I'm reading a book right now that I am finding fascinating, but I don't want to forget the thoughts and ideas presented in each chapter by the end. I was wondering what you all do when reading books like this. In college, I would usually jot down a few notes on the chapter I was reading, but I always found the act of interrupting my reading to write to be very disruptive.

• Do you take notes and highlight directly in the book, or use another notebook or software?
• Do you take notes as you go, or wait until the end of a chapter or section?

I want to arrive at a system that works well for me, so I'm looking for suggestions here.

My in-laws are wanting to do a distance game night soon where we meet up and play some party games together while on video chat from our separate locations. I think it's a wonderful idea, but I'm also not sure what games we can play? Anyone have any ideas for some good, casual fun (think stuff like Pictionary/Charades) to be had via video chat, and how we can best set things up? Are there any good tools/websites that will help us out?

Also feel free to make suggestions that aren't necessarily applicable to my situation but still work for the question as a whole (e.g. a D&D campaign). I want this to be a resource for everyone, not just me.

This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

I live in the UK and Channel 4 got the rights to Seinfeld. I never saw them before, so I'm watching them all now.

It's weird, because people make (still!) a lot of noise about the show, and so far (although I'm only 5 episodes in) I don't get it.

I had a similar experience when I re-watched Allie McBeal -- I enjoyed it the first time around, but the second time it just felt tedious.

I watched Lost a long time after that finished, and I mostly enjoyed it, and I could understand why at the time it was so popular.

So, I was wondering, have you watched any of the zeitgeisty shows long after the buzz died down, and what did you think of them?

I personally see:

• The enaction of the progressive policies that have been continuosly amplified over the last 5 years during the election of Bernie or Warren (in the US, be it after 2020 or 2024)

• Increasing regulation of the Internet (be it the breakup of tech conglomerates, increased pressure by VC investors for the companies in the red to turn a profit or more surveillance by 3-letter agencies in bad faith)

• Increased tension between the US and China as China becomes increasingly more powerful especially over tech companies

• A recession which throws the item in the top 15 years down the line.

• Automation and AI begin to become more pressing issues during the next depression, leading to people taking candidates like Yang more seriously.

• "Apophis 2029 is gonna hit the earth." "Finally."

Edit: Ok, here's some non-political predictions:

• Mojang runs out of already existing biomes and dimensions to overhaul in minecraft, so they'll shift their development focus to adding more unique biomes, worldgen and mechanical depth and maybe some sort of progression to the game (more complex combat, more dimensions, more bossfights, more mobs like the iron golem with better attacks, more Redstone components, more unique worldgen). By the time this happens, hytale will already be a big competitor and great at al this, causing high controversy that Microsoft is stealing their ideas.

• This also applies to mobile phone makers as they get rid of all notches, bezels and ports and so they either focus on specs and battery life and nirvana is supposedly achieved at 1600$ per phone, in making the phones as cheap as possible , which makes people get mad about the working conditions of the laborers or in even more exclusive wearables like now.

• A new manned moon landing, finally. This time the whole journey will be streamed live on an 8k camera via starlink.

• The (further) normalization of anime, similar to what happened to gaming this decade. More people from more different backgrounds will be watching anime, and they will be less focused on self-depreciation because of it. They will watch anime in public, and will demand more and better anime from the production teams in Japan. The more diverse audience will mean that fanservice will be gradually less effective and non-tanned black characters will appear way more often (and someone will lose their shit over it).

• HN finally comes up with a site redesign, mainly to make it clearer which threads are which. The new design is similar to Tilde's now and HN usage grows 3-fold.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

Sorry for the low effort post but my computer is broken and my smartphone is crap.

My city in Brazil is basically closed for business. My mother was supposed to be in another continent but, THANKFULLY, flight restrictions prevented her from traveling.

The downside is that she’s making me crazy like mothers do.

I’m going bananas here, and cycling makes me sane. I also need the exercise. Am I crazy for wanting to get on my bike once a day? The streets are not totally empty, but a lot less populated.

I’m in Salvador, Bahia. My state has 33 cases now.

This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

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!

This questions ultimately rests on the supposition of what a game intends to be or what esport should be. This is partially why it probably won't spark too much discussion, but I'm interested in your opinions nonetheless, especially when it comes to the current state of esports. It seems to me that when we are talking about rules in any kind of sport we want to change as little as we can over time. If the rules changes enough, you could argue that people have over time played what essentially is a different game. It becomes harder to compare achievements between players within the a timeline. Meta's and achievements will only really be comparable after games has stopped adding content such as new heroes or mechanics. With a lot of games there seems to be a major content patch, then long period of balancing and this cycle basically repeats itself. Another point is that by adding content and changing the meta you are preventing the current players from reaching their full potential, the older players from retaining their hard earned experience and discouraging new players by promising them a game they can never "beat". That is until the content stops coming in and in today's world that might mean that you are not able to play at all due to a lack of dedicated servers. Further the players that might once have stuck to it might already have left, leaving no opponents left to play against.

