This is an off-shore sweat-shop knock off variant of @Akir 's "Kitchen Towel" installment of "Someone Asks Basic Life Questions to the Internet" thread, which was very popular.

Short problem: So many different types of stuff around the house and I'm sick of it.

Longer problem:

I have dozens upon dozens of types of towels, gifted to me from teenage years from someone, and I've never managed to be able to buy my own towels. And it sucks. They're all different types and styles and sizes and fabric and....I'm old now and I hate it and I just want to fold ONE type of towel in the bathroom and ONE type of towel in the kitchen. I would like different colours for different purposes, maybe I can decorate them myself or whatever -- but I want standardization. From @Akir's thread, I learned about "Flour Sack Towels" from @tanglisha and omg where had that advice been all my life. I feel like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for kitchen towels.

What I need:

Recommendations for all types of household goods that have stood the test of time, where I can obtain the same product from multiple sources or one long standing brand that is not interested in diversification.

one common type, common functions, common properties

Example: Corelle dishes. I have "big plates" and "little plates" and "bowls" that are all the same size and form, and at thrift stores I can easily find replacements of these common types, even if they were made decades apart and in different patterns. All exactly the same: serves the same and washes the same and stacks the same. The company seems uninterested in discontinuing their line of products and I love them for it. I need the Corelle of all things.

What are your trusty brands and types of "things" that are so obvious you'd never have to think about buying any other types of? Something so standardized that in your region they're just known as "----" instead of what they are actually called or brand name or size?

Do you know a brand that just makes ONE thing forever and they'll never change? Or a public domain type of thing that's an industry standard? I need to know what they are. Nails? Screws? Tools? Computer things? Cables? Cutlery? Knives? Types of household chemicals? Spices? Meat cuts? Margarine? Storage bins? Kinds of wood? All kinds of things, please.

Side question about existing, gifted, singleton household towels and socks :

I'd like to ask about what to do with my existing million different types of socks and towels. I want to buy my own as an now older adult. At what point should I flat out tell them to stop giving me socks and towels? Do I just suck it up and keep quietly re-gifting them to food bank? What about all the ones in current rotation? I would hate to throw out stuff but at this point I'm nearly ready to do it.

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!

It's been years since I've had to use a an actual computer for anything serious and I want to regain my literacy with them. The height of my computer usage was the Windows XP/Vista era. I got it because I wanted to throw myself into a couple of different programming/coding courses.
I chose the Surface Pro because of the detachable keyboard/stylus setup and the fact that I don't have a good way to set up a desktop computer. Also I've always fantasized about being able to do work in a coffee shop or in a comfy chair by a lake lol.
Can anyone share some tips/tricks that might be useful to me? Anything from hotkeys, task management related things, or just general quality of life things I should know about would be super helpful. I'm so used to smartphones being able to do everything and feel like I'm a little in over my head here. Thanks in advance.

Just for a moment, forget all of the technical pros and cons, the static typing, just-in-time compilation, operator overloading, object orientation to the max...

Is there a programming language that you've just found to be... fun?

Is there one that you'd pick above all else for personal or company projects, if you had your druthers, because you would simply be so excited to use it?

And then, is there something missing in that "fun" language that's preventing it from actually becoming a reality (i.e. small community, lack of libraries, maintenance ended in the 80s, etc.)?

Hey, good people of Tildes!

I'm building a self-help web app, a small part of which I'd like to involve some pixel pets. I like pixel art and it'd be great if I could create some. Though, the truth is, I can't draw for shit, I have little to no imagination, and I'm afraid even if I put the time and effort into it, I still may not produce something I'd call good enough to put on the website. I also lack the motivation to spend a lot of time learning how to create good pixel art, as I only need it for this project.

I thought about paying some professional(s) to do it but that would probably break the bank for me, as I want to offer the users a lot of pixel pet options, which brings us to what I guess is the only remaining option.

I found some services that offer AI-generated pixel art. This one in particular looks like what I'm looking for and also offers animations. While watching a demo of it on YouTube, I noticed a few comments voicing concern about the ethics of selling art that's generated using models trained off of unpaid artists' work. While this is not a new topic, I admittedly hadn't given it much thought before, as I've never used, or planned to use AI-generated art in a meaningful capacity.

While I'm not sure whether it changes much, for what it's worth, I should note that my web app is going to be free, open-source, and ad-free forever.

What are your thoughts? Also, I'd love to know if there are options that I missed!

This hit me while watching the latest Gamers Nexus video discussion with Wendell, and Steve recited the quote.

