How do you make sure that your Docker containers don't go rogue and start snooping around or contacting external servers that they shouldn't be talking to? Is there a network traffic monitoring program that I could use? Or a service that would notify me about vulnerabilities in containers that I have installed?

Some background:

Last year, I asked help setting up my new Synology NAS, and many of you wonderful people offered some really, really good advice. I have recently started to play around with Docker containers more, and I am a little uneasy about the idea that my NAS is home to my files, my own scripts, and Docker containers made by other people, and that it is always on and these containers have constant internet access. I don't have the time (or frankly the skills) to verify the contents of the containers beyond making sure that they come from reputable sources, but I would like to have a bit more peace of mind and make sure that things remain private and secure.

My setup at the moment is the following: I have a Synology DS923+ and I manage Docker containers with Synology's Container Manager, using docker compose files. I have so far put all containers into the same virtual network (perhaps something I need to think about), which is a separate IP range from my other devices, and has internet access through my DNS. I use Synology's DNS Server (for everything in my home network) and Reverse Proxy so that I can use local domain names and HTTPS. For HTTPS, I have made myself a certificate authority and created the necessary certificates and installed them on my devices. No ports are opened on the router and things like UPnP are turned off. I use Tailscale to access my home network when not at home. And while I have not yet done so, I have been considering setting up some firewall rules, for instance to restrict access to the DSM. I use 2FA for the NAS and its SSH is turned on only when I need to use it.

Honest question. My son is only 5 months, but that is something that came to mind while reading posts on American websites. My culture is not nearly as sensitive to swear words are English speakers seem to be, so I would like to know if there's any reason to be mindful of that other than specific cultural sensibilities. Is it inherently bad to use swear words in front of kids? Do you have any personal views on the matter?

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Just wondering what the sense is from others. Is it even a thing that you notice if you are in a more detached, work from home setting? Were “things different in my day, harumph!”

This isn’t intended to be a ranting thread on millennials or such. But I’m rather genuinely curious what is considered “normal” in terms of work ethic and work attitudes.

I've tried hundreds of searches (variations of this) on google and either I have no idea what to search for, or it doesn't exist.

I'll keep it short, the best way to explain is that I'm looking for a game in the style of the Total War franchise, but focused (mostly) on the top down battle view:

Example 1

Example 2

I'm not that interested in manually managing tens of regions, I don't want to 3d my way through a battle front while the soldiers gore eachother, I just want to focus on being a general that wins battles through tactics. Where I can apply strategies like Oblique Formation and False Gap to outmaneuver my enemies.

Do you have any recommendations for me? Is there any game that even comes close to this? (apart from the Total War franchise - which I love by the way, but the games tend to last too long, and they're getting bigger and bigger with each release)

Hi all,
I don't know where to turn on this. I work in a small company, my boss who is an amazing person and has given me so much and helped me really kick start my career has had some accusations over the past little while. But now I've heard a few stories that really show that he's done some shady stuff. My boss has been like a brother to me and is a close friend. I have no idea how to digest this and I have no idea who I could talk to, so I'm just posting here.

I don't want to lose a friend, he's been nothing but amazing to me.

Edit: thank you everyone. I'll keep reading the comments. I just need to reflect on this and I appreciate your discussions.

Edit 2: There is proof enough to not deny things, inappropriate and agressive advances and groping stuff. Nothing good.

Web devs: what's up with this trend? For enterprise apps, I get it…single sign-on needs to detect what your email domain is to send you to your identity provider. For consumers, I feel like it's gotta be one of these reasons:

• Users don't know about the tab key being able to move to other fields on a page
• Mobile users don't really have a tab key, despite there being "previous/next field" arrows on the stock iOS keyboard since its inception (Android users, help me out please)
• Users tend to hit Enter after typing in their username, leading to a form submission with a blank password
• Security, maybe? In the past I have sent a link and a password in separate emails or separate communication methods entirely. Are you hashing/salting these separately for better MITM mitigation?

Did your UX team make a decision? Are my password managers forever doomed to need a "keyboard combo" value for every entry from now on?

Non-devs: do you prefer one method over the other? If so, why?

Tildes maintainers: selfishly, thanks for keeping these together :)

I was watching this video. The auto-translated subtitles are not great, but I followed along a bit.

We tried 15 types of Biryani

It made me realise that in the UK I have access to a very limited selection of biryani. From a supermarket it will look like this: https://www.iceland.co.uk/p/iceland-chicken-biryani-375g/87458.html. I'm missing so much knowledge about an enormous region that covers over a billion people.

I'd be really interested to hear about biryani, especially regional variations with different ingredients. What things are essential and often missed? What makes a biryani great?

I'd also love to hear more about delivery - those "handi" ceramic dum cooked to order pots look amazing. There's another video here of an "unboxing" - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Q5OA4XiGl34 , and the makers have a video here too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6nE1Nla3u0

The results are in, and Dispossessed was the clear favorite with many strong contenders. It looks like quite a few people are interested in participating.

There was a tie for third place so we will start with four books.

Edit
We will discuss Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell in early March,
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke in Mid April,
The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin in Late May
And Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir at the end of June.

We will discuss Project Hail Mary in early March
Cloud Atlas in mid April
The Dispossessed in late May
and Piranesi at the end of June

At that point I plan to hold a voting thread for fiction and a voting thread for nonfiction and discuss/vote on how frequently to read nonfiction. Please feel free to renominate your favorites that didn't get chosen.

I'm looking forward to this. Thanks for participating.

I'm currently building an MVP for a startup, solo. We've got Postgres pulling triple duty as the go-to database for all normal relational data, a vector database with pgvector, and a job queue (With the magic of SELECT ... FROM "Jobs" WHERE ... FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED LIMIT 1). Every time I go out looking for solutions to problems it feels like the world really wants me to get a dedicated vector store or to use Redis as a job queue.

