Hey! I’ve been trying lately to get rid of big platforms from my life. One part of it is that I usually buy ebooks/audiobooks from apple, Amazon or google, however I’m then also forced to use their reading app, which is a vendor lock-in I’m not comfortable with.

I know there are plenty of ebook readers out there, but I’m trying to find

1. A store where I can buy ebooks that can be opened in a ebook reader of my choice.
2. A way to then sync my progress between phone and laptop. I have nextcloud setup, so if I can make use of that then it’s perfect.

Anyone here got any tips?

I just received an Unknown Tracker alert on my Pixel 7 running Android 14 beta 5 for an Apple air tag that was on my son in laws key chain as I had borrowed his car.

I heard this was coming but didn't expect it so soon!

Quite impressed with both the information given and the general advice and steps to take offered.

The first notification was "Tracker Travelling With You: Unknown Apple air tag detected. The owner can see your location."

Touching "more info" then shows a map of where the tracker has been with me and the option to make the tracker play a sound to help locate it, with a note that the owner won't know you've done that.

Then more advice and options:

• If you feel unsafe, get help.
• Get and save tracker info
• Disable the tracker (with a how-to guide on battery removal)

And a ”need more help" link.

As I said, I had heard about this coming but was pleasantly surprised at how good it was and the general advice and help offered up.

Nice seeing things like this done right.

Ok bear with me. I like to joke that a significant portion of my music library is white women with guitars. I listen to a lot of art pop/indie, basically. Phoebe Bridgers, Boygenius, Fiona Apple, Weyes Blood, Angel Olsen, Aldous Harding, etc.

So where are the black women with guitars? I think that singer/songwriter trope of a woman with a guitar (or sometimes a piano) is traditionally pretty white, so what artists are you aware of that break this trend? Closest I've found so far is Kara Jackson, who I would highly recommend, by the way. Not too strict about genre here, so whatever you got is welcome.

This thread can be used for general recommendations for anyone, but I'm specifically looking for a daily sunscreen I can wear on my face and neck.

I'm looking for a holy grail sunscreen that might not even exist (in the US, but I'm willing to import if needed). Here are my preferences:

• Not greasy
• No whitecast
• I'm not allergic to it (this I won't know until I try it -- I'm allergic to "fragrance" which is a relatively useless thing to know -- it just means that any scented product is a roll of the die as to whether or not I react with it because there are thousands of different things that can constitute "fragrance" in a product)

I found what I thought was it: this imported sunscreen. Went on easy, smelled great (green apple!), and legitimately worked.

Unfortunately, I'm allergic to it.

I've since replaced it with this Sun Bum face stick which is similar, but it doesn't go on nearly as easily and the synthetic banana smell is offputting. Nevertheless, I put up with it because 1) it doesn't activate my allergies (yay!) and 2) the banana smell is actually better to me than "regular" sunscreen smell.

Sun Bum actually has a fragrance free mineral sunscreen, but it still smells like sunscreen (which I hate) and it has a really strong whitecast, so it's out.

The Sun Bum I'm using now technically "works" for what I want, but I don't love it. I'm looking to see if there's something out there that I can actually love wearing, especially because I'm going to be doing it daily.

If anyone has any recommendations, please let me know!

I'm normally the tech guy in my social circles and can make good recommendations but its been a few years since I was a collage student so when one of my associates who is about to start her college journey as a dental student asked me for my recommendation, I wasn't sure exactly what to recommend.

My first thought was an iPad paired with an Apple Pencil and a Logitech portfolio case. This was because she mentioned lots of note taking and drawing. I figured that option gave her the most bang for the buck and versatility to accomplish any tasks necessary while also having longevity to get her threw the next few years. As for what model, I haven't really figured out just yet.

My main drawbacks here are that iPads still don't fully replace a Mac or PC. I don't know what software her college will require and while many schools are modernizing some are still not quite there yet and may require specific software that can't be run on iPads.

Of course the solution to that problem is to purchase a MacBook as well. That should handle most any applications and maybe make longer essays and research papers easier to get through. Ideally that would be option number one, but obviously that's very expensive, and while I do not know what her and her families fiscal background is like, I think its safe to assume that in this economy, even with educational discounts, that's not the most feasible option for most students.

On the other hand just purchasing a MacBook instead of an iPad would work but not be as versatile since apple has yet to produce a 2in1 like the Microsoft Surface. Speaking of 2in1's I thought about the Microsoft Surface and even some Samsung 2in1's with their s-pen equivalent, but longevity has never really been Windows or Chromes OS's strongpoint. Not to mention I really am not a fan of Chrome OS and its many limitations. I know there is a lot of schools that use them, but they also tend to end up unfixable and unsupported.

