Two nights ago I decided on a whim to watch Jojo Rabbit on Disney+, since I love Taiki Waititi, and I remember hearing good things about it when it was first released a few years ago. But, weirdly, I didn't actually know much about it other than him having directed it.

So imagine my shock, horror, and surprise when I finally started watching it and learned it was a comedy-drama about a Hitler youth!!! I thought it was just about boy scouts or something, similar to Moonrise Kingdom. And I was even more surprised when I almost immediately got over my shock and started enjoying it despite how dark and touchy the subject matter was. It had just the right amount of irreverence for the subject to get me past my initial hesitance, and had enough deeply human, incredibly touching, and painfully poignant moments to get me completely engrossed in it. And by the end I was crying like a baby when he noticed the shoes, and again in the final scenes. (keeping it vague in case others haven't seen it yet)

Several days later and I'm still thinking about it. That's how deeply it affected me. So, needless to say, I highly highly highly recommend watching it, if you haven't seen it yet... especially in light of recent events in Russia and Ukraine, which a lot of the things shown in the movie sadly remind me of.

Has anyone else here seen it? If so, what did you think about it?

p.s. Taika Waititi as Hitler was insanely, darkly hilarious, and the final scene with him was incredibly satisfying. "Fuck off, Hitler!"

It has been two days since I have seen this movie and yet I still have not come to the point where I can talk about it in a way that makes any sense.

The only way I have been able to describe the movie so far is that it’s a roughly two hour long action comedy drama. The name really fits because it is about everything. Success, failure, choice, the nature of meaning, what we owe to each other, why we are here, who we are, and what makes life worth living. It’s also a generational drama, a wuxia film, and a shameless knockoff of ratatouille.

It’s also a movie that I am afraid of spoiling the plot for you in spite of the fact that I am fairly sure that the film is unique enough that you couldn’t possibly “get it” no matter how much I talk about it.

It’s also the first movie in such a long time where the ideas didn’t fly over peoples heads and so much of the audience was stuck after the credits just trying to recover from the experience while wiping the tears from their eyes.

This film is so far out in front of all other choices that I think it’s pretty safe to say it’s going to be my pick for best film of this decade. And you should try to watch it in theaters while you can.

Hello everyone,

This will be a long post because I want to give my post the proper context. I apologize in advance for taking your time.

About five months ago, with the help of relatively high ceiling of Windows 11's system requirements, I finally pushed myself to use Linux exclusively on my desktop. It was a decision between using Windows LTSC or Linux and I went with the better long term option.

I am not a programmer but I'm also not unfamiliar with the Linux world. I believe I've used one distro or another on a spare computer for shorts period of time since at least 2008. But those use cases have always been to satisfy the curious side of my brain as I am always interested in technology. So after installing distros ranging from Ubuntu to Arch, my curiosity waned enough to never look deeper into how these systems work. They were, after all, a hobby project on a spare computer that was often gathering dust.

When I decided to switch exclusively to Linux, the next decision I had to make was to pick a distro. Naturally, I looked for the established players first. Ubuntu was the obvious choice because it has long been the distro for newbies and there are a lot of guides on the internet if I ever needed help, which was inevitable. But then I read about snaps and thought that was a deal breaker. I was moving to Linux specifically because I don't want things shoved down my throat. I had no intention to relive that¹.

So Ubuntu was a no go, but I was certain I wanted a Debian based distro as their support and software availability was unmatched, maybe save for Arch². At this point, why not Debian right? It's known for being rock solid and it's Debian itself, not some derivation. Well, because I had various issues with Debian before. These issues were always fundamental and not very specific too, so I didn't want to risk wasting a lot of time fixing things I didn't understand, only for them to break again after a couple of days. Then I came across Pop!_OS, which seemed like a perfect fit. It was Ubuntu without its worst parts, came with Nvidia drivers and it had a company behind it that seemed to be committed to Linux. I installed it and everything just worked. I had zero issues.

But then I started getting that FOMO itch again. GNOME 42 was out and it looked great, but Pop!_OS was two versions behind. I also found out that they're working on their own DE, which might end up being great (it looked nice) but I didn't want to leave an established player like GNOME behind, including all the benefits you get from its wonderful extensions. I started looking for other distos again and Fedora caught my eye. I was obviously aware of Fedora, I even used it once back when YUM was still a thing, but it didn't leave a lasting impression on me. The fact that it wasn't a Debian based distro was also a disadvantage because that meant something different and at this stage of dipping my toes into Linux, I didn't think different might be the best way to go for me. Still, despite my best judgment, I installed Fedora on a USB and used it live. When my gut feeling was confirmed by my research about how Fedora leaves things as stock as possible and is ahead of the curve in terms of upcoming technology (btrfs, PulseAudio, Wayland et al.³) without sacrificing on stability, I was hooked.

After renewing my Timeshift backup, I formatted my Pop!_OS system and installed Fedora. The installation process could use a facelift, but it handled everything perfectly. I didn't even have some of the issues I had with Pop!_OS right after installation. It was literally problem free. I'm now on day #3 of using Fedora and the experience remains the same. The only issue I had to deal with was trying to get Timeshift to work (apparently it doesn't play nice with btrfs on Fedora), but instead of wasting my time with that, I just installed Déjà Dup and I'm good to go again. Barring any drastic issues, I don't plan on changing my distro again.

Now, onto my plea for guidance.

I'm looking for comprehensive resources that will teach me how Linux works under the hood. Considering my non-programming background, I'd appreciate it if the language is approachable. The reason why I want this, for one thing, is to learn more about the system I'm planning to use probably for the rest of my life (in tandem with macOS) but also, I want to do some cool stuff Linux allows users to do.

Just to give a quick example. Yesterday, I installed Rofi, which is, besides many other things, an app launcher. I got it to work just fine, I even got a configuration of my own with a theme of my choosing, but when it comes to using some scripts, I just couldn't do it. Every video I watched on YouTube told me how easy it is to use scripts with it as if it's a self-explanatory thing, but I was simply clueless. There was a lot of lingo thrown around like environment variables, setting up $PATH, making the scripts executable with chmod etc. I have very little knowledge of these things. I want to learn what they are, why they exist, and how they all tie together. I want to learn how /etc/ is different than /usr/ and the difference between X11 and some DE (or if they're even in the same category of things). Now, at the risk of sounding impatient and maybe even worse, I also don't want to go way too deep into these things. I am not, after all, trying to become a kernel developer. I just want to be better informed.

There are a lot of information on the internet but most of this information is scattered and out of context. If I try to learn more about one thing, I'm bombarded about other things that I don't know, so in the end I learn nothing. In short, I'm looking for a comprehensive, entry level video series or a book about Linux written in an easy to understand language that assumes no prior knowledge.

Additionally, I'd appreciate any website, YouTube channel and what have you to keep up with recent developments in Linux. I already found a couple as there are plenty of them, but I'd like to learn more about how people here keep up with this fast changing environment.

Thank you for reading and sorry for being so verbose! 😊

^{1: I know you can remove snaps, but I didn't want to deal with the hassle of any possible issues deleting a core system functionally might bring about.
2: Despite finding its approach fascinating, I had no intention to get into Arch because it's a rolling distro and I didn't want an advanced system that can break at any moment in the hands of a novice like myself.
3: To be clear, I don't know how most of these technologies are better than alternatives, but the Linux community at large seems to think they're drastically better than alternatives and are the future.}

I did a fresh install of Foobar2000 [1] for the first time since it came out. I'm rebuilding playlists and figured I'd do some digging for some new ones. My old list had a bunch from somafm, Luxuria, the BBC ones, and a few others. Here's a list of some ones I dug up tonight. If you have any other good ones that are indie, hip hop, jazz, exotica, or really well-curated EDM, list 'em up! Bonus points for direct links to the stream.