Back when I was a Rails developer a good majority of the ActiveJob implementers used Redis. Now that I'm doing NodeJS the go-to is Bull which can only serialize jobs to Redis. They back this with claims that I can scale to thousands of jobs per second! I have to assume this theoretical throughput benefit from using Redis is utilized by 0.01% of apps running Bull.

So I ended up implementing a very simple system. Bull wouldn't have been a good fit anyway as we have both Python and Typescript async workers, so a simple system that I fully understand is more useful at the moment. I'm curious who else shares my philosophy.

Edit: I'll try to remember to update everyone in a year with the real world consequences of my design choices.

I moved to a place with an "actual" winter just over a decade ago -- snow, freezing temperatures, etc. In the first couple of years, I got what felt like a genuinely solid winter. Lots of blisteringly cold days. Snow that fell in large amounts and stuck around for most of the season. I love winter, so this was great for me.

In recent years, however, the winters have been milder and milder. When we do get snow, it's only around for a bit because days above freezing are now frequent enough that it's able to melt between snowfalls. Also, the snowfalls themselves are more intermittent. This year specifically we've actually had more rain than snow. I don't remember getting rain in January when I first moved here.

It irks me a bit because the shift has been so stark and noticeable in such a short period of time. There's a part of me that thinks that it's not a big deal and maybe my first years here were unnaturally cold and snowy for the area, so what I'm seeing now is simply the other side of the mean, but then there's another part of me that feels like that's simply a comforting lie I can tell myself in the face of the obvious effects of climate change.

Is there anyone else here that feels like they're missing their winters?

I'm wondering if this type of tool exists. Basically, I am senior dev of a 3 man dev team at a non-tech company. I maintain 60 or so web apps for our 300-400 users (all internal apps) as well as act as jack of all trades when it comes to SQL, IIS, self hosted and cloud hosted windows server boxes, VMware, etc. Basically, I have a lot of spinning plates.

We are in active development but we get interrupted a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Because of this, we don't really work based on deadlines but more on timelines. Upper management knows that things get priority over other things and we have to move things around and pivot a lot, so as long as we can explain why a project took 6 more months than we projected, it's fine.

So having said all that, I'm looking for a timeline system similar to gantt but I want the ability to have more than one "timespan" per task/row.

So for example let's say I'm building a to-do app and one of the tasks is to figure out the theme/color scheme of the app. I think this will take 3 days, and I don't really need to be more specific than that, they aren't trying to micro manage. However, I got interrupted and pulled off the project in the middle of that task, so I worked on it for 1 day, I had other things for 3 days, and I came back to finish the last two days.

In this case, in a gantt chart, your task can only be one "timespan" per "row" and in order for me to chart what actually happened, I need to add multiple subtasks to that task and the task ends up taking 3 rows of space.

This is rough to read and annoying to have to rearrange and insert new subtasks and rearrange subsequent tasks along the timeline.

Is there a tool out there that handles this more "ad-hoc" scheduling that I'm looking for?

Ideally what I would like is for me to be able to put together a full estimate of time for the project (say 3 months) with the ability to cascade schedule changes down when a task in the middle goes on longer than expected or gets interrupted.

I would like to have categories or color mapping so we can see which timespans are interruptions and which are tasks done and tasks to do.

Am I asking too much? Does gantt have this ability and I've not found the right vendor?

Right now my temporary solution is excel but it's a beating to have to go shift things every time I have an interruption, I feel like I spend more time explaining what happened than I do actually programming, haha

Edit: I've seen things like Monday.com and Microsoft project, but these are really heavy and too specific for my needs, I don't want a lot of context or setting up a kanban board or anything like that, I just want effectively an interactive timeline with simple "I'm doing this for x days" and not much else in terms of percent complete, details of the task, sprint integration, etc.

Think trello in complexity, just time-based and sideways 😅

I don't want to be a project manager, I don't have time for that - I just need the ability to quickly track interruptions and be able to use it as backup if upper management comes poking around

It seems to me we teach kids math in a way that prioritizes mass teaching and resource management over the actual learning of mathematical concepts.

We rely on paper and pencil, and maybe some limited manipulatives like unit blocks, and there’s 1 teacher for every 15-30 kids or so.

What are some methods that might work better to establish a strong understanding of math if we were able to approach it differently?

Or what are some methods that have been proven to work in other settings and why are they able to be successful?

The company I work for laid off half of my office this week. I'm one of the survivors, and trying to process what happened.

The company has been transparent about revenues. However, we had no idea that we would be so badly penalized for management choices that created significant operating cost overruns in the face of a projected short-term demand decline. I've lost half the members of my immediate team, good friends, people whose work and thoughtfulness I deeply respected. The entire department structure is being upended. The harshness of the selection for people who were being laid off included a teammate who's in the hospital, parents of young children, people on the edge of retirement. I'm suspicious and extra hostile towards the company - it's very significant to me that all the people of color and people who've had recent medical leave are among the lost.

It's not the first time I've watched and survived a company's poor management and bad choices, but this is by far the worst. I've worked very hard at staying professional with the customers this week. I'm still inwardly seething with rage. I'm trying to figure out how to be supportive to the people who are leaving. I'm trying to figure out how to help a team lead who's in his first management job, and is totally devastated and nearly frozen with helplessness. I'm decent at my job, but don't know why I was kept and others with equal or greater skills were let go. I don't feel good about what qualities I might have had that corporate desired to keep - dutifulness, compliance, amiability, reticence?

At the same time, I'm looking at months of double workload even though corporate management claims they'll outsource part of the duties (so that's another symptom that I'm replaceable) and manage the task pipeline. There's a frankly insulting retention bonus if I stay for another year. We've gotten the usual anodyne HR garbage about the employee assistance program and coping skills. The corporate management's left us with the ominous "stay tuned for further announcements over the coming weeks".

