Main constraint: The space it needs to fit in is 7¾ in (19.7 cm) high. Width and length aren't a concern.

Primary use: Gaming. Doesn't need to be top of the line or cutting edge. Most of what I play isn't very demanding, though I would like the option to play newer stuff if I find something that interests me.

Budget: Ideally less than $1500, but I do realize that I might have to pay out a bit more because I want something both pre-built and compact. $2000 is the hard limit.

Important: I am NOT interested in building my own PC. (Yes, I have done it before, including one that was in a compact case that was HELL to get right.)

Me being uninformed: This might be a silly question, but can I lay desktop towers down on their side? Any traditional tower isn't going to fit, but some of them are thin enough that, if put in landscape instead of portrait, they would. I've read conflicting things about this online, particularly regarding liquid cooling and airflow.

If anyone has any recommendations, I'd appreciate it!

I went down the path of thinking about switching to Passkeys but it seems like more hassle than it is worth, so I hoped this community could tell me if I am crazy.

I use Bitwarden to generate and save passwords for anything important and always use an authentication app when the option is present. I never use the same password. Sadly, most Canadian banks are awful and only allow SMS 2FA if anything at all. That said, of the two banks I primarily use, one does allow an authentication app and the other uses its own app to send authentication codes.

I always read that Passkeys are better for people who are lazy/bad with their passwords. For someone like me, is the security practically the same or is there still some benefit to switching everything I can to Passkeys?

I’m finally making the plunge to getting a bread maker, now that the price of bread has gone up to a stupid amount and I finally realized four months of buying bread every other day will pay for the machine itself. (Flour is cheap, yeast is cheap.) There are only really three machines available where I live, so I’m pretty set on the machine itself.

Since I’ve never had a bread maker, do y’all have any advice, favorite recipes, suggestions?

So since the USB-C spec came out, there are so many different cables advertising different optional capabilities.

Even if you are careful to select a cable which does what you need, there is a good chance it won't have all capabilities as advertised, you only find out when it arrives.

The situation on Amazon is particularly bad, with co-mingled stock and questionable brands like XZZTTG and EIUTOO dominating the listings.

For me, now, I'm specifically struggling to find a short replacement cable for my Samsung T7 SSD, which came with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 cable which was ~15cm and flexible. It was very nice, but they're not sold seperately!

So, where do you look these days to find a listing of decent and reliable accessories like USB cables?

UPDATE:

Great recommendations on brands to look for.
Thanks all!

I have a project I'm working on that could be performed by a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB of RAM. But almost everything on the Pi's board besides the SoC and RAM will be unused. And for this project size is important. I don't need WiFi/Bluetooth/ethernet/USB3/PCIe/Cameras/etc.

Here are my requirements:

• Performance at or above the SoC on the Pi5
• At least 8GB of RAM
• Either one USB port (for a mic/headphone jack combo USB sound card) or integrated analog audio input and output
• A couple of GPIO pins for buttons/LEDs
• Cost around the Pi5 - $80
• Runs Linux

Looking at the Pi5 I feel a properly stripped down version that meets my needs could be as small or smaller than a Pi Zero. I looked around and other SBCs are either much slower, much bigger, and/or much more expensive.

My current best option is to buy a Pi5 and trim its PCB as best as I can. But given there are so many competing options I assume one of them will have what I'm looking for.

I like to periodically audit my home computer infrastructure for upgrades/replacements. Mostly this is so I don't have to make an impulse purchase when something inevitably fails, but it's also nice to keep up to date on the state of the art.

I'm currently trying to reassess my home home networking, and I am a bit overwhelmed by everything. So I'm hoping that the residents of Tildes can help me out a bit with recommendations.

I would classify myself as a fairly budget consumer. I'm on a less than 1Gbit Xfinity plan, and have mostly cobbled together my current system from collected parts over the years. My DNS/DHCP is handled by my primary router, an aging T-Mobile Asus device I picked up years ago and loaded with Merlin. A few years ago I picked up an Eero system on discount, and I have been using that in bridge mode to provide mesh Wifi around the house.

The system I have in place is working great. It occurs to me though, that most of the parts are getting old enough that I can't replace them directly. I'm definitely not going to be able to find my specific router easily, and the first gen Eeros are also getting harder to find. I also think I might not be doing myself any favors with the chain of multiple devices being cobbled together. Perhaps it's time to look for a mesh system with the flexibility that my Asus/merlin router offers.

So let's hear it. What sort of networking equipment is everyone using these days? What do you like about it? Any killer features that I have been missing while living under a rock?

IMPORTANT: These do NOT have to be foods that specifically target vegans, like Amy's or many meat substitutes (though they certainly can be).

For example, most Triscuits are vegan, but they aren't generally thought of as a "vegan food" per-se.

ALSO IMPORTANT: They don't have to be health-conscious foods (though again, they certainly can be).

It's now cliche at this point, but the "Oreos are vegan" type of insight is also what I'm interested in. Sometimes you just want some junk food on hand, you know?

There's some moral issues about big publishers' business practices. Somehow, almost all racing games for example are EA. Like it's actually crazy lol - so despite wanting to play them, we do not wish to do that. Similarly, a lot of other co-op games are Ubisoft.

So looking for recommendations! Almost any genre and type are appreciated - only exception is games with pixel graphics (just really unpleasant to look at for me).

