UPDATE: It was the power supply. I've never even heard of such a weirdly anal issue, but after installing a new one, everything is a-okay.

So, I've never really had issues with power supplies, and generally have always troubleshot (troubleshooted? trouble...shot?) my own issues with no real, well, issues. Until now.

The other day, I got a helluva deal on a 6800 XT on Facebook Marketplace, the guy had the printout with the receipt, it's still under warranty for two years, whole shebang. So I upgraded from a Vega 56 to it. And there were zero issues. Admittedly, my power supply is only 650 watts, so I thought I might be missing some wiggle room there, and was prepared to need to upgrade. But the other night, it was fine. I stress-tested with a nearly-maxed-out 100+ FPS Cyberpunk 2077 and had zero issues, and followed that up with moderate use 144 FPS board games and things for the next few hours with a friend.

And sometime after I went to bed (I left the computer on because I'm a bad man who doesn't take care of his things or some other vaguely acceptable excuse), Windows Update occurred. Again. It's been raising hell on me in the middle of the night any time I leave my computer on, but whatever. So in the morning (this was Sunday), I saw it wasn't working right, and just kind of... shitting itself. Had trouble getting out of BIOS, all this other stuff. Eventually, I realized it was ignoring my SSD, and after unplugging everything else and forcing it to boot from my SSD with the Windows 10 install on it, it said the install was borked and asked me to do recovery steps. None of them really worked. So at this point, I was assuming that I might have hit something with the SSD and damaged the SATA controller when moving the power for the GPU or something.

So today, I got a new NVMe drive, booted from a 16gb flash drive, installed Windows 11 on it, and everything was fine. I was able to create a functional Windows 11 install, and it was fine. Until I got to the login screen. As soon as the screen asking for my PIN (on a complete, 100% valid Windows install) would load, that first frame, it would shut down hard. No BSOD, nothing. Just immediate shutdown. So I thought, "well, this seems like an issue for the POWER SUPPLY!" and removed the GPU, plugging my main monitor directly into the motherboard. Now, it was shutting down and power cycling before it even hit the BIOS, which is... weird as hell? So I thought "well, it gets further when a video card is in, let's put ye olden Vega 56 in and see how far that gets me!" and... it just works. I'm typing this from my fresh Windows 11 install with zero perceivable issues.

So my question is: How is it that my computer was perfectly fine on Saturday night with my new video card under 100% load, but by the next day would decide seemingly at random based on some sort of schrodinger's cat theory when it would shut down and when it wouldn't.

So, in summation, the four inconsistent scenarios, in tl;dr form:

• New RX 6800 XT is installed, computer runs fine at 100% load while stress testing and then for hours afterward
• 6800 XT installed, Windows won't boot and the power supply seemingly gives up
• No video card installed, the computer starts power cycling before even reaching the BIOS
• My old Vega 56 installed, everything is perfectly fine

So, obviously there's something weird going on with my power supply, but if someone can set my sights on exactly why all of this has happened, and what the proper solution to make sure it doesn't again, or just... I don't know, typing this all out has made the last day and a half of my life feel much more worth it.

And as an aside, my theory for why Windows was broken and I assumed my SSD was dying is as such: When it did the Windows Update and started trying to install it was the first time it powered down with no warning, which just broke Windows mid-update in a bad way.

I'm returning home from a trip and am on my 4th layover in a nightmarish series of delayed flights and last minute changes; when I get home it will be 5 degrees (F) which was not the forecasted temp when I left, so I did not make any kind of preparations and left my car in uncovered long term parking, a 5-ish minute walk from the airport. It dipped into negative temps while I was gone and I'm terrified that I'll get back to a car with frozen locks and no lighter, lock de-freezer, hair dryer, etc, anything to help me get in. I've searched for advice but everything I've read seems to assume you're at home, not at a airport. I'm already so drained and exhausted and it will be late when I get there so I'm just trying to find something, anything that might be helpful in advance before I'm stuck standing outside in unexpectedly, dangerously frigid weather with no plan in jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie. Apologies if something like this has been posted, I couldn't find anything and feel like I'm about to collapse. Any advice is appreciated, even obvious things, I'm sure I may have overlooked something that would be clear to someone else. Posting this before I board my next flight in the hopes there may be some replies by the time I get home. Thank you for reading

Update: made it back, took an Uber home and will pick up my car either tomorrow or the day after during the day. I should have thought of it myself and feel silly that I didn't. Thank you all so much for the feedback, really saved me some stress, I probably shouldn't have driven home even had it not been so cold out with how tired I was. Will definitely use all the advice here to be more prepared when leaving during the winter in the future, no matter the forecast.

Personally, I like to check the South Park Controversies Page every now and then.

The page on Quantum Entanglement is fascinating and has so many rabbit hole links that lead to other rabbit holes themselves. I still go back and re-read them here and there to improve my understanding and check for laymen's updates without all pop-science nonsense you encounter elsewhere.

I'll come back and post a few more when I can think of them!

So a recurring thing that's come up when discussing ideas for games with friends, or just thinking about ideas: what are the most absolutely essential graphical assets for building a world?

Obviously, the answer will vary heavily for each game, but for some types of settings, the basic "starter set" is pretty universal. For example, nearly all house interiors will have a bed, at least one type of table (almost always dining), and at least one type of chair that goes with the table. After those crucial basics usually they'll also have some sort of shelf, a dresser, and kitchen counters and a fridge. Outdoor tilesets in 2D pixel art games typically need grass or other ground tiles, path tiles, water tiles, at least one type of tree, and at least one type of rock. From that point, you can expand to include things like fences, buildings, benches, lampposts, etc.

Trying to figure out a full list of assets needed for any game can be daunting, so I figure I'd ask for input on what you consider the most vital for various types of settings. Starting with the absolute barest necessities for building a basic map (so you can at least plot basic layouts and try to get a sense of the art direction), followed by the most commonly featured items. Could be for individual rooms, specific buildings (like gas stations or restaurants), or specific types of areas (jungles, farms, beaches, etc.).

Side-note: yes, I know you can use placeholder assets. But it's also helpful to just have a general list of what basic items are needed for reference.

My head was all over the place, I played really badly, I lost the run I was playing much quicker than expected, and decided to end stream early because of it... but despite all that, I'm weirdly happy about the whole thing anyway.

One of my big goals for 2024 is to stream a lot more often. For context, I've been off work on medical leave for a good long while now, and I find streaming to be (very fun but also) draining in a similar way to how work was draining - like in how "on" you have to be, and how much multitasking you have to do, that sort of thing. And so the main reason I streamed so rarely last year is that I rarely felt "on" enough to be at 100% for all that, and I worried that I wouldn't be doing a good enough job.

Today was the 1 year anniversary of when I first started playing the game I'm obsessed with these days, so I really wanted to do a special "anniversary" stream today, which for obvious reasons couldn't really be rescheduled. My brain did feel kind of fuzzy going in, and if it were any other day, I definitely wouldn't have decided to stream at all... but I'd been hyping up this idea to myself for a while, and knew I'd regret it if I bailed at the last minute, so I pushed myself to go live anyway.

And yeah, like I started this off by saying, the stream definitely wasn't perfect. I didn't play super well, made a bunch of boneheaded decisions, caught myself mentally drifting off every so often and not either playing the game or talking to chat or just being an engaging streamer at all. I lost a run that I for sure could have gotten further with if I played a bit smarter.

BUT!

I did it. I did the thing, and I still had fun, and my friends who tuned in as viewers seemed to have fun too. At the end of the day, that should really be all that matters.

