I have lost my r/finch community, and am feeling curious to see if there are any folks here who also find apps can be helpful for their mental health.

I struggle with anxiety and am processing a lot of grief, and may or may not have ADHD (I am in the process of getting tested, but it takes a while). My experiences with therapy are a bit mixed, so I am currently going down the route of trying to DIY my wellness a little. Starting simple with things like, sleep more, try to focus on drinking enough, go out in nature, switching off podcasts and phones and reading more. It's actually helped me, bit by bit.

One of my 'tools' is an app called finch, a virtual pet that encourages you to set goals, check in how you are feeling, journal, do mindful breathing and such. I tried many things and this app is the one that stuck and actually works.

Just wanted to ask, do any others here use wellness apps? And have they worked for you? Which do you recommend?

Just to be clear, I mean apps that work as a stand alone solution, rather than apps like 'better help' which ultimately just connect you to a therapist. Although Better Help has its uses too!

I joined Tildes a couple of days ago, and I'm absolutely loving the interface and community.

In the last few days of using Tildes, I noticed a particular problem that was mildly annoying; if you have the "Collapse old comments when I return to a topic" setting on, and you click on a link that is supposed to lead to a comment in a topic you have already visited, it won't jump to that comment.

Searching around, I found a post about it from a day ago, in which long-time users have mentioned that it's been a known problem for a while now. In those comments, someone mentioned permalinks as a solution, but it appears that's still in the works.

For now, I've made a quick userscript that will address this issue (and adds some slight related functionality). It hasn't been thoroughly tested yet, so if any issues occur, please let me know. This userscript is designed to be used with Tampermonkey (a privacy-friendly alternate that should work is ViolentMonkey), which is available in all popular desktop browsers. Installation instructions for Tampermonkey are available on their site (it's installed like any other extension).

To install the script, you can head to this GitHub Gist which contains the code (click "Raw" to open the TamperMonkey install prompt), or you can copy and paste the code from the following dropdown block into a "New script" on the TamperMonkey dashboard. The dropdown is not guaranteed to contain the latest version.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Tildes Comment Link Fix
// @namespace    https://gist.github.com/blankdvth/6da89fff580e8cf6e50f88847ddb5729
// @version      1.2.0
// @description  Fixes comment links (anchors) not working as a result of Tildes' comment collapsing feature.
// @author       blank_dvth
// @match        https://tildes.net/*
// @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=tildes.net
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

/* 
    USER SETTINGS
    This script is not big enough to warrant a visual settings menu, so adjust settings here.
    true = enable, false = disable
*/
const alwaysRun_S = false; // If enabled, will always run the script, even if the comment was not collapsed (site works fine in this case). This is useful if you want to make use of the other settings.
const smoothScroll_S = false; // If enabled, will smoothly (animated) scroll to the comment. If disabled, will jump to the comment.
const uncollapseIndividual_S = true; // If enabled will uncollapse parent comments into one line instead of fully uncollapsing them.
const uncollapseChildren_S = true; // If enabled, will uncollapse all children of the comment. If disabled, will leave them collapsed.
const collapseIrrelevant_S = true; // The script uncollapses all parents to ensure the comment is visible. This will collapse irrelevant (not direct parent) comments again.
// END OF USER SETTINGS

/**
 * Uncollapses the comment if it is collapsed.
 * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
 * @param {boolean} individual If true, will "uncollapse" into one line instead of fully uncollapsing
 * @returns {boolean} True if the comment was collapsed, false if it was not
 */
function uncollapse(element, individual = false) {
    if (element.nodeName !== "ARTICLE") return false;
    var removed = false;
    if (
        !individual &&
        element.classList.contains("is-comment-collapsed-individual")
    ) {
        element.classList.remove("is-comment-collapsed-individual");
        removed = true;
    }
    if (element.classList.contains("is-comment-collapsed")) {
        if (individual)
            element.classList.add("is-comment-collapsed-individual");
        element.classList.remove("is-comment-collapsed");
        removed = true;
    }
    return removed;
}

