It does not need to be the most important, just a book that has truly changed you. My personal pick is Albert Camus' "The Rebel"; it provided structure for a lot of nebulous thoughts that were floating around in my head.

I've been meaning to make this post for a while, and it's actually going to wind up being a series of several posts. It's kind of a long meditation on what it means to socialize online and the ways in which the services we use to do that help or hinder us in doing so. Along the way I'm going to be going into some thoughts on how online discourse works, how it should work, and what can be done to drive a more communal, less toxic, and more inclusive of non-traditional (read: non-technical) voices. I'm going to be throwing out a lot of inchoate opinions here, so I'm hoping to pressure test my views and solicit other viewpoints and experiences from the community.

I mentioned in an introduction thread that I'm a policy analyst and my work is focused on how to structure policies and procedures to build a constructive organizational culture. I've been a moderator in some large PHP forums and IRC channels in the old days, and I've developed some really strong and meaningful friendships through the web. So I've always had a soft spot for socializing on the interwebs.

Okay, so that's the introduction out of the way. The main point I want to focus on is the title: Remember the Person. This was the something Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit, suggested in a farewell message as she stepped down from the role in the wake of a community outcry regarding her changes to Reddit's moderation practices. The gist of it was that online communication makes it too easy to see the people you're interacting with in abstract terms rather than as human beings with feelings. It's a bit of a clichéd thought if we're being honest, but I think we still tend not to pay enough attention to how true it is and how deeply it alters the way we interact and behave and how it privileges certain kinds of interaction over others. So let's dig in on how we chat today, how it's different from how we chatted before in discussion forums, and what we're actually looking for when we gather online.

Since this is the first in a series, I want to focus on getting some clarity on terms and jargon that we'll be using going forward. I'd like to start by establishing some typologies for social media platforms. A lot of these will probably overlap with each other, and I'll probably be missing a few, but it's just to get a general sense of categories.

To start with we have the "Content Aggregator" sites. Reddit is the most notable, HackerNews is big but niche, and Tildes is one too. This would also include other sites like old Digg, Fark.com, and possibly even include things like IMGUR or 9Gag. The common thread among all of these is user submitted content, curation and editorial decisions made largely by popular vote, and continued engagement being driven by comment threads associated with the submitted content (e.g. links, images, videos, posts). In any case, the key thing you interact with on these sites is atomized pieces of "content."

Next up are the "Running Feed" services. Twitter and Mastodon are the classic examples as is Facebook's newsfeed. Instagram is an example with a different spin on it. These services are functionally just glorified status updates. Indeed, Twitter was originally pitched as "What if we had a site that was ONLY the status updates from AOL Instant Messager/GChat?" The key thing with how you interact with these services is the "social graph." You need to friend, follow, or subscribe to accounts to actually get anything. And in order to contribute anything, you need people following or subscribing to you. Otherwise you're just talking to yourself (although if we're being honest, that's what most people are doing anyway they just don't know it). This means the key thing you interact with on these sites is an account. You follow accounts get to put content on your feed. Follower counts, consequently, become a sort of "currency" on the site.

Then you've got the "Blogs" of old and their descendants. This one is a bit tricky since it's largely just websites so they can be really heterogenous. As far as platforms go, though, Tumblr is one of the few left and I think LiveJournal is still kicking. Lots of online newspapers and magazines also kind of count. And in the past there were a lot more services, like Xanga and MySpace. The key thing you interact with here is the site. The page itself is the content and they develop a distinct editorial voice. Follower counts are still kind of a thing, but the content itself has more persistence so immediacy is less of an issue than in feed based paradigms where anything older than a day might as well not exist. This one gets even trickier because the blogs tend to have comment sections and those comment sections can have a bunch little social media paradigms of their own. It's like a matroishka doll of social platforms.

The penultimate category is the "Bulletin Board" forum. PHP BB was usually the platform of choice. There are still a few of these kicking around, but once upon a time these were the predominant forms of online discourse. Ars Technica and Something Awful still have somewhat active ones, but I'm not sure where else. These also have user posted content, but there is no content curation or editorial action. As a result, these sites tend to need more empowered and active moderators to thrive. And the critical thing you're interacting with in these platforms is the thread. Threads are discussion topics, but it's a different vibe from the way you interact on a content aggregator. On a site like Reddit or Tildes all discussion under a topic is 1 to 1. Posts come under content. On a bulletin board it works like an actual bulletin board. You're responding under a discussion about a topic rather than making individual statements about an individual post or comment. Another way to put it is on an aggregator site each participant is functionally writing individual notes to each other participant. On a bulletin board each participant is writing an open letter to add to the overall discussion as a whole.

And finally, you've got the "Chat Clients." This is the oldest form besides email newsletters. This began with Usenet and then into IRC. The paradigm lives on today in the form of instant messaging/group texts, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, etc. In this system you're primarily interacting with the room(s) as a whole. There isn't really an organizing framework for the conversation, it's really just a free-flowing conversation between the participants. You might be able to enforce on-topic restrictions, but that's about as structured as it gets.

That about covers the typologies I can think of. Next up I want to delve into the ways in which the UI and design patterns with each of these platforms affects the way users engage with them, what sorts of social dynamics they encourage, and what sorts of interactions they discourage. In the mean time, I'm eager to hear what people think about the way I've divided these up, whether you think I've missed anything, or have any additional thoughts on the ones I put up.

Firstly, I'd like to dismiss any claims of pandering or fishing here. I need to say this and I need to write it out.

I was a reddit user for 8 years. I thought it was 5 but another commenter reminded me what it was. It put me into a bit of a reflective mood. I thought about some of the more meaningful insightful interactions I've had, and some of the more bitterly memorable ones where I was at best annoyed but more recently feeling attacked, shot down, rudely treated. It was profound as a sensitive human being to receive these things, to be made to feel through text, written for you by someone else. These weren't friends, people you held at arms length as you got to know them, they were complete strangers. And these people could be brutal. Make you feel so small. And yet I am a grown man, this environment I spent easily 30% of my waking time on for the best part of a decade was interacting with people and how much I enjoyed it. It was more than a website it was a place that I called home during bouts of depression, social drought and personal hardships. I found myself seeking help and for the most part finding it.

I have learned something valuable that I want to share here and I had to learn it the hard way, through hypocrisy, through mistakes, through mis-spoken words and harsh tongue thrashings both ways. I have realised for the first time that the people reading these things, the people writing them, the sentiments involved and the content/context is important. They are real, they are human, they feel, they are like me.

We are seeking some assembly, some community, some lectern from which to state our case. My whole life I looked for togetherness online and thought I found it in the early days of reddit. That is gone now. Even intelligent well thought out research style posts cannot culminate properly, they do not ascend, the public discourse is dead. I see now first hand the destruction of community the facebook exec spoke about. Our actual confident, open, readily invited opinionated perspectives are being replaced by circle jerks and shallow agree/disagree type statements. Upvotes have become likes. Now I see how it is broken.

Someone saw me having a meltdown and invited me here. I was told it was invite only, and that it was made by someone who had the same feelings as me. I don't want to be surrounded by likeminded people, thats not what I joined reddit for. I joined because open and honest perspectives based on experience were readily available; academics, workers, parents, billionaires, could just shoot-the-shit they didn't need to cite sources or write something popular. But upvotes were reserved for contributors, not jesters or people ridiculing/attacking/berating others. The reddit bandwagon has become savagely toxic in many respects. It is (sorry was) frustrating.

So here I am. Fresh off the boats as a reddit refugee. I hope than I can find my place here and contribute to the discussions, help build the site, build something that hopefully cannot be corrupted by growth, investors and advertisers.

We discussed in the hundred or comments attached to my meltdown that the lowering average age of the site population and possible the general dumbing down of internet users happening the past 10 years was largely responsible. I can imagine previously mentioned factors also drove it over the cliff. What is the current hope for Tildes future? I read the announcement post and it mentioned that a baseline level of activity will ensure that topics cycle regularly and user engagement is high enough to stimulate people coming back. Or that is at least what I think the baseline is for.

I hope this topic starts a discussion and doesn't get moderated away. But the lack of real debate, insight, coupled with a responsive and welcoming attitude is something the whole internet is missing right now, this is where we could make a positive change to the current online environment.

A common topic I've seen so far on Tildes is what exactly differentiates it from other online communities. This doesn't just encompass vision and meta-rules, but also the current state of the forum, and it's userbase. I wanted to propose a possible metric for gauging the quality of a forum, and would love to hear feedback on it. The metric is as follows: when all the content on the platform is no longer realistically consumable by any given member of the community.

I feel like Tildes is still currently at this state, but is somewhat quickly getting to the point where it's unrealistic for any one user to absorb all the content on the site. Once this tipping point arrives, the community has to change. The choice will be between whether one should start consuming all the content on specific sub-forums, like ~talk or ~comp, and ignoring the discussions and other subforums one cares less about, or accept that one will only ever see what is popular overall within the site.

I feel like this falls into 3 main categories: Community, growth, and that "magic" feeling of nascent internet communities.

I think it's important to define what I mean by "information" or "content". Information is meant in the more information theoretic context - it's a more abstract representation of content. It's context specific information that can be manifested as an image, a post, a comment, or even a set of rules. Information is, broadly, what makes up the discussion. If anyone has read Information: A history, a theory, a flood, I mean information in the same way it is defined and used in that book.