I could very easily take today as a bad omen for the year to come... as in like, I'm gonna be mushy brained and keep doing embarrassing mediocre streams, because that's clearly all I'm capable of, blah blah blah. Past-me definitely would have latched onto that train of thought, hard. But right now, mostly what I'm feeling is just... proud. Proud of myself for not letting perfect be the enemy of good today for once, for actually putting myself out there, for not putting so much stock in "I have to be good at the games I play" as like part of my identity or anything (which I used to have a ton of bugaboos about, as a woman who used to play in a lot of sexist male-dominated spaces... it was kind of like, I have to be great at this game, or I'm just encouraging their sexism so much more and letting all other women down because of it, therefore I can't ever afford to be bad at games and especially not when someone else might see). I can finally feel myself starting to let go of a lot of those old toxic ideas, and while I know I still have a ways left to go with it, it already feels incredibly liberating.

Throughout my struggles with chronic illness these past few years, I've been trying my best for some time now to accept myself for where I'm at, instead of berating myself for not yet getting back to where I want to be. Moments like these are really nice reminders that that isn't nearly as hard as it used to be. :)

So, yeah. Thanks for reading. Here's hoping this story resonates with at least a few of you -- and here's to (hopefully) many more mediocre non-ideal streams to come this year, and maybe a few half-decent ones too if I'm lucky 😅

I find myself in an unusual situation wanting to play PC games that can't suck me in. Bear with me, this is a weird and specific request.

Ideally I want something I can easily pick up and put down maybe 1-2 times an hour between tasks. Chess or Risk came to mind, but I don't want something that mandates input or else you forfeit. Also thought of Civ, but in the past I've played that for hours at a time. I haven't found a setting that could force me to slow down, but maybe there's a mod I could use? Seems like I need something that either has built-in cooldowns or allows custom time controls.

Maybe there's some mobile games that are on PC that would fall into this category? I played "Egg, Inc" years ago, but remember the cooldowns started to extend into days which is when I stopped.

For reference, I typically play via Steam, Epic, or GOG and I like these game genres: strategy, RTS, tower defense, puzzle/logic, city building, simulation, automation, and exploration. But since there's probably not many games like this I'm definitely willing to branch out!

This is probably a niche subject, but here we go. The album version of Protect Ya Neck is censored and I hate how it was done. Luckily we have Protect Ya Neck (The Bloody Version) from the single. I don't like all of this version, so I took my European remaster and edited it all to replace the >drrrrtttt< with the swearing.

Today I got the Music on Vinyl release from 2009 and liked it enough, I figured I'd patch it. When I brought it into Audition I noticed that the audio was inverted.

Is there any reasoning behind this?

There was a brief mention of the Amish and their self-sufficiency in the Capitalism topic that got me thinking, so I thought that I'd share my thoughts and start another discussion.

My understanding of the Amish way of life - as someone who is probably thousands of miles away from them - is that they are not really self-sufficient insomuch as they are insular. They don't like to rely on the government, but they heavily rely on their community.

A lot of us here are leftists - some might even go so far as to call themselves socialists or communists. But for the most part we are advocating for government to provide support, and often it's the federal government rather than their local governments. For those of you who do, my question for you is this: why aren't you trying to help out the locals. And I don't just mean your city, I mean your neighborhood or even just your block.

I'm not talking about things like homeless shelters or nonprofits, I'm talking about mutual aid societies. People are complex; they don't just need things, they need people. They need assurance, motivation, and love. These are things that the government does not provide. The US Surgeon General state we are having a lonliness epidemic right now, and that it's majorly affecting people's health. We've had conversations about the lack of a third place but an even bigger problem is the death of our community hubs. It might be a good thing that people are getting less religious, but losing the church was a much bigger hit than people give credit.

We've had many comments in the past deriding "slacktivism". When you throw your voice into the void, you have no real power. But if you put your voice into your town hall, you have tremendous power. Giving money to the government is like having one billionth of a difference to a great many people, but helping out a person in your community is a huge impact in their life which might be the one thing they need to stop them from falling off a cliff. I don't think you'll find anything more socially gratifying.

I titled this "why don't you", but I'm also very much interested in hearing from people who do community work why they do and how they manage to fit it into their lives.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Hey! So I used to be fairly warm to MS Teams but I utterly despise its call handling. I have three Bluetooth audio devices that I used regularly - a set of Edifier earbuds, my expensive Sony WH-1000XM5 pair, my CX-5 audio, and my Bluebus that integrates into my old BMW's hands free system. All of these work perfectly fine when I call someone via regular-ass phone calls. When I use Teams, all hell breaks loose. The edifiers work perfectly fine, so I know Teams is QUITE capable of handling these all ok. My CX-5 system won't do microphone audio when Android Auto is connected, but works fine on Mazda's infotainment call handling. In my BMW it won't handle the microphone but plays audio. On my Sony pair of headphones, it works great... And then about every ten minutes it disconnects, consistently, so I can't use them.

In theme with the other ongoing thread, nothing gets my gears moving like tech not doing what I'm asking it to. Teams barely has any options on Android for audio, so there isn't much of anything to tweak. Does anyone have any ideas of where to start? Is there something similar to Windows solutions like Virtual Audio Cable which could set up a virtual BT device to pipe audio through and simulate it being something else for Teams? Thanks all!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like faa, menslib and linux. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was taking notes.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Sometime this year, probably around the middle of the year or later depending on my welfare, I want to replace my two monitors with an ultra wide.

I do have some preferences, such as:

• OLED Preferably
• Built in KVM
• 120hz or above refresh
• Has the ability to show two separate computers screens at once. Just in case I'm not being clear, two separate computers are plugged in as inputs and it can output the display for both on the same screen by dividing the screen in half. I've only seen this feature on one monitor, an ultrawide ASUS one but that was roughly $2000. This is probably the most 'nice to have' feature.

Would appreciate any suggestions or recommendations. Thanks.

Also, I have two monitors I would like to sell when I replace them, these being an ASUS VG27AQ, and a Dell S2721QS. Both of them are in perfect condition, other than being slightly dusty. What would be a fair price to list them for when selling?

So I came across this new dudesy video titled "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead" and it put me down a weird rabbit hole. I'm not a Carlin super fan but I know some of his famous bits and respect his work and maybe that's the perfect setup for watching this because... I'm honestly blown away. I planned on listening to 3 minutes of it to make fun of stupid AI but ended up letting it run for the entire hour and actually laughed quite a bit. It all makes sense. It does sound like him. I don't know how much editing went into it, how much prompting and discarded material. I especially don't know if it just dug up old jokes somewhere else and copied them. But still.

It feels like we just had awkward AI-wordsalad experiments and things like the infinite Seinfeld stream which was fun in a so-bad-it's-good kinda way but... I mean, it obviously was bad. The funny part was that it was unpredictably bad.

But only a year later we're having some uncanny valley shit. I looked it up and apparently this started with a comedy podcast with an AI co-host which produced a clip for a fictional Tom Brady standup routine which turned out popular enough to get them sued, apparently.

There's this part in the fake Carlin special where he talks about the future of entertainment being 24-hour streams where an AI comedian comments on daily news events in real time or something and I can't say I wouldn't watch that. Just to see what it's like. But I also get people calling it disgusting. It kinda is. I get [his daughter says "machine will ever replace his genius"](machine will ever replace his genius), she's right of course. But that video got close IMO.

You can still point at little flaws here and there with AI generated content but with this trend, it will be 3 or 5 years before we get perfectly polished content machines that don't trip over any of the easy and obvious stuff. What place would such content have in the entertainment industry?

What do you guys think?

We are planning a trip to Norway in February (toward the end).

The plan is to arrive into Oslo and take the first flight to Tromso, and spend several days there enjoying the city and embarking on several activities including:

• Fjord River Boat Tour
• Dog Sledding
• Aurora Chasing
• (maybe) Cross Country Skiing
• Visiting the Ice Domes
• Visiting Museums
• Visiting a spa

On the way back we'd like to visit Bergen for a couple of days and have yet to plan this part at all.

