I’m going to be in Washington, D.C. for the next week (give or take a day). I’ll be staying in Arlington, VA and plan on utilizing public transportation while I’m there.

Any unconventional recommendations or things I should know?

I have a gift idea for my husband that involves commissioning some specific custom artwork (Pokémon-themed, in case that matters!). I did some cursory searches and turned up results on Etsy and Fiverr, but some of these look like they’re automated and are suspiciously inexpensive. Other offers on those sites look more promising, but I’m not even sure if Etsy/Fiverr are where I should even look in the first place.

I’m happy to pay an artist for their work and want this to be something of quality. I’m also fine with waiting on it — some of the stuff I’ve found so far looks tailored for speed.

What’s the best place I should look with quality artists who I can pay fairly for their work?

So I'm on a movie kick after realising I haven't paid attention to movies for a number of years now. I may have seen less than 10 movies last year.

One thing I miss from when I was growing up is when a trip to the cinema always started with a short followed by the main film.

So here's my pr(e/o)mise:

Recommend me your favourite short movies (from any director / year / genre) and I will do my best to track down and watch it (by fair means or foul!)

Also let me know the best way to follow up - add a comment in this thread, make a new post or just shut up (I won't be offended).

I thought it might be interesting to compare notes and ideas.

I will shortly have need for a small, low power (power as in watts, not compute power) system for always-on Home Assistant use. However, Raspberry Pis are out of stock everywhere and while they can be had for extortionate prices on various auction/marketplace sites, I'm not sure I want to spend a load of money on something which might not even be what it claims to be.

Home Assistant suggest Odroid which I'd probably go for the C4 edition but it's relatively expensive (I need to add an MMC and a psu and various other things to the listed main board price)

Any suggestions? The Asus Tinkerboard looks overkill and is very expensive. It needs to be capable of running a standard Linux distro, ideally Home Assistant's own OS. Low power consumption is a definite, 2-3W at idle is probably the maximum I'd be happy with. Wifi is a bonus although not required right now - but the ability to add it if needed is essential. Some amount of expansion capability would be good if I want to add hardware sensors or bluetooth or a Zigbee transceiver or whatever. It needs some reasonably amount of compute grunt I assume but I don't think HA is all that hungry for number crunching power. The machine will more than likely be headless at first but a little bit of GPU and graphical IO would be handy if I want to stick a display on it in the future, which I might want to.

Any ideas? Oh, and also must be easily available in/to the UK.

I've always been enticed by 8 bit computer projects like this but I've never bought any because I can't think of anything I'd do with them given their self-contained nature. Even a really primitive ethernet controller would explode the project possibilities. Does anything like that exist?

Hey everyone!

Sorry if this is a long post, but I've done my research and I would like to make a few questions.

I've decided that I would like to buy a NAS mainly to storage all of my documents, photos and videos, so that, I can access them from multiple devices and also use it to upload important documents to Backblaze B2. Then, I've actually discovered that I can install a few Docker containers and I could use it as a media server (Jellyfin) and serve the content to my Apple TV (neat!).

I considered a QNAP (better hardware for the price) but everyone recommends Synology instead (because of the stronger security and better overall software), but to be honest, I'm not sure what should I get.

My budget would be to buy a NAS (without counting the disks) below €1000. Ideally, €500-600 but I don't mind stretching to the €700 mark, if it is really worth it.

Spoiler alert: I think, it should be the DS920+ (4-bay) or the DS1520+ (5-bay). I think a NAS above 4-bay is better for future-proofing.

Looking here in Germany at price comparators, I could buy the DS920+ for €663 and the DS1520+ for €750. But these prices seem to be at an all-time high :(

Questions & Assumptions:

0. I'm not sure if the price difference of about €100 is worth the premium to get the 5-bay model. There are only two differences between these two models: The 5-bay has one extra slot, and it has 4x 1 Gbe LAN ports instead of 2x 1 Gbe. All the rest is the same. What is your opinion?

1. I've read that if you run a few containers (~10) it consumes quite a bit of RAM (~3 Gb), so it should be ideal to have at least 8 Gb. This is the reason I've said that I think I can only choose the DS920+ or DS1520+. Looking at official Synology resellers, these models, seem to come already with 8 Gb, and they are within my budget. Is my research wrong?

