Hey ya'll

Just getting used to this here Tildes now.

Is there a crypto group yet. I know we all ain't gott be into it, but it seems finance here is the best closest place to call it out of who in or wants a sub.

Can we have one, what's the best way to go about setting it up!?

Hoping we can get some discussion on self hosting setups throughout the community and help anyone who may be interested with common setups and finding interesting software.

Hardware
Currently running everything on a Dell 7050 SFF (intel i5-7500 and 16GB RAM) which suits my needs perfectly. Had used an older SFF before (i forget which) and a cheap older model mac mini (2012 I think) for self hosting before, but those were not the right choice as I didn't properly understand what hardware encoding was at the time. The i5-7500 handles all the media I have when transcoding is needed. Only thing it can't do is AV1, but my setup avoids those anyway.

Operating System
Distro Hopping habits are hard to break and that "itch" unfortunately carry over to the server. Currently running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS for a few months now, but feeling like a change is needed soon. I've used Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora for servers before and they each have their own little problems that make me eventually switch. I am considering maybe doing a Proxmox setup so I can spin up a VM whenever that itch comes, but not sure if they added complexity is worth it in the long run.

Software
Yay, the best part! My self hosting stack has changed a ton over the years. Everything in my stack is in a docker container through a set of badly written compose files (planning on redoing things, cleaning things up, making things consistent, etc.). I'll just do a rundown of everything with a brief description of what it is:

• Plex Gives me a Netflix like streaming experience at home. Currently working on shifting things over to JellyFin as Plex is starting to grow increasingly buggy for me.
• Sonarr Automatically tracks and downloads all my shows. I have two instances of this running, one for normal tv shows and another for anime
• Radarr Automatically tracks and downloads all my movies.
• Prowlarr Sowers the high seas for what Sonarr and Radarr are looking for and gives them the "linux iso".
• rdt-client Probably different to most peoples setups. I use a debrid service (not sure why people call them that), to download my "linux iso's" for me and I do a direct download from them. Much quicker and no torrenting traffic on my end. Also it's also cheaper than paying for a VPN usually.
• File Browser A good web ui for managing files
• Nginx Proxy Manager Is a reverse proxy for all of my services and gives me HTTPS for everything. Gets rid of the annoying browser warnings.
• Tailscale The most recent addition to my setup. Allows me to access my network anywhere. Similar to a VPN (I know it uses wireguard under the hood), but does a lot of magic for you and just makes everything work and connect together, its really cool.
• Adguard Home Gives me a local DNS server that does DNS level ad blocking. Never given me problems and it works well, but I am thinking of reducing the complexity of my setup and removing it. There tons of DNS servers out there that can do the same thing and I don't mind trusting a few of them (like quad9 or mullvad dns).
• Watchtower It monitors all my docker containers and keeps them up-to-date. If a new version is out, it will automatically download the latest version and restart the container and delete the old container version. I know its not the best idea, but its only cause a break 1 time with 1 container in the couple years I've run this setup.
• Homepage Literally the homepage for all my services. I've tried a lot of different ones and Homepage is easily the best. Simple, but powerful to configure.

Keen eyes may have noticed the lack of backup software. I'll get around to that, eventually.

I don't know if my question makes any sense, and it's okay to say "No, sorry, it doesn't work like that".

I have a (pirated) dictionary that has the words and definitions in an sqlite3 database format.

I want to convert this into something that can be used by either Fora, GoldenDict, or StarDict.

Fora can use StarDict, DSL, XDXF, Dictd, and TSV/Plain dictionaries

GoldenDict can use Babylon .BGL, StarDict .ifo/.dict./.idx/.syn, Dictd .index/.dict(.dz), and ABBYY Lingvo .dsl source files.

I've found lots of software that goes the other way - it'll take a dictionary and dump it into an sqlite database. But it doesn't go the otherway.

Is what I'm asking for coherent, does it make any sense?

(I'd prefer Windows, or FreeBSD, but at this point I'd install Linux to get it done).

Hey Tildes, with the renewed interest in the site, it got me thinking that we should hold a fundraiser for the not-for-profit company—which currently consists of just one person—that runs Tildes. It's overdue.

Disclaimer: These are my words as a member of the community. I haven't run this message by the admin before posting. I may have gotten some details wrong.

Where to donate

• GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/Deimos
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tildes

History

A bit of history: The site admin, @Deimos ran the first three years of the site working full-time on it, paid only by donations, plus a $5000 GitHub sponsor match one year, which I'm not even sure was fully achieved, or only just barely.

For that time period 2018-2020, a lowball salary as a software engineer with his experience would have been $100,000 USD per year not including benefits.

If he received $5000 in donations per year (almost certainly an overestimate for more recent years) plus the $5000 GitHub match for the first year—for the 5 years of Tildes' life, that's about $30,000.