Any locals or people who have already visited: Is there anything you think would be a shame to miss out on while we're there? Anything you think is a waste of time and / or money?

We are doing this trip on a budget. Ultimately, Norway is expensive so "on a budget" means, we're taking cheap flights and not staying in luxury accommodation for the most part.

One last thing: I am planning to propose on this trip. I would love any advice on somewhere romantic to actually pop the question. My current plan is to do it on the aurora chasing trip if we get lucky, but otherwise I need a couple of backup plans.

I don't have aphantasia - I can generally imagine things pretty vividly. I also don't have face blindness - I am perfectly able to recognize faces when I see them.

I just can't remember any faces. And I don't just mean someone I barely know or someone I haven't seen in a while. I can literally be looking at a person who I know really well, but as soon as I turn away, I immediately have zero clue about what they look like. I don't know what my parents look like, or my friends, or even myself. Everything else - the body, the hair - that I can picture just fine.

What's also interesting though is that I can imagine photos of people. So, for example, I have no idea what my face looks like and I can't imagine it, but if there is a photo of myself that I remember, then I can imagine that specific photo in great detail, including my face. But as soon as I change the photo in any way in my imagination, I stop seeing my face again. This also works with other people, not just me.

Does anyone else here experience that?

I've been spending a lot of time working on developing my singing voice, and I'm starting to push into a loud, yelling voice at the upper end of my register. It sounds awesome, but it kind of hurts and makes me wonder if this sort of thing is sustainable long-term.

Someone like Dave Grohl (great example of the type of vocals I'm trying to emulate) seems to have made a career singing like this, so I'm pretty sure there's a way. I guess I'm mostly wondering if there's any sort of "progression" or way to do it properly vs improperly.

Does it get easier? Will my vocal chords adapt? Mostly I'm just wondering if I can keep doing this without sacrificing vocal range in the future.

We're looking at doing a trip (2 adults, 3 young kids) from northern Italy to somewhere else in the region. We were thinking about Slovenia, Austria, or maybe Switzerland.

Any thoughts on where to go or what might be a good itinerary?

• budget is medium to high. Call it a few hundred dollars a day, not including lodging.
• we'll go in Juneish for about a weekish.
• the kids are too small to walk by themselves for long. We'll have strollers/backpacks/etc.
• we'd like to try some restaurants; we like fine dining but it's tricky with kids unless we engage a babysitting service at a hotel. I like museums, my wife is meh; some short hikes would be fun, but nothing too crazy. Getting some city stuff in would be nice. We also like looking at architecture, old castles, stuff like that.
• we enjoy doing some scenic driving, but no marathon trips with the kids in the back.

Last year I inquired how one might take sea passage across the Atlantic. The realistic answer is that there are various ocean liners and transatlantic cruises traveling multiple times per year, none faster than 7 days and many taking closer to 10 or 14. Repositioning cruises, when the ship is being moved from one region to another and you just tag along, are infrequent but the cheapest option.

In February, I will unavoidably be in the United Kingdom. I am flying there, but have not purchased a flight back yet. I am thinking about taking a ship in repositioning from England to the US Eastern Seaboard as there is very conveniently one such ship leaving a couple days after my event is over. That would probably be Southampton to Miami (from there, I would take a train home) and would take 11 or so days, zero of which are at intermediary ports.

I was thinking about a ship over a plane because the last time I flew it was like my ears got blown out for an entire day afterward. I don't know what it is about my sinuses but they have never handled flying well. My height makes the experience particularly cramped and unpleasant and I have gotten sick on every plane I have taken in the last six months. It's the most miserable thing I do to myself on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, all the research I can find on passenger ship emissions seem to indicate that it is worse for the environment on a passenger-mile basis than flying that same route, at least as far as cruise ships are concerned (there is zero research on emissions from being a passenger on a container ship). As of 2006, the Queen Mary 2 ocean liner supposedly emits about 0.43kg CO2e per passenger-mile, compared to 0.257kg CO2e for a long-haul airplane. But emissions estimates vary so ridiculously widely that it is a little bit hard for me to take these figures seriously:

Emissions factors for individual journeys by cruise ships to or from New Zealand in 2007 ranged between 250 and 2200 g of CO2 per passenger-kilometre (g CO2 per p-km), with a weighted mean of 390 g CO2 per p-km.

That's literally an order of magnitude. I think there is some guessing going on here. To translate from p-km to p-mi, that's ~402–3545g CO2e/p-mile or a weighted mean of 628g CO2e/p-mi. I would speculate that a repositioning cruise (which spends no time in intermediary ports because it is specifically supposed to get somewhere efficiently) would be on the lower end of the spectrum. So, honestly, while worse than an airplane in terms of gaseous emissions, it's not... that much worse. From the way articles seem to talk about cruise emissions, I would have thought it would be at least an order of magnitude. (For reference, the difference between a train and a plane is about an order of magnitude.) Which I guess it can be based on the higher figures there, but I am pretty sure that that is derived from non-direct routings (port visits apparently contribute massively to emissions) or from luxury behaviors (i.e. having an enormous stateroom and other amenities that decrease space efficiency).

One may notice that those sources are almost 20 years old. There is more recent research on cruise ship emissions, but the non-academic stuff all seems to cite the Queen Mary 2 statistic (not sure where it even originated). I attempted to discern what cruise ship emissions looked like 20 years ago versus today, but was unable to find any specific information about passenger-mile emissions year-by-year. I don't have institutional access to most journals anymore, so feel free to share if you know anything.

There have definitely been new environmental regulations since 2007. In 2020, some new regulations limiting high-sulphur fuels went into effect. But sulfur dioxide is more of a health concern; it isn't a greenhouse gas. It's toxic to marine life too, and all other life, but wouldn't be considered in a passenger-mile CO2e emissions figure. Apparently the regulation has encouraged more ships to switch to less toxic liquefied natural gas (LNG) fuels rather than the literal bottom-of-the-barrel sludges they've traditionally burned (maybe a 20%-ish improvement at face value), but most ships have just installed scrubbers to continue using the same fuel and emit fewer horrible particulates. Apparently a switch to LNG, while favorable for human health, does not really reduce GHG emissions due to increased methane output.

Aakko-Saksa et al. 2023 seems to be the most comprehensive journal article I can access that covers current strategies in reducing greenhouse gas emissions for ship engines now and in the future. It mainly talks about fuels and technical stuff about engines I don't understand. This paper remarks that the switch to LNG could still be positive; it suggests a 30% reduction in GHG emissions compared to diesel fuel but a 6–23% reduction depending on how much "methane slip" happens; the IEA thinks it's 10% or less. That's still a meaningful reduction, though there is quite a lot of variance. The authors' takeaway is that there could be a significant benefit to switching to LNG and then blending that with greener fuels at increasing proportions over time.

There are many proposed ways to decarbonize the industry. It is not clear to me which of these have been adopted recently. The industry seems to have some interest in decarbonizing, or giving the appearance of having interest, as Norwegian claims to want to "reduce GHG intensity by 10% by 2026 and 25% by 2030, compared to a 2019 baseline with intensity measured on a per Capacity Day basis." And they are actually thinking about it: they have ESG staff and a 2022 ESG Report lays out a few relatively specific and achievable metrics (or so it seems to me, a layperson and a landlubber):

We were very excited to announce in early 2023 that two of our Norwegian Cruise Line newbuilds, expected to be delivered in 2027 and 2028, will be re-configured to accommodate the future use of green methanol. Green methanol is a fuel that we see as a promising future solution. Compared to conventional fuels, it can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 95%, nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 80%, and all sulfur oxide and particulate matter emissions.

