I've long enjoyed Foxhole and X4 and was wondering what other games has similar logistical systems. Both give the same satisfying feeling when you look at the big picture of how the games are a complex interplay between the immediate gameplay, and what is being simulated "behind the scenes" to enable it.

The descriptor in the title is a bit of a mouthful, so let's break down what I mean.

Complex
To exclude typical resource game mechanics, where you "just" mine resources which gives you resource points that you can spend directly.

Required & Supporting
In Foxhole the main objective is to push the front and win the war. And players can focus on that and never have to really think about how they get their weapons and ammo. But at the same time the logistics is the entire reason they even can fight.
In X4 you can fly about and do stuff and acquire ships while relying on the AI empires economies. But there has to be some alive economy for the game to not go to a standstill.
In short, logistics systems that are required by the game, but not necessarily by the individual player.
This excludes games where the logistics system is the game, like Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program, Satisfactory, etc.

Real end-2-end
To specify that there should as little cheating as possible. Though obviously there is always some cheating in games. Both in X4 and Foxhole, every resource is tracked right from harvest, to refinement, to the end product. And all steps require real moving of goods by AI (X4) or players (Foxhole) between factories, other intermediaries, and end users.

So what other similar games are there? I was thinking of EVE Online, but I think only the player orgs in null-sec have real economies in that game, and you could still play it if they all suddenly stopped.

Hi Folks

I've been working on an autoconversion Bash script to pick up videos and convert them to AV1. Yes, I know converting a source to another source means degradation and yada yada yada, but it's something I can live with as most of my sources are of very high quality to begin with, and I'm going for space-saving. Plus, my eyes aren't what they once were.

The conversion into AV1 I'm mostly happy with. I'm currently going through some old 90s shows which are of lesser quality, so they would need a little help to look better with AV1 by adding some natural film grain, else AV1 makes them look a little bit too clean.

I can easily pop into the script and enable film grain in the variables, or add in a simple option, but that's boring and tedious. Why do that when we can automate the world :)

Where I have got to is using the signalstats filter. The issue I have is I don't know how to analyse it's output enough to work out whether I should or shouldn't enable film grain or not. I know it's subjective either way.

Does anyone have experience with this? The output per frame looks like:

frame:1438 pts:59977 pts_time:59.977
lavfi.signalstats.YMIN=0
lavfi.signalstats.YLOW=0
lavfi.signalstats.YAVG=60.6913
lavfi.signalstats.YHIGH=149
lavfi.signalstats.YMAX=239
lavfi.signalstats.UMIN=91
lavfi.signalstats.ULOW=108
lavfi.signalstats.UAVG=121.955
lavfi.signalstats.UHIGH=131
lavfi.signalstats.UMAX=148
lavfi.signalstats.VMIN=124
lavfi.signalstats.VLOW=128
lavfi.signalstats.VAVG=134.535
lavfi.signalstats.VHIGH=146
lavfi.signalstats.VMAX=154
lavfi.signalstats.SATMIN=0
lavfi.signalstats.SATLOW=0
lavfi.signalstats.SATAVG=9.74682
lavfi.signalstats.SATHIGH=27
lavfi.signalstats.SATMAX=43
lavfi.signalstats.HUEMED=147
lavfi.signalstats.HUEAVG=162.949
lavfi.signalstats.YDIF=0.737433
lavfi.signalstats.UDIF=0.642897
lavfi.signalstats.VDIF=0.162755
lavfi.signalstats.YBITDEPTH=8
lavfi.signalstats.UBITDEPTH=8
lavfi.signalstats.VBITDEPTH=8

I'm happy to analyse a random 60-second segment and then grab an average from a couple of these outputs, but I'm not sure if this is a good method or not. I'm asked a couple of the biggest LLMs, they have come back with older ways that no longer exist in ffmpeg 7.1.

I'm trying not to use too many other pieces of software in this script. The dependencies are fairly simple with ffmpeg, awk, grep, etc., the kind of thing you get on nearly every distro of Linux. Any thoughts and/or ideas?

So I've been playing a lot of Helldivers 2 recently, and was wondering if there would be much interest in the community for a Tildes LFG / Discord situation to find pick up games.

Anyone else have an interest in the game still?

EDIT: Apologies for the slow response / organization to this thread. Life is busy.

I have generated a permanent invite link to a 'HELLDIVERS' channel on 'The Oak', my personal use Discord server: https://discord.gg/sqepxdu7dK

Join that and say something in the helldivers chat channel, and I'll tag you as an HD2 player for general pings.

Or if you'd like to add me on steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Acorn_CK

My rarely used twitch is the same name, twitch.tv/Acorn_CK

EDIT 2: My timezone is PST, although I play late (generally 9pm-~1am)

Hello all. I feel like our US election upset (or victory depending on viewpoint) has really run wild on Tildes. I appreciate all the solidarity and encouragement from the non-US folks. I know for better or worse it affects many of you as well.

While knowing these are special circumstances, I was thinking maybe folks feel a little left out or overshadowed by our drama.

Back before I had to go on a podcast diet, I really enjoyed the weekly updates from American Prestige because they would discuss important or interesting political/social developments and explain their implications.

So what's something happening where you are? How do you feel about it? What do you wish more people knew about it? It can be big or small. It does not have to be something political, just something important to you.

This is the eighth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing Kindred by Octavia Butler. Our next book will be The City We Became by Jemisen the first week of December.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

Hello good and clever people of Tildes, I need some advice.

With electricity the price it is, and my wife having a sizable workshop in the garden, I'm looking for ways to bring down the heating cost.

Her workshop is 5m x 4m x 2.2m, and the wood is 44cm thick. It's a chunky beast. She makes gifts and personalised items, so when she has the heatpresses and mug/tumbler press on the go, it gets toasty. If the sun comes out, also toasty. However, over night, it gets super chilled, almost to whatever temp is outside. To combat this I decided to use a Govee Electric Space Heater, 1500W with Thermostat, WiFi & Bluetooth. However, this barely does anything and the electric usage flies up.

What are good options here? The office is about 10 metres from my house. It's too far to extend the home central heating via plumbing, plus too much lagging. I don't want to spend a fortune, so any sensible options I'm willing to entertain. If we're talking a couple of thousand, it's off the menu.

Thanks for any help.

Dropping an edit with a link to the actual cabin: https://www.tigersheds.com/product/the-gamma-44mm-log-cabin/

It's not like a USA style log cabin, that's for sure!

Edit 2: Okay - wall insulation looks like the next thing to tackle before even thinking about heating it. Thanks folks.

So Trump won. Next few years are gonna be rough, I know. What happened, and where can the Dems go from here?

James Carville said it best: It’s the economy, stupid (even if he predicted the wrong candidate). Inflation was a big concern among voters, mostly driven by gas, groceries, and housing. Rightly or wrongly, many voters tied this to Biden, and through him to Harris. They viewed Trump as being likelier to fix things, with a big bold plan (tariffs, deportations, tax cuts). I suspect some (many?) voters wanted to punish Dems for inflation. Others probably thought Harris would worsen it. While she had a long proposal, she didn’t seem to talk about it much, nor boil it down to soundbites. Many of the demos that swung were hit hard by the price increases.

We saw swings among Latinos, young voters, and rural voters toward Trump. Some of this was due to depressed D turnout (Harris got 15 million fewer votes than Biden), but in other cases it was due to genuine swings. Starr County, TX went Republican for the first time in decades. New Jersey only went for Harris by single digit percentages. Black voters had a small 2% decline of the share of the electorate.

