Hi all, I'm becoming almost certain that my apartment is dealing with a minor bedbug infestation. Do any of you have experience dealing with the things? Specifically, my unit shares a building with about 20 others, so has anybody dealt with infestations in a similar situation? I'm wondering if a heat treatment is even possible or realistic.

So I rescued an old TV from the trash, appears to be a Hitachi Rear Projection TV, no obvious model number available, and when I try to power it on, it will display just fine, but it has no audio coming out UNLESS I turn it over to antenna input, in which case it has bone rattling analog static. This is the US where everyone changed over to digital television, so not super helpful, and while I could do some sound splitting magic, that seems like a waste if there are already good speakers. So I have come to you, honored Tildos, for assistance in pointing me in the right direction on whether or not this television's speakers can be saved.

I am not a developer, but I do have interesting in learning.

A while ago I asked a question similar to that. I did not take any concrete action since then, and now have some new information to add.

The website shall be called myactualname.com, and will contain about/biography, and a few sections containing articles that I wish to write on different subjects.

That can probably be done without coding on one of the many free blogging platforms currently available, such as Medium, Wordpress, and Substack, but the lack of control is unfortunate.

At the same time, I wish for this website to last a long time, and to be reasonably independent of maintenance. With the Brazilian Real valued at less than one-fifth of the US dollar, hosting prices skyrocketed. Besides, I cannot always rely on my own ability to stay on top of that kind of thing, so it would be beneficial for my web presence to be more resilient than my bank account and mental state. I figure that hosting it on Github Pages, Gitlab Pages (or both) would be a good way to avoid ever going down (it looks like duplicate content is bad for search engines, though, so I might keep one of those private, just for backup reasons). And I could reserve the domain for two or three years in advance.

I really like simple text-focused personal websites like this one. They load fast and are easy to read, but are generally not very pretty or responsive. I have basic notions of HTML and CSS and intend to learn more.

In the previous post, someone suggested using Hugo, which seems like a good option. On the other hand, for something that simple, I wonder what would be the downside of simply coding it from scratch. One thing I know for sure is that I want this website to be rather permanent: whatever changes I ever do to its design should not impact accessibility to previous content (link rot). How can I achieve that? No idea.

Since I write in English and Portuguese, the website must be bilingual. I'm not sure how to implement or manage that, especially in regards to search engines.

I resumed the course on Free Code Camp, which I expect will help in achieving all that.

With that in mind, I reiterate my question: should I make my personal website? Should I just use a free blogging platform? Should I use Hugo or something similar? Any particular free CMS? Or maybe just use what I learn to code it from scratch?

Thanks!

Let me start by saying this is a space I am not at all familiar with. I didn't grow up with IRC, my first text editor was Sublime (I'm not from the "EMACS vs. VIM" generation,) so I feel kinda outta touch with what all is going on.

Is there a winner? I feel invested in this topic after seeing a whole slew of posts, blogs, and medium articles posted all over Reddit and HN breaking down how these folks have personally been impacted over the past month or so. It seems to have died down which leaves me with the question of what the outcome was. An even 50/50 split? Libera destroying Freenode? Or Freenode able to hold onto users by successfully preventing efforts to organize a transition?

Without being in the Freenode community, I don't have a feeling for whether Freenode is dead, Libera Chat is "winning" and I don't think there's a good way to get metrics either.

Anyone in this world who can help the uneducated out on the outcome of all of this?

I’m writing the best man speech for my brother’s upcoming wedding. I haven’t been to many weddings so to be honest I’m not super familiar with the format of this speeches, or things I should be sure to mention (I.e. things like “be sure to thank xyz person”). I’m asking some family members but thought I should cast a wider net and ask here too. Any advice for writing this type of thing? Any memorable ones, good or bad, to emulate or avoid?

My Goal

I am applying to Canadian universities for fall admission as a CS major. This will be my second degree, and one of the requirements of getting admitted for a second degree is to show that you have a significant interest in the subject. My plan is to get online certificates to show that I am actually dedicated to learning CS and getting a job in the field. I am actually dedicated, I just need a way to show it on paper. I have some experience with software development (only the basics), but there aren't any records of it since it was just informal study.

My Problem

I can't decide which certificates I should pursue. I am torn between EdX and Udemy. I would Tilderinos' help in choosing between the two. I would also appreciate any general advice you may have.

Here are the courses I plan to take on EdX (prices in USD):

UBC's MicroMasters Program in
Software Development - $832

Harvard CS50's Web Programming with Python and JavaScript - $199

IBM's Professional Certificate in
Cloud Application Development Foundations - $169

Here are the courses I plan to take on Udemy:

The Ultimate 2021 Fullstack Web Development Bootcamp - $15

The Complete 2021 Web Development Bootcamp - $15

The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp: Go from SQL Beginner to Expert - $30

Angular - The Complete Guide (2021 Edition) - $15

Comparisons

To reiterate, I have two goals going into this. One is to actually learn web development, since I would like to become a fullstack developer (but my options are semi-open). The other is to prove to the Canadian universities that I am dedicated to learning and to give myself an edge over applicants.

