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    1. I made a Google Sheets to-do list that self sorts by priority. I hope it helps someone else as much as it's helped me.

      Hey friends, I struggled hard to find a simple to-do list that would work the way I needed it to. Even the paid options weren't quite helpful for me. Eventually I just gave up and made my own. I...

      Hey friends,

      I struggled hard to find a simple to-do list that would work the way I needed it to. Even the paid options weren't quite helpful for me. Eventually I just gave up and made my own.

      I use it at work and at home every single day. I also made a backup copy to handle an individual project I'm working on.

      Anyway, it's free. I just wanted to share it with you guys.

      Small side notes

      • To start using this, just copy it. It'll open in a read-only mode but you can quite easily pull it over to your own Google Drive.

      • I threw in a donation link on the Sheet. Delete it or ignore it. It's 100% optional and I figured I'd put it there in case this ended up becoming someone's daily driver and they want to say thanks.

      • You can somewhat easily make this sheet work with Google appsheet to use it on mobile as an app. That's what I do for mine so that I can use it on my phone and on desktop throughout the day. Just open appsheet from this sheet and start customizing your app. As long as you're using it for just yourself, you don't have to deploy it or anything. You just download the appsheet app on mobile and access it that way. You can even name it and choose a custom icon. The one caveat is that you'll have to create a time trigger in scripts to make it auto sort. If anyone is dying to do this, I'll post more specific details to help you through it.

      https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sIp4uPq3xwgudNA9tIOGmNXzETtyG421WbmvJPWgbsI/edit?usp=drivesdk

      17 votes
    2. The case for left-handed representation in gaming

      Hi and hello all and fellow southpaws, With the increasing option to pick from genders between characters (unless heavily tied into story and designed that way) it feels like the next option would...

      Hi and hello all and fellow southpaws,

      With the increasing option to pick from genders between characters (unless heavily tied into story and designed that way) it feels like the next option would be to have left-handedness become an option.
      As a lefty I always felt a little "left" out (pardon the pun) in games as soon as I saw a gun or weapon being held in the "wrong" hand.

      I know CS2 makes the option available if you dig a little, which is a great start.

      So my question is, do you know of any other games that deserve a call out for already having this? Games that might need this (character fantasy) or just a shout out in support of the idea, feel free to discuss below.

      Cheers!

      26 votes
    3. What is your favorite museum?

      Inspired by a recent conversation I had with a fellow museum lover: what is your favorite museum or favorite museums? Why? Curious to learn about some really interesting and unique places that...

      Inspired by a recent conversation I had with a fellow museum lover: what is your favorite museum or favorite museums? Why? Curious to learn about some really interesting and unique places that other users might have been to.

      33 votes
    4. How do I know if a USB-C PCIe card supports 4k video output?

      finally getting to be that time where I need a USB-C slot on my tower that I built back in 2017 so I started looking into expansion cards. One thing I can't tell is how to tell if a particular...

      finally getting to be that time where I need a USB-C slot on my tower that I built back in 2017 so I started looking into expansion cards.

      One thing I can't tell is how to tell if a particular expansion card supports the usb-c ports with DP-Alt mode for a 4k display if the need arises.

      for exmple, had my eye on this one and I can't tell much if it does have that kind of support

      9 votes
    5. Advice Needed: Simple and Reliable notifications

      I have a long standing problem that probably has several good solutions, I just haven't been able to figure them out. So here I am, asking you. I'm selfhosting some services, a mix of selfbuilt...

      I have a long standing problem that probably has several good solutions, I just haven't been able to figure them out. So here I am, asking you.

      I'm selfhosting some services, a mix of selfbuilt and open source software. But some things I don't want to selfhost. Notably backups and alerts/notifications. For backups I have a solution which works well in every regard except one - I don't always get alerted when things fail, because the way I send myself those alerts is failing more than the actual backups.

      Currently I'm using python and gmails smtp interface to send myself email, but gmail disables my smtp access from time to time, and it's really easy not to notice not getting an email. I've tried sending the email regardless of whether the backup failed or not, but I've noticed several times that I still don't notice if the they stop coming.

      Now on to my requirements/wishlist.

      1. I'm already using s3 glacier at aws for the backups, so preferrably something in the aws space.
      2. I would like to get an popup/toast on my phone when a message is being sent. And the ability to review messages later.
      3. I would like as few moving parts as possible.
      4. I don't want to write my own client.
      5. I want it to be cheap, and if there's a cost I prefer to pay it at a place where I'm already paying, meaning aws (or possibly proton).
      6. I want a stable service.
      7. I prefer to manage as little as possible of the infrastructure.
      8. I'd like a simple programmable interface that can't easily fail. E.g. http based.
      9. It's no problem if messages are not received instantly, I could easily tolerate delays up to 24 hours.