I learned to play piano when I was pretty young and my parents wanted me to learn an instrument. Real acoustic piano, music theory, private tutor, recitals, the works. I stopped playing after high school and my lessons ended though, mainly since it felt like it was just another chore and I wasn't enjoying it or playing pieces of my own volition. It's been over a decade since then and most of my free time has been in video games instead. The piano's still there but it's been just another piece of furniture for the most part. I've never seriously considered dusting it off and trying it again, and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten everything I've learned at this point.

Recently though, I got the chance to play Taiko no Tatsujin in an arcade for the first time while in Japan and I enjoyed it a lot despite being a total amateur, and I wanted to go back and play more to get better. That's when a thought crossed my mind - if I could gamify piano playing too, wouldn't that be a good way to trick myself into learning and enjoying piano again?

So I did some digging into what gamified piano software was around now, and Piano Marvel seemed to be the one most suited for being both beginner friendly and also for sight reading. The software itself offers a fair bit of beginner content for free, with the more advanced stuff behind a subscription. You can also connect it to a digital piano to track key presses and score your performance, which is the important gamification part that sets it apart from me just pulling up some YouTube tutorials and trying to follow them.

So I did some digging into digital pianos to see what would work for me learning and budget wise. From what I could glean off of various subreddit and other forum posts, if the end goal is to learn piano and not keyboard, an 88-key with weighted keys is the only thing that comes close, which bumps the cost up to a minimum of about 400 USD for the cheapest decent one, a Yamaha P45. If I didn't have a piano that cost would be fine, but I do and it most definitely sounds better, I just can't connect it to software or plug headphones into it so I don't bother my family if I'm playing at night, and I kind of want both of those. I'm also slightly concerned that my parents might be a bit upset if I do get a keyboard since, again, there's a perfectly good acoustic piano right there that they definitely paid more than 400 bucks for, though I imagine they'd be happy to just see me take an interest in learning piano again.

The most important part of this is that I actually commit to it and play regularly, since it'll all be for nought if I lose interest or turn it into a chore again and stop playing after a few weeks or months. I don't know if a gamified piano software will actually do that for me or if I just don't actually like playing piano after all, but I would like some thoughts. Is there other good software for relearning piano in a fun way? Any keyboard recommendations, preferably not too expensive? Am I being a coward and should I just use my acoustic piano instead?

Disclaimer: I am very lazy. I just want an easy way to find music I want to listen to. A paid service is fine.

I tend to listen to Spotify but I find it is repetitive and uninteresting, maybe I just can't find the good playlists? I also listen to my local FM radio station but they don't say the artist or song title so if there's something I like I often can't find it again.

I miss the days of going to the shop and buying a CD after spending two hours listening to the sample tracks.

Surely there is a better way? If anyone can point me in the right direction I would be very grateful!

Long story short, I’ve gotten very tired of buying junky pans that start getting rusty, etc. really quickly.

At the moment, I’m trying to find some good metal pans for baking things like brownies and focaccia, so probably 8x8 and/or 9x13.

Anyone have any good brand recommendations?

Hello Tildes!

I've been trying out a lot of open-source apps these past few months but I've always hosted them on a VPS. It's been great and educational so far. However, I started considering to host my very own server on-prem so that my data is absolutely physically with me and nowhere else.

With that short intro, I'd like to say I'm in the market for a home server. I can install OS's, docker containers, etc. And that's how I managed to install Jellyfin, Immich, Paperless, Portainer, etc on my VPS right now.

What out-of-the-box miniPC can be good for someone dipping their toes in the home server scene? I feel like I might need the storage to be extendable somehow? And it must be able to stream music and video through Jellyfin.

The choices in YouTube videos are overwhelming that I keep jumping from saying "ooh I'll get that" to "oh wait maybe I'll get that other one".

I also am not very handy in terms of hardware so I would prefer something out-of-the-box (if possible). Maybe a max budget of 500? But around 400 euros would be preferred. (Edit: In EU also, if possible)

Thanks for reading! Hope to hear from you guys!

I've been slowly transitioning my diet away from meat and dairy products. Cutting meat out has not really been an issue for me, and most dairy has been easy (I find the idea of milk gross anyway, never liked sour cream much, and butter substitutes are plentiful), but so far the idea of cutting out cheese seems like it will be my biggest hurdle. It's a central ingredient in many things I enjoy (mac and cheese, pizza, grilled cheese, sprinkling it on pasta, queso with chips and salsa, cottage cheese with jam, pretty much any Mexican dish). One of my sons is allergic to dairy so I've had plenty opportunities to try some of the small selection of vegan cheeses (mostly wheat based, I believe) we can get around here and they just don't do it for me at all--I find the texture and taste of every one I've tried actively repulsive (Daiya and Violife are the two that spring to mind).

Has anyone had better luck with vegan cheese--maybe brands or styles that I'm unaware of that come closer to replacing the real thing? Any tips on how to make cheeseless pizza that doesn't taste like sadness and despair? Or will there be a cheese-shaped hole in my soul I'm going to have to live with when I finally give it up?

AFAIK there are three software options for such thing: Peertube, Owncast and Restreamer. If there's something else, please write, I will appreciate.

Regarding hosting, I'm an almost total noob. What I know is that I don't want big latency and I don't want to pay too much. I don't know what to look for and the best thing would be to have some options to try, e.g. some trial period (a day, a week?) for free/cheap.

I've already tried Owncast and Restreamer on webh.pl VPS . Looking e.g. at requirements it seems that no huge machine is needed. However, latency was enormous, about 30 seconds, on both softwares.

What affects the latency the most and what would you recommend to try? Is VPS enough, should I aim for something else?

