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26 votes
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UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman says multiculturalism has ‘failed’ in Europe during migration speech
15 votes -
A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy
14 votes -
The Curse | Official teaser
4 votes -
Critical 0day in WebP: Google assigns a CVE for libwebp and gives it a 10.0 base score.
28 votes -
How to reduce (non-spam) business calls to my personal cell phone?
I have a business phone number that I use for work in addition to my personal cell phone number which I’ve had for 20+ years. I’ve always used my work number for anything job-related (colleague...
I have a business phone number that I use for work in addition to my personal cell phone number which I’ve had for 20+ years. I’ve always used my work number for anything job-related (colleague contact, vendors, sales reps, networking, LinkedIn, etc) and only provide my personal for, well, personal contacts.
But having had my personal number for as long as I have, it’s very easy to Google my name and find that number associated to me.
My issue is that I’m constantly receiving phone calls and voicemails on my personal number from vendors, sales reps, etc that are either for services we use at my job or from vendors in relevant fields contacting me for various reasons. I realize some may lump this kind of outreach into “spam”, but I want to differentiate this kind of outreach from what I consider true spam (robocalls, phishing, non-work related sales calls like for home internet, etc) which just goes ignored and blocked.
I don’t want to answer every call to correct someone to use my work contact info. I can continue ignoring but it does fill my voicemail and I’m hoping to reduce the number of calls I receive on my cell every day (even if it were to only cut it down by 5). Someone suggested changing my outgoing voicemail message to flag it’s my personal number and any work related messages would be ignored while providing my work number. I think this may be the best approach (though I’d skip providing my work number as I don’t need it to start receiving robocalls). I know I’m not the only one that deals with this (but maybe I’m in the minority rather than a majority) and am curious if y'all have this issue and if so, how you manage it?
20 votes -
Witnesses and security camera footage viewed by The Washington Post reveal a more complex operation to kill Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Canadian Sikh leader, than authorities have previously described
40 votes -
Chick-fil-A plans UK restaurants opening after previously facing backlash from LGBTQ+ rights activists
23 votes -
Portland Trail Blazers trading Damian Lillard to Milwaukee Bucks
8 votes -
Gender is not the same as sex (linguistics perspective)
11 votes -
Lord Sugar documents east London’s rubbish mountains
7 votes -
Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman introduces legislation to cancel school lunch debt
77 votes -
What's something spontaneous you've done recently that you loved doing?
Recently I've been getting Instagram ads for those "side quest" decks that are designed to make you do more spontaneous things on a day to day basis. Things like, "Go to a local coffee shop you've...
Recently I've been getting Instagram ads for those "side quest" decks that are designed to make you do more spontaneous things on a day to day basis. Things like, "Go to a local coffee shop you've never been to" or "Talk to a stranger". I've been slowly sinking into the fall season apathy and winter blues and have been looking to spice my life up, but I kinda don't wanna spend money on a bunch of cards.
What are your experiences with spontaneity in your daily life? Anything exciting that has come out of it?
This year I spent a bunch of time in different countries and wrote about it a month ago here
25 votes -
Rubens & Women review – ‘Naked breasts moved him religiously’
4 votes -
Roboforming: the future of metalworking?
12 votes -
Gainesville, Florida is giving trans punk legend Laura Jane Grace a key to the city
11 votes -
Midweek Movie Free Talk
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here. Please just try to provide fair warning of...
Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
7 votes -
Harassment and abuse perceived to harm poor women less − new research finds a ‘thicker skin’ bias
16 votes -
Your creative ways to say "none of your business"?
I'm curious of what other people say when someone (say, a coworker or a complete stranger) asks prying questions-- or even questions you just don't feel like answering! Personally, I enjoy giving...
I'm curious of what other people say when someone (say, a coworker or a complete stranger) asks prying questions-- or even questions you just don't feel like answering!
Personally, I enjoy giving irrelevant answers to the busybody I run into at least once a week, from the classic "I'm going to iron my dog" (more of an excuse, but still great for befuddling), to the recent favorite: "This human suit is chafing and I need to remove it to apply baby powder."