2. These two models, have an encryption engine. I think this is necessary to encrypt my files before sending them to Backblaze, or?

3. A lot of people seem to say to simply pick Synology's hybrid RAID setup called SHR-1 or SHR-2. I would go the easy way here and pick one of those two. Would you think that is a bad idea, and it is better to pick a specific (standard) RAID? I've read about the long long long RAID rebuild that could happen in some situations, and picking the "right" RAID could decrease the rebuild in days (or weeks!!!!).

4. In case, I choose a NAS model with Nvme cache slots, most people say it is not worth it to use if you are not running Virtual Machines and the SSD’s "burn" really fast. I have no interest on VMs.

5. Most people say to pick an Enterprise (Server) HDD instead of a NAS HDD mainly because price is similar in some cases and Enterprise has longer life and warranty. I should also pick a CMR HDD which is helium filled. 5400 rpm would be preferable to 7200 rpm because of the noise. Sadly, all Enterprise HDD's and most of NAS HDD's are 7200 rpm. Is the noise difference that big? The NAS will be in our living room.

6. Is 8 TB still the best cost per Terabyte?

7. I was extremely sad to hear that the Hitachi hard drive division was bought by WD. I've had lots of misfortune with WD drives (and let's not forget the debacle with the SMR and CMR drives) and I would prefer not to give money to them, but, nevertheless, I'm still tempted to buy the Ultrastar drives that belonged to Hitachi. Does anyone know if WD kept the components, manufacturing processes, staff, etc., that made these brilliant disks?

8. Following the HDD topic, what is your experience with Seagate or Toshiba drives?

9. These two NAS models have the same Intel Celeron CPU, which supports hardware transcoding. To be honest, I don't know in which cases would that happen. It seems if I use Infuse on the Apple TV it would never transcode (and instead direct play) because Infuse would do the transcoding in software. Should I take in account that hardware transcoding is a must-have or a nice-to-have?

10. Would you recommend having a CCTV system connected to the NAS? Should I dedicate one entire HDD just for the NVR system? Would a standalone NVR device be better?

11. My last question is: Should I just wait for the new model of the DS920+ or DS1520+? The 20 means it was launched in 2020 (in Summer specifically) and it seems Synology refreshes the model every two years., that means, a new model would be available in Summer this year. Most people say it is not worth the wait because Synology is very conservative in its model updates/refreshes. People are saying that a better CPU will be of course available (do I even need that for my use cases?) and probably upgrade the 1 Gbe LAN ports to 2.5 Gbe or 10 Gbe (10 Gbe I really doubt it). I've read that a 4K stream does not fill a 1 Gbe bandwidth, and you could theoretically have three 4K streams in a single 1 Gbe connection. If all else fails, I could just do a link aggregation of the two ports to be 2 Gbe, or?

12. Anything I'm forgetting? Should I be careful with something in particular?

I know I should buy a UPS too, but I think I'll create a separate post regarding this topic because I would also want a recommendation regarding a UPS for my other devices.

I know that I could actually build my own NAS and use Unraid for the OS. Furthermore, I'm just at a time in my life with too much on my plate (baby and small child) and having something that just works is preferable. When they are older and more independent, I'll have more time to investigate this option :)

Again, sorry for the long post. Thank you everyone!

It's six months and I haven't spent it yet.

What do I need that I don't realize I need?

I already have multiple monitors, keyboards, etc. Separate headphones (that I don't use because I don't need to shut the door often), microphone (doesn't make a difference), and other obvious tech toys. I bought a new UPS right before I started the job.

It's a nice problem to have: "I don't need anything." But surely I should spend money on SOMEthing?

I happen to host my blog https://prahladyeri.github.io/blog statically, built using Pelican and served on Github Pages. Plebs like us can't afford a backend server infrastructure, so we must rely on external services like Disqus for comment hosting.

So far, Disqus was the only fellow in town who allowed us to host comments on a free plan. Though there were some issues (bloat, adware, etc.), people seemed to be generally happy with it so far.