[edit]
I stream from Europe, if it changes anything.

Last time I asked for local bookstore recs I had an AMAZING time visiting local bookstores in Minneapolis!! I'm going to St. Louis this weekend and I would love recs again!

Some extra info:

• Not shopping for any kids currently so children's sections don't matter to me and I would not go to an all-children's bookshop (though I deeply appreciate their existence)
• Primary interest is sci-fi & fantasy, so given the choice between a bookstore with a good overall selection, and a bookstore with a not-great overall selection but incredible spec fic section, I would go to the latter
• My free time will mostly be on Monday, so both store opening & Memorial Day traffic patterns are relevant to me. If the traffic is expected to be untenable I might stay in my hotel instead, but that's helpful to know too

But, all that said, I would love to hear about any bookstores at all in St. Louis that you enjoy going to!

It just so happens that I was asked to write a paper about goals I hadn't achieved and I just thought about how I haven't touched my video game engine project in any meaningful way for around two months or so. On reflection, the main thing that is preventing me from working on it is that when I try to get back into it, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm unorganized and can't figure out what exactly to do next because it's so open-ended. I'm absolutely terrible about writing down plans for what I should do.

I know that I'm not the only person who is trying to work on big solo projects, so I thought I'd ask: what are you doing to keep your project organized? Are you using any tools to help you? What do you find is most helpful to help you anticipate steps you'll need to address when things aren't very clear?

I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations for daily sunscreens, specifically for my arms/legs. I have some Blue Lizard mineral sunscreen that I use but it's a little too greasy for me to really enjoy it for an every day sunscreen (apparently they've rebranded and have a new formula since the last time I bought it, so maybe it's better now? 🤷‍♂️).

I also have this NIVEA Super Water Gel that I absolutely love for my face/neck because it basically feels like lotion/isn't really greasy, but not sure I really want to spend as much to put that on my arms and legs every day.

Anyone have suggestions?

Hi, all.

I'd like to ask for a lazy recommendation. I last bought a KVM maybe 6-9 months ago and I returned it because of audio interference as well as low refresh rates on one operating system.

Ideally, I'd like the KVM to support:

• 1-2 4k monitors over either HDMI or USB-C at a minimum of 120Hz
• 1-2 USB-C peripheral ports
• 1-2 USB-A peripheral ports (presumably we're still at 3.1?)
• audio via 3.5mm
• RJ-45 @ 100 or 1000 Mbps
• a physical button to swap between inputs

For the most part we're talking about swapping between a MacBook Pro and a Windows Desktop. I would love if I could also include my Mac Studio in.the cycle of devices but I absolutely understand If I can only have two.

I hope you're all alright with me flippantly asking for a recommendation! I'm not a KVM expert. I spend my time elsewhere. I was really annoyed at the low performance of the previous KVM I bought. I hope there are folks on Tildes that can rave and rant about their KVM preferences. Thanks folks!

I was a fan of GameRevolution’s reviews for a long time. They always seemed to have a criteria to reviews that not only sold me on what to pursue, but what to truly avoid even if I loved the franchise. (MGS: Ground Zeros, I’m looking at you.) They have seemingly reduced to one reviewer…

I love the weekly Tildes thread of “what games are you playing” and it has truly opened my eyes to some games I would never have heard of, or even tried (Balatro).

Anywho the point of this is to ask where everyone else looks for reputable/intelligent reviews currently? I enjoy listening to Luke Stephens talk about the industry, but it’s not as concise as an A-F or star or 1-10 rating system. IGN doesn’t have my attention… I just don’t know where to turn, as there are so many options.

A little over a week ago I picked up a 3x3 Rubik's cube after seeing a coworker mess with one. I love fidgety things either as a stimming activity or as a puzzle. Do any of you have other fidgety puzzles to recommend?

I was thinking about this during my run today. I have a playlist where I put songs that I consider to be the "most iconic" and I want help filling it out a bit. I'd also like help determining if some of these aren't iconic enough, but the main ones I'm asking about are literal theme songs, so that may give them some extra points.

Now, this is of course at least semi-subjective, but I have tried to not put songs that are just really great or that everybody knows or that nobody will be singing next summer.

There are certainly multiple ways to define "iconic." I'm really trying to stick to the songs where you don't have to explain how or why it's iconic. It just is, and "everybody" knows it. The way I see it, this could actually exclude some of the biggest songs of all time because yeah, they're popular, but they aren't an icon.

So, before I use any more awful, self-justifying logic, let's get into my list so far!

In the Air Tonight
Born in the USA
Roundball Rock
CBS March Madness Theme
Monday Night Football Theme
Bridge Over Troubled Waters
Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley
Hey Jude
American Pie

Some songs from Grease because I'm sure at least one qualifies, but I grew up hating it because my sister loved it so I don't know which one(s) to include (or exclude, rather)

I can obviously think of a lot of other obviously extremely iconic songs but I've only added songs when I happened to listen to them. So what are Tildes' thoughts?

Most of my professional work involves the plumbing side of things (e.g. APIs, integration etc.) So I've come to front end quite late, and dabbled in HTML/CSS/JS frameworks, and tried to create a thing or two using Python GUI frameworks too.

After spending a bit of time learning about game development in Godot, I decided it might be fun to try and build a simple desktop app in the engine, and it surprised me how easy it was, it took me a day or two to build a basic git front end.

