For a long time now, I have been using KeePassXC for desktops and KeePassDX for Android. I keep everything synchronized neatly with Syncthing, which can be configured to operate over your WiFi or the internet through their gateways. This allows me to share a single KeePass file with another individual, provided I tell them the password.

I have a co-worker who is loving 1Password and while it looks great, something irks me about paying monthly for a password manager. I looked into Bitwarden for a "local cloud" and have seen very mixed results as well as not being sure if I could trust my own security configurations to do so.

I am primarily wondering what everyone else is using in search of something a bit more convenient (I'm not opposed to using the cloud) that has an app like KeePass that I can use for desktop apps, and not just in the browser (though I don't use that function often, truthfully).

Edit: Passkey support was mentioned in this comment and made me realize how important such support will be in the coming years. For those of you with password management solutions supporting it, how has it been?

I just realized I haven't made a full post with Oscar predictions since January (did one for the Globes and one for the Guild). Well now that we're half-way through the year, here's where I think the current Oscar race stands:

Picture:

1. The Holdovers
2. Oppenheimer
3. Killers of the Flower Moon
4. Dune: Part Two
5. Barbie
6. Past Lives
7. The Zone of Interest
8. The Killer
9. Saltburn
10. Anatomy of a Fall

Director:

1. Christopher Nolan - Oppenheimer
2. Martin Scorsese - Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Alexander Payne - The Holdovers
4. Denis Villenueve - Dune: Part Two
5. Jonathan Glazer - The Zone of Interest

Original Screenplay:

1. The Holdovers
2. Past Lives
3. Saltburn
4. Anatomy of a Fall
5. May-December

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Barbie
2. Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Oppenheimer
4. Dune: Part Two
5. The Zone of Interest

Lead Actor:

1. Cillian Murphy - Oppenheimer
2. Paul Giamatti - The Holdovers
3. Leonardo DiCaprio - Killers of the Flower Moon
4. Barry Keoghan - Saltburn
5. Colman Domingo - Rustin

Lead Actress:

1. Margot Robbie - Barbie
2. Greta Lee - Past Lives
3. Natalie Portman - May-December
4. Sandra Huller - Anatomy of a Fall
5. Annette Bening - Nyad

Supporting Actor:

1. Robert Downey Jr. - Oppenheimer
2. Robert DeNiro - Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Ryan Gosling - Barbie
4. Jesse Plemmons - Killers of the Flower Moon
5. Teo Yoo - Past Lives

Supporting Actress:

1. D'avine Joy Randolph - The Holdovers
2. Lilly Gladstone - Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Emily Blunt - Oppenheimer
4. Julianne Moore - May-December
5. Rosamund Pike - Saltburn

Cinematography:

1. Oppenheimer
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Killers of the Flower Moon
4. The Killer
5. The Zone of Interest

Film Editing:

1. Oppenheimer
2. Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Dune: Part Two
4. The Holdovers
5. The Killer

Sound:

1. Oppenheimer
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Killers of the Flower Moon
4. The Killer
5. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One

Original Score:

1. Oppenheimer
2. Dune: Part Two
3. The Zone of Interest
4. The Killer
5. Past Lives

Original Song:

1. "Dance the Night" from Barbie
2. "Quiet Eyes" from Past Lives
3. "More of Us" from Wish
4. "Gonna be You" from 80 For Brady
5. Original Song from Wonka

Production Design:

1. Barbie
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Oppenheimer
4. Killers of the Flower Moon
5. Wonka

Costume Design:

1. Barbie
2. Oppenheimer
3. Dune: Part Two
4. Wonka
5. Killers of the Flower Moon

Hair and Make-up:

1. Oppenheimer
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Guaridans of the Galaxy Vol. 3
4. Renfield
5. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

VFX:

1. Dune: Part Two
2. Oppenheimer
3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
4. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part One
5. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Animated Feature:

1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
2. How Do You Live?
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
4. Wish
5. Nimona

There are some very groovy mixes out there. Which ones are your favorite?