Again... its been a minute since I was a student, so maybe there are things that I am not thinking about or realizing. I told her I would think about it and come back with some recommendations so I figured I'd ask here for some real life experience while I do some research on the subject.

EDIT

• Her major is dentistry
• She curranty has an iPhone
• I'll ask her to check her schools requirements
• I'll reply to everyone soon, I just wanted to make those things known for everyone.
• Thanks for all the input so far!

Yesterday I recorded myself setting up PhotoPrism on an old laptop to document the journey. Everything went pretty smoothly which was great. In the past, I've used several different mainstream providers which ended up not working for me:

• Google Photos (been trying to move away from Google products for a while)
• One Drive (I'm not sure if this is widespread but my connection to One Drive servers are so slow. This is super evident right now as I'm trying to pull all my photos from it and it's taking forever)
• iCloud (This works pretty well but it doesn't feel great when I'm on my non-Apple devices)

I'm pretty excited to have local hardware running flexible software to host my things. I still need to figure out how I want to expose the computer so I have access to it away from home (I'm thinking of using Cloudflare Tunnel?).

Next up is finding software to stream videos to my TV so I can start getting rid of some streaming services.

I recently finished watching Silo (2023 - ) on Apple TV and at the end I didn't care much for many of the characters, I just wanted to find out more about the silo itself.

I like those types of sci-fi thrillers, but I cannot remember any of them that made me care much about the characters.

(US) My Fitbit Charge 2 is on her last legs. I'm torn between looking at a smart watch, a smarter fitness tracker, or something at relatively the same level. I have a Pixel and don't use the Apple ecosystem but really don't know what route to go.

Mostly I like the reminder to move, step tracking, and the simple notifications on the Charge 2. I don't need to answer my phone on my watch, I think, but seeing that it's my partner calling is a big deal. But I also could be that person desperately waiting to discover smart watches and fall in love with them, I suppose.

Longer battery life would be preferable as remembering to charge things is a less than fun side-quest. And I doubt I'd be using GPS on it. But again, maybe I would? Open to all suggestions.

Ever since I learned how easy homemade hot sauce is, I try to experiment with a new batch or recipe from time to time. My most recent batch highlights carrot and Ginger, with mild jalapeno heat.

It tastes good, and the ginger is very apparent, but my SO and I feel it's missing something. Of course you can't taste it through the internet, but based on the recipe, can you provide any suggestions for what can help round it out or take it from good to great?

Ingredients:

• 3 carrots, 4 oz
• 1 knob of ginger, peeled, 2.5 oz
• 4 jalapeños, 8 oz
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/4 of a red onion, didn't weigh
• 1/2c apple cider vinegar
• 1/2c water
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 bunch of cilantro, maybe a couple of tsp after chopping

Method:

1. Thinly sliced carrots, ginger, peppers, onion, and garlic
2. Sautee until brown around the edges (carrots and ginger took longer, garlic was just for a minute to avoid burning)
3. Blend with salt, water, vinegar, and cilantro.
4. Strain solids

Any ideas on what it's missing? Some kind of tomato product? Something earthy like cumin? More garlic or onion? Something else entirely?

EDIT: Thanks for all the great feedback! I poured a few small samples to test various additions based on your suggestions, and I ended up adding another 1/2 tsp of salt (for a total of 1 tsp), 1/2 tsp MSG, the juice of half a small lime, 1 squeeze of honey (estimated just shy of 1 tsp) and then thickened with 1/8 tsp of xanthan gum since it was really thin.

Next time, I definitely want to try roasting the peppers and veggies, and I'll try a blend of peppers. I'm curious about other ginger preparation methods, too, such as raw, roasted, or powder. But for a mildly hot ginger sauce, I'm calling this experiment a success!

I read an article today that referred to Foundation as "prestige television," and my first reaction was, "idk man, I didn't think it was all that great." This got me thinking, though, and I'm going down two separate paths here.

First, prestige television is a category that gets thrown about more as a marker of social context than of the quality of the show. Today, at least, these shows are typically big budget, highly marketed (specifically marketed as high quality), and likened to each other. Foundation was really hyped up in the runup to its release. There was a whole slew of articles calling it Apple TV's sci-fi Game of Thrones. More or less the same thing happened with The Rings of Power. Basically, "prestige television" feels like a term that was coopted by television studios in a landscape that has trended towards putting all their eggs into one basket. This only covers the studios' use of the term, though.