Environmental goals:

• Reduce GHG intensity by 10% by 2026 and by 25% by 2030, compared to 2019 baseline, and pursue net zero GHG emissions by 2050
• Decrease fleet-wide fuel consumption of boilers per day by 2% annually, compared to 2016
• 100% of fleet equipped with Waste Heat Recovery by 2027
• Increase the percentage of our fleet with shore power capabilities to 50% by 2024, 70% by 2025, and 100% by 2035
• Increase the percentage of treated wastewater compared to untreated sewage discharged by 2024, compared to 2019
• Reduce bunkering by 4%, as compared to 2019, by 2025
• Decrease the total volume of sludge offloaded fleetwide by 5%, compared to 2018, by 2023

Green methanol is apparently a real thing. The figures Norwegian uses are lifted directly from the Methanol Institute. It does seem like methanol production capacity is increasing and is on track to continue increasing, according to this source. If a cruise ship uses about 250 tons of fuel per hour (91250/year), and current green methanol production is just shy of 1 million tons/year, then if all of that production were directed toward cruise ships then it could fuel about... 11 ships. Hmm. If by 2027 production increases (generously) by an order of magnitude, that's still only about 100 ships, or less than 1/3 of the total fleet worldwide across all cruise firms. Better than nothing...?

Norwegian claims to be "on track" for all of these metrics, especially fuel consumption, but of course they will say that. I can't really figure out what their "-50%" and "-80%" figures mean and I suspect they mean nothing. Frankly most of these commitments are ridiculously insufficient, though it isn't reasonable to expect revolutionary changes to happen in just a couple years. I think we should take these commitments with a grain of salt, but it does make sense from an operational perspective why industry would be interested in improving their own efficiency, especially to avoid potentially crippling regulations from governments who they can clearly see are honing in on emissions.

From what I can tell, many or most of the emissions are not just from the transportation itself (i.e. the burning of fuel for the purpose of moving mass from point A to B) but rather from the hoteling aboard the ship (12x more emissions than land-based hoteling) and from other luxury-related activities. Intuitively, if we know how energy-efficient it is to transport goods by sea, this should come as no surprise: if we're comparing fuel costs, it simply takes less fuel to move objects by water than by air. This is why ferries have so few emissions per passenger-mile. Ship fuel is particularly nasty stuff as far as human health is concerned, but many resources appear to primarily emphasize the non-fuel waste produced by these enterprises. So the CO2e emissions of cruise ships would seem to originate not just from fuel but rather from the inefficiency of human habitation at sea. Norwegian is at least vaguely calculating multi-scope emissions (p. 15) with, for example, "purchased goods and services" apparently making up ~21% of total emissions in 2022 (fuel itself is about 55%, and "fuel and energy-related activities," whatever that means, being another 12%). I assume "capital goods" (18% of their emissions) are the emissions from the ships themselves, which is more of a decarbonization question for manufacturers.

There are also significant non-GHG environmental impacts due to operational procedures taken by cruise ships. Wikipedia has a whole page on the environmental effects of shipping (not just cruise ships, but they are included). Waste dumping, noise pollution, etc. Those externalities are different than the externalities produced by airplanes; same idea, but apples to oranges, so I don't know how to compare them.

Anyway, this is all to say: greenhouse gas emissions from cruise ships are pretty rough. Given the relative lack of information on repositioning cruises specifically, the age of much of the data, and newer emissions reductions which are maybe not yet reflected in the literature, I am going to speculate that such a trip has an approximately equal GHG impact as a long-haul flight, assuming a typical stateroom and a direct voyage. On average, it probably works out to somewhat more emissions, though I personally think ships have a clearer (easier/faster) path toward net-zero (ish) emissions than airplanes given the limitations of each mode.

I will go to sleep and decide tomorrow whether I will fly or sail home, but right now I am leaning toward the sea for this occasion. I am not sure about future voyages yet. We will see.

Savannah Locke’s “Oh Holy Night” has a vocal quality that I’ve heard many times before in other songs and I was always curious what it was called, as well as the general EQ settings to reproduce it.

I name this song because I feel like it’s a very over the top example that I first heard over the holidays on a random playlist. I can only describe the vocals as “paper-like”. The style is folksy but it’s that particular sound of the vocals I’m interested in identifying.

Also, if there’s a particular nomenclature to these different types of styles or a glossary of some kind I’d appreciate it.

Full disclosure: I’ve sat behind a mixing board as an enthusiast but am no means educated beyond lows, mediums, highs.

Many thanks in advance!

Don't really know the best way to describe this. But I bet people do know the feeling.

It's Sunday, all my chores are out of the way, and I have time to do anything, but instead I find myself not being able to decide what I want to do. I am turning on various games, looking at the title screen for a bit than turning them off again. I pick up my guitar, mess around for a few minutes then put it down again. I think about a creative project I could start, but then decide to not when I imagine how much effort it would take. Then I go back to scrolling various websites, not really interested in anything, cause it's all the same all the time. The weather is way too cold and ugly for me to go outside, so I just don't know what to do. The only nice thing is that I am listening to music in the mean time...

Hey folks

I'm building out a backup NAS to hold approximately 350TB of video. It's a business device. We already own the hardware which is a Gigabyte S451 with twin OS RAIDED SSD but 34 X 16TB SAS HDD disks. I used TrueNAS Scale and ZFS as the filesystem because... It seemed like a good idea. What I didn't realise is that with dedupe and LZO compression on, it would seriously hinder the IO. Anyway, long story short, we filled it as a slave target and it's slow as can be. It errors all the time. I upgraded to 48GB of RAM as ZFS is memory intensive but it's the IOPs which kill it. It's estimating 50 days for a scrub, it's nuts. The system is in RAID6 and all disks dedicated to this pool which is correct in so far as I need all disk available.

Now I know ZFS isn't the way for this device, any ideas here? I'm tempted to go pure Debian, XFS or EXT4 and soft raid. I'd rather it be simple and managed via a GUI for the rest of the team as they're all Windows admins as well as scared of CLI, but I suppose I can give them Webmin at a push.

I'm about ready to destroy over 300TB of copied data to rebuild this as it crashes too often to do anything with, and the Restic backup from the Master just falls over waiting for a response.

Ideas on a postcard (or Tildes reply)...?

UPDATE:

After taking this thread in to consideration, some of my own research and a ZFS calculator, here's what I'm planning - bear in mind this is for an Archive NAS:

36 Disks at 16TB:

9x16TB RAID-Z2
4 x VDEVs = Data Pool
Compression disabled, dedupe disabled.

Raw capacity would be 576TB, but after parity and slop space we're at 422TB usable. In theory, if we call it 70% usable, I'm actually going to cry at 337TB total.

At this moment, the NAS1 server is rocking 293TB of used space. Since I'm using Restic to do the backup of NAS1 to NAS2, I should see some savings, but I can already see that I will need to grow the shelf soon. I'll nuke NAS2, configure this and get the backup rolling ASAP.

My bigger concern now is that NAS1 is set up the same way as NAS2, but never had dedupe enabled. At some point we're going to hit a similar issue.

Thank you for all of your help and input.

I enjoy writing letters, but my hands have progressively hurt more and more from handwriting. For a time, I tried typing letters on my computer, the personal feeling of my letters diminished. Having printed it out, looking clean and mechanically perfect made my letters feel less valuable, they didn't feel like I spent time on them.

So, for the last few years, I've typed letters on two older typewriters and that has felt like a happy medium. I make mistakes and have to fix them, sometimes the text looks odd or the paper moves, I love it.

I have two questions I need help with:

1. Does anyone know of a mechanical typewriter that doesn't utilize the rolling pin to secure the paper? When I write on cards, they have to be bent and sometimes they never retain their former shape. I'd also like to get into journaling this way, but can't feed a whole journal through the rolling pin.