      As you may have noticed I'm pretty much expecting there to be something in aws that I can use, but aws documentation is so abstract, that I often don't understand what the point of something is or how I'm supposed to use it.

      9 votes
    6. 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!

      9 votes
    7. Vegan recipe log

      Hi all. I cook as often as I can and thought it might be fun to chat about any recipes you’ve tried or would like to try! I’m vegan so anything I post in this thread will be too. Maybe even share...

      Hi all. I cook as often as I can and thought it might be fun to chat about any recipes you’ve tried or would like to try! I’m vegan so anything I post in this thread will be too. Maybe even share snacks or restaurants that are you’ve tried that you’ve liked!

      To start is a simple sauce/stir fry recipe I make when I’m pretty tired after a long day:

      Spicy salty sweet sauce:

      1-2 tbsp gochugaru
      1 tbsp white or black rice vinegar
      1 tbsp mirin
      1 tbsp soy sauce
      1 tbsp agave or maple syrup
      1 tsp corn starch

      I usually put all of the ingredients together except for the corn starch and then set aside as I do the rest of the prep.

      The rest of the recipe is a bit more variable as I have certain ingredients but looks like this:

      1 cup cooked white rice OR hand pulled noodles

      Noodle recipe:
      250g all purpose flour
      125 ml water
      1/4-1/2 tsp salt
      Canola oil

      I add the flour, water, and salt to a bowl, mixing with my fingers. It starts to form pretty quickly into a mass. I knead the mass of dough into a ball until uniform. With the large, smooth dough ball I cut it into 8 pieces with a knife, roll them into a sort of prolate spheroid shape, and coat with canola oil. Put the oiled dough shapes into a bowl and cover with a damp towel. Let them rest for about an hour or so.

      Heat a pot of water. Flatten the dough pieces into rectangles with a rolling pin. Use the rolling pin (if it’s a thin one, otherwise I use large chopsticks), to press the dough lengthways to create a sort of seam. Hold each end of the dough and slowly pull to stretch. Slap on counter as you pull a few times. Stretch it as long or short as you’d like. On the seam you made with the rolling pin, split the noodle apart so that the noodle is now a large loop. Put into the boiling water and wait roughly a minute /or until it’s floating. Can cook a few noodles at a time, though I usually do one or two and roll/pull while they boil.

      With the noodles or rice done or going and the sauce almost ready, start to chop vegetables, maybe a cup or so of 2-3 types. I like Napa cabbage, squash, green onions, bell pepper, and carrots but really get whatever you’d like or have on hand at the time. Sauté the vegetables in a tbsp or so of oil (I use canola or olive), starting with onions/garlic and then adding others as you see fit. Once the vegetables are done to your liking, add the noodles or rice, then the sauce (adding in the corn starch to the sauce at this point) and stir.

      Often I’ll actually fry a half block or block of tofu I’ve cubed before adding vegetables into the oil. I usually do this as the noodles (or if I’m doing a pot of rice, as it begins to cook) are about done resting, maybe with 15-20 mins to go, since frying tofu can take awhile.

      I like to serve in bowls, topping with a dash of sesame oil, black sesame seeds, and fresh green onion.

      I’ll post more recipes in the thread as I make them but this is probably the most frequent thing I make in a given week. Feel free to share your own!

      28 votes
    8. Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 28

      This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...

      This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

      This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

      26 votes
    9. Cmake strategies or alternatives for building (different) code for different platforms

      Okay, so this is getting really long, I'll put the ask up front: I have a strategy, I think it is reasonable. Now is a point where I can easily change things, and it won't be so easily later. So...

      Okay, so this is getting really long, I'll put the ask up front: I have a strategy, I think it is reasonable. Now is a point where I can easily change things, and it won't be so easily later. So I'm looking to see if anyone has trod this road before and can recommend any of:

      1. a different build system that will be easier to manage for this use case
      2. a different strategy for using cmake that will be easier to manage
      3. any gotchas I should be aware of, even if you don't have better solutions.

      Background

      I have a project I'm working on where the ultimate deliverable will be a hardware device with 3-4 different microcontrollers coordinating with each other and interacting with a PC-ish platform. This is a clean rewrite of a C++ codebase. Due to the microcontroller (and some of the PC APIs) being C++, the language of choice for most of it is likely to remain C/C++.