1. Community:

When every user is able to see what every other use posts, everyone involved has a singular point of view into the content of that community. It's never sharded or split - the information is distributed evenly, and everyone has close to 100% of it. Everyone might not agree or interpret content in the same way, but the very fact that everyone is seeing the same content, and the information is presented identically, makes it so that there is a very dense set of common ground. It's nearly impossible to "miss" big events - these being singular, really well written comment chains, unique posts, or thought provoking ideas. The sense of community is there because no one is excluded due to sheer amount of information - if someone puts in the effort to see everything, and it's still possible to see everything, they're almost automatically a part of that community.

Once a forum becomes so large that any one person can no longer realistically consume all the content it starts straying towards the lowest common denominator. These are posts that share common ground with everyone, which unfortunately means that you lose that unique community. Most people one site will no longer have seen every single post. You no longer run into posts or comments that are as thought provoking, simply because there is so much content only that which appeals to everyone will make it to the top.

2. Growth:

This ties in closely with what I mentioned above - the growth is what spurs those changes. Once you no longer have that feeling of community, you interact with it differently. You no longer can rely on the same people seeing your content, and the content itself starts decreasing in quality. This isn't due to "dumb" people joining - it's due to the sheer amount of "Information" being generated. The idea of Eternal September is tangential to this - you're not just losing out on community due to a lot of new users, it's also a loss of community due to sheer amount of information.

3. Magic internet moments:

I don't have a good definition of this but I think most people will know what I mean. Every popular online community has these moments - they're the random acts of pizza, randomly encountering someone else from the same site in real life, crazy coincidences, etc. These are often what kick start the crazy growth in the previous post - they're just really cool events that happen because of the internet, and specifically happen on that site. The new reddit book We are the nerds goes over a ton of these in the early days of reddit, and how they propelled it to what it is today.

I wanted to ask the current Tildes community what they thought about this, whether they had any major disagreements, and if anything can be done to remedy this./

This is something I've been grappling with for a while. For context I'm a long time mod on reddit, primarily of r/IAmA, r/damnthatsinteresting, and r/churning. I've helped grow and curate these communities over time, and each is drastically different. The most relevant here is probably r/churning, though.

It used to be that there was a core set of users that contributed all the content. They were known by name, everyone that visited knew who they were, and they built up the hobby to what it is today. All the things that I mentioned above started happening there - the content started skewing towards the trivial questions, new members weren't properly acclimated, and the sheer amount of information caused the mods at the time to implement fairly drastic rules to combat these issues. Once you could no longer realistically consume all the content the community aspect sort of fell apart, and it became more akin to a Q&A subreddit, with new users asking the same questions.

Do you believe there is something unique/special about those "early" users, and what changes have you noticed historically once that "content" tipping point arrives?

Oof Grandma... Get your head out of your ass woman.(This is in Jest, Grandma knows and thought it was funny. ya'll chill)* Where are you getting your news lately because I just sent you an article from our national news organization and you just told me you can't believe it... Why?

We live and love in the beautiful free country of Canada and despite any individual political leader, we can find comfort in the fact that we have many elected officials that listen to their constituents and ultimately intend to better the lives for our nation. Canada is a mighty developed country and she has designated important bodies to help protect us from the wolves that prey on the weak. We have the CBC a nationally funded non profit organization that has authorship and integrity to the journalists they hire and a long history of helping the truth and redacting and outright dismissing disinformation (now more commonly called fake news). In this article I've sent you, it has sources directly involved in the measles outbreak, including doctors who are licensed through a board that verifies their integrity and ethics and authority in medicine. Also sourced is the CDC; another body that was appointed by Canada herself to keep her citizens healthy and safe, these are not groups of scientists with a vested interest to lie to anyone as that would jeopardize the safety to our entire nature... Yet these highly educated and well funded scientists are refuting your hypothesis grandma.

I think in order to understand what is happening here we need to both step back and ground ourselves in a neutral territory towards a scholarly pursuit and work towards the advancement of our society. To do this we need to frame our perspective to that of a scholar to which I think you and I both agree we are proud to call ourselves anyway. Me, a university student and you an independent researcher: truth be told, as a student of an organization like Ryerson, I have access to a wider breadth of knowledge in our online resources and databases of peer reviewed articles that I can search through with ease, but our goal will be the same and can be achieved only if you think critically with everything you read - you seem well versed in this regard so kudos let's proceed.

As a critical thinker and scholar we are nothing without our authority which is provided through our knowledge-base in factual information. I don't need to be an expert in biology, medicine, or even journalism to be able to have confidence in reading the news article I sent you; but as a scholar I have the ability to verify the authority to the people making the claims in the article. Every person involved in a professionally investigated article are sourced and cited and provide proof to their authority. It's why the CBC discloses their journalists and is also why they'll happily fire them if they fuck up - their integrity is on the line - same with every scientist working for the CDC. Canada does not have a vested interest in the perpetuation of fake news and disinformation, this isn't fucking Russia! (or the U.S. for that matter - Fox news is GOP run television FYI).

This is critical thinking and needs to be understood before you assume authority to the Facebook posts you read. Think of the platform you are getting your news from - Facebook: an American company with a vested interest in advertising to its users. They are NOT a news agency and have zero regulation in verifying the authority of authorship. Anyone can write any shit they like, and the more clicks they get, the more money Facebook makes. In-fact they will happily sell any message you like so long as you're willing to pay for it. I can post just about anything under the guise of "free speech" so long as it does not contain "hate speech" (technically a crime in Canada) and then pay Facebook a couple hundreds of dollars to get that post higher up on my friend's walls. It's how their platform works and regardless of whether a post has been promoted by Facebook themselves or not they are in the business of clicks. In this age of terrorism and fear mongering, the posts, articles, links, and videos that induce the most controversy and fear will gain the most clicks - this is human nature! Facebook doesn't care, they got their money as they are now one of the largest messaging services in the world, second only to WeChat which is a government controlled chinese messaging app linked to their social credit system meant to repress their citizens... hmm...

As Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said in his thesis Understanding Media, “For any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary… But the greatest aid to this end is simply in knowing that the spell can occur immediately upon contact, as in the first bars of a melody.” unfortunately the advent of social media has only perpetuated the scaling of the media, the importance of the messages, and the shallow knowledge-base of its users to apply the unwary en masse.

To quote a larger bit of McLuhan to drive this point home:

“The American stake in literacy as a technology or uniformity applied to every level of education, government, industry, and social life is totally threatened by the electric technology. The threat of Stalin or Hitler was external. The electric technology is within the gates, and we are numb, deaf, blind, and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology, on and through which the American way of life was formed. It is, however, no time to suggest strategies when the threat has not even been acknowledged to exist. I am in the position of Louis Pasteur telling doctors that their greatest enemy was quite invisible, and quite unrecognized by them.” (McLuhan was a man before his time., this was written in 1954) “For the “content” of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. The effect of the medium is made strong and intense just because it is given another medium as “content.” The content of a movie is a novel or a play or an opera.
The effect of the movie form is not related to its program content. The “content” of writing or print is speech, but the reader is almost entirely unaware either of print or of speech.”

Do not kid yourself, social media is no different than any other media. The content of the message is NOT the message. Who is posting the dribble and fake news and WHY? understand the author and their authority and you will begin to think critically again. You wouldn't pick up a history book without knowing who authored it would you? Facts are facts, and fake-news is disinformation by another name.

Now to return to our CBC article about measles and your claim that there is a connection to the MMR vaccine which has the potential to cause autism (despite how fucking stupid this shit is, I'll entertain your hypothesis for a moment).

1. Where are your critical sources and statistics to prove any semblance to propose such an outlandish hypothesis? Because I can't seem to find any real ones in my databases here and every time I've asked you for your proof you've failed to provide any.

2. If the vaccine were to cause autism you accept that there is a chance this vaccine may put a child at harms risk. The reality is you are saying you'd rather risk your child potentially getting a deadly disease and potentially becoming maimed and permanently injured through contact with the disease and worse contaminating others and spreading the harmful pathogens to others just out of fear of potentially could get autism... again, supported without any fact or evidence? Janet's post from Antivax-moms facebook group is non an authority of fact and no medical body has rightfully confirmed a case of autism to the MMR vaccine... so where is our proof again? Big-vaccine is out to give autism to our children?

3. By not immunizing your children you are immorally upholding your child's life over that of your nations and against those you interact with on a day to day basis. You are no longer in a small town - we are a massive country with very loose borders so we can invite friends and family to visit. But when we don't protect our basecamp, the wolves will get in. That goes for fake news just as much as it goes for measles. We already have guards on duty to protect our children, our sick, our immune deficient elders and infants from harmful diseases. These treatments work and you and I are the proof in the pudding. Where is this form of tribalism coming from where you would rather "protect" from autism but not measles, mumps, and rubella? These are the wolves we must fight, and we can't let our guard down just because a post of Facebook has a few thousand clicks.

We are in the age of disinformation and globalization, whether we like it or not there are a select few who are controlling the messages we perpetuate online. Unfortunately it's the confusion and lack of authority to the messages that has guided us towards a harmful future that is now killing children all over the world.
https://medium.com/the-method/anti-vaccination-is-killing-children-in-europe-658415c54a04

stop spreading misinformation and think critically. You are better than that... you are a scholar!