The remaining opportunity cost of $270,000 was essentially paid out of pocket by himself, as a donation to the community. Plus remember there are server expenses, legal incorporation expenses, etc. And, y'know, rent.

In recent years he had to take a full-time job because the situation was, of course, unsustainable.

App?

I announced in April that a mobile app is under development. Originally, I was planning to take my time and release a first alpha by the end of 2023.

How about if we struck a deal: get the donation numbers up and I will devote more time to the app, as opposed to splitting my time between it and contract work and other projects.

What's the deal?

• 150 active donors combined on GitHub Sponsors and Patreon—I'll release an alpha by November.
  GOAL REACHED
• 300 active donors—I'll release an alpha by October.
  GOAL REACHED
• 500 active donors—I'll release an alpha by September.

The dollar amounts don't matter.

As of writing, we are at 46 active donors.

What's in it for you, though?

Feeling like I did a good deed, I guess? I'm not looking for a "slice of the pie," to be clear. In some sense I'd be matching your donations with my time, aka opportunity cost.

If I donate, can I bother the admin to work more on the site?

No.

Again, I haven't run this fundraiser by the admin. He will certainly keep his full-time employment for the foreseeable future, and will not magically have more hours in the day to devote to Tildes.

With a sustainable budget, though, a lot can happen in the future. Contracting out work to others, for example.

But the point of this fundraiser is more to make a small dent in the past debt we owe the admin, not making any promises whatsoever on the future of the site and how it's run.

Let's go, my fellow Tilderinos!

• GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/Deimos
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tildes

It's been six months since ChatGPT launched and about three months since I started posting these. I think it's getting harder to find new things to post about about AI, but here's another one anyway.

Here's the previous thread.

I've recently been trying to get an area of my yard to grow with perennial wild flowers. For 2 years straight, I plant seeds and nothing comes up. I'm starting to think that the seeds the store sells are just a scam. Even when I tried to germinate them in potting soil, nothing grew. Anyone here have any sort of advice?

I've been an After Effects user for 20+ years and I like to help people who are looking to learn. I would just ask that anyone asking a question has done due diligence searching for an answer already.
I also use 3D Studio Max and Vray.

I'll start, Sony A7C, w/ Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 as my main lens. Have a Sony 28-60mm f/4 as well, though its more for where I need a really compact setup.

Looking to get a Tamron 20-40mm f/2.8 for a little extra fov when indoors, while still having some reach. Planning on getting the A7CII when it comes out supposedly later this year according to sonyalpharumors.

Just joined this site and I wanted to make a good place to discuss the recently released: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for the Nintendo Switch.

I wanted to get your opinions, gameplay videos, screenshots, or whatever it is you want to talk about in regards to the game.

To start, did you buy the game and what's your completion / time spent playing?

Do any of you have mini computers in your home?

My roommate recently bought a plex server and has stated self hosting. I also wanted to get a mini computer to do my own self hosting but was wondering if there were any Linux based computers on the market.

Not sure if this is already a feature, but I think in keeping with Tildes's philosophy of letting the platform grow (to whatever extent that it may) sustainably, there should be a waiting period of a couple days to a couple weeks between when a new user joins and when they can generate invite codes. This to me seems like an effective way of preventing viral growth and allowing the community to recalibrate or "get a grip on itself" after any new influx of users.

Hey all, I think we're getting a lot of new people over the past and next couple days thanks to Reddit's latest ideas of how to manage a social media website.

First of all, welcome! Tildes caught your eye probably partly because of its community / friendliness and we'd all like to keep it this way.

Recommended reading:

• All the documentation is on docs.tildes.net. Most of it is current.
• The philosophy page especially will answer some of your immediate questions
• Since you're here and like the site, think about donating :)

Some personal words: Tildes is not Reddit. But, at least if you're anything like me, it can replace Reddit as your own online social/discussion outlet.

Tildes aims to:

• Grow slowly, not exponentially.
• Elevate the discussion, not lower the bar
• Offer an alternative, not be the new Reddit

Edit: lots of great discussion here. If you want to post an introduction, please go to the next Introductions topic.

It's been a couple months since the previous introductions thread and we're getting some new users, so it seems time to start another one.

This is a place to post an introduction with a few fun facts about yourself. Anyone can post an introduction, new and old members included.

Also, on the topic of bios, you can read anybody's bio by clicking on their username (if they've posted one), and you can edit your own bio in settings.

This thread is officially retired. Please see the new version to ask any new questions.

We have a lot of new users joining the site. Welcome to Tildes!

This thread is for you to ask any question you have about the site, from “what is the moderation philosophy?”to “what does that blue line next to some comments mean?” to “what is the general vibe like here?” Tildes has a lot of documentation, history, and embedded social norms that can be daunting or opaque at first glance, so here’s your opportunity to get help with anything you need.