I think non-immigration identity politics played a smaller role. I do think Harris/Walz could’ve talked more about men’s issues specifically (suicide, the academic gap, poor job prospects), although they are hard to soundbiteify and not sound forced. They likely could've approached it from a universalist angle. Trans issues might’ve driven some voters to Trump, but I believe it was more localized (e.g., reduced margins in Loudoun County). Latinos likely weren’t particularly turned off of Trump because they aren’t a cohesive bloc, and in many cases not even the same race (you’ve got whites, indigenous, blacks, mixed, even Asian Latinos). Between the countries the cultures can be very different, to the point of each country hating the other. They can be more socially conservative as well, especially those in their 40s and older.

Immigration was definitely a bigger issue, dovetailing with economic issues (housing costs, “why are migrants getting help but not me”, homelessness). The migrant bussing by Gov. Abbott will be viewed as one of the greatest political maneuvers of the 21st century. It brought the issue to voters outside of border states. The number of people coming to the border was frustrating/scary for some voters.

Abortion didn’t play as big of a role, I suspect because many women don’t think they’ll need one, or because they don’t view care that legally may qualify as one.

The state of democracy didn’t motivate enough people for the Dems, in fact, some people who thought it was important voted for Trump.

Foreign policy didn’t play much of a role, although Israel/Palestine probably was significant in Michigan. But that needle would’ve been hard to thread for any candidate, and probably would’ve been less of a problem if other points were addressed.

I think the fact that Harris is a biracial woman did reduce votes, but I don’t think it was necessarily decisive in her losing. The right woman can definitely win (Thatcher won the U.K. in 1979, so it should be possible in the U.S. in 2024). I would probably hold off in 2028, but I don’t see an issue with running women long-term.

So, what are the takeaways for Dems?

1. Suburban white-collar voters are not the end-all be-all. They are a good bloc to have (reliable voters in many swing states, including in off-years), but they are not enough to outweigh the others.

2. You cannot take minority demographics for granted. They will not stay with you forever. They are not monolithic.

3. Social policy can only go so far. Its salience can be quite limited compared to the economy. Negatives can be very negative, white positives may be “meh”.

4. Running against someone, rather than for yourself only works so many times.

5. You can only have so many issues stacked against you and be able to win. If it was just the economy, it might’ve been closer, but you had the economy, and immigration, and social policy, and Israel/Palestine.

6. The average voter does not account for lag in terms of policy. Trump got credit for a good economy even though Obama did a lot of the work.

7. Places that are or have been “safe” are not guaranteed to stay like that forever, especially when paired with point 2, without work.

8. NatCon populism is here to stay. The combination of left-ish economics and social conservativism, propelled by apathetics and the hard right is a winning one, and needs to be countered accordingly.

9. Many folks view Democrats as being the “mom” or “Karen from HR” party. That is not the kind of reputation that wins elections.

10. It’s the economy, stupid.

Based on that, what would my strategy be for Dems in 2026/2028?

1. Clean house. The folks in charge lost 2024 and only barely won 2020. Care needs to be taken to ensure replacements have sufficient political/management experience.

2. Don’t be the party of why/if. Be the party of do. The former implies insecurity, the latter confidence.

3. Bring back the 50-state strategy. Open offices in rural areas. States viewed as safely blue came awfully close to flipping for Trump this year. But the reverse can also be true, especially with a good candidate (cf. Indiana in 2008 ). And even if the presidential candidate loses, downballot candidates can still win, especially in off-years. I think the Dems had a good ground game, and while it cannot make up for everything else, it’s usually better to have it than not. Local elections matter a lot because they have stronger day-to-day impact, and they are the breeding ground for future politicians. North Carolina had several good Dem victories.

4. Focus on economics. Moderate suburbanites aren’t enough to win on, and many people like Trumponomics. Go for smart tariffs, universal policies (e.g., Child Tax Credit, universal Medicare, etc), targeted tax cuts and increases along with tax code simplification, and one other oddball policy (withdrawal from the WTO? Annual gas tax holiday?) likely to be popular with voters.

5. Social moderation/tolerance. The party is a big tent one, and there’s going to be friction over social issues. This doesn’t mean abandoning core constituencies, but being smarter about rhetoric and candidates (you won’t win the Georgia governorship with an Everytown candidate). Candidates should be allowed to have differing views on social policy (especially if it is personal and doesn’t extend to the political realm), and there should be a mechanism to allow dissent on an issue an individual is out of touch on. Related: get the loudest social progressives away from the party. They frequently clash with it but manage to tie the party to an unpopular viewpoint with something they said on Xitter/Tik Tok. I did like the initial message of freedom the Harris campaign was putting out, but it didn’t seem to be used much.

6. Turnout still matters. You need to be able to turn out more people for you than the other guy.

7. (My weird, hot take-ish view) Go on an offensive cyber campaign. You’ve got Russian operatives shilling for Trump and the GOP. Hack them. Make it so they can’t just continuously pump out disinfo. Even a few million should be enough to establish a unit dedicated to fucking up Russian troll farms.

8. (Courtesy of @EgoEimi) Go for the reality TV angle. Lots of rallies, some political stunts, and bring loads of energy.

One final thought: Trump is a sui generis candidate. He energizes people who aren’t into politics normally. Thus far, the GOP hasn’t been able to translate that into off-year elections or non-Trump POTUS candidates. Nobody wants diet Trump, they want the real deal. When he passes away, it remains to be seen whether someone (Vance?) can take over with the same level of success.

Hey, I'm trying to pull back a bit from the present news cycle, so I'm looking for some alternatives. My brain often is looking for some stimulation that isn't something huge and meaty, so I figured short stories and novellas could be helpful in particular. If you have something long that's great, feel free to toss that in as well.

I like short stories that depict interesting and different worlds, though they don't need to be particularly detailed. Stories with positive (or at least not miserable) endings would probably be better for my mood. For some examples, I liked the I, Robot stories, particularly the first one with Grace and Robbie, They're Made out of Meat, Flatland, The Year Without Sunshine. I'm realizing that is kind of Sci fi heavy, but that might just be because there are more Sci fi short stories I've bumped into, a lot from links elsewhere on the internet.

For some examples of novels and series that I've liked, Cradle by Will Wight, Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, Scholomance by Naomi Novik, Ender's Game. Recently, I liked Tomorrow and Tommorow and Tomorrow, and Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin, but I don't know if I could handle that level of sad right now. For historical fiction,the only examplez I can think of right now are A Woman of Independent Means, and a Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but I used to read a lot of it when I was younger.

Books I didn't like, but loved aspects of are Babel (I absolutely loved the setting, the book itself felt like it was beating you up with a cudgel), The School for Good mothers (I enjoyed the exploration of what Good motherhood is, and how mothers are judged by society, I disliked how disjointed the actual plot was).

I tend not to like stories where most or all characters are hard to have empathy for -- I hated A Catcher in the Rye, and loathed the Arthur Miller plays I had to read in school. I can get impatient with stories that keep the world vague for a very long time, like Never Let Me Go.

So, any recommendations?

I posted my own thoughts here, TLDR: I am afraid and catastrophizing and thinking very black and white and spiraling quite a bit and I'm not even American.

This is not meant to be another ~news thread.

Please keep discussion in this thread to mental health only.

How are you doing?

What will the impact of this be on your life?

