What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

I'm in a decade-long predicament related to the management of a somewhat complex website for my publishing business, and I'd appreciate your advice. For context:

1. I joined the company as an original founder about 15 years ago. My initial roles mostly dealt with accounting, finance, sales, account management, etc. -- really, anything and everything I could help out with. I offered to take ownership of our website since I had a fair amount of web design and programming experience.
2. The original version of our website was a patchwork of PHP scripts from back in the days before Composer. I was inexperienced and didn't know anything about frameworks, etc. so I just started adding code.
3. Over the years, I built homebrew versions of user authentication, a backend (CMS, CRM, etc.), and our front-facing website (full-stack, from cloud hosting to CSS and everything in between). As the story goes, it became a spaghetti code mess that was only maintainable by me.
4. Realizing that I'd created a mess, my next long-term project was to slowly start transitioning the entire backend over to the Symfony framework, including many/most of the homebuilt components such as auth. This probably took 5 years in earnest. This way, I could at least begin to have conversations about getting outside help.
5. The other founder passed away unexpectedly, and I've found myself not having enough time to dedicate to the website. I can work on it here and there and patch it up when things break, but my fear is that we're going to become stale.
6. I've had several conversations with individuals and web development companies in various capacities over the years. These conversations ranged from "sure, I can help out with front-end stuff" to "we would like to rebuild your website from scratch using (insert popular CMS) and then manage it for the low cost of (insert high cost)".

Right now, all of the coding goes through me because it's the cheapest option (plus all of the context above). I'd like to explore delegating or outsourcing it again, but I don't know where the happy medium is as far as what needs to stay in-house.

Just to give an idea of the complexity, as it goes well beyond what you would think a publisher needs, here are some of the features:

• User auth/database with tens of thousands of users
• Single sign-on that connects those users to several other platforms seamlessly
• Content authoring
• Several "microsite" type pages on the front end that require their own CSS/JS needs
• Some unique features that were built because we couldn't find suitable alternatives, such as a webinar player that automatically generates certificates and stores them for the user, watermarked PDF downloads to include user information (i.e. to prevent piracy), etc.
• CSS from the Bootstrap 3 era that has been modified and bolted onto over the years
• Jquery stuff from way back in the day
• and on, and on, and on

To do things right, I would think that I need a server admin, a Symfony/PHP expert, and a front-end expert. But we're talking about what - hundreds of thousands of dollars per year? We can't afford that.

In my mind, an ideal situation looks like this:

• I am still able to see, modify, and keep control of our codebase (Git)
• Hosting is managed. This is where my second biggest* fear lies, in that I know enough server admin to be dangerous, but I lose sleep knowing that an intrusion is inevitable and there are smarter people than me that can help prevent one.
• I can assign out projects (e.g. we want to upgrade to PHP ## and Symfony ##, we want to redesign a page/template/etc., we want to implement SAML and connect it to another platform, etc.)

*My biggest fear is that, since I hold the keys to everything related to this website, if I am unavailable (or get hit by a bus) then I leave the business in a REALLY bad place.

Can anyone offer any advice on navigating this hornet's nest?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Does anyone else find themselves in the loop of always starting a new project? Of looking up tips and tricks to clean their room but then never get around to the actual cleaning? You want to buy just this one extra thing and THAT will change everything (spoiler: it doesn't). If I could just make a schedule for myself, then I could...

That's the "getting started" loop. Where you're always looking for the newest, so-called solution without enacting any of them.

Disclaimer: I have diagnosed ADHD and take Vyvanse Monday-Friday. But ADHD meds aren't a magical panacea. I'm a less anxious person. I'm able to get my work done. I've got the basics covered. But my personal life is really...neglected? I'm certainly not thriving. I don't have a good role model for what "adulting" looks like. Yknow the people who have thriving social lives, who can do their laundry without procrastinating, who get their butts into the gym without overthinking it.

I have so many hopes and dreams from being able to finally cleaning up my room and keeping it organized to wanting to stream and make videos for Youtube. I want to go back to school. But I am so afraid of change and not doing a good job, of not doing it perfectly, that I just don't start anything.

How do you avoid the loop?

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Building my first Progressive Web App, it's new territory for me but I've made it installable already.

I'm trying to cover a fairly simple use case, which is displaying a badge count based on the number of unread notifications. Intuition tells me that I'd just ping an endpoint on the server at a 5 minute interval, but I'm in new territory so I thought I'd open up the conversation to see if there's any gotchas to be aware of.

I'd like to see if there's anyone out there on Tildes who has experience in this domain - is the service-worker always on, or is it only active once the app has been open and then backgrounded? How do I know if the app is currently open? I would like the app to query for notifications more frequently when it's opened, and only intermittently when it's closed. Any tips?

I have, despite my better judgement, gone back on reddit in a limited way after exiting completely for a few months. I decided to anonymize myself as much as possible and was using Redact to cover my history. It overwrites comments with random words plus a short message that the comment has been anonymized and deleted with Redact. It's been working great for quite a few months.

Today I logged on for the first time in a few days and my comments have ALL been restored, right back to when I opened a new account a few months ago after closing my ten year old account. Everything is there again.

Not sure reddit's point in restoring them, other than a stark reminder that comments and personal info mining is the point of reddit, not community engagement, just like all the other social media.