But now, a new fellow named giscus commenting system has entered the town, it's basically powered by github. Since I already host my blog on github pages, this should be a natural choice for me, right? Many bloggers seem to be migrating to this new system and I might too soon. The downsides however are as follows:

1. It won't allow me to export existing comments from the old disqus system. Understandable to an extent as those exact author usernames may not be on the Github platform?
2. Disqus interface seems to have improved all of a sudden in last few days! There no longer seem to be any ad and even the comment interface seems to be less heavy or cluttered now. It might sound a bit conspiratorial in nature but could this be the result of rising competition in the form of Giscus!

I'm a lazy status-quoist by nature and might well end up retaining disqus if they don't deviate too much from where they are now. But I'll keep an eye out on Giscus too and its progress. What do you guys suggest?

I'm a solo freelance programmer who codes on small to medium sized projects, and I realize that I can upskill myself a lot by keeping up with the industry trends, by listening to what the best in this field have to say. The problem is that there is just so much information overload everywhere, just so many youtube videos and articles that it seems overwhelming to differentiate the wheat from the chaff!

Since reading is my preferred medium of instruction, I want to know what are the blogs, journals, etc. on this topic with some street cred? And preferably individual experts and blogs, not companies. Company or corporate sites and blogs seem to be more hype than substance these days.

Which ones do you refer for keeping up to date?

Hi, lately I've been thinking a bunch about Phantom Crash, which I played on an XBox. It was a mecha battle arena game. It had two main modes (three if you count skipping through interminable conversations with NPCs). First, you'd take your mech into an arena and blow people up. Then you'd go to your garage, spending your winnings on upgrading your mech.

The degree of customization you could achieve was striking. There were big options like wheels / legs / hover platform, and a variety of energy / mass / missile weapons. You could get different aim assist chips that had meaningfully different characteristics. You could tune almost any piece of equipment to be lighter or heavier, and a heavier gun really felt more powerful in the arena.

TBH the actual combat was only alright, but we loved the game anyway.

Are there any other games out there that have this kind of feedback loop? Playable today is best, but I'd also go down an internet archaeology hole.

I'm spending 5 days in NYC starting next week. While I've traveled plenty, it's almost always been alone, frequently short term (2-3 days including flights in and out), and work related so I had people to either ask for suggestions or just went out on my own. If the trip didn't fit into the above categories it was typically to somewhere I'm relatively familiar with or had a lot of lead time to prepare my trip.

That is not the case right now. I've never had any interest in NYC so I don't have a list of places I'd like to experience in my head, I don't have a ton of time to research a plan and filter out all the "top 10 things to do in NYC" websites, I'll be with my wife so going off wandering on my own isn't an option, and this will be the first trip where I don't have a rental car to just go get lost in and see where my randomness takes me. I'm also not the tourist type so there's no interest in "the tree" or Times Square, etc.

So I beseech you fellow Tilderinos, as someone that doesn't care about being a tourist, doesn't have a social media presence to feed I'm-here-and-you're-not selfies to, and needs actual destinations to go to due to a lack of independent mobility, what should someone with pretty much 72 hours of completely free time in NYC actually do?

I started studying again this semester, and have to read a lot of stuff because of it.
As we get nearly all our Books as PDF and reading on my notebook or my phone gets tiering quite fast. So I'm thinking about getting myself an e-reader to make things go easier.

So i tried to find some ressources to learn about e-readers, but the internet (or search engines) these days seem to suck.
So maybe my lovely tildes can help.

must haves:
can read PDF
needs to make reading this "shitty" two colums pages my PDF have good and easy

nice to haves:
FOSS
Backlight

can somebody help me out? or do you know about a resource where I can learn about the pro and cons of the different e-readers, I'm starting with close to 0 knowlege as I never thoght I will need one, I generally prefere to read proper books.

I would like to find a good Statistics course to do for myself, and also to recommend to others, down the road ... one that specifically focuses on risk, and the discrepancy between actual statistical probability vs humans' intuitive sense of risk.

I recall a quote, which The Interwebs informs me right now, came from Albert A. Bartlett ... "The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race Is Man’s Inability To Understand the Exponential Function".