• 90.9fm WDCB
• Luxuria Music Radio
• BBC6
• BBC3
• WWOZ
• KEXP
• BBC1XTRA
• Pigpen Radio (Internet-Radio.com)
• The Current
• Arctic Outpost

Choose one album
that you love
that you think deserves more love

Tell us what it is, and why.

Additional Details

I notice this primarily with the YouTube videos. I've started to notice that the videos I see posted in here I have already had recommended to me by YouTube. And I realize it must be because when I watch a video here, the YouTube algorithm decides I'm interested in that kind of thing. So, functionally, by posting and interacting with content in Tildes we are tuning the various algorithmic recommendation feeds that we interact with to view us all similarly.

It's just an interesting side effect I noticed and some food for thought about the effectiveness of a link aggregator or discussion forum at surfacing novel, interesting content we might not find otherwise. In part, this could just be an effect of Tildes being kind of small and having lots of self-selection biases for its user population. Perhaps if it was more diverse we'd be exposed to more things that break the mold and recommendation algorithms won't be able to pin it all down as easily. In fact, we may be able to use this effect as a way to test the breadth and diversity of content and types of people a site is attracting.

I've been rewatching Ozark. The third season features a bipolar character, and his storyline has been hitting me hard.
There is an emphasis on "getting better". Staying somewhere and getting better. Giving things time.
It's been making me wonder if time really makes things better.

Time heals wounds, but it doesn't fix broken things. It helps with grief. It helps forget the things that make it worse.

Twelve years ago, things got bad enough in my life that I attempted suicide. I had no psychological safety nets at the time. No mental security. What saved me at the time was a mix of luck, a couple of smart decisions on my part, and the good will of some people I barely knew.

I have since spent a lot of time creating and nurturing safety nets to make sure this never happens again. A variety of social, technological and mental mechanisms to stop me at every step, should things ever get this bad again.

And now, I'm... alive. Things got bad this last month. Really bad. Worse than twelve years ago. Worse than they've ever been. But I'm alive. My safety nets worked. I wouldn't be writing this without them.

I'm getting the feeling that I'm going to carry this burden for the rest of my life. Time didn't fix shit. I just got better at defending myself since.

Denmark

Commentary:
Only two Danish finds for the inaugral NMN post. Förlåt! Andreas's album title probably gives a clue, but it's a Danish language release. Don't be put off by the funny language though, and check out the track “i morgen er der også en dag”, with over 8 million Spotify streams.

Finland

Commentary:
I can get behind Babel's album title and the music there on it. “Eden” is a dream-like opening track from a band compared in the media to the shoegazers Slowdive and also the Cocteau Twins. I hear a little Casey Dienel's “White Hinterland” in there.

Iceland

Commentary:
It's not just album releases covered on NMN, but also beautiful EP's, like Axel Flóvent's. The instrumental title track “Coexist” might not have the obvious popularity of the other tracks, but it carries a melancholic piano very reminiscent of some of Aphex Twin's tracks on “Drukqs”.

Norway

Commentary:
For those of you that missed it, Jenny Hval gave an interview to The Guardian that was posted to Tildes earlier in the month. In it they talk to Rachel Aroesti about their life and how changes in it guided the making of the avant garde musician's new album “Classic Objects”.

Sweden

Commentary:
Being based in Sweden means that this list is inevitably the longer of them. There are some great pop releases in March, especially with Lucky Lo's catchy release “Supercarry” among them. But for international name recognition, they are all overshadowed this month by the first new Ghost LP since 2018.

I've always used Postgres. For a medium-sized app that I work on right now it's running great. Were I to seriously need more throughput I'd either shard (no small task I know) or use CockroachDB (which to my understanding is basically Postgres with built-in sharding and no extension support). Throwing away relationships, constraints, unique compound indices and all of the tools I love that Postgres provides just to get schemaless JSON with high write throughput out of the box doesn't sound like a good deal. But so many people have made the decision to go NoSQL so there must be something I'm missing.

I bought a colour eInk screen last summer and had a bit of fun getting it to talk to my shared Google calendar that runs our house. Recently I finally got around to making a frame for it so it can sit somewhere prominent and tell us about upcoming events. It's basically just a raspberry pi zero hat, so it's debian underneath. There's some slightly hacky python to make it (a) talk to Google, (b) mung their API output into something useful, which turned out to be HTML which is then "screenshotted" to create a PNG which can be sent to the eInk display. Updating takes about 30 seconds in total, partly because the pi zero is slow and partly because the refresh rate of the screen is in double-digit seconds. Works in full sunlight though, which is nice, and it's a much nicer screen than it looks in photos.

Screen is this one here. Pi Zero is a pi zero, the frame is flamed oak, the base is beech, the copper is copper. If there are no events in the next week, it shows a random picture instead (and boy, if I thought rendering html was slow on a zero that's nothing on 7-colour dithering a jpg!)

This question was brought on by one of danluu's posts, which linked to another post going into why benchmarking matters. In that post, I discovered a bunch of different places/people running benchmarks to determine the highest performing "thing". Over my years on the internet, I've come across other places and people doing this for other categories of things, and think it would be beneficial to get a large list down of all the high quality testers and reviewers in one place. So I'll start off with a comment below with a list of all the high quality reviewers that I've come across for anything and I would love it if you all could do the same!

Caveats:

• I'd like to try and avoid communities centered around a single niche object. First example that comes to mind for this is the mechanical keyboards subreddit. While there's some good information there, I feel that it's highly diluted from everyone else in the community "following what's popular". If there's a specific user that consistently posts high quality information from there though, I'd say that's fair game.
• If I (or someone else) posts a resource that you don't think is a high quality resource, or is untrustworthy, put a comment down explaining why! It's hard to be on guard all the time, so I'm sure I've fallen for marketing (word of mouth or otherwise) plots without realizing it.

I'll include a disclaimer for reviewers or categories that have an innate subjective aspect to them. (Audio & Video would be good examples I think)

I thought I'd take the time to post about a series I've been looking forward to for over a year now.

Hidden is a fantastic crime drama set in Wales, and a third series was announced early last year. The Welsh version, Craith, aired late last year. This week, the bi-lingual version airs on BBC One Wales and BBC Four. In my opinion it's the perfect crime drama: set in the mountains of North Wales, with a great soundtrack and unconventional storyline. Some shows focus only on the investigation and the victim, who probably just admits to the crime at the end. Not so here.

Sian Reese-Willams, who plays DCI Cadi John, explained what the series is about back in 2018:

It’s not a classic detective drama in that it deals with the whodunit and the police catching the bad man. It’s much more of a personal drama. It takes time to delve into the lives of everybody that gets caught up in the crime - the detectives, the victims, the family of the victims and even the bad guy. You’re trying to understand him.

It really plays with the idea of nature versus nature and almost tries to twist you into sympathising against your better judgement; it’s exciting and thought provoking. The characters are really interesting and it covers a lot of human emotion.

Here's another interview ahead of the second series.

Series two picks up around nine months after series one ends. We find Cadi trying to deal with the grief of losing her father, while trying to keep her head in her work.

It’s a difficult time for her - just as one begins to come through the initial shock of losing someone and start to try and deal with it, that’s the time that everyone around you starts to forget and move on. She’s also faced with dealing with the estranged daughter of the victim of the case, and the parallels she sees between the two of them are difficult for her to navigate professionally.

The first two series are on iPlayer now, and if you speak Welsh (or like subtitles) the third series is already on S4C Clic under the title Craith. Hidden is on BBC One Wales this Wednesday at 9pm, and BBC Four this Saturday at the same time.