If I go with EdX, then I have to pay a much steeper price for the certificates. These courses also take a long time to get through and the projects don't seem as relevant to real word applications. But I will also be learning from established institutions like Harvard and UBC. EdX certificates also come with the distinct advantage that a human is checking the problem sets you submit. This will show the Canadian universities that I have actually spent the time and effort to go through the courses and pass them.

If I go with Udemy, I will get through the courses in less time and their projects seem more related to real world projects. If I go through the courses faster, I will also have more time to start on some personal projects, and I can show my dedication to learning through those projects. Personal projects and also volunteer work will also help establish a resumé for future work. The courses on Udemy are a lot cheaper too. But they don't have the same level of verification or prestige that EdX does.

So in summary, EdX has prestige and quality courses, but a steep prices and a huge time commitment. Udemy is cheaper and gives me more opportunities to do personal projects and volunteer work, but it's certificates aren't fully trustworthy from the Canadian universities' perspective.

Final Words

What do you think? Which path should I take?

For those of you wondering, why I am going to university instead of a bootcamp, it's because I plan to immigrate to Canada and becoming a student seems the straightest way of getting PR. I need to leave my third world country as soon as I can, for mental health and economic reasons. I have been mostly unemployed ever since the pandemic started so I can't get work in Canada (or the U.S.) on my first degree (a management degree). I already tried that route. I can't find proper work here either.

Also, I am sorry if I posted in the wrong group, or if I shouldn't have posted it anywhere at all. I desperately need advice on what to do and I don't have a trustworthy network here that can help me through this. I'm sorry and thank you for your help.

Over the past few months I've been questioning my gender identity, and so I've been doing what any good millennial does and trying to read up on what everyone else in my position did and does. I've found a few resources here and there, but I'd really like to read/watch/listen to more if I can. I'm looking for blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts, twitter users, and possibly even music... Anything created by non-cis people and which discusses their experience with figuring out their gender identity.
Hopefully my fellow Tilderen can recommend some good media to me? I'd also be glad and grateful to hear any personal stories from folks here as well, though I do know it can be a very personal thing so no sweat if you don't feel happy sharing.

I'm creating the concept for a story called The Little Differences. It's about an accountant that, one day, out of the blue, notices that a certain calculation is producing a slightly wrong result. Barely noticeable, nothing world-changing,

He runs it on the computer, tries different software, a physical calculator... everything gives a result that's a little off. When he checks on paper himself, he gets the correct result. But, to his surprise, everyone else tells him that he's the one that's off, and that the incorrect result is actually perfectly sound.

I need something that makes sense, mathematically. The weird result must be something that really is wrong, and not just something that programs sometimes get wrong (I don't want it to be explained at all... I mean, the reason why it is occurring must not be something easily reducible to some well-known malfunction). But it must also be minor enough for someone to miss, something that wouldn't really cause much trouble in the real world (is that possible? IDK).

Lastly: it must be something that I'm able to explain (on some level) to a non-math reader.

So, Tildes math wizzes, what you suggest? :D

I wouldn't say Tildes is wholly uninterested in philosophy, that is certainly not the case. You're a smart bunch full of intellectual curiosity!

I have been making an effort to share more philosophy articles on ~humanities for some time now. They always get a few votes, but discussion is not as common. This is in no way a complaint about our users, philosophy is often highly specific and long-form, and it is hard to predict if a long article will eventually pay off for you.

Generally, philosophy posts that are related to technology, computer science, consciousness/AI, and, to a lesser degree, social change, attract more attention. But there are not as many of those (and I'm personally interested in other stuff too...).

As I said, the purpose of this post is not to complain. I believe the lack of participation in certain topics reflects the size of our community, our most common interests, and our repertoire.

With that in my mind, I would like to know how could I better engage our community in discussions about philosophy. Apart from the themes I mentioned, what are you interested in or curious about?

I could make an effort to include a short introduction or conversation starter on every post, but I'm not sure what is the sentiment regarding that (would that be considered/labeled as noise?). Besides, I'm not a philosopher or anything of the sort, just a layman with a lot of philosophy websites on my feed. So my guess is as good as everyone else's.

It would be awesome if we had a ~humanities.philosophy someday, but I wonder if that is realistic at all...

Sometimes Tildes users give people healthcare advice. Sometimes that advice disagrees with the advice already given by a qualified registered healthcare professional. That might be okay if the tildes advice was compliant with national guidance, but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's bad, dangerous, advice.

Should Tildes have rules about this?

Hello my lovelies,

I struggle with a moderate amount of anxiety and obsession with self-image, which tend to amalgamate as some kind of depression or other over time. At least I think they do. I've never really been sure if what I experience is actually depression, or if I'm just a Mopey Idiot, or if I have a more acute cognitive issue that I'm not aware of.

