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?

I usually generate ebooks in two ways. One is to export directly from Emacs Org-Mode with ox-epub. That doesn't give me a lot of control and export options are a bit of a crapshoot. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. The other is to export from Org-Mode to either odt or docx and use Libreoffice Writer to export to EPUB. I will then open the ebook on Calibre to fix the metadata, the table of contents., and generate a cover.

That works fine for my personal use, but in the near future I may need to generate an ebook that looks proper and professional. I don't even know what "proper and professional" really means for an ebook, but I assume there must be tools and practices that are universally recomended that I am not following.

Hence the question: are there "pro" tools for authoring ebooks? Are there any rules, standards, workflows, or guidelines I should be following? If those exist, where can I find tutorials and documentation on how to generate the best books?

EDIT: I use Windows and Linux.

Thanks!

I've been considering going back to school and taking some courses that are available to me. With the associates that I already have, I was weighing the options that I have available to me. Computer Science is a classic and could probably get me very far with the "need a piece of paper" folks, but it's more software development than I have a passion for, compared to my troubleshooting, find a problem, solve a problem desires. Cybersecurity is probably going to be more dependent on certs than anything I can learn in a class, especially if it's ever evolving and a degree can be outmoded very quickly. Computer Information Systems sort of has my attention because it seems like an IT based degree with elements of a business setup and not as laser focused on coding. With the courses that I currently have under my belt, it would be more for CIS than it would be for CS, but more CLEP and ACE options so it about evens out.

Does Computer Information Systems hold any water in any of your opinions to what Computer Science has to offer? Or is it somewhat arbitrary anyway?

One of the tags that I almost always remember to include in my posts here on Tildes is the author.authorname tags. I wonder which author is cited the most through the tagging system here on Tildes. I know that journalists in ~society show up a lot, but there are also quite a few repeat authors in ~games

Just a quick PSA, if anyone noticed massive amounts of shows disappeared from Netflix the past week or two. Apparently they're getting stricter with VPN detection, and blocking per region licensed shows if we're on VPN.

I sometimes feel like I am the only person who loses interest in a video game as soon as I have to spend any amount of time consulting an online guide or wiki to figure out how to progress.

Maybe it’s because I grew up playing games like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, along with their equivalents and sequels on the Gamecube, and later the Wii. I got either to 100% completion or close to on those, without getting any outside help.

The games themselves made it very clear what the objectives were and what collectibles and unlockables were available.

But at some point in recent years, it just became impossible to play a video game without having to consult a guide or a wiki to figure out not just how to progress in it, but sometimes even how to play it. 💀

And a good year ago or so, I began to subconsciously fight against this, because it annoyed me to no end. I began to just take breaks from a game if I couldn’t figure out how to progress, rather than go online and read some guide or wiki, because it was making me feel like I was wasting my time reading about the game, rather than just playing it, taking me out of the immersion in the process.

You know what? I’m making this a resolution. If I can’t figure out how to progress in a game on my own, then I just won’t. I’ll go play something else.

I have recently played some indie games where I needed zero assistance, and boy did it feel good to figure those games out on my own. Those are the best games (for me), games that “explain themselves”.

Anyone else feel similarly?

Tangentially related side note: I hate, hate, hate “Fandom” wikis. They’re probably a big part of the reason why I began to hate consulting online guides. They’re impossible to navigate, are riddled with ads, and link to unrelated content, everywhere on their pages. There is a good alternative to these for some Nintendo franchises, which are independent wikis, in case anyone is as frustrated by the Fandom slop as I am.

I've been re-reading the Discworld books recently and there are so many quotes that jump out at me as forming who I was as a child, or particularly relevant in 2025.

I'm interested in everyone's favourite Sir Pterry quote, if you have one!

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!

The other day, I happened to stumble on a YouTube video where the creator explored the problem of “discoverability” of video games on platforms like app stores, Steam, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo’s shops. That’s something that has been bothering me for a long time about the Apple App Store.

By pure coincidence though, this morning, as I was browsing through the “You Might Also Like” section at the bottom of a game that I am interested in, I began to go down a rabbit hole where I ended up finding a good handful of games I had played on Steam that I wasn’t aware were available on iOS/iPadOS as well. It’s quite sad, because these are games that I really enjoyed, and I paid for them on Steam, a platform that Valve (understandingly) neglects on macOS, whereas I could have played them optimized for iOS/iPadOS.

The creator in the YouTube video didn’t really have a solution for this problem, and it seems to me that as the industry grows, and more and more “slop” begins to flood these platforms, it will only become harder and harder to discover the good indie games buried underneath it all.

I feel this intense urge inside me to start some kind of blog or website to provide short reviews so that at least some people will discover these games. We definitely need more human curation.

I’m also appalled that so many of these games on the Apple App Store have little to no ratings. No one makes an effort to leave behind a few words so that other people can get an idea of whether it’s worth to invest their money in a game.

I guess that there isn’t really anything that can be done about the issue of discoverability. As an indie developer and publisher, you just have to do the that best you can to market your game, and hope to redirect potential customers to your website or socials, where you should clearly list all the platforms that your game is available on (surprisingly, a lot of developers don’t do this). But that’s about all that you can do. The rest is luck.

I have been thinking about this issue lately because I own some devices that still work as normal, but are really old (one being almost eight, and the other almost seven years old).

The dilemma is the following:

I don’t actually need to upgrade these devices, because newer models don’t have any new features that I have any need of. What my current devices do is all that I need them to do, and that could probably still be true for many more years to come.

In other words, if I get an upgrade now, then I would be wasting money because I could just stick with my current device until it breaks for good and then buy a new one instead.

