For those who do not know it, Tempest is a classic arcade vector-based game, and I urge you to check it out. It is highly addictive and nowadays should fall well within the fast-paced retro fashion.

The problem is that for quite some years, I had nothing to scratch that itch. The last proper Tempest-like game that I played was Typhoon 2001 on Linux, which was a free/gratis clone of Tempest 2000.

Now it seems that in 2018 Tempest 4000 came out, but only for PC (a.k.a. Windows), PlayStation 4 and XBox One. As a Linux and Nintendo Switch gamer, that doesn’t help me one bit.

There are two FOSS versions: Arashi, which works only on old Macs, and Arashi-js, which is a JavaScript re-implementation of the former. Unfortunately, none of the two seem to work on my laptop.

So, here I am, itching for that Tempest fix, yet without a clue how to get something on either Switch on Linux (apart from perhaps Typhoon if it still works). Any suggestions would be more then welcome.

A really long time ago I was introduced to the Evoluent Vertical Mouse. Even though I was only in my early twenties I already had wrist issues and I thought this thing was god send. It was clunky but totally worth it.

These days there are a ton of vertical mice available. Is anyone else into these? I am looking to get a new one now that I'm on the mouse/keyboard a lot again. Do you have a preferred model?

note: If you have wrist issues and are curious, I highly recommend trying one out. One caveat is that the cheap one I got off of amazon recently is a bit too small for a decent sized guy like myself. Filling out your palm seems really important for maximum relief.

I personally am not a big clothes shopper, I pretty much replace underwear/socks when they break or I lose them, and once per year, I buy some clothes. Yesterday I bought my first linen T-shirt. And it feels so airy and comfy, it's amazing and not itchy. What do you guys prefer to wear?
Where do you guys source your clothes, also in regard to ethics - no child labor. I guess second-hand clothes are the best in that regard?
Does anyone here feel strongly about a specific material? I heard merino is supposed to feel amazing, but the price tag keeps me from getting a shirt haha.

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 488 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. this week was pretty slow because the debates sucked all the oxygen out of the room; as a consequence, there are no opinion pieces this week and relatively few stories in this edition.

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 • Week 2 • Week 3 • Week 4 • Week 5 • Week 6 • Week 7 • Week 8 • Week 9 • Week 10 • Week 11 • Week 12 • Week 13 • Week 14

News

Polling

• from CNN (National poll; MoE +/- 4.7 points): CNN Poll: Harris and Warren rise and Biden slides after first Democratic debates.

22% Biden
17% Harris
15% Warren
14% Sanders.
No one else in the 23-person field tested hits 5%.

• from Suffolk/USA Today (Iowa poll; MoE +/- 4.4 points): Poll: Kamala Harris surges in Iowa as Bernie Sanders suffers after debate.

Biden 24%
Harris 16%
Warren 13%
Sanders 9%
... The new standings are hardly set in stone. Twenty-one percent are undecided. Six of 10 who have decided say they might change their mind before the caucuses. One in four say their minds are firmly made up.

• from Quinnipiac (National poll; MoE +/- 5 points): July 2, 2019 - Harris Gets Big Debate Bounce While Biden Sinks Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Despite Drop, Biden Still Seen As Best Bet Against Trump.

Biden 22%
Harris 20%
Warren 14%
Sanders 13%
Buttigieg 4%
No other candidate tops 3 percent.

• from ABC News/Washington Post (National poll; MoE +/- 5.5 points): Harris scores in debate performance while electability keeps Biden in front.

Biden 29%
Sanders 23%
Warren 11%
Harris 11%
No other candidate tops 4 percent.

• from Reuters/IPSOS (National poll; MoE +/- 3 points): Biden's support from black voters cut in half after debate: Reuters/Ipsos poll

Biden 22%
Sanders 16%
Harris 10%
Warren 9%
No other candidate tops 3 percent.

General News

• from the Trace: Where the 2020 Democratic Candidates Stand on Guns. we lead off today with a piece from the trace on where all the candidates stand on gun issues and gun things in general; these range from whether or not the candidate owns a gun to questions like "Do you have a plan for reducing community gun violence?" and "Should the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act be repealed?". this is probably about as comprehensive of a piece as you'll ever get on an issue with such a crowded primary.
• from Pacific Standard: The Democratic Primary Field Is Not as Wide Open as It Seems. not all candidates are equal either in potential or in public perception of viability; this is true with the public, but also with campaign staffers---this'll be touched on further down because it's already becoming a problem for some candidates. it somewhat goes without saying that, because presidential campaigns are infrequent, there is a very small pool of experienced presidential campaign staff, and those folks tend to be gobbled up by the bigger, more serious, better looking campaigns. what is less evident is that without experienced campaign staffers, as this article notes, it is extremely hard to seriously contest a primary. as such, by this metric, the number of "serious" candidates is generously less than half the current field, and mostly frontrunning campaigns.

Joe Biden

• from Buzzfeed News: Joe Biden’s Careful Debate Plan Got Blown Up. it goes without saying, i think, but biden did not come out of last week's debates the winner. aside from the nosedive in polling he's taken across the board (sometimes of up to ten points), biden's carefully-cultivated, extremely-cautious approach in all other things backfired spectacularly in the span of one night. biden's campaign so far has been--if not subtlely hostile to the media--generally avoidant of it where possible. he answers questions on his own terms for the most part and generally does his own things, irrespective of how it'll go over. and that works--or did, anyways--when he didn't have people gunning for him in front of a large portion of the primary's voting base. but now that he's wounded relatively badly in primary terms, i'm not sure the strategy he employed here is going to be practical. not defining yourself to the media and coasting off of obama nostalgia works until it doesn't, and right now, it's really not working.
• biden's fundraising numbers for this quarter: 21 million dollars. something to cheer about i suppose.

Bernie Sanders

• from CNN: Bernie Sanders 2020 is in big trouble. bernie's also not having the best time in the polls. although he mostly held his own in the snap polls immediately after the debates, the polls after that have bene less kind to him, broadly. he's still usually second, but increasingly commonly he is third or fourth, and there's an undeniable trend of warren and harris now playing catchup and winning out. to be clear, sanders is probably not at risk of becoming a basement dweller candidate like beto due to his significantly high floor--but his base alone absolutely cannot and will not win him the primary. he needs to expand who is going to vote for him--and on that count, he is seemingly failing so far.
• sanders's fundraising numbers for this quarter: 24 million; 18 million raised, 6 million transferred.

Pete Buttigieg

• from the Guardian: Pete Buttigieg returns to South Bend amid tension over police shooting. buttigieg was back in south bend over the weekend to once again deal with the aftermath of the shooting of eric logan. to my knowledge, buttigieg has cut down on or outright stopped campaigning for the time being to deal with this situation; it's not clear how long this situation will be lingering over him or when he does intend to get back into the full swing of campaigning. it's worth bearing in mind that he's also been slightly slipping in the polls recently; whether it's over the south bend situation or because his appeal is wearing thin on people or some other event is probably unattributable.
• from NBC News: Buttigieg raises nearly $25 million in second quarter. nonetheless, buttigieg has something to cheer about at minimum: he raised an impressive 25 million dollars this quarter, outpacing every other candidate that's announced their totals so far. now he just needs to put that money to good use.
• from POLITICO: Buttigieg introduces national service plan. buttigieg also has some new policy out this week related to national service, an issue which i am sure is very animating for people:

Buttigieg's plan would immediately increase the number of available national service positions to 250,000 opportunities, up from the current 75,000. It would emphasize recruiting students at high schools, community colleges, historically black colleges and universities, and vocational schools, as well as Americans between 16 and 24 who aren't working or in school.
The proposal also calls for establishing grant funding programs for "service ecosystems" focused on local and regional issues.
Service fellows would be considered for student debt forgiveness, hiring preference and vocational training. The plan also calls for developing new types of service corps like a Climate Corps, a Community Health Corps, or a Intergenerational Service Corps.

Cory Booker

• from Pacific Standard: Cory Booker's Immigration Plan Focuses on Day-One Changes. cory booker isn't looking to congress to be the final arbiter on his immigration plans, which is probably a good idea since it seems unlikely--but absolutely not impossible, mind you--that the democrats will wrestle control from the republicans in the senate in 2020 (note: they'd only need 50 votes if they win the presidency since the VP tiebreaks). booker's plan in the domestic sphere is mostly based on issuing executive orders; it also has ideas for what to do in foreign policy, which is a part of the issue which can't really be ignored (and, for the msot part, is not being ignored by democratic candidates so far).

Kamala Harris

• from Buzzfeed News: Kamala Harris Just Showed How She'd Debate Trump. kamala harris unsurprisingly came out of the debate nights with a great deal of press, of which this buzzfeed article looking to a hypothetical future with her and trump sharing a debate stage might be the most prototypical. harris, the pretty much undisputed winner of the second debate, is in an interesting position now due to her meteoric rise in the polls. previously she'd been running close-but-not-quite-in with the main frontrunning group of biden, sanders, and warren. now, in the immediate term, she's almost always second or third in the polls. will this bring additional scrutiny to her record? probably. she was already getting a bit of it from online leftists and parts of the media, and suddenly being a frontrunner from a single debate performance is almost certain to have that effect. those lines of attack haven't hurt harris yet, though, and it's arguable that her prosecutorial career is what allows her to have the sorts of successes you see when you put her on a debate stage to begin with. call it a double edged sword.

John Hickenlooper

• from POLITICO: Hickenlooper campaign in shambles. remember the bit from earlier about how there's only so much talent to go around and how campaign staff can make or break a campaign? well, the hickenlooper campaign, that bastion of perennial once-percenter, anti-socialist and moderate rhetoric, is not a particularly great campaign to be on, it turns out. hickenlooper's campaign is losing five people and will probably run out of money pretty shortly if nothing changes. he has almost no chance of making future debates, either. if i had to guess, he'll be one of the first people to drop out:

The campaign also only raised just over $1 million in the second quarter — about what he raised in the first 48 hours of his candidacy — and will likely run out of money completely in about a month.
At least five staffers have left or are leaving Hickenlooper’s struggling operation, including his campaign manager, communications director, digital director and finance director. Hickenlooper named a new campaign manager on Monday night.
...
Hickenlooper met the polling requirement to qualify for last week’s debate and the upcoming debate in July. But his prospects for making the fall debates — candidates must have 130,000 donors and hit 2 percent in four qualifying polls — were dicier. The latest CNN poll released Monday shows Hickenlooper with just 1 percent support.

I just finished Breaking Bad, second run-through. I had first started watching it when Season 4 had just started; binging seasons 1-3 and followed it episode-by-episode after.

I was surprised to notice that the content I binged stayed with me much better than the seasons I watched one-episode-at-a-time.
Also… Holy shit. Breaking Bad gets dark towards the end (Jesse getting imprisoned and forced to cook for months; his ex-girlfriend getting shot). I had forgotten all about that. I had forgotten almost everything about the last … 4-5 episodes.

The scenes that had stayed with me the most from my first watch: Box Cutter's throat-slicing scene, the Prison Shankings, Hank vs. the Cousins, Hank's death scene, Gus's death scene.

But, seriously, rewatching it reminded me how good of a series Breaking Bad is. I couldn't help but binge the entire rewatch marathon. It's an incredibly intense experience.

In the context of what happened to Game of Thrones I'm also very happy to see the consistent quality and execution in Breaking Bad's storytelling. It's a series that set out to tell a story. The story makes sense from beginning to end, and gets resolved nice and tidy.

I'm a little disappointed we don't get to see more of what happens to the family while Walt is gone. The trial etc, that all seems like potentially interesting stuff.

On rewatch, I noticed my sympathies changing. I have a lot less sympathy towards Walt, even very early on. Knowing some things in advanced completely changed my view on him; whereas on first watch I rooted for him quite a bit.