2. Can anyone think of other ways I could write letters, other than the methods I've listed already, that may bring a personal nature to my letters?

Thanks!

Way back in the day, I used to run a fan site for a game that ended up teaching me a lot about PHP, perl, databases and so on. Currently, I'm looking to rebuild that site, but PHP nuke is now hopelessly outdated and joomla/Drupal are not the direction I want to go in. So far, I've found php-fusion (from GoDaddys cpanel installer) which seems close, but I'm curious if there is a closer analog out there.

The ideal for me is the old school blocks down the sides with content in the middle layout, with add-ons like forums, image gallery etc. Cheers for any help 😁

I typically listen to music and discover new music through YouTube, but the gradual creep of ads and the possibility of videos being deleted in the future has made me interested in building up a personal library of tracks on my own computer instead of streaming.

What do you use to manage your songs, and buy songs when you find ones you like?

My main computer runs Debian so I'd prefer Linux compatible options, but I'd be interested I hearing whatever other people use regardless.

I'm trying to make my own truffle chips for the wife after having it at a nice bar together. Any suggestions as to the types of chips or truffle seasoning? I'm going to try to buy a bag of regular chips, put it into a bowl, and just shake with some truffle salt and truffle oil (real kind not synthetic flavor).

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

*Thanks everyone! Looks like it's time to do it properly instead of the lazy way...

Can you please recommend a movie about someone finding a new direction in life? Ideally something heartwarming, no soul-crushing drama this time. My picks would be:

• Chef
• Secret Life of Walter Mitty
• Stranger Than Fiction

Do you know about something like that, but less known?
Thank you.

I've been running Linux full-time pretty much since Valve released Proton. I remember submitting reports to ProtonDB back when it was just a shared Google Sheet! In the years that followed I made it a point to test and report out on different games as new versions of Proton were released and support improved. I thought it important that we have a good data set for what worked and what didn't. Over those years I tested hundreds of games and submitted as many reports to the database.

In thinking back over my gaming in 2023, however, I realized that I fell out of the habit of submitting reports because I'm so used to Proton working that it's stopped occurring to me that it might not.

That doesn't mean that there aren't some games that don't work -- it simply means that the success rate that I used to have (maybe 30-50% on average) has risen high enough that I'm genuinely surprised if something doesn't work (it's probably somewhere around 95% for me now, though that's biased by the types of games that I play). I actually tried to remember the last game that didn't work, and I genuinely couldn't tell you what it was. Everything I've played recently has booted like it's native.

Honestly, I genuinely don't even know which games are native and which run through Proton anymore. I've stopped caring!

I got my Steam Deck halfway through 2022. It was awesome, but it was definitely a bit rough around the edges. There weren't that many compatible games. The OS had some clunkiness. It matured though, and has gotten better. Among my friend group, I'm the only person who cares even a little bit about Linux. If you asked any of them to name three different Linux distributions they'd stare at you blankly because they wouldn't understand the question. Nevertheless, of my friends, SIX of them have Steam Decks and are now gaming regularly on Linux.

There are currently ~4,300 Deck Verified games and ~8,700 Deck Playable games according to Valve. On ProtonDB, ~8,600 games have been verified as working on Linux by at least three users, while ~19,700 games have been verified by at least one user. There is SO much variety available, and the speed with which we've gotten here has been pretty breathtaking.

This was my device breakdown for my Steam Replay for 2023:

• 55% Steam Deck
• 32% Linux
• 10% Virtual Reality
• 4% Windows

The only non-Linux gaming I did was VR and some local multiplayer stuff I have on a Windows machine hooked up to my TV.

I don't want to proselytize too much, but if you have a general interest in gaming, you could probably switch over to Linux full time and be perfectly happy with the variety of games you have available to you. Not too long ago, making the jump felt like a huge sacrifice because you'd be giving up so much -- SO many games were incompatible -- but it no longer feels that way. You can transfer and most of -- probably almost all -- your library will still work! Also, if a particular game doesn't work, there isn't too much sting because, well, there are thousands of others you can give your attention to.

If you have a specific game that you must play, then it's possibly a different story. If you love Destiny 2, for example, then full-time Linux definitely is not for you. The same goes VR -- it's simply not up to snuff on Linux yet. There are other niches too that don't transfer over as well (modding, racing sims, etc.) so, of course, this isn't a blanket recommendation and everyone's situation is different.

But for a prototypical person who's just your sort of general, everyday gamer? It's reached a point where they could be very happy on Linux. In fact, as proven by my friends and their Steam Decks, it's reached a point where people can be gaming on Linux and not even know they're doing that. That's how frictionless it's gotten!

I don't really have a point to this post other than to say it's incredible that we are where we are, and I'm beyond appreciative of all the effort that people have put in to making this possible.

I'm looking for ways to make it easier to publish on my personal blog. I've had WordPress blogs in the past, and I find that they set up a constant grind of upgrading — upgrading core, upgrading plugins, reconfiguring the upgraded components, fixing the things the upgrades break...

It was stealing too much of the little time I have to devote to my blog. So, when I built my current blog, I built in on a static site generator (11ty). It took longer to set up than just writing HTML and CSS, but it does make it a bit quicker to get something up since it will build pages from markdown, and it doesn't require a ton of upgrading every time I want to sit down and write something. Sure, I could upgrade a library or two each time I sit down with it, but it's just spitting out HTML so I don't really need to.

That said, it's still more friction than I want. I'm currently obsessed with mmm.page. I love the playful UI. I love the design language it encourages. I love how it makes the tech get out of the way and puts you closer to getting your content out. That said, there are several things I don't love:

1. It's not accessible. I can't pick which elements to use. I can't write alt text for images.
2. It's not open source. This means a lot of things. It means when the developer loses interest, it will die. It means we can't evaluate it. It means we can't self-host it. Speaking of these...
3. Development seems to be slow. There's one item on the roadmap. It was suggested in April. I have a feeling it's not making the money the developer had hoped and they've lost enthusiasm for it.
4. We can't self-host it. Now, this means I'm stuck paying $10 a month. Tomorrow, that could go up to $20, and there's nothing I can do about it.
5. There's no easily apparent escape hatch. I guess I could just download the pages it wrote and host them elsewhere, but that's probably not ideal. If the developer does decide to close up shop or double the price, I want an easy way to take my site and go somewhere else.
6. As far as I can tell, it doesn't support RSS. I am a staunch believer in RSS, and I believe the web sucks without it. I won't want to run a site that doesn't offer it.

All these problems leave me with a web site that provides too much friction and a solution to that problem that leaves many others in its wake. Does anyone know of an alternative that's similar that could address some or most of these issues? I'm a developer and I still would like to be able to publish online without doing developer-y stuff, so it's easy to see how social media has been able to bottle up so much content on the web. I'd love to think there's something that could bring us out of this dystopia... or at least make it easier for me to share a list of the games I've been playing recently. 😅

Time Period: 2000-2004

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

Meta: This is a new post series I'm trying out. I've planned a trial run for three months to see if it catches on. If it does, I'll continue it. If not, I'll phase it out.

Tildes Gaming Club is a space to play and discuss games that fit a loosely defined theme. I see it like a Book Club, or similar to our current Album of the Week and Movie of the Week series. Instead of everyone focusing everyone on the same game, however, we're all focused on the same core theme, and we independently choose a game (or games) that fit the theme. I'll also be posting the topics monthly instead of weekly, especially because many games take much longer to appreciate than a movie or an album.

To participate, play at least one game that fits the monthly theme, and talk about it here. You can make one post summarizing your game(s), or you can make multiple posts as you make your way through the game(s).