      I'm succeeded in setting up a build system for embedded code. The old code was arduino, so it relies a lot on those libraries, but I've managed to set up enough custom cmake to get off of the ardunio tools altogether, even if I am borrowing their libraries and some of the "smarts" built into the system about setting build flags, etc. So far, I have a dockerized toolchain (cmake + make + gcc-arm-none-eabi) that can successfully build ARM binaries for the target platform.

      The thing that I'm up against now is that I'd like to have a robust off-target unit testing infrastructure. My ideal case is that everything in the embedded system will be broken down into libraries that have clear interfaces, then to use unit tests with mocks to get high coverage of test cases. I'll still need some HIL tests, but because those are harder to set up and run, I want to use those for integration and validation.

      In terms of OSes available, we're mostly working on Windows systems using WSL for linux. I'd like things to be as linux-based as possible to support CI on github, etc.

      Goals and Cmake limitations

      I started out using cmake because I hate it least of the tools I've used, and I am at least pretty far up the learning curve with it. But a limitation I'm hitting is that you can't do a mixed compile with two different toolchains in one build. The reasons why cmake has this limitation seem reasonable to me, even if it is annoying. You can easily change the toolchain that your code is built with, but that seems to be largely targeted at cross-compiling the same binaries for different systems. What I want to do is:

      • build my code libraries with embedded settings for linking to the embedded binaries and build those embedded binaries (the end product)
      • build my code libraries with linux-ish tools and link them against unit tests to have a nice CI test process
      • (eventually) also be able to build windows binaries for the PC components -- when I get to that point, I'd like to get away from the MSVC compilers, but will use them if I have to

      Current strategy

      My current plan is to configure a library build like this (pseudocode):

      add_library(mylib sources)
      if (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_EMBEDDED)
      <embedded config>
      elseif (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_LINUX)
      <linux config, if any>
      endif()
      
      #unit tests are built for each library
      if (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_LINUX)
      add_executable(mylib_test sources test_sources)
      target_link_libraries(mylib gtest etc.)
      endif()
      

      For the rollup binaries, I make the whole target conditional

      if (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_EMBEDDED)
      add_executable(myembedap sources)
      target_link_libraries(mylib)
      endif()
      

      Then the build script (outside cmake) is something like

      cd build/embedded
      cmake <path to src> <set embedded toolchain> -DBUILD_TYPE=embedded
      make
      cd ../../build/linux
      cmake <path to src> -DBUILD_TYPE=linux
      make
      

      Things I like about this strategy:

      • It's relatively simple to do all the builds or just one of the builds (that control would go in the shell script)
      • I have one source tree for the whole build
      • It lets configuration be near code
      • It lets tests be near code.
      • I think it's extensible to cover the PC component builds in the future

      Things that worry me:

      • It feels like a hack
      • Support for off-target tests feels like it should be solved problem and I'm worried I'm missing something

      Thanks for reading. If you made it this far, you have my gratitude. Here's a video with funny out of office messages that I enjoyed.

      6 votes
    10. best option for a bare-bones message board/forum?

      hello tildes, i am searching for a bare-bones forum/message board. i'll describe what i need and perhaps someone can point me in the right direction: must have the ability to create an account...

      hello tildes,

      i am searching for a bare-bones forum/message board. i'll describe what i need and perhaps someone can point me in the right direction:

      must have the ability to

      • create an account
      • create topics with the ability to reply
      • fully customizable front-end (html/css) so i can make it match my website
      • either self-host or use a custom domain on ext hosting

      unimportant but nice to have

      • display images in posts via external urls
      • different boards (categories?) to post into (would be nice but not vital)
      • nested replies (or some visual way to see what you're replying to)

      free would be ideal (dreams are nice) but probably wouldn't want to spend more than $5/month as this is a supplement to a website where i don't expect much traffic at all due to the nature of the project. no images/video/audio will be hosted ideally.

      i'm ok with "hacker news" or "reddit-like" software but my backend knowledge if very limited. for instance, i looked into self-hosting lemmy but i don't understand how to setup docker. options like phpbb would be fine if i could strip away everything aside from the above-mentioned features.

      i want it to be extremely simplistic in appearance and for the end-user (tildes is a great example of the simplistic end-user experience). tildes could be a cool option but i think getting it setup is a bit out of my skill-range.

      can anyone offer any suggestions/guidence?

      edited to emphasize important aspects and clarify things that are not vital but would be nice to have.

      15 votes