Curious if anyone has any idea on how to permanently delete comment history?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I recently moved to a new place with a new ISP, and my Mullvad VPN isn't playing nicely with Firefox like it used to. Can any of you networking gurus please help me troubleshoot?

When the VPN is enabled, most requests from the browser fail immediately. If I pull up the dev tools Network tab, I can see that these requests fail with an NS_ERROR_FAILURE message before any data is transferred.

I have Firefox configured to use "strict" Enhanced Tracking Protection. When I reduce it to "standard" my requests go through.

I'm also trying to use DNS over HTTPS with a custom provider (Mullvad, via https://dns.mullvad.net/dns-query). I'm configuring this in Firefox, using the "Increased Protection" DoH setting. When I do that, Firefox reports the DoH status as "Status: Not active (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)". This happens even when Enhanced Tracking Protection is set to "standard" — in other words, that reduced setting fixed the NS_ERROR_FAILURE for HTTP requests, but not for DoH.

So how do I fix this so Strict Enhanced Tracking Protection, DNS over HTTPS, and Mullvad all work together? I never had this problem with my old ISP, so I suspect something's being blocked at the WAN level that I need to circumvent.

• OS: macOS Sonoma 14.5
• VPN protocol: WireGuard
• ISP: AT&T Fiber

I'm just using the official Mullvad client app with mostly default settings. The fiber gateway modem/router came with some default packet filtering firewall rules but I disabled everything in the admin panel. Weirdly, rebooting my machine fixed this temporarily, but the next time I disconnected/reconnected the VPN it broke again. Other browsers (with default settings and no DoH) are working fine when the VPN is connected.

Edit: Solved! Solution here.

So this is pretty different from the typical stuff on here. I want to share an interactive music project that showed up on my YouTube feed called MILGRAM. It's produced by Deco*27, a popular Vocaloid/Utauite, and Yamanaka Takuya, a member of the band The Oral Cigarettes who's also been a key figure in producing some anime and video games (Caligula Effect is a major one). This could probably fit into ~anime too, but this is specifically a music project so I figured this is the best place for it.

To quote the MILGRAM wiki:

MILGRAM, established April 2020, is an ongoing interactive music project by DECO*27 and Takuya Yamanaka.

The premise is that there are 10 prisoners residing in the Milgram Prison; they have all committed "murder". Over time, their mental images will be projected into a music video, containing hints and clues hidden in it. With these videos in mind, it is up to you to find out the truth behind their actions and deem whether they should be forgiven (innocent) or not (guilty).

In Milgram, there's a three trial system. Each prisoner will have 3 different MVs. For each video, you will be able to vote on their verdict (for the specific prisoner). Dependant on their previous verdict, their trial will change it's direction. Keep this in mind when you vote!

I like songs that tell stories, and MILGRAM definitely fits that criteria. I haven't finished listening to all of the songs released yet, but it's fun to watch the music videos while searching for clues to whatever murders they committed. Sometimes it's fairly obvious from the first video and lyrics. Other times, we're doing a lot of extrapolation. If you didn't know the context of the overall project, a couple of the songs and videos seem pretty typical for their musical genre. Just look at the top comment of that one: "imagine my confusion clicking onto a seemingly cute and catchy song only to scroll down and see people talking about abortion, murder and death??"

Even without that context though, I think all of the songs and music videos can stand on their own. I wouldn't have realized they were part of a series if they didn't mention "X Trial Music Video" in the title. The songs span multiple genres, ranging from rock to J-pop to metal to... I guess more jazzy and classical/blues? Not sure how exactly to classify that last one, the music video has my brain biased towards seeing it as a "musical theater song". Anyways, there's probably a little bit of something for everyone, and all of them are incredibly well done. I've been playing Undercover in particular on loop, and the melodies of a couple others have gotten stuck in my head.

Currently, the second trial/season recently wrapped up, and no word on when the third season/trial will start releasing, so the interactive aspect is currently on pause. But I figured this might be a fun rabbit hole for some others to go into. And there's some emphasis on it being a rabbit hole. There's a lot of related content like voice dramas and a Japanese mobile app that provide additional context. The wiki I linked at least has translated transcripts for the voice dramas and interrogations, and some of the messages on the app. Meanwhile, the music videos have some Japanese text that's left untranslated, but have YouTube comments mentioning rough translations. Basically, the music videos are just the surface of the story.

Mainly though? I just want to share some cool music and music videos. So I hope someone here enjoys this as much as I am!

This past weekend was EVO, the largest fighting game tournament in the world. This year the largest esports event in the world. Alongside all of world class international competition came a ton of trailers of what's coming next to the genre. Instead of just flooding the ~games group, I'm going to be compiling as much info as I can here.

Game DLC

Street Fighter 6 - Terry Teaser Trailer

Tekken 8 - Heihachi Mishima Trailer and Nike colab

Guilty Gear -Strive- Season Pass 4 Teaser Trailer

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising - Versusia Gameplay Trailer

The King of Fighters XV Special DLC | Vice and Mature | Trailer

Under Night In-birth II Sys:Celes - Uzuki Reveal Trailer

Pocket Bravery - DLC Character 1 Rick

Upcoming Game Info

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves | Kevin Rian

HunterxHunter NenxImpact Opening Movie and Meruem Trailer

Rivals of Aether 2 - Orcane Reveal Trailer

Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age - Damkina Trailer

New Game Info

SNK vs Capcom Chaos port