Given the ambiguity of the term "lifehack", feel free to contribute anything that you feel fits the label. It can be a specific technique, a novel way of using an item, or even a mindset. It can be a little-known product or a recommendation--whatever you deem fit, as long as it improves quality of life, productivity, or satisfaction.

It occurred to me a few days ago that my YouTube subscriptions are heavily weighted in favour of men. I follow a lot of video essayists and educational YouTubers, and when the algorithm surfaces new ones to check out, 99 times out of 100 it's a man talking. Same with musicians, gamers, and tech heads...
I feel like I'm missing out on some valuable perspectives, insights, and just all around good content. So please hit me up with some recommendations!

I've been slowly learning python for some months already. I used the Python Crash Course book from No Starch Press, it teaches the basics and then goes on with some projects with pygame, matplotlib, etc.

However, I feel that my Python skills aren't very good yet, and before learning to use libraries I would like to have a better command of the standard library.

I have been looking for some book with projects or, even better, challenges using just the standard library, but haven't found any good ones. Most of them either are for absolute beginners, or use additional libraries, or are very technical and without focus on practice.

Do you know of any good book or resource with challenges or projects that don't depend on additional libraries? Or, do you have any idea for a project or challenge using just the standard library?

Thanks in advance!

I don't have nearly as much time to game as I used to, and as such, I tend to prioritize games that are quick to finish over those that want my attention for a long time. Thus, I'm curious to know: what are the best short games you've played?

I'm going to arbitrarily set "short" at a threshhold of 3 hours or less.

Furthermore, I'm referring to games that have a defined start and end, rather than potentially infinite play sessions. That means a game like The Binding of Isaac wouldn't count despite the average play session being much less than 3 hours, but a game like Gone Home would.

If you're not sure about a game's length, check HowLongToBeat for crowdsourced runtime data.

Here's a table of recommendations mentioned in the thread, and their approximate time to complete from HowLongToBeat (using the "Main Story" category).

Here's the idea: feature any artist you love, especially those you think deserve more attention (though that's not a requirement--anyone is fair game!).

• Give the artist/band, their genre(s), and three songs that give a good introduction/overview to their sound and style. Think appetizer, entree, and dessert. (Or just three appetizers--it's good to get us wanting more!)

• Include a brief description of the artist and each of the tracks. Include any other information you feel is relevant.

Feel free to feature more than one band/artist, but in the interest of organization, make each its own separate top-level comment.

(See my example comment below to get a better idea of what I'm going for.)

What are some of your must have browser extensions?

I recently made an effort to switch to Firefox, and now I'm looking for some good browser extensions to make my web browsing experience better. Here are the ones I currently use:

• HTTPS Everywhere
• Privacy Badger
• uBlock Origin
• Vimium

I just picked up a Nokia 3.1 for $120 in a bit of an emergency and I really like it. It's very light, Android One, very nice styling and again it's $120!

I was shocked by this experience at this price point. This thing is excellent for my use case, as a pre-paid EU phone as my lovely iPhone 6s Plus has only one Sim slot. Are there any other great budget phones out there?

Just got my first MacBook Pro, and I've been setting things up. Wondering what people's "must have" software on MacOS is and what programming tools you might recommend. I've heard that I should definitely install homebrew so that I can have a real package manager like I've got on Linux.

After being skeptic of password managers for a long time, I've decided to take the plunge and get one installed. The burden of remembering dozens of passwords is simply getting a bit too much. So, I was wondering if anyone here has any recommendations of password managers? Maybe one you or a trusted friend use? Or maybe you think password managers are rubbish, and want to share you opinion?

Any suggestions are welcome, in the interest of fostering discussion/having the thread be useful to other people too. But in my specific use case, I want to be able to sync between devices. I'd prefer something open source, but it's not a requirement.

Shortly after my son was born I started calling him "Buddy." I love it and he answers to it like a name now. My daughter is two and she calls him Buddy, which I think is the most adorable thing ever.

I'd like to do this with my daughter, but I'm not really a fan of things like "honey" or "sweetheart," though I do wind up calling her sweetheart pretty frequently.

