What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Recently I've been coming back to my chrome browsers to find a tab open with the following URL:
(link disabled to prevent giving them any more clicks)
https ://theaisecrets.beehiiv.com/p/chatgpt-can-now-work-docs-apps-websites-emails
This is happening across all my computers, both linux, windows, and linux VM, so I don't think it's OS-specific malware, but I suspect a rogue chrome extension is opening the tab, because I have chrome synced across all affected devices via my google account.
I've searched for this particular problem and URL to no avail, so I wondered if there's a way to track back which extension opened the tab, other than by doing a binary search disabling half my extensions at a time (which would be annoying as hell - the tabs only seem to get opened once a day or so).
Hi Tildestrians! I recently acquired a broken Sony TV from work. Its older, but its 4K, and would be a substantial upgrade over my current TV, so I am hoping to fix it. My usual willingness to tinker and google prowess has failed me. I am hoping one of you can provide some guidance.
Its a Sony XBR-55X850B. It is showing an error code of 7 flashing red lights. I tracked down the service manual (Sony, you should really have this available to customers and not locked behind an "authorized service center" certification), and it says the motherboard needs to be replaced. I found a replacement motherboard on ebay (it was for the 65 inch version, but that should not make a difference). I installed, and it gave a different error code. I think it was flashing green and orange. Based on my research, that means it needs new firmware to be flashed. Sony's website doesn't still have the firmware file for that TV (should be illegal in my opinion), and tells you to contact support. Support seemingly can't give out the firmware file either. I found a firmware file on Softpedia, but I have no idea if it is legitimate or even still a working file. Threw that on a fat32 drive, and couldn't manage to get it to update. I tried multiple drives and all usb ports over the course of 2 weeks. I ended up pulling the new motherboard and returning it (thankfully I was able to return it for full price). Now I am stuck with a TV panel that works perfectly, except for the motherboard, and I seemingly can't replace the motherboard.
This got me thinking: I don't need anything fancy. I want a display with an HDMI input that takes 4K signal and puts it on the screen. I truly don't need anything more than that. Even an IR remote for power is optional, because I could plug it into a smart outlet. I don't need the speakers because I have a receiver. I know you can get bypass boards to turn laptop screens into monitors. They take the place of the support circuitry on the laptop motherboard and give you a display input, and nothing more. Is there anything like that I can get for this TV? I don't know where to start on that search.
Or are there any other routes I should explore before junking this TV? It feels really bad to throw out a perfectly good 4k panel just because the motherboard is broken.
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
I can't seem to get any CSS user-style to work with Tildes anymore. I'm using Stylus on Firefox. Has something changed recently on Tildes which is causing this?
Edit: I was using Stylus already, just thought it was Stylish.
This is the fifth and last movie we discuss of Academy Award Winners. Ariana DeBose won for Best Supporting Actress. It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Sound, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design.
Did the movie deserve its nominations and awards? Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.
Voting for December will come up in a few days.
I am a couple weeks away from running out of daily contacts. Going to the optometrist every year when nothing has changed is a giant ripoff. I just noticed that the site I've used previously from the UK will no longer deliver to the USA. Does anyone in a similar situation have a store they order from?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
Basically the title. I've been told my voice is too soft on zoom in spite of having tried many options. Before I buy new hardware, I'm asking advice. I have to record a presentation soon, so this is important.
What advice can you give?
Thank you
I would've gotten the Proton Black Friday offer, but it's only valid for upgrades, not for renewing my current account type. Aside from that I'm looking at:
How about you?
Edit 2023-11-27 - I ended up getting the Affinity deal because it was an additional discount on top of the V1 upgrade discount! So I was able to get the entire V2 package for about 67 USD. The Black Friday discount is 40% and then the upgrade discount is 25% on top of that.
I also would've wanted to get the hydroxyapatite toothpaste from my fave floss brand, Cocofloss (25% off the entire site for Black Friday) but it was out of stock.
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.
This is actually two questions in one:
How do you keep yourself from sliding into cynicism? Seeing the worst in things? Finding fault everywhere? Losing hope?
When someone’s sharing their pessimism with you, it can feel dismissive or even hostile to go against it. It can feel unempathetic to do anything but corroborate or validate their feelings, even if you feel they’re inaccurate or misguided. How do you respond without sliding into pessimism yourself?