My sympathy towards Skyler also flipped. On my first watch, I disliked her a lot at first, but grew to like her when she "went dark". On this rewatch, I disliked her less and sympathized more with her, though her behaviour beyond season 4 became incomprehensible to me.
I like Marie a lot more this time around as well. She's still pretty unbearable when it comes to shoplifting and generally the way she talks to people; but I hadn't realized just how much she loves Hank. How much she supports him through his PT (despite how atrocious Hank is specifically to her). Knowing Hank's death was coming, my heart broke into pieces when I heard their last phone call end in "I love you. // I love you too.". Hearing her say "He isn't picking up, probably because he's in the thick of it".

I don't think I even noticed anyone's grief the first time around, most likely because I was dealing with my own. Hank's death was a shock then. This time, I knew it was coming, and I had a lot more time to process how people felt about Hank before and their reactions to the news.

Just a bunch of random thoughts about that series. I usually only rewatch "comfort series" such as comedies, animated series, etc; I very rarely rewatch epics (except that I used to re-marathon GoT before a new season). But I don't regret giving Breaking Bad a full rerun. It is such an intense experience; during Seasons 3&4 I yelled in my pillows a few times on credit roll, just from the adrenaline.

You too should give it a shot.

I'm not sure how many people here are into board games, but I figured I'd make a post about it. I'm going to be at dice tower con this week. I'm hoping to get a game of Blood on the Clocktower going. If you see a guy trying to gather people for a game of botc, that'll be me. Come say hi.

Given a movie with ambiguous story, you have multiple options to base your interpretation upon: you have the movie itself, the screenplay if available, what the author said in interviews or books, etc... Now, if we take a video game, you also have additional tools: the source code, the installed file names, unused resources, etc. There are of course a few games that expect the player to check these files but that isn't what I want to focus on.

Would you say that all these files have the same authority as the game itself when it comes to interpretations?

I'd like to take an example with SPOILERS FOR LIFE IS STRANGE 1, as this is the game that sparked this topic for me:

The blue butterfly has a special place in this game, it is what starts the whole journey when Max takes a picture of it and Chloe gets shot. It also shown again in the 'Sacrifice Chloe' ending during that same scene. And later during Chloe's burial that butterfly is shown to land on the coffin in front of Max and fly away. There are some scenes that imply that spirit animals are a thing in the in-game universe. After finishing the game my interpretation was that the blue butterfly was Chloe's spirit animal. Now what a surprise to see in the game wiki that the texture file for that butterfly is named 'Spirit_animal_Chloe' !

Is there any room left for interpretation when the source makes it explicit text? Or can the source be reasonably be pushed aside?

Consider the life you want to live, from the essentials to the luxuries. House, car, food, tech, kids, etc. Furthermore, consider where you want to live. Rural France? Downtown Tokyo?

For the purposes of the question I don't want you to think of the life of your wildest dreams (e.g. private jet, personal island, etc.), but I don't want you to think bare minimum either. Focus instead on "comfortable and fulfilling" according entirely to your own standards--a life that lets you live well and follow your aspirations with a sense of financial safety. Do not feel obligated to give a low, reasonable answer if your aspirations are higher, and don't feel obligated to shoot high if you're fine with a lower-cost lifestyle. Set your number entirely based around the desired archetypal life you want, rather than what you think is necessarily achievable based on your current financial situation.

Furthermore, don't anchor your hypothetical income to real-world standards. If you want to, for example, teach kindergarteners for a living and live in downtown San Francisco, and your desired income is $200,000 USD a year, that's perfectly fine for the purposes of this discussion despite the fact that you would be hard pressed to find a school there in real life that pays that much. I'm much more interested in the hypotheticals of the costs in your life rather than the feasibility of the income. Think of this less as a real-world budget and more of a thought experiment/personal reflection.

With all that in mind:

• What are the details of the life you want to live?
• Where do you want to live it?
• How much money would you need each year to make that feasible for you, and why?

I'm not interested in anything exact--just a ballpark estimate. And you don't need to give a full budget or anything. This should loose napkin math at best.

Also, to make things easier for everyone:

• Give your money as an amount per year.
• Give the currency you're using.
• Use combined income if your desired life involves multiple people.
• Do not judge someone else's desired life nor income.

Also, please specify which currency you are reporting in so that people can convert it to their local currency if needed to get a better sense of it.

I bet this is already taken care of, but if I type @Silbern or /u/Silbern , will I get a notification I wonder?

Edit: Nope, but someone else replied to a comment right before I hit refresh, so for a brief moment, thought I did. Thought I was quite clever for a moment, but alas.

Hey folks, we had our 3rd meet for the current campaign last night all went really well. Last time our Rogue upset everyone he met, stole everything that wasn't and was nailed down, including the nails. Then managed to get killed by an NPC that we were helping, it was amazing.

Now I wanted to get a little more creative with my character and since level 3 for Paladin is the oath level I went with Vengeance and wrote an Oath. I posted it in my last thread but will post again if anyone is interested.

Now I also wanted to have a go at making a dice bag, the first one is reversible but was too long so I made a few smaller ones. Then had the thought of making each of the guys a small bag with their names on them, each has a name longer than my leg so that failed before it started. I ended up with the initial of their first names, the Rogue wouldn't give up the name or initial so I did something different for his. The guys all loved the gifts especially the Rogue (now a Monk) these are the bags I made next thing I try will be a multi compartment job. All was done by hand because I couldn't get the sewing machine to work ...

Preface

It's not uncommon for a written piece of code to be both brief and functionality correct, yet difficult to reason about. This is especially true of recursive algorithms, which can require some amount of simulating the algorithm mentally (or on a whiteboard) on smaller problems to try to understand the underlying logic. The more you have to perform these manual simulations, the more difficult it becomes to track what exactly is going on at any stage of computation. It's also not uncommon that these algorithms can be made easier to reason about with relatively small changes, particularly in the way you conceptualize the solution to the problem. Our goal will be to take a brief tour into what these changes might look like and why they are effective at reducing our mental overhead.

Background

We will consider the case of the subset sum problem, which is essentially a special case of the knapsack problem where you have a finite number of each item and each item's value is equal to its weight. In short, the problem is summarized as one of the following:

• Given a set of numbers, is there a subset whose sum is exactly equal to some target value?

• Given a set of numbers, what is the subset whose sum is the closest to some target value without exceeding it?

For example, given the set of numbers {1, 3, 3, 5} and a target value of 9, the answer for both of those questions is {1, 3, 5} because the sum of those numbers is 9. For a target value of 10, however, the first question has no solution because no combination of numbers in the set {1, 3, 3, 5} produces a total of 10, but the second question produces a solution of {1, 3, 5} because 9 is the closest value to 10 that those numbers can produce without going over.

A Greedy Example

We'll stick to the much simpler case of finding an exact match to our target value so we don't have to track what the highest value found so far is. To make things even simpler, we'll consider the case where all numbers are positive, non-zero integers. This problem can be solved with some naive recursion--simply try all combinations until either a solution is found or all combinations have been exhausted. While more efficient solutions exist, naive recursion is the easiest to conceptualize.

An initial assessment of the problem seems simple enough. Our solution is defined as the set of array elements whose total is equal to our target value. To achieve this, we loop through each of the elements in the array, try combinations with all of the remaining elements, and keep track of what the current total is so we can compare it to our target. If we find an exact match, we return an array containing the matching elements, otherwise we return nothing. This gives us something like the following:

function subsetSum($target_sum, $values, $total = 0) {
    // Base case: a total exceeding our target sum is a failure.
    if($total > $target_sum) {
        return null;
    }

    // Base case: a total matching our target sum means we've found a match.
    if($total == $target_sum) {
        return array();
    }

    foreach($values as $index=>$value) {
        // Recursive case: try combining the current array element with the remaining elements.
        $result = subsetSum($target_sum, array_slice($values, $index + 1), $total + $value);

        if(!is_null($result)) {
            return array_merge(array($value), $result);
        }
    }

    return null;
}

Your Scope is Leaking

This solution works. It's functionally correct and will produce a valid result every single time. From a purely functional perspective, nothing is wrong with it at all; however, it's not easy to follow what's going on despite how short the code is. If we look closely, we can tell that there are a few major problems:

• It's not obvious at first glance whether or not the programmer is expected to provide the third argument. While a default value is provided, it's not clear if this value is only a default that should be overridden or if the value should be left untouched. This ambiguity means relying on documentation to explain the intention of the third argument, which may still be ignored by an inattentive developer.

• The base case where a failure occurs, i.e. when the accumulated total exceeds the target sum, occurs one stack frame further into the recursion than when the total has been incremented. This forces us to consider not only the current iteration of recursion, but one additional iteration deeper in order to track the flow of execution. Ideally an iteration of recursion should be conceptually isolated from any other, limiting our mental scope to only the current iteration.

• We're propagating an accumulating total that starts from 0 and increments toward our target value, forcing us to to track two different values simultaneously. Ideally we would only track one value if possible. If we can manage that, then the ambiguity of the third argument will be eliminated along with the argument itself.

Overall, the amount of code that the programmer needs to look at and the amount of branching they need to follow manually is excessive. The function is only 22 lines long, including whitespace and comments, and yet the amount of effort it takes to ensure you're understanding the flow of execution correctly is pretty significant. This is a pretty good indicator that we probably did something wrong. Something so simple and short shouldn't take so much effort to understand.

Patching the Leak

Now that we've assessed the problems, we can see that our original solution isn't going to cut it. We have a couple of ways we could approach fixing our function: we can either attempt to translate the abstract problems into tangible solutions or we can modify the way we've conceptualized the solution. With that in mind, let's take a second crack at this problem by trying the latter.

We've tried taking a look at this problem from a top-down perspective: "given a target value, are there any elements that produce a sum exactly equal to it?" Clearly this perspective failed us. Instead, let's try flipping the equation: "given an array element, can it be summed with others to produce the target value?"

This fundamentally changes the way we can think about the problem. Previously we were hung up on the idea of keeping track of the current total sum of the elements we've encountered so far, but that approach is incompatible with the way we're thinking of this problem now. Rather than incrementing a total, we now find ourselves having to do something entirely different: if we want to know if a given array element is part of the solution, we need to first subtract the element from the problem and find out if the smaller problem has a solution. That is, to find if the element 3 is part of the solution for the target sum of 8, then we're really asking if 3 + solutionFor(5) is valid.

The new solution therefore involves looping over our array elements just as before, but this time we check if there is a solution for the target sum minus the current array element:

function subsetSum($target_sum, $values) {
    // Base case: the solution to the target sum of 0 is the empty set.
    if($target_sum === 0) {
        return array();
    }

    foreach($values as $index=>$value) {
        // Base case: any element larger than our target sum cannot be part of the solution.
        if($value > $target_sum) {
            continue;
        }

        // Recursive case: do the remaining elements create a solution for the sub-problem?
        $result = subsetSum($target_sum - $value, array_slice($values, $index + 1));

        if(!is_null($result)) {
            return array_merge(array($value), $result);
        }
    }

    return null;
}

A Brief Review

With the changes now in place, let's compare our two functions and, more importantly, compare our new function to the problems we assessed with the original. A few brief points:

• Both functions are the same exact length, being only 22 lines long with the same number of comments and an identical amount of whitespace.

• Both functions touch the same number of elements and produce the same output given the same input. Apart from a change in execution order of a base case, functionality is nearly identical.

• The new function no longer requires thinking about the scope of next iteration of recursion to determine whether or not an array element is included in the result set. The base case for exceeding the target sum now occurs prior to recursion, keeping the scope of the value comparison nearest where those values are defined.

• The new function no longer uses a third accumulator argument, reducing the number of values to be tracked and removing the issue of ambiguity with whether or not to include the third argument in top-level calls.