I keep very precise semi-quantitative logs of my mood and behavior every day, and they suggest to me that some of my stress is related to being a little overloaded. I'm working on cutting back on some of that responsibility. But it's also extremely obvious to me that, for quite some time—I think since about early October 2019—I've lacked the physical energy that typically allows me to be consistently happy. There was no one, singular "proximate cause" two years ago, certainly it was none of my actual obligations (at that time I had very little work to speak of). However, I nevertheless very distinctly remember that my energy was suddenly just sapped, and has not come back to the level it was at before. The best theory I have is that it might've been a mini-existential crisis triggered immediately by some books I'd been reading, with a background of relatively more social isolation than usual. There have been specific circumstances since then in which I can be high-energy (and I mean be, not just act like I am), but they are fleeting and rare. The overall background energy of my life has been different.

In short, I do not really have a solid anchor per se, even as I have many little mini-anchors. I have been floating around for a while as a result.

At least that has been my working theory for a little while. The persistence of my condition has led me to question whether that theory is useful, or whether there is something fundamentally wrong with my brain. I am Young and Naive so I simply do not know how to tell. The pandemic has made it much more challenging to figure out the root cause of my problems, because I cannot tell if they are just because I can't do the fun activities I like doing in the social environments I like doing them in, or something presumably biochemical.

Things that each help a little:

• Getting more sleep
• Getting more exercise
• Being good about meditating, or when my therapist is useful (rarely)
• Being successful (I have a job for the summer and a likely career after I graduate. Knock on wood)
• Being hot as fuck (I'm not that attractive, but I feel pretty after I exercise, or when I dress nice, or when people compliment my body)

Things that each help a lot:

• Having extremely attentive and caring friends
• Not being around people who constantly drain me
• Consuming certain substances

Specifically, the most non-low-energy I've felt in a long time was when I ate some funky little mushrooms with my friend this year. Specifically, after I snapped back to reality (mom's spaghetti). I was just more alert and more able to function properly. My brain operated at its normal capacity; words flowed freely from my mouth in a gorgeous array of sentences; positive banter was at an all-time high; I was positive and optimistic; and so on. You know how you can sort of visualize the ideas popping around and the gears turning when you're sober but just really on top of your social life? Well that's what it was. Unfortunately my ability to be a normal person only lasted like 1 or 2 days from there, and then it was back to the same old.

This has made me ask the question: might it be prudent to look into some sort of legal medical prescription that would have a similar effect? That is, anti-depressants or like whatever. I'm also open to alternative treatments but I am mainly asking about prescription meds. I just don't know anything about the whole world of medication. I almost never take meds for anything ever, even physical injuries, and I'm afraid that if I start doing medication I'll never be able to stop. The concept of always being medicated is a little scary to me. Like even if it helps, I'm still worried. But I kind of feel like nothing I've done so far has been able to permanently work, so I kind of need to do something.

I appreciate any thoughts that you can give!!!

xoxoxo
beezselzak

Players are understood to be sharing a cake. How much cake do you want? Be fair. Anyone who has had the least gets to size the next piece. Don't finish the cake!

Is this plausible ttg rules text? Do you recognize the instructions?

So my girlfriend has this dog, a miniatura Schnauzer. He's 5 years old and in perfect health. For some reason, he fears even the slightest elevation. The dog is quite athletic but behaves as if he was much older. He does know how to get on things, like sofas that are not very high, but if we forget to "rescue" him he will literally never go down. Which is cute but also a bother. I wanna make him a bit braver and more independent. Any ideas?

I'm setting up a server with nextcloud, plex, matrix and some other things I don't yet know, for some friends and family, (about 20 people if I get lucky)
and now I heard of a thing called single sign on/unified login. (Login to different services with the same user/pw and/or login once, access to all services)

so far I found out about Keycloak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keycloak

is this what I'm looking for? does anybody have experience in this? Are there other/better/simpler solutions for this?

2 years ago we planted a lime tree in our backyard. It was already about 5-6 feet tall when we planted it. There's a lemon tree next to it that is probably 50 years old and produces more fruit than we can use. We're constantly giving away lemons to our friends and neighbors, baking stuff with the ones we keep and we still too many left! But our lime tree barely produces anything. The first year it produced 3 limes, all of which were hard and almost juiceless. This year, so far it has produced a single fruit which doesn't yet look ripe. The thing is that it produces tons of buds that look like they're going to become limes, but they either die or are eaten by squirrels, I guess. I've heard a similar story from a coworker about her lime tree. Is there any secret to getting a lime tree to produce fruit?

The goal is to bring the subject of a painting to animated life, so I would want the model to be rigged as well as photo-realistic. I don't use Facebook products, and have been searching in all the wrong places so far, so why not here, too?