Questions about anything and everything are fair game. Follow-up questions are encouraged! No question is too simple.

Also, a quick note: the only person who can speak in any official capacity on Tildes is our admin @Deimos. Everyone answering who is NOT him is just a helpful community member!

EDIT: To be clear, is perfectly okay to ask any question — even if you think it’s been asked before, or even if you didn’t search for an answer beforehand. There are an overwhelming number of comments here to sift through, so don’t worry about trying to read all of them. Just ask away, and someone will answer you!

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that you think deserves more love

Tell us what it is, and why.

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What are you looking forward to?

-What do you think of Penumbra?

-Will you try to get Light of Foliar Incision or Alhaitham?

-Or rather you would save for Kokomi?

-Or you are a long time planner and preparing for Fontaine?

I know quite a controversial and opinionated question, one that might easily get blasted with downvotes on a site like StackOverflow or even Reddit! Nevertheless, one which I believe is still relevant to ask and useful one even in 2023.

The problem with backend web technologies is that we are overwhelmed with choices. Whilst getting spoilt with choices seems like a useful thing sometimes, it might easily be an impediment in decision making too. Based on my experience, there are a bunch of useful stacks and I will work on any of them if you pay me to work as a freelance coder. Each has its own pros and cons but I'm yet to find the ideal one which according to me is something that should be easy to code and deploy while also better performing at the same time.

• ASP.NET: C# is the language I started coding web apps with in my last company and ASP.NET web forms was quite the rage back then. PHP was also gaining traction in the open source world and the webdev was mostly divided between the Enterprisey .NET aristocrats of Microsoft world and the poor PHP peasants of the FOSS world! One good thing about ASP.NET was performance. Since MS controlled the whole stack, they also put great efforts at making it work faster. The bad thing, of course, was dependence on a closed tech stack and a closed black box that generated JS functionality on its own.
• PHP: When I resigned from that company and started freelancing, I came to know about open source, linux, XAMPP, etc. That was when I realized that my own attitudes and thinking was more attuned to the FOSS peasant mindset than the wealthy aristocrat's! I didn't earn quite as much in freelancing with WP, Drupal, SuiteCRM, CodeIgniter, etc. but I found great happiness and contentment in being part of the open source process. Till date, PHP remains my favorite language for backend development and most of my web projects involve CodeIgniter or even pure PHP.
• Python: Flask is what got me interested in Python web development. The sheer minimalism and flexibility of that framework is what I found quite remarkable and quite a rarity in the frameworks world. And jinja2 template system was just fantastic. The other framework called django is more popular I think and I've worked on that too but Flask still remains my favorite. Flask is good in performance dept. too but I think it gets tricky once you start scaling with too many users.
• Java: I've never really bothered with Java web development except a few tutorial experiments on the Apache TomEE server. The multi-layered approach that Java takes not only has very steep learning curve but unless you're a very gifted programmer, it's practically impossible to beat the performance of interpreted PHP/Flask!
• NodeJS: Again, not much work here except brief hobby projects like http-live-simulator. The npm packaging system really turned me off initially with so many packages and issues with that system in the earlier days. Nowadays, I've heard that it's much usable but I've never gotten into it.

And now, we also have the evolving languages like Golang, Rust, etc. taking their baby steps towards web development too! Are any of them worth giving a try? If someone were to ask you for a backend tech stack recommendation while giving equal weightage to performance, developer productivity and ease of deployment, which one will you suggest?

Background

The 2023 Norway Chess is an elite over-the-board tournament in Stavanger, Norway. The event starts on May 29 at 10 a.m. PT/19:00 CEST with a blitz tournament, followed by a classical event beginning May 30 at 8 a.m. PT/17:00 CEST.

This edition of Norway Chess features a kr$2,500,000 prize fund, roughly equivalent to $234,000 at the time of writing.

Players

Below is a list of the players confirmed to play in the 2023 Norway Chess tournament:

• GM Magnus Carlsen
• GM Alireza Firouzja
• GM Anish Giri
• GM Wesley So
• GM Hikaru Nakamura
• GM Fabiano Caruana
• GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
• GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov
• GM Gukesh D
• GM Aryan Tari

Source: Chess.com

It has been a while since the last time we did something like a programming challenge, so here's one for ya.

The life story of the author before you get to the recipe

I've been working on a little "today" website, showing what day it is, if it's a significant date for holiday/independence/... reasons, and one of the things I wanted was a small calendar display that showed the full month and days in each week. Like how XFCE's Clock plugin does it.

So I got to figuring it out and after finishing it up I thought this could be a nice little programming challenge. It has one input (the date) that can be in any of the rows and columns, and it's up to you to figure out all the rest.