Alternately, Mark Twain popularized (but did not originate) the saying "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics".

That's the kind of course I'm looking for, that focuses on questions like how much should we actually worry about supervolcanoes, asteroid strikes, Covid 2.0, WWIII, Trump getting re-elected, etc.

There are two parts to this. One, people often (naturally, human nature, how our brains are wired to handle Risk) obsess about a short list of risks in life that are overblown, or appear to be more of a concern than they actually are.

The other part is, some things have a very small risk of actually happening, but when considered in conjunction with the potential consequences (asteroid strikes, WWIII, global pandemic), are still worthy of aggressive efforts to prevent ... and people often focus on the first element (statistically unlikely) and dismiss or overlook the second piece (devastating consequences).

Anyway, stuff like that ... ideally an actual, hands-on MOOC-type Statistics course, but even a good youtube video or blog article would suffice.

As usual, thanks in advance.

Maybe you guys can help me out since I found a lot of games that are kinda like this but not quite.

It doesn't need to be a full-blown simulation, but it needs to be convincing.

What I want is a game that puts me inside a submarine, looking at screens full of radar and sensor information, and letting me control the sub in a realistic manner, only with the information provided in the control room. It's okay if the game jumps to an external view just to show the ultimate consequence of conflict, but mostly, I should be in the sub looking at screens.

Is there such a game?

Ideally, I play on the Xbox. My laptop is a potato, so it's only good for very old or otherwise lightweight games (technically speaking, this could easily be a command line game... like naval htop). Other kinds of naval simulation are good for this thread.

Thanks!

My child (who does not live with me) has a PC. He's pretty good at sorting problems out for himself, but he sometimes needs extra help. We've tried doing this over phone and video calls, and it's an unfun experience for both of us.

Is there a remote access software that would fit our needs? I want to be able to connect to his computer over the Internet and have some level of control when he's logged into his account. I'd need to be able to open files, I wouldn't have to be able to save them. He's using Windows 11. I think he's using the home version. I'm using Windows 10 Pro. We both have reasonably good Internet speed.

This is for worldbuilding purposes. I'm not exactly a "science dude", so I'd like to get a better idea of our solar system and beyond, preferably with links to layman-friendly explanations on things like:

• distances and travel time not only having Earth as a starting point, but from any given point to another
  • if at all possible, including hypothetical alien and/or future technologies
• Earth-like planets
• locations that might be able to sustain life, and which kind of life it could sustain
• locations that, while unsuitable to carbon-based life, might receive enough energy to sustain artificial intelligence

I remember there's some kind of simulator or engine, that can run on a computer... anyone remembers the name? And would it run on an aging laptop with an i5 processor and Intel HD4400 integrated graphics?

Thanks!

EDIT: I guess I'll make this question a bit more approachable, so... what are some YouTube channels that can teach me more the basics of our solar system, nearby systems, the Milky Way, and how all of those are linked together?.

Hello everyone, I'm going to move to a new apartment and doing full time home office while my wife is doing part home office, so I'm looking to improve my internet connectivity. I already plan to get the 400 mbps down fiber cable plan. So, I have to be honest that routers is one of those topics that I should know more than I should but don't, so I'm not sure what should I expect and the features I want or don't need.

Some time ago, I discovered and bookmarked the amazing website smallnetbuilder which at the time I thought, I would just trust his thorough reviews and choose the best router within my budget. Sadly, the website seems abandoned now, so I'm not sure if there is something new on the market or if the routers on his "Best" rank, are still valid options. By the way, I don't really game online.

My requirements are:

• 150€ budget, but willing to go to 200€ if really worth it;
• Mesh compatibility, just in case I need it in the future;
• Hopefully very low packet loss maybe 0-0.5%;
• Compatibility/support with open source firmware;
• Maybe VPN support (not sure, if worth it);
• 2.5Gb LAN ports would be nice for future-proofing, but I think this is not possible without going over the budget;
• Something that I don't know and never heard about, but you would really recommend it to me :).

After a first glance, the Asus RT-AX58U looks nice. Just not sure about only having two 5GHz streams and no LAN port aggregation.