Buddy is like friend, which is what I'm going for, but that's taken already. What else could I use?

I find it hard to find articles that I think more people should read.. I find most of them pretty much spam (cough medium cough). I created this thread so you can recommend some articles that you read and found interesting.

It doesn't matter about what it is, recommend away!

Hi all, I am currently on the hunt for some nice newsletters for my email. I ran into "Big" by Matt Stoller on here and I really enjoy it. I guess I am looking for something in a similiar enomonic, political, or macro vein, science works as well. Any and all recommendations are welcome.

A really long time ago I was introduced to the Evoluent Vertical Mouse. Even though I was only in my early twenties I already had wrist issues and I thought this thing was god send. It was clunky but totally worth it.

These days there are a ton of vertical mice available. Is anyone else into these? I am looking to get a new one now that I'm on the mouse/keyboard a lot again. Do you have a preferred model?

note: If you have wrist issues and are curious, I highly recommend trying one out. One caveat is that the cheap one I got off of amazon recently is a bit too small for a decent sized guy like myself. Filling out your palm seems really important for maximum relief.

After our discussion about Tempest-like games, I looked at what else could at least scratch a similar fast-paced space-theme racing, with optional shooting itch on Switch.

To kick off the discussion, these are the games I already tried that I kinda like. I‘ll update this list, once people suggest other entries. I realise it’s a bit of a mish-mash, but it’s more about the feel than a specific genre.

Fast RMX is a very fast-paced pod-racer, with a similar feel to Wipeout, if you take away the weapons, and add a boost mechanic where you need to switch your booster’s code with the speed lane. I prefer playing it with motion/gyro controls, which admittedly makes it harder to play, but with that actually feels a lot more like you’re travelling at massive speed where every unintentional jerk of the steering wheel can cause you to wipe out.

Velocity 2X is a very successful mix of a vertical shooter where time matters with added platforming levels in between. Boosting for speed and warping/teleporting to solve puzzles is a huge part of the game.

The Next Penelope is a top-down 2D (pod?) racing game with weapons, where the acceleration happens automatically, but is influenced by boost, boost markers on the track and bumping into stuff. I haven’t played it for a long time yet, but once you learn the controls it seems to be a very good game.

VSR is a pure zero-gravity, zero-friction 3D space racer. Which makes mastering the controls very hard for anyone who is not used to it. To be honest, I haven’t mastered them yet either, but haven’t given up, as I really liked RPGs and shooters with such a mechanic. It just gives a specific type of zennish “in the zone” feeling, once you get into it.

Fast RMX
price: 20 € 14 € until 2019-07-25
reviews: 81 % on MetaCritic
length: 3½ h main game (57 h completionist) on HowLongToBeart

Velocity 2X
price: 20 € 8 € until 2019-07-18
reviews: 87 % on MetaCritic
length: 5 h main game (26 h completionist) on HowLongToBeat

The Next Penelope: Race to Odysseus
price: 13 € 2 € until 2019-07-11
reviews: 79 % on MetaCritic
length: 2½ h main game (5½ h completionist) on HowLongToBeat

VSR: Void Space Racing
price: 5 €
reviews: 66 % on MetaCritic
length: (no HowLongToBeat entry yet)

For those who do not know it, Tempest is a classic arcade vector-based game, and I urge you to check it out. It is highly addictive and nowadays should fall well within the fast-paced retro fashion.

The problem is that for quite some years, I had nothing to scratch that itch. The last proper Tempest-like game that I played was Typhoon 2001 on Linux, which was a free/gratis clone of Tempest 2000.

Now it seems that in 2018 Tempest 4000 came out, but only for PC (a.k.a. Windows), PlayStation 4 and XBox One. As a Linux and Nintendo Switch gamer, that doesn’t help me one bit.

There are two FOSS versions: Arashi, which works only on old Macs, and Arashi-js, which is a JavaScript re-implementation of the former. Unfortunately, none of the two seem to work on my laptop.

So, here I am, itching for that Tempest fix, yet without a clue how to get something on either Switch on Linux (apart from perhaps Typhoon if it still works). Any suggestions would be more then welcome.

