas on how to solve an issue, so I'm hoping that the Tildes community might have a suggestion for solving this issue.
I have an 8tb HDD that spins up and is recognized by windows when plugged into a USB HDD dock, but in another machine (also running windows 10) the drive can't be seen (**this is using data connections directly to the motherboard).
There is:
Open to thoughts, prayers or possible solutions.
Thank you!
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
What 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!
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.
