One of the common issues that I've run into on reddit as a moderator is that lots of people put in a link and then put a bunch of text into the text area, and then they have a text link with no link.

I realize that you may have built things already in a way that is fundamentally not supportive of this, but I wonder about allowing both to coexist within one post?

I went through the topics and did not see a previous on on this, so I am curious what your current favorites are, from both a single player experience offline (no pvp or multiplayer mode) or MMORPG wise?

Bonus points for new MMORPGS and undervalued titles which are just fun and engaging to play. I have to have the ability to get up and walk away at a moments notice for work purposes, so pvp and requirements that I spend a lot of continuous time are hard to find in a fun game, even if I do not get called away like that for days at a time. I am into strategy more than FPS, but all are welcome!

Okay, it's been a little while since the last speedart thread, but I think we are ready for another one! All the same rules apply.

Remember, the purpose of this thread is not necessarily to create a masterpiece, but to encourage people to dedicate some time each week to improve their art as well as providing critique and support. Thus this thread is open to all either as constructive critics and/or artists!

There is no official theme, but if you are looking for inspiration checkout this month's Pictures of the Day over at Wikipedia Commons.

Now grab your materials, set a timelimit, and get creative!

I'm currently in a "how can I improve and refocus" and wanted to see what this group thinks since either seems we have some pretty thoughtful and techy people here.

I have toyed around for years with different techniques. I got really into GTD and used several apps focused on that even writing my own JavaScript app to use with Google sheets.

I've used spreadsheets, OneNote, Wunderlist, plain text files.

What do you use to keep your tasks moving forward and how do you use these tools to manage your tasks and get work done? I found spreadsheets are nice because you can do a lot of scratch work but it's hard to "check them off' but many "check them off" tools don't give you a lot of scratch workspace. OneNote is cool but I can't stand the Microsoft environment and it doesn't seem to give a lot of indication how best to use the tool. Maybe I should do a training....

When I was younger I would spend hours reading books, Wikipedia articles, magazines, and news articles. I loved to read and do nothing else.

But I've found that I now have much more trouble starting and continuing to read. My eyes almost completely glaze over most pieces of text, and I almost have an aversion to focus on reading. I still enjoy reading, but ever since I've entered the world of video games, Youtube videos, and social media, I've read less and less. I don't want to say that these things are bad, but definitely easier to get into and to "enjoy".

I still read, and continue to amass a large list of things to read, but it's been harder than it used to be to do so and to get something of substance out of it.

Have you ever wondered how little of a difference of input lag you can perceive? With this tool, you can find out.

The screen is split into two halves, and one of them has an artificial amount of input lag (default 50 ms, you can change it) added to the mouse cursor. Figure out which side feels laggier and click on it. After 25 trials, it will show your results. If you can consistently score at least 18/25 correct at a certain amount of lag, then you can probably perceive it. I can go as low as 20-25 ms on my 144 hz monitor.

Be sure to edit one of the files as shown here to disable v-sync, or if you trust me you can download my copy.

Guide can be found here

Right now, the guide assumes you aren't dual booting. This is because I've never really dual booted off a single HDD, so while I probably could include it in the guide, I don't feel comfortable without first testing the process.

This guide also sets you up with BTRFS, but you can still use ext4, just requires changing two lines.

I'm currently using 24 hour sort, and it's great, minus one thing - threads older than 24 hours just disappear. Perhaps a better implementation would be to keep the threads showing up underneath the <24 hour ones, but prevent them from being bumped up by new posts.

Example - if I go to ~comp right now, there are only 5 posts. Older ones, imo, should still be visible, just no longer bumping.

This week, two governments in Australia have taken steps towards negotiating treaties with the native Aboriginal people:

• Victorian Parliament votes on law to negotiate Australia's first Aboriginal treaty

• Indigenous treaty a step closer after Northern Territory government makes historic pledge

Meanwhile, one government says no:

• South Australia government decides not to go ahead with Aboriginal treaties

It's interesting that the two governments moving forwards are Labor Party governments, while the one that's stopping the process is a newly elected Liberal Party government. It's hard not to draw the conclusion that this is a politically partisan issue.