32 votes -
AlbumLove recommendations thread: September 2023
Choose one album that you love that you think deserves more love Tell us what it is, and why. Previous posts in series Additional Details Why AlbumLove? In this day and age, algorithmic...
Choose one album
that you love
that you think deserves more loveTell us what it is, and why.
Additional Details
Why AlbumLove?
In this day and age, algorithmic recommendations for music are easy to come by, and it's trivial to seek out new music that interests you by searching online. AlbumLove offers an opportunity to sift through music loved by others, including those who might have divergent tastes from you. Think of this as an opportunity to listen outside of your comfort zone, with music that you know someone else adores, from a small pool of thoughtful hand-selected options.
What do I post?
Any album that you love and that you feel deserves more appreciation. There are no restrictions on genre, year, or anything else, and nothing is “too popular” or “too niche”. If you think it needs more love — for whatever reason — then it’s welcome in AlbumLove.
Name the artist and the album, and then, most importantly, share what you love about the album. It could be the music itself, but it could also be your associations with it -- maybe the album reminds you of someone you love, or you saw the band live and got a new appreciation for the studio songs.
Also, commenting on others' recommendations is encouraged! If you love something that someone else shared, let them know!
Do I have to listen to what everyone else posts?
Nope. You don't have to listen to anything if you don't want to. This is about creating a menu of options that people can explore as they wish.
Can I post more than one album in a month?
Nope. Limit one! This helps us be more selective about what we choose, as well as preventing the threads from getting flooded with too many contributions to keep track of.
Why albums and not songs/artists?
I like albums. :)
Seriously though, I feel like it's a very different thing to like an album as a whole versus a few songs or just an artist's general vibe. I like the idea of quantizing music for appreciation in the same way we might do with books or movies.
What about EPs?
Fair game!
19 votes -
China climate envoy says phasing out fossil fuels 'unrealistic'
22 votes -
What is your cloud backup service of choice?
I have been going over services for which I pay monthly in my business. I have 17 clients where I do unattended cloud backups as well as doing a backup that I hold onto myself. Overall I backup...
I have been going over services for which I pay monthly in my business. I have 17 clients where I do unattended cloud backups as well as doing a backup that I hold onto myself. Overall I backup around 4TB of data. I'm looking at possibly changing cloud services as the one I currently use has progressively increased their fees. I understand the need to pay for a good, reliable service as it reflects upon myself , my business and the service I provide but feel there are more competitive companies out there.
None of this is for personal use and many cloud services are just that, personal use. These are all server (Windows and Linux) use cases.
24 votes -
Starfield and the problem of scale
Minor Starfield lore spoiler's ahead Originally written for /r/games, but the last discussion thread of Starfield in that place saw many user who said they personally like the game downvoted and...
Minor Starfield lore spoiler's ahead
Originally written for /r/games, but the last discussion thread of Starfield in that place saw many user who said they personally like the game downvoted and replied to by mentally-questionable individuals that said not-so-nice things.
As I pass 170 hours in Bethesda newest, hottest, controversial game. I am happy because it is just as fun as I had hoped it to be.
Yet as I explore the cities it has to offer there is always a small detail that I keep failing to ignore (whenever I'm not busy thinking of new ship designs that is).200,000 units are ready with a million more on the way
So say the slender being that has been tasked with creating an army to defend a galactic spanning government of countless worlds. At this point Montgomery, Zhukov, MacArthur, Jodl, or any-other-WW2-command-figure-of-your-choosing are rolling on the ground clapping each other's backs laughing their socks off. Because 1.2 million is an absolutely puny and pathetic number of troops for a galactic war.
I'm no Star Wars deep lore fan, I understand that fans and later authors has since tried to 'fix it' by making the Clone War more that just the clones. And yet those 1.2M clones was all there was when episode 2 released to theatres.
Most Sci-fi writings has similar a problem with scaling to their subject. It is not news. It even has a tv tropes page (the page is more about distances, but it's in the same ballpark).Quest for the Peoplefield
So where does Starfield go wrong in this? The ships are puny. The wars and the numbers stated are puny.
Certainty more ways than one, but the one that I wish to focus on is this: where the hell are all the people?