• The new function is now defined in terms of finding the solutions to increasingly smaller target sums, making it easier to determine functional correctness.

Considering all of the above, we can confidently state that the second function is easier to follow, easier to verify functional correctness for, and less confusing for anyone who needs to use it. Although the two functions are nearly identical, the second version is clearly and objectively better than the original. This is because despite both being functionally correct, the first function does a poor job at accurately defining the problem it's solving while the second function is clear and accurate in its definition.

Correct code isn't necessarily accurate code. Anyone can write code that works, but writing code that accurately defines a problem can mean the difference between understanding what you're looking at, and being completely bewildered at how, or even why, your code works in the first place.

Final Thoughts

Accurately defining a problem in code isn't easy. Sometimes you'll get it right, but more often than not you'll get it wrong on the first go, and it's only after you've had some distance from you original solution that you realize that you should've done things differently. Despite that, understanding the difference between functional correctness and accuracy gives you the opportunity to watch for obvious inaccuracies and keep them to a minimum.

In the end, even functionally correct, inaccurate code is worth more than no code at all. No amount of theory is a replacement for practical experience. The only way to get better is to mess up, assess why you messed up, and make things just a little bit better the next time around. Theory just makes that a little easier.

Update! After a few hours of struggling I managed to set up Read the docs for Tildee, it should help using the library significantly.

After getting some inspiration from TAPS I thought that maybe I try to work on something vaguely similar on my own. And after… some? hours of coding today I came up with this: tildee.py (source)
It's a wrapper for the Tildes Public/Web API that is already used by the site internally to make it work. The obvious problem with that is that it will at one point break when this unstable API is changed. It can do basically all things a normal user can do with the notable exception of applying comment labels (because I haven't gotten around to that yet).

Example of usage for a DM reply bot (result):

import sys
from tildee import TildesClient
import time

# Initialize client and log in, 2FA isn't supported yet and will probably break in horrible ways
t = TildesClient("username", "password", base_url="https://localhost:4443", verify_ssl=False)

while True:
    # Retrieve the "unread messages" page and get a list of the conversations there
    unread_message_ids = t.fetch_unread_message_ids()
    for mid in unread_message_ids:
        # Access the conversation history page; this also clears the "unread" flag 
        conversation = t.fetch_conversation(mid)
        # Get the text of the last message
        text = conversation.entries[-1].content_html
        # Abort if it's from the current user (I don't think this could actually happen)
        if conversation.entries[-1].author == t.username:
            break
        print(f"Found a message by {conversation.entries[-1].author}")
        # If the message contains a reference, reply in kind
        if "hello there" in text.lower():
            print("Replying…")
            t.create_message(mid, f"General {conversation.entries[-1].author}! You are a bold one.")
        # Delay before processing next unread message
        time.sleep(3)
    # Delay before next unread check
    time.sleep(60)

This has a lot of potential. Haven't yet figured out potential for what, but I'll take what I can get.
I'd be really grateful if someone with a little more experience than me (that's not exactly a high bar :P) could give me some pointers on the project's structure and the "API design", hence the ask tag. Other creative ideas for what to use this for are appreciated, too.

This was inspired by this post.

I was thinking, as a platform gets bigger we're going to end up with more situations where people are asking for advice about fairly serious stuff. In some cases, that advice needs to come from experts and taking guidance from any random Joe on the street can be risky/dangerous. (For the record, I don't think the post I'm referencing is an example of this, it just got me thinking about it).

In cases like this, I think it's important that the actual good advice get some kind of clear designation that THIS is the guidance you need to take first. I notice this in communities like /r/Fitness a lot where people will post about what sound like pretty serious health concerns and you get a fair number of posts that suggest toughing it out or whatever and the more critical "You need to see a doctor" posts can kind of disappear amid the discussion. Similar things in /r/relationships where you can't always count on "This is abuse. Make arrangements to get your kids and yourself somewhere safe. . ." to be the top post.

Even in cases where the poster themselves is smart enough to take "YOU NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR" type advice to heart, not every schmuck searching the topic on Google will. To that end, it might be good to give certain posts with good, holistic advice or by a known expert some kind of visual indicator that it deserves to be taken more seriously than other posts in the thread. It wouldn't be censoring anything really, just providing a little nudge about what ought to be consulted first or taken to heart.

Now obviously it gets hard to decide how to give a post this attribute. It could possibly be awarded by the OP, though that has some obvious issues where the OP themselves might not be in a position to credibly vet the advice they're getting. We could also just do it through ranking by vote, which is the default paradigm. But like I said, it doesn't always work so well on Reddit. And the Exemplary tag is invisible to others, so that doesn't work either (and the post itself might not be worth giving up your "Exemplary" for the day besides). Moderators could do it, but there may not be enough and the skillset to be a Mod might not overlap with the skillset to know what advice a person needs in a particular situation.

I don't actually have the answers. Maybe it just comes down to creating an attribute for some users to be "wisened elders" or something and empower them to star certain posts to separate good advice from bad. It would basically be a trusted user system. It's got it's own problems, but I guess we can open the floor for other ideas. Maybe it's not a real concern. Maybe it's better addressed by tinkering with the sorting of posts.

I started using wine in about 2013 and I remember back then it was quite patchy and only worked on some programs/games. I used to have a rule that I stuck hard to that I would not buy any games that did not have a linux version. But now in 2019 I have found that everything I have tried to run in wine has been so seamless and close to flawless that I hardly know its running in wine. I semi regularly buy games that only have windows version because I am mostly sure it will work and can get a refund if it doesn't.

What does everyone else think about this?

A screenshot.

Following is a user script that embeds a thumbnail into the topic header. Was supposed to be trivial, but walking around the CSRP was not that easy. Luckily, someone had written a nice useful custom Base64 encoder, because I spent more than an hour trying to get btoa to do the thing.

// ==UserScript==
// @name     tildesYoutubeThumbs
// @version  1
// @grant    GM.xmlHttpRequest
// @namespace   tildes.net
// @include     https://tildes.net/~*/*
// ==/UserScript==

let youtubeIcon = document.querySelector('div.topic-icon-youtube_com')

if(youtubeIcon !== null) {
  let youtubeLink = youtubeIcon.nextSibling.nextSibling.href;
  let youtubeID = new URL(youtubeLink).searchParams.get('v');
  let thumbnailUrl = "https://img.youtube.com/vi/" + youtubeID + "/0.jpg";

  GM.xmlHttpRequest({
    method: "GET",
    url: thumbnailUrl,
    overrideMimeType: 'text/plain; charset=x-user-defined',
    onload: function(response) {
      if(response.status === 200) {
        let thumbElement = document.createElement('img');
        let thumbParentDiv = document.createElement('div');
        let header = document.querySelector('article.topic-full > header');
        let data = "data:image/jpeg;base64," + customBase64Encode(response.responseText);
        thumbElement.src = data;
        thumbElement.style = 'width: 60%; margin: auto';
        thumbElement.id = 'gk-youtube-thumbnail';
        thumbParentDiv.style = 'width: 100%; text-align:center;';
        header.appendChild(thumbParentDiv);
        thumbParentDiv.appendChild(thumbElement);
      }
    }
  });
}

// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8778863/downloading-an-image-using-xmlhttprequest-in-a-userscript/8781262#8781262
function customBase64Encode (inputStr) {
    var
        bbLen               = 3,
        enCharLen           = 4,
        inpLen              = inputStr.length,
        inx                 = 0,
        jnx,
        keyStr              = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
                            + "0123456789+/=",
        output              = "",
        paddingBytes        = 0;
    var
        bytebuffer          = new Array (bbLen),
        encodedCharIndexes  = new Array (enCharLen);

    while (inx < inpLen) {
        for (jnx = 0;  jnx < bbLen;  ++jnx) {
            /*--- Throw away high-order byte, as documented at:
              https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Using_XMLHttpRequest#Handling_binary_data
            */
            if (inx < inpLen)
                bytebuffer[jnx] = inputStr.charCodeAt (inx++) & 0xff;
            else
                bytebuffer[jnx] = 0;
        }

        /*--- Get each encoded character, 6 bits at a time.
            index 0: first  6 bits
            index 1: second 6 bits
                        (2 least significant bits from inputStr byte 1
                         + 4 most significant bits from byte 2)
            index 2: third  6 bits
                        (4 least significant bits from inputStr byte 2
                         + 2 most significant bits from byte 3)
            index 3: forth  6 bits (6 least significant bits from inputStr byte 3)
        */
        encodedCharIndexes[0] = bytebuffer[0] >> 2;
        encodedCharIndexes[1] = ( (bytebuffer[0] & 0x3) << 4)   |  (bytebuffer[1] >> 4);
        encodedCharIndexes[2] = ( (bytebuffer[1] & 0x0f) << 2)  |  (bytebuffer[2] >> 6);
        encodedCharIndexes[3] = bytebuffer[2] & 0x3f;

        //--- Determine whether padding happened, and adjust accordingly.
        paddingBytes          = inx - (inpLen - 1);
        switch (paddingBytes) {
            case 1:
                // Set last character to padding char
                encodedCharIndexes[3] = 64;
                break;
            case 2:
                // Set last 2 characters to padding char
                encodedCharIndexes[3] = 64;
                encodedCharIndexes[2] = 64;
                break;
            default:
                break; // No padding - proceed
        }

        /*--- Now grab each appropriate character out of our keystring,
            based on our index array and append it to the output string.
        */
        for (jnx = 0;  jnx < enCharLen;  ++jnx)
            output += keyStr.charAt ( encodedCharIndexes[jnx] );
    }
    return output;
}

welcome to debate #1, night 2. the first thread on this turned out to be about twice as active as i was expecting (i estimated at most 50 or so replies), and that was for the "undercard" so unless something changes with this night, i think we'll be doing these in pairs from here on out--at least until either the DNC pushes out enough candidates for one debate, or activity drops significantly in these threads. previous night's thread can be found here if you'd like to continue the discussions of last night's candidates. anyways here are all the details you'd ever need, and probably then some:

first off, i recommend you sort by newest first instead of the default since this thread will likely be semi-active and covering a live event.

How to Watch:

The debate is being broadcast by NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo, and will air live across all three networks starting at 9 p.m. ET.
Telemundo will broadcast the debate in Spanish.
The debate will stream online free on NBC News' digital platforms, including NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, the NBC News Mobile App and OTT apps on Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV, in addition to Telemundo's digital platforms.

livestreams will also be available on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube because the DNC mandated that of its partners for the debates.

The Candidates:

Democratic Presidential Debate: See The 20 Candidates Who Will Be Onstage

• Michael Bennet (Senator from Colorado)

Bennet is running on fixing a broken political system, the blame for which he puts at the feet of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. Bennet says spending from wars and tax cuts was essentially the U.S. lighting “money on fire.”

• Joe Biden (Former vice president)

Biden’s top concern is less about reshaping America and more about returning America to “normalcy.” He argues that if President Trump gets another four years, the DNA of the country will be fundamentally altered.

• Pete Buttigieg (Mayor of South Bend, Ind.)

The 37-year-old is making a generational-change argument. He argues for progressive processes — like fixing redistricting and voting rights — in addition to policies — like being more cautious on war and more progressive on climate change and health care.

• Kirsten Gillibrand (Senator from New York)

She’s focused on women’s rights, especially when it comes to health care. She boasts that a Fox host called her “not very polite” for speaking out about the “nationwide assault on women’s reproductive freedoms” and “fundamental human rights for women.”

• Kamala Harris (Senator from California)

Harris’ slogan is “for the people,” and she’s making the case that President Trump is a “fraud.” The former prosecutor says Trump is fighting for the wrong people — the powerful and wealthy — while she wants to “advocate for the voiceless and vulnerable.”