I love you, and I hope you take this to heart.

EDIT*
Seeing that the post was more appropriately moved to ~talk I'm hoping I can start a bit more of a dialogue that has unraveled from talking with the rest of my family. I told my internal family about my conversation with Grandma which we've all had by now, we bring fact, she still isn't sure there isn't a bigger picture that she isn't seeing. She's been fed too many stories to really believe the true ones. How are we meant to respond to this? My dad kinda pissed me off, he said it's like pushing on rope and said it wasn't even worth the effort - especially since someone like my Grandmother doesn't intend to have anymore children and all her family members are well ingrained in the Ontario health system... despite his position, we get issues where families are believing information and causing significant harm to our society... what do?

My bad argument style aside, has anyone else felt like they've been pushing on rope lately?

I wanted to say that I really enjoy the "[Back]" link that shows up when you select "Parent" on a comment. Frequently, when I want to navigate to a comment's parent via the parent link, it's because there's a lot of other comments in between the parent and child comments, so being able to easily navigate back is just delightful. It's so thoughtful and demonstrates an understanding of the reading experience that multiple times I wished reddit had. More like this, please. :)

For my particular use case I share my home PC with my spouse and since I'm the more tech-savvy of the two I'll need to occasionally remote in and help out with some random task. They know enough that the issue will usually be too complex to simply guide over the phone, so remote control it is.

I'm also trying to improve my personal efforts toward privacy and security. To that end I want to avoid closed-source services such as TeamViewer where a breach on their end could compromise my system.

The following is the current state of what I'm now using as I think others may benefit from this as well:

Setup

Web

I use a simple web form as my first authentication. It's just a username and password, but it does require a web host that supports server side code such as PHP. In my case I just created a blank page with nothing other than the form and when successful the page generates a 6 digit PIN and saves it to a text file in a private folder (so no one can simply navigate to it and get the PIN).

I went the text file route because my current hosting plan only allows 1 database and I didn't want to add yet another random table just for this 1 value.

Router

To connect to my home PC I needed to forward a port from my router. I'm going to use VNC as it lets me see what is currently shown on the monitor and work with someone already there so I forward port 5900 as VNC's default port. You can customize this if you want. Some routers allow you to SSH into their system and make changes that way so a step more secure would be to leave the port forward disabled and only enable it once a successful login from the web form is disabled. In my case I'll just leave the port forwarded all the time.

IP Address

To connect to my computer I need to know it's external IP address and for this I use FreeDNS from Afraid.org. My router has dynamic DNS support for them already included so it was easy to plug in my details to generate a URL which will always point to my home PC (well, as long as my router properly sends them my latest IP address). If your router doesn't support the dynamic DNS you choose many also allow either a download or the settings you would need to script your own to keep your IP address up to date with their service.

Signal

Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messenger which supports text, media, phone and video calls. There's also a nifty command line option on Github called Signal-cli which I'm using to provide my second form of authentication. I just downloaded the package, moved to my $PATH (in my case /usr/local/bin) and set it up as described on their README. In my case I have both a normal cell phone number and another number provided by Google Voice. I already use my normal cell phone number with Signal so for this project I used Signal-cli to register a new account using my Google Voice number.

VNC

My home PC runs Ubuntu 18.04 so I'm using x11vnc as my VNC server. Since I'm leaving my port forwarded all the time I most certainly do NOT want to leave VNC also running. That's too large a security risk for me. Instead I've written a short bash script that first checks the web form using curl and https (so it's encrypted) with its own login information to check if any PIN numbers have been saved. If a PIN is found the web server sends that back and then deletes the PIN text file. Meanwhile the bash script uses the PIN to start a VNC session with that PIN as the password and also sends my normal cell the PIN via Signal-cli so that I can login.

I have this script set to run every minute so I'm not waiting long after web login and I also have the x11vnc session set to timeout after a minute so I can quickly connect again should I mess something up. It's also important that x11vnc is set to auto exit after closing the session so that it's not left up for an attacker to attempt to abuse.

System Flow

Once everything is setup and working this is what it's like for me to connect to my home PC:

1. Browse to my web form and login
2. Close web form and wait for Signal message
3. Launch VNC client
4. Connect via dynamic DNS address (saved to VNC client)
5. Enter PIN code
6. Close VNC when done

Code

Here's some snippets to help get you started

PHP for Web Form Processing

<?php
// Variables
$username = 'your_username';
$password = 'your_password_super_long_and_unique';
$filename = 'path_to_private_folder/vnc/pin.txt';

// Process the login form
if($action == 'Login'){
	$file = fopen($filename,'w');
	$passwd = rand(100000,999999);
	fwrite($file,$passwd);
	fclose($file);
	exit('Success');
}

// Process the bash script
if($action == 'bash'){
	if(file_exists($filename)){
		$file = fopen($filename,'r');
		$passwd = fread($file,filesize($filename));
		fclose($filename);
		unlink($filename);
		exit($passwd);
	} else {
		exit('No_PIN');
	}
}
?>

Bash for x11vnc and Signal-cli

# See if x11vnc access has been requested
status=$(curl -s -d "u=your_username&p=your_password_super_long_and_unique&a=bash" https://vnc_web_form.com)

# Exit if nothing has been requested
if [ "$status" = "No_PIN" ]; then
  # No PIN so exit; log the event if you want
  exit 0
fi

# Strip non-numeric characters
num="${status//[!0-9]/}"

# See if they still match (prevent error messages from triggering stuff)
if [ $status != $num ]; then
  # They don't match so probably not a PIN - exit; log it if you want
  exit 1
fi

# Validate pin number
num=$((num + 0))
if [ $num -lt 100000 ]; then
  # PIN wasn't 6 digits so something weird is going on - exit; log it if you want
  exit 1
fi
if [ $num -gt 999999 ]; then
  # Same as before
  exit 1
fi

# Everything is good; start up x11vnc
# Log event if you want

# Get the current IP address - while dynamic DNS is in place this serves as a backup
ip=$(dig +short +timeout=5 myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com)

# Send IP and password via Signal
# Note that phone number includes country code
# My bash is running as root so I run the command as my local user where I had registered Signal-cli
su -c "signal-cli -u +google_voice_number send -m '$num for $ip' +normal_cell_number" s3rvant

# Status was requested and variable is now the password
# this provides a 1 minute window to connect with 1-time password to control main display
# again run as local user
su -c "x11vnc -timeout 60 -display :0 -passwd $num" s3rvant

Final Thoughts

There are more secure ways to handle this. Some routers support VPN for the connect along with device certificates which are much stronger than a 6 digit PIN code. Dynamically opening and closing the router port as part of the bash script would also be a nice touch. For me this is enough security and is plenty convenient enough to quickly offer tech support (or nab some bash code for articles like this) on the fly.

I'm pretty happy with how Signal-cli has worked out and plan to use it again with my next project (home automation). I'll be sure to post again once I get that ball rolling.

Hey fellow tilderinos,

I thought it'd be interesting to have a semi-regular discussion where we get into those songs, whether a new find or old standby, where we relate them to specific emotions.

I'd like to keep it pretty general for now and not put too many rules or regulations on how the discussion unfolds (it is a discussion after all) so we start with something more ambiguous: anxious.

So tilderinos what songs do you gravitate towards when you feel anxious or what songs do you feel capture the emotion of anxiousness properly to you?

For instance: Ful Stop by Radiohead really captures what anxiety feels like for me. From the underlying base to the manic cries of Thom Yorke is really is an experience. One or two times I've been on my way home from work and this song pops on and it's almost too much for a drive home after a long shift.

On the flip side, Lion's Mane by Iron and Wine has the ability to calm me down even at my most anxious. It gives me the idea that it isn't always easy but its relatable and everything will calm down and be okay. It's mostly just really soothing to me for whatever reason.

Your turn Tilde. What songs do you associate with the word "anxious?"

I have a slight struggle that I wonder if anyone else can relate to. I'm a creative "type" in that both my job (scientist) and hobbies (many, over the years) require constant innovation, in addition to the usual labor, to keep them going.

I have a note/journal app where I store my ideas. Sometimes these are ideas with acute utility e.g. an experiment design that I can test out the next day at work or maybe an idea for a paper. Other ideas are what I would consider "highdeas" - insights or thoughts that seem amazing when you're stoned but after you sober up they're kind of nonsense. The former are productive and the latter are non-productive forms of creativity (barring any offshoots of the latter that prove useful later on).

But then sometimes I get idea in-between. Say, an insight into how certain human behaviors are a certain way or maybe a rant on a topic/issue in my lab work that is interesting but not valuable enough to publish or bring up in a formal meeting. My question / discussion topic for you, is, what do you do with these sort of self-ascribed interesting ideas that have no immediate value? One option is to write them out on a forum, as I am currently doing, but I would end up writing all day. Does anyone else keep track of these? Do you schedule a follow-up with these intermediate ideas for future inspiration? I currently use Joplin which is great but I don't think there are any features to stimulate creativity in this manner.

A few years ago I got into improving my knowledgebase of personal security - theory and tools - but it didn't go much farther than reinforcing everything with 2FA and setting up a password manager, plus setting up a VPN and full disk encryption.

It seems like we're amidst a rising tide of data breaches due to, IMHO, laziness and cheapness on the part of many companies storing personal data.