I don't have a lot of choices here. I'm trying hard to stay focused on the present, without looking over the cliff of dread at the future. At the moment, I'm the sole support for our household and source of health insurance. My spouse is badly burnt out, and I don't want him to look for work a minute before he's healthy and enthusiastic about a job. I'm a late-50's end-career professional who wouldn't normally have much interest in restarting yet again elsewhere. I very deliberately chose this company, job and location, liked the work I was doing, the people I was doing it with, and I was looking forward to building on it. There's still the possibility that our half-vacant remote office will be closed and consolidated with the corporate headquarters. I have less than zero interest in relocating, and plan to keep separated coworkers who live here as personal friends.

I'll be grateful to hear any advice on coping with this situation, and hope the replies will be helpful to others in future.

I do not like using mouse. I feel it disturbs the flow of things I am doing. Moreover, I like quickly pressing through a bunch of keystrokes that results in what I want. There is a sense of satisfaction in that.

For starters, I use Vim and love it. I liked it so much that all my browsers have Vim-like keybindings (through Vimium or Tridactyl). But that is as far as I have gone in making my life easier (apart from switching windows via Command+Tab, but for all else I need to use mouse).

I recently bought a MacBook and it is kind of disappointing that the keybindings are not so intuitive or don't exist natively as they do in Windows. For example, resizing the window was easier on Windows with Win+arrow. There are many such things I find lacking on Mac. Broadly, I am asking for what other improvements can I bring into better my keyboard-centric workflow.

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.

Gametje

Hi all been working on this project for a while in my spare time. I wanted to share it with this community to see what you all thought.

What is it?

It is a set of online games (currently only 2) which can be played in person with a central screen (like a TV) or remotely via video chat with screen sharing. Essentially there is a host screen and then each player has their own player screen (laptop or phone etc). It is playable in 8 languages at the moment (feel free to request any others!) It also has an integrated ChatGPT player which can be turned on/off in game settings if you prefer to play without it. There are some game mechanics to identify a ChatGPT answer which can yield some funny reactions if you choose a human's answer! It has Chromecast support and works well on Amazon Fire sticks. Visually, it is still a little rough around the edges as frontend design isn't my forte but the core concept is there. I have been play testing it with friends but have not shared it publicly yet.

Why is it called Gametje?

I have been living in the Netherlands for some years and my original motivation for starting this project was to create a game that supported languages other than English. I wanted to incorporate something Dutch into the name. tje is one of the diminutive endings in Dutch. It is usually meant to soften a word or make it "smaller". So Gametje -> a little game.

Where can I try it?

https://gametje.com/

You can either create an account (user/pass with email confirm) or try it out as a guest (navigate to either game, then choose continue as guest). Currently it is free to host a game. Happy to hear any feedback (both good and bad). Hopefully the host provider I am using to run the game will hold up.

Thanks!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like fujitsu, transphobia and the daily show. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was perplexed.

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!

I'm curious if there's anybody here who's like this. Either doing it without writing things down, or doing it minimally. I don't know why but I find it very difficult to do, and it stops me from actually learning/studying. I feel like it slows me down, significantly. It also feels like a chore. I feel like part of this may be because I'm in information security? Like, there's a lot of reading and researching going on, then immediate practicing and applying. Even when I have to take tests. I just read and listen or whatever else and that's it. Maybe in other fields, taking notes is a big thing, or maybe it's just me. I also have other interests, but yet still, I simply can't bring myself to write things down. I just prefer to absorb everything, in whatever pace I like, sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's fast. If I ever decide that I'm going to take notes while learning/studying, I'd stare at my notebook/software for a very long time. I'd sit with one chapter/slide for quite awhile. At the same time, I truly admire people who take notes and write stuff. I do wish I was like them sometimes. Is anybody out here the same? Even though I really want to hear from people who are similar, everyone else can join the discussion too. What do you do? How do you do it? What is your preference? Do you think there's a "better" way to do things? Could taking notes be "superior" to the opposite?

Forget highbrow literature and critics for a moment. What's a book series that stayed engaging and enjoyable throughout?

Bonus points if you don't have to provide a disclaimer for those one or two books in the series that are "a bit of a slog but still really good!"

My top nominations are:

1. Red Rising: Never read anything quite like it. As an ADHD haver, reading something more than once is the bane of my existence. Not for this series. Endlessly re-readable and highly engaging throughout. Starts out as Roman hunger games in space, turns into peak Game of Thrones in space. God, it's so good.

2. Harry Potter: Not sure I need to explain this one. Plenty to hate about this series and the author, but they aren't popular for no reason. I find the world to be magical, whimsical, and the story to be very engaging. The later books are particularly good.

3. The Bobiverse: this is the most fun series on my list. The name and premise will turn most people away from this one and it's a real shame. I could not stop reading these and I'm dying for more. If this story went on forever and maintained its current quality, I don't think I'd ever get bored of hearing it on audiobook.

I have a teenage child. They're going to be doing "design and tech" at school, and they've shown an interest in light maker / builder projects.

I want to put together a small toolkit for them.

The difficulty I'm having is that when I look at precision screwdrivers I pick a Felco set for £80. For regular screwdrivers I pick either Felco, Wira, Wiha, or Sandvick Bahco. This is probably a bad idea - they're going to end up with a lot of very expensive kit that they will not appreciate yet.

The other thing I'm struggling with is knowing which bits of kit are essential and which are nice to have.

I'd be really grateful to hear your thoughts about this kit. I'm especially interested to hear discussion about balancing "good enough" with "avoid garbage" -- I do prefer to spend more on quality rather than buying cheap buying often.

Screwdrivers:

A handle and a set of bits to fit the handle - £10
A set of weird bits (security, hex, torx) to fit the handle £5
Screwdrivers - pz1, pz2, 4 flat head screw drivers in sensible sizes (still working this out) (probably stanley FatMax) - £30

Snips - they're getting my Bahco snips and my ancient lindstrom snips. I want to get them something they can destroy through misuse, so I'll buy something for around £15

Pliers - needlenose serrated pliers £10
Pliers - big pliers - they'll be getting my ancient RS pliers.

