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22 votes
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Humble Choice - January 2020
The second Humble Choice (the new version of Humble Monthly) is now available, with 12 choices for games this month: Middle-earth: Shadow of War Graveyard Keeper Two Point Hospital Dirt Rally 2.0...
The second Humble Choice (the new version of Humble Monthly) is now available, with 12 choices for games this month:
- Middle-earth: Shadow of War
- Graveyard Keeper
- Two Point Hospital
- Dirt Rally 2.0 (and 3 DLCs: H2 RWD Double Pack, Opel Manta 400, The Porsche 911 RGT)
- Street Fighter V
- Bad North: Jotunn Edition
- TrailMakers
- Unrailed!
- Whispers of a Machine
- Them's Fightin' Herds
- Mages of Mystralia
- GRIP (and 1 DLC: Artifex Car Pack)
Having 12 choices this month is fairly significant, since it means that even people on the grandfathered "Classic" plan aren't able to take all the games and have to miss two of them. It seemed to be a pretty common assumption that there would always be 10 choices so Classic members would always still get everything, but that obviously isn't necessarily true.
8 votes -
The empty promises of Marie Kondo and the craze for minimalism
20 votes -
Funk the Casbah! An Arab Funk Mix // Yas Queen Selectress • A selection of rare 60s, 70s and 80s songs from Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, and Algeria.
8 votes -
Why are some of the tags on title page displayed on 2nd row (next to Article), but some of them on the 3rd row (the old tag list)?
How does this work, why are some tags on separate line? Example: How big are the fires burning in eastern Australia? Interactive map ~news australia · Article: 207 words natural disasters...
How does this work, why are some tags on separate line?
How big are the fires burning in eastern Australia? Interactive map
~news australia · Article: 207 words
natural disasters bushfires
The australia tag is next to ~news, not in the tag list below.
4 votes -
How big are the fires burning in eastern Australia? Interactive map
16 votes -
What are futures?
3 votes -
Chris Morocco makes kale pesto pasta | From the Test Kitchen
6 votes -
Australian government deploys army reservists, third navy ship to support firefighters
7 votes -
Our neophobic, conservative AI overlords want everything to stay the same
11 votes -
What are you doing this weekend?
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend. If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't...
This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.
If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.
A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.
So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?
8 votes -
A quick fix—Getting a 787 back in the air after a diversion
8 votes -
Choosing a new printer
I'm thinking about getting a new printer. My needs are basically to print out textual documents 2-3 times per month from macOS. I don't need to print photos. I will not buy an inkjet because of...
I'm thinking about getting a new printer. My needs are basically to print out textual documents 2-3 times per month from macOS. I don't need to print photos. I will not buy an inkjet because of the outrageous price of the ink. I would like to have fax support (my spouse sees a lot of doctors and they still use fax machines a lot, and we're not comfortable sending personal medical info via a fax service on the web), and it would be nice if we could also scan documents. So I'm thinking a multi-function device.
We currently have a Brother 7840W MFC with print, fax, copy, and scan. It's over 10 years old (maybe 15?) and I dislike it. It's been slowly losing functionality over the past 5+ years. The WiFi went out, but I was able to connect it via wired ethernet to a computer and share it from there. The drivers insist that there's a paper jam, but there isn't and it prints just fine (but sounds like some of the internal mechanical components are going to die any day now.) The UI of the printer is awful. I recall having to use the phone pad to enter my WiFi password, and it was like texting on a Motorola StarTAC. (Like if you want the letter "C" press the number "2" three times, etc.) The drivers and related software don't work like normal macOS software. (Disclosure: I also once wrote a scanner driver for Brother and it was horrible, but they shipped it, so I'm not real comfortable putting their software on my computer. But that was 25 years ago, so maybe they're better now?)
I've heard horrible things about the drivers and software of most other major printer makers - HP, Epson, Lexmark, etc. I'm guessing what I'm looking for doesn't exist, but I just want a multi-function device in as small a package as is reasonable, and with a UI on the device and software that doesn't suck and that won't die on me in < 5 years. Does such a thing exist?