A brief summary of the lore. Humanity has invented FTL and has seemingly solved all energy problems. They had to evacuate Earth, but this was successful and so the starfield should be absolutely teeming with tens of billions of human souls spreading to all corners of the galaxy and its many already habitable worlds.
And yet, Starfield feels so barren. I see no grand interstellar civilizations. Only dirt huts on a hill surrounded by walls that support barely a thousand people. Yet this dirt hill is supposed to be a capital or an interstellar superpower. Heck, they are even scared shitless of their own fauna.
The opposites capital is no dirt hill, yet still smaller than a modern earth country town.
And it's not like the main population centers are just outside player-accessible areas. All the NPCs ever talk about are Akila, New Atlantis, and Neon. These tiny puny cities.
It doesn't feel like the evacuation of Earth was a success. It feels like it was a catastrophe, and all that remains are scattered remnants playing civilization.And yet... The Starfield is actually lively, just not where it should be. There is a scale imbalance, because spread across nearly every world in the settled systems are countless research stations, outposts, deserted or populated, you name it.
Yes, those procedually-generated buildings that spawn nearly everywhere you land in the settled systems.
Where did these come from? Surely the UC couldn't have built them. Manning just the ones that I have come across in my playthrough would empty New Atlantis 10 times over!Bethesda built their open-world game style upon Fallout and Elder Scrolls. For both it makes sense that the worlds are sparely populated. One being post-apocalyptic wasteland, and the other a medieval society.
But now they have built something in a completely different realm. But they way in which Bethesda built the scale at which the game is presented remains the same.
So why did they go with this approach? I don't know. Maybe they just like making "small" worlds and didn't want to fit the new universe. Maybe the idea of 'climbing any mountain you can see' is a very hard rule and they didn't want to limit player movement in metropolises, that would undoubtedly be unfeasible to make fully traversable.But lets pretend they actually tried. And perhaps it can be done without really changing how the game is designed or played.
So you can do it better huh?
A Microsoft executive plays the game as it's nearing launch. He feels there is something missing with the scale of the Starfield universe.
So he does the only rational thing he can think of and storms into the street and picks the first rando he can find, puts the Bethesda crown upon his head, and orders him to fix Starfield's problem of scale.
The exec is later found to be mentally ill and fired, but it does not matter for I am now king of Bethesda and my words are design directives.Tell, don't show
The simple solution that requires no real work but some change in lore. New Atlantis is no longer a capital, just a administrative and diplomatic outpost. Akila is now just a small border city. The real population centers are now on entirely different worlds. Inaccessible to the player.
Why can't players go there? Well it shouldn't take much suspension of disbelief to acknowledge that governments might not want any random idiot, in a flying hunk of metal capable of tearing space-time at it seams, to go anywhere near their main population centers without considerable control.
NPCs should no longer talk of sprawling New Atlantis, Neon, or Akila, but rather these other places that you can see on the map but are not allowed to go to.Show enough
The population planets are now accessible, but restricted in where you can land freely. On the map it should show big cities. And just like how you cannot land in water, you can neither land anywhere in cities or its surroundings.
Just like with New Atlantis and Akila, you can land at a designated spot. The difference is when you look into the horizon, because rather than a procedurally generated landscape you will instead see a sprawling metropolis that tells you "Yes here! Here are all the people!".
The other change would be that, unlike the landscape, if you try to go beyond the player-area of the city you will hit a wall. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
New Atlantis and Akila can stay, but like the other solution they would change status.
All in all the scale issue is no big problem and the game is fine as it is. This was just something that has been on mind for some time and I wanted to put it to writing. So do you agree that Starfield has a scale problem? If yes, how would you fix it? Or maybe I missed some crucial info-dump and the entire premise of this writing is wrong?
39 votes -
The plot of all objects in the universe
10 votes -
Norway wants to begin deep sea mining in the Arctic – here is why it's a bad idea
6 votes -
Size of McKinsey consulting firm opioid settlement increased by $230 million
10 votes -
Union SAG-AFTRA votes for strike against video game makers
23 votes -
The villa where doctors experimented on children
8 votes -
When McKinsey comes to town
8 votes -
Parents, how do you raise a well-behaved and well-adjusted child?