Wire strippers - I like the scissor type that have a range of holes. A nice pair is about £20.

Wrenches and spanners - I have three adjustable spanners in different sizes. I'm looking at micro-ratchets, so something like Kerr or felo (xs33) (but the felo is expensive!!) or Bahco 2058/S26 for £20

Soldering iron - I'm super tempted to just get Hakko's intro model for £100-£150. But I don't know whether I should go instead for some cheap thing like tenma. My own preference for me is strongly Weller - I used weller irons for decades and they were so solid and robust for what I was doing, but not a great choice for tinkering about. I'm struggling to understand the build quality of Tenma bought from a reputable company. I don't want my child fixing things in a mains powered box.

I need a tool box to put it all in.

I need some kind of cutting and filing tools - cheap set of files and a little handle.

I need some measuring equipment - I don't know whether to include a nice set of steel rules or a cheap digital calliper.

Alongside all this there will be a dremel multitool and some useful accessories for it.

And also safety equipment - dustmasks, eye protection (from a reputable supplier!!)

I can't get my head around President Biden polling poorly and Trump polling well.

I don't think I need to provide details for people on this site, but Trump was so horrible as a president and President Biden has done such a good job. Even if Biden was a passive placeholder four years of him would have been better than 4 more years of Trump.

I don't understand where the low polls are coming from. Particularly for groups that would not do particularly well under a Trump regime like African Americans and youth.

I see some people complaining about President Biden's age, but his administration has been doing a good job and Trump is only about 4 years younger ( and in much worse shape ).

I don't get where the hate is coming from.

I remember the "red wave" that never happened and articles explaining why polls aren't as accurate as they used to be. However, that answer feels too easy to me, a cop out.

Maybe people are angry about greedflation. However, Trump's presidency when it wasn't about vindictiveness was all about neglect. I can't believe people think Trump would be better for the economy -- that he would even try beyond the stock market so he polls well.

*Disclaimer:

My apologies if this is the wrong place for this conversation. I thought here or "talk" would be the best choices, though people in "talk" might not want political conversations.

After one too many blackouts for the past few years, we're in the market for a backup power solution.

Guidelines include:

• Would rather have multiple smaller units than one large one.
• Should be enough to charge phones, watch a television, run the Keurig. If it can spike up enough to run a heater or keep the fridge from spoiling, that's a bonus.
• Would like to keep it at ~$300 a unit.

We're looking into a whole home generac as well, but this is more of a bandaid trial solution for now.

A pretty simple feature. Just seems like it would be handy to apply a tag to posts that provide non-paywalled or archive links for posts that are walled or 404'd. The idea just being that it seems too much to put an "Exemplary" tag on it, but it seems too significant to just get a vote.

Ideally this would add the free link under the "Link Description" scrape, but that's probably hard to do. I guess you could also promote the tagged comment to the top of the stack, but then it seems like you can game out the sort to promote your commentary rather than just the link.

My wife and I have just finished playing Chants of Sennaar together. I know it's a single-player game, but working on the puzzles together is very satisfying, and the controls are simple enough (i.e. point and click) that it doesn't feel like the person controlling the game is "playing" the game, and we can discuss what's going on at our own pace.

Does anyone have any suggestions for other, similar games with (a) relatively simple interactions that let us play the game together, and (b) an interesting, engaging, and beautiful story?

I've seen a lot of recommendations for Obra Dinn as a similar game around gaining and then applying knowledge in order to solve the puzzles of the game. I confess the style isn't quite as appealing, but maybe we should give that a go next. Alternatively, Heaven's Gate looks like it's more explicitly a similar game about translation, but doesn't look like it'll be as easy to play together. I also thought about more old-school point-and-click games, but from everything I remember about those, they were less about figuring out puzzles with logic, and more about trying all the items in your inventory until something works...

Before we start, no, I don't mean "bring politics into" mental health. Politics obviously covers mental health issues, practices, and institutions. However, I've come to realize a certain approach to mental health has taken root in discussions around mental health. This approach is based on the criticism of mental health from an ideological point. It centers on the idea that mental health is treated only as a chemical imbalance in the brain, and that sociopolitical conditions aren't considered. One of the most prominently figures cited for this is Mark Fisher.

“The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRIs). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.”

― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, 2009

This, I think, is true to a degree. Denying the mental or physical results of certain policies benefits the rich. However, this criticism, whether intended by Fisher or not, is often used to reduce psychiatry and psychotherapy to mere, atomized, asocial, apolitical practices.

First of all, this hasn't been true in my case. Sure, I have my criticisms of the procedure and the practitioners, but I've talked about a variety of sociopolitical issues in therapy. I mean, how can you not talk about these issues? There are obviously social patterns in a population, and if they're not bad practitioners, the psychiatrists pick up on them. This doesn't mean that I talked about political theory in my therapy, but among numerous topics, I talked about things like the male gender role, the attached aggression and violence, the effects of emotional repression as a result of traditional roles. I know people who extensively talked in therapy about gender roles, queerphobia, and the associated problems.

Therapy helped me on political issues too. I used to be much more repressed, unable to express my disapproval, unable to handle any conflict. But with the help of psychiatry, I started expressing my opinions, including my disapproval, more and more. This included standing up for myself, and while there are many power structures I can't overcome as an individual, this change helped me better stand up for myself against people who have power over me. It also helps me feel not as much like a piece of shit when I can't, because learning to face my emotions helps me realize I have limits.

But, according to the Fisherian argument I've seen repeated countless times, this isn't what psychiatry does. It just treats you like an asocial animal, which is not true at all. If anything, psychiatry emphasizes, again and again, that humans are social animals, therefore, have social needs, and that not meeting those needs will lead to mental problems. Seriously. Search "humans are social creatures psychiatry" on whatever search engine you use and also on Google Scholar. You'll find, page after page, pop article and scientific article, talking about the importance of this.