Of course, if you ever need to build something outside of GDscript, it'll require building an extension, probably in C++, but it makes me wonder if those sorts of tools exist outside of games engines? It feels like game devs get a wonderful tool that they use as a garnish on top of the real work (the game).

I'd be keen to know what people who regularly build front end tools tend to prefer to use.

ETA: I just realized the title is a poor summary of what I'm actually asking about, sorry!

Right now in the US Joann is going out of business and Ditto pattern projectors are ultra-cheap. That being said I don’t have much hobby money these days so I can’t just impulse buy. I have done some research and they have some very mixed reviews since it’s a very closed ecosystem. So I was hoping to get some opinions and see if it’s worth it at ~$75. Right now I want it primarily from FOMO because of tariffs on Chinese goods.

Honestly half of me wants to buy it just because it comes with a cutting wheel and board.

I've seen some discussion on self-hosted stuff, but a lot of it depends on docker or droplets or some such.

As a user of dedicated servers and the shared hosting environment on them, although Virtualmin gives me much more freedom than cPanel did, I still can't run a lot of the fun stuff I want to play with.

So I'm curious to know what you run in that sort of environment that's awesome.

Although I will start with one: NextCloud has been around for a while - taking over from whatever-Cloud they forked from that I've now forgotten the name of. heh. It was not a bad project, but it really wasn't featured enough for my needs.

But recently, I've discovered that they have been expanding their features rapidly. What I love and use:

• NextCloud Talk is almost on par with Teams. Featureful chat. Shared files. Links to various things on NextCloud.
• With the local app installed, syncing a folder to the server, I can edit files locally or in the browser and it's a really nice synced environtment. The web view works well, almost like File Explorer - dragging and dropping files around, etc.
• Ability to share files publicly. And even the ability to have a chat with users visiting the file page if you want. Ability to "hotlink" shared pics - like to embed in a forum
• The "Cards" app is... I forget the original name for teh layout, but you get cards in lists. Cards have details, due dates if you want, things like lists you can check off items, embed pics, etc. Also, each card has a chat related to that card and you can @ people
• Passwords app - share passwords with certain people, click to opy to the clipboard. Storing credit cards means I can copy-paste easily to use on my phone instead of typing.
• Calendar that can sync to other sources
• Tables - lke Microsoft Lists - custom set up of columns, handy for any number of things from making a ticket system / issue tracker, to lists of resources for a particular site. Can ahve edit access, or make it into an "app" where it gets stuck up on the nav bar and view-only for your clients, for example

Basically, while there are still some rough spots, it is really pretty slick and works well. And the awesome part is that being self-hosted, I control it. There's a large number of apps you can add to it, of varying quality.

So I'm curious to know what other projects you love and find useful! :)

I'm looking to better organize all the computer and electronics parts I have laying around and am looking for recommendations for software from people who are already doing this. I saw InvenTree but wasn't sure if there are other alternatives I should look at. Most of what I found so far is focused on companies and is therefore a bit more than I need. My only major requirement is that I can self-host it, or at least easily export all my data out of it. Ideally, the same software would work well for organizing home workshop parts as well (e.g. bolts, sockets, glues), though that's not a hard requirement.

Also, I'm not sure if this makes more sense here or in ~hobbies, but I figured the computer/electronics focus means it makes more sense here.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to provide a litmus test, of sorts. This test helps you figure out if you are engaging in the Sunken Cost Fallacy.

Sometimes I find myself asking if I should quit something, let something go, move on, etc.. It can be hard to figure out what the answer to those questions are. I heard a piece of advice regarding this very struggle, and wanted to share it with you all.

Ask yourself:

Knowing what I know now, would I still make the same decision that I did?

If the answer is "No" then you are most likely in a Sunken Cost Fallacy mindset. It could be argued that you should stop whatever it is you're considering stopping.

If the answer is "Yes" it is likely you are not in a Sunken Cost Fallacy and you made a decision in line with your values, even if it may not seem like it (hence the struggling).

Disclaimers:
Knowing the answer to this question does not imply you will know what to do with the information.

This test does not really "fix" anything, so to speak, but it is intended to help you realize when you are in a sunken cost fallacy situation.

I’m wondering what software I should use to stream games from my desktop to my laptop. I’ve migrated from mostly using my desktop to mostly using my laptop in the last year. But my desktop has a substantially better GPU and I would love a convenient solution for streaming both Minecraft and Steam games to my Macbook. I’m personally not a fan of Steam’s client on MacOS as it is severely buggy for me. So any alternatives would be nice. I’d probably be happy with a low latency low compression full screen desktop mirroring app. But anything more targeted at games could be nice.

Edit: I'm using the free version of Parsec and it seems pretty good.

I have been planning to make the switch to Linux as a daily driver for a while and have researched many different distros. I have seen a lot of discussion online about Bazzite and other similar distros based on Fedora Atomic. It sounds like it would be more stable, and less likely for you to accidentally break something, but installing software other than Flatpaks requires running it in some kind of container such as Distrobox. Some people say it's annoying, others say it's good since you mess up the container rather than your system.

I have used SteamOS on Steam Deck, and notice that things have "just worked" more than what I have personally seen with "normal" distros on laptops or desktops. For example, I've never really had any issues installing things and running software on SteamOS, but someone I know using Mint has seen seemingly minor things cause massive glitches on their system, or they've run into strange difficulty just installing certain programs like Steam. Would one of these types of distros, especially Bazzite which specifically is trying to be like SteamOS, be closer to that Steam Deck experience?

Has anyone here tried one of these distros and had any thoughts? Anything you loved, or was anything a deal breaker?