Hi folks
Keeping in with the theme of people of Tildes are generally really good people (hopefully), I may have a gig early next year that I want a quote on for a network redesign. It's not massive at 3 sites of roughly 100 people per site, 2 sites are dark fibred together, a couple of IPSec routes between UK and USA. It's mostly building out IP subnets, correct router and firewall configs, vLANing up the sites correctly.
If anyone is interested or knows anyone, please reach out to me on this thread for a bit more info, we can take it from there.
Else, I'm going to reach out to some UK based tech companies for the work. You may ask "Why not do this yourself?" That would require planning and testing which I don't have enough time for; I'd rather a Pro designed, and implemented.
This is Album of the Week #11 ~ This week's album is Jag Panzer - Ample Destruction
Year of Release: 1984
Genre(s): Heavy Metal
Country: United States
Length: 39 minutes
RYM | Listen! (Album.Link)
Excerpt from Ride Into Glory:
Ample Destruction is filled to the absolute brim with killer riff after killer riff. It’s difficult to pick out a highlight track as they all flow together in one, singular metalstorm. There is very few moments for reprieve as Jag Panzer keep it at 100% for nearly the entire album. The guitars, played by Joe Tafolla and Mark Briody, are masterful and a worthy match for Conklin’s performance. The bass, as became standard for most US power metal, is very prominent in the mix. John Tetley’s bass guitar works to compliment the guitars and drummer Rick Hilyard is certainly no slouch as his drums round it all out. The production is thick and undoubtedly old-school sounding. It does a wonderful job bringing together the instrumentation while letting Conklin take the lead with his soaring vocals.
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?
--
My husband and I will be alone this Thanksgiving, so we decided to cook a smaller bird than a turkey, specifically a duck. I like duck and frequently order it at restaurants where available, but don't have much experience. I found a low slow roasting recipe that looks promising. I'm already familiar with soup making.
What advice do you have re sauces and meals using leftovers?
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)
Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.
You can make a chart if you use last.fm:
http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/
Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.
Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.
It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...
Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?
This is the place for casual discussion about our pets. Photos are welcome, show us your pet(s) and tell us about them!
Hey all,
Over here in Australia (imagine in USA and a few other countries), the 3G/2G mobile networks are being shutdown. My carrier Vodafone is gradually shutting its down with Dec 15th 2023 being the final closure date. The 4G network will have VolTE but my device (LG V20) does not appear to support VolTE nor does it look like i can update the firmware easily (if at all) to do so.
Anyone else have this issue with their phone? (i realise it will be older ones)
Question about VolTE though - will sms and standard voice calling still work on 4G on my device or similar devices without VolTE ?.
thanks
Nig
I'm interested in domain names that are remarkable in the sense that they are short or easy-to-remember.
This idea for a topic started because I find myself window shopping for domain names. Thing is, the only use I have for a domain is for my personal website. That's why I hesitate picking up these fun quirky domains.
What are some interesting domain names you've encountered?
Do you think it's worth it (in terms of utility and/or entertainment value) to have a more remarkable domain name for a personal website?
I was chatting with a friend about Thanksgiving. Neither of us find the holiday relevant to us, so this year we're going for something health-oriented (somewhat off-theme, but we liked it). I'd love to have lots of traditions, but I didn't grow up with them. If you found a tradition later in life, how did it come about?
I am preparing to make beef bourguignon for my Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow (Kyiv cake for dessert) so I am watching Julia Child's take on it.
She mentioned that if you want the dish to be really French than you could buy imported bay leaves from France because they have a different flavor than American bay leaves. It made me start thinking about where my spices were grown and if all of them have specific regional variances that can take specific dishes to the next level. I knew honey can taste wildly different based on the region's flora that was available to make the honey, but never thought too much about spices.
Have you found that using spices from their region of origin significantly enhances a dish?
Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like casinos, sam altman and catgirls. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was speculating.
But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!
I have something I need to vent about, that I've tried to vent to friends about as well, but where nobody has been on the same page as me before.
In short, I despise gambling (casinos, sports betting, loot boxes in games, etc.), I think it destroys lives, often slowly and discreetly, and I think advertisements for it should be as taboo as tobacco advertisements and should even be illegal.