I personally am not a big clothes shopper, I pretty much replace underwear/socks when they break or I lose them, and once per year, I buy some clothes. Yesterday I bought my first linen T-shirt. And it feels so airy and comfy, it's amazing and not itchy. What do you guys prefer to wear?
Where do you guys source your clothes, also in regard to ethics - no child labor. I guess second-hand clothes are the best in that regard?
Does anyone here feel strongly about a specific material? I heard merino is supposed to feel amazing, but the price tag keeps me from getting a shirt haha.

I very much enjoy the "old anime" style and space-based stories. I can't believe that I had never seen Planetes before. Are there any other less well known shows like this that you might recommend?

FYI: I have already seen the old standards such as Bebop, Trigun, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Mobile Suit Gundam, Ghost in Shell, Macross, and maybe a couple others. But this standalone universe of Planetes made me realize there may be a lot more out there of which I am unaware. Thanks!

I've been curious about making a switch for ergonomics and just lack of space on my desk.

• Do you recommend it for gaming? Any guidance on genres that do or don't work? I mostly play real time and turn based strategy games or point-and-click style games such as Diablo on my computer. I don't generally go in for twitchy FPSes, but I'd like the option.

• Opinions on index vs. thumb?

• How long was the adjustment period to get used to it?

• Any recommendations on good ones to buy?

• Are there any advantages I'm not thinking of besides just being better for my wrist?

• Disadvantages besides, potentially, being less precise than a mouse?

• Are there any tradeoffs with going wireless?

Project Gutenberg is a great resource for free books, but its 50,000+ titles are intimidating in number (if not outright impenetrable). The same goes for other free ebook aggregators/feeds, of which there are many. There are also lots of authors who offer up their books for free. And, of course, there are tons of free options available in, say, the Kindle store. While it's nice to have so many choices, it hinders discoverability. Individual books get lost in all the noise.

As such, I'd like to know: what are some standout, recommended books that are available to readers for free?

Obvious disclaimer: I am not interested in pirated content.

I'd put this series on hold, because of lack of activity. Now I'll give it another go, with French, one of the languages with huge amounts of influential literature.

So, without further ado, please share your favourite French books and authors!

I've never really been that into video games. When I was young, I played a lot of RPGs on the SNES and PS1. Within the last couple of years, I dipped my toes back in the water and tried a few out. I tried Skyrim on a friend's recommendation, but it was just a little too involved and open-world for me. I got Cities:Skylines, which I love because I love city builder sims, but that game just does not run well on any of my underpowered computers. And I loved Ori and the Blind Forest, a beautiful platformer, and I'd play it again right now if it wasn't Windows-only.

Here are my requirements. First, it needs to run well on a low-powered machine without making the fan go insane. I've got a MacBook Air 2012 and a ThinkPad x250 (Linux). Neither of these are the ideal gaming experience, I know, but I'm not looking for amazing graphics or bleeding edge technology or something super immersive. Pixel graphics are fine with me. It reminds me of my youth, anyway. I played both Skylines and Ori on my Intel NUC 4th Gen and while it worked, they both really taxed that little machine. I was able to finish Ori, but once a city reaches a certain size in Skylines, it gets unplayable.

I'm not looking for stress. I like RPGs and sims. But it doesn't have to be really hard or frustrating. I don't want to feel chased in a game. I prefer to feel that I'm driving the action and I can go at my pace. I want to feel like if I look away for a moment, I'm not going to lose everything. I'm a casual. I also don't mind if there's no defined ending of a game. For me, I'm more looking for a diversion and a slow build over some kind of constant progression/achievement type scenario.

If it has full controller support, that would be ideal. I've got a Steam controller, and I prefer using a controller to play a game. I've never liked using the keyboard to play. I'm not totally against it, but I guess I just never got into computer gaming. I pretty much always played on consoles in the past.

Linux or macOS only, please. I did have Windows installed once so that I could play games, but I'm not bothering with that anymore. I don't want to have to boot into another operating system just to play a game. I want to be able to hop in and out of a game while using my daily driver computer.