Mine is Alice by Pogo, whimsical and slightly spooky, just like the movie it's sampled from.

So apparently Pogo has held some problematic opinions in the past, I'll go with my second most favorite being this Breaking Bad remix.

Non-SFOite here. I’ve heard twice over the weekend how “bad and unlivable” San Francisco (proper) has become. Someone referred to it as a “failed city”, and “worse than LA”.

I’ve been to both cities and I’ve seen the tent cities in LA fashion district.

I’m curious to know if it truly had gotten that bad or if it’s just people being hyperbolic (like entire city level collapse).

I'm looking to buy a new device and have started to look at chromebooks to see if it would be a suitable option. My use cases are pretty mundane:

• Online banking and other similar services
• Emailing
• As a tool for GMing RPG campaigns (probably managed through some online service)
• Stream video while traveling (eg Netflix, YouTube)
• Note taking & drawing (possibly with a stylus)
• Occasionally ssh to remote machines

Arguably the heaviest of these would be streaming, but I guess most devices can handle that decently. Since I won't be doing any gaming or heavy dev work (on the actual machine) I figured I don't really have very high hardware requirements. As such perhaps a chromebook would be a good option. There are some downsides, mainly for me that it is heavily tied to the Google ecosystem. Can chromebooks be easily jailbroken and run a lightweight window manager on Linux? If so does the device retain its battery life okish? Could I still use a stylus with the device? Would I be better off buying a cheap laptop and install linux on that?

Finally I've read that Google cancled their Pixelbook 2 last year. Has there been any updates or rumors of it coming back (I tend to like Google's hardware)?

Premise - TL;DW -

A young chef from the fine dining world comes home to Chicago to run his family sandwich shop after a heartbreaking death in his family. A world away from what he's used to, Carmy must balance the soul-crushing realities of small business ownership, his strong-willed and recalcitrant kitchen staff and his strained familial relationships.

With season 2 being released this past weekend I wanted to see if anyone on Tildes was watching it. Right now, I think it might be my favorite show. There is no hamfisted comedy. The dialog seems shockingly/surprisingly human. It has stakes, but its not overwhelming or action-packed cheese.

The whole context of the show is surprisingly fresh, a lot of the characters have flaws but good even realistic redemption or growth. I think one of the most surprising things (for me at-least) is the lack of a love interest, I can't recall the last time a show didn't have one. I could go on and gush about this show some more, but I wanted to see if anyone here watched it.

If not, give it a chance. I think you might like it.

Somalia faces worst drought in decades, leading to record number of displacements — Toronto Star

Somalia is facing the worst drought in four decades, devastating floods and more than 30 years of conflict, leading to a record number of displacements this year, with more than a million people fleeing their homes in just 130 days. This brings the total number of internally displaced people to nearly four million, which is close to a quarter of the country’s population. In desperation, some mothers are poisoning their babies with detergent and salty water to trigger illnesses and thus receive free food from health centers. This food, instead of being given to the sick child, is sold to provide for the whole family. Source

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I enjoy a few weather tools. For example, I enjoy
blitzortung that shows live lightning. Currently, you can see a long chain of lighting through eastern Germany and up through Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

This is expected, since we’ve had very warm weather for a while, and it’s supposed to change to colder weather soon.

But is there a good website that can show me easily the weather front that is currently creating all those lightning strikes? The sites I know only shows vague colors and you can perhaps implicitly see some change in pressure, wind, temperature etc, but nothing that clearly shows an east front where for example you would expect lightning soon.

I recently learned about the Wooting two HE, a keyboard with analog input. The interesting feature is something they call "rapid trigger", which defines the actuation point as when the key changes direction (up or down), rather than the key reaching a specific height.

