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3 votes
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Volvo Cars to go fully electric by 2030 – it will phase out all car models with internal combustion engines, including hybrids
31 votes -
Getting an odd number of cogs in a loop to turn
7 votes -
What did the Romans think about race?
8 votes -
Counterproductive public-health messaging during the pandemic
9 votes -
What programming/technical projects have you been working on?
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...
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?
7 votes -
How Big Tech helps India target climate activists: Companies such as Google and Facebook appear to be aiding and abetting a vicious government campaign against Indian environmental campaigners
6 votes -
A fantastic video on high level nuclear waste
8 votes -
NENA - 99 Luftballons (1983)
11 votes -
Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread
General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...
General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.
Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:
Here is my schema: ```sql CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse ( article_id INTEGER , warehouse_id INTEGER ) ; ``` How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
6 votes -
The Hustler (Game Show, ABC US)
2 votes -
Does anyone have, or has had, an addiction to music?
It might sound silly to most, but I have had one for years now. I started to really listen to music on my own volition in the early 2010s when I was in my early 10s, and I was really big into EDM...
It might sound silly to most, but I have had one for years now.
I started to really listen to music on my own volition in the early 2010s when I was in my early 10s, and I was really big into EDM at the time (big room house, brostep, electro house, progressive house, etc).
At some point in 2014 I wanted to expand my tastes so I ended up on rateyourmusic.com which is the kinda place you always end up on at some point if you go down this path the way I see it, and at first I just checked the overall charts and shrugged since it wasn't my kind of music at all (The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, etc), but at some point it started bothering me; "why is all that crappy old music so highly regarded?" and I started giving the stuff a try. Didn't like it at all, but I somehow starting feeling compelled to try and understand/appreciate it.
Eventually, I fell down a sort of rabbit hole when I started reading discussions on how some music is "objectively better" than others and I completely believed it. Pushed around by the extremely harsh disdain towards the EDM I loved and godly praise of the type of thing I just mentioned, I just kinda felt like I was supposed to move on and basically listened to a lot of stuff like that.
Another while later I eventually realized that the whole "objectively good/bad" thing is one ugly sack of false shit, but I've been really burned out since then, and now I don't even really feel the music I used to like. Problem is, at this point the act of crawling through the charts looking for new music, constantly listening to new stuff, thinking about genres, etc, is so deeply ingrained in my behavior that I can't seem to stop. I have music on at nearly all times, and I force myself to listen to everything in full despite not feeling it at all.
Something that's also gotten me is the whole repeated listening thing, I've always really loved the idea of being able to enjoy something you initially didn't care for or were lukewarm towards by simply repeatedly listening to it. That also caused me to disregard my own impressions and force myself to repeatedly listen to almost everything. I'm mostly out of that phase now, but I sometimes still find myself digging through random stuff I've given low ratings and listening to it again purely to see if I suddenly like it, but it has literally never even worked once. I also think this has been a contributor to me being burned out on music.
At this point I kinda feel like I'll never truly enjoy music again like I used to and it's really sad. Sometimes it does return a little, but if have to explain it with a rating, I can't say I've ever really felt anything above a 7/10 again, most of the time it's between a 3/10 and 6/10. I totally realize I just need to take a break, but I simply can't seem to stop (through a lot of effort I have actually managed to take a full break last month, but I immediately relapsed when I resumed this month, and even without that it doesn't seem like it helped all that much). What a lot of people have with things like gaming and food, I basically have with music.
Does anyone else have anything like this?
10 votes -
The explosive rise of Zoom is creating big opportunities for startups, which are raising millions to build apps and integrations
5 votes -
spaceprob.es - A catalog of every currently functioning probe beyond our planet
6 votes -
Google-free /e/ OS is now selling preloaded phones in the US, starting at $380
14 votes -
Why I teach Machiavelli through his letters
9 votes -
Durian comparison - Musang King vs. D24 | Weird Fruit Explorer
1 vote -
Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (March 2021)
This is a monthly thread for those who need it. Vent, share your experiences, ask for advice, talk about how you are doing. Let's make this a compassionate space for all who may need one.