17 votes -
Purchasing an astrophotography mount
I do some astrophotography for fun in my spare time. I'd like to get into doing deep sky photography. In order to do that, I need a moving mount that can keep the camera aligned with the stars for...
I do some astrophotography for fun in my spare time. I'd like to get into doing deep sky photography. In order to do that, I need a moving mount that can keep the camera aligned with the stars for minutes to hours at a time. I'll be using (at least initially) a Canon 7D (original version) with Canon lenses rather than a telescope. I currently have a 200mm lens with 2x extender, which makes it 600mm equivalent on that body.
I'd like to know if others here have ever done this and what type of hardware they've used for the motor and mount? Prices seem to be all over the place and options vary greatly on different devices. For example, I see the following:
Sky-watcher EQM-35 - $623.00US - Seems pretty full-featured for the price, as it includes tripod, motorized mount, alignment scope, and database of astronomical objects.
Celestron Advanced VX Computerized Mount - $899.00US - Seems very similar to the above, but does not include a scope, but is ~$250 more
Orion AstroView EQ Mount & EQ-3M Motor Drive Kit - $269.99US - Like the first one, but without the scope and holds less weight, and no database of objects to look atI get the difference in price between the first and last, but not the middle one.
In any event, curious if anyone has used any of the above or any others and what their thoughts are on the quality of different brands, and anything I should be looking for or avoiding.
7 votes -
SpaceX drawing up plans for mobile gantry at launch pad 39A in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to vertically integrate U.S. spy satellites before launch
5 votes -
The $250 trillion burden weighing on the global economy in 2020
9 votes -
New year, new policy: Seattle Public Library no longer charging late fees
12 votes -
United Methodist Church announces plan to split over gay marriage, LGBTQ clergy
17 votes -
I need to talk about The Witcher!
I just watched the first episode and it's amazing how they got everything right! The fight choreographies capture the nuance of Geralt's dance, mixing magic with strength in a compelling and...
I just watched the first episode and it's amazing how they got everything right! The fight choreographies capture the nuance of Geralt's dance, mixing magic with strength in a compelling and original way. They clearly took a lot of inspiration from the game, and in this case that is not a bad thing. The music is subtle and authentic, and the production is beautiful in all aspects: Netflix clearly spared no expenses. Henry Cavill is a superb Geralt. His voice is a lot like in the game: seasoned, dry and petulant. The story is extremely faithful to the book, and the small deviations only enhance the narrative. Unlike the first book, which is entirely episode, this show starts a lot more epic and serialized. A demand of the media. As a fan of the universe, I'm impressed. It is very rare to encounter an adaptation that respects the source material while having a life of its own.
26 votes -
His World - Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
4 votes -
What have you been listening to this week?
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as...
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)
Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.
You can make a chart if you use last.fm:
http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/
Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.
7 votes -
Google Chrome: Behind the Open Source Browser Project (2008)
6 votes -
Denser housing is gaining traction on America’s east coast
9 votes -
Fitness Weekly Discussion
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started...
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
5 votes -
Uptime 15,364 days - The Computers of Voyager
6 votes -
What have you done in the last ten years?
Asked in the spirit of the new decade. I am 14, so mostly growing up and realizing that the world is probably going to enter a recession when I reach adulthood which will suck for reaching...
Asked in the spirit of the new decade.
I am 14, so mostly growing up and realizing that the world is probably going to enter a recession when I reach adulthood which will suck for reaching financial independence.
Going through puberty, even if it's just the beginning of it and seeing one of my cats die from kidney failure and hearing that my grandma died from cancer, which is very sad :(
27 votes -
Which emoji scissors close
38 votes -
L.I.E.S Records: Various Artists - Eminent Domain
5 votes -
The Beatles - by Peter Sellers
A Hard Day's Night She Loves You (there's four different versions) Can't Buy Me Love Help Background info
6 votes -
Australian navy begins evacuation of beach where thousands had sought refuge from fire
17 votes -
Don Larsen, New York Yankee who pitched only perfect game in World Series history, dies at 90
6 votes -
How do you explain tech topics when your audience doesn't understand the details?