Second is the audience's use of the term. There remains the obvious question of if we're going to ward off the tv studios' coopting of the term, how are we going to use it? It really came out of a specific era of television, and regardless of anyone's assessment of relative quality, shows like that aren't really getting made anymore.

Personally, though? I wonder if we even need the term. My sort of emotional reaction to the conversation about prestige television is that it reminds me of the debate around "literature." It's not a debate I want to get into, but it's another label that has unclear boundaries and a tendency towards the old. In practice, it just gets used to snub certain books (e.g. "Dune is good, but it's not literature"). With television, I'm not saying we need to do away with the concept of prestige television, but if we do want to keep using it (and again, studios will even if we don't),
a) What should it mean?
b) How should we use it (i.e. for good, not for snobbery)?

I've never owned macs for desktop use because of the expense and my general preference for windows pcs.

I had a first or second gen iPhone and was incredibly frustrated by how limited it was - you couldn't set an alternate default browser, access your own file system, customize you home screen, etc, etc. So I've been an Android user since then.

I'm not really looking to make a switch for either phone or PC, but my brother bought an Apple watch which spurred a conversation that made me realize I don't really know if the issues that bugged me about Apple are still relevant in 2023.

Anyone want to weigh in?

I'm looking for suggestions. The Internet has become very small over the last 11 years. My go-to for the moments of downtime was RIF. I was able to consume all the little spaces with it since it was an infinite feed - that's a bit harder now. All sorts of apps are welcome, but I'm not looking for things that require high effort or attention span (unless they are worth it). Games are fine, but other apps that fill your time are very good - preferably SFW and audio-off! I use Android, so I prefer those, but our Apple brethren are also welcome to share.

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?

My phone used to autofill the 2-factor SMS verification codes used when logging into a site. I can't remember when or why, but suddenly it doesn't appear, and I have to... (gasp) type in the SMS code manually.

SOLVED:

Autofill SMS codes only work with Safari.

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.

I'm currently using Navidrome to self-host my music collection, while using DSub to listen on-the-go.

This works very well for most genres, except for the bulk of my music which is classical music. This presents its own host of problems pertaining to cataloguing and using metadata, since there are often multiple recordings of the same musical composition, recorded by multiple conductors with different orchestras and/or soloists. There may also be different instrumental arrangements of the same musical piece. Merely sorting by "Artist" is therefore quite unsatisfactory in this scenario.

Some streaming services have come up with quite satisfying solutions in my experience (notably Apple Music Classical and Idagio), but I am not sure how to go about listening to my own self-hosted classical music.

Is anybody here on Tildes familiar with this organizational problem? I would be very eager to hear how you have tackled this. Is there any self-hosted software more suitable to cataloguing musical collections with extensive metadata?

I recently upgraded my phone and to my dismay everyone followed apples moronic choice to remove aux ports.

I want to keep using my KZ in ears, and while they have bluetooth adapters I rarely like how bluetooth sounds and also don't want to worry about having to charge them either.

Both adapters I've bought either buzz like crazy or my phone is convinced is constantly disconnecting and pausing my music. Anyone know of anything in the budget range thats as good as KZ or good adapters?

I know the scene is in a rut right now with iOS 16 having pretty much no hope (and with iOS 17 right around the corner), but I wanted to see if anyone else is using a jailbroken iPhone (or any other device) on a day to day.
If you are, drop your device, version and tweak list, I wanna add some new tweaks to my collection! My favs at the moment are Jellyfish (LS clock replacer), Saw (removes space at the bottom of the screen) and Ampere (iOS 16 style battery)

The original IBM 360 had a 24-bit address space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360

Microprocessors of the golden age of home computing (Apple ][, TRS-80, Commodore 64, CP/M machines based on the 8080 and Z80) usually had a 16-bit address space, the 8086/8088 was a bit of an exception because it had a segmentation scheme to access 1 MB. (People thought it was awkward but I liked programming it in assembly language and Turbo Pascal) I remember the PDP-11 minicomputer having a 16-bit address space for user programs as well, the machine as a whole could be a lot bigger but an individual logged into it had access to a virtual "home computer" that ran BASIC and all.

24-bit was a natural evolution and by the late 1980s you started to see 24-bit chips like the 80286 (PC AT) the 65C816 (Apple IIgs, Ninteno SNES), the eZ80 and such. Even the bigger AVR8 processors (I love AVR8 assembly) can have more than 64kb of program memory (flash, read-only in operation) so they use 24-bit addresses for program memory.