I'm wondering how much faster this could let someone press or release a key. I tried searching online but I can't find anyone who has measured the average time for typists to reach the actuation point, or even the average velocity of a key-press.

This is mainly so I can find this again and not have to rediscover this for the third time after I forget. I can't find this exact solution anywhere else so I figured I should put it somewhere.

I have a terrible Insignia tv that locks the overscan option so you can't even turn it off, and linux mint for whatever reason doesn't recognize it as a TV so I can't use their automatic TV adjustments. This is just for x11 afaik.

So in the end, I used the underscan to defeat the overscan and it works great:

xrandr to get the output name the TV is using, then

xrandr --output <name-of-tv-output> --set underscan on --set "underscan hborder" <0-128> --set "underscan vborder" <0-128>

to enable underscan and tweak the border values which squash the edges of the screen, undoing the effects of the overscan.

for me the optimal values are 128h 40v but you can just experiment by typing the command into the console before you make it permanent.

I finally have the space to finish a project I've been working on which is a study with 3 bookcases. So far, my idea is to have 1 with books that will always be there, such as classic reads, or even an encyclopedia maybe?, or other reference material. Basically, a permanent bookcase whether or not I've read the material. The other two will be rotated in and out of stuff that I'm reading, have read recently or on my backlog before swapping or donating.

Anyways, what's in your "must have" bookcase? Reference, fiction/non-fiction, Calvin & Hobbes even! (Although that's more of a coffee table piece)

I came from the generation that played obsessively through middle and high school, and there’s a part of me that really misses when I’d be able to absorb myself into a video game for weeks at a time.

Now that I’m a working adult, it’s a bit more difficult to convince myself that spending all day playing a video game is worth it as opposed to doing chores, practicing some more “productive” hobbies (art, exercise, cooking) or socializing. Part of it also seems to do with the fact that when I do get fully immersed into another video game and spend hours and hours playing at a time (thank you elden ring), my standard for dopamine seems to increase, and I’m not as interested in reading or playing music when I could get that instant dopamine hit from playing a video game, if that makes sense. The games I tend to play now lean towards relaxing/cozy games, generally offline games I can play at my own leisure, where I used to be very into the Overwatch/CSGO/Call of Duty scene.

I’d really love to hear how other people have experienced this, if at all, or what your experiences have been. Have you noticed a shift in the types of games you play? Do you specifically try not to play games to keep a healthier balance with your other obligations and hobbies too?

I'm starting a new campaign soon and I plan to create a homebrew setting and story like I've done in the past. I've used a combination of Google Docs, Evernote, and other general purpose tools for other settings and campaigns. Does anyone use something like World Anvil or Legend Keeper? Something else?

I'm still in the brainstorming stage of world building, and I'd like a place to collect my thoughts and plans. Ideally I'd be able to easily convert that into something searchable and updateable when it's time to actually play in the setting.

Do you use a single tool for creating maps, NPCs, plot points, history, and adventures? Or do you have a suite of tools you find works well to cover all those aspects?

I am curious to see what other peoples experience has been with all of their apps?

I made the decision to switch to proton for mail, drive, calendar and vpn 7 months ago. I wanted to get away from having all my stuff tied to apple/google/microsoft. While it has been pretty solid for the most part, especially with android. The same cannot be said for their iOS/iPadOS apps at all. This will be my personal observation from my experience with iOS/iPadOS apps.

Mail - Pretty solid all around experience, timely notifications on incoming mail. I have 4 email addresses setup based on the type of account I used for them. I only get bothered by the emails that I would need to see and the rest get checked around once a day. Recently the whole app on both iPad and iPhone has just slowed down so much. Opening the app is frustratingly slow, while everything loads in. I will get a new email and click on the notification and the app will sometimes load the last email I viewed and not the one from the notification. I have cleared the cache and signed out and then back in and it still has this behavior.