/**
 * Uncollapses all direct parents of the comment.
 * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
 * @param {boolean} collapseIrrelevant If true, will collapse irrelevant comments again
 * @param {boolean} individual If true, will "uncollapse" into one line instead of fully uncollapsing
 * @returns {boolean} True if any parent was collapsed, false if none were
 */
function uncollapseParents(element, collapseIrrelevant, individual) {
    const relevant = []; // List of relevant elements (direct parents)
    var wasCollapsed = false; // Whether any parent was collapsed
    while (
        element.parentElement &&
        element.parentElement.nodeName !== "SECTION"
    ) {
        element = element.parentElement;
        relevant.push(element); // Add parent to relevant list
        if (uncollapse(element, individual)) wasCollapsed = true;
        // Collapse all irrelevant sibling comments (if feature enabled)
        if (collapseIrrelevant && element.nodeName === "ARTICLE") {
            element
                .querySelectorAll(
                    `article#${element.id} > ol.comment-tree > li.comment-tree-item > article:not(.is-comment-collapsed)`
                )
                .forEach((child) => {
                    if (!relevant.includes(child))
                        child.classList.add("is-comment-collapsed");
                });
        }
    }
    return wasCollapsed;
}

/**
 * Uncollapses all direct children of the comment.
 * @param {HTMLElement} element Article element of the actual comment
 */
function uncollapseChildren(element) {
    element
        .querySelectorAll("article.is-comment-collapsed article.is-comment-collapsed-individual")
        .forEach(uncollapse);
}

(function () {
    if (!location.hash.startsWith("#comment-")) return; // Not a comment hash
    const comment = document.getElementById(location.hash.substring(1)); // Get comment element
    if (!comment) return; // Comment does not exist
    // Uncollapse the comment itself, and it's parents, then perform other actions if needed/enabled
    if (
        uncollapse(comment) |
            uncollapseParents(
                comment,
                collapseIrrelevant_S,
                uncollapseIndividual_S
            ) ||
        alwaysRun_S
    ) {
        // Uncollapse all children (if feature enabled)
        if (uncollapseChildren_S) uncollapseChildren(comment);
        // Scroll to the comment
        if (smoothScroll_S) comment.scrollIntoView({ behavior: "smooth" });
        else comment.scrollIntoView();
    }
})();

Hi Everyone!

First post on Tildes. I'm excited to have been invited to give it a shot!

I was wondering if anyone here is using Unreal Engine 5 for any project their working on? It could be game design, virtual production, architecture, automotive or you name it!

I'm currently testing out numerous areas of Unreal Engine 5 for virtual production.

Thanks!!

Someone mentioned elsewhere that they signed up for Tildes “years ago during the beta”. That reminded me: Tildes hasn’t reached beta-testing yet.

Officially, Tildes is still in alpha-testing phase.

The login page says “Tildes is currently in invite-only alpha...” And the Contact page says “To request an invite to the Tildes alpha...”

We’re still in alpha-testing. Alpha-testing of software usually happens on an incomplete product before it is released to the customer.

This is a very important point. Tildes is not feature-complete yet: there are literally hundreds of feature requests yet to work on before Tildes will be what people want it to be – and even that list is far from complete. In Agile software development terms, Tildes is a minimum viable product, or, in other words, “a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development”.

Tildes works as it is, but it’s a bare-bones forum: you can post, and comment… and that’s about it. It’s a proof of concept. There are a few minor tweaks here and there, which give the impression that Tildes is more complex than it is, but they’re misleading. There are plans to make Tildes a more complex website but, right now, most of that complexity of Tildes exists only in people’s imaginations (and there have been some very imaginative people contributing to that list of future features!).