I’m enough of a Linux lay user that I’m not even sure if I’m using the right terminology in the question (feel free to tweak it if needed!). Here’s what I mean:

I’m running Pop!_OS currently, and I have at least one app installed via each of the following methods:

• Deb app from the distro repositories
• Deb deb downloaded from program website
• Flatpak app downloaded from Flathub
• AppImage app downloaded from program website
• Snap app downloaded from the Snap store

As someone who doesn’t really know or necessarily even care to know what’s going on under the hood, these all pretty much work identically for me (with the exception of AppImage which doesn’t integrate into my regular programs menu, and the standalone Deb, which requires manual updating). In fact, for most of the programs on my computer I couldn’t tell you which one they’re sourced from. They all just run like they should.

I’ve looked up differences between all of the options and usually end up finding conversations that go well above my head and get deep into technical details. My question here is basically aimed at cutting through a lot of that depth: what is the important, need-to-know information about these different methods of installing apps? Is there anything I should be aware of if all I’m really going to be doing is running them as a standard, non-power user? Also, if an app is available via multiple methods — is there one that is preferred/better/safer/superior/etc.?

I recently set up kubernetes to run on an old laptop. The goal was two-fold, 1 learn kubernetes and 2 setup an instance of nextcloud. I've managed to set everything up with cert renewals for my domain and enabled dyndns in case my provider changes my ip. All well and good and quite nice learning experience! Now I would like to also start running my own email server and have some questions. Is ther any that have a helm chart that is easy to setup in kubernetes? Since I am running this from home I imagine I'm more likely to be classified as a spammer. What can I do to minimize the likelihood of that? I read somewhere about reverse DNS, but not entirely sure if it is possible to do given I am running it all at home via a regular ISP.

I'm in Hungary, and my local doctor's office just called to tell me I have a Tuesday appt to get the first shot of the Sputnik V vaccine.

Problem is, I'm moving to The Netherlands in 2 weeks. I would have to stay here for another month to get the 2nd shot. Too much already put in motion for the end-of-April move.

I could have just gotten the first shot here, and then see what/when I get up in The Hague. But A) that feels like cheating, and 2) IDK how wise it is to mix vaccines.

Now if I die of Covid before getting vaccinated up there, I'm gonna feel like an idiot.

Thoughts?

ETA:

For the record, I did cancel the appointment, and I assume that, by now, my slot has been filled and I would get pushed to the bottom of the list, if I were to call my doctor back at this point.

Hungary, for whatever reason, is perhaps the #1 best country in the EU to date, for progress on getting its citizens vaccinated (32% half, 14% fully vaccinated, compared to the EU average of 16% and 6%). Being willing to use the Russian and Chinese vaccines w/o EU approval is, I'm sure, a contributing factor.

The Netherlands, on the other hand, is desperately struggling to be "not dead last" in the EU vaccination rankings.

Additionally, I'm 53 years old, right on the cusp of "not quite old enough to be high risk".

So it really was tempting to go ahead and get at least halfway-vaccinated before I go. But the Russian vaccine (as well as the Chinese one) seems to be especially dependent upon getting both shots. So, hopefully I don't die of Covid before The Netherlands gets around to me, but for now, I'll keep wearing masks and washing my hands.

Long time lurker, first time poster. I have a 7 year old lenovo y-40 running Ubuntu which has served me well, but I am starting to get concerned that it may be time to put it out to pasture. Nothing has broken, but I know it's getting a little old.

The way I see it, my options are to stick with this computer and upgrade the ram (currently 8gb, space for up to 16) and perhaps replace the hard drive (although replacing things makes me a little nervous, I have only replaced the battery thus far), or buy a new computer.

I kinda hate buying things but will throw down for a decent piece of gear if I need it. I have a budget of ~1000 (but if it can be cheaper that's better), want to run linux and use my computer mostly for programming and internet-stuff. I am also unsure if I need to stick with a laptop-I almost never take my computer anywhere and have it hooked up to a monitor anyway. I mostly have been looking at getting a T14 or something from System76 but they all seem a little pricey. Thoughts?

Hey Tildes!

I need some help with a specific tech issue, and I'm sure someone here can help me do it way quicker than I would be able to on my own.

General Request

I'd like to be able to scan a directory and find all of the largest files of a specific type (e.g. the largest .jpg files). I'm running Pop!_OS and I'm assuming there's some way to do this in the terminal, or alternately some utility I could use.

More Specific Details

I'm cleaning up my digital music library, and I realized in setting it up I made some errors by saving some very high res cover art. Many of my Bandcamp purchases come with a cover.jpg or cover.png file that is several megabytes large. I made the mistake of writing these into the files (adding, for some albums, an extra, say, 100 MB across all tracks). They also take a lot longer to load when I pull them up in my cloud music player. I'd like to be able to identify the albums with the largest cover.* files so that I can go in and replace the album art with a lower res version and gain back all that wasted space lost to unnecessary duplication.

I could go folder by folder and take a look at the sizes of each, but I figure there's an easier way to surface the ones that need my attention. Everything I've looked at online so far has helped me figure out how to identify the biggest files in general, but all that will do is surface the actual audio files, when it's the cover art that needs the specific attention.

Also, in case it's necessary information, the directory structure is Music/[artist]/[album]/cover.*

Any help will be very appreciated!