Drive - This one is the biggest pain point for me. On iPhone the app crashes when you try to watch a video in landscape mode. This is a pretty basic feature in 2023 if you ask me. I did report the bug, to which they said they are aware and have no timeline for when it will be fixed. The next biggest issue with drive on iOS/iPadOS is that you can only upload 1 file at a time. If you do multiple files if not all, almost all of them will fail to upload. You have to do it 1 file at a time. Reported this and was told the same thing I was about the landscape mode. Seems odd to not want to fix a core function of a cloud storage app as soon as possible.

VPN - I really enjoy this vpn and have paid for just the vpn in past. Now it constantly disconnects or gets stuck in connecting. I can’t use quick connect unless I manually pick a country connect then disconnect. After that I can use quick connect with out any issues. This happens without having secure core toggle on. This is happening on both my iPad and iPhone. Waiting on them to actually help trouble shoot this after sending them a bug report.

Calendar - Is the most useless app they have every put out. I was so excited to finally dial this calendar app in when I got my iPad. Only to find out that they don’t have an iPad version of their calendar. Which makes no sense because that is an app that can really shine on an iPad when do well. This whole app just feels like an after thought and they only have it just to say we have a calendar app too.

I feel that compared to when I started using all of their apps back in December. The quality and stability of the apps has really taken a hit. I understand that they probably have a focus on building their brand with an app suite based on privacy. I feel like the quality is really taking a hit especially with iOS/iPadOS versions of the apps. The obvious answer is to just switch back to android and save myself the headache of apple. The reason for apple is a whole post in its own and I want to keep this one on topic.

For clarification, I have been using the iOS versions since December. I was switching between pixel 7 pro and 14 pro max every few weeks. Having an eco system of apps not based on either platform was also why I chose proton everything.

Today I am putting in writing some very personal thoughts on how to best communicate online and otherwise.

We all know the importance of interpretative charity in online discourse. Without it, we are bound to waste precious time and mental resources chasing dead ends which can be easily avoided by assuming that the interlocutor is both capable and willing to engage in rational conversation. Charitable interpretation can be surmised as the practice of giving precedence to interpretations that maximize the truthfulness and correction of arguments. Charitable Interpretation is essential for civil debate, bypassing unproductive exchanges to arrive quicker at the core of the matter at hand so that each argument has a chance to shine. Charitable Interpretation is a recipe for politeness and intellectual honesty but says very little about emotions and ethical considerations. To address those concerns, I propose a similar concept.

Compassionate Interpretation

Compassionate Interpretation goes a bit further, using a similar procedure to incentivize interactions that also achieve an amenable emotional resolution between the parties. So, while Charitable interpretation allows for productive debate by assuming the most cogent version of an argument, Compassionate Interpretation allows for serendipitous and emotionally enriching exchanges by assuming the interpretations which would lead you to believe that the interlocutor is the most ethical, virtuous, and worthy of sympathy.

When practicing Compassionate Interpretation, one must assume that statements made by others are not only reasonable but also interpret such statements in a way that is least detrimental to their morals. When more than one possible interpretation is possible, the Compassionate Interpreter must choose that which would not equate to a negative opinion of their morals.

By doing that, you avoid needlessly aggravating potential friends and allies. You also give a chance to those that require a change in worldview to improve their morals, stimulated by your kindness and optimism towards them.

On writing this, I remember of how much compassion, patience and kindness I need from others. That makes it easier for me to dispense compassion towards others.

I'll give an example using myself.

I'm a black man. Suppose that someone tells me the following phrase: "I do not understand the appeal of rap music". For some, that statement might indicate that the utterer holds, in addition to a musical preference, a negative opinion of black culture as a whole, which might entail that they hold some kind of prejudice against black people. Or it could simply mean what their words indicate on a surface, literal level: they genuinely do not understand what is appealing about rap music. As a Compassionate Interpreter, I give precedence to the latter. If, in the future, I accrue evidence telling me otherwise, I may revise my interpretation.