K.O.

After a One-Night-Stand a young man is accused of raping a woman in a bathroom. The man vehemently denies it.
But instead of looking for the truth, the court spins it's own version of the truth.

Written by Alexander Rupflin, published on 12th of March, 2022 online. Originally published in
ZEIT VERBRECHEN № 13/2022, 15th of February, 2022.

Translated by @Grzmot

For the protection of the individuals involved, names have been changed.

What really happened in the bathroom between Fabian and Miriam?

It was a normal night at the disco. Miriam wouldn't have caught his eye in the Funpark, if she hadn't pointed her small digital camera at him and shot two photos. He was sitting with his friends, had another woman in his arm, of which he didn't even know the name. She was lean, her hair was blonde and tied in a ponytail with thin lips, but she quickly got out of his arm again and vanished in the dancing crowd. It was supposed to be one of those nights with the hope for an unforgettable evening - And that hope came true. He spotted the girl with the digital camera in the Alpine Fun room of the giant disco. He approached her, introducing himself: Fabian, and you? Miriam.

Miriam is tall, almost 1,80m. But he's still taller than her by almost a head. They yell the usual things at each other, trying to drown out the music. Where are you from? Do you want to drink something?

He smells like vodka-red-bull and wears a necklace with black wooden pearls to show himself off as the cool surfer, but he really is a boy from the village. He think he sees her smiling at him. Contrasting the girl from before, Miriam has more of a round face, that makes her look childlike even though she is nineteen. At the same time she looks incredibly confident; acting like she doesn't take him seriously and is just fooling around. She tells Fabian that she's taking pictures for some website.

Today, he doesn't really remember, what she tells him about herself. He just recently had his twentieth birthday, from a small village nearby, plays football in the state league. He's also in an apprenticeship in a grocery store. That's why he is even here, in this large disco in the middle of an industry disctrict not far from Koblenz. The grocery stores in the region organised a football championship, and he and his colleagues of course are playing. They are sleeping in the guest room of a local school for grocers. Tomorrow, finale, today, party. A colleague's birthday. It's the 20th January 2007, everyone is singing Ein Stern from DJ Ötzi and Nik P.

This night happened so long ago, the Funpark doesn't exist anymore, today there is a Realmarkt there, but Fabian still thinks about those couple of hours that changed his life. Pure hatred rises in him. And every time he talks about it, the same thing happens: He talks faster, louder, until he almost screams, then his lower lip begins to tremble, his voice cracks and fails, until the tears roll. He has cried a lot because of this night, sometimes not even making the effort to wipe away the tears. When he comes back down, he then says things like: "These idiots, what have they done with my life! A convict, for nothing. They continue their life. I can't. I'd need a new one."

Back then, in the wooden room where Schlager play, Fabian orders two drinks. It's by far not his first drink tonight. He loves partying. Why not? He's young and the women like him. Miriam wants to pay for her drink, Fabian insists to cover it.

Later, Miriam will tell the police that in that moment, "the guy" (Fabian) would make a weird pinching move with his fingers above the glass. She had laughed and asked: "What are you doing?" He didn't reply.

They drink, they talk. Then she puts her hand under his shirt to feel his warm stomach. She's bold. he thinks; a party girl. That's how he remembers the moment. She looks incredibly confident, funny, attractive, that makes him a little insecure. He doesn't want to be embarrassed. They kiss, she takes him to her girlfriends, he introduces himself. Time moves along. The two keep their heads close, kiss, talk, kiss. It's two in the morning. Three in the morning. Tanja, Miriam's best friend with whom she lives wants to convince her to go home. Miriam replies: "You're not my mom!" They argue for a bit, ultimately Tanja relents and leaves the Funpark with the others.

What really happened in the bathroom?

Miriam stays with Fabian. They sit in the same wooden room, move tables to two of Fabian's last colleagues, the rest is already sleeping in the guest house. He puts his arm around her shoulder, moves strands of hair out of her face. She's wearing black skirt and tights. Her face looks pale, her eyelids flutter. To him, she seems drunk, but he's the same. One of his colleagues takes a photo of them with Miriam's camera.

Later, Miriam will tell the police that in that moment she felt dizzy, that she had flashbacks to the death of her father, childhood memories came back, that she hit the table with her head multiple times.

The four leave the disco into the cold January night into one of the waiting taxis. Without any conversation between the two, Miriam apparently decided to come with him tonight. She didn't look afraid.

The drive takes fifteen minutes, the other two leave for their room. Fabian tells Miriam (according to him), he wants to buy cigarettes at a vending machine around the corner. Is he looking for an excuse for her to leave? But she waits at the door for him. When he comes back, he realizes that he doesn't have a key, calls his roommate Tobias, who is already sleeping upstairs. Tobias isn't surprised, that Fabian shows up with company, Tobias is his best friend, and when they party, sooner or later there is a woman around Fabian's neck. He is tall, athletic and has a rustic kind of charm. Miriam introduces herself quickly and then they sneak back up into room 112. It's in a sorry state, the plastic sockets yellowed, the curtain a torn piece of red cloth, the mattresses narrow (photos from the investigation prove this).
Miriam undresses, Fabian goes to the bathroom, Tobias falls back into his bed. When Fabian comes back to bed, Miriam is already there, only wearing underwear. They find each other under the blanket, kiss, explore each other blind.

Later Miriam will say that she was nauseous and felt beside herself. She was not able to think straight, nor could she have
said anything to the guy.

Tobias, who wants to sleep, tries to ignore the foreplay, between him and the two there is just about arm-length distance. He's lying on his back, staring at (that is how he tells it today) the ceiling. At some point he loses his patience and says: "At least go to the bathroom!" They do that.

And then? What really happened in the bathroom?

Tobias at least says to this day that he didn't hear any sound from the bathroom. That the two came back after just a few minutes and went back to bed. Except for the lack of decency, nothing had seemed strange to him. At no point did it feel like there could have been a crime happening.

At 22:05 the doctor calls the police

About two hours later all three of them wake up again, Fabian collects Miriam's clothes, she puts them on, says goodbye, stumbling into the grew morning and taking the next bus to her boyfriend Klaus.

They are in a relationship for eight months. When Miriam shows up at his place without any message, Klaus feels weird. Miriam is currently an apprentice, learning to become a paramedic, and is usually very confident. He is very much in her grasp, so much so that he feels like a boy next to her sometimes, and when they argue, her argument always beats his. But today she seems introverted, goes into the bathroom, brushes her teeth for a long time and falls into bed, sleeping till noon. When she wakes up, she asks: "Where am I?" Then she takes the bus home. Klaus, he explains today, can't decipher her behaviour. He didn't ask her back then where she had been. Today, he's unsure if she just had a bad conscience or if she really was under shock. He later discovers blood on his bed. Till the evening, he hears nothing
from her.

On her way home, Miriam writes a couple of messages to Tanja: "You wouldn't believe, how bad I'm feeling. I haven't even known this feeling up to now. I didn't want to at all, but he just didn't stop." And: "He gave me a lot to drink and put something in it, but I was too drunk, so I drank it anyway..."

At that point Fabian and the other boys are already back in the sports hall, playing football. Fabian gets a bunch of dumb statements thrown his way about Miriam, but that's it. His team loses. In the afternoon, he drives home to his parents, where he lives, gets on the couch, sleeps it off. His parents ask, how he has been. He doesn't tell them of the party or Miriam.

Miriam does. She tells Tanja about a gruesome night, complains about pain in her lower body. Tanja convinces her to get to the hospital, the doctor spots redness on the vulva, a almost four millimetre long tear at the entrance of the vagina, a small tear at the anus, a scratch on her neck and haematoma and bruises on her left arm and shoulder blade, lumbar vertebrae and the outer side of her left thigh. No signs of sperm. At 22:05, the doctor informs the police.

