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.

Id never heard the terms satisfier or maximizer til I was having a discussion with my then girlfriend about the difference in the way we select things. The difference became apparent when she wanted to buy a new lawnmower. We walked into a big box store, she looked at a row of 10 mowers and said "I want that one" pointing at the second one. Being a maximizer I thought she meant that was her first choice out of the 10 options here but obviously we had two more stores and many more options to check out.

Nope.

She meant she had looked them over in 2 minutes and THAT mower was her final choice.

I honestly was quite surprised. "You don't wanna shop around? Compare features? Compare prices?" No, that's not what satisfiers do. Satisfiers just find the first thing that satisfies their needs and go with it.

Which is why my wife can select anything and everything very quickly and I end up making a spreadsheet to do a thorough cost benefit analysis on anything important. I even had one when I was dating for every woman I went out for coffee. And fortunately, she didn't - she just started reverse alphabetically and since my username was near the end of the alphabet I won the luck of the draw.

And here we are happily celebrating our 15th anniversary next week. Who says you gotta be the same to be compatible lol?

Are you a satisfier or a maximizer?

My parents are about to get a new TV because theirs is faulty and they don't seem interested in repairing it. I'm going to be taking the faulty one from them and, because it's ridiculous that the TV only worked normally for 3.5 years, am very tempted to try a repair. It's an LG CX OLED from 2021, here's a description of the issue:

• When plugged into the mains, the standby light will come on and the TV can be powered on and used as normal. However, if too much time elapses after plugging-in without fully powering on (I don't actually know how long, somewhere between 5-10 minutes), the standby light will switch off and the TV will become unresponsive.
• When the TV is in this "unresponsive" state, the only thing that will bring it back to life is to unplug it from the mains and wait a bit (again, somewhere between 5-10 minutes), then plug it back in and turn it on. This happens every time the TV is plugged in, with no variation.
• The TV is fully functional when it's turned on, and there's no other issues with it at all.
• If the TV is turned back off (back to standby mode), the clock starts again until it becomes unresponsive.

So clearly there's some problem with standby mode. Some searching has indicated that other customers are frequently having this issue, and that replacing either the PSU or Motherboard of the TV will solve the issue. It's out of warranty, so I'm going to be spending money if I want to fix it. Replacement PSUs are about $250, and replacement Motherboards are about $350. I can only really afford one of these parts right now, so it's a gamble if I can't figure out a way to isolate the issue to one of the boards. I don't own a multimeter to test power, nor do I know anything about electronics, so I'm slightly fumbling around in the dark on this one.

There's always the alternative of getting up and switching the power on and off every time, which is significantly more convenient for me than it is for my parents because of room size and outlet placement, but I'd like to be able to use the remote as intended (and, as I mentioned before, it's ridiculous that the thing is falling apart after only a few years, it's a very expensive TV!). I could also... find an IR controlled outlet or something? I don't know if that's a thing, but you know what I mean.

I will end up using this TV regardless of whether or not I can get it fixed, because OLED is unbeatable, and it's not every day that my parents will replace something that isn't outright destroyed, but if you have electronics experience, or have had this problem (it seems like it's super common) any recommendations or help would be appreciated!

I have a Moto G 5G 2023 and 2025 Chevy Trax that I'm trying to troubleshoot why Android Auto cannot last more than 10 minutes without crashing out and needing to either wait for the connection to be available again, or unplug and replug the USB cord to get it to reconnect. Sometimes it goes for an extended period of time, and sometimes it won't last for longer than a minute before it crashes with no visible error on the phone. I think it might be something in RAM, but more often than not it's when Google Maps is up, with Audible in the background and I'm not sure if it's one of those or possibly my Launcher or having the three buttons turned on for my phone, or some weird esoteric thing.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I'm building a fun bit of code that uses public APIs to track the location of unusual orbital objects. Including the Tesla Roadster still drifting somewhere between us and Mars, the "Trash Bag object" orbiting Earth, Oumuamua, and some famous satellites like the Voyager probes.

What would you include in a highlight reel of random stuff moving around in our solar system? I leave the scope as broad as possible: an observable object in our solar system of any size or mass.

When Musk bought Twitter and "unleashed free speech" on the platform, it made me curious about other social media platforms, specifically one where data and privacy are much more respected.

That inevitably lead me to mastodon. I opened an account and all that, but I must be doing it wrong, or maybe mastodon just isn't what I want it to be.

I don't really know who or what to follow on there that would create an experience that draws me in.

In fairness, it could just be that I am not following interesting accounts but I follow 7 accounts

• grapheneOS which is just updates about their O.S.
• Daniel Micay who hasn't posted in a loooong time
• James Gunn rarely posts
• nixCraft is just memes

and the rest are just news outlets like Ars Technica, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Propublica, which ain't bad but like, they post links to long-form articles, which isn't really what you are really looking for if you are just doing a light skim of your feed for a quick 5 minutes.

Are interesting folks not on mastodon? or I am just not following the right accounts? Im interested in tech stuff and social issues and some politics (but not much cause that can get doom scrolly fast)

I’m finally making the plunge to getting a bread maker, now that the price of bread has gone up to a stupid amount and I finally realized four months of buying bread every other day will pay for the machine itself. (Flour is cheap, yeast is cheap.) There are only really three machines available where I live, so I’m pretty set on the machine itself.

Since I’ve never had a bread maker, do y’all have any advice, favorite recipes, suggestions?

Obviously, Canada and U.S. are entirely different political systems with different media environments and so forth, but as someone who likes the content of podcasters like The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, Hasan Minhaj and podcasters/tech journalists like Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher and "free thinkers" like Bari Weiss and her ilk, I am wondering if Canada has any similar content that I am just unable to find with google/duck searches? As a Canadian, I think I should be consuming more content that goes over Canadian news rather than American but our media environment seems really barren if you are trying to avoid CBC produced material.

The closest I could find was Canadaland but after a few episodes, I found that host is of a particular brand of "progressive" that I don't particularly care for.

Back in January I was tasked by my brother in law to create a murder mystery parlor game during our family reunion in an Irish castle. Well we just got back last night, and it ended up being one of the most fun vacations of my life.

This is a family of social over-achievers. Super engaged professionals and executives and teachers. A dozen of them would stay up every night drinking and laughing til 2am, sleep 5 hours, then do it all over again. I have trouble keeping up, so I'm glad the game I designed happened on one of the first nights. At first, the mastermind behind this whole trip only gave me 90 minutes for the middle of the day but he lost control of the schedule and I got my three hours in the dark as is proper for a game like this.

All 21 players absolutely committed, bringing vintage costumes and props across the Atlantic for this one night. I created a deck of character cards for each of them, as well as a number of other special prop and event cards, and as they were all getting dressed I texted them their roles.

This was the first hangup. The castle had very poor cell and wifi reception so the texts didn't go through. But all 22 of us had iPhones so I ended up AirDropping everyone's character and gave them personal, private notes. I wouldn't mention the tech glitch otherwise, but this absolutely changed my own strategy as the dead victim, Lord Reginald Springfield. I thought I would be in a kind of control room with my laptop receiving texts from the butler or others when they found certain props. But because they couldn't communicate like that, I had to shadow them through the rooms and sprint like the devil in anticipation of their next moves to certain parts of the castle and its grounds.

Having never done this, and certainly not at this scale, I was surprised by several of their own strategies. At the outset, the butler convened (most of) the group and announced the reading of the will. Then the cops showed up to tell everyone the will was missing, Lord Springfield was poisoned and dead in bed, and that they were all suspects. The Inspector and Constable then began interviewing the subjects one by one.

I'm aware that normal police procedure is to isolate suspects for interviews, specifically to compare notes and find the lies afterward. But I didn't think these two players were aware of that. Turned out I was wrong. Instead of interviewing everyone in front of each other, they squirreled each suspect away and gave them the business, taking copious notes that they shared with no one.

Taking their own cues from this, when the suspects began making their own conjectures and discovering clues, they shared them with absolutely no one unless forced. It was perfect game theory. I just didn't expect these competitive bastards to be so very competitive. It was fantastic. The chaos agents played their parts beautifully, muddying the waters, and the spiritualists spent all their time trying to find all seven of their number to convene a seance. Once they did, I raced into my room and put on a long white nightgown and drew a kind of kabuki corpse makeup on my face. They were racing around in the courtyard outside in the last of the sun and I tap...tap...tapped on the window until one of them saw me, an apparition in a castle window. Classic imagery. She pointed and screamed.

All seven spiritualists (except for the devilish Colonel, who only pretended to be one so he could eavesdrop on the seance) piled into the parlor and held hands. I started walking down the upstairs hall toward them moaning a very haunting melody line from an early Frank Zappa album over and over, then entered the parlor. They said their hair stood on end lol. I whispered my answers then disappeared and later, my widow Lady Eleanor found the burned note in the fireplace of that room.

Tremendous dramatic moment here: That's the note that revealed I wrote them all out of the will and left the entire estate to Madame DuBois. But Eleanor of all people found it and you could see her internal torment. Then she turned away from them all and didn't share it. For nearly another hour they labored to puzzle out the clues while she acted out very well the utter destruction of her life. Absolutely choice stuff.

The twist I had planned is that most of the clues pointed toward Vicar Atkinson and he himself only knew that he blacked out after an argument with the victim. So his card tells him that he is almost certainly guilty and if they accused him, to flee. The line of his card at the end is my personal favorite: But if they actually do accuse you, your only chance is to run. That Inspector is old and the Constable is a woman. How fast can she be? I don't think that Tyler (the vicar) knew that his west coast cousin Lena (Constable Wright) was a huge track star, 100 meters champion, crowned fastest girl in San Francisco two years in a row. I wanted to see her run his ass down like The Flash.

But alas, the real murderer, Hanne (Ingrid) is from Hamburg, Germany and although her card told her she had poisoned the victim while leaving no clues, and that all she had to do was keep a poker face and she was in the clear, she simply couldn't do it. Asking a proper German hausfrau to lie to the police, even in a FUCKING GAME, was too stressful for her and she broke down and confessed the entire thing. I'd hoped to finish this neat and tidy Agatha Christie affair with an accusation and arrest of the vicar, delighted by the idea that justice was NOT served and the wrong man was convicted. Very post-modern take on the whole thing. Two days later I shared all my notes as planned and that was when I'd expected them to realize they'd let the real killer slip away... But never count on duplicity from a Teutonic mind.

We took antique photos of everyone's insane costumes which I can't share for privacy. But they were perfect. It was an absolute smash hit, with people spending the rest of the week recounting the plots and sub-plots and attacking each other in character. The next night was a family trivia night. The following night was a filming of two musical scenes from Rocky Horror. The following night we rented a traditional Irish band and they gave us a concert in the 15th century hall. We took day trips to Dingle and Limerick and Cork and I hiked and biked and two days ago I was swimming in the Shannon River outside Killaloe.

An excellent trip all around. Thanks for reading. Happy to answer any and all questions and yeah now I guess I have a side hustle as a murder mystery game designer if anyone needs me.

I would like to upgrade my aged 8 years old laptop and I'm completely undecided about which laptop to buy right now.

I considered Apple Intel laptops terrible, bad thermals, overpriced, unreliable, touch bar (uggg), I hated every second working on it, when the company I work for upgraded me with a M1, it was such a huge improvement from any laptop I have ever tried, absolutely no noise, incredibly performant and the longest battery life of any laptop by a lot.

I still don't like the Apple ecosystem, and I would prefer to use Linux as my main OS, but I can't find anything that comes even closer for the price of a Mac Air, If I go with Framework I'll get a less performant machine with a way worse battery, I honestly don't think the premium on repairability is worth for me when I don't have any issues repairing more challenging laptops, at the end repairability will be how easy is to get new parts.

ThinkPads have good reputation and repairability, but for what I see, the quality has gone down the drain in their latest models, and if I go with their premium models I get similar performance to Apple with worse battery, Dell has similar issues.

Gaming laptops are not an option, I don't do any PC gaming and the size and aesthetics are a dealbreaker for me.

The main issue seems to be that until ARM processors become better competitors to Apple, the battery life will be always the bottleneck, and I don't know how good the new Snapdragon X Elite compares right now.

Besides web development, photography edition and video editing (4k), I don't do many demanding tasks, I'm more than fine with the performance of a M1 as the baseline.

As an alternative, I'm thinking about getting a powerful desktop for the demanding tasks and a less powerful laptop with a good battery and screen, but ideally I would prefer a single machine.