In my mind we never saw a product of this generation that really took advantage of the address space, the 80286 in particular was called "brain damaged" by Bill Gates and operating systems struggled to exploit it. My take is that most of the chips of that generation were flawed in one way or another and were pretty quickly washed away by 32-bit machines when they became affordable in the early 1990s.

For an example of the difficulties, there is this project to make a retrocomputer that is a bit better than anything we had in the 1980s,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oYcu43N-lw

they are using the 65C816 but not taking advantage of the 24-bit nature. Instead there is a simple bank switching scheme which I think they thought would be easier to program and probably faster. The 65C816 just doesn't have enough registers and addressing modes for it to be really easy to work with far pointers.

So my question is, if I am a hobbyist who wants to revive the 24-bit generation and I want to have easy access to a 16MB address space, is there some CPU better that doesn't suck? I'd be happy with a CPU that doesn't have virtual memory or other facilities for an advanced operating system (write everything in "real mode") but something that supports an OS would be interesting too. Any ideas?

Hey everyone,
I’ve been messing with complex nested if/then statements in Excel for many, many years, and recently dabbled in VBA. I’ve decided it’s time to learn Swift for Apple. Mainly for kicks, but also the fun of creating an app if I find a need.

For those of you that know these things, what’s your biggest suggestion for learning? Most useful tips? Things to watch out for? Etc.

Thanks!

Keeping it rolling with our weekly post series bringing ~music ten of the best new Drum & Bass + Jungle tunes from across the globe.

You can find the songs shared on this Spotify playlist. Follow it for new stuff, now updated every Sunday. Have no clue what Drum & Bass is? Start here!

_ - BEGIN TRANSMISSION - _

NEW MUSIC

.:...:..:::..::::..

Bensley & Justin Hawkes - Don’t be Scared [UKF]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

High energy and melodic, this summer time scorcher from Bensley & Justin Hawkes has been burning up sets since the start of the season. Propellant and uplifting, the buzzy bassline and bouncing vocal play perfectly off each other for a feel good fusion of these two producer styles.

Tantrum Desire - Rhythm [Technique]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

The boss is back! Tantrum Desire’s well known for his jump-up anthems, but ‘Rhythm” sees this veteran producer step it up with an anthemic prime-time roller on Technique. Featuring a classic vocal slice of big room cheese taken from Corona’s eponymous “Rhythm of the Night” plus some pounding drum work and squelching synths, this one will drive a dance floor mad.

Rockwell - Comfy [Obsolete Medium]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Like bugs in the brain, this highly infectious cut from Rockwell will burrow into your playlists and never want to leave. The title track of his latest EP is a technical exercise in precise sonic engineering and percussion.

Giant22 - We Go [Obsolete Medium]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Bright, bouncy and ready to rock for any summer party, Giant22’s “We Go” plays tight drum work and a little ‘chopped and screwed’ flavour vocal against echoey, off-kilter synths that create a swinging, swaggering cut that’s good to go in any fan or DJ’s playlist.

Matec - Adrift [All172Things]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Hard. As. Hell. This cut from the mysterious Matec brings to mind Black Sun Empire and Prolix at their most pulse-pounding. Unrelenting synths and razor sharp drum programming drive this one through its 4 minute run time with unrelenting energy and a dystopian atmosphere throughout.

A.Way - Closer [Neksus]

[Spotify] | [More]

With a finger on the sound of ‘now’, A.Way’s “Closer” makes its mark in the same arena next-gen producers like Imanu, Caracal Project and [Borders] play. Epic vocals, soaring synths and stuttering, digitally frenetic vocals ride clattering, swaggering drums that bounce between full on roller and half time swing.

Disrupta ft. Eden - Do You Believe [DNB All Stars]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Like a beach front sunrise, Edens anthemic vocals soar over this certified summer anthem from the unstoppable DNB All Stars camp. With an unapologetic cheese factor you can’t deny, this one brings back memories of the best High Contrast and Hospital Records epics. After “Shine like the sun”, Disrupta has proven they’re on quite a roll in the past year. .

SUUNE ft. Young Gho$t - Signal VIP [In The Lab Recordings]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Down low, deep and dirty, the vocals of Young Ghost keep white-hot producer SUUNE’s latest firmly in the depths of the darkest warehouse raves. Bouncing with energy and confidence, be sure to keep this one ready for the right moment.