I have a Xiaomi Redmi 4X device with 2GB RAM and 16GB on-device storage.

Yesterday, I setup PostmarketOS on it, and it works well enough. WiFi and display work well, although no 3D acceleration and no telephony at all. As such, now it is just another device on my home network, except that I can ssh into it to do some basic stuff. Right now it is setup as a Syncthing node to backup my Keepass db and personal knowledge base written in org-mode, but I would like to use it further, and looking for ideas.

Two things to consider, though. First, I don't want it to overcharge and bust the battery. Before when it was on LineageOS, I had a magisk module acc so it would charge only 40-80%, and is largely the reason why the battery holds up pretty well after 5+ years without swelling. I will take further look into it over coming weekend and try to make something like it for the alpine kernel included in PmOS. Second, while on charging the phone keeps vibrating repeatedly. I have no idea how to fix that one, but would like to strat given pointers. (I have never done kernel dev in my life)

So, any ideas on what I can use this extra computer in my metaphorical basement welcome. Thanks in advance.

Inspired by (or if you prefer, ripping off) @spit-evil-olive-tips ' moving thread.

I'm a US expat with Hungarian citizenship, moving with two native Hungarian friends (plus a dog and 2 cats), to The Hague. We have an apartment there, all 3 animals are chipped and vaccinated (and we 3 are not...). My cousin will be driving us there in about a month.

We already have an appointment, a couple days after the move, to register our BRPs and BSNs at the local govt office. Sooner would be better, but it must be done in person, and right now, I don't relish the idea of a 2nd trip across the EU just to get registered a bit faster.

I'm primarily looking for tips on smoothly integrating into Dutch society ... utilities, banking, health care, whatever else I'm forgetting to worry about. But I'm open to any tips regarding any aspect of moving between countries in the EU, in the middle of a poorly-managed global pandemic.

Side-note for the entrepreneurs: In the US, you can rent a car, truck or trailer anywhere, drive it to anywhere else ... and leave it there. I appreciate the added complexities of an int'l version of that service, but if anyone can be the first to resolve those challenges in the EU ... $$$. Or rather, €€€.

ETA: Any advice posted to @spit-evil-olive-tips thread need not be repeated here.

It is late... and I am pretty much finished with migrating to a new VPS provider. I got rate limited with two domains, but I'm running everything through Cloudflare. Do I need to bother with LetsEncrypt on the VPS itself? When I check the domains, the certs from CF are working nicely.

This is my first time using CF.

Quick edit while I pretend I can sleep.

I’m thinking that CF will cover me for 443 and route all traffic there. I’ve got wildcards set for domains with services that require other ports — which is working. All CF is doing is caching my sites, right?

Hello Tildes,

I've been doing bokashi composting for pretty much all my vegetable and fruit scraps since last year. Lately, I've been wanting to level up my game and recycle meat scraps and chicken/fish bones as well. That's how I came across these "foodcycler" devices. They basically chop up and dry food scraps in a sealed container. I assume it works much like how industrial composting machines work, except it's scaled way down. At around 300-400 dollars, they're certainly not cheap, and probably generate a lot of greenhouse gasses during the manufacturing process. What's more is, every time you run a cycle, it has to run for 4-8 hours, though the manufacturer says the device is "energy conscious."

I'm trying to assess whether I'll do more harm than good by buying one of these things to convert more of my food scraps. My ultimate goal is to try many different ways to recycle food waste and try to get my friends to try it out as well. Some of them have already shown interest in bokashi composting, but none has actually tried it out (too much work).

Do you think commercial "foodcycler" devices do more harm than good? How should we go about evaluating this?

Edit: I've asked this question on many different places, and it looks like the general consensus is there's no strong need for something like this unless you live in apartments, in a city/town that does not collect food waste. Some believe recycling food waste via the more traditional methods (e.g. bokashi, vermicomposting) would yield better results because the foodcycler would dry up and kill a lot of the bacterial presence, though I believe the dried up scraps can be somewhat "revived" by mixing them in wet soil. Nobody seems to be able to definitively tell whether using the foodcycler would be a net positive or negative, because there's no way to verify its manufacturing process. I may do an experiment on how much power it draws if I get my hands on one in the future.

I've been learning a bit more Python, going through a Udemy course to expand my skills a little. One of the programs the course guides you to make is a little dictionary, but it currently only runs once and then quits.
I'd like to adapt it to use a nice TUI that keeps itself open until the user specifies they want to quit, using something along the lines of npyscreen. However, this library uses classes, and that's not something I'm yet familiar with. I'd rather have an understanding of what classes are, how they work, and why to use them before I take the plunge and start fiddling around with npyscreen (although I'd be interested to hear if you think that I should Just Do It instead).
Can anyone give or point me towards a good explanation of the what, how, and why of Python classes? Or better yet, a tutorial that will give me something to write and play with to figure out how it all fits together?
Thanks!

Inspired by a similar thread @kfwyre posted a while ago.