Obsessively refreshing results is the most stressful way to follow an election, but it can be an easy trap to fall into. This thread is a place to try and consciously disengage with that process, and talk about or link to anything and everything: how a sports team is doing, your latest hyperfixation, a silly video you liked, wax poetic about an obscure hobby, do a small text based let's play for a game, or elucidate the proper usage of commonly misapplied Latin phrases. So long as it's not related to the election and you don't feel it warrants a topic all its own, throw it in.

Timasomo 2024 is now officially complete!

Over the next few days, participants will be posting their creations and efforts in this topic to showcase their work to the community.

Comments and feedback are both welcome and encouraged.

Let these creators know what an awesome job they've done!

Creators: In posting your showcase:

• Give your project a title, and use the # markdown to make it stand out in the showcase thread!
• Link to your project in whatever way works best for it.
• If you like, give a "creator statement" that contextualizes what your project is.
• Add anything else you consider relevant! The showcase is yours!
• If you need examples, take a look at last year’s showcase.

Community:

• Treat this thread like a walk through an art gallery or a museum where you get to see different works on display.
• Simple appreciations for the creators are not noise—they are valuable community support!
• Make sure any feedback you give is constructive and meant to help.

I currently reside in Pennsylvania. The election season has been vitriolic, hateful and stressful. Even in church they are angry. They are going to fizzle out they are so mad. Even the ones who are kind are interminably irritable. I may sometimes be a partisan, utilitarian to the core, but I do not talk about politics in God's house. I will speak on justice and righteousness, but not in such terms as are popular. I would rather take that one moment in the week to see my neighbors for who they are and not the tribe they belong to. Somehow that is gone. Service on Sunday was not pleasant. You could feel the tension even as people sat listening. Even the children could feel it.

There is an election sign, or several, on every block. Every building zoned for electric screens has rotating ads (for both candidates) on it. It's all that is spoken about. One cannot escape it. It swallows you whole, spits you out again having transformed you for the worse. Have you voted? Did you hear what he said? Oh, keep quiet, that couple at the next table looks like they voted for the wrong one. Did you hear the vice president is coming to town? Horrible traffic, oh just so terrible. All the out-of-towners, coming in, you know who they support. Despicable. Do you have an election day plan? I voted early this year. That's nice. There was a sign in the next yard over. I just wanted to run it over with my car. Don't look at that man, sweetie, he is wearing boots only the wrong people would wear. The neighborhood watch got a report today. Vandalism, keys. Looking to do some election volunteering. Ballots are on fire. Did you hear? Have to go into that neighborhood, and make sure they don't vote for the wrong person. It would be so bad for them. Oh, they don't understand. Honey, bring your pepper spray, you're not safe there. You'll be shot, knifed. It's the crime, you know who they voted for. Do you know where your polling place is? I voted by mail this year. Did you hear what she said? Well, she didn't say it, but he said she said it. Let's get out of here, sweetheart, you know they voted for the wrong one, just look at the cars they drive, they don't care. Real Americans vote for the right one. All these people voting for the wrong one, so poor, so uneducated. I hate the rich. Let's get out of this bar. Go home. Back where it's safe. We can watch partisan election predictions and not be disturbed.

Nothing else has made me want to leave this state more than its unyielding power in the election. It is not democratic for six or seven states to effectively determine the winner of an election. And it is not a good experience as a resident to be given that much attention. It turns you against each other. It turns your civic and neighborly lifestyle into a caricature. It is worse that it is so all-or-nothing. The stakes are so high. Our 19 electoral votes are worth more than gold, because they only come in a package.

The Lord says

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

It is bad for many reasons. But it is only this bad because of the way our electoral system is set up pits us against each other. It does not have to be this way.

Here are my suggestions. If you are a Senator, please tell your colleagues that scroll_lock has issued a decree and make it happen. Perfection is the domain of nerds, I am simply concerned about minimizing the dominance of the two-party system and improving basic human decency.

• State Constitutional amendments mandating some variety of ranked-choice voting. I'm sure there is some mathematically optimal method. I don't care a whole lot which, as long as it is not first-past-the-post. I am less interested in the most "virtuous" system and rather the most useful one in effectively increasing the number of political parties present in an elected body.
• Federal Constitutional amendment forbidding the first-past-the-post method in elections for any federal or state office. (The states can decide how to implement the alternative. I'm not convinced there is any single best option.)
• Adoption of the National Interstate Popular Vote Compact.
  • When it is inevitably ruled unconstitutional: a national Constitutional amendment requiring the allocation of electoral votes in a given state proportionally to the votes of the electorate, rather than a "winner-take-all" system.
  • OR, maybe this is better done at the state level. Not important to me. The legal nerds can battle out the specifics.
• Federal Constitutional amendment not only forbidding faithless electors but invalidating the votes of any faithless elector. In other words, that "real" vote for the president in December should become a formality only.
  • May as well get rid of this silly meeting while we're at it.
• Federal Constitutional amendment separating the office of president into two equal offices within the executive branch, to be elected in a staggered configuration following the same system of presidential terms we currently have, just offset:
  • President 1: head of state
  • President 2: head of government
• Federal Constitutional amendment forbidding so-called "independent expenditure-only committees" from collecting annually more than an amount to be designated by Congress for political purposes, from any particular entity.
• Federal law forbidding the spending of campaign funds on public political advertising more than 3 months ahead of the election.
• Federal law forbidding the spending of PAC or equivalent funds on political advertising in support of a particular candidate more than 1 month ahead of the election.

And there we go. Not going to solve every problem, but that is the worst part done with.

Godforsaken land. I am buying extra food tomorrow. Let's hope it is over and done with by the end of the week.

Hi Tildes!

My Leopold FC900R mechanical keyboard had a sudden thirst for a full cup of joe, which rendered the keyboard mostly unusable, even after drying for days.

This has been my favourite keyboard of all time, it looks and types the same as the day I got it, and I'm actually quite miffed it broke!

So Tildes, could you help me out? What would be a good replacement?

For people that do not know Leopolds lineup specifically, they're pretty much no frills high end mechanical keyboard. The only similar keyboard I've found so far is the Leopold FC900RBTS, but it's quite expensive and the colours it comes in aren't entirely my taste. Although I'm not opposed to putting down that kind of money, I'm wondering if there's no alternative available that matches my requirements at a slightly lower pricepoint.

So here's what I'm looking for:

• Double Shot PBT Keycaps, that's a must have.
• Fullsize keyboard. I still use my numpad!
• Wired connection. The Leopold FC900RBTS has both wired and wireless, that's fine too, but at it's core it must be wired.
• Relatively small sized frame, the frame on the Leopold is quite economically built. It's keys on a board and that makes it rather small even at full size.
• I think the FC900R came with MX Cherry Browns by default. I liked Browns but I'm not married to them.
• Cost can be anywhere between $50 and $150, but I prefer paying more if the quality matches the price.
• Colour scheme shouldn't be too shouty, but doesn't need to be full black/white either. This is what my keyboard looked like. I like that type of distinct but not loud colour scheme.
• Usecase is both typing and gaming, not heavy office work, but a decent amount of Tildes comment writing.

I was debating putting it into ~tech or ~gaming, but I suppose it's too allround for gaming. Although if it needs to move I'd love to hear it.

If someone has a suggestion, please let me know!
Thank you everyone!

Lately I have seen a few posts here and there from accounts that have been silent for a while, where I can't help but feel that these new posts are made by different people or that the initial posts they made were intended to "pad" the account. In other words, they feel a bit like spam and because of that I would like to "flag" them somehow.

The obvious question people will have is likely "Why not just comment about it under the post?"