So in my research, I've looked into Terraria and Stardew Valley. These might be what I'm looking for. But I really don't know. Do either of these scratch my itch? Is there another game that I would enjoy based on what I've told you? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

EDIT: Thank you everybody for your awesome suggestions. I'm still happy to hear more, as I plan to add the ones that really interest me to my wishlist and revisit later. I ended up getting Hollow Knight yesterday and I spent the whole day playing it. It's very engrossing, and it's the perfect game for me. It's so much like Ori, and that game blew me away. Chilled out, go at your own pace, exploring dungeons, challenging but not impossible (though the first Hornet fight was pretty tough for me). The game runs fine on my ThinkPad x250 (i5-5300U) in Pop!_OS Linux, apart from the initial movie scene stuttering--I just had to skip past it, unfortunately. It's such an awesome game, and I'm glad to see they've already announced a sequel. If you know of any other games that are like Ori and Hollow Knight, let me know.

My laptop is showing sings of death, and I know I will need a new one soon. Also, I am planning to get a tablet and ditch my smartphone, and to stop using the laptop for browsing content: I'll do most of that to the phone/tablet, and use the laptop as an authoring tool: writing and coding.

So I am looking for a laptop that is cheap, light, and can keep running for at least 3-5hrs under mild Debian+Emacs load. Ideally around 11"-13".

I'm having some problems with a notebook I want to set up for a friend. And its the first time in a long time I'm not able to solve it just by myself. So I tried asking at #manjaro and #archlinux-newbies but I got no answer at all. It just seems that IRC changed a lot in the last 15 years. Or maybe my IRC manners are not up to date?
Anyway, do you know a place where there is a nice Linux-crowd? What are your favourite Places to get help? (besides the archwiki) ;-) I'm out of the loop for 10-15 years now because most places got pretty toxic.

I should start by saying that I, generally, hate animes. However, for some reason, One Punch Man (OPM) is fucking awesome! I like everything about it. I find myself laughing while watching it, Saitama is hilarious.

Can you suggest me animes similar to OPM, or animes that you think I would enjoy watching?

I'm a pretty regular YouTube watcher but if I accidentally glance down at the comments section, I know my night is going to be ruined.

I wondered if there is any kind of YouTube app or service that lets you watch and search for videos (even access my subscribed channels) but with less of the crap, ie. the comments and related videos, which just take you down a YouTube rabbit hole that you won't get out of for hours.

Cheers!

Like the title says, every Christmas when my family gets together we play board games traditionally Monopoly. Last year I got tired of playing it and after some research I found Concordia and we had a blast playing it. I'm trying to jump the gun and researching ahead for this year, what are ~games recommendations for a good 2+ player game that isn't too convoluted to pick up and is a good time?

I'm interested in what applications people use, maybe I can discover some better alternatives.

Music: Spotify for streaming, Dopamine for local music.

Cloud: OneDrive. As a student, I get 1 TB of space for free.

Email: Mailspring, though I'm eyeing eM Client as an alternative right now.

Text Processors: Mostly VS Code with LaTeX, but I do sometimes use good old MS Office.

Code: VS Code again, and also IntelliJ IDEA and CLion for the respective languages. VS Code for anything that isn't C or Java related. I'm also watching the development of Oni Vim 2.

PDF: On my laptop with a touch display, I use Drawboard. On my PC at home I use Nitro PDF.

Browser: Firefox, ever since the quantum update it's nice and snappy. Though maybe I'd switch to Vivaldi when they add Sync at some point.

I missed the Witcher, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones boats-- what's the next big fantasy series that's starting right now? Like one book's been recently released and it was a shock how good it was, and all of its readers want more?

I want to hop on a train that'll take me into a fantasy land when the getting's good.

I have discovered hackmd.io a few months ago and started digitalizing my massive mess of handwritten nodes together with all the terrible notepad/word mixed notes into one big personal "wiki" of knowledge. But I ran into a problem. HackMd can only handle ~50k characters before starting to lag and 100k characters is the limit per note, this doesn't even fit my one summary/tips note on one programming language. Do you know any alternatives? I really like markdown, since all of the notes look clean and organized, I can insert pictures and link to websites easily, but also love to work with them online, since I have to switch between 3 computers between university, home and my laptop.