• John Hickenlooper (Former governor of Colorado)

The centrist has a pragmatic message. He says pragmatists aren’t against big things; they know how to get them done. He has also spoken out against Democrats’ lurch toward socialism, warning that moving in that direction would reelect President Trump.

• Bernie Sanders (Senator from Vermont)

Sanders wants to beat President Trump, but he believes the way to do it is not with “middle-ground” approaches, but with promising wholesale progressive change. He’s the only candidate willing to wear the (democratic) socialist label.

• Eric Swalwell (Representative from California’s 15th District)

He has focused his campaign on ending gun violence in the country, targeting semiautomatic assault weapons in particular by calling for a mandatory national ban and buyback.

• Marianne Williamson (Spiritual guru, entrepreneur)

The New Age author is campaigning with a philosophy of “Think. Love. Participate.” As an outsider to politics, she believes change needs to come from the outside and that “half-truth tellers” can’t beat President Trump.

• Andrew Yang (Founder of Venture for America)

The startup investor is running on a data-first approach to the presidency. His big idea is to address the threat of automation with a Universal Basic Income, in which every adult would get $1,000 a month.

The Rules:

Candidates will have 60 seconds to answer questions and 30 seconds to respond to follow-ups. No opening statements, though candidates will have a chance to deliver closing remarks.
Five segments each night separated by four commercial breaks.

The Analysis:

NPR has 7 questions of their 8 for the debates which apply to today's debate:

Will Biden stand up to the scrutiny?
Is the debate an opportunity or danger zone for Bernie Sanders?
Can Harris and Buttigieg stand out?
Do the pragmatists or progressives win out?
How much of a focus is Trump?
How will foreign policy factor in?
Who will stick in voters' minds?

other pre-debate analysis pieces that may be pertinent to you:

• NBC News: On Night Two, all eyes — and jabs — will be on Biden
• Vox: What to expect at the first Democratic presidential debate
• the Guardian: Democrats prepare for first showdown as 2020 debates loom
• from POLITICO: Inside the top matchups in the 2020 Democratic debates

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially in light of some recent threads, and because my own account here is nearing 1 year old. I don't think I've seen this come up yet, but it's possible I missed something. I'd really just like to see what the consensus is here, especially now that the site is fairly large.

Anyways, what I define as 'recruiting' is responsibly (preferably privately) messaging someone who hasn't posted on the /r/Tildes subreddit or reached out in some other way, and asking if they would be interested in joining the platform. My reasons for wanting to do this are two- fold:

For one, on the rare occasion that you come across someone who seems like a good fit for this site, and who is trying to contribute meaningfully to reddit but obviously getting frustrated, it just seems like the right thing to do. Wouldn't you want someone to reach out and let you know there is something better?

Secondly, it's a good way to grow representation of niche ideas, which could later evolve in subgroups. Have a favorite programming language you'd like to see represented here more? Maybe a favorite hobby? Whatever the case, I think most people are part of some kind of niche interest that they would like to see more of here.

I've been curious about making a switch for ergonomics and just lack of space on my desk.

• Do you recommend it for gaming? Any guidance on genres that do or don't work? I mostly play real time and turn based strategy games or point-and-click style games such as Diablo on my computer. I don't generally go in for twitchy FPSes, but I'd like the option.

• Opinions on index vs. thumb?

• How long was the adjustment period to get used to it?

• Any recommendations on good ones to buy?

• Are there any advantages I'm not thinking of besides just being better for my wrist?

• Disadvantages besides, potentially, being less precise than a mouse?

• Are there any tradeoffs with going wireless?

I really enjoyed Peele's new Twilight Zone. It's a bit hit and miss - but most anthology shows have this. Some episodes are great, most are good enough, a couple are forgettable.

The critic reviews (based on the first four episodes) are all over the place, with scoring ranging from 100 to 10. The user reviews are the usual tyre-fire of awfulness. https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-twilight-zone-2019

I found Replay to be genuinely upsetting and it was the episode that stayed with me longest. I get the impression that this episode split the audience and a bunch of people dislike the social commentary. (Or something, I dunno, I can't understand the mindset that criticises a show for something like this).

So I'm interested in your opinions. Have you watched it? Did you enjoy it?

I am working on an app called Percent Done that is a combination of goal setting, time tracking and habit tracking.

I like setting time-based goals for myself every day, such as “write for an hour” or “work on Percent Done for four hours.”

I also like Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain” method. For example, Apple Watch shows you how many days you have completed your exercise circle and tells you that you have been keeping at it for x days.

Percent Done is a marriage of these two concepts. It allows you to set goals and track the time you spend on them, as well as how many days in a row you have consistently completed them. For example, you can add a goal that says “write for an hour every day,” and Percent Done will notify you every day to write for an hour. You will be able to tap on this goal and Percent Done will start counting back from one hour. You will also be able to see how many days in a row you have written for an hour.

Here is a demo GIF.

You can also add one-time goals to Percent Done with or without time tracking, so it is a task management tool as well.

You can play with the design prototype here: Percent Done design prototype

I would really love to get your feedback on this. If you are interested in being a beta tester, feel free to reply to this topic or e-mail me at "hi at evrim dot io."

By the way, this is almost completely a self-promotion post. If it is against the rules, I'd be happy to remove this.

@cadadr's 4 word poetry challenge is one of my favorite Tildes threads to read through on account of the many clever and thoughtful responses, so I figured I'd try to kick off another one. This one is a little more conceptually involved, but I think it still has the potential to be a good time like the last one.

Rather than going with a strict word or line count, instead I am creating a restriction based around personification:

Challenge:
Your poem must:

• Be written from the point of view of an inanimate object
• Give the object personality/emotion
• NOT name the object, so that people have to infer it from what you've written

An example might be an automatic door that is bored to tears from opening and closing ad nauseum. Or maybe a watering can that is excited to tend to its garden.

In trying to come up with a model I decided to channel a resentful milk carton:

It's fine
I get it
You don't have to justify yourself
Lots of better things have come around
Since you first chose me

Just know that I'm still here
If you need me
Waiting for that blissful moment
Where you light up my world
And take me in your hand
And make me feel like I'm flying
Before you lower me down
In a lover's embrace

It's fine
I get it
Until then I'll sit here
In the cold, cold dark
Trying not to go sour
Next to the slowly molding cheese
And forgotten grapes

It's far from perfect but hopefully it gives you an idea of what the assignment can look like. While I saved my "reveal" to the end, don't feel obligated to use that tactic unless you want to. You don't have to hide the identity of your object, just don't name the object outright in the poem.

Feel free to make your poem as long or short as you wish. Feel free to make it as meaningful or silly as you want. Above all else, have fun!

If you need help with ideas or just want the challenge of writing to a randomly selected specification, you can use this noun generator for objects and this adjective generator for sentiments.

What's your dream laptop for running *nix?

I'm currently using a Lenovo Thinkpad T410s, and it's getting ready to die. I think it's a great machine, but every computer eventually dies. It runs Debian 8 (Jessie), but it can't handle 9 (Stretch) without overheating. On top of that, I need to use the proprietary drivers! My computer got dropped on the floor today (not my fault!), and it got me thinking that maybe it's time to start shopping for a new laptop.

What are your ideas about what a good laptop for *nix OS's? Any recommendations? What should I look for? What should I avoid?

I love having a SSD HDD, and playing with different distros, but I'd like to avoid the headache I've had with the propitiatory Intel drivers. I like to have control of my hardware, but still use the latest software. If a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone could match the performance of a laptop then I'd seriously consider using one.

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 496 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. we have one opinion piece this week and a number of [LONGFORM] pieces this week. our polling section continues this week as well.

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 • Week 2 • Week 3 • Week 4 • Week 5 • Week 6 • Week 7 • Week 8 • Week 9 • Week 10 • Week 11 • Week 12 • Week 13

News

Polling

• From Emerson (B+ on 538); margin of error +/- 4.5: National poll

Joe Biden continues to hold his announcement bounce, and has gained a point since May – now holding 34% of the vote, followed by Senator Bernie Sanders who moved up 2 points to 27%. Senator Elizabeth Warren has broken away from the rest of those running, into 3rd place – improving from 10% of the vote up to 14%. Senator Kamala Harris comes in fourth with 7%, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is in fifth with 6%, and Senator Cory Booker follows in sixth with 3% of the vote. All other candidates poll at 1%.

• From YouGov (B+ on 538): National poll [PDF Warning]

Biden 26%
Warren 14%
Sanders 13%
Buttigieg 9%
Harris 7%
O'Rourke 4%
Booker 2%
All others 1% or less

General Stuff

• from Vox: 2020 Democrats share plans to fight poverty at presidential forum. this week has been rich with townhalls and events, one of the first of which was the Poor People's Campaign forum, specifically dedicating itself to the issues of low-income Americans and poverty. a number of the perennial one-percenters showed up, as did frontrunners biden, sanders, warren, and harris; in general, the frontrunners took the opportunity to show off their plans where they had them for low-income america, and the one-percenters tried to make a case to voters.
• from FiveThirtyEight: Democratic Candidates Answer Yes-Or-No Questions About Criminal Justice Policy. FiveThirtyEight decided to ask some criminal justice questions of the candidates running, and the results are interesting. the chart summarizing responses to the questions is here. literally the only thing all the candidates who answered agree upon unconditionally is pell grants for prisoners, but everybody basically agrees upon death penalty abolition (ryan, the sole dissenter, wants an exception for terrorists but otherwise does not support it), abolishing cash bail (inslee is the one exception), and marijuana legalization (delaney and klobuchar are the exceptions). inversely, only sanders and gravel support granting prisoners the right to vote; gravel is also the only person who answered in the affirmative to all six questions.
• from NPR: 2020 Democrats Offer Up Affordable Housing Plans Amid Surging Prices. increasing concern with housing prices is driving democratic candidates to seek to tap into a voting base which spans a large part of the electorate. if it seems like not a coincidence that housing is playing a much larger role in this primary than it ever did in 2016, tha's because it is and it's being driven by voter sentiments. "When [Democratic pollster Geoff Garin] asked voters in 2016 if they thought housing affordability was a problem where they lived, 39% said it was a fairly serious or very serious problem. This year, that number is 60%."
• from Vox: [LONGFORM] We asked all the 2020 Democrats how they’d fix child care. Here’s what they said. Vox's second entry in this section sees them asking around about child care policy, which is something that a number of candidates have taken up this year in their campaign planks. their findings are:

universal childcare supporters: warren, sanders, harris, o'rourke, swalwell, klobuchar
tax credit supporters: gillibrand, buttigieg, bennet, moulton, williamson
universal preschool supporters: castro, yang, booker, ryan
other: biden (no stated policy); de blasio (NYC-type program?); hickenlooper ("subsidies on a sliding scale"); bullock ("universal access to voluntary, early childhood education")
did not respond: inslee, gabbard, delaney, messiam

• from POLITICO: The gloves come off in the Democratic primary. the previously amicable primary got mildly spicy this week because of a number of plotlines. last week we of course began the "biden sorta kinda praising segregationists" plotline, for which he drew significant criticism but doubled down inexplicably; earlier in the week we also had the "sanders criticizes warren as corporatist" plotline, which sanders later said was actually directed at a moderate thinktank called third way. now that the veneer of not criticizing other candidates has been worn off, we're probably bound to see some other beefs flair up as the primary goes on.
• from NPR: 8 Political Questions Ahead Of The 1st Democratic Debates. NPR offers up 8 questions for consideration given that tomorrow is the first debate of this long, grueling cycle:

1. Will Biden stand up to the scrutiny?
2. Is the debate an opportunity or danger zone for Bernie Sanders?
3. Does Warren make the most of commanding the stage?
4. Can Harris and Buttigieg stand out?
5. Do the pragmatists or progressives win out?
6. How much of a focus is Trump?
7. How will foreign policy factor in?
8. Who will stick in voters' minds?