I've been given an Android phone for a work contract and I don't want to carry two devices, so I will likely migrate from my Blackberry Z10 soon. The BB10 OS (not to be confused with BBOS, which ran the Bolds, etc. of BB's heyday) was intuitive, useful, and wayyyyy better than most people who never used it would have expected, only being doomed by the app gap. I'd have considered buying another Blackberry this year if I hadn't been given this other phone. I have long been wary of Android due to both privacy concerns and UI/UX gripes. Having tooled around for a couple days already, I'm struck by how many simple things I apparently can't do out of the box, and the fact that there are so. many. ads. Even in the apps! I know I will root and de-Google the device as much as I can once I get a hang of the OS.

So, I'm mainly looking for app recommendations, but general advice is appreciated as well. My use case is very functional - email, scheduling, messaging, browsing, navigation, weather, and calls. Preference given to FOSS and/or ad-free apps, but I'll pay up if it's really worth it. So far I've uninstalled a bunch of bloatware, installed Firefox, found SwiftKey to be the only half-decent replacement for Blackberry's terrific keyboard software, and the best free no-ad weather app looks to be a Norwegian one called Yr.

My husband and I invested in a smoothie blender for the purposes of incorporating more fruits and veggies into our diets. We made our first batch this weekend — quite tasty, but definitely not perfect. Does anyone more experienced in the art of homemade smoothies have any wisdom they can share as we start to experiment with them?

Hi my lovelies,,

I've been having a hard time over the past few weeks because my life is pretty much a never-ending stream of problems and insecurities right now, most of which I cannot resolve for at least a few months. This has led me into a state of intense listlessness and unhappiness. I do not like being unhappy and have Officially Decided that I would like to be happy again. But I think I need some help getting there.

Moving beyond the basic "I'm terribly lonely in this very unpleasant pandemic" stuff, my main issue is that I actually am not alone at all, at least physically or socially, I am just alone emotionally/spiritually. I live with a bunch of other people my age and certianly have opportunities for interactions (quite a few). I get dinner with some of my very favorite people every week (on Wednesday!!!!) and am kept on at least a slightly consistent social/exercise schedule with some of my other very favorite people every day. My issue is that in most or possibly all of these settings, there is something preventing me from totally relaxing. I can only talk about my surface-level problems, like "oh haha I'm so busy with class ahah lol joke" and not "my deepest darkest insecurities are clawing their way into my brain more intensely every day and I Cannot Stop Them." Its like I keep my little shield up the whole time and don't allow myself to be vulnerable. I suspect there are a few factors going on here:

• I have several leadership positions, either formally or informally, and actually have a very difficult time not stumbling into them and accepting more responsibility in general. I think I have internalized the stoicism or steadfastness I try to exemplify in those positions, in my everyday life
• I often (usually?) look like I have my shit together, even when I very much do not. My default way of existing is just pretty relaxed and I think people assume that means I have no stress in my life (false lol)
• I like it when people think and say Good Things about me and not when they think and say Bad Things about me, and that includes their perceptions of me as someone who has their shit together all the time

sooo the leadership thing is unfortunate because it means that kind ofa lot of people look up to me as a beacon of stability and idealness. I know this because I have been told it several times by several different people, and it's sort of obvious when people emulate your mannerisms or call you at 2 am because they're drunk and lost and need help. There is exactly a 0% chance that I will do anything other than express my normal "everything is going good" attitude when I am running a meeting or giving a presentation or whatever because doing so would signify "everything isNOT good" and therefore "oh no help where is my beacon of stability beezselzak ahhhhhhh" (we cannot have a crisis at the same time because I must be there to attend to their crisis whenever it happens. Part of the job) And also it would upset my narcissistic tendency toward being perfect always.

Even when I'm with my friends, who I can be at least moderately normal around, I still find it very difficult to begin talking about anything that is rather Serious because it is much more pleasant to just talk about enjoyable things, and though I see these people on a regular basis, it is not ever for very much time, so I don't want to waste it. I would feel very awkward bringing up serious mental health problems at dinner. And also even though we're close friends there is still a little bit of an expectation to have your life under control? you know how it is. I have 2-3 people who are sort of individual confidants (about specific things), and there are occasions where we can have very insightful conversations. But it's hard because the covid makes getting together unrealistic and I find it very challenging to initiate Serious Conversations over the telephone. And even in person, I still think I have some barriers yet to break with them.