In long:
I've seen a trend in the last few years of sports betting becoming advertised to an unbearable degree. I can't watch any sport without a commercial for draft kings or fan duel. I can't even watch youtube without content creators being sponsored by draft kings. Advertisements for sports betting, specifically, are literally everywhere. I'm even in a basketball chat and there are several people there that DON'T EVEN WATCH BASKETBALL, they're specifically there to talk about the bets they make for a sport they don't watch.
I've seen at least a dozen friends sign up due to the ridiculous amount of advertising and with almost every single one, they claim they're getting "free money" since DK does give you free bets on a first deposit or something, but then every single one, after running out of the "free money" doesn't cash out and delete their account, they put five more dollars in, then put ten in, etc. until it starts to control their life and their finances. There shouldn't be a person alive that doesn't know how gambling can destroy you, but people still sign up for this bullshit. Nobody seems to understand that the only reason draft kings can give you free money on signup is because, on average, they make MORE than that per person.
On the subject of casinos, I went to Las Vegas for the first time last year. I already knew how elaborate and rich the casinos on the strip are, that part did not surprise me. What did surprise me is that if you go just a few blocks off the strip, it's almost entirely run down low income housing. You have possibly one of the richest areas in the United States in the form of the strip and seemingly none of that wealth is being shared to neighboring communities. It just goes back into the strip, getting sports teams to move to Vegas, getting F1 races, etc.
It just baffles me that so many people gamble and, even when warned about it, even after losing money, they insist that it's fun or that it's not so bad, but I truly think that gambling culture and companies running gambling schemes are some of the biggest evils out there. My parents divorced partly because of gambling. My dad permanently fucked his life up because of it. He has zero money, is now at an age and health where he can barely work, and my sister and I will likely be stuck footing the bill for his care later in life when just 15 years ago he was in a position to be set up pretty well for the rest of his life.
And yet, people still go to Vegas and lose hundreds or thousands on slots or cards, people still sign up on draft kings and lose hundreds or thousands on bets, and seemingly everyone I talk to is entirely blind on how bad of a situation this is and thinks me radical when I say that gambling advertisements should be illegal.
I value personal freedom, I don't think gambling should be banned, but I do think it can pose just as much of a danger to ruining someone's life as cigarettes can, but as a society, nobody seems to have any issue with ads for sports betting and casinos.
In addition to all of the above, we still have loot boxes in video games and collectible card games as a whole, but that would be another 2 pages of writing and I don't want to get in that deep.
If you stuck with me this whole time, thank you. I don't expect many people to agree, but I at least really needed to vent this out, even if it's into the void.
Do any of you have positive or negative experiences regarding gambling to add?
Hello!
I've tried looking for it, but I can't find it. It was an essay about how a large increase of new members alienates the community feeling. How the income of stranger must be kept low so they can become "not a stranger" and how many strangers at once stop that from happening because people know each other less.
Unfortunately I can't find it at all. Does anyone still remember/have it saved?
Thank you very much!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
Being Danish I've never really had any reason to know anything about this holiday - all I know is cursory stuff from movies and whatever one might stumble upon on the internet. Something about pilgrims and eating and/or pardoning birds. But yeah my friend invited me for Thanksgiving because her wife is American and wants to celebrate. But I don't know what I've gotten myself into 😅
There will be other expat Americans as well which makes me a little more nervous, so I'm hoping to learn a thing or two from you all on tildes so please give me any and all advice you can!
I'm looking for general advice about it but I guess I have a couple of specific questions too. They are not very traditional people so it's not going to be formal, and they have called it both Thanksgiving and Friendsgiving - but is there any particular difference between the two? And my other question is what would be a good present for the hostesses - do guests usually give anything particular? Or will the usual flowers/wine kind of thing be okay?
This is Album of the Week #10 ~ This week's album is The Undertones - The Undertones
Year of Release: 1979
Genre(s): Pop Punk
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 29 minutes
Listen! (Album.Link)
Excerpt from BBC:
Armed with seemingly rudimentary musical skills, the reason the Undertones stuck out was that, unlike their cooler older peers from London and Manchester, they didn't stick to the rigorous adoption of American garage and art rock like the Stooges to the Velvets. They were still in love with their elder brothers and sisters' Bolan and Bowie albums: their sound welded glam to pub rock, all topped off with Feargal Sharkey's Larry the Lamb warble. If they did take a cue from any USA acts it was the cartoon fun of The Ramones, Here Comes The Summer contains the same Beach Boys-on-amphetamine rush that 'da brudders' wielded so succesfully. At the same time, the accents definitely didn't stray across the pond. Never has the Northern Irish twang been so thrust into the face of our pop kids. Check out the deadpan backing vocals on True Confessions.