I've been wanting to tell the Tildes community about a favorite podcast of mine, The Film Reroll, an improv. comedy show which plays through your favorite movies as TTRPGs and totally ruins them (their words, I love the show and think the cast is amazing), and would love to hear about any podcasts y'all listen to that you might want to recommend to others!

Bottom line: I live in Western Pennsylvania in the US. I may shortly need to replace my aging Honda Ridgeline. I need a mid-sized truck/van/SUV that can be a good "road trip" car for a family of three that chronically overpacks.

What car do you like? What car buying or car selling wisdom do you have in the post-pandemic car market?

Apologies if I've chosen the wrong topic for this one. My request is broad, so I'm not sure where it should go. Could have fit into an "education" topic, but that doesn't exist so… 🤷‍♂️

I stumbled onto the Manga Guide to Databases, and I'm having a lot of fun reading through it. It's reminded me of other media that is explicitly designed to teach a topic in a fun way. A few examples that stand out:

• The Little Schemer (book)- Teaches recursion in a really intuitive way through a narrative.
• Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~ (game)- Teaches you about Japan and Japanese culture through a visual novel.
• How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? (anime/manga)- Does more storytelling than teaching, but there's still a fair bit of teaching in here about how to get started working out

I really enjoy this kind of media, and I'd like to find more of it. What other media have you found that fits this description? Topic and medium doesn't matter as long as the delivery is effective. I don't even care if the media seems designed explicitly to teach the topic or if learning is just a pleasant side-effect of engaging with it.

I often like to go on the App Store or GitHub and look for new and interesting apps, but very rarely I find really good ones. So I turn to you - what niche apps are you using, why are they niche, why do you use them specifically and would you recommend them?

Here's my Top 3:

Novel writing: I use a tiny app called uFocus for all my Markdown writing. It's lightweight, the developer is a real cool guy and it's entirely free. It has barely any features, and I like that about it. I don't use Word because it's too distracting and complicated, I used to use iA Writer but it's really not justified the updates it's gotten and is straying away from Markdown.

Email: I use MailMate, which is an insanely complicated and user-hostile email client that only works with IMAP/SMTP and does NOT support Gmail or Exchange, but is incredibly powerful at email management and search if you learn how to think like it does. It looks like it hasn't been updated since Mac OS 8, but it's getting regular updates and is very charming in its aesthetic.

Programming: I don't do much, barely some web design, but I like Zed as my editor of choice. It's not very popular, doesn't have a huge user base and barely any extensions compared to a juggernaut like Code or Cursor, but does what it does well and isn't written in Electron. It's also very performant.

Hello Tilderonis! I'll be in the Vernazza area of Cinque Terre next month. While there I plan to propose to my girlfriend :)

My current plan is to find a nice part of the "blue trail" with a nice lookout, track down a florist, and prepare that spot with some of her favorite flowers before we get there. Her family is joining us on the trip so I'll get them prepped as videographers. That night I want to take us all out for a nice dinner.

Okay so now the questions-
In general any potential snags you see with this plan?

Does it matter what time? I was thinking something in the late afternoon so we can do dinner soon after. Any issues with bugs or anything at certain times?

Anything else I can do or add to make the moment a bit more special?

For dinner I'm looking at Belforte Ristorante but definitely open to suggestions.

Thanks!

Hello All!

recently moved into an apartment and happy with it for the most part and grateful to have a place to call my own.

One issue has been the sound though. I am a remote software developer and work for a company that is 3 hours ahead of me. I personally prefer getting up at 3 am my time, enjoying my breakfast with a bit of TV and then signing into work at 4 am and getting off as 12 pm.

It's a life style thanks to covid and luckily landing jobs in a part of the country that is 4 timezones ahead of me but I enjoy being able to have the rest of the day for myself.

However, this move is the first time I am living in an apartment and that means sound can penetrate to neighbors. I had assumed that given the building was cement or concrete or whatever (I just know its not wood), that sound would not be an issue, but apparently given that my living room is right next to my neighbors' bedroom, I have had repeated noise complaints that I make noise during the building quiet hours (10 pm - 7 am)

Some were understandable, I was watching a movie at 3 am on a weekend and my TV is up against the wall that is shared with my neighbor. Bought some headphones and apparently that issue has gone away, but yesterday for example, I was on a call with a colleague at around 6 am and I can admittedly be loud. What I didn't anticipate was that I can be loud enough that it carries through the walls. This amongst other things (like me walking around in my own place which actually lead my property manager to push back on my behalf and tell them that's not a legit complaint they can have and makes no sense given I don't live above them) lead to a noise complaint.

Thankfully my building manager has been nice enough about it (I think cause she can tell I am not being malicious and I do want to be considerate of my neighbor, I just really underestimated how much sound travels in this building).

But this whole thing is making me a bit off about the situation cause if my neighbor could hear me on a call with my colleague, then they can also hear me when I am doing a counseling session from home if they happened to be in their bedroom at the same time and that makes me uncomfortable.

Which is making me research ways to prevent sound from my place going to my neighbors but I am by no means an expert in this field and wondered if anyone else has had experience with sound-proofing and can give tips.

It's a rental unit so it obviously can't be something that requires renovation and I prefer a solution that doesn't involve nails but if that's best, I can always ask permission from my property manager. I also don't plan to live here longer than 4 years (I hope to buy a condo of my own as soon as Trump leaves office) so I don't want to drop too much money on this.

the two things I kept coming across were:

1. acoustic panels: not sure how invasive that is and if there's an adequate brand for people on a budget.
2. a dampening blanket: but not sure how effective that is.

the wall's dimensions are 196 inch wide and 8 feet tall. However, if their bedroom is the same size of mine, it is only 159 inch wide.