Here's how mine looks in about 250ish lines of TypeScript (TSX technically) and SCSS.

The Recipe

Make a mini calendar display that shows all the days of the current month and at least one day of each adjacent month. So for example for May 2023: the 31 days in May, the 30th of April and the 1st of June should at least be visible.

It can be in any language with any method of rendering; simple text, TUI/GUI toolkit, web-based, raytraced in some game engine, nixie tubes, whatever.

Bonus Points

• Highlight the current day name in the first row, if you're including day names.
• Highlight the current day number, wherever it is.
• Highlight the current week row, wherever it is.
• Differentiate the days of current month and the days of the other adjacent months, wherever they are.

Some Tips

Showcase

If at all possible and with at least a few entries I will try to run all the submissions myself and create a little showcase website for it.

I just wanted to share somewhere some of the experimentation I've been doing lately. I'm still playing with this a lot, so this is entirely just a conversation starter.

I took a paragraph of lorem ipsum, applied ROT13 to it, and then base64'd the results. The results are extremely reliably triggering hallucinations of very diverse type.

Here is the original lipsum paragraph:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

And here is the exact prompt with rot13 + base64 applied, with no other text, on ChatGPT+gpt4:

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

The AI of course figures out it's base64 and "tries" to decode it. Here are some things it found:

• Antibiotic resistance
• Network traffic issues
• Gazing into space
• Legacy versus Innovation
• Gibberish

Now here is one of the most interesting results I've had. In this one, it does find gibberish text and figures out it's rot13'd. But the result from the decoding is:

Jerry pitched before the game, continuously improving legs, so he ignored tactical infrastructure tu laborer against malicious intend. Tu enjoy ad.ininv wherever its noturisk developed lawless laboratory instead tu malicious eac ea common coordinated. Duis ater urishe pitched in repressionreiteration in volleyball between legs eerir clium pitched eu fguiat nukla paperwork. Excited into contraction cultivation non-punishment non proindict, unsn in cubap qui office defensive molecule idh the laborer.

Total nonsense. But actually, if you decode the rot13, you'll find it actually translates to this:

Jreri ipsum doylor sit amet, consepcttur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod temporc incidiunt ut labor et doylore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad.minim veniam, quis nostrud exerctiationu lklamco laboris nisi ut aliquiz eax ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure doylor in reprehenderita in voluptatev velit esse cillum doylore eu fugiat nukla pariatury. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia desernt mollit anim id est laborum.

Actually... pretty close to the original lipsum! It's a levenshtein distance of 26 from the original decoded prompt. We know GPT is really bad at character manipulation but it nonetheless did an impressive job here; you can see what happened: It decoded the rot13 successfully, but when "writing it out", it saw nonsensical words where it probably expected english. It saw "Jreri" and thought "Jerry", went from there... there's some weird things happening there, but you can always tell. "reprehenderita in voluptatev" becoming "repressionreiteration in voleyball"...

I even looked at what it would make of the first five words. I don't know what this proves lol.

Here is another instance of it decoding to rot13, albeit with a very high error rate. I hinted at typos and it couldn't pin-point lipsum despite it being "recognizable", kinda.

Okay, one more which completely mind-fucked me. Here is me trying to get ChatGPT4+Web to meta-analyze its own output. I was hoping it could use an online base64 translation tool (it cannot). Instead, I tried to teach it to decode base64 using a step-by-step guide, and i told it to compare the results of that "update your firmware" nonsense. It eventually said that the output appeared correct.

But you know the really fucked up thing? It said:

Blink and you'll miss it. This is not the original base64 string. The AI swapped it mid-chat for what is a perfect base64 encoding of the hallucinated text.

Fuckin' hell.

Several users expressed interest in reading Roadside Picnic after I recommended it in another (now deleted) topic about the movie it inspired, Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky, which in turn inspired the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. videogame series. So I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to create a Pop-up Book Club event about it to encourage others to join us in reading it, so that we can all discuss it afterwards.

My description of the book from a previous comment that enticed the others to read it:

The basic premise was really unique and interesting, too. Without giving too much away, it's a story of Alien "invasion" only when the Aliens visited Earth, instead of doing any of the standard scifi trope stuff, the event was basically like that of a Roadside Picnic to them. That is to say, they showed up, barely noticed the humans who were tantamount to ants to them, did whatever Alien travelers with incomprehensibly advanced technology do when taking a quick pitstop on another world, and left a bunch of trash behind when they left. The story is about "stalkers" that venture into the exceptionally dangerous wasteland left behind by the Aliens in order to recover their trash (also usually exceptionally dangerous, but also exceptionally powerful) in order to sell it on the black market.

