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43 votes
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How come the Mormon, Republican state of Utah is so queer?
4 votes -
What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was...
What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.
If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!
4 votes -
Mozart’s latest track just dropped
7 votes -
Little Monsters (1989) | Almost Cult Classics
3 votes -
Telegram: Why the app is allowed when other social media is censored in Russia
9 votes -
What if you bought a small amusement park for $250k CAD ($219k USD)?
In my province, there's a little old amusement park that's up for sale at that price. Attractions include a Go-Kart track with 14 two-seater karts, an 18-hole mini golf course, a space train ride,...
In my province, there's a little old amusement park that's up for sale at that price.
Attractions include a Go-Kart track with 14 two-seater karts, an 18-hole mini golf course, a space train ride, a batting cage, & a bumper car ride with ten cars
Owners can live on-site in a 2-bedroom apartment
What would you do if you lived at your own mini amusement park?
(I'm not affiliated in any way to this listing, I just live in the same province and like to browse real estate listings for fun)
11 votes -
Paradox must refocus to rebuild trust and survive, bosses say, after Life By You cancellation
5 votes -
Is the .io top level domain headed for extinction?
7 votes -
Elon Musk's X gets OK to resume service in Brazil after bending to top court's demands
6 votes -
2024 Nobel Prize – This year's Nobel Prize announcements will take place between 7th - 14th October 2024
13 votes -
Recreating dog food from the last 2,000 years
4 votes -
Iceland has been the backdrop for generations of astronaut training missions – we look at what makes the Arctic island nation so crucial for Moon research
2 votes -
99 Cents Only Stores | Bankrupt
2 votes -
Midweek Movie Free Talk
Warning: this post may contain spoilers
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.
5 votes -
Tildes Video Thread
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...
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!
4 votes -
Norway's national football stadium has the world's largest vertical solar roof – new solution for northern regions, yielding 20% more energy than traditional panels
16 votes -
Iceland's famous music venues swallowed by tourism – thriving music scene that gave world Björk, Sigur Rós and Ólafur Arnald under threat from Reykjavík's popularity
5 votes -
BTK-gate, Türkiye's massive surveillance state: Internet activity, identity, and personal data of all users in Türkiye is collected
16 votes -
Forever ✱ Notes — A simple and scalable digital note-taking method for Apple Notes
20 votes -
Your chatbot transcripts may be a gold mine for AI companies (gifted link)
25 votes -
Artificial Intelligence in retail marketing: Research agenda based on bibliometric reflection and content analysis (2000–2023)
2 votes -
Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida with 155 MPH winds
42 votes -
Germany rushes to expand biometric surveillance
18 votes -
Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past
26 votes -
Frontline report: Ukraine ignites Russian strategic bases, flames span from Crimea to Urals
10 votes -
I'm getting a new Macbook Pro. What's your favorite apps and tips?
Hi Tildes ! I was passively looking for an refresh of my current laptop (Thinkpad X1 carbon Gen 5; it's still working fine except some mysterious thermal profile1), and a friend of mine working in...
Hi Tildes !
I was passively looking for an refresh of my current laptop (Thinkpad X1 carbon Gen 5; it's still working fine except some mysterious thermal profile1), and a friend of mine working in retail told me he could sell me a Macbook Pro (the mid-range 14in one with the M3 Pro chip2 at a heavy discount (more than half the price; it's a display model but he tells me it wasn't mistreated). It's a too good of a deal to pass on, so I accepted.
1 it's constantly at 70C; I already changed the thermal paste and the battery.
2 does that mean it's Macbook Pro Pro ?
3 and I guess the Thinkpad's going to be recycled as a home server. I half hope that running Linux on it will solve the thermal problemMy use case would be (in no particular order):
- photo/video processing: I know what I need and I already have a CaptureOne license. Davinci Resolve is enough (and plenty) for me
- programming (web dev, arduino; VScode's probably gonna be the second thing I'm going to install)(I'm kinda interested running a LLM locally, but have no experience with that)
- light CAD for 3d printing,
- gaming? My old gaming tower runs Elden Ring fine but struggle a bit with Baldur's Gate 3 (it's really the loading time, and loading textures), and it seems this MBP can run it fine.
- regular day-to-day browsing / office and adulting work
I would qualify myself as a power-user.
Background: I'm not entirely new to the Apple ecosystem. Back in uni I had the first unibody MBP sporting Leopard and then Snow Leopard. I then went with a X220t and then a my current X1.
Some questions:
- I see that BetterTouchTools is still a thing (back then I mapped three fingers swipe up to new tab, three finger swipe down to close tab, and twist to change tabs). I half remember one that was just a staging area living on a sidebar when moving file from one part of the finder to another (the name eludes me). Is there any other handy utilities I should be aware of ? That's also your prompt to plug in your favorite apps :)
- How's the dongle life (and what's the recommended one) ? While most of my stuff can be USB-C, I still have important stuff that requires USB-A (my photo printers, several portables hard-drive)
- Any interesting (gasp!) Android integration ? I'm not currently using any with my Windows machine (having Whatsapp/Telegram/Discord is sufficient), but I'm curious anyway.
33 votes -
Announcing the SDL 3.1.3 stable ABI preview!