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?
--
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
I have a rather impressive collection of thrifted equipment I use for my morning latte. Each piece has required a little bit of investigative repair in order to get it working just right, but I've recently been stumped by my newest addition, a Bodum conical burr grinder.
My current espresso machine is a single boiler Breville with a standard portafilter (no diaphragm or valves in the portafilter, so the resistance needs to come from finely enough ground coffee.)
My question is this; is it possible to calibrate the Bodum grinder at all? It's finest setting is apparently not quite fine enough to provide the right resistance for the espresso maker, so I've needed to regrind my coffee with a blade grinder to get the right consistency.
Cheers in advance!
Hello folks
Recently we've been playing with Powershell and having to move on to graph to do all the fancy things we want to achieve. MS forced this when they suddenly decided the MSOnline module was retired and things stopped working.
We've built a great New Team with SharePoint and including folders script. One of the things we used to do with the PNP module is set folder permission on two of the folders in a new team, making them only accessible to Owners. How the devil does one achieve this with Graph?
Any pointers would be grand.
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
I have tried and tried to write a daily journal/diary and always gave up after a while. My longest stretch was over the course of five years. It always devolves into a litany of banality, though, and when I look back at it, invariably appears a bit cringy.
So I have decided to start keeping a commonplace book- a place to write down interesting thoughts, quotes, ideas I come across and so forth. Without the chronological format of a journal I feel less compelled to list down stuff for the sake of it and am actually listing down ideas I'd like to remember.
Do any of you do something similar?
I was wondering what the best open source EPUB reader was, for both Android and Windows 10/11. It's ok if it's a different app for each platform.
I don't need to be able to convert EPUB to proprietary formats, I just need to be able to read some DRM-free EPUBs I have, preferably on an app that's open source so just does its job without collecting a bunch of data.
As title says, once Valve announced the OLED deck, I saw the refurbished originals go on a deep discount and figured it was time to buy in. So I ordered a refurb 512GB and I’m so excited for it to arrive! Been in a gaming rut for a long time now and, having never been a PC gamer, I’m look forward to checking out a bunch of games I’ve never played before.
What tips do you have for a first time Deck owner?
Any essential games I should be sure to get?
And finally, is it possible to get games I own on the Epic Games Store (I collected all their free games over the years) or Xbox Game Pass PC games on my Steam Deck?
Off the back of all the chatter and conspiracy theories being thrown around because of the OpenAI Boardroom drama, I thought I'd ask how people are feeling about AI in general.
For those of you with your head in the sand, have you heard about AI or interacted with anything knowingly?
Those of you surfing the AI world right now, what are you looking forward to AI doing and are you fearful of where it's leading?
I'll start by saying, as I've said before, I'm looking forward to living in a world where the start of "I,Robot" is a reality. Robotics and generative AI are going to be amazing, as shown in its infancy by Boston Dynamics. If we stick to the way things are going, we could end up very Star Trek with our very own "Data" androids.
My fear is that the human race isn't ready, and we're too stupid as a whole, so we end up more with T1s being actually made by the military and at some point, AI will become cognitive and conscious.
So come on, folks of Tildes, where do you stand?
I often find myself ruminating over something I said that didn’t get the “right” feedback. Maybe this means my opinion wasn’t validated, or someone proved I was wrong, or I was completely ignored. The repetition of these moments in my head can last for days, sometimes years. I’ve learned a few coping mechanisms because no one can be perfect, for example, just telling myself that it’s a learning lesson and realizing that most of the “embarrassing” things I’ve said in the past are completely forgotten by anyone else who heard usually helps get me through. Can anyone who relates to this share some other good tips/tricks?
Good morning ~ This is a thread to discuss new album releases that have arrived on our doorstep this week. Feel free to share albums and EPs that have caught your eye and interest.
Discussion Points
What are you looking forward to listen to?
Have you listened to any of these releases?
What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past?
Why Friday?
Most (but not all) new LPs/EPs release on a Friday, as labels want to give the release a full week of sales before entering the charts.