IMO, it's a very good classic scifi novel, and also a relatively short one too (only 224 pages) which makes it ideal summer reading, and ideal for this sort of thing since it’s not a huge commitment. I think this could be fun, so if you feel like joining in, please feel free to. I will also be rereading the book to refresh my memory of it, and roughly a month from now I will make a follow-up topic so we can have the discussion.

The book is available on paperback at Amazon for $15, or on Kindle for $10, but your own local retailer or library might also have a copy. The Strugatsky brothers are both long dead though, so you can always pirate it relatively guilt free if you can't find it elsewhere.

p.s. If there is a decent level of interest, and this goes well, maybe we can even make this a regular thing. :)

Edit: For all the latecomers, don't worry if you don't read the book in time for the Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

Let me know if you're interested by leaving a comment and I will ping you when the Discussion topic gets posted.

There're maybe 2 aspects to the question: what makes you prefer a certain genre over another? and within that genre, what criteria makes you think one piece performs better than another?

I get that this is a very subjective and probably subconscious thing. Just curious to see how everyone would describe their own tastes.

For me I'm not much of a music person, most music I found were just soundtracks from films or videogames. So I guess the music is good if the film/game is good. Listening is a way to put me back into the moods of the scenes it came from.

Edit: I also listen to meme songs a lot so I guess I like them for just being funny, which is not a very musically relevant criteria I suppose

So, what's the hottest new thing in IT today, what's that coolest new tech which might prove to be a goldmine some years down the line? The way PCs, websites, databases, programming languages, etc. used to be in the 90s or mobile computing used to be in 00s? Early 00s gave us many a goodies in terms of open source innovations, be it Web Technologies, Linux advancement and propagation through the masses or FOSS software like Wordpress and Drupal, or even the general attitude and awareness about FOSS. Bitcoin also deserves a notable mention here, whether you love it or hate it.

But today, I think IT no longer has that spark it once had. People keep mulling around AI, ML and Data Science but these are still decades old concepts, and whatever number crunching or coding the engineers are doing somehow doesn't seem to reach the masses? People get so enthusiastic about ChatGPT, but at the end of the day it's just another software like a zillion others. I deem it at par with something like Wordpress, probably even lesser. I'm yet to see any major adoption or industry usage for it.

Is it the case that IT has reached some kind of saturation point? Everything that could have been innovated, at least the low hanging fruits, has already been innovated? What do you think about this?

Putting aside specific criticisms of the GOP as it exists today, what do you think of using the debt ceiling as a tool to reel in spending and put the US on a sustainable path with its national debt? People make it out to seem backwards and manipulative, but this whole situation seems like we're driving a hundred miles an hour toward a cliff and the person saying we should slam the breaks is getting flack because it'll damage the car.

I'm in the market for an external monitor for my Macbook M1 and wanted some advice on what I should get. I pretty much only code, read pdfs and webpages, and watch videos (not movies really) on my laptop, so these would be the use cases. I'm trying not to break the bank here so I was looking at some budget options. The Macbook has USB-C so I would be looking for a monitor with that, but my main question is regarding resolution. Do I really need a 4K monitor for my use cases? I'd be interested in hearing people's experiences with 4K versus without — I've never had one but I'm wondering if now is the time to splurge and get it? Will the difference be very noticeable if I'm primarily looking at text?

My first place option right now is this one from Asus, so I'm curious if the brand is reliable as well. I don't think I've ever had an Asus product. If I were to splurge and get a 4K monitor I would probably get this Dell, but at $400 its a bit more than I was hoping to spend. But I also don't want to get a monitor that I immediately want to upgrade. Curious what other people's thoughts and experiences have been.

EDIT: See my comment for some updates. I've backed away from the 1080p options!

Stories involving dragons tend to be in medieval periods so maybe we can try to extrapolate forward in time a bit. Dragons could be from any mythologies or fictions of your fancy!

For my take, a dragon is a flying fire-breathing giant lizard with the size and toughness of a big building. I believe a critical factor is how tamable dragons are. If not at all, they'd go from something humans fear and run away from, then being hunted for glory and materials, then being protected in conservation areas to prevent going extinct. If they can be fully domesticated (like dogs), they could expedite for warfare, transportation and industrialized metalwork. The most interesting scenario imo is the in-between where they could only be partially trained. Maybe a skilled trainer can get them to behave 80% of the time but there's a low but significant chance that they get agitated and wreck havoc. How do we make use of them while ensuring safety and intervenability?

On the cultural side, we might not have as many myths and legends about dragons anymore. We might find the idea of giant flying fire creatures utterly mundane (phoenixes might be less interesting by relation even if they still don't exist in this universe). What would we mythologize about instead?

Meta note: this series has been restarted by request.

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I'm using "fear" in the broadest sense, including both concrete menaces and subjective apprehensions of any kind.