"I remember", Miriam goes on record, "It was when I was lying on the ground in the bathroom, feeling his sperm in my mouth and he then pissed in my mouth. Then he told me to turn around. I remember saying "I don't want this." then it blacks out again." She insists, that her memories of the night are in tears and pieces, even though she only drank three beers mixed with cola [ABV 2,4%] and one vodka-red-bull. This statement conflicts with her message just hours earlier.

She says, "the guy" had to give her a date drug, when he handed her the beer-cola. Then he took her with him into the guest house and violently raped her. But she also says: "I absolutely cannot tell, if I, at the time this was happening, wanted it or made the appearance that I wanted it." And she adds: "Actually I don't even know if I can accuse the young stranger of anything." She insists on this while making her statement to the police, that she does not want to file a complaint.

It had to have been a misunderstanding

The police disagree. They hold the statement of the confused looking woman as impressive enough to name Miriam as the "Aggrieved Party" from the first moment on. Not "supposed" or "alleged". The young woman, that is clearly ashamed of what has happened, is designated as the victim of a violent crime. The tight rope between distrust and empathy, that investigators should walk in such cases, is soon left behind. Even Miriams own doubts are ignored. From her statement: "I'd like to state again, that I do not want, that he is wrongly accused of anything. For me, this is all very irritating. I can, like I already said, only accuse, that I was given something, that brought me into this situation."

Only hours later: Fabian is sitting in the large office of his employer at the computer, taking care of financials. His boss approaches him, telling him that he got a weird call from the police. They go into an empty room. Fabian is shocked, what he hears. K.O. drops? What's that? Rape? I never did anything to a woman! Until today, he swears that he did not expect such an accusation in his wildest nightmares. Disturbed, he returns to his computer. It must be a misunderstanding. Or he has been confused for the wrong person. It's all going to get cleared up. Why would she accuse him of rape? There's no motive. The company links him up with an attorney, but he's no criminal lawyer, but civil, specialized in work law. Fabian ignores the call of the police, pushes it away. Does his job, plays football, goes to
parties like nothing happened.

It the start of April 2007, suddenly the police show up at his house with a search warrant. The mother opens, Fabian isn't home. She doesn't understand what is happening. The officers look in his room for drugs fitting of Miriam's descriptions: Benzodiazepin, Gammahydroxybutyric acid and other hypnotics. They don't find anything. In the evening, Fabian finally forces himself to explain the situation to his parents. He swears multiple times that he did not do anything to Miriam. They believe him.

Even after the search warrant Fabian tells himself that the problem is going to disappear, solve itself. He takes no initiative, doesn't find lawyer. Doesn't understand, that the race for the sovereignty of interpretation for the evening has already begun. Even today, Fabian convincingly explains that he's innocent. But if you ask him, what he believes happened that night at the toilet, he stutters, his voice becoming insecure, as if he's looking for long lost pictures in his mind: "It happened so fast in the bathroom...She played with me, yes... But I don't believe... No, I didn't even have proper sex with her. I always was afraid that women could get pregnant, and that's why... I don't remember properly. I didn't rape her!" The wounds in her genital area couldn't be from him. But why does he stutter so badly? And why does he say in his statement back then, that he had sex with her for sure?

Fabian gets to know Jessica. Years later, he'll still call her his dream woman, his soulmate. She's seven years older, he meets her at another party. To most people, she seemed invisible, but to Fabian she was beautiful. Through a friend he gets her number, a few weeks pass, the two are a couple. At some point he's brave enough to tell her of that night. She believes him. Loves him. Surely it will all resolve itself. The two move in together.

Early 2009, two years after that night, Fabian's attorney informs him, that there is a scheduled date for his case to be heard in court. Fabian, that wanted to forget the whole thing, is surprised that a court will even hear the case. The attorney calms him down, worst comes to worst, he'll get a fine. But why a fine, asks Fabian, I'm innocent.

5th March 2009, 9:50 in hall 102 of the state court Koblenz: Only his father is here. Fabian doesn't want Jessica to see him like that and his mother can't bear it. She is back home, at the table, praying. Fabian makes his statement. Miriam hears everything, sitting at the prosecutor's table as joint plaintiff. It's the first time they see each other again. They don't direct a single word towards each other.

In dubio pro reo

What happens then in court, of that tells the written sentence. During the proceedings deeds turn into words that can be fitted into a story. These stories are based on evidence, facts and testimonies. But even looking at it from a willing pointof view, there is no clear picture here, but a blurred one full of assumptions. In such cases, a defendant cannot be convicted. In dubio pro reo - When in doubt, rule for the accused.

But when joint plaintiff Miriam takes the stand as a witness and describes what happened that night, it looks like judge Helga Diedenhofen has no doubts. Fabian immediately gets the impression, that the judge thinks she knows what happened that night. Finally it dawns on him, that he might have to go to prison after all.

The next date of the proceedings, his past roommate Tobias takes the stand. He explains that both of them were drunk, but not so much that they had no idea what was going on, that Miriam immediately undressed herself, that Fabian brushed his teeth first. That they both disappeared into the bathroom for only a couple of minutes and that he didn't hear anything. The court does not believe a single word of the statement, ruling it as a helping out a friend.

But how can it be, that on the bed that Miriam shared with Fabian is clean, without any blood stains, but on Klaus' bed there are? The court doesn't seem to be interested. Also strange, how Miriam could approach the bathroom on her own (as written in the sentence), but exactly then and there fell into a "coma-like deep sleep", approximately three hours after she had consumed the allegedly spiked drink. The usual time where typical substances used are full effective, is just about three hours. Considering this problem, the court avoids concrete statements about time in it's written verdict.

No one looked at the CCTV footage of the disco. The driver of the taxi that the four took home, was never asked anything.

On the last day of the proceedings, expert testimony is heard from Bianca Navarro-Crummenaur. She is a coroner in the victim's ambulance in Mainz and is supposed to determine if Miriam was under the influence of a daterape drug that evening. Neither in her blood nor urine could they find traces in 2007, though such a substance usually disappears after twelve hours. The exper has nothing but Miriam's testimony to determine, if her description of her state fits K.O. drops. And the expert states that her description is "very classic". She never spoke with Miriam and according to protocol, did not ask her a single question during the proceedings.

Under lawyers Navarro-Crummenauer is known for taking the testimonies of the alleged victims a bit too much into her reports for courts. A few years later a family files a complaint against her in civil court, because in her report she found indicators of child abuse, where there were none, and the court took the kids away from the parents, until the misunderstanding was cleared up. Fabian's attorney already files motion to dismiss her report due to bias in 2009, but the court denies it. And so a conflicting story is built brick by brick in hall 102, full of ideas, assumptions and prejudices about an alleged occuring of a crime.

The verdict: Six years prison

After four days in court the verdict: Six years for Fabian. Rape under use of a dangerous tool and dangerous assault, the "tool" being the K.O. drops, of which Fabian allegedly didn't know anything of, but according to the court, he was carrying on him through the entire weekend. Even though the visit to the disco was a spontanous decision made that evening.

Even though the verdict is not in effect yet, Fabian is already in cuffs, going to jail, the court believes he might flee. He looks around the room, looking for help. For the first time in his life, Fabian sees his father cry.

Eleven days he sits in a jail in Koblenz. Then his attorney manages to get him. The appeal remains, like most appeals, without effect. The only thing that could prevent Fabian from prison would be a quick resumption of the proceedings due to new evidence that could prove his innocence. Finally he realizes that severity of his situation and asks one of the most known criminal attorney and experts for the resumption of proceedings for help. It's too late.