This month's theme is: Tinkering

In the future, I plan to simply give the theme with no additional clarification, because I like the idea of people interpreting it as they wish, but I feel like giving some examples for the first go-around might help people better understand what I'm trying to get at:

You might choose to play:

• a game in which one of the characters is a mechanic
• a game that lets you build things and take them apart
• a game in which you have to fiddle with the graphics settings to get it to run
• a game that you've modded
• a DOOM WAD you have to set up yourself
• a Windows game on Linux that doesn't "just run" through Proton/Wine
• a game that has "tinker" somewhere in the title
• a game you pirated back on your Dreamcast that you had to burn six different times with different settings before it would actually boot
• and so on...

"Tinkering" is an open-ended theme, not a closed task. Anything that you can personally fit underneath it counts, even if it's an absurd interpretation! Part of the fun is figuring out how the theme can work best for you.

My goals for this are the following:

1. I'm hoping this can be a fun way of choosing something to play.
2. I'm hoping this can bring a group/community aspect to people independently enjoying their hobby.
3. I'm hoping this can yield some interesting discussions about different themes.

I have been a frequent visitor of the various websites that are now under the Fandom.com umbrella, going back to when it was called Wikia. And if there's one thing that's been a consistent irritation with the platform, it's just how intrusive and annoying the advertising is. (For a sense of how long this has been a problem, see here.)

But worse than the intrusiveness of the sites' ads, their biggest problem is their performance. They can bring Firefox to a crawl.

For a while, it seemed like Fandom had been making some improvements. I could visit, say, Memory Alpha without the CPU on my computer spiking like crazy. But I just tried to look something up on the Forgotten Realms Wiki and, good god, it was terrible.

(And before anyone says anything, no, I have no intention of using an ad blocker to deal with it.)

Am I imagining it or is the platform actually getting worse again?

I like to write notes for work and sketch/draw in my spare time. I'm about to finish another paper notebook, and I noticed a few ads for the ReMarkable & decided to check it out. A few YouTube videos later, I'm now quite interested in getting an e-ink tablet to replace the notebooks I've been going through.

Thing is, with this type of technology I'm always a bit worried that I won't use it enough to justify the price. If anyone has one of those - have they managed to replace the classic paper/pen combo for you? Do you regret your purchase or are you happy with it?

If anyone is curious, I was specifically looking at the ReMarkable 2 and the Supernote Nomad. The ReMarkable seems to be the most popular choice, but I really like how the Supernote emphasizes repairability (notably, the battery is replaceable). I'm also very much open to other suggestions if you have any!

Hi all,

I've been interested for a while in learning to play banjo. My first exposure to it was listening to bluegrass, but recently I have gotten very into Celtic and Irish music, and I think I would most enjoy learning to play by playing that style. Hence I am interested in Irish banjo, which I have come to understand is a bit different. I have a few questions that I was hoping someone here could answer. I don't play any other instruments and I'm interested in this just for fun.

• My understanding is that the typical Irish banjo player plays a tenor banjo with 4 strings. However I see some variation between 17 and 19 frets. Does anyone have some insight into the difference here, and which might be preferred?

• How hard would it be to learn other styles if I start with a 4 string? Is it like going from playing bass to guitar? Is 4 string typically seen as easier to pick up? I like Celtic music but not totally sure I want to be "locked in" to that. But then again, maybe that would help to be a bit more focused.

• To get specific, I am thinking of buying this as a beginner banjo. I'd be surprised if so, but does anyone here have experience with this brand, or else have other recommendations?

Like I said, I am a total beginner in that I've never played any instrument. So on that note, if you think I'm asking the wrong types of questions, I'd want to know that too!

This is specifically about voting on comments, and not articles. I think voting for topics is clear and intuitive.

I've noticed that, while reading users' comments on topics, I have a tendency to think "This is right, so I will vote it up," or "I agree with this, so I will vote it up." I'm not sure I should be doing this, or rather, I'm not sure that's the best use of my ability to vote on comments. I always worry that sites I frequent will morph into echo chambers, and I want to avoid that for this site. I want to encourage expressing alternate viewpoints, because exposure to alternate views helps me grow a human. The vote button is a low-effort means of accomplishing that, and I intend to use it as such.

I think the vote button should be used on comments that enhance the discussion, and help engage people, and not necessarily only on comments that make me feel happy, good or righteous. So, lately, I've been trying to explicitly vote up comments which have replies, especially ones which have several replies, but aren't voted as highly as their children or peers. If someone's comment can engage several people to reply and contribute positively to a conversation, then that comment is worthy of being seen and so I vote it up. I do this regardless of whether or not I agree with the substance of the message.

I've noticed a trend where there will be a low-voted comment with many replies. These aren't trolling comments, because if they were, then they would be removed. These are comments which are engaging people and furthering the conversation, but it seems like the community doesn't value these comments due to their low vote count. This leads me to suspect that the number of votes on a comment might be merely a tally of the number of people who agreed with it.

So, I'm curious. Do you vote on comments?

How do you decide to vote on a comment?

How should we collectively be using the vote for comments?

(As an aside, I also wonder how the psychology of reading comments would change if vote tallies on comments were hidden.)

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like fathers, ux and tom scott. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was paying attention.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Background: I don't like choosing outfits in the morning for work. Due to whatever combination of mental issues/oddities I have, in the past I've gotten stuck at point for a very long time. After reading about how someone like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg wears the same thing every day, I decided to try a version of that to reduce the number of decisions I had to make each morning. I didn't actually want to wear the same thing every day, because then I'd become "the guy who wears the same thing every day" at work. So I decided to have a number of predetermined outfits that I rotate through. I have some number of dress shirts of various colors/patterns and a matching number of pants of various colors to go with them. I have a few pairs of shoes in the typical colors that I just match with the pants. I've been doing this for years now, and it's great for simplifying my daily routine, but I occasionally wonder if people notice.

So my question is: How many outfits do you personally think is the right number such that no one would notice? Alternatively, what number do you think would be the best for whatever reason?

To be clear, this is just a fun discussion question. I'm not really looking for help or advice. I won't say how many outfits I have on rotation right now to avoid anchoring.

I'm hoping someone else has had this problem and has found a solution. I have turned on visibility of taps/clicks, and I've also turned up screen sensitivity. I've turned off all animations. I've restarted it. I've installed the most recent update. Nothing changed it. I can see it registering my taps with the visibility feature, but it won't do anything the first time I tap.

My phone is an Galaxy A52. I don't have a screen protector.

What's happening is a lot of times (more than half) I will click something, and it won't register. So I have to click again. Usually it's only twice, but sometimes it can be up around five times before it will register that I've clicked the screen. This also sometimes happens when I'm scrolling a webpage, so it's like scroll, scroll, try to scroll but it gets stuck, scroll, etc.

It happens pretty much everywhere, in every app, except the keyboard letters and numbers (thank god). But even the word suggestions sometimes need to be clicked more than once.

I'm SO sick of it. I've looked as much as possible to find a similar situation with a fix, and I can't find one. Does anyone know what else I can do?

Harmony does something to my brain than I can't explain but it's like a short cut to, well, I dunno, but something good.

I'd really like your suggestions for harmonies that create emotional response.