As is the case with Charitable Interpretation, there are situations in which a blanket application of Compassionate Interpretation might lead to unfavorable results. That would be the case of a truly malicious individual who intends to exploit our goodwill to cause all kinds of havoc. The principle would still apply, with a few adjustments. When encountering pernicious elements, the Compassionate Interpreter might feel compelled to interpret their actions as the consequence of ignorance, some kind of mental suffering, or traumatic experiences that led them to adopt ill behavior. However, compassion should not be mistaken for foolishness or naivety. A compassionate attitude does not prevent strong measures against wrongdoing. In online spaces, the best recommendation in these cases is to disengage completely and report the wrongdoer on whatever platform you are in.

In writing this, I share something very dear to me, in the hopes that it may lead to some good and helpful thoughts in the minds of the reader.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

I think this game is great and I was surprised to see nobody recommended it in their non-D&D game lists. At the system level, Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) is a rules-light version of 3.5. You never need more than one sourcebook and there are quick-start rules to play for free on the website.

At its core, though, DCC is an old school sword and sorcery setting heavily inspired by the authors of Appendix N. For those not familiar, in the first edition of D&D, Gary Gygax published a list of authors that inspired D&D in an appendix in the back of the Dungeon Master's Guide. It has some obvious ones that I think most RPGs pull from (Tolkien and Jack Vance {of the Vancian magic system}, for instance), but there are also some deeper cuts that I don't think are really leveraged in many tabletop RPGs (Robert Howard of Conan the Barbarian and Solomon Kane, and H.P. Lovecraft). Those last two in particular, pulp-y fantasy writers who defined a genre, heavily influence DCC in my experience.

Aside from this, though, there are a few very unique and fun mechanics that got me totally hooked on this game.

The 0-level funnel and death as a narrative device

Traditionally in D&D, you end up spending the majority of your first session designing and building a character. In my experience, it usually takes around 2-4 hours depending on complexity. This results in mechanically unique characters, but it also ups the stakes for the DM. When was the last time you played a game of D&D and the survival of your character was ever truly in question? Nobody wants to spend 4 hours on their character only to have it killed off in the first play session -- that's not fun. But, in the end, it's also not challenging.

In DCC, it takes about 5-10 minutes to create a character (and there are online tools like The Purple Sorcerer that will generate them by the dozen). Every character starts with a profession (and by extension, a tool of their trade), a random piece of gear, and a block of random stats (3d6 rolled in order, none of these "points" or "4d6 drop the lowest" business). In the first session, you roll 4 of them and you play all 4 in what is termed the 0-level funnel. Over the course of this adventure, 2-3 of your characters will die -- after all, adventuring is a treacherous business fraught with peril -- and your surviving character(s) become level 1. At this point, they get a class and a couple additional abilities.

The core interesting thing to me about this is the emergent gameplay that results. Oftentimes, the character that rolled the best stats aren't the ones that actually survive. A single unlucky roll or an undiscovered trap results in unceremoniously striking down another one of the PCs, whereby they pick up the gear leftover from them and continue on their grim quest. I've seen the character with the lowest luck somehow being the one that survived and it forging a bond with the person playing it unlike anything I've seen in D&D. What did they do to earn that? What is in store for the doomed character that somehow managed to outlast 3 of his fellow villagers? It gives you a ton of tools as a DM and as a player to craft interesting narratives. And it also reminds the players that this character probably won't last forever. That opens the door for dramatic moments involving death that you don't really get to explore with D&D. Magic that restores life is exceedingly rare and would require a quest of comparable bravery to discover.

Magic as a dangerous and unpredictable tool

I've heard some complaints about Vancian magic in other topics and DCC also does away with this, but it does it with two chaotic and, at times, hilarious mechanics: the mercurial magic table and the spell table.