It's the 29. April 2010. Fabian's grandmother's birthday. With Jessica he goes to local retailer, searching for gifts. When they get into the car, a police patrol stops them from getting out of the driveway. Bystanders stare, a second time Fabian gets cuffs around his hands. In panic, Jessica calls Fabian's mother, then goes into a screaming fit.

Again, jail in Koblenz. The prison sentence is served. Months and years pass. In the meantime, a request for resumption is denied. The parents and Jessica visit every week. They cry and make plans to get him out. His father writes letters begging for his release, even to the pope. Fabian gets increasingly worried what his girlfriend does out there. Where she goes, who she meets? He asks her many questions, writes accusatory letters. He is now regarded as psychologically unstable, psychotropic drugs from which he becomes so fat that he is disgusted to see his own reflection.

In december 2012 Fabian's worries turn real, he becomes a letter from a stranger, telling him to keep his dirty lips of Jessica. Fabian collapses, the guards have to get him to the medical ward, they worry he will commit suicide. A bit later, he receives a letter from Jessica, she dumps him.

After four years, Fabian is released on good behaviour. He does not feel anything, the medication has made him numb. He says: "I was in prison for nothing and nothing again." How is he supposed to be relieved?

He learns to breathe again

He moves back to his parents and tries to keep going where he stopped four years ago. But no one is listening to DJ Ötzi's Ein Stern, in the village discos they no play Mein Herz from Beatrice Egli. At a local festivity Fabian meets a woman and jumps into a new relationship, not having dealt with the Jessica yet. The people in the village greet him, but half-heartedly. No one talks to him more than necessary. He feels how they talk behind his back. Realizes, that the court didn't just sentence him but also his parents and his younger sister.

The new girlfriend leaves him as well and Fabian has a final and complete mental breakdown. He drowns without dying, doesn't leave his room anymore. Carries day and night the jacket of his father, a packed travel pack ready to go. "Dad?", he asks. "They won't bring me into prison again, right?" Sometimes he sleeps in the bed of his parents, at the foot of it. Other days he believes, his family wants to poison him. Psychologists meet him. Diagnose anxiety disorder and a severe depression.

Another year passes. One day Tobias comes to visit. The two talk for a long time. Tobias quickly understands that Fabian didn't age a single day. Tobias now thinks about building a house, founding a family, Fabian is still the boy from back then, living in the past on loop. Tobias convinces Fabian to visit the local football court, like they did back then before everything happened. The smell of the wet grass, the memories of the cheering, the hugging-each-other, the feeling safe, all those emotions rise in Fabian again, in that very moment.

He learns to breathe again. In the weeks after he starts getting out of the house, starts working as a tiler, even goes independent soon after. Until today he fights for a resumption of the court case. It's also hatred that drives him: "Hate against the people here, that can't open their mouth in front of me anymore. All my supposed friends. I shot goals for them, every game, thirty five goals in a season. When I got arrested, we were three or four games from getting into the next championship. And when they made it, they drove through the streets, cheering and celebrating, even though I was in prison." He sobs. "I'll never be able to close this chapter of my life, but I hope that one day I can prove my innocence and that I didn't fight for no reason."

In the spring of 2021, Fabian's father dies from a heart attack. He would've loved to show him the acquittal black-on-white. Fabian is now thirty-five.

Miriam, it appears, is now married and mother. She herself does not want to retell her version of that night. When ZEIT VERBRECHEN reached out to her, she did not answer. Her then-boyfriend Klaus, who she left later, says, that Miriam got through that time better than a lot of other women, but that she had always been incredibly strong. But that he doesn't want any assumptions made based on those words, under any circumstance. If new evidence appears, Fabians attorney wants to file another request for resumption of the case.

At least until then, the question will remain: What really happened in that bathroom between Fabian and Miriam?

As some are aware, my NAS hates me. Anyway, I ran an update just now and it spat out the following:

Setting up linux-firmware (1.187.27) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.13.0-30-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sdb2
I: (UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f)
I: Set the RESUME variable to override this.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.11.0-27-generic
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sdb2
I: (UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f)

UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f is /swap.

/dev/sdb2: UUID="e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="329487d0-88c7-4d47-ab82-dc4b80bd3bfe"

The full log is below. If I reboot this thing, will it tell me that it cannot find GRUB like the previous installation that shit the bed?

My assumption is that its simply telling me that it's enabled some sort of hibernation and will use the /swap for that.. but I'm totally on edge with this thing. I don't have a lot to set up with the system-side of things, so I put off trying to fix the old installation from the previous post until later.

Anyway, does anything here seem fishy?

edit:

UUID=842ddd01-963f-4cea-b04f-a52b6b719a16 /          ext4  errors=remount-ro 0   1
# /boot was on /dev/sdb1 during installation
UUID=5cfbef39-3eb7-41e6-8223-e6881b4f3286 /boot      ext4  defaults          0   2
# /home was on /dev/sdb3 during installation
UUID=4f30a4a2-9f28-4831-a22c-dc5b969c4f17 /home      ext4  defaults          0   2
# swap was on /dev/sdb2 during installation
UUID=e6480da4-95f0-4cf3-a047-a43ef09f978f none       swap  tf                0   0

What is a "Screenless Day"?

Tildes "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time and energies elsewhere.

When is it?

It takes place over the weekend starting on the first Friday of each month. Participants will choose that Friday, Saturday, or Sunday to take as their screenless day -- whichever works best for their schedule.

Some people might not be able to participate in that window, and that's fine too. They can choose to shift their day earlier or later as needed. It is also completely fine (and encouraged!) to take personal screenless days separate from the event if you like. This thread will be posted the first weekend of each month, but it is open for comments the entire month.

Does it have to be truly "screenless"?

"Screenless" is an ideal, not a mandate. The spirit of the day is to deliberately step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology, and what that means is different for each person. Thus, it is up to each participant to determine what "screenless" means to them. Some might only choose to not use social media for a day; some might choose to eliminate all "screens" but still use their ereader; some may maintain some screen use but only for necessity (e.g. work; classes; GPS; etc.). Some might get rid of screens entirely, or go fully "unplugged" for the day.

How do I participate?

You do not have to do anything formal at all to participate -- simply take your screenless day in whatever way is best for you!

If you’d like to, use this thread to share plans for your upcoming screenless day or summaries/reflections about it once it’s over.

Can I chat in this thread if I'm not participating?

Yes! The more, the merrier! Discussion from anyone, participant or non-participant alike, is welcome. Though, do understand that it might take a bit longer than normal for some people to respond. :)

People eat a lot of food. So much, in fact, that we tend to overlook exactly how good our food is. In celebration of this (and to get our minds off of the scary stuff), I thought this was a good time to reflect on the good things in life. So I give you this question: what average, everyday supermarket food is secretly fantastic? So fantastic that you could eat it everyday - and probably actually do.

My vote is bread. Bread is so delicious you can practically make a complete meal out of it. But it's also versatile and with just a few more ingredients can be transformed into something even more delicious. Buttered toast is absolutely divine. Everyone has their favorite sandwich, and any of those would also be perfect for this list as well, but you can't have any of them without bread.

I'm also not above ultraprocessed garbage food, so as a bonus suggestion is (bread-adjacent!) premade frozen pizzas. While some people will prefer fresh made pizzas, I've never seen anyone hate frozen pizza altogether, and everyone has a favorite brand. I personally like Totino's; it has a strangely appealing artificial quality to it, and most importantly it's a filling meal that takes zero effort (it can be cooked in the toaster oven without even needing to dirty a pan) and costs only about a dollar.