Hive mind: What advice would you give to someone who has to give a presentation to a non-technical person, and it's important that the listener actually understand the details? How do you go about...
Hive mind: What advice would you give to someone who has to give a presentation to a non-technical person, and it's important that the listener actually understand the details?
How do you go about it? Specific tips appreciated. Pretend it's for a friend you care about.
(This is for an article. Ideally we could refer to you by reference for context and credibility, eg "an IT security pro at a midwest insurance company" or "aerospace engineer" so please give some kind of identification to use).
12 votes -
On privacy versus freedom
9 votes -
Ask Tildes: Design practices for retrieving dozens (or hundreds) of related records over a RESTful API
I'm looking for some feedback on a feasible mechanism for structuring a few API endpoints where a purely RFC-spec compliant REST API wouldn't suffice. I have an endpoint which returns $child...
I'm looking for some feedback on a feasible mechanism for structuring a few API endpoints where a purely RFC-spec compliant REST API wouldn't suffice.
I have an endpoint which returns $child entries for a $parent resource, let's call it:
/api/parent/:parentId/children
. There could be anywhere from a dozen to several hundred children returned from this call. From here, achild
entity is related to a singleuserOrganization
, which itself is a pivoting entity on a singleuser
. The relationship between achild
anduser
is not strictly transitive, but can eachchild
only has oneuserOrganization
which only has oneuser
, so it is trivial to reach auser
from achild
resource.Given this, the data I need for the particular request involves retrieving all
user
's for aparent
. The obvious, and incorrect solution to the problem is to make the request mentioned above, and then iterate through and make an API request to retrieve eachuser
. This is less than very good as this would obviously be up to several hundred API calls.There's a few more scalable solutions that could solve this problem, so any input on these ideas is great; but if you have a better proposal that also works, I'm keen to explore that!
Include
user
relationships in the call by default.This certainly does solve the problem, but it's also pumping down a load of data I don't necessarily need. This would probably 2x the amount of bytes travelling along the wire, and in 8 out of 10 calls, that extra data isn't needed.
Have a separate
/api/parent/:parentId/users
call.Another option that partially solves the issue: I need data from both the
child
and theuser
to format this view, so I'd still need to make the initial call I documented earlier. Semantically, it feels a bit odd to have this as a resource because I don't consider auser
to be nested under aparent
in terms of database topology.Keep the original call, but add a query parameter to fetch the extra data
This comes across as the 'least worst' idea objectively, in terms of flexibility and design. Through the addition of the query parameter, you could optionally retrieve the relationship's data. This seems brittle and doesn't scale well to other endpoints where it could be useful though.
Utilize a Stripe
expands
-style query parameter.Stripe implements the ability to retrieve all related records from an API endpoint by specifying the relations as strings. This is essentially the same as the above answer, but is scaled to all available API endpoints. I love this idea, but implementing it in a secure way seems fraught with disaster. For example, this is a multi-tenancied application, and it would be trivial to request
userOrganization.user.organizations.users
. This would retrieve all other organisations for the user, and their users! This is because my implementation ofexpands
simply utilises the ORM of my choice to perform a database join, and of course the database has no knowledge about application tenancy!
Now, I do realise this problem could easily be solved by implementing a GraphQL API server, which I have done in the past, but unfortunately time and workload constraints dictate implementing a GraphQL-based solution is infeasible. As much as I like GraphQL, I'm not as proficient in that area as compared to implementing high quality traditional APIs, and the applications I'm working on at the moment are focusing on choosing boring technology, and not using excessive innovation tokens.
Furthermore, I do consider the conceptuals around REST APIs to be more of an aspirational sliding scale, rather than a well defined physical entity, because let's face it, the majority of popular APIs today aren't REST-compliant, even Stripe's isn't, and it's usually both financially healthier and feature-rich to choose a development path that results in a rough product that can be refined later, than aiming for a perfect initial release. All this said, I don't mind proposals or solutions to my problem that are "good enough". As long as they aren't too hacky! :)
10 votes -
How to best utilise 5k GBP
Hey everyone, as a goal for this coming year I’d like to better put to use the small amount of savings I have. My first idea is: 3k emergency fund in a NS&I Government insured account. 2k in a...