Hieroglyphics & Feux - Belief [Critical]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

From his newest full-length album on Critical “I’ll Wait, I guess”, Hieroglyphics brings the drama with a smooth, sombre cut that’s already wining over atmospheric and intelligent DNB fans far and wide. Pair those bubbling bass-lines with with a soulful vocal like this, and you’ve got a recipe for success.

KOAN Sound - Ascension [Shoshin]

[Spotify] | [Apple Music] | [More]

Something from far orbit, former Dubstep stalwarts KOAN Sound are back with a cinematic, soaring epic that’s forward thinking beyond any dancefloor. Fusing world music flavours, soundtrack style orchestration and touches of classic jungle breaks, this one’s bound to stay a favourite for years to come. Simply beautiful.

NEW MIXES TO CHECK OUT

.:...:..:::..::::..

Subtle Radio - 10/06/23 - Delta 9 Recordings w/ Flipz

[SoundCloud]

Italy’s Delta9 get things moving with a guest spot on Subtle Radio, and online community broadcaster. Deep cuts and some tougher stuff get rinsed out while host Flipz keeps things lively on the mic. A great intro to the labels sound and a fun listen for your weekend afternoons.

VISION RADIO - S03E24 - Hosted by Dave Columbo Jenkins & Martijn

[YouTube] | [SoundCloud]

Noisia, although “retired” from the DNB scene, continue the essential VISION radio series, which has always proven to be a great place to find the latest from their own label and other fresh new music from the scene’s best… this week they premiere ‘Hide Sun’ by Machinedrum & Holly plus new music by SMG, Censored The Audio, Klippee, Thys, Molokai and more.

HCKRS - Repack Radio June 2023

[YouTube] | [SoundCloud] | [MixCloud]

Warning: Shameless self promotion! Had to plug my own latest mix: a snapshot of some current, classic and unreleased stuff that embodies the “my sound” of DNB. An hour long blend of big room stuff like Dimension, ShockOne and The Prototypes with some deeper cuts from Amoss, Polyrom and other fresh tunes…and some new stuff from yours truly. I think it slaps pretty hard, so I’m adding it. Enjoy!

_ - END TRANSMISSION - _

♥ DNB? Join In! Heard something you like? Share it below? Been to show? Let us know! We want ~music.dnb to be a place for fans and newcomers to share our love of the scene in a positive space.

If you’ve read this far, thanks! Stay tuned, I’ll be back next week with another 10 #DNB / #Jungle tunes you can’t miss. Feel free to throw me a DM with love / hate / questions.

Now that the site has gotten a little busier, I’ve noticed a few shifts in how I've engaged with the site and jotted down notes on things that I've noticed might be nice to have. We already have a "what don't you like" thread I know, but this is more like "what didn't I notice when the place was a lot quieter" sort of thing.




Edit bumps for megathreads

I recently created a megathread for the Apple VisionPro reviews. But I realized that if I continuously edit in new reviews as they come in, the thread won’t bump. I’d need to actually post each time a new review comes in AND edit it into the self-post. It might be nice if I could choose to bump a self-post if I’m making a substantive edit to the content. Though I can see the opportunities for abuse here so I wonder if there’s a more elegant solution for it besides just occasionally posting when there are updates.

Following/Subscribing to Topics

Yes topics get bumped as conversation happens in them, but with the level of activity we have right now I’m having trouble keeping up with conversations I’m actually invested in following. Bookmarks are good, but there’s two issues. One is that they’re hidden in a folder off to the side. So it’s easy to forget to check them. Two is that they’re currently serving dual purposes, they can either be for saving specific topics because I think they’re good enough that I might want to reference them again or they can be because I want to keep up with the conversation in them.
I’d be interested in separating the functions a little bit. I’d like to be able to bookmark topics as a “save” function but also “subscribe” to topics to get alerted up top when there are new posts the same way I am alerted to stuff in my inbox. Alternatively, just having an “unread” count next to the bookmarked topics link and sorting the list of bookmarks by acitivity might do it.



A Drafts section

This post right now I mostly composed in a note-taking app because it’s a collection of random thoughts I had while using the site the past couple of weeks but didn’t want to post until I had time to marinate on them. Being able to save drafts directly in Tildes would have been a nice feature. It would also be good for replies since it gives you a chance to be like “Hmmm, do I really want to engage with this conversation right now?”



“Shortlisted” groups

The list of groups is a bit long, especially when you’re scrolling it on mobile. People might not (and probably don’t) actually care about all of them. It might be nice if we could “star” a group to have it show up higher on the list or have all non-starred groups in a collapsed list.

