My parents normally give all us adult kids money for Christmas, but this year my mom said she wants to get us actual gifts and asked for wishlists from us. Problem is: I don’t know what to ask for!

So, similar to the Gift Swap topic, I thought we could come up with a list of items that are very good/useful/satifying but also less obvious, for the purposes of making a decent gift idea list.

Note: I don’t want it to be specific to me and my tastes/interests, since I want the whole community to be able to use it too. Share anything you like and think others might like!

In my comment on this thread, I briefly explained my grievances with modern minecraft updates, and said that my long-term world was on version 1.1 from 2012. Since then, I reset my computer and accidentally nuked that world along with the rest of the data I didn't care about. After a long while of kicking myself over having no backup (a problem I have since remedied, thanks for the backblaze suggestion @greg!), it's time to suck it up and start a new world. The only problem is that I don't know what version of the game to start the world on.

Obviously, I can update it later if I really want to, but I found myself loving the simplicity of 1.1 (one wood type, small but epic worldgen, simple biomes, etc.) and missing the comforts of later versions (crafting shortcuts, detailed settings, controller support for my steam deck through the likes of midnightcontrols or controllable). With this in mind, if you're partial to a particular update and it's feature set, pitch it here! I know this sounds weird, but I want to hear about why you like the version of minecraft you play, maybe there's perks of newer versions that I haven't thought/heard of.

EDIT: for anyone returning to this thread, I landed on version 1.12.2 for a two main reasons:

• It has good server & client performance (compared to 1.13 and 1.14, which are notoriously poor), meaning I can run a singleplayer server for cheap (paper, ~$3/mo for 1gb ram, runs basically perfectly) and have parity between my steam deck and PC. Steam deck basically sips power while playing, which is nice.

• It's about the time that I stopped paying attention to updates. Anything past the aquatic update is a blur, so I can enjoy the simplicity while still getting some good qol features.

This other topic got me thinking about all of the mods and modpacks that I've played over the years, some that have come and gone with versions of Minecraft past.

So I'm curious:

What are your favorite Minecraft mods?

I'm not going to be too restrictive here. It's ok if they are for an older version and no longer supported. I'll even say that server plugins (like for spigot/paper/bukkit) and datapacks are fair game here. Client side? Server side? QoL? Terrain? Entire modpacks? Doesn't matter! Post 'em if you've got 'em. :)

(Information about supported Minecraft version and direct links to the mod pages are appreciated.)

This will be the final topic in the series. (Sorry about the confusion!)

This one is about short books that have more heft than you would think from their size alone.

As before, there are no hard requirements on what counts as “short.”

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/19

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

Since Musk took over Twitter and made it a "free speech" platform, something that has interested me is has that basically render TruthSocial obsolete or is there some niche that Trump is targeting with TruthSocial that Elon is not with Twitter?

The biggest obv difference is just the reach with Twitter having more people than TruthSocial but with all the headlines I see about how people are leaving Twitter en-masse, I figure it's just a matter of time before it loses mainstream attention?

But beyond the number of users, it is basically the same environment, albeit with different tech stacks?

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?