13 votes -
Arizona advances bill forcing Apple and Google to allow Fortnite-style alternative payment options
7 votes -
Alamo Drafthouse files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announces sale to private equity firms Altamont Capital and Fortress Investment
15 votes -
Brad makes fermented salsa | It's Alive
4 votes -
Spoonbill—a change-tracker for Twitter bios—offers a glimpse into the unseen effort with which we express our identities online, and how the uncanny feeling of being watched informs our sense of self
8 votes -
Thoughts on running online communities from the creator of Improbable Island
15 votes -
The worst song you ever had to experience
I'll go first. I've never made it past the part where I assume she says, 'kill me'... https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=sbMm-I7xev8&
11 votes -
Against child hostages
9 votes -
Brave has acquired Cliqz and their Tailcat search engine, plans to offer a privacy-oriented search engine
9 votes -
Denmark under pressure to drop plans to work with Israel on vaccines – political allies say surplus doses should be shared with Palestinians
4 votes -
Hakuho Cup may allow Hakuho to leave indelible mark on sumo from outside ring
5 votes -
NASA’s latest Mars rover has the same processor as an iMac from 1998
6 votes -
Beyond Meat signs global supply deals with McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut
23 votes -
Jennette McCurdy on why she is no longer acting
4 votes -
Work from home expert Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford economist, says office space will get more collaborative, and you’ll still be working from home (just not as much)
4 votes -
The very bad news
9 votes -
Nickelodeon creates Avatar Studios to create new Avatar, Legend of Korra content
21 votes -
A billion years from now, a lack of oxygen will wipe out life on Earth
5 votes -
Just Shapes & Beats
4 votes -
Katrina’s hidden race war
6 votes -
These girls just wanted to run, the right wanted a war
9 votes -
Why prehistoric humans needed no braces: Crooked teeth are a modern phenomenon and a telltale sign of an underlying epidemic
19 votes -
Wisconsin hunters kill over 200 wolves in less than three days
7 votes -
Gab removes their public Git repository after it reveals their developers adding (and struggling to fix) basic security issues that led to a 70GB data leak
12 votes -
Arctic island finds green power can be a curse – Greenland's rare-earth elements are attracting superpowers riding a green revolution
11 votes -
Make a loop with the Chrome Music Lab song maker!
6 votes -
How would you improve advertising on Reddit?
Let me preface that I'm well aware that if given the choice between frequent, untargeted ads or fewer targeted ads, the average Tilderino's response would be "Neither." However, given that social...
Let me preface that I'm well aware that if given the choice between frequent, untargeted ads or fewer targeted ads, the average Tilderino's response would be "Neither."
However, given that social media at scale has yet to establish a sustainable business model that doesn't rely on advertising (people like free content, after all), it seems advertising has become a necessary evil (and has pervaded nearly all forms of media for the past century regardless).
With that in mind, I think coming up with creative solutions to deliver relevant advertising while preserving user privacy and avoiding destructive feedback loops (i.e. where the search for ad revenue compromises the user base and content generation) is an interesting thought exercise. This is one of social media's largest problems, imho, but it might be easier to analyze just Reddit as a platform due to its similarities (and notable differences) to Tildes.
A couple thoughts of my own:
- Whitelist "safe" subreddits - A massive problem for Reddit is identifying content that brands want to avoid association with (e.g. porn, violence, drugs). While new subreddits crop up every day, the large ones do not change so fast and could be classified as safe content spaces (e.g. /r/aww)
- User subreddit subscriptions - Rather than target ads based on the subreddit currently being viewed, why not use the subs people have voluntarily indicated they are interested in?
- Allow users to tag content - While people can report content to the mods today, there is no ability to tag content (like Tildes has) from a user level. Content that's inappropriate for advertising may not necessarily be a reportable offense. By allowing users to classify content, better models for determining "good" content vs. "bad" could be developed using ML.
- Use Mods to determine content appropriateness - User supplied data may introduce too much noise into any given dataset, and perhaps mods are a better subjective filter to rely on. Certain subreddits can have biased mods for sure, but without trying to overhaul content moderation entirely, could mod bans/flair be used to indicate suitable content for ads?
- Use computer vision to classify content - While this wouldn't work at scale, an up-and-coming post could have a nebulous title and difficult-to-decipher sarcastic comments. The post itself could be an image macro or annotated video that could be used to determine the subject matter much more effectively.