I have done that various times, and it has the opposite effect of what I'd like:

1. Commenting boosts the post for people who sort based on comments or activity.
2. From what I have observed, when a post has one comment, it is more likely to receive more votes as well. If it has more than one comment, it will receive more votes. This, to me, bizarre voting behavior is something worthy of a meta discussion in itself. But from what I gather, people seem to think that it indicates discussion. Making them think that there must be something worthwhile about the post. This obviously doesn't apply when it's just the OP sharing a quote and me raising a concern.
3. Sometimes I am not entirely sure and would like to have someone with more insights behind the screens take a look at it. If I commented my suspicions while being wrong, that would suck for everyone involved.

Basically for the first two points I am not sure what a good solution would be. I am not advocating for a downvote ability, though something would be nice.
For the third point, I guess I am saying that I am missing the ability to report a post. With comments, I can use the malice label and write out a report, for posts there is no such thing.

Hi and hello all and fellow southpaws,

With the increasing option to pick from genders between characters (unless heavily tied into story and designed that way) it feels like the next option would be to have left-handedness become an option.
As a lefty I always felt a little "left" out (pardon the pun) in games as soon as I saw a gun or weapon being held in the "wrong" hand.

I know CS2 makes the option available if you dig a little, which is a great start.

So my question is, do you know of any other games that deserve a call out for already having this? Games that might need this (character fantasy) or just a shout out in support of the idea, feel free to discuss below.

Cheers!

hello tildes,

i am searching for a bare-bones forum/message board. i'll describe what i need and perhaps someone can point me in the right direction:

must have the ability to

• create an account
• create topics with the ability to reply
• fully customizable front-end (html/css) so i can make it match my website
• either self-host or use a custom domain on ext hosting

unimportant but nice to have

• display images in posts via external urls
• different boards (categories?) to post into (would be nice but not vital)
• nested replies (or some visual way to see what you're replying to)

free would be ideal (dreams are nice) but probably wouldn't want to spend more than $5/month as this is a supplement to a website where i don't expect much traffic at all due to the nature of the project. no images/video/audio will be hosted ideally.

i'm ok with "hacker news" or "reddit-like" software but my backend knowledge if very limited. for instance, i looked into self-hosting lemmy but i don't understand how to setup docker. options like phpbb would be fine if i could strip away everything aside from the above-mentioned features.

i want it to be extremely simplistic in appearance and for the end-user (tildes is a great example of the simplistic end-user experience). tildes could be a cool option but i think getting it setup is a bit out of my skill-range.

can anyone offer any suggestions/guidence?

edited to emphasize important aspects and clarify things that are not vital but would be nice to have.

Hiya,

coming off as cheapskate since if I love Webflow so much why not just pay for it? Well a few reasons, but mostly because I'd rather like to be not tied to any single service that can just do away with me with a snap of the fingers.

I've been playing around locally with WordPress and the block editor actually gets me to the finish line. It's pretty easy to design what I want to design -- just everything's lacking that final little detail, I can't easily overlap text with images etc.

So am I just incompetent and the WordPress' block editor is actually capable of these things? Most of the plugins (like Elementor) you need to pay for before you can actually do anything custom, which is kinda no-go for me. I'm also not opposed of trying something else, just that it needs to be free (as I want to be certain I know how to use it before I commit).

(Sorry for the rushed post, I'll make corrections it if need be.)

Recently my family was watching "It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" from 1966 and I recalled how the plot of the show came from comics that were written over time in the years before the cartoon game out. And one thing we talked about was whether Linus was correct that The Great Pumpkin actually exists, or was everyone else right and it was in his imagination.

It seems a reasonable question, because one thing about Linus is that he's usually the wisest character on the show. Like the rest of them, he has flaws but he tends to see things more clearly than the rest.
Well, I was looking for old Peanuts strips and I found one that seems to answer the question in this article:

https://screenrant.com/funniest-peanuts-comics-about-great-pumpkin-linus-disappointment/

It is under item 4, "Great Pumpkin, You're Going To Drive Me Crazy!" November 1 1961.
Here is a direct link to the comic in question, (not sure if it will work long term).

In the comic, Charlie Brown says: "Hey wake up, Halloween is over... You missed The Great Pumpkin. It just came over the radio... He appeared in a very sincere pumpkin patched owned by someone named Freeman in New Jersey!"

When I was a kid we had a book that had a lot of the older Peanuts comics in it, and I'm pretty sure that I had seen this one and just forgotten about it.

So I think one of the following is true:

• The Great Pumpkin really exists in the Peanut's world
• Charlie Brown is lying
• Charlie Brown is teasing
• The radio was lying, like when NORAD reports where Santa's sleigh is on Christmas eve
• Charlie Brown misunderstood the radio

This question may have been answered in a later strip a day or two later, but I don't currently have access to the strips in the order they appeared.

This question is mostly about whether Charles Schulz decided to have magic in his "universe" or not.
What do you think?

I have a long standing problem that probably has several good solutions, I just haven't been able to figure them out. So here I am, asking you.

I'm selfhosting some services, a mix of selfbuilt and open source software. But some things I don't want to selfhost. Notably backups and alerts/notifications. For backups I have a solution which works well in every regard except one - I don't always get alerted when things fail, because the way I send myself those alerts is failing more than the actual backups.

Currently I'm using python and gmails smtp interface to send myself email, but gmail disables my smtp access from time to time, and it's really easy not to notice not getting an email. I've tried sending the email regardless of whether the backup failed or not, but I've noticed several times that I still don't notice if the they stop coming.

Now on to my requirements/wishlist.

1. I'm already using s3 glacier at aws for the backups, so preferrably something in the aws space.
2. I would like to get an popup/toast on my phone when a message is being sent. And the ability to review messages later.
3. I would like as few moving parts as possible.
4. I don't want to write my own client.
5. I want it to be cheap, and if there's a cost I prefer to pay it at a place where I'm already paying, meaning aws (or possibly proton).
6. I want a stable service.
7. I prefer to manage as little as possible of the infrastructure.
8. I'd like a simple programmable interface that can't easily fail. E.g. http based.
9. It's no problem if messages are not received instantly, I could easily tolerate delays up to 24 hours.

As you may have noticed I'm pretty much expecting there to be something in aws that I can use, but aws documentation is so abstract, that I often don't understand what the point of something is or how I'm supposed to use it.

Okay, so this is getting really long, I'll put the ask up front: I have a strategy, I think it is reasonable. Now is a point where I can easily change things, and it won't be so easily later. So I'm looking to see if anyone has trod this road before and can recommend any of:

1. a different build system that will be easier to manage for this use case
2. a different strategy for using cmake that will be easier to manage
3. any gotchas I should be aware of, even if you don't have better solutions.

Background

I have a project I'm working on where the ultimate deliverable will be a hardware device with 3-4 different microcontrollers coordinating with each other and interacting with a PC-ish platform. This is a clean rewrite of a C++ codebase. Due to the microcontroller (and some of the PC APIs) being C++, the language of choice for most of it is likely to remain C/C++.

I'm succeeded in setting up a build system for embedded code. The old code was arduino, so it relies a lot on those libraries, but I've managed to set up enough custom cmake to get off of the ardunio tools altogether, even if I am borrowing their libraries and some of the "smarts" built into the system about setting build flags, etc. So far, I have a dockerized toolchain (cmake + make + gcc-arm-none-eabi) that can successfully build ARM binaries for the target platform.

The thing that I'm up against now is that I'd like to have a robust off-target unit testing infrastructure. My ideal case is that everything in the embedded system will be broken down into libraries that have clear interfaces, then to use unit tests with mocks to get high coverage of test cases. I'll still need some HIL tests, but because those are harder to set up and run, I want to use those for integration and validation.

