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!

Hello everyone,

I'm currently living in Germany and in these few years I've discovered by chance a small but super sharp fruit knife from Solingen (I think the brand was from Rör). I was so amazed by the sharpness that now I want to buy a chef's knife for myself (budget: up to 60 or 70) and a knife for my dad (budget: up to 30 or 40) as a Christmas gift.

I've already searched the web for great German knife brands, and it seems these are the ones:

• Wüsthof
• Burgvogel (a.k.a. in the US as Messermeister)
• Friedr. Dick
• Herder Windmühlen
• Hohenmoorer

If someone is looking into this post looking for a budget (but still good) German knife brand, it seems that Rör is that brand.

But since, I’m looking for advice with this post, I’m no expert on the topic, if there are bad knife makers on this list or great knife makers missing, please tell me, and I'll remove/add them from/to my post. :)

The knives list below are all that fit the budget I've mentioned. Hohenmoorer and Windmühlen (and this brand only has wooden handles, which I don't like), are just too expensive, so only Friedr. Dick and Wüsthof are left inside my budget, but I could include two more expensive ones from Burgvogel and Friedr. Dick, if it is really, really worth it.

For myself:

• Friedr. Dick

  1. ActiveCut 21 cm
  2. Premier Plus 21 cm

• Wüsthof

  1. Gourmet 20 cm

• Bonus (around €80, if they are really worth the extra effort):

  1. Burgvogel: Master Line 20 cm
  2. Friedr. Dick: 1905 21 cm

For my Dad:

• Friedr. Dick

  1. ProDynamic 21 cm
  2. Superior 21 cm

• Wüsthof

  1. Silverpoint 20 cm

Last questions:

1. Would you recommend a 20, 21 or a 23 cm blade size? Some knives have different variations of these blade sizes.
2. Should I care about the material of the knife? I saw someone saying that it should be made of carbon steel (I think?).
3. Should I already buy a knife sharpener from one of the brands above?
4. Should I buy one of those knife guard/protector/sleeve to store it on a drawer or something like that?

That is all, and I want to say thank you in advance for all the replies 🙂

EDIT: I already bought a knife! Thank you so much for all the help! I've bought the Burgvogel Comfort Line 21 cm, I got a nice discount and bought for €58! I don't know how did I miss it but, Burgvogel has the Comfort Line and Series 4000 which are cheaper and also nice quality, just in case, someone in the future wants more options when looking into a new knife. :) My Dad will have a ProDynamic after reading good things about the quality of the cheaper F. Dick knife series.

I am considering the purchase of a Garmin GPS watch, but I don't want to run the bloated Garmin Connect app on my phone. Really all I want, is the ability to pull coordinates from my watch (.gpx files) and put them on my phone or computer. Does a privacy-respecting app like this exist?

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 recently began thinking about how plants get their shape and discovered "morphogenesis" after some inept googling. It seems like a fascinating subject so I'd like to learn a bit more. I have some A-level university courses in chemistry and microbiology, but never dug too deep. So I am looking for suggestions on what to read up on in order to gain some understanding of how plants and other organisms get their shape. The ultimate goal is of course to plant my own house.

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!

Hello everyone.

Sorry if this is a long post.

I currently have a dumb TV 1080p at home and, during my searches on Reddit and so on, I've chosen between the Nvidia Shield Pro and the new Apple TV 4K, at the end, I've concluded to get the Apple TV because of the regular software updates. With the Shield, people are already complaining, and they aren't having updates for a while (but please, you can try to convince me otherwise).

My main objectives for the box are:

• Watching YouTube / HBO;
• Watching / Listening my local content (films, music, etc.);
• PC gaming streaming from desktop to the TV.

1. About game streaming directly from my desktop, how good does it work? I saw people saying the Shield is better for gaming but, if I use AMD Link or Steam Link, I would think it does not matter if it is the Apple TV or Shield, or? Maybe the Shield has better support for GeForce Now, but I do not use the service.

2. How easy is to watch / listen to my content that is currently on my laptop / desktop? I saw people simply saying to use Infuse or Plex and stream it to the Apple TV. Is there a better way?

3. Are there things that I should be "careful" with the Apple TV? I remember the time that my wife bought our iPad, and it was hard to just find how to upload a TV series and run it with subtitles. (facepalm) There is no complexity like this on Android, honestly, no software to install on my pc, etc.

4. I saw a lot of people complaining about the support of codecs on the Apple TV comparing to the Shield. Stuff like, no TrueHD audio, no DTS:X, no lossless audio pass-through, transcoding, etc. So many topics that got me confused, since I'm not an expert in this field. If my goal for the future is to buy an amazing 4K "smart" TV and soundbar that both have Dolby Vision and Atmos, and most of my content are local downloaded films or streaming from HBO or Netflix, how important are all of these missing "features" from the Apple TV? People also said to just use Plex or Infuse, and they will have the "audio features" that the Apple TV is natively missing. So, honestly, I didn't understand all the discussion regarding this and why was the Shield better if other apps can support the codecs and missing features.

I think that is all, thank you in advance for all the replies 🙂

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2021/day/4

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

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?

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2021/day/6

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

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.

This thread is posted weekly, 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!

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!

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