6 votes -
TV Tuesdays Free Talk
Warning: this post may contain spoilers
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.
5 votes -
LinkedIn is the latest to automatically opt you in to AI training
32 votes -
Exploding pagers and spy chips: the rising risk of hardware tampering
9 votes -
US judge rules Google must give rival third-party app stores access to the full catalog of Google Play apps — and distribute third-party stores
53 votes -
Roblox: Inflated key metrics for Wall Street and a pedophile hellscape for kids
22 votes -
PimEyes says Meta glasses integration could have ‘irreversible consequences’
23 votes -
Looking for slim wallet recommendations
I'm in the market for a new wallet. I had used leather trifolds for many years then switched to a cheap Chinese knockoff of the Ridge wallet a few years ago. It's been pretty good, but it's...
I'm in the market for a new wallet. I had used leather trifolds for many years then switched to a cheap Chinese knockoff of the Ridge wallet a few years ago. It's been pretty good, but it's showing its age a bit and I want something that looks a bit nicer.
I want something slim that can go in my front pocket while leaving room for keys and other stuff. It needs to hold 9-10 cards and a small amount of cash. Preferably not more than $80-$90. Though I'd love to know what you all use regardless.
26 votes -
Continuing crackdown on churches and NGOs moves Nicaragua further from democracy to authoritarianism
8 votes -
We only learnt of our son’s secret online life after he died at 20
42 votes -
Look at this photo of Ursula von der Leyen’s new team – and tell me the EU doesn’t have a diversity problem
16 votes -
When is it time for an older doctor to hang up their stethoscope? We owe it to their patients to get it right.
14 votes -
Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of October 6
Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week! Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle...
Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!
Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”
Rules:
- No grey market sales
- No affiliate links
If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.
All previous Save Point topics
If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add
save point
to your personal tag filters.11 votes -
Detailed astronomical observation logging with a microphone and AI
I'm into astronomy as a hobby, and it's useful to have a log of the things in the sky you've seen. Many people take handwritten notes, but my handwriting is awful and having to write notes takes...
I'm into astronomy as a hobby, and it's useful to have a log of the things in the sky you've seen. Many people take handwritten notes, but my handwriting is awful and having to write notes takes away from enjoying the views through the telescope.
So after being inspired by AI note taking applications I've read about online, I decided to give it a try while out observing.
First, I take my recordings and run them through Whisper's speech to text engine. Because my recordings have frequent astronomical terms, it seems to be more useful to run the larger models (or the new turbo model), because they seem to do better identifying the names of moons and constellations.
Next, I run Ollama and give it a prompt like:
Here is a speech to text transcript of an observation session. Create a detailed log of the session, using only facts found in the text. Do not add your own interpretation to the text.
I'm still experimenting with prompts and models, but oddly it seems like shorter prompts give better results. So far, the type of model doesn't seem to matter so much as the number of parameters. Gemma2 27B outperforms llama 3.1 7B, but llama 70B outperforms both of them (again, I think the larger models have more context about which astronomical terms are important). Here's what that gets me with basically no work on my part:
**Observation Session Log** **Session Details** * Date: October 3rd, 2024 * Location: Wolf Street * Telescope: Teleview 85 (also referred to as 80) * Observer: [Not specified] **Targets Observed** 1. M29 (Open Cluster in Cygnus) * Time: 2057 - 2101 * Eyepiece used: 18.2mm * Notes: + Found using star hopping from Sater + Appears as a faint open cluster with 6-7 distinct stars + Stars are fairly even in brightness and color 2. M39 (Open Cluster) * Time: 2109 - 2116 * Eyepiece used: Ultra-wide angle, 18.2mm, and 8.5mm (noted as a mistake, actually using 7mm) * Notes: + Found using star hopping from Deneb + Appears as a larger open cluster with more differentiation in star magnitudes + Stars appear bluer than surrounding stars 3. Alberio (Double Star) * Time: 2120, 2155 * Eyepiece used: Ultra-wide angle and 7mm * Notes: + Found easily without a guide + Appears as a beautiful contrast between colors with constituent parts standing out from the surrounding stars 4. M15 (Globular Cluster in Pegasus) * Time: 2120 - 2130 * Eyepiece used: Ultra-wide angle, 18.2mm, 7mm, and Barlow (2x) with 7mm * Notes: + Found using a bright naked-eye star as a guide + Appears as a slight smudge or fuzzy patch with averted vision + Not resolving individual stars at any power 5. Saturn * Time: 2140 - 2150 * Eyepiece used: Low power, highest power (with a star chart to confirm moon positions) * Notes: + Three moons visible: Rhea, Enceladus, and Titan + Striping on the surface of Saturn visible at highest power **Session End** * Time: 2157
I'm very happy with the quality of the notes. It's much, much better than my handwritten notes and much less work, so I'm likely to do this more consistently.
11 votes -
Human-powered Turing Machine constructed out of Legos
14 votes -
Using randomizers to play Zelda like it's 1987
10 votes -
USA folks, don't forget to register to vote
86 votes -
Good retry, bad retry: an incident story
4 votes -
How ‘snowflake babies’ could change IVF politics
14 votes -
What would Billy Wilder do?
13 votes -
What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
4 votes -
I quit teaching because of ChatGPT
58 votes -
Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer
6 votes