Bonus dumb question(s) (sorry): Will all the routers work with my ISP modem? Or is it normal to always check with the ISP first before buying?

I currently have a hankering for diving into a really long book series, so was hoping to get some recommendations from fellow Tildes users.

The genres I enjoy most are scifi and fantasy, especially darkly themed ones with deep lore, but I'm open to trying anything. The only caveat is that I have absolutely no interest in starting to read a series that hasn't actually finished yet, since at this point I am honestly quite sick of waiting for the next ASOIAF and Kingkiller.

I was considering listing all the longest series I have already read in order to avoid them getting recommended to me again, but I decided against doing that so other people can use this as a resource in case they're also looking for similar recommendations.

p.s. Malazan Book of the Fallen would be my biggest recommendation, BTW. It's by far my favorite dark fantasy series, is a whopping ~3M words, ~11k pages, with hundreds of unique/memorable characters, and an insanely deep lore spanning thousands of years.

After reserving a Steam Deck twice, and letting it drop, trying to get FTL running acceptably with touch controls on my old generic Windows Tablet, and doing the bulk of gaming and leisure time with my phone, I wonder if the best solution to my varied tech needs might be just to bite the bullet, turn in my Android cred and take a walk on the iPad side. I haven't used an Apple device regularly since my iPod touch from ten years ago and ever since that was stolen, I was all Android, all the time. But if I want a device to read comics (PDFs, Kindle/Comixology, Hoopla), watch streaming (Netflix, Prime Video, Youtube), try out games (Apple Arcade, Xcloud Web) but have the option to go back to my old reliables (FTL, Binding of Isaac), should I consider dropping $200 on an older iPad and see if it fits my needs? Should I do it now, or wait on rumors of new ones in October? I know they're supported for longer then the average Android, but at the same time, I don't want to pick one up just in time for it to be a security risk either.

I've been slowly more frustrated by the Spotify client updates particularly on android and short of getting all my music offline which I'd like to do eventually I want an alternative client that isn't going to change the layout constantly and make listening to the music I want to listen to any more difficult than it should be.

I'd also like to filter out podcasts if possible because I have my way of listening to podcasts and spotify filling my home screen with them isn't going to make me any more likely to use them. Especially if they keep fucking pushing podcast episodes featuring deceased family members just to ruin my morning.

Sometimes I like to multitask while I'm having a chill. Basically I'm looking for a game that doesn't require my full attention so that I can play while I'm watching youtube or a stream. Lately I've been playing Stellaris on easier difficulties to scratch this itch, but even on minimum time settings a Stellaris game takes multiple hours. Something with a 30-60 minute gameplay loop would be perfect.

Thanks for your suggestions!

I need to put Linux on a laptop, but I'm afraid I may not be around to upgrade to major versions (which usually means reinstalling everything) and maintaining the machine. Something like Arch or Manjaro (which I use) might be good because I wouldn't ever need to reinstall the OS, but stability leaves a lot to be desired for a non-technical user. So I was thinking of getting something with an enormous support lifecycle, like Rocky Linux (10 years). Is that a terrible idea?

By now we all know that ultraprocessed foods are really, really bad for you, and that should rule out the majority of snack foods you find on the shelf at the grocery store. We've never been big consumers of ultraprocessed snack foods in my house, but we do like to snack. And we really need to diversify beyond popcorn for our snacking purposes. Fruits and nuts are of course an obvious option. What other cheap, easy to prepare, and not-too-unhealthy snack foods do you like to make?

Hello everyone,

I'll be moving to a new apartment where the kitchen does not have any kitchen appliances. From my searches on /r/BuyItForLife, it seems everyone usually recommends Bosch and Miele appliances, but they are usually a bit on the expensive side. I'm not sure about buying for life at this stage in my life because I think this is not my final home, and I think in the future I won't be bothered to take everything with me. Also, it will be always be easier to sell the apartment in the future with the equipped kitchen.

It seems Panasonic and Mitsubishi appliances are actually quite good and cheaper than Bosch and Miele, but unfortunately, these brands are basically non-existent here in Europe (regarding kitchen appliances, I mean).