Another low cost solution is just to move my desk to the other side of my living room so it's facing the opposite wall. The distance between the two walls is 160 inches and I'd be facing the opposite direction but I get worried that they could still hear me on calls if I move the desk to the opposite wall. But I also am not expert on sound dispersion and penetration so I could be wrong :shrug:

Do you have a weekly or daily routine? A preferred application?

For context, I’m an ecologist that focuses on statistics and modeling and I work in a few different ecosystems. I’ve always struggled to feel like I have a good understanding of the literature and I think there are a few main reasons.

• Quantity: It’s overwhelming. There is so. Much. Research. And there’s more literally every day that is or might be relevant.
• Sources: Relatedly, there are so many journals to try to keep up with. And certainly more that I should be keeping up with that I’m not even aware of.
• Method: I haven’t found an interface that really works for me. I end up ignoring emails with journal table of contents. Scrolling through RSS feeds on Zotero or Mendeley is awful. Going to the journal websites is even worse.
• Scheduling: I block out time in my calendar, but there’s always something else I’d rather work on. It’s hard to force myself to focus on it.
• Workflow: The exploration-exploitation trade off. If I skim through all the titles of a bunch of different journals, I end up just spending the whole time downloading papers which then sit in my Zotero library without getting read. If I stop to look in more detail, I don’t get through much of the article list.
• Retention: It’s hard to read something over and really retain it. I’ve taken notes (digitally and on paper) but that adds to the time it takes to skim titles and abstracts, which reduces the number I can cover.

One of the downsides of everything being digital is that I also find it harder to skim an article and get the gist of it. Flipping through a magazine lets you skim the titles and figures to easily get the main idea. Online, I need to read the title, click in a new tab if it seems interesting, scroll around to skim the abstract, and scroll and/or click to the figures. Flipping back and forth to the abstract or different sections is also harder.

What I’d really like is something kind of like a forum or link aggregator where I could skim titles and click an expander to view the abstract and figures.

Lots of exciting leagues to follow in the world of European football. I know there's not a lot of traffic in the ~sports section of tildes, but I'm sure there are some football/soccer fans on the site. So does anyone have any interesting leagues/games to watch in the next couple of weeks as these competitions near their conclusion?

I'll list a few interesting things below that I'm keeping track of or looking forward to, but please feel free to suggest more! At the very least this can serve as a preview for anyone interested in watching some matches in the next couple of weeks but that doesn't know which ones to watch/prioritize.

• Premier League (England) - Well Liverpool just thrashed Spurs to seal the title yesterday, and the bottom three are all set in place, so the main thing to watch for here are the European spots. Newcastle, Man City, Chelsea, Forest, and Villa are all within 57-62 points with 4 games left (Forest have 5). The qualifications for European places is kind of a mess nowadays, with so many different competitions and group stages and the winners getting automatic spots, so I'm not exactly sure just how many of them will make it into the Champion's League vs the Europa League or Conference League. But best to be top of that group just to be safe. Major difference in prize money between those three competitions, so should make for some interesting final matches. Notable ones include Newcastle v Chelsea and Forest v Chelsea, plus there'll be a few games between these teams and others that don't technically have much else to play for, like Liverpool (already won the title), Arsenal (most likely finishing second, plus might be focusing on CL), and Southampton/Leicester (already relegated).

• Bundesliga (Germany) - Similar story to the PL, Bayern have all but won the title (technically there's still a chance for Leverkusen, but slim), and the real fight is for the few European places. Freiburg, Leipzig, Dortmund, Mainz, and Bremen are all at around 46-51 points with 3 games remaining, and even Frankfurt at 55 are not completely out of the fight. It's been interesting seeing Dortmund rise over the last few weeks given how low they were mid-season. Impressive turnaround from them. Too many interesting games to list, like Bremen v Leipzig, or Freiburg v Frankfurt, but I'll make sure to tune into a few of them for sure!

• Serie A (Italy) - my favorite of the bunch currently. Inter lost and Napoli won yesterday, meaning the title race is in Napoli's hands after them slipping and Inter pouncing a few weeks back. 4 games to play and they're at 74 and 71, so should definitely make for some interesting final games. Below them the European spots are heavily contested as well, with Juventus, Bologna, Roma, Fiorentina, and Lazio all with 59-62 points. Though Atalanta at 65 and Milan at 54 are still in the battle. And there are plenty of direct matchups here, like Bologna v Juventus, Roma v Fiorentina, Lazio v Juventus, Milan v Bologna, Atalanta v Roma, Fiorentina v Bologna, Roma v Milan, and a nice Inter v Lazio towards the end. Plenty of great matches to watch with teams that have a lot to win/lose.

• Primeira Liga (Portugal) - Sporting and Benfica fighting for the title. Both with 75 points and 3 games left to play, one of which will be against each other on the penultimate round which should be a hell of a match. Could and probably will be the title decider, unless they tie in which case it'll come down to the last day, which will be equally exciting. Porto and Braga also fighting for the 3rd place spot, which would be Europa League vs 4th place's Conference League.