The second thing I want to mention is that links between inequality and mental health are an important area of research. You can search for keywords like "socioeconomic status mental health" and "inequality mental health" on Google Scholar to see many articles written about this. You can alternatively replace "socioeconomic status" with "SES" and "mental health" with "mental illness" or a mental disorder of your choosing.

To add further support to my argument, let's look at the textbook "Psychology, Global Edition, 5th Edition" of Pearson, which is a very widely known publisher. It has an entire chapter dedicated to social psychology (Chapter 12). The chapter about psychological disorders, Chapter 14, has the following listed as one of its learning objectives (emphasis mine): "Compare and contrast behavioral, social cognitive, and biological explanations for depression and other disorders of mood."

Let's also look at WHO's mental disorders page (emphasis mine).

"At any one time, a diverse set of individual, family, community, and structural factors may combine to protect or undermine mental health. Although most people are resilient, people who are exposed to adverse circumstances – including poverty, violence, disability, and inequality – are at higher risk. Protective and risk factors include individual psychological and biological factors, such as emotional skills as well as genetics. Many of the risk and protective factors are influenced through changes in brain structure and/or function."

I think one of the other negative things about this argument is that, it denies the possibility that some people face mental illness not mainly as a result of social issues, but as a result of some biological unluck. I haven't checked it out specifically, but I think mental illnesses aren't necessarily mainly a result of social conditions or trauma. I can't claim this with certainty, but neither can the opposing side. However, my approach leaves a possibility open for people who may be experiencing exactly this. Therefore, without knowing, it doesn't claim that certain experiences can't exist.

Before I finish, I want to say that I don't deny the existence of bad practice. I've heard many stories of bad psychiatrists, and even if I hadn't, it would be unrealistic to think they wouldn't have such a problem, considering the problems in education and funding. However, my point is, it's not realistic to say psychiatry overlooks the social reasons for mental illnesses. There may be problems, but in no way they are a shared, distinctive feature of the field.

And last of all, this may be harsh but I think it needs saying, Mark Fisher fell victim to suicide. He's not exactly an epitome of healthy coping mechanisms, and his criticisms about mental health should be evaluated with that in mind. I often think intellectualization tends to come in the way of mental health for, well, intellectual people.

Edit: The last paragraph was poorly explained. I further elaborated here.

Hello Tildes,

I am currently taking DSA in college and struggling a lot with the math and algorithms. Recently had to solve Karatsuba questions and I don't even know what I wrote down on the paper. I have been trying to look for videos on this and only really came away with a vague understanding.

What I've noticed is that I struggle with solving the math part of the questions.

For example: "Describe a divide and conquer algorithm to compute the square
of an n-digit integer in O(n log3 5) time, by reducing to the squaring of five [n/3]-digit
integers"

I have zero clue how I am supposed to understand the latter half of the question. It makes no sense to me beyond I am supposed to be multiplying squared numbers. How do I even begin to turn this into an algorithm? What is the solution even supposed to look like?

Needless to say, I've struggled with math my entire life and I've been trying for years to be decent with it, and I have nothing to show for it.

So, do you have any recommendations that could simplify the math needed for DSA? Videos are preferred but I will textbook recommendations as well.

Thank you, and have a good day!

This is Album of the Week #17 ~ This week's album is Wormrot - Voices

Year of Release: 2016
Genre(s): Grindcore
Country: Singapore
Length: 26 minutes
RYM | Listen! (Album.Link)

Excerpt from Angry Metal Guy:

Natural though it may be, there’s something very special about how Voices draws from outside the walls of grindcore. It’s adventurous but just sounds so… obvious. This is just the sort of thing Wormrot do: write so well, perform so tightly, that whatever they’re doing just seems inevitable. Effortless, perhaps. Voices is loud, violent, and brutal, but it also restrained, as if measured in micrograms of controlled adrenaline and delivered intravenously. Like last year’s offering from Beaten to Death, this is a unique and immensely enjoyable take on grindcore that’s a true flame-bearer of the genre and won’t be wanting for love on the year-end lists of the abrasively inclined.

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

--

Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

I've been looking around at different note-taking apps (Notion, Obsidian, Anytype, Joplin, Logseq, etc.) after seeing a few videos about the idea of having a "second brain", and only how has the the thought popped into my mind, "What's the point?". A “second brain” seems like it would require spending too much processing power on something that only exists to exist. What are the chances there you're going to remember any given thing after writing it down? You haven’t filled up your first brain yet. This all sounds very pessimistic - my intention is not to insult anyone's choice to use these tools, but I'm curious of what benefits people have gotten from their "second brains". Maybe I'm just the wrong kind of person for it, or maybe it's just that I'm not used to writing things down.

Edit: I'm coming to an interesting conclusion that many people use their version of a second brain for things they need to do. This isn't really what I was referring to, I was more looking at it as a form of journaling or personal research, which might be less common?

Edit nominations are closed

I asked @Cffabro about doing another book discussion as with Roadside Picnic. He suggested that I pick it up instead. So hi. Are there readers here who would like to join me on a book discussion journey?

If yes, please name between one and five books you find intriguing and think others might enjoy. We will later have a voting thread so that each nomination gets an equal shot to win votes with no early nomination advantage.

Also, let's talk frequency. I think monthly, every six weeks or every two months all sound like reasonable intervals for busy people to read and discuss a book. What are your thoughts?

Lastly do you have things to mention that you thought worked well in the past or should be avoided?

I hope this gets some traction. I'm looking forward to it.

I have been having a lot of trouble finding a digital clock. I don't even know where to ask for recs, I tried a couple subreddits but there is no /r/digitalclocks so I'm trying a more general place here and maybe someone can help?