This superficial take ultimately comes from someone who hasn't really played esports except a little bit of 1.6 counter strike and counter strike global offensive. It always struck me as odd that with MOBA's and especially with shooters such as overwatch and siege, that there seem to be no pushback on this. When I ask people that prefer this sort of drip-feed-service, what I usually hear is that it's something that is necessary to keep them engaged. Isn't there ultimately a trade-off here, between a sort of accessible fun and lack of constancy which prevents players from reaching their full potential?

I immediately see the talking point of financial aspect of games. It seems to me however that Quake and counter strike largely went without major changes when compared to modern esports games. Are there any good broad rules we can use when designing esport games in order to avoid the issues mentioned here?

In an ideal world, do you agree that we generally don't want kind of content and/or rule change that we see today?

If there is a need to add content (such as heroes) to keep a game feeling "fresh". Is there an acknowledgement here that the core-gameplay isn't engaging enough? I think there is a case to be made here when it comes to MOBA's since knowledge (about enemy heroes abilities) plays a more central part when compared to more archaic shooters. Is this indicative of a an audience that is more interested in an entertaining service, rather than a (e)sport that seldom changes?

When we look at games such as world of warcraft, which isn't an esport, yet there are achievements and historic events so to speak which became cheapened or not attainable until what was basically a restart of the timeline (story of the game). Is this not what we are risking with current service models in modern esports?

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?

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

due to the looming pandemic forcing everyone to stay inside, I've recently decided to get back into video games. I did a fresh install of windows 10 the other day, and tried to play a few games with my controller. I found that whenever I press the right trigger on my controller, my computer's audio cuts out system-wide immediately and does not come back on until I restart.

The controller is a wired Afterglow for Xbox 360 PL-3702.

Windows 10, version 1903.

I see two audio devices under Sound, Video and Game Controllers in Device Manager: a AMD High Definition Audio Device and a Realtek Audio device.

I've tried updating drivers for my controller and audio controllers.

I've reproduced the issue and collected logs of it following the steps here. If you know how to read these I'd be happy to send you the trace.

Now, I've tried to look at the trace of this in both Windows Performance Analyzer and Windows Media eXperience Analyzer to try and get a better sense of what's causing this. I see a pretty clear event where a bunch of stuff shows up in the visualizer, but I don't know what any of the stack traces that show up mean. This did not occur on my previous install of Windows on the same computer so I suspect it's related to something with some new Windows "gaming" feature I didn't have before.

I'm really at a loss as to where to go from here. It's both perfectly clear and completely mystifying. Any ideas?

This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

Solved!

Thanks to @pseudolobster's post here, I was able to resolve the issue by creating a new user account on the computer. I'm leaving the post up for posterity, in case anyone else is ever searching up this same issue in the future.

My husband is starting to transition to work from home. He is using his personal computer and just yesterday set up a VPN, Microsoft Teams, and Windows' built-in remote desktop so that he can access his work computer. Everything worked smoothly and he was able to finish out his workday from home just fine.

Primary Issue

This morning, upon booting his computer, he cannot access his Start Menu. It is on screen, and it appears clickable, but nothing comes up. Likewise, the search bar in his task bar is present on boot, but upon clicking the start menu for the first time it disappears and does not return. Other basic Windows functionality seems to be broken. Alt-tabbing does not work to switch between windows. System tray icons are present, but right clicking them and selecting an option does nothing. We cannot open taskbar settings or network settings this way, for example.

This might be indicative of a larger breakdown. Even by command line, I can't get to the Windows 10 settings or Windows Update. It seems like all of the "new Windows"-style interfaces won't start (though the old ones, like the Control Panel, do).

We can still open up apps by clicking on the links in his taskbar, and those seem to work fine. I can also get to the run command with Win+R.

He is running Windows 10, and as far as I know, it's fully up-to-date (I can't open Windows Update to check).

Additional Information

In attempting to diagnose this issue, I've come across several others that are potentially related. I don't know if these are relevant and they're not a primary concern at the moment, but I'm including them here in case they help contextualize what's going on.

There seems to be a runaway process that slowly eats up more and more memory over time, as well as a chunk of CPU. Sometimes it's called "Service Host: Windows Push Notifications User Service_#####" and sometimes it's called "Service Host: WpnUserService_#####" with the numbers changing each boot.

Also, in attempting to restart the computer, it sometimes (but not always) pauses with a notification about programs still running, with one of them being "Task Host Window" with the message Task Host is stopping background tasks. (\Microsoft\Windows\Plug and Play\Device Install Reboot Required) Finally, immediately before restarting, it shows an error message from "svchost.exe" which reads The system detected an overrun of a stack-based buffer in this application. This overrun could potentially allow a malicious user to gain control of this application.