Aiming this question at parents mostly. I'm about to be a dad in the next week or so and I obviously want to raise my son to be a good person. My father was/is an absent drug addict, so I have a...
Aiming this question at parents mostly.
I'm about to be a dad in the next week or so and I obviously want to raise my son to be a good person. My father was/is an absent drug addict, so I have a good roadmap of "don't." But I saw very little in the way of "do."
Where is the line between being too authoritarian vs too permissive? What are your thoughts on gentle parenting? I don't want to trade "well-behaved" for "well-adjusted" or vice versa.
I'm also open to newborn advice since that's what I'll primarily be dealing with for the next little while, obviously.
55 votes -
Using 'spent' coffee and tea to boost shelf life and nutritional value of cakes
28 votes -
How friluftsliv boosts health and happiness – the idea of communing with nature is instilled from birth in Norway
6 votes -
Album of the Week #2: The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt
This is Album of the Week #2. This week's album is The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt Year of Release: 2010 Genre(s): Contemporary Folk Country: Sweden Length: 35 minutes Album.Link Excerpt...
This is Album of the Week #2. This week's album is The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt
Year of Release: 2010
Genre(s): Contemporary Folk
Country: Sweden
Length: 35 minutes
Album.LinkExcerpt from Paste Magazine
Matsson makes the acoustic guitar sound like an orchestra on “You’re Going Back” and the banjo like a full-throttled band on “Troubles Will Be Gone,” a song about goodwill written in the verbal style of Robert Frost. The entire album is full of these tiny orchestras and miniature choirs—a sound few of Matsson’s contemporaries were able to recreate. But many folk artists who’ve arrived in years after The Wild Hunt have seemingly been taking notes. The like-minded Joan Shelley treats her acoustic guitar with a similar reverence, instrumental artist and former Silver Jews musician William Tyler probably learned a thing or two about pacing and rhythm from Matsson and Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor carries on the legacy of curving his sultry, lilting vocals into a style resembling Dylan, as do Kevin Morby and Waxahatchee, who share that same distinct vocal formula. The Wild Hunt gave proceeding indie-folk artists something to aspire to in terms of both authenticity and craft.
Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?--
Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.
Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~
15 votes -
What are your thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.0?
I had been waiting for this game since 2012, when it was first announced. I bought it day one, without reading any reviews, and it was an instant refund for me. Now that update 2.0 supposedly...
I had been waiting for this game since 2012, when it was first announced. I bought it day one, without reading any reviews, and it was an instant refund for me.
Now that update 2.0 supposedly makes the game better, I'm thinking of giving it another shot. Has anyone tried this update? What do you think about it?
31 votes -
Google sued for negligence after man drove off collapsed bridge while following map directions
67 votes -
Spotify (with OpenAI) is going to clone podcasters’ voices — and translate them to other languages
27 votes -
What’s in your go bag for the apocalypse?
27 votes -
Signal’s Meredith Whittaker: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’
24 votes -
Distinct immune, hormone responses shed light on mysteries of long COVID: search of treatments for a lingering sickness that is both debilitating and puzzling
12 votes -
EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation followed by Facebook
34 votes -
Google killing basic HTML version of Gmail in January 2024
44 votes -
Millions of people see staying home and cleaning as their idea of a good time
31 votes -
US President Joe Biden urges striking auto workers to “stick with it” in picket line visit unparalleled in history
90 votes -
It's not just you. LinkedIn has gotten really weird.
52 votes -
US FCC details plan to restore the net neutrality rules repealed by Ajit Pai: banning fast lanes and ISP restrictions on legal content
50 votes -
New California law bars schoolbook bans based on racial and gender teachings
14 votes -
US military will review 2,000 ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ discharges
21 votes -
The movement for affordable, community-led broadband: Grassroots organizations like NYC Mesh want to close the digital divide, one rooftop at a time
20 votes -
Interview with Martha Wells about Murderbot and more
8 votes -
Sand Land has style, but can the manga-inspired game be the next Mad Max?
8 votes