Most questions about “Why doesn’t Tildes do X?” or “Can Tildes do X?” can be answered simply by saying “Tildes is incomplete and X hasn’t been built yet.” There are some questions about missing features which can be answered by saying “Tildes was never intended to do X”, but those are far and away in the minority. Most flaws, drawbacks, and problems with Tildes exist because Tildes is still a proof of concept, rather than a finished product.

It’s also worth noting that Tildes’ current feature set is absolutely not up to the task if the user base and site activity increase too quickly. There’s too much manual tinkering required at the moment to make things work properly: for one thing, there are no significant moderation tools on Tildes (that’s almost all done manually at the moment). There are still a lot of features yet to be built - and we don’t even know what some of those features are yet!

To pre-empt the people who will rightly point out that Tildes is 5 years old: Tildes’ feature set was intended to grow gradually over time, in line with a gradual growth in users, activity, and the need for those features to exist. However, Tildes has not undergone much growth over the past few years, so the existing features were sufficient to manage the existing activity. Basically, the site didn’t need a lot of fancy features to handle the low traffic here.

This sudden surge of new users might change that. But it will take time to build more features. That was always the intention, and it hasn’t changed now.

Until then: Tildes is still in alpha-testing. It’s an unfinished product. Set your expectations accordingly.

EDIT:

If you're one of the many people who seem to be replying to this topic, saying "it's okay, I like this simple bare-bones site as it is"... then you're probably not part of my original intended audience for this topic. This topic was aimed at all the people who are arriving here, being taken aback at how simple Tildes is, and wondering where the advanced features are.

However, we can still take the "set your expectations accordingly" message and apply it to you: "Tildes is an unfinished product, so you can expect it to change in the future. It won't be like this forever."

Either way, "set your expectations accordingly" is the message here, whether you're expecting more features and not finding them, or whether you're expecting simplicity and enjoying what you see. Either way, you should know that things will change around here. Maybe slowly. Maybe quickly. Maybe they'll get better from your point of view. Maybe they'll get worse from your point of view. But, change they will.

Happy Friday everyone! I'm making a post to see if anyone wants to beta test my Tildes.net iOS app Backtick.

Background

I've been wanting to create a Reddit app for quite a while, and just when I got started, the API change chaos happened. Thankfully, I remembered signing up for Tildes.net a few years ago and decided to pivot to make an app for this site instead! The app is still a work in progress, but I believe releasing early and getting as many eyes on it during development results in a better end product (and it's more fun for me 😊).

Features

Here are the current features of Backtick:

• Light mode/dark mode
• Login to Tildes.net (suports 2FA)
• Front page feed with sorting support
• View, vote, and comment on posts
• Reply and vote on comments
• Collapse comments
• View notifications
• Full markdown rendering
• Text-to-speech for posts and comments

Here is a video demo of the app in its current state (updated for v1.8.1): https://youtube.com/shorts/iukQJyJbtw8?feature=share

I know there missing features, but as I mentioned before, I would love to get as many people in as early as possible to help shape Backtick's future.

Testing

If you're interested in testing the app as I continue to work on it during my free time you will need:

• An iOS 16 device
• TestFlight (Apple's testing app)

You can access the beta here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/gNH18NE9. If you have any issues please DM me your Apple ID email and I will send you an invite manually.

Thanks, everyone! Have a great weekend.
- Ash

Edit:
Getting some great feedback! I'll be tracking bugs and potential features here if anyone is curious: https://chatter-brick-3d3.notion.site/Backtick-Tracker-888150b641ae4c0ab39dc0345783bc50?pvs=4

Edit2:
I created the Discord server to help facilitate better collaboration with those who wish to be more involved. It will be a place for discussion around potential features, bugs, and general chat. I will still be taking in feedback via TestFlight and Tildes.net, so it's perfectly fine if you don't want to join.
Join here: https://discord.gg/aah7nkfpBY

After reviewing all the beginner friendly tags on the GitLab and figuring out easy answers the hard way, I finally made my first merge request for issue #700 to an open-source project! It isn't much, and probably took me 10x the amount of time it would take for someone who knows what they are doing, and it probably has some issues that needs to be worked out (although I tried to test as thoroughly as possible), I still submitted it. Even if it doesn't get accepted, I'm sure if someone wants to pick up my pieces, they can do so and build out this functionality in a better way.