Is this potentially a malware/intrusion issue?

Attempted Solutions

I have tried, to no success:

• Rebooting the computer, both via a restart in Windows as well as by holding down the power button
• Signing out and back in to his user account on the computer
• Running sfc /scannow
• Running DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

Request for Help

I know we have a lot of techy people here, but I also know you are all probably busy with everything that's going on. Nevertheless, if anyone has any guidance or help they could give on this issue, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Also, it's been a while since I've used Windows, but IIRC there's a way of just resetting the whole thing and starting fresh? That's not ideal, but if that's the course of action I need to take, just let me know. Ultimately I just want this to work, by whatever method, so that my husband can be at home and reduce his exposure.

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?

Understandably, my interest has piqued on this topic cluster (as I'm sure it has for many others), and I should have more time than usual to read in the coming weeks. I also am spending far too long jumping around aimlessly to assorted news articles and would like to tame that nervous energy into a more focused approach on longer writings.

While I'm interested in non-fiction primarily, I'm also open to fiction suggestions. Also, anything that lands in the ballpark of what we're dealing right now with the novel coronavirus fits (though it certainly doesn't have to be specific to coronavirus, nor COVID-19).

How's everyone doing?

I'm feeling quite a bit of stress and mental burnout, so I wanted to post an "off my chest" style thread. Figured I'd keep it for the comments; maybe others could use the space, too.

(Posted in ~talk as I don't think it's productive to post this to ~health.coronavirus)

This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

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 using OBS Studio to create some video tutorials. Nothing complicated, just me talking and demonstrating the steps on my screen.

I essentially just need to slice up these recordings into clips, delete portions of the recordings where I mess up or there are long pauses, and export it all as one video.

I've used Premier in the past but I no longer have it. While I am pretty capable of learning how to use software, I would prefer something that doesn't have a huge learning curve.

I need something that runs on either Windows or Linux and is free. Not "free trial" free, but actually free. Open source would be a plus but not a requirement.

Feel free to recommend your favorite free video editor even if it doesn't meet all of my requirements, as maybe it will help someone else in the future.

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.

With the need for social distancing and self-isolation and #Stay(ing)TheFuckHome becoming near global realities, it is looking like many of us, and nearly everyone we know, will be spending large amounts of time staying in. I like this guide (thanks again, @aphoenix!), which ends with "Treat quarantine as an opportunity to do some of those things you never usually have time for."

Certainly we all have things in our life like that, but I also think it would be neat to try to brainstorm a list of things people can do for new experiences -- things they might not think to do or know are available to them. Everybody knows we can catch up on Netflix and our unread pile of books, but what else is out there? What can I do when I need a change of pace? What novel things can people do from home/online that don't require them to go out for resources/supplies?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I skim-read multiple news aggregators daily, and for weeks now, every single day, 75% or more of the news is specifically about Covid-19.

By comparison, it is worth reminding younger readers that we didn't even know about the Spanish Flu until ~30 years ago. During WWI, we (humans) suffered the deadliest pandemic of the modern era, and it took 60-70 years before anyone even noticed.

If you didn't grow up before the Spanish Flu became common knowledge, that may be a hard thing to grasp ... but during the late-80s and into the '90s, there was this slow, years-long trickle of news from medical researchers, historians and (FFS) archeologists (?!!?) about how there might actually have been a massive global pandemic during WWI that no one knew about.

Today in Wikipedia, there is just one little tidbit about how various things like (intentional) under-reporting and co-mingling of flu deaths with war casualties, led to it being nicknamed "the forgotten pandemic" ... which doesn't really capture that sense of "Holy Fuck"-ness when you discover that up to 100 million people died of the flu one year, and no one even noticed.

Okay ... at any rate .... you get my point. In 1919, the news intentionally under-reported it worldwide (except in Spain ... hence the name), in part to help prevent panic.

Today, the news media coverage is just incredible. Nothing on Earth happens any more, except Covid-19. A few thousand people die (I'm sorry, but yeah, more people die in car accidents), and the Media loses its mind.

OTOH, honestly, it's mostly been pretty good, accurate, up-to-the-second coverage (as best I can tell), really driving home the message of "we know it sounds lame, but wash your hands, dammit ... a lot", and etc.

So ... thoughts? This constant in-your-face media coverage ... good or bad? How much is media causing the panic vs just reporting on it?

1. Definition

By fiction, I mean:

literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people. (Google)

2. Introduce Yourself!

I understand we have at least one professional writer in the house (I cannot remember your username, sorry!), and several aspirant writers.

Every once in awhile, I get the urge to suggest some collaborative threads exercises, but it's hard to gauge interest without a better notion of how many fiction writers we have.

With that in mind, I make this call for introductions!