In terms of OSes available, we're mostly working on Windows systems using WSL for linux. I'd like things to be as linux-based as possible to support CI on github, etc.

Goals and Cmake limitations

I started out using cmake because I hate it least of the tools I've used, and I am at least pretty far up the learning curve with it. But a limitation I'm hitting is that you can't do a mixed compile with two different toolchains in one build. The reasons why cmake has this limitation seem reasonable to me, even if it is annoying. You can easily change the toolchain that your code is built with, but that seems to be largely targeted at cross-compiling the same binaries for different systems. What I want to do is:

• build my code libraries with embedded settings for linking to the embedded binaries and build those embedded binaries (the end product)
• build my code libraries with linux-ish tools and link them against unit tests to have a nice CI test process
• (eventually) also be able to build windows binaries for the PC components -- when I get to that point, I'd like to get away from the MSVC compilers, but will use them if I have to

Current strategy

My current plan is to configure a library build like this (pseudocode):

add_library(mylib sources)
if (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_EMBEDDED)
<embedded config>
elseif (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_LINUX)
<linux config, if any>
endif()

#unit tests are built for each library
if (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_LINUX)
add_executable(mylib_test sources test_sources)
target_link_libraries(mylib gtest etc.)
endif()

For the rollup binaries, I make the whole target conditional

if (BUILD_TYPE STREQUAL BUILD_TYPE_EMBEDDED)
add_executable(myembedap sources)
target_link_libraries(mylib)
endif()

Then the build script (outside cmake) is something like

cd build/embedded
cmake <path to src> <set embedded toolchain> -DBUILD_TYPE=embedded
make
cd ../../build/linux
cmake <path to src> -DBUILD_TYPE=linux
make

Things I like about this strategy:

• It's relatively simple to do all the builds or just one of the builds (that control would go in the shell script)
• I have one source tree for the whole build
• It lets configuration be near code
• It lets tests be near code.
• I think it's extensible to cover the PC component builds in the future

Things that worry me:

• It feels like a hack
• Support for off-target tests feels like it should be solved problem and I'm worried I'm missing something

Thanks for reading. If you made it this far, you have my gratitude. Here's a video with funny out of office messages that I enjoyed.

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 jeff bezos, anticheat and 2024 us presidential election. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was observant.

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!

The blaze has officially ignited!

The November 2024 Backlog Burner is officially live. Use this topic to post about the games that you play.

Quicklink: Backlog Bingo

Etiquette:

• It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week.

• It is also fine to respond to your own posts.

• If you are playing Backlog Bingo, you can share your table either by markdown or through screenshots.

Gameplay guidelines:

• Goals for this event (if any) are entirely individual and self-determined.

• Playing Bingo is optional and not required.

• You do NOT need to finish games unless you want to. The point is to try out games and have fun, not force ourselves to play things we're not interested in.

Backlog Burner FAQ

Backlog Bingo FAQ

Important: All data for your Backlog Bingo card is stored on your device, not the server. Clearing your browser data will irrecoverably delete your card.

Solution

I added 20.43.161.105 duckduckgo.com to my hosts file and everything is working fine now.
I also changed DNS servers away from my ISPs, thanks to all the recommendations in this thread.

cat /etc/resolve.conf
nameserver 1.1.1.1
nameserver 1.0.0.1

That seems to be working

> nslookup duckduckgo.com
Server:		1.1.1.1
Address:	1.1.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	duckduckgo.com
Address: 202.39.62.156
Name:	duckduckgo.com
Address: 2001:b000:1a0:3505:202:39:62:15d

except (note that non-autoratative IP address which belongs to my ISP) ...

> ping -4 duckduckgo.com 
PING duckduckgo.com (202.39.62.156) 56(84) bytes of data.

My ISPs address again. More...

traceroute to duckduckgo.com (202.39.62.156), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  * * *
 3  * * *
...
30 * * * *

Why do ping and traceroute not use the new DNS server's I've configured (after re-booting too_)
The only thing to work is to add

20.43.161.105 duckduckgo.com

to my hosts file and now everything seems to be working as expected, though I have doubts now that changing the DNS configuration has done any good.

I know ISPs cache things like youtube to reduce costs so I'm wondering if 202.39.62.156 handled caching of duckduckgo, and they pointed their nameservers there and that box is broken.

Thanks for everyone's input and patience (lol are you still reading???)

Original Question

I've used Duck Duck Go as my main search engine for many, many years.
I have several search engines installed in Firefox including 2 for duck duck go. One for the /lite version and one for the full version.

[See update at bottom]

In recent days neither of these work. I would type my query into the search engine, press enter as I have done for years.

All I see is a blank page.

The latest development is that when I try and enter ANY search to either of those engines I get a GOOGLE 404 not found page.

    
    traceroute duckduckgo.com                                                                                                             ─╯
    traceroute to duckduckgo.com (216.239.38.120), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
     1  * * *
     2  * * *
     3  The usual internal routing of my ISP
     4  ""          ""            ""
     5  ""          ""            ""
     6  ""          ""            ""
     7  ""          ""            ""
     8  * * *
     9  any-in-2678.1e100.net (216.239.38.120)  4.089 ms  4.077 ms  4.181 ms
    
    ping duckduckgo.com                                                                                                                   ─╯
    PING duckduckgo.com (2001:4860:4802:32::78) 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=1 ttl=117 time=10.1 ms
    64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=2 ttl=117 time=8.52 ms
    64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=3 ttl=117 time=6.87 ms
    64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=4 ttl=117 time=8.83 ms
    
    --- duckduckgo.com ping statistics ---
    4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3005ms
    rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.873/8.584/10.118/1.155 ms

cat /etc/resolv.conf
> MY ISPs name servers
> MY ISPs name servers

Sure enough I cannot find any pages on the site 2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net which is obviously belongs to google.

This is very very strange.

Could someone verify if they can use DDG or whether they see the same as me?
Does anyone have any idea what's happening?

UPDATE
I can connect to and use DuckDuckGo using a browser VPN. This appears to be a mess made by my ISP.
I'd still like suggestion to overcome the problem though.

I was looking into getting a whole bunch of mods for Fallout and Skyrim and it seems like Nexus is the only game in town. I am not really in the mood to go back and forth 600 times between client and webpage to click on every time I wish to try a collection. I wouldn't mind it if they just severely throttled my downloads, they could just run in the background. But if I have to click the mouse thousands of times every once in a while, I'd rather not mod any game, to be honest.

And although I understand that this is a service and "there is no free lunch", the price they are charging in Brazil is too much for me to be okay with paying. A month of Nexus costs R$51.82, which is 12 bucks more expensive than a month of WoW. I really don't wanna be a "choosing beggar" here, as I know that it is not Nexus's fault that my currency is worth shit. But if there's a cheaper alternative I'll have no problem whatsoever paying for it.

So I have been reflecting on the statements of many members of this book reading group that they want to include books from diverse perspectives. Talking about next year and looking at our current voting results, I see three options and I would like us to vote on which the group prefers.

First, we could accept a very long list from this voting thread and cut off choices just after Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. That would delay new nominations for over a year.

Second, we could elevate Heaven and Earth Grocery Store and possibly Demon Copperhead to the top of the list in a sort of affirmative action.

Third, we could agree that our next nomination thread (for a smaller list of books) would exclusively be taken from groups that are disadvantaged in some way. An incomplete list of such disadvantage would include being from a poor or formerly colonized country, being an immigrant or refugee, being a political/ethnic minority such as basque, romani or catalan or kurdish, being indigenous, being poor or ethnic minority in a dominant country, being a sexual/gender minority, being disabled etc.