To be clear, the spirit of my initial prompt isn't "how can Reddit make more money?" per se, but how can it find a sustainable business model without destroying itself/impacting society at large. Facebook and Twitter seem to have optimized for "engagement" metrics which leads to prioritization of outrage porn and political divisiveness. Snapchat and Instagram seem to have succumb to being mostly an ad delivery engine with some overly-filtered content of "real life" influencers (read: marketers) strewn in between. None of these seem like a net-good for society.
What are all your thoughts? Perhaps Big Tech social media is irredeemable at this point, but I'm trying not to take such a defeatist attitude and instead explore any positive solutions.
9 votes -
Frogwares says the version of The Sinking City on Steam was not made by them
This is a wild, ongoing story that is playing out in a rather bizarrely. First off, here is Frogware's open letter on the situation from August 25, 2020. Basically, Frogwares signed an agreement...
This is a wild, ongoing story that is playing out in a rather bizarrely.
First off, here is Frogware's open letter on the situation from August 25, 2020.
Basically, Frogwares signed an agreement with Nacon (formerly Big Ben Interactive) to license and publish their game in return for funding, but Frogwares still owned the IP. Frogwares claims that Big Ben was consistently late with payments and did not honour milestones for further funding. They took on an EGS exclusivity agreement to help get funding. At some point during the development, Nacom bought another studio and then demanded that Frogwares give their source code to this new company, which Frogwares refused to do.
The released the game in June 2019 but then were told by Nacom that the milestones that were previously agreed to were cancelled, therefore Frogwares would see no profit from the game. Frogware filed a lawsuit and finally got access to some sales data but found it wanting in many regards. They also found that copyright notices on the game were incorrect with the result of misallocating the IP ownership. Their logo was removed from the PS4 and X1 versions of the game and they discovered that Nacon was presenting themselves as the IP owners for the game, and had bought domains for Frogwares' other Sherlock Holmes titles (most of which was published by Focus Home Interactive, with some published by Atlus in North America or self-published by Frogwares).
Frogwares believes they had what they needed to terminate the contract with Nacon, despite some complications with the French legal system due to the COVID pandemic, and so they pulled their games from various storefronts alongside this letter.
In January 2021, that French legal complication played out against them when the Paris Court of Appeals determined that Frogwares acted unlawfully and decided that Nacon would be able to put the game back on the market.
Today, The Sinking City was put back on Steam with Frogwares listed as the developer, but Frogwares says they did not make this version. It seems to be an older version, missing much the DLC and features like achievements and cloud saves.
Frogwares' own version of the game is being sold only on Gamesplanet, Origin, and the Xbox 1 Series, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.
21 votes -
Sounds of the Mandelbrot set
8 votes -
Aliens: Fireteam | Announcement trailer
7 votes -
The Refreshments - Banditos (1996)
6 votes -
What do I need to know switching phones from Blackberry 10 to Android?
Inspired by a similar thread @kfwyre posted a while ago. I've been given an Android phone for a work contract and I don't want to carry two devices, so I will likely migrate from my Blackberry Z10...
Inspired by a similar thread @kfwyre posted a while ago.
I've been given an Android phone for a work contract and I don't want to carry two devices, so I will likely migrate from my Blackberry Z10 soon. The BB10 OS (not to be confused with BBOS, which ran the Bolds, etc. of BB's heyday) was intuitive, useful, and wayyyyy better than most people who never used it would have expected, only being doomed by the app gap. I'd have considered buying another Blackberry this year if I hadn't been given this other phone. I have long been wary of Android due to both privacy concerns and UI/UX gripes. Having tooled around for a couple days already, I'm struck by how many simple things I apparently can't do out of the box, and the fact that there are so. many. ads. Even in the apps! I know I will root and de-Google the device as much as I can once I get a hang of the OS.
So, I'm mainly looking for app recommendations, but general advice is appreciated as well. My use case is very functional - email, scheduling, messaging, browsing, navigation, weather, and calls. Preference given to FOSS and/or ad-free apps, but I'll pay up if it's really worth it. So far I've uninstalled a bunch of bloatware, installed Firefox, found SwiftKey to be the only half-decent replacement for Blackberry's terrific keyboard software, and the best free no-ad weather app looks to be a Norwegian one called Yr.
9 votes -
Hanford radioactive sludge removal
6 votes