Imgur appears to have geoblocked the UK. This is likely in response to the stupid Online Safety Act (brought in by the previous Conservative government) which requires age verification for "adult" content - not just porn, it's a bunch of other poorly defined other stuff too.

My guess, based on very little information because imgur don't appear to have said anything much officially at this point, is they've had a letter from Ofcom (UK telecoms standards agency) and decided an IP ban is easier than compliance and I totally understand their decision. But urgh.

I didn't have much stuff on there and it's all backed up but still. Annoying.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like late night, dark patterns and commingling. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was perturbed.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Hi! I'm looking for some fun and interesting casual puzzle games. Some of my favorites, in no particular order, are:

• Sudoku
• Nonogram - like the recent Every 5x5 Nonogram or Picross.
• Tetris - Apotris on GBA is great!
• A few from the Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
• Sokoban
• Catrap on Gameboy, a bit similar to Sokoban
• Dragonsweeper and Mamono Sweeper that people recommended here a while ago.
• Chip's Challenge - Lexy's Labyrinth is a browser-based reimplementation.

I've recently moved, so I have a new ISP and I've also switched to new network hardware. I've been pulling my hair out trying to understand why I keep getting 100% timeouts when connecting to a locally hosted website. To make it more complicated, it only happens when I’m on WiFi.

Hardware setup is:

ISP router/modem -> Ubiquity Cloud Gateway -> U7 Pro AP -> Laptop
                                           -> Webserver

The issue is opening https://foo.bar.baz:58443 when on WiFi. This domain points to my home (not really bar.baz, but you get the idea). There's is port forwarding rule to get to the local server. With tcpdump, I see the request coming in on that webserver, a SSL handshake is completed and then a bunch of TCP retransmissions.

Some observations:

• If the machine with the browser is connected to a cable and not WiFi, everything is fine, no timeouts.
• Opening https://192.168.1.123:58443 (webserver address) is fine (WiFi or wired).
• Opening https://10.0.1.123:58443 (gateway address) is fine (WiFi or wired).

I thought it would be MTU related, but haven’t had any luck with changing it to a lower size. I’m not positive I’ve done this correctly, though, so it may still be MTU related.

I know there are people here that know way more than I do about networking, so I hope somebody can point me in the right direction.

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'm info dumping some links about open-source robotics. The rabbit hole runs deep and this barely scratches the surface.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried any of these yet. Based on a cursory search and following links from the great Open-source robotics Wikipedia page.

Robotics simulation on Godot

• https://github.com/flynneva/godot_ros - Proof-of-concept integrating ROS2 (Robot Operating System) with Godot, for a 3D robot simulation environment. (Updated 8 months ago)

• https://github.com/nordstream3/Godot-4-ROS2-integration - A fork(?) of the above. The readme is clearer with visual examples of what it's meant for. (Updated 12 months ago)

• https://github.com/plaans/gobot-sim - A top-down 2D factory simulation of packages being processed by machines. (Updated 3 months ago)

• https://lab.nexedi.com/nexedi/godot-modbus-demo - Exposing a modbus interface to control simulated industrial components. (Updated 5 years ago.) Comes with a blog post which might be more recent (a year ago?).

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.18408 - "Exploring Flexible Scenario Generation in Godot Simulator" about generating simulated physical scenes for testing computer-controlled cars. Write-up only with no code. (Submitted 9 months ago)

Robotic car simulation on Unreal Engine and Unity

• https://github.com/carla-simulator/carla - "CARLA is an open-source simulator for autonomous driving research." They mostly target Unreal Engine. Regularly updated and popular with 13k stars on GitHub.

• https://github.com/microsoft/AirSim - Microsoft and IAMAI collaborated (plus DARPA funding?) to create an open source simulation platform for both flying drones and autonomous cars. Targets Unreal Engine and experimentally Unity also. Soon being sunset and replaced with a new project confusingly named "Project AirSim."

• https://github.com/iamaisim/ProjectAirSim - The successor to AirSim. The GitHub shows it's only at version 0.1.1 though.

Robot Operating System (ROS2)

• https://github.com/ros2/ros2

• https://docs.ros.org/en/kilted/Tutorials.html - Tutorials beginning with TurtleSim, a top-down 2D turtle scene where you control turtles. Looks like ROS2 uses familiar network messaging patterns like Publish-Subscribe.

• https://vimeo.com/osrfoundation/videos/sort:date - Presentation videos. Looks like the Open Robotics foundation just completed a developers' conference in Japan two days ago. The presentations from ROSCon JP are Japanese-language-only. Next one is coming very soon this October in Singapore.

How to get started?

That's a lot of links. I'd first figure out what I want to do. Humanoid robots seem popular lately—like the Berkeley 3d printed robot—so it'd be interesting to start there, although it doesn't map cleanly onto the projects I linked. So maybe if I imagined a robot with a human torso and arms, but with wheels and car-like locomotion. Then I could use a combination of the car simulators and probably ROS2 to deal with the upper body components? Or maybe there is another solution for the torso and arms that is a more direct fit than ROS2? Maybe iRobot/Roomba has a better solution for the car-like locomotion at this small scale?