Hey, folks! I've been playing fantasy NFL for about four years now. At first, I expected to hate it. Just, ya know, always a pop culture contrarian. It turned out after a year or two, I really enjoy it!

I've been watching hockey on and off since probably 2007. Would love to see if NHL Fantasy can drive my NHL enjoyment similarly to football.

Not all of our little NFL group wants to try hockey. If you'd like to give it a whirl, I'd be happy to share the link to join! I need a few folks.

It's almost time...

...for another Tildes Backlog Burner -- the event where you try out games you've always wanted to play (but haven't yet -- for whatever reason).

The Backlog Burner for November 2024 will officially begin in two days on November 1st.

If you're new to the Backlog Burner, check out our previous events to get an idea of what's going on:

• 2024 - May
• 2023
• 2022
• 2020

Backlog Bingo returns again!

Backlog Bingo is a backbone of this event, so it's of course back and better than ever! u/Wes has made some new tweaks to his amazing site, and we've also further developed our category sets.

For this event, you can choose between two different official Bingo lists:

• Flow: A conceptually abstract list of ideas to guide you. Let your imagination flow.
• Flux: A tweaked and updated version of the May 2024 category list.

If you participated last time, clear your old card and start fresh with a new one. If you're new to the event, simply go to the Backlog Bingo site to generate your card.

Notification List

If you are interested in participating in the Backlog Burner, please comment in this topic. Anyone commenting/replying here will automatically be added to a notification list for the Backlog Burner, unless you specify otherwise.

Start Planning (or Playing)

Technically the event starts in two days, so you have time to roll your cards (if you're playing Bingo) and plan out what you'd like to play for the month. That said, if you're eager to jump right in, and start early, I certainly won't stop you!

Let's get ready to burn through these backlogs!

Backlog Burner FAQ

Backlog Bingo FAQ

Important: All data for your Backlog Bingo card is stored on your device, not the server. Clearing your browser data will irrecoverably delete your card.

I created an Omnivore account recently and I started to love it. I thought to self-host it but I didn't have enough time and thought I'd host it later.

I (along with everyone else presumably) got this email today:

We’re excited to share that Omnivore is joining forces with ElevenLabs, the leading AI audio research and technology company. Our team is joining ElevenLabs to help drive the future of accessible reading and listening with their new ElevenReader app.

Next, all Omnivore users will be able to export their information from the service through November 15 2024, after which all information will be deleted.

Though it is quite frustrating, I will not go further in my opinion of this move.

I would just like to let the community know that I'm in the market for an alternative for this... or maybe some help how to self-host it. I don't even know if it will be easy to self-host or if it will be worth it, presumably without updates...

Hey Tildes, I was researching about AI usage for a project and was curious -- do you folks use some non-mainstream AI (like outside of ChatGPT/Microsoft Copilot/Apple Intelligence), like perhaps a custom Chrome extensions or maybe a desktop application?

I wanted to understand what use cases for AI exist that the big companies are lacking in right now

It's time to vote. This thread is for voting on the next set of books for book club. Voting will close end of day Sunday.

If you would like to read with us, please upvote as many as five titles. We will select at least four, probably more if there are books with solid support. I look forward to reading and discussing with you all.

There are a few people who voted before the thread was complete so books with authors earlier in the alphabet got a slight statistical advantage. I will take lessons for next time to avoid this.

I stopped blogging several years ago. Over the last few years, I've been writing plenty of private essays. However, very recently I have been considering starting to publish my writing and, well, start blogging again publicly. I have no desire to waste time on templates, look-and-feel, visual stuff, etc. I just want to write a bog-standard html file, and then publish it...I do value leveraging html elements that help with meta data (e.g. microformats, etc.), but don't care about how things look - and these elements that i value are all invisible to most users anyway. I would be fine with just crafting html by hand, deploying it via sftp or some boring deployment pipleine, and that's it. But, then, I started thinking: what about having an RSS/Atom feed? I used to consume content via an rss reader, but have not done so in years. But, I don't want to manually craft that feed file; nope, sorry. But, I've heard a comment or two from acquaintances that rss/atom feeds and syndication are really something that people - like my potential audience - might really desire. So, I should really consider having one. This means that either I have to craft several things manually (from the blog post itself, the list of archived posts, the feed file, etc.), or use a static site generator that will handle all this for me, etc. I don't want to get trapped down a rabbit hole where I am spending so much on the tooling, the scaffolding, twiddling with templates, or the publish process itself. I just want the minimal for writing and publishing, I want it to live on my domain name, and that's it. Am I crazy or extremely lazy for not wanting to generate an RSS/Atom feed file?

So, here's my ask of you all nice people: are feeds like RSS/Atom feeds even worth it? If so, does anyone have recommendations for a manual process where i can craft the blog post's html by hand, but somehow leverage a portion of a static site generator (or some minimal tool) to only automate the creation of the RSS/Atom feed file? Thanks in advfance for any constructive feedback!

P.S. - One thing that re-ignited my desire both to write more in public, and keep it alive with minimal fuss was my re-reading of Jeff Huang's excellent "This Page is Designed to Last" post: https://jeffhuang.com/designed_to_last/

Important Upcoming Date:

• Timasomo Showcase Thread -- Tuesday, November 5 (one week away!)

Technically all work should be finished before November 1st (but don’t worry, it’s not enforced 😉).

November 1-4 are for putting finishing touches on the project to ready it for the showcase.

To get a feel for what the Showcase will look like and how to prep your project, check out past ones:

• 2023 Showcase
• 2022 Showcase
• 2021 Showcase
• 2020 Showcase
• 2019 Showcase

Update us on your progress so far!

• What did/didn't you get done this week?

• Anything go according to plan?

• Anything go off the rails?

• Any successes or struggles to share?

• Do you need feedback or help on anything?

This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.

Race 2 of the triple-header complete! At the highest altitude of all the races: Mexico City.

Lots of crashes into the barriers this weekend. Such as for Yuki. I think Yuki was pulling off a great move on the outside of Albon, but Albon was being squeezed by Gasly, which made him squeeze Yuki. Either way, both were out of the running before Turn 1.

Max had a great start on Sainz to get P1, but then Sainz had a great run on Max after the restart! Sainz's move surprised me actually. But then Max's moves on Norris, as the latter attempted to pass the former, were ugly, to say the least. Both 10-sec penalties on Max deserved, IMO.

Perez had a great start at his home race, 'cept for the false start (looks like he was too far ahead of the marks). That earned him a 5-sec. But seems like the scrap and touch with Lawson just left him adrift at the back. At one point, Zhou was on hards 20 laps older than Perez' mediums, but Perez couldn't get anywhere close to DRS range of Zhou.

Mercedes were entertaining today, with Lewis trying to get around George lap after lap, for 10 laps.

I was hoping that Leclerc would keep P2, ahead of Norris, as a form of damage control in Red Bull's direction. But Norris came out ahead, after Leclerc almost went into the walls. Which was a good recovery by Leclerc to NOT hit the wall! At least Leclerc also took the fastest lap on the last lap. Another great P1 victory for Sainz. Provided this continues, what a way to finish out his time with Ferrari!

After the race, Colapinto recived a 10-sec penalty due to a collision between him and Lawson on the penutlimate lap.

Onward to Brazil!

