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?

Background: I started daily driving Linux (specifically Mint) several months ago and for the most part it's been great. Some weird hiccups occasionally but nothing I can't handle/deal with. When doing my research to set the system up for the first time, I decided to go with 30GB for the / partition and ~220GB for the /home partition (the other half of the drive is for Windows 11 and the various essential tiny partitions). For a while this seemed to be fine, but lately I've been starting to get warnings when performing software updates via the Update Manager that the / partition is running out of space. I think it peaked at maybe 90-95% full a few weeks ago, at which point I started doing some research and cleaning up a bit (apt autoremove, deleting old logs and kernels, etc). I was able to claw back ~4GB and kick the can down the road, but now the warnings have returned and I'd like to handle this properly. I'm working from the assumption that I simply made the / partition too small and intend to double it by giving it some of the Windows space.

My question: How do I know if this is expected or if I've been doing something wrong? Is 30GB indeed too small on modern Mint, or should that have been enough? I know it partially depends on what all I actually do with the computer, but I really don't have very many applications installed (aside from defaults of course) and only four of them are Flatpaks, which I read tend to be larger. If it helps, the Disk Usage Analyzer reports that within /, /usr is taking up 13.2GB (55%), /var accounts for 9.1GB (38%), /opt is 1GB (4%), and everything else is <1% each.

Thanks in advance!

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Welcome to the 2025 NFL Season Weekly Discussion Thread! 🏈

Share your thoughts on Week 1 — wins, losses, fantasy fumbles, predictions, or anything else football-related.

I’ll post these each Tuesday after the games wrap up to keep discussion going. Feel free to start your own threads if something deserves more focus!

Inspired by https://tildes.net/~life/1q0v/what_is_a_business_org_thats_so_terrible_no_one_should_use_if_possible

If you're finding it hard to come up with something, remember that medium, small, and local businesses do exist ;)

Also, good deeds are not enough; their product must be awesome too!

If at all possible, let's keep this positive!

I add hot sauce to nearly everything savory that I eat, but I've never really had a go-to brand. Usually I've got a ton of tiny no-name-brand bottles around from various gift baskets that my wife or her family got me as christmas or birthday gifts, or my wife will pick up random stuff she finds on sale when grocery shopping. But those are pretty hit-or-miss whether they're actually any good or not, and I crave consistency, so I've decided that I want to find a good all-round sauce (or perhaps a brand of sauce with a few variants), ideally something I can purchase a decent quantity of at a time, either online (direct from the company or Amazon or whatever) or reliably from a grocery store, and just replenish whenever my reserves start to get low. Ideally something that won't break the bank, too, considering I go through it at a decent pace.

I like the taste of Frank's, but I'd rate its heat at a 0.5 and I'm looking for something at least 7 or 8 (or higher). I've tried Tobasco and it's pretty mid on all aspects (and way too watery). I really dislike the flavor of Sriracha--it hits me completely wrong for some reason. I recently tried some Cholula extra hot and its heat is acceptable, flavor-wise nothing amazing but right now based on price/availability it's my top contender. I know there are better sauces out there, and brands that I've either forgotten or never even heard of because I'm not a connoisseur and never really paid much attention, and I don't have the vocabulary to really speak to what I'm looking for flavor-profile-wise, so my question is basically the title: What's your go-to hot sauce? Not necessarily your favorite, but the default you'll happily reach for regardless of what you're putting it on and that you've always got stocked?

edit--Too many responses to reply individually, but thank you all for all of the suggestions! I definitely plan on checking several of the new-to-me sauces out in the coming weeks.

What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.

I feel like basically every time I debate any kind of topic (doesn't even have to be controversial, like politics, but of course there it's more common) with people where the participants don't all agree never actually leads to any conclusion where one of the participants would actually change their mind. No matter how the debate goes. No matter whether there is some irrefutable evidence that disproves what one of the participants believes, or if their position is illogical, or basically anything. I feel like people just become entrenched in defending their side, usually the debate starts going in circles, until someone just walks away from the debate or the topic gets changed.

I don't really like this, it just feels like wasted time... I'd rather if when people actually discuss topics that they'd come to reasonable conclusions that make more sense, make the world better, are better supported by evidence etc. I guess it can be considered to be fun, though I don't really feel it is very fun and instead it just frustrates me. But I guess "debate" is often being done basically fully as entertainment, just look at how big channels like Jubilee are getting on Youtube for example, though I kind of hate it.

Is there a better way to steer "debates" into something more productive that can actually change peoples minds?

Here is the schedule for the upcoming year

Last week in August - Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut,

Last week in September - Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Last week in October - The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine by Deborah Blum,

Last week in November - We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor,

December break for the holidays.

Last week in January - Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen,

Last week in February - The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Last week in March - The Metamorphosis by Kafka,

Last week in April - The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See,

Last week in May - Pnin by Nabokov,

Last week in June - How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Wexler,

Last week in July - A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers,

Last week in August - Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Last week in September - Dr. No by Ian Fleming

I've been having a difficult time recently, which has been leading to my absence here and a lot of crying in my real life. I don't deal with letting go too well. I keep texts and pictures and messages and every once in a while I like to look back at them and remember that somebody out there at one point was capable of loving me.