My requirements (I'm in the USA so that's where the time finding needs to happen):

1. It autosets the time based on the radio signal
2. It automatically detects DST
3. Backup battery so if I get a power failure it doesn't lose the time
4. The time is the only thing on the display. (Although, this seems to be the hardest one to find, so, if it also shows the temperature or something, that's ok, as long as the time is a lot bigger than anything else)
5. Not willing to spend more than $50 on a clock
6. Needs to be LED not LCD, i.e. I want to be able to see the time in a dark room without pressing a light-up button or anything

Additional bonuses:

1. If it has a rainbow display
2. If it has a USB charging port
3. Big numbers, like at least 1.5" tall

I don't care about the alarm or any overhead projection features.

If you have a digital clock that you love that meets these requirements (or at least mostly does) I would like to hear about it!! Thanks!!

Sorry if this is not the right place to post this.

I'm interested in a book about game development for the creation of world's, topics I'd like to see covered are:

• L-System
• Scene generator
• Fractal landscape

Is anyone aware of any material that may help me learn about the implementation of said topics. They don't need to be fully automated like a scene generator. Understanding immersion would also be important.

And perhaps while I'm at it if you have any favourite game development books I'd love to know them.

There is a horse race. The horses are running as fast as they can around the track. Around and around and around. This is what they're “meant” to do. Suddenly, a horse trips and crashes to the ground. It breaks its leg. It tries to get up. It tries to limp around the track, but it cannot. Try as it might, it can no longer run around and around and around. It is done. The horse is dragged off the track, a white curtain is pulled up around the horse, and a gunshot is heard. The race continues. That is how it goes. Around and around and around.

I've had this recurring thought of the lame racehorse for a few years now. Once I realized I needed to make a living, I set off out of the gates at high speed to become a software engineer. I frantically caught up in math, something I always struggled with in grade school, I took transfer classes at a community college and got 4.0s across the board, I applied to a local university, I got admitted, I stressed and had mental breakdowns and did all my assignments, I graduated Magna Cum Laude, what an honor. I worked so hard, running around and around and around. I actually got my first software engineering position while I was still in university, I worked there part-time for my last year of university, and once I graduated I went full-time. And here I've been running for five years around and around and around. I don't think I can run anymore.

I feel like trips and crashes have been happening over the years, at least I feel like they happen when I suddenly think of the racehorse. And I feel like they get worse and worse. Every time though, eventually I forget about the racehorse, but now I think the racehorse is really lame. And I feel like I am limping along the track not yet being noticed by the referees for some reason, around and around and around.

What keeps me running, and now limping, around and around and around is fear and anxiety. I don't want to think about entering the job market. I don't want to lose my health insurance. I don't want to become financially dependent on my partner. I don't want to feel like a failure. I have watched my brilliant colleagues from university very recently get laid off from their software engineering positions at various companies. And yet somehow I'm still limping around and around and around. I don't even know if I'm limping anymore, I think I'm stuck on the ground just moving my limbs around and around and around. And I'm honestly surprised nobody has noticed yet.

I understand some might suggest burnout. And maybe that is the case, but I've tried to take vacations, I've tried to focus on my own hobbies, and I know this post sounds pretty depressing, but outside of work, I am not depressed. The thing about burnout is that I think you have to actually catch fire before you burnout. Maybe for me it was a slow burn, not a sudden moment of catching on fire. Or maybe I did catch fire at some point, so long ago that I don't remember working so hard, although I probably could be reminded of it by my partner and friends, but I feel like I have never recovered from it. I feel like lifeless ashes from a burnout. I don't feel like I have ever rejuvenated, my ashes did not become soil from which new life can grow.

I have a performance review soon. This year has been the worst performance I've ever had so far. I'm in this weird feeling zone of simultaneously no longer having the energy to care anymore, while also harboring fear and anxiety because I don't want to have the uncertainty of being unemployed. But it generally comes out that "not caring" currently "wins" over the anxiety by a large margin. My work output has been seriously pathetic for at least the past month. Like completely slacking off almost. And I do feel guilty about it, just if anyone is wondering.

I feel like I'm waiting for them to pull up the white curtain and to hear the ringing of a gunshot.

I don't know why I wanted to write this, I guess I am just wanting to connect. I wonder if anyone else has felt such feelings that freeze you and make you feel like you're watching a trainwreck in slow motion that is your own life. And I wonder if anyone else has ever felt like a lame racehorse. I know there are a decent amount of software engineers here.

Thanks for reading.

This started as a post on asking about how long you think you could survive a massive supply chain disruption and associated collapse of authorities ability to intervene.

But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to paint a picture of a postwar context. Post-Yugoslavian War, post-Korean War, etc. Also, I don’t know if we’ve had any recent memories of sudden, total plunges into anarchy.

I wonder if the modern economy has lengthened the farm-to-table too much that no one could reasonably expect to sustain themselves for any longer than they have food in storage.

What strategies would you use/did you use to survive? Did society break down into roving gangs? If such a thing happened now, do you feel like you could weather the storm?

You can thank my being snowed in the last few days and watching World War Z, The Last of Us, Book of Elijah, Elysium, the Alone TV series and the Band of Brothers for inspiring this post.

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 capitalism, society and company culture. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was mystified.

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!

Watching the drama around kagi unfold and it has me wondering how much you take into consideration a creator's view on things like homophobia, sexism, racism, etc. when deciding to use a product. I think most of us have a bar somewhere (I would imagine very few on this website would ever consider registering on an altright platform), so where is that bar for you? What about art? Have you boycotted JKR or dropped your opinion about Picasso because they're transphobic and misogynistic respectively? Is it about the general vibe of a product or piece of media, or are you more discerning? What goes into this decision and why?

So I recently got back from a very comforting trip to my motherland in Taiwan. I always joke that when I get back from Asia my Chinese gets better by a lot.

One thing I kinda wish I was better at was reading Traditional Chinese, since it's one of the barriers I have for fully communicating with my family and dimishes my confidence when navigating Taiwan.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fluent in speaking, I've had full on conversations with native Taiwanese and they're always surprised that I'm from America.