I just wanted to share and put it out there that you don't have to be a master programmer to make contributions to this site))

Welcome to the discussion thread for the BLAST Premier Spring Final 2023, the last Big Event before the summer break. The event will feature eight of the world’s best CS:GO teams competing for a $425,000 prize pool and a spot at the BLAST Premier World Final 2023. The event will take place at the Entertainment & Sports Arena in Washington, D.C., from June 7-11.

The teams attending the event are:

• Heroic (From Spring Groups)
• G2 Esports (From Spring Groups)
• FaZe Clan (From Spring Groups)
• Natus Vincere (From Spring Groups)
• Vitality (From Spring Groups)
• Astralis (From Spring Groups)
• Cloud9 (From Spring Showdown – EU)
• Imperial (From Spring Showdown – NA)

The event will start with two double-elimination GSL groups, followed by a single-elimination playoff bracket. All matches will be best-of-three.

The event will also mark the return of Vitality to LAN for the first time since their Major triumph in Paris, where they won without dropping a single map. They will face Imperial in their opening match, who might be playing their last event with Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo as rumors of his move to FURIA are rampant.

Other interesting matchups include G2 vs Cloud9, who both had disappointing runs at IEM Dallas and the Major cycle, and Heroic vs Astralis, who will clash for the Danish supremacy.

You can follow the event on BLAST.tv, YouTube, or Twitch. The schedule and results can be found on HLTV or Liquipedia.

This is a bit of a test thread. I will try to post a comment for each match, under which you can share your thoughts and comments about each individual game. As such, it may be preferable to sort the thread by new, in order to see the most recent match-ups. Also, in case I miss any match feel free to post the results yourself!

I figured it'll be easiest to consolidate discussion of all these in one place. As you find more good, thoughtful ones feel free to comment it and I'll edit them into this list.

Overall impressions seem very positive. LTT, in particular, tends to be pretty comfortable being critical of Apple and even he seems impressed (though I think his is the only review that doesn't have a hands-on component.

The Bloggers:

Daring Fireball: https://daringfireball.net/2023/06/first_impressions_of_vision_pro_and_visionos
Nilay Patel: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23750003/apple-vision-pro-hands-on-the-best-headset-demo-ever

The Vloggers:

iJustine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtCEGztr8cw
MKBHD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvXuyITwBI&t=917s
Linus Tech Tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqB0lUcqFbA
Snazzy Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUblFIaZKIk
Norman Chan (via Adam Savage Tested): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0HBzePUmZ0

I've been trying to set up a dev enviornment for Tildes, mainly so that I can actually test my MR (!136), and I've been running into a few issues.

However, since we also have a new influx of people who might be interested in contributing to Tildes, it seems like a good time to collect resources on setting up the dev environment, as well as helping anyone running into issues.

So, if you have issues or advice, post them here! I'll be adding my questions in a comment shortly.

Relevant wiki pages:

• Development / Initial Setup
• Development / General Development Info

Edit: A more recent post on setting up the dev environment on Apple Silicon / M1 Macs

Just tested it myself. Here’s the process that worked for me, in case anyone else needs a guide. No guarantees, of course, but hopefully it works for others too:

From Desktop Mode

Download the Battle.net installer
Add the installer as a non-Steam game
Change the installer settings in Steam to run with Proton Experimental
Run the installer
(tip: to make it easy to find the launcher in the next step, you can change the install path to be in your downloads folder instead of deep in the Proton path)

Once installed, exit the installer
Add the installed Battle.net Launcher.exe as a non-Steam game
Change the launcher settings in Steam to run it with Proton Experimental
Run the launcher
Log in
Install Diablo IV
(tip: uncheck the high res textures option which is on by default to save yourself about 40 GB of space)
Close launcher
(tip: if D4 is the only Bnet game you’re planning on playing, you can rename the launcher in Steam to Diablo IV)

From Gaming Mode

Launch the launcher
Click the Play button on Diablo IV
Enjoy!