Elizabeth Warren

• from POLITICO: Warren emerges as potential compromise nominee. warren has been the biggest beneficiary of the moderate/centrist wing of the democratic party realizing that its influence over the party is waning and that the increasing normal is going to be candidates in the vein of warren and sanders. warren is most likely getting the benefit here for obvious reasons: she self identifies as a capitalist, and sanders for the most part does not. of course, if you actually compare notes on their policies, they're mostly the same, so... not sure this gambit is going to work out?
• from POLITICO: How Sen. Elizabeth Warren would try to ban private prisons. policy wise, warren unveiled a plan this week to ban private prisons. this is pretty straightforward:

Warren would end federal contracts with the Bureau of Prisons and Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for detention facilities and private prisons. Warren would try to extend this ban to states and localities as well. In addition, the plan calls for prohibiting contractors from collecting service fees for "essential services" such as phone calls, health care, and bank transfers."

• from the Guardian: Biden stumbles over abortion rights while Warren receives cheers. warren is not the sole focus of this piece, but she ones one of the best received at the planned parenthood forum this week of the candidates that attended (which was nearly all of them). of note:

“This is a democracy. In a democracy, the laws should reflect the values of the people. So I say it is time to go on offense with Roe v Wade. It’s not enough to say we’re going to rely on the courts. We need to pass a federal law to make Roe v Wade the rule of the land.”

Bernie Sanders

• from CNN: Elizabeth Warren's rise opens a new chapter in the progressive primary. although titled for warren, this piece is actually about bernie sanders and how warren's rise in the polls threatens to balkanize the progressive vote between the two of them. it als goes into some details about the controversy over the sanders tweet that was apparently aimed at warren but which sanders said was actually directed toward third way.
• from Vice: Bernie Sanders Wants to Wipe Out All Student Loan Debt. sanders's big coup this week was a plan to eliminate all student loan debt. Vice explains that: "Under the Sanders plan, there would be no eligibility standards — it would cancel 1.6 trillion in undergraduate and graduate debt for all 45 million people who hold it. Sanders would also make public universities, community colleges, and trade schools free." and as for how you pay for it, "Sanders intends to pay for the plan with taxes on Wall Street, namely a 0.5 percent tax on stock transactions and a 0.1 percent tax on bonds. The plan is projected to cost $2.2 trillion over 10 years."

Pete Buttigieg

• from CBS News: Officer-involved shooting remains Pete Buttigieg's biggest 2020 challenge yet. buttigieg has had a rough week dealing with what can really only be described as a complete clusterfuck of a situation. the set-up: "Prosecutors say the officer who killed Logan, Sgt. Ryan O'Neill, was responding to a report of a person breaking into cars when he encountered Logan in an apartment building parking lot. O'Neill told authorities that Logan had a knife, and when he refused the officer's orders to drop it, O'Neill opened fire, shooting Logan in the stomach. Another officer took Logan in a squad car to the hospital, where he later died." no body camera was activated.
• from CBS News: Pete Buttigieg faces South Bend protesters: "You want black people to vote for you — that's not going to happen". unsurprisingly this has not gone over well with some segments of the black community, for which this is a regular occurrence. buttigieg was first confronted with protests prior to the town hall this week which were somewhat tense because of his seeming failure to address the problems in south bend's police department.
• from the LA Times: Black residents of South Bend unload on Mayor Pete Buttigieg. this tension continued into the town hall, where buttigieg was at times roundly criticized by some members of the black population in a town hall that was kind of a train wreck. the town hall was a proxy for some of the broader gripes that members of south bend's black community but also for some of the problems various community members have with each other, and just in general things went badly. buttgieg for the most part was fine, but obviously shaken both in the town hall itself and afterwards when interviewed by CNN.
• from NBC News: Buttigieg learns the hazards of campaigning for president as a mayor. this all has of course gotten buttigieg off message at possibly the worst (or best, depending on how you see it) time on an issue that has not been especially good for him and could potentially jeopardize what little black support he does have.
• miscellany: south bend has basically had everything possible go wrong with it in the past week and change. there was the police shooting which has caused much controversy; there was also a mass shooting which killed one a few days later; most recently, there was also an EF2 tornado which impacted part of the city.

Cory Booker

• from TIME: [LONGFORM] Cory Booker's Moment is Yet to Come. this longform profile of cory booker by TIME goes into the significant efforts of the booker campaign so far to make a splash, and how despite those efforts and a fairly flawless campaign so far, booker has yet to see particularly good poll numbers, even in iowa where he has invested extensively.
• from Vox: Cory Booker has a plan to reform the criminal justice system — without Congress. booker also has some policy on establishing a clemency system unilaterally. "Booker’s plan calls for granting an early release to as many as 17,000 to 20,000 people in federal prison for drug offenses, and establishing a panel within the White House that would make recommendations for more clemency applications in the longer term."

Beto O'Rourke

• from Buzzfeed News: These Donors Helped Give Beto O'Rourke A Historic Start. They're Disappointed With What Happened Next. beto's slip in the polls has not exactly inspired his voterbase. he's not dropping support like flies here as the article makes clear, but at least a vocal portion of his donor base is less than impressed and some of them are seeking to go elsewhere with their money, which is generally not good, especially given that beto is actually polling better than most candidates in the race currently even with his rather bad numbers. it's possible that if this continues, he'll end up in a feedback loop which drags down his candidacy. we'll have to see.
• from USA Today: Beto O’Rourke: From Juneteenth to today, Americans are still on the march for justice. nonetheless, beto is still on the beat, and this week he had an op-ed in USA Today promoting his new voting rights act, which would "crack down on draconian voter ID laws; prevent politically motivated state officials from purging the voter roles to game the system; expand vote-by-mail and early voting; and declare the first Tuesday of every November a national holiday, so no one has to choose between going to work and participating in their democracy."

Andrew Yang

• from NBC News: Some Asian Americans are excited about Andrew Yang. Others? Not so much. andrew yang is an interestingly polarizing character in the asian-american community. while he is getting some of his best funding from them, he also is struggling with winning over many asian americans, which makes his path quite difficult since he doesn't really poll well with any other groups to make up for that.
• from The Baffler: Andrew Yang’s War on Normal People. this article from The Baffler runs through the fairly comprehensive list of criticisms against yang, and especially his proposal for UBI. namely it argues that yang is taking a silicon valley approach to a problem that is decidedly not a silicon valley solvable problem. it also argues that yang, while he has the right rhetoric on paper, his execution both historically and currently falls well flat.

Everyone Else

• from NBC News: Biden doubles down on segregationist comments, says critics like Cory Booker 'should apologize' to him . as mentioned in the last thread, biden's big controversy this week was touting his ability to be bipartisan with segregationists, then doubling down on it and insisting that cory booker apologize for raking him over it. this has gone unresolved as far as i know; booker and biden talked about it at some point during the week but i'm not sure that they actually made up over it. booker refused to apologize to biden in the immediate aftermath of the remark here and really does not have a reason to apologize in the first place.
• from CBS News: Kamala Harris: Concerns about my prosecutorial record are "overblown". kamala harris is finally getting enough heat for her prosecutorial career that she's decided to address it, apparently. harris has previously received large amounts of criticism from the progressive wing of the democratic party but especially leftists for some of her decisions as a prosecutor. harris has expressed regret for some of the policies that she helped enact and uphold, but in general she is fairly unrepentant about her record, as seen here.
• from NBC News: Julián Castro wants to transform housing assistance for poor, give renters tax credits. julian castro has some housing policy: "[Castro] wants to transform the housing assistance program, known as Section 8, into a fully funded entitlement program — a reference to federal safety net programs such as Social Security. In addition, Castro called for a refundable tax credit for low- and middle-income renters if their rent exceeds 30 percent of their income."
• from POLITICO: Michael Bennet pushes sweeping plan to remake political system. michael bennet has some political reforms he'd like to pass, which include "a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, a lifetime ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists, a prohibition on political gerrymandering and a push for ranked choice voting. Bennet is also supporting a laundry list of long-desired Democratic reforms, including automatic voter registration, D.C. statehood and greater transparency around super PAC fundraising and spending." most of this is fairly stock for democrats, but some of it is not.
• from CBS News: Joe Sestak, former congressman and 3-star admiral, joins 2020 presidential race. another rando, joe sestak, decided to cast his lot in. sestak was a representative of pennsylvania's house delegation for a number of years before trying and failing to run for senate twice. he is democrat number 25 to enter the race.

Opinions

• from the Guardian: The secret to Elizabeth Warren's surge? Ideas. our sole opinion piece this week comes from the Guardian, and argues that the rise of elizabeth warren in the polls is driven by her unrelenting torrent of policies and willingness to treat voters as if they can understand that policy instead of watering it down.

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

I used Bullet Journal for a year, then went back to Org mode with Orgzly on mobile. I find I'm more productive with pen and paper b/c when I see a rabbit hole I can't do nothing but jump into it and go right down, and trying to conform to ways app devs' workflows and hack them to behave the way I want cause friction which is for me greater than that of dealing with a meatspace physical notebook. Bullet Journal was nice, but I wonder if Strikethru could be even nicer. I never fully conform to these methods, but they are generally nice starting points to build a custom one, so I generally like starting out with them.

My use case is, I have four types of tasks: projects, like "study statistics" or "transcribe scans" which can take weeks or months to complete, and sometimes have deadlines; todos which have no specific completion time (e.g. long time shopping lists, books to buy, stuff to check back on later, things to research); tasks that are scheduled for a certain date/time or a range thereof; and lastly tasks that recur on varying intervals, like posting the thread to ~books every other week or completing a particular task that pertains to a project, say reading pages from a book that is relevant to the "study statistics" project. Bullet Journal provided a means for all of this, but the amount of rescheduling and rewriting was inconvenient, and inconvenient is the evil enemy of making habits and getting things done for a fucked up procrastinator like me. When I look at Strikethru, I am not sure if it can handle this, if it's too simple for more complex stuff. So I wonder what you guys do with it. I'd be glad if you could share your workflows and/or advice me on how I could make use of this particular system, or anything else out there!

Edit: prior art:

• https://tildes.net/~talk/9jl/do_you_use_a_todo_manager_or_something_like_a_bullet_journal_my_story_of_trying_different_planners
• https://tildes.net/~life/7yk/note_taking_bookmarks_reminders_and_todos_what_do_you_use_to_organize_your_life

I've commented on both of these talking about how I use a modified Bullet Journal method.

~movies.horror?
~life.parenting?
~creative.poetry.limericks?
~comp.dev.games.godot?
~tildes.taxonomy? ;)

The possibilities are, of course, endless. Right now, with few users, we're all still living in top-level land, but I think it would be interesting to see what everyone's more specific interests are, as well as how some people would tackle defining a hierarchy. (e.g. ~games.overwatch vs. ~games.fps.overwatch vs. ~games.multiplayer.fps.overwatch etc.).

Furthermore, what content would you like to see in your specific subgroups? What types of posts would make having them worthwhile?

Introduction

I want to give an introduction on several physics topics at a level understandable to laypeople (high school level physics background). Making physics accessible to laypeople is a much discussed topic at universities. It can be very hard to translate the professional terms into a language understandable by people outside the field. So I will take this opportunity to challenge myself to (hopefully) create an understandable introduction to interesting topics in modern physics. To this end, I will take liberties in explaining things, and not always go for full scientific accuracy, while hopefully still getting the core concepts across. If a more in-depth explanation is wanted, please ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

Previous topics

Bookmarkable meta post with links to all previous topics

Today's topic

Today's topic is spintronics storage devices for computers. I will try to explain how we can use an electron's spin to read and write data and why this is more efficient than current technologies.

What do we need to have a storage device?