At the same time I feel like I should be keeping up with the news and general day to day life in Taiwan, since I plan on visiting more often because my grandparents are getting older and I really miss the country a lot.

I know we have a couple of people who are in East Asian countries/Taiwanese/Taiwanese-adjacent, I was wondering if y'all had any suggestions on things like news channels on YouTube or day in the life content that I can follow along with and match characters to practice my reading a bit. I can read at maybe a kindergarten level if that helps LOL.

(That title is kind of awkward, feel free to suggest a better one.)

I came across aini's channel on Youtube a while back. She does videos on different topics focused on East Asia. Her most recent video being "Why Chinese People Will Choose $5 Over $10".

I'm especially interested in native creators; those who can present a personal view from the inside. Even more so for countries that are not as well-covered for whatever reason—like places with less technological access or government limitation.

My own preference is for a more analytical presentation. I.e. looking through an academic lens incorporating sociology, psychology, etc, rather than "footage of daily life". That style is still welcome, of course!

I work remotely for a US tech start-up, and my work is flying me out for our company kickoff in Santa Barbara at the end of February. Because I want to spend as little time in Berlin February weather as possible and I want to meet up with some local(-ish) relatives, I'm flying in a week earlier than necessary. As a result, however, I'm going to have some free time to fill.

The biggest thing is that I'm going to have to find and pay for my own lodging while I'm there until the work event starts and I can check into the hotel my company booked. So if anyone has any personal experience with some cheap-but-not-sketchy lodging options in LA or Santa Barbara, I especially welcome that. I'm flying into LAX so I'm able to stay there before going down to Santa Barbara for the actual work event if it's cheaper or there's more to do there (which I kinda assume is the case on both counts, idk).

I've heard LA is generally pretty expensive. I'm not a huge party animal by any means, but I figure I should do more when I'm there than sitting in my hotel reading (especially if I want to kick the jetlag before all the work stuff starts). So I'd also love any recommendations for cheap but interesting stuff to do while I'm there. My cursory Google searches have turned up a bunch of Hollywood tourist type stuff and recommendations for outdoorsy activities like hiking, neither of which is my speed. But surely there's gotta be some interesting stuff for a nerdy introvert to check out!

I'm also a very food-motivated traveler, so any particular restaurant recommendations for while I'm there are very welcome -- especially stuff that's hard for me to find in Germany. Latin American food is especially high on my list ofc, and I'm also on the lookout for good wing places, since I know both of those things are very hard to find at home in Berlin. But I also welcome other recommendations, especially stuff that isn't gonna come up in a quick google search. Or authentic Chinese food (even though I'm not going to SF, I learned how to say 洛杉矶 in Chinese class back in the day so LA's gotta have at least somthing 😅). I'm also a coffee person, so I'd love to know about any particular standout local coffee shops (even though I'm sure there's way more than I could try in even a month in a city the size of LA).

Hi all,

I'm looking for some advice as a first time visitor to SE Asia. I'm an experienced traveller I've just not made it to that part of the world yet. To give some context on my trip, I recently lost somebody very close to me, it was very sudden and painful and I'm just coming around to sitting with it after the surreality of being in it. Planning funerals, scattering ashes etc.

I don't suspect I'll find any answers travelling but I do have a strong desire to be as far away from where I am currently as possible and to just press pause for a while. I will be working while I'm away (unfortunately I cannot afford the time off) so I guess that is a factor too.

I am not interested in partying or the noise of major cities so where possible I guess I would like to avoid that.

My trip is planned for April and May. All I have so far is starting in Hanoi and ending in Singapore.

Any advice on routes/places to visit on the way are appreciated. As ever thanks to this wonderful community.

When I was reading a Psmith novel, I couldn't help but notice that Psmith had a certain similarity with Douglas Addams character Dirk Gently. I can't say for sure if it has any validity, or if it is just make-believe patterns in random chaos. But regardless, these are my observations.

Svlad Cjelli. Popularly known as Dirk, though, again, ‘popular’ was hardly right.
Notorious, certainly; sought after, endlessly speculated about, those too were true. But popular? Only in the sense that a serious accident on the motorway might be popular -- everyone slows down to have a good look, but no one will get too close to the flames. Infamous was more like it. Svlad Cjelli, infamously known as Dirk.

—Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Addams

Thus were Dirk Gently introduced. But who is this Psmith fellow anyways? He is the titular character in a series of novels by P. G. Wodehouse, a great humorist who happens to be Douglas Adams favorite author. Douglas Addams writing, I’ve noticed, share the same whimsical mastery of language:

Deep in the rain forest it was doing what it usually does in rain forests, which was raining: hence the name.

and

Richard stood transfixed for a moment or two, wiped his forehead again, and gently replaced the phone as if it were an injured hamster.

—Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Addams

While both characters have changed their name to something much more fancyful, their motivation contrasts greatly. Psmith wanted a fancier name, simple as that; Dirk Gently, on the other hand, changed his name repeatedly to avoid being held accountable for a lifetime of blatant hustling and has finally ended up with Dirk Gently:

'My dear Svlad.'
'Dirk, please, if you would,' said Dirk, grasping his hand warmly, 'I prefer it. It has more of a sort of Scottish dagger feel to it, I think. Dirk Gently is the name under which I now trade. There are certain events in the past, I'm afraid, from which I would wish to disassociate myself.
—Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Addams

Enter Psmith:

A small maid-of-all-work appeared in answer to the bell, and stood transfixed as the visitor, producing a monocle, placed it in his right eye and inspected her through it.
“A warm afternoon,” he said cordially.
“Yes, sir.”
“But pleasant,” urged the young man. “Tell me, is Mrs. Jackson at home?”
“No, sir.”
“Not at home?”
“No, sir.”
The young man sighed.
“Ah well,” he said, “we must always remember that these disappointments are sent to us for some good purpose. No doubt they make us more spiritual. Will you inform her that I called? The name is Psmith. P-smith.”
“Peasmith, sir?”
“No, no. P-s-m-i-t-h. I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith. But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced. Smythe I look on as a cowardly evasion, nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name on in front by means of a hyphen. So I decided to adopt the Psmith. The p, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan. You follow me?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“You don’t think,” he said anxiously, “that I did wrong in pursuing this course?”
“N-no, sir.”
“Splendid!” said the young man, flicking a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve. “Splendid! Splendid!”