Other Tips

During installation or the game, whenever you need a keyboard, press STEAM + X to call it up.

Occasionally, during installation or in the Launcher in game mode, my trackpad input would get wonky or stop responding. When this happens, hold the STEAM button down while using the trackpads, and they should work again.

Beyond that, the game automatically worked from me. It loaded low graphics settings (which are perfect for the Deck) and recognized my controller. It even opens with some accessibility settings before you start playing that lets you scale the font size up too, which makes it easier to read on the small screen.

I can’t say much about how the game actually plays as I really just did this to test if it works. I’ll be putting in my first actual time with the game tomorrow.

Ok ok disclaimer, I am a cosmology PhD candidate, don’t have the degree yet. However I do feel comfortable at this point calling myself a cosmologist (I think for the first time ever). In any case, with all the new people here, I think an AMA might be fun. I will try my best to answer all of the questions I get asked, but it may not happen quickly!

A bit about my research. I study the conditions in the early universe, specifically when the cosmic microwave background was forming, and I use CMB data to test our understanding of this era. The CMB formed roughly 300,000 years after the big bang, when the universe was 1/1000th its current size. The patterns that we see in the temperature fluctuations of the CMB can tell us a lot about the universe at this early time, and specifically we can try to use them to see if anything ‘unexpected’ happened at this time, like a hitherto undiscovered particle annihilating into ‘normal’ particles (for example).

Ask me anything about the early universe, or physics writ large, and I will do my best to answer!

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.

• https://tildes.net/~tech/1539/spotify_is_shutting_down_heardle_the_wordle_like_music_guessing_game_it_bought_last_year_will

• https://tildes.net/~news/153y/the_worlds_longest_suspension_bridge_is_history_in_the_making_after_2_000_years_of_political_and

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?

Welcome to Tildes first Turing Test.

Rules:

1. Anyone can ask a question in a top level thread if you want to see if you can tell man vs machine. I'll just start with @NaraVara, but feel free to post up.
2. Anyone can answer the question in 1.
   a. Respond with two responses. One human. One AI. Add [A] in front of the first response and [B] in front of the second response. Randomly assign which one is the human. Remember your choice and keep it secret.
   b. Your AI should try to pretend it is human. You can decline to respond to any question that exploits GPTs well published weaknesses, or exploits the fact that this is a small community. I suggest you pick a character from https://beta.character.ai/ that is similar to you, or get really good at Jailbreaking ChatGPT so that it will pretend to be a human with a personality similar to yours. Any response where the machine mentions ChatGPT or OpenAI disqualifies that thread, as Turing's machine should be specifically designed to pretend to be a human.
   c. Your human response should be a genuine response. Answer the question without tipping the scales either way. Don't say something impossible for the GPT model to say. Don't mimic ChatGPT. You can always decline to answer any question, just decline for ChatGPT as well.
3. The original person who asked the question in 1 can now reply with a follow up question based on the responses in 2.
4. Now the original person who provided the answers in 2, can now answer the new questions in 3.
5. And so on. After 700 words of questions and answers, the person asking the questions in 1 and 3 must guess which is human and which is AI. 700 words is approximately 5 minutes of Q&A.
6. If you are asking questions, no peaking if there is activity in another thread. I suggest we use expandable sections with the details tag to hide responses.

@NaraVara, if this is clear, do you want to give this a go?