In order to be able to save a bit (a 0 or a 1 in computer science speak), we need to be able to represent both the 0 and the 1 in some physical way. We could for example flip a light switch and say light on is 1, light off is 0. We will also need to be able to read the information we stored, in this case we can simply look at the lamp to see if we're storing a 0 or a 1. We would also like for this information to be stored even when power is cut, so that next time we power the hardware back on, we will still be able to read the data. Lastly, we want to be able to change between 0 and 1 freely; no one wants to go back to the CD days for storage.

Now for some basic concepts.

What is spin?

Spin arises from quantum mechanics. However, for the purpose of explaining spin storage devices we can think of an electron's spin as a bar magnet. Each electron can be thought of as a freely rotating bar magnet that will align itself with the fields from nearby magnets. Think of it as a compass (the electron) aligning itself to a fridge magnet when it's held near the compass.

Why are some metals magnetic?

Why can we make permanent magnets out of iron, but not copper? In all metals, we have spins that are free to rotate. This means that we can turn a metal into a magnet by holding it near another magnet, it will "copy" the other magnet's magnetisation - its spins will rotate in the direction of the field. But as soon as we remove the magnet, our metal will stop being magnetic. This is because the spins are freely rotating, the spins will align to the magnet's magnetisation when they feel it, but nothing is holding them in place as soon as it's removed. We call this property paramagnetism.

However, iron (and some other metals) will retain a nearby magnet's magnetisation even when the magnet is removed. This is because in these materials, called ferromagnets, it costs energy for the spins to rotate away from the material's magnetisation. They are pinned into place.

What happens if we expose half of our ferromagnet to a magnetisation pointing in one way (let's call it up), and the other half to a magnet whose magnetisation is pointing the other way (which we call down)? The ferromagnet would copy both magnetisation directions and create a boundary region - a so-called domain wall - in the centre. The spins in this domain wall will slowly rotate over the thickness of the wall so that at one end they're pointing up and at the other end they're pointing down.

How can we use spin to store data?

What if, instead of a light bulb, we used a bar magnet as our storage medium. We could magnetise our bar magnet in one direction to store a 1 and magnetise it in the other direction to store a 0. To read what we have stored, we simply check the bar magnet's magnetisation.

Let's work out this idea. We want to be able to efficiently change the magnetisation of a bar magnet and we want to be able to read the bar magnet's magnetisation. We will use a ferromagnet because it will retain our data indefinitely (its magnetisation will not change unless we force it to). We know it costs energy to flip the spins inside a ferromagnet, so we will want to use a very tiny ferromagnet - it will have less spins which means it will cost us less energy to change the magnetisation (i.e. flip the spins).

Magnetoresistance

A-ha, now we're getting into the fancy-titled paragraphs. What do you, dear reader, think would happen when we send a current (e.g. a bunch of electrons) through a magnet? What would happen to the current's electrons (also called itinerant electrons, to distinguish them from the non-moving electrons of the metal)? At the boundary of the magnet, where the current enters, only the electrons who (through random chance) have a spin that's aligned to the magnet's magnetisation will pass through. We call this effect magnetoresistance, as in effect part of our current will feel a resistance - they cannot pass through to the magnet. So to rephrase, the current inside the magnet will be "magnetised" - all of the spins of the itinerant electrons are pointing the same way.

Current induced domain wall motion

So now we know what happens to a current that's inside a magnet. What happens when this current meets a domain wall - the region where the magnetisation changes direction? The itinerant electrons' spins will start rotating along with the magnetisation, but the static electrons of the ferromagnet will also start rotating in the opposite way due to the magnetisation they feel from the current (more experienced readers will recognise this as conservation of angular momentum). So the spins inside the current will slowly rotate until they are pointing the opposite direction and can continue passage from the up-magnetised part of the ferromagnet into the down-magnetised part. But the spins that belong to the ferromagnet itself will be rotating in the opposite manner, slowly rotating from down to up as the current passes through. This means the boundary region between up and down magnetisation, the domain wall, will move along with the current.

So in short, by sending a current through a magnet that's magnetised in opposite directions at each end, we can force our preferred magnetisation to expand in the current's direction. By reversing the direction of the current we can then magnetise the other way again.

So we can say magnetising up (pushing current through (let's say) from left to right) can be our 1 and magnetising down (pushing current through from right to left) can be our 0. This would allow us to store data permanently as even when we remove the current our magnet will remember its magnetisation. If we make a really tiny ferromagnet we will only need a really tiny current to flip it's magnetisation too. So we can scale this process down to get to really good efficiencies. In the lab these types of devices are down to nanometre scale and require extremely little current to be operated.

Reading the data

OK, so now we know how to write data. But how do we read it? The key effect here will be magnetoresistance, as explained earlier in the post.

Let's look at this picture. The red dotted line shows our write currents, the big bar is our ferromagnet. The arrows pointing up and down at the sides are our magnetisation direction, the double-pointed arrow in the centre shows the region where we flip the magnetisation by sending through a current.

Now we jam a third, permanently magnetised, bit of metal (let's call it the read terminal) on top of the centre of our bar. We send a current from this read connector to one of the ends of the ferromagnet. If the ferromagnet's magnetisation is aligned to that of the read terminal we will experience a low (magneto)resistance, but if the ferromagnet is magnetised in the opposite direction we will experience a high resistance. By measuring the difference in resistance we can determine if we have a 0 or a 1 stored. We just need to be careful not to send too big of a current, else that would influence our ferromagnet's magnetisation. But small currents means better efficiency, so this is not a problem at all.

Conclusion

This concludes the post, we have seen how to use spins and magnets to both write and read data and we understand why this is efficient.

Feedback

As usual, please let me know where I missed the mark. Also let me know if things are not clear to you, I will try to explain further in the comments!

Does anyone have a business subscriber Internet connection? Is it worth it?

I just spoke with my ISP, and for an extra $40/mo I can get a static IP address with 100mbps that I can host my own website on. I have a virtualization server, and I've been thinking about hosting my own hobby-scale website for a while. I haven't had any luck finding rack hosting space that I'd feel comfortable using so I'm thinking about just going rogue, and operating solo. If I had a static IP address with a pipe that would allow me to host then all I'd need to do is stand up a server, register a domain, and point it at my IP address.

Other than the typical security risks, what do I need to worry about? Would the experience be worth it?

Hey Tildes!

I've got a static, basic website, HTML and CSS. It's one page only. But I'd like to create a second page with some more private content that is password protected.

I know that I can accomplish this via .htaccess but what I don't like about this method is that when the user navigates to the page, they get a pop up asking for a username and password. What I would like is having the user navigate to the page, and then they are met with a simple form asking for just a password (no username). After they enter the password, the "veil" lifts or the page forwards and they get the private content.

Here's the thing... the content really only needs to seem private. It's not super secret, personal information. I don't want it indexed by search engines (nofollow), and I want it basically hidden, but the password is only there to make the user feel exclusive. If some tech-minded person encountered this page and jumped through a bunch of hoops to get in without the password, it's not a big deal to me. In reality, 99.9% of people accessing this page will not be able to bypass the password.

I'm guessing this can be accomplished easily in Javascript, but I don't really know much Javascript apart from finding code snippets and plunking them in. I also want to be able to fully design the password entry page so that it looks branded, so a code snippet plunked down into my HTML doc would be great for this.

If there is an easy way to actually protect the content behind the password, that would be excellent. In this case, I imagine it would be much like a news site with an ad-blocker-blocker. Just some kind of pop-up that blocks all the content. Enter the password, and you're in.

Anyhow, I hope I've described what I'm looking for accurately enough. Anybody have any easy and quick ways to accomplish this?

I hope this is the right place to post my question.
About me: I am 23, currently studying computer science in a university and failing it hard. I have finished school with pretty good grades, found school easy and didn't really put any effort into learning. After getting my fancy sheet of paper with my grades I applied to compsci studies. Fast forward to now, I am in my last semester with only 30% of credits I need to graduate. It is really hard, I have zero friends to work with at unversity, I make plans and detailed lists of work I have to do but always fail to follow them. I feel like I cannot control myself, one week I will do my work, next week I will struggle to get out of bed and do anything, I can spend whole day laying in bed and doing nothing. My personal life did not progress upwards too, I do not feel any joy in reading, communicating with people or doing basically anything. Everything feels like one big boring game of get a degree, work, make kids and die. My parents are disappointed, since I am failing uni, got fat and basically became a complete opposite of who I was at school. If I dont have anything to do I will just sit at home and stare at my computer, I dont even play games or watch movies, just mindlesly browse reddit or some forum without posting or commenting.

Maybe someone out here has faced a similar situation and give me a hint/tip to start with, I feel hopeless and useless. This situation seems like an endless void to me, maybe there is a way out that I cannot see?

I'm having some problems with a notebook I want to set up for a friend. And its the first time in a long time I'm not able to solve it just by myself. So I tried asking at #manjaro and #archlinux-newbies but I got no answer at all. It just seems that IRC changed a lot in the last 15 years. Or maybe my IRC manners are not up to date?
Anyway, do you know a place where there is a nice Linux-crowd? What are your favourite Places to get help? (besides the archwiki) ;-) I'm out of the loop for 10-15 years now because most places got pretty toxic.

I was thinking about how I can get caught in negative/critical thought patterns and fail to give gratitude to the people and things in my life that I love and spend time with. I end up taking a lot for granted or spending too much of my mental energy critiquing small flaws instead of appreciating the bigger, better picture.

As such, I'm curious to hear about stuff in your life. It can be big or small. It can be a person or a thing, or a person behind a thing (e.g. I'm grateful to the people that grow and roast the beans in my favorite coffee). What deserves more love and admiration in your life?

good morning, tildes--this is not a test. we are 503 days and dropping away from possibly the biggest election day in recent american history. no opinion pieces this week, but we do have a number of [LONGFORM] pieces this week. our polling section is large this week, and donald makes his first entry onto the TWIEN scene with his formal reelection campaign's kickoff today.

the usual note: common sense should be able to generally dictate what does and does not get posted in this thread. if it's big news or feels like big news, probably make it its own post instead of lobbing it in here. like the other weekly threads, this one is going to try to focus on things that are still discussion worthy, but wouldn't necessarily make good/unique/non-repetitive discussion starters as their own posts.

Week 1 • Week 2 • Week 3 • Week 4 • Week 5 • Week 6 • Week 7 • Week 8 • Week 9 • Week 10 • Week 11 • Week 12

News

Polling

• from Fox News (A+ on 538): Fox News National Poll 6/16:

Biden 49 - 39 Trump
Sanders 49 - 40 Trump
Harris 42 - 41 Trump
Warren 43 - 41 Trump
Buttigieg 41 - 40 Trump

• from Ipsos/Daily Beast (N/A on 538): Ipsos/Daily Beast National Poll 6/17 [PDF warning]:

Biden 46 - 35 Trump
Sanders 47 - 35 Trump
Harris 41 - 35 Trump
Warren 42 - 36 Trump
Klobuchar 34 - 36 Trump
Buttigieg 34 - 36 Trump

• from Quinnipiac: 6/18 Florida Presidential Poll:

Biden 50 - Trump 41
Sanders 48 - Trump 42
Warren 47 - Trump 43
Harris 45 - Trump 44
O’Rourke 45 - Trump 44
Buttigieg 44 - Trump 43

• from NBC News: Trump campaign cutting ties with pollsters after internal numbers leaked:

In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan [...] Trump trails Biden by double-digits. In three of those states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida — Biden’s leads sit outside the poll’s margin of error.
Trump is also behind the former vice president in Iowa by 7 points, in North Carolina by 8 points, in Virginia by 17 points, in Ohio by 1 point, in Georgia by 6 points, in Minnesota by 14 points, and in Maine by 15 points.
In Texas, where a Democratic presidential nominee hasn’t won since President Jimmy Carter in 1976, Trump leads by just 2 points.

