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    2. Looking for albums that are both beautiful and melancholic

      ~music Ask (recommendations)
      This is hard to describe, but I'm looking for albums that I can kind of wallow in a bit emotionally, but that are also beautiful musically, aesthetically, or lyrically. Because it's difficult to...

      This is hard to describe, but I'm looking for albums that I can kind of wallow in a bit emotionally, but that are also beautiful musically, aesthetically, or lyrically.

      Because it's difficult to put into words, here's an example of a song that kind of has the vibe I'm going for: Snail Mail's "Deep Sea". It's sad but not too sad, and I find the arrangement and melody to be resonant and, well, beautiful. I want something that feels like this, but across a whole album (note that the "feel" doesn't apply to the genre of the song so much as it does my emotional response to it).

      I'm open to any suggestions. Bandcamp preferred, but not required.

      UPDATE: A huge thank you to the community for all your recommendations! I have a lot of wallowing to look forward to.

      22 votes

    4. 4K screen on 15" laptop - worth it?

      ~tech Ask (recommendations)
      Pricing up my next Thinkpad (I'm a lifer for Thinkpads I think now) and I keep hovering over the 4K screen option. I'm looking at a 15.6" screen. The FHD 14" screen I currently have is lovely and...

      Pricing up my next Thinkpad (I'm a lifer for Thinkpads I think now) and I keep hovering over the 4K screen option. I'm looking at a 15.6" screen. The FHD 14" screen I currently have is lovely and sharp with a decent colour gamut, and I don't think I can see pixels, even now when the machine is literally on my lap. I'd guess the screen is maybe 35cm from my eyes at the moment.

      I don't really game, I do edit photos, video (HD, not 4K) and do a little 3D work with Blender/FreeCAD/etc. I usually run Debian/Gnome, occasionally dropping into Windows because my 3D printer's preferred slicing software is Windows only (grrrr).

      The other bonus to 4K is HDR400 and twice as many nits of brightness but again, I'm not sure that's worth an extra £250. I'd probably turn the brightness down anyway. The HDR is potentially interesting but as I don't watch TV/movies on this machine and my camera doesn't output HDR, that's likely not very useful despite sounding good. I could buy quite a lot more compute power and ram with that money instead..

      I would go and look at one in person but I have no idea where the nearest 4K Thinkpad is, in person, and even if I did, I don't really want to go into shops right now.

      Any thoughts, experiences, advice, etc would be much appreciated.

      9 votes

    5. Added a page showing details of Tildes's financials, as well as a monthly donation goal

      ~tildes.official Text 500 words
      On the home page of Tildes, there's now a monthly donation goal meter shown at the top of the sidebar. The "(more details)" link in the box goes to a new Financials page, which shows the current...

      On the home page of Tildes, there's now a monthly donation goal meter shown at the top of the sidebar. The "(more details)" link in the box goes to a new Financials page, which shows the current expenses and income for Tildes for this month.

      This is information that I've always been meaning to make public, and the original announcement blog post even mentioned it as an intention. So far it only includes the current month, but I'm intending to add information about past income and expenses eventually as well.

      The Financials page should mostly explain itself, but I want to talk a little more about the goal specifically and why it seems to be set unrealistically high. To be clear, it probably is unrealistically high at this point, but I think it's important to be honest about where the next "stage" in Tildes's sustainability is, and how far away from it we currently are. I could have set the goal to a lower number to make it more achievable, but that would really just be arbitrary and wouldn't represent any meaningful threshold.

      The first important milestone was making sure that all the actual expenses were paid every month, so that keeping the site up wasn't actively costing me money. We're long past that point and almost always have been, which is great on its own—so many businesses and sites never reach that "break even" point and are forced to shut down, but there's absolutely no danger of that happening with Tildes. For how small and young the site is, it's amazing that we've already reached that goal.

      The next milestone, which the current goal represents, is making it so that I'm not effectively donating my time to continue maintaining and developing the site, which means being able to pay myself enough that I can think of Tildes as a "real job". As you can see, we're still pretty far from that point right now, but I think it's a good reminder (especially to myself) to have the meter showing it. As I said in another comment recently, there are other things I should probably focus my efforts on more that would help, and this will be a prominent reminder of that.

      I also want to mention that the overall situation isn't quite as bleak as the goal makes it look. There have been multiple incredibly generous one-time donations made over the last year and a half that you won't see in the current month's numbers, and that's absolutely made a huge difference. I'll try to get the historical information added before too long so that the picture is more complete.

      Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions, and thanks again for all of your contributions, whether they're actual donations or just being active and contributing to the site in that way. It's all important, and I greatly appreciate all of it.

      And as usual, I've given everyone 10 invites, accessible on the invite page.

      95 votes

    8. How can we encourage more posts with comments here?

      ~games Ask
      On this page, I see posts, but no comments. It's a see of death. The same is true of all game design subreddits. Despite this being a thing a lot of people find interesting, there doesn't seem to...

      On this page, I see posts, but no comments. It's a see of death. The same is true of all game design subreddits. Despite this being a thing a lot of people find interesting, there doesn't seem to be any really successful community oriented way to talk about this type of thing.

      What types of posts do you think we could make to bring this space to life?

      Personally, I think in-depth reviews of games you've played a lot are the way to go. Say you're a grandmaster at chess. Give it a review. Have you played Monopoly into the ground? Critique it. I'd like to start discussing here to, what other ways are there to liven this up?

      I also may start posting speculative designs. So, game rulesets I've come up with, asking for comments from others on what they think I should look out for.

      9 votes

    11. What do you think of LeetCode? Did anyone of you succeed thanks to it?

      ~comp Ask (survey)
      I've come across this website recently, and I'm genuinely wondering if it's really that useful for passing interviews. For example, I think it can not replace a solid background in algorithms/data...

      I've come across this website recently, and I'm genuinely wondering if it's really that useful for passing interviews.

      For example, I think it can not replace a solid background in algorithms/data structures and maybe CS courses in general.

      7 votes

    14. What did you do this weekend?

      ~talk Ask (survey)
      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 weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at...

      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 weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

      11 votes

    18. What's the coronavirus like where you are?

      ~health Ask (survey)
      I kept the title the same as our last thread which was back in March (and now feels like a very distant past). Consider the question to be not just about the coronavirus specifically but more...

      I kept the title the same as our last thread which was back in March (and now feels like a very distant past). Consider the question to be not just about the coronavirus specifically but more about "life with the coronavirus" or the "new normal" or however you prefer to identify the situation you're in. What are things like in your area?

      18 votes

    32. What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

      ~anime Ask (survey)
      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...

      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!

      8 votes

    49. Scheduled topics should link to the previous post from the week before

      ~tildes Text 42 words
      Would it be possible to add a link to the previous weekly post? For example, https://tildes.net/~comp/rml/what_programming_technical_projects_have_you_been_working_on could link to...

      Would it be possible to add a link to the previous weekly post?

      For example, https://tildes.net/~comp/rml/what_programming_technical_projects_have_you_been_working_on could link to https://tildes.net/~comp/rhk/what_programming_technical_projects_have_you_been_working_on from the week before.

      Bonus points if it can be applied retroactively.

      13 votes