Anyone used these before and have a story to share? Anyone curious to try one out and report back? I plan to, but no idea on my schedule.

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 4 — wins, losses, fantasy fumbles, predictions, or anything else football-related. Sorry for the delay posting today, I was away from a computer all day and just now have time to post this :)

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.

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?

Wondering if we have tilde fellows playing it. I’ve become addicted since last year and it’s fully taken over my regular board game nights… I’ve been storytelling and doing custom scripts and characters.

As someone who DM's a lot of short, casual sessions with rotating members, I burn through a lot of maps. I'd love to hear some of your recommendations for how you guys either find or create maps that suit your situations.

For me: r/battlemaps has some really high quality stuff and gets me 90% of the time. I usually type in a key word or two (e.g. bridge; throne room) and usually I'll find something that gets close to the mark.

I know that some have been using generative AI to delve into this space as well, so if anyone has any experience there, I'd love to hear it!

Schedule

There was a three-way tie for 5th, so instead of scheduling the next 6 months, I scheduled 7. Bonus month!

@CannibalisticApple will be hosting her nomination, The Last Express, for our first month. If you're interested in hosting a month, see the Hosting section below.

Also, I selfishly scheduled PlayStation WHAT? during the Backlog Burner so I can use those games in my Bingo Card. :D

For the rest, I tried to create variety in the schedule so that we weren't playing the same systems or genres back-to-back.

Discussion Topics

Each month will have two discussion topics:

• "Insert Cartridge" - 1st of the month
• "Remove Cartridge" - 20th of the month

Insert Cartridge topics are primarily for getting the game set up and running. Remove Cartridge topics are primarily for reflecting on the game once you've played it. However, the game itself and anything else related to it can be discussed in either one.

Hosting

Each month, the discussion topics will be posted by a different "host" who will act as the emcee for that month.

Hosting is not required, but it is encouraged that people host months for games that they are either already very familiar with or that they are strongly interested in playing.

People who nominated a game will be given preference for hosting, otherwise it will be given to whomever claims it first.

If you would like to host a month, let me know which one and I will add you to the schedule.

Before your month begins, I will send you a "Hosting Package" featuring templates that you can edit to your liking.

If no one claims a month, I will host it as a fallback.

Voting Results

The top 6 games from the voting round were chosen to be played.

Of the remaining games:

• The top 50% will advance to the next round. They will start the next round with a base score of 70% of their vote totals.
• The bottom 50% will be removed from the list.

Removed games will be able to be re-nominated in future rounds if someone chooses to do so.

Flames flicker as the once mighty Orient Express lies on its side in pieces, bodies in cartoonishly thuggish costumes scattered all around. After a long three days full of murder, deception, concerts and romance, its final journey has come to a fiery end.

From the inferno, a single figure emerges in a scorched trench coat, dark hair ruffled by the breeze. He brushes off the coat with one hand and smoothly extends the other, and a solid gold bird swoops down from the sky to perch on it. Red flames flicker along its wings and back, but his sleeve remains perfectly untouched.

He walks away from the burning wreckage, arm still outstretched with gleaming golden bird atop it. Sunglasses descend from the sky and land squarely on his nose. A second smaller pair studded with jewels descends and lands on the bird's beak, managing to somehow look cool instead of ridiculous.

“Time to kick some Nazi ass,” the man declares, and the bird caws.

The train explodes behind them and the air reverberates with a “Yeeeaaaahhhh!”

Note: the above scene may not be 100% accurate or canon.

So concludes the first leg of the Colossal Game Adventure!

We hope you enjoyed your time aboard The Last Express. For anyone who missed the initial boarding period... Well uh, luckily this game involves rewinding time, so you can just rewind here to the Insert Cartridge topic when the train was intact. Feel free to post there if you're just starting the game, or you can post here after finishing even if you're only finding these topics months later.

That said, presumably most of you boarded earlier and had a chance to play the game. As such, this post will not require spoilers to be hidden in dropdown blocks. So if you don't want to be spoiled, please adjust your clock and rewind to the previous post.

Use this post to share final thoughts and impressions, post fun little secrets or easter eggs you found, ask questions if you had to abort your playthrough for whatever reason, link video clips, discuss if you completed any of the meta challenges, etc. Or you can share and express admiration for the very nice official Colossal Game Adventure splash screen made by @Boojum which I meant to link last time on "Press Start", but accidentally pasted the wrong link. I have since fixed it, but that was two nights ago so you probably haven't seen it. And dang it this splash screen is too awesome to go unappreciated!!

Otherwise, we can consider this leg of the journey to be complete. That said, the adventure is only just beginning! Wouldn't be a Colossal Game Adventure with only one game, now would it? You can find the current schedule here. Our next destination will be Chrono Trigger with @ali stepping up as the next host. As for me, my time as conductor has come to an end and I will be joining you all as passengers.

If you intend to continue this journey, you can just grab your luggage from the—uh... *glances at the flaming wreckage* ...Well hey, it'll be a little easier to travel without all that extra weight, right?

Onwards to Chrono Trigger!

THE END

> CONTINUE?