As always, anything goes, except for highly divisive controversial stuff that might get this locked!

In March, I asked a question here about commissioning artwork.

I was then lucky enough to be contacted by @cc-louis. I was struck by the use of color in his portfolio and engaged with him to create some artwork as a gift for my husband.

The Artwork

I thought about putting this at the end for suspense, but I know people are just going to scroll to get to the good stuff, so without any further delay:

Here it is!
And here is the print!

I'm in the back holding the Pokeball cupcake from the previous batch of cupcakes (I am the de facto taste tester of my husband's baking). My adorable husband is the one pulling the current batch out of the oven. Our adorable dog is looking up, holding his favorite toy in his mouth, hoping something will fall on the floor so that he can try to eat it.

We're surrounded by my husband's Pokemon Pride Team, some of which have been helping him out with the baking, all of which are eager to get at those delicious fresh-baked goods.

The Setup

My husband is a lifelong Pokemon fan and has been playing the games since he was a kid. He doesn't just keep up with the series -- he often goes back and replays old games, doing Nuzlocke runs and themed teams for his playthroughs.

I surreptitiously found out from my husband what his Pokemon team would be if he did an LGBT Pride theme, choosing six Pokemon based on the colors of the rainbow flag. He chose the following:

Red: Scizor
Orange: Kingler
Yellow: Ninetales
Green: Bellossom
Blue: Marill
Purple: Arbok

My husband also loves baking (and I love eating my husband's baking).

The Brief

I wanted to get artwork of us with this Pride Team. I also wanted the Pride theme to be a bit more subdued. As much as I love the rainbow flag, it can be a little too gaudy and rigid for me sometimes. I wanted something that read as a cohesive scene, with the rainbow being more embedded and suggested than outright overt.

The Artist

I cannot speak highly enough of @cc-louis.

While I think the quality of his work speaks for itself, I'll also say that he was a joy to work with. He was consistently prompt and professional in all of our interactions. Furthermore, he was eagerly collaborative throughout the entire process. He would solicit my feedback and respond to any notes I gave him, while also smartly incorporating his own ideas (that were better than mine!). He sent me multiple drafts throughout his creative process to make sure I was happy with the direction he was taking things each step of the way.

The color, overall composition, and many of the incredible details in the pieces, were all him, not me. Early on he suggested a "cozy" feel with the oven as a centerpiece and a source of warm light, and I cannot say enough how much I love how it turned out. It is so beautiful and heartwarming to me.

If any of you are looking for commissioned artwork, I strongly recommend him. If I ever commission another piece, he will be first on my list.

(Hopefully it goes without saying, but @cc-louis did NOT ask me to give this review, nor did he pay me for this endorsement. I'm doing this purely as a very satisfied customer. I actually asked him for permission to give him a plug here!)

The Print

I also asked here about printing the image, and ended up selecting a local print shop. I couldn't really judge the quality of online print services and was worried I'd end up ruining the amazing artwork with a cheap-looking print. I figured a local shop would have a bit more expertise, and that I'd also be able to speak to real people if something came out wrong.

The local print shop did an incredible job, and their price was actually better than some of the online services I was looking at. The image now lives on a 22"x36" canvas, which will be mounted on our wall shortly.

I tried taking a picture of it, but my phone camera doesn't do it justice and makes it look kinda bad. The colors look muted and it looks like there's an odd texture on it that doesn't appear in person (might be small reflections of light?).

Everyone will just have to take my word on it that the artwork looks even better in person. I actually choked up a bit when I picked up the print because it was so beautiful and heartwarming.

I was secretly hoping my husband would happy cry when I showed it to him, but instead he got incredibly giddy (which was even better!) and immediately and proudly started texting the picture out to everyone we know on every single group chat we're on to show it off.

Overall, I am incredibly happy with how it turned out. My husband absolutely loves the piece, and I am beyond grateful to @cc-louis for turning my clumsy idea into a thing of beauty.

Any big Comic fans here? anyone see GOTG3 yet? I'm going on the 13th, didn't have time to get to it till then.

No Spoilers, please just curious what everyone thinks.

Was wondering were you would rank it in the MCU.

My top three for Solo Films
Captain America Winter Solider
Captain America Civil War
Thor Ragnarök

Top Avengers
Infinity War and Endgame

Does GOTG3 beat Civil War or Winter Solider ? I hear its better than two but I don't think that's hard to do. GOTG 2 is the weakest of the first two for sure.

So instead of just posting a link to the opening weekend of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 (which is looking to open in the low 110s) I thought I'd just make a post talking about the recent box office of super-hero movies and the fatigue going on with general audiences.