Choosing groups from the new post view instead of posting from the groups view

Since groups are currently being treated more like “super-tags” than separated communities, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to designate the group in a dropdown menu above the tag bar when we’re posting instead of needing to go into a group to create a new post. In some cases, I might think a self-post belongs in one group but by the time I’m done writing I realize this ~humanities post is really more of a ~life post. This will, of course, depend on the outcome of the “treating groups more as separate entities” discussion.



Subscribed topic tags

Filtered topic tags is a nice feature because it’s one interaction mode that serves dual uses. You can both remove a selected class of content from your main feed but then you can also navigate into it to see ONLY that content. This basically lets you use it alternatively as a “favorites” option instead of an anti-favorites option. (I guess this is less of a feature suggestion and more of an observation for a non-obvious use of the function.) We could, maybe, separate out the list of filtered topics by why you’re filtering. Either “I don’t want to see this stuff” or “I want to be able to specially focus on this stuff.”

Built-in invite request form

Currently to get an invite you have to ask on Reddit or something. Maybe we should have a page where people can request invites within Tildes so we aren’t reliant on having to pick-up flotsam from other social media platforms. The downside, of course, is that you can’t vet people. So this invite path would probably be the lowest priority and only handed out during quiet periods where noxious posters can be handled quickly.



“Only New” filter for comments


I mentioned this issue with the Arc browser that makes it so the “collapse all old replies” function breaks if I open it in a background tab. Maybe it might be nice to also have this as a button I can trigger next to the Collapse replies and Expand all buttons. Or, if it doesn’t over-complicate the UI, maybe even a way to “collapse all before [datetime]” with the last session time pre-filled in. Or perhaps more like a clock that you can wind backwards in 30 minute or 1 hour increments.



Rethinking time-limit on Exemplary labels


I think it’s crucial that these remain a rare commodity, but with the current volume of good posts the 8 hour limit is feeling mighty constraining. Although previously the time limit didn’t feel like a constraint at all because there legitimately wasn’t much to label. Not sure if this should actually change or not, maybe the time limit can stretch or compress based on how active the site has been over the past X hours.



Add a “Funny” modifier to the “Joke” label

The effect on sorting should be the exact same and it should be invisible to everyone, but I just think it would be fun and would also encourage people to label jokes as such (trick folks into narcing basically). Maybe when there is a reputation system in place it can be used to adjust how big of a negative weight your joke posts get. Funnier people get dinged less.

Rethinking the necroposting warning

With more people here there are more active conversations and topics seem to remain active a lot longer. In topics like the one for questions from new users it’s so active it feels kind of silly to see the “this topic is over X old” warning. We do want to encourage maintaining conversations as long as they’re going so maybe we should suppress this warning on active topics (like ones that have had more than 5 posts in the past 3 days).

Improved search


I know search is hard, but it is difficult to find old stuff. I’ve been trying to dig up examples of old posts or previous conversations on things when answering questions and I’m often trying to wrack my brain for specific phrases from conversations a year or more ago. It just doesn’t work for this. Discord search works pretty well and gives you modifiers for who posted, where, around when. I get the potential for abuse here, but maybe enable this kind of deep search for my own post history and nobody else’s?



Mark direct messages as unread

Exactly what is says on the tin. Sometimes people ask you something and you need to come back to it later.



Tag cloud

Knowing what to tag things as is intimidating for newbies and old heads alike. There need to be mechanisms to make this more approachable. I think perhaps if, underneath the tag bar we just displayed a “word cloud” of the common tags sized according to frequency it might help get people started. The word cloud would have to be per group and maybe refreshed per day based on a rolling-sample of the last 100 posts.

Put a vote button on the bottom of the post for self-posts.

Seriously, do you realize how much scrolling I have to do to go back up and upvote kfwyre when he posts something like this? It's especially a hassle on mobile.

Hi,

I saw that Proton now has a Family Plan that includes all of their services including mail, calendar, drive, etc.

I've been looking to detach my and my family's life a bit from the big corps like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Proton sounds interesting.

At the same time I am wondering if they're really to be trusted any more than any other company. I found some critique of the E2E encryption being basically snake oil and not properly implemented etc. I am of course aware that there're always tradeoffs and while privacy is definitely nice, I don't need to go to an extreme degree of "no logs whatsoever, never even turning anything over to the police", I think I am just mostly looking to make me and my family less of a product of advertising, possibly AI/ML and so on, so some compromise is definitely possible.

I am curious, does anyone here have any experience with or opinions on the company and their products?