What's your go-to weekend dish? Whether it's a fried breakfast or eight hour smoked pork shoulder, what do you love to cook on the weekend?

Personally it's split between bacon and egg sandwiches on homemade bread; my chili recipe, loosely based on SeriousEats Best Ever Chili and potato, chorizo, and cabbage hash with a runny egg on top.

So it all begun as a [something]monkey script but I decided to give it a try to web extensions after several years of not touching it.

If you don't care about the yada yada, skip right at the bottom now.

Why

So the whole thing revolve around a simple concept: I'd like tildes to remain as lightweight as possible with a simple and clean interface and not too many user settings.
We don't know the full structure of the code yet but, by experience, frontend and backend require quite an effort to be kept in balance so that one or either don't becomes a mess.

From this idea, the next step has been quite obvious. Users that would like a more advanced frontend experience could just download an extension (probably an app for mobile once it becomes possible).

What

Right now the extension does some simple things. It is basically just a porting of the script I made some time ago so you'll get non-tildes link in a new tab and a button to jump to new comments in a topic you already visited.
The extension don't retain any user data. it doesn't care who you are or what you browse. If you're unsure you can check the source code (below).

Future Goals

The immediate priority is to create a "settings" page so you can customize how the features should behave. As an example, about the links in new tab, letting you decide which kind of links should behave like this: all / comment's / text submission's / etc etc. I'm still thinking which are reasonable use-case

After that, I want to try and implement a user's labelling system and that is the reason for the app already requesting access to storage data on the browser. I've yet to figure it out but the gist of it is that I'll store something like username:tag duplet in your browser localstorage and on load of a page, check for usernames match and add the label you choose.

Additional Notes

I know the code is dirty. As I said, I didn't touch extensions since... I think more than 6 years ago. Maybe more.
On top of that, I went for jquery and am more of a modern framework JS developer with a strong preference and background as backend developer, so... you know.
I still think I'll stick to jquery because the syntax is quite clear and I want even non-technical people to be able to understand what's going on in the code if they want to double check.

If you want to contribute you're more than welcome but keep in mind that most basic things are still missing. To mention just a couple:

• settings page
• proper isolation of content scripts
• guidelines or at least a sample to use to implement new features

if you have any resource that you used to build something similar (web extension or the like) please share them as I've a goddamn long commute every day and have time to read :)

Links

• Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tildes-extended/
• Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tildes-extended/dinimcigfnjcblajimodbacmbknmicgl/related
• Source: https://github.com/theCrius/tildes-extended

It should work on any fork of Chrome as well.
I can't assure the same for future development.

Current features:

• Link in new tabs management
• Button to jump to new comments in topics
• Add custom CSS from external URL
• Markdown Preview
• Add User's labels

Link: https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

Full Text:

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
by John Perry Barlow

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland
February 8, 1996

For the last couple of days I've been visiting the site several times a day and leaving after 10 minutes or so.

It's not that the site is bad or the discussion isn't good, but there's been a big lack of discussion I'm interested in. I don't like to take place in discussion of politics, or religion, or LGBT, or whatever. For me, the forums always were a place to meet new people to talk to, without it being a date or making friends or anything, just a friendly talk. Not that there shouldn't be a place for talking about world problems, but I get much more enjoyment from small issues or just getting to know other people.

Which is why I haven't been very active here for the last couple of days. There is all this LGBT talk and Trump and catastrophes. Even in the ~talk, there are 'Homosexual marriage legal or illegal?', 'Do you think school uniforms should be in all American/Canadian schools?', 'It's a Piece of Cake to Bake a Pretty Cake: LGBT+ Discrimination'. There is a fair share of smaller conversations, but they are mostly things I'm not interested in: 'What's your favorite documentary?, 'Advice- Best Tablets for Interactive Training' ― or things I don't know enough about to discuss, like 'How to gauge the degree of someone's self-awareness?'. This leaves very few posts I'm interested in, and I can hardly engage there because everything I could've said has already been said before I saw it.