~~ Feedback on the format welcome
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
I only realized tonight that the second movie from the final season came out a couple weeks ago, and just got done watching it about 20 minutes ago. I didn't find any discussion about it on Tildes, so what's the verdict?
I'm an anime-only pleb. For those who have read the manga, was the final movie disappointing or satisfying? How faithful was the adaptation overall? Did they have to leave out a bunch of stuff to wrap the whole thing up with these last two movies?
For anime-onlies like myself, how'd you feel about how it all concluded?
I didn't foresee exactly how things would end, which is a plus, but I guess it ultimately felt sufficient rather than satisfying. It couldn't have been easy for the original author to come up with a good ending for something that became such a runaway hit in the first place, but I wonder if this was the ending he had in mind from the start... somehow I doubt it. I fully expected more of the final squad to die, honestly. I also don't feel like I got enough resolution from Mikasa. She feels like a big missed opportunity throughout the series, actually. As a character it seemed like she got rather two-dimensional after cutting her hair, and considering how her arc ends, her inner monologue would have been one of the most interesting threads to follow throughout the series but it pretty much just got some footnotes here and there.
I go to LinkedIn to find work.
My real name is there. My picture is there. My career history is there.
There are many places on the Internet where I can anonymously post inflammatory opinions without endangering my job, my career, or my reputation in my field.
I kind of feel like that is the situation on for everyone else on LinkedIn too.
So... why do some people post inflammatory opinions about politics and other non-career related subjects on that site?
All risk and for zero gain.
I’ve completely eliminated the alarm clock from my morning routine for about six months. The biggest impacts it's had on my life are:
Becoming a morning person is a necessary side effect of not using an alarm clock because it requires the body to naturally wake up early enough for work, school, or other regular obligations. Although I’ve historically enjoyed staying up late, the brutal truth is that all humans require a certain amount of sleep, and this can't be consistently fought without an alarm clock.
The best part about eliminating alarm clocks from my life is how it has affected my day. It’s not a hidden secret that good sleep habits translate to:
I can confidently say I really do feel all these benefits. In the end, it's not to any real surprise. The alarm clock interupts one of the most important cycles of your body, and so it only makes sense to leave sleep alone so it can do what it needs to do.
Once I decided to try this experiment, I created a simple plan to implement it. Before this life change, my sleep schedule was from around 1 am to 8 am. So, the first thing I did was set an alarm for the target time I wanted to naturally wake up, in my case, 7 am.
The first night resulted in 6 hours of sleep (1 am to 7 am). My body needs more than that, so by the time 11 pm rolled around, I was ready to fall asleep. It was initially tough to sleep earlier than normal, as I felt there was still time to do things, but I let my body dictate my actions and went to bed without an alarm.
That night, I slept for about 9 hours due to sleep debt. I missed my 7 am target, but it wasn’t a big deal. After that, with my body reset, I simply aimed to continue to sleep around 11 pm, meaning I was in bed by 10:30 pm. The pressure of needing to naturally wake up before work was enough motivation to forgo the later hours of the night and continue heading to bed early.
Now, I’ve settled into a great rhythm of going to bed around 10-10:30 pm and waking up around 6:30 am. What’s great is discovering how much sleep my body naturally needs (8-8.5 hours). No more trying to "hack" my body with things like miserable polyphasic sleep experiments. I know what my body needs, I succumb to it, and I’m rewarded the next day.
What worked for me won’t necessarily work for everyone. Each person and their situation is unique, so results will obviously vary. Some unique factors for me are:
One final note: I still use alarm clocks for special occasions, such as early morning flights. Although I could probably wake up naturally for them, without an alarm set, I would probably wake up in the middle of the night stressed about the possibility of missing my flight.
This change has been significant enough in my life that I frequently recommend it to friends. I now honestly believe that the alarm clock is the single worst thing the wider population willingly inflicts on themselves. If you’re willing to eliminate the morning alarm clock from your life, I would love to hear how it goes. Good luck!
Anybody have some greater amount of background or context on this? I certainly don't see it helping anything, but I know nothing of the Valley or its ways
This is the fourth movie we discuss of Academy Award Winners. It won for Best Original Screenplay and Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Actress.
Did the movie deserve its nominations and awards? Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.
The rest of the schedule is: