Meta's new app, Instagram Threads, is planning to be compatible with the ActivityPub protocol. This means it will be possible to federate with services such as Mastodon.

I became aware of this as my Mastodon admin talked about being approached by Meta to discuss federation. Many other large instances have been approached too. There is a general apprehension about federating with Threads, with many instances (including mine) saying outright that they will not federate with any Meta product.

Personally, I think this is an advantage of federation. I can continue to use Mastodon and choose whether I want an instance that interacts with Meta or not.

I definitely understand the apprehension with providing all of your data/information to a company not exactly known for their good handling of data/information, but I'm also not as against it as some people seem to be. If they are going to create a service like this, I'd rather it was federated than a walled garden.

How do you feel?

Do you have a home carbonation system? What do you carbonate with it? Just plain water? Flavored drinks?

My girlfriend gave me a DrinkMate as an early birthday present, and I love it. I've been going crazy with it.

Hey everyone. I just beat FFXVI and wanted to share my thoughts in case anyone was thinking of getting the game, or if anyone wants to have a good discussion about the game. I tried to make it as spoiler-free as possible, but please do be advised that this could end up accidentally spoiling certain story elements.

Please note, these are just my opinions. I haven't really played any other FF games, so I'm only comparing this one on it's own merits. Please, if you disagree with something, don't lash out at me. I'm just a dude posting this for good fun and have 0 accolades on why I'm qualified to review anything lol

Also, if you're reading this and have a gaming recommendation for me, I am 100% open to it. I've been looking for some new games to play, so if you think of one I might enjoy while reading this, please let me know.

Pros:

• Graphics: This game looks amazing. There were times where I would just walk through locations and really appreciate how everything looked. I don’t do this often in video games, so it’s nice to see a world that felt genuinely awesome to appreciate and admire. You can tell a lot of work went into building these towns/locations, aside from some of the later areas.


• Combat: The combat in this game is great, addicting fun. I know this is a point of contention for fans of previous FF games and how this is a definite departure from the turn-based style, but some of the best moments I had were chaining combos and getting staggers quick. Towards the end of the game, I was able to bring down some of the mini-bosses extremely quickly and it never got old to pull off. I see people saying things like “You just press square the entire time and win” which I don’t agree with at all. If that’s how one chooses to play the game, then you’re actively not engaging with the combat mechanics and that’s on you. The combat can be complex with different abilities interacting with each other to obtain massive damage, that's what I like in a game.

• Story: The story of this game is phenomenal and I was engaged most of the way through. I’ll have some of my thoughts on story-beats below because there were times where this game dragged on, but the overall concept of a nation at war with each other and essentially starting your own faction from the ground-up is a lot of fun. About 50% of the way through, you’ll unlock a mechanic that allows you to see how all the factions have been interacting with each other, what wars were started and why those wars were happening throughout the entirety of timeline of the game. I spent a solid hour reading everything in these menus because I was intrigued by the complexity of everything and how it all tied into other events, and how sometimes your main characters crew were beyond detached from what was going on in the main world to achieve an ultimate goal. It’s really awesome to see what other antagonist are doing despite your current story beat being involved with something else at that moment, and I wish more games would incorporate this because it really works to make it feel like the game doesn’t revolve around you but that you are apart of an overall story.

Cons:


• Eikon battles: For those not in the know, you’ll occasionally transform into a giant beast (Eikon) named Ifrit and take on other giant beasts (Eikons) throughout the story. At first, these were really fun to play and were truly spectacular to watch but as the story goes on, the fights get less and less engaging. In these parts of the game, you really can just press square and win. Aside from dodging, there is practically no complexity or strategy to these fights. There really isn’t strategy with the main combat either but at least with the main combat, you can pull off insane combos. As Ifrit though? Forget about it. The best combo you can do is ‘Square, Square, Square, Square, Triangle’. You do get 2 abilities as the story goes on, but they’re really nothing special. I actually started to play these section how I play Diablo; outheal the damage. I just used the one combo and healed 2-3 times per fight, while closing the distance as much as possible. I guess this is a valid strategy but I can’t imagine this is how the devs wanted these parts to play out.


• Quicktime events: I think QTE’s should stay in the 360/PS3 generation. I haven’t seen a current Gen game utilize QTE’s, let alone utilize them as many times as FFXVI did and it’s these dated mechanics that are definitely contributing to others saying the game feels outdated. There are multiple times where you’ll go up to a door click ‘X’ and it will be like ‘Now hold R2’. This happens a lot in the game. It happens so often that I’m not convinced at all that it has anything to do with enhancing the gameplay and was made simply to show off the Dualsense controls because, whilst I don’t like the QTE, the Dualsense will give this haptic feedback during these parts. I can’t really explain it, but it does occasionally work well enough to be immersive. The other QTE events are during Eikon battles, and they’re literally just ‘Press X’ and ‘Press R2’ in an extremely generous amount of time. There’s also another QTE even where you just mash square endlessly until you win, which reminds me of mini games in Mario Party 1… on the Nintendo 64 nearly 30 years ago. It’s just an outdated design IMO and I would have rather just watched cutscenes than occasionally press a button. I will say though, there was one QTE which I laughed at. There’s a scene where the MC is coming to grips with an important story-beat and the QTE literally says “Press L3 & R3 to accept the truth”. This gave me giant “Press F for respects” vibes, and I don’t know whether they meant for this to be hilarious but it was. This is the only QTE event I thought was good.


• 70% fun, 30% drag: I found the first 70% of this game to be an insanely good experience. Truly next-gen and one of the best action games I have played. The story was engaging, the combat was really fun and the character/world building peaks about here. Afterwards though, not so much. It goes from being a story about conflict between nations but once that resolves, it’s a story about killing God. From here, I really couldn’t care less about the happenings. The people you’re built to dislike from the beginning have resolved story arcs, they introduce new antagonists that aren’t super interesting and it’s just an overall slog the last 30%. Also, that’s a specific percentage, but when I found myself wanting the story to wrap up, it was right at the 70% mark. From what I’ve read/watched about the FF series, it seems like a few of the games have this inevitable drop-off and can get pretty convoluted, but what I can say is… that first 70% was some of the best gaming I’ve had in a while. The last 30%, not so much.
 The ending of the game was great though and I hope that we get a continuance of this story later on.

Random Thoughts:


• Side-quests: I’ve seen people saying the side-quests are generic MMO like side-quests and I flat out disagree. First off, I think the only reason anyone is making the MMO comparison is because the same team that made FFXIV (an MMO) created this game, so it’s low hanging fruit and easy to criticize without putting in any effort. The side quests are not any different from any other RPG game I’ve played. Most side quests in most RPGS boil down to “Talk to this person, go kill this thing, come back and get a reward”. I have played very few RPG’s that didn’t have these as a majority of their side quests. Even something as recently as Diablo 4 has primarily only these types of side quests. I don’t understand why people give FFXVI so much flack, but I just don’t agree. The side quests are more about world-building and getting to know what your average person existing in this world deals with. You’ll learn backstory about your companions you wouldn’t know otherwise, get various upgrades/mementos and really get to know the world you are playing the game in. I’m not saying that some of these side quests aren’t just “Go talk to this person, then talk to this person and win”, because there are some that are really that simple, and if that’s not your thing then that’s okay, but I seriously don’t understand why people are giving this game flack for doing the same things that every RPG has done before. Just seems unfair IMO.


• RPG Mechanics: This game should have either added more RPG mechanics, or leaned into the action style and got rid of them entirely. There is no point in leveling up in this game. You don’t get rewarded for leveling up. It happens automatically and you don’t get to distribute any skill-points or anything like that. You literally don’t get anything but new weapon unlocks and an increasing number. I have never played a more shallow RPG. You get Ability Points which can increase your Eikon powers, but somewhere down the line, you just start stockpiling these because you have nowhere to spend them. Sure, you can unlock more abilities and increase those powers, but why would you do that? This game has obvious skills that are significantly stronger than other skills, so why would you use those other skills? I’m sure if I experimented around, I can find some great ways the skills I never used can interact with each other, but why would I when the ones I use now are already doing massive damage? IMO, they should have just leaned into the action gameplay and did away with the RPG mechanics. I know this is FF and FF is an RPG series, but the RPG mechanics are insultingly bad in this game and I can see why FF take offense to it. I do, and I’ve never extensively played any of the others. They could have at least added damage modifiers, resistances, etc that you can spend Ability Points on. By the end of the game, I had 8000 unspent Ability Points because there was just nowhere to spend them once you've got your play style.

Overall, I'd give the first 70% a 9/10 and the last 30% a 7.5/10.

I started getting into makeup about six months ago and I've become a bit obsessed. I've been trying to nail a natural, glowy everyday look which I mostly have down.

I managed to work out what my undertone is - always thought I had cool undertones but it turns out I'm neutral tending towards warm. I think this was one of the trickiest things to get to grips with, especially as it's one of the first things you need to figure out if you want to find a good foundation match. I tried lots of the recommendations online and spent an inordinate amount of time staring at blue and green marker lines on my arms trying to work out which ones more closely resembled the colour of my veins (the fact that I couldn't tell should have been a clue I was neutral). In the end I took a photo of my face and put it into Photoshop and used the colour picker to see the CMYK balance of my skin tone.

My approach to my makeup base has been to follow Lisa Eldridge's technique for covering acne/ redness etc. It basically involves using a base layer of tinted moisturizer before applying concealer where needed (I generally use a primer beforehand as well). I'd like to try some colour correctors to better conceal redness and the circles under my eyes but e.l.f has completely sold out of the colours I need and I'm waiting for them to come back in stock.

I really like Jecca Blac's glow drops for adding some glow/ highlights to my face. It's the only product of theirs I've tried but I would recommend them as a brand if you're just getting started with makeup. They're vegan, cruelty free and gender free/ trans inclusive, and they offer free consultations if you buy a product with them so you can learn how to properly apply it.

Another product I use all the time is the Body Shop's freestyle multitasking crayon in the colour 'staple'. It's one of the first things I bought and I think it's great as a starter product because it has so many uses - it's lip-liner, blush and eyeshadow all in one. It's good for travel as well for the same reason.

The other thing I do most days is tightline my eyes. I tend to follow this technique which works well for me and gives my eyes a bit more definition without being over the top. My eyelashes are quite dark and long anyway so I tend not to use mascara on a daily basis.

If anyone has any tips on doing winged eyeliner I'd love to hear them! I think I probably just need more practice but I find it quite hard because I'm basically unable to wink so I have to do it with my eyes open.

Also any product recommendations for a setting spray/ powder (preferably vegan and cruelty free). I'm currently using e.l.f's Halo Glow setting powder but I find it quite mattifying and it tends go a bit cakey for me after a few hours.

Anyway, I would love to hear any and all of your thoughts on makeup. What products do you love? Are you looking for some recommendations? What's your goal with makeup and what does your routine look like? Anyone that you follow for inspiration or tips?

Something I've noticed about the Fediverse, especially Mastodon, is that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of discussion going on except for meta discussion.

For example, if you go on Mastodon, you'll find lots of people talking about how Mastodon is the future. You'll find lots of people asking how to do certain things on the platform. But you really have to dig to find actual discussion about topics beyond the platform itself.

Even when you do find people not doing meta discussion, there aren't really any people talking with each other. There's people sharing content but not a lot of people interacting with it. Even basic stuff you see on other social media sites like people giving each other compliments just isn't really there. You can see everyone's stuff but it's just shouting into the void.

I think that the Fediverse has a severe problem with holding people's interest, and the most die-hard people who are interested just want to use it to talk about itself.

What are your thoughts on romance in RPGs? I'm using the word "romance" here because it's usually what the topic is called. But I think it's too specific and has unwanted connotations with cheeziness. I would prefer the term "attraction", which can also refer to more challenging relationships that might not include sex or even happy endings.

The recent news that Starfield will only feature 4 romance options has fans debating, and before Starfield it was Cyberpunk, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Skyrim, etc. Each of these games took a slightly different approach to romance and each had their fans and critics. On the one hand, the Witcher 3 had a defined player-character and very few romance options, but the writing was excellent and the romances fairly believable. And then there was Skyrim, where you created your own character and had lots of romance options, but all you needed to do was a fetch quest for your belle/beau and then give them a necklace before living a happily married life of fighting bandits, adopting children and saying the same things to each other ad nauseam every day for eternity. But even Skyrim's romance had a certain charm to it. At least you got to live with your partner, build a house, have a family and go hunting together...

I fully understand the viewpoint that gamers would rather have fewer options if they are deep than more numerous janky options. We're yet to see what Starfield's execution will be like, but even if they have done a good job with it, I can't help feeling a little disappointed that there are so few options in such a massive game. I fully understand how difficult it would be to have more options and still make the romances compelling, but I think this should be strived for, rather than just given up as too hard.

Of all the big entertainment media (movies, TV, books, etc.), games are understandably way behind when it comes to romance. It's either rarely implemented or implemented poorly because technically it is very difficult. Yet it's often a major part of storytelling and virtually omnipresent in other media. Sometimes it's the main story; other times it's a side story within the main one. But it's quite rare for it never to feature at all in mass entertainment media. Of course, it's often shoehorned in because it's what the viewers/readers want and expect, but you can also argue that attraction to someone else is just a fundamental human emotion and maybe even unavoidable, especially in an epic or heroic scenario like an RPG. I'm sure someone with professional experience in this field could probably speak more to this point, but I'm thinking here of those intense emotional feelings you get from stressful situations, which could lead to crushes and attraction for those in the same situation, or to rescuers and caregivers (Nightingale syndrome), or even to abductors (Stockholm syndrome) and the opposite (Lima syndrome).

And the fact that it's a fundamental human trait that plays such a major role in our lives (for better or worse) is why I think gaming companies should not ignore romance and should strive to create truly compelling attraction stories. It's an area ripe for innovation and could really make a game stand out from the rest. It's time to move on from the stereotype that gaming is for teenage boys and all they want is to shoot things and maybe have sex with big-titted avatars. Gaming is now for everyone, for all ages and for all sexualities (including asexuals), and I'm sure there's a market for mature stories to reflect what drives many people's decisions and behaviours.

The RPG genre in particular seems to be the best fit for romance (outside of dating sims, which I know nothing about). The beauty of role-playing is that you get to be who you want to be, which includes exploring attraction and your sexuality. It's incredibly challenging and maybe even impossible to create a game that would please everyone, but I certainly don't think the idea of compelling attraction gameplay should be given up because previous attempts have felt so inauthentic.

Going back to Starfield, I'm really excited to go out exploring the stars, fighting space pirates, upgrading my ship, and acquiring cool abilities. I love all these things about RPGs. But I'm also a sucker for a great story and experiencing a genuine human journey. For me, this includes relationships, both platonic and sexual, because it would be unavoidable when spending so much time with people on my ship, and exploring the galaxy. The importance of attraction in games will vary between gamers, but as other mass entertainment media has shown us, it's massively popular when done well, probably because it speaks to something so fundamental within us as humans.

These are just some of my musings and ramblings. What are your thoughts?

• Is it a waste of dev time and resources because it's too hard to do well?
• Is it an aspect you particularly enjoy or hate in RPGs?
• Which game did it best?
• What would you like to see in RPGs of the future with AI possibly being used?

I have a PS VR2 and it's my first headset. I played call of the mountain, a bit of no man's sky, swordsman, tentacular, and beat saber. I was thinking I would buy Synapse tonight, but it has mediocre reviews. I want to start a new game, but am having trouble deciding which one. Here is my short list.

• Synapse - looks super fun, and I like that it's an exclusive, but mediocre reviews
• Song in the smoke - I enjoy survival games and in general prefer non shooter games, so this has an appeal to me.
• Red Matter 2 - this one has some pretty good reviews and I do enjoy sci-fi tv and movies, but don't go out of my way to play sci-fi games
• Moss - I know it's critically acclaimed, but I was really hoping for a first person experience
• the light brigade - I could see myself enjoying this.

Since I can't decide, I think I'll be happy with just about any of these. I'll play the most voted comment!

My wife just went back to work and as the one who works from home, that means I'll be cooking a lot more. I'm not bad in the kitchen, but I'm not good at just making something up without a recipe -- I can alter and combine existing recipes once I'm used to them, but I need that starting point.

My wife and I are also both neurodivergent so it's very easy for us to get overwhelmed and not have the executive function for cooking -- which is why we eat way too much takeout currently. So I'm looking particularly for recipes that are easy and tasty. Ideally they should be reasonably healthy as well, but "healthier than takeout" isn't a high bar.

We live in Germany, so please keep that in mind if you want to recommend a specific brand of premade stuff. That said, I don't turn up my nose at premade things if they're tasty and worth it.

We do have a wok, the staple sauces for Chinese cooking , and access to okay Asian supermarkets. As an example, our current staple weeknight meal is "chop up some broccoli and stir-fry it in light soy sauce and black vinegar w/ aromatics and sichuan doubanjiang." I'm willing to go out and buy sauces and seasonings for specific cuisines if I can find them and they're useful enough, but for perishables like veggies and meats I'd prefer to stick to what's easy to find at a German grocery store, since those are in walking distance. But anyway just don't assume we only want European-style food.

Stuff that feels appropriate for summer is also a huge plus! I know a few great stew and risotto recipes but I can't bring myself to make something so heavy in this hot weather.

I have a Baratza Encore (or whatever the entry level model is called) and it could use some tlc. There are a bunch of bean parts accumulating under the hopper and grounds are getting stuck in places. I can disassemble to get the big stuff, but that's not enough. I'm wary of just splashing water or using a damp rag to wipe parts down. The oily residue needs some sort of detergent but I don't want to ruin anything or end up having my coffee tasting like soap or something.

Anyone have any experience or suggestions?

Edit: thanks to everyone for the tips! I've bought some grindz and I already popped the hopper off and gave the grinder a good brushing. There was a lot of buildup and the first grind afterward felt like it sounded quieter and I could swear the grounds were more consistent, but those are both probably illusions. Haven't made enough cups to taste a difference yet but I'll definitely be adding a regular cleaning to my routine.

I usually just read ebooks on my phone using ReadEra, but I'm going to the beach in a few weeks and I'd like to buy a dedicated eReader so I don't burn through my phone charge (I usually stay on the beach from as close to sunup as I can manage to sundown). I'd like something that handles multiple file types, especially ePub, or at least doesn't require a proprietary file type or have RDM. I'd also like it to have a long-lasting battery (I frequently read for several hours at a time), and be sturdy/waterproof (because beach). I guess backlighting might be nice, togglable if possible, and if I could get on the internet to download files directly to the Reader that'd be nice too so I don't have to plan ahead. It doesn't need to be huge, in fact smaller is probably better. Price is definitely a factor, but I'm open to refurb if available for a higher-priced model.

Needs: Inexpensive, waterproof/sturdy, strong battery, ePub/open file types/no DRM

Wants: Backlighting, internet

I've done some comparison shopping but I'm waffling so I want other people's opinions. TIA!

Using iem with ANC on the street

Hello!

I'd appreciate knowing how is it to go out on the street using an iem with ANC. Especially when you are on a sidewalk next to a heavy-traffic street or when you are on the subway for example. Does the ANC eliminate completely those types of loud sounds? Or they are still present but just not on the same level?
I ask this because I use IEM with foam ear tips but with no ANC. I feel that the foam ear tips normally makes a good seal and isolate conversations next to me or other sounds in my house. But when I go to the street in those places I mentioned the sounds are still somewhat present, although not at the same level as the music I hear. So I was thinking if I could achieve more isolation using for example a ANC iem.
Any insight would be much appreciated thank you!

We all know it. The boss/area/section of any of your favorite games/well liked games that gives you pause whenever you consider replaying it. An area or boss that sucks so much to go through that you may even reconsider entirely. Who/what hurt you?

For me it'd have to be either Pontiff Sulyvahn from Dark souls 3, or Nyx from Persona 3. Pontiff just straight up sucks to fight. Unless you're a parry god, it's just nonstop aggression with seemingly few windows, and then the second phase kicks in and you're just skewered endlessly. I can't hack it. Did it once, never again. For Nyx, besides being a long and grueling fight, it loves to pull out the ol' Marin Karin making you pull out the ol' Diarahan. Can't do it. There's a reason I emulated it. Thank god for save states.

With Tildes having a distinctive approach to content and comments I found that I was missing an option.
Without calling out anyone someone posted a submission today that was simply an image collection. I did invite them to also post a bit more about as a comment starter, which they did.

I naturally gave their comment an upvote. But I found myself wanting to reward them a bit more for their recognition. I could go for exemplary as label, in fact I did. But I can't help but feel that I am missing a meta label that is positive but doesn't weigh as heavy.

How do other people look at this?

Hi friends,

I’ve been enjoying listening to audiobooks a lot lately but find I generally have to be doing something (e.g. going for a walk, doing dishes etc) while I listen to them since it would be strange to just sit in a chair and stare and if I closed my eyes I might fall asleep.

I have found a couple of mindless games I can play on my phone while listening that don’t distract me from the story such as temple run, desert golf and amazing brick, but I’d be interested if anyone else had any suggestions?

I’d also be open to more substantial games as well so long as they didn’t have a lot of dialogue or require a lot of brain power (I’ve found trying to solve chess puzzles while listening to the audiobook just distracts me too much from the book for example).

Thanks in advance!

See title. I thought this might make for an interesting topic and I can't see one like this in the search, so...

What sorta got me thinking about this - a couple days ago, I noticed that Dying Light 2 got a sizeable update, with a pretty heavy emphasis on changes to the game's parkour mechanics. I absolutely loved the first Dying Light, as well as both Mirror's Edge games - parkour and other kinds of momentum-driven gameplay are my jam - so that got me curious enough to check it out again, for the first time in a year.

I played for a few hours, got some of the way in, and... felt pretty underwhelmed. It certainly feels better than it did last time I played, and the change to retain momentum during parkour moves does feel pretty nice... but it still feels far too slow and floaty to me. It feels awkward and unresponsive to me. On top of that, the combat updates - while I actually appreciated DL2's changes to the combat over DL1's (a major gripe I've always had with DL1's combat is that sometimes zombies take just one or two hits and sometimes they take twenty, and I have never been able to detect any kind of pattern to it - combat level, game progress, weapon damage, etc., none of them seem to impact it so I have no idea what's up with it), playing it again now... left me feeling pretty disappointed.

I booted up DL1 for the first time in a while the next day, just intending to compare how it feels - and I've since found myself drawn several hours into it. Even in the first half hour of the game, where your climbing's super slow and everything, it feels so much more snappy and reactive - it feels good. And while my previous gripes with its combat are still present, it feels so much better to me now than DL2's does (for the most part - fighting human enemies still sucks). I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but there's just something really visceral and satisfying about it that DL2 doesn't have.

As I've been playing DL1, as well, I've been thinking about its story again. As much as it's maligned for its story, I think it's actually a really interesting subversion and deconstruction of expectations in a lot of ways - while that could be a thread (or video essay, I've thought about it) of its own, the way I see it: despite how the intro and story set him up, Crane actually fails pretty hard at being a hero until towards the end. I mean, the very first thing he does is take a crowbar to the back of the head, get bitten, and get someone else killed. It's a pattern that continues throughout most of the game (and even The Following, I'd argue, even though I don't care for it much). I find it pretty memorable beecause of that, even if it falls flat in some places.

Meanwhile, Dying Light 2... I honestly couldn't tell you much about the story? It didn't leave any kind of impact on me at all. I'm not really the kind of person who plays games for their stories very often (unless it's something like Ace Attorney where that's explicitly the point), and I have to admit that I went into DL2 with low expectations to begin with (I held off getting it at launch because of Denuvo, by the time I did pick it up reviews were already fairly negative; and I tend to view "your choices really matter!" in advertising as a huge red flag so that wasn't a good sign either), but even so. It might be in part because I actually quite liked DL1's ending - I found it pretty refreshing for a post-apocalyptic zombie game - so DL2 throwing that out didn't sit well with me from the get-go (also part of why I'm not too keen on The Following, but that's a different matter).

Overall, it just sorta left me thinking about how... even though I'd tried to go in with tempered expectations - all I really wanted was a fun zombie-flavoured parkour game, where climbing and jumping and swinging and stuff felt fluid and rewarding - I still found myself left feeling pretty hollow about it, even after an update that allegedly addressed some of my biggest issues with the game. It's especially frustrating, because the Inner Circle (I think that's what it was called, I can't remember - the second city map) is really, really cool and I would absolutely love to just aimlessly run around it... if the movement didn't feel floaty and awkward. Stuff like climbing to the top of the VNC Tower felt exhilarating and awesome - I could catch a glimpse of something excellent there, but it was so outweighed by everything else.

So... Yeah. I dunno, I thought this'd make for an interesting question. Have theere any been any sequels you've played that left you feeling underwhelmed, in comparison to the previous game? If so, why?

alright maybe some part of me just wants to ask this so i'd have an excuse to waffle about dying light and its story a bit but still i think it's an interesting topic nonetheless
EDIT: formatting

NOTE: This does have slight self-promotion which I'm aware is against what Tildes is. While it is to drive attention to my band and although originally so, music promotion is NOT the sole reason for this post. It is here for context. It does benefit me, but I make music for this type of discussion. Grief and mourning are important things to me, and art helps me open up and process those feelings. Music is art.

Want to do more of these posts, as I have found my niche in ~music to be this. Nevertheless, I want to balance these to be fair and to make these special. Please leave feedback about what you think, and whether or not I should continue these posts. DO NOT VOTE if you think it does not fairly contribute to ~music or Tildes as a whole. All I ask is you read this entire post before reacting or commenting.

I've been going back and forth on this but I decided to do so. I want to keep things as anonymous as possible, so please respect my wishes.

I am part of a band called LUCY. Over this fortnight, I've been grinding hard trying to promote the discography in order to get as many eyes as possible. I wanted to make this post to highlight "Film" — which I strongly believe is the best released song thus far. But I didn't want to use my account just for promotion. I love Tildes, even with its quirks, and I wanna do quality, meaningful posts. Then I heard from a friend or an acquaintance that a good friend of theirs died.

Suicide, no less. I was......

There's no word or phrase or idiom. There's nothing that can describe the feeling and realisation when someone is gone. It reminded me of why I wrote "Film" in the first place — to grieve and remember a friend who killed herself. I don't think a number of grief songs or popular anti-suicide songs really talk about grief. That one Logic song was bleh but cool, but that remix that goes "WHO CAN RELATE" was insulting.

You may not even have a loved one who killed themselves. You may have one who just died, or disappeared. Or the worst:

The relationship you once had with a person you loved lots. One of your most prized people in the world. That one day, breaks and bo matter what. It will never happen. They're gone from your life

Forever.

And they're not coming back. You have to move on. Even tho you don't want to and sometimes, you yearn for the connection. To be near. Bittersweet nostalgia, to fall back into place. Y
In the end, it is what it is. Yeah..

Grief is hard. Mourning is hard. Moving on is hard. It's messy and there's no right way to do it. Life is unfair and one day, it will end. Songs and albums help. Music is that language and that lexicon that knows just how you feel. "Film" was what I wanted to do, to bring attention to that process. Nowadays, it's an occasional comfort song that's best played when it's overcast and blue. And you'll know when if you know.

So my question for y'all is... what songs or albums have you listened to that reminds you of someone you've lost? What are some lyrics that don't stick out like a sore thumb, they hit you like anaesthesia? What are your stories? What are your regrets? What are you afraid of? Hell, if youre a musician, what songs have you done that address this? And no matter what, please don't feel like it's too much. To the extent of the code of conduct and what is appropriate, there is nothing pathetic about grief. Esp if you're hanging on and can unravel at any moment.

Ask me anything about my list of songs for grief too (won't include my band's songs heh). I have another song in the works that I'd love to just talk about. I'm an open book as far as grief, fear and such. I write songs for catharsis anyway.

Hope you are all having a wonderful day or night. Forgive me if I can't reply or listen to all the songs, I really do wish I could. I will vote tho.

I've heard much about the great Digg migration but I found Reddit through different means.

Any of you hear of mfisn? It was my Reddit before Reddit. A bare bones link sharing community where a number of registered users could share links. Unregistered users could suggest links that I guess a registered user could approve? I remember sharing links to movie trailers there. I found Reddit years later after googling it and finding a Reddit post asking about it. And that's how I fell into Reddit.

I discovered mfisn through cookiethievery, a yourethemannowdog-esque page that had a rotation of repeating animations set to a short music loop. And I vaguely recall finding that through an AIM buddy's profile...? Either that or albinoblacksheep.

Any of you have a traceable lineage of Internet communities you've passed through? What were your pre-Reddit internet go-to sites? Are they still around?

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

Tell us what it is, and why.

Previous posts in series

Additional Details

Recently NordVPN rolled out an update which forced users to use an encrypted username and password combination when connecting through OpenVPN. I haven't seen any posts on this here, and it took me way longer than I want to admit troubleshooting this issue because I knew my original credentials were correct.

If you use a gluetun container for routing any of other containers traffic, you might have recently noticed a 500 Internal Service Error in your Health Status and when you check your logs you will find a AUTH_FAILED message.

Solution below:

1. Go to NordVPN website and log in (using your normal credentials)
2. Under accounts, services, click NordVPN
3. Click "Set up NordVPN Manually" at the bottom of the page
4. You will receive an email verification code, using whatever email you have set up for your NordVPN services. Type this code into the popup window.
5. Copy your new encrypted credentials for your Open VPN client settings.

This is my first post, please add tags as required.

Hey,

I use Windows 10 and Arch in a dual boot configuration.

I use both of them for software development and want a shared partition to store all the projects.
Unfortunately, it's not as easy as I had thought.

Initially, I tried NTFS as the Linux support seemed fine. I tried both, ntfs-3g and the kernel implementation.
Besides the issue that hibernate could lock the drive - which you can disable - it periodically caused problems during compilation and other stages.

Especially Rust based projects have thrown weird errors during builds, but I also had this on certain Go projects as well.
It sometimes felt like, that the NTFS driver returned the wrong files when the compiler asked for them. Unmet dependencies, missing files, etc. Usually, when the project is huge.

In certain scenarios symbolic links didn't work and permissions were not set correctly - which you can fix by adding some args to the fstab mount - never got it really stable though.

I then tried to format to Ext4, and all issues were instantly gone on the Linux side.

Fortunately, there are tools such as Linux FileSystem from Paragon which promise to make it work (I even bought a proper license) - and it did for a while, until it didn't.

I once copied a bigger folder that included a bigger node_modules folder and during copy, files were missing, corrupted, the copy process hung - then crashed.

I was so desperate that I even tried out FAT32, but I quickly found out that it doesn't support symbolic links at all, and therefore breaks Git and other tools depending on it.

Is it still so hard in 2023 to have a shared partition between two OS? Has anyone made better experiences?
I really don't want to split the partitions as I sometimes work on the same project on different OSes.

Thanks in advance!

(I'm not looking for simple lists of YouTube channels that you like.) _{even though I'm about to dump a list of channels that I like}

There's a lot of YouTube cooking content. I was wondering what you look for in that content, and what you want to avoid?

I don't have a particularly coherent answer - I like a mix of content.

I do like plain and simple information, or informative content that gives details about technique or science or why a thing is done the way it is. Examples of this would be America's Test Kitchen, or J. Kenji López-Alt or Helen Rennie, or French Cooking Academy.

I also like recipes that I can actually make. I prefer recipes that don't have a massive array of ingredients that I don't have. Examples are Brian Lagerstrom (I like the way he tends to use a limited amount of equipment and he gives alternatives for ingredients if he thinks some thing is going to be hard to get) Not another cooking show has some nice recipes (his grilled cheese and tomato soup is fantastic).

Some channels I watch have Michelin Starred chefs discussing a recipe. I like watching this because I can't replicate most of it, but I can get ideas for improving taste or texture. Italia Squisita has a lot of content, and some of their videos are comparing a traditional Italian recipe (and these are excellent) with an elevated restaurant version. The staff canteen is a bit frustrating - it's almost exactly what I want, but it ends up missing the mark a bit. But they talk to chefs, mostly in the UK, about being a chef or about a dish. La pâte de Dom is self-taught, but they have a high level of skill in pastry.

And here's a list of videos that I can't categorise, and why I like them.

The Biryani Expert (sadly, channel appears not to be making content any more) taught me that biryani covers a quite wide range of different dishes.

Sheldo's Kitchen He seems like a nice bloke, and his food looks really nice and achievable to make. Again, sadly, he doesn't seem to have made any videos for a while, and he was saying that he has a lot on. But he has a calm style and I liked his content.