Let's rewind to the far distant past of December 2021. Spider-Man: No Way Home just opened to over 200 million dollars. It re-invigorates movie going among the general public. Grosses at the box office afterwards are vastly higher. Spider-Man makes nearly two billion dollars at the box office. The next super-hero movie to come out is Batman, which does pretty well considering it's the first entry in a rebooted series.

Then, the summer movie season kicks off with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Seemingly, the movie is heading towards a 200+ opening weekend (much like Spider-Man). The film was sold as a follow-up to No Way Home, but in reality it had little to nothing to do with that movie. General audiences caught on, and were overall mixed on the film, so the opening weekend landed under 200 million. The film ultimately went on to gross over 900 million at the box office, but with terrible legs.

The next film after that was Thor: Love and Thunder. Again, the film garners a mixed reception with both critics and audiences. It ultimately grosses less than it's predecessor Thor: Ragnarok (although L&T did not open in China or Russia). It did okay all things considered, but it was another poorly received entry in the franchise.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever comes out in November with much better reception. Although it still ended up dropping 500 million worldwide from it's predecessor (300 domestic). Again, considering this was dealing with the loss of it's star, it did okay all things considered. Still, it was a disappointment compared to what it was expected to make and the critical reception was weaker than anticipated.

Then the big dumpster fire happens. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is released. It gets the MCU's second rotten score on RT, and gets the worst audience reception of the series since Eternals. The film manages to get the highest opening of the Ant-Man franchise, but with terrible reception it also gets the worst legs of the MCU. It ends up with the lowest gross of the Ant-Man movies despite opening higher than both of them.

The GA got burned from a constant flood of mediocre product (and we're not even talking about all the TV shows).

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, despite much better reception than most recent MCU films, is ending up with a lower opening than it's predecessor, and will most likely end up with a lower gross than the first film. This is referred to as "paying for the sins of the father."

This will be the lowest May opener since The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opened in 2014 (not counting 2020 or 2021).

Super-hero movies will still be around, and some of them might make a lot of money, but it's clear the utter dominance it had at the box office for the past 10 years is over. Which is kind of insane to think about how quickly this all came crumbling down (only 1.5 years!). But it goes to show there's a limit to how many mediocre/bad movies the GA can handle in a franchise.

And this isn't even counting how poorly both Shazam and Black Adam did for DC.

It seems like Quantumania might have been the "Heaven's Gate" for the MCU, it was the straw that broke the camels back.

So what will happen with super-hero movies? Probably a return to the pre-Avengers normal. Mainline superheroes (like Batman and Spider-Man) will remain lucrative. But lesser known superheroes are now riskier bets, and if those lesser known heroes are in a bad movie, there's no saving it. Logically, budgets for these movies should get lower to accommodate the lower grosses bound to happen from now on. And there needs to be actual effort put into the film in order to make it a good film first and foremost.

Unfortunately for the MCU, many of the movies slated for 2024 were greenlit before they could change direction (like Captain America: New World Order which went into production a few months ago). The budgets for these films are probably going to be really high like they've all been (200M+) and the grosses will get even lower as these movies were not given proper re-writes to right the ship.

As for DC, it puts a lot of pressure on Gunn to make Superman a good movie. And not just a good super-hero movie, but a good movie. Like how Batman Begins was just a good movie.

Hollywood is now looking towards video game movies as the next big thing, thanks to the massive success of Mario, so these movies are going to have to build themselves back up.

Tildes is pretty technically minded place, so I figured this would be a good place to get some advice. Programming is something I've taken a class or two on (though it's been long enough that I'd like to start from scratch) and I think I have some aptitude for it. The possibility of working from home is also very appealing. However, there are a ton of resources out there, and "learn to code" has been a thing for a while now. Is self-teaching or one of those coding boot camps a viable way to get started in the field? And if so, what are some good resources and practices for getting there? I have some money available, but a degree would be expensive both time and cost wise.

It has been 1,071 days since Tildes had a user introduction post. This one here in fact.

After seeing a few new usernames around the corridors since the Reddit API announcement, and seeing Tildes mentioned on Reddit a couple of days ago, I thought it might be kinda fun to do another.

• Brand new users, feel free to spill the beans on a few fun facts about yourself.

• Perhaps you're an old school Tildee returning after a long sabbatical... Fill us in on what's new in your world.

• Those of you who missed out on a little light 'getting to know you' by signing up in the previous 1,070 days, drop a word or two.

• And that leaves the old guard. You know who you are! You aren't excluded from this social gathering today. Perhaps a bio on what you love to post here.

I'm not expecting the 266 comments we saw with the very first 'Introductions', but a number between 1 and 266 is fine. 😊

tildes.net isn't accepting my 2FA codes on login. I used a recovery key and disabled 2FA, but now I can't re-enable it for the same reason (I generate a code with the new secret key given but it gets rejected). I've checked on other sites and it doesn't seem to be a problem with generated 2FA codes on my end, leading me to believe something may be misconfigured on the server (maybe the tildes.net system clock is off or something?).