I have been wanting to write about this for some time. This happens, in some shape or form, whenever someone reads others on the internet. Especially on sensitive subjects. Many readers are linguistic sleuths. Every fraction of language will be forcefully interpreted and analyzed in order to reveal some hidden truth (which is always assumed to be negative), the user's actual position, his or her sinister agenda. On the one hand, that is a consequence of the very real fact that many individuals do have sinister agendas, and many organizations do employ backhanded tactics to manipulate public opinion. I get that. At the same time, this makes it very hard to communicate sometimes.

This affects the neurodiverse disproportionally and is a common complaint in places like /r/aspergers and /r/autism, among others. Some of us are not highly efficient machines of context evaluation and reproduction of linguistic patterns. Some of us actually do mean precisely what we say. No subtext, no irony, no desire to influence through excuse means.

There are also people for whom English is not the first language, as well as those of varying age, cultures, and circumstances. While it is understandable that English-speaking communities naturally center on the US, the assumption that everyone lives within that context produces all kinds of misunderstandings. This makes me less likely to truly engage with some communities because every once in a while I'm hit in the crossfire. Sometimes I inadvertently use words, expressions, or phrasing patterns which North Americans associate with a certain position they disapprove of, and their "mind-reading" is led askew.

This is not specific to any linguistic community. It happens everywhere. We're all kinda messed up. But it would be nice to be able to comment on complicated issues without feeling like Edward Norton in his first day at the Fight Club.

I don't mean to imply that everyone should just abstain from hermeneutics in regular discourse. But maybe be a little more charitable, give it another chance when someone strikes you the wrong way.

Sometimes people mean exactly what they write.

(A lot of the above is directly transferable to offline interactions)

Use this thread to post about the games that you play!

Also, a quick note about thread etiquette: It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week if you play multiple games. It is also fine to respond to yourself with updates if you're continuing a single game and want to talk more about it as you go!

Previous threads:

Announcement
Beginning
Week 1
Week 2

A lot of game engines are geared towards making full-fat games with 3D graphics and animations and sound effects and all that jazz. What if, instead, I want to make something dead simple, graphics-less, and minimalistic -- like Wordle? What's the best way to get to something like that (almost more of a digital toy than a full-fledged game)?

It doesn't have to be web-based at all (though it can be if that's easier? I'm genuinely not sure). My preference would be for open-source engines/tools, but that's not a necessity.

A few months ago I got a new to me HP Proliant ML310e Gen8. For the most part it works well, but I went to add some drives to it yesterday and grub / whateverthefuck doesn't like the one and only kernel that is installed.

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04. I looked around saw guides like this. this, and this -- but I'm not sure if this will fix the issue.

After grub I get the ol'

---[end Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) ]---

I think I need to run something with initramfs or something, but I just want to be sure before I go messing around.

The bad kernel listed is 5.11.0-27-generic. I'm a little out of my element with this part of things.

The last part of the original trilogy has been completed! For those unaware, the 4K## project from Team Negative 1 is a full remastering of the original trilogy from 35mm negatives. Around September of 2018 4K77 (A New Hope) was released. Under a year later, 4K83 (Return of the Jedi) was released.

A few years later and the first release of 4K80 (The Empire Strikes Back) is out! Its pretty grainy and does need some work, but this is definitely a project worth keeping an eye on if you're into the OT.

If you want a copy, you can join the forum and use Resilio Sync to get them. 77 and 83 are available on most file sharing platforms, too.

• 4K77 (A New Hope)
• 4K80 (The Empire Strikes Back)
• 4K83 (Return of the Jedi)

Once 4K80 is a few versions deep, it'll completely unseat the Despecialized version as the purest OT experience, at least in my opinion :)

Use this thread to post about the games that you play!

Also, a quick note about thread etiquette: It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week if you play multiple games. It is also fine to respond to yourself with updates if you're continuing a single game and want to talk more about it as you go!

Previous threads:

Announcement
Beginning
Week 1

Recently I got for free an old Zeiss Super Ikonta 531/2, it's a medium format foldable camera from 1936. It was in decent shape but the lens was very foggy. Fungi can grow on lenses but I think it was just general dirt. Opening it was a bit tricky (I had to get watching-making tools, because the screws are very tiny) but I managed to clean the lenses quite well. I shot a first roll but the focus was off, so I had to make sure the front lens element was at the right distance, using some semi-transparent tape on the back of the camera to see the image.

Then I shot a second roll and developed it myself, which was also a first (it's not super hard though), I had no idea if the images would come out good, or even at all (wasn't even sure I loaded the developing tank correctly). Seeing the images come out of the tank for the first time is quite magical, and they came out great (some of them at least...) :

https://imgur.com/a/bF817x9

Even with my crappy development & scanning I can get high-res images that compete with my expensive digital camera. The lens (Tessar 105mm, f3.8) is quite sharp wide open (statue shot) and I even took a long exposure shot at night using a release cable. The process is very slow and focusing is hard, but it's quite fun and rewarding. These kind of cameras are very cheap but the rest (film, accessories, development, repairs, ...) not so much.

A project I'm working on requires me to cover a bit of comedy targeting Lennart Poettering as it's tangentially related, and I'd like to have more context even though it's not strictly necessary. I'm a nontechnical Linux user who used the OS before systemd came around, but really the only impact on my life it's had is that I occasionally use systemctl to control services.

Though I wasn't paying as much attention to the community around the time major distributions switched, I've been casually exposed to criticism of it ever since I came back, and I'd like to make sense of it all and form an opinion beyond "I like Fedora and GNOME and it seems to go hand-in-hand with those". I've read The Biggest Myths, the Wikipedia article, some stuff on freedesktop.org, and of course absorbed the venom slung back and forth over systemd in every FOSS community, but it's hard to get a full picture. And a picture from 2022, for that matter, as a lot of this information comes from its early days. Help me out?

hey tilders,

so I mostly read tildes.net content through my RSS reader, and it's 98% great. the remaining 2% is due to two things:

• HTML entities (fancy quotes, etc) don't degrade nicely; I get a lot of &#xxx; in my feed reader - Edited topics (I think) get posted twice to the RSS feed, giving me duplicate items.

I don't know how hard it might be to fix these issues, but is there anything I can do to help?

Hey everyone!

This year I've started getting into music collecting, and I'm wondering what everyone around here uses/recommends to manage a music collection. Basically what I'm after is software where:

1. I can pick the albums that I own.
2. I can pick albums that I want to own.
3. I get notifications when one of tmy tracked artists releases a new album.
4. Should not be a mobile exclusive app.

I've looked at Discogs but this one goes a level of complexity beyond what I need (It tracks all the different releases of a same album) and MusicBrainz which seems more what I'm after but not sure if it does #3; though I could supplement that with a different service. Looking for suggestions on software available online or self-hosted.

Alright, so I fell down a rabbit hole of trying to understand a whole bunch of techy things that I don't fully understand and could use some help:

What I'm looking for: a pair of Bluetooth wireless earbuds that I can pair with my computer, with low enough latency that it won't impair my enjoyment in casual gaming/video watching

What I understand so far: Almost nothing. 😔 I get that Bluetooth will always have some level of latency, but, beyond that, I've got nothing. I'm so confused.

There are lots of different versions of Bluetooth, and then there are different Bluetooth protocols within that, and then different audio codecs, and each piece of hardware seems to support completely different combinations of those, and I'm not sure if the devices have to match configurations or even how to figure out what my computer supports? It seems Bluetooth will gracefully fall back to worse codecs/protocols if better ones are incompatible, but I don't really want to buy something that's just going to fall back to its worst usecase.

I also don't know what's an "acceptable" level of latency. What's reasonable versus what's intolerable?