• Ligue 1 (France) - PSG have already won (and comfortably, though hilariously they just lost for the first time in the season, meaning they won't go unbeaten as many thought they might) but the next 6 teams are all neck-and neck. Marseille, Lille, Monaco, Lyon, Nice, and Strasbourg are all at 54-58 points with 3 games left. Should be plenty of movement there in the coming few weeks. A couple of direct matches too: Lille v Marseille and Monaco vs Lyon, plus Strasbourg are still to play PSG.

• Champion's League (Europe) - Arsenal v PSG and Barcelona v Inter. Some great teams there, and the quarterfinals were (mostly) incredible match after incredible match. So hopefully the 5 games that are left don't disappoint. 3 of those teams are still up for a treble. Any predictions? My money's on Barcelona purely because of Flick and Raphinha.

• Europa League (Europe) - Spurs v Bodø/Glimt (you bet your ass I copied and pasted that), and Athletic Club v Man United. Spurs and Man United are having absolutely terrible seasons, so they're sure to be desperate to win this and salvage something. Meanwhile Bodø/Glimt (how many teams do you know of with a slash in the middle?) are in the semis despite being a small Norwegian team. Would love to see a Bodø/Glimt v Athletic Club final!

I like crying to sappy bingeworthy tv dramas.

I've just finished Parenthood, and before that I binged a lot of hospital ones like The good doctor, New Amsterdam, etc.

The setting isn't really important, except I can't stand law enforcement settings.

Spoken language doesn't matter as long as I can find it with subtitles.

The important thing seems to be stories that are reasonably realistic where people live their lifes and care about each other.

What do you recommend?

Edit: below is a list of recommendations, mostly for me to have an easy spot to find them

• Bunheads
• Friday night lights
• March Comes In Like a Lion
• This is us
• Shitt's creek
• The crown
• Brothers and sisters
• Scrubs
• Midnight Diner
• The good place
• Virgin river
• Gilmore girls
• Dawson's creek

Company I work for has game nights (with prizes) as team building, mostly play free games, but occasionally a paid game as well. This week's game is paid and am looking for a place where I can buy about 20 Steam keys for the game that's legitimate.

Steam will only let you gift a game if you're friends with them on Steam, which complicates things and would be a pain.

Game is Move or Die in case that matters.

I am going to be in Minneapolis soon and I have 1 free day which I want to spend going to local bookstores. Does anyone have a favorite local store in the city? I particularly like going to bookstores with good SFF sections, and also lots of book club/staff picks; and also to used bookstores with good SFF fictions. It's my first time in Minneapolis so every local bookstore there will be new to me!

"Challenging" is up to your own interpretation: length, word choice, writing style, subject matter, etc.

Whatever the challenge, you had to put in more effort than normal to read the book, but you came out on the other side feeling like it was worth it.

What's that book?

What makes it challenging?

And why do you feel it's worth it?

I wanted to practice my stagnant drawing skills and something I always liked is pixel art, but I don't know any program for that (beside Paint and Photoshop) so I would like for recommendations here, the only big feature I need is multi layers management and that preferably runs in multiple platforms (You know, like Gimp and Inkscape).

Anything that runs on Linux/Windows/Android is welcomed. I guess there should be open source apps for that, and since it's only for practice I would to waste money on paid apps.

My current mouse is a Logitech Lightspeed G502, it works fine and aside from double click issue which I brought to a store to fix, no issues with it but it was my friend's prior mouse before he upgraded to a newer model.
As for why I want an ambidextrous mouse, on the rare occasions I want to use my left hand to navigate instead of right.
I used to use a chinese MMO mouse that honestly was not bad but its software was fairly garbage(Rebranded Red Dragon mouse iirc) so I don't mind Chinese mice as clearly being a brand name mouse doesn't mean much, just want something that is good and lasts a while, since I'm not that big on mice.

I want these qualities in a mouse.

• Works wired and with a 2.4GHz dongle
• Either rechargeable batteries or replaceable works
• High DPI
• Not a "lightweight" mouse
• Has a few programmable buttons
• On chip storage for programmed buttons/DPI/etc
• Available worldwide

Bluetooth as a 3rd option would be neat but not something I'm looking for in particular.

Rechargeable batteries are supposed to provide better longevity afaik, but the buttons or the mouse itself will probably die before the battery.

I use 8200 DPI on my current mouse pretty much in both games and in desktop... with mouse acceleration,

I only lower it on the rare occasions I use something like GIMP.

Not a fan of these perforated light mice or super light mice, I used to put weights in my previous wired Chinese mouse but I'm using the G502 without weights currently. I am willing to compromise on this if there are no options however.

On the G502 I only use 2 buttons regularly, and they are to switch to the left or right virtual desktop, the rest of the buttons have a function but they get rarely used (Except Windows+Tab to show all virtual desktops).

On chip storage is good when I switch platforms (e.g. PC/Windows, SteamDeck or Linux, Mac) and in case I want to completely drop Windows and not worry about needing software for the programmable buttons to work.

Worldwide availability because I don't live in the US or most parts of Europe.

Not aware if Logitech has a mouse that does all what I need, the free scrolling wheel is cool and gets used, but they got a history of switches that die too fast.

I used to use the Waking Up app for daily 20 minute guided meditations, and I want to get back into it, but these days I don't use a smartphone most of the time so I'm looking for something similar that I could load up onto the (offline) hardware music player that I use for music and audiobooks. Ideally a number of different similar-length guided meditations (where I could either loop through them in order, or pick one at random for each session). I'm still fairly new to meditation, so I'm probably not aware of all the forms/formats that this kind of thing can take, but the ones I'd been using are 20-30 minutes of mostly silence (but I'm not opposed to the idea of some kind of background white noise) with a guide providing verbal instructions around breathing and relaxation at the beginning, then providing occasional visualization exersizes or affirmations to focus on at occasional intervals.