So, basically, is there still any brand left that might be as good as Bosch and Miele but slightly cheaper? Maybe Whirlpool or Electrolux brands?

So my TV is broken (so no Xbox) and my laptop is a potato. Well, not a total potato, it has an i54210 1.7ghz CPU with integrated Intel HD 4400 graphics. It's a Linux machine, but since Proton I fully expect to be able to play many low spec games.

I'm looking into some low spec games. I got Papers Please and liked it a lot. For something meatier I was thinking Baldurs Gate Enhanced, but I fear that I might have a hard time with the outdated mechanics. I had a hard with the original Fallout for that reason... I loved it back in the day, but it was just too clunky for my current tastes.

After re-watching the absolute masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977), I was in awe. This got me thinking a lot about aliens, and it seems to me that that is an area where movies and TV shows have been lacking in recent years.

When I say "aliens", I mean something truly alien, foreign, mind-bending, even terrifying (although I'm not very fond of horror) -- so not the tame, often humanoid extraterrestrials that we fully understand, like you usually see in Star Trek and Trek-like shows. But rather stories of contact that make us rethink the boundaries of existence.

A recent movie that touches on that was 2016's Arrival, which has more than one similarity with Close Encounters.... Another is Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997).

Hello everyone,

I recently moved to a new town and I'm looking forward to walking on all its streets and discover its secrets. However, it's relatively a big town and it will take me a while to do that.
I also don't like walking all that much and I'm not an outgoing person at all, so I want to gamify this a little bit to trick my monkey brain.

So, as an idea, I wondered if there was an iOS app that used the GPS on my phone (or some other trick that I can't think of) to map my route, save it, and place it on the map of the town so I can coordinate my future routes according to the places I've already visited. It's sort of like those running apps that shows you your route after you finished running, except I want it to be not about running and I want them to save the route data, preferably locally.

Thank you everyone in advance for their time.

This may seem like an odd request and I'm not sure if I can properly explain this, but for some reason I dislike games that require me to drag things with my fingers. I prefer games that allow me to "click" stuff using my finger as a mouse, like Go (baduk), checkers, and other board games. Any genre. Any suggestions on Android? Thanks!

I have a burner phone for the next month.

(Lately a number of services refuse to accept my google voice number, and I refuse to share my actual number.)

Are there any cool services I should try out that maybe require a phone number to sign up?

Hello! I do a fair bit of my reading via Libby (I have memberships at the NYPL and Brooklyn Public Library) but I like to pick up some physical copies as well. I've spent some time in a couple of NYC bookstores but I'm curious about online portals folks here use to buy books. I've switched to bookshop.org for new books but what's the go to for used books?

Thanks!

I was granted access to DALL-E today and I'm wondering what's a good place to collect and share silly computer-generated photos? I have quite a few places already that will do this, but none seem quite right:

• Twitter - It works, but I'm not sure I want to mix photo sharing with other stuff.
• Mastodon - My account is mostly inactive and I'm hardly following anyone I actually know, or who does much picture sharing.
• Facebook - I don't really want to spam the relatives.
• Google Photos - I use this for sharing personal photos with immediate family. I made an album for MidJourney but it isn't quite convenient enough.
• Tildes - no direct photo sharing here! I could link to an album, though.

Where do you go for decent reviews? Context-i was looking for a site to find good popcorn, and all the results on google for as far as i cared to scroll were fluff (pun intended).

Here’s what i use:

Rtings for stereo.

Wirecutter for appliances.

Reddit for everything else.

And my results are quite mixed, and involve a lot of scrolling.

Where do yall go?

Covid finally caught up with me and I'm going to be living like a hermit for the next 2 weeks. It's been a stressful month here so I'm looking to melt my brain (or at least the bits covid hasn't already melted). I'd love to check out your easy watching, good time having, feel good suggestions!

Looking at the available options, I see many programs such as Ardour and Audacity that seems to focus on recording, mixing, streaming, etc. But what should use it to actually edit the thing?

By that I mean changing the order of things, removing silences, involuntary sounds, and noises, adding music and sound effects, as well as making what I'm saying more concise and intelligible.