It's often brought up as the inevitability of modern product ownership as company executives push profit-first practices like subscriptions, licenses and anti-right-to-repair designs. However this neglects the fact that these systems don't come from nowhere - they have to be built by programmers, engineers and designers.

I don't know if those same people support right-to-repair and freedom to manipulate what you buy in their private lives (or if they have even thought about it), but it seems like every techie I speak to does support it, yet somehow these things keep getting made.

I want to try and escape my bubble about this. I don't believe the engineers are powerless against the executives - if the engineering community works together and don't backstab, I think these systems can be prevented at the technical level and never see the light of day.

What happens at these notorious companies (John Deere, Apple etc.) that I'm missing? Is the lure of money too great? Is the threat of being back stabbed too large?

As my school project this year, I'm making a metasearch engine for courses (any type, online/offline, free/paid). I could just add the websites I know myself but school requires us to provide a detailed explanation of how we did "market research", so I'm asking here.

What websites do you usually go to first to when you want to learn something? It should preferably be something which is not exclusive to IT, but those websites are fine as well if they're really good.

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 didn't have as much time for reading this year. My daughters kept me quite busy (and happy). However, I managed to squeeze in one or the other title. I don't want to discuss all of the forty-something books I read, but here's an incomplete list of what I can recommend (and what not).

I really enjoyed the following books:

• number9dream by David Mitchell
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
• Red Rising (all six books) by Pierce Brown
• The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis
• Dark Rome by Michael Sommer
• A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Grossman
• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
• At Night all Blood is Black by David Diop
• The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World by Tim Marshall
• First Person Singular by by Haruki Murakami
• Guitar Zero by Gary Marcus
• This is your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin
• The History of Heavy Metal by Andrew O'Neill

I think my favorites were Black Swan Green and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Both are very powerful stories with complex protagonists.

I didn't really enjoy these books:

• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (seriously, I like Murakami, but I hated this book – the plot was annoying, stylistic choices were questionable and the protagonist bland)
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang (the book was interesting, but also a bit "too much" for me)

I think those books taught me something, although they weren't necessarily fun to read:

• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
• The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• The Great Mental Models Volume 3: Systems and Mathematics

Especially Chris Voss and James Clear can't stop boasting and/or advertising. I learned something from their books, but I found them annoying to read. The mental models book and the Phoenix project were fun, though.

I'm a software developer and read quite some books about this topic this year. I can recommend the following of them:

• Efficient Linux at the Command Line
• 100 Go Mistakes
• The Staff Engineer's Path
• TypeScript Cookbook
• Principles of Package Design

But I didn't really like those (although they're good from a technical perspective):

• Cloud Native Go
• Security and Microservice Architecture on AWS

So, what did you guys read? What can you recommend? Which books disappointed you?

I’m going insane from the bland ass Xmas music at my work and I’m looking to zhuzh up the playlist with some more interesting Xmas music. Think “Christmas at the Zoo” by the Flaming Lips or “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight)” by The Ramones.

I would also like some non-Christmas holiday songs, so we can get some representation for holidays besides the Christian one, or even just “Winter Songs”

Thanks!

Recently on here someone recommended a game called travle, which is a lot of fun even though I suck at it, as do my friends who play. Can anyone recommend other similar "one puzzle per day" style games?

Hello Tilderinos! As I am finally entering the holiday slowdown, I wanted to express my gratitude for the community here.

I ended up migrating here from Reddit during the Apocalypse. Before that time, I would have told you that Reddit was a pretty good place, but after having time to detox and spending time here, I realize it was just better, but still pretty awful. With a few exceptions (like r/3Dprinting), the negativity I would get hit with when posting anything was pretty toxic.

I also set up Lemmy Sync on lemmy.world, but it's pretty much only good for scrolling shitposts and memes. Which sometimes I want, but if I dig into the comments under a topic, the noise factor is so high that it's usually not worth it.

Tildes is really different. The intentionality that people post with, the quality and positivity of the discussion is all amazing. One thing I enjoy especially is seeing reasonable people express views contrary to my own, and being to learn something from them.

This year has been a year of big changes for me. I left a 10 year run at a startup that was starting to lose the plot, becane a stay-at-home Dad to relaunch my wife's career, and wrestled with major health issues. All of that has been pretty isolating, but Tildes has been a bright spot of connection for me.

Sorry if this comes off as excessively cheesy, but I feel like it's a good time to take a moment and say "Thank you!" I am hoping that if something was really helpful to others, that they will take a moment to share it here.