The Mercurial Magic Table

Magic is, by nature, a chaotic tool for the desperate. No two casters cast the same spell in the same way and the mercurial magic table is a representation of that. The first time a character casts a spell, they have to roll on the table to determine how they invoke that spell. There's a big chunk of the table that's just 'as normal,' but there are also things like 'every time you cast this, a digit on your hand or foot disintegrates. Take a -1 to dex for every two digits that disappear.'

How badly do you need to cast that magic missile? Is it worth invoking the unpredictable elemental energies required to do so? Is it worth....your thumb?

The Spell Table

Once you invoke the spell, you roll your spellcasting check and consult the spell table. The quality of your roll (of which there are a couple mechanics to affect this) determines what the spell actually does -- and they can be wildly different! That magic missile might fire a single missile that does 1 damage or it might summon 1d4 that do 1d4 damage each. Your darkness spell might allow you to create a 20' sphere of darkness at a point of your choosing or it might center a 5' magical darkness sphere on you.

Magic is chaotic and difficult to control. But as a result, it is almost always very powerful. Your spell might not do exactly what you expected, but it makes for much more interesting combat and on-the-fly thinking.

Should I play it?

Emphatically, yes! The rules-light nature of the game allows you to focus more on story-telling and mood-setting than being buried in the books all the time (except for looking up spell effects, everyone at the table seems to get excited when we have to do that). The deadly nature of the game has resulted in both better and heavier storytelling than anything I've done before -- stakes without it getting personal, as it were. And the adventure content is awesome -- there are some great resources on Sample Adventure Paths, but even the starting 0-level adventure in the back of the sourcebook is strong. I swear I'm not a shill, I just want more DCC in the universe.

Is it just me or does it feel like there is no big new song of the summer this year? Nothing is standing out to me. Like a Watermelon Sugar type of anthem, etc. What big hit are you all listening to a lot so far?

I've been idly browsing for a home weather station for a while, hoping to contribute to the local sensor network for a region that's got lots of microclimate variation. I saw this one from Seeed Studio today, and was hoping for some reviews and advice. Seeed Studio devices are known for open source software, and I wouldn't mind playing with writing a tie-in for sprinkler system automation so we're not irrigating when it's about to rain. It wouldn't be situated so far from the house that we'd need to use the LoRaWAN feature, though.

Concurrently, we just had an inch of rain dropped on our house in the space of 15 minutes, with winds that were taking down tree branches. The weather report says "light rain", weather stations a mile away continue to indicate that everything is bone dry with quiet air. This rainstorm breaks a nearly month-long drought. I'm finding it nerve-wracking that climate change makes it impossible to use past local weather as a predictor of what to expect for gardening, home maintenance, and outdoor activities, and local weather reports are so inaccurate. So that's (hopefully) where the weather station might come into play.

That being said, any chat about your local conditions and reporting from your station is welcome.

Over the last year, I've found myself listening to quite a few audio dramas. I've never been one for traditional podcasts so it was pretty surprising to me that I loved them so much the moment they went from nonfiction to fiction. It's pretty similar to watching TV, except you can still use your eyes for other tasks! Audio books are nice too, but they don't quite scratch the same itch. So with all that, here's an unordered list of some of my favourite audio dramas (along with a small synopsis and some personal opinions), and I invite you to post your own in the comments!

All of these can be found on basically any podcast app (I use AntennaPod on Android), so if any piqued your interest, do give them a shot!

When talking with my therapist, the subject of writing is a constant. My obsessive approach to writing is a source of frustration.

I write well in my first language, and aspire to create short fiction . But I'm an over planner and way too critical of my own writing.

Anything longer than a single page is impossible for me because I'll obsess with editing and some misguided sense of "perfection", cutting paragraph after paragraph until I'm left with a decent micro story that you can read in two and a half minutes. Most of the time I don't even get this far.

So my question is, how can I force myself to be less self critical and obsessive, let things flow, and write longer stories? Are there any advices, books, courses, practices and exercises I can use?