The end result here is that I am kinda just walkin around every day with a lot of issues and nowhere to exactly put them, and everyone thinks it's all sunshine and roses and I really feed into that perception because it makes me feel good short-term (even though it makes me feel worse long-term). I have a therapist, but you know how that goes. It's not the same as talking to a peer, which is really where I'm stuck. So this is my question to the wise and learned gentlefolk of Tildes:

How do I shed this annoying habit of trying to be perfect even when it's really not necessary and really not helpful? I know that there's a problem, I just can't give up my leadership positions (at least for now) and am having a hard time giving up my narcissism.

and yes yes I do therapy and journaling and the mindful meditation and whatever, I am not interested in generic self-help advice. I'm more curious about your rituals, or forms of understanding that are personal to your struggles in regard to being vulnerable with friends, your SO, and people who look up to you. I'd like to learn more about how any of this might resonate with you, and then how you have dealt/would deal with it yourself. Because I am Young And Naive I think I lack most of the experiential knowledge about like, "how to exist," and I want to be able to take your ideas into account. Things that matter, things that really just don't matter, ways to conceptualize the self versus the great vast universe of possibility and collective individuality to ultimately be less concerned with perfection and the like. etc. Also I ought to teach some of these people how to be better at being independent functional humans and that is a little tricky when I am not one myself.

xoxoxo
beezselzak

I purchased a license and activated DEV MODE on the Xbox Series S, with the purpose of running some SNES games I definitely own... But part of the procedure involves using the Games and Apps tab to set Retroarch as a game. Without that, it doesn't have access to all the system resources. The problem is that the tab disappeared and I don't know how to get it back. Anyone have the knowledge to fix this? I really don't want to reset my Xbox to factory just because of that... thanks

I attempted to purchase a domain this week without first using whois. The registrar's search function got stuck in an infinite load animation. I then checked the whois to find the domain was registered about 4 hours prior by a different registrar. Bad luck I guess but I can't help feeling paranoid that this was a domain front run.

My question is how much leeway is there for a registrar reporting the registration time?

I find myself at a point in my life where I have the time, energy, and money to adopt a dog. Growing up I never had a dog - my parents only had cats. I don't totally know what I'm getting into so I'm looking for some advice.

I would like to have a moderately active dog, as I live a moderately active life. However, many donation sites list even just moderately active dogs as needing a yard. I live in a fairly spacious 1 bedroom apartment that's in a small complex (5 units) on the ground floor. Does this severely restrict the kind of dogs I should adopt? I know a hyper-active breed wouldn't be happy here. But should I consider myself limited to small, lower needs dogs?

Edit:

Probably important bit of information, I don't plan to get a puppy.

I don't need answers so much as an idea of where to start.

Essentially, I have a Google Sheet that uses importjson.gs to pull from the following APIs

• OMDB (IMDB)
• TheMovieDB
• TVMaze

I also use another script to scrape Letterboxd for ratings.

This works well, but sometimes it'll time out or I'll hit urlFetch limits that Google has in place.

Basically, I'd like to have a text file (input.txt) where I pop in a bunch of titles and year or IMDB IDs, then the script runs and pulls set endpoints from all of these, outputting everything on one line (a pipe as a delimiter.)

My thinking is that I can then pull that info a sheet and run all of the formatting, basic math, and whatever else so it suits my Sheet.

I have a feeling I'll be using requests for the JSON and beautifulsoup for letterboxd -- or maybe a module.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? I don't think it'll be too difficult and should work well for a first python project.

My spouse and I own a condo. The property management company that the home owners' association hired is generally mediocre (which is a huge step up from the usual scenario where most are actively awful). They do a reasonably good job of keeping us informed, but they way they do it is hilariously bad. Every email they send is sent as a .jpg and a .docx file with no actual text in the message. My email client renders it and I can read it, but it makes all of their emails unsearchable, and it makes filtering beyond the basic "emails containing address x" impossible.

I've asked them personally several times both electronically and in writing to please stop sending such correspondence and just send a regular email. (I honestly don't care whether it's plain text or HTML, just so long as it's searchable and filterable.) But it's so far been to no avail. I brought it up at the last HOA meeting and they agreed to also include their messages as text in the body of the email, but they don't. If I'm really lucky they'll have one or two sentences in text, but the rest is a .jpg and a .docx (or .pdf) of the actual body of the message. I've tried to explain that this is bad for people with disabilities and may even run afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act, but they didn't seem to care.

It's not clear to me how one ends up sending emails in this form. I don't use any Microsoft products, which they probably can't comprehend, but I suspect this is some sort of Windows thing. Does anyone know how this happens and why? And more importantly, does anyone have suggestions for getting them to stop?

My beloved Duke controller has developed an extremely squeaky right trigger. It sounds like a mouse or bird is in distress every time I play something. My dog is getting concerned.

When I search the issue online, seemingly everywhere says to spray WD-40 on it, with people immediately saying “don’t do that” without offering any real alternatives. Given WD-40’s toxicity, I’m not comfortable using that for something that’s going to be in my hands for a long period of time anyway (plus it’s even more potentially toxic to my dog).

What’s the right, preferably non-toxic way to fix this issue?

I want to try something new and send some sacks of coffee over the atlantic and maybe start a sidehustle. I'm in the process of checking tarifs and stuff, but I have no idea where to even start looking for somebody who would do the actual transporting or what it might even cost.

did anybody here do something like that?
how did you do it?
what did you send?
why did you do it?
what was your experience with it?
would you do it again?