So, recently I've embarked on my second journey to improve my own security via habits and software and teaching myself. Privacytools has been a super helpful resource. My main lesson this time is to take ownership/responsibility for my own data. To that end, I have switched to KeyPass with yubikey 2FA (still trying to figure out how to get 2FA with yubi on my android without NFC), moved over to Joplin for my note taking (away from Google and Evernote) and also switched to NextCloud for all of my data storage and synchronization. I'm also de-Googling myself, current due-date is end of March when Inbox is shut down.

So my question / discussion topic here, is, what are everyone's thoughts on the future of practical personal security and privacy? More decentralization and self-hosting? That's what it looks like to me. Blockchain tech would be cool for public objects like news articles, images etc. but from what I understand that has zero implication for anything personal. The other newish tech is PGP signatures, which I'm still having trouble implementing/finding use for, but surely that will change.

There is this topic but that ended up just being about encryption which I think is a no-brainer at this point. I'm more so looking for the leading edge trends.

Hey everyone!

I'm pretty new here, and I'm already enjoying this place, but I was wondering when there will be a group to post photos. I take photos and I'm sure some of you do as well, and I thought it would be cool to be able to share the photos we take and get honest feedback on them like we have honest discussions in the news articles, share tips and tricks, and generally have another way to connect.

I know generally photos are kind of taboo, as places like instagram have kind of ruined it and turned every single person with a camera on their phone into a photographer, so I get it if you have reservations. I have some myself, but I still want to take the chance.

Idk, I thought it would be cool. If not, then whatever, I ain't picky about this place I enjoy it very much.

Hello y'all!

I wanted to make a post where all us trans peeps can introduce themselves and say hey to each other, since I find it nice to have other trans peeps to chat with. Come say hey, or drop me a line!

For my own intro: I normally go by Nihilistic Janitor online, and before you ask I really don't know jack about philosophy I just thought the phrase "cleanliness is next to meaninglessness" is funny. I'm a nineteen year old pan trans woman, currently wheelchair-bound, who enjoys reading and writing and who recently finished a draft of a fun cheesy gay romance novel. I'm also in with some other trans-heavy communities, so if you're curious and want to check those out, message me!

The Meta-application layer works by using a number of pre-configured free-to-use web applications such as FB messenger, gmail, skype, gchat, yahoo email, etc to establish a connection and transmit data over top the application layer.

It's purpose is to establish a meta-layer for new applications to make use of, to decrease centralization, and to increase privacy. Take the power back from big corporations, and put it back in with the People! (or some such thing, maybe...).

So each end of the communication would check some pre-configured number of free-online web apps for a code/key from the other side. Once found that key would determine the ordering, frequency, and mediums to use for communication. Such as: gmail - first message, skype - second message, yahoo email - third and forth message, repeat 10x, then reverse order, repeat 10x, and then start over again or better yet some hard-to-discern pattern.

Privacy would be increased through both obscurity (typically not a good way to do security) and through the use of a multitude of different web applications, each with their own varying degrees of security.

The actual messages would be the binary code...or for a more directed-application - text messages... Communication would be slow....but possible?

Anyways, that thought popped into my head so I thought I'd share it in case it took your own brain to any interesting places :)

I've seen a number of topics that have had unrelated comments regarding Tildes as a whole and the direction in which we'd like to steer it toward. While I realize much of these sidebar conversations have been occurring naturally and very frequently in well-nested comments, I wonder if it isn't going to become distracting to some going forward.

On one hand, I have enjoyed passively gaining insight into the vision of Tildes. On the other, I can see how we might want to start setting examples on the type of organization and behavior we'd want from users as the site grows. If new users who are joining after Tildes goes public see a regular occurrence of off-topic conversation, they might fall into bad habits and it may take root and grow.

What are your thoughts? Maybe start creating new topics in ~tildes and tag users along with quotes from outside threads so that there's still a reference point to start discussion from?

I came across a site about Chinese tech and video gaming and found it very Buzzfeed-y with its headlines and writing. It made me wonder what are the websites that curate a standard of thoughtful articles, essays, discussion, etc. and aren't part of the American internet scene.

I don't care what language it's in, what it's about, what country specifically it's centered on, if it's community-centric or not. If you have a suggestion, let's hear it.

Edit: An example I have is The Blizzard. It's really a subscription-model digital magazine (about soccer) but you can read various articles online.

Freshly minted user here, so here is a bit of feedback from the first hour of using ~s.

#1

Having topic-info line below the topic-text-excerpt block creates some usability friction, because if the the excerpt is large-ish, then the "xx comments" link is pushed way down, sometimes below the fold.

https://imgur.com/FUwKHo7.jpg

This is an issue (at least for me) because it interferes with efficient selection of topics to read.

You spot a promising topic, you open excerpt, skim through the top part, if it still shows promise, use the "xx comments" link to open it in.

Key point is that I would very rarely read the whole excerpt before deciding to see the comments. However with existing layout the "xx comments" link sits at the very bottom of the excerpt, requiring scrolling down, correcting for an over-shoot (if the link was below the fold) and then zeroing in on the link.

In comparison, if the link were to stay above the excerpt, it will be within few pixels from where my mouse is after clicking on the "open excerpt" triangle.

#2

If this were my site, I would probably just swapped topic-meta with topic-info, like so - https://imgur.com/fJ3tKxc.jpg.

The rationale here is that meta carries information that is less important and less frequently used/needed that topic-info. I know that I would be more interested in the comment count and the topic age than in tags.

#3

The topic-text-excerpt font size is too big. The index is nice, compact and has a very light feel to it. Then you click to expand the excerpt and it's like - WOAH, HERE'S SOME TEXT FOR YOU.

While browsing through the Tildes documentation, I stumbled across this in the Technical Goals section:

Tildes is a website. Your phone already has an app for using it—it's your browser.

Tildes will have a full-featured API, so I definitely don't want to discourage mobile apps overall, but the primary interface for using the site on mobile should remain as the website. That means that mobile users will get access to updates at exactly the same time as desktop ones, and full functionality should always be available on both.

This got me thinking. Despite Tildes preferring mobile browsers over an app, is there still a chance for one? I usually avoid using websites on mobile unless I must, as mobile websites generally don't have the full functionality of the website. Labelling comments 'Exemplary' and 'Malice' on mobile is an example of what doesn't work (there's more), and it's usually very unresponsive for some of the things that still do work. Also, there aren't any notifications on mobile websites and some people, me included, have cumbersome browsers that make the feel of using the website slow and laborious.

Another thing is, if the app has no chance of happening, could Tildes get desktop notifications? I usually like to respond to replies to my topics and comments as quickly as possible and I'm not a fan of the whole 'constant login to check my notifications' thing. Email notifications aren't possible because of Tildes' privacy belief.

Wasn't sure where to post this.

I needed a break, I am a reddit Mod and was hoping to become super active here as well. But, it was taking a bigger impact on my mental health than I knew.

I stopped posting here, on reddit and instagram (really the only platforms I use) and it really helped with my stress levels and even sleep patterns. I read waaaay more books and felt far more focused then I have been in years.

I dont know if there are any CGP Grey fans here but I am a big fan of his and was inspired by his choice to do the same.

http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/cyclops

Coming back into things I am thinking I will limit myself and try and work on pacing my internet usage.

Anyway, kind of a random post, but I wanted to share it with someone and I thought our community here would apreciate it (Reddit probably wouldn't).

The Pet Shop Boys (my favourite band/artist ever) are releasing an EP this weekend. (Who even knew EPs were still a format?) It will include three satiricial songs and one sad song, which they're posting progressively on YouTube throughout the week.

I've heard the three satirical songs, and this one's my favourite. I also love the style of the video - it's a great meeting of form and function. And I thought it was appropriate for here. ;)

On Social Media

EDIT: Typo.

I was telling someone about a psychology book I'm reading at the moment. Intending to read it themselves they messaged me later to ask for the title. And I felt a bit unsettled at sharing it!

Whilst it's interesting and I'm enjoying it, I doubt I'll remember its lessons or claims in a year or two. Which got me thinking about books that I read years ago which still help me understand the world.

So I thought I'd make a post asking which books other users still found helpful year(s) later.

tldr; share books that are:

• Non-fiction (or at least serious fiction).
• First read over a year ago.
• Have been helpful to you multiple times since.

First let me say that I long considered myself an independent until I realized I always voted Democrat a number of years ago because I find they best represent my interests, so that's my POV coming into this. I consider myself generally liberal on most issues with a few exceptions (gun rights, against college for all, etc)

Some observations:

• There was much there to please Republicans regarding the economy, etc
• There was much there that I'm not sure will play well with Trump's base: economic programs for women in other countries (Ivanka's influence?), criminal justice reform, lots of praise and visuals of black Americans including several guests, seeming to waffle a bit on the "wall" - I think he reduced it to fencing, did I get that right?, he stated several times he was in favor of legal immigration (something his actions have indicated otherwise and his base seems to be against)
• We're going to make peace with the Taliban - that was a jaw-dropping moment for me and I could tell from the reaction of the Rs in the crowd that it didn't play well with them
• Democratic women wearing white - smart political move and I didn't catch they did it during his first speech
• Pelosi was great to watch. Calm as a cucumber. She had several little subversive moments where instead of immediately sitting down after clapping she shuffled some papers or pretended to read something, sending a clear message of what she thought of POTUS' remarks
• Trump's anti-immigration push still isn't focusing on any facts...sigh.
• Russia investigation was only mentioned once or twice so he didn't succumb to temptation there
• I thought this was by far his best and most presidential speech
• The Rs at work were not impressed so I thought that was interesting

Regarding Stacy Abrams' response:

• I was totally disappointed
• She completely lacked energy and I had a hard time following along because of it
• Kennedy was 100x better in his response (even with the excessive lip balm)
• I don't have much else to say...it was bland

What did you think?

EDIT: Forgot he announced we're back in a nuclear arms race with Russia and China. And what was up with bringing in all of the Holocaust survivors and WWII vets? Was that a blatant appeal to the oldest members of his base or simply to recall the last "good" war the US fought?

Hey! Lately I've decided that after years of wanting to do stuff on the internet, I'm gonna try my best to start streaming video games. I'm rather excited to start trying to form a lil community and I wanted to know if anyone here has tips/experience they would like to share. Any and all advice is welcomed and appreciated! I did a little test stream of Bioshock (using OBS) for some friends, but I'm currently using a wireless adapter so it didn't go very well for very long. I'm definitely picking up an ethernet cable before I try again. But in the meantime, I thought I'd ask for some wisdom.

Hello all, hope you're doing well. It's the weekend again, and that means that a lot of us have some free time on our hands. And some of my favorite things to do with my ever-shrinking free time is dive into a large game world and just explore. With that in mind, I thought we could start a little conversation about free-roaming video games, and open-world games in general.

Some thoughts to ponder:

• What are some of your favorite free-roaming titles?

• What keeps a free-roaming or open-world title from getting boring?

• What are some of the more unique ways to populate a large game world?

• *Is Just Cause 2 the best free-roaming game ever? The answer may surprise you!

hiiiiiii everybody guess who drunk for the first time this year ayeeeee

we're back

i love it

i hate it

i miss you

how damned lazy

is the poet

who only ever writes.

how wasted

is the painter

who drowns out his lines.

how atrophied

the pianist

who cannot bend the light

if this is art then it isn't mine.

.

a screw

driver is useless

when nails

are the nuisance

an easel

is pointless

with verbally

mindless rhymes.

.

to what length in an artist?

if you cannot wield

every edge of the

toolbox right?

.

not every thought

is at best

through emo

writings expressed

kid, sometimes

you have to

know your lines.

.

to better outline your problems.

(better outline your problems)

better sketch out your issues

(guarantee she don't miss you)

better sculpt out the tissue

and try to attend to

the shit you

can only rhyme.

.

what a waste of an artist.

.

what a waste of an artist.

.

you call your poems cathartic

but that's your only

medium, right?

.

you wanna be a God

you better step up

better learn to

do your makeup

hopefully you learn

to draw her thighs.

.

better off dead otherwise.

.

if you're not the greatest it's a guise.

ich lebe noch von dir

so if i won't be remembered

then by your God

i should prolly' die.

.

what the fuck is an artist.

.

wjo is reallt an aritst.

.

you call your poems cathartic,

but that's your only

medium - right?

Nothing but a rant and personal outlet here, so if you don't want to read that sort of stuff move along.

To preface this, I haven't gone to uni, gotten an certs, or anything of that sort. I worked my way up the ladder and moved up positions slowly. My experience was/is my crutch. I DO NOT have any intention of going to, or getting any sort of schooling for anything computer related now. I am moving out of the IT industry.

I started with computers at a young age like many people in my profession do. I loved everything about them. Their versatility, the ins and outs of them, hardware, software... It all fascinated me. So I thought, hey why not work with computers because I love them? That's when I got a job at the good ol' yellow tag store selling them!

At first it was great, I got to talk to people on what they were doing with it, try to work within their budget while getting the best computer for their needs, and just got to see what all sorts of people do with their devices. But then the sales numbers started to become a thing. "Hey you aren't hitting your goals." "You need to push financing." "SELL DAMAGE WARRANTY." I fucking hated it. So I changed departments to Geek Squad once I realized that I wasn't a salesmen. I couldn't bring myself to get someone to spend something I didn't believe in. No problem. Started doing more tech support stuff and actually working with computers, instead of selling them and knowing hardware. Except that quickly turned into "SELL SELL SELL!!"

Started looking around for a new job after sales started to become a thing for that position, and ended up finding a job at a local PC store. I was elated. I was a computer technician. I shouldn't have to worry about sales anymore. I work with customers on preexisting devices and get them running well! Although... The passion for computers started to die. I wasn't as excited for new hardware coming out. I didn't want, or care for, the newest thing. AND ON TOP OF THAT I STILL HAD SALES EXPECTATIONS. WTF. I was a tech, not a sales person! How was I suppose to sell half of what the sales guys there do when I'm working on machines all day?? On top of that if I handed something off to a sales rep to call and talk to them, it was always a struggle with them to get them to share the sale with me. Fuck this I'm out.

That's when I got lucky. That's when I found my first actual IT job. I started on the phones at a place, and not even a week in they said they had a desktop support position available. I pushed for 4 weeks to get that job. I hounded the IT manager, director, and the admin there... And eventually, I got it! I was learning so much. So many systems to learn. WTF is AD??? IDK, but imma find out. No need to explain mr boss man, I got my secret weapon... GOOGLE. I learned quickly google was my friend in IT. TBH this job was mostly keep the little shit out of the boss mans hair so he could focus on getting the big shit done. I loved all the little shit. It was all so new and exciting to learn. I had to learn systems that NO ONE at the company knew because someone previously installed that system and no one knew how it worked. I wrote up documentation on it, how to pull info, what to put where for new employees, etc. etc. That was until the layoffs started happening. I started getting worried. Would I be next?? No, I was doing a great job! To top it off, my boss went from a backlog of 50+ items down to 12 in 6 months! They can't get rid of me! ...How young and naive I was. TBF I was the ONLY employee they gave any notice to. A full month. Everyone else came into work, and was let go in 5 min or less. So cool, they definitely appreciated me. Not only that, I was only like 19 at the time. To me it showed me they respected me, and that I was a good worker.

After that passion was a 0. How could a company I worked so hard for do this to me?? I gave up countless hours (to a 19YO that aint much I can tell you that), and I documented everything, I was a good employee... But alas it was the end. I had to find something quick... I'll call up my old manager at the PC store. THAT WAS A MISTAKE. After only being there a week I fell into a depressive hole that I don't think I've quite gotten out of to this day. I was only there a few weeks, but goddamn... I hated every second of it.

Next job was fucking amazing, and I took it for granted. I was lazy. I did what I was suppose to, but I wasn't proactive like before. I didn't care. I thought, "just give yourself some time. you just need to get out of this rut." But I never did. It sucked. Not the work, that was fucking easy. But life sucked. "But you just got married man? How can you be sad??" (outta left field i know, but my relationship status during any of this is a WHOLE different story) I CAN BE SAD BECAUSE I FUCKING HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT LIFE, I thought to myself. I wasn't happy. I should have gotten out then. It should have been the end of my IT career... But my ex-wife and I made a stupid financial decision and I needed the money that came with how hard I had already worked to get the pay I was. I had to stay in to be able to afford the bills. I loved everyone at that job. It was honestly the best. But... Cuts were made. 20ish% of all staffing was cut... Including my position. Not only that, my ex and I talked and we were separating. Wow, I can't even last a year in marriage. FUCK.

That's when shit took a turn for the worse. I dug myself deeper, and deeper, and deeper. Separated, and now talking of divorce... I need time. 3 months. I'll find a job after 3 months. During that time I dated for the sake of not being home. I took nightly drive up the canyon... fast. In retrospect, I think I was hoping to fly off the cliff every night I drove. I wasn't in a good state of mind. But I got good at driving up that canyon fast! It turned into a hobby (although now I am not into cars for various reasons).

But 3 months was up! Wow that was fast. But I feel good. Found a job. Service desk. Cool. Let's go. First day. FUCK. I don't want to be here. I went from desktop support making 40k a year, to service desk making 30k a year. I can barely pay shit rn. I need something better. I need more. I need more. I need MORE. Desktop support position opened there sweet. Apply. Nope the fucking retard got it who had been there for 3 years, even though I already know more than him, AND I get asked by the sysadms for help n the regular because I know the systems they use. But nah, he's been here longer. Fuck this, I'm finding something else.

So I did. Here I am at my current job. As a system administrator. Good money. Like 50k a year. Full paid benefits. I got here with 0 schooling, or certs, just my experience like I was told I would be able to. Sitting pretty... But... I still hate it... WHY? I LIKE COMPUTERS? I LIKED LEARNING THIS SHIT BEFORE?! WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME?? WHY CAN'T I BE HAPPY?

...Oh... Wait... Do I really like computers? No. Not really. Do I want to do this ever rapidly changing career forever? NO. Fuck this. But... I have bills. Okay. Budget time. So now I am still here. I have an end date. Once I get my debts paid I will be out of the IT industry. I am moving states. I will be able to afford to live on much less, and go to school for ANYTHING else. I'm thinking I just want to do something simple for a little like night custodial work, or a security guard. I don't want to have to worry much about the next big thing always around the corner. It's too much stress. It's just not a career for me. Maybe it's not for you. Maybe you should walk away from it to if your not happy.

What's the point of this post? Honestly mostly a rant. But I also want to let people around my age (24 now) know that walking away from a career IS AN OPTION. "But I need the money I make now because of debts!" Dude, did you not read this? I know. I've been working on paying shit off because of my ex and time I took off from work. I'm in the hole. I get it. Budget and get an end date. That helped me out immensely. Knowing there is an end... Just I'm already excited. Then get out of that career if you aren't happy. DO NOT SACRIFICE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH FOR YOUR CAREER. People in the US have this work work work mentality and I just hate it. I just want to live my life. I don't care about traveling or anything, I just want to be able to live.

There's one HN custom I really adore, and it's the random, interesting wikipedia articles that are posted and sometimes upvoted to the front page. cf: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wikipedia.org

This curated discovery of some obscure facets of humanity. Picking random articles from that list, for example, on the game Nomic; the Pineapple Express term in meteorology; or the British plan to build an aircraft carrier out of pykrete, which in case you didn't know is a mixture of paper and ice.

I was planning to try to help kickstart this here by posting articles with a special tag but I'd actually like to get people's thoughts on this, and if it's something others are interested in, suggest adding a ~wikipedia tildes to encourage this here more officially.

So I was at a concert this evening and when it was over and people were leaving the concert hall, I went up to a guy and said that I thought the tattoo he had on his neck of the band's logo was really cool and showed dedication. He simply nodded and said thanks, and then his mother (or girlfriend, I have no idea) poked my shoulder and showed me an identical one. It was in sort of between her breasts, but also underneath them. So she had to pull down her top and show a not insignificant amount of cleavage to show it to me. All I could say was "wow, very nice" with a stupid smile on my face. She just laughed and walked away, and it made my night!

Was a pretty good concert too by the way. Behemoth are an amazing band! :)

I thought it'd be fun to have a casual conversation about what we like to drink. If that's not appropriate for some reason please let me know.

I've switched from beer and whiskey to Tangeray and (diet) tonic and really feel less hangover when I drink (for whatever reason). What is your current go to on a Friday night?

hey all!

i think this is my first ~talk post, 👀 nice place ye got here!

so, i got to thinking about social media sites a few days ago (whilst trying to brainstorm a sideproject that isn't a social media site) and i got to thinking about Voat.

it seemed like an interesting idea at first, a nearly literal copy-paste of old reddit meant a system that i was already used to, but i'd also be early enough to get whatever username i want, and they even have a cute little goat!

and then uhh

reddit got rid of a lot of hate-communities

and they all went to voat.

now - i guess that's fine. if they want to all exile themselves into their own corner of the internet, i can't stop em

but my question is like - what about the people behind Voat? obviously there's people running the site, there's investment money involved, and they have to know that their site is the front-yard above-ground pool with green water of the internet, right?

i tried looking for some interviews of the founder - but i couldn't find anything.

any of you lot know what's goin' on with voat? what are your thoughts on the site itself? its longevity?

I was a bit worried about the future of Google Voice with the demise of Hangouts, but I got an email from GSuite about classic Hangouts today, which linked to this support page. Coming to Hangouts Chat are:

• Enhanced video calling experience

• Google Voice integration

I included the video calling line because I thought it was a bit odd for Chat to have that - I thought that's what Hangouts Meet was for (though it certainly wouldn't be the first case of Google making a redundant product). In any case, if Chat is going to have video calling, it's not much of a stretch to assume it'll also have voice calling for Google Voice, in addition to SMS/MMS.

Self-post instead of a link post because I want to highlight just 2 bullet points in the support page that wouldn't be obvious if I just linked the page. I wasn't sure if this should go in ~tech or ~comp, but ~comp seems to have more non-link discussion than ~tech.

Edit: Somewhat related, I found a news article about the Google Voice 5.7 update. They've created some interesting Google Calendar integrations, which makes sense since Voice will be available in GSuite this March.

What are people's thoughts on ads? I feel that if they are implemented in the right way they can be very unobtrusive and not take away from the viewing experience. If they can help fund the project down the road I would personally not be against them.

Releases of the week 12/01/2019 - 18/01/2019

Featured Release

James Blake - Assume Form (Alternative R&B, Art Pop)

"After dropping two new songs yesterday — the subtle trapper “Mile High” and the haunting “Lullaby For My Insomniac” — James Blake reveals today the entirety of Assume Form, his fourth full-length to date and follow-up to 2016’s The Colour In Anything. It’s available to stream in full below via Apple Music and Spotify.
The album spans 12 tracks, including last year’s excellent “Don’t Miss It”, and features guest spots from Travis Scott, Metro Boomin, Rosalía, André 3000, and Moses Sumney. Blake previously contributed to the most recent full-length efforts from Oneothrix Point Never and Travis Scott, as well as on singles from Kendrick Lamar, André 3000, and Moses Sumney.”

Source: Consequence of Sound

Listen to single

Stream

Other Notable Relases

Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow (Indie Pop, Synth)

Listen to single
Stream

Future - The WIZRD (Hip Hop, Trap)

Listen to single
Stream

Deerhunter - Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared (Neo-Psychedelia, Indie Rock)

Listen to single
Stream

Toro Y Moi - Outer Peace (Alternative R&B, Synth Funk)

Listen to single
Stream

Feel free to discuss or feature any and all other releases in the comments below

Discussion Points

Have you listened to any of these releases?
What are your thoughts?
What are you looking forward to listen to?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past?

// All feedback on this format welcome below.

This is a general, "what books have themes or content that would make for great movies" question. Graphic novels are included here.

Could have posted in ~talk or ~movies, but I'm seeking the opinions of dedicated readers, who've had the thought in considering a story, "I'd really like to see the visuals for this", or "a movie/series adaptation could expand on these themes".

Also, what were your biggest disappointments in the rendering of a book into a movie/TV series?

My picks:
Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed. Can't say that it's likely to get the nuanced treatment it deserves, but an even-handed visualization of socialist vs. capitalist societies is overdue, and it's got spaceflight and FTL information transfer.
Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan. Not that he's ever going to grant the rights, but this one's a no-brainer for American cinema - brash, loud, splashy, violent, with bigger-than-life characters and themes.
James Tiptree, Jr. (a/k/a Alice Sheldon), Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. I'd love to see a short series based on this collection.
China Mieville - anything from the New Crobuzon books. The baroque ruin backgrounding the scenes, and the panoply of characters, should make for amazing cinema; a little judicious editing will be needed to make the stories work for the screen.
[Obscure] Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron, subject to timely and relevant updates for 21st Century media. There's a great theme about how selective presentation of video clips and the editor's viewpoint influences the story being told.
K.W. Jeter, Farewell Horizontal, this one's gonna have great visuals, trust me.
John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, remade as a story about border migration.
Joe Haldeman, The Forever War - man, is it ever time for this one in the U.S.
Dan Simmons, Hyperion - the World Tree, the Shrike, and plenty of other opportunities for fine visuals.
Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Another candidate for an anthology series; perfect for animation.
Tibor Fischer, The Thought Gang - it's a heist story, but also a comedy and a satire. Kind of amazed no one has made it into a movie before.

Biggest recent disappointment - The adaptation of Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon. Edited to completely discard the political messaging and amplify the sex/violence. Turgid, poor special effects, and gruesome acting.

Preface

Software security is one of those subjects that often gets overlooked, both in academia and in professional projects, unless you're specifically working with some existing security-related element (e.g. you're taking a course on security basics, or updating your password hashing algorithm). As a result, we frequently see stories of rather catastrophic data leaks from otherwise reputable businesses, leaks which should have been entirely preventable with even the most basic of safeguards in place.

With that in mind, I thought I would switch things up and discuss something security-related this time.

Background

It's commonplace for complex software systems to avoid unnecessarily large expenses, especially in terms of technical debt and the capital involved in the initial development costs of building entire systems for e.g. geolocation or financial transactions. Instead of reinventing the wheel and effectively building a parallel business, we instead integrate with existing third-party systems, typically by using an API.

The problem, however, is that sometimes these third-party systems process requests over a long period of time, potentially on the order of minutes, hours, days, or even longer. If, for example, you have users who want to purchase something using your online platform, then it's not a particularly good idea to having potentially thousands of open connections to that third-party system all sitting there waiting multiple business days for funds to clear. That would just be stupid. So, how do we handle this in a way that isn't incredibly stupid?

There are two commonly accepted methods to avoid having to wait around:

1. We can periodically contact the third-party system and ask for the current status of a request, or
2. We can give the third-party system a way to contact us and let us know when they're finished with a request.

Both of these methods work, but obviously there will be a potentially significant delay in #1 between when a request finishes and when we know that it has finished (with a maximum delay of the wait time between status updates), whereas in #2 that delay is practically non-existent. Using #1 is also incredibly inefficient due to the number of wasted status update requests, whereas #2 allows us to avoid that kind of waste. Clearly #2 seems like the ideal option.

Method #2 is what we call a webhook.

May I see your ID?

The problem with webhooks is that when you're implementing one, it's far too easy to forget that you need to restrict access to it. After all, that third-party system isn't a user, right? They're not a human. They can't just give us a username and password like we want them to. They don't understand the specific requirements for our individual, custom-designed system.

But what happens if some malicious actor figures out what the webhook endpoint is? Let's say that all we do is log webhook requests somewhere in a non-capped file or database table/collection. Barring all other possible attack vectors, we suddenly find ourselves susceptible to that malicious actor sending us thousands, possibly millions of fraudulent data payloads in a small amount of time thanks to a botnet, and now our server's I/O utilization is spiking and the entire system is grinding to a halt--we're experiencing a DDoS!

We don't want just anyone to be able to talk to our webhook. We want to make sure that anyone who does is verified and trusted. But since we can't require a username and password, since we can't guarantee that the third-party system will even know how to make use of them, what can we do?

The answer is to use some form of token-based authentication--we generate a unique token, kind of like an ID card, and we attach it to our webhook endpoint (e.g. https://example.com/my_webhook/{unique_token}). We can then check that token for validity every time someone touches our webhook, ensuring that only someone we trust can get in.

Class is in Session

Just as there are two commonly accepted models for how to handle receiving updates from third-party systems, there are also two common models for how to assign a webhook to those systems:

1. Hard-coding the webhook in your account settings, or
2. Passing a webhook as part of request payload.

Model #1 is, in my experience, the most common of the two. In this model, our authentication token is typically directly linked to some user or user-like object in our system. This token is intended to be persisted and reused indefinitely, only scrapped in the event of a breach or a termination of integration with the service that uses it. Unfortunately, if the token is present within the URL, it's possible for your token to be viewed in plaintext in your logs.

In model #2, it's perfectly feasible to mirror the behavior of model #1 by simply passing the same webhook endpoint with the same token in every new request; however, there is a far better solution. We can, instead, generate a brand new token for each new request to the third-party system, and each new token can be associated with the request itself on our own system. Rather than only validating the token itself, we then validate that the token and the request it's supposed to be associated with are both valid. This ensures that even in the event of a breach, a leaked authentication token's extent of damage is limited only to the domain of the request it's associated with! In addition, we can automatically expire these tokens after receiving a certain number of requests, ensuring that a DDoS using a single valid token and request payload isn't possible. As with model #1, however, we still run into problems of token exposure if the token is present in the URL.

Model #2 treats each individual authentication token not as a session for an entire third-party system, but as a session for a single request on that system. These per-request session tokens require greater effort to implement, but are inherently safer due to the increased granularity of our authentication and our flexibility in allowing ourselves to expire the tokens at will.

Final Thoughts

Security is hard. Even with per-request session tokens, webhooks still aren't as secure as we might like them to be. Some systems allow us to define tokens that will be inserted into the request payload, but more often than not you'll find that only a webhook URL is possible to specify. Ideally we would stuff those tokens right into the POST request payload for all of our third-party systems so they would never be so easily exposed in plaintext in log files, but legacy systems tend to be slow to catch up and newer systems often don't have developers with the security background to consider it.

Still, as far as securing webhooks goes, having some sort of cryptographically secure authentication token is far better than leaving the door wide open for any script kiddie having a bad day to waltz right in and set the whole place on fire. If you're integrating with any third-party system, your job isn't to make it impossible for them to get their hands on a key, but to make it really difficult and to make sure you don't leave any gasoline lying around in case they do.

Personally, I strongly dislike it. Every aspect of every film is way overblown there.

If there's a funny scene in a movie, they LITERALLY die laughing and wake their whole neighbourhood up.

If there's a scene that is in the slightest bit sad, they're going to cry their eyes out for months.

If there's a movie that's decently good, then it's an absolute masterpiece and the best movie of the decade.

And so on... Everything is always really exaggerated.

On top of that, there's always the circlejerk hivemind aspect. Threads are closed after 6 months, so the whole discussion about the film is divided between many threads, but because every thread is small and new, you often get the same fluff comments.

For more popular flims, it is the absolute worst. With half the thread being just funny quotes from the movie with no additional commentary or anything valuable, yet having thousands upon thousands of upvotes. It's kind of sad.

I used to go to IMDb boards, –which, admittedly, had their own issues– but they were still pretty useful for discussion. And shutting people up wasn't as easy as it is on Reddit, so the opinions there were much more varied. However, since they shut them down, Reddit is the closest thing I've found. Moviechat.org is supposed to be a replacement to the IMDb boards, but it's pretty inactive.

So, even though I kind of despise r/movies, I'm sort of forced to use them. But reading it makes me somewhat bitter.

What about you?

Sometimes when I am thinking, these bad thoughts come into my mind, specifically images. I would rather elaborate not elaborate what the images are but they are all connected by a single object.

I have tried meditation, and while I feel at peace for a few hours after meditating, the thoughts haven't really left long-term or gone down in frequency. Maybe I am meditating wrong. I am blindsided every time the thoughts appear.

Anyone have any experience with this?

I've seen every episode of The Good Place up to this point and still can't decide if I like it or not. It's a very strange situation. The premise, while novel, doesn't work well (in my opinion) on a TV show budget or schedule and I find myself wondering why I'm watching it.

Reviews of the show are generally very positive, but it feels like the writers are constantly scrambling for new ideas when the concept just doesn't lend itself to that much TV.

I love Michael Schur's work generally and like Kristen Bell as an actress, but I still can't decide if I like this or not. Thoughts?

I saw these things originally on Reddit that extracted the average colour of frames from films and put them together to make a colour palette for said film, the original creator has a site called The Colors of Motion. I thought it would be cool to try and create a simple PowerShell script that does the same thing.

Here are a few examples:
Finding Nemo: https://i.imgur.com/8YwOlwK.png
The Bee Movie: https://i.imgur.com/umbd3co.png
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: https://i.imgur.com/6rsbv0M.png

I've hosted my code on GitHub so if anyone wants to use my PowerShell script or suggest some ways to improve it feel free. You can use pretty much any video file as input as it uses ffmpeg to extract the frames.

GitHub link: https://github.com/ArkadiusBear/FilmStrip

A little bit about me -- I'm in my mid-to-late-20s, male, single, recently graduated college, and I quit drinking about a year and a half ago. I never really considered myself an addict; there was never a point where I wanted to quit but I couldn't and it never interfered with work or school. I just woke up one day and told myself, "I don't want to do this anymore," so I just stopped.

The problem, for me at least, is that I live in a relatively rural part of the world. There's not a lot to do here on Friday night other than go to the bars, which never really bothered me anyways because I work nights anyways and don't really like crowded scenes. Most of my free time is in front of my computer, I've recently started getting into distance running as a hobby, and I like playing board games when I can. All of this is fine except for the fact that I can't really seem to make friends in those mutual areas of interest without alcohol anymore.

I signed up for meetup, which seems like a great way to meet new people, and I'm sure it is, in bigger cities at least. But around here, both the closest board game meetup and run club are an hour and a half away. It seems like everyone around here just wants to meet up to drink, and maybe do some other stuff along the way. (Don't get me started on making my own events here -- crowded bars already give me anxiety so organizing my own meetup with people I've never met before would be a new, special type of hell)

I think at least part of this is compounded with the fact that since I graduated, I've had a hard time making new friends. I work a very isolating job, and teetotaling only further compounds the issue that I haven't met very many new people. It's something I've thought a lot about while searching for a partner as well -- I can't/don't want to meet people at bars, and I don't really find much use out of dating apps.

Sorry if this is unorganized or hard to read, it's just a lot of thoughts I've had over the past year.

edit: another part of it too is that, since I quit without the assistance of AA or any support group, I don't have any like-minded people to do things with.

In the rare chance you haven't heard of Flutter, here's the link: https://flutter.io

Flutter just officially left beta with v1.0 December 4, last year. The code is written in Dart, and deploys on Android, and iOS (and will run natively on the rumored Fuchsia OS).

So for those of you that have used Flutter or are currently using Flutter.

• What are you working on?
• Why'd you choose Flutter?
• What do you like about Flutter?
• And what do you dislike about Flutter?

I'll start:

I'm working on a niche art app. I myself do not do that type of art, but knowing people that do, I wanted to create a tool to fill in the lackluckster market for Chromebooks and Android.
I chose Flutter because:

• I wanted to try something new, and what newer than something that was (at the time) in beta?
• Custom Views in Android are a hassle.
• I will be able to release on both Android and iOS (semi-)natively without having to code it twice.

Here's what I like about Flutter:

• Layouts are really simple.
  (though you can easily let it get clustered if you don't think too much about it.)
• Design isn't an afterthought.
  Animations are built in (and simple), themes aren't hard-coded, and Material Components get more attention here. (Still waiting for Shapes on Android)
• It's fast by design.
  Flutter uses its own custom rendering engine (Skia). I've never experienced any stutter with the built-in components, and when I caused lag (with heavy I/O) Flutter/Dart had tools in place for me to narrow down exactly what was causing it.

What I don't like about Flutter:

• It has poor mouse/trackpad support.
  Right clicks, not a thing. I can workaround this with a double-click/long-click, but for a desktop OS, this isn't optimal. Scrolling, that's panning, this should be differentiated. There's a difference between using a scrollwheel and moving finger around on the screen. According to Flutter there is not. There's also currently no support for mouse hovers which I have needed very much.
  There is a pull-request for adding support for all of these, but the developer hasn't done anything since code review.
• Keyboard support, while there, is lackluster.
  Ctrl, Shift, Alt. These have to be gotten with the meta code. There's no built-in function for checking those. Text fields don't support the tab key to navigate. And text formatting (bold, italic, etc.) isn't possible with text fields without the use of a library (or making it yourself).

I was trying to think of a third dislike, but I can't. My complaints are on missing APIs for Chromebooks. That's it. I really like Flutter, I plan on using it more, and if they won't add support for mouse/keyboard, maybe I'll have to contribute.

I'd love to hear what your thoughts about it is.

[LONG POST - 4 months of trying different planners)

I always wanted to use one but I never thought of analog (paper) planners and tried a lot of digital ones - link to a post.

About 4 months ago I saw my friend at school using a pocket diary - similar to this image, he was writing down his tasks on it (he didn't use it again). That day I bought a good pocket diary of around 200 pages, till date I've not used more than 10 pages and its still lying around.

I realised that I was not going to use it because it was very thick and I couldn't carry it in my pocket. I bought this pocket diary. This was thin and simple, perfect for me. I've used it the longest before switching.

Initially I used to dump all the tasks and cross it after completion, later I introduced a date system and it was one date for one page. I wrote down tasks for the day and crossed after completion if something was incomplete I migrated it to next day. This worked well but I needed a place to dump tasks that I had to do in future so I made a future section from backside and added tasks to it. This was the final tweak and I used it for like a month. I used it for daily tasks, future tasks, some notes and contacts (I used to make contact.txt before this).

Later IIRC I wanted to change because it was already half full and a mess because I was trying to do a lot with it. Next I mindlessly bought a notebook - something like this but with 5 sections, I didn't know what to do with it. I also don't remember why I bought it so I used it to write down stuff that I learned online and wanted to remember. It replaced my reddit save and I wrote what I wanted to remember, it is still with me and has been changed a lot (usecase).

I made a calendar on a single page of that notebook and tracked down basic stuff on it, I started using small square sticky notes to write down tasks and that's how I left my pocket diary. Not long after I lost interest in that notebook thing and updating calendar daily was not interesting. I left that and searched a lot online. Again tried a lot of digital options but I know it will never work for me so I left it and didn't use anything for like a day before I stumbled across Strikethru.

Strikethru is something like Bullet Journal. If you want to look at strikethru then see this video & this for Bullet Journal.

I took that notebook and turned it into a bullet journal, I used it for ~a week before trying strikethru and then again switching to bullet journal after a week. That was testing period and I chosed bulletjournal (bujo) over strikethru. That book was also thick so not long after I made a new bujo notebook (normal 200 pages). Again it felt like a big task that I had to do daily and I lost interest, I again restarted it with a new design. In this month I switched to different notebooks/design a lot and was never satisfied. I also tried Nextcloud tasks for 3 days before again trying out bujo.

Last year in december around a week before christmas I wanted to change it all so I went to a store and bought a new grid notebook (we used it for doing math in 1st grade). I used it for 10 days and everything broke during the last week of december, I was not at home and we went on a vacation. I took it with me but didn't update it because it was boring. It has been 5 days I was busy organising everything else again and now I've settled on what I started with (slightly better idea).

During that time I read a lot on nosurf, pornfree, internet addiction, sleep cycles, polyphasic society, tulpas, made new friends, tried a lot of todo managers, used different journaling apps and this is what I've decided to stay with.

I went to the store today to buy the same pocket diary that I've used the longest (1 month one). Its cheap, for 15 INR and works well for me. Over there I saw a box that said monthly planner, I took it and it had 13 small pocket diaries (similar to what I've used the longest but more thin) and with that a small case that would hold a notebook. There was one contacts pocket diary (perfect) and 12 pocket diaries one for each month. It was for this year and costed 170 INR, I didn't had money so I asked the storeman (idk what we call them, here we call them uncle) did he have cheaper option. He showed me the same piece that costed 140 INR but was for 2016, he said he would give it to me for 70 INR because he would have to throw it anyways.

I thought that was a great deal and bought it. So now I have 12 mini diaries for each month and one contacts diary that has my big list of 10 friends contacts. After trying a lot of different options I came back to what I used for the first time. Its simple and stupid & fits in my pocket.

It has one page for one day and I just have to cross 2016 and the day (mon, tue, etc.) thing and update it with 2019 days. In the middle it has a big two page calendar for current month, page before it has previous months small one page date list to write down events and on page after it has next months small one page date list. The last page is for notes and the cover has 2017 calender that I won't use and ignore.

Theres little patch work todo but for that price I think I bought a good set and if I actually use this for full year then I would buy a new one next one (for 2020 & not 2017 :|)

I've spent around 300 INR for all these (~ 4.5 USD)

Tl;dr -> Used a lot of systems and in the end switched to what I used for the first time which is simple and fits in my pocket.

# What do you use for managing your tasks? Do you use it daily?

I spent most of 2018 exploring the Soulsborne games (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls I (no longer for sale, thanks to the Remaster), II, III, and Bloodborne) and wanted to know all of your thoughts on them. Like them? Hate them? Want to try them? Favorite and least favorite?

From Software is probably my favorite game dev studio now. I want to say I adore all of the games, but I haven't tried Demon's Souls or Dark Souls II... yet. Bloodborne is my favorite out of the collection (or what I've played of it) because of the familiar but much faster-paced gameplay, with higher risk meeting higher reward. Not to mention they didn't put Ornstein and/or his armor in it.

BISHOP NEHM MICH UNTER - UNTERGANG 2019

Xes on my eyes for life

seems like some people 'roudn here tdont know that bishop an emo rapper on the comeup 👀

so lemme introduce myself

bonjour

im bishop.

i write hella poetry, and i just got a midi board and a expensive-ass course on Logic Pro X so imma learn how to produce as well.

imma kind, lighthearted fella, but poetry is my muse to get the dark shit off my chest

and rap is the zeitgeist now so i dont gotta feel ashamed of that anymore lmao

i sold my soul for love and cash, but that keeps biting back

we'll see how siht plays out

.

i love comments, and always peep my inspo tracks or we cant be friends

(jk but srsly)

much love, spread positiv y, all of that shit,

bishop

ps i also cook a lot so if u hungry for some plants hmu

peep tha inspo at the bottom

a wise man once said
don't let your dreams be dreams
so any time i go to sleep
it's always nightmares indeed
a lucid hellscape, i cant
move i cant scream
as i lay there unawake
my fists pounding at the sheets
it steady creeps, in my head
it lays dormant in the day
but still it's stench seeps out
constant suffocates my brain
as i struggle for a breath
and my heart starts to race
i just wanna lay down and
fantasize a better day

chasin xanny with the whiskey
give a fuck about my kidneys
life feels like a living hell
if the furnace isn't in me
so im steady blowin smoke
out my lungs like a chimney
my body like the house that
you used to live in with me
now it's empty and i'm starving
feelin ugly, i'm not eating
but the devil promised riches
thus, the dark, i will believe in.

---

So Spoke Zarathustra
we're in this shit again
as i built up another hope
and then i lost another friend
now there's demons in my head
i expose my skeleton
i thought that i could trust you
always swore you're genuine

but now i'm in this swamp again
and i be wadin' through the water
my skin begins to bubble up
my blood is getting hotter
and i can hear a voice within
screaming out with an offer
all the pain will end if i just
offer up my slaughter
let the water take me under
let the Bishop take me under
i could send my soul away
and throw my body in gutter
and i shudder in my slumber
fingers gripping at the sheets
and i wake up in a sweat
this is what she did to me.

---

don't let your dreams be dreams
let them be nightmares
when your soul's in the dark
you can trust that the night cares
upon a hilltop
there stood a white mare
who scoffed my direction
took off and left me there

taking an L like
fuck, i'm here again
Zoroastrian hell
as my heart starts withering
cut that bitch out,
used my last breath
to bury it
fell to the ground
as my life was
diminishing

send me to hell
then at least i'll be free of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxvLc2a6Iao&t=112s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ff0bq_ydEQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w--D1S8SrCQ

if anyone would be interested in my top 10 emo rap tracks of 2018 lemme kno because i know what they are i just font have the everny to write a wholeass post on it but if yall want it i will

bye now

Let's fantasise Tilderinoes! You can just write what comes to your mind or answer any of the questions below to get your thoughts flowing.

• What bothers you in the current blogging platforms, like Blogger, Tumblr, or Wordpress?

• Is it “free” and with ads, commercial with no ads, or free and non-commercial and struggling? If it's commercial, how much does it cost?

• Does it have comments? How are they moderated? Who can comment? Are there PMs?

• Does it have tags? Categories? A tree structure?

• Does it provide file storage (images, audio, video)? How much?

• How extensible is your blog page? Can you control all of the CSS? Can you add scripting?

• Does it allow adult content? Political content? Hateful content? Who decides?

• Does the country of origin matter? Does it block content based on your country's laws (e.g. copyright, political stuff, etc.)?

• What are the privacy features? Does it require an email address? A card number (if commercial)?

I'm currently researching the cheapest off site backup system and it looks like leaving a hdd at a friends house is the best option. The only thing I am stuck on is how to access it remotely. I need a system on a chip that I can plug in to the hdd and Ethernet and that provides ssh access. My first thought was a raspberry pi with a sata to usb cable but since I will only be doing weekly backups it makes no sense to keep the drive spinning 24/7. I need some way to turn off the drive and then back on over the internet. From what I understand there are linux programs that can do it but only directly over sata because the command doesn't work on usb sata controllers.

What I need is a cheap linux SoC that has sata and ethernet. Does anyone have any ideas?