It's not like I don't have friends that love me either, I've spent days and days at other people's houses just crying, people have taken me out to eat and cry and just feel my feelings, and people have been reminding me about the things they like about me too. I mentioned it to a friend that I've been having trouble letting go and we dug into it a bit more, about why I want to keep these things. My friend asks why I need the love to come from other people first. Where is the self love?

My core issue has always been needing to be reminded that I am loved. It's really silly sometimes, because on some level I know that I am. But something is missing.

There's an old saying that we judge other people by their actions and ourselves by our intentions. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just a bad person. Or if I think I am. Because if I didn't have that, why would I have such a hard time forgiving myself?

I don't really know how to self love, to be honest. I spent all day today barely working, just mindlessly staring at a screen playing a stupid game and not leaving the house. I dunno. Maybe I just need some ideas. I set up a couple more appointments with my therapist this week, but sometimes when it's 2 in the morning like it is now I just can't sleep and spend more time hurting myself in my own head.

Sorry to be picky, but it's hard for me to find games I enjoy - and part of that is I don't really know where to look.

I'm a fan of games with no/skippable story, no/limited exploration, no/limited unlocks, no/limited power ups - but high in strategy and/or skill based games that are pretty simple while still giving depth to it (aka something that can be picked up and put down without issue, eg picking right back off where you were after not playing for months). Online is okay but no login bonus/requirements and something that can be played at ones own pace.

I think what I'm looking for and what I'm NOT looking for would be easiest by giving examples:

One of the big things that makes me asks this is that I find collectible card games (eg Hearthstone, MTG, Marvel Snap) to really fit the mold that I'm looking for, but the toxic skinner box of their economy to not be worth having in ones life. I don't want "daily quests" to be something I worry about.

I found Slay The Spire to be okay, and have mostly been jamming Balatro as of late...but it's very annoying that basically all card games I can find now are basically Slay The Spire knockoffs. Going back to the "no/limited unlocks" and "no/limited power ups", that rouge-lite aspect to them really ruins the games to me - I get that there's the macro strategy about picking the power ups and what not, but it personally ruins the actual gameplay aspect to me and just feels too much "am I going to high roll or low roll?". Runetera's Path of Champions also fits this mold that, to me, was ruined by the power ups. I've heard good things about Monster Train, but the fact it gets compared to Slay The Spire has led me to skipping it.

To give an example of card games I enjoyed, Marvel's Midnight Suns I thought was quite fun. It was nice that you could completely ignore the story and RPG aspects of the game to solely focus on the card combat. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales has interested me since I've heard good things about Gwent, but since it's a Witcher game I don't know if that means it's mostly a story-based game and the gameplay is just a means to server the story. I've been enjoying the duet expansion of Wingspan and see that it has a video game counterpart, so that might be interesting to try out for single player (but I also don't want to get burnt out on the game to be able to continue to play the board game)

Autobattlers (which I basically consider deck builders) like Hearthstone's Battlegrounds I enjoy, outside of the fact that by being an online multiplayer game you have to give 100% focus on the game. I also quite dislike the constantly changing cards and what not with just how much information there is to the game (it's a big reason I haven't picked up other autobattlers like the League of Legends one). Are there any good offline autobattler-type games?

Going off card games for strategy games...I do enjoy simulation games like Civilization to an extent, but the "one more turn" aspect of them really hurts - very rarely do I want to go back to a campaign I've already started and have to re-figure out what my plans were. Something that is either a lot quicker of a loop or a lot easier to drop back in would be interesting to me though.

Tetris is probably one of the easiest games that fit the mold I'm looking for - strategy game that has very simple game play but a lot of depth to it. Shoutout to the old tetrisfriends.com website, though playing on it so much kind of burned me out from the game (definitely used to get the Tetris effect lol)

X-Com 2 has been of interest to me since I enjoyed the game studio's Midnight Suns as mentioned above, but it's been hard to get into the start of the game and it's not exactly the easiest to play on a Steam Deck. I do think I'd enjoy it though.

Going more skill-based group, Cuphead and Furi are two of my favorite games I've played in the last decade. I've definitely been leaning more strategy games though as I've gotten older, but still down for anything that is pure straight awesome gameplay without any other fluff like those two.

This post is probably getting long enough lol. But thank you for any suggestions/pointing in directions for me to look

September 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I know if I posted that on Reddit, all the top answers would be something like "Money"or "It lets me survive" but I'm looking for something deeper than that.

I'm a teacher and school just started where I lived and I realize how much freedom the job gives me. I can considerably modify how my day will go as long as the students learn the curriculum. I love that freedom.

I also love the human nature of it. I get to know and see 100 kids develop every year, plus, I teach juniors and I've had a lot of my last year students stop by me to say hello and talk about their summer or their current teachers. It's fun having all these random positive conversations every day.

I get to learn a lot about people and about me. I love that growth.

What about you?