I still mainly use Windows, although I've dual-booted Linux a few times and I have Linux Mint on an old laptop right now. One thing I've never understood about Linux is all the different distributions - their different reputations and why they have them. What is the mechanical difference between using one distribution of Linux and another? Or are the differences usually not mechanical?

For example, Ubuntu and Debian seem to be large families, meaning that a lot of other distributions are based on them (using packages built for them in their package managers at least) as well as being popular distros on their own. But what's different between the two of them, and between each and the other distros based on them? (and what's similar? I gather they all use the Linux kernel at least!)

I also know that people are quite opinionated on their choice of distro, I wondered what reasons people had for their choice. What things are easier or harder for you in your distro of choice? Is it mainly day-to-day tasks that are important or more how the OS works underneath? How much difference does your preferred distro make?

For myself, I've only used Kubuntu (though not much) and Linux Mint, which was mainly for UI reasons, and particularly for the latter, ease of use for someone used to Windows (at least that was what I found years ago when I first looked into it).

Though I doubt I'll ever fully move away from Windows I would like / need to have access to a Linux OS, so maybe this will help me to know what is important to look for. But I also hope it'll be a useful and interesting discussion topic. Also, there are some previous discussions on the latter question so I'd be more interested in learning about the main topic.

also, please do add more tags

Hi Tildes. Hopefully this thread will be both a good discussion and helpful to some of you, and hopefully me.

As I'm guessing most of you know, data backups are quite important and it is best to have at least one copy locally and another copy somewhere else. At the moment, I store photos on an external hard drive and Google Drive, photos from my phone on Google Photos with copies of important original quality files saved locally, and everything else on drives in my PC and a network drive on my Raspberry Pi. It's far from ideal, I've only got one copy of some files and three or four of some others so I've been looking for something better to keep everything organised, safe and in one place.

I've tried the free trial of Backblaze, which seemed the obvious choice, but it had a few problems. I couldn't backup my Pi's network share, and in general it's a bit clunky and difficult to use. It is marketed as an easy solution to backing up data, but in doing this it just makes everything more difficult, at least for me - I know what I want backed up, and I would prefer to select it manually, but by opting in everything for backup by default you have to spend ages excluding the folders you don't want saved, one-by-one, in a UI that is difficult to use and often unclear. Sometimes the exclusions list just doesn't work - the Program Files folders are meant to be excluded by default and they were listed under exclusions but were backing up anyway. For me it found over 200,000 files, and because they were all so small it barely managed to backup 100MB in three hours. (Not that I know where the files come from because they aren't listed in the Windows app in any vaguely comprehensible way.)

So I need to find something else, and I was hoping someone here would have some recommendations. Personally I need it to:

• Be affordable and easy to setup and use
• Backup external and network drives to the cloud (physically keeping another drive somewhere else isn't an option for me)
• Be trustworthy and have strong commitments to security and privacy
• Work well for my use case: preferably automatic from Windows

Looking forward to any comments or recommendations. Thanks!

Hello people of Tildes, long time no see! As per title, since some point last week I've begun receiving calls from extra-EU countries I've never had any contact with (Haiti, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia just to name a few).

No doubt it is part of a call back scam; of course I have never picked up nor redialed, still, this seriously blows as I've now been woken up twice at 3am during the week.

Now, I've never had such a problem before, nor have I recently posted my number online anytime recently. Has anyone here had a similar issue? What can I do about it (I'm from the EU if that might help)? Is there any way for me to find out where my number was leaked from?

I have just now installed NoPhoneSpam from f-droid, but have no idea how good of a fix that will be.

Let me know if y'all have any ideas, thanks :)

I'm having a "server" (very cheap, very old office pc) in my house I use together with dynamic dns. But it's not really stable, (needs regular restarts and dyndns is not really gold either) and as I want to offer family acces to nextcloud and myabe plex? any other ideas? and all the other nice stuff the free software world has to offer, this is not working well enough to not make them flee back to google + apple and stay there till eternity!

the other thing is, i got used to ssh and stuff over the last years and want to improve my skills and learn.

I know these two dont really go well hand in hand :-(

I actually have a decent up and down speed at my home so an upgrade for my existing system is thinkable but dyndns is just a PITA and i'd like having my own domain. do these work with changing ips? because with the prices they ask here for staric ips I can just rent a server in a center somewhere.

what do you do to self host, how do you do it and what would be your advise for me?

I recently got an Ethernet cable in the hopes of making my online gaming more responsive, but to my dismay it made little difference in latency measure on the Xbox Series S. It merely dropped from 146ms to 143ms.

I use the modem+router provided by the ISP, a Sagemcom Fast 5655v2. According to preliminary research, the ISP blocks any alterations so I would have to jailbreak the device to explore other solutions. I’m open for suggestions in that regard too! I’d like to know if I can determine if the problem is on the router or the ISP.

On your suggestions please consider that my country’s currency is worth less than one fifth of the US dollar, so I’m not looking for anything even remotely close to the best setup possible, but merely a significant improvement. Anything above 50 US dollars is already too much for me.

So, with that in mind, what do you recommend?