It's a genre that friends, coworkers, and family will chide you for reading, and often self-help books will repeat the same old principles. Yet, I find myself drawn to books like How to Win Friends and Atomic Habits again and again, in a hope that reading them will fix my life's problems. And honestly, some books in the genre do provide some great advice.

Top level comments should fill in the blank with some sort of descriptor identifying a kind of song you would like suggestions for. Be as generic or specific as you want.

Replies can then recommend songs to that individual.

Hint: Use the "collapse replies" button to view only top-level posts.

See previous posts of this type: books, games

This post went well in ~books, so I figured we could give it a go here.

Top level comments should fill in the blank with some sort of descriptor identifying a kind of game you would like suggestions for. Be as generic or specific as you want.

Replies can then recommend games to that individual.

Hint: Use the "collapse replies" button to view only top-level posts.

We've had a few threads recently criticising the direction of various shows cough Game of Thrones cough and @Amarok suggested a thread celebrating the good stuff on TV instead. Personally, television is by far my favourite means of visual storytelling, a good TV show can go into the kind of depth and complexity that the more time-limited format of movies just can't touch.

A few of my favourite shows then, in no particular order:

House MD - recently rewatched this and it definitely stands the test of time. Sure, there are a few weak episodes here and there but on balance it's solid. Hugh Laurie absolutely nails the role of Sherlock Holmes Greg House and the supporting cast are excellent too. It has one of my all-time favourite endings of all television shows, even knowing what was coming I still ended up a little moist of eye by the end. Also they grade the colour with increasing desaturation throughout season 8, almost to the point of it being monochrome - until the final scene is in glorious, bright colour and I love little touches like that. TV shouldn't just be actors reading lines, there is a whole medium to tell stories with (Game of Thrones also did this kind of thing well).

Detectorists - BBC show about two metal detectorists. Gloriously paced, slow and gentle but insistent in telling it's tale, with really strong characters. Finishes beautifully, at just the right time. A gem of a show, it's very well written and nearly flawless throughout. Mackenzie Crook (writer, director) was offered more seasons but he declined because the show was finished and that takes guts to do but I love that he did. Also features Diana Rigg (Olenna Tyrell) who is never not brilliant.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer - I mean what can you even say about Buffy. Might have been the last show where my friends would meet up for a watch party every week, hanging out for hours discussing it and enjoying herbal cigarettes for the evening. Streaming is great and so convenient but in some ways I do miss TV being an event. There was someone very special about getting everyone together once a week to share in that world, and especially with Buffy because the characters were so close in age to me (I'm slightly younger than Alyson Hannigan and I had such a crush on Willow). Sure, it had it's wobbles (the entire Adam story arc, for example) but also some of the best TV moments of the 90s/early 2000s. Once More With Feeling and Hush are fan favourites for a reason.

Hannibal - Produced by Bryan Fuller, who is always good, but absolutely outdoes himself here, and Mads Mikkelson is terrifying in the titular role. Visually it's stunning, the plot is engaging and deeply disturbing, the characters well drawn and believable (Hannibal particularly so, which is all the more horrifying) and the sound design is absolutely astonishing. I bought a whole new sound system literally just for this show and it was totally worth it. Sound design is one of those things which you only notice when it's particularly bad or particularly good and Hannibal is definitely the latter. It's such a well-rounded piece of television, it uses colour and light and sound and all the tools in the TV maker's box. the ending is a little on the weak side but they got axed early - Bryan Fuller had five seasons planned but they only got three.

I could go on, but I won't because I'll go on for ages! Please add a couple of your favourite shows and maybe we can all find a few new things to watch.

Heya!