Next race:

Sao Paulo Grand Prix
Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace
Sunday, November 3

so this might be a weird question but -- occasionally, particularly in the evenings, I get a strong craving for parmesan cheese. I live in Germany, so I don't mean the green tube kind either. I'll just take little slices off a wedge of real-ass parmesan that we bought to shred over pasta and such.

Thing is, parmigiano reggiano is pretty expensive, and the similar replacement cheeses like pecorino aren't that much cheaper. But I don't know of any other snack that can deliver the combo of saltiness and umami like just munching on slices of italian hard cheese.

So, does anybody else on Tildes understand this? Or have any recommendations for other foods to scratch this itch? Keeping in mind I'm in Germany, so I'm limited to stuff I can buy here.

I love the labels feature of Tildes and use it fairly regularly where I feel appropriate. But recently I wanted to label a post (rather than a comment) and realized that there is no option for that.

Is this something that has been discussed before? I did a cursory search but was not able to find anything specific to labels on posts. I'm not even saying that I'd be 100% for the feature, just wondering if it's been discussed before. Questions like 'would it provide a benefit?' or 'if so, should those labels be the same as the ones for comments?' were along the lines of what I was thinking.

Might be a terrible idea, or difficult to implement for some reason or another, but sometimes I feel like a post could use a label (like 'exemplary' for a well-thought-out post, or 'malice' for one where the article posted feels deceptive and/or misleading) and right now there does not appear to be a way of doing that. Wondering what others think.

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.

Has anyone used a free, offline, open-source, real-time speech-to-speech translation app on under-powered devices (i.e., older smart phones)? There are a few libraries that written that purportedly can do or help with local speech-to-speech:

• https://github.com/ictnlp/StreamSpeech
• https://github.com/k2-fsa/sherpa-onnx
• https://github.com/openai/whisper

I'm looking for a simple app that can listen for English, translate into Korean (and other languages), then perform speech synthesis on the translation. Although real-time would be great, a short delay would work.

RTranslator is awkward (couldn't get it to perform speech-to-speech using a single phone). 3PO sprouts errors like dandelions and requires an online connection.

Any suggestions?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like tariffs, electoral college and elder scrolls.oblivion. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was researching.

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!

Yeah, I bought an ebike from Costco. It was a pretty good deal and it exceeded my expectation in just about every way, at least so far. The only thing that's bugging me right now is that the seat is supposedly super comfortable but my butt is sore after relatively short rides, but I've read that that will go away after a while.

I haven't owned a bike for decades and I was wondering if there was any less obvious things I should look out for. I already figured out that I put on the front wheel off-center because the disc was rubbing against the brake pad, but that was an easy fix. The manual for my bike is painfully lacking in details; half of covers how to use the controller, and the other half is assembly, and even that part wasn't terribly detailed. There were two parts that came in the box that it didn't even mention (a reflector for the handlebars and the derailleur protector - the latter of which I only figured out what it was after I did a reverse image search for it). It appears that it was written for people who already know a lot about bikes. The fork has shocks on it that appear to be adjustable but I don't know how or even why you would want to adjust them. Is there a website or a book that I can find with more detailed info on bikes generally?

Finally, accessories. I already bought two simple things just on impulse: a simple cheap cable lock and a bell (which seems like a strange omission for a bike, but what do I know?). I figure that I should have probably invested in a better lock, though, since it's a fairly expensive machine, so I thought I'd ask what people would recommend. Also are there any other accessories I might consider? I want to get a bottle holder, but I'm looking for a design to 3D print if anyone has any recommendations. It'd be nice to finally bust out my roll of ASA for it.

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom was one of the best metroidvanias with a retro flavour and an excellent hand-drawn art style and fantastic music of the current console generation, an entry in the Wonder Boy series of games. While completing the game gives you a sequel teaser, it had since been reported a long time ago that the development team at French studio Game Atelier had decided not to go forward with plans for a sequel, citing the overcrowdedness of the market for (2d?) metroidvanias.

I remembered this recently and decided to look up what the studio is working on now. To my surprise, a new game by them has already been announced, and a demo is live on Steam. The game is called Otherskin and is... a Metroid Prime-like? My jaw dropped to the floor when I heard that - these game devs sure know their ambition!

Otherskin is a 3D action platformer metroidvania. You play as a woman who is stranded on an alien world filled with ruins of a bygone alien civilization and are tasked on eliminating the Corruption™ (yes, that's really what it's called). You progress through the game world by absorbing and copying abilities of enemies you defeat - I'm thinking Kirby or Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Or, well, any other kind of metroidvania game. The major difference between this game and Metroid Prime is the 3rd person perspective.

Grappling hook, wave beam, bombs, your favourites return. It's not all copy-cat though. The very first ability you acquire is a super-jump that makes you fly very high into the air. The movement in the game is great and the environments range from dark, corrupted and gloomy to bright and wonderful. The combat feels dynamic - while you're using your super-jump ability, you can briefly slow down time to shoot at enemies while falling. You can also insta-switch between different weapons with the mouse wheel.

I'm curious to see how the final game will turn out. The demo has you lose your copy abilities after returning to the hub, for you to have to collect them again from the same enemy in the next level - although this likely doesn't apply to weapon upgrades, only copy abilities like the super-jump and grappling beam. I'm also perplexed that it is a metroidvania game without a map system. Maybe we will see one in the full game? It certainly has me intrigued and looking forward to more.

Creatives of Tildes, I'm in dire need of help.

My plan on Nov 5th is to vote, drop my kids off at school, and then go stand next to the heaviest republican-leaning polling location within 20 miles of me until the polls close (with possible break to pick up my kids).

I need a sign. A good sign. I need 1 sign, maybe 1 pamphlet. A final plea to the Republican voter to vote against fascism. It needs to be succinct and thought provoking, but not accusitory. A visual for them to ponder as they walk in the building. Something to inspire even one voter to change their mind about voting R this year. I have ideas, but I am no artist, and not nearly as witty or empathetic as I wish I was.

It will, to the best of my knowledge, be just me. Although I invite you all to join me in spirit at your nearest equivalent.

Here are my ideas so far, but they all feel too wordy.

• Your spouse can't find out you voted for women's rights.
• Don't force my daughter to be on a menstration registry.
• The Republican party abandoned you, It's time for you to abandon them.
• If you replace "Immigrants" with "Jews", Trump sounds a lot like a Nazi.
• I don't like Kamala much, but I trust her to step down if she loses.
• Don't be on the wrong side of history.

I'm a graphic designer. I've been working in the field for nearly seven years now, two of which in an actual agency. One afternoon I started on a project that was born of more or less pure spite - I love the annual art trading game Art Fight, but absolutely loathe how the game is run, how it comes completely crashing down every year due to people trying to access the site all at once and them not having any contingencies in place, and how the leadership there is apparently only concerned with donations and little community outreach. If you're unfamiliar, artists get sorted into one of two teams, upload their original characters with reference sheets and then draw characters belonging to the opposing team's members. It's great fun, and I tried volunteering for them, but the fact that I'd've to sign an NDA just to be a moderator is just a step too far. For those unaware, the Art Fight team was also caught embezzling donations in one of the last fights, 2022 if memory serves.

So I did what I do best. I started drafting user stories, did UX research, sketched, drew and designed what I'd think would solve all the problems with Art Fight. The result I called PICTOCLASH, and while the process to make and prepare the design took me about four weeks from start to finish, I knew I couldn't actually make the thing work. Disregarding the fact that the Art Fight platform is anaemic and runs on outdated PHP, has no optimisations for image storage or user content and does not buffer or queue database interactions, it's still a massive lift. We don't have numbers on how large AF is, but suffice it to say that it's far larger than any hobbyist project can be without VC involvement.