Sorry for dumping a huge number of links here. Here are two favourites:

Picforth, In Nomine a 5.

and

Cork Sacred Harp - "47b Idumea"

Here are some examples: (and now that I post them, I realise some of them aren't really harmony proper, so I'm not sure what I'm asking for)

Irish lilting in harmony

Beloe Zlato - "За тихой рекою" (beyond the calm river?), and a better but more noisy version Белое злато - "За тихой рекой" (Белое злато / Beloe Zlato / White Gold -- I don't know anything about this group and if I'm posting Russian propaganda please let me know because I don't want to be doing that)

Mamas and Papas - "California dreaming", "Here in my arms" (although Ella Fitzgerald's version is much much better), "Safe in my garden" (especially the bit around 1:50 building to 2:15)

Sacred Harp choirs. Sacred harp and "shaped singing" is how you teach people to sing if they can't read music. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note](Wikipedia has a good explainer). They start with a verse of the soh, lah, ti, fah sounds so people know the tune and rhythm and then they launch into it. I'm not religious (in a quiet, polite, respecting other people's religions kind of way) but they turn out a great tune sometimes. Henderson, Texas - Sacred Harp 463: "Angel Band", Austin, Texas - Sacred Harp 463: "Angel Band", Unknown - scacred harp 463: "Angel band". Camp Doremi Europe 2015 - Sacred Harp 117 "Angel Band". I've dumped four of the same song so you get a feel for differences in pace, in size of congregation, and skill of singers. The acoustics of these rooms suck, and even skilled professional sound engineers are going to struggle to mic up these rooms and get good output, but I like the fact that every consumer grade mic and recording equipment is just OVERLOADED TO ALL HECK.

More sacred harp. Texas - Sacred Harp 505 "Cleansing Fountain". The lyrics are really something.

Irish sacred harp, and this is the one I really want to share because my word they mean it: Second Ireland Sacred Harp Convention - "47b Idumea" there's a woman really singing. I love love love this. There's also Cork Sacred Harp - "Come thou fount"

It's not just vocal harmony either. Lankum, NPR Tiny Desk Concert, "The Wild Rover" just builds and builds layer upon layer. (And "Bear Creek" does something similar, with more joy. The Mary Wallopers - "Frost is all over" have something going on underneath this romping joyful noise and I think it's the sneaky "Banish Misfortune", so here's a version of that Sorcha Ni Scolai - "Banish Misfortune" and it's all amazing but there's a tiny bit at 1:19-1:25 that gets right into my brain.

Sometimes it's just a big crowd. From a comment by @jgb I found this Welsh National Anthem just before Wales beat England. Here's a Welsh flash mob Cor Meibion Male Voice Choir - "Bread of Heaven"

And I think it's not just "harmony" proper that I'm thinking of. A bit of nice tune in the middle of near chaotic noise is nice. So, for an example, listen to all of this The Incredible String Band - "The Mad Hatter's Song" and stick with it, because at 3:40 they suddenly drop into this very short, but very sweet bit of nice tune. And that "I am the archer, the lover of laughter, and mine is the arrowed flight; I am the archer and my eyes yearn after the unsullied sight" is lovely.

I'm listening to a bunch of music from the 1500s, and especially In Nomine. The strings sliding all over the place is amazing to me. In Nomine À 5, "Seldome Sene" · Christopher Tye · Jordi Savall, In Nomine À 5, "Rachells Weepinge" · Christopher Tye · Jordi Savall, In Nomine IV A 6 (Strogers) · Hespèrion XX · Jordi Savall, Youtube have given this weird artwork Picforth, In Nomine a 5.

This is a recurring topic for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app, which is currently in alpha testing.

I'll summarize the previous month's updates at the start of each topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

Android v0.9.1: Fixed crash double-tapping comment in profile, and other rare crashes and minor bugs.

iOS hotfix v0.9.1: Fixed a possible crash opening the Notifications tab.

Android and iOS v0.9.0 (Jan 22, 2024)

• View user profiles ("all posts" feed; more options like bios coming in the future)
• Tweaked app theme colors
• Fixed various layout bugs
• (Android) Fixed crash tapping links in comment reply preview
• (Android) Fixed missing Share button on topic OP if logged out
• (Android) Fixed black background setting on Android 9 and earlier

iOS hotfix v0.8.1: Fixed keyboard blocking the Exemplary prompt dialog.

Android and iOS v0.8.0 (Jan 9, 2024)

• Apply comment labels (Exemplary, Offtopic, Joke, Noise, Malice)
• Tap an Exemplary label you've received to see messages
• Added Reply to text selection context menu
• Quote selected text when replying
• Fixed app incorrectly treating user as logged in after restoring a Google Drive or iCloud backup
• (Android) Added Share button to OP in comments section
• (Android) Support Android 14
• (Android) Fixed rendering non-breaking spaces
• (iOS) Fixed logout bug if no connectivity
• (iOS) Fixed markdown table layout and CPU idle bugs
• (iOS) Fixed rare crash collapsing a comment

iOS hotfix v0.7.2: Fixed crashes in Notifications tab, and fixed crash inserting emoji in reply

Android and iOS v0.7.0 (Dec 27, 2023)

• Added a markdown formatting bar when composing a comment
• Edit comments after posting them
• View markdown of other users' comments
• (Android) New setting: Quit confirmation
• Fixed comment reply preview bugs
• Fixed bugs viewing direct linked comments
• Fixed numbered list bug
• Fixed rate limit error message
• Fixed crashes and UI bugs

Android and iOS v0.6.x (Nov/Dec 2023)

• In-app notifications of comment replies
• Highlight and jump to linked comments

Last month's topic: December 2023

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

iOS version on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

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

Tell us what it is, and why.

Previous posts in the series

Additional Details

I'm doing a bit of Typescript programming and started using zod for input validation. It has a fair number of convenience methods, one of which is brand(). This creates a unique type, much like the newtype operator in some languages. This is despite TypeScript not having unique types by default; TypeScript implements structural typing.

The technique used to implement unique types has been known for a long time, but it's new to me. You can declare a type with an extra field that doesn't really exist.

There seem to be several variations on how to do this. They seem to be mostly equivalent, but the ergonomics might differ. (Some might have better compiler errors that others?) The basic requirement is that the imaginary field doesn't get in the way in normal use, but it's incompatible with other types, causing a compiler error if they're mixed.

One way goes like this:

declare const brand: unique symbol;

type Brand<T, TBrand extends string> = T & {
  [brand]: TBrand;
}

It can be used to declare branded types like this:

type TopicId = Brand<bigint, "TopicId">;

const myTopicId = 123n as TopicId;

This trick relies on the fact that TypeScript's type checking is unsound. We can lie to the type checker. Intersecting T (in this case, bigint) creates a subtype of bigint with an imaginary field. The field's type is declared so the field requires a specific string, so it's going to be incompatible with just about any other type, unless you use Brand to give it the same name on purpose. (The field doesn't actually exist and no string is actually stored there.)

To create a TopicId value, you use "as" to explicitly downcast bigints to TopicId's. Then you can use them just like a bigint, except that there will be compile errors if you use them wrong.

A less strict approach is to make the imaginary field optional, described here as "flavoring" but I don't think that's in common use? Then you could assign bignums without doing a cast, but the type is still incompatible with other branded type. This reminds me of how types work in Go.

Voiceover: In space, there is SPACE WAR. Once there was a king or something, but he died. Honestly, it doesn't really matter. The Space War continues.

[We open to shots of bucolic farmland -- in SPACE.]

Village Chief: Everyone! We have to make love so the harvest gods make our crops grow! (This is a real line from the film.)

Village Chief: I am going to talk for a bit about religion. It will never come up again in any way for the rest of the movie, and our folksy ways will seem a lot weirder when the main characters walk to a spaceport that's, like, 20 miles away. But that doesn't happen for like another 30 minutes of screentime, so I'm going to go for it.

[Suddenly - Nazis in SPACE. They were presumably mentioned in the opening narration.]

Admiral Noble: Everything about me screams evil. Give me your grain.

Village Chief: Oh, uh, we don't have any.

Gunnar: Even though it's been shown that the whole village loves and trusts the village chief, and he explicitly told me not to do this, I will publicly contradict him in front of Admiral Noble and suggest that we sell the Nazis some of our massive amounts of grain.

[Admiral Noble kills the village chief. He demands all of the grain!!! He leaves some Space Nazis behind for the purposes of terrorizing the village and then leaves while they.. grow the grain? I guess?]