— Leave it to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse

As mentioned, Dirk Gently is a hustler. One of those enterprising characters who will push themselves tirelessly and unrelenting in order to aquire cash or commodities without labour. Earlier, he had cast himself as a psychic, something which backfired with terrible hybris. When we finally encounter him, he has ended up as a detective, seemingly specializing in searching for, but not actually finding, the lost cats of old ladies:

'Yes,' continued Dirk into the phone, 'but as I have endeavoured to explain to you, Mrs Sauskind, over the seven years of our acquaintance, I incline to the quantum mechanical view in this matter. My theory is that your cat is not lost, but that his waveform has temporarily collapsed and must be restored. Schrödinger. Planck. And so on.'
—Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Addams

Psmith, by contrast, is no hustler, but fall squarely into the trickster archetype. Think Loki, who tricks the blind Hodr into killing Balder. Think the Joker, whose terror is its own reasoning. Psmith, by his own admission, is bored. He may steal umbrellas and impersonate poets in order to woe a certain girl, but one suspect that the girl is merely a pretext for the means.

Both characters share the same flamboyant ignorance of the fuckedupness of their antics. Compare Dirk Gentlys quantum cat theory to Psmiths approach to being accused of umbrella thievery:

“Mr. Walderwick was in here a moment ago, sir,” said the attendant.

“Yes?” said Psmith, mildly interested. “An energetic, bustling soul, Comrade Walderwick. Always somewhere. Now here, now there.”

“Asking about his umbrella, he was,” pursued the attendant with a touch of coldness.

“Indeed? Asking about his umbrella, eh?”

“Made a great fuss about it, sir, he did.”

“And rightly,” said Psmith with approval. “The good man loves his umbrella.”

“Of course I had to tell him that you had took it, sir.”

“I would not have it otherwise,” assented Psmith heartily. “I like this spirit of candour. There must be no reservations, no subterfuges between you and Comrade Walderwick. Let all be open and above-board.”

“He seemed very put out, sir. He went off to find you.”

“I am always glad of a chat with Comrade Walderwick,” said Psmith. “Always.”

— Leave it to Psmith by P. G. Wodehouse

When the girl feel some reservations upon learning that the umbrella he so gallantly lend her was stolen gods, he casually brush it off:

“Merely practical Socialism. Other people are content to talk about the Redistribution of Property. I go out and do it.”

Psmiths outre clash of upperclass lifestyle and socialist glamour is mirrored in Dirk Gentlys clash between the private detective business and holistic new-age mumble-jumble:

'I'm very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term 'holistic' refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson.
'Let me give you an example. If you go to an acupuncturist with toothache he sticks a needle instead into your thigh. Do you know why he does that, Mrs Rawlinson?'
'No, neither do I, Mrs Rawlinson, but we intend to find out. A pleasure talking to you, Mrs Rawlinson. Goodbye.'

Psmiths socialism bend is merely a humble joke. The quirky disrespect for property laws and insistance on calling other men "Camrade" is highly amusing, surely, but also a bit on the nose, lazy creativity which everyone else knowing nothing about socialism would come up with. On the other hand, with Dirk Gently, the holistic approach to detective work is mirrored in the novel themes and plotting. In contrast to the way Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy gleefully throws around outlandish scifi mindfuckery with absolutly no relevance to the plot, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a beautifully orchestrayed mystery where "everything is connected". (for another tightly plotted mystery novel in the fantastic genre, I can recommend Who Censored Roger Rabbit)

Another difference is that Dirk Gently is much more complex and deep, his casual money grapping contrasted with a moral compass of sorts. Both are clowns, but we get to see one of them after the show, devoid of pancake makeup.

I'm traveling with my wife to Italy (Rome, Florence) for our Honeymoon. We're American and looking for any suggestions on what to bring/wear, tips/tricks we might need to know, or anything you feel would be relevant. We have a basic itinerary with some guided tours through the "main" tourist attractions like the Vatican, Colosseum, The Pantheon, The Accademia Gallery, the Uffizi Gallery, and a few day trips. But we know not everything is going to take all day.

Do you have recommendations for things to do to "fill" the day? Anything to avoid? Things to bring that we might not think of? Any general tips/thoughts would be appreciated.

My weekly D&D group has been running for a number of years now and unfortunately our current DM is suffering from some pretty severe burnout at the moment (both in life and D&D in general). I think ultimately we're going to end up shuttering our D&D campaign, and may well never pick the game up again as we've almost all soured on WotC/Hasbro after the OGL debacle.

This week we entertained ourselves by messing around with image generation (velociraptor nun was a favorite result and became a bit of a running theme through the evening) but the fun in that can only last so long. We've also had some nights playing games like Dead by Daylight and Midnight Ghost Haunt but those are typically games we reserve for around Halloween. We also play some of the Jackbox Party Pack games, but they're only moderately fun to be honest.

We're usually a group of 7, and this particular formation of the friend group has been meeting almost exclusively online and will probably want to continue that way for the foreseeable future. I'd like some suggestions for games we could play together (either video game or TTRPG that works well online) that are: mostly cooperative or at least team based (we're not very competitive), something that won't become repetitive and dry after a couple of sessions (goal-oriented I guess), and something that we don't have to pay a subscription for. The ability to drop in or out as life dictates would be a plus too. Any thoughts?