The question is rather straightforward. Even though I said smaller, size doesn't really matter for this - the focus is more on the community aspect rather than it being small. Here's my non-exhaustive list (in no particular order):

1. Tildes - This is unsurprising. It's definitely large for a "small" community, but it's managed to preserve it's culture very well, which is rather impressive. It's cozy and has high quality discussion.
2. Various Discord servers and IRC channels. This one is harder to pinpoint, to be honest. As far as IRC channels/Discord servers goes, some of the more niche gaming ones are probably some of the nicest environments. IRC-wise, I really haven't managed to find any particularly active ones, outside of the ones for the next list member...
3. tilde.town and probably the larger tildeverse. Not affiliated with Tildes, but generally just... a nice place to be. It's rather quiet a lot of the time, but their main IRC channel is, frankly, quite great. When it's active.
4. A lot of Mastodon instances, although of course not all. The fediverse is generally a nice place to be, although politics on there is kind of mushy and one sided. Genuine interactions on there, however, are extremely common and sorting by the global timeline is quite nice (most of the time.)
5. rateyourmusic is a nice community of those who are passionate about music. It's quite nice overall, though.

There's definitely a lot I've missed out, mainly because I probably don't know about them.

So, what are some of the smaller (or not) communities that you enjoy?

I have been listening to "Darknet Diaries" and it's a great podcast, but I am looking for more. Maybe more technical.

Does anyone have any good recommendations? Thanks!

Edit: if you are like me, and learning about this stuff, here is an interesting and hilarious episode of mini-stories from Darknet Diaries: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/22/

So I kind of want to try the Nokia 8110, it's a feature phone with an app store that contains it's own version of Google Maps and Assistant. I use my phone an awful lot, and I'm thinking that a less capable phone would be helpful in using my phone less for browsing the internet, news, and discourse and using it more for what I would want to do with it, calls, texts, navigation, music and podcasts.

Unfortunately, the Nokia 8110 is only available on AT&T in the States, and they stink, so I was wondering if anyone had any picks for devices that would scratch that itch, specialized apps, or other tools that could be used. I like the idea of another device that I could use as a daily driver so I can put some physical distance between myself and my current phone, but if you have an app or a system that you swear by, I'm down for it.

Also kind of interested in maybe combining the ZeroPhone Raspberry Pi with support for Alexa or Google Assistant, but that seems like a time waster and a half.

I thought I've been looking for a good password manager, but I'm not sure that's what I really need.

Here's my use case:

• I currently have a Google Sheet in my Google Drive that contains all my ID/passwords for everything
• In addition I have personal info in there like SSNs and Credit Cards #s
• I want to be able to have instant access to all of the info from my ancient iPhone and my laptop

Things I've tried:

• I messed around with Last Pass a bit and found it couldn't actually fill in the passwords in the apps I was using so I'd have to manually type them, which is a deal breaker for me.
• I've been using FireFox's LockBox and it's a bit better on that front but doesn't actually remember what the password goes to the app so I have to look it up each time, but it does populate them in the appropriate fields.
• Password-protecting a Google Sheet is apparently impossible but was a solution I was after for some time (Excel and Libre can do this..so +1 for software)

Other info:

• I am currently using an iPhone 5 but I plan to "upgrade" to a Samsung Galaxy S7 sometime in the near future. Perhaps that's why the functionality of these password managers seem so inconvenient for me? Would they work better on a modern phone?

What I'm after is perhaps two solutions:

• A password manager that crosses the bridge from desktop FireFox to the apps on my phone, and fills in the password for me automatically. That would allow me to feel like I could move to more random passwords for things.

• Some encrypted, password-protected site/app that could store plain text notes for sensitive things like SSNs and Credit Card #s that would stay in sync between a laptop and a smartphone.

Go ahead and mock me for my terrible security and ancient phone. I deserve it! But when you're done, I'd appreciate some guidance.

EDIT: Sounds like first priority should be to update my phone. Then there appear to be plenty of options to try. Thanks everyone so much!

I'm gonna have to buy a new smartphone soon, but I want to be able to keep that as long as possible. From my viewpoint, there are mainly three aspects to that: performance, software and battery lifespan/replaceability.
Do you have any recommendations (what I was originally hoping for - but didn't find - is a mid to high range phone with a maintained lineageos build and a replaceable battery)? And what are your ways to handle the problem of the user experience on smartphones degrading so quickly?