A few searches shows no shortage of options for this kind of thing (both free and paid), but I'm wondering if anyone has any specific recommendations of something like this that they use or have used and would vouch for the quality. It seems like the kind of category where it would be easy to churn out a bunch of low-effort AI generated slop and disguise it as something else, which I would like to avoid.

Hey there musical types! I'm on the hunt for something I can use to create music that doesn't require a PhD in comp.sci and music theory. I downloaded LMMS and found myself immediately in the weeds, so I'm hoping someone out there can point me in a more elementary direction. The end goal is to create a theme track for my YouTube channel that has a good old fashioned 80s metal feel, if such an animal exists...

Thanks in advance!

I'm looking for recommendations actually, personally my favorites are Björk's Homogenic and Blue Bell Knoll by Cocteau Twins, but I also enjoy some orchestral music like Tchaikovsky's ballet suits and Ravel's Bolero.

I'm looking for full albums, preferably slow paced and that don't sound too "dark" (so no stoner metal).

I've been thinking a lot lately about the prevalence of echo chambers in basically every corner of the internet, and how they manipulate our opinions of things in both obvious and incredibly subtle ways.

Having spent a lot of time on Reddit, it's really easy after a while to see all the different echo chambers that different folks live in. Obviously the big conservative subs just have a completely different news cycle compared to the liberal ones, but even the liberal ones all form obvious biases and fairly large blind spots. All sides have the problem of just reading the headline and coming to a conclusion, regardless of the content of the article or who the authors are; the number of times I've seen the Irish Star, well known in Ireland as being a complete fucking rag notable only for celebrity gossip and nude photos on page 3, being posted to big subreddits as if it's real news, is absurd.

And when you pay attention you can easily spot when the propaganda machines start to accelerate, especially during and after election season. I'll always remember before the 2020 US election primaries when all of Reddit was supportive of Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, while deriding Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren as being centrist career politician dinosaurs, and the second that Biden was chosen as the Democratic nominee the entire site opinion shifted to "Biden is the best candidate and we all support him 100%". And then the moment the election finishes and all the botnets go back into hibernation, it's right back to "should have been Bernie". And that was just the first time I noticed it. Once you notice it happening in your own circles, it's impossible to miss afterward because it happens for every single political discussion. It was the exact same thing in the 2024 election too with Harris. I'm sure some of it is just people showing solidarity when it matters, but so much of it is clearly artificial too, and I don't like that.

The thing that worries me the most is all the propaganda and manipulation I don't see, the stuff that's subtle enough to fly under my radar and successfully manipulate me as a result. I'd be an idiot to pretend like I'm 100% capable of spotting it all.

Anyways, with all that stated, I wanted to see where the users of Tildes get their news from. It's really difficult to find unbiased news, that much is a given, so I'd rather not rely on any one source.

Personally I try to get my news from the Associated Press as much as I can. Don't think much needs to be said about AP that hasn't already been said, it's kinda just the gold standard for journalism.

The Guardian is a reputable news site in the UK (and fairly popular outside of the UK too from what I've seen online), though one that has a definite left-wing bias. All news is biased news of course, and there is an argument to be made that reality itself has a left-wing bias, so I think it's fine overall for my use case. But I do worry that I'm only making that call because I myself am somewhat left-wing, and having news that reinforces my existing opinions is comforting and rewarding. And I don't think that's at all how we should be choosing which news to read and believe.

Have been considering a subscription to the New York Times as well, more for the cooking, puzzles, and classical music discussion than the news itself honestly. But I've seen a fair amount of discourse around the NYT; how much of that is reactionary Redditors reacting I am not certain of however. Their Wikipedia list of controversies is pretty long whatever the case. Plus there's that whole Boycott USA, buy EU movement going on that I should probably consider as a European (sorry yanks I know you guys are cool but you know how it is). I don't know honestly, anyone more media-literate than I am is welcome to weigh in.

There are probably loads of smaller, independent, and less Anglosphere-centric options I should be considering also, but I'm no expert in this stuff. If anyone has suggestions I'd very much appreciate them.

Generally I try to not read too much news since so much of it amounts to "everything is fucked and your life is going to get worse and worse forever because of things outside of your control good luck", which is generally not good for, y'know, trying to be happy. But I also think it's the duty of a citizen in a democratic society to not just have opinions of things, but to have informed opinions. Who am I to vote for X politician because they're pro-Palestine if I have never done my own research on the Israel-Palestine conflict outside of things I've seen on Instagram, and have hardly even researched the politician in the first place? I think far too many people are comfortable forming opinions based on vibes and news they find comfortable that already conforms to their pre-existing opinions.

Anyways, that's my big wall of text for the day. If anyone has recommendations for places to find news and/or sites worthy of my subscription money, or just general tips on how to stay properly informed in the disinformation world, please post them below.

EDIT: Just stumbled upon this post by DefinitelyNotAFae a few hours ago asking a very similar question as what I'm asking here, so sorry if there's some repetition!

Sometimes my girlfriend commandeers my desktop to play games like Fallout 4 (which she discovered after the Fallout TV series last year) and sometimes I’ll go on my laptop while she does that. I usually like to program when I’m on my laptop then but I’m looking for suggestions for games to play that don’t need a mouse or much graphical power. Is Dwarf Fortress something I should try?