Cool Daddy, YummyBoy and Street Foods TV expose me to a lot of food that I'm not used to. I can't recreate a lot of it (I don't have a camel I can cut up and cook but it gives me ideas for new ways to combine ingredients or new flavour profiles to try.

So, what do you look for in content?

(In this thread I avoided dunking on creators, because there's a few that I really don't enjoy but I don't think me yelling about them is good discussion. _{But I'd totally join in if someone created another thread}.

This is an article I wrote on boardgames subreddit seven years ago, about a tournament game of Diplomacy which had lasted more than 3 years and was still ongoing at the time. It eventually ended in a draw with Italy leading, in Feb 2016, after 3 years and 7 months of play. I'm reposting it here because I'm quite proud of the article (and I want to move it away from Reddit) and because imo it still holds up as one of the greatest events in the history of Diplomacy and a very interesting event in niche internet history.

tl;dr - Seven players (less now that some have been eliminated) have been playing a game that simulates the First World War in a Tournament. They've been playing it so long that the First World War is now continuing on into the 21st Century. The game has been out for 57 years and this has never happened in a recorded game before.

If you are not familiar with Diplomacy, it's a war game based around negotiation where 7 players each play one Great Power in the First World War, attempting to gain control of Europe by taking key provinces known as Supply Centers. It's very similar to A Game of Thrones - The Board Game except that you can (usually) talk in private with other players and all players must submit orders for a phase before any are revealed, meaning that you don't know if your 'ally' will backstab you that phase or not until you've already set your orders. Other players can support your units into provinces, so negotiation is key to victory.

Everyone who knows about Diplomacy knows that it takes a ridiculously long time to play. In a face-to-face (FTF) tournament strict deadlines of 15 minutes per phase are set, and games are played from 1901 to 1908, meaning 4 hours for a game. In casual settings, where the timers aren't observed so harshly, a game of the same number of phases can take 8 hours.

Because of how difficult Diplomacy can be to start in real life, there are a lot of active communities for playing it online. In online play, phases are usually set to process every 2 days, and you only need to dedicate an hour or so a day to it. Because of this, the set end date (1908) used in most FTF games isn't needed, and the game can be played to the win condition stated in the rulebook - one great power controlling 18 Supply Centers - which isn't used much in FTF because it takes far too long to achieve. This in turn means that games can last months.

There's also the possibility of an 'eternal game' since there is no set end date. Usually, this is due to stalemates - there can be positions where no player can push any further forward, and no player can back off because another player can win as a result. These games are declared drawn, since no victory is possible.

However, there's a small possibility of a game that would go on forever while going back and forth, back and forth - one power gaining centers then being pushed back by the others, and then another, and so on, without the game being stalemated. In practice, this sort of thing rarely happens - going by statistics from webDiplomacy last year, out of ~43000 games completed, only 17 had legitimately passed 1930, and none of those had reached the year 1940.

The longest recorded completed game comes from another site and reached 1964 -note, I originally had a link to this game but it appears to now be dead. However, one non-completed game on webDiplomacy completely blows it out of the water.

The 2012 webDiplomacy World Cup Final has one game still ongoing, long after all the others have been completed. This game has just reached the year 2000! That is absolutely insane - if this had been a FTF game at a tournament, the participants would have been playing for just over two days straight. Since it's online, they have been playing for three and a half years.

I have checked with several important members of the Diplomacy community and it is indeed the first game ever to have legitimately done so (not just because some players decided to mess around until it reached that date).

Link to the game

What was/is the 2012 webDiplomacy World Cup?

The World Cup was an event held on webDiplomacy which mimicked the FTF Diplomacy Tournament that goes by the same name. Different countries (or regions, if there were not enough players in a country) would gather a group of players and play in a group of games with teams from 6 other regions, each having one player in each game, and gaining points based on how well they did in each game. The best countries/regions advanced from groups in a knockout style until the Final, which has not yet finished.

Why has it gone on so long?

That's a difficult question to give a straight answer to. It's a combination of several factors:

• These players are insanely good. The teams in question reached the final, and they picked their best participants at the Public Press Variant (which I'll come to next) for this game.

• This game is Public Press Only. That means that any messages anyone sends are received by everyone, which slows the game down a fair amount because players have to position themselves to make completely uncounterable moves if they want to coordinate them with allies, or they have to risk their allies misunderstanding what they are doing and not supporting them correctly.

• Nobody wants to lose or draw. Sounds trivial, right? Everyone wants to win any game they're playing. This one is different, though - every other game in the world cup has finished, so everyone in the game knows how many points all teams have. Every team in this game can still win the overall tournament, but for most of them it is only if they achieve a solo victory. One specific team will win if all players draw, so nobody except that team want this game to end in a draw, and certainly nobody wants anyone else to get a solo.

That said, fatigue is starting to set in and they may draw the game soon just to be done of it. That's only after over 3 years of trying to achieve a solo though.

Do you have a handy graph of how the SC counts of each player have changed throughout the game?

What a coincidence! I just happen to have one right here!

That game is really long. I want to just see the interesting bits.

Again, you're in luck! I happen to have an imgur album here which shows the high points and low points of each great power and explains a little what happened to them. The important provinces (Supply Centers) are marked by white circles with a black dot in them. The provinces and units belonging to each country have an assigned colour as follows:

• Pink, England
• Blue, France
• Brown, Germany
• Green, Italy
• Red, Austria
• Purple, Russia
• Yellow, Turkey

If you do want to look through the game for yourself, you can find the full record here. On webDiplomacy, red arrows represent move orders, yellow arrows represent support move orders, green lines represent support hold orders, and blue lines represent convoys.

Has any Supply Center never changed hands?

No. Every Supply Center on the board has changed hands at least once. Ankara has been taken the least, it's been held by Russia for the 76 years since he took it from its original owner, Turkey, in 1925. Rumania has been taken the most, it's been conquered an astonishing 26 times. Most SCs have been taken around 11 times, but in particularly contested places (like the Balkans and Scandinavia) the average is much higher.

If it's Public Press Only, can I read the messages the players have sent?

Yes! You can find all messages sent in the game here. Use the blue arrows above the messagebox to navigate pages. The chat from each country follows the same colour coding as their provinces and units.

Bear in mind, though, that there are so many messages to look through that they actually crashed the game at one point. The site administrators had to assign more memory to the chat of this particular game to fix it. There's also some profanity in some of the messages, although not many.

Diplomacy sounds interesting. Can I try it?

First off, playing the game in person is a very different experience to playing it online, and one that I find to be much more tense and exciting (although online is good too!). I'd very much recommend you play it in person first. You'll need a copy of the board game (it's available on Amazon) and 6 friends with 4 hours spare.