• from the Texas Tribune: Trump’s reelection support is 50-50 in Texas, Biden and O’Rourke lead the Democrats, UT/TT Poll says:

Half of the registered voters in Texas would vote to reelect President Donald Trump, but half of them would not, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
Few of those voters were wishy-washy about it: 39% said they would “definitely” vote to reelect Trump; 43% said they would “definitely not” vote for him. The remaining 18% said they would “probably” (11%) or “probably not” (7%) vote to give Trump a second term.

General Stuff

• from Buzzfeed News: [LONGFORM] People In Flint Are Still In Crisis. They Want Presidential Candidates To See Them As More Than A Rallying Cry. the people of flint, long used to being a stopover location for prospective presidential candidates, are seeking to be something a little more this year as the city continues to try and recover from its massive infrastructural problems. flint has been a national issue since 2016; some of you may remember that both clinton and sanders debated there during that cycle, and donald trump also stopped over. so far this cycle though, only one candidate has stopped in the city--julian castro, who incidentally has a plan to eliminate lead poisoning. we're still quite early in the cycle, of course, so this is likely to change, but the question is worth asking whether or not it'll be anything extensive.
• from Alternet: ‘Storm of a century’: Why voter turnout in 2020 might be nothing like we’ve ever seen. we're still quite a ways out but there is already extensive speculation that based on the 2018 midterms and the continued, extremely polarizing presidency of donald that 2020 could be the highest turnout election since 2008 (61%), or perhaps even 1960 (63%). this would most likely require about 156 million ballots to be cast, compared to the 139 million cast in 2016.
• from POLITICO: Dems take red state detours to prove 2020 electability. a fair amount has already been said of the trend of democratic candidates going to places that they don't ordinarily go to in presidential cycles, which is the crux of this article. democratic candidates are taking the opportunity to go places that have never seen presidential candidates before, and while it's not going to win deep red states obviously, it suggests that maybe the democratic party is finally readopting something resembling the 50 state strategy.
• from Vox: A new poll shows how sexism and electability collide in 2020. one of the things that could genuinely be holding back the female candidates in this race is sexism--but not voter sexism, interestingly. for you see, the problem confronting female candidates this year is not necessarily voter opinions on whether a woman can be president per se, but voter's perceptions of other voters' opinions on the subject: "Only 33 percent of voters surveyed believed their neighbors would be comfortable with a woman in the Oval Office, despite 74 percent saying they themselves would be comfortable with a woman president." this, vox argues here, basically leads to the electability argument kinda fucking women over.
• from Vox: Young voters of color are supporting Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. But many want a different candidate. emphasizing how early we are in this, it's worth noting that many candidates are being buoyed in part by name recognition currently, particularly biden and sanders. they of course have solid bases, but a lot of people are defaulting to people they know since it's early, and in the next few months those people might start shopping around for other candidates.
• from Vox: Why the Democratic Party doesn’t want a presidential debate about climate change. the longest lasting of the controversies surrounding the democratic debate series continues. the ostensible reason for this: "Perez said that even without a climate change-specific debate, it will be an issue that’s impossible to ignore. “I have the utmost confidence that, based on our conversations with networks, climate change will be discussed early and often during our party’s primary debates,” he wrote."

Donald Trump

• from the Guardian: Can lightning strike twice? Trump set to launch 2020 campaign. donald trump formally launches his reelection campaign today in orlando, florida. focuses of his campaign are all but guaranteed to be economy, national security, and immigration; how well he sticks to these given his inability to tout them effectively in 2018 remains to be seen, of course. socialism also seems like it's shaping up to be a part of donald's reelection message, and he may be preparing to relitigate the 2017 healthcare fight as well.

Joe Biden

• from NBC News: Biden's 'Back to the Future' dilemma. joe biden has an interesting issue: the crux of his appeal is based in the past, but so are most of the criticisms of him. the source of most of the things that make people like him are obviously rooted in the obama administration and his extensive legislative and senate career, but his past also leaves him open to attack because it leaves a lot to be desired. NBC offers some observations: "Biden is finding out that William Faulkner's observation applies to presidential politics: The past is never dead; it's not even past. To win, he may have to figure out how to get past his past."
• from VICE: Biden Has an Aggressive Plan to Force China to Go Green. policy-wise, biden's climate plan has some interesting international features. per VICE, "It promises that as president, “Biden will rally a united front of nations to hold China accountable to high environmental standards in its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects so that China can’t outsource pollution to other countries.”" this is not really a feature in any other candidate's plans, it is worth noting.
• from CNN: Biden slams critics of working with GOP: 'Why don't you all go home then, man?'. biden is trying to play up the bipartisanship argument, probably against better judgment. while other candidates have stumped on the idea of nuking the filibuster in the senate and using executive orders to pass their policies instead of trying to ram things through the senate at all, biden takes a consensus line: "The fact of the matter is, if we can't get a consensus, nothing happens except the abuse of power by the executive. Zero." in the event that biden somehow cannot make this work, he intends to "[...]go out and beat these folks if they don't agree with you, by making your case -- and that's what presidents are supposed to do: Persuade the public."

Bernie Sanders

• from CBS News: Sanders defends democratic socialism, calling for "21st Century Bill of Rights". the capstone of sanders's past week was his speech on democratic socialism, where he doubled down on being a democratic socialist, framing it somewhat in the image of FDR and the new deal. sanders also called for a 21st century bill of rights though, as the article title notes. this bill of rights "would establish that every American, regardless of income, has a right to a job with a living wage, health care, education, affordable housing, a clean environment and a secure retirement." (see also In These Times: Bernie Sanders Has Laid Out the Stakes of the 2020 Election: Democratic Socialism or Barbarism; Truthout: Bernie Sanders Proposes New Economic Bill of Rights)
• from Left Voice: Sanders’ Speech Explains His Vision of Socialism—It Sounds a Lot like New Deal Liberalism. not everybody on the left is per se thrilled with sanders's speech, however. left voice criticizes sanders here for essentially jacking new deal liberalism and presenting it as democratic socialism instead of providing an actual alternative to the capitalist system we live in. this is not unfounded--sanders is basically doing that, honestly---but as a matter of practice it's something of a hollow criticism, as a genuinely anti-capitalist or socialist platform is almost certainly not viable at the national level currently.

Elizabeth Warren

• from Vox: Elizabeth Warren isn’t Hillary Clinton. this piece by Vox is one-part modification of an interview ezra klein did with elizabeth warren, one-part putting warren in a broader context as a candidate. warren, in klein's view, is not hillary because where hillary had many plans with many messages, warren has many plans which all reinforce a singular message. warren, weirdly enough, seems to also basically agree with sanders on most things? bu she also won't define herself as anything bernie does.
• from Reuters: Democrat Warren wants 7 billion fund to give grants to minority entrepreneurs. warren has a small plan to promote minority entrepreneurs by "creating a $7 billion fund to provide grants to help more minorities start their own business" which she would pay for with her ultra-millionaire tax (see also: Warren Medium post; Mother Jones: Elizabeth Warren Just Unveiled a Plan to Close the Racial Wealth Gap).
• from Mother Jones: Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan for Winning the White House, and Right Now It’s Working. despite an early fumbling over the extremely dumb native american story, warren has remained incredibly consistent to her election plan, which is paying off quite well for her so far. she has of course been rising in the polls and gaining significant media attention, and now seems likely to overtake sanders if sanders continues to stagnate in the polls.

Kamala Harris

• from Buzzfeed News: Kamala Harris Has A Network Of Black Sorority Sisters Mobilizing For Her In The South. one advantage kamala harris has going for her organization wise is sorority sisters. harris is a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the oldest (greek letter) sorority for black females in america, and as it happens that is a very convenient for campaign organizing. harris is fairly distant from the front runners in the south currently, polling only around 8% in south carolina (biden is polling at 40%!), so she'll probably take every volunteer she can get. harris's campaign in fact identifies the sorority connection as one of the keys to sucessful organization in the south as of now.
• from the Atlantic: Kamala Harris’s Mistake. harris is not without criticism this week, of course. some people are not very appreciative of her statement on the DoJ most likely having no choice but to prosecute donald in a post-trump presidency because it reeks too much of some sort of effort to create an illiberal democracy, or some similar criticism like that.

Pete Buttigieg

• from POLITICO: Pete Buttigieg raised staggering $7 million in April alone. despite stalling in the polls, pete buttigieg is still raising fairly large amounts of money (in part because of his continued appeal to some liberals, but also probably because he is apparently one of the favorite sons of many wall street types); it is worth bearing in mind though that we currently do not have anybody to compare this against besides biden, who has supposedly raised 19.8 million according to basic math. it's entirely possible that buttigieg is on the short end of the stick. we'll have to see.
• from CNN: Buttigieg cancels top-dollar California fundraisers to focus on officer-involved shooting in South Bend. buttigieg also had to cancel appearances at a number of events this week to handle an officer-involved shooting that took place in south bend this week. this move has mostly been praised, but i imagine will be under a decent amount of scrutiny given that buttigieg is running for president and will, if he wins, have to address things like this on a national level.

Everybody Else

• from POLITICO: Julián Castro in Fox News town hall: Let’s talk about me, not Hillary. julian castro was the latest candidate to have a fox news town hall, at which he rebuked the network's efforts to tie everybody to hillary clinton (and also rebuked efforts to talk about really any other candidate actually in the primary). castro also doubled down quite significantly on his plans for immigration and in his criticisms of donald trump, despite the conservative audience at home.
• from CNN: Amy Klobuchar joins Democrats calling for impeachment proceedings. amy klobuchar, the other other female candidate, became the latest democrat to call for impeachment proceedings that is running for president. this brings the total number of candidates in favor of impeachment proceedings up to about a dozen, according to CNN.
• from the Atlantic: This Isn’t Going According to Plan for Kirsten Gillibrand. kirsten gillibrand's mighty, shambaholic campaign continues to get press--but most likely not for the reasons she'd want. last week i had an article on how she's used to uphill battles, but in this case it seems like she picked off a battle that is entirely too much for her abilities as a skilled campaigner, because her polling remains incredibly bad. her one solace is she's made the first debate, but that's about it. that, i think, is really her last chance to start rising in the polls before she's going to be relegated to perennial 1%er status the rest of the way.
• from POLITICO: How Rep. Eric Swalwell would tackle gun violence in America. eric swalwell has a plant to tackle gun violence. it is quite straightforward, and "includes banning assault weapons, instituting a gun buyback program and requiring licenses for all gun owners." he also says he "would hold weapon manufacturers responsible by “lifting the shield of liability that protects” them" and wants insurance to be a part of gun licensing.
• from New York Magazine: [LONGFORM] Tulsi Gabbard Had a Very Strange Childhood, which may help explain why she’s out of place in today’s Democratic Party. And her long-shot 2020 candidacy. this piece by NYMag is an extensive profile of possibly the second most odd candidate running in the primary and perennial 1%er tulsi gabbard, the congresswoman for hawaii's second congressional district, noted "progressive" candidate, apparent hindu nationalist, and supposed assad apologist. gabbard is an interesting candidate mostly because of her own incredibly unique past, but also because of the incredibly odd people she brings together to form her 1% coalition that polls just behind yang but just ahead of williamson, usually (that coalition being progressive types, hindu nationalists, intellectual dark web dogwhistlers, and more).
• from CBS News: Marianne Williamson on bringing spirituality back into politics. marianne williamson, who is arguably the weirdest candidate of the cycle ahead of gabbard, takes a very interesting line of approach to the campaign, which i think i'll just quote directly: "The problem [with politics] is with an over-corporatized, over-secularized political conversation so disconnected from values, so disconnected from issues of moral and ethical responsibility, as to have broken itself off of the major river of American thought and American life. That's why so many people can't relate to it." interestingly, williamson also supports a 200-500 bllion dollar reparations package.
• from Vox: [LONGFORM] Andrew Yang is promising to revitalize America. His nonprofit tried, too, but couldn’t. andrew yang is running on a platform of revitalizing america among other things, but his record on the issue suggests he might have a hard time messaging on that. as Vox reports, yang intended to create 100,000 jobs through venture for america, but VFA has failed to create even 4,000 "jobs" so far. given that VFA is sorta kinda a model for yang's campaign, this does leave a number of questions up in the air.

anyways, feel free to as always contribute other interesting articles you stumble across, or comment on some of the ones up there.