Hey everyone, as a goal for this coming year I’d like to better put to use the small amount of savings I have.
My first idea is:
- 3k emergency fund in a NS&I Government insured account.
- 2k in a Vanguard index fund.
A few questions:
-
Is this sort of setup the best use for such a sum?
-
If so, with the impending brexit, does it makes sense to move the money out of the U.K?
-
Is there much maintenance with an index fund or is it sufficient to let the money sit? I’m aware anything of this nature is essentially a gamble.
-
How do you calculate a worthwhile amount to invest considering the on-running service costs?
-
Does anyone have experience with ethical index funds? If so which? And how have they performed for you?
Any help is most appreciated.
11 votes -
Sweden dodged a bullet by not building this nuclear submarine – the reactor had an insufficient amount of nuclear shielding
5 votes -
We regret these errors: Mistakes were made at The Stranger in 2019
7 votes -
Earth is missing a huge part of its crust. Now we may know why.
15 votes -
Flammekueche
11 votes -
California's new employment law is starting to crush freelancers
5 votes -
Top Movies of the 2010s
The end of the year has me in a movie-watching mood and I want to add the best of the best into my queue for the next few weeks. Similar to games of the decades, what are your movies of the...
The end of the year has me in a movie-watching mood and I want to add the best of the best into my queue for the next few weeks. Similar to games of the decades, what are your movies of the decades and why?
22 votes -
How a Chase Bank chairman helped the deposed shah of Iran enter the US
5 votes -
I'm not feeling the async pressure
5 votes -
Common gas market for Finland, Estonia and Latvia launches following the completion of the Balticonnector pipeline last month
3 votes -
Pagal Records: Awara Sound - Disco Erc (2020)
3 votes -
Don't trust online reviews (personal anecdote)
I recently bought a product online. I wasn't able to find it in a bricks-and-mortar shop, so I had to buy it online to even see it, let alone try it. I received it, and it wasn't right for me. I...
I recently bought a product online. I wasn't able to find it in a bricks-and-mortar shop, so I had to buy it online to even see it, let alone try it. I received it, and it wasn't right for me. I was able to exchange it for a different version, but even the different version wasn't right. So I returned the product and got a refund. All along, the customer service was excellent, but the product itself turned out not to be what I wanted.
The way the product failed for me was connected to the "headline" description of the product. It wasn't a minor failure. It did something that they explicitly said it wouldn't do, which was one of the main selling features of the product.
After the dust settled, I wrote a review of the product. I don't normally do this: I neither write nor read reviews. However, I know that other people do rely on reviews and, seeing as this product is only available online, and its failure was linked to a major selling feature of the product, I felt duty-bound to inform other prospective buyers that it might not suit some people. I gave it a 2-star (out of 5) rating, as well as writing up why it didn't suit me (while allowing that it might still suit other people).
Since I submitted the review, I have checked the website (I'm an egotist: I wanted to see my words being published!). Other reviews with more recent timestamps have appeared, but my review has not appeared. I've now noticed that the lowest rating in their reviews is a single 3-star rating, with some 4-star reviews and lots of 5-star reviews. There are no 2-star or 1-star reviews. My only conclusion is that the company selects which reviews to publish - and which ones not to publish.
I've always wondered if companies would post negative reviews of their own products. Now I know for sure that at least one company does not.
18 votes -
Project-Specific Programming Suggestions for Newbie
8 votes -
Residents in 24 states and Washington, D.C. will see a minimum wage increase in 2020. The increases range from $0.10 per hour—in Florida—to $1.50 per hour.
7 votes -
Mansplaining convention coming to Orlando promises to 'Make Women Great Again'
16 votes -
What are lost continents, and why are we discovering so many?
8 votes