Obviously that can be a bit difficult to arrange, so you could also look for Diplomacy Face to Face groups in your area - there are quite a few of them around the world. If you want information about them feel free to PM me and I'll try to find out if there are any in your area and get back to you. Also, if you're part of a board gaming group, it's possible that someone there will have a copy so you might be able to play it with them.

If you are interested in the online version, there are many online sites that offer it. I'd recommend webDiplomacy but there are plenty of others if you don't like the interface there.

Is there anything I should know before I play?

Yes, specifically if you're playing in person. I'll let some board game celebrities say it for me:

"This game makes people mad, and I mean really mad." ... "The tagline is 'Diplomacy - Destroying friendships since 1965'." - Tom Vasel

"Diplomacy wounds run deep, and take forever to heal." - Wil Wheaton

It's not quite as bad as they make out, but it's worth making sure that you don't play it with someone you know will take lies and backstabbing badly. Also - don't play it over several sessions, the paranoia you get when you see other players talking to one another in the breaks can be unbearable.

Congratulations if you've read this far, and I hope others found this Diplomacy game to be as incredible as I did!

Hey Reddit enthusiasts! Revanced has recently extended its support to some of the most popular Reddit apps out there. The list of supported apps now includes Boost, Infinity, rif is fun, Relay, and Sync.

For those who are new to Revanced, this means you can patch these existing apps with your own oauth-client-id, allowing you to continue enjoying them seamlessly.

Quick tutorial:

1. Go to https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps in your web browser.
2. Create a new app by giving it a name of your choice.
3. Tick the "Installed App" option and fill in the redirect URI field. The specific URI depends on the app you're using. For example, for rif, the URI would be redditisfun://auth. You can find the required redirect URI in the app's corresponding section on GitHub.
4. Copy the client ID string that appears for the app you just created.
5. Create a text document named "reddit_client_id_revanced.txt" and place it in the root directory of your phone's storage (e.g., /storage/emulated/0/<file here>). Paste the client ID into this document.
6. Install the latest version of ReVanced Manager on your device.
7. Open the Patcher tab in ReVanced Manager and select your app.
8. In the Patches section, enable the "Change OAuth Client ID" patch.
9. Apply the patch and install the modified app (Note: If you already have the app installed, you may need to delete it first and then click Install once ReVanced finishes creating the new APK.)

Following these steps will help you navigate through the process of obtaining a private client ID and applying the necessary patches to enjoy Reddit using ReVanced.

Guides with screenshots:

1. https://gist.github.com/decipher3114/4423a2671dc3ce4401025b737d5c89f4

2. https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1wHvqQwCYdJrQg4BKlGIVDLksPN0KpOnJWniT6PbZSrI (Thanks to @kobew50 on Discord)

If you encounter any difficulties during the process,head over to ReVanced Discord server to seek assistance.

Reddit applications that have available patches or modified versions.

➡️ Platform: Android 🤖

➡️ Platform: iOS 🍎

*Shout-out to WefWef - a Lemmy client not only inspired by Apollo, but which is aiming for feature parity. (GitHub)

For anyone that grows their own veg it's coming up to the zucchini/courgette glut season. To prepare can you give your best recipes? Anything will do salads, baking, frying, pickling... I'm willing to give anything a try so they don't go to waste.

YouTube limits ad blocker usage in new test
YouTube could be testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking (Update)
So its clear now that YouTube is going to limit the usage of Ad blockers in the coming future
I use Ublock Orgin with Firefox which basically used to block all ads and on mobile device I use NewPipe

I’m embarrassed to admit that after the whole Reddit shutdown, I’m at a loss on how to get news. The past 10+ years my internet routine has been browse Something Awful for discussions, and use Reddit as a glorified RSS. I would open up Reddit, browse World News, Politics, Technology, Games, Apple, and Electric Vehicles for any interesting articles for the day. Then go to SA for more granular discussions, which I’m now using Tildes to supplement since I love the community here.

I have tried downloading Inoreader and adding some of their default feeds but it feels super cluttered, not like the quick concise headlines I’m used to casually browsing. I’ll admit I’m guilty of just glancing at headlines and not actually reading news, but it was nice to just have an inkling of what’s going on in the world

So the question I ask is how (mostly on the internet) do you get your news? RSS? Dedicated news app? Read a site?

I have someone visiting the US from out of the country. They have a Google Pixel 6a, just need a temporary plan for a month or two. Mostly they're going to be home within wireless range, we're just looking for a little bit of data while going out. I imagine a few tens of MB/mo will suffice. Has anybody tried to do this recently? What should I expect to pay? I'm looking on Amazon, and the reviews seem filled with stories of being sold pre-expired SIMs.

I am planning on going into the peace corps after I finish up my degree. My first priority is an education position, but if I can't get that, I'm open to other options. I would love to hear about the experiences anyone had while in the program.

Some years ago, I bought the Philips OneBlade around the time it was announced. My beard grows very fast and covers a large portion of my face, so daily shaving with a razor blade is often a chore and can leave some pretty nasty rashes on my face sometimes.

The Philips OneBlade was perfect for my situation as it was a quick and painless solution to shaving. I even changed my style to something like a permanent stubble using the guards included in the package. However, after some time, I decided that I preferred my beard longer and ended up abandoning my electric razor.

Recently, though, I've decided to go back to the old stubble look and have been searching for a decent electric razor. I was pretty disappointed to see that the best product for me would still be the Philips OneBlade. It just seems that there is no other competitor in this type of electric razor (or maybe I just haven't looked enough), which I think is a bit strange considering it has been more than 5 years since the OneBlade was released. Even the OneBlade models from Philips still seem to be the same ones made back in 2016. Is the market for electric razors really so stagnant? Or is that Philips hold such a heavy monopoly on this kind of razor? I'm thinking of maybe buying the pro version this time, but even that seems to be only a fancy clipper attached to the same old product that I had.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this and know if you have any recommendations for electric razors that would be just as small and practical.

I'm going camping for the first time with just my partner (as opposed to a bigger group) and it's been a while since I've camped in general so I'm looking for some food ideas! Do you have any go to things you always make? Any special meals that are best enjoyed outdoors? Or simply dishes that are convenient and tasty for camping? I'll be car camping with a stove and cooler, but all suggestions are welcome!

I just wanted to share a handy feature in Firefox that can be used to create shorthanded keywords. For instance, you could make it so that typing "t ~books" brings you to "https://tildes.net/~books". Or "ts banana" that brings you to Tildes search engine, searching for "banana".
I've been using a similar trick on another browser I use for years (Qutebrowser), but lately I've been using Firefox more and a post on the Ferdiverse reminded me that I could do this in Firefox as well.