Edit: minor formatting

Most of the world seems to be settled around Chrome and Safari these days. I remember using Firefox a long time ago myself but then everyone started switching to Chrome and that also turned out to be a natural path of least resistance for web developers like me who had to test web apps in local environment.

This switch happened in circa 2015-16 if I recall correctly, many other browsers have evolved since then and people are looking at alternatives. The Android Kiwi browser, for example, is a great alternative for power users on mobile who need plugins but Chrome won't allow that. Other alternatives have evolved too like Brendan Eich's Brave browser which seems to be promising. Anyone here tried that yet?

I have half a mind to go back to Firefox but I recently learned about how Mozilla Corp is also funded by Google and that turned me off. Wouldn't you rather want to deal with the Devil directly instead of the Devil's assistant or sidekick!

And then there are also those who use Garibaldi, Midori, etc. but I can't go that purist way. I'm way too dependent on the digital way of life and sites like amazon and flipkart won't work in those browsers. What do you think should be the right path ahead from here?

As I recall, about 2-3 years ago I had experimented with what is called the npm install xyz through some tutorials, etc. The objective was to improve my tooling or toolchain at least with things like css/js minification, etc. along with Bootstrap customization. The idea was to then move on to other newer learnings like react, etc.

But I was soon disgruntled by the whole process! Neither bootstrap turned out to be an easy horse to tame, and NPM was like this astronomical universe of packages that keep on downloading into your folders! I soon lost taste of the whole thing and kept using my tried and tested stack of PHP scripts and using stock Bootstrap through CDNs.

But today, I want to give it another shot. Has NPM improved than earlier days? What is the best way to go about building a toolchain using it? Are there any useful guides that make the whole process easier to digest?

Hi everyone!

I've been using Vox for about a year now to listen to music and while there are some good qualities to it, I'm honestly fed up with the lack of volume normalisation and having to constantly adjust my volume manually (There's heaps years old of threads on their forums requesting or complaining about this). So here I am looking for a replacement and was wondering if anyone has a setup that I could copy. Here are the requirements that I have:

• I can stream my own music library of high quality music (FLAC format).
• It provides volume normalisation.
• I can set my whole library to shuffle.
• Native macOS client.

I've been doing some looking around and so far the most likely solution will be for me to set up a Gonic server at home and use Strawberry Music Player on my laptop. A close second contender was Youtube music but they don't provide a native client and I currently use a combination of keyboard shortcuts and applescripts to manage playback (I found media keys insufficient but that's a topic for another post).

I am currently paying a subscription fee for Vox so I don't mind if I have to pay for the new player, I'd prefer a service like that for ease of use rather than rolling out my own.

Update
For posterity I'm posting what I ended up doing. I tried Roon and while it looked and felt amazing, the ability for streaming out of home is very limited, it's intended to stream within a local network. It appears you can only do remote streaming to a mobile device and requires a custom port to be forwarded, I wanted to put this behind a reverse proxy but was not able to do that (Seems it's not supported).
I did not try Plexamp, after all the work I did to get Gonic set up properly it felt like I was doing too much work myself to pay for a solution. Ideally I wanted something that would "just work" even if it wasn't free but no solution did that. If I had access to a free trial I would have probably tested it as well.
I already had Gonic working within my home network going into this but setup of it is still trivial. The bulk of the work came in setting a dynamic DNS set up, and a reverse proxy (NPM) inside my network to provide HTTPS support with Letsencrypt certificates for Gonic (It's only HTTP). I spend too much time trying to have a secure setup (Crowdsec + Cloudflare) but after ditching that, I'm still happy with it and looking at logs it does not appear there's any significant risk to my network (I'm also using a geoip block to outright block requests from some countries).
As far as clients go, I settled with Strawberry. Tried the following:

• Sonixd: It had limited hotkey functionality and doesn't seem to be actively developed anymore.
• Submariner: Did not work.
• Clementine: Current version crashes on launch, rc version complaints about wrong credentials when connecting to the server.