Everything above is why I was mostly active in my own posts when I first joined as well. And I wanted to create this post to express this frustration(?) with lack of content, and I'm sure a lot of other lurkers will agree with me on that (whether or not they have different interests) ― I'm writing this post for them, too. I have no idea how you'd fix this problem or if it's even fixable, but I think it's important to state it so more active people can notice and so I have someplace to be active on ~.

So, it might just be that I'm older and notice these things more, but it really seems to me that fan groups are becoming more and more toxic overall. It feels like over the past 5-8 years specifically fanbases are reaching toxic levels faster and faster.

I remember when bronies became a thing, it took them like 3-4 years before the dangerous, threatening, and assholeish behavior really began to become common. Then Steven Universe came out and it only took them like 2 years to start sending death threats to people who didn't support their head-cannons. Rick and Morty went toxic in under a year and a half.

Then there's the shit in long-running franchises. Star Wars has had multiple of the actors shutting off social media from the toxic bile being shot at them. Chris Pratt is getting hate for what Star Lord did in Infinity War.

There's memes too, weirdly enough. Calarts is the biggest example I can think of. People made a dumb joke about how all the cartoons look a like today and someone pointed out how a few of the artists went to this one school in California and it became a catch all term for the shitty artstyle, and then within like 4 weeks the school has to go into lockdown because someone made a tongue-in-cheek threat of shooting the school up. A few years ago trolling attempts would be things like ordering a bunch of pizzas to the school or something annoying and dickish but overall harmless like that.

I know toxicity amongst fanbases has always been a thing, but it really seems to me that they're reaching unseen levels and doing so faster and faster. I mean Rick and Morty fans rioted over fucking dipping sauce, there are the aforementioned Steven Universe death threats, the directed attacks of actors on social media, fucking joking about shooting schools up because you don't like the art-style a few of their graduates used in a time where we've seen like 6 school shootings in half a year, there was that whole Voltron incident where a fan stole storyboards or something and threatened to release them to the public unless the creators of the show made their favorite gay ship a thing.

I guess what I'm getting at is what the fuck is happening that's poisoning every single community online? It's like everything has suddenly devolved into Youtube comments. How did we get to this level of toxicity? Or am I just more aware of this shit now and it's not really all that different from how it used to be?

                                                              Book Plot: Spoilers

The book opens by introducing the gunslinger, Roland Deschain, who is on a journey to find the Man in Black. As he ventures across the desert with his mule, he meets a farmer who goes by the name of Brown with his crow, Zoltan. The gunslinger begins to tell of the time he spent in the town of Tull. When Roland first comes to Tull, he missed the Man in Black possibly by a week. It is later revealed to Roland by the barmaid, Alice, that during his stay the Man in Black brought a dead weed eater by the name of Nort back to life. Roland makes Sylvia reveal to him that she is pregnant with the Man in Black's child (more importantly the child of the Crimson King). Roland uses his gun and rips the unborn monstrosity out of Sylvia. Outraged, Sylvia convinces the entire town of Tull that Roland is the spawn of the devil. Roland guns down the entire town of Tull: men, women, children, and even his lover, Alice. The story refocuses on Roland at the dwelling of Brown. Roland goes to sleep and wakes up to Brown telling him that his mule died of heat exhaustion and wonders if he can eat it. Roland leaves on foot to continue his pursuit of the Man in Black.

As his journey continues, Roland happens upon a way station and sees someone there in the distance. Roland believes this to be the Man in Black, but finds out it is a young boy by the name of Jake Chambers. Roland is near death when he arrives at the way station and Jake brings him jerky and water from an atomic slug water pump. Jake tells Roland that the Man in Black passed by a few days before. The way Jake talks reveals that he is not from Roland's world. Roland asks Jake about where he came from, but Jake cannot remember anything. Roland proceeds to hypnotize Jake and learn about where he came from.