Instructions

• In FIrefox, open the Bookmark Manager. (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+O , alt: Burger-menu in the upper right > Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks)
• Select a folder where you want to save your bookmark
• Go to "Organise > Add Bookmark"
• Enter whatever name you like.
• In the URL textbox, enter the static part of the url you want to use. Replace the part that can change (like the page name or the search term with this: "%s"
  • Example for switching communities or go to the frontpage: "https://tildes.net/%s"
  • Example for searching: "https://tildes.net/search?q=%s"
• Optionally, add tags seperated by a comma in the tags textbox.
• At last, choose a keyword. This is the word that replaces the static part of the URL when you use the bookmark. For example, I use "t" for the community-switching and "ts" for searching.
• Save you bookmark and try it out. When you now type just the letter "t" in your URL-bar and press enter, it should bring you to the home page. When you type "t ~books" , it should bring you to the books community page.

You can use this feature with any website, so I encourage you to play around with it :)

I have been thinking about buying a fretless bass for a while now to go along with my regular one, and I've just found a pretty nice one that's in my budget. Do you think I should go for it? Sharing your experiences and any tips/advice would be very helpful!

Hey all, my partner is newly paraplegic post spine surgery and while he's been disabled through our ten years together this is new. He's using a power wheelchair and has to transfer by Hoyer lift. And in the six days since he was discharged from the rehab (PT and OT) hospital he's been to the ER twice. We have home health set up. But all of a sudden my life is a lot more... Stressful is understating it. He's going through his own emotional journey and getting support so I was hoping to find some connections, suggestions and the like here.

Right now I'm feeling a ton of pressure not to let any of the various balls I'm juggling drop. Something that feels unsustainable, particularly with my ADHD. I feel like I'm only getting this far due to stress compensating for my lack of medication (it's packed from our recent move, I'll find it or get a new script I just haven't yet). My partner's in a rush to get a wheelchair van and I don't know if we're making a good purchase and it feels like everything has to be handled right now but also for the rest of our lives.

Are there devices that are must haves? Things I need to know about wheelchair vans? Empathy from fellow caretakers?

Mixed feelings about it all.

I think Reddit suffers from the same ‘1 discussion keeps you coming back for ten years in hope of a repeat’ that most if not all social media struggles with. It also has excellent dogs in hilarious situations and because of the amount of users, a constant refresh of what should be a tired genre but which just dosnt seem to die.

I have enough respect for r/pics for the John Oliver death march, that I cant go back.

As the games industry continues to grow there are many new things introduced which sometimes players don't like, but then overtime we either get used to them, while still disliking them (only a bit less maybe) or we realize "hmm, yes it's good to have this actually". Of course any such mechanic can be implemented very well or quite poorly. I'm not asking about specific implementations, but the mechanic itself as a whole.

Personally I can think of some quality of life changes that at first I thought are not needed or would make a game needlessly easier. When playing I would always try to go for full immersion, but overtime as I've had less and less time to be able to play in long uninterrupted stretches I've come to appreciate things like fast travel and quest markers and other features which would help resuce "wasted" time when playing.

I would like to have a discussion of the season finale and season as a whole of Silo with other book readers who know the overarching plot. Non book readers are welcome obviously, but spoilers will be here.

Overall, would watch season 2. I wanna know what ends up happening.

In a few weeks I'm participating in a three(ish) day nonstop sailing regatta. My friend and I have been put in charge of making and bringing food and drinks for the entire crew. We also have no idea what we are doing, so any advice would be appreciated!

My first thought is sandwiches/wraps but for morale I think it would be nice to have a variety of things.

We won't have a kitchen/stove/way to heat the food. No fridge, but a cooler full of ice. (It will probably not remain very cold the entire time.)

The primary goal is to sail fast so no stopping to assemble anything complicated- someone might even be on shift sailing and eating at the same time. Probably nothing involving sharp knives as the boat will likely be heeled over and that seems needlessly risky.

What kind of sammies? Brownies or cookies? What are we going to do about caffeine? Are two day old room temp breakfast tacos gross or okay?

I recently digitized some old home movies from my grandparents and looking through the film I realize I recognize almost no one. This got me thinking, I should go through this with my mother to help me identify family members as she's probably the last person who knows who anyone is.

Obviously I can just make a document with notes ex: 2:53 screen right, great uncle john"
But I'm hoping there's a more elegant solution in which I can keep info with the file and not some auxiliary document that dosent live in the same place.

I could just dump all that info into Metadata but that's maybe the lowest quality solution.
The xray function of Amazon prime video is the example of the best solution in a perfect world. (if you don't know, when you pause or bring up the context menu on prime video, there's a bar that identifies everyone one scene with a matching headshot)

I actually looked into it and there's an API that amazon uses for this called "RecognizeCelebrities" and uses images to train the program to recognize faces and populate it's menu. I'm not sure if it's open source but even if it was, it's over my level to use it practically I think.

The last option I can think of is using a video markup platform like frame.io but that's not really a long term solution.

Any ideas?

I am currently going through the official Rust book and have gone through some of the Rustlings exercises. Both resources have been excellent so far.

What resources have you enjoyed?

Additionally, is there anything about Rust that particularly caught you out when transitioning from other languages?

Hey everyone. The Steam summer sale should go live in a few hours, I thought it would be fun for us to have a topic dedicated to game recommendations. Rather than having an typical review post, I think we can do something different. Think about the games you've played in the last year and pick one that is meaningful to you, then post a comment with it and why you think others should try it.

In the next few months, I'm going to be on the rental market again for the first time in a couple of years. The last time I rented, I lucked into a very nice condo that was being rented out by the owner, and it was fantastic. We developed a great rapport. I looked after the place and paid the rent on time. She was kind and responsive whenever I had a problem. It felt like we were both getting exactly what we needed out of the arrangement.

She wanted to raise the rent when my lease renewed, but it was a very reasonable ask to cover an increase in her HOA fees. It was significantly less any increase than I had been subjected to on any prior lease renewal, which I appreciated.

After experiencing this, I decided I was done with corporate landlords who use algorithms (i.e., price fixing) to make sure they're extracting as much cash as possible and churning through tenants as they progressively price out more and more people without any regard for them and with no connection to the communities they're hollowing out on the way to more profit.

I ended up leaving that condo for a reason unrelated to the rent increase, and I'm trying to find a similar setup again… but I'm not sure where to look honestly. Pretty sure I found that place on Craigslist which seems to have since devolved into a playground for scammy "landlords" whose dear old mothers have all come up sick in some far away corner of the country so they can't show me the furnished apartment they're renting for 20% below market rate, but if I'll kindly send the deposit, they'll gladly mail me the keys.

Does anyone have any hot tips for how to find rentals like this in major metropolitan areas in the US?