Please try to include:

• Have you ever made money writing fiction?^[1]
• First writing language(s): Examples: English, Portuguese, German, etc
• Other writing languages(s): same as above. English is implied.
• Formats^* : Examples: Short story, Romance, Play, Screenplay, etc
• Genres^*: Examples: horror, science-fiction, fantasy, etc.
• Main themes^*: Examples: relationships, violence, artificial intelligence, etc.
• Link to Writing Sample(s) on Tildes or Ghostbin (either as text or markdown)
• What do you expect to achieve with your writing (anything, either subjective or objective)?^[2]
• Apart from ~creative, where do you go for feedback?
• Are you looking for collaborations of any kind? Yes or No.

Footnotes

^[1] The purpose of this question is not to assess the quality of your writing, but rather the position writing occupies in your life. Is this something you do in your free time, or does it have a central role among your other activities? I do not pretend to know how and why everyone writes, this is just a starter. Feel free to share as much as you want.

^[2] For example: self-expression, philosophical investigation, external appreciation (nothing wrong with that), financial rewards, political or societal change, any combination of those.

^* In order of importance

Technically two people are a team, right? :P

If it was only me I would use Org Mode, but that's not the case.

Our projects are all artistic in nature, mostly screenplay collaborations, film criticism, YouTube, podcasts, etc ^[1]. It's easy to get overly excited about this kind of stuff, but we need to follow up too. And we don't have an external demand that would incentivize us to put in the effort.

Even though we're only two people, we both have trouble sustaining long term goals, organizing schedules and information. My partner is a brilliant writer, but for him concentrating is even more of an issue than it is for me. He needs something visual. This tool must also work very well on mobile since he currently does not own a computer. It also must be graphical and easy to learn for someone that only knows Windows and MacOS.

To be more specific, I'm looking for something that allows me to track what we have done, what we're doing now and what we're going to do next. A calendar and some kind of notification system would be nice, but, as I say in the title, it must be free (I'm Brazil and our currency is worth nothing, so even the cheap is expensive for us...).

Google gives me dozens of results, reviews, etc, but it's hard to assess how good each tool is without experimenting it. And I would like to avoid learning an entire platform just to conclude it is subpar (I know this is largely unavoidable, but we can do better with a little help from our friends!).

Any suggestions? :D

^[1] Even though our projects are artistic, their execution involves many things that are not artistic at all, such as understanding, budgets, legislation, registering our works with the copywriting authority, participating in public contests, networking, etc. There are lots of menial tasks that are easy to forget.

Admittedly this depends on the measures being taken, which vary wildly from country/state to country, so you should probably specify where are these measures being taken to a national or state level depending in the location.

I want something settled - which general class of common cheese is better for a tuna melt sandwich:

1. A "white" cheese like Swiss, Provolone, or Havarti
2. A "yellow" cheese like any cheddar, Velveeta, or American

Obviously this is just a matter of opinion, but I contend one of these opinions is better than the other.

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!

I'm only 30, but I can't think of a time entire sectors of the economy were shutting down like this.

I'm looking at statements from countries that appear vastly more prepared and honest, like Germany, who say they expect 60-70% of the population to contract the virus. Am I wrong for seeing the general lack of appropriate reaction from the US and expecting worse?

I expect the US will eventually be in a similar situation like Italy is. Most people staying home and most businesses shut down. How do people pay bills? Mortgages? Rent? Healthcare? Find money for basic supplies? Car loans?

Has something like this happened before to a modern economy?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with what I generally submit to tildes that videos, history and history.military are my favorite topic tags... but some of the other slightly more obscure ones I also enjoy (all music related) are live, soul.blue_eyed, singer_songwriter, and cover_songs.

What about you all? What are your favorite topic tags on tildes?

p.s. If you provide the associated https://tildes.net/?tag=topic_tag links to the ones you mention so that we can all peruse them, that would be greatly appreciated. :)

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?

Just looking for some general advice in the event of a quarantine. I'm already thinking I will make sure to get plenty of flour, rice, beans, and water. But I would definitely like to hear from the more forward thinking members on what to get!

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?

With quarantines becoming both a reality for many and an increasing likelihood for many more, what are the recommended best practices for preparing oneself and household?

There's a lot of general advice already out there, so specific advice would be really helpful, as well as things people are likely to forget.

It always bothers me that I know American politics presumably pretty well but my own nation's politics on a nearly surface level so I guess I'll ask this, but this can be for practically any country that isn't the US or maybe Britain.

Since this is specifically for your countries the sources can be limited to your country's language.

One source of Brazilian (my nation's) news I've heard of that isn't a from a large cable channel like CNN is Nexo, although the paywall makes serious consumption inviable simply because my parents wouldn't pay for me to read news of all things, but if you can, do it, the charts are great and the rest seems pretty good.

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!