Jake reveals to Roland that he is from New York and was on his way to school when a man dressed like a priest snuck up on him and pushed him into the street. Roland believes this man to be the Man in Black. Jake is then hit by a car and dies, but not before the priest approaches him and blesses him.

As they prepare to leave, Roland goes down to the cellar and encounters a demon speaking to him from a hole in the wall. After their palaver, Roland reaches into the hole and pulls out a jawbone. They then depart from the way station, and eventually make their way out of the desert into somewhat more welcoming lands. Roland awakes in the middle of the night to find Jake gone. Roland tracks down Jake and finds him about to be taken by the Oracle of the mountains. Roland uses the jawbone to lure the Oracle away from Jake. He then gives Jake the jawbone to concentrate on while he is gone and couples with the oracle himself in order to learn of his fate and path to the Dark Tower. Once Roland returns, Jake discards the jawbone. Come morning, they continue their trek to the mountains.

Along the trek Roland tells Jake a bit about his past. He tells of Hax, the cook, who was hanged for being an aid to the enemy. Hax was to poison the town of Farson/Taunton. Roland and his friend Cuthbert overhear the plot and alert their fathers of the traitor. Hax is hanged and the boys are allowed to watch with permission from their fathers.

Roland also reveals how he became a gunslinger at the age of 14. As he is walking home, his father's advisor Marten Broadcloak calls Roland to see his mother, Gabrielle, in Marten's bed covering her shame. Angry, Roland charges off to challenge Cort so he may receive his guns. He defeats Cort with the use of his hawk, David.

Roland and Jake soon come to the mountains and enter a series of tunnels under the mountains riding on a mine cart. On their journey, they are attacked by a group of Slow Mutants. Roland battles the Slow Mutants and they move along without the mine cart. They eventually come upon the exit from the tunnels. Jake trips and is left dangling from the tracks. As Roland tries to help him, the Man in Black appears and tells Roland that if he saves the boy then he will never catch him. Roland decides to let Jake fall; Jake knows this and spouts, "Go then. There are other worlds than these." Jake then falls to his death as Roland goes to talk with the Man in Black.

They meet in a golgotha and palaver. The Man in Black reads Roland's fate from Tarot cards. Roland's fate includes The Sailor, The Prisoner, The Lady of Shadows, death, life (which the Man in Black burns), and the Tower at the center of everything. The Man in Black tells Roland he is only a pawn for Roland's true enemy who now controls the Tower itself. The Man in Black tries to convince Roland to give up on his quest by creating a representation of the universe and showing him how insignificant he is. Roland refuses and is forced into sleep. When he awakens, ten years have passed and there is a skeleton next to him, which he believes to be the Man in Black. Roland departs from the Golgotha and sits at the edge of the Western Sea contemplating the next step in his quest for the Dark Tower.

Currently the subscribed groups list is only shown in the sidebar of the index page, but given that the sidebar isn't currently used for much else and doesn't take up much vertical space, it would be nice to have the group list persisted across at least the individual groups if not threads themselves, to make navigation easier without having to go back to the top level to check a different group.

I would love to hear about stuff you are interested in. Do you have a hobby you really, really love? Is there a subject you could talk about for hours? Something you tend to rant/rave on about even though you're pretty sure everyone around you has had enough of the subject? Please share it here, and don't worry about going on for too long - I love to hear people talk about stuff they are passionate about and I'm sure others do too!

So I've been really excited about this page, but lately I keep coming here, glancing at the front page, and then leaving. I think it's in part the minimalist design and the way the colour of the clicked links is very similar to the colour of the unclicked ones, making it unclear at a first glance which threads one has visited already.

Since the pace of debate is moving much slower than on Reddit here (which I think is a good thing), it would be very useful to have some kind of a 'my discussions' page that you could save threads to - either threads you are participating in or just threads you are excited to see the responses to. This would make it much easier for users to return to interesting discussions without having to browse around ~ for ages trying to find that one interesting topic.