Introduction to Genetic Algorithms

Genetic algorithms can be used to solve problems that are difficult, or impossible to solve with traditional algorithms. Much like neural networks, they provide good-enough solution in short amount of time, but rarely find the best one. While they're not as popular as neural networks nor as widely used, they still have their place, as we can use them to solve complicated problems very fast, without expensive training rigs and with no knowledge of math.

Genetic algorithms can be used for variety of tasks, for example for determining the best radio antenna shape, aerodynamic shapes of cars and planes, wind mill shapes, or various queing problems. We'll use it to print "Hello, World!".

How does it work?

Genetic algorithm works in three steps.

1. Generate random solutions
2. Test how good they are
3. Pick the best ones, breed and mutate them, go to step 2

It works just like evolution in nature. First, we generate randomised solutions to our problem (in this case: random strings of letters).

Then, we test each solution and give it points, where better solutions gain more points. In our problem, we would give one point for each correct letter in the string.

Afterwards, we pick the best solutions and breed it together (just combine the strings). It's not bad idea to mutate (or randomize) the string a bit.

We collect the offsprings, and repeat the process until we find good enough solution.

Generate random solutions

First of all, we need to decide in which form we will encode our solutions. In this case, it will be simply string. If we wanted to build race cars, we would encode each solution (each car) as array of numbers, where first number would be size of the first wheel, the second number would be size of the second wheel, etc. If we wanted to build animals that try to find food, fight and survive, we would choose a decision tree (something like this).

So let's start and make few solutions, or entities. One hundred should be enough.

from random import randint

goal = "Hello, World!"
allowed_characters = list("qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnmQWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM ,!")

def get_random_entity(n, string_length):
    entities = []
    for _ in range(0, n):
        entity = ""
        for _ in range(0, string_length):
            entity += allowed_characters[randint(0, len(allowed_characters)-1)]
        entities.append(entity)
    return entities

print(get_random_entity(100, 13))

Test how good they are

This is called a "fitness function". Fitness function determines how good a solution is, be it a car (travel distance), animal (food gathered), or a string (number of correct letters).

The most simple function we can use right now will simply count correct letters. If we wanted, we could make something like Levenshtein distance instead.

def get_fitness(entity):
    points = 0
    for i in range(0, len(entity)):
        if goal[i] == entity[i]:
            points += 1
    return points

Crossover and mutation

Now it's time to select the best ones and throw away the less fortunate entities. Let's order entities by their fitness.

Crossover is a process, when we take two entities (strings) and breed them to create new one. For example, we could just give the offspring one part from one parent and another part from second parent.

There are many ways how to do this, and I encourage you to try multiple approaches when you will be doing something like this.

P:  AAAABBB|BCCCC
P:  DDDDEEE|FGGGG

F1: AAAABBB|FGGGG

Or we can just choose at random which letter will go from which parent, which works the best here. After we have the offsprint (F1), we should mutate it. What if we were unfortunate, and H (which we need for our Hello, World!) was not in any of the 100 entities? So we take the string and for each character of the string, there is a small chance to mutate it - change it at random.

F1:  ADDDEBEFGCGG
F1`: ADHDEBEFGCGG

And it's done. Now kill certain part of old population. I don't know which percentage is best, but I usually kill about 90% of old population. The 90% that we killed will be replaced by new offsprings.

There is just one more thing: which entities do we select for crossover? It isn't bad idea - and it generally works just fine - to just give better entities higher chance to breed.

def get_offspring(first_parent, second_parent, mutation_chance):
    new_entity = ""
    for i in range(0, len(first_parent)):
        if randint(0, 100) < mutation_chance:
            new_entity += allowed_characters[randint(0, len(allowed_characters)-1)]
        else:
            if randint(0, 1) == 0:
                new_entity += first_parent[i]
            else:
                new_entity += second_parent[i]
    return new_entity

When we add everything together, we get this output:

Generation 1, best score: 2 ::: QxZPjoptHfNgX
Generation 2, best score: 3 ::: XeNlTOQuAZjuZ
Generation 3, best score: 4 ::: weolTSQuoZjuK
Generation 4, best score: 5 ::: weTgnC uobNdJ
Generation 5, best score: 6 ::: weTvny uobldb
Generation 6, best score: 6 ::: HellSy mYbZdC
Generation 7, best score: 7 ::: selOoXBWoAKn!
Generation 8, best score: 8 ::: HeTloSoWYZlh!
Generation 9, best score: 8 ::: sellpX WobKd!
Generation 10, best score: 9 ::: welloq WobSdb
Generation 11, best score: 9 ::: selloc WoZjd!
Generation 12, best score: 10 ::: wellxX WoVld!
Generation 13, best score: 10 ::: welltX World!
Generation 14, best score: 10 ::: welltX World!
Generation 15, best score: 10 ::: welltX World!
Generation 16, best score: 11 ::: zellov Wobld!
Generation 17, best score: 11 ::: Hellty World!
Generation 18, best score: 11 ::: welloX World!
Generation 19, best score: 11 ::: welloX World!
Generation 20, best score: 11 ::: welloX World!
Generation 21, best score: 12 ::: welloX World!
Generation 22, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 23, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 24, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 25, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 26, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 27, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 28, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 29, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 30, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 31, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 32, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 33, best score: 12 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 34, best score: 13 ::: Helloy World!
Generation 35, best score: 13 ::: Hello, World!

As we can see, we find pretty good solution very fast, but it takes very long to find perfect solution. The complete code is here.

Maintaining diversity

When we solve difficult problems, it starts to be increasingly important to maintain diversity. When all your entities are basically the same (which happened in this example), it's difficult to find other solutions than those that are almost the same as the currently best one. There might be a much better solution, but we didn't find it, because all solutions that are different to currently best one are discarded. Solving this is the real challenge of genetic algorithms. One of the ideas is to boost diverse solutions in fitness function. So for every solution, we compute distance to the current best solutions and add bonus points for distance from it.

Has anybody had much experience playing DnD or other tabletops with children? I've been toying with the idea of making a fairly straightforward and simplified RPG using Story Cubes and GURPS that kids can get involved with easily and have fun playing. I'm specifically aiming to play with my daughter (8) and my niece (5) on a big family holiday in August, though I see no real reason that this couldn't work with adults as well.
Essentially, the conceit would go along the lines of each player rolling a limited number of story dice to help with character creation and such. I'd ask the players a few simple questions about their powers (for example, are you more of a wizard or more of a warrior?) to get some basic stats stats together (STR, DEX, INT, CON), and then use story dice myself to quickly improvise a short one-shot session.

Does anyone have experience playing with kids, and if so - any pointers? Am I being too ambitious about children's ability to imagine stuff in this way? If so, are there any good systems out there that are good for young people to pick up and get stuck into roleplaying with?

My laptop is showing sings of death, and I know I will need a new one soon. Also, I am planning to get a tablet and ditch my smartphone, and to stop using the laptop for browsing content: I'll do most of that to the phone/tablet, and use the laptop as an authoring tool: writing and coding.

So I am looking for a laptop that is cheap, light, and can keep running for at least 3-5hrs under mild Debian+Emacs load. Ideally around 11"-13".

There was talk a while back about the different sections of tildes getting broken down further into subsections. Is this still the plan?

Does tildes even have a user base large enough for it to be worthwhile?

I've never really been that into video games. When I was young, I played a lot of RPGs on the SNES and PS1. Within the last couple of years, I dipped my toes back in the water and tried a few out. I tried Skyrim on a friend's recommendation, but it was just a little too involved and open-world for me. I got Cities:Skylines, which I love because I love city builder sims, but that game just does not run well on any of my underpowered computers. And I loved Ori and the Blind Forest, a beautiful platformer, and I'd play it again right now if it wasn't Windows-only.

Here are my requirements. First, it needs to run well on a low-powered machine without making the fan go insane. I've got a MacBook Air 2012 and a ThinkPad x250 (Linux). Neither of these are the ideal gaming experience, I know, but I'm not looking for amazing graphics or bleeding edge technology or something super immersive. Pixel graphics are fine with me. It reminds me of my youth, anyway. I played both Skylines and Ori on my Intel NUC 4th Gen and while it worked, they both really taxed that little machine. I was able to finish Ori, but once a city reaches a certain size in Skylines, it gets unplayable.

I'm not looking for stress. I like RPGs and sims. But it doesn't have to be really hard or frustrating. I don't want to feel chased in a game. I prefer to feel that I'm driving the action and I can go at my pace. I want to feel like if I look away for a moment, I'm not going to lose everything. I'm a casual. I also don't mind if there's no defined ending of a game. For me, I'm more looking for a diversion and a slow build over some kind of constant progression/achievement type scenario.

If it has full controller support, that would be ideal. I've got a Steam controller, and I prefer using a controller to play a game. I've never liked using the keyboard to play. I'm not totally against it, but I guess I just never got into computer gaming. I pretty much always played on consoles in the past.

Linux or macOS only, please. I did have Windows installed once so that I could play games, but I'm not bothering with that anymore. I don't want to have to boot into another operating system just to play a game. I want to be able to hop in and out of a game while using my daily driver computer.

So in my research, I've looked into Terraria and Stardew Valley. These might be what I'm looking for. But I really don't know. Do either of these scratch my itch? Is there another game that I would enjoy based on what I've told you? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

EDIT: Thank you everybody for your awesome suggestions. I'm still happy to hear more, as I plan to add the ones that really interest me to my wishlist and revisit later. I ended up getting Hollow Knight yesterday and I spent the whole day playing it. It's very engrossing, and it's the perfect game for me. It's so much like Ori, and that game blew me away. Chilled out, go at your own pace, exploring dungeons, challenging but not impossible (though the first Hornet fight was pretty tough for me). The game runs fine on my ThinkPad x250 (i5-5300U) in Pop!_OS Linux, apart from the initial movie scene stuttering--I just had to skip past it, unfortunately. It's such an awesome game, and I'm glad to see they've already announced a sequel. If you know of any other games that are like Ori and Hollow Knight, let me know.

howdy all, been a few weeks since I posted about our last meet for the first campaign we ran.
So one of the other players has stepped up as the DM so our first DM could actually play since it was his idea to get us altogether in the first place, the new game is running on milestone leveling and so far feels like it will move a bit faster. Our first meet we only just survived the night, all of us having to use the death save rolls at least once each, the new DM made a comment of "If I thought you lot would roll so horridly I would have toned it down way more" but hey it made things more fun and we had to work as a damn team.

Last night we had our 2nd meet and our first PC death. It was the rogue that tried to steal everything nailed down including the nails, he tried to pick pocket the NPC that was with us and rolled a damn 1 the NPC rolled a nat 20 and it just went from there, this was also after dealing with the big bad of the evening so spell slots had been spent and half the party kinda said he had it coming. He is brand new to RPG games so went all out with the role playing side and doing what he wants, personally I thought it was amazing he also has taken some pride in being the first to go down.

Anyone else have something fun or cool to share about their campaign?

I often have a really hard time getting myself to wake up and get out of bed in the mornings in time to go to work or whatever else I need to do. I was hoping people might be willing to share any good strategies they use to get themselves up and going every day.