I have a background in video editing, and I'm used to working in the "timeline paradigm" that is common to Adobe Premiere and older versions of Final Cut (I have no idea what Final Cut looks like now...). But I have no idea how to edit stuff using actual audio software, I've only used those to treat audio and then finish editing on other programs.

I'd use a video editor for that, but I currently don't own any machine powerful enough to use a video editor software comfortably.

So I'm reading Asimov's short-story anthology The Complete Robot, which contains stories written between 1939 and 1977, and I'm fascinated by several instances in which Asimov tries to predict the future of robotics.

When he gets it right is just as interesting as when he gets it wrong, as even when he's wrong, he's wrong in very interesting ways.

For example, it's very interesting how Asimov seems to think that everything must have a positronic brain (which often produces something either identical or very close consciousness), when in reality we now have numerous useful robots that have nothing of the sort.

So this made me thinking, I think I'd like to write a story that was just like that, an exploration of universal themes that is facilitated by simplified technology. A form of retrofuturism. And since I had the idea, obviously someone else had it before. I wanna read it! More recent stories, especially those with old-school robots and artificial intelligence. Any suggestions?

Also open to other medias, but books would be particularly helpful.

Building myself a computer for the first time, and I have most of the parts specced except for the GPU. I don't play a lot of video games, so my first priority is getting something that can display output at all; but I would like something a bit capable, as I do play some 3d games from time to time. Prefer an nvidia gpu, as I would like to play with some nv-specific features (nv_path_render, maybe cuda), but not a hard requirement.

I've spotted the following gpus on craigslist:

• gtx 1070 - C$260 (~$200 usd)

• gtx 1660 super - C$320 (~$250 usd)

• gtx 1070 ti - C$300 (~$230 usd)

• gtx 1050 ti - C$120 (~$90 usd)

Any suggestions? Something else I should look out for? Are these good prices?

Reply All was consistently one of my favorite podcasts on my player. I've been a listener for years, and while risking sounding parasocial, I felt a huge loss when the show finally ended. There's something about the consistency of some content, and the nostalgia for the rough patches where that content helped make things easier, whether it be a podcast, TV show, or blog.

It was that right mix of personality, investigative journalism, humor, and weird internet culture. I have a lot of alternatives in my player, but none of them seem to fill that RA-shaped hole. Here's what I'm listening to nowadays:

• Underunderstood
• You're Wrong About
• Endless Thread
• Darknet Diaries
• Crypto Island

Basically, I'm begging for podcast recommendations from shows you consider to be your favorite. Preferably, if you can include a recent, really good episode to get started with, I'll give it a listen and report back. Thanks!

Choose one album
that you love
that you think deserves more love

Tell us what it is, and why.

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I should be getting a Steam Deck soon and plan to spend a lot of time diving into old console libraries.

What are some games from previous generations that you recommend revisiting today? That is: games you feel have aged well and that aren’t readily available via a re-release or re-master elsewhere.

Any console and any recommendation is fair game, but I’m definitely interested in the kinds of recommendations that aren’t likely to show up in “The 25 Best Games for the [Console Name]”-type articles out there. I already know Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid are great for the PSOne, for example, but what about the thousands of other games for the system? Give me some deep cuts!

I'm mostly interested in metro/subways, but also over the ground systems and rapid transit in general.

Mostly the vehicles themselves, the rails, and the related technologies. I mean, I do enjoy the city planning bits, but some channels focus too much on the design and evolution of the lines and I don't like that, looking at a map is not really enticing to me. A healthy mix would be nice, some engineering deep dives mixed with history, urban planning, and a lot of train porn! (Not rule 34 lol).

Thanks!

I know we already have more than enough launchers for the PC platform, but are there any recommendations for the one that can rule them all, with the controller functionality and presentation of Steam's Big Picture Mode, but also with the modularity and ease of setup of GOG Galaxy? Or is it pretty much one of the above as far as easy options go?

Edit: Took a look at Playnite, really impressed. Deeper impressions in the thread.

I love mailing lists! They are my preferred way of discussing interesting topics with people. Please share your favourite lists, and any directories or search engines you know of. 🙂

• nettime - net art and media crit
• JISCMail - UK academic listserv

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