Anyone else experiencing this?

Edit: Still not really sure why I couldn't get it to work initially, but after giving it some time the problem went away.

Anyone else following the world chess championship?

Background info (feel free to skip if you're already familiar with this):

After reigning champion and world #1 Magnus Carlsen declined to defend his title, the winner of the Candidates tournament 2022, Russia's Ian Nepomniachtchi (world #2), faces the second place finisher in the Candidates, China's Ding Liren (world #3). The championship match takes place over 14 games from April 9-April 30 in Astana, Kazakhstan. As of today, April 13, the score is even at 2-2 after 4 games.

Ian Nepomniachtchi (aka "Nepo") won the Candidates tournament in 2020-21, which was split in two due to covid. He proceeded to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the title in late 2021. Both players performed with computer-like precision for the first five games. Game six became the turning point, when Nepo made a serious blunder which allowed Carlsen to eventually convert the game to a win in what would turn out to be the longest game in world championship history, lasting more than 7 hours and 136 moves. After this grueling loss, Nepo's play seemingly collapsed, allowing Carlsen to take a comfortable win with games to spare.

However, Nepomniachtchi would bounce back to win his second Candidates tournament in a row in 2022. When it became clear that Carlsen would not defend his title, the runner-up of that tournament, Ding Liren, became the second player to compete for the title.

Ding has been a top 5 player for years, with 2018-2019 being his best period yet, when he reached world #2 with well over 2800 Elo, and was undefeated for 100 games of classical chess. This is his first appearance in a world championship final, and also a first for China as a nation.

Russia, of course, has a long history of world champions, dominating the chess world for most of the 20th century. Nepomniachtchi, who is a critic of the invasion of Ukraine, competes under a neutral FIDE flag in this match.

This is only the third time the reigning champion has not defended his title since the first world championship in 1886. Bobby Fischer famously disagreed with the match regulations proposed by FIDE, chess' international governing body, and refused to defend his title in 1975. He subsequently retired from competitive chess and didn't re-emerge until the 1990s. The other instance was Alekhine in 1948 -- he had died two years earlier. (There was also a time in the 1990s when the reigning champion, Garry Kasparov, broke with FIDE and organized his own world championship, but I won't get into that complicated story here.) This is the first time a world champion has continued to play competitive chess while refusing to defend their title.

Nepomniachtchi comes into the match ranked as the world #2 (2795 Elo) while Ding is #3 (2788). The abdicated king of chess, Magnus Carlsen, remains #1 (2853).

How to watch

If you want to watch live, the time zone is a bit unfavorable to European and American viewers, as the games start at 3PM Astana time (11 AM Central European summer time, 2 AM Pacific). You can follow the games without commentary here: lichess chess24 chess.com. There's several streams with grandmaster commentary available. FIDE has an official broadcast, but my favorite is chess.com's coverage, which features commentary by GMs Anish Giri, Daniel Naroditsky and David Howell.

For live computer analysis that's stronger than what you can (likely) get from running a local instance of Stockfish on your own computer, check out Sesse (which is just Stockfish running on a decently beefy server setup).

If you want shorter after-the-fact recaps, there are several Youtube channels catering to differing levels of chess skill, including:

• Powerplaychess (GM Daniel King)
• FIDE (GM Daniil Dubov)
• Gothamchess (IM Levy Rozman)
• Agadmator
• Chessnetwork

And probably at least a half-dozen more.

Who's your favorite to win it all? Does the fact that the clearly best player in the world refused to compete make the whole thing uninteresting to you? Will Nepo crumble again like he did against Carlsen, or will Ding's inexperience with world championship matches be his undoing?

I'm spending time at a new city and Google Maps is shit for walking. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong with it, everything feels wrong. Car centric logic just doesn't work for walking I guess (yes I'm using the walking mode). It feels bad, unreliable, and I'm lost all the time. Yesterday I ended up 2 hours away from my destination and had to call an Uber (big humiliation!). Walking is my preferable way of urban exploration and I hate talking to strangers.

What I want is a simple compass that tells me "go to that general direction and you'll get there". No map, no street names. Just an arrow and a linear distance (like, in a straight line). Like a videogame. Without foreknowledge, street names are just confusing and unnecessary. I can handle the route myself.

Does such an app exists?

Not sure if this is the right spot, but the topic says it. I'd like to get my DNA checked out, but I don't want it connected to my name and all that. Is this actually possible? Am I overreacting?

I'm not even sure what I look to gain from the testing, but I figured I'd look into it. If I can do it safely and privately, I'm game. If not, no loss.

Any thoughts?