Gunnar: Noooo the consequences of my actions!

[The Space Nazis are evil to the villagers and also each other. They have a robot. He is conflicted about things.]

Robot: Have you heard about the king?

Village Girl: No.

Robot: There was a king. All we combat robots had a prophecy about how he would have a daughter. Then he did. Then they both died. We decided to stop fighting because all the light had gone out of the world.

Village Girl: Well I think you're carrying the light inside you, Nazi Robot That I Just Met.

Robot: That's kind of a weird thing to say, but thanks.

[The concept of combat robots who prophesy, worship a human god-king, and can choose not to fight - by far the most interesting idea in the movie - is never touched again. The Nazis try to rape the village girl, in case the audience needs a reminder that they are evil.]

Old Villager: Kora, when I found you on that crashed ship being all badass and stuff, I thought you were a badass. Please help us!

Kora: No, I don't feel like it. I'm going to leave. If the Space Nazis learn I'm here, they'll kill all of you. Wait, are those guys going to rape that village girl? Well, if I don't help, it'll introduce some moral ambiguity to my character, and we can't have that, so....

[Kora beats the shit out of the Space Nazis, mostly in slow motion. The robot helps, then runs away. He is never seen again, which is very confusing for the watchers since he has had a significant amount of the dialogue thus far.]

Kora: Well, shit.

Gunnar: We have to go find some more fighters to protect the village!

[Gunnar and Kora walk to the spaceport.]

Kora: The Space Nazi Emperor found me as a child and raised me as his daughter. I had to become an assassin or something. Now you know my darkest secret.

Gunnar: Honestly, I'm not surprised at all.

[They go to a bar. A weird alien disses Kora. She shoots him and a bunch of his friends in slow motion, but not before giving them lots of chances to surrender because she's a good guy.]

Kora: Anyway, now that those guys are all dead, we're looking for the super secret rebel leader. You know, the one whose very name means death to mention. Does anybody know how to find him?

[Kai stands up. Kai is sketchy and rougish.]

Kai: Yeah, I do. Plus I have a spaceship, which is convenient. We just need to run some errands first.

Kora and Gunnar: Tight.

[They visit a variety of locales. At each one they find a new member for their crew. Each new character gets a five-minute fight scene in slow motion. None of this is relevant to the plot. None of them get any more lines in the entire movie, because we have a lot of exposition to dump.]

Kora: At one point I was the bodyguard for the princess. She had space magic. It was wild. Anyway, just wanted you to know.

Gunnar: Wait, didn't that robot imply that the king and his family got killed, like, a hundred years ago?

Kora: Nah. Well, maybe. Don't worry about it.

[The crew finds the rebel leader.]

Rebel leader: Fuck off, we don't want to help you and your shitty village.

Gunnar: ...please?

Rebel leader: Good point. Okay, I am going to go help these guys. Team, this is exactly what we have been working towards. Who wants to come with me?

[Basically none of the rebels go with him.]

Rebel leader: Fair enough.

[They go to somewhere. Suddenly, Kai betrays the crew! And the Space Nazis are there!]

Gunnar: What the hell, man? You've acted sketchy this whole time, and now you're just going to go ahead and do an obvious betrayal?

Kai: The space nazis didn't just destroy my planet. They tortured every man, woman, and child living on it first. (This is an actual line from the film.)

Kora: Okay...? You'd think that would make you hate those guys instead of work for them, but whatever I guess.

Kai: Anyway, the whole point of all of this is that I want to collect the bounties on all of these rebel fighters I took you to visit, and I figured they'd come with you when you asked. Because I know your secret identity as the adopted daughter of the space emperor!

Kora: Wait, so you knew where they all were the whole time? And instead of just selling that information you cooked up this insane plan to bring me to them so that they'd join my crew? Why?

Kai: Don't think about it too hard.

[For inexplicable reasons, Kai and the Space Nazis force Gunnar to execute Kora instead of just doing it themselves. Or not doing it, since the whole point of the plan was to take her alive. But wait! Gunnar sets her free instead!]

Kai and Noble: Oh, bother.

[There is a fight. The good guys win - in slow motion. The rebel leader dies, but since he is one of a dozen minor characters, the audience doesn't really care.]

Djimon Hounsou: Guys, this is awesome. It could start a whole... rebellion! I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but actually it really IS. (This is an actual line from the movie.)

Djimon Hounsou: I am wasted in this film. Also, Snyder paid how much for me and gave me literally 35 words of dialogue?

[The Space Nazis get the body of Admiral Noble. They pump him full of juice and he has a vision of the Space Nazi Emperor. At one point the closed captions read "astral ice crepitates," which is just incredible.]

Space Nazi Emperor: I am going to briefly recap the backstories of all of the crew, since you probably forgot as they haven't spoken since they were introduced.

Space Nazi Emperor: Ok, now that that's over - find them!!!

[Admiral Noble comes back to life. The heroes ride horses through a sea of grain, despite this ostensibly being a movie about space. The last shot in the film is of a Nazi Robot in the grain holding a stick and wearing antlers on his head. It is unclear why.]

THE END

I've noticed this changing over the years from my options when interfacing with a website or app going from "yes" or "no", to "yes" or "maybe later". I've tipped over the point from being mildly annoyed by this trend to now being angry about it.

Navigate to my bank's web portal to pay bills, "did you want to try and qualify for this new Visa card?"

Launch and use an app, "leave a rating!"

It's even a part of Windows now. When running through update prompts, setting up a Microsoft account is "yes" or "remind me in 3 days". The answer is no thank you!

I want to be able say no! And don't ask me anymore, ever again! How often should a product be allowed to nag you into doing something you have absolutely no intention of doing? It feels like a situation where the dial on the nags could just keep getting turned up to try and force people into just submitting into whatever it is they're nagging us to do. They'll just keep prompting you over and over until you get fed up and just say yes.

Is this mindset actively being pushed by large companies to take away our ability to say no, and stop asking? Are there rules in place for this kind of thing?

Paradise is an exciting action sci fi with a really interesting premise. What if eternal youth, was available to anyone with money... yet it involved literally sucking the life force out of others less fortunate than yourself?



The movie focuses on Max, who after his wife is unexpectedly forced to give up 40 years of her life, he desperately searches for a way to get her youth back.

The movie is filled with the usual plot twists, cool sci fi graphics, true love and the like.



There are two truly interesting elements to this movie. The first is the cynical idea that if the rich could live forever, then they would be much more motivated to think about and solve for the long term health of the planet.

In this movie, only the rich can afford to extend their lives for as long as they choose, so we also see how that would severely impact wealth inequality. 



The second interesting element of this movie is a series of questions very similar to the trolley problem. If you could extend your life, at the cost of someone else's youth, would you, assuming they were somehow reimbursed financially?

What if your youth had been taken from you; or what if youth had been taken from someone you loved. Would you take it back? Would you take it back as ethically as possible, or ethics be damned?

Could you give up your youth to save a loved one from an extremely unkind yet uncertain end, or is it easier to risk your life to save theirs than it is to give up eternal youth once you have it?



At one point in the movie, we learn it is easier to take someones life passively through the forces of economics and medical science, than it is to actively kill someone with a gun to their head. Which is the essence of the trolley problem. But it is also the essence of wealth inequality.

We could easily flip the switch, to improve the quality of life and length of life for many people, at the cost of one rich persons riches, but those with power passively choose to not do so. The movie doesn't philosophize anywhere near as much as I am doing right now, instead focusing on fast action, true love and cool sci fi. But I think perhaps this movie is a very subtle warning to the rich. At a certain point of wealth inequality, some portion of the population will want their fair share of the wealth, ethics be damed.

https://www.netflix.com/title/81288179