EDIT: The problem has been solved. @Sill identified the problem here and @cfabbro found a work-around here. Crisis averted!

I listen to some internet radio stations on my computer, but a couple of them aren't working any more: they appear to play, but there's no sound coming from my computer's speakers.

It is only two stations. I've tested other internet radio stations I listen to, and they still work: I can hear them. I can play and hear YouTube videos. I can stream Spotify on my computer. I can play and hear my music files stored on my computer's hard drive. So I know my speakers work. I know Chrome works as a music player for other sources, including other internet radio stations. It's just these two radio stations.

One of them is this radio station. Also this radio station. I know their digital streams are working, because I can listen to them via an internet radio app on my phone. So I know their digital signals are being sent out. But, while my phone app can play them, my computer browser can't play them.

I've tested both non-working stations in Chrome and Internet Explorer. They both don't work in Chrome, but this station also doesn't work in IE.

I'm using Chrome 80.0.3987.122. And I'm running Windows 7.

This problem only started a couple of days ago.

What's going on? How do I fix this?

I was reading this twitter post and it made me wonder if you have any ideas to stop speeding by car drivers? Have any of these ideas been tried anywhere? I'm also interested in unintended consequences.

https://twitter.com/agnessjonsson/status/1229103764843438086?s=20

Agnes @agnessjonsson

fact of the day: Sweden once experimented with a “speed camera lottery”. Those who drove within the speed limit were automatically entered into a drawing where the prize fund came from fines that speeders paid.

They tested it in a few different cities and I haven’t read the results of each one, but in Stockholm the average speed on the selected road decreased by 22 percent.

A while ago I mentioned I was going to attempt making a knife for the first time. Well, I did.

Apologies in advance for there not being many photos of the process - steel is really messy to work with so I mostly kept my phone safely out of the way. I'll try to get more pictures next time, although there are plenty of videos and picture tutorials around if people are super interested in the process. I shall endeavour to describe what I did in text, however.

I started out with a bar of 01 tool steel (wiki) which I cut into a rough knife blank. This I then hit with a ball hammer a load of times to get some texture. Then I used a belt grinder to put a bevel on the edge side, although only enough to thin the knife down to roughly the right shape, not actually sharp. Once that and a few other minor shaping tasks were done, it was time to heat treat it.

Heat treating changes the structure of the metal to make it harder. Hard steel will hold an edge longer, but it does make it much more difficult to work, hence doing most of the shaping before heat treating. To harden steel you need to heat it to a particular temperature, which depends on the exact alloy being used but 'bright orange' is close enough. Fun fact - when steel gets to it's 'critical' temperature, it stops being magnetic, so that's another way you can test it. The steel is then quenched, this one in oil, which makes it hard.

Hardened steel is very brittle so it's usually tempered after hardening. For 01 steel that means putting it in an oven at 160-200C for a couple of hours. You lose some hardness but you gain back some toughness and flexibility.

After tempering, cleaning, polishing, polishing and so much polishing. Steel is so dirty and difficult to work with compared to the silver, gold and copper I'm more used to. But eventually, and after glueing and bolting a sycamore wood handle on, then giving it a final sharpen on my wetstone, I had a knife.

It is a Japanese-style Nakiri knife. Usually used for cutting vegetables, it's really nice to use. Lightweight and agile, the balance is nice and it's comfortable in my hand. It's not perfect and there are a few things I'd do differently but I can see myself using this on a daily basis. More pictures

I have already laid out and started shaping my next knife, which will be a slightly more complicated bunka knife

Any questions, please just ask and I'll do my best to answer.

I know my question isn't worded great! If anyone has a better edit after reading all of this, let me know!

I have a half-formed idea in my head and I want to brainstorm a bit.

Here's the idea: games as a whole have a ton of different aspects/lenses through which we can enjoy and appreciate them, and I want to know what they all are. Here are some examples to show what I mean:

I feel like there are dozens of these we could come up with if we get really specific. The diversity of gaming experiences and genres really lends itself to a broad swath of these aspects. After all, the appreciation someone gets from playing something like Katamari Damacy is very different from that which someone gets from, say, ARMA 2.

I think later it might be interesting to try to apply some sort of analysis or taxonomy to this, but right now I just want to brainstorm. What are all of the different reasons we can like games? Be as specific as you can, try to cover lots of different titles and genres so that all of gaming is represented, and feel free to critique or edit my examples as well (e.g. I think it might be worth breaking up "Narrative" into "Plot" and "Characters", for example).

Aggregated List So Far

I'll keep updating this as we go. For entries that didn't follow the table format (which I didn't intend to be prescriptive but it looks like it caught on!), I've tried to incorporate them as best as I can, but if you feel I've misrepresented something let me know! Again, I'm mostly just interested in brainstorming at the moment, and then I think we can have a secondary thread later for analysis/synthesis.

I've been discovering recently how convenient Discord can make developing with the feedback of your community, or of selected members of your community.

This is assuming that you are already talking with your dev team and community on Discord and have a server for that.

Create your game on the Discord platform (they do the same thing as Steam basically), and integrate an alpha-access store page right into your Discord server as a channel. This store page can be restricted to whomever you want via normal Discord permissions. Binaries can be distributed wonderfully simply this way, becuase if you're talking with the community in Discord already, you can just send them to that store page channel embedded directly in your server where they can simply click "install" to test your most recent binaries.

The agreement with Discord restricts only a few things that I wasn't interested in anyway: They don't want you to do an exclusive deal with another distribution service (duh), and anywhere you advertise your game you must mention that it's also available on Discord in addition to wherever else you're distributing it. That's pretty much fine with me.

Anyway, I'm having a lot more fun with this than I had previously trying to distribute pre-release alpha binaries, so I wanted to see what you all thought about it. And what criticisms there are to be had.

I recently came across an article about setting up automated builds (installation, code quality check, running tests) using Github Actions. I've since found a few more articles excitedly promoting the feature and, from my personal testing, it seems to work quite well.

I was wondering if others had begun using this feature for their own projects, or had tried it and disliked it and used something else. Is there any broader community consensus towards which tasks it's best-suited for and when to use something more robust?

I'm currently in the process of reading the excellent "Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach". Early on the following is mentioned.

Test common threats before exotic threats.

Seems reasonable enough. That said, it got me thinking It'd be cool to generate a list of such threats for future devs/testers to draw on. So...I'm calling on the collective experience of any Tilders involved in iOS or Android development to lend a hand.

In your time working on mobile, what issues have you encountered that you would you classify as exotic? I.e those issues that infrequently arise but when they do can cause major damage. Any and all help is appreciated.