It also seems like the information I read online is subject to rapid decay. I read a bunch of stuff only a few years old saying I should look for aptX Low Latency capability, but then I read very recent posts saying that's dead and to go with aptX Adaptive instead. Meanwhile there are a handful of gaming-focused headsets that say they're low latency but don't really say how (e.g. Razer's Hammerhead). And some, like Samsung's buds, having a "gaming mode" but it only works on special hardware.

Also, how do I know what my computer itself will support? Is there anything I can do from the computer side to reduce latency, or is that strictly a function of what my hardware supports and which earbuds I buy?

My usecase:

My computer is a System 76 Oryx Pro (5) running Pop!_OS 21.10. I think its Bluetooth adapter is version 5.1 (though I'm not confident on that). I do not know which protocols/codecs it supports, nor how to find that out.

Audio quality isn't too important. These will be for everyday video-watching and gaming, which is what's prompting the latency requirement. I'd rather them be responsive than rich.

Active noise cancelling would be nice to have (especially if it has a toggleable transparency mode), but I don't know if ANC adds latency and is therefore incompatible with what I'm wanting.

I don't have a specific budget for it, and that's honestly the least important requirement. If the solution exists I'm fine paying for it (within reason, of course). These will end up getting used for thousands of hours, so even a big price difference upfront will even out over time.

I'd appreciate any help anyone can offer in pointing me in the right direction on this!

Use this thread to post about the games that you play!

Also, a quick note about thread etiquette: It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week if you play multiple games. It is also fine to respond to yourself with updates if you're continuing a single game and want to talk more about it as you go!

Previous threads:

Announcement
Beginning

Hello everyone,

I usually do my own research, and then I try to find multiple matching results and afterwards, read specifically in detail about each recommendation, but, I have to be honest that for UPS recommendations that I’ve seen, it seems to be a very personal recommendation depending on the wattage and connected devices.

First of all, most people recommend CyberPower or APC, but I’ve also seen some recommendations for Eaton. Is there any other brand that I should be looking into?

The devices I would like to connect to a UPS would be: desktop, TV, Apple TV, NAS, router and probably my Nintendo Switch.

There are some general things I've found out while searching that I think I would like some confirmation:

• I actually think I should buy two UPS's, or? I think just one for the desktop and another one just for the remaining devices, since the desktop uses a lot more wattage.
• Pure Sine Wave: It does not matter for smaller stuff (routers, etc) but it seems that anything above 70 W, it should use a UPS with this. So, that would mean I need pure sine wave, since my desktop and TV definitely use more than 70 W of power.
• Some people said to search for a UPS with line conditioning so that you always get a perfect sine wave. Would you agree?
• USB connection (not a faux USB!) so that the NAS detects the power failure and shuts down gracefully.
• It is important that the UPS has removable battery for better longevity.

How would I choose a UPS? Do I need to see the total wattage of all my devices and then pick the UPS accordingly? Anything I'm missing?

My budget would be up to €100 or €150 in case it is really worth it.

Thank you in advance for all replies.

I have an HTPC (a shitty asRock beebox) away from my main router and all. For the most part the wireless signal is fine, but it can act up at times or completely cut out.

The design of the beebox is bad for wireless. I get a more consistent connection running from USB C > USB hub > USB Wireless stick -- but it still isn't great.

I'm thinking I should just bit the bullet and use ethernet. Would it be better to go with powerline or a wireless bridge for this? The reviews for powerline stuff are all over the board.

The HTPC pulls everything off the LAN, so outside speeds are about 99% irrelevant. The most it'll ever pull is metadata for Kodi's library, and even then it doesn't pull a lot.

Which is best? I'm running an RT AC68U running Merlin if that matters. I also saw a lot of gripes re: the AI Mesh stuff.

We have 2 boys, one of which is 4 months old and my wife is looking for new ways to share updates with friends and family. She doesn't want pictures publicly available anymore but still wants to cast a wide net to many different people. I think she's open to a newsletter of some sort that would allow people to opt in or unsubscribe.

What's the best way to manage a newsletter like this? I want her effort to be the same as Facebook. She can add photos and text to a "post" all from her iPhone and then it gets emailed to everyone that we've added to a list.

Any ideas or suggestions?

What is a "Screenless Day"?

Tildes "Screenless Day" is a simple event aimed at encouraging people to take a temporary step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology and spend their time and energies elsewhere.

When is it?

It takes place over the weekend starting on the first Friday of each month. Participants will choose that Friday, Saturday, or Sunday to take as their screenless day -- whichever works best for their schedule.

Some people might not be able to participate in that window, and that's fine too. They can choose to shift their day earlier or later as needed. It is also completely fine (and encouraged!) to take personal screenless days separate from the event if you like. This thread will be posted the first weekend of each month, but it is open for comments the entire month.

Does it have to be truly "screenless"?

"Screenless" is an ideal, not a mandate. The spirit of the day is to deliberately step away from toxic or consuming aspects of technology, and what that means is different for each person. Thus, it is up to each participant to determine what "screenless" means to them. Some might only choose to not use social media for a day; some might choose to eliminate all "screens" but still use their ereader; some may maintain some screen use but only for necessity (e.g. work; classes; GPS; etc.). Some might get rid of screens entirely, or go fully "unplugged" for the day.

How do I participate?

You do not have to do anything formal at all to participate -- simply take your screenless day in whatever way is best for you!

If you’d like to, use this thread to share plans for your upcoming screenless day or summaries/reflections about it once it’s over.

Can I chat in this thread if I'm not participating?

Yes! The more, the merrier! Discussion from anyone, participant or non-participant alike, is welcome. Though, do understand that it might take a bit longer than normal for some people to respond. :)

I'm curious what experiences people who game on linux have had, what your favorite distros are, and why. Mind sharing them in this thread? I'm in the market.

My old GTX770 just bit the dust. I picked up a Radeon 6600 to replace it, only to discover after installing it that while the 6600XT has Windows 7 drivers, the 6600 itself does not. The desktop works, but that's it. A little strange, but not entirely unexpected.

My ancient frankenstein Win 7 Enterprise has got to go (into a VM, already on its way) and there is simply no way in hell I will ever use any version of the spyware/bloatware mess that Windows has become today. They lost me forever the second they put a marketplace and ads into my start menu. Ain't nobody got time for that, or at least, I don't.

That means it's finally Linux time, for real - no going back. I'm rather excited. :D

Side note: My original install date for Windows 7 Enterprise was 11-12-2011, it's lasted nearly eleven years without a BSOD or the need to reinstall. They really did fix windows decay syndrome in v7. That's the longest I've ever had a desktop OS last. Can any desktop linux distro manage to go that long, I wonder?

The last time I ran a linux daily driver was Ubuntu for two years around '08, until I got sick of the pulseaudio issues. I'm not worried about that anymore, linux is ready for primetime now. That begs the question of which distro to use. I've toyed with or supported just about all of them at work (mint, redhat, suse, ubuntu, arch, deb, slack just to name a few). I'm a sysadmin by trade so I'm not phased by the learning curve, I know linux cold already.

It's more a question of which distro is going to bother me the least acting as my daily driver. I like to tinker at work, but if I have to do it all the time at home I get cranky. I prefer the 'it just works' experience. The primary requirement is linux gaming, as this is my main gaming rig. That means lots of Skyrim Special Edition, Stellaris, Rimworld, emulators, etc.

There's so many choices out there I'm not sure how to tell which one is the best and I don't particularly feel like putting a dozen of them through their paces over a month to find out - so I'm asking Tildes. ;) I don't mind trying a couple. Steam is required. Good support for WINE is a bonus. Ditto virtual desktop support - is Compiz still a thing or is there something better?

Here are the system specs. I'm sure it's all fully linux compatible.

1. Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z
2. Intel i7 2600K (3.2GHz, OC'ed to 4.2GHz with a Noctua air cooler, never breaks 60'C)
3. Sapphire RX6600 GPU w 8GB of DDR6
4. 16GB of G.Skill DDR3 2400MHz memory
5. 500GB Samsung SSD, 4x4TB WD Red NAS drives

Yeah, it's long in the tooth, and I'm glad I went for the Z/K combo so the new GPU isn't entirely gimped plugged into a much older PCIe 2.0 mainboard. I'll pick up a Ryzen sometime to replace it, but not until after the chip shortage shakes out. It was hard enough getting that 6600 in this market without getting scalped.

I don't use Windows 10 all that much, but there's a Windows laptop in the house that I use from time to time.

I generally wait like a year before upgrading, but I heard Windows 11 has better support for running Linux GUI applications with the Windows Linux Subsystem 2. Command-line Emacs is fine but is not exactly the same and there is no clipboard integration. That is the sole reason I'm thinking of upgrading. I don't care about any details or aesthetic changes, since I'll just make everything look and feel more like Windows 7 anyway. I just wanna know if it's stable enough, and if it will get in my way.

Thanks!

The event has officially started! Let's burn through these backlogs!

Use this thread to post about the games that you play!

Also, a quick note about thread etiquette: It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week if you play multiple games. It is also fine to respond to yourself with updates if you're continuing a single game and want to talk more about it as you go!

What is this?

Your "backlog" is all those games you've been meaning to play or get around to, but never have yet! This event is an attempt to get us to collectively dig into that treasure trove of experiences!

How do I participate?

Choose a game (or several) from your backlog and play it/them. Then tell us about your experiences in the discussion thread for the week! If you're not sure what you might write, take a look at a previous backlog post or our previous Backlog Burner event in 2020 to get an idea. Also if you want to keep track of statistics across the whole event or anything else like that, go for it!

Do I need to finish the games I play?

Nope! Not at all. There aren't really any requirements for the event so much as this is an incentive to get us to play games we've been avoiding starting up, for whatever reason. Play as much or as little as you like of a given game. Try out dozens for ten minutes each or dive into one for 40 hours. There's no wrong way to participate!

What's the timeline?

I will post an update thread weekly, each Tuesday, for the four weeks of February. At the end of the month, I think it would be neat to tally how many collective games we all removed from our backlogs, as well as what the best finds were from our collective digging into our libraries. I expect we'll turn up some good hidden gems, as well as interesting insights.

Do I need to sign up?

You don't have to do anything to officially join or participate in the event other than post in these threads! Participate in whatever way works for you. Also, because this is ongoing, it is okay to make more than one top-level post if you're updating the thread with new information.

Do I need to wait until February to get started?

Nah. I figured people might want to begin over the weekend, which is why I'm posting the announcement now! The first official discussion thread will go up on Tuesday, but feel free to kick things off here if you're wanting to pre-game the month!

Let's burn through these backlogs!

Hey everyone!

Sorry if this is a long post, but I've done my research and I would like to make a few questions.

I've decided that I would like to buy a NAS mainly to storage all of my documents, photos and videos, so that, I can access them from multiple devices and also use it to upload important documents to Backblaze B2. Then, I've actually discovered that I can install a few Docker containers and I could use it as a media server (Jellyfin) and serve the content to my Apple TV (neat!).

I considered a QNAP (better hardware for the price) but everyone recommends Synology instead (because of the stronger security and better overall software), but to be honest, I'm not sure what should I get.

My budget would be to buy a NAS (without counting the disks) below €1000. Ideally, €500-600 but I don't mind stretching to the €700 mark, if it is really worth it.

Spoiler alert: I think, it should be the DS920+ (4-bay) or the DS1520+ (5-bay). I think a NAS above 4-bay is better for future-proofing.

Looking here in Germany at price comparators, I could buy the DS920+ for €663 and the DS1520+ for €750. But these prices seem to be at an all-time high :(

Questions & Assumptions:

0. I'm not sure if the price difference of about €100 is worth the premium to get the 5-bay model. There are only two differences between these two models: The 5-bay has one extra slot, and it has 4x 1 Gbe LAN ports instead of 2x 1 Gbe. All the rest is the same. What is your opinion?

1. I've read that if you run a few containers (~10) it consumes quite a bit of RAM (~3 Gb), so it should be ideal to have at least 8 Gb. This is the reason I've said that I think I can only choose the DS920+ or DS1520+. Looking at official Synology resellers, these models, seem to come already with 8 Gb, and they are within my budget. Is my research wrong?

2. These two models, have an encryption engine. I think this is necessary to encrypt my files before sending them to Backblaze, or?

3. A lot of people seem to say to simply pick Synology's hybrid RAID setup called SHR-1 or SHR-2. I would go the easy way here and pick one of those two. Would you think that is a bad idea, and it is better to pick a specific (standard) RAID? I've read about the long long long RAID rebuild that could happen in some situations, and picking the "right" RAID could decrease the rebuild in days (or weeks!!!!).

4. In case, I choose a NAS model with Nvme cache slots, most people say it is not worth it to use if you are not running Virtual Machines and the SSD’s "burn" really fast. I have no interest on VMs.

5. Most people say to pick an Enterprise (Server) HDD instead of a NAS HDD mainly because price is similar in some cases and Enterprise has longer life and warranty. I should also pick a CMR HDD which is helium filled. 5400 rpm would be preferable to 7200 rpm because of the noise. Sadly, all Enterprise HDD's and most of NAS HDD's are 7200 rpm. Is the noise difference that big? The NAS will be in our living room.

6. Is 8 TB still the best cost per Terabyte?

7. I was extremely sad to hear that the Hitachi hard drive division was bought by WD. I've had lots of misfortune with WD drives (and let's not forget the debacle with the SMR and CMR drives) and I would prefer not to give money to them, but, nevertheless, I'm still tempted to buy the Ultrastar drives that belonged to Hitachi. Does anyone know if WD kept the components, manufacturing processes, staff, etc., that made these brilliant disks?

8. Following the HDD topic, what is your experience with Seagate or Toshiba drives?

9. These two NAS models have the same Intel Celeron CPU, which supports hardware transcoding. To be honest, I don't know in which cases would that happen. It seems if I use Infuse on the Apple TV it would never transcode (and instead direct play) because Infuse would do the transcoding in software. Should I take in account that hardware transcoding is a must-have or a nice-to-have?

10. Would you recommend having a CCTV system connected to the NAS? Should I dedicate one entire HDD just for the NVR system? Would a standalone NVR device be better?

11. My last question is: Should I just wait for the new model of the DS920+ or DS1520+? The 20 means it was launched in 2020 (in Summer specifically) and it seems Synology refreshes the model every two years., that means, a new model would be available in Summer this year. Most people say it is not worth the wait because Synology is very conservative in its model updates/refreshes. People are saying that a better CPU will be of course available (do I even need that for my use cases?) and probably upgrade the 1 Gbe LAN ports to 2.5 Gbe or 10 Gbe (10 Gbe I really doubt it). I've read that a 4K stream does not fill a 1 Gbe bandwidth, and you could theoretically have three 4K streams in a single 1 Gbe connection. If all else fails, I could just do a link aggregation of the two ports to be 2 Gbe, or?

12. Anything I'm forgetting? Should I be careful with something in particular?

I know I should buy a UPS too, but I think I'll create a separate post regarding this topic because I would also want a recommendation regarding a UPS for my other devices.

I know that I could actually build my own NAS and use Unraid for the OS. Furthermore, I'm just at a time in my life with too much on my plate (baby and small child) and having something that just works is preferable. When they are older and more independent, I'll have more time to investigate this option :)

Again, sorry for the long post. Thank you everyone!