The problem is that, if I wait until that point, then I’ll be left without a device that I need for everything that I do on a daily basis, until I have been able to save up the money to buy a new one.

This makes me think that I should maintain a “critical device failure” fund, just in case. But even if I do, that doesn’t solve all the problems.

With my smartphone, for example, I use it for online banking authentication. There is no alternative system that I can use where I live, and this system can only be tied to one device at a time. There is always the risk that if I lose my phone, then I would also lose access to my online banking app, which is a service that due to certain circumstances, my wife and I use on a daily basis. We truly depend on it. I would have to quickly buy a new device, and then rush to the bank, to go through a long and gruesome process of getting the permission to install the app on the new phone (true story).

Ironically, I can “transfer” the app between devices, but that feature is useless if I let my smartphone completely die first.

And there are many other similar apps and services that I regularly use, which I can hold on one device only.

I also know, however, that whatever date I choose to upgrade these devices on, will be a mostly arbitrary one. So... shrug

Just to give you a final example: The battery on my smartphone wasn’t doing too well, so after almost six years, I finally got it replaced. It was surprisingly cheap, considering how it breathed new life into my device. Maybe I was just imagining it, but it suddenly seemed to work faster, not to mention that the battery lasts way longer now, obviously. Many people that I know though, would just have tossed this six-year-old device and gotten a new one. For them, a dying battery is synonymous with a dying phone, and at the six year mark, that’s... maybe not a completely unreasonable way of thinking?

But anyway.

How do you device when you upgrade a device?

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?

Looking at the submission rules for Clarkesworld Magazine, I found the following:

Statement on the Use of “AI” writing tools such as ChatGPT

We will not consider any submissions translated, written, developed, or assisted by these tools. Attempting to submit these works may result in being banned from submitting works in the future.

EDIT: I assume that Clarkesworld means a popular, non-technical understanding of AI meaning post-chatGPT LLMs specifically and not a broader definition of AI that is more academic or pertinent the computer science field.

I imagine that other magazines and website have similar rules. As someone who does not write directly in English, that is concerning. I have never translated without assistance in my life. In the past I used both Google Translate and Google Translator Toolkit (which no longer exist).

Of course, no machine translation is perfect, that was only a first pass that I would change, adapt and fix extensively and intensely. In the past I have used the built-in translation feature from Google Docs. However, now that Gemini is integrated in Google Docs, I suspected that it uses AI instead for translation. So I asked Gemini, and it said that it does. I am not sure if Gemini is correct, but, if it doesn't use AI now it probably will in the future.

That poses a problem for me, since, in the event that I wish to submit a story to English speaking magazines or websites, I will have to find a tool that is guaranteed to be dumb. I am sure they exist, but for how long? Will I be forced to translate my stories like a cave men? Is anyone concerned with keeping non-AI translation tools available, relevant, and updated? How can I even be sure that a translation tool does not use AI?

EDIT:

I feel like I didn't adequately describe this phenomenon so that it can be understood without accessing the links. Here goes.

Reddit user uncovers instructions online for unlocking AI's "hidden potential", which actually turns out to be its brainwashing capabilities. Example prompts are being spread that will make ChatGPT behave in ways that contribute to inducing psychosis in the user who tried the prompt, especially if they are interested in spirituality, esotericism and other non-scientific / counter-scientific phenomena. The websites that spread these instructions seem to be designed to attract such people. The user asks for help to figure out what's going on.

Original post:

One version of this post is still up for now (but locked). I participated in the one that was posted in r/ChatGPT. It got removed shortly after. The comments can be accessed via OP's comment history.

Excerpts:

More recently, I observed my other friend who has mental health problems going off about this codex he was working on. I sent him the rolling stones article and told him it wasn't real, and all the "code" and his "program" wasn't actual computer code (I'm an ai software engineer).

Then... Robert Edward Grant posted about his "architect" ai on instagram. This dude has 700k+ followers and said over 500,000 people accessed his model that is telling him that he created a "Scalar Plane of information" You go in the comments, hundreds of people are talking about the spiritual experiences they are having with ai.

Starting as far back as March, but more heavily in April and May, we are seeing all kinds of websites popping up with tons of these codexes. PLEASE APPROACH THESE WEBSITES WITH CAUTION THIS IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, THE PROMPTS FOUND WITHIN ARE ESSENTIALLY BRAINWASHING TOOLS. (I was going to include some but you can find these sites by searching "codex breath recursive")

Something that worries me in particular is seeing many comments along the lines of "crazy people do crazy things". This implies that people can be neatly divided into two categories: crazy and not crazy.

The truth is that we all have the potential to go crazy in the right circumstances. Brainwashing is a scientifically proven method that affects most people when applied methodically over a long enough time period. Before consumer-facing AI, there weren't feasible ways to apply it on just anybody.

Now people who use AI in this way are applying it on themselves.

I've been deep in learning how to rewire sections of my house, trying to understand the logic behind my older (1950s-era) electrical system. In the process, I came across a free game on Steam called Wired developed by the University of Cambridge's Engineering Department. It's a puzzle game that gradually introduces core concepts in circuitry and logical flow. It doesn't replace proper training, but it is an engaging supplement compared to reading electrical code books.

But anyways, I though I would ask about games that don't just entertain but also teach. Not strictly edutainment in the shallow sense, but games that impart understanding, intuition, or practical knowledge through their mechanics.

What are some games you've played that taught you something substantial? I'm thinking anything from real world skills, conceptual insights, functional knowledge, or anything that stuck with you after playing.