I was convinced, though, that if one just... approached the problem differently, maybe with modern technologies, the Next.JS I kept hearing about from my web design peers, maybe a shiny new database like Postgres, state management, all the things I know next to nothing about, this could work. My project could work. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it wouldn't be impossible. With a team of developers, all believing and contributing to the project in an open-source way, that's doable. Eminently realisable, even.

So I started. I began reading documentation for TS, Next, React, Prisma, Postgres and all the other things I'd need to read up on. This was maybe half a year ago. But damn, programming got hands. Even the Me-ChatGPT-Dream-Team wasn't enough to have me wrap my head around so many concepts here. I'm a front-end guy, that's for sure. I got my ass handed to me, and in a month, I barely have a login system, and looking at GitHub I could have just went with any of the many pre-rolled solutions.

Which just led me back to my original point. I have three hundred-odd lines of barely functional typescript that holds up an incredibly slow login system. I'm not cut out for this project, and I need to accept that. I'm a designer, I know PHP, I can write valid JavaScript, but... application development? That'll forever be a realm locked off to me.

And of course, the easy way out would just be to look for developers. But I can't do that, at least not without significant risk of falling into the "I had an idea for an app, you wanna make it?" brand of parasite. I'd feel dirty doing that, even if I know that I could more or less to front-end and every visual component by myself. In fact, I have done that. It's just the app part that's missing, and that's unfortunately the major lift.

How do you people cope with this? Because it's not been the first time this happened to me. I keep putting off learning 3D modelling out of exactly that reason, that I could just hit a wall no matter how hard I try. It's frustrating, and looking back how easily I picked up other disciplines in university it really makes me wonder if there are some things my brain just can't learn. I don't think I'm ready to accept that.

Edit: For anyone interested, I uploaded the abridged design document to my website.

So, got a new job. That's great. Pay bump, more / new responsibilities and all that jazz. It took until my first day on the job for it to like, REALLY sink in that it's my first job managing people. I want to be good at this, or at the very least, competent. I'm responsible for my team and I don't want to let them down. I'm already looking things up online, talking to my parents, friends in similar positions for more information, and figured it would be good to ask around on here.

I guess the other half of this is that I've gone from looking at code in the IDE to now being more responsible for higher level architectural decisions. Possibly company steering decisions. Not used to that yet either, or at least the feeling. I feel under-prepared, and am possibly verging on overwhelmed. Lots of new things happening at once here, also writing this to unpack it as I type it out.

What advice do you have for me? Anything that you've learned while in a managerial role that you haven't gotten to share? Tips and Tricks? Prayers? 🤣

A while back I asked for some advice about running a haunted Beaver Dam game, and a few people popped up to ask why I wasn't trying out a narrative RPG system instead of using classic DnD.

Well, you got me. After some discussion (particularly about the painful amount of time to conduct a high level fight in 5e), we're going to try out the Dungeon World system instead. I've never run a TTRPG like this, and I'm rapidly working through the rulebook to figure it out. But rules only take you so far, there's a lot of learning that only comes with experience.

So for those of you with experience, I ask you: What do you wish you would have known before running a narrative TTRPG?

I just got the official notice from my boss that I've been let go due to performance reasons. This wasn't a surprise to either of us at this point, as I'd been struggling to improve without sufficient improvement for a while up to this point. Can't really even blame my boss, as she really did try to gently help me get back on track over the last year. I think the likely culprit has been burnout all along -- I've been feeling like a fly stuck to fly paper for months at this point. Before getting fired I got some burnout leave started with my GP (it's not super hard to get medical leave for burnout here in Germany) but I initiated the process too late for it to make a difference for this job.

Luckily between my severance pay and eventually unemployment benefits, I'm not in any financial risk due to this change (advantages of moving to a country with a real social safety net). I can even get some free job training courses paid for by the state while I'm on unemployment. But between now and when that sort of thing starts, I'm wondering whether I should do something specific to help myself rest and recover from burnout. I'm planning on going back to therapy and talking to a professional about this, of course, but I'm curious whether anyone else here on Tildes has advice for how to recover from burnout other than just "take time off", since I've got that bit covered.

In some games like Terraria or Horizon Forbidden West, you can have a "fake" set of armor on top of your "real" set of armor. The "fake" set defines how your character looks, while the "real" set determines your stats. This isn't a common thing in a lot of games, but in basically any game with different outfits with stats, I hear this being a requested feature. Whenever someone mentions this feature in a comment, people will chime in that it's cool and they wish [insert game here] would add it. The Horizon devs being one example of a studio who heard about this from the community of their first game, Zero Dawn, and added it to the sequel.

I really don't like this, even having it available as an option for single player games. Let me explain...

I think it really ruins the whole point of stat changing equipment in games. A big part of video games with customizable equipment and builds is designing a build and a character appearance that you like. Do you want to be slow with powerful attacks? Do you want to be fast with weak attacks? Do you want balance?

I'd argue that making a set that looks good while balancing the stats is another one of these things that adds to meaningful character creation decisions. Do you take the insane armor, or the really decent armor with worse stats that looks cool? Find a cool hat the character you're roleplaying as totally would wear? Oh, it has worse stats than the helmet you were using... But it weighs less! Maybe you can use a heavier chest plate to compensate for the stats you lost?

This also makes armor that both looks cool and has great stats into very valuable items that players want to get.

Of course for PvP games, having the type of armor that a player has on instantly give away their power level is important. On a Minecraft server, if you see two hostile players, one has leather armor, and the other has full netherite, you know the netherite guy is going to have better gear.

You might think this only matters for PvP games, but not allowing this mechanic in mostly single player games also adds a lot to the game, since you'll likely either see friends play the game or watch videos of other people playing the game. Each armor being intrinsically linked to certain stats creates a link between what you know that armor does and what kind of player would use that armor. In Elden Ring (which also has PvP, but bear with me), if you see someone wearing Bull Goat (the heaviest armor with the best stats), or wearing nothing but a jar on their head (to get worse defense but faster dodge rolls and some buffs to consumable throwing items), that tells you a lot about their play style just looking at their character's appearance. If both of these people could wear whatever armor they wanted and make the functional armor invisible, I would have no idea what build they had.

Using armor that looks good but has bad stats can be a fun flex to show you're good at the game, and choosing to have terrible fashion in exchange for stats is hilarious, as per this ProZD skit. That concept is a fun part of gaming culture I wouldn't want to see destroyed.

This is such a vague thing to post, but in the past few years I've been wrestling with my increasing introversion. I'm always tired. I was talking about my feelings towards friendships to a friend (without an intent to say anything negative) and found myself surprised at how little I mentioned any benefits from companionships. What weighed on me was the time spent, the work spent, the money spent on trying to "keep people happy." (I have a few other closer friends, so it's not the way I feel about everyone). It's a weird position to be in as someone who had once tried hard to make new friends. I find myself struggling with the guilt for how I feel and the desire to just recess, to focus on myself, and to attend to my desire for stability (especially financial stability-- I feel like things have gotten more expensive). I have deeper and more commitments than I used to, which should make me feel so fortunate. However, as a result, they are also in competition for my time / energy.

I've been feeling really weighted down by this lately, so I'm curious to hear from people who may have gone through something similar. A part of me feels that perhaps if I made my life more stable (a cheaper mortgage instead of renting in a major / global city, a higher paying job, lower-key friendships etc.) then I would feel happier on a day-to-day level.

edit: clarified some things